Super Famicom Friday, four games

It isn't Friday and I didn't even play them on a Friday. As artistical freedom I'll still call this my Famicom Friday (super edition). It is almost Christmas and maybe you expect some Christmas games, but sorry I only celebrate Christmas for two days and don't bother for the rest of the month.

During the week I played a couple of SFC games that you probably are not familiar with.

Blazeon, an uncommon shooter by Atlus.

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At first I was perplexed but then I discovered I could freeze some enemies and fly into them to get their suit. Interesting idea. Usually when I try crazy stuff like that I die but ever so rarely I discover something.

The game looks like Gradius at first. The most distinct difference is that in this game you fly really slowly sometimes without any enemies appearing. Maybe the enemies will appear if you set it to Hard mode.  It does make the levels take a long time.

There seems to be infinite continues. Because the levels take so long, you still have to replay 5-10 minutes of moving along sequences. If you like this peculiar kind of gameplay, give it a try. It is original in the way that I have never played anything like it.
Also, I read on gamefaqs that the game becomes a real challenge later on. The manual tells me there are only five levels though (or six? don't remember).

The game is uncommon and my copy in a fine collectors condition, as new, will cost you 448 SEK (70$). Worse condition or loose cart would obviously be cheaper.

Also played Popful Mail. I was impressed by this game, one of the more playable action/RPG games I have tried. With all that walking and ladders and so on it felt like Castlevania. Maybe it is just my lack of experience with these games that makes me feel that way.

The game is also on Sega CD and Pc Engine with all games being different. This article explains more: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/popfulmail/popfulmail.bak.htm. They recommend the Sega CD game released only in Japan and USA. A working Sega CD does costs a bit these days. I could mention that we offer restoration of Sega CD consoles, and can also rather easily make it region free.

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The levels take a bit long. If you enjoy playing cute hack'n slash games you probably won't mind.

There is some Japanese text in the shop but I quickly guessed my way. There is also a battery save option here. You need to know that you have to trade your Exp for Gold, which you either do in the shop or in some other places.

In the video I made mistake at around 09:30 when I didn't go into town to be health items. Then I died around 13:50 and had to restart. Finally found my way into town and bought the health items I needed by 18:00. I also saved there. At around 21:00 I continued the trip. I played on and beat the boss and then came to an underground level (with bats!).

This game is rather common and can be had for around 175 SEK (25$). I recommend you check it out. As I read on hardcore gaming, this game is rather long and you get more characters you can switch between.  A nice story driven adventure.

Dolucky's A-Leage Soccer.

Another sports game. Sports games are thankful to play because they are easy to into. Some of them have good gameplay, although most have strange problems with controls and I quickly get annoyed. I feel that about modern PS2 and PS3 sports games too. Sports games are fun only if you can beat them, no?

This one I played for some 30 minutes at least, so I would rate it a playable game. After a while the controls got frustrating. You have to tackle all the time and the computer cheats. Also, you can't see much of the playing field. For 48 SEK (7$) it could be worth to try it out. If there is a 2-player mode, and there should be, it is probably fun with a friend long enough to justify the 7$.


When you have charged your power meter, you can press L to go into overdrive mode. This will make you shoot a super shot. A humerous game, and maybe you can play it better than I could.

As a bonus, I will recommend a different soccer game on SFC. Fighting Eleven, by Konami! There is also Fighting Eleven II. The EU/US titles for the games are Internation Superstar Soccer and Internation Superstar Soccer Deluxe. I read on gamefaqs that the Japanese version has more teams, but don't rely on that info. Here is a video I uploaded a month ago where I beat Denmark. I'll include it here as a bonus. More information on how to play is in the video page.
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Finally, during the week I also uploaded this video I made a while ago of Hashire Hebereke.
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It is a racing game with inspiration from Super Mario Kart. This was my first time playing. I didn't do well the first race but I quickly got into it. Another game that should be fun to try it for a while.

I don't know if it can be played multiplayer. If so, that should be fun. I sold the loose cart for 75 SEK (12$) and for an uncommon game like this I think it is worth paying that. Getting it Complete In Box would be more expensive.

Final Match Tennis for Pc Engine

UPDATE 2013-08-11: video

In the last few days I have played Final Match Tennis on my Pc Engine.
I am one of those people that play Racing and Tennis games. That is good for me. Most people buy the Pc Engine for its many shoot'em up games that I sell at a higher price. I get to keep the cheap games.

This is our AV modded Ten No Koe 2. It is like an AV Booster, but you can save in the games that have a save feature. An AV Booster is also harder to come by.

We can also RGB mod it, but it is more expensive (300 SEK extra, or 50$). I don't personally have demand for RGB, but we constantly get requests from customers who request the best possible picture and sound. Even some that don't play their games, so as to not cause scratches and marks. To each his own, as they say.

I made a video (2013-08-12) of some gameplay. You can set the difficulty with a code in the beginning, and Level 3 is appropriate for me. I am not very good though. I am Lendl (white shorts, starting on the downside of court). Lendl is the hardest hitter of the game.
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Here is a second video where I am Edberg (blue shirt) playing against Becker, as it happens.
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The game has a simple structure. You can play exhibition game, tour, or practice. I think you can play up to four players with a multitap, but I don't have a multitap to try right now.

As I have written before, I enjoy tennis video games on any console. I have some experience by now , I think, so I know what a good and bad tennis game is.
How would I rate this one?

• The controls are simple. One button for normal shot,  one for a slice shot, and press Start for lob. This works excellent. The lob isn't useful though, because it is short and the opponent can often smash it.
• There are no strange additional moves. No dubble-tapping, or button combinations, or holding the button to hit harder. You just press the button to make the shot. Use the arrows to place the ball.
• The direction of the ball depends on how close you are to it when you hit it, and if you hit it early or late. I can't explain exactly. It requires some practice to learn, but most tennis games are made this way anyways.
• I liked the difficulty level. The ball easily goes outside court, so you have to learn exactly how to hit it to place it inside the court. It can be annoying, but reasonable.
• You can chose between 16 different players. Their names are in Japanese, but it is the players from around 1988 such as Edberg, Lendl, McEnroe and Chen. They are well adjusted. The baseline players who can run fast left and right, but move slowly up and down. They are also not very good at making stop balls at the net. Other players are net players, and move fast up and down, but are slow left and right. Some players hit the ball harder and so it more easily goes outside the court, and other players hit it loose. Some have top spin, etc.
• A good thing is that the opponents are never too hard. They always hit the ball in a normal way and they can be beaten if you play well. So far I also wouldn't call the game too easy either. Since you are game over as soon as you lose a match, it can be challenging, especially if you only play 1-set matches. In each game you can chose between 1 set or 3 set, and I think I should start playing 3 set in the more difficult matches.
• A nice feature that I appreciate is that there are no long pauses between balls. Some 2-3 seconds after the last ball you can start playing the next.
• I also liked that it is well possible to catch smashes if you stand in the right place, so a smash doesn't "kill" the ball. And you can usually return the opponents serves , unlike some more realistic tennis games where this can be impossible.
• You will throw yourself automatically if the ball is far to reach. This is nice.
• It is a bit annoying though that when you play in the Tour, you are game over as soon as you lose a match. You start with Australian Open, and then French Open. I made it to the final of the French, but then I lost and was game over.

What I think could be improved is that the slice and lob are useless as soon as you move from the baseline, because they always go too far. The slice button can be used as a stop ball for the baseline player type. Unfortunately the baseline player is almost useless by the net because his stop balls always hit the net, at least on grass. On clay, he plays better by the net because the ball bounces higher.

Well, that's about it I think. You might tell that I enjoy playing this game. I looked at some youtube clip and they all love it too, some say it is the best tennis game ever. It has its own website, www.final-match-tennis.com, with info about the players and so on.

Golf for Game Boy

I watched a little of the recent AVGN Golf episode. And I came to think of the game Golf for Game Boy, which I played all the time for a period as a kid.

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Let's see how much I remember of it. :D For this game, you will benefit from a manual or from a little guide like I will write for you.

As you can see in the video (not my video, as always) it has a battery save so you can see your results and start where you left off. You can press Select at the title screen to see all the best scores so far. There is a Japan and a US course, and the Japan course is easier. In the US course, not only are the courses more difficult, you also will face strongers winds and more difficult greens.

To explain the basics of a golf video game: Change club by pressing up and down. Change the aim by pressing left and right. The clubs all have a maximum reach, in yards, that is listed in the manual. This FAQ calculated the distance himself, which is actually different than the manual says, but pretty accurate: http://www.gamefaqs.com/gameboy/585733-golf/faqs/29829.  Differences might be because he calculated the length from tee and with max hit force, but the manual counts from fairway and almost max hit force. I used that manual A LOT back in the days so I suggest you keep the FAQ nearby if you don't have the manual. I think the manual costs like 1$ on eBay should you want it.

I took a blurry photo of it. See, from fairway.

Manuals are often useful. I complain about that sometimes, why don't people look in the manual on how to play games? Not every game can be figured out just by pressing buttons. The FAQ guy didn't mention backspin because he didn't have the manual. I will explain backspin soon.

Press B to see the full map to plan your shot, as in the video.

There is an arrow that shows the wind. The more wind, the more you need to adjust both power and left-right. This is actually tricky because it depends on different factors. For example, if you hit a high shot, the wind will affect it more.

The display at the bottom also shows how deep the ball is in the grass. The deeper it is, the less power your shot will have on it. From deep in the bunker you may only be able to hit it 30 yards, and remember that you should use the SW or PW from in the bunker.

After selecting club and aim, you press A to start the shot. Then press A to have the meter go up. The farther up it goes, the harder you will shoot. Then it will go back. Press again to make it stop. If you hit the second time right on the mark, the ball will go were you aimed (adjusted for wind). If you hit it to the right or left it will make a slice or a hook.

Slices and hooks can be useful on purpose to avoid trees or to compensate for wind, but most of the times you want to ball to go where you aim.

Also, if you press Up while you make the shot, the ball will go high. This is useful for avoiding trees, if you want to use a strong wind in the balls direction, or if there is a water hazard. If you press Down while making the shot, the ball will go lower. This can be useful if you don't want to suffer strong wind against you.

A nice little trick is that if you press Left or Right while shooting, AND the marker stops in the black area on its way down, you will give the ball backspin. Not possible from tee though. Useful while you want to chip into the green, so that the ball doesn't roll away, or to avoid waters.

I think all of these factors is what makes the game interesting. There is no set formula to win. You have to use intuition, luck, or cheating.

Alright, even if you are as bad as the player in video, you will reach the green eventually.

The arrows show how the green is leaning. Big arrows means a big leaning. Remember to use backspin to counter strong arrows, or the ball will roll very much -- and to great annoyance.

Inside the green you have to use your putter and can't use backspin.

The game will save after each shot you make, so you can turn the game boy off and continue right back! The "cheat" is that you can restart the game boy quickly after a failed shot to attempt it again...

Well even though I played it a lot, I still remember it as being an annoying game that is impossible to master. But that's Golf for you. If you must play Golf, I suggest playing it on the Game Boy.

Super Final Match Tennis for Super Famicom

Sports games don't sell easily (if they sell at all), so I decided to try to play one. I actually enjoy Tennis games, on Game Boy, Virtual Boy, GBA, Pc Engine, Neo Geo Pocket Color... So why not try the SFC.

There are two things I like about tennis games:

• you always have to fight for each ball, and each ball is like a new game where you start from zero
• when you figure out how to beat the computer, you can theoretically do it all the time, and you can feel good about that

My father likes tennis too, but he plays it on a real court. I always felt that playing sports in reality is a hazzle. So much work. Just picking up the tennis balls takes half the time. And nothing is as simple as on the TV. They have caddies and umpires and all kinds of aides that pick up their balls.

There are some things I don't with tennis video games though. I don't like when the game is "realistic", so you move too slowly, serves are impossible to take, you can't hit the ball when it is in front of you, the computer is almost impossible, you hit the ball outside all the time, and so on. The ball must understand that I want it inside the court.
It also gets boring if the computer is too easy. If hardly any shot goes outside for example.

