150 SNES games reviewed

Game 43



The Super Nintendo version of Sim City was the first console game in the Sim City Series, it was also apparently a launch title for the system. I have to admit though I never saw it in the early days, in fact I think I got it very late in the day.   It was developed by Nintendo EAD under license from Maxis and published by Nintendo (in 1990). I think the fact that Nintendo worked on it themselves shines through into the final product. This is far from a hasty cash in conversion, its a very specialized version of the game tailored towards SNES owners and it shows pretty much straight away, I know this is giving the game away early but I have to admit that this is actually my favourate version of Sim City. I fell in love with it from more or less the instant I played it.

The gameplay is similar to the PC version, but every step possible seems to have been made in order to make it easily playable with a jupad, there are also more buildings and scenarios added to the game so in a way you can consider this a sort of Sim City 1.5. There are lots of other little style based changes which the average user would not notice unless they have played both the SNES and PC versions, one example is that the buildings  present in the SNES version resemble those in Japan  as apposed to the typical North America styled ones in the PC version.

The best thing about this for me in comparison to the PC version is the adviser they have added to the game who goes by the name Dr. Wright, he is supposed to be a cartoon parody of Will Wright the creator of the Simcity Series, obviously I know that now but as a kid I never realized that, I just took him as a new cutesy fun Nintendo character and I actually wondered if he would ever turn up in anything else. He is basically there to offer you advice and to tell you things such as the population growth of your city. To add to the Nintendo related flavor Nintendo also sprinkled one of two little touches in there  the Godzilla attacks from the PC have been replaced with Bowser attacks and if you can reach a particularly high level of  growth then there is an unlock-able Mario Statue that you can place in your city .



The graphics are functional but cute, the music is a little twee but its also catchy, I have the main music from this game on my MP3 player and actually find it quiet relaxing. For those of you who haven't played this the whole point of the game is basically to make a thriving city which grows and grows in size, but how you do this and what tax rate you set, how you choose to lay out the city all of these things are left to you. This is great as you can build a giant city have fun with it and then decide to do it all again this time setting it up in a completely different way. There are lots of different maps, you essentially put a number in and it decides a map for you, you then get to say Yes or No to this map.

In some ways this game was the 90's equivalent of console Minecraft. I mean this in the way that you would spend your time building an impressive world which you could then show off to your friends. This is and was a great game if you had friends to share it with as you will all use the same basic game, the same basic framework but yet end up with a totally different city, to an extent your city is a reflection of yourself. One of the best things about the game was that there was very little like this on the system. If you were sick of all of the platformers, one on one beat em ups, sports games etc then this was something different something original, and for that I think it deserves a place in everyone's SNES collection. This is pretty much the only PC to SNES conversion where I can say with utter confidence that I think the Super Nintendo version is the superior version. I am going to give it a 10 out of 10  that is how deep my love for this game is, I don't think there is anything else really like it and I think that it is almost infinitely re-playable.

If you want to buy this game then it will cost you about £8 for a pal cart. Which I think is an absolutely brilliant price considering the fact that the enjoyment you can get out of it can be practically limitless.

Game 44



My game today is Mortal Kombat the arcade fighting game developed and published by Midway (in 1992) It was subsequently released by Acclaim Entertainment for just about every home video game system that existed back then. It was a massive seller and was one of the few competitors for street fighter 2's crown in a market which was usually filled with awful semi functioning clones. It started a whole series of games but more than that it actually spawned a successful film adaptation in 1995. It sparked a great deal of controversy though for its depiction of extreme violence and bloodshed by using realistic (for the time) digitized graphics. This game was involved in several hearings on video game violence the results of which resulted in the introduction of age-specific content description ratings for video games. This game certainly changed the world of video games.

When mortal kombat came it came riding a huge train load of hype, at the time nearly all games were released on a friday but mortal kombat just had to break the trend it was released on a monday which was dubbed Mortal Monday... No matter how long ago that was I still remember it for one reason and that's the fact that the man who owned the local games shop agreed to give a select number of his loyal customers the game on the friday before that. My brother was one of them, he brought the megadrive version and we spent the entire weekend before its release playing it.. Its not uncommon now to get the odd game a day or maybe two before release because it has been posted out and arrived early but back then this was more or less unheard of. 



Eventually I decided to get the snes version when I saw it at a greatly reduced price. Now a lot of people would expect the snes version to be an improvement and maybe the graphics were a touch clearer but if anything the gritty quality of the megadrive version actually helped to give it a certain grind house feel and if anything covered some of the blur present in the sprites a little and that's before you even got to the infamous blood code. On both the snes and megadrive versions of mortal kombat when you put them in the machine they would load up and one of the first things you would notice was the absence of blood. For the mega drive there was a simple code you could input which would switch on the gore, unfortunately the snes version simply did not feature this and no button combinations or joypad caresses would get claret flowing. 

A snes magazine in the uk actually ran an april fools which tried to make its readers believe that the blood was in there as well as an option to play as the boss characters but that the cart needed extra weight adding to it to make all of this obtainable. What they told you to do was glue a one pence piece on to the top of your cartridge before going through a combination of button presses which would open some kind of debug menu. I remember that even after they had admitted it was all a giant wind up I would come across seconds hand copies of the game in various stores and markets which still had a penny firmly glued to the top of them. The funny thing is there were kids at school who swore on there life that they had gotten into this debug menu and then promptly denied ever having said it latter. Now the game mortal kombat often gets compared to is street fighter 2 and yes I admit street fighter 2 is better for combos and has several other advantages but I think MK has enough of its own qualities to warrant its place in the fighting fans collection. Personally I love the characters and there back stories sure people will argue that sub zero and scorpion are essentially palate swaps but there portrayal as mortal enemies from warring clans and just how cool they both were in general was more than enough to make me not care. In some ways it can be said the graphics haven't aged as well as more basic sprites but I don't know something about them appeals to me and kind of reminds me of old kung fu films I guess its down to your personal preferences. One thing I loved with Mk was the music and sound effects the beat in the various songs just got you in the mood to rip somebodies head off and the sounds being cried out such as scorpion shouting ''get over here'' just had an epic quality to them. I find the game greatly playable but not without its limits, the way I see it is as an excellent starting block for a franchise and I can't help but give it a 7 out of 10. (I give the mega drive a 8 out of 10 though it just feels more tailored to the system and I guess I am just ''loyal to the gore'' (bonus points for anyone who knows where this quote comes from) 

If you want to play the game on your SNES it is going to cost you around £10 for a pal cart or about £20 for a boxed copy, if you own a megadrive you might want to consider getting a copy on that instead. I also dont want to give anything away but you might want to look at the prices of other games in the series as well.

Game 45



When looking at Jaleco’s Rival Turf! (known as Rushing Beat in Japan), it’s important to understand something about it, something which you cant help but think is the entire reason for its existence and its release.I have already reviewed and talked about the SNES conversion of the arcade hit Final Fight. Now as you will probably remember from my review Final Fight woo'd people with its pretty much arcade-quality visuals and sound. It was an epic achievement getting the game to look and play so well on the SNES especially when you take in to consideration the huge difference between the hardware inside coin-ops and home consoles at that time, but sadly as I mentioned when reviewing it not every thing was exactly perfect: the two-player mode that made the arcade original so brilliant was missing due to memory constraints.

This left a demand out there for people who wanted to play a walk along beat em up together and Rival Turf was basically Jaleco's attempt at filling this void. You will find people who love this game, people who hate it and people who while appreciating it for offering what it offerd at the time  
ultimatly now see it as being a game which was average and could be forgotten about as soon as other games came out which filled this void.

Now for some reason the plot of this game was massivly changed from the Japanese version when it was released in Europe and America.

In the Japanese version the plot is something along these lines. Rick Norton the main character is stopped by a man with a gun who informs him that his sister is being held hostage something to do with some video evidence she has in connection to drug dealing. So after this Rick goes on a quest to clear up the streets and try to rescue his sister.

In the Euro/American version well the main character is called Jack Flak and it is his girlfriend who has been kidnapped by a gang the Street Kings. He asks police officer Oswald "Oozie" Nelson his friend to help him to rescue his girlfriend and basically beat the Street Kings off of the streets. I imagine most of this is down to basically removing the reference to drugs.



I find that the graphics for this game are good when you look at the time at which it was released, they are not really as good as those in Final Fight but you can tell that this is one of the areas where things have been cut back a bit in order to free up the power needed at that time to allow for the two player option. I find the music in this game to be quiet catchy, none of it is the sort of thing that your going to find yourself humming in your day to day life but the music from the first level seems to have stayed in part of my mind over the years, I could humm it you right now as I could have done before I put this in the slot to play it again and refresh my opinion ready to write this.

I would give Rival Turf a 6 out of 10 for a moment I was tempted to give it a 7 as I have a bit of a soft spot for it. Its not as good as final fight but it does of course have the two player mode that final fight lacks. One of the issues is that there are simply much cheaper options now, Rival turf filled a void which simply no longer exists anymore. If your looking for a copy of it a Pal cart will cost you around £8 to £12 online including postage. The game does have some much improved sequels but they are costly.

Game 46 

Due to life and the death of this place I will never finish this... so here is a review well its more story than review but you get reviews everywere ...so instead step into this semi review, semi chunk of my life.

I remember walking home from comprehensive school, must have been in one of my first years there. At home I had a Megadrive and an Amiga 500 as well as all of the other usual stuff youd find in a boys room at that time, TV, CD player, poster of a good looking singer you had a crush on. I didn’t really think much of school so Id be out of that gate the second I could. There was a system whereby we would walk the kid who lived the closest out of our group to his door, usually passing a sweet shop on the way, and then the next kid and so on and so on. In the end there would be only me and my friend Andrew left.  Now Andrew had almost always been in my life, the early years of gaming were mostly based around him coming to my house to play on my spectrum and Atari 2600 or me at his playing on his  Commadore 64. Now we would walk to a crossroads were my house lay down a path on the left and was towards the right so we would part there but for a solid 3 months I didn’t go home straight away. No I crossed over the road and went in to our Local CO-OP. This wasn’t a CO-OP for food, it was a large store it had all sorts in it, sheets, toys, and all manner of stuff but for a while it had a Super Nintendo Demo unit, one of those consoles under a dome with the pad sticking out so you could have a go. In this Demo unit they had FZero. No one I knew at this point owned a SNES and no one would till the Christmas of that year, but I used to go in there every day after school and play FZero basically until they got fed up of me and chased me off.



So yes Fzero was the very first Super Nintendo game I ever got to sample and I knew one thing from the first time I played it and that was, I needed to get a Super NES. The problem was I had only just gotten a Megadrive for the Christmas that had passed so I thought asking for one for that Christmas would be seen as ungrateful, besides I knew my mum she had probably already started buying stuff in advance, no I was going to have to wait it out for over a whole year.
Christmas came and I got lots of stuff but didn’t get a SNES, but lots of my friends did, and I was soon visiting them playing on their machines and enjoying it, but nobody got FZero. From the day they removed the Demo Unit from the shop till the next time I would end up playing on the game which had awoken me to the wonders of the Super Nintendo to the day I would hold it in my hands was probably separated by probably a year and a half. I got the SNES a year after a lot of my friends, but even then I was the only one to have both a SNES and a Megadrive, all of the others stuck firmly to one camp and defended their choice day in day out with every fibre of there being.

It is probably the greatest complement I can pay to the game to say that it was worth the wait and that it was the machine that made me buy a SNES. 

For those of you who haven’t played it and as a recap for others here is a little information. F-Zero is a futuristic racing video game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo. The game was released in Japan as one of the two launch titles for the machine. The game takes place in the year 2560 and can best be thought of as a sort of futuristic Formula One you can choose to play as one of four characters each of them having their own particular hover car. The player then races against computer controlled opponents in fifteen tracks divided into three leagues.

F-Zero is acknowledged by critics to be the game that set a standard for the racing genre and the creation of the futuristic sub-genre. F-Zero wasn’t just a good game though it was an early example of what the SNES could do with the use of the graphical mode called "Mode 7". This graphics-rendering technique was an innovative technological achievement, it helped show that the Snes could perform certain tricks which other consoles would struggle with (Mode 7 is a graphics mode on the Super NES that allows a background layer to be rotated and scaled on a scanline-by-scanline basis to create many different effects.) This game showed that the SNES wasn’t just a powered up console it was a new machine which had brought new technology and innovation to the table.

The graphics, the sound the sense of speed everything in this game seemed to be designed to get you hyped, to get you playing filled with excitement not just for the game but for the very future of this machine and this is something I feel it did well. It was an easy game to pick up but a hard one to Master. Even to this day there are races on this game which will make you feel like your blood is boiling, like you are travelling at 5000mph, it is quite simply that good.
 
I Would give this game a solid 9 out of 10 and I have seen it sell for around the 10quid mark online although it can go for more, if you own a Snes and you don’t own it buy it. I hate the fact that since the cube version Nintendo just seem to have left this game series to rot, the only reminder being the fact you can buy it on Virtual console, some would say Wipeout out did it, but while I love wipeout as well I think there is always room for More Fzero (the studio that did Wipeout has since died but members of it have reformed as a new studio to make a game which is a follow up in spirit if not in name)

Game 47



Sports games were no strangers to the regular update system, but there was a time when they were pretty much the only thing to receive this kind of treatment, sure there would be sequels to games in every genre but the following game will always be accused of being the game which brought on the situation we now find ourselves in, the situation of having improved versions of games, DLC ecetera, I am of course talking about Street Fighter 2 turbo.
Street fighter 2 turbo basically took the world warrior, increased the speed, let you play as the boss characters and had some slight balancing related changes, it wasn’t a whole new game it was simply an improved version of the original with a few bells and whistles tied on to it. No one really minded what it was because well an improved version of one of the greatest games of a genre who is going to complain about that? It is important to note though that while some of us moan now about DLC and about paying Extra to add a few new characters back then plenty of people brought Street Fighter 2 turbo for 40quid or even more if they were over excited and importing it.

I was young so importing it or buying one of the imports that was being sold in some of the gaming shops near me for figures around 80quid was out of the question. I didn’t expect to get it for a long time, one of the fortunate parts of both of my brothers being older than me though was that sometimes one of them would get something I wanted. I walked in one of the local games shops with my brother and they ran a system where games were kept in different sections in relation to their worth.. Now someone must have been looking at a Japanese copy of turbo and put it in the wrong section because it was in a section for 20quid games. The shop owner ran a policy where you could swap any game of yours for one of the shops games for 3quid if they were worth the same. The store owner was out and his wife was running the store and so my brother swapped some old game he had for Japanese Turbo for 3quid. 

We went home and played the living heck out of it, for at least 2 weeks my house became the place to be, friends of mine and friends of his kept popping round to challenge one of us. I owned world warrior at the time and although Turbo was great I couldn't help but think that it was in no way worth the massive amounts people were paying for it. It hadn't moved on enough from World Warrior but then again it wasn't a sequel was it. I think I enjoyed the attention and the way it brought everyone together almost more than the game. It did become the new version played at every party well at least until Super street fighter 2

As a side note I remember a special pad being made a pad which had buttons which could with 1 press cause your characters to do there special moves, I didnt need one of these as I was very good at the game but the whole idea fascinated me, they were also programmable so you could programme combo's into a single button press. I messed around with this pad no end seeing what I could do with it not just on Street fighter 2 but on any other game. I did use the pad for training purposes though. There was a friend of mine who would always be Ken and would spam fireballs he had gotten it down to a fine art, he could do them so fast it would seem inhuman. He was a great person but he began to get a little too cocky with it and it started running friendly get togethers as he would fireball so much that no one seemed able to beat him, no matter how much you dodged or blocked it would get you in the end. So I got my brother to use the street cheater pad against me till I could perform fireballs at insane speed. Then I was ready it was Ken against Ken and I taught him a lesson about how boring fireball spamming can get... this in itself put me off street fighter for a little bit though.

I could talk about the graphics, the sound the characters but I did it all when I talked about world warrior, all I would be saying is a little better , a little faster, the same ohhh and you can play as the bosses.
I gave world Warrior 8 out of 10 and yes this is better but it’s only just better really so I’d Give it 8.5 out of 10. 
If you do decide you want this version and on cartridge then it will set you back around £10 which is well worth it but again you might want to stop and consider all of your options first (If you own a ps3 or xbox 360 then for £15 to £20 you can get the Ultra version of Street Fighter 4).  This game is also available on the Wii U as a download but then so is Street fighter alpha 2, a much latter street fighter game with more characters and a lot harder and costlier to track down on the SNES … as the price is the same if you want a downloadable street fighter for your Nintendo system that is the one I would go for.

Was this game the start of a dangerous trend though?

Game 48

I started trying to space my games out a bit, letting there be a wide variety and trying to keep the number of games which were considered true Nintendo classics to a minimum, it wasn’t that I wanted to ignore them, I just wanted to space them out, but now as the end of this forum is near I have thrown this to the wind a little and tried to talk about a lot of bigger games. I have over the last few reviews almost half stopped reviewing the games and just given stories about the games written chunks of my life almost. Gaming has had a huge impact on my life and it’s not just been the games it has been the friends I have made through them, the time I have spent collecting them and all the little things.
It has been suggested before that I own to many games, buy too many games and spend too much time on aspects such as cleaning and repairing them but there are reasons for this. This might be the most personal thing I ever write on here so maybe it is fitting that it is coming so close to the end.

As a child I was a chubby kid with lots of problems and a bit of an attitude. I was both dyslexic and epileptic, so I struggled at school particularly in my first year of comprehensive. Lots of people teased me about my inability to write property, the fact that I could miss spell a word ten different ways in one day, or the fact that I would go vacant when having a small fit and just look in one direction doing nothing saying nothing for a long time. There were two types of bullying I got one was the verbal the other was other kids trying to fight me. Eventual after a few fights I got a reputation, the reputation was that I was a psycho, this was largely because no matter how many people attacked me or how many times I got knocked down I would keep getting up and I would make sure that I gave at least as much pain as I got.. This was a good and a bad thing, it meant that I was largely left alone so the bullying greatly decreased but then no one outside of my small group of friends wanted to know me or have anything to do with me. 

Video games were my refuge, I could forget about everything, I could retreat in to my bedroom all of the familiar things around me that made me feel safe and play some Super Mario land. With all of the secrets the game had, the Star road and the connected levels, hidden exits to various ghost houses, there was always a friend who could do a level faster or with more coins and the game just seemed to be infinitely repayable.

I have had some rough times in my life and games have always been there to offer a moment of escape, a chance to forget about my worries. It wasn’t just when I was a kid though. When I was in my twenties I was working in a pub, it was long unsociable hours, I would get home and my partner at the time would be asleep but I would be to stressed from my job to sleep, so I would need to spend time unwinding and most of the time this would be by gaming. I would walk in the door kiss my daughter on the head and then play a few games until I wound down enough to sleep.

I did buy some retro stuff back then but for some reason I didn’t focus on it quiet the way I have now. I suppose the following could go into the ‘’Why do we Retro’’ thread but It belongs here just as much. One day I was at work, I had been trying to get promoted, I was also at university at the time and I knew that I didn’t have long left. I didn’t want to be one of those uni students who gets a degree and then just tries to use it to become a manager without having worked all of the up, without having earned it through hard work. I had managed to become a supervisor but in order to be accepted as a manager one of the things you had to do where I worked was to be able to work in the kitchen successfully. 


I was up in the kitchen one night and I had cooked all night, and had managed it quiet well. I cleaned everything up and went through the whole shut down process making sure everything is turned off, I got the rubbish in bags and walked it out, throwing it in the trash. I could have just left then and there having finished my job, but decided that to be nice I would go through to the bar area and I would help them close down. I walked through and there was a sudden flash of pain. I had been hit across the side of my head with a crow bar, I could feel the pain explode through my head, my vision blurred for a second and then a buzzing noise began to come from somewhere deep inside my head. I began to gain awareness of my surroundings again and I could tell I was surrounded by 5 or 6 guys, all of them were wearing Halloween style president masks. Before I could do anything else I was hit with crow bars again and again from various directions, in the end I took about 6 hits to my head. I never passed out but things got increasingly hazy from then. Somehow I made it from where I was to the bar, I kind of felt my way and crawled along the bar to behind it, and I ended up on the ground in the corner under the coffee machine. I could feel blood dripping from my head, luckily I had been wearing a leather cap to keep my hair covered and it seemed to have at least helped a bit.  There were two girls behind the bar one was about 2 years older than me the other was maybe 5. It had become a robbery and hostage situation all in one. In the middle of this one of the robbers decided that he wanted to rape one of the girls, I got up stood in the way and pretty much suggested that it would happen over my dead body, this resulted in me receiving a punch to the mouth which cracked one of my wisdom teeth in half. It was all a blur from then on, but thankfully my intervention had been enough to stop someone getting raped, they left with the money and they were never caught. 


I was off for a month and I was only getting very limited sick pay so I pulled out my old consoles and began to play on them and something about them touched me, they took me back to a simpler time, back to my childhood and in a time when I felt the most vulnerable in my life they actually made things seem a little bit safer, they added some normality to a very horrible and strange time. From that point on I began to spend more money on retro games, I began to talk more to other people online, but I also realised that I was living in an awful marriage. My partner never seemed to care about what had happened to me, she didn’t support me, my mother and father were the ones who were there for me, the ones who helped me try and piece myself back together. 8 years later I developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which for those who don’t know is basically when a traumatic situation keeps replaying in your mind, you can hear things and see things that happened before and you can feel the feelings. My partner was even less understanding.


I had to stop work and I had to have therapy. Part of my therapy involved having to talk about what had happened to me in great detail but after in order to calm yourself and try to leave in an ok mood and not leave the therapy upset you had to have a happy place. A happy place was a place you went to in your mind where you felt safe and well happy. My happy place was in my bedroom playing Super Mario World on my Snes, jumping on dinosaurs, collecting power ups and finding hidden secrets. I owe the game so much, it was there for me. During this period I didn’t leave my house much except to go to therapy. I sat and played my games, worked on my systems and tried to put my head back together. One of the only things that could get me out of the house was the idea of visiting a market or a retro store chasing the various games I had decided that I wanted the thrill of the chase was getting a game cheap. I got lots of SNES games and megadrive games and for prices which compared to now were for virtually nothing. I didn’t have a lot of friends after this everyone seemed to be too worried that they would say the wrong thing or they were just far more interested in getting drunk than in offering anyone a helping hand or a bit of their time. I had my games and my daughter, my X wife would go see her friends and leave me to struggle, she got increasingly mean to me even telling me that she wished I would die so I wasn’t in her way. My games became my friends, my games became my life. I had a few friends from ONM who I talked to and was close to and they helped a lot as well.

