Mega Man review

Mega Man the blue robot who can take the powers of his enemies, that´s a short description of Mega Man (Rock Man, japanese title) that I used when I was earlier when I was trying to tell my friends of this game. The game released in in december 1987 in north america and may 1990 in europe. This was actually not my first Mega Man game that I played, I started playing Mega Man 2.

Mega Man was thought to be an action arcade game that friends would compete against eachother for the highest highscore, however the game didn´t sell as good as the developers thought it would, it wasn´t until Mega Man 2 that the little blue bomber got the attention he deserved.

In Mega Man you take control of a blue little robot called Mega Man who was created by Dr. Light, you are off to fight against your old friends who have turned evil by Dr. Wily. However the game didn´t follow the traditional level order, instead it let´s you choose between 6 different levels right from the beginning. Each level had their own distinct look and music, but also they had their own robot master. There were 6 robot masters that needed to be beaten before the real adventure to get to Dr. Wily began. Cutman, Elecman, Fireman, Iceman, Gutsman and Bombman, they all had their own power that could Mega Man could be getting from them. My favourite is Cutman, not sure why but I really like his level and the boss battle.

Once you have killed all 6 robot masters Dr. Wily stage is accessible, his levels are a true test on the players skills, this is not an easy game, not by far. The player needs to check his/hers surroundings all the time, make difficult jumps on moving platforms while being shot at, Mega Man has a life bar and next to it you have your ammunition bar. If a player runs out of ammunition it´s empty but can be refilled with item drops from enemies (which are rarely seen).

This game started a series of 10 games to different consoles, a couple of other Mega Man series games included in them are Mega Man X and Mega Man Legends. The blue bomber has however yet to recieve a game that is doing him right in the later years of gaming history, except for Mega Man 9 and 10 that went back to the roots there haven´t been a mega man in many years that can compete with the NES games.

Summary
The game is brutal in difficulty but enjoyable because you can always try again. It´s fun to see how Mega Mans upgrades works and finding the right weapon against a difficult boss to see his life drop down to zero in mere seconds is as enjoyable as it can be. However Dr. Wilys stages are the most painful way to see the end of your adventure.

Overall Rating
7/10 It still holds up a tough challenge and the game and music is great to play in short bursts, my recomendation is getting this on 3DS and play it while you are on the move.

Wanna see the blue bomber in action? Click on this:

Donkey Kong Country Review!

Last sunday I decided to play through one of my favourite game on the snes. This game is a game that play every december in while waiting for christmas eve, Donkey Kong Country. This game defines quality in games. It got cool characters full of life, one of the best soundtracks in the gaming world and some awesome game mechanics. It also has some of the best graphics on the snes.

So lets begin describing the story, there are an Island where the Kong lives. The Kongs are the heroes of this game and consists of Donkey Kong (main protagonist), Diddy Kong (main protagonist aswell), Cranky Kong, Funky Kong and Candy kong. Their archenemy the Kremlins have stolen Donkey Kongs banana collection, ofcourse D.K and Diddy sets out to get them back from the Kremlins. The story aint very complex but that is somewhat expected from a platforming game from the 90s. 

The game mechanics are pretty simple aswell, you push B to jump, Y to roll and if you hold Y you run faster. The things that stood out however from other platforming games like Mario is that instead of upgrades such as a mushroom that will make you grow in size and take a extra hit you got your monkey friend Diddy Kong who is following you. This means that you start of playing as Donkey Kong and if you take a hit you change to Diddy Kong while DK is runnign out of picture. You can also swap who you want to play as anytime you like, if you have both monkeys with you. If the player runs out of monkeys he or she will loose an extra life. Why you would like to swap monkeys is because they are different from eachother. Donkey Kong who is a big gorilla, is strong and can jump kill bigger enemies that Diddy Kong would just bounce of from. While Diddy is smaller, faster and can jump higher. However that is not all, there are a couple of animal friends locked in boxes that the player can save and take control of. Rambi the rhino can jump on spikes and smash into Zingers without taking damage (Zinger is a bee like enemy), Engaurde the swordfish grants the player the ability to fight back under water, which could be fatal for the outcome in a level. Nonetheless, if you get hit while riding on a animal you will loose it, but you can easily get him back if you catch it before it runs down a cliff or something. The animals run around like Yoshi does in Super Mario World (if you have played it).

