SNES A Day

A Super Nintendo game a day. Ish. www.snesaday.com

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Adventure/educational Developer: The Software Toolworks Publisher: The Software Toolworks

Mario Is Missing! is notable for several reasons – it’s a Mario game not made by Nintendo, and it’s Luigi’s first starring role – but the biggest might be that it is a reasonably well-done educational game.

Uh oh, Mario Is Missing! Bowser has kidnapped him and locked him away in his Antarctic castle, and it’s up to Luigi and Yoshi to rescue him by traveling the world and recovering lost real-world landmarks and artifacts. Yes, Mario Is Missing! takes place on Earth, and it’s odd seeing the Super Mario World graphical and musical styles applied to places like Rome and Beijing. The map of Earth done with the 16-bit look is neat, though!

The gameplay loop is simple: Bowser’s castle serves as the hub, and each door takes Luigi to a different, unknown place on Earth. In each location, you have three tasks: find and return the three artifacts that have been stolen by Koopa Troopas, figure out what city you are in, and then return to Bowser’s castle. You find the artifacts by stomping on the Koopas, and you learn information from talking to the same people that happen to be in each city. You use this information to answer a little quiz when you return the item. Return all the items, summon Yoshi with the, uh, “Globulator”, a giant world map where you select the location you’re in, and exit back to Bowser’s castle.

Rinse. Repeat.

Mario Is Missing! is still an edutainment game (made by The Software Toolworks, the same people who did Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing) and should be graded on such a curve. No, moving Luigi around San Francisco doesn’t feel close to as good as moving Mario around Dinosaur Island in Super Mario World. It’s also a bummer how Luigi is yet to get an original design in his first solo game*! He’s just green Mario here. It’s disrespectful.

But when I compare Mario Is Missing! to a game like Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, though, I feel more positive. There’s no ticking timer here, and you can explore and make mistakes at your leisure. The Wikipedia-opening-paragraph amount of information you get for each artifact is a good amount of information without dipping into minutiae. And it’s not just history or trivia questions; adding geography puzzles with Yoshi’s Globulator is a welcome extra dimension. This game is where I, as a child, learned that Italy is shaped like a boot!

If you are reading this, you shouldn’t play Mario Is Missing! It’s not for you. It is tedious and tough to play for more than a level at a time. It’s not just a cash-in, though, and it lets people play at their own pace. If you know an elementary school-aged child of a certain reading level, it’s not a bad choice, even today.

* Luigi’s Hammer Toss does not count. Don’t @ me.

Next time: With the holidays and the busy season at my day job coming up, don’t expect weekly updates for a few months. Keep an eye on the SNES A Day account on Twitter for updates. The classic co-op shooter Pocky & Rocky is next, though, so you have that to look forward to!

SNES A Day 207: Mario Is Missing! Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Adventure/educational Developer: The Software Toolworks Publisher: The Software Toolworks Mario Is Missing!

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Racing Developer: Park Place Productions Publisher: GameTek

Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge offers motorcycle and Jet Ski racing in one cartridge. That’s great and all, but neither are developed enough to offer a full experience.

There are two crucial issues with the game. First, piloting the bikes and boats is overly difficult. Whenever I would take a turn, a combination of over- and under-steering and then over-correcting from that would send me into the track wall. Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge is brutally difficult, so wiping out once is likely to relegate you to near-last place. I never felt comfortable taking turns even though I did improve as I played more and more.

Second, there is barely a game here. The career-style Challenge mode is the main way to play, despite being listed third on the main menu for whatever reason. There are three islands, each with one motorcycle race and one boat race. You need to place high enough across both races to advance to the next island, and the cycle repeats. You get sent back to the main menu if you fail and have to start over from the start. Having only six tracks is rather anemic for a racing game, especially one without multiplayer or, you know, fun gameplay. As a bonus, all the tracks look the same.

I’ve mentioned a few times that Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge is hard. Part of the problem is definitely the controls, as mentioned above. The AI is also an issue, or lack thereof. The CPU racers don’t seem to react to the player’s existence. If you get in their assigned racing line, they won’t react or try to get around you. They will go through you. This, combined with the fact the CPU drives mostly perfectly, makes jockeying for position difficult. I was unable to make it past the second island.

I’d like to end this review with some positive impressions but I don’t have any. The Jet Skis and the motorcycles drive similarly, so I can’t even recommend the watersports half as a distinguishing factor. There’s a good sense of speed, but the camera whips around as you take turns in a way that I found disorienting. Said camera can’t keep up with the speed so I relied on the minimap to know when a turn was coming.

Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge does almost nothing right yet isn’t bad enough to be interesting. It is the video game equivalent to stale white bread: you shouldn’t eat it but at least it’s not covered in mold. There’s no reason to play this when Cyber Spin or even Battle Grand Prix are available and vastly superior overhead racing experiences.

Next week: Luigi gets his own edutainment game because Mario is Missing!

SNES A Day 206: Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Racing Developer: Park Place Productions Publisher: GameTek Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge…

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Platformer Developer: Absolute Entertainment Publisher: Malibu Games

Family Dog isn’t as by-the-numbers as you might expect from a platformer based on a failed TV show, but inconsistent and imprecise controls make it impossible to enjoy.

