✰ GR Creative Highlight: 167 Super Nintendo Reviews, Index on first page

Anything to do with games at all.
User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:11 pm



Super Bowling Video review

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Sun Mar 11, 2018 5:56 pm

First video made using my brand new Microphone so hopefully it sounds a lot better


User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Mon Mar 12, 2018 8:47 pm

SNES game Review 147: Super Bomberman 2

Image

Well my 65th Review was for Super Bomberman, which I just kept calling Bomberman totally forgetting the super part for some reason. When I reviewed the original I said that it was part of a long running franchise and since that review a Switch version was released which I grabbed, I also managed to get a copy of the original English Spectrum Bomberman game Eric and the Floaters. I dont want to get into how long this franchise has been going on again but I think the above does that. My purchase story behind Super Bomberman 2 is not a particularly exciting one, I grabbed it years later in a charity shop for a few quid. I should mention now that if you have read my review for the first Bomberman then it might sound like I am repeating myself but that's because this sequel is very much more of the same.

The normal 1 player mode of the game is just like any other Bomberman game. You control Bomberman, and you have to use your bombs to destroy various obstacles and opponents, ultimately using your bombs to turn on light switches that allow you to exit the level and progress on to the next. After completing a set number of levels, there is a boss battle, and how do you think you defeat the bosses that's right you do it by using bombs. You start the game only being able to lay one bomb at a time, this bomb will have a very small explosion, basically it will only harm things one square away in any direction. By destroying various obstacles some of which are bricks and others are mushrooms or treasure boxes it depends on the level you can find hidden powerups, what power ups can yoh get? Well you can pick up a flame this will increase the area your bomb damages, then you can pick up extra bombs so you can lay more than one at a time, you can also pick up shoes which make you move faster and more. Everything you can get in single player you can also get in the Multiplayer battle mode.

It is very easy to play Super Bomberman 2 there are very few buttons to get to grips with and very simple but tight controls. In order to become an absolute master at the game though you need to get smart. You will find yourself starting to understand how everything works, you will learn how large your explosion will be if you pick up a flame icon or 3 flame icons, all of this information will start to lodge in your brain, you will start having a greater awareness of how everything works and how you can use this to your advantage. If a bomb explodes and the flame hits another bomb it will cause this second bomb to detonate early. This is where the game starts to be far from simple as with multiple bombs and power ups you can either intentionally or accidentally cause large chain reactions in an attempts to get your opponents. If you panic and drop bombs all over the place causing huge chains of explosions then you will most likely kill yourself and this is where the game gets good. You need to learn how everything works and then learn how to keep a cool head and how to put your new found skills to work in even the most stressful of situations.

The single player story mode is basically partly there to entertain you when you are on your own but in honesty it also sort of serves as a training mode getting you ready for the real portion of the game the Multiplayer Battle mode. Super Bomberman 2 is one of the few games to use the SNES Multi-tap adaptor and with this you can have up to four players battling to blow each other to kingdom come.

If you don't have a multi-tap, your stuck to playing it in one or two player mode but luckily the computer will join in controlling AI characters to reach the full number. One of the interesting things is that there are multiple difficulty levels you can pick for the AI controlled Bombermen which is helpful as it means no matter what your skill level is you should be able to find an AI level that will allow you to have a good competitive game, its also cool from a training perspective as if your trying to improve you can keep upping the difficulty as you get better. If I have any issues with the AI it is that they all basically play in a highly defensive manner, it would be a nice touch if you could set some parameters that would make one be a little kill crazy willing to die if he took you down with him, then a defensive one, and a risk taker but I guess that's just expecting a lot given the hardware and when this game came out.

There are about ten maps you can choose from in multiplayer mode, and each one is different. The first map is sort of your bog standard no thrills one but each one from then on is unique having its own quirk which makes it stand out and makes playing on it just a little bit different. For example one map has that sort of Pacman style thing where if you exit from the top of the map you reappear at the bottom. Sounds simple but it means that you can basically go from one side of the screen to the other in seconds and get the drop on your opponent or that they might do that to you.

Graphically the game is kind of basic but bright and fun and full of character, it might not be anything that flashy but it has aged well and it offers a pretty wide amount of variety which helps to keep things fresh.The sound in my opinion is good it manages to be cutesy catchy and it also manages to work with the on-screen action to make the game feel tense in the best possible way.

