Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Post-Mort'Em!

 

Gather 'round, boys and girls! I'm going to tell you a long, involved, highly technical story of how the recently released Sega Master System game Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons Remarked came to be. I'm going to do this chronologically, starting at the very beginning of the game's development cycle and coming to the very end roughly a month later. Prepare yourself for thrills, chills, triumphs, heartbreak, and of course, plenty of information about how the Master System works its magic. Grab a popcorn and an extra-large soda... this is going to take a while!

APRIL 27, 2025

In an unexpected and hugely ambitious move, Oscar Toledo Gutierrez, better known on the internet as Nanochess, expanded his popular BASIC compiler CVBasic to support the Sega Master System. The compiler was already compatible with a baker's dozen of similar Z80A-powered computers and game systems, but the addition of Master System support was a pretty big deal, because that console was a pretty big improvement over what had come before it. As a fan of all things Sega and someone who was less thrilled with the ColecoVision's onerous limitations, I immediately took notice.

APRIL 28, 2025

A day later, I expressed my excitement about the latest build of CVBasic in a post on this very blog. How could you NOT be excited? In a single day, Master System programming was brought to the masses, instead of the classes. (Specifically, those who took C++ programming classes in college.) After a quick look at the capabilities of the Master System and its rich color palette, I posted images of how Byron already looked in the ColecoVision version of his game, versus how he could look on the Master System. Observe!

The fuse was lit. Barring a heart attack or a stray meteor falling to Earth (on my head), a Master System port of Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons was destined to happen. 

MAY 7, 2025 

After a week of studying the Master System's specs, coding some test programs, and enhancing the graphics from the original game, I got right to work on a Master System port of Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons. 

One word: feh.

Originally, Remarked was a straight port of the ColecoVision game, with improved graphics but absolutely no new content. The old logo from the ColecoVision version was likewise converted faithfully to the Master System, but it lacked the luster one expects from a post-crash game console. In fact, the whole production felt decidedly underwhelming; a straight port from inferior hardware that brought to mind the colossal Master System dud F-15 Fighting Falcon. 

From the makers of ALF... oh joy! Even
Tiertex points at these guys and laughs.
(image from Sega Retro)

There had to be more to this conversion... something to make it worthy of the more advanced hardware. This game was never going to compete with the likes of Phantasy Star or Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, but it had to be somewhere in that ballpark. At least in the cheap nosebleed seats!

By the way, the alpha version of Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons was shockingly easy to convert from the ColecoVision original. All the graphics had to be redesigned, and I was happy to take advantage of the system's expanded color palette, but the Master System handles sprites differently than the ColecoVision, and adapting to the machine's "skinny" sprites became my first challenge. It took at least a day to make the PEEK-0 mallet display as intended. This was good practice for what would come later, however!

MAY 12, 2025 

What does an 8-bit video game from the late 1980s need to make it feel genuine? Why, an illustrated storyline, of course! Previously, the story for Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons was restricted to the instruction manual, but on the Master System, I decided to bake it into the game, told through a series of lightly animated images. Images like this one!

This picture started out a lot more simple,
with a flashing arcade sign and Byron's
agonized reflection on the display of the arcade
game. Over time I decided to add a friend
I knew from the furry community, along with
a plug for my Atari 2600 game Solar Plexus.
Gosh, I can only imagine how that game
would look on the Master System! Heck, even
the ColecoVision would be a pretty big step up.

Six images were used in total, with the last one using palette effects to create an animated sunburst behind Byron's adopted sister Elle. Unfortunately, all these nifty graphics took up a lot of space, meaning that I'd either have to cut them from the finished product (two words: HELL NO) or make other accommodations. More on that later.

MAY 19, 2025

What else does a home console game from the late 1980s need to make it feel complete? Production logos! I had a nifty idea for JessCREATIONS, my own independent game company... I'd have the logo sitting in the middle of an invisible pond, throwing a reflection on the water, with the long end of the "J" dipping into the surface.

"Hee hee, neat!" Me when I first made this.

This is when the enhancements of the Sega Master System over the ColecoVision became abundantly apparent. The ColecoVision is limited to a fixed sixteen color palette. Don't like the colors, consisting of Pepto-Bismol, stale urine, and earwax? Tough. Want to swap colors on the fly for nifty special effects? You'll have to change the palette data for that block of graphics, and this takes a lot of work. 

