FLips' Sega MegaDrive Thread

[FLips]

4 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

the first time I played Terminator was a mate's house, and I got killed by the very first enemy, and then he said "my turn" and never let me play it again. Was years before I got hold of a copy and realised it's not nearly as hard as I thought it was (though still tough), I just sucked at it.

Yeah that's one thing I meant to mention in my review and forgot when it came to writing it out. That first enemy is ace. Huge boss robot that can crush you and kill you pretty easily but ultimately isn't as dangerous as it looks. Sets a great intense tone for that first stage.

[RedRooster]

1 hour ago, FelatioLips said:

That's it for this week, coming up next week is Animaniacs.

Ooh, I'm looking forward to this one. I've never played Animaniacs, and I've no idea if it's meant to be any good. I really liked Tiny Toon Adventures back in the day, although the soundtrack still haunts my nightmares. 

[Merzbow]

After finishing her run of playing every MD game Kim's compiled a list of her worst 50.

 

[FLips]

1 hour ago, Merzbow said:

After finishing her run of playing every MD game Kim's compiled a list of her worst 50.

 

Glad to see none of the games I plan on playing in the immediate future are on that.

[FLips]

Animaniacs
 

Developed by Konami back in 1994, similar to what they did with Tiny Toons (another Steven Spielberg/Warner Bros joint) they released an exclusive Sega version and Nintendo version. For this review we'll obviously be looking at the Sega Mega Drive game.
Konami in the 16-bit era rarely stepped a foot wrong and while this may not have the same lasting legacy as a Rocket Knight Adventure or Castlevania Bloodlines, it's certainly up there as one of the more creative and enjoyable licensed games on the system.

Playing as Yacko, Wacko and Dot, each with their own respective special abilities, the Animaniacs are on the prowl for movie memorabilia in order to open up their own hip-hop culture shop. Luckily for them they live on the Warner Bros studio lot, so there are plenty of heavily themed movie sets to rummage through.
After the intro stage which very handily teaches you how to use each character (which you can swap on the fly with the press of a button) you can play four movie-themed stages in any order, which then culminate with a final stage and showdown with Pinky and The Brain.
The levels are Jungle, Space, Wild West and Horror themed and each brings it's own buffet of content based on their respective films (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc).
Yacko can push/pull boxes and attack with his paddle ball, Wacko can break blocks and hit switches with his mallet, and Dot can blow kisses at enemies to stun them or manipulate them into helping you. The character swapping gimmick is a great idea on paper but can be held back at times by the obscurity of some sections. While there are creative sections early doors, it very soon boils down to dragging boxes, hitting fuses and blowing a kiss at something and when a puzzle feels like it might have a bit more meat to it, it's because you're using the wrong power and have to slowly cycle through them to get the right one.
The game lacks regular enemies too, so the process is platforming, puzzling, miniboss and repeat. Considering one of the main character moves is a paddle ball attack, I would have liked to see a little bit more depth to the combat than just paddling the security bloke every few screens.

In the jungle you'll be jumping over pits and swinging on ropes and arguably it's the best stage for platforming. There's a segment involving jumping up and down logs in a waterfall which is one of the better log on a waterfall-based sections I've played in a platformer. You might think that's a weird thing to say but stop and take a look; Revenge of Shinobi, Mario Bros 2, Mega Man 8. They've all got one.
The halloween level brings the expected Animaniacs humour including a clever mirror spot with a vampire and a boss fight with Pinky and The Brain. Ironically (is that the right use of the word?) it's also the most colourful stage, very reminiscent of Ghouls n Ghosts.
The Star Wars style level isn't without it's moments but it's where you might first encounter box-dragging fatigue as a lot of segments involve it. It's also the worst for trial an error at some points too.
The game shines a lot brighter during the tough and varied platforming segments and small movie-themed boss fights than it does during the puzzle segments.

Graphically Animaniacs isn't anything to scoff at either. Similar to other Konami games you're looking at detailed and wonderfully animated sprites combined with big colours and some clever movie-set style backgrounds that are animated as though they're real but you can also see cameras and lights which in a lot of cases become part of the platforming. It all seamlessly blends together which is a big drawing point of the game. You can hold it up to anything else they released at this time and it looks just as nice.
The soundtrack has a couple of decent tracks, namely the intro stages and jungle stage. There's nothing particularly bad here but it's where the game doesn't hold up as strong with it's peers. Each level's music fits the theme well but you won't come away from it with many lasting impressions.
All the Warner Siblings control absolutely fine too other than the previously mentioned slow swapping speeds, but that's a hardware limitation more than anything. When it comes to clearing pitfalls, firing out of cannons and dodging enemy attacks you're thankfully looking at pin-point precision which makes a difficult game just that little bit easier. Checkpoints are fairly generous but a game over will send you back to the start of the stage. A lot of them are made difficult purely by length more than anything else but with a little trial and error it's not Contra or anything.

