Splatterhouse is a diabolical, gruesomely violent game for the Turbografx-16/PC Engine based on the Namco beat ’em up arcade title of the same name. There were two direct sequels made for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, but the TG-16/PC Engine has the one and only original – unless you live in Japan and owned an FM Towns Marty in the mid 90s, but who did?

You play the game as Rick, a parapsychology student trapped behind a terror mask that makes him look an awful lot like Jason Voorhees. Your goal is to save girlfriend, Jennifer, who is lost inside the mansion of Dr. West. Dr. West was known to conduct ethically questionable experiments in his mansion before going missing. You’ll find out soon enough what the ramifications were for Dr. West’s experiments, and it is unlikely that anyone has ever entered the mansion and returned to tell the tale. Luckily for Rick, the terror mask gives him superhuman strength, which he will need in order to dispatch the disgusting onslaught of monsters.

The plot is straight out of a horror film, and there are numerous references to other movies of the time, such as the aforementioned Friday the 13th (Jason), Poltergeist (inanimate objects become projectiles), Re-animator and The Evil Dead (the dead coming back to life to wreak havoc on the living) as well as countless other homages not mentioned here. The gameplay is basic side scrolling beat ’em up where you can use either your fists, legs or weapons you pick up throughout the game in order to literally splat your enemies against the walls and floors around you.

The plot may seem like the basic “save your girl” variety, but what sets Splatterhouse apart is the game design and graphics. For starters, your attack is very satisfying, resulting in an audible crunch/squish/splat of your annihilated enemies. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of the timing of your melee attacks or the appropriate time to use weapons and jump/slide attacks. However, the controls are really just the beginning of what makes Splatterhouse memorable.
Nothing can prepare you for the grotesque variety of enemies & level bosses which are key to the game’s appeal. Throughout the game you will encounter decomposing bodies which vomit acid, a room full of intestines with parasitic worms crawling out of the piles, skinless bodies falling from the ceiling, alien like water monsters and gruesome infant-blob hybrids that slither along the floor. And that only scratches the surface of the horrors you will face.

Level bosses tend to up the gross & fear factor as well, and one of the most memorable level bosses is **SPOILER ALERT** your kidnapped girlfriend, who transforms into a terrifying monster right in front of your eyes after begging you to save her. Yikes! Splatterhouse is essentially a playable nightmare or horror film, and this particular nightmare/horror film is an immensely enjoyable one. If you can stomach it.

My favorite level in Splatterhouse is hard to choose. Splatterhouse contains so many great levels, but some in the second half of the game are very frustrating due to cheap hits and annoying enemies. Probably my favorite level, or stage as the game calls them, would be level 3. This particular level is the only one in the game that takes place outside of the mansion. You spend your time walking through a forest in order to reach another part of the mansion where Jennifer is being kept. You have to cross a bridge, where hands will grab you and pull you down to a sub-level if you’re not careful, as well as jumping over spikes, avoiding vomit throwing enemies, angry zombie dogs and red monsters. The first thing you’ll encounter during this level is something you have not seen up to this point. That would be the game’s best weapon: the shotgun.

The shotgun is the best weapon in the game, mainly because it allows for long-range attacks that other weapons such as wooden planks and axes don’t provide. The downside is that they contain limited ammo, so they must be used sparingly. Level 3 will offer you two shotguns, one at the very beginning and one closer to the end. You cannot pick up and hold both at the same time, so you can either use the first one trying to get to the end of the level unscathed, or you can attempt to save it by bringing it with you and using melee attacks instead of shotgun attacks. You can also drop it to pick up rocks that are useful against the vomit-spewing enemies. In my opinion, the best technique is to utilize them both at the level 3 boss by continuing to drop and pick the first shotgun up until you encounter the second shotgun. At this point you’ll have to keep dropping them and picking them up until you reach the screen where you meet up with the game’s best enemy.

