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Developer: Criterion Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Console: Xbox 360/PC/PS3
Release Date: January 2008
The Good
Paradise City is gorgeous. Plenty of traffic, building variety, a lake, sea shore, country side, and countless off-road shortcuts.
No loading while driving around. Paradise City is huge, and as you’re driving to a new area the game loads without you ever noticing it, except for a little icon at the top left corner. There is loading before and after each event, but it’s not terrible.
Marked Man events. You must go from point A to point B, but there will be 3 or 4 black cars out to get you. They will try to make you crash enough times to the point where your car won’t be able to race, and you will lose. These guys mean business.
Road Rage, my favorite event, is back. Opponents seem a little easier to take down this time around, but as you get new licenses the takedown score to beat becomes pretty high.
Online races are a lot of fun. You can also complete online-only challenges with friends, like meeting inside a baseball stadium, jumping together from the same ramp, or making teams to take down opponents.
Located all over Paradise City are breakable billboards, hidden shortcuts marked by yellow fences, junkers, repair shops, gas stations, paint shops, parking areas and super jump ramps that you must find to unlock achievements. I’m having a lot of fun searching for these.
Sound effects are sharp and crystal clear as expected. Tires screeching, glass shattering, engines revving, metal twisting, etc. The in-game Dolby Digital 5.1 never gets old.
The Bad
No offline multiplayer, not even 2-player split-screen.
Events can’t be restarted. That means that if you mess up an event, like a 3 minute race, you have to reach the finish line for the event to end, and if you’d like to retry it you have to drive back to the starting point. This is incredibly annoying.
DJ Atomika, the announcer, just won’t shut up. He says the most obvious and idiotic things, like, “try not to crash” and “use boost to go faster.” I don’t think a single gamer likes him.
Stunt Runs are a bit on the lame side. You are given a limited amount of time to reach a high score by completing stunts, like clearing super jumps, performing barrel rolls or breaking billboards. It’s not terrible, but it becomes dull and repetitive quick.
You can no longer pass an event by finishing on 3rd place. You don’t even win medals anymore. Either you finish 1st, or you don’t finish at all.
No crash mode. Every Burnout has had a crash mode. What the hell was Criterion Games thinking? There’s a Showtime mode where you crash and your car starts tumbling down the road as you try to hit as many cars as possible, but it is not nearly as fun as the previous crash modes. Lame!
The music selection, while not bad, is not as cool as I had hoped. My favorite one is “Paradise City” performed by Guns N’ Roses.
Cars are still driven by ghosts. Is it too hard to put some freaking drivers inside the cars?
In Burnout Revenge you could steer your wrecked car after a crash and slam into opponents for an after-touch takedown. Not any more. Another problem with takedowns is that if you perform a takedown on a car and that one makes other cars crash, you’ll only get 1 takedown point, unlike before where you could get as many takedowns as there were opponents.
There are no weather changes. It’s always daytime, with clear skies. It’s a gorgeous-looking city, but come on, not even a single drop of rain or nighttime? Lazy programmers.
Burnout Revenge introduced the Crashbreaker Race, where you could make your car explode after crashing to take some of your opponents with you. This is gone, sadly.
For whatever reason the Burnout series has never featured licensed cars, so every vehicle looks somewhat similar to real cars, but aren’t.
Car-checking is no longer allowed, so if you hit a car from behind you will wreck your car.
Bottom Line
If you’re new to the Burnout series you’ll love Paradise, but fans of Revenge will miss many features that are inexplicably absent. Also, if you’re not planning to go online, forget about playing locally with your friends. Still, there’s plenty to do in Paradise City to keep you pushing the pedal to the metal for a long time.
Developer: Irem
Publisher: Irem
Console: TurboGrafx-16
Release Date: 1991
You are Tommy. You have a cape. You are… a superhero! This is all you need to know to get excited about this game. Why is the game called Legend of Hero Tonma when the character you play as is called Tommy is one of the many timeless unanswered questions not even Nostradamus can answer.
A princess has been kidnapped by the devil, or a some sort of giant demon, and will either kill her or make her his bride. I’m making up the story as I go because the game doesn’t seem to have a story. So Tommy must use his inhuman ability of tossing minute fireballs from his fingertip to save the princess.
The gameplay is very similar to Capcom’s Ghouls n’ Ghosts, but with 100% less middle-aged men in their underwear. Tommy shoots fireballs and these can be upgraded many times to change the size and direction. You also collect useless bagsof gold and coins scattered around. You can’t buy anything but it adds up to your score and eventually gain some additional lives. And you’ll be needing them since you die with just one hit. I fucking hate not having a life bar, even if it’s tiny.
For such a simple and rather cute-looking game things can get pretty damn hard at times. Most enemies just walk left or right, but others jump in weird patterns and shoot crap at you in all directions. There are these rock totems that shoot at you like crazy, and you must dodge their shots while dodging armies of skeletons, bats and other shit that’s coming to kill you. It’s brutal, and not fun. The game is short, with only six stages and seven bosses, but it’s hard, dull and monotonous, so it doesn’t matter.
Even for such an old game the music quality is so bad it’s embarrassing. I can’t remember any of the music tracks, or even the sound effects. Maybe I had the speakers off, I honestly don’t know.
I was disappointed not to find as much Engrish as other games of the early 1990’s. Besides “Can you surely save the legendary princess?” and “The story of your brave rescue will be handed down through generations… …as a splendid legend.” I can’t think of any other, and those aren’t that bad. You can always go back to Blue’s Journey to get your Engrish fix.
There is no real reason to purchase this turd besides telling your friends how awesome you are because you own even goddamn Virtual Console release. If you are like this then you should walk around with a “I Suck” T-shirt at all times, you sad freak. Everyone else stay the hell away from Tommy and his fireballs.
Score:
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Console: Genesis
Release Date: 1996
The second Virtua Fighter tournament sees every original fighter returning, plus two newcomers: the young and agile Lion Rafale and the old drunken master Shun Di. Oh wait, my bad, this is the Genesis port and Lion and Shun Di are inexplicably absent. That’s right, take one of the best parts of the arcade game, the new characters, and completely remove them for the port. Way to go, Sega! Dammit, if the Genesis can’t handle that many characters or moves, then maybe the Genesis is not the best console to port a complex 3D fighting game to.
The game’s graphics are not awful, but by 1996 the Saturn, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were already out and could deliver true 3D graphics, so this Genesis port ends up looking pretty bad. The game uses 2D graphics for the characters and weird, horribly pixelated parallax backgrounds that resemble buildings and trees. The characters are stiffer than boards and the animation is profoundly lame. There are only a handful of stages and they are recycled with different colors. Super lame. I hope someone can someday tell me why they nixed Lion and Shun Di but could add Dural, the final boss, as a hidden playable character. Even weirder than that, she appears all blocky like she did in the arcade. The game has 2D sprites so why the hell was she drawn blocky? Her stage is an underwater ruin and makes the battle take forever with intentional slowdown. Underwater, slow movements… oh I get it, it’s supposed to be realistic. If it’s realistic why are people fighting a metallic woman under the sea? I’ll just never understand why Sega released this turd.
The controls are also terrible. After playing for over an hour I had performed a total of zero throws on my opponents, but had been thrown more times than I could count. What’s up with that? Jumping is as useless as in the arcade, so at least that’s accurate. The game is somewhat playable, but I rather wrestle with my opponents instead of the controller.
Now for the worst part; the sound. Everyone knows the Genesis’ sound chip was ass when it came to voice samples, but some games managed to pull this off. Sadly, Virtua Fighter 2 has some of the worst if not the worst voice samples ever. Even the NES did a better job. Besides the regular grunts and screams each character has an unintentionally funny winning quote or laugh that will make you either run for the nearest bible out of sheer terror or end up in a hospital’s emergency room from laughing so hard. The worst sounds, by far, are Wolf’s howl and Pai Chan’s laugh. Every single music track is bad enough to cause brain tumors.
The arcade and Saturn versions of Virtua Fighter 2 were awesome, hell, even the PC version was good. The Sega Genesis was a cool console with many memorable games, but this was not one of them. Greed can be a powerful ally, but it can also ruin the fun of a great fighting game by porting it to the wrong system. Spend your Wii points elsewere.
Score:
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Console: TurboGrafx 16
Release Date: April 1992
As the title implies, you play as a dead samurai named Taiga no Kagekiyo who has been resurrected and must now battle demons and monsters until there are no more demons or monsters to kill. That plot is worst than Pong’s, and Pong had no plot.
For a brief moment you might think this game could be good because Kagekiyo’s sprite is big and detailed, and the background graphics are full of vibrant colors, but as soon as you take a single step forward reality kicks in. This is one ugly piece of shit. Kagekiyo walks like if he had shit in his pants. He’s always leaning forward for no reason and has the crappiest sword movements. His legs and arms seem to be disconnected from his torso, which never moves, ever. The enemies also look like ass and they animate even worse. Some have up to two frames of animations. I believe Namco didn’t give a shit about the quality of Samurai Ghost or didn’t know how to work the TurboGrafx 16.
Your only weapon is a sword. You can do a forward slash, a ducking slash, a jumping slash, a downward slash when in the air, and you can also hold the sword in front of your face for as long as you hold the action button. Sounds cool, but every single enemy will hit you regardless of how you approach them. If there’s a cat in front of you and you duck to slash it, it will hit you. If a bird comes flying at you and you jump to slash it, it will hit you. No matter what you do, you will get hit. This game is not hard, it’s fucking frustrating and impossible.
Sometimes when you kill a graphical error that’s supposed to be an enemy you’ll get an orb. There are like 10 kinds of them, with different colors and kanji symbols inside. I honestly couldn’t tell them apart and had no idea what they were for. One makes you do a spin jump attack, another makes you throw an energy wave, and the other 8 don’t do shit.
Apparently the guy that was supposed to add sound effects and music to the game was sick that week, and they used effects from Galaga. Every time Kagekiyo jumps you hear an annoying bleep that makes no sense at all. I’m no expert on samurai, but I doubt they produced such sounds. The music is horrible and the few speech samples sound worst than those on the Sega Genesis. Absolutely no effort was put into the game’s audio.
Once in a while you’ll get transported to a pink cloud field where a giant statue throws a crapload of orbs and other shit at you. These are the bonus stages. The music here is less horrible but makes no sense since it’s lively, unlike the rest of the game. It’s one of the most ridiculous bonus stages ever.
The bosses are even lamer than the regular baddies. One of them is a skeleton with a sword, another one is a floating alien playing a string instrument throwing neon bunnies at you that turn into poisonous mushrooms when hit. The last boss is a lightning bolt-throwing dude that then turns into floating feces and then finally into a blue fart cloud. Seriously, I’m not making this up.
Samurai Ghost is actually a sequel to a beat ’em up arcade game called Genpei Tōma Den only released in Japan, and Namco should have never released this crap anywhere else. I can’t even begin to imagine the first part of this mess. The team responsible for this disaster should be put behind bars for cruelty against video gamers and disrespect to samurai.
Fun Fact: Did you know Kagekiyo and a few of the bosses made cameos in the Japan-exclusive Namco X Capcom? Me neither.
Score:
Developer: SNK
Publisher: SNK
Console: Neo-Geo
Release Date: June 1994
Set many years in the future, when mankind has colonized the far reaches of space, an evil group of space pirates known as the Klaptons are wrecking havoc through the galaxy. Authorities can’t handle them, so they placed huge bounties on their heads in the hopes that some brave hero will claim them and restore peace to the universe. Bounty hunters Roddy and Cathy answer the call and promise to bring down the space pirates for good.
