Developer: Konami

Genre: Sidescrolling Shooter/ Third Person Shooter

Release: 1987

Contra NES Boxart

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.

Contra is the game that brought the above cheat code to fame.  It unlocks 3 extra lives, and there is absolutely no way to win without it. I died well over 50 times, but I used a Game Genie for Unlimited lives.. To the Review:

This game is amazing. Definitvely one of the best looking and playing games for the NES. It looks like some SNES or Genesis Games, except for the people, though. The levels were, well, extremely challenging,  but very fun to play, and designed very well. The enemies were advanced, and look decent. There are amazing backdrops; a clear competition to most SNES Games. All the weapons, and their projectiles, are extremely detailed for a 1980’s game. Most enemies are a 1-Hit kill, except for Sentries, Bosses, Turrets, Walls, and Power-Nodes. Most of the bosses are diffucult, ranging from Eyes, to 2 heads that spit into 4 heads, and even an Alien from the movie Alien. The gameplay is a simple run-and-gun sidescoller/ Third Person, but Contra is basically the game that defined the Genre.

The first game to include Third Person?

The third person, though, still needed some development, was very playable. The rolling “Tootsie Rolls”, as shown in the picture above, could only be jumped over randomly, due to the fact that Depth Perception was about as good as a Hedgehogs; (they have a poor depth perception; run into walls, etc.). The only problem in this game is Controls. A game system, that has 2 buttons, a Direction Pad, Start/ Select, should mean good and easy controls, but shooting downwards makes your move and shoot down at an angle. If one presses down, then you lay down; which is useful, but I’d rather have it so it shoots down. But, that’s my opinion, and everyone has a different one. The sound, although not the best quality, Works well, and unlike other NES games, sound files don’t overlap the music and/or other sounds. The game never lagged for me, even when there was 7 moving sprites on screen with a few explosions.

Gameplay Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Graphics Rating: 8.5 out of 10 stars

Sound Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Overall Rating: 8.83 out of 10 stars

And the best part about this game, It’s a super rarity. Luckily, I have a copy, mint condition. Buy this, rage hard a few times, but love it.

Oh, and it’s 2 Player.

Developer: Sonic Team

Genre: LUDICROUS SPEED Platforming/Beat ‘em up

Release: November 21 (XBOX 360), December 12 (PS3)

ESRB Rating: E+10

    SEGA created a game where Sonic can be controlled in 3-D and stepping back a decade and a half and using what made him popular, 2-D Sidescroller platforming.  The gameplay is phenomenal, about as “classic” as modern Sonic can get, with a ton of speed.  No doubt, this is the fastest (In-game speedwise) the hypersonic rodent has gone in any of his games. Unfortunately, there is a prominent “Press boost to win” feeling here, since you rarely slow down to do som of the platforming Sonic is known for.  The control scheme differs noticably from the Sonic Adventure series, among these is the button mapping.  Sonic’s Homing Attack is now mapped to X (Square for PlayStation owners) from tapping the jump button again after jumping and the Lightspeed Dash is now assigned to the Y button (Triangle) from X.  It sounds simple, but immediately after playing the Adventure series and popping Unleashed in your console, you’ll be thrown off momentarily. Controls set aside, Sonic’s gameplay in Unleashed is definitely a step in the right direction.

When the opening cutscene plays, you’ll notice Sonic gains an elastic Lycanthrope Alter Ego – the Werehog. He plays similarly to God of War and Virtua Fighter mixed, taking the combat from God of War and the combos from Virtua Fighter. He is greatly slowed down compared to his normal self, but as a tradeoff, is much stronger and.. Stretchier. At first, the Taffy-limbed Werebeast will feel boring, but when you level up his skills to unlock more moves, it feels much more fun and rewarding. Even still, the Werehog is a very forgettable, thoughtless attempt to add a different twist on Sonic’s Gameplay.

