A Few of My Favorite Things, 2021 Edition

It's almost the end of the year, and you know what that means!

"Heaving a sigh of relief that 2021 is almost over?"

Well, that too, but it's also time for that familiar video game journalism cliche tradition, the end of the year awards! I haven't played enough games from this year to cover those exclusively, so I'll be widening the net to software, hardware, and accessories I experienced this year, whether they were released in 2021 or not.

Will this get followed up with a "worst of" list? It's certainly a definite possibility! Check local listings for time and availability.

EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING
Black Bird
Onion Games

You're not losing track of bullets in
backgrounds like these.
(image from Nintendo)

If you wanted to be reductive about it, you could call Black Bird a clone of Sega's silly shoot 'em up Fantasy Zone. However, that would do the game a disservice, as Black Bird goes a long way toward addressing all the nagging issues that made Fantasy Zone a drag to play. Instead of assaulting the player with blinding psychedelic colors, Black Bird opts for dreary, muted tones in the background, which not only sells the dingy Victorian era setting but makes it easy to focus on the flood of bright orange arrows coming your way. Instead of shops that put the brakes on the action to sell you weapons with steadily rising prices and the robust staying power of Hassium-271, you power up your gun with bouncing gems, and any boosts in firepower stay with you for the remainder of the game.

Finally, instead of losing interest after five minutes of Fantasy Zone's bright colors and questionable deaths, you'll stick with Black Bird until the end... even if that end happens to be delivered by a drinking bird in a tutu. It's a weird game, but compellingly weird, like the early films of Tim Burton, rather than loud and obnoxious, like that Yellow Submarine meets McDonaldland thing Sega's got going on with Fantasy Zone. If you don't come back for the intuitive gameplay and the perfectly tuned challenge, you'll give Black Bird one more spin for the soundtrack, an opera apparently performed by Dudley Do-Right and Popeye the Sailor after throwing back a few too many beers.

THE THING THAT WOULD NOT DIE
Tie, Dreamcast and Playstation Vita
Sega and Sony

The Dreamcast had this award wrapped up last year, thanks to the release of dozens of games originally designed for the Atomiswave arcade hardware. Granted, not all of these games were good, but between Dolphin Blue, King of Fighters 11, and Fist of the North Star, there were plenty of reasons to dig Sega's last console out of the closet for an encore performance. 

Unfortunately, this Dreamcast renaissance couldn't last forever, and when the top tier Atomiswave titles were exhausted in February, all that remained were throwaway games in the Sammy Family Entertainment Series. (Any family that would be entertained by this series must live extraordinarily dull lives.) That left the Playstation Vita to pick up the slack with over a dozen classic games, mostly of the first-person shooter variety, ported by fans. 

Personally, the most tantalizing of these homebrew titles was Space Cadet Pinball, an addictive and wonderfully noisy silver ball sim that was oodles of fun on Windows computers back in the 1990s. It's a little awkward to start on the Vita, but once you've launched that first ball into orbit, good luck trying to come back down to Earth.

TINY BUT MIGHTY
Tie, Neo-Geo Mini and Super NES Classic
SNK and Nintendo

My beef with the Neo-Geo Mini is
that it looks like some arcade
cabinet that exists somewhere,
but not at all like a proper
Neo-Geo MVS unit.
(image from Amazon) 

By my estimation, the problem with mini-consoles is that you obsess over them for a week, maybe two, then forsake them shortly afterward. The Neo-Geo Mini manages to buck this trend, possibly because its built in screen and the instant gratification provided by its games make it easier to pick up and play than its competitors. Stick a battery charger on the back and it becomes completely self-contained, making it faster and easier than it's ever been to get a quick endorphin rush from a couple rounds of Mutation Nation.

Not far behind is the Super NES Classic. It's not as convenient as the Neo-Geo Mini, but the interface, the quality of the emulation, and the games available are all outstanding. Yes, it's got half as many games as the Genesis Mini, but nearly all of them represent the best this system has to offer, unlike the Genesis Mini where at least a half dozen of the available titles are best left forgotten. Besides, if you want more games, just add some with HackChi. (Just don't tell Nintendo about it afterwards.)

SECRET TOY SURPRISE
Gaplus, in Namco Museum Archives 2
Bandai-Namco

Gaplus' headlining feature is that
you can actually grab the bugs
yourself, instead of vice versa.
(image from Internet Archive)

As classic collections go, this isn't one of the better ones. Like its predecessor, Namco Museum Archives 2 is an assortment of creaky old NES ports, rather than the arcade games you really wanted. You can't remap the buttons, and a small menu window hangs distractingly over the bottom left corner of the display... it's not impossible to turn it off, but Namco didn't make it especially easy, either. 

However. What makes Namco Museum Archive 2 worth a look anyway is a surprisingly tight NES conversion of Gaplus, the third game in the Galaxian series. Gaplus was released around the time of the video game crash of late 1983, and feels desperate as a result, overburdened with features that sometimes add to the experience but usually don't make much sense. 

Having said that, this NES port of Gaplus is a technical marvel, as dead on as an arcade conversion gets on the hardware. Where this came from or why we're getting it now is anyone's guess, but hey, I'm happy to have it!

FIST, MEET FACE
Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate
Warner Bros. Games

The latest Mortal Kombat game dabbles in time travel, with the 1990s versions of the characters teaming up with their older, wiser counterparts to defeat the scheming chronomancer Kronika and her daughter Cetrion. It's a convenient way to tie up loose ends in the plot and introduce guest stars like Robocop who probably shouldn't exist in this universe, but beyond that, it feels like introspection on the parts of the developers. We're all a lot older than we were when the first Mortal Kombat first hit arcades in 1992, and MK11 was an opportunity for Ed Boon and his team to reflect on what this game used to be, and what it's become in the years since.

On a fundamental level, Mortal Kombat 11 is very much like the first three arcade games, with 2D gameplay, combos performed with action buttons tapped in rapid sequence, and uppercuts that do hefty damage while launching your opponent a safe distance away. However, the gameplay has evolved, with "fatal blows" offered as a risky but wickedly satisfying way to tilt the odds in a losing match, and characters that can be customized with new outfits and even alternate special moves. The graphics are vastly improved, as one might expect from decades of technological advancement, but what you might not expect is the effort put into the story mode, which feels like a big budget action movie and fleshes out the inscrutable lore of the series.

