Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Genesis)

Sonic the Hedgehog’s third and final main series Genesis outing was destined to be his largest and most creatively ambitious yet. Arguably to a fault. Its creators envisioned an epic quest divided into fourteen acts that would be twice the size of their Sonic 2 counterparts. On top of that, players would have the option to play through them all as Sonic, his trusty sidekick Tails, a Sonic and Tails duo, or newly introduced ally/rival character Knuckles the echidna.

It was a tall order. Too tall, in fact, since time and technical constraints ultimately prevented this ideal version of Sonic 3 from making its planned street date. Sega’s response to this was novel to say the least. They ended up splitting the content up into two separate retail releases, titled Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. The latter came equipped with an extra connector port along the top of the cartridge capable of docking with a copy of Sonic 3. This so-called “lock-on technology” essentially merged the two pieces of software into a third composite game, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, that delivered everything Sonic Team’s developers had intended all along.

This novelty came at a cost, however. Literally, as gamers were being asked to shell out for two conspicuously incomplete full-price games in order to realize the true Sonic 3 experience. At least the lock-on feature did have one other significant use: Attaching Sonic 2 to Sonic & Knuckles instead allowed you to play as Knuckles in that earlier game. Patching new content into old console games this way was pretty unique and wild by the standards of a largely pre-Internet era.

But enough preamble. How is Sonic 3 & Knuckles? Well, the smooth, addictive physics-based platforming of previous installments is back, and the presence of Tails and Knuckles adds considerable depth and replay value. Tails can fly for short periods, while Knuckles can scale walls and glide in the air. Sonic himself hasn’t been forgotten, either. He’s been given three new items to collect in the form of the aqua, flame, and thunder shields. These multifaceted enhancements block enemy projectiles, enable him to absorb an extra hit (at the cost of losing the shield itself), make him immune to stage hazards of the corresponding element, and even provide extra movement options like a double jump or flaming dash. It’s about time the Blue Blur had a proper suite of power-ups to rival Mario’s!

So far, so good. I only wish the stages themselves weren’t such a classic case of being given too much of a good thing. The desire to make S3&K twice as long as its predecessors was commendable in the abstract. Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World are two uncommonly lengthy platformers relative to most of their contemporaries and you’ll almost never hear anyone complain about that. The difference is that their total play times were divided up into 70 – 90 bite-sized chunks, whereas S3&K opts for 25. Simply put, so many of these levels drag hard. You’ll plow through one samey looking section after another, often for upward of ten solid minutes before reaching a boss. Each of the game’s individual acts do a commendable job of introducing new enemies and environmental gimmicks, only to then drive them into the ground through sheer repetition. That old entertainment adage “always leave them wanting more” is forgotten entirely. My typical response to reaching the end of an act was something along the lines of “Yeesh! Finally!”

S3&K also runs afoul of one of my long-time personal gaming grievances: Requiring you to amass a certain number of collectables to unlock the real finale. As before, Sonic has the option to play hidden bonus stages in hopes of eventually winning the seven Chaos Emeralds that enable him to assume his invincible Super Sonic form. This time, though, he must be in possession of a complete set to face off against arch-villain Dr. Robotnik in the fourteenth and final act. This marks the first time I’ve bothered making a serious effort to gather these Emeralds and I’m hoping it’s the last, seeing as these bonus games never seem to be much fun. I’ve heard you can keep on grinding them to upgrade the Chaos Emeralds into Super Emeralds and see a slightly better end screen. I’ll pass, thanks. I just want to play all the levels. I know a lot of players don’t mind this kind of thing, but I’m still not liable to let it slip by without comment.

Make no mistake: Sonic 3 & Knuckles is superb and its tremendous scope, expanded mechanics, and lavish presentation (famously including some soundtrack work by an uncredited Michael Jackson) collectively amount to a more than fitting climax to the Genesis trilogy. That said, virtually all of its acts felt bloated to me after the comparatively lean and breezy Sonic 2. Trim away somewhere between a quarter and a third of these humongous maps and you’d have a practically perfect platformer on your hands. Not that “only” having one of the best on the system and indeed of the 16-bit generation as a whole is any sort of tragedy.

Castlevania: Bloodlines (Genesis)

Castlevania’s 16-bit period gave rise to some of the saga’s highest-regarded entries. Action-platforming epics like Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood don’t need much in the way of introduction. I’ve covered both previously, as well as the Super Nintendo’s divisive Dracula X. What I’ve yet to do is give the ever-formidable Genesis its due. Well, I’m delighted to finally declare that I’ve been saving the best for last! Sega’s machine was graced with its lone installment, Castlevania: Bloodlines, in 1994 and developer Konami knocked it clear out of the park with this one. Bloodlines weds the typical lush Gothic atmosphere and stunning music the series is famous for with innovative settings, an electrifying set piece approach to level design, and faster, smoother action than ever before.

On its surface, Bloodlines (also known as Vampire Killer in Japan and Castlevania: The New Generation in Europe) appears to be another stock tale of two vampire hunters, John Morris and Eric Lecarde, fighting through six stages of creepy mayhem on the way to slay Count Dracula. That it is, though it earns bonus points from me for being the only Castlevania game to directly reference Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula novel. Bloodlines is set in 1917, twenty years after the events of the book, with John Morris described as the son of Stoker’s Quincy Morris, who the instruction manual goes so far as to claim as a distant descendant of the legendary Belmont family. I could nitpick here, as Quincy was a bachelor with no hint of offspring, but I’d much rather give Konami credit for going there at all.

