skip to main |
skip to sidebar
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: 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: 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
