Perfekt Past: Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

Rich

When asked the question ‘what’s your favourite game?’ any gamer will struggle through two or three choices before picking one and slightly regretting it.  I’m exactly the same.  Resident Evil 4?  Rebelstar 2?  King’s Bounty?  It changes daily for me.  But what about ‘what’s your favourite demo?’

For me, that will always be the demo of Tony Hawk Skateboarding (the European renaming of Tony Hawk Pro Skater).  It came free on the front of some PlayStation rag and I fired it up with as much anticipation as I’d fire up ITV on any given night.  None at all.  A few plays later and I’m awaiting the full game more than anything ever.  I played that demo over and over until I’d mastered the game mechanics as much as possible.  I knew that level like Rihanna knows the back of Chris Brown’s hand.

Elissa Steamer in the warehouse with the skateboard. Probably not the Cluedo solution you were looking for.

The full game didn’t disappoint and I played it to death, beating it with every character and setting all the best scores on the game’s high score table.  Every level, every trick, every hidden tape… I knew everything about the game.  Well, almost everything.  One thing I could never have guessed was that Activision, lords of all that is unholy, would ruin the franchise so badly that a new Tony Hawk release would be as welcome as Tony Hawk releasing fluids into your face and so these days in, a mere decade and a bit after Neversoft’s extreme sports masterpiece I honestly couldn’t give two fucks about what the Birdman does next (either in real life or in virtual form).

The thing is, I just picked up a replacement PSP and, with a little bit of coercion it plays this old favourite from a PS1 disc image.  I have the disc, the means to convert it and thumbs with which to play it.  So how does the game that introduced gamers to such things as the kickflip (because admit it, we would never have known if it wasn’t for this game) hold up twelve years after its release?  I’ve been painstakingly researching it and the short version is ‘really well actually!’

Here’s the long version.

‘you are still pulling off’

Firing up THPS for the first time is much like firing up any modern game.  You get the PlayStation logo, the Activision logo, the Neversoft logo, an intro movie (featuring videos of the various skaters represented in the game), a memory card check, a ‘press start’ screen and eventually your main menu.  Phew.

I jump right into Career Mode and pick Bob Burnquist.  He’s got great stats – not as good as Tony Hawk but not as smug either – and I seem to remember him being my first choice back in 2000.  Rodney Mullen hadn’t been introduced to the series yet.  After sticking with the default board, trucks and wheels I button-press my way into the first level.  Warehouse: Woodland Hills.  What strikes you as the level loads up is the list of goals.  There are just five.  Get some points, smash some boxes, get SKATE, find the hidden tape and get even more points.  None of this combo shit and wacky stunt bollocks that the later games became obsessed with.

‘much shorter but also it means that you concentrate’

After my thumbs struggled to get used to using a d-pad again (seriously, has the 360 killed that little skill or what?) I get reacquainted with the warehouse.  It’s as I remember it, with a big ramp leading to a half-pipe and a few other ramps that I always stayed away from because of their limited scoring potential.  I take down the goals fairly quickly.  This still plays well and feels comfortable even if it is missing the manuals and reverts of the first game.  That means the combos are much shorter but also it means that you concentrate on the actual tricks and not how to link them.  It feels a lot more realistic, even if you are still pulling off moves that would make most skaters weep in their pants.

I hope that rucksack contains a lot of bandages.

Graphically, it’s a little rough.  The PS1 was a complete paradigm shift for console gaming, giving you proper polygonal 3D and more or less signalling the end of the 2D visuals of the 16-bit era.  At the time it was mind-blowing.  Now it’s probably the most dated looking console since the NES because 2D is timeless.  Jagged 3D, less so.  That said, viewed on the tiny phosphorous-bright PSP screen, THPS looks better than it would on a proper telly and the character of the game still shines through.  In 2000, this game looked great and was something of a marvel with its free-roaming stages and interactive scenery.  Well, a tram running you over is as interactive as it gets I guess.

One thing that THPS had was a really iconic soundtrack.  This was the age of the proper soundtrack with games like Wipeout licensing actual musicians.  THPS went with a punk soundtrack (something it’d regrettably move away from when it began whoring itself to various hip-hop and nu-metal artistes) and it was quite something to load up a game and hear Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies blaring out at you.  Indeed, the soundtrack is something of a time capsule – if anything hearing Goldfinger after all these years reminds me that you couldn’t fucking move for poppy ska bands with chirpy wind sections – and even if it did usher in a horrible trend that reached its nadir with the Burnout games, hearing some of these tunes after all these years makes me smile.

‘you get to the bottom’

After nabbing the goals on the Warehouse level, the game sends you to school.  The school level is oddly featureless but is one of the largest stages in the whole game.  Ramps, tables and bridges punctuate the landscape but it’s not until you skate away from the start that you find one of the gaming wonders of 2000.  A small area with two pools to skate in and a giant video screen showing some skating action and clips from music videos.  It’s a little primitive but at the time this was as next gen as gaming got.

Next up is the mall.  A great level that highlights something that was lost to the series (until it came back in one of the later games), the downhill level.  You start at the top of a mall which is basically a huge ramp.  You’ve still got SKATE letters to find, things to smash, points to get and a hidden tape but once you get to the bottom of the level, that’s it.  End of run.  The increase in speed means that it’s harder to line up your jumps but the increased challenge is welcome.  It’s a great level even now, with loads of detail including water features, giant staircases and an outdoor area.  The score goals are tougher here as there aren’t too many opportunities for big points, at least not until you train your eye to spot them.

I can see my impending death from here!

Beating these first three levels obviously helps your skater cred as next up is a competition in a Chicago skate park.  There’s no collecting to do here.  You just lay down three runs and the best two are entered into the competition scoreboard against the AI skaters.  This is the area that so wowed us in the demo.  Pro tip:  go to the half-pipe at the back, to the left (back and to the left…. back and to the left) and stay there for big points.  Without the distractions of the other levels, these skate competitions represent the purest gaming in THPS and are a good place to express your inner skater dude (without the risk of crippling injury/pretentiousness).

After sufficient time on that hype, it’s time for the *woosh* crackpipe.  That is to say, hello Downtown, Minneapolis.  This is an outdoors level where you aim to attain the usual goals while getting run over by bastard motorists.  It’s probably the first area where you’ll need to go searching for your goals and nabbing those pro scores is tough also but it’s also got some nice touches to it.  The hidden tunnel leading up to the rooftop pool is one of them.

Next up is the bitch of the bunch.  Downhill Jam, Phoenix.  This level is much like the earlier mall run but faster, harder and tougher.  Getting the collectables takes a bit of discipline – the hidden tape is a complete bastard even now – and the score goals take a lot of work also.  It’s a great level though, one of my favourites from the whole series.  Although I’ve got horrible memories of them bringing it back for a later game and adding more collectables.  I might be imagining that though.

‘reverting to type and giving you shit’

After another skate competition, this time a tricky affair in a limited arena in Burnside, Portland, it’s over to the streets of San Francisco complete with trams, cops and skateable landmarks.  I have to admit, the hidden tape had me stumped here and I had to look it up onYouTube.  Never would have found it without that bit of assistance.  Fuck knows how I managed it back in the day.  We were made of sterner stuff back then, clearly.

The final level is another skate competition, this time in Rosswell, New Mexico.  An early example of the humour that would grace the series, this level is set in a mysterious environment, all green and techy, that is both spooky and very skateable.  Big ramps and quarter pipes make it easy to score big here and winning this competition unlocks your chosen skater’s skate reel video.  In my case, I get to see Bob Burnquist doing his thing.  Beating all the goals in the game also unlocks a video of horrible bails and the hidden playable character, Officer Bob.

Tony doing the first

I don’t know if I’ll go back and complete the game with all the other characters – the only reward for doing so is to unlock Private Carrera.  I remember going to the trouble the first time around but the character (a woman if I remember correctly) wasn’t really worth the effort.  Later games in the series would introduce much better unlockable players such as Spider-Man and some weird devil woman, before oddly reverting to type and giving you shit unlockable characters again but the decline of the series is another article, for another time.

For now, let us remember a great and trailblazing game.  It literally defined a genre and wasn’t bested until it went too far downhill and crashed into a metaphorical bus, opening the way for EA’s brilliant SKATE and it’s less-brilliant sequels.  With ten skaters, nine levels and a dozen or so songs, the thing that strikes any veteran of the series is how efficient this game is, elegant even. The gameplay is centred on skating rather than hunting down too many collectables and is refreshingly free of gimmicks whilst still having a few surprises up its sleeve.  The levels themselves are particularly great with a good mix of open areas, downhill courses (why did they get rid of these, they are brilliant) and competition arenas.  Aside from the Downhill Jam level, I blazed through the game quite quickly and whilst it’s a hell of a lot easier than what would follow (Project 8 was coded in hell by cunts), it’s fair to say that THPS is, surprisingly, as much fun to play today as it was all those years ago.

Revisiting it has been a blast.

Resident Evil – Code Veronica

Mark

With Racoon City left far behind and the few living survivors going their separate ways, the next entry in the Resident Evil series took a new direction after the ‘more of the same’ sequel Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. It become the true follow on to Resident Evil 2 all this despite not having a number in the title, those crazy Capcom writers eh… That’s not to say that it was a complete reinvention if the series like Resident Evil 4 but was more of a refinement.