As for the game’s best enemy, this one’s easy for me. The first time I encountered the level 3 boss, I was genuinely nervous. It is a huge, skinless monstrosity with a bag tied over it’s head and two chainsaws for arms, and that in itself is enough reason to quiver and reconsider you’re choice to pop this game into your Turbografx-16. On top of that, the music changes to a frantic pace in an attempt to increase the tension, while a high-pitched buzzing attempts to mimic the sounds of twin, flesh-chewing chainsaws. I have been programmed to think of chainsaws as one of the most horrible weapons for killing people thanks to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it being an X-rated movie back when I was a kid. My assumption was that the gore level in the movie was so beyond what was acceptable for an R-rated film that it had to become this ultra-restricted movie-going event. This reason alone causes my skin to crawl each time I fight the level 3 boss.

Because of the enemy’s large size, its reach is also long, so unless you want to get chopped into bits by the chainsaw arms, your best chance of survival is to blast him with the two shotguns. If you don’t have two shotguns, you can still do a lot of damage by ducking when it jumps across the screen and using slide kicks to stay under it’s chainsaws. Once defeated, it simply dissolves as if it was never there.

I thoroughly enjoy Splatterhouse, and in my opinion it is a must own for your TurboGrafx-16. Saving Jennifer won’t be easy, but you’ll be granted numerous continues which assist your efforts. I’ve played through the game and there are a couple of surprises that await the brave souls who venture into Splatterhouse. The game’s final boss fight is definitely winnable once you recognize the patterns, but the ending may haunt you long after Halloween is over.

Grade: A-

The post Splatterhouse (Turbografx-16) appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Grandpa: Well, sonny, there was this one particular game on the Atari VCS called Adventure that was kind of like your own grandpappy but in video game form. Today we may show our age and may not look too impressive anymore but when we were young we were quite the catch. We also managed to sire a bunch of young ‘uns for better or worse (no offense to you sonny).

Grandson: Wow, that’s cool. I’ve heard about that game, is it epic like The Legend of Zelda?

Grandpa: No, sonny. It isn’t. However, what is epic is that it offered an open world experience in 1979 when no one was really doing that. If you weren’t shooting aliens in space or bouncing electronic balls back and forth across a screen, you weren’t doing it right.

Grandson: Sounds amazing…..kind of. Wait, was the game actually fun, Grandpa?

Grandpa: Depends on if you have a tolerance for annoying things like bats that steal your weapons and keys. Those g?@!#!n bats…..oh, and really, really primitive graphics. As in, all the screens & items are monocolored and the dragons look like ducks. Despite these graphical limitations, the game is effective in how it offers mazes and castles to traverse in order to find a magical chalice which you then have to take back to the original castle you started in. There are different colored keys spread around the game that will unlock the corresponding same colored castles. Inside these castles are weapons, dragons and the chalice of course. Finding an arrow can help kill the dragons and finding the magnet will retrieve stolen items back from those bastard bats. F*&! those bats!!! Sorry for the language sonny.

Grandson: It’s ok, when I play online games I hear worse. But I don’t know Grandpa…..it sounds very…..basic.

Grandpa: Oh sonny, it is. But it had an innovative continue feature! When you inevitably would be eaten by a dragon and your little square body would struggle in vain to escape it’s hollow stomach, all you had to do was hit reset and the game could be continued. You’d start back on the opening screen but all the items would be where you left them! This was really cool in 1979! Trust me.

Grandson: Sure thing gramps. Did you say your character was a block? Really?

Grandpa: Yes, sonny. You controlled a block and you were a hero.

Grandson: Well, how is the music? You haven’t mentioned anything about it so far.

Grandpa: There was no music, just sound effects mostly coming from the dragons. Adventure required every bit of code space for the ambitious game itself.

Grandson: It sounds easy.

Grandpa: Easy? Definitely not on 2nd and 3rd quests. The 1st quest is a warm up for newbies but the bats show up in later quests and the mazes sometimes are darkened so you can only see directly in front of you. With all of the screens looking pretty much the same, it made it very difficult to find your way around and you could easily get lost. Especially if you didn’t draw a map.

Grandson: Hmmm, drawing your own map huh? Sounds like a true adventure! It would be kind of like Lewis and Clark setting off on their quest to reach the Pacific Ocean! Around every corner could mean certain death! Only those with smarts, strength and a good sense of direction would survive. I haven’t had to use my imagination in years. Grandpa, I sure hope it still works.

Grandpa: Don’t worry sonny. It will all come back to you. It’s not something you ever lose. Just think, players like myself had to use our imagination every time we played an Atari game. Do you see why this game is important, sonny?