When I say inconsistent, I mean that literally. Family Dog eats button inputs much like a family dog might eat a beloved slipper. Press B or A to jump and the dog you control will probably jump. Hold down right on the D-pad and it will probably run to the right. But sometimes the dog won’t jump, and sometimes it will stop moving even with the button pressed down.

Even when the controls work, they don’t feel good. The dog’s jump is unlike any I’ve seen in a platformer. Most platformers let you run to get extra height and distance with your jump. Family Dog doesn’t: a running horizontal jump and a standing horizontal jump are pretty much the same. If you want extra height, the game expects you to come to a full stop, hold up on the D-pad, and then jump. It doesn’t feel right.

There are only three short worlds in Family Dog: the house, the pound, and the woods. The house is a predictable left-to-right affair where you avoid cats and other household terrors. There’s a lot of verticality in these house levels that you can ignore if you want. If you want to get ammo for your bark attack for later, stock up now. There are also items you can find that let you play fetch minigames with the family’s son, but I’m not sure what you get out of it other than points. Once you reach the end of this part of the game, the family sends you to the pound.

Excuse me? The rest of Family Dog is the dog trying to get home. I don’t understand why the dog wants to get back to those jerks. It wasn’t a mistake. They put the dog in the car and drove it there!

Anyway, the second world has you escape from captivity. This is a more open area filled with some very light exploration and puzzle-solving. You rescue birds from cages who then flip switches or break windows for you to continue further into the level. It is a pleasant change of pace from the first level, but once you break out the game has you do more bad platforming. It’s not clear where to go, and it’s frustrating to play because of the bad controls. The final world, the woods outside the pound, reuses this open environment idea to have you bounce on tree limbs to find your way back home. At least the developers set up arrows to point you in the right direction.

Family Dog is a poor game that only has three levels but enough new ideas for barely one. Part of me wants to knock the game for being so short, but I don’t want to play more. Maybe it’s the perfect length?

Next week: Top-down racing returns to the Super Nintendo in Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge!

SNES A Day 205: Family Dog Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Platformer Developer: Absolute Entertainment Publisher: Malibu Games Family Dog isn’t as by-the-numbers as you might expect from a platformer based on a failed TV show, but inconsistent and imprecise controls make it impossible to enjoy.

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Action Developer: Rare Publisher: Tradewinds

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is a pretty but unnecessary retread of the original Battletoads game for the NES.

I’ve never been a fan of the Battletoads series. The discussion around the NES release tends to revolve around how difficult it is. That’s never been an attractive quality in a video game for me. And since Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is almost a remake of the previous game, that applies to this one, too.

Each stage in Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is a different genre of game. The first stage is a beat-em-up. The second is a vertical auto-scrolling action stage. The third stage is basically an exact replica of the infamous speeder stage from the first game where you hop into some bikes and dodge barriers that appear in front of you. The fourth stage, where I tapped out at, is a platformer where you must jump on snakes that come out of the walls to make it to the exit. The variety is commendable.

Unfortunately, none of that variety is fun.

I’m finding it difficult to write about Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. Like… this is a game where within moments of the start of each level you know how to beat it. In level one, you know that you’re going to move to the right side of the screen while punching dudes. There’s going to be a boss at the end. That’s fine, but there are no surprises that aren’t cheap shots to drain your life away. When the ground disappears under your feet and you lose a life because you cannot react fast enough, it’s frustrating, and all you gain is that you know next time you play not to step there.

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is a two-button game; there are no combos, and there’s no notable depth to the controls or systems. Any improvement in my gameplay didn’t come from mastery, but instead from memorization. This is a crutch that old games often leaned on but was definitely more common on the NES. That’s where the Battletoads should have stayed.

Next time: I wasn’t aware of the cartoon Family Dog is based on, mostly because it got canceled a month after it first aired on CBS. Yikes!

SNES A Day 204: Battletoads in Battlemaniacs Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Action Developer: Rare Publisher: Tradewinds Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is a pretty but unnecessary retread of the original Battletoads game for the NES.

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Puzzle Developer: Radiance Software Publisher: THQ

Short but not sweet, The Great Waldo Search does less than the bare minimum for a full-priced video game.

I loved the Where’s Waldo books as a child. They are a series of wonderfully illustrated picture books where the reader scours the pages to find Waldo and his various accouterments he has lost on his journey. He wears eye-catching red-and-white striped clothes, but he’s drawn quite small in between all sorts of visual cacophony.

Naturally, as a popular child-focused property in the early 1990s, Where’s Waldo received a video game adaptation. Everything you need to know about The Great Waldo Search is in this video.

Yes, I beat the game on both difficulty settings in 13 minutes.

That is a completely unacceptable amount of stuff to put into a product that you are selling for money. Five stages and two difficulty levels don’t fly, even with Waldo changing positions in each playthrough. The Great Waldo Search limits the player to only panning the screen left and right. The books make the reader feel like they were plopped in a vast world to explore. This game feels like you’re stuck in a hallway and feels confined and limiting as a result.

I get why the game has these limits. The graphics – especially the huge number of sprites and stuff in the level at once – is impressive. I’m sure the programmers developed technical whizz-bangery to make it work on the Super Nintendo’s hardware. Expanding the game’s scope might have been impossible. It’s still disappointing.

I’m just going to share some miscellaneous thoughts:

The controls are fine, and never once did I choose something with the cursor and not have it register. Some of the things you pick up are quite small, and you lose time if you select the wrong object, so that reliability is a boon.

