Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel
to Ridley Scott's... masterpiece? Cult classic? science-fiction film
Blade Runner. In it, Harrison Ford plays a titular Blade
Runner, a cop tasked with hunting down replicants, illegal androids
so human-like that it takes a detective to find one and “retire”.
I thought the first movie had excellent world building, a unique
aesthetic, great sound design and almost inscrutable characters and
motivations. It left Blade Runner feeling like it was a
beautiful mess and would certainly be a tough act to follow. For
better or worse, Blade Runner 2049 does just that.
The movie begins with a screen's worth
of text to cover the 30 year time gap between movies. In short,
things have only gotten worse but different. Essentially the world's
food supply is saved from ecological disasters by a super genius who
then uses his new fortune to purchase what was left of the Tyrell
Corporation, the inventors of replicants, to form a new company and
create a new brand of replicants that are guaranteed to be loyal. To
that end replicants have found many legitimate places to take root in
society even if they aren't accepted.
That brings us to “K”, played by
Ryan Gosling, who is this movie's Blade Runner and is also a
replicant. K begins the movie being tasked with hunting down a new
generation of illegal replicants. Remains found on the site of his
first retirement leads K on a path to a much bigger case for a
missing person who means a whole lot to a couple of powerful groups
of people. Along the way Gosling walks with excellent posture through
many sets reminiscent of the first movie and, other than a single
shot at the opening, manages to give
updated and original looks to the grungy, Used Future of the original
Blade Runner.
K gains two primary allies in travels. First is Joi, played by the
lovely Ana de Armas, who is a holographic housekeeper programmed to
give her owner anything they want and that ends up being more than
either of them bargained for. The second is Rick Deckard himself,
returning from the first movie and played by an increasingly limping
Harrison Ford. Deckard enters the picture when it turns out that he
is a person of interest between the two competing factions.
I bring up these factions now because this is where the movie shows
some serious cracks. One side is led by Jared Leto's Niander Wallace,
who solved the food crisis and the other is led by a character who
I'm not even sure got a name. Some motivations are spelled out,
others are left a mystery and the paths to their success and their
intentions with the important missing person are also unclear. It's
possible that this was left in the dark because another sequel is
going to give this movie greater meaning but in the meantime even
Deckard asks a character “why” and he is answered with a shrug.
On top of this a couple of other basic decisions by the film makers
lead to other problems. First, the text used for location transitions
and the opening information crawl is so tiny that I had a hard time
making it out from my third row seat. Second, the music which was
scored as a clear homage to the original, fails to find any real
melody or theme to counteract its bass heavy and screeching klaxon
approach.
Theme is the major
flaw of this movie. There is some good use of the idea of artificial
beings yearning for more above their original programming and
self-determinism but it doesn't have much to do with what exists of
the plot. Plus all the future stuff is great to see as the technology
has certainly improved during the 30 year time skip but nothing is
made to reflect anything from modern day like its original did with
its wall-to-wall advertisements.
In the end this is
a movie that is all dressed up with nowhere to go. Even if the goal
of this movie was to have a sequel that would have been fine if it
had put a few more of its cards on the table. Still, with as much
thought that went into the world building and a sex scene that
probably uses more special effects than I've ever seen in a movie I
appreciated the originality it had to offer, even if it didn't have
enough to say. It's a low recommended movie at two and a half stars.
You may enjoy the spectacle and some good ideas but I would be
surprised if Blade Runner 2049 even has half the impact of its original.
I've been wanting to see Blade Runner
for quite some time. It seems like one of those seminal science
fiction movies that should have been part of my movie diet earlier
on. Problem is that the movie predates me by two and a half years so
by the time I would have been old enough to be allowed to see bare
breasts, gaping gunshot wounds and speculative thoughts in my movies
I would already be lamenting about how bad the Star Wars prequel
trilogy was.
What I'm saying is that I think I
missed the boat when it comes to Ridley Scott's much lauded Blade
Runner. Now, I've done some studying on the history of the movie and
have watched through a synopsis of the film and seen a couple of “did
you know” videos online before watching this so the whole thing was
thoroughly spoiled for me before going in. That goes against what One
Hour Reviews are about as I really only want to know what the
trailers have to say and that's it. For these “classic” reviews
I'm going to have more knowledge and bias simply because a lot of
these films have entered public lexicon by the time I get to writing
a review of them for my puny Internet blog. I picked the 2009 Final
Cut out of all seven available cuts simply because it's what I could
rent off of YouTube and it's supposedly the only cut of the movie
that was 100% under Ridley Scott's creative control. I know I lose
out on some voice over and gain some scene which apparently provide
clarity over other cuts but I'm going to just tell it to you
straight: Blade Runner is kind of a mess.
