SNES Game of the Week 118 - Clock Tower

[Digitalnametag]

Not much to be said that others haven't already covered. Game is good but not as good as X1. It does have my favorite buster upgrade in the series. That double shot can melt some Mavericks. Plus you can dash from the start unlike in X1.


Rank: A

[excelsior]

• Publisher - Hudson
• Developer - Produce
• Genre - Platformer
• Initial Release - 11 January 1992

Master Higgins is back in his wildest and greatest adventure of all! His girlfriend, Jeannie Jungle, has been turned to stone by the evil Dark Cloak. Now he must leap into action to defeat the scores of guardian animals and monsters that protect the wicked wizard.

Join Master Higgins as he reaches new heights of adventure on his high flying skateboard. Speed through underground caves in a crazy mine car ride! Go from tropical shores to the belly of a whale - all in search of his final battle with the mad magician, Dark Cloak!

  

  

[excelsior]

Despite all of our insistence of the superiority of Mega Man X to it's sequel, somehow they managed to both land the exact same score from this forum, in joint tenth place on the rankings. Please see the first page for that. I also finally remembered to update Godzilla with Snakes score, so sorry for the delay there Snake.

Onto Super Adventure Island. Actually, in my initial planning stages for the SNES Game of the Week thread this game was included within the first ten entries. I'm not sure how it managed to get pushed back by 100, but here we are. Anyway, this ones a nice and simple romp, but it's that kind of simplicity that doesn't allow for greatness. There's just not much ambition here, with the game mostly being an easier, yet otherwise safe sequel to the NES entries. I find the visuals are interesting, I don't think I've seen other games use the same style. Regardless, they are bright and fitting. Other than that, this game doesn't provoke the most discussion in my mind, which perhaps may answer the long delay.

Ranking - C

[spanky]

We all have games we associate with certain times of the year right? Super Adventure Island is a game I always associate with summer. It's warm, breezy and goes by too fast. It's a game that feels like summer vacation. So it's a bit fitting we are covering it as the season is starting to wind down - at least around here anyway. The kids are back in school, the pools are starting to close and the days are getting noticeably shorter. August is very melancholy for me.

Anwyay, excelsior is right in that SAI is not very ambitious. If anything, it's the opposite of that, dialing things back by removing all of your dino buddies and making the game much shorter than it's predecessors. I think that works out to it's credit though. The other Adventure Island games go on a bit too long and reuse environments to a great degree, whereas every single stage in SAI feels like a unique experience. The difficulty hits the sweet spot for a game like this too.

It looks fantastic with bright colors and big, bold sprites. For whatever reason, I love the glowing fruits, something about it feels very arcadey to me. Yuzo's jazz fusion/New Jack Swing soundtrack dates the game - in a good way. It's all very early 90s. As a series, Adventure Island always felt like it had a low ceiling to me but I think this is the closest the formula gets to making a classic - without going into a full on Metroidvania that is. For that reason, I'd actually give this an A. I run through it once every couple of years and enjoy it each time.

[dsparil]

It's Adventure Island but Super. I played the sequel a huge amount, but I can't bring myself to ever actually finish the first. To a certain extent, it does make sense that Hudson kept catering to fans of the original Wonder Boy for the first five Adventure Islands considering that Westone had dropped that gameplay quickly, but I never liked it in the first place. Personal preference aside, I'd still go with a B. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but it could have been a bit more ambitious.

[Snake]

Super Adventure Island 

Kinda lukewarm about it.  Feels like a remake of of the original Adventure Island, in a similar vein from Castlevania to Super Castlevania IV... gameplay execution falls short. Brighter, more colorful graphics aside, the core gameplay is a step back from Adventure Island 2 and 3, which I really enjoyed for your dino buddies!  Last boss seems like they just copied the strategy from Super Mario Bros 3.  Played through this game a handful of times, and no desire to relive it.  Rent once, and done.  Wasn't really a fan of this style of "time limit by slowly depleting life bar, eat fruit or die."

Rank - C

[ommadawnyawn2]

I suppose the nicest thing I can say about this one is that I'd play it over the first AI, as it's basically the same thing but not nearly as frustrating. The game is just OK, not as good as the later NES games and lacking in creativity and overall polish. The music is pretty great though, which makes it somehow more disappointing that the game is not.

