Aerobiz Supersonic

Grade: A-

Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 16th

Publisher: Koei

Year: 1994

Genre: Biz Simulation

Koei has published some pretty unusual games in their day, but Aerobiz Supersonic is one of those ones that absolutely should not have worked. In Aerobiz Supersonic, you’re the CEO of an airline. You spend your time crunching numbers, taking in meetings with your advisors, and negotiating deals. That’s it. You don’t get to fly the planes, or beat up coach passengers who try to sneak into first class, or come up with creative ways to sneak in hidden fares. At least with Koei’s hyper-detailed strategy games, you still get to fight a war, assuming your pre-battle mismanagement doesn’t cause all your troops to desert first. And while a lot of the Uncharted Waters series is about shipping and trading, at the end of the day, you still get to explore the world and can commit piracy. There’s nothing “adventure-like” in Aerobiz; it’s just you trying to do the one thing that nobody in America seems capable of – keep an airline from declaring bankruptcy.

I’m the CEO of Australia? Thanks, Ron Jeremy!

On paper, this sounds pretty dreadful, but somehow it manages to be fun. Hey, you know the old cliché: that’s why they don’t play these games on paper. Well, except for D&D, I suppose – that’s a game that you do play on paper. Also, paper football. But not video games. You don’t play those on paper… although in the case Aerobiz Supersonic you’ll probably need to play it WITH some paper, you know, to write all your budget spreadsheets and airfare rates on.

At heart, all business simulations are strategy games, so if you’re not big on the genre, you’re probably not going to find much to enjoy here. And even if you are, you still might not like it. There’s big a difference between launching a well-timed invasion into enemy territory and hitting them with, say, a fleet of tanks they didn’t see coming, versus doing the same thing except your weapons are a steep price cut and aggressive marketing campaign.

In fact, it’s hard to say exactly WHO the target audience for this game was. I’d say it was meant for Genesis-playing adults who enjoyed strategy games, but would be like saying the game was designed the game for the iPhone – neither of those things existed back then. I first found out about the Aerobiz games from my friend Jay, back when Aerobiz Supersonic had just been released. Now Jay was an extremely brilliant kid who grew up to be a doctor, and he was a little bit eccentric, too, so you might think this kind of game would be right in his strike zone. But he was also 15 years old at the time. His favorite part of the entire game was renaming all the airlines. It was all downhill from there.

Though he also enjoyed playing in the 1970s time period so he could pretend he was watching Starsky and Hutch after he got home from running the airline.

I’m still tempted to chalk this up as more evidence that Koei’s business plan back in the Genesis days was to make a bunch of games that wouldn’t sell, then hold them in warehouses and auction them on eBay twenty years later when people finally came around to appreciating them. Talk about visionary – instead of making games for the average gamer, they made them for the adults those gamers would eventually grow into. Oh, and they apparently predicted the existence of eBay. Either that, or they just had no idea what they were doing at all.

Aerobiz Supersonic is definitely not a game for everyone, but it does have a certain geeky appeal to it. Part of it is that it’s not too hard to get into. I’ve never run any kind of business before (unless an unpopular blog about Genesis games that generates negative revenue is considered a business), let alone an airline, but I managed to figure out what I was doing before very long. Compare this to many of Koei’s wargames, which can get to be pretty demanding, and generally result in me executing the brilliant strategy of having my navy dump my entire food supply into the ocean, while I spend all my money researching more efficient ways to dump food into the ocean. This plan generally leads me to step two of my grand strategy – surrender to whichever rival seems the least genocidal. So I give Aerobiz a lot of credit for the fact that I’ve never had to contemplate which competing airline would be the most likely to murder all my customers by the second turn.

For the record, though, it’s Air LA. They’re monsters.

But while it’s easy to understand, it’s still very challenging. It’s not quite that old “easy to learn, impossible to master” thing, because AS isn’t impossible to master – you just have to be very attentive. There’s a lot here that you’ll need to keep track of – money, your inventory of planes, rights to use certain airports, and perhaps most importantly, timing. Keeping everything on the proper schedule is perhaps the most challenging and most critical part of the game, because it affects everything you do. You don’t want to spend three turns negotiating the rights to have a flight between London and Paris, and then have to wait an additional turn before you have a plane available to actually make the flight. The game is a race to accumulate wealth and market share, and every wasted turn brings your enemies that much closer to defeating you.

That’s another thing about Aerobiz Supersonic – it gives you a real appreciation for the cutthroat nature of business. Everyone is trying to maximize their profits, and the easiest way to do that is to wipe out the competition. There’s no silver medals here. First place is control of the skies. Second place is you and everyone who works for you loses their job, and whatever city had been unlucky enough to house your corporate headquarters receives irreversible damage to their local economy and goes into a slow death spiral (ok, that last part isn’t actually in the game, just some speculation I have from growing up in the rust belt).

Sometimes on the news you’ll hear about corporations screwing their workers just to save seemingly inconsequential amounts of money, and you’ll think “Why wouldn’t they treat their employees better? They made $1.4 billion last year, would have been so awful if they made $1.3 and paid their employees better instead?” Well, a nice thing about a game like this is you can follow your morals and do the right thing. Go ahead, give everyone raises. And guess what? That insignificant $.1 billion (which is $100 million, by the way) that your competition didn’t spend on wages they didn’t have to, they used that money to undercut you in your most lucrative market. Now spending that extra $100 million just cost you $200 million in sales that went to your rival. Next quarter it’ll be a billion. Quarter after that, instead of raises, you’ll be giving out pink slips, which in turns floods the labor market and gives your amoral competitor the leverage to drive employee wages even lower. Isn’t capitalism awesome?

It is when you’re the one winning.

Availability: Aerobiz Supersonic is a hard one to come by. For reasons that should be all too easy to understand by now, this wasn’t exactly a huge seller when it first came out. And unfortunately, it’s also not available as part of any retro compilations, or for download on any of the current gaming systems. That means the only way to play this one is to track down a copy for the Genesis (or SNES, the two versions are pretty similar).

Now we’ve tried to take a somewhat neutral tone while discussing the prices of the games on our Top 50. After all, what we’d be willing to pay for an old game might be a lot less than what you would. In fact, we’re pretty cheap, so it’s actually pretty likely that many of you would be willing to spend more for a rare game than we would. Having said that, the prices being asked for copies of Aerobiz Supersonic are completely outrageous. The cheapest price we were able to find online was $35 (before shipping), and most copies were going for far more than that. On the off chance you actually see one in a store (which we haven’t), don’t be surprised if they demand you pay them in diamonds or precious metals.

Or trips to Saipan.

Still, if you ever do find one for a better price (maybe at a garage sale or something) or can borrow a copy from a friend, don’t hesitate to do so. Alternately, you could try to track down a copy of its predecessor, Aerobiz. The differences between both games are pretty minimal, so it wouldn’t be much of a downgrade. Unfortunately, it’s also not much cheaper, so you’re still paying a king’s ransom to obtain a copy. Don’t do that.

Sorry to say, but right now your best bet is probably just to keep your fingers crossed and hope that Koei decides to bring it out for the Wii’s Virtual Console, as they did with New Horizons.

