Various Formats - Mortal Kombat

Various Formats

Mortal Kombat

Oh, come on. It had to happen eventually. I had to cover one of the most controversial, bloodthirsty games of all time, the game that infuriated a whole generation of clueless parents. The game that pretty much invented the "Death Move", brought blood and guts to be standard fare in video games, and really kicked off what was just the beginning of increasingly violent digitised beat 'em-ups across all available formats.

But no-one, except Midway, made decent ones. Pretenders all were the likes of Survival Arts, Street Fighter: The Movie, Time Killers (OK, not digitised, but riding on the crest of the violence wave), Kasumi Ninja, Way of the Warrior and Vicious Circle. Mortal Kombat and its sequels seemed to be the only games of this type that really WORKED, that didn't come across as a gimmicky load of old tripe.

Right, enough of this, let's dive in.

The arcade version came along first; 7 characters, a fairly standard moveset for each (except for the specials, of course), and a back story that spawned a million (approx) fan stories and ran deeper than Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. Let's touch on that quickly (it gets more and more complicated as the series expanded), basically there is the Earthrealm and the Outworld or some such place, where there exists a fighting tournament, which some guy called Shang Tsung has corrupted. Thanks to his meddling, there now exists a rule where 10 victories in a row for Outworld would result in the Earthrealm being overrun by Shao Khan's Outworld forces. How marvellous!

Naturally, of course, it falls to the fighters of Earthrealm to stop this, especially since last year was victory number 9...

So, the characters first of all: they're a varied bunch, a couple of Ninjas, the token Bruce Lee-alike, a God of Lightning, a film star, a mercenary and a woman. Each of them has the standard moveset, which is high and low punches and kicks as standard, the leg sweep, the big uppercut, the overhead throw and a roundhouse kick. Without special moves, each character would actually handle identically.

But there ARE special moves, although usually only 2 or 3 per character. Johnny Cage, Liu Kang, Kano, Rayden and Sonya all have a "Fireball" move (ok, it might be lightning or a knife, but the effect is the same), whilst Scorpion and Sub-Zero have slightly different moves... Scorpion has a harpoon, which, on successful impact, he uses to drag the enemy in close, briefly dazed, for either a throw or an uppercut for best results. Sub-Zero uses an iceball, freezing the opponent on the spot, again with chance to get in close for a throw or an uppercut. Be careful, though, attempting to freeze an already frozen opponent will result in a "Double Ice Backfire". Oooh, nasty.

Other special moves tend to be something like a "teleport" punch or kick variant, or Johnny Cage has the "Package Check" punch, which is good for a laugh. But the big part of the game was without doubt the fatalities. That's right, upon winning your second round, you were commanded to finish your opponent, a swift joystick combination from the correct place on the screen would result in some kind of bloodthirsty finishing move, which caused outrage in some anti-video game circles, but then again, so did most games, so maybe we can't pay too much attention to that.

Your game would consist of beating each opponent in turn, then a "Mirror Match" against yourself, followed by 3 "Endurance" matches where you must beat 2 opponents. Then comes the big guy, Goro, a huge 4-armed half-human half-dragon who is not at all easy to beat, and then the final boss, the fireball-spamming Shang Tsung himself. Occasionally you'll be asked to "Test Your Might" against a variety of substances, starting with wood and going up to diamond, this little sub-game was a button-bashing frenzy to build up the power and strike. A nice little diversion, there.

You know, I'm going to be brutally honest here... Without the death moves, Mortal Kombat would probably have never "made it", there wouldn't have been a sequel, there wouldn't have been a film, and there certainly wouldn't have been so much fuss about what is mostly a fairly "average" beat 'em-up.

Hold on though, there is more... Y'see, Mortal Kombat was a sneaky and deceptive game, in that there were a few little tid-bits to deliberately keep surprises coming. First of all, on occasion a Green version of Scorpion and Sub-Zero would drop down before a match, give you a little bit of information, then jump away again... This was Reptile, and he was a hard-to-reach secret character. Once you got the clues, you then needed a little luck to find and face him anyway. You needed to fight on the Pit stage, with shadows going across the moon (I seem to remember this was a 1-in-64 chance every time you reach the Pit level), win with 2 flawless victories, no blocking, and do your fatality. Until you find that Reptile is a faster enemy combining Scorpion AND Sub-Zero's special moves, which makes him very hard to beat. But still, word of mouth spread news of his existence.