The Graphics engine for the game is appropriately titled “Hedgehog Engine”. It does a few things that no other game engine has done, among them is Global Illumination.  What this does is have every object reflect light (matted or otherwise) off of another object, onto another object, continuing this pattern until every object reflects off of every other object. A better explanation and visual examples can be found by clicking here. 

 The Music is simply a joy to listen to, the whole soundtrack is filled to capacity with upbeat music reflecting each nation’s culture. You will hear Chinese Music in Dragon Road (China), Early 1900’s/contemporary jazz in Skyscraper Scamper (New York City), and European sounding Orchestrated Rock hybrid in Rooftop Run (Europe). Every piece of music in this game is beyond memorable.

Click to enlarge.

Sonic Gameplay- Rating: 8 out of 10 stars Probably the fastest consistent gameplay experience I’ve ever had. It’s the most solidly built 3D Sonic game since the Dreamcast days.

Werehog Gameplay- Rating: 6 out of 10 stars Not terrible, it’s a fun beat-em-up, but the controls are far too loose when precision platforming is key. It also isn’t the best character SEGA could’ve added as an alternate game experience, since Knuckles could easily fill the Werehog’s spiked shoes.

Learning Curve-  Approx. 30 minutes, mainly due to button mapping and the Werehog’s gameplay.

Graphics- Rating: 10 out of 10 stars  Hedgehog Engine does its job and then some, producing some of the most gorgeous visuals on the current generation of consoles so far, without any doubt. Now if only these consoles could generate foliage correctly. Oh well.

Sound- Rating: 9 out of 10 stars  The music is fast paced and fun, the best that Sonic’s had in a very long time. (Not counting Sonic 2006, which had beautiful music, but a mediocre game.) The only problem with the sound is that Sonic repeats something he’s said while boosting a bit too early to say it again.

Glitches- Rating: 7.5 out of 10 stars  Nothing game breaking, but it’s hard to get the Werehog to jump off of a pole. Also, most of the known glitches are really useful, such as ones that enable you to access areas cut from earlier builds of the levels.

The Verdict: Overall Rating: 8.1 out of 10 stars

Take Sonic Adventures 1 and 2, remove game breaking glitches, pile on the speed, and add a Werehog. and you have about as good of a game as the Sonic the Hedgehog stages.  If Elastic-Armed Lycanthropic brawlers aren’t your forté, then you probably won’t enjoy 40% of the game, even though a lot of the Werehog stages are optional.  Even still, this game is like most High School students.  It just doesn’t know what it wants to be. A very fast platformer or a Clichéd brawling platformer.

Genre: Platforming

Developer: Sonic Team

Release: November 19, 1993

Sonic Boom, Sonic Boom, Sonic booooom~

SEGA CD has been deemed a complete failure by internet bandwagonners, complaining about all of the terrible FMV games, but they have obviously never played Sonic CD. This is one of the handful of exceptional games produced on the system, among Silpheed, the Lunar series, Eternal Champions and Shining Force CD.

Unfortunately for these people, they are blindly condemning the system that houses the single greatest Sonic game to date. A bold claim, yes, but it does live up to it.

The gameplay is pure fun. Sonic must travel through time to destroy Robotnik’s generator machines and in order to do that, he has to run at top speed for a long time. This can get difficult, since there aren’t many straightforward paths and he could run into an obstacle, thus slowing him down. Sonic CD was developed by seperate division from that of Sonic 2, this means that since there was very little communication between the two divisions, the games have similar qualities but executed differently. The most notable differences are that Sonic’s Spindash (Down+A) doesn’t require you to tap the A button repeatedly to charge, there is no original animation for a spindash (there is no smoke and he just has a rolling animation) and the Super Peel-Out (Up+A) and Sonic’s top speed running animation have his legs in a figure-8 blur shape. There are 7 Zones, 3 acts for each zone, and past, present and future versions of the first two acts of every Zone.  Add that all up and you get a fairly long game.

