![]() Batman Forever |
one height Y |
few pits N |
up arrow Y |
jump extras Y |
auto attack N |
3 / 5
I guess this one is kind of an anomaly. It's basically the Mortal Kombat game engine as a platforming beat-em-up, so like fighting games, you repeatedly jump if you hold "up".
If you can get past the fact that the Dark Knight and baton-twirling Robin have the same "rapid-fire patty-cake punches / ducking uppercut / ducking-leg-sweep" powers of Lui Kang and Sub-Zero, it's not horrible.
Oh, wait...yes it is: you have to figure out which button-presses trigger the 1-2 "special move" bat-tricks you get to take with you in each level, there's a LOT of places where huge foreground objects block the action, and when you go through doors you see a blank "HOLD ON" screen for a few seconds as it loads the next area.
But on the up side, every individual enemy has a personal name that appears over their energy bar, like in another superhero game I could mention!
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![]() Super Star Wars |
one height Y |
few pits N |
up arrow N |
jump extras N |
auto attack Y |
2 / 5
In Luke's first Super Nintendo adventure, he has to drill his way through torrents of enemies who suck up dozens of laser blasts each. It's a good thing your attacks are fully-automatic.
But he can also travel around Tatooine and the Death Star in "constant back-flip mode" with his fully-automatic jumping (or if you prefer, fully-automatic sliding), so the whole thing feels pretty loosey-goosey.
Unfortunately there's lots of spots where a missed jump (or a mid-air collision with bullets or the ever-popular Knockback Bat™) either sends you to your death, or drops you far enough that you have to repeat a lot of jumping (Jawa Sandcrawler, I'm looking at you on that one).
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![]() Super Empire Strikes Back |
one height Y |
few pits N |
up arrow N |
jump extras Y* |
auto attack Y |
2.5 / 5
Luke and company are back, and eventually (in theory) you may get some force-powers to help with everyone's Constant Turbo Jumping issues.
* = Luke can eventually get force-powers that let him levitate etc.
However, this game sprays you with a riot hose of enemies at every step, presumably to punishing you for playing and daring you to try to find any enjoyment in the experience. (Those of you who've visited my tumblr account know how I feel about those kinds of challenges).
If it wasn't for a few kind-of-neat vehicle levels and some fond childhood memories of Super Star Wars, this would be another game I played less than three times.
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![]() Super Return of the Jedi |
one height Y |
few pits N |
up arrow N |
jump extras N |
auto attack Y |
2 / 5
I haven't really played much of this, but I was underwhelmed by how the first level was a weird F-Zero-esque vehicle level (featuring giant holes in the track).
I guess it gets brownie points for not throwing bats at you during your initial platforming appearance (like Super Star Wars and Super Empire Strikes Back); here you do get to do some light saber-ing of actual humanoids firing blasters at you.
But the down side? The first platformer level also features bugs with (frickin') laser beams on their heads.
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![]() Mary Shelley's Frankenstein |
one height N |
few pits Y |
up arrow N |
jump extras N |
auto attack Y |
2 / 5
As I mentioned last week, this was the first Super Nintendo game that came to mind for turbo-jumping. It's especially confusing how bouncy ol' Franken-Long-Shanks is, considering his walking animation shows a very dramatic limp.
Learn more about what I thought on the SNES's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
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![]() No Escape |
one height Y |
few pits N |
up arrow N |
jump extras N |
auto attack N |
1 / 5
This game (based on a Ray Liotta movie of the same name) plays like a bad melee platformer.
Not only that, it has a slightly improved version of the "combine items" interface like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. For example, now you get actual audio and visual feedback to INDICATE which item you've "selected." This similarity isn't surprising, because the same company(s) that made Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
The bad news is that the item gathering/combining is no longer particularly optional, and no longer siloed into each level. If you survive the first level (assuming you managed to figure out that you're supposed to out-run the feral burlap-punks that chase you while lots of cheap traps chip away at your health on your way to struggle against an overpowered boss), you're greeted with a weird choose-a-level map. As you platform down a map path, you can also gather items for item-gathering/-swapping/-combining to help you fashion weapons and equipment, in theory helping you to survive and unlock some of the other levels.
But the looseness of the jumping/platforming, the brutality of the enemies, and your very finite stock of lives and continues means it's hard to get invested in exploring. If you're like me, you'll give up before you've built even one composite item.
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