Grandson: I do, gramps. I appreciate that this game existed to set the stage for all my favorite adventure games of the past 30 years. I guess I owe this game a certain amount of gratitude for paving the way and showing players that video games could make you think as well as work your hand-eye coordination. I guess this truly was the greatest video gaming generation!

Grandpa: Well, don’t go overboard there sonny…..

Without a doubt, the best character in the game are the dragons. Not only were they your primary nemesis and the only enemy that could eat you (i.e. kill you), there were 3 different dragons to contend with. Yorgle (yellow dragon), Grundle (green dragon), and Rhindle (red dragon) were all difficult to contend with but Rhindle was the worst offender, chasing after you quickly and relentlessly once you entered its lair. Who could forget the first time you were eaten by one of the dragons and you discovered you could move your character around in it’s hollow stomach? This gave you hope that maybe there was a way to escape and only after frantically moving the joystick in every direction while mashing the button for awhile did you come to the realization how futile that effort was? Classic!

Adventure is also known for it’s big secret, almost as much as it was known for it’s innovative and non-linear gameplay, Adventure is almost as equally well known for containing the first Easter egg. Warren Robinett, the creator and programmer for Adventure, felt like his efforts were being unrecognized by Atari Inc. and ultimately unrecognized by the players of his games. Atari didn’t allow their programmers to take any credit for the games they made so Robinett took matters into his own hands and created a hidden, hard to get location within the game that when found could be read. It said very clearly, “Created by Warren Robinett.”

If discovered by Atari, this was a potentially fireable offence, so Robinett ensured that finding this Easter egg would be difficult. At this point, how to find this hidden room in the game has been well documented, but I can only imagine how the very first person to accomplish this must have felt. Also, with no internet to spread this discovery across the globe in a matter of hours, word of mouth was likely the primary means to share this knowledge. The practice of hiding Easter eggs in games would become quite commonplace, not just on Atari’s console, but others as well, until developers/programmers from Atari and Mattel would break away and create their own third party publishers such as Activision and Imagic and usher in the era of recognition for the talent behind the games.

All items and weapons in Adventure are critical to achieving success in the game, but the most unique would have to be the magnet. The magnet would attract keys to your player which was super helpful if they got stuck in a wall thanks to a case of the dropsies by those thieving bats. Also, the magnet could be used to pull a bat holding a key towards you so you could carry the bat with the key around with you for a period of time. Talk about awkward!

Adventure is the granddaddy of action/adventure games, and we can all point to the primitive graphics and gameplay and scoff, but the reality is, we wouldn’t have The Legend of Zelda without Adventure to pave the way. It can be frustrating to play at times when you’re running around trying to find the next castle or trying to escape a quick moving dragon only to realize you’re going in circles, but Adventure still deserves accolades as one of the must owns for the Atari 2600.

Grade: B+

The post Adventure (Atari VCS/2600) appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Consoles and Computers:
By early 1984, Nintendo’s Famicom system was a unbridled success over in Japan and Nintendo was making an attempt to break into the North American market with the Advanced Video System. Initially presented at the January 1984 Consumer Electronic Show held in Las Vegas, NV, the AVS looked like yet another console/computer hybrid that had been the rage at the time but was falling out of favor with retailers and consumers thanks to poor sales & reviews (see Intellivision’s computer add-on and the Coleco Adam add-on for the Colecovision). Retailers wanted nothing to do with a new, potentially expensive video game console and who could blame them? So what was being released in the first half of 1984 if video gaming as a viable entertainment medium was quickly slipping into the realm of “fad” status faster than you could say “Pet Rock”?

Atari was still making moves in an attempt to stay on top of the video game world, as precarious a spot as that might have seemed to them at the time. They introduced the Atarisoft brand name which was created as a way to port some of their previous exclusive Atari titles to other home consoles and computers such as the Colecovision, Commodore 64 and Apple II computers, just to name a few. This led to releases such as Centipede, Defender, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Moon Patrol and Ms. Pac Man among many others, to find their way onto these other machines in early 1984 after a couple years of being Atari console and computer exclusives. Atari’s iron grip on arcade ports had finally loosened and owners of Colecovision and Intellivision consoles as well as non-Atari computers were the benefiters.

