Troddlers - SNES (and other formats)

It's the title, run now and don't come back, thank me for it later.

Take the idea of lemmings, you know, those blue-bodied, green-haired suicidal little beasts that mindlessly run back and forth along levels until you build them, block them, blow them up and cause little fireworks. Now remove ALL the functionality from them and make them run up walls and across the ceiling like they've got the stickiest shoes in existence. Still with me? NOW, put in a playable character that can make blocks appear and disappear and you've basically got Troddlers.

No foes... I can't die sooner rather than later.

Troddlers, the "fun" game of block building where 1-2 players get to help guide the haplessly little minions from starting point to ending point by building and placing blocks strategically so that the little pets can happily and mindlessly make their way to the goal and thus, you can beat the level. Unless of course you've also got to collect specific items during the level.

More walking than the Lord Of The Rings films.

While doing this, you have to get your character around the same level while using the SAME blocks in a mash-up of puzzler and platformer. So not only are you guiding the Troddlers into the exit, you also have to make your own stairwells and platforms in order to get to be in the key places that will allow the Troddlers to meander their way to the objective. Now do we start to see where this is going wrong?

It only LOOKS interesting.

Throw in a bad, unresponsive and reliable control system and you've got the recipe for a thunderclade shitstorm of frustration. If only it was that bad. Troddlers can be minded up, burned up, tripped, flipped, crushed (and in some cases they HAVE to be) and so on that you need to prevent their demise through strategic placing of blocks. You also need to make sure YOU don't die from enemies and more.

New sprites, same dull gameplay.

To add more chaos, there's zombie Troddlers that can kill the real ones and SOMETIMES (depends on the level) hurt you upon contact, while some enemies will injure you and others will kill or make things more awkward for the Troddlers. The rules are fairly inconsistent on this one.

Good Knight, I've had enough.

But let's not stop there, you can also have multiple blocks! Standard blocks for walking and moving, ice blocks to reduce traction and stop Troddlers walking up (or down) them, Mines for blowing things up (including Troddlers), Arrow blocks that flip Troddlers through the block. Bouncers to stop Troddlers from dying upon falling too far, and finally Slowdown blocks that do exactly what it says on the tin. In truth, most of these are just annoying and make the level more awkward than it already is.

It took 9 minutes to get here.

The game isn't without merit, I just don't know where to find it. But having said that it has a fair charm to it with the graphics and the levels at least look unique enough from Space levels to Pyramids and such, but the block structure and mechanics leaves you realising that this is just a grid game and soon you don't even see the aesthetics, just where blocks go, can't go and what to do. It loses its charm rather quickly.

There's fire, but it can't get to you, how disappointing.

The music however is decent enough with some rather chirpy and catchy little tunes that sadly become dull and repetitive when you're playing on levels for 10 minutes at a time because one little Troddler is insistent upon walking ALL THE WAY AROUND THE LEVEL because you didn't quite get to the one point you needed to be in, in time. The sound effects however are dull, uninspired and rather bland.

The most accurate depiction of this game. It'll send you to sleep.

It's not a great game, it's dull, slow paced and too unforgiving and awkward with the controls for it to be any real fun and once you've seen a few levels, you've effectively realised all that is on off and can happily switch it off, blend the cartridge and go play something more fun, like in traffic.

Bad Dudes vs Dragonninja (NES)

This game is definitely BAD enough to waste your time and grammar.

Are you a Bad enough Dude to play this game? Don't bother. However, I should be fair. The arcade game is a decent enough platform-ish romp, enjoyable to a point where it becomes more tedious than fun. THIS game, for the NES is diabolical by itself and atrocious in comparison. Granted I am taking into account that there's a significant scale-down from arcade to console, but if Bubble Bobble can do it, as well as Ramparts as reviewed earlier by myself, there's no reason THIS should be so downright unplayable.

Generic tittymen.

You've the nice graphics, which is signalling a big rip-apart coming up if I'm jumping straight to the graphics and the best I can say is "nice", but there's some strong presence of trying to replicate the arcade's graphics though perhaps that is where this game has fallen down, the attempt is so strong that there's little effort been put into realising that it's going to slow everything down.

