Battle Mania: Daiginjō (Mega Drive)

Prepare for trouble! And make it double!

I could swear it was only last year that I made the acquaintance of Vic Tokai’s unjustly obscure Genesis action romp, Trouble Shooter (aka Battle Mania in Japan). Turns out it was all the way back in 2021! It’s sobering just how fungible memory can be. In any case, this fast-paced, quirky, and accessible gem of a shooter instantly became one of my favorite games of its kind for the system.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that it had a Japanese-exclusive Mega Drive sequel released in 1993 called Battle Mania: Daiginjō. The term daiginjō is used to denote the finest quality rice wine. In other words, the developers are promising a more refined, top-shelf take on the original’s formula. Sign me up for that!

Daiginjō resumes the comic exploits of two teenage girl mercenaries with big guns and jetpacks named Mania and Maria, or Madison and Crystal in the English localization. This legally-distinct Dirty Pair (Soiled Duo?) is once again tasked with saving the world from a random bunch of weirdo baddies while hopefully also bringing in enough cash for junk food and car repairs. The tone is consistently zany, complete with heroes and villains alike regularly breaking the fourth wall to acknowledge that they’re in a silly video game. It’s well worth checking out the English fan translation by Jon Najar for this reason alone.

Gameplay-wise, this is an all-around bigger, better Trouble Shooter. There are nine stages to blast through instead of six, representing a satisfying mix of horizontal and vertical scrolling segments. The control options now include eight-way shooting rather than limiting you to firing straight left and right. Oddly, you will need to go into the options menu and manually enable eight-way shooting, as the old method remains the default. Why you wouldn’t want to is frankly beyond me, though. The added offensive flexibility elevates Daiginjō tremendously and most enemy and boss patterns seem tailored to work in harmony with it.

The rest of the mechanics should be quite familiar to Trouble Shooter veterans. While you technically control both girls simultaneously, Mania/Madison is the only one who can take damage. This takes a little getting used to when it comes to dodging enemy attacks. Eventually, though, you’ll learn to keep your eyes focused on Mania. Your standard rapid-fire shot is complimented by your choice of several limited use sub-weapons that do things like sweep the screen with lightning or cause Mania to sprout giant chainsaw blades for a short time. Sub-weapon activation is dependent on a charge meter that empties with each use and slowly refills thereafter. A life bar system is in effect and running out of health results in a game over. Extra hit points and continues naturally accrue at a brisk pace, however, so there’s ample resources available to see you through to the end credits. Funnily enough, every hit taken is punctuated by a voice clip of Mania yelling “Shit!” I have to assume that would have been omitted in a hypothetical international release.

On the audiovisual side, Daiginjō has also received a serious shot in the arm. The graphics pack much greater detail and the soundtrack is downright intense. Certainly more intense than I expected for such a goofy premise. Kudos to composers Shigenori Masuko, Yoko Suzuki, and Fumito Tamayama because some of this stuff rocks almost as hard M.U.S.H.A. or Thunder Force IV! This is easily one of the best looking and sounding Mega Drive releases overall, something I couldn’t imagine anyone saying of Trouble Shooter.

In short, Battle Mania: Daiginjō delivers on its subtitle’s promise and then some. Trouble Shooter was a modest, if charming little game. Its sequel is big, bold, and polished to a mirror sheen, all without sacrificing an ounce of that offbeat charm. Something this superlative coming courtesy of an otherwise mid-tier studio like Vic Tokai has to rate as a minor miracle. Such a shame that it’s never been released outside its native territory and that Mania and Maria disappeared from the gaming landscape altogether following their brief cameo in another Japan-only title, 2001’s Segagaga for the Dreamcast. They’ll always be two of my favorite protagonists to come out of the 16-bit era. I’m glad they were at least treated to one hell of a swan song.

Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Master System)

Time once again to kick back and savor a game showcasing my very own character that I definitely possess the legal rights to, Mickey Mouse! Yes, just in case you’ve been living under the proverbial rock, the latest craze taking the world by storm is gloating over the fact that this year marks the 96th anniversary of the first Mickey cartoons, meaning that this most iconic of all mascots has finally entered the public domain and is no longer the exclusive intellectual property of the Walt Disney Company. Since the literal first minutes of the month, the Internet has been flooded with all manner of mocking parody works. Frankly, the sheer number of everyday people taking this opportunity to gleefully hoist a middle finger in celebration over the slightest public setback to their normally unflappable corporate overlords is downright heartwarming.

Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse is another of Sega’s successful collaborations with Disney. Debuting on the Master System console and Game Gear handheld in 1993, it’s a follow-up to their Castle of Illusion and continues that game’s theme of sending Mickey on a colorful platforming odyssey through a whimsical fairy tale setting. This time, the framing device borrows a page from The Wizard of Oz. Mickey falls asleep reading from a storybook and finds himself transported to an enchanted kingdom populated by characters who bear a striking resemblance to Donald, Goofy, and certain other of his friends. Is it all a dream? The only way to find out is to undertake a fourteen stage quest to defeat the wicked Phantom plaguing this fantasy land with his evil magic.