One of the strongest part of the game is the level design. Platforming has never been as fun as it is in DKC, it´s challenging but never feels impossible. I´ve lost countless with extra lives while trying to beat a level. Oh by the way did I tell you that every world has a boss fight? The bosses are huge animals who sits on a part of DKs banana collection. They are fun and kinda creative, they are often bigger versions of some common enemy. They are not so difficult once the strategy against them are learned. By the way there is one song in the game that is actually bigger then the whole game itself, it was way to big from the beginning to even have in the game however the developers really loved it so they somehow made it to work and I can only say thank God for that because it is one of my favourite songs from a video game, the track is called Aquatic Ambiance.

Summary
In Donkey Kong Country you run, jump, swim, blasts from barrels and ride minecarts to get from point a to point b. It´s a fun, sometimes stressful and unforgiving game but that manages to compete against Super Mario and Sonic. If you want more mayhem try out the cooperative gameplay with a friend, fun and challenging. It´s still as fun today as it were back in the 90s and you could listen to the music anywhere and still love it. The visuals are from an era where magical places where players got lost in how beautiful and riched detailed the world really were was something that was a big thing in games. I can start spotify and play Aquatic Ambiance and close my eyes and letting my thoughts wander away.

Overall
10/10, A better platforming game on the SNES is hard to come by, this is the top of it´s class.

Wanna see the game in action? Check this out:

Resident Evil Review

Resident Evil the game that many claims to be the first successfull survival-horror game. It first released for the Playstation console, but then later got ports to nintendo 64 aswell as pc. It has been remade into a completely new experience in Resident Evil (for gamecube) and Resident Evil HD remaster (xbox360/one, ps3/4 and pc). It was also released with another edition for the Playstation system with Resident Evil Directors Cut.

I was only nine years old when Resident Evil hit the shelves in europe. Me and my brother had been together with our parents to the capitol of sweden (Stockholm) for a shopping trip when we found this game. We were nervous and excited on the trip back home which took around two hours, we couldn´t wait to get home to be able to play this game. When we got home we put the disc into the playstation, sat down quiet infront of the tv, and it began. The first thing we got greeted to was this man walking in a corridor and the camera chased after him, the man turned around and started to scream. The screen went black and then the blood sprayed our scream and we heard a voice saying "Resident Evil". We knew already there that this was something new, nothing could compare with this at the time.

This was 21 years ago, much has changed, we no longer use these "tank" controls or fixed camera angles. Our characters we take the role of playing today moves faster, aims faster, shoots faster. We are not used today with this slow paced fear. But I must admit that still today the fear of being eaten by a zombie still hunts me. However will the game still be as good today as it were 1996?

Let start with the story, time to pretend we don´t know anything from the other Resident Evil games. The game starts with giving the player some background information about, strange murders where the victim seems to been eaten, mutilated and then shifts to a helicopter with the elite force S.T.A.R.S. who are sent to the outskirts of Raccoon City where the murders originated from to investigate. The Alpha team who consist of six members (two members the player can control) lands in a forest for continue investigation on the ground. It doesn´t take long until the group is ambushed by a flock of zombie dogs also called Cerberus. One of the members dies and the rest of the group retreats to a nearby mansion. While inside one member is missing (changes who´s missing depending on who you are playing as). They now need to try and find a way to escape the mansion but also the origin of the monsters.
 The game has some cliché moments in the story and the voice acting is terrible, it is often considered as one of the worst acting in a game. Appearently the voice acting in japanese were so bad so they scratched it and kept the american voice acting even in the japanese version. The members of most important is Jill and Chris because these two the player can choose to play and the gameplay will be different depending on who you choose to play as. Chris doesn´t have as much inventory space as Jill but he can take more damage, Jill have a lockpick and Chris has a lighter for starting items. Jill gets back up from Barry and Chris gets "help" from Rebecca.

That was little about the story lets check the game mechanics and controls. So you push forward to walk forward and back to go backwards, however you can´t sidestep or walk at the same time you are aiming your gun. This made the term "tank controls" to come alive. you can run and you will not get tired from running. The game only offers a certain amount of ammunition, weapons and health items so the player need to be sure that it is absolutely necessary to kill an enemy or if he really should use the health item. You don´t have infinite with save oppertunity either, first you need to find a ink ribbon and then you need to find a typewriter to be able to save. And ofcourse there´s a limited amount of ink ribbons aswell.
So the mansion and the other areas aswell in the game are filled with puzzles and items to pick up and solve, books to read to get a better grip of the story aswell as enemies to kill the player.

