Wonderboy in Monsterland - Arcade

Don't you just love when resolutions don't quite work

The original Wonderboy was a rather interesting little platformer that took the Mario approach, slapped in some graphics and sped up the fluidity of the gameplay. This outing of Wonderboy however has taken the adventure approach from platforming and put a lot more emphasis on combat, a pseudo RPG element to the game and thrown in a little exploration with it too.

Kill Dragon, Restore Peace. Nothing about political balance or economies.

You start off as Dicky McNoRealSignificance and before you can say "First Screen Away" you're talking to a fortune teller that lets you know that you're the last hope for the world and must go kill a dragon, and with that, gives you a sword and sends you on your merry way. What you're not told is that you'll have to fight, kill and find a hell of a lot of gold if you want to stand a ghost of a chance at getting anywhere NEAR that goal. As well as finding secret bosses, swords, weapons and everything else in between.

THE FIRST BOSS, is DEATH. (Yes I cheated and no I don't care)

Combat and movement in Wonderboy in Monsterland is very simple. Joystick for the movement, one button to attack, the other button jumps. Blocking is done automatically with a shield as long as you're not attacking and if you've got yourself a shield, while magic is cast by pressing down on the joystick. This does become problematic later in the game when enemies are dropping spells and there's ladders to navigate downwards, by pressing DOWN ON THE JOYSTICK... Anyone seeing this as a problem just yet?

Oooh, secret hidden door leading to more bosses.

Wonderboy in Monsterland, treats us to a rather jovial set of music, uplifting and jaunty as it bounces along with a slightly casual set of tunes with a light spring in their step. There's little sense of atmosphere beyond the entire game being treated as a kid's adventure and it fits in well with the graphics and setting.

"Take my large flute and blow on it... Gently..." -this is why I don't go adventuring any more.

Graphically in Wonderboy in Monsterland, everything is nice, friendly and rather cute. Even Death (your first boss), looks nice and cute for a skeleton wearing a robe and holding a scythe. Everything from snakes and yetis, to knights, demons and the last boss, the dragon, looks like a cheerful reject from some Saturday Morning show. The background and foreground are brightly coloured, clear and crisply presented while the design of the levels suffers a little in the later parts when having to jump and navigate up and down screen and the scrolling isn't enough to get through.

All healed up.

 

That said, Wonderboy in Monsterland, starts innocently enough with fairly linear levels and the unknowing behind each door that it could be a shop, a hidden trader for health and such (though in towns they'll be clearly marked) or a boss you weren't prepared to fight. That said, there's the hidden doors that are initially announced and unless you realise what the game is telling you, you have to press up to enter the door or walk past blissfully unaware that you're missing the chance to get more powerful swords and key items that will either solve the final dungeon or make Dragon very easy to defeat.

For what? A "?" and a "?" and that's all I get?

As for the final dungeon, the ramping difficulty for that last level is vertical to the point of coming back on itself as the maze is incredibly long, doesn't make it abundantly clear when you're going the right way or the wrong way at times (unless you have the bell) and is flooded with previous bosses, leaving you to the final battle against Dragon with likely far less hearts than you should have and few spells left. Though if you've the maximum armour, weapons and such, it shouldn't be a challenge. But with a strict timer throughout that drains lives, respawning enemies that stop dropping items after the 2nd or 3rd kill, you NEED to keep on the move or McNoRealSignificance will be gaining his wings sooner than expected and awaiting more cash/credits from the player.

Dragon Gun - Arcade

It has guns, and dragons. Ronsil would be proud.

It's an interesting idea, but given the fact that Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Magic and a whole other glut of "Dragon" based games came out around this time, it was only a matter of eventuality that someone did this in a board meeting. "How about... a gun game... wait for it... with DRAGONS" which was invariably met with rapturous applause and much cashbags of money heaped upon the little bastards head then with a quick return to reality for the rest us, this I think is how Dragon Gun was born.

You name it, and it'll come running to attack you.

