Last Alert - One player, saves to system. Telenet's Last Alert is a top-down run & gun action game. With many cutscenes, lots of levels, some variety in level designs along the way, and that the game saves your progress as you play, Last Alert is a pretty impressive game for 1990, when it released. The gmae also has fantastic controls -- unlike many run & gun games from its time, this one has a strafe-lock button, so you can lock your firing direction with ease! It makes shooting easy. Controls are good, as well. The game has some flaws, though. Most notably, the voice acting in this NEC-published US release is absolutely abysmal, to a comical degree. Also, the graphics are small, there is no multiplayer, and the game is easy and sorely lacking in challenge. This game gets a fair amount of praise from Turbo fans, and it deserves some of it, but the downsides are real. In Last Alert you play as Guy Kazama, a muscular '80s style action hero. You're off to beat a series of villains who want to take over the world, naturally. The game has cutscenes between missions, with the usual Turbo CD-style barely-animated-scenes-with-voice, and conversations with each boss once you reach them. However, the story is generic action/spy movie stuff, and the voice acting really is awful. That bad voice acting is entertainingly bad at times, though, so there is that. Also while the story's far from great, a game, or even movie, in this genre rarely does much more. Back in 1990, just having voiced story cutscenes in a game was a pretty big deal, of course. Now it's not, but the story here is mostly fine. Gameplay is what matters the most in games, anyway, and the plot sets the scene for each of Guy Kazama's exploits.
Last Alert has 23 levels spread across a sequence of missions. Each mission is made up of several levels, and sometimes you can choose the order you play a missions' levels in. The game will also autosave after you complete a mission, which is great (it does not seem to save after each level, though.). Levels are reasonable length in Last Alert, and you get experience as you kill enemies. As you level up you'll get more health and unlock more guns. However, as I said earlier, the game very rarely provides much challenge. I'm not the greatest at games, but I do not die very often in this game, that's for sure. Honestly I find the game getting tedious after a while, thanks to the low difficulty level and long length of the game. Sure, the controls are great and wiping out the enemies is usually easy, but it's often TOO easy. You can also often shoot through cars, which is weird. The games' internal rules for which things you can shoot through and which you can't don't make much sense, and more obstacles to your fire probably would have been a good thing. And as with many TG16 games, like a NES or SMS game don't expect to find any difficulty level options here, there are none. The game does have a few different level types, though. The variants don't change much, but in this genre anything is nice. In most levels, you're navigating through a fairly linear level, looking for the boss and wiping out the enemies along the way. A few missions have you instead "infiltrating" a base trying to rescue prisoners. Here, the amount of enemies you face depends on how often you shoot your gun. So, arm your machine gun and fire away if you want to face endless waves of respawning foes, or use the pistol and have an easy time of it. There are also some levels where you have to explore around an area, finding all of the bombs to disarm for example.
The basic gameplay of going around and shooting enemies as they appear never changes, though, and nor do those small graphics. HuCard games in this genre like Legend of the Valkyrie or even Bloody Wolf probably look better than this game. This game does show off its CD format by having a lot more levels than those games do, of course. The game also has a decent CD audio soundtrack. Overall, Last Alert is an okay game. The firing-lock button makes moving around and shooting where you want easy, and the game is plenty long and it is a fun game, at least for a while at a time. The game costs quite a bit more than the other Turbo CD topdown run & gun, Final Zone II and I don't know if it's a better game, though. Since it saves you don't have to play the whole game all at once, though, unlike that game, and that's great. Still, slightly bigger graphics and some difficulty level options would have gone a long way here. Still, Last Alert is reasonably good, overall. It's worth a look for sure.