This is the game that set the tone for the upcoming horror games generations to come. The game didn´t offer just one story line but two depending on who you choosed to play as, it had multiple endings and secrets that could only be unlocked if you met the requirement after you completed the game.  This made the game worth to replay.

Now in 2015 the graphic is really outdated, the voice acting is even worse BUT the gameplay is gold, this is where things started for my horror fascination in games, this is a big title that is still fun as hell to play today, it is challenging for newcomers and veterans alike. It takes around 5-7 hours to complete first time around, but can easily be completed in 2 hours for hardcore fans.

Overall 9/10 - A classic that never dies.

And as always here are some of my playthroughs of the game with Jill and Chris.

Mike Tyson´s Punch Out! Review.

The next game I played on the list was Mike Tyson´s Punch Out! This is and old game but gold.
It´s kinda hard to get a hold on for the NES because there are two releases of the this game, first we have Mike Tyson´s Punch Out! and then we have the regular Punch Out! and in the latter we have Mr. Sandman instead of Mike Tyson as the last opponent.

In this game you control a young boxer named Little Mac, and boy is he small. Your opponents are often twice the size of your character. But that doesn´t stop Mac from entering the ring. You got five different attacks, low left punch, low right punch, high left and right punch and uppercut. You can only do uppercut attacks when you have a star in your inventory and you use by pressing the "start" button. You get stars from hitting your opponent when the "shine" which means your are hitting them with a counter attack or similar. It doesn´t matter if you use your right or left attack but it differs if you use lower or upper attack, sometimes you need to hit the opponent in the head to be able to combo attack him.

You also have a heart symbol in your inventory which represents your stamina. If it goes down to 0 you´ll get kinda paralyzed and you are only able to dodge incoming attacks before it refills. So under that time you are unable to hit your opponent.

This game is all about memorise the movement of your opponent, counter attack and use uppercuts in the right time. If you go all in and just mash the buttons you will most certainly fall to the ground failing to win the round.

So let´s look over the extra life mechanic, you can get knocked down twice in the same round, if you get knocked down three times it´s over, you can´t get up. When you get knocked down the first or second time you will have to button mash the "A" and "B" buttons to get back up. One round has a three minute timer, however it goes a bit faster than normal seconds so I would say you got 2 minutes a round. If you fail to win a match you get sent back to the opponent before the one failed at, if you loose again it´s over and you need to restart the circuit. Don´t worry because at the end of every circuit Little Mac runs behind his trainer dressed in a pink training dress, and at the end of that cutscene you get a password which is the old way of using save points. However the password is very long so you better get paper and pen to write it up.

The game starts off pretty easy, just to get a hint on the mechanics of the game, the first opponent is Glass Joe, which has a 01-99 win/loss ratio, so winning over him shouldn´t be a big of a problem. But the second opponent is more of challenge for those new to the game and the third can be a real pain in the but for newcomers.

This is a game I played alot together with my father, we got pretty far in the game, but never got to fight Mike Tyson, I can probably say that will be the case again, because later in the game the difficulty is a real pain, the game is however still fun to play, challenging yes but fun. The game still holds up for todays standards, not the graphical department but the gameplay, it´s a fun game to pick up, play a couple of matches. You can now buy it on nintendos E-shop for the 3DS, I really recommend this game. Don´t forget that the soundtrack of this game brings awesomeness to new level.

Overall 9/10

Wanna see how the game looks? Check it out here: Lets Play!

Little Nemo: The Dream Master review.

I started playing Little Nemo: The dream master yesterday, it´s one of those nes games that I have in my shelf but never played through when I were a kid. Then I thought to myself that someday I need to complete these old games, how could I call myself a gamer if I don´t?

So a little backstory to the game, Little Nemo: the dream master is a game released by Capcom (the dudes behind Resident Evil and Mega Man series) and is based on the japanese animated film Little Nemo: Adventures in slumberland.

