Golden Axe (Megadrive)

1989, a good year, no idea why

It's an old game, but a good one over all and depending upon which system you play it upon, you may end up with more levels than you realise. Golden Axe IS still a good game and one that stands proud as part of the golden age of the arcade brawler with its multiple characters, spell system, combos and various attacks and multitudes of enemies, mounts and bosses (see: palette swaps).

Green, Blue, Red, in order of attack power and reverse order of magic power

The story is simple enough, some prick has a giant axe of gold and rules the land, you need to go drop an anvil on his head in the form of slaughtering his army one-by-one until you get to him, settle your differences and then maybe go on to fight his boss as well. It's a storyline taken from nearly every swords/magic/might/barbarian type of film going that it's effectively made it into its own little interactive film.

NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKE!

You start with your character, either the blue themed barbarian with his sword, muscles and very little else being worn. The red themed Amazonian type warrior woman, wearing slightly more than the barbarian and having a smaller sword but the most magic potential (i.e. summon a dragon to cough up all over your enemies) and then there's our green diminutive coloured dwarf, who thanks to an incident in Ireland many years back I will dub "Murphy".

Yes, the last boss IS using that dragon on you.

Murphy and Co. will run the gauntlet of levels, enemies, dragons, odd chicken monsters and more to get from left to right in order to punch faces, stab bodies and hack up fuck ups everywhere. Liberating a giant turtle, giant bird and some identical looking villagers (sprite limits etc). While punching out small baldy, big baldy, skeletons, dragon riders, warrior women, ghosts, knights in full body armour, some muscle bound nutcase with a giant axe and magic powers, some muscle bound nutcase with a giant axe and even more magic powers and his two immortal skeleton bodyguards. It's a BIG list of enemies for a small game and colour swapping is RIFE.

As you can see, it can quite action packed on the screen from time to time.

As you wander the land, you'll meet some really quick-footed and ANNOYING little bastards that will drop magic potions and meat. Magic potions fill your magic meter and the more you have, the more powerful your magic attack will be when you unleash it all at once (except in beginner mode) and watch as something happens, enemies get hurt, then usually get up to keep fighting until you kill them that little bit quicker. The more magic you have when you use it, the more damage you do.

Looks like a fair fight...

You'll quickly learn to treat skeletons as hell spawn that need to killed quickly before they do some heavy damage to your health bars, while most bosses are too slow to be a real threat, it's about their backup that's the issue (except Death Bringer.. his backup never dies). While certain moves are more powerful and that the enemies will not nicely wait while you beat up one of them and if there's more than one, one WILL try to flank you and get behind you. It happens every time but it's nice to see the AI was written to give a challenge, more so than quite a few brawlers I can think of.

Oh ok, an eagle, like I care just get me to the last level!

The music is fairly standard, nothing really to write home about but you'll find yourself humming the initial bars to the first level here and there and the sound effects... well let's just move on for now. Ok they're shat for the most part, some repeated and recycled poorly for the wrong enemies too.

Like the dwarf, I was very unimpressed by the opposition.

Gameplay is the usual arcade affair, you'll likely play it a few times and even less if you manage to beat it, but there is the co-operative play for a friend or the solo basement dweller can opt for the duel mode which is a gauntlet of levels with ever increasing enemies until you beat it or die trying. It does add a quick play mechanic to the system and works rather well as both a challenge and a warm up to playing the main game.

That's just embarassing.

It has its glitches and it has its exploits you can use, getting caught between two enemies at once is a pig when the engine will let them wipe you out in a combined twitch-up of a combo, but for the most part it's a good, solid game that can be enjoyed even today.

Snake Rattle and Roll (NES)

Snakes, they rattle and roll.

Two snakes, one called Rattle, one called Roll in an isometric game by rare called Snake Rattle and Roll. That didn't quite pan out how I had originally hoped but I blame fatigue on this one. What we do have however is a rather charming little isometric 3D platformer by Rare that promotes team play and solo in the same way.

One looks dopey, the other looks like it takes things far too seriously

It's a little bit aloof but the basic premise is that two snakes, Rattle and Roll, have decided to climb a mountain filled with traps, enemies, spikes and Nibbly-Pibblys (I'll explain...) In order to find a spaceship and leave the moon. How they get from the mountain TO the Moon is something else but I'm not exactly going to pick apart this fine bastion of story-telling at this point.

Another bonus level, where the Nibbly-Pibblys are running away

On each level, you've got your snakes, you've got (almost always) a weighing machine and a rather unending supply of Nibbly-Pibblys that get spat out from generators or can be found under lids. Eating them will make your snake gain tail segments and more importantly, weight. Once you're heavy enough to ring the bell, the door will open and you can make your escape. Your tail will grow faster if you eat Nibbly-Pibblys of the Yellow persuasion (fast and tend to run the hell off quickly) or your own colour. Eating your friend's coloured Nibbly-Pibblys will get you a minimal boost.

