Super FamiComplete #102: Mario Paint

 

Title: Mario Paint

Release Date: 05/05/1992

Developer: Intelligent Systems; Nintendo R&D 1

Publisher: Nintendo

Finally another first party Nintendo game, and this one showcasing a peripheral for the SNES. This is another one of those SNES titles that is mainly here to serve as a tech demo for the mouse attachment. Honestly, it's not really a game perse, but instead a program that encompasses several different functions; almost like Nintendo's SNES era equivalent of an Adobe Suite. 

Background

Mario Paint was developed by Nintendo R&D1 and was directed by Hirofumi Matsuoka, a Nintendo stalwart who worked on many projects within the Metroid series, and seems to be regularly attached to Gunpei Yokoi's team. He would later go on to direct Wario Land 4 and the first game in the Warioware series, apparently taking great inspiration from this game in the aesthetic and "create your own fun" style of Mario Paint. 

The aforementioned Gunpei Yokoi serves as a producer on this game, which makes a great deal of sense as he was one of Nintendo's chief engineers when it game to introducing new hardware. His gift as an engineer was in making ideas such as "I want a portable gaming device to play Nintendo games on the go" and coming up with something that wasn't just a functional version of that idea, but one with charm and the ability to connect with its audience. Mario Paint is a primordial attempt at a "maker" game; a virtual studio in which children could create: be it art, simple cartoons, or songs. Now while professional programs take intensive onboarding and tutorializing to become proficient at using, the idea behind Mario Paint is that even a child can get into and use its programs within about five minutes. The skill ceiling on such a program is really quite high as well, as it can be something you tool around with and make nonsense for thirty minutes, or you can actually make some neat (if not stunning) music and art with this program. 

Gameplay

The game has several modes to play with, each with different purposes. The first to talk about is the one that is implied by the name of the game: the drawing board. This is a very simples MS Paint style drawing program with 15 colors, 75 patterns, and 120 stamps available to make some neat art with. As well, you can then put this art into a simple animation of up to 9 frames of animation (woooo). Here are some cool pieces of art I found from around the interwebs...

As well you have the music studio program on here as well. This lets you make simple compositions using 12 different instruments and a series of Nintendo sound effects. Pretty neat! Here are some cool compositions made using this program. 

Finally, the actual bit of "game" in this game is the fly swatter game. It is a game you can play in which you try to swat flies using the mouse. As you swat flies, they increase in number and vigor. After you swat 100 flies, then you fight a boss monster named King Watinga. It's a fun diversion between creating art or music!

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Final Verdict

This is a classic SNES program with a long reaching influence on future Nintendo products. I have fond memories of just messing around with this program when I was a kid, and even though this has since been outmoded and outdated, there was definitely a good bit of joy in returning to it even just to mess around for a half hour. You can see its influence on the Mario Maker series, which plays around with the concept of making your own fun but extends that to classic Mario gameplay. Overall, it is the first step in Nintendo using its branding and ingenuity to step outside of the realm of making strictly video games, at least in terms of a game that had wide reaching appeal and sales to boot (this game sold well over two million copies). So, in my opinion, definitely check it out if you never have played it before, or at least go to a reddit of compilations of art made with Mario Paint. 

Super FamiComplete #101: Battle Blaze

 

 

Title: Battle Blaze (NA)

Release Date: 05/01/1992

Developer: Electronics Application 

Publisher: Sammy Studios

The first game of May 1992 is a bit of a let down. While Street Fighter II's port to the SNES would be out the following month in June 1992, the arcade game had been out for a year and some change by this point; its popularity most definitely led to a glut of cheap knock off fighters hoping to cash in of the craze. Battle Blaze is certainly one of those, and it is fundamentally not a good fighter.

Background

Battle Blaze was developed by Aicom, a developer that had a pedigree for some hidden gems on the NES, like the Mafat Conspiracy (the sequel to the Golgo 13 game), as well as Astynax, and who would go on to make some quality titles for SNK such as Pulstar. The publisher in this case is Sammy, who are well known developer/publishers of panchinko machines. 

Not too much else is known about the development of this game, especially when it comes to the decision to make this a medieval fighter rather than a traditional martial arts fighter. I guess for novelty? To its credit, this is before fighters such as Time Killers and Samurai Shodown. It is weird that this isn't based off of any arcade property: it is a fighting game made only for the SNES. 

The only other weird note about its development was that it wouldn't be released in the United States for another two years. Details are vague about the reasons why, but it is cited that it was due to issues with Nintendo's legendarily stringent approval process. 

