150 SNES games reviewed

Ere man, what happened to this?

I found it really hard to keep up with when I got my current job and had other things I needed to do come up... Id love to promise I will get back to it, and I really hope I will but who knows.

SNES review 105

Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits

OK so this is a bit different to reviewing a regular SNES title as its a compilation of older arcade games, basically there was no real alterations to them they are just copies of the old arcade machines no new graphics or functions added. I kind of need to throw a sort of disclaimer in here, what a person will make of this particular game/cart will largely depend on what they expect when they pop it into the Super Nintendo, if you have been playing a whole bunch of Donkey Kong Country and other high end advanced (for the system) games and haven't ever sampled the games on this compilation in there original state in arcade machines or even ports of them on an older machine (For example there I a port of Defender 2 a game present on this compilation on the Atari 2600) and don't have a particularly high tolerance for games from before the SNES era then you might find yourself very underwhelmed.

An important part of making a good compilation is deciding which games to put on it so what is on this one well you have Joust, Sinstar, Robotron, Defender and Defender 2. Now while the games go together well it needs to be noted that 3 of them are spaceship based shooters so its not exactly big on variety. I have quiet a big history with 3 of these games Robotron, Defender and Defender 2.. Robotron I had played a lot in the arcades at the coast so playing this was quiet refreshing to jump in to it again, not only is it one of those games which reminds me of a happy time (past family holidays) you can also tell that it is one of those games which has fed into so many other games since its release including games like Smash TV and Geometry Wars (a personal favourite of mine). As for Defender and Defender 2 well I had owned them on my Atari 2600 and while I have to admit that the 2600 versions are cut down versions they were good enough for there time and I was always very fond of them. Joust I never really appreciated not in the way a lot of people seemed to, it just didn't do anything much for me, Sinstar I never really knew but I have to admit it is a pretty good slice of space shooter action. I do think that having Defender and Defender 2 is a little redundant they are both so similar that its more like just having 2 slight variants of the same game, I would have much rather seen a different Williams classic take one of there places such as MoonPatrol.

The games although kind of shallow have a great pick up and play just one more go, I can do better than this kind of vibe which well they should with there origins being in the arcade and it is good to see them on the SNES but and it needs to be said is it really worth using a SNES to play them? Copies of this Cartridge tend to go for around £20 and that's just the cart, sure if you look around and play your cards right you might be able to get it cheaper I paid £7 for mine recently (from an indie games store) if you have an original Xbox or PS2 though then I have seen the Midway Arcade Treasures collection go for as little as £2 or £3, sure it might not be considered quiet as collectable or give you an excuse to use your super Nintendo but that's £2 or £3 for 24 Midway arcade games including all of the ones on this SNES cart, plus a lot of other stuff like Smash TV, Paper Boy, Rampage add on top of this the fact that these disc based compilations have a few interviews and such on them well they just provide a lot more bang for your buck, your getting more for less.

If I had to give Williams Arcade's greatest hits a score well I would have to kind of give it 2 scores, one for those into classic games and that would be a 7, its a good collection of a handful of arcade classics but with the selection not being the best it could be, and one for those who only want to see the best a machine can do and that score would be a 3 as well compared to most of the SNES  library what is on offer here is basic in every sense of the word.

 
As a kid I absolutely loved Dinosaurs, I liked everything about them, there size there power the fact that there were so many different types it just blew my mind, you can imagine when I discovered transformers and met the dinobots I thought life could not get any better than getting to see big dumb robotic Dinosaurs pulling Decepticon planes out of the sky, breathing fire and generally wrecking things.


Life as a youngster was very much a sequence of finding one thing after another that would grab your attention and make the days seem better and better another of these things when I was slightly older was Street Fighter 2 and the other various one on one fighting games which followed in its wake. A lot of the games of this type for awhile seemed to fall in to one of two camps either those that tried to keep looking sort of anime inspired (Street fighter, Art of Fighting, etc) and those that attempted to look as real as possible the most famous and the one that started that kind of trend being Mortal Kombat. So you can imagine how excited my tiny little mind was when there began to be news that a game called Primal Rage was being developed for the Arcade by Atari and that it would be a versus fighting game featuring Dinosaurs... and what is more not cartoon Dinosaurs but ones done in a very MK looking style so that they would look as real as possible, it was going to be Mortal Kombat but with Dinosaurs instead of Ninja's this was just mind blowing to all of us back then, it was like one of those kind of dream video game ideas you would come up with when talking to your friends the sort of thing you'd spend a whole day chatting about but then sigh knowing it would never be made yet here we were all met with the announcement of what we saw as pretty much MK Dino Wars (yeah there made by different companies and not related but look at it through a sugar high prepubescent pre-internet filter and it makes sense).


So Primal Rage has a bit of a story and it goes like this You are on a post-apocalyptic version of Earth called "Urth". On Urth Dinosaurs (and a giant monkey) are battling each other to determine the fate of the planet..... This plot made the game appeal to me even more because lets face it plot wise it is basically a B-movie, on Paper this sounds like a recipe for gold a Dinosaur featuring, B-Movie plot owning one on one realistic looking beat em up what could go wrong?


Players control one of seven large beasts that battle each other to determine the fate of the planet. Matches feature many of the conventions of fighting games from the era, including special moves and gory finishing manoeuvrers. Various ports were released for home consoles and personal computers but I am obviously talking about the SNES version, as far as I remember they wernt really that different but I haven't looked at any of them before writing this to verify that, I just seem to remember them all being pretty much the same. Sure this wasn't the first time a game was on everything of course but it did seem to be everywhere and get a big push.


Now I have to start with the games graphics because these were pushed as being a big selling part of the game and in total honesty they were pretty darn cool for the time and in all fairness I still think they don't look bad, they certainly could have aged a lot worse. The backgrounds are good, and so are the sprites, they are close enough to the arcade that if you go from the arcade version to the home yes there might be some differences but not enough that the average person will really care. The game has a real sense of depth yes its a 2D game but somehow it feels like a real world with depth. Unfortunately, there is one real issue here and that is the fact that a lot of the dinosaurs/combatants kind of resemble each other, I think that there could be a lot more favourite and its a shame I have to say that when there is only 7 of them, if there were more fighters and some of them were just sort of pallet swaps it would be a lot less of an issue for me.