Super Bomberman 2 is definitely a very good game, especially if you have a multi-tap and a bunch of friends to play with. If you aren’t interested in a party game and prefer being a solo player then the single player game is not too bad but your really missing the part that makes this game the stand out classic that it is. Of course being a sequel there is the inevitable question is this one better than its predecessor? I find this a really tough question to answer as I am kind of biased to the first Super Bomberman because all of the levels and tunes from the game are burned into my brain, its the one I played as a young lad and its the one I have the really fond memories of. I gave Bomberman a 9 but I find myself having to give the second one an 8. Its still a brilliant game and I know some people prefer it but for me its just not quiet as good. If you want to try Bomberman 2 then the cheapest Pal carts I could find of it were about £25 with boxed copies being around double this. I would argue that the game is worth it but I would say don't worry about getting more than one of the SNES Bombermen games because there all just sort of variations of the same thing and hey it might also be worth looking at different versions on other formats, I am particularly fond of Bomberman Battlefest which was a download game for the Xbox 360 which has recently been added to the Xbox one via there ever growing backwards compatibility service, as this is only £6.75 to download I personally think its a complete steal and if you have been living under a rock for the last 30 years and don't know what Bomberman is it would be a great cheap place to start.

User avatar
Lime
Member
Joined in 2008
AKA: Lime

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by Lime » Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:50 pm

kerr9000 wrote:First video made using my brand new Microphone so hopefully it sounds a lot better



Much much better! Thank you!

Image< Click here to listen to my band, finally on Spotify (and all other streaming services!)
3ds - 0946-2364-6907
Wii U - Monkeylime
Switch Online - SW-0245-1766-8994
User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:47 pm

Thanks Lime :D , I'm really enjoying the new microphone and I'm very open to any suggestions on how to improve.

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Wed Mar 14, 2018 11:15 pm

The following review comes with a slight disclaimer, if you don't like to hear about horrible situations or mental health struggles, or feel that these things might trigger you then please don't watch.


User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:28 am

OK so I am currently working on Review 148 but I guess I have been putting a lot of time into doing the Videos for some of the reviews, I guess this is because I am not quiet sure what I am going to do when finished. I don't even know if I will end up making Videos for all of them or not but it just seemed like a good way to try and get the project some more exposure.


User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Sat Mar 17, 2018 9:00 pm

SNES game Review 148: Secret of Mana

Image


Secret of Mana, was originally released in Japan as Seiken Densetsu 2, so yep the first thing I am telling you is that this game is in fact a sequel. Seiken Densetsu apparently translates to Legend of the Sacred Sword. the original Seiken Densetsu was released as Final Fantasy Adventure in North America and Mystic Quest in Europe and was on the Game Boy. So the series began as a handheld side story to Square's flagship franchise Final Fantasy, though you wouldn't know this from playing Secret of Mana as all of the the Final Fantasy elements were dropped starting with this second instalment in the series and in all honesty it became a series in its own right with its own fan fare and legion of loyal followers.

So Secret of Mana can best be described as an action role-playing game it was both developed and published by Square for the SNES and released in 1993. Surprisingly this is the first time I have managed to talk about Square in my SNES series, yes they are a great studio but there stuff is usually expensive. In fact I spent £25 on my American cart of Secret of Mana and that was quiet a long time ago before prices really started to jump. I didn't own Mana back when it was released but one of my close friends did, and I used to go round his a lot and play it, I really enjoyed it but for some reason I just never decided to pick my own copy up, maybe its because when I was younger I tended to jump from game to game, so didn't really think an RPG was the best use of my cash. It was years latter when I decided to buy it and I basically just kept checking eBay until I saw a buy it now American copy with free postage. It was this game that actually resulted in me modifying my Super Nintendo. You see I was playing it through a convertor and well it was on a cupboard and when my daughter would run into the room the cupboard would rock a little and this would make the SNES rock and well it would crash, one time it crashed and somehow this ruined my save and I lost 15 hours worth of playing. I then began to think about what I could do to fix this situation, the obvious solution would be to simply sell my copy and spend whatever it cost to buy a Pal version, or heck just purchase an American SNES. Somehow I ended up reading about how to make a UK SNES play import games, and as a result of this I widened the cartridge slot, and disabled the region lockout on my machine and altered it so it ran at 60hz, I could have gotten more clever and gone down the route of switches etcetera but I decided to just have my altered SNES and a regular one as well as bad as this sounds it was simply easier.

