42 - LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND NINTENDO GAMES - June 1992
| GAME BOY
BALLOON KID Sunsoft £25 1 player 76% Issue Three Andy Argh, argh, it's going the wrong way! Yep, this is one of an incredibly small number of games ever in the world to scroll from left to right, and it makes it deeply confusing and uncomfortable to play for about the first two minutes, but get past that and you get a really neat little platform-ish game with cutesy graphics and a novel feel (thanks to the inertia-heavy control on the balloons that you dangle from for most of the time) that sends this one soaring above a dozen more run-of-the-mill efforts of similar design. There's more of Mario in this one than it first appears, but there's enough originality too to make it well worth having in its own right, and the extra little mini-game you can play from the options screen is brilliant addictive fun for whenever you just fancy a quick five-minute bash. All-round entertainment (ho ho). LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN ****
BART SIMPSON'S ESCAPE FROM CAMP DEADLY Acclaim £25 1 player 92% Issue Four Steve It's strange, but while most movie/cartoon/whatever licence games turn out to be formulaic platform efforts with little or no feel for the character, young Bart seems to lead a bit of a charmed life. First came the charming (if bitchingly hard) Bart vs The Space Mutants on the NES, now Escape From Camp Deadly on Game Boy turns out superbly atmospheric too, with a feel almost like playing an episode of the TV series! On first impressions it's fairly average-looking stuff, but just when you're about to get bored, something groovy always seems to happen and keeps your interest alive just long enough to get to the next good bit (which is never far away). The difficulty is brilliantly-judged to allow for steady progress, and although this means you'll finish the game sooner rather than later, you'll enjoy it so much that you won't be disappointed. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN *** STAR TIP: The first treehouse baddie, Blindside Bill, can be killed with a single shot! When you reach him, simply turn round, fire a boomerang AWAY from Bill, then jump over his head and run away. The boomerang will fly round and hit him in the back as he turns to face you, and he's a goner!
BATMAN Sunsoft £25 1 player 80% Issue One Andy Hang on, this is just Super Mario Land with pointy ears, isn't it? Well, yes and no. Batman does indeed look almost identical to the Mario classic (except with prettier graphics), but game-wise this is considerably more shoot-'em-up orientated than Mario's platform-leaping and pipe-exploring action. While this means that Batman's the more immediately thrilling of the two, it doesn't take long before you find yourself wishing that you could headbutt a few of those blocks and discover a few mystery rooms and so on. It also suffers from allowing infinite continues, which would mean that you could finish it pretty easily inside a day if it wasn't for the unbelievably evil auto-scrolling section two levels from the end. This is what extends the game's life immeasurably, albeit in an almost impossibly infuriating way, but if you're after a challenge after completing Mario Land, this is the nearest thing to a 'sequel' currently available. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN ****
BEST PLATFORM GAME EVER BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT GAME BOY ADVENTURE Sunsoft £25 1 player 91% Issue Three Steve Excellent! Right, that's enough Bill & Tedness. Which is fair enough, because there's practically no Bill & Tedness in this game either - the characters have simply been tacked on to a simple little platform puzzler which fortunately turned out to be one of the fabbiest Game Boy games ever. Actually a cross between a couple of ancient but totally classic computer games, Bill & Ted's Excellent Game Boy Adventure (they must have been up all night thinking of that title, eh?) brings you 50 screens of the most perfectly playable and unputdownably addictive platform action the Game Boy - or pretty much any other machine, come to that - has ever seen. Titchy graphics allow lots of scope for some real brain-blending situations, but the fiendishly-designed movement patterns will give your reactions the test of their lives too. Missing this would be a, like, totally bogus move, dude. LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: If it all gets a bit too much for you, these level codes will give you a head start on the time-travelling meanies: Wild West 555 4239 Greece 555 6767 England 555 8942 Prehistoric 555 4118 Shopping Mall 555 8471 Cliff place 555 6737 Paradise 555 6429 Concert 555 1881
BEST PUZZLE GAME EVER BOULDER DASH Sunsoft £25 1 player 89% Issue Three Steve Another game with its roots in a veteran computer title, Boulder Dash is still, oddly enough, exactly the kind of game the Game Boy was made for. Based on a handful of very simple rules, it doesn't take long for Boulder Dash to throw up some of the most complex, evil and downright frightening levels you'll ever see in a puzzle game. Picking your way gingerly through subterranean caves full of rocks that will come crashing down on your head at the slightest provocation, manipulating other underground dwellers for your own ends, and trying to survive the huge chain-reaction explosions you sometimes have to set off in your never-ending quest for buried diamonds will have you scratching your head, thumping the floor and swearing at the dog in frustration, but this is such a beautiful and rewarding game to play that you'll never quite get to the point where you want to stop playing it. The multiple difficulty settings mean that it'll take you a lifetime to beat it, too. LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN *****
BURAI FIGHTER DELUXE Nintendo £25 1-2 players 84% Issue Four Andy There aren't actually all that many space shoot-'em-ups around for the Game Boy (right now I'm having trouble coming up with half-a-dozen), so it doesn't actually take very much to be one of the best. Luckily for Burai Fighter, though, even if there were a hundred really good ones released tomorrow it'd still be right up there among the leaders. A slightly odd game, with weird multi-directional scrolling that you can sort of half-control a bit, it's nonetheless a classic blaster in the traditional style, with lots of neat power-ups to collect and millions of squidgy aliens to annihilate. The very best thing about it, though, is the level of challenge which comes from the three difficulty levels. Even the first stage is quite tricky, but by the time you get to Ace level you're faced with a game which will stretch even the best player to their limits. Seriously addictive slimy-slaughtering fun. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: These codes will get you to the second, third, fourth and fifth worlds on each of the three difficulty settings: EAGLE: HGKM, CPFG, JJCM, DKLF ALBATROSS: HGNC, BMHB, DGBF, JGJH ACE: GBHL, MHCB, CDMN, KDPG
CASTLEVANIA II Konami £25 1 player The Castlevania series is Nintendo's biggest cart-shifter after Mario, but quite a lot of people find most of the games a bit lacking in the action and pace departments. That's all changed now though, with this thrill-packed effort, loaded down as it is with gorgeous graphics, secret rooms, and big mean bad guys. Everything travels a lot faster than it did in the first game, and there's much more exploring to do - you can actually take different routes through each level and discover different areas instead of simply trekking through from the start to the end. You can also play the various levels in any order you like, which means you never have to be stuck for long, and the end-of-level bosses always give you at least a fighting chance. The music's a bit on the strident and annoying side, but hey - you can always turn the volume down. LOOKS ***** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: codes from issue five
CENTIPEDE Accolade £25 1-2 players (link or normal) 68% Issue Seven Steve There's been a bit of a renaissance lately in the Game Boy release schedules for old arcade titles dating from the very beginnings of video game history itself, but for all the old amusement-hall veterans who remember 'the good old days', this has to be one of the most welcome revivals. A ridiculously simple single-screen shoot-'em-up in concept, where Centipede really scores is with the sheer overwhelming relentlessness with which your fast-moving insect adversaries assault you. The frenetic action never lets up for a single instant, simply getting faster and faster and tougher and tougher until the screen is just a blur of frenzied motion. Funnily enough, there's something of the feel of Smash TV in here, and in its own way Centipede every bit as much of a classic as that game is. You'll never play it for hours on end, but you'll be playing it for years to come. LOOKS ** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: The trick here is to be in danger from the smallest possible number of sources at any one time, so instead of shooting centipedes in the head or middle (which just makes them split up and get really dangerous), blow them away from the very last segment towards the head, which stops them from dividing or dropping down levels.