By improving the ‘classic’ Resident Evil elements already in place rather than changing them for their own sake (Yes Resident Evil Zero, I’m looking at you) it is for me the best entry in the series before Resident Evil 4 and stands head and shoulders above the other entries in the series, even above Resident Evil Remake which for anyone who has played the GameCube reimagining knows is very high praise indeed.

Conjoined zombies - The horror!

Unlike the first two Resident Evil games Veronica has a single plotline to follow with no alternate scenarios or extra content to be had through additional replays instead Capcom crafted a plot arc that has a definite beginning, middle and end that takes in multiple locations and has you playing as three different characters whose paths stories intertwine to form a complex and layered narrative.

Long time fans of the series will feel right at home as the opening FMV sets the scene with Resident Evil 2 heroine Claire Redfield being captured by Umbrella while searching for her brother Chris and is imprisoned in one of their research facilities located on a remote island. Before she can even begin to find her bearings the island comes under air attack by an unidentified force which triggers a T-Virus outbreak just like during the original Umbrella Mansion incident. Sure enough within no time at the entire whole island is swarming with infected zombies and mutated creatures. So with her brothers lucky Zippo lighter in hand (which does a great job of showing of the engines 3D lighting, but more on that later) she escapes from her cell with the help of a dying guard and begins looking for a way to escape of the island and call for help.

Before long Claire befriends a fellow escapee, a young and brash man called Steve Burnside and with his help finds that the whole island was under the command of Alfred Ashford whose ancestor was one of the founding members of Umbrella. With the help of his twin sister Alexia, the twins have been using the island’s research facilities to create a new strain of the T-virus using another rare virus dubbed ‘Veronica’ after the Ashford family’s matriarch. Needles to say Alfred just like most high level Umbrella members he’s bat shit insane and quickly blames Claire for the attack on his island and further endangers her by releasing his own unique T-virus creatures to hunt her down and kill her.

Michael Jackson circa 2012

By far the most dangerous and surprising is the Bandersnatch mutant whose thick, rubbery skin not only makes them extremely tough but also lets them attack you over long distances with their super pliable limbs that they can also us to stretch across rooms and access higher and lower areas with ease. Add to this the ever present Cerberus dogs, carnivorous crows and assorted zombies and you’ll quickly realise just how careful you’ll have to be if Claire is to come out of this new outbreak alive.

That’s not to say Claire can’t defend herself as there’s a whole new range of weapons at her disposal to keep the zombies and assorted freaks at bay. First there’s a range of improved weapons with the a new semi-automatic pistol that you can upgrade to burst fire when you find the right parts, there’s also new explosive tipped arrows for the bow-gun and even anti-B.O.W rounds for the grenade launcher.

Next up is the all new twin machine pistols that have a limited ammunition magazine just like the machine-guns of previous games but have the added bonus of being able to target and shoot two enemies at a time which can be very handy when fending off a large horde of zombies. The other new weapon of note (not including the *spoiler* you get in the game’s climax) is the sniper rifle that you can be used for a 1st view, the first time in a Resident Evil game making it essential when fighting one particular boss monster who’s exposed heart is his one and only vulnerability.

Alfred knows what makes a good soldier.

This new 1st person view is possible thanks to the software engine that powers the game which renders ever room and environment in the game in full 3D rather than the static pre-drawn backgrounds of previous Resident Evil games. Before if you came to a corner of bend the view point would change instantly to give you a better view (but often be angled in such a way that you wouldn’t be able to see everything and as such keeping you alert for near-by zombies and monsters) but now the camera view would swoop, pan and swing around in real-time making everything fell much more connected rather than a location made up of badly taken side shots.

The backgrounds rendered where far less flat than the static backgrounds of the past and made judging depth and distances easy (very important when firing grenades) but there was a trade off with the 3D backdrops lacking the fine detail compared the pre-drawn environments. Then again finding ammo and objects was far easier now as you could see the red 3D ammo boxes rather than just a few pixels jumbled in with all the miscellaneous junk that littered old locations.

Another advantage of the new 3D environments was it made the lighting much more effective with individual light sources being able to provide light and case shadows where appropriate. The best example being the Zippo lighter item that not only keeps the hungry bats away but also lights up the surrounding vicinity making it idea when searching a particularly dark area like the Ashford mansion or rain lashed island exteriors. As always every location is filled with ‘jump’ moments like hidden monsters waiting to pounce and with the atmospheric lighting and even fog and rain effects added to this each location you visit will linger in your memory be it the charnel horror of the islands surgical hut, the gothic malaise of the Ashford mansion or even the desolate arctic wastes on the final act.

The storyline has a far greater scope than previous entries in the series and isn’t limited to just one location. Early parts will have you playing as Claire on the island then later ‘escaping’ to Alfred’s secret facility in the Antarctic after which you then take control of long time Resident Evil protagonist Chris Redfield who appears again for the first time since the original Resident Evil. Tracing Claire’s disappearance he arrives at the island just as she leaves only to find it even more perilous thanks to the arrival of long time Nemesis (sic) Albert Wesker who we discover was behind the attack on the island and subsequent T-virus outbreak.

ABC had the right idea.

Now free from Umbrella’s control and hungry for power Wesker has joined forces with a new mysterious organisation seeking to harness the power of the T-virus for its own ends. He quickly sets about making his presence on the island felt by unleashing a batch of improved Hunters, the gargantuan humanoid-reptiles last seen at the Spencer mansion along with robot drones equipped with motion sensors and cameras that’ll alert the Hunters to your presence if you stumble upon their patrols around the island.

To say anymore about Wesker’s motives would ruin the plot anymore for first time players but be assured he proves to be even more dangerous than before as his experiences at the Spencer mansion have left him not quite human… If you want the full Wesker experience track down a copy of Resident Evil: Code Veronica X the updated version of the Dreamcast original ported to the PS2 and Gamecube as it has better cut scenes many of which are additional material featuring Wesker including a rewritten showdown between Wesker and… well that would be spoiling it for you.

The Dreamcast version plays the same as the ‘X’ edition but with both versions be aware of an almost-but-not-quite-bug in the game: after you use the fire extinguisher be sure to stash it in one of your item chests NOT the metal detector bin as you’ll need it again later in the game. Now I could spend loads of time on a rant about how this game is always underrated but if you take anything away from this series of Resident Evil retrospectives is to at least play or replay ‘Veronica. Sure the original trilogy are good, as is Zero (in its own annoying way) and the Gamecube remake is sublime but ‘Veronica was and is the pinnacle of the survival horror genre. Is Resident Evil 4 a better game? Yes but Capcom took the series so far away from its roots you can’t really class it in the survival horror genre but more akin to hybrid horror games like the immensely underrated ‘Extermination’ or hugely plagiaristic ‘Cold Fear’

Next time I’m going back to the Gamecube to take a look at Resident Evil Zero which out of all of the Resident Evil games had possibly the most fraught development of all the Resi games so far and served as the series survival horror swansong.

Perfekt Past: Resident Evil 3 – Nemesis

Mark

September 28th. Daylight…The monsters have overtaken the city. Somehow… I’m still alive…

So begins the third entry in the Resident Evil series. First released in late 1999 as Biohazard: Last Escape in Japan it would continue to build on the foundations laid by the previous two games and introduce a few new elements to further ensure the series legacy as the premier survival horror franchise.

After escaping from the Umbrella mansion at the end of the original Resident Evil, Jill Valentine has returned to the S.T.A.R.S. (Special tactics and rescue squad) unit based out of the Racoon City Police department. However, unlike fellow mansion survivor Chris Redfield she’s trapped in Racoon City a few months later when it becomes the epicentre of a full scale outbreak of the dreaded T-Virus.

Isolated and alone, Jill has to find a way out of this city filled with flesh craving zombies all the while being stalked by one of Umbrella’s dreaded Tyrant creatures. However unlike the mindless brutes seen before now this Tyrant codenamed: Nemesis was especially created by Umbrella to have both strength and intelligence and can even operate machinery, fire weapons and track specific targets, in this case any S.T.A.R.S. left alive in Racoon City.

Bloody hell, will you look at this mess.

This is demonstrated in the opening section of the game as Jill has to watch helplessly as Nemesis corners her fellow S.T.A.R.S. member Brad and kills him before quickly turning his attention to her. This triggers the first of many ‘Live Selection’ events where Jill will have to quickly choose from two different options that have separate outcomes and effect later events. The first live selection is fairly clear cut, do you stay to fight the Nemesis or do you flee into the near by PRD station house?

With the Nemesis being so dangerous fleeing would be the sensible option but if you can collect the Police ID from Brad’s body you’ll save time and potential health/ammo consumption once inside the station house. Plus if you actually manage to incapacitate the Nemesis, albeit temporally you can recover useful items from him like extra gunpowder types (I’ll come to that soon) and ammo etc.

Once you do get inside the station house don’t expect to be there for very long. Unlike the previous game that had you spending half of the game in this one location exploring and slowly opening to new areas Jill’s visit is strictly short term. In this game the station house is only one of over a half dozen different locations Jill can reach by running the zombie choked gauntlet through the city streets to reach newspaper offices, municipal gardens, shops, cafés and tram station.

