Friday 15 March 2024

Jack Bros. (Virtual Boy)


 This is one of the better-known Virtual Boy games, but I'm still considering it obscure, because it's still a Virtual Boy game, and like most of them, it's an exclusive to a console that almost no-one owned and has only fairly recently seemed to have attracted the attention of emulator writers. It also has something of a positive reputation, which I think must be entirely based on the fact that it's a little-known, lesser-played action game starring characters and monsters from the Shn Megami Tensei series.

 


There's been games featured on this blog in recent times that I didn't particularly enjoy for various reasons, games I didn't feel like I could recommend, but I think it's been a long time since I've featured a game here that I've actively disliked as much as I do Jack Bros. It's a maze game in which you have to collect a bunch of keys in each stage to open up the exit (or exits) and go to the next stage. One thing I do like about it is that it utilises the VB's 3D in a nice little way: you get to the next stage by jumping off of the side of the current one, and you can always see the next stage floating in space far below the current one. I also like the use of a combined time limit/health bar. That's something you see in a lot of the old top-down racing games I love, and it's rare to see such a system in a game of another genre (the only other example I can think of off the top of my head is Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars).

 


That's about all I like about it, though. The problems start before you even get to do anything: at the start of every stage, a fairy will appear to deliver a few textboxes of information, that you've either already worked out or could have worked out within a few seconds of play. Things like several variations on "there are enemies on this stage that will attack you", or the revelation, at the start of the eleventh stage, that you can attack by using the right d-pad. I've managed to get over twenty stages into the game, and that fairy was still showing up at the start of each one to deliver some worthless advice.

 


Then you start playing, and the game is just so slow and boring and easy. You waddle around the small mazes, find a few keys, and jump off the side to the next stage. Like you've probably already worked out, it uses twinstick controls, though you can only move and shoot in the four cardinal directions. Even with this in mind, the normal enemies are no threat to you at all, and the bosses only slightly moreso. There are three characters, though only one of them is really viable. Jack Frost has ranged attacks, but they're so slow and weak that he's useless. Jack Skelton does decent damage, but only at melee range. Jack Lantern has fast-firing projectiles that do decent damage, so is better than the other characters in such a way that makes them totally pointless.

 


Like I said back in the first paragraph, I think that all of the goodwill people have towards this game comes from its association to a beloved series. Unfortunately, for the first time in a long time, this is a game that was hard to review simply because playing it was such a tedious chore that I would put off going back to it, and wished I was playing anything else the whole time I was playing it. I'm not writing off the Virtual Boy as a console, though: I've played a few other games that have been better and/or more interesting, and I'll almost definitely cover at least some of them here in the future.

Friday 8 March 2024

Royal Stone - Hirakareshi Toki no Tobira (Game Gear)


 Back when I was a teenager, one of my friends' bedrooms had no windows, and a bunch of us used to hang out in there, watching anime and playing videogames. The lack of windows is relevant because he had a Game Gear lying around, and we'd sometimes take turns playing through stages of a little turn-based strategy game named Crystal Warriors (which was called Ariel: Crystal Densetsu in Japan), and the Game Gear's screen was bright enough that if someone was playing it, it was possible for someone sat next to them to read comics by its light.

 


Anyway, Royal Stone is the sequel to Crystal Warriors, though it only ever got released in Japan, unfortunately. I can't remember anything about the plot of the first game, so I can't comment on that, but Royal Stone is a true sequel in every other aspect, replicating the original's concepts but in bigger, better, and more sophisticated ways. Crystal Warriors had crudely drawn characters wiggling weapons at each other, Royal Stone has detailed characters full of personality attacking each other in cool little psuedo-3D scenes. Crystal Warrior's towns were crude and all identical, being more like slightly glorified menus than actual places, while Royle Stone's towns are like those you'd see in most 8-bit RPGs. The element system carries over too: Water, Fire, and Wind all have a Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship, while Earth (usually reserved for important characters) is neither strong nor weak against any of the elements.

 


I assume that Ariel was a big hit in Japan, as its clear that this game was a lavish production. It looks better than some contemperanous 16-bit console RPGs, and I feel confident in saying it's the best-looking game of the Game Gear's original lifespan (and the Game Gear is a system with no shortage of great-looking pixel art), not being bettered until 2020's GG Aleste 3. It even has a seperate copyright credit for the character designer (Kugatsuhime, of Monster Maker fame) before the title screen appears, which was pretty rare in general back then, and even moreso for a handheld game. The plot has also had a lot of effort put into it, not just in the writing, but also the presentation. There's various twists that occur, a bunch of different factions warring against each other, a protagonist with a tragic backstory and more. Like I keep saying, it's all so much more than you'd expect from a handheld game in 1995.

 


And as for the presentation of the story, it's mostly pretty standard for this kind of game, with you going around towns and talking to people, and also your enemies taunting you or declaring their intentions at the start of battles. But there's other things too: there's flashbacks that are shown in the game's graphics but with a sepia toned pallete. One particularly impressive example uses the game's battle engine to tell the story of the protagonist's dad getting betrayed and falling in battle. Furthermore, when your party members fall in battle, they're just dead and gone, and they all have a unique line of dialogue to act as their last words. One character uses this to declare his love for the protagonist, something that he never mentions at any other point!

 


Royal Stone is an excellent game, and has impressed me in so many ways the whole time I've been playing it. There was an instance somewhat early on, the first time I lost a couple of characters in battle, where I was ready to give up on the game, thinking my diminshed force might make the game unplayable. But I persevered, and with some slightly better strategy to compensate, I still got through the next few battles and gradually recruited a few new friends. I think that's probably one of the best compliments you can pay a strategy game, isn't it? That you can make up for having a weaker force by just thinking about what you're doing a bit better? Unfortunately, SEGA exhibited some of their trademark wisdom, and decided no-one outside of Japan would be interested in playing what was probably the best handheld strategy/RPG at that time, and so the only way to play it in English is via a fantranslated ROM. But we are lucky enough, at least, to have that available to play, and you definitely should.