REVIEW - X-Men II | PC | 1991

GENRE(S): Action / Adventure / RPG / Roguelike
RELEASED: 1991
AVAILABLE ON: PC
DEVELOPER(S): Paragon Software
PUBLISHER(S): Paragon Software

So, the 1989 game commonly known as X-Men: Madness in Murderworld actually got a sequel; as it turns out, the game was X-Men II by informal title only, to clarify the fact that these games were developed and published by the same company. As a game, X-Men II - or X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants, as it is commonly known - is totally different from its "predecessor". What we have here is an "RPG" that kinda looks like Gauntlet by a quick look, and swipes a bit off from console RPG's too. In truth, what we have here is a totally incoherent, incredibly cryptic mess of a "game", that just might've been conceived during one single drunken night at the Paragon offices. It's so ridiculously bad it's nearly entertaining.

And your first challenge is: getting to the title screen

The X-Men go on a search and rescue mission to find their missing comrades Storm and Forge, who have been kidnapped by the Adversary, and run into the Freedom Force. Both opposing teams are caught in a time warp which causes serious ripples in time, causing barbarians and dinosaurs to run rampant in modern Dallas... and seemingly not much else worth mentioning...

Until about a week ago, I knew nothing of this particular pair of X-Men games beyond its existence. When I finally got around to this phase of the marathon, totally stunned at how royally the first NES game actually sucked, I was pretty much ready to doom this whole marathon to hell. However, I saw a lot going for the first DOS game before I even started it and I got my hopes up for a decent curiosity item. Perhaps I wouldn't go as far as to call it even decent, but it had good ideas. Perhaps with the sequel, those good ideas would be translated to an actual game a bit better. Then it turns out that the game has virtually nothing to do with the previous one, even though it's dubbed X-Men II. And, although once again it differs from the usual superhero schtick, its good ideas go to waste in a terrible game. Wait... what good ideas...? X-Men II is such pain from the very start - even before the start - that I'm not sure whether I should score the game at all. Then again, it does look the part. And, I laughed at it - let it be known that I was not even able to laugh at the NES game.

Whoa. That's what I'd like to see in an X-Men
movie. Or not.

Starting this game up is a challenge of its own. Uatu the Watcher shows up and asks for your preferred settings for a/v, controls and combat (either unanimated, turn-based combat out of a role-playing card game or side-scrolling action, just guess my ultimate choice), and doesn't seem to respond to anything, especially actual changes to the settings. You can just keep pressing Enter to get forward, but that doesn't help you a whole lot, now does it? Some changes have to be made for this game to actually run. Well, you have to press the starting letter of each option; figured that out on my third try to get the game started. Choosing characters is easy enough, and there's quite a lot of them. You get five picks from a total of 15 X-Men, that's pretty rad. Well, then comes area select. Pressing those letters from before doesn't help. Enter doesn't help. Nothing seems to help. The game seems to have crashed, until you take a wild guess and press 1, 2 or 3. Now you're cooking... or are you?

So, the game is a roguelike RPG, meaning it's one confusing pile of randomly generated screen upon another, filled with traps and power-ups only one of your party can disarm or use, respectively. Who? No idea. How do you change party members? No idea. You have two weeks (some tens of minutes of in-game time) to finish an area. It even implements a day/night cycle, which however has close to no effect to the game. If your party leader dies, he dies, and the turn to lead the group moves on to the next mutant until you've run out of your trap fodder. Those traps pop up everywhere, all the time; it depends on the level, too, I guess, but the point is that you have no way of knowing they are there. Or if you do, I didn't figure that out. Your mission in each of these levels is to find not one, but two members of the Freedom Force, and defeat them to proceed to the next area. After each of the three areas has been cleared, I'm guessing a fourth area unlocks and you will fight against the Adversary.

Of course he does.

Be warned that getting through one area is a bitch. As if the general overhead controls weren't bad enough do drive you out of your mind, there are those traps and dead ends everywhere. Even one screen might change if you exit and re-enter it. I'm not completely sure about what I'm about to say, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if the game occasionally hit a glitch and denied you an exit completely, like in the last roguelike game I've played, the abysmal Fatal Labyrinth on the Genesis. The beat 'em up-style combat might be more exciting than the turn- and card based that's offered as an option in the beginning, but it's definitely not good. First of all, the two different attacks you have at your disposal are assigned to keys as unpractical as Pg Up and Pg Dn. Simply walking around is hard enough, and it looks retarded as the character turns around by his will and that alone. I've not even come to the best part yet. You encounter an enemy, you beat him just like that, you're still stuck in the battle screen. The only way you're getting out of the battle screen is Esc, which translates to the game as "Flee". The game proclaims how you attempted to escape the battle - no, I was just trying to carry on this fool's errand!! The enemy you just beat is still there on the overhead map, and you will encounter him - or rather, his corpse - again and again, until you manage to somewhat slip away from him on the map. As you make your way forward - that is, if you're lucky - these same enemies will start appearing out of thin air, usually just in front of you or even on top of you. Every time, it's the same strange deal. No, it doesn't get any more entertaining than this.

What were the creators of this completely senseless game on? Why in the world didn't they just heed the good potential and the feedback they got from the first game? Why, why, why did they make this game? Well, it was an experience, I guess.

UPS
+ Nice collection of X-Men to choose from...

DOWNS
- ...Whose identities don't really make a stinking difference to how the game will play out
- Completely senseless, randomly generated levels with awkward, not to mention invisible enemy and trap placements
- Terrible controls and retarded gameplay "mechanics" from field to combat

< 2.2 >

REVIEW - X-Men | PC | 1989

GENRE(S): Action / Adventure / Puzzle
RELEASED: 1989
AVAILABLE ON: C64, PC
DEVELOPER(S): Paragon Software
PUBLISHER(S): Paragon Software

The first game I reviewed within the confines of this series of Marvel reviews was an old DOS game called The Amazing Spider-Man - by no means a great, revolutionary game, but surprisingly decent and moreover, a different game, more of a puzzle game than a straightforward action game or a run-of-the-mill platformer. It was made by Paragon Software - a closer look at the company reveals a whole series of Marvel games, of which the aforementioned game was actually the last, and also one of the last games before the company was bought out by MicroProse. Among those games was a pair of X-Men games, formally labelled X-Men and X-Men II, but better known as X-Men: Madness in Murderworld and X-Men: Fall of the Mutants, respectively. While the latter followed a comic book storyline, this first DOS game was an original story, one that Marvel endorsed to the point of including a limited edition comic book, serving as a prequel to the game's events, in the game package. Just like The Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men isn't from the most typical end of superhero games either, as it crosses point 'n' click with arcade action. Now I didn't rightly know what I was heading into here, but I knew it had to be better than what I just suffered through on the NES. I WANTED it to be better.

Love killercoaster

The X-Men's arch nemesis Magneto has joined forces with the evil genius Arcade, kidnapped Professor X and taken him to Arcade's backyard in the twisted theme park known as Murderworld. A team comprised of the X-Men's finest - Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Dazzler - bust through the gates to save their leader and mentor, to be greeted by a legion of Sentinels, other formidable enemies and brain-twisting puzzles requiring the skills of each and every one of them. (Keep that in mind, 'cause that is one of the game's greatest downfalls.)

