My 155th SNES Review (I think, its complicated with me proberbly not having numberd some of the prototype reviews and such)
Hyper Metroid Review
When I first started doing my whole series of 150 SNES game reviews I stuck by a whole bunch of rules, I only reviewed things that I owned on a real physical SNES cart, that I had played on a real SNES. Sure I still use a real SNES to play the games while I am deciding what I think of them but now I have branced out a little, I have started using an Everdrive so that I can review games I am struggling to find for a reasonable price and so that I can review prototypes and fan made games and hacks.
I have been a Metroid fan for a long time, I remember playing not only the Super Nintendo game but also playing Metroid 2 on the Gameboy and after having sampled both of these getting my hands on the NES original. When I got my hands on the Gameboy Advance I got Metroid Fusion as soon as I could and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was for all intents and purposes another Super Metroid style game which was in my opinion just as good as Super Metroid, I couldnt believe it, it was like lightning had struck twice. Yet many many years later I would learn that there are all kinds of Super Metroid hacks and that some of the best of them are so good in fact that they are practically whole new Super Metroid titles. Having recently made my YouTube review of Super Metroid I decided that I would look at one of these fan made Super Metroid Hacks called Hyper Metroid which I have heard good things about.
So to play this game I had to first apply a patch to a rom of Super Metroid, this patch changed super Metroid into Hyper Metroid, so a word of warning here if you plan on playing this game the best thing you can do is download the patch and the software to apply it and then make a copy of a super Metroid rom, apply the patch to this copy and then rename the copy Hyper Metroid so you end up with two separate roms one for the original game and one for Hyper.
So they have done a pretty bang up job with this game it starts up with its own intro cutsence in which Samus talks about having started a family with Adam , yep you will recognise the name if you have played enough Metroid games as being Samus's Commanding Officer from her time with the Galactic Federation General Adam Malkovich as seen in the game Metroid Other M. Its a little funny to find out that in this game he was Samus's lover especially when his trophy in the Wii U version of Smash describes Samus as viewing him like a Father, still I guess I wont get in to this any further after all who wants to kink shame an Intergalactic Bounty hunter with a missile launching arm. Still its obvious that this happiness doesn't last otherwise there wouldn't be a game, Pirates raid the colony Samus is living on and kill everyone Adam included and make Samus miscarry, yep it actually uses the word miscarry if anything so far gives away that this is not an official Nintendo product then this would be it. Obviously this seriously peeves Samus off and she swears she will have vengeance, so she comes up with a plan to hunt down the pirates, exterminating all of the Metroids apart from one, one which she will then use as bait to lure the pirates out using an illegal weapons facility. OK so this plot has gone a little none Nintendo none PC with the genocide, a Miscarriage, and using a sentient creature as live bait, if this was cannon I think it would be about as well received as Other M. OK so past the story and on to the game. The intro area is a little bit strange. So you start at the illegal weapons facility which although looking like the space station from Super Metroid from the outside inside appears to have been made from scratch. The intro cinematic had been greatly customised sure the animated bits stayed the same but the words are chaged and there are new illustrations, I would deffinetly give an A plus for effort here
The facility is quiet plain, but it does the job, there are plenty of long hallways and some jagged paths get you practicing your movement and your jumping. Ridley turns up and I start shooting but then he just seems to sod of. There is no timed escape sequence like in Super Metroid though, everything just turns red and you just basically walk out and then your off to Zebes. Once on Zebes the surprises and wonder just continue the map is totally different, the order in which you find things is totally different it is a whole new game, which has a surprising level of polish for a fan made hack. When you see an impressive game and realise that there is a huge studio and piles of money behind it its impressive but when you see people make something this good not as a job but as a labour of love, as a love letter to a series which has meant a lot to them that goes beyond impressive.
I could talk about the games sound, its graphics but as a lot of this is built upon Super Metroid I would be retreading a lot of the ground that I have done in that review. Sure things have been changed but a good job has been made of altering things to give the game a new flavour without ruining anything. The simple truth is that if your a hardcore Metroid fan and you need more Metroid then you could do a heck of a lot worse than giving this game a try.
My 156th SNES Review PilotWings ......Video to come soon.