Super Mario land was one of my favourite of the retro games I had, I knew it wasn’t worth crazy amounts of money but it was worth a lot to me because it had been such a big piece of my childhood.

Yeah there is hardly any review here but the game is amazing the graphics were so bright, the music was perfect I would always find myself humming the tunes, but the playability oh my gosh it was simply an amazing game to play, every success felt well-earned every failure felt like it was purely your own fault you never feel like you can blame the game or like you have been cheated The game is a stand out 10 out of 10. I think I could make a very strong argument for it being the greatest Mario game ever. If you want the game then the cart on its own can be got for between the 10 to 15quid amount and I think this is more than a fair price. It is also available as a download for the Wii and Wii U.

Sorry if this review went really far off tangent.

Game 49



Sometimes there is a game series that just seems to pop up in your life again and again. I did a lot of my gaming on the spectrum to start with and I played a heck of a lot on a certain 9 or 10 games, one of these games was ghouls and goblins. Now the game worked on the spectrum it was perfectly playable but like a lot of spectrum games the game was playable but the graphics and the colours used were a mess. At the time we dealt with them because well hey that’s all we had. Compare this to now days when if a game on the current generation of Xbox one’s and PS4 doesn’t hit 1080p at a constant of at least 30 frames per second then it is considered to some degree to be a failure. I could go on to a whole rant about how gamers now days can be so judgemental or how kids have grown up as graphical whores who seem to deny a game any merit unless it meets a certain set of numerical standards, or how we could use our imagination back then but I wont. Instead I will simply say that when there was a jump in quality from one machine to the next it amazed us and we appreciated it.

Next Ghosts and Goblins game into my life, my brother’s friend was the first to have it on his megadrive which he would bring round to our house. One day he turned up with that and Rambo 3 and we all pretty much spent the better part of about 6 hours trying to get as far as we could in the two of them. I got the megadrive version myself some years latter. When I first saw the SNES game Super Ghouls and Ghosts my reaction was oh they ported it to the Snes and felt they needed to add a Super in to the name big deal been there done that. I was wrong though. I don’t know if you could fully describe it as a sequel as there seems to be a lot taken from both Ghosts and Goblins and Ghouls and ghosts in this game so it’s either just a sequel sticking very close to the original format or it’s a sort of Ghosts 2.5 semi sequel of sorts. What I do know though is that it is more than worth owning both the Megadrive and Snes games if you can pick them up, and if you like a challenge.

If you don’t like games that will repeatedly hammer you into the ground, that will repeatedly see you die and have to try again and again then do not go near this game. If you enjoy a challenge though and you get a great sense of pride from doing what moments before seemed almost impossible then this game is going to be digital crack to you. A friend of mine well his parents used to have a sort of agreement with him, he didn't get much pocket money because they thought he would spend it all on sugared sweets and run around fruit loops so they used to give him a small amount but then they’d buy him games every now and then throughout the year. One of the rules though was that his Dad picked the games so he didn’t get rubbish ones (he got a say in his Christmas and birthday presents but not these random games) and that he had to be completing games in order to get new ones…. and yep you've guessed it the poor git got brought Super Ghosts and Goblins. I had gotten it myself so we used to compare how far we had got at least until the day he begged his folks for permission to trade it in for something that didn’t make him scream.

The graphics were kind of basic but had a lot of color in them and fitted the theme well. The music though man I loved the music from the very first time I heard it. One funny thing to note is that there used to be a sofa place not sure if it still exists if it does it certainly isn’t on TV anymore but it used to be called ‘’The Leather Warehouse’’ and for some reason I couldn't Listen to the song in the first stage without singing  ‘’The leather Warehouse at a moment where it seemed to fit in’’  (the song goes kind of  Daaaa dadd daaaaa daa daaaa daaaa daaaa   followed with a silent pause and in the silent pause id always shout it) I was at a gaming convention in there retro room one year (Game City) which is held in Nottingham and I was playing this on the big TV and even did it, have to admit lots of people looked at me very strangely especially the younger ones who probably didn't know what I was on about or thought it was some kind of bondage club… Still I digress the music gets in to your head so deep.

I love the game but it’s a hard one to rate as it all depends on if you like a challenge if you do then its an 8 out of 10, if you don’t then well its more a 5 or a 6 as your not going to be saying its bad but you will soon be referring to it with swear words and feeling like you wasted your money. Plenty of copies of this game cart only sell for around the 15 quid mark or more even imports. I would suggest it might be wise to look at investing in one of Capcoms classic collections as you wont pay much more and you will get a bunch of other games with it.. there have been classics like this for the ps1, ps2, psp etc. Capcom its stuff like this that makes me remember my love for you.

Game 50

I have read a lot about this game over the years, I have seen all kinds of quotes about it some positive, some a little negative heck I have even seen it called ‘’the game that saved the Snes’’. Now how a game that came out in 1994. I will admit it gave the machine a good kick up the butt and probably helped with sales a lot. 

A lot of games have seemed to focus too much energy on their visuals, sacrificing other key areas trying to sell themselves of the idea of being raw eye candy and this game has been accused of exactly that. Shigeru Miyamoto himself claimed that this very game was ‘’proof that American gamers will buy anything so long as it just looks pretty.’’ Some people believe that the graphics have not aged as well as some of the less complicated and expensive games from that time period but I have to disagree. I like the way it looks, I like the way it sounds Ladies and Gentleman I give you Donkey Kong Country.



I have already touched on Rare twice while doing this string of reviews and stories You might remember that I said that in the early days of the SNES Rare released very little, in fact all they really did was Battletoads in Battlemaniacs but as I pointed out before they spent most of their NES profits on expensive workstations, these were used for Killer Instinct but they were also used for Donkey Kong country and its sequels. 

The reveal of Donkey Kong country is a huge story in its self but put simply Nintendo used the games shockingly good graphics as part of one of the best reveals they have ever done. We all knew that they were working on the Ultra 64 (the N64) so we were more or less certain we would see a prototype N64 game or some kind of test footage something to excite us and get us desperately needing there new machine. So when they showed Donkey Kong Country everyone was amazed they thought well if this is what the N64 is going to be able to do on day 1 then that’s amazing the true shock came though when they turned around and went oh and It is a SNES game.

From that moment on more or less all of my friends were absolutely desperate to get the game on the second of release. I can’t remember how much it went for I will say 40 but it might have been more. I knew though that I didn’t have that money I had spent it on to many other things so I thought oh well I guess that’s a Christmas game. I did all sorts of things to get my games cheap back then it’s something I have always done. I hit a stroke of luck there was a local pawn store it mostly dealt with records and videos it was called “Adam’s Audio” now they sometimes got games and other stuff in they got a Cart only copy of Donkey Kong Country in not long after release about a week or so and I paid 20 pounds for it. Yeah 20 quid for a cart only seems like a lot, but I still own this cart and with the amount I have played it, it is more than worth it, at the time though my thoughts were firmly on not getting left behind. I knew that this was a game people would be playing all of the time until they had finished it, there would be school based discussions about who was the furthest through it, bets on who would complete it first and many discussions about the best piece of music, the coolest level etcetera. At the time I was young and naïve I never questioned how a cart only copy of Donkey Kong came in to existence, how both a manual and box could be lost or damaged beyond all repair that quickly, I guess there could have been an accident but thinking back and knowing what the area I grew up in is like there was probably some poor kid crying his Donkey Kong had been stolen. 

The graphics blew me away but I thought the sound was even better. I had always been a pessimist so I fully expected the game to be shallow and be well total trash when put next to the Mario games, but how wrong I was. It was very fun, very well thought out and I loved not only the graphics of the characters but the work which had clearly gone in to there characterisation. This and Killer Instinct were the games that put the name Rare into my head. I had played BattleToads, I had played there NES games, heck I owned a lot of the stuff they had done back on the Spectrum back when they were called “Ultimate play the game”. It was after this that I would go out and look for games with the Rare logo. I even loved a lot of their stuff other people haven’t been keen on I was a huge fan of grabbed by the ghoulies for example, and Kameo. I had hoped for a while that they would take all they had learned over the years both from making games and from there association with Nintendo and would end up making games with a sort of Nintendo flavour on Microsoft platforms, unfortunately they are now largely dead though. 
Unlike some people though when I now play Donkey Kong I still love it, I still hum along to the music, tap my foot and have a whale of a time.

I think the game is a definite 8 out of 10. If you want to play it your probably going to pay somewhere around 15 for a cart of it, Boxed copies can go for a lot more sometimes stupidly high but I have seen them go for as little as 25quid.

Game 51






Metal Marines is a real-time strategy video game developed by Namco for both the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and MS DOS 3.1 PCs. It came to the virtual console on the wii but as I already had the cart I didn’t really pay much attention to which regions it came out in. I do know the Snes version came out in the UK as Metal Marines and in Japan as Militia.

The game is set in the year 2117 and you lead a military force whose main unit of combat is known as Metal Marines which are basically 50ft tall mecha’s think robotron, gundam that kind of thing.
This game came in to my life for a very simply reason originally and that was because of the sales which used to happen in Game and its main rival at the time Electronics Boutique which no longer exists in this country at least. The sales never seemed to be like they are now where prices are slashed across the board, no a sale back then was one company seemed to get a whole pile of a particular 40quid recommended retail SNES title from who knows where and start chucking them out at 15 or 20quid brand new sealed. I remember Virgin Megastore doing this with a Tennis game more or less straight after its release I think it was called Smash Tennis and I remember Game doing it with The Hulk and with Metal Marines. When this would happen nearly everyone I knew and spent time with who had a SNES would get the game if it was supposed to be even half way decent, heck sometimes I would buy a copy and sell it to a different store for a profit and then go back and do this again and again till word got around and I was told to go forth and multiple, when this would happen I would simple keep the game.

I always loved games that were on sale like this because regardless of what they were like lots of people would have them so there was always someone at school to compare scores and progress with.
The game is something you’d expect to find on the PC but on the SNES it is practically on its own with very little like it. Each of Metal Marines' 20 missions takes place across a pair of islands. One of them being your Island the other being your opponents. You get given bases which you have to hide on your island/map and the idea is to find and destroy your enemies before they do the same to you.

You never get to access the opposing island outside of combat, there is no sending across drones to spy or taking over enemy territory. You and your opponent are limited to building in your own spaces, so the focus is really on getting the mix between attack and defence just right. In some ways it is a sort of more complicated form of Battleships, that should give you a rough idea of what to expect but it does make it sound simpler than it is.

During your turns you’ll build defensive turrets, anti-air missiles, attack missiles, and metal marines, you can also build dummy bases and try to hide your bases by laying trees over them. You always gain cash at a steady rate so  there is no mining or real resource management in the command and conquer sense, so really all you do is decide how to spend what you have, how much will be used on defence and how much on offensive units. Energy, which is required to execute an attack also builds over time.