The Master System makes things a lot easier, to say nothing of more attractive. Its palette is alive with color, with sixty-four mostly well chosen hues, and you can use sixteen of them for the backgrounds, along with another sixteen for sprites. Especially clever programmers can borrow colors from the sprite palette to use in the background tiles. This was not required here, though... all I needed to do was strobe the colors of the logo's reflection to make it seem as though the water was struck with the eerie glow of a full moon.

There's one other thing... the lily pad sitting on the reflection. It's made from two "skinny" sprites, with one set slightly above or below the other to make it seem as if it's rocking in the water. It demonstrates that a little programming sleight of hand can have dazzling results. (Just wait 'till you see what I did with the Sega logo later!)

MAY 21, 2025

One nifty trick up the Master System's 
metaphorical sleeve is that sections of the
screen can be frozen in place. This was
intended for stationary status bars, but
I used it to set Byron on the right-most
side of the screen, letting him watch 
as the credits scroll upward. 

Adding the logos, the storyline, a flashy introductory sequence, and an updated credits screen was a lot of fun, but I started to notice that there was no way I could fit all these bells and whistles into a 48K game and still have room for the game. 

My only solution was bank-switching. I've never used bank-switching in a video game before, and I was not eager to start. It complicates the development process, forcing the designer to split the game into components. Each 16K "chunk" of the game rests inside a separate bank, and BANK 0 acts as the hub for the other banks, with BANK 1 acting as its data cache. 

Image from TV Tropes, which probably stole
it from someone else. See also "Charlie Brown,
football."

It's more organized this way, but if you're not aware of the bank you're in at any given moment, it can lead to situations that Nanochess describes as pulling a rug out from under yourself as you're standing on it. This hurts less when you're programming a game, but not MUCH less. Rest assured that I took many such pratfalls until I learned to get it right. (Now I know how Dick Van Dyke feels.)

It also meant that I had to compress the main game loop into BANK 0, and that was not easy! By the time I was finished, I had less than 1K left. Things also got pretty tight in BANK 2, where the story resides. I wanted to add more details (cameos from other friends, twinkling stars in the planetary view of the first stage), but after CVBasic loudly complained that there was no room left for it, I decided not to press my luck. The picture frame that surrounds each image had to be given its own subroutine to cut down on wasted space... things got that tight.

MAY 25, 2025 

Once the space issues were all sorted out and the graphics were compressed to squeeze the game into a one megabit cartridge, I was free to perform all manner of feats of programming daring-do. Here's one of my favorites; a screen-filling animation of the Sega logo that greets you when you first boot the game.

"Big whoop, it's the Sega logo!" Still images
only tell part of the story! You've got to see
this in motion to really appreciate it!

The logo slides upward from an unseen void in the center of the screen. I was originally going to use PRINT statements for the animation, because old habits are hard to break. However, done this way, it was a slow, flickery mess, uncomfortably reminiscent of the kinds of games I coded on my VIC-20 when I was a teenager. It was much smarter to bite the bullet and learn how to use CVBasic's SCREEN command, which Nanochess describes as the fastest way to display graphics in the compiler. And he's right... it is indeed very fast! Farewell, flicker! So long, slowdown!

It just took a little math to figure out how to make the logo seem like it was sprouting up from the center of the screen. Basically, I drew one row of the logo near the bottom of the screen, then two rows eight pixels higher, and so forth until the logo is fully visible. The final results are gorgeous, if I do say so myself... and I do!

This title, which is at least three screens
long, was made with just ten graphic tiles.
A good tip for programmers working with
8-bit systems: Conserve every byte, and
streamline your code whenever possible.
Unlike today's systems, storage is at a
premium, and you'll quickly find yourself 
out of ROM space if you're careless.

The "Remarked" sign that scrolls past in the introductory sequence was a little tougher. First, I had to conceal the sides of the screen to disguise the appearance of each letter and make it seem like it's sliding smoothly from the right. Then I had to scroll the playfield, refreshing the graphics on the right of the screen while deleting everything that scrolls off the left. 

This is made more complicated by the fact that the right hand side of the screen shifts to the left as it scrolls. I had to create a moving pointer variable to keep track of where the rightmost screen actually was at any given moment. It was a lot of work, but it was ultimately worth the trouble.

