150 Megadrive/Genesis games at a nice reasonable pace New Games Added

My Shinobi 3 Review ....YouTube Video to follow in the next few days probably.

Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master, which was released in Japan as The Super Shinobi II, is a hack-and-slash action game which was both developed and published by Sega for the Mega Drive/Genesis console it was released in 1993. It is a direct sequel to the previous shinobi title The Revenge of Shinobi.
The game was originally intended to be released in 1992, but unusually for games from this sort of time period it was delayed a little over half a year finally being released in July 1993. Back in the day video game production was generally measured in months so this was one heck of a delay. The changes to Shinobi III during this delay were quite drastic, a prototype has found its way onto the internet which shows a very different game, a game which would go on to be redesigned almost from scratch.

The original version of Shinobi III is thought to have been almost complete and was apparently previewed by gaming publications back in the day, I have even heard rumours that it might have even got to the stage where some magazines had written reviews for it. Some of the original version's ideas were clearly brought forward into what became the final game, but judging from the leaked earlier prototype I have seen things could have been very different.
Ok so what’s the plot of the game, well you take on the role of Joe Musashi who is a Ninja whose mission is to stop an Evil organisation called Neo Zeed . You do this by making your way through seven levels full of enemies dispatching them with your move set. A move set which shuriken throwing knives, katana strikes and magical ninjutsu powers, all of these were present in the last Shinobi game but now you can also sprint allowing you to close the distance between you and your enemies quickly so you can dispatch them with your sword attack, you can also perform an airborne kick to dispatch enemies from above, you have also gained the ability to block incoming projectiles by holding down the attack button, and you can also wall-jump to gain access to high places which in places gives the game a sort of Ninja Gaiden like sprinkle of spice. All in all, this makes you feel like the game has a very varied moveset, one which has had lots of things added to it which allows you to play the game at a much faster pace than its predecessor. So now I have mentioned what you can do in the game I suppose I should comment on how the game feels, well I mostly find the controls for this game very smooth you can do pretty much everything you want to do easy with one exception and that is the rolling jump which pushes you higher in the air, this thing seems to just not want to work sometimes where as other moves such as the wall jump and the dashing seem easy and smooth to pull off first time every time, this is not a game breaking bug its just a minor annoyance I have, sure its cost me a life here or there but as this game is a fair degree easier than previous entries in the Shinobi franchise and is also a joy to play its not something I can be overly harsh about.

Shinobi III does feature some genre clichés such as a factory based level, a military base level but it also does offer up some lesser used ideas for example Round 2 begins with you riding a horse and fighting ninjas which although reminding me of the Start of the 1991 Amiga game wrath of the Demon so not being totally original I would argue it was done very well here and is a far from common game based occurrence. Round 4 puts Joe Musashi on a surf board reminding me of the surfing in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time and if you’re getting compared to Turtles in Time it’s never a bad thing. This game does a great job of putting in these neat little different parts to help keep things fresh, something it also does with the enemies in this game, you will never find yourself going oh great there’s the 4 millionth soldier I have dispatched in a row.

The game has bright varied graphics with a lot of attention to detail and everything moves so smoothly, this is met by what I consider to be an overall good soundtrack with certain tracks being in my opinion nothing less than perfect both in terms of in fitting the action and pace of the gameplay but also in just being darn good pieces of music in their own right. The games length is just about right in my opinion but I also find it almost infinitely replayable probably because it feels like it has such a spring in its step the pace is just perfect and you always feel like you can improve and handle things better every time you play the game, I also just find it a really comfortable game to pick up and blow through the first few levels when I have nothing better to do. If I was going to give this game a score, I would have to give it a 9 out of 10, If your new to the world of Shinobi I would probably call this game the perfect entry point for you as it’s a lot easier than some of the other games in the franchise without in my opinion feeling any weaker for it.

Megadrive Review 11 Jewel Master (YouTube Review to come in due course)

Jewel Master is a side scrolling action game that came out in 1991 so it’s a game from the early, pre-Sonic the Hedgehog Sega Mega Drive days back when the system’s library consisted mostly of arcade ports and in-house projects before the system had really gotten going. The game was both developed and published by Sega In fact apparently the game began its life being developed for the Sharp X68000 under the title Blade of the Great Elements before development was moved over to their own machine.

Now I originally grabbed this game from an Indy store that was called Games World in my local town, it was a Japanese import as were a lot of my early Megadrive games, but by the time I got it, it was an old game, the game launched pre Sonic the Hedgehog and I am pretty sure I had Sonic 2 by the time I was grabbing this, it wasn’t like nowadays where you could read about every game ever on the internet, although this was an old game I had never seen it before and what drew me to it was its Japanese Cover art with a giant ring, the pictures of mythical creatures on the back and the title Jewel Master all of which added up to make me think of The Lord of The Rings and that’s what sealed the deal.

