2. Sushi Academy (DS)
3. Alcahest (SFC)
4. Comix Zone (GEN)
Brief plot: Sketch Turner, along with his pet rat Roadkill, gets pulled into the comic book he's been writing by his own villain. Now the villain is the artist, actively drawing enemies in Sketch's path and doing other nefarious real-world things (like burning pages -- brilliant!) to torment and destroy our hero. Sketch teams up with Roadkill and one of his comic's fictional protagonists to attempt an escape.
Reflection: So, Comix Zone is one of those games that infuriates you until you've tripped all the booby-traps, identified everything that can kill you, and memorized the locations of all the hidden power-ups. What makes this learning process particularly awful in this case is that there are no "lives" to speak of. Run out of health and it's game over, and at most I've only been offered two continues after dying. There's never any indication of how one earns continues or whether there are any on reserve, either, which only adds to the feeling of "this game has me twisting in the wind... and it's enjoying that."
In a sense this is interesting, because the whole plot of the game does revolve around a villain who's being sadistically unfair to the protagonist. (The "continue" screen is literally the artist-villain scoffing, "Killing you was too easy! At least give me a challenge, why don't you," then drawing Sketch back into his comic book hell.) But that said, it's super unforgiving for a game that forces you to fail in order to understand how to navigate a stage. It got to the point where I was clearing the first few chapters fairly easily, getting about an inch further on a new page, dying from a landmine I didn't see, then starting from the beginning. Then I'd get two inches further before dying. Progress!
After all that, though, you mostly love it. It's a beat-em-up, so you can still have a challenging run no matter how good you are. The concept is great, the art and music are really fantastic. I can see myself replaying this a lot, actually.
Rant: But now, I must rant about the final boss for a second. There are two endings to this game: a good and a bad. The good requires that you rescue your fictional friend from certain doom in addition to everything else, and to do so, you have to flip a switch that 1) doesn't appear until you've cleared the final boss and all other enemies in the room, and 2) doesn't work like any other switch in the entire game. The first time I finished everything I had time to spare for the rescue, but I couldn't get the hit detection to take. My rat wouldn't even pull the switch, and that's one of his main gameplay functions. I had to watch a longplay to discover that I needed to inexplicably grab the lever not by facing it, but by approaching it backwards, to throw it.
I'm thinking this might have been a programming mistake, as the game is buggy in other areas... but a part of me thinks this might have been a Kaizo trap, and let me tell you: I was not happy about it.
Reflection: So, Comix Zone is one of those games that infuriates you until you've tripped all the booby-traps, identified everything that can kill you, and memorized the locations of all the hidden power-ups. What makes this learning process particularly awful in this case is that there are no "lives" to speak of. Run out of health and it's game over, and at most I've only been offered two continues after dying. There's never any indication of how one earns continues or whether there are any on reserve, either, which only adds to the feeling of "this game has me twisting in the wind... and it's enjoying that."
In a sense this is interesting, because the whole plot of the game does revolve around a villain who's being sadistically unfair to the protagonist. (The "continue" screen is literally the artist-villain scoffing, "Killing you was too easy! At least give me a challenge, why don't you," then drawing Sketch back into his comic book hell.) But that said, it's super unforgiving for a game that forces you to fail in order to understand how to navigate a stage. It got to the point where I was clearing the first few chapters fairly easily, getting about an inch further on a new page, dying from a landmine I didn't see, then starting from the beginning. Then I'd get two inches further before dying. Progress!
After all that, though, you mostly love it. It's a beat-em-up, so you can still have a challenging run no matter how good you are. The concept is great, the art and music are really fantastic. I can see myself replaying this a lot, actually.
Rant: But now, I must rant about the final boss for a second. There are two endings to this game: a good and a bad. The good requires that you rescue your fictional friend from certain doom in addition to everything else, and to do so, you have to flip a switch that 1) doesn't appear until you've cleared the final boss and all other enemies in the room, and 2) doesn't work like any other switch in the entire game. The first time I finished everything I had time to spare for the rescue, but I couldn't get the hit detection to take. My rat wouldn't even pull the switch, and that's one of his main gameplay functions. I had to watch a longplay to discover that I needed to inexplicably grab the lever not by facing it, but by approaching it backwards, to throw it.
I'm thinking this might have been a programming mistake, as the game is buggy in other areas... but a part of me thinks this might have been a Kaizo trap, and let me tell you: I was not happy about it.