For those that don't know it all by now
I'll summarize the plot. Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, a Blade
Runner. A Blade Runner is a detective meant to hunt down replicants,
a brand of android slave labor now illegal on Earth, who are shot and
killed, or “retired” once they are identified. Deckard is
apparently the best Blade Runner in the business because he is pulled
out of retirement in the opening scenes and then proceeds to have
very basic facts spelled out to him, and therefore the audience.
Maybe all the alcohol he imbibes throughout the movie implies that he
has some memory problems due to previous drinking issues.
Deckard's task is to hunt down and
retire four replicants who have returned to Earth for unknown
reasons. The four are lead by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, a super
combat model of replicant who seems to represent the Aryan ideal. It
turns out that Roy and the other replicants are seeking their creator
in an attempt to prolong their artificially short life and mostly
want to stay under the radar while they complete their goal since
their very existence is punishable by death. Too bad they keep
racking up the body count to remain incognito.
This is all set against the backdrop of
Los Angeles in the far flung future of 2019. The LA of this time is
over crowded and almost always raining with neon being the lighting
of choice and advertisements taking up space on any flat space big
enough to support it. Looks like some things were predicted
correctly. To my understanding Blade Runner's appeal was drawn
largely from being one of the first realizations of the cyberpunk
genre on film. The lighting is usually dim or doesn't work, the
weather adds a layer of mist and obscurity to everything at street
level and Chinese has taken over as an equal language to English. Oh,
yeah, and flying cars.
I'm sure the spectacle and set dressing
was set to impress back in the day but now that the Used Future
setting has been seen so much that I think it doesn't hold up so well
over time, especially not if the first viewing is done 35 years
later. But that's not why the movie doesn't work for me. As far as
the movie having some good ideas in its loose adaptation of Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
and being well-shot and lit all of the characters are a complete
puzzle. None of the characters really act human. For the replicants
that's understandable: they are so human but they aren't so their
mannerisms falling into the uncanny valley makes sense. But all of
the others who are beneath suspicion also either talk flatly, emote
in only one way, or fail to react in any natural way. Added on top of
this is some really choppy editing and occasionally jarring film
composition and it feels like a lot of visual pieces that don't
really connect. This left me feeling that everything was in a
completely bizarre state of unreal.
Maybe
that was the point. Much of the discussion of the film after the fact
seems to regard “was X a replicant the whole time?” If everyone
in the world acts strangely then anyone could be a robot! I don't
think having hidden robots excuses questionable directing and acting.
It feels like a lot of this discussion wallpapers over either a
slight misfire from a younger Ridley Scott or a budget that couldn't
support an ambitious film. In either case, it's a movie with a fair
amount going on but in the 35 years that have passed since it can't
possibly be top dog in the sci-fi world anymore.
I'll
give it two and a half stars. There's a lot to talk about in this one
but I can't say I completely enjoyed it.
Writing start time: September 29th,
2017 – 9:54 PM
Tom Cruise has
another vehicle but, spoilers, he doesn't run in this one.
Tom Cruise stars in
American Made, a movie in which Cruise plays American pilot
Barry Seal who is asked by the CIA to begin serving the USA by using
his piloting skills to spy on Those Dirty Commies in 80's Central
America. Cruise gets plenty of face time in the camera as he narrates
to the audience in a framing device to make sure the audience doesn't
fall too far behind, especially those who can watch R-rated movies
but are too young to remember the Cold War. Even though the film is
“tell” heavy with the narration there is plenty to show here and
what is never shown is a good guy.
Like any good spy
movie all of the players are shady or just looking out for number one
and Cruise gets to bounce between them all in an upwards trajectory
that takes him from an ordinary airline pilot to a fabulously wealthy
smuggler. Instead of the cloak and dagger spyworks and heightened
martial arts found in the recent also Cold War era Atomic Blonde
we get a zoomed in focus of a profiteer in a whole different kind of
battlefield. The movie is a period piece with many trappings of the
late 70's and early 80's brought to life but this film exists
primarily so Cruise can tell a story and it's a good one to hear.
Surrounding
Cruise's character is his expanding family including his wife Lucy,
played by Sarah Wright, and her brother JB, played by Caleb Landry
Jones. Wright does a great job standing alongside Cruise and avoiding
getting caught in his shadow. JB is effective as a Southern punk that
presents some real complications for Cruise's character and raises
the stakes of the plot considerably. Nobody is a hero here but the
relationship between Cruise's and Wright's characters manages to give
the audience a touchstone and gives us characters to root for among
all of the scum and villainy.
The other standout
note of this feature is the cinematography. Filming aerial scenes
can't be easy but what little flight choreography and drama needs to
exist the movie delivers with aplomb. Several takeoff and landing
sequences also manage to deliver some genuine tension. I've seen
enough planes dip below frame only to zoom at the camera with all of
the important characters on board safely more times than I can count
but we get some originality with the framing and you can really hear
and feel planes getting pushed to their limits for our viewing
pleasure. Great job.
