Mini-Gaming #011 - Alisia Dragoon (Genesis)

Video game release dates are unfortunately spotty in the 80s and early 90s. The markets were fragmented and the industry wasn’t taken seriously enough at the time for accurate bookkeeping. After all, video games are just sophisticated toys, right?

Well, with a vague release date of March 1992, today might well be the 34th anniversary of our next Mini-Gaming feature: Alisia Dragoon. I was originally going to make a joke about how the year is 199X and all of the good Genesis games at Blockbuster have been rented out. All that’s left is this oddball-looking game about a magical Amazon-looking woman… ok sure I guess I’ll take it out. But when I saw that release window I couldn’t help but notice the coincidence.

Alisia Dragoon is a hard game to classify. It’s a one-off Genesis exclusive that combines platforming, shooting, and light RPG elements with an original setting and story. You control Alisia herself through eight stages of action, shooting your way through enemies and defeating bosses of ancient, futuristic, magical, and alien origin. Alisia shoots auto-targeting lightning from her hands, governed by a power meter that runs down as she shoots. When not shooting, the meter replenishes, with stronger attacks reserved for the very top of the meter. This establishes a cadence of shooting and waiting to allow your attack to be strong enough to be effective.

But Alisia is not alone. By her side is one of four miniature dragons, or dragoons I suppose. Each one can be called upon at will and offer their own auto-attacks along with Alisia’s. One shoots straight fireballs, one shoots boomerangs, and one unleashes a screen-clearing bomb at regular intervals. The last is more of a sprite than a dragon and doesn’t shoot anything, but does damage any enemy it comes in physical contact with. This seemingly useless helper wound up being a surprise asset when it came to some bosses, and the strategy became less about shooting them and more of lining up Alisia to make the sprite strike the boss for a quick defeat.

Alisia Dragoon is a console game that thinks it's an arcade game. You have one single life for the entire game—the collectable 1-ups are not extra lives but continues. You are given a rather generous health bar and while enemy hits are weak, but they are very frequent. This is one of those games where you will just constantly take damage and you have to be okay with that. Most of the stages are quite short but incredibly dense, loaded with enemies, items, and secrets. You’ll want the manual handy as the glyphic items are hard to distinguish, nothing about them indicates it’s a level-up or a heath restore aside from the fact they look ‘magical.’ Many of the better items only appear if you stand on a particular point in the level, so keep a look out for conspicuous areas. The game presents itself frantically with semi-respawning enemies and your large lightning attacks, but blowing through it will do you no favors. You really need to dissect each stage and find as many upgrades as you can, as well as health restores to top you off as you constantly get hit by something you couldn’t avoid. 

It’s an odd balance: Alisia trudges along, getting hit constantly while you wait for your power meter to fill up, then your massive attack clears out everything only for a new enemy to swoop in and attack you. Holding your attack on a larger enemy will eventually kill them too, but then your power meter is decimated. Mind you the meter refills very quickly but they become the longest few seconds of your life. The game regularly doles out health potions as you progress, acknowledgment that this is just how the game is. It becomes an endurance match after a while, and eventually you don’t beat the game as much as you’ll just outlast it.

The game is very eager to end you and bump you back to the title screen, but not before giving you a results screen showing how far you made it and awarding you an arbitrary rating. Repetition is clearly the key to Alisia Dragoon, as you’ll have to keep replaying to memorize the stage layouts, enemy patterns and find the secret level-up items that will bolster you for the later levels. You’ll find hidden items to extend the health bar and raise the attack power of not just Alisia but your four dragoons as well. As you develop your playstyle and know what’s coming ahead, you’ll have to strategically choose who and what to level up when.

As I tried to play as genuinely as possible, it took many playthroughs to claw forward through the game, and the repetition did generally help. But nothing helps when a new enemy or boss gives you no chance to learn its pattern and kills you straight out; now you’re back to the title screen with nothing but your dumb in-game rating to show for it. Maybe you’ll make it back to that late-game boss after another arduous playthrough and you’ll last a little bit longer, dodge an old attack and lose to a new one, Game Over once again. And as the nature of Alisia Dragoon is to keep damaging you, you never feel like you’ll achieve a perfect run. It can be a little disheartening knowing you’ll eventually beat the game but never be particularly great at it. The playthroughs get repetitive after a while too, as you’re trying to re-collect all the secret level-ups over and over for a chance to get back to where you were last time. Combing all the secrets in each stage gets stale. That’s when the save states begin to tempt you, and luckily we have the access to them today to just finish the darn game.

For what it’s worth, the game has a lot of charm and a lot of heart. The music is wonderful and the sound effects are honestly fun to listen to. Each various item has its own twinkly, gamey flourish, and they sound as rewarding as they are. Even every stage intro has its own opening jingle. There are also a few cutscenes where the game will take over the controls, flashing ‘DEMO’ in the corner when you attempt to override. There is a rote story in place, and the game does a good job in its presentation to get you vaguely interested without overreaching.