There’s also a minigame where you play as Waldo’s dog and you collect bones while flying on a magic carpet. It is notable for possibly taking as long to complete as the actual level.

The higher difficulty adds little bonus objectives like “find the man with three legs.” This is the kind of fun easter egg-type joke that the books did so well. It’s a neat twist, but the answer is always on the screen you’re viewing when the challenge pops up. Also, I went back and checked and these don’t appear to be randomly placed, unlike Waldo and the scroll, which change places on replay.

The Great Waldo Search needs a great deal more to do in it. There’s not much I can say about a game that can be beaten twice in under fifteen minutes.

Next time: I’ve never been a fan of the Battletoads games, but maybe Battletoads in Battlemaniacs will be the one that wins me over.

SNES A Day 203: The Great Waldo Search Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Puzzle Developer: Radiance Software Publisher: THQ Short but not sweet, …

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: RPG Developer: FTL Games Publisher: JVC

PC-style dungeon crawlers like Dungeon Master aren’t common on the Super Nintendo.

This is the kind of RPG that necessitates dusting off some graph paper and making maps by hand. I spent several hours bumbling about and never found the exit to the first floor. Part of the reason for that was I didn’t pick up a torch early on, so I was Mr. Magooing it in the dark for a while. Not knowing what I was doing in Dungeon Master was common.

And it’s to the game’s credit that I didn’t find that frustrating. Like most games from 1993, there’s no tutorial or guiding hand to help with the basics. That’s what the manual was for. The basic controls are intuitive enough that not knowing the little shortcuts and tricks you can do feels clunky rather than frustrating. For example, the d-pad controls the cursor on the screen. You can use the B button to interact with items in the first-person dungeon window, and you can move through the dungeon by pressing the arrow keys at the bottom right. That’s a kludgy system, but it works. Later, while playing, I discovered that the Select button toggles “MOVE MODE” so the d-pad and shoulder buttons directly control movement. I had several little revelations along those lines.

Dungeon Master starts in the Hall of Adventures. There are over 20 characters to choose from, and you can customize your party as you see fit. The party always adventures in a two-by-two formation, which you can see and adjust at the bottom right of the screen. Characters in the back can’t use melee attacks, so I always went with two fighters in the front and an archer and mage in the back. The mage was a bit of a waste since I never figured out how to use the magic system. They can throw ninja stars just fine, though.

The design of the dungeon is impressive. I wouldn’t describe this game as a looker, but it’s atmospheric. As I mentioned above, I did not have a torch at first, so everything was dark. There’s no music, but there are noises. Usually, it is just a water drip echoing through the halls, but sometimes there will be other noises that could be an enemy or a trap. Or it might be nothing. And because the game is in first-person and the movement is tile-based, the stereo sound can let you know where sounds are coming from. It’s very well done for a decades-old console game.

The biggest annoyance I had with Dungeon Master is how the game isn’t as responsive as it should be. I’m sure it was a feat for the developers to port a game of this size and scope to the SNES and its controller, but it doesn’t run very well. I had many button presses either not happen at all or be counted twice. It happens a lot and I found it frustrating to take damage because my party decided to walk directly into a wall.

But still, this is an impressive game that took me a bit to enjoy. For patient players that want a complex dungeon crawler, with all that entails, Dungeon Master is an easy recommendation. For the rest, Arcana might be a more relaxed experience but it’s not the same.

Next week: I spent so much time as a kid poring over the Where’s Waldo books. I’m curious as to how The Great Waldo Search adapts that experience.

SNES A Day 202: Dungeon Master Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: RPG Developer: FTL Games Publisher: JVC PC-style dungeon crawlers like…

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Action/puzzle Developer: SETA Publisher: SETA

Cacoma Knight in Bizyland takes an arcade classic and makes it a little worse.

If you have played the arcade puzzler Qix before, you know what to expect with Cacoma Knight. You move your character around the edge of the screen, and you can draw lines into the center. Everything inside the walled-off area clears out when you connect one edge to another with a line. There are enemies riding along the edge that you need to dodge by drawing lines, as well as enemies in the center that will hurt you if they touch your line. Once you fill in the stage’s required percentage of space, you move on to the next stage.

It’s a simple game.

Where Cacoma Knight kinda falls apart is when it tries to do something that Qix doesn’t. For example, each level starts as a dark and decayed version of what gets revealed as you fill in the play area. The restored parts of the screen have lots of color and detail, which is nice, but enemies and projectiles blend in easily sometimes and the game has to pause to load the new artwork in. Things get a little too visually, uh, “bizy” for such a simple game.

The lack of clarity extends to other aspects of the game. For example, there are several treasure chests hidden in each level. These chests hold powerups such as extra speed or invincibility. Cacoma Knight doesn’t tell you where these treasure chests are, so it just ends up being something you stumble upon. Which is fine, I guess. I think if they were visible it could be an interesting way to add a little more strategy to a too-thin experience.

There are three different characters you can play as: a boy, a girl, and a robot. I think they all play differently, though I couldn’t tell a difference between the boy and the girl. The robot, however, was incredibly slow. Slow enough that I thought my controller was broken. Maybe the robot can take more hits before losing a life or something? The robot’s tradeoffs might become more clear in the cooperative multiplayer mode.

