An experiential and analytical look at the medium of video games in a particular order. Currently there is "Capcom A to Z," a look at the games of Capcom in alphabetical order, and "Super FamiComplete" a look at all of the games of the SNES/Super Famicom in chronological order.
Here we have our sixth golf game for the SNES/Super Famicom, and our first golf sequel, or at least another entrant in the True Golf Classics series. This is the series that focuses on a "classic" course that is from the PGA tournament series. First we had Waialae Country Club in Hawaii being showcased, and here we have Pebble Beach Golf Links in California on display.
Background
T&E Soft, if you recall or for the uninitiated, was the C Tier developer during the 90's who churned out sports games (this series being one of their heavy hitters) as well as the RPG Hydlide series, of which we will have to eventually cover the execrable Super Hydlide. One thing of note is that they did manage to develop for most of the major consoles and portable consoles from this period, which I always find need. It seems like this is one of those workhorse developers who focused more on quantity over quality in their products. It certainly will not be the last we see of them on this blog.
As far as the country club in which this game is set, the Pebble Beach Golf Links is a course in Pebble Beach, California (on the Monterey Peninsula just south of San Francisco by a couple hours). It is considered an incredibly scenic golf course, several times winning the #1 golf course in the United States by such publications that care about such things. There are three other courses in the Pebble Beach area, of which this is the most prominent (though all four are owned by the same "Golf Links" company). This course has been the key course in many a PGA, Majors, and U.S. Open tournaments, and is also regularly featured in many other video games too.
One neat fact is that in the 1990s, a group of Japanese investors purchased and owned the club, but had to sell due to it coming to light that one of the investors had heavy ties to the Yakuza.
I can dream...
It really is a beautiful stretch of land, as much of the Pacific Coast is worthy of a scenic drive. I really like the fact that the course is right up against the water, but in a series of cliffs versus beaches. Here are some of the highlights.
Gameplay
It's another golf game to be certain. It plays incredibly similarly to Waialae with some marginal chances to the UI and gameplay. Unlike the other golf simulators of the time, this one is a bit more demanding in the things that you have to consider before you swing. There is shot placement, power, backswing, club, etc; these are things which nowadays are pretty part and parcel of the golf genre but much rarer back in the 1990s.
Sports games are, again, really hard to come back to after enjoying modern sports titles which do a pretty bang-up job of replicating the sport. This game is just too slow, the environments can't be replicated with much fidelity, and your eyes get tired after a while looking at the faux-3D and the chunky character model.
Music
Remember the best kept secret in video games is that old golf music is usually pretty good. This game is no exception. Give it a listen...
Final Verdict
Yeah go ahead and skip this one. My "I got it" button was pressed pretty quickly with this game. It's a SNES golf game. Not a bad one, but again these have been pretty much relegated to their place in history by modern sports titles.
Similar to our entry on the Shogi game, this is an episode dedicated to a video game version of a board game that is wildly popular in Japan, Othello. I have limited experience with this game, as well, but like Puyo Puyo, it is a game that is pretty easy to pick up. The catch is, also like Puyo Puyo, the skill ceiling in this game is pretty high. This is a game, similar to chess or Shogi, where there are grandmasters and world class competitions.
It should also be noted that this is a Japanese only title.
Background
The game Othello is named after the Shakespeare play of the same name. The play focuses on the a general who protects the city of Venice, Othello, who is convinced by a subordinate, Iago, that his new wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him. The jealousy that festers in Othello ends up being his undoing, as he murders his wife. It turns out that Iago was jealous of Othello's advancement, and propagated this on purpose to ruin him, and poor Desdemona was innocent. Othello kills himself in his grief. Race is an important issue in the play, as Othello is a Moor (historically black), while Iago is white, and his prejudiced views against Othello hinge, in a large part, on race. This is a long winded way of saying that the game, which utilizes white and black pieces in a "war" against each other, has been made a little problematic by 2021 standards, so the name is now known by the much more innocuous name of Reversi.
