Shaq Fu (Megadrive)

Umm... Ego much?

Shaq Fu, it's been said that this game is monumentally bad. I however had never played the game until recently and decided that maybe it'd be worth taking a look and seeing what redeemable features (if any) this game has. Ever one to support an underdog and play Devil's Advocate in such circumstances, I picked up a copy for the Megadrive (....Genesis.¬.¬).

My brain hurt itself with the level of sophistication shown

30 seconds in and I'm ready to shut this off and throw it out the fucking window into a wood chipper with acid-coated blades. The music is like listening to something I'd expect a 5 year old to generate on a synth when they're doing it just to be annoying. The tones and shift of the music are painful and I'm still yet to press the Start button on this bastard. Not really setting itself up well at the moment.

I envy Shaq, I wish I was knocked out for this game.

Oddly, it proudly touts Delphi Software as a developer, the same group that brought us Another World, Flashback, Operation Stealth... Future Wars... Fade to Black... Ok, starting to see a trend now. Though games were made after Shaq Fu, it certainly helped hammer a few nails into the coffin it would seem.

The setting, detail and backgrounds look stunning, but then so did Rise of the Robots

Shat Fuqup however is a beat-em-up for those who don't know. Featuring Shaquille O'Neal, though barely recognisable when in game, the game focuses on Shaq decided to pop into a shop while sight-seeing, get accosted into the back room and ends up in a world where some mummy has kidnapped a kid. A mix of The Mummy and The Golden Child if we're taking film references for inspiration.

I won't be back, Mummy Boy, and return the Legion of Doom's shoulder pads.

The story mode has Shaq running around a central hub/map and going to locations and fighting someone there. There's no build up in story other than "Here's Shaq, arse will be kicked" or at the very least, something might happen. There's no real reason for the fights from what I can see other than "Shaq turned up, now we must kung-fu fight" which makes far less sense than say, Street Fighter which is about a tournament and justifies why people are fighting. Here it's Shaq running up to someone's home, knocking on the door and then punching them in the mouth and running off until he finds the right door with the kidnapped kid behind it and punch the kidnapper in the mouth before running off.

Fight and already taken damage, seems fair to me...

However, the fighting... Well... Where do I begin? The AI tends to start the fight before you even do, "Begin" you're told and already you've gotten a boot to the face. Combat is a series of single attacks from kicks and punches with the directional control modifying the attack slightly. I.e. Towards and Kick is a lunging kick, while Kick on its own is a standard straight kick and back with kick is a round house. Each character has 2-3 moves that barely can be said to be moves for some characters, while other characters have such overpowered attacks with little cool-down after that makes them effectively death-on-legs, assuming you can time the move well enough to pull it off.

No life... Ironic really...

The responsiveness of the controls is shit-and-miss at best. Jumping and attacking is... A lottery at best of who wins which attack and how. The special moves are almost impossible to pull off without inadvertently doing another move instead or just standing there and back flipping into an oncoming attack. 2 player duelling is just a hammer fest of buttons and good luck trying to counter any attacks or time it well enough to hit someone after they've been blocked before they hit you again.

Shaq ignores the metallic body gear however.

Graphically speaking it's a mixed back. The background and setting look impressive as one might come to expect from Delphine Software, but the characters in fighting are tiny by comparison to games like Mortal Kombat and it's as if they reused their own Point and Click engine to make this game, where in each command is just another command you'd find in something like Flash Back or Future Wars. It just doesn't work and makes the game unbearable to view, even less so with that annoying music in the background that doesn't fit but seems more at home in a hospital on a life-support machine while I'm reaching for the plug!

Thank God, it's nearly over. Yes that few pixels on the bridge is YOU.

It still seems to me that this was originally going to be something else and the fighting was thrown in at the last minute, then someone up top decided that the fighting was going to be the ONLY thing. Before this pile of abuse was hurled to players around the planet. Avoid it, steer clear as I wish I had.

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.

Super Dodge Ball (NES)

Hello to you too.

It's rare that I'll like a sports game but with this adaptation of Super Dodge Ball, I can't help but find it charming while offering an interestingly tactical game. Depending upon where you're from and what you understand of dodge ball, the basic premise is that you have a ball and have to hit people with it while also avoid being hit by it. Hence, Dodge the Ball... Clever that part, is it not? (No... it's dumb). Aside from dumb and obvious naming conventions, the game itself in this case has two teams of six, balling each other to the point where people are trying to avoid being smacked in the face by balls.

Yep, it's going to be one of those reviews.

Odd shaped balls... It's not rugby.

The first team to get hit by the other's balls more times, is out. In this case, there's a health bar system in play too where each character in the centre of the court can survive until they take too much damage and then they're removed from play. Those on the outside of the court cannot be knocked out but don't count towards the winning conditions. So you can slap them in the face as much as you want with your balls, it won't end anything.

Another ice level.... Oh how much I hate these

Each character also has the incredible ability to adjust their balls depending upon how they handle their balls. If running for a short while before releasing their balls, they can turn their balls into different shapes and in some cases, multiply their balls as a sort of "special shot". Being hit by the players balls while in a special shot, can cause more damage or penetrate through multiple opponents if not caught. It all depends upon which character is unloading their balls at the opponent. Though it's hard to remember which character has which effect on the balls and this also changes depending upon running or jumping after running for differing attacks and special balls.

