Since I promised you earlier, here are brief reviews of a random assortment of TurboDuo titles. Some of these games I enjoyed, and others not as much, but they're all worth mentioning here!
GATE OF THUNDER
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| Even the explosions explode in Gate of Thunder. |
YS IV: DAWN OF YS
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| Er, yeah. Thanks a lump, pal! |
A little disclosure before I begin… I supplied three voices
for the recent English fan dub of the game.
It seemed as good a way as any to achieve video game immortality! With that out of the way, let’s talk about my
complicated relationship with the Ys series. I first played Ys on a Master System emulator in 1996, and found the combat system simplistic to the extreme and wholly unbecoming of an action
RPG. Despite this, I just couldn't stop playing... I was spellbound by the attractive graphics and charming characters. That tradition continues with Ys IV, which throws
enough twists into its beautifully illustrated story to keep you hooked for
hours. I still don’t like rubbing my
crotch against monsters to slay them, but it’s easier to accept if you think of
this as an ordinary RPG with really efficient combat, instead of the Zelda-esque
action-adventure it first appears to be.
DRACULA X: RONDO OF BLOOD
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| Singing at bats is actually more effective than you'd think! Maybe it screws up their echolocation... |
The last of the classic arcade-style Castlevania games is
also the best… and curiously, the only one not released in the United States,
where Castlevania reigns supreme.
(Before you ask, the watered down Super NES game most certainly does NOT
count.) It’s especially frustrating in
hindsight, as Symphony of the Night was designed as both a sequel and a love
letter to a chapter of the series most Americans never knew existed. So what’s so great about Rondo of Blood,
anyway? Well, the CD-quality soundtrack,
full of tunes that would later find their way into Symphony of the Night, is
definitely a plus. However, there’s also
the sharp graphics, lush with detail and rich with color, and the stage
designs, with their cleverly hidden forks in the road. Revealing one of these alternate paths unlocks the
option to play as Maria, a frilly beastmaster who’s just a few steps behind
Marvel vs. Street Fighter’s Norimaru as the most hilariously incongruent bonus
character in a video game.
THE ART OF FIGHTING
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| "This is the greatest game EVER!" - Every fourteen year old boy in 1992. |
The Art of Fighting was one of a handful of story-driven
Neo-Geo games offered as a response to Street Fighter II. They didn’t have the nuanced technique or sure-footed
control of Capcom’s smash hit, but damn if they didn’t make a strong first
impression with their gripping plots and astonishing graphics! The Art of Fighting took it to the next level
with beefy brawlers whose faces bear the scars of combat and special moves which
let out the resonant ring of a gong on impact.
The TurboDuo leaves no stone unturned in its conversion, and even tries
to reproduce the zooming camera from the Neo-Geo game. Without hardware scaling, the effect leaves
something to be desired, but at least they tried! It’s not the best fighting game on the TurboDuo,
but The Art of Fighting smokes the decidedly less impressive conversions on the
Super NES and Genesis.
FORGOTTEN WORLDS
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| "You cannot defeat me with gaping sphincters alone!" |
Here’s a fun little anecdote for those interested… Forgotten
Worlds was the game that cemented my decision to buy a Sega Genesis back in
1991. I still stand by that decision,
but if I had seen the TurboDuo version first, that Genesis would likely have
stayed at the store. It pains me to say
this, but Forgotten Worlds on the TurboDuo towers above its Genesis counterpart
as the best home port of this stylish shooter.
You lose the option to play with a friend (the system DOES only have one
controller port, after all), but you get brighter colors, larger sprites, all
the (embarrassing in retrospect) voice acting, and the top-notch arranged
soundtrack you’d expect from a TurboDuo game.
For a hermit like me, that’s more than a fair trade.
SHOCKMAN III
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| Don't let the picture give you the wrong idea. It's really, really not as cool as it looks. |
This franchise didn’t get much traction in America, with
only one game officially released here in the States. After playing this, though, I’m thinking that
may have been for the best. Kaizo Chojin
Schbibinman (a Japanese title which takes a strange turn for the Yiddish about
halfway through) casts you as a sword-wielding cyborg, cutting his (or her!) way
through hundreds of robot thugs. The
action is distressingly low on technique, with a sword swipe being your only
means of attack, and the level design doesn't get interesting until later in
the game… if you can stay awake that long.
The graphics in Kaizo Chojin Schmendrick or whatever are up to the
TurboDuo’s usual high standards, with lots of color-drenched, futuristic
scenery, but there’s little variety to be found… and little reason to spend
much time with it.
MARTIAL CHAMPION
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| Hey Goldar, why the long face? (And the Andy Rooney eyebrows? And the crappy gameplay?) |
A Sega Saturn it’s not, but the TurboDuo has its fair share
of solid fighting games. Street Fighter
II’: Championship Edition! Fatal Fury
Special! World Heroes II! And then there’s Martial Champion, which
doesn’t belong anywhere on that list.
Originally planned as a sequel to the groundbreaking Yie-Ar Kung Fu,
Martial Champion juiced up that game’s graphics while barely evolving its prehistoric
gameplay. The TurboDuo version preserves
everything you didn’t like about the
arcade game while throwing out its sole saving grace, the massive characters. Instead, you get shrimpy fighters that would
barely cut the mustard on the GameBoy Advance.
Martial Champions is one of the few TurboDuo fighters on a disc that
doesn’t require the performance-boosting Arcade Card… and believe me, it shows.
STRIDER HIRYU
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| Leapin' larvae! |
The troubled history of Strider on the TurboDuo is the stuff
of legends… and myths. This much is true…
the game took years to finish, and its development was shifted away from the
SuperGrafx after NEC realized that nobody owned one. However, that rumor you heard about the
despondent game designer who killed himself over the finished product? Total bunk.
You’ll understand how the rumor gained so much traction when you play
this, though. Strip away the slick cut scenes
and the voice acting and that extra round and it’s clear that the game is a
step below its Genesis counterpart. The
character sprites are kind of fugly, the control isn’t nearly as responsive, and
everything explodes into garish yellow clouds.
Beyond all that, the new stage is pretty contrived; a flat stretch of
desert broken up with encounters against a tank and the world’s most athletic
ant lion. Should a wingless, bottom-heavy insect really
be able to leap out of the ground like Shamu after a chunk of tuna on a stick? Admittedly, that doesn’t make any less sense than a game that took three
years to make being worse than its cartridge-bound Genesis counterpart.
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