There’s not a lot of things to say about Cacoma Knight in Bizyland. Basically, almost every twist on the classic Qix formula makes for a worse game here. If you’ve never played a puzzle game like this before, it’s fine and you’ll get the gist of it. You’re better off dusting off a copy of Jezzball, though.

Next week: Roll up your sleeves as we delve into Dungeon Master!

SNES A Day 201: Cacoma Knight in Bizyland Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Action/puzzle Developer: SETA Publisher: SETA Cacoma Knight in Bizyland takes an arcade classic and makes it a little worse.

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Platformer Developer: Titus Software Publisher: Titus Software

The Blues Brothers is extremely rough, but I had an enjoyable time playing through it.

I’m as surprised as anyone about that. The Blues Brothers is yet another misguided licensed product that probably shouldn’t exist. It’s not as dumb of an idea as Wayne’s World or the execrable The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, though. There are at least car chases and gunfights in The Blues Brothers movie, which could lend themselves to a game.

There are no car chases or gunfights in The Blues Brothers, though. This is a very standard action-platformer. You play as one (or both, in the two-player cooperative mode) of the Blues Brothers with the goal of reaching the jukebox at the end of the stage. The game has 34 levels in all, with motifs ranging from sewers to warehouses to … uh, a fantasy land with giant mushrooms. There’s a recurring sorta-boss that’s a dragon-snake-thing you must jump on and ride to the end of the level.

And that’s the main problem with the game and probably why The Blues Brothers has such a negative reputation online. It is brazenly unconnected to the source material. It’s so discordant from expectations that it feels like something funny is being pulled. It’s as if the developers had hurriedly reskinned a long-lost The Great Giana Sisters sequel. It would explain a lot, actually. On a platform and an industry filled with bad ideas, The Blues Brothers is so poorly conceived that it feels dirty. Like a scam.

So, I feel some mix of concern and embarrassment that I quite like the game. It does itself no favors by opening with some very basic levels that don’t give a good first impression. It’s not until The Blues Brothers ups the difficulty a bit before you can really tell that the controls are fantastic. Precision jumping is not a problem and movement is responsive. I’d go so far to say that this is one of the best-controlling action games thus far on the Super Nintendo. I’m aware that this is a ridiculous statement to make.

Most levels have a gimmick, which can be annoying, but the levels are almost all short and not too challenging. Nothing egregious overstays its welcome, and the generous mid-level checkpoints mean that dying isn’t as awful as it could be. Too many stages are cycle-based, though, meaning that if you are just a bit too slow you’ll need to wait around for a platform or something to line up so you can continue on. On the flip side, a handful of later stages have some gentle puzzle elements that are neat diversions. One has you destroy blocks as you descend through the level so a trampoline will be waiting at the end to let you complete the level. These kinds of flourishes are simple, but it gives some of the levels in The Blues Brothers some texture that would otherwise be missing.

I do wish that the game wouldn’t repeat the same low-quality voice clip every time you pick up an item, though.

I don’t finish many games during coverage of SNES A Day. But it says something that I finished The Blues Brothers despite its obvious and myriad flaws. So obvious and myriad that I’m worried that I’m totally off-base with recommending this game. I had a lot of fun playing it, though!

Next time: The title Cacoma Knight in Bizyland tells you absolutely nothing about the game, and that’s rad.

SNES A Day 200: The Blues Brothers Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Platformer Developer: Titus Software Publisher: Titus Software The Blues Brothers…

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Approximate Release Date: June 4, 1993 Genre: Racing Developer: Silicon & Synapse Publisher: Interplay Entertainment

Rock N’ Roll Racing might be the pinnacle of the isometric racing game genre, even without any radical changes over its predecessor.

RPM Racing was Silicon & Synapse’s first game, and it wasn’t very good. Rock N’ Roll Racing improves on it in every way just like any good sequel should. The basic gameplay loop is still the same: you work your way through a series of races, utilizing the money you earn to upgrade your car to make competing in harder races more manageable. There are some differences, like the cars being outfitted with offensive and defensive weaponry, but they are minor compared to the gameplay refinements that have been made. The distracting ghosting and split-screen display are jettisoned for smooth and colorful full-screen sci-fi graphics with lots of detail and control fluidity. It is a remarkable improvement in a short amount of time between game releases.

The only problem I have with Rock N’ Roll Racing is how the career mode is designed. Each set of races take place on a particular planet. With enough wins, you can travel to the next planet’s set of more challenging races. You might need to race as many as 20 times on a given planet before moving on, and the tracks will start to repeat. I don’t know how many tracks are in the game, but there aren’t enough. Besides, since all the races take place on one planet at a time, there’s not a lot of visual variety until you move on to the next planet. Mixing it up would have been nice and less fatiguing to play through.

I have to touch on the music, because the game is called Rock N’ Roll Racing. It was probably very impressive at the time, and the renditions of the five famous songs are genuinely impressive for the Super Nintendo. Having said that, there are only five songs. I don’t know how many times I heard the beginning riff of “Bad to the Bone”, yet it was enough. But the biggest bummer is that the rock-n-rollness doesn’t extend out to the rest of the game. If you mute the game, you’re racing against generic aliens in space. I’m not saying I want to race Ozzy, but… no, wait. In a game called Rock N’ Roll Racing, I actually do want to race Ozzy.