Although superficially similar to Castle’s straightforward “hop and bop” style, the gameplay here is complicated by the addition of some basic environmental puzzle solving (mostly of the block and switch pushing variety) and a few key items that grant Micky new abilities. The magic potion, for instance, allows him to shrink down to half size in order to access narrow passages, while the rope lets him scale walls. These features are hardly sufficient to push Land into full-on action-adventure territory à la Metroid, though Sega was savvy enough to build some bona fide challenges around them, ensuring that they’re no mere shallow gimmicks thrown in to gate off a handful of arbitrary passages.

The core experience remains one of traversing hazardous (if cheery-looking) locales and dispatching enemies with a combination of Mickey’s aerial “butt bash” attack and picking up and hurling the various rocks and other small objects littering the landscape. Mickey begins with a two-hit health bar that can quickly be extended to a maximum of five by collecting red star icons. Health upgrades are permanent, so you may ironically find yourself dying more in the early game despite the more difficult layouts of later areas. Thankfully, the threat of death isn’t overly daunting due to the excellent controls, frequent checkpoints, and unlimited continues afforded the player.

As per usual for Disney-licensed games, the graphics and music in Land of Illusion are top-notch for the hardware. Mickey’s sprite art and animations for running, swimming, climbing, and even standing idle are about as good as it gets in an 8-bit title. The many enemy characters he encounters show a similar degree of care in their visual design, from the smallest bee or snake to the largest of boss monsters. The music by Sega sound team veterans Izuho Numata, Keisuke Tsukahara, and Tomonori Sawada is also far better than average by the standards of the Master System’s starkly limited sound chip.

On the whole, there’s little worth objecting to in Land of Illusion. Hardcore players might be disappointed by its general ease, but this aspect of its design is no doubt intentional and shared by numerous highly-regarded Disney games of the era, such as the NES’ DuckTales and Rescue Ranger duologies. Beyond that, Sega’s usual high degree of craftsmanship and impressive attention to detail make this one an easy recommendation for most any fan of the genre or subject matter. The subject matter that I own. Suck it, Walt.

GG Aleste II (Game Gear)

When it comes to homegrown holiday traditions, few can rival Compilemas in my heart. For six years running now, I’ve given myself the gift of a brand new (to me) shooting game by the late, great studio Compile. This time, I’m continuing my exploration of the often overlooked Sega Game Gear library with GG Aleste II, confusingly re-titled Power Strike II in Europe despite being wholly distinct from the Master System release of the same name that also arrived there in 1993. I swear I’ll never understand the bizarre and convoluted naming conventions of this series. It’s almost as wonky as Adventure Island/Wonder Boy’s sometimes.

In the year 2070, five years after the events of GG Aleste, a powerful military satellite called Algo is created to defend earth from outside incursion, only to itself be turned against humanity by an alien parasite of unknown origin. Accomplished test pilot Alice Pfeiffer Waizen is chosen to strike back at the enemy in the new GG Aleste Model II ship, code name Lance Bird. Alice is the cousin of Ellinor “Terri” Waizen, heroine of Aleste 2, M.U.S.H.A., the first GG Aleste, and developer M2’s upcoming 2024 Aleste installment, Aleste Branch. Repelling alien invasions is the sort of thing that runs in families, apparently.

Compile was, above all, reliable, and GG Aleste 2 embodies this. If you’ve played and enjoyed any of their legendary vertical shooters before (The Guardian Legend, the aforementioned M.U.S.H.A., Space Megaforce, Blazing Lazers, et al.), you know exactly what you’re in for here. Nobody was better at delivering frantic, non-stop action that runs like a dream regardless of hardware limitations and still manages to remain fair and approachable, even for newcomers to the genre.  

The first GG Aleste was a worthy effort, albeit one that played a tad slower than fans may be used to. Perhaps Compile was still getting to grips with programming for the platform. I’m pleased to report that its sequel is noticeably zippier, with more enemies and bullets to dodge. It is slightly scaled back in other respects, however. There are only six main levels here, as opposed to eight, resulting in a total run time of just under half an hour. Acceptable for a handheld game, if relatively short for a Compile joint. Similarly, GG Aleste’s six upgradeable secondary weapons have been pared down to four: Neo Napalm Gun (self-explanatory), Hammer Hawk (homing missiles), Delta Form (defensive satellite drone), and Rising Masher (spread lasers). On the plus side, you’re now given a limited stock of super bombs to deploy, as well as a shield pickup that enables the Lance Bird to withstand two hits instead of one. Your primary straight shot is much the same as before, starting off small and weak until you collect enough of the falling “power chips” dispensed by tiny carrier ships to level it up into a serious threat.

A pair of bonus stages are also included. These play out from a pseudo-3D behind-the-ship view and involve manipulating a cursor to lock onto incoming enemies with your radar and then taking them out with a flurry of guided missiles. You’re scored based on the percentage of targets destroyed and how many shots you missed. It’s impossible to die during these interludes. They’re strictly a means of padding out your point total, thereby earning some extra lives.

