Oh wait. In this case the boxes ARE different.
But you try telling your Mom to pick out the TMNT fighting game with the Shark on it as opposed to the Triceratops warrior.
Or to pick the one with Leonardo on it as opposed to Donatello.

Well here’s another new Magnistar feature where we look at the phenomena that used to occur with games that appeared on multiple consoles. Nowadays every game that appears on multiple systems with the same box cover and game title is almost always the same, unless maybe it’s a handheld version versus a console title. But back in the 90′s this was often not the case, resulting in some A-grade confusion. There were some pretty classic fanboy arguments from all sides debating which versions were better than the others and it still continues to this day despite 90% of multiplatform releases being completely identical…

It was around the time of the Saturn and Playstation that this kinda thing generally stopped happening, but still other systems such as the Nintendo 64 had ports that were often completely different purely out of hardware limitation.But no, what we’ll be discussing here is game developers creating a different game for each individual system for… well, I’ve never really been sure why they went out of their way to simultaneously create a radically different game for each system and not just re-title each game and give them new art work. I honestly don’t know…

I was certainly surprised when I found out about this version of the game. I remember the other two versions coming out at the same time, but then like a year later came the NES version. Considering how long both the Super Nintendo and Genesis had both been out at this point I was a little stunned they were still bothering with NES ports. Not to mention that this (aside from Wrestling titles) is practically the only fighting game on the entire system. So is it any good?

Well considering that it’s on the NES it fares better than you’d expect. It includes something that most fighting games at the time didn’t bother with. Dashing. Just tap forward twice and you’ll bolt forward to your opponent.

Conversely it also included automatic blocking where you hold back and you block all incoming attacks. These were two things introduced and perfected by Street Fighter 2 and various Neo Geo titles… so to see it in action on the NES is a welcome addition that I did not expect.

As always the production values are exactly what you’d expect from Konami’s 8 bit titles. It sounds and looks as good as every other Turtles game on the platform and that’s a good aesthetic to have. As for the fighting, while it does run along much quicker than you’d expect it’s also not terribly complicated. This is an 8-bit fighting game and it shows. In fact this fighting engine wasn’t that much more involved than what you got as a two player extra in the main Turtle beat em ups at the time.

You go through the game fighting your Ninja Turtle brothers (I have to ask why), Casey Jones, Hothead, and Shredder. The game also comes packaged with the usual story, tournament, vs. 2P, and Vs. CPU modes. But aside from the 2P mode it’s all there to make the game look bigger than it really is, kinda like shaving your pubes to impress the ladies. All this amounts to little more than a slightly above average outing even for the non existent NES fighting game market.

I say don’t even bother.

Lame.

Rating: 5.5/10

Now this is the version of the game that was put out alongside the Super Nintendo version, and is the only one that has a noticeably different box. Now unlike the NES the Genesis had a slew of fighting games released for it and you might be asking how this one holds up against that library. Well pretty poorly in my opinion.

It’s just kind of an average, middle of the road fighting game for the system and it would only really fit the bill if you were looking for something specifically with the TMNT plastered on it, or just something widely different from the MK and Street Fighter clones that infested the Genesis (and really all systems at the time). But even purely as a TMNT game there’s still way better for the system, like the needlessly altered Hyperstone Heist.

While it does have it’s own feel it does play very much like a lot of clunky less polished fighters you’d find on the Genesis or even the Neo Geo. The music is appropriately Genesis and has some pretty good garbage can beats, while the graphics leave virtually no impression other than being kinda ugly. I don’t know if it’s the sprites and backgrounds themselves or the colors they chose but I just really don’t like to look at it.

So you spend the whole game’s quickly put together story zipping from planet to planet and fighting everybody’s clones followed by Krang and then Kurai. It’s all terribly exciting. Plus like the NES title there’s really not much to do. Just a few special moves and a taunt. Which would be fine if the game’s final bosses weren’t equipped with more ways of kicking your ass then you can properly defend.

