“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

In 1992, when adventure games still reigned supreme with PC gaming nerds, LucasArts released one of their most beloved titles, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. It had everything a fan of both the adventure genre and the Indiana Jones movies could want.

You get to play as Indiana, traveling the world, fighting Nazis and solving the mystery of a lost civilization. What more could a fan ask for?

Fate of Atlantis is another in the long line of SCUMM adventure games. It uses the now famous point and click interface where the bottom half of the screen is used to make sentences wherein you “use kerosene on spiral design”. As you would expect, the bulk of the game consists of talking to the NPC’s, collecting various items and using those items to solve puzzles.

Being Indiana Jones, you also have to do a little archeological research. To keep things interesting, Fate of Atlantis has a set of solutions found in Plato’s Lost Dialog (a book within the game you have to retrieve) that are randomized. There are also three different paths you can choose which even more drastically change how to solve the game’s puzzles.

It’s up to you whether or not you want to head out into the world on your own, with your former colleague Sophia Hapgood, or with fists a’blazing. On the wits path, Indiana goes out on the adventure solo, relying on his wits and charm to solve the puzzles. The team path allows you to defer to Sophia, who will help you get on the good side of otherwise unfriendly characters. And of course the fists path requires lots of keyboard based fisticuffs.

No matter which path you choose, your mission is to figure out what happened to Atlantis and stop the Nazi’s from acquiring it’s rumored hidden power. All in a days work for everyone’s favorite globe trotting, beefy guy punching, whip wielding archaeologist.

Why did I pick this game?

As a fan of both adventure games and the real Indiana Jones films (you know Crystal Skull doesn’t count), I am amazed I didn’t play this game sooner. This is a recurring theme when it comes to the LucasArts series of adventure games. Outside of Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, I mostly played the Sierra adventure games, like Space Quest.

That isn’t a knock against the LucasArts games in the least. I just personally didn’t have access to their games back then. That’s the real reason I chose Fate of Atlantis. I had always heard good things about it, but never had a chance to play it for myself.

How does it hold up with time?

There are two big factors that go into an old adventure game holding up. First, is the story entertaining? In most games, story isn’t really all that important, but what always drew me to adventure games was that feeling that you were playing through a Saturday Morning Cartoon.

Despite the fact that the voice actor for Indiana Jones sounds nothing like Harrison Ford, the voice work and story are both well executed. It’s a little on the cheesy side, but the quirky sense of humor associated with the LucasArts games is definitely intact.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, do the puzzles hold up? This is the tricky one. Now that the answer to any puzzle can be looked up in a few seconds on GameFaqs, it’s a lot tougher to determine. Was a puzzle just too confusing or poorly designed, or would you have eventually solved it? Having finished several classic adventure games back in the day as a collaboration with friends, I think Fate of Atlantis would be one that we wouldn’t have spent too much time getting completely stuck in.

When I did find myself getting stuck and referring to a guide, none of the solutions were so obtuse that I had a “I never would have thought of that” moment. I do condone looking up the answers if you are so stuck in the game that it is sapping your enjoyment.

The biggest thing that didn’t hold up for me was the combat. Thankfully, it is completely optional in both the Wits and Team paths.

All in all, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis still holds up as a great example of the adventure genre. If you haven’t played it yourself, you should really give it a shot.

We all have those games that we miss the first time around. With the busy release schedule of modern gaming, no one has time to play everything. That is why we at WingDamage present to you “Fashionably Late Reviews“. This is our series on games from the current generation of consoles that we may have missed on their initial release, but have gone back to experience now.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is one of those titles that I missed the first time around. I think a lot of it had to do with being burned out on Star Wars in general. There has certainly been an over-saturation of the franchise leading up to, and ever since, the prequel movies.

However, I am a long time fan of the original trilogy, as well as many of the “expanded universe” novels. It was always my plan to go back to The Force Unleashed and the Ultimate Sith Edition was the perfect excuse to do so.