There are plenty of great flagship fighting games for the Xbox One and Playstation 4, but Mortal Kombat 11 is easily the most ambitious and most fully realized of the bunch. Even the latest game in the Street Fighter series, once regarded as the high watermark for this genre, seems like an underachiever by comparison. It took nearly thirty years to reach the top, but ultimately, time was on Mortal Kombat's side.

BEST METROIDY, CASTLEVANIA-Y TYPE GAME
Iconoclasts
Joakim Sandberg

I used to love 'em as much as anyone else, but lately, the greatest challenge offered by search action games is just staying interested. I didn't finish Axiom Verge, didn't finish Timespinners, didn't finish Ori and the Blind Forest, and most certainly didn't finish Hollow Knight, which was praised by reviewers but just left me flat. Just what I needed, angsty insects. Where'd I leave my Raid?

Barring some occasional annoyances, this
was good to the 'clast drop.
(image from Steam)

Iconoclasts, though... that I did finish. I'm not sure what this game has that the other Metroidvanias don't... it's certainly more colorful than the titles I just mentioned, with top-shelf sprite work from its creator Joakim Sandberg. There's also the wrench, which functions as a melee weapon but doubles as a key for unlocking stubborn doors and triples as a means of conveyance. It's fun to charge up the wrench and catch a stray power line that sends you screaming through brick walls and into areas you previously couldn't reach. There's also the option to play in a "relaxed" mode whenever the need arises, taking the sting out of the endgame where you're expected to take down bosses many times your size.

It's not entirely without irritation, and the plot goes in some pretty strange directions, starting with a ruthless theocracy and ending with... uh, a parrot trucker hauling magic yogurt. However, Iconoclasts kept me in its thrall from beginning to end, which is the highest praise I can give to a game in this increasingly stale genre.

BEST "WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN" GAME
Part-Time UFO
Nintendo/HAL

This Hamburglar girl shows up in several
scenes, trying to steal things. Typically
you'll get extra coins by grabbing her first.

And now for something completely different! Adapted from a smartphone game, Part-Time UFO challenges you to finish a series of odd jobs using a crane suspended from a flying saucer. Whether it's catching fish, hauling turnips, constructing robots, or keeping circus acrobats balanced on a tightrope, you've got a time limit to finish each job. If you've got the time to spare, you can fill it by finishing bonus objectives, which add to the difficulty but put a little extra cash in your pocket. That money in turn can be used to buy hats for your UFO, which may increase its abilities but mostly just make it look silly. 

Even as the jobs grow in challenge to the point where each narrow failure will threaten to pop a blood vessel, Part-Time UFO never loses its cheerful optimism. It also keeps finding new ways to use that crane, keeping the action fresh and unpredictable. It must have been as fun for HAL Laboratory to make Part-Time UFO as it is for Switch owners to play it, suggesting that it was wise for Nintendo to lighten its grip on the leash and let its subsidiary stray from the Kirby series, giving it time to creatively recharge. Other game companies should take notes.

BEST GAME, PERIOD
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Sega

The numbers don't lie, folks. I've spent fifty hours with this game so far, and expect many more in the future. Why not? Like a Dragon is an incredibly robust and diverse experience, and it would probably take at least a hundred hours to absorb it all. It's a turn-based role-playing game, and yet also a successful extension of the long-running Yakuza series, with the same style and some of the same play mechanics. It's also (takes a deep breath) a dungeon crawler, a business management simulation, a racing game in the style of Super Mario Kart, a collection of Sega arcade games, and a compelling story about a disposable Yakuza thug finding his own value in friendship, justice, and the occasional delivery of super spicy kimchi.

"Hi, I'm Ichiban Kasuga, and I'll be your
poofy haired, goofball protagonist for the
duration of the game."
(image from Metacritic)

Sometimes that variety is to the game's detriment, with side stories distracting you from the side stories that distracted you from making meaningful progress in the main story. Tedious grinding for experience points (and job experience points, and personality points, and heaven only knows what other bars and gauges you have to fill) gobbles up an enormous portion of your playtime, and scenes that should be emotionally resonant lose a lot of their punch thanks to dead-eyed characters who set one defiant toe onto the edge of the Uncanny Valley. You guys do know Bioware was doing better cut scenes than this ten years ago on a last generation system, right?

Nevertheless, Yakuza: Like a Dragon has the same Jupiter-like pull as other classic role-playing games, which steal every spare minute from you and even a couple hours you can't spare. You know, legendary titles like Final Fantasy VI, Grandia, the early Suikodens, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and Mass Effect 2. When your game can be confidently mentioned alongside these greats, you know you've done something right.

Here Comes Santa Claus, There Goes 3DS

Somehow I doubt a 3DS would top Naruto's
Christmas list today. But he's all grown
up and stuff now, right? Maybe that old-ass
system got passed down to Boruto, or
Newruto, or whatever his son's name is.
(image from Video Games Blogger)

Season's warnings, everyone. Amidst the big sales on games for consoles and computers, there's a substantial but not well publicized holiday discount on games for the Nintendo 3DS. This is important, as rumors have been circulating that Nintendo will shutter the 3DS eShop as soon as next year. If you want some el cheapo titles for the dual screen, three dimensional handheld, this is both a golden opportunity and quite possibly your last one. Trust me on this... although Sony left its own digital storefronts open for its legacy systems after a public outcry, sales for the Playstation 3, PSP, and Vita have been all but non-existent for at least a year.

Nintendo Everything lists two dozen Atlus titles up for grabs on its web site, but the sale goes deeper than just one publisher, with parent company Sega and several others making significant cuts to the prices of their own 3DS titles. My humble suggestion is to get what you can while it's cheap, and more importantly, while it's there.

Tough Break

Greetings, programs. I'm not in good spirits right now... I learned a few days ago that my brother and his family contracted COVID-19. His wife and child are apparently fine, but the virus hit him like a wrecking ball. He's in emergency care, and I'm sitting here on the other side of the country, anxious and worried. Did he get vaccinated before he caught the disease, and if not, can he make it through this? After months of reading the Herman Cain Award subreddit, I'm less than optimistic about his chances.

Now I realize that death is a constant in life, but I always assumed that it would come later for my brother... you know, twenty or thirty years down the line. If I can be brutally honest, I also thought the end would be a better match for his brash, macho personality. You know, maybe he'd run afoul of a rutting buck on a hunting trip, or skid off the road and into a pole during an especially rough Michigan winter. Not something like this. It's so dreadfully... unremarkable. I hope he recovers for the sake of his wife and his sons and my mother and myself, but as stupid as it sounds, part of me thinks he deserves a more spectacular finale than this.

