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Your Weekly Kusoge
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T&C Surf Design: Wood & Water Rage - NES (1988) |
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Cover |
T&C Surf Design |
T&C Surf Design |
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LJN is notorious for publishing many stinkers on the NES based off of licensed properties. Interestingly, they weren't all based off of movies or comics. Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage is actually based of a chain of stores that sell and manufacture surfboards and surf apparel, founded in Pearl City, Hawaii. Many of their designs were born from an artist named Steve Nazar, creating such gnarly characters like the pompadour shades-wearing Joe Cool (no, not Snoopy's hip persona), Tiki Man, the tuxedo-sporting Kool Kat, and cap-wearing Thrilla Gorilla. Obviously with the big surfing and skateboarding craze of the late 1980s, this sort of game was bound to fly off the shelves, regardless of the lesser-known name brand. In the style of Skate or Die!, California Games, and many of its ilk, T&C Surf Designs sports wildly different game modes based on extreme sports. Unlike them, there's really only two available, with a third mode alternating between them. The game is very limited in scope, meant only to be played for the top score (which it doesn't save) until you reach game over from losing all your lives or running out of time. Thankfully, the clock stops when you have a full life bar of 8 yin-yang tokens, but you lose 1 to 3 lives at a time depending on what obstacle you hit and how you hit it. Aside from the white noise title screen and menu music simulating waves crashing on the beach, there's only one song that plays throughout the entire game (it sorta resembles the main riffs of At Doom's Gate from Doom), and a few jingles for completing a round or wiping out. There is a 2-player option, but it's alternating, so no co-op whatsoever. The skateboarding segment stars Joe Cool and Tiki Man and contains only one course, which starts a little farther back at the beginning of each new round up until its full length at Round 6, where it just loops endlessly afterwards. The road is littered with oil drums and boxes strewn about and huge potholes to leap or ramp across. Outside of a few buildings, there's nothing else to look at or to stand out. There's not even any other people around in this ghost-town, yet somehow frisbees, baseballs, volleyballs, R/C cars, drums, and even turtles bounce or roll by from the right side of the screen to launch you off your board and skid you bellyfirst onto the pavement. The color palette differs depending on which character you select, and this is the only mode where this happens. You can perform various tricks for bonus points, but the majority of them put you in immediate danger so it's too risky to attempt. Even jumping without holding left to hang onto your skateboard is a death sentence for anything but crossing gates for the measly 500 points. The best trick to pull off is to hop and ride on the white fence in the back for a few seconds to bypass many of the obstacles and hope there isn't a hole or oncoming hazard once you jump back down. There are various coins sprinkled randomly on the street, sometimes even apprearing inside of oil drums where you can't reach them. If you're lucky, you can jump on top of a hazard like the R/C car and defeat it for big points, but the hit detection's so strict you're likely to crash attempting it. As painfully dull as the skateboarding game is, the surfing sections are brutal to stomach through. Your tuxedo-wearing cat or gorilla avatar is constantly pulled down toward the bottom of the screen, which counts as a loss of life if you sink past it. Preventing a swift undercurrent death means wrestling with the d-pad in order to stay above, with almost every other direction but up and right leading to a wipeout from the motionless crashing wave behind you. Your only hopes for survival are surfing off the crest of the wave or reaching the pier far off toward the right to advance to the next round, and each method is wrought with peril. The wonky controls go as follows: pressing up sends you up and left, toward the wave of instant wipeout. Meanwhile holding right creeps you towards the right side, away from the wave, but also down, with your only hope being to reach the pier before you're sucked down. If that weren't enough, you also have to contend with divebombing seagulls, leaping fish, and smug-looking innertube riders that'll knock you off your board. Aside from hopping of the crest and reaching the pier, the only other ways to score points are from picking up bobbing bananas in the water (mmm, salty, soggy nanners...) and riding just inside the wave, which you'll do anyway, just trying in vain to survive a few seconds longer before the vacuum of the bottom abyss of the screen overtakes you. There's no time limit in this mode, but good luck lasting any longer than you would during a round of skateboarding. As lousy as this game was, it apparently sold well enough to warrant a sequel called Town & Country Surf Designs II: Thrilla's Surfari in 1992. As the name suggests, you only play as the gorilla, but the majority of the game is played riding a skateboard and not surfing. |
T&C Surf Design
T&C Surf Design |
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Superman 64 - N64 (1999) |
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American Cover |
Superman 64 |
Superman 64 |
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For those around at the time, Superman 64's critical reception was phenomenally bad, and since release it's come to be known as one of the all-time worst games ever released, due to poor and unresponsive tank controls, shocking bad visuals, atrocious and illogical game design, and a thoroughly stupid story involving virtual reality. In fairness, this reputation as "the worst game" isn't entirely warranted - as pointed out by N64 Magazine there were a few equally if not worse N64 games, including Carmageddon, Mortal Kombat Mythologies and Aero Gauge. Still, Superman 64 has become the poster child for N64 kusoge. Prolific Longplay video maker Proton Jon actually interviewed one of the Titus guys behind the game, Frenchman and Titus co-founder Eric Caen. Due to Google claiming that Jon's blog is potentially harmful to computers, we've mirrored the interview HERE. The entire interview is a fascinating breakdown of self-delusion on the part of Caen, and also the problems which license holders cause when you work with their material. As Caen explains: "The main issue was working with the licensor. They caused us so much trouble - they refused to let Superman kick 'real' people. They generated the final quality of the product!"