Oh I have to stop and mention one of the little things I really love, there are human worshippers who run around in the background, you see them at times get thrown around and even eaten it is kind of awesome. On the other side though the game tends to have a sort of sluggish feel which I think is down at least in part to its frame rate.
I will just quickly touch upon the games sound to say that it is OK, there are a few decent beats and the odd roar you would expect but it could be so much better its just all so average.

It is really the gameplay where Primal Rage falls down, its not that its a bad game, its more that it is an average game which just needed more polish, it feels kind of hollow and unbalanced and I am afraid that on machine with games such as Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat it just feels poor in comparison. Certain characters seem to have moves which have a much better reach than others and its quiet easy to win by being cheap, the combo system seems pretty poor if you want to see a combo you kind of feel like you need to bang the buttons so fast that you cant really learn what you are doing .


I would give this game a 5 out of 10 and just say that it is very very average, sure you could do worse but you could also do a lot better. I got my copy from a market for £3 and that felt like a pretty reasonable price for it.. having looked online if your after it you can typically look at spending about £5 for a loose cart if you should spend that or not probably depends how you feel about average games.

SNES Review 107: Out To Lunch

So did any of you visit the fast food restaurant chain Wimpy's here in the UK as a kid? Actually there are still a few of them dotted around here and there so maybe you went last week, I wouldn't be surprised though if there are people that have never even heard of it, after all they are not that common now days and everyone seems to have almost forgotten that there are alternatives to McDonalds when it comes to a burger fix. As many of you will know McDonalds had plenty over the years but the first fast food game I ever remember playing was Mr Wimpy a platformer released on the good old 48k Spectrum back as a kid, why am I mentioning this in a SNES review? Don't worry It will make sense in the long run. Now the bulk of Mr Wimpy was effectively a clone of an arcade game created by Data East called Burger Time in which you ply as a chef called Peter Pepper who walks over burger ingredients to knock them down until they create a burger while being chased by various killer foods like a walking hot dog and a walking egg, I can link this back to Nintendo by telling you that Burger Time got a Gameboy version called Burger Time Deluxe in 1991.


Now you kind of expect weird games on the old spectrum specially seeing as you could buy budget titles for as little as £1.99 so there was room for some stranger ideas to have a chance, but it might surprise some to learn there was a cart based game for a major system about a Chef, how about I tell you it wasn't the only game staring a Chef on the Gameboy, there was another one, and importantly this other one had a SNES release as well or I wouldn't be talking about it (and its name wouldnt be in the title and a picture of its cover wouldnt be above either). So the game I am reviewing right now is a game called Out to Lunch or to give it its full long title Pierre le Chef is... Out to Lunch. Out to Lunch was released for the SNES in 1993 it was both published and developed by Mindscape a company who published a few very good games my personal favourite being the blood filled fantasy game called Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight which I highly recommend everyone to look up, Out to Lunch couldn't be further from that though don't expect Pierre to be slicing anyone's head off here his weapon of choice tends to be a net.


OK so to explain it as simply as possible Out to Lunch is a side-scrolling platform game in which you play Pierre a French chef who has to try to collect the ingredients he needs for his culinary delights by travelling around the world to collect sentient escapee foods.


One thing I need to say is that when you start the game up you will be met with a choice of playing either a single-player or two-player mode/game but it is one of those kind of bollox alternating turn taking two player modes, which I can hardly see the point of. Yeah I am not going to call the game a failure over this but I do think its something that needs pointing out to anyone considering purchasing it.



OK so the objective of each level is to capture a set number of ingredients before a timer runs out. To catch the ingredients you use Pierre's net, you don't just have to catch them and then they disappear and that's it like you might expect though, there is actually a cage in the level you empty them into which is a nice touch. I personally find this game to be absolutely full of neat little touches though, you get these cool little animated skits now and then that are bursting with character, you really start to feel for Pierre as his vegetables run off and leave the poor little fella dazed and confused.



The game is quiet simplistic but its not really a bad thing you can pick it up and have fun playing it straight away. It goes like this at the start of every level, you have to find your net before you can catch the run away food, then you catch the food and place it in the cage and then the door to the next level will appear somewhere in the stage and you go through it, rinse and repeat. Yes it sounds simplistic and it is, but its simplistic in much the same way something like Pacman is, its also a very very charming game.



So far it all sounds very walk in the park but there are of course enemies, there is bacteria and insects trying to get in your way. Its not just you and your net against the world though, no you can also jump on enemies heads to stun them and pick up weapons like hot sauce and bags of flour. You travel the world visiting different countries 8 in total which all have there own set of levels, there own music and feel, it is done very well and helps to keep this basic game fresh and fun. The graphics are simple but charming as is the soundtrack, its just generally a very nice pleasant game. The game handles well, its nice and quick and you never feel like its anyone's fault but your own when you fail and to me that is the hall mark of a darn good game.

So how would I rate Out To Lunch well I give it a very hearty 8 out of 10 and would strongly recommend it, its a fun little game that probably passed most people by, sure its not a Mario beater but its a nice cute fun game which really deserves more attention than it gets. So how much are you looking at if you want this game, well online loose carts tend to go for £15 to £20 usually with boxed copies starting from around the £28 sort of mark. I was lucky enough to get mine from a local indy shop for £15 complete. I think this game is totally worth it.

I remember the reviews and adverts for Out to Lunch but never played it.

I have tried as much as possible to review games in order when it comes to parts of a franchise/sequels for example I made sure I didn't review Donkey Kong Country 3 until I had reviewed the first and then the second entries in the series but I also said that I would not review a game I did not own. So when it came to the Super Star Wars games I reviewed Super Star Wars and then jumped to Super Return of The Jedi for a simple reason I didn't own Super Empire Strikes back. The truth is I had never owned Super Empire Strikes back not even as a kid, sure a friend had owned it and I had played it before but I had never owned and had a chance to really give it a proper go. I reviewed Return of the Jedi because I simply didn't think I would ever get Super Empire Strikes back, every time I saw it which wasn't often it was a lot of money, and to be honest it was more than I wanted to pay, to cut a long story short a few months ago I finally managed to get an American Cartridge only copy for what I considered to be a good price, I have sat on it since then knowing that at some stage I would play it and review it, so when did I play it? I started playing it after I heard the sad news that Carrie Fisher had passed away, and I have decided that I have finally played enough of it to give a fair opinion on it.


So why didn't I get it as a kid? Well I guess in part because unlike a lot of other people of the original Star Wars films Empire was my least favourite, sure I like the snow speeder parts at the beginning a lot and its still a great film but I was always a Return of the Jedi fan the other reason was that I constantly heard about how much harder than StarWars it was and in truth as a child I had found StarWars hard, hard enough to be frustrating but still fun and overall just about manageable, I kind of thought that if it was tougher than this then it would simply be so hard that I wouldn't enjoy it. Plus lets remember as a kid you are very limited in how many games you can manage to get and if you spend all of your money on a game you then quickly get stuck on you might be stuck without a new game your actually managing to progress through for quiet a long time.


Well as you will probably know either from reading my review or another review or even from playing it Super Star Wars game was primarily a run and gun platformer with some Mode 7 levels thrown in to keep things fresh, well if you liked that then your in for more of the same here. The graphics are more or less the same there is not a massive jump in quality but they do feel slightly more polished especially when it comes to the Mode 7 focused ones. To the untrained eye you might look and go well its basically the same but with sand swapped out for snow, but its when you take a look at the enemy vehicles they are a lot clearer in Empire. The best new thing about Empire is that there is a password system. The length of Super Empire Strikes Back is roughly the same as that of Super Star Wars. However, with the added password system this not only means that you don't have to try to do the whole game in one it also means that if you keep a record of your passwords you can play the bits you like again and again without having to keep playing through the game until you get to them. This is great as there's a part later on in the game where you get to fly the Millennium Falcon and fight Tie Fighters in space. This looks and feels rather like a SNES version of the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games that were big on PC at the time of this games release. I can not tell you how many times I have returned to this part via password to play it again and again, there are entire flight based games on the SNES which are not as good as this little part of this game yes The Rocketeer I am looking right at you (as well as another title I have yet to review so wont name).
The difficulty is defiantly turned up from the first game which yes might be an issue if this is the first of these games that you grab but to be honest its not as hard as some people have made out if you have already played and finished the first game Super StarWars then most of the skills you learned will see you through the start of this game. This is where I will make a strange suggestion, nearly everyone knows the StarWars story, you will have seen the films probably countless times, if your my age then Christmas and New Years always seemed to be StarWars time with all of the films being shown during your Christmas holiday therefore I would say if you are going to grab one of these dont worry about the story order worry about the difficulty order. If you want to play them easiest first and work up to the hardest then in my opinion you should play Super Return of the Jedi, followed by Super StarWars and finally end with this game Super Empire Strikes back.
I have to say I really liked this game if you have played and liked any of the Super StarWars games then you will like this, it has the same high level of presentation with both graphics and sound effects that just scream StarWars. So if I was to give this game a score then what would I personally give it? Well I need to give it 7 out of 10, I really like it but I did enjoy both Super StarWars and Super Return of the Jedi just that little bit more. I spent around £15 on my American loose cart of Super Empire Strikes back but looking online at the moment your looking at something closer to £30 with boxed versions being more in the £60 to £70 price range. So is it worth it? Well that comes down to the individuals desire to own and play this game, I would certainly start with Super Star Wars or Super Return of the Jedi first, It might interest some people to know that Super StarWars can be got on the Playstation 4's download service for around £7 Yes this is the SNES version).

SNES review 109:

So the title I am going to talk about today is actually a game I accidently purchased twice, how do you accidentally buy a game twice well in this case it has something to do with the fact that it has a diffrent title in each of the 3 regions 1 of which essentially makes it a sequel to an Amiga game. In Japan the game is called Sky Mission, in Europe it is called Blazing Skies and it is in America where it has sequel status and is calledWings 2: Aces High. For the purpose of this review I have been playing the two versions I own the European and the American.

Now the first thing that attracted me to this game was the fact it involved planes, there have been some flying games I have absolutly adored but in both cases when I decided to buy it there was really 2 main factors one was the low price and the other was that it had the Namco brand on it.I have said before that you just have to see certain video game companies logos and you automatically feel safe in buying one of there products and I find that this is usually true with Namco, there is a big issue here though Namco didnt make the game they simply published it, it was made by a Studio called Malibu Interactive who have a far worse pedegree than Namco, in fact I can only think of about 2 of there titles that I actually enjoy one of them being Ex-Mutants on the MegaDrive. I guess this is an example of how having the right publisher can help a title because if I had realised this game was by them I would have been far slower in reaching for my wallet. I am not even sure of how this became a sequel to Wings as that was both made and publised by Cinemaware although I believe by the time Wings 2 was released they had gone bankrupt so maybe the rights were brought up or something, either way its not really anything to do with it and is pretty much just a game about the same sort of thing which is a sequel in name alone.
So as far as the story goes all you need to know is that its set during World War I and basically your overall mission is to destroy Kaiser Wilhelm II's factories, out fly his best pilots and generally do your best to put a significant dent in his war efforts. As the game is set during World War I, you'll be using biplanes from that era and there limitations are pretty much stuck to, there are no lock on missiles or fling like a nut with no fear of stalling here and there is no radar system, sure this makes it close to the truth of what it would have been like but in some cases it doesn't make for the best of games.

This game has three different kinds of missions. There are the dogfighting ones basically plane against plane in the sky try to knock as many of them out while trying to survive yourself. These missions become harder and harder as the enemy AI/Pilots improve as the game progresses. You will really have a tough time on your hands moving all over the place trying to outmanoeuvre the enemy Since your flying a WW1 era biplane you can only shoot at enemies that are directly in front of you and some of them can be pretty darn tricky when it comes to getting them to stay still long enough for you to get enough shots of to down them.

Then there are bombing missions, in these you fly far overhead an area and you drop bombs on strategic military sites while watching out for anti-aircraft attacks coming from soldiers on the ground. You get shown a photograph of the target before the mission so you know what and where you are bombing but there is one important thing to remember and that is that you can not physically turn your plane around during these missions so if you miss something then you've missed it.

