Mortal Kombat (Game Boy)

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Cassidy

“Wisdom of the Fighting Monks.”

“The ensuing battles rage on for years. And the wars result in our world’s final destruction.
Have a nice day.”
North American box art.

September 13th, 1993: A date which will live in infamy. Retailers in The United States of America were suddenly and deliberately stocked with home and handheld versions of Midway Games’ Mortal Kombat, which had been released in arcades just a little over a year earlier in October of 1992. The facts of that “Mortal Monday” speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions, and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

I know it’s been said a million times before, but the arcade release of Mortal Kombat really was a big huge deal back in the day, and its impact was felt almost immediately. Midway knew they had struck gold, and also knew that porting / converting their game to the consoles of the time would be a guaranteed success. Trusting matters of publishing and developing the conversions to Acclaim Entertainment, it was decided that four versions of the game would be developed across Nintendo and Sega’s home and handheld consoles and all be released on the same day, unifying four major releases into a singular launch day spectacular. The marketing and hype surrounding the simultaneous release was inescapable: Whether you watched television, listened to radio, or simply thumbed through magazines, Midway made damn sure you knew that Mortal Monday was coming.

But not all conversions are created equal. Much has already been said of the quality of the Super Nintendo version of Mortal Kombat in comparison to the Sega Genesis version, and how the latter is considered by most to be the better / more arcade accurate of the two. But I’m not here to explain how “Sega doing what Nintendidn’t” helped their business immeasurably, or how the U.S. Senate came cracking down on both corporations for allowing the game onto their systems in any capacity. Rather, this article is about one of the conversions which is less often discussed, though when it is it is not often fondly. It’s a game which some might see as having squandered its potential, while others may contend it was a doomed prospect from its very conception. I speak of none other than Mortal Kombat… for the Game Boy.

If you need a refresher on the Senate committee hearings on violence in video games, I do go into some amount of detail in our article on Night Trap.

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Don’t Buy This

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Cassidy

“Please Place Sticky Tape over the Lug Holes.”

Try before you Don’t Buy This.
European box art.

Video game enthusiasts love to see bad games torn to shreds. For many, seeing a bad game scorned by others can be just as satisfying as actually playing a good game for themselves. Whether it’s the comedy value of seeing a game’s flaws laid bare, the sense of schadenfreude that comes from how sullen players express their misfortunes, or the satisfaction of seeing your own opinions validated. It’s the reason why the Angry Video Game Nerd rose to fame, for better or for worse. Heck, it’s probably the reason why you’re reading this here article right now! Be honest: When you saw that this article would be about a game by the name of Don’t Buy This, you probably had a certain expectation of what kind of game it is and what kind of article this was going to be.

A similar expectation must’ve developed as ZX Spectrum owners in 1985 stared down a copy of the game on a store shelf. I can imagine myself in their shoes, scanning the box art and wondering what exactly they were looking at. First, you reckon that the five included games have gotta be some kind of awful. Then you ask yourself, why would they try selling something like this in the first place? Which leads to wondering what purpose the title was meant to serve exactly: Is it a genuine indictment of its own content — a legitimate warning to stay far away? Or perhaps it’s the most cynical marketing ploy of all time, preying on the human fascination with catastrophe? What sort of expectation is one meant to develop for a commercially released game marketing itself as something which should not be bought? But perhaps the most important question you’ve gotta ask yourself is, are you willing to part with £2.50 to see the game for yourself?

In this article, we’re gonna get to the bottom of how Don’t Buy This came to be, find out what it’s all about, and determine whether or not it was actually a game worth buying. The answers may surprise you.

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Chase the Chuck Wagon

Posted on August 29, 2016 by Cassidy

“A Dog Can Get Mighty Hungry.”

“Serve your dog Chuck Wagon!® Chances are, he’s already waiting for it.”
North American box art.

Chase the Chuck Wagon is perhaps the second-most misunderstood game in the Atari 2600 library (with the number one spot going to E.T. the Extraterrestrial, of course). That such an obscure game continues to find mention is a testament to the persuasive power of revisionist history, and to how much misinformation surrounds the American video game crash.

You see, Chase the Chuck Wagon didn’t have much of an impact on the games industry back in ‘83, let alone on the eventual crashing and burning. In fact, it was a game that even most die-hard Atari enthusiasts didn’t even know existed until decades after its release. So, to see it referenced so surprisingly often now – most often in the form of gameplay footage used as B-roll in videos as narrators talk about how “shovelware games” helped kill the 2600 – is a curious turn of events.

In this article, we’ll examine what exactly the game is, how it came to be, and uncover what brought about the games’ comeback story… Actually, I think you need to have actually been relevant at a point before you can stage a comeback, and Chuck Wagon doesn’t meet that criteria. So, scratch that: Let’s see if we can figure out how Chuck Wagon became relevant to begin with. We’ll also answer the all-important question of whether or not it’s truly as bad as folk seem to believe it is, or if it can earn the Purina® seal of quality.

This article is no way sponsored or affiliated with the Nestlé Purina® PetCare Company.

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Night Trap

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Cassidy

“We All Have Our Own Very Special Cravings around Here.”

“If you don’t have the brains or the guts for this assignment, give the controls to
someone who does!”
North American Sega CD box art.

The relationship between the games industry and the film industry is a curious, fascinating one. Video games have always taken cues from movies, and movies have more recently begun to take an equal measure of cues from games. They’re locked in fierce competition with one another for consumer dollars, and yet they have become increasingly codependent on each other. They are as unmistakably distinct entities as they are remarkably alike. However, amidst all these confusing contradictions, there are two undeniable facts: Movies that try to be video games suck, and video games that try to be movies suck. To be clear here, I’m not talking about “video games based on movies” or the reverse, since time has proven that at least an occasional good can come of those combinations. I’m talking about movies that try to emulate the game-playing experience and games that try to emulate the movie-watching experience.