Rock N’ Roll Racing is a lot of fun, though, despite not innovating much over its predecessor. This highlights how important execution is in game development. It also provides an interesting bookend for Silicon & Synapse: RPM Racing was the company’s first game, and Rock N’ Roll Racing is its last. Silicon & Synapse became Blizzard Entertainment in 1994.

Next week: Let’s celebrate the big 200 on SNES A Day by checking out The Blues Brothers!

SNES A Day 199: Rock N’ Roll Racing Approximate Release Date: June 4, 1993 Genre: Racing Developer: Silicon & Synapse Publisher: Interplay Entertainment Rock N’ Roll Racing…

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Approximate Release: November 1992 Genre: Fighting Developer: Loriciel Publisher: Electro Brain

I am impressed by the quality of animation in Best of the Best: Championship Karate. I am much less impressed by everything else.

Best of the Best is a dreadful fighting game. But even after putting way, way, way too much time into the game for this site, I still can’t get over how smooth the combat looks. Moves flow well from one to another and characters react responsively to being hit. The smooth animations remind me of Prince of Persia, but I don’t think Best of the Best is using any rotoscopy. It’s worth seeing in motion.

The focus on animation, while nifty, might be what ruins Best of the Best. When you press the button to make your fighter punch at your opponent, that punch looks great, but it has a long wind-up and cool-down. It’s not totally clear when the game is going to accept the next attack input. Best of the Best wants there to be deliberate thought in what moves to use, but this feels unresponsive. Attacks will just go through an opponent if he is too close, which only adds to this feeling. The button-pressing is so divorced from gameplay that I sometimes lost track of which character I was. It didn’t feel like I was controlling either of the almost-identical fighters.

The main menu acts as a hub for the rest of the game. Here you can alter your fighter’s appearance and moveset. The moveset editor in Best of the Best is intimidating and I didn’t dig too much into it, but it looks like you can customize almost everything about how your character fights. It’s not intuitive, but in a better game I could see making changes to my character. As is, the fancier moves just leave you open to counterattacks. I relied on basic attacks that were fast and had a lot of reach.

I lost a lot when I first started playing, and I had to spend a lot of time in the menu’s training mode to raise my character’s stats. Training consists of three different minigames that each raise one of your attributes based on how well you perform. The first minigame has you fight a dude, the second requires pressing the B button as fast as you can, and the third tests your reflexes by hitting the correct direction on the d-pad to hit a target. None of these are fun and will only give you a point or two at most. I couldn’t tell how much of a difference it was making in the fights, but I strongly suspect grinding out these minigames will be necessary to beat the game. Oh, and losing will lower your stats, too.

I did not enjoy my time with this one. Best of the Best: Championship Karate is ambitious, but beyond the cool character animation there’s nothing to recommend here. Anything you’d want from a fighting game is either nonexistent or nonfunctional. It’s not Pit-Fighter bad, but it’s not far off.

Next time: We are jumping back into the future of 1993 for the company that will become Blizzard Entertainment’s third Super Nintendo game, Rock N’ Roll Racing!

SNES A Day 198: Best of the Best: Championship Karate Approximate Release: November 1992 Genre: Fighting Developer: Loriciel Publisher: Electro Brain I am impressed by the quality of animation in…

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Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Action Developer: Gray Matter Publisher: Electronic Arts

B.O.B. has some serious flaws but manages to be interesting enough to check out despite them.

You play as the titular B.O.B., a rowdy robo-youth who borrows the family spacecar so he can go on a date. He promptly crashes it, and now he must make it to his date in time. It’s a fun premise, and the opening cutscene shows off B.O.B.’s great design. He has big, emotive eyes that couple well with his exaggerated animations, giving him a personality that pops off the screen. B.O.B. is more successful in this regard than almost every trying-too-hard mascot game from this immediate post-Sonic the Hedgehog era. Sorry, Bubsy.

It has style, but B.O.B. isn’t anything too special in terms of gameplay. It’s actually quite similar to the recently discussed Super Turrican. It’s a run-and-gun action game set in small mazey levels. There is the standard assortment of action game weapons, like the spread gun, homing missile, and flamethrower. Every weapon – even the basic pea-shooter – has limited ammo, so the game encourages you to swap weapons all the time. B.O.B. also has a melee attack which is beyond useless; it does almost no damage and doesn’t knock back the enemies which are trying to give you painful hugs. There’s enough ammo in the stages that I played where I didn’t need to resort to using it.

You also have special items on the X button that you collect throughout the stages. There are several, but I mostly only used two: a trampoline which gives you a super jump and a little helicopter which lets you fly around for a few seconds. These items are extremely situational, and I found myself never using them. It was easier to shoot enemies than decipher what the icon on the bottom right corner of the screen might indicate. I didn’t feel like I was missing too much, but I appreciate the idea.

The reason I mainly used the trampoline and helicopter items is that B.O.B.’s level designers lean too hard into trolling the player. It’s offensive how often the game will trick you into falling into acid pits, and if you don’t have a way to escape out of the pit you are dead. One level early on gives you a choice of a few pits to fall in, with at least two of them being inescapable. It’s frustrating, and that’s on top of the standard action game damage you’ll take from being unfamiliar with where enemies will pop out. Death strips you of all your weapons, adding insult to injury.

