I'm still working towards the next major review, so in the meantime, I'm taking today for another review of games I played on the Nintendo Classics. This time, I'm doing something different; two different consoles! Today, we're starting on known ground with the SNES, and then moving on to games from a console I've never played, the Sega Genesis!
The SNES: Fighters
I found out there was an undercurrent I hadn't heard about from the SNES era: The massive success of Street Fighter II Turbo led to a swath of copycats trying to hit the same level of fame by repeating the formula. But it's like I said a while ago: "If you follow the leader, you stay behind them". I bet you haven't heard of these games!
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| I mean, it does look a lot like Street Fighter II... |
Fighter’s History: Developed by Data East, first released in arcades in 1993, then for the SNES in 1994. Play as one of nine fighters from around the world, each with their own reason to be in this competition; and learn to use your moves against each opponent. This game reminds me of
Street Fighter II Turbo in terms of setting; it does try to set itself apart with new mechanics, however. One such mechanic is the “weak point” system, where you can temporarily stun a fighter once per round by hitting their weak point. But with that aside, it didn’t feel too revolutionary or special on its own – in fact, it looks so much like Street Fighter that Capcom sued Data East over it, though Data East won the suit by claiming that several elements in their game were inevitable for the genre.
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| Oh yeah, that's not Ryu at all. |
Tuff E Nuff: Another trend-chasing “clone”, released in 1993 and featuring only four fighters. In 2151, the world is in shambles after an apocalyptic war. Something about one powerful guy rising above all others using technology and becoming like a god, and setting up a worldwide tournament to find the strongest among the survivors… I guess. Anyway, you can only play as one of four different characters, going up against the other three as well as seven additional opponents in Story Mode. It’s… well, if we put aside the stupid story and the lack of playable characters, this one just doesn’t catch my interest at all. It fares even worse than Fighter’s History.
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This game has a fighter who's a dragon?
Okay, that's one extra point. |
Doomsday Warrior: Yet another fighting game, this one was developed by Laser Soft and released in 1992 in Japan and March 1993 in North America. Although this is a fighting game, this one has a story that does away with any tournament setting. Your character is one of seven heroes brainwashed into working for Main, a sorcerer, but they broke free of the influence. They must now fight the other six heroes, before moving on to the sorcerer’s two henchmen and, finally, Main himself. Between fights, you gain experience based on how much HP you have left, and can use Ability Points to have an easier time in the next battles. Which does sound like a situation where the better you are, the easier the game gets down the line, and vice versa; if you beat opponents with barely any health left, the next fights will be even harder. Some concepts here could be interesting, and the story at least tries to be different, but otherwise I didn’t feel like it was anything to write home about.
The SNES: Others
But, of course - there were different types of games on the console! Let's check out a few.
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| That's gonna be six aliens down with one arrow sphere. |
Cosmo Gang The Puzzle: A puzzle game first released in 1993 in Japan, three-piece blocks come down into a tube with both bricks and little aliens. You can align falling bricks into a full line to make them disappear. The aliens, it’s a little more complicated; they only disappear if you form a path out of them, then align a special arrow block at the end of that line. The arrow will then delete every aliens on its way to the bottom of the chain, causing the other bricks to fall and potentially form more lines. It’s a tough mechanic to get a hold of at first. The game is available in single-player mode in four difficulties, in multiplayer 1-v-1 mode, and even includes a puzzle mode. A fun concept that takes a lot of practice to master fully.
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| Looking good so far, I think the odds of victory are good. |
Magical Drop II: In this puzzle game released in 1996, characters from the tarot duke it out… in drop-destroying puzzles. You choose a character (each one has a favorite drop type and a difficulty level), then fight the others. Drops are little spheres descending from the top of the screen. With a button, you can grab a drop above the character (characters can hold up to 2 drops at once, but only if they are the same color), then toss them uopwards at another drop of that color. Create chains of 3 or more to destroy them. One catch is that you can only destroy a drop by tossing the drops of the same color right underneath it (It won’t disappear if you throw your drops on either side of it). You can break special drops to make one entire color disappear from your screen. The game is always 1v1, but you can play against the CPU. Also included are a Puzzle Mode and a Story Mode, which ends in a duel against the Empress. This one’s fun, though I had to figure out most of it on my own; it also gets devious, but you can learn steadily thanks to the Story Mode and its five difficulty levels, starting at Very Easy. The character designs are neat, too.
