This update is all over the place again. First was Kid Kool adn the Quest of the Seven Wonder Herbs. Awesome title! This game seems to be designed to be an especially frustrating platformer. Your quest is to finish seven stages, each ending with a boss battle, and depending on how quick you finish you get a slightly different ending. The levels have a lot of different trial and error sections which I'm assuming are to slow you down and prevent you from getting the best endings to easily. After you get used to the awkward jumping controls (you have to be moving at a decent pace to be able to jump forward with any momentum) it plays alright, but holy hell some of the areas you have to get past are annoying. It took me around 3 hours to finish the game and I still seemed to get a good ending (but not the best one).
Someone on the nintendoage thread I've been following made a comment about AD&D Dragon Strike being nearly impossible. I'd never tried it out and always assumed it was going to be a traditional RPG or possibly a dungeon crawler. Turns out its a shooter, cool right! So I had to pop it in and see what all the fuss was about. Turn out I loved the game and only wish I'd played it years ago. You get to control one of 3 different dragons, all with different stats and attacks. Even though this game is definitely in the shmup family it plays drastically different than most. Instead of scrolling vertical/horizontal you get complete freedom to move as you wish across a small map. Each mission consists of 1 or more objectives which have to be met before you can move on to the next mission. Your dragon moves in a swooping motion instead of straight ahead and you can switch between to different heights. Some enemies or projectiles will require you to be at a different height to hit/avoid. Very cool little game that I'd definitely recommend trying out.
Popped in yet another black box beauty and tried out Slalom. Having played a few different black box games already I had some expectations about Slalom going in. It surpassed most of them right away. As far as BB games go its got to be one of the best. Decent graphics, sound and gameplay really werent what I was expecting when I turned it on. Short enough that it doenst get too repetitive and just a lot of fun.
Next up was yet another Taito game, Wrath of the Black Manta. I've had relatively good experiences with most other Taito games so far so I had high hopes for Black Manta. While it did do a few unique things and have some funny cheesy-ness to it, it ultimately was broken because of one move you obtain after completing the first level. It wasnt bad, but not up to par with many of Taito's other games.
Finally for this update is my most recent pick up, Race America. I'm not a fan of racing games unless they are Mario Kart. This may be the exception though. I had a lot of fun with Race America and it played VERY well for an NES title. Almost something I'd have expected to see on the SNES or Genesis. It might even be a bona fide hidden gem. Very cool game!
Future Plans - I worked a bit on Treasure Master tonight and think I can knock it off my list tomorrow if all goes well. Also want to get to Krusty's Fun House and King's Knight in the near future.