Both Krang and Kurai will more than likely just toss your ass around the arena for a few rounds relentlessly before you move on and play something more satisfying. And like any shitty fighting game the final bosses can inflict entire thirds or your life bar in single hits where you have to painfully widdle away at theirs. For example Kurai’s throw move will live on in my nightmares right next to Kintaro’s cheap-as-hell teleporting stomp.

And the final blow to this game for me, there’s no Shredder.

However, I did get into the game and I found that the best way to fight anything is to be cheap. It all comes down to finding the character’s “speed attack” move and just spamming the crap out of your enemy. Well except for Kurai where nothing seems to work… Except when I switched to April after 30 minutes of trying with the Turtles only to beat her on the first try with next to no effort. Not sure why that worked really.

But anyway the game ends. And I’m just left with a hollow feeling of dullness. I doubt I’ll ever play this again.

Rating: 6/10

Now the SNES Tournament Fighters is the version that I grew up familiar with and liked the most, but was somehow the most derivative fighting game of the three. But it’s a well made title in fact it’s only crime is that it’s a complete clone of Street Fighter 2 right down to the music speeding up when health gets low. Even some of the backgrounds seem oddly familiar. But for a Turtles fan wanting to get into a mainstream fighting game that all his friends had this was a good starting point, other than just buying the real game of course.

So like any fighting game it has a quickly pasted together story. There’s a fighting tournament and it’s advertised on television, the turtles consider joining but as an extra incentive Shredder and April are kidnapped (surprises). So the Turtles take off in their turtle blimp… and jump out of it into random locales to fight random CPU’s and then a final boss. Riveting. And unsurprisingly Kurai is crazy cheap once again.

One unique thing about the game is the characters. Not so much the selection of which you can play but the ones that hide in the background. While it’s true that the Tournament Fighter games mainly focus on characters from the comic series (with exceptions like Krang and Ratking sprinkled throughout) the SNES version has characters from the cartoon hanging around in the background. Like Bebop, Rocksteady, and Baxter Stockman for example. I mean what kind of a tease is that? Who’d rather play as Wingnut than Rocksteady honestly? Though I’ll admit that the walking shark character Amagon is pretty cool.

This version of the game has an impressive library of voice over for character attacks and announcer lines with the highlight being an attack called the “endless screw” … Uuugh. This game also gets major points too for being the only version where you can play as my favorite character Shredder. But for some reason he looks kinda funny…

In tournament mode each character gets their own story epilogue which is pretty satisfying, but the game’s story mode limits you to the four brothers and ends with April laying a smooch on whatever Turtle you chose…

What a cock tease.

Rating: 7/10

So yeah. Get the Super Nintendo one… Pretty obvious choice really. But keep an eye out in the future when I decide to delve into some more cross platform confusion… Cross platform confusion? That name is way better than the one I used.

Shit.

I sing (horribly) my imaginary lyrics to the piss poor Robocop Alpha Commando theme song.

Happy Halloween Motherfuckers!

I decide to break the hiatus by hopping on camera real quick to update you on what I’ve been up to and to thank you all for keeping this ship running. Here’s to another year.

Oh! My God.

It’s finally here. We’re still standing. This site is one year old. Just in case you’re curious I’ll be recording something for the occasion but I couldn’t quite get it ready in time so you’ll have to settle for this shitty post for now. I’m actually on my way to work at the moment so I’m sure I’ll be adding more to this when I get home.

Here’s a picture of the website back in March 2010:

I wanted to thank every visitor who’s stopped by, commented, and shared links and all that jazz. And thanks to whatever “fans” I have at this point. You guys make it worth it. As for the hiatus, it ends with the next post related to the anniversary and then it’s on to Halloween. Oye, so much work ahead of me.

I also wanted to personally congratulate and plug another site that is also really close to it’s own one year milestone. Congratulations to the guys over at…

THELAMEST.COM

As for what’s coming up expect something for Halloween again, and then for November I’m deeming that month the “get all my shit done” month as I’ll be dealing with a lot of unfinished projects and loose ends before the Christmas season arrives. Basically there’s a crap storm on it’s way. So look forward to that. And again, many thanks to all of you.

-M10

I’m alive, and updating. These two things have not been true for almost a month now, and periodically before as well. Truth is I’ve been getting a lot of hours in at work (and shifting schedules weekly) so anytime I even *think* about updating or doing something productive off hours I’ll either pass out, or blankly stare at my monitor cross eyed. Amusing all around me.

I have done a little bit of behind the scenes shit, like I almost launched the “blog” subdomain I was talking about but then decided it was shitty and deleted it, and as before I’m still trying to reinvent the forums so they’re actually useful. Of course nothing really got “done” as it was just a lot of experimentation. And code clean up. And internal planning. I’m really not sure what I’m going to do about the blog idea now but I would like to separate it in some way from the main content, so I can make updates like this a lot more often without spamming the front page into hell.

Either way I should have those website changes (and my sticky list of to-do’s) all done for the end of the year. Speaking of year the site is almost ELEVEN months old omgjesusilu but that also means I’ve gotta pay my host soon… FUCK!

When I’m super tired like I’ve been the last thing I can effectively do is write and proofread which makes writing articles extremely difficult in this state. It just seems to strain my eyes before I can even get going.

So maybe I’ll start turning on my camera on and speaking my mind…

Anyways people, thanks for being so understanding. The ongoing hiatus won’t last long and hopefully I can master this groove and make the website my bitch again real soon.

God damn it. I need sleep…

-M10

Duh Duh Duh Duh – Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh – Dah Dah Dah Daaaaaaaah!

Contra. One of the older, more successful, and all around kick ass shooting series Contra helped define the run n gun genre, helped define arcade to console ports, help defined Konami as one of my favorite companies, and also helped define pure frustration. Whether you rushed in with 3 continues or put in that famous code no matter how you cheated it was still going to be hard. As long as you’re not one of those Game Genie pussies…

So with a franchise so awesome how could any of it suck? Other developers forgetting what the appeal of Contra is mostly. Or Konami just slapping the brand on an unrelated game. It seemed to happen quite a bit.

You might not think that these games are worth talking about at all but keep in mind that aside from the twice a decade boom of a new legit entry to the franchise new Contra games are not too highly revered these days. And that’s completely due to these fucking games. If there was ever a franchise to fly so high only to have it’s integrity shat on I’d pick Contra.

So here are the Contra games that fuck my ass and don’t even have the courtesy to give me a reach-around.

Before we start though there are plenty of games I’m not going to mention such as the many butchered arcade ports of the original game (MSX I’m looking at you!) or the really shoddy GBA port of Contra 3 with the Hard Corps levels thrown in for no reason, or even the whole Probotector fiasco in Europe.

On a side note, although it’s kinda bad Contra 3 on the original Gameboy is still a lot of fun.

This is a game that almost everybody knows about because there was Contra and Super C for the NES, and then Contra 3 for the SNES, then Contra Force for the regular NES again. If you were like me as a kid then you didn’t know about Super C (because of the dumb title) until years later, and also didn’t know that Contra Force came after Contra 3 considering that it was on a earlier system, so you probably mistook this game for Contra 2.

However that bliss doesn’t last too long because as soon as you start playing, hell, as soon as you watch the beginning intro you’ll have noticed that something is amiss. For starters they dropped the Aliens from the equation and now the “Contra Force” is an anti-terrorist organization. Whoopee. As soon as the game starts too you’ll have the ability to select your character. Burns, Smith, Beans and Iron? Where the hell is Bill and Lance?!

The next thing you’ll pick up on is a lot of time when you jump or even just walk around the game suffers from near constant slowdown. It can be brief of it can flat out kill you. It’s possible to adjust (as I did) to these conditions but man, does it suck. Just imagine Topman’s level in Megaman 3 at the start where all of those hardhats are manning construction vehicles and the game slows to a crawl. Imagine that ALL THE TIME.

