Besides being one of the most obscure (and rare) games on the Super Nintendo, Syndicate has to be one of the most improbable of releases as well. I mean, how in the world did Bullfrog manage to get a classic PC cbyerpunk strategy game that involves mass-murdering cyborg junkies onto a Nintendo console? Had the Big N already relaxed their strict limits on adult content by the end of the SNES's life cycle? Did they overlook this game because they were more focused on the launch of the N64? Did they even know they greenlit it?

The game opens up with one of the world's grainiest cutscenes. Later on you'll experience more of them after completing or failing a mission. All in all, they're so bad that you have to wonder why Bullfrog even bothered. I'm sure they were super impressive when originally released on a CD-ROM, but after being squeezed and compressed onto a tiny cartridge, the results are no doubt laughable in comparison. And each one is so short and without any sort of context that they serve no real point anyway. So... who knows why they wasted the time trying to cram these things in.

Next up, you are sent to the main menu where you're confronted by a number of nebulous icons and menus you'll need to understand and manage. It's at about this point that most casual players are gonna immediately throw their hands up and move onto something else. Something that's a little more familiar and just a little bit less confusing. Something like a Donkey Kong Country. Anyone who has the fortitude to stick with it is just gonna have to learn how things work through good old fashioned trial and error. Well, that or they can read an online guide like I did.

From that main menu you can see a world map where all of the land is separated into 50 different areas, each representing various countries and regions. Everywhere from Alaska to Madagascar. At any given moment, one (or more) of these areas will be flashing, indicating a possible mission that can be undertaken. Each one of these has super flavorful text descriptions (i.e. rescue a kidnapped judge's son from extremists), and upon completion will award you one new liberated area to be added to your "territory." New incoming cash flow included.
At this point you can feel free to jump in head first and start kicking ass and taking names.

...or...

Instead, you can head over to your squad and gear management menus, and make your job just a tad easier. You see, when I said Syndicate is a strategy game, what I really meant is that it's a tactical game. A squad tactics game, to be specific. Each mission is gonna give you access to a team of four "agents" who are gonna be loaded down with all sorts of heavy weaponry, and you need to make sure that they can not only lay waste to everything that moves, but you need to make sure they can take a rocket or five to the face as well and still come home alive.

One thing you can do is give your agents new gear. Except of course that you don't have access to anything at the game's start. So you need to acquire it. Which brings another menu into play: your technology research management. As you complete missions, you earn cash (or maybe it was credits). That cash is used to buy gear and upgrade abilities, but also to unlock the gear and abilities in the first place. So you'll need to pump cash into various weapons and techs in order to unlock them for usage, and to unlock the ability to research more advanced weapons and techs. It's very ambitious for a Super Nintendo game, and exactly the sort of thing that helps give a game depth.

Besides the various weapons (everything from gauss rifles to miniguns), you can also upgrade the actual body parts of your agents. Torsos give you enhanced durability, eyes give you accuracy, legs give you speed, etc. Each of those have multiple tiers of effectiveness as well. Which brings me to another point: permanent death. Your supply of agents is basically unlimited, but you are investing lots of cash into them, so it's in your best interest to keep them alive.

Finally, when you are ready to tackle the actual mission, you are greeted with another rarity on the system: load times. This is one of the few games on the system with honest-to-god load times. Long ones at that.

Missions take one of several different forms: hunt down a target, capture a target (you do this with some sort of brainwashing gun), pick up some sort of item, and several different variations of each of those.

Agents can either be controlled as a group, or individually. 99% of the time you'll control the entire group. Typically you will need to head across the map, keeping an eye on your radar to know which direction your current target is, while blasting the holy shit out of any and all enemies that get anywhere near you. Ammo isn't usually a concern so you're almost always better off shooting first and asking questions later.

You also have access to three different stimulants that your agents can start taking in order to increase their performance. Though really, you're almost always better off just using all three at once, as often as possible. And no, I'm not joking about any of that. This is the one Nintendo game you'll ever play that encourages rampant drug use in order to fuel your murderous rampages.

Oh, and did I mention that some of the missions' goals are to wipe out as many civilians as possible? Gunning them down in the streets? Most likely with shotguns and/or uzis? You cannot make this shit up.

Anyway, after murdering all of the enemy agents/robots/nearby civilians, you'll usually need to make a beeline back to an exit point in order to complete the mission. Sometimes you'll need to make the getaway in a vehicle of sorts. You can also attempt a "driveby" in said vehicle if you really want to complete the mission in style. Again, I'm not making any of this up.

Now if all of that sounds super complicated, know that it really isn't. At least, not once you get into a groove. A typical gameplay loop might only take 5-10 minutes, and encompasses all of the following:

• Ensure you have ongoing research.
• Replace any agents that may have died in the last mission.
• Load down agents with weaponry if necessary.
• Check to see if you have acquired or can afford any body enhancements.
• Head out for a short mission.
• Repeat.

After fifty iterations through this loop, you've beaten it. Roll credits.

So what did I think of Syndicate overall? Well, I'd be lying if I said I had anything other than a blast. It's a super repetitive game for sure, and there's some really annoying issues with bad pathfinding, dumb AI, and a number of different glitches that I ran into. And yeah, the controls and mechanics can be hella confusing at first, and some of the missions' completion parameters are super obtuse. And sure, the perspective is super awkward at times, hiding enemies or pathways behind (or even inside) buildings, forcing you to rely on the tiny little crappy map/radar in order to tell where you are and where you need to go.

But none of that really mattered. I played the hell out of it and beat all fifty missions in just a few play sessions. Yes, it's a rough experience, and no it is not for everyone. But I had never played anything like it, and I'm super grateful that it somehow found its way onto a Nintendo console.

Did I beat it?
I did. It took awhile, but I had a good time throughout.

Hmm… now what direction do I take this write-up? There's a couple different possibilities dancing through my head...

Do I talk about the film it’s based on? One that was mostly known for being the directorial debut of one David Fincher. People seem to hate it. I always felt like it was pretty underappreciated. I mean, it’s no Aliens (few movies are), but I thought it took the story in an interesting direction that thematically made a lot of sense. Yeah, it is soul-crushingly bleak. Maybe one of the most feel-bad sequels in cinematic history. But this is a bleak-ass franchise. Hope never belonged here in the first place.

Or do I talk about how the game has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with the movie? Kinda like every other movie adaptation on the Super Nintendo. I mean, I get it. How could you possibly adapt a movie where some unarmed prisoners spend 60 minutes running away from a murderous alien leopard, while trying to get it trapped inside some doors? If you stayed faithful to the source material, you’d end up with one hell of a frustrating (and repetitive) survival horror game, and I don’t think LJN is the sort of company to pull something like that off successfully.

Speaking of which, I guess I could talk about LJN, and how I’ve already written about a dozen of their games. And how the overwhelming majority of them have been crap. I know it’s easy to bash them, especially in light of the continued onslaught on them by the Angry Video Game Nerd. And I also know that some people like to push back on that movement, and try to champion LJN as some sort of misunderstood label. Well, I feel that the truth (like usual) is somewhere in between. They are a publisher of bad games. There just happens to be a handful of exceptions. This is obviously one of those exceptions.