So did I enjoy Alisia Dragoon? It’s really hard to say. It’s a unique experience; a combination of familiar game genres and systems that make a game you’ve never played before but could swear you have. It is compelling to play with the mechanics and see how far you can go with the working knowledge you gain, the secret items you can stumble upon. But again locking in to finish it can be a chore. This is not a game that you get quicker at as you replay it, and the enemy hits are intentionally relentless no matter how methodical you play. The visuals and especially sounds do help try to boost your morale, but overall it becomes clear why this is a one-off game that few remember or cherish.

Honestly though, good for Sega for digging Alisia Dragoon out of the vault and placing it in the Genesis Mini. Many other games could’ve taken its place but Alisia stands proudly in the lineup. This really showcases what a ‘designated rental’ game was like back in the day, an odd release that has a lot to offer, at the very least just something different to cleanse the palette. It may not have sold well or risen above cult status, but these retro experiences are still valuable and when it comes to exploring ‘new’ old games, the diversity is really the strength.

Mini-Gaming #010 - Granada (Genesis 2)

The Sega Genesis Mini 2 was quite a surprise when it was announced and released in 2022. The mini-console fad had run its course, and Sega already made a successful entry with its original Genesis Mini. It looked and ran great with a solid game lineup. It was surprising Sega released an in-house console at all, as hardware was no longer its focus for the last 20 years. Yet the Mini 2 made a subdued launch with an all-new lineup of Genesis (and Sega CD!) games, as well as games that were unreleased, out of region, and even completely new. It’s probably the most intriguing of the mainline minis.

As 40 go-to Genesis games were already out on the Mini 1, the Mini 2 pulled from deeper in the library, focusing on more second-string and uncommon releases. Despite the negative connotations, these are far from low-quality games. These are cult classics at best and quirky oddities at worst. Echoing my Sonic 1 story in the last post, many of these games had single production runs and/or modest sales. Once they sold, they sold, and stores quickly cleared them out to make room for the next wave. Especially for a later Genesis gamer, there were scores of games you’d either see at a friend’s house, on the rental shelves, or tucked in a magazine or catalog. And if you still didn’t see them, you’d never know they existed. Granada is a fine example of this.

Granada is one of the many earlier-wave Genesis releases that pulled from a Japanese computer called the Sharp X68000. This general-use PC never made its way to the US and was revered for its surprisingly strong lineup of game software. These games ported well to Sega’s console and were a welcome third-party fill-in. Many of them share a similar kind of vibe: high-tech, hardcore, and ‘crunchy’ for lack of a better term. A lot of them are space shmups, but Granada is a bit different, taking place on dystopian Earth as a free-roam top-down shooter.

As I played Granada it reminded me of a cross between Soul Blazer and Rally-X. Levels take place on vast areas as you hunt down marked enemies on a radar map. Marks are either enemy generators or major cannons. After destroying every mark, the boss mark activates with a battle in either a fixed arena or in the open field. You get a generous amount of time to clear each level, though a Time Over just kills your ship and respawns you immediately with a fresh clock. Granada is odd with its hit points: you’re given a large shield bar that ticks down with each hit. There are no health pickups. Losing a ship respawns you on the spot, and losing all ships Game Overs immediately. Back at the title screen you’re given a chance to continue at the stage you ended at, up to 3 times. Especially in a genre that’s usually punishing, it’s an oddly generous system that trivializes lives—it’s tantamount to having one life with 50+ hit points and no way to replenish them. Again, it’s nice but just a little odd.

There are 9 stages, each one completely different from the last. Some stages are wide open, while others are tight corridors. Every stage has a maze-like feel to it, but never so much you feel lost. You’re given infinite ammo for a weak rapid shot and a strong blast shot (16x stronger according to the manual) at the cost of a significant recoil. Each stage also features a unique option weapon (remember that term from Last Resort?) that will help out and is optimized for the stage they are in. The variety in stages and firepower make for a game that’s always throwing a new surprise your way, with little repetition outside of the main objective. The variety extends to the bosses, with some stalking you around the map, some acting like a traditional vertical shooter boss, or even one that requires bank shots to hit. Some of them can be a little cryptic though, as they could’ve been more obvious when a weak point (or any hit point) is struck. A good old-fashioned health bar wouldn’t have hurt, either.

Granada is one of those games that simultaneously has a deep (if nonsensical) story most likely caught up in its own translation, while also featuring barely any of it within the game itself. This is an unfortunate product of its era, where English translations/Western localizations were given very little care and attention, either overwriting old stories completely (with something worse) or translating them so phonetically they almost make no sense. Even after reading the game’s manual, screen text, and online webpages, I still have no idea where the name comes from or what exactly is going on. It seems they tried to make the story overly wordy to come off as sophisticated; all it did was make me ignore it even more. Luckily this game puts its gameplay before anything else and is all the better for it.