Road Rash Series

Grades:

Road Rash  (1992) – A-

Road Rash 2 (1993) – A-

Road Rash 3 (1995) – D

Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 17th

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Years: 1992-1995 (see grades for specific year of each game)

Genre: Commuting

Note: Road Rash 2 was the editors’ unanimous favorite game in this series

We don’t write this blog with a conscious effort to be anti-establishment or populist, but it’s not hard to imagine “hardcore” gamers and other Genesis enthusiasts getting a little bent out of shape upon seeing the Road Rash series finish so high our list. Certainly, this is not a series of games we would expect to see do well if a similar list had been published by, for example, Gamefan magazine back in the old days. The Road Rash games are the kind of thing likely to be looked down upon as mindless, or “just another racing game”, completely lacking the interesting characters or narrative depth of, say, an RPG. To this I would argue that if you can’t properly enjoy a well-made game about racing motorcycles while punching people in the face, then perhaps you’re all taking yourselves just a bit too seriously.

I mean, video games are supposed to be fun, right? It seems like sometimes we get so caught up arguing about their artistic merits that we kind of forget that. And despite what the pundits of “hardcore” gaming will tell you, not every title needs to be an RPG with a complicated story, a 2D fighter with 400 characters that are all slightly different variations of Ryu, or the world’s hardest vertical shooter. It doesn’t make you any less of a gamer if you enjoy, say, a sports game, as long as the game is well designed and satisfying to play. Road Rash isn’t a sport (tragically), but the same principle applies.

Oh hey, there’s a bike based on one of my ex-girlfriends.

Road Rash wasn’t the first game to combine racing in combat, but it does so in a way that’s much more believable and almost perfectly balanced. Think about how weird it would be if you saw a bunch of heavily modified cars racing down the street while firing machine guns and other weapons at each other. Aside being expensive, that’s the sort of thing that would probably attract a lot of attention and probably a military intervention. That probably explains why most “car combat” games take place in some dystopian future. But Road Rash is a motorcycle race, where the competitor’s just happen to punch each other when nobody else is looking because… well, why wouldn’t they? I mean, besides the fact that it’s incredibly dangerous? That’s believable. In fact, for all you know, that sort of thing could be happening right now. You should probably look out a window to check – you wouldn’t want to miss something that awesome.

Of course, the “why wouldn’t they?” aspect of Road Rash’s combat will ruin all normal motorcycle racing games for you going forward. You’ll never be able to battle it out in a tight race without thinking “why can’t I just punch him on the face and take the lead?” ever again. On the plus side, it’s not like there are a lot of great motorcycle racing games out there anyway, so no big loss.

 

They’re neck and punch-able neck going into the final turn.

 The other nice benefit about only allowing hand to hand combat is that it forces the focus of the game to be on racing first, and combat second. After all, you’re going to have to catch up to your opponent before you can kick him into the path of an oncoming car. It feels less cheap than a racing game with ranged weapons, where you can drive poorly but bring down a distant opponent with a missile. Compare this to any of the Mario Kart games, where you can get a red turtle shell that will home in on an opponent so long as you’re close enough to see him in the distance. That doesn’t feel fair at all. In a more Road-Rashian world, instead of firing shells at each other, Mario would pull up alongside Toad, reach over, and slam that little bastard’s face into his own steering wheel, preferably while doing his “Yahoooo!” laugh as Toad skids into the nearest wall.

There are times when Road Rash’s combat feels a bit unnecessary, particularly when you have a significantly faster bike than your opponents and can blow past them before they even have a chance to make a fist. But in a close race, it’s an important aspect of the game, as it allows you to (quite literally) beat back an opponent to take or hold onto a lead.  Besides providing an alternative way to win instead of boring old stuff like, you know, racing well, it’s also incredibly rewarding to pound a tough opponent into falling off his ride. This creates a nice balance between the racing and the fighting – you still have to race well enough to catch up, but it’s your ability to really whale on your opponents that will put you over the top. It’s perfect.

The first Road Rash comes from a time when EA was a fast-growing but still only medium-size publisher from San Mateo, and still developed many of the games they published in-house. It’s sort of interesting to see how the company’s California roots sometimes show through in subtle ways in their earlier products. It’s probably why the cover of the first NHL Hockey has a picture from a LA Kings home game (as well as a secret message about the brand new San Jose Sharks). It’s also a likely explanation of why all of Road Rash’s tracks take place within California. It’s their home territory after all – places the designers probably already knew, or could hop in the car and check out on a slow afternoon. And that’s kind of cool in itself – it lends the game sort of a personal touch, by creating a connection between the player and the people who worked on the game as you get a glimpse of the places where they live. Admittedly, these tracks aren’t anything remotely close to accurate maps of the area, so much as just a collection of California-themed backgrounds. Still, it’s kind of fun to imagine the people who made them driving in to work one morning and thinking “This commute would be awesome if I was on a motorcycle and fistfighting cops.”

Wave to the designers as you go past their house.

Road Rash 2 was sort of the ideal sequel, making minor refinements to the gameplay, improving the graphics a bit, adding some new bikes and weapons, and expanding the courses to locations all across the nation. One nice little touch here is that each course has its own unique background music, and each track’s music seems really appropriate for that location. The Hawaii course emphasizes island-sounding drums, the Tennessee music has a definite bluegrass feel to it, and to the extent that Vermont has a signature musical style, let’s just assume that the game nails it as well. The differences between Road Rash and it’s sequel are almost negligible, so the best way to describe RR2 is that it’s basically the same as the first one, but a little bit better. That might seem a bit unambitious, but as the flaming trainwreck of ineptitude that is Road Rash 3 demonstrates, it is all too easy to mess up a good thing.

Ah yes, Road Rash 3. Well, our goal in doing this Top 50 list was that after years of being negative and hateful towards games, we were going to write positive, loving articles about the 50 games we did like. Let’s just say that Road Rash 3 isn’t amongst those 50 games. Oh, it might have rode in here on the coattails of the more successful Road Rash games, but when we say “Road Rash series”, we really mean Road Rashes 1 & 2. It’s like the Godfather movies – the first two are excellent, and the third is something that people generally don’t acknowledge and eventually everyone sort of forgets it exists.

Still, it’s probably worth discussing Road Rash 3 a little bit, because its badness is pretty symbolic of its time. It’s a bad game from a bad year, put out by a publisher that was in the midst of going from our most to least favorite game company, on a system that was over the hill and practically crumbling before our eyes. For those of you who don’t remember 1995, it was mostly awesome – the economy was going well, there was good music on MTV, good TV shows and movies to watch, it rained gumdrops, and just about everything was great. Except for gaming, where 1995 was this awful year where games had already gone about as far as the technology could take them, but the next generation of consoles weren’t out yet. This hit the Genesis especially hard, because it was weaker technology than the SNES, and also because the games for the system had been so innovative right from the beginning that there wasn’t much left to do design-wise. As a result, you got a lot of newer games that were just way beyond what the system could handle technologically – attempts at 3D graphics, first person shooters, and new animation techniques that looked awful AND made the games less responsive. That’s what happened to Road Rash 3 – the big innovations came right at the beginning of the series (“Hey, let’s have these motorcycle dudes punch each other!”), and by 1995, all that was left to do was add a new graphics engine that ended up looking worse and being harder to control. You ever have a pet that you really loved, but it got old and sick and you had to put it to sleep? The Genesis was kind of like that beloved pet, and Road Rash 3 is a symptom of the disease that forced you to put it down.

Road Rash 3, a broken leg on the horse that is the Sega Genesis.