The crippling slowdown coupled with the fact that it’s a Contra game (in name) naturally make this a pretty hard game. However there are many methods of exploiting the game into being super easy. First off the Konami code in this game makes the game insultingly easy especially if you’ve done it before. However another equally effective trick is the ability to swap out between any of the 4 characters and when you swap a character they each get their own life bars and extra lives. The only trick to this method is to swap out to a new guy when your current guy is down to his last leg because of one guy dies everybody dies. Another trick involves pausing and unpausing the game mid jump which apparently makes your guy constantly jump without ever touching the ground meaning that you can bypass whole sections of platforming and for the most part entire levels up until the boss fights.

Which brings me to my main issue with the game. The bosses are really dumb.

1. My battle against what appears to be a 7 foot five tall Leprechaun.

2. Me fighting 50 Cent infused with Gamma radiation.

3. Seriously look at the ridiculous size, proportion and lack of scale happening here!!

4. Smith VS. Generic ass jet.

5. Iron fighting the ‘Super Mario Half Brother’ of both Mario and Jean Claude Van Damme.

6. A helicopter and some asshole who isn’t worthy of being the final boss in a Contra game.

Aside from the gross misuse of scale and proportion in this game the graphics are really good for the NES, and the music is on par with other games in the Contra series (though not as fast paced). Actually wait, getting back to the graphics for a second…

All the characters also have portraits and little avatars on the screen and they all look stupid but take note of Burn’s little avatar to the left. Why does Burns the leader of an anti-terrorist unit look like Harvey Birdman and the fucking Green Arrow had an autistic child who couldn’t shut his jaw?

At least that beats this guy’s expression.

The controls for the game are kind of weird too for starters maneuvering just feels different than it did in Contra. When you hold down the jump button your character will just keep on jumping (what purpose that has I don’t know) but if you hold down the fire button he’ll only fire one bullet. So If you opt into a turbo controller your character will fire multiple bullets as you desired, but whenever you try to jump using turbo the character will just keep doing half jumps and you can’t properly play the game. So unless you have a turbo controller that selects individual buttons then you’re screwed. Beyond those problems the game feels sloppy no matter what you do.

Ultimately the biggest flaw here is that the game was originally a totally unrelated game called ‘Arc Hound’ but at the last second Konami slapped the Contra logo on it and it’s a damn shame too because this game on it’s own is really not a bad game at all… just a bad Contra game. If Konami had ironed out the slowdown and some of the bug related problems they could’ve had another classic NES series on their hands. As it stands however it’ll always be remembered as a shitty Contra game.

Rating: 6.5/10

I remember getting my PS1 for Christmas and becoming really exciting about the next generation of gaming. In particular all of our older and beloved franchises making the leap onto Sony’s hardware. I remember Megaman X4 being the highest hyped game for me and my friends. Which in it’s gameplay footage at the time displayed so many explosions in it’s showcasing that I nearly exploded my pants.

But by the time I’d got one in the very late 90′s it was pretty obvious that a lot of retro franchises that made the jump to the next generation were gigantic flops. Bubsy and Earthworm Jim being the most famous of them all. Games such as Megaman Legends however went balls out and showed off the 3d and new modes of gameplay we couldn’t even have imagined at the time, while others such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night stayed very true to it’s 2d roots while still boasting the hardware power in new and creative ways.

Contra: Legacy of War however exists somewhere between those two ideologies. It’s not exactly a 2d game, and it’s definitely not a 3 dimensional experience. The plain of movement is 2d, but the environments and enemies are in 3d. The result is just a really sloppy gameplay style. And much like Mario Kart 64 the character is depicted as a sprite, except unlike Mario Kart it just looks plain washed out and ugly.

The gameplay itself is the first subject of gripe for me. Every single level in the game is from a top down perspective. Which is the conceptual opposite of every other Contra game ever made. Sure Super C and Contra 3 has overhead bonus stages but NOBODY preferred those to the side-scrolling levels. Why anybody thought an entire game of it would be cool is beyond me.