There are also what the game refers to as "strafing runs". In these you fly your plane at a low altitude and you have to wipe out targets that are described during the mission briefing. This doesn't sound so tough but you seem to fly like a bat out of hell so its very easy to miss lots of things and fail the mission.
Now I guess it sounds all nice and varied but in truth it just doesn't feel right, it feels boring, the graphics do the job but don't really do anything to excite you and there is no effort through the music or sound effects to really grab a hold of you, the controls work but also it all just feels kind of clinical and laboured, the dog fighting seems to play out kind of slowly, even the worst of enemies seem to be to good at avoiding you and it takes an age to just shoot down what you need to finish the stages even near the beginning of the game, this game commits the cardinal sin of gaming in that it simply is not fun. I found myself wanting to put this game down almost straight away, in fact I wanted to go back to one of the flying stages from Empire Strikes back and just play that a few times instead as that seemed to capture the thrill of dog fighting in a way this game didn't even come close to. You might think that I am just being a bit of a dick and simply prefer Sci Fi, well I am a huge fan of a lot of science fiction things but I have enjoyed other games involving old fashioned planes, heck Pilot wings was one of my favourite SNES games, I adored the plane flying in that.
I cant remember what I paid for my English copy of this game but I know I got the American one for £5 or less and in all fairness I think that's the kind of price it needs to be, its simply not fun or particularly interesting past the oh look there is a game I haven't played before buzz you will initially get when you see/try it. If you want it then remember I would only give it about 3 out of 10 and think your cash would be much better spent on well most other things... Online you can find pal cartridge only copies of this for about £7 but frankly I think that's to expensive for this game.

I'm sure I have a complete copy of this. Think I've tried it a couple of times but could never get into it.

Snes review 110


Now lets be honest Mortal Kombat had been a very popular game and all of the fuss its blood and gore caused basically just made it be seen as even cooler and more desirable. So it wasn't surprising that there was a Mortal Kombat II or that a third one was announced. I can remember when I first heard there would be a third Mortal Kombat and boy was I excited, Mortal Kombat 2 felt like a giant leap from the first game and all I couldnt help but get excited at the prospect of a third game I just thought what if the third entry is as big a leap from the second as the second was from the first.


Well Mortal Kombat 3 came to the arcades in 1995 both developed and published by Midway Games it was converted to the snes by Sculptured software (who would be latter renamed Iguana West and then Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City before finally closing in December 2002). I will say before continuing that Sculptured Software did a great conversion much like with Mortal Kombat 2 the blood from the arcade version and all of the gory finishers made it across fully intact and any faults with this game are pretty much faults with the game itself and not this conversion.

So the first thing most people ask about sequels and this is especially true of fighting games is so what new things does this one bring to the table? Well with Mortal Kombat 3 the first thing I noticed was that there was a "Run" button, which comes with a"Run" meter. You can only run forwards but it allows you to close the distance between you and your opponent quickly and I find that it helps when you have a character who is better at close combat. Apparently this was introduced to the game due to fans who had felt that the Mortal Kombat games always seemed to favour those who played more defensively. Mortal Kombat had never really seemed to pay much attention to the idea of combo's sure you could string a few small pieces together or juggle a little bit but now there were what were called "Chain combos",sequences of moves that cannot be interrupted once one hit connects; some of which end with an uppercut or other move that knocks the opponent into the air, so you can add your own juggle on to the end of this. This feels to me like it was an effort to move beyond the initial Mortal Kombat shock and awe sell it with the blood and an attempt to try to give the series a bit more depth, to try and help it compete with the Street Fighter games on a technical level.

There were a lot of other things added. There was the idea of the fight being able to break out of its initial arena. In certain levels if you uppercut your enemy or he uppercuts you through the ceiling then you are both taken to a new area where the fight will continue, its a nice touch.

Lots more ways of finishing matches were added not only were there new Fatalities,new Friendship moves and the return of babealities but there was also the introduction of Animalities, where the character transforms into an animal in order to kill their opponent, as well as some new Stage based Fatalities. Some of these things are gruesome, some are just plain funny but they all feel like they belong in the game (I am not one of those people who wants Mortal Kombat to be a purely serious blood bath, I think you need humour in it to balance it out).

I know that in general one-on-one beat-em'up's dont really need the best stories, after all your just looking for a reason for people to be punching other people in the face, thats why so many of them are based upon fighting tournaments, now the original mortal kombat was based on this with a little more added basically the idea that the fate of the world was dependent upon who won this tournament. Mortal Kombat 3 decideds to overly complicate this though, the plot goes a little something like this Shao Kahn frustrated at the continuing failure of his minions to win dominion over Earthrealm either through the tournament or otherwise decides that he needs a new plan,

Shao Kahn decides to send Shang Tsung and his Shadow Priests to Earthrealm to resurrect Sindel his wife who died thousands of years ago, because he will then be able to stroll into the Earthrealm and reclaim his bride as his own, somehow doing this will cause Earthrealm and Outworld to begin to merge, this merger will cause billions of humans to drop dead and loose there souls and will allow Kahn to pretty much do whatever the hell he wants including sending his soldiers to kill any remaining humans and well just generally taking over the earth. Clearly he never cared about his wife and was quite happy to be rid of her, maybe she was always nagging at him and asking him to take out the trash or take his shoes off when he came home, or take his helmet off indoors as its only now he has realised her rebirth will create this situation that he seems to remember he once had a wife. It all sounds like a convoluted B movie plot and is kind of to much as far as reasons go for one character to punch person after person.

Graphics wise I cant really complain about the game its pretty good overall sure the sprites have been shrunk a bit in the port and lost a little bit of clarity but considering the power difference between the arcade hardware and the SNES this is very understandable and at the time of its release the graphics here were very impressive in my opinion, I still think Mortal Kombat II looked a little better though, but still nothing here gets in the way of the playability. The sound is also nice and solid the music is good and the sound effects such as the punch and kick sounds have a nice solid quality to them. The game handles very well and its just as fun to play with a Super NES controller as it was in the arcade.