 Availability: For reasons I’ll never understand, EA has been pretty reluctant to re-release their classic games on a collection for modern consoles. This truly baffles me – I know I can’t be the only one who would rush out to buy a collection with Rings of Power, Road Rash 2, and NHL ’94 all on one disc. My best guess is that EA makes so much money off of Madden that they simply don’t have any room for the additional piles of cash such a collection would generate. Whatever the reason, the Road Rash games aren’t part of any collection (other than the PSP one, which doesn’t count due to the fact that the PSP sucks), and aren’t available for download either. If you want to play these games, you’re going to have to get them for the Genesis.

That shouldn’t be too hard, though. Copies of Road Rash 2 are plentiful and dirt cheap, and you ought to be able to find one at either a used game store, flea market or just order it online. One small caveat is that many of the copies in existence today seem to be cartridge-only, as people who buy games about brawling on motorcycles apparently aren’t real big on keeping their stuff all nice and pristine. Copies of the original are a little harder to come by, but by no means impossible, and only slightly more expensive. Road Rash 3 is the rarest and most expensive of the bunch, but not by much, so if you really wanted a copy… well, then you’re obviously not reading these articles very closely. I did compare playing RR3 to putting your favorite pet to sleep only a few paragraphs ago.

Beyond Oasis

Grade: B+

Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 18th

Publisher: Sega

Year: 1994

Genre: Zelda-Envy

Beyond Oasis is the story of Prince Ali (and if you can read that name without automatically saying “mighty is he” to yourself, than I think it’s safe to assume we’re from different generations), who is apparently the sole heir to the Kingdom of Totally Not Giving a Fuck. This is a guy who thinks nothing about going off to explore abandoned caves on long-forgotten islands without telling anyone, and when he finds himself alone and in pursuit of some enemies fleeing by ship, he does what any rational person would do in that situation – he hops on board and starts murdering everyone. Does he know how to sail the ship or even where it was headed? No. But why worry about such trivial things? When the time comes, he’ll just crash the ship into the nearest land mass, assume any nearby structure is an enemy fortress and proceed to kick some more ass. That’s the kind of guy Prince Ali is. Traits like “a reasonable amount of caution” or “forethought” are not among the his best qualities. You can’t help but like the guy. Especially when his game looks like this:

Look at that. Believe it or not, that screenshot is from a Genesis game. The whole game looks this good, if not better. If Beyond Oasis isn’t the best-looking game on the system, it has to be pretty close. It’s as though somebody over at Sega flipped over the Genesis, and found that the “nice graphics” switch  had been set to the off position for the last 5 years. Which, given the way they run things over there, doesn’t seem all that unlikely, actually.

Then again, graphics aren’t supposed to matter, right? Gameplay is supposed to be the only thing that counts. Well, except for those times when we arbitrarily decide that its actually the story that’s important, and gameplay doesn’t matter at all (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy). And in rare occasions, it’s even ok to like a game purely for the soundtrack. But never graphics. Real gamers are above such trivial things. Good graphics are for slack-jawed casual gamers to drool over while playing their games based on the latest Michael Bay movie.

But  that’s complete nonsense. The quality of a game isn’t determined by any single aspect on an all or nothing basis. Gameplay might be the most important part of a game (and by the way, “gameplay” itself is sort of a catch-all of numerous important things, such as control, difficulty, and level design), but the other stuff goes a long way to supplement it, too. A good story can make you more emotionally involved in a game, and provide extra incentive to see what happens next. A game’s music engages a player’s mind, can provide a pleasant distraction through a slow part, and is a surprisingly strong motivation to play through a game again (at this point in my life, I’m pretty sure I keep replaying Megaman 2 purely for the music). And graphics set the mood of a game, as well as help players visualize the things going on in the game, which often can be abstract concepts. Don’t think so? Try to imagine Super Mario Bros. as a text adventure:

 

World 1-1

You are standing on a grassy plain. Off in the distance, large green pipes emerge from the ground, and remnants of a brick wall are floating in the air above you. One of the bricks has a “?” carved into it. A path leads right.

A large turtle is approaching you.

>Jump on turtle

You jump on the turtle, causing it to retreat inside its shell and flip over. You bounce off the turtle shell into the floating “?” brick. Doing so releases a gold coin from the brick, which flies into the air and disappears.

You now have one gold coin.

>Wait, what?

Between the hair, the headband, and the people constantly trying to shoot him with a crossbow, the Prince is actually a lot like me.

Better yet, Beyond Oasis plays nearly as well as it looks. The game is an action RPG cast in the Zelda mold – open world, with lots of sword fighting, exploring dungeons, and solving puzzles. Is it better than the SNES masterpiece The Legend of Zelda 3: A Link to the Past? No, but to be fair, that’s an almost impossible standard. A Link to the Past is probably one of the top ten games of all time. Obviously a game that finished #18 on our list of top Genesis games isn’t going to beat one of the ten best games ever made – for it to do so would defy the principles of mathematics. And we hate it when people go around defying the principles of mathematics – it makes our checkbook so much harder to balance. So no, Beyond Oasis isn’t better than Zelda 3.

Thanks to the advanced graphics of Beyond Oasis, this is the most realistic… whatever the hell it is, that we’ve ever seen in a game.

Even so, it does manage to do a pretty respectable job in a lot of ways, and some aspects of the game, such as the combat, are actually better. Was it enough to satisfy the typical Genesis owner’s raging Zelda-envy? I doubt it, but I think that envy was probably a little misguided anyway. Zelda 3 was arguably the SNES’ best game and, as I said a paragraph ago, one of the best ever made. In fact, at the time it was released, a lot of people probably would have said that it WAS the best game ever made. So while a lot of Genesis owners may have thought what they wanted on their system was a really good action RPG like Zelda, what they really wanted deep down was for the Genesis to have one of the all-time great games… like Zelda.

Those are some pretty unfair expectations for any game to live up to. Instead, appreciate Beyond Oasis for what it is – a great looking, fun action RPG with a main character who kicks ass first and asks questions, well, never.

Availability: Beyond Oasis came out a little late in the Genesis’ life, and was released during the dreaded “red box” era, when Sega switched over to flimsy cardboard boxes instead of the superior plastic ones they had been using. As a result, most of the boxes and instructions for the game were lost or destroyed, making complete copies hard to come by (and expensive) for hardcore collectors. If this is what you’re looking for, expect to pay upwards of $20.

Those of you who just want to play it should be in luck, though. Unlike a lot of later games, this one isn’t too difficult to track down. Cartridge only copies can be found online for around $10, and we’ve seen it in a few used game stores for slightly more than that. Additionally, the game is available for the Wii’s virtual console, and was included in the excellent Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Uncharted Waters: New Horizons

Grade: B+

Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 19th

Publisher: Koei

Year: 1994

Genre: Travel

I hate to admit it, but Uncharted Waters: New Horizons has been one of the tougher games for us to write about. It’s not that this isn’t a great game, because it absolutely is It’s just that while we love New Horizons, it’s not that gushing, romantic infatuation we have for many of the other games on this list. It’s more like the quiet, respect-borne kind of love you might feel for your favorite author or a really talented monster truck driver.

Still, we’ll do what we can here, because damn it, this game deserves some praise.

Yes, please. Teach us to make fun of you.

Uncharted Waters: New Horizons is kind of like a sea-based Grand Theft Auto game – there’s a story, and you’ll have to complete certain missions to advance the narrative, but in between doing that, you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want. There a whole world to explore (literally), and plenty of side missions to keep you busy. Or you can just fool around – if you want to take an unsatisfying, pixelated version of that Mediterranean cruise you’ve always dreamed about, go ahead. Or if you prefer to go to a tropical area, buy a bunch of bananas, and then visit every town in Europe giving them away and declaring yourself the Banana Emperor, you can do that too. For those of you of a more serious mind, the most important thing to do in your free time is to make some money, because although the various kings and nobles seem to have no problem tasking you with carrying out important duties, they are a bit reluctant to actually fund these missions.

