Famicom Fanatic

Monday, April 18, 2011

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Gradius Review

The fist game in this 3 part Gradius special!

Gradius was the first game ever to use the "Konami Code". The player could simply pause the game and input: " Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A" and you would get all power-ups except "Speed Up, Double and Laser" As a mater of fact, lets go through them all:

Speed Up: Speeds up you plane by 1 stage
Missile: Fires a missile diagonally downwards
Double: Shoots two bullets at once, One going forward and second diagonally upwards
Laser: A short stream of laser that penetrates enemies
Option: A small sphere that follows you and shoots the same projectile you do
?: Also called a shield that's in front of you and

The power Up system was pretty innovative at the time and still is a way. A red colored enemy would drop a power up sphere which you would collect and it would move the indicator on the Power Up screen to the left by one step. By pressing "B" you would obtain the marked Power Up and the marker would reset to the beginning. This way, you would have to prioritize what were more important at that specific time. Would you use for instance "Speed Up" and easily pass through a hard section or save it and hope to obtain a Option.

Dying on the other hand resulted it losing everything you had saved up, unless you had something marked on the Power Up screen, then at least you would start with the marker on "Speed Up". On the subject of dieing in Gradius, this game killed you in one hit. One small projectile or colliding with a wall or enemies resulted by death.

This game had some interesting levels, all of them started out with you piloting the Vice-Viper through a space like stage where you have the chance to collect some Power Ups to repair you for the coming stage.

The stages in this game are:

Volcano
Stone Henge
Moai
Invert Volcano
Tentacle
Cell
Base

Theres some secret 1-Ups and scores you can get like for example, Fly through a volcano or touch the back side of a diamond shaped rock and so on. The bosses on the end of some level are called "Core" and the name says itself, It's a ship that fires at you and has a Red or Blue glowing core. They were used in almost every Gradius game that were to come.

Konami are known for making some of the best Famicom music and this game of course is no exception.

The Space stage song of course is classic and used in almost every Gradius game. And the Mid-boss and End-boss song is just what you want for a good boss fight, its fast paste and makes you nervous and that "one hit death" constantly reminds you that the slightest little mistake you do here will make all that hard worked power-ups disappear. And taking on the boss again with no Power-Ups certainly makes it a lot more harder.

Pros and Cons:

The Good Stuff:

After beating the game you can replay the whole game with harder difficulty, beating it more times will make each play through harder.
Stellar soundtrack
Fun Power-Up system
Challenging Bosses

The Bad Stuff:

This game is really hard, even on the first play through
Cheap Death's on certain locations

Well, that was Gradius 1 for the Famicom.

Stay tuned for the next Gradius game in this Three parter.

Arashes Out!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Arumana No Kiseki Flyer

I just had to upload this awesome Arumana No Kiseki flyer.

The Miracle of Almana Review

アルマナの奇跡 or Arumana no Kiseki

Arumana No Kiseki is a game heavily influenced by Indiana Jones which you can sew on the cover art. The story is quite simple, a mysterious man stole the Arumana treasure from its resting place in a small village causing them to turn into stone, and now its all up to you to get the treasure back and free them. You star of the game with 30 daggers which you can throw at enemies and a grappling hook of sorts which you need to use to climb the many mountains you will face. During the game you will find several power ups such as:

Bomb: Throws it in front of you and explodes.
Gun: Simply shoots a bullet straight forward.
Bolas: It flies of diagonally.
Crystal Ball: Eliminates enemies on screen
Spike Ball: Similar to the "Bomb" except this does more damage.
Hat: Simply a 1-up.
Pendant: Extends the life bar slightly.
Meat: And of course the classical "pork chop" that heals you.

This game is somewhat on the hard side, it starts of simply and gets gradually harder, by the end its a bit to hard like so many early Konami games. You will explore mountains, rivers, mines and lastly a sanctuary of sorts. The enemy setups is classic gaming enemies like snakes and scorpions. There are human enemies as well, all wearing turbines and being equipped with guns. The yellow/brown-ish enemies doesn't drop any items but the red ones does. There is pretty basic setup of bosses to, they are:

Water Hydra/Water Dragon: He just stand's still and shoots 3 projectiles that home in on you.
A old Hermit on a cloud: He just flies around and shoot lightning bolts at you.
A wall with skulls: There's One brown scull moving up and down on the Left side and there's 3 gray skulls on the right side, they both fire beams, but if to of those beams collide they will scatter around the stage.
Big Tarantuela: He just jumps around constantly and shoots web. If you stand close to the boss, his web attack will just go through you and leave you unharmed.
Plant: A plant that comes out from the floor or walls and shoot boulders at you.
Flying skull: Smaller flying skulls comes out of its mouth and homes in on you, and you can also see the stolen Almana treasure on its forehead.

Now to get to the good part, The soundtrack. The soundtrack is mainly the reason i bought this game. Its some of the best famicom soundtrack there is out there, it's definitely on my top 10 Famicom soundtracks list.
Some songs appear on more the one stage though, but that's not a problem in my opinion. From the start to the end of the game its just sheer goodness. This game also uses the FM Syntheses chip but this time its on all tracks. Konami sure knows how to make a stellar soundtrack.

I included a medley for those who are interested.

Well then, this is a game that i strongly urge you to try out. It's a bit on the short side but it's action packet from the beginning to start.

Pros and Cons

The Good Stuff: