Moto Roader (1989)

Name:Moto Roader
Number:265
Year:1989
Publisher:NEC
Developer:NCS
Genre:Racing
Systems:Turbografx-16, Windows, Wii, Wii U
Country of Origin:Japan
Difficulty:4/5
Time:2 hours 20 minutes
Won:No (117/90L)

You know, when you're just randomly playing games looking for something easy, it's kind of strange how little you seem to find. At first, out of a hat, I picked this one, decided against it, then played some Doraemon game I added...which was not a shooter, but a game in which you defeat enemies by digging holes. Interesting, but not my thing. I came back to this, since I still had a copy and...well, decided that I should be covering this anyway.

Moto Roader is a very generic game at first glance. It looks like a forgettable, bland top-down racing game like so many others that we've forgotten over the years. A perspective chosen not because the developers were using the latest technology or deliberately choosing it for whatever reason. It had a sequel, sure, but at the time of its release, there was only one other racing game on the system, Victory Run, but 1989 was a packed year, so how did it get ahead of the pack and somehow get two sequels?

From a race results rather than the opening name selection.

There are five racers in every race, each of which can be either human or computer controlled. Which actually sounds impressive, but I'm guessing that was picked because that was how many the system could physically support rather than deliberate choice. Player 1 is always white, so that will be the one I'm racing every race. The game offers the chance to pick a name...with five letters. I'm usually not this lazy, but I went with AAAAA, because there are multiple sets of race series and even the first I would be entering the same name over and over again.

After this, and after a blonde podium girl with eyes uncomfortably close to the size of her boobs for one so gifted, we get a drone fly-by over the racetrack. It speeds up as you get further along in the series. Pretty sure this is nowhere near the first racing game to do/need something like this, but it's still rare enough that I find this helpful and new. You get to find out just enough ahead of time to find out where the real danger spots. This, as you go along, becomes increasingly more and more helpful.

This leads into the part selection menu, where you spend money on parts for your car and various special items, including weapons. This is where things get interesting, car customization. At the game start you get 5k and every race you get a certain amount depending on where you were in the race. As long as you finish, you get money. Which depends on which position you get, up to 10k for getting first. No matter what, with some trickery, it's possible to survive even if you're dead last...but it still needs trickery.

The car parts are as follows:

• Tires, these determine your acceleration, and I believe how well you turn. This makes them very important, because getting your speed back up faster is often just as important as having it in the first place.
• Body, changes the body type of your car. This improves your speed, but not to the degree that engine does. It's a bonus on top of your engine.
• Brake, determines cornering ability. You don't get a dedicated brake button, so it might help when you take off the accelerator, I wasn't paying attention enough to tell if that changed anything.
• Handle, how well you turn. I think, because the best option costs 200 I basically never went a game without having it. There are also two steering modes you can have, a more traditional left/right turn function, or...I'll explain later.
• Engine, speed, you need this, and you need a lot of it. You need to keep upgrading this to keep pace with the other racers, because otherwise you will be left in the dust. This is a dramatic change from first to even second, where having the second engine almost guarantees victory in your first race.
• Turbo, I think it improves speed. It didn't work too well for me the one time I got it, but something has to be giving the AI more speed than the body and engine.

The specials are as follows:

• Warper, the manual says this warps you ahead one place. I have never seen the AI use it and I never bought it. Because if I'm spending that much, I'm just getting Nitro for the final push.
• Gas Tank, refills your gas timer, multiple use. More on that later.
• Turner, I don't know. I've never bought it and never used it, and the AI doesn't use it.
• Nitro, rapid speed boost, one-time use. But in the end, there's only one time it's best to use.
• Grenade, shoots an explosive ahead of you. The other racers love this one.
• Bomber, drops an explosive behind you. The other racers love this one.
• Hopper, causes you to jump. There are a few situations this could be really helpful, but if you have the situational awareness to use this ahead of time, you usually can just go around the hazard.

Once you've purchased what you think is best, it's time to actually race. It's a scrolling top-down view. Use your item/weapon with button I, accelerate with button II.  Again, there are no brakes, but assuming you take your finger off the accelerator, you won't have any trouble slowing down. The real learning curve is in turning.