Go out and explore unknown areas for the glory of England! Just be sure to stop by Denmark first and do some wool-trading. Ships are expensive after all, and we’re running a kingdom here, not a charity.

Luckily, there are lots of ways to earn an income, such as trading commodities, delivering messages for guilds, and investing in businesses. Or, since those ideas are all kind of lame, you can just do them for a little while to make some money, then strap a bunch of guns to your ship and start raiding other ships to steal their cargo. I’m assuming that’s sort of the unspoken expectation a king has when he just hands a ship to some captain he barely knows without bothering to check if he’s, you know, actually from that country, and then gives him a dangerous task to do without any funding or guidelines.

Or, if high seas villainy isn’t you’re thing, you can gamble. Oh sure, you might lose everything in a hand of blackjack, but at least if nothing else, your king will learn a valuable lesson about trusting his navy and the fate of an entire nation to the whims of a gambling degenerate.

Perhaps the coolest thing about New Horizons is that the game world is a reasonable approximation of the Earth, you can sail just anywhere you want, except for the poles. Or places that are landlocked, obviously. Still, if there’s a coastline or a big river near it, you can sail there. It’s hard to convey just how much bigger of a world this is compared to what we’re accustomed to seeing in games, including modern ones. It actually came as a bit of a surprise the first time we left the Mediterranean Sea to sail up the Northern European coast and the game actually let us. Then we started sailing down the coast of Africa, the whole time thinking that sooner or later, the game would run out of room. Next thing we knew, we were rounding the southern tip of the continent, yelling at Bartholomew Diaz to suck it, and making our way to China to load up on bootleg DVDs which we planned to sell back in Europe to fund our next expedition.

It probably says a lot about how conditioned we’ve been by other games that even after this much exploring, the first time we attempted to cross the Atlantic, we still fully expected to hit an invisible wall at the edge of the screen. I mean, there’s no way they put the Americas in the game, right? In fact, we were so sure of it that we didn’t stock up on nearly enough water, and everyone died on the voyage. But on our second attempt, we managed to sail across the ocean, and before we knew it, we were cruising up and down the coastline of the future United States.

Of course, being a Koei game, the attention to detail is just insane. Forget about just managing inventory, the game actually lets you decide exactly which cargo you want on each individual ship (and knowing Koei, this probably has subtle effects on the ship’s behavior). You also assign your crew to various duties, splitting them between lookout, navigation, and combat. That might be a little bit of overkill on the game’s part, though, as I imagine being boarded by an enemy ship would be sort of a “everybody grab a sword and start stabbing” situation. Still, the game leaves no minor detail untouched – you can even adjust the crew’s wages, which goes a long way toward recruiting the best officers for your ship. Never, ever underestimate the importance of offering a good heath plan when trying to convince people to take on the Spanish Armada with you.

New Horizons gives you six different characters to choose from, and each one has a completely unique story, objective, and circumstances. That’s pretty impressive when you think about it. In most games, different characters may offer various strengths and weaknesses, and maybe a few unique special moves, but that’s it. Even in games where the characters have drastically different play styles, they generally still have those characters playing through the same levels, progressing through the same narrative, and striving toward the same ultimate goal. Not so in New Horizons – every character has a unique story, circumstances, and objective. It might be a stretch to say that this game is six games in one, but it’s definitely like getting one really good game with 6 full-length campaigns.

Holy shit! These guys have a zebra in their town! Can we stay? Please, please, please?

 Of course, having all these characters is almost a moot point, because of those six characters, one of them is a superhot Spanish redhead named Catalina. Oh, and she’s a pirate. Let’s not kid ourselves here, when a game gives you a choice of characters – and really, it doesn’t matter if that choice is six, or two, or one hundred – and one of them is a sexy female buccaneer with flame-orange hair, that choice has already been made for you. It doesn’t really matter what the other characters are – you could have a choice between Catalina, Blackbeard, Batman, Macho Man Randy Savage, President Reagan, and a T-Rex, and you’d still have to be crazy not to pick Catalina. Remember all that stuff I said earlier about not feeling a romantic love for this game? That line of thought doesn’t apply to Catalina. It was all I could do to keep this review from turning into an incoherent 7 page love letter to an imaginary video game character.

 

Hear that, guys? She’s single!

I know what you’re thinking – sure, but once you beat the game with Catalina, then you could play as one of the other five characters. Yes, you could. And about 5 minutes in, you’ll remember that you could instead be playing again as a superhot redhead pirate. At which point any sane person will be reaching for the reset button.

…and that’s kind of the thing about New Horizons in general – you get lots of great options throughout the game, but all too often one choice is so ridiculously awesome (piracy, redheads, not running out of water while crossing the Atlantic) that you’ll almost always take it. On one hand, it seems like kind of a waste, because a lot of pretty good options are being passed over. But on the other hand, those best options are so good you won’t even mind. Or to put it another way – superhot redhead pirate.

Did we mention that her chair is a puma?

 Availability: Like just about all of Koei’s games from this era, New Horizons is pretty rare, and it’s unusual to see a copy selling online for less than $30. To be honest, we sometimes wonder if Koei’s entire business model isn’t based on releasing games that they know people won’t be interested in at first, then hoarding all the unsold copies in a warehouse, and selling them on eBay 15 years later when they finally become popular. There’s a slight chance of coming across one at a really good used game store, but don’t expect to pay any less than you would online.

Fortunately, there are a couple of alternatives here. New Horizons is a sequel, and the original in the series, simply called Uncharted Waters, typically sells for about half as much. New Horizons is the better game of the two (hence it’s the one that made our Top 50), but Uncharted Waters is almost as good as it’s sequel, with the exception of one glaring flaw – no Catalina. That’s a sacrifice you’re going to have to think long and hard about before making. Unless you’re a Wii owner, in which case you can spare yourself the dilemma and just snag the nearly identical SNES version of the game on the virtual console, thereby saving some money and still getting all the sexy pirate action your little heart desires.

Test Drive Unlimited 2

Grade: D

Publisher: Atari

Year: 2011

Genre: Compulsion

 

Brad: Test Drive Unlimited 2, isn’t just a racing race, it’s a “lifestyle simulator”. Rather than simply have you race some exotic cars, the TDU series wants you to experience what it would be like to actually own one of these cars, to cruise around town in them, and take it home at the end of the day. To round out the “lifestyle” experience, you also use race winnings to buy houses to hang out in and shop in expensive boutiques.

It’s a nice little fantasy – my in-game persona dresses stylishly, lives in a comfortable home on a beautiful Mediterranean island, and drives a classic Lotus Espirit (it’s kind of like being James Bond on his day off). The problem is that you can’t actually do any of the things that would make this lifestyle really cool. There’s no level where you show up at your high school reunion in a Ferrari, or swing by your ex-girlfriend’s house in an ill-advised attempt to win her back. There’s no cruising on the beaches of the island of Ibiza, and other than a few cutscenes, you don’t even get go to cool rich-people parties. Games like Grand Theft Auto made driving around with no particular goal fun by giving you all kinds of distractions, but TDU2 lacks such depth – despite a large play area in what should be rather scenic environments there really isn’t much to see, most of the areas are unpopulated, and there isn’t a whole lot to do other than race. It’s less a sandbox game than it is a racing game with a lot of commuting in between events.

