Sakigake!! Otoko Juku - Shippuu Ichi Gou Sei (Famicom, 1989, Bandai/TOSE)

From the same developer that brought us Saint Seiya - Ougon Densetsu Kanketsu Hen comes this gem, and only a year later. Because disgracing just Masami Kurumada was not enough I guess, so Akira Miyashita joins the fold of the many many people who'se work got bastardised by TOSE.

The "progress" map which comes up so
rarely you'll forget it even exists most of
the time.

Now let's get something straight here. This game is not as bad as Saint Seiya ODKH (hereafter reffered to, somewhat incorrectly, as Saint Seiya 2). Almost nothing on this earth is. That's not to say this game is good, but I'm just giving credit where credit is due in that TOSE in a mere one year's time managed to learn to make a game who'se mechanics are comprehensible to non Harvard graduates and that even theoreticaly respond in a way which can be replicated when the need arises. But don't fret, the absolute monotonous game length and the complete lack of any entertainment are still retained to preserve that classic TOSE feeling.

And the game begins. And never even remotely
looks like anything else but this.

 Not being familiar with the source material this time around, I can't realy say how much this game tarnishes the original's good name, but I will probably wager a guess and say the manga at least depicts the characters distinctly, and doesn't instead resort to having them share the same model except for the one on one fights. This is especialy heinous since playing as the different characters would most likely be one of the main reasons why anyone would even buy this game at the time. Because TOSE never develops for anything but a currently running series it seems and it's pretty bad when there's something I can say Saint Seiya 2 actualy did better. Once again, not good mind you, better.

And no, putting piranhas in your game hasn't
been original since Super Mario Brothers TOSE.

The game is basicly just a dirt simple action side scroling beat em up....almost. Because we all know the that if TOSE would have to actualy develop something and not try to "improve" it in some way then they'd need alot of snowplows down in Hell. You have to wander around entering doors and try to find your way to the boss. Every place looks pretty much like every place else and an incorrect choice simply loops you back out. The enemies are usualy the exact same (and the game only has three sprites for them anyway) so that doesn't help. Later on the game adds moving platforms, necessity to go down trap-like shafts (some of which simply loop you back out) or hitting a completely invisible wall that prevents you from passing until it doesn't anymore.

The begining of the game, with every character selected
in turn.

You have two attacks, a short punch and a much longer kick. Normaly this would be enough but the enemies can guard against your moves at least 50 % of the time so you will most likely take dammage. You will definitely take dammage from the invisible holes that are on every level that have no indication of them being there and you will fall into every time unless you just happen to jump over them. The only way to recover health for your specific character is to either find a random guy in a random door who will refill it or....a chorus. (Edit: this does make sense in context of the series)

Yeah you basicly select the option, then the amount of health to be refilled, some guys come onscreen and start singing and your health increases by the amount you set earlier, decreasing the overall amount availible when selecting this option. You can also select this and not replenish any health, for what reason I don't know.

As noted your characters look and behave identicaly, except in the boss fights where you suddenly get new sprites and actualy varying abilities. One of the guy's has a sword, but he loses this the moment he's knocked down once, so it's not much of a plus. The other's usualy have some variety of punches, (the last guy having no immediately visible improved attack ability but he does backflips), one guy has a knife that never falls out of his hand, and one of the bosses that later joins you makes supper fast kicks but seems realy hard to move around.

The bosses themselves just reuse the handfull of rooms availible, and mostly have a very basic run-up-and-hit-you type of strategy. Beating them refills you no health for said character when going to the next level.

And then the game simply goes on and on....and on. At first it changes scenery every two levels but then the last area has around five levels that take place in it and nothing ever realy changes. There's somewhere around 18 levels and the game stops being even the slightest bit entertaining around level 8. At least Saint Seiya 2 had a reason for being as overly long as it was, here it seems completely nonsensical.

In the end, there is nothing you'll remember about this game, and frankly there is nothing here that deserves it.

Fire Rock (Famicom Disk System, 1988, Use Corporation)

Mark Flint. His name is everywhere on this game, short of the cover. Which, given the quality of this piece, is not exactly smart.

His credentials are somewhat hard to trace. He has his name on some games since early Famicom days and his last game I managed to find was the 1997 Running High. All his work that I know of seems to have been developed under System Sacom. His titles range from Pinball games, to sports racing games, and then today's offering.

Fire Rock (no relation to the recently covered Fire Bam) is a stone age-looking platform game, released during a time when games with prehistoric settings were quite popular. The PC Engine had four, the Bonk series plus the Legendary Axe, Joe and Mac appeared on many different consoles, there was the unlicensed adventures of Big Nose on the NES in america, then there was Prehistoric etc. You even had a stone age era taxi game, Ugh for DOS. What sets Fire Rock apart from all of these are the abominable controls.

Unlike the other games mentioned above, in Fire Rock you seem to be controling a caveman with springs for shoes who just took a swim in a pool full of lubricant. Your jump is far too short to reach most platforms and items, and so you'll be left with climbing on walls. Remembering how easy it was in Bonk, imagine the same basic method of continualy pressing the jump button while holding up, except increase the amount of button presses needed to clear the same basic obstacle by about 800 %. Basicly you don't climb, you sort of....inch your way upwards very very very slowly. And in case you happen to fall off, you not only fall down, but slide backwards, most likely into lava, which makes you jump forward and idealy fall back down below a platform you just spent a good five minutes getting up on. You have no control of where you're character will be after you try executing a jump, because more often then not it will simply backfire and kill you.

Now imagine this control scheme applied to a game where you need to jump all the time, and I do mean all the time, plus where precise movements to make it into perilously placed doorways hanging in midair over pools of lava-filled death is the norm.

Your goal throughout the game is to go through each maze like level and the many doors that spontaneously appear in a room depending on from which door you got in, find each boss (the room is a different colour then the norm so it's easy to tell what flock of enemies is just that and which one counts as a "boss"), kill it, then find the necessary items and then find the one door which may look slightly different from the others and leave the level. Along the way you collect torches to increase your fire power (which is agravatingly reset whenever you start a new level), vases for points and hearts to generate a shield that you will immediately lose upon being hit once so why bother and besides you have no after hit invincibility and the boss ramming you into a corner can literaly drain all your life before you come out of your post-hit dammage animation. There isn't realy anything more to say, other then the keys are usualy put in the most ridiculous of places, such as below, the key one finds on the first level.

Yeah, that's an easy start.

Now once again, try and imagine this setup, only one of the later levels is designed around one way secret walkways hidden in walls, ceilings and floors where one incorrect movement sends you plummeting to the very bottom of the maze.

The basic design of the game is not bad, the levels look different enough to not seem repetitive, the enemies and bosses look fun and it seems like it could very well be a much, much better game only if Mark Flint didn't bend over backwards just to infuse it with "realism" thereby making it nigh-unplayable.