Super Return of the Jedi (SNES)

 

An amazing end to a saga.

Box art for Super Return of the Jedi

So, I was probably a little misleading at the end of my rant on Super Empire Strikes Back. Whilst it is true that I didn’t beat Return of the Jedi for many years, this wasn’t because the game is overwhelmingly hard, in fact I would probably say this is potentially easier than the original… Up to a point. Return of the Jedi takes the improvements since Empire and adds an additional level of polish to some things. Double jumping isn’t dependent on you jumping from the ground, allowing you to fall off a ledge and save yourself with a quick double jump, checkpoints in the game are now represented by a collectible R2D2, enemy positioning isn’t as malicious, metal debris from enemies doesn’t seem to hurt you or push you around (If it did I never noticed it), and most bosses don’t come across as frustratingly spongy.

Luke is on the Forest Moon of Endor, R2D2 is seen as a collectable checkpoint

So, all in all, Return of the Jedi is a very decent time, the things that made Empire strikes back so hard seem to have been smoothed out a bit and the balance of power seems to have shifted back to the hands of the player. The only possible downgrade in this game that I can see is that Blaster power-ups don’t carry over between levels, so every time you start a new level, you are back to the basic weak blaster. Chewbacca and Han also must endure this awful tier of weaponry, no longer starting with the tier 2 flame weapon. Though Chewbacca keeps his spin attack, really making the blaster redundant, and any level you can play as Han you can play as Chewbacca. So, being able to pick between different characters is back, which certainly helps with the difficulty. Some levels only give you a single character to play as, this is more prevalent towards the latter half of the game when Luke is aboard the Death Star. But during the Jabba’s palace segment, we usually have about three characters to play as. Luke, Chewbacca, Han and in some instances Leia.

Most levels give you multiple characters to play as, now including Leia!

Yes, they made Princess Leia a playable character, and she comes in flavours! The first few levels she is in her bounty hunter disguise, where she uses a stick that functions in a similar way to the light saber. There is also Slave Leia, available for Jabba’s sail barge level, where she has a short-range melee attack with her chain, and has Chewbacca’s spin ability. There is Rebel Leia as well, available on Endor and… I don’t think she has any special abilities; she just has a blaster. Leia in her first two forms has a special ability that if you hold down the attack button for a few seconds, she will start to flash and releasing the attack button she will shout out an energy wave which just destroys… Well… Everything. It seems to reliably remove about 3 little orbs from a boss’ health bar. It is ridiculously overpowered. Talking of overpowered, you also play as Wickett the Ewok during some Endor stages, he has a little bow and arrow which seems to do some serious damage. I mean, the Ewoks do destroy the Stormtroopers in the movie, so I guess it is to reflect that.

Leia in her Boushh Bounty Hunter disguise fighting Jabba's guards

The game isn’t without its difficulty, in fact the first stage is a bit of a beginner’s trap, as it immediately throws you into a vehicle section where you race across Tatooine in a speeder and must jump across bottomless pits. This is a very different Tatooine from Super Star Wars. You don’t have a huge amount of time to react to the first jump and chances are you will fail it, a couple of times, as you probably won’t realise you want to hold down a button for the boosters and hold that the down button during jumps to slow down your descent as you jump. Graciously, the other vehicle sections aren’t as bad and are quite comfortable, except for one… And that one, I feel it is important that it is so challenging. So, we have a speeder bike chase in the forests of Endor and some Millenium Falcon sections where you shoot down TIE fighters. But then we get to the big one, and honestly why I never beat this game as a child. Return of the Jedi has a very visually impressive first-person flight segment into and out of the Death Star as its final levels. Flying into the Death Star is not that bad, you have TIE pursuing you that will drop shield and health pick ups as you move deeper and deeper into the Death Star. But then we get to the last stage of the entire trilogy. Escaping an exploding Death Star.

The first level of this game is a Mode7 vehicle level!