When an attack is initiated, everything under construction stops and whoever's being attacked can't do anything until the assault ends this leads to a sense of urgency that is exciting, you know that you have to think fast and get what you need to do done fast. When you initiate combat, your viewpoint shifts to a top-down map. You can launch missiles or your metal marines. Missiles are always launched first. Because you can't see the enemy’s map to begin with launching missiles is a little hit and miss some of them will land, some of them will get knocked down but you’ll begin to build an image of what they have where and start to think about how to go about picking at their defences and thinking about where they might have put their bases. 

The marines can get shot out of the air so really you’re trying to blow up enough of the defences to get these bad boys on the ground. Once there on the ground you get about 60 seconds in control of them to try and blow the crud out of anything and anything within a limited area around them, in hopes of either finding a base or just wreaking the enemies defensive and attack abilities.

As far as your arsenal goes, you're stuck with the same structures and weapons available in the first mission throughout the entire game. There are no tech trees, no research and development, no new and improved units, you just need to work on your old grey matter and get better at using what you have. 

Personally I love this game because its something different compared to the kinds of things you usually find on the super Nintendo, if you like command and conquer, Xcom, Civilisation and that kind of game and have a SNES I would highly recommend this game It gets 8 giant robots of death out of 10. You can buy a cart only copy of this game for 10 to 15quid and I feel it is well worth it, I paid about 10 for my current cart only pal copy the annoying thing is I only paid 15 for it new boxed complete and sealed not long after it release (several times), wish I had brought just one more and put it under the bed or something, cant remember when or how I lost my original.

Game 52


I have talked a lot about Capcom but well back in the day there was just certain companies you could rely on to always be bring stuff to the home console market and Capcom was one of these companies. I had been intending to talk about this game for a long time, I set the stage up by talking about both Final Fight and Street Fighter 2 because this game is kind of connected/related to both of them but I also wanted to get another wrestling game or two done first for the sake of comparison. I talked about Fire Pro, and I intended to look at some WWE based games first but well I remember this game and got impatient.




Yes the game I have been playing today is Saturday Night Slam Masters (known in Japan as Muscle Bomber – The Body Explosion) it was a pro wrestling arcade game made by Capcom to run on their CP arcade system (as previously mentioned by me in my final fight review) As well as featuring some interesting connections to other Capcom games it is cool to note that the game features character designs by manga artist Tetsuo Hara (Who is most well-known for his work on the Animated classic Fist of the North Star.)
Slam Masters plays like a traditional arcade wrestling game and if you have played things like Wrestle war or 3 count bout then you will be right at home with this. It also feels a little bit street fighter 2ish so if you’ve never played a wrestling game before but you like your street fighter games and enjoy Capcoms work then this is an excellent place to start. The game uses a three button configuration with on button being used to grab, on to  attack, and the third to  jump, with the D-pad moving you around the ring so it’s all nice and simple there with no real room for confusion.

Each character has two special attacks and a finisher. When an opponent's life meter is depleted, he must either be pinned for a three-count in classic WWE style or forced to submit. Defeating all of the other wrestler’s results in winning the championship belt, but your game is not over then, no you then have to defend your belt against the whole roster.

There are two game modes: Single Match, where the player fights in a series one-on-one matches against computer controlled opponents and then there is Team Battle Royale, where the player and another partner controlled by either another player or by the computer competes in a series of two-on-two matches. The game can be played by up to four players utilising the Super Nintendo’s multi tap and making it a great game for retro party situations.
This is going to sound a little street fighter 2 like. The game features ten playable wrestlers. Only eight of which are selectable in the Single Match mode. The remaining two: Jumbo and Scorpion, are non-playable bosses they are however selectable in Team Battle mode.

You know how you found it annoying in Street fighter 2 when the names all got messed around and changed from the Japanese originals? Well it’s even worse here. In the English localization, Capcom changed the names of all the characters and even went so far as to modify there backstories.

Here are the fighters with a quick bit about them (and both of their names)

Biff Slamkovich (AKA   Aleksey Zalazof)
This guy is the sort of main character. In the Japanese version of the game, Zalazof is a Russian wrestler who trained under Haggar alongside his rival, Gunloc. They have a sort of Ryu and Ken style wrestling relationship. In the English version though this whole relationship/situation is gone but Biff does make a reference to his "Comrade Zangief" when he losses. 

Gunloc (AKA Lucky Colt)
In the Japanese version of the game, Colt is another apprentice of Haggars and as I have pointed out already is Zalazof's rival. The English version not only gets rid of this but also goes on to suggest that Gunloc is related to Guile from street fighter 2. He does look like he could be related in all fairness and Street Fighter: The Movie arcade game (what a blooming title) even goes so far as to hammer this home and say that Gunloc is Guile's brother. I was kind of disappointed to learn that this was largely just some codswolup made up for the European Market as I really latched on to the idea of Guile having a kid brother who had decided to be a wrestler as opposed to following in his older brothers footsteps (I have also self-made up the younger older bit as far as I can remember based purely off there appearances age wise as I don’t think it’s ever said if he is younger or older or anything.)

Mike Haggar 
So Yeah Haggar from good old Final Fight. He is probably the reason this game exists to be honest, I would imagine that the whole idea began with oh Haggar from Final Fight was supposed to be a wrestler lets make a game with him wrestling against a whole bunch of spandex wearing dudes, and if that is true its just one more reason to salute the mighty Mayor of Metro City.  The  Japanese and English versions cant even agree about him though. The Japanese version says that Haggar's appearance in this game takes place before he was elected as the Mayor in Final Fight which would make this a game set in Final Fights past a sort of body slamming prequel if you will. The English version though decides to disagree with this though and refers to Haggar as being the "former Mayor of Metro City". His daughter, Jessica (the one he was rescuing in Final Fight), sometimes enters into the ring to celebrate with him when he wins a match. Age wise as far as I can see they haven’t even thrown us a bone here as both of them look exactly like they do in Final fight. This all really does leave me to wonder if they sit and decide what the story is going to be in each region, so that they can capitalise on their past games that have been popular in different places or if they just throw stuff at someone who has some degree of literacy in both languages and go, here whatever you can’t understand or quite work out just make something up and shove it in there to fill in the blanks.

The Great Oni  (AKA Mysterious Budo)
A Japanese wrestler who dresses with a kabuki theme. He is apparently a rival of El Stingray. It has been suggested that he is based on the real life wrestler The Great Muta. Personally he is one of my least favourate and least used wrestlers in the game, I do know that they cant all be from other games or be someones brother though but I just wish there was a little something more to him.

Titanic Tim (AKA Titan the Great)
A huge wrestler who uses his size and strength to great effect, basically he is one of the big heavy enforcer type characters. His backstory is that he was once a tag team partner to Birdie from the Street Fighter series. For all intents and purposes he looks like he basically based on the wonderful André the Giant. Andre was a legend so can’t fault them for wanting to have a wrestler like him and it beats most games going for an imitation Hulk Hogan.

El Stingray  (AKA El Stinger)
A Mexican luchador who is all based around pure speed and fancy techniques. People have argued about him being based on darn near every Mexican Wrestler who ever wore a mask and even some Japanese and American ones…. I personally really like masked wrestlers and people who throw themselves around in the air so he is Cool in my books… I suppose if this had come out now days people would say oh look it’s the Ray Mysterio one.

Alexander the Grater (AKA Sheep the Royal)
An Australian wrestler who is for all intents and purposes basically supposed to be the resident nutcase. It is believed generally that he is  based on Big Van Vader and I can see that myself

King Rasta Mon (AKA "Missing IQ" Gomes)
A wild jungle-like man who acts like a beast in combat. He is always accompanied by his pet monkey, Freak, who happens to be his "manager".  I guess Blanka was popular and they decided to go with the whole wild man idea again but didn’t want to go and spray him green or super mutate him or anything.

Jumbo Flapjack (AKA Kimala the Bouncer)
Sub boss, right hand man of the Scorpion basically he looks and plays just like the famous WWE (WWF at the time) wrestlers the Earthquake. Cant say much more about him, typical fat slow strong wrestler.

The Scorpion (AKA The Astro)
The game's final boss and main antagonist of the series. The appearance of this character was inspired by the legendary "luchador" … He looks like a guy wearing a Motor biking helmet in a wrestling ring but he is a pretty cool character, he is enjoyable to use in the team battle mode. It is said that he is possibly based on Tiger Mask or Black Scorpion. I think he is just a guy who wants to get away with wearing a bikers helmet inside the ring.

I have to admit to loving this game even though hardly anyone I ever talk to seems to know about it, its like Street fighter and final fights long forgotten cousin, it did have an update and a sequel if my memory serves me right but they never made it to the SNES and the series pretty much died out. The Graphics and sound are both very Street fighter/ Final fight based so if you like those you will like what is on display here. I think its arcady enough to attract the attention of people who wouldn't normally go for Wrestling games. I did believe that it as a USA, Japan only release at first as I have had my American cart since I was a kid and none of my friends ever owned it and I never actually saw a UK version on a store shelf. I believed this till about 2 months ago actually when a copy of the game cartridge only surfaced in a local retro store for 20quid. This was enough to not only make me boot this up then but also to go online and look into where it was released. The only UK copy of it I can find online is at 32 quid right now with about a day and a half left to go, that’s boxed but without a manual… There is not exactly a wealth of import copies out there either. I would give this game a nice solid 8 out of 10. It plays well, its interesting, Its links to other games are enjoyable, it’s just a shame it seems like it would be such a pain in the butt to get a hold of.

Game 53




 Once again it seems like this thread is set to become a mass Capcom love in, maybe it’s the fact that Capcom did a heck of a lot for the machine or maybe it’s the fact that I happen to have a fair few of their games but here we are talking about them again.

For those who owned a NES the Mega Man games were kind of special, they were hard, challenging but also good. The only complaint that could be raised about them really was that with so many sequels and the format staying the same the idea was being milked a little dry. Still that’s the main complaint that can be levelled at Capcom as a whole when they have something that is selling well they grab hold of its teats and milk the idea, the franchise for all that it is worth.

I have mentioned before that when I am collecting retro games I look for ones from various categories including ones I have owned before, ones friends owned and ones I have only heard about. Well one of my friends owned Mega Man X, one and one only but it was one of his favourite games so we would play it basically every time I was over there and this went on for several months.

In short Megaman X is close to being the perfect platform shooter. It takes everything great about the amazing NES Megaman games and adds the super touch to them. Better brighter graphics, great sound track, extra power ups, well hidden secrets, the introduction of Zero the coolest character to ever hit a Megaman game (who played this game and didn’t wish they were zero because he oozed coolness).  I was kind of surprised at the time that this game wasn’t given the Super name treatment but I am very glad that it did not after all Mega Man X sounds far cooler than Super Mega Man would have. If you have played one of the NES titles then you will know exactly what to expect, you work your way through a level until you get to the boss. You fight the boss and if you beat him you get his weapon. You can take on the levels in any order you like and this adds some strategy to proceedings as you start to think about what weapon you would like to have in order to take on a certain boss, so for example if you want a fire weapon to fight an ice boss then you will have to do the level with the fire boss in it first. A lot of the extra power ups the hidden ones seemed to be put in places where they would be found by the curious, I often found them when I said something on the lines of ‘’I wonder if I could’’ before trying something on a whim. This is great it makes the game seem like it is filled with almost limitless possibilities. 