(As an aside, it turns out game design is roughly 25% digital puppetry and sleight of hand... you're not so much making magic happen on the screen as making the player BELIEVE there's magic happening on the screen, with split-second tile and palette swapping. It was ten times worse on the ancient Atari 2600, where programmers were forced to stay one step ahead of a television scan line that refreshes every 1/60th of a second. It's a wonder Pitfall!'s David Crane made it through the 1980s with his sanity intact.)

JUNE 1, 2025

We're in the home stretch! The game is nearly finished and thoroughly playtested. By me, at least. The members of the SMSpower forum offered their own suggestions on how the game could be further improved, including the option to skip all those fancy animated scenes. After choking down my pride (b-but I WANT people to see all that cool stuff I spent sleepless nights coding!), I let players press a button to advance through most of the game's non-interactive scenes. 

I also snuck in a screen at the end of the game with a silent film aesthetic, complete with an inkblot Byron, and a special hidden screen paying tribute to my other friends, who donated to this project. You can see the expanded ending below, but the secret credits screen you'll have to find for yourself. Hey, it just wouldn't be an 8-bit game from the late 1980s without hidden cheat codes!

"Let's examine the prints!"
"Here he is!" (holds up Prince)
"No, FINGER-prints."
"...I don't think so.

JUNE 3, 2025

Having finished the game, I wrote the post-mortem you're reading now, then collapsed into a heap. Designing video games is tough, yo. Even on a humble 8-bit game system. Even when you've got modern design tools like Aseprite and CVBasic. But hey, having my game and my characters on a retro game system makes it worth the toil and trouble! In the span of a month, Byron has become a Sega video game character, in the same digital pantheon as Joe Musashi and Alex Kidd and the space harrier from Space Harrier. Eat your cartoon hearts out, Rigby and Mordecai!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a heap to collapse into. Nighty-night. 

Of Blood and Stones

 

Seems Microsoft is raising the prices of all its Xbox products, because it sure makes sense for the five year old console that's dead last in the current console wars to bump up its price. Perhaps Bill Gates, or the interchangeable Indian CEO who's taken his place, should reconsider this course of action. After all, the only reason Microsoft sold ANY Series consoles after the colossal failure of the Xbox One was because the S was economically priced. The numbers speak for themselves... according to IGN, three quarters of Xbox owners own the Series S, as opposed to the deluxe model.

See, here's the thing. With incomes remaining low and everything else raising in price, people have to make tough choices about what they'll buy... and they're not buying the upscale model of a game system when the budget priced model plays just as many games, and looks nearly as nice. Hell, they can barely afford groceries. And you think it's just fine and dandy to raise the price of a five year old system that nobody wants. It's withered technology at this point! The price is supposed to go down with time. Nobody's going to pay a premium for obsolete technology, and they sure as fuck aren't going to pay eighty dollars for a video game. A game, one must point out, that comes with the barest essentials and absolutely none of the downloadable content, because that's sold separately. (Likely for the same extortionate prices.)

So I ask you, Microsoft and the video game industry in general, what the hell are you doing? Do you want another video game crash? Because this is how you get another video game crash. I wasn't paying sixty dollars for video games before, and I won't pay eighty dollars for video games now. Not when Steam's own games sell for a fraction of that price, and Epic is just giving them away. Sure, they might have been on the shelves for a couple years, but that doesn't make them any less playable. 

You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Indie games. I just bought Dave the Diver for ten bucks at Wal-Mart, and Balatro for fifteen dollars on the Switch eShop, and Balatro in particular is more entertaining than any five bloated "triple A" games put together. You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Buying a dozen games in a Humble Bundle, or a whole shit-ton of games from Itch.IO, when they're raising money for the latest global crisis. There are so many global crises at the moment that you're never going to run out of sales! There's one going on right now to keep Benjamin Netanyahu from throwing Palestinians into a chipper-shredder!

You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Retro games, which are legion fifty years after the invention of home game consoles. You can buy them in collections for a small fraction of the retail of a big-budget release, or just buy the actual games from a pawn shop or a Goodwill or a yard sale. You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Making your own using the wealth of development tools available on the internet. CVBasic in particular costs nothing and supports over a dozen systems, including the goddamned Master System. I didn't make much money from the half-dozen versions of Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons I made with CVBasic, but I sure as hell didn't pay eighty dollars for the opportunity.

