Blogger Blitz Round #1: Retail Rumble

What is this?

What is Blogger Blitz?

Basically, it’s a writing competition between bloggers we are doing for fun. I could explain everything in detail, but the organizer has written a very long blog post about it. In this post, you can find all other bloggers who are in this competition. So, feel free to read this post if you want more information.

https://adventurerules.blog/2017/07/24/blogger-blitz-round-one-match-schedule/

First Round!

So, I have the honor to start in the first round and start the first “battle”. So, today I’m presenting you with this:

Basically, the goal of this round is to convince you and the judges that a certain iconic item of the character can be mass produced and sell the best. For example, Minecraft Steve can mass produce diamond tools and sell them at a high price.

Since I choose Indiana Jones as my character, I’ll try and convince you about what he could mass market and sell. Oh, if you don’t know a lot about Indiana Jones or want to read a bit about his background, well… here is a massive article from the Indiana Jones Wiki telling every adventure in order from all the movies, games, books and other media: http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Indiana_Jones

If you want to read the argument that Lightning Ellen makes, feel free to take a read at her blog here: https://lightningellen.com/

Her character will be Lightning Farron from Final Fantasy XIII. If you want to read more about the character of my opponent, here is a link to her page on the Final Fantasy Wiki: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Lightning_(Final_Fantasy_XIII)

The results will be announced on Friday the 4th of August on the Adventure Rules blog, so we shall both check there! So, I hope you are ready since here comes my argument! Also, the rules state that the argument can only be 500 words long. Just a little side note. The rules can be read here: https://adventurerules.blog/2017/07/27/blogger-blitz-rules-and-regulations/

So, may the best argument win!

My argument

Dr. Henry Indiana Jones Jr. got a special phone call after he finished his classes at the Marshall College. It was his other boss, the one with the big ears and the big white gloves. The conversation was brief, but it made Indiana nervous.

He had to go to his office and pitch something new to convince him to not go for another project. He thought about it for a while and after he created a prototype, he went to the office of his boss.

When he was walking towards the office, a young girl with long pink hair walked outside. Then he realized, the other pitch was for Kingdom Hearts. He got even more nervous. There was only room for one more project and he wanted that spot.

Indiana’s plan was simple, to sell new merchandise to attract new fans and try to ease the pain of the disappointed fans that saw the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie. He had to make and present something good, otherwise, the release of the new movie in July 2020 might be a flop and that would mean possibly the end of his franchise.

After the young girl left the hallway, he knocked on the door. He knocked a few times in rapid succession. It didn’t take long before he could enter the office. But, this time, Indiana wasn’t alone with the mouse in the office, his wife was sitting in the office as well.

Indiana didn’t hesitate and started his pitch. He started to talk about how the merch sales are declining and they needed to come out with a new item so that they could hype up the 5^th big movie. Indiana’s plan was simple. He wanted to make a new line of costume sets.

This would serve several purposes. It would be very handy for people that want to cosplay, act in theaters, make fan movies, collectors and so on and so forth. The mouse was happy to see something that iconic being pitched in front of him.

Yet, Indiana wasn’t done with his pitch. There was another layer to his idea. Since he was nearing his retirement, he also wanted to sell the costume set to create a great competition for his replacement actor. Since, that would make it easier to set up some sort of show, “Who will be the next Indiana?”.

The costume set would have everything, the fedora, shirt, jacket, pants, satchel and a prop gun and prop whip. Indiana didn’t want to limit it, so he created a female prototype. This made the wife of the mouse happy. She found it very cute and fell a bit in love with the design. She tried it on and she was convinced of the pitch. In her eyes, Indiana won. But the mouse, he had to speak to the judges. Since he wasn’t sure who had the best pitch. He both liked the pitch of the pink haired girl and Indiana. So, what now. What now?

Ending of my entry

So, that was my argument. To prepare myself for this, I replayed various Indiana Jones games and rewatched all movies I owned. Also, I wanted to present my argument in a way how I love to write, in a story.

I highly recommend you read the argument made by Lightning Ellen and decide for yourself who won. But, who will go to the 2nd round? Well, as I said earlier in this article, the jury will decide that and it will be announced on August the 4th. You can find the links for that earlier in the article.

As a little side note, for those who didn’t get it; I wrote about this event. Obviously, I took some creative freedom to fit it into a story only about Indiana Jones. This story has no ill intent to anybody or any company.

So, I want to close off this article with thanking you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then take care and have a great rest of your day.

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First Impression: Tarzan (GBC) ~ Hide and SEEK.

IGN entry

So, one day on a garage sale, I saw this game. Since one of the very first games I ever played was Tarzan on the PC, I had to have this. I enjoyed this game quite a lot. And now, after all those years, I still have the same cartridge and the instruction booklet. I’m quite happy that I still have it since I have fond memories of it. Now, I have never finished this game since I couldn’t get passed the tiger battle as a kid. That’s why I’m writing a first impression. Anyways, enough stalling, let’s dive right into this game and let’s take a look at it. As usual, feel free to leave a comment on the game and or the content of this article. 

Collect-a-banana gameplay.