Although the game looks like a Metal Slug clone at first, the game mechanics are not about shooting stuff. You actually fight hand-to-hand close quarters combat, picking up enemies, stones, crates, etc. and tossing them around. Roddy and Cathy have retractable arms that stretch pretty far to grab baddies or items lying around. By using Street Fighter-like controller motions you can throw fireballs and perform rising punches and kicks. Both playable characters have the exact same moves, so it makes no different which one you choose. Two players can play the game simultaneously.
Every stage has two layers where you can walk on; one on the foreground and one in the background. With the press of a button your character will jump-kick to the next layer, just like in Fatal Fury. This feature is cool at first but because your characters don’t scale in size when they jump to the background it’s hard to see in which layer the bad guys and items are. You’ll occasionally find a gun or a bomb to use as weapons, and even commandeer a big bi-pedal armored walker, similar to the one in Mega Man X.
The game is divided in four main worlds, each with two sections and a boss in each. There are fire, ice, forest and wind themed levels. The enemies vary from state to stage, but they behave the same. Some bosses fight you on foot, but most operate huge machines. After you beat all four worlds you’ll travel to the Klaptons’ spaceship for one last round of ass-kicking.
The level of detail in the graphics is awesome. Every background has plenty of stuff going on, with cascades, lava rivers, trees shaking in the wind, etc. The characters also look pretty nice, but unfortunately don’t animate that well. If it had better animation you could easily mistake this for Metal Slug.
I wasn’t too impressed with the audio, but it’s not bad. Standard sound effects of gunshots, punches and creature roars. The music is forgettable but you’ll be too busy fighting bad guys and trying to survive to care.
While decent, Top Hunter doesn’t provide enough variety to be a truly fun game. After a few minutes of picking stuff up and tossing it around you’ll wish there was more depth and replay value. Playing with a friend helps, but it also makes things more confusing with everything that’s going on. Infinite continues pretty much ruin the fun of beating each tough boss, so you’ll just breeze through the levels not caring to pick up items or power-ups. Why bother, right? Top Hunter worked better as a quarter-muncher at the arcade than on a home console because of this.
Score:
Developer: ADK (Alpha Denshi)
Publisher: SNK
Console: Neo-Geo
Release Date: April 1990
The evil Gul-Agieze wants to rule the world by awakening the terrible God of Destruction using the 8 Books of Mystical Power. It is up to Elta, the last Magician Lord, to find the 8 tomes and seal away the evil god, forever.
The Neo-Geo controller had four buttons but ADK thought gamers willing to buy this game were mentally-challenged and couldn’t handle so many, so only two are usable. Elta can jump and shoot two slow and microscopic waves of magic at a time. That’s it. You can shoot upwards, while ducking, and downwards if you’re jumping. The enemies move in such bizarre patterns that it doesn’t matter if you can shoot in many directions, you’ll get killed constantly anyway. You just can’t hit everything that’s coming at you and you die after only two hits. After you get hit once you blink for half a nanosecond before you can be hit again, so you basically die every two seconds.
Along the way you’ll find little treasure chests that have crap inside like food that doesn’t replenish your health and jewelry you can’t wear, but they also have one of two magic orbs. Oh boy! One of the orbs can upgrade your wimpy magic shots up to three times, making it less wimpy. The other orb is what makes Elta the raddest Magician Lord ever. It gives him the power to turn into six different forms: a ninja, a fire-breathing man-dragon, some sort of knight, a samurai, a blue watery man, and a brown electric dude. The characters you change into seem to be random and their special skills are not that great. Even worst, you lose the upgrade if you get hit, and you are CONSTANTLY getting hit! It’s fucking pointless. No wonder the Magician Lords are extinct.
All of the eight stages consist of a maze with lots of doors. You have to find the correct door that will lead you to a mini-boss, then you face the stage boss and move on. There are all sort of monsters flying around shooting at you, popping up from the ground or simply materializing where ever you’re standing for an instant death. Even if there were absolutely no enemies it would still take an eternity to finish each level because Elta moves slower than Stephen Hawking without his wheelchair.