The other obnoxious element to this trolling is that B.O.B. has some pretty strict time limits in levels. Like I said above, these levels are maze-like; you’re not going to get totally lost in them, but you might get turned around or go down a dead-end. If you dally you’ll run out of time, rendering large chunks of these levels meaningless because you’re punished if you explore. It’s not hard to find the critical path through a level the second time through, but it’s still rude. The time limit is especially infuriating in gimmick levels, like the one where you must drive a car through an obstacle course. It’s not a fun level!

That being said, I really enjoyed B.O.B. and would recommend it. There are some missteps, but I had a fun afternoon with the game. If I had to make a single change to improve B.O.B., it would be to remove the concept of lives from the game so the trial-and-error parts of the game design wouldn’t be as egregious. That would have been considered action game design heresy in the 1990s, but that’s why we have cheat codes, right?

Next time: I skipped a game! Take a time machine back to 1992 and read all about Best of the Best: Championship Karate!

SNES A Day 197: B.O.B. Approximate Release Month: June 1993 Genre: Action Developer: Gray Matter Publisher: Electronic Arts B.O.B. has some serious flaws but manages to be interesting enough to check out despite them.

[snesaday]

Approximate Release Date: June 1, 1993 Genre: Platformer Developer: Imagineering Publisher: THQ

The Super Nintendo has many bad platformers. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends is the worst yet.

I don’t know why they were making Rocky and Bullwinkle games in the early 1990s. In my memory, the cartoon was relegated to extreme early morning television at that time, usually sandwiched between Flipper and Mr. Wizard. The live-action movie wouldn’t release for almost another decade. It is puzzling and might be reflective of the video game industry at the time; games were cheap to make, developers didn’t need a ton of people working on each title, and people bought them up. There were multiple Rocky and Bullwinkle games released around this time. Baffling.

With that being said, there are some things that I like about Rocky and Bullwinkle. The game opens with a cutscene explaining the premise — moose and squirrel have to recover stolen museum artifacts — and it’s cute. There are cartoon-like visual gags and fourth-wall-breaking jokes along with pretty all right graphics. Nothing revolutionary, just decently executed.

Then you start playing the game.

Rocky and Bullwinkle’s biggest defect is the punishing difficulty level. It is brutal. There are so many enemies on the screen at times that you just have to take hits to get through. Projectiles fly in from offscreen in ways that encourage memorization and not reaction. Actually fighting enemies is useless as far as I can tell, too. Bullwinkle uses his antlers as a weapon, but the range is minimal. I would whiff more often than not and usually take damage. You can only take five or so hits before losing a life.

It’s not just enemies, either! The controls are stiff, so any precision jumping is frustrating. The second level is mostly cycle-based platforms over a bottomless pit that you must get across. Most of these platforms are very small and spend a lot of their time off-screen, so it can be difficult to know where you will be jumping to next. Sometimes it takes a few cycles before subsequent platforms sync up, so you’ll be standing there unsure if that is even the right way. And when you do jump, there’s a chance you will fall through the ground anyway. Then the next level is an auto-scroller, and that’s where I pulled the ripcord.

As an aside, Rocky and Bullwinkle does feature two minigames that are able to be played from the main menu. One is a Sherman and Peabody joint where you have to gum up a fire-breathing dragon’s mouth. The other is Dudley Do-Right being chased by a train. You get three tries to complete the game’s task, and if you succeed you get an extra life. They are uninteresting and not worth playing.

If you’re going to play The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, and I do not recommend it, use save states. Save states will help with the painful trial-and-error game design and you can plow through the eight-ish levels in an hour or so. But there’s nothing interesting here. Why waste time playing a very bad Tom and Jerry?

Next week: Bob’s your uncle in B.O.B.!

SNES A Day 196: The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends Approximate Release Date: June 1, 1993 Genre: Platformer Developer: Imagineering Publisher: THQ The Super Nintendo has many bad platformers.

[snesaday]

Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Adventure/educational Developer: Broderbund Publisher: Hi Tech Expressions

Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego is cute and charming, but there’s not enough variety or depth in the sleuthing to make it worth spending time on.

Every case is the same: the Chief gives you a time period and location where a crime took place, and you have to find the person responsible. You travel to said time period, talk to witnesses, speak with informants, and scan the environment for clues. Each takes a chunk of your limited amount of time, so you have to ration out what actions you’re going to take in each location. There’s a large number of places to visit, so you can’t just guess.

For example, if you choose to scan you might find a graham cracker. As everyone is well aware, a minister in the United States invented graham crackers in 1829. Great! That’s where you go next. Talking to a witness or informant might give you another hint about where to go in case you don’t know the origins of graham crackers or, preferably, give you details about the criminal. You need those details to get an arrest warrant. This means you need to find some unique combination of gender, hair color, eye color, favorite author (huh?), and favorite artist (what?) to winnow down the list of suspects to one. Follow enough clues, and you’ll catch your crook.

The main problem I have with Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego is that the missions feel randomly generated. I don’t know if these are actually designed cases or not, but the clues feel like ad-libs. I played six cases in total and had clues, locations, and a criminal repeat. If this was a way to have “infinite” replayability, it was misguided. It leads to situations like where a witness in the Italian Renaissance knew what the United States is. It’s goofy.

Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego was likely a hit in 1990s school computer labs, but as a home console experience, I don’t think it would have held anyone’s attention. Certainly, it couldn’t today. Games like this need bespoke mysteries to solve to be rewarding to play. Some versions of the game came with a small encyclopedia, and I’d rather have that than this cart.

