PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Activision (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 12/1985 (JP)

Because naming a game Hero would be considered boring and a waste of everyone’s time, Activision named their game H.E.R.O. cause that’s what good companies do when they’re trying to get people intrigued. Everyone’s like, “Hmm, what does H.E.R.O. stand for? I bet it means something awesome and related to the game. Like, the main guy is a hero, but he’s also a H.E.R.O., ya know?” Then you find out the hero’s name is Roderick Hero who’s on a H.E.R.O. – Helicopter Rescue Emergency Operation – then Xzibit is summoned because you said “hero” a certain number of times in a row. All part of Activision’s diabolical plan.

In H.E.R.O., you guide Mr. Hero down an about-to-burst volcano to rescue miners. The miners are trapped in the center of the volcano, which takes some time to reach, don’tcha know. Before you get to them, you work your way through a number of adult situations: bats, moths, snakes, lava, both vertically dribbling and in horizontal pools. These situations are totes doable because Roderick is equipped with a jetpack, (only in the SG-1000 version, which I guess should technically be called J.E.R.O.), a laser gun, and a certain amount of dynamite, depending on the level. The dynamite should be used for walls only, and- hey, don’t stand so close to it unless you want to die. The laser gun is for the wee enemies who would have been killed by the encroaching lava anyway, so no harm, no foul.

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The first five levels are so easy, you’ll question why Activision bothered producing this bizarre concept into a full-fledged game. Once H.E.R.O. hits stage six, though, this hero business gets raw and the whole rescue operation may as well be soundtracked by Nine Inch Nails’ “The Downward Spiral” (cause Roderick Hero’s going down in the volcano physically and in his spirit emotionally, plus yo dawg, I heard he likes to get down).

Because your progression moves you constantly downwards and the screens don’t scroll to provide you a glimpse of what’s on the following screen, you will never see danger in time to avoid it. Fall down a hole and land in lava or atop a floating bat, and woops, you’re dead! But you should have known to swerve just a hair to the right in order to avoid the enemy cause you’re a hero and good heroes are psychic, yeah? And the hit detection, Lord have mercy. Sometimes a dynamite blast kills you, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve died by “touching” lava in the game, despite the fact that my main character sprite was nowhere near the lava. Finally, the jetpack, which only works when you’re jamming ‘Up’ and Button II together. Surely, pressing ‘Up’ twice would have been more helpful than having a necessary item only operate when it feels like it?

By level 12 or so, H.E.R.O.‘s straightforward boring levels become mini-labyrinths, full of branching pathways and wrong turns. As you make your way through these areas, you see a power bar that you’ve never noticed before at the bottom of the screen. It’s constantly decreasing and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Run out of power, run out of life. Is this a bad thing? Nah, it just means you’ll have to blaze through the volcano faster than Snoop Dogg through a spliff.

H.E.R.O. plays well enough if you’re willing to give it a chance, but Dre help me, I didn’t care for the game at all. Even as the levels expanded and H.E.R.O. turned from a fast-paced arcade game into a slightly non-linear platformer, the game feels one-note. Falling down chasms time and time again is necessary to the idea of venturing downwards into a volcano, but it’s not like you’re falling to complete creative objectives or distinct puzzles. Kill a moth, fall down, blow up a wall, fall down, and so the ballet of heroism goes. Plus, the flaws: poor hit detection, cheap deaths, obnoxious trial-and-error gameplay that’s tacked on to extend the length of the game. Roderick Hero might be a hero from H.E.R.O, but he’s not my hero.

D

Champion Ice Hockey

PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

GENRE: Sports

RELEASE DATE: 12/1985 (JP)

Champion Ice Hockey does indeed bring the sport of ice hockey to the SG-1000, just as Champion Baseball, Boxing, Wrestling, Soccer, Golf and so forth brought their respective sports. As anyone who’s read my reviews of these other sports games can attest, the Champion series bears no signature of quality. Outside of Boxing, none of the games are playable for more than a few minutes, and for a number of reasons including, but not limited to: poor physics, unresponsive controls, broken mechanics, and… well, that’s enough. I’d like to think that these games’ weaknesses are as much due to hardware limitations, rather than Sega’s poor development skills. Champion Ice Hockey doesn’t break Sega’s streak of mediocre sports titles, but it is one of the better games in the series. Unfortunately, this says more about the Champion Sports line than it does about Ice Hockey‘s own quality.

Forget about team names, stats, any of that simulation stuff. You choose your difficulty level (Amateur, Semi-Pro, and Pro), then head to the ice for 3-on-3 puck-slappin’ action. A cursor – easily maneuvered with the joystick – highlights whichever player you’re in control of, while Button I shoots and Button II passes. Drive the puck past the goalie and score points, while avoiding the violent outbursts of the opposing team. It’s ice hockey, alright.

The controls are awkward until you get the hang of them. Making your players move in any direction is like forcing a semi-truck to make a narrow U-turn: doable with practice and time, but you’ll hate doing it, even if you get used to it. Even when the players have momentum, they can slide all over the ice, as if the skates on their feet have zero grip. Of course, I attribute their slippery movements to the ice, but said slipperiness could just as easily be poor controls masked as “realistic” controls.

Other than learning Champion Ice Hockey‘s quirks, there is no strategy you could employ to help you win – other than understanding that the game likes to take things slow. Getting touched by the opposing side will result in you being ‘knocked out’ for a couple seconds, unable to move. There’s also a brief pause in the game every single time before you shoot your puck, as if the game doesn’t immediately understand which button you pressed. The slow-moving players, the pause before hitting the puck, being stunned on the ice: it’s like Sega was determined to add value to Champion Ice Hockey by making the game last as long as possible.

And speaking of long-lasting, the hockey games themselves. Each game has three periods of twenty minutes each, which might not sound like a lot, until you try to skate your way through a full sixty-minute game. Most of that time will be spent maneuvering your slow, slippery players in the direction you want them to move. All the while you’ll be thinking about Blades of Steel or Ice Hockey or some other better hockey game you could be playing because it’s not 1985 anymore and you have options.

D+

Bomb Jack

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Tehkan (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 12/1985 (JP)

Is Jack the most boring name for a superhero ever? Well, it’s slightly better than Ant-Man, but not by much. Thankfully, Jack’s ability to defuse bombs is nothing short of phenomenal. Also, he can jump as good or better than Mario. You heard it here first, kids.

In Bomb Jack, you play as Jack (is he a demon in tights or just a really ugly superhero? Who can say!) and your goal is to defuse bombs at several worldwide tourist sites. The Sphinx, the Great Pyramids, the Acropolis and many more will be blown to the realm of the Ancients unless Jack can defuse all the bombs in time.

“Defusing” involves nothing more than collecting/jumping through them, and while the bombs are scattered all around the screen, Jack’s superhero leaps will easily allow him to collect them in the highest places. Also, the bombs themselves will never go off, even though certain ones look closer to detonation. No, the real threat comes in the form of numerous unknown creatures (I have no idea what these things are – bats? Crustaceans? Beings from civilizations past?). They generate out of nothing and try to stop Jack from defusing the bombs. Jack can’t attack these creatures, even though he’s a superhero and all superheroes should have an attack of some sort. However, if he collects enough bombs, an @ symbol will appear and bob around the screen. Grab the @ and all of the creatures will turn into blobs. At this point, Jack can collect the creatures for extra points or leave them be and finish collecting the bombs.

The best way to play through Bomb Jack is by collecting the proper amount of bombs for the @ symbol to drop. Once the @ symbol drops, grab it, then fly through the remainder of the level and pick up the rest of the bombs. All the enemies will be powerless to stop your bomb grabbing. Of course, this strategy becomes less doable as the level layouts grow more complex and puzzle-like, but it will certainly get you through the first dozen stages.

While the level backdrops themselves don’t change that often (by the time you reach level six or seven, you’ll have seen The Sphinx a couple times), the levels themselves potentially go on forever and with slightly more complex layouts. Each level consists of a pre-rendered historical backdrop and platforms in the foreground which Jack can use to access the bombs or weave his way through, puzzle style, to collect the bombs. The higher the level, the more ferocious these level layouts are. Imagine Tetris pieces set up around the bombs, and you’ll get the idea.