Othello is played on an 8X8 board, with 64 tiles available to capture. The two players start in the center of the board, one player using black tiles (who goes first), and the other using white tiles. The goal of the game is to "flip" the other player's tiles to your color by placing a tile of your color next to theirs. You can only place tiles in rows or columns that have another tile of your color in them AND would sandwich your opponents tiles between them. When playing this game with my students (as I host a board game club), they always call this the "Oreo" game, as they feel it is like trying to make the largest stuf' Oreo. The complexity comes in the sheer number of available moves, and how you react to your opponent's actions. A player wins a match when all spaces are filled and their number of pieces is counted against their opponent.
This game itself was developed by DICE (which stands for Dream Image of Computer Entertainment), and this was their inaugural game. After this, they were primarily a low key casino/gambling game developer or handling ports of titles like Strider or Sega racing titles.
The publisher, Tsukada Original, is much more interesting, as they were the true "creators" of Othello as we know it, giving it its patented black, white, and green color scheme. They were primarily responsible for making Othello video games a thing throughout the 80s and 90s.
Presentation
When it comes to games like this, the quality of the gameplay is pretty much tied to the game itself, and falls down to how well the game is translated and presented in the medium of video games. I will say, much like the previous game, the presentation in this case is pretty good. It has an "Alice in Wonderland" and general Fairy Tale theming, and like Puyo Puyo games, you are playing against different characters in and around that world.
The first match (and the one I couldn't beat) is against the White Rabbit, and later ones are against characters like a fairy or an intensely creepy Pinocchio, and eventually jolly ole' Bill Shakespeare himself. The sprite art is really detailed and portrait-esque, which is a rarity for this early in the SNES's lifetime and really quite novel. The music, as well, is a constant presence and quite enjoyable (much preferable than to the gameplay silence of Chessmaster or the Shogi game we played before).
Some parts of this game, too, are relatively trippy. When you start a new game, you get this kaleidoscopic image of colors and patterns swirling out of a magician's hat and this atonal cacophony of noises is playing. I thought the game was glitching until the White Rabbit jumped out of the had and the colorful swirl turned into a verdant grotto (the setting for your first Othello match).
The game does do, what I am assuming due to my inability to read Japanese script, is a good job of tutorializing the board game. Every so often the action would stop and the rabbit would detail some rules, then give me an option to verify that I understood what just happened in the game.
Music
The music, as stated previously, is pretty darn good!
Final Verdict
Much like Aerobiz, this game was surprisingly fun! Maybe it is just because I like classic games or due to the fact that the presentation is pretty inviting and whimsical. Who wouldn't want to play against William Shakespeare?
So when I saw the cover for this game (the North American one as the Japanese one is pretty darn rad), and saw the business man looking wistfully at the planes flying outside his office, I thought this was going to be a slog. In actuality, this is a really well presented and entertaining management sim with enjoyable music and well explained interface.
Background
Koei and later Koei Tecmo is a company that has a wide variety of strategy and management sim games in their portfolio. They have their military/government sims in the Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, and their exploration and trade sims in Uncharted Waters. Aerobiz hews more closer to the latter, but focuses on managing a business/corporation into, hopefully, being the leading company in a competitive market.
In this game, the market in question is the air travel market. You run a corporation modeled off of corporations like United, American Airlines, Japan Air, etc, and you are fighting for market share while trying to expand your brand to airports and cities across the globe.
Presentation
The presentation of this game is very charming; smartly, instead of trying to make this seem like a SNES game trying to emulate a computer game, they leaned into a SNES friendly presentation. This feels like an SNES game rather than an imitation or port. Mode 7 is used to great affect, showing planes taking off from airports and landing across the globe. The world map looks like a map made in Final Fantasy IV that just happens to look like the planet Earth. The menus and characters of this game, who are mainly members of your board of directors, seem to be inspired by Pilotwings, with charming little portraits that will emote depending on your actions and the performance of your company.
The menus, as well, are pictures and icons instead of words, and after some exploration and tooling around with the menus to see what icon stood for what (no legend is provided for you), it was all pretty self explanatory. While the menus used muted blues and a very "corporate" color scheme, the animations and pictures in the game are very colorful and inviting. Animations are used throughout to depict events in the game, which was a smart choice given the fact that it would have been cheaper just to use text to tell you the events that are transpiring. For example, events like planes being delivered will show a plane being taxied into your hangars, or a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new branch office being opened in a new city. It makes what could be a very dry business sim much more exciting. The game does a great job making the esoteric exciting!