OK so what makes Secret of Mana such a unique and often talked about game? Well for a start its a Square game so there is that name recognition but its also a little different for one its not just a single player game its also a cooperative multiplayer game with a system which allows for a second and even third player to drop in and out of the game at any time. You start the game as one character and as you play a further two are unlocked, and well as soon as one is unlocked a friend can jump in and play with you. As an adult this sounds pretty cool but as a kid this was simply amazing, it meant I could drop in on my friend and if he was playing this game it didn't mean that I had to just sit there and watch him play or that he had to come of the game because he had a visitor nope I could just grab a pad and jump right into the game. OK so I think its pretty obvious that being two player its not going to be an old Final Fantasy style RPG where everyone stands there waiting for there turn to attack, no rather than using a turn-based battle system like other role-playing games back then this game instead offers real-time battles with a power bar mechanic. For anyone who hasn't played Secret of Mana I guess id kind of explain this game as kind of feeling like its an almost Final Fantasy meets Zelda a Link to the Past kind of thing. The game also has a unique ''Ring Command'' menu system, when you use this it pauses the action and allows you to make decisions in the middle of battle.

I might have spent quiet awhile going on about how great it is that people can drop in and out of your game but even if your on your own or don't really like playing games with other human beings then the game still has you covered offering customizable artificial intelligence (AI) settings for your computer-controlled allies. While you control one character the other two will then behave however you have set them to behave with you having choices between having them run in swinging without a care in the world or having them behave more defenselessly staying away from enemies and only fighting when absolutely necessary. Or you can set them to run in swinging. The experience gained is equally shared so you don't need to worry about them either stealing to many kills from you and your character therefore loosing experience, or them cowering too much and becoming weak. There is a fairly large variety of enemies. You get creatures called Rabites, which are pretty much half rabbit half blob, then there are zombies and goblins all sorts of different things sure there are some pallet swaps but its not done to death and in my opinion it doesn't hurt the game at all there are also some pretty darn cool bosses.

OK so lets talk a little about the weapons you get how you attack with them and what makes this cool. You have an area on screen which sits under your character's icon and health meter this shows percentages, if you stop attacking it will climb up to 100% wait for this and the attack will be stronger, so rathter than slashing like mad its often better to hit and avoid to let this build.

As you increase your weapon abilities, which is done by killing enemies with a certain weapon, you will gain techniques. You use these techniques by holding the attack button and you will see a bar fill up to the desired level 1-8 and then when you release your button you will do a more powerful attack, to start with these are pretty simple like a jumping slash but they just get better and better. There are 8 weapons in the game and they are a sword, an axe, a spear, a pole arm, a boomerang, a bow, a whip, and a glove. So what you have is 8 selectable weapons for 3 characters, so you get to control who uses what and when. All of these weapons are upgradable by finding orbs and then taking them to the blacksmith. As the weapons are improved by the blacksmith they get stronger and develop abilities, so you might find that certain ones stun enemies or become strong against particular things. Now you will most likely just work out which are your favourites but its great to have the choice and for me at least it does add some playability as you can try to do things a little different next time, like using the whip, glove and bow instead of the spear, sword and axe. I could talk about this game all day but I don't want to give away everything about the game , and I certainly don't want to talk about the story in the slightest and that's because this game gets a very high recommendation from me and I want people to know just enough to feel curious and to go out and try the game.

OK so I have talked about my history with the game , I have talked about the play mechanics and seeing as I think gameplay is king id kind of be happy to leave it here but I guess I should talk about the graphics and the sound. I think the graphics are beautiful, you have great 16-bit sprites that living in a bright colourful world absolutely dripping with detail, its a wonderful living breathing world in cartridge form. You have large impressive bosses I think its just a treat for the eyes.

As for the games Music well the game has an absolutely fantastic score it is at times peaceful, at other times atmospheric and sometimes beautiful, its just as far as I am concerned one of the greatest game scores on the system which ticks every box and is an emotional roller coaster. As far as sound effects go you have all of the Slashes and such you would expect in a game of this type and most importantly nothing ever feels repetitive or out of place.