CHOPLIFTER II JVC £25 1 player 80% Issue Seven Steve And talking of old arcade games, here's another one. Well, sort of, anyway. The original Choplifter was a hugely popular game on some of the old 8-bit computers, then a moderate hit when converted to coin-op format (unusual in itself, as most things go the other way round), but as far as we know the sequel has only ever shown up on the Game Boy. It's not very different to the original game, with the same flying-a-big-chopper-around-and-rescuing-hostages gameplay, but it's got a feel all of its own all the same, and there's certainly nothing else like it on the Game Boy. The balance between frantic blasting and delicate manouevering is just right, and while the graphics are a bit weeny they're sweetly animated and full of life. If you liked the first game you'll love this, and if you're too young to remember it, find out what you've been missing all this time. LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN *** STAR TIP: passcodes from issue 7
BEST LOOKING GAME EVER DR FRANKEN Elite £25 1 player Wow. Gorgeous, or what? There's no competition whatsoever for Dr Franken's title as the most beautiful-looking Game Boy game to date, but how does it actually play? After all, Dragon's Lair (from the same company) looked fabulous but played like a bit of a dog. Luckily, the same fate doesn't befall Dr Franken, 'cos this is one of the best-designed games you'll ever come across. A huge castle (which comes with its own maps to save you the bother), filled with all manner of fiendish beasties, but mostly filled with a genuinely creepy and realistic atmosphere that draws you in like no other game we've played. You actually get the feeling that you're sneaking, lost, around a real castle, exploring the bathrooms and bedrooms and kitchens and desperately trying to work out how to actually get anywhere, and when you come across a room full of meanies you really do get a bit of a fright. Loads of depth, over 200 rooms, this is true epic material. LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
DUCK TALES Nintendo £25 1 player 78% Issue Two Steve One of the things that's so great about the Game Boy is that its games are cheaper than those of just about any other format you can get. That's especially handy in cases like this, where the exact same game (except for the colour, obviously) is available on the Game Boy for £25 and the NES for £40. Buy it here, and you get a tidier game (the NES suffers from rough edges and jerky scrolling), better control, and most importantly of all, 15 quid in your pocket towards another game! Duck Tales itself (we had to get to it eventually) is a pretty standard formula licence game, lots of platform-leaping and map-making, with objects to find and sub-quests to complete and all the usual sort of stuff that we see such a lot of on the Game Boy, but here it looks prettier and plays better than most, and anyway, it's about time we had a game with a pogo stick in it... LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN *** STAR TIP: solution issue 7
BEST TWO PLAYER LINK EVER DYNA BLASTER Hudson Soft £25 1-2 players (link) 93% Issue Two Andy Almost all of the games which work with the Game Boy's two-player link cable are brilliant fun, if only because at the very root of human nature is the desire to get one up on a real person, but this one is just something else altogether. A groovy (but completely different) game when played solo, the competitive version of Dyna Blaster drops two little robot men into a maze full of blocks, with only some extremely high-explosive delayed-reaction bombs to protect themselves. A race to discover hidden power-ups quickly ensues, followed by a frantic and phenomenally entertaing bout of rushing around trying to avoid massive explosions as chains of bombs set each other off and fill what feels like the whole screen with napalm death. You'll quickly grow to hate your friends... LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN *****
F1 RACE Nintendo £30 1-4 players (link) 88% Issue One Andy The first game to feature the four-player adaptor (hence the high price, because the adaptor is included with the game), F1 race is also the Game Boy's first attempt at the Pole Position style of 3D driving game. The critical factor in these is usually the speed, and luckily that's what F1 Race has in abundance. This is a game that moves like a bat out of Hell that's been covered in greased lightning and had its tail set on fire, and that's before you get out of first gear. There's not a lot of scenery to look at, but that's okay because you have to concentrate so hard to get anywhere in this exceedingly tough game that you don't have time to look at trees anyway. F1 Race is excellent, if frustrating, fun on its own, but get another three players hooked up and the fun level goes through the roof. LOOKS *** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
FACEBALL 2000 Bullet Proof Software £25 1-4 players (link) And while you've got all those people and their Game Boys in one place, why not whip out your four cunningly-concealed copies of Faceball 2000 and give that a bash too? Another example of a game that's okay by itself but totally amazing with a few opponents linked up, Faceball 2000 sticks a load of what look like giant Pac-Men into a 3D maze where they have to motor around and shoot each other (basically). There isn't an awful lot to it, but the sense of 'being there' really grabs you from the outset, and it doesn't take long for you to completely forget about the real world and get totally lost in the corridors and passageways on your little yellow screen. Just be careful you don't absent-mindedly wander out and punch the first person you meet in the hallway after you've finished playing... LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: warp from issue 6
FORTRESS OF FEAR Acclaim £25 1 player 84% Issue Two Steve Funny one, this. It's supposed to be a sort of RPG, in the Wizards And Warriors series, but it's really hardly any more complicated than Double Dragon. You control a knight (and you really do control him - every last pixel of movement is entirely at your command) through a series of scrolling levels, hacking up all manner of medieval meanies with a sword. Occasionally there are keys to collect, doors to unlock, power-ups to use and so on and so forth, but basically this is just a heads-down no-nonsense slaughterfest, a bit like Castlevania except faster, prettier, more controllable, more imaginative and just generally lots better in every way. So there. Mind you, you'll need a good couple of hours at a time to really play it properly (no passcodes or anything), but you can't have everything. LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Um, you're pretty much on your own with this one, we're afraid. Still, you can get off to a good start by going left instead of right at the very beginning and grabbing yourself an extra life and a key. Er, hurrah!
GOLF Nintendo £20 1-2 players (link) 92% Issue One Steve Okay, okay, so it's only golf. But golf wouldn't have survived for centuries if it wasn't inherently a pretty groovy game, and it so happens that this Game Boy version is a pretty groovy attempt at capturing the things which make the real thing so, er, pretty groovy (especially if you play it sitting in a park in the summertime). Simple yet flexible control makes hacking your way round the two 18-hole courses (one tricky, one not so tricky) an easy thing to do, but the well-designed holes make doing it well a lot more demanding. The best feature of all though, is one which real golfers the world over go green (ho ho) with envy for - with the fab battery back-up, you only have to play as many holes as you feel like at a time, so you can visit the nineteenth hole eighteen times a game. Now that's what I call sport... LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Don't like the look of that shot? Why not take it again and see if you can do it a bit better? All you need to do is reset the Game Boy (with Select, Start, A and B), then select Continue and you'll be back at the start of the hole! Battery back-up - don't you just love it?
GREMLINS 2 Sunsoft £25 1 player 82% Issue Two Andy Mario time again, with another platformarama that owes more that a bit to our little Italian chum's numerous escapades. Still, there's nothing wrong with being inspired by a classic, and Gremlins 2 rises above its roots by virtue of some beautiful, solid graphics with subtly pretty backgrounds and fluffy-looking sprites, and fast-moving and slick gameplay that never gives you a moment's peace in which to get bored. It's a meanie too, and while there are only four levels to get through (plus a few little between-levels bonus stages, if you want to be picky about it), they're all so big and nasty that you'll be plugging away for ages before you get anywhere near the end. There's nothing here that'll make you stop and scratch your head, but as a simple platform runaround you'll have to go quite a long way (Mexico, for example) to find something more playable, enjoyable and entertaining. This is just about as good as film licences get. LOOKS ***** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
HOOK Ocean £25 1 player 88% Issue Seven Andy More movie-licence platform antics here, in what's fast becoming the Game Boy's most overloaded genre, but this is neat stuff all the same. Lots of levels of Peter Pan-type fun, with a real atmosphere of the film and lots of neat touches to give it that genuine Hook feel (like playing basketball to convince the Lost Boys that you're the real thing). It's all sweetly executed, with bigger graphics and a lot more speed than its NES counterpart (another case of Duck Tales Syndrome here), and it's the kind of thing that'll take you a while to get through without ever getting you madly frustrated at a particularly difficult bit. Fighting sequences break up the running and jumping stuff nicely, and the whole thing is rounded off with some lovely presentation, especially in the music department. A class act, and Dustin Hoffman nowhere in sight. LOOKS *** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN ****
HARDEST GAME EVER HYPER LODE RUNNER Nintendo £25 1 player 84% Issue Two Steve So you fancy yourself as a bit of a game wizard, eh? Beaten Super Mario World with 50 lives and think you're the business, eh? Well, stand by to come down a peg or seventeen, because here comes Hyper Lode Runner and it's got a mean look in its eye... One of the oldest computer games around, Lode Runner gets its nastiest incarnation ever in this superb but brutally difficult Game Boy platforms-and-ladders romp that's strictly for the best of the best. Incredibly devious within a very simple framework, if you can get even halfway through this game's 50 levels (to say nothing of the ones you can design yourself with the built-in but unfortunately save-less construction kit), we want to hear from you now! LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: If you're some kind of masochistic pervert, the password QM-0388 will let you tackle any of the game's 50 screens without having to solve the ones before it. And remember, you can stand on the guards' heads while they're falling as well as when they're standing in a hole...
