GAME #076 | SUPER STAR WARS Review (1992) | Beaten

SUPER STAR WARS (November 1, 1992)

Genre: Run and gun

Platforms: [SNES]

Developer: Sculptured Software, LucasArts

Publisher: Nintendo

Moby Score: 7.7

Started: June 27, 2023

Finished: June 28, 2023

Beaten: Beaten

Playtime: 3 hours

Title Screen

Super Star Wars is a run and gun developed by Sculptured Software and Lucas Arts for the SNES and released n November 1, 1992. It is based on the first ever Star Wars movie 'Star Wars' or 'Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope' as it's called now. There are over a dozen stages that take you through many familiar locations from the movie and (partly altered) scenes from the movie are used for cutscenes and overall storytelling.

I had not watched the first Star Wars movie before playing this, ever, so it was nice to get some motivation to finally do so. My conclusion: It's very good. The movie, not the game. The game itself is OK, not bad but not as good as I had hoped it would be.

Opening crawl, just like in the movie

Let's get this out of the way first. This is definitely on the upper half of licensed games in terms of quality. Whether it is in 2D platforming sequences, the vehicle stages (which tbh weren't that fun) or the trench run finale, all sections of this game are of high production quality relative to the majority of video games of its time. Animation work is also pretty solid, my favorite part being Luke Skywalker's hair flying in the wind as you run forward. Sprite work is good here too, though almost all enemies you face in this game are not from the actual movie.

In general, the game takes liberties in how it uses the movie framework. C3PO runs to Luke and tells him that R2D2 has been kidnapped, so you step into your landspeeder and destroy dozens of enemies on your to finding him. When did that happen in the movie? Or the bar fight scene, which is pretty much just Obi Wan and Han Solo shooting one guy each, but has you run through the bar with either Chewbacca or Luke and shooting another few dozen enemies. Or the 10+ boss fights, out of which I believe only the final one is actually somewhat part of the movie. As you do your trench run, Darth Vader's TIE Advanced appears in front of you, though is disposed of within seconds. This is all not a big deal, but worth noting.

Luke running and gunning in the desert

One pretty poor design choice in my opinion that was made here is that enemies infinitely respawn for some reason. This was odd from the get-go, as you start the first level on a desert setting and run through sand dunes to get to the finish line and are constantly bombarded with enemies from all sides. Kill an enemy that is about 5 feet in front of you, and by the time you get to his position, he will have been replaced by a clone already. You're also constantly subjected to attacks and projectiles from all angles, and here is the second weird part about the game's design. Almost all enemies you kill drop a heart, which regenerates a little bit of your health. You might think that's excessive. On Easy mode, it kind of is. But you're also constantly hit and lose health, so it's kind of necessary to get this many healing items. How about you don't have enemies constantly respawn and rebalance things that way?

It doesn't help that projectiles are almost impossible to dodge because your character takes way too long to jump once you press the button, so you almost always get hit in your legs unless you know an attack is about to be made.

Watch your fuel, watch your health and watch the controls on your landspeeder

Again, to counteract this, you constantly get health refills and have a lot of health in general. You also get "Health Laser" power-ups, which extend your health bar, but only for the stage that you are on. Other power ups include a Darth Vader mask which gives you "2x points", a thermal detonator, a timer that adds to your overall time, a boost to your blaster and extra lives.

Most boss fights are pretty similar in how you approach them. You simply button mash and try avoid as many hits as possible with the limitations the controls set on you, and what happens in the end is that you simply try to deal more damage than you take to outpace the boss. Most boss fights are trivial, if you simply could actually dodge whenever you would press the jump button. Instead, you watch as slow projectiles hit your even slower character.

Overall, this was enjoyable enough thanks to its visual and auditory presentation. The characters you know, the orchestral sounds you're familiar with and the locations you revisit make for an experience that Star Wars fans at the time will have undoubtedly enjoyed, and it plays differently to most games, which I appreciate, but I can't say it was a good is at it could have been.

Flying an X-Wing is cool but more of a novelty than fun here

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10

• Story is of the first Star Wars movie with liberties taken here and there

• Story told after each stage and using images from the movie

• Overall, story takes a backseat to the gameplay though

GAMEPLAY | 11/20

• Controls have their highs and lows

• Varied levels, though landspeeder parts not that fun

• Platforming and Run and gunning enjoyable enough

• Many boss fights

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10

• Voice acting limited to Obi Wan saying "Use the force, Luke"

• Sound design is really good, utilizing all the sounds you'll recognize from the movie

• Soundtrack faithful to the movie, so if you like that, you will like their SNES versions too

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

• Locations you visit are from the movie, look great

• Animation and sprite work is on a good level

• Nice special effects

• If you like the Star Wart art design, you'll enjoy this from a visual standpoint

ATMOSPHERE | 8/10

• Sounds, looks and plays like a Star Wars movie, putting you in the role of your favorite characters, letting you drive a landspeeder, wield a light saber and fly an X-Wing