I remember a lot of us did think the X was referring to 10. Even when they referred to the Megaman in the game as X this never really sunk in. Sure he might have been called X but the name on the box was still supposed to mean Mega Man 10 right? It was only when X2 came that everyone seemed to go what not 11? Ok so X was X.
The only complaint I have with this game is the password system which is pretty decent but id have preferred a battery save. The best thing is though that the game is challenging and even tough in places making you invent new swear words to use at the bosses but never does it feel like the games fault. You always feel if you die you are to blame and that you will do better next time. Couple this with how fun this game is and you have the perfect reason to game into the early hours.

It is good to see how many times over the years this has been ported and re-released on to different systems, it means a lot of people will have played the game who otherwise might not have been exposed to it. The game can be  little costly to buy for the SNES I have seen pal copies go for amounts I don’t care to think of, you can pay like 50quid just for a cart. If you can play imports you should be able to get an American copy for around 35, that’s what mine is. The Psp version a remaster can be got for around 10 to 15 pound complete so if you own a PSP that’s not a bad way to go.  Still I give this game a 9 out of 10.

Game 54

Everybody knows about advertisement games. Heck a few years ago we got the quiet brilliant for a freebie Doritos Crash Course on the Xbox live arcade, which if you have an xbox 360 and haven’t played I strongly recommend you download and have a bash at now. Back in the megadrive and SNES days though and before as well sometimes whole 40quid games would be released which were basically an advertisement in video game form. You probably think that by starting the review in this way I am going to talk about Cool spot, but I am not for one as far as I can remember I only own it on megadrive.

The game I am going to talk about some of you might have played but you might have never realised that it started its life as an advert in game form. I am talking about Pushover.



Pushover is a platform puzzle game which was developed by Red Rat Software and published by Ocean Software in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST and  DOS. The game was sponsored by Quavers (Yes the cheesy crisp snack which most of us have probably tried)  The games story was that Quavers mascot Colin Curly (who I think is long since dead and gone) lost his Quavers packet down a giant ant hill and needed the help of an ant controlled by you the player to retrieve it. 

The SNES version lacks the Quavers branding, and instead the aim is to recover bundles of cash dropped down the ant hill by someone called Captain Rat. I have tried to read and look into if there is a reason behind this but can’t really seem to find one.

Advert games seemed quite common back then there was a series of 16 bit games based on Chester Cheetah, the McDonald's game "Mic and Mac: Global Gladiators then there were the games less based on a snack but seemed to be at least sponserd by something for example Robocod heavily featured Penguin chocolate bars and Zool was sponsored by Chupa Chups. I haven’t played the SNES version of Robocod so I am not sure if it has penguin bars in it, there was a McDonalds game on the NES so I can’t see Nintendo having had an issue with adverts. 

This game came at a time when things like Lemmings Humans and Lost Vikings which were all popping up on various formats. So there seemed to be a decent little market for this kind of thing, and well it was nice to have something that was a puzzle game that wasn’t Tetris. I don’t tend to talk to many people who have played this game though and if you pick it up and try it now then you might be shocked by a few things. Graphically, this is one of the simplest looking games you will find on the SNES. I think the NES or Master System could probably handle the graphics of this game, it really does not make much use of the SNES. Don’t expect any mode 7 or well any graphical tricks or niceties at all… would they improve the game probably not would they have added a little to the presentation Yes.

You will always feel like you’re playing on a very basic home computer game The main character is an ant which has only a hand full of frames of animation as he walks around and pushes and lifts domino on  the one-screen levels. The background are incredibly simple,  Yes it was an early game on the SNES, and is also a puzzle game, with the focus being on the solution of puzzles but it still feels super basic. Music is also very basic and can get on your nerves when you have been listening to it again and again when you get stuck and believe me you will get stuck.

So basically the player is presented with a number of different dominos of in all the levels. Among these are standard dominos which roll once then fall over, tumbler dominos which will continue rolling until they make contact with another domino, exploder dominos, and bridge dominos etcetera. The main goal in all the levels is to pick the dominos up, place them in a position where one domino will hit the others and result in all of them being knocked over with one push. 

The levels are always based on one screen, there is no scrolling in any direction what so ever what you see is what you get. The basic graphics hide what at times can be a fiendishly complex set of puzzles. As the game goes on the variety of dominoes you have to deal with increases as does the difficulty and frustration. If hard puzzles make you scream and tear at your own hair this will not really be one for you. If your happy to spend a good twenty minutes messing around pondering and thinking about solutions and if you feel great excitement from feeling a plan work out then you can get a lot from this game

One of the problems with retro games is that when you come back to them latter or when you find the game latter in your life there are far more impressive things out there already. I find it hard to recommend this game because I think much better things have come out more recently. If pushed to give pushover a rating I would be inclined to give it the very average 5 out of 10. I wouldn't worry about trying to buy it for your SNES, if you try to play this on a TV over 14 inches it is going to look absolutely shocking. If you have a gba or a dreamcast just get chu chu rocket it is similar in the way that your trying to work out puzzles which require a bit of thought but it has much better graphics, music, presentation. If you have one in fact I would recommend the Android version of  Chu Chu rocket it is a great little game to pull out on a train.

Game 55

I have wrote a lot about Capcom while I have been looking at SNES games largely because I tend to own quite a few of their games but also because they were a bit of a power house back in the SNES days, they weren’t the only company that was producing brilliant games though there was also Konami. 
Konami has existed since 1969 but originally it was a jukebox rental and repair business in Osaka, Japan.
In 1973 they began working on manufacturing amusement machines for arcades. Their first actual game machines were not created until 1978 though and these games were called Block Game, Block Invader, Space Ship, Space King and I have to admit to never having played a single one of them however I have heard that Space King was a space invaders rip off.

Konami’s real success as far as games go began in the year of my birth 1981 with games including Amidar, Frogger and scramble all of which I have played enjoyed and owned at some point on at least one system, in fact I was playing frogger with my father on the Atari 2600 just a few years later.
Konami made approximately 50 games for the Super Famicom/Nintendo and we probably got about 30 of them over here, but I want to talk about one of the games they brought out in their first year of producing Super Nintendo games.

The game was very important not just then but now as well, largely because it comes from a series that started before the SNES and still exists to this day. In fact my reason for choosing to play this game today was not entirely random. I was in a community based charity shop and I brought a bunch of old Playstation magazines for peanuts mostly just for something fun to flick through on the bus ride home. I love looking at previews of games with the hindsight of knowing what became of them while flicking through one of the magazines though I found something I always used to love as a kid and that was an A to Z of reviews. Basically a huge list of games with a quick one line review and a score. Now in the world we live in now days with people accusing magazines and websites of taking bribes and a lack of faith in some reviewer’s people might wonder why these lists used to excite me so, but as a child with a limited income I would remove these pages from the magazines back in the SNES days and onwards and take them with me just in case I saw a cheap game on a market or in a pawn store or on sale.

I sat flipping through this list of playstation scores and found myself actually calling bullshit on some of them. That is when I saw one review I had to call mega mega bull shit on and that was Castlevania Symphony of the Night 7 out of 10. Now to me Castlevania Symphony of the night was one of the very best games I ever played on the playstation 1 and what is more it is a game I still hold in massive regard. How does this relate to the Snes you might ask? Well it is simple I have always loved Castlevania and when I first Played Super Castlevania IV I was certain that it was the pinical of its series and that things would never get any better than that. 



Castlevaina IV came out in 1991 it is considered an action-platformer and is also largly considered to be a remake of the original Castlevania on the NES (A remake that adds on extra features ups the power and gets rid of some problems). It was developed and published by Konami and is the first Castlevania game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It has been re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2006 and has also found its way on to the Wii U VC in 2013.

It features improved graphics in general plus very cool use of the Super Nintendo’s mode 7. The game also features a brilliant soundtrack which mixes brand new tunes in with remixed and improved versions of some of the classic NES music. The game takes place in the year 1691 in Transylvania. You play as vampire hunter Simon Belmont with your quest being simple, find and destroy Count Dracula. Now the graphics might look quite simple now days and on first impression some of the graphics are a little basic and functional but then there are extra special moments where the whole screen will turn and pivot when you will really get to see and appreciate all of the effort that went in to the game. The soundtrack though I don’t feel has aged at all, sure we now live in a world where full on CD quality real songs exist in games but when I have this game in my slot and I am playing I never once stop and think this could be better, I simply think this music is kick ass and fits in so well with everything. 
The game is reasonably challenging, sure it is not as hard as the NES versions but a lot of the challenge in them came from either cryptic guess work, control issues and deaths which felt unjust, none of this is present in this game. When you die in this game you never feel like you’ve been cheated or drawn the short straw you instead simply feel like you need to try harder. This game polished up everything that was Castlevania and I cannot see how the game could remain the same and get any better than this. For a long time it felt like this would be the pinnacle of the series as when the N64 versions came out the 3D aspect of the game and its controls brought with them an increase in both confusion and a disconnect between skill and achievement, the games took a step backwards. It wasn’t until the playstation 1 Castlevania came about and bits of Metriod and RPG stats were grafted on to the game that the improvement’s began again but for raw platforming action you can’t do much better than the 4th one in the series.

This is a game which it might be better to turn to the Virtual Console for… Both English and American Cartridge only copies easily sell for around the 40 quid price point. One fair thing to point out though is that this game has no battery backup. Continuing is all password based so that’s one thing that you don’t need to worry about. I used to have both an NTSC and a Pal cart of this game but I sold the Pal cart around 4 years ago and got 25pounds for it…when I had found it on a market for 3 quid. I kept the NTSC cart as it was the one I had owned as a child so it had more sentimental value.

Game 56




Dragon's Lair was a laserdisc based arcade game published by Cinematronics in 1983. In the game, you played as Dirk the Daring a knight attempting to rescue Princess Daphne from the foul wizard Mordroc's castle and the claws of an evil dragon. It featured animation by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth yes that Don Bluth the main man responsible for   The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, the land before time and all dogs go to heaven cartoon feature films. 

Now back when Dragons lair came out the vast majority if not all other games represented characters as sprites, which in simple terms are a series of pixels displayed in succession to form an image. Due to hardware limitations of this a lot of game artists were greatly restricted in the detail they could put in to a character, for example take the original classic NES Mario he had a moustache to make his face a little more obvious and a hat to hide his hair and a lack of real features or detail.

Dragon's Lair overcame those limitations by tapping into the vast storage potential of the LaserDisc, the idea being that you could be in control of full on cartoon characters bursting with detail but unfortunately this imposed limitations on the actual gameplay. 
If you haven’t played Dragons Lair then think of it like all of those games on the Mega CD the full motion video kind where you watch a film and an occasional press of the right button at just the right time influences the outcome. This is pretty much how Dragons Lair played, it was great to watch and I remember it shocking the heck out of people in the arcades in its day but it was a definite case of style over substance, even though I find it fun for what it is.
The success of Dragons Lair sparked numerous home ports, sequels and related games though and that what I am here to talk about today, one of its ports the Super Nintendo port to be precise.

