Gauntlet 2 - Arcade

Whose face is more horrifying between Warrior and Valkyrie?

Why Gauntlet 2 and not Gauntlet 1? Simple really, read on and I'll tell you. Gauntlet 2 is the successor to the largely popular game Gauntlet. A game based around the lovely lore of Dungeons and Dragons, which involve some Dragons and maybe a Dungeon or two. Everything that Gauntlet has, Gauntlet 2 has more of and better.

Mazes, ghosts and monsters ahoy!

Pick your character by holding the joystick in a specific manner and pressing start. Choose from A warrior (Tough guy but slow shots), Wizard (Wuss but heavy firepower, a glass cannon so to speak), an elf and a Valkyre who are the middle ground between the warrior and wizard, and venture forth into the multiple, multiple levels of Gauntlet 2.

New incidents come with a little instruction.

You start your intrepid journey in Gauntlet 2 with a top-down/birds-eye-view display of the local part of the dungeon and can move in 8 directions while either firing your weapon or casting magic (if you have it). You'll have a health counter that steadily counts down, meaning you'll have to find food or other sustenance to survive (more credits help a lot) and battle lots of different enemies that will be keen to drop your health counter further than it already has.

Sadly, some mazes have invisible walls.

That is the basics of both Gauntlet and Gauntlet 2, however the intricacies are what keeps the game going and what keeps bringing people back to the game itself. Through each level, one can find keys to unlock doors and chests that (may) contain treasure (or death... he's not nice at all), locate food to up the health counter and other special power ups that include Invulnerability (Yet the health drops quickly anyway), reflective shots (which can hit AND hurt you), transportation (You teleport through walls, chests, keys, potions etc), IT (makes the enemies run at JUST you), repulsiveness (enemies run away but still shoot back) and various potions that act like smart bombs in taking out most of the junk on the screen or boost stats like strength, attack, defence and speed. There's a lot to be found and used within the game.

Wouldn't be much of a secret if it didn't have those...

To stop you, Gauntlet 2 throws every cliché in the book at you. Ghosts, trolls, lobbers (little people that throw stuff), demons, sorcerers, dragons (rare but damn they're tough) and DEATH to name but a few problems you'll encounter. You can run into most of these things and cause damage (except ghosts and death, they just damage you and Dragons... Well if you're running INTO one you deserve to be crispified) or shoot them. They in turn will cause damage if they chomp, whack, bite, punch or "death" you on contact or hit you with a ranged shot.

The deeper you go, the harder it gets. Said the Actress to the Bishop.

Interestingly, the game has a curious narrator that likes to comment on almost everything and every new "instance" of something happening will pause the game, explain what it does and then carry on without repeating itself. This goes for being hit by a new enemy, being shot by a new enemy, picking up anything you've never picked up before etc. etc. The narrator will happily talk to you about it including when you do stupid things like shooting the food, even going so far as to tell EVERYONE who did it. The narrator will also happily tell you when someone's "Life force is running out" or the most famously remembered line of somebody "...is about to die" with base notes warning of impending demise.

Eventually though, you just get bored of it all.

That said, unless you're pumping in credits left and right, this game will not let you finish it. Even working in tandem with partners and having a foolproof system, you're going to get butchered one way or another and enemies like Death are designed almost purely just to get credits out of pockets and into the machine. Dragons too if you get too close. Else it's a good fun, smoothly playable game that is worth a visit or two every few years or so.

Battletoads - Arcade, Rare Replay

Or don't and save your cash.

Take the premise of a morning cartoon show. Grab some animals, make them humanoid and muscular, give them attitude and over the top muscle physiques and set them against even bigger and more muscular characters and you've basically gotten every anthropomorphic cartoon you could imagine. Now set it in a video game and you've got Battletoads. Following the lovably named Zitz, Rash and Pimple, the trifecta of getting oneself down to the doctors, we watch as these beefed up toads decide to win a space war against a colourful assortment of characters by punching, kicking, slamming, fly-munching, bulldozing and chainsaw-knee-blading (I wish I was making this up) their way through level after level until the last boss is killed. What probably doesn't help here is that Battletoads became a cartoon show after the first game was made, then the arcade game came later.

Kicked a pig, in the arse.... Wow...

The game switches between styles of play. From the pseudo 3D brawler we expect from games like Final Fight, to a straight up 2D flat affair as if Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat became a platformer with more enemies, rather akin to the Batman Forever game on the SNES and Megadrive. Thankfully there's not nightmare of a level where you're driving constantly to dodge obstacles...

When there's Snow more room in Hell, Bod will play this shit game.

Interestingly, each of the Battletoads has an assortment of situational-dependent attacks. Enemies on both sides? Attack will hit both. Enemy on the ground and weighs a lot? You grow a huge boot and plant it up their backside to launch them into the screen or through the 4th wall. Enemy on the ground? You'll drill/spike/crush them, while charging and attacking will cause your Battletoad to develop a Quarterback Helmet/Bulldozer blades or a big fist to smash the enemies. Leaping and attacking can cause your Battletoad to expose a leg-axe, knee chainsaw or worse. The fighting and action is as cartoony as it is inventive.

Something for the vore fans I guess.

The cohesion between levels jumps back and forth like a cat overdosing on catnip. One moment you're on a battleship punching a bull in the balls (no joke) and the next you're in an ice cave covered with snow while icicles fall upon you, reindeer try to gore you with their antlers and then a giant snake living in a ribcage tries to devour you while it's away from its internet-connection, otherwise I'm at a loss as to how it managed to insult you at the start of the level during the cut scene. Then it's another spaceship with a multi-stage boss, followed by a drop down a long passageway while punching out pigs and spiked-up abominations then finally a palace with a spike pit that looks like the same architects from Double Dragon have been around. The last level changes it up entirely to have the battletoads riding a ship while shooting in 8 directions in a sort of mix between Gradius and that FPS mode in Aliens.

Don't worry, you won't fight her. Not unless you play Battletoads Double Dragon.

Enemies range from rats and bulls to snakes and big, hulked out, larger forms of rats and bulls. The larger enemies tend to take several rounds of beating before being finished in rather "unique" ways (I did mention earlier with the balls...) leading to several comical instances through the game until you realise you'll see it almost EVERY time that you happen upon such an enemy, where upon the novelty quickly wears off, especially when you're punching someone's lights out, stuck in the combat animation while someone else runs up behind you can smacks you over the back of the head with a wrench for 3/4s of your health.

Another poor attempt at humour, punching a giant rat, in the cock.

Musically, I could miss this and not even realise, the problem with the game isn't the music which sounds remarkably suitable for the Megadrive rather than an arcade game. There's a lack of uniqueness in the music but then again it is overruled by the sound effects and biffs pows and slams of melee action and enemies being ball-punched, flattened, slaughtered and annihilated by the sheer fun that is the action. Could have been a lot better in retrospect if there was more focus here.

Another one of those, utterly unfair bullshit modes where you avoid spending more money.

All things being said, this game might as well have a hosepipe planted straight into your pocket and sucking out all of your credits/quarters/coins and what have you. Run out of those it'll happily strip you naked just for a few more moments of gaming with virtually no progression. There's parts of the levels where you'll make good and steady progress and then there's parts that will let you get 1-2 hits in and then kill you almost outright. Health regens are far and few between and regain so very little of the health system back that it's barely worth even trying to eat the flies. It's an unfair game, solely based around completely slaughtering your cash level for a few more minutes and isn't worth the play through just to get to realise you don't fight what is infamously known as the Dark Queen as a final boss, she barely even is seen or mentioned in the game.

Stick to the other games, this one can burn.

Puzzle Bobble 2 - Various

Bubbles, Bobbles and Puzzles.

Bright, colourful, loud and cheerful. The key elements of a fun game aimed at as many audiences as possible and based upon the popular Bubble Bobble series, Puzzle Bobble 2 is Taito's foray into the world of bubble pop games, made more famous recently by games like Bubble Witch 1 and 2 on Facebook and smart phones and involves the player trying to overcome various set pieces or go toe-to-dragon-toe with opponents both of the Artificial Intelligence and the Stupid Intelligence.

So many choices, some more expensive than others.

Puzzle Bobble 2 takes the light-hearted approach to gaming with the use of Bub and Bob, the character bubble-dragons of the game Bubble Bobble, and sets them in the odd gaming world of Bust-a-move. Where players are presented with a wall composed of various coloured balls and bubbles and have to connect additional balls and bubbles together in order to pop them with the objective of either clearing the screen of bubbles or surviving longer than your opponent as they attempt to do the same.

This is just enemy one. He's a pratt.

After so many shots, Puzzle Bobble 2 will lower the arena or add an upper layer of new bubbles to the arena, giving a limit on the number of shots you can take or keeping the game flowing and continuing while you play against your opponent. If you manage to pop multiple bubbles, you'll be rewarded with bonus points for the feat while in Vs. mode you'll also begin to flood extra bubbles to the bottom of the playing field of your opponent. This being the only way to lose, when the bubbles in your arena extend beyond the point where you can launch them.

Fire bubbles, pop in sets of 3 or more and bonus drops fill up the opponents area.

The puzzle mode for Puzzle Bobble 2 sports a series of differing arenas with different balls and layouts for players to test their skill and accuracy while navigating a board towards a multitude of differing endings. That said, it's not an easy feat to get there and harder to actually beat some of the levels that will require some incredible trick-shots and ricochets to be able to win and progress onwards. The Vs. mode in the game pits the players against a series of cute creatures with increasingly difficult algorithms that will hit the best shot more readily as the player continues, up until a final boss battle and then receiving their well-deserved ending.

You win, "big whoop, wanna foight abaht it?"

The only real problem with the game is that it can be very difficult to judge where to place shots and how the physics of the engine works if you've already been used to playing more recent games like Bubble Witch, as in those types of games you could squeeze shots between gaps that you physically are unable to do in Puzzle Bobble 2, whether by design (to get more cash out you, oh spend-happy player) or through limitations of the hardware and programming (I'm still thinking it's the cash incentive), it can come across as particularly jarring when key shots that work in later games, do not work in this one and are likely to cost you that round of play (and a credit).

You're crap, and beaten by an annoying cartoon kid for that matter.

However, it's still a cute and very appealing game, the music and audio puts it on par with the cheerful Saturday Morning Cartoon Club of games and the presentation is one that puts the player back a few years to the point where cartoons were fun and interesting things rather than being the non-sensical meshes of animation and crowbarred plot devices they seem to have become today... Or I'm just old. Oh God I'm old.