GAME #007 | ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK Review (1990) | Not Beaten

  

ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK (March, 1990)

Genre: Adventure, RPG

Platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS

Developer: Horror Soft

Publisher: Accolade

Started: September 7, 2022

Finished: September 7, 2022

Beaten: NO

Playtime: 4 hours

(Score on the spreadsheet) 

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is an adventure game / RPG developed by Horror Soft and released by Accolade in March 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and MS-DOS. It is named after the movie that released in 1988. A sequel was released in 1992, which already gives us a hint that this game must have done alright commercially.

And sure enough, the reception for this game was very good. On Wikipedia you won't find a score below 4 stars or 81% and it received the Computer Gaming World RPG of the Year Award for 1991. Not sure why it won a year later, but know that the competition wasn't light at the time.

In Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, we play, well, ourselves, called upon by Elvira to prevent her great-great grandmother Emelda's return from the dead. The game plays in a castle and has multiple elements. It is part point & click adventure with its typical verb-interface (open, unlock, look in), part action game with real time combat and part horror game as it uses a lot of gore and has some scary surprises in store overall.

If you don't know Elvira, as a non-American I didn't before today (though her style does look familiar), she is a character portrayed by Cassandra Peterson and was most popular in the 80s. She is most known for her gothic, cleavage-showing wardrobe and her edgy humor. 

I checked out the movie before playing and thought it was a funny movie, though a lot of gore and horror is present in it, so I wasn't sure what to expect with this game. Sure enough, it's a lot of tense, creepy horror interspersed with Elvira's edgy humor.

In the game, you control your character by clicking forward, turn right, turn left or turn around. Whenever an enemy approaches, you start in attack mode and have to click LUNGE / HACK to strike. Depending on a variety of stats and some RNG, your strike hits or is blocked. If you hit, often you get a second attempt (again, depending on your stats vs the enemies) but if you are blocked, you go over to Defense Mode and have to BLOCK / PARRY. 

But let's dive deeper into that whilst we go through each category in more detail.

STORYTELLING

You start the game by moving two steps forward before being arrested. In a humorous little scene, your character is in his dark prison cell as light shines in and the characters jaw DROPS. In comes Elvira, and she quips that you were sent to save *her*, but instead she is saving you. She brings her to her room in this castle, in which she is a prisoner. Her great great grandmother Emelda is about to awaken from the dead, so you have to help prevent that from happening. 

Elvira then is found in a kitchen where she can mix spells for you, she can also climb into a little hole if you find her some light for that and there are a variety of other things that she does / expects you to do, but most of the time, she is not gonna be on screen. She is pretty much her witty self from the movies and TV shows and it works well.

Then there is the guy who arrested you, who seemed to be on drugs or something, and later an old woman who takes over the kitchen, meaning you have to "scare her off", otherwise Elvira will not mix any more spells for you. 

Depending on how you stand on her edgy humor and a horror story like this one, this might work or it might not. It's not particularly advanced story telling and most of the game is spent in combat or exploration, with some environmental storytelling as well to be fair. There isn't that much here overall, but it's solid.

GAMEPLAY

Combat took a while to get used to, especially defense. Your enemy reaches back for a swing for a second before striking to your left or your right. From what I figured out, BLOCK or PARRY is assigned to one side during a specific fight, so when he attacks left, you BLOCK for example. However, I believe stats matter here too and sometimes, I would click it too early or too late and the swing would hit me anyway. Considering that you have 99 LIFE to start, you can lose it all rather quickly, especially because the tougher enemies can be found very early on. But the game has a real time combat system that was uncommon for the times and even if it isn't great, it's still unique.

This means that the entire game is filled with trial and error moments that you will die to dozens, if not hundreds of times. Make sure to save often. 

The rest of the game is puzzle solving and exploration. For example, outside in the garden area, a man stands with a bird on his arm. When you get too close, the bird jumps into air and flies at you. Within this time, you have to figure out how to defeat it. Turns out, there is a very specific way to beat it, and if you don't have the item, a bolt, go and find it. The game doesn't indicate that you need it though, but this is one of the easier "puzzles" to solve. Problem is, your aim is terrible, so you can't hit it. What do you do now? The manual has a tip regarding that if you're stumped, but even though the answer is very "game-y", it kinda makes sense.

Many puzzles are like that. Often they do make sense and you'll get them eventually. The problem is, figuring out where item A is to use it with item B to get the wanted result can take a long time and will involve a lot of dying. Considering your life points are rather low, even saving a lot will still mean losing a lot of time to find this random item. Games back in the day did this a lot I notice to add an additional "challenge" for people looking to complete games, so you probably will either have to use a guide or look for hours and get lucky. Not the most fun.

To complete puzzles and for combat purposes, you have an inventory and can drag and drop items in and out of it. The manual says that you have a lot of space and shouldn't be shy when picking things up, however there are a lot of necessary items to collect and going over the invisible quota happened quicker than I would have liked. If you are over encumbered for too long, you become too tired and the game ends, so it's actually important to pay attention. Luckily you can simply drop items anywhere and then pick them up later. But there's a lot of inventory management without a lot of "reliable" management to be done. 

Plus, there is a kitchen where Elvira mixes you spells, but once you visit and exit for the first time, the kitchen is blocked by an old lady and you need to find an item later to get her out. Until then, no spells. That means you shouldn't go there for a while, but if you don't, you gotta keep the ingredients in your inventory, which means you have to manage dropping them somewhere and getting back to them later. There is some strategy involved here, but to me it wasn't the most fun. 

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE

There is a little line by Elvira when she first talks to you, but it's not even linked to what she is actually saying, so it's not much more than a noise and not worth discussing. 

The sound design is solid. From the sound of swords clashing to the sound of enemies shouting when being hit (though the sound is the same for both man and monster), not to mention the sound when you beat a sharp wooden stick into the chest of a vampire with a hammer, the sound design works well in line with the game's atmosphere. 

The real highlight of this game though is its soundtrack (for the Amiga version). There are three or four tracks that you hear based on the location you are in and all set the mood perfectly. The track in the garden especially I could definitely listen to outside of the game. The music is creepy, unsettling truly does the most work to make this game feel like a horror game. I can recommend a listen.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN

Oh man, what can I say here? I think it's safe to say that this game is one of the bigger gore-fests of its time. The first character you meet that imprisons you for example has no pupils. Or the first time you are in combat, you realize that whenever the enemy's health depletes, cuts in his chest become visible. But that's the harmless stuff. 

Because whenever you die, your character's demise is shown in very graphic ways. When the bird manages to kill you, it takes your eyeballs and you see your character in that particularly gruesome image. When a vampire bites you, you have bite marks in your head. When the old lady gets her hands on you, your head ends up swimming in a cooking pot. There are many more unique ways you die and even the most basic death is hard to look at, not to mention that your character is bloodied in every scene.

ATMOSPHERE

The grotesque design mixed with the tense music and the appearance of a bunch of in-theme characters make this one of the more atmospheric games of 1990. 

CONTENT

If you know what to do, this game takes a bit over an hour. If you don't, you'll probably be busy closer to 10 if you use guides sparingly. 10 hours will be filled with a lot of reloading and guessing on which way to go in which order, in addition to inventory management, so a shorter length or a bit less complexity in the level design would have done this game good I think. 

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN

As I mentioned, the design is too complex at times and a lot of it has to do with the dungeon (here: castle) being small overall, but filled with enemies that are too strong at pretty much every second door, meaning you will go into the wrong direction or enter the wrong room on a very regular basis. 

CONCEPT/INNOVATION

The amount of gore present here is certainly noticeable and I'm gonna say it's unlikely that there were many other games like this back in the day where you had so many different ways of seeing your character's death. If you enjoy horror games, this definitely pushed the scene in the right direction, but if you're in it for the RPG mechanics, it'll probably not be as welcomed. 