So the first question in your minds will be how did they port a laser disc cartoon based game to the SNES did they try to stick to the source material and make a cut down version of the arcade machine which functioned to the best of the SNES’s abilities keeping the style over substance mantra intact or did they just fudge it and make some kind of regular cash in platformer or did they do something really bizarre well close your eyes take 10 seconds and guess.


If you guess generic platformer congratulations you were right. The story is basically the same. You are still a daring knight out to rescue a princess from a dragon. Imagine a castlevania light, remove the whip remove the amazing music and graphics and replace them with a basic repeating tune of very little worth, some grunting noises for bits and pieces like getting hit and imagine you had the Axe weapon you can get in castlevania but its unlimited. No mode 7 fancyness well apart from maybe the way the attract screen has the title rotate in to view, by and large though what you have are basic Amiga style graphics, areas of map that seem to be repeated and repeated with different exits added on. It is a pretty challenging game well unless you have played the NES port, the NES version is impossible and so in comparison makes this one feel like a piece of piss. It is still harder than it needs to be. You might say oh but if you try and try again and get better then youll find some enjoyment. No you won’t the game is kind of boring and had that I could stop playing this any time and find something better to do very quickly kind of feel. There is some better music latter in tge game and things do get a little more varied but it never feels like quiet enough. Somewhere deep inside this there are elements of a good game trying to make their way out, I personally just don’t think enough attention was paid on it because they thought what the heck it’s one of the most incredible arcade games as far as shock and awe goes, pin the name on this bitch and throw it out and see the dollars role on in.
If you try this game you will notice a two player option. Now Dragon's Lair is one of those annoying not really two player games where you simply take turns on each stage using the same character. Exactly the same character no change of color or anything fancy here at all. I never saw the point in this kind of two player mode myself you might as well just take turns on the one player mode.

My score  4/10 … its below average but it’s not a complete abomination or anything.. If you saw it for a few quid I would say give it a bash but if it ever came on Virtual console Id say the standard 6.50 you pay for a Snes game could be used on much better games If you ever get the chance though I would strongly recommend you check out the arcade version though since it is a very cool concept and kind of a piece of video game history. I haven’t seen a machine in years though so maybe you'll have to consider going down the emulation route.

I know that in the past I have complained like hell about games which appeared on the Amiga and then made their way to home consoles. A lot of this has been down to 15quid disc based games being shoe horned on to a cartridge with no improvements and 40pounds being charged for them.

The game I am going to talk about right now was initially released for the Amiga in 1992 but you won’t hear any moaning from me. It was then ported to MS-DOS, Acorn, Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Nintendo in 1993. CD-ROM versions of Flashback followed a year later coming to the Mega-CD, 3DO, CD-I and well just about everything you can think of that had a disc tray. It ended up getting its final initial release on the Jaguar around 1995 but this wouldn’t be the end of it.




Flashback, (AKA Flashback: The Quest for Identity in the USA), is a science fiction cinematic platform game developed by Delphine Software. 

Once again I have been thinking about reviewing this game for a long time, I wanted to get a few things out of the way one was the Prince of Persia which I managed to do a few weeks ago, the other was Another World/Out of this World. You will most likely have noticed that I have not reviewed Another World well this is basically because I was certain I owned a loose cart of it on the Snes but can’t seem to find it right now, I did find a Megadrive cart in my stuff so maybe my memory just fooled me. 

This game can basically be either described as a futuristic game standing on the shoulders of Prince of Persia, or as the spiritual sequel to another world it feels very similar to both of these but I would argue it is a definite progression from both of them. (It is worth noting that Another World did get an actual sequel but as it was a Mega CD exclusive it is not very well known).

The game was originally advertised with claims such as the first "CD-ROM game on a cartridge" It is kind of easy to see why and it certainly helped get people hyped for the experience it had to offer.
The game was a commercial and critical success. It wasn’t just a darling of the critics though, everyone I knew who brought it seemed to absolutely love it, even my own brother who hates having to do any platforming, jumping or puzzles and only wants to shoot thngs was drawn in to this game. The game has a place in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling French game of all time. 

The story in Flashback felt like a video game version of an 80’s sci fi action film, you take on the role of a man called Conrad. Now somehow Conrad has lost his memory and is being chased by the police. Initially you have no idea who you are or why you are being chased, soon you find a holocube which contains a message, a message Conrad has recorded for himself which lets him know that he should make his way to the city and find his friend. The game always sort of reminded me of a combination of films such as Blade Runner and Total Recoil and I think these kinds of mental comparisons really work in its favour. 

There is a brilliant streak of realism in the game, the way you move and what you are capable of all seem very human but it goes beyond this. The objects that you encounter in the game are also realistic. All of the objects you find are just lying on the floor there is no floating icons or strange object hovering in the air without explanation. When an enemy dies he lies on the floor dead, instead of disappearing or turning into an item, it’s a nice little touch. 

The controls are a little bit hard to master. Your character moves in a way which makes it obvious that you are moving within a pre-assigned grid, a step forward and step backwards will always result in you moving the exact same amount of distance. This can at times be a touch confusing for example if you think you are standing below an overhanging ledge sometimes you will jump up and not be able to grab it, after a little bit of playing around you will realise that you were in fact one step away from where you needed to be. All of the movements seem to be bound somewhat by reality, if you draw your gun and turn to fire it won’t all happen as an instant thing, you will see the pauses between these motions as your character realistically draws turns and shoots. Sometimes this might feel a touch annoying if you’re more used to arcade style play but you soon become accustomed to the characters limitations and learn to work with what you have.

For the modern player this game lacks a tutorial you feel very thrown in to the thick of things but that is just the way most games were back then.

I loved the graphics back then and I still love them now they are a mix of the closest that could be gotten to realistic back then and classy cartoon. The backgrounds are beautiful and differ greatly from stage to stage.  The cut scene and in game graphics fit brilliantly together.

As for the sound the game can be very quiet at times, sometimes all you can hear is quiet background environmental noises and the sound of your own footsteps but I find that this often lends to the tension. There are also what some would call Zelda like musical success tunes for when you find something interesting 
It could be argued that there is almost no replay value in this game because of how story driven it is but it’s a long reasonably hard game which I feel is very satisfying so I don’t think this can really be taken as a serious fault.

The game can be got on ebay for around 7 to 10quid for a loose pal cart but then it as also been remade for the pc and the current consoles and the remake can be got for a similar price and I know the xbox 360 remake contains an emulated version of the original as well. It was also followed by a PS1 sequel called Fade to Black, it was years since I have played this, I seem to remember it was good but not anywhere near as good as flashback.   I would give the game a good solid 8 out of 10… I am very much a fan of it

The game I am about to talk about never had a release over here, in fact for a very long time I thought it was a Japanese only release but no it was translated into English for the American Market receiving several changes and cuts.
If I was to say Tanuki and leave it at that you would assume that I was talking about some kind of Mario game but let’s face it any game which had Mario in it and hadn’t made it to the UK everyone would already know about.
If I was to add that Tanuki’s were said to have very large testicles and that this little fact had been kept out of the Mario series this might give a few people a chuckle. The game I am talking about today though to my knowledge is the only Super Nintendo game to ever feature the tanuki’s engorged testes in all of their glory (except in the USA where they were edited out).

The game I am talking about today is Gōsō Jinrai Densetsu Musya, or Mushya for short. To start with I will give you a rough translation of the tile and that is Brave Spearman Jinrai's Legendery Warrior. It came out in 1992 and can proberbly best be described as an action platformer 



It was developed by Jorudan and published by Datam. Jorudan is a Japanese video game publisher and developer headquartered in Shinjuku, Tokyo.  It has been publishing and developing video games since 1991, they still exist today according to records but the last recorded game they released was Sukeban Shachou Rena a cat themed mini game collection on the Wii. They mostly seem to have done strange games that didn’t reach these stores very often but they also appeared to work on the odd port here and there. Datam was publishing stuff up to and including the PS2 days but nothing much anyone over here would know or care much about.
You play as a Pikeman who is the only survivor of a fierce battle.  He collapses near a Village where he is informed by the villagers that their shrine maiden has been kidnapped by demons and basically this has left a door to hell wedged open.  Without retrieving the maden the door to the abyss cannot be shut.  So your job is to rescue her in order to close the gates to hell.

You don’t see to many video game heroes who wield a spear so in this regard Musya is kind of unique.  The spear has excellent range to begin with and can be enhanced furtherwith collectable items.  As well as being used to attack normally the spear/pike can be twirled around to attack although you’ll remain stationery during this animation so it is a little limited You can also jump like you have super human powers and are able to use Magic.  Magic comes in the form of five spells with a new one granted upon defeating each boss.

This game will remind you of castlevania if you play it and that’s a good and a bad thing as I don’t mean super Castlevania 4, I mean Castlevania.  This is not just because of some of the rigid animations used, it is also because for this kind of gamed you have a kind of limited toolset.  You cant even hit enemies directly above you despite having a huge stick.  Flying enemies are very common so having to leap to confront them is inconvenient when in reality youd just strike diagonally.  There are a lot of bottomless pits and jumping off screen can lead to an unfortunate demise since you can’t see the ground again until it’s sailing past you on your way to death.  
The game is very unbalanced it basically lacks the amount of polish something like Castlevania 4 received.  The spear lacks stopping power so even after an enemy has been hit they still continue to move towards you, add to this the fact that enemies will respawn immediately after death, making killing them almost pointless.  Standard enemies go down in a few hits but boss battles tend to drag on forever, seriously you will be praying for them to just flipping die before your fingers drop off.  

If you ever get a chance to play this then just last it out till you see the first boss, who is a demonized anatomically correct Tanuki. Once you have laughed at this turn off the game and play something better.

The graphics are average, the sound is average the game is just really average, I suppose in some ways it’s a good thing this game never made it to our shores. It is only something worth owning so you can go ‘’oh I have a really strange game with a Tanuki with balls in it”… If you need this game it can be got for about 8quid on cart for the Japanese version… The US version is a lot more and doesn’t feature Tanuki balls you have been warned.
4 out of 10 must try a lot harder

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (known in Japan as Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyūshutsu Emaki?) is an action adventure game for 1-2 players made by Konami. It was released for the Super NES in 1991 and was I would argue one of a kind.

It was the first game in the Japanese video game series Ganbare Goemon to have a western release. With its blend of action, humour, mini games and bizarreness it is kind of a small miracle that it ever made it out of Japan but even though this may be prematurely giving the game away I have to say it is one of my most loved Super Nintendo games.

The game has two main different styles of gameplay but then there is also a sprinkling of simple mini games and distractions. The first is sort of like a beat-'em-up as you as Kid Ying (aka Goemon) or you and a friend as Kid Ying and Dr Yang explores towns, fight enemies and visits shops. One shop see’s you able to seek employment, you can do a painting task which is basically an excuse to let you play snake, then there is whack a mole and if you can manage to do well at them you can make a nice little pile of money. This can then be spent in other shops where you can buy food to increase your energy or shoes to help you jump higher in the latter platforming-focused parts. The second part of the levels The platforming like sections attempting 2D side-scrolling stages that play in a way which will feel familiar to fans of other Konami franchises like Contra and Castlevania. You move from left to right, making jumps, hitting enemies and trying to make your way to the boss.

