Forgotten Old Games – Zillion

Hi everyone it´s me again Danilo with a fresh (maybe not so fresh) old game!

This week´s game is Akai Kodan Zillion for Sega Master System. Zillion was one of the best old Sega franchise for the SMS and later Sega with Tatsunoko Productions released an anime based on Zillion.

The anime was a huge success and was a good merchandise for the SMS game. I remember when I was a kid I played Zillion a lot, not just because was a great game but also because I was a huge fan of the anime.

You can check the anime opening here:

*as you guys can see the main character´s weapon was a Light Phaser pistol

Zillion´s story is very simple. Human race was attacked by aliens called Noza and the only weapon capable of detroying the Noza was three pistols called Zillion.

Three young brave soldiers where are chosen to wield them as the White Nuts [I’m not making this name up!] in order to fight back against the Nozas.

Those brave soldiers are JJ (the main character), Apple (a beautiful girl) and Champ (a very skilled gunfighter).

*from left to right Champ, JJ and Apple

So in this game you play as JJ who must find five disks that will enable him to input the self-destruct sequence into the Noza´s main base computer. As secondary objective, JJ must rescue the other two White Nuts members, Champ and Apple.

Now let´s talk about the gameplay.

Zillion was on SMS at same time as Metroid was on NES and Zillion was also a free-scrolling platform adventure. You start the game in front of your mothership landed on Planet X (the Noza home planet), then you must take an elevator to the underground area to get access to the Noza´s base.

Once you´re inside the base you´re going to spend the rest of the game there. If you want you can go back to the mother ship to replenish your health.

JJ can shoot his weapon, duck, jump and even craw on the ground. JJ can also shoot while crawling too.

The Noza´s base is filled with rooms and in most part of those rooms lies a computer terminal that you can input some codes. Some of those codes can make enemy weapons offline or disarm nearby barrels or even disable enemy sensors.

Those computer terminals also can open doors for you but in order to do this you must collect codes from capsules that can be found in these rooms.

Inside those capsules there´re power ups too.

During the game, you have to fight against enemy soldiers too and escape from traps like energy barrels and landmines. When you rescue a friend, you can select the friend soldier and play as him, something similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for NES.

This game is very long and there is no save or even password features, so be prepared to spend hours playing it until you finish it.

Zillion has very nice graphics for a open-world game like this. For instance, if you compare Zillion to Metroid for NES, which was also an open-world game you´ll see how Zillion graphics are far superior to it´s counterpart.

Music and SFX are great too, I really like the sound that the light phaser makes when I shoot something, it´s very close to the sound that it produces in the anime.

The musics are very nice and catchy, it´s a shame that basically are only two musics in Zillion but they´re very well done.

The intro theme of the anime “Pure Stone” was very well converted into midi.

In closing comments, Zillion is a classic for SMS and maybe was one of the best games on the console. However, I don´t know why, Sega ended up abandoning the series what is really a shame that a masterpiece like this was dumped away by Sega.

Forgotten Old Games – Gravity Armor Metal Storm

Hi everyone today I´m bringing to you a game that I recently discovery that has an american version, so most part of this review is about the japanese version of it. This game is Metal Storm.

Metal Storm is a very obscure game created by the same company that made R-TYPE. The most noteworthy thing in this game is the ability to change the gravity during the gameplay allowing the player to walk in the ceiling with reverse gravity.

But first, as always, I´m gonna talk a little more about this game´s history. The year is 3521 and a giant battle station called Cyberg has been taken by an unknown force. Now that the battle station is out of control it´s already destroyed Neptune and Earth is the next target.

In order to save humanity they´ve sent an ace pilot using a gravity battle suit capable of control the gravity. The main objective is to active the self detonation device in the battle station to stop this menace once for all!

You can check it out here:

Cool huh? It´s a shame that the US version doesn´t has this introduction.

Metal Storm´s gameplay it´s simple and intuitive.

If you press A you can jump, B fires your weapon, pads move you character and if you press Up + A you can invert the gravity and walk in the ceiling and if you press Down + A you get back to the floor. If you change your gravity, enemies will change theit gravity too so you must use it wisely.

Besides, there´s a lot of items that can help you during the game. I´m gonna list them below:

• Armor Item: Increase your resistance to enemy fire.
• Bonus Item: Give to you 5000 points to your score.
• 1 UP: Extra life.
• Extra Time: Add 100 seconds to your time counter.
• Crusher: Kill all enemies on-screen.
• Power Beam: Increases the width of your beam… (wut?!)
• Shield: Deflect all enemies bullets but it´s useless against beam weapons.
• Gravity Attack: Transform you in some kind of energy ball when changing the gravity, that allows you to become invincible in that period of time and it can destroy enemies too.

As you guys can see there´s lots of cool stuff to try on and lots of choices and power ups, so I think that this game isn´t too difficult. At least, it didn’t felt too difficult compared to other games of its time.

The enemies aren´t a great deal [most of them die with just one shot], the level design is really awesome and the biggest challenge are the boss fights.

Now I´m gonna talk about the looks, graphics are awesome in this game and I´ve never saw a NES game with so fluid animations like this.

Take a good look when you´re walking, there´s lots of animation frames and the main character is heavily detailed too. The bosses are giant with great amount of details too.

The backgrounds features a nice parallax effect I don´t know how they did that since NES doesen´t suport parallax backgrounds but it gives to the player the felling that there´s depht in the background.

Musics and sound effects are good, not something that really gets stuck in your head but they´re okay, at least for me.

So I´ve recommend to all of you to take your gravity armor and go kick some robot asses!

Forgotten Old Games – Choujin Sentai Jetman

Hi to everyone it´s me again Danilo with a brand new old game!