Your character’s sprite is big and detailed, but doesn’t animate that well. Backgrounds look pretty good, but the castle wall texture gets old fast. Enemies look like shit, but that’s what they should look like. All the flying flaming skulls, zombies, catwomen, wraiths, and other creatures look pretty good, and the bosses are big and detailed.
Although the graphics is Magician Lord’s highest achievement, the same cannot be said about the sound. The music is forgettable and mostly annoying, and the sound effects are just average. Between boss fight, the evil Gul-Agieze says completely absurd things, and you get to actually hear him speak. The speech quality is not bad, but the broken English is. After all, this is the same development studio that brought us the god-awful Blue’s Journey.
Magician Lord may not be the worst game ever made, but it definitely doesn’t try too hard to be the best. Here’s something to think about: the first Ninja Gaiden was released a year earlier on an inferior console, and that game is so much better in every department. Shame on you, ADK.
Score:
Developer: Hudson Soft/Compile
Publisher: NEC
Console: TurboGrafx 16
Release Date: 1989
The Japanese version of Blazing Lazers is based on a film called Gunhead, but the English version, the one I played, has absolutely no story. The intro shows your ship shooting at a gigantic spacecraft, and that’s it. It’s a shooter, so who cares about plot?
Your ship looks very crappy, maybe even worst than the one from the original Asteroids. It’s just not cool-looking. The enemies are even worst. Rotating round things, possessed tiles from the floor below, floating brains, metallic objects that barely resemble jets, and other shit. The environments are boring, because empty space is boring. After a few stages you finally get some variety, but it’s nothing too interesting or original. There’s not a lot of animation either, as most enemies are stiff blocks. You won’t have time to care, though, since you’ll be too busy avoiding all the crap they shoot at you.
This is your average upward-scrolling 2D shooter. Fire at anything that moves, avoid bright colored balls (bullets?) and collect anything with giant letters or Roman numbers on it. You can move in eight directions, but the way the screen scrolls as you move left or right is very awkward and makes avoiding certain enemy bullets harder than it should be. Power-ups include additional mini-ships that circle your ship and fire at enemies, shields, and the ability to shoot backwards. You have weapon upgrades that shoot curvy lasers, homing missiles, multi-directional wave beams, and a homing snake-like green energy laser thing. You are constantly upgrading your weapon, like every three seconds, and most of the time you end up with one you don’t like or downright hate. Thankfully you can hold the fire button to constantly shoot. I really, really hate having to tap the button every time I want to shoot in other shooters. There are also bombs that don’t cover much space but deal massive damage.
The first few stages are so easy you’ll think you’re the king of shooters, but then you’ll be twitching and swearing at the screen. In level 5 there are some Easter Island heads, ripped off from Gradius, that shoot so many green starfish at you there’s almost no way of avoiding them. I hate those fucking stone heads! If you live long enough to reach 8 you’ll be bombarded by gay-colored bubbles of death throughout the entire goddamn stage. It’s fucking impossible to avoid all the shit that’s out to kill you. Level 9 is the last stage and here you have to fight some of the previous bosses. For some reason it seems easier the second time around. When you finally reach the last boss it turns out to be a giant woman that shoots missiles from her armpits. What the hell where the developers smoking?
Don’t expect awesome music or sound effects like in R-Type here. The music is so boring I acquired immunity to it and can no longer hear it. The sound effects are what you’d expect from a random 80’s shooter. Nothing spectacular or horrible.
Although certainly not the best shooter out there it’s way better than Air Zonk. There’s enough challenge to keep you busy but not many rewards. A two player more would have really helped.
Score:
Developer: Red
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Console: TurboGrafx 16
Release Date: 1992
The Story
One night, Zonk was followed by a mysterious woman as he entered a night club. She told him she could arrange a meeting with the one he had been looking for. Bonk then wakes up in the real world, where machines have taken over the world by enslaving humanity! Yes, that’s the plot of The Matrix, but since Air Zonk has absolutely no story it might as well be that one.