L-Dis (J exclusive) - One player. L-Dis, from NCS Masaya, is a hard cute 'em up-styled horizontal shmup. This game is reasonably well regarded I think, but isn't one of the better-known Turbo CD shmups. For a regular CD title, though, this game looks and plays great. L-Dis has a very basic sexist videogame plot: you play as a boy who has to save the girl he likes, who has been kidnapped by aliens. Yeah, this plot again. Fortunately the game is a lot better than the story, though. You pilot a cute little ship, flying through six or so several-part levels on your quest. L-Dis is a very tough game, and beating it will take quite a bit of practice; I haven't gotten even close yet, so far. If you run out of lives you can continue, but you start the whole level over, which is quite cruel when you've gotten to the final boss. Most levels do have obstacles to avoid, and of course the level designs get even tougher as you progress. The game has a powerup system of course, with floating powerups some enemies drop. There is a problem here, though: unlike almost all shmups, the powerups here are Japanese text boxes. So yeah, memorize which one is which, or else you'll have problems getting what you want. It's kind of annoying, but with some practice you will get used to it. The text color tells you which of the two different powerup types the powerup will give you, weapon or ship, so that's a help. Weapon powerups give you different weapons, while the ship ones can give you helper ships (like Gradius Options), a shield, and and such. You can have a few (but limited) options, and have to choose between either option helpers or bombs which do nothing until you use them as screen-clearing superbombs. The weapon system works well, as long as you can figure out what you're getting.
L-Dis is a pretty good looking game. The game does have some parallax scrolling, though not in every level. Still, on the Turbo, any parallax is great to see. Backgrounds are well-drawn as well, and the sprites are done in a nice cartoony style which looks quite good. The ships all have big eyes on them, which is a nice touch. The game makes use of the CD format to have some enemies, and the bosses, talk during your fights with them. It's a nice addition and gives the game more personality. The music is good, fitting stuff as well. Overall, L-Dis has graphics and sound about as good as you can expect from a regular-CD title, and plays about as well as it looks, too. L-Dis is a hard game, but it's well worth the effort, and I will definitely be going back to this one as I try to get farther. This is one of the better Turbo shmups I own, though it's hard to choose when they're almost all so good... but even so, it's one of the better ones.
*The Legend of Xanadu (J exclusive) - One player, saves to system, Super CD game. This is another Super CD game, so I haven't played it yet... and from what I've read about it, I'll have a hard time once I do. The Legend of Xanadu, from 1994, is a later release on the system from Falcom, and it's one part Ys I & II, one part Ys III, and one part confusing, apparently. This game has top-down Ys-style action with somewhat small sprites but actual fullscreen gameplay (unlike all previous Falcom games or ports of Falcom games on this system), along with side-scrolling levels that have nicer graphics. However, it also apparently has some pretty tricky puzzles which are very, very hard to figure out for those like me who don't know Japanese -- you need to talk to people then go to specific places at specific times, since this game has an ingame time system, in order for some things to happen. There is a partial walkthrough for the game, but it's far from complete; hopefully someone works on it soon. Even if I don't get oo far though, I'm very interested to play this game, since it looks pretty good. The gmae has a sequel, LoX II, which has some of the system's best graphics. That one is apparently a lot shorter than this game (people say 30+ hours for this one, maybe half that for the sequel), but it sure looks nice. This game does have one thing that game doesn't, though: it comes in a dual-jewel case, and comes with not just a slightly thicker manual, but also a map/poster that was one of the reasons why I got this. On one side, you have the poster with art for the game. It's very '90s anime-style stuff, but it's kind of amusing. On the other side, there's a map of the floor layouts for all of the floors of the apparently very tricky dungeon at the end of the game. That'd probably be very useful, once you get that far.
Legion (J exclusive) - Two player simultaneous. Legion is usually regarded as being one of the Turbo CD's worst shmups, and it's easy to see why. This game is not without any value, however. Legion is by Telenet, and was released the same year as Avenger. This game is a far cry from that great should-be-classic, however. Legion is a brutally hard, unforgiving game with average to subpar graphics and lacking music. This game is mostly for masochists and people who really want another two-player co-op shmup for the TG16/CD, since there are so few on the platform.