• All faithfully created

CONTENT | 6/10

• Over a dozen stages with bosses at the end of each

• Landspeeder levels not that fun, boss fights feel similar after a while

• Three difficulty modes, but plenty of unfair deaths on Easy due to slow jumps/dodges, don't want to know how Hard feels like

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10

• Varied levels

• Poor choice to have enemies keep respawning

• Sometimes you can't see where you are jumping and fall to your death

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10

• Overall a successful recreation of the first movie

• Pretty fun to wield a lightsaber

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

• You can play some levels with different characters, but for the most part, they play the same

• You can play on three difficulty levels and try to beat your high score

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

• Worked well at all times

OVERALL | 67/100

GAME #075 | SPIDER-MAN: RETURN OF THE SINISTER SIX Review (1992) | Not Beaten

SPIDER-MAN: RETURN OF THE SINISTER SIX (October, 1992)

Genre: Action-adventure

Platforms: [NES], Master System, Game Gear

Developer: Bits Studios

Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment

Moby Score: 6.2

Started: June 26, 2023

Finished: June 27, 2023

Beaten: Not Beaten

Playtime: 1 hour

Title Screen

I have now played 5 Spider-Man games starting in 1990 as part of this challenge I'm doing. The previous 4 are among the worst rated games I've played in my life, 2 of which I'd consider worst and second worst as part of this challenge for sure. Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six is another absolutely horrendous crap taken on everyone's favorite wall-crawler, and I am now one game away from having my own Sinister Six of shit Spider-Man video games of the early 90s. Awesome!

This game is another one by Bits Studios, which is slowly but surely turning into my most disliked development studio (I didn't even consider disliking one before this day) and I'm not at all surprised that they went out of business in 2008. It doesn't help that the publishers behind this are Acclaim Entertainment, who were behind two of the other 4 Spider-Man games I've played. They literally got the licensing rights just to slap his name on a video game cartridge, make no effort whatsoever to have the games even feel like Spider-Man games, and just profit from all those kids who love Spidey from the comics and are blinded by his appearance on both cover and title. These games were literal cash-grabs, and while I give this no thought again until the next, likely terrible, Spider-Man game I'll play (because I'll play them all damnit!), I just want to use this opportunity to say that Acclaim Entertainment can RIP where the P does not stand for peace, as they went bankrupt in 2004.

"Are you seriously playing this shit?"

Now with that rant out of the way, let's get into why Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, which released in October 1992, is another brutally bad Spider-Man game. First off, let's go over the same points of criticism I can give you for all Bits Studios / LJN / Acclaim Entertainment Spider-Man games. Spidey looks like he is suffering from a disc prolapse in all of these games due to his weird hunched forward posture. His movement is odd at best, he controls like crap and he controls like crap. Oh I mentioned that twice? How did that happen?

The game, at least on the NES (the Game Gear version looks very slightly better), looks terrible. Bright green and bright red dominate the first stage, blinding red was used for one later stage for no good reason, sprites look bad, environments look (1) bland at best and (2) unrealistically designed and half the time, you have no idea if you are jumping on top of a platform that you can actually stand on or if it is supposed to be part of the background.

Look at that ugly Spider-Man, my god

The soundtrack, which has some OK tracks, is the highlight of this game and that's not supposed to be a compliment. The lowlight on the other hand is the aforementioned controls. You can jump up. You can jump up higher if you hold down the jump button. You can also move while in air, at least that's something, but only in the direction that you're facing. That's somewhat more realistic, but stupid for a video game. You can sommersault forward as well, you can climb up walls and chains and you can shoot webs, if you have enough web fluid. Most of the time, you don't, like in some of the other Spider-Man games, and I ask once again, why make a Spider-Man game where you barely ever have any web fluid?

Spider-Man can do web-swinging here as well, but the controls here are so bad. You have to press B to jump, hold it and then press A to release the web and try to connect it to something. All this does though is let you swing left to right. You won't get up to a higher platform this way, limiting its use significantly. Letting go also doesn't carry you forward thanks to momentum, but instead drops you straight down. There were multiple occasions where I fell to a lower platform, and I literally could not bring myself back up by jumping or using the web. I suspect there are literal game-breaking pits that you can not fall into, if you ever want to get back up, but I suspect I won't find my answer to that officially because I doubt anyone cares enough about this game to share that anywhere on the internet, and I'm not gonna spend more than the 5 minutes I did unsuccessfully trying to get out.

You do that, Electro

Then there is the combat. You press A and do a punch. You double tap A and the punch animation gets cancelled for a jump-kick. This catapults you forward as well, so when you are near an enemy and frantically press A twice, you do the jump-kick instead of punching, which not only carries you past the enemy, but also happens above most enemies head, so you can't even touch them. Punches don't connect half the time unless you press it from the exact correct angle, and if you do connect, enemies blow up into a thousand pieces. That's right, Spider-Man kills in this game, and he does so non-stop. Try to find another studio that gives as few fucks about Spider-Man as Bits Studios, I dare you.

