Rock 'N Roll Racing (SNES, Sega Genesis)

World's worst Gwar cover band. Buy the game HERE or HERE!

When I was a kid, the combination of "rock 'n roll" and "video games" seemed like such a novel and awesome combination! Like peanut butter-and-jelly (and the even more awesome peanut butter-and-chocolate,) it would seem like the ultimate mash-up on paper. Keep in mind,  I was roughly 8 years old in 1993 - which made me too young to know about the mediocre Journey game for the Atari and it would be roughly a year before the horrific Aerosmith game Revolution X would puke all over my Super NES.  Naturally, a young Chris should have been worry-free in renting a game called "Rock 'n Roll Racing" for his Super Nintendo. Sure, racing games that don't feature either motorcyclists hitting each other with chains or Mario chucking shells at his brother don't tend to appeal to me - but this game has rock music and a groovy sci-fi backdrop. So the question remains: was it a great game and does it hold up now?

A tiny bit of history first (...and I get all of my historical information from Google and Wikipedia!) Rock 'n Roll Racing was developed by Silicon and Synapse. Ya know - that tiny upstart that became Blizzard frickin' Entertainment - one of the biggest game studios today. Published by Interplay in 1993, it is actually the spiritual successor (or perhaps follow-up) to the SNES game RPM Racing from 91-92. RPM racing in itself was a reboot of Racing Destruction Set from EA for the Commodore 64. So that makes Rock 'N Roll Racing actually "RPM Racing II." Err...or "Racing Destruction Set III." I prefer to call it "RC Pro Am III: This Time With More Space Mutants!"

Early 90's Battle-Racing games are so unique!

I would love to break down the excellent plot to you guys & gals, but there isn't one. The gist is this: you control one of six main racers (with two additional hidden ones) around racetracks in a top-down, isometric view, and proceed to blow up, trap, smash, outrun and bump your competition off the road.  Oh, and it has something to do with intergalactic racing. And Rock 'n Roll. You control racers such as Tarquinn, Katarina, Snake...wait, Snake? I'm sorry sir - there is only one Snake and that's Snake Plissken. And yeah, Solid Snake - but he's just modeled after Mr. Badass Kurt Russell himself.

no caption necessary

I digress...

One of the hidden characters in this game is none other than Olaf from the Lost Vikings! You can find my review for that wonderful Silicon and Synapse game here. Each of the characters differ by having a particular bonus strength in different aspects of racing, such as cornering or top acceleration, etc. I have to admit - they look an awful lot like characters from the later Might and Magic games. Not exactly hardened, alien, rock 'n rollin', race car drivin' material. Nonetheless, the game's presentation should look familiar to anyone who has played RPM, or the R.C. Pro Am games for the NES.

Apparently, my space-hardened battle racer has +7 Agility!

One of the most important aspects of any racing game is how it controls - and I can safely report that it controls fairly well. The caveat being that you need to upgrade your car to get the full potential of your vehicle (which only makes sense.) At the beginning of the game (depending on who you pick) your car can sometimes slide off of the track easily or have a little difficulty staying straight. Sometimes you will find yourself picking a character who is more balanced on the road but has less acceleration: in the end though - the differences in characters are small enough that after you win a few matches and upgrade your car, it all sort of levels out. As a racing game, R&RR is successful. The excitement of racing is also helped by the frequent outbursts of the announcer. The game features voicework ala NBA Jam and it helps the atmosphere of the game. It's a little crude by today's standards, but back during its release - having voiceover work in games that weren't on the Sega CD was always a pretty impressive feat.

Joe Camel's new gig after corrupting our youth - sell them cars in a game!

So now that we know the "racing" portion of R&RR is pretty solid, how is the Rock 'n Roll? Admittedly, it's not the best selling point of the game.  Don't get me wrong, you've got great songs for racing, such as: "Radar Love" (on the Genesis version,) "Bad to the Bone, ""Paranoid," and "Highway Star." However, you would almost hope that since the game was being pitched with licensed Rock music as the key feature, that there would be a few more songs. I know that the Super NES and Genesis had a finite amount of space to hold all of that data, but you had NES games that all had unique and interesting songs for each and every level (such as Mega Man 1-6.) You can't tell me that 5-6 midi versions of rock songs was the most you could fit on a cart! What about some Motorhead, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Dio, Stooges, Ramones, or Van Halen? I know licensing can be a beast, but a few more songs wouldn't have killed us. I remember even when I was a kid that eventually I turned the sound off - lest I have to hear a chiptune version of Paranoid for the 400th time. It's amazing that the one selling feature of this game turned out to be its one Achilles' Heel.

