SNES Game of the Week 118 - Clock Tower

[Snake]

Ah, good ol' SNES Mortal Kombat.  I much preferred the game in the arcades, with just better overall presentation, sound quality, and resolution.  The real draw for me in this game is the digitized graphics, gratuitious, comedic violence, and nods to martial arts films of the 1980's. The overall gameplay isn't as entertaining to me as the visceral experience of how it is presented and packaged. Fun and cheesy set-up, though each character shared too much in the way of basic move sets with each other.  I got memories of this version where it was a necessity to Game Genie code the game to palette swap the white vaporizing "sweat" back into non-splattering blood.  With the current capabilities of MAME and emulation, there's no real reason to come back to SNES Mortal Kombat.  But at least someone made some kind of effort to port it for the SNES fanbase.  

[excelsior]

Week #5 - Super Star Wars


  

Risk your life as a Jedi Knight! Join Luke, Han and Chewbacca in their fierce war against the Empire!

Features

Play along to the story of the movie


Fight your way through the wastelands of Tatooine to the hostile streets of Mos Eisley and beyond

Rip through the desert in Luke's Landspeeder


Vehicles from the Star Wars franchise are brought to life

Play as three classic characters



Luke, Han and Chewbacca are playable at various points in the game

[excelsior]

During my rather short lived childhood Star Wars geekdom I was of course sure to pick up the Super Star Wars trilogy. All three games are pretty darn tough but perseverance saw me through with multiple completions of each game. The controls don't feel quite natural in the first game with the multi-directional shooting and the jumping feeling a little odd and taking some time getting used to. The vehicle stages are a bit of a mixed bag but the better ones were in the late game, though generally the early part of the game is the weakest and with no password system it means spending a bit of time to get to the better content each time you pick it up. Also the stages created to retell the story of the movie often feel like a stretch in this game.

I think there's a good game in Super Star Wars, but it takes a lot of work and compromise to reach it. Getting used to the controls and fighting through the extremely tough early stages can be something of a chore. Although I played through each game in this series multiple times I didn't return to the original close to as often as it's sequels.

Rating - D

[ommadawnyawn2]

This game captured the spectacle and aesthetics of the movie quite well at the time, with the more authentic sounding music, large boss sprites and mode 7 levels. It also adds a slide move and 5 levels of gun upgrades compared to the previous games by Beam. Sadly the gameplay feels kinda sloppy, with a bunch of cheap hits countered with frequent health drops, plenty of trial & error, sloppy hit detection and some slowdown. Other things also contribute like having to duck for certain items to be picked up, your avatar repeatedly jumping from holding down the button, the somersault not being that good and not being able to shoot or swing while moving. It's a very frustrating game to me (though the sequel is even worse in some regards, my fave being the third one).
I also feel that the first NES game had a better sense of adventure and being in that world. IIRC in that one you could also switch chars more freely, though you couldn't play as Chewbacca of course.

Rating - D-

[spanky]

Though it's seen average at best nowadays. This game was a huge hit in 1992 and received tons of critical praise and made many end of the year award lists. Gaming magazines LOVED some Star Wars back in the day. 

At some spiritual level I feel like the Super Star Wars series is the equivalent of the prequels. Fancy, but poorly aged visuals and endless mining of the original trilogy iconography for references and cameos to mask that is ultimately a shallow experience.

I think the game is sloppy fun. There are some levels I think are memorable, like the one where you have the scale to the top of the sandcrawler, and all the Mode 7 stuff. 

I would give it a C.

[dsparil]

Yeah, Super Star Wars was very highly reviewed when it came out originally, on Wii and on PS4. That being said, I do prefer the NES version too since there was more design effort put into it as it the first Star Wars game LucasArts released after their contract with Kenner lapsed; see this post if you want the quick backstory. Even though it was an NES platformer, it's more ambitious with the Tatooine overworld, Death Star exploration and first person ship portions. Super Star Wars is more typical and what you'd expect. It's okay, but nothing special.

Ranking: C

[excelsior]

I don't put much stock in magazine reviews from the 16bit era since they would hand out 90+ scores like they were going out of fashion. I'd imagine the license factored into those scores as well. I bought the trio of games around 1995 and I haven't revisited them in the last 20 or so years so I'm grading on memory of my opinion from the time.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Just looked at some review excerpts at mobygames and had a good laugh.

"Super Star Wars is an ultra movie-like experience."
-95/100, CVG

At the same time, some of those reviews such as the EGM ones (looked up a scan) were limited to about 70 words or less. Hard to express any nuance then.

[Snake]

I think the game holds up okay.  I actually don't play many Star Wars games (NES Star Wars, Famicom Namco Star Wars, the Super trilogy on SNES, Rebel Assault, and Shadows of the Empire on N64 is basically it).