Overall I would have to say that this game is one of the very best games on the system, and even if you don't usually like RPG's with this games multiplayer and its spin on it being an action RPG, id recommend that you give it a bash. I feel I need to give this game a very rare 10 out of 10 after all it has to be one hell of a game for you to modify your whole console because of it doesn't it?


OK so if you want to play this game prices for pal carts start at about £40 I have also seen a lot of fake carts knocking around, with some of the owners/sellers even believing them to be real, this is something worth considering. To try and combat this take a good look at pictures of real ones and then study any you consider buying. It is also worth noting that this game made it on to the SNES mini AKA the Super NES classic Edition. It has also had a 3d remake for various modern platformers but I haven't tried that so wont be commenting on it beyond making people aware of its existence.

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Mon Mar 19, 2018 7:09 pm

SNES Game Review 149: Whirlo AKA Xandra no Daibōken: Valkyrie to no Deai

Image

The game I am reviewing now is Xandra no Daibōken: Valkyrie to no Deai or at least that's what it was called in Japan, this basically translates to Xandra's Great Adventure: Encounter with the Valkyrie. The game didn't come out in America but it did hit Europe and Australia where it was called Whirlo, heck of a title simplification isent it?

The game is a prequel to a NES game, a game called Valkyrie no Bōken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu that game had you play as a Valkyrie but featured a supporting character called Krino Xandra (known as Whirlo in Europe). This game takes that supporting character who for simplicities sake I will mostly call Whirlo from now on and thrusts him into the role of hero.

So what kind of game is Whirlo? Well its an action-adventure platform game it was developed by Nova Games Ltd and published by Namco on July the 23rd of 1992 in Japan for the Super Famicom hitting Europe and Australia on the SNES as Whirlo sometime later during the same year. Now this is actually one of 10 games that Nova Games Ltd made for the SNES but in all honesty information about them is pretty much none existent, if you try to look up Nova Games you will find a mobile phone games developer which set up shop in 2014 and a Nova Games Limited which clearly cant be the one which worked on these SNES games as it was set up in 1993 a year after this games release, this particular company was a British game distributor located in Coppull, Lancashire, England which manufactured strength tester machines that had Addams Family and Star Trek licenses. I guess some game studio names just sound so cool they get used multiple times and no one cares as long as the company which used the name last is dead and gone.

OK so lets start talking about the game and lets start with the story. Whirlo/Xandra is living a peaceful and happy life deep in the countryside with his wife and there son in a place called Sandros/the Land of Marvel (Depends on the version your playing). Everything doesn't remain peaceful though, nope one day all of this peace is broken by a huge explosion which is so loud and powerful that it is heard throughout the land. This explosion releases an evil fiend who causes a deadly dust to fall from the sky and this dust makes many of the people across the Land of Marvel ill, it gives them some form of withering disease. Whirlo's son is afflicted with the disease and after overhearing talk of a marvelous curing medicine, Whirlo leaves his wife and child and sets out on a journey to find this medicine and save his son.

So not that I have talked about the story I guess I will move on to the graphics. Well to start with Whirlo is a great looking little character, basically he is a tubby little green jelly baby sort of looking thing with a three pronged head who walks around naked holding a pitchfork. Strangely on the English box they gave him a mouth which is not present in either the game or the original Japanese art and well they also made him look a little bit more like a frog in my opinion as well as taking away his pitchfork. Its bad art and well OK I should stop talking about box art now and save that for another time. The graphics in general are great though, they look very polished, and there are a lot of different areas with there own designs and everything just moves so beautifully smooth. The game looks nice and pleasant but as I will get into later don't let the happy friendly graphics deceive you.

The music is absolutely brilliant stuff, not only does it fit the game perfectly but I also think its some of the best virtually unkown music on the system, well unknown outside of Japan at least, not really sure how big this game was there so for all I know everyone over there into retro gaming might frequently talk about this game.

I am guessing that this game was released in very small numbers over here, as I never ever saw it as a kid and well it also goes for a heck of a lot for a SNES game nowadays. After playing it I have to say that its such a shame that such a good game seems to be basically unknown. OK so I have let the cat out of the bag and sad the game is good, its good but its also blooming difficult , its darn challenging but it is also cutesy platforming at its best. One touch from any enemy in the game and you die there is no energy bar here and no power ups. You have the tool set your given from the get go and that's it.

