#587 - Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warship

Conquer 12 alien worlds, then Westernize them so that they may know the joy of McDonalds.

                                                        Run, little jetman.


PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER: Tradewest

DEVELOPER: Rare

GENRE: Adventure

RELEASE DATE: September 1990

Solar Jetman carves its own weird niche on the NES, with little regard for what any player thinks. There's slight action, a good deal of non-linear exploration, and a little strategy. But what ties these three elements together are the game's equally impressive and abhorrent physics. Solar Jetman takes place within the confines of twelve (thirteen, counting the bonus world) planets, each with its own gravity. If a planet has little gravity, your miniature exploring ship/spaceman will bounce around like a pinball; on the plus side, it will be easier to lift essential items out of each planet, like pieces of the golden warship or crystals used for currency, fuel upgrades, etc. Lifting said items requires hovering near the item (a task in an of itself), waiting for the tractor beam to attach to the item, then flying it back to your main ship. If a planet contains more gravity, you have more control of your ship, but forget about lifting anything. Whatever item you attach to on a planet with higher gravity will lower you farther and farther down, unless you fly towards the item with enough momentum and it latches on miraculously. Two problems with that: 1) if you bounce your ship on the planet's terrain, your ship will slow down and you'll likely start to sink; 2) enemies will be shooting at you, and one stray shot can explode your ship, leaving your spaceman out in cold space, unable to pull anything. If the latter happens, your wee jetman can propel up to your main ship and re-generate another exploration ship. But why? Why does Solar Jetman force you to go to such great lengths to accomplish a simple task, like pulling an item out of a cavern? Because Rare wanted to show off their physics "engine." Take away the physics and this game is revealed as a spartan item-collecting exercise; insert the physics, and the game has substance, depth, and frustration in unequal amounts. Kudos and congratulations to Rare for simulating pseudo-realistic physics on an eight-bit system, and jeers for making Solar Jetman's potentially satisfying gameplay rely so heavily on them.

D+

#586 - Soccer

          I'm typically a fan of the black box titles, but I can't says I appreciate this one.

                                  I wasn't aware skipping was a large part of soccer.


PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous

PUBLISHER: Nintendo

DEVELOPER: Nintendo

GENRE: Sports

RELEASE DATE: March 1987

Nintendo's early sports games for the NES may seem crude today, but it's a testament to the company's developing prowess that they're still playable. Soccer is a stress-free, basic intro to the sport. Choose from a handful of teams (go, Federal Republic of Germany! Give those Easterners what for!), skill level (1-5, with 5 being the toughest), and half-time (15 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on your insatiable lust for soccer). All the teams play the same, so choosing one boils down to what team colors tickle your eyeballs. Don't bother playing a game on any difficulty setting lower than 3 or the A.I. will win the game for you. Once you're on the field, you switch players with 'B' and hit the soccer ball with 'A'; controls for sports games often feel more complicated than they need to be, but Soccer gets it right. There are no plays, no field management, no huddled masses yearning to be set free. Hit the ball around the field, kick it in the goal, watch your goofy 8-bit players cheer, then go back for more. The one drawback to Soccer's retro simplicity is its sluggishness: all of the players move like they're knee deep in mud. If you stick with the game, you get used to the pace, but initially, the slow movements can be maddening. Still, for a sports game that just had its twenty-sixth birthday, Soccer gets around pretty well.

B-

#585 - Snow Brothers

                                            Nick and Tom, you rascals!

                                                  Now that's "snow" like it.

                                          Everyone's just having a gay ol' time.


PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous

PUBLISHER: Capcom

DEVELOPER: Sol

GENRE: Arcade

RELEASE DATE: November 1991

Snow Brothers takes the Bubble Bobble formula – trap enemies in bubbles, pop to kill them – and exchanges bubbles for snow. Prince Nick and Prince Tom are the Snow Brothers (small complaint: no princes would ever be named Nick and Tom – ever), two do-gooders who want to smother the world of evil under a blanket of cleansing white. The evil King Scorch has set before them fifty levels of injustice and, natch, a princess to rescue. Caveman Tornadoes, Yetis, Blue Bats, and more await snow's purifying touch. Cover each enemy until they're a fully rounded snowball, then unleash them to their demise. As the large snowball careens around the level, it will hopefully destroy other enemies along with it. After every ten levels, a large reptilian boss creature appears. They'll spit out enemies you can turn into snowballs, or if you prefer the more methodical approach, you can spew snow at them until they die. Once you understand how to unleash a snowball that takes out almost every enemy on the stage, the levels end quickly – too quickly. Snow Brothers is over fast, thanks to nine continues and little difficulty increase in the later levels; playing with a friend only makes the experience end quicker. A shame, perhaps, but Snow Brothers levels lack the creativity and variety of Bubble Bobble, the very game that inspired it (and I'm not even a huge Bubble Bobble fan). By the time the game ends, you'll be bored with snow and the brothers who release it.

C+

#584 - Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular

This game originally featured Donald Duck in Japan, but due to licensing restrictions, Kemco had to change the main character to Snoopy. This neither hinders nor helps the actual game.

                                       A Sack Race, in the peasant part of town.


PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Kemco

DEVELOPER: Kemco

GENRE: "Sports"

RELEASE DATE: April 1990

There's nothing silly or spectacular about Snoopy's first sports game, a multi-event exercise that's over before you can say "Good grief!". Choose from one of six events – Pile of Pizza, Sack Race, Overboard, Pogo, Boot Throwing, River Jump – or play all six at once. It's better to play all the events together for two reasons: 1) each event will take you only about five-to-ten seconds to complete; and 2) if you select only one event and you complete it, but you don't "try again" when the game asks, it boots you back to the title screen; best to avoid the hassle. Most of the events are nonsensical: Pile of Pizza has Snoopy carrying a large stack of pizzas slowly to a finish line; Overboard has Snoopy and his creepy pervert counterpart playing Urban Champion in a boat; Sack Race and Boot Throwing are as hobo as they sound. Only Pogo and River Jump make marginal sense in the "sports" context, but the movements – pogo-ing and jumping, respectively – are difficult to execute. The events themselves are inoffensive, but once they're over, they're over, and the game has little left to offer. If you get a certain score at the end of your first playthrough, you can play through the game twice more (assuming you get higher and higher scores) before it awards you a gold medal – but really, who cares? Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular doesn't look, sound, or control poorly, but its lack of content (it's hardly a game at all) renders it an inconsequential waste of time.

F

#583 - Snake's Revenge

                             Snake's got his silencer aimed at the female assassin.

                     There's spotlights now, because that's what you've always wanted.


PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER: Ultra

DEVELOPER: Konami

GENRE: Action/adventure

RELEASE DATE: April 1990

"Metal GEEEEAAAAR?" Well, yes and no. Snake's Revenge is the unofficial North American/European sequel to the first Metal Gear for the NES, but not only did Hideo Kojima have nothing to do with it, he wasn't even aware of its presence until one of the game's developers told him about it (props to Wikipedia). This led Kojima to make his own canonical sequel Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX (the more you know!) So where does that leave the Super Mario Bros. 2 of the Metal Gear series? Snake's Revenge may not be developed by Kojima, but it does a "solid" job at imitating its older brother – which is to say, it's hard and not very good.

The original Metal Gear involved 8-bit stealth, non-linear progression, and layers of confusion. If one didn't have an FAQ or an old Nintendo Power laying in front of them, it could be difficult to deduce where you were supposed to go. Snake's Revenge eases a bit on the confusion. As you progress, there are several different paths to take and different areas are opened up once you acquire certain items and key cards, just like the original. As a whole, though, the map layouts and objectives don't feel nearly as overwhelming or daunting as the original. What is frustrating are how powerful and numerous the guards are in this game, particularly with their awe-inspiring line of sight. They can't see behind them or to their side, but if you are barely in front of them at all – even if you're on the other side of the screen – they see you and they'll alert more guards. Worse still, the guards will chase you from screen to screen, so unlike the original Metal Gear, you're no longer safe if you try to run away. Unless you knife their backs on the sly, every encounter you have with the guards will lose you points off of your life bar (don't rejoice about a life bar – it really doesn't matter). The guards are everywhere too, which makes progression a very slow and annoying process; you will die a lot en route to accomplishing your objectives, thanks to the guards' uncanny ability to hit you wherever you move.