Fresh off the worst game I've ever played - thus far - I bumped into a game commonly referred to as X-Men: Madness in Murderworld, a curious little DOS game from the late 80's, around the same time that beastly abomination commonly referred to as The Uncanny X-Men (why can't they have just ONE title?) was unleashed on the NES. Now these games have one huge difference: the NES game's got Marvel's brand name on it, but apparently it wasn't officially recognized by Marvel. This game, on the other hand, was not only recognized by Marvel, but they slapped a comic book exclusively available with the purchase of this game, on its side. These days, collector's editions of games are very common, and you can buy a lot of those - depending on the game - on eBay for a few bucks, still sealed and CiB. Those days, there were no collector's editions of anything, and rarely games that had something else for an extra incentive. Now I highly doubt you'll find a sealed copy of this game anywhere, but there are CiB's on eBay, and they sell for 20-40 bucks. Just a tip for all you true Marvelites out there, this one's a true collector's item. ...But is it any good? Now that's the true question. Marvel's efforts to promote the game already promise us a better game than that NES game with its circuits welded out of crap.

The first example of a simple, but cool puzzle.

The game is extremely tough to get to work properly on a modern PC. It seems that even if you use the same a/v and control settings every time, it doesn't guarantee proper functionality. A mouse apparently never worked with the game even though there's a constant need for one, and getting the joystick controls to properly respond to a basic joypad is a pain in the ass. So, the keyboard's pretty much the only choice here, I'm afraid. The space bar is the most useful key here, as it works as the confirmation button, as well as the tool to toggle through the different functions on the bottom of the screen. You'll have to try them all out to figure out what each one does, the icons are pretty vague. They're easy to learn. Just very painful to use. Literally. Carpals do not like this game. However, the toughest part ain't the adventuring and puzzle solving. That might even be fun, since you have to think a little about each mutant's special talent, and how they would help in certain situations. This brings forth another problem, but let's talk about the absolutely toughest part first.

Which is, non-surprisingly, combat. It's clumsy, actually hitting the enemies is random at best, and if you think duking it out with your everyday Sentinel is hard, try hitting rats. Yeah, this is one of those games in which any small vermin can kill you just as easily as a Sentinel or a boss. They're actually the easier enemies to fight, seriously. Hell, even spikes falling from the ceiling do less damage to you than a rat running back and forth at your feet does in half a second. It's absolutely ridiculous. If you ultimately fail at this game, don't feel too bad about yourself. I know exactly why you fail - the combat is just that poor. If it isn't the combat, it's something else. Here goes.

Wolverine looks like Wolverine, and he also
moves like Wolverine. It's Wolverine!

So like I said, when it comes to the puzzles, you need each and every mutant's talent. For example, in the very beginning of the game, there's an impenetrable adamantium cage with an important key in it. Now is there a member of the group who could get that key? Yes, there is: Nightcrawler. So I use his mutant power to get in and out of the cage with key in hand in a second. Wow, dude. This is how X-Men games should be made. At that point, even though my wrists were screaming murder (already), I knew this game had potential. Then, the dying began... when you run out of X-Men, the game is over. Even that's not the worst problem. You simply cannot make progress if a certain member of your group dies. If I had started out with Nightcrawler, and he would've succumbed in the hands of the first Sentinel, I wouldn't have made it past the second screen. There's a save system, sure, but saving the game after just one member of your group has died is a risk - a risk you absolutely have to take all the time if you want to have the slightest chance of beating this game. "Close, close, close... oh fuck, RATS!"

No, the game isn't very entertaining in the long run, but once again, I must commend it for its substantial difference from the stereotypical superhero game. It's got a good, if not brilliant concept, and with better design, it could've even been so much as revolutionary, especially in a time when licensed games on consoles very rarely gave us half of what we wanted. A badly designed and literally painful game, but an interesting one nonetheless. And yes, better than the NES game.

UPS
+ Authentic X-Men feel, and a good story
+ The puzzle/adventure part is a neat concept

DOWNS
- Poor execution of good ideas, all over - the worst being that you might blow your chances of beating the game by losing just one character
- Bad controls, terrible combat in particular

< 5.5 >

REVIEW - The Amazing Spider-Man | PC | 1990

GENRE(S): Action / Puzzle
RELEASED: 1990
AVAILABLE ON: Amiga, Atari ST, C64, PC
DEVELOPER(S): Oxford Digital Enterprises, Paragon Software (PC)
PUBLISHER(S): Paragon Software

Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man is definitely the most widely known and consistently popular Marvel superhero there ever was. Marvel's very own Batman has starred in an unparalleled amount of 11 animated shows, one live-action TV show preceded by a TV movie, and four big-budget films in the last 11 years, with a fifth one on the way, and finally, nearly 40 video games, counting out guest appearances in just about every Marvel all-star game there ever was. The first one was released on the Atari 2600 in 1982 - and it was also the first video game based on Marvel Comics. The second one was the middle chapter of the Questprobe text adventure trilogy, released on home computers in 1984. The third one was a Marvel crossover entitled The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America in Dr. Doom's Revenge!, released on home computers in 1989. Then came this next game's turn. There's a whopping total of 17 Spider-Man games for me to review - at this time, anyway; we'll see if the number goes up - so, without further due, let's get started. Here's a DOS-operated ball of dust by the name of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Tingling the senses

Mary Jane's been kidnapped by Mysterio and taken to an abandoned movie studio. Spider-Man has to take on various movie icons and some increasingly random obstacles to get to his loved one.

Ah, Spider-Man. Spider-Man, Spider-Man... friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man... now I'm getting carried away. There was a time I sincerely thought you could put this guy's likeness in anything and I would've loved it. When my interest in Batman waned a little in the mid-90's, not least thanks to a couple of rotten sequels to Tim Burton's fine pair of movies, it was Spider-Man who was there to sling his web at me and pick up the pieces with the strength of one awesome animated series and a bunch of books my stepfather bought me from a local antiquarian. One of those books was The Amazing Spider-Man, issue #299 from 1988, which is historical for introducing the world to one of the most sinister, persistent supervillains ever created, a bad motherfucker known as Venom. To me, Spider-Man and Venom were the Batman and Joker of the Marvel universe, but they didn't even have to be enemies to impress me. I dug the few concepts where they actually formed an uneasy alliance to take something even more sinister down - like Carnage. They made a game out of this in 1994, mind you - and it's on the list. Can't wait for that one.

It's always about the damsel.

Well, actually I do remember this game. When I was in the first grade, one of my best friends - I have no idea what happened to that guy - had one impressive collection of Commodore 64 games. No, I couldn't find him on Facebook, which means he's probably dead. His dad was a nerd who worked at a computer maintenance store, if my memory serves me right, so some of them might've been his games for all I know. Anyway, that's when I first caught a glimpse of this game - more than a decade passed before I played another Spider-Man game. Did it scare me off or something? Probably, but I can't be sure before I try it.