Or maybe I could talk about how repetitive this game is. Seriously, play through the first mission. Go ahead, take a break from reading this, and pop in the cart or boot up the emulator. It will probably take about 45-60 minutes to complete, during which you will get a really good feel for the game. You’ll probably be super frustrated to start, as the endlessly spawning enemies continuously jump at your face, forcing you to waste valuable ammunition. But once you get into a groove, figure out how to manage your health and ammo, and start completing objectives, you’ll see just how surprisingly easy this game is.

You’ll also start to understand how the game requires you to do the same few things over and over and over again. Backtracking over the same areas dozens of times. And if you do manage to reach levels two and three, you’ll be disappointed to find out that it’s just more of the same. Really, the only thing that changes throughout the entire game is the occasional addition of deadlier alien types. And let me remind everyone that this is an adaptation of a movie where a single alien is responsible for all of the carnage… but I digress.

Anyway, I guess the review sort of wrote itself there. I mused about things I could write about, and ended up writing about them. There’s gonna be a lot of that in these next fifty games. Me opening up a google doc, pondering for a moment about what I think of each game, and then just doing a brain dump, spur of the moment. We’ll see how it goes.

So yeah, Alien 3 is a good game. Especially for LJN. It could have been a lot better, and I doubt most people will have the fortitude to see it through to the end, but just playing through a mission or two is something I recommend.

Did I beat it?
No. I'm through four of the missions but I haven't gotten around to finishing the game yet.

Okay, first off we obviously have to talk about that box art. That gloriously ‘90s, completely-out-of-touch-with-reality, straight-from-corporate, cheesy, wonderful box art.

What do you think those two guys are doing nowadays? What do you think the story behind them was? Were they models who were selected because they had nice headshots? Were they the kids of some random employees in Jaleco’s office?

Do you think either one of them ever got recognized on the street?

Fan: “Dude, you’re that guy!”

Cover model: “That guy?”

Fan: “That guy from the...thing!”

Model: “Oh. Yeah, I was in several different ad campaigns for Calvin Kl-"

Fan: “No, fucking, from that game... the...Final Fight game. Fuck, what was it? With the stupid teenage assholes on the cover. The ones that looked like two rejects from a Breakin’ sequel. You’re that guy! The... non-ethnic one!”

Model: “Oh God, not again. Umm, no, that was not me. It was some… someone else. I don’t even know what a Rival Turf is or anyth-”

Fan: “RIVAL TURF! THAT’S IT. Hahah. Hey, did they end up letting you keep that stupid coat? Wait, was that your coat? Do you still own that thing? Hold on, I gotta call my friend Chip. We used to play that shit all the time, he’s totally gonna love this.

Model: “I really have somewhere I need to be and-”

Fan: “WAIT, can you hold still and let me take your picture, real fast? Chip would love it. OH. Can you make that same face? The one where you’re all like “I’m a bad boy”, but then no one would ever believe that because your hair is all feathered and you-”

Model: “Okay, so I really have to leave. My wife and kids are waiting for me at the Sizzler and-

Fan: *on the phone* “Chip! Dude, you ARE NOT gonna believe who I ran into. No, better. No, even better.”

Model: *takes off running*

So… yeah. That’s Rival Turf. It’s a beat ‘em up or something.

Did I it?
Yes, many times.

I’ll be upfront about something: of all the games I have ranked in the top 250, B.O.B. might be the one I have made the least amount of progress in. And it’s not from a lack of trying. Either this game is hard as balls, or I’m just really, really bad at it. Probably both.

A friend of mine gave me this game back around 2008 or so, and in the 12 years I’ve owned it, I’ve started the game over from scratch at least a dozen times. And yet, I never seem to be able to get past the third or fourth batch of levels. What’s more, I’m pretty sure my play actually gets worse every time I sit down with it. I’m actively getting further and further away from completing it every time I play it.

Mostly because when you run out of lives, you go all the way back to the beginning of your current area. That isn’t an uncommon design in old school video games, but for me it’s always been the sort of thing that absolutely murders my will to keep playing a game, usually leaving me too dejected to press on. And it’s a real shame, because I really like this game. I like the character, I like the combat, I like the controls, I like the arsenal of weapons you have access to. It’s a fun game! It’s just such a giant pain in the ass to attempt to actually try and play through.

Of course I always come back after I’ve had some time away from it, rejuvenated and ready to try again. But the resulting defeat and dejection is always an inevitability.

And I wonder why that is. This is certainly not one of the hardest games on the Super Nintendo. Not even close. And I have beat many of the hardest games. Battlemaniacs? Defeated. Super Ghouls n Ghosts? Defeated. Time-consuming stuff like Uncharted Waters and Space Football? Defeated. But something about the design here just seems to run contrary to my playstyle. Maybe it’s meant to be played slowly and methodically. A thinking man’s shooter, as it were. Maybe I’m overlooking some key mechanic. Whatever the case, it always gets the best of me.

I should also mention that I have seen several people compare B.O.B. to the landmark shooter, Doom.

I don’t see it.

But others do. And that should excite anyone, because Doom is great. Timeless, really. And any game that can conjure thoughts of 2D sidescrolling Doom is a winner. Or at least, that’s what they tell me. Again, I don’t see it, but I wouldn’t put it past me to have blind spots.

Did I beat it?
Nope. Probably never will either.

Every time I write one of these Koei reviews, I imagine one of the subject matter experts ready to just completely eviscerate me.

“Slow combat? You didn’t have the settings right!”

“Impossible to win with the Japanese? Well your strategy is completely wrong!”

“Mechanics are poorly-explained and don’t work? Well that’s your fault for being an idiot!”

And to be fair, though I have played through many of them (and sunk dozens of hours into the rest), these are the sort of games where you can play for a hundred hours and still be learning new things. So, if you are one of those few rare souls that are really into Koei, have mercy on me. I beg of you.

Genghis Khan II, sequel to some game that came out on the NES (and probably a bunch of Japanese computers), is Mongolian Nobunaga’s Ambition. Or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Like with almost every Koei game, this one gives you several different campaigns or scenarios to choose from. After picking one, you decide which faction you want to control, and the game begins.

Turns are separated into several different…

Actually, you know what? I’m not gonna go into the heavy details here. I’m just gonna lay out some of the foremost thoughts that popped into my brain and were jotted down in my notebook after sitting with the game every night for a week.

• Combat is reminiscent of the Heroes of Might and Magic series for PC. Armies engage one another, which takes you to a battle screen where you position your units across a hexagonal grid, trying to maneuver the enemy into choke points.
• As much as I am a diehard fan of HoM&M, I am not a huge fan of the combat here. It’s extremely clunky, extremely slow, very prone to luck, and strategy seems to mostly boil down to having overwhelming superiority in numbers. And I hate the “daze” mechanic.
• Pacing issues. Koei games are no stranger to this problem, but I still have to call it out. Combat in particular takes way too long, especially if you enable viewing CPU vs CPU battles (I 100% recommend turning those off). It’s not as bad as Operation Europe (nothing is), but it’s still among the most patience-testing games in the SNES Koei library.
• There is a unique mechanic here that deals with “family.” What does that mean? Mostly, that you want your generals to be those men who are either your own direct children, or the men who are connected to you via marriage.
• There are a lot of different unit types to choose from. I’m talking swordsmen, spearmen, horsemen, horsemen with spears… hell, there’s even cannons, elephant troops, and samurai (if you’re the Japanese).
• The game seems to love to screw you over with random bad luck to begin a scenario. I started one of the campaigns about five or six times, and I lost the game in turn one in at least half of them. Though that is nothing unusual for these “Eastern” Koei titles.