In a deliberate inversion of the typical formula, John and Eric start out at Dracula’s castle in Transylvania before going on to pursue his vampire niece, Elizabeth Bartley, west across Europe, hoping to stop her before she’s able to revive her uncle. Thus, we’re treated to levels based (very loosely, of course) on flooded Greek ruins, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a German wartime munitions factory, and the Palace of Versailles. This international angle gave the development team carte blanche to present concepts outside the Castlevania norm. They leaned into it big time, and I’m not just talking about Pisa. While a mere six stages may not sound like much compared to SCIV’s eleven, each location in Bloodlines is massive and composed of many distinct sections with their own unique enemies and environmental hazards. Germany, for example, begins with an approach to the factory where you’re bombarded by skeletons in army helmets popping out of metal drums and chucking bones over a fence in the background. Once inside, you battle regenerating skeletons across a sequence of moving conveyor belts. Next, you must ascend a tight vertical shaft without getting crushed by the giant pistons along its length. After that, a classic clockwork area with giant spinning gears and the staple flying medusa heads awaits. All this, and you’re still not halfway there! Plenty of fresh platforming gimmicks and a mid-boss still stand between you and the next stop on your road trip. It rivals Contra III in terms of sheer “What next!?” factor.

All this variety is only enhanced by the presence of two playable characters. John wields the fabled Vampire Killer whip passed down by the Belmont clan and therefore plays the most like previous Castlevania protagonists. He has the special ability to whip diagonally upward while jumping, which has applications outside of combat, since it allows him to latch onto ceilings and perform an invincible swing maneuver necessary to cross certain gaps and reach the occasional out-of-the-way item. Eric fights with a magic spear gifted to him by none other than fan favorite dhampir Alucard. The spear offers longer reach than the whip in exchange for dealing slightly less damage. Unlike John, Eric can’t attack upward in the air, He can, however, do so while standing on solid ground. The spear also enables a pole vault jump that’s similar to the whip swing in that its primary function is to enable Eric to access a few alternate routes John can’t. The idea of branching paths is a fine one, even if the game only includes two instances of it. On top of their individual movesets, the pair can find and employ three limited-use sub-weapons: An axe, a boomerang, and holy water. In a flourish lifted from Rondo, a stronger “item crash” variant of each sub-weapon’s default attack is available in exchange for more of the gems that stand in for the usual hearts as ammunition here. Although I tend to find Eric’s reach more generally useful than John’s damage output, both feel powerful, distinct, and relatively balanced. That last bit in particular is something earlier multi-character Castlevania outings Dracula’s Curse and Rondo really struggled with.

In spite of its world-class levels and thoughtfully balanced heroes, the flow of the action in Bloodlines might be what truly won my heart. Konami resisted the urge to showboat with the sort of massive player sprites that led so many 16-bit action-platformers to feature slower movement and more cramped screen layouts than their 8-bit ancestors. Rather, John and Eric were given NES-like proportions that, in tandem with the Genesis’ famously zippy processor, resulted in the quickest-paced Castlevania yet. It’s hardly Sonic the Hedgehog, mind you, but try booting up Bloodlines immediately after any of the games that inspired it and I guarantee you’ll spot the difference. It all amounts to a substantial, fair challenge that’s a joy to take on.

Bloodlines’ brilliant mechanics are bolstered by a remarkable soundtrack courtesy of composer Michiru Yamane in her Castlevania debut. Her “Reincarnated Soul,” “Iron Blue Intention,” and “Calling from Heaven,” all fit in right alongside slick Genesis FM arrangements of such touchstones as “Vampire Killer” and “Bloody Tears.” It’s so good, I had to own it on vinyl. The graphics do their musical accompaniment full justice, with impressive sprite work (that’s also impressively gory unless you’re stuck playing the censored European version for some reason) and a bevy of striking background effects that include reflective water in Greece and a dizzying swaying tower in Pisa.

Konami was close, so achingly close, to realizing a perfect old school Castlevania experience in Bloodlines. What tripped them up mere inches short of the finish line was, of all things, the continue system. Yes, flying in the face of all tradition and good sense, Bloodlines is the sole console entry in the franchise to saddle the player with limited continues. An unwritten rule dating all the way back to 1986 was that no matter how daunting the task of hunting down Dracula grew, you’d never be confronted with a true game over. As long as you refused to give up during that long night, dawn always beckoned. Here, run out of lives three times and it’s back to the title screen with you. It’s a decision so contrary to the Castlevania ethos that it may well have torpedoed the whole production. Thankfully, there is a workaround in the form of the password system. It’s an imperfect one, owing to the fact that passwords record your current life and continue count as well as your progress. Still, it does at least mean that you can treat a password obtained after a clean run through a stage as a de facto save point. It turns a potential deal-breaker into a manageable low grade annoyance, albeit one that was wholly unnecessary in the first place.

Pound-for-pound, Bloodlines is my pick for the best overall Castlevania release of its generation. In fact, it sits near the top of my personal series tier list, right below the first and third NES titles. Despite being historically underappreciated relative to its contemporaries, I maintain that it looks and sounds just as superb as Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood while handily outstripping them both in terms of level design, difficulty balancing, and general gameplay feel. Hardly a popular opinion, I admit, but a sincere one based on extensive experience with all the games in question.

Speaking of sincere, happy Halloween to you all, and congratulations on surviving another October’s worth of spine-chilling game reviews! I hope you’ll join me next week as we resume our regularly scheduled programming.

Golden Axe (Genesis)

I’ve long been guilty of giving short shrift to one of the most prolific and popular video game types of the ’80s and ’90s: The belt scrolling beat-’em-up. I’ve covered a handful, certainly, but not many relative to the legions of platformers, shooters, adventure games, and RPGs that tend to dominate my digital leisure time. Unlike the equally neglected sports titles, military simulations, and abstract puzzle games, it isn’t because I’m not fond of the form. Really, it’s down to the fact that these games are virtually always best enjoyed with friends. Not unlike their kissing cousins, the head-to-head versus fighters. This social component is such a keystone that brutalizing endless hordes of palette-swapped thugs solo can feel oddly hollow. Lonesome, even.

Nevertheless, I do sometimes get the urge, so today is the venerable Golden Axe’s turn in the spotlight. Technōs Japan’s Double Dragon had been one of the biggest arcade hits of 1987. Indeed of the decade’s latter half. When it came time for Sega to craft a response in 1989, they opted against aping Double Dragon’s urban setting and street punk antagonists in favor of a savage sword & sorcery saga patterned on Conan and similar pulp fantasy heroes. And that’s not just me making glib assumptions for once. Lead designer Makoto Uchida is on record as saying that he drew on his love for Schwarzenegger’s Conan and similar action flicks of the period to give the competition a run for its money. He likely went a little too far with it, in fact, since the arcade Golden Axe prominently featured voice clips lifted without permission from Conan, Rambo: First Blood, and others. Naughty Sega.