Gimme a break, gimme a break!
Break me off a piece of that... esoteric
and increasingly valuable game system.
(image from Wololo)

Anyway, you're here for video game crap, and I aim to deliver. Wololo.net reports that a hacker named tzmwx created a custom Sega Saturn handheld by splitting its motherboard in two, folding one half under the other, and connecting them with a tangle of wires. This feat of engineering means the system can fit inside a case barely larger than a Game Gear, but the thought of cracking a Saturn in half only to resurrect it later as a handheld makes an electronics klutz like myself drop half his body weight in flop sweat. Have you guys considered emulation instead? I mean, somebody's got to make a Saturn emulator that runs comfortably on an Android phone eventually, right?

Oh, there was one other thing I wanted to mention. ROMhacking.net recently published a metric crapload of hacks and translations, with a localization of the PC Engine title Rabio Lepus Special and an incredibly ambitious English translation of Bulk Slash for the Saturn as headliners. ROMhacking is down at the moment, but you can get all the deets on Bulk Slash on the Sega Saturn Shiro fan site. Those crazy funsters even included English voices for all the characters, and compatibility with the Virtual On twin stick! Don't worry; you won't have to saw your Saturn in half to play it.

The Future Is Now, and Also Later

It's a Christmas miracle! The nearest Wal-Mart, which also happens to be the stingiest Wal-Mart in the Southwest when it comes to clearances, finally dropped the prices of a handful of Xbox One games. Not everything that was clearance priced was of interest to me personally, but I did manage to find a few tempting titles for seven dollars each, with Yakuza: Like a Dragon being the highlight. And here's a snapshot of my bounty, which Blogger will finally let me post!

When I bragged about my catch on a forum I frequent, I was told that my deal was even better than I thought, thanks to the magic of Smart Delivery. Apparently, games with the Smart Delivery logo on the case work with the Xbox One, but also get upgraded to next generation standards when you play them on an Xbox Series. I'm not sure how much of a difference that actually makes, as games for the Xbox One are compatible with the Xbox Series by default, but if I manage to get my hands on a Series X (and a 4K television set, and a gold-encrusted yacht, and a sparkly unicorn with a flowing, rainbow colored mane...), three of the four games I've purchased will run natively on it, and I'll reap the benefits.

The lone Smart Delivery holdout among my four purchases is Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, yet Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 can be smartly delivered to the Xbox Series, because... uh, why is this again? Maybe the power of the mighty Series X will give you even more interminable blather from the game's cast of brightly colored characters. I'm not sure who told you otherwise, but really, you guys aren't even the slightest bit interesting, and you could have shut up twenty sentences ago. It's like the disc came with three games... Puyo Puyo, Tetris, and Flail on the A Button to Skip Past Unnecessary Dialog.

I'm sure Yakuza: Like a Dragon is better. Likewise Dirt 5, which is a fairly recent rally racing game with a strong pedigree, if my time with Dirt 3 for the Xbox 360 was any indication. Power Rangers I'm not as thrilled with... I played that on Game Pass months ago, and it somehow straddles the fence between mindless and confusing. Still, you know, it was seven dollars. Maybe I could learn to love it for that price. I'd need a hypnotist to make that happen, though, and those don't come cheap.

Sneak King Nuts

2,706 copies of Sneak King. About the number
of calories in a Double Whopper meal, I think.
(image from Reddit)

Well, that was unexpected. Someone on Reddit proudly announced that he currently has over two thousand copies of Sneak King, the tactical fast food delivery game that was sold for the Xbox as part of a Burger King promotion years ago. You may remember Sneak King as the only game in this promotion that was worth anyone's time. The other two, Pocketbike Racer and Big Bumpin', were lackluster kart racing titles at a time when the market had plenty of better alternatives. As nutty as it is to own thousands of copies of Sneak King, this collector at least has enough of his sanity left to refrain from buying the other two games in bulk.

So. I've had Dead or Alive on my mind since the big backward compatibility update a few weeks ago, and decided to purchase the sixth game in the series from the Xbox Black Friday sale that started last week (and will be ending later this week, so I'd recommend picking up whatever interests you soon). It's still downloading so I've only been able to play a small sliver of the full game, but one thing I'm sure about even with such a limited taste is that I'm not fond of the new look for the characters. 

Break blows do more damage than standard
attacks, and may force your opponent to step
out of the ring for a minute to redo their
hair and makeup. Maybe I'm just spoiled by all
those Street Fighter IV supers which plaster
your opponent against an invisible wall, I dunno.
(image from YouTube/Kasumi Rina)

Koei-Tecmo is clearly aiming for a more realistic design, but what I'm seeing is way too much makeup on the eyes of the female characters, along with soft, supple skin that doesn't really fit the faces of fighters who have been trading blows for over twenty years. Sure, they can get a little bruised over the course of a fight (with much more damage happening to their outfits... heh), but characters like Kasumi look more like they're ready for a sassy march down a catwalk than a fist fight with assassins and professional wrestlers.

The game plays about as well as it ever has... maybe even slightly smoother than DOA had on previous systems. However, the main attraction is the break blow system. There's a super meter just under your life bar, and when it's filled, you can take advantage of a new special button, assigned to RB on an Xbox One controller. Four taps initiate a "fatal rush," back and special intercepts attacks with a "break hold," and "break blows" are triggered with forward and special. 

I'm normally a fan of super moves, but this new play mechanic doesn't add as much to the Dead or Alive experience as I hoped. Break blows hurt more than a regular attack, and they're more stylish, but they don't turn the tide of a desperate battle like the Fatal Blows in Mortal Kombat 11, and they're certainly not as visually arresting. You knock the sunglasses off Bass or put a cut on the too-perfect face of Kasumi, and that's the extent of the battle damage. I'm not asking for the ultra-violence of Mortal Kombat, but it would be nice if the designers could find some way to get me more invested in these not-so-super super moves.

Like I said, it's still early. I've only lapped a little of the cream from the top of this game, and once it's fully installed maybe I'll better understand its appeal. From what I can see right now, though, it's just more Dead or Alive. To its credit, it's one with difficulty settings below "sledgehammer to the windpipe," and without the minty fresh scourge of Aquafresh Kasumi.