The story is explained in two sentences. Dr. Octopus wants to rule the world, so he calls on the Sinister Six, Electro, Mysterio, Hobgoblin, the Sandman, Vulture and himself. No one can stand in their way apparently, only Spider-Man. Done. Unlike the Game Boy games, especially the first one that was not developed by Bits Studios but rather by Rare, this game has 0 charm in its presentation. There are no cutscenes, no witty dialogue between Spidey and the villains, nothing. You finish a level, a simple image is showing the next boss with a sentence like "Sandman appears with a fist of fury" and off you go to the next level. It's just bad and shows how little Bits Studios cared when making this.

Electro looks like an anthropomorphized Chocobo that got electrocuted

Finally, I want to touch upon the boss fights. My god. I didn't beat the game because the controls were doing my head in, but the first boss fight itself should tell you all you need to know about how much thought went into them. You fight Electro, but you actually don't. What I mean by that is that you stand there while Electro is simply chilling at the bottom of the screen and out of reach. Sometimes he decides to pay you a visit and come up, at which point you need to fight both him and the controls to somehow successfully jump-kick him, and while I did eventually just beat him on my first attempt, I can't say I have experienced boss fights that were much worse before. I suppose what the devs wanted to accomplish was for Electro to be out of range and shoot his lightning bolts at you, but it ends up looking like the game is bugged and he is flying around somewhere where he shouldn't. It doesn't help that he is literally under the platforms in a 2D game, which just would make no sense, but it doesn't matter because this all just sucked from start to finish.

To conclude, if you like to torture yourself with terrible Spider-Man games that aren't even bad in a funny sense, give these 1990 to 1992 Spider-Man games a try, but something tells me 1993 won't deliver different quality here. Oh wait, there is another game in 1992 already, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge... Why am I doing this to myself again?

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 1/10

• Story is explained briefly in the manual and opening in-game screen

• Stages start with the boss introducing himself in one short, uninspired sentence

• Spider-Man kills dozens of enemies in this game and has no dialogue, rendering him a soulless guy in a red suit

GAMEPLAY | 4/20

• Controls are horrendous

• You rarely find web fluid and its uses are very limited

• Boss fights are just sad

• Spider-Man just feels like a name given to a random protagonist

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10

• No voice acting

• Sound design ranges from OK to terrible. The sound of rats is haunting, especially when you are stuck next to them trying to get a handle of these darn controls

• Soundtrack is OK, with at least some tracks that don't make me want to turn the sound off completely

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 2/10

• Graphics are straight up ugly

• Spider-Man looks like an old guy with back problems and all sprites look bad

• Why did they choose to go with super-bright green and red colors? And did their little children draw the backgrounds?

ATMOSPHERE | 2/10

• Locations just feel like random places that have no realistic properties

• The Spider-Man license is also noticeable thanks to the enemies names, the ugly portrayal of Spider-Man and his web-swinging ability

CONTENT | 1/10

• 6 bosses with their own levels with multiple stages

• The game's biggest offense is that it exists in the first place

• None of the content is fun to engage with

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 2/10

• I guess there is some visual variety at places, even if it is hideous

• There are walls placed that you can crawl, crates in mid-air that you can web-swing off of I suppose

• I can literally not come up with another quarter-compliment

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 1/10

• This is the worst kind of your typical NES platformer

• I imagine this is what gaming would look like if Nintendo didn't save the industry

• This game is so conceptually bad that they didn't even bother to make use of the Spider-Man licence

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5

• Zero replay value

PLAYABILITY | 3/5

• The controls make this nearly unplayable at times

• I literally could not get out of certain holes because I couldn't jump far enough and the web-swinging ability just did not allow me to reach a higher platform

OVERALL | 21/100

Congratulations to Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, which just became the worst-rated game of this challenge, beating out a Spider-Man game, which had previously beaten a different Spider-Man game. Man, the video game industry did a number on this guy. Actually, it mainly was LJN / Acclaim Entertainment published games that did the deed.

GAME #074 | SUPER MARIO LAND 2: 6 GOLDEN COINS Review (1992) | Beaten

SUPER MARIO LAND 2: 6 GOLDEN COINS (October 21, 1992)

Genre: Platformer

Platforms: [Game Boy]

Developer: Nintendo R&D1

Publisher: Nintendo

Moby Score: 8.3

Started: June 26, 2023

Finished: June 27, 2023

Beaten: Beaten

Playtime: 3 hours

Title Screen

I love the Super Mario games, but I am not a fan of almost all Game Boy titles I have played in the past year. That's to be expected considering the handheld's limitations and the fact it loses its charm when emulated on a monitor, but based on this, you can maybe imagine how my expectations were both high and low for Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. Its the sequel to Super Mario Land 1, which itself was the start of the Game Boy Mario platforming series. After Super Mario Land 2, Nintendo did not release a new mainline Mario platformer for a handheld system until New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS in 2006 (!) and didn't follow up on that until 2011 (!) with Super Mario 3D Land. However, Super Mario Land itself did get continued without Mario, and the name of the third game ended up being Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, a character which was first introduced in Super Mario Land 2. Why did this game get another sequel? Simple.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins sold over 10 million copies over its lifetime and became the fifth best selling game for the Game Boy (Color), only to be beaten by the first Super Mario Land, Tetris and two sets of Pokémon games. It sold twice as much as the 6th placed game, Dr. Mario.

