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JoLiKMC

9 Game Reviews


The game is programmed well enough and everything seems to do what it's supposed to. It could have used more variation in level design, more traps, and so forth. The concept is good and can be pretty fun, though I think something similar has been done before with stationary objects rather than a physics-based one. ("Mario & Wario" comes to mind.) It's not a bad idea, but it was poorly executed.

Of the 12 levels, I only had problems with the last. Levels 1 through 11 do a decent job of teaching you the physics of the game, but there's really no tenseness to the levels, wherein Bob is in direct danger of being killed. It's just all busy-work and timing with a whole lot of "red herring" dangers.
The game is also challenging... but it's a completely artificial difficulty. Due to how the "grab" engine was coded, when the left mouse button is held down, there's an invisible sphere of influence which pulls the box toward the mouse cursor. If you move the cursor too fast, the box leaves the sphere of influence and thus, leaves your control. The box also seems to have some collision detection issues with the walls.

The sound effects are fine, but that music is one of the more annoying things I have ever heard in ANY game. I'm VERY glad there's a mute button.

All and all, this isn't the worst thing I've ever played on Newgrounds, but it's nothing to write home about, either.

Over three years later, and I still get all choked-up when I get to the end of the game. This is a work of art. And what makes it even better is the fact that it wasn't TRYING to be "art". It's just trying to be a fun little retro game.

It succeeds wholeheartedly in that regard.

Glitchy, but Classic Nonetheless

I've gotta say, this game is great in concept, but in reality, it won't work (and doesn't presently work) without a lot of bug-fixing...

BUG 1: The first person I played against was a guest, which is fine and dandy...but there's just one problem. Every time I went first, he ALWAYS trumped me! No matter what I picked, if I selected first, he would win! Is there some sort of exploit to the game for Guests or something? I wouldn't normally say anything, but this happened around seven times in a row. Nobody is that lucky.
BUG 2: The same guest I played apparently didn't select a character. At all. He ended up with the "default" or "debug" choice where it just randomly flashes a character sitting there, scrolling through all the available characters -- including the secret character(s) only available through Random Select! Once he finally lost, the game locked up because the "debug" character doesn't have a losing animation.
BUG 3: If you opponent leaves the match before they win or lose, you do not get credit for a victory. I don't know if this is an actual bug or just a simple oversight, but either way, it's very annoying.
BUG 4: Either people are playing non-stop, or the lobby is bugged, seeing as I have not seen a single game in there yet. A toggle or default setting to where people can see games in-progress would be nice.

Anyway, all that aside, this is a very neat interpretation of Pico vs. The Uberkids. Please take my words into consideration and I wish you the best of luck in future endevors!

Super Mario "Revived"? Not Even Close. . .

I actually had to shorten this review TWICE because it was too long. Go figure. So long smarmy opening paragraph. . .

Let's start with the graphics. Simple backgrounds, all taken from three places in Super Mario World: the plains levels, the cavern levels, and the fortress/castle levels. Mario and enemy sprites also come from said game. Now, some of them get a bit fuzzy for some odd reason, and the maces have some rotating issues, which really isn't that big of a deal. The Gameboy Advance gets away with it, afterall.

Now, style. . . THIS is where the game really starts to hurt. The game isn't even on par with the original Super Mario Bros. It's barely on par with Mario Bros., for that matter! There's nowhere near enough disversification in the game. Diversification is replaced by difficulty. Simply put, the game spits out a couple obstacles or enemies at you on one screen, then twice that on another, then quadrillion that on the last screen, or so. The difficulty factor is mostly evident in the Donut Plains stage where you're jumping over Fuzzys. The Fuzzys move in such a way that it makes it pretty damned hard to jump over them without dying. Jumping on the first one causes it to die, but if you jump on the second or third one, the first one comes back! What the Hell?
Tying in with that, the swinging maces in Bowser's Castle have some pretty lousy hit detection going on. When I played, there was at least a good dozen or possible TWO-DOZEN pixels between Mario and the mace, yet I died. Due to bad collision detection. Dandy.
Lastly to this section, what are we playing for? A crappy credits roll. No high score. No nifty ending. Just crappy text. . . But I digress. . . Let's move on.