This movie isn't
one for this history books even though it is a history lesson. The
pacing, acting, viewing and listening are all great and, hey, in
these times seeing more jabs at our government is always an
additional bonus. Three stars for American Made; it's a good
story told well and I'll recommend it to you.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the
sequel to 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service, an action movie which
surprised me with its originality and fun. I was excited to see that
the universe of the Kingsmen would get revisited, and more
importantly to me, expanded upon in its sequel.
The original movie featured the
Kingsmen, a super spy organization that both winked at and embraced
the absurdities of the Tuxedo and Martini spy flicks of old, not the
least of which the James Bond franchise, which itself is acknowledged
in-universe several times. It featured Taron Egerton as Eggsy, a
lower class street tough with lots of potential, who is plucked from
his situation by Galahad, played by Colin Firth, who owes a debt to
Eggsy's family. The movie had a good theme of potential trumping
social class with a scathing rebuke of the complacency of governments
towards violence as a means to an end. It also has a scene where a
multitude of heads explode in cadence to Pomp and Circumstance. No,
really.
The marketing for the sequel promised a
movie that carried the same beats as the first but expanded on its
universe. In some ways this movie succeeds in fulfilling that promise
but it does so with less confidence and finesse than the first. The
Golden Circle introduces the Statesmen, an American counterpart spy
agency that uses a laid back cowboy aesthetic as a foil to the stuffy
British upper class motif of the Kingsmen. This gives us a new set of
characters to explore but very little is done with them. It's nice to
see Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and even Channing Tatum as core members
of this new group but none of their characters get a chance to exceed
two dimensions.
Even the Kingsmen have a hard time
achieving much depth. Eggsy himself completed his character arc in
the first movie and is left to float along here. Galahad is back and
he is given little to do except to provide callbacks to the first
film. Mark Strong's character, Merlin, the tech wizard/drill sergeant
of the Kingsmen, has character beats that fall flat and are
completely unearned. The saving graces are the villain, Poppy, played
by Julianne Moore, a drug cartel kingpin that wants to use capitalism
to legalize her stake in the drug trade and an extended celebrity
cameo that saying too much would give away the game.
Poppy's ambitions make a pretty big
political statement, especially in the face of a certain government's
response to it and, honestly, if this theme was properly explored it
might have made for a more engaging conflict and a more interesting,
but completely different, movie in its own right. Unfortunately, said
evil plan imperils millions of lives so the heroes must step in to
save the day and any potential there is lost.
Saving the day in a big way through
awesome and sometimes hilarious set pieces was the major reason the
first movie stood apart from its peers and happily some of that fun
and ingenuity stays intact to its sequel. Deliberate attempts are
made at recreating the magic of some of the original's big moments.
Instead of inventing new ideas whole cloth, some twists to the
original's are introduced and exploited but the feeling of deja vu
can't be shaken. The big fights themselves are often inferior due to
an increased use of confusing camera movements, shaky cam and
less-than-perfect framing.
One non-action scene in particular is
very troublesome. To inject some drama into Eggsy's relationship, he
gets involved in a seduction scene that very much gives a counter
argument to the “show, don't tell” adage. This is going to be the
one scene of the movie that will make repeat viewings pretty tough
and more should be written about it in a spoiler-filled article. From
my understanding much is already being said.
Overall
I got a movie that is a mixed bag. There is some fun to be had but
there is also quite a bit of wasted potential and more and more
questions and doubts are creeping into my head as I write this
review. As it is, I am nearly at the end of my one hour writing
allowance. More should be said about this movie, I think, as
comparing the two Kingsman films would lead to excellent exercises in
analyzing what does and does not work in writing screenplays.
Two
and a half stars. Action fans ought to get a kick out of this but for
more casual viewers I'll recommend the first movie any day of the
week.
Developed by: Nintendo R&D 1, Published by: Nintendo
Introduction & Bias:
Ahh, pinball. Whenever I visit a classic arcade I always make an effort to see if they have any pinball tables. Arcades with a lot of older cabinets with classic games seem to have a higher chance of having a table compared to modern arcades. Modern arcades make a lot of their money by offering quick games that pay out a ticket reward. Pinball machines have not primarily been known for having any sort of ticket dispensing system so they are often excluded from arcade lineups.
That's too bad because up here in central New York I don't really know of any retro arcades. The ones I loved going to the most are all situated at seaside attraction towns like Seaside Heights in New Jersey. I always get a little misty eyed remembering the combination of the smell of salt water and the excitement of all of their attractions like carousels, mini golf, and, yes, huge arcades.