To help make these commutes more interesting, driving around involves the FRIM (Free Ride Instant Money) system, which rewards you with money for getting air, doing awesome powerslides, or having near misses with oncoming cars. This is explained by a quick cutscene in which the FRIM device is installed in your car to track your movements, making it sort of the reverse of the “safe driver” devices a few insurance companies are trying out. Nobody ever explains where the money comes from, leaving us to assume that there must be some anonymous billionaire out there sponsoring reckless driving. I know that sounds farfetched, but ask yourself: If you had both the financial means and the technology to encourage people to drive like maniacs, wouldn’t you?

Also hurting this car fantasy is the fact that, due to a simplified physics model, all the cars more or less handle the same. Some are faster than others, but all have the same kind of driving characteristics – solid up to a point, and then increasingly prone to tailslides. It’s kind of disappointing to win races, earn money, and save up enough cash to buy that Ferrari you’ve always dreamed about, only to hop behind the wheel and find that it behaves a lot like the Volkswagen Golf you had been driving. And once you realize that driving the superexotic Bugatti Veyron feels about the same as driving the more pedestrian cars at the beginning of the game, it’s only a matter of time before you start to notice that driving either one feels an awful lot like sitting on your couch.

Of course, you still need to collect these cars (and houses to store them in!) to progress through the game. In this way, TDU2 is a classic example of the kind of game that really isn’t fun so much as it is compulsive. The racing isn’t that great – things get repetitive quickly, the handling is pretty bad, and most of the tracks were designed by a sadist with lamp poles and trees lurking around every tough corner to punish those who make mistakes. But you keep playing because there’s always one more race to conquer, requiring you to buy another car to be eligible for said race (long after you’ve given up on the promise that maybe, just maybe, the next car will be somewhat drivable), or another shop hidden somewhere for you to play dress-up with your avatar. It feels less like playing a game than it does completing a to-do list, with pure addictiveness standing in for fun. Test Drive Unlimited 2 is the kind of game you could get obessesd with and play the hell out of without actually enjoying much of the experience, and only when it’s done would you realize what a waste of time it was.

Spare yourself the trouble.

Stryker: TDU2 isn’t just a mindless driving game, there’s a story and… well, does that ever go well for a racing game? To give you an idea of just how bad this one is, one of your main rivals is… wait for it… Paris Hilton. Yeah, that happens. Of course, they change her name to the ever-so-subtle “Miami Harris”, but even if you can’t decode that one, they give you plenty of hints.

So here’s a thing to try – go find a bunch of episodes of The Simple Life, or whatever else Paris has done, watch it, and see if you find yourself going “Man, I really want to race sports cars against her.” I mean, I don’t doubt that you’ll find her unlikable, but a rival for a racing game? That’s just crazy.

Paris… err, Miami, gets one final swipe in after you defeat her too, by giving you her car as a prize. Sounds awesome, right? Well, it’s a pink Mustang covered in hearts that you will never drive, anywhere, ever, for fear that it will set off some kind of hidden “wuss-radar” and send high-school bullies swarming to your real-life home. The problem is, you cannot sell this car, and since every car you own takes up space in your virtual garage, having it will actually force you to buy an expensive new virtual house even sooner.

In other words, the prize for beating her is essentially to lose $60,000. Just another reason to hate Miami!

Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II

Grade:  B-

Publisher/Developer:  LucasArts/Factor 5

Year:  2001

Genre:  Wedge

Perhaps the most notable thing about Rogue Squadron II is that it’s a Star Wars game that lets you play some levels as Wedge Antilles. To which I say “Finally!”, or at least I would if the game hadn’t come out ten years ago. See, I’ve always found Wedge Antilles to be one of the more interesting characters in the Star Wars movies. Not because of anything that happens in the films, mind you, but just by the virtue that such a small role somehow ended up being a recurring character.

Wedge’s part in the movies is so small that there’s probably a good portion of you who have seen the Star Wars movies and don’t even remember who he is. To recap: he was the guy in the first movie who almost got shot down during the Death Star attack and ran away. He shows up again in The Empire Strikes Back as one of the snowspeeder pilots who battles the AT-ATs, and then again in Return of the Jedi as the X-Wing pilot who flies alongside the Millennium Falcon and helps Lando blow up the second Death Star. RotJ’s final scenes show him hanging out at the Ewok village, celebrating a hard-earned victory alongside all the main characters, which seems wildly out of place for a guy who’s total screen time throughout the entire trilogy was probably less than 5 minutes. Especially considering that – aside from the Ewoks, who, you know, live there – he’s the ONLY non-main character they really make a point of showing, as if it was some kind of loose end they needed to tie up so fans didn’t leave the theater wondering whatever happened to Wedge.

Now, in the Star Wars lore, Wedge is supposed to be this important guy, and the greatest pilot in the Rebel Alliance, and has an extensive back story. And for fans, he’s someone to latch on to – the character you claim as your favorite just to show off how much you know about Star Wars (guilty). But based solely on what you see in the movies, you get to that last scene and it’s like “What the fuck is he doing there? Why is that anonymous pilot hanging out with Chewbacca like he’s some kind of big shot?” It’s almost as if the only reason he kept showing up in each movie was that George Lucas already had Denis Lawson’s (the actor who played Wedge) paperwork on file from the first movie and thought “Well, there’s one less W-9 form I’ll have to fill out.”

Think of it this way: If Star Wars was an 80s sitcom, Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie would be the guys people who would have their close-ups shown during the opening theme song with the actor’s names under them. Lando and Yoda would be recurring characters labeled as “special guest appearances” and Wedge… well Wedge would be like Paul on Cheers – barely acknowledged, and he only shows up briefly every 5 episodes or so when the script called for Norm and Cliff to have a third guy with them. His name would be listed in the end credits between “Customer #1” and “Man on Phone”.

…this is who ends up blowing up the Death Star.

You can understand then why he must have been an almost irresistible choice for the main character during the 2^nd half of Rogue Squadron II, then. It’s the perfect option for a video game based on Star Wars – he’s in all the major battles from the movies, but the rest of his career is a blank slate that you could make any kind of game level out of. What was Wedge doing while Luke was training with Yoda on Dagobah? There is no official answer, which means it can be any kind of mission you want to put in the game. Which actually works out really well, because it allows for the game to fill in some of the back story, such as a mission where you steal the Imperial Shuttle that Han and Luke would use to land on the moon of Endor.

…I’d apologize for making a reference to a plot point that people who haven’t seen Return of the Jedi in a while might have forgotten, but I figure anyone who actually read through my 500 word biography of Wedge Antilles probably knows the plot to RotJ pretty well.

Rogue Squadron II is a tough game to rate because, for the most part, it’s pretty mediocre. The controls aren’t very good – the ships, which should be quick and nimble, feel like flying space Buicks (which, ironically, is one of the bonus vehicles), and you can’t really do much to control your speed, other than speed up or slow down temporarily. Your sensors are worse than useless and you’ll spend far too long just trying to find enemy ships, let alone fight them; and more often than not, you begin to wonder if the camera has fallen to the dark side, because it’s constantly fighting against you, too. Also, just about every mission in the game is of the straightforward “kill all the Tie Fighters/AT-ATs/laser turrets within our hidden time limit or else the ship/base/troops you were trying to protect will get blown up.” It’s by no means an awful game, but it’s a lot closer to Rebel Assualt than it is to Tie Fighter.

