Five lesser-known games you really like.
Feb 9, 2009 3:11:36 GMT -5
Post by Forte Wily on Feb 9, 2009 3:11:36 GMT -5
It's been a while since I've made a new thread, hasn't it? 
I've been adding some new old games to my game collection of late, and couldn't help but notice that I like quite a few games which are lesser-known (or to some entirely unheard-of), which is what inspired this thread. The theme is simple - list five games you happen to like, but which aren't as well-known as other examples in their genre (you'll see from my list that I just so happen to really like 2D platform games).
1: Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 (Konami; Mega Drive)
Screenshots here.
This first game here is very likely to be the only one in my list that many people will have heard of. Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 is the sequel to Rocket Knight Adventures, and a great game it is, too. The opossum knight, Sparkster, returns to do battle again, both against another invading kingdom, and against his rival, Axel Gear (a traitorous Rocket Knight, corrupted by evil).
The control system is entirely different to that of Rocket Knight Adventures (instead of having to charge your rocket-pack manually, it's done automatically; additionally, firing the rocket-pack doesn't send you flailing in out of control after it burns out - you retain control of Sparkster at all times), and grants the player a great deal of control over Sparkster's rocket-pack, which is tremendous fun (it has a lot of "toy factor" to it), and adds a lot to the gameplay. It encourages exploration as well as pulling off some cool techniques. The game is full of great touches, and not a bit of text is used to tell the story. Also it's got some giant mechs, and a really cool final boss.
More information on the entire series (which I would highly recommend checking out) can be found here.
2: Fire & Ice: The Daring Adventures of Cool Coyote (Graftgold; Amiga)
Screenshots here.
Fire & Ice is a very polished and well-animated platformer starring a fluffy blue coyote (who started off as a large fluffy dog, instead), Cool Coyote, who has the ability to freeze enemies by throwing ice pellets at them. He's taking on a mission in order to assist an otherworldly being with tracking down an escaped alien warlord who destroys planets using the power of fire, who happens to be planning to conquer the Earth now that he's here. The game is full of neat touches, and incredibly good music, and sometimes these two even combine, such as on the title screen, where Cool Coyote is playing the theme tune on his piano, and barking along to the music.
In Fire & Ice, you have to freeze enemies before you can destroy them (touching a frozen enemy will cause them to shatter), as you seek out the pieces of the key which will allow you to exit from each level - these pieces are held by six random enemies in the stage, and this is usually different each time you play, which adds some variety to the proceedings.
You also have to guide puppies, who are also hidden in each level (there are usually two per level), to the exit. Doing this will get you one extra life for each one.
It seems that in the hurry to brand platform characters such as Zool as "the Amiga's mascot", a real gem got a bit overlooked. Cool Coyote was certainly worthy of the title.
In a rather awesome move, the developers of this game have licensed the Amiga preservation site Back to the Roots to freely distribute the game online (more information on Back to the Roots' policy on what it hosts, and how you can use it, can be found here).
3: Shockman (Masiya; TurboGrafx-16)
Screenshots here.
I know what you're thinking: "This game looks a bit like a Mega Man clone.". You're close, except Shockman is absolutely insanely difficult - more so than a lot of entries in the Mega Man series, even (as far as the Mega Man series goes, Shockman actually has a fair bit in common with Mega Man Zero - in fact, it did some things in 1992 that Mega Man Zero would do a decade later, such as the one-life-but-many-continues method of gameplay; it is harder than Mega Man Zero, however). At points it can unfortunately be a bit unfair, but for the most part, the good points about it outweigh this.
You play as either Arnold or Sonya, who are the two "Shockman cyborg" superhero protagonists. They can jump quite high, and shoot (both forwards and upwards), and crouch, and that's about it - at least if you're playing the single-player game. The game also has a two-player co-operative mode (in which you have to share the life-bar!), and in this you can also perform a team shot by charging up at the same time as the other player, and then shooting them just as they release their charged shot. This will result in a powerful beam being fired, if you get it right - but it will result in the other player shooting off in a ball of fire if you get it wrong. This is actually quite hilarious to watch.
The game has some quite odd-feeling controls, and these do take a bit of getting used to - if you can do so, though (it's not hard), it's worth it.
Shockman is an incredibly difficult game, and it's hard to recommend it to anyone who doesn't like *incredibly* challenging titles. But recommend it I shall, if you do happen to like difficult games.
