#7 SUPER THUNDER BLADE

Never judge a game by its clam shell. This is some deceptively cool looking box art. 

 The depressing black and white mess of a title screen is a much better depiction of what you are about to experince. 

If this continues much longer you’re going to start to wonder why I claimed I love the Genesis so much. I promise you though it gets better and we are almost out of the woods. This is, thank God, our last launch title. Wikipedia if you change the lineup one more time I swear to God I will kill you and your whole family, which I imagine includes about.com. It feels like I am earning the right to play games I actually enjoy, especially as many of my favorites and games I’ve always wanted to try come later in the Genesis life span. The further down the line we go the more games I like will pop up. But I have suffered plenty and the next few games we review are going to be good ones – or at least I am going to try my very best to pick them that way.

But right now we have no choice but to look at one of my most hated games of all time. You don’t even need to read further, I wouldn’t blame you. Super Thunder Blade is absolute dismal crap. This is the most annoying gnat that ever had the audacity to call itself a game I have ever played. I know what you’re thinking. It looks like Space Harrier. Space Harrier is best game of the century compared to this abomination.

Everything I said was wrong with space harrier is increased about two-hundred fold. The lack of animation frames that make bullets and obstacles impossible to dodge, the repetitive flying in a circle, it’s all here and then some. You now also get really bad controls likely meant to guise as realism, the worst level designs I’ve ever seen, and a broken version of a vertical shmup mixed in.

Helicopters are a big effing deal in the 90s. I’m not totally sure why this is but we definitely had a love affair with them. You’ve never seen to many helicopter games as you will see in the 16-bit era. I certainly haven’t seen any sense. When was the last time a helicopter themed game was even released on a console? This generation? I don’t think so. If it was it sure as hell was not popular. But we got tons of them on the Genesis and Super Nintendo and a lot of them were actually really good! I can think of four off the top of my head right now that were great fun. But this game is truly unplayable.

Just fly in circles, shoot, and pray. Thats it. Fifty bucks please. 

Like Space Harrier Super Thunder Blade is a rail shooter and the two games appear to be running on the same engine. Super Thunder Blade just has dismal controls, stupid features, and terrible level design. The controls feel delayed; every move you make is slow and clumsy. I think what they wanted to do is make it feel like what they imagined flying a real helicopter was like. This would be fine in other games but this isn’t a realistic game! You’re shooting down F-14’s and giant sci-fi battle tanks the size of sky scrapers! There isn’t anything realistic about it so this doesn’t add to the suspension of disbelief it’s just annoying.

Space Harrier had tight controls and even it got annoying when it came to obstacles because of the frame rate. Well, the frame rate is now just as bad if not worse only the controls are also terrible and the obstacles take up much larger portions of the screen.

There is no strategy to the shooting what so ever. When you fire, every few machine gun blasts also shoots off a homing missile. As long as you don’t get shot yourself things in front of you will always be shot down, there is no reason at all to line up your shots.

You'd better get used to seeing this image because you'll be looking at the broken fragments of your chopper a lot. 

The result of all this is a game where it feels like your spinal cord has been severed from your brain. You don’t actually feel like you are playing anything. Whatever happens on the screen, be it a victory or a defeat, does not seem to have any real solid connection to what you are doing with the controller.

And then there are the vertical levels. My God. Half way through each stage it turns into a vertical shooter. Only get this – you can only move from side to side. The chopper stays fixed to the bottom of the screen. It is also supposed to be hitting ground targets and they wanted it to look like the nose of the chopper is pointing diagonally towards the ground. What this actually translates to is a shooter where you cannot move up and down the scrolling screen and your shot only goes out about the length of your ship’s body. How could they have made so many bad decisions? There is no excuse for this! It’s not even technical limitations at play in these levels, the designers actually consciously choose these decisions and thought they were good ideas!

I sincerely want to know what made them think this was a fun addition. 