I don't give a damn about inflation. I don't care about the tariffs, because corporate America made them happen by installing Donald Trump as president. Put bluntly, we don't have the money. You made sure we don't have the money by raising the prices of everything while keeping wages at the poverty level! We not only don't have the money, but we wouldn't give you the money if we had it, because we have more important expenses, and countless other options to amuse ourselves without selling a vital organ for it. 

Know this, Microsoft. If you crater the video game industry with eighty dollar games, it's no skin off my back. That software will instantly drop to clearance prices at stores, and the miserable sons of bitches who sucked the fun out of this hobby with their greed will be flushed out of it like so many turds. It's happened before! It's why there's no Data Age, no Mythicon, and no Apollo Games. A video game crash on the scale of 1983's "Atari shock" would do this industry a world of good. If you think it can't happen now, just keep pressing your luck. You'll see just how wrong you were... and if we're really lucky, Microsoft itself will become a bitter memory. I'm overdue for switching to Linux anyway.

Mastered System

The Sega Master System is to date the only
major game console that comes with its
own flowchart.
(image from GameTrog)

Here's some megaton-caliber news for fans of the Sega Master System... after years of going without, the 8-bit console finally has its own BASIC compiler. And here's a surprise... it's the same compiler people have already been using to make ColecoVision games for nearly a year! Oscar Toledo Gutierrez (more popularly known by his online handle Nanochess) has brought Master System support to CVBasic, making it the fourteenth machine supported by the compiler and arguably the most significant of the bunch.

Here's why this is a big deal. Previous consoles supported by CVBasic used the TMS9918 chip, a video processor which was a step up from the prehistoric Atari 2600 but started showing its age the moment Nintendo released the Famicom (our NES) in Japan in 1983. Its limitations are numerous and aggravating, with single colored sprites, a lack of hardware scrolling, and a fixed color palette with some of the most repellent hues this side of a gas station bathroom.

Colors on the ColecoVision include yuck,
ew, nasty, eww with two w's, and what
the hell were they thinking?
(image from Lo Spec dot com)

 

Those limitations were tolerable on the education-focused TI-99/4A, but are glaringly apparent on the ColecoVision, a supposed arcade-quality game console with games that fell distressingly short of arcade perfection. (Have you seen the original ColecoVision version of Time Pilot? Yeech.) Nintendo actively sought to address these shortcomings with the NES, and its long lifespan speaks for itself. While the death of the ColecoVision is largely due to the video game crash and Coleco's mismanagement, it's highly unlikely that its anemic hardware could have kept pace with the game design trends of the late 1980s and beyond. If a dated arcade game like Time Pilot is beyond your system's reach, you can forget about Crystalis, or Bionic Commando, or River City Ransom, or Final Fantasy.

That brings us to the Sega Master System. This console was designed as a successor to the SG-1000 (effectively a Japanese ColecoVision), and demonstrates massive improvements over both that system and the Famicom. It's as much a Super ColecoVision as Nintendo's 16-bit system was a Super NES, with an expanded color palette, hardware scrolling, and sprites with not one, not three, but fifteen possible colors. As a result, the very best games on the Master System approach a 16-bit level of color and detail, leaving past game consoles and even the NES in the dust.

Rampage on the Master System (left), versus
the same game on the NES (right). The only
thing more palpable than the difference in
visual quality is the disappointment I felt
when I bought the NES version.

Back in the late 1980s, it was the dream of every nerdy Gen-X teenager in America to make their own NES game. You might call CVBasic's recent inclusion of Master System support a nifty consolation prize for those hopeful game designers, but considering the advantages the Master System has over the NES, this might actually be better. It would certainly be preferred in Europe, where the Master System was the 8-bit console of choice of kids weaning themselves off the ZX Spectrum.

The best part is that games already written in CVBasic for other formats can be converted to the Master System. The graphics have to be redrawn to take advantage of the system's expanded color palette, but the original game logic remains compatible. Heck, you can even expand on what you've already written, since the Master System has a lot more RAM and solid state storage than the old SG-1000. Extra stages? New intermissions? A high score table? Sure, why not?

The juiced up graphics alone may be enough motivation for a Master System port. Check out how my mascot Byron looked in his ColecoVision game, compared to how he COULD look on the Master System. Now you're playing with power!

The colors, Duke! There actually ARE some now!

