The Apprentice Presents: Gaming in the 90s

[The Apprentice]

Today: Clockwork Knight - Sega Saturn - 75%

This has got to be the most average game I have ever played. This game has its highs and its lows, but overall the game is niether particularly great or particularly bad. Your character is a toy soldier named Pepperouchau (No, I can't pronounce that) who every night at midnight, like all the other toys, is brought to life by the singing of a princess who lives in the clock on the wall. When this princess is kidnapped, its up to Pepperouchau to save her using his key-sword, before the sun rises and the toys can lever come to life again. Pepperouchau is not a very cool character, and judging by the intro sequence, he's awkward, unpopular, and overall a total dork. The graphics are a combination of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional, using 3-D rendered 2-D sprites in 3-D environments with 2-D backgrounds. That's a mouthfull, but at least it gives the game a unique look. The sound is lacking, with anyoing music and sound-effects. Most of the levels sound like they have the sae music played at different pitches. They don't, but it sounds that way, so don't misunderstand. The game gives you more time then you need to finish the levels, but you die constantly. The difficulty is about right but the boss battles are loaded with cheap hits.

Final Thoughts: Solid gameplay, but it doesn't impress me.

Super Smash Brothers - Nintendo 64 - 90%

The Nintendo 64 lacks of good fighting games, but this stellar title more than makes up for that shortcoming. There are a variety of stages and characters, characters like Mario, Link, and Fox. Its fun to dish out the crazier moves, thanks to the control scheme Nintendo devised to allow anyone to master their favorite character. Items also add to the fun, allowing you to pick up baseball bats, hammers, heart containers, and many others. The arenas are huge and include famous sites from Nintendo greats like Brinstar from Metroid and the Great Fox from Starfox. Chaos ensues when three of your friends plug in controlers and fight against you in four player battle royal or team battle. The one-player mode is also a great way to play, ast the computer is competitive and rarely cheap (at least compared to other fighting games). Besides that, Master Hand is an epic final boss. Another one-player event is the minigames, "Break the Targets" and "Board the Platforms." These are very challenging and automatically record time, so you can try to beat your best times. For this review, I beat my time with Samus in the target breaking game that my brother set six years ago! The graphics are good enough, but not great, since it takes a lot of power for the Nintendo 64 to handle these kinds of battles, and sometimes the game suffers from slowdown. The music is great and has a good Nintendo vibe.

Final Thoughts: If you have an N64, this game is in your collection. If it's not, it really, really should be.

[The Apprentice]

My reviews have attracted 1000 views! Thank you for the support, three reviews are coming er, well, today, because it's 1:33 AM where I'm at (I don't sleep) and I stayed up just to watch the counter roll over.

I just wanted people to know- RyaNtheSlayA will only take comments in private messages, but I don't mind if you comment in my topic. In fact, I encourage people to debate over their opinions of the games I review. And there will be plenty to debate- I've set up a timeline of games to review over the next three days.

Here are my plans:

6-16-08
Mario Party
Sega Rally Championship
Starfox 64

6-17-08
Mutant League Football
Virtual On: Cyber Troopers
Black Fire

6-18-08
Ms. Pac-Man
Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures
Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master

[RyaNtheSlayA]

The reason I dont want people commenting on my review threads is because i dont want my pages filled w/ crap as the review "library" grows. Also cant wait to see your take on Sega Rally.

[The Apprentice]

Today: Mario Party - Nintendo 64 - 85%

Just as the name implies, this is a Mario game made for multiplayer excitement. The game is played on a giant game board with four characters from the Mario series. These characters are controlled by either four players or by fewer players with the computer handling the rest. The players move about the board and collect coins and stars. At the end of each turn the players engage in a mini-game a play for coins. The player who has the most stars at the end of a set number of turns wins, and if that person is tied with another player, the winner is determined by the number of coins in their possession. The graphics and sound are top notch, and the gameplay is totally original. It's fun to set traps for your friends, thanks to special places in the levels that let you steal stars and coins from the other players, as well as mini-games that pit the players against each other on teams or even in a three to one match. The game's only downfall is its somewhat short list of mini-games; you'll sometimes play the same mini-game more than twice in one game.

Final Thoughts: I'd recommend getting it if you have company coming over who like to game.

