I've been boning up on my Toaplan lately, and working through various versions of their titles--incidentally, I am totally in love with the arcade version of Twin Hawk. The introduction sequence gave me chills; The music is rocking for the first few minutes, until it becomes repetitive, at which point, I'm so focused on not getting blown out of the sky that I stop blinking, and my ears could hardly care less what they're hearing--which eventually led me to try Wardner on the Genesis.
After playing a bunch of Toaplan arcade conversions on PCE and Genesis, I've come to the realization that a lot of their console titles are pretty hit or miss, but this one in particular, is pretty bad. I haven't played the arcade version, but I really thought Wardner would be at least a little bit more entertaining than it actually is. I would have stopped playing it all together after the first two minutes if the 'a' and 'c' buttons didn't continue at the continue screen. (Instead of counting down the continue timer like I expected.) It's not nearly as bad as some of those horribly NES platformers, but it reminded me a bit of Kid Cool, in that it basically starts you out with a platform that can't be reached without relatively precise timing; a platform below that, that can not be reached if you mistime the first jump; and a bottomless pit below all of that. That pretty much spells out my lack of interest in this game: It's a one-hit death from enemies and projectiles sort of game (when you don't have the cape) and the only weapon you seem to have is an arching fireball, that's kind of horrible.
The enemies don't really pose that much of a threat, and most of my deaths came from poor/annoying level design. I guess it's not necessarily a "bad" game, but it's horribly generic and derivative in its style and game play. For anyone who hasn't played it, it's like Athena (a great game) without any of the fun, or power ups. (At least, I don't think there are any power ups other than the cape. I really didn't play very much of it, though.)
So I'm curious what the community thinks of this game. Has anyone played it? Am I way off base? How do you play the game to enjoy it?
Or on the flip side: What else about this game is completely horrible or uninspired?
Also, I'm curious if Demon's World on the PCE is any better than Wardner.