PixlBit

A giant mashup of everything I played the other day becomes another great game. Read to play.

Fire Shark: I was excited to get this Genesis cart in the mail today and play it because it is the sequel to my favorite vertically scrolling shooter, Sky Shark. Fire Shark plays great. You pilot a biplane, but your enemies are WWII tech like single wing fighters and tanks. Bosses are enormous tanks or weapons platforms on treads or train wheels. I like their design and of all the tanks and armored vehicles. I had a lot of WWII toys when I was a kid, so maybe that’s why.

The controls are perfect, and the game isn’t as brutally hard as the NES port of Sky Shark. In Sky Shark you shoot planes and bomb targets below with two different buttons. In Fire Shark, shooting planes with one button hits everything, both above and below you. You also have a giant bomb you can drop to clear parts of the screen of all enemies and fire. I think this game has simplified the controls from the arcade game, but I’ve never played that version, unlike Sky Shark.

My only gripe is the plain black-and-white packaging on the cart I got. I’m not sure why, but there is a more colorful one out there that I wish I had but it was too expensive on ebay.  

 

Capcom Beat ‘em Up Bundle: No one is online for these games right now. I got a match for Final Fight and King of Dragons a week ago but nothing else yet. I keep trying.

Knights of the Round: I finished this game today solo. I love the art but this one frustrated me with its cheap deaths late in the game. I found out later, though, I wasn’t using all the moves. I started studying the controls before playing anything else today. You can ride horses in this, which is very cool. I played as Perceval who looks cool. Take a look at idealized me with my Pixlbit knights:

 

Warriors of Fate: This is a much better playing game than Knights of the Round. You have several different moves and can pick up all sorts of weapons. You move a little quicker, and It also seems fairer. It gets very scrappy near the end, but I expect that from an arcade game.  It has a medieval Japan setting. I played as the white-bearded archer who can also pick up melee weapons. I finished it happily.

Armored Warriors: In this you pilot a mech and fight other mechs and robots. You are defending earth from cyborg invaders. I liked the story of this one. The locations in the game make sense and give you a strong feeling of progression as you beat back the invaders and then take it their battleship. What is best though are all the crazy mech weapon add-ons you can pick up. I picked up, alternately, tank treads, a spider-mech drive train and a hovering underbody. You have an arm and a secondary weapon which also come in many varieties. It’s super fun to try them all out. My favorite was having a laser sword and a mortar shoulder blaster while moving on tank treads. I finished this one and enjoyed it all the way. 

Castlevania Anniversary Collection:

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse: I liked it. What threw me off a little was that I had been playing those Capcom games with “X” for shoot and “A” for jump. Here it’s reversed. I somehow adjusted. I got caught up in the section with the flying stone heads. This game takes a lot of health away from you on hits and gives you little from found hearts. War of attrition was against me and I kept dying at that part. I saved it there and will return.

Super Castlevania IV: The game looks amazing. The controls are “A” jump and “X” whip. I was happy. Another thing I noticed was the movement on stairs. You don’t just fall down when approaching a down stairway if you are not pointing down. I found that really annoying in earlier Castlevania games. You can whip diagonally, upwards and use it to swing from rings. That throwing star item is certainly useful. I got killed by that first boss, but I feel like this game is easier than previous ones.

Castlevania II Blemont’s Revenge:  Going back to “A” whip and “X” jump drove me totally nuts. I had spent hours using the opposite configuration and could not unlearn it. I decided that “A” should always be jump in any game. Anyway, this game is on Game Boy and is in black-and-white, which made me think of Dark Castle, which looks much the same. I almost got stuck on that spikey wall section when I discovered you could slide down the ropes fast by holding “X”. But then I accumulated too much damage fighting those giant eyeballs and creatures that look like hands and throw out balls of energy.

Castlevania Bloodlines: I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the controls were back to “A” jump, “X” whip. I realize now I probably could have changed all these controls, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I chose Eric Lecarde to play as. I beat the first werewolf boss and then died trying to get past the swinging blade flanked by two giant skeletons. These games, it’s all about timing and practice. I saved it and will return.