The jump mechanics in this game are unusual and at first kind of confusing but with a bit of practice you will soon be impressed with what you can manage. You have two jump buttons B and A . B is your standard regular jump button. If you give it a little push then you do a little jump and if you press it for longer then you do a higher jump. A is also used to jump. If you hold down A, Whirlo/Sandora will crouch and start charging and when you release it you do a charged jump which goes even higher, think mario 2 on the NES if you have played that. If you start it from a stationary position the jumps not exactly super high but if you were running when you started holding A then you will jump much higher. If you charge for too long though you will tire Whirlo out and cause him to collapse out of exhaustion for a little bit. If while you're running you tap A then, you will do a long hop. It's a long jump with no real height but a lot of distance. At first all of these different kinds of jump are kind of confusing, it seems weird to have such a range of jumps but this is the beauty of the game, each and every one of them has its own use.

The Y button is your attack button, press it and Whirlo will use his pitchfork to attack enemies. If you do it when standing you'll do a straight stab. You can also stab below you. One of the coolest moments in this game for me is when you run and jump and attack an enemy below you with your pitchfork, you'll find yourself bouncing off of them and if you get the rhythm right you can bounce from enemy to enemy unleashing awesome stylish cutesy death upon your enemies. Its a tough game and it also seems to be pretty darn long, but its highly enjoyable, although for people who find hard games frustrating I can see this game rubbing some people up the wrong way.

OK so if I was to rate this game I would give it a 8.5 out of 10. I would score it higher but I do seriously think its difficulty level might be a barrier to some peoples enjoyment, maybe it could do with a few different difficulty levels perhaps one with a health bar? So if you wanted a Pal cart of this game what would it cost you? The cheapest pal copy which looked genuine that I have seen for sale was about £100 if you include postage. I have often seen people asking for sums like £230 for a loose cart of this, with people asking for £450 or more for boxed copies. Plus you get absolutely loads of fake copies and reproductions of this game. If you want to play it without paying a fortune or resulting in emulation then your best of looking at a Japanese copy of Xandra no Daibōken: Valkyrie to no Deai, you should be able to get a cart only one for about £10 if your willing to keep your eyes open, wait and have it imported, heck sometimes boxed copies of the Japanese version come up for about £30, obviously you need an import console, a modified console or a convertor in order to play it.

Corazon de Leon

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by Corazon de Leon » Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:32 pm

kerr9000 wrote:The following review comes with a slight disclaimer, if you don't like to hear about horrible situations or mental health struggles, or feel that these things might trigger you then please don't watch.



Thanks for sharing that - it must have been difficult to record.

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:55 pm

Corazon de Leon wrote:
kerr9000 wrote:The following review comes with a slight disclaimer, if you don't like to hear about horrible situations or mental health struggles, or feel that these things might trigger you then please don't watch.



Thanks for sharing that - it must have been difficult to record.



Thank you very much Corazon de Leon. Years ago when I was at my worst I wouldn't have been able to talk about it at all, but now I feel I need to share it to help other people who have been through horrid stuff and are suffering, to show them it can get better, hence that video and another on YouTube about my PTSD. I think the more mental health is talked about the more the stigma is removed.

Well I guess this leaves me with one review left to do and then I've reviewed 150 games... I am considering which game to make review 150, at the moment there is World Heroes, Redline racing, Illusion of time and about 3 others on a pile while I think it through.

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Sat Mar 24, 2018 10:42 pm

SNES Game Review 150: The Adventures of Dr Franken.


Image


OK so when reviewing a whole bunch of SNES games I knew that I was going to come across good games, bad games and average games. I knew there would be things that had aged well and things that had not done so well. Some of the games I had very vivid pictures of in my head, I had played them to death as a kid and literally the second I picked up a pad a lot of it came back, heck some of them I have never really stopped playing. Then there are things like the game I am going to review today, things that I would have seen in shops again and again, and that I might have spent 5 minutes on at a friends house but which I don't have much more than a hazy awareness of.

So the game I am playing today is Dr Franken AKA The Adventures of Dr Franken. The game came out on the GameBoy and the SNES but there were NES and GameGear versions developed which never got released, still obviously the version I am going to be talking about today is obviously the SNES version. The SNES version was developed by a company called Motive Time LTD who I have to honestly admit I can find next to no information on at all other than various lists of things they worked on, apparently though the last thing they worked on was the PC version of Ford Racing in the year 2000. It was published by DMTC in America and Elite systems in Europe. The SNES version came out towards the end of 1993 and in honesty the game is kind of so 90's it hurts.