Bomb Jack ultimately succeeds because of the game’s flawless controls. Jack can jump to the very top of the screen if you want him to – hold Button I or II down for as long as it takes and watch him soar like Superman. Once Jack’s on top of the world, press either Button down again and he’ll glide slowly downwards. These actions feel as smooth and instinctual as jumping in the original Super Mario Bros. Not only does the arcade version of Bomb Jack precede Super Mario Bros by a year, Jack’s jumping, flying, and gliding abilities recall some of Mario’s later endeavors. Long before Mario donned a Tanooki suit or a cape, Jack – of all characters – laid down the roots of character-based flight in a video game.

Bomb Jack isn’t the deepest arcade game, no matter who you ask. But I’ll be jiggered if the little horned creature didn’t win my heart with his pure arcade action. The Jack series continued with Mighty Bomb Jack on the NES, a not-so-impressive attempt at an early platformer. While not a terrible game by any means, Mighty Bomb Jack seeks to be unique, but ultimately feels like another early NES platformer with a genre identity crisis (see also: Goonies II, Milon’s Secret Castle). Bomb Jack‘s focus is simple and true, and its this assured identity (and beautiful controls) that make the game… dy-no-mite!

B+

Rock n’ Bolt

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Activision (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 11/1985 (JP)

Were construction worker-themed puzzle games all the jam back in the mid-80s? Nintendo had Wrecking Crew, and Activision had Rock N’ Bolt. Now, two games might not sound like a lot, even for a sub-sub-genre of gaming (perhaps there were more, these are the only two I’m aware of). But can anyone truthfully say they expected hard-hat wearing, cortex-wringing action in a video game at any time, let alone two separate games released within a year of each other (Wrecking Crew burst onto the Famicom in June of ’85, while Sega ported Rock n’ Bolt to the SG-1000 sometime the same year)? Wrecking Crew‘s bizarre personality – Eggplant Men! Robotic Foreman! Walking Wrenches – makes it the better of the two games, but Rock n’ Bolt‘s quiet charm isn’t to be denied.

You play as a generic construction worker and your job is to bolt down moving platforms within a certain time limit. All the platforms move in set patterns at different speeds. To reach platforms on the far end of the level, you’ll often need to ride a platform to the back end of the “job site,” bolt the platforms down at an appropriate location (one where you’re not stuck out in the middle of black space), then move forwards back to the starting point. In other words, it’s almost always better for you to bolt backwards to forwards. If you do happen to bolt a platform in the wrong location, unscrew the bolt and the platform will begin to move again.

In the odd-numbered levels – 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. – you can bolt the platforms in any direction you desire, as long as you’re able to get back to the level’s starting point. In the even-numbered levels – 2, 4, 6, 8 – however, you’re given a map on the bottom right hand corner of the screen that shows you specific areas where the platforms need to be bolted down. Failure to bolt the platforms in the location indicated on the map will result in red screws instead of yellow screws (red means bad, yellow means hooray).

I made it to level seven before I grew overwhelmed with the amount of moving platforms and the lack of time with which to bolt them (kudos, though, to the SG-1000 for handling a plethora of objects moving in all directions). Because the time limit is so short – usually no more than a minute and thirty seconds, depending on the size of the level – later levels need to have perfect runthroughs in order to be completed. If you want to see how far you can get without any pressure, pick the Free Play mode. In Free Play, the burden of time no longer eats away at you; as if you exist in some Communist fairyland where time is infinite and work is done for work’s sake, not for a paycheck. Of course, playing without a time limit nullifies the challenge of the game, but it makes for good practice. Rock n’ Bolt isn’t a classic, but at times it locks you into a meditative groove that’s all its own. Few SG-1000 games can say as much.

B-

Elevator Action

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Taito (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 11/1985 (JP)

Elevator ACTION! ACTION!… action? I don’t know about that. Three “actions!” in a row is perfect for monster truck rallies and NASCAR mishaps, but there’s only so much one can hype riding a series of elevators down thirty stories.

Elevator Action casts you as Agent 17, an unknown secret agent on the prowl for sensitive documents in dimly lit office buildings. You start at the thirtieth floor of each building and ride elevators to the ground floor, searching for red doors and protecting yourself from enemy agents. While the building is predominantly filled with blue doors on each floor, red doors hold the documents you need to collect. Enter a red door and leave it to collect the document you need – simple as that.

Enemy agents will appear frequently, sometimes in clusters of two or three. Shoot them or kick them in the face to make them disappear (or squash them with the elevator, the most hilarious and therefore best option). Mind the agents’ bullets, though, particularly as you ride down the elevator. Sometimes they will see you coming up or down on the elevator and shoot in advance. Bullets are red, narrow, and hard to see, so if you even think they might be shooting, jump to prevent death. Light bulbs can be shot down, as well – both to disable enemies (assuming the bulb lands on them) and to darken the area.

The building’s layout becomes more difficult to traverse the further down you travel. From floors 30 to 20, hit down and ride the elevator like a boss, unless a red door on the side hastens you to pull over. Levels 20-1 switch up the layout with multiple elevators, already darkened hallways, walled-off portions and, of course, extra agents emerging from every which way. Once you gather up all the documents, make it to the ground floor, get in your Agency approved sports car, and fly, baby, fly to the next building. Each building’s layout remains more or less the same, but the red doors are always in different areas and the enemy agents are craftier.

Elevator Action was a surprisingly successful arcade game in 1983. I say “surprisingly,” because while I personally find the game addictive, I’m not sure I understand why. The game isn’t suspenseful or moody, despite the secret agent window dressing. Going into a few red rooms while dodging enemy agents isn’t the most thrilling objective, either. Yet there’s something about scaling down thirty floors of a building using slow-moving elevators that feels so right. Elevator Action is, in my opinion, the type of arcade oddity that could have only been made in 1983, yet it remains highly playable today.

I played the NES port of Elevator Action and found it solid, but this SG-1000 version is slightly higher quality all-around. Agent 17 moves faster, jumps higher, and shoots quicker than his counterpart on the NES. Alas, the price for these features is poor graphics. Both Agent 17 and the enemy agents look like poorly constructed Crash Test Dummies wearing full-blown pajama suits. Still, I’d gladly take inferior graphics over choppiness and slowdown any day. Besides, the SG-1000 port faithfully renders the elevator hopping and document stealing of the original arcade game. That’s really all you can ask for.

B

I touched upon the Card Catcher briefly in my writeup on the SG-1000, but didn’t really delve into specifics. Since the majority of SG-1000 games yet to be reviewed were released on Sega’s MyCard format, I feel it wouldn’t hurt to go into some detail on perhaps the most important peripheral for Sega’s first system.

The Card Catcher is a device that plugs into the cartridge slot of the SG-1000, SG-1000 II, SC-3000, and the Othello Multivision, and allows the systems to play Sega MyCards. Sega MyCards hold games, just like regular cartridges, but they’re tinier and only have a capacity of 32K of data; needless to say, you wouldn’t see a game like Phantasy Star on a MyCard. Cards were also much more cost-effective for Sega to produce than cartridges. Indeed, once the Card Catcher was released in 1985, Sega effectively said “Screw you” to traditional cartridge releases for the SG-1000. Only nine titles were released on cartridge in 1985 and 1986. The remaining two dozen or so games released for the SG-1000 were on MyCard.

Forcing the consumer to buy an additional pricey upgrade in order to prolong the life of the system. Sounds like something Sega would do, right? Well, according to SegaRetro, the Card Catcher only cost 1,000 yen or about ten dollars at the time. I don’t care where you’re from, that’s a smokin’ deal, even for 1985.

Sega’s MyCard legacy transcended the SG-1000. When the Sega Mark III was released in Japan in October 1985, the system came with both a cartridge and a card slot built in.The new hardware could play its own Mark III cards and cartridges and was also backwards compatible with SG-1000 cards and cartridges; the SG-1000, of course, could not play Mark III Cards. When the Master System was released in the United States and Europe, the console received its own card games called Sega Cards. Japanese MyCards were not compatible with the Western Master System, but if one owned a Card Catcher and a Japanese Mark III or Master System, one could play Western Sega Cards through the Card Catcher, which was region-free.

