Defenders of Dynatron City (NES, Lucasfilm Games / JVC Musical Industries, Inc. 1992)

You wouldn't think this would be so bad. At first glance this seems like a fun action game where you run around, switching between different heroes and beating up robots to clear up sections on a map to thus feed into your inate OCD cleanliness obsession. And that IS what the first level is about. You pick one starting hero, and get an aditional trio to select whenever you wish to, going about shooting robots, each taking two, please note, TWO hits.

Then you get to the boss. It's a blimp that doesn't do many interesting things, sorta goes left and right and can pretty much never hurt you. A few hits and it's dead and the supercharger item falls out. Pick that up and it's on to level 2. Which is sorta the same as level 1, just a new area on the previous map. You go here, blast at a few dinosaur robots, however at this point the kid gloves start to come off as each of these robots take a lot more hits then the robots on the previous level, but it's still fairly manageable. Then you get to the boss.

No, the above screenshot does not deceive you. That is not a random enemy, but an end of level boss. And despite how underwhelming it looks, and how easy it is to dodge it's shots, it's real power lies in it's secret alleigance with the level timer. You see, every stage has a random time limit. There is really no reason for this, and yet it becomes your undoing in stage 2. For some reason even if you do get every powerup item in the city (and trade in the monkey character for the dog, one of the main hero characters who you can thus have on your roster along with one of the two other "main" heroes) this thing refuses to go down. I literally ran out the timer and had to sacrifice the hammer head guy. You see, the character you had selected when the timer runs out gets "captured" which is kinda like when it happens in TMNT, except it can screw you over big time.

Once you beat this guy you move on to level 3 where you have to run into the sewers, running back and forth in a maze that is actually less confusing then the city street layout (also tip, the in game map is totally useless as it shows things from a weird angle and thus will just confuse you) and here you will first be screwed over by the fact not all your characters can jump. Yeah, this is apparently considered a "super power" with it's own meter and everything. Problem is there are bats around which you can't hit from the ground so you have to wait around ladders, going up and down to get a clear shot. However given the short amount of time, you don't have much time to do this.

Also you will notice that you have some money if you picked up the powerups in level 1. For some reason defeated enemies don't leave cash but you apparently just sort of have it the moment you pick up a power up item in a store. And you get like 10 bucks for each one so at most you have 40 dollars. You probably spent most of it on food to replenish health in the second level. Well, you could replenish your health in this level, in theory, but you have such a short timer you don't have time to do so. So you move along and get to another boss, static boring machine sort of thing which you can kill with about four shots from the top of a ledge and then you move on to the Cola factory level.

And here is where the game screws you over. You see, there is no way to get out of this building. So there is no way to go buy health items. If that wasn't enough every screen has a pair of enemies which each take from 25 to 35 hits to beat. And if that wasn't enough every screen is filled with floating green bubbles which each do four dammage, seemingly cannot be destroyed, one of the characters cannot avoid them at all because Ms. Megawatt cannot jump, at all. Basically you will get utterly decimated here, with the bubbles killing all of your heroes. You'll be lucky to have the dog left by the end with any health at all.

If you manage to somehow get past that, you are treated to a really cheap bait and switch. You see, you emerge outside on the streets for your fight with Dr. Mayhem. At first you think you can finally go buy some health but no, you cannot leave the area, at all, nor go inside any of the shops. And to top it all off Dr. Mayhem is horribly cheap as well. All he does is run into you and smack you for tuns of dammage. Oh and of course the game not only doesn't bring back your other "captured" team mates seeing as you can't got and find them, nor does it give you back any health after the previous level, at all. Plus he has tons of health, having three shields you have to beat down before you start hurting him at all and even then it takes some time for him to go down after that. You pretty much just have to hope to get him stuck in a running back and forth animation where you can stand still and not take dammage, or have all the Superchargers somehow, which is doubtful at best seeing as you probably used them to finish off the buzzsaw robots in the previous level faster so the bubbles wouldn't get you.

And for all that you are rewarded with

Saying "this game sucks" is a bit of a cliché perhaps, but god if it doesn't describe this thing to a t.

Mo Shen Fa Shi/Demogorgon Monk (Famicom, Waixing Computer Science & Technology, ???)