Golden Axe is a classic revenge tale of three muscle-bound heroes, Tyris Flair, Ax Battler (who fights with a sword, naturally), and Gilius Thunderhead, setting out to defeat the evil warlord Death Adder, who wields the fabled axe of the title. Each of the protagonists has lost at least one friend or family member to Death Adder’s villainy. Up to two can play simultaneously, though the choice of character here seems less impactful than it is in many brawlers. They don’t map cleanly to usual stereotypes of the fast one, the strong one, and the balanced one. Rather, the trio is differentiated mainly by their varying skill with magic. Collecting blue potions throughout the journey will fill up the player’s magic gauge. Activating magic will cash in the entire stock to generate a screen-wide special attack that deals damage based on the number of potions spent. Tyris can stock a maximum of nine potions, Ax Battler six, and Gilius just four. Apart from this, their moves are quite similar, making them akin to an easy, medium, and hard mode, respectively.

In addition to the magic system, Golden Axe’s second signature contribution to the genre is the rideable beasts that appear in most stages. They’re functionally a variation on the weapons carried by enemies in Double Dragon, except that instead of knocking a baseball bat out of an enemy’s hand and picking it up to swing as his buddies, you’re knocking a rival swordsman out of the saddle and commandeering his fire-breathing dragon or wacky whip-tailed chicken critter. In both cases, you can only get hit a limited number of times before the power-up disappears for good.

As I played through Golden Axe again for the first time in many years, I found myself wondering if this Genesis port had been shortened in some way. Levels seemed to fly by before I knew it, being no more than a half-dozen screens long in some cases, if that. It turns out that the opposite is actually true! The Genesis edition had a brand-new final area added on top of faithful reproductions of the arcade’s six. This effectively nudges a fifteen minute game up to around the twenty minute mark. That’s roughly on par with the aforementioned Double Dragon, but positively dwarfed by 1989’s two most influential beat-’em-ups, Capcom’s Final Fight and Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as the majority of their successors. The presence of that single new stage and Duel mode, an endurance style sequence of twelve matches against increasingly difficult groups of enemies, ultimately doesn’t do much to alleviate Golden Axe’s extreme brevity.

The combat isn’t all it could be, either. While you’re given a varied enough arsenal of weapon strikes and throws on top of your magic, it becomes clear early on that one move overshadows the rest: The dash attack. It’s fast, it knocks any victim to the ground in one go, and opponents are apparently unable to defend against it in any meaningful way. From the lowliest grunt to Death Adder himself, all give way before the almighty dash. This renders Golden Axe fairly trivial to complete, which I suppose could be considered a plus if you’re in no mood for a challenge and would prefer to steamroll the minions of darkness without breaking a sweat. On the whole, however, I’m inclined to count it as a negative.

If I had to summarize Golden Axe in one word, it might be “ungainly.” It carries an air of awkward adolescence about it, releasing as it did right on the cusp of seminal works fated to usher in the beat-’em-up’s true ’90s golden age. Still, this one is fondly remembered for a reason. Its barbaric atmosphere, brilliantly conveyed through quality pixel art and composer You Takada’s bombastic score, remains as appealing as ever and has inspired no less than five sequels and three spin-offs over the years. This impressively accurate home conversion also enjoys its own cherished place in history as a showpiece of early (pre-Sonic) Genesis marketing, when the company was pushing the “arcade experience at home” angle as hard as they could. It absolutely lives up to that hype, despite lacking a few animations, voice clips, and the original’s gloriously nutty fourth wall-breaking end scene. Stay gold, Ax Battler.

Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom (Genesis)

I want to love Sega’s Phantasy Star series. I want it so bad. The original was a technical marvel on the Master System and its first Genesis sequel blazed new trails as one of the earliest 16-bit console RPGs. Factor in their slick Star War-inspired setting and it’s no wonder I’ve been excited to discover what kid me was missing out on as a staunch Nintendo loyalist. So far, though, the harsh reality of their stultifying designs have left me to conclude that Sega’ saga simply wasn’t on par with the big ticket RPGs Square and Enix were busy crafting for the competition. If you weren’t spending more time with your pad of graph paper than your controller due to Phantasy Star’s overlong first-person mazes, you were suffering through Phantasy Star II’s even more interminable overhead dungeons. One way or another, both rapidly devolved into mind-numbing slogs.

Despite this, I went into 1990’s Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom with a certain cautious optimism. Sure, this one has long been branded the franchise’s black sheep by fans. I regularly find myself enjoying games with the same reputation way more than I’m supposed to, however. See my Castlevania: Dracula X or Rockman & Forte reviews for some prime examples. Besides, the premise alluded to by the subtitle was most intriguing. Phantasy Star III follows the exploits of a family of heroes over the course of three generations. The first always plays out the same, but your choice of spouse for main hero Rhys at the end will result in a passing of the torch to one of two possible heirs. A similar choice awaits at the end of the second generation, meaning that there are four possible main characters in the third and final one. Five, technically, since one pairing results in twins.

In theory, the replay value inherent in this structure is tremendous: Two separate middle acts and four finales! In practice, it becomes apparent very early on that the development team lacked the wherewithal to craft a single satisfying scenario, let alone seven interconnecting ones. As with the previous games, there’s virtually no dialogue or characterization included for any of your eighteen potential party members. Take the ageless androids Mieu and Wren, for example. They were present for 99% of my playthrough, yet they never spoke again following their 3-4 sentence introductions. This complete lack of attention to storytelling is a tragic staple of the first three Phantasy Stars. While it was somewhat understandable on the Master System circa 1987, the rapid development of the genre coupled with the extra power of the Genesis platform makes it harder to forgive three years later.

