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Quick Video Games Reviews
Power Blade (NES, Played on Nestopia) - A later-era NES platformer that straddled the line between being an explore-em-up and a Ninja Gaiden clone by having six stages, available in any order, that had multiple mazelike paths; and in each one you have to find the contact with a keycard before you could go through the door to fight the boss. The other gimmick was that you fought with an energy boomerang, and powerups let you through more and stronger versions. There were also power suits that gave you three free hits and, until you took them, let you fire a much larger energy crescent. The nonlinearity makes the game a bit longer because you need to search the levels and can screw yourself by navigating all the way to the door without the keycard. The bosses are standard fare and the powerups are fairly plentiful, but some of the platforming is really devious despite the lack of knockback. And the plot is throwaway: The machines that run our lives are out of control! Defeat them, Nova!
Cross Fire (NES, Played on FCEUX on PowKiddy Q90) - This is a relatively straightforward run-and-gun side-scroller released only in Japan, but a copy of it was on my PowKiddy Q90 and I tried it on a whim: Turns out that copy was hacked so that you had infinite health, so I played the whole thing. The fact that you start with just your fists and have to find and upgrade guns (but the enemies have no such limitations) makes the game hard to start and hard to continue from deaths, but it’s moderately entertaining for an alien-free Contra clone.
Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics 2 (NES, Played on Nestopia) - Despite featuring Mike time-traveling to fight aliens, this is markedly inferior to the original game. The movement is more granular than the grid, which is not actually an improvement because it makes it harder to line up with enemies, who often have weird hitboxes in the ¾ view. The dungeon puzzles are generally weaker (though the lack of instant-death dead-ends is appreciated) and the plot is even sillier than the original. Still, this maintained the edge gravity that made the platforming in the original stand out, and it’s a fairly fast play even with 9 chapters.
Cross Fire (NES, Played on FCEUX on PowKiddy Q90) - This is a relatively straightforward run-and-gun side-scroller released only in Japan, but a copy of it was on my PowKiddy Q90 and I tried it on a whim: Turns out that copy was hacked so that you had infinite health, so I played the whole thing. The fact that you start with just your fists and have to find and upgrade guns (but the enemies have no such limitations) makes the game hard to start and hard to continue from deaths, but it’s moderately entertaining for an alien-free Contra clone.
Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics 2 (NES, Played on Nestopia) - Despite featuring Mike time-traveling to fight aliens, this is markedly inferior to the original game. The movement is more granular than the grid, which is not actually an improvement because it makes it harder to line up with enemies, who often have weird hitboxes in the ¾ view. The dungeon puzzles are generally weaker (though the lack of instant-death dead-ends is appreciated) and the plot is even sillier than the original. Still, this maintained the edge gravity that made the platforming in the original stand out, and it’s a fairly fast play even with 9 chapters.