Yet another arcade port was released in early 1984 to every major console and computer of the day to less than stellar reviews. Congo Bongo was an isometric title from Sega released in arcades in 1983 to little fanfare. In Congo Bongo you play as a safari hunter chasing after a big ape named Bongo all because he played a prank on you while you were sleeping (hmm, ok!). The playfields have a tilted isometric view and in the first level you must avoid Bongo’s coconuts while climbing up platforms to reach him….sound familiar? I remember playing Congo Bongo a few times in the arcade as I was a big fan of Donkey Kong, the game looked similar and the term “derivative” wasn’t yet in my vocabulary. I never really thought much about Congo Bongo during and after playing it indicating it was fairly forgettable. There are home console versions available for the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Intellivision and the Colecovision as well as versions available for every major computer at the time. The Colecovision version is one of the nicest looking (oh my god, the Atari 2600 version looks horrendous) home console ports out there but it only includes 3 of the arcade’s 4 levels. None of the ports were considered all that great but considering that the source material wasn’t one of Sega’s best, indicates that 1984 might have been a transition year for home consoles and computers. Not much to see here but it’s an ok game overall.

Arcades:
While the home console market was shrinking rapidly, arcades were also not pulling in the same amount of money as their peak a few years earlier. With that said, there was still new games being developed and released for arcades a decent clip in early 1984. One of these games, Space Ace, was created by Don Bluth Studios, Cinematronics and Advanced Microcomputer Systems, the makers of 1983’s smash hit, Dragon’s Lair. Like Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace is a laser disc based game that requires the player to watch the cartoon action on the screen and quickly moving the joystick or pressing a button to prompt the character on the screen to perform an action. Perform the wrong action or perform the action too late, and you are treated to an elaborate death animations. Space Ace added some minor improvements over Dragon’s Lair such as difficulty level choices and alternate paths. Your character, Ace, can also revert back to his child form as Dexter, for an alternate gameplay option. I have only played Space Ace a few times as laser disc games intimidated me as a child when I would see them in arcades. Part of the reason was the cost, as they tended to be a bit more expensive (50 cents per play) than your average 25 cent arcade game. The style of quick time event gameplay also wasn’t something I was inherently adept at so my games would inevitably be extremely short and unfulfilling. Nevertheless, Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair seemed like the future of video games at the time and were innovative and appealing to many.

The post Retro Gaming Archives – Winter/Spring 1984 appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

My original 7800 with ProLine controllers.

There aren’t very many consoles in my collection that I’ve ignored in the manner that I’ve ignored the Atari 7800 ProSystem over the years. I’ve owned Atari’s 3rd (2600 x 3 = 7800) foray into home console gaming for many years but after my initial purchase along with a handful of games in the early 2000s, I’ve probably played my 7800 only a few times since. This is largely due to lack of nostalgia or any viable memories of the 7800 when it was released.

Officially released nationwide in 1986, the Atari 7800 had been in development since 1983. Atari wanted to quickly release a successor to the poorly received Atari 5200, correcting two of that console’s biggest mistakes. Lack of backward compatibility with the 2600 games and fragile analog controllers. Unfortunately, the video game crash of ’83 occurred and Atari began bleeding money left and right. Atari’s Consumer Division was then sold to Jack Tramiel and all of the subsequent legal battles with GCC (General Computer Corporation), the manufacturer of the 7800, delayed the release of the console for 2 years. The test launch of the 7800 in 1984 showed promise but by the time the system was finally released, the same old, same old arcade ports being offered seemed crusty and mothballed compared to exciting titles such as Super Mario Bros for the NES.

