Retro Review: Boxxle on Gameboy

Have you ever found yourself playing a Legend of Zelda game thinking: "It's nice to save Hyrule and all, but why aren't there more box puzzles?" Perhaps you're on one of Ms. Croft's tomb raiding adventures but instead of looking forward to your next artifact, you're looking forward to the next room full of crates. If so, Boxxle has you covered.

Boxxle is a game about pushing boxes. No really. That's the game. The very thin premise is that a young man (you aren't told his name, but I've decided to call him Bobby Boxpush)  is working in warehouse to earn money for a present for his girlfriend.

Graphics:

This is a Gameboy game from 1989 so you can't expect too much which is good because there isn't much here. On the small puzzles the graphics are on par with other games of the era, not exciting but certainly serviceable. However, the long view on the large puzzles looks like it was ported from a particularly advanced atari game.







Controls:
Controls are intuitive and responsive. You push the boxes with the Dpad. The start button allows you to restart,  or select a new level. You only use the buttons to put in passwords in the main game and select and place pieces in create mode. Nothing really of note here.

  

Sound:
There isn't a lot of sound happening. There's a few menu selection sounds and when you complete a level, Mr. Boxpush let's out a surprisingly realistic (for the time) "Yeah!". The music is the same repetitive track in every level or at least in every level I played (37 of them). At first is seems like standard uninspired video game fare, but the longer you listen to it the more it seems like some sort of  awful torture. There's a few other melodies such as in the "interludes" and when you pause, but overall Boxxle is best played with some other sort of music going on. I don't care if it's Garth Brooks, or Kenny G, or Lil' Wayne or The London cast recording of Cats, anything and everything is going to be better than what the game gives you.

Gameplay:
As I mentioned previously, boxxle is a game about pushing boxes. Instead of a great treasure, a piece of heart, a new weapon or any of the other good stuff normal games give you for completing a box puzzle, here you just get more box puzzles, 250 of them to be exact spread across 25 levels of 10 stages each.

The game's thin storyline about why you're pushing all those boxes told in a series of short between level vignettes in Pac-Man type fashion. You see the first before you start the game and then one every 10 stages. Bobby Boxpush is working in a warehouse to get cash to buy his lovely lady a present. Though honestly I don't see why, as in the first scene she walks right by him. I'd like to point out "She hates me, I'd better slave away pushing thousands of boxes until she notices me." is not a good way to start a relationship even in video game land, but the game sprites can't hear me so I'm stuck pushing boxes.


Once you're in a stage you're presented with various boxes that need to be pushed, not pulled, into place.
You can tell where they should go via dots on the floor and once a box is over one of the dots it turns dark. As you would expect, it starts off simple and becomes increasingly harder as the game progresses. The game counts each step you make and displays the number of steps under the stage number and it seems to count for absolutely nothing, but hey there's always the self satisfaction of knowing you did it in a smaller amount of steps than all your Boxxle playing friends!

 Even for a box puzzle veteran such as myself some of them were pretty taxing and required a several restarts. There is a surprising amount of problem solving and critical thinking involved with rearranging boxes. Luckily, there's a convenient feature that,  if a particular puzzle is making you console-throwingly angry the menu allows you to select a new one within the same level. You can't move on until you've completed all the stages in one level, but sometimes a little break is all you need. If that's not enough though, there's a password feature so you can turn the Gameboy off, put the madness of boxes behind you an run over people in GTA or something.

If you get bored with the 250 pre-made puzzles you can make several of your own custom creations. You get the same materials as the standard puzzles, Bricks for walls, dots for placement, and of course boxes. The only thing to watch out for is that the game will let you create and attempt to play impossible puzzles so you'll need to really consider your placement choices.

So that's it, go into a level, push some boxes. Complete the level, move into a new level and push some boxes. If you get bored with that make a level, push some boxes.

Conclusion:

As a Puzzle game/brain teaser game, Boxxle can hold it's own. It'll never be one of the greats but it's playable and it gets you thinking. I like box puzzles and it still got boring for me eventually, but I did do 37 of them in one sitting so it took awhile. As a bonus it's also training for almost every other video game ever.  Overall, Boxxle is a pretty average game, but if you want a puzzle game that's not a Tetris or Bust a Move clone, give some boxes a push. It earns a perfectly middle of the road 2.5 Octopi.

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Retro Review: Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX

--Introduction--

The Legend of Zelda was a ground breaking game, offering a depth of adventure never before seen by gamers. As the years progressed several, equally as compelling sequels would spawn from the original classic. Those that would grace the heldheld genre proved to be some of the most unique spin-offs a video game series had seen. And as the first Legend of Zelda to be featured on Nintendo's own Gameboy system, Link's Awakening took the essentials that made The Legend of Zelda great with new, quaint features and gameplay that while not entirely traditional, were certainly not forgettable.