The question of whether GG Aleste II’s fewer levels and weapon options are adequately offset by its greater speed and intensity is an interesting one. For my money, they are, although this obviously doesn’t amount to a clean win over its predecessor. One thing the two share in common is ease. The combination of short length, in-place respawns, unlimited continues, and your ship’s formidable weaponry makes for an uncommonly gentle ride by general shooter standards. But far be it from me to bemoan not getting my ass kicked hard enough on Christmas, eh? The bottom line is that this is yet another quality piece of work from true masters of the craft.

On that note, may you and yours enjoy this special time to the utmost, whatever reasoning and methods you adhere to. Just as some of us prefer to vanquish rampaging space aliens with napalm while others favor lasers or homing missiles, there’s no wrong way to have yourself a joyous holiday season. See you in 2024!

Batman Returns (Master System)

Director Tim Burton’s 1989 mega-hit film Batman managed to almost completely dominate the pop culture zeitgeist in the months surrounding its arrival in theaters. The half-dozen video games based on it also performed extremely well on average at retail. It should come as no surprise, then, that when the inevitable cinematic sequel, Batman Returns, eventually debuted in 1992, it brought with it a veritable flood of software. This time to the tune of eight distinct games spread across nine platforms. Whether you were playing on a handheld, a home computer, or any of the major 8 or 16-bit consoles of the period, you could don the cowl of the Caped Crusader as he sought to safeguard Gotham City from the sinister machinations of the Penguin. Oh, and he does it during the holiday season, too, making a Batman Return adaptation a perfect choice to kick off my December with.

But which one? Of my eight choices, the Double Dragon style beat-’em-ups Konami produced for the NES and SNES tend to be the best regarded by critics and fans alike. Excellent as they are, however, action-platformers are more my jam, so I went with a dark horse pick in the Master System version. More of us might have been able to enjoy this one in its heyday if the Master System itself hadn’t already been discontinued in North America and Japan prior to its release. As it is, only those in Europe, Australia, and Brazil were treated to this admirable bit of work from developer Aspect.

In contrast to the visceral hand-to-hand focus of the Nintendo editions, Aspect’s Batman Returns delivers a mix of ranged combat and precise grappling hook movement reminiscent of Capcom’s Bionic Commando. Batman’s primary attack is his trademark “batarang” projectiles, the speed and range of which can enhanced by collecting power-up icons. His grappling line can be deployed at any time during a jump and will allow him to attach to ceilings and the undersides of most platforms. From there, he can adjust the length of the line as needed and swing back and forth to build up momentum before detaching. This enables him to chain together precise sequences of grapples to cross gaps, bypass ground hazards, and reach out-of-the-way items. The grapple line also doubles as an attack, although I didn’t find much real use for this outside of the climactic battle against Penguin. Finally, Batman can deploy his cape as a glider in mid-air to extend his hang time, and this is mandatory to make some jumps.

The lack of a traditional health bar leaves our Dark Knight subject to one-hit deaths. Thankfully, extra lives are everywhere and dying results in an instant in-place respawn. Since there are no breaks in the action, you can treat the life counter as a de facto health bar; a numeric indicator of how many hits you can withstand before having to spend one of your unlimited continues to restart the current stage. Don’t get too cocky, though. Any enhancements you’ve collected for the batarangs are lost with each death, so there is still some incentive to play carefully.

It’s a relatively simple setup on paper, but combine it with inspired level design and the result is something special. There’s a wonderfully smooth sense of progression to these stages. Their increasingly complex arrangements of enemies, platforms, and power-ups are thoughtfully calculated to encourage and reward mastery of the grappling mechanic. And there’s plenty of them, due to the ambitious way Batman Returns implements its difficulty selection. You’re able to choose between easy and hard paths in each of the first four areas. The paths are wholly unique, as opposed to being the same layouts with trickier enemy placement or the like. You thus have a total of nine levels to sink your bat fangs into, even if you can only complete five of them in a single playthrough. The option to stick to the less arduous course when initially learning the game and then graduate to a “second quest” of sorts later on is quite the novel feature given its genre and vintage.

With such a solid design foundation, some decent graphics, and fittingly moody music by a team that included legendary composer Yuzo Koshiro, Aspect’s Batman Returns has a lot to offer fans of 8-bit side-scrollers. I can’t say it’s without its flaws. Getting around by grapple can feel rather ponderous at times, and certainly can’t match the sheer addictive snappiness of gold standard Bionic Commando. Bosses, apart from Penguin himself, are basic and trivial to dispatch. This is made worse by the fact that one of them (Batman’s on-again, off-again love interest Catwoman) is recycled. The overall presentation isn’t exactly lavish, either. Fans of the movie it’s based on will surely note the total lack of introduction, dialog, or in-game cut scenes. Still, this is an above-average title and a better take on Batman Returns than we saw on any other Sega system. If you’re looking for quality overseas releases to import or just Master System deep cuts in general, play this one like a harp from hell!