REPLAYABILITY 

Once you have finished the game, there is some replayability in approaching puzzles slightly differently or of course trying to beat your previous time (or limiting the amount of reloads), but generally the game is fairly linear in how to solve things.

PLAYABILITY 

The game is perfectly playable.

OVERALL

The focus on puzzles in addition to the RPG mechanics present in this game make for awkward gameplay mix. If you're a fan of one genre but not so much of the other, this will probably be off-putting to both fronts. If you enjoy both genres however and don't mind experiencing how a mix between the two would work, and especially if you don't mind but rather welcome the horror elements in this game - which set a great atmosphere - you'll likely enjoy the game for what it's worth, however the complexity and the reliance on save states may be frustrating to you. 

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

• Leah Wesolowski for Computer Gaming World Issue 82 (May 91): "these images are simply not acceptable for two-year-olds" (in reference to the gory scenes) | No shit, Leah.

The "TGB" Challenge Moves On To 1991 - Here Are My Plans

Hey everyone,

Mr. Kane here, checking in. I've just put my Steam Deck down for the last time for games released in 1990, as ACTRAISER signifies the end of our, checks notes, 159-hour journey through games released in 1990. 

There was plenty of bad and mediocre, plenty of good and even some all-timers included in this batch, and I'm looking forward to diving into that in another post soon. In that post, I will list my Top 5's for both Best and Worst Games I've played all year, plus give out a bunch of different Awards as well, which I hope to make a tradition whenever a year's worth of games is completed.

The challenge is now ongoing for over 3 months, and in this time I've learned plenty about how I want the challenge to proceed from here on out. I wanted to use this post now to go through what exactly I have learned and what I'm planning on doing with the start of 1991. 

• I had a hard time deciding how exactly to review the games. Do I go for a traditional review that is not divided into "chapters/segments" but rather tries to talk about each aspect of a game fluently? Do I try to do some quick "to the point" reviews so that people can quickly grasp whether I enjoyed the game and whether they themselves would enjoy it as well? Or do I want to talk about each category of mine individually in order to discuss each game as thoroughly as I can? I've tried out all of these methods for the 35 games I played and reviewed so far, but I think from here on out, I'm going to stick with talking about each category individually. You want to know about the story? Read the story part to get a deeper look into it. You want to know about the gameplay? Check the gameplay category. You get the idea. I think this will work well, especially if I attempt to be more detailed in each category I cover. 
• From July 1991 on out, I will have a feature that will appear once every 1-2 weeks, where I will go through 3 gaming magazines from that time and talk about games that are reviewed and topics that I find interesting. This way, those of you who are as clueless about gaming history as me (or were born after 1991, also like me) can enjoy finding out how the gaming landscape looked like at the time. And those who lived it can reminisce about the past. I think this will be a fun little feature. The three magazines I have selected for 1991 after Electronic Gaming Monthly (1), GamePro (2) and Video Games & Computer Entertainment (3). 
• There have been multiple weeks where pretty much all games I played were bad. These "runs of misery" as I'd like to call them didn't leave me burned out, yet, however I did realize that playing a lot of these games doesn't really offer me, you nor this whole challenge anything of substance. A bad game is a bad game, and it's the worst kind if it isn't at least hilariously bad at the same time. But many of these games I played during these "runs of misery" were just a slog to go through. For example, from October 7th to October 20th, I've played 7 games. None of these received a rating higher than 54 from me, and the only one that got the 54 was Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, a game that received this rating more for its presentation than its gameplay. And this run included some big time stinkers like The Amazing Spider-Man for GameBoy, The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout and Skate or Die 2. What I'm trying to say is, if games stink and they don't really try to move the needle in any way, then I don't have much reason to play them.
• Continuing on from my last point, I have therefore decided to narrow down the types of games I will play for this challenge. There will be plenty of bad games to rant about still, I'm sure, but if I stumble upon games in my spreadsheet or on the magazines that we will go through that barely have any views on YouTube, that barely have user reviews on sites like Grouvee or Backloggd, that simply do not look at all like a game I would enjoy or that look very much like games I've already played plenty of times ... well, then I will remove these games from the spreadsheet. Doing this, I have reduced the 1991 play-list from 107 games to just 50. This will still cover the year very well I think and also will allow us to move through the years quicker and get to those classics that I am so anxiously anticipating to experience.

As we go further into this challenge, I might start doing YouTube playthroughs or reviews of some of the games I play, but that is something I haven't decided upon yet. For now, I want to thank all of you have followed the challenge along so far and am looking forward to make this challenge bigger and better as we go through 1991.

Game #006 | THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Review (1990, Commodore 64/Amiga/Atari ST) | Not Beaten

 

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (March 26, 1990)

Genre: Platformer

Platforms: Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST

Developer: Oxford Digital Enterprises

Publisher: Paragon Software (NA), Empire Software (EU)

Started: September 6, 2022

Finished: September 6, 2022

Beaten: NO

Playtime: 2 hours

(Score on the spreadsheet) 

We are now in March 26, 1990. The more popular Amazing-Spider Man game of the same year was still four months away, but developer Oxford Digital Enterprises pounced and released their version first for the Commodore 64 and Amiga, before porting it to most notably the Atari ST later. Considering that the other game released for a handheld device only (the Game Boy), there wasn't really any competition between both games, so this narrative I just created is probably incorrect. 

But here it is, The Amazing Spider-Man, published by Paragon Software (NA, Empire Software for EU) and being so far inferior to the Game Boy game that even the description of it on Grouvee reads "Not to be confused with the Game Boy title released in the same year". Or how about the Marvel Fandom Wiki having a page for the Game Boy game, but no mention of this one. 

To keep it short, the plot in this game revolves around Mysterio, who kidnaps Mary Jane. That's it. There is a comic book style presentation of the story and then there is one happy ending image at the end, but that's it. You didn't play these platformers for their stories though, so what was gameplay like? Well you were controlling fat Spider-Man. 

With that, let's dive into each aspect of my reviewing system one by one, starting with, very briefly, the story.

STORYTELLING 

Again, you didn't play these games for their story, even though games like Ninja Gaiden obviously did at least make an effort in that regard during this time (the sequel released only two weeks after this Spider-Man game). We do rate story(telling) though, so let's see. As mentioned, the beginning of the game, at least in some versions (the Atari version didn't even have these from what I've seen), shows us three slides of images designed like in a comic book, where we see Mysterio kidnapping Mary Jane and Peter Parker being angry. That's pretty much it. Environmental storytelling is pretty much non existent throughout, there is little sense to be made with the sheer randomness with which assets were used, most even being unassociated with Spider-Man (there are a lot of R2D2s running around in this game). 

GAMEPLAY 

When I say "fat" Spider-Man, I mean it. The first image of gameplay you see is Spider-Man hunched forward like he's either been playing too many video games and ruined his posture or gained a ton of weight or he has significant back problems. Moving forward reveals even worse truths. Spider-Man walks as if he is carrying a bag filled with 200kg of sand and when he jumps, he does levitate for a good 3 seconds, but only jumps up a few inches overall. When he falls down, he often lands flat on his face and walks around sniffing the floor for a good few feet before you can manage to make him stand upright again. When he climbs walls, he doesn't climb up or down like a spider, but more like a cat, using both arms simultaneously first, followed by both of his legs to push himself forward.

Long story short, the animations are very bad, funnily so. The slow movement just makes it worse, because funny bad is always manageable, but boring bad is just a slow death to the players enjoyment. I often look at gameplay online after I finish playing and pretty much always do I find hundreds of nostalgic comments that range from "this was my childhood game" to "this is one of the greatest games ever made", and while some of the former was present with this game as well, most did acknowledge that this game is actually just not good. Doesn't mean the memories weren't precious of course.