Speaking of actualities, actually The Amazing Spider-Man is a surprisingly decent, innovative game for an old DOS title. It has many severe flaws, but in all seriousness, I was perfectly ready to have seen all there is to see in just a matter of minutes. I got stuck on the game for hours - and felt the consequences in my bones, literally, 'cause the controls are just off-the-charts awful. But, just seeing what they were at least trying to accomplish, at that day and age... it's pretty impressive, seriously. Besides, The Amazing Spider-Man isn't a beat 'em up or a platformer, it's essentially a puzzle game that kind of resembles Solomon's Key on the surface, but doesn't really have any strict point of comparison. That's something, am I right?

As Spider-Man, you are to make it through puzzle rooms with switches all around the walls, and push these switches in the correct order to open up a path and advance to the next room. Usually, there's an enemy or a few of them in your way, who you can temporarily incapacitate with a web shot - you can't kill any of them, at least not by any direct means, and you have no other attacks. Spider-Man can climb any horizontal or vertical surface, and the hallways in the game are extremely narrow, so you can just imagine that guiding him through them is like trying to control a basketball gone rogue. He likes to get stuck in an all-fours position which prevents him from shooting webs, all of the time. For such a stubborn fellow himself, he's merciless when it comes to presses of the wrong directional button while climbing - every time you climb around a corner, say, one which goes left, up and right, you have to press both up and right at the exact right time, or Spidey goes crashing down like a retard. And I mean it - his movement really looks retarded altogether.

R2-D2 has something against me.

Like I said, though - The Amazing Spider-Man is different, and it is a more entertaining game than 90% of licensed DOS games of its time. And, it looks awesome. The intro in its very authentic comic book-style is a pleasure to see through, and it's a hoot - ridiculous, yet fun - to spot familiar movie "stars" such as R2-D2 and a guy who looks very much like RoboCop for enemies from the beginning of the game. It also sports a "save system" quite rare in an arcade-style DOS game; make no mistake about it, you'll have to beat this in one sitting, but there are a few save rooms which check your progress over the course of that one session, preventing you from having to start the whole thing all over again once you die. You will die, with these controls - as easy as the game might strike you at first. It ain't a very long game, as you will see if you get stuck with it like I did.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a fairly good game, seriously - colour me positively surprised - but, a pretty big deal of my sudden warmth towards it is because games of its generation and platform haven't made much of an impression on me during my adult years. Especially licensed games. Ironically, I hated this one as a kid - too difficult to play and understand, I presume. It's still difficult to play, but for other reasons - worse reasons.

UPS
+ Unique gameplay
+ The graphics are quite all right in general, and the intro sequence looks awesome

DOWNS
- Simple, yet shitty controls
- Just one song plays throughout the whole thing, from the title screen to the end

< 6.9 >

REVIEW - Mario's Game Gallery | PC | 1995

GENRE(S): Compilation
RELEASED: February 23, 1995
AVAILABLE ON: MAC, PC
DEVELOPER(S): Presage Software
PUBLISHER(S): Interplay Productions

Mario's Game Gallery is the last Mario game to date to have been produced without Nintendo's direct involvement, and the first Mario game ever to have Charles Martinet voicing Mario. I guess that kind of makes the game worth a look for the most serious Mario fan. At least it's not an educational game; it's a compilation of classic board and card games, with some serious issues that prevent it from being too fun even in its harmless nature.

"Mamma mia" this

Checkers. Not really within my comfort zone.

Mario's Game Gallery includes Mario-themed versions of five games: checkers, Go Fish, backgammon, dominoes and Yahtzee, all of which you play against Mario himself. All the while, your opponent spews out lines that will make your children happy and drive you out of your mind. Well, at least there's close to no music, the game is completely harmless, and a couple of the games could almost be considered fun, if it wasn't for some certain strip-downs and the fluffy A.I..

Mario's Game Gallery is kind of a last hurrah from some of the same people that plagued consumers with totally unnecessary and way less than lackluster educational Mario games for a good deal of the 90's; a truly harmless children's game, or rather a compilation of minigames which even adults could almost enjoy, provided they're in the right mindset (read: drunk). However, they always sucked at this job, and that reflects on the whole set in a lot of ways. The A.I. is shoddy, the mouse is a little on the non-responsive side, and my favourite game in this bunch, Yahtzee ("Yacht") is a very frustrating, stripped down version of the real thing.

"MARIO, GO FISH!" Ggghhh.

There's really not much more to say about Mario's Game Gallery, so this might very well be my shortest review ever. It's useless to make it sound any more complex than it is in reality. I've already summarized all the important bits multiple times: it's harmless, but it bends the rules in the wrong direction, and the CPU acts like a retard - not to mention that it sounds like one (sorry, Charlie) - especially in the case of checkers. Well, at least I can finally win at that game.

UPS
+ Finally, some decent children's entertainment

DOWNS
- Bad A.I.
- Stripped rules and Yahtzee criteria
- Mario never shuts up

< 6.3 >

REVIEW - Mario Teaches Typing | PC | 1992

GENRE(S): Edutainment
RELEASED: 1992
AVAILABLE ON: MAC, PC
DEVELOPER(S): Interplay Productions, Presage Software Development Company (MAC)
PUBLISHER(S): Interplay Productions, MacPlay (MAC)

Once upon a time, this blog pretty much revolved around the most popular and distinguished video game character in history. Almost two years ago, I bid farewell to him, and now he's back, by the strength of a few curiosity items in his long, long resume, which spans a whopping total of 32 years. Although some of my most positive, heartfelt reviews to date have been inspired by Mario games, there's a certain selection of Mario games that has inspired me to write some of the most insulting, provocative prose richer with expletives than all of the other reviews combined. Since I'm all for self torture, I'm now going to bring Mario back into the fray with a pick from that particular selection of games - an educational Mario game. It's called Mario Teaches Typing, and to my understanding, it was Mario's first educational game, released some months before the first versions of Mario Is Missing! emerged. It was made by Interplay instead of The Software Toolworks, and it was exclusive to home computers, so two of my favourite things to bash about these games are eliminated before I've even started the game. This had better be bad.

Afdjfifjdfdjfdsp

At least Mario Teaches Typing is a very straightforward and honest "game" of its sort - down to its very title. You know exactly what to expect from it when you load it up. Or will you? No, you won't.

Don't start that "Hello JUKKA!" crap with me.
You're not the Mario I once knew.

First of all, let me straighten myself out, as to why I chose this game for review. After such a long break from reviewing games, and with my mind totally set on something else for almost a whole month, I wanted to review something really light, and light-hearted, to get my juices flowing again. I had a few good ideas, but then a very brief selection of Mario games yet untouched caught my eye, and I thought that since this year's most about tying up loose ends, why not bring back the most popular plumber in the world, who just happened to dominate this blog for its first month online and a few later periods of time? What's more light and light-hearted than an educational Mario game? It might not be good, but at least I can have a few laughs... and perhaps provide a few laughs. Unfortunately I don't find Mario Teaches Typing too funny. It doesn't even have the bad, and usually unintentional humour and ridiculous imagery of the usual Mario edutainment caliber to give it some strange, inexplicable appeal. It's just one horrible app - I've seriously seen better typing apps made by first-year IT students. Better, and definitely more sensical. And, when it comes to the target group, I think having to type real words instead of short lines of gibberish like "?r@q" is more beneficial to a child's basic learning process. Maybe it's just me. There are real words there, they're just considered "more challenging" than those lines of gibberish and that's why they show up later. Weird thinking...