As games became bigger, larger cartridges were once again required. Sega’s MyCard/Sega Card format was retired in 1987, leaving the original Card Catcher without a purpose. The peripheral had a couple good years, though, which is more than even the 32X can boast. The Card Catcher’s greatest achievement by far was extending the lifespan of the ailing SG-1000 by another year. No way that console would have survived past 1985 and the release of the Mark III if Sega hadn’t taken an unwitting precautionary measure.

Thanks to SegaRetro.org and Wikipedia’s entry on Sega Cards. If anyone sees any wrong information, please let me know in the comments.

PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Broderbund (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 10/1985 (JP)

Drol, not droll. I know what the latter means – “curious or unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement.” Not sure about the former. You’re a robot and you rescue… sad girls with balloons? And rocket-powered lizards? Sounds like an indie film, sans the whimsy and “do you feel” soundtrack. But Drol is no film. Drol is a game and it does exist. Beyond that fact lies nothing.

But perhaps I’m looking less for Drol‘s meaning, than its purpose, its reason for being. In Drol, you control a generic-looking robot across a four story map layout. Each story is barren, save for the occasional Roman-Greco pillar and random enemies. The enemy design ranges from scorpions and goblins to flying swords and axes hurled from unseen hands. The robot levitates and is able to shoot multi-colored balls out of his chest to combat any threats. After you’ve littered the map with goblin corpses, a crying girl with a balloon will emerge from nowhere. You collect her. The level continues, more death, more mindless wandering, then a rocket-powered lizard appears. Collect it, and a curtain falls across the screen. You’ve just bore witness to an off-Broadway play in some drunken back alley.

Oh, but then the curtain rises, and it’s another level, this time with more threats, similar outcomes. There are only three distinct levels, each with slight variables. All of them require the collecting of a small balloon-holding girl and a rocket-powered iguana to progress to the next stage. After these three levels have been completed, the game repeats and it’s more of the same. Not at all droll, but perhaps very Drol.

I fail to see why Drol exists. Is the fun derived from shooting enemies for copious amounts of points? Points are achieved easily enough by standing in the middle of any of the four stories and shooting back and forth. Enemies regenerate forever and there is no time limit. Have at it. Destroy! Consume! Drol!

And why are you a robot? Beyond levitation, you don’t do any inherently robot-y “things”; I’m not sure I would equate levitation with robots, anyway. The balloon girl and the lizard are neat designs, but they’re just as random as the goblin gargoyles and scorpions that chase you around. You collect the girl and the lizard because the game tells you to, not for any particular reason.

Nothing in Drol makes sense. Nothing made me care about what was happening at any given time, nor did I ever feel a desire to push forward. I could if I wanted to, I suppose: the game only starts to get hard after you’ve gone through the three levels a couple times. But why bother? Why, Drol? Why Drol, indeed.

D

Chack’n Pop

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Taito (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 09/1985 (JP)

Chack’n Pop has you playing as a weird yellow creature named Chack’n. Chack’n has stretchy legs and a zeal for his girlfriend, Miss Chack’n. Miss Chack’n wants Chack’n to get his act together and “put a ring on it,” but before he can make her an honorable bird creature thing, he must travel across a variety of stages filled with danger, explosions, and caged hearts.

The basics of the game are presented in a handy tutorial stage. Chack’n is able to walk on the ground and upside down on the ceiling, but not vertically on the wall. Eggs dangle from the ceiling that, once hatched, turn into purple pupil-less Monstas (the game’s name for the creature, not mine). Chack’n throws grenades to take out Monstas, destroy walls, and release hearts from their prisons (a true warrior of love, he is). Chack’n’s own grenades are also able to kill him, though; if even a single pixel of the grenade smoke touches him, he dies. Once the heart is freed, it soars to the upper-right hand side of the stage and decimates the brick blocking the exit. Get to the exit and Chack’n Pop begins in earnest.

The best strategy for each level is to run to the hearts as fast as you can and blow up unhatched Monstas along the way. Destroy the cages and follow the hearts to the exit, post haste. Once the Monstas hatch, they are very aggressive and will cut you off at any opportunity. Be mindful of the Mighta knight pushing a boulder towards the exit, as well. If the knight makes it to the exit with his boulder before Chack’n does, you’ll have to restart the stage. Chack’n Pop gives you bonus points and an extra life if you can get through the level without destroying any eggs or monsters, but this becomes impossible beyond the first level.

According to Wikipedia, Chack’n Pop is considered the “ancestor” to Bubble Bobble because of the latter game’s use of Monstas and Mightas, and because of a duplication of a Chack’n Pop level found within Bubble Bobble. “Ancestor” perhaps, but don’t be fooled: the two games are considerably different. Both games are arcade-y, yes, but Chack’n Pop is far slower, and somewhat more methodical in its construction, while Bubble Bobble is a brainless free-for-all that’s really only enjoyable with two players.

As far as I know, Chack’n Pop never saw a release outside Japan until the 2007 compilations Taito Legends 2 and Taito Legends Powered-Up emerged for the PS2/Xbox and PSP, respectively. As such, most gamers have never heard of it. If you’re a fan of Taito in the slightest, though, you owe it to yourself to try out Chack’n Pop. The name might sound like a mixture of Rice Krispies and bubble gum, but the game itself is bizarre Japanese majesty.

B

Bank Panic

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Sanritsu (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 09/1985 (SG-1000 - JP); 1987 (Master System - EU)

Being a banker during the Old West must have been one of the worst professions imaginable. You knew you were going to get robbed and shot at some point during your career, it was just a matter of when and how often.

Imagine working at an Old West bank like the kind found in Bank Panic, then: twelve doors, all rotating with drunken hustle and bustle. At any moment, a gentle cowboy or cowgirl could come in and deposit their hard-earned money sacks. Or a robber could kick the door in, shoot you, and steal said money sacks out of your dusty, bleeding hands. Or a child with a stack of hats (?) could show up unexpectedly, begging you to shoot the hats out of his hand for money. In the Old West, anything was possible.

As the badass bank sheriff (read: security guard with a sparkly badge), you are asked to secure money deposits from all twelve doors before moving on to the next level. You have a gun to protect yourself from robbers and to shoot the hats away from the child (shooting all the hats before the door shuts nets you a money deposit). Later levels will also add bombs on the doors that you shoot (!) in order to prevent them from exploding (?!).

The upper portion of the screen will show you which of the twelve doors have already received a money deposit (signified by a dollar sign in a box) and whether people are standing and waiting at the door (signified by a red line in front of the door). Thankfully, you can only focus on three of the twelve doors at a time. Pressing ‘Up’ shoots the left-hand door, Button I shoots the middle door, and Button II shoots the right hand door.

When a civilian comes with money to deposit, you don’t have to press any buttons, the money will deposit on its own. When a robber comes, shoot him before he shoots you. Sometimes a civilian will appear at the door, look around nervously, then quickly be replaced by a robber. When this happens, wait for the robber to appear before shooting, always. Otherwise, you’ll shoot the civilian and be run out of town on a rail (that’s how it works, right?). After you’ve accumulated money from each door, Bank Panic continues until you’ve shot too many civilians or run out of time or gotten shot enough to warrant old-time disability i.e. an early death. A charmed life, to be sure.

Bank Panic is intense and nerve-wracking and the type of shooting game that Hogan’s Alley should have been. It can also be very frustrating, depending on the version you’re playing. In the SG-1000 version, all three bank doors must be closed before you can move the cursor around to the other doors. Because of this “closed door” law, your time can and will run out on later levels when you’re trying to move to doors that have no deposits and robbers/civilians keep coming to the same three doors. When you are finally able to progress, scrolling to the other doors is SG-1000 standard slow and choppy, further eating away at your time. Don’t get me wrong: Bank Panic is still a hoot and/or a holler, but the game’s inability to progress quickly hinders it at times.