Sadly, this is possibly the best part of this port of the game.

Controlling the game is a chore, your Bad Dude (With strong emphasis on the word "bad" to mean "SHITE") moves in chunky, blocky and almost in grid-like fashion, ninjas in all their off-colour glory run about in blocky movements and there's no fluidity behind anything regarding characters and motion. To add to this, there are significantly less enemies on screen to prevent sprite flicker but to compensate for this, some ninjas have multiple hit-points which does change the game mechanics A LITTLE, and note I said 'change' not 'improve'.

So painful, to even look at it, it's just... so "bad". In the bad way.

Combat is almost as hit and miss as Battleships, you've got to have some quick reflexes to be able to hit something that moves the way these ninjas do and also to be able to accurately time the difference between jump then attack, jump and attack, and finally, jump andattackalmoststraightaway, to get the spinning kick move that will basically let you trawl through the levels very quickly and not have to fight anything while you speed it towards the boss on the short levels. The auto scrolling levels do not give you this shortcut, you're in it for the very long boring haul.

Thank god that's over.... what? There's MORE LEVELS?!? Shoot me now.

The music is an assorted mess of squeaks and poorly processed notation with a possibly memorable instance of one bit of music that sadly, is so distorted, that it ends up sounding slightly better than it would do normally, so it's not really as a result of planning or composition but blind luck. Makes me wonder if it's Deaf-Luck when vision is not an issue... Never mind. The sound effects are barely existent but the most risible of all is the end of the boss fight when the pitiful attempt to copy the arcade's sounds of "I'm Bad" come out sounding like the most guttural grunt from the most base Neanderthal in existence. Or the final satisfying grunt from a constipated gorilla, I've yet to decide.

Sadly, I've not been decapitated by the awesome pose of the boss, it's just sprite flicker.

Granted, the game has the same variety of moves found in the arcade, you can jump, jump kick, spinning-jump kick, punch, kick, crouch, grab weapons, use weapons and so on but there's no polish and shine to the delivery, it's a very stale and clunky method of control beset with the issues of there being a shade of a game behind the original. The original wasn't that great either, but this could have been better.

Another boss, another step closer to ending this. Or I could switch it off.

This version, isn't worth playing through to get a burger with the president. He can rot for this one.

Moonwalker

Yep, THAT Michael Jackson

I have to thank my cousin for reminding me of this little gem. But Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, is probably one of the most offensive and horrific games of all time... in hindsight. It's a game that was released in 1990, developed by Sega after the release of the original Mish-Mash film, Moonwalker (which was basically several long music videos thrown together and then MJ fights Joe Pesci by turning into a car, a robot and a spaceship before leaving and coming back for a gig... I wish I was making this up but it sounds more impressive than it really is), the unfortunate side-effect of MJ's life is that in this game, you save kids by touching them...

I'll try to keep away from joking about this, but I make no promises.

Start of almost every level has this comic book approach to the level.

Dancing McPaedo (Never convicted but often insinuated, not quite the best tagline for someone, would much rather have Outnumbered but never Outgunned, but oh well..), is the only "person" for want of a better word, that can save multiple kids that were spotted hanging out with MJ when they saw Joe Pesci doing a drug deal. Joe now wants MJ dead so he kidnaps the kids (MJ's obvious weakness) and forces MJ to rescue them while trying to have him killed.

Smoking, Drugs, Drink... they all kill, but few will name Dancing as a dangerous weapon.

Cue 5 levels of isometric perspective maps, moon walking power moves, dances and turning into a robot when collecting Bubbles the Chimp... We're really trying to shoehorn a lot of MJ's life into a game here. I'm just sorry there's no plastic surgery powerups but then the game would look entirely different. I'm also surprised that arcade cabinets didn't have extra hands under the machine to try and fondle the players, but hindsight is 20-20 after all.

Onto the game, you know, the whole actual point of this article.

The threat level bounces around within the game, some areas are nice and quiet, this isn't one of those areas.