The first game, and let me tell you: it lasts
forever.

There are four different typing games, influenced by some real Mario games. The basic idea behind all games is the same: type the letters or words that pop up to get ahead in the whole wretched thing and get yourself a decent report card to show off to your friends and parents. Or just get a life - at least a better app to make you a killer with the keyboard. Only two games are available at the beginning, and indeed, Mario's Expert Express showers you with gibberish you must simply copy. Once you conquer more challenges within the whole game, the gibberish apparently turns into real, short words.

Would someone tell me by what degree of a
flying fuck would this be educational?

Well, conquering those challenges is no interesting task. All of the games are very simple, and they hardly teach you how to type, only how to alternate between 2-4 different keys at a time, or type down short words with similar, repetitive structures. The outline to the whole game might sound boring, yet harmless, but there's also a small twist to bug those curious enough to try this game in this day and age: the game cannot register certain symbols such as "@" typed with a modern keyboard. And, well, to cast it out as bluntly as I can, the game IS boring throughout. No less than one of the most boring games I've ever played, even in its usually boring company. And, it sounds simply rancid. Even though the game wasn't made by The Software Toolworks, Interplay certainly provided them with the safely annoying solution of taking some well-known Mario tune (in this case the Super Mario World theme song) and playing it on endless loop throughout the whole thing. What's worse, every time you type something - anything - the song hits a very audible glitch.

Considering I leeched this off Abandonia, and since it was originally a home computer exclusive - for once an exclusive for the right platform for these kind of "games" back in the early 90's - I guess I could say Mario Teaches Typing is harmless, but as a Mario fan, I find myself having to regard it as a piece of trash, one more disgrace with Mario's fine name on it. Yet again, the most important thing is that it doesn't have the Nintendo Seal of Quality on it like a few other games do, and at least it's an honest product.

UPS
+ Interplay was honest and opted not to disguise it as a real game

DOWNS
- Outright horrible sound; now I'm really starting to avoid playing Super Mario World anytime soon
- Incompatibility with modern keyboards
- Immensely long and boring games with very strange ideas of challenge
- All of the games must be played through to unlock the more "challenging" (as in a bit more sensical) games

< 2.0 >

REVIEW - Operation Stealth | PC | 1990

GENRE(S): Adventure
RELEASED: 1990
AVAILABLE ON: Amiga, Atari ST, PC
DEVELOPER(S): Delphine Software International
PUBLISHER(S): Delphine Software International, Interplay Productions, U.S. Gold

Operation Stealth was the second point 'n' click adventure by Delphine Software International - after Future Wars: Adventures in Time - released at a time LucasArts pretty much had the monopoly on the genre, and it showed in the game's sales. What's it got to do with the James Bond franchise, exactly? Well, to boost the game's sales in the United States, local publisher Interplay Productions renamed the game James Bond: The Stealth Affair, and changed the main character from CIA agent John Glames to the familiar James Bond - actually changing nothing but his name. Obviously, the game's developmental history makes for an interesting game to review, and it's of a genre I'm very fond of. What's surprising is that beyond all its technical hickups and laughable presentation, the game is actually worth a try for a point 'n' click fanatic.

One awkward operation

CIA agent John Glames travels to Santa Paragua, South America, to investigate the theft of an ultra-modern aircraft named STEALTH.

Neither does your grammar.

I started this game a few weeks ago before the start of the marathon, heeding the risk that I might actually enjoy it and knowing that a point 'n' click will probably take me some time to complete and review. The risk was pretty small, after all it's utterly ridiculous in every exterior aspect, all the way to its U.S. localization (not present here), and back in the golden days of SCUMM, very few developers managed to create an user interface that would come even close to the master engine. Operation Stealth is a very clumsy game - the Cinématique engine is just very slightly improved from Future Wars - and there are parts of puzzles that I sincerely believe could not be figured out without the help of luck or a walkthrough, or both. I had to utilize both to finish the game, and I was amazed at how short it actually was. If you know exactly what to do, you'll be done in well under an hour. If you don't, you can safely expect to get stuck on the most dumb and obscure individual steps, and even ultimately fail on a few occasions - a true holler back to the most frustrating moments in any Sierra On-Line game from the 80's. Just one of the things that granted LucasArts their monopoly in the point 'n' click genre was that they removed death and irreversible failure from most of their games.

Some technical issues. First up to greet me after I started the game up was a stupid copy protection program, which luckily just required a quick Google image search to be dealt with. The next thing I figured out was this was not going to be an easy game to read. Is "congraultration" a word?

"THANKS, CREEPY RETARD WITH A
MICKEY MOUSE FIGURE ON HIS DESK!"

The graphics and sound are very good. The "graphic" part of graphic adventure is taken very seriously and while the game is nearly not up to par with LucasArts' game of the year, The Secret of Monkey Island, it's at least on par with what Sierra was letting out at the time, and operable hotspots are highlighted just fine. There are some navigational issues in control and graphics both - you can't really see all the possible routes you can take from a room or outdoor area, and taking another route instead of the local obvious one is made frustratingly hard. It seriously took me hours to find everything I needed from the opening level, the airport, and 50% of that stemmed from not finding an obscured route. The other 50% stemmed from the fact that the game could've at least HINTED how to use my briefcase properly. The music is indeed very groovy, surprisingly awesome! I found myself humming the theme song while writing the prologue to the review - if a "new", much less than perfect game does that to me, it's at least accomplished something.

Those not familiar with the Cinématique engine might enjoy a little history lesson. The Cinématique engine was Delphine's answer to LucasArts' SCUMM. It was first introduced in Future Wars, then this game, and finally, Cruise for a Corpse - which is the most obscure game of 'em all, a murder mystery somewhat inspired by Hercule Poirot. The French... anyway, each of these three games had a slightly modified interface, but the common rule was that there was a basic command, and under that, a target for that command. For example, you chose "OPERATE" and then clicked on whatever you wanted to "operate", for example a control panel in the vicinity. Sounds pretty much like SCUMM, but the commands aren't on constant show on the screen, and there's another twist. By clicking the right mouse button on a basic command meant that you were searching for a target in your inventory. For a great example from this specific game, let's operate your own briefcase.

One of the things Leisure Suit Larry taught my
10-year old self: never walk past the taxi post.

Operate briefcase. John opens it without second thought, but then the problems start to pour. It's full of stuff, but there are just a few items you can remove from the briefcase. OK, I took all I could, I can't make progress beyond the first room. A customs officer is raping me up the ass with demands of a passport. I show him my passport, over and over again, but can't get through. Well, back to the briefcase to see what's wrong. OK, so I have to OPERATE the calculator inside of the briefcase to get the secret compartment open. There's another passport, a fake one, on which I have to print a false German identity my using some sort of a high-tech thingamabob bolted to the bottom of the case. There are millions of choices for hotspots, and each time I fail, I have to start up the command sequence again. The engine's starting to bore me. Well, when I finally have this puzzle done, I move on to the next room, to find the route-finding mayhem I mentioned earlier, and a little later, I find out I'm still missing something from the briefcase - a "bench of notes". What the fuck is a "bench of notes"? For your information, it's a BUNCH of notes. Making more sense now? Well, I can't find it anywhere in the briefcase. Turns out it's tucked within the first passport. Funny that John doesn't mention a "BENCH of notes" when he unfolds the passport. I couldn't see it the first time around, or the second one. My bad? Could be. But on the other hand, I've played a lot of point 'n' clicks that at least inform me about what could easily be unseen (like "There is a BENCH of notes inside."), and do not expect me to open up the tedious command menu simply to examine the whole still image to accidentally stumble on the one, obscured thing that might get me out of any mess I happen to be in.

