#114: Firepower 2000

BANG BANG!

Firepower 2000 certainly sounds like a shooter of some kind. The title screen with a dune buggy and a helicopter make me think it's going to be a scrolling shooter. And likely one where you change vehicles based on the level you're in. Could be interesting... Or it could be two bad shooters in one package.

Beep Beep in a Jeep!

Judging from the scores at the top of the screen I'm now pretty sure this is designed as a two player game where one player controls the jeep and one controls the helicopter. I was the jeep and I had a jump button in order to shoot things that were obviously up in the air like planes. I could also drive backwards if I wanted to (though the screen kept scrolling) and could shoot sideways or on diagonals so that was a nice twist.

Boss fight? Nope...

It all felt a little bland though. It was hard to shoot a lot of things since I didn't have a spread attack weapon so I mostly just dodged around. I thought I reached a boss but he eventually flew off. I suspect this game is much better with 2 players than with 1, since there were things I couldn't reasonably hit with the jeep that the helicopter could probably take out. Especially if it has a spread attack?

It still felt pretty reasonable though. It didn't suffer from the major flaws that other scrolling shooters have suffered from, so it gets a decent rating.

Rating: B-

#113: Cyber Spin

That font is the best thing about this game...

Cyber Spin is another game that's new to me, and that I was way off base when I guessed what it would be from the name. Cyber Spin sounds like some kind of cyberpunkesque skating game or probably a platformer that looks like Tron. Instead it turned out to be a high speed racing game. The name probably comes from how easy it was to make the car spin out and crash into a wall? And by crash I mean bounce, because apparently this car can crash into a wall at ~400 km/h and take no damage like it was a bumper car.

Screwy turn ahead!

The one good thing this game has going for it is the way it flashed up the direction of an upcoming turn to let you setup for it. No track map was annoying but at least the little diamond signs gave me a chance of steering at high speeds.

Game over? I guess?

I raced a bit and got this cryptic game over screen. I'm guessing I had to actually race in under 45 seconds? I tried again, made use of the turbo button to put up what I thought was a pretty good time, and still was over 45 seconds. That's about enough of this game.

Speaking of a turbo button... They made a pretty bad use of the buttons on the controller! Y, a pretty standard button, did nothing. B was for breaking, something that was never needed in the first level at least. A was for going fast and you had to hold it down. X was turbo. I'm pretty good at holding down a button while pressing another one, but the Y into X combo is a weird one. I feel like that means it rarely got used in games while I was developing my controller skills. I was able to do it, but it was weird. L and R caused big skids in one direction or the other. Again, not needed on the first track. Maybe those are more relevant later on? I'll never know.

I don't much care for racing games, especially ones like this that look like they should be realistic but aren't. I get the appeal of games that emulate real racing even if I don't like them much. I get the appeal of games that go way crazy and are obviously using fake physics like Mario Kart. I don't get why someone would make a game like this one, or why someone would want to play it. Well done, past me, for avoiding this one.

Rating: D-

#112: Chuck Rock

ROCK OUT!

Even before the title screen loaded up this game started off with a pretty sweet rock tune. It got me pumped to try the game for sure. Then the title screen came up and I was hooked. Caveman rock band? Run it! Especially if I get to play someone in the band who made that sweet intro tune!

UNGA BUNGA!

No options menu, no nothing. Hit start on that title screen and get thrown into stage 1. Of what turned out to be a fairly straightforward, plot-free platformer. I'm a caveman. I start each stage by saying UNGA BUNGA with pretty good video game voice synth. (I Blame Bunga.) But then I just need to run from one end of the stage to the other... My only attacks are to thrust my fat belly out, or to jump kick, or to pick up a rock and throw it. I don't even get a club to swing.

PS: Pterodactyl.

I wanted to play a game with a rocking caveman. Instead I got a very bland platformer. It actually controlled quite well, and still had pretty good music and sound. But I didn't know who I was, or why I was platforming. I beat the first boss without losing a life and got bored. I hoped the game over screen would be interesting to I slowly got myself killed. No dice for anything interesting there, either.

Normally I find myself disliking games in this adventure because they're really bad in some way. Terrible sound, or horrible controls, or brutal lag. This game has none of that. It's just super bland.But probably would have been fun back in the day!

Rating: B-

#111: Captain Novolin

Suck it, giant evil donut!

I first learned about the existence of this game earlier this year while watching Awesome Games Done Quick. One might think that this game would therefore be awesome, but it was in the subsection they run called 'Awful Games Done Quick'. Ruh-roh!