Pancaked

Each segment of tail will act as a health point and getting hit, attacked, sliced, collided, bitten or such will lose you a point of health, get hit with no tail and your head blows up. You also lose a life. There are (thankfully) very few enemies that can one-shot you, such as falling to your death, spikes, Bigfoot (and Ice foot by extension) and heavy items like anvils and fishtails (to be used to climb a waterfall). Later levels will have more emphasis on boulders and such that can kill you quickly too.

Big fat snake, the only way to open the exits with weight machines.

On the way, you'll encounter a wide variety of enemies and objects. From checkers pieces to large feet, pincushions that blow out spikes, toilet seats (starting to sound like old 80s video games with random objects), ice blocks, bombs, fake lives and sharks. You've some weapons and items to help you out though, tongue extensions to make it easier to lick enemies to death (yes... including the foot, lick the foot to death), lives, continues, clockwork keys to speed you up, diamonds to make you invulnerable (hard as diamond perhaps? not sure the relevance) and more Nibbly-Pibblys than you really want.

The fish-tail power up lets you swim up this. I don't know where the snorkel set comes from though

Depending upon the location, there are some hidden secrets like level warps, for the really quick, a warp from level 1 to 8 is possible at the start of the game. While others are hidden around in places, some more obvious than others. There's also bonus rooms where you get a flurry of Nibbly-Pibblys (getting cramp typing that name out) that you have to devour quickly before they make a lap of the room and escape.

Magic carpets and flying icons, all the fun of a platform puzzle.

The dynamic of the levels change when you get further along, focusing more on jumping puzzles and later on being able to swim freely in free-space underwater though this is hindered by the lack of awareness of moving into the background unless you can see where your shadow is and the 2D perception in a 3D world REALLY hinders the progression unless you're very astute in picking up where your shadow is on the bottom of the pools. Some of the jumping puzzles are beyond annoying and later levels (ice... I hate ice levels) have decreased friction and sloped ramps to slide you off into the abyss and off the mountain with a comical "aaaaaaaaaaaarghhh" and a chipper little tune to announce your death.

Round 1, fight! Sorry... wrong game.

These niggling little issues aside, the game plays smoothly, the controls function incredibly well though you've that translation of movement where Up doesn't move you up, it moves you 45degrees around from Up to keep you moving in a compass direction along the 2D planar of the isometric view. In short, it gets fucking annoying, fast until your mind/hands adapt to the situation. It also is the cause of a lot of mis-aimed jumping and attacks as you can't tell how far into the background you actually are and appear to be the same size whether you're all the way back or right at the front of the screen.

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

It plays like it's based on a kids cartoon, the characters are bright and happily animated, being hurt makes them leap up into the air and gawp at the screen with a wide slack-jaws O.O face on their features while there's little in the way of violence beyond going pop, screaming aaaaaaaargh in a string of comical letters or getting pancaked by the heavier enemies in the game. The music is toe-tappingly pleasant enough though the more heavy music in the later levels does add to the sense that the game is tough from here on and the difficulty is about to ramp it up to the point that it's almost vertical.

Yes, you have to lick the foot. A disgustion solution to this enemy.

It would seem that the game, because of its fairly unique perspective, is difficult in only its control system and how it translates to the map/levels. Some of the jumps and traps are very fiddly (nibbly-pibbly?) and can be awkward at worst to navigate, and downright impossible save for blind luck or highly intuitive ability to control the game.

Despite this, it's still a very game, very enjoyable and fairly well polished. Another gem from Rare.

Robocop NES

You've seen the film, now suffer the 8-bit

In one of those moves to capitalise on the popularity and success of the arcade game, the NES version of Robocop was brought in within a year as a "sort of" port to the gaming industry. In what seems to be an acceptable practise, games would be produced on one machine and then other companies that worked on other formats (i.e. Started in Arcade, then would be made for C64, Nes, ZX81 etc) in order to bring the game to other machines in a way that could be played but wasn't quite the same standard as the original arcade game. Sometimes these games were VERY close to the original (Take Bubble Bobble as an example) and in other cases the game was.. well, let us just say that it wasn't very much like the original and in many cases was either a passing similarity or more of an "in name only" kind of concept.

So instead of getting a near approximation of the arcade game we get this instead... You can likely tell by now which tone I'll be adopted for this review. Well done for recognising a pattern, aren't you clever.

I can only imagine robo is blowing one fat raspberry at this point.

6 levels of platform trawling (you don't jump) where Robocop will walk slowly from one side to another and gradually punch and shoot his way past thugs, mugs and under-world scum, beat off dogs (not like that...) helicopters, large people that are bullet proof (mostly...) an odd assortment of bosses and villains ranging from generic tough guy that can be encountered repeatedly later on, to Miller who held the mayor hostage to ED209 (twice) and so on.

Like the arcade game, there's punching and shooting, though unlike arcade there's the lovely incapacity that is the game deciding "No guns here" and forcing you to punch everything once again. The arcade did this initially and never again, but this game will occasionally FORCE it upon you while fighting pretty much the same enemies you were while having access to the gun. On top of this, you'll have a time limit (which gets VERY tight in the last levels) and a health bar where you tank damage (or not, seriously, at what point did a dog bite through Titanium Alloy armour?). Your weapons range from the pistol to the machine gun to the cobra cannon so it's nice to see that little nod of acknowledgement.

Wow... can we get any more supposedly patriotic? It really doesn't work on non US audiences

There's slightly more focus (ONLY SLIGHTLY) than the arcade game in keeping with the theme of the film. The 2nd level for example is set entirely around the siege with the mayor and your boss being the very guy that Robo punches out of a window (to land on a crash mat that isn't entirely out of shot and used again in the news report, but enough movie mistakes here). Not only do you have to traverse the building and search various rooms, you'll also be able to actually punch through the walls to find secret routes and then take on the boss in a shootout with a hostage and then kill him. It's nice to see that the NES throws in things that the original arcade didn't touch upon.

The third level takes place in the warehouse, akin to the films drug factory. Followed by going to OCP headquarters which is what happens next after interrogating Clarrence Boddicker (yep.. dicker..) followed by the showdown at the steel mill (film again) then back to OCP (like in the film!) If anything that should be praised here is that the game follows the film rather than just using it as ideas for backdrops, it sticks fairly closely to the plot and mimics it in the cut-scenes between levels which is a lot more impressive than the arcade managed to do it.

The problem however is that the arcade focused on gameplay and responsiveness and the NES... didn't.

Possibly the most impressive graphic in the game, and even here it has glitched.

Graphically speaking, this game is ugly. The backgrounds are almost enough to make me puke blood in disgust (especially the first level) but redeems itself by having one of the HUGEST ED-209 bosses I've seen in a game, so big in fact that they boss fight(s) tend to be in dark rooms so the graphics can be focused on rendering him in-game (a shame he's so easy to beat if you have the machinegun).

It can also be hard to work out where the doors are in the game and sometimes the sensitivity and precision required to enter the door can be a nightmare. It's also a little odd in trying to go through a door and having never encountered one before, not realising you can go through the door in the first place. Often a fun thing to witness while you run back and forth trying to find what you're missing until you die of time-out. Yay, use another continue.

You'll learn to love these moments, it's when the music is different

Incidentally, dying = new life = continue = restart the whole level and slowly walk through it again. As you can see, this is a key formula for qualifying for dickmove-university. Especially annoying on level 6 where you start on a backwards moving conveyor belt and goes EVEN MORE SLOWLY for your progress. Aside from this, there's a lot of other inconsistencies where some doors can be walked into on the horizontal plane on which you walk, while other doors are rather more disgusting in that you have to push up to walk through them while they look like these other doors that you can hobble your way through with your oh-so-limited frames of animation.

Controls are an absolute shitbagbastard, of the highest order. Stairs are a nightmare to try and ascend or descend while the actual act of picking up items is still a case of TeaBagging Hit or Miss wherein you need to duck but have to be almost pixel perfect in your positioning just to get a battery or health bar. Later enemies have the lovely ability to hit you no matter where you are and serve JUST to drain your health until you slap it down.

Punch fight. Bullets don't do shit here. Yes it's as dull as this picture looks.

There is far too much dependency upon having perfect timing for the game to be any real fun and it becomes quickly a slog through the hardest and slowest forms of gaming if only because your reaction times need to be super human and your control with the not-so-entirely-accurate-control-system(more hyphens please) has to be above and beyond.

Avoid this. It's a disaster of a game that's ONLY saving grace is that it sticks far more rigidly to the plot of the original film than the first arcade game does.

A boss fight... It's about as many enemies as you'll get on screen at once.

And the music... you'll be begging for a different tune on the levels, it's the same cheese-fest schmaltzy rubbish of the original theme tune. Actually you know what, fuck this. Go watch the original film instead while playing the arcade version.

And avoid the shitty remake film!

...Afterwards, blow my brains out for having to suffer this game.