Legion is also interesting for having English-language voice acting telling the story. The art design is okay, and has that Telenet look to it, but clearly did not get the budget of even Avenger. This game doesn't have parallax, of course. This cut-rate game has no actual cutscenes, but it does have audio logs from your ships' pilot which play over the level, all voice acted by a native English speaker. Is he the same guy who did one of the voices in The Ninja Warriors on Sega CD? I'm not sure. Anyway though, the story is somewhat amusing, and some of the lines are weird. You're a space pilot sent to defeat an enemy ship fleet threatening your planet. However, it comes at the cost of CD audio -- this game has none! Instead, the actual soundtrack is chiptunes, and don't sound as good as Turbo CD shmups usually do as a result; the TG16 can do some good music, but it doesn't have one of the best audio chips of its time. Still, the music isn't all bad. It's very repetitive, but some of the songs are kind of catchy, such as the between-levels space map tune. Others are just annoying. Ah well.
As for the gameplay, this game is about trial and error above anything else. Sort of like Telenet's Valis games, the enemies zoom in at you from off the screen, and if you're in the wrong place you will get hit. As a result you will die, and die often, and hopefully memorize everything as you do so. This game is reasonable-length, too; this isn't one of those 20-minute shmups. That will be the only way to survive this frustrating game. When I can manage to stay alive for a while the game can be fun at times, though. You do respawn where you were when you died, but those lives will go away quickly, and you have limited continues, so finishing this game is hard. You lose all of your powerups when you die, which in this game is a SERIOUS setback -- you start out quite underpowered, and being reverted to nothing will surely cause more deaths. Try to avoid taking any hits, somehow! In order to add some replay value, the game does have some branching paths, where you can choose between multiple stages. That's nice. In two player mode killing the enemies will be easier, but you share credits and environmental obstacles and hard-to-dodge enemy fire will still take you down sometimes, so the game is still hard. Overall, I don't entirely hate Legion. The game has okay controls, decent graphics for its time, and certainly provides plenty of challenge. If you don't mind frustratingly difficult games, go ahead and give Legion a try if you find it for quite cheap. Otherwise pass. I don't regret buying it, since there is some fun to be had and sometimes I like a challenge, but it's definitely not one of the better Turbo CD games.
Mateki Densetsu Astralius (J exclusive) - One player, saves to system. Astralius, from IGS, is a traditional-style JRPG that is pretty much hated by the few people outside of Japan who have played it. I got this as a part of a lot, and unfortunately, here the critics are right: this game isn't good. I do like the graphics and story, though. Astralius has decently good graphics for its time, good-sized sprites for an RPG from 1991, and the art design and enemies look good enough, when you're looking at them. The monsters could look better, but it's not too bad. This game is no Square or Enix title, but it looks fine, much better than I expected given its reputation. The problems are almost everywhere else. First, load times in this game are long and very frequent. Every battle has a long load, and you can't even see the enemies on screen at first, either -- you only can look at them through a menu option, or after you've chosen your strategy for the round. Argh. Some people also dislike that the game does not retarget if a characters' target dies before their turn, but I don't mind that; the GBA Golden Sun games worked that way, and it was fine, and added some strategy. Still, the slow-paced battles, with their odd menus-only-while-selecting-moves design and load times, slow this game down to a crawl. Your movement speed on the overworld is far too slow as well, and the random battle encounter rate is very high. That is not a good combination, and gets me to either stop playing games, or stop trying to explore in games, which is awful since exploration should be one of the more fun things to do in this kind of game.