I wish I could say that more effort went into other aspects of Phantasy Star III’s production. Alas, it is in all respects an empty, threadbare pretender posturing as an epic. This is evident in the droning soundtrack, the ropey combat animations, the miniscule selection of background tiles, and, above all, the absurd degree of padding. Every low-down trick in the book is leveraged to ensure that accomplishing anything in Phantasy Star III takes you just short of forever. Your party members move like sloths. Enemy encounters trigger after every couple steps. There’s no form of fast travel until late in the last act and it’s still a lot slower than you’d prefer. Indoor areas are designed to make you trace the longest possible path between two points. Backtracking is constant. About the only positive I can muster is that the dungeon layouts aren’t nearly the overwrought nightmares they were in the previous two installments. They’re actually fairly compact now. Thank God.

Perversely, Phantasy Star III goes so far as to deny you any sense of satisfying character progression on top of all that. You can forget about unlocking new abilities as you level up. Characters know their full complement of special techniques from the start. Although these abilities will improve with experience (dealing more damage, restoring more lost health, or whatever), their basic functions always remains the same.

Between its skeletal narrative, drab presentation, uninspired mechanics, and insultingly labored pacing, Phantasy Star III has the dubious honor of being the dullest excuse for an RPG I’ve suffered through since, well, Phantasy Star II. Although I can glimpse the vague outline of a grand sci-fi melodrama peeking through now and again, the execution just isn’t there. The idea of starting over from scratch to see the other three endings fills me not with anticipation, but shuddering revulsion. I keep hearing that the fourth entry is the real winner; the Best Genesis RPG, and I’m praying that’s so. I need some sort of redemption angle to salvage this whole dreary enterprise for me, because my primary impression of Phantasy Star thus far is that it’s felt like generations of tedium.

Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun (Genesis)

Meow.

It’s only been a few months since I reviewed my last Dungeons & Dragons branded game, the NES port of Pool of Radiance, but I guess I’m still in the same vintage high fantasy adventure mood. That said, my subject this week, 1992’s Warriors of the Eternal Sun for the Sega Genesis, is a bit different. For starters, it’s one of the few console D&D efforts of the ’90s to not be a direct adaptation of a previous home computer title. Rather, it’s an original work by Westwood Studios, even if it does take some obvious design cues from several contemporary D&D PC releases.

Furthermore, Warriors was the first video game to be set in the Known World (aka Mystara), an official D&D setting that stood out as wilder than most. It boasted Viking fjords right next door to Arabian deserts, samurai cat men from the moon, and (most relevant to this review) a hollow planet with an inhabited interior lit by an ever-burning artificial sun. This Hollow World was created by an alliance of godlike immortal beings who wanted to use it as a “living museum” of sorts where cultures and species facing extinction on the surface could be transplanted and maintained indefinitely. In practice, that means dinosaurs, cavemen, and a motley patchwork of societies based on the likes of ancient Greece and Egypt. Powerful magics put in place by the immortals ensure that most inhabitants of the outer world have no clue that the inner one exists, and vice versa. Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud. Having campaigned across the length, breadth, and depth of Mystara myself throughout the early ’90s, I couldn’t wait to dive in and discover how well Westwood was able to capture its gonzo essence in digital form.

The titular Warriors are your party of four, who find themselves stranded in unfamiliar territory when the besieged castle they were defending from a goblin horde is magically transported to the Hollow World. Their mission is as vague as it is vital: Go out and explore the surrounding territory in search of answers and allies. You’re free to construct your lineup from seven classes: Fighters, Clerics, Magic-Users, Thieves, Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings. This early decision is far from the only instance where a little familiarity with Basic D&D tabletop rules of the time will serve you well. Dwarves and Halflings, for example, are similar to fighters, except they have slightly better resistance to magic and negative status effects. In exchange, however, they have comparatively low maximum levels, making Fighters dominant in the long run. Thieves are underwhelming as well. Their ability to disarm some traps hardly begins to make up for their overall poor combat potential. That leaves those four remaining classes as your bread and butter options. I went with one of each. Don’t overlook the importance of re-rolling your stats as many times as necessary, either. Every character should begin with good dexterity and constitution, and all but Magic-Users benefit greatly from high strength.

Once you’re actually underway, you’ll discover that Warriors plays out as a simplified hybrid of a tactical Gold Box D&D game like Pool of Radiance and the more action-oriented Eye of the Beholder. In other words, outdoor navigation takes place from an overhead perspective and outdoor combat encounters are strictly turn-based affairs. Enter a dungeon and suddenly you’re working with a first-person view and real time combat. Novel as it is, this split gameplay style is also the bane of Warriors. Overhead battles trivialize movement and ranged combat by starting enemies out mere inches from your party, while the first-person mode lacks the puzzles present in Eye of the Beholder, leaving only the endless button mashing monster brawls to hold your attention.

A worse sin in my eyes in the inane leveling system. In place of the tabletop standard, where experience points earned are automatically divvied up evenly between the various party members, Warriors insists on giving sole credit to the character who landed the killing blow on a given monster. The problem with this should be obvious: Magic-Users are dismal at physical combat and their spell use at low levels is sharply limited. I was finding it damn near impossible to level up my Magic-User in a timely manner until I lucked into a hidden lightning wand tucked away in the opening castle. Its ability to dish out loads of damage to multiple enemies at once quickly allowed the lagging mage to catch up. Yet this solution felt more like an exploit than anything else and would have been wholly unnecessary if the designers had stuck to the sensible preexisting method instead of trying to imitate bloody Drakkhen of all things.

One final major disappointment was the story. The whole point of the Hollow World as a gaming environment is to give players an excuse to interact with a multitude of mysterious cultures that are decidedly alien to the usual late medieval European D&D paradigm. Here, though, the starting castle functions as the game’s sole friendly settlement. All other supposedly intelligent beings you’ll meet are effectively mindless beasts that attack on sight. If you’re a fellow fan of the source material, such a superficial treatment is unlikely to satisfy. Even sans those expectations, I still can’t imagine you’d find a narrative of this caliber particularly compelling.