The game takes place in Nemos own surreal dreams where he is supposed to save slumberland from the Nightmare King. Nemo meets with different animals that he can take controll over such as a Gorilla that can climb walls and punch enemies, a Bee that can fly and shoot stingers and a Frog that doesn´t move to fast while going but can jump high and crush enemies under him.

I played this game pretty much when I was younger and one thing that I remembered was that it was pretty difficult, even by NES standards. And that was something that I noticed this time around aswell. Even as we speak I haven´t been able to beat the last level of Nightmare World. It´s not that it is difficult due to random enemie movement (well that´s just a little part of it) but it´s surprisingly difficult due to your own clumpiness as the player. If you die you know why you died, it´s not because of poor programing. What I mean is that multiple times I know I had only myself to blame for my deaths. But it never felt impossible to beat and everytime you get further in the level you got some adrenaline and a feeling of desire to see more.

So you start of with having three extra lives and three health bars. If all extra lives are emptied you return to the title screen, where you can continue. This allows you continue from the beginning of the level you were at. At your disposal as weapons you only have candy that you can throw at enemies to stun them, this is not however killing them and they are only stunned for a short while. However the candy is used to get your animal friends asleep so you can ride them, if you don´t get them asleep they will hurt you aswell. Much later in the game you also get a morning star in your arsenal that is required to kill the bosses.


So the environments in the game really feel like a little kids dream, the first level you start off playing is in some sort of forest, where the mushrooms have grown up to tree length. You are later entering a water level, toy store and your own house. I really enjoyed to the level design and environments, always wanting me to see what the next level would bring. However there are some autoscrolling events in the game, and the first one is in the toy store where you have to ride this toy train through the whole level. This was surprisingly hard and it took me some trial and error runs before getting past that area. To be able to advance to next level the player has to find several keys to unlock the door to next dreamworld. The number of keys differ from level to level, mostly they aren´t that hard to find if you explore the level (which you really should) and they are always in the same place.

The soundtrack has some nostalgic moments that brought me back to my childhood. It was an nice and really set the tone for the level you were at. It´s one of the better NES soundtracks.

Overall the game was difficult but fun ride which should´nt be overlooked in any NES collection. If you haven´t tried the game yet you really should, and if you haven´t beaten it give it another go and I promise you won´t be sorry for doing so.

Overall score: 8/10

update: I have now beaten the game, the nightmare king has fallen! The boss fight itself wasn´t that overly difficult once you learned his patterns. But challenging never the less.

And here´s the video of me playing the game, be aware I curse sometimes Lets play!

New schedule for fall 2015!

Ok so I have been thinking alot lately on how to make my twitch streams better, cause I have this pile of games that only grows bigger the order I get that I want to show you guys in the stream. And then we have requests of games from you the viewers that you want to see me play. So I thought to myself that the best way is to have some sort of schedule that will be working for the coming weeks in fall 2015. So i started to look over the games that I want to play, the games you are demanding and so on. So we got resident evil series, new games such as Batman arkham knight, Witcher 3 and Eso and we also got dark souls 2. What my channel on twitch was all about from the beginning was good old retro games such as super mario bros, donkey kong country and mega man. So the schedule I have put up is as follows:

Mondays - Retro Mondays, here I will play games not younger than gamecube and ps2 era.

Tuesdays - Donated requests, here we'll be having games that you guys want me to play as, however a request will only be accepted with a donation/follow

Wednesday - Fright night - on wednesdays I will be playing horror games.

Thursdays - anything can happen thursday, as the title says, here anything or any game can be played.

Fridays - 1001 games that needs to be played/games from my collection, ok so this is where things get interesting, either I'll go through my book "1001 games that you need to play before you die" or I play the next game on my game collection list starting of with NES and then SNES games and so on.

Saturdays - Games that needs to be beaten, so here I choose a game that I still haven't beaten and try my best to be able to beat it.

Sundays - Forget about monday, this will be a relaxed stream day, playing anything just to be able to forget about that both monday and winter is coming.

This schedule will be starting next week, that is week 32. And remember that the real stream time is 9pm gmt+1 (Stockholm timezone) til approximately 11:30pm (depends on viewers/new followers/donations). This time is for sunday til thursdays due to work in the week, on weekends the starting time is mostly the same however end time is farther away, so the end time for streams on weekends is approximately 3 am or 4 am.

If you have any suggestions on the schedule or any sort of input, please let me know in the comments below.

As always dont forget to swing by Stream.