My main issues with this game are sort of a mix of the tangible and intangible. On the one hand I find the character selection to be kind of questionable. There are a number of brand new warriors that have been brought into the game, and I personally like the cyborgs Cyrax, and Sektor they are definitely a welcome addition, but I have to admit that I miss some of the fighters who have not been brought back this time the prime example being Scorpion, there are after all some rather bland new fighters who take up space I would have rather seen being filled by a classic. The other issue is that this game just doesn't feel as good as Mortal Kombat 2 and as this is a feeling there is no real way I can explain it, maybe its just don't to the fact I feel a lot more nostalgia when it comes to number 2, it was at a point when the series felt like it was at its prime and it felt a lot better than much of what was out at the time, by the time the third game came out lots of other fighting game series had either got a good start or kicked it up a gear, after all the PlayStation was out at this time so we had been introduced to the likes of Tekken and Battle Arena Toshinda etcetera.

I ended my review of Mortal Kombat 2 by concluding that I would give it 8 out of 10 an that if you caught me in the right mood then I might go as high as a 9, unfortunately I wont be going that high this time in fact I feel that despite this game technically having more it kind of feels like a step backwards like a worse offering and so I would have to give this game a 7. No its not a bad game I would recommend trying to get a hold of the second one instead myself and to be fair when I reviewed the second one I did recommend that if you had a Xbox 360, a PS3 or a Decent PC that you looked at downloading the Mortal Kombat arcade collection as it has the first 3 games on it, and not ports actual arcade perfect versions and this is still true. I also went on to mention that there was a modern Mortal Kombat game, will since that review there has been a sequel game and then it has had a special edition with lots of extras, this special Edition is called Mortal Kombat XL and I would strongly recommend it. It has a lot of characters, a whole heap of finishing moves and some very interesting special guest characters, there is Leather Face from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Xenomorph from Alien, the Predator from Predator and its just a darn good game that you can now get for under £20 new if you look around. It is hard to recommend an old loose cart of MK3 when you could use your money for this instead. If however you simply need a cart of MK3 for your snes how much are you looking at? Well for a loose cart your looking around the £15 to £20 mark, its worth noting that when you look up MK3 you will see a regular and Ultimate Version, it is the regular I have reviewed as that is what I own, the ultimate version was a latter release with more characters and often goes for more money it has added characters and such, this is not something I will ever actively be searching for so it is highly unlikely I will ever provide a review of it. (If I ever saw one for a few pounds id grab it but its not something I am looking for cheap or that I am willing to pay the going rate for).

Well the last review I did was for Mortal Kombat 3 which was the third Mortal Kombat game on the SNES and today I am going to talk about another third fighting game from a series on the SNES , I am talking about Super Street Fighter 2 The New Challengers. Yes the first Street fighter on the SNES was Street fighter 2, the second was Street fighter 2 Turbo and this was the third, they wernt exactly totally new games they were like new enhanced versions. I am not the first one to mention this but back in the day we kind of came to believe that Street Fighter 3 would never happen, after all Capcom just seemed to keep making new version after new version of Street fighter 2 seemingly unable or unwilling to use the number 3, little did I know that years latter I would find myself in the same position with Street Fighter 4 seemingly getting version after version on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

I remember seeing the new characters and hearing about them long before I ever got to play the game the two that particularly excited my friends and me were Fei Long and Cammy, the truth was no one was particularly excited for T-Hawk as none of us tended to use the bigger slower guys and DeeJay just didn't seem appealing, all of us were interested in the introduction of a second female character especially because she would be an actual British character, finally we had a character who came from where we did. We also really liked the idea of pitting what was basically Bruce Lee in all but name against the fireball throwing likes of Ryu and Ken. In honesty once the game arrived I used T-Hawk very little although I did enjoy DeeJay as a character a lot more than I thought I would. We all wanted the same things from the new version and that was more more and even more. When Super Street Fighter 2 hit the arcades and we got to have a bash there was some sense of disappointment with the fact that it ran slower than Turbo and Hyper Fighting's top speeds on the SNES and Mega Drive and the SNES port also ends up not being as fast at its fastest speeds as those games but I don't see this as being an issue now at all, in honesty I think when Turbo and Hyper Fighting are ramped up to there top speeds they actually run so fast that some of the playability is lost and it becomes a bit of a mess, so this is not something that bothers me these days in the slightest. Some people debate the fact that Super Street Fighter 2 is slower on the SNES mentioning the fact that you can increase the speed and claiming its top speed is similar or equal to turbo and although yes you can change the speed and make it faster no it does not become as fast as turbo, if your after raw speed then this is not the Street Fighter 2 for you.
The main mode is your typical arcade mode just like the previous versions of Street Fighter II you pick your warrior and then go on to defeat twelve others in order to see your fighters ending. Now most of you reading this will have realised that I said defeat twelve others when there are sixteen fighters in the game, basically you don't fight every single character, you fight 8 different characters and then you fight the four bosses with Bison being the last one as per usual. Your fights are also broken up with bonus stages you know the one where you get to smash up some poor dudes car (and others) what with the vehicle destruction in both the Street Fighter games and Final Fight I think Capcom really likes giving you the chance to punch auto-mobiles. Along with the four new characters came four new stages one for each of their home countries, this wasnt all though the older characters weren't just left as they were, nope many of them received new moves, new animations and balance related tweaks, the graphics also seem a little brighter and crisper in my honest opinion.

OK so I gave world Warrior 8 out of 10 and then I Gave Turbo 8.5 out of 10 and as I have already said I see The New Challengers as an even better game or at least version of a game so I guess I have backed myself into the corner of giving this game a 9 out of 10. In all honesty this is just about as fine a fighting game as you could get on the SNES hardware, should you buy it though? Well that all depends how much you want to spend, it is on the Virtual Console for around £8 so that is an option, if you want an actual cart though so you can play it on its original hardware then your looking at paying around £30 for a European Cart, if you can play imports you might be able to find a Japanese copy for around £10 to £15 which is what I own. In comparison I recently grabbed Street Fighter 5 for £15, so it all depends on if your wanting to collect it as a retro game or just play some Street Fighter.

