No stats this time!
Wario’s Woods Stats and Records
Reply
Tag Archives: Free to Play
Double Dragon Stats and Records
No stats this time!
NES Open Tournament Golf Stats and Records
No stats this time!
Blaster Master Stats and Records
No stats this time!
TwinBee Review
I actually played the sequel to this game before the original back when I was blasting through all of the SNES games. So it’s definitely pretty nostalgic to go back to the original here. The cover still looks like it’s saying TwinBoo to me until I look at it closer. I blame it on the fancy way they wrote the boxart. Either way this is a fun shooter game. It’s definitely one of those really quick one that loops almost right away though. It’s got a pretty fun dynamic to it though and some interesting mechanics even if they take a while to figure out.
So the gameplay here is that of a shooter where the screen is always scrolling up. You have to keep up with the screen and blast away at all of the enemies that get in your way. There are enemies on the ground as well which are tough to deal with since your normal blaster only shoots forward. At the beginning of the game you are able to shoot down a bit with the other button (A or B) but I ran out of ammo very quickly and couldn’t figure out how to get more. I’m sure there’s a way though. For the most part you just keep focusing on blasting away and eventually you will reach the top. At the end of each level there is a boss that must be defeated. There are 6 levels so this may take you around 20 minutes give or take a few.
One interesting mechanic here are the bells. They show up when you blast a cloud and change colors as you blast them. I only noticed white and blue, but I believe yellow and red may be present somewhere too. I couldn’t really figure out what they do though. White seemed to just increase your score and Blue would maybe give you a bit of extra speed. Beyond that they didn’t have a noticeable impact. It’s an interesting mechanic to have to blast your power ups as you go through the stage. I can’t think of any other games that really do that and it gives you an extra thing to focus on. It gives the gameplay a little more depth because now you have to decide what to prioritize, getting the power up or blasting the enemies away.
As always the rewind feature will be super helpful here. Without it the game may ultimately prove to be a little too tricky. These games have definitely proven to be extremely difficult in the modern day. I still think I wouldn’t be quite as big a gaming fan back then as I am today with all of the modern conveniences. If anything I probably would have mostly stuck to RPGs once they started coming out since they always had save features at least. RPGs and fighting games, the rest of the genres would have lagged behind a bit.
As for the graphics, I’d say that they hold up pretty well. The levels are nice and bright with a good amount of variety. The enemy designs are good too and I didn’t notice any lag during the game so the system was able to handle all of the models pretty well. The sound is more on the generic side so I don’t think you’ll be remembering much there. Lately quite a few games haven’t exactly wowed me with the soundtrack but they can’t all be winners.
Sometimes I’ll throw in a tip or two for a game like this, but there isn’t a whole lot to say beyond the obvious. Be careful with going too high up in the screen or you’ll be surrounded and will likely be defeated. Always take down as many enemies as possible. If you can’t take down the grounded units then at least beat the aerial ones. I’d also say to keep all of your aerial bullets during the opening levels because they will be incredibly handy later on in the game. That’ll be when you will really wish that you had some at the ready.
Overall, TwinBee is a pretty fun game. Ultimately what holds it back from a higher score is what holds most of the NES games back. It’s just too short. As fun as a game is I can’t totally recommend it when it’s under 30 minutes. This one’s free so you should still check it out but it won’t last long. There is also effectively no replay value here since there is nothing to do after beating the game. I suppose you can work on increasing your score at least.
Overall 5/10
Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Review
It’s time to look at the Pac-Man Championship Edition title now that it’s free on the PS4 for a little while. I’ve always been a fan of the Pac-Man style gameplay. It’s simple yet effective. You could play it for hours as you try to get a higher and higher score. After a while though when your score is super high you have to play for very long periods of time before you even think about smashing the record. Well, this one’s a remixed style of the game. It’s not quite as fun as the original, but it still works out well and it’s nice to see Pac-Man experimenting.
When you boot up the game you’re forced to run through a bunch of tutorials. These shouldn’t take you long though and there is a second wave that is optional. I’d recommend playing through them as well. Then you jump into the mission mode where you take on a bunch of levels and try to get good ranks. Eventually this unlocks the Adventure Mode where you blast through worlds with a bunch of levels and a boss at the end. It’s pretty fun although fairly similar to the Mission Mode. I think you could have put them in the same category but the more content the better right? I played through a bunch of the levels although there are quite a lot so I didn’t beat them all.
The levels tend to all be about the same in the end with some slight differences in between them. For the Score Attack levels you have 5 minutes to get as many points as you can. You get infinite lives in the meantime I believe or at least it never seemed like you were in danger of losing them all. I got a few A ranks but it seems like it would be incredibly hard to get an S rank. Perhaps there is some kind of trick to moving faster or getting more points. It was pretty fun though and I do like how high-tech the gameplay feels. Even the fact that you can bump into ghosts intentionally to get them out of the way is definitely something new.
One area where the game missed out on though was not having the original game as an option here. I would have very quickly jumped on that. Pac-Man is just so much fun to play and I suppose the developers would be sad to see you playing that instead of their game but at least it would push sales a little more too right? It’s a win-win in my book. My main issue is that the variety of content seems very low. You’ve got a lot of levels to play through here but they’re all effectively the same level in the first mode and in the Adventure Mode they’re all super short. There isn’t really a mode here where you can just free play until you’re defeated and match scores with everyone. At least you can match scores on the 5 minute levels but in those you know you could have lived longer if they didn’t cut you off.
The graphics here are definitely pretty solid. I like the colors and the backdrops. It all works out pretty nicely if you ask me. It’s not like it’s AAA level but it’s all very clear and I like the art direction. As for the soundtrack, it was nice enough. It’s very fast paced which is important for a game like this. I dare say that you need fast music since slow tunes would throw you out of your rhythm very quickly.
It’s hard to say quite how long a game like this is. If it’s about how long it’ll take for you to beat all of the levels then I’d say around 7-8 most likely. Of course you’ve also got the replay value of trying to increase your score or getting the Platinum Trophy. It seems to me like that would be incredibly hard and even a lot of the individual trophies are tagged as Ultra Rare on the site which is not something you see every day. The game doesn’t have a lot of trophies so if you’re really good at Pac-Man then this could be one to go for.
Overall, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is a pretty solid game. I never got the first but this seems like it would be a solid sequel. At the very least it does hold up on its own which is always the important thing. I don’t know how long it”ll be free or even if it still is so I’d advise dashing if you want to play it. Who wants to turn down a free game right? This is the perfect opportunity to make a move for it so you should definitely do that. In the meantime I’ll keep on waiting for a new Pac-Man game to show up. I feel like it’s been ages since we got a big title.
Overall 7/10
Gradius Stats and Records
No stats this time!
Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Stats and Records
Stats time!
PS4 Trophies 11/19
Tutorial 100%
Adventure 11% Total Stars 25
Stage Stats
Championship II
Single Train B
Regular A
Extreme N/A
Jumping
Single Train B
Regular A
Extreme N/A
Hexagon
Single Train B
Regular B
Extreme N/A
Highway
Single Train N/A
Regular B
Extreme N/A
Dungeon
Single Train N/A
Regular B
Extreme N/A
Mountain
Single Train N/A
Regular B
Extreme N/A
Manhattan
Single Train B
Regular B
Extreme N/A
Junction
Single Train N/A
Regular A
Extreme N/A
Championship I
Single Train N/A
Regular A
Extreme A
Spiral
Single Train N/A
Regular B
Extreme N/A
Eliminator Boat Duel Review
It’s time to look at another classic NES game. This is another title that I was not familiar with before. I’ve never heard of any game quite like Boat Duel but the premise looked interesting. I am planning to try all of the NES games after all so it was only a matter of time before I got to this one. It’s definitely pretty reasonable although some parts of the game have aged better than others. I’ll give it props for the mini cutscenes and trash talking during the game though.
The basic plot of the game seems to be that you are an up and coming boat driver and so now you’ve decided to take down all of the previous bosses. This will be tricky since none of these guys plan to go down without a fight. That’s fine by you though. So you go through the levels and keep on beating various opponents. At least to the point I had gone up to they didn’t reuse any character models so that was pretty good. There was a reasonable amount of effort put into the game and I always applaud effort like that. The gameplay switches between 2D and 3D. I personally enjoyed the opening phase of the 3D levels more than the second.
How it works is you quickly accelerate when the judge gets you the signal. The trick is to actually start right before she tells you too, but the timing for this is very precise since if you go too soon then you’ll end up incurring a yellow flag which will cost you 1000 bucks. Once you get this head start you go to phase 1 of the gameplay. Essentially what happens here is that you have to outdrive the other boat to the goal so try not to bump into things. Then you head into phase 2 which is more of an overhead view than 3D and the same rules apply. You can boost to gain a little speed and even jump. Then there’s also the interesting mechanic where bumping into bombs and other obstacles is actually good as it speeds you up. It’ll cost a bit of damage but you can repair it later. You get to face the next opponent after you beat the current one 2-3 times.
After each race you are taken to an upgrade screen where depending on how much money you have you can upgrade various things. I recommend maxing out the damage each race since it’s super cheap to do this and then you can allow yourself to bump into everything. By the point I stopped I had nearly every upgrade maxed out so I feel like I was pretty close to winning it all. The opponent racers are incredibly fast so if you make one mistake then it could be game over. My main advice here is to use the rewind feature but otherwise I’d say just try and memorize the stage layouts. The stages actually are re-used quite early on so after a while you’ll probably start to remember where the next turns are and such.
The gameplay is pretty interesting but not quite as exciting as your average racing game. There’s just only so much you can do while you’re on a boat so it’s not quite as thrilling. as being in a car. The opponent car also feels a little too powerful at times even when you can see that they haven’t put any real upgrades into the speed while yours is maxed out. I suppose it’s to be expected to an extent but you’ll probably shake your head a bit at that. It just feels like you should be steam rolling the guy. As mentioned though, the trash talking between levels is pretty fun. The graphics are also pretty sound. The sprites have aged pretty well so you always know what is going on. The levels may be a bit repetitive but they are well designed.
Overall, Boat Dueling seems like it has a lot of potential. I’m sure you could make a pretty interesting remake of this at some point. While it’s a cool concept I guess the reason most probably wouldn’t make a game like this is because for that you could just make one about cars and it would probably do a lot better. You just can’t top cars after all. Still, I think you’ll have a reasonable time here and it’s worth a quick check. What’ve you got to lose other than time right?
Overall 5/10
Baseball Review
It’s time for another classic NES game. This time we’re looking into the wide world of Baseball. It’s not a sport that I’m a huge fan of both in watching the real thing or playing the video game versions. For the game adaptions, it’s because a lot of the game seems to be RNG to an extent. When you hit the ball you just never know where it’ll go as opposed to something like Football where you deliver the ball where it needs to be. To that extent, I was pretty impressed as I would say this Baseball game beats a lot of the newer ones. The simplistic controls and style actually worked out really well and made the game more enjoyable. I was getting blown out initially but by the end of the game I started getting pretty close. I narrowly lost 15-13 and one more Homer could have done the trick. I probably should have tried for it, but I don’t tend to use the rewind feature in sport titles so I just ate my loss.
The goal of the game is to hit the ball somewhere where the opponents can’t reach it and you score points once you run around the diamond and make it back home. The more points you score the better as the team with the most points at the end ends up winning the match. You throw the ball when the other team is set to hit it and then you shift sides after knocking 3 of their guys out. When hitting the ball you can hold the hit button to keep the bat out instead of swinging it. That way you lay out a bunt and then run for first base. It seems really handy for getting that opening move but after that usually there just isn’t enough time to get to further bases. It’s still a tactic I recommend though.
As for hitting the ball, well that’s where the timing will come into play. Make sure you hit the ball really carefully or you may end up hitting out of bounds or into someone’s mitt. That’s definitely the last thing you want to happen here since a single wrong hit can really make things not go very well for you. The opposing team won’t hold back with their hits after all. Careful when you’re fielding the ball though because missing it once or predicting the bounce the wrong way can end up costing you 1-3 points. Those make a huge difference when it comes to the final total. For all you know that may be the difference between victory and defeat.
There’s not a lot to say about the graphics because it’s basically the same as most of the other NES games. You’ve got some crispy sprite artwork to look at and it’s all pretty easy to see. The menus are clear which is always important. Between that and the solid gameplay you’re set up pretty well. This is the kind of game without a whole lot of extra content so you’ll probably play a game or two and then call it a day.
Overall, Baseball is definitely a fun title. It’s easy to pick up and play and just seems a lot more fun than some of the others like Tennis. As someone who usually doesn’t care for Baseball all that much I was pretty impressed. I’m nearing the end of the sport games on the NES so soon it’ll be time for more of the Arcade thrillers and games of that nature. I’m definitely expecting big things coming up. If you have the Switch Online then there is no reason not to check out this one. Whenever a game is free I feel like you’re obligated to at least give it a quick whirl even if you don’t ultimately stick around. What’s the harm in a quick check right?
Overall 6/10
DReager1.com 