The story in this game is amazing. They made it work on the Gameboy Color! They follow the movie quite perfect. The levels and stages are designed around some amazing scenes of the movie. As a kid, I watched that movie a lot.

While the characters don’t have a lot of development in the game, I still enjoyed this story quite a lot. I’m so glad that they know what the gameboy color was capable of doing.

The game is surprisingly longer then you would think. This game consists out of 23 stages. Which is quite long for a movie game. It’s actually quite good too. This game is a platformer, but not in your traditional sense. You need to collect a certain amount of banana’s before you can advance to the next stage. The amount of banana’s you need to collect are shown when you start the level.

You don’t always play as Tarzan, there are levels as Tuck… but…

The bad things.

… There is barely any variation between the characters. They all play the same. Apart from Tuck’s hitbox being slightly bigger then Tarzan’s.

While the controls are really solid, the jump animation is a bit broken. Sometimes the jumps, well, don’t work. You can’t grab a ledge you see clearly in front of you or you clip right through the edge.

I don’t know it was my copy or not, but the sound was messed up. The music had like a missing line of melody. The noise it added was rather annoying.

A disappointment was that you couldn’t multiplayer the hide and seek mode. You had to pass your gameboy to your friend after you had hidden one of the characters. That was a major let down for me. Thankfully, this allowed me to play this game with my sister. Since we only had one copy of the game back then.

Another annoyance is that the checkpoints aren’t clearly indicated. Suddenly, you get shown that you reached a checkpoint, but it looked like a usual ledge or platform to me at first. Also, if i remember correctly, once taken is always taken.

Oh, don’t get me started on the password system. It’s quite creative by using symbols but why do they have a password system in place for this game? There were games like the Legend of Zelda who showed that they can make a saving system work on the Gameboy color!

 Is it bad?

So, I have talked about most of the things this game does wrong. But it isn’t that bad. Thankfully, this game has some other good things. The animation blew my mind, and it still does today. What Disney displays here, is just amazing. The game feels tense and nice.

Looking at it now, you could argue that this game has the problem of design over gameplay. I mentioned earlier that some jumps didn’t work correctly. I think the culprit is that the animation is too good.

The difficulty curve is just perfect. While some parts might be a bit unforgiving, I don’t think that is such a bad thing. Do you seriously expect games from that age to be forgiving.

Visually, this game is nice to look at. The game is sometimes a maze… Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that a map would be nice. But at the other hand, I understand why there isn’t a map. Since you play inside the jungle, which is unmapped terrain in the first place. Also, Tarzan doesn’t know the whole jungle like the back of his hand.

Another thing I forgot to mention is how you go to the next level. As soon as you got all the required banana’s you don’t go to the next level automatically, you have to find your partner. He is hidden in sometimes a hard to reach area. This tests your knowledge of the level and you have to use all your skills.

What I don’t understand, and I can’t test it since I don’t have one, is that this game supports the Gameboy Printer. Yes, you can make images and print them. This is wasted potential in my eyes.

Before I wrap up this article, I think I should talk a bit more about the controls. Since there isn’t any tutorial, I liked it that you can find out what each button does on your own. But, as soon as you play, you will understand that this isn’t the best choice. You’ll have to play that in order to understand it. Otherwise I ruined each surprise.

Anyways, let’s wrap up this first impression here. I almost wanted to start the conclusion as I was writing a review. But I haven’t beaten this game, so I can’t write a review. Anyways, I think this game deserves a play. It isn’t perfect, but it’s good. It isn’t polished, but it’s fun.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article. I wish you happy holidays and I look forward to seeing you guys soon. Since the Gameboy and Gameboy Color month will still go in January. I had a way more busy time then I expected, so I couldn’t write enough articles as I wanted for this theme. That’s why I decided that. But anyways~ Take care!

Review #012: Aladdin (GB) ~ Terribleness on the go.

GameFaq’s Link

I have a cousin who I went to each Saturday. One day he lend me DuckTales on the gameboy, which was a great blast. But I do remember one game that he lend too with it. A game so bad, I’m not even going to finish it before I write a review of it. This game on the SNES isn’t that bad, but the gameboy version is terrible. I got this game from a friend, when she didn’t want to keep her gameboy games anymore. I was so happy that I got new free games. But when I saw this cartrigde, I wish I could cry right there on the playground. Man, bad memories of this game. I’m even putting on a sad face while writing this review. Sadly enough, this game is playing next to me on my SuperGameboy and my SNES. It’s already clear that I’ll rip this game a new one, but how bad is it actually? Let’s dive right into Aladdin, without a magic carpet to save our ass. 

Flawed or bad?

Some games might have a few flaws. Or just have some things not polish. But this game is a joke. Let’s start analysing this insult of Virgin Interactive by looking at the options.

The difficulty levels are not what you expect from a normal game. Easy is practice and hard is difficult. Yes, I kid you not, the screen says literally “difficult”. Signs for a great game. Also they feel the need to be special and or grammatically correct. Somewhat. The options for the music and sound are displayed as follows:

“Music is: ON”

“Sound FX are: ON”

Why? These “is” and “are” aren’t doing the game any good. It’s silly and just lines of code lost for the actual game. And they could have used it. Oh yeah, a minor annoyance is that you can’t scroll back that the difficulty menu. But that’s nitpicky me.