Progressing in this game is done by climbing in a very slow pace, by using your web to fly over enemies and by activating buttons that allow you to progress forward. If you position yourself correctly, you can even shoot your web to access buttons that are otherwise inaccessible. Enemies in this game are skeletons, rats, R2D2s and basic humans, among others. Rats for example follow you around, while most of the others have a set route which they follow. Most enemies don't bump into you, but they rather just walk past you, and every second that you are in contact drains your health. Your health bar is displayed as a standing giant Spider-Man to the right of the screen. His body starts turning into a skeleton with each percent of health that you lose, starting from his feet all the way to to the top of his head. Once he is a full skeleton, the game ends.

There are some OK ideas here, but overall it is just not fun. 

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE

There is no voice acting, but in the Amiga version, there is the oddest remix of a male and female voice saying Spider-Man, making me feel glad that no actual voice acting is in the game. Well, there is the "ugh ugh ugh" sound when you or enemies take damage, which just sounds unsettling.  

I didn't figure out a way to turn off the music and only display sound effects, but I have seen plenty of videos with that kind of alignment. For me, the music played nonstop and it was just one track being put on repeat. Music in this generation of video games was pretty catchy most of the time and this was certainly OK, but not something I would want to listen to outside of this game. Plus some variation would have been nice.

Sound in this game is abysmal. The sound of the web, the sound when you step onto a platform and the annoying click it makes at the end, the aforementioned damage noise, the awful sound of doors opening and no actual sound for a lot of the moving platforms, enemies and effects (which I guess I should be glad for) mean that the overall sound design is just very poor.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN

There are just a bunch of random assets used and placed to create levels that make sense from a level design standpoint, but little sense from an artistic standpoint, let alone from a Spider-Man universe standpoint. Not much to like here either.

ATMOSPHERE

The incoherent art design and world building, an average singular track vs. poor sound design (if you use music, you can't really hear the sounds, so pick your poison, though I'd choose the music) and a game that is not a looker even for its time and you got a game that is bereft of atmosphere.

CONTENT

Once you get past the slow animations, the poor controls and everything else, the puzzles in this game are actually interesting enough and the game does offer a challenge to those looking for one. There isn't that much variety in what this game offers though, it's a lot of buttons pressing to unlock other buttons to press, which open up new locations or make your enemies fall to their deaths.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN

This isn't actually that bad. The game misses some variety, there isn't really anything to unlock, but there are puzzles present and some that require some brain power to solve. There is also some good interconnectivity here and there, meaning a previously inaccessible area can be unlocked as you progress, leading you back to a previous room, where a previously "non-pressable" button can now be pressed to progress elsewhere. It's not always intuitive, it's repetitive but it's probably the best part about this game.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION

Apart from the web swinging, which is 'unique' but in a bad way, there is nothing here that stands out.

REPLAYABILITY 

If you do enjoy this game, there is of course the added incentive of beating your high scores and your times. There isn't much leeway in how you can complete this game, there isn't that much creative space for that, but you can always try to be quicker and receive less damage I guess.

PLAYABILITY

The game works well, the only issue I had was that sometimes I would clip into a level below the one I was on and the game would glitch out for a second. There is even a clip of someone glitching his way from the early stages all the way to the final level, if you want to check that out.

OVERALL

Definitely the worst game of this challenge so far and will probably find its way into the Top 5 Worst Games of the Year by the time I finish 1990. Or I've been relatively lucky with the first 4 games and this is what a good chunk of 1990 will look like. I doubt that though. Don't play this game if you're looking for a fun platformer, there are hundreds of better options out there in this time frame.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

Nothing. I couldn't find a single magazine that reviewed this game at the time. I did find the Game Boy in every single one though.

Game #005 | CASTLE OF ILLUSION STARRING MICKEY MOUSE Review (1990) | Not Beaten

CASTLE OF ILLUSION STARRING MICKEY MOUSE (November 21, 1990)

Genre: Platformer

Platforms: Sega Genesis, Master System, Game Gear, Sega Saturn

Developer: Sega (AM7)

Publisher: Sega

Started: October 25, 2022

Finished: October 25, 2022

Beaten: NO

Playtime: 1.5 hours

(Score on the spreadsheet) 

Quick word on the challenge I'm doing:

The Sega Genesis obviously launched in Aug 1989 in NA already, so it's not like Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse is the first 16 bit game to come out since I started this, nor is it even the first Sega Genesis game I've played. So far I've played Batman and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker for the system. 

But we're now in November 1990, and this game actually released on the same date as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which would be November 21st, 1990. That console, as is well-known, is the best-selling 16-bit home console, so that's why we're starting to really get into 16-bit territory here, and I am incredibly excited to try out a bunch of classics for the first time from an era many still call the best for console games - if not games in general.

Is this game, developed and published by Sega for the Sega Genesis, the highlight of the era already? Some say it's right up there with Super Mario World as one of the best platformers of this time (SMW also released on November 21, 1990) but to spoiler my conclusion a little bit, I don't really think it's close. This game is fun but has plenty of flaws, so let's get into it.

____________

STORYTELLING

The story is explained at the beginning and in the manual. Minnie is kidnapped by the evil witch Mizrabel (great name btw), because she is jealous of Minnie's beauty. So Mickie makes his way to the Castle of Illusion to save Minnie. An old man there tells him that he needs seven gems of the rainbow to rescue her. Why? Who knows.

There will be an epilogue as well but no other form of storytelling in between from what I can tell, so nothing worth talking about here. 

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is very simple and basic. You move from side to side in this 2D platformer and can either jump on enemies or shoot projectiles (often fruit) at them. If you jump on them, it catapults you up and enables you to reach otherwise unreachable platforms. That's definitely the most unique part about this game's gameplay.

Levels are heavy on platforming and the likelihood that you will fall to your death increases with each level you pass. One cave level where the next platform was so easily miss able if you jump a milli-second too early was especially frustrating.

The game starts you off with three health, 3 lives per continue and 2 continues. Your i-frames after taking a hit only last a second or so, so it's very easy to die within seconds. Since hit frames are sometimes too big, enemies sometimes just pop out of the ground with almost no forewarning and a jump on the enemy's head doesn't get recognized properly (you get damage for missing it), you often lose health unfairly. This is precisely where any comparison to a game like Super Mario World is just not reasonable. I'm playing Super Mario World as we speak and the difference in quality is so high that it actually surprised me quite a lot to see people actually comparing the two.

I've also encountered a bug where I somehow jumped over a tree during a boss fight and couldn't go back to the other direction, meaning that I was stuck. 

Gems are acquired by beating bosses after the end of each level, which aren't too difficult, but I failed the second one twice because my jumps on his head just didn't register for some reason. I decided to abandon the game some time after the third boss because while I was doing platforming on tiny tiny platforms, I realized the game didn't immediately register that you let go of the forward button, which made me slip off the platform and fall to my demise. 

Apart from these issues it's not a very difficult game, but there is also nothing really exciting about it. There is plenty of stuff you can argue for here apart from its gameplay, and I'll likely agree with you, but I must say that this was not that fun to play.

 

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE

No voice acting. Sound design was mostly pretty good and I liked how a lot of actions actually got a sound to accompany them, like even jumping or throwing stuff, which doesn't happen in a lot of platformers I've played recently. The music was fine overall but I can't say I liked it that much. My favorite track definitely was the one used for the boss fights but the soundtrack just didn't get me into a playful/whimsical kinda mood like I would have expected.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN

Lots and lots of colorful, bright worlds are present in this game, with plenty of variety between them. To mention something a little more lowkey, I liked how the clouds outside kept moving even if you were standing still and how much detail was put into the horizon, even if it's not something a player will really focus on a lot. 