OK so if your reading this and you don't know I am a massive massive horror movie fan with a particular love for the classics, so to put it bluntly Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and the 1930's universal film based on it are very important to me. I am also a big fan of things that reference this sort of stuff in a fun loving parody style way, hence the fact that I adore the Adams family etc. So I really wanted to like something based of the whole Frankenstein thing even if it was a tongue in cheek joke based sort of thing.

So most people will know that Frankenstein is not the monster and is in fact the Doctor who created him right? Well this game ignores that and makes you a character called Frankie who is the monster, no idea what the Franken or Dr part is about maybe there was something in the manual which gave that away or maybe they just pulled the name out of there collective asses. Still Frankie has a giant cartoon head and wears sunglasses and is trying to be all rad and bad in a Michael Jackson way so maybe he thinks he is a Doctor like Dr Dre or John Cena the Doctor of Thugonomics but he kind of flushes all of this street cred down the toilet by appearing to wear sandals. Now call me silly but if I was really trying to make him cool I would have dropped his Bart Simpson red T-shirt and shorts and gone for jeans a leather jacket and some Nike trainers personally. Now despite only owning a cart and there being no story sequence I went and read around on the internet so that I could provide some story back drop for those that care. Apparently Frankie, wanted to take a trip with his girlfriend Bitsy but they could only afford one plane ticket so he disassembled her and stuck her in a bunch of suitcases. Apparently the suitcases instead of reaching there destination end up all over the world and so Frankie has to go around finding all the bits of his girlfriend in order to put her back together again. So I guess the moral of the story is never saw your girlfriend in to pieces to try and save money just fly with easy jet or go to Skegness again.

OK so in the game you are tasked with playing as Frankie through 20 stages, now in each of these you have to collect four parts and then find an exit in order to complete the stage and move on to the next one. Well I guess this sounds nice and easy then well it would be but unfortunately this game may well in fact be one of the most frustrating and difficult platformers available on the Super Nintendo.

OK so on to the gameplay well Frankie has a button which attacks to the left, one that attacks to the right, one that jumps and one that does a little flip kick. Then you have the trigger buttons the R button shoots a shot that can stuns enemies for a little bit while Pressing L unleashes a powerful fireball that kills enemies. Now this all probably sounds pretty straight forward and like there is a reasonable amount of moves but its actually kind of confusing that if your running one way and you press the wrong button you end up attacking behind you, surly it would just be better to attack in the direction your facing and have a wider range of attacks? What it really feels like is that the games developer wanted to give this game an innovative control setup not because it would help the gameplay but because it would tick a box and make this game different. Its basically innovation for the sake of innovation and frankly in my humble opinion it doesn't work.

Add to these innovation issues the fact that Frankie has very little health, most enemies can in fact finish you of in four to five hits, heck half the time when your jumping at them to fly kick them they seem to hit you as well. You only have three lives as well so with all of this given its a pretty darn challenging game for all the wrong reasons. You can collect icons that refill your, there are also ones which give you extra lives and the game does have bonus stages, these have no enemies and are instead loaded with power-ups and extra lives. In fairness though the stages are not always the best made some of them in fact contain pits and require pretty wild unintuitive jumps. The game also becomes pretty darn repetitive since every enemy takes one hit to kill and well the game just doesn't bother to have bosses at all.

OK so I have been ragging on the game a lot, is there anything much I can say about this game which is in any way good? Well Frankie and all of the enemies are large and nicely drawn, the animation is best described as satisfactory, it feels like it could use a few more frames but the game does have some personality to it. I would also praise the backgrounds, they are pretty rich in detail, vivid and all have there own personality, there are something like 10 different stage themes some of these include castles, dungeons, forests, Ancient Japanese architecture and construction sites.

