Together Retro: Licensed to Thrill (Licensed 2D Platformers)

[SpaceBooger]

I love Aladdin on the Genesis, one of my favorite games. I have the capcom SNES version...never played it seriously. So here is the big question:

Aladdin - Genesis or SNES?

[Exhuminator]

I remember that cab being in a bowling alley my parents frequented.

It's hard to forget this badass cab:

Hope you don't mind my memory lane side-rant

Not at all! One of the best things about retro gaming boards are the nostalgia trips, especially vicarious ones.

Aladdin - Genesis or SNES?

I think the Genesis version is the better of the two, but the SNES version is highly decent.

There's also another version, not made by Shiny or Capcom, which some people say is good:

Never played it myself, so I don't know.

[Sarge]

I prefer the SNES Aladdin, but both are great. Interestingly, one of the runs at AGDQ was a 100% run of the SNES game. It's pretty interesting to watch, actually. They always make it look so easy, but playing at that level is anything but.

[ESauced]

I personally think the SNES Aladdin is a good game, but the Genesis one blows it out of the water. I think every aspect of the Genesis game is superior. The soundtrack actually matches the movie. The animation looks like the movie which was incredible as a kid. And the sword makes the gameplay feel more interesting than the SNES one. But I agree that they are both good games.

Assuming that the Master System Aladdin is identical to the Game Gear one, it’s a decent game but nothing to write home about. If you’re interested in playing them all it isn’t awful, but it can safely be ignored over the superior Genesis and SNES ones.

I have to admit though I’m giving my impressions of the Game Gear one based on my memory of playing it as a kid 18 years ago on a plane. I was pretty proud of myself for beating it! I’m 95% sure that the Game Gear one (and again I’m assuming the same for Master System) has a password system (I remember a lot of sticky notes with passwords in my backpack), which does give it one advantage over the Genesis one.

[alienjesus]

I haven't played the other versions to judge, but I thought the Mega Drive Aladdin was just OK. It certainly looked and sounded the part, and the core gameplay was decent too, but the level design was a bit of a mess.


Anyhow, I beat my first two games for the month yesterday. I started off with Batman. I'd heard this one was hard, but for the most part it honestly wasn't all that brutal, especially if you stopped at the enemy generators to grind for health and ammo when necessary. The 4 weapon system is cool, but it's a shame it's only worth using 3 of them - the punch, batarang and 3 way shot are great, but the gun-type weapon sucks. Anyway, I did say 'for the most part' it wasn't that bad - unfortunately the final stage ramps things up a LOT, with some absolutely ridiculously precise wall jumping required, followed by the games 2 hardest bosses in succession. I eventually muscled through though. Did you ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? I did!


Next up was Little Nemo: The Dream Master, because apparently I am a glutton for punishment. Early on I wasn't ahving much fun with this game, due to the way the level design works - you must find all the hidden keys in the level in order to unlock the end of level door. After dying over and over during the tedious backtracking to find said keys, I said fuck it and looked up some online maps. And you know what? When using a map, Little Nemo suddenly becomes fun. If you don't enjoy the game normally, give it a go. Anyway, the game still isn't perfect - there are a few sections where attacks seem unavoidable, and you don't have a lot of health to start with. The difficulty, again, ramps up super suddenly on the final stage too. But with enough persistence, you can get through, and the boss fights at least aren't too hard, although they still offer some challenge. Like all of Capcom's NES stuff, I don't think this one is as good as everyone else does, and honestly, without the maps I had I think I would call it awful (the games low health does not encourage prolonged exploration, and it's also just not fun). However, grab a map and it becomes a decently fun platformer romp.


The only other unbeaten licensed game I own is Mickey's Wild Adventure, which is a port of Mickey Mania for PS1. I think that's going to be the hardest one to finish to be honest - it's balls hard and has limited continues.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I have that Robocop game. In this format:

To call it unplayable would be an understatement.