So, to briefly touch upon the games story the prologue talks about how the Twelve Masters of the Elements tried and failed to prevent Jardine the Mad the Demon King and his forces from conquering the peaceful kingdom of Mythgard. Well, the game itself takes place in Mythgard, and you take on the role of The Jewel Master a hero who goes out with two magic rings to traverse the lands fighting evil creatures and trying to locate the rest of the elemental rings in this land so that you can save Mythgard from the evil of Jardine the Mad the Demon King and finish what the Twelve Masters of the Elements failed to do.
The game is a side scrolling action game in which you take on waves of enemies as you progress through each level largely travelling left to right until you get to the end of level final boss. In some ways I would compare it to an early Castlevania game but instead of having a whip there is a focus on magic rings and the powers these give you. Wearing a single ring on your left or right hand will give you a magic spell, a lot but not all of them are attack based, for example you start with a red ring and a blue ring, the red providing a fire blade and the blue a form of shield. This mechanic really begins to come into its own when you collect more rings, you see you can have two rings equipped on each hand, and when you combine rings, this will create different effects for example equipping the white ring and the red ring on the same hand will allow you to launch a fireball.

This for me is one of the best ideas Jewel Master has because it encourages you to play around trying different ring combinations to see what attacks or abilities this will create, then you can play around with these by for example seeing what attack-based combination is the best one to deal with a particular type of enemy. It is one of those ideas that although very neat feels like it could have been further developed, in fact I would have loved to have seen it pushed even further in a sequel but this game never got one. Ok so what do I mean well when you actually get down to it there are only four base magic types which are fire, water, earth, and speed up, you start with a Fire and a water ring and soon you’ll find a speed up ring, then you’ll get the earth but from here on out the rings you find are simply more powerful versions of these four rings. So, it is a great idea but it could have been pushed much further specially given the fact some combinations cancel each other out instead of making a different power, fire and water together do nothing.

I would describe the controls in this game as being a little on the stiff side, this was particularly apparent to me when compared to the last Megadrive game I reviewed Shinobi 3. The game is kind of designed around its controls though so you can easily move around in this world without the environmental hazards or enemies causing you too many issues, the only thing is that all the enemies essentially rush you, nothing really seems to hold back or attack in a different way, if it’s a ground-based enemy it will just rush straight at you, an airborne enemy might swerve up and down a bit but its still just essentially rushing at you. This means that you largely just end up walking along a straight path smashing your attack button to attack the enemies, there is no way you can really avoid enemies your jump is not very high at least until you collect the rings needed to unlock a high jump and most attacks will hit you even if your ducking so this is not as useful as it probably should be, there are no check points in stages, if you die your starting again from the start of that level no matter where you died.

The games graphics are functional, I think there is a nice look to them in terms of how they kind of help to create the games world, everything seems to fit together but there is nothing overly memorable about them either but where the game really shines is the soundtrack, which is sort of a mix of banging rock tunes and orchestral style ambient pieces I would argue that it’s one of the best sound tracks on the MegaDrive This was the first game to be composed by Motoaki Takenouchi, who would go on to provide the music for the Shining Force games, games which would receive a lot greater public acclaim than this title.

I enjoy the game a lot myself but it is clear to see that it is not without its faults, this is why I would score it a 7 out of ten its one of those games which is good enough to enjoy but its not good enough to really be remembered by people who don’t have nostalgia for it, I remember it because it was a game I owned as a kid back when you kind of just had to crack away at whatever you had until you could afford something new, so I spent a lot of time playing this that I possibly otherwise wouldn’t have if someone had given me a £10 note to buy some other second hand title. So, would I recommend it today and how much would I tell people to spend on it? Well yeah, I think its worth a go particularly if you’re into your Lord of the Rings inspired stuff and your side scrolling games but I would try to pay less than £15 for it as its not a game that you’re going to get days and days of play out of more one that you’re going to waste a few hours on over the course of a couple of afternoons.

MegaDrive Review 12 Dragon the Bruce Lee story Youtube Video to follow

So, it’s hard to talk about Dragon the Bruce Lee. Story as a game without touching on the man himself I am sure that most people will know about him at least in passing but I figured I should give a brief summary of who he is. Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun-fan on November the 27th 1940 he was a martial artist, a martial arts instructor, an actor, a director, a screenwriter, a producer, and a philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, which can best be described as a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines it is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts. Lee is considered by critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time to put it simple the man was a legend, a cultural icon the likes of which will never be forgotten. He made eastern martial arts extremely popular in the western world, he was a force for change and his death at a relatively young age, contributed to his almost mythical status.

When the Movie Dragon was announced Bruce Lee was still famous Martial arts action movies were very popular at the time with artists like Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal pumping out hit movie after hit movie. This was probably one of the key reasons that it was decided to create a semi-fictionalized biopic based on the life of the greatest martial arts actor of all time. The primary source of the screenplay was two books about hi life Bruce Lee’s wife Linda Cadwell's 1975 biography Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew and Robert Clouse's book Bruce Lee: The Biography. Rather than making a strictly traditional biographical film, the director Rob Cohen decided to include elements of mysticism to the story and to dramatize the fight scenes in order to give the movie a tone which would sit well with the films Bruce Lee himself had made. Given that it was the early 90’s the creation of this film coincided with the rise of the fighting genre in the world of video games, everyone had loved Street Fighter 2 and studios were looking to capitalise on this using any idea they could and what would fit in with this craze better than Bruce Lee himself after all plenty of characters in other games had been and would go on to be pretty much fictionalised versions of him.