As for the story, Astralius uses the classic story concept of having a group of normal Earth people who are pulled into a fantasy world. In this case, you play as a musician guy, and your three musical group members are the other party members. No, not a rock band; the main character is a flutist, and the game starts on an ocean liner where you are supposed to entertain the guests, before you get sucked into another world of course. In the other world, you naturally turn out to be the hero who will have to save the world, as expected. You'll eventually gain music-based magic attacks for each character, fitting with the games' theme. The game has a few cutscenes, and some voice acting, but also plenty of text of course. Use the walkthrough (
http://www.unlimitedzigworks.com/1498/faq-astralius-pc-engine.html ) if you don't know Japanese, it's essential. Or just don't play the game. I haven't gotten too far into this one, and can't see myself sticking with it long enough to finish it, but I will get at least a bit farther, I think; I'm not too far into it, and while it definitely is frustrating and I'm sure I'll lose patience with it eventually, I do at least like the basic story. That "modern person pulled into another world" setup is a good one, and it's one only infrequently seen in RPGs.
Pomping World (J ver.) [aka Buster Bros.] - Two player simultaneous. Pomping World, or Buster Bros., is a port by Hudson of Capcom's arcade game of the same name. This game has a US release as 'Buster Bros. Collection', but I have the Japanese version because the game is the same and this was cheaper. The original arcade game was called Pang in Europe, so the game has a different name in each region. From the second game in this series on, in Japan the series also took on the "Pang" name, but here it stayed "Buster Bros.". So yeah, why that title, "Pomping World"? I have no idea. Whatever you call it, though, this game is decent fun. I don't love this game, but it's alright to good. Buster Bros. is a single-screen shooting/platform game. Unlike a lot of single-screen platformers from this era, though, this game is nothing like Bubble Bobble. Instead, it's more of a shmup. Each of the players -- and yes, that this game has two player co-op is awesome -- can move around the bottom of the screen, or up ladders to higher platforms if there are ladders in the stage in question. Each level is just one screen, but there are 17 stages full of levels and limited continues so the game is plenty long. The attacks in this game are unique: you can only shoot straight up. The enemies in this game are bouncing balls, which get smaller as you shoot them, but much like Asteroids, as they shrink they also break into multiple parts. Instead of a gun, your default weapon is more of a grappling hook gun, or something -- if it hits the ceiling or a platform above you, it creates a rope which will damage an enemy (ball) if the ball bounces into it. This will destroy the rope and let you fire again. However, when one of those is out, you can't shoot, so be careful with your placement! Also, since you have to stand under or right in front of enemies to hit them, the game requires quite a bit of risk, and can be frustrating when you're down to a few tiny balls which aren't bouncing very high, giving you very little margin for error. This is a one hit and you die game. There are some weapon powerups that can make things a bit easier, but you still fire upwards only. That's what makes this game unique, but I do find it kind of annoying sometimes, and I wish I could shoot sideways too. Ah well, you do get used to it. The game has a variety of backgrounds as you progress, and new obstacles and trickier stage layouts appear as you get farther. The basic gameplay stays the same, though. Overall this is a decently fun game, but I do have some issues with the design (always firing up only, most importantly), and there's no enemy variety either, just lots of balls, balloons, or whatever they are. I also dislike how you can get stuck sometimes if you didn't do things right in a level. Still, the game can be addictive and definitely is a solid and mostly well-designed challenge, and the two player co-op is pretty cool as well. I can see why this game was successful enough to get a couple of sequels, though they didn't come to this system. The first three Buster Bros. games were all included in the Buster Bros./Pang Collection for the PS1. All three titles are also included in the Capcom Puzzle World collection on PSP, along with Super Puzzle Fighter II and one other game. There are also European ports of this game on some computers (Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, PC, and Atari ST). There is a SNES port of the second Buster Bros. title, but not the first. I haven't played that one.
*Prince of Persia - One player, saves to system, Super CD. I haven't played this yet (Super CD...), but as for PoP in general, it's not a game I played much of at all as a kid, and I haven't gone back to it much either. The game seems okay, but that time limit... maybe I'll try this one someday and actually play PoP for once, I don't know.
*Puyo Puyo CD (J exclusive) - Two player simultaneous, Super CD. Haven't played this yet either, but Puyo Puyo is a pretty good series.
Topic: Game Opinion Summaries: TurboGrafx CD / PC Engine CD (Read 373 times)