Here's a heads-up the game won't give: you're
about to fail the game in ten seconds.

Operation Stealth is sometimes a very illogical, dumb game, which adds to its difficulty alongside the subpar interface itself, as well as the few sudden deaths that are frankly traps for casual players who never played one Sierra game in their lives. I was a Sierra fan as a kid, and since this is a non-LucasArts game, I found myself terrified in many situations that would've resulted in certain death in any Sierra title. Ironically, I ended up not expecting my first sudden death at all. It came as a surprise even to me, and while I approve of the reasoning behind it, I think the developers should've given players at least five seconds to react to the events.

Even after all of this, I indeed found Operation Stealth a surprisingly entertaining point 'n' click game, recommendable to any true fanatic, and up for quick grabs from Abandonia. It's short, but it's difficult - not for all the right reasons, but some. And, its many inconsistencies are quite amusing at their best.

UPS
+ Good graphics and music
+ Some details appear to change a little on each playthrough
+ Not all the puzzles are bad, once you get the hang of Cinématique...

DOWNS
- ...Which is hard, and even after you do get the hang of it, you'll most likely find the whole thing incoherent and tedious; the commands are confusing, and easily misplaced, which makes complex graphic-based puzzles much harder than they actually are
- Mere navigation in complex areas is nerve wracking
- Typos all around, both amusing and misleading
- Sudden deaths in adventure games should've disappeared in the turn of the decade

< 6.8 >

REVIEW - 007: Licence to Kill | PC | 1989

GENRE(S): Action
RELEASED: April 20, 1989
AVAILABLE ON: Amiga, Atari ST, BBC, C64, CPC, MSX, PC, ZX
DEVELOPER(S): Quixel
PUBLISHER(S): Domark

Licence to Kill was the 16th canonical Bond film, the second and last one to star Timothy Dalton as a dark, serious counterpart to Roger Moore's loose and light-hearted 007. The quality of Dalton's short stint as 007 has been a subject of debate to this day, but Licence to Kill is still recognized as an outstanding film that broke the usual mold of the film series a little. Licence to Kill the home computer game really didn't go on to break any molds. It's a faintly entertaining arcade-style action game, though, and after my recent plunge into the depths of text adventures, it's definitely a refreshing change. Bad controls and all.

Licence to stay alive, revoked

Franz Sanchez, a drug lord captured by James Bond and his best friend Felix Leiter, escapes from custody by bribing Leiter's fellow DEA agent and arranges an ambush. Leiter is critically wounded and his wife is killed. M suspends Bond due to his emotional investment in the case, which only feeds his hunger for revenge.

M gives 007 a random mission to carry out. 007 meets a good girl, and gets laid. Then a second girl gets involved, a bad one. 007 might get laid again. 007 shoots bad guy, then gets laid for the second/third time, and the no-life hacks back at MI6 have to settle with jerking off. The end. This was the synopsis for just about every Bond flick from the 60's to the mid-80's - of course it varied just enough every time to not be confused with the last one. After Licence to Kill, the Bond series returned to this basic formula, but what's important to note is that Licence to Kill WAS different, and although I never really appreciated Timothy Dalton's brief time as 007, in script alone Licence to Kill is one of my favourite Bond films, and a standout action movie in general.

Seriously. Some shadowing beyond large buildings
would be nice. We can see those just fine.

As per usual, shifting my attention from the film to the licensed game ain't no comfortable feat. Licence to Kill. Let's look at the facts, first. It was released at a time LJN "flourished" on the console market with their licensed "classics" such as Friday the 13th, The Karate Kid and A Nightmare on Elm Street - all of which were several years late, to go with their natural tendency to suck sacks. One reason possibly being that home computer games weren't taken that seriously, and of course the fact that home computers were more common average household items than consoles, licensed games were very common for home computers. No matter what the games were like - they made money, and they were well-advertised in well-chosen mediums. Domark, founded by Dominic Wheatley and Mark Strachan in 1984 - and later merged with Eidos Technologies to form Eidos Interactive - was a "fairly respected" publisher, who ironically had made another game based on the Friday the 13th movies in 1985. That game was not received any better than LJN's NES title. They had a couple of 007 games under their belts by 1989; the side-scrolling action game The Living Daylights and Live and Let Die, which was an odd variation of boat racing (actually the first Bond game I ever played, on my friend's Commodore 64... yeah!!).

The Living Daylights was made by Sculptured Software, Live and Let Die was designed by Elite Systems, and Licence to Kill was designed by Domark's own development team, dubbed Quixel, which meant this was going to be yet another different game. What it turned out was an arcade-style action game with a constant top-down view, but with different gameplay modes: shooting shit up while controlling a chopper in the vein of the soon-to-be-super-successful Strike series (well, not quite!), shooting shit up while on waterskis (!), shooting shit up while flying a Cessna (can't come up with anything clever), and shooting shit up while on the ground as James Bond in the vein of Ikari Warriors (I'm just buffing better games here, I admit it). The result beyond the end result: a madly, truly, deeply frustrating game, but actually one with some semblance of decent arcade action. I thought I'd absolutely loathe it, but I don't. At least it changes some in each level. The controls and the graphics remain loathsome, though.

Where's Waldo? - The 007 Edition.

For once, I find the visual output of the game very important to mention. It's horrible, and not just in a "oh dear Lord, it's ugly" kind of way, but the game is much more difficult than it should be, based on its visual output alone. Everything looks so flat that while you're flying a chopper, it's extremely hard to make out what kills you and what doesn't - yeah, one collision equals death, even if it's by a quarter of a pixel - and when you're on the ground, you might get stuck running against a wall you can't properly see without squinting, or putting a few (too many) bullets in it. You have five points of health, just a few lives to spare, and limited ammo, which you simply cannot collect if you run all out of it (the invisible wall is a piece of shit, but it doesn't deserve your bullets). It's either a breakaway through the enemy hordes to the goal (worth a shot), or ultimate death, which - not so surprisingly - places you back to the beginning of the first level. Luckily there are only five of them levels altogether. ...The music? Well, don't expect to hear the James Bond theme, or any variation of Gladys Knight's "Licence to Kill", or any of the late Michael Kamen's stuff. All you get is an annoying title tune that doesn't remind me of much of anything, much less anything related to the franchise, and the usual, steady "POP-POP-POP" sound effects of an old DOS shooter.