The station itself is the same as before but with it still in lockdown Jill can only get access to a very small area namely a few offices and importantly the S.T.A.R.S. squad room. Before long though Nemesis will be back on Jill’s trail and going so far as to break through walls and even employing a missile launcher to try and kill her.

Old uniform, new pain.

Once you’ve found what you need inside the station house its back into the city streets with the zombies and now Cerberus hounds, as you’ll need to visit several locations to find what you need to progress to the next walled in area. That’s not to say there’s not a sense of urgency as wherever you go before too long you’ll hear a gravely voice shout “Stars!” which is your queue to start running as Nemesis will be right behind you and if you don’t act quick enough punching, slamming or even shooting at you.

As in previous games the few moments of respite and real safety Jill has will be in ‘safe’ rooms free from Nemesis (although he might be waiting for you as you exit the room) where you can use a typewriter to save your progress, access an item chest to store or retrieve items. While you’re there you might want to take a few moments to experiments with all those different types of gunpowder Jill’s been finding around the place.

Jill starts the game with a new item to the Resident Evil series – the reloading tool. By using this this with the three different gunpowder types available: type A, B and C she can create her own ammo from simple 9mm rounds for the pistol to powerful Magnum rounds and even different grenade types for the grenade launcher.

Simple combinations are revealed at the start of the game by the users manual such as A = pistol ammo, B = shotgun ammo, C = grenade ammo. But if you experiment a little you can find new types e.g.  A+B=C. You can also double up powder types to increase the amount of ammo made with one power mix producing about a clips worth of bullets while three of the same powder mixed produces four to five times as many bullets/shells/grenades than a single mix. This gives you a little more freedom in how you play the game. For example do you use your powder to make lots of 9mm bullets and spray away at the enemies or do you make less but far more potent grenades and pick your targets carefully?

Carlos the jackel (read: arsehole).

Along with making DIY ammo Jill can also (finally) spin on the spot doing a 180° degree turn with a simple button push making hasty retreats and ambush responses a breeze compared to the first two games that forced you to slowly trundle around or put your faith in the sometimes dodgy auto-aim.

If you do survive long enough to make it to the café area you’ll finally meet Carlos who’s faint distress call Jill heard back while at the RPD. He’s a member of Umbrella’s U.B.C.S. (Umbrella Biological Countermeasure Service) and was ordered into Racoon city to rescue any survivors only to see the majority of his squad wiped out by the zombie hordes. Upon hearing he works for Umbrella Jill becomes very distrustful of him but as they are forced to evade Nemesis together they establish a truce and later partnership along with his surviving squad mates to escape the city.

Despite being the third entry in the series, Nemesis looks and feels a lot like Resident Evil 2 ½ rather than a fully fledged sequel, a fact reflected when you look at the history of the game. It was originally intended to be a side story rather than a full sequel, director Shinji Mikami dubbed it Resident Evil (Well Biohazard) 1.9 and later Resident Evil 2.1 as he felt it shouldn’t officially be Resident Evil 3.

What the bejesus!

After looking back and replaying the game today I’d have to agree with him. The new additions like the reloading tool fell a little gimmicky and the 180° spin should have been in from the first game to be fair. That’s not to say it’s a bad game just a little over familiar after spending so much time in Racoon City with the previous instalment and the lack of true innovation that later entries had like Zero’s swapping or Veronica’s use of 3D.

The single storyline doesn’t have much replay ability aside from choosing different outcomes in the live sections. Sure there’s an unlockable mini game and extra costumes for Jill but it just feels you’re covering old ground. In short it’s one for fans who want more of the same but don’t expect it to convert any first time players.

Next time we’re going to be leaving Racoon City behind and studying the hugely overlooked Resident Evil: Code Veronica for me the best entry in the 2D/3D Resi game series that features a huge sprawling storyline and the return of some old favourites, both good and VERY bad…

Resident Evil 2: Umbrella go to town.

Mark

Once again we enter the world of survival horror with the second entry in the Resident Evil/Biohazard series. Like the first part you control a 3D modelled character around different static pre-drawn 2D environments killing zombies, collecting items and solving puzzles all the while trying to say alive and virus free long enough to escape your fate.

The story picks up nine weeks after the original game with the surviving S.T.A.R.S members having escaped the now destroyed Umbrella mansion and returning to their lives in nearby Racoon City. Unable to persuade their superiors of Umbrella’s guilt because of a lack of evidence not to mention the huge amount of political weight Umbrella carries in the city Chris has left the city to peruse outside leads while Jill… well we’ll get to Jill in part three.

Bad guts in a backstreet alley. It's friday night in Bridgewater all over again

‘leaked into the racoon’

As this is going on unknown to anybody is that Umbrella’s T-virus, the source of the Umbrella mansion outbreak has leaked into the Racoon City sewers and before you can say mass pandemic its spread among the rat population and out into the city itself. Taking control as either Leon S. Kennedy a cop just transferred to the Racoon City police department or Claire Redfield who is looking for her older brother Chris Redfield star (or should that be S.T.A.R.?) of the first Resident Evil you have to escape the city through the zombie filled streets and into the Racoon City police department and down into the sewers that lead to… well, why spoil that little gem for first time players eh.

After a mad dash through the city and an all too brief respite in Kendo’s gun shop you make it to the safe haven of the RPD where the game really starts and you can catch your breath without having to worry about near constant zombie inflicted death. You quickly find that the station is in lockdown mode with many of the doors and exits locked, bared or even destroyed after the initial wave of the zombie plague. After a quick bit of exploring you’ll get the first of many keys that will open up previously inaccessible areas where you find new puzzles to solve, zombies to kill or better still avoid and maybe fellow survivors who can help you.

Now would be a good time to run

‘mansion is relentless’

Depending on what character you chose at the start of the game the storyline will take different twists and turns with Leon being assisted by a mysterious woman called Ada Wong who’s looking for her boyfriend an Umbrella employee living in Racoon City while Claire rescues Sherry Birkin a child also with ties to Umbrella sheltering inside the station. Both storylines also featured a short section where you would control Ada or Sherry as they solved a simple puzzle to recover the vital ‘heart’ key for Leon/Claire after avoiding or killing a pack of T-virus infected dogs guarding the area.

Both storylines follow the same general beats with the odd difference in puzzles or locations with Leon having to explore the station’s jail cells and Claire using explosives to gain access to the office of the chief of police. Both characters storylines also feature the dreaded Mr. X creature, a creation of Umbrella’s Tyrant project with massive strength and resistance to regular weaponry but like the T-002 Tyrant from the Umbrella mansion is relentless but simple minded in its attacks and movements. To detail any more of the game’s storyline would be unfair to first time players so I’m going to take a few moments to talk about the Resident Evil 2 that never was…

As even a casual glance at videogame history will tell you Capcom have never thought twice about capitalising on a franchises success (I mean c’mon how many Mega Man games were there on the NES alone) so after initial release of Biohazard/Resident Evil it was no surprise that they put a sequel into production shortly after the original release back in 1996. What might come as a surprise is that as the game’s release date in 1997 loomed large on their calendar the game Capcom had was and is a far cry from the Resident Evil 2 we know today.

We're coming to get you Barb... Claire

‘plays just like Claire’

Sure it had rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy as one of the two main characters but his co-star wasn’t Claire Redfield it was a blond teenage student in biker’s leathers called Elza Walker. The Resident Evil 1.5 build as it has come to be know was very similar to the final release with its overarching plot of two survivors banding together to escape the zombie hordes inside the Racoon City police department but when placed side by side with Resident Evil 2 the differences are immediately obvious.

Supporting characters like shop owner Robert Kendo and doomed cop Marvin Branagh have far bigger roles in 1.5 with Kendo acting much like Barry Burton did in the original and Marvin even helping Leon and Elza to escape the station into the sewers. Just like in Claire’s storyline Elza finds and helps Sherry Birkin and apart from outward appearance of red and white biker’s leathers she moves and plays just like Claire.

The other obvious difference in the game apart from Elzas role is the RPD station house itself. The station as it is today is a strange mix of art deco and gothic (no doubt added to invoke memories of the Umbrella mansion from the original Resident Evil) but in 1.5 it was a far more modern and contemporary design. The corridors are decked out in marble and chrome rather than wood and carpet and the chief’s office wouldn’t look out of place in a high-rise corporate office block. Other non-RPD locations look almost identical with the sewers and city streets appearing as they do today albeit with a slightly different layout.

It's just a flesh wound

‘tofu that was coded’

Unhappy with how the game was turning out Capcom took the bold move of canning the entire project, restarting from scratch and pushing back the games release by a year. The final result was what we now know as Resident Evil 2 and Elza was relegated to a mere footnote in history.

Just like Resident Evil before it completing the game isn’t the end. Both characters have two A and B scenarios making four different games to play through with the B scenario’s revealing information about some characters that show them in a totally different light once you know their secrets (Again I’m being coy so as not to spoil the surprise) If you can complete both A scenarios with an A ranking you can unlock the minigame ‘The 4th Survivor’ where you can play as Hunk, a black clad commando tasked with retrieving virus sample before the timer runs out. There’s also a ‘The Tofu Survivor’ minigame to play with Hunk replaced by a giant piece of tofu that was coded into the game originally to test the hit detection system.