You control Dancing McPaedo (I'll try to stop now) as he moves around the levels and rescues children. Each level looks like it's been fairly closely, but not overly accurately, recreated from scenes in the film. You've Mr Big's base, (Pesci's character name, original isn't it...), a street and bar, another dark street, a graveyard with zombies (to force us to hear Thriller as the music for the game), then the last level which is the first level but backwards followed by an elevator set then the last boss. Most of time you'll get to fight and "kill" Joe Pesci in the same way we fight and kill Robotnik in Sonic The Hedgehog games and that he flies off when defeated to "get you next time, McPaedo!"... Or something along those words, the speech isn't entirely clear at this point.

As far as final bosses go... this is shit.

You move around the level in the standard 8 compass directions, which translate exactly in the game as those directions. This isn't one of those games where pressing up moves you diagonally up into the "background" of the perspective. This does make the game a little easier to avoid enemies as they tend to move on the 4 diagonals provided by the isometric view. It does become awkward when trying to navigate through narrow points unfortunately or when you're up against larger enemies that can tank the damage you dish out.

You too can dance along, and look like as much of a prick as he does.

Your primary method of fighting is a charge/release attack. Hold the button and MJ starts to moonwalk while moving, holding his hand up while charging his laser and then when released, fires in the direction he's moving (not facing, as he's backwards while moon walking... go figure). This charge also determines the size and power of the shot, so a long shot goes across the distance of the room/screen and does huge damage, while tapping the button will fire a short blast that goes less distance than an asthmatic wheezing out a death-rattle.

Joe Pesci chokes a fat kid, and MJ looks like he's being sucked off...

Thankfully, there's some help in this game in the form of Bubbles the Chimp who can be collected and then turns MJ into Robo-Paedo, where he becomes a hulking great moon walking robot that fires lasers and missiles, doesn't require large charge up times for the power move and has a greatly increased range of attack. Though this usually turns up before or around the boss areas. On top of this you've your dance attack, which is your special "Let's slap everything in the face with MJs dick" move, forcing all characters and enemies on screen to dance for a moment before being killed or heavily damaged. You get one per life and can find more in the kids pockets when you rescue them.

Robo Wacko Jacko... Sadly, MJ was the conceptual designer for this game.

More disturbingly, are some of the enemies. If you've played the game then you'll know what I mean when I talking about the 2-legged robo-cock machines. It's like one of those two legged walkers from Star Wars with an extendable strap-on that can be used to punched MJ. Perhaps someone in the design team had a glimpse into the future and saw what was going to happen, wrote this enemy and thought "That's one MJ takes instead!" But given the later years of MJ's life, it's probably even more disturbing with the hindsight.

The aptly named "Location not appearing in the film" level.

You'd think though, that the music in the game would be sublime. MJ, who at the time, was the BIGGEST name in pop-music around the planet, riding the thrill of having the biggest albums and breaking more records than almost anyone else ever, would have had decent renditions of his music in the game. We can get people speaking badly, but the musical over tones are the worst level of hell of Dante's vision for this kind of elevator musak. Bad is barely recognisable, Billy Jean is butchered (and not my lover), Thriller is vaguely recognisable and none of it really represents the music for what it was at the time. Fairly decent (until MJ opened his gob...).

"Now for today's caption contest, just send in your own quote for this picture to..."

Interestingly, the arcade game was for 1-3 players, with each rendition of MJ being in a different coloured suit, though player 3 had the added bonus of being in a black suit, with a red arm band... They got to be the Gestapo version of MJ, adding in holocaust bonuses along with playing as Dancing McPaedo. 2 fuckups for the price of 1.

It's the power of DANCE!

It's a short game, even for 1990 and won't take too many credits to get through, between 1-4 for a seasoned player of arcade games and less for someone who's played it before. But it's worth playing, just to see how MJ liked to see himself as the saviour of kids while the rest of the world recognised him as being a filthy little pae- [Obscured on legal advice] -p his own rectum.

Like Joe Pesci, this is pretty much my reaction to this entire game.