Next week: The television show ended in 1964, so why not make a The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends game for the Super Nintendo while the iron is hot?

SNES A Day 195: Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Adventure/educational Developer: Broderbund Publisher: Hi Tech Expressions Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego…

[snesaday]

Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Casino Developer: HAL Laboratory Publisher: Nintendo

Vegas Stakes stands out from other casino video games by integrating elements from adventure games with the gambling.

For example, there’s a story with characters! You are on a road trip to Las Vegas with four friends in a quest to become multimillionaires. Each of your friends has their own personality and will offer advice when asked during gameplay. The game implies that each character is better at different games, but I’m not sure if that’s just flavor or if it is correct.

The most stand-out feature of Vegas Stakes is the random events that pop up during gameplay. While you’re playing, you have a chance to trigger a short dialog with a casino patron. The first one I got while playing for review was where a man came up to me at the blackjack table and asked if I wanted to buy a watch for $200. It wasn’t shady at all, so of course I bought it. A few hands, later a man came up and wanted to buy the watch from me for a thousand dollars. Most events will have randomly selected positive or negative outcomes, so it’s always a gamble.

I really like these encounters. Casino games are dry experiences, so anything that lets it stand out benefits Vegas Stakes. A pickpocket stealing a couple thousand from your wallet is more singularly memorable than almost anything else that can happen in these kinds of games. I wish there were a wider variety of events that popped up, though. They repeat too much.

Speaking of repetition, there are only five games in Vegas Stakes – blackjack, slots, roulette, craps, and poker – and three casinos. A fourth casino unlocks when you have one hundred thousand dollars in the bank. Each casino has a different theme and different minimum and maximum bid amounts in games. Going to a new, swankier casino is the only progression in the game. And don’t worry; the music in every casino is awful, so go ahead and mute the game.

You already know if you like the games included here. I am not especially familiar with the games other than blackjack and slots, but all five seem like decent adaptations of the real-life games. They move quickly and without annoying extraneous animations and time-wasting. Blackjack in Vegas Stakes taught me the rules of the game when I was a child, so it’s great that it is still a blast to play. Roulette deserves a special mention for making it easy to trivialize the game. Make a save, put it all on red, and see if you double your money. When you max out the money counter, you win the game.

There aren’t many games like Vegas Stakes in the Super Nintendo’s North American library, so if you’re wanting to play a 16-bit gambling game it’s one of the only choices you have. At least it’s a good choice.

Next week: Let’s try to answer the most pressing question of our time: Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? 

SNES A Day 194: Vegas Stakes Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Casino Developer: HAL Laboratory Publisher: Nintendo Vegas Stakes stands out from other casino video games by integrating elements from adventure games with the gambling.

[snesaday]

Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Racing Developer: Visual Concepts Publisher: Sunsoft

The Tasmanian Devil is known for being fast, so making Taz-Mania into a racing game is a decent idea.

Well, Taz-Mania is only kind of a racing game. Taz careens down a series of Aussie highways to catch and eat speedy kiwi birds while dodging various road hazards. You advance to the next level by catching enough kiwis before time runs out, not by reaching the end of the track. You don’t compete with other devils to catch the kiwis. Conceptually it’s not a racing game, but you hold up to accelerate, you have a boost on the X button, and the A button brakes. Taz handles like a car and, moment to moment, Taz-Mania isn’t much different from Road Rash. Instead of whipping bikers with a chain, you’re eating cute birds. Which I feel bad about.

The level of detail in the character sprites and animation is notable. I can see it being very impressive in 1993. When Taz runs into a tree or gets run over by a truck there’s a very cute Looney Tunesy animation. There’s a unique animation for most things, but the repetitive nature of Taz-Mania means you’ll be seeing them a lot. Later levels introduce new bad guys and require catching more kiwis before the timer ticks down. There’s not much here, and even what few powerups there are feel inconsequential.

A bigger issue than the lack of content is the camera. Taz runs away from the screen with the camera behind him, and the draw distance is mostly fine. I sometimes felt like I didn’t have quite enough time to react to a sharp turn or obstacle, but I feel that way with games that play similarly like OutRun or Rad Racer, too. It’s a natural consequence of having a large, detailed main sprite with this perspective. Taz-Mania falters whenever there’s a hill, where those other games were fine. Every hill is disorienting and unpleasant and triggered some light motion sickness in me. You’ll lose track of the kiwi you are chasing and probably run smack-dab into the grill of a sports car.

Taz-Mania is a sparse experience that would feel more at home as a mini-game in a larger, different game. It is exceptionally shallow despite having a concept that is more interesting than it just being a platformer. Trying to figure out whether Taz-Mania is a racing game or not was more fun than playing it.

Next week: As a child, I learned how to play blackjack from Vegas Stakes.

SNES A Day 193: Taz-Mania Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Racing Developer: Visual Concepts Publisher: Sunsoft The Tasmanian Devil is known for being fast, so making…

[snesaday]

Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Action/platformer Developer: Factor 5 Publisher: Seika Corporation

Super Turrican is a wonderful surprise in the Super Nintendo’s action game library.

I went into Super Turrican expecting a traditional run-and-gun like Contra III: The Alien War. There are similarities, and fans of one will like the other, but Contra III is more linear and combat-focused. Super Turrican has extremely large and expansive stages that encourage exploration through platforming challenges. There are hundreds of gems to collect in every world and literal dozens of extra lives scattered about. Some levels have verticality and alternate pathways to the end that gives me some Sonic the Hedgehog vibes.