The 7800 was marketed as a budget console, which was smart considering it was never going to be able to compete with the buzzworthy Nintendo and to a lesser extent, Sega. This helped it to be somewhat profitable but it never made a cultural dent. As I alluded to earlier, I had no distinct recollection of the 7800 existing in the late 80s. Atari had repackaged and re-released the 2600 around this time as the 2600 Junior, so I do recall seeing Atari 2600 Juniors in stores at the same time as the NES. Despite being a kid, was no dummy and I recognized that it was just an ancient console with graphics and games that could no longer compete being repackaged as something cool and new so I promptly ignored it. I’m certain that in my sub consciousness, the 7800 was wrongly lumped in with the 2600 Junior when I saw them on the shelves. There just wasn’t enough to distinguish the two of them besides the number used behind the brand name. Honestly, when you look at the 7800 console and game boxes, they don’t do a very good job of selling themselves. The game boxes in particular were very bland and monochromatic silver/gray. The lack of colors for the packaging was certainly a cost cutting measure and flipping the boxes over to see one or maybe two barebones screenshots had minimal impact. Yes, the games were significantly cheaper than NES titles, but that wasn’t a motivational factor for me. No one I knew growing up owned a 7800 so I didn’t have a chance to play it nor did I care to. Backward compatibility also meant nothing to me, not having owned a 2600 prior. I’m sure that a huge portion of the sales of the 7800 were by previous 2600 owners as I cannot see how Atari’s marketing (or lack thereof) was going to sell a potential new video game console owner on their console in a sea of “Now You’re Playing With Power” ads.

I spent an entire month dedicated to playing my Atari 7800, then consolidating my thoughts on the somewhat ignored and forgotten entry into the late 80s console wars. Personally, I ignored this console for many years as well so I can understand why it never gained a true foothold in the mind of gamers when it was released. With a dated launch library filled with aging arcade ports, it appeared as if the 7800 was just a slightly improved version of the 2600, which was also still in stores at the time along with the XEGS. Maybe there was a case of consumer confusion with too many consoles available at once? Nevertheless, the Atari 7800 soldiered on and ultimately offered gamers more choices than just arcade ports but it was too little too late. The later released 7800 games such as Ninja Golf, Midnight Mutants, Basketbrawl, Mean 18 & Motor Psycho were just some of the titles available for the 7800 that can’t be found on other consoles of the era but never captured the hearts for many gamers.

I added several titles to my collection recently but I really wanted to add some of the unique later released games as mentioned earlier. I ran into a couple of problems when attempting this, however. One, those games are not that common and show up online very infrequently and two, when they do show up on sites like eBay, they often are sealed copies and pull a premium. For some reason, there are a lot of sealed 7800 games floating around and especially for the common early titles, these sealed games don’t cost significantly more than previously opened and complete copies. Sealed games are interesting to own from a collector’s standpoint but serve very little purpose for someone who intends to actually play the games (i.e. me).

If I was to look at the pros and cons of the Atari 7800 console both from a player and collector’s standpoint, it would look something like this:

Pros:

• Collecting a large library is relatively cheap, especially if you like to own boxes and manuals. Lots of sealed games out there for sale, which is odd but nice.
• Very few expensive games if you’re collecting a complete 7800 library.
• Some of the best versions of classic arcade titles are available on the 7800 (e.g. Asteroids, Dig Dug, Joust).
• Lots of support from the homebrew community and after market peripherals and controller manufacturers.
  Console is sturdy, sleek and attractive.

Cons:

• Natively only allows RF output, which seems to be worse than most console’s RF output from that era. Requires modding for composite video/audio.
• Original ProLine controllers are some of the worst in terms of comfort and responsiveness.
• Games can be hard to find in both the wild and online due to low sales numbers.
• Game library is short on must own exclusives.
• Early game carts are dull looking and without color, likely as a cost saving measure.

I’m a purist at heart and typically don’t like to modify or tweak my consoles in any way but my original 7800’s RF port is failing. I tried several RF connections and the end result was the same so I have to assume that it’s the console itself. The picture has way too much snowy static for my liking and on top of that, my pause and select buttons no longer work. So I bit the bullet and bought a composite AV modded 7800. One of the best purchases I’ve made related to the Atari 7800. I can now play games with a clear signal and that benefit can’t be understated. Now that I’ve addressed that issue, the next issue I need to address are those darn ProLine controllers. People complain all the time about Intellivison, Colecovision and Jaguar controllers but I find the ProLine controllers to be the worst of the bunch. I absolutely need to either buy the adapter that allows Genesis controllers to be played on the 7800 for 2 button games or else pick up a couple of the European Joypads Atari was so keen on showing off on their North American advertisements even though they were never for sale over here.