One Last Trip Back

It's Microsoft's twentieth year as a console manufacturer, and they've celebrated the occasion with a backward compatibility update, the first they've done in years. Regrettably, it will also be the last... Matt Kim reports that the Xbox manufacturer has reached the limits of what it can do with the service, thanks to legal constraints and also the vast architectural chasm between the Xbox One and Series, which use x86 hardware, and the Xbox 360, which chugged along on the dated PowerPC standard. (The original Xbox also runs on x86 hardware, but it's really old hardware, and challenging enough that Xbox emulators have only recently started to surface on home computers.)

It's a bittersweet farewell to backward compatibility, but at least the games in this final update were well chosen. Verge has the entire list, and I'm both surprised and delighted by the selection, which finds a balance between the fondly remembered and the unjustly forgotten. Case in point: the two Otogi games. These lushly illustrated, bitterly difficult action titles were released in the lull between From Software's more successful Armored Core and Dark Souls series, but they're also worth your time. You can fling exploding spiders into each other and tear down two story pagodas with your bare hands... what's not to like?

Nothing to lose, especially for that price.

More predictable but nevertheless welcome are the additions of the Max Payne trilogy and the Dead or Alive, uh, sextology to Xbox backward compatibility. I bought games in both series for a pittance at thrift stores and pawn shops earlier in the year, and I'm itching to give them a spin on more modern hardware (read: I'm too lazy to blow the dust off my last two Xboxes and play them there). Dead or Alive 3 was a stone cold stunner on the original Xbox, far superior to its Xbox 360 sequel, and it should have come to later systems in the lineage a lot sooner. Max Payne I'm somewhat less excited about, but I logged some quality time into this gritty, time-bending third person action game on a PC years ago, and for the sack of pennies it cost me, I'm happy to get re-acquainted with it.

It's been ten years and Mortal Kombat 9 still
looks great. It's less realistic, but more stylized
than later entries in the series.

Some other highlights include Mortal Kombat 9 (finally!), TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, the peculiarly entertaining cover shooter 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand (you'd understand why I said it's peculiar that it's entertaining if you played the previous game, Bulletproof), and shockingly, Mini Ninjas. The game is a frustrating mess to install and run in Steam, and while I never would have guessed it would come to later Xbox consoles, I'm relieved that I can play this lighthearted action adventure without that Herculean struggle. Really. Mini Ninjas. If you had told me it would be in a backward compatibility update two days ago, I never would have believed it.

Games I don't care for but will have to grimly accept include Manhunt, a stealth action title that represents the nadir of Rockstar's poor taste, a handful of titles in the F.E.A.R. series of survival horror games, "Mass Effect if Mass Effect wasn't good" Advent Rising, and Binary Domain, which annoyed me to no end on Xbox 360 and won't be revisited on the Xbox One seven years later.

On the plus side, there are dozens more games
to play! On the down side... we all have to put up
with Aquafresh Kasumi again.

Overall, this is a pretty strong send-off for Microsoft's legacy consoles. Did I get everything I wanted from this update? Of course not. Darkstalkers Resurrection, Capcom vs SNK 2, and Blur are still off the table, and some of the games Microsoft did deem worthy of inclusion seem to have been picked out of a hat. Seriously, Cloning Clyde? Disney Universe? Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad? (Okay, I think we all know why they picked that one.) Still, we're getting Otogi and Timesplitters and Dead or Alive 3 and one of the best Mortal Kombat games in the whole damn series, and I can definitely live with that. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have games to install.

It Goes to Eleven

Been a while since I've posted, hasn't it? Let's talk Mortal Kombat 11.

I bought the Ultimate version for the Xbox One in a recent sale, and despite some grumblings I've heard elsewhere about its microtransactions and changes to the fighting system, I'm really happy with it. In fact, I think the decision to split the super meter into two separate gauges really adds to the gameplay. The first strengthens your special moves while the other lets you break combos and interact with background objects. Both gauges refill over time, preventing abuse but at the same time being less punitive than the old three segmented super meter. I rarely used enhanced special moves in the previous two Mortal Kombats, because doing so kept you from building enough power to perform the far more effective X-ray moves. Now, I'm cranking out enhanced specials as quickly as the game will allow me, because the two are no longer joined at the hip.

You already know where this is going.

Actually, there are no longer X-ray moves per se, but rather "Fatal Blows" which work like the desperation moves in SNK's South Town series. If your fighter's life dips to twenty percent, you can squeeze both triggers on the Xbox One controller to start this attack. If it lands, you'll perform a lengthy series of strikes, shown from dramatic camera angles and deadly enough to qualify as fatalities in their own right. If the first attack in the series is blocked, your Fatal Blow is wasted for that round, but if it lands, expect heavy damage... easily enough to take out an opponent whose own life bar has fallen into Fatal Blow territory. The trick is to make sure the other kombatant doesn't use his Fatal Blow on you first.

There are plenty of characters to select even in the vanilla version of the game, but there's plenty more in the Ultimate upgrade, including guest stars like the T-800, Rambo, and Robocop. (Apparently Mortal Kombat is migrating from the horror film icons from the past two games and settling into dumb action movies.) While the fighters in the original trilogy were a little samey, characters in MK11 are more distinct, with their own movement speeds, strategies, and attack ranges. Rambo stays low to the ground and sets hidden traps, while larger fighters like Geras and Robocop strike harder and feel heavier. Fan favorites from the first two games are familiar enough that old-school players can start using them with only minimal adjustments to their strategies... Scorpion still has his chain hook, and Sub-Zero still freezes foes in place with his ice ball.

You would not believe how many times I
had to rename this Sub-Zero variant before
I could get it past the censors. Decapitations
and disembowelments are fine, yet "I.C.
Wiener" is a bridge too far for Warner Bros.

Here's where things get interesting, though. As a logical progression of what Netherrealm had done with Mortal Kombat 10 and Injustice 2, players can customize each fighter with gear, augments, and even different moves, for a total of five different variants. Some special moves are baked into the character and can't be replaced, but if you wanted to swap Sub-Zero's slide for a shoulder tackle, or his axe swings for an ice wall and a shower of icicles, you have that option. Gear changes the look of your character, and augments provide inconsequential perks... maybe one of your fighter's attacks gets a little stronger, or you'll get more hearts for performing a fatality. Character customization wasn't strictly necessary, but it is nice for old-school fans to have the option to give their favorite kombatant the outfit he wore all the way back in 1993.