Link's Awakening DX Title Screen

The story begins with our hero Link sailing across the sea for reasons not ever revealed, just presumably for another quest. A vicious storm brews and while Link struggles to keep control of his ship, a bolt of lightning strikes the mast, and Link blacks out. He washes up on the beach of a mysterious, unidentified island. He his found by Marin, a sweet young girl with a fondness for animals and an affinity for singing. She brings him to the house she and her brother, Tarin, share. Here, Link tosses and turns until his eyes snap open to see a worried Marin at his bedside. Relieved at Link's revival, Marin tells him that he has washed up on Koholint Island. Not only that, but monsters have appeared and are acting very violently ever since Link washed ashore.

Link's Awakening waking up on Koholint Island

Link hops out of bed, and regains his inscribed shield from Tarin. He leaves their home, and ventures out into Mabe Village, a small, peaceful place with fluttering butterflies, frolicking animals, and playing children. Link travels down the lane, to the beach where he came ashore. Nearing the splintered wood of the wreckage site, Link finds the resting site of his trusty sword. As he approaches, he is accosted by a mysterious owl, who stops him and tells him that he will be unable to leave this island until he can wake the Wind Fish. Giving link instruction to start in the Mysterious Woods, the owl takes off back into the sky, as Link emphatically retrieves his sword.

Link's Awakening wake the Wind Fish

The adventure begins.

-Overview-

The heart of Link's Awakening remains true to the great, classic Zelda games. Ninety percent of the game is played in a top-down view, while Link (or whatever name you've decided on) swipes his sword out at enemies, blocks spears and stones with his shield, and places bombs, shoots arrows, sprinkles magic powder, and uses a variety of other tools and abilities to see the end of his quest. The gameplay could best be described as a perfect crease between the original classic, and the SNES masterpiece, A Link to the Past, boasting some of the more advanced features of ALTTP while maintaining a lot of the simplicity and control of the NES original.

The same can fairly be said about the graphics and sound. The look of the DX version of the game is very beautiful for the Gameboy age, which can be greatly attributed to the lovely coloring. However, even the original, colorless version of the game was an impressive introduction to what Nintendo's Gameboy could do. The art of the game is quite nice, not something that will blow you away such as the first time you saw A Link to the Past, but the detail and cartooning is certainly a few steps up from the first game. Flowers bounce happily up and down much like those found in ALTTP, and also like that game, you can slice through bushes and tall grass, followed by the animation of leaves being strewn about.

Link's Awakening Big Fish

Link's Awakening also features multi-level surfaces, such as standing on a ledge while your enemies cover the ground below, something that the original Zelda game did not have, making it a pretty impressive feature for an 8-bit hand-held system. Water is also animated in Link's Awakening, although it's not the best job you will see. Water at the shore line is a pretty good effort but everywhere else, it is a very basic graphic.

"Cut-scenes" can also be seen in the game, such as in the intro, during a photo sequence, the end, and in other areas. They boast higher detail and higher quality art that could maybe even stand up to simpler SNES games. However, the animation in these sequences is not complex by any means. Also, in some instances, the focus of the game will change from the normal view to a close up of a specific object or image. Once again, these sequences have very high art quality but are not animated. These changes in view and detail are one of the many features that sets this game apart from its NES and SNES cousins.

Link's Awakening Opening Cut Scene

The game has little for flaws in the sound department when you consider that most gameboy games of the time generally featured little more than a series of thuds and beeps. Link's Awakening, however, feature a slew of distinct sounds and music. Link's sword makes a clear "swipe" noise, while touching your items to a wall makes a little "clink" noise. Tapping your blade against a thin, destroyable wall adds a quaint echo to that noise. Not every sound indeed sounds like what it is, treading water is a very basic "whoob" noise, setting something on fire makes a generic hand-held type noise, but the mere variety that this early Gameboy game offered in sound is what truly sets it apart from what would otherwise be par.

Link's Awakening Marin Singing

Musically, we're talking about something very impressive for what it was. Once again, the quality of it can be identified somewhere between the NES and SNES age. At its core, the music is a series of beeps and buzzes with very, very basic electronic percussion. But put into the hands of the musical genius known as Koji Kondo, these bare elements can be turned into the great, complex, and memorable compositions that you will find in Link's Awakening. The main theme you will hear during gameplay is an altered version of the classic Legend of Zelda theme, half of which is the theme we all know and love, and the other half being a new and interesting twist while not losing the sense of adventure the original score instilled in us. Music changes when you enter different areas, such as the village or the forest. The village's music is simple, sweet, and conveys the peaceful living that takes place in the area. The forest's music gives a feel of mysterious while also a bit sneaky, which seems par for the moblins that live within it. Dungeon music stands out the most, as each dungeon features its own unique, eerie music, something that not even A Link to the Past could say for itself. While a couple of the dungeons' music could be described as the cave-area music slightly altered, there is still a difference between each dungeon, giving these areas a sense of individualism, and helping each stop be a specialized experience.  The Ballad of the Wind Fish, the theme song to the game's story, is arguably the most beautiful piece of music ever composed on an 8-bit Gameboy Game, boasting a tone of both sadness and hope, so impressively well put together that its reoccurring nature never becomes one of annoyance.

