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Game Corner: Streets of Rage 4 (Xbox One)

16/12/202011/06/2024Dr. K4 Comments

Released: April 2020
Developer: Dotemu/Lizardcube/Guard Crush Games
Also Available For: Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4

The Background:
Back in the good old days of the mid-nineties, one of the most prominent genres in arcades was the sidescrolling beat-‘em-up. Simple, mind-numbing arcade action, these titles demanded little more from players than to hold right and mash buttons to take down waves of generic enemies and eat away at your hard-earned pocket money. Beat-‘em-ups were also quite prominent on home consoles; however, while these were mostly ports of arcade titles such as Final Fight (Capcom, 1989) or licensed titles such as Alien vs Predator (Jorudan, 1993) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Konami, 1992), SEGA developed their own exclusive series of beat-‘em-up titles for their consoles and it was called Bare Knuckle Streets of Rage (SEGA, 1991 to 1994). The Streets of Rage trilogy was, functionally, a rip-off of the Final Fight series; players controlled a group of ex-cops and street wise vigilantes who patrolled the mean streets and defeated the many various henchmen of the Syndicate and its figurehead, Mr. X. The brainchild of Noriyoshi Ohba and Yuzo Koshiro, the Streets of Rage trilogy has subsequently been ported and re-released to other consoles through compilations and digital only services but has been largely absent from SEGA’s library for the better part of twenty-five years! The game’s characters didn’t even appear in SEGA’s crossover racing titles, for God’s sake! Streets of Rage 4 changed that, however. Developed by the same team who resurrected Wonder Boy from the depths of obscurity, the game boasts nearly a thousand different frames of animation for each of its characters, all of whom have been redesigned to resemble a comic book come to life. The return of Streets of Rage was a highly anticipated event for me, largely thanks to my love for the series, genre, and SEGA properties in general; for too long, SEGA have allowed their original properties to stagnate in obscurity and I can only hope that the overly positive reception of Streets of Rage 4 prompts them to dust off some of their other franchises and bring them back into prominence.

The Plot:
Ten years after defeating Mr. X and his criminal Syndicate in Streets of Rage 3 (SEGA, 1994), Wood Oak City falls under the control Mr. X’s children, the Y Twins, who use hypnotic sound waves to brainwash its citizens and only one team of ex-cop vigilantes are tough enough to stop their nefarious plans!

Gameplay:
Streets of Rage 4 is a sidescrolling beat-‘em-up that controls almost exactly as its predecessors; when taking on the game’s story campaign, you have four characters to select and unlock more as you progress through the story and earn Lifetime Points. Initially, your choices are limited to series staples Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding and newcomers Cherry Hunter and Floyd Iraia, Essentially, each character controls the same: X executes a fast attack that becomes a mini combo the more you mash it, Y unleashes a special attack at the cost of some health (though you can replenish your health by attacking enemies after unleashing this attack), A jumps (and you can jump attack), and you can attack enemies who try to flank you from behind by tapping the shoulder buttons. Get close to an enemy and you’ll grab them, which allows you to deal a grapple attack for massive damage or toss them at enemies as a ranged attack, which is always super satisfying. You can also pick up weapons, health, and other items with B and press Y and B together to unleash a screen-clearing special move if you have enough Stars.

SOR4Stats — *Different characters have different stats and special moves that affect gameplay.*

However, your character choice does affect gameplay quite a bit; Axel, for example, is an all-rounder but Blaze is much faster in her attacks and Floyd is the slower, more powerful of the four main characters. One thing you’ll immediately notice, and probably by annoyed by, is the lack of a dash function for a lot of the characters; the ability to dash is reserved for the likes of Cherry and the returning Adam Hunter, but every character can perform a rushing attack by tapping forwards twice and then hitting X. As you attack enemies, you’ll begin a combo chain; the longer you can maintain your combo without being hit, the higher your score will be. Thanks to the ability to attack enemies from behind, maintaining a good combo has never been easier (though I still find myself relying on the old jump attack approach) and raking up a high score is imperative to earning all of the game’s Achievements, receiving the higher ranks, and unlocking additional characters as your points are accumulated over time specifically to this end.

SOR4Combo — *Keep attacking enemies to rack up an awesome combo and earn more points.*

Streets of Rage 4 has multiple difficulty settings to choose from; if you pick “Easy”, you’ll start with more lives and enemies will be much less aggressive but, when you select harder difficulties, you’ll have less lives and have to contend with tougher enemies. As you make your way through the game’s missions, you can break open various crates or destroy objects in the environment to uncover food and cash; food replenishes your health and cash adds to your score. When you reach 10,000 points, you’ll earn an extra life but, if you lose all of your lives, you can retry the stage with some Assists, which grant you additional lives and Stars, to help you clear difficult stages.

Graphics and Sound:
Streets of Rage 4 is rendered with a fantastic comic book-like aesthetic; characters are large and full of life, sporting lots of little animations that add to their charm and personality. The game contains twelve stages, each one either lovingly recreated from the original games or heavily inspired by the first three games and other common beat-‘em-up tropes (yes, there is an elevator stage here; two, in fact!) You’ll begin on the mean streets of Wood Oak City and progress through a prison, the sewers, a pier, a biker bar, a dojo, and even battle on the roof of a train and in an airplane all before you reach Y Island, the game’s final stage, which naturally contains an elaborate castle.

SOR4Details — *Stages are filled with character, cameos, and variety.*

Stages are full of little details, elements, cameos, and intractable elements; you can break open doors, smash apart parts of the environment, and toss enemies into damaging hazards in almost every single one of the game’s stages and each stage is generally broken up into distinct areas to help keep things interesting. The Skytrain stage is the exception to this as you spend the entirety of the stage on top of the titular train, battling waves of enemies and jumping over obstacles as they speed at you.

SOR4Graphics — *The game’s story is told through comic book-like cutscenes.*

The game’s story is told through simple, partially animated comic book panels; there’s no voice acting to worry about here and all of the game’s cutscenes can be skipped but they are brief and appealing enough to sit through when you do feel like taking in the game’s simple, but effective, story. The game’s soundtrack, composed by Olivier Deriviere and other notable composers is suitably fitting, featuring a mixture of rock and techno, among others, to give each stage a rhythm and a theme. Even better, the game features the option to switch to a retro soundtrack that features music and sound effects from the first two Streets of Rage games, which is perfect when playing as the unlockable 16-bit style characters.

Enemies and Bosses:
As a mindless beat-‘em-up, Streets of Rage 4 features a number of enemies that get progressively harder as you advance through the game’s stages; enemies are recycled throughout the game, taking on different colour palettes and slightly tweaked attacks as you can, but are generally assorted enough to keep things interesting. You start off taking out generic, denim-clad street thugs like Galsia (who sometimes charge at you with knives and stabbing weapons) and Y. Signal (who sometimes charge at you with a slide tackle) but soon encounter Donovan (a skinhead who has an annoying tendency to uppercut you out of the air), Raven (a Muay Thai martial artists who leaps at you with knees and kicks), and the lackadaisical Francis (who always has his hands in his pockets but flies at you with whirlwind-like kicks) and their many rainbow-coloured variants. You’ll also take on charging biker girls, emo chicks who lob grenades, toxic sludge, and other items at you, and more rotund enemies like Big Ben who breathe fire or belly flop on to you. Some of the game’s more annoying enemies include Goro (not, not that Goro), a martial artist who can reduce your health to nothing by parrying your attacks and bashing you across the screen, suit-wearing bodyguard types who shoot at you with pistols, the whip-wielding girls, and the Goddamn cops! Cops can actually assist you in stages as they’ll attack your enemies, which is helpful, but they have a tendency to grab you so others can hit you and one particular variant loves to rush you and hit you with a taser which is extremely aggravating. You’ll also fight with riot cops who must have their energy shields broken before you can actually damage them, which can be tricky as you can’t rack up a combo of attacks at they can easily swat you away with their batons.

SOR4Bosses — *These boss variants can affect a wide area with their attacks.*

The game’s bosses are just as varied and interesting and each one has multiple attacks, phases, and issues to watch out for; like some enemies, bosses often have several invincibility frames and nigh-unavoidable rushing attacks and combos so it’s best to keep your distance, bring a weapon if you can, and make good, strategic use of any health items. The first boss you’ll encounter, Diva, isn’t too difficult as long as you get away when she’s charging her primary attack as it has a lot of range. Later on, you’ll have to fight two similarly-themed variants of Diva at the same time, which can be extremely annoying and difficult as, unlike other enemies and bosses, they don’t appear to be susceptible to their partner’s attacks. In this battle, I found it best to eliminate the flame-wielding Riha first as her attacks do more immediate damage.

SOR4Commish — *The Commissioner doesn’t get any easier when he shows up as a support boss later on!*

Stage two really ramps up the difficulty though as not only does it introduce those damnable taser-wielding cops, it also has you battling the Police Commissioner himself. The Commissioner dashes across the screen and charges up a brutal combo and grab attack that can deal heavy damage and he’s just as annoying when he is brought in as support for another of the game’s bosses, Estel, in the Skytrain stage. You’ll battle Estel twice throughout the course of the game and she’s no pushover either as she attacks with bicycle-like kicks, calls in air support, and tosses grenades at you; the key is to attack and then jump away to avoid her attacks and throw her grenades right back at her and try to avoid the Commissioner in the Skytrain fight as the stage will be complete as soon as Estel goes down.

SOR4Bosses2 — *Shiva and Max also make welcome returns.*

You’ll also battle Shiva, a boss from the original games, who likes to teleport around the stage and conjure shadow versions of himself, a particularly annoying martial artist at the biker bar, and even a brainwashed version of series protagonist Max Thunder. This latter battle can be particularly gruelling thanks to Max’s invincibility frames, dangerous wrestling moves, and the fact that he doesn’t really get stunned by your attacks. DJ K-Washi can also be a trying boss battle as you must not only avoid his many and varied projectiles and goons but also break through his protective shield before you can whittle down his health bar.

SOR4YTwins — *After besting the Y Twins individually, and together, you’ll have to contend with their giant mech!*

The game’s primary antagonists, the Y Twins, are fought multiple times; you’ll face Mr. Y in the Airplane stage (where he attacks with an Uzi (similar to his father), a bazooka, and grenades) and Ms. Y (who attacks with a rapier-like sword) on Y Island. Of the two individual fights, Mr. Y is easily the more troublesome thanks to his ranged attacks but, once you defeat Ms. Y, you’ll then have to face both bosses at the same time. Once you whittle one of them down to about half of their health bar, they’ll leap into a massive spider-like mech and try to crush you while their sibling continues to press the attack. In this final battle, I find it easier to take out Mr. Y first as his bullets are much harder to avoid; take him down to half health and then attack the mech as and when you can but be sure to also attack the remaining Y twin as, if you deplete the health of the sibling in the mech to nothing, the remaining twin will jump in the mech so it’s much easier to take the remaining sibling out of the equation so you can concentrate on disposing of the mech.

Power-Ups and Bonuses:
The only real power-up you can find in Streets of Rage 4 is the odd Star hidden throughout the game’s stages; otherwise, you’ll mostly be picking up cash for points, health, or a number of weapons throughout the course of the game. These weapons are finite, meaning they will break or disappear after a few hits, but are great for wiping out groups of enemies or throwing as a ranged attack. These weapons range from things such as knives and baseball bats to sledgehammers, swords, and even a razor-sharp boomerang. Often, enemies will be wielding these weapons and can pick them up to use them against you, as well, but you can catch weapons that are thrown at you with a well-timed press of the B button and using an enemy’s weapons against them is imperative to surviving against some of the game’s tougher enemies. Additionally, there are various intractable parts of the environment that you can use to your advantage; you can attack a massive wrecking ball to take out enemies, cause barrels to explode, and toss enemies down pits or cause them to walk into toxic fumes or exposed electrical wires. As helpful as all of these elements are, however, these environmental hazards can also damage you as well so it’s best to keep your distance.

Additional Features:
Streets of Rage 4 features a number of Achievements for you to earn; you’ll get these for clearing the Story mode as each of the available characters, completing modes on different difficulty settings, and for performing certain actions (such as killing three enemies with one explosive barrel or causing a chandelier to kill an enemy). When you first play Streets of Rage 4, your gameplay options are surprisingly limited; you can only choose to play Story or Battle mode and must unlock the Stage Select and Boss Rush mode by clearing the Arcade mode once. I actually like this; so often these days, games come with everything either automatically available or hidden behind downloadable content so it’s nice to actually unlock modes and characters through good, old-fashioned gameplay. Earn enough points across each of the game’s modes and you’ll unlock 16-bit versions of the game’s characters who look and play exactly as they did in the original videogames (sadly, Roo is not playable this time around, though). There are also a lot of options available to you in Streets of Rage 4, ranging from the usual (difficulty selection, brightness and volume customisation and the like) and the unique as you can customise how health-restoring food appears onscreen and switch to the retro soundtrack if you wish. If you explore your environments well enough (or, more specifically, attack arcade machines with a taser), you’ll also find some hidden levels ripped straight from the original Streets of Rage trilogy that pit you against a classic boss character from the first three games and net you some bonus points. If you bought the physical version of the game, as I did, you also get a nifty little artbook and a keyring, which is a nice touch, and Streets of Rage 4 can also be played with friends; the game allows couch co-op for up to four players but online play is limited to just two. However, you need to keep a safe distance when playing with a friend in co-op as you can damage each other in true old school beat-‘em-up fashion, necessitating the need to pick to an area or section of the screen and stick to it.

The Summary:
Streets of Rage 4 is a fantastic love letter to everything that was so great about sidescrolling beat-‘em-ups. The genre has sadly fallen out of favour in recent years and I really don’t know why; it’s simple, fast-paced, arcade-style fun that is easy to pick up and play and waste a few fun-filled hours on. Arguably, Streets of Rage has never looked or played better; the game’s cartoony aesthetic, multiple nods and cameos and call-backs to the original games, and myriad of features make the game extremely accessible and fun to play. Some of the enemies and bosses can be annoying and cheap at times but, once you play through the game a few times, it’s easy to see their patterns and avoid their attacks. Hopefully, the release of Streets of Rage 4 will inspire SEGA to outsource some of their other franchises so we can see the same love, care, and attention afforded to this once long-dead series applied to other dormant SEGA franchises.

My Rating:

Fantastic

What are your thoughts on Streets of Rage 4? Do you feel it lives up to the legacy of its predecessors and old school, arcade-style, sidescrolling beat-‘em-ups? Which Streets of Rage game or character is your favourite? What SEGA property would you like to see get brought back in glorious HD on modern consoles? Whatever you think about Streets of Rage 4, or the series in general, drop a comment below.