I'll drive off this bridge if I have to hear "Highway Star" again...

Final thoughts? Rock 'n Roll Racing is an above average racing game for the Super NES and Sega Genesis. Being a fan of the RC Pro Am series and other racing games where shenanigans and violence are equally important to skill, this is another fun entry into the battle racing genre. Are there more accurate and overall better racing games on the Super NES? Sure. Try Top Gear 1 & 2 on for size. However, for a fun, fast way to kill a weekend, I recommend Rock 'N Roll Racing.

You may have gotten first place, but you're still no Snake Plissken!

Zero Tolerance (Genesis)

When I was in elementary school there were exactly two games that mattered for the computer: Wolfenstein 3d and Doom. There were always a handful of kids who broke the "no outside software" rule and installed one or both of those little .exe files right onto one of the PCs in the computer lab. While I couldn't dream of actually being caught breaking the "no outside software" rule, I loved playing Doom and Wolfenstein over at my friends' house. It was great having friends whose families adopted computers early! Running around blowing up imps with rocket launchers and icing mutant warriors with my trusty shotgun. It was good, clean, all-American gaming that helped an otherwise docile kid vent his frustration with bullies, homework, and having to empty the dishwasher.

By the time high school rolled around I was more into games like Leisure Suit Larry and Monkey Island than any FPS's, but there will always be a small place in my heart for blowing up aliens and totin' around a BFG or a chaingun. However, early first-person shooters had a pretty lousy track record on home consoles. Doom and Wolfenstein 3d had such popularity on the PC, that they were ported (rather poorly) to the Super NES as well as a handful of other home consoles. FPS's on home consoles didn't really get it right until at least the 64 bit era rolled around when games such as Hexen on the Sega Saturn and N64 or Duke Nukem 3d hit consoles. While the Super NES could handle representing these games in at least a relatively close port - it was pretty hard to buy that the Genesis could pull off anything close to an accurate FPS experience (without resorting to that abomination known as the 32x.) That is - until one day in high school I randomly came across the game "Zero Tolerance" at my local game store.

Zero Tolerance is a first-person shooter developed by Technopop and released in 1994. It's unique because to the best of knowledge it is one of - if not the only FPS for the Genesis. You control a squad of soldiers known as codename "zero tolerance" sent to an orbital space station known as Europe-1 with the mission of destroying some alien baddies before Europe-1 blows up. That's already at least a smidgeon more plot than any of the first two Doom games have and just a little less than Wolfenstein 3d. While it's nice to have a good, rich plot driving you through a FPS (ala Half Life 1 & 2) sometimes killin' stuff is just enough, thank you very much.

So bloody...so pixelly!

In your journey through 40 stages (separated into 3 different sections) you have a 5-person team to destroy these extraterrestrial enemies. In other words, you have 5 lives - if all of your crew members die, it's lights out for codename zero tolerance and you have to start over. Each of your team members has their own unique talents ranging from a communications/marksman expert, surveillance specialist, expert in hand-to-hand combat and evasive techniques, a medic who rocks with a pistol, and demolition expert. As you can tell, each team member has a little something extra to the table so it's helpful to have the right person for the job (though ultimately what you'll be doing most is shooting blocky brown aliens in the melon.)

I think that alien is wearing Uggs. Just sayin'.

While I would characterize the controls for most home ports of FPS's like Doom to be stiff; the controls for Zero Tolerance are surprisingly good considering the limitations of playing with a controller. Levels are laid out with a lot of open area to walk around so it's not often that you'll get stuck on a wall or some stray pixel that will lock you up unlike other console shooters. The only real annoyance with the controls seems to be an intentional design choice which is what happens whenever your character gets shot. Getting hit by a bullet in this game is the equivalent of having Mortal Kombat's Goro grab you by the neck and toss you 400 yards. For whatever reason, you fly back (sometimes through doors or across rooms) and fall to the ground, slowing your reaction time tremendously every time you get a good solid hit. While this might add a pinch of realism to getting sprayed by shotgun shells, it certainly can be annoying for anyone who's used to walking through a hail of gunfire with nothing but bare fists and a bloodied smile. Turning around to face an enemy behind you can also be a pain as well; however, the enemies seem to move at a relatively medium clip so it doesn't feel like you're being cheated by slow camera movement.