When asked what he thought of the game's reputation Caen replied: "Superman is a cult character. I don’t think it is easy to deliver even a portion of players’ expectations, and we were probably too ambitious and a bit presumptuous at that time... but its terrible reputation is exaggerated mainly because Superman is an icon!" Now, even accepting the problems caused by the licensor, DC Comics, at some point you have to draw a line and acknowledge the simple fact that Caen's team clearly had no idea what they were doing. Irrespective of any political meddling from above. Superman moves like a drunk tank, despite direct analogue joystick control having already been present in earlier games like Mario 64. The fly and landing buttons only seem to work intermittently, and when Superman does land, it's not always on the land but quite often a non-existent piece of "ground" in the sky. Melee combat is slow, awkward and imprecise, leading to much flailing of limbs. The cityscape consists of a few tall buildings and walkways, with entirely flat textures below for buildings - the kind of flat terrain you'd expect in a Mode 7 SNES title. Not to mention the chronic fogging which makes flying an exercise in pure frustration. Outdoor missions are timed, and while you might be able to hear your enemy target, you'll seldom see them, leading to game over. Mission objectives, given the virtual reality setting, are suitably surreal: grab a police car and fly it down the road! And of course there are the infamous rings in the outdoor levels, which have become symbolic of the entire Superman 64 experience. Caen defended this point, claiming: "Rings are only in the tutorial levels." Except they're quite clearly not. The rings appear in every outdoor level, which precede every indoor level. The game is quite literally, in the most literal sense of the term, fifty percent rings. Half of all the levels. Which raises the question: is Caen implying that there's a tutorial level directly preceding the final level?
The indoor missions are worse than the ring missions, which at least played like a crude Pilotwings 64 rip-off. The environments are all cramped, made worse by sloppy collision detection and the tank controls. The objectives are also obscenely stupid. One involves a Rubik's Cube style word puzzle, which is never properly explained. You need to press switches which change the letters while a timer counts down. Upon failing the game asks: "Can't you spell Lex Luthor?" Well no, not when there's no logical pattern to things. Hilariously, when playing through a second time to screengrab this section, the game glitched out, sending Superman into an empty void and necessitated a level skip. As if this beleaguered experience wasn't bad enough, the ultimate insult is that to access the final level you need to play through on the hardest difficulty setting, otherwise it sends you back to the title screen. Afterwards you are rewarded with a rubbish 10 second ending. Still, despite its awfulness, you the public bought it in droves, as Caen explains: "The N64 game sold very well and was profitable for us!" Shame on everyone who gave this man money. Perhaps the absolute best worst thing about Superman 64 though, is that the unreleased beta, which contained material removed at DC Comics' insistence and somehow found its way into the hands of a collector, is considerably better than the final game which was released. |
Superman 64
Superman 64
Superman 64
Superman 64
Superman 64 |
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Horror Zombies from the Crypt - Amiga, Atari ST, IBM PC (1990) |
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American Cover |
Horror Zombies from the Crypt (IBM PC) |
Horror Zombies from the Crypt (IBM PC) |
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Horror Zombies from the Crypt - Ah, if that title doesn't spell exquisite home entertainment of the highest order. You know you got a real gem at your disposal when the manual introduces the protagonist as "Count Frederick Valdemar, the typically-handsome, stock character hero, pitted against the most evil and hideous beasts ever to grace a horror story." And doesn't it come from Millennium, the makers of such unforgettable classics as James Pond, Moonshine Racer and Super Troll Islands? Like Castlevania, Horror Zombies from the Crypt pays homage to the classical horror films by Universal and Hammer, but Mr. Valdemar's quest doesn't make nearly as much sense as the Belmonts' vocation; he simply has to go inside a huge haunted mansion and collect all the skulls he can find in each of six levels. Or at least it would have been a simple task, if the typically-handsome, stock character hero didn't walk like he was wearing a peg leg. Seems to double function as a pogo stick, though, as he can jump like a frog. Also looks like a frog while doing it. In a way, Horror Zombies was a glimpse at asshole platformer mentality more than one-and-a-half decade before Kaizo Mario came along. Background elements randomly turn out lethal, enemies spawn right into you, and getting hit just once kills you instantly. No wait, you're not just getting killed. You get your little toe even somewhere close to a hazard or a monster, and your frickin' head! Explodes! Get bitten by a werewolf? Your frickin' head explodes! Rat runs past you? Your frickin' head explodes! Just be at the wrong spot at the wrong time? Your frickin' head explodes! Press Esc to get out of this mess? Your frickin' head explodes! For each level you get only five lives. It may sound like much, but dying also resets everything you did in the current room, and rooms are getting big very soon. At the beginning of each stage, Valdemar is completely helpless until he finds a set of throwing knives. In the first two levels they're right next to the starting point, but the unarmed stretch gets longer and longer with each episode. Many stupid engine glitches help to make the task a Herculean one. Throwing the knives while standing in front of platforms does nothing. You can't just climb up ladders straight, cause Valdemar immediately falls back down through the platform unless you steer sharply to the left or right as soon as you get on top. Worst of all, there's only a limited number of keys to open the various doors and treasure chests (which usually contain floating cloud platforms, cause that's what you keep in treasure chests), but once you track back a bit, the chests are locked again. You better pray you didn't miss any of the skulls the first time around.
At least you can restore previously made progress by using passwords. Only they don't save the special powers, and since you already get in stage 2 the the power you need in stage 3 to survive, the stage 3 password ('hammer') is pretty damn useless. A shame, too, cause the powers are the one really cool thing in Horror Zombies from the Crypt: The first one lets Valdemar sneak in front of the deadly statues with a hilarious animation, in stage two you get the ability to transform into a zombie for a limited time to get past some invincible revenants (who look completely identical to the other zombies, btw.) Since Valdemar's pogo peg leg deprives him of a natural crouching ability, another "special power" grants him exactly that. The final power, the crucifix... I don't know what the hell the crucifix does, cause I never got far enough to see the bloody piece of copper up close. Horror Zombies from the Crypt is by no means the hardest game ever made, but it is so excruciatingly unfair, and only hard for all the wrong reasons, so that it's simply no fun anymore to keep trying beyond a certain point. |
Horror Zombies from the Crypt (IBM PC)
Horror Zombies from the Crypt (IBM PC)
Horror Zombies from the Crypt (IBM PC)
Horror Zombies from the Crypt (IBM PC) |
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Fright Night - Amiga (1988) |
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Fright Night |
Fright Night |
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Fright Night was a cheesy 1985 horror movie about a teenager who discovers that his next-door neighbor is a vampire, and first tries to convince the people around him to believe that, and failing that to take out the creature on his own, getting the help of a crooked "paranormal investigator" type TV show host. The film also got a remake in 2011, which judging by the trailer takes itself way more seriously than it should. So how does the video game adaption fit in there? Not very much. You take on the role of the vampire instead, who has to go through his mansion each night in order to drink the blood of several intruders. Why they keep coming to the house is anyone's guess. The concept of playing the blood-thirsty villain might have sounded exciting for a 1988 marketing, but the execution isn't too hot. The vampire just walks around the rooms, and when he spots potential victims, he has to run towards them, and then sucks their blood automatically. They throw all kinds of stuff at him, but from drinking their blood he gets his health replenished probably more than they could ever take away from him. The real danger are the various ghosts that appear from the second night onwards, and for whatever reason fight against the supposed master of darkness.
Fright Night Dodging enemies is a real pain, though. To jump or duck, the fire button has to be held while pressing the joystick in the appropriate direction, slowing down your reaction time. Enemies also drink your health in one big slurp as long as they touch you; there's no such thing as invincibility time. While it's usually not too hard to go and kill all the intruders, getting back to the vampire's coffin to conclude the night is pretty much impossible from the third night on. It's possible to replenish health by standing in front of said coffin, but first the nights - represented by a moon passing through a circular display - are so short that waiting for the excruciatingly slow healing process is pretty much never worth it, and getting back from the higher floors just to get healed only results in more damage from the flying ghosts. The game ultimately is also very boring, as there's just nothing more to it as has been described so far. The sprites big and nicely animated, and some of the backgrounds very well detailed (while others look like shit), but the graphics got nothing that can save such a dull experience. The "music" by David Whittaker has been praised a lot in contemporary reviews, but it's just a bunch of repeated screeching sounds that might have had some effect if it was used with any kind of direction to match the action on screen, with short samples from famous spooky music spliced in randomly. |
Fright Night
Fright Night
Fright Night |
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