The Master System version is the best version if you’re looking to ease into Bank Panic. The system’s upgraded hardware makes for silky-smooth scrolling, and the bank doors don’t take nearly as long to open and close. Bank patrons – both good and bad – don’t emerge at the doors as frequently either, which forces you to move around the bank looking for the doors where people are located. Despite being a shooter, the game is unfortunately not Light Phaser compatible. Overall, though, the Master System Bank Panic has a natural flow that enables you to succeed beyond the jankier (but still enjoyable) SG-1000 version.

SG-1000: B-

MASTER SYSTEM: B+

Zoom 909

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

GENRE: Shoot-em-up

RELEASE DATE: 07/1985 (JP)

Zoom 909 isn’t just about blowing up spaceships. It’s about how cool you can look while blowing up spaceships. See, instead of destroying ships from the standard two-dimensional vertical/horizontal perspective, the camera is positioned in a third-person perspective behind your ship. That means enemies will sail towards you and it will appear as if they’re three-dimensional and they’ll leap off the screen and blast your face in! In reality, the enemies are 2D sprites “scaled in real time to give an illusion of depth” (Source). I’m quoting that because I’m not entirely sure what it means, but I know it’s true, and knowing is half the battle.

Each round in Zoom 909 is comprised of four parts: the bordered trench portion, the wide open plain portion, the-portion-that’s-basically-Asteroids-but-a-lot-harder portion, and a final boss. In the bordered trench section, you’re surrounded by green walls and floors that scroll by at seemingly tremendous speeds, while multi-colored enemy spaceships race towards you. Shoot the ships, don’t crash into the walls.

You have a fuel meter that drains consistently, but the game does give you a goodly amount of fuel bubbles (this isn’t Safari Race, thank God). Fuel is your life/lives. There is no traditional two or three-life system. If you crash or get crashed into, a chunk of your fuel will be taken away. Lose all of your fuel and the game is over.

Eventually, after you’ve passed a number of in-your-face green walls in the bordered trench section, you’ll be blasted into the vista. The same shooting shenanigans take place here, just on a wider surface area. Fight the enemy ships or stay out of their way, and after thirty seconds or so, you’ll be taken to the almost-Asteroids section.

This area is intense and wrong and too much for me. Your perspective changes from not-quite-3D to absolutely top-down 2-D, and your ship hovers quickly over a large grid without your consent. Asteroids and enemy ships and fuel bubbles and power-ups are littered about on the grid, as well. The goal seems to be to collect power-ups which give you invincibility so you can sail around the grid, unabated, until the game decides it’s time to move on to the boss. But I never got that far. Trying to fly in this area is hopeless. Better to float hopelessly on the grid and shoot your best, then flail about and watch your fuel drain. Perhaps I just need to work on my zoom-zoom skills or perhaps the Asteroids portion is just a bit too difficult. Either way, I never saw the boss.

Zoom 909 got re-worked into Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom for Western audiences because a sci-fi license sells a game more than a generic title. The SegaRetro clan claims that both Zoom 909 and Buck Rogers are essentially the same, save for some “minor graphical differences.” I couldn’t test that claim, as I couldn’t find a working Zoom 909 “machine.” I did find one of Buck Rogers, though, and compared to the SG-1000 port of Zoom 909, the former is quite different. Instead of a fuel gauge, you have a time gauge. If the time gauge runs out, it speeds you to the next portion of the level instead of killing you. Buck Rogers also wants you to destroy a certain amount of UFOs in each section in order for a bonus, but it’s not essential to completing the game. The different portions of each level flow more easily into each other, and you have a standard amount of three lives. In truth, Buck Rogers plays more like an upgraded Zoom 909 with fancier effects and a stronger sense of direction.

I enjoyed enveloping myself in Zoom 909‘s fancy scrolling effects and pseudo 3-D trickery. Blasting enemy ships out into the psychedelic nethers of space is always a good time, as well. Still, despite the visual magic and bang-bang-boom, I’m not sure what the game wanted to achieve. As soon as I was settling into a particular area, the game would fling me to a new dimension for no discernible reason. This wasn’t bad, per say, just vexing. I never knew if I was destroying the appropriate amount of on-screen crap or if I was collecting the proper amount of points. The only goal seemed to be to collect as much fuel as possible in order to keep your ship gassed up and not crashing onto an alien surface. Admirable, sure, but not exactly a driving force to want to complete the game.

If that’s my only complaint (well, lack of purpose and that damned Asteroids portion), I guess I should be thankful. Zoom 909 certainly challenged my perception of the SG-1000’s processing power. The graphics were impressive, the music was as good as any NES action title made by Konami or Capcom (no, really). For as long as I played the game – as long as I could stay alive – I enjoyed myself. Still, I doubt even Buck Rogers’ corpse1 could drag me back to Zoom 909‘s bleak identity-free world of three-dimensional sorcery.

C+

Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Activision (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 07/1985 (JP)

As David Byrne once sang, “This is not your beautiful Pitfall II.” Or was it David Crane? Well, who ever sang it, if it was ever sung, the phrase stands. The SG-1000 Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns is not quite the Pitfall II you remember from the 2600. Or the 5200. Or the billions of other systems Pitfall II was ported to. This is Sega’s Pitfall II because… they thought they could do a better job than Activision? Licensing was an easier road to take than outright stealing the Pitfall formula? Simply because they could, and besides, who would stop them? Let’s go with the latter.

In 1985, Sega licensed Pitfall II for arcades and the result was a highly enhanced version of the game with added bonus features. Prettier graphics! Extra lives! The ability to see more of the maze at one time! The ability to travel by balloon! And for the Harry who has everything, falling stalactites!

Yes, Pitfall Harry’s life is a whirlwind of activity. But even with all these zany extras, the gameplay is basically the same. Pitfall Harry has to explore caverns of the lost variety via his significant jumping ability. He has no weapons and no items to use, save for various money bags and other assorted pearls that add to his score. The caverns are filled with creepy crawlies with specific movement patterns: bats and hawks swoop up and down, scorpions hot step it across the cold cavern floor, and frogs jump back and forth over ladder holes. Sinkholes appear out of nowhere. Water plots can only be swung over. Pitfall II is pure timing and memorization. The game is simple platforming pre-Super Mario Bros., yet it remains addictive and challenging to this day.

The SG-1000 version doesn’t look as nice as the arcade. Harry in particular looks like a salary man on his way home from work. All in all, though, the game has a brighter and cleaner look than most SG-1000 titles. Harry controls like a boss too. Precise jumps are key in the Pitfall series and the game pulls them off well. The only issue I have with the game is how Harry automatically falls through holes, even if a ladder is placed under the hole. I know this “falling through holes” mechanic is integral to how Harry progresses through the cavern, but compared to Pitfall II‘s overall elegance, it feels downright awkward.

Thanks to my aversion to all systems and games pre-NES, I hadn’t played a “traditional” Pitfall game prior to the SG-1000 Pitfall II (Super Pitfall will never count as a traditional Pitfall title). Pitfall‘s style is not the type of platforming game I’m used to, but I was still impressed with the game’s simple, minimalist design. Every room, every enemy, in the lost caverns feels thought out and well-placed. Simple it may be, but few games can claim as much about their own design.

A-

Dragon Wang

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

RELEASE DATE: 07/1985 (JP)

Yes, I know. Dragon Wang. I’m having a laugh right now! It’s ok, you can have a laugh too. We’re all adults here.

Ah, but if only the game was as brilliant and juvenile as its title. You play The Man With No Shirt otherwise known as a Mr. D. Wang (that would make his surname Wang then, I suppose – there’s nothing funny about that), and your mission is to rescue some chick you met while practicing Tai Chi on a mountain. Legions of shirtless bad guys run up to you, longing for your fist or foot to meet their face or ankles. Sometimes the “Sans Shirts” (my name, not the game’s) will get a hit in, especially if they’re chucking knives at you. Rude and dangerous? That’s the name of the Wang.

The amount of shirtlessness on screen varies per playthrough, though. Sometimes D. Wang will walk through an entire level and only see a couple dudes. Other times, you’ll be swamped by bulging chests, flabby stomachs (‘cept yours, natch), and pit sweat. Reach the end of the level and you’ll fight a boss who has a weapon, an obvious advantage over your weapon-less state. Keep Wang’s life up and you might beat the boss, but more likely, you’ll be bludgeoned to death by cheapness. And so it goes, for four mindless floors.

