Sin & Punishment Review

Treasure. A developer long known for cult favorites, was one of the kings of shmups. Unsung kings. By the time the Super NES, and Genesis came around, everyone knew of heavy hitters. Gradius. R-Type. Raiden. Contra. But Treasure put out many great games that were under the radar at release, but became sought after later. Nowhere was this more true than on the Genesis. Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, and Alien Soldier went on to be cult classics. Even today they’re popular enough that a loose copy of Gunstar Heroes goes for as much as a newly shrink wrapped release. After the Genesis, Treasure would make games for Saturn, Dreamcast, and even Sega’s rival Nintendo. Sin & Punishment is not only one of the best rail shooters on the Nintendo 64, it’s one of the best you will ever play.

PROS: Fast, smooth game play. High, rewarding challenge.

CONS: Difficulty may turn off some.

MOD: It was a Japanese only release. But it is on the US Wii Shop Channel.

Sin & Punishment never made it outside of Japan. It was released in 2000 at the very end of the Nintendo 64’s lifespan. Though acclaimed, Nintendo never brought it to North America. It was intended to be released here, but due to the Nintendo 64’s decline by that point it wasn’t. If you’re really worried you won’t be able to navigate the game, you shouldn’t fret. You don’t have to know a single word of Japanese. Though you may have to experiment with the main menus to get into the game. Something that takes all of five minutes. Similar to the Super NES, The Nintendo 64 also had different tab placements in the system to prevent games being inserted from other regions. If you don’t mind tinkering with some pliers, you can remove them. This will make your N64 capable of running imported cartridges.

For those unwilling, or unable to mod their console, you can also use a Game shark as a pass through device. Or if you don’t want to go through those steps, and you own a Wii, there’s another option. As of this writing Nintendo’s Wii Shop Channel is still around. While you may not be able to play Wii games online, you can still buy them. The Virtual Console section is no exception. So you can skip all of the importing, and modifying should you desire.Be aware though, if you choose to play the game on the Wii (or Wii U in Wii mode), you will need to invest in a classic controller attachment if you haven’t already.

With the lengthy introduction out of the way, I’ll talk about the game. Sin & Punishment takes place in a dystopian future. There is widespread famine, and so new creatures are cultivated for food in Japan. But the creatures mutate into deadlier beings before turning on the populace. A military group called the Armed Volunteers steps in to fight the creatures, as well as another one called the Saviors. The Saviors oppose both the creatures, and the Armed Volunteers. The setup starts out like a standard action movie, but things become more, and more bizarre as you play through the campaign. The three main characters are Aichi, Airan, and Saki. Throughout the game there are in-game cut scenes that give a bit of back story for the characters, and why they’re fighting the Armed Volunteers. Without giving anything away, there is an ulterior plot that is uncovered later. Things do get pretty strange. It isn’t a deep story, but it is an entertaining one for an entertaining game.

As for the game itself, it is an on rails shooter like Star Fox. Through most of the game you’ll be dodging obstacles, and a lot of projectiles while you fire a seemingly endless barrage of fire. There are a wide variety of enemies too. Giant monsters, hundreds of soldiers, ships, tanks, and other vehicles. The best part of all of this is just how brisk, and smooth the game runs. There are only a few moments of any slowdown during a play through. The Bosses are the main attraction in these kinds of games, and Sin & Punishment’s are definitely a big deal. Nearly every stage has a couple of boss fights. Just when you think you’ve conquered a level, you’ll find out you haven’t. Best of all,the game does this without it feeling like padding. In the end it feels like just about the right amount of time. Throughout the game you get to use three main attacks. There is a gun, that has two modes. A free aim mode that does higher damage, and a lock on mode. Locking on is almost like auto-aim in a first person shooter. It makes the game a little bit easier, but it also does a lot less damage to targets. The third attack is a melee attack. If an enemy gets too close, you can double tap the trigger to stab at them.

Environments look pretty nice too when compared to most other games on the Nintendo 64. Textures seem a little bit better quality than in a number of other games, and there are a wider variety of settings. Each stage has its own particular settings, and themes. When you start the game you’re in wheat fields, with tree trunks. Soon you’re in a city. Then under the ocean, a military installation, and even space. While these are almost action game tropes, They’re all done with a unique flair. Some of the special effects are really cool too. There are great uses of colors, and translucent effects.  The main drawback here though is that the models are fairly rudimentary. This was probably to keep the frame rate up to the speed the game play requires. Fortunately the wonderful texture work compensates a lot. It is definitely not an ugly game. Sin & Punishment also has some of the best sound on the console. Voice samples come in pretty clear, explosions, lasers, and pretty much every other sound are great. The music even complements the action very well. It all blends together to make for a great experience.