Wario stole Mario's castle. Luckily for him, redesigning didn't take a lot more than turning the letter

This game is a 2D platformer in the vein of the home system games. It improves significantly over the original, which released in 1989, while this game in particular released on October 21, 1992. The original had somewhat odd looking and very small sprites, bland environments and very little variety in gameplay. Super Mario Land 2 meanwhile feels like it was made for a different handheld due to how many more features it manages to pack into a Game Boy cartridge.

Comin' through

First up, sprites are a lot bigger. In general, you see a lot less of a level, but what you do see ends up being much more visibly pleasing as a result. Some games, like the Mega Man series on Game Boy, don't work this way because they are usually much more difficult and when you have a small screen like this, enemies showing up at the edge of the screen being right next to you can become a problem. In Mario, that didn't feel like an issue to me because the difficulty felt pleasant at all times. In Mega Man: Dr Wily's Revenge on the other hand, you are much more susceptible to unfair hits because you just can't react that quickly.

The level select screen of the Space Zone

Second, environments look much more varied. Instead of same-y settings, the game is divided into six zones with their own themes. So you end up having multiple basic "tree" levels that you will remember from the opening levels of Super Mario World, but you also have water levels, the Mario zone with its moving floors and lego levels (here, what look like Lego bricks are actually N&B blocks from Nintendo which competed against Lego in the 60s and 70s) and there is even a Space Zone where you explore the moon and where Mario changes into a spacesuit. It's all done on a pretty basic level of course, since this is a Game Boy game whichever way you slice it, but presentation and variety does a lot to keep things fresh and interesting, and ends up putting this game into 'Recommended' territory for me.

To conclude, here is a summary of my thoughts on each area of the game.

Boss fights are simple but well-designed

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS |3/10

• Story is explained in the manual. Wario took control of Mario's castle in Mario Land. That's it.

• Wario is a new character in the Super Mario franchise at the time of this game's release. This fact plus keeping things consistent with the enemies is where the game gets the points from me

• There is a commercial on YT for this game that introduces Wario. Very much worth checking out

GAMEPLAY | 15/20

• Great controls for the most part, but sometimes they can feel a bit slippery

• Next to your typical power-ups, there is a new one, the "Carrot", which is fun to use

• Well-balanced in terms of difficulty

• Plenty of variety, such as the water levels, the space levels and the Mario zone levels

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

• No voice acting

• You'll instantly be familiar with the sound effects. As per usual, they are fantastic

• Good soundtrack, but no memorable tracks and not as good as for other Mario platformers (my favorites: Athletic, Tree Top and Star Maze)

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10

• Graphics on the poorer side with the industry now firmly in the 16-bit era

• Game makes up for the Game Boy's limitations through presentation

• Varied locations make for a pleasant experience for the eyes, unlike the original Super Mario Land

ATMOSPHERE | 8/10

• Great overworld with 6 unique zones

• Plays and feels like a typical Mario platformer

CONTENT | 8/10

• 6 zones with multiple stages on each

• A few extra optional stages

• Bonus levels for ringing bell at the end of each stage

• High quality and varied content

• Enjoyable boss fights

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10

• The game allows you to choose in which order you want to tackle the zones

• The zones have variety in style and challenge

• Difficulty is fair, stages never felt like they were made extra difficult just to pad playtime

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10

• Conceptually not different from the home console Mario platformers

• Added a couple new features like the Carrot power-up and balloons that you can ride into the 'sky'

• New iconic character introduced

• Probably did as much as they could with the Game Boy's limitations

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

• Main replay value comes from beating your high scores

• You can find a few extra secrets

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

• Worked well at all times

MY OVERALL RATING: 70/100

What Am I Playing Next? #04 | Super Mario Land 2, Super Star Wars, Alone in the Dark + more

Hello readers,

in the next batch of games I'd like to highlight, we have 4 games from franchises that I like a lot and one game that revolutionized an entire genre, something that I realize applies to quite a few games in 1992. Here they are.

SUPER MARIO LAND 2: 6 GOLDEN COINS

BASIC INFO

• Initial Release Date: October 21, 1992
• Platforms: Game Boy
• Genre: Platformer
• Developer / Publisher: Nintendo R&D1 / Nintendo
• Series/Franchise: Super Mario
• HowLongToBeat: 3 hours
• MOBY RATING: 8.3

Finally another Mario game. This is just the second Mario platformer since I started this challenge, and I'll be honest, I have never heard of this. I'm assuming Super Mario Land is simply a Mario series done for the Game Boy and will be akin to the NES Super Mario Bros. platforming games. Right?

The game sold over 10 million copies and a pretty well-known character, Wario, debuts in this game. In the UK, the print ad had a pretty wild slogan: "Why did the Hedgehog cross the road? To get to Super Mario Land 2."