This super scaler stuff (the tech behind games like space harrier and thunder blade) does not seem to be fairing very well on this console so far. The whole time I was forcing my way through this mess I kept thinking of the poor Japanese, whose only launch titles were this and Space Harrier II. No Altered Beast. No Thunder Force. Can you imagine? Abysmal Crap and slightly less annoying crap. No wonder the Mega Drive would never do as well there as here; it had its poor legs broken right from the start.

Well it’s over. We’ve finally made it out of the launch titles which mean I now have a lot more choices about what to play next. It wasn’t the greatest launch and even the good games were a pale shadow compared to what was to come. Altered Beast remains my favorite of the bunch but it gets better. Much better. We now move into the rest of 1989. The weeks and months following launch day would see the Genesis start to establish a more solid and diverse library of games. It’s going to be an exciting time and the journey is only just beginning! The launch titles are merely the threshold out the door into the world of Sega Ages! 

#6 TOMMY LASORDA BASEBALL

I...Thats a nose. Also The baseball is as big as his head, which itself is as big as Godzilla. 

Big batter sprites are a cool feature, but check out the ghostly vistage of the catcher. Nothing in the rules says dead guys can't play baseball. 

Well kids it was bound to happen eventually. I knew that sooner or later I’d have no choice but to review a sports game.

It isn't that sports games are bad or pointless. But there are two things about them that make them a potential hurdle for this project. The first is, get this, ready to have your mind blown? Their target audience is people who like sports. Can you imagine? Now I don’t dislike sports. At best I’d say I’m mostly indifferent to sports. Particularly team sports, spectator sports. Watching other people exercise has rarely held interest for me. I do have some interest in hockey and boxing but even those I’ve never managed to follow for any length of time.

Be that as it may this project is all about personal growth through classic gaming. I am very much hoping to find many sports games I enjoy and maybe even discover a passion for some sports I didn’t know I had. It’s worth looking at it optimistically like this because god knows there are enough sports titles on every console ever made. I want to try actually mastering some of these sports games…..But I won’t be mastering Tommy Lasorda Baseball. And I would be willing to bet cold hard cash, neither will you.

My current theory is that Tommy Lasorda Baseball is a government artificial intelligence project gone haywire that has infiltrated the public through a Sega Genesis game cartridge. If I had to sum up basically all of my complaints about this title it boils down to an unstoppable CPU rendering the game damn near unplayable.

OR

I suck.

Honestly either one is likely. I really could suck that bad. But I think my story still holds some water because I have played Genesis era baseball games before where I didn't suck with quite this much suckatude. I don’t know all that much about baseball statistics but I’m pretty sure I had picked the best possible team. To start with I wanted to put the game on easy and set the computer up with the worst team for an exhibition match so I could learn how the game was played. 15-0. That was the final score. The CPU never swings on a ball. They never fail to hit. I got two strikes, non-consecutively, the entire game. The few hits I managed to get in never resulted in anything more than a base run and 90% of the time, not an exaggeration, the CPU always caught the ball for an instant out. It was a baseball Armageddon. I was slaughtered. I’d have picked up my ball and went home but after that game, I didn’t have any balls left.

The game isn’t “hard”. When I say a game is hard, even “too hard” I mean its got a steep level of challenge. Its like doing complex algebra without a calculator. This game isn’t hard its not playable.

I’d be curious perhaps to revisit this one to see if playing a multiplayer game is a better experience. I’d imagine so. The presentation is actually rather nice and arcade like. I especially enjoy how the ball increases in size on the overhead view, as it flies up towards the birds eye camera. It’s a bit odd how the pitching and batting work, with your player sliding all over the place to line up with the ball or position for a strike. I suppose though this was still a time for a lot of experimentation with this dynamic of the sport, the physical application of which is hard to translate into video game form.

But this is still an awesome effect. 

It is also worth noting that this is our first example of Sega’s famous marketing strategy of celebrity endorsements. This led me to research a bit about Lasorda who I knew nothing about – again not being a baseball guy. Even as a non-baseball aficionado it was an impressive career to read about. I kind of feel like this game doesn’t do him any justice. He was playing for the Dodgers while there were still Nazi’s in Europe for Pete’s sake!

