Leger vs. Kuuga: Operation Code Vapor Trail (Mega Drive)

Data East is said to have done a good job in porting the arcade original to the Mega Drive. I would not know since I have not played the arcade version, but looking at some footage on YouTube certainly seem to indicate that this is the case.

Not that Kuuga: Operation Code Vapor Trail (I will leave it at Vapor Trail) really seems all to progressive, not even by 1989 standards, but at the same time it does not seem out of time comparing it to other 1991 shmups on console.

Picking one of three available ships, each one balancing out the ratio between fire power and speed, it just takes a couple of seconds until the concept of layers (at least visually speaking) is at work. Some tanks positioned upon a bridge which other tanks are passing under.

Certainly technically sound, even though some slowdowns are to be found at certain intense places, but very much generic in most aspects.

While a life bar, up to three hits to be taken before a ship is lost, is a rather rare sight to see... aswell as the rechargable shielding ship rotation to be activated when needed... the rest just goes off into more than familiar territory.

The military theme, combined with some sci-fi elements, is a done deal and so is the upgrade system where some different weapons can be picked up and powered up a few times.

However, only two weapons seem truly useful and that is the main vulcan (especially with the attack focused ship and fully upgraded) and the bombs (because when they explode the explosion eliminates the enemies projectiles). The so called defender, which rotates some kind of bubbles from the ship to the edges of the screen is hillariously underpowered and so are the missiles.

Each ship also has a unique S-Unit upgrade which not only gives some special firepower but also acts as a disposable smart bomb affecting most enemies on the screen.

While the environments are interesting, they often lack originality and some kind of presentation that makes them stand out from similar ones in other games.

You have the city, the forest with mountains and a railroad which huge offensive trains with cannons make use of, a desert with canyons, a stage full of water and boats aswell as the city at night.

Nothing out of the ordinary, besides some giant aircraft carrier converted for desert use and a, also giant, rocket chased into space where a defensive satellite is waiting to kill you, but it all looks good.

Besides the end of stage bosses you also have to deal with mid stage ones aswell, but the range of ordinary enemies is somewhat limited.

Nowhere is anything remotely close to being manic to be found.

At most some quite high speed projectiles fired at you makes for an acrobatic act of avoidance, but as long as stages are learnt, enemies are shot down before they pose any real danger and the upgrades are kept by not dying Vapor Trail is quite an easy shmup.

Out of the six stages, with the sixth one being nothing more than the final battle, it takes pretty much up until the third boss to be greeted with some harder stuff do deal with.

Maybe its the omnius boss music that threatens my nerves, music which by the way is rather inverted conceptually in that the stage music is the same all the way through while the boss music differes between each stage.

Good thing, thus, that the main theme is such a banger with a reccuring melody eeriely similar to Chris Hülbecks later soundtrack to Apidya on the Amiga (to be more specific, the theme of the first stage).

Coincidence?

I do not know.

Now, all of this comes together nicely into a generic but yet strangely fun to play package with good production values.

The balance of the difficulty may be somewhat off (depending on the choice of ship), some weapons rather useless, if there are some complex scoring system or dynamic difficulty to be found they are more than hidden away from the average player and everything just feels... like a nice but mindless little simple action romp to pick up and play not really bothering about nothing else than to shoot everything that moves and to do it in style.

 

Leger vs. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (Game Boy Advance)

Kirby's Adventure did really bring the NES down on its knees.

Beautiful, colourful, great sounding and unique in its gameplay it somehow managed to sell well and become a classic even though the year was 1993 and the SNES already had become the center of attention.

But, no.

It is not pleasant to play today.

And what a difference a complete lack of slowdowns can make, which the updated 3DS version shows. Pretty much the original game, more or less, and suddenly it feels fresh again.

Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land, on the other hand, do change things up quite a bit while at the same time staying surprisingly true to the original even though the new graphics at first makes me wonder if it really is a remake I am playing or a completely new Kirby game.

Somehow feeling like a part of a trilogy, including Kirby Super Star and Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, just by the looks of it. Leaning more towards graphics that seem hand drawn and then scanned more so than having been put together pixel by pixel.