The story of The Force Unleashed is exactly the kind of thing that gets my nerd juices flowing. Darth Vader is the evil and unpredictable menace that we all grew up loving. Instead of running around telling everyone how much he hates sand, he has enlisted a secret apprentice whom he found as a child, Starkiller. He is the son of a Jedi Knight and has an extremely strong connection to the force.

Under the leadership of Vader, he has become a formidable Sith warrior, and Vader plans to one day use him to kill the Emperor. This leads to some fun twists and turns in the plot that I will not spoil for you here. What I will say is that it takes you to some very fun and very fitting locales that any Star Wars geek will get a kick out of.

"Silly Stormtroopers and their turrets."

The Force Unleashed is a third person action game where you combine lightsaber combos with force powers to wreak havoc on your enemies. As you progress, you will level up, gaining points that can be spent on increasing your number of force powers, their potency, and unlocking new combos with your lightsaber. You can also use the right trigger to grab and throw objects from the environment as well as enemies.

As you can imagine, a lone Stormtrooper won’t do much against a trained Sith, so the game is good at throwing lots of enemies at you at a time. To make things more interesting, you will also face some of the best armed Stormtroopers in Emperor Palpatine’s army. Some have been given sniper rifles, some jetpacks, others shields that can block force attacks. If the ones in the movies had been this well equipped, the Rebel Alliance wouldn’t have stood a chance. Thank the force for budget cuts.

There are several types of mini-bosses that you will come across during the adventure, from AT-ST’s to Rancors. These are fought mostly with your normal moves, but can be finished off via QTE’s (Quick Time Events) that are used to give the game a cinematic feel. Bad QTE’s can ruin an otherwise good game. Thankfully the ones in Unleashed are fairly forgiving.

Since much of the game revolves around tracking down remnants of the Jedi, you will fight several of them as bosses throughout the story. While some of these battles can be pretty tough, they are a lot of fun. They often require using the environment and a variety of force powers to keep from being knocked on your ass by a well placed Force Push.

The biggest issue I had with the game was the jumping mechanic. While it does allow for a double jump and a dash forward on top of that, it is really hard to tell where you are going to land. It also seems a little too fast, making it feel rushed and awkward. I was very glad that there were no major platforming sections or the bad jumping could have ruined the experience.

A big draw for the completionists out there are all the hidden Jedi and Sith Holocrons, as well as secondary missions. Sith Holocrons give you temporary power-ups, while the ones of the Jedi variety give you bonus points to spend on your levels, new lightsaber colors, and lightsaber power-ups.

The Ultimate Sith Edition comes with all the currently available DLC. This includes a bunch of costumes for your character (including C3P0, which can lead to hilarious results), and three bonus levels.

The first level has Starkiller going to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, where he is looking for information on his father. This level was included on the Wii and PS2 and PSP versions of the game, but was originally cut from the 360 and PS3 editions. It has some interesting new areas to explore, but is slowed down by a section where you must undergo various Jedi trials. One has you using the force to move a ball along a line, and if you vary too far from that line, you have to start over. That really doesn’t do anything for me. Level design, guys!

Second is Tatooine in which Starkiller, now the Emporer’s right hand in an interesting “What If?” scenario, goes in search of R2D2 and C3p0 to find the missing Death Star plans. You will fight your way through Jaba’s palace, face Boba Fett, and a massively powered-up version of Ben Kenobi. The boss fights alone made this one my favorite of the three bonus stages.

The final bonus stage is the battle of Hoth, because it hasn’t quite been in enough video games. This time you are on the side of evil, trying to hunt down Luke Skywalker rather than flying around in a snow speeder trying to trip up AT-AT’s. Here you end up fighting a lot of Wampas, some automated defense, and most deadly of all, a platforming sequence. The platforming section in this bonus level solidified my opinion that if there had been any of these in the game proper, it would have really dragged down the over-all experience for me. The battle with Luke at the end was fun, though, even though they gave him a “farmboy Luke” level of whininess in his voice.