The Dodger’s, the team for which most of his acclimates are accredited, does not actually make an appearance in this game. No MLB team does. This tended to happen a lot as those official licenses are often expensive to come by.

It’s hard to say if I gave Tommy Lasorda Baseball a fair chance or not. I met all my personal requirements for a game but it certainly had more to look into. It is the first example we have hit of a game running on a password system, a common feature to replace less than reliable battery backup, and had lots of stat based features that I didn’t really bother checking out. The reason for this is simple – if the single player campaign is unplayable than there really isn’t an additional mode in the world that can fix the title. It’s a bit disappointing because the game has decent presentation and may even be fun on a two player setting….But there are other baseball games that offer presentation, good multiplayer, and great single player. Most fans who aren’t collecting everything out right will likely be better off going with a later baseball title. 

#5 Thunder Force II

  

Ok Not even joking? Probably the most bad ass cover art so far. 

 Confused about whats going on? Let me clear it up for you - You're Boned.

For many retro gamers, the "shooter" genre is their bread and butter. I've always found this a bit odd. Mostly because it suggest they had been playing these sort of games for a long time. As a kid I had around 50 genesis titles - and not one of them was a shooter. I think I was vaguely aware that such games existed, but how I am not certain. Even my Genesis playing friends and family did not seem to own any such games. I think I did play one on the NES once, maybe, but it's the most faint and distant of memories now. I didn't come into the genre at all until the retro craze hit. At first I loved these kinds of games...Now I am no longer sure what I think - especially of these Genesis installments. MY  bread and butter was side scrolling action games and beat-em-ups, which may be why despite the lackluster opinion many people have of it, I rated Altered Beast so high.

But I will soon have a more clear opinion of genesis shooters as there are going to be a boat load of them. The first is this launch title - Thunder Force II. I can't tell you this is my favorite shooter, but then again it isn't quite ordinary by shooter standards.

The first Thunder Force is rather obscure and appeared on platforms like the Sharp-X1.....Yeah don't feel dumb I've never even seen one.

Until now!

It was a shooter from an overhead perspective that, unlike most games in the genre, allowed for scrolling in any direction. This sequel follows a similar routine - half the time. Every odd level is an overhead level where your mission is to destroy a series of ground targets scattered about the very large map. The even levels are more standard shooter fair from a horizontal perspective in the vein of Gradius and R-type. This is kind of an odd but interesting evolution of the series. Thunder Force II feels kind of like a half man half ape missing link, as later installments would drop the overhead levels entirely and focus only on the horizontal side scrolling shooter style of game play.

Perhaps this is with good reason. The overhead levels in my opinion are a major pain in the ass! I really wanted to like them. I like overhead other stuff, and they look pretty. They definitely show off the infamous parallax scrolling of the Genesis well. But the way you move....Its hard to describe without you trying it. Understand it is still a shooter. And like all shooters you are always moving. But unlike most shooters in this one's overhead levels you can move in any direction. That means break neck awkward 180 degree flip arounds that are too jerky to be enjoyable. Enemies come at you from nonsensical directions and half your weapons will be useless against ground targets. Add to this the fact that the maps for these levels are, I'll admit impressively, very large, and you're in for a frustrating experience as you run around aimlessly looking for your target with nothing to indicate correct direction of travel except for very good muscle memory. 

 

Even after locating them, the ground base targets required to complete overhead levels aren't going down without a fight.

The side scrolling levels would fair a bit better. But only a bit. The first one was actually a blast and I really enjoyed it. Later on though, the deaths seemed cheap and the difficulty curve a bit ridiculous. Understand though I am not a bullet hell savior. The most appealing thing about this genre to me is the huge community that has built up around this one style of game-play. The internet is full of forums and YouTube videos of deathless play throughs on insanely difficult settings for even the most obscure shooter titles. It's all very impressive! I'm just not even close to that skilled .

   

 There is something to be said for tradition. Although there are some cheap deaths the sidescrolling fare was much more enjoyable. Note selectable weapon options on the top HUD.