Snes review 112


OK so this is a game I want to talk quiet a bit about, I wanted to talk about it a long time ago but I figured that I had to hold some things back, I also clearly needed to talk about it after StarWing/Star Fox, I also wanted to talk about Dirt Trax FX. So with those out of the way and quiet a long gap since them here I am talking about Stunt Race FX, or Wild Trax as it was known in Japan. To sum it up quickly Stunt Race FX was a 3D cartoon-style racing game developed by Nintendo EAD with assistance from Argonaut Software, it was of course published by Nintendo themselves


Nintendo originally wanted to make a franchise out of stunt race FX but this idea was dropped, a sequel on the Nintendo 64 called Buggie Boogie was planned and I think work even began on it but it was cancelled, which I honestly think is a crying shame a this game had a flavour which in my opinion made it very different from other racing games this is part of the reason for e being eager to review it.


The story of Stunt race really starts back in 1991, Nintendo began developing a custom 3D cartridge chip called the Super FX chip with Argonaut Software so that it could be used in Super NES games to create polygonal 3D graphics. The first game that used the Super FX was StarWing/Star Fox, which obviously became a big success and birthed a whole franchise that still exists to this day. After the release of Star Fox/Star Wing, Nintendo and Argonaut began experimenting with what else they could do with a Super FX chip. A title began to take shape originally refereed to as FX Trax a polygon based 3D-animated racing game featuring both stunts and racing. This was the title that would go on to become Stunt Race FX.


In Stunt Race FX at first you would think you have a pretty standard racing game, there are a number of circuits there are time trials and there is a selection of vehicles but stick with me and I will talk about the game what it has to other and why I think it is more than just a standard racing game. Ok so lets starts with the vehicles themselves. The vehicle roster is not that big in fact in some ways its more like the selection you'd expect from a walk along beat em up in the way that each choice is strong in one trait while being a little weaker in another. You have the monster truck with massive tires, high acceleration, and the ability to drive through patches of water without it effecting you but with the disadvantage of having a low top speed. Then there is a little yellow coupe which in all honesty can be described as the nice average vehicle, an average rate of acceleration and an average top speed. Last but not least there is a red formula one type of car this car has the highest top speed but has slow acceleration. OK I guess this is a spoiler but its not exactly a big one but there is also an unlockable vehicle, a motorcycle which breaks the above rules in that it is just basically good at everything, it could be criticised for being over powered but it is an absolute blast to play with. There is also a large semi-trailer this is driven from a fixed 3/4 perspective. It is obviously slow to move and turns slowly as this kind of vehicle would but dont worry your not racing with this its used for a sort of bonus level so its kind of a nice bit of something different thrown in to break up proceedings.


One of the problems with early 3D games like this was that they never looked very realistic, sure they tried to look realistic but with very square cars and such built from obvious wire frame style shapes, quiet frankly it was pretty much a waste of time trying to be too realistic back then and thats why I love Stunt Race FX it sods realism and makes itself in to a giant cartoon. Yes the cars are made of basic shapes and its obvious but the game embraces this by putting large eyeballs on all of the cars roughly where the headlights would usually go, and I am not talking about painted on flat lifeless eyes no these are active cartoon eyes which blink and look around, they are so active and full of emotion that they bring the cars to life. I know it might sound silly but this really made me warm to the game, maybe its the fact I grew up on things like Tomas the Tank Engine and Tugs so I have been pre-programmed to like vehicles that have been given eyes and personality who knows.


OK so the game itself consists of three championships which consist of four races and a bonus level each. Now you would think that for each race you get given a certain number of points and then where you come in the championship and if you can progress on to the next one or not is determined by your points total, well this is not how it is done at all nope basically your finishing times are all added together with the quickest/best total time winning.


Now the courses are split up into different areas, there is a mountain area, a city area, etcetera and they are filled with changes in elevation, and the odd hazard things like falling rocks for example. Then you have halfpipes, which if you hit wrongly can send your car flying over the edge of the course, on top of this there are a few which have pieces missing out of them, which make you have to ride along the side of them to stop yourself falling off. You have a damage meter and if you take enough damage from hitting walls or other cars or hazards then your car will explode but don't worry there are red crystals that you can drive over to refill your meter (if you do take to much damage and this happens though you will be forced to restart the level). There is also a boost meter, which works just how it sounds press your boost button and you go faster but the meter drains,if your skilful you use this carefully to maximise its potential. There are also blue crystals which appear on the track and if you manage to collect these you can refill your boost bar.












The game controls well, everything is nice and simple you have one button for acceleration, a button to brake, you steer with the dpad and the shoulder buttons help you to perform tighter turns, then there is the boost button and a button that both toots your horn and makes you hop, used correctly at the right moments this can be used to help you bounce over the opposition.


Now you have probably noticed that for a game called Stunt Race FX I haven't actually made much mention of stunts well as well as the racing there are stunt tracks, there are four of them to be precise. Each of these stunt tracks begins with you in the back of a semi and has you running through segment of the course collecting stars. There are a bunch of obstacles ranging from simple mounds to elevated platforms that you have to deal with. You have to manage to collect every star before the timer counts down in order to unlock the next course. This can be quiet hard as to reach certain stars you will need to be travelling at the right speed and at the right angle to make a jump that will take you to an otherwise unreachable platform which has a star on it. There is also a bit where your in a sort of mini demolition derby with the goal being for you to ram three other cars until they blow up in the quickest time possible


Now I guess I have been going on about the game in quiet an excited manor, this was after all a game I got nice and early I got a US import copy before it was even out here and I played the living heck out of it, but I am not completely blind to its faults, I will admit that it does have some, after all I hate people who deny the faults of any company or product so even though I love this game lets talk about them.


I said that I like the cartoon way the game looks but it has to be noted that it is a bit of a slow game at least as far as frames per second goes the game only floats at around 15 frames per second, I guess this is because the graphics and what's on show actually required a lot of grunt work from the both the Super Nintendo itself and the FX chip, and it is noticeable.


Now when you grew up playing games in the pal region you kind of get used to the idea that your game is not going to fill all of the screen but Stunt Race FX's main viewing area is very small, in fact it only accounts for about half of your full screen, its also important to mention that even though this game has a two player mode but obviously your playing area is stupendously small during this well unless you have a TV big enough not to care, but no matter the size of your screen you are going to notice that the already slow frame rate drops even more in two player mode. Given this I don't think it makes a very good two player game really. I also think this game is a little bit disappointing in the sound department, its not like the music or sound effects are like nails on a chalk board though its more like they are just a bit plain, a bit average, fit for purpose but ultimately forgettable.