The 7th Saga (Super Nintendo)

Here’s a question for you: What makes a traditional turn-based RPG stand out as more difficult than the norm? Or easier, for that matter? If you think about it, such games generally unfold in menus, proceeding at whatever pace the player is comfortable with. There’s no ticking clock, no need to hone one’s reflexes or timing. No permanent game overs, either, outside the roguelike sub-genre. Furthermore, they’re essentially numbers games. So long as you have the patience to pad your stats out sufficiently, you’ll plow through the opposition pretty much automatically. That’s the nature of the beast, right?

Apparently not, since The 7th Saga always seems to get singled out as the most difficult Super Nintendo RPG. Developed by Produce! and published by Enix in 1993, 7th Saga doesn’t initially appear to be all that unusual by the standard of the period and platform. It’s yet another game where you explore a generic fantasy world from an overhead perspective hunting down magical MacGuffins (seven runes, in this case) while racking up cash and experience points via a constant stream of random monster brawls.

So what gives? 7th Saga’s original Japanese version, the unfortunately titled Elnard, isn’t regarded as particularly challenging. Turns out it’s all in the localization. You may have heard how some older action games like Castlevania III were modified to be harder for an American audience due to the prominence of the rental market here (as opposed to in Japan, where businesses successfully lobbied the government to have game rentals made illegal). Well, 7th Saga is what results when the same process is applied to an RPG. Monster stats got bumped up, player character stats got bumped down. The result is a grim struggle of a quest where many common encounters are on par with the boss fights of your typical RPG. You have to plan every move out carefully and make effective use of buff and debuff spells simply to survive against standard enemies. Even then, you can expect to periodically hit a run of bad luck and get wiped out anyway. It doesn’t need to be a long run, either, considering how hard everything that isn’t you hits.

Leveling up helps, of course, but since your party members’ stats grow at a much slower rate than initially intended, each level effectively counts less. Making up that difference requires some serious extra grinding, piling mountains of repetition onto what’s already a fairly long playthrough and extending it from what should rightfully be no more than 20-30 hours to nearer the 40 hour mark in my case.

It’s as egregiously unfair and frustrating as it sounds. To my surprise, however, it didn’t quite manage to ruin 7th Saga for me. There are still enough good ideas present to just barely compensate for the cruelty baked into the localization. Foremost among them is your choice of seven characters to function as main protagonist, a mechanic noteworthy enough to reference in the English title. Esuna the elf, Valsu the priest, and Lejes the demon are dedicated spellcasters with little in the way of martial might. Wilme the alien and Lux the robot are almost exclusively geared toward physical combat. Kamil the warrior and Olvan the dwarf attempt to split the difference. Your initial choice of hero is very important, since you can only ever recruit one of the remaining six at a time to accompany you, and their willingness to do so isn’t guaranteed. They may also snub or even attack you hoping to steal your coveted runes. In rare cases, there are unique story events only accessible to specific characters. Olvan is needed to access an optional treasure-filled dungeon called the Tower of Grime, for instance. While it would have been nice if the developers had been able to include more of these branching paths, I’m grateful for the few that did make it in.

7th Saga boasts a fine presentation as well, the soundtrack from Norihiko Yamanuki being the true standout. I count it as a loss to the games industry that he left it after this in favor of other musical pursuits. Credit is owed to the art staff, too, for their host of intimidating enemy designs. There are no affable grinning slimes in the world of Ticondera. These critters look as nightmarish as they are to fight and I love it.

In a perverse way, 7th Saga’s blatant unfairness actually grew on me over time. It’s not that I ever liked it per se. Rather, it succeeded in goading me into a “don’t get mad, get even” mindset. The need to focus so intently on every battle meant that I could never zone out and button mash my way through the opposition. It kept me engaged, in other words, if also on edge and periodically angry. There was a palpable tension to making my way through a dungeon or across a vast stretch of overworld to the next town, all the while knowing that the next step could spell disaster. At least you don’t lose progress when you die, instead being docked half your gold and sent back to the last inn you visited à la Dragon Quest. Forcing you to load a previous save from scratch every time would have been a bridge too far. Spite is a strange motivation for gaming, but my desire to throw all of 7th Saga’s nonsense back in its smarmy face is ultimately what carried me to the end credits.

Would I revisit The 7th Sage? I’m certainly curious to see how other character combinations will differ from my initial Esuna/Lux run. That said, I’ll likely opt to cut down on the time and aggravation required by using one of the fan-made patches that revert all the stats to their Elnard values. I beat this one on its default bastard mode once to prove a point. I feel I’ve more than earned myself the right to relax a bit with it in the future.

Edo no Kiba (Super Famicom)

Edo no Kiba (“Fang of Edo”) is a 1993 sci-fi action game by Riot, the same internal development team that produced Psycho Dream for publisher Telenet Japan the year previous. The title’s callback to Japanese capital Tokyo’s pre-modern moniker Edo is significant, as it reflects the game’s samurai cyberpunk art direction. Despite playing as a cop in high-tech powered armor battling robot terrorists in the year 2050, you still fight with a sword and many of your opponents resemble the Terminator by way of Akira Kurosawa. This style was seemingly all the rage at the time, as also evidenced by Compile’s Musha and CAProduction’s Hagane. Unlike those two, however, Edo no Kiba never scored a release outside Japan.