Dragon Wang plays very much like a poor man’s Kung Fu. In the latter, you could time your attacks perfectly to dole out damage to the underlings. Sure, the controls were a bit clunky, but success was achievable with time. Dragon Wang‘s crappy scrolling abilities ensure that your hit timing has to be perfect; otherwise, you’ll be absorbing all the pec sweat you can handle, which just happens to be your entire life bar. Also, according to Hardcore Gaming 101’s generous writeup of Dragon Wang, there’s trap doors in higher floors that take you back in your progress. Congratulations, Sega, nothing could make me hate your game more.

Beloved title aside, what a terrible way for Sega to begin their exclusive Sega MyCard line. All other MyCards released prior to this one had been ports of previously released SG-1000 games. Dragon Wang was the first of many originals to come and was, in fact, packaged in with certain waves of the Card Catcher. No, Sega, you should not have had such confidence in Dragon Wang. No game should make me long for the shirt-filled vistas of Kung Fu.

D

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

RELEASE DATE: 07/1985 (JP)

Upon first glance, Doki Doki Penguin Land appears to be a cutesy puzzle game about a father penguin rolling an egg home safe and sound to its mother. The penguins’ home is found many levels below a pre-constructed igloo, levels constructed of brick, boulders and ice. Brick is dug through by the penguin a la Lode Runner, while ice and boulders are solid. Boulders are easily pushed, however, and are good for constructing platforms and crushing those who would oppose the penguin and his egg. The egg can’t be dropped beyond a certain point highlighted by a line that appears underneath it; nor can it interact with the frozen underground denizens like the Polar Bear or the Armadillo. The Armadillo will immediately destroy the egg with its claws, while the Polar Bear will bat it around for awhile before it breaks. The penguin himself can’t be killed, only maimed by the Polar Bear (just like in… real life?), but if the egg breaks, you lose a life and begin the process anew.

Doki Doki Penguin Land‘s challenge forces you to always think one step ahead, analyze each level, and choose your path wisely. Sometimes the penguin has to leave the egg to shoo a Polar Bear guarding a lower level, or he must dig through layers of brick in order to make a safe landing for the egg. Armadillos will emerge like wizards from the brick itself if the game feels you’re wasting too much time figuring out the best downward path.

While there are usually two ways one could bring the egg down in any given level, some routes – ones with more padding and less enemies – are certainly better than others. Also, there is no option to restart the level like in Adventures of Lolo. If your egg gets stuck in a hole, you have to smash it and start over from the beginning. Accept that every level will require some trial-and-error – again, like Lolo – and you’ll enjoy the adventure.

There are twenty-five levels total, and while you only have three lives, no continues, you are able to choose any level you wish to start at from the main menu screen. While the stage selection might seem overly generous, particularly for 1985, it’s a nice concession from Sega given the game’s difficulty.

All in all, a heartwarming story, yes? Who doesn’t like the idea of a father taking responsibility for his children? It’s like “March of the Penguins 2: Underground Boogaloo” for your SG-1000. Alas, all is not what it seems in Penguin-dom. Once the egg drops into the penguins’ opulent dwelling, the mother penguin smashes it to reveal – gasp! – a king’s ransom of loot! The penguins aren’t part of a tear-jerking Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary at all, and the egg is not their child. The “egg” is in fact a case full of stolen Antarctic goods, like diamonds, pearls, and Pac-Man’s fruit. The larger the item, the more points you get upon completing the level. Sleazily satisfying, perhaps, but at the expense of the game’s initially innocent veneer.

Curious skeeziness aside, Doki Doki Penguin Land is one of the most rewarding games on the SG-1000. The levels are the perfect kind of difficult: just enough that you want to keep trying, not so easy or tough that the game feels pointless. The graphics are adorable, the music is appropriately tense and the controls are tight. I’m not sure what made Sega get off their duffs in 1985 and start developing honest-to-God solid SG-1000 games, but I’m glad they did.

The morally corrupt penguins went on to star in future Penguin Land titles for the Master System, Genesis, Sega CD*, Saturn*, and… Game Boy? Yes, despite Doki Doki Penguin Land being a Sega made license, a Japanese-only Penguin Land for the Game Boy was developed by Atelier Double and published by Pony Canyon. Hardcore Gaming 101 speculates that this version may have come about from a deal that also allowed Pony Canyon to publish an MSX version as well. Either way, the general consensus seems to be: stay away from any Penguin Land not published and developed by Sega themselves.

A-

* The Sega CD version is the Genesis version re-released on a compilation, while the Saturn version is an exact replica of the SG-1000 game found on Sega Ages Memorial Selection Vol. 2.

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Broderbund (SG-1000 port by Sega); Sega (Master System)

RELEASE DATE: 07/1985 (SG-1000, JP); 09/1986 (Master System, US)

Sega’s steadfast love for Choplifter began in 1985 when they ported the 1982 Apple II game to the SG-1000. In this version, you pilot a helicopter across enemy territory and rescue little stick figure hostages from burning houses. The helicopter only holds sixteen hostages at a time, so once it’s full, fly back into friendly territory and drop off the hostages at the base. Any hostage killed along the way doesn’t count against you, per say, but you won’t acquire points for the hostage.

Each trip you take back into enemy territory will see the enemies increase. When you rescue your first set of hostages, only tanks will attack you. The second time you go back, jet fighters will fly in and shoot hard-to-see, accurate missiles at you. Third time in, it’s air mines that don’t shoot, but do get in your way. The first time you collect hostages, you don’t want to lose any of them. You love them, especially their little hand-waving gestures. But as time goes on and the enemy presence grows more severe, life becomes cheap. Your attitude shifts from “That tank just shot a hostage?! I’ll burn it alive!” to “Get in my helicopter or die already, you maggots!” Harsh, but real, just like war.

The SG-1000 version of Choplifter looks fantastic, sounds amazing, and plays astonishingly well. The helicopter controls in particular are some of the tightest I’ve felt on the system. Cor blimey, is this game tough, though. Once the jet fighters get called in, you have to tiptoe your way across the desert (as much as helicopter can tiptoe, anyway) to get back to where your hostages are located. If you fly like a banshee spitting hot fire, you’re guaranteed to get hit by the jet fighters barely visible pixel bullets or by the fighter itself. I made it to the second level once, and the difficulty there was even more frightening. Instead of land hostages, you’re rescuing hostages stranded at sea. Right from the time you enter into enemy territory, you’re bombarded by ships and jet fighters and air mines all at once. Let’s just say a certain junior pilot – we’ll call him D. Cornelius – lost his wings in a hurry.

Sega’s liaison with Choplifter didn’t end with the SG-1000. In 1985 – the same year the SG-1000 port emerged – Sega remade Choplifter for the arcades. It’s easy to see why Sega would do this: Choplifter‘s sharp bursts of difficulty coupled with addictive gameplay had an arcade feel, despite first being released for computers.

For the arcade, Sega added additional enemies like anti-aircraft guns (tailored more to the level’s landscape than to the amount of trips you make into the level), a point system (which could also be found in the SG-1000 port, but not the original Apple II game), and a fuel meter which could only be filled by rescuing hostages. In the SG-1000/Apple II, the game would continue even if you had lost most of your hostages, but in the arcade, you had to rescue at least twenty hostages before you could proceed to the next level. If the arcade version sounds infinitely harder than the already difficult original, that’s because it was. Sega saw that there was millions of quarters to be had and they went for it.

The Master System version of Choplifter is a straight arcade port. The landscapes are more colorful and detailed, and the challenge is that much greater. Instead of the enemies being doled out to you in small portions, every type of enemy – tank, anti-aircraft, jet fighter, jeep with gunner – is now coming at you all at once, all the time. Thankfully, the jet fighters aren’t as difficult to avoid here, but the sheer volume of enemies unleashed on you from the first level onward is a sight to behold. Now, there’s only four stages, so the insane difficulty makes sense (gotta get your money’s worth, yeah?). But if you’re not in the mood to be shot at from every direction, the increased enemy presence is overwhelming and, frankly, not very enjoyable.