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Enemy alien designs are a blast as always. R-Type
knocks it out of the park in that department. |
Super R-Type: A sequel in the R-Type shmup series released in 1991, first year of the Super Nintendo’s availability in North America. R-9 is back in action against a new alien invasion and battles through seven stages of enemy ships and enormous bosses. Your ship can collect upgrades and boost its own speed or gain an Option that can be used as a second shooter. Every further upgrade to R-9’s weapon radically changes the way it shoots, from classic bullets to multiple bullets at once, to laser rings, to lasers that bounce off the walls. You don’t really get to choose what comes your way, it’s always the same power-ups. You die in one hit, but you have three lives, and can gain extras by collecting enough points; and when you have a Game Over, you can resume playing at the latest stage you had reached, so there’s some leniency here. You can equip your Option at the front or back of your ship, and when launched it'll be thrown forward or backwards, depending on its position, by pressing A. You can hold X to shoot a constant stream of bullets, or B to charge up your shots for more damage. The big annoyance? No checkpoints, so if your ship is destroyed, you start the stage all over – yep, even if you were at the boss. And that gets grating fast. In comparison, the lag that gets increasingly intense the more things fly all over the screen is barely a bother!
The SNES: Star Fox 2
Other than the SNES Mini, the Switch’s Nintendo Classics program is the other official way to play this game that everyone thought had been lost to time. Andross is back, and has deployed his forces to attack the Lylat System and Corneria directly. It’s up to Star Fox to stop this villain again! Compared to the three possible linear paths of the original Star Fox, this time around you can freely roam the Lylat System, choosing what to fight against. First difference: You can pick your playable character. There’s the original four (Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad) as well as two new recruits, Miyu and Fay, Howeveer, you'll claos choose a second character, and you’ll be able to switch between them with Select while both are available. When one goes down, you can either start over, or keep playing as the other, who will be on their own.
Another new feature: On a planet, pressing Select allows your Arwing to switch from flight mode to walk mode. Walker Mode auto-aims towards targets but cannot turn around by itself. In both modes, the ship you use has access to bombs (or other special items, depending on the character) that make quick work of opponents in an area; and when in flight mode, it can temporarily boost its own speed, allowing it to catch up with faraway targets.
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| Walking Arwing? .......walking Arwing. With chicken legs. |
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The first-person view is pretty great at times, when you're
aiming for specific targets. |
Gameplay-wise, the freedom gives plenty of new options; you can tackle any planet you want that has an enemy base, or you can attack enemy teams or battleships. Corneria itself has a percentage bar indicating how much damage it has sustained; if it hits 100%, you also get a Game Over, as your job is to protect it. Thus, you must also intercept missiles headed towards the planet. You only get access to the final stage and fight Andross if you eliminate all the enemy bases beforehand (there are more bases on higher difficulties). Andross can send his giant snakelike ship for an attack, and it’s quite the formidable boss if you don’t know what to expect. Finally, at a certain point of progress you’ll encounter the members of rogue team Star Wolf, who will force your characters into space dogfights, topped with a battle against Wolf O’Donnell himself.
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Bosses abound, and you have far more freedom than before
in terms of motion and options. |
Although I haven't finished this game yet, I do like that this Star Fox game played with the formula set up in the prior game. I love being able to pick a character to play, and having free reign opens up many gameplay possibilities on top of introducing an unexpected strategic aspect of time management, along with figuring out which threats need to be dealt with fast and which ones can wait. Takes a moment to get accustomed to the new mechanics, especially if you're a lot more used to those in the original Star Fox game. Only issue? Star Fox 2 is so short it can be easily finished in under an hour!
Sega Genesis / Mega Drive
Games from this SEGA console were added to Nintendo Classics starting on October 2021, following an announcement the prior September. Honestly, this may be the stuff I was looking forward to testing the most, since I have no experience with this console whatsoever, so all of these games are completely new to me. I don’t know what to expect, let’s just dive in. I might need some getting used to since the Sega Genesis had three action buttons (A, B and C), and I’m not yet used to how that translates to the Switch controllers.