The game follows the course of the movie which itself is based on events in Bruce Lee’s life however one of my main gripes for the game is that as far as story goes its almost none existent. You do see still recreations of bits from the film showing what Bruce said or someone said to him before a fight but they are provided with essentially zero context so there neat to see if you have seen the film but on their own, they certainly do not show enough to tell a self-contained story.

The first fight for example is against an American sailor during his early beginnings in Hong Kong, with the next fight being one he had during his first job in the United States as a dishwasher and this is the way the game continues. Bruce Lee is the only character available for you to play as which is sort of weird for fighting games of this time but also is sort of obvious as the game itself moves through his life. So, something interesting is that you get three lives to try and finish the game with each represented by a Chinese bagua mirrors, loose a fight and a mirror cracks, if all of the mirrors crack then the Demon Samurai Knight appears he is an opponent who deals out insane damage but if you can manage to defeat him then you can continue the game, the Demon is also the game’s final boss.

This game actually achieves something a lot of fighting games didn’t back in its day and that is to be something other than a Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat clone, this game certainly feels like something all of its own. Unlike most other games in this genre at the time you don’t get special moves in Dragon, so you’re not going to see Mr Lee shooting fire out of his hands. Your move set varies depending on your position in relation to your opponent and if you keep your attacks varied then your chi meter a bar located below your life bar charges. Once you have gained a certain level of charged chi you can change your fighting stance which will change your attacks, eventually you will be able to adopt a stance where Bruce pulls his nunchucks out which provide both a better attack range and higher damage than your fists. The chi meter raises very slowly though but you can gain chi in between certain stages by completing mini games, a word of warning though the end boss of the game is going to require a whole lot of chi to beat unless your some kind of gaming god.

Something to bear in mind is that there are no time limits to the bouts, a fight is only finished once you or the computer have been defeated, except for one battle in the story mode that you MUST win within 60 seconds, this is basically due to a claim by Bruce that with Jeet Kun do he could beat any opponent in 60 seconds. This is a game where if you’re playing on the MegaDrive and you actually have a six-button controller you can use it, its not unplayable with the standard pad but there are advantages to having more buttons it makes switching style easier for one.

Over all I enjoy the gameplay on offer here but I cannot help but mention the fact that sometimes the collision detection does not feel as tight as it should on some occasions hits will not seem to register even if they appeared to fully connect, this is frustrating and takes a little bit of the shine off the game but I don’t think it happens often enough and to a large enough extent to ruin the game, its just something I wish that they had taken a little more time with and tried to iron out. I do have to applaud the game for mixing things up a little though, in particular with the stages where you fight two enemies at once, then with the occasion where you suddenly have a tight time limit in which to beat an opponent, and the instance where you find yourself having to fight through several blocks of ice which are hurled at you before you can actually reach your opponent.

It is also neat that you can play story mode with two players at once, making it something you seldom ever see a cooperative Versus fighting game it is a little bit weird though that both characters play as Bruce Lee though with just different coloured slacks to differentiate yourselves.
As well as having multiplayer story mode there also is a battle mode which allows battles between up to three players at the same time all 3 of you have to be Bruce Lee though so beyond a 5-minute bit of fun I don’t really think this mode offers much, I would have preferred if once you had beaten an enemy in the story game this added them as playable characters for this multiplayer battle mode but oh well you cant have everything you want.
I like the graphics in this game, I feel your sprite does a decent job of looking like Bruce Lee and everything else feels like it fits together giving the game its own art style which also fits well with the games music, the tracks in this game are pretty decent they have a cinematic quality to them while having what I would describe as a Chinese sound, my favourite bit of sound though is the noise Bruce Lee makes when he wins, I actually wish there was a little bit more of this sort of thing while fighting, one of the things I always remember from watching Bruce Lee movies as a kid is how much noise he would make and the face he would pull while striking.

I have to admit that this game will not be everyone’s cup of tea, those expecting something a lot closer to a typical 2D Fighter will possibly be disappointed, really the game is better suited to someone who really loves Bruce Lee and who wants something a little bit different, I would give this game the score of 6.5 out of 10. As I am also known for Reviewing SNES games I will briefly touch upon the fact that the SNES also had a version of this game but in truth its not that much different, if anything I would argue that it’s the slightly superior version so if you own both formats that might just be the one to go for, after all apparently a lot of things like the music were made with the SNES in mind and then pushed on to the megadrive hardware having to be altered to fit the system and the system something is developed for always has a sort of natural home team advantage.