Choplifter doesn’t seem to be remembered much today, despite having a couple sequels portioned to the Game Boy, Game Gear, and SNES in the early 90s. It does hold the distinction of being one of the few, if only, games to begin its life on a computer before being remade for the arcade, then ported back to a home console. What a trippy, overly aggressive journey.

SG-1000: B

MASTER SYSTEM: B-

Space Invaders

PLAYERS: 1-2 alternating

PUBLISHER: Sega

DEVELOPER: Taito (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 06/1985 (JP)

Billions of dollars in quarters spent. Yen shortages. Single-handedly kick-started the golden era of arcade games. Quadrupled the Atari 2600’s sales when released for the console. Space Invaders is one of the most successful and iconic video games of all time. And until I was forced to play the game for this review, I had never played it before. Ever.

I was born in the mid-80s and started seriously gaming in the late 80s/early 90s, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Space Invaders was never on my radar to play. I saw it around, of course. Arcades, bowling alleys, grungy Greyhound bus stops. I knew what the game entailed: rows of alien creatures are “invading” your laser cannon’s turf, one horizontal movement at a time. Shoot ’em before they land or shoot you, then do it again until you run out of lives. All for the biggest high score ’cause that’s what gamers cared about in those days. Simple, potentially addicting stuff, but by the time I got to the arcades, I was too obsessed with The Simpsons and Street Fighter II to care. Space Invaders may have been great, I reasoned, but these other games are greater because they’re newer. I was young, inexperienced with life, and stubborn in my point-of-view: there was no way I was going to play some silly arcade game from my parents’ time.

It took my desire to play every Sega game on every console to force me to play Space Invaders for the first time. To Sega’s credit, the SG-1000 port is solid. The aliens, shields, and the laser cannon have been rendered in glorious Technicolor (well… SG-1000 color, anyway). The laser cannon glides smoothly across the bottom of the screen. The music, such as it is, remains tense and ominous. And the game is hard. The lasers the aliens shoot travel fast to your laser cannon’s brain. I had to train myself to move the cannon every time I saw a laser fall from the aliens’ centers, regardless of if the laser was close to me or not. Also, when that last alien came high-tailing it down in my direction, it took all my self-control not to throw the controller at the screen. Buggers move fast.

I’m not ashamed to say I only reached the second level. I’m sure I could get better with time and practice, but I have no desire. Space Invaders, as well-made as it is, isn’t my game. I didn’t grow up with it. I have absolutely no memories of it. I’m coming into the game after its initial release, as an almost-thirty-year-old with about twenty five years of gaming behind me. This is not the mindset in which one loves Space Invaders. I respect Space Invaders for breaking new ground and inspiring legions of people to get into gaming as a hobby or a career, but the game was for a different generation, a different place and time.

I imagine being in a dark arcade as a child in 1980. Rush, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd are playing full-blast on the overhead speakers. Teenagers are smoking and playing games and looking cool. Crowds are gathered around various machines, including Space Invaders. I watch as someone dominates wave after wave of aliens and I think, Yes, I want to do this too. I want to be as good as this person. So I try and I fail because I’ve never played the game before, but I want to get better because Space Invaders is what’s happening. This is the type of environment I would have needed to be in to appreciate Space Invaders as an adult. The scene, the mood, and the moment in time lend itself to a deeper union with the game. It isn’t Space Invaders‘ fault that I’m a couple decades late to its party, nor is it my fault for not making an effort to get here sooner. I just got caught up, is all.

B-

GP World

PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

GENRE: Racing

RELEASE DATE: 04/1985 (JP)

Speeding around the globe in a F-1 Formula car is a vagabond’s pursuit. You don’t drive for euro-sign bags full of money, glamour shots, or command of supermodels. You drive for the sharp turns, the squeal of the brakes, the visions of heaven as you narrowly escape death. No game can embody the recklessness of traveling around courses at 300 km/hr, but GP World – for all its technical limitations – comes close. The threat of death as you drift around a dangerous corner won’t be real, but the sweat dripping from your furrowed brow will be.

Canada has the easiest course layout, so you’ll begin your world-encompassing mega race there. The goal in GP World isn’t to take first place, but to beat the qualifying time listed at the top of the screen. Race two laps around the course before your timer reaches the qualifying time limit, and you’ll move on to the next course. Other F-1 drivers are present to give you grief, as well. Many will know their place and allow you to pass, but some will try to bump you off the road, like some common wastrel. Pay the fools no mind: they are jealous of your luscious jet-black wavy hair and expensive Italian sneakers.

The races continue through America, Brazil, Spain, France, and others, with each successive country’s courses increasing in difficulty. Luckily, controlling your car is as smooth as a bathtub full of luxury oils. Accelerate with button II, brake with button I, and shift gears with the joystick. Most races, it’s possible to accelerate with abandon, but braking is imperative as you caress tight turns; particularly since other drivers tend to linger directly in front of your car as you turn. If you crash into them at full speed, you’ll explode, but if you ease off the gas, you’ll only bump their car. There is no penalty for crashing, however, other than lost time and perhaps your ego. Run your fingers through your hair and get back on track.

The level editor is GP World‘s one minor revelation, even if it is restricted. Custom levels are constructed atop a grid where you can add and subtract pieces of the course at any given point. However, you are limited to the pieces the editor gives you, and those pieces are always based on the curvature of the last piece you placed. For example, if you place a straight line, you’re then given the choice of another straight line, a curve to the left, and a curve to the right. Certain pieces when placed, however, give you only one option to build upon, leaving your course design relatively limited. Your level is forced to stay within the grid, so there’s no building outside of it. I had to constantly rethink the level I made to stay within the narrow parameters of the editor. In the end, the level just wouldn’t work. If you’re playing along with these games (something I encourage all readers to do), let me know if you had better luck than I did with the editor.

The SG-1000 GP World is not the end of the story. Originally, the game began life as a Laserdisc arcade game in 1984. Sega took real first-person road footage and placed pre-rendered Formula 1 sprites on top of it. As you can see in the screenshot below, Father Time has not been kind to these visual pyrotechnics. Perhaps the game looked breathtaking in 1984 when it was first released, but looking at screenshots of the game now brings confusion to one’s soul. Those car sprites don’t belong on that real road, and it’s hard to trick your brain otherwise.

Obviously, the arcade GP World couldn’t be ported to the SG-1000 as it was. A downgrade was necessary to even make the game work. Unlike many of Sega’s SG-1000 arcade ports, however, a downgrade was just what the road crew ordered. Even after almost three decades, GP World for the SG-1000 remains genuine class, while the arcade is now a minor novelty. Stay classy, readers.

B+

*image courtesy of Launchbox Games Database

Zaxxon

PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

GENRE: Shoot-em-up

RELEASE DATE: 02/1985 (JP)

Zaxxon was a lot of “firsts,” both for the arcade industry and for Sega as a company. It was one of Sega’s first big worldwide successes ever – crazy, considering they’d been making games for about sixteen years at this point. Zaxxon was the first game to employ axonometric or isometric projection which gave it a pseudo three-dimensional look. Because isometric projection forced the player to view the game from a third-person diagonal angle, Zaxxon has also been labeled the first “diagonal” shoot-em-up. Finally, Zaxxon was the first arcade game to ever be advertised on television. Home video games had received commercials before, but many of them were bare-bones affairs, content only to show people playing the game at home. Thanks to Paramount Pictures stake in Sega at the time, the Zaxxon commercial had a healthy budget: $150,000, which today would be close to $370,000. The money was well worth it.

The 3-D might be laughable by today’s standards, but in 1982, it was so good Sega didn’t need to show the game. Watch the commercial again. The only time you even see Zaxxon in action is at the nine second mark when the camera briefly turns to face the arcade screen.

Brilliant marketing and technical trickery may have made Zaxxon a hit in 1982, but graphics aside, the game has not aged well at all. Your space craft is stiff and cumbersome to control, and your firepower is often too slow against the threats of the enemy fortress. Even with an altitude meter that allows you to adjust the ship’s height, navigating through the fortress – comprised of brick walls of varying heights, turrets, missiles, and electrical barriers – is a nightmare. Unless your ship is at the highest point it can go on the meter, or the ship’s shadow can be seen on the surface of the fortress, you won’t know how high or low your ship is flying.