Gameplay
When you start a new game in Aerobiz you have some upfront choices: the difficulty of the game, the number of players that will be controlled by a human (there are always three competing players in the game), and what city you want to base your airlines in. As for that last choice, this is a very important one; if you make your home office in a bustling metropolis like Los Angeles or Tokyo, you will have an easier time as the population and economic activity in that city will mean you will start with more planes available, more people needing to travel, and a boosted amount of profit. If you start in a more economically troubled city, such as New Delhi or a remote city like Honolulu, you will have a much harder time getting your airlines off the ground. For my game, I started in Tokyo.
You also have to choose the "time period" in which you start the game. Yes, oddly enough, this game is tied to the historical context of the aviation industry. The two times periods you can choose from are 1963-1989, or 1989-2013, with the game making up events since many of those dates hadn't transpired at that point. As a history teacher by trade, I decided to go with the historical route and choose the first option. This will have dramatic implications on your game depending on where you started and where you are looking to expand. If you start and American company, you will have a tough time negotiating with the Soviet Union; if you start in Africa, the political instability of the region during the 1970s and 1980s will make labor shortages and decreased travel in that region a real problem.
The last thing you are told before you start the game proper is your win conditions: you have several goals you can shoot for over the course of the game. You can dominate the globe by opening up routes to every major city (of which there are 22) or out-profit the competition by reaching a set number of daily passengers. If your airline doesn't maintain profit for four consecutive quarters and ends the year in the red, you lose. If you also go the entire time frame of the game without hitting your win conditions, that is also counted as a loss. There is also the historical goal which basically will determine whether or not you win or lose. In the first time period, this is creating a plane or route that makes single plan Trans-Pacific travel possible, as most planes need to stop and land in Honolulu in order to refuel.
When the game begins, you will see at least two of your competitors go first, which is actually useful as it shows you what the early game is all about: opening routes. You will start with some planes already in your name, and your first turn should be spend heavy, as everything in this game takes time to get going. You will open up some routes to the few cities around you: you will set the number of planes that go on this route, how many flights a week, and the fare for the route. You will also start to be able to send your board members to different cities to open up negotiations; these negotiations are about purchasing "slots" for your planes (think terminal spaces). Most of these negotiations take about 6-9 months to complete.
As well, you have other choices which will impact the long term development: do you spend money on advertising and shoot promos highlighting your routes (it is really funny when these fail as it will show the lamest commercial of crying cheerleaders)? Do you open up hotels in cities in order to make some side income? Do you look into purchasing charter companies, which, if you perform a stock buyout, will come automatically with planes and routes set? Do you order more planes hoping to have more cities and routes opened up soon (which on its own has a whole bunch of settings)? Where do you allocate your budget: maintenance, marketing, or service? All of these options will help boost your economy, either directly or supplementally.
After every turn (which takes place over a financial quarter), you are ranked and graded as compared to your competition, and at the end of every financial year, you are given a detailed breakdown on how you are comparing to your rivals. As well, over the year, you will be given news updates for goings-ons around the world, such as the Olympics being announced to be in a certain city, or political friction/events going on in countries. Knowledge of basic modern history will help you immensely in this game, as you can start to predict when key events are going to take place, and plan your routes to maximize on this plan. For example, the game begins with announcing that the Olympics will take place in Vancouver, and if you can connect some routes to Vancouver and build a hotel there, then you will get a massive boom in income when the Olympics finally hit there.
If you ever get lost in the sheer amount of different plates you must keep spinning, you can always consult with your board, which is a great tool where the game will tell you where your current corporate strategy is wanting. For example, in my game, I learned that I was allowing too many slots to go to competitors at airports, and I wasn't spending enough on service. I was basically turning my airline into Spirit rather than Japan Air.
Music
The music in this game is really good! It keeps you invested and tapping your toes while reading through your reports and making decisions.
Final Verdict
I am really surprised with how much I loved this game. I enjoyed the time I spent with it (which was one complete game which I won), and would be happy to revisit this someday down the road. I really want to try a playthrough with a more remote location as a starting point, and experiment with some different strategies.