Nostalgia notwithstanding I got to play the first Pinball title for the NES, simply titled Pinball. This game certainly has pinball in it. Let's dive in.
First Impressions & Presentation:
The title screen this time is nothing really to look at. There is a black screen with the words Pin and Ball on it. Instead of the double layered fake 3-D text, the player simply gets a little highlight on each letter to make them appear round. Maybe they are bubblegum letters or something. Not sure. Other than that, the player just has a choice of game mode to make. The tip here is that there is not much difference between the two modes. They both take place on the same pinball table. The six second theme music is pleasant enough, though.
Pictured: Pinballoon maybe?
The game does have a demonstration to allow the player to preview the table before selecting their game mode. The silent demo does not offer anything amazing other than that preview. Pinball by its nature is pretty easy to understand so there are not a lot of rules to learn. There are two sets of flippers on the table in this game and the object is to keep the ball from falling past the bottom set. The demonstration player quickly loses their ball and it gets reset back to the title screen. Easy enough.
I got the chance to launch the ball once I started the game proper and I did get some ability to finesse how much strength I got to use during the launch. The problem is, practically any strength other than full would not shoot the ball far enough to put it into play so I wonder why the option to have a variable launch strength exists.
Pictured: FULL POWER!
The graphics were inoffensive enough but I was confused as to what the theme of the table actually was. The top half of the pinball table allows the player to interact with trained seals and a set of penguins. The bottom half of the table gives the player a chance to complete a royal flush with playing cards and hatch baby chicks out of eggs.
Don't confuse the term "inoffensive" graphics with "good" graphics, however. Honestly, the whole thing looks pretty dull. Most of the screen is black except for the parts that can be interacted with. On top of that there is no music that plays during the game except for one little victory jingle that sounds if the player completes one of the table's objectives. The sounds are pretty dull as well with a lot of clunks and thuds representing the ball hitting different targets. Overall, the game does not benefit from its style or art direction.
Pictured: Cute penguins and a total lack of character besides
A real pinball table does not tend to have a lot of moving art on the actual playing area so perhaps entertaining gameplay will pull this NES title out of mediocrity. Prepare for disappointment.
Experience & Conveyance:
I have played a fair amount of pinball over the years. The tables I got to experience tended to be products of their times so I started out with tables that only had number displays like old alarm clocks and their associated bells and whistles. Later on, licensed pinball tables would be a pretty big deal with pretty elaborate dot matrix displays, lots of music, and voice samples from their respective medium.
It's unfair to expect an NES game to recreate anything from a modern pinball table. The game is copyrighted in 1983 so it's not like pinball tables of that era had a lot of tricks up their sleeves. To check this I spent about 20 minutes watching YouTube videos of pinball tables and I did manage to find a table that was released the same year as this game: Farfalla.
I have no idea what this game is based on, if anything. I'll look into that more for the trivia section. Based on my research the NES Pinball title represents about as much as one could get out of a pinball table at the time so this game gets a pass in that regard. That said, it really is not a terribly engaging experience. I think the main problem is that playing pinball in real life is the sum total of all of the surrounding experiences. A player rarely gets to put quarters into a pinball machine that is sitting in an empty room. There are other games or at least a pizza parlor next to it to provide other feedback. There is a certain joy of pushing the buttons on a pinball machine or using the plunger to launch the ball. All of that is missing from the NES title.
Not Pictured: An arcade. Or pizza
It's too bad, too, because Nintendo did at least try to do one or two things that would make playing a game of Pinball on the NES familiar and unique. First, the controls are really simple. The left flipper is activated by pressing left on the controller and the right flipper is triggered with the A button. This simulates the usage of the pinball flipper buttons by forcing the player to use the right and leftmost buttons on the NES controller.
The second item is a bonus game that is hidden in one of the bonus activators on the table. Shooting the ball up into that activation hole will bring the player to a different screen with a bonus game. The object of this game is to bounce the pinball up, Breakout style, to keep the ball above a certain line on the playing field. The Breakout platform is being held by Mario who carries the platform back and forth over his head to keep the pinball in play. The ball is used to light up different rows and columns of numbers. Doing that enough will slowly destroy pieces of floor that are holding Mario's first girlfriend, Pauline, captive. Once the floor breaks she begins to fall so Mario must catch her so she can escape. Completing this bonus game nets the player a lot of points which, at the end of the day, is the only thing a player can do in a game of pinball.
Pictured: Mario and Pauline are just in it for the paycheck
And that's it. Keep the ball in play, attempt to complete objectives to activate safety bumpers, and score lots of points. The only use of points other than getting the high score is to get an extra ball. An extra ball is awarded at 50,000 points, but like so much of the rest of the game it happens with no ceremony.