Star Wars the Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition is a good little package. The DLC levels and skins are fun, but had they not come packed in, I couldn’t see myself paying for them at their current price. This is coming from a guy that is in no way anti-DLC, as is the popular stance of many gamers. When it is worth it, I am all for it, but $10 a pop for those extra levels would not be worth it to me.

For the Star Wars or action fan in your life, Star Wars The Force Unleashed is an easy recommendation. While it is not without its flaws, it is a lot of fun. The fresh take on familiar set pieces from one of my favorite franchises is hard to beat. But honestly, I hope they do beat it with the upcoming sequel.

This review is based on a the Xbox 360 version of Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, purchased by the reviewer.

"REAL adventure is waiting for you, DS."

I’m the type of gamer who mostly plays old Sierra and LucasArts adventure games. Some people might not even consider me a gamer at all, in fact. I didn’t have a console until very recently. My circa 2002 computer may be running like a champ, but it had some lagging problems running Psychonauts… in 2005. So, modern computer gaming is also out. I was lucky enough to be visited by the Wing Damage Fairy a while back, who blessed me with a DS.

I was excited about rumblings of the DS being the promised land of adventure gaming; I’d read on many a message board and blog that since the console’s point-and-click stylus interface was ideal for the genre I would have a bevy of adventure games to choose from once I had a look around. I was bummed to find out, however, that there is not, in fact, a whole lot of quality adventure games on the DS. At least not the kind I’m looking for.

Read after the jump to see my findings.

It started out promising. WingDamage-a Claus gifted me a copy of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and I loved it, despite it not being a straightforward adventure game. I was thirsty for more. After a basic Google search I had assembled a sizable list of games to check out. I was drawn to the game Trace Memory. I liked the look of the art and it’s plot. A ghost story that takes place on the ominously named Blood Edward Island? Yes, please. But what I found when I played the game was an easy-as-pie adolescent drama that lasted two brief evenings. I had caught wind of these flaws in online reviews of Trace Memory previous to purchasing it, but my optimism had blinded me to them.

Going back over my list of possible games, they all seemed a little off. Professor Layton is apparently a puzzle game in adventure game clothing. Reports of diminished graphics and a poor interface have scared me off of Syberia. Middling reviews have caused me to shun Insecticide. Ugly art, and the threat of the same developer that released Trace Memory, kept me from checking in to Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (although this review of it almost made me change my -bad pun alert- tune). Time Hollow gives off a tween vibe similar to Trace Memory. Hey wait, the Secret Files games look good, I’ll take them! Ah, no, not available in the US. Of course. I felt like I was spinning my wheels, so I set my DS down for a few months.

I recently came back to it, and found a game that looks okay. Broken Sword: Director’s Cut. It’s ported from PC, but it looks like it was redesigned for the DS and not just clumsily shoved into a new format. It looks like it makes good use of the DS interface, which is important to me.  I’m not a big fan of straight forward dramas however, which it looks like Broken Sword might be, and the comparisons to The DaVinci Code are kind of scaring me. But I clearly have to take what I can get here.

If I were the Don Corleone of the Adventure family on the DS, I would get Dave Gilbert on the case. I would play Emerald City Confidential or any of his Blackwell games on the DS in a heartbeat, and they’d look great on the shelf. I’d get Telltale with the program. I can’t imagine Monkey Island or Sam & Max not making a total killing if properly ported. I don’t think the Days series would do well on the DS, but wouldn’t an original Yahtzee game blow everyone’s minds? He really knows how to make limited graphics and sound sing. I think any of these entities would make a big splash if they released something on the DS, a system that I don’t think gets a lot of high profile, original releases that are of interest to the mainstream gaming community. There’s endless potential here, and I’m dying to seeing it realized.

Don’t get me wrong, the DS is a great system. It’s got a fun personality, a unique interface and a lot of games that make it worth having. I think it’s the only system I’d really want to have. But I am disappointed that it doesn’t have more of the specific type of adventure games I was hoping for.