Story

This game takes place on the land of Virg, and each year the king of this land holds a Tournament of Champions where he invites the best fighters from across the land to do battle. A demon, though, decides to send phantoms to possess all the participants to help overthrow the kingdom. You play as the son of the king's champion, Kerrell; your father was killed by the phantom, and it is now up to you to defeat the possessed champions and foil the demon's plans. 

The possession angle adds a nice wrinkle, and helps explain why you are fighting the other participants in the tournament, but overall, it's really only as interesting as that conceit. 

Fighters

• Kerrell, the protagonist whom you play in the Hero (basically story mode) mode of the game, looks and fights a lot like Conan the Barbarian. 
• Shnouzer is the werewolf like cat man who was probably the toughest fight in the game. 
• Adrick looks like a dark knight with a big evil sword who can shoot energy beams out of his sword. 
• Lord Gustoff who looks like a really fat Baraka (basically a big Orc with a chompy mouth) who fights with a flail and has horse like legs? He is the weirdest design.
• Tesya who is the attractive young woman dressed like slave Leia. 
• Lang who is only playable in battle mode and looks just like Kerrell.
• Autarch is the main demon whom you fight as the final boss and is just a big red devil looking guy. 

Gameplay

You have a choice of any of the four other champions to fight in any order. Like any fighting game you fight until one fighter's lifebar is diminished, bringing an end to the round. If you win two out of three rounds overall, then you win the match. Once you beat all four champions, you fight the demon last boss and that's the game. All told you can finish the game in about twenty minutes.

As a fighter, the game is extremely basic and makes some really simple but profound mistakes. For one, this feels like the controls are made for the NES. You only have the movement commands as well as a jump and an attack button. It is certainly a weird feeling to press jump as a button in a fighting game, and it gives the game a very awkward feel to play; almost as if you are playing a vs mod in a beat-em-up like Golden Axe. 

You only have four special moves per character, including a grab and a dash, which means you really only have two special moves, as dash and a grab are usually considered standard moves in a fighter. This makes this game a very simplistic and rudimentary fighter, and one that is more about just being as aggressive and as cheap as possible to just overwhelm your enemy. There is not much skill involved at all, and it is relatively easy. I beat the game by continually grab-locking the enemies, and that strategy took me through the final boss.  

Music

The music is one of the better parts of the game, but still nothing too amazing. Check it out.

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Final Verdict

This was a short game to play through, which means it is relatively inoffensive. Overall, though, this is a very skippable game that is immemorable in most every way. 

Super FamiComplete #100: Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye

 Title: Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye (NA) Super Shanghai: Dragon's Eye (JP)

Release Date: 04/28/1992

Developer: Genki

Publisher: Activision (US) Hot- B (JP)

Well here we are; 100 entries into this blog. To mark this occasion, we are covering that Mahjong spin off game that everyone had on their old PC computers on default. Yeehaw. 

Background

Mahjong is the competitive tile game that I have tried to learn to better accomplish my personal goal of getting a platinum medal in all the Yakuza games. Shanghai, though, I am much more familiar with, as it was installed on my Mom's old work computer in her home office. Whenever I was using her computer, as a kid, to type up school papers and the like, I would sometimes pull up Shanghai, also known as Mahjong Solitaire, when I was bored. 

Mahjong solitaire is pretty simple to pick up, and takes very little strategy. The game constructs an almost ziggurat of Mahjong tiles, utilizing all 144 tiles. These arrangements may take different forms depending on the level of difficulty you are going for in a round of the game, which makes sense as in a Solitaire style game you are really playing a puzzle that you set for yourself. You are then looking to match tiles that share the same symbols, the only catch being that the tiles can't be under any other tiles, or blocked by a tile on the left/right. When you match a set, those tiles are removed from play, and the ziggurat slowly shrinks. That is the entire game in a nutshell. 

Weirdly, this was published by Activision in the US. Warcraft, Call of Duty...Mahjong. Humble beginnings I guess. Development wise, the game was developed by Genki, which is really not known for much at all, though was fairly active up until a couple of years ago. 

Gameplay

The game plays like a Mahjong Solitaire game. Very similar to as you would play on a computer, but made a bit more awkward with a traditional controller than a mouse and keyboard. This version has only a few music tracks, some animations for when you match tiles, and some other presentation flourishes (looking at you intro Chinese dragon), but that is really it. 

The game thankfully lets you know when there are no more possible moves, and is very generous for helping you out by highlighting pairs if you want to move the game forward a phase. Honestly, though, it is a pretty barebones game, similar to the Shogi games we have covered thus far. 

Music

The game starts with chopsticks...wow.

Final Verdict

I'm sure there is a better version of this game hiding on your PC somewhere, and if not I am sure it is available on Steam. This is a game that is best enjoyed elsewhere or in better formats. Also, aside from being our 100th entry in this blog, it is also the end of April 1992. What will we encounter in May?!?

