May Together Retro: Bad to the Bone!

[Ack]

Gotta say, Bone, I am struggling to comprehend what I am seeing, and I'm usually pretty good with game maps. That is painful.

[Ack]

Any of you playing a game that people once thought was good, but upon returning you discover it's actually quite terrible?

After a brief chat with Prfsnl, he and I agree that the original Shadow Warrior is just such a game!

Why do I say this? Well, I will give an example: at the start of the third level, I entered a giant palace to be greeted by repeated fart sounds and Lo Wang complaining in pidgin English of a smell. I then saw a place to blow a hole in the ceiling, so I did. Once up in the secret room, I discover the source of the fart noises: a naked anime lady standing in front of a toilet. Upon interaction, Lo Wang makes a sex joke about her diarrhea, and she promptly shoots a gun at me. I kill her and flush the crap-filled toilet for a pair of night-vision goggles.

This is Shadow Warrior. At least I didn't have to hear a "Confucius say" joke. That happens whenever I get a health power-up.

[prfsnl_gmr]

YES! That sounds awful! Is there really a “Confucius say” joke every time you get a power up?

[Ack]

Absolutely. The big health power-ups are even fortune cookies, and they display Confucius jokes like "Man standing on toilet is high on pot," lucky numbers for the lotto, or even the 3D Realms address in text at the bottom of the screen every time you grab one as Lo Wang shouts, "Ancient Chinese secret!"

[BoneSnapDeez]

Gotta say, Bone, I am struggling to comprehend what I am seeing, and I'm usually pretty good with game maps. That is painful.

I mean, I use the term "warps" literally as there's no consistency to any of it. For instance, from the start if you go left to "A" you end up on the right side of a new screen.

Or, imagine you head right from the start and walk off the screen at "B." You emerge from a door on another screen!

At least have doors lead to doors and screen edges lead to screen edges! Good Lord.

I've read that the later stages feature one-way warps. Barf.

There are in-game maps but they're "abstract" to the point of being totally worthless.

EDIT: This game is hot garbage. Spent over an hour wandering around stage two. It's massive, with the aforementioned one-way warps, plus endless looping areas. Oh, and hidden passages. Worse, the game requires you start building an inventory at this point, so you gotta collect items.

Even GameFAQs couldn't help me. I ended up in some underground area where the enemies were tougher and I bit the dust. The game treats lives and continues as one and the same. But when you die you gotta start the whole level over. Checkpoints? What are those? Also, no saves or passwords. The game is like Rygar or Bio Senshi Dan where you're expected to chip away at it, memorize it, and then dedicate an entire afternoon to rolling through it.

Well ya know what.... I'm not going to. This game is abysmal and I don't want to spend another minute with it. It's one of the worst Famicom games I've ever played - which is saying a lot. Right "up there" with Valkyrie no Bouken. Both are worse than any localized NES game I've played, for whatever that's worth.

[Ack]

I beat Shadow Warrior. The middle section of the game has some generally decent level design, but the whole thing starts poorly and ends poorly. Hiding necessary switches and keys behind secrets is bad level design, and when you give me a puzzle, and the main character declares he would rather shoot things than solve puzzles, just know that I am thinking it too.

I've moved onto the expansions, and do you know what they throw at me? Freaking land mines. As in one-shot death if I'm too close when they go off land mines. Because that's conducive to this type of FPS.

[MrPopo]

My favorite bullshit secret to pass was the ladder hidden in the fireplace.

[Ack]

Yeah, that one took me a bit, though the longest by far was the secret door switch hidden in the back of the toilet in the second level. It took me half an hour to find it.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Ordered some games from Japan last night, Bone. I passed on Valis Fantasm Soldier based almost entirely based on your review, I did get Super Monkey Daibouken, though,

Ack...I’m glad to see you’re able to fit in some truly awful games this month. They sound so, so bad. You’re inspiring me, I may try to fit in one more terrible game myself!

[BoneSnapDeez]

Super Monkey Daibouken

I think I could only handle 15-20 minutes of that. The most broken console game I've ever played.