Day 54: Super Monaco Grand Prix I & II (Game Gear)

The Game Gear is loaded up with six AAs as my ongoing efforts to play one title a day from my 590 game backlog additionally tries to plug the hole left by the absent F1 season...

Super Monaco Grand Prix I & II for the Game Gear
Previous days' entries can be read HERE

Here’s a challenge for you: Open up another tab in whatever browser you’re currently using and, using all of your well honed Googling skills, find out everything you can about Ayrton’s Senna’s Super Monaco GP II for the Game Gear. Not the first one, the sequel.
Go on, take your time, I’ll be here when you get back…

Weird, isn’t it? I can only assume that by 1992 the confusion caused by Sega’s 3 Console strategy and the success of the Game Boy were both at their peak and this game just passed everyone by.

What did I learn from trying to research this game?
Well: It came out in 1992, it’s apparently better than the Master System version, and everyone who has uploaded footage of it to Youtube is terrible at it.

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 21: Prince of Persia (Mega Drive)

I'm playing one title from my 627 game backlog every day that the UK is in lockdown. 
Previous entries can be found HERE, but today's random selection is...

Prince of Persia on the Mega Drive

Before I downloaded Transpose yesterday (it was free on SteamVR at the weekend and looks ace) this was actually the game that had been in my backlog for the shortest amount of time. 

It was a thank you gift I received just earlier this week, and with this undertaking every day and playing Pyre and Ape Out quite a lot, poor PoP hadn't got a look in.

This is a game I played a lot back in the day. Although I have neither in my collection today I'm almost certain I played and completed both the Gameboy and SNES versions. Interestingly I discovered whilst researching the game that every version of it after the Apple II original had to be re-written from the ground up. Jordan Mechner was only involved in the original, the sequel, and the 1999 masterpiece 'The Sands of Time'. Every other port, sequel, and spin-off (of which there are literally dozens) was handled in isolation by third parties.

By the time the Mega Drive version arrived in 1993 it was pretty late to the party. This was 4 years after the Apple II original and a year after every other port to 4th and 5th generation hardware (including the Sega's own Master System and Game Gear). 1993 was the same year that the sequel arrived on other systems, a year after Flashback had arrived a knocked this concept into space, and only 3 years before Tomb Raider came along re-wrote the book on this kind of thing entirely. As a result this version was yesterday's news and it did not review or sell particularly well.

Anyone who plays a lot of retro games will know that you never continue on the first level of a game. You're basically wasting that 'continue' because you're starting from the beginning away. So, whatever the game, don't continue, go back to the main menu and start again. 
With PoP you have a 60 minute countdown timer running so it's time you'd be wasting rather than continues - but it's still relevant, and on the Mega Drive there's extra step to this process. 
After you've died on the first level for the first time, head back to main menu and, before you start a new game, change the sounds option from 'Music and SFX' to 'SFX Only' - because it seems the developers used their extra time incubating this version to compose the most irritating music ever conceived! I think I'd rather have Baby Mario screeching in my ear for an hour.

Other than that this is Prince of Persia as I know and love it. I've seen the Domark ports (they handled all Sega machines and the Amiga version) criticised around the internet but I'm struggling to see why. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had this running side-by-side with the SNES version but I didn't, and neither will the vast majority of other people who play it.
I have to say though, and this is very much a matter of personal taste, but I think the earlier versions of game have aged with more style. The Apple II version may have limited detail but this somehow makes the rotoscoped art look even more fluid in action.

The weird thing now is that I find myself in exactly the same position as the original reviewers of this game back in '93. The overwhelming consensus back then was that Prince of Persia on the Mega Drive was only really worth your time if you hadn't already played it on other systems - and it's as much true now as it was then.
If you only have a Mega Drive/Genesis, or maybe the Mini Classic version thereof, then absolutely you should have Prince of Persia in your library. Other than that, this version's appeal will rest on how keen you are to play different versions of this classic title.

Prince of Persia (Mega Drive) - Better than I was expecting and, with the above caveats, recommended.

Gaming the Pandemic - Day 6: Enduro Racer (Sega Master System)

This is the latest in my attack of (at least) one game from my 639 strong backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know:A) What they're all about.B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

I put a random selection button in my game database and today it threw up...

Enduro Racer on the Sega Master System.

This is the first time I've but the hardware in the title of the post - I'm going to keep doing it from now on but there's a very good reason why it's important for this game.

We used to call these 'Coin-op Conversions'; games that we knew and loved from the arcades brought to home consoles (apologies if this is patronising to anyone). It's worth remembering that there were pretty much no 1:1 arcade-to-console accurate games until the Dreamcast, that's pretty much half the time that home consoles have existed.

So, as you can imagine, a ride-on arcade motocross game that used Sega's 'super scaler' technology was not going to be 'Arcade Perfect' on an 8 bit console in 1987.

'Arcade Perfect', by the way, would totally be the name of my garage band if I had any musical talent whatsoever.

So instead of riding into the screen and hoiking back on a life size bike, the Master System version of Enduro Racer has the player on an isometrically presented course, riding from the bottom left to the top right corner.

Initially it all feels a bit too basic. You press a button to accelerate and move left or right, as you would expect, to avoid other vehicles and obstacles, occasionally pressing down on the d-pad to pop a wheelie over a jump. But I noticed I was losing a lot of speed on landing, so I dug out the manual to see if I was missing something - and lo-and-behold the game features a pre-cursor of Crazy Taxi's Crazy Dash to keep the speed up over the jumps.

That may seem an extreme analogy, but when you're playing it really does have that exact rhythm. You press back as you hit a jump to wheelie then forward as you hit the top - I assume to simulate the action of pumping the bike over the ramp - but the timing and result immediately put me in mind of Sega's 1999 masterpiece.

On top of this, the game is further elevated beyond the basic by the developers decision to embrace the distance from the original and actually turned the game into an endurance event, rather than the checkpoint racer from the arcades.

Your bike will inevitably get damaged in the course of the stage and it becomes of far more concern to keep the wheels turning than to make the fairly generous time gates. Fortunately you can patch up or upgrade your bike between stages using points you earn from passing vehicles on course, and today it might even be called a roguelike, as each upgrade only lasts a single stage and nothing in carried over beyond the game over screen.

All in, this is one of the best games I've played on the Master System. That might be considered damning with feint praise by some, but personally I love Sega's plucky underdog in the 8 bit fight.

Enduro Racer (Master System) - A 100% nostalgia free 'Recommended'

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii