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.

 

Leger vs. Battleships (Amiga)

There is nothing particularly wrong with Battleships.

Being a digital 1987 version of the analogue (sometimes digital) board game it does exactly what it sets out to do.

With some added touches of fancy graphics, speech and a quite odd multi player system alongside the ordinary single or two player mode battling it out against a simple ai or a friend acting as the enemy.

Oh, and the choice of letting each non sunk ship giving the player four shots to add to the total instead of just having four shots each turn.

Having six ships to place on the grid, each one occupying up to six blocks in some Tetris looking shapes, there is nothing more to it than placing the ships and then taking turns trying to do some sinking and watching cannons, birds and projectiles in action while doing so.

All good, the presentations is sound (except the not so inspiring title theme) but concerning longevity it comes down to your love of Battleshipping.

Me, myself and I feels somewhat full of it after a couple of rounds and besides some occasional toe dipping in the water every tenth year or so, just to reach the conclusion that a sufficient presentation in itself is not equal to a not insufficient package, there is not much more to it.

Leger vs. Defenders of the Earth (Amiga)

It might be that I have seen some of 65 episodes of the animated series Defenders of the Earth from the eighties, but if that would be the case it feels like the impact of the experience comes quite close to zero.

Not that The Phantom, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician and his bodyguard Lothar and the odd blue Zuffy with yellow hair lacks relevance, but in this very constellation (and especially in this game of lackluster everything) I can simply not bother to bother.

Most of the license based games were quick cash grabs at this point in time, with a few exceptions. Considering the developer Enigma Variations mostly dealt with these kind of products my guess is that you would be hard pressed to find something even remotely close to being a "classic" out of the nine games they developed for the Amiga.

But I would love to be proven wrong.

So, this Defenders of the Earth... what about it?

As Flash running from left to right, right to left, jumping, entering doors and shooting at everything that comes your way without ever getting room to breathe all that is left to do is to every now and then press the spacebar to get one from your team to perform a task.

Such as kicking down a door, use a computer to disable a force field or with the help of magic make a bridge appear.

It takes some time to do so, and if they are interrupted you will have to wait a while until being able to ask them again, all while watching your health getting drained by evil bastards spamming the screen.

You could try to keep your health by hammering the fire button until your finger start to bleed, but what is the point?

All you get by doing so is more of the same, room after room, with the occasional boss with more or less unavoidable attacks.

Oh, and of course the experience is without music (except on the title screen), the presentation uses full screen graphics in PAL everywhere except when playing (when the graphics only uses the NTSC part of the screen leaving the bottom third pitch black) and the Level 1 said to be loaded when starting the game never reaches a Level 2 before the game is completed.

Defenders of the Earth on the Amiga is nothing but pure crap.

Well, besides the actual coding of the game (it runs really smooth in 50 frames per second, most of the time) and some of the graphics which does not really look all to bad.

But...

 

Amiga vs. Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (Amiga)

Recently coming from the 8-bit racing games it is somewhat impossible not to be impressed by the high speed, detailed graphics and great sounding everything.

I just felt I had to cover the entire bunch of racers for the Master System in recent years, nothing more to it.

Somewhat disappointed by a vast majority of the offerings, not necessarily bad but seldom truly great, the genre obviously did more than well with added horsepower.

Thing is, few games reinvented the wheel (pun certainly intended) and what it all came down to felt like a slight difference in presentation and balancing of the experience concerning difficulty and the ability to steer ones conditions to win in one way or another (oh, the puns).

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge does not really do that much to change this, in fact it is more of a return to the roots experience, but considering the fantastic presentation and being able to use the official license aquired by Gremlin it is not that much of a problem.

It never fiddles around with different cars, upgrades or anything of the sort.

One or two players, always on a horizontally split screen (a truly big deal at the time, even though the decision to use not much more than one third of the screen in PAL for the playing area even in one player mode can be questioned), with a faster acceleration and higher top speed if using manual transmission (and slower and lower dito if using automatic) racing for the top spot through a series of tracks (seven on easy, ten on normal and fifteen on hard).

What one have to bother about is placing ten or higher out of the twenty racers, otherwise a Game Over will show up on the screen (with two players racing only one have to place ten or higher for both to be able to keep competing), enter the pit stop if fuel is starting to run low and avoiding other racers and obstacles on the tracks.

But, like mentioned earlier, what truly made a difference is the presentation.

As a two man project, Shaun Southern as a coder and musician and Andrew Morris as a graphician, Magnetic Fields truly blew the competition away in 1990 with Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge.

From the attract screens showing of the Lotus Esprit in detail, booth in looks and from a technical perspective, to the car stereo used to chose one out of four available music tracks if the sound effects did not seem enough, the Super Scaler looking objects passing by on, and outside of, the tracks and the great feel of the controls making sharp turns in high speed a pleasant thing to tackle.

To make the experience a more dynamic one the tracks really differ both in design and visual appearance.

Some rather straight, some curved as hell, some with stones and signs to avoid crashing into and some with pools of water that slow things down or oil that throws things out of control for a short while.

And, of course, sometimes you have to drive through the night, through snow or annoyingly through patches of road work.

Now, this would be all good and fine if it were not for one fatal flaw: The artificial intelligence of the computer controlled racers. Or, rather, lack of that very thing.

See, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge seem to love to up the challenge by making the road narrow in one way or another. This would not have been such a big deal if you had a honest chance of passing by the opponents or simply could slow down to avoid a close encounter which pushes you to the side dealing a quite huge blow to your speed.

But you do not. You can not.

Why?

Because the opponents do nothing more than bounce around on the track, horizontally, like ping pong balls in various speeds.

Once seen it simply cannot be unseen.

So bothersome, to feel that it all comes down to luck on some of the harder stages if you manage to pass a narrow passage without having to deal with other cars, because the penalty of loosing speed is such a big thing.

On some tracks starting in the jumbo position, just bouncing into another ping pong ball acting car when trying to get ahead of the competition during the first few seconds of a race can be enough to make it almost impossible to take back what is lost.

So much that you almost feel like trying to get into, say, tenth position on the previous track just to have a fair chance of managing the next (since you will have a starting position which is the previous goal passing one inverted).

Another thing worth noting is that the opponents does not seem to care about your car at all. They just keep swinging from one side to the other, driving pretty much straight trough you if your speed do not match theirs, pushing you to the side loosing speed while not being affected themselves.

It just seem so unfair, fury inducing to such an extent that it feels attractive to smash the controller into pieces, and takes away so much of the fun in playing the game.

At one point or another, it just seems to fall into place.

The flow of it all.

When this happens Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge really lives up to its reputation as one of the greatest racers on the system.

But most of the time some tracks in all of the three different difficulty setting brings everything to a halt in ways that many earlier games in the genre did not.

At least not in ways feeling as unfair as they do here.

Looking at the successor things apparently got a lot better, and I can not in any way claim Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge not being a game changer, but as a game concerned the wonderful presentation have passed the test of time far better than the actual balance of the gameplay.

It is good, but flawed and thus not great.