Alien Storm is a game I had on the Master System, which wasn’t as different as you’re probably imagining, but still, for this review me and my friend played through the Mega Drive version as … well, it’s actually two-player, for a start off. Plus being able to take screenshots easier helps too! The game is pretty much Golden Axe with a sci-fi setting rather than fantasy, but with one key difference: first-person reticle shooter segments! Let’s take a look.
Unlike the previous game, it’s not surprising I didn’t know Golden Axe III existed, as it was never released here in the UK. Hell, it wasn’t really released in the US either! Rumour has it the localisation team thought the game wasn’t worth porting because it was ugly looking and didn’t play very well… Can’t say they were wrong either, at least not graphically…
The two Golden Axe sequels have the same story attached to them as the two Final Fight sequels did: me and my friends had no idea they existed until the early 2000s when we saw them on a list of ROMs, though this time a Mega Drive list rather than SNES. Still, 2001-ish is nearly two decades ago now (?!) so I can still take two separate looks at them, even if the first one isn’t contemporary. Golden Axe II is as a sequel plays it extremely safe, but does it improve enough to overcome the lack of nostalgia?
Golden Axe was a very early Mega Drive game, and one of the first ones I played. I enjoyed it, but I never got fully into it, the closest being when me and a friend completed it when he slept over (which isn’t that impressive, looking back at how short the game actually is). Still! It’s a scrolling beat ‘em up, so let’s take a look!
Time to complete the Final Fight trilogy, again a trilogy I had no idea existed back in the day. Thankfully unlike Final Fight 2, the third entry actually improves on the old system and even adds some Street Fighter systems into the mix, but is it better than the original?
I remember back in 2004 me and my friend were reading a list of naughty-naughty ROMs and saw Final Fight 2 and Final Fight 3 listed for the SNES. We were confused, how could there have been two sequels to Final Fight and we’d never heard of them? Well, it turns out, it’s probably because they’re not very good (or at least this one isn’t), and beyond Maki appearing the Capcom vs. SNK 2, this game is never referenced again. Want more details? Read on!
Now if we’re talking about the games I played and actually owned growing up, then Final Fight is first, release date chronologically (though I actually first played it on the Mega CD, meaning after I played the Streets of Rage games…) and it’s a great example of the genre. It may have been inspired by Double Dragon’s success, but it itself inspired many games after it, mostly from Capcom themselves. So let’s take a look at Final Fight, the first of a trilogy, making the title technically incorrect…
Any game that has an opening that reads “The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?” deserves respect for not giving a crap about any kind of serious plot and having a laugh with itself, but is the actual game good? This is one of the only completely side-on, 2D Scrolling Beat ‘Em Ups I’ll be covering, but it’s also possibly the earliest example of the genre I actually played. Let’s see if I’m a bad enough dude to give this game a fair shake in 2020, shall we?
I brought Double Dragon III quite cheap at some point in my childhood, thinking it would “be like Streets of Rage”, a series I loved to death. Sadly, I was wrong, as Double Dragon III is … not good, or at least not the Mega Drive port anyway. It’s slow, unresponsive and not very pretty to look at, and it didn’t take long for me and my friends to head straight back to SoR2. Did I not give it a fair shake, or was I bang on the money? Let’s find out…
Scrolling Sundays moves into week two, and with it the second (and I’m pretty sure last) game on the list that I didn’t actually play back in the day. I’ve already reviewed the original, and DD III is up next week (which I actually owned on the Mega Drive…) so given I have access to it via Nintendo Online, I thought I may as well complete the original Double Dragon trilogy rather than leave this out. It’s safe to say “The Revenge” is a big improvement over the original, but by how much? Let’s find out!
Hogan Reviews 