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chuckroMinskies - A non-branded version of Kirby’s Avalanche or Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. Pairs of colored critters fall; you need to match them and get chain reactions to screw over your opponent. Arcade-style fun.
Radical Rex - I’m reminded of Bubsy, as this as a Sonic the Hedgehog knockoff 16-bit sidescroller, just with more quirks, worse controls and more demands for perfectionism.
Nightshade – An 8-bit puzzle adventure game with sidescroller/fighting game elements. The city’s hero was killed by criminals, and you’re trying to take his place against the crime boss. Outdated mechanics, lack of useful direction and Nintendo-hard fights against random mooks combine to make this very much not for me.
Spellcasting Collection – A trilogy of classic text-based adventure/puzzle games with a vaguely naughty (think Leisure Suit Larry) bent to them. They were apparently written by the same guy who did the Hitchhiker’s video game, and things like Planetfall, so they guy had a niche. That said, while I enjoyed reading Let’s Plays of those games where someone who knew what they were doing was keeping everything on track, I find the wandering and the ease of irrevocably failing in these sorts of games to not be fun.
Dragonview - This is the sequel to the PC/SNES game Drakkhen, which was an interesting experimental rpg. This keeps the overworld map, but changes pretty much everything else, turning it into a single-character adventure with heavy side-scroller beat-em-up elements. You still go to towns and collect clues and buy equipment, but the dungeons require actual button-pushing skills. I may play this on an SNES emulator with cheat codes at some point in the future.
The Dame Was Loaded – An FMV-based puzzle adventure game originally released for the Philips CD-i. The theme is noir potboiler (as you could likely guess), casting you as a private eye looking for a client’s missing brother. I’m not so much for either the game genre or the plot genre, here.
Brave Battle Saga - The Legend of The Magic Warrior – This is a 1996 Sega Genesis jrpg that was only released in Taiwanese markets at the time. This is fascinating because it’s so very much a knockoff—the battle sprites are clearly copied from Breath of Fire, and the rest of the graphics are a mishmash of Final Fantasy 6 and Romancing SaGa 3. The original Chinese title is apparently the same as what Square used for Final Fantasy in that market! You play a small-town boy trying to make his parents proud by becoming the town’s warrior in the annual trial, but the elder’s son, a bully named Hemo, beats you up, steals the prize, and then gets himself warped somewhere by forbidden technology; so his friends frame you for killing him and get you exiled. Irritating in that the randomness of enemy damage is high and doesn’t seem affected much by your defense—which means that both leveling and buying new armor are of limited utility. Also, while many different enemy sprites roam the map, for any given area, they’re all the same two monsters (and you need to save your MP for boss battles, so you just mash attack a lot). Oh, and the dungeons tend to be very repetitive but also labyrinthian; and they feature fewer puzzles and more “guessing games”. All in all, while this was fascinating to explore a bit, it becomes monotonous quickly and isn’t actually a very good game.
Overall: I found this bundle interesting for pointing out some older games from familiar genres that I wasn’t actually familiar with; but modern games in the classic style generally add quality-of-life measures; and the games that are more well-known have survived in memory because they were better.
Radical Rex - I’m reminded of Bubsy, as this as a Sonic the Hedgehog knockoff 16-bit sidescroller, just with more quirks, worse controls and more demands for perfectionism.
Nightshade – An 8-bit puzzle adventure game with sidescroller/fighting game elements. The city’s hero was killed by criminals, and you’re trying to take his place against the crime boss. Outdated mechanics, lack of useful direction and Nintendo-hard fights against random mooks combine to make this very much not for me.
Spellcasting Collection – A trilogy of classic text-based adventure/puzzle games with a vaguely naughty (think Leisure Suit Larry) bent to them. They were apparently written by the same guy who did the Hitchhiker’s video game, and things like Planetfall, so they guy had a niche. That said, while I enjoyed reading Let’s Plays of those games where someone who knew what they were doing was keeping everything on track, I find the wandering and the ease of irrevocably failing in these sorts of games to not be fun.
Dragonview - This is the sequel to the PC/SNES game Drakkhen, which was an interesting experimental rpg. This keeps the overworld map, but changes pretty much everything else, turning it into a single-character adventure with heavy side-scroller beat-em-up elements. You still go to towns and collect clues and buy equipment, but the dungeons require actual button-pushing skills. I may play this on an SNES emulator with cheat codes at some point in the future.
The Dame Was Loaded – An FMV-based puzzle adventure game originally released for the Philips CD-i. The theme is noir potboiler (as you could likely guess), casting you as a private eye looking for a client’s missing brother. I’m not so much for either the game genre or the plot genre, here.
Brave Battle Saga - The Legend of The Magic Warrior – This is a 1996 Sega Genesis jrpg that was only released in Taiwanese markets at the time. This is fascinating because it’s so very much a knockoff—the battle sprites are clearly copied from Breath of Fire, and the rest of the graphics are a mishmash of Final Fantasy 6 and Romancing SaGa 3. The original Chinese title is apparently the same as what Square used for Final Fantasy in that market! You play a small-town boy trying to make his parents proud by becoming the town’s warrior in the annual trial, but the elder’s son, a bully named Hemo, beats you up, steals the prize, and then gets himself warped somewhere by forbidden technology; so his friends frame you for killing him and get you exiled. Irritating in that the randomness of enemy damage is high and doesn’t seem affected much by your defense—which means that both leveling and buying new armor are of limited utility. Also, while many different enemy sprites roam the map, for any given area, they’re all the same two monsters (and you need to save your MP for boss battles, so you just mash attack a lot). Oh, and the dungeons tend to be very repetitive but also labyrinthian; and they feature fewer puzzles and more “guessing games”. All in all, while this was fascinating to explore a bit, it becomes monotonous quickly and isn’t actually a very good game.
Overall: I found this bundle interesting for pointing out some older games from familiar genres that I wasn’t actually familiar with; but modern games in the classic style generally add quality-of-life measures; and the games that are more well-known have survived in memory because they were better.