The sounds and music are, as you may have guessed, typical Super Mario World sounds. Super Mario World Overworld music for the first two areas, then an absolutely awesome arrangement of the first and third kingdom themes from Super Mario Land. . . Which plays only ONCE then DIES. Additionally, the music used didn't really fit the areas, aside from the first area. Bowser's Castle has always been dark and foreboding. Using the chipper tune from Super Mario Land just doesn't do it justice. And why no underground theme for the cavern level?
Sound effects. . . The "Area Cleared" theme plays way too fast and uses far too many instruments, and the "Oops, You Died!" theme has a tendancy to drown out whatever might be playing in the background, if anything.(See note about Bowser's Castle above.) Otherwise, no complaints about that.

Violence. Cartoon violence. Mario gets hit and falls off the screen, just as he's been doing since his days as a plumber back in Mario Bros. That's about it.(Does not effect Overall Score.)

The controls of the game handle well enough. There's a noticable delay between jumps when you land which does indeed get you killed from time to time, particularly on the last level. . . There's also no real clever feel to the controls. You're forced to jump a certain height, you can't make Mario sprint, and walking and stopping is very static. No skidding to a halt. No slowing down. You just STOP. So yeah. . . I'm not very impressed. But at least it's a working control scheme.

Finally. . . This game just does not amuse me, but that's fine. It wasn't intended to be funny. I'm not altogether sure WHAT its intention was, but I know it was not intended to be funny.(Does not effect Overall Score.)

Sound and graphics save this otherwise poor excuse for front page material, and that's only because they were entirely pre-fab from the original Super Famicom game. What on Earth possessed you to upload this, outside of a spontanious thought of "Lookie what I can do!," I'll never know. But hey. . . Just because I don't like it doesn't mean that thousands of mindless sheep won't, either. You think about that for a while. . .

Fun With Mouse Cursors 201

Cursor effects. On the front page? . . .uh, no. It's original and all that junk, but it's hardly front page material. Short review time.

The grpahics were pretty decent with no real flaws that I could see. Maybe they could've been better. The effects were nice, though.

The style wasn't very interesting. You move the cursor around the screen and that's about it.

The sound was high-quality and top-notch. It even had stereo effects.(Does not effect Overall rating.)

No violence. Unless you think trickling water and burning smoke is violent.(Does not effect Overall rating.)

Interactivity was good and all, but maybe you could've added some sort of left-click event for some(or all) of the cursors.

I guess there was some humour in there somewhere. . . I didn't pick up on any. The Caterpillar thing was a little amusing, though.(Does not effect Overall rating.)

So. . . This was cute, sure. But once you scroll through all the cursors, it kind of loses its purpose and becomes boring. Cute, but not really front page material, and DEFINATELY not much of a game.

Point-and-Click

An odd, but pointless variation on the old "Kill the Pop-Ups" game. Even the "secrets" aren't worth the time it takes to get them.(Particularly if you're not a "loyal follower of all things Cycon" like I'm not. Jazz WHO?(See Cheat Sheet.) Feh.) Though the "Session with Cycon" thing got a few laughs.

The graphics were in perfect Windows XP style from the login screen to the actual "Desktop," right down to AIM itself. Everything was done perfectly. A LOT of attention to details were paid here, as you can guess. Not all buttons work, which is a disappointment, but I'll get into that later.

Obviously, the Style score didn't hurt this Flash much, dispite the fact it's such an abysmol score. The point of the game is to close the AIM windows by clicking the X buttons. Just the same as with the "Kill the Pop-Ups" game, you can also move the windows around. Again, even with the Secrets and other things, it's not very original. . .

The sound was clear, crisp, and pretty much flawless. Can't think of a negative thing to say about it except for the fact that the quotes when closing windows don't take very long to start looping.

No violence to speak of.(Does not effect Overall score.)

Interactivity. . . Now, this is where I was going to start babbling about things.
Firstly, not all the icons are clickable. Most, but not all. And half the ones you CAN click generally turn up a Windows-style Error Message(in-game event, not a genuine error). I was hoping you could just close AIM, or minimize it, or something.(I would think closing AIM would result in say. . .a Game Over, admittedly. But still.)
The other thing that gets me is that you can't right-click and close windows that way, which is a shame. And don't tell me it's impossible to do in Flash. Take a look at that Interactive Buddy's custom right-click menu. But I guess ya can't have everything in a quick game like this.