Granada is a solid, arcade-inspired game that thankfully stands out with its gameplay and approachability. I’m sure it certainly had its fans, especially with enthusiasts of the X68000 ports, and in later years probably made for a solid B-tier rental. It took me a few sessions to finally clear the game on Easy. At my peak I managed to reach stage 7 reliably on one credit, with 8 eventually following and savestating my way through 9. With such a large shield bar, the game expects you to take hits (and oh, you will) but the last stage is utterly ridiculous, especially with recoils pushing you into bottomless pits that shave off your shield in one go. The game’s high time limit encourages you to be strategic with your approaches, taking it slow and angling your shots to avoid return fire. But so many enemies take pot shots at you constantly, and I always found a way to get hit by them. After a while you get numb to them, until you remember there is no way at all to recover health!

This is a game I would have never given a chance, either on a rental shelf or in my ROM library. It’s just too out of my comfort zone, with not enough of a pedigree for me to bother trying. But having it in the Mini 2, staring me in the face forced me to give it a real go, and I’m really glad it did! Thank you, Mini-Gaming, for giving me a wholly new retro experience. Granada was a fresh diversion in this list, and now I see first-hand why so many gamers, then and now, swear by the X68000 ports the Genesis had to offer.

Mini-Gaming #009 - Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis)

Sonic 1… what can I say that hasn’t already been said? The icon, the legend, and my childhood hero made his debut with this game 35 years ago. The original Sonic the Hedgehog was the secret weapon Sega banked its future on, and it threw the established gaming order on its head. Fun fact: did you know Sonic 1 predates the US launch of the Super Nintendo? Yep, Sonic is older here than the SNES by a few months, and although the SNES was created to keep up with the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16, the shattering launch of Sonic forced Nintendo to pull out every stop they had for the next several years. Sonic gave Sega a fighting chance for the 90s, and set them up as best as he possibly could.

Today, Sonic has dozens of friends, adversaries, plot lines, and abilities, but in the beginning it was just him, Dr Robotnik (Eggman), and a Zone of Green Hills. Robotnik is kidnapping small animals and using them to power his robots, and it’s up to Sonic to free them and stop the doctor’s dastardly deeds. He’ll go through six zones of three acts each, collecting rings, defeating enemies, and knocking Robotnik out of the sky at the end of each zone. There’s lush forestry, volcanic ruins, flooded temples and shimmering cities to explore, as well as a mysterious realm containing gems of unspeakable power…

It’s a simple, run-to-the-right affair. But never before were gamers blessed with a platformer of such speed, physics, and quality. Platformers before Sonic were rigid and grid-based, but Sonic offered curvature and momentum, complete with a rolling jump that turned him almost into a pinball. Even the stages' undulating ground was not something seen in other games. He may not have had familiar moves like the spin dash or homing attack yet, but his spinning jump and forward rolls gave him utility that allowed players to tackle the game with fluidity, grace, and freedom. Competitors like Super Mario looked downright stodgy in comparison.

Sonic the Hedgehog is renowned for his Special Stages—courses that feature a completely different gameplay style and showcase major technical trickery. The prizes of these stages are the Chaos Emeralds, and no Sonic game is fully beaten without obtaining all of them. This tradition began immediately in his first game with bonus stages dubbed Secret Zones. Finishing an act with over 50 rings places a giant ring at the act’s endpoint to jump inside. Unlike later games which usually featured pseudo-3D, Sonic 1’s stages are top-down 2D mazes that continuously rotate. Sonic is permanently spinning and must jump off walls and obstacles toward the flickering emerald. There are six unique stages of increasing complexity for each color emerald, and although collecting every emerald would open up major perks in later games, in this first game they merely unlock a more festive ending cutscene.

Now how about some story time! I received my Genesis in 1994 with Sonic 2 as the pack-in title, and went on to play and own the further games in the series. Gifts and Blockbuster rentals would be of the hedgehog’s future adventures, but the original Sonic 1 was never to be found. This was back when e-commerce was nonexistent, and you were limited to whatever your local stores stocked. (Catalog and phone orders were also common, but not to my child self.) Sonic 1 was, at the time, out of print and out of reach. I only knew it existed through logic (surely if I have 2 there must be a 1), a one-off quarter on a random MegaPlay machine (Sega’s arcade-ified Genesis that played time-limited cartridges), and a classmate that let me borrow his cartridge for one glorious week. I all but gave up on ever owning the mythical game until one day, Toys R Us happened to stock the ‘Sega Classic’ re-issue of Sonic the Hedgehog! And there was only one copy left!! My mother, who knew how badly I yearned for Sonic 1, was almost as happy to see it as I was… and purchased it for me on the spot. My 6-year-old self was in shock the whole time we brought the last paper tag from its cubby to the counter for purchase. Getting a new game for no reason?! It was something she never did before and would never do again. Finally Sonic 1 joined my modest collection with its distinctive Sega Classic branding setting it apart, and this story of its arrival remains with me as a beloved childhood memory.