Pilotwings was released on the 21st of December 1990 in Japan which was one month after the launch of the Super Famicom the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was a master class in how to effectivly use the new hardware's Mode 7 scaling abilities to construct an original game experience. The developers had used mode 7 to help show you soaring through the skies in a Light Plane, a Rocket Belt or Hang Glider and also to give players the experience of hurtling towards the ground before pulling there parachute strings and guiding themselves down to a hopefully gentle on point landing. This game really helped to show what the Super Famicom would be capable of when using Mode 7. Mode 7 allows programmers to rotate, shrink, or enlarge graphics quickly pair this with the fact that Pilotwings included a special chip called the DSP-1 chip inside the cartridge to assist with the Mode 7 effects and you have a very important title here as it both demonstrates mode 7 and how some Super Nintendo titles could push beyond the limits of the original hardware by including chips within the game carts to perform special functions or boost the machines capabilities. It is important to realise though that chips like this can prevent some titles from being run on some of the more basic everdrive style cartridges.
Sure there had been flight sim's before PilotWings there had been Sega's After Burner and there had been early versions of Microsoft's Flight simulator but everything so far had either been pretty much war based or a very complicated Sim that tried to be as much of a real life representation of flying as was physically possible at the time, it was all rather deeply serious and no I am not saying that there is anything wrong with jet fighter games or serious flight simulators but with Pilotwings Nintendo brought something completely different and refreshing to the table, and this is often the big N's strength they find a new way to look at something and by doing this offer up an experience so unlike what is already on the market.
The game doesn't exactly have a story so to speak of well at least not in the traditional your a hero on a special quest sort of way. Basically you join a Flight Club where you meet instructors who you train under, first you meet Tony who instructs you in light-plane flying and parachuting then you meet Shirley followed by Lance and then Big Al. Along the way your skills with the light-plane and parachuting will be tested and you will also learn how to fly a rocket-pack and how to hanglide. These instructors will frown if you fly badly and there eyes will grow wide with astonishment when you get a great score, its little touches like this which really give the game a fresh and kooky flavour which really helps it stand out.
Pilotwings is not a game that holds your hand, you can read the controls before you start but it doesn't really teach you how to play, you literally pick parachuting and start falling from a great height working it out as you go, if you fail though there's no death, you can fail your lessons and have to start again but you can do this again and again until you get the required score to progress. Pilotwings strength lies in the fact that there is a great sense of satisfaction to be had from passing a lesson and seeing your instructors eyes light up as they congratulate you especially when it has taken you a few goes and your finally seeing your perseverance and practice pay off. There is often a great risk reward dynamic to the game as there will be safe and easy places to land your parachute or rocket-pack which wont score you a high score but will probably allow you to score a passable score or there will be hard to land on landing platforms which are high risk high reward so its a great game if your a score chaser and want to keep trying to better your previous efforts. There are also some amazing bonus levels.
After beating Lesson 4 though something unexpected happens you are sent on your first Secret Command rescue operation. This is a helicopter combat mission and to be honest feels kind of out of place suddenly your flying a helicopter in a combat situation which plays far more like a shoot-em-up, it kind of reminds me of the Strike series of games Desert Strike and Jungle Strike etcetera, this plays pretty well but in all honesty it kind of feels out of place in this game, I don't think its the best fit with the rest of the game content to suddenly throw something combat based in to what was previously a pretty chill flying sim sort of mini game collection.
Once you've beaten the first Secret Command mission, well then you unlock the harder difficulty which basically means that you will be replaying the previous four missions with stricter scoring targets and in harsher weather conditions , so you will have to do the same thing as before and better while taking into account things like snow and very strong winds.
I think it needs to be said that the game has wonderful music it really fits the gameplay you have music which really conveys the feeling of sweeping and soaring through the air.
If F-Zero was the game that sold gamers on Mode 7, then Pilotwings came along soon after to prove that mode 7 wasn't just a gimmick it was a real game changer. I have a real soft spot for PilotWings it is just this amazing pallet cleanser in the Super Nintendo library, its unique and different enough that it always seems to slip its way back in to the cartridge slot. I cant help but say I love this game and I feel that I need to give it a 9 out of 10, I like it enough that I was tempted to give it a 10 out of 10 but I cant help but admit that it does have its faults despite this though I not only love it I would also put it in my top ten Super Nintendo games list and I would argue that it is the best entry in the admittedly not massive pilotwings franchise.
