Tag: Retro Monday

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Retro Monday: Turbo Out Run

First off, I’ll let you know that I am bad at racing games, ask those who’s seen me on a Retro Monday where I’ve had a racing game, or the folk I’ve played Driveclub and Mario Kart with.

Anyway, Turbo Out Run is the Sequel to Out Run, it was originally an arcade game where you had a steering wheel and a big booth to sit in. I have played the Mega Drive conversion, which obviously doesn’t have the same feel as sitting down and taking the wheel. I will say that the game is still really enjoyable, if – at least for me – a little difficult. I only managed to get to the 3rd stage and nearly to the 4th, but it was hard going. You need to know when to speed up, slow down, use your turbo boost at the right times, and using the turbo for me was tricky. Most of the time I’d use it, I’d come to corners which were difficult to take. I assume that finishing a race without using turbo must be hard if not impossible to do and using it optimally is no easy feat.

The game is your typical arcade racer, and follows the Out Run style, where you get in your Ferrari and drive to the checkpoints as fast as you can, the visuals are nice, though not as nice as their Arcade counterpart which has a lot more on screen also, and the soundtrack is pretty great. All in all, you’ve got a neat and tidy arcade racer that’s probably a bit underrated compared to it’s older brother.

Verdict: Recommend.

 

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Retro Monday – Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude!

Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude is another game I haven’t played before, in fact, I don’t think I’ve heard of it.

The game seems to centre around a guy called Greendog and he’s be cursed due to a magic amulet and he can’t go surfing anymore, that is unless he collects all the shards of some ancient artifact he and then he’ll be free from his curse.

The gameplay’s OK, the game feels somewhat clunky and a little sluggish, the enemies are a pain, especially things like fish which are difficult to hit with Greendogs attack, which is what I believe to be a Frisbee. There’s your standard platforming sections and then you get to some flying sections after each artifact peace is collected. These are reminiscent of the gyrocopter levels from Alex Kidd in Miracle World, albeit nowhere near as enjoyable and they auto-scroll and for me where a pain as I couldn’t get used to the controls, as I thought that you had to tap the B button to fly about, only later did I realise that you can just hold B and then use the D-Pad to control where you fly which makes the pretty boring flying sections a little more bearable.

Visually the game is decent, the backgrounds and sprites are fine for the most part, but Greendog himself doesn’t seem to have a face and it’s hard to tell if the big lump on his head is a hat or hair (It’s hair going by the box art.)

Overall the game is plain average and there;’s not much else I can pinpoint as pro’s and cons, I say if you feel like playing an average platformer to then show you just how good the better ones are then this is a game that would suit that desire.

Verdict: Neutral.

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Retro Monday: Konami Krazy Racers

I have never played this game before, sure I’ve played Mario Kart, but not Konami’s version of it.

I was happy to have played it though, it’s actually very good in it’s own right. It’s going to be instantly compared to Mario Kart, as they are both similar games and Mario Kart id the fore barer of the Party Karting Genre. Anyway, While it doesn’t have the variety of items, for example the items I came across where a boost, when hitting a blue bell, or from hitting the red bell I’d get a triple rocket, a red homing rocket, ice block, bomb and maybe 1 or 2 more things there was enough variety in the items to make it fun and not feel stale and repetitious. Another thing is that you may be less familiar with them over the Mario counterparts, but the gane has Dracula from Castlevania as a playable character it instantly derserves to get some recognition for that. Over all the game itself stands well against Mario Kart.
Visually it’s a great game with detailed sprites and backgrounds, musically it’s nice to listen to with music being taken from the games the courses and karters are taken from.

The actual gameplay is you standard party karter styled game where you pick a character and race through cups to get a podium finish, while this does change up the formula by having you take test to get a B license and A License, if generally doesn’t stray to far away from the standard formula. The gameplay is good and the karts all control well enough while feeling different enough to that other karting game, and I had no trouble with taking corners while slowing down, but it seems that this game is an easy to pick up hard to master kinda game as getting the drifting down is not easy.

Verdict: Recommend