Here we have another CRPG being translated to the SNES, and from a venerable series as well. I will be upfront with saying that my experience with Ultima as a series is incredibly limited. I have played maybe one hour of Ultima Online and perhaps 30 minutes of a 3D Ultima game that I played on a computer while my being babysat as a kid. CRPGs, in general, are a genre that I am relatively new to, but starting to explore more as I am getting older. As I am new to the genre and still learning some of the basics like how to navigate the menus and execute actions, these entries on this blog are ones that become very tiresome to sit through. NES and SNES translations of CRPGs usually are not known for their ease of use (see Drakkhen as that is a game that should have been on the PC over a SNES game), and they often implement the CRPG UIs and controls in an inelegant manner.
This all being the case, I will be honest that I only played a little bit of this game. I found it very frustrating and was not having fun, and seeing as how this game takes around 20 hours to complete, I didn't find it worth seeing it through to the end.
Background
Ultima is a series that broke ground in the RPG genre in general, translating the trends for RPGs as a tabletop game to a new genre for video games. As such, Ultima is one of the primary pillars of the CRPG genre. It was developed by Origin Studios, and was the brainchild of Richard "Lord British" Garriott. Lord British is also a self-insert character in the games as well, as the benevolent god-wizard-king who rules over the world of the game.
The series takes place in the world of Britannia, and the character, since Ultima IV, has always been known as the Avatar. In VI, the Avatar is captured by this race of gargoyles, and starts the game on an altar about to be sacrificed to their sinister gods. They are rescued by their companions, and they are tasked by Lord British with repelling an invasion of these gargoyles. Over the course of the game, you learn that the gargoyles view you as harmful and instigating party, and the goal of the game, in an interesting twist, becomes making peace with the gargoyles.
Gameplay
The player views the world from a birdseye view. The player's avatar and companions all navigate the map on a grid. As a visual aesthetic, I find this really unpleasant. It is hard to distinguish doors, characters, enemies, or items from one another. Seeing NPCs move in this view is also strange too, as the animation is very simple and lacking frames, which gives everything this SimAnt style movement. Very unpleasant overall.
For the player, though, everything moves at a crawl. Everything is chosen off a menu of verbs: attacking, talking, using, interacting. I just wish something was simplified; as a boy spoiled on a mechanically simple by comparison RPG series, Final Fantasy, I was harshly missing moving as one character (instead of a horde of a party) and pressing an "interact" button instead of having to pick it off a menu.
I also had that feeling while playing of being unsure of what I was doing, as a player, had any affect in battle or gaming scenarios. Like, the game opens with a battle against the gargoyles in Lord Britain's throne room. By the time I figured out who I was controlling and having them attack who I thought was a gargoyle (again its hard to tell), the battle had already been won by my companions. Just very frustrating overall.
Music
Ads
Final Result
I know I really didn't give this game a fair shake, but I am very greedy with my video gaming time, and this game really just wasn't enjoyable for me. Honestly, I would try to play this again, but on my PC rather than as an SNES title.
Alright, at long long last, it is the last game of March 1992, and here we have another manga/anime licensed property. This being the case, this game is a Japanese only release. Let's jump in.
Background
There is a lot to unpack in this title. First let's talk about the developers. This game was developed by Game Freak, which you may recognize as the company that made Pokemon. They have a long history as being a second party developer for Nintendo, and while after this they were primarily the "Pokemon" company, before 1996 they developed some ancillary Nintendo titles (like and a few licensed games like Yoshi's Egg and the next title we will cover by them Mario & Wario), and some licensed games. It must be remembered that we actually already covered a Game Freak game, in the amazingly memorable Smart Ball, the platformer where you play as a ball of goo that has a lot of issues damaging enemies.
The source material on which this game is tied to is also a strange one. Magical Taluluto was a manga written by Tatsuya Egawa that was fairly popular in the Shonen Jump weekly manga scene around the late 80s and early 90s; popular enough that it warranted an 80 episode anime and three feature films from between 1990 and 1992. The story of the manga is pretty cutesy, falling into the "magical boy" trope of anime.