 

Sunny Side Up

 

(image from Inspired Pencil)

I’m not one to look on the bright side, and it’s gotten that much harder for me to be optimistic in the face of everything that’s currently happening in America. However, out of the ninety-nine problems I’m currently juggling, video games ain’t one. There’s a ton of great stuff available on all the major consoles, and thanks to recent spring sales on Steam and Nintendo’s eShop, it’s never been cheaper to enjoy it.

Let me give you a couple examples. Despite all the critical acclaim it’s received, I couldn’t bring myself to pay sixty dollars for a copy of Super Mario Wonder. However, at forty-two dollars, it was a lot easier to take that plunge. Same goes for Robocop: Rogue City, which piqued my curiousity when it was first released, but became a more palatable purchase when it dropped to fifteen dollars during an Xbox Live sale. After all, the original Robocop movie was brilliant, but that was nearly forty years ago, and nothing else in the franchise has been worth a damn. I needed some added incentive to take a chance on this game, which seemed to come out of nowhere.

I’m happy to say that while I wouldn’t have touched Robocop: Rogue City at its launch price, it’s been well worth what I actually paid for it... an earnestly designed first-person shooter that feels more authentic than practically everything else bearing the Robocop name. With rare exceptions, everything I’ve played lately has been worth my time and money, which is something I couldn’t say in those days before steep Steam sales and the last year of the Nintendo Switch, a game system with an impossibly comprehensive library. So let the world burn and the walls fall... you’ll find my corpse buried in the rubble, with a game controller clutched tightly in my hands and a smile on my face.

That wasn’t as optimistic as I hoped it would be. Anyway, here’s a handful of the games I’ve played over the last few months, ranging in quality from “surprisingly good” to “augh, why can’t I stop playing this?!” (Of course I’m describing Balatro, and of course I’m playing it right now, even as I blog. You’d probably need to pull me away from it with the jaws of life to make me stop.) 

BALATRO
Local Thunk
Xbox

One nifty touch is that if you beat the stage
quota with a single hand, your score is set
ablaze, audibly crackling as the points
pile up. It's the little things, man.
(image from Steam)

Calling this poker would be like calling chess checkers. Fundamentally, they’re similar, but Balatro is more strategically rich than poker thanks to the introduction of Jokers. These special cards change the rules of the game to your advantage... for instance, Odd Todd makes all odd-numbered cards boost your multiplier, earning you more chips for every hand. Smart players can combine the effects of two or more Jokers, creating “synergies” which lead to huge point bonuses. Pair a Swashbuckler (the price of all Jokers is added to your multiplier) with an Egg (which increases its value after every round) and you’ll be swimming in chips after a few antes. Likewise, combine Midas Mask (all played face cards turn gold) with Pareidolia (all cards are counted as face cards) and you’ll quickly have a deck of gold cards, helpful for earning the currency you’ll use after every round to buy more Jokers.

Adding to the depth are planetary cards, which boost the value of specific poker hands, tarot cards, which alter the cards in your deck, and spectral cards; monkey’s paws which offer significant advantages to the player at an uncomfortable price. There’s a lot to consider when you’re playing Balatro, but it’s rarely overwhelming because it’s built on such a familiar and intuitive foundation. It’s poker, on a higher plane of existence. (Adorned with charming pixel art.)

FREEDOM PLANET 2
Galaxy Trail
Nintendo Switch

Genesis may have done what Nintendon’t thirty-five years ago, but Freedom Planet does what Sonic the Hedgehog hasn’t for years, propelling players through two dozen speed-focused stages while keeping them eager to witness what’s next. Freedom Planet 2 isn’t an exact replica of the first three Sonic games, with melee combat replacing the blue blur’s trademark spin jump. However, in some respects, Galaxy Trail’s tribute to Sonic the Hedgehog feels like a refinement of Sega’s formula, with levels that encourage exploration, clever gimmicks that take advantage of the game’s emphasis on physics, and more substantial boss battles.