Sega Rally Championship - Sega Saturn - 95%

This game has everything I enjoyed in Sega Rally 2, with more intense gameplay and more reasonable difficulty settings than its sequel. Control in this game is slightly different in this game, with drifting only encouraged on some of the turns instead of all of them, which makes the game more skill intensive. You can save custom car setups, but you can't use them in the arcade mode. The gameplay is perfect, and it just goes to show how far a little extra effort can go when you compare this to the miserable Daytona USA put out earlier in the Saturn's lifespan. The graphics in this game are phenomenal; there are few Playstation racing games that look better than this, and I love the details on the tracks like birds that scatter as you fly around the corner, and crowds along the sides of the track. By far the best looking track is the mountain track, with a large castle in the distance behind old architecture of the small town you drive through. The only rough spots in the graphics can be seen in the mountain course, where a road on the edge of the mountain curves to the right and there is a visible lack of support for the road, and the Lake Side course, which is just overall a brown, ugly mess. Sound in the game is pleasant, but some of the music tracks and sound clips sound very cheesy, like the voice who says "Sega Rally Championship" at the title screen who just doesn't sound very excited, and the odd voice clips used in the replay function. The cars in the game are rendered neatly, and using a cheat code, X-Y-Z-Y-X at the main menu, you can even play using my favorite rally car, the Lancia Stratos. The game even has a two-player mode! Other than a handful of issues, this might just be my favorite racing game.

Final Thoughts: This game should be a written requirement for Saturn owners. It's also very cheap and common, so you should be able to get it easily.

Starfox 64 - Nintendo 64 - 80%

This is a mixed bag. I appreciate Nintendo's effort on this one, but some of the things they tried to throw into this one hurt the gameplay more than it helped. The gameplay is a standard 3D shooter like Panzer Dragoon, with the added element of a team that helps you along the way. In the game, there will be opportunities to help your teammates when they get in trouble, which opens up new paths in the game. All throughout the game, your actions determine what levels you end up playing. The gameplay is a little shaky sometimes, but most of the time the game is fast-paced and enjoyable. The graphics are well done in the game besides a few ugly looking bosses and enemies. The sound is very rough, with very compressed voice samples and some midi-hiccupping in some of the deeper, vibrating sounds like engine sounds and explosions. The music is also enjoyable, except for the annoying music in the four-player battle mode.

Final Thoughts: Get it if you liked the original Starfox or Panzer Dragoon.

[The Apprentice]

Today: Mutant League Football - Sega Genesis - 50%

This is a very shallow football game where monsters, aliens, super-humans and skeletons battle it out on the gridiron. It sounds fun, but only if you're very forgiving, because the gameplay in this thing is broken. The field is shown from above, rather than a scaling projection like the madden games, and the programmers didn't even bother including depth. If there's a single player between the Quarterback and his receiver, you will not be able to pass to that receiver. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if not for the passing windows they used in this game. The players are large and detailed, but in the passing window, this is a disadvantage because now you will only see the player in the window and none of the players covering him. You think you see an open man, throw, and realize he's standing three yards to your left with three opponents covering him. The running game is equally bad, where the defense in twice as fast as your running back. There will be defenders who leap so hard at your players that they will miss and fly straight off the field and off the screen. And when you play defense, the offense is twice as fast as you are! There are also traps on the field, but these are obvious and easy to avoid. Should you fall into one, your player explodes into bloody chunks, which is only funny the first two times it happens. This game has average-looking graphics and good music, but that can't make up for its flaws with the fundamentals.

Final Thoughts: Maybe exciting in its time, but there are far superior football games, especially on the Genesis.

Virtual On: Cyber Troopers - Sega Saturn - 80%

Sega loved their arcade titles back in the nineties, and Virtual On is one of the products of their effort. It's a game about giant robots fighting in various locations. The robots have several different attacks, and can move in literally any direction. The fights are fast paced and fun, but the control scheme is difficult to learn. The graphics are detailed and look great, and the music works well for the action. There's also a two player mode which I like. The game's weakness is its difficulty. Because I can't beat the fourth or fifth robot, (I can't remember which) I haven't played the game for months until I reviewed it. I do enjoy this game, and every time I play it I'm surprised by its excellent presentation.

Final Thoughts: If you're really good at games like these, bump up the score 10%. Otherwise, get if you find it cheap.

Black Fire - Sega Saturn - 20%

The only kind of game I hate more than one that's too difficult is a game where you have no idea what you're doing. In this game, you're given a super heavily armed combat helicopter and thrust into the action. Just like Defcon 5, they give you instructions, but you have no idea how to accomplish your mission. You only have a few minutes before your craft runs out of fuel, the maps are giant, your radar is useless, you have no map and no target indicator, and the targeting system is worthless. I gave this one a chance. I really did. But even with the invincibility cheat, I couldn't complete the first level. And what's with this game's into movie? It moves at like, 15 frames-per-second! The only cool thing about this game is when you enter the invincibility cheat, you hear the game's villain say "You're on the wrong team!" and then laugh. Nice touch, but this game is pathetic.