The Death Star escape during Return of the Jedi is a test of endurance, reactions and fumbling with the relatively awkward first-person flying controls. I’ll give everyone a tip for free, pressing select will cycle through some different control schemes for the Falcon, at the top of the screen it will tell you which one you have selected, and I recommend using “Flat”. With Flat you can use the L and R buttons to roll the Falcon in that direction and that should be your focus in this section. Essentially, during the escape, you need to be moving at top speed to escape fiery explosion behind you, scraping walls will slow you down and you’ll eventually start losing health from the explosion as it catches up with you. The biggest challenge of this section is that it is a depth perception problem, as you move between “zones” and need to roll, it is hard to know when you need to start rolling without hitting walls and losing speed. Eventually you need to also move yourself to avoid walls that are sticking out a little bit. I make it sound relatively easy, but it really isn’t when you are in control. This stage alone was the reason I never beat this game, I could get all the way to the end and fall at the last hurdle, and my understanding was that this was a common experience for people who played this game back in the day. If the section was in third person, it might be easier, as you’d see where the Falcon is spatially, but the first person view makes it much harder to comprehend.

A snippet of the visually confusing mess that is the final level of the game

There are a few other challenging levels in this game, the Rancor boss can be surprisingly tough depending on which character you play as, Luke has a miserable time with this boss and requires a ridiculous amount of patience to beat. I have beaten the Rancor as Luke once, as a requirement on RetroAchievements, but I would probably be sticking to Chewbacca for the fight. Han fares quite well, with his grenades, but Chewbacca is the go-to for any stage where you can pick him. That’s not true, Han is very good for the boss of the shield generator on Endor, his grenades can end the boss fight incredibly quickly and can help avoid a death spiral there. The shield generator stage is the hardest stage in the game, it is the longest and most complicated. Graciously, there is a means to farm lives on this stage, but only at the first check point. Lives are not as plentiful in this game as they are in Empire, but I will be totally honest, there is no real need to farm lives unless you want a safety blanket.

Han fighting the Shield Generator Core

Much like the films, I highly recommend that you play these games in order as part of your overall experience with them. I personally feel that Return of the Jedi is my favourite, even if it had left this terrible scar on my gaming history. Finally beating this game and completing the entire trilogy has been a rather cathartic experience for me as these games really were a hallmark of my childhood, not just from a game perspective but also from a film one. Playing through these has been a blast from the past and I think anyone who was a Star Wars fan, especially of that original trilogy really should give these a look at. The Force will be with these games, always.

And to cap off the series, this is the final message before credits roll

Super Empire Strikes Back (SNES)

 

And this Empire strikes hard

Box art for Super Empire Strikes Back

So, I feel that LucasArts may have taken the outcome of the Empire Strikes Back a bit too literally when it came to developing this game. This game is short of merciless, but we will get into that in significantly more detail. Get ready to strap yourselves in, because this is going to be a rant. But let’s start with the positives, try to make this a nice constructive criticism sandwich.

Firstly, Super Empire Strikes Back does what every sequel game should try to do, make slight improvements on the original, and I feel it does this quite well. We have a longer game, that does a great job following the story beats of Empire and there is now a password system, meaning that if you do game over, you can continue, near enough, from where you left off. Not all levels have a password, with some passwords putting you at the start of an act of levels in some instances. I didn’t mention this in the original Super Star Wars, but in that game, you have two types of jump, a normal jump, and a super jump. The super jump requires you to also hold up on the D-Pad as you jump, and it is a higher jump. That’s thankfully been scrapped for a double jump mechanic. Better still, when playing as Luke, and using his light saber, which is a more important tool in this game, when you double jump, the light saber spins around you and functions as an attack. He did this with the super jump in the first game, but this feels more practical and this will probably be your primary attack with the light saber. You can now block and deflect certain projectiles, which is great and adds some depth and strategy to how you take on enemies.

Luke on the planet Hoth, riding a Tauntaun and defending himself against local wildlife

This provides a decent segue, enemies, my god, this game throws them at you in droves. If we were to compare the first level of this game to the predecessor, both games can be quite dense with enemies. Both have Mynocks, but the Dune Sea has scorpions that are easy blaster fodder, even the wamp rats can be bullseye’d with relative ease. But the icy wastes of Hoth, which I thought were, by and large, devoid of life has boar like enemies, snowballs, killer fauna, weird little icy sprites that leap out of the snow and instant death pits filled with spikes. This isn’t like Beggar’s Canyon back home, Hoth is out to kill you, and it will. Graciously for the overground Hoth levels, you do get a Tauntaun who you can ride, and damage boost your way to the end of the level. Don’t both trying to fight things on the back of the Tauntaun, it isn’t worth your time.

