Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic.

It's a name nowadays that conjures up mixed feelings and emotions, all depending upon how old someone is and how well versed they are with the long series of games this little blue mammal. If you take a look at the more recent games, some will say that there's been relative success in capturing the fun back into the games with titles such as Sonic Unleashed and Sonic 4, though this is a point of contention amongst the extremely jaded and divided fan-base.

With which, I entirely sympathise. A series they've grown to love over the decades is being systematically fucked up beyond all recognition (yes, FUBAR'd) by rushed deadlines, cut corners and lack of decent quality control and testing which is being acted upon in post-development. Seems a lot of games have that little issue, they're tested and found to have faults but nobody is rectifying this stuff as it's the bottom dollar the company bigwigs are really interested in. But I'm not going down that particular route today.

I could go on about whether or not the Sonic games for Dreamcast and GameCube were any good or not, I may even review them at a later date. But for now we're going back to the Megadrive (...Genesis) and looking at the first outing by our 23 year old cerulean spiked one. (and let's get the giggles out of the system now before I start to mention Blast Processing... who the hell came up with that one needs to be given an award for having the balls to make that up then shot for being a prick)

Mr Needlemouse (look it up), lives in a wonderfully designed and colourful world where naturally growing and occurring loops, spins and corkscrews are common everyday happen place events. In this saccharine world however, is a royally fat-fuck asshat called Dr Robotnik (No, not Eggman, we don't talk about that in this game and that term wasn't coined for many a year) who was formerly Dr Ivo Kintobor and in some instances of back-story, helped Sonic to develop his speed and blueness through experimentation of a friendly sort. See kids, animal testing can be a positive thing! (This reviewer does not condone animal testing of any kind, except testing how many government politicians it takes to slake a carnivorous animal of its bloodlust)

The mean old naughty bad-man, Dr Robotnik, decided it would be a good idea to turn all the cute little animals in the land into robots. He also decided he'd take the Chaos Emeralds (of which just ONE is actually emerald coloured, must be some genetic testing by-product thing) so he can do more naughty things. Cue our cobalt coloured hero deciding that after many MANY robots have been made, that this cannot be allowed to continue and our journey begins in the first level where we, as players, basically run right. There may be some jumping and rolling at times, the occasional boss every 3rd stage of a level and a few bonus levels if you're great at collecting coins... I mean rings.

That's the game in a shell of nuts.

There's a lot to be said in the game for the fast flowing pace of the main character gradually building up speed, pressing down to roll and then sending our azure ball of spikes racing through ramps, loop-de-loops and soaring sky high on springs and bouncing things. The game belts along at an almost breathtaking pace that eventually becomes a test of "how fast can the game scroll through its own levels" rather than actually playing the game. Occasionally you may have to WALK somewhere back and forth and in some of the levels there's a considerably slower pace being forced upon the player with the whole "jumping onto platforms and being slowly, SLOWLY, moved across lava safely". Although, with this being the first game, there's some leeway in arguing that the designers may not have been sure as to what kind of game they were producing at this point.

Because this is the first game, there's no spin-dash move. That wonderfully typical, nay, ESSENTIAL technique in the second game onwards that allows you to build up speed while being motionless before racing off going from 0-60mph before you can say internal-organ-rupturing. So when you're faced with a ramp leading upwards and you're not going fast enough to clear it, you'll have to run back and try again with more momentum built up so that you can clear the ramp. It becomes a rather annoying point when you especially lack the speed and jumping height to simply hop over the ramp and instead start bouncing back and forth like a bus full of kids after all the passengers were given energy drinks for breakfast.

You still get the pre-requisite power-ups though. A shield to help you tank a hit of damage, any and every ring you pick up will allow you to take a hit of damage and drop all the rings, so having one ring at any time will save you from death unless that death is being crushed, landing on spikes and bouncing onto MORE spikes (mercy invincibility does NOT work on spikes) or falling off the bottom of the level, will kill you outright. Speedy shoes for moving EVEN faster and seeing even less of the level while you race through it quicker than Jessie Owen doing a victory lap through Berlin. Other power ups include extra lives and more rings as well as the invincibility effect that negates spikes but not being crushed or falling off the game.

Getting to the end of a level with more than 50 rings gives you the opportunity (unless there's a boss) to jump up into the giant ring, which will magically take you to a bonus round. Where you get the opportunity to navigate as a jumping ball through a constantly rotating maze with psychedelic backgrounds and hopefully attain either enough rings to achieve a continue, or get the Chaos Emerald hidden within the core of the level, before being dropped out by hitting a "goal" icon. Getting all of them nets you the lovely "good ending" where you make the science fat man cry and your character does something mildly impressive; walking left for a bit by himself.

Each level in the game usually has multiple ways of getting through the level, taking higher or lower routes depending upon how quickly you can leap up to various heights and land on outcrops rather than not, each route having its own share of tricks and traps to navigate while fighting off various enemies (there's usually 2-3 types of enemy per level) and the bosses which have a small level of ingenuity behind them not seen until the 3rd game and cross over with Sonic/Knuckles cart. Hit the boss 8 times to win, and then free all the collected furry friends from the large metal ball.

Variety between levels is diverse, but with this comes a lack of cohesion. One level has you running through the lush green (and mathematically formulaic) setting of the Green Hill zone, before turning up to lava and underground purples of Marble Hill with no real indication of whether it's simply a few steps away or there's been a long travel from one to the other filled with multiple hardships and angst on the part of our main character overcoming his doubt and self-loathing to see his way through towards taking up the responsibility of defending the land in which he inhabits.

No, you just turn up.

I've deliberately ignored one aspect of this game until now. Take the game as it is, bright, colourful, full of fluid motion and fast game play (when you get a decent run up) and then go a little further into the wonderful land of Labyrinth Zone. And already I can hear some people reading this and groaning in the dawning realisation of where I'm going with this. It's a simple enough set of levels where you'll face off against a few enemies which pose little threat but then the big threat is the water. Sonic can drown here and you'll get a few light warnings to escape. When there's about 15 seconds to go you'll be treated to some of the most harrowing, terrifying and rather upsetting music akin to a sped up and high-octane version of Jaws, before the music stops and Sonic just drowns. Complete with count-down timer, which all induces high panic levels and lack of co-ordination until you get yourself to an air bubble, or jump back out of the water.

Allow me to reintroduce you to your own nightmares http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yw5jkAHgME with thanks to YouTube for hosting.

Now that I've ripped apart enough of people's childhood memories or introduced some people to a few new ones, I'll take my leave by departing with this little snippet. The game is not great, it never was. It served a purpose as a launch pad of mediocrity against poor competition and won many over with its speed and sacrificed actual game play mechanics to do it, repeated in later instalments with less control and more autonomy from the game. Given this game is missing some of the much needed improvements implemented in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, there's little to be said for this one save that it served a purpose, started something reasonably impressive but failed to deliver even back in the day. If you've never played it before, don't. If you have, go back and see just how far we've come by comparing it to Sonic 3 and/or Sonic and Knuckles and be thankful that someone decided to make the changes the first game needed.

Bubble Bobble

It's cute, it's bouncy, and it’s bubble-y and a little bobble-y too. It's Rainbow Islands. No, no it's not. You'd have to be absolutely shit-brained to think that after such a lead-in. It's the arcade classic that is Bubble Bobble (and ported to NES, Megadrive, Gameboy and a whole plethora of other machines and systems), what we have here is a game that took the standard idea back in 1986 of having platform games that usually focused on just one room/screen at a time, and then turned it into the semi-puzzler, semi-action fest that is now known as Bubble Bobble.

The recipe, take two dragons and colour-code Green and Blue as necessary. Conjure up 100+ levels each of almost a full screen in size and drop the two (maximum 2, minimum 1) dragons into the levels. Ensure they can move freely, descend at a steady rate when falling and can jump up through platforms but not downwards through them. Provide bubbles as a means of attack for the dragons.

Once ready, carefully sprinkle enemies on the upper layers of the levels and in the lower layers of the levels include much more liberally with a smattering of spread here and there through the middle layers of this bake-off. Next, add water, heat and electricity as bonus power bubbles, include catching jingle and play until puking rainbows out of your eyeballs.

Allow room for bonus levels, power ups and warps, toss in some bones as a compulsory measure to devour the meal and ensure that the meal cannot be devoured in solo. Also hide some extra levels of the mixture, somewhere else that's difficult to get to, just for the added fuck-you required in older arcade games. Cook steadily until top layer is nicely browned, middle layers are a little tricky and the base layers are rock hard.

Murder self for over torturing metaphor of making a cake in comparison to creating Bubble Bobble.

The above is a basic rundown for the uninitiated, as to what happens in Bubble Bobble. You control your happily big-mouthed dragon as he jumps about the levels, picking up power ups and bonuses, blowing bubbles at the opponents and trapping them, before popping the bubbles to kill the enemies. Hopefully, before they break out and (usually just as you get to them) don't kill you by running into you, or the rare ones, firing some projectile at you.

Your power ups run the gamut of speed increase, rapid fire bubbles, long bubbles, fire balls instead of bubbles (can't bounce on these though), firing lightning bubbles (which launch a lightning bolt across the screen when popped). Popping multiple enemies at once gives you added bonuses and releases bonus bubbles that when popped, provide a letter of the word "EXTEND" which when completed, finishes that level and gives you a bonus life for your adorably cute and certainly marketable, dragon.

Enemies look as cute and friendly as the dragons do and you'd be forgiven for thinking that his whole setup might have been lifted from some kiddies’ daytime TV show between blowing bubbles at people and singing crappy songs to each other. Thankfully this isn't Barney (get the shotgun...) and we're instead treated to a wholesome, responsive and enjoyable game. For the most part.

The first 30-40 levels are fine. Gradually easing you into the idea of the game and then challenging you with the warp holes that drop you out of the bottom, ease you back in at the top of the screen so you can quickly escape or follow after various enemies. It's around level 40 onwards that you'll come a real cropper if you haven't mastered the timing of the bubbles, bouncing on bubbles to elevate higher, knowing where you can blow through a wall when jumping and not get hit and be able to race around the levels quickly to get to the items you need.

Level 99 earns the title of pigfucker of the year (1986, and runner up in 1932... or not) where you've a very short amount of time to navigate the level to a point where an item will appear that will permit you to the secret bonus levels and the TRUE final boss monster... only boss monster... There's just one big boss monster and depending how you get there (and how many players there are) will determine if you get the true ending. Most won't get past level 20 unless focused on the goals and familiar with the power ups, how they work and of course, their optimal use and deployment within the game itself.

Sometimes you'll get other items like the umbrella which lets you skip 3-5 levels, crosses that wipe out multiple enemies, bottles that give you bonuses and lets you end that level at that point. Candies to modify your bubbles, shoes to run faster and so on and so forth. The game feels huge and it pads the game play rather well but the fact the music goes on for SO long is irritating to say the least. There are some changes such as when you're running short of the hidden time limit in a level, where the music speeds up. Or when the skull whale, Baron Von Blubba, turns up to hunt you down for taking too long and finally, the boss room which sounds very different. Oh and certain bonuses.

Controls however are very responsive and the simplicity of the game is kept that way with just Jump and Shoot. Thankfully it didn't go for Up as jump and use one button, but I think that would have killed the playability and drowned the series at the first block into a big soapy bath of bubble liquid. This would have been very ironic but thankfully not.

It's a good fun game, more fun at the time it was released when things like variation and the internet, weren't around to give us a larger knowledge of what is and was available at the time. But it's bright, it's colourful and loud enough for us all to enjoy the fun mechanics of the game and have a few hours of enjoyment from the system rather than many other games that I could think of that were a pure waste of circuits. You could do better, but you'd be hard pressed to find it, even these days.

Super Mario Brothers

For what might be one of the most iconic platformers, possibly of all time and the most definitive article in establishing the 8bit gaming era, Super Mario Brothers (on the NES) is one of the most played and purchased games of all time (or at least, very heavily disputed to be as such). But we're not here to discuss the validity of such claims as if we're some over-inflated, self-important, critical analysis of gaming. We're an over-inflated, self-important, game reviewer. A completely different kind of asshole, but still as much of an asshole as anyone else.

The general idea of the game is as such, Mario (a plumber... bear with me on this one) is tasked with rescuing a princess who has been kidnapped by a large turtle/ox thing, called Bowser (Or King Koopa... or both, depends which manual you read on this one really). To get her back, he's going to have to run through the Mushroom Kingdom and travel 8 zones/worlds, each made of 4 sub-zones/levels, and battle Bowser to save the princess and consequentially, the day.

On the way you'll do all the things known and loved in most Mario games. Namely, running, jumping and punching blocks above your head. Oh and landing on things, Mario loves to land on things. Which highlights nicely how different we all take things as I'd end up with a long, arduous slog through whole armies of turtles, mushrooms, weaponised-clouds and armour-plated beetle-things; duelling giant turtle ox creatures in castles over moats of lava while sweating through the heat and exhaustion of battling a creature twice my size and trying not to succumb to the tiredness of the mammoth task; drop-kicking hammer-throwing turtles into large pipes and feeding them to the voracious plant-traps that live in some of those pipes unless they provide me the information to find and use the secret warp pipes; before rescuing the Princess and walking alone into the sunset to ready myself for another day of fighting the same armies.

Mario takes the light-hearted approach, he'll run, he'll jump, he'll eat a magical mushroom (this is for kids?) and grow to twice his size before collecting a flower and throwing fireballs at his enemies, or a star and just running through them with his indestructible (save for falling to his death and running out of time) status. He'll collect coins for extra lives and use warp pipes to get to hidden areas and zones, swim underwater and run across bridges and platforms before hop, skip and jumping his way through castles and side-stepping bosses before being told the real princess is in another castle. Unless it's World 8 of course.

It's simple, it's effective and it has a lot of hidden depth within the game.

The levels do get progressively harder but there's never really anything that screams at being hugely unfair. There is nothing in this game that is on the levels of platform-hell games like I Wanna Be The Guy or CloudBerry Princess (in its later levels at least) where death is often the ONLY option unless you're the computer and even then... It's a pure game. I don't have to worry about combos, or special moves done only with sequences of buttons and controls, I just have to move right (duck and climb rarely), jump when I need to jump and run/shoot when I feel the need to.

At first.

The game becomes more complicated and more interesting in the later zones when you get to meet up with enemies that can survive being landed upon, such as the turtles, but then become ammunition for being kicked across the floor and taking out more enemies, which sets off the multiplier bonuses for accumulating scores and clearing out your adversaries. Just be care in case it bounces and comes back, then you're in trouble if it hits you. Other enemies might be better to just bounce off and land on others for combo points or killed (if you have it) with fire/flower power. While later enemies will be tougher and some immune to being hit with your shoes but not fireballs, while others are immune to fireballs but not the shoes.

To mix it up, there are a few themes within the levels. The underground levels tend to have a roof over them which will let you run along and bypass some/all of the level and access the secret warp zones. Some levels are underwater and tapping jump will allow you to swim in some fashion but now you cannot land on enemies. Other levels are more a series of platforms suspended in the air rather than having ground to run along and the 4th level of each world is a large castle with variable heights and floors with lava and fire themed traps and obstacles. There's plenty of variation and with each new world, new setups and different enemies.

Speaking of which, the enemies are quite varied in their inception and design. There's the usual low grade enemy of the Goomba which takes one hit of anything from landing on or a fireball to disperse. Turtles that either mindlessly walk onwards or patrol platforms that can be kicked after landing on them to destroy other enemies. Turtles that can bounce or fly, making for less predictable enemies than their ground-bound cousins. Large bullets that fly the distance of the screen sometimes from random heights or sometimes from cannons. Clouds that roam the skies with a little bastard hidden inside that throws out spiked enemies that can't be jumped upon. Squids, fish (swimming and flying varieties), fireballs, water, pits, lava, swinging lengths of fireballs, bosses and turtles that throw hammers at you are all included and several more enemies that I'll likely remember after publishing this write up. It's a grand old world out there and the population is varied and colourful.

On top of that are the many secret pipe routes. Through the game you can explore Mario's Plumber roots and take trips down specific pipes (no indication as to which pipes WORK, you just have to jump on and try to... Piranha Plants, knew I'd remember more enemies... press down so that you can descend into the pipe) and find secret rooms usually laden with coins and perhaps a power up or multi-coin block, before ascending a way ahead of the level you were previously in. While other levels will have bean-stalks that grow up into the ceiling, allowing you to climb up and explore the upper areas where you'll find lots of coins and collectibles and maybe even a few secret warp pipes (if you're on Level 4-2).

Control wise, you can run and leap bounce and jump and so on with relatively good control in mid-air after jumping (yep, realism), and there's a good level of inertia and sliding when coming to a stop but nothing excessive and nothing that really ends with you sliding off the end of a platform into the eternal ether that is the lost life pit. Swimming adds a little extra problem over certain holes and areas where you'll be sucked down rapidly with NO indication where these undercurrents are... Aside from recalling where you died previously, but that's hardly a fair measure of progress.

It's bright, it's smooth, and it’s simple for the most part with only the real challenges coming from later worlds and castles where the route you take through a castle determines success or repeating a section of castle again. Even the music is so catchy and well known nowadays that most people can simply just say "Mario" and have someone immediately start thinking of the first few bars of the main level music. Slight variations for underground levels and water levels and the castle/boss levels but the majority of what you're playing will be the standard tune, which thankfully is cheerful enough to be memorable without being annoying. Most of the time.

Nowadays, it's still a firm staple of gaming and which many games emulate in some manner or another, being that the ground was laid back then, many platforming games try to copy it and fail hopelessly at the task. It takes a considerable effort to match this game and takes a great deal more to be considered "as good" and even rarer is being seen as "better", especially if it's not another Mario game.

Spindizzy C64

Back in the day, there was quite a few ways to release a game. You could have written it as part of a professional team; you could have made it in your bedroom and sent it off to a publisher. You could have half-arsed a game and sent it to a publisher infamous for not giving a ripe fuck about the quality of the game and in such cases, we end up with Spindizzy.

No, not Dizzy, that game series featuring an animated egg and obscure puzzle/platform sections with item A being traded for item B and so on. I'm not talking about that here. This is a game that was relatively well received in the UK and applauded by a great number of reporters who didn't really know what a good game was, nor how it should be reviewed.

The game is a simple premise (as are most of the c64, but not all) where in you control a geometric shaped character and where the shape has no bearing on how you move or perform. Ball, spinning top or inverted square based pyramid, means no difference in the game itself. You are "it" and you are off to explore an Isometric 3D world, collecting gems, solving puzzles and all that before you run out of time/energy and your machine creature thingy shuts down and the game is over.

This already sets alarm bells ringing in the design and concept of the game.

For a start, this means there is a maximum distance you can travel in EVERY game. Which also means that you'll have to make choices to navigate one way and not another and not be able to explore those ways until you start the game over again. You will never be able to collect every gem in a single game either. You will also have to navigate the same areas REPEATEDLY in order to get to somewhere new and then explore a fork in the path you've never navigated before.

Assuming of course you can even get there in the first place. The game's control system is always confusing on the Isometric system of display. Up, moves you Up and Left, Down moves you Down and Right. The problem with isometric displays is that the translation of controls is never consistent. In this game the controls are set, though the inertia and speed can take a lot of management to get used to in order to be able to successfully navigate around 80% of the rooms in the game.

Not only are there the issues of moving around the game but there's the fact that you'll have to rotate the game world to see around pillars, obstructions and other such fun. The ability is there to be used, but you'll have to use the keyboard to in conjunction with the joystick to get around the map. On top of this, is the ability to speed up by use of the joystick fire button which can give you enough of a speed to make certain leaps and jumps (but not too big though, you can't handle too much of a landing impact). Conversely there's the lovely little ability to slow down by using the space bar, though try handling a joystick and a keyboard when performing some very intense and precise movements in this game.

The game is however, a good idea. But the lack of speed and power of the C64 means that dying (or falling off and resetting) can take a while before you have to load up the next screen, fall, bounce off a wall, load up the previous screen, fall, bounce rinse and repeat. While other times might have you falling off one level into an abyss on the next screen with NO CLUE that you're unable to go in that direction until after you've taken a Peter Pan swan dive off the fucking level.

The idea of exploration and puzzle solving is not exactly a novel one by this point but it's a brave attempt just executed poorly. The puzzles within the game are just the idea of hitting switches in a certain order to attempt to bring together a set of lifts and platforms. Making walls appear and disappear, high floors and low floors fading in and out of existence, lifts above lifts to get to higher points etc. There's potential but sometimes it's not so easy to realise.

This brings me onto another big gripe with this system. Perspective. It's hard at times to realise WHERE blocks and floors are in relation to yourself. On top of that some rooms are PURPOSEFULLY designed to obfuscate and confuse you, lead you into a false sense of awareness so that a floor that LOOKS like it's under you is actually 40ft behind you into the level and when you fall, you're absolutely nowhere near it and end up going sailing past the edge of the room and into the abyss that is reloading back where you fell from and wasting more time failing to get to rooms you now cannot access as you'd run out of time.

Nice idea, poorly executed.