While looking good, I can not help but feel that it somehow lacks the pixel perfect attitude of the original and without a doubt the aesthetics have little to do with what once was.

Thus, an explanation to why I at first did not recognize the layout of the levels.

More intact we do find the abilites Kirby is able to copy by inhaling enemies and the gameplay in general even though a gazillion small changes are to be found everywhere you look.

Like the fact that the handling of Kirby differs a bit, that some characteristics of the abilites have been adjused and that the bosses are bigger and sometimes easier (the moon and the sun went down even before they had a chance to attack).

Breathing fire, swinging the sword, going electric or making ice cubes. Yep, still a thing, although sometimes attacking feels much more sluggish and delayed. However, breaking certain harder blocks now seems a bit easier and having to backtrack to reach the correct ability to do this feels much less of a hassle.

Bigger changes would be the inclusion of two new mini-games (a line grinding one and one where you throw around a bomb amongst competitors until it explodes) and a revamped version of the classic western themed quick draw), the option of going multiplayer through the adventure and the harder Extra mode which now upon beating also unlock the option of playing through the adventure as Meta Knight.

For some reason I have played Kirby's Nightmare in Dream Land quite a few times now over the years with the intention of having something to say about it, but as it turned out a review never came to be.

Not until now.

I think I had to realise why this is, and now I have.

The reason?

I can for the life of me not become emotionally attached to the experience. Long before the adventure is over I start to think of what to play next.

I can not really bother about the production values when the aesthetics fail to attract (but is by no means an ugly game, it looks truly lovely at times, just kind of "generic" Kirby if that makes sense), things that annoyed me to a small degree in the original (many boss fights keep Kirby waiting for an opening to attack, so much so that the tempo of the game crawls to a halt, to mention one of these annoynances) feels out of place and annoys me more in this later production from 2003 and what is on offer in the Extra mode amplifies many of these annoyances.

Not because the Extra mode is all that hard, but because I just can not find motivation to play as concentrated as I have to do to get through the game with the frustrating parts amped up.

Like the somewhat laggy and slippery controls.

Oh, and removing the save function from the final mode, playing as a sword swinging Meta Knight not being able to copy abilites, seems like nothing more than a desperate attempt to make more out of nothing.

Running in an environment where the endless continues can be used and not having to start all over after shutting down the hardware (say, running via Virtual Console on the Wii U) renders this issue non existent, however.

Now, not to say that I actually DISLIKE Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land.

I do not.

I think it is a perfectly fine little adventure and a curious remake of a much more intriguing and fascinating original.

It is just that it to me lacks any kind of OOOMPH and as a game feels more outdated in this new outfit on the Game Boy Advance than the original without slowdowns on the 3DS.

More of a "What if Kirby's Adventure had been released on the SNES instead of the NES?" thing.

And as such it is an entirely different thing.

A quite good thing, yes.

But not like, say, the reimagining of 8-bit Metroid in Metroid: Zero Mission on the GBA.

No.

 

Leger vs. Rockman: Mega World (Mega Drive)

Competing with the memories of one of my most fondly remembered christmas is not such an easy thing to do.

Waking up early in the morning, following a red thread from my bed passing through the entire house until finally reaching an end where a present was to be found.

Just to keep me occupied all day long, this Mega Man.

Another year, over and over again reading Nintendo Magasinet and its Power Player addendum exclusive to subscribers where Mega Man's second adventure was presented with pictures and information making it seem like the best follow up to a game ever.

For a while I thought that was the case.

And then, finally, that day when a friend of mine wanted some help with this game he and his brother had gotten hold of from Japan.

It just happened to be Mega Man 3 and they could not for the life of them manage to beat Shadow Man. They thought I could, and I thought I could, but I could not.

But what I could do was to get Shadow Man's theme stuck on my mind repeating it over and over again until the game reached the Swedish shores and I not only got hold of a copy but also managed to beat it.

This was that very time when I secretly used a cassette recorder to get the music from the game stuck on tape while being caught in the act by some friends that realised that very thing while we were playing.

Back then this was not a cool thing to do.

To conclude: The early Mega Man defined me as a gamer.