Like the original, you'll swear the awkward
Chinese girl from Turning Red made it.
(image from Pressed Sake)
(uh, I mean, Press a Key)

Freedom Planet 2 also shows marked improvements over the previous game, with a more agreeably silly storyline and accessibility options that give less skilled players an edge in the often brutal boss fights. Instead of being dragged to a checkpoint after losing a life, you can opt to revive yourself immediately, with almost no health. It’s risky, but oh so satisfying when that second wind lets you sneak in one last blow and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

The game’s not perfect. Minor enemies are annoyingly damage resistant, and the set pieces aren’t as fun as they were in the first Freedom Planet. It’s also an unapologetically girly game, which may not be to taste for some players. (Suck it up, men! You lived through the My Little Pony fad of 2010, and you’ll get through this.) Having said all that, Freedom Planet 2 is one of the rare Sonic-like video games that can keep pace with its speedy inspiration, and even overtake it.

ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY
Tayon
Xbox Series S

When not contemplating what it means
to be human in a chrome-plated future, Alex
Murphy blows away criminals and law
enforcement mechs with a pistol that
thinks it's a Gatling gun.
(image from MP1st)

What is the future of law enforcement? For officer Alex Murphy, it’s eternal confinement in the terrifying margin between life and death, man and machine, as the property of a sinister, all-consuming corporation. (Presumably one with free two day shipping.) When not blasting thugs into hamburger with his Auto 9, Murphy searches for his humanity in a society which has happily abandoned its own for the sake of convenience and comfort. It’s a science-fiction tragedy that has crept from “what if?” to “what is” in recent years... we still don’t have steel-plated police cyborgs, but the crass commercialism and frightening corporate overreach in the first Robocop movie isn’t far removed from life in the actual 21^st century.

This is an essential part of the Robocop experience, and one that often gets glossed over for that other Robocop trademark, extreme violence. Robocop: Rogue City has plenty of the latter... mohawk-topped gang members look like they’ve taken a ride in a high-speed blender after Murphy targets them with his firearm. However, Robocop’s search for humanity in an inhumane world also gets its proper due. Citizens in the urban wasteland of Detroit frequently need his help, and he can either do things by the book, upholding the law, or look the other way and let them make amends for past mistakes, serving the public trust while embracing the decency the scheming chairmen of OCP couldn’t quite snuff out.

As a game, Rogue City is adequate, a first person shooter with light adventure elements. You can scan for clues with computer-aided "Robocop vision," which earns experience points and eventually, stat-boosting skill points. As one might expect from his size and weight, Robocop is slower and stiffer than your average FPS hero, but as one might also expect, that inch thick metal armor makes him extremely damage resistant, letting him wade through hailstorms of bullets that would quickly bring down a human target.

There have been better games in this genre, and certainly ones with better graphics... the streets of Detroit are appropriately dreary and dimly lit, but the cast of characters dangle their toes over the edge of the Uncanny Valley, looking and moving like bug-eyed mannequins. However, thanks to the film-quality soundtrack and the voice work of Peter Weller, there’s rarely been better Robocop games. Heck, it’s better than nearly everything else bearing the Robocop name, and it’s all a fan can ask for after suffering through several lousy sequels and a wrongheaded 2014 reboot.

SUPER MARIO WONDER
Nintendo
Nintendo Switch

Good thing they labeled him as "Steve
Smith." I thought he was Cheech
Marin for a minute there.
(image from HG101)

Back in the early 1980s, there was an arcade game starring the rock band Journey, with two noteworthy features. The first is the introduction of digitized graphics, with each band member portrayed as a crude black and white photograph stuck on a tiny video game body. Inventor Ralph Baer originally wanted to use this early technology to let players take pictures of themselves for the high score screen, but since players in test locations wanted to take pictures of everything but their faces, he wisely decided to lose the built-in camera and just digitize some celebrities.

The second headlining feature of Journey is that each stage has a split personality. At first, the gameplay is fairly passive, with simple challenges that bring to mind games like Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, and Lunar Lander. However, when a member of Journey claims his stolen musical instrument, all hell breaks loose, and everything onscreen that was content to leave Steve Perry alone as he sailed past them on a rocket pack now wants him dead. (You know, like every other member of Journey.) The game instantly becomes more frantic, with players flailing on the fire button to clear a path through waves of neon gates, LP-firing cannons, and other musically themed hazards.