Another rumour was that of more hidden characters, such as Ermac, this was in fact just the name of a counter for "Error Macros". But still, it led to false counters being introduced in subsequent Mortal Kombat games in the future.

But it was the death moves, the fatalities, that everyone wanted to see. Still my personal favourite was Sub-Zero's Head-and-Spinal-Cord-Removal, though Kano's Heart-Rip was also good. Liu Kang's was crap, though, basically a somersault kick and an uppercut, leaving no clue that the opponent was actually dead, except for the big "Fatality" bonus, that is.

Uppercutting your opponent on the pit stage would cause them to fall onto a bed of spikes, ironically Reptile's lair, which was always nice.

So, the arcade game was superb, how were the conversions handled?

The SNES version was heavily censored, and removed blood (instead replaced with "Sweat") and changed several of the death moves to less "gruesome" moves. However, it still played really well, which is always a good thing. The Megadrive version started out with no blood, but had two codes to activate it again, which of course, everyone did. Despite some slight compromising on the graphics, it retained the speed and action of the arcade game, enough to compete with the SNES, so simply for the fact of the added gore, the Megadrive version just about trumps the SNES here, although you NEEDED a 6 button pad for complete control.

The Amiga version was absolutely superb. It SHOULDN'T have worked, especially with only one fire button (I can't remember how it was done myself, but I promise you it worked perfectly), but the game was outstandingly good, and probably the most graphically impressive of all the 16-bit versions, but with disk loading times, and obviously getting used to the 1-button system, the Megadrive version would still win out, just about.

However, the PC version was ARCADE PERFECT, except for the music which was probably better. Of course, you can just play it in MAME now, but without doubt, if you're going to find a home version, the PC is the one to go for. Although with it being DOS based, you might have a few problems here and there.

The MK series got better, though, and even progressed into 3D, but the original game will always hold a special place in my heart. It's just a shame my heart is in Kano's hand and I'm on the floor. D'oh.

Arcade - Tapper

Arcade

Tapper

You look back at arcade games of 1983, and you'll remember just how basic the graphics normally were... and then you look at something like Tapper or Timber by Bally Midway. Alright, Dragon's Lair was around then too, but that's a laserdisc game and not a real arcade game in comparison.

Anyway, the point I was making was that compared to arcade games like, for example, 10-Yard Fight, the graphics on Bally Midway's games was the equivalent of High-Definition TV these days. Not only were the graphics top-notch, but the arcade cabinet was slightly unusual too, featuring a foot rail in the style of a real bar itself, and beer taps along with a joystick for controlling the game. Yes, ACTUAL BEER TAPS.

As the server of drinks, you're required to keep the many and varied thirsty punters adequately watered by filling and flinging drinks down the bars to them. Each screen has four bars for you to keep an eye on, and the simple object is to empty the screen of customers by forcing them back out of the doors by continually supplying drinks. Supplying too many drinks and smashing a glass or letting a punter reach your end of the bar is an instant loss of a life, though.

Sometimes a punter won't go back out the door after one drink, they'll stop and finish their drink and ask for more, flinging the empty glass back in your direction. Again, don't let it fall off the end of the bar, or that'll be another life gone. You can run along the bar to collect empties (or tips), so if time allows that might be a better option.

Collecting tips can be both helpful and fatal for you... as soon as you collect a tip, some form of entertainment will begin in the background. Whatever the entertainment might be, SOME of the punters will be distracted and no longer advance towards you, but they also won't pick up a drink if you sling one in their direction, and, in case you haven't guessed, sending too many drinks down the bar for them to smash against the doors... will cost you a life.

So the odds are certainly stacked against you, but hey, the game's still a lot of fun, and once again, like all the best games, there's some nice little touches in there, like your character's reaction when you complete a level... he'll pour himself a drink (sometimes a few in quick succession), and then throw the glass and smash it on his foot (all of a sudden, breaking a glass is PERFECTLY FINE??), or on his head, or even take a bird out of the sky...