Am I totally off base? Are there some amazing gems that I’ve missed? Am I wrong about any of the games that I dismissed above? Am I a cranky old man, asking the new world order to get off his lawn?

Let me know, internet.

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Rather than releasing a trilogy of Indiana Jones games like they did with Star Wars, Lucasarts and Factor 5 teamed up to make one game that spanned all three films. In Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures, you take on the roll of everyone’s favorite 1940′s action-serial throwback, Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, JR.

The core of Greatest Adventures is an action-platformer. You start each level with a single grenade and your fists. I’m not really sure why you start without your whip, because almost every level and checkpoint immediately gives it to you. It seemed like an unnecessary step. Maybe they figured kids love collection crap in games. You occasionally get a gun as well, but I found the whip to be a much more effective weapon. Not only does it do more damage, but there are special points throughout the game where you need it to swing across chasms that are otherwise to wide to jump.

The game starts you in Raiders of the Lost Ark, so after an initial platforming stage, there is the obligatory “running from the boulder” level. At least in GA you are Indiana Jones running from the boulder and not just some other character emulating this famous movie scene.

"I'm impressed at how many hills this thing made it up."

The levels provide a good mix of combat, exploration, and platforming. To keep things more interesting, they even throw you a few curveballs. On the first stage of Doom,  there are cross-hairs chasing you down. As you progress through the level, you have to also hide behind tables and chairs to avoid being shot by the gangsters off-screen. In the Catacombs of Venice scene in Crusade, you have to quickly progress and get to safe areas where you can duck out of the way of giant walls of flame. These are both pretty good references to the films, abstracted into a video game context. I just think they would have been better had they not been one-hit kills.

There are even a few Mode 7 “vehicle” stages to change things up. Out of the game’s twenty-eight stages, there are only three of these, all of which play differently: the snow level in Temple of Doom where they ride down the mountain on a raft, the mine-cart, and the biplane from Last Crusade. The rafting level is pretty easy. You just have to dodge the trees and remember to jump when you see a cliff.

In the mine-cart, you control a cross-hair. Your job is to shoot the junk on the track that is in your way, the switches to make sure you don’t go down a closed or broken path, and the other guys shooting at you. This one can get really frustrating.

Then there is the biplane. This requires you to shoot down twenty enemy planes (a lot like the Mode 7 levels in Star Wars). The biggest problem with this one is how non-maneuverable your plane is vs. how much damage the enemies can do to you. It is a lot.

As with all video games based on movies, the bosses also have a strange level of abstraction to them. Major Arnold Toht jumps around like a mad man throwing Molotov cocktails in Marion’s bar while it is engulfed in flames. Belloq, dressed as one of the Jewish priests, shoots ghosts at you from the Ark of the Covenant while jumping around like a mad man.

Perhaps strangest of all is the final boss, Donovan. After drinking from the wrong grail he turns into a crazy skeleton creature, which proceeds to jump around like a mad man.

"Do you guys have directions to Castlevania?"

The sprite work in this game is amazing. Factor 5 did a great job on the SNES with bringing all of the exotic locales from the movie to life. They also did some great work with the cinematics. The still frames straight from the movies and digitized into the game came out looking great.

The sprite animation is top notch on all the major characters. They even threw in some fun little touches, like the monkeys in Cairo that throw “bad dates” at you.

The score comes straight from the films, recreated fantastically into 16-bit sound. They even threw in a few voice samples, like Sean Connery’s famous “I’ve lost him” quote on the Game Over screen.

Why did I pick this game?

I originally intended to include this along with our retrospective of the Super Star Wars games, but ran out of time.

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues released this week and Greatest Adventures came out for virtual console (If you are interested in picking up a copy on VC, it will set you back 800 Wii Points). It only seemed appropriate to revisit the game now that we have a weekly segment.

While the game’s lack of a debug mode made me remember it less fondly than the Star Wars games, it is still one of those games of the 90′s we would play over and over again.

How does it hold up?