Luke fighting a Wompa Snowbeast, double jumping over it to avoid its ice breath attack

Enemies in places can be frustratingly bulky, if you don’t have an upgraded Blaster and using your light saber, it can still take upwards of 3 or 4 hits with that to kill the enemy. Chances are you’ll soak up more damage killing enemies than you’ll get as a return reward. This game is also stingier with those health pick-ups. We’ll stick to Hoth for the time being, but there are small bat like enemies, they don’t drop health, because in this game you are not allowed nice things. Enemies also seem to spawn endlessly, at least, that is how it feels. There seems to be a magic number for how many times enemies will respawn to continue harassing you, and it is between 4 to 8 times. So, there is opportunity to farm hearts at times and other power-ups but there are plenty of times where you will find yourself coming out worse for wear. Other power-ups drop based on a random percent chance, so I hope you are not counting on a thermal detonator or a shield item to help you overcome a certain point. Admittedly, I have just come off the back of playing a run on Jedi difficulty, where you take significantly more damage and start with less health. By the time this has gone live, I am hoping that I would have completed my Brave mode run for my YouTube channel, and this particularly hang up will be less prominent.

The Battle of Hoth level, in glorious Mode7!

What else do we have? Oh, yes, the awful vehicle sections in this game. The vehicle sections are designed to frustrate and feel more a dice roll than a display of skill. Firstly, we have two mode7 vehicle levels, the Battle of Hoth in the snow speeder. You fly over the rolling landscape, that repeats the terrain layout regardless of what direction you are flying in, so you will have these hills, that make it impossible to hit your targets, but they can seemingly hit you, and because you need to line yourself up with your target, it can be hard to see if they are shooting at you, whilst you try to shoot at them. Chances are you will be taking a lot of damage even taking down little speeder bikes. The lack of any real depth perception also makes it hard, so chances are you will also be colliding with things. Graciously, dying in the Battle of Hoth doesn’t reset your progress, so for the 3 “missions” you have, if you destroy 1 AT-ST and then die, the one you destroyed still counts. The Battle of Hoth is frustrating, but the Cloud City encounter as Luke in his X-Wing is just abysmal. When I did my Jedi difficulty run of this game, I came into this stage with about 40 lives, and I left with 11. Some runs on this level were over in about 30 seconds. The lack of depth perception, combined with the viewing angle you have makes this a truly miserable experience, not only that, but you can also go under the sea of clouds, which removes your HUD when you are under there. The X-Wings blasters don’t seem to do a huge amount of damage, so you can try spamming proton torpedoes, but they can be difficult to aim. All the while, Cloud Cars are flying circles around you, crashing into you or just shooting you from where you can’t see. You must destroy 15 of these sods, and unlike Hoth, it is 15 of them in one life.

The level immediately after the battle of Hoth, the entire Snowspeeder counts as Luke's hitbox in this section.

As if Mode7 vehicles weren’t your only vehicular nightmare, you also have two side scrolling sections, one on a speeder bike and one in the snow speeder. The speeder bike one isn’t so bad, as you whizz along shooting enemy bikes before they can shoot you or drop mines that box you in a little. But the snow speeder section is torture. Considering that it is where Luke is approaching the AT-AT, and is shot down (In the movie), the fact you need to survive an onslaught of enemies with a hit box that takes up way too much screen real estate, and enemies fly behind you, where you can’t hit them… I had a game over here, I burnt through about 20 lives on my first run of a 1 continue clear of this game (On Jedi, more fool me). The best part is, if you manage to get to the point where Luke bails out, you better not die, as then you must do the snow speeder section again, and this game throws its most devious enemy at you. Grenade troopers.

Luke attempting to land a jump between two grenade troopers whilst a jetpack trooper harasses him

Grenade troopers are storm troopers with shields and they toss grenades at you, as they throw the grenade, they open themselves up for attack, unless you get behind them. Which can be tricky, as chances are, as you try to jump over them, they are throwing a grenade at you as well. These enemies are placed in some of the most obnoxious places known to man, either on small platforms they take up completely, or used in tandem with other enemies that harass you and limit your mobility. I say the grenade troopers are the worst, your biggest foe in this game is metal debris. When most mechanical things are destroyed it explodes, shedding metal debris, the shards of metal debris can hurt you and push you around. You better believe you will be pushed into pits because of this. This also impacts the grenades the troopers throw at you. The original game did this as well, but it is far less noticeable in that game.