And it's mad. I mean seriously mad in the way that when you stop and think about it, you realise why everything wants to kill you beyond the "Some git is trying to take over Fantasia... I mean the World". Yep this game is heavily rooted in the fantasy world so much so that I'm half expecting Luck Dragons and David Bowie dealing me "this little slice" of a piece of cake inside a Labyrinth.

It's an interesting take on the boss battle, actually being grabbed and attacked.

The plot in Dragon Gun is a simple affair, after all it's an arcade game so there's little point in doing anything convoluted, especially when you can just skip it and get back to shooting dragons. (And a whole host of other things) But for those that like to get their money's worth out of a game: Some Princess in a far away land (ooh) needs help after being attacked, a messenger from the dragons tells her to find two asshats that can fire the Dragon Gun (Name drops are great aren't they) and these people will be legendary enough to stop everything while blowing up most of the countryside with their god-like weaponry.

Do special, get dragon.

So you're either Twatty McJock or Dopey Doris in the quest to save the fantasy land from, some threat. Which, upon reflection, seems to be the BIGGEST case of mass parasites I've ever seen. Practically every enemy you fight has some sort of living critter in their body while they expel at high speed towards you, puking it up, arm-cannon-ing it at you or ass-blasting you with some living (or undead, we're not picky here) monstrosity that will damage your health. Seriously, some nit-shampoo and a worming drugs would solve this problem far quicker than a gun could. But wouldn't be as much fun.

Huge monsters will assault you at every turn.

So you've your character in Dragon Gun, you've a gun with infinite rounds but holding off the trigger charges up for a bigger shot, and a selection of Dragon Bombs that wipe out everything on screen or at least, cause heavy damage to the bosses and sub-bosses, and as an added bonus, if you run out of bombs, you get a weaker recharge blast that still destroys all projectiles and does minor damage to everything as well. You're quite well equipped in this game. But then so are the enemies, with worms, skulls, face-hugger looking things and god knows what else living in their bodies.

"Pull trigger to cap asshat" - a much better game.

Dragon Gun is an on-rails shooter, you don't choose where to go, you just follow the pre-set route and meet the boss at the end if you get that far. Which would be a shame if you didn't as the bosses are a rather colourful and lively bunch that range from Large Dragon, to flying centipede, Large Frog, running centipede with more parasites than one would care to think about, last boss and last boss 2 (back for revenge as per typical unimaginative game approach). While things to move at a quick pace, there's plenty to shoot at but thankfully not everything is capable of hurting you and there's a little mercy invincibility from one damage point to the next.

Look out, it's got a glimpse of plot here!

Graphically creative is an understatement for Dragon Gun, the variety and sheer scope of monsters is incredible. Yes you get your typical types with the dragons, lizards etc, but there's so many more monsters in the game which can be shot and killed in various ways. Heads get blown off only for the monster's JAWS to fly out and try one last bite, chests are shredded and limbs shot away, legs running off with the rest of the monster long since departed. Wyverns dying then returning as skeletal dragons to take more attempts and killing you. There's a high level of originality within the monster department here, it's a shame the backgrounds and scenery for the most part is either too pixelated or clearly a photograph, probably from New Zealand long before hobbits were filmed.

Insects, dragons, demons, dogs, this game has a LOT of things killing you.

Once again with the sounds, the music is overshadowed and drowned out by the explosions and screams of things dying, some monsters have some VERY human sounding screams while other sound effects sound like they're been taken from Alien 3 and Space Gun, I'm guessing someone sold a game engine at one point. Thankfully the music doesn't really add much to the game when you do hear it, so there's little missing when you don't hear what Dragon Gun is trying to pipe out through the speakers.

Even the bosses take quite the stab at the originality approach.

Overall it's a fun game, worth a few quick plays and if you're careful enough you can get quite far on just a credit or two but it's  not likely that you'll want to come back and play it again as there's no real variation in the game to want to see if things are different, however it is still enjoyable and at least with the relative ease of the game, you'll feel like you're getting good value for your cash.

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.