Now, Moto Roader can work like your average racing game. Can. Mode B handling options allow you to turn like you're playing any old racing game left and right. Mode A is different, and likely the one any modern player is going to have to figure out beforehand. Mode A is kind of like playing a game with tank controls updated to a modern audience. Tap the d-pad in the right direction and you move that way. On my machine this is a bit tricky, since holding down S, left and up causes that old keyboard locking up crap, but I can bypass this by tapping up or left as needed.

This works to the game's favor, oddly enough. Because your view is in absolute directions and this movement turns to absolute directions, in certain bad situations, you're home free. No awkwardly sliding to the left or right because you didn't turn all the way...now you can just fix that by tapping up. It allows you to match the AI in its perfectness...or at least their one bit of perfectness.

The track's made up of several distinct pieces. Narrow bits, short divides, cross junctions, hard turns, soft turns, oil slicks, jump spots and walls you have to move around. Firmly in the arcade style of the genre. If you hit a wall or a jump spot, you'll stop dead and have to go around it, but make a turn wrong, hit an oil slick or go off into the grass too fast and you'll spin around like a top. Naturally, the game sets up the tracks so you won't be able to avoid this.

The game has an absurd number of tracks, ranging from mundane, to real world race tracks, to complex obstacle courses. One group starts off with one intended to be a suburb, which would have been a nicer concept if the graphics were capable of showing it. As these go along they tend to get longer and longer, sometimes to the point that a single lap of a track feels like enough, yet often there will be two. It's impressive, but at times I wondered just how many times the player was supposed to go through a race series to even have a chance of winning.

This ties into that number you've been seeing in the corner. That's the gasoline you have left. It refills through one of three ways, gas tank power-up, through a gas zone in the middle of a lap, and when you reach the finish line. Run out, and it's a game over. It drains slowly as you go around, but it goes down faster if you're slow enough to end up on the back side of the screen.

See, If someone ends up so far behind that they'd be off the screen, they get teleported to the middle of the screen. Speed and direction are carried over. For the player, this drains their gas, but the AI has no such handicap. So if you run off the road on a sharp turn, you'll get placed back on it when the guy who made it speeds off into the distance. But you better hope you won't have to turn around too much. This is why you get the tires with the best acceleration.

But this actually creates a weird effect in several situations. In a section where the center of the road is actually bad, like an oil spill or a narrow bit off to the left or right, you can be teleported into more pain. It can actually screw you up, putting you through a nasty loop for a while. Even the AI can get tripped up by this. And on the home stretch, just because you should be second or third doesn't mean that a lucky teleport won't send you back a spot. By the same token, you can exploit this even if logically these guys should be lapping you.

Now, the other racers. They're great. They're slightly dumber humans. They act like a human logically would but they don't have the benefit of any foresight. They'll do something mostly well...if they can react in time, but the other guys aren't going to be making hairpin turns if they're at the front of the pack. Often all of the AI would go off somewhere and I alone would somehow manage to make it through. Especially often on wall pieces, where you zig-zag through walls.

They'll have one of three specials. The hoppers...which jump. I'm not sure why they get these, it never seemed to help them in any noticeable way. Then the grenades and droppers. Whether or not these were effective seemed random, sometimes they'd hit gold, other times not. This was the only experience I had with weapons. For me, it was simply more effective to use other things. There's probably some wisdom in saving a grenade for the finish, jump up a few places, but I'll explain why I didn't later.

These guys have to handle their money the same way you do. They can't get better upgrades than you theoretically could with the same money. Which is good in theory, except here's where the trouble starts. There are four other guys, and chances are the guy in second got enough cash for the biggest engine. If you purchased the second engine, there is no way for you to buy the best engine on the second race, and you need to buy something else to keep at least some parity with the racers. This starts the doom loop.

The second race is usually possible to survive. You won't get first, but maybe you can get second if you're lucky. After that, if you don't get the gas tank, you'll get teleported so many times it's game over. The other racers are going to have high powered engines and turbo chargers, you won't stand a chance. Looking back, I should have tried the same method the AI was using, perhaps this was a hint that burning your cash on the second engine wasn't the correct choice of action.

At this point, you probably expect to hear me complain about the difficulty, but I'm not going to do that. The strange serenity of the early races combined with the sheer chaos of the later ones makes it a fun experience. The few moments in a middle race I get to be in the lead, only to see every other racer slowly catch up to me. The final races I actually make it to, when I have some parity on the high end, only for every other corner to turn into a major crash for someone.