It's not all suffering, just mostly, each character you play as has some new tools in their arsenal. Luke eventually gains force powers, which he needs to find during the Dagobah stages, admittedly, that is way after a lot of the harder Luke stages. Notable force powers include Heal, Levitation, Freeze and Mind Control. Mind Control works well against Storm Troopers, when you approach them with this power active, they conveniently face the opposite direction. A perfect tool to use against the grenade troopers. Freeze freezes everything on screen and you can defeat them in a single hit. Levitation allows you to float upwards, this force power is one of the most useful, especially during the last couple of stages. And Heal, well, that one is self-explanatory. There are a few other powers, including saber throw, deflect, slow down, invisibility. A lot of the time you’ll probably have heal prepped and ready, as that is the most useful one for boss fights and trying to get through levels.

Luke on Dagobah, learning different force powers, in his force selection menu he has levitation selected

Han and Chewbacca also get some new moves, Han can collect and throw grenades, like the ones the grenade troopers throw, and Chewbacca gets an amazing spin attack, where he double lariats everything into oblivion. During his spinning, he is also invincible to damage. Shame we only get to use Chewbacca twice in this game, and due to his abilities were much easier than the other levels around it. Unlike the first game, you don’t get to pick your characters, as the levels do their best to stick to the plot and using the plot relevant character. If I could use Chewbacca for everything, I most definitely would have, but sadly about 75% of the game is spent playing as Luke and his rubbish starting blaster and not having useful force powers until his last 3 levels. Also, I should double back quicky to talk a little about the double jump, if you fall off a ledge you can’t perform the second jump, the second jump can only be done as part of a normal jump. This is annoying at times as some platforming would probably be easier if you just rolled off the platform and jumped mid-fall.

Chewbacca delivering his double lariat special attack on some Jet troopers

Another change, that I personally do not like, is bosses no longer have a bar of health similar to your health bar with their name above it. I liked this in Super Star Wars, how else would I know that the beast in the Sandcrawler was Lava Beast Jawenko? Or that the Womp Rat at the end of Valley of Bantha was indeed mutant. Boss health bars are now displayed as balls of non-descript value. Sure, the old health bar system probably has some weirdness in values as well, but the newer style is more frustrating. For some bosses, hitting them once doesn’t remove a ball, in fact sometimes you need to hit them multiple times to reduce the balls by a half. Yeah, a half. Bosses in this game can be frustratingly tanky, and this doesn’t consider that some bosses health can’t be directly reduced until you have destroyed other parts of the boss. Super Star Wars did this with one of the Mos Eisley levels, but in that case, it wasn’t as annoying as the creatively named Habogad, the Dagobah swamp monster. Habogad is the probably the hardest boss in the game, most other difficult bosses have some relatively straight forward cheese strategies, usually involving taking a thermal detonator into the fight. I am grateful that no maverick decided that the Super Star Wars Trilogy would go for no-damage boss achievements for RetroAchievements, otherwise I would scream at some of the bosses.

Luke fighting the Wompa Snow Beast boss

Despite the game relentlessly flogging you, it does give you several opportunities to farm for lives. Lives were not as prevalent in Super Star Wars, but Empire tends to have them in groups of two or more. In fact, early on there is a secret with four lives, allowing you to farm them. Dagobah stage where you fight Habogad has about three lives hidden throughout the stage. So, you’ll probably find yourself inadvertently farming them, providing you are on a stage that would allow you to farm them. But those gaps between the chances to farm can be quite tense as you find yourself dropping lives, Empire is a game that loves to put you in death spirals, and I didn’t mention this in the Super Star Wars either, but you don’t know when and where the check points will trigger, some stages are very long, and even getting to the boss doesn’t guarantee you will restart just before the boss if you die. In some cases, this is good, as it gives you an opportunity to potential back track a little bit and nab some power-ups, but even then, that can be quite risky.