Gameplay
File this under side-scrolling shooters. You move Bonk, err, I mean Zonk, in any direction, avoiding enemy fire while shooting everything that moves that doesn’t have your face on it. He is in constant flight, so there’s no walking or jumping around, just flying to the right. Your standard weapon is boogers. No, really, he shoots green mucus from either his eyes or mouth. I can’t tell because there are no animations for this move. Green snot balls just appear in front of your face. Power-ups include smiley faces and crystal jars full of shit. Sometimes the shit inside the jar resembles a piece of dinosaur meat, sometimes it looks like your face, and it could also look like a smiley face with your shades on them. These super lame power-ups can make you shoot rotating lightning bolts that cover an area smaller than your head’s, rocket punches, laser beams from your mouth, boomerang scissors and other stupid shit. The best/worst power-up is the one that summons one of your friends. Yeah, Zonk has friends, and plenty of them. One looks like a small, round, swollen, cow that shoots missiles. One looks like a cat that barks and fires missiles. Another one looks like a sea urchin-man, and he likes to shoot missiles. If your friends get hit too much they will leave you, just like real-life friends, but if you manage to hold on to them long enough they will merge with you, forming ungodly abominations such as a cat that barks.
There are five levels, each with two stages and bosses. I didn’t find the game to be too challenging because you get plenty extra lives by achieving a high score. Regular enemies are stupid and have predictable patterns and you can kill some bosses by staying right in the middle of the screen hitting the fire button like a madman.
Graphics
Imagine smearing shit all over a pile of elephant vomit and you’ll have an idea of what Air Zonk looks like. For a 16-bit console the graphics sure look very 0-bit. Everything is very colorful and I guess that’s cool, but every character looks like ass, especially your so called friends. The bosses are some of the crappiest ever. UFO’s with eyes, space crabs, a trash bag that looks like Pizza the Hutt, and a four-armed foot-ball playing eagle that looks like a snake. Don’t try imagining them because your imagination is way cooler than the character designer’s. Did I mention Zonk looks like a cross between Bonk and Astro Boy? It’s sad the designers couldn’t even come up with an original-looking hero. *yawn*
Sound
There’s sound? Oh yeah, the music. It’s not terrible but when everything else is so bad, who gives a shit? You’ll forget all about it even while playing it.
Replay Value
I’d say there is no replay value, but chances are you won’t see every one of Zonk’s friends in one game, so you might want to play again to see them all if you are into sadomasochism.
Final Thoughts
How hard could it be to make a side-scrolling shooter? Throw in a few power-ups that actually enhance your regular weapon, have big, cool bosses and add a goddam two player mode. That’s pretty much it. The last boss, King Drool, says he’ll be back at the end, but I won’t be playing any other game with the word Zonk in it, ever. Only play this game if a friend pays for it, and if he or she is stupid enough to buy this, then that’s a good sign you should be looking for a new friend.
Score
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Console: Nintendo Wii
Release Date: November 2007
The Story
Every one hundred years a comet flies over the Mushroom Kingdom and Princess Peach is throwing the biggest festival of the century in order to celebrate the occasion. Just as Mario arrives at the party, Bowser attacks the castle with countless battleships and a giant flying saucer. He takes the whole castle into space, along with Mario, but he is attacked by a Magikoopa and falls off. Mario is rescued by Luma, a magical star being, and is taken to Rosalina, watcher of the cosmos. Bowser stole Power Stars from Rosalina and wants to create his own new galaxy of pure chaos, where he will force Peach to be his sex slave. It’s up to Mario to find the stolen stars, rescue Princess Peach and restore order to the universe.