While you’re trying to survive the fortress’s contours, you also have to blow up fuel drums to re-fuel your gas-hungry spacecraft. As if flying through Satan’s convoluted space lair wasn’t enough! After you escape from the fortress, you have to attack groups of enemy space craft from varying altitudes. This portion of the game is pure luck, but you can’t pass on to the next section without defeating a certain number of craft. Eventually, the levels will just repeat with slightly different layouts and more fire power directed at you.

I expect older arcade games to have difficulty curves, but Zaxxon‘s difficulty stems less from its generic gameplay and more from its ground-breaking viewpoint. Had Zaxxon just been a standard horizontal or vertical shump like Sega’s earlier Star Jacker, the game would be a lot easier to control – and a lot less interesting.

The SG-1000 port of Zaxxon slightly improves upon the game’s foundation, even as it’s unable to replicate the graphical achievements of the arcade. Although the SG-1000 does an adequate job of recreating the isometric perspective (unlike the worthless Congo Bongo port from two years prior), the scrolling is choppy and might be considered atrocious, if it didn’t allow your ship to fly through the fortress with a greater amount of ease.

Whereas Zaxxon arcade focused more on piloting your ship through a compact and tightly woven space fortress, Zaxxon SG-1000 is about destroying as many fuel drums as you can. The surface of the fortress isn’t filled with nearly as many elements as it was in the arcade. Homing missiles are gone, thank God. Turrets and electrical barriers remain, though they’re not as difficult to navigate through. Most importantly, you’re never left wondering what altitude your ship is in the SG-1000 version. Because of the sparse fortress surface, your ship only needs to be settled directly on the surface or high above the brick walls; only when you encounter an electrical barrier do you need to place your ship’s altitude in the middle.

The problem with the SG-1000 port is that it becomes stale quickly. The levels are essentially the same, and the goal of destroying enemy space craft before advancing has been eliminated. Revel the prospect of blowing up legions of fuel drums and going through electrical barriers ’cause that’s all this version of Zaxxon has to offer. The port remains a marginally better take on the arcade, but without any significant challenge to frustrate or gee-whiz special effects to distract, Zaxxon is yet another example of how limited the SG-1000 actually was.

As the commercial foretold, Zaxxon remains an outstanding example of style over substance. Take away the arcade game’s colorful “three-dimensional” depths and there’s the SG-1000 port, infinitely more playable, but ultimately shallow. Play Zaxxon in the arcade, as intended, and you have a game that stuns your senses – even as it robs you of your quarters.

Arcade: D

SG:1000: D+

Girl’s Garden

PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

GENRE: Arcade

RELEASE DATE: 01/1985 (JP)

Editor’s note - I wrote this in 2014 when both the world and I were in a different place. Please keep this in mind when you read it…

Girl’s Garden is a cornucopia of whimsy, an exploration of childhood love in pixelated form. Or, from another perspective, Girl’s Garden is anti-feminist propaganda that celebrates girls as creatures who exist solely to give boys pleasure. I’ll be honest, my eyes roll back into my head when I ponder the latter point. I constantly question whether critics should read so deeply into games, period, let alone a thirty-year-old SG-1000 game. But as much as I think certain aspects of the gaming landscape have become over-analyzed in recent years, both interpretations of Girl’s Garden could be argued reasonably. Given the game’s lighthearted disposition, I doubt Sega intended players to view Girl’s Garden as a strictly chauvinist experience, but that doesn’t make the sexist undertones any less curious.

In Girl’s Garden, you control a young girl named Papri. Papri must collect a bouquet of flowers to take to her boyfriend, Minto. If Papri doesn’t get the flowers to Minto in time, he will leave her for another girl, Cocco. The flowers are collected in a large field that also teems with bees and bears. Bees are your allies and will often drop pieces of fruit worth bonus points, extra lives, and even pre-made bouquets of flowers. Bears, however, get aggravated when they see you, and will not hesitate to maul you unless you give them some honey. Once bears see the honey, they are distracted and you’re free to move near them for a limited time.

You start the game with five honeypots in tow, but these will not last long unless you use them sparingly. Honey is only-reacquired when you begin another level or if you collect a bee that’s pollinating a flower. Flowers in the field come in one of three types: pre-bloom, full bloom, or dead and wilting. Only the blooming flowers count towards your bouquet; if you collect a budding flower, it adds nothing to your count, and if you collect a wilting flower, it eliminates half of the flowers you’ve already collected. Once you’ve collected enough flowers, you take them to Minto’s house. He accepts them with joy, the field magically blossoms with rows of flowers, and your love becomes an undying love – until the next level when Minto demands another bouquet of different flowers.

Let’s analyze what Girl’s Garden asks Papri to do: risk her life to collect flowers for a guy who is moments away from leaving her for another girl. Notice the “time bar” at the top of the screen. Papri the valiant warrior-ess on the left side, Cocco the mistress on the right side, Minto the unfaithful ne’er-do-well in the middle. As Papri collects flowers in the level, Minto walks slowly towards Cocco on the time bar. But when Papri delivers the bouquet to Minto in the level, Minto in the time bar comes sprinting back towards her (the less time it takes him to sprint back to Papri, the more bonus points you receive). Minto doesn’t love Papri at all. He loves the flowers and the attention. Whether Papri knows this or not is unclear. But as the game continues and Papri continues to collect flowers with an oblivious smile on her face, it’s clear she’s unwilling or unable to face reality.

Yes, Girl’s Garden doesn’t show relationships in the best light, but it’s important to remember that Papri, Minto, and Cocco are young kids, probably no more than ten. Relationships at that age usually involve nothing more than talking at recess or holding hands (or delivering bouquets of flowers?), and often end quickly. As for Papri’s exploration of the bear-infested fields, how often do kids intentionally seek out danger or get themselves into danger without thinking? If Papri likes flowers herself, there’s a chance she would risk wandering into the field even if Minto wasn’t in her life. If nothing else, Girl’s Garden shows that kids are gonna kid. I wonder if Sega would have portrayed the relationships as harmless as they did if the characters were adults.

I’d like to deem Girl’s Garden as a wholly innocent kids game, but the final product feels more like a demented Disney film. Underneath the cheerful coating and chipper music is a dark, depressing story of a young girl who doesn’t want to give up the love of a jerk, even if it means her death. No element of the game is on poor Papri’s side. The bees are enablers, helping her to collect flowers so she can prolong the inevitable break-up. The bears are trying to maul her for being in their space. Minto only cares about what he can get from Papri. Cocco isn’t thinking about Papri at all. Sure, Papri and Minto could live happily ever after, surrounded by thousands of suffocating flowers. But Girl’s Garden only ends when Papri is no longer able to defend herself with honey. After the fourth stage, the game repeats with unbelievable amounts of bears, and the fields become that much harder to navigate. Papri is forced to collect flowers for Minto until her inevitable death. I wouldn’t call Girl’s Garden anti-female by any means, but the actions of the characters don’t paint the game’s intentions in a good light.

Taken as just a game and not an exploration of controlling male-female relationships, Girl’s Garden is one of the best experiences you can have on the SG-1000. The graphics and atmosphere are bright and colorful, the controls sublime, and the flower-collecting gameplay, though not wholly original, feels like a breath of fresh country air compared to the SG-1000’s typical monotonous dreck. Also, troubling themes aside, how many games at the time – heck, even now – allowed you to play as a girl and a little girl at that? One gets the sense that Sega’s heart was in the right place with Girl’s Garden, even if their execution was misguided.