Truth be told this is probably the most technically competent game I've played so far for this blog. It just isn't quite my thing. That isn't to say I'm passing judgement on all shooters. This one is so unique in some ways that its hard to compare it with others. The weapon switching may appeal to many shooter fans. I think a major problem I have with shooters in general though is that so many of them are focused on that very community I mentioned that they are designed so that if you don't have a perfect run you might as well not play. Dying eliminates all your weapon upgrades and as the game progresses you very quickly find survival may even be impossible with a standard shot alone.

 The overhead maps are enormous! Its impressive on such an early title, but frustrating when you get lost.

  

Please don't think I'm  a pansy ass whose favorite Genesis game will turn out to be Barney's Hide and Seek Adventure. I told you my bread and butter is side scrolling action - just wait till we get to games like Chakan or Comix Zone and I'll make you eat those words, but I would prefer it if these kind of games gave me one or both of two options:

1. Quit taking away my power ups at death. At least not until I have hit continue. For the hardcore gamer you can make this a toggle switch option, but I'm not a shmup god, I would prefer to finish the game with an average level of challenge. If I must be a shmup god though -

2. Cut out extra lives and continues entirely. I know. One extreme to the other. I actually went into the options menu for Thunder Force II with exactly this in mind but it could not be arranged.

Why? Because in this kind of game extra lives are completely pointless. After the first couple of levels I can't survive without my power ups no matter how hard I practice. The only chance I have at completion is a perfect game. So don't make me waste my time or burn out my reset button. If I die once, just start the game over for me with as little loading time as possible. No extra lives. No continues. No going back to the title screen, just back to the beginning of level 1. "Initiating...ladder...good luck." (or whatever he says at the level start screen. That's what it sounds like to me.)

Ultimately this is a technically impressive game and may even be the best of the launch titles. Had I bought my Genesis on launch day out of the option available here in north America this would have been the best option to companion with the Altered Beast pack in. There are still a couple of launch titles left to review but I think most of you will agree with this sentiment when you try them. It just isn't going to make it into my favorite games list any time soon. It caters to much to the hardcore shooter fanatic - something that if I have any potential to become I haven't reached that point yet and this game isn't going to get me there. But if that describes you well than I definitely suggest giving Thunder Force II a run.

#4 Space Harrier II

 "Aye! The giant metal snake woman came to this giant checker board with me and that's who she's leaving with, disembodied samurai armor!"

 "I have had over half my animation frames sucked out of me and now I seek revenge!!"

I don’t want to talk about this game. Lets talk about Sin and Punishment : Star Successor! 

 Wii Ages! 

Man, I wish I still had a copy of that game! I should dust my wii off and grab one next time I see it around. I absolutely loved the story and the game play was addicting. I always say with arcade style games that I’m going to try to do a bunch of replays and get a really good score. I almost never actually do this. But Star Successor had me hooked enough that had I not gotten rid of that first wii I definitely would have tried. 

If you haven’t played it, Sin and Punishment : Star Successor is a third person rail shooter with serious attitude released on the wii. It is a sequal to the first Sin and Punishment, which was a Japanese exclusive N64 title before it was released finaly on the virtual console. If I had to compare it to something it would be Space Harrier. . . But that might be part of the reason for this game seeming a bit bland.

 But I thought it was gonna fall into crisis later?

We have to face facts – try as we might retro game reviewers live in the ages they live in. We write these articles because we love video games and even though we might claim to have a favorite classic console I sincerely doubt many of us play our games in a bubble. We might not be 100% up to speed due simply to time constraints but we do, at least occasionally if not frequently, play modern games alongside our retro favorites. If we could play in a bubble it might drastically change our opinions; but unfortunately how well a game stands the test of time will always be a factor a retro gamer must consider.

