Tennis, Space Harrier 2, Military Madness

Tennis500 Points
It appears Nintendo has been leaning heavily on early titles from the NES sports catalogue for early Virtual Console releases. Are they holding off the big guns and releasing these because they are true classics, or because they actually want to re-release and profit from their entire catalogue, and they know these titles won’t sell well compared to the heavy hitters like Super Mario Brothers? I think you can figure that question out. Last week Nintendo fed us Ice Hockey, which has decidedly not aged all that well. Tennis is a somewhat different story. Its actually rather awkward seeing this game on the Wii since Wii Sports is packed in with every North American Wii, and Wii Tennis was touted as the primary example of what Wii is capable of back at E3. Old Tennis games all share the common flaw of limiting the second players viewing angle. Wii Sports dodges this problem with a split screen viewing angle for two players,but NES Tennis does not. The A button delivers a normal stroke, and B delivers a lob. The ball’s direction depends on the timing of the stroke. The controls are tight and responsive, though overly simplistic, but what can you expect from a sports title that originated on a console which featured a controller with a D-Pad and two action buttons? The only thing NES Tennis has over Wii Tennis is the ability to move your character. Other than that, it’s glorified pong in 16 colors. It isn’t as dated as Ice Hockey, and is still fun for five or ten minutes, but regardless of its merits, Intelligent Systems has developed far superior title than these limited sports titles from their early days as R&D1. Go back to Wii Tennis and hold out for the good stuff.

Space Harrier 2800 Points
Two words…Yu Suzuki. That should be enough to get your attention. Space Harrier is a beloved arcade title from Sega’s early arcade days, and was developed by the legendary Yu Suzuki of Sega AM2, the man who brought you Virtua Fighter and Shenmue. This is the simi-sequel released for the Sega Genesis in 1990. The game is more or less exactly like the original arcade Space Harrier, but with a different layout and higher level of challenge. You control a man with a jetpack and a gun as you fly forward through the “Fantasy Zone” to destroy all the monsters that have inhabited the area. Creature design is extremely creative and the whole experience almost feels like something out of a lucid dream with mutant frogs, dragons, and robots all flying around the screen while you frag them with a flame thrower. Space Harrier plays more of less like a combination of After Burner and Star Fox with a more unique style. The visuals in the game are generated with sprites that scale larger as they get close to you. You would think that the end result would be jerky and ugly considering the limited scaling abilities of the Genesis, but the game actually runs quite smoothly and looks vibrant with blazing colors and terrific artistic direction. Still, the original game ran more smoothly thanks to its beefier arcade hardware, but this isn’t a port of the original game, but rather a Sega Genesis sequel that plays just like the original. To top it off, the music is also very memorable. Though it doesn’t really offer anything different that the original arcade game offered, the original isn’t available, and Space Harrier II is. With that in mind, Space Harrier II is a great little drug trip through shooter history.

Military Madness600 Points
This week we’ve got another first-party classic from Hudson. Military Madness is a turn-based, war strategy game that takes place on the moon in the distant future. It’s basically a futuristic repeat of World War II where humanity has colonized the moon due to diminishing space on Earth, and the “Axis Empire” has seized large chunks of the moon and imprisoned innocent people. You and your “Allied Powers” are out to blow them off the face of the…you guessed it, the moon. So, the story is simplistic and generic, but does the game hold up? It’s good enough, but certainly not on the same scale of modern turn-based strategy titles such as Advance Wars DS. Still, there is plenty to love here for strategy fans. There are a grand total of 32 stages (16 easy, and 16 difficult) which makes for a lengthy enough of a quest, though there could have been more. You are given the opportunity to view a map of the entire area once at the beginning of the battle, and that’s it. You have to run on your own memory past that. There is a healthy selection of units (tanks, soldiers, jeeps, transports, planes, bombers and much more), and movement is straightforward with a honeycomb-esque grid that shows you where you can move your units. The battle animations aren’t half that bad either. While TurboGrafx games are traditionally not known for impressive soundtracks, this game is a terrific exception. One glaring flaw is that the game uses passwords rather than a backup system, but the Wii’s instant “save state” abilities can usurp this glaring flaw. Besides, the passwords are only six characters in length, so it is not a major issue. The Super Nintendo installments in the “Nintendo-Wars” series never made it to America (and hopefully they now will), but even if they had, Military Madness is a strong competitor, albeit a tad generic in style, and more than worth your six bucks.