Captain Silver

System: Sega Master System

Cheats Used: None

I like pirates, so considering the fact that there aren’t many pirate-themed games, the ones there are should be fun, right? Not in this case. The game is simple enough. You walk to the right killing enemies with your sword to get letters that spell out “captain silver”. As far as I could tell, nothing happens when you collect all the letters, they just disappear and you have to collect them again from the next group of enemies. This in itself wouldn’t make the game bad (although it does seem rather pointless), but the game is way harder than it needs to be due to you dieing after only one hit. I couldn’t even make it past the first level because of this, so I have no idea whether the rest of the game would have been any better. My advice? Give this one a pass.

Kirby's Dream Land

System: Game Boy

Cheats Used: None

This first game in the Kirby series is no less than a classic. While it is very short (only five levels), it is a ton of fun. The level design is fantastic and the music is excellent and very catchy. The game is easy enough that anyone, even young children, can finish it without too much trouble, although there is one boss that I couldn’t get past without being at full health (this is where save states come in handy). From this humble beginning, Kirby would go on to bigger and better things (Kirby’s Adventure for the NES is one of my favorite games for that system) and, although it’s not as high-profile as Nintendo’s other franchises, the series continues to this day with the release of Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii. If you’re interested (and if you can find it) there was a very cute and enjoyable Kirby anime series. The English version was done by 4Kids and I think it’s the second best series they’ve done (after Pokemon, of course). Happy hunting!

Batman

System: TurboGrafX 16

Cheats Used: None

In 1989 when Tim Burton’s Batman film was released, there were several videogames released for multiple systems as tie-ins, as well as an excellent arcade game. The Turbo game, unfortunately, never made it out of Japan and that’s a shame because it’s a fun little game that every batfan should have in their collection.

Every other Batman game was a side-scrolling beat-em-up, but for this one, Sunsoft decided to try something a little different. Instead of being a side-scroller, this game is viewed from a top-down perspective. In each level you go around collecting all of the Joker’s chemicals, dodging his henchmen along the way. You can stun the henchmen with your batarangs and knock them off the screen for points, but they respawn infinitely so it’s better to just knock out the ones in your way and ignore the rest. Once you’ve collected everything in a level (indicated by a counter in the bottom right corner of the screen), you move on to the next. The game does get repetitive, but it’s still a lot of fun and if you like arcade-style games, this is one of the better ones on the system.

Space Battle

System: Intellivision

Cheats Used: None

Considering the era in which it was released, Space Battle is a remarkably complex game for its time. The main goal of the game is to defend your mothership against five groups of invaders. You have three squadrons you can deploy and when one of your squadrons encounters a group of invaders, you move to a battle screen which plays like a first-person shooter. If a group of invaders reaches the mothership, they begin attacking it and if you don’t fight them in time (for example, if all your squadrons are deployed elsewhere), the mothership is destroyed and it’s game over.

There are five difficulty levels to choose from, but even on the easiest setting, the game is very difficult. This is due primarily to the fact that the invaders seem to move faster than your squadrons do and it’s hard to get a squadron back to base in time to defend it. Despite this, the game is still a lot of fun to play and I imagine that if I spent some time practicing, I could get better at it. This is indicative of the types of games found on the Intellivision, which were often more involved than Atari games in an attempt to be better than the 2600, which was the reigning champion at the time. In fact, that you had to use your brain was the system’s chief selling point and it was advertised as “intelligent television”. This is certainly truth in advertising and as a first impression of playing on real hardware, I’m very impressed.

Mortal Kombat

System: Sega Genesis

Cheats Used: None

When Mortal Kombat hit the arcades in 1992, it caused a sensation, both for its violence (which upset many parent’s groups) and for it’s fantastic gameplay and visuals which featured live actors digitized into the game. In fact, this game was one of the primary reasons we now have a videogame rating system after congressional hearings on the subject of videogame violence. The game features eight fighters all dukeing it out for the chance to battle Shang Tsung and his top general, Goro. It would go on to become a huge media franchise, spawning many sequels as well as movies, tv shows, comic books and a ton of other merchandise.

So how about the home version? Unlike the Super NES translation, which replaced the blood with “sweat”, all the mayhem of the arcade original is intact in the Genesis port. The game isn’t terribly difficult due to the fact that it’s easy to spam your special attacks and I made it almost all the way to the end before I ran out of continues. The controls are perfect and simple enough for anyone to pick up and play and sound is decent as well. And, of course, it’s even more fun if you have someone else to play with. All in all, it’s very easy to see why it became such a phenomenon and why the series continues to this day.

My Newest Purchase

Hey guys! I just got a great deal on the Mattell Intellivision (thanks, Ebay!). The one I got came with the system (and all the needed hookups), the Intellivoice module and eight games all with instruction manuals and controller overlays, plus the instruction manual for the system and a few other goodies. I got all this for $50! Yay! I fell head over heels for the Intellivision after playing Intellivision Lives on the PS2. The problem with that compilation, though, is that they just couldn't manage to duplicate the Intellivision controller on the PS2 controller, making many of the games difficult to play. So, now that I have an original system coming, I can review some of the games for it along with all the other systems I've been doing. I hope you'll look forward to it.

Dragon Spirit

System TurboGrafx 16

Cheats Used: Infinite Health

I’m not a huge fan of scrolling shoot-em-ups, mainly because a lot of them are very similar and don’t have anything special to differentiate one from another. For this reason, I like to play those shmups which do try to break the mold and do something different. Namco’s Dragon Spirit is one of those. Rather than a spaceship shooting down other spaceships (which is what shmups usually are), in this game you play a dragon, flying through various fantasy settings and using your flames to battle a wide variety of wild creatures. Since I love dragons, this premise appealed to me immediately.

This game is very good on a technical level with tight controls, good level design, creative boss fights, and catchy music. However, I imagine that the absurdly tough difficulty would be a big deterrent to most players. If I hadn’t cheated, I never would have made it past the first level. The last two levels in particular would be a nightmare for anyone trying to finish the game normally, and the final boss? Forget it! On the other hand, if you’re looking for just such a challenge, then I can certainly recommend this as one of the hardest games I’ve played. All I can say is good luck. You’ll need it.