-Gameplay-

There are no unwanted changes here for the most part, and the mechanics of the gameplay are unchanged from the classic Legend of Zelda formats we know and love. You wander the map, swiping your sword at enemies and collecting rupees and other helpful supplies to aid you on your quest, while bombing through secret walls and talking to the occasional villager and other characters. The gameplay never changes much, but if you're familiar with Zelda then you know what you're getting into. You can at least be comforted knowing that the scenery does change quite a bit over the span of the game. There are some small, irking things that can start to wear just a bit on your nerves, a large example of this being the messages that appear every time you touch a rock or similar item before you can actually lift it. This goes for multiple obstacles in the game. Many of these messages cease to appear after you tackle the obstacles but it's not always an immediate thing.

Link's Awakening Link Lifting Rock

There isn't any shortage of items in this game, though with the constantly changing obstacles and situations to overcome, the lack of buttons make frequent visits to your item screen both necessary and a little annoying. You'll find yourself cursing link for being unable to both wear a bracelet and carry a feather. Interestingly, this is the first and only early Zelda game that allows you to change the controls for your sword and other items. You can control your sword with either A or B, same with other controls. This is nice if you find yourself to be more of an A masher rather than a B, and vice-versa.  In fact, you don't have to have your sword equipped at all.A con here would be that your shield isn't automatic and must be equipped to be used. You also have to push the button for Link to actually hold it in front of him. Due to the unending need to lift stones and jump gaps which require equipping other items, the shield will likely get very little use during your game.

Link's Awakening item Screen

  

While most of your special items will be discovered in dungeons, a few of these as well as basic items are available in the one and only supply shop in the entire game. Being the owner of the only shop available allows its purveyor to charge whatever we feels fit for an item, without fear of competition. It may not always seem fair, but there may be a way around it... .

Link's Awakening Shop

Naturally every "chapter" of the game ends with a dungeon. The lack of on-screen scrolling is a throwback to the old days in these areas but the much more elaborate layout of the dungeons and multiple floors is yet another mirror of A Link to the Past. Each visit to a dungeon reaches its conclusion with a final battle with the "Nightmare" monster, and then retrieving the Siren Instrument hidden beyond the door of the Nightmare's lair. Some complaints about the dungeons would first touch on collecting the compass, which annoyingly tells you all about its special features every time to get it, regardless of how many times you acquire it. Additionally, dungeons are very confusing in this game for a variety of reasons, mostly stemming from a lack of direction provided for you. There are multiple instances where your only hope of completing a dungeon is to bomb through a wall that has no visible cracks or weaknesses. Without a walkthrough, some players may find themselves stuck in an area for months or maybe longer before they discover the solution. Hints as to what you must do are often provided by finding the owl's beak (stone tablet-piece in the original release) and reuniting it with the rest of the owl/tablet, which will then give you a helping message. However, these messages range from patronizingly clear to mind-bendingly cryptic. This game is not recommended for those who don't consider themselves inquisitive.

Link's Awakening Dungeon

Sword play and dungeons are just one part of this very interesting and elaborate Nintendo title. There are several extra little fun things to partake in, such as...

fishing for prize money...

Link's Awakening Fishing

river rafting...

Link's Awakening River Rafting

and even a claw machine...

Link's Awakening Trendy Game

One of many things that make a good game would be features like these to hinder productivity.

Other quirky additions to this game that make it an oddity of the Legend
 of Zelda series would be things such as Phone Booths, hollowed out trees with an old-style telephone inside which you can use to call Old Man Ulrira to get help on what to do next in your adventure.

Link's Awakening Phone Booth

Next would be the Camera Shop, a little hut where you'll find an anthropomorphic rodent whom is an avid photographer and has chosen you as his new favorite subject. Throughout the game, you may find him waiting for you at strange and often hidden photo opportunities. All the photos he snaps of you will be stored in your Photo Album, available for viewing at his shop. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that you'll actually have the necessary accessories to print these photos but nonetheless, it's fun to try to find all of the often humorous photo ops throughout the game.

Link's Awakening Thief Photo

Unfortunately, there aren't much for side quests, as most of what seems like one actually turns out to be required for the game's completion. Some of these things can be done at different times but all and all, it eventually leads you to your main goal, which makes them less special. There are a few extra things to do/collect and the DX version of the game has one endeavor that could be considered a side quest but that would be the one and only example. More quests that lead to optional bonuses would make this game that much closer to perfect, but that's not to say it's not an exceptional title.