For my Mini-Gaming playthrough, it was only fitting for me to do a perfect run with all Chaos Emeralds and no deaths. Though I know the game like the back of my hand, it had still been years since I intentionally sat down and played it. This was my secondary goal in this blog challenge: not just playing new (old) games for the first time but play familiar games in a refreshed context. Sitting down, Genesis controller in hand, glow of the TV screen reflected in my retinas. It's the difference between scarfing McDonald's in the car and indulging in a chef's tasting menu: it's both food but it hits differently. Sonic 1 has aged like the fine wine it is, and the levels complement Sonic’s limited move set so well that his future abilities aren’t missed. 

Speaking of those levels, it’s interesting to realize only half of them focus on speed. The zones alternate between breezy and precise, and although today’s gamers criticize Sonic 1 for this, I disagree. If every stage was speedy, the game would get samey and boring quickly. You need a break from the pace in order to appreciate the freedom when it comes. The slower stages also demonstrate the precision control Sonic offers, remember that platformers at this time rarely allowed the level of finesse seen here. Also back in 1991, the ‘slow stages’ weren’t seen as slow, but standard. Platformers were not a fast-paced genre until now—Sonic’s high-octane adventure was truly a revolution. I mean think about it, even when you are running in Mario games, how fast are you really going?

Replaying the Secret Zones for the first time in years was also a treat. Even to this day they are disorienting, and there’s palpable tension trying to get Sonic where you want him to go. There’s a downward gravity at play, and each rotation puts Sonic in a new angle you must adjust for. The rotation is jerky but consistent (re-releases of the game would rotate smoothly), and I almost prefer the jerkiness. I found it helped with lining up and timing my jumps, even if half of them would fling me in the wrong direction. An odd bounce would set me right on course with a dreaded level exit, with my thumb crammed away on the D-Pad in a desperate nod to lean away from it, and another jump would set me on a speed-up panel, making the maze spin faster, now I hit a reverse panel and we’re going in the opposite direction… it’s a lot! Almost too much for today’s impatient and inflexible player, but for me a healthy dose of difficulty and excitement. Every emerald felt earned, even for a veteran player such as myself.

It almost felt silly to play Sonic 1 when I have hundreds of other games to explore, but this session felt like meeting up with an old friend. We’ve known each other since childhood, and things around us have changed a lot. But the spark is still there, as we laugh at old stories as if we’ve never heard them before. And we made plans to definitely hang out again, even if it won’t be for several years.

Mini-Gaming #008 - Bomberman '93 (TG16)

Bomberman is one of those ‘comeback’ mascots that never really left. He’s had a steady stream of releases across almost all platforms dating back to the early 80s, and was one of Hudson Soft’s best-known properties. Bomberman was always a platform-agnostic series, even during the lifespan of NEC/Hudson’s own TurboGrafx-16. One would hope the Bomberman games on their home console would be given the same quality assurance and care as the third-party games. And with a year-prominent marquee title, that’s a lot to live up to.

Fortunately, Bomberman ’93 is a worthy culmination of the games before it. And while it’s the best version of Bomberman it could be so far, ’93 maxes out the formula and opens the door for the series’ evolution.

Bomberman’s single-player campaigns always followed a strict ruleset: bomb your way through a series of block mazes, destroying all enemies (while not trapping yourself!), collect power-up items, and uncover/escape through the level’s exit. Lather, rinse, repeat. ’93 breaks up this monotony by setting up 7 worlds with 8 levels each, the last of which is a boss stage. Each world introduces a new level mechanic such as conveyor belts and turnstiles. The enemies get stronger and more aggressive, but the objective always remains the same. Though the worlds do a lot to spice things up visually, there’s a flatness to the stages that keeps them on the rigid side. Yes it’s top-down 2D, but the graphics could have had a little more dimension to them. I always found the green HUD a little basic, giving away the TurboGrafx's primitive roots. Many stages also maintain a perfect grid to their layout with no passageways or obstacles; it does nothing to keep the stages from bleeding into one another, and can make it quite difficult to trap fast-moving enemies with no natural chokepoints.