If you caught my review of Psycho Dream a few months back, much of what I said there applies to Edo no Kiba as well. That is, it’s another bare bones, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it effort that barely qualifies as mediocre. Heck, the most interesting thing about it is probably how difficult it is to cleanly slot into a genre. It’s an auto-scroller, but not a shooter. It handles somewhat like a beat-’em-up in the ground movement department, yet it doesn’t have any of the combos, throws, or other signature moves this naturally primes you to expect. It’s not an action-platformer, as there’s no platforming. In the end, I suppose it’s a game where the screen scrolls on its own and you hit stuff. Call that what you will.

Your character’s abilities are nothing to write home about. Jumping and the basic sword slash are self-explanatory. Holding down the attack button raises the sword in a guard position and allows it to block some shot types, although there seems to be no way of telling which other than trial and error. The real trick is to master throwing the sword by pressing forward while in guard stance. It will then travel the full length of the screen before boomeranging back, dealing heavy damage to bosses and potentially taking out multiple regular enemies in a row. If you find yourself in trouble, you have a super bomb attack that can be triggered once per life. Not that I never found myself needing it. The action simply isn’t that hectic. Opponents are few and far-between across the six extremely brief stages.

Empty as it can feel at times, Edo no Kiba somehow manages to run quite poorly. Slowdown and flicker are as prominent here as they are in legitimately fast-paced and chaotic SNES contemporaries such as Contra III and U.N. Squadron. Coupled with the stiff controls, the result would be downright frustrating if it wasn’t for the instant in-place respawns and extremely generous continue system. You start with five lives and nine continues on the default difficulty setting. I bumped the difficulty up a level on my first playthrough, granting me just five continues instead, and still had no trouble clearing it.

Edo no Kiba isn’t all bad by any means. It’s easy to pick up and play, a few of the giant mecha bosses are well drawn and fun to square off against, and the driving, hard-edged soundtrack showcases some beefy percussion. For me, though, there’s no escaping the fact that the game as a whole feels half-baked, as if it was rushed or even unfinished. The conspicuous lack of enemies in the back half could well indicate the latter. Psycho Dream, unexceptional as it was, at least delivered more than this via its inclusion of two playable characters. Why would you want to play this when Hagane handles the same concept and aesthetic exponentially better? Beats me. Oh, wait! I got it! Edo no Kiba is the only game I know of that shouts its title at you whenever you pause. Really. A cheesy voice sample blurts out “Edo no Kiba!” each and every time. It’s hilarious. That’s gotta count for something…right?

Star Fox (Super Nintendo)

It’s not often that I attempt to synch my reviews up with specific major anniversaries. Mostly I play whatever I happen to feel like in the moment. When it was brought to my attention that Star Fox was celebrating its thirtieth birthday last week, however, I simply couldn’t resist taking advantage of an excuse to revisit an old favorite.

The Super Nintendo platform was riding high when Star Fox released in March of 1993, having been on the market less than three years at that point. Despite this, the writing was already on the wall. NEC and Sega were busy showcasing the possibilities of the burgeoning CD-ROM format. Meanwhile, it was clear that the age of the sprite was drawing to a close. The next wave of consoles would inevitably be 3-D powerhouses relative to their 16-bit ancestors. So when U.K.-based Argonaut Software approached Nintendo with the idea for a proprietary graphics accelerator chip that could be incorporated into game cartridges to enable eye-catching 3-D polygon visuals on the SNES, their proposal was met with considerable enthusiasm. Why wouldn’t it be? Nintendo had a long-standing tradition of extending the shelf life of its flagship system via liberal use of such chips. Often referred to as memory mappers, they’re what allowed the NES, a machine engineered in 1983 to run Donkey Kong, to stay commercially relevant for over a decade and play host to 8-bit technical wonders like Kirby’s Adventure.

Argonaut and Nintendo thus set to work on what would ultimately be dubbed the Super FX chip. Naturally, they needed not just the tech itself, but a real killer app of a debut game to put it over with the public. What they settled on was a 3-D rail shooter based on Argonaut’s hit 1986 PC title Starglider, a game that was itself originally intended to be a licensed Star Wars tie-in (Get it? TIE-in?) and was clearly inspired by Atari’s seminal 1983 Star Wars arcade cabinet. At this stage, the concept was missing but one thing: That trademark Nintendo charm. Star designer Shigeru Miyamoto remedied that with the decision to set the action in a galaxy of anthropomorphic animals. Hence, our titular fighter pilot hero Fox McCloud is a literal fox leading his rabbit, toad, and bird wingmen on a mission to save the Lylat System from Planet of the Apes reject Andross and his unreasonably huge space armada. Brand identity assured!