And then there's the bonus level between scenes... The Bandit will shake up 5 of the 6 cans waiting on the bar, not only must you remember which one was NOT shaken, he then mixes them up to make life more fun for you.

The game was originally all about serving beer, obviously, but it also got a family-friendly overhaul as "Root-Beer Tapper", replacing some of the graphics so that the barman now looks like a "Soda Jerker", for example. Obviously the worry was that kids would become alcoholics or something, but as we all know, if video games influenced our behaviour, we'd all be dressing up in yellow costumes, wandering round mazes and eating pills, going "Wakka Wakka Wakka Wakka" all day long.

Hmm. Anyway, to surmise, then: Tapper is a great game that LOOKS way ahead of its time. It's challenging, but it's all good fun. If you're lucky enough to find an original working cabinet, don't waste any time, get your money in and enjoy 80s arcade gaming at its best.

Arcade - Bad Dudes vs DragonNinja

Arcade - Bad Dudes vs. DragonNinja

Sometimes a game brings out the best and the worst in Retro Gaming. Y'see, there's a big difference between playing a game in the way it was meant to be played, and then reliving it years later through an emulator or something. Or at least, it seems that way with me.

If I played an Arcade Game, I'd expect to get as far as I can through it every time. By that I mean, I learned the right tactic to employ to get to a certain point, and that's where I'd try and reach, normally in one credit. Normally, for example, I'd expect to complete Time Crisis 2 with one credit, I'd expect to complete Double Dragon in one credit, I'd expect to get to level 3 of DragonNinja (but only just), and half-way through the first level of Ghosts 'n' Goblins. I was crap at Ghosts 'n' Goblins.

Anyway, on that basis, DragonNinja was great. It was also great in that it brought us one of the earliest and most iconic "Intro sequences" seen in games. "President Ronnie has been kidnapped by the ninjas", you are told. Fantastic, do ninjas tend to take hostages these days? "Are you a bad enough dud to rescue Ronnie"?

Yes. Yes I am.

Except I wasn't. I never got close until MAME came along. And that's where this game suddenly becomes very very bad.

Well, not bad as such, but MAME showed me what I would have had to deal with if I'd ever been brave enough to shove another credit in after I'd reached my "limit". And trust me, it would have meant my next credit would have been over in about twenty seconds. And the next. And... you get the idea.

DragonNinja starts off with enough enemies to cause you problems and test your reactions and control of the game, but not too much to make progress impossible. The game's difficulty really rises with the level 2 boss, and then level 3 becomes almost as ridiculous as a "Bullet Hell Shmup".

So, yes, I've seen the ending (And it's almost as funny as Zangief's ending in Street Fighter II), but I urge you to play the game on one credit, and not spoil what is essentially good, solid fun until you reach that point.

It's a standard two-tier beat 'em-up (you know, you can take a high or a low path and jump between them at any time), but you should be spending most of your time on the top level. Ninjas attack you from all directions, but luckily you have a few sweet moves you can carry out. You know, the usual kicks, punches, fire punches... Erm...

The different attacks are easy enough and obvious enough to pull off. Pressing attack will punch. Combine it with moving the joystick in the opposite way to which you are facing, and you'll perform a rear-kick. Pressing down will allow you to leg sweep. You can even do a spinning flying kick thing. But hold down the attack button for a couple of seconds and your shoulders set on fire, releasing the button will unleash a much more powerful attack which can either cause serious damage to a boss, or take out several single-hit enemies at once. Marvellous.

Some enemies carry weapons, such as swords and throwing stars, others will drop handy weapons like knives and nunchucks (or energy or time). None of which will do you any good come level 3.

Data East, probably best remembered for their awesome arcade version of Robocop, use their typical graphical style to nice effect, but there's one scene fondly remembered by most Arcade Gamers worth their salt... the second level's truck-top fight. If there's no other reason to play Bad Dudes, this level alone is worth your time.

Without being an outstanding game, it's an iconic reminder of games of yesteryear.