OK before I give a rating I want to just talk a little bit more about Nintendo and Argonaut. So with the Team of Nintendo and Argonaut hitting gold again even if not commercially this team must have gone from strength to strength right? In short No. Argonaut and Nintendo had done some good business together true, Star Fox had been huge even if Stunt race was not quiet as big but unfortunately it was not a team which would go the distance. Argonaut pitched a 3D game starring Yoshi to Nintendo even going so far as to mock up a prototype for it. However, Nintendo did not accept the pitch though, one Argonaut employee speculated that this was because the company did not want to let third-parties use its characters, which might have been the case but if it was then this is something that has clearly changed with Nintendo entrusting the likes of Retro with the Metroid series. Rather than accepting defeat though and simply putting there idea to bed Argonaut decided to retool the prototype turning it in to an original game, this game would go on to become Croc: Legend of the Gobbos.


Bad blood seems to have originated between Argonaut and Nintendo over two issues one was Nintendo's refusal to pick up the Yoshi pitch the other was the cancellation of the nearly completed Star Fox 2 which Argonaut had done a lot of work on and were apparently not paid a penny for. Members of Argonaut have claimed that the Yoshi Game prototype influenced Super Mario 64, with claims that Shigeru Miyamoto actually made some form of apology for ripping there idea off, add to this that it has been claimed a bunch of StarFox 2's ideas and even code were implemented in future Nintendo games both StarFox and none StarFox related all without any acknowledgement or payment. Lets just put it this way if even a fraction of this is true Nintendo were basically being dicks, lets remember at this time they had agreed to do business with Sony to then back stab them and run to Philips which I think kind of does make this all sound believable. I think this whole situation is a real shame as I think together they could have done so much more.



OK so I would have to give Stunt Race FX 8 out of 10, yes it is not without its faults, I would have liked to have seen a sequel which addressed some of these but alas it was not to be. The game has its limitations but it is a darn fun game full of charm and this would make me strongly recommend it. One of the best things about it if you own an actual SNES is that if you want to get yourself a copy of the game then it doesn't actually cost very much at all, if you look around you can get Cart only copies for prices starting around £6, heck sometimes you can even find a complete copy for around £15, and the truth is usually games this cheap on the Super Nintendo now days tend to be ones that are either sports titles or just general piss poor. Now I also have to admit that it is good to have a game like this to get my teeth into as yes the SNES has a large library of games but not all of them have stories or facts around them which are worthy of conveying, trying to review a large library of SNES games can be a very hard task especially when there is so little to say about some games and this has really been one of the factors which has held me back in my challenge to review 150 games, lets hope that I can find a few more like this to give me the strength to carry on.

You cannot quit now, you only have 38 games to go.

Stunt Race for me is a game that I can give or take. I own it, I play it but then I just put it back and move on to something else. Things like Mario Kart and Street Racer I can play for ages, not so much SR.

Snes review 113


Super Family Tennis was created by Namco via their in-house brand Namcot and was released on the in Japan on June 25th, 1993 with the European version being called Smash Tennis, it was localized and released by Virgin Interactive the following year. This game for some reason never got an American release which to be fair I think is a crying shame. I have probably mentioned before that you didn't tend to get cheap new SNES games very often, back in the day games tended to sit at the £40 level for a long time, so when there was a case of a newish game being available for cheap it was sort of a big event. In the closest big town to me we had a huge Virgin Mega Store with a floor dedicated to music and then one to things like T-shirts and such and finally one split between games and films and they sold Smash Tennis near release for £20 and it sold like hot cakes, literally ever kid at school with a SNES did everything they could in order to get the cash to go grab it at the weekend, lots of us pocketed our dinner money and didn't eat for the week, went around collecting up glass bottles that had been dumped for the 10pence pieces we could get in exchange for them at the local store, begged for pocket money advances or offered to wash cars, pots and any other household chores going. In the end I remember going down to town with 3 friends on Saturday and all 4 of us brought a copy of the same game, the only time we would all usually get the same game was when something like Donkey Kong or Street Fighter 2 turbo or another highly publicized game was released and this was usually staggered with one of us getting it for a birthday, another for Christmas, someone saving up over time and someone else trading any game that wasn't bolted down for store credit to buy it (I was very against trading games , OK so maybe Id trade if I could swap one game for another and pay £5 but I wasn't going to swap like 8 old games in to get 1 game out the other end, it just didn't make sense to me).

It was a little strange this, we all just paid for the game without ever having played it, surly it would have made more sense for one of us to grab it and the rest of us to wait and see what we thought of it? We hadn't even seen reviews of it but we had seen very positive previews. The thing is nowadays even if a game receives positive reviews we don't always seem to believe them, we know that plenty of games have done well as far as websites and magazines go but then you read about publishers holding influence over parts of the media things like advert revenue being pulled when reviews have not met a publishers expectation, it seems almost stupid looking back to think of how high a regard we used to hold previews in, after all they were basically just a writers initial thoughts a guesstimate of how good or bad a game would be based on what sometimes was a very early unfinished build of a future game that they had been shown. Still we all jumped in and purchased Smash Tennis based of a strong preview and its cheap price tag.

OK so to get straight in to it Smash Tennis doesn't come with a whole lot of playing modes basically there are two choices and they are Exhibition and Tournament. Both can be played in Singles or Doubles mode. You can if you want to also watch the computer play itself, not sure why you would want to but the option is there if you'd like to try it.

In exhibition basically this is just what you play if you want to jump in things ayou pick your player and your rival, your court and then you get down to playing Tennis, this is good if you just want to have a quick bash but the Tournament is the real meat of the game. Now while I have said there are not a lot of game modes this is not to say that Namco did not bring much to the table, in fact there are a large number of courts, you can play on grass, clay, hard (concrete), sand, rock and there not simply cosmetic either if you play it you will find that the court actually does affect the way the ball travels. There is what is called a “Whistle Stop Tour”, in which you play matches while switching between the various types of courses. This is pretty darn cool as it keeps things remarkably fresh and varied for a Tennis game, add on to this the fact that there is a number of objects and people around the various courts, some of which you can interact with, for example, if you can manage to hit the climber in the Mountain Court you get to see him fall, its not like this does anything though its just a neat little touch for this type of game.

