Twentieth Century Gamer (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compromised as it was, the 1988 NES port of Metal Gear fared quite well in Western markets. So much so that Konami greenlit a sequel, Snake’s Revenge, to be released exclusively in Europe and North America in 1990. They famously didn’t ask original lead designer Hideo Kojima to participate in the project at all, leaving him to learn of its existence via office chatter. Really, it’s a wonder the guy stuck it out there as long as he did.

Snake’s Revenge has since gone on to develop a reputation as a truly dire game, particularly among fans of the mainline Kojima Metal Gear titles. When it’s remembered at all, it’s as that weird bastard installment so bad it got stricken from the official series canon. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of thing I can’t resist seeing for myself. I freely confess that my recent coverage of the first NES Metal Gear was merely a formality intended to spare me the awkwardness of discussing the two out of order.

At first blush, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. The opening is practically a straight redux of the last one. Iconic super soldier Solid Snake and a couple of his obviously doomed buddies are airdropped into the jungle and tasked with finding and destroying another world-threatening Metal Gear tank before some terrorists can use it to launch nukes. Gameplay, too, seemed almost identical. You guide Snake around various enemy installations, doing your best to avoid cameras, traps, and the absurdly narrow eyelines of patrolling guards. In addition to avoiding detection whenever possible, you’re expected to slowly amass the arsenal of weapons and miscellaneous utility items needed to progress. Rescuing allied prisoners and interrogating bad guys should also be a priority, since this is how you’ll increase Snake’s level (or rank, as it’s called here), lengthening his health bar and increasing the number of items he can lug around. If you find yourself stuck, you can try contacting one of your teammates on the radio. You shouldn’t expect brilliance from these guys, though I will give Konami credit for doing a marginally better job with the English dialog this time around. I didn’t notice any “the truck have started to move” caliber blunders.

So nothing too amazing in this implementation, but nothing that wasn’t also a staple of the previous game, either. What gives? Two words: Side-scrolling. Yes, Snake’s Revenge attempts to spice up the 8-bit overhead Metal Gear formula by adding, of all things, rudimentary action-platforming sections. Looking at still shots, you could be forgiven for thinking they have potential. Snake and his foes are represented by big, detailed sprites and it’s certainly not like Konami hadn’t hit plenty of home runs in this field before. No dice, though. To say these interludes are no Castlevania or Contra is putting it milder than mayo on white bread. They’re slow, stiff, and overall clumsy, likely some of the worst action segments Konami’s ever produced. Do they handle as bad as, say, Dragon’s Lair or The Terminator for NES? Hell, no! Clearing that low bar ultimately means less than you’d hope, however.

So there you have it: Snake’s Revenge is what happens when you copy the blueprint of Metal Gear’s already watered-down console incarnation and throw in a poorly realized gimmick to serve as the rotten cherry on top. The result is hardly impressive, with the lone exception of an intense score by composer Tsutomu Ogura of Adventures of Bayou Billy fame. I’m not surprised it prompted Kojima to push for a chance to set things right by making his own wholly distinct Metal Gear 2 for MSX computers, which debuted later the same year and was met with considerably greater acclaim. All that said, I wouldn’t exactly call this complete trash. Not when entertainment software war crimes like the two I just mentioned are lurking on the same platform. It looks and sounds fine and is very much playable. Just don’t expect it to make your snake solid, if you catch my drift. But, hey, at least we get to actually blow up Metal Gear in this one.

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EarthBound confounds me. I don’t mean that it frustrates me. Not usually, anyway. Only that I’ve struggled for years, decades really, to understand why I find it as wonderful as I do. Lacking the ability to string the necessary words together in my own head, it’s no wonder getting them down in writing has been a greater challenge still. In any case, here I go!