Since I am only capable of playing and reviewing games from my own collection, I will make a quick list of the top 10 Atari 7800 games that are in my collection:

1. Food Fight
2. Centipede
3. Asteroids
   

   Food Fight

4. Ms. Pac Man
5. Joust
6. Midnight Mutants
7. Galaga
8. Ballblazer
9. Dig Dug
10. Robotron 2084

Top 5 least favorite games in my collection:

1. Touchdown Football
2. Realsports Baseball
3. Karateka
4. Hat Trick
5. Ace of Aces

As far as Atari consoles are concerned, the 7800 is probably the second best after the VCS/2600 in my opinion. Yes, I understand that the 7800 plays most all 2600 games so by default, it should be the best Atari console to own, unless you’re a huge Jaguar fan. However, I reject that notion as a reason to call the 7800 the best Atari console since I look at each console in a bubble when I’m assessing them. The 2600 was a juggernaut in the early 80s and if backwards compatibility wasn’t an option, it wouldn’t be a contest between these two. If I had to grade the 7800 based on my experience with the original console and controllers, I would give it a C. However, I’m going to make an assumption that my enjoyment would be increased significantly to a B- as long as I add some after market goodies so that averages out to a C+.

Grade: C+

The post System Spotlight – Atari 7800 appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

Thankfully, the wily chef has a few options up his apron to stop the pesky food from ending his career (and life). He can either drop ingredients on top of them by walking over them, lure the enemies onto ingredients and then walk over them causing them all to fall, or throw pepper at them to temporarily stun them. You rack up the points for dropping ingredients while enemies are on top or underneath them but no points are given for using the pepper. All of these attacks only temporarily keep chef Pepper safe as all enemies will re-spawn. There is a finite amount of pepper you have on hand so it’s wise to save them for when you’re cornered and really need it. Mercifully, you can earn more pepper by grabbing bonus food items such as coffee, French fries, and ice cream when they appear on screen. The stages get more difficult based on how the ladders and ingredients are situated on the board as well as the food becoming more relentless in their attacks.

BurgerTime is no slouch in the difficulty department, but I generally did well in the arcades when I would play. I found it better to head towards the top of the screen and lure as many food items onto the ingredients as I drop them in order to have them fall multiple levels based on how many enemies were standing on them. I have a harder time performing as well as I did in the arcades when playing the excellent Colecovision or Intellivision ports, mostly due to the controllers. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who is familiar with the controllers for these consoles. Data East licensed BurgerTime for development on consoles and computers by several companies, most notably Mattel. Mattel developed and released a number of the early ’80s ports of the game onto consoles and computers, including the Intellivision version. The Colecovision’s version of BurgerTime has the better graphics, but I find the controls to be much more responsive on the Intellivision version. I am attributing much of that to the Intellivision’s disc controller vs. Colecovision’s mini joystick knob, which can be difficult to maneuver. I find that rolling your thumb along the disc allows you to move Peter Pepper up and down those ladders with a level of precision and timing that Colecovision’s controller cannot handle. This is especially important when attempting tricky escapes and complex burger component drops.

I am not a fan of how some enemies respawn right in the middle of certain platforms, which can lead to some very cheap and irritating deaths. Through trial and error, you eventually learn to avoid certain platforms if you know an enemy will be respawning soon. Other than that, I really have no complaints about either the Intellivison or the Colecovision ports. Mattel was so proud of their version that they bundled it as the pack-in for the Intellivision II.

Colecovision version

The enemies in BurgerTime are an eclectic bunch for sure. Mr. Pickle, Mr. Hot Dog and Mr. Egg all have equally malevolent dispositions, and none of them appear to be smarter or more difficult than the others. However, there’s something about the way Mr. Pickle spins around as he moves that makes him appear a bit disturbed and deranged. The fact that he doesn’t show up until the third stage makes him the most intriguing enemy for me. Not to mention that pickles are common hamburger toppings, so his motivation for stopping Chef Pepper is more understandable.

No single BurgerTime sequence is more satisfying to me than luring several enemies up to the highest level, waiting for them to step onto the top of a bun, and then dropping them all the way to the very bottom. You get huge points for this move. Plus, it clears a vertical hamburger in an instant. The cherry on top is that by performing this difficult-to-pull-off move you often reach the point total needed for your bonus food item to show up on screen, making it extra special.

Without a doubt the hardest level to clear is level 6. This is the last unique level before the game begins cycling back through, and its design is completely intended to trap Chef Pepper on various ledges. The layout of the stage includes ladders in the middle and 5 finger-like ledges on each side of the screen, with only one way on and one way off. The only way to survive this level is to save up your reserve pepper supply and do your best to lure enemies onto the ledges with you so you can drop them down with the ingredients. Some of the enemies will re-spawn on those same ledges, so you have to be careful to never stay on them too long. Not that you’d want to anyway!

BurgerTime is one of my favorite arcade games and easily one of my top 5 second console generation-era games. While the arcade version is the gold standard, I do prefer the Intellivision port slightly over Colecovision’s due to the controls and the wider screen size which makes the game slightly easier. The Colecovision version seems a little cramped to me, giving you less room to work in order to avoid the food enemies. I can lure enemies to one side of the screen on the Intellivision version if necessary, and I have a much harder time doing that on Colecovision. The Intellivision overlays don’t add much to the gameplay as you only really need the disc for movement and the side buttons to throw peppers at the enemies. The keypad buttons are used to select number of players and to start the game and that’s it. Nevertheless, the overlays are attractive and worth having if you’re a huge BurgerTime fan like myself. In my opinion, this is the definitive home console version of this classic arcade title.

Grade: A

The post BurgerTime (Arcade, Colecovision, Intellivision) appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

My own copy of the first edition of Night Trap. Notice the MA-17 sticker in lower left corner. This must have been slapped on after the Senate hearing for violent video games.

Full motion video games, or FMV’s for short, were all the (short lived) rage back in the early 90s. CD technology had been around for a few years in the music industry, but, by 1992, it was finally mainstream to the point where just about everyone had traded in their cassettes for CDs. The same was becoming true for the video game industry as well. Cartridges were being touted as the technology of the past. In order to harness the true power of your video game consoles, you needed to slap on a CD-ROM and experience the additional graphical, video and sound capabilities it offered. The Sega CD was preceded by Turbografx-16’s CD attachment by two years, but the Turbo CD was an add-on for a relatively poor selling console in North America and Europe. The Sega Genesis had sold millions of consoles by 1992, so there was a larger built-in audience hungry to create their own Marky Mark & Kris Kross music videos. Welcome to the glorious world of full motion video, and one of the most infamous games of the genre.

Night Trap was an original North American launch title for the Sega CD in the fall of 1992. The plot of the game involves a group of young women staying overnight in a house, Bed & Breakfast style, which happens to be run by (Spoiler Alert!) a family of vampires, who look and sound like a typical American family. Dana Plato, of Diff’rent Strokes fame, plays one of the young women staying over, but she’s actually an undercover agent for S.C.A.T. (Sega Control Attack Team) attempting to find answers to what happened to other women who went missing after staying at the house. In preparation for this assignment, S.C.A.T. discovered a series of traps as well as hidden cameras placed in strategic locations in and around the home. The traps were initially set up by the vampires to help capture their victims, but you’ve managed to override the control system for access to both the cameras and the traps. As the player, your job is to man the hidden cameras off-site and set off traps to catch Augers, who are vampire lackey’s whose job is to capture and drain the blood of potential victims.

The vampires can and will change the security code (in the form of colors) to the traps at various points in the game, which means you need to be a step ahead of them and do the same. If you don’t have the right security code set up ahead of time when you’re attempting to set off a trap, it won’t work. If you’re unable to capture the Augers in the traps, they will eventually overrun the house and kill not only the victims, but also some of your S.C.A.T. team members. If too many Augers take over the house, or certain key members of the party you’re in charge of protecting die, the game is over.
So what makes Night Trap so “infamous”? For starters, it was terribly dated. Most of the footage used in the game was originally shot in 1987 for a failed VCR-based gaming system by Hasbro. Sega acquired publishing rights to the game when they began working with Digital Pictures, who owned the game and footage by the early 90s. You spend much of the game moving from camera to camera, eavesdropping on the homes occupants. Sometimes the scenes are informative, such as when members of the vampire clan unintentionally inform you that they are going to change the security code and to what color it will be changed to. Other times, you’re treated to inane and pointless conversations between the girls, humorously cheesy singalongs to the original track created for the game, or one of the girls preparing to take a shower.