Gameplay
Space is the final frontier, and although this is not the first time Mario has been to space, it sure is the wildest ride he’s ever been on. Instead of regular levels you play on little planets. Most of them are round and you can walk in any direction without fear of falling off. Others are flat but you can also walk under them and not fall, as long as there are no black holes around. It feels weird and frightening at first, but it becomes perfectly normal by the second galaxy you visit. You travel from planet to planet by either jumping on them or using Launch Stars. These stars are usually hidden and require you to defeat every enemy on the planet or find little star pieces scattered around. Three hits and you’re a goner, but there’s a Super Mushroom power-up that gives you six units of health. Coins fill your life bar, and you can get coins by stomping enemies or breaking boxes and other breakable objects. Shaking the Wii remote makes you do a spin attack that also lets you get a bit higher if performed at the top of a jump. You’ll be using this technique constantly. Spinning into enemies will produce Star Bits. Collect 50 and you get a 1UP. Star Bits can be used to “purchase” access to new planets as well as shooting them at enemies to stun them. There are an infinite number of Star Bits through the game, so don’t be a greedy bastard and use them.
All the jumps you could do on Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine you can do in Galaxy. Triple jumps, backflips, wall jumps, butt stomps, long jumps, etc. You can also climb poles, swing on vines, spring on trampolines, swim, walk while ducking, shimmy across narrow edges, hold on to ledges, grab turtle shells, and go down pipes.
Every new Mario game brings new power-ups, and Galaxy has some of the coolest. First up is the Bee Mushroom that turns Mario into a bee. You can hover around for a limited time and stick to some walls. It’s cute and effective. There’s a Ghost Mushroom that turns Mario into a Boo. You can fly and turn invisible to pass through some walls. There’s a Spring Mushroom that wraps a coil around Mario making him jump incredibly high, but moving around in that bouncy thing is a bitch. There’s the awesome Ice Flower power-up that turns you into Ice Mario, capable of skating on frigid waters that would normally hurt you, but only for a limited time. You can also freeze fountain water to reach higher placer. Finally, there’s a red star you’ll only get near the end of your adventure that lets you fly. It’s pretty useless since by the time you are able to use it you’ll have most Power Stars already, but it’s really fun to fly around and relax.
Returning power ups include the always fun Starman, which temporarily turns you into Rainbow Mario. You’ll be invincible for a while, changing colors and running twice as fast while that familiar music plays. It’s great. And for the first time in a 3D Mario game you can use the Fire Flower. You’ll be able to toss fireballs by shaking the Wii remote, but it only lasts a few seconds.
Bosses are a real treat because they are usually huge and require you to find a weak spot and memorize a pattern to exploit it. It’s a bit lame that some bosses are recycled in later galaxies, but they return tougher and meaner so I guess that’s OK.
From time to time you’ll travel to a galaxy that has a huge comet over it. Those are called Prank Comets, and as the name implies they are tricky motherfuckers. Depending on the color you’ll get a different challenge, like racing an evil doppelganger Mario, finishing a section of a galaxy within a very short time limit, beating a boss without taking damage, or collecting 100 purple coins in a single area. The Purple Comets are some of the most frustrating challenges in any Mario game. Every Prank Comet you complete gives you a Power Star, so as hard as they are you’ll eventually have to clear them all if you want access to every galaxy in the game.
Graphics
It pisses me off so much that Nintendo didn’t give the Wii next-generation graphics with high definition support. As beautiful as Super Mario Galaxy is it’s a shame it doesn’t look better than anything on the GameCube. But don’t get me wrong, everything about the game looks fantastic. It has true widescreen support, unlike the half-assed Mario Party 8 which tricked us by putting crappy borders at the sides to fill the screen. Mario looks as good as he did in Sunshine. The planets are as detailed as possible, but many textures look blurry, as in every other Wii game. Water looks really nice, Mario leaves footprints on the sand, see-through glass surfaces look and shine realistically, lava areas have that hot wavy effect, and clouds look fluffy enough to take a quick nap on. The greatest graphical update is enjoyed by Bowser, who’s polygon model and facial animation is the best I’ve seen in any Mario game to date.