In retrospect, the choice of Star Fox as poster child for the Super FX chip was inspired. The combination of Starglider’s proven fundamentals and Miyamoto’s character design Midas touch do a more than adequate job of smoothing over the game’s technical rough edges. For instance, it’s a lot easier to accept playfields constructed from a modest number of flat-shaded polygons when they’re meant to represent various spaceships and trippy alien planets, as opposed to living beings or objects and locations we’re familiar with from real life. Look no further than the largely forgotten Stunt Race FX or Dirt Trax FX for proof of that. Even the dismal framerate, which maxes out at a paltry twenty refreshes per second and routinely struggles to reach that, is a price worth paying for the sheer inventiveness and scope of Star Fox’s 21 stages. The number of unique enemies and environmental hazards seen throughout is impressive, with the bevy of truly intimidating giant boss ships being the best of a great lot. Capping it all off is composer Hajime Hirasawa’s magnificent John Williams-esque score. Hard to believe he worked on a mere four games during his short tenure in the industry.

This isn’t to say that every gripe one might have with Star Fox is down to it being a first experiment with new hardware. Those three wingmen I mentioned, Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad, and Falco Lombardi, add little to the experience apart from the occasional nugget of expository dialog and the flimsiest illusion of camaraderie. In fact, they can be quite annoying, constantly begging you to swoop in and save their bacon from bad guys that are invariably getting the best of them. I know Fox is supposed to be the designated protagonist and all, but it makes you wonder why he doesn’t leave these clumsy dorks to chill back at home base so he can take care of business unimpeded.

So, with the massive strides in 3-D graphics over the past three decades and a number of more advanced Star Fox sequels to pick from, can I still recommend playing the original now? Absolutely! Its readily accessible arcade style shoot-and-dodge mechanics are timeless, as are its top-notch level and enemy design, stirring soundtrack, and endearing (if endearingly useless) cast of characters. Heck, I’d go so far as to say that Star Fox’s union of bright, flat colors with ultra-basic polygon geometry constitutes a sort of retro-cool visual aesthetic that holds up today in much the same way it does in Tron, The Last Starfighter, and other beloved sci-fi films of the ’80s. While it may not look “good” anymore, it remains compelling as a nostalgic paradox; a bold, naive vision of a future past.

Fausseté Amour (PC Engine)

Fausseté Amour translates to “False Love,” and what that has to do with anything going down in this sleazy little low-effort action-platformer from developer AIM and publisher Naxat Soft is anyone’s guess. Between its 1993 release date and focus on a half-naked girl slashing her way through a generic fantasy realm to face off against a hulking masked baddie, I have to assume that it represents a “me, too” reaction to Telenet Japan’s popular Valis series. Also like Valis, it uses the enhanced storage capacity of the PC Engine’s Super CD-ROM format to deliver a bevy of colorful, cheesecake-laden cut scenes. Its sole claim to fame, in fact, is the way it leverages these scenes to push the boundaries of good taste just that one extra bit further than its inspiration. Whereas the first Valis was content with giving heroine Yuko a suit of rather skimpy armor, Fausseté Amour ups the ante by shoving cartoon girl butts and crotches right up in the viewer’s face. It’s not subtle, although it does maintain the bare minimum of PG-13 grade coverage needed to avoid being branded a proper hentai game.

Our protagonist is the oddly-named Corque Lans, a spirited young woman whose sister, Meriya, has been kidnapped by a gang of Satanic cultists led by a figure called, get this, Goat Bone. Goat. Bone. If I eventually forget everything about Fausseté Amour, which seems likely, that name will be last to go. Anyway, Corque’s journey is comprised of seven side-scrolling action stages, all featuring an end boss encounter and most a mid-boss as well. All seven are relatively small by genre standards. This is balanced by a lack of checkpoints and Corque’s languid, Belmontesque walk speed.

Speaking of Castlevania, Corque’s weapon of choice is a sort of extendable chain spear that can lash out in any of five directions. In addition, it can be spun around in a 360-degree arc, albeit only when the wielder is jumping. This spinning jump slash can also be used to generate one of three magical projectile attacks, depending on what magic icon, if any, was collected most recently. Finally, the spear functions as a grapple for latching onto the undersides of platforms. Once attached in this way, Corque can execute a follow-up super jump that launches her high into the air and deals heavy contact damage in the manner of Samus Aran’s iconic Screw Attack.

If a mix of mechanics from Castlevania, Bionic Commando, and Metroid sounds promising to you, you’re not alone. It was that setup, and not ’90s anime thong lust, that initially drew me to this one. Unfortunately, stealing from the best is still no guarantee of success. Lackluster level and enemy design are what ultimately consigns Fausseté Amour to the Hell of Forgotten Games. These environments simply aren’t interesting to navigate, and the token resistance put up by their handful of listless inhabitants makes what would otherwise be a punishing Ghosts ‘n Goblins style two-hit death system feel positively generous. Worse, the spear grappling gimmick is badly underutilized. It’s not necessary at all until the final stretch, where some very basic vertical movement is abruptly demanded. What could have formed the cornerstone of a superior experience really amounts to nothing more than a trifle.