KING OF THE ZOO Nintendo £20 1-2 players (link) 87% Issue One Steve We've got some pretty simple games in this book, but this one just about takes the biscuit. You play a little penguin (or one of four other characters) who has to beat all the other zoo animals at a bizarre game which involves rolling a load of balls across a table. And, er, that's about all. The twist comes with the superballs that you can throw across and stun your opponent, but the actual fun comes when you link up a couple of Game Boys and play it against another human. A bit like tennis, the simple nature of the game makes it impossible to accept defeat when you lose, so you play again and again until you win. And then again to prove that it wasn't a fluke. And then again because your opponent can't accept that they lost. And then again because... well, you get the idea, anyway. Cute, fluffy and lovable. LOOKS ** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
KWIRK Acclaim £20 1-2 players (link) 78% Issue One Andy Puzzle games aren't in short supply on the Game Boy (the lack of demands they make on the little screen is one major reason why), but this is one of the best in a pretty big field. Played in a series of rooms filled with what appear to be Tetris blocks, you have to manoeuvre (with the aid of a little tomato character) the blocks around in order to clear a path to the exit. As you might expect of anything where Tetris blocks are involved, it's fiendishly tricky, especially if you play at one of the higher of the three (count 'em!) difficulty settings. Not only that, but you get two different types of game plus a (fairly dull) head-to-head link option, and even two different ways to view the screen. As with all the best puzzlers, it's really simple rule-wise and really complex in operation, and it's a game which will keep you scratching your head for a long time to come. LOOKS ** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
MISSILE COMMAND Accolade £25 1-2 players 49% Issue Seven Andy Okay, okay, it's a fair cop, we under-rated this one a bit. What can we say, we were having a bad day, the sun was shining, we wanted to get outside, you know how it is. This is a fabby conversion of one of the better old coin-ops and - drat, no more space. LOOKS *** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: After about half-a-dozen levels or so, you'll find that the missiles rain down the screen far too fast to pick them off individually. What you should do from then on is to build a wall of explosions a couple of times each wave. Starting at the opposite side of the screen from the missile base you've decided to use, fire off about seven shots in a line travelling towards the base (wait a second or so for the missiles to appear to see which bits of the screen you have to cover.) If you time it right, the whole wave will be met by a solid wall of impenetrable death, leaving you to pick off smart missiles and bombers with your remaining missiles. It's also worth knowing that the enemy can only destroy three cities in any one wave, so if a wave is in progress and you've already lost that many, concentrate on protecting your bases and getting big points. Don't worry about your cities - they don't need you.
MOTOCROSS MANIACS Palcom £20 1-2 players (link) 91% Issue Seven Steve No, it doesn't look like much in pictures, but don't be fooled by your eyes - Motocross Maniacs is one of the most excellent games ever to grace a Game Boy screen. Your little motorcycle really zooms around the eight increasingly-dangerous course, performing loop-the-loops and other death-defying stunts at a breakneck pace, competing either against the clock, against a computer rider or - best of all - against another human player via the link mode. Control is everything, and you'll need the reactions of a cheetah and the co-ordination of an octopus if you're going to come out on top at even the easiest of the game's three difficulty settings. (And if you try out the hardest one, you'll need the eyes of Superman and the brain of Albert Einstein as well.) As a great man once said, 'Good luck - you'll need it!' LOOKS ** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: Use nitro boosts whenever you go up a ramp - you never know what could be lurking just out of sight at the top of the screen...
NAVY SEALS Ocean £25 1 player 79% Issue Two Andy Another example of the 'never mind the plot, let's get lots of platforms and shooting in there' school of film licencing, Navy Seals luckily doesn't suffer at all from bearing almost no relation whatsoever to the storyline of the movie whose name it shares. (In fact, the movie was so totally useless that it's probably a much better idea to forget about it completely and just write a whole new plot for the game anyway.) What you get instead is a five-level (and that's five BIG levels) platform shoot-'em-up with big butch graphics and a level of challenge that's mean enough to tax the best of players. As with Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and Castlevania 2, you can practice to your heart's content on any of the levels, but to finish the game you have to play right through them all in one go, and that's a tall order. In fact, Navy SEALs is a lot like the first Turtles game in a lot of ways, and while it's not quite as good it'll probably take you quite a bit longer to beat. Give it a try. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN ****
BEST SHOOT EM UP EVER NEMESIS Konami £25 1 player 92% Issue Two Steve One of the earliest Game Boy shoot-'em-ups, but still easily the best, Nemesis takes its inspiration from the classic coin-op of the same name that made horizontally-scrolling blasters with big power-ups the hugely popular staple of the arcade market that they are today. It's not a pixel-for-pixel conversion, but despite the differences in the levels the all-important Nemesis feel survives completely intact, and that's what makes this such a fabulous game. Well, that and all the great baddies, secret levels, and totally gripping epic blast-frenzy that Nemesis is from start to finish. Two difficulty levels gives you a real challenge to aim for too, and this is one of those games that you'll play again and again after you've beaten it anyway. Truly essential software. LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: weapons cheat
BEST BOARD GAME EVER OTHELLO Nintendo £20 1-2 players 92% Issue Two Andy Cor. Looks great, doesn't it? Those firm, regular grid lines! Those uncompromising, defiant black and white circles! That determined single screen! That, er, sexily-gloved hand! That - okay, we're not fooling anybody, Othello looks crap. What you can't see from screenshots, though, is that this is one of the most thoughtful, absorbing, deeply strategic and just basically brilliant board games ever invented, and that this Game Boy conversion plays an excellent game and boasts fabulous presentation that'll make a decent player out of the most treacle-brained dimbo as it gently helps and nudges you towards the best ways to play. Four talented computer opponents provide a challenge even for the experts too, though, which is the final clincher for this superb cart. LOOKS *** SOUND ** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: The single most important strategy (apart from trying to capture the corner squares) in Othello is to try and capture the smallest possible number of your opponent's pieces with each move. Yes, we know it sounds silly, but you'll thank us for it when you get to the end, just you wait and see.
PAC-MAN Namco £25 1-2 players (link or normal) 51% Issue Seven Andy One of those games you either love or hate, but you'd really have to have a pretty cold heart not to love Pac-Man. The first real arcade hero, the little yellow face with the insatiable appetite has appeared on almost every games machine that ever existed, and nothing's changed in this latest version, except that he now inhabits a maze that scrolls around a bit instead of all being on the screen at once (unless you choose 'all-the-maze-being-on- the-screen-at-once' mode, of course). The utterly classic dot-munching and ghost-dodging fun is the same fabulously addictive reaction-testing stuff it always was, and this is a title no true game-lover's collection should ever be without. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN *** STAR TIP: Pac-Man is a pattern game - the ghosts always behave according to certain pre-ordained rules, so if you always do the same things they'll always react in the same way. Experiment until you devise a safe route through the maze - it'll then work perfectly all the time!
Q*BERT Jaleco £25 1 player 80% Issue Seven Steve Guess what? Yep, it's another classic coin-op from the early days. Q*Bert was mostly famed in times gone by for being the arcade game where the hero swore in a speech balloon whenever he got killed, but it's actually a great game as well. Your big-nosed buddy leaps around weird pyramid structures changing the colour of the floor tiles from grey to, er, a different shade of grey, but if you think that's weird you should see the bad guys! Coiled springs, evil snakes and giant bouncing balls are just a few of the nasties which give this game most of the hugely cutesy feel that makes it so enjoyable to play, but the testing gameplay and the teasing cartoon movie between levels do their bit too. Friendly control and well-judged difficulty are the final icing on this yumlicious arcade cake, and you could do a lot worse than to grab yourself a slice of the action right now. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
QIX Nintendo £20 1 player 83% Issue One Steve There certainly are a lot of really old arcade games in this list, aren't there? It just goes to show that fashion always moves in circles, I suppose, as well as showing that arcade games in the old days had to be great to play instead of simply relying on fab graphics to make people want to chuck hard-earned dosh at them. That's certainly a good description of Qix, a game with graphics that you can only really call, er, 'crap'. Draw boxes with lines, avoid the big spinning collection of, er, lines that is the main bad guy and that's about it. But why is it so great to play? Get it and find out for yourself. LOOKS ** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: The way to big-point success in Qix is to draw with the slow line, and so get double points for the area filled in. The best way to do this is to start each screen with a lot of small boxes drawn with the fast line, in the form of a sort of tree (ie going straight up the middle of the screen with lots of little branches splitting off all over the place). Then you can box off huge areas with tiny little lines in slow draw mode without putting yourself in any danger from nasty old Mr Qix whatsoever!
REVENGE OF THE GATOR Hal £20 1-2 players (link or normal) 85% Issue One Andy Pinball! Now we're talking! Of course, if you're a deaf, dumb and blind kid you're going to be a bit knackered with a Game Boy, but for everyone else this is a brilliant recreation of the silver-ball game, with a few extra bits that you couldn't do on a real machine chucked in for good measure. Absolutely fabulous pinball fun, then, and with a great two-player link game as well (sort of like the awesome seaside arcade game Air Hockey, but with flippers), but the very best thing about Revenge Of The Gator has to be the brilliant little dance that the three baby gators at the start do in time with the theme music - you'll watch it for hours! Well, I did, anyway... LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: Tilt your Game Boy - it really works!
