prfsnl_gmr wrote:Bionic Commando (Arcade)
Contra (Famicom)
King’s Field a/k/a King’s Field II (PS1)
Metal Gear (NES)
Mysterious Murasame Castle (Famicom)
Shinobi (Arcade)
Summer Carnival ‘92 Recca (Famicom)
Super Baseball 2020 (Neo Geo)
Super Meat Boy (XBLA)
Vampire Killer (MSX)
Two more down (i.e., Metal Gear and Vampire Killer)…and only two to go!
In Metal Gear, you play as Solid Snake, infiltrating Outer Heaven, at the behest of Big Boss, to destroy the secret weapon, Metal Gear. This game (or the MSX original, at least) launched one of Konami’s most popular series, and remains an excellent stealth game. It is played from an overhead perspective, and you sneak by enemy soldiers, rescuing POWs, finding equipment, and fighting bosses to achieve your mission.
The first two-thirds of the game are stellar. You make steady progress, once you get your bearings, and the game is a lot of fun. The last third, however, is full of “you need a Nintendo Power subscription to beat this” BS. Doors accessible only by punching random walls; death traps avoidable only through a trick; etc. Also, the Metal Gear ends up being a giant PC. I don’t recall that in the MSX original, and it really spoiled the end of the game for me. Still, it’s a classic. With the MSX version now readily accessible, however, there’s not much reason to revisit the NES port.
Vampire Killer is, basically, Castlevania 1.5. It is an action-platformer with the same structure as Castlevania (NES), but since it’s a MSX game, it’s played one screen at a time. It also has a (somewhat) non-linear structure, with each section of each stage requiring you to find a key to proceed. (That is, you explore each section, one screen at a time, until you find the key, before proceeding to the door to the next section of the level. The last section of each level is a boss fight.) The game also features many of the items available in Castlevania II, such as a shield, and you use your hearts to buy items from merchants.
The game features, basically, the same music and graphics as Castlevania (NES), with the graphics slightly improved and the music slightly downgraded. It features, largely, the same enumerated, and the same bosses appear in the same order. The different structure and items, however, make for a very different gameplay experience that is some ways better, but in many ways worse, than Castlevania (NES). Specifically, I really enjoyed exploring each stage, and the different mechanics add a lot of challenge and depth. The game is insanely hard, however, and even with liberal save state usage, it’s still quite a challenge. (The game provides you with two lives, No continues, and no chances to earn additional lives, and I can only image the frustration associated with trying to beat it on original hardware.). It also has a lot of BS, such as some stages being rendered in winnable if you don’t play them exactly right, that really sour the experience. Still, I ended up enjoying Vampire Killer more than the NES version of Metal Gear, despite its BS (and maybe because it’s just a lot shorter), and I am happy to have played through it.