Super Final Match Tennis is the successor of the Pc Engine game Final Match Tennis, a game that got good reviews at the time. I don't think I have played it. I have played Pro Tennis World Court on the Pc Engine and I enjoyed it, but I found it too easy.

They sure give tennis games silly names. What could the difference be between "Power Tennis", "World Court Tennis" and "Final Match Tennis"?

Well on to the game. I have enjoyed it a lot in the last two days. It has kept me up all nights. But now it is starting to get easy and that has gotten boring, so I might not play it more. I have won the two first grand slams already and maybe I should retire.

A couple of things I would like to mention. It took me a little while to figure out how to take the opponents serve best. I recommend to move a little forward and out, and then tap te button twice when the opponent serves. Try different buttons; I found that the lob often gives good returns to enable you to move forward towards the net. As usually in Tennis games, you win the ball by moving towards the net and placing it left and right there. It is a bit tricky to get the hang of it, as in real tennis the opponent can lob or try to make shots that pass you. You'll learn with experience what works and what doesn't.

It took me a while to figure out that to dive towards the ball -- hold L or R. Maybe you need to press a button to make him throw himself. I haven't really needed to dive that much, but sometimes you will need to take that extra step to reach some balls that are just outside reach.

Another thing to mention is that you can go into the Options menu at the start (the last selection) and remove the counter (the 00 - 00 in the picture). If you don't, it may disturb how you see the ball.

Some things about this game are peculiar, but still enjoyable. When the ball is just inside the line, the announcer will say "IN" with letters flashing at the center of the screen. Stupidly distracting, but funny.

I also noticed you can play up to four players at the same time. I think that might be pretty funny, if I had three friends to play with. As for me, I don't know if I want to spend more time beating the computer now. I have saved my passwords though if I want to continue.

I still haven't played the perfect Tennis game. I do think that these early games are actually better than the PS3 game I played last month because the simpler graphics don't distract.

Football games for the game boy

I received some game boy games yesterday. Oh , what joy. 30 boxed game boy games I didn't have. Most of them were "crap" games, but I really like them. The "crap" games are a lot more difficult to find. I am missing 500 Japanese game boy games, but I still have 9/10 of the boxed games I see. Usually I'll see the Nintendo-published games and a couple of others that sold in the millions, such as Tamagotchi, Yu-Gi-Oh and some others.

Several of the games from yesterday were football (soccer) games. Football games on the Game Boy are actually not that bad. It's interesting to see how they dealt with the limits of the Game Boy. It's not like Baseball games or Ice Hockey, that in my opinion are all unplayable.


 
Nintendo World Cup is one of the unique football games. A charming game. I've played it all the way to the end.
 

A problem with football games is how to continue. In some games, in particular the early games, you can only play one match and then that's it. In later games, you can play in tournaments or the J-League (Japan League, Japans first division). However, because there is Japanese text, those games can be difficult to figure out. There are menus, you may need to buy and sell players, check stats, and so on.

Some football games have a password system, other games have a battery save. Some games have no save function at all.

I think it is interesting to see the different approach that the football games have. Some games choose the "flickering" effect, including Nintendo World Cup. Some may find it annoying, but it keeps the paste and the games are definately playable. The alternative is the slow down, but this usually makes the game very difficult to control, as everything suddenly slows down.

Here are some other examples of different approaches:
Soccer Boy: Big cute characters and play up and down

J-League winning goal.  Play from left to right

In the game "Goal!" you play like this. I don't recommend that game though.


In some games, the ball sticks to the player when he moves. In other games, the ball is always kicked in the direction he moves. A couple of games tried interesting control alternatives but I need to get back on the details.

Then there is the Captain Tsubasa game, where you tell the player what to do in a menu system.

I don't see the appeal of those game, frankly, but they certainly has their supporters! If you like strategy games, sure.

According to gamefaqs there were 22 soccer game boy games. Discount tvo Captain Tsubasas and the dreadful Super Kick Off, there's 19 games to discover. At least 6 of them only released in Japan. I may do more detailed reviews at some time, although actually there isn't that much difference between the 19 games. You try to score goals.