Interactions with Non-Playable Characters in Link's Awakening can be quite enjoyable if not a little repetitive at times. The things people say tend to be the same at any one time, but as the game progresses, so do their phrases and even actions. All of the characters in the game have distinctive personalities which boil down to their interest, lifestyle, and even style of speaking. At one point during gameplay, you are briefly joined on your quest by the game's main character (aside from yourself), Marin. During this time your interactions with her can be very deep but mostly just humorous and fun. Due to the new feature of item-trading in this game, some people you've already met will suddenly want the special item you're holding onto (do not worry, these items are useless to you for the most part). Giving them this item not only grants you a new one to trade, but can sometimes trigger a very amusing sequence with that character.

Link's Awakening House O' Bananas

While we've already spent a lot of this review comparing Link's Awakening to the original Legend of Zelda and A Link to the Past, it is worth mentioning, if not more with the following images, that this game in many ways could be called a Gameboy Color version of ALTTP (a better description before The Four Swords was released on the Gameboy Advance). Many of the same enemies, items, mechanics, and other aspects are straight out of the SNES classic. This isn't a negative thing, and is even a bit fun to see, again.

Now one thing that's immediately noticeable within Link's Awakening would be Nintendo's addition of perhaps...guest characters from past games? Rather than go into explicit detail, why don't you just take a look at the following images and ask yourself: does any of this look familiar to you?

Link's Awakening features very fun, classic-style gameplay that can keep you amused for hours. Along with this are graphics that are very pleasant to view, and sounds that are what all other hand-helds of the time should be measured against. Likable characters can offer a feeling of in-game companionship and compassion for their lives and fates. The story is one of mystery, discovery, and triumph over evil. As it unfolds, the tale manages to be exciting, funny, and even genuinely saddening. Once you've finished the entirety of this title you'll want to reset your Gameboy and start it all over again. And if only for that reason, this is why Link's Awakening is a truly genius part of the Legend of Zelda phenomenon.

Link's Awakening Link & Marin

It is just too bad that you have to eventually finish it.

~Richard

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Retro Review Tuesday: Operation C

-Introduction-

As a long time Contra fan, finding out it could be made portable for me was quite exciting news. And unlike the disappointing Gameboy port of Contra III, the MOSTLY original Gameboy title Operation C proved to be a fun and compact Contra experience, exhibiting both familiar features and charming little new ones. With pleasure, I now wish to share it with the rest of the gaming world who may be unaware of its very existence.

-Overview-

The basic idea of the game remains the same as the good old days (Not that this game could be considered new...). Run the side-scrolling course of the level, and if it moves, shoot it. And if it doesn't...try anyway. At the end of each level you will face a boss. Destroy it, and you will move on to the next area.

Graphically it is quite an impressive piece of work considering it is an early Gameboy game. There is an animation for aiming forward, upward, and in all diagonal directions (Shooting downward in normal levels is only possible when doing so during a spin jump). Enemy sprites are rather detailed and mostly easy to distinguish the identity of. Backgrounds aren't too terribly detailed in come areas but are still pretty good in others. The game is colorless played on a normal gameboy, and on a Gameboy Color or Gameboy Advance it is very basically colored.

Operation C's controls are responsive and easy to get the hang of. Their simplicity remains the same as the Nintendo originals. You jump with A and shoot with B. Using the Directional buttons is what aims, and you can aim in eight different directions. If you are used to the classic Contra games, you will certainly notice the lack of speed your character boasts, most likely in an effort of stretch out the course of the 5-level game. Along with low speed, your character's jumping is far from impressive, making several jumps in this game quite nerve-racking situations. These are the only real issues with controls.

The sounds are rather complex for a Gameboy game. A lot sounds for games of this period were basically a series of "thuds" and what not. This one however has nice, large explosion sounds, the sounds of motors in attack vehicles, the high-pitched bullet-ricochet sound indicating a hit target, a notably nice machine-gun sound effect, and many other distinct sounds.

Not only is the music none-too-repetitive, but if you're a Contra fan, you should find it familiar. All the levels play Gameboy-modified versions of the music heard in the original classic. This is with exception to Area 2, which seems to exhibit an original but energetic musical composition. Additionally, the music that plays during Boss battles is a modified version of the great music that played during the Base Boss battles of the first Contra.

-Your Operation C Experience-

The gameplay of Operation C is quite easy compared to the classic Contra and Super C games. This in mind, it is still a Contra game, and should not be taken
lightly. You are always busy as enemies are constantly running at you from every direction, a common nuisance. Like usual, you also have to destroy gun turrets, tanks, and other machinery, which take multiple shots. This makes the game more interesting, and keeps you a little more off balance. Gunshots coming at you are

reasonably slow which is good as you yourself are rather slow. However, some move very quickly and are very hard to avoid. A different array of battle styles from level to level ensure the
gameplay never gets too stale.