Blocky still looks better than those smudgey, venetian blind wide shots.

Even though the graphics and sound are nothing to write home about nowadays, Zero Tolerance is actually a pretty well presented game as far as Genesis games are concerned - especially considering what an undertaking it must have been to develop a FPS for the console. The graphical capabilities of the Sega Genesis are limited when compared to the Super NES, so there aren't a huge amount of games that tried to experiment with 3d pixels and polygons ala Starfox & Pilotwings or games that pushed limits like Donkey Kong Country and Stunt Race FX. Heck, look at the Sega Cd and the 32x - two add on consoles developed just to compete with the power and appeal of the Super NES (a system that had the same amount of bits but a lot more power and potential.) That being said, this game is the equivalent of those boundary-pushing SNES games for the Genesis. It was relatively revolutionary for the time and it's pretty amazing today to consider the lack of attention this game has gotten over the years, remaining more or less a cult classic.

Let there be no mistake, though; the graphics are crude. You have a vague idea what the enemies are supposed to look like - but they are mostly just a blurry flurry of pixels. The levels are well designed and have a lot of detail when you get up close to things like walls, signs, doors, etc - it just looks like you're peering through a grimy window with sideways Venetian blinds from far away. The music is fairly stock, but tolerable (excuse the pun.) It sounds like your typical sparse instrumentation mixed with military music run through a midi processor. Nothing that would have been out of place in Wolf 3d or Doom, but nothing that will start a gaming revolution. The sound effects are good for Genesis standards but not as varied as they could be. There aren't enough grunts, howls, and other monster noises to make the game as creepy as it could be. Gunfire sound effects, however; sound pretty crisp and realistic - better than even a lot of Super NES games I have encountered.

The actual difficulty of the game is relatively low, except when accounting for the flaws in control and the sheer amount of enemies that get tossed your way in nearly every room. I mean it - there are usually 5 or more baddies in each room, so the best technique is to take on the Wolfenstein 3d approach; shoot first, walk out of the room, and then wait for the enemies to come to you and spray 'em at the door. At 40 levels this is an impressively long game and that adds to the difficulty a bit. Also, the fact that you cannot get your level passwords without clearing the level completely also adds a unique twist to the difficulty: meaning you have to either beat the game in one sitting, or go back in there and kill more baddies until the level is cleared!

I had a boo-boo.

Zero Tolerance is not a perfect game, but given the Genesis' limitations and the scarcity of home console FPS' (especially original ones designed for the console rather than ported) it's a unique experience. It's also typically available for a pretty cheap price and Lukie Games has it right now! If you're on the lookout for good and unique Genesis titles I recommend tossing a copy of Zero Tolerance in your cart as well. It's money well spent and a really fun time if you dig blowing away aliens!

The Lost Vikings (SNES, Genesis)

Interplay's "Lost Vikings" is one of those games that I heard about for YEARS before finally playing it. I'm serious. From 9th grade until I finally played it in senior year of high school I had my best friend, classmates, neighbors, Blockbuster employees, mail carriers, garbage men, and CPAs all tell me that I absolutely had to play this game. With all of that ridiculous hype, you would think I would either praise this game as God's gift to gamers or cast it into the fiery pits of gamer hell along with "Shaq-Fu" and "Dudes with Attitude."

Truth be told, it belongs in neither category - which is a good thing and a bad thing.

Let's start off with all of my personal, nitpicky complaints first - that way we can try and be objective about this whole thing. I have a love/hate relationship with these type of puzzle-formers. "Lemmings" is probably in my top 30 games of all time list - but after about an hour or so of watching those little green boogers explode into a pixelly mess or splat like raindrops from a tall platform - I want to throw my controller through the flatscreen. That being said, I have a lot of experience with these types of games. I have walked many a "Lemming", "Troddler", "Human", or even Krusty's very own "rats" to their early gaming graves - so sad to say, a game like Lost Vikings no longer has the fresh coat of originality it may have had back in '92. So is that a fault of developers Silicon & Synapse - the company who would later become the behemoth known as Blizzard? Well, no. Out of Troddlers, Humans, Lemmings, and Krusty's Fun House - only Lemmings predates Lost Vikings, so it isn't like this had become a glutted market yet. However, all of the other puzzle-formers came out the same year - so it's hard to compete when so many similar games come out at the same time.