I don’t hate Super Empire Strikes Back, as that leads to suffering and we know where that takes us. In fact, I enjoy the game quite a bit when it isn’t kicking my butt. The improvements that have been from the original cannot be overstated, I would say that even the general look of the game is just much better, the visuals in this game feel like a bit of a step-up with more detailed environments. Levels can feel quite overwhelming as they are not as linear as the first game some with slightly alternative routes or dead ends that take some effort to get to. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the hardest game in the trilogy. Playing this game on Jedi difficulty is not recommended, unless you are trying to prove a point. Beating this game on easy or brave is an accomplishment enough, and even if the game is openly hostile towards the player, there is a sense of pride and relief as you beat levels. The game is not impossible, but there will be a lot of lives lost and continues used until you finally beat this game for the first time. Though, would you believe that I beat this game way before I finally beat Super Return of the Jedi?

After finishing Super Empire, the game prompts you go out and buy Super Return of the Jedi to finish the saga

Super Star Wars (SNES)

The Force is Strong with this one

The Box Art for Super Star Wars

I think being a child born after the release of Star Wars almost guaranteed that you were going to grow up with it in some capacity. My Dad’s side of the family were particularly into it, in that my Uncle had a decent amount of the toys, including the old AT-AT and said Uncle also has a son called Luke, I can only assume because of his love for Star Wars. As a child, we had the black box VHS’, the digitally remastered versions, before they did the Special Editions with the added tweaks, such as that weird Jabba scene in A New Hope or the worm-like mouth on the Sarlacc Pit Monster. I should see if my parents still have all those editions in the loft… But yes, as a child I grew up with Star Wars very much entrenched into me, and you better believe this extended to the video games.

I am sure I have mentioned this a few times somewhere, but this is one of the few American SNES games I owned as a child, in fact, this was the first one. I remember the cheap looking little adaptor we had for it, which was a thing looking piece of plastic with two slots on it. One on top, and one at the back, there was a label stuck to it, the label indicated that Star Wars needed to go on the top slot, and the back slot specifically said Street Fighter 2, which we also had. For the longest time as I child, I thought it was a requirement that we used Street Fighter 2 in the adaptor. Even to the point where when we got a newer adaptor, I made sure we used Street Fighter 2 as the bypass cart.

Luke fighting Womp Rats in the Dune Sea

Super Star Wars, I have mostly gushy praise for, as far as video game adaptations go, I think this one and the rest of the trilogy, are perfect. Everything from the opening title crawl when you start a new game, the sprite work, the music, the voice samples, the sound of you swinging the lightsaber. It is all just divine. Sure, Ishambard, but what about the gameplay? I could say it is faultless, but each game has their quirks that I will talk about separately, because they deserve that much. Let’s focus on Super Star Wars, which is the adaptation of A New Hope. This is the game where everything is at its most rough, and even then, the quality of this game is stellar. The game has decently challenging gameplay, with mostly fair platforming challenges. I think there are probably three instances of the game where the platforming can be frustrating, and admittedly they are all in the first act of the game.

The game offers good gunplay as your primary means of attacking. Each character has a blaster, that can be upgraded by finding blaster power-ups, some of them hidden, some of them out in the open. There are 5 levels of blaster power in total, and honestly, as nice as the final stage is, I find the seeker weapon to be the most useful, even if it does have some behavioural quirks, like tracking projectiles it can’t destroy. The initial starting blaster is infuriatingly weak, this is a trend across the board for the trilogy, and dying at any point during a stage will reset your blaster power. Graciously, for Super Star Wars, when you play as Chewbacca or Han you start with the tier 2 blaster. That was always something I really enjoyed about the game; it allowed you to play as different characters after you unlock them. In this game they pretty much play the same, though Chewbacca’s hitbox is probably larger, but he does start with a little more health than Han or Luke. Luke also gets a Light Saber which is… Okay at best. It does decent damage, but the range is short. You’re more likely going to be taking damage as you attack things, stick to the blasters, this game doesn’t require sophisticated weaponry.