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Lime wrote:These are so interesting! Keep 'em coming!
and thanks for doing them!
I am glad your enjoying them, and thank you for watching them.
I have Basefiles made that I just need to record my audio for, for Lethal Enforcers and Bomberman, yep there just video versions of ones I have already written, but I do plan on some all new ones at some point as well.... I want to review Joe and Mac for one.
My 157th SNES review Yoshi's Safari in written form, a video will come at some point but thought people might enjoy this first.
So Yoshi's Safari is a light gun shooter game developed and published by Nintendo for the SNES. It is the only game in the Mario franchise to feature first-person shooting gameplay and it requires the SNES's Super Scope light gun to work. This is the first time we would see Mario packing heat, something we wouldn't see in a Mario title again until Mario met the Rabbids on the Switch. Something a lot of people might not know is that not only the Super Scope but all the old lightguns such as the Justifier and Sega's Menacer handgun actually require old CRT Televisions to work, they wont work on modern LCD Plasma style TV's, so if you want to play this game on an actual SNES then your going to need quiet a bit of stuff.
OK so back to the game Mario and Yoshi are sent on a quest to save the kingdom of Jewellery Land from Bowser and his Koopalings by Princess Peach, this is a place which as far as I know we never ever hear of again in the Mario world. To do this they have to travel through levels as Mario riding on Yoshi shooting enemies like Goombas and Koopas, while collecting power-ups and coins. At the end of each level, there is a boss fight with an enemy, a Koopaling, or Bowser. In order to beat these dastardly villains you basically have to dodge there projectiles while working out there weak point and shooting it. Nintendo commissioned its R&D1 department to develop Yoshi's Safari in response to the dwindling sales of the Super Scope to try and turn this situation around. It is interesting to note that Yoshi's Safari was the first Super Scope title to use the SNES's Mode 7 graphics mode, and this title was basically make or break time for the scope if this thing sold like hot cakes Nintendo would keep supporting the Scope and if it bombed then Nintendo would drop he scope.
Back in the day Yoshi's Safari received positive reviews with its presentation, visuals and gameplay being praised, some magazines actually claiming it was the best ever Super Scope title. It did receive a lot of criticism however for its short length and its low difficulty. Ultimately when it came to the game buying public though the game was a flop, it failed commercially and went by largly unnoticed by most people and so really it signals the death of the Super Scope.
I think Yoshi's Safari is a beautiful looking game and it is pretty fun to play, it really does manage to capture that Mario feel but it is not the sort of game you'd play for hours and is instead more of a quick blast of arcade on rails shooting style action. I love the music, I love the graphics and I think its a bit of an overlooked Gem I would give the game a 7 out of 10 recognising it as good but rather lacking in content. Ultimately I don't think its worth buying a cart of this game because of the fact most people wont have a CRT TV set up and its a lot of hassle for a game which I don't think anyone is going to invest that much time in. It is a crying shame that this never received a re-release as in particular a Wii conversion or sequel using the Wii-Mote would have been a very welcome addition to that platform and would have been much easier to pull out and play nowdays. If you really want to play this on a real SNES then the cheapest I have seen loose carts go for is around £15 but getting the carts probably not the biggest worry for most people. If your in to emulating games then its cool to point out that using SNES emulators you can play the game with a Mouse which is how I captured the footage for my review and I actually found this made the game more challenging and it didn't harm the enjoyment for me at least.
Wow. Never of this game nor the super scope - but are those Snes graphics? It does look fantastic, won't happen but I would be interested if Nintendo did something with this in the future - looks like a quite fun. Nice review by the way
Wow. Never of this game nor the super scope - but are those Snes graphics? It does look fantastic, won't happen but I would be interested if Nintendo did something with this in the future - looks like a quite fun. Nice review by the way
Yeah they are great graphics for the SNES nice big sprites , I think if they didn't do anything with this during the Wii days there unlikely to now. Glad you enjoyed the review
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