Super Mario Wonder. It's like Freaky Friday,
every day of the week!
(image from Nintendo Everything)

Super Mario Wonder takes this concept and runs a marathon with it. At first it’s Dr. Jeckyll, with Mario bouncing through a seemingly ordinary stage. When he finds the game’s MacGuffin de jour, a Wonder Seed, it becomes Mr. Hyde, with the prevailing theme of that stage taking an unexpected and often dangerous twist. Herds of grazing triceratops become a relentless stampede, rolling fossils come to life as flying serpents, and Mario turns into a squishy red blob, clinging to the walls of a cavern overflowing with gelatin. There’s a fun surprise waiting in every stage of Super Mario Wonder, and it’s exactly what the series needed after settling into a rut with the last handful of games on the 3DS and Wii U. This is the first Super Mario Bros. title developed without creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s direct involvement, and it suggests that the long-running series will be in good hands even after his retirement.

BERSERK BOY
Berserk Boy Games
Nintendo Switch

Go berserk? You probably should, if you like the fast, challenging action and futuristic sheen of the Mega Man X games. Thanks to its focus on multi-stage melee combat, it’s probably more accurate to compare Berserk Boy to the Gunvolt games by Inticreates... in his default form, Berserk Boy must first tag enemies with a charging dash, then finish them off with a blast of lightning.

Here's just the thing to top up your
testosterone after a few froofy games
of Freedom Planet 2.
(image from Instant Gaming)

Like Mega Man X, the title character can unlock more forms by beating bosses, but these feel less like optional weapons and more like entirely different characters. Soaring Wind is pitifully weak on offense, but spans wide chasms with ease. Meanwhile, Ice Kunai is the only form that can strike enemies from a safe distance, and moves more swiftly than the combat-focused Flame Drill. You’ll want (and sometimes need) to frequently switch forms to progress through each stage, which finds a comfortable middle ground between the linearity of Mega Man X and the more open level designs of a Metroidvania.

There could have been better balance between the five available forms... you’ll probably stick with lightning and Ice Kunai until you’re absolutely forced to switch to something else. Moreover, it’s a bit of a kludge to quickly switch to specific forms when the terrain demands it. The cast of characters aren’t especially interesting and the plot about “berserk orbs” makes even less sense than Mega Man X’s, but that’s the extent of the flaws in this top shelf platformer that should prove especially compelling for speedrunners. It looks great, sounds even better thanks to the Tee Lopes soundtrack, and encourages players to not only beat stages, but master them with repeated playthroughs.

 

Attack of the Constipated Ninjas

 

They're dream makers, in the same sense as
Freddy Krueger or Doctor Destiny.
(image from Giant Bomb)

You'd think I would love Shadow of the Ninja Reborn, the latest release from Natsume-Atari. It's an old school experience with driving music and lush graphics; the kind of game we would have seen more often on 32-bit systems if not for the dick-dribbling, tech-chasing writers of magazines like Next Generation, who never missed a chance to tell their readers that their games aren't worth shit if they don't have polygons. (What, me bitter?)

Unfortunately, Shadow of the Ninja Reborn brings back all the annoyances of video games from the 8-bit and 16-bit generations, along with lead-footed assassins that make an already frustrating experience that much more agonizing. Reborn is ostensibly a remake of Natsume's similarly named sleeper hit for the NES, but the designers have taken creative liberties with the source material. Stages have been expanded, character sprites have been redrawn, and the weapon system has been completely redesigned, with everything from caltrops (you know, floor tacks that always land point first) to giant swords to laser beams added to the slim arsenal in the original game. 

The Kasurigami (hooked chain) is now
a permanent part of your arsenal,
but each throw leaves you locked in
position until the head of the chain
returns, and doesn't snuff bullets or
shuriken. This becomes a problem
when fighting the elusive aquatic ninjas in
the second stage. Prepare to pick a lot
of ninja stars out of your keister.
(image from Nintendo)

You might think this would improve the experience, but the new weapons quickly become a nuisance, with massive set up times and weird trajectories that make using them more trouble than they're worth. Adding to the frustration is a weapon select system that forces you to hold in a button while cycling through the available items with left and right. Left on the D-pad moves the current selection right and vice versa, forcing you to adapt your muscle memory to the mad whims of the designers. Just pressing the weapon select button swaps between the default katana and the first of the seven items in your inventory. This must have seemed like a good idea in theory, but leaves the player struggling to reach the one health restoring item in their stock that could save their lives in a tense situation. Got milk? Nope, you got a mallet instead, and now you got killed by that giant robot samurai flinging chunks of metal in your face.