All in all it's another thoroughly decent Konami 16 bit fare. It looks fantastic with very impressive stage design and character sprites and controls precisely with a fun 3-person swap gimmick provides a decent puzzle element between all the tight jumps.
You won't come away wanting the soundtrack on vinyl but there's much worse. Where the game falters more than anywhere is running out of ideas with the puzzles early on, almost like the game was created with the idea you want to see everything in one level and may never play the others right after. The difficulty is fairly tough but articificially made worse by making stages twice as long as they need to be, though there is a password system so playing it stage by stage may not be the worst approach.
Worth a pop.

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Sega Logo of The Week

Sticking with the licensed games theme, and picking one where the logo may be better than the game itself, it's Taz-Mania. In this one, the greedy devil does his trademark spin onto the screen and gobbles up the S. Look no further than Taz-Mania for evidence of just how good we have it with Animaniacs.

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Cheat of The Week

If Taz-Mania is the bottom of the barrel of licensed games, and Animaniacs somewhere in the middle, then to top off this nice big sandwich this week we'll look at Aladdin. This also fits nicely into the different Sega and Nintendo versions theme too. Lovely.

Easy peasy for this one, with no screenshots required. Want to skip the stage you're on? Namely the magic carpet lava stage?

Pause your game and enter A B B A A B B A and a-ha! you've skipped to the next stage.

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Next Week - We'll have a quick word from some of our sponsors.

 

Edited January 22 by FelatioLips

[CavemanLynn]

Another brilliant review/post. I've a RetroBOSS sitting in my office intimidating me with its 36k-odd games, but I'll be busting it out this weekend and rattling through these recommendations.

[BomberPat]

a friend of mine played Taz-Mania on a Twitch stream a while back, and for a game I played a ton as a kid, I was astonished by just how awful it was. If you pick up too much speed you can just disappear completely off the screen, the collision detection is appalling, and for some reason it can't handle two sounds happening at once, so every time you do something that triggers a sound effect the music cuts out.

I'm amazed that I don't think I've ever played or even seen the Animaniacs game, considering it's exactly the sort of thing I used to shovel up (see, playing way too much Taz-Mania), and based on a cartoon I love. I think the fact that cartoons were big in the '90s, and that most of them got at least a half-decent tie-in game, and the best of them were gorgeous, is part of the reason that I've always found high-end gaming's constant drive towards photorealistic graphics to really misguided. I always hoped, and to some extent assumed, that the end goal of video game graphics was to look like a playable cartoon.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

I just read through this whole thread in one sitting. Lovely stuff. I loved my MegaDrive. I had a NES, Spectrum and Atari before, but this was the greatest console of all time. Probably still is. I had a ton of games for it, all sold at a car boot sale for £100 most likely. The games I had ranged from absolute shite (LHX Attack Chopper I think was the name) to superb (Toejam & Earl 2: Panic On Funkatron). Castle Of Illusion, as already reviewed by Flips, was one of my favourite platformers. I had FIFA 94 and 95, and I kept a diary of results for my team. There were two really good pinball games, Psycho Pinball and another whose name I can’t remember. Psycho Pinball was the more cartoony of the two and had some nice mini games set in themed worlds (western, horror). The other pinballer was full of skulls and quite gothic/medieval imagery. If anyone can remember the name, I’ll be grateful and impressed. 

Gods, a Bitmap bros game, was impossible. Never came close to finishing it. Robocop Vs Terminator was pretty difficult to young Dr. Grant. I preferred to replay the first level over and over for the cool soundtrack. 

So many great platform games. Aladdin, Lion King, Chuck Rock, Bubsy and Earthworm Jim to name a few. The name of the main villain in the latter is forever etched in my increasingly poor memory. I may not remember what I did yesterday, but I do know about the Evil Queen Pulsating Bloated Festering Sweaty Pus-Filled Malformed Slug For A Butt. 

The MegaCD came later and it wa disappointing. Pugsy was an abomination, but Road Avenger was class and contains the greatest opening cutscene/song ever written. Probably. 
 

When I got my Steam Deck last year, I downloaded a bunch of emulators and started working my way through the NES back catalogue. I quickly realised that there was an abundance of crap on that console, outside of the tentpole Mario and Zelda games. I should have instead jumped straight into the MegaDrive ROMS so I can experience my childhood all over again and maybe, just maybe, finally finish Gods. 

Edited January 29 by Dr. Alan Grant
Spelling

[RedRooster]

6 hours ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

So many great platform games. Aladdin, Lion King, Chuck Rock, Bubsy and Earthworm Jim to name a few. The name of the main villain in the latter is forever etched in my increasingly poor memory. I may not remember what I did yesterday, but I do know about the Evil Queen Pulsating Bloated Festering Sweaty Pus-Filled Malformed Slug For A Butt. 

