Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP II (1992)

Somewhat strangely, this 8-bit take on the Mega Drive Formula 1 racing juggernaut has no manual acceleration, with the player only controlling the car’s steering and gear changes. I can’t recall ever seeing anything like this in a racing game of this nature before, which makes it Interesting and therefore Good. I mean, alright, maybe Good is a stretch, but it made me go “ooh, that’s curious” and any time a game does that after almost 40 jaded years of this horrendous pastime I have to sit up and take notice. The look of it all is rather lovely, with a smooth scrolling road, but there is of course the usual issue of non-stop engine whining. It is what it is with 8-bit racers, I suppose. I enjoyed my time with this and found it generally appealing, though it’s not the sort of thing I would be likely to play again as it simply isn’t my genre. Not the most useful review, is it? I haven’t been feeling that well, I must confess. Maybe I need to go to the GP. The Super GP. Which is in Monaco. Show’s over, folks. Scroll down for the next game. ***

Aztec Adventure (1987)

This is an attractive, enjoyable little top-down shooter type game with lots of colour and a fair whack of enemy variety. Unfortunately it is slightly hamstrung by your playable character’s very, very slow walking speed, but it’s not bad enough to make the game not fun. Just… less fun. I found the whole thing slightly reminiscent of Sabreman, which is a Spectrum game where you run around in the jungle losing repeatedly because it’s impossibly hard. In Aztec Adventure, however, you’ve got a little inventory that lets you throw various weapons at your foes – sometimes you’ll need a specific type of ammunition to progress, though if you run out there’s always a monster you can farm to get more, so you won’t get softlocked. Entertainingly, you’re able to throw money at certain types of enemy to bribe them into fighting on your side, which is shown in the title screen demo so I was able to intuit it without having to look up the manual. Bribing your enemies is very funny and should absolutely be an option in more games. Overall I found this all rather cheerful. In Japan, this game is called Nazca ‘88: -THE GOLDEN ROAD TO PARADISE-, which is a bit loud, really, isn’t it. ***

Back to the Future Part II (1991)

Terrible. Absolutely god-awful crap that should never have been released. The first level, which I don’t think I would be able to get past if you paid me, is a side-scrolling hover boarding sort of business where Marty McFly repeatedly dies because the enemies seem to home directly in on him, including – for Christ’s sake – a little old lady crossing the road who arbitrarily decided that she would take a little detour to murder a child. Seriously, the enemies seem to track you perfectly and it’s apparently completely arbitrary whether jumping over them will work. At least, jumping seemed to be my only means of defence, but maybe I missed something? I’m not very sympathetic because at one point early on in this game I lost a life because an enemy sprite had simply become invisible due to the excess of objects on the screen, though the game flickers like crazy with any number of visible sprites above, well, one. The graphics are incredibly poor in general. More like Cack to the Future. At least the old lady thing was kind of funny. *

Back to the Future Part III (1992)

This one is slightly better but still almost unbelievably shit. The first stahe is a horseback chase with a few fleeting cool moments as Doc Brown fires his pistol at pursuers, ducking down one side of his galloping steed to avoid their return fire. Unfortunately the collision detection seems absolutely woeful, leading to multiple instances of essentially needing precognitive ability in order to reasonably clear the first stage on a single pass. Which you just won’t, because the stuff you need to leap gallantly over comes up on you so fast and the Make Horse Jump controls are so unresponsive that it all feels incredibly unfair. I did reach the second level this time, but I found it to be an impossible nightmare; a vaguely isometric land of confusion where you throw plates at cowboys who move far too quickly and are positioned entirely too awkwardly for you to reasonably hit with any satisfaction and oh my god, it’s just a load of old bloody toot, is what it is. Watch the movies instead. *

(Next: Bak-Bat)

• sega
• master system
• Stuart Gipp
• sega master system
• master system directory