The Legend of Kage – 500 Points
The Legend of Kage is an obscure NES title from Taito released very early in the NES’s lifespan (1987 to be exact). It is a port of the arcade game of the same name. As with just about every other “Legend†of the era, you are given the task of rescuing a Japanese princess named Kiri from a group of mystical villains who have kidnapped her. Quality cinema scene storytelling wouldn’t come along in NES games until a later Tecmo game by the name of Ninja Gaiden, so you’re stuck with a little text at the beginning, and some more at the end. The purpose is simple, but sometimes a simple plot can result in a good or sometimes legendary game (Super Mario Bros.). That line of reasoning doesn’t apply here. The Legend of Kage is simple, monotonous, shallow, and just plain bad. As the game begins, a mystical Ninja swoops down and kidnaps Kiri. That’s where you come in. You fight villains through the forests of Japan, fortress walls, and a castle. Once you rescue the princess, the game repeats itself in a different season. The five or so enemy types are monotonous and lack any real sense of creativity. You are given a sword and endless supply of ninja stars to kill them with, but the controls aren’t so hot, leaving the action confusing and frustrating. Add to that the fact that you will die after one hit. One interesting attack involves the ninja scrolls. When you collect one, Kage will stop to meditate, causing all the enemies that come in your vicinity to instantly drop dead of a curse. Other than that, the action is extremely repetitive and will bore you quickly. The graphics are extremely simplistic when compared to other NES games released in the same time frame such as The Legend of Zelda or Mega Man, and the music is likely to drive you to contemplate suicide after prolonged exposure. The Legend of Kage serves as an interesting footnote that possibly led towards Tecmo’s legendary Ninja Gaiden, but on its own, the game is without merits in the modern world. Steer clear of this one no matter what.
New Adventure Island – 600 Points
Everybody remembers Adventure Island, right? What we have here is a much beloved series that began its life on the NES and soon worked its way over a variety of platforms in coming years. Created by Hudson Soft, the original Adventure Island starred a man named Takahashi Meijin, which was an in-joke because he was named after an executive that worked for Hudson Soft. In North America, we know him as Master Higgins. The release of New Adventure Island is a little awkward because it is actually the fourth game in the series. In the original title, Master Higgins is attempting to rescue his kidnapped mate Tina. Ah, kidnapped girls, stolen banana hordes, missing power stars. Gotta’ have some reason to go out on a quest over bottomless pits of doom and dodge wild animals, right? Seems like a trend by this point doesn’t it? Anyway, in this one, we join Master Higgins and Tina after they have just been married. As they step out of the Church, an evil figure named Baron Bronsky swoops in and kidnaps…can you guess? Tina! If you got that, give yourself a cookie. If you got it wrong, you’re sentenced to a week of playing The Legend of Kage. The Baron also kidnaps six island children along with Tina, which means six worlds (four levels each) for you to traverse to get them back. Gameplay is pretty simple. Walk or run around the island throwing projectiles (axes, boomerangs, spears and the like) at your enemies. If you are running and hit a rock, Master Higgins will fall on his face and you will take damage. Every so often, you will come across a skateboard that Master Higgins can jump on to travel faster and take an extra hit fro enemies, but you are unable to completely stop moving while riding it. It’s an interesting trade off. Flags are spread out around the island to serve as checkpoints if you die, similar to how the goal posts are used in Super Mario World. The surroundings in the Adventure Island series have never been extremely varied seeing the series has a jungle-esque setting, but the game does provide you with enough sights to keep things busy with stages based in the hills, volcanos, deserts, and several other types of standard platform game terrain. While nothing truly stands out in the sound department, the music is pleasant and fitting to the style of the game. Most of the enemies here have been taken straight from the original NES game, and other than the story (which really makes no difference), the games play exactly the same. At the end of each level, you face a different wild animal which serves as the stage boss. The series isn’t really that original, let alone groundbreaking in any way, and you won’t find anything here on a Mario or Sonic level of excellence, but there is still plenty to love. If you’re a fan of platformers, give New Adventure Island a try. It’s a charming little game and will give you a good ride for your $8.
