Thursday 7 August 2014

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.

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