Despite having gradually ensconced itself as one of the Super Nintendo’s quintessential classics, this 1994 sleeper hit RPG does have its detractors. They typically point first and foremost to its simplistic and highly derivative mechanics, which are obviously lifted wholesale from genre trailblazer Dragon Quest. These include the mix of overhead exploration with first-person turn-based combat, the basic “fight, magic, item, run” nature of said combat, and the cumbersome, claustrophobic inventory system. EarthBound’s presentation doesn’t escape criticism, either. In contrast to the lush landscapes and painterly monster art of other acclaimed 16-bit RPGs, the graphics here employ a flat, naive style reminiscent of children’s drawings. Instead of sweeping faux-orchestras, our ears are treated to a chaotic soundscape cobbled together out of disconnected pop samples, off-kilter Americana, and ’50s monster movies. To the uninitiated, it can be baffling how such a title could belong in the same conversation as slick SNES showpieces like Chrono Trigger and Secrets of Mana at all, let alone how it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

I can sympathize to an extent. EarthBound’s onerous inventory management in particular is a sore spot for me. It invariably takes up a much larger chunk of any playthrough than I reckon anyone would prefer. That said, attempts to dismiss it as merely wacky Dragon Quest with weird music and sub-par visuals is anything but fair to the vision of prolific writer and part time game designer Shigesato Itoi of Ape Inc. (now Creatures Inc.) and the stellar teams at HAL Laboratory and Nintendo that united to make that vision a reality.

What appears on the surface to be a straightforward story about four tweens with psychic powers uniting to stave off an alien invasion of Earth ultimately taps into something I believe to be significantly more fundamental, indeed powerful: Nostalgia for childhood. I mean that in the broadest sense possible. The recognition and longing EarthBound evokes throughout is for the condition of being a child itself, carefree within a seemingly boundless existence, as opposed to a sequence of comparatively lazy callbacks to the fashion or popular culture of any given generation of kids. This is especially obvious, of course, when you consider that it’s the second installment in a series named Mother in its native Japan. The connection between main protagonist Ness and his mother is heavily emphasized, to the extent that he’s periodically subject to a unique homesickness status effect that hampers him in battle and is incurable except by phoning or visiting her. In light of this, I doubt there was anything accidental about the decision to model the game’s systems so closely on Dragon Quest’s. As the definitive Japanese RPG franchise, it’s the electronic equivalent of comfort food for millions of gamers in that region. In other words, it feels like home.

If all that sounds a little too esoteric or high concept for you to swallow, I can only point out that I was sixteen when EarthBound was released. Unlike many, I was fortunate enough to have played it at launch. I can assure you that thread of wistfulness, that gentle reminder of how much my outlook had changed in just the last handful of years, was absolutely present from the get-go. To see the world through a child’s eyes is something unspeakably precious we’re all doomed to lose, with that very loss being paradoxically beautiful in its ability to unite and ground us in a universal human experience.

Oh, and let’s not forget that it’s funny. Legitimately laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end. This is no small prize. Good comedy is tough under ideal conditions. Delivering mountains of it in an early ’90s console game that needed its entire massive script translated verges on a miracle. There’s a case to be made that it was the single funniest game yet made in 1994 and virtually all its gags hold up admirably today.

If none of what I’ve said has connected with you and the game remains crude, shallow, and overrated in your eyes, that’s fine. Whether or not there’s truly some deeper layer to the absurdist antics of Ness and his pals, EarthBound remains special; a singular joyous creation that’s destined to continue growing in stature for the foreseeable future. So perhaps the meaning it apparently supplies for itself as part of its famous mid-game “coffee break” interlude works as well as any: “There are many difficult times ahead, but you must keep your sense of humor, work through the tough situations and enjoy yourself.” Makes sense to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet Noobow, a blobby yellow mascot character created by Japanese snack food company Morinaga. Though seemingly in semi-retirement now, his perpetually grinning mug graced many a confection wrapper during the ’80s and ’90s. He was even deemed popular enough in his prime to headline a regional exclusive Game Boy title in 1992. One crafted by the prestigious development team at Irem, no less. That pedigree may be why it’s the rare case of an advertisem*nt masquerading as a video game that manages to be worthwhile despite its purely mercenary origin.

Our unlikely hero’s self-titled adventure is a side-view puzzle-platformer with a relaxed pacifist slant reflective of its star’s demeanor. There’s no one to fight and no way to die in any of its six stages. Walk Noobow over to the edge of a precipice and he’ll halt of his own accord, steadfastly refusing any command to do himself harm. Other creatures (all of which are quite adorable) might harmlessly block his path forward for a time, but only until he can provide them with whatever object they happen to desire. This is illustrated early on in the opening level, where a barking dog can be induced to move along by tossing a nearby stick for it to fetch.