But somewhere near the end of this otherwise forgettable title is The Battle of Endor. Remember the scene in RotJ where the Rebel fleet flies into the Emperor’s trap, and they’re suddenly swarmed by thousands of fighters, numerous Star Destroyers and an operational Death Star? That battle is recreated (fairly) accurately, and the result one of the most enjoyable levels I’ve ever played in this kind of a game. The battle is intense, with an unbelievable number of both fighters and capital ships from both sides fighting it out, and genuinely feels epic. Completing the level requires shooting down an entire squadron of bombers and then destroying not one, but two massive Star Destroyers. Playing a video game version of this battle has been something I’ve wanted to do since I was 5 years old, and Rogue Squadron II absolutely nails it.

It’s usually hard to justify telling people to play through what is otherwise a C+ game just to experience one A+++ level, but in this case, it might actually be worth it.

EA Sports NBA (Series)

Grade(s):

Lakers vs. Celtics (1991): C+

Bulls vs. Lakers (1992): B-

Bulls vs. Blazers (1993): B

NBA Showdown ’94 (1994): B

NBA Live ’95 (1994): B

NBA Live ’96 (1995): B-

NBA Live ’97 (1996): C+

NBA Live ’98 (1997): C+

Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 35th

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Years: 1991 – 1997 (see grades above for exact year for each game)

Genre: Endorsements

Note: Of all the games in the series of EA’s NBA titles, these were the Editor’s favorites:

Brad: Bulls vs. Blazers

Stryker: NBA Live ‘95

With all due respect to the Shining Forces and Sonics of the world, it was really sports games that made the Genesis successful. They translate well to video games since they are, you know, already games. Most importantly though, they appeal to that 14 to 21 year old demographic that had grown up on NES, but were getting a little too old to take an interest in the adventures of effeminate wood elves and, crucially, had money of their own to blow on games (and not much else). Never underestimate the chilling effect that a mother saying “You want me to buy you another game? Didn’t I just get you a new one 6 months ago?” can have on game sales.

Through a little bit of planning, and some good fortune, the Genesis established itself at the outset of the 16-bit wars as the place for good sports games. The SNES had a few decent efforts, but nothing that could compare to Genesis’ offerings. Oddly enough though, it was EA – a third party publisher with no interest in either system doing better than the other – that was putting out the “gold standard” for sports game during that era. All of EA’s sports franchises were on the Genesis first, and even when they became available on other platforms, the Genny version was always better (and if someone says otherwise, it’s a legitimate reason to throw down).

Out of all of EA’s sports franchises, the NBA Live series was kind of the least appreciated. It wasn’t the juggernaut that Madden was, and it wasn’t a bestselling game based on a sport nobody actually watches in real life the way the NHL series was. That’s a shame too, because the games themselves are good enough to get someone like me – who can’t do a lay-up, has never watched an entire basketball game, and lives in a Canada-bordering city with a team that left town the same year he was born – to enjoy basketball. It takes some goddamn magic to pull that off.

Pictured: some goddamn (Orlando) Magic.

Of course, it was easier for a basketball game to have crossover appeal back in the Genesis era. Like I said, I don’t really follow the sport, so I can’t say for sure if the talent level was really any higher in the early 90s, but there sure seemed to be a lot more superstars. The Dream Team probably helped some players become more famous, but this popularity was mostly thanks to corporate America – just about every team in those days had at least one player with some kind of endorsement deal. Charles Barkley appeared opposite Humpty in Nike commercials. You know, when he wasn’t trying to get you to buy Right Guard or telling you he’s not a role model. Larry Bird starred in McDonald’s ads, playing one-on-one against Michael Jordan, who also showed up in ads for everything ever. Beyond helping sell cheeseburgers and Gatorade, this exposure also raised awareness of the players and the sport, too. Let me put it this way – when my Mom knows Larry Johnson is the guy in the old lady wig and dress, you’re reaching out into untapped markets.

Was David Robinson a better player than Tony Parker? I’ve barely seen either of them play, but I did see David Robinson’s Nike commercial like 100 times, so I’m going to say yes.

Anyway, the NBA series sticks to the formula that worked so well for most of EA Sports’ games in the 16-bit era: a near-perfect blend of simulation and action-packed fun. The games tend to get the fundamentals of the sport right, without getting bogged down in frivolous details and unnecessary realism that detracts from the fun. As a result, instead of being a hardcore basketball simulation, or a over-the-top arcade-style dunkfest that barely resembles the NBA at all, these games end up occupying a coveted middle ground.

It’s basketball-ish. Or… basketball-y?

This approach of being realistic, but not so realistic that it isn’t fun, probably explains a lot of the game’s appeal. You don’t need a soaring basketball IQ to understand concepts like “get open” or “don’t let the guy on the other team get open”. Even more advanced strategies like “Don’t pass to the white guy” are easy enough for anyone to pick up and play. Later games in the series incorporated more strategy and improved AI, but never to the point where it got overbearing for the casual fan.

Oh, and the graphics. EA Sports had kind of a unique art style back in those days, and it’s oddly beautiful in its own way. You won’t hear many people going on about the graphics in Bulls vs. Blazers the way they might for Phantasy Star or something, but there’s something about the pixel art in these games that really, just seems “right”. Just like the gameplay, it’s a cross between being realistic enough that you know what it’s supposed to be, but just unreal enough to let you kind of imagine how it would look in real life. The NBA games are littered with awesome animations, and even after playing several games, Stryker and I were finding new dunks, shots, and other unexpected movements. And the “signature dunks” that appeared in the early games? Things of beauty.

Drink Gatorade and wear Hanes underpants!

The soundtrack to most of the games in the series screams “classic EA” as well. Hard to describe, but you know it as soon as you hear it. At times, the whole franchise feels like a basketball-themed orgy for EA fanboys. Best not to think of that literally.

Availability: The really good news is that if you’re interested in buying any of the games from this series, it’s definitely a buyer’s market. Finding a copy of any of these games should be about as easy as going to any place where they sell Genesis games, and a copy shouldn’t set you back more than about $4. The earliest or latest entries in the series might be a little bit rarer, but they’re also the least fun of the series, so unless you’re a collector, that’s not really an issue.

NFL 2K5

Grade:  A

Publisher/Developer:  Sega/Visual Concepts

Year:  2004

Genre:  Thanksgiving

We thought this year we’d get everyone into the holiday spirit by putting up an article related to Thanksgiving.  This basically limits us to either writing about food, relatives, or football, and since there really aren’t any games about preparing a turkey or sitting at a table in awkward silence while Uncle Ed somehow turns a discussion about the weather into a rant about Obama and Socialism, we decided to write a football article.  Specifically, we decided to write about NFL 2K5, because that’s all Stryker and I have been doing for the last few weeks.  For your benefit, of course.

NFL 2K5, for those of you who want the history lesson, was the final entry in the NFL 2K series, which started off as THE reason to own a Dreamcast, and later, like the son of an alcoholic who can’t save his parent from self-destruction but refuses to die with him, survived the premature demise of the DC by moving on to other consoles.  In doing so, it became the last real competition to Madden, but this was a short-lived arrangement.  There was no NFL 2K6, because after 2K5’s release, the NFL figured out it could make a lot more money selling an exclusive license to one game company for an outrageous price instead of non-exclusive ones to a handful of publishers for more reasonable fees.  EA won the subsequent bidding war, and as a result, the Madden series has spent the past 6 years as the only official football game on the market while NFL executives roll around in big piles of money.