Game Corner: Castlevania: Bloodlines / Castlevania: The New Generation (Xbox One)

07/11/202027/01/2024Dr. K1 Comment

Released: May 2019
Originally Released: December 1993
Developer: Konami Digital Entertainment/Konami Industry Co. Ltd
Original Developer: Konami
Also Available For: Mega Drive, Nintendo Switch, PC, and PlayStation 4

The Background:
For the longest time, Castlevania was a series synonymous with Nintendo’s home consoles; handheld or otherwise, Castlevania was generally played on a Nintendo-branded product, meaning those of us (like me) who were playing SEGA consoles missed out on the chance to slay Dracula like those Nintendorks. Castlevania: Bloodlines (also titled Castlevania: The New Generation) changed that…or, at least, it would have except for the fact that Castlevania: Bloodlines is still one of the rarest and most expensive videogames these days. Luckily, the title was not only included as part of the Mega Drive Mini but is also available on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, being only one of two 16-bit titles available in that collection following Super Castlevania IV (ibid, 1991).

The Plot:
It’s 1917 and the dark countess Elizabeth Bartley seeks to resurrect her uncle, none other than the evil Count Dracula. To facilitate his resurrection, she sends her minions across Europe to cause chaos and bloodshed, only to be opposed by two young vampire hunters: John Morris and Eric Lecarde.

Gameplay:
Castlevania: Bloodlines is a 2D, sidescrolling action/platformer and the first game in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection to not include one of the legendary Belmont family. Instead, players can choose to control either John Morris or Eric Lecarde right off the bat, making it only the second game in the collection to include another playable character and the only one where this character can be selected from the main menu rather than switched to mid-game as in Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (ibid, 1989). Choose John Morris and you’ll be in for a traditional Castlevania experience; like his forefathers, Morris wields the Vampire Killer to fend off the forces of evil. Morris isn’t quite as adept with the whip as Simon in Super Castlevania IV, though; he can only attack diagonally and upwards when jumping and can’t let the whip hang loose to freely aim it or block incoming projectiles. Similar to Simon, Morris can use his whip to swing across gaps but the mechanic is noticeably more clumsy and tricky to pull off here as, rather than swinging from hooks or metal rings, Morris dangles from ceilings and, while you can alter the length and speed of his swing, it’s far easier to just drop to your death than clear the gap.

CVBUltimate — *Each character has their own screen-clearing attack.*

Pick Eric Lecarde, though, and you’ll get a fresh, new Castlevania experience; Lecarde wields the Alucard Spear, giving him a greater attack range (if slightly reduced attack power). Lecarde can also attack in all eight directions, swinging his spear in a flourish to quickly attack enemies both in front and behind. Lecarde is also slightly faster and can leap higher thanks to his super jump, allowing him to reach platforms and levels Morris can’t, though I actually found him a bit clunkier and his attacks to be slower than Morris’s. Both characters have access to all the classic Castlevania sub-weapons (and even a few new ones), which are now used thanks to the acquisition of jewels rather than hearts. You have no idea how happy this makes me; like the hearts replenishing health in Castlevania: The Adventure (ibid, 1989), having jewels rather than hearts just makes so much more sense. Unlike Super Castlevania IV, there’s only one piece of meat available to replenish your health, but you can still upgrade each characters’ weapon by collecting orbs and even perform an “Item Crash” manoeuvre; this unleashes a more powerful super attack for each sub-weapon at the cost of a substantial number of jewels.

CVBPlatforming — *Platforming is still a risky, tricky business…*

Both characters are noticeably faster and more manoeuvrable than their predecessors but still fly backwards upon receiving damage, often to their doom. Thankfully, Castlevania: Bloodlines finally ditches the limit limit of the previous games and is light on the instant-death traps and spikes; often, when you jump or fall into water, your health will be slowly drained as you take damage (presumably to represent the character drowning) rather than immediately dying. That’s not to say that bottomless pits and instant-death spots aren’t present, or that you won’t find yourself just slipping or walking off a ledge when you meant to jump thanks to a slight (but glaring) delay in the game registering your button presses, or that you won’t be tasked with making some difficult jumps or awkwardly swinging across gaps while fending off projectiles or enemies. After two games focused more on rope climbing, the staircases are back! And, what’s more, it’s super easy to climb up and down them, and to stop and attack enemies while on them; there’s no sudden dropping to your doom here…unless you’re stupid enough to jump through the staircases. Like Super Castlevania IV, Castlevania: Bloodlines also uses the power of its 16-bit hardware to render some impressive graphical mechanics; you’ll jump up rotating platforms, traverse the Leaning Tower of Pisa as it sways alarmingly, and hop across floating platforms as the screen auto-rises and auto-scrolls.

CVBPlatforming2 — *Auto-scrolling is far less punishing than in other* Castlevania *titles.*

Yes, auto-scrolling is a thing in Castlevania: Bloodlines but, for the most part, its far less stressful or annoying than in previous Castlevania titles; not only are there are more opportunities to save yourself from death and far less enemies to contend with, you also don’t die from touching the top of the screen, which is always useful. Castlevania: Bloodlines operates using a simple six-stage formula; you progress across Europe via an automated map screen and, in each unique area, you’ll face different platforming requirements, obstacles, enemies, and, of course, a boss. Of all the Castlevania games I’ve played for this marathon, Bloodlines has the most variety in terms of its graphics, stages, and enemies; rather than simply ploughing your way towards, or through, a gothic castle, you’re exploring a munitions factory or exploring the ruins of Atlantis. Some of these locations have been hinted at before, or served as inspiration for the aesthetic and atmosphere of the Collection’s other games, but nowhere have they been more fully-realised than in Castlevania: Bloodlines. That’s not to say that the game is flawless though (but then again, few games are). Sometimes, the game takes its new mechanics and features a bit too far, asking you to jump across platforms while upside down or your vision is distorted by mirrors. While this wouldn’t be too bad, the developers also threw in erratic Medusa Heads and constantly-respawning skeletal demons to make these sections more frustrating. It doesn’t help that I found myself just as likely to simply walk off a platform to my death or pointlessly hop in place rather than make a successful jump, or that you’re seemingly destined to jump right into the path of an enemy or projectile if they’re onscreen but, thankfully, these sections are few and far between and, for the most part, Castlevania: Bloodlines is a crisp and visually impressive experience.

Graphics and Sound:
Super Castlevania IV set a high standard for the series, dragging it out of the 8-bit era and into the glory of full-colour, arcade-style 16-bit graphics and Castlevania: Bloodlines only builds upon that foundation. Sprites aren’t as big as in Super Castlevania IV but they’re no less detailed for it; both Morris and Lecarde stand out from the game’s many and varied detailed backgrounds, popping out at you thanks to their unique colour palette and sprite art, and enemies are easily spotted and fantastically animated thanks to the game’s 16-bit engine. Simply put: there is a lot going on in this game’s stages. Not only do they slant or flip upside down, they’re also filled with some fantastic blood and gore as corpses and hanged victims litter the background of a lot of the stages.

CVBGraphics — *Platforms crumble beneath your feet and spiral around you with detail and depth.*

You’re also required to pull off some tricky jumps from rotating platforms, gears, and moving platforms and stages are filled with variety and teeming with life and danger alike. Konami borrowed a trick from another of their fantastic titles, the criminally under-rated Rocket Knight Adventures (ibid, 1993), for the water reflection effects seen in stage two, where (as in Rocket Knight Adventures) you’ll use the reflections in the rising and falling water to jump safely across the ruins of Atlantis. You’re also tasked with attacking the crumbling, ancient pillars to create new platforms and jump from others as they collapse beneath your feet and jumping from platform to platform up the swaying Leaning Tower of Pisa, which is a cakewalk compared to having to negotiate the small, annoying, rotating platforms in stage five. Given its more modern setting, you’ll also have to content with conveyor belts, pistons, massive gears, and razor-sharp circular saws in stage four, all of which only add to the game’s more steampunk-inspired aesthetic.

CVBGraphics3 — *The game mixes the traditional* Castlevania *gothic with a steampunk aesthetic.*

The danger in the stages is compounded further by the way Bloodlines incorporates enemies into each stage; Minotaurs break parts of the marble pillars off and attack you with them in stage three, Fish Men leap from the depths below, Medusa Heads swarm around you as you hop from wooden platforms while the water level lowers, skeletons throw bones at you from behind a chain-link fence in stage four (they also jump over the fence and pop out of barrels without warning) and form (and re-form) from a bloodied water fountain in stage five, where skeletal monkeys wing at you from vines, tossing explosives at you and trying to cut you in half. The game returns to its gothic roots by the time you storm Castle Proserpina, the game’s final stage, which sheds the more steampunk-driven aesthetic for a traditional, stone castle familiar with anyone who has ever played a Castlevania before. All of these graphical and gameplay elements, while impressive, do lead to some noticeable slow-down in many areas of the game, however, which can (literally) drag down the otherwise thrilling experience Castlevania: Bloodlines has to offer. This is accentuated further by the game’s impressive and atmospheric soundtrack; the 16-bit games really did put all their power and benefits to the best use possible, allow this game to not only look fantastic but, thanks to Michiru Yamane’s fittingly gloomy soundtrack, sound amazing as well.

Enemies and Bosses:
Castlevania: Bloodlines offers one of the more diverse and varied bestiaries in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection; unlike many of the other titles, which simply recycled the same enemies with some minor tweaks or alterations, I felt like Bloodlines actually put some effort into really giving even the most basic enemies some life and vigour. Sure, all the usual suspects are here (skeletons, bats, ravens, the Pillar of Bones, etc) but even some of these have been spruced up to offer more of a threat. Skeletons wield swords, shields, and whips and there’s a variant that swings a massive axe and another massively annoying one that swings at you from vines. You’ll also encounter Harpies (who attack unevenly from the sky with spears), Mummies (who both float their bandages at you and try to whip you with them), man-eating plants, plants that screw up your controls (which is always annoying), mace-wielding barbarians who leap right in your face, and charging Minotaurs.

CVBSubBosses — *You’ll have to get past some monstrous sub-bosses to progress.*

In keeping with the game’s more steampunk-inspired aesthetic, you’ll also face a wide variety of knights; there’s knights that sprint at you, ones that brandish swords (as well as that old favourite, the Axe Knight), ones that fire arrows at you in an arc, and even ones with giant mallets, gatling guns(!), and on wheels! The level of detail in each enemy is impressive and even the most small and seemingly-insignificant enemy can be a threat thanks to their placement, attack patterns, and the limitations of Morris’s whip. Castlevania: Bloodlines also stands out by its use of sub-bosses; you’ll face the likes of Hellbound (a bloodied, half-skeletal beast that haunts the ruins of Dracula’s Castle), two large, armour-plated heavies (one with an axe, one with a mace), sentient faces brought to life by some kind of poltergeist and even a Castlevania custom, Frankenstein’s Monster. Some of these are, honestly, a bit more creative and visually interesting than the stage’s actual bosses, such as the giant suit of armour that barely poses much of a threat at the end of the first stage.

CVBBosses — *Some bosses are better than others but they’re all visually impressive.*

Things pick up considerably once you reach stage two’s Golem, however; in this fight, you have to first whittle away chunks of the creature’s mid-section before you can attack its vulnerable head and actually do some real damage, all while dodging falling rocks from the ceiling. Stage three’s Gargoyle can also be a bit of a pain without the right sub-weapon (…unless you use Lecarde) as it buzzes around your head, trying to whip at you with its rock-like tail, all while the top of the tower you’re on (and the background) excitingly rotates. The mess of gears and cogs that acts as stage four’s boss is probably the wildest and most ill-fitting of all the Castlevania bosses I’ve fought so far; don’t get me wrong, I love a good bit of steampunk but this…thing…was not only kind of boring to fight (despite its multiple forms and attacks) but also needlessly frustrating. The Princess of Moss from stage five is marginally better but ridiculously easy even after she transforms into a giant…moth…?

CVBReaper — *You’ll have to defeat all the previous bosses again before you can face Death.*

Once you get to Castle Proserpina, the shit really hits the fan as you have to face a gauntlet of sub-bosses and bosses, each with different forms and attacks at their disposal. First, you’ll battle the Grim Reaper once again; this time, Death surrounds himself with tarot cards and, as you attack, you’ll either spawn a whole mess of health-restoring food, get attacked by a fireball, or be warped to one of the game’s previous bosses. Luckily, these guys are much weaker the second time around but, once you’ve defeated them again, you’ll have to face Death himself once again. Fortunately, Death isn’t anywhere near as formidable or daunting as in previous titles; he glides around above you throwing sickles at you, tries to rush you with his scythe, and sits in the corner throwing his scythe like a razor-sharp frisbee but all of these attacks are easily dodged or avoided and he’ll go down pretty easily (especially if you have the axe). After that, you’ll battle Medusa; this isn’t like the floating, snake-haired head from previous titles, though. This Medusa is a horrific, snake-like creature that blasts at you with two different types of fireball, tries to whack you with its tail, and then awkwardly crawls towards you to try and throttle you. Each attack is predictable and relatively slow, meaning you can deal massive damage even while the Medusa is attacking, to say nothing of when she shuffles towards you like a slug. Once she’s dealt with, you’ll have to fight Elizabeth Bartley herself; ol’ Liz likes to teleport from one side of the screen to the other and throw a fireball at your head and, if you don’t damage her enough times (the number of hits is determined by the different elemental orbs she summons, though these can’t hurt you), she’ll unleash a powerful attack upon you. This shouldn’t happen, though, as it’s ridiculously easy to duck under her one projectile and hit her no matter which side she choose to spawn on, meaning she will fall without much bother at all.