The games story is all about Kid Ying’s quest to save the kidnapped Princess Yuki, yes this may seem like an average boring plot but the game is just so fun and so silly that you can’t help but fall in love with it. Cut scenes are illustrated vibrantly, with large, comical characters bursting at the seams with the kind of personality not often seen outside of the very best cartoons. The soundtrack, in this game is also worthy of praise it is quite simply superb. You'd struggle to find many superior scores in the SNES library. It is up there with the likes of Mario World, F Zero, Zelda a link to the past and I believe that this is true of the game itself.

The game's greatest selling point without a shadow of a doubt is its co-operative play. Yes it is still a good game if you decide to attempt it on your own but with a friend it is so much more, you will laugh together compete while trying to earn cash at mini game but ultimately work together to try and beat the game. I played this game off and on for years at both home and at my friend’s house the little animations between levels had us in tears, kid Ying would be in a raft while Dr Yang swam behind him being chased by a shark for example, it was the brilliant little subtle bits the looks on characters faces, there is just such attention to small details.

The controls are so perfect that there is no real need to talk about them, they just work, you never feel like any hit or death was anything apart from your own fault, the game also has a great learning curve, it gets very hard latter but the first few levels help build you up and get ready for the challenges that will face you.
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja is a brilliantly fun, wonderfully colourful, and extremely challenging in the latter stages adventure. It is a hard game to criticise, I could tell you of the hundreds and hundreds of times when I have played the early levels of it again and again and that I have only ever finished it once and that might sound bad, but it’s not. Every moment spent messing around on this game was a moment of pure joy.  Unlike a lot of comedy games that are released this one is actually funny, and not chuckle funny, it is seriously laugh out loud funny at times.

I would give this game 9 out of 10 and strongly recommend it. If you want to play it then it will cost you about 30quid for a pal cart, about 20 for a usa one and more if you want it boxed. It is worth this amount but it is also available on the Wii virtual console which would offer some people a much cheaper and easier way to try it.

RPM Racing (short for Radical Psycho Machine Racing) is a Super Nintendo Entertainment System racing game developed by a company which still exists but most people have probably never heard of Silicon & Synapse they are now known as Blizzard Entertainment a name most people will be a lot more familiar with. The game was published by Interplay (who many of you may know as the original creators of the fallout series).
A lot of people won’t have heard of RPM but even those who have will not realise the connections it has to other racing games. RPM was basically an enhanced remake of a Commodore 64 program called Racing Destruction Set which was developed by Electronic Arts in 1985. It also has a much more famous and well known sequel which quite a few of you will have at least heard of, if not played.

RPM was one of the first SNES games developed in 'High Resolution Graphics Mode. This mode was supposed to allow for sharper details but at the expense of the number of colours used. It was a very early release in general. The logic engine and track editor for RPM were apparently ported almost directly from the previously mentioned Racing Destruction Set with only some modification to get it running on the 16-bit SNES.

Graphically, this game just looks very basic. At first it doesn’t look to bad but you will soon notice that all the tracks conform to a basic kit format. You have green grass which represents the areas outside of the track, and then the tracks are made up of a mix of dark grey pavement, brown for the dirt sections, a bit of blue for ice, and light grey cement columns which prop up the raised areas. The repetitive scenery soon kind of grates on you, it practical but a little boring.

The Sound is so boring and unmemorable you will forget about it the second you turn the game off, the effects are passable but that’s the best I can say about them.

You are probably waiting for the point at which I say the game is saved by its story or its playability well in all honesty there is no real storyline at all, can’t complain too much as many good racers have had no story at all. You know you are supposed to win and in a good game that can be enough.
The game goes a bit like this you start the game with nearly $5,000 this is just enough to buy a car but this is ok as the first few races are free to enter. The payout for the free to enter races isn’t great but you soon earn enough to pay the small entry fee to other races which have much better payouts if you win.

You then spend your time managing your funds, how much do you spend on upgrading your car and how much do you hold back to pay entrance fee’s As you progress to higher and higher levels, the pay-outs become increasingly larger, but the game naturally gets harder and harder. In order to earn cash, you must finish in the top 3 or you won’t win anything meaning if you have paid an entrance fee you will in fact loose cash.
So where does the Psycho of the title come in to it you might be asking? Well as well as buying upgrades you can buy Nitro boosts, mines and oil slicks. If you use them well they might help you if used well but you will have to buy them again if you want to use them in a following race. Yes you can you lay mines and oil but so can your opponents. If you run over a mine, either one planted by the cpu or one of your own your car explodes. This doesn’t kill you though, you just wait a few seconds before your car reappears and you can continue racing. Oil slicks will cause you to skid out of control again wasting time.

One sort of different thing is that you don’t have to race every track.  It is all about making enough cash to buy your way up the levels, so if you find one track per level that your unbeatable at there is nothing to stop you just hammering this one again and again for maximum profit.
The main problem this game suffers from in my opinion though is a complete absence of the feeling of speed. You literally feel like your crawling around the tracks when compared to other racers, but there is still something there, the hint of greatness. If the game could be just a little more exciting, a little more colourful, if it could just feel a little faster something in you tells you that it could be a darn good game.

This is where the Sequel comes in to play. If I was to tell you that at one stage RPM Racing 2 was in the works you would probably ask well why haven’t I heard of it? What went wrong? Nothing went wrong however it just got a new name and had heaps of colour and style thrown on to it… The Sequel was called Rock and Roll racing.

Should you buy RPM? That depends. Do you enjoy games even if they have faults? Are you interested in seeing the way that a game develops? RPM is an average game a 5 out of 10 but as a prototype for rock and roll racing it is a curious piece of video game history. RPM as far as I know never got a pal release, it only came out in America and Japan. The American version is seldom seen on these shores so you would most likely be looking at either importing it or waiting and checking ebay again and again until one comes up for sale. It is not on any download service as far as I know and this is very unlikely to change in the future. Take my Advice look for Rock and Roll racing instead it’s a much better game

I have talked about lot of games which happen to be on multiple platforms often this has either been a game which is on both the snes and the megadrive, or a game that originated on the amiga and then finally made its way to the SNES as well as just about every other machine known to man.

Now I am going to start with some clues/information about the game and see how quickly anyone who is reading this can guess what the game is.

The game I am going to talk about now was on the SNES and the Megadrive and it was one of those games which didn’t try to be the same on both system, no both versions were very different, it was also however on the NES.

The NES version of this game was the final game Konami released for the platform in both North America and Europe in 1994. The Nes version of this game was also the only version of this game to not be released in Japan. 
The character roster is different in each of the 3 versions as is the story.

If you know this game then this will be the clue that defiantly lets you know what this game is. The game came out during the one on one fighter boom and has been referred to by some as a street fighter clone.
 


In case you haven’t realized it I am talking about Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: Tournament Fighters as it was called in Europe. In the USA it was called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, and in Japan it was known as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Warriors. Now with a lot of games the name will be the same in the UK and the USA but the reason for the change here had very little to do with the games designers.
Apparently those in control of the media in the UK decided that the term “ninja” was too violent, and ninjas were too violent of a subject expose children to. So the turtles became Heroes as this was much less violent. The censorship of the original cartoons didn’t end there though. Michelangelo one of the turtles chosen weapons were nunchakus and they were deemed to be too violent. The other turtles used a staff, a pair of swords and a pair of Sai which we all know are far less deadly weapons made from cotton wool and fairy kisses. It didn’t even stop here though. Eventually further editing would result in the loss of the turtles “Let's kick shell!” battle cry being removed as it was also apparently far too violent and we lost the use of the term “Bummer” due to the fact that in the UK, "bumming" is a slang word for anal sex and the term "bummer" was use by some as slang for somebody who likes to partake in this. Yes I have digressed a little in to a moan about censorship. Thankfully by the time we got to this game even though the term heroes was kept Mikey was allowed to use his nunchakus.

I grew up with the turtles, they were everywhere when I was a youngster, they had their own TV show, there on series of films, their own series of NES games, a whole line of toys and then the usual lunchboxes, sweets, pencils. They  had a SNES game an amazing walk along beat em up which I wish I still owned but I had largely grown out of them by the time Tournament fighters was announced. Yeah I still knew who they were, still played the arcade game every chance I could get but they weren’t the center of my life anymore. The very second this game was announced people began talking about how it was just another street fighter 2 rip off, and that it would be a babyish piece of trash which could never hope to even approach any of the brilliance of Capcom’s classic title yet I saw the name Konami and I didn’t doubt for one moment that it would be something special. I remember getting it one year for my birthday, I didn’t wait for it to be cheap or anything I just said to my mum ‘’mum I need this game, I would like it for my birthday’’ without ever having played it, I don’t think I even waited for a review score and this is very not me, usually I want everything for as little as possible and only if I know what I am getting myself into. I got it for my birthday and immediately started playing it.

So yes it is a ‘‘Street Fighter II'' rip-off and if you want to rip into this game that would be one of the best places to start. It is a 2d one on one fighter, carton based graphics, there are moves which are basically this games versions of fire balls and dragon punches but once you get past the games origin there is not much to moan about at all. Back in the day you got fighter after fighter made by Capcom they were pretty much the kings of the whole genre, then you got Midways Mortal Kombat and of course there were the Neo Geo snk games. There was also a lot of broken fighters trying to ride on the back of this popularity wave but Konami really surfer over the top of all of this floatsam and jetsam so much so that I have to say that it is a real pity that they didn’t try more often as they could really have given Capcom some good competition.

You might think that the fact the turtles use weapons would change things but they don’t really, beyond how it looks they might as well be punching each other. There are plenty of modes such as Story mode, Tournmanet mode, Vs. Mode, ''Watch'' mode, basically everything you could hope for from a fighter at this games time of release. 

The turtles themselves are all great to control, they kind of come across as the middle fighters you know the sort medium power, medium speed but other than this they all feel very different, which is a surprise as I was expecting them to be largely palette swaps with different weapons painted on top. From the point of view of a turtles fan some of the choices for other characters might be strange there is the robot turtle Chrome Dome, the Rat King and  Shredder. Beyond this though some of the other characters seem slightly strange choices either having been made for the game or only having featured in the comics and not the TV show. You have the bat-like Wingnut, the Shark Armaggedon, a demonic long-clawed creature called War, a female Ninja who looks a bit like a SNK character who snuck her way in to the game. Some characters were held back and instead feature in the Megadrive and Nes versions (each version has a different roster) but you cant help but stop and wonder who the heck is this tit and where is Bebop and rocksteady, where are Casie Jones and  Baxter Stockman. Yes other characters appear in the background street fighter 2 style but you would expect from a marketing point of view that they would slam the most well known characters in to the game not lesser known comic based ones.


Graphics look great they are bright colorful and full of detail, I would say that it is one area in which the game clearly gives the street fighter 2 games of the time a nice sound pounding. The Music is pretty good as well it fits within the game and gets you in the mood but there is nothing there which would rival the likes of street fighter tunes, nothing you will find yourself humming in the shower really it’s just fine functional stuff. 
Overall this is one of THE best fighting games on the SNES 

Apparently though despite getting mostly rave reviews due to certain factors such as bad timing it didn't sell anywhere near as well as it should have. Now I love street fighter 2 world warriors and I feel that with each version Capcom got better and better but I cant help but wonder what Konami could have achieved if this thing had sold like hot cakes. It was basically there first attempt at doing something like this and I think they beat world warrior and depending on the day of the week you ask me I might even say this is better than turbo (today I would), so what would we have got if they had carried on and perfected the formula with a sequel or two? I guess we will never know

I give this game an 8.5 out of 10. It is a brilliant game and if you want to play it then most likely due to licenses and such you will have to track down an original cart. Unfortunately the game seems to now be around 20 to 25quid on ebay just for a cart but if you’re a fan of one on one fighters I think it’s worth it.