Konsumables offer the most significant change to the gameplay. These are earned in the Towers and the Krypt, and can either be used to strengthen your character, or provide a buddy who jumps in from the sidelines to attack. If you're thinking of the strikers from King of Fighters '99 or the special partners from Marvel vs. Capcom, it's pretty much that, but with a cooldown period limiting their use. Some of these konsumables are very handy (to the point of being easily exploited) and others are alarmingly useless, but they're all switched off during the final encounter with Kronika, a guardian of time described by one reader as "future Tilda Swinton" and nearly as infuriatingly cheap as Shao Khan and Motaro. She takes half the usual damage from your attacks, and some of your tried and true special moves won't work on her at all, which has been the frustrating status quo for Mortal Kombat since the beginning.

The orange of the fall leaves blend nicely with
the yellow flames and the red bloodshed.

The graphics in Mortal Kombat 11 are spectacular, which you've probably come to expect from the series since Midway was purchased by a cash-flush film studio ten years ago. Each fighter looks startlingly lifelike (or lifeless-like, in the case of Noob Saibot) and expresses themselves with fluid, natural gestures. This is a boon in the story mode where the Warner Bros. influence is most deeply felt, and the game is convinced that it really is a dumb action movie. The backgrounds aren't the best they've ever been, but there are a few highlights, like a serene temple partially obscured by autumn leaves and an arcade with scenes from the original three games projected onto a nearby wall. What's nifty is how organically the game folds these stages into the story mode, shifting from cinematics to fights and back without the player ever noticing the seams.

Regrettably, the sound isn't up to the same standards, with the cinematic flavor of the story mode leeching into the other styles of gameplay. The musical score consistently sets the wrong mood for combat and even skirts dangerously close to annoying, like when the game lets out a sympathetic wail after a fatality is performed. The voice acting is largely solid, with a few questionable changes to the cast. Ashley Burch is no longer smart-ass millennial Cassie Cage (c'mon, it was the role she was born to play!), and her mother Sonya Blade is now voiced by professional wrestler Ronda Rousey. Rousey can do rough and tough just fine, but that's about where her acting range ends. 

On the other hand, all the heroes from those dumb action movies who make cameo appearances are played by their original actors, even Peter Weller, who's steered clear of the Robocop series for nearly thirty years. Yep, that's Sylvester Stallone as Rambo, too. That's not Ahnuld as the Terminator, but the voice is so uncannily close you probably wouldn't know unless you were told beforehand. You've also got Spawn, played by Keith David, who sticks the landing in practically all of his voice roles. He's convincingly played everything from medieval stone guardians to devious newt kings... you'll have no trouble believing he's an inner city cop turned demonic soul hunter, and you'll even buy his howls of anguish when some other character tears out his heart.

Not a flawless victory, but a real treat
nevertheless.

The soundtrack is iffy, the final boss is cheaper than cheap, and the violence has gotten overly gratuitous as the result of thirty years of oneupsmanship, but beyond all that, it's hard to find fault with Mortal Kombat 11. The game is brimming with replay value thanks to the Towers of Time, which impede your progress up the chain of opponents with various nasty surprises, and the Krypt, which lets you spend all the currencies you've gathered on treasure chests full of additional content. It plays as well as it ever has; a rapid-fire rock paper scissors contest with the super meter system vastly improved over the last two installments. The guest characters are a little puzzling, but nevertheless welcome appeals to your childhood nostalgia. The Friendships are back, and are arguably better than the fatalities, shining a silly beam of light into the game's grim darkness. It all comes together beautifully, and for just a little over twenty dollars it would be hard not to recommend Mortal Kombat 11. Hats off to you for a quality product, Netherrealm. (Just try not to throw said hat at my neck.)

Special "no thanks" to Microsoft for making it a circuitous pain in the ass to gather all the images for this blog entry. You can't make this process any easier? Really?

Switch's Brew

I don't have much to say game-wise (or anything-wise, honestly), but I wanted to get in one more blog post before Halloween. So here, have a look at this.

Tito from Macho Nacho Productions took an ordinary Game Boy Advance and gave it Switch-like features, including compatibility with Joy Cons and the ability to output video to a television set. This is one of his more creative mods, but Tito does consistently good work on all his projects, as well as the videos which showcase them. If you're not watching his channel already, now is a good time to start.

Castlevania: Regurgitation of Despair

Recently, I played a stage in Psychonauts 2 where you're tasked with cooking gourmet meals for a trio of sock puppet goats. (It makes more sense in the context of the game. Well, as much as that scenario could, anyway.) Once you're finished, the goats who are really footwear but who are really figments of a disturbed man's imagination vomit up what you've served them, and demand that you make them more delicacies with the chunks of what they've already partially digested. That goes about as well as you'd expect, and to put it bluntly, it goes a lot like Castlevania: Harmony of Despair.

Why in the hell would you want to see the
entire castle in a Castlevania game all at once?
Furthermore, why is this the default view?
I feel like I'm fighting demons in a Petri dish!
(image from Castlevania Wiki)

As you may have already gathered, Harmony of Despair is repurposed vomit. Konami took elements from the Castlevania series, stitched them together, and sold the tattered quilt, precariously held together with spools of dime-store thread and the occasional staple, to desperate fans. "Here's an all-new Metroidvania game!," they said. "And this time, you can play it with your friends!" What they DIDN'T tell you is that the new level designs don't make much sense, or that there's now a timer which adds to the frustration of hitting dead ends, or... much of anything, really. If you want to re-equip weapons and items, you have to find books hidden in each level, then make your selections while the timer continues to count down. If you want to actually see where you are, you'll have to click the right analog thumbstick to change the camera view from Outer Space Vision™ to the room where you're currently standing. If you actually want to enjoy yourself, I'd suggest turning off your Xbox and playing one of the games in the Castlevania Advance Collection instead. Not Harmony of Dissonance... somehow games in this series with "Harmony" in the title uncannily end up being the crappiest ones. Call it Dracula's Curse, or more accurately, Kozuki's Curse.

Maybe this game would be better with multiple players, which seemed to be Konami's intention. Then again, maybe a slower paced, more methodical action title with RPG trappings like a Metroidvania isn't well suited as a party game. Maybe the critics were right when they dismissed Harmony of Despair as a lazy, incongruent jumble of past ideas, swept off the floor and stuck together with generous squirts of Elmer's glue. Maybe there's a damn good reason Konami had to give it away as part of Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold program. It was either this or scrape the whole mess into an air sickness bag.

