Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #2

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I was planning on continuing these articles under the Nintendo Switch Online denomination, but then Nintendo decided to change it due to the upcoming release of the Switch 2; they are now known as the Nintendo Classics (...even though it includes stuff from the SEGA Genesis, and a lot of third-party games released on retro consoles). Oh well! I'll manage. Just a quick name change, right?

I was hoping to cover a different console for the second such article in a row, but as it turns out, the NES section has most of the shortest games among the Nintendo Classics, so – might as well do this again! For the foreseeable future, I might try to release full articles covering the short games from just one console, at least as long as it will be possible. I'll cover games from other consoles soon enough!

Sports

Go Canadians Go! ...Oh wait. Canada isn't one
of the two teams here.

Ice Hockey: Released in January 1988 in Japan and two months later in North America, this title is self-explanatory – you play a hockey team in a match against another. You choose your team (one out of six), then the opponent, the speed of the game, the duration of the match. After which, you can change the layout of your team of five; the goalie never changes, but the other teammates can be slim and weak but fast, average all around, or stocky and slow but strong when brawls happen. Yep, there can be brawls in this game. Aside from when you’re put in control of the goalie, you swing the hockey stick with A, and swap to another teammate with B. It’s a complicated game that requires way more skill than I’m likely to ever have, and I doubt I’ll play it beyond these first few tests. Though, I am told there’s a decent number of extra little programming details, like the crowd noise being louder when the game is a close one.

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We end this today!

Krawlosphere

Final dungeon looks like a dump and is just not
interesting to explore. Checks out.

Rallen and Jeena land their ship inside the planetoid and step out. The place is nothing but writhing Krawl flesh. Gross. No other way but forward. I mean it, too; this dungeon is nothing but one long corridor forward with larger rooms for battles. You have exactly one unavoidable battle in each corridor, and then one longer fight in each room. Multiple rounds of enemies topped with mini-bosses. Thankfully, the mandatory fights don’t return once they have been cleared, which means that you can go back to the ship at any time to save, heal your Spectrobes and swap your team around.

Rice balls! Pluck 'em right out of the ground, and eat 'em!
It's okay, they're clean! Somehow!

Kinda annoys me that there’s no other way whatsoever to heal your Spectrobes, other than when they level up. The only healing items in this game are rice balls, coming in four varieties that heal your player character 30, 100, 300 or 1000 HP. Nothing for your creatures. No way to bring them back into action during a battle after they’re fainted, either – no Revives here! Nope, the only controllable way to heal any of these battle beasts is through a save point. And, oh yeah, you can’t buy rice balls anywhere. There's only two ways to find some. The first is to find them with your searcher critter. The second is to discard a cleaned fossil, which trades it away for random items – can be minerals or rice balls, gotta be lucky. Not a very reliable thing. Kinda sucks when you're short and need many, quick, before heading out to fight a boss.

These charged attacks are pretty awesome to watch.
They're better when they actually deal, y'know, good damage
to the enemies and bosses.

And the Krawlosphere being what it is, you won’t find any fossils, crystals or healing items here. Any light patches to investigate will summon enemy encounters. Which, to be fair, makes the planetoid a perfect training spot if your team is still weak against what’s coming up.