The very next thing you’ll notice more and more the further into the game you get is the visuals. There’s just something that appears to be off when you look at them. Something muddy or like the sharpness on your television needs adjusting. Then I took another look at the packaging and see something in the corner.

Oh god. No wonder looking at every single screen in this game is a nauseating headache, yeah just like Spy Kids 3d. I can’t really speak for the 3d effects because I don’t have the glasses and from what I understand the original pair are hard to come by unless you get the game sealed. But I can tell you this, without the glasses this game looks like complete shit.

This is one of those games that just betrays an entire franchise. I’m sure it will be the worst Contra game to ever be made for many decades to come. And forcing yourself to beat the game is not an experience I’d recommend. It’s not even a satisfying release when you beat the game. I mean you kill the final boss and the planet you’re on explodes, all of the planetary debris is floating in every which direction and you’re just standing on a giant hunk of it without any space suits, as it floats toward Earth I assume. Oh and a trace of the alien is still alive on the same meteor with you in a shitty form of sequel baiting.

Every thing about this game sucks. Every enemy takes a million hits, every level drags on too long, every sound effect is repeated way too much and mixed very harshly, the character selection is garbage, and the ending is complete shit. Well, the game did have some pretty good music though…
To add insult to injury the back of the box claims “It’s the Contra you always knew”. Don’t make me laugh.

Rating: 2.5/10

After the disappointment of Legacy of War I didn’t think I’d ever rent another Contra game in my life. But sure enough screen shots of this game started appearing in magazines and proudly showed off the 2d themed levels. All of the sudden I became ecstatic for it and I couldn’t wait.

However there were two things I didn’t realize at the time. First is that only the first and last levels are in this style, essentially serving as a massive bait and switch for anybody WANTING A CONTRA GAME. All the other levels play like clunky Duke Nukem or Tomb Raider clones fortunately devoid of much platforming but still VERY confusing at times. The other thing I didn’t realize was that Appaloosa the game’s developer also developed Legacy of War before this. So what the fuck? Konami brought these assholes back? How do you not get fired for burying a franchise so deep that it would take almost 5 years for it to save face? You know one of the most popular retro gaming franchises there is. AND THEY FUCKED IT UP. TWICE.

Yeah, I’m not gonna beat around the bush. This game sucks too. It IS a gigantic step up from the previous effort and maybe if this came first instead of Legacy of War there could’ve been a good Contra after it, but let’s not be fooled, this game is still garbage. No matter how bad the other game is by comparison it does not make this one any better. I mean just the fact that Konami retconned both of these games, and the fact that neither one has been released anywhere else but stateside speaks for itself. Nobody else in the entire world wants to play this crap.

This time they’ve trashed the 3d glasses idea, eliminated all the lame extra characters, and the game’s graphics are in 3d with no sprites to be seen. Sound effects again are lousy, and the music once again is surprisingly pretty good (I really hate to admit that). This complaint may sound silly but a big problem with this game and Legacy of War is that they both seem way too hard. Maybe it seems harder because they’re shitty. And I know they’re Contra games but they just don’t have the replay value of other Contra games. You put some time into these games once (most likely) or twice (masochist) you’re likely to walk away. So I feel these games in particular should’ve been way easier considering how shitty they were. I know that sounds like such a moot point but it would’ve made my job easier at least.

Although I hate to concede I will admit that the game’s second last level is actually fun. And it’s in the 3d perspective too. But instead of exploring an awkward cavern you’re experiencing a recreation of the base levels from the first Contra. Where you poke out from behind laser gates and shoot at things in the distance. This element surprisingly works very well in the new format and this is when something hits me. The game is only ever any good at all when it’s trying to recreate scenes from the older games. Be it the bases, the 2d perspective, or the boss from Alien Wars where you have to climb all over the room’s ceilings and walls to avoid it.