Arcade - Golden Axe

Arcade

Golden Axe

OK, I decided to do a review of this today, simply because I recently obtained the Platinuminary Trophy on the PS3 Megadrive Games Compilation, which obviously included their famous coin-op conversion, Golden Axe. I'm not going to review the Megadrive conversion, simply because the Arcade game was far superior. Not to say the home conversion was awful, but believe me, you would notice the difference.

Anyway. Golden Axe tells the story of three warriors, all of whom have lost family at the hands of the evil "Death Adder". I say 3 warriors, but obviously you can only take a maximum of 2 through the game... so one of them's going to have to do without the pleasure of revenge. Ah, well.

Your three warriors are a varied bunch, there's Ax Battler the Barbarian, whose sword has a reasonable reach, can move round the screen at a reasonable pace, and possesses reasonable magic skills. All in all, he's a pretty average, reasonable character to play with. Feminists can rejoice, however, as Tyris Flare, the Amazon, balances up the gender differences with her puny little sword, fast attacks and most powerful magic. Luckily there's something for the vertically-challenged too as Gilius Thunderhead, the Dwarf, boasts the longest weapon (oo-er), but the weakest magic.

The main gameplay is pretty similar to Double Dragon, to be fair, it's a side-scrolling beat/slash-em 'up with bells on. The game begins as one of your friends staggers across the screen, injured, only to be attacked from behind by a typical enemy grunt. As he dies, you take up the rather lop-sided battle to avenge him and your family members. Luckily, you've got health, magic and your own player skill on your side as the game's AI starts off pretty sloppy, but later on in the game you'll find yourself struggling to beat some of the game's tougher enemies.

You do have a wide range of attacks to use, though. Tapping the attack button will start a combination slash attack that can end in a variety of ways, either smacking the enemy's head a few times, giving them a swift kick, or even hoisting them up on your shoulder and throwing them to the side. Using the jump button will allow you to make mid-air slash attacks, and you can also double-tap a direction to charge across the screen and launch a shoulder barge or charging headbutt attack. Combining a dash with a jump can also unleash a downward-stabbing attack that can kill some weaker enemies with a single hit. Pressing the attack and jump buttons simultaneously will cause you to attack behind you, either with a sword-twirl or a roll and a swing of the axe in the case of Gilius Thunderhead.

The most impressive part of the game had to be the magic attacks, however. Ax Battler summons the power of the Earth in the form of Volcanos, Gilius Thunderhead commands the power of Lightning (Who saw that one coming??), and Tyris Flare, without wanting to be too obvious, pulls forth the infernal fires of Hell. Or something like that.

In fact, the main reason for choosing Tyris at the character select screen was to see her magic in action, as hers was both the most powerful and the most impressive. Whilst Ax's huge volcanic eruption was good (when magic was full), Tyris could summon lots of small fires, a couple of swooping fire elementals, or even bring down a huge fire-breathing dragon with maximum magic power. Yes, I would save my magic potions up just to see that.

Enemies, then... they range from the usual enemy grunts and skeletons, to huge giants and armoured foes and of course the token female enemies who are generally considerably weaker but faster, as seems to be usual in this genre.

Magic can be gained (and stolen) when you encounter the little blue elves, and green elves carry food for health. Between levels you are often surprised by a couple of these while resting. You have only seconds to attempt to get as much inventory from them as you can.

The levels themselves are ingenious, ranging from the "Turtle Village" (yes, a village on the back of a giant turtle) to the fight on the back of an eagle. Honestly.

Other than that... there's really only the Bizarrians left to mention. Y'see, a staple of beat 'em-ups was that you could pick up weapons to use against the enemy. It's one of those rules, I guess, that there has to be weapons of some kind. But in this game, you already have a weapon, and it appears to be glued to your hands and unreleasable (except that you are apparently ambidextrous and swap hands according to which direction you're facing... d'oh). The addition of magic wasn't enough, so instead they added dragon-like creatures you can ride on. They come in 3 flavours, there's the "Chicken Leg" one which knocks enemies down with a sweep of its tail, the blue one which gives a short range blast of fire onto the ground, and the best of the lot is the red one, which will breathe a fireball that will travel the full length of the screen. Unfortunately it's also the rarest of the lot, but it makes one of the boss battles in particular a very easy one.