[alienjesus]

I finished up Mickey's Wild Adventure for PS1 today. It's a port (or, in modern phrasing I'd guess it'd be a remaster, as they've definitely upgraded stuff for the more powerful hardware) of Mickey Mania, based on the Sega CD version I believe.

I said yesterday that this game was really tough, but as it turns out, once you get the rhythm for things it's not too bad. There's some definite hitbox issues and some enemies that seem unfair, as well as a very uneven difficulty level with lots of spikes in odd places - stage 2 is one of the worst ones in the game. There's some occasionally dodgy jumping physics too - it's hard to describe but something feels just a tiny bit off.

However, the level designs, music and general gameplay are all pretty good stuff and I had a fun time playing through this one, at least until the final level (The Prince and the Pauper) which is too long for it's own good, and caused me to lose all of my continues and have to restart the level several times. I beat the final boss with 2 lives to spare.



With that, the 3 games I intended to finish for this month have been finished. I have other stuff I want to play, so I don't plan to get stuck in to too many more games this month, but I reckon next weekend I'll replay both the Asterix games I have for Master System. There are different stages for each playable character, so I want to do the stages I've not done previously - it'll be as if they're 2 entirely new games

[isiolia]

I played through Thor: God of Thunder for DS, which might be a stretch for the theme here, if you're being pedantic, but it's close enough I think.

Anyway, in still-relatively-recent 2011, the first Thor movie came out, and was followed by licensed games that all shared the same name - Liquid Entertainment made the one for PS3/360 (which is apparently crap), Red Fly Studios Wii/DS (apparently okay), and Sega tasked Wayforward with the DS version, which got middling to good reviews. It ended up coming out within weeks of their also-notable Aliens Infestation, and shares the same sort of pixel art aesthetic. So, it might be a little new, but it's squarely in a 16-bit kind of style.

Unlike that game, but like Wayforward's Contra 4 from a few years prior, Thor: God of Thunder uses both DS screens as effectively one tall frame:



The visuals are a highlight, as everything is nicely drawn (for the size) and well animated. While I don't think any of the games actually followed the movie's plot, about all this has to do with it is the box art. Character portraits, based on the Brooke/Oback displayed in the gallery, are via Mark Brooks and Sonia Oback (artist/colorist, respectively). So it's really more based on the comics.

There's platforming of a sort, but no pits to fall to your doom in. Really more of a brawler, but doesn't have multiple planes...so hybrid I'd say. Boss fights do end up with more what you'd expect from a platformer though, and are the highlight here. The basic combat is solid, but gets quite repetitive over the 4 hours or so that the game takes to beat (there are some challenge modes and things unlocked if you want to get more out of it, but I didn't mess with them). Meanwhile, the bosses have some simple patterns and strategies to figure out. The game does occasionally have some extra twist in a level, but usually it's just needing to clear enemies before the map will scroll further.

Anyway, it's a decent game with a nice aesthetic, and well worth the $2.50 I paid for it (Gamestop had one of those four for $10 on used games $4.99 and under deals going). Really the big strike against it is how repetitive it gets, otherwise, it's much better than you'd expect.

[pierrot]

Next up was Little Nemo: The Dream Master, because apparently I am a glutton for punishment. Early on I wasn't ahving much fun with this game, due to the way the level design works - you must find all the hidden keys in the level in order to unlock the end of level door. After dying over and over during the tedious backtracking to find said keys, I said fuck it and looked up some online maps. And you know what? When using a map, Little Nemo suddenly becomes fun. If you don't enjoy the game normally, give it a go. Anyway, the game still isn't perfect - there are a few sections where attacks seem unavoidable, and you don't have a lot of health to start with. The difficulty, again, ramps up super suddenly on the final stage too. But with enough persistence, you can get through, and the boss fights at least aren't too hard, although they still offer some challenge. Like all of Capcom's NES stuff, I don't think this one is as good as everyone else does, and honestly, without the maps I had I think I would call it awful (the games low health does not encourage prolonged exploration, and it's also just not fun). However, grab a map and it becomes a decently fun platformer romp.