On the presentation side, there are a few nifty backgrounds that give the impression of considerable depth. The Japanese voice acting seems broadly competent, too. This is where my praise ends, though. Sprites tend to look alright when they’re not moving, but seeing them in motion reveals notably stiff animation cycles. The music and sound effects are a disappointing lot, especially the former. Songs are short, repetitive, and minimally developed. There are no strong melodies evident and the worst tracks suffer from an overreliance on obnoxious laugh and scream samples. Why, I couldn’t tell you. On top of all that, additional playtesting was clearly required. I fell down a pit while battling the third boss. Instead of dying as expected, this inexplicably triggered the next cut scene and I moved on to stage four as normal. At least I can now say I defeated a video game boss by falling in a hole.

I started out highlighting the obvious parallels between Fausseté Amour and the better-known Valis. In concluding, I sorely wish I could say that its uptick in fanservice wasn’t bundled with a marked downgrade to Valis’ already average gameplay. Frankly, I’d come to expect better than this from the Naxat brand. I suppose it is short and easy enough that serious PC Engine fanatics may find it worth booting up purely as a curiosity. I can’t recommend you goat bone your poor wallet by shelling out a hundred bucks or more for an original CD copy, however.

Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly-Paradise (TurboGrafx-16)

Just one year after Hudson Soft published Air Zonk, one of the finest of the TurboGrafx-16’s many auto-scrolling shooters, they gave us a sequel, Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly-Paradise. Heroic cyborg-with-attitude Zonk is back to battle a new plot by King Drool and his henchmen to take over Earth. Except they’re calling the lead baddie Emperor Sandrovich this time for some reason. Don’t worry, he’s the same reptile bastard Zonk veterans already know and hate.

True to its name, Super Air Zonk used the expanded memory of the Super CD-ROM format to realize what should have been an even more polished and bombastic sequel. Unfortunately, for reasons we may never be entirely sure of, Super Air Zonk largely squanders its theoretical technical advantages, coming across as an oddly muted and perfunctory follow-up. If I had to speculate, I might point to Hudson’s choice of development studio. The first Air Zonk was the work of Red Company, the established shooting game masters behind the likes of Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder. Super Air Zonk was contracted out to Dual, who’d previously worked on . . . Predator for the NES. Huh.

In any event, Super Air Zonk not only fails to live up to its CD-ROM hype, it underperforms relative to the humble HuCard original. Practically all of its predecessor’s impressive parallax scrolling background work is absent. The CD music, which is mostly in the playful rockabilly style you’d expect, packs less energy and fewer memorable melodies than the last game’s chiptunes. This tidal wave of mediocrity surges clear over the presentation to inundate the gameplay proper, too. Levels here are significantly less hectic. Air Zonk’s positively insane enemy design has been toned down considerably. And power-ups? Forget ’em! Gone are the seven unique shot types with their own charge attacks. Zonk has now been downgraded to a basic straight shot and bomb combo.

One element that is thankfully still present is Zonk’s group of helpful companions, which can merge with him to provide new offensive abilities. Alas, they, too, are shadows of their former selves. They’ve been reduced in number from ten to seven and you can no longer choose which ones you’d prefer to bring along with you. Instead, you’ll meet a preset companion midway through each of the seven stages. In other words, player choice is never a factor. What precious little power-up potential is present always manifests itself in the exact same way on every playthrough. Not a great sign for any shooter.

This review is quite short (by my logorrheic standard, at least) and almost entirely dismissive. Strange as it seems, however, I’m not necessarily saying that you should avoid Super Air Zonk. Yes, it’s half the game its forebear was, if that, but I found it to be an adequate enough lightweight diversion. Its world and characters retain no small measure of charm. The graphics are colorful and the tunes catchy. Tame enemy placement, a ready supply of extra lives, and unlimited continues make it a serviceable casual or introductory shooter as well. It was a late release for the console and the physical disk is consequently one of the most expensive out there, tipping the scales at U.S. $800 and up as of this writing. Personally, I wouldn’t venture to pay 5% of that on the strength of the action alone. If you have a way of running it for free, though, I can think of far worse ways to kill an hour or so.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Game Boy)

My introduction to The Legend of Zelda was the debut entry all the way back in 1987. To this day, it remains one of my most beloved games and my gold standard rendition of the default “Link saves Princess Zelda from Ganon” scenario. Maybe that’s why my other favorite Zelda outings tend to be the offbeat ones that boldly shed one or more sacred cow elements and wind up better for it. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link led the way by leaving archvillain Ganon dead and Zelda unabducted. However, it wasn’t until the fourth installment, 1993’s The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for Game Boy, that Nintendo truly cut loose and got weird. In addition to being the first Zelda designed for a handheld system, Link’s Awakening was the first to completely omit Ganon, the kingdom of Hyrule, and even the title character herself!

Instead, Link finds himself shipwrecked on isolated Koholint Island, having been fished out of the sea by Marin, a friendly local girl. This lush and inviting new setting is also, ironically, a prison. But no sooner is our waterlogged hero back on his feet than a talking owl (no relation to the one seen in Ocarina of Time, oddly) swoops onto the scene and informs him that his only hope of returning to Hyrule is to wake the Wind Fish, a mysterious, semi-divine being said to slumber inside the giant egg resting on Koholint’s highest peak. Since this is a Zelda game, waking the Wind Fish requires recovering eight enchanted musical instruments sealed away inside eight perilous dungeons.