The humour was average. Nothing special. A few chuckles here and there, perhaps. But again, what's to be expected from a quick game like this?

So. . . Several Megabytes to download and only a few moments of play involved, secrets or not. Is it worth the time it would take for those poor Dial-Up users to download? Probably not. Is it worth MOST peoples' time? Eh. . .depends on the person. I didn't really like it, myself, but someone else might. In fact, a LOT of "someone elses" apparently dig this game. Fancy that.

This review brought to you by the letter "X". You certainly can't have X-Mas without "X"! Unless you're Christian.

A Very Pale Imitation Indeed

Wow. This is the absolute worst incarnation of the Tiger Electronics Castlevania II game I've ever seen. Of course. . .this is the ONLY incarnation, other than the actual handheld unit, but still. . .

First of all, the graphics are a pale imitation of the little LCD graphics. Very pale imitation. . . The graphics barely look a thing like the handheld device's graphics. If you were really trying to emulate the original graphics, the failed. By far. 3 out of 10. And this isn't even including the poor-quality scan of the unit itself, mind you. If I were counting that, I would likely knock off the other two points. . .

Now, the style flatly bombs. The movements of Simon, his Dagger tossable, and the Bone Pillars, are way too quick in comparison to the game. There's hardly any time to dodge out of the way, thanks to the fact you have to play with the mouse.(More on that later, though.) This gets a 1.

The original LCD had little bips and boops in it. Not a piece of very soft, quiet MIDI(I'm guessing) rendition of Vampire Killer in it. It had no music at all, in fact. So, in addition to the fact that this strays vastly from the original, the MIDI in the background is terrible. This also gets a 1.

The violence in this game is hardly excessive. That's just sloppy, false advertising. There is little more "violence" in this game than there is in an average Warner Bros. cartoon circa 1976. But then, the original game wasn't violent, either. So, either way, a 3 is a fair score for this one.

The controls for this game are horrendous. Unless there are some hidden keyboard controls for this game that I don't know about, anyway. Using the mouse to play an LCD game like this just does not work! Additionally, the Reset button also doesn't work at all. It's not even clickable. This drops the Interactivity down to a depressing 2.

So, let's give this the once-over, now. . . Badly-attempted graphics, no style, no sound and poor music, and very bad controls. What does that amount to? An extremely poor game. Oh, excuse me. A poor DEMO of a game. I pray you never actually make the full version of this, if this is all you can do.

Until next time,
Joseph Collins

It's Been Done. . .

It's not that I have anything against Tetris itself. . . Tetris is a wonderful, marvelous game, the likes of which spans generations and beyond. Who knew such a simplistic concept would spawn so many incarnations? Endless, even. . . But. . .this version of Tetris is hardly any different from any of the other endless versions out there. There's absolutely nothing about this game that sets it apart from anything else, aside from the fact it's Mario-themed.

In my opinion, this is hardly front page material, regardless of the fact so much work went into it. For one thing, it's way too big for its own good. A 4.4MB download is not worth sitting around all day, making rows of blocks in order to obtain a personal high score. . . And why is it so large? Because of the fact you put so much useless music into the game. . .most of which coming from Super Mario 64, I might add, which isn't bad, but as I said. . .useless. And pointless. If you wanna get technical about it, in fact, you could have completely NEGLECTED the music altogether and just let people play the game in silence.

Anyway. . .it's not a bad rendition overall. . . It's just boring. At least with Neave's Tetris -- the thing of which I believe you used as a basis for this, by the way. . . Correct me if I'm wrong. -- there was a High Score feature. But, yeah. . . Even though it's Tetris, I'm giving this a low Overall score. Or maybe BECAUSE it's just plain old Tetris. Whichever.

Xiao Xiao: The Final Fight

Pretty spiffy, Zhu. Even though you used Guy(from Final Fight, for those who don't know) as the main character for this game.

I dunno what to tell you about myself.
I like music and video games, and I've been for years.
 
Also, I like Roll. (:

 
Current header / icon from
"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney"
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Jo Li KMC @JoLiKMC

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Joined on 6/26/02

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