Each stage’s layout and their enemies stay the same each playthrough, but the bomb-able blocks and enemy placements are randomized. This is great for replay value as no stage is ever exactly the same, and with some enemies free and others blocked in, your assault plan will change every time. Each stage also has a single power-up item to be found under the blocks, the most important of which up your firepower and bomb limit. Unlike other Bomberman games, your power and limits are permanent for your run, but more powerful items (remote controls, passthroughs) will still be lost upon death. Upon killing all enemies, the block containing the stage’s item will flash. The stage’s exit however, will not and always needs to be stumbled upon (also randomized). Work quickly though, as that 3-minute stage times can close in pretty quick after focusing so much on enemies, and larger stages can have scores of blocks yet to be bombed.

The game starts off simple and has a gradual difficulty curve. But with 56 stages, there’s a lot of game to get through and that curve becomes as flat as the level layouts. Even though the worlds feature different graphics and music, 8 stages of anything gets redundant, and when you’re deep in the weeds of the game it almost gets boring. I meant to finish this game much sooner than I did, but had to break up the sessions due to my eyes glazing over.

Saving game progress in the early 90s was always a crapshoot, as games mostly either didn’t save at all (usually), utilized passwords (probably), or used a battery backup (uncommonly). Bomberman ’93 was an outlier that used passwords as well as saves, a generous gesture as the TurboGrafx required a separate accessory to keep save data that not everyone owned. Sometimes, dual-saving games would use passwords for vague progression and backup data would be more detailed, but ’93 makes no difference. I could see passwords not saving your firepower and bomb limits for example, but it appears the passwords bake in which items you would’ve collected by that point. To me this seems a little too… nice? The levels do seem to scale with your power levels so it’s kinda necessary, but it also gives zero consequences for losing. Continuing just puts you exactly back where you are, maybe not with stronger items but they’re offered in multiple stages. Why offer two continues before you must quit to the title screen, just to reload your save (or input your password) and get back in the action mere seconds later? In modern game design, this game wouldn’t have a life system at all, but back in this day, not having lives would be inconceivable. As such, it’s really interesting to go back in time and see how gaming went through these growing pains.

I’m conflicted in criticizing this game, because the core gameplay is proven, timeless fun! And having too much content is an odd thing to complain about, especially back when simplistic games had to find ways to be worth their while. By 1993 the TurboGrafx was all but dead in the US, but it continued to find ways to punch above its weight with its bright colors and bold outlines. It’s clear Bomberman ’93 is doing as much as it can to keep up visually with its rivals, and the game by no means looks bad, but it can’t shake the glossy 8-bit look that it really is. It looks cutting-edge and nostalgic at the same time, if that makes any sense.

The music is also another nice highlight. As one of the last TurboChip games running on stock hardware, ‘93 doesn’t have the luxury of CD audio and only has the stock system’s twangy soundscape at its disposal. But that doesn’t stop the game from coming out with some seriously catchy tunes. ’93 has a surprisingly worldly soundtrack, with each planet’s theme featuring motifs from different cultures. Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, even Arabic and French-sounding songs await! Special mention goes to the title theme, which is the most video-gamey track I’ve ever heard. It’s great but almost becomes self-parody—it sounds like what AI would invent a video game song to sound like.

I especially enjoyed tackling the bosses, if anything because they break up the pace. And this is coming from me, who (hot take incoming) never cares much for video game bosses. At the start of each world, a small cutscene plays where Bomberman pulls up the world’s boss on a computer, showing its name, picture, and a brief strategy. Unfortunately this comes way too soon, as after 7 rote stages with standard enemies you’ve already forgotten who the boss is, much less how to defeat it. The boss stages are definite spikes in difficulty and will take a few tries to clear, but they’re quite fun. Unfortunately, the have the same flaw all Bomberman bosses do, as their hitboxes are dwarfed by their sprites. They all float freely around the stage, obscuring what exact part of them is deadly or vulnerable. This may be intentional design, but it comes off a bit cheap. Defeating them rewards you with a cute mural of Bomberman playing with the boss character, presumably from happier times. It’s completely superfluous, but it goes a long way in giving ’93 its own flavor.

I would be remiss to leave out Bomberman ’93’s other half: its multiplayer battle mode. To many, the battle mode is Bomberman, and the solo campaign is an oft-maligned afterthought. Although multiplayer Bomberman could be found on other consoles, only on the TurboGrafx-16 could you enjoy 5-player simultaneous play with its multi-tap accessory. This was something you physically could not find anywhere else at the time, as multiplayer on other consoles generally served 4 players at most. I personally, past and present, always preferred single player over multiplayer, and even though you can play alone with computer players, the battle mode holds little value to me. But I do respect and appreciate multiplayer Bomberman as a paramount retrogaming experience. The TurboGrafx-16 mini does include a second controller port for 2-player (the original console had only a single port) and they did release a custom multi-tap for the mini, so 5-player glory is still in reach today. But good luck finding the multi-tap and 4 extra mini controllers for a fair price (if at all), as well as 4 friends willing to sit down and play a 33-year-old video game with you. Should you pull off this impossible setup, put it up on YouTube, I’d love to see it.