My YouTube Review of Jewel Master for the Sega Megadrive

Megadrive Review 13: Road Rash

Road Rash is a 1991 racing and vehicular combat video game originally developed and published by Electronic Arts. Road Rash was one of the first titles conceived by EA after they made the decision to begin developing video games in-house before this EA had been outsourcing its video game development to external studios, with a primary focus on PC games. Originally, they were working on a racing game for the NES but they soon realized that the NES was not capable of the kind of road-scaling effects they wanted to do. There was also a lot of backwards and forwards movement of ideas in the games early days with Quad Runners being suggested at one point as potential racing vehicles before motorbikes were settled on due to one of the games creators being a fan of motor bikes and the realization that bikes gave the studio lots of technical advantages, for example they could put more bikes onscreen at any one time than they could cars , and that bikers were more visible than car drivers, so there was more room for drivers to be expressive.
The game's title originated from the producer Randy Breen reminiscing those involved in the games programming about riding his own bike in a place called Mulholland Drive and thinking "If you wiped out here, you'd get some serious road rash". The game was pitched to EA with the title Road Rash on Mulholland Drive, but this was eventually shortened to Road Rash.

Even though the game would go on to be on the Amiga, the Master System, the Game Gear and even the Gameboy I feel that this game would always be considered a quintessential Megadrive Title, it was one of the games from my youth that Megadrive owners would use to lord it over Super Nintendo owners as it was deemed a more adult game with its violence, there was nothing on the Super Nintendo quiet like it.

The object of the game is to try to place highly in a series of motorcycle races throughout California in order to keep advancing to progressively difficult races, while engaging in both unarmed and armed combat. The introduction of combat really changed the game as it made you think far more about the other riders not only were they something to try and pass they were a genuine threat as you never know when one might ride up alongside you and smash you in the face and well if you lose all of your health then you fall off your bike something which will cost you time as you pick yourself up off the road and have to run back to your bike before you can continue the race. Not only does it give you more to fear you can also use some dirty tactics of your own such as kicking a rival into the path of an oncoming car, there is something infinitely satisfying about watching some one who previously smacked you fly through the air before crashing down on the road, the game feels fast and it feels dangerous and this makes it a heck of a thrilling ride. The interesting thing for me is that you can be as violent or none violent as you want, you can go around punching everyone off their bike or you can just race hard and never so much as touch another soul. Gamers had of course previously experienced motorcycle racing in several hit games such as Sega’s own Hang-On but it was this element of violence which really helped Road Rash stand out and feel a little more adult, I would argue that it was a massive contributing factor in the games success as it made the game stand out from all the other racers back in the day.

Another thing that makes the game feel different is the fact that the other racers aren’t just faceless opponents hidden behind a crash helmet, every single one of them has a name that appears below their health bar when you’re close to them during a race, your opponents are also fallible, occasionally you will seem them make an error of judgment, they will mistime something and smash into a car or a road sign. Different riders also seem to display different personalities when it comes to dealing with you, some seem to be very happy to attack you with all they have whilst others just seem to want to race. To add to this your competitors actually make appearances between races in the form of an image of their face and some text letting you know what they have to say for themselves, so maybe you will have Natasha giving you some helpful riding advice or you’ll get one of the thuggish characters like Biff letting you know that he will get you out there during your next race, but it actually feels like how you act in the races has an effect on how these characters feel about you, while I was playing this for this review I had Natasha giving me friendly advice and then after I had kicked her into a passing car one race she said something before a following race which was essentially her let me know that we were through and she wouldn’t be watching out for me anymore.

While static screenshots of Road Rash don’t look that impressive it moves very smoothly so looks a lot better when you’re looking at it in motion, its also one of those games that’s absolutely full of little touches with great little bits of animation when you wipe out or finish a race just giving the game a great flavour. To add to this the soundtrack is an absolutely perfect fit for this games action and it fits the megadrives sound capabilities well, the megadrive typically has this more industrial mechanical sounding sound chip when compared to the Super Nintendo so different types of music sort of fit more easily with the machine’s constraints and the type of songs on show here lean more into the megadrives particular skill set.

When wanting to score Road Rash for this review something that really struck me is how much fun it still is to play it has aged extremely well for a game that is as old as it is. Some older games that were impressive when released just don’t look or feel as good now, but Road Rash is just as easy to pick up and enjoy now as it was then, and that’s why I feel that the game deserves a good solid 8 out of 10, it’s a great game but there are a few little things it could do with being added to the mix, I suppose that’s why I am so glad that rather than being a one off this was the start of a whole series.

My YouTube Video review of Road Rash, I am really rather proud of some of these new reviews

My shinobi 3 YouTube Review including footage of the prototype version

Ironhide wrote:One word, Skitchin'.

Finally I have written a review for Skitchin without my hard-drive or pc dying, I honestly felt like I was cursed for a time as far as this game goes, it is what basically derailed this whole thread, as I kind of lost heart with all the times it failed and moved on to other things, I have the Written Review and I have the recorded gamplay footage, the footage is now on a USB Key to keep it backed up and the written review is going to be posted here now so it honestly feels like its going to actually get made some time soon....


