Burai Fighter NES Review

There are certain games that are played, where you might have a knife as a weapon or a gun, and just wish that during the game you could improve the gun, making it more powerful or changing the bullets of the gun. Well, game designers clearly thought the same, so rather than keeping the player subjected to the same gun through (even though the monsters become more powerful), there were games where using power ups in game, it allowed you to make your gun more powerful or even change it completely.  Obvious examples of this are Contra and Ghouls and Ghosts, but what if this idea was made for a game set in space? With jet packs and enemies far beyond the perimeters of Earth, a Contra in Space kind of game? There was a game like that released in 1990 by the name of Burai Fighter, so is it any good? Let’s check it out!

Burai Fighter is a side scrolling game as mentioned previously similar to Contra, where the idea is to move your character, who being in space would naturally have jetpacks – and shoot everything inside. Nothing more complicated then that. The story goes that there are seven bases of Burai, being clever clogs cyborgs and you have to destroy it – of course, and here was me thinking you might have to save the bases. Well in another game I suppose you could. So you pop the game in turn it on and are greeted with two options – new game or password. New game is pretty self explanatory, and the password system is quite handy for when you complete a level your giving a four character password. No 30 digits including capital letters, little letters and symbols no just 4 characters, which when entered you can progress with the game without having to keep the NES on due to the lack of a save state. So pick the difficulty from Eagle, Albatross and Ace which is a novel touch from easy, medium or difficult, and then away you go.

Why can’t all passwords wbe as simple as this?

The idea is to go from left to right on the stage destroying everything in sight, although sometimes you do have to go downwards rather than simply to the right. You start off with a weak laser that takes several bullets to kill enemies, but along the way you’ll notice that there are power ups waiting for you to collect – L which improves your laser, R which stands for ring, and M is for missile (no not murder). You can’t change weapons without collecting the relevant lettered power up, however the power up does come along quite frequently so if you didn’t like using the missiles than it’s easy to use the rings again or just the normal laser. There are also S power ups to collect though and also what looks like red drops, which when collected to a certain level you can unleash a devastating super bomb on the screen destroying whatever is on there. At the end of the stage is a mini-boss which generally aren’t too difficult as long as you got your wits about you and have the reflexes of a crocodile chewing a heron in the middle of summer.

The purple and green colours are subtle, yet illuminating

The controls of the game are quite simple, you use your d-pad to move the character in any of the 8 different directions available to you and use the A button to shoot your weapon whilst B will release the supercharged attack should you have sufficient power to do this. What you have to be careful of is when you move your character, the direction that the gun is pointed at will change direction to. So if your facing right and shooting, then you go left to run away from enemies chasing you, you cannot move back with left and still have your gun pointing run – the gun changes direction which can get annoying. This happens whichever direction your character goes in. There is a solution – if you hold the A button down which makes the gun fire rapidly and move your character, it “locks” that direction which is more useful, especially if you want to scatter your bullets everywhere. The graphics are bright purples and greens which although aren’t the most tasteful of palettes, they do their job. Sometimes it can be quite confusing knowing what is the background that will block you, and what will let you pass over it with no difficulty, it’s more a case of trial and error. The music sounds quite funky and upbeat, it sounds well on the 8 bit console and the sound effects, well they do their job, making nice noises when you collect power ups or shooting the gun, so you might find yourself rocking out with the music on the game without needing to reach for the mute button.

They say in space no one can hear you scream – man up!

If you find yourself with a spare 15 minutes and not a lot else to do, then Burai Fighter is certainly a game worthy of your limited time. It’s nice to occasionally blow everything up on screen and collect power ups and not have to think of puzzles and how to escape certain rooms or worry about slow gameplay. It is only 1 player though which is disappointing as it would be even better with 2 players on screen. As well what can be annoying is what was mentioned earlier in regards to your gun pointing in the direction your facing in – if your running away and need to turn and shoot then you’d better have really good reactions otherwise you’ll get killed. It’s a one hit kill for you, though the later in the level you get you do start half way through or just before the boss battle – failing that you’ll start at the beginning of the level and have to work through it again having lost your power ups.  Copies of the game go for peanuts on all your favourite auction sites so if your bored and you’ve completed Contra for like the millionth time without using the Konami code, then pick this title up for your collection and give it a whirl.

