Retro Games Beaten

A certain someone around HRG is very fond of this game, so I finally got around to beating it:



Jackal is a NES overhead shmup developed and published by Konami in 1988. This is a reimagined port of the 1986 arcade original with numerous differences. The biggest difference being the NES version is divided into six stages, compared to one long stage in the original. In Jackal the player must maneuver an armed jeep to rescue prisoners of war (POWs) trapped in Vietnam enemy territory. To do so they drive around large open stages, shooting and grenading enemies, while liberating and collecting POWs from secured buildings. Then releasing collected POWs at heliports, and finally moving on to destroy that stage's unique boss. Extra lives are acquired via point aggregation, and the default grenade can be upgraded into a wide explosive rocket. There's also unlimited continues, but no password system. Jackal also supports simultaneous two player, where each player drives an independent assault jeep.



+A mature theme and somber aesthetic on NES.
+Stages have a lot of visual variety.
+Stage survival is much more tactical than run 'n' gun.
+I liked the final boss.
+Running over dudes with your jeep.

-Um, Konami... this ain't 'Nam.
-OST is okay but lacks variety.
-I hate that I can't shoot in the direction I'm driving!
-How I loathe those jeep-seeking missiles.
-It's got that "screen doesn't scroll until you're nearly at the edge" thing going on.

First things first, it's ridiculous that the player can't shoot in the direction they are moving. Well, your grenades do, but not the machine gun. The jeep's machine gun fires vertically upwards always. I get this is important for strafing, but what Konami should have done, was allow the player to use the select button to change the firing mode. One mode to shoot in the direction you are moving, the other to shoot vertically upwards while strafing. This simple select-button-cycle would have made Jackal far more enjoyable for me.

About Phantasy Star 3 - it's worth playing through both 2nd generations as they're completely different, but the four 3rd gens only really start differently, then have you doing all the same things. As for whether it's grindy, if you mean that in the sense of "requiring level grinding", the answer is no, it really doesn't. The battles are also really fast, but the walking speed is super slow compared to 4.

Moulinoski You're given a choice of who to marry at the end of each generation. There are no other variables.

Boy, Robo Warrior gets tedious, even more as you progress. Thoughts later.

EDIT: Okay, so let's talk about Robo Warrior. This game can get pretty random, and a lot of your progress is going to be gated by how lucky you get with drops. The best place to rack them up is hidden staircases, which lead to dark areas full of power-ups. Problem is, if you don't have any candles, you're going to be feeling around in the dark for the exit. Sometimes you have plenty, sometimes not, and you have to make a decision whether it's worth entering what amounts to a bonus area to stock up if you're low on candles but good on everything else.

Speaking of light, there are some main stages that are completely dark. My advice here is, instead of wasting all your medals on the screen-clear item (something I did, 50 medals, yeesh), spend 20 every time you can on the lantern. It lights up the whole screen and never depletes. Much better than feeling around like you're using a torch in Dragon Warrior.

The game itself relies on a lot of inventory management. You want to always have health restoratives on hand. But the further you go, the more enemies tend to swarm you, and while they don't do much damage in most cases, they will often knock you into your own bombs, and that can be deadly, especially if repeated hits knock you around and you get smacked by the bomb multiple times. It can be very frustrating, basically tanking hits because you just don't have any room to maneuver. And you still need to kill some of these enemies to restore your limited bomb stock. This especially comes into play toward the end, where the game sets up mazes with blocks that take 3-5 bomb blasts to get through... and you won't always know where those even are your first time through. It becomes more and more tedious, because the same basic formula never changes. Stock up on power-ups, bomb your way through the stage, find the chalice (or just the key at the end), and occasionally take on a boss while your life slowly depletes.

Early on, I was ready to give this a 7/10. It's a competently-programmed game, and even has some solid tunage going on, but it just turns into too much of a slog. I think it took me 4-5 hours to get through, with my finally succumbing to save states. (You can continue from the stage you're on, but lose half your inventory.) Even someone that knows what they're doing will need nearly two hours to get through it, as seen in a longplay I checked out. Much like Blaster Master, that's pretty egregious for a game that has no password system at all. But this game isn't half as awesome as Blaster Master. By the end, I think I'm settling on a 6/10 overall. It's decent and playable, but it's just waaaaay too long for its own good.

I do like this tune, though. Kind of reminds me of some Wily Castle music in Mega Man 3.