Double Dragon Neon

There's a wave of this situation running through, not only video games, but the movie industry as well. This being, the almost accursed situation of the Remake. While films have been around long enough for people to see the 2nd and 3rd wave of this happening, Gaming is getting to the point that games themselves are starting to be re-made for the modern era of gaming. Granted that some games are updated for each generation of console or next iteration of PC gaming, but sometimes a game that's been left to the side for a significant period, are now being picked up and made into (almost) the same game as before with bumped up graphics and new features. Double Dragon Neon is this for the original Double Dragon, but at the same time, goes way above and beyond just a simple remake.

This game, firstly, is so heavily saturated in the 80s you'll be expecting Rick Astley to turn up and slap you repeated in the face with a Sinclair C5 while strumming a guitar made out of a Commodore 64 machine. Ok perhaps not that 80s, but certainly disco 80s with the over-the-top neon colours that now heavily populate this version of Double Dragon. Even if nothing else, the game will be heavily show itself through a rather large abundance of references to 80s paraphernalia and the original game while also introducing one of the most memorable villains to grace a video game in quite some time, not for BEING a villain but for being one of the most amusing, self-referentially humorous and over the top behaviour and lines from any villain.

The plot, for those not alive around 1987 onwards, is that someone decides that Marion (excessively busty and leggy in this iteration) will make a great girlfriend for themselves and has her abducted, not realising that her boyfriend and his brother are "Double Dragons" who will punch, kick, combo, power move and use a variety of weapons and other such items to battle their way through the game and into the inevitable final showdown with Skullmageddon, who is little more than a modernised version of Skeletor from the He-Man cartoon and more Ham than a pig abattoir. To great comedic effect.

I'm serious, I couldn't stop laughing when I realised on pausing the game while fighting this boss, advised me to "punch me in the stomach while I'm swinging my sword and I'll stop! There, I just saved you a trip to the internet!". While in other times, was moaning about how it's ok for me to pause the game in a fight but not for him to do it. Throughout almost the whole game, he'll drop in every comment and hang every lampshade on any situation while punning everything he can about bones that one could think of. "Not very HUMOROUS!" to the point you can't help but sympathise with the supposedly ineffective villain until he under goes his entirely predictable, but equally welcomed, final transformation into ... Giga Skullmageddon armed up with blades and mechanics much in the same way most final bosses would transform into beefed up versions of themselves in other games from the original times (The 80's in case we forgot).

Game play is your usual brawl-em-up, punching kicking, throwing, block-countering while the specials are made up from collecting mix-tapes (and reviving your partner is done by winding the magnetic tape back into a mix-tape while using a pencil in the hole, only 80s people will get this one). Each tape can be used to power up specific special moves which do need to be selected in another menu rather than being learned as a move/combo. Which does interrupt game play somewhat but the trade-offs is the simplicity of the combat being just one button for the move. Statuses can be attributed in the same way in that you'll pick a set that can boost power but drop defence, balance all the stats, focus on massive defence but no real attack for the tank types, draining stats and health from other enemies at reduced stats overall, allowing for a multitude of game play types and techniques that either can be selected and forgotten or changed during the game, mid-level, to fit into the requirements the player might have for that particular situation.

The bosses are ridiculous in an amusing, Over The Top way, and just as filled with references and tropes as the final boss is. Ranging from Abobo in the original game, to a mega-man clone on a space station (everything goes to space in the end), giant plant based on Audrey 2 (with a shark head flower and dinosaur head flower... yep it's there) a giant tank based on an original Double Dragon 2 boss, Skullmageddon a few times for the sake of it. A few clones named on the typo made in the 3rd original Double Dragon (Bimmy and Jimmy, as if the spell check wasn't an option back then) and several other over-the-top characters and situations. Such as fighting against an upside-down flying helicopter, or sliding down a tundra on a plant's lower jaw, or fighting in space and breaking screens only for Skullmaggeddon to take the cost out of another minion's pay packet.