Luke Joyriding in Tatooine, blasting Jawa in his speeder

The game itself follows the core aspects of the story, changing only a couple of things up. The first level is the Dune Sea, Luke fights the Sarlacc Pit Monster and ends up finding C3-PO at the escape pod crash site, where he tells you that R2D2 was kidnapped by Jawa. I mean, it’s not film plot accurate, but gives perfectly good reasons for the levels that follow. Between most levels there is a short narrative sequence to progress the plot, with some decent artwork to go with it. Besides the 2D platformer there are a few vehicle sections that utilise Mode7 and for Super Star Wars, these work, for the most part. The Death Star battle is a bit of a confusing mess where depth perception is more of a concept and trying to avoid enemy shots is experimental. The final Trench Run is quite cool, if potentially overwhelming, but if you focus on shooting down enemy shots you will be fine.

Luke fighting Lava Beast Jawenko in the Sand Crawler

Super Star Wars can be challenging, especially on higher difficulties. There are a few moments where a death can lead to a bit of a death spiral, as some sections of the game really benefit you having a couple of upgrades. One particularly rough encounter is the Sandcrawler and the boss of that, Lava Beast Jawenko is a tough fight, where if you die and must come back with the level 2 Blaster, it is a bit of a crapshoot if you’ll kill him before he kills you. Sure, you can try to jump over his attacks, but that can be quite challenging as the range and speed of his lava shots is seemingly random. Dying and getting a game over won’t help you, as using a continue will put you at the mid-level checkpoint and not the start of the level. Another potential death spiral is the boss for the Cantina stage, do you remember that weird monster that is on the space chess board that is on the Millenium Falcon. I mean, there is a bunch of them, but there is one that R2D2 uses to defeat one of Chewbacca’s pieces. Yeah, he’s the boss of the Cantina stage, and he pulls no punches. Dying against him sets you back a little bit, but you’ll be on very few resources. Easily the hardest boss in the game. Everything after that is not as bad, though this is coming from someone who played and beat this game a lot. Don’t be surprised if you don’t make it past the Sandcrawler on your first play of this game, but this is a game where patience and perseverance will get you far. You might see a timer in the top corner, but you can let that run down to zero without penalty, a fact that I only learnt the recently, the timer is only for bonus points. Some stages and some areas have endlessly respawning enemies, this is quite helpful as almost every enemy will drop health restoring pickups in this game. So, using them to slowly regain health is not a bad strategy at times, and might even be mandatory in certain situations.

Chewbacca fighting the Kalhar Boss Monster in the Mos Eisley Cantina

Overall, it is a relatively short experience, at a guess I would say it would clock in at about an hour, providing you don’t fall into any death spirals. The shortness isn’t a bad thing, Super Star Wars doesn’t come with a password system, unlike later entries. When I was a kid, I only ever played this game on Easy mode, it is only this year that I took the plunge and played through the game on Jedi, which did take a couple of hours as I was struggling with the Cantina boss and the Valley of the Bantha. But what I will say is, if you were or still are a Star Wars fan, Super Star Wars is a game I highly recommend you check out, perhaps that is my personal attachment to this game and Star Wars as a whole speaking. Even though this one I had beaten several times as a child, it still brought me great joy to get to the blow up the Death Star and see that message, “Great shot kid, that was one in a million”.

Luke has just blown up the Death Star and Han sends him this message

Duke Nukem Advance (GBA)

 

Hail to the portable king, baby

Box art for Duke Nukem Advance, it uses the same artwork as Duke 3D

So, when you think about the Gameboy Advance and the kinds of games you would play on it, you might be thinking platformers like Mario, JRPG like the classic ported Final Fantasy games but something you probably wouldn’t think about are First Person Shooters. There are several FPS games on the GBA, much to my surprise. From Doom, which still stands as one of my favourite ways to play Doom on a console (At least until the modern Unity and Nightdive ports), to 007 Nightfire, Serious Sam and, today’s subject matter, the king of 90’s FPS, Duke Nukem.

Now, I had heard that this game was pretty good, but when I booted it up, I was a little hesitant. The game was brought to us by an Australian developer, Torus Games, who made the port of Doom 2 for the GBA, which stands as my least favourite way to play Doom on a console! The original Doom on GBA was quite impressive and worked quite well, but Doom 2 is just frustrating more than anything else. I must give them credit that they put Doom 2, in pretty much its entirety, onto the GBA and whilst two maps were split in two due to their size, it still had pretty much everything else, including the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind encounters, which were absent from the Doom ports based off the Atari Jaguar maps.