Oh, but the frustration doesn't end with the weapon system! In addition to way too many useless weapons, Kaede and Hayate are armed with ninja techniques that would be impressive... if they weren't so kludgy to perform. Take for instance hanging from platforms. Jumping under a platform makes your ninja cling to it... simple enough. Up flips your hero up to the top, while jump drops them back down to a lower level. Up and jump would vault your character upward in any other side-scrolling platformer, but here, you just fall... possibly into a pit, which robs you of precious energy. 

Your ninja can also climb walls, but pressing up and down to adjust your poisition a'la Ninja Gaiden II won't cut it... you have to press up and toward the wall, then hammer the jump button to make them race upward. Similarly, there's a spin that lets you float over gaps in tight areas, but that's triggered by holding down and to the left or right, while pounding the jump button. You can't double tap in the direction you'd like to air dash, as has been customary in video games since 1996's Guilty Gear. No, Natsume had to be unique, and the player suffers for it. (Really, you're making me press DOWN on the controller to defy gravity, a force which tends to pull you downward? That makes perfect sense. Wink wink, give middle finger.)

And ANOTHER thing! Power ups
increase the length of your katana
blade, but taking damage takes
that advantage away, forcing you to get
dangerously close to that chimpanzee
with spike-lined armor.
(image from Nintendo)

Worst of all, these two ninjas are gallingly weighty and sluggish, making you think they should have considered a career in accounting instead. In that 8-bit tradition, Shadow of the Ninja Reborn is a demanding game, forcing players to make split-second adjustments to their positions to cleanly leap from platform to platform, and to keep a safe distance from their enemies. Kaede and Hayate are just too doughy to match the reflexes of their foes and meet the game's overwhelming demands, which means players will have to memorize each stage and react a half-second before each enemy strikes. You can adapt to the slight reaction delays, but when you're playing as ninjas and not sumos, it shouldn't even be necessary.

Look, I want to love Natsume-Atari's games. Unfortunately, whether it's Wild Guns or Pocky and Rocky or Shadow of the Ninja, they feel like the twelve labors of Hercules with Sisyphus' boulder clamped to your ankle. If you're going to present me with a brutal challenge, at least give me the tools needed to meet that challenge. Don't give me shinobi who spend most of their downtime at the all you can eat buffet.

Another Year Birthier

 

Why, thank you for the birthday wishes, PSP Go! I can always count on you, unless UMDs are involved. I'd buy an M2 card, or even better, an M2 to SD card adapter, but I can't justify the expense when the last time I used my PSP Go was, uh... exactly this time last year. You can see the position I'm in here. This thing gets less love than my flippin' Vita. The 3DS spends more time in my hands.

If it's just an R4 with 208 ROMs
on it, is it still a 208 in 1 multi-
cartridge? The Channel 4 News
Team investigates.

 

Speaking of which! I found this interesting little trinket floating around in the wilds of Tucson earlier today. It advertises itself as a 208 in 1 3DS cartridge, but it's pretty clear from the SD card slot alone that it's really a clone of the R4, that Nintendo-enraging flash cart that everyone with a Nintendo DS knew about, but absolutely nobody actually owned. (Wink, wink.)

Sure enough, there are precisely 208 games on the included SD card, which can be played on a Nintendo DS, IF the R4 can slip through the handheld's security checks. This seems to happen with every other boot, and the inconsistent functionality lends a sense of cheapness to these products. Maybe I'd have more luck if I upgraded the dummy ROM... this one's currently running, or pretending to run, Deep Labyrinth by Atlus.

But when the cartridge does work, it's a fun trip back to 2010-era gaming. Well, New Super Mario Bros kind of bites, as ponderously slow as it is starved for fresh ideas. You know how Super Mario Wonder was made by junior Nintendo staffers, and full of all kinds of creative twists to the formula? New Super Mario Bros. is... kind of the exact opposite of that. If it tells you anything, Tose made a Super Mario Bros. game for the Nintendo DS, Super Princess Peach, and that has more character and identity than New Super Mario Bros. Actually, a lot more, which is surprising coming from the makers of Chubby Cherub. "Hey, Tose. Why don't YOU make the fun game for a change, and we'll make the aggressively formulaic, barely adequate one?"

Anyway. I can always nudge myself back into Solatorobo, since that's also on the cartridge. I didn't see the attraction before, but maybe it'll finally click.