The audio is also pretty darn good for an older SNES game. The music is pretty catchy and importantly all of it fits the area that it plays in, on the downside though I don't think there are really enough tracks to keep the game varied, which also adds to its repetitiveness. The sound effects also are not to bad at all, they pretty much all fit and work and do what they should do

I have to say that I didn't really enjoy the game at all. It’s a very hard game and in general it soon starts to feel like a chore and when any game feels like a chore you know that it is basically a failure as games are supposed to be enjoyable. The issue is that this game could have been a lot better, with some better controls a few bosses and well just a little more work. The truth is that while I have been doing all of these reviews there have been very few games that were totally irredeemable, even in the worst of them you could see some shred of something good. In fact the honest truth seems to have been that most of the SNES's library was kind of average, it takes a whole lot of good to make a good game, good intentions, good programmers, good decisions and even a dose of good luck, basically it needs all of the stars to fall in to the right alignment and this game just didn't have all of the stars lined up like it needed. I would give this game a 3 out of 10, its a pretty bad game but I cant hate it, I guess if I have learned anything in the last 4 years while I have been working on my SNES review project it is that even the best games have there flaws and even the worst of games have a spark or two of greatness in them that just never quiet got to turn in to a fire.

If you decided that you wanted this game what would you be paying? Well in all honesty most of the time when I see this game it is selling cart only for between £12 to £20, I was lucky and got an American cart for £7 including postage, in honesty though I don't think it was worth even this, the simple truth is that there are much better things you could spend your money on. Some people might find it a little strange that I have let this project end on a not particularly high note but the truth is whenever you have been working on something for a long time there is a kind of bittersweetness which comes at the end of it and who knows just because I have reviewed 150 SNES games it doesnt meen I will never review one again. It just means that I have finished what I set out to do, what I promised myself and others that I would do, and now it means that I am free, free to talk and write about whatever takes my fancy with my work complete.

User avatar
Drumstick
Member ♥
Joined in 2008
AKA: Vampbuster

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by Drumstick » Sun Mar 25, 2018 12:32 pm

#150moregamesatthespeedkerrcanhandle

Check out my YouTube channel!
One man should not have this much power in this game. Luckily I'm not an ordinary man.
Image Image Image
User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Sun Mar 25, 2018 2:12 pm

I'm contemplating doing some megadrive stuff now, although I can confirm there will be more SNES reviews it just won't be my main main priority. There will also be more YouTube versions of reviews I have done.

User avatar
Poser
Banned
Joined in 2008
Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by Poser » Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:19 am

kerr9000 wrote:I'm contemplating doing some megadrive stuff now, although I can confirm there will be more SNES reviews it just won't be my main main priority. There will also be more YouTube versions of reviews I have done.


Excellent work. Good thread. Think I've pretty much read all of these, though I naturally looked out for the games I'd played myself.

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Fri Mar 30, 2018 10:50 am

Poser wrote:Excellent work. Good thread. Think I've pretty much read all of these, though I naturally looked out for the games I'd played myself.


Thank you very much. There are still lots of the early ones which will be going up on grcades front/news page. Plus I have started playing Namco's Prime Goal 3 and I think there is a review 151 in it.

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Sat Mar 31, 2018 5:50 pm

SNES Game Review 151:90 Minutes: European Prime Goal AKA J-League Soccer: Prime Goal 3

Image

If I was to tell you that there was a trilogy of SNES games released in Japan and that the European markets only got one entry you would most likely assume that what we got was the first entry right? J-League Soccer: Prime Goal 3 is a football/soccer game developed and published by Namco in Japan, It was the third and last part of their Prime Goal series which was released for the Super Famicom (The Japanese version of the Super Nintendo). It features all fourteen teams of the 1995 season of the J-League, with there real names and logos. The first two games in this series never made it out of Japan

The game was the first in the series to be released in Europe with the name 90 Minutes: European Prime Goal. There were quiet a few changes to the game though for a start the fourteen teams of the J-League were swapped for fourteen European international sides, these are Norway, Romania, Scotland, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Bulgaria, Germany, the Republic of Ireland, England, France, Wales and Spain. In connection to this the graphics have been adjusted to replace all of the Japanese looking players with players representing various ethnicities, logos have been swapped but beyond these cosmetic changes and the game being translated it is pretty much the same game.