Verdict & Score:
Playing this game was a bore. Writing this article got me more nostalgic for a part of my childhood that I thought I had let go so I am grateful for at least that much. Feeling whimsical does not make me feel any softer or more kind toward this NES game, however. If nothing else I do not want to give this title any more credit than it is worth because I know what pinball is capable of.
After mixing my feelings together and spitting them out I will give Pinball a 4(3)/10. The game is disappointing to be sure but I don't think it makes me feel strongly enough to call it a bad title.
Factoids & Trivia:
No, I did not find out anything more about Farfalla or what the voice on that table actually says. The whole thing looks pretty psychedelic. Winners don't do drugs.
While there are a couple of pinball titles on the NES I was curious if Nintendo produced any pinball tables themselves. I did learn that Nintendo partnered with venerable pinball machine producer Gottlieb for at least two pinball tables based on the Mario Brothers series. I remember seeing the second of the two at Seaside Heights though I missed my chance to play it. I am linking a video here to a company that restored the first of the two tables to better-than-factory condition.
To wrap things up I can mention one pinball table that I am oddly proud that I got to play. It is reportedly the largest pinball table ever produced and appropriately it is named after Hercules. This table is massive. I think I got to play this when I was about 7 or 8 years old and I could barely get my arms around the thing. The table does not use a pinball to operate. Instead it uses a cue ball. You know, one that you play pool with? This table is that big. You can watch a video of it here. Now excuse me while I stop crying and get myself back to the present.
Sniff. Ah, OK. I'll be back by the end of the month. I am really excited to get the review after this posted. After this next review I will have played and posted about all 17 US launch titles and I will consider this whole insane project officially off the ground! Join me next time as I knock down some buildings in Wrecking Crew! See you then.
Kung Fu is a title that I did not play until I was an adult. It just wasn't a game that I saw my friends own so I selected the title from the massive list of games I downloaded because, hey, it's Kung Fu. I do like me some martial arts movies sometimes and why not give this game a try? After playing it the first time it triggered some memories of the arcade version of the NES game that I witnessed once but passed up in favor of other arcade machines. It always made more sense to me to play games that looked like Nintendo games on the home console and use the arcade as an opportunity to play games made specifically for those arcade cabinets. They were always more powerful than the home console so they brought something different.
I bring this up because on the surface Kung Fu does not look like anything special but once I started playing the game again in earnest I was really able to peel a couple of layers back and get some good gameplay out of the title. On top of that I found out some pretty interesting details about the history of the game and why it exists. Let's get into the review proper so I can share what I learned.
First Impressions & Presentation:
The title card for Kung Fu continues Nintendo's trend of having the fake 3-D text but the yellow and red of the title's lettering pop out and the perspective is correct so good for them. Add to that the Chinese-style border and some foreshadowing of the dragons and the mode select icon in the shape of a dagger and the player is presented with a pretty solid title screen. If there was music playing I would give it full marks.
Pictured: Kung Fu Game!
There is only one demonstration included in this title but it is pretty effective. The demonstration shows the protagonist, Thomas, walking in from off-camera facing to the left. After a brief pause he walks forward and immediately begins to punch and kick enemies who are all taken out in one hit. Thomas has middle, low, and jump attacks and they are all displayed here. Good to know.
Also good to know is how the health system works. Regular pink and grey enemies only damage Thomas when they get right up in his grill. After a moment of awkward staring they are shaken off but Thomas has lost a little bit of health. The other enemy on display is a knife throwing enemy who wears a white headband and gi. Thomas is hit with a knife and while it does significant damage it is far from a one-hit kill. In fact, the player can take quite a bit of abuse based on this introduction. On top of that I learn that Thomas has two extra lives and that there is a timer set to 2,000 Arbitrary Time Units that tick down quickly.
Pictured: Kung Fu Jump!
After educating myself with that demonstration I started playing the game and it plays just like I expected it to based on what I saw. The only thing the demonstration did not convey well was jump momentum. Thomas can jump straight up or lock in for a forward jump and that is easy enough to figure out in the first few minutes of play. Overall the pick up and play aspect of this game is pretty great.
The presentation is pretty simple. Thomas is your Kung Fu hero that looks completely distinct from the pink and blue haired enemies so keeping track of the correct character is easy. Other than that everything is pretty plain with almost nothing to give the player more information or distract them either. The player, enemies, and obstacles all look as flat as a board with only the floor of the fighting plane and its supporting pier-like structure giving the graphics any sense of depth. I will credit the game for taking place on a light blue background which allows the black haired protagonist an easy way to stand out.
There is one other neat detail that I want to point out. The upper portion of the fighting area of the screen contains small banners. The banners have the symbols for 1-5 in Japanese so the player can get a quick idea of how far along each of the game's levels they are. It is a nice little bonus for those players who can at least recognize the characters of Japanese numbers.
Pictured: Kung Fu Counting!