Balls balls balls, balls (ok sorry...).

You win, here's the mirror match in 1950's Russia... Odd location.

It's a 1-2player game with a world tour mode, a straight up versus mode and a more interesting Free For All mode where characters just go mad at each other. In the world tour you'll take on the rest of the world as USA (why?) competing against England (Houses of parliament in the background) Iceland (Slippery floor) India (Taj Mahal and the team has low HP but high Def stats), China (shades of ping-pong tournaments perhaps? And a chance to use Wang as a name) Kenya (playing on mud which drops your running speed stats like mad) Japan for the semi-finals (Not holding onto any war grudges here are we?) and finally Russia. (No surprise there...) followed by a bonus-boss team.

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing it's Mount Fuji in the background.

For controls, you've your ability to double-tap to run, you jump with both buttons (awkward as you're likely to either take a shot with your balls or lob your balls at your teammates rather than jump) shoot with B and pass with A. That's it really. Simplistic but gets the job done and does it fairly well even with another player playing at the same time. There is a slight delay at times because of the large amount of events happening on screen which can throw off your timing and force someone's balls into your face.

There IS a 6th person there, but flickering sprites...

The biggest issue here, is that it's got so much going on screen with so many large sprites, you end up missing most of them, or flickering as it's the game's way of showing which character has been selected (why not put a P1 or P2 over their head?) that you can quickly lose track of what's going on and the vanishing sprites through sprite overload, looks horrible and shows an over ambition here that failed to take into account the limitations of the NES. Maybe if it was just two characters on the court it might have avoided this issue.

Now it just needs Hollywood to make another bullshit film about it...

If you can look past the staggered frame rate and slightly unresponsive controls, you've a nice little game here that would otherwise be overlooked, but that said, there's better and more fun sports games out there than this on the NES with better graphics and controls. I could mention Double Dribble for a start by the synth-speech makes me laugh my balls off.  

Yep, now get lost and read something else.

Bomb Jack (C64)

He's Jack, there's bombs... what more do you want?

Time for a fun little quirky game now, Bomb jack on the Commodore 64. One of those arcade conversions from the big all-powerful graphics down to the clunky little home computer. But first and foremost, what exactly is Bomb Jack and does it even have a plot? Probably, shoehorned in somewhere just for the sake of it.

Speed is essential in this level, as all the enemies spawn at once.

You're a superhero, complete with leaping ability and cape and the lovely little talent of being able to float and stutter your descent should you need to with your cape. Your sole task to collect bombs that some thoughtless little shit has left around various tourist-traps and locales. Avoiding enemies and collecting bombs is all there is and once you've cleared the room, that's it and you move onto the next one.

I suppose it's slightly less insulting than telling you how to play.

There's a little more behind this however, once a bomb is collected another will flash. This is not a timed game however, it's merely the one you should get next if you want a bigger bonus. Collecting enough bombs (either flashing or not) will spawn bonus collectibles such as bonus points or the more important P ball that gives you the same effect as Pacman eating a power-pill, all the enemies turn into smiling faces and collecting them nets ever-increasing points in a short amount of time. Or ignore the enemies and just get the remaining bombs to finish the level.

More winning, much dancing.

The levels get increasingly harder, the enemies get faster and home in quicker and that damn bird thing flying about really ramps up the speed after level 10. But the game is pattern based, so if you know the sequence of bonus bombs, you could max out your bonuses and bombs very quickly and in short order have yourself a wealth of extra lives before very long at all.

Those last 2 bombs in the top left are going to be a bitch to get.

Controls for the game are fairly simple, you move from side to side and press fire to jump, holding up while jumping will make you jump a little higher, enough to get from bottom of the screen to the top in one go and tapping fire while falling will stop your descent and let you glide down safely in order to avoid enemies or that damn bird thing. Death is instant from a single collision from enemies and the collision box is a little bigger than your sprite, or so it would seem... A situation I like to call, cheating fucking computer. So don't risk going alongside enemies please.

Odd choice of a tourist trap... They couldn't think of anything better?

The levels become more fiendish as you progress with the start point for monsters often being right beside 2-3 bombs so you'll have to wait until a FULL set of monsters are on the field of play before you can resolve the issue of kicking arse, taking names (bombs actually) and generally winning the day.

Get bombs, avoid enemies, simple pick-up-and-play approach

The music, the lovely little Sid Chip Tune ensemble that it is, plays along quite happily within the game. The same tune for each level, different music for the bonus power up, endings and the starting splash screen which seems to have some odd warbling effect that makes me think this was composed underwater for some reason. Sound effects are your usual squibs and plinks that one might expect, there's little to write home about on this one while you're waiting to go over the top.

Thank god, now I can play something better.

As an arcade game from the early 80s it does fairly well, but it's a short little romp that will come back and see you every now and then but has no real long term lasting appeal, really should have just stayed in the arcade and not worried about a home port when something with more substance could have been used instead.