Your SNES is not a licensed doctor.

This game was designed to teach kids about diabetes. Donuts and hot fudge sundaes are evil and will kill you if you touch them. Each level has good food pickups you can make, but if you pick up too many of them then you also die. Presumably if you pick up too few that would be bad too, but I had a hard time not picking up the pick-ups in a platformer. Gotta catch them all! You're routinely forced to check your blood sugar level, inject yourself with insulin, read factoids about diabetes, and answer quizzes about the factoids.

This game has jumped the sundae.

I remember hearing from people's donation comments during AGDQ that this game was actually reasonable for helping kids learn about their diabetes. That's fantastic for it. But it's an atrocious game! It's a platformer where you can't go backwards and there are no platforms. Move in a straight line avoiding or killing the big sugary things while hitting most of the small things.

The controls are also terrible. Your only attack option is to jump in the air then hit down to stomp. I didn't realize this the first time I tried and couldn't beat the first level. I went and found a control listing online and found out how to kill things and made it pretty far into a very short game. The game only uses one button, which sucks. I hate when games only use one button. (Jump, in this case.)

Maybe edutainment is a real thing worthy of praise, but I'm looking at if I'd have wanted to actually play this game now, or back when I was a kid, and the answer to both questions is no. But it probably did some good in the world, so it gets to escape an F rating.

Rating: D-

#110: Best of the Best: Championship Karate

Who's the best?

'Best of the Best' on its own is a name that doesn't tell me anything about the game I'm about to play. But the byline about championship karate makes it all crystal clear. This will be a karate game, and presumably one where you fight one on one in a tournament of sorts in an attempt to show you're the absolute best of the best.

Go Canada Go!

That is, in fact, exactly what we have here. There's a bit of a metagame going on where you earn money and can do training to raise your stats. You can customize your character moves, though I found that screen confusing so I didn't play around with it. I do remember using it when I was a kid and I think it was a good addition.

Canada down. 8(

The game has a cool metagame, and it actually includes Canada as a country option which always makes me happy. But is the core game any good? It felt like a pretty decent fighter as far as an SNES fighter goes. It felt pretty smooth and I feel like the pace was slow enough that you could work in counters and such if you were good.

I am not good at fighters. If I practice a whole ton I can get decent at them, but right off the hop when I don't really know the buttons I have no chance. So I got blown out here. I didn't feel super frustrated though, which probably bodes well for this being a decent if slow paced fighter.

Rating: C

#109: Bazooka Blitzkrieg

KABOOM!

This name didn't ring any bells, and then I saw the intro screen. It had a crosshairs moving around over the sign that said BAZ_OKA and I got a sinking feeling. The crosshair felt like this was going to be a shooter... Probably a shooter with the Super Scope.

*sigh*

Indeed, that was exactly what was going on. Which means this is a game I cannot play. They didn't put in any mode to allow you to play the game without a Super Scope and my emulator doesn't seem to have any idea how to even pretend.

There isn't even much on the internet about this game. No one has anything to say about it, good or bad. I seem to recall the Super Scope was a bit awkward for the sort of quick movement that this game looks like it requires, so I'm probably not missing out on anything by being unable to play. Oh well.

Rating: Incomplete

#108: Wings 2: Aces High

CAW!

I'd never heard of Wings 1, and I'd never heard of Wings 2 either. I assumed it was going to be some kind of flying game, maybe a scrolling shooter like Legendary Wings on the NES? It turned out to be a World War I simulator where you play British pilots running various missions in biplanes.

Je suis un pilote. Je peux volez!

You end up playing in a variety of missions. You can fly a top-down view and do bombing runs, or you can do a third person behind the plane view and do strafing runs or dogfighting missions. The controls actually seemed pretty realistic for a WWI biplane, and I was enjoying myself despite not really knowing what I was doing a lot of the time. I only succeeded in one mission and got my 5 guys killed off otherwise. Once by cutting my engines and flying into the ground!

Level up!

On the plus side the one mission I did complete gave me some experience to spend on making my pilot better. I like leveling up and getting better! The game also had a series of passwords so you could play again and pick up where you left off, which is nice.

I really liked the sound and music in the game. It wasn't amazing, but it really fit in with the theme of the game. The graphics were perfectly functional and there wasn't the sort of lag I've come to expect from a bad SNES game.

All in all... A pretty good game, actually. I would have had fun playing this as a kid for sure.

Rating: B+