The music is suitable and follows the pattern from Ice Climber of having quick intro themes while taking a back seat to the action during gameplay. The music in this game was provided by Mario composer Koji Kondo. My man. To top off the audio the sound effects offer some punch as Thomas will shout when he attacks and adds to the pleasure the player should get when they knock over some goons. Overall the presentation suits the action without really elevating it to the next level or detracting from it.
Experience & Conveyance:
Up to this point I haven't actually mentioned what type of game this is or the plot. The plot is not revealed immediately but since the game is named after a family of martial arts styles the player should expect this to be some sort of fighting game. Fighting does occur but it functions more as a side scrolling beat-em-up. All enemies other than bosses go down in one or two hits meaning the player's body count is high. The player can proceed left or right at any time which is a nice change from the usual ratchet scrolling found in titles like Super Mario Brothers. Since the progress number banners exist it is hard to forget what the intended direction is supposed to be in case the player gets turned around.
The fighting is very responsive. Pressing the A button throws punches and the B button launches kicks. All of the animations are crisp, fast and can be spammed. The player will routinely be assaulted by three or four enemies at a time and Thomas can attack as quickly as the player can mash buttons. This makes encounters against the normal enemies pretty routine but the knife throwing enemies apply an appropriate amount of pressure to the proceedings as the player may need to duck or jump over thrown knives. After I knocked out over a dozen foes I came across the first boss who has the superpower of using a stick!
Pictured: Kung Fu Tonfa!
The boss is more powerful than the regular enemies by quite a large margin. The player can only get hit by the boss maybe two or three times before dying. To add insult to injury the boss will let out an evil digitized chuckle if they personally defeat the player. The jerk. Making the boss eat his laugh will allow the player to ascend to the next floor. There are five floors in all and the first floor only takes about a minute to complete. This would be a very brief game were it not for one thing: lack of continues.
The player gets three lives to beat all five floors of the tower with additional lives possible if they can score over 50,000 points. I failed to beat the first floor on my first set of lives but then made it to the second floor my next try. The second floor completely schooled me as the obstacles took the form of falling traps and summoned creatures, rather than other martial artists.
Pictured: Kung Fu Trogdor!
Frustration quickly set in for me as I would run until I hit a brick wall, get forced to reset at a game over, and then make incremental progress on following attempts. The process was slow but relatively steady as I learned from mistakes and encountered new obstacles. I fought my way through snakes and dragon summons on the second level along with floating confetti bombs. My reflexes got sharper as I waited out falling obstacles and dodged the boomerangs of the second boss to beat that level and proceed to the third. I was stopped only briefly to get all of the information I needed about Thomas' motivation.
Pictured: Kung Fu Plot!
The last three stages each had their own challenges. Floor 3 added small enemies that needed to be dispatched with low attacks. The boss was a hulking dark-skinned man whose main advantage was having long reach and crushing damage. The fourth floor forced me to dodge and kick poisonous moths out of the air and to defeat a magician who would literally lose their head when kicked in the face only to reappear unharmed to throw more spells.
The final stage gets rid of all the gimmicks and challenges the player to a gauntlet of all three human enemy types until they finally encounter Mr. X himself. Mr. X is a tough customer as he fights with a similar style to Thomas and can actually block some of the player's attacks to mitigate damage. Upon finally beating Mr. X with a jump kick to the face I was allowed to finally free Sylvia so we could share all of our hearts.
Pictured: Kung Fu Romance!
Verdict & Score:
Kung Fu represents a rarity for me as I actually completed the game within my hour of play time. It really taxed me as I tend to have a low amount of willpower and patience when it comes to full-game resets. I managed to smack my head against the brick wall that was the moderate challenge to the game until I got a clean run and achieved my victory. I felt good about the whole thing but beating the game just forced me back to Floor 1 with some heightened challenge. I was satisfied with the game at that point.
Overall the game is crisp, fun, and concise. It may be hard to get a good one-hour bite out of this game, especially when a skilled player can beat it in a matter of minutes. A player new to this title should get a kick or punch or two of fun out of several short sittings of Kung Fu.
With all that in mind I will give Kung Fu a 6/10. Hi-ya!
Factoids & Trivia:
All right. Ready for some trivia? Get this.
Kung Fu was originally developed as a tie-in to the 1976 Bruce Lee movie Game of Death, hence the five levels of the game which ties in well with the so-called plot of that movie. During development the game was renamed Spartan X for its Japanese release. Spartan X was the Japanese name of the movie Wheels on Meals, a classic Jackie Chan flick that was more contemporary to the game's release.
To avoid needing to license the game to the movie studio upon the game's international release the title was changed again to either Kung-Fu Master or Kung Fu depending on the system. To that end, the characters Thomas and Sylvia are the names of Jackie Chan's and Lola Forner's characters from Wheels on Meals. That means in a roundabout way, Jackie Chan unofficially starred in one of the launch titles for the NES. Neat, huh?
