Club Retro 2020: February - Game Gear

I just remembered Moldorian earlier today. Maybe I'll give it a shot. This is my quick breakdown of the turn-based RPGs on the Game Gear: Defenders of Oasis is easily the best, and legitimately solid in itself; Lunar Magic School is just okay; Phantasy Star Gaiden is awful; Last Bible is the same game as Revelations: Demon Slayer, whose GBC port came out in English much later. The GG game itself is a port of a two-tone GB game; it seemed very plain and grindy from what I tried, like most RPGs on the original GB. The GBC version that we received came out 5 years later and may have some improvements, even if the colors are weaker. I don't know anything about the first-person dungeon crawlers like Last Bible Special or the Madou games.

Sarge , one thing to keep in mind is that even the longer games aren't that long. Royal Stone and Shining Force Gaiden 3 are probably 15 hours at most. If you like old-school Shining Force, definitely play the latter. Or both. As for Zenki, I didn't pick that avatar because it's the greatest game ever or anything - I just liked that character in the anime, and I thought he looked cool in sprite form. But it's a good game.

As for me, I finished a second GG game, Tempo Jr. Unlike the two main Tempo games, which were mostly made by Red Company with a bit of outside help, Jr. was made by SIMS. I guess it's what you'd expect based on the title; a heavily simplified platformer with the characters and musical theme of its bigger brother. The controls feel pretty good, other than a certain sluggishness (you can run, though, which helps a lot), and there's basically no challenge - I did not die once - so it's sort of relaxing to play. The goal in each stage is to find a golden note and then find the exit; the levels are somewhat linear, but not entirely, so it does feel like you're exploring. You can jump on enemies, but the most common method of attack is to fire a note at them to stun them, then just walk up to them to kick them automatically. You can also sort-of fly by holding the jump button in mid-air, which is nice. After every two stages, there's a boss, who's a complete joke. After four of them, there's a mini boss-run and then you've won. You can also find coins that allow you to participate in bonus stages for score, but they're boring. I don't really know how to rate that one, since I always get bored with pure platformers after a few levels. I did have to take a break in the middle (even though it's quite short), but I'd say it's still a somewhat pleasant game to play. As is often the case with the Game Gear, everything's nice and colorful. I'd give it a 5.