But simply graphically, this is definitely one of the best one's you will find from this entire year.

ATMOSPHERE

I didn't always feel like the music used for a particular level necessarily fit the mood, but overall the colorful levels and their overall designs managed to do a solid enough job of putting me in the mood of playing a Mickey Mouse platform adventure. If someone is reading this: Sometimes I feel silly seriously critiquing a game like this, at the end of the day it's a game for children that isn't meant to be taken apart this way. Right? I don't know, I'm definitely going to be glad when a lot more mature games start coming up on the playlist.

CONTENT

There is some fine content here for platformer enthusiasts. This game should take about 3 hours for your average gamer and lead you through a variety of different worlds. But the game overall has pretty basic gameplay and plenty of frustration to come with it, even if there certainly is much worse out there in that regard.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN

Mostly the levels are designed pretty much as you would expect. The difficulty is definitely lower than for many comparable platformers. Most of the time you just go into a specific direction and are offered with very little choice in how to deal with the dangers. Move, kill or avoid, beware of gravity, find the exit at the end of the screen.

Some levels also include underwater sections, and these just frankly sucked. A piranha would usually wait for you in there and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to move past it without taking damage.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION

The worlds are definitely lookers here, and there even is one part where you have to trigger a button to flip the level over. Your character can then still walk upside down, while all others fall down. Nothing major but a nice changeup. Other than that, this is a pretty basic licensed platformer, though it does look pretty good graphically for its time.

REPLAYABILITY

Apart from trying to beat your high score, there also are some secrets to discover, which might warrant a second playthrough for you.

PLAYABILITY

The game works well at pretty much all times, but I did encounter one bug and I disliked how letting go of the forward button would only register like a second later. 

OVERALL

The game looks great for a 1990 game, and certainly it was a big deal when it released. You'll be hard-pressed to find a review below 9/10 back in the day. But in today's day and age, we have a game that simply shows its flaws and can't wow in the same way with its strengths. And turns out, its flaws, at least to me, are worse than in many other games I've played from this year recently. And if we just compare to Super Mario World, we can also see that a big difference in quality exists on pretty much every level. Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse is fine and should probably be played if you're looking to go through gaming history like I am, even if in a much more condensed way. Why? Because the ratings tell me you shouldn't look into my thoughts too deeply. But at the same time, I've played too many comparable games to really feel bad about standing where I do on this game. 

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

• J. M. for VGCE, Issue 24 (Jan 91): "Castle of Illusion is, quite plainly, one of the most fabulous run-and-jump games ever created."
• Sushi-X, Issue 17 (Dec 90): "Music... a 10+!"

Game #004 | STUNTS Review (1990) | Not Beatable

STUNTS (October 5, 1990)

Genre: Racing

Platforms: MS-DOS, Amiga, NEC PC-9801, FM Towns

Developer: Distinctive Software

Publisher: Broderbund

Started: October 23, 2022

Finished: October 23, 2022

Beaten: Not Beatable

Playtime: 1.5 hours

(Score on the spreadsheet) 

It's milestone time. Stunts is a 3D racing game developed by Distinctive Software and initially released on October 5th, 1990 for IBM PC compatibles. It's also the 25th game I've beaten for this challenge and the 1st racing game.

It's by the same devs as for The Duel: Test Drive II, which is a very similar game to Stunts, but the big difference is that Stunts focuses on, well, stunts during its courses. I had some fun during my short time with this game, and I can confidently say that for better or worse, Stunts is a game ahead of its time.

____________

STORYTELLING

No surprise that there is no actual story here. But there are 6 characters in total that you can choose as your opponents for a race. I gotta give the game credit here, they could have have phoned it in here but the devs actually did much more than necessary. Characters have clever names and strengths and weaknesses to go with it. For example, there is Joe Stallin, who is slow on straightaways. Next to that, there even is a little bio on each of them that often explains their weaknesses. With Stallin, there is speculation that he "rear-ended another car on a straightaway" and has therefore developed a restraint. Pretty neat stuff, and they all perform differently during races based on their strengths, weaknesses and the track you choose, not to mention the car you choose to give them. Ahead of its time.

GAMEPLAY

Before a race, you pick an opponent (one of the characters or the clock), your own car and the track. Then the race begins. You gotta beat your opponent (you can see the opponent's car as well) and you gotta try to survive. Because once you crash, it's game over.

You can use mouse, keyboard or a joystick for controls. I used my mouse, which was pretty simple to use. You click the right mouse button to accelerate and just move it to turn. The control of your vehicle seems pretty fair. Drive too fast and you'll lose control. Pretty straightforward. And yet, I've crashed more often than I can admit, and that's mainly due to how tracks are designed.

There are tons of stunt pieces on each track, and not only did I find myself flying out of a loop, but I often was driving too fast into a jump while I couldn't keep my car straight, so I'd fly off to the side. 

It never really feels unfair, but it also shows its age at the end of the day. Turning feels stiff, the motion is not really smooth. This is to be expected, but it's hard to hide that one is spoiled by racing games of today, or even of the late 90s. 

That's a complaint that will pretty much make or break this game for you. Do you need a fresher experience? Then look a few years ahead. Do you enjoy old school racing games? Then you should have already given this game a try. Because here comes the best part.

You can build your own tracks! Yes, seriously. Did I mention that this game is ahead of its time? You can change road surfaces, you can add road pieces like ramps and crossroads and you can add a bunch of stunt pieces to your hearts content. You can do some pretty wild stuff and I can only imagine how hilarious it must have been to build tracks for yourself or especially friend back in the day. 

And finally, the game actually saves your replays! That's right, you can actually re-watch your performance. I don't know if this stuff is a first for racing video games or not, but it's definitely pretty advanced stuff either way. 

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE

No voice acting. Cars sound pretty good for a 1990s racing game I'd say, though I don't really have any comparison as of now. The sound's a bit weird on curves, but otherwise it doesn't sound too bad. There isn't much music here but what is there is... alright.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN

I like the design of the cars and there is some detail to the scenery during races. The world is drawn with 3D polygon graphics and it translates speed pretty well. 

ATMOSPHERE

Not necessarily the game's strength. I would have liked a bit more of an aggressive atmosphere for a game focusing on risky stunts. As it stands, this is a pretty basic racing game's atmosphere.

CONTENT

There is no career mode or online play, and almost no car customization. Naturally, there is only so much you can expect from a 1990 racing game, so none of this is a big deal. What you do have are about half a dozen pre-made tracks, an ability to make some of your own, and races that can be tweaked by choosing opponents with different abilities, not to mention all those test drives you can make to familiarize yourself with tracks, where you can take multiple routes and have a bunch of obstacles to overcome. It's a good racing game for the time.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN

Really impressed with how the game managed to add variety to races by adding unique strengths/weaknesses to opponents. I know I mention it a lot but it really is impressive and it's funny to see opponents crash when the track is unfavorable to them.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION

A replay system, opponents with strengths and weaknesses and a damn track builder are all in this game, which is pretty impressive.

REPLAYABILITY

Lots of replayability thanks to multiple different opponents, multiple tracks, multiple cars and the ability to create your own tracks. 

PLAYABILITY

The game works well at all times.

OVERALL

The theme of this review was "ahead of its time", because the game had some really fun ideas, and plenty were executed well, but with more technical leeway, the features could have really been fleshed out. As it stands, this is a game that shows its age but is pretty fun anyway.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

Couldn't find anything.