I must admit that the Japanese version is a lot easier and cheaper to get hold of and it is very easy to get in to an exhibition match where your playing against either the computer or another player but the game does actually feature numerous modes and it can be a little hard to navigate your way into some of these in Japanese. The European version is a lot better if you want to get the most out of the game but it actually sells for a lot higher price, despite being a football game it seems to demand prices of around £20 for a loose cart and they don't come around as often as you'd think.
OK so as well as having the obvious exhibition mode there is also a tournament mode, and a mode where you can train your own player and have them recruited into one of the games teams, then there is a league mode, an all-stars mode which takes the best players from the fourteen teams and uses them to create two all-star teams to play against each other and finally a cup championship mode.

I don't think bearing in mind that this game is made by Namco that its surprising to find that this game has a very arcade feel to it. If you leave the game to its own devises then your met with some lively music and the logos/flags of the various teams flashed in front of you, it really is the sort of thing you'd expect to see in an arcade. When you start the game you will see that the way the game is played is vertically with one goal being to the left of the screen and the other being to the right. I never played this game back as a kid so now that I find myself playing it I am reminded of the Neo Geo arcade game Super Sidekicks, if you have played that then this game has a very similar feel, it is a very arcade feeling game. I found it much easier to score goals in this than in any of the other football games I have played during my SNES review series, my first game ended 15-4 with me winning(This was playing with two 10 minute halves). Personally this made me enjoy the game though as with me actually being able to score goals and the computer seeming decently capable as well then there seemed to be a lot more pressure to both push the ball in to there zone as well as to try my best to get it out of my own quickly as well. Personally I didn't feel like there was a set way to shoot at the goal which always insured that you scored, obviously the harder you seemed to make it swerving around passing the harder it seemed for the opposing team but there was no sure fire method you could use to cheat. For a long time I didn't think that fouls even seemed to exist in this game as both I and the computer were constantly sliding at each other knocking each other over all over the pitch and yet no one seemed to get carded for it, but then I did eventually see yellow and red cards so I guess the game is just a bit lenient in this regard. If you like or dislike this will depend on how aggressive a player you are I guess, personally I would be happy if I could get away with letting my players headbutt the opposition and getting away with it ( There was actually a football game back on the spectrum which I owned as a kid that actively encouraged you to foul the opposition with no consequences). Also if you can score a goal then the ball find its way into your goalkeeper's hands then you can just hold it until the time runs out for an easy win. The controls are pretty much standard for a football game when the ball is in your possession then one button passes, one button shoots, and one crosses it in. When you don't have the ball then these buttons either tackle or do things like select the player closest to the ball.

I think that the graphics for this game are actually pretty normal for the time the game was released. They are nice and functional and you can always see what is happening, I never lost track of the ball or wasn't able to determine who I was controlling or who had possession. I love all the touches such as the word GOAL sliding across the screen just after you have scored and seeing little cut scenes of your players charging down the pitch afterwards with the crowd visibly excited.

The sound is pretty decent overall, there is some digitized speech in the game, but it is kind of hard to understand, alongside this there is a lot of sort of clapping and chanting noises but they have a sort of echoey distant sound to them, they are all put in to the game in the appropriate places along side a little bit of music here and there overall I think it works

I would find myself giving this game a 7 out of 10, of the SNES football games I have reviewed so far (This, Virtual Soccer and Super Goal 2) I have certainly found this one to be the most fun. I have already talked about the price of this game, it is a bit of a steep game to buy if you want a Pal copy, you can get away with a Japanese copy but only really if you just want to play it on a shallow level without being able to get into all of the modes easily this is good enough for me but it depends on what your personally looking for in a sports game.

User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:19 pm

I was going to start on another review but instead I decided to put a bit more work into my 19th Review before it gets its time to hopefully shine on GRcade view. I guess I have been writing reviews so long now that I think a few of my earlier ones dont measure up, hopefully I am not doing a George Lucas lol

User avatar
Lime
Member
Joined in 2008
AKA: Lime

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by Lime » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:18 am

Still loving this thread.

Kerr9000, did you review Stunt Race FX/Wildtrax? I tried a search and it doesn't come up.

Image< Click here to listen to my band, finally on Spotify (and all other streaming services!)
3ds - 0946-2364-6907
Wii U - Monkeylime
Switch Online - SW-0245-1766-8994
User avatar
kerr9000
Member
Joined in 2013

PostRe: 150 SNES games at the speed I can handle
by kerr9000 » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:21 am

Yeah I did it must be in the 35 odd that are due to go up on grcades view if it's not on here


Return to “Games”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 454 guests