In case you were wondering why the movie was titled Wheels on Meals instead of Meals on Wheels which makes more sense; the executives at Golden Harvest, the producers of the movie, got nervous about the movie's title because the last two movies they released that began with the letter M were flops so they meddled and changed the name of the movie. Never bet against Jackie.
Here, have a fight scene from this movie:
It seems that this game can be picked up for less than $10. Have at it!
Next up, something with just slightly less Kung Fu action: Pinball! See you then.
Developed by: Nintendo R&D 1, Published by: Nintendo
Introduction & Bias:
Ice Climber is a pretty interesting piece of Nintendo history. It's not so much that I think the game is some legendary classic as I have a whole article to prove that idea, but I think that this game, more than most, is proof that Nintendo is excellent at making sure they get as many eyeballs and dollars out of its old content to obfuscate how little they output today. I don't think that Nintendo drags its feet in the present but it is the nature of the video game industry beast that any new ideas or old ideas made new takes so much more effort to product that we don't get the days of ten to seventeen simultaneous game release gluts anymore. Case in point, I did not know this first party existed until Super Smash Brothers Melee was released for the GameCube in 2000.
Through SSBM I learned that the Ice Climbers were a pair of short, parka wearing people who acted well in tandem and had a lot of old-school charm. Their jumps made old noises, they shot a basic themed projectile (ice, instead of Mario's fire), and used those easy-to-draw, classic video game weapons: hammers. And so, of course, thanks to the creativity of SSBM's interpretation of the Ice Climbers I needed to go back and see what I had missed. My familiarity with Ice Climber makes writing about this game both easy and difficult because I do have a fair amount of experience playing this title. But since my hour of play time was not used for gameplay discovery it was difficult to make that time compelling.
First Impressions & Presentation:
If nothing else, Ice Climber certainly knows how to get the party started. In spite of the black background of the title screen the title card itself actually makes clever use of the faux 3-D text layer with dark blue letters that looked carved into a lighter blue block of ice. Good theming there, Nintendo.
Pictured: An easy high score to beat
Couple the good theming with a jaunty intro screen music tune and I am looking at a game that does a good job at setting my expectation meter to "fun". There are three selectable options, 1-player, 2-player, and Mountain. Since I don't have any friends I only played the 1-player mode but I do know that 2-player mode does feature simultaneous gameplay and that's pretty neat. The Mountain choice is a stage select that lets the player pick amongst the game's 32 different stages. For as notorious Nintendo is for making very difficult games it seems that a lot of these early titles were nice enough to give options to pick up from where the player left off without needing to have a save function. That is a pretty clever design decision.
Letting the game go through its attract mode introductions does allow the player to get a feel for the rules and objectives of the game. The goal is simple: climb the mountain. This is achieved by jumping up all of the numbered platform levels of the stage to reach the top. Aiding the player character is the ability to jump high and swing a hammer at the same time. The first demonstration shows that the player is protected from above when they jump as the hammer swats flying dinosaur enemies directly above them. Jumping also lets the player break blocks to allow passage up to the next level. Opposing the player are the aforementioned airborne dinosaur enemies, small yetis that fill in broken floor tiles with icicles, and unbreakable blocks which have a distinct look compared to destructible bricks.
The introduction to each stage shows a preview of the whole mountain as the player will watch a quick fly-through of the level. They will witness a pterodactyl fly straight up the mountain carrying an eggplant in its talons. I wish I was making that up. The preview of the level only shows permanent features of the mountain which apparently includes 40 second timers embedded into the icy peak and the words "BONUS STAGE" literally floating in the air.
Not pictured: My speculation that if this naturally occurred on mountains we'd have fewer mountain climbers and more mountain-based casinos
Other game rules I learned is that the player can wrap their position left-to-right on the screen. So if the player walks off the screen to the right they will appear on the left. This is an important lesson I missed and I only discovered that on accident later in my play time. I also learned that the player can use their hammer to attack foes to the side and that the player dies in one hit. Of course. I would expect more durability from even small humans if they were capable of climbing mountains.
The demonstrations play to complete silence but the sound design is pretty good overall during actual play time. There are two main themes in the game: the first being the title music that is also repeated during the bonus stages and the second is a more subdued version of the theme that plays during the main climbing portion of the levels. There are plenty of sound effects for jumping and hammering and the simple graphics do a good enough job of warning of danger and keeping all of the objectives clear enough against the contrast of the black background.
Pictured: Basic gameplay at its most clear
Unlike some other titles I have reviewed so far Ice Climber actually does develop new layers of challenge as levels progress which is to its credit and detriment.