Battle takes place sometimes on flat ground, and other times as you jump from ledge to ledge, or even on rising and lowering elevators. The occasional mini boss or just rather large vehicle make their appearances throughout gameplay and certainly add to excitement and breaking up the usual flow of things. The slightly slower pace of this game doesn't really allow for the death-defying jumps and evasion maneuvers the classic games turned into necessity. This is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. As was said earlier, jumps ARE dramatic only because you can't jump far in Operation: C so getting over certain crevasses takes some thought and timing, but this isn't necessarily a high intensity moment.

If you're well acquainted with the second Contra installment, Super C, then these levels may seem a bit familiar, as the whole game seems based on it. Respectively, levels 2, 3, and 4 in Operation C bear notable resemblance to Super C's second, third, and sixth area. Also, parts of Op-C's  fifth and final level could be compared to Super C's Area 4. And as these levels were fun in Super C, that tells a good tale for this one's performance. Along with these similar features, the classic Konami way of changing view modes is in effect here as well, so a couple of the stages (two and four) are played in a top-down mode. This limits your maneuverability and evasion tactics to just simply walking in a different direction. You can, however, wander the screen freely in all directions adding more interest to the gameplay.

Your boss battles can still prove as epic as those found in the classic games. They are still many, many times the size of your character and are loaded with weaponry. Level 4's boss is especially notable, as its alien qualities and stressful difficulty start to really remind you just what game you are playing. Of course, you can expect the end of a Boss's life to be signified with plenty of explosions and sound. None of the Operation C bosses are exactly what you'd call classic, and aside from Boss 4, aren't terribly memorable, but they still tack on the difficulty and bring a decent enough conclusion to an area.

As with the original games, this one allows you to pick up different weapons, each with different abilities and uses. The gun selection is not as plentiful as the other games but it's still enough to make it interesting for you, especially considering how different the weapons that are here are. Along with that, all the guns are now fully automatic, meaning you can just hold the button for continued fire. And of course, the everlasting salvation that is the Spread Shot is present and more alive than ever.

Your default gun has been upgraded to a Machine Gun, which obviously is rather nice. It generally shoots in 5-bullet bursts and has enough speed to be its own best option for some situations.

Heat-Seekers or Homing Rounds are new to this game and are a very useful weapon. Basically, the gun's bullets seek out targets without you having to aim and in addition to that, have a slight Spread-Shot like quality, shooting three at a time.

Fireballs are just as they were in Super C, large balls that disperse into four others when they hit their target. Taking out multiple enemies is made easier with these. However unlike the Super C version of this gun, you can't charge it for a huge blast.

The Spread Shot is amped up in this game and is quite amazing the first time you see it. Interestingly, you have to sort of level it up first. When you first collect the universally beloved S-marked falcon, your Spread Shot shoots in 3-round belts, mildly useful. But if you collect a second Spread Shot while you still have the first, it turns into a nearly unstoppable weapon of Mass Destruction (The kind you're already aware of that doesn't act a cover story for the securement of foreign oil). It shoots the full, big, bad 5-round belts with an added rapid-fire feature that just obliterates all opposition. As it was in the early days, not all the belts are full but the initial few that are tend to take care of any issue that would cause. It's certainly worth your time to see this weapon in action.

So is portable Contra fun? Why yes it is. All the elements are there, and the difficulty is enough to keep you on edge but not too overbearing, allowing the average Joe to pick it up and enjoy it, something that can't necessarily be said for the original Contra and Super C. The action is a bit slower than its NES predecessors but it's still a pretty fast paced game for an early hand-held. You will still find yourself taking out the triple-barrel tanks, alien pods, and huge bosses just like you love. You get the classic Contra feel with the strange after taste that comes with all Gameboy versions of video games. The downfalls of this game will probably be how slowly you move and how poorly you jump, which accounts for about half of its difficulty. I personally could stand to see this game be a bit longer but I suppose I understand that it's merely a handheld. Now while the first four levels are pretty tame compared to the Contra you are accustomed to but worry not. The final level, five, comes roaring at you in true Contra spirit, with fast guns, dangerous aliens, and plenty of player death. If you wanted Contra, you're getting it now.

-Conclusion-

Your Contra experience isn't going to be exactly the same as the classic play through you may be familiar with upon turning on this game. However, as a long time Contra veteran, I can personally vouch for the quality of this game as a hand-held version of possibly the most popular shooter ever crafted. Operation C is sure to be an exciting addition to your hand-held collection and possibly your entire video game collection if you are a Contra fan like I am. It's small, it's different, it's quaint, it's Contra. Pop it into your Gameboy and love it like I do.

~Richard M.




*Scan of Operation C Box art from giantbomb.com

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Retro Review Tuesday: Mario's Picross

So lately I've been playing a lot of Picross on the DS and it made me reflect on it's predecessor which is why I decide to do this review this week.