MY HISTORY WITH THE SERIES

I've played quite a few Mario games and simultaneously, only a small percentage of them. I've played Super Mario Odyssey, a couple Mario Kart and Mario Party games, Dr. Mario and Super Mario World. The two platformers among these are some of my favorite games of all time, so expectations are always going to be somewhat high for this series.

MY THOUGHTS BEFORE STARTING THE GAME

10 million copies sold is pretty crazy. It's actually the fifth most sold game on the Game Boy (Color), behind the original Super Mario Land, Tetris and two Pokémon games. The most recent platformer in the series, Super Mario World, is to this day the highest rated game in this challenge and one of the best games of all time. Using some of those innovations, even if it is just for a Game Boy game, makes me think this will be plenty of fun as well.

REVIEWS OF OTHER GAMES IN THE SERIES

• Dr. Mario, 1990 (Game Boy, NES, SNES)
• Super Mario World, 1990 (SNES)

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI

BASIC INFO

• Initial Release Date: October 30, 1992
• Platforms: Super Famicom, PC Engine CD-ROM, Mega-CD, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance
• Genre: RPG
• Developer / Publisher: Atlus / Atlus
• Series/Franchise: Shin Megami Tensei
• HowLongToBeat: 38 hours
• MOBY RATING: 7.5

It's criminal how much I love this series and how few games of it I have played. Shin Megami Tensei 3 and IV are great, but I never finished them for some reason. Going a bit further to the spinoff Persona series, 3 to 5 are among my favorite games of all time. Apart from these however, I have not played any of the other dozens of mainline and spinoff games in the series.

Shin Megami Tensei is the third entry in the mainline series after Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei I and II and the first solely developed by Atlus. It's also the first game in the series on a 16-bit system. From its soundtrack to its aesthetics and core gameplay mechanics, it won't take you long to see how consistent the series has been in tone and presentation from the very start. 

SMT V sold over a million copies by today, and is the best selling mainline game by a significant margin with those numbers, so you can imagine that the first title did not set the world on fire in terms of sales. It did however sell well enough to be considered a success and for the next entry to be developed shortly after, and it did well critically if we just go by Famitsu's score, a 36/40. Only 10 games got a score that high or higher until 1992.

MY HISTORY WITH THE SERIES

As part of the challenge? None. In general? I've played a few dozen hours of SMT III: Nocturne and SMT IV each, and I got a physical copy of SMT V collecting dust on a shelf. So the answer is: Too little. 

MY THOUGHTS BEFORE STARTING THE GAME

I've read a few times that the encounter rate is way too high in this game, at least for the Super Famicom version. That has me a bit worried. I don't think the Press Turn system existed here yet, so I hope the gameplay does not get too repetitive over the 30+ hours I expect to spend with this. Just from an atmospheric standpoint though, I know I will dig this a lot, so I'm still looking forward to it.

REVIEWS OF OTHER GAMES IN THE SERIES

• None

SPIDER-MAN: RETURN OF THE SINISTER SIX

BASIC INFO

• Initial Release Date: October, 1992
• Platforms: NES, Sega Master System, Game Gear
• Genre: Action-adventure
• Developer / Publisher: Bits Studios / Acclaim Entertainment
• Series/Franchise: Spider-Man
• HowLongToBeat: 30 minutes
• MOBY RATING: 6.2

Is the Spider-Man series the worst in all of gaming? You'd think just by looking at the 4 Spider-Man games I've played up to this point. The scores are 26, 37, 35 and 25. Four of the seven worst scores I've given so far, including the two worst. 

Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six is likely not going to be different. It released for the NES, Sega Master System and Game Gear and wasn't received very well. One review complains about the controls. Oh boy.

MY HISTORY WITH THE SERIES

Too much history. I've played 4 games in this series as part of this challenge, all of which controlled horribly and simply sucked. That's quite an accomplishment. That said, I also played 2018's Marvel's Spider-Man and it is among my Top 10 ever, so apparently Spider-Man video games know no inbetween. 

MY THOUGHTS BEFORE STARTING THE GAME

If I had to guess, I'd say this is another stinker. A 6.2 Moby Rating is not a good sign, and this doesn't seem to be a particularly well-known Spider-Man entry, which is never good. I did set the challenge of going through all Spider-Man games however, since I love the superhero himself, so we'll push through. A 30-minute run-time doesn't sound so bad either.

REVIEWS OF OTHER GAMES IN THE SERIES

• The Amazing Spider-Man, 1990 (Commodore 64/Amiga/Atari ST)
• The Amazing Spider-Man, 1990 (Game Boy)
• Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin, 1991 (Sega Genesis)
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2, 1992 (Game Boy)

SUPER STAR WARS

BASIC INFO

• Initial Release Date: November 1, 1992
• Platforms: SNES
• Genre: Run and gun
• Developer / Publisher: Sculptured Software (LucasArts) / Nintendo
• Series/Franchise: Star Wars
• HowLongToBeat: 3 hours
• MOBY RATING: 7.7

I've only watched one Star Wars movie from start to finish: Star Wars I. Or is it IV? The first one out of the second trilogy. The one with Jar Jar Binks. I'd like to say the hate George Lucas got for this character and this likely resulting in the plot twist of him being a sith lord being thrown out (yes, I believe that conspiracy theory) is the reason for why I didn't bother watching the rest, but really, it's just me being stupid. Maybe playing this game will inspire me to watch another one like the recent Indiana Jones video game managed to do.