With the original Playstation version doing so well Resident Evil 2 was ported across to many different platforms since its creation. A port to the Sega Saturn was started but never completed leaving Sega fans to wait until the Dreamcast version was released. The DC version was wear identical to the PS1 original but had added support for the VMU unit that sits inside the control pad that displayed the characters health and ammo count.

Miss Not-Appearing in this game

‘frame rate was worse than the N64′

The Nintendo 64 version was a far better conversion that not only squeezed the entire game onto a N64 cartridge but also improved the controls and even added a mode that randomised the location of items making each play through unique and different. The Gamecube version released much later was a straight port of the Dreamcast conversion before it (you following this ok?) and aside from being able to skip cut scenes and having a slightly better frame rate was worse than the N64 version the previous generation.

Any of the above or even the PC version are a great play and show why even ten years after its creation it’s regarded by many Resident Evil fans to be the best of the ‘Survival Horror’ games in the franchise (for my money it’s Resident Evil: Code Veronica X, but I’ll save that gripe for part four) Next time we find out what happened to Jill Valentine after escaping the Umbrella mansion and meet possibly one of the scariest enemies found in any videogame ever, the T-Type tyrant or as it’s better know… Nemesis.

Resident Evil: Jill sandwiches all round.

Mark

It’s always been a difficult task to make videogames truly scary. Early efforts on 8-bit consoles and computers failed to invoke a truly terrifying response, the best any of them could realistically hope for was to unsettle you with a well crafted atmosphere be it the stark checkerboard landscapes of The Sentinel or the nowhere-to-hide panic of Ant Attack 3D. The 16-bit era fared better with Amiga games like Alien Breed and Bloodnet raising hairs on the back of your neck while console owners had games like Clock Tower and Splatterhouse to unnerve them but it wasn’t until the 64-bit generation (Playstation, Saturn, Nintendo 64) dawned that gamer knew true horror in their games.

For psychological chills and thrills Silent Hill reigned supreme until it’s sequel on the PS2 but no game of its era could make you jump out of your seat like today’s exhibit from the Perfekt Past vault: Resident Evil by Capcom.

Barry didn't have the heart to tell Jill he'd lost his script

‘more violent bits’

Resident Evil was first released in Japan in March of 1996 under the title of Biohazard and proudly boasted of being the worlds first ever survival-horror game. It featured an FMV introduction filmed by none other than George A. Romero the father of modern zombie movies. It should also be noted that he also wrote the first draft of the Resident Evil movie script which was never filmed but reads a hell of a lot better than the Paul W. S. Anderson version that was finally made.

The FMV shows the cast coming under attack from a pack of Cerberus dogs (more on those later) and fleeing to a nearby mansion for shelter only to become trapped inside the seaming deserted building. Next is the roll call of the cast all dressed as the games characters right down to Barry’s orange vest and Rebecca’s over the top Red Cross uniform and J-Pop ponytail. It’s all very cheesy in a kind of eighties action movie over the top kind of way but was normal for FMVs of the time with many developers experimenting with all the extra storage space the CD format provided over the old style cartridges.

Along with setting up the game the FMV also marks the first of the many changes the game underwent during its conversion from the original Japanese Biohazard to the westernised Resident Evil. The action footage was changed from colour to black and white with some of the more violent bits cut altogether to avoid the western censors and a clip showing Chris smoking a cigarette was also excised. Later versions would be uncut but the original Playstation version was filled with these changes that also affected the inventory chests, aiming and even the amount of ink ribbons you could find. Making it far harder than the original JAP version.

Give us a kiss

‘shuffling around but because of the camera’

Once started you have a choice to play as one of two characters: Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine who are both members of S.T.A.R.S the elite special tactics and rescue squad based out of the fictional North American Racoon City. Along with having slightly different storylines Chris is able to take more damage before dying than his team mate while Jill can carry more items at once and use her lock pick (After all she is as Barry tells her “The master of unlocking”) to open some doors where as Chris has to find special small keys that take up his precious inventory slots.

Who ever you play as you’ll quickly find that the mansion is filled with zombies and with your fellow S.T.A.R.S. either dead or missing it’s up to you to stay alive long enough to unravel the mystery of the mansion. The action is viewed in the third person with a every room having different camera angles depending on where you are standing and mices 3D sprites with statoc 2D backgrounds much like the original Alone In The Dark games meaning that you might enter a new room and hear a zombie shuffling around but because of the camera angle you can’t see it making your experience much more tense as you slowly creep towards a bend in a corridor or the edge of a wall hoping for a better view only to find the zombie is right in front of you.

When this happens and there is no chance of avoiding the zombie you can draw a weapon and attack. You start the game with either a pistol or knife depending on your choice of character but if you do have a pistol the ammunition is very scarce so if you do decide to ‘kill’ a zombie its going to take the best part of an ammo clip to do it and the mansion is swarming with them. With the odds so greatly stacked against you the best tactic is to try and run or dodge past the slow, shambling zombies (There’s no modern running zombies, or ghouls as they should be called in the original Playstation version) it’ll save you bullets and you’ll need them.

Chris is so pimp he doesn't need polygons

‘you’re playing the game you’ll be cautiously holding’

Along with the combat you’ll also have to use our brain as uncovering the mansions many secrets requires you to solve some different puzzles and logic problems. Often it’s as simple as taking item A to Item B and combining them but when you have a limited amount of inventory slots that also have to hold your: weapons, keys and healing items you have to be very careful about how much you carry and what you stash in the mansions interconnected storage chests for later.

Before to long as you start to explore the mansion many rooms and even read the odd diary entry or research document it becomes clear that the mansion is owned by the sinister Umbrella Corporation who where researching a new type of BOW or bio-organic weapon and have been infecting all manor of test subjects with their amazingly powerful T-virus. Along with reanimating the dead it can also mutate living subjects giving rise to not only the Cerberus attacks dogs but lethal plants, super-sized sharks, snakes and the pinnacle of Umbrellas research the dreaded Tyrant creature.

The mansion soon leads to the Umbrella research labs and then back again to the mansion’s basement before finally having to escape to the roof to rendezvous with the S.T.A.R.S. rescue helicopter. All the while you’re playing the game you’ll be cautiously holding your breath as you attempt to dodge past a zombie or outright jumping as the game throws one of its trademark scare moments at you. I won’t go into too much detail here in case I spoil it for first time players but rest assured just because the long corridor filled with windows has been empty the last three times you’ve been through it doesn’t mean it’s safe this time and that seemingly dead body on the floor might not be so dead after all…

Smooth criminal

‘with you using it to slash’

So you’ve got action, puzzles, suspense, shocks not to mention great atmospheric music and even a few unintentional laughs thanks to some dodgy scripting and voice work. For example: After nearly being crushed by one of the mansions deathtraps Barry says to Jill “You were almost a Jill sandwich” and the already mentioned “It would be best if you Jill the master of unlocking had this” but like the censored FMV these laughs are only to be had in the original version as later versions don’t have them. So what do they have?

Well the Resident Evil: Director’s Cut (released to cash in on the then soon to be released Resident Evil 2) had some different camera angles and a few extra items and events along with dual-shock support in some versions. The Sega Saturn conversion added a battle game mode much like the Mercenaries game mode in Resident Evil 4 that has you fighting monsters and bosses against a timer and also had some miscellaneous extras like extra costumes for the characters and a new monster type or two. Resident Evil: Deadly Silence on the DS added some stylus functionality with you using it to slash your knife or move around puzzle pieces it even has a LAN co-op mode and slightly improved graphics when put next to the original Playstation version.

Govan, Saturday 01:33

‘the odd unintentional by-product’

The biggest and by far best version of the original Resident Evil is by far the 2002 Gamecube version. To call it a conversion is unfair as it is less of a remake and more of a reimagining (god I hate that term but it does apply here) with the whole game rebuilt from the ground up adding new areas, plots, monsters and endings. To talk about it properly I’d have to give it its own Perfekt Past feature and I’ll happily write it if you would want to read it?

Beside being a great game in its own right it was also the starting point of a franchise that as grown and evolved over the last decade to include first person shooters, light-gun games and even online co-op play not to mention all manor of books, comics, films, spoofs, cult heroes like Barry Burton and Albert Wesker and even the odd unintentional by-product like Devil May Cry (See part six for more info)

So there we go, part one of Perfekt Past’s look at the Resident Evil series. Next week its Resident Evil 2 where Resi goes to town and makes some new friends including some bloke called Mr Kennedy…

]]> http://www.peoww.co.uk/perfekt-past-resident-evil/feed/ 0 http://www.peoww.co.uk/766/ http://www.peoww.co.uk/766/#comments Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:55:57 +0000 Mark http://www.peoww.co.uk/wordpress/?p=766

Half-Life: Dr. Freeman I presume?

Mark

When the first system wars started in the mid-eighties it was the titanic struggle between Commodore, Spectrum and everyone’s favourite underdog Amstrad (at least in the UK’s playgrounds and schools but that’s a feature for another day…). By the late nineties the fight card read something like this: Nintendo, Sega and plucky newcomer Sony. Nintendo had the modern classics Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64, Sega was slowly losing ground with good but ultimately niche games like Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter while Sony was about to drop a bomb with Metal Gear Solid and then Final Fantasy VII.