So out of that hodge podge of games,  I find that Super Star Wars holds up pretty well.  Vibrant, colorful visuals, cool shooting, better light saber controls than the NES games, great sound engineering with the soundtrack, sound effects, and voice overs.  It's still pretty fun to me.

Rating - B

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

Never played it. Or any of the sequels. I know they're criticized a lot, but I'd like to get/play them some day, even though I'm no Star Wars nerd. Honestly, the Indiana Jones game in these games' vein appeals to me more. I guess that makes sense, since the Indiana Jones trilogy is better than the Star Wars trilogy.

[excelsior]

Week #6 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time


  

Shredder's got some time to kill - three billion years of hi-tech turtles terror! This week we celebrate the release of Shredders Revenge by discussing the inspiration and arcade classic Turtles in Time which was released in arcades in 1991 and brought to SNES worldwide the following year.

Features:

A millennia-spanning beat-em-up

Journey through ten levels of enormous arcade graphics, from prehistoric to futuristic galaxies.

Mode-7 Throws

Get ready for the 3-D jab and toss that sends enemies flying in your face.

Versus Mode

Team up for double Turtle trouble or face each other.

[excelsior]

I did a quick shift around due to the release date announcement for Shredder's Revenge last week - sorry Final Fight, you'll get your time.

What can be said about Turtles in Time? It's a classic fighter that outdid the arcade version on SNES and still holds up fantastically today due to sprite work and animation that looks like a cartoon come to life and an exciting soundtrack that feels authentic to the property. Throwing enemies into the screen still looks fantastic and the Turtles have a good array of attacks at their disposal to keep the action exciting. The idea to create an adventure that spans different time periods allowed the developers to let loose and make whatever they wanted ensuring each stage has a completely different look and can house unique enemies or environments. If there's a better beat-em-up I haven't played it.

An easy to rank - S

[vnisanian2001]

There have been some cases where I wish we had the best of both worlds. By that I mean the music from the Arcade version, and the gameplay from the SNES version. Yes, I don't think anyone will disagree that they improved on the gameplay by adding a stage, and putting in better bosses in some of the others. But the music in the Arcade made some incredible use of that slap bass. In a thread I made on Favorite Bonus Stage tunes, I selected Neon Night Riders (Arcade version), as one of my favorites of such types of stages.

[spanky]

Turtles IV is probably the best Turtles game (at this exact moment anyway...) and a very strong contender for the best beat-em-up on the SNES.

Turtlemania was starting to wane in 1992 but it was still very popular and I was a huge fan. Turtles was *my* beloved childhood cartoon/toy franchise when I was a boy and a lot of that owes to Konami's generally excellent games. I shudder to think of how bad the games would be if Bandai or Acclaim got the rights to the series.

I knew this game was coming out thanks to Nintendo Power but I saw it in person for the first time at a demo kiosk in the store. It was also the first time I saw one of those Nintendo kiosks that had one screen with a game you could play and another screen that played short video previews of games that you could select from a control panel. I spent several hours in front of these things.

The power of the SNES allowed this game to be much closer to the arcade than the NES games were. It looks great but there are numerous cuts graphically. Mostly to the animation. I didn't play the arcade game until well after the SNES port and it looks very strange to me - almost like it's overly animated. Konami wisely added tons of new content. Sewer Surfing and Neon Night Riders are turned into "bonus levels" now and NNR uses Mode 7 to basically turn the level into an F-Zero course. The new Technodrome level has the awesome Shredder boss and makes more sense. In the SNES game, you get sucked into the time portal while in the Technodrome's portal room. This makes sense. In the arcade version, the Shredder hologram just appears at the end of Sewer Surfin and magically sends you back in time from there. New bosses are added, so are a few new modes, and the Turtles all have individual stats now, Leo is balanced, Mikey has power, Don has range and Raph has speed. Even minor things, like the ability to give the Turtles "comic book" coloring (basically, giving them the same color schemes as their action figures, Don is a deep olive color for example) is a neat touch. The arcade game if anything, feels like the inferior version in many ways.

And I can't stress how fun it is to play. You have so many options for attacking now, with a variety of dash attacks and multiple throw types. It's fast, and the game keeps throwing new enemy types at you and the bosses are all unique and fun to fight. I never really get tired of it. This game also has the distinction of being the first game I ever beat on Hard mode and the ending is absolutely worth it, one of my favorites on the SNES. It's an easy game even on the hardest difficulty though.

The music is great, I love all the cutscenes and presentation, even the box art...I could go on and on. There's nothing else I could give this but an S.

[excelsior]

I think that the music in the arcade versions of Konami games is always very strong and the bass can't be recreated on SNES so that's a recurring issue. They did a good job of recreating the themes though I think and they're still very catchy. From what I've read there are licensing issues with the Turtles cartoon theme and so some music will be changed in the Cowabunga Collection which will presumably effect this game as well as others in the package.