Thursday, August 12, 2010

Ice Climber: 1HN Cooperative Block Breaker

Back in the late 80s, one of THE first NES games I received from my mom and dad was Ice Climber. It's a simple platformer in which you play one of two parka-wearing climbers named Popo (who wears blue) and Nana (who wears red). You can guess the gender of each, though it doesn't matter.

Anyway, the great thing about Ice Climber (this is back in the late 80s, mind you) was that you could play cooperatively (or competitively) with another player. Unfortunately, as an only child, I rarely got the chance to play alongside someone else, but I was used to that.

The point of the game was easy to understand: break the ice blocks of the floor above your character using your hammer, and then jump through the hole to go up. Do this as many times as it takes to get to the top floor, from which you start the bonus stage. Along the way, you encounter ice-pushing white flightless birds and red bird-like flying creatures (pterodactyls?); the white birds do not try to harm you directly, but do if you touch them, but the red birds (pterodactyls) almost always seem to gun for your character. If that's not enough, there's a polar bear that will appear if you linger too long on a lower floor and stomp to make the screen rise one floor. If this happens while you are on the bottom floor of the screen (or if you fall through an ice hole in the bottom floor), your character dies.

To defend yourself against these baddies, you can use your hammer to bonk them at floor-level, or you can jump into the baddie (especially if it's the flying red bird), as you do when you break ice blocks. To lend to the cooperative intent of the game, you cannot mallet your partner, though you can push your partner through holes (if you are so malicious).

Ice Climber is the type of game that you can pick up and play with a friend for a half-hour of mindless fun, either helping each other or interfering with each other. Each subsequent level adds new difficulties: moving floors and cloud platforms, fewer blocks on which to stand, greater frequencies of creatures, and the like. When my sons play Ice Climber, they neither play cooperatively nor competitively -- they just try to do something with their controllers to make the characters move and survive. Their gaming sessions are hilarious and frustrating in equal measure. Nonetheless, once you and your friend begin to master Ice Climber, you may find the game stimulating, at least for that half-hour.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Mega Man X: 2HN Stiff Shooter

Back in the mid-90s during my college days, I was a loyal Genesis player, particularly of EA Sports games on that console. Occasionally, I bought and tried other games, like Sonic and Ecco the Dolphin. While I wasn't an ardent side-scrolling platform game player, I respected them enough to acknowledge them.

Today, as I plumb the depths of not only platforming side-scrollers, but also Super Nintendo games, I stumble upon games that even gamers now hold in high regard. One of those games is Mega Man X, which was one of Capcom's early SNES releases after a successful franchise run on the NES. In college, I wasn't directly aware of Mega Man X, but I did recognize the Mega Man character, who I believe is robot boy/man made out of metal. This recognition compelled me to buy the game from a co-worker, who happens to still own SNES cartridges.

Mega Man X starts up with a rocking soundtrack and the main character "X" leaping into the title screen. The game looks good and sounds great, but when I started playing I realized something: I can't duck! I can jump, I can shoot, but I can't duck! And, I can't shoot at a angle, which means that I have to jump to shoot. This is how it is in the first stage: X is capable of firing charged beams, jumping or sliding off walls, and jumping. There is no turbo run, no ducking, and no angle shooting from the start; the lack of such abilities sometimes led to character death. Super Metroid gets this right, but it appears that X has to gain certain abilities as he finishes missions, such as sliding on the ground. I haven't investigated what other abilities X can inherit, but you don't start off ducking and that bothers me.

After I passed the first stage and endured an "event battle" (i.e. a battle you are destined to lose, but must happen to advance a paper-thin plot), I found myself able to choose which stage I could try out. Which stage do I do first? I don't know, but apparently there is an optimal order because some stages are harder than others without certain upgrades. If any game needed a walkthrough, Mega Man X is such a game. How about an indication of which stage is "Stage Two?" No such indication, sadly.

Overall, the look and sounds of Mega Man X are awesome, but the gameplay is stiff and restrictive from the beginning. I've heard that this is how Mega Man games were on the NES, so I can see why my friends never recommended it (if the stiffness was the reason). I must compare it to Metroid; even on the NES, you could angle your shot up or diagonally up, and you could duck. With X, all you can do is jump to avoid missiles, rolling robots, and other baddies. Why Mega Man X is a classic is beyond me.

By the way, in Mega Man X, you blow up robots with your arm cannon. This technically qualifies as violence, but there is no blood though X writhes in agony whenever he's shot. If this game sits well with you, you could try it out, but be prepared to be a little frustrated.