It follows a school boy who lives in Tokyo, named Honmaru Edojo, who is considered the "outcast" of his elementary class due to being a naughty kid. In a Great Gazoo style twist, a child-like gnome warlock named Magical Taruuruto-kun decides to help him with the challenges of childhood, such as bullying, meeting girls, etc. It also goes into the realm of the fantastic, as there are other witches, warlocks, etc, who junk things up. It all seems very cutesy and innocent...well except for this weird clip.
Now to junk things up even further, Game Freak actually released two different Magical Taruruuto-kun titles, one for the Mega Drive and one for the Super Famicom, and like the Batman Animated Series games, both are completely different in how they play. I did not get a chance to play the Mega Drive title, but it definitely seems, from youtube videos, to be the stronger of the two. Perhaps someday if I ever to Turbografx or Sega as well as Super Famicom I will check it out. It definitely seems to adhere closer to the source material.
Gameplay
This game is a traditional platformer that seems to pull from a lot of the games at this time. It has a Super Mario 3 overworld map, a Mystical Ninja style shop system and minigames that are built into the map, and Alex Kidd style platforming/jumping. You play as Magical Taruruuto and you play through a series of five worlds, each with 6-8 levels. At the end of each world, there is a final level with a boss fight against Magical's rival who looks like a little devil guy (don't @ me because I don't know this character's name).
Each level is very similar: the levels are cutesy little pieces of wilderness, towns, castles, and beaches. Like the anime, the theming seems to be a mix of the regular/mundane and the magical. Most of the enemies in these levels are animals and beasts (birds, mice, bees), and only rarely is it something mystical like a ghost or a monster plant. Throughout each level are a bunch of takoyaki, Magical's favorite treat, and he can lick these up to gain his form of currency. Each level ends with a form of takoyaki that is non-standard, such as a giant takoyaki or a wheel of moving takoyaki's, and when Magical gobbles these up the level is considered beaten. He then is allowed to spend these bits of currency at the store to buy spells or extra lives.
Now I mentioned licking because that is also Magical's primary and only attack. He let's loose his big "Wolfie" style tongue and slobbers enemies to death. It doesn't have crazy range to it, which makes combat rather risk/reward based. It should also be mentioned, at this point, that Magical dies in one hit, so you really want to be careful with how you approach enemies.
In fact, my primary complaint with this game is that it is actually pretty difficult. It forces you to move very slowly through each level. Magical's sprite is quite large, and his enemies are usually quite small and move at a fairly decent clip. This means that you have to assess each platforming challenge, and really wait to notice how your enemies are moving before trying to circumnavigate them or take them out with a good tongue lashing. You can't jump on enemies either, and one touch will cost you a life and send you back to the beginning of the level. It makes playing this game just a tad bit annoying.
In between levels, you are moving around your world map, and you will encounter various other characters from the anime, many of whom are blocking your path until you complete their mini-game. These mini-games are all traditional and simple card games. One is a form of speed solitaire where you are trying to move through your stack of cards before your opponent, one is a form of high/low, and another seems to be a game of war. This is a novel concept, but when I noticed that the same road blocks/games were appearing on every map, this got a little old.
The boss battles aren't too tough. The trickiest was probably the second would boss, where the devil guy clones himself and his clones attack you from various angles quickly. This wouldn't have been too bad if everything didn't kill you in one hit.
Music
The music is actually pretty catchy! It has a kind of island flair to it utilizing a lot of marimba and such.
Final Verdict
Overall it is a cute platformer, but it is really too tough to get into, and the card games slow down the pacing, especially in the later worlds where the computer seems to always get the best cards. Like its source material, I think this game is more of a curio that will be forgotten by history except by true hobbyists.
We have our first professional wresting game, and this one from LJN. LJN isn't really known for quality games, so I really don't have high expectations for this entry. On the bright side, this is the last of the four March 1992 US developed games, so we are almost out of the woods.
Background
Back in the 1990s, the WWE was known as the WWF, or World Wrestling Federation. It was still owned by the McMahons, and this was the generation where some of those classic wrestlers from the 1980s, like Randy Macho Man Savage and Hulk Hogan, were starting to really feel their age. This was the weird transitional period in wrestling, where the superstars of the 80's were fading, while we were still a ways off from The Rock" and Stone Cold Steve Austin. This was back when the Big Show was known as The Giant.