It's worth mentioning that Shockman is actually the English version of a game called Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman 2: Arata Naru Teki (this roughly translates to "Restructuring Superhuman Shubibinman 2: A New Transforming Enemy", as I understand from an article I will link to at the end of this paragraph), and several bits of its story come across as a bit odd if you aren't aware that it's actually part of an entire series that otherwise wasn't translated. The translation is quite plain, and sometimes too literal ("Something occurs!" is a response to a large video wall springing to life suddenly, at one point in the game, for example), but still quite likeable. More information about the Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman series can be found here - it's well worth reading this article, as it's quite a good little series, and well worth checking out.
4: High Seas Havoc (Data East; Mega Drive)
Screenshots here, here, and here.
One of my favourite obscurities, High Seas Havoc is another rather challenging game. Too many people usually tend to dismiss this game for one of two reasons, and occasionally both - 1: Its art-style strongly resembles that of a more well-known platform game series (go on, try to guess though there are no prizes for guessing which one it is 
), and 2: It isn't anywhere near as easy as the aforementioned series, resulting in the game getting bashed for it due to people's imaginings that were based entirely upon the game's looks (which are quite possibly some of the best in any Mega Drive platformer).
What you get is a game that is in most ways closer to a combination of a Mega Man title and Shockman. It has some excellent music and animation, a nice story with some cute artwork (though the same cannot be said for some of the global variants of the game's box-art), and a nice selection of large and varied levels to explore and beat. It's also got some of the nicest level artwork I've seen in a Mega Drive title.
High Seas Havoc was released as Captain Lang in Japan, and Capt'n Havoc in PAL regions. The PAL release was handled by Codemasters a year after the US and Japanese versions were released, and has a quite important difference - the first level, Cape Sealph, was removed entirely, for no apparent reason, meaning that the game starts on the Pirate Ship, and contains a boss in what is now its very first stage. For this reason, I would recommend avoiding the PAL release of the game if you intend to purchase a copy - missing out on stuff is no fun.
The US version (and I would guess the Japanese version as well, if you have a modified cartridge slot or a slot-adapter, since they contain the same data) will run just fine in a PAL Mega Drive, but behaves ever-so-slightly unusually - it will display the intro text and suchlike in English, but will display the Japanese version's title screen. I am told that this most likely occurs due to the practice at the time of releasing the Hong Kong versions of games using the Japanese titles combined with the English in-game text, as it was a cost-effective means of localisation due to one of Hong Kong's official languages being English.
5: Sleepwalker (CTA Developments; Amiga)
Screenshots here.
If you were to take Lemmings, make the player's pointer a controllable character instead, place it in the platform genre, and then mix in some Tom & Jerry, you'll most likely get Sleepwalker. This game is probably best known in the UK, as it was made and sold to raise funds for the British charity Comic Relief, and it got a bit of news coverage at the time as a result.
Sleepwalker places you in the role of Ralph, a dog whose master, Lee, has a habit of sleepwalking across the city! Ralph is entirely invincible, but will be prevented from moving momentarily if anything (such as cars, toxic waste, and so on) hits him. Lee is not invincible at all, he has a bar which shows how deep his sleep state is (this essentially functions as a health bar), and if this is depleted, he will die.
It's up to Ralph to eliminate hazards, bridge gaps, and prevent his master from dying in all manner of ways, in order to get Lee back home to his bed before morning. To do so, he can run (in a Tom & Jerry-esque fashion - it even controls in that sort of way, which is hard to describe unless you've played it yourself), jump, push objects, kick Lee between platforms, turn Lee around or hold him in place for a while, whack enemies with a small club to immobilise them, and make use of your brainpower in order to get Lee through each stage. There are also the letters "C", "O", "M", "I", and "C" hidden in each stage - if you collect them all, you get to go to a bonus stage where you collect tokens representing words or parts of words, along with plus or minus symbols. These spell out things such as "Manhole", "Puddles", "Look out below!", and quite a number of others. There are several different combinations per bonus stage, and once the bonus stage is over, you get to see a short animation relating to each word or phrase that you spelled out - these animations are meant to be Ralph's frustrated daydreaming about how he'd like things to go (such as Lee falling into a manhole, to use one of the earlier examples), as he's quite fed up of having to stop Lee from sleepwalking every night!
Sleepwalker is clever and original, and simply didn't get as many sales as it deserved at the time. It's well worth the purchase, if you can find it.
That's all of them. ;D Honourable mentions also go to: Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman 3 - Ikai no Princess (PC Engine CD-ROM2 System), which I haven't had time to play very much of yet, so I couldn't really write very much about it; Lomax (PSX), which was the incredibly obscure Lemmings series platform game; Klonoa - Door To Phantomile (PSX), which was just a *little* too well-known to make the list, as was Tombi!/Tomba! (also PSX); and Sparkster for the SNES, which is an entirely different game to Sparkster for the Mega Drive, but one which is also well worth checking out.