So if you’re into Koei stuff, you could do worse, but you could do better. It’s about middle-of-the-pack in that regard. And if you are into Nobunaga’s Ambition, you should definitely check this out. I think that series is superior to this game, but they’re all still very enjoyable titles.

Did I beat it?
I have not. Bastards just never want to leave me alone long enough to build up an unstoppable force.

If there are two constants I have seen in the retro gaming scene, it is... this. It is... “these?” Uh, neither of those sound right.

If there are two constants I have seen in the retro gaming scene it is these two things? Should I say “two” twice in the same sentence?...

*spends ten minutes saying every variation of this I can think of out loud*

Oh God, I give up. It’s very late right now, and everything I’m saying sounds very unnatural. I mean, more so than it usually does. Save me editor(s)!

[Nah. This is pretty entertaining actually. - editor]

You know, one thing this project has taught me, is that writing is really hard. Like super, super fucking hard.

I’ll admit it, I went to a liberal arts school. Granted, I mostly took classes in stuff like computer science and project management and all that crap, but I still had a fair share of writing and literature courses. And I did pretty well in them for the most part.

I was also pretty pleased with the work I did in them. I could come up with interesting things to say, and I could say it in coherent ways. As and Bs weren’t too hard to come by.

And now I’m thinking that those good grades had more to do with the bar being very low, as opposed to any sort of talent on my behalf. Because anytime I go back and read anything I have written, I hate it. I always hate it. I could go and read the review for Super RBI Baseball, right now, and I guarantee I’d find it embarrassingly amateurish and borderline incoherent. And I have had an entire rotating team of guys helping me make this shit readable for the last three years. That’s pathetic! It’s almost enough to make me want to quit entirely!

But then I have to remind myself that what I just said is true. Writing is really, really hard. Coming up with interesting things to say is hard. Trying to be funny is EXTREMELY hard, because if you fail, it backfires on you majorly. And I try to be funny all the damn time.

So I guess what I’m saying is, for the people who have actually managed to read nearly 500 of these damn things, thanks for making it this far. And a big thank you to Alan, James, Tony, and the professor, for helping me make this something I could maybe someday actually be proud of. The jury is still out on that one, but I’m gonna do my damned best to help it happen.

I also promise that I will eventually go back and try to polish up every single review when I get a chance. I want this site to be around for many more years, and I want total strangers in 2030 to stumble across it and get completely sucked in. And the better the writing is, the more likely it is that that will happen.





Oh, right. Prince of Persia 2. Yeah, something about how everyone likes this series, but hates this port. Seemed fine to me.

Did I beat it?
I did. It was one of the hardest completions in the library, but I did it.

Here it is, the final golf game for the Super Nintendo. Well, final conventional golf game anyway.

Which is kinda funny, because I don’t feel like #244 is an especially lofty position. I mean, it’s not bad. I certainly like playing every game in this range - each and every one of them is fun, and I would be happy to bust them out in the future for a playthrough or two. But it’s also not exactly an elite tier or anything. I guess part of the reason for that is that the SNES library is very top-heavy, and the competition for the highest spots is going to only get harder from here.

Still, not a single one in the top 200? Most other sports will have a representative. I figure the reason is, even though I think golf is a natural fit for the video game medium, none of the golf games on the Super Nintendo really knocked it out of the park. None of them did what the Hot Shots Golf franchise would do a few years later. None of them captured people’s hearts like the Tiger Woods series, or any of the Mario Golf games. None of them provided an experience that would ever be called “must play” like those games did.

Now, of course a lot of that shouldn’t be in consideration here. After all, I’ve repeatedly harped on how I’m only comparing the games in the Super Nintendo library against other Super Nintendo games. So it shouldn’t matter what Mario Golf has done.

Anyway, here’s a quick list of what the game has to offer:

• Limited features (skins, match, stroke, tournament).
• Just one single course to play on. That’s not uncommon for SNES golf games, but it would still be nice to have more.
• You get to select from four preset golfers, all with their own strengths and weaknesses.
• The camera switches to an overhead view when you hit the ball, similar to the perspective in Hal's Hole in One.
• It plays very fast, which lets you speed through a round quickly. The polar opposite of the True Golf series.
• It offers complete control over how you hit the ball.
• Reading the greens for putting takes a bit of getting used to, but it's pretty easy once you do.
• I love the interface.

Really, I have no major complaints. Yeah it could have been better, but I still think it’s the best traditional golf game on the system, with the only other game that really gave it a run for its money being the original PGA Tour Golf. In the end, I ended up giving The Skins Game the slight edge.

Did I beat it?
I have not. It is tough.

A couple years back I took part in a year-long NES tournament. How it worked was, every week you’d have to play a different game, starting on Sunday, and ending just over a week later. The rulesets would depend on the game, but generally fell into one of three categories:

• High Score
• Fastest time
• Furthest progression

So one week you’d have to see who could no-death Contra, another you’d see who could defeat the computer in Tecmo Super Bowl by the highest score, and so on.

It was a great time, but very taxing. For every Contra or Tecmo Super Bowl, there were 2-3 games selected that no one in their right mind would want to play. But play them you would, for hours and hours, week upon week. At least, you did if you wanted to place anywhere near the top. And for people like me who didn’t grow up with an NES, all of the games were completely alien. Uncharted terrain. So I had to grind them out.

Well, at season’s end, the top players took part in a playoff system. Three rounds, with the worst performers being eliminated each week. That culminated in the championship round where we needed to play one of the most feared games in the NES library: Adventure Island.

Now, if you are unfamiliar with Adventure Island, picture a relatively straightforward, tropical-themed platformer. You control some loinclothed doofus, who has to run left to right, throw projectiles at bats and shellfish, and jump over lots and lots of pits, boulders, and fireballs. Nothing too unusual in that regard.

The rub lies in the fiendishly difficult way the game likes to mess with you. Since every level has you on a timer, you need to be constantly on the move. Since you are constantly on the move, you need to start memorizing everything that is coming your way.

However…

The game knows that you need to know this, so it repeats the same patterns over and over again. But it also subtly changes them up, so that one section may have two enemies, then a flying fish, then a dropping platform, and then a boulder. Then the next samey-looking section has two enemies, then a flying fish, then TWO dropping platforms. Which most likely results in you dropping to your death.

Here is where the madness of that championship week truly became apparent…

It was a one-life competition. So every time you screwed up, you had to reset and start from scratch.

I don’t know how many attempts I put in that week, but it must have been in the hundreds. Hours upon hours, every single night. My wife and I only had one child at the time, so I was forced to try and find any small opportunity I could to sit in front of the toaster and get a few attempts in. That toaster probably stayed on for seven straight days.

And honestly, it slowly drove me mad. I got so tired of making progress, getting frustrated, regressing, and then starting the whole cycle over again, that I resorted to two things I will only do as a last resort:

First, following a longplay. And I don’t mean just watching it. I mean watching it in short bursts so that I could reproduce what I saw in the most granular way possible.

And second - after watching YouTube became too inefficient with my time - I resorted to making a cheat sheet that I could reference in every level so that I could see at a glance what was coming my way.

So a typical note would read something like:
"Frog, frog, fire, jump, boulder, frog, fish, jump, drop, drop."

When it was all said and done I ended up taking second place, barely missing out on the crown thanks to a fatigue-related mistake that will haunt me forever.