Ok first of all I´m gonna give to you guys a little background about this one.

Between 1991 and 1994 there was an invasion of Japanese super heroes series in Brazil, almost every kid in that time was a huuuuge fan of those live action super heroes.

I remember that when I was a kid I spend all afternoon playing NES and watching a lot of these series and most of those Japanese series was about “super sentais” or super squadrons like Power Rangers.

So there was a Japanese NES game about a super sentai serie called Choujin Sentai Jetman and because of that, this game was very popular between the kids in that time. (If you read my NES clones article you´ll probably know that was really easy for Brazilians to own a pirate copy of a Japanese game.)

Jetman

Choujin Sentai Jetman is an awesome platform game that has lots of nice touches.

Basically when you start the game you can choose between five areas, when you pick one of it you have to choose your character.

There´s five characters avaible:

Red Hawk -> main weapon is a sword

Black Condor -> main weapon is a sword

White Swan -> main weapon is a laser pistol

Blue Swallow -> main weapon is a laser pistol

Yellow Owl -> main weapon is his fists

So as you can see those guys has different types of weapons like in Power Rangers for SNES.

Now with your hero selected you start the stage but if your hero dies you have to go back to the character select screen and choose another one.

When all the heroes die you´ll sent to a Game Over screen with a continue option, like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

At the end of each area there´s a boss waiting for you but these bosses are giant monsters so what you gonna do!?

Easy, call the rest of your team and form a giant robot like Megazord! Fuck Yeah!

In these boss fights the gameplay changes to something like a fighting game with two energy bars one for your robot and another for the giant monster.

After you beat the boss there´s a cool scene with the giant robot finishing the boss with a super beam attack.

At the end of the five areas the area 6 appears as the final stage, something very similar to Willy´s fortress in Megaman.

As you guys can see the gameplay is very rich with a bunch of good ideas that fits perfectly the game´s tematic.

Graphics are fairly good with some good stuff like the cut scene that shows before every boss fight or the fluid aspect of the animations.

Music and sound are good too and some area themes are very memorable.

So if you´re looking a nice platform action game for NES take my word that Choujin Sentai Jetman is very addicting.

Forgotten Old Games – Astyanax

Happy New Year everyone, It´s me Danilo in my first post of the year!

Today I´m bringing to you another medieval side-scroller from the NES era so be prepared to Astyanax!

Astyanax for NES, released in 1990, was a port of “The Astyanax”, the arcade version, which was from 1989.

In Astyanax you play as… Astyanax! Astyanax is a 16 years old boy who dreams every single night about a princess calling for help and then, suddenly, he was transported to another realm by a pixie. Now in order to return to his home, Astyanax must save the princess that was asking for help in his dreams!      Awesome…

The gameplay is simple with a few RPG elements. Astyanax can attack with melee weapons or use magic spells, and there are three types of melee weapons an axe, a spear and a sword and three types of magic, blind, blast and bolt.

Melee weapons can change when you gets a power-up, for example if you have an axe and gets a power up your axe will transform into a spear and the magic spells consume MP.

Speaking about magic spells Blind can freeze enemies for a certain amount of time, blast throw fireballs in all directions and bolt cast a lighting in every single enemies on-screen.

There are lots of items too like:

Red potions that restore three life points.

Blue potions that fully restore your health.

Wings that increase your dexterity.

And a Pixie that can restore your MP or change your weapon.

Astyanax has six stages and every stage has a boss and minibosses. In my opinion, bosses are the best part of Astyanax, they´re pretty cool and very challenging.

In Astyanax the graphics are okay. Personally, I don´t like Astyanax´s sprite, it´s poorly animated and the fact that the sprite is too big just drain your attention to him. The backgrounds are just fine but the best artwork for me are the bosses, they´re awesome with lots of cool details.

There´re  lots of cut scenes too that helps to explain the game´s story.

As the graphic department isn´t too shining at least the sound it´s awesome, The musics are very good and sound effects too, check it out:

Overall Astyanax is a good game I hope that everyone gives it a try.

PixelArt Rebirth in Digital Animations

photo by brokentrinkets

Have you guys noticed how 8bit/pixelated style have been getting really popular lately? And I don’t mean only in good retro games, as Contra Rebirth and Megaman 8 and 9 to name just a few, but even non related to videogames materal, like all rappers/hypsers and even the Black Eyed Peas videoclips, are taking advantage of this hype. Despite those lousy mash ups, the 8bit fad had also presented us with good outcomes. We present here a selection of some of the coolest 8bit inspired videos.

Forgotten Old Games * Special – Brazilian NES Clones

Hi everyone It´s me Danilo and I´m back!

This week I´m gonna show to you guys something really interesting, The Brazilian NES clones!

Back in the 1989 the official NES wasn’t available in Brazil yet, so Brazilian electronic companies started to produce NES clones and unofficial cartridges. Since Nintendo patent wasn’t valid in Brazil, making NES clones was a “legal” deal…

The official NES was released in Brasil only in 1993 so these NES clones were the only way to play NES games in that time.

These clones, generally speaking, where top quality stuff with nice image quality, durability and good sound. Most of them used 60 pin type cartridges as the Japanese model. These 60 pin cartridges were produced in Brazil, I think that most of them were pirate versions of the original Japanese cartridges or even American 72 pin cartridges.

For example, my Double Dragon 2 was based on the Japanese version but my Ninja Turtles was American based and both of them were 60 pin cartridges.

Here we have some of the most well succeeded clones and they respective companies:

Name: Dynavision

Manufacturer: Dynacom

*this guy is identical to an Atari 7800

Name: Phantom System

Manufacturer: Gradiente