Donkey Kong Country – 800 Points
Though Donkey Kong Country was a world renowned smash, and one of the greatest selling titles of all time at the time during its original release, now the game serves as a point of controversy among many gamers. Though Rare had been long a developer for Nintendo before the game’s existence, DKC was the game to bring their talents into the limelight. The growth of the 16-bit generation had been stunted, and Nintendo was in desperate need. While Sega had been in the game since 1989, Nintendo showed up two years late, and the Saturn and PlayStation threatened to shut down the 16-Bit market in its prime. Nintendo needed a title to show the world that 16-Bit gaming had plenty of life left in it. As it turned out, DKC was just the title to bring that message to the world, and the game is primarily responsible (along with Super Metroid) for ushering in two of the greatest years of solid hits gaming has ever known. Donkey Kong Country introduced a technique that while not unheard of, had never been used so proficiently. For marketing purposes, Rare and Nintendo dubbed the technique Advanced Computer Modeling, but that media buzz word carried about as much weight as Blast Processing. Today, we call the technique pre-rendered graphics. The concept is simple in premise, but delicate in execution. Explained in basic terms, pre-rendered visuals are simply two-dimensional sprite images of fully rendered three-dimensional objects. Render an object, take a picture of it, then put the picture in the game to save processing power. It may sound easy, but it takes a lot of work to actually have the game look good. For its time, this concept was revolutionary, and at first glance, looked a heck of a lot better than any of the early crude 3D being done on the PlayStation or especially Sega Saturn. The story consists of DK going to recapture his banana horde from the dastardly King K. Rool, an ugly crocodile who contests DK’s rule of the island. It is pretty basic, but that’s not what makes the game shine. The game is pretty much your standard mid-90’s Super Mario Clone platformer. Bananas equal coins. DK and Diddy equal Mario & Luigi. DK and Diddy’s abilities are ever so slightly different with DK being the heftier of the two thus making it easier for him to take out heftier enemies with less effort, though Diddy can also take out the big boys. You’ve just got to put more thought into your plan of attack. Diddy is really the more useful of the duo, being able to cartwheel farther, and jump slightly higher than his Gorilla pal in the tacky tie. There is no power meter. Instead, you control DK and Diddy in a tag team fashion, each being able to take only one hit apiece, which gives you two changes. If you loose one, you can find them later on in the level hidden in conveniently placed “DK†barrels. Taking a nod from Super Mario World, the primates can ride an assortment of animal buddies hidden throughout the game including: Enguarde the swordfish, Rambi the rhinoceros, Expresso the ostrich, Winky the frog, and Skawks the parrot. Each animal offers something new to the gameplay experience, and liven things up quite a bit.
The point of contention when regarding Donkey Kong Country in this day and age is how the visuals have aged. Pre-rendered visuals don’t look quite so hot compared to what is available now in real time, and being the first in a trilogy, DKC obviously doesn’t have visuals as advanced as its successors, but the game manages to get away with murder because of its excellent art direction, unbelievable soundtrack, and uncanny style. Rare worked tirelessly to make DKC look and feel like a living, breathing world. While post-Rare Nintendo developed DK adventures would go for a far more generic “jungle†atmosphere and goofier character designs, Rare’s DK was far more stylized and sophisticated both in personality and setting. The characters are simi-modernized, and the environments are breathtaking, and the variety is astounding.
There have been two ports of this game on portable platforms, but this is one of those cases where it is completely irrelevant factor. The Game Boy Advance version was designed with the original non-backlit GBA in mind. That means the colors have been brightened and look entirely washed out. Many graphics were also altered or replaced and look vastly inferior in comparison to the original. Worst of all, the soundtrack was completely trashed in the conversion with tinny sound and missing instruments. Stick with the SNES original here, otherwise half the experience is lost. In the end, Donkey Kong Country is a game hated by Shigeru Miyamoto who once claimed that â€DKC is proof that American gamers will buy anything that has good graphicsâ€. Don’t listen to the man. Yes, his games are far deeper and offer much more rewarding gameplay, but in the end, Donkey Kong Country truly proves that good gameplay backed with amazing graphics can really make a game impressive. The problem with most of those is that they won’t stand the test of time well. The difference here is, DKC had, and still has so much more to offer. Gameplay, graphics, soundtrack, control, and style all come together in an amazing package that serves as a quality example of early Western European game design coming of age. It may not be the Donkey Kong Miyamoto wants us to like, but it’s sure as hell the better one of the two. Put up the bongo drums and get out your classic controller, because Donkey Kong Country is sure to please.
Streets of Rage – 800 Points
Ah, the brawler. It’s such a simple concept. Run to the right and beat the hell out of everything that comes within range of your fists the disposable blunt object you picked up from the last goon you dropped. These things came to arcades in endless numbers, and most of them came home. Some sucked, some didn’t. Streets of Rage is a unique situation. As everyone knows, brawlers were a dime-a-dozen in the 90’s, but Streets of Rage is unique in the fact that it was not an arcade to home port, but rather originated on the Genesis. The Super Nintendo’s original premiere brawler was Capcom’s Final Fight which was released to arcades in 1989, and brought home in 1991 at the launch of the SNES. Right there to greet it was Sega’s in house project, Streets of Rage. That rivalry is soon to be reignited with the inevitable release of Final Fight somewhere on the horizon, and that once again draws both games into a direct comparison. Streets of Rage banks a lot on its style to get by, because it suffers from a problem many fighters had in those days (especially the Batman brawlers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series). The enemies are endless clones of each other, with a few variants in sprites coming at you in endless numbers. Final Fight was guilty of this as well, but got away with it more by having a higher level of detail and more personality injected into the character design. Final Fight’s sprites are much larger thanks to the beefier SNES hardware, but it came at a consequence: the loss of the arcade versions 2-Player. With that option, the game would win right there, but it doesn’t have it, so the debate continues.
