The Entropy Pump

This is a nice, little platformer for the SNES that was never released outside of Japan, but thanks to a translation it can be enjoyed in English. It sports character designs and humor by Akira Toriyama, since it’s based on one of his manga. Anyway, you play a small demon whose targeted by a small angel. Your mission is to collect souls and maw through all enemies, while the small angel summons evermore stronger (and mostly stranger and more hilarious) bosses. After a short time the whole operation gets taken over by archangel Michael(a), an highly effeminate and odd version of the archangel.

The humor of the whole game is in line with Toriyama’s Dr. Slump: not very subtle or smart, mostly extremely childish and simple. Not exactly my kind of humor, but also not something which puts me off of the game. And the gameplay and handling is well done to make this one a nice piece to play.

I never played this one before, which was obviously a big oversight on my part. I’m not sure whether it’s better than the SNES Contra, but at least it’s equally good. Typically for a Contra game, it’s extremely hard to beat. Unlike other games in the series there are divergent paths you can chose, resulting in 5 endings one can find. The game has boss battles galore, most of them extremely ingeniously designed that really stretch what you can do in 2d to the limits. Due to the higher level count compared to other Contra games it also feels like it’s the biggest of all Contras from the 8 to 16bit era. Overall, if you like the Contra series and never played the Genesis version, you owe it to yourself to play it. Pure, fucking brilliance.

Apropos, when I was talking about the Gameboy Advance version of the SNES-Contra, I thought they had added two new levels. Nope, they were ripped from Hard Corps. Talk about efficient recycling.

It’s interesting to see all the small differences between the three versions of Ys3 I played. In the SNES-version the weak point of the final enemy was only open for a short time, in the Genesis-version it’s open all the time, which makes killing him that much easier. Graphically I liked this Genesis-version the most, it really looks quite beautiful in places. But the character handling and the translation were weaker than in both the SNES- and the PCEngine-version. But the gameplay remains fun, even on my third play of the game.

The SNES-version of Ys 3 has, unlike the PCEngine version, no voice acting and no animated intro and ending sequence. Also some graphics are slightly different. The rest of the game is pretty much the same, although the re-spawn and attack speed of the enemies feels slightly lower. Since all enemies can only be attacked at a certain level – if you’re too low you won’t damage them at all – you have to grind levels a bit more actively than in the PCE-version. Overall it’s pretty much the same game, but somehow I think I prefer this version over the PCE-version, since I liked the graphics and the handling better, even if the differences between the two versions are not very big.

While I didn’t much like the first two games in the franchise, the third part on the PCEngine offered enough of a difference to make it look interesting. Instead of a top-down action-RPG with an unusual battle system (bump into enemies to attack), the third Ys game went into another direction. The game is a side-scrolling action-RPG with an active attack button system. Interestingly, there’s actually a side-scrolling action-RPG with utilizes an similar battle system as Ys 1+2, Popful Mail (although that’s only true for the PCEngine version, the MegaCD and the SNES version have both an active attack button system).

The game is unique in that it’s core concept seems to stem from an RPG with the side-scrolling elements grafted on. The game is designed with grinding in mind. Bosses and smaller enemies are supposed to hit you. Only by grinding levels and buying better equipment can the game be beaten, unlike platforming games that have RPG-elements grafted on, where skill still plays a major role in evading hits.

Is it a good game? Well, the gameplay is fun, even the grinding, due to being an action-RPG with a much faster pace. While the story is pretty typical for fantasy RPGs, it’s delivered in a way that doesn’t make you groan (although the voice acting is annoying in places). It’s also pretty small and can be beaten in a matter of hours. Overall, even if you don’t like the first two games much, you might enjoy this one. Alternatively, if you did enjoy the first two (hard to believe, but there are many fans), you might not like the third due the very different gameplay.

Aeon Genesis, one of the most productive ROM-translation efforts, has released another excellent translation of an old SNES-game. Holy Umbrella mixes sidescrolling platform-action with top-down adventure parts (mostly exploring cities, talking to others, buying equipment and saving). The story is slightly bizarre. A young man finds an umbrella and gets transported to a magical land, which is under threat from your typical evil guy. Okay, this evil guy is less typical, as he/she (hard to say, looks female, but the backstory reveals him to be a man) is completely wacky and silly. There’s even a part of the game where the evil guy is lost together with your characters in the stomach of a gigantic whale. He joins your party until he betrays you. The game tries to subvert typical fantasy elements, but is straight enough to tell its own story without completely going bonkers.