Game #003 | YO! NOID Review (1990) | Not Beaten

  

YO! NOID (March 16, 1990)

Genre: Platformer

Platform: NES

Developer: Now Production

Publisher: Capcom

Started: September 2, 2022

Finished: September 2, 2022

Beaten: NO

Playtime: 3 hours
(Score on the spreadsheet)

Yo! Noid, released in March 1990 in Japan and November of the same year in NA, is a side scrolling platformer developed by Now Production and published by Capcom for the NES. Well, that's a lie. The game that was actually developed was called "Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru". Pretty much the same game then simply got a visual overhaul in "The Noid" style, The Noid being a Domino's Pizza mascot at the time.

So instead of the game being about a Ninja, it's actually about a Mascot stopping his evil twin to get some pizza as reward. 

With that, let's talk about what Yo! Noid is about.

As established, you play as the Noid, a long-eared red rabbit-like creature that likes pizza a lot. He is equipped with a yo-yo and has to fight two obstacles. The first? Platforming through a variety of different levels like the icy and slippery second stage. Or how about the first stage, which takes place along a wharf. The land moves up and down and the water rises and falls, so the Noid has to avoid falling into the water when this happens. The second obstacle? A large variety of random enemies. In the first stage for example, you have to worry about flying birds, random humans and also fishes that jump out of the water. In later stages, there are bats, wasps, flying bullets, falling icicles and more. 

The re-skinning of the Ninja game to fit the Noids "universe" falls awfully flat and while it may be a minor complaint, the stages just feel incosistent and random. In the first level, the humans that attack you are just random pink men with a harpune in hand. There is no meaning to the color they wear and their attack is simply walking into your character. In addition, it's a water level but you got both fish and bird attacking you. Why are the birds flying so low? I guess I'm looking for logic unnecessarily here and it probably is a weird complaint, but there isn't much else this game offers apart from world & level design, gameplay and its soundtrack.

The music in this game is typical 8 bit music, but it doesn't sound as catchy as I'm used to from other games. Plus, music is reused for two consecutive levels, even if they are thematically very different from each other, so there doesn't appear to be much thought given there. 

Gameplay in this game I would describe with one word: Frustrating. The hit box of both the Noid and enemies is very inconsistent and simply stretches many inches away from the character models. Even though you jump above and past an enemy, the game sometimes still says you hit the enemy. You only have one life before a stage resets, so this exacerbates the frustration there. Sometimes, hit detection is really just completely random, especially in a skateboard level where you are meant to hit pigeons with the back of the wheel. The same hit two times can result in a kill or death seemingly at will of the game.

In stage 2, the ice level, the footing of the ice was also frustratingly inconsistent. You have to jump on a small, icy and slippery platform and most of the time, you would slip one way or the other and would have to try and adjust your footing before slipping off and falling to your death. However, sometimes you wouldn't slip at all and stand still. It really wasn't possible to tell which roll of the dice you would get. Not to mention that sometimes it would look like your character was slipping off, but it was actually a graphical glitch making it appear that way, and trying to adjust against the "phantom slip" would result in falling to one's death as well.

But later stages do kind of make up for the frustration of the earlier levels with the use of pogo sticks and even some levels where you are flying and have to avoid spikes in a level that is designed in a way that reminds be of Floppy Bird. But getting to these stages takes a high frustration tolerance for many hours and also is mired with what I have to call the "worst boss fights in video game history".

Or at least as far as I have experienced so far, the experience through 1990 and beyond should lead me to valleys far darker than what Yo! Noid has to offer. But this game will undoubtedly be a first ballet worst boss fights Hall of Famer if for nothing else. Because the boss fights in this game are ... PIZZA EATING CONTESTS.

After every odd numbered stage, you face your evil twin in a pizza eating contest. What does this entail? Both you and him have a deck of cards with numbers from 1-5. The evil twin, Mr. Green, makes the first selection at random, let's say 2. Then you can choose one of your cards. If you select 3, which is your highest numbered card in the earlier stages, then you win the round and get 1 point to your total. You need to get a specific amount of points before your opponent does to win the boss fight. There are also power up cards, so you can double your 3 to 6 and get 5 points to your total. That's literally it. These fights can take up to 2 minutes and throw you out of the action completely. They are boring and it's only a matter of time before you win, not a matter of skill, unless you think 2 is higher than 3, in which case you will lose. In Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, you have to prove that your "Ninjutsu" is higher in what is essentially the same game, simply thematically different. But in both instances, boss fights suck. 

I checked the Internet Archives to find reviews of this game in Magazines way back when and I found it listed in the "Video Games & Computer Entertainment issue of December 23rd, 1990". It's very positive about the game, maybe too positive, but even it denotes the boss fights as "the only area that's not fun for gamers of all ages". If you didn't play this back in the day and aren't wrapped in a nostalgia bubble for it, you likely will find that most areas of this game are not fun for gamers of all ages.

P.S.: Did you know that this game sold for $49.95 USD at release? No, seriously. We give gaming companies shit for their business practices these days, and rightfully so, but selling a re-skin of a game that you already made and one that has so little content for 50 bucks would surely cause a shit storm or two if a similar thing happened in the age of social media. I loved seeing this price because it made me appreciate how spoiled we are with incredible indie games going for barely half the price at release and offering a hundred times more. Is it weird to compare this random game from 1990 to indie games in 2022? Maybe. But maybe not.

To top it off: According to the VG&CE magazine, "the hilariously exaggerated look of concentration that replaces his buck-toothed grin" when The Noid whips out his yo-yo "is worth the price of admission". How liberating it must have been to have such low expectations that an animation is worth $50. I'll definitely take this positivity over "Starfield is unplayable if faces don't show 2% more emotion" any day though.

Game #002 | CODE NAME: VIPER Review (1990) | Not Beaten

 

CODE NAME: VIPER (February 23, 1990)

Genre: Action, Platformer

Platform: NES

Developer: Arc System Works

Publisher: Capcom

Started: August 31, 2022

Finished: August 31, 2022

Beaten: NO

Playtime: 3 hours

This is the type of game I would have spent hours of time and lots of money on in the arcades as a kid. A game similar to Code Name: Viper, called Rolling Thunder, was actually an arcade game, but Code Name: Viper itself was released for the NES. 

This is a side scrolling action game where you control "Mr. Smith", a special forces operative who is tasked by "Commander Jones" to take down seven hideouts of a drug syndicate. There is a mystery here to uncover and it reveals itself bit by bit after each stage you complete, revealing that Commander Jones is "dealing drugs".

There are two weapons in this game, a pistol and a machine gun. Enemies are mostly syndicate members who are differentiated by color of their outfits. A blue member needs two shots to be killed and can only hit you by running into you, while a pink member can be killed with just one shot, but has a pistol of his own. You only have two lives, at least in the first three levels I've played, so this game can become very tricky real fast.

Not only are just two lives a problem, but you can accidentally run into an enemy that just gets into frame, you can enter a wall (to free hostages) and run into enemies or a bullet right as you exit the wall etc. Expecting a smooth experience I did not, so I'm not surprised that there were some annoyances here. 

However, the gameplay loop got me trapped for a few hours anyway and if it weren't for the fact that I will likely play dozens of games like this in the coming days, weeks and months, I wouldn't have minded trying a bit longer to finish. But the game only gets harder from here and looking at a longplay of it on YT, I doubt I'll get close to the level necessary to play through this.

But definitely worth checking out overall.

Game #001 | LOOM Review (1990) | Beaten

LOOM (January 1990)

Genre: Point & Click Adventure

Platform: MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari-ST, Mac OS, FM Towns, [TurboGrafx-CD]

Developer: Lucasfilm Games (LucasArts)

Publisher: Lucasfilm Games (LucasArts)

Started: September 5, 2022

Finished: September 6, 2022

Beaten: YES

Playtime: 3 hours

Loom is a point & click adventure game initially released in January 1990 for MS-DOS by LucasArts using the SCUMM engine, with Brian Moriarty as its Designer. There are multiple versions for this game, but the initial release was on a floppy disk and had 16-color EGA graphics with no voice acting, while the version that I played, the "Talkie" version, released in 1992 on CD with 256-color VGA graphics. This version includes voice acting, but some scenes are censored and there are some cuts as far as conversation close-ups and puzzles with multiple solutions go.