I was surprised to find that the platforming was tighter than in any of the Star Wars games. The levels were, on the whole, more forgiving (except the Mode 7 ones) and you don’t take damage from enemies you just killed exploding in your face.

Unlike the Star Wars games, this one is actually a little better than I remember it. It is still not one of the great classics by SNES standards, but I did have fun with it. There were some frustrating sections, like getting lost in the platforming section in the “Shanghai Streets” stage or when knife throwers in The Last Crusade would be across a jump and knock me into a pit over and over. This was no where near Ninja Gaiden levels of frustration, mind you, so I was able to look past those and enjoy the ride.

It does make the small list of Indiana Jones games that are actually fun and is worth checking out for that fact alone.

"I've lost him."

Hey WingerDamagees. (Is there a good phrase for the readers of this site yet?) This is MrColinP, taking a quick reprieve from my temporary Wing Damage exile to let you know about a series of LucasArts themed illustrations that I just completed for the great LucasArts and post-LucasArts centered news site MixnMojo.com. It’s been a dang eventful and joyous few months for MixnMojo and the fans of what they cover, what with the new Monkey Islands, the imminent arrival of Brutal Legend, the comparatively quiet release of A Vampyre Story and the just previewed DeathSpank.

MixnMojo is running a series of retrospectives on each of the classic LucasArts adventure games and were nice enough to let me do illustrations for three of them. Three of the best ones, actually. Links below the break.

There are two links for each illustration. One for my blog entry on that illustration, and one to the article it was created for where you can view the illustration itself.

Day of the Tentacle:
My blog entry
MixnMojo article

Full Throttle:
My blog entry
MixnMojo article

Grim Fandango:
My blog entry (including lots of way cool wallpapers!)
MixnMojo article

Cool! Which is your favorite Wind Gamagers?

"Not to be confused with the non-super return."

I remember being quite fond of all three games in the “Super Star Wars” series when the Super Nintendo was still the latest and greatest. After-all, even to this day my favorite genre remains the 2D platformer. Because of this, it was especially jarring to pull “Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” out of my retro shelf only to find out my childhood memories were about to be shattered.

It’s amazing how much better games can appear through the rose-tinted glasses of our memories. Eight-year-old Jesse would like me to believe that Return of the Jedi is a flawless platformer on par with other greats in the genre. Eight-year-old Jesse is a filthy liar.

Maybe it was the fact that I was obsessed with Star Wars at the time, satisfied that I no longer had to use my imagination (coupled with some Star Wars action figures) like a sucker to “play” in that universe. Maybe it was the fact that, when you’re eight, even renting a game is a huge financial ordeal that forces you to latch on to the precious game that your money brought home. Either way, the only thing that could save this game from present-day Jesse was nostalgia, and frankly that just wasn’t enough.

"Luke! Use the floating rebel tokens!"

One of my biggest problems with this game is the play-control. Jumping, one of the most important actions a platformer can have (unless you’re Bionic Commando), feels terrible. If you want to perform a full jump, naturally you’re going to be holding down the jump button. Unfortunately, it’s “all too easy” to perform additional unwanted jumps, especially if you’re jumping to an especially high ledge. The game features a double jump, but half the time the game decided to count my first jump as the second… just to mess with me.

The controls for using a blaster are based on the order in which you press the buttons. If you hit forward on the d-pad before hitting the fire button, you’re set to “run and gun”. But if you shoot before hitting forward, you will stand in place and the d-pad will be used solely to aim your weapon. This all sounds fine in theory, but I found myself in many sticky situations where I would want to run away and accidentally be stuck standing in place instead. I would have rather seen the “L” and “R” buttons used to aim diagonally up and down like in “Super Metroid”.

But alas, they needed those two buttons to make up for another one of the game’s flaws. The game features some poorly executed level design peppered throughout certain areas resulting in blind jumps. Or at least the jumps would be blind if you couldn’t use the shoulder buttons to look up and down.

"In the special edition, that wall fired first."

In spite of all these shortcomings, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem dealing with them if they weren’t combined with atrocious hit detection. I often wondered if Luke had some sort of symbiotic link with his lightsaber, as it seemed to take damage with me in some instances. There were a few unfortunate checkpoint locations that resulted in me sustaining seemingly random damage from enemies who entertained the thought of attacking me before my next attempt to take down the current stage’s boss.

Even though this game effectively crapped all over my childhood memories, it isn’t without its good aspects. There are a variety of characters to choose from as the game progresses. Each of them has at least one key ability that sets them apart from the others and it’s nice to be able to approach the levels with different strategies, though Luke can no longer toggle between the blaster and lightsaber as he could in the past two games.

The graphics are nice for the most part. There are a few clever uses of mode 7 in both the game’s opening cinematic and the obligatory vehicle levels. Each of the famous characters are easily recognizable and there is enough variety in the enemies and backgrounds to at least keep things interesting. It’s also a treat to hear SPC renditions of the classic tunes from the movie.

The vehicle levels are very “hit or miss”. Strangely enough, the game actually starts out with a level involving the drive to Jabba’s palace. And by that I mean the drive to a random location eight-hundred miles away from Jabba’s palace (get walking!). There are a couple levels where you take control of the Millennium Falcon and take down a set number of Tie Fighters. These levels were actually mildly fun.

Two of the vehicle levels, however, I found to be incredibly annoying. The speeder bike scene through Endor in which you have to wait for Scout Troopers to fly in front of you so can shoot them from behind, and the escape from the second death star. Just as the game started with a vehicle level, it ends with one. From inside the cockpit without so much as a reticule, you must not only dodge, but rotate the axis of the ship through narrow pathways. Hitting “SELECT” during this level will toggle the option at the top of the screen between “real” and “flat”. Through no fault of the options’ names, I found this just swapped the strafing and tilting buttons. Even eight-year-old Jesse remembers hating this level.

"Real or Flat? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!"

If you are a huge fan of “Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” even after playing it recently, don’t let this review get to you. The game is still not without its charms. However, unlike many of the other SNES and NES  games I’ve decided to give a present-day playthrough, this one just didn’t stand the test of time that my memory thought it would.

It is safe to say that “Super Star Wars” came out for the SNES at the perfect time during my youth. It was 1992, so I was about 12 years old. My friends and I were just starting to discover our love of the Star Wars films. We had all watched the movies growing up, but had not yet gone into that phase where we were obsessing over them.

One of us rented “Super Star Wars” and we were all hooked. We started delving more and more into the universe, picking up the expanded universe novels, which at the time were just starting to get off the ground. By the time “Super Return of the Jedi” came out in 1994, we were full fledged Star Wars nerds.

So how does “Super Star Wars” stack up now?

The game does a decent job of at least loosely following the plot of the movie to more of a degree than most movie tie-in games of the era do. You start as Luke, but once you get to the Cantina and recruit Han and Chewbacca, you are able to choose whichever of the three of them you want at the start of each level.

"Bantha Fight"

Luke starts with the weakest blaster, but also has his lightsaber (once you have found Ben Kenobi). Han and Chewie both start with the second blaster, making them the better choices once the option is there. Throughout the levels, you can gain power ups to your blaster, collect lightsabers which increase your total health, and grab miscellaneous item like shields, more time and point multipliers.

With a few changes, this game would hold up a lot better than it does. While the platforming works fine in most levels, there are a few spots where it is needlessly frustrating. The level most people give up on in this game is the sandcrawler. It is a vertical platforming stage where a missed jump can make you have to start the whole climb over again. If there had been more checkpoints or a little tighter controls on the jumps, it would have avoided a lot of frustration.

The second example is the assault on the Death Star where, as you progress in the level, Tie-Fighters endlessly spawn and fly at high speeds toward your character. While fighting the normal enemies, you have to constantly try to get to higher ground so that you can jump over them. To say it was “kind of silly” seems like an understatement.