Experience & Conveyance:
Stage one of Ice Climber is a pretty straight forward affair. The only obstacles the player needs to overcome are the challenges I outlined earlier. All I needed to do was break through the platforms and proceed up to the top of floor 8 to get to the bonus stage. It is a good thing that the first mountain was such a warm up as there is a decent amount of subtlety to the game's jumping mechanics that need to be mastered quickly.
Like in real life there is little the player can do to influence the trajectory of a jump once they are airborne. The player can move maybe one or two small brick's worth of distance to the right or left if a standing jump is performed. The real way to get anywhere is to make a running jump. The run does not have to be that long; maybe only two or three brick lengths to get the full horizontal distance from a jump. This forces the player to be pretty methodical and plan ahead for a lot of jumps to ascend to higher levels as the option to simply jump in place to proceed is not often a viable one.
Pictured: Fire Mario would have a much easier time in this game
Things get tricky starting in level 2 as a new element gets introduced: scrolling clouds. Some floors of a mountain will have no permanent platform to stand on so the player must wait for a cloud to float by which is, of course, solid both on the top and bottom. In some stages the cloud floats by at breakneck speeds so the player needs to anticipate its arrival, jump to break blocks on a higher floor, and then finally ascend. Usually the cloud scrolls by so quickly that the player will need to wait for three or four different clouds to pass by to finally get to the next floor. Once that level of play gets reached all hell starts to break loose.
The player in the later levels can eventually find themselves in this situation: The player stands on about two or three bricks trying to jump on a cloud. The cloud moves fast so landing on it happens almost by accident. The player then needs to jump up immediately to break through to the higher floor. Failing to jump back down to the tiny platform means death because somehow the lower floors have disappeared due to the ratchet scrolling. On top of this, a yeti works on the floor above to undo the players progress, birds swoop in from above, and oh, yes, the floor the player is trying to jump on to is a conveyor belt so there is a good chance they will slip off the higher platform anyway. To compound the troubles the player may be hit with the soft time limit of the game: a standing polar bear wearing pink swimming trunks and sunglasses (still not making this up) will walk out, jump, and scroll the entire screen down to apply pressure if the player is not making quick enough progress. All of this is handed to the player while they still need to somehow make a running jump to finesse their ascent. The game gets brutally hard in the middle and later stages.
Pictured: Hell frozen over!
The player gets three whole lives to work with and only a single chance to earn more. Even though the player can manually select the mountain they died on last to restart their progress, the three life total can be chewed through in a just a few seconds if they end up respawning on some impossible platform over and over again. At the end of the day the different levels end up turning more into puzzle games than platforming games. The would not necessarily be a bad thing if it wasn't for the fact that the mechanics of jumping require the game to move at one speed while the game itself insists on moving about twice as fast as needed.
Verdict & Score:
Ice Climber was not a game that got brought up as a title that the cool kids owned from the early NES library. There were many copies of Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, and Excitebike but I was ignorant to this game existing until Smash Brothers brought the Ice Climbers out of the archives. I can see why this game might not have caught on. The pick-up-and-play features of the other games does not really apply to Ice Climber. The overall goal is simple but the difficulty curve ramps up far too quickly to be user friendly. 30 years later I think the title can be played well by more experienced gamers and offers a more entertaining experiences than titles like Clu Clu Land but I think Ice Climber fails to ascend to a level higher than average.
As foreshadowed just one sentence ago I will give Ice Climber a 5(6) out of ten. It may be able to break the mold of an average Nintendo game but only barely.
Factoids & Trivia:
To me, Ice Climber doesn't feel like it has its own trivia (though it does have some) as much as Ice Climber feels like Nintendo trivia. I predict that this game really wouldn't be well known at all if the characters had not been revived for Smash Brothers. The imagery of the Ice Climbers were used here and there besides Smash Brothers, most notably in a couple of Kirby games. The titular character would wear an Ice Climber inspired parka when he has a freeze based powerup. Even then, the Kirby games where this happens were released after Smash Brothers so it stands to reason that if the Ice Climbers were not used then the reference in the Kirby games would not exist.
I think the most interesting trivia item I found regarding the differences between the Japanese and North American versions of the game is that the yeti creatures in the NA version were actually seals in the Japanese game. I guess Nintendo of America did not want to have any seal clubbing in their games. Exploding bubble fish are OK, but seal clubbing is just a bridge too far.
It is also clear that development of this game was one of Nintendo's earlier efforts as the game's director considered this a warm up to later efforts. Like Super Mario Brothers.
Probably due to the name recognition alone the game is fetching $15-$20 on eBay.
Not a lot of trivia this time so I will share an Ice Climber remix that I like. Enjoy!
That's it for me today. Check out the next article where I will present a game I like and actually has one trivia fact I only learned about recently: Kung-Fu.