It isn’t a very long game either. If you’re really good you can beat it in a couple of hours. But rail shooters don’t generally lend themselves to long experiences either. They hearken back to the glory days of arcades, where shorter but more exhilarating experiences prevailed. They are also very difficult which this game certainly is. You can expect to die, and continue many, many times. Even on the easiest setting, you can find yourself running out of continues, and starting all over again. But again, such is the nature of this type of game. The high challenge will make the determined want to keep playing, and the really good trying to beat their time. If the thought of frustration turns you off it might not sound like your cup of tea. But most of the time the game is fair. Most importantly, the game is fun.

Sin & Punishment can certainly sound like an exclusive experience, intended only for fans of the genre. But don’t let that stop you from giving it a try. The strange story, characters, and dialogue are worth seeing, and they’re built upon a really good arcade shooter. Save for a couple of minor nitpicks over models, and a couple of cheap deaths it’s one of the best games in the Nintendo 64 library.

Final Score: 9 out of 10

Clay Fighter 63 1/3 Review

Last week I talked about one of the best parody games around. Clay Fighter eventually found its way onto the Sega Genesis after a run on the Super NES. Then it was beefed up for an upgrade release on the Super NES. The game I covered the last week. After that game came Clay Fighter 2: Judgment Clay, which not only lampooned fighting games, but the Terminator sequel. Unfortunately I won’t be talking about it any time soon as I don’t have a copy. But I do have one of the final versions of Clay Fighter. (Until the recently announced reboot sees daylight.) Which is what we’ll cover today.

PROS: Increased goofiness. Claytalities. A host of top name voice talent.

CONS: Poor graphics. New fighting system.

REALLY?: One character is a very bad stereotype. Oh yeah. Really.

Clay Fighter 63 1/3 makes some big changes to the Clay Fighter formula. Some are alright. Others not so much. One of the most noteworthy changes is the move from a Street Fighter inspired fighting system to a Killer Instinct fighting system. Oh sure, you still have your weak, medium, fierce button layouts, but the organic play is changed. As in Killer Instinct, later Mortal Kombat games, and a host of other fighters you’ll have a host of Dial-a-Combos. But where Killer Instinct merged these predetermined combos with some level of self-reliance, this game doesn’t. At least it doesn’t succeed in its attempt. The problem is that the movement speed of the characters doesn’t entirely meld with the timing needed. So while there is a little bit more depth here than in something like War Gods, you still have many moments where things feel clunky. Chaining moves with these Dial-a-Combos doesn’t feel as smooth as it does in Killer Instinct.

The game also implements the Street Fighter Combo meter. You can fill up to three bars, choose to either use them one at a time, or use all three when filled. Be that as it may, this Clay Fighter entry still does a few things right. This is one of the earliest fighting games to give us transitioning backgrounds. All of the stages are tied together in some way. Every stage has a secret entrance to another stage. As you fight, if you pull off a hard enough attack near one of these segments you can knock your opponent into another stage. Things continue to borrow from Killer Instinct as you play. Backgrounds rotate during your battles. Each player has two life bars. There are even Fatalities in this entry. They’re called Claytalities, and most of them are pretty funny the first few times you see them. The game even introduces a couple of secret characters. This brings the total number of characters to 12. Many of the characters from earlier games return here. Bad Mr. Frosty, Bonker, Taffy, and Ickybod Clay are here. Earthworm Jim is also here as a cameo along with Boogerman, a character from one of Interplay’s platformers.

A lot of the best voice actors around are here. Dan Castanella known for his role as Homer Simpson is here. Jim Cummings of Darkwing Duck fame is here. Even Rob Paulsen of Pinky, and The Brain had a hand in the game’s voice over. All of whom put in some great work here. It would have been easy to phone in a few lines of dialogue, but they treated it like any of their other projects. But there is one character in particular who was, and is very divisive. Kung Pow. Kung Pow is every bad Chinese stereotype rolled into one character. Many will be upset, a few might laugh, but no one will argue it is in poor taste. He speaks in broken English, all of his moves are named after Chinese restaurant meals, and have animations to match.They even designed him with the stereotypical over bite, and bowl hair cut. Even during release people were asking “Really?”.

On top of the blight that is a character made for pure shock value, the game doesn’t have the memorable look of the original game. While characters are, once again sprites made from stop motion animation, backgrounds are another story. Everything has a dim, muddy look to it. Geometry. Textures. Everything looks bland, dull, and lifeless. Gone are the hilarious, and fun backgrounds from the Super NES. Even though there are a number of stage transitions they all suffer the same boring feel. Boring  is not the vibe you want from your parody game. Sadly, that’s what the game becomes. The comedy that is here does wane pretty quickly. The change in the fighting system does little to keep you playing. Clay Fighter 63 1/3 doesn’t have much in the way of multiplayer either. You have the standard 2 player Vs. mode, and that’s… about it.