If it seems like I’m down on Warriors of the Eternal Sun, well, it’s because I am. It’s certainly not the worst RPG I’ve covered. It would need to physically transmit some sort of communicable disease to rival Shiryō Sensen – War of the Dead for that “honor.” Busted experience system aside, it’s playable enough for what it is, that being a mechanically shallow melange of several superior PC RPGs spackled together with a paper-thin plot that fails to do justice to a singularly intriguing premise. I wanted a hollow world, sure, but not like this.

Light Crusader (Genesis)

The crew of independent game developers at Treasure enjoy a sterling reputation among fans of the Sega Genesis. Their Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, and Alien Soldier are frequently hailed as three of the greatest action titles of the 16-bit era. Imagine my surprise, then, when 1995’s Light Crusader turned out to be the least impressive of the four isometric fantasy adventures I’ve experienced on the console to date. It lacks the delightful humor of Landstalker, the chunky beat-’em-up combat of Beyond Oasis, and even the arcadey run-and-gun thrills of Arcus Odyssey. As Treasure’s swan song on their debut platform, it’s the epitome of going out with a whimper instead of a bang.

What happened isn’t entirely clear, although interviews with the game’s staff do mention a troubled development cycle that had to be restarted from scratch at one point. In any case, the woefully generic quest of knight David to rescue kidnapped villagers from a six-level dungeon beneath the town of Green Row feels borderline unfinished in places and well below the usual standard of a Treasure production.

Of course, isometric projections in general could be tricky to implement well on older hardware, especially when platforming and other precision movement is called for, as it is here. The lion’s share of Light Crusader’s gameplay issues stem from this one factor. David’s primary attack, a pathetically short-range sword swipe, can be maddeningly tricky to connect with. You’ll often see his blade pass clear through enemy sprites to no avail. Lame duck bosses combined with David’s generous health bar and sprawling inventory of healing items ensure that battling remains quite easy as a rule, but I can’t escape the impression that all this leniency is really just a band-aid solution slapped on top of a deeper problem.

Worse, the impact of the dodgy hit detection is hardly limited to combat scenarios. Most of the puzzles in Light Crusader are variations on basic block pushing. Nothing too difficult in theory. That is until you realize that the slightest wrong move anywhere near some blocks will send them careening across the screen into unwinnable positions, forcing you to exit and re-enter the room to reset its objects. It wasn’t unusual for me to hit on the correct solution to a given setup immediately, only to then spend the next ten minutes mastering the pixel-perfect precision needed to execute it. Not fun.

On the plus side, Light Crusader’s treatment of magic is easily its best idea. I can detect the Gunstar Heroes influence in the way David can mix four basic elemental spells together in various ways to produce a total of fifteen useful effects. Water by itself is a minor healing spell. Add fire and it can cure poison. Water, fire, and earth create a temporary damage shield. It’s a joy to experiment with and enemies tend to drop plenty of element refill pickups, meaning that you don’t have to be overly conservative with your casting.

As much as I’d love to be able to give Light Crusader a strong endorsement based on pedigree alone, there’s no escaping the fact that its story and characters lack any vestige of personality and its challenges are trivial apart from a handful of persistent annoyances imposed by technical flaws. At the same time, however, I hesitate to deem it a total failure. I already praised its elegant magic system and the regal soundtrack by Aki Hata is a treat as well. It also doesn’t overstay its welcome at a brisk 6-8 hours. All-in-all, it’s a thoroughly average, middle-of-the-road work that happens to come with a legendary studio’s name attached. Worth a look if you appreciate this particular style of action-adventure and are willing to keep your expectations nice and modest. Playing it before those better games I cited certainly couldn’t hurt, either.

Midnight Resistance (Genesis)

Midnight Resistance is proof positive that looks can be misleading. Here you have a side-view run-and-gun starring a beefy commando dude capable of firing his arsenal of guns (which includes a flamethrower and spread shot) in a total of eight directions as he endeavors to take down a motley mix of military grunts and grotesque space aliens. That clinches it, right? This is Data East’s attempt to ride Konami’s coattails with a Contra knockoff. Oh, but not so fast! Because the second you actually lay hands on the controls, you’ll discover that the proof is in the playing.

While the original 1989 arcade release of Midnight Resistance did undoubtedly take some of its cues from Contra, it’s primarily a pseudo-sequel to Data East’s own 1987 overhead run-and-gun Heavy Barrel. Like Heavy Barrel, Midnight Resistance features a custom rotating joystick similar to the ones designed for SNK’s Ikari Warriors and Capcom’s Forgotten Worlds. Using the stick as a lever moves the character and rotating it adjusts his angle of fire. This allows for moving in one direction while simultaneously shooting in an entirely different one, a technique necessary for survival in Midnight Resistance.

Of course, there was no replicating this input method when ISCO and Opera House ported Midnight Resistance to the Genesis in 1991. The default arrangement now has you aiming your gun with the directional pad and then locking it in place as needed with the B button. Meanwhile, the A button toggles continuous shooting on and off. It works fairly well once you’re used to it. Just be forewarned that the adjustment period can be pretty awkward as you struggle to suppress those ingrained Contra instincts. The slightly clunkier control scheme is one of only two substantial cutbacks in this port, the other being the loss of two-player support.

What cursory backstory we get in the manual centers on our hero, Johnny Ford, rescuing his kidnapped family from a monstrous extraterrestrial drug lord that some unspecified prog rock fan on the development team decided to christen King Crimson. Silly, sure, but I reckon the same era gave us far less exciting games about saying no to drugs. I’m looking at you, Wally Bear.

Johnny’s righteous rampage plays out across a total of nine stages. Though this may have you thinking that you’re in for quite the journey, I should point out that levels in Midnight Resistance are notably short. Some can be completed in under a minute relatively easily. All told, you can blaze through this one in less than twenty minutes once you’ve commited it to memory. That said, you at least get a few impressive boss encounters along the way. Seeing Johnny take on a multi-screen battleship or entire squadron of fighter jets single-handedly definitely helps compensate for the extreme brevity.