Final Thoughts: This game is worthless. Avoid at all costs.

[The Apprentice]

Note: A massive storm hit my hometown yesterday, and to avoid damage to my computer I had to turn it off during the lightning and the rolling blackouts and brownouts that followed.

Today: Mrs. Pac-Man - Sega Genesis - 75%

Pac-man is a simple game. Collect all the dots for points, and use the big dots to eat the ghosts who normally pursue you. Mrs. Pac-Man is roughly the same game. This particular release is seems to be just about perfect as far as graphics and sound go, and although I'm not totally familiar with Mrs. Pac-Man arcade cabinets I can imagine the game here is just about arcade-perfect. After completing the fist couple of stages, I realized that the game has cut scenes depicting Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man meeting and such, and I didn't pay much attention to those. There are several types of maps to play on such as "arcade," "large," and "mini." There are also several two-player games.

Final Thoughts: I'm not too much into the game, but you might want this if you like Pac-Man, especially if you also have a friend who likes it too.

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures - Sega Genesis - 10%

What exactly counts as an adventure? If I'm going to play a Genesis game with the word "Adventures" in its name, I'm expecting to see the hero of some land duke it out with an otherworldly villain in space with some galaxy destroying spacecraft looming ever closer to the fragile planet. Okay, so they can't all be winners, but this one takes the cake as the worst game ever to call itself an adventure. Your first task in the game is to go get milk. See where this is going? You don't even control Pac-Man. You have a worthless slingshot at the bottom of the screen, and you just "suggest" where he needs to go next. The game tries to explain itself early on with a tutorial, but the goals of that learning exercise were unclear at best. Ghosts attack Pac-Man early on, and you give him a power up so he can defeat them. Later there's an extra cheesy cut scene with an evil villain ordering the ghosts around. Not only is this villain totally out of place, but the dialog is cliché. The scene made me laugh. Why does someone want to kill Pac-Man? There's no explanation, except that he's Pac-Man. There is absolutely no point to playing this game.

Final Thoughts: Namco should be ashamed.

Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master - Sega Genesis - 90%

This is an adventure… a fairly epic one, too. Everything about this game is great, and I can't really criticize any of it. You play as a ninja with a sword, throwing stars, and mystical powers. I don't have the manual, so I'll just assume this guy is one another ninja's generic quest for revenge. Along the way, he will encounter other ninjas, generic soldiers, and heavily armed samurai, but with all of your weapons you'll blast through these guys like a Dynasty Warriors game. The boss fights are challenging, but fun, and the game's presentation is stellar with multi-layered backgrounds. The graphics are incredible, and the music, although not very memorable, fits the action like a glove and really makes the game more interesting than before.

Final Thoughts: If you can't get the cartridge, try the Genesis collection on PS2. It's more than worth the investment.

Note: After tonight, there will only be 1 review per night unless I say otherwise. If I keep going like this I'll run out of games!

[pompeyparsons]

I'm definetely enjoy your reviews so keep them coming. I agree with you on Mutant League. I had such fond memories of playing it when I was kid, but when I played it again a couple months ago, it was just not very good. It's weird how our minds can build something up to be so great and then you actually play it and it's just meh.

[The Apprentice]

Bad news. The Shinobi III review will be the final one I'm going to post on Racketboy. Because of a server problem earlier today, I lost a review I wrote of Wipeout on the Saturn due to the fact that I couldn't log in. This isn't the first time that the servers were down on the site when I needed to post a review, and I also feel that I could attract more views if I could have more content to show. So I decided that my reviews will instead be hosted on a file sharing website in a magazine form, with more content than just text, like screenshots and cheat codes. I'm going to re-release my reviews in the first few issues, but once the releases catch up, I'll be posting entire issues of new content every few weeks. After the releases, I'll still have this topic here for any opinions on the releases.

Any sugestions for the magazine, post them here.

Oh, and the magazine's name will be "The Apprentice Presents: Gaming in the 90s"

[racketboy]

So my explanation of the server issues wasn't good enough?
I mean your free to publish your stuff anywhere you want, but just seems like blaming it on the fact that you tried publishing right when I was moving back to a stable server is a little unnecessary.

[The Apprentice]

This isn't the first time that the servers were down on the site when I needed to post a review, and I also feel that I could attract more views if I could have more content to show.

I mean to say that I had been toying with the idea of doing something bigger for a while, but I had never made a real effort to do something untill I lost the review today. My expansion was something that was already planned, I just moved it forward because I'm frustrated with the internet right now.