Super Star Wars is the first Star Wars game for the SNES and has been pretty well-received. It got 9's across the board almost at the time, and was listed in multiple Top 100 lists over time. This is the first of three games with that name, each based on a movie out of the original trilogy.

MY HISTORY WITH THE SERIES

None in terms of this challenge. I did play a bit of KOTOR and the entirety of Jedi Fallen Order, both of which I enjoyed. 

MY THOUGHTS BEFORE STARTING THE GAME

This game is pretty popular, so I'm optimistic about it. It's also supposedly pretty difficult, though which game for the NES/SNES isn't? As long as the presentation is good and there is fun gameplay, I'll be happy with this.

REVIEWS OF OTHER GAMES IN THE SERIES

• None

ALONE IN THE DARK

BASIC INFO

• Initial Release Date: 1992
• Platforms: MS-DOS, 3DO, Mac OS, PC-98, FM Towns
• Genre: Survival horror
• Developer / Publisher: Infogrames / Infogrames, EU (Interplay, NA)
• Series/Franchise: Alone in the Dark
• HowLongToBeat: 5 1/2 hours
• MOBY RATING: 7.7

Finally we are getting to Alone in the Dark, a couple months before the remake releases. This is a survival horror game, one of my favorite genres. This genre has not popped up on this challenge before because this game pretty much is the first 3D survival horror game and revolutionized the genre as a whole. 

Resident Evil's Shinji Mikami went as far as to say that without Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil 1 would have probably turned into a first-person shooter. 

The game ended up selling over 2.5 million copies, and many sequels would release, though not all to critical acclaim like this one unfortunately.

MY HISTORY WITH THE SERIES

None, this will be my first time interacting with this series.

MY THOUGHTS BEFORE STARTING THE GAME

I can't wait for survival horror games to be featured multiple times annually on my lists, so needless to say, I can't wait to play this game. All I'm worried about is that I might get frustrated with the controls, which might not have aged so well, but we'll see. I've become relatively tolerant over the past year or so.

REVIEWS OF OTHER GAMES IN THE SERIES

• None

GAME #073 | NIGHT TRAP Review (1992) | Beaten

NIGHT TRAP (October 15, 1992)

Genre: Interactive movie

Platforms: [Sega Genesis]

Developer: Digital Pictures

Publisher: Sega, Digital Pictures

Moby Score: 6.8

Started: June 26, 2023

Finished: June 26, 2023

Beaten: Beaten

Playtime: 2 hours

Back in 1992, many games led to controversy in the US regarding their violent and sexual content. Because see, "film like rating systems" did not exist in the games industry until that point, and societal pressure was not there to create something like that until this fateful year and the year after it, where we saw the release of games like Mortal Kombat, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and, yes, Night Trap.

Night Trap released on October 15, 1992, was developed by Digital Pictures and is an FMV (full-motion video) game. Teenagers are having a sleepover at a mansion that is infested with vampires, and you, the player, watch surveillance footage of eight rooms in the house and partake in a hundred QTEs to activate traps around the house whenever these bad guys trigger them. You can fail a few times, but fail too often or fail at critical moments and certain characters will die.

Production values here are really poor, and there is never any actual blood seen in the game, though a drill-like device pouring red liquid out of a victim through a tube is the most controversial moment you will find here. The victim doesn't die, it continues on screaming and struggling to get out while she is getting carried out of the room, but it was a moment like this that had Night Trap added to a congressional hearing in 1993 alongside Mortal Kombat and Doom.

The result of this hearing? The creation of the ESRB, a self-regulatory organization that assigns ratings to video games in North America to this day.

Night Trap received a 25th anniversary edition in 2017 and can be played on PS4, PS Vita, PC and the Switch these days. Its ESRB rating? T for Teens...

Title Screen

GAMEPLAY | 14/20

Usually with my reviews, I talk about the story first, but I think this game should be discussed the other way round for clarity. As explained, this game is mainly a QTE game. Robbers (vampires) sneak around one of the eight rooms, sometimes on their own, sometimes in pairs. As soon as they reach a platform with a trap, a bar will turn from green to red, which is your cue to click on the screen. This activates the trap and a short clip of them being dropped into the floor, engulfed by a bookshelf or thrown out of the window is played, among others. During all of this, the main characters walk around the house and play out the story, at first oblivious to the dozens of robbers walking around the house.

What makes this game difficult are three things. First, at times, robbers show up on two of the eight screens. The traps don't activate after a set amount of time that they are on the screen. One trap might take 10 seconds to trigger for one robber, the other might just take 3 seconds to trigger it, meaning you might find yourself waiting to activate a trap on the wrong screen, therefore missing the trigger on the other. The game keeps a counter running of "Possible captures" and how many you actually captured. Capture too few and the game is over, requiring you to restart from the beginning unless you reach a checkpoint halfway through.

Second, the story is cheesy as hell but you of course don't know that at first, and when big moments happen, you find yourself suspensefully watching and missing out on the robbers sneaking through other screens in the meantime. Not letting this happen is one part of the challenge.

Finally, you don't just have to wait for a red light for your cue. That would be too simple. There is an additional colored code that you need to have selected for the triggers to work. There is orange, red, green, blue, yellow and purple to choose from. I believe there are 4 or 5 times during the game where the color changes. The only way to know which color you need to be on next is by listening to the characters. At very specific times in the story, they will talk to each other and say things they "I will change the code to green". If you miss this, all you can do at this point is just guess, which usually means you will miss a few traps.

I've heard plenty of things about this game since the release of its anniversary edition in 2017. A lot of it was and is negative. Having played this game myself, unbothered by the controversy and humored by its cheesy story and low production values, I don't really understand the hate. Is it a great game? Objectively, no. Is it bereft of fun? Absolutely not. I played this solo, but I can only imagine how hilarious this would have been had I played it with friends, which I plan on doing some time in the near future for sure.

The gameplay is extremely simple, but challenging and quite simply fun. Perception, quickness and a good memory will be the only skills you need in this game, and I really enjoyed how that translated. My only critique here would be that having to constantly check for robbers means you will not catch a lot of the story. Though I will go over that in the next part of this review.

This guy gives you your instructions and pulls the plug on you, if you fail

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10

The story in this game is cheesy, cringeworthy, trashy and plain bad. Let's get that out of the way first. As someone who can enjoy low production values from time to time though, I had my fun with it. You are part of the SCAT (Sega Control Attack Team for the Sega CD version, Special Control Attack Team for the others), which was alerted to the disappearance of teenagers at the Martin winery estate. As the game starts, a new group of teenagers are invited over to this place.

The SCAT team gives you the overseer role and tasks you with using the traps around the house on any suspicious people roaming about, whilst the overall goal is to keep track of the three teenagers and their two parents as they have a party with a suspected group of victims.

The game takes place in one continouus loop of roughly 25 to 30 minutes on 8 screens, each depicting a different area of the house. As you take care of the robbers/burglars/vampires, you also can simply switch to the screens with the main characters and listen in on their conversations. The problem is that most of the time, robbers are walking around, which means you can rarely listen to them for more than a few seconds uninterrupted. This has one good and one pretty bad point to it.

First, the good. If you fail to trap enough robbers, the game is over and you restart. This happened to me a few times, and with each run, I caught different conversations and learned more about the game's story, which mainly included hints given at the true nature of the hosts.

The bad is that the game's design pretty much doesn't allow you to catch all of the story unless you do dozens of playthroughs. Being stubborn and saying "I'll just listen for this next playthrough" doesn't work, because if you don't spend the time catching robbers, you get the Game Over screen after just a couple minutes. Personally, this wasn't a big deal to me because you don't end up missing much, the story isn't good and the gameplay was the fun part to me here either way, but how you feel about all this will depend on how OK you are with admittedly trashy games like this, which I personally think have their own charm, especially if the gameplay itself is, to this day, pretty unique.

We will definitely not get caught...

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

This is an FMV game. An interactive movie. So while the acting wasn't great, voice acting WAS present here, which in itself is unique for this time. There isn't much of a soundtrack here. Most of what you will hear comes from a specific part of the game where the group of teenagers start singing. There are some horror themes that play whenever you are in a room with robbers though, which added something I'll call "funny tension" because they just walk in the weirdest way possible.

Aw shucks

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10

Hard to rate this part considering that this is an interactive movie. I'm giving it a 7 for the following reasons. First, I'm rating the setting of the game and the style of it all. It certainly has that 90s feel to it and is charmfully trashy. Second, the costume design and the walk/crawl mix that the robbers do is hilarious. Finally, the UI, which looks different depending on the version you play but succeeds in giving you a clear overview. Here I can only recommend going for the 25th anniversary edition at this point though, since that one actually has the screens at the bottom show what's going on in each room, while older versions only had a stock image displayed and made you memorize the exact timing and locations of when and where you would find the robbers.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10

If the atmosphere this game was going for was of the "comedy horror" genre, this works. You are part of the SCAT team, and you have sent a teenage girl in to aid you, so sometimes you will find her talking into the cameras and addressing you that way, which is a nice touch.

As for the suspects, they have an ominous presence to them in the way they walk and talk, they drink suspicious red liquid and there are some teases of their true nature every couple minutes which was pretty neat.

The SCAT team pulling the plug on you when you would let too many robbers pass by was also a nice touch, instead of getting a simple GAME OVER screen.

Night TRAP!