Comparisons between NFL 2K5 and the latest Madden are inevitable, much the same way comparisons between the Carolina Panthers and Houston Texans would be if those were the only two teams in the league.  At first glance, it might not seem fair to compare a 6 year old game versus the newest installment of a series that not everyone agreed it was better than even when both games were brand new.  But this has been aided by Madden’s stubborn refusal to improve in any tangible way.

So how do the two series compare?  Well, fans of each series will claim that their game is a better simulation, but it’s hard to say.  Each one is unrealistic in it’s own unique way – if Madden’s realism is lacking is a certain way (for example, defensive players can’t play coverages properly), it tends to get cancelled out by some other inaccuracy (defensive players also have ESP to make up for their mistakes in coverage) that keeps the whole thing looking like a real football game as long as you don’t watch too closely.  By contrast, NFL 2K5 usually just rolls with whatever shortcomings it has, and the result is a game that’s usually like real football, except with big plays happening a lot more frequently than in real life.  It’s not Tecmo Super Bowl or anything, but you will see far more 80 yard touchdown passes, fantastic interceptions, or runs with multiple broken tackles than you would in either an actual NFL game or in Madden.

In terms of gameplay, NFL 2K5 is so much better than Madden it’s kind of like watching Super Bowl XXIV all over again (Hint for you non-football fans – by the way, why would you be reading this? – the final score of Super Bowl XXIV was 55-10).  In the last ten years or so, Madden’s gotten to a point where it often feels like it’s playing itself  while your players occasionally follow your suggestions.  NFL 2K5 still feels like playing a game.  The action is intense, the pace is fast, and the control is responsive.  When you  break off a long run, or complete a pass through tight coverage, you really feel like you did it.

There are obvious advantages to putting out a new football game every year (see:  rolling around in big piles of money, as discussed earlier), but there is at least one advantage to having a series go into hiatus, in that it provides a static platform for the fanbase to work with.  As a result, fans of the game have had time to create historically accurate rosters for many of the greatest teams in league history, as well as full NFL rosters for most of the past 30 years.  Want to recreate the 1987 season?  Go crazy.  Just remember, even with the most accurate representations of the players from that era, it will still be up to you the blast “Livin’ on a Prayer” after every Jets touchdown.

By the way, here’s a link to a pretty nice site where you can download historic rosters. Getting them onto your console is a little tricky, and requires some extra equipment, but there are detailed instructions available, and it shouldn’t be too difficult for anyone with a little computer experience.

Oddly enough, this combination of historic rosters and NFL 2K5’s occasional lapses in realism actually complement each other rather well.  When you think back to whatever the glory days of football were to you (for me, it’s 1991), you probably don’t remember the boring games, the 2 yard runs up the middle, or the incomplete passes on 2^nd and 8.  You remember things like L.T. annihilating a QB on a weak side blitz, Barry Sanders juking 7 defenders on a length of the field run, or Andre Reed splitting the gap between two safeties for a long touchdown catch.  In other words, you tend to filter out the ordinary stuff and remember all the big plays, which is pretty much what NFL 2K5 does as well.  It’s actually uncanny the way the flaws in the game’s realism line up so perfectly with a person’s nostalgia.

In other words, NFL 2K5 is a near perfect simulation of the way you remember old football games.

In a weird way, this means that NFL 2K5 has actually gotten better over time.  This isn’t something that happens very often with games.  Rather than fine wines that get better with as years go by, video games tend to age like, I don’t know, tuna fish sandwiches.  (This is an analogy I feel 100% confident in saying, as anyone who thinks tuna fish sandwiches age well is certainly already dead from food poisoning).  Sure, we’re all classic gaming enthusiasts here, but I’m not going to tell you that Shining Force is more fun now than it was in 1993.  And this is an even rarer occurrence in sports games, which are usually made obsolete by a newer version within a year.  How many “timeless” sports games can you think of?  NHL ’95?  Tecmo Super Bowl?  Ok, sure.  But are either of those actually more fun now than they were then?  Probably not.

Splatterhouse 3

Console:  Sega Genesis

Grade:  B

Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 42nd

Publisher:  Namco

Year:  1993

Genre:  Gore

Since the late 80s, Splatterhouse has made its name with the copious amounts of blood, gore, and general grossness that appear in each game, and the third entry in the series is no exception.  If you want slime, guts, and what can best be described simply as “assorted crawly stuff”, then this game will have what you’re looking for.  Also, there’s a good chance you’re 12 years old.  Let’s face it – there does come a point in most people’s lives where this kind of stuff begins to lose it’s appeal, and seems more childish than scary.  Here’s my advice: if your kid is asking for this game for his birthday, and it’s more than a few months away, don’t get it for him.  He’ll likely have outgrown it by then.

Also, since when do kids ask for games that came out before they were born?

I suppose that back in 1993 though, stuff like this might have seemed shocking and possibly even creeped players out a little.  Not like today, when you’ve likely seen things ten times more disturbing than anything in Splatterhouse simply by accidentally clicking the wrong link on YouTube.  The horror of fighting hordes of mutilated zombies in a blood-soaked mansion pales in comparison to the terror of accidentally watching some kind of not-quite-porn for people with very strange, and very specific fetishes, and following the suggested links on an online video site is often like a real life game of Minesweeper – 90% of them are fine, most the rest you know better than to click on, but then every so often you make a mistake and end up watching a video of a nurse pouring custard onto a schoolgirl.  That, my friends, is a kind of terror no video game can compete with.

Still, while the game might come across as being more silly than scary, it more than makes up for it with its gameplay.  Ditching the side-scrolling elements of the prior entries in the series, SH3 is a beat ‘em up style game, focused solely on brawling.  More importantly, though, it’s a really GOOD beat ‘em up, a feat which is harder to pull off than it sounds.  Games in this genre tend to be pretty similar, so design is everything, and the line between a really good game and a really bad one can get pretty thin.  Splatterhouse 3 excels due to a fast pace and a good balance of enemies – most of them being of the punching bag variety, with just enough tough ones mixed in to give the player a challenge.  A time limit further increases the need to hand out the beat-downs with ruthless efficiency.  As a result, you’ll often find yourself thinking “Man, I can’t believe how much ass I’m kicking!” while you make zombies’ heads explode with your fists.

And really, isn’t that exactly the right emotion to have while plowing through hordes of grotesque monsters in a haunted mansion?

In other words, this game is a lot closer to Final Fight than it is to, say, Cliffhanger, and that’s obviously a good thing.  Which is why we’re more than happy to overlook the fact that just about everything in the game looks like something that would get rejected from a Rob Zombie movie for being too cheesy.  Including the story.

Splatterhouse 3 begins five years after the previous game in the series with Rick, our protagonist, now married with a child,  They’re living comfortably in a mansion after he successfully transitioned from monster hunting to a lucrative career as a stockbroker.  This seems like kind of a strange career path to me, most people usually just study finance at a university and then get low paying entry level jobs.  Perhaps the demons you fought in the first two games were supposed to be metaphors for higher education, internships, and all the other challenges a person goes through before being ready to enter the modern workforce.  And in the third game, these monsters now symbolize the struggle of entering adulthood and settling down into a stable home life.

Then again, I might be giving WAY too much literary credit to a game with the word “Splatterhouse” in the title.