Aside from the secret characters, the game does have a handful of hidden things in it. There is a secret menu you can pull up, that will let you turn off the Claytality timer, scale the size of the characters, and other minor changes. There is also an option for someone to control the game’s camera with a controller in port 4. Beyond that, there’s a cheat code to enable well.. cheats. Ultimately, Clay Fighter 63 1/3 isn’t as fun, funny or as memorable as the original Clay Fighter. In spite of having a lot of great voice talent, and improved models, it still falls short on all of those fronts. The most interesting thing about the game is that like Clay Fighter Tournament Edition, it does have an upgrade.

One many will probably never see. And in the unlikely event that you do see it in person, it will be fairly expensive to take home. Clay Fighter Sculptor’s Cut came out a short time after 63 1/3 failed to make an impact. It fixes some (not all) of the sluggish problems in the fighting engine. It adds one of the characters who was cut from 63 1/3, and a couple of new characters. Presumably because of the lower than expected sales of the base game, Sculptor’s Cut became an exclusive rental. Blockbuster Video was the only vendor to get copies, and it was rarely sold until they began to scuttle their retail locations. The few copies in the wild fetch a high price due to their rarity. If you’re especially lucky enough to find a copy with a manual, and box hang onto it very tightly.

As for the game itself, it is only slightly better than the base game. If you’re a fan of the general concept, and characters Clay Fighter introduced to fighting games Clay Fighter 63 1/3 might be worth owning. If only because of the historical aspect behind it. It isn’t a horrible game, but it isn’t particularly great either. The controversial Kung Pow character also doesn’t help its case. It is an interesting game in the sense of analyzing a misfire. But it isn’t something that will keep you busy for years. It never hits the un-functional levels of Dark Rift, but it isn’t going to give you the replay value the original did either. It’s average. Boring, and painfully at times. It’s been revealed there are plans for a new entry in the long dormant series. Hopefully that game will take its cues from the Super NES cult favorite. Not this swing, and a miss sequel.

Final Score: 5 out of 10

Reposted Review: Road Rash 64

(Originally published on the defunct Retro Retreat)

The lauded Electronic Arts series lands on the N64. Except that this entry was not made or published by EA. Confused yet?

Originally an exclusive for the Genesis, Road Rash saw rare ports on the Amiga, Game Boy, before a quick reboot on the 3DO, and Windows before disappearing awhile. EA also brought it over to the Playstation as Road Rash 3D, and took one last stab with Jailbreak. But Electronic Arts final attempts on the Playstation failed to capture the 16-Bit glory days of the series on Sega’s most popular console. Enter the late, THQ with a grand proposal.

PROS: Truly captures the feel of the Genesis classics. 4 player split screen.

CONS: Like F-Zero X it goes with low poly counts. With worse textures.

WEIRD BUT TRUE: The game totally calls bull crap on you for gaming the system.

Back in 1999  (Has it been 13 years already?) a strange thing happened. It’s not uncommon to find late ports of titles showing up on a competing platform. It is however strange to see a franchise entry be created by a developer with no apparent ties to that franchise’s IP. Stranger to see that entry be published by a publisher that doesn’t own that IP.

Strangest of all, seeing that title in a store, on a shelf, and all completely legitimate.

But that’s exactly what happened. Back in the early 90′s, Electronic Arts published a 3 game motorcycle combat racing series called Road Rash. A Genesis exclusive, the first title later saw ports to the Commodore Amiga computer, and the Game Boy handheld. As it’s ports were not on traditional consoles, anyone who wanted to play the series on the big screen had to buy a Genesis. It was a great series too. Going head to head against friends, while you swung bats at each other while driving bikes at 200 mph was a blast.

So much so that gamers temporarily put aside the petty console war, and challenged each other whenever they ended up at the Sega kid’s house on a Saturday. The series briefly made an appearance on the 3DO when EA founder Trip Hawkins left to create the 3DO company. That version made it to Windows 95. After the 3DO was defeated by the Playstation, and it’s rivals however, EA would bring the motorcycle combat racer to Sony. When they did bring over Road Rash as Road Rash 3D though, they toned down a lot of the fighting aspects, and focused on the racing portions. This probably would have been passable among the series’ most ardent fans if not for the fact that RR3D had no multiplayer mode whatsoever. EA tried to make up for it with Road Rash Jailbreak, (USA gamers got it late) and reception while not bad, was still a far cry from it’s days on the Genesis.

Enter the late THQ. Around this time it was finding pretty modest success on the Nintendo 64 with it’s World Wrestling Federation games, and previous World Championship Wrestling titles. Besides this, the publisher always seemed to attempt filling gaps on the platform. It tried publishing Quest 64 during the N64 launch period to give RPG fans something to play in the wake of losing Final Fantasy. While that was a very blunderous miscalculation, with today’s title the practice was one of their successes.

THQ contacted EA, and worked out a publishing deal to make their own original motorcycle battle racer using the Road Rash moniker. They certainly didn’t squander the opportunity.

Road Rash 64 took everything fans knew, and loved about the Genesis games, then amped them up to eleven. Moreover, the game even did a few things some of your favorite modern racers do. Like the 16-Bit originals, RR64 will have you racing against other psychotic bikers in violent races for blood sport. Make it from point A to B in one piece while placing in the top three you qualify for the next race. Make it through all the races, and you will find yourself in the next circuit. RR64 also does all of this on one large map. While being A to B distance racing, the game does not put up any invisible walls. You can feel free to drive off-road, drive lines through “S” winds of track, or even attempt to skip long areas of track.

But don’t think that any of that will help you. Because Road Rash 64 also calls you out for being conniving. Get used to seeing the question “Cheat much?” crop up in red, and white if you do anything the developers found questionable. If you flat-out try to skip a race by driving around the preplanned route, right to the end you can expect your bike to mysteriously break down while a warning “Cheaters never prosper.” taunts you. You won’t want to break down either, because each breakdown takes away prize money. Prize money is very important in this game because you need it to buy bikes. Why do you need bikes?  Because later circuits require faster bikes to enter. If you can’t afford a bike that meets the race requirements, you can’t progress. So you’ve been warned.

The game also brings back police chases. Biker cops will show up to crash your party. Unlike the other bikers who may need to keep making you total your bike until it can’t race anymore, the police only need to make you crash once to arrest you. Get arrested, you lose money for bail. Run out of money, and it’s game over. So not getting arrested is just as important as not crashing, and having the nicer bikes. Be that as it may, the real fun of the game ARE indeed the fights, and crashes. Road Rash 64 features amazingly, hilarious crashes. Where other games will infuriate you because one tiny mistake cost you a victory, here you will laugh, and wonder how your racer is still alive. It even has an award called “Cascade”. It will pop up when half of the racers are involved in the same crash. Bodies will fly hundreds of feet in the air, rag doll in the street, and then be run over by traffic. There are also pedestrians you can hit during races for bonus points.

There are so many fun weapons to use here too. Of course there are the typical B-movie biker staples like bats, chains, or clubs. But you can find pool cues, steel pipes, mace that can be used to blind other bikers, and the greatest weapon for this sort of game: a taser. Even once you make it through the main game you’ll have a lot of multiplayer modes to play. Thrash mode is probably going to be the best of the bunch. This mode lets you, and three friends race on any of the tracks featured in the campaign. All of the weapons are available to you, and as in the main game, you can pick up other stuff like damage amplifiers.

Other modes are lap based modes on tracks not seen in the main game. Here you can run a 1,3,5,or 7 lap race against one another, or play variants of these like tag mode (Everyone has to gang up on a specific player before the game assigns IT status to the next player). Deathmatch mode is here too. In DM you get a frag for each lap you make, and if you are knocked off you lose a frag. The final multiplayer bit is Pedestrian hunt. This mode sees players trying to run over anyone standing in the street or on a sidewalk. Whoever hits the most at the end of the track wins.

There is one major off putting thing here though, as you can probably tell by the screen caps. That’s the graphics. Even at the time of release they are far below what most players expected. The N64 did have a lot of games people cited as visual power houses. Turok 2, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark to name a few. But Road Rash 64 goes just a minor step above the fidelity found in SNES games like Star Fox or Stunt Race FX. One likely explanation for this is the lower polygon numbers increase performance. Even Nintendo’s own F-Zero X did this. But even F-Zero X had pretty respectable textures in comparison.

Nevertheless, Road Rash 64 does take advantage of the Expansion Pak cartridge. Players who have one installed in their N64′s will have access to a few graphics options to mildly improve the quality. Widescreen mode (Although it’s really stretch o vision), Letterbox mode ( Really more of a window box. Makes the screen smaller, and centered to sharpen the image.), and then there’s the option of using Higher Resolution Textures at the normal 4:3 setting. For most  players, the typical Normal setting or the Hi Res mode are the best options. Hi Res doesn’t add much of a performance hit either. So if you have the Expansion Pak, it’s probably the best bet.

Road Rash 64 is the odd duck of the series. It’s a game that nobody ever expected to see, and then when they did see it, they had to do a double take. While it isn’t very much to look at, it is a great example of gameplay over graphics. It’s a lot of fun, and is the only four player entry in the series. It’s also not terribly expensive, so if you’re looking for another party game to add to your Nintendo 64 collection you can easily do a lot worse.

Final Score: 7.5 out of 10 (A lot of fun despite it’s faults.)