CONTENT | 7/10

There are 100 captures to be done in this game. If you want to try and get all of them, you can play this game for hours. In terms of your first full playthrough, you can expect 1 to 2 hours of gameplay. It's not much, but it's definitely the perfect amount for a game like this. That said, there isn't anything else to it besides the mouse clicking during appropriate times, so this game is what it is.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10

You have eight rooms to observe and need to do so with constant focus. Sometimes, the game cleverly takes your focus from you without you noticing, and half a dozen robbers scroll by before you notice. I found this to be a well designed game on that front on most levels, apart from the fact that the story cannot really be properly observed due to the constant interruptions.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10

This game was partly responsible for the creation of the ESRB, it is one of the most well-known FMV games of all time and it has the type of gameplay that (almost?) no other game has ever done. I can't say that a series of games like this would work, but for a one-time thing, this was a great concept.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

Replay value comes from all those extra story bits you'll get to see that you probably missed in earlier runs and from trying to capture all robbers.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 67/100

If you are OK with the low production values, the cheesiness and the one-dimensional gameplay, there is a good chance that you will have a fun 1 or 2 hours with this game. Personally, I had a blast, and I didn't expect that based on all the negative things I had heard about it.

(This is the 73rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

GAME #072 | SPLATTERHOUSE 2 Review (1992) | Not Beaten

SPLATTERHOUSE 2 (July, 1992)

Genre: Beat 'em up

Platforms: [Sega Genesis]

Developer: Now Production

Publisher: Namco

Moby Score: 6.8

Started: June 25, 2023

Finished: June 25, 2023

Beaten: Not Beaten

Playtime: 1.5 hours

When you think of a video game that is all presentation and no gameplay, Splatterhouse 2 is a good retro example to give. Its known for its gory, grotesque style as you walk the halls and punch, kick and smash enemies into pieces. Does doing that equate to fun though? Not really. Splatterhouse 2 was developed by Now Production and released in July 1992. It's similar in gameplay to the original Splatterhouse, and was followed up Splatterhouse 3 as well as a Splatterhouse remake in 2010.

Title Screen

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10

You contol a character called Rick. The game follows on the story of the first Splatterhouse game. I'm unfamiliar with that game, but the manual makes things relatively clear. The mask talks to you, and tells you that you can still save Jennifer, so you must go to some house to do so. An atmospheric introductory scroll through an onimous field alongside lines of dialogue by the mask talking to you set the tone. With that, the game starts.

Each stage is introduced with a still image showing the stage number you are now on and a short comment by the mask on the next location. That's pretty much it in terms of story presentation.

The setting is explained in an atmospheric cutscene

GAMEPLAY | 7/20

Where to start? I guess I should first mention that no, this game is not fun to play. First, there is the fact that you simply don't have much you can do here. You can punch, kick, jump and use melee weapons to smash.

Second, everything you do is very slow. Fittingly, you can not sprint, just walk or 'strudge' as I would call it. This applies to dodging as well. Enemies pretty quickly start jumping over you, and you simply don't have the agility to dodge these jumps unless you know you are coming and preemptively are positioning yourself appropriately. That sucks.

Rick's agility generally sucks out the enjoyment I could have had with this game. You need to get close enough to enemies to punch them, but this means you are putting yourself in harm's way with no reliable way to dodge, so a lot of times, you take an unfair hit. I wouldn't even call it a hit, it's a mere touch. Then there are all these smaller enemies, which can easily find a way to jump at you from angles that you cannot reliably attack, meaning with a standing punch or a jumping kick. Instead, they will find the inbetween position to attack from sometimes, like the piranhas jumping out of the water in one early stage.

Boss fights are OK and certainly the highlight of this game alongside its atmosphere, but they are a minor part of the game. The major part of the game is simply not fun.

Disgusting creatures getting punched by a badass named ... Rick

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

No voice acting. The soundtrack fits the theme of the game. I can't say I loved it or that it was memorable, but it was certainly fitting.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10

Splatterhouse 2 looks pretty good, but mostly due to its graphical presentation. Few games on the SNES look quite like this. The animations bring it all home. For example, there is one thing the game does in its presentation that I love, which is that when you use a melee weapon against an enemy, you either strike them from above and squish them into the ground or you hit them from the side and leave them a gooey mess on a wall.

Home run!

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10

Definitely the best part about this game. The game does a great job with its atmosphere. It all starts with the introductory cutscene, continues with the design of each stage and culminates with the boss fights, which are all uniquely positively disgusting.

CONTENT | 3/10

The game takes less an hour to beat, once you know what you are doing. It takes multiple hours to beat if you're a new player, and most of it is spent frustrated by the game's controls. There is little variety in gameplay, so even with that short runtime, it overstood its welcome.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

Strudge through levels, maybe do a little bit of platforming by jumping over obstacles, and punch your way slowly through enemies. Get hit unfairly most of the time because of the enemy's attack patterns and reach, and there you go. You got pretty frustrating levels in your game. The saving grace here is the presentation of the boss fights at the end of each stage.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

You can praise the game a bit for its atmosphere and grotesque presentation, an inspiration which is felt in well-presented boss fights as well. However, from a gameplay standpoint, it's a below average 2D beat 'em up.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

Apart from trying to beat your high score, there is no replay value here.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 51/100

Splatterhouse 2 is above average in presentation, below average in gameplay. Depending on what you favor, your experience may differ, but assuming that most gamers want fun gameplay, I'd make a guess and say you won't enjoy this game.