My initial impression upon revisiting Link’s Awakening after a roughly two decade hiatus is just how full-featured it is. When it came to Game Boy adaptations of established gaming properties, audience expectations tended to be, if not low, at least modest. We weren’t all that surprised when the portable Super Mario Land, for example, turned out to have nowhere near the scope of its NES inspirations. It was a mere trifle, after all. A quality one in its own right, sure, but a trifle.

In contrast, Link’s Awakening was arguably the most fully-realized Legend of Zelda experience yet, rivalling its Super Nintendo contemporary Link to the Past in the breadth and depth of its content. At 256 screens, the overworld is twice the size of Zelda 1’s. On top of that, it retains the quirky style of Link to the Past’s, being populated by a wide array of strange and memorable characters. There’s an entire village populated by talking animals, not to mention surprise cameos by a bevy of Nintendo stars. I wouldn’t want to spoil them all, so I’ll just highlight one: Prince Richard from the tragically obscure Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (aka The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls), one of the best Game Boy originals to never leave Japan and a sister game of sorts to this one.

All that said, I think the dungeons may be awesomer still. Their intricate layouts and satisfying puzzles routinely go above and beyond what came before. Eagle’s Tower, for instance, tasks you with plotting the correct route to lug a massive wrecking ball between pits and barriers in order to use it to knock over a set of pillars and bring the otherwise inaccessible top floor crashing down. It’s more advanced in both concept and execution than anything we’d previously seen in the console Zelda releases.

Factor in the expressive pixel art and a rousing score and you really do have a total Zelda package crammed into one miniscule cartridge. Not only are there no compromises evident apart from the monochrome visuals, we can actually witness the gameplay and narrative sophistication of the series as a whole advancing along multiple fronts. Without spoiling too much, Link’s Awakening marks the franchise’s first real flirtation with moral complexity, melancholy, and angst when it becomes apparent that Link’s quest to wake the Wind Fish and escape Koholint may have unforeseen consequences. While it doesn’t push the unease nearly so hard as the downright eerie Majora’s Mask would seven years later, it paved the way to Termina nonetheless.

Impressive and important as it is, I would be remiss if I didn’t detail the handful of significant flaws that mar this initial Game Boy version of Link’s Awakening in particular. Least in the grand scheme of things is the game’s baffling tendency to interrupt the flow with explanatory text boxes each and every time you interact with something. Pick up a small key and you’ll have to sit through a detailed explanation of what it’s for. Every. Single. Time. Turns out keys open locks. Go figure! God forbid you so much as brush up against a boulder without your magic bracelet equipped. They’re heavy, you see, and can’t be budged without a certain special item. It’s a fine idea the first time. Maybe a welcome reminder the second. After that, it smacks of sadism.

Equally obnoxious is the constant pausing to change items. The designers were kind enough to let you freely map items to the Game Boy’s two action buttons however you wish. Unfortunately, they then included so many barriers that need specific items to bypass that you’re still going to be switching your gear up on what feels like every other screen. Hell, there are cases where you’ll need to swap out items more than once just to successfully traverses a single screen! I’m aware, of course, that gating some portions of a game world behind equipment is standard in the action-adventure genre. The practice itself isn’t the problem so much as the sheer redundancy of its implementation, further exacerbated by the two button limit.

Finally, and most worrisome of all, are the handful of potentially game-breaking glitches. I very nearly had my playthrough terminated for good in the home stretch when I made the “mistake” of visiting a shop and purchasing a second shovel to replace the one I’d recently traded to an NPC for a boomerang. I didn’t realize right away that I was now effectively carrying one item too many as far as the game was concerned. I eventually discovered the problem when I picked up the fire rod in the eighth dungeon, a tool required to reach the end of said dungeon, only to find that it hadn’t been added to my inventory because its intended slot was now occupied by the replacement shovel. If I had saved my progress after this point, I’d have been permanently softlocked. Fortunately, my lackadaisical approach to saving became my salvation, although I did lose around 90 minutes of progress and was forced to to repeat level seven. The scariest thing is that this isn’t some bizarre set of circumstances one wouldn’t usually encounter in the course of normal play. All I did was pop into the shop, see they were still selling shovels, and figure I may as well buy one. Yikes.

An expanded 1998 Game Boy Color revision (dubbed Link’s Awakening DX) would patch some of these nastier bugs and the 2019 Nintendo Switch remake features a dedicated sword button to cut down on the tedium of item swapping. Between such so-called quality of life changes and the obvious presentation upgrades made possible by newer hardware, it would be easy to write this vanilla Game Boy iteration off as obsolete. I can’t dispute that in any objective sense, though I can perhaps point out that in no later format is the strength of Link’s Awakening relative to practically all other handheld offerings of its time more apparent than it is here. Regardless of the version you pick up, you’re guaranteed an unforgettable adventure that ranks among the finest this most legendary of sagas has produced to date.