Although the basics of running, jumping, and blasting are straightforward enough, Midnight Resistance does have one more Heavy Barrel-inspired trick up its sleeve when it comes to power-ups. Instead of picking up new weapons for free in the field, Johnny instead collects the keys left behind by specific red-clad enemy soldiers. These keys can then be used between stages to access locked containers holding various weapon upgrades. The contents of these lockers and the number of keys required to open each one appear to be randomized on every new playthrough. If you should stumble across a great deal (such as an extra life for a mere two keys), I recommend you grab it while you can. One-hit deaths are in effect and will cause Johnny to drop both his weapons and stock of keys. He can usually respawn in time to recollect them, thankfully, unless they happen to land off the edge of the screen. This mechanic even factors into the ending, since reaching the room where your family members are held captive without a full complement of keys means that some of them will have to be left behind to die. Brutal, yet also oddly amusing in the context of what’s otherwise such a lightweight exercise. Sucks to be you, granny! I guess you can always count on a Data East production to skew a bit weird around the edges.

As a scaled-down conversion of an arcade title that wasn’t especially good-looking in the first place, the Genesis Midnight Resistance won’t be winning any beauty prizes. Backgrounds in particular are sparse and underdetailed, little more than fields of solid black in some cases. On the flip side, Hitoshi Sakimoto’s rearranged take on the musical score is majestic. The opening stage theme, “Flood of Power,” lives up to its name and then some. It’s raw, concentrated one man army energy and one of the system’s defining tracks in my book.

On balance, I can say I enjoyed my time with Midnight Resistance. It’s certainly far from perfect. The controls take getting used to, the level design is serviceable at best, and the visuals are borderline poor by 16-bit standards. Despite being nowhere near as technically sophisticated as any given Contra outing from the period, however, it nonetheless refects an innate understanding of the over-the-top spectacle that makes this genre work. In that regard, it makes an excellent companion piece to another contemporary Data East release, Bloody Wolf. Sometimes the the heart of a tiger and a soundtrack for the ages are all it takes to get in my good graces. Go, Johnny, go!

Haunting Starring Polterguy (Genesis)

Battling monsters is all well and good. Every once in a while, though, don’t you get to wondering how the other half lives?

Well, “lives” is putting it rather generously in the case of Polterguy. He was once an everyday radically bodacious (or is that bodaciously radical?) ’90s skateboarder dude in the Bart Simpson tradition. Until he had a fatal accident involving a cheaply-made board produced by corrupt businessman Vito Sardini, that is. Now, he’s a gnarly ghost out for revenge on the entire Sardini family: Vito, his wife Flo, and their kids, Mimi and Tony. Our Polterguy’s no villain, however. Perish the thought! He doesn’t want to murder the Sardini clan, just shatter their sanity with hellish visions of death and dismemberment until they run screaming from their home. Good guy stuff all the way!

With a setup this strange, it should come as no surprise that 1993’s Haunting Starring Polterguy is one tough game to pin down. It was made by Electronic Arts, back when they were scrappy up-and-comers with an artists-first mentality and a flair for experimentation. Yes, really. Time makes evil megacorps of us all, it seems. Anyway, since “spook-’em-ups” never exactly caught on, Haunting is effectively a genre unto itself on the Genesis.

The primary gameplay mode is an isometric view of the Sardini abode. You’re free to guide Polterguy between rooms as desired in search of humans to torment. A handy map on the pause screen displays the entire mansion layout, as well as each family member’s current location. It’s recommended to rely on the map rather than wander aimlessly, as all of Polterguy’s powers are tied to his green ectoplasm meter, which depletes automatically over time. Once Polterguy is in the same room as a Sardini, he can start setting up scares. This is accomplished by moving close to various household objects and noting which ones have a colored icon associated with them. Activating these designated items (called “fright’-ems” in the manual) will consume a small amount of ectoplasm and result in a startling animation that will terrify any hapless Sardini witnessing it. Doing this multiple times in quick succession will raise their fear level all the way from Calm to Very High, at which point they’ll flee the room, leaving puddles of bonus ectoplasm behind. Should Polterguy give chase and continue the spectral harassment, the victim will eventually flee the building altogether. The level is considered complete when all four Sardinis have exited the building. Later homes add slight complications in the form of rare ectoplasm stealing beasts and the family dog, who can simultaneously drain Polterguy’s meter and calm nearby humans down with his barking.  

You’re probably wondering what happens when Polterguy’s supply of ectoplasm runs out. Nothing good, unfortunately, for him or for you. The pugnacious poltergeist is instantly transported to an underworld dungeon. Here, he must collect drops of ectoplasm raining down from the ceiling and avoid hazards (bats, bouncing skulls, disembodied arms, steam vents, and sinkholes) until an exit back to the living world is revealed. Those five aren’t examples of the dangers found in the underworld, either. They’re the complete list. These underworld segments are the nadir of Haunting; a real drag all-around. Polterguy controls like he’s on roller skates and the collision detection is spotty at best. These aren’t problems when he’s topside, as nothing up there can hurt him. The underworld is another story. If he runs out of energy down there, he’s double-super-dead and the game is over. No extra lives, no continues.

This dichotomy makes Haunting a game with a treacherous split personality. The proper haunting stuff, where you’re frightening the figurative and literal piss out of the Sardinis in grand Beetlejuice bio-exorcist fashion, is a hoot. There are supposedly over 400 unique scare animations included, and these range from the relatively tame (objects moving around on their own, flying skulls, exploding candles) to the downright crazy (a turd-flinging toilet demon, a disemboweled naked woman, a corpse being lowered into a meat grinder). I played for hours and I’m confident I didn’t see half of them. The gore is pretty extreme for the time, and EA was likely only able to get away with the 13+ age rating due to the overall slapstick tone and the fact that none of it is real in the context of the game world. That’s on top of the unexpected sleaze component, exemplified by the lovingly rendered pantie shots of Flo Sardini that make up a regular part of her scare animations. Polterguy himself even takes time out to comment on these, proving that one can be both spooky and creepy at the same time.