The game has a lot of player characters there are about 20 in total with 12men and 8 women, none of them are based on real Tennis players in fact they have regular names like John and Helen for example, but the interesting thing is that they all play completely different. Some have great serves others have very powerful shots in short all of them have something in particular which makes them worth picking. This adds extra fun in Doubles, where you not only try to pick the ideal player for yourself but also try to pick the perfect doubles partner to make the ideal team.

In Tournament mode your goal is to win the four Grand Slams of a single year. To do this you will have to play a number of tournaments until you win all of them. Tournament matches are short, you only play one set, and that's good because in my opinion this keeps things flowing rather fast. This game does not have battery back up it saves via passwords, they are given to you when you win a tournament and are of what I would consider a decent workable length, sure I would have preferd battery back up but its not like it ruins the game or anything so I wont be unjustly harsh on it.

The main thing is that the game plays well, darn well in fact, it is in its element when played in four player with your friends in particular but its a decent enough game when your on your own. The different characters with different strengths adds to the re-playability, all in all its a pretty darn fun game to play.

I don't tend to harp on to much about the graphics and sound concentrating more on the gameplay in games only really mentioning things which I deem to be neat little touches however lets just briefly touch on them. The Graphics are kind of simple but there is a great cartoony style to them, the courts are big and the characters are relativly small but with big heads and a surprising amount of character and importantly they look completely different to each other as opposed to being a bunch of poor clones. Now the SNES was often held on high when it came to its Sound, now there are some very good sound effect like echoes and the sound of the wind which I rather like, there is also some goo music but unfortunately not during the matches, maybe some people would find it distracting so that's why they didn't put it in but personally I think it makes things just a little bit duller than they could have been. I think overall it all fits together well giving it the feeling of a quality product.

I gave Super Tennis a 7 out of 10, it needs to be pointed out as I am sure I said at the time though I am not a big Tennis fan, I stand in judgement over Smash Tennis not from the point of view of a fan of Tennis but from the point of view of a fan of games, I suppose the most obvious question to ask is, ''is this game a Super Tennis beater?'' The truth is that it is a hard question to answer, this has a lot of neat little touches and it has a 4 player mode something Super Tennis does not, yet I can only stand it side by side with Super Tennis and if you told me I had to live with one and one alone it would be a very hard choice between the two of them, I find myself forced to give this game a 7 out of 10 and call it the equal of Super Tennis as opposed to a Super Tennis beater. If your looking to buy it then its not quiet as easy to get your hands on as Super Tennis, a cart only copy of it will cost you around £10, if you have a machine and want to play a Tennis game then I would go for Super Tennis as its cheaper and just as good but if you already have that and want more then give this a bash.

I really wanted an excuse to come out with the gem ''Big Money, Big Prizes'' which you may realise is of course from the game Smash TV, a game I really love, I love it because basically it is based of the Arnie film The Running Man, which is not only a film I adore but is also based loosely of the book The Running Man which was written by Stephen King one of my favourite writers of all time. I don't own Smash TV though but I do however own its sequel Total Carnage. This used to happen a lot the whole lets make a film into a game but do it so loosely that we can get away without paying for any rights or fee's, Total Carnage doesnt do this however instead it has a story which feels like someone read and watched a whole bunch of random different things and then vomited up a story which was a mix of things. You have your big muscular Solider think Arnie again think Commando etcetera, your fighting a dangerous Dictator General Akhboob so your basic evil foreign sounding military figure from foreign sounding place in this case Kookistan, who is using his base to stockpile weapons and look for ways to conquer the world in this case by creating mutants. To be honest I find this sort of craziness pretty cool, games are supposed to be fun so a little nonsense now and then is very welcome in my books.

Now Total Carnage is for all intents and purposes a twin stick shooter just without the twin sticks. So if you have played the old arcade game Robotron or if your more of a modern gamer and you managed to play the fantastic Geometry wars then that's the kind of territory your in here. So how do you play a twin stick shooter on an old console like the SNES that only has one stick, well actually no sticks? Well the dpad works as the first stick ,moving your characters around the screen, and instead of having a second stick to control the direction you fire in the various directions are mapped to the X, Y, B and A buttons. This takes some getting used to especially if your used to games in which you always shoot in the direction you are facing in but if you keep playing then eventually it becomes second nature to you.

So you set out with what in video game weapon terms can best be described as a pea shooter to kill a whole arm of exploding mutants while you will die if you are so much as grazed by anything, yes there are various power ups but even with these this game is a darn hard game, only made slightly easier if you manage to find a friend to play with. I have to be totally honest when I say that the game will be found so hard by most people that it at times becomes more frustrating than fun, this is definitely a negative, I don't find the game completely UN-enjoyable but I wouldn't be surprised to find that some people do. If you relish a shooter which is a challenge though this could very well be the game for you, providing that you also find the games plot and presentation as B-Movie delicious as I do, this is very much a game for hardened gamers who don't mind being frustrated and who have there tongue very firmly in there cheek.

Its interesting to note that this game is another victim of Nintendo's family image, a lot of things are toned down from the arcade version, some of it is related to the on screen gore but then there is also some cuts made when it comes to the language used and some taming of plot related issues, for example your out to capture rather than kill the main villain, it doesn't really alter the game but its worth mentioning.

In general the game is not one that's going to change the world, there are not any truly original ideas here, the graphics are not the best you will see nor is the sound but the game has character and challenge going for it perhaps a little too much as far as challenge goes. I appreciate this game as a fun bit of something to pick up and play now and again but its not an all time classic or anything in fact I would have to give it a 6 out of 10, its not that I wouldn't recommend it its just that there are so many games I would say to get first. If you really wanted Total Carnage though well unless you got really lucky and found it for a bargain then you would be looking at around £15 for a cartridge which is not a bad price but I really do think that there are better games you can get for around this kind of figure.