 

I'd love to see @FLips give Chuck Rock 2 a go for this thread. I have such fond memories of the Amiga version of that game, I'd love to read his thoughts on how it holds up.  As far as Bubsy goes, I was always confused by the hate it gets these days until I revisited it; it's not aged well, but even at the time I can see why there were so many reasons to hate it. Bubsy is one heck of an annoying lead character, and it's main gimmick was its 'faster than Sonic' speed; but while it's certainly a fast game, the speed makes the game much harder to play and it's incredibly easy to die or get hurt based on that movement. 

I think Aladdin and Lion King have ages really well, and while I've not actually played the original Earthworm Jim for a while, the sequel holds up very well. 

[Scratch]

I got a Mega CD around 2002 when I started collecting consoles I’d never owned as a kid, primarily for WWF Rage in the Cage (the lure of playing as Headshrinker Samu was too high).

It came with Road Avenger which me and my mates became obsessed with. One in particular couldn’t rest until he’d completed it, but kept getting stuck right near the end. As we’d watch him try again, we’d all insist he should “put it on easy!” but he wouldn’t have it. “PUT IT ON EASY!” persisted, much to his annoyance, before he crumbled and put it on easy to get the job done.

More than 20 years later, “put is on easy!” is one of the most overused phrases amongst my peer group. Struggling to bring the round back from the bar? Put it on easy! Keep dropping the spanner trying to remove a part from under the bonnet of your car? Put it on easy! Can’t finish the Hungry Horse steak challenge? You get it from here.

So yeah, Road Avenger has a special place in my heart.

Its a terrible game, mind.

[FLips]

Cool Spot

Released in 1993 by Virgin Games and developed by David Perry of soon-to-be Shiny Entertainment fame, Cool Spot (or Spot and The Quest for Cool in some European regions) is a licensed game for the soft drink 7-Up. Along with Mick and Mack Global Gladiators it makes up a little licensed game sandwich that came after The Terminator and before Aladdin and Earthworm Jim in Virgin/Shiny Entertainment's back catalogue.
If you remember a bang average game slapped with 7-Up logos everywhere then sit yourself down because you're dead wrong. This game, at least in our PAL region has no 7-Up branding to be seen anywhere which when going back to play this has melted my brain a little bit.
It formed a holy trinity of licensed platformers alongside Zool and James Pond 2, sponsored by Chupa Chups and Penguin Biscuits respectively, but apparently that's only in the US version as at the time we had Fido Dido as the Pepsi-Cola sponsor and they didn't want to infringe on the super popular and definitely memorable without Googling Fido Dido.
What we actually got here was a bang average game with generic green bottles and cans and a Spot that now had no context as a mascot.
Not only that but it means most of the extra bits I got for this review like adverts won't mean anything to us as we never got them. Great.

Cool adverts right?
Never seen them before?
Same. Sorry.

Cool Spot is a very mixed bag. First things first it looks like shit. The colours are washed out and the backgrounds are grainy. If we're comparing it to it's peers then it very much lacks both the immediate burst of colour and character that both Zool and James Pond had.
The stages have all rights to be colourful though, as even though there isn't a lot of variety we're looking at sunny beaches and toy boxes that have all chance to be fun and popping with brightness but they just don't. The enemies are weak and strangely crab-based even when you leave the beach and most of the level hazards are pins which seem to be laying around everywhere.
The stages themselves also follow a really odd pattern. You don't for example do all the beach levels in one as a world and then move on, but instead you go through a weird palindromic (is that a word?) order where you will go A-B-C-D-E-D-C-B-A starting and ending back up at the beach. It's nitpicky but it gives the impression the longer you get into the game that they ran out of ideas and had to go back to the well until it was empty. That is exacerbated more by the music which on the lone level in the middle is an absolute migraine of a stage that has you tumbling down shelves and getting sucked up tubes while the level complete music plays on a loop. It's like one of those anti-piracy measures developers sneak into games to troll you.
Speaking of the music, it's OK. It's Tommy Tallarico (or at least credited to him, who knows these days) so you expect a level of quality there. Most of it is suited to the level it represents but you won't remember it any time soon. The title music is kinda fun in a knockoff of Wipeout way, similarly the Western track is definitely a knockoff of something but one of you might have to tell me what that is.
I'll tell you what though, "Rave Dance Tune" from the Bonus Stage and "Wall Tune" from the Hardware levels are shockingly and unnecessarily too good for this game. The Sega versions of both are the best you'll hear as well as I immediately went looking for the Amiga versions of them but for as expectedly gorgeous the quality sounds, it's slowed down by being 50hz which thankfully the Sega port doesn't suffer from, and that slow tempo knocks it down a peg.
The sound effects are jarring at times though and bring out some of the worst of the Mega Drive soundboard at it's screechiest and tinniest.

The gameplay is frustrating because for every step it takes in the right direction it jumps two spaces in the wrong direction. Level layouts are maze-like and encourage exploration for extra lives, extra points and secrets; the downside is that the game is head to toe full of blind jumps and crap enemy placement. Exploration is fun until you miss a jump because all the platforms are off screen and you plummet back to the start of the level.
The movement is crazy and nothing like I've seen before; it's momentum based so you walk at a crawl and then you'll automatically pick up speed until you're going at what can best be described as a light jog. It makes no sense and shouldn't work because the slow pace is frustrating at times, but it makes the platforming (when you can see it) a dream to control, with Cool Spot going exactly where you want him to.
Combat is projectile based, so you can shoot sparks in 8 directions by snapping your fingers like a cool cat, but you take damage from enemy contact with no jumping on heads available so that enemy placement is a real bummer. They also have a bad habit of hitting you and throwing projecticles at you through walls and ceilings.
If you took the movement and precision but made the levels better designed and allowed Cool Spot to do damage from jumps, it would solve all of this games problems. Not being able to see where you're jumping to most of the time though and enemies just appearing from offscreen makes it a rocky experience.

When all is said and done though Cool Spot sits there middling and unlicensed. Like the tubular waves our titular Spot surfs his label-less green bottle on, they'll come crashing down on you in a big wet drab mess while you're trying to have a nice day at the beach. I wouldn't waste my time on this. If you want a good licensed game by the same people, look either side of this flat pop at The Terminator or Aladdin.

Region Differences

Here's a side by side of the opening and closing credits of the game. Like a mug I played both regional versions to get screengrabs.
Do you remember a 7-Up logo there? I do. Mandela Effect in full action here. My head is farting.
The branding is all over, with the "Spot and the Quest for Cool" title used on the PAL version despite it not being called that in the UK. The 7-Up Logo features on the NTSC box art too but not the PAL one. The in-game pickups and collectables all lose their 7-Up branding too, with the PAL versions having generic designs or replaced with Virgin Games branded stuff.

I'll put them in PAL-NTSC order for clarity.

 

Sega Logo of The Week

It's your boy Cool Spot in a Sega Logo about as exciting as the game itself. Spot is jumping up and down inside the logo making that awful WOOOAAHOOO sound he makes when he gets hit by crabs (and everything else but mostly crabs) in the game. He does go a little step further though and pushes the Virgin Games logo on for us too. Clearly overcompensating for the game he knows we're about to play. Fair play to him though he got a sequel out of it, but I'm not playing that get lost.

Cheat of the Week

Sick of Cool Spot yet? Same, but we're almost there.

This week's cheat is what helped me get through the back half of the PAL version and then skip right to the end of the NTSC version for screen grabs (you really didn't think I played this game twice did you?).
I used it so much I can actually type it out by heart.

Level Skip - Pause the game and press ABCBACABCBAC to skip your current level. You'll have to unfortunately sit through the long points tallying screen every time though. You know maybe I was too nice on this game.

Fido Dido of The Week

Wouldn't be fair if we didn't give him his own moment in the spotlight. I do actually remember him but I think I was confusing him with Doug for some reason. His unreleased game for sure will go down as one of Sega's biggest "What If" moments alongside the failure to launch of the Saturn and death of the hardware business with the Dreamcast. Maybe.

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Next week I will be mostly playing California Games.

Edited January 31 by FLips

[Fog Dude]

I had the SNES port of Cool Spot so the cheat inputs obviously wouldn't been different but other than that I'm sure it plays similarly enough. I don't think it needed more than three action buttons so the Mega Drive controller should've worked fine for it.

I call being aware that it was a 7-Up tie-in, but can't remember seeing the logo in-game unless it was from very early screenshots before those were removed for the PAL version? Like you said, that particular drink had a different mascot over here so we got different ads anyway. Perhaps the rules on product placement were just tighter in the UK, or maybe Virgin Interactive, as a British company, got some sort of deal to distribute it even without the visible PepsiCo branding? 

Was probably a bit too generous on platformers at the time and might find it more frustrating these days. Don't think I ever finished it (definitely not without cheats if so) but it feels like I put a lot of hours in and enjoyed it for the most part. 

[SuperBacon]

1 hour ago, FLips said:

Next week I will be mostly playing California Games

 

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well that'll be my Post Of The Year wrapped up nice and early.

Possibly my favourite game ever.

[Arch Stanton]

I remember thinking Cool Spot looked great when I used to read Sega mags as a kid, but I never played it. Doesn't seem like I missed out on much, having read that review. Definitely a surprise to learn the PAL version is 7-up free though! 

[Devon Malcolm]

I quite liked Cool Spot but I think we had the SNES version. Still a notably weird idea for a character for a game though to this day.