Beat Mystic Ark- ending was fair. I can now safely say the game was quite strong for its time, but not a must-play classic. Now I'm on to finding games in my queue that actually play- my used Metroid Prime 2 disc seems to have sticky non-soluble gunk on it making it frequently unreadable, and while I could start Valkyrie Profile on emulation, I'd really rather wait and get it working on console if I can (see other threads
) So wanting some vaguely action-game fix, I moved on to my latest "wow, that exists?! / wow, they have it?!" acquisition:
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (Master System version): I picked the game up largely because it seemed graphically so close to what I'd explored-via-emulation of the Genesis version, and hey, MJ on 8-bit synth sounded like potential awesome in and of itself. I must say this is the first game in my MS collection that really makes me glad to have the system (still haven't seen Wonder Boy III, Psycho Fox, etc.). The graphics, while lacking enemy dance moves and happy-love-magic sparklies, are quite impressive for the system. Michael has the same fluid animation as on Genesis, and most of the animation frames. I dare say he alone is probably hogging over half the sprite memory, judging from the fact that every stage/room features more or less a single flavour of not-Michael mob at a time.
Control is sufficient and deterministic, if not quite as tight and practical as many full-action games. You get the hang of which moves will glue you to the enemy's fist in a given scenario fast enough, though, and once acclimated, the only thing that I still really wished I had was a midair low-attack for getting rid of things right where I wanted to land a jump.
While the mechanic appears repetitive at first- explore every location, find all the girls, proceed- there's a surprising amount of design that went into the level progression. Each round throws another caveat to the hide & seek, whether it be new types of locations or new not-girl things that you need to watch out for when checking. Each stage brings in a new enemy type that generally breaks whatever strategy you'd found in the previous stage. Further, the stages themselves get increasingly complex and difficult to navigate/search in a systematic manner. Some areas are tricky, and the final boss is a right royal pain (I dare say impossible to beat without a specific strategy, and heavily reliant on luck and twitch-reflex once you've figured out how to even go about it), but infinite continues mean that with some patience anyone should be able to at least get to the final stages (and there's not much you miss if you get to round 5 or 6 without actually beating the game...).
I personally find this version easier and more enjoyable than the Genesis version, apart from the lack of dancing enemies, although the store rep claimed it was generally considered harder. $40 may have been a little steep for the overall enjoyment, but as a complete boxed semi-collector's-item that's a fun play to boot, there are worse things I could have spent the money on
