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I need to play Lagoon. It looks like a pretty fun 16-bit ARPG, and I haven’t played one of those in forever.

.....

I played (and beat) Mega Man for the Game Gear tonight. It’s a bad version of the worst NES Mega Man game (i.e., Mega Man 5). There are only four robot masters; all of them are weak to the Mega Buster, apparently; Wily’s castle is just two additional robot masters (Wave Man and Toad Man...also weak to the Mega Buster); and Wily only has one, really easy form (you guessed it!!!...weak to the Mega Buster). The levels are copied wholesale from Mega Man 5, with no accommodation for the screen size; so, if you like blind jumps and hate using different weapons, this is the Mega Man game for you! Despite this, it’s still somehow incredibly easy. Not recommended.

Next up...Game Gear Double Dragon!

What the hell.................. I had no idea that existed. Published by good ol' U.S. Gold, eh?

I'm about halfway through Lagoon. Honestly, the worst thing about this game is how slowly health regenerates.

Okay, so I played through Voyeur on the CDi.

To start, the volume, either on my TV, the CDi or the disk, seems to be borked. I had to turn it up almost all the way to hear anything, and even then I couldn't make out much. Considering this is a FMV game, this may have actually improved my playthrough, because even with the sound essentially nonexistent I could still tell by the acting itself that it was hammy as hell.

Second, the game really doesn't do a good job of telling you what you need to do. It comes down to a lot of trial and error. It's obvious that it's meant to be played through more than once, since the camera you're working with to spy on everyone has the battery capacity of roughly 5 seconds. So you can't see all the scenes going on at any given time even if you wanted to. It does, however, have the best camera lens known to mankind. This thing can pick up conversations from across the street, make out hastily scrawled memos from the other side of the room, make out emails on a computer screen that's turned away from the window and, most impressively, read through entries in a closed journal. I don't know where you're supposed to have gotten this lens, but it needs to be turned over to NASA straight away.

Item number three, the game is just...odd. And I don't just mean the acting. Like, I can tell that they're trying to be provocative, but there isn't anything worse here than what you'd see on, say, NBC at 8pm. Sure, it's got some weird-ass scenes


Okay, maybe less NBC and more FX

But for something that touts itself as sexy, it's actually very tame.

Also, because you have no direction, the narrative is all over the place. Most of this is because you can't view all the necessary scenes at once, because the game wants you to play through it multiple times. Think the arcade version of Dragon's Lair, except it looks crappier and you aren't constantly plagued by death at every turn (just bad acting).

They do have some nice call backs for some scenes, though if you missed the corrisponding earlier scene you're going to be highly confused.


What sort of weirdo names their dog Frank?...Oh.

On the other hand they also throw in weird little additions that just make no sense. Like, this guy you're spying on is supposed to be an even eviler version of Donald Trump. Why is the game trying to trick me into looking at crappy bedside photos for no reason?


Also, this is awful, why would you keep it, let alone frame it and put it on display for the world to see?

Another strange thing: You have to enter a code to start the game. Now, if you play PC games this may not sound strange. Some of them came with security codes, codes that are clearly displayed on the case in some from. Not so with Voyeur. I have a complete copy of this thing (cause that's how I roll), manual and all, and nowhere could I find anything related to a code needed to start the game. I had to stop what I was doing and go look the damn thing up on the internets (it's 3333, in case you're wondering) before I could even start. WTF, game.

The one good thing going for the game is that it's blissfully short. It took me less than an hour to get through the whole thing. Good thing too, cause there's no save feature whatsoever. Once you start you either have to be prepared to be committed for the whole run or you have to turn the thing off in frustration and loose all your progress. Fun.

So, in conclusion, Voyuer is odd. Though I don't know if it's any worse than the vast majority of FMV games. Of course, it's less of a 'game' and more of a 'hunt and find' puzzle with movie elements. I've certainly played worse and it didn't so much frustrate me as confuse me. Thankfully it's short, so I may go back one day and see if I can 'play' through a couple different paths. But today will not be that day.

Voyeur sounds amusing and I'd count the lack of gameplay as a plus. Games like Double Switch are pretty much unplayable because they require you to jump through so many hoops to progress; searching for things while watching movie clips sounds a lot more entertaining.


Today I finished playing some A Week of Garfield (aka Garfield: A Week of Garfield aka A Week of Garfield: Garfield) for the Famicom via Everdrive with my NES.
I've long had a fondness for Garfield. Garfield & Friends was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a little kid, I used to love getting Garfield books from the Scholastic book order when I was in elementary school, and I played the hell out of Garfield: Caught in the Act for Genesis. Then when I was a teenager I realized how artless and corporate Garfield is and my love turned to hate. But now that I'm in my 30s and am being more open with myself about loving the dumb stuff I love, I've rekindled my fondness for Garfield. I even have a Garfield land-line telephone!
This game went completely under my radar during my childhood, but with good reason: even though it's based on an American comic and is entirely in English, it was never released outside of Japan. Apparently this was due to the licensing of the character, though I suspect it might also have to do with the poor quality of the game.

I first heard of this game through Something Awful's ROM Pit at the time, I was into emulation on my PC, though I only used the keyboard for controls which really put a damper on things. Like the reviewer, I never made it past the first stage at the time.