CVBDracula3 — *Dracula’s final form is intimidating but his attacks are predictable and easy to dodge.*

Finally, you’ll face Dracula himself who, despite your efforts, once again awakens from his coffin. Initially, Dracula attacks very similar to Super Castlevania IV, teleporting in through a column of light and tossing fireballs at you with a sweep of his cape. However, his teleport cannot damage you and, while you only have a small window to hit his head, it’s pretty easy to land a hit and still dispose of his projectiles without taking a hit. After you’ve drained his health, Dracula transforms into a floating, cloaked sorcerer form and darts around the screen above your head in an inconsistent pattern. Being as he’s often just out of reach, this can be tricky with Morris as jumping to hit Dracula may cause you to make contact with him and take damage, so it’s best to keep a safe distance and use the axe. Dracula blasts two fireballs at both sides of the screen in this form (these travel down the screen and across the floor and can be tricky to avoid thanks to the game’s janky jumping physics) and drops columns of energy into the arena that can deal massive damage if you’re not standing in a safe area. Still, this form isn’t especially difficult and I found it more than doable to destroy him before he could unleash this more devastating attack. Once bested, Dracula transforms into his largest and more horrific form yet: a massive, Devil-like creature with a fanged stomach, huge devil horns, wings, and claws. As intimidating as it looks, though, this final form isn’t much of a threat; it lumbers around in a clear and identifiable pattern, first throwing sickles at you in a spray, then trying to roast you with fireballs that are easily ducked (in the far corner) or jumped over, and, finally, spewing bones at you. These can be tricky to avoid if you’re caught on the wrong side but there’s a clear gap between them you can dart into and, even with Morris’s difficulty in attacking upwards and diagonally, it isn’t long before Dracula is done in once more. What makes Dracula so difficult this time around is the fact that you have to face all three forms in a gauntlet, with no healing in between and only the health, ammo, and weapons you have on you.

Power-Ups and Bonuses:
All is standard in Castlevania titles, you can upgrade the Vampire Killer and the Alucard Spear to increase their reach and damage output. When you fully upgrade the Vampire Killer, it takes on a glowing, plasma-like appearance that looks more like energy or lightning than the usual fire, while the Alucard Spear glows with an ethereal magical power. Sadly, though, you’ll lose an upgrade when you take damage, meaning that you may be left with you bog-standard weapon by the time you reach the stage boss. As always, this means relying on the game’s items to help turn the tide when things get rough; you can grab 1-Ups on the rare occasions that they appear, briefly become invincible, and wipe out all onscreen enemies and grab one of the three sub-weapons: the axe (which travels in a high arc and is perfect for aerial enemies and bosses whose weak points are out of reach), the Holy Water (which travels along the ground in a fiery path), and the boomerang (here an actual boomerang rather than clearly being a cross, this time being razor sharp and travelling high and low to return to you, which is perfect for dealing additional damage). Additionally, as noted, you can perform an “Item Crash” with each of these weapons and each character has a specific “Ultimate Item” they can pick up: Morris has the Water Dragon (which fills the screen with a powerful, homing orb) and Lecarde has the Thunderbolt Spear, which unleashes a torrent of thunderbolts and lightning.

Additional Features:
Castlevania: Bloodlines features thee difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, and Expert) and the ending you get depends on which character you use and which difficulty setting you pick. Finishing the game on Easy takes you straight to the credits, while Normal only gives you a brief glimpse of your character’s ending and challenges you to try the game on Expert in order to earn a more complete ending. The game also employs a password system to allow you to return to the stage where you left of, jump to different stages with different characters, or start the game with extra lives. Castlevania: Bloodlines has two Achievements tied to it; you get one for beating the game as Morris and another for beating it as Lecarde. With the features available in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection you can also save your progress at any time, apply different display filters and effects, and play with one of three different frames around the game screen as with the other titles available in the collection.

The Summary:
Castlevania: Bloodlines is easily one of the top three titles available in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection; you should purchase this collection for this game alone and see the others as a bonus as it really is a tight and well-crafted videogame. Despite some issues with slipping off platforms and mastering Morris’s awkward whip-swing mechanic, the controls are smooth and generally responsive; Morris and Lecarde both move at a far faster pace than their predecessors and, between the two of them, offer as much versatility as seen in Super Castlevania IV. Bolstered by its incredibly detailed graphics and atmospheric soundtrack, Castlevania: Bloodlines is probably the darkest and most foreboding title collection thanks to the inclusion of blood and gore. This really lends to the game’s atmosphere and the franchise’s tendency towards macabre horror that it is so often stunted by the localisation and restriction these early Castlevania titles had to endure. The steampunk aesthetic is married with the series’ trademark gothic styling which, while it does include in some weird and ill-fitting enemy designs, results in some amazingly detailed sprites and environments and makes Castlevania: Bloodlines a solid successor to Super Castlevania IV.

My Rating:

Fantastic

What did you think of Castlevania: Bloodlines? How do you think it compares to Super Castlevania IV? Were you lucky enough to own an original copy of this game back in the day or did you pay out through the nose to get a copy of it only to find it much more affordable in this collection? Whatever your thoughts on this title, and other Castlevania videogames, leave a comment below and check out my other Castlevania reviews.

Game Corner: Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Mega Drive)

22/07/202022/09/2022Dr. K3 Comments

Released: November 1990
Developer: SEGA AM7
Also Available For: Game Gear and Master System

The Background:
As I’ve mentioned before, Disney had quite the reputation for licensing their characters for top quality videogames back in the nineties. These days, licensed videogames are often frowned upon but, back then, Disney’s movies and characters made for some of the most enjoyable action/adventure platformers on the SEGA Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. Mickey Mouse, Disney’s beloved mascot, received quite a few videogames for the Mega Drive, each one an enjoyable 2D romp capturing the whimsy and aesthetic charm of Mickey’s character and animated adventures. Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse paved the way for Mickey’s subsequent adventures, both solo and alongside Donald Duck, who also had his fair share of adventures on 8- and 16-bit hardware back in the day. So influential is Castle of Illusion’s reputation that a remake was released in 2013 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, and various mobile platforms. Until now, this was the only version of Castle of Illusion I had played; while that was quite a while ago, I remember it being a fun little 2.5D romp so, when I started planning on expanding my Mega Drive library, I knew that Castle of Illusion would have to be on the list to see how the title holds up.

The Plot:
Mickey and Minnie Mouse live peacefully in Vera City but when Minnie is suddenly abducted by the evil witch Mizrabel, Mickey must journey into the witch’s Castle of Illusion to recover the seven Gems necessary to defeating Mizrabel and stopping her from switching bodies with Minnie.

Gameplay:
Castle of Illusion is a 2D, sidescrolling action/platformer in which players must guide Mickey through six Levels, each hidden behind doors within the titular Castle of Illusion. Rather than using a traditional map screen or a hub world, or simply transitioning from one level to the next, Mickey travels to each of the game’s Levels by passing through enchanted doorways in Mizrabel’s castle, which is a nice change of pace from simply navigating a basic map or automatically dropping into a Level.

CastleOfIllusionMDAttacks — *Bounce off enemies with Mickey’s butt or toss items at them.*

Mickey has two main forms of attack to defend himself against Mizrabel’s many and varied minions; he can either grab an apple or a marble and throw them at his enemies or bounce on their heads with his rump. Throw projectiles can be useful but, as a lot of enemies are shorter than the projectiles travel, you’ll most likely be making use of Mickey’s butt to defeat your enemies. However, if you don’t hold down the jump button, Mickey will take damage, which is annoying, so it’s worth holding it down every time you make a jump in case an enemy swoops beneath you. When you land on an enemy’s head, you can bounce from one to another to make short work of multiple enemies, clear larger gaps, or reach higher platforms. While Mickey’s arsenal of moves isn’t exactly the deepest, he makes up for it by controlling extremely well for the most part. There are times, however, when either he feels a little slippery or the surfaces he is standing on are oddly slippery and you’ll find yourself sliding off an edge and to your death or accidentally slipping into an enemy or down a bottomless pit. While instant death traps and obstacles aren’t too obtrusive, they are present in some of the worst areas, such as a section where Mickey must jump from small platforms while waterfalls threaten to drag him down a bottomless pit and to his death.

CastleOfIllusionMDSwing — *Swinging from ropes can be a tricky mechanic.*

As standard, Mickey has a fairly decent, semi-floaty jump that takes him quite far and far the longer you hold the jump button down and depending on how much momentum you have. His walk is quite sluggish, though, and he doesn’t really speed up beyond much of a gentle stride so the game’s emphasis is more on platforming and mild exploration and puzzles rather than fast-paced, high-speed action. Mickey can duck to avoid projectiles and enemies as they jump but, while he can swim without fear of drowning, he can’t actually attack any enemies whilst underwater, leaving him vulnerable. Certain Levels task Mickey with grabbing on to ropes, vines, and other hanging apparel; I found grabbing these to be troublesome, at best, as more often than not Mickey simply leap through the rope but, once you grab on, you can swing from rope to rope with the added bonus of automatically dispatching any airborne enemies as you swing along.

CastleOfIllusionMDExplore — *Explore Levels to find items and bonus areas.*

Mickey’s health is represented by a five-point power bar; Mickey loses a point every time he takes damage and loses a life every time his health is fully depleted by can replenish a health point by grabbing a Star item. He can earn an extra try by either grabbing some Mouse Ears or collecting first 40,000 points and then 50,000, awarded by defeating enemies, grabbing gems, and tallied up after you complete each Level. Some Levels require Mickey to do a bit of exploration; in Toyland, for example, you need to find a key in order to progress while in the Storm, you have to contend with a maze-like cycle of water jets and find the right path to the Level’s exit. While exploring the Library, you can jump into tea cups and swim through a few small bonus areas to grab extra projectiles or gems, and you’ll sometimes have to run away from a large rolling obstacle or try to not be swept away by rushing water.

Graphics and Sound:
Though later surpassed by its later 16-bit successors, Castle of Illusion is still a gorgeous little title; all the sprites and backgrounds pop with bright, colourful art and feature some interesting animations and elements. When left idle, Mickey has a charming little animation where he sways his hips to the game’s various whimsical tunes and he always looks full of life and vigour as he strolls, hops, and bounces along. His enemies aren’t quite as dynamically rendered but they’re interesting and wacky enough to fit the themes of the game’s various Levels.

CastleOfIllusionMDGraphics — *Levels are varied and full of life and obstacles to overcome.*

As you travel through the castle’s enchanted worlds, you’ll journey through a forest, a toy box, a giant library, and the castle itself. Each Level has various other layers to it, meaning you’ll hop across leaves and through spider’s webs, leap through a sweet and chocolate world, get stuck in sticky jelly, and even traverse a pyramid-like structure where damaging water threatens to wash you away. Once you reach Mizrabel’s castle proper, you’ll have to contend with far more obstacles and face your greatest challenge as giant boulders try to crush you, bridges crumble beneath you, and Mickey must leap from cogs and gears and swinging pendulum’s in the castle’s clock tower.

Enemies and Bosses:
Being that the game is, essentially, a jaunt through a magical, fairytale-like setting, Mickey comes up against a whole host of enemies in his journey that vary from the painfully generic to the bizarre. You’ll go from butt-bouncing on sentient mushrooms, spiders, toy soldiers, bats, and chubby little bookworms to contending with juggling clowns on unicycles (which race at you once they’re riders are defeated), skeletal fish, and extremely annoying, bouncing letters of the alphabet.

CastleOfIllusionMDBosses — *The game’s bosses aren’t much of a threat.*

At the end of each Level, Mickey has to face a large boss, known as a Master of Illusion. These range from an angry tree that tries to drop acorns on your head, a jack-in-the-box that tries to punch you with boxing glove, a totem pole that can only be knocked down by butt-bouncing on the enemies it spews out, and a giant sweet dragon.

CastleOfIllusionMDWitch — *Stay away from Mizrabel’s attacks and you’ll soon have Minnie back safe and sound.*

After defeating the Masters of Illusion and getting through Mizrabel’s castle, Mickey has to face off with the witch herself at the top of her castle, with Minnie held captive in a magical balloon. Fittingly, Mizrabel assumes the form of a youthful sorceress for the battle, which sees Mickey having to keep to the high ground to avoid the witch’s swirling spirits and butt-bounce on her head in the small window of vulnerability she has. While none of these boss battles are particularly difficult, as they all stick to a very predictable attack pattern, there’s not a lot of call for Mickey’s projectiles during these fights and even Mizrabel is bested with relative ease simply by staying on the upper platforms.

Power-Ups and Bonuses:
There’s not a lot on offer here apart from the standard trope of being awarded an extra life when you collect enough points. You can, however, pick up bags that will gift you with a whole bunch of projectiles to throw and use your butt-bounce to reach higher and out of reach areas to find additional health, gems, and ammo but, apart from that, there’s no much else available to expand your health or arsenal.

Additional Features:
The game has three difficulty modes: Practice, Normal, and Hard. In Practice mode, you start with full health and won’t have to face any bosses and only need to collect three Gems and can continue four times after you exhaust all your tries but you won’t get the game’s true ending; in Normal and Hard, you start with three or two health points, respectively, and have to find all seven Gems and can continue two times in Normal but have no opportunity to continue in Hard mode; you also lose all items you’re carrying after losing a try, adding a level of difficulty to the game and requiring you to exhibit more skill than in its 8-bit successor.

The Summary:
It’s easy to see why Castle of Illusion is so beloved; it’s a fun, charming little adventure that looks and feels just like you’re playing a cartoon. Mickey has always been dropped into this bright, colourful fairytale adventures, even when he made the transition to 3D titles, and these worlds are surprisingly fitting for Disney’s cheeky little mascot. Offering just the right level of challenge to keep you coming back for more, Castle of Illusion set the standard for Mickey’s subsequent 8- and 16-bit adventures, most of which deviated very little from this game’s core gameplay and mechanics. It might not be the best action/adventure platformer on the Mega Drive, or the fastest or most action-packed title, but it’s still a charming, whimsical romp that looks, plays, and sounds fantastic and is well worth your time.

My Rating:

Great Stuff

What did you think about Castle of Illusion? Where does it sit in your hierarchy of 16-bit Disney games? Did you ever play the remake from a few years ago? How do you think it compares to the original? Whatever your thoughts on Castle of Illusion, and Disney and Mickey games in general, drop a comment below and share your thoughts.

Mini Game Corner: Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Master System)

08/07/202018/09/2024Dr. K2 Comments

Released: June 1993
Developer: SEGA
Also Available For: Game Gear

A Brief Background:
Back in the nineties, licensed videogames hadn’t quite earned the reputation that they have these days. Anyone who had played one of the many videogame adaptations of Disney movies and properties, particularly on SEGA’s Mega Drive or the Super Nintendo, would generally be in for a good time and treated to big, colourful, well-animated graphics and tight, fun gameplay. One of the most prolific of Disney’s characters to be licensed out to videogames was their enduring mascot, Mickey Mouse. A couple of years after Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (SEGA AM7, 1990) and World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (ibid, 1992) released for Mega Drive, a similar (though, apparently, unrelated) title was released for SEGA’s 8-bit consoles, the Master System and the Game Gear handheld.