Introduction
Mario's picross is really a hidden gem, it's seen as cult favorite, but it wasn't received well in the US when it came out. Which is really a shame as it's one of the most fun hand held puzzle games to grace the gameboy. For me it's really right up there with Tetris, I could easily pick it up and play it just about anytime.

Overview

Like most puzzle games the plot line is a bit thin, Mario is an archaeologist who's searching for the pictographs by slowly chiseling away at stone to reveal the pictures. It's simply a series of nonogram (logic puzzles involving a grid with numbers for every row and column), with loose Mario theming.

Controls are simple it's a Gameboy game so there's not much to worry about. You chisel stones by pressing A, you make an X were you shouldn't chisel by pressing B and you move around the grid with the D pad.

If you can manage to hit this a mushroom or flower might pop out.

Graphically it's fairly nice for an original Gameboy game from 1995. Though most of what you see graphically are borders and menus screens as the bulk of the game is the graphs you fill in. It's worth mentioning that I took screenshots via an emulated super Gameboy so it's in color, but if you'd played it in a normal Gameboy it obviously wouldn't be.


Musically, it's so-so. Like many puzzle games you get a section of background tracks to choose from. They're likable enough and make for fine puzzle completion music, but none of them are as noteworthy or interesting as those found in games like Dr. Mario or Tetris. The sounds themesleves are pretty sparse, but serviceable.

Gameplay

I'd like to know why this was translated Kinoko instead of mushroom since the star isn't Sutā

The game divides puzzles into 4 categories, Easy, Kinoko, Star, and Time Trial. Each category consists of 64 puzzles. The puzzles start at 5x5 grids and moves up to 15x15 grids. The puzzles increase in complexity as you move forward.

Ahhh yes the classic an much beloved Mario back hoe

All you have to do is match the numbers on the grid to corresponding points in the puzzle and chisel out a spot when you find it. It's one of those cases where anyone can learn how to do it, but it hard to master. If you try to chisel a spot where there should be a space you get a time penalty, the penalty goes up depending on how many wrong answers you get. The first wrong answer is -2 minutes, the second is -4 minutes etc. with a max of an 8 minute penalty per mistake. You only have 30 minutes to do these puzzles in so getting a lot of silly mistakes can end your game quite quickly.You also get the option to take a hint in the beginning which will fill both a horizontal and and vertical line correctly this doesn't dock tine and is extremely useful in the larger more difficult puzzles. If you get stuck you can strategically "try out" a spot (preferably one that will help guide you to plot multiple points) you run the risk of losing time, but it often quicker than several rounds of endless speculation in tough spot.

If it take you the full half hour to make this letter R this is probably not the game for you.

You can start off in either easy picross or just picross where you can select the first normal class, Kinoko (the Japanese word for mushroom). The easy picross puzzles are as you would expect, quite easy. They do move up to 15 x 15 grids, but aren't very complex. The Kinoko puzzles are all a 15x15 grid and are much more complex than the easy puzzles. After completing all 64 of the Kinoko puzzles you'll unlock the Star catergory which has even more complex puzzles.

The first three classes, Easy, kinoko and Star all work in the way described above. The time trial class however, works differently. First you have to have sucessfully completed all 192 of the previous puzzles before you can unlock it. Second, there isn't a time limit, the time just counts up as you work towards completion. The final difference is, you are not told when you make a wrong answer, this may seem nice at first as you don't have to worry about losing, but is actually quite a challenge. If you make a mistake you usually won't know until after it's potentially ruined your entire puzzle.

Overall it's a lot more addicting that it sounds via descriptions and with a total of 256 puzzles you'll have hours of fun with it. Even after you've managed to beat them all, you time totals are stored so you an always try to get better and better times, in time trial mode you can even enter your initials for posterity.

Mario is proud of your ability to make everyday objects our of squares

Conclusion

As I said earlier this one of those games that's easy to learn, but takes a long time to master. It's easy to pick up and play, but you can easily spend hours with it. The logic is easy enough for a child to follow but more than complex enough to keep an adult entertained for hours. If your a fan of games that make you think, puzzles and logic, this is a perfect game for you.

~Stephanie

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Retro Review Tuesday: Resident Evil Gaiden Gameboy Color

This is our first review for a handheld game/system.

Introduction
Many Resident Evil fans aren't even aware this title exists due to what seems like a large miscalculation by Capcom. It's a mature rated Gameboy color game based on a wickedly popular series of games that debuted on the Playstation. Many players old enough to appreciate blood, gore, and some good ol' fashioned zombie shooting fun weren't toting around GBCs. However, for those of us who were familiar with both we were rewarded a unique perspective on the Resident Evil franchise.

