Platform Game Compilation Review: Disney Classic Games - Aladdin and the Lion King

Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and The Lion King is a compilation of two of the most well remembered platform game adaptation of Disney films. It brings the Virgin Games version of Aladdin and The Lion King by Westwood Studios to consoles and Windows through emulation by Digital Eclipse.

The headlining game is a bit controversial. There were three versions of Aladdin, one by Virgin Games, one by Capcom, and one by Sega. Since the 16-bit days, there has been a lot of debate over whether the Virgin Games or the Capcom version of Aladdin was the best. In most debates, the Virgin one, primarily released on the Sega Genesis, just barely comes out on top, over the Capcom version, which was primarily released on Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Virgin game is the version included in this compilation. Digital Eclipse included both the Sega Genesis and Game Boy versions of Aladdin. The Genesis version is, without a doubt, the better version, but it's interesting to get to play the Game Boy port in the compilation as a curio.

The other game is not controversial at all, bar it's difficulty. The Westwood Studios game adaptation of The Lion King was released for both Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis. Both of those versions are included in the compilation, and this one really comes down to audio preference due to the difference in the sound hardware between the two systems. Digital Eclipse also included the Game Boy version of this game as well, although, like with Aladdin, it's merely a curio since it's not a great port.

A neat inclusion is a prototype version of Aladdin that was compiled the same month as the version that was demonstrated at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1993. It's a really cool inclusion, and it's really neat to see what changed from the prototype stage to the final release. The level inside the lamp, in particular, is quite different. Since this is an unfinished build, I recommend you play through the full Sega Genesis version of the game first before trying the CES version.

Disney Classic Games - Aladdin and the Lion King is a nice compilation of two of the most popular Disney video game adaptations of the early 1990s. It was created by Digital Eclipse, the studio that has been releasing emulation-based re-releases since its release of Williams arcade games in 1994, so the emulation is quite good. The regular emulation features like rewind and save anywhere really help for these games, since the 16-bit era was one where difficult platformers were still the norm. This version of the compilation doesn't have Capcom's Aladdin included, which is a bit of a bummer, but what is there is done really well, especially the inclusions of the original artwork and the CES prototype of Aladdin.

Final Verdict:

4 our of 5

South Park: Tenorman's Revenge was a platform game that was the second game that was directly overseen by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, following Let's Go Tower Defense Play! This had the benefit of making the game the first truly good video game in the series.

The game is a direct sequel to one of the most controversial episodes ever, Scott Tenorman Must Die, where Eric Cartman manipulated events to get rid of Scott's parents. To get his revenge, Scott built up an army of ginger robots throughout time, stole Cartman's Xbox 360 hard drive, and lured them through a portal to the year 2546.

The four main boys, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick, each have unique abilities that they have to use to destroy Scott's robots and to traverse the landscape in the future, past, and present. Then they have to finally confront and defeat Scott himself.

The episode not only calls back to the infamous episode mentioned above, but also to the various superhero-themed episodes of the show, such as Coon vs. Coon and Friends. The boys have their regular abilities and can use their superhero alter egos to access more.

Stan has the ability to throw a football to hit distant targets and can drill in certain areas to reach hidden locations as his superhero alter ego Toolshed. Kyle can take off his hat to distract robots and gain access to certain areas. He can also glide through the air to reach hidden areas as his superhero alter ego  the Human Kite. Cartman can use his weight to crash through weak walls to open new paths and can scale walls as his superhero alter ego The Coon. Kenny can jump further than the other characters and can make himself invisible and intangible as his superhero alter ego Mysterion.

The sound effects are a perfect fit to what you'd expect from South Park and the music fits the game well. The soundtrack is a fast-paced electronic soundtrack that is themed perfectly for the prehistoric, futuristic, and modern versions of South Park

South Park: Tenorman's Revenge is a puzzle platform game can be a bit tedious, especially in the future, as each area tends to blend in with the others. The weird storyline and fantastic voice work performed by Matt and Trey themselves helps to keep you invested though. It's not a perfect game by any means, but it was a harbinger of the good things that were to come.

Final Verdict:

3½ out of 5

Arcade Fighting Game Review: Virtua Fighter 2

Virtua Fighter 2 was the sequel to the influential 3D one-on-one fighting game Virtua Fighter. Like the original, it was developed by the famed internal division within Sega known as Sega AM2. It managed to take everything good about the original and expand upon it in many ways.

The character movement was vastly improved from the original, due to motion capture technology that was advanced for its time. It is still stunted compared to Virtua Fighter 3, due to the fact that the full range of movement would not be introduced in fighting games until the release of SoulCalibur four years later.