The Review:
Land of Illusion is a pretty standard 2D, sidescrolling action/platformer in very much the same vein as previous Disney titles released around that time. Players take control of the affable Mickey Mouse and journey through fourteen stages, dispatching enemies using Mickey’s rump, sliding down slopes, or by throwing objects at them. Mickey controls at a steady, grounded pace; he doesn’t slip and slide around, making precision platforming a much easier task than other platformers of the time. He begins the game with two stars in his Power Gauge, meaning he can take two hits before he must try again from either the beginning of the stage or from the last checkpoint he passed. Players can refill Mickey’s health by smashing blocks and other objects to uncover cake; if you search hard enough, you’ll also find a bonus star in each stage, which will add another star to Mickey’s Power Gauge and thus allow him to take more hits. Mickey can also collect coins, which will add to his score tally; defeating enemies and bosses also adds to this tally and he’ll earn an extra try for every 10,000 points. Mickey must sometimes take to water to navigate through a stage; in these areas, players will have to watch Mickey’s air meter, as he’ll lose a life if it runs out. There’s a few simple push-and-pull-based puzzles that Mickey must also solve by opening blocked areas or turning environments upside down and, occasionally, he’ll need to find a key in order to progress.

LandOfIllusionAttacks — *Stomp on enemies with Mickey’s butt or chuck a rock at them.*

Players must also complete each stage within a time limit (as was the style at the time) but, as Mickey progresses through the game’s story and stages, he frees some familiar-looking faces and is gifted various items that aid his quest; the Magic Flute allows players to replay any stage they’ve previously completed (which can be essential for tracking down other items and extra energy you’ve missed), a Shrinking Potion (which allows Mickey to fit through small tunnels, doors, and spaces), a Rope to climb certain walls, Cloud Shoes to walk on clouds, and a Magic Bean to grow a beanstalk and reach the Phantom’s castle. As mentioned, you can increase Mickey’s health with cake and collect stars to increase Mickey’s Power Gauge but that’s about it. There’s no invincibility, speed ups, or special abilities here. Instead, you can grab Mickey Ears or hit 10,000 points for an extra try and will use the game’s mandatory times to progress further. However, while you can shrink through gaps with the Shrinking Potion, your attacks are useless and being able to jump on clouds doesn’t really help at all except when climbing the magic beanstalk. Otherwise, there’s nothing extra here; the game has one ending, no unlockable or extra characters, and the only incentive to play it again is to beat your last high score.

LandOfIllusionStages — *Though simple, stages are bright and colourful.*

While nowhere near its 16-bit counterparts in terms of graphics or sound quality, Land of Illusion is still quite a charming little 8-bit title. The Master System was never known for having particularly exciting backgrounds or environments, so all of the artistic effort seems to have gone into making the sprites (particularly Mickey) as bright, colourful, and animated as possible. You’ll travel to some pretty standard areas in Land of Illusion (a forest, a desert, a couple of castles…) but each one is distinct in its design and features slightly different gameplay mechanics. You might have to let a tornado of leaves carry Mickey over spikes to safety, for example, or have to outrun a wall of spikes or cross poisonous water or lava. The Master System renders these environments simply enough but it’s surprising how vivid and engaging they are for such an under-powered console. Similarly, the game obviously doesn’t match the bright, poppy tunes or sound quality of its bigger brother but the soundtrack nevertheless does a serviceable job; there’s some catchy little tunes, all of which are perfectly in keeping with Mickey’s cute-and-cuddly aesthetic. Enemies here are as generic as they come; you’ll butt-bounce off the likes of spiders, wasps, snakes, and floating skulls. Some present more of a challenge than others, however, shielding themselves from harm, reforming after being hit, or being invulnerable to Mickey’s butt-bounce.

LandOfIllusionPhantom — *Wait for an opening and then hit him with your butt!*

You’ll battle some big bosses while playing Land of Illusion but none will really pose much of a challenge (…I really struggled with the giant crab, though, thanks to how slow Mickey moves underwater). You’ll dodge their attacks, maybe toss one of a limited number of blocks at their head, or wait for an opportunity to bounce off their heads with Mickey’s butt. The final boss, the Phantom, is slightly more complex as you must first traverse his booby-trapped castle and then dodge his energy balls (just crouch right in front of him) and jump over his whirlwind attack before he’ll pause long enough for you to smack him. He’ll mix it up by jumping to the ceiling, forcing you to throw blocks at him, but it’s over within seconds, especially if you’ve completely powered up Mickey’s Power Gauge.

The Summary:
While a mere shadow if its 16-bit counterparts, Land of Illusion does a decent job at entertaining; there’s no bottomless pits or cheap deaths, plenty of opportunities to explore, and some charming graphics and tunes on offer. Gameplay is about as simple as it gets, which is to be expected given the Master System’s simple two button setup; as mentioned, you might have to backtrack to previous levels to get items to progress further if you missed them, and you will find a challenge in the game’s final level but, with infinite continues as standard and a leisurely pace to its gameplay, Land of Illusion is a fun enough little jaunt to keep you distracted for a couple of hours.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

Did you ever play Land of Illusion? What were your favourite, or most frustrating, Disney videogames from back in the day? Would you like to see a HD compilation of Mickey’s 16- and 8-bit titles? Go ahead and take to the comments to share your thoughts and memories.

Game Corner: Global Gladiators (Mega Drive)

24/06/202017/01/2023Dr. KLeave a comment

Released: 1992
Developer: Virgin Games USA
Also Available For: Amiga, Game Gear, and Master System

The Background:
You…you’ve heard of McDonald’s, right? The highly commercialised fast food chain founded in 1940 that, despite having the best milkshakes around, is (in my opinion) subpar to Burger King. Oh, sure, the Happy Meals are fun (especially back in my day, when they had far better toys and treats) but Burger King does this fantastic cheese and bacon burger that has the crispiest bacon, the gooiest cheese, and their meat actually tastes like it’s real meat and not some mass produced, watered down piece of off cuts. Anyway, McDonald’s was such a powerhouse back in the day that they ended up being behind a handful of videogames, including the unsubtly titled M.C. Kids (Various, 1992), a shameless rip-off of Super Mario Bros. 3 (Nintendo EAD, 1990), introduced gamers to the titular “M.C. Kids” themselves, Mick and Mack, who had to travel around a magical McDonaldland collecting the restaurant’s iconic Golden Arches and helping out their now long-retired mascot, Ronald McDonald. Although released in the same year, the M.C. Kids saw a dramatic redesign in Global Gladiators, a pseudo-sequel that I actually first played on the Amiga and which carried a heavy emphasis on recycling and environmental responsibility. Both characters slimmed down, stuffed chewing gum into their mouths, armed themselves with Super Soakers goo-shooters, and, since “attitude” and being “cool” was all the range for platformers after the release of Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Team, 1991), were reinterpreted as hip pre-teens who cared for nothing more than comic books, McDonald’s, and…protecting the environment. Because, yeah, sure, me and my friends were all about environmental awareness…especially when we ate at McDonald’s…

The Plot:
One day, while reading a Global Gladiators comic book in McDonald’s, Mick and Mack are magically transported into the comic’s pages by Ronald McDonald. Armed with goo-shooters, they journey across four worlds fighting against pollution and to protect the environment, all while collecting McDonald’s arches.

Gameplay:
Global Gladiators is a 2D, sidescrolling action/platformer with strong run-and-gun elements. From the “Options” menu, you can select one of three difficulties and also choose to play as either Mick or Mack. Functionally, they are exactly the same, but palette swapped (Mack is the Caucasian kid…), so it really doesn’t matter which one you pick; the game is only made for one player as well, which is really weird considering even Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (SEGA, 1990) had a turn-based two player mode…and that only had one playable character!

GlobalGladiatorsControls — Global Gladiators *has two speeds: clunky and slow and uncontrollably fast!*

Anyway, despite being young kids in the prime of their lives (and probably hyped up on McDonald’s food), Mick and Mack seem to have some difficulty in deciding whether they want to be fast, loose, and slippery or slow, heavy, and clunky. They start off at a painfully slow walk that soon turns to a trot and, eventually, a full-on sprint the longer you hold the direction; the faster you go, the more momentum you carry when you jump and the more likely it is that you’re going to crash head-on into an enemy. Luckily, the game’s jump is very useful; your character leaps quite high and you can control their direction in mid-air, but the game’s fast-paced, shoot-‘em-up action is mired in the fact that the titular Gladiators either plod clumsily forward and slip off of platforms or go rocketing away straight into a bottomless pit or a bed of spikes.

GlobalGladiatorsAttack — *Blast enemies with goo but watch out for that recoil…*

Each character wields a goo-shooter, which sprays some unidentified substance that generally eliminates enemies in one hit. The goo travels in a slight arc and you can only shoot in the direction you’re facing, meaning you’ll have to jump and shoot to hit higher enemies and duck and shoot to hit lower enemies. Considering the screen immediately scrolls down when you duck, this can make it difficult to properly aim at your target but, for the most part, the goo is quite a useful tool in your limited arsenal…provided you’re not standing too close to an edge. When you fire the goo-shooter, your character is knocked ever so slightly backwards thanks to the weapon’s…recoil, I guess?…which can be enough to nudge you into a pool of water or toxic waste, and to your death. If you shoot whilst running, this same recoil will stunt your momentum, which can be useful for avoiding damage but, more often than not, simply killed my momentum when I actually wanted to sprint ahead.

GlobalGladiatorsPoints — *The more Golden Arches you collect, the more bonus points you can score at the stage’s end.*

As you battle your way through the game’s handful of levels, you’ll collect different coloured Golden Arches; if you’re thinking that you need to collect a certain number of these to beat the game’s worlds, well, you’re in luck because you don’t. You are free to jump, sprint, and blast your way to each world’s goal (literally Ronald waving a flag) without collecting any Golden Arches, but you’ll miss out on the points they provide and the bonuses you get from collecting them at the end of the stage. If you collect seventy-five Golden Arches, you get to take on a Bonus Stage (which you can also practise from the game’s “Options”), which sees you avoiding anvils and recycling materials for bonus points.

GlobalGladiatorsItems — *Grab a Continue Arrow or a Heart to increase your odds.*

Global Gladiators only has four worlds but, like Sonic, each world has three stages, each of which is surprisingly big. There are many paths to take in each world; the higher path is usually fraught with more enemies while the lower path has pits and other instant-death traps (spikes, water, toxic waste, and bottomless pits). Continue Arrows are dotted around each world’s map, allowing you to respawn further into the stage when you die and, even better, you won’t lose the Golden Arches and points you’ve collected and the enemies you’ve destroyed stay dead; no respawning enemies here! Mick and Mack have a health meter at the bottom of the screen, which is represented as an arrow (conveniently, this arrow is also pointing right, which is the direction the goal is located). If you run into an enemy, they’ll be destroyed (which is good) but you’ll take damage (which is bad); most enemies spit or throw projectiles at you, meaning you’ll have to work around the game’s clunky controls to avoid being hit, and some stage hazards can result in instant death. Luckily, though, you can pick up a Heart to replenish your health and, like the Continue Arrows, these aren’t exactly plentiful but also aren’t exactly rare, either.

GlobalGladiatorsItems2 — *You’ll need those 1-Ups thanks to the abundance of instant-death hazards.*

As with seemingly every single videogame of the time, you’re also working against a clock; when the timer reaches zero, you lose a life, but you can extend your time by picking up a Clock and, if you’re really lucky, you can grab a 1-Up or earn an extra life by accumilating a high enough score. You can also find Continue Coins that will allow you to continue playing after all of your lives are exhausted, which is easily done considering the amount of enemies and hazards packed into the game’s worlds. Mick and Mack travel to three worlds in Global Gladiators: Slime World, Mystical Forest, Toxi-Town, and Arctic World. Each is themed around some kind of environmental message; the first, obviously, deals with pollution and the cleaning up of toxic waste, the second is deforestation, the third is centred around industrialisation and industrial pollution (kind of ironic given that McDonald’s restaurants wouldn’t be the powerhouse they are without industry…), and the fourth is, I guess, commenting on global warming? Honestly, it kind of falls apart the further you get away from Slime World, where you’ll battle slimy monsters and even destroy polluting machines; you might think these machines are crucial to clearing the world’s stages but they’re not and similar mechanisms don’t seem to appear in other worlds and, by the end, it just seems like you’re blasting generic enemies with your goo while hankering for a second-rate cheeseburger.

Graphics and Sound:
Global Gladiators is a visual treat; the game immediately blasts you right in the face with bright, colourful, well-animated graphics and sprites when you teleport into Slime World. While the game’s other stages aren’t quite as visually appealing in their presentation, Slime World does a great job setting the tone for this game; stages are dense, packed with colours, and different layers that can make other worlds, like Toxi-Town, a bit difficult to navigate as, not only can you take multiple paths, your way is often obstructed by foreground elements. Stages do change it up by changing season or colour palette as you progress, and there are often hidden paths or invisible blocks to jump across to reach more Golden Arches, Clocks, Hearts, or 1-Ups, which encourages exploration and experimentation.

GlobalGladiatorsGraphics — *The game is bright and colourful, if a bit cluttered at times.*

Sprites are large and full of life; Mick and Mack both incessantly chew on gum when left idle and sprint and hop around with a fluidity that makes it feel as though you’re playing a cartoon or comic book. The game’s enemies are equally large and well-animated but often blend in with their surrounding; Slime World, for example, is largely covered in green slime that is the same colour as the stage’s enemies and many of Mystical Forest’s stationary creatures tend to merge with their backgrounds.

GlobalGladiatorsCool — *When a character describes themselves as “Awesome”, you* know *they’re awesome!*

As soon as you shove in the cartridge, Global Gladiators blasts your ears with a loud, rap-inspired main theme that also doubles as a stage theme by the time you reach Arctic World. Luckily, the other worlds have themes that fit their aesthetic rather than being a distorted mess of synthesised sound bites and “hip” music. As you collect points and bonuses, your character will also spew out exclamations such as “Awesome!” and “Cool!” just to remind you that these environmentalists are radical and have attitude. Remember how Sonic just was cool and hip without having to literally shout about it (in the videogames, at least)? That is how you know a character is cool, not yelling it out while sporting a knock-off Super Soaker and saving the environment on behalf of McDonald’s.

Enemies and Bosses:
Each of Global Gladiators’ worlds is filled with enemies unique to their theme; there’s no recurring enemies here, which is nice, and each world has slightly different obstacles to overcome. In Slime World, for example, most of the enemies are globs of toxic waste that spit projectiles at you but, in Arctic World, you’ll contend with more aerial enemies and be navigating more platforms rather than dodging projectiles. However, Global Gladiators loses some of the distinctiveness of its enemy design once you get to Mystical Forest. From then on, you’re battling the likes of sentient axes, man-eating plants, living fireballs, and (of course) bats. Luckily, these appear alongside such weird creatures as garbage-throwing anthropomorphic trashcans, log-throwing beavers, and sliding polar bears.