One minute you’re savoring all this lurid wackiness and the very next Haunting decides that it’s time to spoil it all by becoming an action game again. I understand that EA probably wanted to offer a bit of variety and implement some sort of fail state to add tension. Too bad the sloppy, repetitive, and frankly aggravating underworld segments were anything but a satisfying way to go about it. The most tragic part is that they’re a picnic compared to the boss fight at the end of the fourth and final mansion. It is, without exaggeration, one of the worst I’ve ever endured. Expecting you to attack a series of small, constantly advancing targets with a clumsy arcing projectile that requires you to be almost the full screen’s distance away from whatever you’re aiming at? I can’t begin to fathom the thought process behind such a design choice. It’s simply dreadful. Getting a game over on this encounter felt so distasteful that I was sorely tempted not to try again.

Now for the true test: Can I recommend Haunting Starring Polterguy? On balance, yes. The lion’s share of its development time clearly went into meticulously crafting the hundreds of creative scares Polterguy can call down to wreak vengeance on the hated Sardinis, and these rarely disappoint. As a sandbox haunting simulator, it’s all but guaranteed to produce a steady stream of laughs. You’ll have to slog through some truly dire action segments if you hope to see it all the way through, but you can still get a taste of the best Haunting has to offer without that degree of commitment. Perhaps a more polished debut would have allowed the green ghoul with attitude that sequel he teased at the end. Oh, well. Leave it to low sales to finish the job a faulty skateboard couldn’t.

Phantom 2040 (Genesis)

When it comes to licensed games that passed me by, Phantom 2040 takes the cake. I’ve covered adaptations of lesser known ’90s cartoons before (Bucky O’Hare, Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa), but this is the first time I’d never so much as heard of the property in question. It’s a pity, too, since unlike the two above-mentioned “funny animal” programs, I would have been all about Phantom 2040 when it debuted in 1994. I decided to watch an episode or two as research for this review and was so taken by it that I’ve yet to stop! I’m up to episode twenty now. While not without its flaws, some seriously ropey animation foremost among them, it was an uncommonly ambitious sci-fi series for its time and target demographic.

Taking a page or two from Batman: The Animated Series’ playbook, Phantom 2040 updated Lee Falk’s eponymous 1936 comic strip superhero to a dystopian future setting where ruthless megacorporations scheme to dominate what little remains of an Earth ravaged by the apocalyptic conflict known as the Resource Wars. Artist Peter Chung of Æon Flux fame contributed some of his signature aggressively ectomorphic character designs, and the out-of-this-world voice cast included such notables as Margot Kidder, Ron Perlman, Mark Hamill, Paul Williams, and even Blondie’s own Deborah freakin’ Harry! This show was practically made for me, and I’m pleased to report that the game based it by Viacom New Media is no slouch, either.

Given the option to tackle the Genesis or Super Nintendo version of this one, I chose the former for its slightly higher resolution and superior background effects. Both releases offer fundamentally the same experience, however, so most everything I’m about to say can also apply to the SNES Phantom 2040.

At its heart, Phantom 2040 is an exploratory platformer in that classic Metroid mode. The main caveat is that it’s divided up into seven discrete chapters, reflecting the episodic nature of the show. These chapters are somewhat analogous to levels, in that they usually contain some areas and boss encounters that can’t be revisited later on. At the same time, other portions of the world map remain accessible across multiple chapters. The result is an interesting hybrid between a true open world game and a more traditional linear affair. Another wrinkle comes in the form of the various branching story paths, many of which have the potential to drastically alter the course of the current playthrough. This allows for over twenty unique endings, some of which require you to satisfy a whole laundry list of cryptic requirements.

Though it seems like a lot to unpack, you’re clearly not meant to overthink it at the outset. There’s no way you’re going to see all those endings on your first go, after all, so you may as well dive in and take the adventure as it comes without obsessing over what the “best” choices are.

You play as The Phantom himself, naturally. Unassuming college student Kit Walker, Jr. is the 24th man to don the mantle of The Ghost Who Walks, the role having been passed down from father to son ever since the 16th century. In addition to your formidable feet and fists, your main tools are your inductance rope, which can be used to grapple and swing from most any surface, and a high-tech pistol with an ever-expanding selection of shot types. If you’re fortunate, you’ll stumble across some other useful upgrades, such as an invisibility cloak and the ability to summon a shadow panther that damages all enemies on-screen. Rounding out the goodies are single-use first aid and ammo replenishment kits, as well as rare permanent health and ammo capacity increases.

Between the varied arsenal and the tight control you have over The Phantom’s acrobatics, I have few complaints about the action here. One of the rare sore spots is the enemy placement. Or rather, the lack thereof. Enemies have a bad habit of spawning in endlessly from all available angles in a fashion oddly reminiscent of Wizards & Warriors of all things. Expect to take plenty of cheap damage from the flying ones in particular. This sort of constant low-grade harassment really isn’t ideal for an exploration-based game in my opinion. The generous health bar and frequent first-aid pickups keep the challenge reasonable enough overall, although having to start an entire chapter over due to running out of lives is still quite possible. Phantom 2040’s unorthodox use of a lives system is another way in which it attempts to split the difference between a typical adventure game and a straight action-platformer. Thankfully, the passwords provided at the end of every chapter prevent a true game over scenario.

Much like the tv show that inspired it, the Phantom 2040 game is the epitome of unwarranted obscurity. Especially on the Genesis, where this style of action-adventure title is relatively rare. It plays wonderfully for the most part, offers impressive replay value, and goes above and beyond in terms of reflecting its source material. You don’t need to watch the cartoon before playing, but it is recommended in order to get the most satisfaction out of the many shared characters, locations, and plot points. Strange as the merging of ’30s pulp swashbuckling with gritty ’90s cyberpunk sounds, I’m now doubly glad I gave it a chance. Lock and find this one today.