But more importantly, the experience kind of soured me towards the Adventure Island formula. The controls, the mechanics, the “challenge”... all of it stirs resentment in me.

Enter Super Adventure Island. It’s really just more of the same, but Super Nintendo-ified. By that I mean it looks a little bit better. But that doesn’t mean it’s any better of a game. Hell, if anything it’s actually a step or three backwards, as the levels don’t quite feel as fiendishly nuanced with the fresh hells they spit at it. In fact, difficulty-wise, compared to the original game, this one is a walk in the park.

So the question is, is an Adventure Island without the devious challenge a good thing or a bad thing?

I’m still not sure of the answer.

Did I beat it?
Yeah, several times.

Playing these old football games really takes me back to grade school. I’m sure they do that for a lot of people. Chugging Mountain Dews, eating endless amounts of candy, and waging eternal war with the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers. Which then inevitably led to brawling, wrestling, hurt feelings, and possibly crying. And you usually lost because the other guy was older than you, bigger than you, and stronger than you. Or was that just me?

Anyway, that was the story of my life with basically every football game under the sun. All of the Maddens, all of the Tecmo Super Bowls, all of the Joe Montana Footballs, and even regular ol’ Tecmo Bowl. It even happened with rentals of horrid games like Troy Aikman Football and Emmitt Smith Football. Football was life, and football games were… well, also life.

Except for the Quarterback Club games. Now, I have no idea why, but me and my cadre of friends refused to have anything to do with them. Why would we waste our time playing that crap when we had Madden and Tecmo Bowl?

Of course, what sort of sense does it make to shun QBC and still play Troy Aikman Football, right? This is why kids are idiots: they do things that make no sense, and are absolutely sure of themselves while doing it.

Eventually we found out that a classmate of ours owned one of the QBC games (I forget which one), and from that point forward he would desperately try to inject himself into our football game conversations. We wouldn’t have it, and ridiculed him to no end. Probably creating all sorts of neuroses in the process, most of which probably live with him to this day. Kids are also cruel.

Flash forward a couple decades, and I’m this guy who is playing and collecting all of the Super Nintendo games released in America. And when I get to the QBC duo, I find out that they are actually kinda, sorta fun. Like, some of the better football games on the system. In fact, I find myself preferring them over the Madden games…

Just barely though. And I have to wonder if the millions of games I put into Madden didn’t kind of deaden me to them. Like, maybe I learned their patterns too well, which lets me exploit their AI to such a lethal degree that I’ve cheapened their challenge. Or maybe I’ve just grown bored of them. Whereas QBC still presents a challenge for me.

So, are these better games than the Madden series? It’s a tossup. They’re definitely better than the earlier entries, and they’re right on par with the latter ones. The challenge is also a lot more pronounced than it was in Madden 95, 97, or 98, while also feeling a lot more organic than the merciless Madden 96.

I guess it could go either way. Right now I’m a tad higher on QBC. In a few years I might change my mind and rearrange them. It’s that close.

Did I beat QBC?
No.
Did I beat QBC96?
No.

I'm assuming most of the people that find their way to this website are familiar with the Ys franchise. Maybe that's a foolish assumption, but I feel like anyone who has enough interest in old games to read about some stranger's thoughts on Whizz has already had an Ys game pass through their hands. For the one or two of you that haven't heard of them, here's a quick history lesson... that I'm completely making up on the spot.

The Ys series got its start on the... MSX, maybe? Some old Japanese favorite anyway. That first game was an overhead action RPG, where you led the red-haired Adel and his best friend Dogi on a long quest to defeat something or other and save the day. And the follow-up Ys II was another overhead action RPG, except this time it put you in the shoes of some lady. A lady who must travel across the land and defeat something or other and save the day. Notable gameplay elements include the stubby little butterknife sword you’re forced to use (which you don’t even so much as swing in the first two games - you just “run” into people with it), and the elemental rings that enable you to cast magic. Kill dudes, gain levels, use magic, equip gear, all the usual stuff. Since people loved these games, the franchise has lived on ever since, seeing nearly a dozen different sequels and spinoffs in the ensuing decades, even to this day.

The black sheep of the franchise is the 2D sidescroller action RPG, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. The developers (Falcom), I guess, wanted to change things up, and give the game more of a platformer vibe. Or maybe they thought Nintendo kids were more comfortable with sidescrollers. Who knows. Judging by opinions held across the internet, most people were not down with this move, which is why the third game is commonly thought of as one of the worst games in the series. Falcom certainly never came back to this style.

Anyone who knows me knows that I like the Ys series, but that I don't love it. Never have, probably never will. I've played through six of the different games (including the reboot of III), and I've always had a good time with them, but I would never count any of those experiences as among the best I've ever had for their respective platforms. They're just... good. And my sentiments on III are no different. It's a fun game that provides simple pleasures, but not much more. And it certainly ain't among the best of this type of game on the Super Nintendo. Not by a long shot.

Now, I can also admit that the game probably never got a completely fair shake from me. After all, I got the cart when I was young, not long after my playthroughs of games such as Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, and A Link to the Past. No game would ever be able to follow in the footsteps of those three and come out smelling like roses. So you could say I was just a tad underwhelmed for perfectly justifiable reasons. But I did play through it, and I've played through it a number of times since. And it's always been an enjoyable ride. Just not an amazing one.

Did I beat it?
Many times throughout the years.

Imperium is one of those games that I want to like so much better than I actually do. Seriously, I’ve tried so hard to love it. I’ve given it so many hours, and so many attempted playthroughs. And it just never seems to want to requite that love.

On the surface, this game would appear to combine two things I love: shmups where you pilot a giant mecha thing across the sky (à la Musha and Robo Aleste), and fighting gigantic shrimps and Voltrons (à la Darius and... uh, Voltron). Good and gooder, right?

The problem is, nothing about the game’s balancing seems “right” to me. For example, the upgrade system, where weapons are powered-up by gaining experience (earned by destroying enemies), and by collecting the powerups that float across the screen, is totally FUBAR as far as I can tell. You need to string the upgrades together for it to be effective, but every time you’re damaged you move back down a level. It turns into this extremely frustrating game of tug-of-war. It’s a game I always seem to lose. Which, in the later levels, is basically a death sentence. It’s the Gradius effect at its finest. Except, this game doesn’t really seem balanced to let you avoid taking hits. So maybe I should say it’s the Gradius effect at its worst.

The second problem is the REST of the game’s balancing. Or the lack of balancing. Everything just feels off. The bosses’ difficulties are all over the map, the levels are generally too long, most of the basic mooks take too many shots to destroy, and on and on. It’s almost as if the entire game was designed around a playthrough where a player can get through without taking a single hit. Again, like Gradius. The problem with that is, Gradius has razor-tight balancing. Anytime you fuck up, it’s your fault. That never really feels like it’s the case here.

Complaining aside though, I really do dig the game. It is legitimately fun to play. I love the graphics, I love the controls, I love the “idea” of the experience system. Even if the execution is lacking. And, like I said, I’m a sucker for fighting crustaceans. It may not be an exceedingly original game, and none of the levels really stand out in any way (they usually don’t in vertical shmups), but it does enough right to be enjoyable.