Streets of Rage is a blast with a buddy. You could blow a few hours with a friend tossing goons into cars and light posts, while picking up the many objects the game lays in front of you to aid you in the brainless destruction. The game’s combat is simplistic, resorting to a simple one-button “canned combo†control scheme. This does make the game accessible to just about anyone, so you won’t have a difficult time finding someone to play with. One key feature that keeps Streets of Rage going is the soundtrack. Composed by Yuzo Koshiro, the soundtrack to Streets of Rage is so good that you’ll be tapping your feet while you’re cracking your knuckles with a buddy. Too bad the poorly digitalized sound effects are enough to make children cry. Streets of Rage has a nice back street style with bars, hookers, and so forth, though it doesn’t go out of its way to promote them. Back then you didn’t need to. Just having them was enough. The visuals are simplistic to the point of looking barely 16-Bit, and when you compare its visuals to the larger sprites and more detailed animation of the game’s sequel, it looks even worse. Still, the top notch music with two players going at the game is enough to get by. At the end of the day, Final Fight remains the better of the two, despite its limitations. Streets of Rage has not aged well at all, with graphics that are barely passable and simplistic gameplay, but the awesome multiplayer and killer dance soundtrack help to keep the game on its feet. If you’re an old-school Genesis fan, you already downloaded this before you read the review. It is one of the original games that set the tone for the platform. If you’re new to the Rage, and can find a buddy to play with, then Streets of Rage may keep you entertained for a while.
Legendary Musicians:
The last two games in this week’s Virtual Console collection each represent two outstanding musical achievements in the 16-bit generation for the two star platforms. In fact, both of these musicians have actually developed titles for both platforms, but it is these two soundtracks on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis for which they are most duly noted.
First of all, we have Mr. David Wise. Over his many years in the industry, he has composed soundtracks for over seventy games, many of which were obscure licensed games for the NES back when Rare was a no-name developer working in obscurity. It wasn’t until 1994 with the release of Donkey Kong Country that his work would be brought in the limelight for the first time. The soundtrack for DKC is one of the primary reasons that the game was able to set itself apart from everything else on the market, and why it still has legs today. When people first saw the game, the graphics made them say “wowâ€, but it wasn’t until you walked up to a store display hooked up to a Dolby setup that you realized how impressive the game was audibly. With the help of Robin Beanland (Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Live and Reloaded) and Eveline Novakovic (Rare vocalist, lead composer for DKC3, voice of Kameo, Joanna Dark, and Krystal), Mr. Wise went onward to compose one of the most technically astounding video game soundtracks of all time that would later warrant its own standalone CD release the following year, DK Jamz. His follow-up work was the soundtrack to Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, which is quite possibly superior in every way. Since then, he has done work for such classics as Diddy Kong Racing (DS included), Star Fox Adventures, and the impressive new soundtrack for the GBA re-release of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble (Eveline composed the original game with Mr. Wise assisting on a few tracks). He is renown for his ability to make music using a combination of natural sounds, acoustic instruments, and electronic effects that blend together to create a truly unique sound. If you’ve never heard any of his works, you best get to looking for them, because with or without the games in question, his music is just that good and stand as some of the finest examples of what creative expression video game music is capable of, and how it can truly impact how you view a game.
On the other side of the pond, the Sega Genesis was known for many memorable soundtracks, but the machine lacked the audible flexibility of the Super Nintendo. The Genesis’s FM-Synth driven sound core was much more akin to the sound of 1980’s synthpop than sample driven live instrumentation the Super Nintendo could provide. Many composers like Masato Nakamura and Tommy Tallarico created some legendary works on that machine that have stood the test of time, but only one man was able to utilize the sound chip in a way that truly reflected its abilities. That man is Yuzo Koshiro, the man responsible for the killer FM Synth driven soundtrack to the Streets of Rage series, and countless other classics through the years since. Working as a freelancer, Koshiro has scored for over 55 different games, beginning back on the Genesis and following on just about every platform released since. Though the majority of his most famous titles have been for Sega platforms over the years, he also did score a number of famous games released on Nintendo platforms such as the SNES classic Actraiser which was the first game to prove the symphonic abilities of the Super Nintendo, and just recently, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for Nintendo DS. Known for his versatility, Koshiro can tackle everything from haunting sonatas to tracks from recent Dance Dance Revolution games, and even the complete soundtrack to the much beloved swan song of the Dreamcast, Shenmue. Even if you don’t bother to download Streets of Rage in this week’s Virtual Console lot, check out the soundtrack. Sega didn’t credit him by name on the title screen for nothing.
