Time for another quick round-up of recently-released arcade-style games. This month we have the return of a classic clone and a bunch of new karting games.
Giana Sisters: Twistered Dreams
Developer:
Black Forest Games
Publisher:
Black Forest Games
Platforms:
PC
Price:
£12.99
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
Back in 1987, a .Super Mario Brother clone called The Great Giana Sisters was released for a bunch of home computers. It was pretty good, but Nintendo didn't like the uncanny resemblance to their flagship franchise and threatened the developers, Time Warp Productions, and publishers, Rainbow Arts, with legal action. Now Black Forest Games have created a truly beautiful sequel for PC (with Xbox 360 and PS3 versions in the pipeline). There's been a lot of great looking 2D platformers in recent years, such as Rayman Origins, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Trine, but Twisted Dreams could be the best looking yet. Thankfully it backs it up with some fun gameplay too. There's a demo coming on Steam, so check it out.
Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed
Developer:
Sumo Digital
Publisher:
Sega
Platforms:
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, WiiU and 3DS
Price:
£29.99
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
From one Nintendo clone to another, the original Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing was a perfectly competent Mario Kart clone. I'm sure that it's no coincidence that about a year after Mario Kart 7 introduced karts that can fly and float, so too does Sega. I'm not going to hold it against them, because I actually think this game looks and plays better than the recent Mario Kart games.
Let's be honest, Formula 1 is a tad boring. The same few teams have been ruling the roost for decades, the racing generally lacks the bump and grind of touring cars or the risks and thrills of rallying. So what better way to spice things up than to make an F1 karting game? Featuring super deformed versions of all the latest drivers, including Lewis Hamilton, Jensen Button, Mark Webber, Fernando Alonso and many more. The game straddles the rules of both F1, with pit stops required to repair your car, and more karting mayhem, with weapons, power-ups and crazy tracks.
Of the three karting games out this month, this is probably the weakest, but if you don't like Sonic or (somehow) Sackboy, then this is a suitable alternative.
That does it for this month. Check the Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.
It's difficult to say which SNK Neo Geo series is the best, but I do remember when I first saw Metal Slug in a Mansfield arcade in the mid-90s thinking how incredible it looked. Of the many Metal Slug games there's been, 2000's Metal Slug 3 is generally considered to be the best. As with previous games, you are battling General Morden's army, only discover Morden himself is under the control of the same Martian threat that appeared in the second game. And begins another crazy, over-the-top Metal Slug adventure, in which you battle enemies human, undead, mechanical and Martian alike.
The final boss is the Martian overmind, Rootmars, whom you encounter on-board its giant mothership, in orbit over Earth. You begin by entering a chamber to find Rootmars is hooked up to heart of the spaceship by numerous wires and tubes. When the fight begins, he blasts you with enormous blue energy balls, which get bigger and bigger, until eventually they're taking up about a ¼ of the screen. Blast it enough, and Rootmars' glass dome will explode and your character (Marco Rossi, Tarma Roving, Eri Kasamoto or Fio Germi) runs off screen.
For the next few minutes you run down a Giger-esque corridor, blasting zombie clones, robots and giant, goo-dripping Martian quadrupeds, to finally escape out of the airlock. As you plummet to earth in a SV-001, you get a nasty surprise - Rootmars is not dead and has jumped out of the exploding mothership after you. The battle then rages on, as you both fall through the atmosphere, as this video demonstrates.
In a series that is jam-packed full of incredible boss encounters, there's something about fighting as you free fall that makes this fight with Rootmars the most extrordinary of all.
In 1995, as a response to the success of Taito's Puzzle Bobble series, Data East released Chain Reaction (or Magical Drop as it was known in its native Japan). The game did well enough for Data East to make two sequels for the SNK Neo Geo MVS, under the Japanese name. Thanks to the success of the Neo Geo, Magical Drop II and III were huge successes, even spawning their own clones, most recently Astro Pop on Xbox Live Arcade.
Over the years there have been a couple of non-canonical sequels, Magical Drop F for PlayStation in 1999, and Magical Drop Touch for iOS/Android in 2009. Now, 15 years after the last arcade game, Ignition Entertainment is publishing Magical Drop V, developed by the brilliant Arkedo and Golgoth Studios.
The game is available now on PC, with XBLA and PSN versions due next year. In the mean time, here's the trailer.
Disney's Wreck-It Ralph is an upcoming 3D animated movie about the baddie from a fictional arcade game called Fix-It Felix, who declares at his local Bad-Anon meeting that he does not want to be a bad guy any more — much to the chagrin of Clyde the orange ghost, Bowser, Dr Eggman, M. Bison and Zangief. Yes, you just read that list right and they are far from the only arcade and video game references in this trailer. In fact the references go so far back into the annals of gaming history, it makes me think this has been made by people with a genuine love for the medium. Dad's like me will certainly appreciate the fact they have kids young enough to justify going to see this when it comes out later this month.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of those franchises that refuses to die, even if most people forget it ever existed after it's initial rise to fame in the 80s (when it was known as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles here in the UK). However, following the comic that started in 1984, the original animated TV series ran from 1987 to 1996, a live action series ran for two years after that, a second animated series ran from 2003 to 2009 and just last month, Nickelodeon began its new CG-animated series. And let's not forget that among all that there's been four films, with a fifth due out next year. So amazingly, Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo and (my favourite) Raphael have been around for 28 years.
I was 12 when the Hero— err, Ninja Turtles first appeared and at the time I was a fan of all things martial arts. Add 80s' attitude and references to exotic fast food like pizzas and I was hooked. However, like so many super hero cartoons back then, there was very little actual fighting. Invariably the gang would defeat Krang, Shredder and their lackies Bebop, Rocksteady, Dr Baxter Stockman and the foot soldiers by tripping them into a rubbish bin or splatting them with food. It wasn't the clash of steel or the flash of gymnastic ninjitsu skill I craved. And so it is with a cry of cowabunga that Konami's 1989 arcade game offered precisely that. What's more, unlike like other treasured beat 'em ups, such as Golden Axe and Fight Fight, TMNT let four players go into battle, each with their own dedicated joystick.
The game played like pretty much any other beat 'em from that era, only more frantic, due to four players flitting around the screen. The game consisted of two buttons, one for jump and the other for attack. Pressing them both triggered a special move, but unlike Fight Fight and its ilk, you did not use up any of your life meter to do so. The game also had more emphasis on vertical and diagonal scrolling sections, although the actual characters stayed on the same plane.
To say an arcade game was difficult is a little like saying a heavy metal band's concerts are loud, but Turtles was actually a little cheap. These days people would bitch like hell about bashing away at a boss for as long as the level leading up to him took, only to have him fill the screen with bullets and minions, but it was common enough at the time.
It's probably worth mentioning that TMNT shared more than a little DNA with another four player Konami beat 'em up, The Simpsons. At the time, I'd never seen that TV show, but the similarity between the two games meant I did not need to know it's origins to play it whilst waiting for a space on the neighbouring TMNT cabinet.