Megadrive Review 14: Skitchin


Skitchin' is a 1994 racing video game developed and published by Electronic Arts for the Sega Megadrive or as those over in America would call it the Genesis. The game puts you in the role of an inline skater who must win races in a tournament. It’s not just a racing game though the game has two additions to it that most skating games would not have and these editions are unarmed and armed combat with other skaters and the ability to skitch. Now for those who do not know what it is skitchin is basically the act of clutching onto a moving vehicle's bumper to hitch a ride. For a lot of people this will invoke images of Marty McFly from the Back to the Future movies, if that’s what you are seeing then you are very much on the right lines.

Skitchin' was developed by Electronic Arts Canadian division who repurposed the game engine from EA’s hit motorbike racing series Road Rash, something that a lot of reviewers back in the day were very quick to notice, but heck if you have a good game engine and a fresh idea that looks like it would work well with it why not use the engine as a starting point instead of starting from the ground up?

Even though Skitchin was built on Road Rash’s engine a whole lot of work went in to making it feel like its own unique game. In order to collect reference material for the stunts seen in the game, the development team went to Toronto to try to find skaters to consult they were directed to Troy Manering someone who was considered to be the community's best skater. The team behind the game would go on to rent a warehouse and set up a series of ramps so that they could record footage of Manering performing various motions and tricks which were then rotoscoped into the game. If your familiar with the term retroscoping it might well be because that’s how the actors who portrayed the characters in the original Mortal Kombat games were put into the games, it’s a neat trick that helps you to make your in-game characters move in a more realistic human fashion. This wasn’t the only neat thing the development team did they also went around Toronto and photographed any graffiti styles that they liked. After finding a phone number on one of the walls, the team came into contact with a trio of young graffiti artists to discuss the look of the game, it was this trio who suggested that what the game really needed to feel authentic was a grunge style soundtrack. This all adds up to create a rather interesting story around this games development and I think its just great to get a glimpse at the story of how this game came to get its own individual flavour.

So, the story in this game is a simple one basically you race through various cities including San Francisco and Vancouver trying to win races in order to end up the World Skitchin Champion it’s as simple as that. Just like in Road Rash you can either race trying your best to avoid violent confrontations or more likely you’ll try to beat your way to the top of the leader board smashing your opponents out of your way with your firsts or with one of the various weapons you can grab which include, bats, nunchucks and an electric cattle prod. Your Rivals have a Stamina bar and if you can sufficiently lower it, you’ll knock them out, but if they lower yours then you’ll crash out of the race and straight into the hospital and then you will get stuck with a hospital bill, a bill which if you can’t afford to pay is a one-way ticket to the game over screen.

The higher place you manage to finish in the more cash you’ll earn and not only does this cash pay for your entrance to races and your hospital bills it can also be used to buy replacement or improved racing gear. This is something you didn’t have to think about in the Road Rash games sure you had to buy bigger bikes to compete in later races but here you have to constantly maintain your six pieces of gear, the condition of which is indicated by their colour, if somethings green it’s in great condition if its red then it’s had it basically, this is something I didn’t particular like, sure its realistic that you have to maintain your gear but realism and fun don’t always walk hand in hand and I would sooner not have to think about wear and tear on virtual equipment.

The gameplay is relatively simple B is your skating button A is the button you use in connection with a direction to reach your hand out to grab on to passing vehicles and the C button is your attack button, you can pick the game up and be playing it in seconds, my only complaint is that when you press the combination of left or right and A to skitch it can feel a little clumsy sometimes it doesn’t seem to do it as quickly as id like so I often end up just holding my hand out waiting, and if a car shoots past you on the left it seems to take ages to switch to trying to hold your hand out to grab the one passing on the right, a lot of the time so long that you actually end up missing that one as well. Something totally wasted on me is stunts, I often found them just to be something that got in my way, you would put so much energy into trying to correctly go up the ramp and land that you’d either mess it up or someone would skitch past you while you were messing around resulting in my attempts at stunts making me finish in a worse position so I just sacked them off altogether.

Graphically you can instantly tell that the game is made on the Road Rash engine despite all of there attempts to give the game a personality of its own, I’m not saying that they wasted their time as I do think that the overall presentation of the game is great but its just that it doesn’t really look like it’s an improvement from even the first Road Rash game despite a number of years having passed between that games release. I guess I would call the graphics pretty good just not impressive in terms of what EA had previously produced they felt like a step to the side rather than a step up.I actually really like the audio to this game, sure I am not a grunge fan in general, it’s not the sort of thing I would have on my phone to listen to on the way to work but it just fits the feel of the game

Ok so what would I score Skitchin Overall? Well, I enjoyed the game quiet a lot but I also after a while found myself wanting to put the game down and return to Road Rash, they are both very similar games and despite Skitchin offering enough to deserve to exist alongside Road Rash and its sequels I just can’t help but feel that despite being a good game it’s an inferior product and so it is with this very much in mind that I am going to award Skitchin a 7 out of 10. Having looked at how much the game currently sells for you should be able to get a cart only copy for around £10 if you’re in the UK and to be honest at this kind of price point if you have a MegaDrive I would highly advise that you buy this

Ironhide wrote:One word, Skitchin'.

Finally it is here in all its YouTube glory, will need to try and do Dynamite Heady and Eswat in the near future to answer some of the other requests I didn't get round to.

