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Jan 23rd, 2007 at 20:33:21 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
It took until the Sun and Moon boss at the end of the fourth world to get to something challenging in this game. It took probably a good 5 minutes to figure out exactly how to defeat this boss. Normally the player simply waits until the boss throws a projectile at Kirby, and suck it up and spit it back at him. This time there are two enemies, the sun and the moon. One is always in the sky and the other is always on the ground charging at you. Ever so often the one in the sky will shoot projectiles, but these are difficult to catch because of the enemy on the ground. Eventually, I got the hang of it and beat them handily.
A wonderful aspect of the game is the sprites and background art. HAL Laboratories, the creators of Air Fortress and Super Smash Bros. are quite good at using what is available to make the best of things. Although, it looks eerily like Super Mario Bros. in some places, the castle for instance, and most of the first world, they have done an amazing job at creating clean and interactive levels with the limited palette of the NES they are working with. One of my favorite levels is the air ship level, again looks a lot like Super Mario Bros. which consists of blimps and platforms with propellers on them. The propellers make Kirby's floating ability, and in fact jump at all, difficult to use, thank you, and therefore forces the player to carefully time their jumps as to not be blown off the blimps. The propeller animation is also just cool to watch. The good production value of this game is also evident in the tower level which uses an almost hypnotic parallax effect for the tower. As Kirby moves across the screen he seems to move around the tower, which looks really cool for the NES. Kirby may be only a few pixels across, 16 x 16, which is quite small even for an NES character, but there is a lot of feeling and motion expressed in those few pixels.
Finally, an all important aspect: the music. Kirby's Adventure has some great music. Similar, again, to Super Mario Bros. the music is fast paced and catchy. Very catchy. I find myself humming the tunes now and again while not playing the game. This adds to game play by making it exciting to play the game. The fast music encourages the quick completion of the level. Somehow, just carefully walking through the level destroying each enemy is not much fun to do. Speed is what it is all about.
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Jan 23rd, 2007 at 20:32:55 - Kirby's Adventure (NES) |
The intro clip of this game really sets the mood for how fun it is to play. “First you draw a great big circle. Then you dot the eyes. Add a great big smile. And presto, its Kirby!” This is the jingle the appears on screen before the slash screen. At first play the game seems far to simple, and much like Super Mario Bros. The fact that Kirby can float indefinitely definitely makes the game too easy for the first few dozen levels. I found myself beating almost the first world entirely by floating over everything. Not a single enemy could touch me. I think it would have been better to have perhaps a limited amount of floating around would have made the game a little more difficult. Despite this, the game is still a lot of fun. First of all the level selection takes place in rooms where the unexplored areas are covered. Once the player has beaten a level, Kirby plants a flag and more of the levels are revealed. The mystery of what portions of the map will be revealed next creates as sense of accomplishment because the players actions have created real change in the world not just opened up the door to another level.
In addition to levels, there are also fun mini games such as catching eggs, fighting mini bosses, claw machines, and other interesting things. They may sound a little lame, but they show that the game doesn't take itself too seriously, something that I think makes the relationship between the game world and the player stronger and more palpable. In some respects, the game designers are communicating with the player in usually a fun and humorous way. It adds a human element to a mechanized computer system such as the Nintendo Entertainment System
Another fun feature that differentiates Kirby's Adventure from the hundreds of other NES platformers out there, it the powers system. Kirby gobbles up his enemies and, by pressing down, takes their powers. The power system partially makes up for the game so easy. Now the player has a choice about how they are going to go about destroying enemies. Also, some aspects of puzzle games are added and provide additional challenges. For example, there may be an extra life or health behind a series of boxes and only the laser power or bomb power can destroy the boxes. Kirby must find the correct enemy and keep the power, by not receiving damage, and backtrack through the level.
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Jan 18th, 2007 at 20:00:08 - Gradius (NES) |
On my second hour of playing, I am starting to get a real grip on the mechanics of the game. I could almost consistently pass the volcano and almost could beat the boss. I adjusted my formula of power-ups a bit, one [?], missile, double, laser, and a speed or two if I could afford it. After another try or two I beat him and its off to the second level.
The second level begins almost the same as in the first, empty space followed by the first line of crafts. However this time one of the craft shoots at your ship as it is destroyed. This is the games way of introducing a new enemy, or in this case, a variation of an enemy to the player in a controlled environment. An situation where the enemy is easily defeated. Soon afterwards this momentary lull in action turns into an intensely difficult level, introducing additional environment scaffolding to avoid while also avoiding bullets.
The music for Gradius is also another aspect that makes the game so enjoyable. Instead of the customary beep boop music so often found on the NES the music is quite complex for the NES. There are many layers to it and it never really gets old. It must have taken a lot of work to get the music this good. I did however realize a little glitch, it seems that in the first 3-5 seconds as the background music is going there are no sound effects. This is probably one of the limitation of the NES. The sound effects are also well done and do not really distract from the game play at all. The balance between the two is also very well tuned. Neither the music nor the varies lasers and explosions outweigh the others creating a very tight sounding game.
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Jan 18th, 2007 at 19:41:12 - Gradius (NES) |
I have played a lot of side scrolling shooters, but had never played Gradius before so I was excited to finally play it. I started off by simply shooting any ships that were in my path. The ship controlled a little slow and I was worried about how this might detract from game play, however I soon realized that this could be fixed by obtaining power-ups from the enemies which could be immediately spent on speed, or could be collected to gain more powerful weapons Missile, Double, Laser, Option, and [?]. However, I couldn't really get very high up the power-ups list because I really couldn't find many power-ups. After a few runs through, I realized that power-ups are not simply dropped by any enemies, and are the dropped randomly. The player is rewarded for destroying chains of enemies and harder enemies, marked with red paint instead of blue.
This aspect of the game lends itself well to replayablity. Not only does the player want to beat the level, but they probably also want to beat it with missiles and lasers. That way, beating the boss at the end of the level is much easier, and in respects, more enjoyable because it is not much fun to shoot at something with a dinky blaster for half an hour.
While trying to beat the first level boss I was constantly adjusting which power-ups I bought with my tokens, and which amount of speed and firepower was enough to beat the boss. Missing even a single red enemy or a group of enemies could mean that I would not be able to get the [?] which is in fact a shield. The shield is a necessity for beating the first level because of the two invincible volcanoes that come before the boss. Each of the volcanoes projectiles is almost guaranteed to hit your ship and without the shield you die and start a the middle of the level again.
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TranceJunkie has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 15 days |
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