Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World Review

"Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World" or "Naughty Kokkuns Gourmet world" is one of my favorite newly bought games. Although this is a short game, it sure is one great gaming experience. First of this game has perfect difficulty since the 1st stage feels easy enough and for each level the game gets progressively harder. At the last 2 levels the game gets hard enough to challenge you, but not hard enough to make you shut of the game and make you go look for another game that's not as brutally hard.

The music isn't bad at all but its definitely not as good as it could have been. I feel like they didn't put enough effort in the music division like they should have.

The story goes like this: The evil chef "Hors D'Oeuvre" has taken over your restaurant and its up to you "Naughty Kokkun" to take it back.
Every boss and enemy in this game are food related. Everything from "Hamburgers" to "running grilled chicken" are out to kill you.

There have been some changes from the Famicom to NES. For instance "Kokkun" looked noting like the hero in the NES version and in the Famicom version he's standard attack is to hit the enemy's with he's head, but in the NES version he uses a black frying pan.

Famicom Version

NES Version

You can pick upp several weapons in this weird food-platformer. And they are:

Spoon - has a longer reach and a bit more powerful, but its a bit slower.
Fork - It's used like a "pogo-stick" and you can only hit enemies tat's underneath you .
Dishes - Probably the best weapon in this game, you throw dishes at enemies.
Pan - Pretty much like the "star" in Mario Bros except that you have a big pan over your head and you spin around and are invincible for a short period of time.

Instead of naming the levels simply 1 trough 6 they made it look like a food menu and the stages are called:

Stage 1 - Appetizer
Stage 2 - Soup
Stage 3 - Salad
Stage 4 - Fish
Stage 5 - Meat
Stage 6 - Dessert

Well this is a short and fun game, so if you ever want to kill 15 - 20 min then just play "Wanpaku Kokkun no Gourmet World" Or "Panic Restaurant" if you live in the rest of the world.

Arashes Out!

Quick Review : "Final Lap?"

This 8 stage racing game chart is packed with adrenalin pumping racing, bringing the F-1 experience to the Japanese homes in 1987. In my opinion, this is one of the best Motorsport games for the Famicom of all times. This game had a LOT of small little things in it to make it interesting for both hardcore F-1 fans and regular gamers. For instance, you have 8 tracks to race on, some of them are fictional and some are tracks modeled after the real tracks in Japan and the rest of the world. You can tune your F-1 car and enhance some of the car's stats like:

Engine: Increases the car's Top Speed!
Brakes: You brake faster!
Tier: Your car grips better in sharp turns!
Nitro: (the unrealistic one) By pressing "forward" you get a boost!

Each of the parts can be upgraded 4 times, but you only start with 5 points to spend so its up to you how to spend it.

The interesting part is how smart the AI is, they react really realistically to your actions.

This is one game that I really recommend for all who either loves motor sport or just want a short and a moderately hard game.

Arashes Out!

Back from the dead!

So i haven't been posting something new this month, but its all going to change.

There will be a new type of "Short Review" or "Quick Review" (whichever name i choose for it) coming out soon of a Namcot game that really isn't much to say about, but i still love it. And its a unnecessary to make a big review with lots of pictures and lots of information about a game that you can complete in less than 30 min.

Anyways, look forward for a new review coming soon!

Arashes Out!

Gradius 2 Flyer

Gradius 2 Review

The 3rd and final part of this 3 part Gradius Special!

And now we arrive at the final and (in my opinion) best Gradius game for the Famicom. Konami pretty much nailed everything in this game. The difficulty is perfect in the way that it starts out relatively easy and progressively gets harder. The Music is pretty much perfect throughout the game and the inclusion of voices when you select a weapon or item is a nice extra feature. The graphics are some of the best on the console and the bosses are big and have a sense of danger to them which Konami is really great at implementing in their games. It’s a shame that Gradius 2 never got released outside of Japan and i really wonder why that is, It’s not like they had a lot of text to translate, and to my knowledge the entire game is in English, from the start screen to the end screen it’s all English letters. The only thing i can think of is that Gradius 2 might have a built in FM Synthesis chip like Akumajou Densetsu (Castlevania 3) and the American and European NES couldn’t play those games because of pin shortage on the game cartridge.

The game starts of by giving you a choice between 4 types of item layouts. They are all special in their own individual ways but I always prefer the Laser setup with the spread bombs. The Laser cuts through the enemy and the bomb explodes on impact and a blue explosion stops for some time and constantly hits the enemy multiple times. Combining that with some Options just gives you a devastating power and a truly “Force to be reckoned with”. Although just like the other games, one hit means that you die and lose all of those sought after, hard to get weapons and powerups (Unless you of course have the shield).

The game begins with you piloting the Vice Viper again around some really big fire rocks with fire dragons around and gigantic flames that crosses the screen like enormous waves. The later levels include a alien lair straight from contra and the standard grass and volcanic planet from the first Gradius. There’s even a boss rush part when you fight against 4 bosses one after the other, each getting harder and harder to beat. The thing about the Gradius bosses are that they are almost too easy when your ship is full powered and way to hard when you accidently died and try the boss again but with maybe a speed powerup at best.

I always loved the manuals for the various Famicom games because they differ so much from the manuals we have now. For instance they cover in greater detail how the Vice Viper works and where the parts are laid out on the ship. And they include every enemy in the game and show either a direct cutout from the game or the art for that certain enemy and then wright their names to. The Power Up explanation is also drawn for every type of weapon instead of just one screenshot. They had fewer people working on the games during that time and they still made everything as perfect as it could be.

A fun fact is that I bought this game for less than 5$ and wasn’t aware that the game would come with the box and manual, sure that look beat up and old but I still think it’s a real catch. This is also one of the games that I bought the Famicom for, to play those games that we didn’t get and we missed out of. There are a lot of those games coming up on future reviews.

Hope you guys enjoyed this 3 part Gradius review.

Arashes Out!

Salamander Flyer

Salamander Review

The 2nd game in this 3 part Gradius Special!

Salamander differs a lot from Gradius and was released between the 1st game and Gradius 2 in 1987.

For instance, in Gradius you would die and start over the stage entirely or at the last checkpoint, but in Salamander the screen just continued scrolling and a new ship that was invournable spawned. You could play 2 player co-op at the same time and in every other stage the screen would scroll vertically insted of the classical horizontal way. Even the cartridge design was different.

The music were a big update as well as the graphics. The plane now had a more smooth animation like when you went either up or down, making a tilt animation on the ship look more realistic than previously. Salamander also replaced the "shield" with a "force field" that could resist some enemy fire no mather were the bullet hit the ship. (Unlike in the 1st game where you were only protected in the front) The "Lazer" weapon even got longer and slower which in my opinion is way better. Also the weapons could get upgraded 2 times which made them stronger and faster. The interesting part is that they switched the buttons around on the "shoot" and "chose weapon" buttons. Gradius 1 used the "A" Button to shoot and "B" to pick items and from Salamander and forward they used "B" to shoot and "A" to pick items. It's more logical to shoot with "B" since every other game had that formula. Perhaps Konami wanted to be different. Speaking of Konami, during that time Konami started to add some really gorey parts and aliens in their games like the final stage of Contra and the entire 1st stage in Salamander where the walls are made out of flesh.

There really isn't much ells to say about Salamander. Its a interesting Gradius experiment / Spin-off that had some nice ideas.

Well that was Salamander for the Famicom!

Stay tuned for the next Gradius game in the final part.

Arashes Out!