Simply the Best

image from IC14259379/TinkerCAD

I'd like to offer a late but nevertheless heartfelt toast to Hiroshi Ono, who recently died of unspecified causes. Known affectionately in his native Japan as "Mr. Dot-Man," Ono created the bulk of the sprites in Namco's most memorable arcade games. Who gave the world Goro and the Mewkies, the gang of felonious felines from Mappy? Ono did! Who drew each frame of your ship spinning wildly as it's caught by the enemy forces in Galaga, without the benefit of hardware scaling or rotation? Ono did! Who faithfully recreated the cast of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Pac-Man in the side-scrolling action game Pac-Land? Ono did! Who used a mirror to project video game spirits inside a toy mansion, resulting in the hauntingly tangible light gun shooter Golly! Ghost!? You'd better believe it was Hiroshi Ono, shown here dressed in his best Rick Sanchez cosplay.

image from Playstation Lifestyle

Ono's sprite work ranks up there as some of the absolute best from the arcade industry's 8-bit era. Only Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto was as talented, but he was nowhere near as prolific. As you'll note from this memorial on Retronauts, Ono did the artwork for a dozen different arcade titles... really important arcade releases like Pole Position and Xevious and Dig Dug, that were the keystones for Namco's long-term success as a video game developer. 

The polished artwork that reached beyond the limitations of early 1980s technology was a huge part of the appeal of these games, and it's doubtful that they'd be as captivating without their fiery explosions, their screen-filling, bullet-spewing battleships, and the endearing way those subterranean monsters get flattened under rocks, or filled to bursting with an air hose. (I don't know how he managed this, but those Pookas and Fygars just die so adorably.)

So I guess what I'm saying is this... thank you, Hiroshi Ono, for forty years of putting your dots in all the right places.

Nintend-no

We finally know the price of Nintendo's extended online service. You'll get access to Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64 games, and some DLC for your copy of Animal Crossing, alongside the expected option to challenge your friends across the world in Nintendo games, for the yearly sum of... fifty dollars. That's more than double the price of the standard Nintendo online service, for Genesis games you've doubtlessly already purchased elsewhere, a handful of games for one of Nintendo's least memorable systems, and extra content for a Switch game you might not even have. Sorry, that a "no" from me, dawg.

Nintendo's defenders are already coming out of the woodwork, saying "Oh, it really doesn't cost THAT much!" Well, if you can squeeze that extra expense into your budget, fine, but my money is already stretched pretty thin, as this comic from Andrew W. Dickman illustrates...

stop complaining, it's not that much pic.twitter.com/StRjaGgLoi

— And-boo! D💜C (@AWDtwit) October 15, 2021

The Robot Master designed during Dr. Wiley's bi-curious years is right... you've only got so much disposable income available to you each month, and there are so many subscription services available that you've got to make difficult choices to ensure you're getting the maximum entertainment for your dollar. 

However, Nintendo's deluxe online service offers so little bang for the buck that it's not a tough decision at all. Amazon Prime gets me free shipping on purchases and a modest video streaming service. Paramount Plus offers a steady drip of The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal, along with the occasional hit of nostalgia from Nickelodeon cartoons. Xbox Ultimate Game Pass grants access to a hundred recent games, along with the option to play them online. 

What does Nintendo's premium subscription service give me? Considering the bottom-scraping quality of the company's online services, and the fact that you can find most of its included Genesis games on practically every 21st century format in existence, not very damn much.

Over the Moon

Castles are always most beautiful during a
sunrise, aren't they? Especially when they're
about to crumble into dust.

It took twenty years (yikes), but thanks to the recently released Castlevania Advance Collection, I've finally beaten Circle of the Moon. What took me so long? Aside from misplacing my copy and a bunch of other Game Boy Advance games in a Detroit airport fifteen years ago, I dunno... I guess I just lost interest. Repeatedly. There's more than one way to play Circle of the Moon, of course, but I found that regardless of the format, I'd get about halfway through the game, tire of grinding for spell cards and items, and move on to something else. I'm fickle like that.

Not THIS time, though! I vowed that I would play the game from beginning to end, and after roughly twelve hours of exploring Casa Del Vania, endlessly whipping Arch Demons for their rarely relinquished bounty and shuffling a handful of magic cards, I finally reached Dracula. A dozen Thunderbird summons later, Vlad went down for another century-long nap, and I could finally move on to something else, without carrying around the residual guilt of unfinished business.

I'm talking like finishing Circle of the Moon was a dreadful obligation, and while that was true some of the time, I honestly enjoyed the overall experience. Is it the best game in the Castlevania series? No, not really. Is it the best game in the subgenre of Metroidvanias? Not that either. Is it the best of the three Metroidvanias on the Game Boy Advance? Er, no... but it sure beats the crap out of the tinny, dayglo nightmare that was Harmony of Dissonance! There, score one for Circle and me not wasting my time.

Anyway, I had a few stray observations after beating Circle of the Moon. The first is this... why are all the health ups in the form of a pitcher of Kool-Aid?

(image from Junk Food Betty)
(Junk Food Betty, wham the bam)

When you put it that way, it makes much more sense. Oh yeah.

Secondly, this game has a big thing for furries. It's not just the Robin Hood-looking Fox Hunters scattered throughout the machine tower, but entire corridors stocked with Hyenas, Werewolves, Were-Panthers, and Were-Bears, offering threats ranging from "eh, that'll heal" to "that frickin' punch took HOW MUCH damage?!" You start to think about halfway through your adventure that Dracula's castle doubles as the hotel for the Romanian branch of Anthrocon.

What else? I recently learned from the game's strategy Wiki (an invaluable resource, by the way) that Konami doesn't even consider Circle of the Moon part of the official Castlevania timeline. That seems a little harsh... sure, it's a little lacking compared to Symphony of the Night or the later Sorrow games, but in the distant, technologically-impaired year of 2001, Circle of the Moon blew minds and melted faces. Listen to that crisp digitized sound! Look at those detailed graphics! Wait wait, let me get this lamp closer to the screen... okay, NOW look at those detailed graphics!

It's hard to overestimate the impact of hearing the title screen music from the cutting edge Symphony of the Night, on a handheld game system, a year after quality-challenged Game Boy Color titles were the depressing norm. Frankly, no portable game system was punching at that weight... not the Wonderswan, not the Neo-Geo Pocket, and not even 16-bit systems turned into handhelds, like the Nomad and TurboExpress. Circle of the Moon has its problems, some stemming from being a freshman effort and others being inherent in the Metroidvania formula, but considering its advancements over past handheld Castlevanias, and the direction it paved for future titles on the GBA and Nintendo DS, it's hard to justify blotting it out of series canon.

Then again, retconning Circle means bitchy-ass Hugh Baldwin never existed, so maybe it's not that bad.