So, above average shooter. Too flawed to really ever threaten the top titles, but fun enough to warrant checking out. And if you’re a more apt gamer than me (which is probably a given), all the better. It’s an exceedingly difficult game that is meant to be played by exceedingly skilled individuals. Anyone who thinks they fit the part should give it a shot.

Did I beat it?
Nope. It's a safe bet that I will never beat this game.

Joe & Mac 2, the final installment of the Joe & Mac trilogy (wut?), will be the first J&M game that I write about. And since all three of the games appeared on the Super Nintendo, that very clearly means I think this is the weakest entry in the series.

And I am wracking my brain trying to come up with reasons as to why that is.

I mean, I’ll be covering the reasons why I enjoy both of the other two games soon enough (hint, nostalgia may play a role), but my feelings for this guy seem a lot harder to verbalize for some reason.

Is it because J&M2 offers the least memorable set of levels, bosses, and challenges in the entire trilogy? Yeah, that may be a part of it. The levels here aren’t particularly memorable, even though they are far longer than those found in Congo’s Caper.

Is it because J&M2 doesn’t stray far from the beats established in the other two games? You still move across various jungle, lava, and ice worlds, beating up on all of the local tribesmen and wildlife that are desperate to defend their homes. And you still need to jump across millions of bottomless chasms, raging columns of fire, and annoying spouts of water. And of course you will still face large prehistoric bosses at the end of every…

...

The bosses…

Right. THAT is why I’m calling this the lesser game of the J&M trilogy. The goddamn bosses. Those bastards are by far the cheapest mofos in this whole franchise (and I mean by a LARGE margin), and their stupid fights are what single-handedly drag the game down.

Ugh, two of them in particular. I’m wincing just thinking about it. There’s the triceratops in the middle of the end-game boss rush, and then there’s the penultimate guy (who you have to fight on several different occasions). Which is funny because the end boss himself is actually something of a pushover. Or at least he is after you learn his pattern.

Anyway, I don’t know where I was going with this, but it doesn’t matter. If you like Joe & Mac or Congo’s Caper you’ll probably like this game too. All three games in the series have a lot of similarities, and I have pretty similar sentiments for all of them. Really it’s a toss-up as far as which one is the best. But the few boss-related rough patches in this game do just enough to make me want to pull it back a bit. Not enough to make a huge difference in the ranking, but enough to let me know which of the games I prefer.

Did I it?
Yes.

Oh man, here is a review where I definitely don’t know what to say, because I know that I don’t know what I’m talking about. But here goes anyways.

Samurai Shodown, as you probably know, is one of those super long-running SNK fighting franchises that has endured for generations, refusing to die.

How many installments are there in the franchise? I have no idea.

Which installment is this? Also no idea.

How many have I played? Just this one.

What other versions of this title have I played? None of them.

In fact, I have not only never played on one of those ubiquitous red SNK arcade cabs… I’ve never actually played on a Neo Geo MVS or Neo Geo CD home console either. Hell, I’ve never even seen one of them in person.

Now, couple all of that with the fact that I generally avoid fighting games like the plague, and you have a review that I’m barely qualified to write. The only thing giving me a fighting chance here is the reality that I spent hours upon hours playing this port so that I could accurately measure how much fun someone like me can have with it.

And the answer to that is: a surprising amount of fun.

Obviously I don’t especially care for fighters (something I’ve hammered so far into the ground by this point that it’s practically on the other side of the planet by now). But I DO like swinging big weapons around. That’s half the appeal of a game like Golden Axe or Knights of the Round. And something about the weapon-based action of SS is just so satisfying. Call me a man of simple pleasures, but whacking someone in the face with a sword just makes a fighting game that much more enjoyable.

Now, how does this stand up against the arcade version of the same game? Don’t know, don’t care. We know I’m only judging each and every one of these games against other SNES games, in a vacuum (to the best of my abilities). And I know at least one person out there is gonna harp on how this is “not as good as the arcade version actually” (while straightening their glasses). But in the scheme of the SNES library, it’s a pretty damn good fighter, and definitely in the top 250 games.

Did I beat it?
I did. No thanks to that dick of a final boss.

I’m a child of the 80/90s, so I think you can probably tell what sorta kid-oriented franchises spoke to me when I was growing up. Living in America, you couldn’t really escape stuff like Transformers, GI Joe, and later on, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All of that stuff was so ubiquitous across pop culture, that even to this day all three are still carrying on strong. Hell, there’s probably theatrical motion pictures being prepared for them, as we speak...

But kids grow up. As the mid ‘90s rolled along I began losing interest in such “childish” things. My GI Joes started gathering dust around 3rd or 4th grade, and I never even bothered watching the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film (something I took care of years later, regrettably). By the time I was in middle school, budding interests in sports and video games were all it really took to permanently kill off my interest in cartoons and action figures.

So when the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers broke onto the scene in… well, whenever it was, I was already “too mature” to care about that stupid baby crap. I mean, giant rubber monsters? Hammed-up villains? High school scenes straight out of Saved by the Bell? My mind couldn't comprehend how something so silly and dumb could become such a dominant force in children’s entertainment. No one in my core group of friends ever gave it much mind, but I had many peripheral friends who were instantly smitten. I could only shake my head at them.

Decades later, I still have never gotten into the franchise. I never watched the movies, I only ever saw bits and pieces of the show, and I never went out of my way to play any of the games. That of course came to an end when I built up my massive SNES collection, all four Power Rangers games included. So I had no choice but to dive in head-first.

And wouldn't you know it, Bandai can make a darn good video game.

I already wrote aboutBattle Racers Zeo a while ago. It was a Mode 7 Mario Kart knockoff that was surprisingly fun, but had some serious issues that prevented it from being among the system’s better games. Call it a missed opportunity.

Meanwhile, the fighting game, a reskin of a Gundam title, is surprisingly awesome. But I’ll get to that one later.

What we’re gonna be talking about here (in this batch of games) are the beat-em-ups, which both kinda reside in a middle ground between those other two games. Not great, but good. And while they are very similar to one another, there’s just enough difference between the two games that I decided to give them separate write-ups.

The first Mighty Morphin Power Rangers brawler is the inferior of the two. It appears to adapt the very-fine gameplay from Natsume’s very own Ninja Warriors (Again) and attempts to “morph” it into a child’s beat-em-up. I say a child’s, because it is ridiculously easy. So easy that I no-deathed it the first time I put it in my console. No joke.

And that’s a great idea. Ninja Warriors is a great game, and beat-em-ups are a great genre. But they’re usually pretty hard. So why not take a franchise that kids were absolutely nuts for, and give them a game where they can bash in faces without being constantly crushed by merciless bosses and gangs of foes?

Of course it makes for a rather unengaging playthrough for an adult. And there isn’t much variety to the foes, who are mostly just faceless foot soldiers (I don’t know what they’re called within the context of the show). And sure, the controls are very simple.

But I enjoyed it. Both times I played through it. It’s the beat-em-up you can play when you don’t feel like you need to be on top of your game.

Did I beat it?
Yes. This is the easiest brawler I've ever played.

The other day I was thinking about which SNES games seemed like they would be utterly impossible to complete without a guide (or any other form of outside help).

The foremost title that came to mind was The Lord of the Rings Vol. 1. Partially because, I can’t imagine anyone torturing themselves with that one for any longer than they have to. And then after that, I’d say pretty much any of the dungeon crawlers. Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master, Obitus, and so forth. You’d have to be pretty damn dedicated to making your own maps and taking pages of notes if you wanted any chance to succeed with any of those. And finally, I have to include nebulously obtuse adventure titles like King Arthur & the Knights of Justice and Addams Family Values. Good luck with either one of those.