The Roster
The roster is a little strange to be sure, but it has some classics in it. The headliners in this title are Hulk Hogan, Randy Macho Man Savage, and Ted DiBiase, who were present in every port of this title. Unique to the SNES version though, they added The Undertaker (back when he was the cowboy style undertaker and not the biker quite yet), Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Sid Justice, The Legion of Doom (comprising of Road Warrior Hawk and Road Warrior Animal), and finally The Natural Disasters (comprise of Typhoon and Earthquake) who "famously" feuded with the Legion of Doom. Now this sounds like a pretty decent roster, but one issue I have with the game is that it pretty much turns these really unique and flashy personalities into a set of homogeneous characters. For example...
Randy Macho Man Savage looked like this at the time...
And in game he looks like this...(he's the one drop kicking his clone, who is actually Jake the Snake)
Hulk Hogan generally wrestled like this...
And in game he looks like this...
Jake Roberts looked like this...
and in game he looks like this...
One of my big issues with this game is that it takes a lot of the flash and fun out of wrestling, and just reduces it to a very simple wrestling simulator, and this is apparent even in the character designs. Not saying that they needed to add oddballs like Doink or The Boss, but at least play with some of the fun of grown beef boys in crazy costumes play fighting around a ring.
Gameplay
There is a weird trend in sports games from this era where developers stopped at just translating the rules of the game into video game format, and then said "okay good enough let's ship." This is certainly one of those titles, where the only gameplay format available to the players is arcade matches, a survival tournament, and tag team matches. There is no story or career mode, no arcade style tournament series, or really any other game mode outside just set a match and play. I am not saying that there has to be a full on narrative to this wrestling game, but there part of professional wrestling is some of that silly pageantry to it. There should at least be SOME sort of storyline, but instead what you get is a very barebones wrestling simulator. It feels like a port of an arcade title or an NES title rather than a true individual game. The most you really get, as far as hinting to its source material, is the announcer introducing each wrestler before a match.
The wrestling itself is pretty lackluster. You basically just punch and kick the enemy, and get into little "tug of war" style grapples where you can, if you win, throw the opponent against the ropes, deliver one of your signature slams, or wallop them for a little bit. You can do goofy shit like jump from the turnbuckle, but there is no exiting the ring and slamming into tables, no chairs being slid into the ring, or accidentally taking out the referee. The most effective and common strategy seems to be just punching your opponent until they fall, and then kicking them when they are on the ground. When they are weak enough, you can then pin them, winning the match.
Music
There is some music! It is...okay!
Ads
There are two mediocre ads, so I added a commercial that has nothing to do with the game, but I found quite funny.
Final Verdict
This is a super mediocre wrestling title. While not a huge fan of the sport in general, I do have an appreciation for the athleticism that goes into this sport, and generally enjoy the silliness, so was a little disappointed that none of that translated into this game. I really wanted to be screaming "OH YEAAHHHHHH" and "BROTHER!" and this game made me very bored instead. Oh well.
Here we have another golf game, and this time from the sports game goliath that is EA (you know, the giant that makes every big yearly sports release?). Let's jump in!
Background
The original computer version of this game, which was considered wildly popular, was developed by Sterling Silver Software, but then published and ported by Electronic Arts. This is the first title under the PGA Tour Golf series, and certainly not the last one that would appear on this blog eventually.
Gameplay
This certainly is a golf game, but honestly one of the most solid that we have covered in this blog thus far. It sets up the style of golf that would be replicated by Mario Golf and other tiles, with the camera behind the golfer, the timing based back and forward swing, and the placement of the club with the ball to be able to put spin on your shot.
Each hole begins with a breakdown by the commentators and your caddy, offering tips on how to approach the hole. The Mode 7 is in full effect as you can see the map of the course spin and rotate.
Like this blog post, much of this game is without bells and whistles. There is no real music (though the sound effects are pretty good), not many game modes (just tournament and single play), and generally just a golf game with several real courses to play through.
Ads
Final Judgment
Its a golf game, but with most sports games, you are better off just playing sports games on the new consoles if you want a good sports time!