ROBOCOP 2 Ocean £25 1 player This game had a really hard act to follow. Not the original RoboCop game, which was an okayish but sluggish and repetitive scrolling beat-'em-up/shoot-'em-up job, but the original RoboCop game's theme music - an absolutely gorgeous piece of sonic engineering which you can listen to for hours on end without ever wanting to bother playing the game. Sadly, RoboCop 2 doesn't quite cut it on the theme front, but it makes up for it by being better than its predecessor in every other way. While the basic gameplay is the same, RoboCop 2 has bigger and better-animated graphics, prettier and more varied backdrops, a fairer kind of difficulty, and most importantly a good deal more speed. It's not revolutionary in any way, but the pressure is constant all the way through, so you don't have time to notice that you've seen it all before. Production-line movie licencing the good way. LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
R-TYPE Irem £25 1 player 86% Issue One Steve The game that kicked the life back into the horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up in the arcades didn't seem like one that would be even slightly feasible on a little monochrome handheld, but against all the odds Irem came up with a Game Boy conversion that captured every last bit of the feel of the coin-op smash hit (even if it didn't manage to capture a couple of the original eight levels). Wondrous graphics and sound, but what really makes this a fab game is the superb, imaginative design that characterised the original game. Huge, disgusting end-of-level bosses, stages made up entirely of a single enemy ship bristling with gun emplacements, and massive robot snakes are just a few of the uglies you'll have to obliterate with your impressive array of weaponry in R-Type, and you'll love every minute of it. The only flaw is that it's a touch easy, but hey - we all need to actually complete a game sometimes. LOOKS ***** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: All the tricky bits of R-Type (not that there actually are all that many) are comprehensively covered in our start-to-finish guide printed in issue three.
SKATE OR DIE - BAD'N'RAD Konami £25 1 player 76% Issue Two Andy After the first Skate Or Die game on the NES, you'd be forgiven for giving this a wide berth. You'd be daft though, because it's (a) nothing like the NES game, and (b) really good fun. You get seven levels, alternating between Mario-esque sideways scrolling and down-the-screen vertically-scrolling sections, each packed with lovely scenery, vicious enemies and some of the hardest end-of-level bosses you're ever likely to encounter. It's really fast-moving, but unlike most Game Boy titles it doesn't blur all over the place when things start to shift, and the music is some of the most appropriate around too - pounding, throbbing thrash soundtracks accompany the fast'n'furious skateboarding antics perfectly, and help to work up a real feeling of tension and excitement. The two different types of gameplay keep it interesting, and the 'practice the first four levels' option gives you just a glimmer of hope in what's one of the Game Boy's most demanding challenges so far. LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
BEST GAMEBOY GAME EVER SUPER MARIO LAND Nintendo £20 1 player 94% Issue One Steve What can we say? If there's a single Game Boy owner out there reading this who doesn't already have a copy of this trillions-selling platform classic, we want to hear from you immediately, so we can say 'What on Earth's the matter with you, you foolish person?'. All the best bits of the NES Mario games, but with a couple of wild scrolling shoot-'em-up sections thrown in for good measure, this is just about the most complete gaming experience you'll ever have. Loads of secrets to discover, loads of new baddies to meet (and jump on), lots of pretty graphics to go 'ooh' at, but most importantly, loads and loads of supremely addictive block-butting and platform-jumping entertainment. It's topped the Game Boy charts almost uninterruptedly since the day it came out, and it'll probably stay that way for a long time to come yet. And quite right too. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Check out our complete guide to the game in issues one and two.
SNOOPY'S MAGIC SHOW Kemco £25 1-2 players 71% Issue Seven Andy Hmm, interesting title. This game's got nothing to do with Snoopy, nothing to do with magic, and there's precious little show-business on offer either. What you get instead is a naff-looking but surprisingly compulsive puzzle game where your little Snoopy sprite (the only noticeable connection with the character) runs around a set of fixed single screens avoiding bouncing balls and collecting little Woodstock icons. There's precious little to it, and it never really changes or gets more involved as it progresses, but it's so zippy and classically simple that you find yourself, almost without noticing it, getting completely addicted and not wanting to put the game down until you've solved 'just one more level, y'know?'. That said, if you do stick at it for a couple of days you'll whizz through it (thanks to the password system) and probably not bother with it anymore, but for younger players or puzzle-game novices, this is neat. LOOKS ** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
SOLAR STRIKER Nintendo £20 1 player 72% Issue One Andy One of the first batch of Game Boy games released when the machine first appeared a couple of years ago, it's perhaps a bit surprising that this is still up there with the best of the dozens and dozens of titles available. Then again, since almost every one of the other games in the first batch (Super Mario Land, Golf, Tennis and Qix) is also featured in this book, maybe it's not that surprising after all. Solar Striker is a vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up (which we haven't seen many of so far), cursed with graphics which look like they were drawn with a razor blade on a piece of slate, but gameplay which is fast, action-packed, addictive and gripping and all the other things which are a million times more important to a game than good graphics. Some of the aliens' flight patterns would put the Red Arrows to shame, and some of the guardians would make the Death Star swallow nervously and gaze at its shoes, and overall this is one of the nicest (if that's the right word) blasters you could ask for. And a bargain, too. LOOKS ** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
SOLOMON'S CLUB Tecmo £25 1 player 93% Issue Seven Steve If you've finished Bill & Ted's Excellent Game Boy Adventure and you're after something even more challenging, this is the cart you want. In fact, no matter who or what you are, this is the cart you want, because it's completely stonky. 50 levels of single-screen platform puzzling, but this time you can do any one you feel like at any time. Well, you can TRY to do any one you feel like, because these are no softy Kickle Cubicle-type puzzles, these are real brain-teasers and hair-ripper-outers. It's puzzley enough for the most dedicated problem-solver, yet still arcadey enough for Mario lovers to get more than enough kicks out of it, and being able to play the screens in any order should mean that absolutely everyone in the whole world can get their money's worth of entertainment out of it. It's unbelievably playable, terrifically addictive, and if you don't own it by this time tomorrow, you're off your flippin' rocker. LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
SUPER HUNCHBACK Ocean £25 1 player 90% Issue Seven Steve The last 'really old coin-op updated for the Game Boy' game in this book, honest. Super Hunchback takes the basic plot of the fun-but-simplistic arcade title of yesteryear, adds more than a touch of 90s platform knowhow and comes up with one of the very best straightforward run-and-jump romps there is. It's super-simple (collect fruit, get to the end of each screen, don't get hit by baddies or land on spikes), but the gorgeous execution, lovely presentation (check out the way Hunchback gets bored and reads a book or whistles a little tune on top of the in-game music if you leave the controls alone for a while), supreme playability and the addictiveness that comes from short, snappy levels and lots of hidden secrets to go exploring for turns Super Hunchback into something very special. If there's a flaw it's that it's a pretty difficult game which doesn't come with any level codes to give the average player a chance to see the later stages, but really, if you're any kind of gamer worth their salt, you'll stay with this one until you get good enough. You'll feel better for it in the end. LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ****
SUPER RC PRO-AM Rare £25 1-4 players (link) 87% Issue One Steve A real shame, this game. Why? Well, it's got some of the prettiest graphic backdrops of any Game Boy title to date, but unfortunately the 3D isometric scrolling is so fast and smooth that when the game's in progress all you really get to see is a lot of big grey blur. Oh well. Other than that, it's pretty difficult to find flaws in Super RC Pro-Am. The overhead-view radio-controlled buggy racing is fast, exciting, challenging and addictive, and it's certainly one of the top two Game Boy racing games to date (er...), not to mention being the best four-player link effort so far. It gets a little repetitive if you're playing by yourself (some level codes would have helped), but get some chums together and get a four-player adaptor (and, er, get four Game Boys and four copies of the game) and you'll be set for weeks. LOOKS *** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
TENNIS Nintendo £20 1-2 players (link) 95% Issue One Andy Tennis - isn't it just terminally dull, though? You sit there in front of your TV set, some overpaid jessie grunts and groans and bounces the ball up and down for five minutes, finally hits it, the other guy belts it back right past the first guy and wins a point, then it all starts again. Top entertainment, I don't think. So why should it be any different on a Game Boy? Well, how about multiple difficulty settings to give even the dodgiest player a chance to win? How about superb control that lets you play a shot to just about any blade of grass on the court once you get good at it? How about a great two-player link mode that lets you pit your wits against your pals and thrash them? How about the best competitive sports game since, well SNES Super Tennis, basically? This is the absolute biz, even if you hate tennis, and we can't recommend it any more highly than that. LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ****
TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES - FALL OF THE FOOT CLAN Konami £25 1 player 91% Issue One Andy Until the release of its sequel, this was almost certainly the best Game Boy beat-'em-up around, which means that now it's, er, the second-best beat-'em-up around. If you're a fan of beat-'em-ups then, this is a game you shouldn't be without. The graphics are fab, the music is double-fab (especially the extra-groovy version of the theme music you get if you manage to finish the game), it's great fun to play and there's an any-level-practice mode which saves you from getting frustrated with the same old scenery. All the same, a halfway-decent player will probably complete the game within a couple of days at the most (practicing beforehand or not), but Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles is one of that exclusive club of games that you'll go back to and blast through many a time after you've seen the end, just for the sheer fun of it. Top entertainment, even if the Turtles are totally old hat these days. LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN *** STAR TIP: For a full energy refill, pause the game and press UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A. Sadly it only works once, but you don't want it too easy now, do you?