"Han, about to take a Tie-Fighter to the face"

The other major problem I had with the game was the endlessly spawning enemies. Even if you take the time to fight off all the guys on the screen, it immediately re-spawns all of them and fills the entire place back up again within seconds. Some breathing room would have made the game go a lot smoother. The crazy trade-off is that, while the enemies are constantly barraging you, they each drop a small heart that gives you a slight amount of health. The number of enemies you are fighting combined with the fact that they all drop health just makes it even stranger to have them instantly re-spawn.

"Didn't I see you on my chess board?"

They had to get pretty creative with the bosses on many of the levels. Since the only real big baddies in the first Star Wars movie are Darth Vader, whom Luke never fights, and the Death Star, which you fight in your ship, they pulled bosses from other sources. The Cantina boss is my favorite example of this. Here you fight one of the monsters from the crazy 3-D Holo-Chess game Chewie was playing against R2 in the movie. No, it doesn’t make sense, but it is a nice nod to the source material.

There are a few flight levels in the game to mix things up. These all use the Mode 7 technology, in which 3-D space is simulated with sprites. Some of them have you in Luke’s landspeeder, shooting Jawas on mini-bikes for some reason.

The last two levels are your approach on the Death Star, the first part of which you shoot a set number of Tie-Fighters and gun towers. The second part is the famous trench battle. Here you have to focus your attention on the explosions (I guess these represent torpedoes) being shot at you as you make your approach on the vent. The controls in all of these sections are pretty hard to get used to. I remember not being a fan of them even when I used to play this game back in the 90′s.

"Take THIS, ya stupid Jawa!"

I don’t want this review to sound too negative. Sure, the game has it’s flaws, but it does have it’s good points too.

The sprite work is well done throughout most of the game, particularly in the side-scrolling levels. In the Mode 7 flight levels, things can get a little muddled together and hard to tell what is going on. The chiptune versions of the familiar Star Wars songs are surprisingly well done, as are the sound effects.

Now for the secret to enjoying this game to the full: The glory that is the Debug Mode. A, A, A, A, X, B, B, B, B, Y, X, X, X, X, A, Y, Y, Y, Y, B, Start. Sure, it’s not as snappy as the Konomi Code, but it does the trick.

This allows you to set the level you want to play, the number of lives you have, which character you are, and which blaster you start with. You can even skip a level if you really get stuck. With the code in place and the game set to easy, much of the frustration normally present is lifted, leaving you to enjoy 16-bit nostalgic Star Wars bliss.

If playing the game this way is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

“Can I have that bucket?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s there.”

“Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay”, the second episode in Telltales new Monkey Island episodic series, picks up immediately where the first game left off. While most Telltale episodic games can be played out of order without leaving the player completely lost, this is not the case with Tales. These episodes are written along the lines of old movie serials.

The first game left off with a cliffhanger that put Guybrush in a tight spot. This one picks things right up from there, starting with a sword fight. Rather than the insult sword fighting of the older games, this one has you solving a puzzle during your duel.

"And I've got a TIP for you. Get the POINT?"

The game controls exactly like episode one. You point and click to interact with objects, but move Guybrush with either the “WASD” controls or by dragging the mouse. You can also run when moving with the mouse by holding down the right click. This feels incredibly awkward, but the increased walk speed is worth it. I am still of the opinion that the old point and click interface works best, especially since you are already using it for a majority of the game.

Once again, the writing is top notch. From start to finish, the game provided plenty of laughs. Now that I have finished the original Monkey Island (and Special Edition), I can see that they are really building off of the existing MI universe in these new episodes.

The voice actors also turned in great performances. Since this one allows Guybrush and Elaine the chance to interact more, you get a much better feel for the characters and their relationship. The secondary characters are off the wall, as you would expect, and the actors do a great job bringing the universe to life.

"Two Unsavory Pirates"

Without giving away any spoilers, I have to say my favorite parts of this episode were the interactions between Guybrush and LeChuck. I’ll leave it at that, because I really don’t want to spoil anything.