It's over the top and fun. The actual combat is slightly formulaic if you watch the movement patterns of the enemies, allowing you to goad them into specific movements, or rather disastrously, recognise when someone's going to be butchering you mercilessly because you know an attack is incoming and there's nothing you can do to counter it. Almost a death by slow motion. But there's enough there to mix up the combat itself and try some more impressive moves and techniques but people usually won't do that. They'll find a combo that works well for them and stick to it. Changing only if they encounter an enemy for which that method is entirely ineffective against.

The music tracks, composed/remixed by Jake Kauffman (known for the music in Retro City Rampage, Duck Tales remastered, Contra 4 and a whole host of other games over the last decade or so), certainly show their origins, most of which are remixes or retuning of earlier games' music, particularly of the first game, and given that oh-so-generic treatment the 80s is famous for and it hits the mark nearly every time, a little miss here and there on the more out-of-place levels and you'll realise those when you encounter them. Humour and sound bytes are rife in the game, in particular when Bill and Ted sorry... Billy and Jimmy, end up sounding like some "Valley-type, cool-dude" kids and manage to sound idiotic at the same time. Case in point, grabbing a baseball bat, slamming an enemy only to hear "Touchdown!" shouted to great enthusiasm. Its little tweaks like that and the other use of very bad puns that shine through with the pseudo-campy humour.

It can get a little awkward in places however, especially when it comes to the issue of the shops and the weapon smith. Each level on the map screen, where your character is personified by the Double Dragon 2 NES sprites, has details as to whether there is access to a shop or weapon smith. Shops sell items and tapes, such as food and health regens, extra lives etc. Weapon smiths take the gems you get from killing actual boss monsters and uses them to upgrade powers, which is all well and good but the shop becomes particularly annoying for this particular gripe. The gripe being, that the shops cannot be visited straight-away but must, I repeat, MUST be found in the middle of a level in order to attain the power ups required. The shops in this method are more annoying as not every shop has every item and some of the shops are in fact, hidden within levels i.e. on secret routes and within breakable entrances that one normally wouldn't seek to find. Only THERE can you buy more of the items to max out your abilities, stats and power moves. Rather than just walking into a shop.

Like one would expect. Each time I go shopping, I go to a specific shop and BUY it, I don't have to run through a level of death and carnage, facing down adversaries and dropkicking people through walls and racing around deadly tracks of blood, guts, gore and explosions... Except when I go shopping and need to take the M25... and arrive at Lakeside... Yeah I take that whole point back; it's still fucking annoying though to have to play a level to get to a shop.

The engine for the game however is fairly solid, except in circumstances where the game somehow manages to slam you into an obstruction, which causes damage, to bounce into another one, then into a 3rd one and results in your death by this point. Namely more possible on the higher difficulties and even more awkward is this pseudo 3D movement, in where pressing up would normally move you into the background on levels, and down moves you into the foreground. Some levels will START this way, but change to being entirely 2D and having NO means of moving back and forward, which then necessitates a change in tactic and means of combat that normally wouldn't have been an issue. When the game then punishes you for NOT being able to adapt to this arbitrary change soon enough, that becomes the dick-slap to the face from the game. Hardly fair and not in the slightest part enjoyable, even if you do like dick-slaps from non-game sources.

The game does feel awkward however with the lack of online support. It's a little odd when you realise that the original arcade game was released with online-support (buggy and laggy but THERE) and to not have it included in this game makes it feel like there's been a rather missed opportunity here for greater potential. Perhaps they've not been given rights to, or there's an issue with the network coding, or the game just doesn't translate well for netplay, all could be valid reasons but there's the fact that the game is missing one of the fundamental aspects of multiplayer in this day and age that, ought to have been included and increase the potential market for the game's fan base to those wanting to play it online with friends that can't turn up to the house like the old days.

Seems not everything in Double Dragon Neon is as revamped as it purports itself to be. While it remains a good solid game that sticks almost lovingly to the original source, the game does trip itself up a few times in relying too heavily upon nostalgia factors.