BEST BEAT-'EM-UP EVER TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLES 2 - BACK FROM THE SEWERS Konami £25 1 player 84% Issue Seven Andy Hang on a minute, didn't we just do this one? The Turtles, the scrolling levels, the pretty backdrops, the beat-'em-up action, the whole lot? Well, yes and no. There's no denying that this is a very similar game to its predecessor, but it improves on the first game in almost every area. It's got more levels, more sub-games, more variation (whole rounds taking place on skateboards, bits with alternative routes, the chance to rescue captured comrades, great bits where the Turtles run uncontrollably down steep slopes), better backdrops and generally more of all the things you loved from Fall Of The Foot Clan. Unfortunately it doesn't quite manage the same on the animation front, with some girly mincing around on the part of our heroes and some deeply unconvincing weapon swipes, but that's a small price to pay for such a playable and challenging game. Very good indeed. LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** |
NES
BATMAN Sunsoft £45 1 player 81% Issue One Andy Love or loathe the movie, you can't help but be impressed by Sunsoft's Batman game. It's got almost nothing to do with the hit-flick, apart from the star, the grinning baddie and the dark, oppressive atmosphere - who says the NES can't cut it in the graphics department? This is one good-lookin' game, with loads of background animation and some really nasty nasties! Ol' rubber-pants jumps 'n' clings like a good superhero should and has a number of bat-weapons at his command. It's a long, tough and occasionally frustrating mission, but you won't find many more challenging platform games this side of Gotham Central. LOOKS ***** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: If you're the kind of person who gets a thrill out of blindly following instructions and completing a game without ever having to put any of your own effort into it whatsoever, then you can chicken out with the aid of our complete guide from issue six.
BATTLE OF OLYMPUS Imagineer £30 1 player 92% Issue One Andy Dare you enter into battle with the gods of ancient Greece? Well, you'd better get ready to kick some mythological butt, if you want to get your girlie back! This sprawling RPG-style adventure is a mixture of scrolling beat 'em up and popping down the road to ask that nice Mr. Johnson where the mystic Staff of Fennel has gotten to. The graphics are sweet, with more detail than games like Zelda I and II, and the quest is long and arduous - good job you get passcodes along the way. If you've been considering having a bash at an adventure, but like a fair amount of action in your life, the long-forgotten land of Arcadia is as good a place as any to start! LOOKS **** SOUND ** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: Hades too hot to handle? Getting plopped on in Peloponnesus? Best check out our full players' guide in issue 9, then.
BEST SPORTS GAME EVER BLADES OF STEEL Konami/Palcom £35 1-2 players 81% Issue Three Steve Ice hockey games are never usually up to much (probably because of the limited nature of the sport itself), but Blades Of Steel is the exception to the rule. The control, passing and shooting system is a work of genius, and the game really feels like the real thing, with players sliding around, the puck zipping from end to end in two seconds flat, and brutal punch-ups peppering the play. Three skill levels and eight different computer sides make for a decent challenge in one-player mode, but as a two-man game this is pretty much unbeatable, and it's a lot more accessible than Kick Off too. Shame about all the tedious and annoying skating around the players do in the gaps between matches, periods and goals when you want to get on with it, though. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Learn to control your keeper! Any time the puck even gets close to your net, concentrate on moving your keeper instead of the defence. Save a couple of shots and the defence will come in for the puck by themselves, so don't worry about trying to move them in to tackle, it'll just leave your goal unguarded.
BLASTER MASTER Sunsoft £40 1 player 71% Issue Six Andy At first glance, you'd be forgiven for dismissing this as just another run-of-the-mill platform job, but there's quite a bit more to Blaster Master than first meets the eye. Firstly, there's the nifty way your truck can fire in eight different directions while it's moving along. Secondly, there's the two different gamestyles you get - the platformy shoot-'em-up bit, and a Gauntlet-style maze romp bit. But best of all, there's the totally ridiculous excuse for a storyline - escaping frogs, radioactive chests, giant underground worlds and an utterly unfeasible hero. Never mind the platforms and all that nonsense, just read the plot and laugh for a week. LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN ****
BLUE SHADOW Taito £35 1-2 players 74% Issue Four Steve Just about every other NES game out seems to be one of these multi-level platform-leaping shoot-'em-up efforts, so one of those has got to be pretty zappy if it's going to stand out from the crowd. Luckily though, Blue Shadow is exactly that, with big imaginative graphics and excellent two-players-at-once gameplay turning a run-of-the-mill formula structure into a fast and slick blasting experience. Blue Shadow is a great looker especially, featuring huge enemy tanks at the end of levels, huge spinning wheels with platforms that rotate around impressively without flickering, and some neat special effects to boot. The only downer is that with only five levels and five continues, spirited persistence will see it off inside a few days, but at least that's better than spending your whole live having a thoroughly miserable time trying to get to the end of Shadow Warriors, eh? LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
BEST PUZZLE GAME EVER BOULDER DASH First Star £30 1-2 players 90% Issue One Andy Take everything said about the Game Boy version of Boulder Dash earlier in this book, then say it again only more so about the NES version. The exact same totally fabulous game, but with colour graphics and - crucially - two whole new worlds which don't appear either in the Game Boy game or the original computer versions. Everything else is identical, making this totally and utterly unmissable, even if you've already got it on Game Boy - those two extra worlds are real swines, and you'll really have your work cut out beating them. Chuck in the difficulty levels as well and you've got a game that'll last you a lifetime (although the life of what, we're not saying). LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: Take a trip around the Boulder Dash universe with these level codes: Ice World 635870 Sand World 840137 Ocean World 840967 Relic World 225378 Volcano World 752053
BUBBLE BOBBLE Taito £30 1-2 players 80% Issue One Steve Oh no! Tragic Miscalculation Alert! While Taito have come up with a great conversion of this wild arcade game, with over twice as many levels as the original and lots of new features, someone made a terrible boo-boo when they decided that it should come complete with level codes for every screen and infinite continues into the bargain. What this means, of course, is that you can buy the game, set aside a few hours for playing it, finish it the same day and be so sick of bubble-blowing and platform-leaping that you'll never play it again. With a bit more will-power, though, (say a few screens a day), you'll get a ton of fun out of this cutest of cutesy adventures, especially in two-player mode. It's a bit sneaky of Taito to print screenshots of the coin-op version on the box and not tell anyone, though. LOOKS ** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **
CAPTAIN PLANET Mindscape £40 1 player 70% Issue Three Andy The cartoon eco-hero bursts onto your NES screen to suck up all the CFCs, scrape up all the doggie-doo and generally make the world a better place to live. Hurrah! In fact, Captain Planet - and his chums the Planeteers - possess all manner of Earth-cleaning powers with which to vanquish evil polluters like Hoggish Greedly and Looten Plunder. It's your task to guide the Captain either on foot (well, hovering) or in one of his three eco-craft through long levels full of deadly muck and grime, halting oil-spills, rescuing dolphins and helping to cleanse the planet. It's a gorgeous looking game, but cleaning this world of ours is a tough operation, even with the Cap'n on your side. LOOKS ***** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
CAPTAIN SKYHAWK Rare £35 1 player 83% Issue One Andy Shoot 'em up time! This is a slick little number giving you control over a high-tech jet fighter on search 'n' destroy missions. Each level is split into three stages: a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up (over some weird, but very smart 3D geometric landscapes), an After Burner-style blasty bit and a space-station docking section. You can tool up with a number of different weapons, but you usually get enough cash to buy all the weapons on offer, rendering this feature a bit pointless. There's plenty of variety, plenty of action, but it's all a bit simplistic and shouldn't be too difficult to finish. Good, but not a classic by any stretch. LOOKS ***** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
CASTLEVANIA III Nintendo £40 1 player 80% Issue Seven Steve The third in the NES Castlevania trilogy - ad the best of the bunch! This time it's the turn of Trevor Belmont - ancestor of the original whip-wielder, Simon. But the baddie remains the same: Count Dracula still stalks the earth and is all set to take over the earth with his army of un-dead (spooky, huh?). The gameplay is pure platform action, with heaps of monsters to whip, crumbling platforms to fall through and even a few giant clock pendulums to ride on! The scenery is better then before, the enemies just that bit nastier and the quest typically long and unpleasant. If you ever fancied a crack at Drac' this definitely the one to go for. LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
CHIP 'N' DALE RESCUE RANGERS Capcom £45 1-2 players 81% Issue Four Andy Yep, it had to happen - a game featuring those sweaty bodybuilding male strippers who send girls crazy with- eh? Oh, those Chip 'N' Dales!? The pair of lovable chipmunks who shot to stardom in their own cartoon series Rescue Rangers? (Phew.) Yep, the pair of rodent rogues jump, climb and scurry their way through this wonderful two-player platform knockabout. The graphics are suitably chipmunk's eye-view (ie massive) and there are lots of varied monsters to avoid, defeat or simply run away from. The one hair on the jelly is that it's too easy to finish, which is a real shame. Still, it hasn't stopped Chip 'N' Dale selling in bucketloads! LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