It Came From Planet Xen, a Quinn Martin production

‘break out the microscopes’

All the while this was happening PC owners where left on the sidelines to grumble and moan like the last kid to get picked for football. Sure they could try and boast about the unique genres that only graced its system like real-time strategy games or flight simulations but until the release of today’s exhibit from the Perfekt Past vault PC gamers never had an argument stopper that could compete with these games. That was until the release in 1998 of this, sure Zelda is good but we’ve got Half-Life… argument over.

Sure there had been shooters before Half-Life like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Star Wars: Dark Forces and later fully 3D games like Quake but they all stuck to the by then firmly established formula. Dark Forces moved things along a little by having the first jumping and ducking mechanics and the little known Terminator: Future Shock created the now standard free-look mouse and keyboard control combination but Half-Life was the first of a new breed of smart first person shooters. Right that’s enough videogame history 101 lets break out the microscopes and dissect Valve’s opus.

The men in white coats finally arrived

‘no brainers like fractured bones’

The game begins with a mundane train ride to work with you taking the role of Gordon Freeman a research associate at the far from mundane Black Mesa complex, a decommissioned missile silo in New Mexico now used for all manor of military R&D. The train ride takes about five minutes during which time along with reading the developer credits you can move around the train and look out of the windows at the different areas in Black Mesa some of which you’ll pass back through as the game progresses this serves as a teaser of events to come with glimpses of an Apache attack helicopter and the strange near future technology that is prevalent in the complex.

Before to long Gordon gets to his destination, the sector C test labs where you will for the first time in the series get to step into the infamous HEV suit. The HEV or hazardous environment suit allows Gordon to keep track of his health status, suit power and even his weaponry with the onscreen HUD (heads up display) and hear a pleasant female voice that will when required inform you of environmental dangers such as high levels of radiation or low air supply when underwater and even no brainers like fractured bones when recovering from a fifty foot drop. With Gordon suited and booted you head down to the test chambers where Gordon’s PhD is out to good use by physically pushing a cart loaded with a crystal samples into a mass-spectrometer for study but in doing so begins a chain reaction that creates a resonance cascade and opens a portal to the alien world of Xen.

The forecast for tomorrow: Death

‘grab a hold of your cranium’

As you might imagine this isn’t a good thing and before long the entire complex has plunged into chaos with hostile Xen alien’s teleporting into Black Mesa intent on destroying everyone and everything. From the diminutive Headcrabs that will leap around trying to grab a hold of your cranium to the huge Gargantuas that can easily destroy you with a single stomp. If it’s not human it going to try to kill you and even if it is human be very careful.

Finding himself trapped underground and surrounded by danger from both the Xen invaders and the rapidly deteriorating complex, Gordon has no choice to fight his way out using whatever he can find be it a humble crowbar, machinegun, exotic Xen weaponry or some highly experimental weapons technology scavenged from one of the complexes many labs. Gordon isn’t alone though as from time to time he’ll find security guards who can provide extra firepower or even the odd friendly scientist who can open retinal locks, administer health restoring hypo shoots and provide clues about how to progress. Without the benefit of a HEV suit many of Gordon’s allies won’t last long as before long the first military strike teams start to arrive to contain the incident and show no mercy be it human or alien.

Blat blat that dakka dakka

‘they’ll adapt and lay’

Unlike the enemies from Xen who are single mindedly suicidal in their lack of tactics the human soldiers will work as a team when possible. The soldiers will take cover, use suppression and flank manoeuvres, flush you from cover with grenades and even retreat when wounded making them shrewd and dangerous foes compared to the aliens and indeed first person shooter enemies in general. As the game progresses and you get wise to their tactics and improve your own arsenal of weapons they’ll adapt and lay elaborate ambushes for you even going so far as to use APCs and tanks against you and when that fails the Apaches start appearing.

That’s not to say the Xen aliens stay the same throughout as many of the game’s impressive set pieces revolve around passing or destroying the unique alien life-forms that have taken up residence in Black Mesa after the resonance cascade. The best example is the ‘Blast Pit’ chapter that will have you sneaking through a missile silo avoiding a huge beastie that hunts by sound, forcing Gordon use his limited stock of grenades as decoys so he can reactivate the silos test rockets to incinerate it.

Barney checks UK:R for updates

‘use the sewer’

The biggest danger is by far Black Mesa itself, as post cascade all that shiny technology starts to malfunction transforming every electronic door, lift and generator into a potential deathtrap. Even then Gordon has to avoid the labs and use the sewer or ventilation system to get around spinning fan blades or toxic waste make the tricky platforming areas as dangerous as going against a military strike team.

Provided Gordon survives long enough as makes it across Black Mesa to the Lambda complex (The ‘a’ in Half-Life is the symbol for Lambda, the radioactive decay constant which is used to work out the half-life of isotopes fact fans) he can then take the fight to Xen by using the complex’s teleporter to travel there and stop the invasion, or at least slow them down. The final Xen areas are very different to Black Mesa not only in visual terms with Xen itself being that it’s a bunch of floating rocks in space but also that it’s low gravity environment filled with exotic flora and fauna that take the place of medical stations and HEV dispensers when healing and charging your suit.

The HEV spring collection

‘squib compared to the bulk’

Many, myself included consider the final act of Half-Life to be a damp squib compared to the bulk of the game set in Black Mesa compared to Xen and it’s over reliance on fiddly jumping and uninspired rocks in space area design. Thankfully if you want more Black Mesa larks then you can play one of the many expansion packs released after the game’s initial success both in sales and critical approval (fifty one games of the years wins!)

A year after the original release came Half-Life: Opposing Force developed outside Valve by Gearbox Software (The Brothers in Arms trilogy) this time you view the events at Black Mesa as one of the marines sent in contain the resonance cascade. The main character Adrian Shepard is similar to Gordon Freeman with his military HECU suit works much like the HEV suit although rather than copy Gordon’s weaponry entirely Shepard uses a wrench rather than a crowbar along with some unique weapons like the SAW heavy machine-gun, alien lightning gun and tame barnacle that Shepard can use like an organic grapple launcher to reach new areas and higher ground.

Everyone remember where we crashed

‘put down the fan community’

Originally created by Gearbox to tie in with the Dreamcast conversion, Half-Life: Blue Shift finely saw the light of day as an expansion pack on the PC (although the completed but unreleased Dreamcast version was leaked into the internet for download some time later) and had you playing as long time fan favourite security guard Barney Calhoun as he too struggled to escape Black Mesa after the resonance cascade. It was rather short in length compared to Opposing Force and lacked new content but had the added bonus of including a patch that upgraded the visuals of the original game replacing many of the character and enemy modes and even two of the weapons with the trusty MP5 becoming an M16 and the Glock pistol turning into a Beretta.

The Playstation 2 conversion had the co-op Half-Life: Decay mode that acted as a mini prequel to the events in Half-Life and until the conversion of Half-Life 2 on the original Xbox would be the only officially released Half-Life game not on it’s native home the PC. Despite these being the only official releases much of Half-Life’s success can be put down to the fan community that supported it with unofficial maps and even total conversions and entirely new games!

Team Fortress: The lycra years

‘so it’s no harder’

Soon after Half-Life’s debut Valve released the Half-Life SDK or system development kit that let bedroom coders make their own maps filled with characters, enemies and items all found in the game and even add their own graphics or change the games AI. Half-Life itself was based on the Quake II software engine so in no time at all there was a huge collection of fan made material some of which would go on to become almost as popular as Half-Life itself.

Like what? Well… Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and Team Fortress both began their lives as Half-Life mods and have since gone on to become huge franchises in their own rights but some lesser known mods like They Hunger, Poke646 or Natural Selection are all great games. To list all the mods and maps made would take hours, thankfully there’s still a strong development scene for Half-Life so it’s no harder than searching Google to find hundreds of free maps for one of the best games ever made.

How 99% of players view Counter-Strike

‘shitty analogue sticks’

Playing Half-Life today is amazingly simple, you can find a copy of the game online for less than a few pounds in one of half a dozen or so different forms some with the different expansions and conversion games some without. You can download it from Steam along with the whole of Valve’s software catalogue or even try the console versions with the PS2 conversion working well although some may balk at the auto-aim lock-on feature to counteract the PS2′s shitty analogue stick controls.

So there we go a huge feature for a huge game that has inspired and enthralled hundreds of thousands to not only play a great first person shooter but make it yourself in an age where the bedroom coder is all but extinct.

]]> http://www.peoww.co.uk/766/feed/ 0 http://www.peoww.co.uk/perfekt-past-outlaws/ http://www.peoww.co.uk/perfekt-past-outlaws/#comments Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:29:07 +0000 Mark http://www.peoww.co.uk/wordpress/?p=758

Outlaws: The spaghetti western with meat.

Mark

Today’s exhibit from the vault should really be in a zoo, why? Well it’s a near extinct beast that has three ultra rare characteristics: first off it’s a good Lucasarts game that isn’t based on old Georgie boy Lucas’ Star Wars franchise, or a point and click adventure but most of all it’s a Western, a genre hardly seen or heard from in this age of grungy (read: brown and grey) near future settings and related contemporary nonsense.