There is also a version that came out for the Japanese FM-Towns in 1991 which many fans consider to be the "definitive version", while Brian Moriarty himself considers the initial EGA version to be the "real" edition. If you want to play the game for yourself, I can say the 1992 version compared to the 1990 version will not drastically alter your opinion of the game, so if you value VGA graphics and voice acting, I would go with that.

Anyway, what's this game about?: 

In Loom, you play Bobbin Threadbare, a 17-year-old who is part of the "Weaver's Guild", a group of people who became masters of woven fabric and over time gained the ability to weave "patterns of influence into the very fabric of reality", meaning they could actually change the color of something, turn invisible and heal, among other things. In this world, many other Guilds that focus on a singular craft exist and the Weavers Guild was persecuted for using "witchcraft", resulting in their escape to an island that became their new home, Loom, called after their guild symbol, a loom (an apparatus for making fabric).

Events unfold and Bobbin Threadbare is born, however in unforeseen circumstances, and the loom's pattern is thrown into chaos as a result. This means that throughout his life, Bobbin is not allowed to learn the Guild's ability to weave, since he is seen as the one who has cursed the guild. He is raised by "Dame Hetchel", an old serving woman, who in secret teaches Bobbin the basics of weaving and when Bobbin turns 17 and the story starts, it is her who gives him his mission.

At the start of the game, the Elders summon Bobbin to the Sanctuary to determine his fate. As he arrives, he sees how the Elders punish Dame Hetchel. They turn her into an egg, only for a swan to crash into the room from a window and turn all the Elders into swans as well. The Elders shout that this is all Bobbin's fault as they fly off to who knows where.

This is where the actual gameplay begins. One of the elders dropped his "distaff" (a stick to which wool is wound for spinning), and Dame Hetchel is still in the room as an egg. You pick up the distaff, point it to the egg, and four notes start playing. You repeat this four-note pattern (called a "draft), and the egg starts to hatch ("open"). Out comes Dame Hetchel as a cygnet (young swan) and tells Bobbin about his mission, about how the "Third Shadow" will cover the world and why he has to find the swans.

So to summarize, you play Bobbing Threadbane, something is wrong with the "loom" and the Elders of your guild blame you. You are left on your own when all Elders are turned into swans and leave the island that you live in, so you pick up the distaff and have to use the "Weaving ability/magic" to try and find the flock and try to stop the world to be covered by the Third Shadow.

This is where Loom is very different to pretty much all other graphical adventures of its time. Instead of an interface with a bunch of verbs and an inventory to store items, you are solely equipped with the distaff. The distaff shows up horizontally on the interface and every few inches of it make up one sound, each being higher than the next. For each "draft" (magical ability), you need to figure out the corresponding four-note sound. For opening something, this sound turns out to be "E-C-E-D". Later on for example, you find for trees with holes in them, and each tree you click presents you with one note. Once you get all four, you have a draft. You don't know what the draft is for until you actually successfully tried it on something. This particular one for example was used to "twist sth". As you progress further and further, you unlock more and more notes on your distaff, which you need to do to be able to play some of the more advanced drafts which may use letters (like "A") that you are not skilled enough to play.

But with that, let's move over to my rating system to discuss all aspects of this game individually.

STORYTELLING

Throughout the story in this game, which only takes about 3-4 hours depending on the difficulty you pick (more on that in a bit), you visit many different areas and meet different Guilds like the Blacksmiths Guild or the Shepherds Guild. You visit the Forge, the home of the Blacksmiths, Crystalgard, the headquarters of the Guild of Glassmakers and a cathedral, home of the Guild of Clerics, among many other locations. The world created for this game overall is very unique and to know that this is not just a playground for your main character but rather a world that is actually alive definitely aids the telling of stories concerning both the main quest and of simple side stories. For each Guild you stumble upon, you meet one or multiple characters who tell you what their kind is like, what kind of problems ail them and what goals they pursue. The Glassmakers for example are building a massive Sythe atop the Crystalgard. For what purpose? 

The main story that ties all this together is an interesting, yet convoluted one that falls victim to the use of a lot of "this happens so that *this* can happen" methods of storytelling and especially scenes that should call for urgency just don't and the pacing of it all can fall a bit flat as a result. For example, in the final showdown with Chaos, instead of taking your distaff, with which you are pretty much incompetent, and forcing you to teach him the ways, he just stands there until you do something.  Worst of all, the game has been made with a trilogy in mind, and according to Brian Moriarty himself, both himself and others just wanted to do something else after Loom was finished, and they just never got back to it. So expect a cliffhanger ending and change your plans of playing this game if that bothers you. It probably should, but the game is worth experiencing nevertheless I think.

The voice acting in the versions that include it is actually much much better than I would have expected and while the main character's voice actor made him sound a bit whiny throughout, the cast overall did a great job. I played the first chapter without voice first and definitely am glad that I played the voiced version afterwards. 

Unlike many other LucasArts adventure games of its time, Loom is more serious and has few humorous elements included (though they are certainly there). As someone who has tried some Monkey Island but didn't finish any of their games prior to Loom, I can say that I prefer the more humorous games and graphical adventures with often odd solutions to puzzles definitely fit the "Comedy" category more.

GAMEPLAY

There is a "Book of Patterns" that comes with your copy of the game, if you indeed do want to buy a copy for $100+ these days. For everyone else, there is the manual online which includes it, and while it's not necessary to be used in my version of the game, the initial release does have a puzzle right at the start that is unsolvable without the manual in hand. Otherwise, the "book" lists a bunch of drafts (spells) and you can use it to write down the notes that the game gives you. Otherwise, it's recommended to write down the notes elsewhere, because the first draft you learn (open) will be needed to solve puzzles in the final third of the game, and writing down is the only option to access it. Almost all drafts are randomized for each playthrough, so you can't look up the notes online either.

Apart from using drafts, there isn't really much gameplay in this game. You walk around, you find items to click on and you either are rewarded with a new draft or you can try to use known drafts on it. Some drafts I didn't really find any use for, so I wonder if they were a) a distraction or b) used for optional puzzles, but the devs found a creative use for most drafts at least twice and sometimes, the game also requires you to think outside the box. How? You learn the draft "twist". But what about when you have to untwist something? In that case, try the draft backwards. 

Spelling out a draft can take quite a while, so if you try multiple ones at something to guess the puzzle solution, it can take you a few minutes to go through all of them. This is nothing unusual for games of its time but with no skip animation button it did get boring after a while to wait and see what happens. Being more skilled at these games than me might mean you figure these puzzles out quicker than me though and limit your amount of unsuccessful attempts. 

Finally, when you start the game, there are 3 difficulty levels. PRACTICE, which shows you the letters for each note, which note you hear and it also spells out all four letters at the end. STANDARD, which also shows letters and marks the note you hear, but it doesn't spell it out in the end. It's pretty much the same difficulty level though. EXPERT, which neither shows letters nor which part of the distaff the note comes from, meaning you have to figure out which part of the distaff makes which noise at first and then make out those notes from hearing. It's definitely much harder than the other two difficulties but also more than doable. 

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE 

The voice acting is very good. I didn't quite warm up to the voice of the main character, but the rest did a fine job. Especially later on in the game, you could hear the end of the previous dialogue line cutting into the next dialogue line, which got more and more notable right into the finale. 

The game's sound design is overall good but has similar issues. When the four notes of a draft play for example, one or more of the note sounds are cut off for a split second almost every time. 

