• Tag Archives retrogaming

  • Time Lord (NES)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Time Lord (NES)

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/170647078694/doiner-nes-time-lord

    No, Time Lord doesn’t have anything to do with Doctor Who even though that’s exactly what it sounds like. Time Lord is a completely unrelated game for the NES that involves traveling to various time periods in Earth’s history in order to defeat an alien force that is attacking in those time periods in order to change history and make Earth easier to conquer in the present. You get to use various weapons found in the time period you are in from swords to lasers and everything in between. Despite not being Doctor Who related, it still sounds pretty cool. Another plus is that this game was developed by Rare. Rare is known today for having developed some pretty incredible games.

     

    Unfortunately, as this game proves, not everything Rare touched was gold, especially in the early days (Time Lord was released in 1990). This game just doesn’t really live up to its cool sounding story. The game plays like a fairly typical sides scrolling platform adventure game. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that and the graphics are fairly decent as well. The problem comes with the difficulty and the repetitive nature of the game. While the different levels / time periods look different enough, they all really play very much the same. The lack of variety combined with the difficulty make this a hard game to finish. It doesn’t help that the game is timed. If you don’t defeat the enemy by January 1st, 3000 then you will self destruct along with your time machine. The game starts in the year 2999 and a day bases every 6 seconds in real-time so if you do the math you have a little over 36 minutes to beat the game. The difficulty would be more bearable if not for the repetitive nature of the game.

     

    As far as I know, this game has never been re-released or had a sequel. The good news is that if you really want to give it a try, original cartridges are fairly cheap and easy to come by. If you are a Rare completist or maybe just enjoy especially difficult and frustrating games then this may just be the game for you.





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  • Hardball (Commodore 64)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    commodore_microcomputer_issue_41_1986_may_jun-022

    Source: Commodore Microcomputers – Issue Number 41 – May June 1986 – Page 20 (Software Reviews)

    I’ve never played a whole lot of sports related video games. I covered my favorites on the Commodore 64 recently (The Games series by Epyx). The only other sports game I can recall playing on the Commodore 64 is HardBall!.

    HardBall!, as the games suggests, is a baseball game and it was released for various home computers, including the Commodore 64, in 1985. The graphics were excellent on the Commodore 64 and the game play was fairly straightforward. There were not a huge number of options so the game was not that complicated. There are only two teams, each with their own roster of players. There are multiple pitchers and other players for each team and you can make substitutions but there are not a huge number to chose from though this does offer some strategy. Your pitcher does get tired and may need to be replaced if you don’t want to throw home run pitches all the time.

    Each pitcher has a list of pitches to chose from and each player has their own stats. It would have been nice if there was more to chose from in this regard (or if it had the ability to add additional players) but there is something to be said for simplicity. The game offers some enjoyment when playing against the computer but the computer can be a tough opponent and a second player is always more fun. HardBall! was notable for being the first baseball game to present a behind the pitcher viewpoint.

    The original HardBall! was also available on the Apple II, Apple IIgs, Atari 8-bit, Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, Sega Genesis, Macintosh and a few other systems. The Commodore 64 version compares reasonably well with the versions for more advanced systems. Though the original has never been re-released, HardBall! was successful enough to spawn a number of sequels. There were six major releases with some of those having multiple editions. Only the first was ever available on the Commodore 64. The final iteration was Hardball 6: 2000 Edition which came out in 1999 for Windows based computers.

    The review above for the Commodore 64 version comes from the May/June 1986 issue of Commodore Microcomputers. It is mostly positive but does mention the difficulty of the computer opponent. For an arcade baseball game it was pretty decent for its time.




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  • Terminator 2 Judgement Day (NES, Game Boy)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    1991 Terminator 2 Judgement Day for NES & Gameboy

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/170654582074/gameraboy1-1991-terminator-2-judgement-day-for

    There have been a lot of Terminator movies over the years. Probably the best, with the exception of the original, was the first sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. In many ways, it was even better than the first. I think every Terminator movie has had at least one game associated with it and T2 was no exception.

    There was a confusing series of games based on T2. This particular ad is for the Game Boy and NES versions of Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Each of these was different from each other and both were different from the 16-bit versions. In addition, there was an arcade version of the game that was also different (a shooter on rails) that was later ported to various systems and called T2: The Arcade Game.

    Anyway, back to the games in this ad. The NES version consists of five levels and was primarily a side-scroling adventure/beat-em-up with the exception of level 2. Level 2 was an isometric racing game. There is also a Game Gear and Master System version of this game that is similar to the NES version except that it does not include level 2.

    The Game Boy version is somewhat similar in that it is also a 2D side-scrolling type game for the most part. However, the levels are different and instead of a racing level, the Game Boy version has a puzzle level. In addition to the 8-bit and 16-bit console versions of this game, there were also numerous home computer ports.

    Unfortunately, like the vast majority of movie licenses, these games really aren’t that great. Certainly not as good as they should have been. I guess the good news is that they are a bit above average for movie licenses and if you are a big fan of the movie and 8-bit games then they are worth a shot. Just don’t expect them to be as cool as they sound. As far as this type of game goes, there are many far better ones on both the NES and the Game Boy. Ones that aren’t movie licenses for the most part.





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