The game has you taking the roll of retired Marshall James Anderson who returns from a trip to get supplies to find his home destroyed, wife mortally injured and daughter kidnapped by a pair of outlaws acting under the (misunderstood) orders of Bob Graham, a ruthless business man hell bent on taking the Marshall’s land for his railway. Taking the roll of Anderson you blaze your way through ten stages of first person shooter action each filled with gun toting bandits and boss character outlaws while looking for your kidnapped daughter and vengeance for your deceased wife just like a classic spaghetti western movie.

A different kind of boomstick

‘it renders you immobile due to its size’

The game uses Lucasarts’ own Jedi FPS engine originally built for Star Wars: Dark Forces and mixes 3D environments with 2D sprites for objects and people. This keeps things moving at a quick pace but next to other FPS games of the time makes it looks rather antiquated as other games released around the same time where starting to master three dimensions with Id’s Quake released the year before a good example of the blossoming 3D FPS genre. There was a multiplayer option but despite numerous patches and fixes never worked particularly well with many of the weapons being badly effected by lag making it a frustrating experience.

Being set in the late seventeen hundreds there’s no fancy compact automatic weapons to use with Anderson starting off with just a single action six shot revolver that you can use the alternate fire to fan (holding the trigger and slaming the hammer quickly with the palm of the opposite hand for near automatic fire, true spaghetti western style) and a lever action rifle that can be upgraded to a sniper rifle with the addition of a rifle scope. As you progress other weapons like shotguns in both single or double barrel models can be used along with knives, sticks o’ dynamite and even a tripod mounted Gatling gun for fully automatic fire but using it renders you immobile due to its size and weight.

Despite the historic setting many of the game’s mechanics conform to shooters of the day with different types of keys: steel, iron and bronze standing in for Doom style red, blue and yellow key cards with water canteens replenishing health and even the odd tool such as a crowbar or shovel needed to open stuck gates or dig through soft patches of earth to access secret areas. Where the gameplay deviated from the norm was in its fresh ideas that would quickly become common place in the genre as much as coloured key cards and using oversized medi packs.

Behold! The first ever FPS sniper rifle

‘dripping with spaghetti’

The first one is the first ever sniper rifle in a FPS. Yes I know Shiny Entertainment’s MDK often gets credited with this accolade, but Outlaws beat it to release by a few crucial months but no doubt the debate will carry on long after this feature is done. By collecting a rifle scope Anderson can increase the practical range of his standard rifle with a simple zoomed in reticule that pops up making long range kills a duck shoot. Sure it’s a far cry from the .50 cal camper’s boom stick found in every FPS today but still deserves the credit for being the first.

The other big contribution to the genre was the train stage. Sure it was, along with the sniper rifle, made popular by other FPS games (notably Rare’s Goldeneye 007) but its genesis was Outlaws with level three being entirely set on a train in motion with Anderson working his way through the carriages and over the flatbeds and carriage tops.

That’s not to say the game should only be regarded as merely the birthplace of then new videogame conventions as despite the now very obvious technical limitations as it still looks, sounds and plays a real treat. The scene setting introduction displays Outlaws’ brilliant art style with every level starting and ending with an animated sequence that progresses the plot each moment dripping with spaghetti western atmosphere.

The exquisite pain of the knife.

‘Morricone filled with mournful horns’

The voice work is first rate as you’d expect in a Lucasarts game with each outlaw having a distinct personality. Special mention must go to John De Lancie’s (yes THAT John De Lancie) creepy Shakespeare quoting Dr. Death who kills Anderson’s wife and finally gets his comeuppance in the best scene in the game (which you can watch be viewing the video below, plug, plug) Clint Bajakian’s score also deserves mention with each of the game’s many themes and tunes easily the equal of anything every composed by Ennio Morricone filled with mournful horns and bombastic trumpets that definitely puts it in my own personal top ten game soundtracks of all time.

Anderson is no superman or cyborg space marine so all it takes is a few bullets to send him to boot hill so careful use of cover and corner strafing soon becomes second nature as you wait for enemies to exhaust their six shots or two barrels before planting them with your own cold hard lead. The only help other than using tactics and smarts to avoid fire is the occasional boiler plate you can tie to your chest to provide some ad-hoc body armour, just like the ending to A Fist Full of Dollars, one of many nods to the genre with even the difficulty levels called ‘good’ ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’

Freelance police circa 1876

‘all too easy to snort’

Well I’m almost out of space and haven’t had a chance to talk about the Lucasarts cameos by Sam and Max or the extra bounty hunter missions included when you’re done with the story mode so I’ll leave it to a fellow videogame fan to help summarise my thoughts…

“If you were to cast a cursory glance at Outlaws it would be all too easy to snort with derision. Believe me – all you have to do is play it for a while and you’ll find it hard to tear yourself away. Check it out.”

- Charlie Booker

Mega Man 1-8

Gareth

Danny

The announcement of Mega Man 9 came as a shock to many. Not necessarily because it’s a Mega Man sequel on the next-gen systems, but because Capcom have decided to take a step back in time. It is effectively a NES game, with all the glitches and slowdown you’d expect from such a thing (these authenticities are optional however). It’s a brave decision, many people won’t understand what they are seeing, but if you’ve played the originals you’ll know that assuming they get it right, it’s something to look forward to. If you haven’t played them (I suggest you do), here is a quick run down of the games that (numerically at least) lead up to Mega Man IX.

Gareth

Released in 1987 for the NES and famous for its hideous US boxart. Very little changed gameplay-wise from this initial instalment, so it’s a good place to begin if you’re looking to play a few Megaman games. The story goes that Dr Wily has modified six industrial robots (known as Robot Masters) to do his bidding and he is intent on world domination. Each Robot Master represents a stage, and you can pick any stage to start from and all can be completed from the off. However, the magic of Megaman is that defeating a Robot Master gives you his primary weapon which will then be strong against a different Robot Master, making that battle much easier. Picking the correct path through the game isn’t necessary, but it will save a lot of stress.

It does have some differences from latter games, such as a score counter which was never seen again, the ability to replay levels over and over again and only six robot masters to every other game’s eight, but the basic gameplay and level set up has never really changed. Arguably the hardest of the series due to less moves and a lack of password or save feature, but you do have infinite continues (which reset your score to zero). Well worth checking out.

Gareth

The original Mega Man was not a huge success but Capcom produced a sequel anyway, and it ranks as one of the greatest games of all time for many. Despite coming only a couple of years after the original the music and graphics are both greatly improved on the original and there are a few minor changes to the gameplay as well. A password system was implemented which would keep track of which Robot Masters you had defeated (again created by Dr Wily, who’s back, which is all the story you need to know), and also the number of E-Tanks you had. E-Tanks could be found at specific points in a level and basically allowed you to refill your energy completely at any time from the weapon select screen. Also, as well as the Robot Master’s weapons you could gain there were three ‘items’ to collect by defeating specific Robot Masters. These could then be used in levels like a weapon, but their function was to allow access to hard to reach spots.

Despite only being the second in the series it solidified what was to come from the rest of the series as very, very little changed from this point. There is a negative for me though, which puts it behind the next game in the series, and that is that some areas require multiple playthroughs simply to progress as instant death occurs a matter of seconds after entering the screen if you don’t know where to go (see Quickman’s stage). This should not put you off however as this is still and excellent game and should be checked out.

Gareth

Ah, Mega Man III. My personal favourite, maybe because it was the only one I played as a kid, maybe it truly is the best. It often competes with Megaman II for best game in the series and best music, but in the end it depends who you talk to. Definitely the longest Mega Man at this point, with eight regular stages, then four more stages (where you’d fight variations of the original Megaman’s Robot Masters), plus Wily’s Castle, but it keeps the password feature from Mega Man II so you don’t have to play it all at once. It introduces the slide move, useful for sliding under enemies or small gaps and Mega Man’s robo-dog sidekick, Rush.

Rush replaced the ‘items’ from Mega Man II and could transform into three forms: a spring, a hovering platform and a submarine. You start with the spring ability but would gain the other two from defeating specific Robot Masters. Protoman is also introduced, attacking you half way through certain stages (accompanied by a whistled tune). Once he’s sustained enough damage he will open a pathway for you and you can continue on with the level.

If I personally had to recommend just one Mega Man game to someone, it would be this one. There are definitely challenging sections but it never seems unfair. One of my favourite games of all time.

Gareth

Mega Man IV tried to shake things up a little by not having Dr Wily as the main villain for a change. Enter Dr Cossack (Russian, don’t you know), who unleashes eight Robot Masters on the world and taunts Mega Man to try and stop him. Equipped with his new ‘Mega Buster’ Mega Man goes forth into a now almost over familiar adventure. Unlike Mega Man’s old arm cannon the Mega Buster could be charged to unleash a powerful single shot, which also applied to any special weapon equipped at the time. Other than a little helper droid who appears at certain parts of the game to drop a random item at your feet, that’s about it for innovations.

It’s still a good game, no question there, but compared to the previous instalments it just doesn’t hold up. You get a bad feeling upon loading up the game, where you are greeted with Robot Masters titled Toadman and Dustman, but the gameplay is still here even if it’s not as fresh as it used to be. Visually there are some excellent touches here and there (see the rainy opening to Toadman’s stage), but the music isn’t as memorable as II or III’s either. Play the previous games first, and if you are still enjoying the series then give this one a go.

