SNES Game of the Week 118 - Clock Tower

[retr0gamer]

I'd be surprised if any of the Americas here get that 🤣

[excelsior]

• Publisher - JVC
• Developer - Sculptered Software
• Genre - Action-Platformer
• Initial Release - October 1994

Join the Rebellion and crush the Death Star in a giant 16-meg universe filled with all the action and adventure of the Star Wars® finale. The command of five different characters-- from Wicket the Ewok to Princess Leia--and go up against the Empire's worst, from Jabba the Hutt to the Emperor himself! This is it! You're going to need every ounce of Force you're got in you.

  

  

[excelsior]

I thought we'd close out this trilogy. LucasArts games haven't fared too well so far in this thread, and I guess this is the last significant game from them we haven't covered. I do have a deal of nostalgia for these, so I'm easier on them, even though they are rough in places. I think this is the easiest of the three, with some of the frustrations toned down a little. I could get through it in one playthrough reliably. I also think vehicle stages are the best here, since they present the action of the film well - except the opening landspeeder stage which didn't need to be there. For those reasons, I think this is the best one, but it's largely more of the same and I don't expect it to change anybody's mind.

Ranking - B

retr0gamer - It's funnier to me if they don't

[spanky]

Also agreed this is probably the best of the trilogy, with the greatest variety of characters, level types and environments. It also has lots of later-era SNES technical wizardy. It's a late 1994 game, an era I have a lot of love for as it seems like the SNES was firing on all cylinders at this point and the stuff being released felt a cut above the releases of the previous year.

Interestingly enough, this was the very first piece of Star Wars media I ever consumed. I had a vague idea about lightsabers and Darth Vader and whatnot but I had never seen the movies. I actually had a lot of fun running around on Tattooine hacking critters to death with Luke's (well animated) lightsaber with very little context as to what I was doing. My only complaint about this is while Luke chops up mooks just fine, the bosses take an incredible amount of punishment and you're just better off selecting Han or Chewie and blasting them from afar. Leia can also throw Kamehamehas in this game for some reason and Wicket is actually the strongest character in the game, you can only use him for like 2 levels though.

It reviewed very well in it's era - the Gen X guys who staffed game magazines in this era looooooved some Star Wars but in 2024 it feels like a pretty typical and somewhat sloppily playing western platformer typical of the era. Levels are huge and sprawling, you're going to eat tons of cheap hits from enemies flying all over the place, and nothing feels as solid as it should. I'll give this a C.

[Snake]

Haha! Should've been Peppy hare!

But Zippy def makes for a cool avatar!

[dsparil]

LucasArt's heart was never in the console space especially in this era, and all the Super Star Wars games suffer from that. Being a fan of Rebel Assault, I do appreciate the vehicle levels, but everything else is just so mediocre at best. I think they would have been better off making an original rail shooter along the lines of RA maybe even a cut down port of it. By this point, they could have even tried to do a SuperFX space combat game, and they definitely could have done a sprite based one. RotJ is the best of them, but I don't see much reason to go above a D like the others.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Yeah this one's decent overall. It's the most feature rich and overall best looking I think. The double jump helps with platforming, moving while shooting and not crouching after landing (as Luke anyway) helps the gameplay flow and they tweaked some other stuff like the initial difficulty curve and enemy respawning frequency, as well as added the password save. It's also nice how you can almost always pick between three different characters.
That said, this is still a pretty sloppy game and the final stretch is super frustrating. It really should've run better too, the slowdown can affect your input at times (IIRC, even the GG version runs better!). Playing these after the NES/SMS game I also kept hoping they would go that route, but they never did. I hope a fast rom patch can be made for each of the SNES games. 

C-

---

Final Fight 3 I'd give a C. It's pretty solid, seemingly inspired by SoR 2 as well as adding the same things 3 did in its alternate paths and run move. But it also feels a bit behind the times in some ways, and what's with the friendly fire?

Haven't played FF2 beyond the first couple of levels. 

[personman]

I do not know what this Zippy thing is but I approve of them nonetheless lol.

When I was going through this trilogy before in '22 I liked this one the least. The level design had some real brain dead screw ups and the bosses were absolutely awful damage sponges. The final stage seriously just being a bunch of barely discernable bitmaps flying towards you was a real wet fart to top it all off. Which is better of the three I can't really say, looking back I can gripe about all of them in near equal measure so giving it a D.

[excelsior]

• Publisher - Enix Corporation
• Developer - ChunSoft
• Genre - RPG
• Initial Release - 18 December 1993

All is darkness. The Dragon-lord has captured the Princess and stolen Erdrick's powerful ball of light.
You are Erdrick's heir. To you has fallen the most dangerous task -- to rescue the King's daughter and recover the mystic ball of light.

Your mission is deadly, but it is your fate. Prophets have long foretold your coming.

Three keepers await your journey, each ready to aid you with a mystic item of great power.

