Worth a Look November 2012

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.

Little Big Planet Karting

Developer:	Media Molecule
Publisher:	Sony
Platforms:	PlayStation 3/PlayStation Vita
Price:	£39.99
Demo available:	Yes

What is it?

Little Big Planet was a brilliant, creative, expressive game, so I find it strange Media Molecule have created something as cliché and worn out as a karting game, especially when the PS3 has a brilliant karting game with Mod Nation Racers. However, with the Little Big Planet name comes all the charm of Sackboy and friends. And you know what, it's a pretty decent karter anyway.

F1 Race Stars

Developer:	Codemasters Racing
Publisher:	Codemasters
Platforms:	PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/PC
Price:	£39.99
Demo available:	Yes

What is it?

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.

MTW

Boss Fight - Rootmars (Metal Slug 3, 2000)

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.

MTW

Magical Drop V is here

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.

MTW

Wreck-It Ralph

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.

MTW

Classic of the Month - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Manufacturer:	Konami
Developer:	Konami
Genre:	Beat 'em up
Board:	Konami 68000-based
Year:	1989

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.

MTW

Sega's new dream

Last December I said I thought Sega were the greatest arcade manufacturer of all time, then not a month later I was bemoaning the fact all they are making in the second decade of the 21st century are prize machines. Earlier this month, they unveiled their latest arcade machine and looking at the specs, photos and trailers, I think I may have been a bit hasty.

It's called Dream Raiders and it's a rail shooter with what Sega are calling a "motion platform", which basically means the seat moves. The controls resemble the twin-sticks of Atari's vector classic Star Wars (another rail shooter), with strange glowing domes on top. I can't decide if they're just ornamental or actually serve a purpose. The screen is a big, HD flat panel and it features a surround sound system too, both of which are pretty much par for the course these days.

Superficially, this all looks pretty ordinary, but when I read that it was inspired by the superb Christopher Nolan film Inception, I thought I should pay a little more attention. The basic premise is that each level represents a dream, which the player or players must battle their way through before choosing the next dream to tackle. As such the levels include a dragon hunt, some sort of mine cart through a volcano, a snow mobile chase (which is probably the most Inceptiony of all the levels), a battle with a sea monster, a cowboy world, an alien invasion, an asteroid belt and various other dream-like worlds.

I think Sega have been smart by offering players so much choice right out of the gate. I can see people spend a fair few quid on it, if only to try a different level/dream. The only problem now is finding one to play.

MTW

Worth a Look - October, 2012

Time for another quick round-up of recently-released arcade-style games. This month we have a PC shmup from Capcom, which makes great use of lots of borrowed ideas, a remake of a classic top-down racer for PC and an utterly insane platformer from Sega.

Ether Vapor Remastered 

Developer:	Edelweiss
Publisher:	Nyu Media/Capcom
Platforms:	PC
Price:	£5.45
Demo available:	Yes

What is it?

Continuing Capcom's initiative to publish small independent games, this doujin shmup borrows ideas left, right and centre, yet never fails to make good use of those ideas. The weapon system is similar to Radiant Silvergun, in that there are no power-ups, just 6 weapons assigned to 3 buttons, some of which have to be charged up to activate. The camera switches between several angles during the game, so sometimes it plays like a typical horizontal or vertical scrolling shmup and other times it plays like Sega classics Space Harrier and even Rez. It's a tight and tidy looking game, although admittedly there's not much variety in the enemy types. Nonetheless, there's a demo on Steam and any shmup fan would do worse than to download it.

Death Rally

Developer:	Remedy Entertainment
Publisher:	Remedy Entertainment
Platforms:	PC/iOS/Android
Price:	£7.99
Demo available:	No

What is it?

Max Payne and Alan Wake developer, Remedy Entertainment's original Death Rally was a top-down combat racing game, released 16 years ago for MS-DOS PCs. This remake plays much like the 1996 original, which in turn played much like Bally Midway's Spy Hunter. As the name implies, Death Rally features guns, bombs and various other weapons to help you dispose of the opposition. There's even an arena-style death match mode, which is all about destruction and not at all about racing. The remake manages to retain the feel of the original, but look a whole lot more modern at the same time. If you have a bunch of like-minded friends on-line, this is a blast.

Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit

Developer:	Arkedo
Publisher:	Sega
Platforms:	Xbox Live Arcade, PC, PS3 (via PlayStation Network)
Price:	1200MSP/£12.99
Demo available:	Yes

What is it?

Games don't get much more colourful and crazy than this rainbow-gore platformer from Arkedo and Sega. You play as the Prince of Hell, who has had the misfortune of being photographed playing in the bath with his rubber ducky — which is a very un-Prince of Hell-like thing to be caught doing. A quick look at the website where the pictures were published reveals 100 monsters have seen the picture. What can an undead lagomorph lord of the underworld do but kill every last one of them!? And so you set about exploring the incredibly detailed hell world of Hell Yeah! with the help of a jet pack-come-circular saw — yeah, you read that right. When you catch up to one of the 100 monsters, instead of a traditional boss fight, you get a 20 or 30 second-long mini-game, which invariably takes the form of quick time event. They are very fast and you have to understand the aim of these mini-games in an instant if you are to stand a chance of beating them. It keeps you on your toes in this amazingly detailed game. And much like last year's Rayman Origins, Hell Yeah! shows what 2D arcade games could have been had polygons and home consoles not taken over. Check out the demo and prepare for a visual feast.

That does it for this month. Check the Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.

MTW