Like the original, there was no story, just a batch of fighters competing in a tournament. The improvement upon the original tournament is that the game's cast was expanded. The original cast returns, including a man skilled in the Chinese martial art of Bajiquan named Akira Yuki, a jujitsu fighter named Kage-Maru, the American siblings Sarah Bryant and Jacky Bryant from the United States, Pai Chan and her father Lau Chan from Hong Kong, a First Nations fighter from Canada named Wolf Hawkfield, and an Aboriginal Australian named Jeffry McWild. They are joined by an elderly Chinese man who practices drunken fist kung fu named Shun Di and a wealthy French man who has a kung fu style evocative of a prying mantis named Lion Rafale. 

The ten fighters battle each other to rise up the ranks. As before, the final boss of the tournament is a female cyborg with a body made up of reflective chrome. Dural does not need to be defeated, as if she is not downed by the time the timer runs out, the game continues to the credits regardless. Virtua Fighter 2 was one of my favorite arcade games to play with friends when I was young. I played through the story mode several times but I don't believe I ever managed to defeat Dural. It never bothered me, as the game was still enjoyable regardless. Like the original Virtua Fighter, Dural can also be playable in the home ports of the game via cheat code.

The music and sound effects were created by the Sega sound team. The sound effects added to the whole experience with the slams and throws sounding authentic. There is also a voice cast that supplies the voices of the characters in their intro and winning scenes, which was the standard in fighting games around the time of the games release to the arcades.

Virtua Fighter 2 is an excellent fighting game that was highly influential to the genre. It doesn't have the full range of movement of fighting games from the late 1990s onward, but it is much smoother than the original Virtua Fighter. That is one of the primary reasons the game has received ports through emulation to later consoles and in games in the Like a Dragon series up to this day. It's music, voice acting, and sound effects make it a classic that is worth experiencing if only for historical value to see how far 3D fighting games have come.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 5

Arcade Action Game Review: Adventure Canoe

Adventure Canoe is a game included in Taito's recent EGRET II Mini tiny arcade console that was a big surprise when the game list was announced. It's such an unknown game that Taito only lists it as having been released "overseas". The only mention of it on the internet was a post asking if anyone else had seen the game and mentioning that the game was available in New Zealand. Because of this, few, if any, people could be expected to have thought this game would be included in Taito's mini console. Yet, here we are.

The game, as the title suggests, has you control a canoe with the joystick. You have a speed up button, and one for shooting a gun from the front. It's actually quite fun, but there's a ton of obstacles, so it can get difficult. Maneuvering around the little islands, incoming logs, and moving river locks is difficult as it is. However, you'll have to be careful of the enemies throwing arrows from the river banks. It's really easy to get stuck in the path of the arrow if you're not careful. 

On the sound side, there's a simple looping background song, and bloops for sound effects such as hitting an obstacle, rowing, shooting, and for logs coming toward you, among other things. It's simple, but for a game released in 1982, they do their job well enough.

As far as shooting goes, you can shoot the logs to get them out of the way, and you can also shoot the animals. The latter is hard for me to do, personally. The graphics are bright and colorful. The animals that appear sometimes on the riverbanks are the most detailed part of the art. They look so cute, I just can't bring myself to shoot at them. There's a lion or a fox just chilling in the grass by the river. The little fox is bopping to the sound of her own rhythm and the lion may roar at you. But, they can't reach you, so I can't bring myself to do it, even if it is just a game. I'm crazy like that sometimes. If you can do it, which I'm sure you can, you'll get bonus points for doing so.

Adventure Canoe is a game that has an easy to understand premise. It's not one of the games from the era that aged particularly well, but it is a fun little bop in small doses. The real draw of this is that it is one of the lesser known game in Taito's arcade library. Before the release of the Egret II Mini, the only mention of the game is from a classic gaming forum where a user from New Zealand asked if anyone else has ever heard of the game. For preservation sake, it is always great to see relatively unknown games get a re-release. It's especially great in this case, as arcade developers don't have a good track record of keeping ROM files of their own games, usually falling to archivists like the contributors to the multiple game emulator MAME to extract them from physical boards found out in the wild. It's great to see this game finally get an official home release for Taito enthusiasts.

Final Verdict:

3 out of 5

Arcade Shoot 'Em Up Video Game Review: Pooyan

 

Pooyan was a unique fixed-screen shoot 'em game by Konami where the player's shots were fired by arrows at the side of the screen compared to the usual games in the genre where the player shots come from the bottom to the top.

The main character is a mama pig who has to protect her piglets from hungry red wolves. She rides an elevator controlled by some of her piglets on a cliff on the right side of the screen. Wolves drop off of the cliff on the left holding balloons. Mama fires arrows at the balloons, causing the wolves to crash down to the bottom. The wolves throw rocks, which cause the mama pig to lose a life if hit directly. If they hit the top of the elevator instead, the rock will drop down.

At certain points, the mama pig can also throw meat to the wolves, which will cause them to get distracted, drop the balloon, and fall down to the ground. The latter will earn the mama pig bonus points. If the wolves reach the bottom in tact, they will run over to the ladder to kill mama pig.