This means of progression doubles as the game’s overarching plot. Affable Noobow traverses a variety of environments, encountering NPCs in need of aid and happily rendering it. A baby whale trapped in a tub needs to be returned to its family in the ocean, hungry squirrels need nuts, parched moles suffering from a heat wave need their water pipes fixed, and so on. All the puzzle solving this entails hinges on Noobow’s sole ability: Picking up and carrying a single item at a time. That item could be a block you reposition and stand on to reach a high ledge (Noobow can’t jump), a shovel to dig through soft earth, a parachute to safely descend from heights, or any number of similar things.

Between the easygoing vibe and minimalist mechanics, it should come as no surprise that Noobow makes for one easy playthrough. I can’t say for certain whether it was specifically tailored for young children or if the intent was simply for it to be as accessible as possible for practically anyone, regardless of age or experience. Whatever the reason, the result is a far cry from the unrepentant sadism Irem dished out in the likes of R-Type, Metal Storm, and Holy Diver. Nothing here will strain your brain or your thumbs. So long as you show up expecting an hour or so of chill meandering as opposed to any real challenge, you shouldn’t be disappointed.

Noobow for Game Boy is short, sweet, and about as broadly palatable as its makers could manage. A fitting digital analog for the millions of chocolate bars that bore its namesake’s likeness. It’s far from deep and notably lacks anything that might give it replay value. No optional objectives or side paths, no score or best times kept. Still, I enjoyed that hour I spent poking around its charming little world. It’s a fine example of a truly unique Japanese handheld exclusive that doesn’t require any knowledge of the language (although an unofficial English patch does exist for its handful of brief cut scenes). Oh, and it’s a Christmas game, too. Really. I hadn’t intended to touch on that theme again until December rolled around, but I’ll give you one guess which fellow fat, jolly gift giver Noobow finds himself helping out toward the end. Seems I just can’t avoid starting the holiday season early, no matter how hard I try.

Love and shurikens fill the air with the dawn of another Thanksgiving Day! If you’re any sort of conventional, right-thinking figure like me, nothing floods your heart with more gratitude than badass ninja games. Nobody understood this nearly universal human sentiment better than Sega in their ’90s prime. One year after they struck portable gold with The G.G. Shinobi, they brought hero Joe Musashi and his Skittles rainbow of palette swapped pals back for an encore.

Stylishly subtitled “The Silent Fury,” 1992’s G.G. Shinobi II is the very model of an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” sequel. True to its apparent primary inspiration, the Mega Man series, Silent Fury presents another set of four stages with kidnapped ninja to rescue that you can tackle in whichever order you prefer. Once you’ve cleared a level and rescued its ninja, you can switch over to controlling him at any time via the pause menu. Every shinobi squad member has his own specific weapon, magic, and special movement ability, and all five are needed to infiltrate the maze-like final area and defeat the Black Ninja who’s been causing all the recent mayhem in Neo City.

G.G. Shinobi II’s staunch commitment to the original’s formula makes it a relatively simple title to review. If you loved the first for the superb handheld action-platformer it is, you’re practically guaranteed to love the second. It maintains the same proven blend of tight gameplay, appealing graphics, and quality music by series veteran Yuzo Koshiro (with an assist from Motohiro Kawashima this time). The resemblance is so strong that it even carries forth its predecessor’s main shortcoming: Starting character Joe/Red is easily the worst in the game and if you didn’t need him to overcome the final boss, there would be no real reason to use him at all after you rescue any of the other ninja.

That’s not to say there’s literally nothing new here. Silent Fury adds a secondary objective to each of the four opening stages in the form of hidden crystals. All four must be obtained before you can storm the Black Ninja’s base. Acquiring the crystals requires using your various ninjas’ signature abilities to explore otherwise inaccessible sub-areas. Since Joe can’t reach any on his own, this means that you’ll have to go back and revisit at least a couple already completed levels once you’ve recruited the necessary allies. This exploration element is ultimately very slight, a far cry from the scope of, say, Metroid, but it still succeeds in adding a bit more substance to a playthrough without dragging the overall pacing down too much.

A few of your ninja have also seen their powers tweaked and shuffled around a bit. Blue and Pink are their same old selves, while Red’s earthquake magic has been transferred to Green and replaced with a new teleportation one. Yellow now has an oversized boomerang shuriken for a primary weapon instead of a chargeable energy shot. Finally, a new password system has been implemented. The ability to take a break and continue where you left off is always welcome, doubly so in portable games.