I just started watching the Skitchin' vid and The intro of Kerr9000's game room seems to have two voices.

It's also like it on Shinobi and Road Rash.

Pedz wrote:I just started watching the Skitchin' vid and The intro of Kerr9000's game room seems to have two voices.

It's also like it on Shinobi and Road Rash.

Yeah I intentionally left it echo'y , I might change it to a clearer voice if people think it sucks lol
Just been trying new things with it like the TV screens in the background.

Pedz wrote:I just started watching the Skitchin' vid and The intro of Kerr9000's game room seems to have two voices.

It's also like it on Shinobi and Road Rash.

I just did a Video for my Dragon the Bruce Lee Story, and I removed the echo on the start, let me know if you think its better.

I put a lot of effort in to this one, probably because I am a huge fan of Bruce Lee.

kerr9000 wrote:

Ironhide wrote:One word, Skitchin'.

Finally it is here in all its YouTube glory, will need to try and do Dynamite Heady and Eswat in the near future to answer some of the other requests I didn't get round to.

As much as I love the game, I definitely agree with your final score of 7/10

I have recorded Gamplay footage for a Comix Zone review and edited it, and recorded footage of Streets of Rage 3 and Eswat that needs editing .... so these could be the next 3 reviews I have played all of them enough to write my reviews just need to sit down and do it..... I am not going to go nuts with it and wear myself down as I have work every day now for a bit but I am going to keep going with this project and make sure its not forgotten.

I think having Kerr9000's game Room missing is better than the echo-y one, but it's better to have the no echo-y Kerr9000's Game Room there

Megadrive Review 15 Comix Zone ......

I am already working on the YouTube video which will technically be a remake of my first ever YouTube Video which I made 13 Years ago


Comix Zone is a 1995 beat 'em up video game developed and published by Sega for the Megadrive or as Americans would call it the Genesis which means that by the time this game was released Sega’s true follow up console the Sega Saturn was already out, this is probably why I missed out on this game as a youngster, myself and everyone else I knew had either gotten a new console or were saving our money up towards getting in most cases a Playstation. It is almost a shame that a lot of the very best games in a consoles catalogue can come out towards the end due to the fact that its by this sort of time that most developers have truly learned how to get the most out of a machine and how to work around its various limitations but not many gamers stick around to see this point in a console’s life, whether Comix Zone is one of these high points or not well you’ll just have to stick around to find out.

In the game's introduction you meet comic book artist Sketch Turner and learn that during a freak lightning storm the moustachioed, monocle-wearing villain he dreamed up has come to life and pulled him into his own comic book, one he has now become trapped within the confines of. Is it just me or is this name combined with his ponytail and radical glasses just such a throw back to what marketing executives’ thought was cool back during this sort of time period? The central characters look is quiet possibly the thing which has aged the worse in this game. Anyways Sketch has to fight his way through panel after panel of creatures he dreamed up himself in order to escape back in to the real world. In the comic you can use knives, explosives, health potions, and your pet rat.

Its interesting to note that the concept for this game originated from a 1992 demo video for the Commodore Amiga which was called "Joe Pencil Trapped in The Comix Zone", which was animated by Peter Morawiec, Comix Zone’s designer and writer. I find this really interesting to know because as a kid we had an Amiga in the house and we had all kinds of public domain discs lots of them being unplayable demonstrations of what programmers could do with the hardware. Watching this Amiga Demo Video, it doesn’t look a million miles away from the game we have here.

At the expense of getting side lined once again another interesting thing about the game is that although it’s not the first game to ever try to appear like a comic book for example Ocean Software's Batman: The Caped Crusader from 1988 did a really good job of trying to look like a playable comic yet Comix Zone stretched this idea so far that Sega applied for and were granted a patent for a "Videogame system for creating a simulated comic book game".
The game might have an interesting history and some really interesting tricks when it comes to presentation but when you push past this and get down to it Comix Zone is a traditional beat-'em-up in most ways. You'll walk into an area, punch and kick some villains, and then move on to the next area. You've got a single attack button, a jump button and a button to pick things up. Your attacks are varied by pressing either up or down while attacking causing you to do low kicks or uppercuts and such. There are places where you will choose if you want to move to the panel across or below you and while adding some sense of freedom to the game and the way you flip and move between panels being rather neat its ultimately little more than a gimmick.

An important thing to bring up is that the game is blooming tough and one of the things that makes this game so tough is that you only get one life to finish the game with, you don’t get to earn extra lives or continues the only respite you get is health which will fill your bar up, so you need to work your way through the game's six levels, through into this the fact that at the end of the first level there is a jump which is a sort of just make it just and if you fall while attempting this then you die and have to start totally from scratch, no game with only one life and no saves should have instant death jumps in it they are just not fun. Actually, while recording footage for this review, I missed this jump the first 4 times I tried it.

So, I guess I have touched on the graphics while mentioning the games comic book style but I would also add that the graphics are quite bright, they have lots of details but the thing I like most is the way everything moves particularly when sketch jumps or drops between pages there’s just something so cool about it. As for the games music I suppose it fits the game and I can see what they are going for with its sort of rock type style but I just find it kind of repetitive it drones on without ever leaving any real impression in my mind, and is totally forgettable outside of the game.