Booooing! Hey, that block is supposed to be up here!

Out of that batch of games, Lost Vikings plays closest to "Humans" in that you switch between a handful of characters and combine their strengths to reach the goal, rather than controlling a few out of a much larger pack and just arranging the talents of a select few to get the whole tribe out of the exit. I know that sounded like the same thing twice, but anyone who's played these might know what I'm talking about. In easier terms - 3 Vikings enter, and if you did it right, 3 Vikings leave. In Lemmings, 40 Lemmings enter, you make a handful parachute down and create a bridge so that hopefully, 29 or better will leave.

Crispy fried Viking. I'm NO GOOD at this game...

Now that I've explained my personal bias against puzzle/platformers - let's discuss the myriad of things that Lost Vikings gets right. First, this is the kind of game that benefits greatly from having a partner or two. Vikings lets you have up to three players control Erik, Olaf, and Baleog through these spaceships, pyramids, etc. It is a game that controls pretty easily with one player - you hit the L & R buttons to switch between Vikings and move them into position. However, having two or three players cuts the time down tremendously and makes chores that require; for instance, Olaf to make his shield into a platform for Erik to jump upon, much easier. You still have to coordinate the strategy with your real life friends and keep them from jumping down pits or getting zapped by lasers, thus negating all of the planning you guys did - but that's all on you, buddy! It's nice every once in a while to find a game that allows you to have more than two players at a given time (provided you have a multi-tap.)

For the most part the graphics are pretty well done. Your Vikings are fun, colorful and expressive. Jump down a long pit and watch your the facial expressions your Vikings make! Hi - larious. Their hair flips through the air, they have clean and fluid animations whenever they are running, jumping, shooting arrows, and more. The backgrounds and level designs are a bit of another story. For the most part, levels are fairly bland and repetitive with the same few sprites repeating constantly. I'll admit though, it's very hard to make a spaceship look exciting and many other games have lamer level design and background graphics. The music is nice and funky. It has that early 90's hip-hop stank all over it, and you half expect M.C. Hammer to bust out or Vanilla Ice to bring his "Ninja Rap." While not quite as funky as a game like Toejam and Earl, the soundtrack is fun and works well. The sound effects leave something to be desired as there really aren't too many to speak of. That being said, the presentation of Lost Vikings is better than average.

An example of some of the sassy Viking humor you'll see!

Side Note: The screenshots provided are from the Super NES version. There is a slight difference between the SNES and Genesis versions graphically speaking (I would argue the Super NES one is more detailed) as is usually the case when games are ported across both systems.

The difficulty level is exactly as you would expect from a Puzzle/Platformer and is pretty typical of the genre. If you can get 100% of your Lemmings out alive in at least 25% of the levels in that game - you will probably smoke through Lost Vikings in a short weekend. Folks like me who are clumsy at these games will have considerably more trouble - especially once you have to rely on multiple Vikings simultaneously and you don't have a partner to back you up. You will die - constantly. Rumor has it that the Genesis version has more levels than the SNES version - which is good for you guys and gals who want even more of a challenge. The box boasts "over 40 rip-roaring levels." I can give you a guess as to how many I completed successfully in all of the times I've played this game, but let's just say I never saw my way out of that friggin' space ship.

A Viking's Funeral. Get used to seeing this cutscene...

Lost Vikings is an above average puzzleformer in a sea of similar games. The animations are smooth, the gameplay is top-notch among this genre of game, and there is plenty of challenge to be had here. It's a real treat to find 3 player games and this would definitely make for a fun party game (until one of your friends calls you a dirty name because you guys had to see the "Viking funeral" animation for the 400th time.) It's difficult, it's generally a fun time, and it's available for both the SNES and Genesis over at Lukie Games right freakin' now! Get over there!

New RetroN 3 Systems - Red or Black - Plays NES SNES and Genesis Games

We now have the Red and Black RetroN 3 systems by Hyperkin now in stock! These systems let you play Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Genesis systems all on one console. They also include 2 wireless controllers which is very nice - but better still for those of us that like to use the original controllers the RetroN 3 has 2 ports for the NES, SNES and Genesis controllers so you can play your games the way they were meant to be played - with authentic original controllers!