The game was, as I said, converted with great success (and alterations) to the Megadrive with the loss of graphical detail, but unfortunately a series of comparitively CRAP sequels followed.

With good reason, Golden Axe was very popular in arcades. It's a smooth, fluid, brutal game with a fair degree of fun and with excellent graphics for the time. Don't waste your time with the console sequels, I only played them to get the aforementioned Platinuminary trophy... and I didn't enjoy it. Grr.

Arcade - Paperboy

Arcade

Paperboy

Alright, now we're talking. This is Retro Gaming people REMEMBER. No, really.

If you like Retro Gaming, just the mere mention of Paperboy has probably already got you humming the music in your head... I know I have. Aaargh, will have to go and play it. Now.

OK, had a quick game. Guess what? It's half the fun without the handlebars.

Alright, seriously now, this is one of those occasions where I think we have to stand in awe of Atari. Y'see, there's been many games brought out with kind of unique ideas, but they've never stayed that way. Here, with the exception of the hopeless home computer rip-off "Paperboy 2", I can't think of another game like this.

Here's the premise, on the surface it's very simple: Deliver newspapers to your customers, avoiding obstacles on the way. Now, you could take that as the be-all-and-end-all of it, but it's far from that simple.

First off, your customers. They all own nice bright houses, with big letter boxes. Deliver a paper to their door or their letter box to keep their custom. As Paperboys go, you're as lazy as they come, flinging the paper, America-style, whilst riding your bike down the street. Yup, none of this lark of riding your bike on one pedal and jumping off or even entirely by foot in the depths of winter, putting the paper through nicely like us harder, stiff-upper-lipped British Boys do, just simply pedal and pelt the papers, pulverising pugilists and pleasing your patrons, perambulating the pathway as you go.

 OK, now I've got that awful bit of alliteration out of the way (sorry, couldn't resist), I can get back to explaining the game. As well as customers, you have... that's right, non-customers. Did you see that one coming? They all own dark houses, many with gravestones in their front garden, and you can either simply not deliver a paper to them, or you can smash their furniture and/or windows and accumulate a "damage" bonus. Nice, huh?

If you manage to miss any customers along your way or damage their property, they will cancel their subscription. Lose ALL your customers and you'll get your P45 and Marching Orders, in other words "Game Over". Oh, and you have a limited supply of newspapers to throw, so don't get too happy with the fire button, although there are more you can collect.

In MAME, the game is best controlled with the mouse (although it's tricky), but in the arcades the cabinet had a set of handlebars mounted on the front, which were truly awesome. But the best bit of the game comes at the end of each day's round... the stunt course. Suddenly you are armed with an infinite supply of papers, which you can throw at the targets for big bonus points, whilst negotiating winding paths, narrow bridges and jumps. It's a bit of a change of pace, but incredibly good fun.

Once again, it's the "nice touches" that make this game so awesome. Some of the obstacles and bonuses you can score are normal everyday things, from the people driving cars down the street to the young lad with the remote control car, to cats and dogs, drunk pedestrians, unicycle-riding punks (erm?) and the naughty cat-burglar trying to break in a side-window. Most of these can be dealt with by means of high-speed Newspaper, but some have to simply be avoided. It's worth getting them with a newspaper though, for example there's often two men having a fist fight... hurl a newspaper at them to knock one out and the other raises his arms in victory. Nice.

One thing is for sure, if you spend 5 minutes on this game, you WILL be humming the music for the rest of the day. Gah, I'm STILL humming it now. Everyone around me wonders what the hell it is I'm singing.

Paperboy. It'll ruin your life. But you have to play it.

Arcade - Q*Bert

Arcade
Q*Bert

Sometimes, the simple ideas work best. If a game can be summed up in a fairly succinct sentence, it's a simple game, and in the 80s that was a recipe for success. For example: Run round a maze, eat all the dots, avoid the ememies, repeat ad infinitum. Shoot alien spacecraft before they shoot you. Make horizontal lines out of blocks to prevent them reaching the top of the screen. Or how about turn all the blocks the right colour by bouncing on them, avoiding the enemies?