Anyway, things are going great until the monsters come back, take over the mansion, and kidnap Rick’s family.  Rick then does what he always does in these situations – dresses up in his Friday the 13^th Halloween costume… er, I mean puts on the terror mask (apparently the blue coveralls are just what he happened to have on at the time, you know, during his normal everyday activities working on Wall Street) and sets out to kick some monster ass.

Which, sadly, is not at all similar to monster booty.

One thing you’ll realize as you make your way through the game is the impracticality of having a gigantic mansion with hundreds of rooms.  When every room is filled with traps and monsters, this can be something of a liability.  Think of it this way –  when I first got married, we lived in a five room apartment.  It got a little cramped sometimes, but I could rest assured knowing that if it ever turned out to be evil and haunted, and monsters kidnapped my wife and cats, they were only going to be one or two rooms away at the most.  That’s like, three, maybe four zombies I’d have to beat up to rescue them.  Even the average 2 story house only has what, ten rooms at the most?  You could probably kill that many monsters armed with a couple of heavy books or a pointy stick.

And even in non-monster circumstances, it doesn’t really make sense.  Rick has a wife and one kid.  That’s it.  How much space do they really need?  There is such a thing as having too much house, even if cost isn’t an issue.  You still have to furnish all those rooms.  So in addition to familiar-looking areas like a kitchen or dining room, there are plenty of rooms where they clearly didn’t know what to do with the extra space – one room is just filled with grandfather clocks, which looks kind of neat, but doesn’t really make any kind of sense if you think about it.  There’s another long room with no furniture at all, and the only adornment is one small portrait on the wall.  You start to get the feeling Rick and his wife probably ran out of ideas by about the 50^th room or so.

Either that, or the monsters kidnapped most of his furniture, too.

 

Not to mention the amount of maintenance a house this large would require, which was clearly an issue at Rick’s house.  The wallpaper is looking tattered, the paint is peeling, and some of the fixtures are clearly broken.  I suppose some of this could be blamed on the hellspawn running through his home, but probably not all of it.  I mean, it’s not like there’s an epic boss battle against a demon that eats drywall.

This was the last game in the Splatterhouse series (upcoming PS3 reboot notwithstanding), which is a shame because it’s also the only good one.  Who knows, maybe after this incident, Rick finally moved into a reasonably sized home, stopped taking directions from taking hockey masks, and hired professionals to take care of any future monster infestations (I hear the Belmonts resisted the allure of Wall Street and opted to stay in the family business).  Or maybe people just stopped playing beat ‘em ups, and Namco realized there might be more money in this new “Tekken” thing they were working on than it making sequels for a series that, at best, had a small cult following.  Either way, this game ended up being kind of rare, and commands a fairly respectable price in the online marketplace.  Still, if you’re a fan of the genre and ever have a chance to borrow it from a friend (thanks, Stryker), or see a cheap one at a garage sale, or just have loads of money to burn on old Genesis games, Splatterhouse 3 is worth checking out.

Tecmo Super Bowl (Genesis/SNES)

Console:  Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo

Grade: B

Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 43rd

Publisher:  Tecmo

Year:  1993

Genre:  NES

Anyone who’s ever played Tecmo Super Bowl on the ol’ NES knows that it was not the most realistic representation of NFL football.  The punters could kick the ball into the parking lot, the quarterbacks could throw the ball 80 yards and hit a receiver in full stride, and length of the field running plays were no surprise.  Fast quarterbacks dominated the league as rushers, since defenders would stay in pass coverage even as the QB ran by them.  And rather then base the difficulty on the quality of your opponent, the game got progressively harder every week, regardless of who you were playing.  Before you knew it, that mysterious “QB Bills” who was throwing all those incredible touchdown bombs in week one would do nothing but toss interceptions in the Super Bowl… although now that I think back, that part was kinda realistic.

Pictured:  Realism

Still, despite these frequent departures from reality, TSB was a huge hit with football fans.  It was sort of the perfect blend of a video game and a sports simulation – just barely realistic enough not to be considered “arcade”, yet still offering typical video game aspects such as having music during the action, and interrupting plays with cutscenes.  It was kind of like how exciting and highlight filled you thought football was when you were a little kid, before you grew up and got a enthusiasm killing dose of NFC power football with its thrilling 9-6 outcomes.  Or maybe it was more like the Arena League, with the obvious difference that people actually pay attention to Tecmo Super Bowl.

Perhaps the AFL just needs some of Tecmo’s Ninja Cheerleaders.

Either way, it’s amazing that while Tecmo Super Bowl remains one of the most beloved NES games of all time, its 16-bit follow-ups aren’t remembered as fondly, if they’re even remembered at all.  Many gamers think that this series died with the NES, and those who are aware of a Genesis or SNES version often remember Tecmo Super Bowl 2 or 3,  two games that ditched the old TSB formula in favor of trying to imitate Madden, and doing about as poor of a job at it as that fat idiot who used to be on Mad TV.

But believe it or not, the later consoles did get one good version of TSB, complete with everything you loved about it on the NES.  Want to throw length of the field touchdown bombs to Andre Rison?  You can do that here.  Want to see Barry Sanders dodge 20 tackles on his way to the end zone?  Check.  Want to dominate a game as Bo Jackson?  Well, too damn bad – by 1993 the only thing Bo knew anymore was career-ending hip injuries.  A real shame, too.  If he had stayed healthy, there’s no telling how many AFC Championship games the Raiders could have gotten blown out of.

You can’t see it in the picture, but he’s actually jumping out of the window of his burning mansion.

This actually brings up an interesting point – although the game stays pretty close to the formula that made it a success on the NES, it did come out two years later, so you’re getting an updated, 1993 version of the NFL instead of the 1991 season that the NES game was based on.  Whether or not this is a big deal depends on your favorite team. Some teams, like the Cowboys, are a lot better, while others, like the aforementioned Raiders, or the Eagles, lost key players and are on the downside.  Kansas City is kind of a wash – Christain Okoye is no longer the human wrecking ball he was in the original TSB, but this is offset by the addition of Hall of Famer QB Chiefs, who won 3 Super Bowls back when he was QB 49ers.  Detroit fans should probably just be happy that the NES version came out during the only year in the entire history of the Lions that they were any good.

And of course Bills fans can rest assured that the core players that made them the dominant team in the AFC are all still on the team and ready to bring home that one last Super Bowl loss.

Thanks to the 1991 Lions, there’s at least one year that Buffalo Bills fans can point to and say that the NFC Championship game wasn’t the “Real Super Bowl”.

As somebody who was in his early teens during the Tecmo Super Bowl era, I have a particular soft spot for these games.  These are from the years when I first really started caring about pro football, and each game is like a snapshot of the NFL that particular season.  I get a kick out of seeing games on the schedule and remembering watching them in real life, seeing players I haven’t thought about since I was in Jr. High, and scoring touchdowns with guys whose trading cards I might still have in my attic somewhere.  I get a little nostalgic thinking about the Eagles once-mighty defense, the Oilers Run and Shoot attack, or that freak year where the Atlanta Falcons were actually good.  I realize that “guys who were 15 when the game came out and liked football” is probably a pretty niche audience, but if you’re still reading  this far into an article about Tecmo Super Bowl on the Genesis, then chances are, you’re in that niche, too.

There’s really no simpler, or more effective way to say it:  This is Tecmo Super Bowl, almost exactly as you remember it on the NES, except for the Super Nintendo and Genesis.  What’s not to love?