Anyone else have any to share?
I've been adding some new old games to my game collection of late, and couldn't help but notice that I like quite a few games which are lesser-known (or to some entirely unheard-of), which is what inspired this thread. The theme is simple - list five games you happen to like, but which aren't as well-known as other examples in their genre (you'll see from my list that I just so happen to really like 2D platform games
).1: Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 (Konami; Mega Drive)
Screenshots here.
This first game here is very likely to be the only one in my list that many people will have heard of. Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 is the sequel to Rocket Knight Adventures, and a great game it is, too. The opossum knight, Sparkster, returns to do battle again, both against another invading kingdom, and against his rival, Axel Gear (a traitorous Rocket Knight, corrupted by evil).
The control system is entirely different to that of Rocket Knight Adventures (instead of having to charge your rocket-pack manually, it's done automatically; additionally, firing the rocket-pack doesn't send you flailing in out of control after it burns out - you retain control of Sparkster at all times), and grants the player a great deal of control over Sparkster's rocket-pack, which is tremendous fun (it has a lot of "toy factor" to it), and adds a lot to the gameplay. It encourages exploration as well as pulling off some cool techniques. The game is full of great touches, and not a bit of text is used to tell the story. Also it's got some giant mechs, and a really cool final boss.
More information on the entire series (which I would highly recommend checking out) can be found here.
2: Fire & Ice: The Daring Adventures of Cool Coyote (Graftgold; Amiga)
Screenshots here.
Fire & Ice is a very polished and well-animated platformer starring a fluffy blue coyote (who started off as a large fluffy dog, instead), Cool Coyote, who has the ability to freeze enemies by throwing ice pellets at them. He's taking on a mission in order to assist an otherworldly being with tracking down an escaped alien warlord who destroys planets using the power of fire, who happens to be planning to conquer the Earth now that he's here. The game is full of neat touches, and incredibly good music, and sometimes these two even combine, such as on the title screen, where Cool Coyote is playing the theme tune on his piano, and barking along to the music.
In Fire & Ice, you have to freeze enemies before you can destroy them (touching a frozen enemy will cause them to shatter), as you seek out the pieces of the key which will allow you to exit from each level - these pieces are held by six random enemies in the stage, and this is usually different each time you play, which adds some variety to the proceedings.
You also have to guide puppies, who are also hidden in each level (there are usually two per level), to the exit. Doing this will get you one extra life for each one.
It seems that in the hurry to brand platform characters such as Zool as "the Amiga's mascot", a real gem got a bit overlooked. Cool Coyote was certainly worthy of the title.
In a rather awesome move, the developers of this game have licensed the Amiga preservation site Back to the Roots to freely distribute the game online (more information on Back to the Roots' policy on what it hosts, and how you can use it, can be found here).
3: Shockman (Masiya; TurboGrafx-16)
Screenshots here.
I know what you're thinking: "This game looks a bit like a Mega Man clone.". You're close, except Shockman is absolutely insanely difficult - more so than a lot of entries in the Mega Man series, even (as far as the Mega Man series goes, Shockman actually has a fair bit in common with Mega Man Zero - in fact, it did some things in 1992 that Mega Man Zero would do a decade later, such as the one-life-but-many-continues method of gameplay; it is harder than Mega Man Zero, however). At points it can unfortunately be a bit unfair, but for the most part, the good points about it outweigh this.
You play as either Arnold or Sonya, who are the two "Shockman cyborg" superhero protagonists. They can jump quite high, and shoot (both forwards and upwards), and crouch, and that's about it - at least if you're playing the single-player game. The game also has a two-player co-operative mode (in which you have to share the life-bar!), and in this you can also perform a team shot by charging up at the same time as the other player, and then shooting them just as they release their charged shot. This will result in a powerful beam being fired, if you get it right - but it will result in the other player shooting off in a ball of fire if you get it wrong. This is actually quite hilarious to watch.
The game has some quite odd-feeling controls, and these do take a bit of getting used to - if you can do so, though (it's not hard), it's worth it.
Shockman is an incredibly difficult game, and it's hard to recommend it to anyone who doesn't like *incredibly* challenging titles. But recommend it I shall, if you do happen to like difficult games.
It's worth mentioning that Shockman is actually the English version of a game called Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman 2: Arata Naru Teki (this roughly translates to "Restructuring Superhuman Shubibinman 2: A New Transforming Enemy", as I understand from an article I will link to at the end of this paragraph), and several bits of its story come across as a bit odd if you aren't aware that it's actually part of an entire series that otherwise wasn't translated. The translation is quite plain, and sometimes too literal ("Something occurs!" is a response to a large video wall springing to life suddenly, at one point in the game, for example), but still quite likeable. More information about the Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman series can be found here - it's well worth reading this article, as it's quite a good little series, and well worth checking out.
4: High Seas Havoc (Data East; Mega Drive)
Screenshots here, here, and here.
One of my favourite obscurities, High Seas Havoc is another rather challenging game. Too many people usually tend to dismiss this game for one of two reasons, and occasionally both - 1: Its art-style strongly resembles that of a more well-known platform game series (go on, try to guess
though there are no prizes for guessing which one it is 
), and 2: It isn't anywhere near as easy as the aforementioned series, resulting in the game getting bashed for it due to people's imaginings that were based entirely upon the game's looks (which are quite possibly some of the best in any Mega Drive platformer). What you get is a game that is in most ways closer to a combination of a Mega Man title and Shockman. It has some excellent music and animation, a nice story with some cute artwork (though the same cannot be said for some of the global variants of the game's box-art), and a nice selection of large and varied levels to explore and beat. It's also got some of the nicest level artwork I've seen in a Mega Drive title.
High Seas Havoc was released as Captain Lang in Japan, and Capt'n Havoc in PAL regions. The PAL release was handled by Codemasters a year after the US and Japanese versions were released, and has a quite important difference - the first level, Cape Sealph, was removed entirely, for no apparent reason, meaning that the game starts on the Pirate Ship, and contains a boss in what is now its very first stage. For this reason, I would recommend avoiding the PAL release of the game if you intend to purchase a copy - missing out on stuff is no fun.
The US version (and I would guess the Japanese version as well, if you have a modified cartridge slot or a slot-adapter, since they contain the same data) will run just fine in a PAL Mega Drive, but behaves ever-so-slightly unusually - it will display the intro text and suchlike in English, but will display the Japanese version's title screen. I am told that this most likely occurs due to the practice at the time of releasing the Hong Kong versions of games using the Japanese titles combined with the English in-game text, as it was a cost-effective means of localisation due to one of Hong Kong's official languages being English.
5: Sleepwalker (CTA Developments; Amiga)
Screenshots here.
If you were to take Lemmings, make the player's pointer a controllable character instead, place it in the platform genre, and then mix in some Tom & Jerry, you'll most likely get Sleepwalker. This game is probably best known in the UK, as it was made and sold to raise funds for the British charity Comic Relief, and it got a bit of news coverage at the time as a result.
Sleepwalker places you in the role of Ralph, a dog whose master, Lee, has a habit of sleepwalking across the city! Ralph is entirely invincible, but will be prevented from moving momentarily if anything (such as cars, toxic waste, and so on) hits him. Lee is not invincible at all, he has a bar which shows how deep his sleep state is (this essentially functions as a health bar), and if this is depleted, he will die.
It's up to Ralph to eliminate hazards, bridge gaps, and prevent his master from dying in all manner of ways, in order to get Lee back home to his bed before morning. To do so, he can run (in a Tom & Jerry-esque fashion - it even controls in that sort of way, which is hard to describe unless you've played it yourself), jump, push objects, kick Lee between platforms, turn Lee around or hold him in place for a while, whack enemies with a small club to immobilise them, and make use of your brainpower in order to get Lee through each stage. There are also the letters "C", "O", "M", "I", and "C" hidden in each stage - if you collect them all, you get to go to a bonus stage where you collect tokens representing words or parts of words, along with plus or minus symbols. These spell out things such as "Manhole", "Puddles", "Look out below!", and quite a number of others. There are several different combinations per bonus stage, and once the bonus stage is over, you get to see a short animation relating to each word or phrase that you spelled out - these animations are meant to be Ralph's frustrated daydreaming about how he'd like things to go (such as Lee falling into a manhole, to use one of the earlier examples), as he's quite fed up of having to stop Lee from sleepwalking every night!
Sleepwalker is clever and original, and simply didn't get as many sales as it deserved at the time. It's well worth the purchase, if you can find it.
That's all of them. ;D Honourable mentions also go to: Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman 3 - Ikai no Princess (PC Engine CD-ROM2 System), which I haven't had time to play very much of yet, so I couldn't really write very much about it; Lomax (PSX), which was the incredibly obscure Lemmings series platform game; Klonoa - Door To Phantomile (PSX), which was just a *little* too well-known to make the list, as was Tombi!/Tomba! (also PSX); and Sparkster for the SNES, which is an entirely different game to Sparkster for the Mega Drive, but one which is also well worth checking out.
Anyone else have any to share?