Pretty Sneaky, Sony

Remember when Sony planned to shutter its digital storefronts for the PS3 and Vita, leaving owners of those systems without a quick and convenient way to buy games for those machines? Luckily, consumers called Sony on its crap, and the company retreated from its original plan of... uh, planned obsolescence. The stores for both systems remained open (at least on those systems... they've been purged from the web store accessible from your computer), and fans breathed a sigh of relief.

Don't get too comfortable, though. Sony still wants to wean gamers from their legacy systems... they're just being craftier about it. Video Games Chronicle reports that starting on October 27th, if you want games for the Playstation 3 and Vita, your payment options will be drastically limited. You won't be able to buy them with PayPal or credit cards... just whatever credit happens to be in your Playstation account's wallet. Sure, you can buy credit online or from brick and mortar stores, but it will make future legacy purchases more inconvenient... and might give Sony an excuse to retire the PS3 and Vita's respective digital stores for good. And people wonder why I've shifted my allegiance to the Xbox. 

(Note: People actually don't give a damn about that, but if they actually were wondering, that's the reason.)

In non-Sony-is-full-of-douchebags news, the final fighter has been announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and it's...

That looks like a gas station logo.
(image from Smashpedia)

Er, no. That's the company that makes Super Smash Bros. Let me try that again...

image from Amazon

Yeah, the little dork from Kingdom Hearts, with the key-shaped sword and shoes Bozo might wear while going out for a morning jog. Any connections Sora has to Disney properties will be cut loose in his Smash Bros. appearance, which is odd as that's his whole raison d'etre. Without Mickey, Goofy, and Donald at his side, what's he got going for him? It sure ain't his fashion sense, or his Gordion-knotted storylines.

Speaking of confusion, the three mainline games in the Kingdom Hearts series will be coming to the Switch... except they'll be cloud-based and won't play on the system without an online connection. Look, I get that the Switch is a little underpowered, but it's also a handheld game system, and thus not always near an adequate wi-fi signal. Maybe Square-Enix should have made the visual compromises expected of Switch ports, rather than having the system dial out for an experience that's likely to be even less satisfying to players without Gigabit internet access.

One other thing. Nickelodeon's own platform fighter, All-Star Brawl, has just been released. So far, it's got just twenty fighters, a small fraction of what's available in Smash Bros. However, hackers have been nosing through the code, and discovered clues that strongly suggest there will be DLC characters in the future. Shredder's a candidate for inclusion, along with Garfield, but the most promising addition would have to be XJ-9, aka Jenny Wakeman from My Life as a Teenage Robot. If you've never seen that show, imagine all three Powerpuff Girls aged up a decade and welded into a tin can in a skirt, and you've got the right idea.

Direct to You

The recent Nintendo Direct has revealed games that were painfully obvious (Castlevania Advanced Collection, which was referenced in Australian content rating documents months ago) along with titles that came completely out of left field (ActRaiser Renaissance, a modernized version of the cult classic with polygonal graphics and expanded town building gameplay). The most surprising of these announcements was Kirby and the Forgotten City, a 3D platformer set in an abandoned metropolis. Yeah, his royal pinkness has gone all post-apocalyptic on us. I never would have seen that coming! 

Post-apocalyptic settings have been
done to death in video games as of late,
but this well-worn cliche almost seems fresh
again now that Kirby is doing it.
(image from game-news24)

Forgotten City also features stages that stretch out in all directions, letting Kirby explore at his leisure and adding depth to his copy abilities. Take Needle, for instance. Instead of just sitting there with his spines out, Kirby can roll around the playfield as a salmon-colored sea urchin, sticking to any foes unfortunate enough to be in his path. Some people are already fretting about Kirby's shift to a 3D environment, but personally, I'm eager to see what this will bring to the series.

The strangest announcement was the reveal of an expanded online service, which gives players access to a small pool of games originally released for the Nintendo 64 and... the Sega Genesis. Okay, I get the N64, but can't you play Sega Genesis on practically everything these days? Hell, there's a collection on the Switch right now. That's a library of thirty something games you can fire up whenever you like, and you don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee for 'em.

Similarly, Namco's arcade oldies, already represented on the Switch with Namco Museum, will also be released a'la carte, under Hamster's Arcade Archives banner. You know, just in case you didn't already have Pac-Man for a dozen other formats. I shouldn't complain too much... this opens the door to a lot of games that weren't included in the Switch version of Namco Museum, including Assault and Libble Rabble. It's just a shame that Namco made its Arcade Archives debut with... what else?... Pac-Man. The poor guy's jaw is gonna fall off at this point.

Speaking of all things Switch, there are a ton of games on sale at the eShop right now. We're talking the original Castlevania Collection, Axiom Verge, Borderlands, Valkyria Chronicles, Mortal Kombat 11, Blaster Master Zero 3, a dozen flavors of Mega Man... it's going to take a heavy toll on your wallet.

A Deluge of News

Whoo. Lots of gaming news has piled up in the five-ish finkel days since I've posted, so let's get right to that. The first is that video game box cover artist Mick McGinty (not to be confused with the man who broke Steve Martin's hand in The Jerk) recently passed away. Thousands of gamers on the internet have expressed their disappointment, but Street Fighter II's resident kickboxer Sagat is taking the news especially hard.

Next on the menu is an unexpected but nevertheless welcome Playstation Vita port of Space Cadet Pinball. This was the app included with early versions of Windows, that kept kids entertained on their parents' computers before the widespread adoption of home internet. Hey, it was either that or Minesweeper... for kids who wanted to lessen their boredom rather than increase it, the choice was obvious. 

Twenty five years later, Space Cadet still plays a mean pinball, and is well adapted to the Playstation Vita. Pressing X launches the ball, and the shoulder buttons swing the flippers. However, it's important to note that the game won't work at all unless you pluck some files from the original Windows version of Space Cadet and drop them in the appropriate folder on your Vita. Later versions of Windows don't include the game, but Groovy Post's Brian Burgess has a solution for that irritating omission. PINBALL.DAT is the bare minimum required for getting the game to work, but you're going to want all the WAV files too, so you can hear every funky noise as the ball slams into targets and slips past your flippers.