Unlicensed games are a mixed bag. Some are good, some fairly decent and others are cornerstones of many internet gaming reviewers clame to fame. Most of the games covered are usually either cheaply made American/British action games with terrible controls, awful graphics and bad hit detection. However, there is very little discussion of the Chinese bootlegged and unlicensed RPG scene, despite there being quite a few games of this type around, mostly because of the language barrier. As a result few if any of these games get noticed or receive anything beyond the vaguest mention.

Today's subject is one of these games. "Mo Shen Fa Shi", as the transliteration of the title supposedly goes, is a very simple turn based RPG based on the Journey to the West. It was made by Waixing Computer Science & Technology, who'se known games include rip offs of other titles like Super Contra 7, or games which steal sprites and assets from other games en masse. It's possible this game does so too, but there is no information about it online except the fact it was produced by Waixing.

There are no ulterior motives in posting this particular screenshot at all.

The game itself at first seems to be a regular turn based RPG. However, there are some notable differences. For one, there are no "inns" or anything similar in this game. Instead the characters regain health and magic after each fight automatically, to a certain extent. This is not a problem later on but becomes one towards the one of the game.

Another difference is that there is little to do in the game other then talking to people and fighting enemies. Despite not knowing Chinese one can force one's way through the game by simply fighting the boss characters visible on the screen and talking to people. There is little chance of not knowing where to go as you can only go into areas that you have to go to next. Otherwise the game simply notes the area as being somewhere you can go by displaying a name, but will not allow you to go inside, even if there is seemingly nothing preventing your entry. In addition, NPCs and defeated boss characters will not repeat dialogue that they've already said, so one can check quite easily if he missed a necessary conversation by simply attempting to talk to them again. There is little need to really know what they say in depth as the conversation usually amounts to an event flag which opens up a previously inaccessible area.

The only other thing one can really do in this game besides random encounters is walking around the stage picking up items from treasure chests and opening closed passages. The former is done by bumping into the chest while holding b and pressing the direction button. It seems really impressise and hard to replicate exactly. The latter is done by going around the area, touching an object that looks like a keyhole, floating around in the middle of nowhere, and press B which magically makes what resemble stone pillars blocking your path disappear. There is little else beyond buying some health items and upgrades.

One notable thing about the game is that it is set on one map, which is however divided into three areas. Once the player gets teleported to the other side of the river, there is no way to go back to the starting area. It is at this point where the game becomes more imbalanced. There are two boss characters here, both of whom use an attack that hurts the entire party for 200 or 300 dammage respectively. Progress having been much smoother before, one has to start going around and grind the enemies in this area, far tougher then those in the first area. It's here that the auto healing function stops being much of an asset, as there is only a certain amount of health and magic that regenerates after a fight and if you keep running into the skeletons, you will probably keep on losing energy rather then getting any back.

After you move on from this area, you are in the final part of the game. Confusingly, there are several caves and towns here which, despite looking like the other towns, are not locations at all, but just part of the background. Here you will face off against the tiger boss, who can hit your whole party for 500 dammage. The problem being that, even if you have all four characters maxed out to level 30 and all using their elemental summon spells to attack the guy, you can't survive long enough to beat him if he gets to use his group attack even twice. So you have to hit him with normal weapons, hope to god his A.I. decides to just attack one of your characters normally, so you can hit him with your highest level spells twice.

This all while basically all of the enemies here are way stronger then you and can take up to 7 attacks in the 900 dammage range to go down, and 90 % of enemies here come at you in pairs. You really wish you could spend all that XP your counter isn't even displaying anymore after it reaches 9999 and all the gold you're getting to get stronger weapons, armour etc. But there is nothing of the sort here, nothing to make these battles any less of a pain. This is probably the biggest flaw in the game as there is nothing to really work towards, no special weapon that you spend hours grinding to be able to buy and kill off a boss that's giving you trouble, nothing to decrease the amount of dammage you take, or decrease the cost of your spells, give you more spells etc. When you've beaten the Tiger, Elephant and Bird bosses which all have the same annoying powers as Tiger, you have to go into one of the seemingly inaccessible towns from the side, make your way through a forest like area, down a specific path to end up in a dark temple interior, talk to a buddha statue, then coverse with two guys on opposite sides of the temple and you win.

You are rewarded with some chinese text which seems to be a list of staff and then the game resets to the title screen. Not exactly thrilling but then again, one should probably not expect any epic lengthy ending from a game like this. The experience overall is entertaining, though less engaging then a proper, professionally developed RPG.