Bomberman ’93 is the most fully realized version of classic Bomberman you can find. It's elegant in its simplicity while also being held back by it. It’s got just enough added flair to keep from being outdated, but it was clear the eventual Bomberman ’94 would need a little shakeup to its flow. And whaddaya know, there would indeed be a Bomberman ’94, and it would do just that. And it’s also on the Turbo mini, so you know what that means!

Mini-Gaming #007 - Donkey Kong (NES)

We’ve made it this far into the blog series and have given Nintendo nothing more than lip service! I suppose it’s only respectful to check in with Big N while I’m on my Sega/SNK kick… fine let’s bang out Donkey Kong real quick.

It’s odd to think of Nintendo as an arcade developer, but the early 80s saw them making a notable indent in the scene. The home console landscape was dominated by Atari, Mattel and Coleco at the time, seeing Nintendo take the odd role as a third-party licensor of their beloved properties. Yep, the same Mario Bros and Donkey Kong playable on the Switch 2 today saw official (but shoddy) ports on the Atari 2600 decades ago. 

So as Nintendo was developing their own home console, they needed to establish a benchmark for power. They knew they would blow the prior generations out of the water, but how far should they realistically go? The answer, interestingly, was Donkey Kong. That’s right, the NES was conceived as a console designed to play the most arcade-accurate yet financially viable version of Donkey Kong possible. Anything more advanced the hardware could do was gravy. Seeing it that way, the NES is a miracle system for what it was able to perform beyond its most basic launch title.

The NES port of Donkey Kong is nearly arcade perfect, barring a few small things like a smaller color palette, differently-pitched music, oh and the entire second stage being removed! For whatever reason, the four-stage arcade loop is only three, and it’s arguably the most interesting stage. But most importantly, the signature arcade gameplay is there, the running, jumping, and climbing all feel just like the original cabinet. That’s not to say that gameplay is particularly good, but it is arcade accurate.

Hear me out. I fully recognize 45 years ago Donkey Kong felt more advanced than anything that came before. It basically invented the platforming genre, included multiple stages, and featured graphics that actually looked like what they meant to depict. Mario (er, Jumpman) looked like a man, Donkey Kong looked like an ape, barrels looked like barrels, I know it sounds silly now but graphics at the time were more interpretive. No imagination was needed to make out what was going on. It was a revolution.

But as the years pile up, Donkey Kong’s gameplay gets harder to stomach. Mario is slow, his jump has no height, and the hitboxes are suspect. Every game after this refined the platforming mechanics we take for granted today, and it makes going back to the origin even harder. The game does work around its own physics, which makes it possible to lock in and effectively play it, but it doesn’t make it more fun. I’ve played this game for decades now, so my complete playthrough for this series was more courtesy than anything. I got up to the third loop before game-overing, and admittedly it came from sloppy boredom that I’m sure I could’ve pushed through in future runs. But I’m simply not interested in being any better at it.

Donkey Kong is that geriatric in the nursing home you were forced to volunteer at. He’s a diminished shell under his blanket but he still wears his veterans cap, and you can tell he lived quite a life in his prime. He’s respected, adored, full of stories, still has his humor, and is still fun to spend a few moments with. You wouldn’t be living in the world you do today if not for him and his peers. You want him to stick around forever even if you don’t go say hi every time you see him. This game absolutely deserves its spot in the NES Classic lineup, and you’d miss it if it wasn’t there, but spend the 10 minutes you will with it and you’ll never feel the need to fire it up again. 

Mini-Gaming #006 - King of Fighters '98 (NeoGeo)

Sigh, I suppose it’s time to get into the fighters…

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I have only had a passing interest in fighting games and am pretty terrible at them. They always came across to me as one-note and interchangeable. That’s not to say I’ve never had a good time with one though, as back in my main Dreamcast and NeoGeo Pocket Color era I gave the games in the Capcom vs SNK series a run for their money. But other series like Tekken, Virtua Fighter, even Street Fighter I let pass me by. But if I’m to do Mini-Gaming justice, the fighting games will have to be played, and the NeoGeo is gorged with them. I bounced around on which fighter to play first and settled on SNK’s flagship King of Fighters series, which is currently up to its 15th entry and 10 of which released on NeoGeo hardware. KOF provided much of the DNA that makes up the Capcom vs SNK games, and of the entries included on the mini console, ’98 is considered a fan favorite. 