Well, if that wasn't a giveaway, I don't know what is, because that is basically all you do in Q*Bert. Simples!

Simple doesn't mean easy, though. In fact, it's devilishly hard. First off, the games in a 3D perspective, and the game's physics plays real tricks on you as you progress.

Let's start from the beginning then... You start atop a pyramid made of cubes, and must commence jumping on all the cubes to change them to the correct colour. However, other creatures will soon start to show up, like bouncy balls that will go from top to bottom, trying to intercept you on the way. You'll notice first of all, however, that the purple ball will stop at the bottom, and turn into a relentlessly chasing snake, able to travel in exactly the same way as you... but slower.

There's a way to deal with it, but it's only temporary. The little discs at the side of the maze (you may have noticed them) are acutally lifts that take you back to the top of the pyramid. If you jump on one of these with the snake in pursuit, he will jump off after you, to his death... only to be replaced by another one seconds later. Still, there's bonus points in it for you.

From level 2, it starts to get harder very quickly indeed. Blocks will need 2 or 3 bounces to cycle through colours until you get the right one up, and enemies will start coming from all sides, almost as if gravity to them is sideways rather than downwards. The 3D view does you no favours here as they skip along the sides of cubes, and you try to work out what bloody way they're going, and which way you should go to avoid them.

But that's the game, that's where the real challenge lies, and that's where you'll keep coming back for more, no matter how frustrating you find it; A sign of a great game indeed! Somehow you never tire of seeing the nonsense-swear-word-speech-bubble pop up again and again and again...

Your chances of finding an original working cabinet (complete with solenoid to cause a "bump" inside the cabinet when you or an enemy plummet to your death) are slim, but worth a little effort to find. If you get nowhere, though, there's always MAME.

Finally, is it just me who thinks our hero in this game looks like a bodyless Cyril Sneer from The Raccoons?

Arcade - Rampage

Arcade
Rampage

Ah, the old monster movies... Godzilla, King Kong... erm... quick, think of one involving a big wolf. Alright, I can't, but there probably is one. How great would it be if all three monsters got together in one movie?

Well, the wheels have been in motion since the mid-80s, when Bally Midway released the arcade game Rampage. 3 players can play at once, each assuming the role of one of the aforementioned monsters, or rather a non-copyright-infringing equivalent. The storyline is that you are actually a mutated human, the mutation being caused by some super vitamin or a radioactive lake or something.

And your aim? Well, pretty much cause as much destruction and devastation to the single screen play area as you can. Destroy all the buildings, and move onto the next screen. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well it would be, but unfortunately there's a lot of people none too happy about that. In particular, the armed forces are out to get you, with soldiers, helicopters and tanks all coming to try and take little bits off your health.

Luckily, your energy bar is pretty enormous, and it'll take a fair few hits before you finally succumb, at which point you revert to your naked human form, hastily sidestepping away whilst covering your vanity. Nice touch!

So, how do you bring the buildings down? Pretty simple, climb them and punch the living hell out of them. Using the joystick, you can aim your punch in different directions, so you can, for instance, punch directly upwards to take out a helicopter, or even behind you. But whilst you're on the side of a building you need to be punching either the outside walls or the windows. Once a building takes enough damage, it will start to crack, and then collapse. Unfortunately, you're probably still attached to the building, so you'd better jump off before you come down with it and receive a fair bit of damage.

Luckily, there are ways to give your health a boost, people and objects appear in windows, and you can eat some of these; beware, however, that some items will actually cause you damage. A good example of this is the toaster. Try to grab it and it electrocutes you... unless the toast has popped up, in which case you will eat the toast. Clever, huh?

The problem is... that's all there is to it. That's it. There's no official end to the game, you get a bonus every 128 levels, and after level 768 you go back to level 1... but this isn't a game to play score attack on. It's a game for a sharp burst of fun, a good laugh, even better with 2 friends. The high-res graphics remind me of Atari's games, but with typical Bally Midway cartooniness.

But now we come full circle... the game ripping off 3 major film franchises / monsters, is set to be made into a movie itself! It's almost unbelievable.

Whether it'll be any good or not, of course, is an entirely different story.