Overview

Controls are simple. A is your action button use it to pick up items, select them in your inventory and shoot your gun. B aims your gun on the normal play screen or switch characters in the fight and inventory screens. Starts shows your map and select shows your inventory. The D pad moves you around. Controls are pretty responsive, but when a zombie is after you they slow down quite a bit.

Graphics are a mix of good and so-so. The basic play screen has rather fluid sprites, but they're undetailed and the backgrounds leave something to be desired. In the fight screens the backgrounds are much more detailed and the Zombies are rendered quite well and have a lot of detail. They don't move a lot, but they're zombies, they don't have to. The cutscenes vary wildly.Your characters are highly unattractive pixel blobs in most of them, but other times they're incredibly detailed and good looking for the format. There seemed to be no graphics quality control on this game.

It's SUPPOSED to be Barry but I'm not sure this isn't red haired Ernest Hemmingway

Soundwise this is a great GBC game. The music is pretty complex and there's quite a bit of variation including changing tempo depending on whether or not you're in danger. There's also several themes you'll hear depending on where you are and what you're doing and all of them manage to be perfectly fitting. The main theme can get a little bit annoying because you hear it all the time, but it really does a good job of making you feel on edge, no small feat for an old school hand held game. The other sounds are good for what little of them you hear, there's the sound of zombies, the sound of your death and the sound of finding an item, that's it.

This game has enough items to warrant a basic items list here. The things you'll pretty much always have in your inventory are:

Thank goodness the knife has infinite ammunition

Key items you haven't used yet, you'll need to go into the screen to use these when you're in the right location, just having a key in inventory won't open the door for you.
Your PDA it gives your current mission objective helpful if you were distracted during a cutscene or came back to playing after it's been awhile.
Guns and ammo self explanatory. Only one character can use a certain gun at a time. If Leon is holding a gun and you want Barry to have you'll have to do a bit of finagling to make it happen, it's best to get that done before entering a battle you can do it during but it will get you mangled most of the time. Also, you can not pick up ammo for a gun you're not carrying. Apparently your character thinks to themselves, Well I'm sure I'll never find this gun no need to pick up the ammo even though I've got space for it. So try to make mental notes as you will often have to backtrack to get really nice ammo.
Herbs Like all Resident Evil games you find herbs to heal yourself there are 5 different types in this game, but you don't mix them this time, how you receive them is how you use them, predictably there's a manual on the ground with how to use them so I'm not going to describe that.
Armor  New to this game, there are 3 types to find with varying levels of protection. As soon as you get nice armor you're going to want to put it on, it helps more than you could possibly imagine.

Gameplay

You start off as Barry, who you may remember from such situations as: constantly saving The Master of Unlocking and having some things to check out on the other side of the mansion (RE1). In any case Barry is sent to try to figure out what happened to Leon. Leon, who you may remember from such incidents as: His first day at the Racoon City Police Department(RE2), was dispatched to a distressed luxury cruiser over 24 hours ago and hasn't been heard from. So with this in mind Barry gets down to the boat. Things start off as you'd expect in a resident evil. Ho hum I'm exploring, then, OH MY GOD IT'S A ZOMBIE HORDE!

Luckily zombies rarely get embarrassed when they show up in the same outfit.

The members of the undead army come in varying flavors as well, normal male, normal female, poisonous female, crowbar male and BOW. Each of these has their own special style of attempting to get at the delicious innards of your skull, learn them, and you'll be a lot happier.

Where are zombies getting all these crowbars?

Your first instinct is probably going to be to take the zombies out. You can either aim at one, which will ensure it's too far away to give you a good swipe if you enter attack mode, or let one get too close which will cause it to be directly in front of you (unless you struggle enough to push them back). In either case, instead of fighting on your normal screen, you enter a battle screen where you have to time your hits with the cursor. The cursor moves faster or slower depending on how nice of a gun you have and the "hit zone" get smaller the further away from the zombie you are. So while a zombie right in front of you with a hand gun will be fairly easy, trying to hit one from across the room with a grenade launcher is quite a feat of timing. Making matters worse is that other zombies that are on the screen can show up leaving you battling multiples. Fighting this way is a lot less scary than just being jumped at, but it's also a lot harder. You can't just twitch shoot your way through it, you've got to have a bit of strategy.

If you're familiar with the Resident Evil series you know that there's no way you can take out all the zombies. The most reasonable course of action is to try to avoid them. It's worth noting that sometimes you want to meet the zombies head on even if you can avoid them, if a red exclamation point pops up it means the zombie nearest you has an item (occasionally it's a key item, but usually it's just ammo or herbs). Unfortunately, you won't know if it's important or not until you take it down. When you do want to run though it's not easy. For some reason when a zombie has you in it's sights, it's tell tale groan gives our hero pause so you slow WAY down making it an awfully hard to do so. Additionally it's very easy to get stuck on door frames or random debris and when that happens after you're slowed you're pretty much screwed. If you get stuck in the fight screen you can hit start and escape the battle. However, before you can escape you'll have to hit the strike zone dead on. Meanwhile the zombie gets closer much faster and you can't hit it because you're running away. Often this is a more dangerous proposition than just fighting the zombie in the first place. Unless you're cornered by multiple zombies, you're probably safer knifing one than you are running from it.