GlobalGladiatorsBoss — Global Gladiators *features a grand total of…one boss…*

What isn’t so great, however, is the fact that Global Gladiators features a grand total of one boss. Yep, four worlds, with three stages each, and you’ll only battle a boss at the end of Arctic World…and it’s two angry faces set into blocks of ice, one on the left-side of the screen and one on the right. Each only attacks you when it’s on screen, and even then all they do is spit bats at you or cause icicles to fall from the ceiling. The most difficult part of this boss is not falling into the instant-death spikes and actually hitting their weak spot, which is their just in-reach eyes; you also have to defeat each face in turn and you’ll know when you’ve done it because the game abruptly ends and wraps up its paper-thin story.

Power-Ups and Bonuses:
Disappointingly, Global Gladiators doesn’t feature any power-ups at all. There’s no speed up, no invincibility, no way to improve your goo-shooter, and no smart bomb to clear out all onscreen enemies. Honestly, I find this very surprising considering when it was released but, when you’re playing Global Gladiators, the best you’ll get are extra lives, extra points, extra time, and the chance to play the Bonus Stage if you collect enough Golden Arches…where you can earn more points and extra lives.

Additional Features:
There aren’t any. Oh, sure, you could play through the game as Mack instead of Mick, or take on one of the other difficulty settings but there’s very little incentive to do this beyond attaining a better high score and, I guess, bragging rights. You can input a few button combinations from the pause menu to gain one extra life or skip the stage you’re on, but I wasn’t able to access the supposed cheat menu so I can’t say if there’s more to be gained from blasting through Global Gladiators with cheats enabled.

The Summary:
Global Gladiators is quite a cumbersome little title; the controls are very stiff and awkward but, once you get used to them and the way the game handles its momentum and physics, it’s a lot of fun. The game is gorgeous to look at, well animated, full of life and vigour, and has a very catchy and upbeat soundtrack but it can’t be denied that there are better colourful run-and-gun platformers from that time available. It’s easily the best of the McDonald’s-branded videogames, though, thanks to its more action-orientated approach; perhaps if it were longer, had more bosses, and allowed (at least) a turn-based two-player mode it would have been better but, as it is, it’s a decent enough way to waste an hour or two and nothing more.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Did you ever play Global Gladiators? Which of the two titular characters was your favourite? Where do you rate it in the surprisingly long history of McDonald’s videogames? When you visit McDonald’s, what do you tend to order? Do you also prefer Burger King? What is your favourite Mega Drive title? No matter what, drop a comment below.

Mini Game Corner: SEGASonic the Hedgehog (Arcade)

29/05/202014/07/2023Dr. K3 Comments

Released: 1993
Developer: SEGA AM3

A Brief Background:
I may have mentioned this before but, back in the early-nineties, SEGA’s super-speedy blue hedgehog of a mascot was on something of a roll; Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Team, 1991) had finally swayed videogame fans away from the Nintendo Entertainment System then, after the unforgettable and highly marketed release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1992), Sonic’s status as a cultural icon was cemented. It was amidst the wave of Sonic’s incredible popularity that SEGA decided to develop a Sonic title for the arcades, most likely as the arcade scene was still a popular way of enjoying videogames even with the Console War right on the horizon. Although it wasn’t the first time SEGA tried to get a Sonic arcade game off the ground, SEGASonic the Hedgehog is, perhaps, the most infamous. Featuring the debut of Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel (two characters that were long-forgotten by SEGA until very recently) and forgoing Sonic’s trademark speed, SEGASonic used a trackball to control its three playable characters and was pretty much exclusively released in Japan. I actually got to play the game at SEGA World in London years and years ago, back when that was a thing, but the game has never been officially released or ported to other consoles since quietly disappearing from the arcade scene.

First Impressions:
SEGASonic makes an immediate impression simply through its bright, colourful graphics; the game features a charming cartoon-like aesthetic, featuring some extremely expressive and amusing animations and facial expressions from Sonic and his two friends. Captured by Doctor Eggman and forced to escape from his hazardous island, players are tasked with battling the game’s awkward trackball controls and navigating seven isometric levels.

*Sonic, Mighty, and Ray must escape Eggman’s island.*

Generally, players are chased by some kind of hazard (a wall of fire or a drilling machine, for example), must dodge past some kind of blockage (a cage, crumbling paths, or spiked walls and the like), and clamber across monkey bars to escape danger. Sonic, Mighty, and Ray all pretty much control exactly the same; no one character is faster than the other, they all have a Spin Attack, and the only real difference between them is the way they animate when performing certain actions (Ray uses his prehensile tail to climb, for example). Each character has a health bar, in a change for the series, which can be refilled by collecting the familiar Golden Rings generously scattered across the game’s maps, all while being chased by Doctor Eggman.

My Progression:
Unfortunately, as SEGASonic hasn’t been re-released or ported to home consoles, the only way to play the game now is using a ROM and an emulator. Equally unfortunate is the fact that the ROM I have for this game is very finicky and prone to crashing; as a result, I didn’t manage to get too far in the game before the emulator crashed and kicked me out of the game. I’m pretty certain that I managed to clear at least one level when I played the game at SEGA World but, on this playthrough, my ROM conked out on me shortly after clearing Trap Tower. I probably will reload my save state and go back to the game at some point to try and get a bit more playtime out of it but, as much as I love the obscurity and visual presentation of the game, the controls make it quite difficult to play (or, at least, play well).

I love SEGASonic the Hedgehog; I would be so happy is SEGA got off their asses and made a real effort to put together a real, HD-quality port of the title that integrates modern analogue controls in place of the trackball. It, like Knuckles’ Chaotix (SEGA, 1995), is criminally under-rated, under-looked, and under-valued for its appeal and, considering SEGA loves to port and re-release their classic titles, it literally boggles my mind that we haven’t seen anything from this game in decades. The only thing holding it back from a full-blown replay is the dodgy controls (well, that and that unreliability of the ROM I have…); even when using a trackball, the game is difficult to control but, with analogue controls better and more sensitive than ever, I could see this game being a nice distracting for an hour or so if SEGA were to spruce it up and re-release it.

What do you think of SEGASonic the Hedgehog? What was your favourite of Sonic’s short-lived arcade games? Did you ever go to SEGA World in London? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Game Corner: RoboCop Versus The Terminator (Mega Drive)

27/05/202027/01/2024Dr. K12 Comments

Released: May 1994
Developer: Virgin Games USA
Also Available For: Game Gear, Master System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Game Boy

The Background:
One of the greatest things about comic books published in the nineties was that the sky was, seemingly, the limit for plots, crossovers, and all kinds of stories to be told. Thanks to Dark Horse Comics snapping up the rights to some of the biggest science-fiction/horror franchises of the time, we got to see not only the likes of Aliens vs. Predator but also the cybernetic clash you always wanted to see in a movie but never got, RoboCop Versus The Terminator (Miller, et al, 1992). Given that the comic was written some time before Frank Miller flushed his reputation down the toilet with The Dark Knight Strikes Back (2001 to 2002), the RoboCop Versus The Terminator was relatively well-written, action-packed fun. The general premise was that RoboCop’s artificial intelligence (A.I.) formed the basis of the world-killing Skynet, which sent Terminators back through time to protect him and ensure its survival. Cue a time-line hopping, reality-bending story that sees RoboCop reduced to his digital consciousness, construct a fully robotic body, and travel back in time to destroy Skynet once and for all. It’s a pretty mental comic but, like Aliens vs. Predator, a fantastic concept that, apparently, had enough legs to warrant a videogame released on a number of consoles. I had owned and played the Master System version for years but, once I set my literal come corner up in my cabin, I knew that I had to track down the superior Mega Drive version.

The Plot:
Unwittingly responsible for the creation of Skynet, RoboCop must battle from the streets of Detroit, to the offices of Cyberdyne, to a war-ravaged future eradicating the Terminator threat and freeing hostages as he goes to ensure a future free from Skynet’s influence.

Gameplay:
Like the majority of videogames based on the RoboCop (Various, 1987 to present) and Terminator (Various, 1984 to present) movies, RoboCop Versus The Terminator is a side-scrolling action shooter with light platforming elements. Unlike the Alien vs. Predator (Capcom, 1994) arcade game, this is a strictly one-player experience that sees the player control RoboCop, who must blast his way through about ten levels taking out the likes of regular street thugs and Terminator alike. As much as I love RoboCop, he’s always a terrible character to control and play as; even in the excellent RoboCop (Data East, 1987) arcade game he was a slow, plodding hunk of metal and it’s more of the same here. RoboCop lumbers his way through levels at a steady pace, hopping half-heartedly to platforms (and, amusingly, monkeying his way across lines and pipes) and struggling to dodge incoming fire. While this is obviously a realistic way to portray RoboCop (who, despite being a massive efficient combat shooter, has never been the most versatile of sci-fi cyborgs), it does mean you can’t just plough ahead guns blazing.

RCvTJump — *RoboCop has a real weight to him.*

Instead, it’s best to hang back and keep an eye on enemy projectiles, ducking and hopping out of the way as best you can considering RoboCop’s massive hit box. Thankfully, many of the game’s environments are destructible and will yield all kinds of goodies, from baby food that will restore Robo’s health to extra lives and weapons. There are also loads of secret rooms to be found that hold similar rewards, encouraging exploration. RoboCop is armed with his trademark Auto-9 handgun and can fire in multiple directions; this alone is more than enough to take out most of the enemies he’ll come up against but, if you get up close to enemies, you can also punch them, and you can acquire bigger, better weapons as you make your way through the game’s levels. You can switch between these with a button press but, once your health is drained and you lose a life, you’ll lose one of your weapons until you return to the default Auto-9. the good news is that RoboCop can take a fair amount of damage and will return to action right on the spot where he fell, but the bad news is that it doesn’t take much to drain Robo’s health and there are a few occasions where environmental hazards (like vats of toxic waste or flaming pits) will instantly kill RoboCop.

RCvTHostages — *Rescue hostages to refill health and score points.*

While RoboCop is generally given simple objectives (like cleaning up the streets or destroying the Terminator threat), some levels will see him having to rescue a number of hostages. Upon being rescued, a portion of Robo’s health will be restored, which is helpful; also helpful is that it doesn’t appear to be a requirement to clearing the level to rescue these hostages; when you see them, you can touch them to rescue them but I never reached the end of a level and was told I’d failed or was forced to go back and save any hostages I’d missed, so it’s more about gaining health and points than a level-clearing obligation. Yes, like pretty much every videogame ever made, there’s a nice little score tally at the bottom of the screen that’ll increase as you take out enemies, rescue hostages, and collect items. Earn enough points and you’ll gain an extra life, which you’ll need as the game ramps up in difficulty as you progress from the thug-infested streets of Detroit to the robot-infested headquarters of the killer A.I. known as Skynet. It’s around this point that you’ll struggle a bit with RoboCop’s controls, hit box, and clunkiness; Terminators of all shapes and sizes (from the traditional T-800s, to the robotic endoskeletons, to spider-like drones and wall-and-ceiling-mounted cannons) will unleash a hailstorm of projectiles your way and you’ll need all of your best weapons and skills to make it through the game’s bullet sponge of a final boss.

Graphics and Sound:
Coming off of the Master System version (which, honestly, isn’t too and compared to some Master System ports), RoboCop Versus The Terminator boasts some gorgeous in-game graphics. RoboCop and his various enemies are big, fantastically-detailed sprites; while this does mean they have large hit boxes, it makes for some impressive, arcade-quality graphics.

RCvTBlood — *Come for the cyborgs, stay for the gore!*

One of the most enjoyable things about RoboCop Versus The Terminator is the copious amounts of gore it contains; when you blast away thugs, they explode in a bloody mess and it’s absolutely glorious. You’ll miss these effects once the Terminators begin to take precedence as the game’s primary enemies but, even then, you’ll see the T-800’s skin degenerate until only the endoskeleton is left, which is a nice addition. Alongside a few choice sound bites from the first RoboCop movie, the game features a techno-inspired soundtrack with a lot of beats and rocking bass; there’s some odd choices, like a sultry voice blurting out “Terminator!” every ten seconds or so but, while the game doesn’t feature either of the iconic themes from the two franchises, its techno-inspired beats seem heavily inspired by both.

Enemies and Bosses:
RoboCop will initially face little resistance from the street thugs of Detroit; they’ll shoot at him, sometimes from behind windows, and get in his way but they’re small fry and easily dispatched with a single shot.

RCvTRCvT — *The T-800’s façade can be destroyed, revealing the robotic endoskeleton.*

At the end of the second level, though, RoboCop comes face-to-face with a T-800 Terminator modelled closely on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appearance from the end of the first film and the majority of the second. As a boss, this guy obviously takes more hits, degenerating from a fully clothed and skinned appearance to the iconic Terminator endoskeleton as the battle progresses. After this, similar Terminators will begin to appear as regular enemies; the Arnold models will take around three hits to put down (one to blast away the façade and two to destroy the endoskeleton) while the endoskeletons will take around two. Smaller Terminator drones also show up to spew projectiles at you as you journey deeper into the future and Skynet, but you’ll also encounter red Terminators, which are endoskeletons that take even more hits to put down.

*You’ll also battle some classic* RoboCop enemies, though *Skynet is a giant floating skull…*

You’ll also battle some iconic RoboCop bosses, such as ED-209 and (rather inexplicably) RoboCop 2 (or “RoboCain”), each of which are guarding the facilities and offices or RoboCop’s megalomaniacal creators, Omni Consumer Products (OCP). Once RoboCop travels to the war-torn future, he’ll battle bosses such as Terminator-controlled gatling guns, super-powered endoskeletons, and Skynet itself. Skynet is represented as a giant floating endoskeleton head that tosses small drones and projectiles at you while endoskeletons march in from either the left or the right side of the screen. This final battle is, honestly, a little underwhelming (though, honestly, most of the game’s bosses are after the first few and you’ve finished with RoboCain and Ed-209); you’ll have your work cut out for you to dodge all of the projectiles it throws at you and to unload enough bullets to finally do it in but I can’t help but feel the game missed out by not including a T-1000 battle or a final boss more reminiscent of the giant liquid metal T-1000000 spider from T2-3D: Battle Across Time (Cameron, Bruno, and Winston, 1996).