Metal Gear and Snake's Revenge are both unnaturally difficult, but in different ways. Obtuse progression and poor design limit Metal Gear, while the enemies' superhuman strength dominates Snake's Revenge. Better to skip ahead to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake to play what is essentially a 2D Metal Gear Solid and the first Metal Gear game that somewhat captures Kojima's tripped-out vision of war and humanity.

C

#582 - Snake Rattle 'n Roll

                                         These snakes have herped their last derp.

                                                          Now I've seen it all.


PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous

PUBLISHER: Nintendo

DEVELOPER: Rare

GENRE: Arcade

RELEASE DATE: July 1990

Kudos to Rare for making a bat-guano crazy Marble Madness sequel that skimps on the marbles in favor of cartoon snakes. You play as Rattle (and Roll, if you bring a friend along), a Snake Head who must re-construct his body in each level. Swallow as many red, blue, and yellow balls as you can to make Rattle a fully functioning snake. Once the tip of Rattle's tail starts to flicker, you can jump on the scale at the end of the level to open the exit door. The levels have an isometric 3/4 view like Marble Madness, so perish any thoughts of this being a left-to-right platforming affair. Rattle can't jump very high even when he is fully reformed, so you'll have to figure out a path to the exit while not falling off of high cliffs or puncturing your soft underbelly. If (when) you use up all your lives, you can continue right at the very point where you died. This sounds gracious of Rare, but Snake, Rattle and Roll gets challenging by the fourth and fifth levels, then bonkers hard to varying degrees for the last five. Rampaging toilet seats, hairy disembodied feet, and snake dozers are some of the main enemies. You can destroy these creatures with your tongue, but if you get hit by anything, you lose one of the pieces of your ball-tastic body. It only takes losing one ball to get your tail to stop flickering, so if you get hit by an enemy guarding the exit, you'll have to make your way back to the middle to get more balls. Oh, the white hot rage! Despite the stupendous difficulty for the latter half, Snake, Rattle and Roll excels with its bizarre, charming atmosphere. Nowhere else on the NES can you make disembodied feet explode by licking them.

B

#581 - Smash T.V.

                         Go on, readers, you can make fun of this cover by yourselves.

I didn't realize all of Smash T.V.'s enemies are Communistas, and probably, robots at that.


PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous

PUBLISHER: Acclaim

DEVELOPER: Beam Entertainment

GENRE: Arcade

RELEASE DATE: September 1991

Violent game shows: the scourge of civilization in 1999! Fight for your freedom and fat stacks of glorious cash in Smash T.V., the game "heavily inspired by" the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, "The Running Man." There are four arenas, with multiple stages in each arena. Each stage is filled with weapon upgrades, an overabundance of enemies, and gold bars, precious gold bars. Fend off the hordes, grab the cash, and don't die. Smash T.V. was known in the arcade for its insane boss battles, and understandably if not regrettably, they have been scaled down to fit the limitations of the NES. To its credit, though, Smash T.V. bears perhaps the most unique control scheme on the system. Play with one-player, and you have the option to use one controller or two. If you pick two controllers, the first controller will use the D-pad to move, while the D-pad on the second controller will allow you to fire and switch between weapons; if you have two players, you can use an NES Four-Score. It's a clever concept that mimics the dual-joysticks in the arcade, but it does come with a learning curve; master it and there will be no televisions you can't smash. Despite the worthless graphics, minor censorship, and sub-par predictions of the future (1999 was the year that Boy Bands and Rap/Rock Roamed the Earth), Smash T.V. translates well to the NES. Total Carnage. I like it.

B