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This perspective makes it tough to judge thge speed at which
enemy blasts come at your helicopter. And where,
specifically, they'll go, since they arrive so fast. |
Super Thunder Blade: One of the Sega Genesis’ launch titles, Super Thunder Blade is a home console adaptation of SEGA’s arcade Thunder Blade game. This is basically a shmup, but with sequences in 3D third-person back view, and in 2D with bird’s-eye view in some areas. Before playing, you can select the game’s difficulty, number of lives, and whether you want up and down controls to be reversed (as regular controls are pressing up to go down, and vice versa). Your helicopter, the titular Thunder Blade, has head-seeking missiles so you don’t even have to aim. However, it may still be tricky to avoid enemy shots considering your helicopter’s speed and how fast they can come at you. That said, there is the possibility of changing your flight speed. By Stage 2, avoiding hazards like stone pillars also becomes essential if you want to get through. I didn’t do great at this one, I kept flying into pillars, I didn't have the reflexes to avoid them. I'm not sure I enjoyed it all that much, maybe I should give it another chance.
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Why... Do... They... Keep... Coming... From... Behind?
This is gonna make me spent my smart bombs too quickly! |
Mercs: A Run’ n’ Gun game in which your character is part of the Mercs, an elite rescue group tasked with saving the President of America from an African guerilla organization. This game offers the option to play in both Arcade and Original modes, both of which function differently; no Lives system either way, but your character has a health bar. In Arcade, if your character’s HP is completely depleted, you get a few continues; in Original, no such luck, you die, it’s instant Game Over, good luck, though you unlock new mercs the further into the game you get and can switch to a still-alive merc when the one you were playing as dies. On the field, you can find health-restoring items, as well as new weapons. You can also pick up Megacrush Bombs, which when shot will destroy all enemies on screen and deal significant damage to bosses. Can’t say I played deep into this one, it got difficult fast (and it doesn't have the cushion of a Konami code to help a struggling new player). Way too many enemies came from behind, sneaking up on the player, which felt downright unfair.
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| Take that, you alien monsters! |
Alien Storm: A side-scrolling beat’em-up released in North America in April 1990, in which our hero battles hordes of invading aliens. You can pick between three characters, and then you’re sent off to fight through eight stages (only six in the original arcade version) with varied enemies . The three characters have the same moveset, so your choice doesn’t really make a difference. You can set the game’s difficulty in the options menu and can play alone or with a friend against the enemy waves. The stages follow a classic beat’em-up formula, albeit with often weird encounters like aliens disguised as normal humans or as trash cans. Some stages have boss fights, of course, and those get tough due to the characters’ lack of range attack options.
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I'm not even sure of everything I'm seeing in here.
That's a lot of monsters! And the |
Some stages end in a first-person shooter mode during which enemies come towards the screen, and you must take them out before they hit you. Two stages end with a speedy version of the beat’em-up, the second of which even had a boss battle. One peculiar element is how your main weapon, a flamethrower, needs Energy to run, so when you’re out of energy you’re left with lesser, close-contact weapons, instead. Alternately, by spending more Energy, you can call a nuke to instantly kill all the enemies on the screen. Your other offensive option is to jump and plunge forward into the opponents. I didn’t think the game was too much on the easy side (I’ve only beaten up to Stage 7), but it looked great and had cool moments. Decent, overall.
Space Harrier II: Released in August 1989, this game is described as a third-person rail shooter. You play as Harrier, who can both run or fly, and moves on the 2D plane of the screen, while the world moves towards him, creating a 3D effect through a checkered floor and enemies and obstacles approaching him. You can move up, down, left or right, and shoot with all three right-side buttons. Your character has four HP, and loses one if he is struck by an enemy, one of their bullets, or any obstacle such as by hitting a tree or a column. The most annoying part of the game, in my opinion, is how everything stops when the character is hurt, leading to a long animation that removes any momentum you could have amassed up to that point; the mercy invincibility afterwards is nice, though. There are 13 stages, and you can start with any one of the first twelve; but you must beat them all in one go to unlock the final one. While the concept is interesting and the bosses are fun, I thought that having roughly the same décor throughout made for a bland experience. You barely have time to move out of the way of ground obstacles as they grow on the screen. Gameplay also never really changes, and having just one action for all three buttons is meh. Maybe it was groundbreaking at some point, but I felt it was underwhelming.
That's it for today - I probably won't do a fourth article like this before the year ends. Still, keep your eyes peeled, I'll probably continue these next year.
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