The soundtrack has a mystical and classical theme and from what I've read online, it's highly regarded and a big part of the experience for many. It definitely is a big part in enhancing the experience, I agree, but I wasn't quite enamored with it. Sound cutting issues were present here as well and while I understand music was limited to the most important moments due to technical limitations, it didn't help my experience when 90% of the game was played without any music in the background. Overall, it's a solid and fitting soundtrack but the times have raised expectations on what to expect there for sure.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN

Loom received top or near-top grades for its graphics at the time and even today its sophisticated art design and its colorful, varied landscapes stand out over many other games coming out in and around 1990.

ATMOSPHERE

Music, sound and graphics work well in tandem with the game's lore and world building to create an atmospheric adventure, however the rarely used music due to the technical limitations at the time does take away from  the atmosphere, especially whenever you are stuck on a particular puzzle and spend minutes without any sound, whether its from the soundtrack or from the musical notes coming out of the distaff.

CONTENT

There isn't that much here outside of the main story, which takes 3-4 hours to beat, but considering the premise of this game, it works in its favor that the game is shorter than comparable graphical adventures.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN

Overall the structure in this game works well, but at times the places you find the necessary drafts from to progress seem pretty random. In addition, the final chapter seems rushed and at least to me, the puzzle solutions seemed unintuitive.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION

The distaff being the key component is certainly unique. I think it's fair to say that it's unlikely that you've played any game quite like Loom. It didn't really stick as a concept, ostensibly, but it shows developers desire to innovate at the time where a more traditional adventure would have been a safer bet. Plus, at worst it makes Loom stand out, since the unique gameplay feature is not something that I would call "bad" at all. The game sold over half a million copies all told from what I've read, so it wasn't a commercial failure either.

REPLAYABILITY

You can replay it once to get a better grasp of the plot and especially to try the game on expert if you played your first playthrough on PRACTICE/STANDARD, but there isn't much replayability beyond that.

PLAYABILITY 

The game works fine overall and is completely playable.

OVERALL 

You should have probably already played this game if you're a fan of point & click adventures, especially of this day and age. Unlike many other games from this time period, this one does not require you to go through magazine or internet tips on how to solve puzzles in order to complete it. Even the manual says that the devs created this game in a way that they wanted you to complete and fully experience it, so you won't be stuck for too long at any particular puzzle. And that's good, because even if the story is not as mesmerizing today as it might have been in the early 90s, it's still one worth telling and one that a faster pace, by nature of the player being stuck at puzzles far less, does a lot of good.

_____

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME

• "Unknown Gamer" from the GamePro Issue 41 (Dec 92): "Loom's magic comes mainly from its highly creative and original use of music"
• "Leslie Mizell" from the Game Player's Issue 12 Vol. 2 Nr. 6 (June 90): "[...] sit back and watch the spellbinding graphics as the story unfolds."

The TGB Review System

In this post, I explain how I review games and why I review games this way. You can see the rating for each game in the spreadsheet in the right sidebar.

Welcome to the Gaming Binge Project!

 

Welcome,

I am MrKane and I will be your host through this most challenging and unlikely journey through the history of video games (as far as 1990 at least).

Who am I? 

I am MrKane, can't you read? Oh oh, you were looking for information beyond the alias, I see. Well, I'm 25 years old, I'm German and I am currently heading into the third semester of university. I've already completed an apprenticeship in the business field before and looking to make a career in finance over the next few years. Whilst I am welcoming of improving my skills in all areas, I am otherwise very much a person living in the "routine" as far as the typical layout of a day, week and even year is concerned. I enjoy what I do, so why not stick with it, and in my free time what I do is, among other things, playing video games. But let's walk it back a little bit.

I've owned a SNES as a kid and played your typical Mario and Yoshi games, I've had all PlayStations from the PS1 as a little child to the PS4 as a young adult, and as of today, with more any money available to me compared to before, I own a high-end PC, a PS5, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. 

So it's apparent that playing games is a big passion of mine. However, what is not apparent is the following: I have next to no experience with iconic and/or retro games prior to 2015. Mario and Yoshi? Yeah, those were the only games I played on the SNES. No Zelda, no Donkey Kong, no Mario Kart etc. The PlayStations? Almost exclusively used to play FIFA, plus some GTA San Andreas.

Back in 2015, I bought my first ever PC with my own money. A GTX 750 Ti was the highlight of that rig, nothing too impressive even back then, but it did it's job. But with that PC came the thirst to play a video game and experience what people online kept calling "framerates above 30 FPS". The problem was, I owned 0, that's 1,2,3,4... 0!, video games on PC. All I had was a copy of Alan Wake's American Nightmare thanks to a video game magazine I had bought for the first time that month. So I slipped in the CD, opened up the game and would you believe it, 60 FPS gaming!

I had no idea who Alan Wake was or why he had American Nightmares when I played this back in 2015

Now let me get this out of the way first, the game was utter shite. You play through the same 90-minute level three times and the credits roll. Even my "non-GTA singles player experience lacking" self could tell that this game was not a masterpiece or close to it (By now I am happy to report to have played and very much enjoyed Alan Wake).

HOWEVER. Coming off of a PC that couldn't even run "Slender: The Eight Pages" (remember that?) at anything above 10 FPS, playing Alan Wake's American Nightmare ignited at least an interest in single player video games, so I bought and played a few others. Murdered: Soul Suspect came with the magazine's next copy, so I played that. Saints Row: The Third was offered up for 1€ somewhere I don't even remember, which I snagged up and played a bit. Fallout 4 kept coming up in my gaming website visits, so I gave Fallout 3 a try and ... woah. 

If Alan Wake's American Nightmare ignited an interest in single player games, leaving the Vault in Fallout 3 ignited a passion for them. You all know the feeling of your first true open world game I'm sure. "You're telling me I can just .. go wherever I want?" And I did. And I haven't looked back since. Among the other games that I got to experience quickly after where The Witcher 3 (to this day my favorite game of all time), Skyrim (since modded the isht out of it), Fallout: New Vegas and many many more. If I had to count up all the games I have played from start to finish since, it would easily be in the 300+ mark.

What is this project? 

So with that said, let's segue into this question. Well, while I have played quite a lot of amazing and horrible games through the years, I always feel left out whenever a remake of a beloved 90s classic is announced, or whenever people reminisce about those first Zelda games they've played etc. Recently, the Resident Evil 4 Remake got announced and as a fan of the original (how can one not be?), I lost my mind. 

So then I started thinking. How good must those games be from way back when, if the fans are losing their minds over a remake as well? "I gotta play them". The idea to start this blog then quickly become more realistic when I stumbled upon a blog called "CRPGaddict". The blog has been running since 2010, and the goal of the blogger is to go through all RPGs since the 1970s. 12 years later and he is in 1993 (!). As someone who loves to record information on games he is playing himself - mostly due to two reasons, the joy in sharing and because this helps me remember my past experiences which are otherwise mostly forgotten - and as someone who is in awe with the discipline and passion the "CRPGaddict" is showing, I got the final nudge I needed to start this blog today myself.

While he is focusing on RPGs only, I am interested in games from a much larger variety of genres. That said, I am unlikely to go back to the 70s and 80s and play those ultra-retro games at this point, like he does. And unlike him, who does not shy away from playing ANY games that meet his requirements (seriously it's fascinating, check out the blog if you don't know of it), I personally will be a bit more picky in game selection and the time I spent before moving on.

So what exactly will you be playing? Well thanks for asking. For this project/challenge, I will be playing games starting in January 1st, 1990 and log my progress in written form on this blog. I may record parts of the playthrough here and there and share some clips as well. The "ultimate goal" is to reach the 2010s some day. Naturally, this is impossible, so the more achievable objective is to simply experience a lot of different games, catalogue and share experiences with you and try to get as far as I can. 