By the mid-90s, 1v1 fighters dominated the dwindling arcade scene, and were the best bandage they could find against their mortal wound. SNK had released several fighting series by this time and found their hardware paired as well with fighters as gin and tonic. So it was inevitable that a crossover game be developed that brought all of their fragmented series together into one… wait for it… king of fighters. Predating Super Smash Bros by several years, King of Fighters quickly evolved into a juggernaut that overshadowed SNK’s arcade output in its later years, with the series’ annual entries often being one the company’s only releases. It became a hit in Japan and all across the western hemisphere, performing particularly well in Latin America due to socioeconomic factors. Although I’m happy for KOF’s success as a whole, its reputation as a money printer vaporized the NeoGeo’s game diversity. Especially for a platform as versatile and timeless as the NeoGeo, the fact that most of its library was stunted by this series is really disappointing. If you look at game release lists, there’s a clear divide before and after King of Fighters ’94—outside of the Metal Slugs and third-party puzzle games there’s not a lot for non-fighters to enjoy in the NeoGeo’s second half.

Similar to King of the Monsters a few weeks ago, I begrudgingly fired up ’98 as well as a few of the other ones over a few play sessions, expecting to be underwhelmed and frankly bored. But once again, through whatever combination of maturity, nostalgia and open-mindedness, I think I’ve found a new (old) series to be captivated by. Tough as nails for an old newcomer, but what a fun line of games this is!!

King of Fighters boasts an impressive amount of lore for an arcade series, though very little of it exists in-game. SNK really leveraged other media to tell its stories as for why all these cliques of characters came together. Music, anime, manga all came together decades ago in a way that would make the cinematic universes of today blush. Even more impressive is KOF’s consistent annual game output: even through SNK’s worst years a new game came out every year for a straight decade, from 1994 to 2003. Today, annual series like Call of Duty rely on rotating developer teams for this kind of schedule, but SNK did it all on their own.

King of Fighters games can be grouped together by their storylines. KOF ’95, ’96, and ’97 shared a story arc, which led to KOF ’98 being a celebratory ‘dream match’ entry. Story is cast aside and every character ever offered is available to play. This openness paired with tuned-up gameplay that comes from four years of experience made ’98 the king of kings. Personally, at least as of now, I know next to nothing about the lore, so a free-for-all game feels like a fine starting point.

Speaking of the gameplay, this might be where I got my biggest surprise. King of Fighters’ annual games are not roster updates with a samey feel. I wholly admit from the outside looking in, I was annoyed so many KOF games filled up the mini’s game list, ‘when you’ve played one you’ve played them all,’ right? But each game really is unique. Yes they’re the same at their core but specials are handled different, movesets are tweaked, new mechanics are added and removed, and presentations are robustly changed with each year. Playing through each KOF entry shows a progression that’s oddly intimate; you can really see how the developers thought, assessed, and moved through the series. You not just play through their design choices, you feel them. What may seem like an experimental addition one year may be removed, or expanded upon the next year. Given this was SNK’s main baby toward the end, being a part of a niche company’s niche output in a niche genre must have really felt special at the time. By 2003 they were making this game series, on ancient hardware that very few owned, for you.

Anyway yeah that’s great, but how did my fledgling game sessions go? Well first off, and this goes for every fighter I’m sure, I’m proudly playing on the easiest difficulties. These pose more than enough challenge for me, and I’ll never be competition ready. For a genre I’ll never be great at that’s totally fine. There’s literal dozens of characters to choose from, especially in this dream match game, each with their own full movesets to learn. Granted some do play similarly to others, and there really are only so many stick/button combinations to make. Again if this $250 home cartridge was understandably one of the only games you owned, you could easily get your money’s worth trying to master each character, up the difficulty scales, and eventually transition to the cabinet at your arcade/pizzeria and be ‘that guy.’ Cue the nerdy fame and glory. (‘I heard he even has that memory card and shows off the final boss…’ ‘I heard he actually has the home version, what is it like a thousand bucks…?’ ‘Jeez who would even buy that…’)

When I played the Capcom vs SNK games I found I stuck with the SNK characters more. So to finally play the games of their origin is exciting, and I’m sure I’m being total amateur hour here but my team mostly consisted of Iori, Kyo, and Mai, the characters from my past. King of Fighters matches always consist of 1vs1 matches of 3vs3 teams, which is a great way to see and play against the games’ huge rosters. It would be a shame to leave all the other characters on the table, so in future sessions and with other games I’ll try to diversify my teams. But it’s not so easy: KOF does not reward the button masher. To really get anywhere in the game, even on beginner difficulty, you gotta learn and commit the combos. Characters have basic moves as well as special moves, and super special/desperation moves on top of that. 

After getting nowhere just winging the controls, I pulled up movesets and spent an ordinate amount of time actually practicing the motions. They’re deceptively hard to pull off consistently, but this goes for any fighting game. I can think I’m doing the exact input it’s asking for, only for it to register every 10th time. It’s 100% a personal skill issue, and why fighters never clicked with me. But practice really does make perfect. Now I feel like I can get them to work every 5th time! By the end of this I might only get to every 3rd time, but I’m already at more than I expected of myself. And what a good call ordering that microswitched 8BitDo controller was!