I'm a little disappointed that you relied on a key map, but still happy you had some fun with Nemo. I don't think that many people really even know about the game, compared to the Disney or Mega Man Capcom games for the console.

I know what you mean about a lot of dangers appearing to be unavoidable (I think the one that sticks out most to me is the dandelion seeds in the second level) but in my experience, everything in the game is actually avoidable, with enough persistence put into observing enemy patterns, and platforming execution. That's one of the main reasons I find it so impeccably crafted. I also think it reinforces the necessity to use all the animal 'transformations' since a lot of them have considerably more health than Nemo alone. I felt that there was also a plethora of healing items speckled throughout each level, although some of them do tend to be pretty hidden. Ultimately, I like the emphasis placed on exploration in most of the stages, and the ball busting difficulty felt too fair for me to ever be upset with anything other than my own lack of competence with the game. Clearing a stage, and beating the game felt so much more rewarding than doing the same thing in most other games.

I said yesterday that this game was really tough, but as it turns out, once you get the rhythm for things it's not too bad.

I've beaten a couple different versions of Mickey Mania, and while i wouldn't say it's an easy game, I also don't see at as a particularly difficult game.

I kind of prefer the Genesis version of Mickey Mania to the Sega CD version, though. I actually like the FM soundtrack better, and the added fight against Pete in the last stage is a really pointless addition to a level that, to your point, is already a very long level.

[alienjesus]

I'm a little disappointed that you relied on a key map, but still happy you had some fun with Nemo. I don't think that many people really even know about the game, compared to the Disney or Mega Man Capcom games for the console.

I know what you mean about a lot of dangers appearing to be unavoidable (I think the one that sticks out most to me is the dandelion seeds in the second level) but in my experience, everything in the game is actually avoidable, with enough persistence put into observing enemy patterns, and platforming execution. That's one of the main reasons I find it so impeccably crafted. I also think it reinforces the necessity to use all the animal 'transformations' since a lot of them have considerably more health than Nemo alone. I felt that there was also a plethora of healing items speckled throughout each level, although some of them do tend to be pretty hidden. Ultimately, I like the emphasis placed on exploration in most of the stages, and the ball busting difficulty felt too fair for me to ever be upset with anything other than my own lack of competence with the game. Clearing a stage, and beating the game felt so much more rewarding than doing the same thing in most other games.

I've beaten a couple different versions of Mickey Mania, and while i wouldn't say it's an easy game, I also don't see at as a particularly difficult game.

I kind of prefer the Genesis version of Mickey Mania to the Sega CD version, though. I actually like the FM soundtrack better, and the added fight against Pete in the last stage is a really pointless addition to a level that, to your point, is already a very long level.

I was thinking of the dandelions, but there's specifically a point in the 2nd last level where you have to climb up a wall as the mouse, and even if you make the dandelion start falling to the side and then climb up right away, there doesn't seem to be a way to get to the top of the wall before the next one to spawn hits you, and your hammer randomly doesn't work when going vertically.

I don't feel bad about using a key map. I find the 'find x things in this stage before you can exit' gameplay to be very tedious in 2d platformers.

I was annoyed that when getting an animal buddy your health didn't rise. You had to change animal buddies quite frequently, so having 5 health points as the mouse made little difference - if you made it to the mouse in bee form with 4 health points intact, you'd switch back to Nemo, drop to 3 health, then when you became the mouse you'd still only have 3/5 health spots filled - you'd have lost rather than gained. Frequent changing meant you were more often than not reliant on 3 or less health because the rest would be disappear when you switched.


As for Mickey Mania, I didn't realise that the last fight with Pete was added in some versions. The last level was definitely too long - it took longer than several of the others combined, and it sucked when you had to continue because it felt like you were being sent back miles.

I might sound negative on both, but I enjoyed my time with both of these games. I just thought they both had some obvious flaws.