You know, I started to talk about the graphics and sound, and ended up explaining the whole variety of downs to the game already, so I see no reason to not wrap this up right now. Get a controller working for this one in DOSBox (assuming you don't have a functional old home computer with an old-school joystick, that's the best choice) and you might beat the game if you're determined enough to bear its bullshit; the game is impossible to play using the keyboard, as the flight controls are oversensitive. You'll hit a wall or tree seconds into the first level, and aiming your gun on the ground is extremely hard due to the 360 degree aim. Licence to Kill might be a soddy game, but it's a notable improvement over the Bond games I reviewed prior. It's enter-frustrating retro arcade for those who appreciate it, a bundle of bad mixing.

UPS
+ Arcade meets old school DOS; take it or leave it
+ Each level has a different theme

DOWNS
- Flat visual output meets a top-down view; take it or leave it...
- Doesn't really connect with the 007 franchise; which is the same as some critics would say about the movie, those bastards
- Sensitive controls, one-hit kills... not a good mix

< 5.9 >

REVIEW - James Bond 007: Goldfinger | PC | 1986

There's no title screen, so here's the
box art for the Apple II version. Not
subliminal at all.

GENRE(S): Adventure
RELEASED: 1986
AVAILABLE ON: Apple II, PC
DEVELOPER(S): Angelsoft
PUBLISHER(S): Mindscape

Goldfinger was the third Bond film, and also the third to star who many like to think as the one and only James Bond - Sean Connery. After all, he did play James Bond in seven movies, made between 1962 and 1983 (what an arc), returning to the role after an absence on two separate occasions. As much as I'd like to blab on about Sean Connery and how great he is, this is mainly a forum for computer and video games. Sean Connery's films have rarely been licensed, and not a bit too rarely. Just look at 1986's Goldfinger - another text adventure in the vein of 1985's A View to a Kill. Extremely amusing in some ways which I'll point out very soon, but in the end, just another boring tribute to a long-dead interface.

Pull my goldfinger (you saw it coming)

"Blah, blah, blah-blah-blah, blah,
BLAHHHH, blah, she should have
stayed in England."

James Bond squares off with one of his most resourceful adversaries, a gold smuggler named Auric Goldfinger, who is planning an attack on Fort Knox.

After getting my nerves and veins torn by A View to a Kill, I was going to skip Goldfinger without giving the game a second thought ever again. Then, I came up with the conclusion that here we have a game based on what I think is a quintessential Bond film, my long-standing favourite in the series right up 'til Skyfall. Back at the time of its release, it introduced many elements that immediately became staple for the series (and turned boring as years went by), it had Sean Connery and if that wasn't enough, he already had two movies' worth of experience under his belt - his performance could only go downhill from here, and it did. Auric Goldfinger, played by Gert Fröbe, was a classic Bond villain, a standard who is still pretty much unbeaten - although Sean Bean's Alec Trevelyan in GoldenEye comes quite close, as well as Javier Bardem's Silva in Skyfall. I dug the idea that both of them were mental and physical matches to Bond as they were both former MI6 agents, but still very different from each other. I'm babbling, I know - so let's just say Goldfinger's a badass with badass henchmen (ODDJOB!!!) and leave it at that.

"examine plans carefully", something I
picked up in "the Navy".

It's amazing how much stuff I came up with in under a minute after I started up. There's no title screen whatsoever - I could come up with lots of insults and questions aimed at Mindscape, but I won't bother. If the game cuts right to the chase, so will I. "Cutting right to the chase" is quite literal, as the game begins from a car chase. Although many scenes in the game are inspired by the movie Goldfinger, the game is not as close to the movie's script as the previous Bond adventure, so you'll have to think for yourself quite a bit - and do it good. After fumbling with different commands for a time, I typed the always effective "shit". The game asked me if I was venting out my frustrations. I cracked up, I truly did. I found it hilarious, and it brought me one step closer to enjoying this game. After the same situation repeated, I tried "fuck", and the game asked me if that was something I learned in the Navy. I cracked up again. This game just garnered in a few points, by simply responding sarcastically and intelligently to less intelligent, less formal commands.

Seriously, though, Goldfinger is a drag to even try to play. There are some improvements over the text parser. For example, "look closely" ALWAYS works just as good as "examine carefully" - in the previous game, it depended on the specifics of the situation. When it comes to complying to a variety of verbs in general, Goldfinger feels like a masterpiece in comparison to A View to a Kill. But then some truths come around to smack you in the face. In this game, one mistake won't get you killed - directly, that is. Instead, if you make one mistake, the game goes into some sort of a "mistake mode" - there's a whole string of mistakes waiting in that mode. You can't escape, there's nothing you can do, but the game just keeps juicing the situation up and from the looks of it, it's expecting you to find the one command that would get you out of the situation. Well, there is one: "load".

The bit about Tilly Masterson's figure
makes this game sound like a dirty novel.
The box art doesn't help.

An example of this sort of situation can take place after the very first move in the game. If you miss one command, one of the Goldfinger thugs chasing you will knock you out, take you to some torture chamber, and make you watch as Goldfinger does quick work on your female companion and then proceeds to cut your balls off with a laser. The text description explains this all in a LOT of detail (I mean BLAH-BLAH-BLAH), and stops to stand by for a totally useless command on several occasions before informing you that the game is over, something it could've done about a dozen paragraphs back. This is kind of like an overtly stretched death animation in any modern game - the main differences being that there's no animation in this game, and secondly, watching someone die was never this boring.

If you're desperate to get the hang of Goldfinger, it's going to be hard. It's a very hard, delicate game, that requires ultimate precision. The text is so long, detailed and boring to read, that at least I find ultimate precision impossible to spot. Well, at least Bond responds to navigational commands a little better, there's little need to drop items, and inquiries in full sentences are rare. Considering the theme on top of these semi-positives, I'm with Goldfinger over A View to a Kill. It's bad, yes, obsolete, absolutely, but better. And funnier - it's good that they taught the game to actually answer to some of the most usual commands people tried playing the previous game with.

UPS
+ It won't take your bullshit sitting down, it responds with wit; I approve!
+ The text parser is a little less limited than in A View to a Kill
+ Based on one of the best Bond movies ever made, and the golden text is a good touch - a minor and predictable one, but good

DOWNS
- It's still a game that was dead on arrival - actually even moreso than its predecessor; last time, I asked about the sense of releasing a text adventure licensed off a movie in 1985. Now, I'm asking about the sense of releasing a text adventure in 1986, licensed off a movie that was made over 20 years before.
- No title screen, or theme song or anything, just text all the way...
- ...Text which is long, too detailed and impossible to enjoy
- The smallest mistakes lead to whole alternative three-page scenarios which are boring as hell, and inescapable

< 2.2 >

REVIEW - James Bond 007: A View to a Kill | PC | 1985

GENRE(S): Adventure
RELEASED: 1985
AVAILABLE ON: Apple II, MAC, PC
DEVELOPER(S): Angelsoft
PUBLISHER(S): Mindscape

A View to a Kill was the 14th James Bond film, and premiered in 1985. It starred Roger Moore trying to stop a psychopathic industrialist played by seemingly psychopathic thespian Christopher Walken - accompanied by his much more intimidating bodyguard played by Grace Jones - from flooding Silicon Valley. Two home computer games spawned off this critically debated piece of 007-branded celluloid. The first was an action game, aimed at the young, while the second was a plain old text adventure, aimed at the more mature who were still rallying for the cancer-ridden genre in the wake of graphic adventure. Guess which one's on the plate.