Mega Man: The Wily Wars (or, Rockman: Mega World since I have been playing the Japanese version), on the other hand, did not really do much at all to me since I did not play it until many, many years after its release.

In theory it is a compilation for me to love, since it updates three of my favourite eight bit NES games of all time into sixteen bit glory.

New graphics, more colours, soundtracks adapted to the bass heavy and extremely electric sounding sound chip the Mega Drive is known for and a completely new mini adventure with three new robots masters and a Wily Tower to ascend after the main games are beaten.

But this is not really the case, that this is a compilation that I love.

Rather, I find it disappointing and very much so.

Outsourced to Minakuchi Engineering and having a troubled development according to Keiji Inafune of Mega Man fame The Wily Wars never reached North America in any other form than a digital release through the Sega Channel while Europe and Japan got a physical release.

Considering the completely insane prices it fetches today it seems a small print run, poor sales, extremely high demand on the second hand market or a combination of everything mentioned could be the case... but a modern physical rerelease (with some problems fixed) and inclusion in the Mega Drive Mini console have made it somewhat less out of reach for the masses.

And that is a good thing, even though the collection comes with its fair share of problems.

Mega Man: The Wily Wars is very much of a remake, not a remaster, and as such it does not really seem to bother about staying true to the original experiences.

While not really offering anything new and staying true to the original stage designs it is in the details things start to feel off.

The most apparent thing of all is the insane slowdowns which at times are so extreme that it borders on rendering the games unplayable.

A good thing, some might say, since the Yellow Devil in the first Mega Man no longer teleports himself all over the screen in such a fast fashion that people will have problems avoiding his bits and pieces, but in most cases it just feels like sloppy programming since nothing happening on screen seems like it would push the Mega Drive down on its knees.

Then comes the fact that Mega Man no longer can shoot projectiles at a high speed and often finds himself unable to fire his cannon because too many bullets are on the screen. This makes the games feel slow and full of lag, just to add to the insult of the already extreme slowdowns. Sections on the NES where rapid shooting while moving could eliminate enemies coming ones way now on the Mega Drive often brings the tempo of the game down to a halt.

Another thing that have changed is the collision detection where Mega Man now actually can move off a platform and turn back again in the air and get back on it instead of falling down. This makes trying to avoid the beams on Quick Man's stage way harder than it should be just because it takes much more time to fall down, change direction and keep moving to get away from the beams crossing the screen.

Combined with many of the other changes, small and big ones, The Wily Wars just feels off... like it completely lacks the understanding of what made the original trio of games so good... and while some of the graphical changes makes for a more colourful and vibrant experience, others just completely kills the great vibes of the original aesthetics (look at Top Man's stage, for example, where the green plants in glass containers now have been mostly replaced with boring metallic constructions).

And... while always keeping in line with the original soundtracks the music never really do that much with the hardware available and lacks the pure intensity, power and punch of the original versions of the songs; The presentation just feels a tad... generic.

What I am trying to say is that the tracks are so great by default that the way they are sometimes lackingly presented do little to harm them. But few, very few, manages to reach the heights of, say, Quick Man's theme, which actually can take on the NES original without it being completely run over.

The new adventure, Wily Tower, underscores the above mentioned problem, the generic aspects of it all, rather well... because the three new robot masters and their stages do not really feel all that Mega Man.

One almost looks like it could be a Mega Man-version of Green Hill Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog. Not really, but... almost.

A nice little touch is that all the weapons and special items from Mega Man one to three can be selected when preparing for the challenge. Not all at once, just eight weapons and some three special items, to use on each stage but it does mix up things quite a bit and heightens the value of replayability.

But the new adventure is a short and easy little experience (besides the horrible three part final boss which is presented with so much slowdown that it feels like the hardware is about to break) and is in no way more than a curiousity for those that actually bothers to get hold of this compilation of remakes.

A shame, really.

Becuase it could have been so much more.

Actually, the only way for me to appreciate The Wily Wars is to not compare it to the superior NES games it is based upon.

Then, and only then, they do offer a couple of hours worth of quite charming but somewhat flawed action platforming experiences.