There was something else, I'm sure... oh yes, the long awaited and excessively hyped indie game Skatebirds sucks eggs. Look, I wanted this to be good. I'm a casual fan of the Tony Hawk series, and saw merit in a tongue-in-cheek parody with avian skaters. The whole affair feels soft boiled, though, from the camera that points everywhere you don't want to the samey characters who roll around on the floor like they never hatched after a wipeout to the ollie play mechanics that force you to hammer buttons like you're playing Joust to get any lift. After waiting so long for its release, Skatebirds was a nasty surprise, like when my cockatiel shifts the papers in his cage at night so he can crap on the bare floor the next morning.

Okay, okay, this is the news you really wanted to hear. There's been a massive leak of Dreamcast and Xbox prototypes... we're talking nearly 150 of the former and 350 of the latter. Most of these games ultimately found their way to store shelves, but a small handful were never released in the United States, particularly Shanghai Dynasty for the Dreamcast and Dinosaur Hunting for the Xbox. Special thanks to Hidden Palace for finding this deluge of software and sharing it with the world.

Now Hear This

I guess this news is as worthy of an update as anything else. After four years of digging in its heels and ignoring its customers' requests, Nintendo is finally letting players use their own Bluetooth audio equipment with the Switch. It's bad news for anyone who bought expensive gray market peripherals to get around this limitation (and the makers of the paint program Colors! Live, who had to include a wired stylus with the software because of Nintendo's senselessly locked down Bluetooth protocol), but good news for everyone else. Just install the latest Switch firmware update- and your JoyCons while you're at it- and you're in business.

Before I go, does anyone know how to connect USB controllers to a Super NES Classic? I got a couple of those 8BitDo SN30 Pros from ShopGoodwill, and they seem like they'd be a great match for Nintendo's micro console... except for the fact that there's no way to plug them into the system. The bitter irony is that you could plug them into a Sega Genesis Mini, but the button configuration is all wrong for Genesis games, and there's no guarantee the system would even recognize them. Damned if you Nintendo, damned if you Ninten-don't.

Tall Order of Ecclesia

So I was poking around the internet, and I came across this news.

image from Wiffle GIF

I'm qualified to use that GIF. See, I'm a grunkle myself.

Anyway, someone is working on a Sega Genesis port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Technically, it's less of a straight conversion and more of an adaptation, the way Dracula X for the Super NES was a reworking of the PC Engine favorite Rondo of Blood. The designer intends to make the game a more straightforward experience, with eight linear levels for both Alucard and beastmistress Maria. You can probably also count out the absurd amount of little details from the Playstation game, like the peanuts you catch in your mouth for a small health boost or the rainbow of jewelry that bestows elemental resistance or the shield spell that gives you the force fields from Gradius.

Strangely, I'm okay with this. I don't think it's a realistic goal for one developer to smash the entire Symphony experience into a Genesis cartridge. Besides, I've been worn smooth by the concept of the Metroidvania anyway. If you want that kind of game, there's always the original Symphony of the Night... or the very similar Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night... or Axiom Verge... or its recent sequel... or Chasm... or TimeSpinners... or any one of the search action titles that I gave up on halfway through. A classic Arcade-vania is just what the creepy beak-nosed medieval doctor ordered right now.

My major concern is how it will play compared to other Castlevania games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. The developer promises the same silky smooth animation as the Playstation game, but judging from the early test footage, it's going to take a while before this adaptation is up to those high standards. On the other hand, the backgrounds are already shaping up to be incredible, as you can see from this image taken from Pigsy's Retro Game Dev Tutorials.

I think the term "dayum" applies here. Similarly impressive is that the developer has already put the boss Granfalloon on the Sega Genesis, with the corpse-amari dropping its usual payload of zombies on the player's head.

It's probably harder to appreciate in 2021, but on the Genesis, where every programming victory has to be earned with blood, sweat, tears, and profanity, an enemy of this size and with this much detail is astonishing. And it frickin' moves! Bravo, Pigsy. Special thanks to Nintendo Life for spilling the tea on this unexpected (hell, nearly unfathomable) project.

Eight Way Third Degree Burns

It's almost fall. I've got one last chance to squeeze in a post before August comes to a close, so let's talk Hellfire.

Not that hellfire. By the way, who shouts "Dersh!" as a victory cry? That's the worst exclamation for a warrior since The Tick's "Spoon!"

Yeah, okay, that's the Hellfire I meant. Hellfire is an early Sega Genesis shooter tragically buried under an avalanche of early Sega Genesis shooters. Sure, it doesn't have the visual flair or the clever hook of Gaiares, or the blistering speed of Thunder Force II, or the depth and open level design of Granada. However, in keeping with Toaplan tradition, it's a hypercompetent shmup which makes its appeal obvious once you get used to the dull colors and questionable enemy designs. I still don't know what the hell this thing is supposed to be, other than deadly.

Unfortunately, Hellfire has one especially nasty fly stuck in its ointment. It takes a lot of inspiration from SNK and Tose's Vanguard, which puts emphasis on firing not just forward, but around your ship to take out dangerously close enemies. That's the good part. Hellfire is designed to force the player to frequently switch between bullet trajectories, to either concentrate fire on one target or to sink shots into cannons tucked between impenetrable walls.

Now comes the bad part. When you only have three buttons on a stock Genesis controller, you have to cycle through forward, back, vertical, and diagonal firing with button taps. In all fairness, the arcade game was like this too, but it's nevertheless awkward and counterintuitive, especially after forty years of twin stick shooters like Robotron: 2084 and Smash TV. Your mind is forced to find a perfect balance between dancing around the bullets Hellfire throws at you and hammering the bullet cycle button to find the right trajectory for the current situation. That inevitably leads to confusion, chaos, and ultimately, a fiery death from a collision your brain was too knotted up to notice.

What I'd like to see is a hack that removes the trajectory cycling button completely and replaces it with omni-directional firing, provided by the six button Sega Arcade Pad. Holding B fires forward, while holding X fires backward. Y or A fires vertically, while any combination of the two buttons lays down a spread of diagonal fire. Finally, Z or C fires the Hellfire cannon, a forward facing thermonuclear ray that scorches all enemies in its path. 

You could even adapt this control scheme to an older Genesis controller... it wouldn't be ideal, but it would certainly be an improvement over Toaplan's default setting. A fires backward, B fires vertically, and C fires forward. Any two buttons fire diagonally, and all three together unleashes hellfire on your enemies.

I'd like to see this happen, but I doubt there's enough interest in a crusty old shooter like Hellfire for anyone else to tackle this project, and I just don't have the mad hacking skills to make it a reality. Even making Peter Pan green in the Genesis version of Hook without everything else adopting the same hue was beyond my reach...

Green cherries. Mm, bitter and possibly toxic!