Power-Ups and Bonuses:
As mentioned, there are a variety of power-ups RoboCop can collect as he explores (and destroys) each level; baby food will replenish his health, little RoboCop heads will grant an extra life, and shields will grant RoboCop a generous period of invincibility. Most notably, though, RoboCop can acquire a variety of bigger, better guns which will dramatically increase his odds of survival; we’ve got everything from a traditional three-way spread to a grenade launcher, to homing missiles and a laser pistol. You can also grab one of ED-209’s arm cannons from a rapid fire burst, which is a pretty great little bonus; you can grab one of these during the boss battle with ED-209 but they do crop up in secret rooms and other areas of the game, too,

Additional Features:
There are three difficulty settings to pick from, each one carries a different set of lives, continues, and affects the amount of damage RoboCop can take. If you play on the hardest setting, enemies will be much more aggressive and the arrows that show you the way to go will also be missing. Aside from that, the only real incentive to replay again is to find all the secret rooms. As with all great old school games like this, there are a variety of cheats you can input that will grant you a whole bunch of lives and let you pick from all the available weapons. Unfortunately, though, you can only play as RoboCop; the narrative is geared in a way where Robo is the hero and the Terminators are the enemy but it might have been nice to see a mode where you play as a reprogrammed T-800.

The Summary:
RoboCop Versus The Terminator is a blast to play; while RoboCop is a clunky and cumbersome videogame protagonist at the best of times, you really get the sense that you’re playing as RoboCop and his quick-firing weapon and variety of additional armaments more than makes up for his heavy, stilted control. It also helps that there’s not many cheap deaths here; projectiles can come at you quickly but each enemy has a specific pattern that you can learn and exploit and, given the generous amount of health and power-ups on offer, there are instances when it’s okay to plough ahead guns blazing. Some levels can be a bit of a maze but, other than that, it’s worth it for the gore and the joy of seeing RoboCop punch a Terminator right in the face.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

What did you think of RoboCop Versus The Terminator? What is your favourite RoboCop or Terminator videogame? What did you think of Frank Miller’s comic book? Do you think we missed out on seeing these two sci-fi icons clash on the big screen? Whatever you think, feel free to leave a comment below.

Game Corner: Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble (Nintendo 3DS)

15/04/202005/08/2025Dr. K11 Comments

Released: March 2012
Originally Released: November 1994
Developer: M2
Original Developer: Aspect
Also Available For: Game Gear, Gamecube, and PlayStation 2

The Background:
A lot of people forget that, alongside Sonic the Hedgehog’s iconic and much-lauded Mega Drive titles, SEGA also released a fair few Sonic videogames for their 8-bit consoles. The 8-bit versions of Sonic the Hedgehog (Ancient, 1991) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Aspect, 1992) differed considerably from the 16-bit counterparts, featuring entirely different Zones, gameplay gimmicks, and features. While Sonic 2 had almost nothing in common with its bigger, better brother, Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos (ibid, 1993) represented Aspect’s first real attempt at a completely original Sonic title. Released in Japan as Sonic & Tails, Sonic Chaos was a major step up from the first 8-bit Sonic, featuring a playable version of Miles “Tails” Prower, bigger and better graphics, and many other upgrades that left its 8-bit predecessors in the dust. After SEGA switched their focus entirely to the Mega Drive, the Master System was abandoned entirely and all subsequent 8-bit Sonic titles were released exclusively on the Game Gear, SEGA’s underrated handheld console. This was also where Sonic & Tails 2, launched outside of Japan as Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble, found its home; while clearly inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1994), Sonic & Knuckles (SEGA, 1994), and Sonic the Hedgehog CD (ibid, 1993), Triple Trouble again told a largely original story and represented the pinnacle of Sonic’s foray into 8-bit platforming.

The Plot:
The diabolical Doctor Eggman scatters the Chaos Emeralds across the world but secures one for himself and tricks Sonic’s friendly rival, Knuckles the Echidna, into tracking the remaining gems. However, Nack the Weasel (known as Fang the Sniper in Japan) is hording the Emeralds inside the Special Stages, resulting in Sonic and Tails facing all three in their quest to recover the Chaos Emeralds.

Gameplay:
Like its predecessors, Triple Trouble is a sidescrolling, 2D platformer based on speed. Of all the 8-bit Sonic titles, this is easily the biggest and the fastest; players can choose to play as either Sonic or Tails and journey through the game’s six Zones and each plays a little differently.

*Run or fly through Zones as Sonic or Tails* *and tackle a variety of Special Stages.*

Both characters can run, jump, and spin as normal and enter a Spindash by pressing down and A; pressing up and A as Sonic allows him to perform the Strike Dash, a version of the Peel-Out, to blast ahead at full speed. Tails, however, flies instead of performing a Strike Dash and, unlike in Sonic Chaos, Tails can actually access the Special Stages and collect the Chaos Emeralds. Speaking of which, like all 8-bit Sonic titles, Triple Trouble features a unique way of accessing the Special Stages; players must first collect fifty Golden Rings, locate and smash open a Chaos Emerald monitor, then enter the sparkling warp to challenge Nack for a Chaos Emerald. Like Sonic Chaos, each Special Stage offers a different challenge, including bouncing around collecting Rings, piloting the Tornado bi-plane, or navigating a maze.

SonicTripleTroubleNack — *Nack acts like a tough guy but is really a pushover.*

At the end of each Special Stage, they then battle against Nack, who shows up sporadically throughout Triple Trouble to cause Sonic or Tails headaches, similar to Knuckles in Sonic 3. Despite his cool and unique character design, Nack is more a buffoon and an annoyance than an actual challenge, however. Triple Trouble’s Zones borrow heavily from other Sonic titles and yet still manage to stay relatively unique; Tidal Plant Zone has more than a passing resemblance to Sonic CD’s Tidal Tempest, for example, and Atomic Destroyer Zone is like a combination of Sonic & Knuckles’ Death Egg Zone and 8-bit Sonic 2’s Scrambled Egg Zone thanks to its abundance of maze-like tubes. Oddly, Triple Trouble features a large number, and dependence upon, springs; the first Zone, Great Turquoise Zone, is chock full of them (they’re on the trees, the ground, and even the Badniks!) and one of the main things you’ll find yourself doing when playing Triple Trouble is bouncing around on springs and other bouncy hazards, fighting with the stiff controls to get Sonic or Tails back on track. Being that it’s an 8-bit title, Triple Trouble lacks some of the polish of its 16-bit counterparts but, saying that, its 8-bit predecessors felt a bit easier to handle. Here, Sonic jutters along, refusing to change direction mid-air, and feels sluggish and weighed down, making precise platforming difficult. This is a bit of an issue when trying to explore Zones for those elusive Chaos Emerald monitors and when tackling the Special Stages but, for a simple pick-up-and-play title, isn’t a major handicap, especially as there’s not much in the way of bottomless pits or cheap deaths.

Graphics and Sound:
As mentioned before, Triple Trouble is probably the best looking 8-bit Sonic title. The sprites are large and full of character and the Zones and environments are bright and lively. Of all the 8-bit Sonic titles, this comes the closest to matching its 16-bit counterparts, particularly by evoking the same sense of fun and adventure found in Sonic 3.

SonicTripleTroubleZones — *You may recognise* Triple Trouble‘s aesthetic.

What lets the game down, however, is the sound. As it was originally developed for the Game Gear, sounds are muddy and distorted, as though they’re playing underwater. The game’s music is catchy enough and fits perfectly but collecting Rings or smashing Badniks lacks the usual oomph I expect from a Sonic title.

Enemies and Bosses:
Triple Trouble features the usual mechanised enemies we’ve all come to expect from a Sonic title, especially one from his heyday; Badniks range from robotic snails with springs on their shells to exploding penguins. Most are easily destroyed by simply spinning into them but there’s a fair few Badniks here that cannot be destroyed, which prove especially annoying when you run face-first into them and then stutter down to a lower level thanks to the game’s janky knock-back feature.

*Bosses aren’t lacking in variety, although Dr. Eggman ends up being a bit of a pushover.*

Like in the 8-bit Sonic 2 and Sonic Chaos, bosses consist, for the most part, of giant Badniks (such as a giant flying turtles and a bomb-spewing, rocket-powered penguin). However, Sonic and Tails also have to battle Knuckles, who fires bombs and rockets from a cute little vehicle, Nack (who bounces around in a funky spring-loaded contraption), Metal Sonic (in a variation of the iconic battle from Sonic CD), and, of course, Doctor Eggman. Sonic or Tails won’t battle Eggman until the game’s finale, however. This boss battle has three stages but there isn’t much to it; you simply ram his machine until it explodes and transitions to the next phase and, in the final stage (which is eerily reminiscent of the final bosses from the first two 8-bit Sonic titles), you dodge some lightning and smash him as he cycles around a tube.

Power-Ups and Bonuses:
Like all Sonic titles, Sonic and Tails can smash monitors to aid their progress; they can get an extra ten Rings, a speed boost from the Power Sneakers, an invincibility, hit a checkpoint, or gain extra lives as standard but can also access some additional items.

Triple Trouble *has some fun, unique power-ups, including Tails’s cute little submarine!*

There’s a snowboard that lets Sonic cut through the Robotnik Winter Zone with ease, Propeller Shoes that allow him to navigate underwater, Rocket Shoes to allow him to burn through the sky, and a Pogo Spring because…there aren’t enough springs in the game already. These last two popped up in Sonic Chaos as well but it’s nice to see them return here and it’s a welcome change to the usual shield power-ups. Sonic doesn’t get all the toys, though, as Tails can jump into the Sea Fox to navigate through Tidal Plant Zone without the need for air bubbles. Since he doesn’t need to Rocket Shoes, he can also grab the Hyper Heli-Tails to increase the duration of his flying ability. Additionally, players won’t lose all of their Rings when hit; instead, they’ll only lose thirty Rings, which makes playing through Triple Trouble much easier compared to the first to 8-bit Sonic titles where Sonic couldn’t even collect the Rings he lost.

Additional Features:
There isn’t much else in Triple Trouble; obviously, as with the majority of Sonic titles, the ultimate goal is to collect all of the Chaos Emeralds to receive the game’s best ending but this doesn’t offer any reward other than not being told to “Try again”. There’s no Super Sonic here, no two player mode, and you cannot unlock Knuckles or anything like that. It’s a very simple, one-player experience with the minimum of effort being asked of you. The Virtual Console version, however, offers a few extra features; you can create a save point (which is quite handy if you need to stop playing but you only get one save), change the aspect ratio of the display, and fiddle about with a few other minor settings but that’s about it. For such an ambitious 8-bit Sonic title, it remains as bare bones as all 8-bit Sonic videogames were back in the day.

The Summary:
Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble is decent enough, for the most part; Zones are bright, vibrant, and easy to blast through, Sonic has never looked better in 8-bit, and there’s a decent amount of variety and challenge on offer. However, for as much as Triple Trouble outpaces its 8-bit predecessors, it’s still an 8-bit title; the controls are clunky and unresponsive, the knock-back from damage is a pain in the ass, and sound effects are distorted. Similar to the Game Gear version of Sonic 2, the screen is zoomed in quite a bit as well, which means you’re never quite sure what you’re running into. Overall, I enjoyed the game; it was probably the best 8-bit Sonic game of the bunch, but it’s still far from perfect. I loved Nack and how he was worked into the game, even if he was, technically, just a rip off of Knuckles, and it’s a shame that he hasn’t been brought back in a similarly high profile role. Honestly, I’d love to see this game get a proper, Sonic Mania (PagodaWest Games/Headcannon, 2017) style remake (alongside, or as part of, it’s other 8-bit brothers) but it seems like SEGA and Sonic Team and happy to let their 8-bit/handheld Sonic titles fade into obscurity, which is a shame really.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

What were your experiences with Triple Trouble? Do you also long for Nack’s return to the franchise? What did you think of Sonic’s other 8-bit outings? Drop a line in the comments to let me know.

Interplay: Sonic Adventure

13/04/202001/12/2024Dr. K16 Comments

One of the great things about adaptations, and adaptation studies, is that they both:

“[continue] to expand and become more inclusive […] it is increasingly difficult to determine a cohesive theory that accounts for the division between adaptation and other intertextual modes: allusions, plagiarisms, remakes, sequels, homages, mash-ups, appropriations, and the list goes on” (Dicecco, 2015: 161)

This quote sums up perfectly what makes adaptation studies so interesting; adaptations can be anything and are restricted only by the scope of your imagination and your commitment to researching the links between media.

While researching the theories of Nico Dicecco (and his contemporaries) during my PhD, I chose to focus on the adaptation of videogames into movies, television shows, cartoons, and comic books. This was primarily because it’s a lot easier to talk about media that is adapted into film and there hadn’t really been any serious research into videogame adaptations at that time. I’ve previously talked about how my studies into the Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Team/Various, 1991 to present) franchise revealed that Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball (Polygames/SEGA Technical Institute, 1993) heavily influenced multiple Sonic adaptations over the years but there has been another Sonic videogame that has made multiple jumps to other media.

Today, I’m once again returning to one of my favourite Sonic videogames, Sonic Adventure (Sonic Team, 1998), Sonic’s first real foray into 3D gameplay and a title that focused on multiple characters and gameplay mechanics, a far deeper narrative than the franchise had experienced in a videogame before, and functioned as both a consolidation of Sonic’s competing iterations and a “soft reboot” for the franchise, due its use of “slight changes to be made without having to completely scrap the franchise and start over” (Bancroft, 2015).

SonicAdventureVariety — *I can’t praise this game’s variety enough!*

Coming after a long absence from a main series Sonic title (and at a time when SEGA were almost haemorrhaging money thanks to failures like the Mega-CD and SEGA 32X), Sonic Adventure became “the best-selling Dreamcast game of all time, with almost two and a half million copies sold”. (Pétronille and Audureau, 2012: 70). It reinvigorated the Sonic franchise in a way that I think has been forgotten over time; while the game may have had its flaws, it successfully revitalised Sonic and led to a string of successful sequels and follow-ups. While these weren’t enough to curb SEGA’s financial woes, the success and impact of Sonic Adventure led to a shift in Sonic’s gameplay, narrative, and aesthetic direction; rather than racing along a 2D plane, players now ran along at break-neck speeds in fully 3D environments that were designed more like rollercoasters. Sonic was now “Taller, slimmer and somehow spikier”, his friendliness replaced with “an anime-style cool” (Jones, et al, 2011: 31), and his narrative was far darker and more mature than his bright, psychedelic 2D titles. Perhaps the most significant impact of Sonic Adventure came through Sonic Team eventually stripping away all other playstyles to focus purely on Sonic’s speed, an aspect that largely led to the development of the Boost-orientated gameplay of modern Sonic titles.