On the whole, I consider G.G. Shinobi II a marginal improvement to an already outstanding Game Gear exclusive. The expanded level layouts and password system are both thoughtful additions, the presentation is top-notch for the hardware, and the entire experience is perfectly balanced. It never feels too short, too long, too easy, or too difficult. Elegant from start to finish, it’s works of this caliber that makes me wish I owned the system growing up. I’m delighted to add it being more accessible than ever these days to my list of things to be thankful for. On that note, it’s time for me to pop a ninja smoke bomb and vanish myself. I’ve got bread in the oven.

Kemco’s Ghost Lion is hardly a celebrated RPG for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Most obviously, it was a 1989 work that looked, sounded, and played years out of date then, never mind by the time it finally reached non-Japanese audiences in late 1992. It presented as a bare bones clone of the original 1986 Dragon Quest by a far less accomplished studio. Not exactly the sort of thing destined to make waves so late in the system’s life. On top of that, it was adapted from an obscure film, Beyond the Pyramids: Legend of the White Lion, that failed to generate much buzz upon its release in Japan. It flopped so hard, in fact, that it failed to find its way to any other markets, despite all its dialog being in English.

I imagine that Kemco may have rationalized their decision to localize and export the game anyway by reminding themselves that it barely resembles the movie it’s ostensibly based on. Anyone bored enough to check for themselves (the entire thing is on YouTube) can verify that the two could scarcely have less in common. What was an overlong and insipid yarn about Maria, a bratty American girl traveling around Africa learning assorted life lessons and wildlife facts from the natives, has morphed on the NES into something more akin to Dungeons & Dragons by way of The Wizard of Oz. It’s bloody weird, to be honest, but I’m not about to complain in light of the alternative.

Your goal in Ghost Lion is to guide Maria through a fantastical dream realm in search of a way back to her parents in the real world. She’ll complete basic fetch quests, chat up fairies and witches, and fight an endless parade of orcs, skeletons, and other generic beasties on the way to a final confrontation with the titular Lion. Maria isn’t alone on her quest. At least not all the time. Ghost Lion’s most prominent gimmick is its summoned party members. Instead of new characters joining up with Maria on a permanent basis, she’ll gradually amass a selection of enchanted items holding different spirits. Using one of these items causes the spirit inside to temporarily manifest and do battle on Maria’s behalf. In addition to taking a bit of heat off Maria by serving as extra targets for enemies, they often have more powerful physical attacks than she does and a few can use magic spells. Defeated spirits vanish, but can subsequently be called forth again at full strength. There’s a practical limit to this, however, as every summoning costs some of Maria’s dream points, Ghost Lion’s equivalent of magic points. It’s a novel concept, especially in the pre-Pokémon age, and is implemented very well for the most part. I appreciate how spirits can act on the same turn they appear, for example, which keeps it from feeling like you’re sacrificing your momentum in combat when you summon them. Smart.

Alas, this is where my praise for Ghost Lion runs dry, as its overall design marks it as a spiritual precursor to Square’s Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: A well-intentioned yet fundamentally misguided attempt to streamline the standard console RPG experience for a younger (or just novice) audience. As I alluded to, the exploration element so crucial to the genre is simplified to the point of absurdity. You’re merely nudged from one miniscule cave/dungeon to the next, popping in to grab whatever random MacGuffin you’ve been sent after before heading back to town and doing it all over again. Sure, that same arrangement forms the skeleton of any given classic Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest installment. Here, though, all the little ancillary tasks and digressions that break up the monotony of the main progression thread in those games has been pared away. You’re not going to be probing far-flung corners of the map in search of bonus treasures in out-of-the-way locations, as there aren’t any. You’re not going to be amusing yourself talking to the locals because the terse, utilitarian dialog lacks all wit and charm. You can’t even kill some time grinding experience to level up!

That’s right. There are no experience points in Ghost Lion. They’ve been replaced by items called fragments of hope that are found exclusively in preset locations in the dungeons. Each fragment you collect raises Maria’s hope (level) by one. The problems this one design choice creates are manifold. For starters, it makes some sections of Ghost Lion considerably harder than they would be in the majority of RPGs, undermining its credibility as a beginner’s game. If you’re struggling against some of the nastier enemy types, there’s nothing you can do to make Maria any stronger until you get past them to a part of the world with more hope fragments lying around. You have no choice but to tough it out and hope for good luck.

