REVIEW: Urban Champion

Game: Urban Champion
Original Launch: November 1985
Relaunch: December 2010
Rating: 2 stars


Wow.

Wow.

This game needs a re-boot.

Oh, “Hi” again loyal flock. Simon here and I've been cursed with two related obsessions:
1.I love fighting games.
2.I love NES classics.

The two used to be mutually exclusive and, except for the occasional “River City Ransom” or “Karate Champ”, I had never seen a fighting game similar to the likes of Street Fighter II. Until now.

Urban Champion!
With AWESOME 2 Player options!
Urban Champion!
With multiple stages!
Urban Champion!
With large characters......
Urban Champion!
With a crappy fatality!!!
Urban Champion!
With pure unadulterated 8-bit sound!
Yes, I said a fatality!

Before we get to that, let's go over the logistics. It's a 1 to 2 Player head-to-head fighter. It's set in a non-descriptive urban locale. You have 5 colors on your character (as opposed to 4) and FIVE different attack and dodge functions!

As the game starts out, you are a nameless street warrior bent on getting to the right side of the screen. But you have a secret...you are slowly dying of what I can only describe as a sentient Lou Gehrig disease with a sense morality. Each time your aggression gets the better of you and you attack, you lose health. But what challenges do you face you ask? You must fight your palate-swapped evil twin brother, COM. Along the way to defeating COM, you are assaulted by flowerpots that violate terminal velocity and the shame that you get from playing this game.

Your moves list are as follows:
A+Down= Low Jab
A+Up= High Jab
B+Down= Body Blow
B+Up= Hay-maker
Left= Dodge

Not too bad for a reeeeellllllllllyyyyyyy crappy game. What? I didn't warn you ahead of time? Well, if you want to get out of the car now when we're almost done with the trip, I wouldn't blame you.
I was throwing haymakers the whole time and, if I didn't want to live anymore, I would have been punching COM into the sewer forever. (Can 'forever' be two words? For ever. Naahh, it doesn't look right.) When you knock out your opponent, or when you get knocked out, the intended target falls into an open manhole. (Can 'manhole' be two words? Man hole? Yeah, it looks funnier that way.) When COM falls into the man hole, another COM pops out of nowhere to take his place. I think the best way to make this game salvageable would be to put you in black leather, a black trench coat, and sunglasses and put COM in a black suit and call it Neo vs. Agent Smiths.

I can't wait until Urban Champion II: Warring Warriors Warring



Review in a Haiku
Urban Champion
Don't think about playing this
You thought, didn't you

-Simon-

REVIEW: Hogan's Alley

Game: Hogan's Alley
Original Launch: October 1985
Relaunch: December 2010
Rating: 3 Stars


Do you love light guns but are sick of laughing dogs? Do you think target identification is the best part of a shooter? Do you have difficulty shooting the broad side of a barn? Then Hogan’s Alley may be for you! Hogan’s Alley is a light gun shooter that attempts to replicate a police training simulation. I guess law enforcement standards are slipping because the game allows you a ton of mistakes and the enormous stationary targets are nearly impossible to miss.

PROTIP: Pick GAME C.

You get three game modes to choose from. Hogan’s Alley A is a strict target range simulation with three targets presented. When the targets are revealed, the player will have a limited amount of time to identify and shoot the criminals in the batch. The best thing about this mode is that it actually could help hone your skills on target recognition as a practical skill. However, sticking with the convention of rolling out the targets and then flipping them is tedious and unnecessary. You can expect to spend much more time waiting for targets to slowly roll onto the board than you will spend shooting at them. Imagine Duck Hunt if you had to spend 10 seconds watching the ducks paddle around in a pond before you could shoot them. Also, while the time available to shoot tends to decrease as the rounds go on, it is still variable and may one round may give you significantly less time than the next. It would make more sense if it gradually and steadily decreased as the player progressed.

The Professor and his identical meth head brother.

Hogan’s Alley B is similar to A but has a bit more atmosphere. The target range gets an urban setting and the target layout and behavior changes slightly. This mode is a bit more interesting than the first and it does cut down on the waiting between rounds, but it still gets old pretty quickly. After your first time through the different screens, you will have seen all there is to see. You are still picking targets and avoiding civilians, but when the tedium sets in, it is difficult not to blast everything in sight. Of particular note is the Professor who dresses EXACTLY like one of the gang members in an attempt to draw your fire and bait the department into a costly law suit. If you can avoid shooting him out of spite, you are a better man than I.

This is as good as it ever gets.

They saved the best for last with Trick Shot. In this mode, tin cans will fly onto the screen from the right and you must shoot them to keep them in the air and moving all the way to the gaps on the left side for varying amounts of points. There is a bit of strategy in that the more dangerous lower gap give you more points and it will take quick and accurate shooting to keep scoring. This mode is by far the most entertaining and there is a bit of strategy in how you keep the cans aloft and how to maximize your score. There is plenty of shooting here and the smaller, moving targets does ratchet up the challenge. Probably the best part is that Professor jerk face is nowhere to be found.