The game itself looks beautiful, everything looks just like it should in an early Sonic game. Not a tree or badnik out of place. Even though I feel that they should’ve made their own sprites for Sonic instead of using the ones from Sonic 1, his sprites do fit perfectly. One major thing I like about the level graphics – they’re trippy. Every single one of the Special Stages look like a serious acid trip, you destroy UFOs in an unknown area with a fading rainbow background. This game also has the single greatest intro to a Sonic game yet, as shown below (although, my opinion may change since I’ve seen Sonic Unleashed’s intro).

The music is simply amazing. There are two different soundtracks for the game, depending on your region. If you live in the United States or Canada, you have a different one than Europe and Asia. Both are equally as good. Palmtree Panic, Wacky Workbench, Collision Chaos and Tidal Tempest are some of the most memorable songs in the game.

The U.S. Intro Music

The Japanese and European Intro.

Gameplay- Rating: 10 out of 10 stars

Fast paced, exploration based, and just about as classic as Sonic can get.

Graphics- Rating: 9.5 out of 10 stars

Mode-7 Special Stages, original levels and badniks. The only unoriginal art in the game was all of Sonic’s movements except the Super Peel-Out.

Sound- Rating: 10 out of 10 stars

Both The US and JP/EU soundtracks are simply amazing and take full advantage of the SEGA CD’s then unsurpassed sound quality.

Glitches- Rating: 9.5 out of 10 stars

An extreme few bugs, but there is a little bit of slowdown when Sonic loses rings. The framerate drop was actually a software error that was fixed in later 2-D Sonic games, but has been present in Sonic 1 and 2.

Overall Rating: 9.75 out of 10 stars

Verdict: Simply the greatest Sonic game ever made. Definitely deserving of this 10.

P.S. I’m making a Sonic CD tie-in comic, look for it in about a month.

Genre: Racing

Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release: August 13, 1991

Want to blaze through futuristic Utopias exceeding 450 km/h (That’s 275 mph for the people who are too “patriotic” to use the metric system) against three other rivals in faux-3D MODE-7 euphoria? F-ZERO does just this.

F-ZERO is a game that you will not want to stop playing, It’s one of those games that finds it’s way into the innermost layer of your soul and takes over, effectively making you want to play it unendingly. It has perfect craft control, and you won’t feel cheated when you hit a wall or any other racer. You are able to choose from four characters: Captain Falcon (Blue Falcon), Doctor Stewart (Golden Fox), Samurai Goroh (Fire Stingray) and Pico (Wild Goose) who all have different attributes to their vehicles like cornering, acceleration, top speed or weight. The courses are very well mapped, with obstacles put in perfectly appropriate places. The difficulty is moderate, it isn’t hard, but it isn’t easy either.

The music is some of the best the SNES can produce, and every single track is a classic. The only thing I didn’t like was that Big Blue was synthesized with accordions.

MODE-7 is a graphics engine that scales an image to look like a 3-D floor. F-ZERO pulls this faux-3D off well, as the graphics were insane at the time.

Screenshots do not do the game justice.

Gameplay- Rating: 8 out of 10 stars Fast paced, extremely fun gameplay.

Story- No story rating. The only story is in the manual.

Graphics- Rating: 8.5 out of 10 stars Mode-7 makes everything truly look like a 3D environment even though the SNES couldn’t produce the real thing.

Sound- Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Bugs- Rating: 10 out of 10 stars I haven’t found any bugs. The game is bullet-proof.

Overall Rating: 8.63 out of 10 stars

Verdict:

It’s a very solid game, a must buy for anyone interested in futuristic racing, Captain Falcon and neat MODE-7 effects.

-Kevin

P.S. FALCON PAWNCH.

Developer: Sega-AM2

Genre: Light Gun Shooter

Date Released: December 1994

ESRB Rating: T for Teen

Virtua Cop, One of Sega’s greatest first 3D Games, Along with Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, and Virtua Strike. You play as a cop, and you’re trying to stop a mob leader killing all of his goons in the way. That’s the entire story. No nutshell intended. And yet, the boring story (or lack thereof,) doesn’t even remotely ruin the already awesome game.