InterplaySAOVAAdv — *Surely this can’t be a coincidence?*

One thing to note before I delve into the main focus of this article is how the adaptation process appears to have worked both ways with Sonic Adventure. Many elements from Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie (Ikegami, 1996) are recognisable in Sonic Adventure, such as Tails’ workshop on South Island, the appearance of cities and structures that mirror those of our world, and a lot of Doctor Robotnik’s (Edwin Neal) personality and technology. For me, the Sonic OVA is clearly a precursor to Sonic Adventure’s attempt to leave behind Mobius and show him as an adventure-seeking teenager in a world not too dissimilar to our own (though I still pray for the day when his characterisation matches the snarky attitude of his OVA counterpart). Sonic Adventure didn’t just impact Sonic’s videogames, however; by 1999, Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic books had developed into a continuation of the fan favourite Sonic the Hedgehog (1993 to 1995, more commonly referred to as “SatAM”) cartoon, infusing characters and events from the videogames into its narrative. With this in mind (and, possibly, in keeping with SEGA’s desire to create a homogeneous version of Sonic), it was inevitable that Sonic Adventure would feature in these comics before long.

InterplaySARoboEggman — *Robo-Robotnik soon replaced his organic counterpart as “the Eggman”.*

Sonic Adventures’ influence began slowly but, in keeping with the increasingly-convoluted narrative of the comics at the time, was complex to the nth degree. First, the Archie team crafted an elaborate story to explain why Sonic now looked like his Sonic Adventure counterpart: ‘Retro Activity’ (Bollers, et al, 1999) not only showed how Sonic transformed from his pudgy, classic look to this edgier aesthetic by racing against a destructive energy beam so fast that he cycled through his various Super forms, but it told this story backwards! If you thought that was bad, though, the lengths they went to to explain Robotnik’s transformation into his Sonic Adventure counterpart, Doctor Eggman, were even worse! So, in ‘Endgame, Part 4: For Whom the Bell Tolls’ (ibid, 1998), Sonic finally destroyed Robotnik forever in a fight to the death involving his latest doomsday weapon, the Ultimate Annihilator. However, it is dramatically revealed in ‘I Am the Eggman!’ (ibid, 1999) that Robotnik has returned…in the form of his fully-robotic, alternate-universe counterpart, Robo-Robotnik. Though seemingly destroyed in that story, the issue ends with Robo-Robotnik downloading his consciousness into a body that is identical to his Sonic Adventure design; “Eggman” (for a long time “The Eggman”) would quickly become a derogatory nickname used to describe Robotnik until the madness was smoothed over by massive continuity changes much later down the line. The Sonic Adventure tie-in officially began with ‘The Discovery: A Sonic Adventure Tie-In’ (ibid), in which Sonic and the Knothole Freedom Fighters first learn about the “hidden city of the ancients”. Robotnik also learns of an ancient beast known as “Perfect Chaos” hidden within not the Master Emerald (…as that was where Mammoth Mogul was imprisoned) but the “Black Emerald”. Unearthing the Black Emerald in the Mysterious Cat Country, Robotnik discovers that it is severely depowered and promptly leads and assault on Floating Island to smash the Master Emerald in order to repower the Black Emerald.

InterplaySAAdventureBegins — *Two issues in and I’ve already lost the plot!*

After being denied the chance to accompany the Freedom Fighters, Amy Rose uses the magical “Ring of Acorns” wish herself into a more mature body in the follow-up story, ‘If Wishes Were Acorns’ (ibid), one that (you guessed it) is identical to her Sonic Adventure appearance. The Freedom Fighters then travel to the hidden city, which is located beneath an island (that is an almost exact replica of the OVA’s South Island) and accessed via a Mystic Ruins mine cart. A back-up story, ‘Swallowing Trouble’ (Penders, et al, 1999), introduces Archie’s readers to Big the Cat; his peaceful existence is disrupted when Froggy (who articulates through thought bubbles) swallows a piece of Chaos, grows a tail, and is promptly kidnapped by E-102γ (also known simply as “Gamma”). In the next issue, ‘City of Dreams’ (Bollers, et al, 1999) shows Sonic and friends exploring the hidden city, which is Station Square from the videogame and populated entirely by humans (who are different from “Overlanders”, the mostly-extinct human-like species that once waged war on Mobius), and sustained by an “artificial environment” (…that includes a sky, apparently).

InterplaySAVsChaos0 — *Things pick up with this Sonic’s battle against Chaos 0.*

While they end the story making good progress in establishing diplomatic relations with the humans, the two back-up stories show Robotnik sending his E-series robots out to find more Master Emerald fragments to empower Chaos and Amy rescuing an injured bird from ZERO. Interestingly, while Archie bent over backwards to explain the characters new look, they simply have Amy’s Piko-Piko Hammer appear out of thin air with no explanation; even she is shocked to see it! Things finally pick up in the next issue’s ‘Night of Chaos!’ (ibid), which recreates (with amazing fidelity) the first encounter and battle between Sonic and Chaos 0. The back-up stories introduce Tikal to the story, as she relates to Knuckles her history (meeting and befriending Chaos and the destruction of her tribe when her father, Pachamac, tried to forcibly take the seven Chaos Emeralds from its shrine), how Robotnik finalised Chaos’ 0 form by infusing it with Froggy, and recreates the beginning of Gamma’s story by showing it pass a training drill and release Amy and her bird friend (here clearly identified as a Flicky) after overcoming its programming and gaining a modicum of sentience.

InterplaySAArchiePC — *Archie recreated Perfect Chaos’ birth in stunning detail.*

Archie followed this up with a 48-page ‘Super Sonic Special’ that rapidly told Sonic Adventure’s familiar story beats: Sonic, Miles “Tails” Prower, and Knuckles battle Chaos 2 and 4 after Robotnik feeds it shards of the Master Emerald; Big, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles end up on the Egg Carrier; there’s a tussle with Gamma (where Amy spares it from destruction) and they fight Chaos 6, destroying the Egg Carrier in the process. The adaptation continues in the next regular issue; in here, Knuckles discovers “the Eggman” unconscious in the Mystic Ruins and Chaos, still alive, blasts through the land as a tornado, absorbing the six Super Emeralds, and transforms into Perfect Chaos, flooding Station Square (and attaching itself to the Power Siphon that control’s the city’s environment) exactly as it does in the opening and Super Sonic story of Sonic Adventure. Perfect Chaos destroys the Egg Carrier then, after learning a bit more from Tikal, Sonic uses the Emerald’s to transform into Super Sonic and engage Perfect Chaos. It’s around about at this point that the story stops creating its own dialogue and starts lifting lines directly from Sonic Adventure but, considering the quality of Archie’s writing back then, I would necessarily say that this is a bad thing. The story finally comes to a conclusion in issue 84’s ‘Perfect Chaos’ (Penders, et al, 1999), in which Super Sonic struggles to subdue Perfect Chaos while Knuckles overcomes his fear of water and uses his immense strength to restart the city’s power generator (tapping into his latent Emerald powers for the first time, which would later significantly change his appearance and powers). This, coupled with Super Sonic’s attack, is enough to revert Perfect Chaos back to Chaos 0. At peace once more, Chaos and Tikal return “to the Zone [where they] belong” and the threat is finally ended (…once again glossing over the untold death and destruction in Station Square).

InterplaySAArchieLore — *Archie lore was dense enough before they wedged in* Sonic Adventure.

Archie’s Sonic Adventure adaptation is one of the few times they actually crafted a long-running narrative out of a videogame story; normally, they just produced one-shots or sort stories that briefly (and very loosely and awkwardly) spliced the game’s story into their own convoluted narrative. The incorporation of Sonic Adventure’s narrative was especially difficult given that several key elements had to be changed due to them clashing with Archie’s lore; Chaos’ origin and imprisonment, for one, and the weird way they introduced Station Square for another, to say nothing of how the entire Echidna backstory struggled to fit in with the messed up narrative crafted by the notorious Ken Penders. Nevertheless, this was, perhaps, the closest Archie Comics got to a straight-up, beat-by-beat adaptation of a videogame; they made it easier on themselves in the future by generally just adapting the opening portions of a game and leaving a dialogue box that said something like “Play the game to find out the rest” and then vaguely referring to the game’s events in subsequent stories. Here, though, we got lines from the game, locations, notable boss battles, and hit almost every story beat from the game no matter how at odds it was with the world Archie had created for their version of Sonic.

InterplaySASTCFearChange — *Chaos cripples with its fear aura and alters Sonic’s look.*

Over here in the United Kingdom, Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic (1993 to 2002, referred to as “StC”) was a little late to the party with their Sonic Adventure adaptation; like Archie, Fleetway had established their own, separate lore for Sonic and his friends, one that “felt” closer to the videogames but was still distinctly separate from it. Previously, their adaptations of Sonic videogames had tended to be multi-part stories that took the game’s characters and the vague outline of its plot and applied them to their unique narrative and Sonic Adventure was no different. The arc began in issue 175’s ‘The Coming of Chaos!’ (Kitching , et al, 2000), in which Sonic and his friends race out to confront StC’s version of Chaos 0 in Metropolis City Zone. This battle, which is a truncated version of the first boss fight with Chaos 0, showcases that StC’s Chaos exudes an aura that cripples its foes with feelings of utter dread. Headstrong and arrogant as always, Sonic attacks Chaos head-on regardless and manages to fend it off but is left with glowing green eyes and jagged spikes. In the following issue, it is revealed that Robotnik’s assistant, Grimer, unleashed Chaos in the hopes of destroying Sonic and his friends and shaking Robotnik out of the slump he had found himself in after multiple defeats. However, Robotnik reveals that Chaos is truly uncontrollable and that, by setting it free, Grimer has “doomed the entire planet”.

InterplaySASTCJohnny — *Defeating Chaos extracts a heavy price.*

Meanwhile, Sonic’s tech buddy Porker Lewis arrives; he’s (somehow) discovered that it’s made up of Chaos energy and has whipped up a device to defeat it but Sonic, already weakened from his earlier tussle with the creature, is unable to fight through its fear-inducing aura to complete the process. Luckily, Johnny Lightfoot steps in to lend a hand but, while he succeeds and Chaos is seemingly defeated, he dies in the process! Yep, a kids comic actually killed off a beloved, long-time character and not just any kids comic, a Sonic comic! Up until this point, death had largely been a stranger to StC’s stories; characters were used as batteries for Robotnik’s Badniks or turned to stone, or trapped for all eternity (…for a while), but they had never died before! StC hammered home that Johnny was actually, really, 100% dead in the following issue, where the guilt and shame of having recklessly led his friends into danger causes Sonic to quit the entire thing. However, Chaos reappears the Floating Island’s Emerald Chamber, now able to talk and state its intentions: it claims ownership of the Chaos Emeralds and desires to absorb their power. Knuckles is left with no choice but the jettison the Emeralds in the following story, ‘Splash-Down!’ (ibid), which causes the Floating Island to crash and sink into the sea. There’s an interesting wrinkle here where Knuckles, despondent at his actions, resigns himself to facing the same fate as his ancestral home and has to be coerced by Amy (and a good knock on the head) to avoid killing himself.

InterplaySASTCTikal — *Tikal raised new questions about* StC-Knuckles…

Also in this story, rather than going through a whole complicated mess involving robotic counterparts and body swapping, Robotnik simply…puts on a jacket so he resembles his Sonic Adventure design. I find this doubly amusing and ironic considering the lengths StC went to to show Robotnik transforming from his classic design to his Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993) look. Oh, and Sonic just…comes back at the end of the story, ready to jump into the fray once more. In the next issue’s story, ‘Out of Time!’ (Kitching, et al, 2000), Porker continues to obsess over Sonic’s green eyes and the Chaos energy he apparently absorbed from battling Chaos. This turns out to be a pretty big deal as Sonic is the only one who can see Tikal when she suddenly appears and promptly zaps him 8,000 years into the past. This (and the subsequent issue) is also where StC loops Sonic Adventure’s lore into their own narrative regarding Knuckles’ past; we learn not only that Knuckles existed in the distant past (a plot thread that wouldn’t be resolved until StC was continued online) but also that the extra-dimensional Drakon Empire (who had previously attempted to invade Mobius) were involved in Chaos’ origin. After defeating a Drakon Prosecutor, revealing the heavily-armoured warriors to be mutated fish in armoured shells, Sonic chats with Tikal’s father, “Pochacamac”, who reveals that the Echidnas stole the seven Chaos Emeralds (and the Master Emerald) from the Drakon Empire after they invaded the Echidna’s sacred Emerald Mines and infused the gems with their patented Chaos energy.

InterplaySASTCChaosOrigin — StC *gave Chaos a completely new origin.*

During a battle with Drakon Prosecutors in which a stray energy blasts hits the Emeralds and causes their powers to surge out of control, the Drakon Sonic had previously defeated is released from its prison and fuses with the Emeralds to transform into Chaos. Sonic attempts to get revenge for Johnny in the following issue but is transported back to the future in order to weaken Chaos enough for past Knuckles to do…something to imprison Chaos. Sonic returns to the present just as Chaos arrives at Robotnik’s mountaintop fortress, where Robotnik gathered the Chaos Emeralds in order to lure it in…though he does this merely to have a front row seat to the end of not only Sonic and his friends, but the entire world. All hope seems lost in ‘Perfect Chaos!’ (ibid) when Chaos absorbs the power of the Chaos Emeralds and transforms into Perfect Chaos (which actually more closely resembles Chaos 6) until a severely weakened and dying Super Sonic arrives. How, I gave Archie flack for how complicated some of their stories were so I guess it’s only fair to deviate here to explain this a bit. In StC, Sonic absorbed a huge amount of Chaos energy a long time ago; this lay dormant in him for years and, whenever under extreme stress or driven to severe rage, he would transform into Super Sonic. StC Super Sonic was an uncontrollable, rage-filled, super-powered demon with maniacal eyes who could shoot energy blasts, fly at incredible speeds, and was all-but-invulnerable. However, Sonic’s friends eventually found a way to separate Super Sonic from him and imprisoned the demon within a time dilation of sorts. Super Sonic did eventually escape but the effort drained his power so much that he eventually lost his memory and became a confused, but harmless, individual.

InterplaySASTCFinale — *Chaos, and Super Sonic, are both defeated, ending both the story and* StC.