  

  

[excelsior]

With the recent unfortunate passing of Akira Toriyama, I thought it was appropriate that we cover his work this week, and what better place to look than the beginning of the Dragon Quest series. This is, of course, from the collected I & II port to the Super Famicom, which, as per other DQ games from that system never saw a Wester release. I'm going to give this version a short revisit before making a post in judgement of the game, but feel free to discuss as always.

[Snake]

Super Return of the Jedi - Kinda impressed by the variety in this game, from Mode-7 landspeeder modes, action platforming, to piloting the Millenium Falcon in different scenarios.  And it's nice they made the playable characters more distinct from each other, like with Leia's spin attack and Luke's ability to Force Vanish and such.  Throwing in the Ewok was a cool touch as well.  The graphics and the music still hold up well overall, along with proper final boss fights against Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine.

Rank - B-



Dragon Quest -  Pretty much better than the original versions on MSX/Famicom/NES in every way.  Unless you preferrrrr to grind away.  This Super Famicom re-release doesn't just update the graphics with actual cave and dungeon backgrounds.  They rebalanced how much experience points you earn, making it essentially possible to level-up in half the time.  Brighter, more onscreen colors, richer fuller music.  Even for what would be a rudimentary grand daddy RPG of today, I think it holds up pretty well if you're an RPG fan.  The world is quite open, lots to explore, you can do relatively out of sequence.  Sugiyama's music is overall relaxing and lends a great mood.

RIP Akira Toriyama.  I didn't realize the Toriyama - Dragon Quest connection until an issue of Nintendo Power, highlighting the Dragon Quest III release day.  It was one thing to look at his monster design, but the characters on the Dragon Quest 3 cover art is unmistakably Toriyama.  The main hero, Loto/Erdrick may as well have been Son Goku in fantasy hero clothes and a haircut.  Then again, the roundish eyes of the slimes are more or less quite similar to Mr. Popo from Dragon Ball.  Love or hate his art style, I think it lends a fun, campy mood to Dragon Quest that doesn't take itself too seriously.  What a legacy.  While my instagram has been recently bombarded with Dragon Ball memories and homages, I've yet to see one that shows how enduring his design for Slime as a Dragon Quest series mascot - even Dragon Quest IV's line: "Warui slime janai-yo/I'm not a bad slime," still gets referenced in the manga/anime of today like Tensei Shitara Slime Datta ken/Reincarnated as a Slime. Much of his enemy design sense carried over into that lovable Dragon Quest:Dai no Daibouken/Adventure of Dai series.  Love you forever Toriyama.

Rank -  B+

[vnisanian2001]

I have a few gripes with the SNES version of II: In all the enhanced remakes since the SNES version, they play the tower music when you unveil Hargon's Castle. I think I actually prefer how it was done in the NES version originally. I also prefer the pitch change in the ending theme in the original version over the one in the enhanced remakes (C Major to E Flat Major, instead of C Major to D Flat Major).

[spanky]

It's been a while since I played this but I think I've played it recently enough to form an opinion on it. Anyway, I love Dragon Quest. It's an RPG stripped down to it's most basic elements. Like a lot of early RPG remakes, this cuts down the grinding by a significant amount and I always wrestle with whether that's a good thing or not. In this case, the grind is kind of the game. Your main satisfaction comes from killing monsters for an hour so you can finally buy that Battle Ax to kill Wolf Lords in one hit or whatever. There's a minor thrill to it, and the game kind of loses that thrill when you are sinking less time into it overall. The graphical and audio upgrades are a bit...restrained, keeping in line with the aesthetics of the series at this point. But what can I say, it's still DQ. It's an A.

[dsparil]

The original DQ is a classic, but I'm not sure how well it really holds up compared to some of the other early games in the series. It definitely kick started RPGs on Famicom although Hydlide snuck out before it (as did LoZ if you're willing to consider it RPG-like). However, it strips out basically everything that gave Wizardry and Ultima any depth. On the one hand, I don't want to be too hard on it for that since it was made as a game for kids, but I find the original release just excruciating to play from the low experience and gold. I've never actually finished the game before for that reason.

The SNES game is better for the streamlined controls, reduced grinding and some new dungeon layouts. I wasn't planning on actually finishing it, but I still did! Granted that was with fast forwarding the whole game, but there's still just enough substance that taking out the main time sink still leaves something there. I'd go with a B. I feels wrong to go lower, but I also will probably never revist the game again.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Good port of a not so good game. Sure, it deserves some credit for streamlining RPGs for consoles and influencing a bunch of later ones. It's straightforward and the audiovisuals are pretty good here (particularly the battle visuals), but it's just not fun to play due to being too repetitive and shallow. So it mainly serves as a more accessible and quicker history lesson on the first in the series for me, but if I had to replay either this or II at some point I would probably pick this one. 

D+