It's like using a Colt to sort your recycling.

It’s unfortunate that the main modes of Hogan’s Alley just aren’t much fun. It might be worth some time if you are actually trying to cultivate target recognition skills, but it’s going to take a lot of patience. You have to make 10 mistakes before the game ends, and I’m not sure why the game gives you so many chances. Three would have been sufficient, even for the faster paced Trick Shot mode. Ten chances stretches the games out for far too long. Trick Shot is quite an amusing shooting mini-game, and any enjoyment to be found in Hogan’s Alley is here. If the other modes were as fun, then we could have had a bull-eye here. As it stands, most people will have more fun with Duck Hunt.



Review in a Haiku
Shooting and snoozing.
Self inflicted light gun wounds.
Thank god for the cans.

REVIEW: Donkey Kong Jr.

Game: Donkey Kong Jr.
Original Launch: June 1986
Relaunch: December 2010
Rating: 6 stars



Greetings all nerds!

(For those non-nerds reading, I will try not to exclude you any further. I will try to horn in some words to garner your attention. Like football, Monster truck, rabies, candelabra, and rap-music.)

Simon here and I've been given the opportunity to review the near and dear classic, Donkey Kong Jr. The game itself is a breaking of tradition from the original Donkey Kong. This sequel's name actualy makes more narrative sense. Why would you name a game after the penultimate villain? It's like calling Super Mario Brothers, "Koopa." Tetris, "Z-Block." Football, "The Other Team." Or Metroid, "Mother Brain."

The dialog that I assume occurred after the events of Donkey Kong, go something like this:

Mario: Pauline! I'm-a so happy my carpentry skills of-a swingin' a hammer has-a freed you!

Pauline: Oh Mario!

Mario: This-a giant ape with purple and yellow stars orbiting his unconscious head has-a to pay for his barrel throwing and kidnapping!

Pauline: But Mario, what court in the world would prosecute this 16x16 pixel brute?!

Mario: They won't-a have to! I'm gonna build a cage and capture some tiny alligators and other assorted animals to hinder anyone who may have a soft spot in their heart for this 2-dimensional being!

Pauline: Oh Mario! Your aggression towards animals makes me so happy!
Mario and Pauline embrace.

Donkey Kong Jr. glares at them from behind a flaming barrel and runs off around the corner.

This all happened in 1982.

Let's begin the actual game review. The game pops right up with a catchy tune with a selection of 1 Player or 2 Player. It's a very solid presentation. Retro enthusiasts will adore the simple black background, which is present throughout the entire game. It gives the moving characters that certain “pop” that you can't get with any other game.

The control. (If I could put a Picard Facepalm right here, I would. That's one thing I give the ancient Egyptians: they had a whole cartouche to work with: Bird, wavy water, Picard, bird.) This Jr. Kong handles worse than a Monster truck doing the job of a Zamboni. And, to top it off, the “I can touch that“ meter is waaaay off. For one, you'll be climbing up a vine and your hand easily makes it past the encephalitic red alligator and all of a sudden, he bites your teeny tiny toe and you plummet to your pre-diabetic death. So, you've now assumed that, “Hey, the tiny overlap of 4 pixels applies to damage. Awesome, I can balance my primate off of this minuscule precipice.” ---- “FFFFFFFUUUUUUUU” And you fall. Three feet. And die. One out of three, gone.

You only have one action button, A for jump and the D-pad for the obvious. Also, if you make yourself walk into anything that isn't a fruit, chain, or vine, you will die. Ideal for those with terminal rabies.

The first level is easy enough. The vine you need to get started is literally right there above the crotch-exposing Donkey (I'm assuming that “Kong” is his last name, like the Mario Bros.) Just a couple of fruit-grabbing arm stretches; you are a couple of jumps away from tea-bagging Mario. Why Donkey just stands on the platform after he bests Mario confuses me.

“Ahhh! That purple buzzard bit my butt!!!” Is all you'll be emitting in the second level. Surprisingly, the 3^rd level, TRON, is pretty easy.

Not TRON, but close enough

The 4^th level must be the final level I assume, because Donkey senior is at the top and dead center. And I never passed it. (That's a lie. The game just cycles back around to the first level like sampled rap-music) And, after the futuristic Metropolis of level three, there is nowhere else one can go.

The way the vines hang exactly like an upside down candelabra just teases Donkey from rescuing his dad. The variation of music when you “free” your dad is unexpected for a first gen Nintendo game. The only sense of “defeating” is the frustration you get after falling because you hit your head on the floating platform.

Overall, the graphics are nice and crisp, something I'd like to see in Super Mario Crossover. Sound effects, heavy handed (walk left, blurp-tee, blurp-tee, blup-tee.). The music was surprising. But the replay value is horrendous.

Review in a Haiku

Must rescue my Dad!
That banana's not worth it.
This level again?

-Simon-