Jurassic Park also came to mind, mainly because of one crippling problem that I’m sure you already know about. After all, odds are good that anyone playing a Super Nintendo has been made to suffer by this game at some point in their lives.

Of course I am talking about the complete lack of saves or passwords of any sort. I don’t know what Ocean was possibly thinking there. Maybe they ran out of time. Maybe they just plain forgot to do it. The mind boggles.

I should also mention that this is another game that tormented me as a child. In fact, I bet this one tormented most of us when we were children. Because this game was everywhere. There was no escaping Jurassic Park-mania back in 1994. Besides offering masterful filmmaking from Steven Spielberg in his prime, it also featured some of the greatest CGI sequences in the history of cinema. No one is likely to forget…

You know what, I’m not gonna bother. You all know what Jurassic Park is. We’ve all seen it a million times. Most of you probably saw it in the theater just like me. So I don’t need to rehash things that we’re already intimately familiar with. Instead, let’s just get straight to it.

Jurassic Park, the game, is an overhead adventure type of deal. And before I make the obvious comparison with The Legend of Zelda, just know that the two games are nothing alike. There’s no gear to acquire, no bosses to defeat, no dungeons to conquer… well, I guess the game does have something similar to dungeons. But it’s not anything like what you’d see in a Zelda game. Any Zelda game. Take a look at the middle pic up above if you need a clue.

The overall goal of the game is for you, as Dr. Grant, to accomplish a list of objectives in order to escape the island of Jurassic Park. These goals include: clearing out a raptor nest, restoring power, turning off a ship’s autopilot, finding a billion raptor eggs, and radioing for help.

To do these things, you are going to go through this exact pattern several dozen times:

• Wander around the island until you find a building to enter.
• Wander around inside the building until you find a keycard.
• Use that keycard to access a different building somewhere else on the island.
• Wander around that building until you find another keycard, operate an important computer terminal, or find a key item.
• Wander around the island until you find another building to enter.

That’s pretty much it. Actually, that’s exactly it.

The game seems ridiculously impossible at first, especially as endlessly spawning velociraptors repeatedly gank you from the nearest foliage. But once you settle into a groove, learn to work the unlimited health and powerups that spawn, and learn what not to do, the game becomes extremely easy. So easy that the raptors on the overworld are the only threat to you. Everything else is a pushover.

And you know what? That’s fine. I don’t need every game to be impossibly tough. And I can handle games that are repetitive. Because if the game is fun, I can work with those things. And Jurassic Park is fun. It’s satisfying to work your way through the game. And it’s satisfying to blow away dinosaurs, and frantically flee from the T-Rex.

But the lack of any sort of save is really just unforgivable. Because this is not a short game. And it’s not a straightforward game. I shouldn’t have to play it while constantly dreading that I’m gonna nudge my console and cause the game to crash, forcing a restart from scratch. And I shouldn’t have to keep my console on for days on end because it’s a ten hour game.

So, if they had just rectified that one grievous oversight, I probably would have put this somewhere in the top 200. Maybe closer to 175. But as it is, I had to hold it back.

Did I beat it?
I did. Had to leave my system on for a couple straight days, but I managed to do it.

I’m gonna do it. I’m throwing the word “Metroidvania” out there again. And it’s gonna do one of two things: perk people’s ears up, or piss them off. So it goes.

Rounding out the Addams Family trilogy for the Super Nintendo, this game, based (loosely) on the original motion picture adaptation of the classic sitcom, is easily the best of the bunch. More closely resembling Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt than Addams Family Values, it’s an open-world platformer that has Metroid elements in the loosest possible sense.

And it was something of a pleasant surprise too. I mean, who knew that a frickin’ Addams Family game from frickin’ Ocean of all people(s), would be any good? Before I played it, I would have bet any amount of money against that being the case.

For whatever reason, this was one of the very last carts I popped into my console back when I was originally going through the library so that I could sort everything out. By that point I had already played through the entirety of Addams Family Values - a game I have very tortured thoughts on - and had already given up (for the first time) on Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt. I didn’t know what to expect from this game, but assumed it would be more of the same: good ideas, hamstrung by questionable execution.

Well, you could color me shocked when I discovered that not only was it a fun game, but it was pure, unadulterated fun. No caveats to that statement. No crippling problems trying to wreck everything. No forcing me to leave my system on for a week straight. I will never forgive you for that AFV!

You play as Gomez, who needs to travel around the Addams estate finding keys, unlocking doors, and defeating bosses. I don’t know why, because it was never explained, and I haven’t seen the movie in nearly thirty years. Not that plot matters in a game like this.

Anyway, this is handled in a nonlinear manner, which means you are free to explore at your own pace, tackling the different areas in the order you choose. Well, sort of. It’s open-ended, but not completely open-ended. Either way, I love games that do that.

For weapons, you generally are left with stones (that you throw), or a fencing saber. Occasionally bosses drop permanent health upgrades. There’s also… yeah, you know what? You get the point. I don’t need to go into a laundry list of gameplay specifics.

I will say that the game is good, but coulda been great. A few nagging issues prevented that from happening.

For one, the controls are kinda slippery, especially if you get the speed boost power-up. It’s nothing that cripples the game, but they could have been tightened up.

Some of the later areas definitely could have been a tad more forgiving, with long areas that go on awhile, with some pretty merciless platforming. Nothing game-breaking, and luckily the game is very forgiving with checkpoints, lives, unlimited continues, and a password save system. But they could have eased up in places.

Overall though, it’s one of the best Ocean games on the system. Not good enough to be in the elite ranks of SNES platformers (we still have a little ways to go to get there), but certainly a good game that people should check out.

Did I beat it?
Yep.

When I was a kid I was a huge Star Wars fan.

That’s what everyone says, right? After all, everyone likes Star Wars. Everyone was super into it at some point in their lives. We all know who Yoda and Han and Leia and Luke and Darth Vader are. We can all imitate Chewbacca’s...uh, howl... thing.

But I’m serious when I say I really, really liked it. Hardcore. I owned and read dozens of the expanded universe novels. I stole the Dark Empire trade from the library (well, I kept it for like two straight years). I went through all of the reference and behind-the-scenes books, inside and out. Hell, I even read the “technology guide” that my dad gave me. And let me tell you, that was just about the driest shit I’ve ever read in my life. Made-up technical specifications for made-up fantasy gear. And I went through the whole thing like four times. That’s how much of a rabid fan I was.

So it’s not hyperbole when I say that Star Wars was king for me in the ‘90s. That’s when my passion was in overdrive. And it’s also when some of the greatest Star Wars video games in history came out. We’re talking Dark Forces. We’re talking Jedi Knight. We’re talking Rogue Squadron. We’re talking TIE Fighter. Every one of those games is perfect in their own way.

The “Super” Star Wars trilogy of video games on the SNES on the other hand… well, let’s just say I have a complicated relationship with the lot of ‘em.

Now, I probably don’t need to tell any of you how these games play. Everyone knows. Everyone has played them. Odds are good you owned one or more of them as a kid. And I think we can probably agree that most people are gonna react to these games in one of two ways:

They think the games are great, because they spent a million hours as a kid learning them inside and out.

Or...

They think the games are way, way, WAY too frustrating.

