Four Games for the Road

It's been a blast, but I'll be taking a break from 1UP, at least for the time being.  I can't say when I'll be back, but I can give you a parting gift... four brief reviews of games that might have slipped under your radar.

Solaris
Atari 2600

The NES was one of the best things about the 1980s, but many middle-class kids (including myself) had to get by with the Atari 2600 until they could scrape together the money for Nintendo's hit console. It was just our luck that the 2600 experienced a late 1980s renaissance, with both Atari and third parties releasing some of the best games for the system. It didn't get any better than Solaris, a thrilling yet surprisingly deep shooter with special effects even the NES couldn't beat!

Rollerball
NES

Pinball was probably not high on your list of reasons to buy an NES, but there were two excellent simulations in case you needed to scratch that silver ball itch. While Pin-Bot made a strong first impression with its stunning graphics and digitized speech, Rollerball offered a lengthy playfield based on New York skyscrapers and challenged players to climb to the top. Authentic ball physics and an energetic soundtrack kept pinball fanatics and ordinary gamers fighting for hours to earn the "Sky High" bonus!

Q*Bert 3
Super NES

Q*Bert's offbeat gameplay and personable characters made a strong impression in 1983, but the game vanished from the public eye after the industry crash later in the year. Fame has eluded the orange puffball ever since... which is a shame, because Q*Bert 3 is the most wonderfully weird of his adventures. The gameplay is the same as it's always been, with Q*Bert hopping on blocks to change their color, but the lush psychedelic graphics will blow your mind. Less mesmerizing but still welcome are dozens of brand new levels along with the classic pyramid.  You'll also find elusive fruit prizes which could net you bonus points... or put Q*Bert in peril!

Double Dragon Advance
Game Boy Advance

This game got a lot of grief for being repetitive, but uh... it's Double Dragon. It's like complaining that Grand Theft Auto has too much carjacking. Yes, you'll be beating up dozens of guys who look like the dozens of guys you beat up in the previous stage. However, it's never been done this well. The technique has tripled from the original game, with dozens of attacks for your thug-thumping pleasure, and there's a perfect blend of classic stages and new content. The only problem with the game are those bedeviled Smiths. The Matrix, in my Double Dragon? It's more likely, and annoying, than you'd think.

Slicing and Dicing with the Ultra Sexy Samurai, Rising Zan

We're going to leave the 80s and early 90s behind for this installment of Retronauts and talk about a game that was released just shy of 2000, near the end of the original Playstation's life. ASCII Entertainment made a bold return to the US video game market as Agetec, and planned to take America by surprise with an assortment of high-quality, refreshingly original Playstation titles. Rising Zan: Samurai Gunman was the headliner, a fast-paced, cinematic action title starring a cowboy who takes up the katana after being ambushed by bandits.

I could be totally off-base here (and if so, I'm sure my readers will tell me as much), but Rising Zan strikes me as an ancestor of the third-person beat 'em ups released for the Playstation 2 years later. Like in Capcom's long-running Devil May Cry series, Zan is armed with a gun and a sword, letting him slowly chip away at enemies from a distance or close in for a risky but devastating finishing blow. Instead of an extendable arm, Zan is given "hustle time," which shifts the ultra sexy samurai into overdrive and lets him sweep a room full of foes clean in seconds. This burst of adrenaline doesn't last long and takes forever to charge, but it's nevertheless handy for cutting the game's intimidating bosses down to size.

I'd also wager that Rising Zan was an influence in the bewildering humor that players found so endearing in God Hand. The game's jarring juxtaposition of East and West, along with its unrelenting anachronism, result in situations that wouldn't make sense anywhere, at any time. One scene forces Zan to rescue the town's clock tower from a marching coffin armed with explosives. As he chases after the black box, which squeals "Smash it!" with every step, Zan is swarmed by hostile scarecrows and Japanese good luck charms. Later scenes reunite Zan with his way-too-underdressed-for-the-time-period love interest and challenge him to outwit robots with rechargeable batteries and ninja-powered flamethrower treadmills. If you like your games weird, welcome to paradise!

The only issue with Rising Zan is that it, like many PSOne games, hasn't aged gracefully. The combat that's smooth and flowing in Devil May Cry is frustratingly constipated here, and stage designs are kept simple to accommodate the hardware's limitations. The graphics are dark and grungy too, which fits the dusty western setting but also leaves you wondering what the developers could have done on today's high-octane systems. Unlike many of the games reviewed in Retronauts, time was not on Rising Zan's side, but you still have to appreciate the foundation it laid for 21st century action titles.

Pimping your Plumber with Super Mario Unlimited

Fifteen years after the emulation explosion of the late 1990s, hacks of console games have saturated the internet... and gamers have come to make certain expectations of them. They've usually got a peculiar, even juvenile sense of humor, with the player battling everything from evil clones of Wilford Brimley to disgruntled Food Lion butchers. They've often viciously hard... one hack of Super Mario World lets the player finish a stage, only to snatch that victory away by forcing Mario to march off a cliff if he hasn't hit a block switch first. However, one thing that isn't often said about hacks is that they improve the source material. In most cases, they don't add much to the experience, and often take some of the appeal away with kludgy new graphics and levels designed to torment rather than entertain.

There are exceptions, though, and Super Mario Unlimited is exceptional indeed. A hack of the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES, Super Mario Unlimited shaves five years off its age with graphics that are a pleasant pastiche of series highlights Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. There's also a fresh assortment of stages that hit the right balance between cakewalk and ten mile hike uphill. If they're not hard enough for you, a special Mario coin in each stage will give you the controller-breaking challenge you crave, forcing you to vault over chasms and scour levels on a tight deadline for each elusive prize. The only downside to this hack is the music, split between tunes you've already heard to death in the original game and plodding, off-key compositions in Bowser's dungeons.

Sour notes aside, Super Mario Unlimited is an experience you really shouldn't miss. You can pick up the hack from this link at Retro Collect, then apply it to a copy of Super Mario Bros. using one of the IPS patchers available on the internet. Just be sure you own a legitimate copy of the game before you proceed... Mario may seem cute and cuddly in his latest games, but he'll drop the family-friendly facade and go all Sopranos on you in a heartbeat if he knows you're pirating his stuff!