In conclusion there is a lot of positive things that I can say about Comix Zone, it has great presentation, its comic book style really helps it to stand out and gives it a flavour of its own, its graphics are good, it has a passable I suppose soundtrack and it doesn’t feel quiet like anything else in the systems library, yes, it’s just a scrolling platform fighter but its one made which leans into its own unique offering of this type of gameplay. I can’t just talk about the positives though I have to talk about the negatives the game is a short one, it would feel even shorter if not for the fact of how tough it is, and not just in a challenging tough way but also in an unforgiving way. I reviewed this game previously about 9 years ago, in fact it was the very first YouTube Video Game review I ever did and I recommended people to try this game but I have to admit that my attitude towards it has actually changed somewhat, at the time I didn’t give the game a score but I did give it a recommendation, now I am going to give it a score, I will also give it a recommendation but one that comes with various stipulations. The score is a 6, I still recommend that people try it but only if they like games that can be a little bit unforgiving and that they can get hold of it without paying a great deal. Its available for under a £1 on steam and its also on all kinds of retro game collections, I was lucky enough to get it from an Indy Games store bargain bin around 10 years ago for £1 as a loose cartridge but when I just looked for it online you were talking more £20 to £25 for a cart and I am sure you could get something or even several things a lot better for that kind of money.

My Comix Zone Review , I got this done a fair bit quicker than I thought I would... Its kind of cool to remake your first ever YouTube video.

MegaDrive Review 16: ESWAT: City Under Siege


ESWAT: City Under Siege, was released in Japan as Cyber Police ESWAT it is a 1990 side scrolling action platform video game developed and published by Sega for the Sega Megadrive AKA Genesis and the Sega Master System video game consoles. It is the Megadrive version I am here to talk about.
City Under Siege was based on the arcade game Cyber Police ESWAT which came out a year earlier in 1989. The Megadrive game maintains the main characters, a similar plot and some of the enemies from the arcade game, but features some different levels, weapons, and bonuses with the biggest difference between ESWAT the arcade game and the Mega Drive version being the game mechanics. Whereas the original arcade game ran off of the Shinobi gameplay engine the Megadrive version clearly does not. Just to touch on a few of the Differences in the arcade version you only take damage from attacks and you do not lose health for simply making contact with an enemy in the Megadrive game if you touch an enemy, you get hurt. The guns in the Megadrive game have unlimited ammo in the arcade game you have to keep collecting ammo, and the Megadrive game has a jet pack in the game after a few levels. The arcade games stages were more focused on combat in the city slums having you fight more human based enemies whereas the Megadrive version has stages in places like cybernetic prisons and industrial robot factories, with there being far more cyborg type enemies. The bosses are all completely different between the two versions with the exception of one. I could probably write a whole essay on the differences between the two games but you get the point, I am sure.

Ok so as for the story well at the start you’re a rookie cop with dreams of progressing up through the ranks, dreams a lot of people would probably share in this world seeing as promotion is the route to gaining a robot suit and jet pack. Keep pushing on and your overall mission is to stop a terrorist group called E.Y.E. from taking over the world. As I said Initially, you’re just a regular guy and your only armed with a hand gun and the game feels very early shinobi like. To put it basically at the start you slowly walk along, jumping fairly realistically for a video game and shoot, you can shoot straight up, but not down, and you can’t shoot in diagonal directions either. The bullets move pretty slowly but this won’t matter as the enemies don’t really do much to try and get out of during the first mission, I was kind of reminded of an earlier game by Namco Rolling Thunder.

I remember thinking back in the day when I first got this game that it was a bit of a mistake that you didn’t start the game in your Eswat suit as it seemed a bit lame being shown the robot suit on the cover of the game and the title screen and then basically being given the role of bob the average looking copper. Now however I kind of enjoy the fact that you start out as a regular coper for a few levels before getting the suit. The main benefits of the Eswat suit are more health a jetpack and the ability to accumulate various special weapons including ground hugging missiles, a rapid-firing super laser, and a particle cannon. For me one of my issues with this game is that I sort of feel that the level design is inconsistent, I for example really enjoy the first level and would happily zip through this at any time however the level immediately after it just feels like a slog. You have to get on to a floating platform and then zip around trying to find the place to enter the prison properly while getting shot at by things, it just feels gimmicky and I would have missed the whole traveling on platforms looking for the entrance thing out, it doesn’t add to the game its just a pain until you learn the proper path to take.

As for the games graphics well, I rather like them sure some of the sprites are not the most detailed but there is a wide range of very different backgrounds which help to give every single stage its own sense of identity. As for the music well its nothing that I found myself humming while away from the console but it does fit in with the games style very well, so Id say its good but not amazing.