I bring up Sin and Punishment because while it vaguely has the aesthetic of Space Harrier - rail gun shooter about a guy hovering around jet pack style that can also run on the ground blasting bizarre enemies  with a rapid fire energy weapon - it definitely does not have Sin and Punishments level of involvement, re-playability, or charm. It is an interesting title to be sure – but not one I see myself returning to just for kicks. 

 

I’ve always felt that the PlayStation 1 along with its competitors was the crossing point to 3D gaming but that crossing point does not necessarily mean older style genres are dead. In general they fall into three categories. The first is genres that are superior in 2D format. In my opinion beat em ups and definitely run n guns fit the bill here. Understanding that my equivalent to a 3D run n gun is the third person shooter, I simply think 2D run n guns were a lot more fun. Then there are games that work really well in either format though the mechanics may be different. Fighting games and plat-formers fit in here. Then there are genres that just genuinely are superior on modern consoles. First Person Shooters, racing games, and though often over looked, rail shooters, definitely fit into this category.

The rail shooter got a second look on the wii and I think to great success, at least in terms of fun if not commercially. 

So enough about the wii and star successor, what about Space Harrier, does it hold any weight? 

Well like many early genesis titles this was sort of an arcade game – only not really. Space Harrier II is actually the console only sequel to the popular arcade game Space Harrier. But it doesn’t feel like any effort was put into making the game a competent home console game as opposed to an arcade novelty. In the Arcades I’m sure the first space harrier was fine. It was big and flashy with interesting controls and the environments then really were fantastic looking. It probably blew the cabinets on either side of it into obscurity. But it doesn’t translate at home because of the nature of the game play. The game is fun for about five minutes. But there are twelve levels followed by a boss gauntlet and a final boss. That’s a long time for a game that literally has you doing the same thing over and over. You just fly in a circle and shoot. It’s the best possible strategy you can implement.

 There would be better strategies except that the frame rate in this game is horrendous and that is its biggest critical flaw.  It feels like there is roughly two frames of animation before a projectile reaches you sometimes. 

The projectile is far away.

The projectile is close.

You're dead.

I'm sure this will turn out fine. 

So flying in a circle is your best shot at survival because when you die there is no health bar. Get hit once and your character plummets to the ground, followed by the “get ready” voice synth you will learn to hate with a passion. Your punishment for death is the fast paced flow of the game play gets broken up. This might be incentive for some masochistic players who loved games like R-Type to want to master this title, but it won’t be enough. Most deaths are not caused by enemies but by running head first into obstacles that skip jump through the terrible frame rate before you have time to react. 

I did beat this game. And I will say this, the ending genuinely surprised me. Mostly because this was an era when just putting “congratulations!” on the screen was considered a legitimate way to end a game. But for all the ways it feels shoddily made, Space Harrier II managed to actually have a story line ending. Don’t beat me up when you see it and are disappointed. I’m not claiming it was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald or anything, but it's there and its got a bit of thought to it. The fight with Dark Harrier, the final boss, even got me excited for it again for a second but the  repetitive gameplay and cheap deaths and frustrating frame rate just kill any chance of me coming back to the game “just for fun.” 

This game might be enjoyable to people who like other rail shooters from the era. It is certainly not the least playable of the bunch….oh... that is still to come…  But for me what it did more than anything was make me realize how much better this genre is now.

#3 Last Battle

Obvious product placement.

 "That's not your purse!"

Here we have another weird conundrum much in the same vein as Alex Kidd – a truly terrible game that shows evidence, if one scrutinizes closely enough, of having at least someone on their development team with an idea, just a glimmer of a thought that could have worked. It doesn’t work, not even a little, but what makes both games bad is the presence of possibility that there could have been something to this.

The first thing that gave this title some promise was its license.  Last Battle was actually Fist of the Northstar. Not to be confused with any other game of the same name. This is certainly not a port. No one would have elected to repeat this on more than one console after seeing the results. From what I understand, the Fist of the Northstar license could not be obtained in the States, so they decided instead to base it off the final Narnia book by C.S. Lewis….

Not really. Just wanted to see if you’re still awake. But a bunch of kids dying on a subway at the beginning might have given this game a bit more appeal.