I had planned to try and keep this positive. I had enjoyed the original arcade machine as a young child at the end of various peers and in the back of the occasional family pub, chip shop etcetera. I wanted to be fair but when I put it in the cartridge slot I noticed a sticker on the back of my cartridge a sticker for how much someone had paid for this game once upon a time in dollars, this sticker says $15 and bearing in mind the sticker is on the actual cart I am going to assume they paid this for just the cartridge. I was lucky in that I spent 1pound on it.



Pit-Fighter was originally a 1990 arcade game by Atari Games. It featured characters who were created by capturing the movements of real people and then putting them into the game and this was pre mortal kombat. Pit fighter as far as I know was the second fighting game to use digitized sprites the first being a game which never reached our shores. When I first saw it in the arcade it looked amazing now days it looks very choppy but the SNES version now that never looked good in the first place. If you take Mortal Kombats conversion from the arcade to the SNES and look at it for the moment ignoring the lack of blood on focusing on everything else then you will see that while there are some subtle differences which let you know that the SNES version is a slightly cut down version, you would probably note that if you were not comparing them side by side then most likely no reasonable person would really notice the difference. In comparison to this though Pit fighter on the SNES stands out like a sore thumb. The difference between them looks about as vast as it would if you tried to port Super Mario 64 on to the NES but at least that would probably still play well.

Now the arcade pit fighter wasn’t exactly a masterpiece. It was a fun violent little fighting game which was better in premise than it was in execution. I think I mostly enjoyed it because I got to play it with my brother and it reminded me of some of the films I had watched as a kid for example Blood sport starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.  The SNES game as well as having inferior graphics, no real presentation or music seems to have far more hit and miss style gameplay. The arcade machine was tough but it felt beatable, you'd shove 20pence piece after 20pence piece into it convinced that you could reach the end. With the SNES version however you get no continues, you are expected to defeat the whole game on one credit which in a good game like street fighter 2 would be a challenge trying to do this on SNES Pit fighter though is like trying to punch your way through a solid brick wall, hard painful and an exercise in futility.

I try to not be an angry reviewer and to give everything its fair chance but this has to be the worst SNES game I have played so far I wouldn't recommend anyone buy it under almost any circumstances, if you’re a collector and you see it for 1quid and plan to throw it in the cupboard with some of your other games and just forget about it then yeah sure, but if you are looking for something worth more than this or which you plan to play save yourself the bother… 0.5 out of 10….

It was going really well with a few of my favourite games in there and then you played Pit-Fighter...

I hate that game.

Yeah it is a bloody awful Snes game. The arcade game is a fun but forgettable little game but the Snes one is one of the worst arcade conversions Ive ever seen. If its not the worst game on the snes its at least arcade conversion on the snes as far as I remember.

“I was also playing the Willow arcade game, which inspired me to push the visual quality on the SNES above other games. I wanted it to be as good a side-scroller as Contra or Castlevania, with the visual quality of arcade games such as Willow’’

Now the above quote is from one of the people responsible for the game I am going to talk about now and it seems rather fitting. When I first played this game it reminded me a little bit of a mix between Grazor (the spectrum version of contra) and Turrican (which I had played on the amiga). If you know these games then you will probably be able to see these connections as soon as I name the game the Willow factor needs a little bit of an explanation however.

Most of you will probably know that Willow was a fantasy film starring Warwick Davies. A lot of people though don’t even realise that it had an arcade game made from it. It was a side scrolling adventure game following the plot of the movie, it had nice bright cartoon style graphics which really showed off the characters, you could instantly recognise who was who and what was supposed to be what.



This is what they wanted to achieve they wanted to take a very famous film and turn it into a game, a game which would be full of action but have character models who were instantly recognisable, the game I am talking about is SUPER STARWARS.



The first thing I feel I need to talk about is the presentation. Thegame succeeds in recreating the atmosphere of the film remarkably well, it has all of the little touches you could possibly want such as the opening text crawl the Lucas-esque screen wipes and the wonderful 16bit rendition of John Williams’ classic music.

Super Starwars sort of follows the plot of the film the levels are based in the right places and there are story-progressing cut-scenes. Some things have been altered though but in ways which will make it work as a game. For example the Jawa’s holding R2D2 just happen for some unknown reason to keep a Lava Beast in the basement floor of their sandcrawler as a pet and you have to murder it. You can see why this was added though, it was to put a boss encounter into this stage of the game, in much the same way as a parts of a book will be altered to better suit the medium of film here the film has been changed to suit a video game. You can tell though that the team which worked on this game took a great deal of pride in it and really attempted to present something which would be both an authentic a Star Wars experience as well as just a darn good game.

The team used actual reference materials and photos from Lucasfilm’s photo library, and took pictures of the actual movie models from the Lucas Archives for reference purposes and I think this really shows in the final product. Nothing else on any console at the time seemed to show this level of dedication and with a few notable exceptions (Alien Isolation for example) you would be hard pressed to find a modern game which has this much attention to detail.

One of the things that people talk about a lot with this game is the difficulty. It is often called a hard game but I don’t really think it is necessarily that bad. I think there is a definite issue with its difficulty curve, the problem being that it gets far too hard to quickly for the average player. The difficulty seems to curve straight up into the air and into a brick wall in one far from smooth movement. Once you get past a certain point though it seems to get easier again, it goes from hair pulling to just a nice challenge. I guess someone needed to do a little more play testing on it to iron this blip out. There are a few moments where one tiny miss step can lead to you falling back to the bottom of a bunch of stuff you have been climbing and it’s not that it’s hard to get back up it’s just that if this happens to you a couple of times in a row it can be enough to make you invent new swear words, on playing this game for review I let scream with the term ‘’you god damn nerf turd burglar.’’

In conclusion, I love this game, it is one of the best movie games available on the Super Nintendo and after reviewing something as awful as pitfighter playing this was a real breathe of fresh air. I would give the game a 8 out of 10, I am teetering on the very edge of giving it a 9 but I can’t help but admit it has certain issues particularly with the difficulty curve which will provide a barrier from some people fully enjoying it. The game was released on to the virtual console on the Wii so that is one option if you would like to try it, as always another option is to try to track down a physical copy to play on the SNES. A cart of super Star Wars will cost around 10pounds which I feel is very reasonable for this game.

Game 64

If I was to tell you that the Snes Game I recently played and I am here reviewing for you was a light gun game, then you would most likely assume that I own a super scope and that I was maybe playing the super scope 6 cartridge, Yoshi safari or Battle Clash. I don’t own a super scope though, I have the receiver box, the super scope 6 cart and Battle clash but I have no memory of what happened to the actual scope itself. No the game I have been playing is Lethal Enforcers.



Lethal Enforcers is a 1992 light gun based shooting game released originally in the arcades by Konami. The in-game graphics consist entirely of digitized photographs. This game caused controversy when it came out basically got it allowing you to shoot photorealistic representations of bad guys. If anything though as is usually the case the controversy only helped it gain popularity and it was soon converted for home systems including the Super NES, the Sega Mega Drive and the Sega Mega CD. Rather than adopt the game to use the light guns which these systems already possessed though Konami decided to produce its own special bun and include it with the game. This was a revolver-shaped light gun known as the Konami Justifier, it was about as close as you can get to the gun used in the arcade machine, the only real difference being the weight (the home version is much lighter).

I don’t remember anyone owning this game back in the day for the SNES, in fact I don’t even remember seeing it for sale on a store shelf. The only place I ever saw it was on the shelves of a video rental store with the name Video City. Now Video city was a great place it was a sort of independent Blockbusters rip off which was on the border of the next small village from the one I grew up in. You could walk there if you had about an hour and a half to spare, so sometimes when there was nothing better to do me and a few friends would walk down partly just to rent something, partly for something to do. I got to experience quite a few SNES, Megadrive and latter PS1 games through this place because not only did it have very low rental prices and a great selection it also had some of the very best promotions. Every Christmas they would put up decorations and the decorations included a tree on the counter. Now this tree would be covered in small folded tickets and you could buy the tickets for a small price something like 50pence. Now every ticket was a winner. I remember winning a T shirt for the film blown Away, the novelisation of Basic Instinct, lots of other promotional things and a whole bunch of free rentals.
It was because of this place that I got to play Out to Lunch. The Firemen and countless other games I might otherwise have not experienced. On one fateful day though I turned up to rent a few games and they were selling off there Megadrive and Snes games to make way for Playstation games.  I can’t remember everything I got but I remember getting both Lethal Enforcers and Out to lunch.  Lethal Enforcers cost me about 10quid for the game and the gun.
 As for the game itself the graphics are great. The game’s backgrounds look photorealistic, and are full of details even if you can tell some bits are repeated again and again (You can see the same few store/building names fly past again and again while your shooting from a car). The enemies in the game look exactly the same as the arcade’s cardboard cut-outs. It is a very faithful adaption of the arcade machine the only real difference being the typical Nintendo effect (the blood effects in the game have been changed to sweat just like in mortal kombat), and while this is a little disappointing ,it doesn’t really alter anything.
The game’s sound is pretty darn good. The gunhsot sounds are perfect, they are very realistic for a videogame particular for one of this age. The characters in the game all have realistic voices; but its more than that there is a real attention to detail the enemies sound like the bad guys you would expect, and the victims sound truly terrified this really adds to the games presentation. 

The gameplay is as simple as can be. You shoot at the bad guys and try to hit them before they hit you while trying to avoid hitting any civilians. The gameplay is fast and frenetic. Enemies appear directly in front of you or in the distance, in window etcetera. You can shoot a bullet that is shot at you, or you can make sure you take out the enemy before they manage to get a shot off, get them before they get you it’s as simple as that.
The game is your standard arcade shooter you have a limited number of levels to complete each with a boss and this won’t take you long to do at all. You will see everything this game has to offer very quickly. Nothing has really been added to the arcade machine to give it any more lasting appeal once it’s in your home. 
The game works very well with the gun but obviously you need to use an old TV. I had to go round to my brothers with the SNES in a backpack to play this again as I no longer have a CRT Television in my house and one day with them not being produced and parts becoming rarer no one will. The game does work with a pad but its just not the same what is a fast game of quick responses becomes rather slow and clunky.

It’s a crying shame that this game and its sequel never got either ported to the wii, I suppose there is already a lot of completion there with the house of the dead games and ghost squad, Mad Dog Mcree and all of the other various lightgun games but I would have loved to have seen this come out.

So should you buy this game? It’s a tough call there are very similar games available for the Wii as well as the PS3 (time crisis). Well the cheapest I have seen the cart and the gun go for is about 25quid but remember you need an old style TV as well this could get you a whole pile of Wii gun games. I would give lethal enforcers a 7. It’s a lot of fun but only in short bursts and you have to go through a fair bit of trouble to play it now.

Ere man, keep em coming.