DIE HARD Activision £35 1 player 78% Issue Seven Steve One of the ropiest-looking NES games you're ever likely to see, if we're being strictly honest about this, but that doesn't alter the fact that Die Hard is also one of the old machine's best games. Loosely Gauntlet-like in style, you guide a barefoot Bruce Willis around an office complex full of terrorists, superbly and atmospherically rendered with the aid of a great lighting system which ensures that you can only see areas of the screen which would genuinely be in the line of the character's sight. Gameplay isn't very complicated, but there's just enough to it to give the illusion of cleverness, so you feel extra chuffed with yourself when you manage to pull off an especially devious bit of trickery. There's also a fiendish balance between the desire for wanton destruction and the fact that if you leave broken glass everywhere you'll cut your character's poor little feet to ribbons, and it all goes together to form a game that's simultaneously true to the film and top fun in its own right. LOOKS ** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
DRAGON'S LAIR Elite £35 1 player 83% Issue Three Andy Any comparison with the brilliant (if flawed) laserdisc coin-op would be silly, so let's just take this one at face value, eh? For starters, Dirk the Daring has some superb animation. His moves are beautifully presented and add a whole lot of atmosphere to the proceedings. Similarly the scenery is mean and moody - but the gameplay is a lot meaner! This cart just might have you hefting the NES out of the window, but it's got that strange, indefinable lure that keeps you coming back for more. The game is a bit like Prince Of Persia, er, but different. It's neither platform nor shooter, but an odd in-between. Still, it's one hell of a challenge for anyone hard enough to take it on. STAR TIP: This is tough beyond belief, so why not pay a brief call to our player's guide in issue 9? Of course you could always enter your name as BATS on the high score table for loads of lives. But I doubt you'd want to do that. LOOKS ***** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ****
GAUNTLET II Mindscape £40 1-4 players (with Four Score) 88% Issue One Steve And talking of Gauntlet... The tragic Game Boy version of this is almost enough to put you off Gauntlet for life, but you can have your faith restored with this fabulous NES port. It's a pretty dull maze trudgearound by yourself, with two players it's much more entertaining, but with a Four Score hooked up and another three chums playing along, it's a total riot of alliances, treasure-stealing, comrade-shooting and everybody-trying-to-go-in-different-directions-at-the-same-time chaos. Almost everything in life is better with more than one person, and Gauntlet II is the absolute proof. LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN ****
GREMLINS II Sunsoft £50 1 player 73% Issue Five Andy Don't leave it bright lights, don't ever get it wet, and NEVER feed it it after midnight - and that's just the cartridge. Gremlins II is yet another film tie-in that borrows almost nothing from the movie: true, it's got gremlins in it, but that's about it! What we have here is a platform jump about with the most vicious levels! The visuals are stunning, from the detailed backdrops to the perfect sprites to the droolworthy in-between screens - the NES has never looked so good! There's very little to fault the game on, but it's still a standard platform romp and the £50 asking price is way OTT. Get it second hand if you can. LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Here are all the codes to this tough game: Level 1.1 - GBQK, Level 1.2 - BVKF, Level 2.1 - DXNH, Level 2.2 - CGMW, Level 3.1 - NJTD, Level 3.2 - ZFPJ, Level 4.1 - SHMC, Level 4.2 - VLBB, Level 5.1 - NXRD
HOOK Ocean £45 1-2 players 84% Issue Six Steve More movie-licence platform antics here, in what's fast becoming the NES's most overloaded genre, but this is neat stuff all the same. Lots of levels of Peter Pan-type fun, with a real atmosphere of the film and lots of neat touches to give it that genuine Hook feel (like playing basketball to convince the Lost Boys that you're the real thing). It's all sweetly executed, although with smaller graphics and a deal less speed than its Game Boy counterpart (another case of Duck Tales Syndrome here), and it's the kind of thing that'll take you a while to get through without ever getting you madly frustrated at a particularly difficult bit. Fighting sequences break up the running and jumping stuff nicely, and the whole thing is rounded off with some lovely presentation, especially in the music department. A class act, and Robin Williams nowhere in sight. (Hang on a minute... - Publisher) LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN ****
ISOLATED WARRIOR 72% Issue One Andy Weird, this one, and no small error. Diagonally-scrolling shoot 'em ups (remember Zaxxon? No, didn't think so) are few and far between these days, but this is one of the better attempts. You are the isolated warrior (some bloke all on his own, presumably) who walks, jumps, somersaults and occasionally climbs on board a hover scooter, in order to better get shot at by hundreds of gooey aliens. It's a mean blast with massive end-of-level guardians, very pretty graphics and the odd wibbly background just to show off. Passcodes help keep you going and, all in all, a respectable little shooter. LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Want some help, wimp? Cop a load of these codes to let you play all the levels: level 2 - 1227, level 3 - 0501, level 4 - 0948, level 5 - 2168, level 6 - 0666, level 7 - 1192.
KICKLE CUBICLE Irem £30 1 player 62% Issue Four Steve I hope you like puzzle games because, daft name and cutesy-wutesy plot aside, this is one of 'em. The idea is to guide the hero, Kickle, around single screen puzzles, kicking ice blocks to duff up the nasties and collecting all the dream bags (don't ask) on each screen. It's a lot easier to play than it is to describe. And, in fact, it's just as easy to finish. The one saving grace is that there are a series of ever-so-hard levels when you've finished the main game which extends its life to a few days instead of one. A beautifully designed, nice-sounding and good-looking puzzler - but one for younger gamers only. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ** STAR TIP: To access the harder Special Game, press down on the joypad as you turn the NES on. When the screen goes pale blue, press SELECT and bingo!
KICK OFF Anco £36 1-2 players 93% Issue Four Andy A lot of people have slagged this off for not being a perfect conversion of the 16-bit home computer version (which is pretty dumb, really). True, it's not entirely fab when you play on your own, but stick a partner head-to-head and it's a fast, action-packed, joystick-smashing blast of a game! This is footie all right - down to the way you have to keep your player behind the ball. You can put aftertouch on a kick to swerve shots and the most talented of players can dribble the ball, perform overhead kicks, everything. Kick Off is fast and entertaining - what more could you want? LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN *****
Okay, so when you first load this one up, your reaction is probably going to be 'Ugh, it's all slow and crude and incredibly jerky and rubbish and... well, yuk', and you'd be sort of right in a way. Still, suffer the crappy front end for just a little while and you'll find yourself playing a huge and entertaining game, with some of the most impressively colossal baddies you've ever seen. The low gravity effects make for a completely different feel to any of the million other platform games which are otherwise superficially similar, and make this the one that really ought to be at the top of your shopping list if you're in the market for some of that kind of thing. LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: Try the password L0BB (that's a zero in the middle, by the way) for eight lives at the start, or alternatively use the password SHOT to kick off with loads of weapons.
KONAMI HYPER SOCCER Konami £35 1-2 players Right, right, so there isn't really a lot of competition for 'Top Football Game On The NES' so far, but that doesn't make this one any less enjoyable. It's got big butch graphics, reasonably good computer opposition (although, as ever, this kind of thing is much more fun played against another human being who you can gloat over when you score a goal and punch brutally in the face when they score a goal), and most importantly of all, a pretty zippy turn of speed down the wing, Brian (sorry). The only drawbacks are the cheap and nasty animation and the way that you quite often get a screen with nothing on it except for two players and a huge expanse of green nothing, but neither of those affect the groovy gameplay in any way, so who cares? LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
MOST RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE GAME EVER MANIAC MANSION Lucasfilm £55 1 player 83% Issue Three Steve 'HOW MUCH?!?', was the cry in the TOTAL office when this one arrived, but let's forget about the price for a minute and check out the game before we run out of the shops clutching our piggy banks and sobbing. Based on a really old 8-bit computer game, this is a graphic adventure where you take a team of zany Famous Five-type teen heroes on a romp through a creepy mansion full of puzzles and weird mutated beasties. It's got an unusual menu-driven interface and a much more complex method of play than NES players are generally used to, but persevere past the unfamiliarity of it all and you'll find an engrossing and rewarding game that's still, sadly, nowhere near worth the totally disgraceful price ticket attached to it. Ah well... LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN *** STAR TIP: What, you spend 55 quid on a game and then you want us to go and solve it for you? Sounds like a complete waste of a lot of money to us, but if you really insist, you can find a complete solution to the game in issue five (with alternative endings in issue seven). Wimps.