The lack of experience points earned also makes the high encounter rate especially frustrating, since all you’ll have to show for winning a fight is extra money in a game with very little to spend it on. The designers seem to have realized that the smartest choice would therefore be to avoid fights, which is no doubt why the command to flee battle is one of the least reliable I’ve ever seen. You’ll usually lose more health trying to evade enemies than you will killing them every few steps for no real reward. Not fun, and all the worse for how frequently many monsters dodge your attacks.

All these issues tend to snowball as Maria’s journey drags on and individual foes take longer to vanquish, leading to Ghost Lion’s awkward position as a game that makes a decent first impression, only to squander it completely by the halfway mark and then proceed to get downright obnoxious in the last stretch. I could certainly go on listing off other minor gripes, like how the sole means of restoring lost health (or courage, as it’s dubbed here) is by eating bread, a consumable item that restores up to 50 points. Works alright at the outset. Later on, when you might have upwards of 500 to recover? Not so much. But I wager I’ve made my case. The best things about this one are its relative brevity at twelve hours or so and the bizarre circ*mstances surrounding its creation and eventual localization. I’d be lion if I said it was worth playing.

Every other contender in Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! series has an unfortunate tendency to fall under the shadow of 1987’s Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! Not that there’s been all that many of them in total, despite their almost universally positive reception among critics and fans alike. In any case, I can understand why the NES version became the definitive one in the hearts of many. Even today, over three decades past his pugilistic prime, Tyson himself remains the biggest celebrity athlete the sport has produced since Muhammad Ali. The entry bearing his name also debuted at the height of Nintendomania, a period when their 8-bit hardware thoroughly dominated the world’s most lucrative gaming markets.

All that is to say that its lower profile successor, Super Punch-Out!!, is well worth your time. I’m specifically referring to the 1994 Super Nintendo release Super Punch-Out!! here, by the way, not the 1984 arcade cabinet of the same name. Confusing future generations by giving sequels identical titles to their predecessors? I wish I could go back and advise Nintendo that not all trails are worth blazing.

Still, I suppose the callback to Punch-Out!!’s early arcade roots wasn’t entirely unjustified. Super Punch-Out!!’s presentation style and rules have more in common with the games from that era than with the subsequent NES one. The upgrade to 16-bit hardware made it possible to have a transparent player character sprite again, meaning that protagonist Little Mac doesn’t have to be quite so little anymore for you to spot and avoid incoming attacks. We also see the return of the single round format, a change I can honestly take or leave. While having no breaks does make the fisticuffs feel more intense at times, I miss the silly corner commentary from both opponents and Mac’s coach, Doc Louis, who sadly doesn’t appear at all.

Arguably the biggest difference from the previous game is the presence of the arcade’s power meter. Landing a string of punches without taking any in return will gradually fill up the meter along the bottom edge of the screen. Once it’s full, you can throw devastating super punches to your heart’s content. Unless you get hit, that is, which drains the meter to an extent corresponding to the amount of damage received. This mechanic effectively replaces the stock of expendable star punch icons you would earn from precise counter hits in NES Punch-Out!!, and I happen to prefer it. It rewards aggressive, proactive play, as opposed to waiting around patiently for preset vulnerability windows in which to hopefully nab stars. At the same time, you can’t afford to neglect your defense or you’ll never be able to properly capitalize on a full meter.

Beyond these few key differences, what you have here is the classic Punch-Out!! formula coming through in fine form. Sixteen eccentric fighters from across the world are evenly arranged into four increasingly brutal circuits. Study their special moves, learn their tells, then pair that knowledge with quick reactions and skillful timing to make them kiss canvas. A handful of established stalwarts like Bald Bull and Piston Hurricane are back, but the lion’s share of the cast consists of new faces. I’m especially fond of the Italian circus reject Mad Clown, Mexican luchador Masked Muscle, and Bob Charlie, who is literally Bob Marley in boxing gear for some insane reason. Aged kung fu master Hoy Quarlow can go straight to hell, though. As the game’s single steepest difficulty spike by far, he’s responsible for around 75% of my total losses. Thank goodness for the built-in battery save feature.