Sonic’s fears regarding his demonic counterpart are realised in the finale of the Sonic Adventure arc, ‘Point of no Return!’ (ibid), in which Super successfully drains Perfect Chaos of all its energy and regresses it back to a harmless Drakon fish. The Chaos energy returns Super’s memories and powers and he attacks everyone, intending to kill them all, and begins to drain the life energy out of Sonic. However, Super’s friend, Ebony, uses her magical powers to fuse Super and Sonic back into one being again. Grimer quits Robotnik’s employ, disgusted at his lackadaisical attitude to what looked to be the end of the world, and the story ends with Sonic and his friends triumphant. Sadly, the Sonic Adventure arc would be the last time StC ran original Sonic stories in their comics; for a while, the comics had consistently largely of reprints of old stories, even though the writers could have done what Archie did and used the extra pages to tell back-up tales to expand the story rather than rushing through everything in the main Sonic strips.

InterplaySASTCRushed — StC didn’t really give these guys anything to do in this arc…

Compared to the Archie adaptation, StC’s interpretation of Sonic Adventure is not only rushed but has some pretty weak connections to its source material. The characters never visit any of the locations from the game, Chaos is significantly different (though, in some ways, better; its “fear aura” was a nice inclusion with a lot of potential), Big is reduced to a throwaway, one panel cameo, Gamma doesn’t appear at all, and neither Tails or Amy have anything near the significance of the roles they played in the game. While Knuckles plays a vital part, he’s far more hands-off than in Archie (and the videogame), and Robotnik barely features at all (though this does make sense considering where the character was, mentally, at the time). If Fleetway had been able to use every page of their issues to tell this story, it probably would have landed much better; while I don’t doubt that they still would have sought to slot Sonic Adventure’s canon into their own as best as they could, at least e could have seen a five page back-up story featuring Knuckles, or Big, or anyone. Instead, it’s a very poor effort; StC did a pretty good job of telling stories heavily influenced by the videogames in the past but, by the point, the comic was on its last legs so I guess we were lucky to get anything.

InterplaySASXChaos0 — Sonic X weaved the game’s story into its lore and mixed it up a bit.

Chaos would go on to sporadically appear in Archie Comics as it continued on, even when the license switched over to IDW Publishing, but it also notably appeared in Sonic X (2003 to 2006) when the anime did its own six-part adaptation of Sonic Adventure. Before I get into that, though, I just want to briefly mention Sonic Underground (1999), the oft-lambasted follow-up to SatAM that, for all its faults, at least featured Knuckles (Brian Drummond). There’s a couple of points in the series where characters refer to “Chaos” as being the destructor of Mobius and, in ‘New Echidna in Town’ (Boreal, et al, 1999) Chaos Energy transforms Dingo (Peter Wilds) into a mindless beast, Chaos Dingo, who takes on a malleable form. While this link to Sonic Adventure is tenuous at best (made all the more so by Sonic Underground’s dramatic departure from all Sonic lore), it’s still an interesting connection to make. Despite looking fantastic due to its anime aesthetic, Sonic X was a bit of a disappointment when it first started for a variety of reasons: Sonic (Jason Griffith) is largely lethargic, preferring to spend his days taking naps or smelling flowers, and all of his iconic friends are pushed to the side to make way for Chris Thorndyke (Michael Sinterniklaas) and a host of other human characters forced into the show when Sonic and the others are transported from their world to Earth. However, for me at least, things started to pick up near the end of the first season and with the episode ‘Pure Chaos’ (Kamegaki, 2004), which kick-started the Sonic Adventure saga with Froggy swallowing a Chaos Emerald, Dr. Eggman (Mike Pollock) launching the Egg Carrier, and Sonic and Knuckles (Dan Green) battling Chaos 1 and 2. Straight away, Sonic X is ahead of the curve simply by including Big in a role more suited to his videogame story and, like Archie, the series sticks quite close to the source material.

InterplaySASXBosses — Sonic X *featured almost all of* Sonic Adventure‘s bosses.

The adaptation continued in the following episode, ‘A Chaotic Day’ (Kamegaki, 2004), which focuses a bit more on Knuckles’ side of the story, detailing how Chaos broke out of the Master Emerald and his search for its shards, which also brings him into contact with Tikal (Rebecca Honig). Sonic and Tails (Amy Palant) then battle both Chaos 4 at Eggman (in the Egg Hornet) at the Mystic Ruins (in what is a pretty faithful adaptation of the same boss battles from Sonic Adventure) before pursing Eggman to his Egg Carrier. They crash, as in the game, and Amy (Lisa Ortiz) and Cheese the Rabbit (Rebecca Honig) are attacked by ZERO, who kidnaps Amy and the birdie, Lily (Sayaka Aoki). Amy and Gamma’s (Andrew Rannells) stories are the primary focus for the next episode, ‘A Robot Rebels’ (Kamegaki, 2004), in which Gamma kidnaps Froggy right after Chris helps Big to rescue him and he subsequently frees Amy after suffering a bit of a short circuit at the sight of Lily just like in the videogame. Similarly, Amy convinces Sonic to spare Gamma and Knuckles recovers the last piece of the Master Emerald in the following episode, and, though Eggman successfully uses Froggy’s tail and Chaos Emerald to transform Chaos into Chaos 6, Sonic and Knuckles (randomly sporting his Shovel Claws) defeat it. The episode ends with the finale of Tails’ story, in which Eggman launches a missile at Station Square and he must gather his courage and self-sufficiency in order to disarm it (though he doesn’t battle the Egg Walker).

InterplaySASXGamma — *Gamma’s tear-jerking story is told from start to finish.*

‘Revenge of the Robot’ (ibid) primarily wraps up Sonic and Gamma’s stories from the game: Gamma travels through the locations of Sonic Adventure deactivating its robotic brethren and freeing the Flicky’s trapped within (which is considerably easier than in the videogame) and eventually destroys itself and its older “brother”, E-101β “Kai” (Andrew Rannells) to reunite with its Flicky family. While Sonic does go on to defeat Eggman and his Egg Viper, Chaos obtains all seven Chaos Emeralds, transforms into Perfect Chaos, and floods Station Square in the final episode of the saga, ‘Flood Fight’ (Kamegaki, 2004). Up until this point, Chris’s involvement (and the involvement of his extended family and friends) was largely painless and unobtrusive. The changes this, however, as the destruction brought upon Station Square has a significant impact on the lives of Sonic’s new human friends and, wouldn’t you know it, it is Chris who supplies with the last Chaos Emerald he needs to transform into Super Sonic. Unlike in the videogame and the Archie Comics adaptation, Super Sonic defeats Perfect Chaos with hardly any issue at all in Sonic X; while Perfect Chaos had never looked bigger or badder, resembling more a water-based version of Biollante, and packs some serious firepower, it is defeated and reverted back in Chaos 0 with very little effort. To be fair, though, Sonic X’s Super Sonic was always far more powerful than his other incarnations, being more of a God-mode than a power-up. Still, Chaos is defeated and returns to the Master Emerald with Tikal, at peace once more. Station Square is left in ruins and, while the anime also glosses over the death and destruction the flood must have caused, subsequent episodes dealt with (or, at least, referenced) the restoration process.

InterplaySASXFaithful — Sonic X *told the entire game’s story, giving everyone their due.*

Like the other adaptations of Sonic Adventure discussed here, Sonic X incorporates the game’s narrative into its own unique lore but, in a twist, includes characters like Cream and Rouge the Bat (Kathleen Delaney) who debuted after Sonic Adventure. However, even these videogame characters have smaller roles than Chris and his cohorts; given that Chris was obsessed with following Sonic everywhere and putting himself in danger, this isn’t too surprising but, honestly, their inclusion and involvement is no more or less, better or worse, than those of the Archie and StC extended cast. However, Sonic X’s Sonic Adventure saga is easily the closest, most faithful adaptation of the source material of these three; Archie Comics came close bit their impenetrable lore meant that too many compromises had to be made. Both comic adaptations focused more on Chaos than other bosses and events, but Sonic X includes almost everything from the videogame, giving plenty of time to each of the game’s six characters and adapting their stories with a high degree of fidelity. It even streamlined and improved the story in many ways, such as having characters team up against Chaos’s various forms and improving the appearance of Perfect Chaos.

InterplaySASAStory — Sonic Adventure told a complex, interweaving Sonic story for the first time.

Sonic Adventure has been a rich source of adaptation, second only to Sonic Spinball. Aside from the more direct adaptations I’ve talked about here, stages, bosses, and narrative themes from the game cropped up in many subsequent Sonic titles. Unlike Sonic Spinball, I feel like this is probably because of the game’s story; this was the first time Sonic and his friends and enemies had a real voice in the videogames and the first time Sonic Team tried to tell a deep, overarching story. Add to that the influence that Sonic Adventure’s gameplay and aesthetic choices had on Sonic’s canon and future release and it’s not hard to see why. The only thing that hampered each of these adaptations was their attempts to shoe-horn the videogame narrative into their existing lore, rather than using the general story and themes of the game and threading it through in a more natural way. While Archie Comics and StC had good reasons for this, Sonic X had every opportunity right from the beginning of its run to properly prepare and lay the groundwork for its eventual videogame adaptations and, instead, it was happy to waste time focusing on Chris, his idiotic behaviour, and having Sonic be this bland, lethargic goody-too-shoes rather than a snarky, hyperactive adventurer.

Which of these three Sonic Adventure adaptations was your favourite? How did you find Archie’s writing at the time? Do you remember Sonic the Comic? What were your thoughts on Sonic X and Chris? Drop a line below and stick around for more articles in the future.

Mini Game Corner: Mortal Kombat (Master System)

11/04/202014/07/2023Dr. K14 Comments

Released: 1994
Originally Released: 1992
Developer: Arena Entertainment / Probe Development / Midway
Original Developer: Midway
Also Available For: Arcade, Mega Drive, Mega-CD, Game Gear, Game Boy, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), PC, Amiga, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360

A Brief Background:
You’ve all heard of Mortal Kombat, right? The violent fighting game series that revolutionarily used digitised sprites instead of traditional 2D sprite art and was filled with all kinds of controversial violence and blood? These days, the blood and brutal Fatalities the series is known for don’t cause nearly as much outrage as they did back in the day but, in the early-nineties, parents and organisations alike were fuming at the levels of violence Mortal Kombat depicted. As you might expect, this meant that Mortal Kombat was massively successful; kids finally turned away from Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (Capcom, 1991) and wasted their hard-earned pocket money trying to tear their opponent’s spines from their bloodied bodies. Given its level of popularity, Mortal Kombat received numerous ports to home consoles; the Mega Drive version reigned supreme thanks to SEGA including the game’s trademark blood and Fatalities (albeit after a code was entered), while Nintendo lagged behind with heavily edited “Finishing Moves” and substituting blood for “sweat”. While the Mega Drive version is sluggish and hasn’t really aged very well, it’s got nothing on this Master System port!

First Impressions:
After slotting Mortal Kombat into the Master System, you’re treated with a long diatribe about “codes”, which was the developer’s sneaky way of telling you that you need to enter a code to enable blood in the game. I skipped this, however, and, as always, selected Sub-Zero to take on the game’s arcade ladder. The first thing you’ll notice is that Kano is missing from the game’s roster; the second thing you’ll notice is how absolutely God-awful the game’s graphics are! I grew up playing the Amiga version of Mortal Kombat but, mostly, was playing either Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway, 1995) on PC or Mega Drive (except for that odd period were I happened to have a copy of Mortal Kombat II (Acclaim Entertainment/Probe Development, 1994) for the Master System) so maybe I was a little spoiled but…my God, the graphics here are terrible! The downgrade to 8-bit has left the already-questionable digitised sprites looking blocky and blurry. Sprites seem to float or merge with the foreground and background, and so many frames of animation have been lost that there seems to be a delay in every button press!

MKMSMovesEtc — *Backgrounds are okay and everyone has their special moves…but still*…

It’s not all bad, though; the backgrounds are okay, for the most part, those there’s a noticeable lack of stages here. Each character also has their signature moves but, thanks to the Master System’s two button setup, I couldn’t throw even one Ice Ball for the life of me. None of this changes the fact that the game plays like absolute garbage, though. One of the things I love about Mortal Kombat (especially the early titles) is how the game is easy to pick up and play and gets deeper the more you master its controls; unlike Street Fighter II and its sequels and spin-offs, you don’t have to stress yourself with worrying about “frame cancels” or whatever. Every Mortal Kombat character basically plays the same, with only their special abilities separating them, meaning it comes down to how good you are at getting through the opponent’s offense and landing your own.

My Progression:
In this version of Mortal Kombat, you can technically wipe the floor with the computer without any real problem; if you select the “Easy” difficulty, you can pretty much trounce every opponent with just flying kicks, rapid punches, and leg sweeps no matter how much better they are at throwing their projectiles at you. The issue is, though, that you have to battle against some really dodgy hit detection and slow-down; it’s like the game is taxing the Master System to its very limit, as you’ll slowly stutter through the air and punch through the opponent more often than not.

MKMSWin — *At first, it’s not too difficult to get the win, especially on “Easy”.*

When I fired the game up to have a quick playthrough, I selected the “Easy” difficulty, picked Sub-Zero (because…obviously…!), and played through the arcade ladder. I managed to get all the way to the Mirror Match without losing more than one round (Rayden turned out to be a cheap spam-artist) and was promptly, soundly defeated by my doppelgänger. Truthfully, I’m not too bothered about this as the one thing I always hated about Mortal Kombat was those damn annoying Endurance Matches, where you have to take on two opponents with two health bars while you only get one. That probably wouldn’t be so bad but you need to fight your way through three of these bloody things before you can take on Goro and, eventually, the game’s final boss, Shang Tsung.

Honestly, the original Mortal Kombat has not aged well at all. The only version worth anyone’s time is the arcade version, and even that is slow and graphically sub-par to its later sequels. This 8-bit port of the game is a joke from top to bottom; it’s literally the poor man’s version of Mortal Kombat, made for those kids unfortunate enough to not be able to upgrade to the Mega Drive, and should be avoided at all costs. Am I being too harsh on the Master System port of Mortal Kombat? Which was your favourite version or sequel to Mortal Kombat? Do you have any fond memories of wasting your childhood away in arcades trying to set your opponent on fire? Write a comment below and let me know.

My Rating:

Fantastic

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My Rating:

Fantastic

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My Rating:

Great Stuff

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My Rating:

Pretty Good

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My Rating:

Could Be Better

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My Rating:

Pretty Good

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My Rating:

Pretty Good

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