Monday, June 26, 2023

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
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
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
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