If I had to take a wild guess I might say Taxan could have had something to do with the lack of license for this release. I am sad to report Sega is directly responsible for this particular abomination and my understanding is that the Taxan game for the NES was actually not bad. In its original format Last Battle is based on the second Fist of the North Star anime series. The names have been changed – both for legal reasons and to not slander the franchise by having this game attached to it. I’m not totally sure how similar the plot is, but the characters have all definitely had their names swiped. This doesn’t really evade the obviousness of the license to anyone familiar with it. The one thing this game has going for it are some pretty well designed sprites for some characters including Kenishiro who is now known as Aazark (?).

I didn’t know much about Fist of the North Star until just recently. One of the things I am going to be doing here with this blog is experiencing the licensed material that goes with licensed games. Whenever we run into a game based on a movie, series, book, or comic I would like to read or watch at least some of it, if I have experienced it before or not. While technically it has lost its license the one good thing to come out of Last Battle was that it gave me an excuse to finally watch some of Fist of the North Star, a series I have been aware of for a long time but never personally experienced. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a cheesy, mad max like post-apocalyptic martial arts story with a bit of fantasy sprinkled in. It’s a real blast of an ultra-violent 80s anime and I plan to keep watching the series despite how bad this game is.

The worst part actually is that the anime had all the elements to make a really good game. I haven’t played the Taxan game for NES but I hope they made much better use of the license.

 So much wasted potential. This license could have made an amazing game.

So what exactly is wrong with Last Battle?

To put it simply it just isn’t fun.  The game kind of feels like it wanted to be a more complex version of Altered Beast but it isn’t even close, do not assume from that statement that if you like Altered Beast you will like Last Battle, they couldn’t be further apart. It’s a slow moving left to right oddball action game. When you punch or kick most enemies, they just go flying off the screen, which is pretty entertaining at first. The gimmicks with this one are an over world map in which you can pick which level you want to go to next and a sort of leveling system. The map is important mainly because it allows for repeating a level multiple times which is helpful for leveling up. Everyone loves built in grinding right?

 Pick your poison....again....and again...and again...

Leveling makes you beef up in a somewhat Altered Beast like fashion. You can then do some of the moves Ken does in the show like rapidly punching several times in a second. You also have no shirt which is good I guess, it looks like it might be hot out.

The basic left to right levels are just bland, not horrifying. It’s the boss fights- which consist of weird random button mashing and odd timing- that take you out of the spirit of the franchise that is the real problem. They just feel very poorly done, like a broken fighting game. When I beat the first boss I was very disappointed by the localization changes as well. He bubbled up all over. I had just finished watching the pilot episode for fist of the Northstar so I knew what was happening and was pretty excited. In the anime, Ken has a secret kung fu technique that causes his enemies flesh to bubble, and then their heads explode. All that was taken out of the western version and all we got was the bubbling followed by a cartoony cheap 16 bit shump style explosion. Not a good one either. No decapitation. I know I sound like a sick freak right now but the magic of these old anime franchises was how over the top they were. If they weren’t going to give us dynamic gameplay they at least could have spared us some franchise flavor.

 "Consider this and everything that follows it a warning shot!"

The labyrinth levels are even worse, with traps you really aren’t very well equipped to deal with given how slow and clunky Aazark moves. The other big problem is how difficult it is to gain life if you’ve lost it. The labyrinth levels allow you to do this by fighting enemies. This isn’t to tough but the labyrinths are dangerous, it’s easy to lose more than you gained and you only get one life- die and its back to the beginning of the game. A step penalty, considering how much of the game consist of grinding for levels that take too long to reach for a game of this type. While I’d have liked to see what could be done at the last upgrade I couldn’t find it in me to care enough to continue after reaching my two hour requirement. I decided to pass on mastering this one.

The dialogue though? The dialogue is spot on. 

Last Battle may be worth it for a Fist of the Northstar fan who has to have every related product but I don’t really think there is a market for it among people looking for a fun Genesis experience. Another bad launch game down the tubes.