I kinda fall into both camps. They’re fun games that lather on fan service, and there’s a lot to like here. But the rough edges, which all incrementally add to the experience being a frustrating one, nearly cause each game to come undone.

I’ve probably said it before, but I’ll say it again. I hate when games have legions of endlessly-spawning enemies that dive bomb your head. It is such a bullshit style of gameplay, and I really have to question the design savvy or general awareness of any developers that make games that way. Who finds that sort of thing fun? Does anyone wish that Link or Mario spent 99% of their time fending off birds? Or that they had to constantly replenish their ever-diminishing health with a steady diet of recovery items that are being dropped by each and every bird? Does anyone think Metroid games need 10x as many enemies as they do? Does anyone wish Mega Man forced you to upgrade your health bar by spawn-camping enemies? Every time you die?

No. No one likes any of those things. But we can force ourselves to put up with them.

The next issue is that the controls and hit detection are both shoddy, at best. We’re talking bush-league material. If a Ninja Gaiden or Contra game had come out with controls that were this loose, it would have been laughed off the planet. If a Castlevania game had hit detection that was this inconsistent, it would be considered nigh unplayable.

My third major complaint is that the difficulty curve for all three games is so completely all over the map, that it kinda defies explanation. I maintain my stance that LucasArts either didn’t have a QA department, or if they did, it was some lone guy, and he didn’t know what he was doing.

For example, Super Star Wars has a midgame boss that is basically unbeatable if you don’t defeat him on the first try, and a Death Star aerial battle that (to me) is one of the most torturously difficult levels across the console’s entire library. Neither one of those things is hyperbole.

And then Super Empire Strikes Back starts you off with some of the most difficult levels in the entire trilogy… right off the bat! What were they thinking with those cave levels? And the steam contraption boss on Bespin? Fuck my life, that shit is ridiculous. And then the final platforming sections before you fight Vader at the end? Unless you know exactly what tricks to use, don’t even bother. It’s not worth smashing your controller to pieces.

Then Super Return of the Jedi comes around and trivializes most of its playthrough by giving you super-powered Leia and Wicket characters that destroy everything.

*cough*

I mean… what in the fuck, LucasArts?

None of the developers noticed any of these things? No one ever thought that maybe things should be tightened up? Or that some of the bosses or sections needed a little rebalancing?

That being said. They’re Star Wars games. They look great. They sound great. There’s a metric shit-ton of content to get through. And against all of those odds, they’re pretty fun to play. You'll want to tear your hair out in the process, but it's still worth it.

I also want to address what I feel is an inevitable elephant in the room: some people really love these games. Some of those people will think that these games should have been ranked higher. The same people who probably think I should have put Mortal Kombat II and Maximum Carnage higher.

And that’s fine, we’re all free to have our own opinions. Granted, my opinions come from a place of actually playing/completing all of the games I ended up ranking higher, but no one is right or wrong. It’s all subjective opinions. And in my opinion, the demerits in these three titles hold them back from being anything other than a B- sorta thing. Good, maybe even very good in some ways. But never great.

Did I beat Star Wars?
Yes. It only took one million tries.

Did I beat Empire?
Yes. It only took one million continues.

Did I beat Jedi?
Yes. It only took a few hours.

Okay, let’s get this all out of the way, right now.

I’m not the biggest fan of the original American Tail movie. I don’t know why - I usually adore movies from that era - and Don Bluth did do good work. But something about that film just never did it for me. Not to say that I don’t respect the film. Thirty years later, I can still remember how great the animation was, the songs are still stuck in my head, and I can still quote many lines from the movie. I just don’t care to actually watch it. Perhaps I should make myself revisit it for the first time in a while and see if my sentiments have changed.

On the flipside, the sequel, Fievel Goes West, I only watched once back when it originally came out. I do not remember a single thing about it. No one does. It was the sort of unnecessary continuation that only serves to diminish the legacy of its predecessor, and I hate when studios do that sort of thing. The same executives would bury The Land Before Time in sequels just a few years later, and shortly after that, Bluth Studios was basically no more. Blame the dumb sequels. Well, blame Disney getting their act together and releasing classics like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. But the sequels did not help.

But before Fievel Goes West disappeared to history’s cartoon landfill, Hudson Soft released this uninspired game. How uninspired? It’s a platformer, where you beat up spiders and cats, trounce easy-as-pie bosses, and it can be beaten in 45 minutes. On your first try. It’s like they weren’t even trying.

Or at least you’d think that… because I actually really dig the game. It is unabashedly fun to play, with solid mechanics, great graphics and animation, and never overstays its welcome. Which is more than I can say for about 80% of the platformers in the library.

It also kinda reminds me of the easier Disney Capcom games in that way too. Not that this is anywhere close to being as good as something like DuckTales. But it is comparable to games like Bonkers or The Little Mermaid for NES. A short, painless experience, that gets the fundamentals right, and is perfect for kids. Which is totally alright by me.

Did I beat it?
Many, many times.

Seven movie adaptations in a row? I swear that was not planned. Sometimes these things just sorta have a way of coming together. Or maybe I’m subconsciously doing it. I guess we’ll never know.

Closing out the “Acclaim 90s action movies” trilogy (alongside Judge Dredd and Stargate), is Demolition Man. An adaptation of a ridiculous summer blockbuster starring Sly Stallone and Wesley Snipes, about two dudes who get cryogenically frozen, and then unleashed upon future L.A. It was probably a huge bomb since Stallone’s star was already losing its luster by the time it was released. I, on the other hand, think it’s something of an underrated satire, featuring a great cast (Rob Schneider aside), and some inspired jokes. Then again, anyone who’s been paying attention to these writeups knows I’m super partial to anything starring someone named Stallone or Schwarzenegger, so what do I know?

Anyway, the Super Nintendo game uses the same engine as those other two titles, so it’s the same kinda run-and-gun affair. Though one thing it does do is ditch the horrid vehicle levels that bogged down both of those titles, instead opting to break things up with some True Lies-esque overhead shooting galleries. They’re merely alright in comparison.

Now, while I was pretty tepid on Judge Dredd (partially because its difficulty curve is so damn borked), I’m a pretty big fan of Stargate, and Demolition Man plays very similar to it. Most of the levels have the same sort of labyrinthine feel, that will have you hunting for the exit. But it never gets to the point that you’ll feel frustrated, which is exactly how I feel about Stargate. And the way your character handles is almost exactly the same. They probably used the same Kurt Russell sprite, and just slightly modified it to look like Stallone.

The main drawbacks would probably be a slightly wonky difficulty curve, and a lack of bosses. Which I guess are the same two drawbacks that I feel Stargate suffered from. Funny how similar those games are. Luckily, DM offers unlimited continues, so the uneven challenge isn’t a showstopper or anything. Just a periodic annoyance.

So overall, this is easily the best game based on a Stallone vehicle in the library. And… wait, is it? Judge Dredd, Cliffhanger… shit, are there only three Sly Stallone games on the Super Nintendo? Damn, okay, I guess that wasn’t much of a compliment after all. Still, it is a fun game. Check it out.

Did I beat it?
Yes, several different times.

So this is another one that I have struggled with a little bit. Well, a lot. Because I think I’ve had it as high as #150, and at several points I considered dropping it down around the #300 mark. Super R-Type and I have a complicated relationship it seems.