So, let’s move on with this review by pressing the B button to get out of the options menu. Wait, it’s one of those games. You need to go to “exit” to go back to the main screen. Oh yeah, “exit” instead of “return”. Whoopsiedasy.

The gameplay, my god, the gameplay.

In the name of all the holy and good cartrigdes, be happy that I played this joke for you so that I can warn you about this game. First of all, this adventure and platform game suffers from one major flaw that is also quite visible from the menu. There isn’t a save or load option. This is the kind of game that could have benefited from this feature. Like the first Super Mario Land on the gameboy, this is one of the games you have to play in one sitting. And that isn’t good at all for a handheld game. No, since usually you play these kind of games on the bus or at the doctor’s office. So, you wish you could save.

The controls are weird at best. But at the start of the game, you don’t have any guide or nothing to explain you how this game works. Let me give you one hint. Press the select button at the start of the first level so you don’t waste any apples. Yup, they start you with an attack that is limited. And without giving you a slight hint that you can press select to switch weapons, the game gets annoying really soon.

While I do realize that I ranted about game tutorials more holding your hands these days, this game should have had at least an easier first part. The very first part of this game is filled with all sorts of things. You barely get time to get used to the game mechanics or the controls. You are expected to play this one with already knowing every sort of enemy or hazard.

I just noticed this too, while writing this review, I have to pause the game and then write a bit. And the pause screen actually kindly reminds you that the game is paused with displaying a “PAUSED!” message at the bottom left of your screen. How lovely that they think we are stupid people. Just like the enemy AI in this game. I could stand in visible range of an enemy and it kept just standing there. How lovely. Also, some enemies seem to have a very special attack pattern. The one the animators gave them. And your goal is to be faster then the animation.

All the apples of the nopes. 

For a Gameboy game, the flaws don’t stop there. The music is the next victim of my critic-ing. And it’s terrible. The menu music is true to the movie. But the music in game is just a loop of a 1-2 minutes melody and it gets annoying and repetitive extremely quick. And there is no way to go in game to the option menu to put it off. They forgot to program that in I suppose.

The first camel you pass in the game, which can be used as a mini-trampoline, actually spits out knives from it’s mouth. This happens after you see an enemy cheat by walking over hot coals. Which is actually a black puddle on your screen. That brings us to the graphics. They are bland. Somethings even don’t represent that they are supposed to be. The apples look like bombs. And who dies of apples, except from chocking on them, anyways?

Also, the attacking of enemies is flawed. Their melee attack reaches further then yours. Which means that you need to use your valuable apples to take no damage. And believe me, you are going to need that health since it’s so rare to find a health pick up. In addition to that, you don’t get explained what the power ups do. One of the first power ups I came across is one that wipes out all enemies on screen. And guess what, there was only one enemy on screen. ONE, for NOPE’s sake, ONE!

Oh, and what’s up with the jumping? You can’t attack when you are in the air. In addition to that, when you fall from a platform, you are locked vertically. So, if you see a vase dropping down on you, it’s damage you can’t avoid. Oh yeah, cheap game. Very cheap. But lucky me, the damage doesn’t get taken since the animation was still playing of Aladdin getting up after the fall. And this ended after the vase actually hit me. Oh joy.

Also, what did I say from the AI before? Further in the first level, I was able to get an enemy in attack mode without even the ability to hit me. Wait, why isn’t it coming closer to me then? Oh yeah, movie game. That explains a lot. So I destroyed this enemy with my rock apples. Which brings me to another complaint. There is no clear indication which weapon you have selected. You just need to guess or to press the attack button to know that.

The decent animations of the characters are ruined by the white outline around them. Which makes those very clear, but not the places where you can and can’t jump on. Since this game isn’t so linear, this is another issue.

And then my copy decided to freeze. Which it often does. So, end of this review! On to the conclusion.

Conclusion

The good:

+ Follows the movie story quite well.

+ It’s exists for reviewers to rip apart when they need to review a bad game.

The bad:

– Terrible AI.

– Lacking save and load feature.

– Bland graphics.

– Annoying music.

– Major flaws in the controls.

– Too steep of a learning curve.

– Nothing of the game gets explained.

– Bland sound effects and some parts could use sound effects.

– Difficult even on easy.

– …

My advise

When you are a Gameboy collector, get this game. But let it gather dust. As a hobby gameboy gamer, don’t even spend money on this title. You’ll regret it for sure. There aren’t many games I don’t finish for a review but this is one of them. I had trouble finding good points to defend this game.

This was a promising game though, but the lack of so many things and screwed up basics make this game a shouting fest for adventure and platform gamers. I forgot to mention a few things in my review like the sound and the enemy always being able to hit you first, but it’s clear that this game has more flaw then Swish cheese has holes.

And if you would excuse me, I need to play better games now to finish up other reviews of actually good games. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave in the comments what your experience is with the game.

Score: 27 / 100