THIS TIME WAS DIFFERENT: playing with an actual NES controller was quite helpful! I made it much easier to attack and hit enemies. The first couple stages are actually playable, the game starts on Monday with a stage for each day (I got to Thursday). While this game is more playable than I remember, the flaws are still obvious right from the start:
Garfield's main attack is a kick which barely reaches anywhere, it only works if an enemy is RIGHT on your foot. Thankfully there are slow moving worms and frogs that are fairly easy targets.
Garfield's movements and character design is really awkward: he can walk on all fours, but there doesn't seem to be any advantage to this except for being slightly lower with the big disadvantage of losing your attack. He looks super-doofy while jumping, which I found kind of amusing. You can pick up weapons which help fighting enemies, but they often are not of much help: you can throw a bone which goes over many enemies and under others; you throw cat-food in a three-way spread, but MOST enemies won't line up with the center shot, so you need to rely on the angled shots. The most useful weapon is what I assume to be some sort of pie that you throw on the ground and explodes-upwards.
Lining up attacks with enemies is what makes the game tough; there are a lot of birds which can be REALLY tough to hit. If you try to run past them, they stay on the screen chasing you and you end up having a bunch at once which will kill you quickly. You SEEM to only have one life but when you get a game over, the game will start you off from the stage you died at, so it effectively has infinite lives/continues. You have a health bar, but it can go down pretty fast in certain situations.

While you play, you uncover hidden items by touching certain parts of the screen. This lets you get health (coffee), weapons, go fast (shoes), take damage (fish skeletons, which are IMO unintuitive as the bad item), keys, and a few other items I wasn't completely able to figure out. Level design is as bland as can be; you basically just keep walking to the right and fight enemies. I didn't encounter any aspects of the stage that proved challenging except for the enemies. No tricky jumps, no sense of exploration beyond the hidden items that pop up seemingly at random, no sense of danger. Just a boring house and town.
At certain points, you come to locked doors and need to find the key to progress. But the game only scrolls in one direction so the key is always going to be close to the door which kind of makes the mechanic feel pointless to me.
I only heard one song and didn't encounter any bosses, but looking at a playthrough on YouTube it DOES seem the music eventually changes and there are a few boss battles.

But all-in-all, I wouldn't REALLY say that this is the bottom-tier game it's normally considered to be. It's still bad, but after playing Fist of the North Star, it seems almost tolerable. If I BOUGHT this game and was trying to beat it FOR SERIOUS, I'd probably end up completely despising it. But for something to play around with for an afternoon, it's fine.

Yeah...... Lagoon is done.

I dig it. I'd give it a solid 7/10. Swordplay is a bit dicey, but this is largely ameliorated by the offensive projectile magic.

Honestly, the two worst things about this game are almost never discussed. Namely that,
- It takes an eternity to recover HP and MP. This is one of those "rest to recover" ARPGs. Late in the game, if your health is low but max HP is high, you can sit a couple of real-life minutes waiting for this bastard to fill back up.
- The boss battles kinda blow. The shoddy hit detection is really noticeable when you start battling a huge sprite (and magic is disabled during these skirmishes). There game ends with a series of back-to-back bosses and it sucks balls. If you don't kill the third-to-last boss in the "correct" position the penultimate boss will immediately spawn on your hero's sprite which spells instant death. It's so poorly programmed. Seriously, observe the (lack of) transition here:
https://youtu.be/BonIMAwlcBc?t=147

So, yeah, janky azz game. But still fun. The "haters" are wrong, play it if you like crusty old ARPGs.

@Nemoid, I had this rad Garfield clock as a kid. My uncle gave it to me knowing I dug the cartoon & comic strip. Looks like it's originally from 1978. Always thought it was cool. Thing was giant at about 18 inches tall.

While we're on bad game design... I got caught by the last boss glitch in Genesis Garfield Caught in the Act. No way out other than reset button . Interesting that one was on PC with a different level order. Can't image it was better with KBM.

You guys are killing it! I am digging all of these reviews. Lagoon? A Week of Garfield? Voyeur?! Awesome work, team.

Nemoide wrote:I've long had a fondness for Garfield. Garfield & Friends was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a little kid, I used to love getting Garfield books from the Scholastic book order when I was in elementary school, and I played the hell out of Garfield: Caught in the Act for Genesis. Then when I was a teenager I realized how artless and corporate Garfield is and my love turned to hate. But now that I'm in my 30s and am being more open with myself about loving the dumb stuff I love, I've rekindled my fondness for Garfield. I even have a Garfield land-line telephone!

lol this mirrors by thoughts about Garfield pretty closely.

As a kusoge "fan" I have an interest in A Week of Garfield..... but it's oddly expensive.

I payed a chunk, definitely didn't beat it, but I remember thinking Lagoon wasn't bad. Sold it off probably 5 years ago & haven't emulated it since, but I recall thinking it was decent contrary to internet comments.

My son likes the Garfield CGI show on Netflix now. I don't really find it that funny, but interesting to see him like something else I dug as a kid.

Oh man Famicom Valis suuuuuucccckkkks. It attempts to do the Metroidvania thing... but instead of a giant cohesive mappable world featuring smooth horizontal and vertical scrolling, we're treated to a level-based hellscape where you must travel all around via "warps." Here's a level one map (from GameFAQs, nothing like this is provided in-game). It just gets worse after this.