I guess what it all comes down to is play the other games. This one is just a unconvincing pretender masquerading as a legitimate Contra and even going as far to sprinkle in some fan service. Does it make it a better game? On the surface, maybe, but it only serves to remind you that your NES is still in your closet and that you should probably dig it out to get that bad taste out of your mouth.

Rating: 4/10

What followed after “Contra Adventure” was a period of silence in the Contra franchise until about 2002 when someone released “Contra Shattered Soldier” for the PS2 which cemented itself as a legit return to form, was one of my favorite games on the PS2, and all around it just blew off faces. I mean this game was awesome, and it was hard as tits. What’s the matter? CIA got you pushing too many pencils?

In 2004 Konami decided to experiment again with NEO Contra. So against all wishes the entire game is once again played from a top down perspective. But fortunately this is no Legacy of War. So be thankful for that.

Actually what we get here instead is a pretty well designed game just with some odd choices employed. The first thing that’s jarring about the game is just how easy it is. Compared to Shattered Soldier or any other key game in the series this game is child’s play and can be mastered in a mere weekend. But what you’ll notice before that is the game’s… interesting choice of an opening theme song.

SONIC HERRROOOOOESSS. Yeah nothing establishes a Macho shooting franchise like this fucking J-pop shit. Yeah the cinematic is well done, but it only accentuates just how ridiculous the Samurai character Jaguar really is and why he shouldn’t be in a Contra game. This is an intro that really would’ve been better with NO music at all. But the music aside from that is actually pretty good although a little more of a techno departure than what was in “Shattered Soldier” and it reminds me of a PS1 game called Apocalypse (yes the Bruce Willis game) I used to play that actually reminded me of Contra quite a bit back in the day. Controls are about what you’d expect from this kind of shooter. Much like in other Contras you walk around and shoot, you hold a button while shooting to strafe. The hang up associated with this simple control scheme is that you’ll periodically have to hold down another button to manually lock on to targets that are above you and fire an assortment of missiles at them.

Bosses range from the typical machines, mechs and tanks to the giant disgusting mutants that you’d associate with Contra’s best. But again this all feels underwhelming considering how easy the game really is. One memorable encounter though is the plant thing with the baby face sticking out of it, and another is this centipede slug thing with a human face that literally shits monsters out of it’s ass.

My favorite part in the whole game is the beginning section of the second stage. The intro mimics the opening to one of Shattered Soldier’s openings which had Bill Rizer smashing through a billboard on a motorcycle. This time around it’s a giant television screen actually showing footage of the intro from the Shattered Soldier stage and then Bill Rizer busts through the screen… riding on a dinosaur!

Moving onto the plot… Yeah, it’s Contra which means it was probably slapped in at the last second and is completely meaningless. But could they at least try to make the villains cool? You fight the NEO Contra which is a group of 5 elite soldiers by the names of Guerrilla Contra, Plant Contra, Pheromone Contra who is really Lucia from Shattered Soldier, and Animal Contra is is just a dog in army gear… Are you kidding? And of course Master Contra who is just a clone of Bill Rizer. Creative.

As is the case with Contra Force it’s not a bad game, it’s fairly well designed, and for the most part it sports an appealing style but it just makes for a lousy Contra title that any Contra fan owes to themselves to rent but never own.

The game also has the dumbest ending of them all. Neo Contra ends with the base exploding and the characters making a narrow escape. The scene cuts and then they are riding back to shore on the back of a Whale. On the back of a Whale. But considering throughout the course of this game these two guys get fired out of a volcano, run on top of helicopter blades, ride missiles like surf boards, and can breathe in space I guess I really shouldn’t care.

Rating: 6/10

Well I’m cracking open the seal on a new series of articles that I plan to start writing that focuses on the most worthless and unsellable items that plague our rooms that we can never seem to be rid of. So what’s today’s subject matter in question? What item poses to be even more worthless than my Killer 7 and Gamera comic books, and more unsellable than that stack of 16 bit sports titles that you still have? Observe…

Finally! The threesome of everybody’s dreams!

Well. Well. Here’s another shit blistering issue of Gamera and right away what do we have?