King of Fighters ’98 may be the first KOF I cleared but I can’t wait to see which one becomes my favorite. If I have any complaint, I think the ring announcer comes off a little shrill, but that is nitpicking. It’ll be interesting to see how the other fighting series feel compared to this one. I dunno, the NeoGeo Mini may make a fighting fan out of me yet!

Mini-Gaming #005 - Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (Genesis)

Now here’s a beloved relic from my childhood! This game predates Tetris for me, and I consider it my very first puzzle game. Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine is one of the many re-skins of the long-running puzzle series Puyo Puyo. Although today the original name and characters are proudly used internationally, in the 90s the anime-centric series was perceived as a little too much for Western audiences to stomach. Nintendo decided to rebrand its Puyo release as part of the Kirby series, and Sega rebranded its as a Sonic game, more specifically from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. 

In this falling block puzzle game, your goal is to align four or more ‘beans’ of the same color causing them to disappear. Any beans resting above are affected by gravity and can drop in to make new color connections. As you can imagine, chain reactions are the name of this game, and successful chains will send proportional garbage beans (or ‘refugees’) to your opponent’s side of the field. New beans drop in faster as the game goes on, and if no more new beans can enter, the bottom drops out and the opponent wins. It’s simple to understand, tough to master, pleasant to look at, and devilishly addictive. Puyo Puyo is a series that continues strong to this day, and with this basic mechanic it’s easy to understand why.

Presumably, you play as Sonic in this game, though he makes no appearance in the game and is never mentioned once, not even buried in the manual! Instead, the stars of the show are literally the stars of the TV series: Dr. Robotnik and his band of sentient robots. In the main scenario mode you compete against 12 robots, and finally the doctor himself. TV viewers will recognize the three primary robots, Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts, as the gatekeepers of each third of the lineup. After beating each of them, the stage music changes and the difficulty noticeably jumps up. The remaining robots are much more obscure, most of which made their only appearance in the show’s first episode. (I theorize the game and show were developed at the same time, and the game assumed the show would use these secondary robots more often in episodes than they actually did.)

MBM is fondly remembered among its Puyo Puyo contemporaries for its diverse lineup of foes. The opponent robots come in all shapes and sizes, and the Genesis really shines with showing their emotions. Each stage starts above ground with a monologue displaying their personality. Some are calm while some are overconfident, but all of them have massive egos. You’ll really want to keep playing just to see who you encounter next. After their spiels, the camera moves underground to the bean dungeons and the game begins. Your opponent stares you down the entire time, subtly animated as they make their moves. If you seem to be having trouble, their expression changes to taunting happiness. But if they’re having a hard time, they humorously change to shock, anger, or disbelief. Defeating them shows one final expression that is wholly unique and true to the personality they’ve crafted through the whole match. Each robot has a fully realized beginning, middle, and end to your time with them, and a special hats off goes to the graphics department for the bright and cartoonish animations. Beating the game rewards a cast roll where you get one last, almost nostalgic look at these memorable robots.

The game plays great against the computer, but of course even more so against a friend. MBM is one of the Genesis’ premier head-to-head games with endless hours of fun to be had. What a smart move including two controllers with the Genesis Mini! Only as you sharpen your skills do you see the game’s only flaw, one that was immediately remedied in future games in the Puyo series. You can play the most perfect game you can, but if a huge wave of garbage is headed your way there is no way to stop it. You could even have a great chain reaction underway but the garbage will still overwhelm you afterward, dooming you to a loss. Future games would have an offset feature that let your combos break down impending garbage, nullifying enemy attacks and even sending it right back onto them, but MBM predates this rule.

So unfortunately, expert play breaks down to just creating the fastest and simplest 4 or 5-chain you can. Anything above a 5-chain will drop down more garbage than there is space on the board, guaranteeing an automatic win. This kind of takes the fun out of the back and forth of it, and I’ve tuned my play more for quicker 2 and 3-chains instead. Even a simple chain can drop just the right garbage in the right place to mess up your opponent.

For an extra challenge, I completed my playthrough on Hard and it was thrilling. (For the record I have cleared the scenario on Hardest before, but only once.) After each win, you’re given a password, except for the final stage where the password is replaced with an ‘ALL CLEAR.’ There’s something so cathartic about seeing that message, you’re so accustomed to seeing a password there it almost comes up like a fakeout. I also always turn the voice samples off—chain reactions are joined with ‘Yippee!’s and ‘Yee-Haw!’s in a rising pitch that sound garish and out of place. Just because the Genesis could do decent voice samples doesn’t always mean it should.

MBM does suffer from ‘first game syndrome’ a bit, with later games offering more favorable rule sets, but its top-notch presentation still makes it worth the occasional play. Puyo Puyo will always be Tetris’ eccentric cousin, and that really isn’t a bad thing.