Shadowrun (Genesis)

Double feature time! Hope you’re ready for more techno-magic intrigue on the seedy streets of 2050s Seattle, because just a year after Beam Software brought their quirky point-and-click spin on the tabletop classic Shadowrun to the Super Nintendo, it was BlueSky Software’s turn to give Genesis owners their own cyberpunk RPG fix. California-based BlueSky was no stranger to Sega’s 16-bit machine, having previous worked on such diverse licensed releases as Ariel the Little Mermaid, Jurassic Park, and NFL Sports Talk Football ’93. Similar to Beam, however, Shadowrun marked their first foray into this particular genre. Not that you’d know that from the end result, an extensive open world experience unlike any other console RPG available at the time.

I must say, reviewing these competing takes on the property back-to-back has been enlightening. Both studios started from identical inspiration and went on to create games that share a genre, a setting, and an emphasis on piecing together clues to a mysterious conspiracy. Yet despite all that common ground, the two are radically different in most every respect.

Genesis Shadowrun follows Joshua, a rookie ‘runner looking to hunt down the party responsible for the recent murder of his brother, Michael. He arrives in Seattle flat broke with only a single lead in the form of Michael’s last known address at a sleazy motel. Unfortunately, the innkeeper refuses to part with Michael’s personal effects until the outstanding bill is paid. If this were any other contemporary RPG, the solution would be to go out and fight some random enemies. While these are present to a limited extent, the real means of acquiring cash and experience is to go out there and get yourself a job.

You’re thus immediately introduced to the game’s defining feature: The random mission system. Talk to specific NPCs in bars and they’ll assign you a task. They might want you to escort a client from one location to another, to download, upload, or delete a file on some computer system or other, to go kill some rampaging ghouls, and so on. If you’re familiar with the “radiant quest” system popularized by Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series, this is essentially the exact same concept circa 1994. Whereas SNES Shadowrun was concise, arguably to a fault, with no side quests or optional objectives on offer, the Genesis entry is practically all side quest. None of these tasks have any bearing on the fate of Joshua’s poor brother, except that they’re mandatory to build your gear and stats up enough to stand a chance of surviving the relatively few proper story missions.

It’s a divisive approach to be sure. Impressive as it is to see a true open-ended RPG running on such limited hardware and immersive as it can be to feel like a real freelance shadowrunner with theoretically unlimited employment opportunities, making a mountain of randomized content not have the empty, repetitive feel of, well, a mountain of randomized content is a problem game designers still grapple with nearly thirty years on now. Should that fragile sense of immersion ever fail, you’ll find yourself realizing that walking faceless drone X between building Y and building Z for the twentieth time is merely performing menial tasks at the behest of an algorithm to make numbers go up. It doesn’t really mean anything. How you feel about that is up to you.

Another way this take on Shadowrun differentiates itself is by faithfully replicating the nitty-gritty rules of the pen-and-paper iteration whenever possible. That means more attributes and skills, more guns and spells, and greater complexity in general. You start out by picking one of three archetypes for Joshua: Samurai, decker, and shaman. In theory, this fosters replay value by forcing you to tackle the adventure as a beefy killing machine, cunning hacker, or master of mysticism. In practice, the shaman is the clear top choice. A samurai can easily acquire the implant needed to become a decker. A decker can end up just as as jacked and deadly in a firefight as any samurai. Neither of them will ever be able to cast spells, however. That’s exclusively the domain of the shaman. Not so all that computer and gun stuff, which the shaman also has full access to. True, you can’t go utterly hog wild with cybernetic implants as a shaman, since that will have a negative impact on your spellcasting skill, but this apparent weakness is offset by the existence of enchanted talismans with almost identical effects. In other words, the balance here is rather lacking, a theme sadly echoed elsewhere. For example, you can acquire the overall best weapon, the Ares Predator pistol, in the opening area for less than a thousand bucks. These hiccups aside, I do appreciate BlueSky’s attention to capturing the fine details of the source material.

Nowhere is that attention more apparent than in the presentation of the Matrix, the virtual reality computer realm where the megacorps keep their juiciest secrets locked away behind deadly IC (intrusion countermeasure, “ice”) programs. The Matrix in the Super Nintendo Shadowrun was an afterthought; a joke, even. On the Genesis, it’s a game unto itself! It’s far and away the best looking portion of an otherwise drab landscape, with a charming retro sci-fi look straight out of the likes of Tron or The Lawnmower Man and some lovely scaling effects as your gleaming chrome avatar glides up to distant network nodes. What’s more, the mechanics of it are deep. You’re able to customize and upgrade innumerable facets of your cyberdeck’s software and hardware, meaning that the device is essentially its own character with its own independent suite of stats and equipment. Various programs are used to attack, defend, evade detection, heal damage to your virtual persona, and so on. Honestly, it often feels as if more passion and development time was devoted to this digital world within a digital world than to the “real” Seattle depicted outside of it. This is backed up by the fact that Matrix runs are consistently the most lucrative. On the downside, I imagine it can be a lot for a new player to take in. I have the good fortune to have played a decker character extensively in the tabletop version, so getting to grips with all these IC types, node functions, and so on was second nature to me. For anyone else jumping into this one for the first time, you’ll want to keep that instruction manual handy.

Coming up with any kind of final verdict on BlueSky’s Shadowrun is tricky. It’s a uniquely ambitious effort that bites off a lot and actually manages to chew it pretty thoroughly for the most part. You have loads of authentic options for building your main character, filling out a party with hired runners (if you wish, I went solo), and taking on all manner of dangerous tasks on your own terms and schedule. On top of that, the central story is fairly compelling for the 20% or so of the total runtime you’ll realistically be working on it. The music’s decent, too, appropriately grim and atmospheric, if lacking the catchy beats that put the SNES soundtrack over the top. Conversely, though, it suffers from significant balancing issues and the dark, nondescript graphics outside the Matrix don’t give you much to look it. Above all, I found that the deluge of samey runs grew stale quite quickly and I had to actively force myself to grind my way to the finish line. Both Shadowrun games I’ve covered this month do the franchise proud in different ways. Neither is perfect, but which is superior ultimately comes down to the question of scope versus focus. Unlike the shaman, we simply can’t have it all.