One of the tricks the game uses for its secrets are invisible power-up boxes that double as platforms. You reveal these platforms by shooting them, but shoot them too much and you might lose access to a shortcut or extra life. There are areas where you need to hop on several of these hidden platforms to get to better rewards. I like this because it tries to discourage the player from holding down the fire button all the time. Unsuccessfully, in my case.

https://youtu.be/snr3A72hCKw

There’s a problem with the power-ups, however. These hidden boxes barf out so many goodies and are so plentiful that you can go from zero to maxed out in a few moments. Even when you die you don’t restart from scratch. You can only hold one of Super Turrican’s three weapons — spread gun, laser, and ricochet — at a time; you swap them out when you touch a weapon orb of the corresponding color.  Each is situationally more effective in some spots over the others, but all three are extremely powerful and can get you through any situation. I never prioritized nabbing one weapon over the others and the massive number of pick-ups would have made that difficult if I tried. They’re all very fun to play with and the controls are responsive. I would have liked to see more player power progression or strategy, though.

Super Turrican also equips the player with a freeze gun on the X button. Striking an enemy with this weapon will cause them to stop moving for a few ticks, perfect for the tankier baddies that take more than a few bullets to defeat. Those enemies aren’t as common as the easily vanquished cannon fodder enemies that just run around. No enemy, or boss for that matter, is very difficult.

The most dangerous enemies are stage hazards. Super Turrican is a short game of four worlds with three stages in each. World 2 is set in an industrial factory fill of conveyor belts that don’t let you stand still. There are pistons coming out of the ground, missiles falling from the ceiling, and flamethrowers going off all over the place. World 3 is a slippery land of ice with falling stalactites and rolling snowballs interspersed with bottomless pits. These overused obstacles chip away at your health and waste your time. Fortunately, checkpoints are common, and you are never more than a few moments away from where you faltered.

I am coming across as a little negative here, but I had an extremely good time playing this game. A few balance tweaks and some level design changes would have made Super Turrican a legendary game rather than a very good game. I hope the 1995 sequel gets closer to the former of the two.

Next time: The Looney Tunes games have had a decent run so far on the SNES. Will Taz-Mania keep that streak alive?

Title screen

You can jump on these enemies to destroy them.

These hidden floating treasure boxes drop a lot of loot.

Freeze beam

The first boss

Spread gun

The freeze beam is the only weapon that can fire at angles.

The spread gun can save you from a lot of damage if you’re smart.

The second boss… ? You just dodge rocks for a while.

Lava raft

Shooting the third boss with the laser beam.

World complete

World 2 has many stage hazards to deal with.

Flowing liquids make standing still impossible.

You can change into a ball and lay bombs down, Metroid-style.

The walls are closing in!

The ricochet gun

The fourth boss

World 3 is all about ice and perilous jumps.

The flower petals let you know which direction the wind is blowing.

World 4 is very Aliens. Litigiously so.

The autoscrolling train level is where I stepped off.

Game over

SNES A Day 192: Super Turrican Approximate Release Month: May 1993 Genre: Action/platformer Developer: Factor 5 Publisher: Seika Corporation Super Turrican is a wonderful surprise in the Super Nintendo’s action game library.

[snesaday]

Approximate Release Date: May 1993 Genre: Fishing simulation Developer: Starfish Publisher: Hot-B

My poor performance in Super Black Bass is proof I shouldn’t be an outdoorsman.

I caught zero fish in my hour or so of playing the fishing video game Super Black Bass. It was an excruciating hour. The game helpfully suggested I focus on shallow waters in the morning and move out to deeper waters after noon. This is done in an overhead map where you zoom your little boat around and use your fish-finder to know when to stop and cast a line. Eventually, I found a group of fish and I started the casting process.

Casting your line reminds me of playing a golf game. You can adjust your angle and press A to start a meter to see how far your cast will go. Then, you reel it in and hope you find some fishies.

I was able to get some fish to nibble on the line a few times and that was exciting, but they never bit. I’m sure that different lures work better on some fish, but I tried all of them and the fish seemed uninterested.

I generally don’t look up GameFAQs guides when I’m playing games for the site, but I did after being frustrated for a while. I didn’t learn how to catch fish, but I did learn that by catching fish you improve your stats. Also, there are four lakes in Super Black Bass. That doesn’t seem like enough given how small the first lake is. My worry is the game will make you grind out stat points to slow your progress.

I’m sure there’s fun to be had in Super Black Bass if you’re willing to invest some time and patience in such a sim-oriented fishing game. Hopefully there will be fishing titles in the future that have a little more arcade action. I’m not up to this bass challenge.

Next week: It’s time to both run and gun in Super Turrican!

No luck today

Weigh-in

Sorry, try next year!

Title screen

Reeling

Tournament rules

Game over

Casting

You can weigh-in whenever you want.

Name entry

Heading out

Fish!

Skywater Lake

You can go into an overhead view during casting if you want to aim for a specific area.

The fish-finder will ping when it detects fish near you.

Fish facts

Casting with a worm lure

SNES A Day 191: Super Black Bass Approximate Release Date: May 1993 Genre: Fishing simulation Developer: Starfish Publisher: Hot-B My poor performance in…