The Saturn’s light gun feels like they put someone’s hand in a moudler for the grip, then added the innards and Gun looking parts on top of the mould, to create the most comfortable light gun in history (Super Scope as nothing on this). Somehow Sega made it so it can be used both left and right handed, and they are symmectrical. It can be used 1 or two handed, with light enough weight for one hand, or a grip for two hands.  The Start button goes right where your second hand’s thumb goes, so, it makes the most perfectly placed button in light gun history.  Back to the game, It has decent graphics for the system even though it’s a direct Arcade port. The physics look realistic, the gun is comfortable, it’s fun and the bosses are challenging. What more could you want?

Onward to the ratings:

Gameplay- Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Sorry, No story Rating, it would take the overall down too far.

Graphics- Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Sound- Rating: 6.5 out of 10 stars

Overall Rating: 7.17 out of 10 stars

See it in a store, buy it. See it in an Arcade, you better spend some of them quarters you brought. ($20 in quarters will suffice.)

-Travis M

Genre: Space Shooter

Developer: Game Arts

Date Released: 1986, 1993

VRC Rating: GA (ESRB Rating: E)

Silpheed, a space shoot-em-up, almost like Galaga, but in Full 3D, with a Storyline, and you can move forward and backward. This game is amazing. The game is based in the year 3076, the Earth is under attack. The space craft SA-77 Silpheed is the Earths last hope against the strike from “Zakalite”. Yeah, it sounds corny, but the game is addicting. You get 4 HP from shield, then a Weapon Malfunction, taking your attack down to 1 shot instead of 2, then an Engine Malfunction where you can’t move, then explode if you get hit again. The game is challenging, yet addictive. There are 11 Stages, with a boss at the end of each round, and then you battle “Zakalite”, for earth. The game is amazing, graphics good for the time, and sound is kind of lacking. The ratings:

Gameplay- Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Story- Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

Graphics- Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Music- Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

Overall- Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Verdict: The game is a definite keeper

-Travis M

Genre: Puzzle Platformer

Developer: Silicon & Synapse Inc. (Now Blizzard Entertainment, which is now Activision-Blizzard)

Date Released: 1992

VRC Rating: GA (ESRB Rating: E)

The Lost Vikings is about three Vikings, Erik the Swift, Baleog the Fierce, and Olaf the Stout, who live in the viking ages, who get kidnapped by Tomator and are sent into the future. and have to make your way out of his ship, and on your way home. But there is a twist. If any one of the three characters die during a level, you most likely won’t be able to finish the level. If Olaf dies, Baleog and Erik might be shot by a turret, killed by some monster of some sort, dying, and not being able to finish the level properly, and ultimately, restarting the level. But you get unlimited lives, and each character has 3 hitpoints. But if you hit a laser, you die instantly. There are certain levels (Every single level) where if one dies, the other ones cannot continue. I will not delve deeper, as spoilers would appear everywhere. Anyway, the Characters. Erik, is the only character who can jump or run. Baleog has a sword and a bow with unlimited arrows. Olaf has a shield, than can be used to block any attack, as a hang glider, or a platform for Erik. This game is rated by G4 as the Fifth best Blizzard Game ever created. The Lost Vikings is in a few of Blizzard’s other games, Such as the MMORPG World of Warcraft.

The Ratings:

Gameplay- Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Story- Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Graphics- Rating: 8.5 out of 10 stars

Music- Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Overall- Overall Rating: 8.88 out of 10 stars

-Travis M

PS. Buy this game or download the demo. It is amazing. I would recommend it to anyone.

Genre: Platformer

Developer: SEGA Mobile

Released: 2006/7

Sonic Jump has the most traditional story for a Sonic game out there, Robotnik steals the emeralds and you have to get them. The story is more in-depth than that, but it is a fairly accurate summary. Unfortunately in Sonic Jump 2, the Story mode is taken out, leaving you with an ending cutscene that won’t make much sense unless you have the original. Some other features that were taken away were the very nice Menu background from the original and lack of a jumping sound that the original has.