I'm giving it a D.

[excelsior]

• Publisher - Pack-In-Video
• Developer - Thinking Rabbit
• Genre - Puzzle
• Initial Release - 29 January 1993

  

  

[excelsior]

There's a few different options for Soukoban style puzzles on the Super Famicom. Super Soukoban is the purest, with a no frills approach to in-game presentation and no special abilities or gimmicks in sight. There's a large amount of puzzles on offer, with a nice, progressive difficulty curve. Add to that a two player mode and a level edit and this game gives a greater amount of content than any other puzzler on the SNES. As a genre fan it's hard to argue a better or more challenging alternative. I'm going to give it an A.

Ranking - A

[dsparil]

I don't think most version have a step limit, but aside from that, this might be the best version of classic Sokoban at least for this time period. There's a newer one from a few years ago, but I haven't looked at it. Really, the big feature here is the extent of the undo. The PCE game has an undo of 1023, and it must be at least double here. The highest limit I could find from poking around was 1900 and the undo covered it all. I guess having redo too is nice, but I can't imagine a use for it. Regardless, A is right here.

[spanky]

A soukoban game? You're killing me! I did give it an honest chance but it's pretty bare bones and I just can't get into the genre as a whole. I'll be nice and give it a C since it seems to accomplish what it's setting out to do.

[excelsior]

• Publisher - Extreme Entertainment Group / Ocean / Victor Interactive Software
• Developer - Beam Software
• Genre - Shoot-em-up
• Initial Release - January 1994

Rage. And enough napalm to fry the amazon. That's all you need to rescue your men and wipe terrorism from the face of the earth. Those are our boys out there, lieutentant.... Your mission: BRING 'EM BACK ALIVE.

  

  

[excelsior]

This might be the first game covered with three different publishers. The box text given is from the American release, and well, it's something...

Anyway; it's finnicky controls month! (you'll see). I used to enjoy Choplifter as a kid. Nowadays, though, I find this release kind of insufferable. You control a helicopter, which allows for some deviation from standard shmup action, but controls are an issue as is the size of your ship. As taking out enemies requires thoughtful positioning and effort only to be met with them annoyingly respawning, the end result is pretty much that you lumber through as best possible, avoiding as much enemy interaction as possible. There are bosses which don't seem to take into account the size of your vehicle, nor how flimsy it is, as just the slightest mislanding will be met with severe consequences. There is some strategy in choosing captives to rescue and getting them back to base, but that's really all there is to offer here. If you can master the controls the content is very slight, which is a shame considering the kind of weak presentation. 

Ranking - D

[dsparil]

I'd go with a C. I don't think that the controls are an issue here and seem totally fine. I do agree that the bosses are annoying considering the size of the helicopter. There's some good ideas here for giving the formula some variety, but it's really just the bosses that drag the whole thing down.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Good timing as I just beat this one a few days back (the PAL version on default/practice, which besides that puts the desert levels last)! I think compared to the first game (I played it on SMS) there are good and bad points. Starting with the good, there's more enemy and weapon variety, you don't die nearly as easily, and they fixed the scrolling when moving backwards so that you can't exploit it to not get shot while moving (although moving is less dangerous here anyway). The controls are improved a bit with the shoulder buttons switching your direction and being able to shoot downwards while moving at a still decent pace. Some of the added bosses are also pretty good, though I tended to like the mini-bosses more. The first boss when it starts raining down bullets got pretty cheap, and found some of the later ones too resilient, but I wasn't that good at saving up on the kind of rare ammo. Speaking of that I also like how your weapon inventory is continuous.
As for bad points, they overcorrected with the scrolling so that finer back and forth movement during air to ground fighting doesn't quite work and you tend to have a hard time seeing what you're shooting at. It also becomes an issue in the caves, where the upwards scrolling is too loose.
Some excitement is also lost. There's no sense of urgency when picking up hostages since you don't get harassed by enemies spawning in, there's no timer, and nearly all levels are left to right corridors where you have to backtrack pretty frequently to drop off hostages. I think there could've been toggles to activate the first two, as well as a looping/wrap around level structure instead, like in Defender or Fantasy Zone.

I think I would lower it by one step on normal but on default/practice in the PAL ver., I'll give it a C.


Oh and those mobygames screenshots have had their color count reduced for some reason.