Sound
The music is as bouncy and cheerful as it’s ever been. Some music is familiar, like Starman’s theme, the underground levels from the original Super Mario Bros., and Bowser’s castle from Super Mario 64, but most is brand new and pretty catchy. My favorite is the water galaxies theme. The main hub area has a great, relaxing orchestral track that should return in future installments.
The sound effects are awesome, with familiar sounds for collecting coins, getting 1UPs and going down pipes. Enemies scream and moan when beaten and ambient sounds like wind and water add realism to an otherwise surreal experience. As you’d expect, Mario brings back all his charming woo-hoos and yee-haws.
Replay Value
The game records how many Star Bits and coins you collected on each stage so you can challenge your friends, or yourself, and beat each other’s score. You can beat the game with 60-something stars, but hardcore Mario fans will go hunt for all 241 stars. Yes, you read correctly, 241. After you collect 120 stars and beat Bowser you will unlock Luigi as a playable character. Go through the whole game again with Luigi and get another 120 stars. Then you will unlock the final star if you collect 100 purple coins outside Peach’s castle. Sounds tough? It’s ridiculously tough! That’s because Luigi’s controls are a bitch! He runs way too fast and doesn’t immediately stop running when you let go of the control stick, so you’ll be falling to your doom a lot even on the easier galaxies. He does jump higher than Mario, so that’s good. At least Nintendo didn’t forget about the green Mario Brother.
Final Thoughts
There’s always something to complain about but none of the small nitpicks will prevent you from having a total blast playing this fantastic game. Some of the levels seem to have been designed by the devil and appear impossible to complete, but practice makes perfect. A lengthy adventure with fun power-ups, tough challenges, excellent controls, catchy music, a two-player co-op more where player two helps you gather Star Bits with the Wii remote’s cursor, playing as Luigi, and memorable boss fights. What more could you ask for? Shigeru Miyamoto truly is the best game designer, ever. Buy this game!
Score
Developer: Treasure
Console: Mega Drive (Sega Genesis)
Original Release: February 1995
Only released in Japan and Europe, Alien Soldier is a fast-paced run and gun game similar to Gunstar Heroes and Contra Hardcorps. What makes it different is that the game is made up almost entirely of boss fights. More boss fights than you can count. Now, thanks to the Wii Virtual Console, American gamers can enjoy the frustration they had been missing for 12 years.
The plot is pure Engrish nonsense, and once you start playing you won’t hear about it again. I’ll try to explain: The once leader of the terrible Scarlet group is reborn as a birdman who now fights for humanity and… nah, forget it.
The graphics are pretty good for the time, with big sprites and colorful backgrounds. The main character animates well and looks sort of cool, for a cyber birdman, but the regular enemies you encounter on each level are ugly as hemorrhoids. Some look like rotten vaginas, which is never a good thing. The music and sound effects fit the game well, and the few voice samples are pretty clear even for the Genesis' super crappy sound chip. Treasure always delivers the goods.
I must warn you - Alien Soldier is hard. Tough games can be fun for hardcore gamers, but no one else will keep coming back for more after getting killed 10 times in a row by the first boss of the game. The controls, while responsive, take a while to get used to, making battles even more frustrating. Sometimes you’ll move through the screen with the greatest of ease, but in the frenzy you accidentally press down and the jump button, making you dash across the screen, right into an enemy or into a bottomless pit. Thankfully, you can change the speed of the game at any time in the pause screen if things get too crazy, and you’ll be doing this quite frequently. There’s also a password feature, so you won’t have to go through the 25 levels in one sitting.
The game is very playable, although not as fun as other run and gun games, mainly because there’s no multiplayer. It’s still worth checking out, since every game developed by Treasure has its charms. For example, in one stage you have to rescue a cute blue teddy bear that’s being harassed by horrible banana-shaped monsters. He shows his gratitude by giving you a ride on his boat, only to be killed moments later by the stage boss. His last words are “Help!”. You gotta love that.Score:
