*Bakuma is seen checking his fridge, having forgot to make shopping*
Blast! There is nothing good, only some Fraznatt meat, some Brambleberry jam, mayo and ketchup, bread… ¿Why did I put the bread in the fridge? Anyway, some takeout chow Mein and Unsalad… oh and a can of grapefruit soda… guess I have no choice
*Montage of salvaging the leftovers and then devouring the crude meal*
*Satisfied burp* Woo, I am stuffed out of a miracle, it could be worse, but I managed to get something out of it… uh, it reminds me of something… oh yes… I have lots of coupons *Goes to the store before forgetting to buy his groceries again*
Imagine you have a ceramic bowl, now imagine it breaking, what you do with it? Most people will simply throw it away, but what if you fix it? That’s where some people will simply fix it… but in Japan there is a curious practice, known as Kintsugi, it involves literally fixing the fissures with gold since that means symbolically showing the scars and appreciating the beauty in imperfections, be literal or metaphorical
That’s what I learned from a Hello Kitty cartoon, maybe I got it wrong, I just want to symbolically transition to the curious lore of this review’s subject, anyway, people, do you remember Sunsoft? Ah Sunsoft, while hardly known compared to the NES’ heavy hitters, people still fondly remember their games, be the licensed ones like Batman or Gremlin 2, or some original Ips that still are remembered like the Gimmick or Blaster Master, one that could be both of those categories was going to be a Terminator game, sadly the License Nation attacked and the license was lost when the game was in the oven, this is where the Kintsugi was made, they already had the game made, but they couldn’t make it a Terminator one, so what they did? TEAR IT APART AND PUT IT TOGETHER AGAIN, THAT’S WHAT THEY DID! Usually that would mean the game was released in a mangled state, leading to a relatively cold reception, but what it did to be remembered nowadays as a classic that those that played fondly remember… including myself? Today, we will find it out
STORY
Ah yes, the ancient times where floppy disks could save/destroy the world even when you was lucky they could fit a modern Word file
The plot is real simple, usually I mean the plot is not that complex, but I mean it this time, the plot is limited to a cutscene once you press start, basically a kid named Ray lost his dad to some terrorists that are building a space station during a war, you both to obviously stop the terrorists and to avenge your dad decide to take revenge on them… and that’s all, no, really, not even the manual, the usual gospel of the game lore back then doesn’t elaborate, is clear that they had to haphazardly throw anything to the wall and scoop what sticked, more notorious since the “Terrorists” are just a bunch of robots with no human aside of Jay on sight, the Ending doesn’t even offer a resolution, is just a still image before the credits… once again they had to work with what they had, so they get a pass
GAMEPLAY
Ray: Where the heck i am!?
Bakuma: According to the game data, a factory
Ray WHAT THE HECK THEY BUILD? CORPSES!?
With the plot set aside, now let’s move to the gameplay, to put it simple, played Mega man? You more or less played this game already, you can run and jump as usual, the game mixing combat with enemies and platforming challenges, like in Mega man you get a weapon, pause with Select and choose your new toy, obviously you get limited ammo, but they can take the heat off your hair once you learn to use them sparingly, mercifully like in Mega man each weapon has its own ammo bar, speaking of ammo, the game provides two power ups, a blue pill-like chip that recovers ammo and a pink one that restores life, don’t get used to the pink ones, the game will rarely drop them
DIFFICULTY
Think the paragraph above was too short? That was because the things I wanted to talk will be encompassed here, and oh boy, this game was made to make you break at least a controller! I used to beat this game and yet I can tell the game is a real grind, only five stages, but you will feel each one as an eternal limbo!
For starters the elephant in the room, as already mentioned, ammo pickups are easy to come by… perhaps too easily, is nice to have some spare weapon usage, but you will often get it EVEN WHEN ALL YOUR WEAPONS ARE AT MAX CAPACITY, by contrast, the slightest breeze will knock down a chunk of your already short life bar, and Life pickups are as mentioned rarer than a Ralts with Synchronize (I know you did that), so the game can be cheap with its resources, and no, you can’t rely on your special weapons much neither since while you will mostly get blue pickups, is no guaranteed you will get any pick up ET ALL!
The shooting is another obstacle, mercifully you can shoot while crouched unlike most shooters of the time, but that’s nothing when Ray seems to have a delay between the press and actually moving, given enemies and projectiles won’t stop themselves for you, that’s clearly a problem, and no, there’s no dodge move nor invincibility power up, heck, even your Mercy invincibility is shorter than a Mayfly’s lifespan, while the bullet and traps aren’t as dense as you expect, Ray is far less agile than your usual Run-n-gun character to make up for it, forgot to mention it, but jumping also has a delay too, joy…
Paradoxically, the bosses… aren’t that hard, the one that had me more in my feet was ironically the FIRST ONE and that’s because he throws some flea-things to kill before he lowers itself so the true fight begins, the boss itself had a simplistic pattern, the rest aren’t harder, the second one is slightly harder but once you time dodging to its deadly claw he’s piece of cake, the third looks hard but if you literally stay in place and only jump when necessary to hit the blatant weak spot he’s a sitting duck, the fourth boss has easy to dodge (But hard hitting) attack and nothing else, and the final boss is an android that only couches and punches you, he’s slow so you more or less have three able days to hit his head (The previous phase, a sort of airship, is not a challenge neither), either mercy or hasty pasting of their materials, I choose the first one
Oh, by the way, there is only THREE CONTINUES, and AFAIK no extra lives can be earned, so you better get used to all that mentioned crabs, hopefully there’s a patch that makes health pickups far more frequent, not automatic hand holding mode, but now I was able to reach farther per life, also there’s a cheat, is one of those that looks like fake cheats told in playgrounds, but this is real, you need to press the B Button EXACTLY 33 times in the title screen, if you hear an in game explosion, you did it right, and your reward is expanding the limited continue count to a more manageable 9
GRAPHICS
Times could be better, but graphis are still crisp
Let’s take a break of raging at the game, otherwise you may believe I came to hate its guts
While the graphics still has some notorious “Paste a different photo on top of the painting” vibes, given some enemies look like Terminator machines (Heck, Ray looks like Kyle Reese with a generic retro Sci Fi suit)they manage to be redrawn in a unique way, the backgrounds are limited to Sci Fi settings, so don’t expect forests or even a meadow, the backgrounds manage to look distinct, alas with the exception of the final boss’ second phase and the third boss, the bosses sadly has a crude black screen as background, mercifully the bosses are as scary as expected, the fourth one looks like a goddamn alien computer, for flips sake!
Ray’s sprite is good, but I have an awkward question
What the heck happened to his hair cut? It looks like if someone popped a single popcorn, painted it orange and wore it as a wig, considering in the only cutscene he showcases a regular haircut, that only happens in the USA version, the Japan and EU versions has a better-looking sprite
Tadaah!
MUSIC
The game may be short, but it still has enough bangers to keep you lulled into not using the cart as a frisbee, I mean, license or not, it is still the motherfucking SUNSOFT we are talking about!
The title screen, a perfect way to kick off the adventure
The Cutscene intro, short as the scene itself, but also an ominous way to showcase the gloominess of the game itself
Stage 1, the way the game tells you we are not fucking around both musically and difficulty wise
Boss, a creepy song for a creepy bunch of nasty freaks that can and will wreck you around
And if you manage to not loss your sanity and persevere the journey, enjoy a musical post injection lollipop
Short soundtrack, but sometimes, less is more
CONCLUSION
Maybe it is bias of me speaking, since I used to love this one as a teen alongside many others in a bootleg PSX disk, but the game was not half bad, nowadays the difficulty may put off some people yes… but it is still a good game if you put the effort into it, it may be not Batman Retorn of the Joker, but even if we ignore the fact it refused to die when the reason it was created was denied off it, the game is still memorable, if you want to feel some Karma out of this, this game still gets talked about, meanwhile of all the Terminator games of the 8 and 16 bits are even MENTIONED when discussing good games? Exactly
A bit short yes, but once again, less is More
BAKUMA OUT
Pros
- + Fast Paced and short
- + IF you are a hardcore gamer, the difficulty will be a plus
- + One of the best soundtracks of the NES
Cons
- - If you are casual, the difficulty will NOT be a plus
- - Compared to most of the NES games of Sunsoft, it looks kind of... dry
8
Gameplay
Solid if at times poorly implemented challenge
9
Graphics
Ray's peculiar haircut in the sprite aside, the game's graphics are smooth and elegant to comvey a dead world taken by "Terrorist" robots
5
Story
A basic "Baddies want to kill us, kill them frist" plot, then again, shooters still treated plot as an afterthough
10
Sound
I already mentioned it has the best tracks on any NES Console? The only ones that takes the spot are Final Fantasy III and Megaman 2
8
Replayability
Not in a "Find random crap even after 108 years of release" but in a simple pop it for a quick play once in a while
8
out of 10
Overall
Despite being forced to be its own thing instead of a good apaptation, the game managed to shine despite the hasty tear and paste, not exactly the best of SUNSOFT, but still worth a check