Super Punch-Out!! stands tall as an exemplary piece of work. The action manages to be impressively deep and refined without compromising on basic accessibility. Art and sound are top-shelf by the standards of the platform. That franchise signature wacky humor is firing on all cylinders. It’s all balanced fairly well, too, apart from that one hiccup I mentioned. Although the final three matches (starting with the hated Hoy) definitely represent a formidable challenge, they pale before the hellish gauntlet that was the NES’ Mr. Sandman, Super Macho Man, and Tyson run. This is one of the definitive SNES experiences for me. Shame it took Nintendo fifteen years to deliver another Punch-Out!! to the Wii in 2009, and that it remains the most recent installment as of this writing. Why does this company seem to hate beating up on broad ethnic stereotypes so much, huh?

Video games about video gaming have a long, poorly documented history. The archetypal meta-game framing device (perhaps inspired by Disney’s Tron) is everyday gamers somehow getting physically drawn into the digital world and having to fight for their lives there. See Kid Chameleon or, uh, Cheetahmen, I guess. The 1983 horror anthology film Nightmares put a rather bizarre spin on the formula in its memorable “Bishop of Battle” segment (starring a young Emilio Estevez!), and the concept made its way to television later in the decade via the title character of NBC’s Captain N: The Game Master cartoon.

A much later example is FX-Unit Yuki: The Henshi Engine, an indie action-platformer/shooter hybrid developed by SaruPro. Originally crowdfunded and released in the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Super CD-ROM format in 2018, it’s since been ported to the Genesis, Dreamcast, and Switch. I played the PC Engine version because, well, that’s what the game’s all about! Our lead, “average gamer gal” Yuki Shirakawa, has just landed her dream job as a game tester for JEC, makers of the FX Engine console. It soon becomes clear, however, that nefarious agents of JEC’s rival, the SG Corporation, are attempting to sabotage the code of its upcoming titles. The obvious solution is for Yuki’s bosses to plug her into an experimental virtual reality device in order that she might become, in true scantily-clad magical girl style, the mighty FX-Unit Yuki and defend her favorite games from the inside.

Yeah, the references here aren’t subtle. Neither is the dialog, which can be downright groan-inducing at times with its emoticons and exclamations of “wut,” “so ridic,” and similar glaring indicators of a middle-aged man trying to write a teenage girl. That said, the still shots that comprise the between-stage cut scenes look good (arguably better than the average in-game pixel art) and the scenes themselves aren’t voiced, so you’re at least spared hearing amateur actors stumble over these feeble lines.

The meat of FX-Unit Yuki is its eight levels, the majority of which are obviously crafted to resemble the PC Engine’s most iconic hits. In essence, the game is one massive extended homage to the platform itself. This is both its primary draw and its downfall. As a presumed fan of the material, you’re meant to welcome all these nods to the greats with nostalgic warmth and a chuckle or two. This recognition phase passes quickly, though, and you’re then stuck playing through decidedly inferior renditions of some of the best games of all-time. Excited by the prospect of some janky Wonder Boy? Maybe a little sad, ugly Castlevania? Level design in these platforming areas is the most insultingly rudimentary it could possibly be. You walk, whack one or two generic baddies, jump over a hole, and repeat until you start to regret that humanity evolved thumbs. Dull as that is, the two auto-scrolling shooter sequences manage to be drastically worse, with basic enemy patterns that never, and I mean never, get around to varying. The Cotton parody has the saving grace of being relatively short, while the travesty that is the Lords of Thunder one promises to be twelve of the longest minutes of your life. You’ve been warned.

Enter composer Simon Johansson, who thankfully stepped up to furnish FX-Unit Yuki’s one untarnished high point. His songs are universally magnificent and rise so far above the rest of the material they support as to be almost jarring. Any professionally-made game from the PC Engine’s heyday would have been proud to boast tunes like these. Their catchy, driving melodies lend the flat action a much-needed shot of intensity and I can’t imagine being willing to invest the hour plus a full playthrough demands without them.

That was…harsh, I know. I regret this, as it’s certainly not my intention to come down too hard on poor FX-Unit Yuki. Whatever its shortcomings as a standalone work, one has to acknowledge it as a labor of love produced on the cheap by a very small team of well-meaning hobbyists for a niche system I happen to adore. The world needs more of this sort of thing, not less. It’s tough to really hate on a love letter, even the awkward, sloppy kind you might find scrawled on the back of a co*cktail napkin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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