In addition, I will be using my past reviews on other forums and posting them on here for games I have played before, including a lot of games from the more recent years. Ultimately, this will be a blog on my gaming journey and hopefully at some point even a website that you check out to potentially find some gems to play yourself.

Are there any rules? 

Actually, yes there are.

1) In the spreadsheet, I have noted the initial platforms the games have released on. Since I don't own the majority of them, I will be playing the games through the best means of availability. In most cases, this will be on Steam/GOG. For Nintendo games, I'm hoping the Switch/Online library has some of these available. For PlayStation games, I'm hoping the same with the PS Network and the recently released PS Plus Premium. 

2) I will be playing each game for at least one hour. If a game is not beatable, I will play it as long as I want to form an educated opinion. For any other game, the goal is to finish each of course, but I will not shy away from abandoning a game if I feel like I've experienced most of what the game is about and finishing it would just take too long for little additional benefit other than the fact that I can say "I beat it". This often will apply to arcade-type games from the early 90s that would be very hard on purpose to push the game's playing time. I will note whether I have beaten a game in the spreadsheet and in the review of said game.

3) I will be playing the original versions of these games in most cases. The only times where I will consider playing newer versions is if we're talking about a "remaster" that doesn't change the core game in any notable way apart from UI and other quality of life changes. Since I am aware that games from the 90s will be lackluster graphically and UI-wise in most cases, they wouldn't have negatively factored in to the overall rating either way. I will not be playing "remakes" in place of the originals however, as those usually come with major changes to not only the visuals but to gameplay and story as well (see Final Fantasy VII and FFVII Remake). Those remakes I will play at the time they released in, or, if I really want to, I may choose to play it right after I played the original. Once we make it to 1997 and I finish Final Fantasy VII, and I really like it, I might play the Remake soon after for example.

4) I will generally avoid using cheats unless two specific things happen. (1) I'm playing a story game and am very close to the end and (2) to fight the final boss, there is A LOT of grinding involved previously because I didn't level enough up to this point (we're talking hours and hours of grinding). Instead of putting myself through the agony, I'd rather use cheats in such a scenario, if available, to finish up and witness how the game ends. I will also try to avoid using walkthroughs/guides to be able to have a fresh experience, though of course I'm going to check a game's manual before playing. But if I'm stuck at a puzzle/level/segment and feel like I've tried everything that's possible, I'll check out a guide to be able to progress faster. I'd rather experience the entire game by checking a guide for once than be stuck at a simple segment for pride's sake.

5) I will generally try to play games on "normal" difficulty. I may choose "easy" whenever I've tried "normal" and utterly failed. I can imagine Strategy games to be especially difficult and to make me go down a difficulty level.

6) There may be numbered titles in 1990 and onward of games that I haven't played the previous iterations of. For example, there is Ninja Gaiden II in my 1990 list, but I haven't played Ninja Gaiden 1. For those instances, I will check out a playthrough on YT and share key differences that I find between both versions, plus let you know what the story in the previous game was, if relevant. 

7) I might make a list of "pre 1990 classics" filled with games before the start date that are all considered to be among the best the 70s/80s have to offer. This would come at a later date though. 

And those are all the rules. 

Will you review the games you play? 

Yes, definitely. If a game is particularly long, I might make update posts where I share initial impressions and thoughts, but otherwise expect a review after a full playthrough. A separate post will explain how my rating system looks like. It's subjective, naturally, and seeing a numbered rating system might irk people the wrong way, but the rating number will not be displayed on the website review, only in the spreadsheet. You can read the review, check out the total rating on the spreadsheet OR list by specific criteria (gameplay, story) if you're looking for games that do a great job in something specific. There are multiple ways to gain some insight on these games from how I plan to do my reviews.

Let me give you a very brief rundown on how I plan to review games, but more details will be found in the separate post, that I will link here soon. There will be 10 criteria and each criteria will be rated by 1-10, with all numbers combined creating the final score. While a 6 is given to very bad games by professional reviewers and Metacritic scores rarely fall below that, I am more traditional in the way I use the numbers 1 to 10. A 5 is an average game, 6 above average and a 3 is poor. I'm unlikely to dish out 10s to most games but I'm also unlikely to go below a 3 unless something is barely working or is barely there. A game with no story for example would get a 1 for story. It could still get a 91 but to me a game is not worth 100 points (no game will ever reach that point I'd assume) unless it has everything and is a perfectly well rounded experience. Even infuriatingly bad features of games, like the level design of Dragon Age 2, would get a 2 or 3 from me based on this system. To get a 1, we're probably talking about 15 FPS on average in a "Performance" category (Deadly Premonition), if I will even end up having that category. But here is how I would describe the numbers:

10 - as good as it gets. Even the best games will more often than not see only a few 10s in their rating sheet, if even that. 
9 - amazing. Few games do it better. Significantly improves enjoyment of the overall game.
8 - very good. Simultaneously, I have nothing to complain about and could see a few additions/improvements be made here and there. Overall my feelings are very positive and it increases the enjoyment of the overall game a lot.
7 - good. It's all in all very well done, though I have only a few complaints on certain aspects. It increases the enjoyment of the overall game.
6 - above average. It's better than most games and more than respectable, yet falls short in some areas.
5 - average. It's solid and doesn't take away from the experience, yet it doesn't add anything either and you've seen it before in other games.
4 - below average. It's worse than most games, but still more than acceptable if the game is better in other areas. 
3 - poor. It's detrimental to the enjoyment of the overall game at least somewhat and could have been done a lot better.
2 - very little exists OR very bad. It's very detrimental to the enjoyment of the overall game and it's clear that little to no effort were made here.
1 - doesn't exist (or barely exists) OR horrible. Don't know what's worse. No effort being made or effort being made just for this part to completely suck. It works on a functional level, but they might as well not have bothered.

Looking at the scores, a game with all 5's would get a 50 and would be considered an average game. Definitely playable, but doesn't stand out at all (Far Cry 5). Or it could be a game with a lot of 3s but also some 7/8s, which make it an OK - yet not special - experience overall (Trek to Yomi). You get the idea.

While a game with a 50 score would be average, a game with a 35 score would be poor, yet still a relatively fun experience to the right player potentially. As we get closer to 25 territory, I'd say a game becomes more and more objectively bad. Meanwhile, a game with a 60 score would be considered a solid game, a 70 score would make the game a very good one (we're probably talking 2013 Tomb Raider or Batman Arkham City levels of good), an 80 score would probably put a game among the Top 25, if not Top 10 of all GOTY lists (Fallouts, Bioshocks, Resident Evil 4) and games with a rating close to or above 90 will be your must-play "masterpieces" (The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Marvel's Spider-Man, God of War). 

Of course which games you place in what category will be subjective, but I think giving examples will help you guys understand the ratings regardless. As a takeaway, keep in mind that games starting at close to 60 will already be considered good games, while we're talking about "you're very likely to enjoy this as an average gamer" territory in the 70s. Don't expect to see more than a handful or so 80s or better in a given year.

Are you going to play newer games as well? 

Yes, as I mentioned elsewhere in this post. I will release reviews of games I have already played on a quasi-daily basis and while I plan to focus most of the playing time I get on games in this challenge, I will probably play current titles whenever one releases that I am interested in (God of War, Starfield).

But that's all I got for the introduction today. How this all works will become apparent pretty fast once I make some more posts. To see which games I'm playing, just check the sidebar to the right. To see the spreadsheet, just check the sidebar to the right. 

Other than that, thank you all for reading, hope you enjoy the content this blog will provide you with and I'm looking forward to engaging with you in the comments. Cheers.