Duke at Area 51 using his desert eagle to fight Alien grunts

Enough Doom, though, let’s talk Duke. Duke Nukem for GBA is a totally new and standalone adventure for Duke. Aliens are growing a hybrid army on the earth and need to be stopped, so armed with a decent array of classic Duke 3D weapons and some compressed Duke lines he is once again off to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and you better believe he is all out of gum. Honestly, this game is incredibly solid, whilst there is a clunky way to aim vertically, there isn’t much of a need to, as vertical auto-aiming helps you deal with any height variation the game throws at you. Levels are designed incredibly competently to avoid sections where you need to fight with the auto-aiming. The controls are intuitive though the jumping can be a little bit awkward at times, graciously there is not many sections that require accurate platforming, most of the time will be spent running, strafing and blasting. Though, I did have some issues with the weapon selection, this was more of an issue with how the emulator was registering me pressing the select button, as it should cause a menu to drop down, and you can cycle through the weapons with the shoulder buttons. For myself, the menu would come down and immediately go back up and it was a bit of potluck if I managed to cycle to a new weapon.

Duke fighting a Pig Cop at a supermarket in Australia

But, yes, weapons! We get some classics and a few new ones. Duke’s classic shotgun, the RPG, pipe bombs, freeze ray and shrinker all make a return and feel just as good as the original game. Well, the pipe bombs can be a little difficult to aim and the range on them seems significantly smaller, so besides the pipe bombs, everything is good. We also have a new pistol, a desert eagle, it works as a last resort weapon. There is the MP5, which replaces the chain gun cannon from the original, but functions the exact same, spitting out lead making quick work of most of the enemies. For my playthrough it was my go-to weapon, mostly because I was struggling with cycling weapons effectively. Finally, there is the Lead Cannon, an upgrade to the shotgun that fires 4 shells at once, it’s… Serviceable, a bit overkill if I think about it. The shotgun is effective and this is one that just eats up more ammo. It also doesn’t help that late game the pig cop enemies don’t appear so ammo for the shotgun gets scarce incredibly quickly.

Duke using the MP5 against an Enforcer in Egypt

Speaking of pig cops, plenty of familiar faces from Duke 3D, from the alien grunts, the lizard-like Enforcers and octobrains. There are a few new enemies, including the new alien hybrid who looks like one of those stereotypical looking Grey aliens you see, they shoot projectiles at you, but can also revive dead enemies. No where near as annoying as an Archvile from Doom 2, but still very annoying when there are multiple of them and you’re trying to manage things. There are a few more late game enemies, such as little alien crabs and eggs but they aren’t anything particularly special to talk about in my opinion. There are a few boss encounters as well to test your skills against, one of them is more of a puzzle than a boss, but it is a puzzle in that you need to find some switches and lure the boss into a crusher.

The game isn’t terribly long, with about 19 levels divided between 4 acts. There are no secret levels, but plenty of secrets to find. Sadly, none of them are easter eggs or anything of that sort, which was always one of the more, I suppose, charming parts of Duke 3D. But I think this game captures the essence of the Duke 3D experience sans most of the sleaze. If you are looking for a decent shooter for the GBA, I don’t think you can go too wrong with this. It does everything it needs to do, providing a solid gameplay and whilst some levels can be a little challenging in terms of where to go, some of Sydney levels suffer from this, and there are two levels in the final act that are somewhat hard to navigate, but there is a map function so with any luck if you do get lost it won’t take you long to figure out where you are going. Visually, it might take some getting used to, as I can appreciate that the game could look like a pixelated mess, and perhaps this is just me, but I didn’t find the visuals to be off-putting, though if I had to play this on an original GBA without a backlit screen, I think I might be singing a slightly different tune! For a portable Duke outing that was released in 2002, I don’t think you could have gone too far wrong with this one.

Mickey No Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken (SNES)

 Daibouken desho, desho?