In the mood to a kill

NOTE: Due to the nature of the game, I uploaded the screenshots in their original size (and also left out the usual white photo frames). Just click on the screenshots for a closer look.

Max Zorin, a microchip industrialist in charge of Zorin Industries, is planning to bomb and flood Silicon Valley to gain exclusive control over the microchip market. Enter MI6 agent James Bond to the task of ruining Zorin's big day.

I'm thinking "n".

A View to a Kill isn't one of my favourite Bond movies, for numerous reasons. First and foremost, Grace Jones - the actress with the most ironic first name ever. I was actually terrified of her when I was a kid, more than Richard Kiel's Jaws - the way he was originally presented, not the comic sidekick he was in Moonraker. The term "Bond girl" doesn't really equal hotness when you've got this chick (?) on that distinguished list. Secondly, it was time for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer to retire the once great Roger Moore with some dignity - he was 57 years old at the time of the movie's release, and training regimes or general make-up effects were obviously not as impressive as they are in these days when they're making movies like The Expendables. In other words, I have found it very hard to not think how old or bald Bond looks whenever I've watched the movie in my adult years. I guess they got their hopes up when they cast the 53-year old, obviously balding Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again and thrived - but that movie was all about an aging Bond, and it wasn't even a part of the 007 canon, but a freeform remake of Thunderball. It had a different idea and that's why it worked - A View to a Kill was supposed to be a full-fledged, fun Bond adventure, not a tired last effort by the second-greatest Bond ever (who was 57) banging the hottest Charlie's Angel ever (who was 29 or 30). That was kinda nauseating. Christopher Walken made for a good villain, though - I'm stating the obvious, I know. He saved a great deal of the movie, and Duran Duran's classic theme song was a good start for it.

In 1975, Will Crowther published an independent game called Adventure (a.k.a. ADVENT), and this marked the birth of text adventure games, which were literally wholly based on text descriptions of the game's events and your surroundings. In 1980, Roberta and Ken Williams created the first GRAPHIC adventure game Mystery House, which still followed text commands and had those descriptions intact, but you could also see your surroundings, making the game much easier and more comfortable to play. As time went by, graphic adventures became more and more playable, and eventually evolved into point 'n' click, which produced us many golden classics of computer gaming history. The reason I'm giving you this little history lesson is, that for all intents and purposes, text adventures should've ended where graphic adventures began - but they didn't. There were still a few companies pushing out these frustrating bundles of desperate trial and constant error. One of them was Mindscape - very often on the spot when I find a game to be utterly useless, in its time and especially in the modern day. I don't think they paid much attention to what kind of a game Angelsoft had made out of A View to a Kill - they saw a franchise, a money-making one, and secured publishing rights. And here we are.

First, I thought I'd rather skip the game, and then played with the thought of not rating it at all, 'cause you know - it is what it is. How can I even expect to enjoy a clumsy, limited text adventure in this day and age? Then I thought: well, how could Mindscape expect people to enjoy a clumsy, limited text adventure that was licensed from a popular flick in 1985, five years after the break into graphic adventures? It's critical slaughter time. A View to a Kill is even amusing in its own clumsiness, but make no mistake about the fact that it reeks.

"You sound like a common guttersnipe"?

The text parser in the game is your most lethal opponent. While it does comply to some surprising verbs, it sometimes can't associate them with certain actions, and while it's relatively rare to get responses like "What ARE you doing, 007?" or "You're babbling!" once you figure out the basics of how to play the game, it sometimes takes a turn to the retard zone and accepts one single verb for a very basic action. "Look" or "Read", which have always worked in Sierra games, won't do. It has to be "Examine". Sometimes that isn't enough, and you have to look closer at your target. "Examine closely"? Won't work. "Examine carefully" is the only way to go. And there we have a command that would've driven Leisure Suit Larry nuts.

Also, the text parser seems to suffer from an identity crisis. For the most part, it seems we're giving orders to Bond as an unnamed third party or M. When we're supposed to ask a question or talk to another character, the inquiry needs to be typed in the form of a sentence like we said it ourselves. Typing "Ask about x" or "Talk about x" usually gets us nowhere. Once again, good luck figuring out what Bond needs to know, or better yet, GET, with a simple inquiry. Here's one who "forgot" to ask M to give him a clip to his gun before heading out of MI6. You can guess the rest, but do note that the rest took place about a hundred moves later.

The game follows the movie like an ass follows its owner. Some scenes are skipped altogether, but reading the descriptions feels like you're reading the movie's script. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the script didn't have "Bond travels to direction x" or "Bond drops item x" in it as every other action. Since there's no character to control, you indeed have to type every single step. Get one step wrong, and you might be fucked - you'll either lose direction, or walk straight into a death trap. Keep on reading those long-ass, boring descriptions. As the game goes on, you might be able to pick up a certain template for all the texts and spot the important parts immediately. However, the dark side to that is that you'll start to lose sight of one of the most important elements of the game, which is the plot. Well, in that case - go see the movie. As a matter of fact, in every case: go see the movie. I'm starting to appreciate it a little more here.

What? It's what Bond would say.

You constantly have to drop stuff, too. In some cases, prancing around with some key item you "forgot" in your inventory might get your invisible agent capped, or simply prevent you from proceeding. You can bring up the inventory by simply typing "inventory", but good luck figuring out exactly which items you have to drop and where.

It's needless to say this game is a very difficult one, but not the most difficult text adventure there is due to the fact that it's so closely based on a movie. A surprising lot of the actions can be executed by following Roger Moore's every step and just figuring out the directions and item drops yourself. It's probably needless to point out how "fun" it is to play from any aspect, as well.

A View to a Kill was obsolete when it came out, and it definitely isn't fresh today. It's not even a fun retro trip to take; if I had to pick a game from this genre, I'd take one where sudden death isn't looming inches away at every possible step. One wrong or "mistyped" command and you're done, that's what the action scenes are all about. I have another apple from the same tree to slice to pieces, so I think I'll save a little for that. If you want to try your luck with this View to a Fuck, head to Abandonia for mental suicide.