As a SG-1000 game in 1984: A-

If Girl’s Garden was released as an indie game today: C

Flicky

PLAYERS: 1

PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER Sega

GENRE: Arcade

RELEASE DATE: 12/1984 (SG-1000); 01/91, 04/91 (Mega Drive/Genesis); 03/18/1994 (Mega-CD); 2/28/1997 (Saturn)

Flicky was a brief flash of inspiration for Sega, and up until 1984, the closest a Sega-developed game had come to mimicking Nintendo’s colorful character-driven style. Flicky, the Piopios, the Nyannyan cats, and the Choro Iguana designs burst with life and personality. The story – help Flicky rescue her baby birds from the perils of the outside world – was heartfelt and relatable. Most importantly, Flicky‘s short bursts of addictive gameplay coupled with its wonderfully-rendered characters gave the game a well-rounded depth unlike any in Sega’s catalog up to this point. Flicky isn’t quite a masterpiece, but to my mind, the game heralded a new wave of creativity in their arcade output, while also foreshadowing their future mascot rivalry with Nintendo.

In Flicky, you control the blue bird Flicky around different levels of an apartment building. Her babies, the Piopios, are adrift and must be collected by Flicky and taken to the exit. The birds amass behind Flicky in a single-line formation and will stay behind her unless they’re disrupted or taken to the exit. The more birds you deliver to the exit at one time, the more bonus points you’ll acquire; extra points are also given for beating the level quickly.

The Nyan cats emerge from litter boxes to stop Flicky from her exodus. If the cats pounce on Flicky, she’ll die, but if the cats pounce on her birds, they will disperse away from Flicky, forcing her to collect them again. The Piopios with sunglasses have rebellious minds of their own and will run all over the place if touched by a Nyan, while the goody-goody Piopios without sunglasses will always stay close to where they were displaced from Flicky. There’s miscellaneous debris – telephones, flowerpots, teacups – scattered around the level that Flicky can throw at the cats to make them disappear for a brief window of time. Later stages add in Choro, a fast-crawling iguana who never stops running across and around the entire stage.

There are forty-eight levels in total, each one consisting of a wraparound screen that gives the illusion of greater space. Unlike one-screen games where the action is bound to what the player sees, wraparound screens enable the action to move on a continuous loop. Flicky can move forever to the right or to the left, bounding from platform to platform, but she’ll never get away from the Nyan cats until she delivers her birds to the exit. For some players, the wraparound screen can make navigating the levels confusing, but Flicky‘s levels are never so complex as to get you lost; give the game time and your mind will adjust. After you beat all forty-eight levels, the levels will repeat with slightly different elements. Repeating levels were a standard element in the majority of arcade titles at the time, but in Flicky, the implication behind them – that Flicky’s war to free her babies is a never-ending one – is quite sad.

While the arcade version of Flicky is cute and colorful, the SG-1000 version is drab and barely playable. Gone are any details from the arcade version. The vintage wallpaper from the apartment has been replaced with monotonous green and blue backgrounds. Flicky, the Piopios, and the Nyan cats are all bizarro stencil copies of their former selves. Graphics aren’t everything, sure, but in Flicky‘s case, they’re a huge part of the game’s appeal. The wraparound screen effect remains, but the platforms, once so carefully spaced apart, are closer together and nearly impossible to jump on. There seem to be invisible barriers surrounding the edges of each platform as well, forcing Flicky to make pitch-perfect jumps in order to reach the platforms. Another bizarre change: the cats fall from the sky instead of appearing from litter boxes. This change might sound trivial, but when you’re about to complete the level and a cat falls out of nowhere on to you, expletives will emerge with a maddening fury.

Flicky for the SG-1000 is harder, uglier, and not at all representative of what the system can do, but the Genesis/Mega Drive version released in 1991 is a wonderful arcade port. Almost every element from the arcade game (save for the slightly wonkier music) is recreated flawlessly. No wonder, then, that the Genesis version of Flicky would later be placed into damn near every Sega collection, including Sonic Mega Collection (where I had my first experience with Flicky), Sega Genesis Collection for PS2 and PSP, and Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for PS3 and Xbox 360, among others.

In Japan, Flicky also saw two additional re-releases for the Mega-CD and Saturn in the compilations Game no Kanzume Vol. 1 and Sega Ages Memorial Selection Vol. 1 respectively. Both versions of Flicky on the compilations look and play like the arcade, though the Mega CD version only plays music upon the beginning and completion of each stage. The Saturn version, however, has improved CD-quality music throughout the entire game.

Sega never honored Flicky with her own sequel, but her legacy lives on in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and particularly in Sonic 3D Blast. In earlier Sonic games, Flickies would appear out of robots that Sonic destroyed and scamper off into the distance. 3D Blast – otherwise known as Sonic 3D: Flickies Island in Europe and Japan – brought Flickies into the forefront, playing less like a Sonic game and more like an expanded version of Flicky with Sonic as the main character. Sonic rescues the Flickies, they follow him in a straight line, if he gets hit they scatter, and he has to bring them to the exit in order to move forward.

My opinion? Traveller’s Tales, the makers of 3D Blast, weren’t interested in making yet another 2D Sonic game (what would have been the fifth in as many years). The developers obviously had fond memories of Flicky, but Sega, keen to maintain their hard-edged 90s image, probably wouldn’t have allowed Traveller’s Tales to construct a cutesy straightforward Flicky sequel. Thus the subversive 3D Blast, a Sonic game in name and characters only (Tails, Knuckles, and Robotnik make brief appearances), was born. 3D Blast wasn’t really a good Sonic game because it eschewed the series’ typical lightning-pace for isometric levels that forced you to explore. As a spiritual sequel to Flicky with Sonic playing the role of the mother and the Flickies as the Piopios, however, 3D Blast has its charm.

I haven’t played much of Sega’s arcade output pre-1980, but most of what I’ve played feels hollow and lifeless compared to Flicky. Games like Borderline, N-Sub, Safari Hunting, and Champion Baseball are all forgotten now because they lack any sort of personality or defining qualities. As such, I consider Flicky a turning point for the company, a game that’s remembered as much for its considerable charm as its addictive gameplay.

SG-1000: D-

Genesis/Megadrive: A-

Mega-CD: B+ (where’s the carnival tunes?)

Saturn: A-

Cheers to SegaRetro.org and Hardcore Gaming 101 for their invaluable information on Flicky.

Othello

PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous

PUBLISHER: Sega (1985), Tsukuda Original (1983)

DEVELOPER: Tsukuda Original (port by Sega)

RELEASE DATE: 07/1985 (JP); 1983 (within the Othello Multivision)

When Tsukuda Original took the board game Reversi and trademarked it under the name “Othello,” they did so because of the colors of the game’s pieces. They felt that the interaction between the black and white pieces reflected the bitter relationship between two of the characters from Shakespeare’s infamous play of the same name: Othello, who is black, and Iago, who is white. I didn’t know about the game’s connection to the play prior to playing Othello, but upon learning this information, I can’t say I’m surprised. I chose black in every game I played, and white was always a sneaky vicious bastard.

In Othello, you transform your opponent’s black/white pieces into the opposite color. Each game starts with two white pieces and two black pieces laying next to each other in diagonal formations. Let’s say your opponent is white and you’re black (because black is the color of coffee and a moonless sky and dark chocolate and is therefore superior – also I’m aware that black and white aren’t really “colors,” but for the sake of this review and my mind, they are). You effectively trap white pieces between black pieces, and the white becomes black. Of course, white can do the same to your black, so you gotta be careful where you place your pieces. Just because a move initially overturns a dozen pieces and looks like it will win you the game doesn’t mean it will. Take note of where the computer might lay their piece after you’ve laid your piece, and you’ll stand a better chance than if you let the pieces fly where they may.

Sega’s SG-1000 version is actually a re-worked version of Tsukuda Original’s Othello, included in the hardware of their SC-3000 clone, the Othello Multivision. While I wasn’t able to find the BIOS of the Multivision to compare the two versions, the SG-1000 version is clean, fast, frustrating, and simultaneously playable with a friend. In other words, it’s everything I expect and want from a video game port of Othello. The only complaint I have is the lack of increased challenge within the five difficulty levels. Level 1 was no more or less challenging than Level 5, which doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Curious difficulty levels aside, extended sessions of Othello are guaranteed to sharpen the mind and clench (clenchen?) the buttocks. And now that you know the white pieces represent Iago, you kinda have to pick black, lest your moral sensibilities collapse like so many Shakespearean corpses.

B-