MEGA MAN 2 Capcom £45 1 player 83% Issue Six Andy Mega Man 1 is an overhard and unenjoyably frustrating platform nightmare, but the designers of this sequel seem to have learned from their mistakes and come up with something that's a lot less repetitive, not nearly as annoying, quite a bit nicer to look at and tons more fun all round to actually play. Still very tough, Mega Man 2 is, however, a game that you'll stick with because you always feel you've got a fair chance of getting just a bit further every time. Great stuff for the experts out there. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Can't be bothered with that long trek to Dr Wily's castle? Just enter this code (put dots in the appropriate boxes according to the codes) and you can go straight from the start to the end the easy way: A2 B1 B3 B5 C2 D1 D2 D4 E4
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE Palcom £40 1 player 79% Issue Four Steve A bit like Die Hard in some ways, Mission Impossible is nonetheless another 'alone in its field' NES game. A curious mix of overhead-view Gauntlet-type mazes, Zelda-esque puzzle-solving and character interaction, and Ski Or Die-style scrolling arcadey bits, this is a game that you won't find yourself getting bored with in a hurry. It also boasts some of the best presentation ever, with an especially brilliant intro sequence, and one of the most absorbingly atmospheric NES games around. If someone offers you this, choose to accept it. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: These are the codes to access the game's later stages, y'lazy old cheats, you. Area 2 HMPR Area 3 KMVW Area 4 XDGJ Area 5 TVJL Area 6 QBYZ
BEST GAME WITH KIWIS IN EVER NEW ZEALAND STORY Ocean £40 1-2 players There aren't many games that make the NES look like a better machine than the ultra-posh £400 Amiga, but this is number one in a field of, er, one. Probably the most perfect arcade conversion the NES will ever see, New Zealand Story looks, sounds, feels and plays exactly like its coin-op parent. Take Tiki the Kiwi through huge levels spanning the whole of that strange-looking country off Australia, donning snorkels for larks beneath the sea or getting up to all manner of airborne antics in a series of bizarre balloons. It's terrifyingly playable, impossibly cute and irresistably lovable, and well worth inventing a special category all of its own for, no doubt about it. Unmissable. LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: The quickest way through the game is to use the secret warp world, which is accessed by firing arrows into certain gaps and walking through the portals thus revealed. The NES game warps are in exactly the same places as the coin-op's, so if you know that well, you're laughing. Otherwise, explore each level as thoroughly as possible, fire all the time and watch out for arrows disappearing without appearing to hit anything, as that usually indicates there's a warp nearby.
PROBOTECTOR Konami £35 1-2 players 85% Issue Four Andy You might know this game as Contra (from US arcades) or Gryzor (from UK arcades or computer conversions) or Operation C (from US Game Boy versions), but the most important thing is that you simply know it, because it's one of the NES's classiest pieces of software of any kind. Fast, smooth graphics race around in a frenzy of blasting and platform-leaping through seven levels, covering three distinct styles of gameplay, from sideways-scrolling blasting to into-the-screen Operation Thunderbolt playalike to vertically-scrolling Rainbow Islands-style platform action. Every section is beautifully executed, the graphics are varied and lovely, sound is strong and useful, and basically what we're looking at is a practically perfect NES arcade game. Get it. LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: The codes for the higher levels are as follows: Level 2 1227 Level 3 0501 Level 4 0948 Level 5 2168 Level 6 0666 Level 7 1192 Also, pressing up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and Start on the title screen before the music stops will give you 30 lives for every credit!
RAINBOW ISLANDS Ocean £40 1-2 players 92% Issue Five Andy Generally accepted as the best 16-bit home computer game of all time, Ocean did a better job of bringing Rainbow Islands to the creaky old technology of the 8-bit NES than anyone had ever dared to hope for. Every last little bit of the original game makes it intact to the NES, which means that every last bit of the original compulsive and incredibly addictive gameplay does too. Easy to get to grips with but phenomenally hard to defeat, this one could last you longer than your NES does. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: To access the secret rooms containing permanent power-ups, collect seven diamonds on each island, in the correct order (left to right, starting with orange and ending with purple). This will create a door on the end-of-level boss screen which you can go through for big bonus points and a power-up (fast shoes on the first island, moving on to include permanent fast rainbows, automatic double rainbows, a Book Of Continues and lots more) which you'll retain even when you lose your lives.
ROAD FIGHTER Palcom £30 1 player 44% Issue Six Andy Yes, it did get a pretty duff review, and yes, it is far too expensive for what it is, and yes, it is incredibly simplistic, but the simple fact remains that Road Fighter is more straightforward fun to play that about 80% of all NES games. The graphics are tiny, but attractive in their own way, and the sound is minimalist, there are only four stages (and two difficulty levels), and there's about as much depth to it as there is to a sheet of tissue paper, but you can't get away from it - it's immensely addictive and great reaction-testing, and there are an awful lot of games out there which don't even manage this. It'll never be anybody's favourite game, but it'll always be dragged out for a good playing every now and again, and so it should be. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. LOOKS ** SOUND ** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Being the most accurate driving simulation yet seen on the NES, the best tactics to employ in Road Fighter are, as you might expect, exactly the same ones you'd use in real life. Therefore, if you get into a skid, quickly steer your car in the same direction as it's sliding to recover control.
ROLLERGAMES konami £40 1 player 72% Issue Two Steve Remember those lace-up skates that you had that rubbed your heels raw and meant that you had to work twice as hard just to keep up with people on foot? Oh. Erm, forget that then. This is something different - it's a cross between the old movie Rollerball and a one-player game of Double Dragon. You skate around like a mad thing avoiding all the hazards 'n' stuff, then duff up some bad guys at the end of each level. Nice graphics, a good slice of variety and a meaty bit of challenge. If you fancy a change from, well, anything really, try out Rollergames for a laff. LOOKS **** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
THE SIMPSONS: BART VS THE SPACE MUTANTS Acclaim £40 1 player 81% Issue One Steve It feels like an episode of the cartoon, it plays like a dream, it's incredibly challenging (you won't finish this one in a week, that's for sure), and there are more little secrets hidden in it than in a lifetime's supply of boxes of Sugar Puffs. Most of Bart's world is encompassed in the five huge levels of ultra-tricky platform action, displayed in bright, primary-colour cartoon graphics and accompanied by a fab rendition of the brilliant Simpsons theme music everywhere Bart goes. The whole family are there to help out too, and the zany nature of the tasks Bart gets himself landed with ensures that there'll be a smile on your face no matter how many times you get splatted by one of the numerous evil and vicious baddies. Very hard but never frustrating, this is one for all the family to get together on. Beats singing hymns around the piano on a Sunday night, anyway. LOOKS **** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: You want that complete level one guide from issue two, you do. Also, on level two, after you go up the first escalator, go to the second bin and bounce up and down on it over and over again to get free coins, lives, and even temporary invincibility (Cheers, Ants).
BEST TWO PLAYER GAME EVER SNAKE RATTLE'N'ROLL Rare £40 1-2 players 90% Issue One Steve Actually, this one should probably get 'Best Graphics Ever' too. Amazingly-lovely 3D landscapes are the playground for Rattle And Roll, a couple of hungry snakes who can only progress through the 11 levels that constitute their world by munching dozens and dozens of tiny little creatures called Nibbley Pibbleys. As they try, they're continually assaulted by sharks, toilet-seats, hand grenades and incredibly dangerous landscapes full of breath-taking drops and vicious spikes in a superfast arcade blast where the action never lets up for a second. Unbelievably playable, superbly programmed and a great laugh to boot, you just can't beat this when you've got a pal round. You can help each other out or battle hard to steal each other's food and pig out on points, or combine the two for a rollercoaster ride of love and hate and fun and thrills. Absolutely brilliant! LOOKS ***** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ****
BEST SHOOT EM UP EVER SMASH TV Acclaim £40 1-2 players 82% Issue Three Steve Total carnage! I think we all love it, don't we? If you do, you can't ask for a better game than Smash TV - this is as single-mindedly brutal as games ever get. Based on the coin-op, itself an update of all-time classic Robotron, Smash TV chucks you into a maze of arenas with no other object than to kill absolutely every other moving thing on screen before it kills you, with the aid of one of the grooviest control systems ever - one joypad moves you around, the other one fires independently in eight directions. Acclaim have even turned the pads on their sides for maximum comfort, and this is one game where you'll never be able to blame the controls when you mess up. Breathtakingly violent and a nerve-shredding challenge, this is pretty much the ultimate in blasting. LOOKS *** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: Don't panic! Even in the most hopeless-looking situation, hold your nerve, blast away in one direction and steadily move the same way, pausing only to hit anything which comes too close. Stay calm and keep your mind on the job! You can do it!
SOLAR JETMAN Rare £30 1 player 92% Issue One Steve Solar Jetman is really the 12" re-mix of some ancient old Lunar Jetman games which appeared on the Spectrum home computer. Still, we're not proud at TOTAL - we'll play anything. And a good job too, 'cos Solar jetman is a superb product in every respect. It's technically impressive, loaded with interesting features, clever gameplay and one or two surprises. In fact it's so damn good, we're not going to tell you what it's about. Then when you buy it, it'll be a nice surprise! Go on - it's a lot cheaper than a lot of games out there, and we promise you won't be disappointed. Tell you what, if you don't like it, you can send it to us and we'll play it again, OK? LOOKS ***** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: Here's a code for the secret level: BKKBKKHMBHMB And this is the code to level one with lots of kit: KMBKMBHMBHMB
SOLSTICE Software Creations £35 1 player 90% Issue One Andy This is another title whose inspiration comes from the early days of home computer games. It's an arcade adventure viewed in isometric perspective (basically, diagonally on and up a bit). Shadax is a wizardy bloke in love with the Princess 'phwoar' Eleanor. Up pops Morbius (boo, hiss) and beore you can say 'Staff of Demnos' poor old Shadax is up to his armpits in the most complex and compelling 3D arcade adventure you'll ever play. The scenics are superb, the puzzles intriguing and the playability out of this world. An old NES game but a ruddy classic, unsurpassed. Sahme there's no save game option, though. LOOKS ***** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Everything you could ever possibly need to know about playing Solstice can be found in our player's guide in issue three. Also, try going to the inventory screen and entering the following joyupad/button presses: B, START, START, B, B, START, START, B, B, START, START, START, B, START, B, B, B, START, START, START, B, START, B, START, START, B, START, START, B, B, START, B, START. Get it right and the screen flashes. Re-enter the inventory screen and you'll have full potion bottles and loads of lives!
STAR WARS JVC £50 1 player 88% Issue Three Steve Scene: JVC's house. The programmers are having a bit of a sing-song around the old joanna when someone says 'Hey, why don't we write a game?' First programmer: "I don't think I can be bothered, it's so much trouble coming up with one of those clever designs." Second programmer: "Nah, you don't want to bother about that, all you have to do is buy a licence, copy some old platform job, stick some different sprites in and you're laughing." Third programmer: "Hmm. What kind of licence could we pick up cheap? It;d have to be pretty old, but something everyone still remembers. How about ET? The Deer Hunter? Grease? Jaws? No wait, I've got it - Star Wars!" First programmer: "Yeah, and that Batman game Sunsoft did's been selling pretty well..." Second programmer: "We could always stick in a few Millennium Falcon shoot-'em-up bits to make it a bit different..." Third programmer: "...and make it really expensive so everyone would think it was totally amazing!" Everyone: "Let's do it!" LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: 'And lo, the Lord didst descend from the heavens, and he spake unto them; "I can't play the thing to save my life personally, but I think those guys at TOTAL! printed the complete solution to this one in issues six, seven, eight and nine". And there was much rejoicing in the land.'
SUPER MARIO BROS II Nintendo £40 1 player 79% Issue Five Andy Interesting fact No.264537: this is actually almost exactly the same as an old Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic, which seems to have been slightly tweaked around a bit until it magically turned into a Super Mario game. That would explain why it doesn't really play or feel much like any other Super Mario games, but it doesn't stop it from being a pretty nifty bit of fun all the same. Controlling one of four characters gives it a bit of extra depth, and it's a much more complex game than either Super Marios 1 or 3, but there's just enough of that classic combination of platform-leaping and secret-room searching to keep it in touch with the theme. To be honest it never really scales the heights of either of the other two games, either technically or in terms of pure fun, but it's a good diversion when you need a break from all that headbutting. LOOKS *** SOUND **** GAMEPLAY *** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Explore and experiment to find lots of fabby hidden stuff, but if you just want to get to the end, we ran a solution enabling you to do just that by the shortest route possible in issues four and five.
BEST NES GAME EVER SUPER MARIO BROS 3 Nintendo £40 1-2 players 98% Issue One Steve The best game on any machine anywhere in the world ever? Well, along with it's Super NES follow-up, it's definitely in the top two. Huge, imaginative, varied, beautiful, clever, stuffed to the gills with hidden secrets, perfectly playable, great two-player mode, complete version of the original Mario Brothers game hidden inside it, an almost infinite number of ways to play it, enemies a dozen screens long, more nice touches than there are hairs on a centipede's legs, why that stingy old tightwad Steve only gave it 98% is a complete mystery to the rest of us. If you only ever buy one NES game in your life, you're a completely stupid - er, we mean, make it this one. Do we really need to tell you how good this is? Haven't you been paying attention at all? LOOKS ***** SOUND ***** GAMEPLAY ***** LIFESPAN ***** STAR TIP: We've printed stuff about Mario 3 in just about every issue we've ever printed, but your best bet is issue three, which contains a complete solution as well as all the screens to the card-matching sub-game.
SWORDS AND SERPENTS Acclaim £35 1-4 players (Four Score) 82% Issue Two Andy Just about the truest RPG on the NES - and with the Four Score adaptor, a four-player RPG to boot! Basically it involves lots of wandering around horribly complex mazes, collecting unusual things, meeting new and interesting people - and killing them. And darn good fun it is too! What it lacks in pace it makes up for in atmosphere, with some wonderfully animated creatures. And what it lacks in action, it makes up for in intrigue, with puzzles to solve and dungeons to explore. Make up your own party of adventurers or, better still, invite a few friends round and have an adventuring party! LOOKS **** SOUND ** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
BEST ZAPPER GAME EVER TO THE EARTH Nintendo £30 1 player 82% Issue Four Andy Sadly, Nintendo have never given the Zapper light gun the back-up it deserves, leaving Zapper players about half-a-dozen naffo games to choose from - well, with the exception of To The Earth, which is actually quite a hoot. It's a straightforward blast 'em up, in which you must render a series of attacking aliens inoperative by copious amounts of fire (er... basically, shoot everything!). The 3D graphics work well and although it's all quite simple, the sheer pace of the alien advance and the unrelenting assault means that it's a real adrenaline-pumper. If, by some sad turn of events, you happen to have a Zapper gun, get To The Earth so you can at least pretend it was money well spent. LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ***
WIZARDS AND WARRIORS III Acclaim £40 1 player 76% Issue Seven Steve You'll never guess, but this is actually the third Wizards And Warriors game... eh? You knew already!? Ah, but did you know that you have to guide the brave knight Kuros against the might of Malkil once again? Oh, you did. Well, were you au fait with the fact that you have to become a thief and a wizard in order to defeat said bad guy? What, that as well? Yes, but surely you couldn't know that this is a massive arcade adventure which gets better the more you play it? Well, in that case you must have read the rotten review in issue seven, you cheat! (But if you missed it, this ain't a bad little adventure - give it a whirl.) LOOKS **** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN ****
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA Nintendo £40 1 player 78% Issue Two Steve The NES Zelda games conspire to be two of the biggest-selling Nintendo games of all time, clocking up millions of sales world wide. This is the one that started it all and, to be honest, it's starting to show its age a bit now. The quest is split between a flick-screen overland map, and flick-screen underworld dungeons, so there's nothing to get excited about, visually. The sound is godawful, so what's all the fuss about? Well, the adventurey gameplay is actually quite captivating. Once you start on the long trek to rebuild the Triforce of Wisdom (gosh!) it's difficult to put the damn thing down! However, if this sounds like fun, try the sequel first... LOOKS ** SOUND ** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Having hassle in Hyrule? Bring peace to the land by consulting the oracle of all knowledge (TOTAL issue 8 to you buddy).
THE ADVENTURE OF LINK - ZELDA 2 Nintendo £40 1 player 82% Issue Two Steve Yep, unlike most movies, video game sequels are generally the better games. Zelda 2 takes the adventure elements of Zelda 1 and spices it all up with pacier action, slicker gameplay, neater graphics and a series of horizontally scrolling combat sections (of course, for people that enjoy the adventuring aspect, these arcade combatty bits are just a pain). The quest is just as compelling and is, if anything, even bigger than its predecessor. Zelda 2 may not impress your mates, but it'll certainly keep you hacking and slashing for longer than a lot of games we could mention! The battery back-up will make sure of that. LOOKS *** SOUND *** GAMEPLAY **** LIFESPAN **** STAR TIP: Zelda 2 can faze even the most adventurous, so why not save your sanity by taking a peek at our player's guide in issue 9?
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