UPS
+ If you're serious, and remember to save at each step, you can find ways to amuse yourself. The game won't do it for you.
+ Having no graphics means no pixelated Grace Jones

DOWNS
- Would someone tell me what was the point in releasing a licensed text adventure in 1985?
- Based on Moore's worst Bond movie (just an opinion...)
- The text parser is 10% clever and 90% retarded
- Navigation, item drops and inquiries make progress hard to manage; most of all other stuff can be deduced by watching the movie closely... sorry, EXAMINING the movie CAREFULLY

< 1.5 >

DOUBLE REVIEW - Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 & Mortal Kombat Trilogy

ULTIMATE MORTAL KOMBAT 3
GENRE(S): Fighting
RELEASED: October 1995 (Arcade)
AVAILABLE ON: ARC, GEN, SAT, SNES

DEVELOPER(S): Midway Games, Avalanche Software (GEN, SNES), Eurocom Developments (SAT)

PUBLISHER(S): Williams Entertainment

DESIGNER(S): Ed Boon & John Tobias

MORTAL KOMBAT TRILOGY

GENRE(S): Fighting
RELEASED: October 1996 (PS1)

AVAILABLE ON: N64, PC, PS1, SAT

DEVELOPER(S): Midway Games (N64), Point of View (PC, SAT) Avalanche Software (PS1)

PUBLISHER(S): GT Interactive, Midway Games (PS1)

DESIGNER(S): Ed Boon & John Tobias

In October 1995, an arcade game named Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was released. It was an update to the original Mortal Kombat 3 – a successful but risky game, which had fans raging and frowning over the loss of many of the franchise’s classic characters and traits. This new version included most of the characters, as well as a couple of new multiplayer modes and a new type of finishing move for each character. Ever since home versions of this game were released on the 16-bit consoles and the Sega Saturn in 1996, it has become known as the official version of Mortal Kombat 3, and it has subsequently been re-released in Mortal Kombat 3’s place on several occasions. Just a few months later, this update was further updated with Mortal Kombat Trilogy, that saw release on the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64, and later, Sega Saturn and the PC, which already had their versions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 available. Confusing? I guess it is. I don’t mean to confuse you any further, but seeing how both games are apples from the same tree and their purpose is almost exactly the same, here are reviews of both Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the SNES and Mortal Kombat Trilogy for the PC.

MOOOOOHTL KMBAAAAAAAT!!!

The Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 line-up...

Fresh off the Mortal Kombat movie train, I was jumping ahead to Mortal Kombat 4 on the Nintendo 64 until I remembered that I had the two updates to Mortal Kombat 3 to take care of. The average of this marathon would’ve suffered if I didn’t, ‘cause at the very least Mortal Kombat Trilogy is an often overlooked and underrated game. Since I owned the original Mortal Kombat 3 on the SNES, I never got around to buying the Ultimate version. It’s a good thing I didn’t spend my money on it on top of the original game, but I would’ve gladly replaced my copy of the standard Mortal Kombat 3 with it – especially since the cartridge was all fucked up and worked about 10% of the time.

The most important asset of both these games is the huge variety of playable characters. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is very much solely based on Mortal Kombat 3, so all the characters from that game return, except for the kind of strange exclusion of Sheeva – who does appear in the arcade, Saturn and PC versions, though. New designs of Kitana, Mileena, Jade, Reptile, Noob Saibot, the masked version of Sub-Zero, and my all-time favourite (no shit?) Scorpion join the fold. The game also introduces the new ninjas Ermac and Rain, who both went on to appear in the awful Mortal Kombat: Annihilation movie as members of Shao Kahn’s extermination squad, and features the return of Human Smoke from Mortal Kombat II as a hidden character. Overall, there are 25 playable characters – even Motaro and Shao Kahn are playable via a cheat code – so I think everyone’s as happy as they can be with Mortal Kombat 3 now. The franchise’s age-old tradition of hidden stuff all across the arcade ladder was a bit lost in their decision to make all characters playable from the start, but hey, 25 playable characters, most of their features and moves digitized from actual human beings, in a 16-bit fighting game? You have to understand that takes up a lot of capacity, be the cartridge 32-bit or not. You wanted this, now bear with it.

...versus the Mortal Kombat Trilogy line-up. Not
a bad performance from either one.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy has even more redesigned characters, actually everyone who was ever anyone, hence the name “Trilogy”. Since all of the secret characters of the past are made playable from the start, including every boss from Goro to Shao Kahn, there’s a new character – once again a ninja (sort of) – a female one, by the name of Chameleon. Seriously, they’re ALL here, and there’s simply no place for anyone to start flapping their gums about how Boon and Tobias allegedly destroyed the Mortal Kombat legacy by taking their favourites out. Now that we have this debated subject out of the way, let’s see how the gameplay fares.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Scorpion tells
everyone that Smoke farted.

Two words combined sum up both games perfectly: BRUTAL DIFFICULTY. Mortal Kombat was easy, if you were cheap enough. Mortal Kombat II was very hard, Mortal Kombat 3 was almost impossible, and these two games are one step closer to being impossible to beat. It doesn’t matter which size of ladder you choose, it doesn’t really even matter which difficulty level you choose – Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy will both fuck you up the ass. You want practice? You get practice in the form of one single opponent, and that’s your first opponent. Everyone that comes after, it doesn’t matter who, is a brutal bag of those combos you grew to hate in Mortal Kombat 3, an endless reserve of the skill to block everything that comes their way, and annoying ranged attacks. Both of these games are fucking insane, but the positive side to this is that the “new” characters have basic attacks that make progress a little bit easier. Take Scorpion, for example – his close-range, knife-assisted combo does a fair deal of damage, and it’s difficult to block. If you’re enough of an enthusiast, you might not beat the games, but you’ll surely have fun with them.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 doesn’t really have much more to offer in terms of gameplay in comparison to the original article except for the Brutality finisher, which is EXTREMELY difficult to pull off, but Mortal Kombat Trilogy has the Aggressor meter, which sticks out like a sore thumb as soon as you start the game. It’s supposed to make things a bit easier. It’s simple: fill out the Aggressor meter by kicking ass or getting your ass kicked, or by executing special moves, and you become stronger and faster for a short spell. It might help a bit. I’m not sure, because I have a serious problem with the PC version.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Smoke pays back in
spades.

You see, the PC version has severe compatibility issues with any joypad, particularly the Xbox 360 controller. Now I know the PC version was released in 1997, when joypads weren’t that common and even the creation of the first Xbox never crossed Bill Gates’ mind, but it doesn’t even work right with an early model of the Microsoft Sidewinder. For some odd reason, the game automatically assigns any joypad as “Controller 2”. To my knowledge, it can’t be reconfigured. Secondly, no matter how much you tinker with the button configurations, you can only assign the buttons for basic movement, the punches and kicks. Thirdly, configuring the buttons yourself is a guessing game. The button options are just numbers, from one to ten. For example, if you’re using an Xbox controller, you have to assign each move to one button at a time, test it, and if it doesn’t work, you move on to the next one, and the next one, until you find the right one. The weirdest thing about this is that the Xbox controller has ten buttons, and the game lets you assign moves to ten buttons, BUT does not register Back, Start, or the triggers as buttons. If you’re a wizard with the keyboard, congratulations – stick with it. I certainly couldn’t.

Both games are good. What makes Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 stand out is the wide selection of characters in a mere 16-bit game, and it’s a huge improvement over the last one. Mortal Kombat Trilogy, on the other hand, has all the Mortal Kombat characters you could possibly want, and extremely fluid controls, IF you can get them to work on the PC. I decided to review these two games in one, ‘cause there really wasn’t much to say about them as individual games, but plenty as two updated versions of a game that was originally good, but now obviously lacking.

UPS
+ Lots of characters to choose from
+ Both games have mutual and individual minor qualities that shape the Mortal Kombat 3 gameplay experience for the better
+ Mortal Kombat Trilogy has the best controls out of all 2D Mortal Kombat games…

DOWNS
- …However, the PC version suffers from severe controller compatibility issues
- Both games are insanely difficult; once again, combos that are extremely difficult to land once, are used as basic attacks by the CPU

< 7.9 (UMK3) >

< 8.1 (MKT) >