#118 - Castelian

 

  

Yup, that looks about right.

 

 This is the first screen of the game. I died several times here. I wish I was joking.

What's a Castelian, you ask? At first I thought it sounded like a top-secret Italian dish; like, if you were Italian, you would enter into a restaurant, pull the waiter down to your ear, whisper "Casteliano." He would nod, a grim, knowing look on his face. Twenty minutes later, he would present said Italian with the best Italian food you've never heard of. If only Castelian was a succulent secret and not an attempt at making a game. After having engaged myself in Castelian's world for more than twenty minutes, I've decided that it is not a game. It is a cartridge-shaped mass that contains all of the known and unknown evil in the world, programmed by one man, Duncan Meech. Whether Mr. Meech knew what he was creating or whether the project got out of hand and overpowered him, is unknown. It doesn't matter. May God have mercy on the souls who have played this game, and of those who have yet to venture unknowingly down its nightmarish path.

You play a frog-ish creature whose goal is to progress up several flights of stairs. You avoid eyeballs, bouncing balls – any manner of ball that you can think of, really. Once you ascend as many flights of stairs as Duncan Meech thinks you should, you enter a door and progress to the next tower where, yes, several more flights of stairs await for you to climb them. Remember those old RPGs where you ascend insanely large towers with hundreds of floors, grind until your eyes bleed, acquire cool items and weaponry, only to die and have to start all the way back at the beginning? I think Castelian was trying to go for that style of gameplay in an action format. It's not a bad idea, in theory, but the incentive for progression just doesn't exist like it does in an RPG.

Let's get to why I, and several others like me, believe this game is an abomination from the pit: the controls. When I first started playing, I noticed that the "A" button shot out white pellets from my frog-ish creature's mouth. I pressed the "B" button and nothing happened. My conclusion from this was that the developers made a game that didn't require a jump function. I moved forward and when I ran into my first eyeball enemy, I tried shooting white pellets at him. It didn't seem to be hurting him, but I continued to move forward and hit him. As I did, I jumped into him, effectively killing myself. I did this several times without knowing why, until I discovered that pressing left or right and the "A" button at the same time makes you jump. Unfortunately, jumping is essential to moving forward in this game. You need to make precise jumps to land on elevators or to move up flights of stairs. One misstep (and there will be more than one) and you could land all the way back at the beginning. This will make you hate your own life, the "game," and/or Duncan Meech.

This is the end of the first level. I never made it here nor did I want to after twenty minutes of soul-sucking madness


In all my months of reviewing NES games, never have I encountered a game where I died several times on the first two screens. Even in other terrible games like Beetlejuice, or my favorite, Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt, I've been able to move forward even if I didn't want to. Castelian's problem is that it hides behind the facade of cuteness and simplicity. In truth, if you wanted to make a friend think they suck at video games, you could recommend Castelian by saying, "Yeah, you play this cute frog and all you have to do is get to the top of the tower in every level. Pretty simple stuff, really." Set up a hidden camera in their room and laugh as they try to tackle one diabolical level after the next. Once you realize that you're a voyeuristic psychopath who wants to harm his own friends, it is already too late: the evil of Castelian has entered you.

F-

 

#89 - Blaster Master

Why aim at the monster, when the Tetris piece behind him is far more threatening?

Animal rights groups were up in arms over this game's graphic depiction of smushed insects.


Two highly acclaimed NES games in a row?! Surely this streak will end tomorrow when I try to care about The Blue Marlin. Anywho, I've master blasted my way through some games in my time, but never Blaster Master. When I was really young and lacked any knowledge of gaming magazines, I only had the game covers at the video store to inform me whether the game was good or not. Blaster Master had a bland, crappy cover featuring a mix of Eighties-riffic art and a pixelated monster (see above) that did not intrigue my young self. Once again, I find myself at age twenty-five playing beloved NES games for the first time. Since Bionic Commando was such a smash hit in my eyes, I dared to believe Blaster Master would blast my mast off. Alas, my mast remains.

The game starts out promising enough. You play as a spunky robo-boy who pilots a tank in order to save his beloved pet frog. STAY WITH ME NOW, THINGS GET COMPLICATED! The game is divided into two segments: the main portion where you drive the tank around a large pseudo-non-linear world and destroy baddies; and the secondary portion where you guide the robo-boy into caves or other random dwellings where the tank can't go... and destroy baddies. The combination of both styles should be entertaining, but Sunsoft manages to make things dull, or at best, slightly above average. It's fun to destroy things with a tank at first, but the levels' layouts are boring. There are only so many places you can go, and none of them give you a sense of discovery and wonder found in a game like Metroid (a game Blaster Master copies, to some extent). Playing as the boy is, again, ok at first, until you realize the dwellings you enter usually exist only to give you power-ups; many of which are not necessary to your survival, and thus, pointless. Unfortunately, there are one or two places you enter per level that are important, as boss fights are sometimes fought there, so you have to enter all of them.

Some other general complaints: the game starts off really easy and accelerates to hard by the second or third area. I'm aware that, since most developers were just figuring out how these "video game things" worked in 1988, they didn't always manage difficulty properly. Still, a little easing into the harder areas would have been nice. The game repeats backgrounds a lot. Often I wondered if Blaster Master (or BM as I will affectionately refer to it from now on) was laughing at me as I continued jumping up these never ending castle platforms in Area 2, and then I reached the top and discovered it was just part of the sloppy programming. There are a good number of enemies who, if they are in the ground in front of you and you are in your tank, you won't be able to shoot them. I suppose you could exit out of the tank and shoot them with your little man, but that would grow wearisome. And if there's one thing I don't want from my BM, it's to grow wearisome while attempting to master it.

I dunno. Some people swear by this game, others are like me and think it's overrated. Truthfully, Sunsoft made some pretty boss games for the Nintendo era (Batman anyone?), so I expected better of this game. The story doesn't help either: why would I want to hunt down a robo- boy's pet frog across worlds filled with creatures that only desire my pain and suffering? How about saving a girl or the world from evil? These things are potentially worth fighting for, depending on one's point of view towards humanity. But when one can walk outside during a thick rain and find a replacement for your best friend, well, perhaps Little Johnny should have kept the tank gassed up in the garage until a worthier cause came along.

C