This deck is a lawsuit just waiting to happen.

Running from zombies both on screen and in the fight screen is the most annoying thing about this game and given that it is impossible to take out all the zombies (even if you knife the majority of the normal ones like I do) it's very easy for this aspect to make you hate playing the game. I enjoy a challenge, but the slowdown, poor collision in tight spots and the sheer numbers of zombies make it kind of ridiculous.

Exclusive screenshot of the Boxxle zombie add-on

Managing to cheat death, Barry eventually locates a survivor on the ship using a surveillance computer. Thee survivor is a young girl with strange powers of prediction named Lucia who helps lead him to Leon. Lucia is a much more useful character than most you'd find under these sort of circumstances as you can actually equip her with items and use her in a pinch. Of course before you can actually make use of this you've got to meet up with her which means a lot of opening of locked doors that have keys (or items you can use to open them) located in the most inconvenient places possible. Given the limited graphics of the game, the items do not show up on the ground directly. You can be in a room full of items and you won't know right away, you'll have to root around for your loot. Basically you'll blindly run around until you hear a noise and see a little green exclamation point letting you know there's an item to pick up. This can be annoying enough for just the time consuming aspect, but worse is that it means tangling with an awful lot of zombies on your quest to see whether or not all the nooks, crannies and corners have items in them. Hooray for unavoidable zombies!

Given all the hordes you'll be taking down, even if you become the zombie avoidance master, you're probably going to see the "you died" screen quite often. Luckily the good folks at Capcom aren't completely heartless so you can either start from the last save(which is a spot determined by key points in the games and could be a long ways away from where you are now) or from where you last came through a door or killed a zombie. I can not express how wonderful this second option is, I'm fairly certain that it kept me from smashing the Gameboy into tiny bits several times.

Just in case all the zombie killing and death dodging wasn't exciting enough for you, once you unite your team members (all three of you) you will be given the wondrous honor of being hounded by huge zombie, they'll refer to as the BOW. This zombie seems determined to not only obliterate your sparse STARS team but to kidnap Lucia. He's stronger and faster than your standard zombies and has a tentacled stomach, giving him much longer reach. Which all means you'll die twice as fast (you'll even get a special "you died" screen when he kills you, fancy right?) If that's not annoying enough on it's own, it's one of your mission objectives to eliminate it. The joy in this game just never stops! But wait! That's not all! The mega Zombie runs away rather than being defeated, so he just keeps coming back and every time you meet him he mutates, changing just enough to be a bigger uglier pain in your butt.

He really ought to get that checked out

So of course you need some plot to hold together the story or really the game would have been over in roughly 20 minutes once you have both Lucia and Leon in your party. We can't have that so we need a plot device or two. So imagine you're Leon. Being plagued by zombie problems and having the survivor you're trying to protect kidnapped by a huge ugly zombie is pretty much ruining your day. But you can you depend on your partner to help you out in these troubling times, right? Nope, instead you get some of Barry's , I just have to check something out, antics, thickening the plot. However, after a series of confused and muddled events that involve Umbrella, a submarine and more zombies, Barry comes out looking just fine (again).He even manages to avoid telling Leon he was almost a sandwich and that alone makes him a better partner this time around.

I guess I WON'T take this time to consider my proposal for waffles as the ultimate in home building materials then

Basically add a few more details to the thin to plot to hold it together and that's the entire game. Kill zombies, avoid zombies, attempt to kill super zombie, avoid getting your brains eaten and unravel some inane and implausible plot. It's a zombie game, you shouldn't be expecting too much more than that, and it's actually more fun than it sounds. It's worth mentioning, the final boss battle(s) in this game are very long and arduous, you've really got to earn that victory and really hope you've saved enough ammo. It 's honestly something you're likely to have to attempt several times if you don't get annoyed and swear off the game before then.

Conclusion

People either really like this game or absolutely despise it. I have to give the creators credit for trying something new and making a pretty decent original game for a hand held. The storyline is
crap, but really all of the RE games that came about between 2 and 4 had some pretty questionable and incoherent storylines as well and I don't see as much outcry with those. Besides someone must of liked it because Capcom basically remade this game with an even more ridiculous story and added light gun, calling it dead aim. Overall I think that RE fans might be a little disappointed in this one as while it has characters you're familiar with but it doesn't fit into the main storyline, isn't considered canon and basically becomes a "let us never speak of this again" chapter. But in my opinions as a gamer looking for a unique old school zombie experience this is a good solid game.

~Stephanie

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