Danny

While Mega Man IV was generally seen as the start of the downturn for the series Mega Man in my eyes cemented the feeling that Capcom were in fact running out of ideas. Don’t get me wrong Mega Man V probably would be more well received if it did not have the it’s previous games to compare it to but Capcom appeared to take everything we liked about Mega Man and threw it out of the window for this instalment.

Instead of the evil Dr. Wily we had Protoman and instead of Rush the dog we had this stupid bird thing which you would gain access to after collecting each of the letters that would spell M E G A M A N V. One of the most disappointing things about this game though is the difficulty or the complete lack of it. Mega Man V was way, WAY too easy. Although most of the bosses had weaknesses they could all just as easily be defeated using the Mega Buster thus rendering the other weapons a bit pointless. Overall I would say this is one of the more disappointing games in the series.

Danny

When do you know if a company thinks a game is so bad that they don’t have the confidence to sell it? Well when they refuse to publish the game of course and that’s exactly what happened to this Mega Man title. Capcom did not want to publish this title thus Nintendo stood up to the plate and published the game for Capcom. This game contained two robots who were designed by some Mega Man fans in a contest and a Magazine. Knightman and Windman were the only two western designed robot masters in the entire series.

Gameplay wise Mega Man VI was not doing anything we have not seen before in a Mega Man game. Beat, Mega Man’s bird companion makes a return in this title. This was the last NES Mega Man and it was made in 1993 so Capcom had a full grasp of the machines technology by now and the levels are pretty well made. It’s just a shame that Capcom could not up the stakes with the music and robot masters who all seem a little uninspired compared to the rest of the series. Overall I would say that this game is worth playing as it’s an improvement over the previous two games but only after you have beaten the original trilogy of Mega Man games.

Danny

Mega Man VII was the only “original” Mega Man game to come out for Nintendo’s SNES system way back in 1995. Two years after Mega Man’s final NES outing. This game introduces a whole bunch of new features and has some very humorous touches to the game. (See the game’s 1st level and see what I mean!) The most noticeable difference is the graphics and sound which has been improved over the NES counterparts thanks to the new technology that the SNES brings to the table.

Other changes in the series include a new selection process for the robot masters. You have to defeat four of them first then beat a clown like robot then beat the other four robot masters. Also this is the first game were Bass and Treble, rival bounty hunters(?) that are also after the evil Dr Wily. This Mega Man title also has a store where you can buy stuff just like the Gameboy versions of Mega Man IV and V. While this title may seem a little weird from the NES standards we are used to this Mega Man title is not too bad, although make sure you play the SNES version as the anniversary edition has some stuff either missing or cut out of it due to technical problems.

Danny

Mega Man VIII was to be the last original Mega Man, or so we thought. Mega Man VIII was created to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Mega Man series. This Playstation and Saturn title was the first to have anime cut scenes in the game which were of very high quality I might add. It was possible to upgrade Mega Man thanks to the shop but this time you had to collect special bolts but due to the limited amount of space and bolts the player had to choose their power-ups carefully. Bass and Treble also return in this title as well as Roll and the gang. The game has much more of a dark tone to it than the last, again this is thanks to the cut scenes.

The gameplay of Mega Man VIII was not bad. It has some well thought out enemies with some decent puzzles although like the Starwars movies most people will tell you that the newer titles pale in comparison to the original trilogy. That said one thing this title gets right over all others in the series is the controls. Being able to use the Mega Buster while holding a special weapon is a good idea and having the change weapon buttons as the shoulder buttons is a stroke of genius. It’s interesting to note that Capcom were originally going to only make this for the Saturn hence it has more bonus material than the PSX version. Overall all if you can find the PSX or Saturn version cheap you might want to check this out, it’s different but at least it gives the impression that Capcom tried with this title.

Strider: Capcom’s classic ‘Ninja vs. Cosmonauts’ platformer.

Mark

Today’s exhibit from the Perfekt Past vault has a special place in my heart as not only is it a great action-platformer but it also has the distinction of being the first Megadrive (Read: Genesis for our non-European readers) game I ever played. It was the very early nineties and a friend of my older brother boasted that he’d bought a Japanese game for his new Sega Megadrive.

“Will that work in a British machine?” I asked. “Sure, you need a converter to play it or you can use a hacksaw to cut the sides off the cartridge.” he claimed. I never took a hacksaw to a NSTC cartridge but I did use the fabled converter (a small rickety piece of circuit board that bridged the NSTC cart and PAL cartridge slot and had to be in ‘just’ the right way to work) to play a few games as then unreleased in the UK the first of which was this…

Are Striders electric?

‘a boss confrontation inside a mosque’

The original Strider was made by Capcom for their CPS-1 arcade system back in 1989 and was a mix of platforming action with the title character Strider Hiryu able to somersault, climb walls and hang from platforms thanks to his handy climbing claws. To defend himself from the hoards of enemies all looking to make him explode into a shower of light (yeah, don’t ask) he has his falchion, a plasma sword that can cut through most enemies with a single swipe but has a very short range unless you manage to find a upgrade to increase the size of its arc.

Other collectable upgrades include energy replenishing and extending symbols as well as a variety of drones that will follow you and attack any enemies nearby and standard 1-ups and short term invincibility. All of this is used by Hiryu to thwart the plans of the Grandmaster Meio, a Palpatine style bad guy who has used his third moon battle station to enslave earth and take control of Earth. All of which is conveyed by some semi-bizarre dialogue between levels along with some hammy voice acting.

Strider’s setting is a unique mix of future sci-fi set in 2048 across different locations in Asia, Africa and space with the opening level set in St. Petersburg that has you scaling rooftops and minarets before a boss confrontation inside a mosque. Later levels take in a wide variety of vistas with snowy caves and mountains in Siberia to battles on airborne destroyers that include zero-g sections and even a quick stop off in the Amazon jungles before storming bad guy Meio’s third moon battle station in orbit of Earth.

Hiru the cabin boy

‘you’re trapped in a cave with a giant robot monkey’

Now when you think about levels in a game you can normal break them down in your minds eye to tile set placed and arranged to make interesting gameplay with an inherent structure and repetitiveness. However one of the many things that make Strider great is the fact that almost every level doesn’t follow this formula but rather has bespoke quality making it look and play like a collection of action packed set pieces from a movie script rather than just a set of placed background tiles.

The second level is a great example of the bespoke nature of the game. The first ‘area’ has you fighting off wolves before you’re trapped in a cave with a giant robot monkey (I don’t know why they chose a monkey other than it looks cool) that must be defeated to advance. Hiryu then has to scale the cave walls up to a chamber filled with rotating platforms and wheels before ascending through and up to the mountain top where he is attacked by Solo an airbourne bounty hunter in the employ of Grandmaster Mido. You can beat Solo or just run past him either way you have to run as fast as you can down the mountainside as it explodes and jump a chasm over to the powers station on the other side.

Once there you need to avoid more wolves, some big robots and the huge electrical arcs being discharged all around the station (which looks wicked cool by the way) until you can jump off the top of the station a grab a passing hover transport. From there the only way is up as you jump from transport to transport defeating the pilots and dodging bombs being dropped by the bigger airship you reach after hopping off the final transport. Then it’s just a case of getting to the bridge and defeating a trio of female assassins and Solo if you avoided him before. Phew.

Thrown to the wolves

‘replaced with a chubby Shatner look-alike’

Every stage is like this with a narrative going on amongst the action packed scenes with hardly any repetition in the scenes save for the final stage where some previous bosses return for vengeance including a stunning scene where you have to ride Ouroboros across the third moon to your final confrontation with Grandmaster Meio atop a huge radio mast. Once you add to this the great music, with each level having different themes for the set pieces and special themes for the characters, you’ve got an absolute stone cold classic that has to be played.

The only negative comments I can make about it is down to how Strider has been treated in the past. Lacklustre cover art was commonplace for Megadrive games but Strider’s was especially offensive with the original manga style artwork replaced with a chubby Shatner look-alike being spied on by some space marines from Warhammer 40,000. The home versions apart from the near perfect port on the Megadrive were all gash and the NES version was totally different instead being based on the Strider manga comic that removed the whole Grandmaster Meio plotline replacing it with Hiryu running around the world looking for enemy officers to capture to increase his available skills.

A bad time to use the slip 'n' slide

‘made by Tiertex and was a complete load of bollocks’

The sequel Strider Returns was made by Tiertex and was a complete load of bollocks that removed all the great ideas from the original, replacing them with bland clichéd stages and other nonsense like transforming into a robot for boss fights. Things where improved much later with Hiru having cameos in some Capcom beat ‘em ups and a proper Strider 2 sequel but even this fell far short of the originals greatness leaving it almost unique in the genre when compared to its fellow Capcom games of the time like Black Tiger or even Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts.

Playing Strider today is easy thanks to Capcom whoring it out on various retro compilations on a half dozen different formats and the Megadrive conversion can be found for just a few quid on any good online videogame retailer. Who knows if we can generate some interest in the IP maybe Capcom could pull a Resi and give Hiryu a makeover for the next generation or at least an Xbox Live Arcade sequel. After all it couldn’t be any worse than Commando 3 or 1942: Joint Strike.

Hidden Gems: Sega Megadrive.

Mark

Danny

As part of our ongoing quest here at Peoww to bring you, our beloved readers, the very best of retro videogame action we’ve turned our attention to Sega’s 16-bit Megadrive console or Sega Genesis to our non-European readers. Despite being in direct competition with Nintendo’s SNES in later years it still held its own despite the lack of a fancy ‘Super FX’ chip and an almost 8-bit sound setup it still managed to rack up over a thousand releases, some of which were hidden gems…

Danny

A stupidly rare title that never made it to Europe, Master of Monsters is a turn-based warfare game like Civilisation or Advanced Wars but this time your using monsters and magic. Not only can you summon up a whole bunch of monsters but they also obtain experience and you are even allowed to carry over some of your chosen monsters in to your next battle. You can also mix monsters together to form more powerful monsters but there is a risk of losing them during that process.

The graphics are pretty good by Megadrive standards but the presentation is lacking somewhat, I can’t put my finger to it. This does not stop this game being one of the more fun games I’ve played on the system. While the Megadrive version may be stupidly rare the PSX version is quite easy to find in comparison (and it was even released in the UK). Definately one to check out if you like the genre.

Mark

First off I’m going to start with this gem from SSI who spent most of the 80′s and early 90′s making shoddy D&D videogames but also found time to make this sci-fi epic based on TSR’s version of the Buck Rodgers franchise called ‘Buck Rodgers XXVC’ Despite the space based setting it is strongly based on the then standard D&D 2nd edition rules with Fighters, Thief’s and Wizards replaced with sci-fi classes like Rocketjocks, Medics and Engineers and Desert Runners and the like replacing the different D&D races such as Elves and Halflings.

Combat is viewed from a 3D isometric view and runs in turns with each character moving, firing a set amount before the next character has its turn and so on until the conflict is resolved. In addition to this is the ship-to-ship all seen on a single screen and plays not unlike a limited version of the old Star Command games. The plot is no great shakes with you racing to find a destroy the enemies mega weapon before it’s unleashed on earth but stands apart as being one of the few good RPGs on the Megadrive that’s not part of the Phantasy Star or Shining Force series and as such stands apart from those formulaic J-RPGs. It’s just a shame the sequel Buck Rodgers: Matrix Cubed was never converted but on the up side it does teach you a little French as you play, really.

Danny

Avenging angels, you gotta love ‘em! This particular avenging angel likes whizzing around in a horizontal scrolling style shoot-em-up filled to the brim with some really quite gross looking enemies. There really is not much I can say about this game other than this is a pretty solid shooter which gets overlooked by the most people in favour of Zero Wing (because of the “all your base“ thing) or the Thunder Force series.

This game is heavily themed around horror (just check out the bosses!) and is really fast-paced and has some very nice graphics and sound in places. The game allows you to power up your angel using a traditional three power up system (spread, concentrated and a middling one). Gynoug is not a hard game to find and goes quite cheap on eBay normally these days so check it out if you like shooters and want something a little different.

Mark

Now I’ve never made a secret of my love of retro gore and I’ve got to tell you they don’t come much gorier than Splatterhouse 2. Following on from the original arcade and Turbografx game, you play Rick who with the aid of the mysterious ‘Terror Mask’ that makes him look like a steroid pumped Jason Voorhees alike when worn. Using the mask Rick must rescue his lost girlfriend Jennifer from the land of the dead by beating the hell out of anything in his path with his bare hands or any number of handy weapons like bats, poles and even chainsaws all of which will reduce monsters to bloody messes or wall splatters in no time at all.

At its core it’s a simple platforming 2D beat ‘em up with Rick able to throw high punches and low kicks along with a jump kick for when he’s airborne like when jumping pits or nasty spike traps. Enemies range from simple zombie type creatures that can be despatched with a simple punch to the huge bosses that require some nifty joypad work to kill and some good old fashioned attack pattern memorisation. It can be very frustrating at time but the atmosphere and shear bloody madness will keep you going all the way to the end and on to the sequel Splatterhouse 3 which doesn’t get my vote for inclusion as it’s a different beast to SH2 that includes room exploration and more 3D movement which for me spoils the purity of the game but should not be overlooked if you get the chance to play it, especially in Europe where it was never released.

Danny

This is the definitive Gauntlet for any system ever. A four player port of the original Gauntlet II awaits you here but what’s this? Deathmatch, Record Mode and RPG mode?!? Yep Tengen actually put some effort into this port and instead of just throwing any old crap at us like a lot of companies seem to do these days when it comes to ports of old games we are treated to two really cool new gameplay modes which extend the game’s lifespan a lot.

The music was done by Masaharu Iwata of Final Fantasy Tactics fame and is arguably one of the best bits about the game itself. The RPG mode was actually really good with simple character development, non-randomised levels and some really cool dungeons. The multiplayer deathmatch mode was also a lot of fun especially with three other friends and can contain anything from the original Gauntlet 2 game Record mode is basically high score mode where you can’t die but you lose points for every 500 hp lost. You gain points by collecting treasure and killing monsters, there was even a password continue system. I highly recommend checking this game out right now!

Mark

Castlevania is very much a Nintendo franchise today with annual release for the DS and future Wii releases to look forward to but occasionally Konami slip the odd non-Nintendo game like the superb Symphony of the Night for the PS1 and this for the Megadrive. It looks and plays just like the classic Castlevania games before the switch to Metroid-Vania style of play with SotN with no RPG stats or different weapons and equipment to mess with just the Vampire Killer whip if you play as John Morris, heir to the Belmont legacy or the Alucarde spear if you chose Eric Lecarde.

All the usual Castlevania trappings are here with powerups and hearts (well gems in this entry) collected from destroying candles and tricky left to right platforming action set across different stages in Europe rather than just one location in Transylvania as in many previous entries. The choice of the two different characters opens up different paths during the game with Eric able to jump higher using the spear while John can cross pits by swing across with his whip meaning you can replay as the other character and take a different route to the final showdown with Bartley and ultimately the resurrected Dracula. If possible get hold of the NSTC or Australian PAL versions as it has all the blood intact and keeps the original enemy placement making for a far more fairer and balanced game that the EU-PAL rehash.

Danny

Not so “hidden” this one but very overlooked by a lot of people at the time (can you explain why this never got a sequel?). Mutant League Football used the Madden ’93 engine and well… let’s just say Electronic Arts modified the concept of American Football somewhat and for most people outside of the US, probably for the better.

Explosive landmines, zombies, fire pits, exploding balls, invisible players, killing refs, this is not typical “football” as the Americans might call it. It’s possible to kill your opponents in this game while bribing the ref so he looks the other way and it’s stuff like that that really sets the game apart because it’s actually very tactical sports title. Each team is a spoof of an actual American Football team and they all have there own “special plays” which are normally very devastating and violent. If you have not picked up and played this game yet then shame on you, you deserve a slap for missing out on one of the best sports games ever created.

Mark

One of the biggest advantages of the Megadrive was the fact it shared the same Motorola CPU as the Commodore Amiga range and as such made converting games between the two formats a doddle so for anyone who didn’t own an Amiga could play near perfect conversions of games like Shadow of the Beast, Turrican or even Kings Bounty. One of the best conversions was The Misadventures of Flink, an action platformer by the same guys who made the amazing Lionheart and later went on to make the Lemmings spin-off The Adventures of Lomax.

The game looks gorgeous, even better than Lionheart which is about as good as 2D graphics got and plays as a hybrid of several platformer classics with the magic system similar to the gold rings in Sonic the Hedgehog and a world map straight out of Super Mario World. But don’t think Flink is lacking in originality as he has his own spell ingredient system that will have you hunting down spell lists in hidden chests or just combining ingredients yourself to try and find useful combinations to help you as Flink can move at a good pace when you give him a run up but don’t expect any twenty foot standing jumps or gravity defying moves. The best way to play it is to find a copy of the Mega-CD version as it has all the levels compared to the cartridge which is missing some due to the storage limitations of the format but either way just play it as it deserves your time.

Danny

An Amiga classic that’s often overlooked by the younger generation and our cousins from the states. Super Skidmarks is a fantastic conversion of the original Amiga game which is generally overlooked on this console by other racing games like Micro Machines, Super Hang-on, Outrun etc.

Super Skidmarks was just plain whacky and had some really great car and track design. Name me another game where you could drive as a cow on some big arse skates? The courses and gameplay in general remind me of Super Off Road which is never a bad thing. The best bit was that the game had controller ports attached to the top of the cart so you could play the game four player with having to buy any addenda hardware, awesome no? Defiantly one of the best multiplayer games on the system!

Mark

It wasn’t just Castlevania that jumped formats; Capcom also broke ranks and released this for the Megadrive in ’94. Thankfully it’s not a dreadful spin-off like Mega Man Network but rather an update come conversion of the Mega Man 1, 2 and 3 games with all of them given a 16-bit makeover and annoying bugs like the notorious pause bug and flickering sprites removed.

The graphics can be a little rough in places with some sprites just ported over directly and given a paint job rather than a full reanimation and the tunes although good are still mostly bleeps and bloops but for my money this is the best way to get into the Blue Bombers early adventures as the original NES games are an acquired taste for those not around for its debut and the handy inclusion of a battery backup save makes finishing the game easier as many bosses weapons have a rock-scissors-paper relation to other the bosses and defeating them in the correct order is key to beating the three games here.