I did find that this was a game which I don’t think has aged as well as some of the other games I have recently replayed, if you had asked me when I was a young lad what score I would give Eswat I would probably have told you an 8 out of 10 but then I hadn’t been spoiled on certain other titles and I was kind of Robocop obsessed so this sort of thing would have been right up my alley. Now with my mind expanded by a huge range of games over the years and a slightly more logical view point I find myself wanting to score Eswat as a 6.5 out of 10, don’t get me wrong it’s a good game its just not a world changer. It is a game however which has not gone to ridiculous heights of expensiveness, having a quick look online I saw boxed copies of this title for around the £15 price point, it has also been on a whole bunch of Sega game collections and can be found on steam for the grand total of 79pence so why not buy it on Steam and if you enjoy it consider adding it to the collection.

Eswat YouTube Review

Megadrive Review 17: Rambo 3

I did some new stuff on my latest videos like putting an ending asking for subs etc, keep trying to make it more professional so feedback would be amazing.



and here is the Written Review for people who prefer written to YouTube

Ok so I think just about everyone knows who Rambo is either because of the fantastic original movie First Blood, one of its sequels or unfortunately in my home the UK partly because of the Hungerford massacre. This was a spree shooting in Hungerford, England which happened on the 19th of August 1987, when 27-year-old Michael Ryan shot dead sixteen people, including an unarmed police officer and his own mother, before shooting himself. The shootings were done with a handgun and two semi-automatic rifles, occurred at several locations one of which was a school that he had previously attended. Fifteen other people were also shot but survived. No firm motive for the killings has ever been established but the British tabloid press was filled with stories about Ryan's life stating that he had a near-obsessive fascination with firearms and watched violent videos one of which, one they particularly liked to hold responsible for his actions was Rambo. The reason I mention this is because we as gamers will often come under the firing line, people will claim that games make you violent and that they are a form of crack in cartridge or disc form which will program our youth to be blood thirsty killers. It was only 2 years after this that I played Rambo 3 on the Megadrive, it was one of the first Megadrive games I would play because a friend of my brother owned a Japanese Import Megadrive and would sometimes bring it round to our house. Despite having played Rambo at a young age and having since played many violent video games I am currently responsible for having shot zero people, nor do I have a red head band or a bowie knife and I reluctantly have to also add that I have never fired a flaming arrow from a bow.

There were games based on Rambo 3 for pretty much every computer and console back in the day, with lots of different studios having made and published them, the Megadrive game was both developed and published by Sega themselves and was released in 1989. Ok so what kind of game is Rambo 3 well it’s a run and gun shooter kind of game which takes some pointers from the likes of Ikari Warriors, Commando, and Mercs. The game has six missions which have various objectives, in some missions you have to free prisoners, in others you will find yourself destroying enemy ammunition supplies before finding the levels exit. Rambo is controlled from an overhead perspective and comes with a machine gun that has unlimited ammo, a knife that can be used for close range kills timed explosives and the longbow from the movie complete with explosive arrows. Ammunition for the bow and the bombs is limited so you will need to keep an eye on how much of this you have left and be sure to collect more from dead enemies.

After some of the missions, the perspective switches to a view behind Rambo’s shoulder and while in this view you will have to take on Soviet tanks or helicopters using the bow. While aiming the bow, Rambo is unable to move, but while not aiming you can hide behind rocks or other obstacles to avoid enemy fire. I found this to be a really neat addition to the game which helped break things up.

Ok so let’s talk a little bit about the controls the best thing I can say about them is that they are simple and responsive, you will find that you can switch weapons and dodge enemy bullets without any issues at all. A neat little thing I learned while playing was that if you have Rambo stand still and fire then he will spray his machine gun fire from left to right creating an arc of death, which is different to what happens when you shoot while running, if you shoot while running, he shoots in a straight line. I found this really useful to know as it kind of adds a tool to your repertory if you want to hang back and fire defensively. The game moves at a decent speed, its easy to know what you’re doing and you never feel like your fighting with the joypad which are all things which go a long way to making a good game

Graphics are definitely not one of this game’s highlights especially during the run and gun shooter parts, the thing looks not very much beyond a NES game, there are a few decent bits to look at but there is not much detail when it comes to enemy sprites but it is an early megadrive game so it’s not that surprising, when you switch to the behind the shoulder view point the sprite looks good but the backgrounds are very plain. As for the sound well most of it is just various bits of spluttering gunfire sounds, its not too bad but its also nothing to shout home about either, the music in the game consists of very simplistic repeating tunes which I actually think sound pretty decent when listened to on their own but in honesty you’re not going to hear much of it anyways what with the constant machine gunning.

On its release I think Rambo 3 was a very strong game especially when you take into account how early it was in the machine’s lifespan, even now it’s a very easy game to pick up and play at the drop of a hat but its also not something that you are probably going to find yourself pulled towards. I think if I had reviewed it back in the day it would have scored a lot higher but reviewing it now with my mind contemplating if you should grab it now or not the truth is its probably about a 6 out of 10 if anything unless you happen to see it cheap, I would probably recommend that you go for the similar but in my mind deeply superior Mercs which I have previously reviewed. If your desperate for a cart of Rambo 3 with a little bit of searching and luck you can grab one for about £15 with boxed copies obviously being more expensive.