In the next level, it will have a ladder that does not reach the bottom. In this case, the wolves will inflate balloons and rise up toward the cliffside instead. Among the regular wolves, there are also boss wolves that ride up in balloons that have to be hit more than once to pop. There is a rock at the top of the left cliffside, and the wolves will push it down to kill mama pig if they reach the grass on the top.

After the end of every two rounds, mama pig will reach a bonus round. There are two types of bonus rounds. In one, the wolves need to be defeated by only throwing meat. In the other, wolves throw fruits and mama pig will earn points by shooting them.

The game has beeps and boops that act as sound effects for arrows being shot and wolves falling to the bottom. The sound of the popping of the balloon is especially effective, as it sounds just like it does in real life. The music played is a traditional American camp song titled "The Other Day I Met a Bear". While that song sounds similar to the theme song in its contemporary Konami arcade game, Frogger, it doesn't have the wide range of music of that game. What is there does work well for the game, though.

Pooyan is an arcade game with an unusual name and one that is not well known today. It is unique compared to other shoot 'em ups of the time because the player shots come from the side rather than the bottom of the screen. The graphics are cute and colorful, which work well for this type of game. The camp song played in the game also fits the animal hijinks and family-friendly gaming that the game represents. It isn't a classic game, but Pooyan is one that is fun to play if you ever get the chance to do so.

Final Verdict:

3½ out of 5

Arcade Action Game Review: Frogger

 

Frogger is a successful and influential arcade game that was developed by Konami and distributed by Sega/Gremlin in the United States of America.

Like the best games of the 1980s, it is easy to pick up but difficult to master. The goal is to take frogs across a street, across a river, and then onto a lily pad. There are several obstacles in the way, including automobiles, tractor trailers, snakes, and alligators. The latter can also be used as objects to hop onto in the river, much like the logs. However, the gators open their mouths and become a danger to the frog if it comes into contact with the gaping maw. Once all of the lily pads are filled with frogs, the game jumps to the next level.

As the game goes on, the highways become more packed, the river becomes more populated with alligators, and the logs become more filled with snakes. The vehicles also become faster and the river gets quicker. The latter makes it more difficult to jump into lily pads without becoming gator food. The logs also are less able to be stood upon, as when the river takes them beyond the game playfield, the frog loses its life.

The game is packed full of sound. Beyond the bloop sound that is meant to represent the frog's jumps, there are 26 different song fragments played throughout five stages. After that, the stages loop back to the first, albeit much harder than before. The game has an opening jingle, as was common in arcade games of the early 1980s. But, from there, each stage contains music loops. There is also music for restarting a level after dying, completing a level, and getting a game over. Beyond that, there are a ton of songs that play when a frog has arrived home on a lily pad, with a total of 20 different song fragments used. This was definitely a very lively arcade game, and the variety of songs kept it from feeling too repetitive.

Frogger is a great arcade game that inspired many clones and competitors. It's also one of those games that stood the test of time. There are a ton of frogger clones on various app stores, showing the longevity of the concept. It's very easy to pick up, and super addictive. There's tons of music too, which helps the game remain fun way into the era of constant music in most video game soundtracks. It's likely you've at least come across a clone, but if you haven't played the original, you owe it to yourself to give Frogger a try.

Final Verdict:

5 out of 5

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio Boycott

Rock Paper Shotgun has a story about the contents of Yakuza Kiwami 3: Dark Ties that is frankly disgusting.

"Kanda, upon discovering he doesn’t have enough cash to buy time with a sex worker, grabs an unsuspecting woman in the street and drags her off to an alley. Mine finds him gripping the terrified woman by the wrists. As part of Kanda and Mine’s arrangement, the former tasks you with leading a PR campaign to boost his reputation in the community, via a minigame dubbed "Kanda Damage Control"."

I was going to delay buying Yakuza 3 Kiwami and play it ten years down the road for Dark Ties. But, I can't even stomach this. Not just as a woman who experienced sexual assault herself, but as a decent human being. 

This is more than tone deaf considering the controversy surrounding Teruyuki Kagawa. He sexually assaulted at least two hostesses. He admitted to the first and was caught on camera for the second. There has been a boycott for this game since Kagawa was announced to be playing Goh Hamazaki in Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Dies and Ryu Ga Gotoku and Sega have not handled it well. They have been limiting, filtering, and removing posts protesting the recasting, supporting the hostesses, and carrying the #REMOVEKAGAWA hashtag on social media.

There is a petition on change.org to replace Kagawa, but in light of the blood-curdling sick minigame it is just not enough.

I don't know why anyone would think this is OK. If this game goes out without any real backlash, I'm going to quit playing Ryu Ga Gotoku games altogether. I'm sure everyone here knows how big a fan of the series I am, but this is just beyond creepy and misogynistic - it makes me sick, metaphorically and literally. I'm sitting here with a pit in my stomach just typing this.