For example: Zack Snyder’s 2011 film Sucker Punch tries its damndest to evoke the same feelings from viewers as they might get from progressing through a game, presenting each mind-numbing action scene as if they are progressively more difficult levels. The action itself is heavily game-inspired as well, with the impossibly coordinated protagonists pulling off sequences of choreographed fight movies and attacking what can only be described as their enemies “weak points.” For contrast, 2014’s The Order: 1886 serves as an example from the video game side. The developers (‘Ready at Dawn’) seemed to focus the majority of their efforts on “filmic presentation,” going so far as to force a 2.40:1 aspect ratio with the addition of non-optional letterboxing. Hell, there were even talks pre-release of the game being locked to a “cinematic” 24 frames per second, which they eventually realized was a very bad idea and raised to a more sensible 30. But the biggest problem with the game isn’t the result of any misguided technical aspect, but more to do with what feels like a lack of interactivity. The action feels passive, with far too many instances where your control is restricted to walking as you listen to characters rattle off dialogue; constantly giving and taking back control from you, until you’re left feeling like you never really had it to begin with. A quote from game director Dana Jan shines a light on this design approach:

“Gameplay is something that… it’s a game, we make games, we can’t get around it. We love games, but we also love telling stories, so I think story is always going to be at the top because it’s what we start with. It’s at the top of the pyramid and everything else supports that. I think it’d be more challenging to make a game for the gameplay’s sake, then try to make a story that fits in there.” – Dana Jan

This approach seemed to translate to a game devoid of engaging gameplay or replay value, leaving mixed reviews and disappointed consumers to show for it. On the one hand, developers are entitled to approach game design however they choose to, and should be free to experiment with the medium as they please. On the other hand, isn’t the unique aspect of games as a medium that the audience is supposed to feel like they’re in control of something? By taking away or limiting that functionality, you’re putting players in a passive role, effectively daring them to compare your game to the movie-viewing experience you’re trying to evoke. As it turns out, the game often loses the battle in this matchup. But we shouldn’t need to keep running this experiment just to see the same result repeated and over again: The industry ran enough tests in the early-to-mid 90’s to last us a lifetime. The rise and fall of the FMV-powered “interactive movie” genre tells us all we need to know, and the lessons the industry can learn from it are the sort that remain relevant even as the medium continues to evolve.

If there’s one game that can be seen as emblematic of this era, it would have to be Digital Pictures 1992 release of Night Trap. For a game with so little to it in terms of – y’know – gameplay, there’s certainly a lot to discuss about it. In this article, we’ll try to touch on every aspect of it; including its production, reception, impact on the industry, and that one time an American Senator referred to it as “the nightmare before Christmas.” As if that weren’t enough, we get to talk about not one, but two instances where Nintendo made decidedly underhanded business moves. This article has it all!

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Super 3D Noah’s Ark

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Cassidy

“Make the Animals Go to Sleep.”

The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds of the Super 3D Noah’s Ark.
North American SNES box art.

The term “Bible games” has become synonymous with series of unlicensed Christian-themed titles released through the course of the early 90’s, developed and self-published by Wisdom Tree. Like with so many games that fall outside of the mainstream games market, most folk these days seem to know of them from Internet game reviews. Many likely learned of them from James Rolfe’s Christmas-time videos as the Angry Video Game Nerd, where he ends up hating the games so much that he takes a diarrhea dump on the cartridges and blows up a copy of the Bible (I may be misremembering this slightly). Some might even remember Seanbaby’s “20 Worst” lists from the year 2000, where 1991’s Bible Adventures somehow ranked as both the 19th worst NES game and the 19th worst game in a list that covered games from other consoles as well. Obviously, these are very official ratings from reviewers who never deal in hyperbole, and all of their game opinions should be taken as absolute fact.

Of course, there were those who had actual first-hand experience with these games, likely having discovered them in “Christian goods” stores for themselves back in the day. And while the non-standard cartridges were certainly an oddity when placed in the midst of official Nintendo product, they were the only games explicitly Christian retailers were likely to have on offer. They provided a Christian-friendly alternative to games that aimed for secular (which even occasionally crossed over into what could be considered “sacrilegious” territory), appealing directly to an audience who felt Nintendo and the publishers at the time weren’t sufficiently catering to them. As such, many of Wisdom Tree’s games served as alternative takes on popular games. For example, 1992’s Spiritual Warfare plays similarly to 1986’s The Legend of Zelda, but with biblical themes inserted in order to remind players (and often more importantly, their parents) that this was a more wholesome game than its inspiration. Covering platformers, RPGs and puzzle games, they had answers for all the major genres of the time. And with the advent of the first-person shooter – seeing Wolfenstein 3D bring the budding genre into public awareness – it seemed that Wisdom Tree knew what they had to do.

1994’s Super 3D Noah’s Ark is a game surrounded by misconceptions and misunderstanding. Its place in history has been decided not by its impact at the time of its release, but by modern reviews and retrospectives that don’t seem to fully understand what exactly it was. In this article, we’re going to try to get the true story of its development across, and give a proper rundown of the game and its features. There are some who have been lead to believe that Noah’s Ark is nothing more than a copy of Wolfenstein 3D with redrawn graphics. I’ll tell you right now that isn’t the case; not exactly. But you know what might really blow the minds of the misinformed? The suggestion that it might actually be an improvement over the DOS classic.

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