A snippet of the Japanese box art for Mickey's Big Adventure in Tokyo Disneyland

 So, the “Master of the Mouse” challenge has yielded some interesting games, had it not been for me undertaking this, I would not have discovered the other games in the Magical Quest series. I suppose there is a possibility I would have encountered them at some point, but today’s game is certainly one I would not have come across. Mickey No Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken is a Japanese exclusive Mickey Mouse adventure as he travels various ride inspired worlds in Tokyo Disneyland, such as Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain and Cinderella’s Castle, to gather his friends who have been deceived by Pete. Pete truly is Disney’s Bowser at this point. Though, I had to check a plot synopsis because I had erroneously said in my toot on this game that Pete had kidnapped everyone, he does have form for that sort of thing, so I am sure you can understand how such a mistake like that could be made.

Mickey ventures around the worlds using a backpack that can either fill balloons up with water or helium, depending on how long you hold the button for, it will fill up a bar. In the case of the helium balloon, once the bar is full it will lift Mickey off the ground allowing you to reach places you can’t jump to. As you float up the amount of helium in the ballon will decrease giving you a finite amount of height you can float to. You can also use the helium balloons to zip around, by prematurely releasing the helium inside them. Water balloons functions as your attack, the more water you put into them, the more damage they do. A fully charged water balloon can also be placed on the ground, where you can jump on them for a boosted jump or to be a weight to place on a pressure switch.

Mickey using a helium to float up to a high up platform in the Pirates of the Caribbean world

Initially, everything sounds quite simple, but it isn’t too long into the game that you need to start getting creative with the tools at your disposal. When you release a helium balloon, depending on which direction you are holding, you will zip in that direction, if you zip diagonally down towards the floor, you can crouch slide underneath obstacles, such as spikes. You can also use the helium balloons to get infinite height with the right timing of releasing the air and then starting to inflate your next balloon. There is a puzzle in Big Thunder Mountain where you need to place balloons in an updraft to make platforms across a gap. It all has a very surprising learning curve to it all that means that understanding and mastering how the balloon mechanics work is important to beating the game and this made the game much harder than I was expecting.

Mickey using a Helium balloon to zip along horizontally

Something that also doesn’t help is the game has numerous first-time traps. Rude enemy placements, enemies hiding in chests that don’t become active until you are ridiculously close to them, leaps of faith, platforms that will lead you into damage or into an instant death pit. Everything feels designed to be inconvenient and to bleed you of lives. Graciously, some stages do give you the opportunity to farm for lives, by either finding extra lives (Park passes) or collecting enough coins, dying and then repeating the level netting you a gain on lives. The lives counter caps at 9, but your lives do keep going. I remember having about 20 lives going into the final world on my One-Continue-Clear run of this game… You don’t need to 1CC, but I was doing it for RetroAchievements Mastery and to some extent, I regret this, especially because it was hard mode, and hard mode doesn’t mess around.

My own personal inclination for suffering aside, this is the kind of game that you will most likely crawl through, each life lost is hopefully a learning experience and with enough perseverance you will beat it. I felt the game doesn’t really ease you into anything, with first time players probably dying on the early stages a decent number of times before they wrap their head around what exactly is expected of them. Graciously the game does provide you with infinite continues and a password system, so for the casual playthrough you will make it through the game, possibly battered, bruised, a little scarred, pretty standard fare for 1990s gaming now that I think about it. I should note that by the time I did play through the game on normal difficulty, it was quite a comfortable experience, but that was because I was battle hardened by some of the nonsense hard mode threw at me.

Mickey navigating a maze of roller coaster tracks in Space Mountain

Overall, I would say that this is a pretty decent entry in the Mickey Mouse sphere of games, sure it isn’t as intuitive as the Magical Quest games or as beautifully nostalgic as Mickey Mania, but if you are a fan of Disneyland, and the attractions within, this game does a pretty decent job of taking those environments and turning them into game worlds, Magical Racing Tour probably does a better job, but that is a racing game which sounds like a much easier endeavour. Though, if you are looking for a platformer that does things a little differently, then I think this is a pretty good contender as the balloon mechanics are quite unique, the nearest thing I might be able to compare this to would be Kid Clown in Night Mayor World, which the Japanese version had a Disney flavoured theme… A Mickey Mouse theme… Where he uses balloons as his primary means of attack... Dammit, is this a Mickey Mouse III Yume Fuusen successor?!