I am no stranger to the series. Besides putting dozens of hours into this game and R-Type III throughout the years, I’ve also had many late nights with the non-SNES entries. Including owning at least three different versions of the original two games on Switch, XBLA, and PS1. R-Type Final was also one of the very first PS2 games I ever purchased, and also one of the first games I re-purchased when building my collection back up. Even R-Type Command, the odd turn-based strategy/tactical affair on PSP, is a game I totally adore. Really, that just leaves R-Type Delta as the only game that I have limited experience with. I once got to play it for a few minutes at a friend’s house back in the day, but never was able to revisit it. So we’ll say it’s on the bucket list.

So I guess what I'm saying is, overall, I adore the series. III and Final are both fantastic, the first two games have aged very well for how old they are, Command is a total hidden gem, and I’m dying to play some more of Delta.

But Super R-Type is probably the weakest link in the entire franchise (not counting all of the spin-offs I’ve never played). Probably the weakest link by a long shot. And why is that? Blame it on a few questionable design choices, as well as technical issues, which all mar what could have been a great experience.

Now, if you have never played an R-Type game, the formula to the gameplay can be described pretty easily. You see, instead of being something of a twitch shooter, or bullet hell, this series is focused on a much more methodical style of play. Everything moves at a relatively slow pace, but you still have to know what is coming and prepare appropriately. Why?

Well, for one, your ship’s hitbox is rather huge. Maybe the biggest you’ve ever seen in a shmup. The complete opposite of what you would see in a typical bullet hell.

Two, because enemies love to pour in from multiple directions and try to put a squeeze on you. That’s where the “force pods” come into play. These power-ups are both your greatest weapon and your only defense. Acting as a shield (and even as a projectile if need be), they offer great versatility because they can be “attached” to the front or back of your ship. This will not only allow you to fire backwards, but also give you a buffer against enemies constantly taking potshots at your rear.

“But guy, I already know how R-Type works. What the hell is Super R-Type?”

I guess the answer to that question is "I don’t know." It’s definitely some sort of R-Type II, with a few additional levels tacked on, and several crippling issues that I will get to in a moment. And as far the levels go, I don’t remember the exact breakdown, but I believe the new ones are interspersed throughout. They’re also the ones that kinda suck.

Now, what this game is most infamous for is the wicked difficulty curve. Easily the hardest game in the series. And a big reason for that is the lack of mid-level checkpoints. Anyone who knows me, knows that I HATE when games don’t have checkpoints. Of course that isn’t something the series adopted until part three, but it makes all the difference in the world. Playing levels over and over again from the beginning is not fun. Not here, not in any game. And with the already swollen difficulty this series is known for, trying to complete the game inevitably descends into frustration.

The game is also riddled with slowdown. Like, super crippling slowdown. And you know it’s bad when I take issue with it because I have made it clear across many of my writeups that I’m not the harshest judge of technical issues. If anything, I’m the sort of wuss who can actually welcome it when it acts as a crutch against my poor play, allowing me to dodge and weave like a pro. But it crosses the line here, and annoys even me.

Strike three, is the levels themselves. I sorta already mentioned that, didn’t I? Well, I’d argue that R-Type II was already pretty weak in this department, and Super R-Type makes it even worse, with some very uninspired additions. Level design is supposed to be the series’ strength. Not a weakness.

Now, did I enjoy my time with Super R-Type? Yes. Did finally completing it bring a huge sense of closure and satisfaction? Immensely. Am I eager to play it again? Not so much. So I have it here, within the ranks of games I enjoy, but not near the top of the SNES shmup heap.

Is it a better game than BioMetal or Thunder Spirits? That’s probably up to personal preference. Is it better than Raiden Trad or stupid dumb D-Force? Of course it is.

Did I beat it?
Yes, but only because I was hellbent on making it happen.

As I’ve gone through the Super Nintendo library, one thing I have noticed is how much I am increasingly having trouble keeping all of the different baseball and soccer games straight. And it’s just those two sports, for whatever reason. Not basketball, not football, not anything else. Just baseball and soccer.

Now, I should clarify that I was crystal clear with each and every game as I was writing about them, so there was no confusion when it mattered. I made damn sure of that, revisiting games again and again if my memories and impressions started to fade. But for whatever reason, when it comes to these two particular sports I have a really hard time retaining those memories for very long. As of right now, I cannot accurately recall the differences between Hardball III and The Sporting News Baseball, without either going back and reading those write-ups again, or playing the games again. Similarly, I have a very hard time remembering which of the two games between Elite Soccer and Head-On Soccer was the FIFA clone, and which one was the spazzy prequel/sequel to World Soccer Road to Glory. And can you blame me? You try keeping all of that shit straight.

But I never had that problem with Championship Soccer ‘94. I never get it confused with anything else, and I never had a problem recalling it, despite the fact that its name sounds EXACTLY like 4-5 other games on the system.

I don’t have that problem, because this game is great. Well, and because I call it Sensible Soccer in my head.

Now if you have never played any of the games in the Sensible Soccer franchise, then I can bring you up to speed with these three bullet points:

• Fast arcade action.
• Tons of options and configuration.
• Fun ball physics.

And by ball physics, I mean this game lets you put spin on your shots, and it is GREAT. Single-handedly elevates it well over most of the other soccer titles on the system.

As far as gameplay goes, again, arcade-like and very fast. It’s kinda similar to that Mindscape soccer game I covered a long time ago. Uh, which was one that…. World League Soccer? Yeah, that’s the one. The key difference being that game was horrible, and this one is awesome. And this game looks okay whereas that one was the worst-looking game on the system.

Of course I can’t call it the best soccer game on the system. I still have one or two more games to get to. But it was close. And for some people, this will probably be their favorite. You can’t go wrong either way.

Did I beat it?
Nope.

Ask anyone who has played Plok, and the first thing they will mention is the music. Always, without exception.

And for good reason. It’s a great soundtrack, composed by the immortal Tim Follin. In fact, you should stop reading this, and just go listen to it on YouTube right now. It might just be second only to the Donkey Kong Country trilogy as far as platformer OSTs on the Super Nintendo go.

As for the actual game itself, it’s alright. It’s a platformer, with levels where you need to find the exit, levels where you need to kill all of the “things” (in this case, fleas), and fight the occasional boss, with a difficulty curve that will probably have you tearing your hair out at some point. Most likely in those damned underground levels.

There are also some truly bizarre design choices. Like when I could swear using a continue sent me back to a level I had never seen before. Or how the easy mode ends about halfway through the game, which is super annoying, but at least forces you to “git gud” and play on medium. Gotta respect that.

I’m also a sucker for anything sepia-toned, especially if it has old-timey title cards. So of course that means I really dug the levels where you play as Plok’s grandfather - who’s basically just Plok, but with a handlebar mustache. The explanation for these levels is something about some amulet being passed down through your family which is good for keeping a bunch of fleas away from the island or something… I dunno, I couldn’t really follow the storyline. But those were my favorite levels regardless.

One last note: I swear to god the final boss fight resembles a bullet hell shmup. I know that is an overused term nowadays, and no one is ever gonna mistake this game for DoDonPachi, but I swear it triggered the same sort of feeling in me.

So, yeah. It’s a good little package, featuring middling gameplay that just happens to be propped up by an awesome OST in a big way. No one is gonna mistake this thing for a Nintendo-made platformer, but it’s still worth your time.

Did I beat it?
Yes.