Hmmm, taking a shower, you say? Don’t get too excited, the game doesn’t show anything that might titillate unless you’ve never seen a woman in a nightgown before. The aforementioned bathroom/shower scene is the scene in the game that was repeatedly highlighted during the U.S. Senate hearings on violent video games in 1993, and the main reason Night Trap is considered infamous to this day. Its depiction of violence against women, as the character in the game is attacked by Augers and her blood is sucked out of her screaming body using their “auger” device, was called “sick” and “disgusting”. By today’s standards, this scene wouldn’t garner more than an uptick of an eyebrow. My opinion is that because the game uses real actors instead of pixels and sprites, parents were naturally more concerned with having their 12-year-old play a game that shows a real-life actor get the blood sucked out of her neck by a machine than him or her knifing a street thug to death in Double Dragon. You can thank this game for helping to usher in the ESRB ratings systems that all video games are now subject to. There is also a version for the 32X/CD, with larger, clearer video than the regular Sega/Mega CD version as well as a port for the 3DO. All copies of the 32X/CD version as well as some later released Sega CD versions are censored, shortening some of the more “graphic” death scenes.

For a FMV game, Night Trap isn’t the worst I’ve played. Sure, there is some pretty bad acting, Dana Plato aside, and even more groan-inducing dialogue, but the gameplay can be fun if you know what you’re doing. Eventually, you get the hang of where the Augers are going to be at certain times while knowing when to change the code. This requires a lot of repeat plays, which can make things a bit repetitive until you’re able to move forward by mastering the early portions of the game. Night Trap also features multiple endings depending on who you are able to save and the choices you make. There is one ending in particular that involves Dana’s character suffering an odd and cruel fate that really needs to be seen as opposed to read about.

Hands down, the best or most campy scene in the game is the party singalong scene, where one of the girls sings into a tennis racket to the original track made for the game, naturally called “Night Trap”. Eventually, she convinces the rest of the gang, including the vampire daughter, to join in the singalong. The other young male vampires enter the room and crash the party, but not before vampire cousin Tony shares a moment with one of the girls. When asked how old her cousin is, the vampire girl, Sarah, responds “Older than you think.” It’s a classic 80s scene in a classic 80s script, but for a 90s game. “Night Trap! That boy will find you! Night Trap! Watch out behind you! Night Trap!” A close second would be the ending I alluded to with Dana Plato’s character and her untimely demise, but so few people actually get to see that scene as opposed to the singalong scene which takes place early in the game.

Kelli Medd, Dana Plato’s character, is the heart and soul of the game. As the woman on the inside, she has to play along with the girls in order to prove to the vampire family that she isn’t an imposter. At the same time, she has to make sure S.C.A.T.s mission isn’t compromised and get the necessary information she needs on the family to tie them to the previous disappearances. She will also speak to you directly to nudge you in the right direction or remind you of what needs to be done. If you are unable to save her at the end of the game and she calls you out on it, it feels pretty devastating, trust me.

The traps themselves can almost be considered a character in the game. These traps are comical in how effective they are in spite of themselves. Here are some examples. A door opens filled with steam that blinds the bumbling Augers while another door on the opposite side of the hallway opens up and pushes them into the steam. Hidden doors open in corners and bookcases magically sucking the Augers into the walls by sheer centrifugal force or something. Lots of trap doors in the floor that drop Augers into what I’m guessing are pits filled with lava (just a long shot). My favorite trap has to be the spring loaded trap on the roof that launches an Auger high in the air where it lands, presumably, in a pit of lava? Or maybe the fall breaks its neck. Who knows, really, as the fate of the disappearing Augers is not immediately clear, but in my mind, it’s always lava.

Night Trap is far from a perfect game. It’s cheesy as hell, the video footage is grainy, the gameplay is confusing at first, and having to repeat the same scenes over and over in the early going gets tedious. Night Trap only gets better as you get better at manipulating the cameras and traps. It’s not a game that immediately rewards players with non-stop action, so you need to spend some time with it to catch on to what it has to offer. There’s a slow burn quality to Night Trap that demands repeat plays, not just to become proficient, but to also revel in all of its FMV brilliance.

Grade: B-

The post Night Trap (Sega CD) appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.