The gameplay is typical for platformers and nothing you haven’t seen before, with some attack and health upgrades thrown into the mix. The only less typical element of the game is the addition of two more people you can collect, who have different abilities (double-jump, wall-jump, small size) which you need to beat the game. Overall, the game manages to be fun, even if it’s not a must-play. If you have no problem with the odd eastern type of humor present, you might like it.

If you wonder how to beat the Sphinx, you have to jump on the mummies, pushing the down-key, which catapults you higher and lets you the hit boss.

Secret of Evermore has always been panned by those who still harbor a grudge for Secret of Mana 2 never making it to English-speaking shores, but after playing it I don’t think most of the criticism is deserved. The game basically integrates the battle and menu system from Secret of Mana and adds its own unique magic system (Alchemical spells that require certain ingredients). The story is simple and not that original (a boy from Earth goes to an imaginary world), but compared to similar games on the SNES at that time it feels pretty much unique. Sure, in the end the story is just another save-the-world-plot, but it’s still different in style and tone to other fantasy games. In some ways the feel of the game is that of a much toned down Earthbound, but with an American, 80ies vibe.

My biggest gripe with the game is that it inherited the battle system from its big brother, Secret of Mana. It’s a real-time attack system that forces you to wait until your gauge has fully loaded. If you don’t, your attacks will only deal minimal damage. While this system in theory seems like a clever way to force you to act more tactically, it praxis it doesn’t work too well. Most of the time, due to the limited attack range of your weapons, you’ll miss the enemies. Either you then hack futile at the enemies with a low gauge or you retreat until your gauge has reloaded. This often resulted in my dog killing more enemies than myself, since computer-controlled characters (enemies inclusive) always hit with their attacks at full gauge. Another annoying “feature” of the game is the kickback from getting hit by an enemy, which can throw you a bit and stun you. If you’re unlucky, you get swarmed by enemies and hit until you die without any chance of resistance.

I prefer either round based battle systems or real action-battle systems like in Zelda or Terranigma, which are much better suited to this kind of gameplay. Still, if one manages to live with the annoying aspects of the game, it can be quite fun.

Star Guard is one of these games that looks much better in motion than on still shots. Stylistically it goes for the retro look (as far back as Atari games), but still manages to look good. It’s a 2d-action-platformer that tells its story in shorts text bursts that appear while going through the levels (something about an evil wizard on venus, fun in a pulpy way and reminded me of Burroughs’s fiction). There are nine levels, which are really easy to beat due to a high number of save points and an infinite number of lives. Only the last two levels really require some skill. The controls are well done and despite the low difficulty the game racks up tension quite well on the first playthrough.

Legend of Princess is a neat Zelda fangame by Konjak (maker of such great games as Chalk or Noitu Love) that utilizes a 2d-engine but incorporates most of the stylish elements and some of the items known from Zelda-games. It’s pretty short and all you do is basically going forward killing some monsters and a few boss monsters, but it’s great fun. Especially the extremely well done controls makes this one fun to play. And the graphical presentation is top-notch too.

I fiddled around a little bit with the Doomsday engine, since I wanted to replay Doom, but ended up playing Heretic instead, since my memories of that were much more dim and I wasn’t sure whether I ever completed the game. It’s basically Doom with a fantasy theme, the weapons play similar, the gameplay consists, like in Doom, of finding keys to advance and the main objective is to kill all monsters. What story there is, is told via very small text pieces after you won an episode, but it’s a very basic, generic story that’s really not very important.

Overall a fun game, but it does get repetitive very fast and if you don’t enjoy killing monsters for the fun of it, you probably get bored very fast. Also, the graphics really reach the limits of what can be done with them very early on and despite some interesting sounding names for the levels, they all look very similar, despite the different level structure.

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders

This edition of Heretic features two more episodes (The Ossuary and The Stagnant Demesne) that take place after you vanquished D’Sparil. Like expansion packs or add-ons they are much more difficult that the original episodes, but don’t offer new graphics or gameplay elements. I didn’t enjoy them as much as the first three episodes, as the game devolved into nothing more than a find-the-right-button or find-the-right-key game. While these elements were essential to all episodes of the game, due to the ramped up difficulty there are moments when it’s easy to get stuck. While this wouldn’t be a problem in an adventure, where you expect such a thing (but even there it’s annoying), it’s not something an FPS should aspire to, as it stops you completely in your track and breaks tension.