The gameplay is pretty much defined by the game’s title, you are forced to jump to your destination from floating platform to floating platform instead of running there, now don’t let that scare you away just yet, It is a lot more fun than you’d think. The controls are extremely simplistic but If you have large fingers, you won’t like using the number pad or navigation keys to control Sonic. And just like there were features that were taken out of the sequel, there have been some additions, such as a bonus level, the ability to collect Chaos Emeralds and a truly working double-jump(which is EXTREMELY handy).

The Graphics are an extreme improvement over the original. In Sonic Jump, his shoes were grey and he had no pupils, due to pallete and scaling limitations, but the problems seem to be gone in this version. Everything was beautifully redesigned in Sonic Jump 2 and the effects were really nice for a cellphone game.

As you can see, it looks pretty good for a cell phone game.

The music is probably one of my favorite parts of this game. All of the music is as perfect as MIDI can get. Due to limitations in the phone, you have an option to use sound effects only or Music only. The sound effects aren’t that great, so I’d strongly suggest the music.

Gameplay Rating: 7.5 out of 10 stars

Graphics Rating: 6.5 out of 10 stars

Sound Rating: 8.5 out of 10 stars

Overall Rating: 7.5 out of 10 stars

Verdict: If your phone carrier has it priced less than $8 then buy it. While it is a nice game to play, it isn’t something you would play for hours on end.

-Kevin

Genre: Platforming Shooter

Release: August 2, 1994

Developer: Shiny Entertainment (Now known as Double Helix Games)

V.R.C. Rating: GA (E Rating for ESRB)

Earthworm Jim. Just the name alone makes you want to play it. You play as Jim, an earthworm with a Super suit. The super suit was dropped by Psy-Crow, when delivering to, and yes, this is straight from the Instruction Manual, Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-Filled, Malformed, Slug for a butt. Seriously. Your mission is to tell Princess Whats-Her-Name that her Sister, The Queen Pulsating… whatever, is trying to make her evil. Now, I won’t give away the ending, but I will say it’s controversial, goofy, terrible (in a good way), hilarious and great all at once. Anyway, the Ratings:

Gameplay- Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Story- Rating: 8.5 out of 10 stars

Graphics- Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Music- Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Overall- Overall Rating: 8.63 out of 10 stars

-Travis

Release: 1995

Developer: Digital Pictures

ESRB Rating: T for Teen

I couldn’t even play through the first level. This game is terrible. But anyway, on the the review.

Once again, this game is terrible. Not only is it the traditional Live Action Full Motion Video game we love to hate, but the theme song, (Whatcha gunna get.. Gunna Get respect!), is terrible and the concept is moronic. You play as Ace, some guy nobody knows, and play a basketball game against five people, (Including basketball star Scottie Pippin…? Who’s that?) to gain respect to take home the Girl. The gameplay is horrible as well. Your character takes up half of the screen so you can’t even see where the ball is at. I figured out a way to get it in every time, but still, think about it. Do you want to play something this broken? The controls are Unnatural too. A is shoot when you have the ball, But when the other person has the ball, its A to block and C to try and knock the ball out of his hands. Another thing is that the Sega CD doesn’t even have enough RAM to run the Main Menu. When you score a ball, you get Respect points, whatever they are used for. I haven’t ever beaten any of the levels. If you get a pre-specified ammount of respect points, you get the girl. After you have beaten the 4 players, you get to challenge Scottie Pippin (Who sung the main song), and then I don’t know much afterwards. To summarize, this game is downright terrible. I suggest if you see it, buy it but only if you are a collector of bad games as it will be very rare sooner or later.

Gameplay- Rating: 1 out of 10 stars

Story- Rating: 1 out of 10 stars

Graphics- Rating: 2 out of 10 stars

Music- Rating: 1 out of 10 stars

Overall- Overall Rating: 1.25 out of 10 stars

-Travis M