Super FamiComplete #99: Space Megaforce

 

 

Title: Super Aleste (JP), Space Megaforce (NA)

Release Date: 04/28/1992

Developer: Compile

Publisher: Toho Co., LTD. 

Once again that moment where you look at your blog, and suddenly it has been a month and a half since your last update. Luckily, the game I am returning to is really quite good, and comes from a company with a really good pedigree for schmups. Dare I say, this is the best vertical shooter that we have encountered thus yet in this journey through the SNES catalogue. 

Background

Compile was the well known and loved developer known originally for creating the Japanese rival to Tetris, Puyo-Puyo. If I am skirting over Puyo-Puyo it is because we will be talking about it a metric ton later in the blog. Not content with creating that incredibly popular game, Compile is also known as one of the big grand-daddies of the schmup genre, having creating popular titles such as Zanac, Blazing Lazers, and Spriggan. Probably the most well known series of their creation, though, is their Aleste series. 

This game is actually the fourth game in the Aleste series. The first game, Aleste was released for the MSX2/Master System, with the next two games,  Aleste II and Musha Aleste being released for the MSX2 and Genesis respectively. Super Aleste, though, was only developed for the SNES, and when released in the US they changed their name to the much more plain Space Megaforce. 

There is a difference in the story between the two regions in which this game was released. In North America, the story takes place in 2049, when an alien sphere enters Earth's atmosphere. The sphere begins unleashing a fleet which attacks major cities around the globe, and the Earth is helpless in mounting a counterattack with its current weaponry. Thus, the world's governments make an advanced fighter known as the "Super Aleste" with which to attack the sphere. In the North American version, you play as a nameless pilot. 

Now in the Japanese version, you play as an anime styled pilot named Raz and his co-pilot, the alien woman named Thi. Thi has some connection to the sphere, which plays out in cutscenes and the ending. 

Gameplay

The game is a very mellow paced vertical schmup; now when I say mellow, I mean really mellow. Stages take a long while, and the game very slowly ramps up its difficulty. It feels like your ship moves quite slowly as well, at least in the pace it scrolls northward. The actual pace of play, though, eventually ramps up to be quite intense. 

The game really seems to push the amount of bullets and sprites on screen to the edge of the Super Nintendo's capabilities, and I think this is done through really clever pattern and enemy placement design. It often seems that as soon as one enemy is dealt with, another takes its place; as soon as a pattern of bullets passes, there is already another one on its way. The game, to help this frenetic moment to moment play, also mixes in a fair amount of navigation puzzles on top of just bullets and enemies. Much of the game is about navigating the stage while dealing with a few enemies and their bullets, rather than dodging intricate bullet hell patterns. In fact, I would say that for a schmup, this game really isn't a bullet hell. In its patterns and level designs, this game pulls more from Contra, or to compare to another schmup, something like the bosses from Gradius V. 

As far as mechanics, the game features an innovative take on power ups, and ties them directly into your health. Throughout the game, you are continually offered a cycling set of weapons: there is a spread shot, a heavy machine gun, electric currents, spheres which circle around you, homing missiles, and shots that explode upon impact, to name a few. Each of the weapons has six levels of strength, with the final level usually being incredibly powerful and melting through what is on screen. To gain these levels, you either need to get multiple of the same weapon power-up, or collect "eggs" which will slowly boost up your power (three eggs gains a level). If you get hit, though, you lose 2-3 levels of power-up. Similar to rings in Sonic, as long as you have some level of weaponry, you can't die, which actually makes this a pretty forgiving shooter. As well, extra lives are quite common and easy to collect, which extends your longevity in the game. When you die, you restart right where you died unless you die three times in a row; in that case you start the most recent section of the level over. 

The game has 12 levels, making it quite long for a schmup. In a weird convention, you can actually choose to play a "short game" which is only six levels, but you don't get the final level. The levels are quite innovative in their design. The first level is crazy long, and it is you repelling the alien invasion from Earth. The second level is an assault on a space station which starts with the space station in the distance launching artillery at you, and then moves into your assault on the station's exterior defenses, ending with a climactic battle against the station's core, with your final attack sending the station careening into space (incredibly satisfying). There's an underground mine/lava flow, some weird biological environs, as well as fighting a ghost fleet (that level is almost a bullet hell). There are also three weird casino style "bonus stages" that are easy and are basically there to refresh your lives/weapons. All in all, each level feels incredibly fresh and fun, and for a longer schmup, it rarely feels boring. 

Music

The music is pretty mellow and chill for a schmup! Check it out. 

Final Thoughts

This is a really good schmup! I really enjoy how accessible it is and the depth of its design. This is just really well made and enjoyable.