Rating – 4 out of 5

 

Ice Climber NES Review

It seems as though spring is finally rearing itself and with that we wave goodbye to dark mornings, cold blustery winds and the daily thought of snow, to then give a hearty handshake and a quintessentially British cheerio to winter. It therefore may be a peculiar time to focus a review on something that encompasses all that is associated with winter, but they say in life in order to move forward you have to look back – or in this instance trying not to look down in order to move upwards, so what better way of doing this than with the help of the wonderfully named Popo and Nana (no, not your grandma who sucks on Werthers Originals and always smells like the contents of a cat’s litter tray) and their mighty mallet. So does this game make you want to drink luxurious warm hot chocolate or eat yellow snow?

13 is unlucky for some, hope it isn’t for you

Ice Climber is a black box NES game released in Europe in September 1986, that is a vertical platforming game where you control Popo in his gorgeous blue parka jacket and climb the mountain on 8 different platforms getting to the top. Standing between you and the top of the mountain are ice blocks that you need to smash with your head Mario-style, jumping onto the next platform and using your mallet to whack seven bells out of ice monsters and birds that attack you. When you get past the 8th platform you get to the bonus stage, where for extra points you collect the vegetables set on the level, and if you reach the top quick enough you meet the overhead condor who has a passion for stealing vegetables so try to jump and hang on to the mighty condor for extra points.

So when you pop in the game and turn the game on you get three options to pick from – whether to start the game with one player (starting as Popo) or two players (where both Popo and Nana are on screen – Nana in her lovely pink parka) and curiously a early level select option. The game has 32 mountains for you to ascend, so if your feeling brave and want to start on level 16, or even just curious to see what the final level is about then this is a good opportunity to do so. So you start the level, you see the condor take the vegetable up the mountain and then away you go. Every level is the same – climbing up the mountain bashing the ice blocks with your head and jumping up accordingly. Some blocks cannot be broken and some blocks act like travelators so you’ll have to use your retro gaming cunning and reflexes of a spider that’s ate a mouldy piece of bread and is feeling the effects of it. When you complete the platforms as mentioned earlier, your given 40 seconds to complete the bonus stage so collect as many vegetables as possible, and reach the top jumping up reaching the condor. The level ends should you do this, or you run out of time, or you fall down past an icy platform. The score for the level takes into account whether or not you met the condor, the number of vegetables you collected, enemies hit and the blocks broken. As per most of the black box games there isn’t a story to complete it’s just a question of gaining the highest score. Yet again like the other games of the time, there is no battery back up so it’s not as if the score gets saved, all you need to do is write it down on a piece of paper or take a screenshot with your camera to prove you are the manliest at the game, or womanliest (if that is a word).

Now remember to eat your vegetables kids – don’t they look delicious?

The controls are very simple – the d pad moves your character left and right, you jump the character with the A button and whack the enemies with B – nothing more complicated then that. A slight issue is that when you jump and move, the control feels very rigid and doesn’t feel like your jumping fluidly. It doesn’t matter how hard you press the d pad left or right you don’t move that far at all, and this gets more infuriating in later levels when the platforms get shorter and move across the screen quicker. The music is simplistic yet effective, and the sound effects do their job properly – you won’t need to grab your record player and suitable LP’s so by all means leave the music on whilst you play. Without climbing a mountain myself I cannot say if the sounds are realistic when I jump on top of a icy platform or whack birds out the air, but they serve the game well.

YOU ARE WINNER!

So all in all, this game is certainly  a worthy launch title (which it was for the NES console in the US) and plays like a good arcade game, something that would be worth pumping in nickles and dimes, or 20ps here in the UK to play and top the high score set by a humourist with a dirty 3 lettered name on the high score. The characters have had a longevity and appeal thanks to the Super Smash Bros series as they are playable characters, and a testament of how good the game is shows in the rereleases on the Virtual Console and Game Boy Advance to name but a few. The minor criticisms of the game is the stiff control when jumping and the repetitiveness of the levels in collecting vegetables at the end and jumping onto the next platform, but aside from that, take it for what it is – a decent arcade-style vertical platform game and eat those vegetables like never before. Not that the subliminal stuff works for me though I am hankering to raid a greengrocers…

Rating – 4 out of 5