They also mix up the locations more in this one, as you go island hoping between several tiny islands to solve many of the puzzles. While it did make the game feel a little bigger moving from island to island, this was counterbalanced by the fact that most of the islands are very tiny; so tiny that the screen barely has to scroll over for you to have walked across the whole thing.

Like the first episode, the majority of the puzzles made enough logical sense, at least within the game universe’s twisted logic, that you can get through this episode in just a few hours. If you do get stuck there is, once again, a built-in tip system to help you out. If you aren’t progressing, Guybrush will randomly say helpful things to clue you in on the next puzzle.

“The Siege of Spinner Cay” is a nice continuation of the story and I am looking forward to the twists and turns they take us through in episode three.

You can get the entire season of “Tales of Monkey Island” from Telltale’s official site.

This review is based on the PC version of Tales of Monkey Island: The Siege of Spinner Cay provided to us by Telltale.

As I mentioned in my review of “Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal“, I am new to the whole Monkey Island franchise. Not to say I’m new to adventure games, I just somehow missed this series the first time around.

It was great to be able to catch up on a game that I’ve been wanting to play for several years. I also wanted to be able to be able to compare both the original and Special Edition, so I played through both versions. The original on PC and SE on the Xbox 360.

“The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition” takes the classic LucasArts adventure game and gives it a graphical overhaul, as well as all new voice acting. The writing still holds up to this day. It is laugh out loud funny on several occasions, and the new voice cast did a great job bringing these great characters to life.

The point and click interface works flawlessly when you are on the PC and using a mouse. Playing it on the 360 is a little trickier. You use the analog stick to move the cursor across the screen, which is pretty cumbersome. They did add the ability to use the d-pad as a shortcut to the various interactions. This is very useful since it makes it a little more functional.

"Special Edition Graphics"

The new graphics are a mixed bag. The backgounds are beautiful. They look like paintings, and I really enjoyed their style. However, I was not too fond of the redesigned characters. They have a very similar hard angled / carved out of wood look like the new Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoons.

The text is also pretty hard to read sometimes. In the original, all the text appears below the action. In the remake, all the text choices appear in white. This makes them incredibly hard to read in a few scenes.

I also have a little bit of an issue with the animation. With the original graphics, everything moves as you would expect. However, when you apply those same animations with the same number of frames to the new graphics, it makes it look wonky. I know in this type of remake they almost always do a one to one with the animation (see the HD remake of  Street Fighter II: Turbo), but it looks wrong with high res graphics.

"Original Graphics"

One of the coolest features is the ability to switch between the original and new graphics simply by hitting the back button. Sometimes, I ended up doing this to read the text when it was one of those hard to read scenes I mentioned above. It also allows you, if you are so inclined, to play through the game both ways. Pretty convenient considering there are two endings.

All in all, “The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition” is a great adventure game by any standard. I would recommend it to those who loved the original or if you are new to the franchise. It is even a good jumping on point if you are new to the genre.

I just hope that this leads to more Special Editions and re-releases of these great classics.

On a very special episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, the twenty second as it turns out, Jesse and Jonah are left to their own devices, as several people had to cancel at the last minute.

Not ones to let a thing like that keep them down, they decided to do the show with a live video stream.

In “What We’ve Been Playing”, Jesse talks about Fire Emblem, “BlazBlue” and “Mega Man Star Force 3: Red Joker” (aka Megamon Red). Jonah checked out the “Overlord II” demo, Finished “Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal” and more “Battlefield Heroes”.

Then in the second half it’s off to the news, where we talk about new adventures in writing for other websites, Lucasarts classics arrival on Steam, Game & Watch games being released on DSiWare for 2 bucks a pop, Wipeout HD Fury being in the final testing phase (wooo!) and a lot more.

So check it out, and watch this space for details on the next LIVE episode of Barrel Roll coming this weekend!

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Show Links:
Nintendo’s New Suprise
LucasArts Classics on Steam
InsulinFunk.net
The MegaMan Network
Song in the Middle – “I Am Evil” Monkey Island remix