My issue is that the presentation feels goofy. The soundtrack is bland, generic happy race music. It feels somewhat out of place when the guy in the back shoots a grenade and everyone else spins around. Or just when someone is always going off the road. I wanted the option to turn it off and put something more appropriate. Having the music just be background noise contributed to the feeling on longer tracks that this race was taking too long.

I think some of the tracks should have been shorter length-wise but just throw in another lap. Some races had three, a few one, but most two. There are a lot of races, so they were doing this from a good point of view, giving the player content, but sometimes that wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

Weapons:
All of the weapon items are very effective at what they do, even if I never saw the wisdom in using them. 2

Enemies:
I've not seen better AI in a top-down racer. Of course, I don't usually play top-down racers. Feels human in that it has the same flaws humans have, and the developers did not make them perfect play AIs. 5

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There is no want for choice here, even if the levels are obviously made of certain repeating blocks. 4

Player Agency:
While there is an option for traditional left/right steering, the point and go system this game has feels very nice to use when you get used to it. 6

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Beneath a somewhat cutesy exterior lies chaos. 3

Graphics:
Nice, bright and happy. Doesn't quite depict what it wants to depict half the time. Seems like every race track in the world is on a bright green field. 3

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Sound effects are solid 16-bit representations of what they're trying to do. Music is bland and sometimes aggravating. 2

That's 25...again. Not bad for a game category which usually has quite a few zeroes in it here.

Reading the reviews for the game, not a lot of period ones, modest scores, but there were some for the Virtual Console rerelease on Wii. These find the game's very existence offensive. I gotta say, in retrospect it makes sense as to why Youtubers, despite their obvious and sometimes extreme biases, started eating the lunch of professional reviewers around this time. These do not read like the words of someone who got paid to review a game, they read like someone who feel like the good folks behind this game committed a war crime. I realize I do this sometimes, but it's usually when I actually spend the time to go through a game. If I'm not spending that much time on a game, it's usually because I don't find it that interesting.

For instance, the controls. They are unique, but I got used to them in about half a hour. It took me a moment to figure it out on the first race, but you know, that's because I'm just starting to figure things out. For 200 out of a starting 5000, you can switch to a normal left/right with the best possible handling for 200. (or as I said, the default with best possible handling) This is so cheap that I basically never went a race without it after I realized it. Or you can spend nothing to switch to it. The game is not going after you for not using it's own method of controlling the game. Yet everyone is acting like this is some impossible to get around problem which can only change if you spend an obscene amount of money. If you can survive a race, you can get the best handling even if you didn't buy it at the start. I swear any retro reviews from the late '00s should be taken with a salt shaker.

Next time, once again, trouble on the home front, but I'm going to aim for the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D, also released on Macintosh and 3DO as Second Encounter. Since it's somewhere between a remix and quasi-expansion of the original game.

Silent Debuggers (1991)

This looks less like a space station and more like a mecha.

Name:Silent Debuggers
Number:182
Year:1991
Publisher:NEC
Developer:Data East
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:4 hours 10 minutes
Won:Yes (72W/60L)

Welcome back to the Turbografx-16, the system for pre-Wolfenstein console FPS games. Yeah, it is just two games, but it's kind of weird that there are two games on the system that most people ignore that feel very advanced for something that competed with both the NES and the Genesis. Obviously the Game Boy and the Genesis had their own games, but those were very lacking.

This was released both in the US and Japan. While the English version of this game has a questionable grasp on the language, I will be playing it in English. The Japanese version is only in Hiragana, and I'm much too reliant on Kanji to be able to read all that in a fast paced action game.
(Every other line this guy says is hilarious, but probably not in a way the original author intended)

 

This doesn't really sound good in-context either.

In the aftermath of a great war, humanity is united and begins to leave the planet. Alien bugs have been encountered, so the government calls upon the remaining military units of the great war. One of these groups are the Debuggers, the best of the best. You're a new Debugger, working under Leon, to retrieve treasure from the abandoned space station Gane/Ohme. (the name switches between the two) Unfortunately, no one has ever come back from the station in a year, including other Debuggers.

Music plays throughout this intro, and the menu, and when you select your name. Your given a paltry 5 characters, which makes me wonder why they included such a thing to begin with. It's very repetitive. The conversation continues. Myself and Leon are to find our way to the core computer from the shuttle bay. Leon kindly informs me that there are aliens here and that I should take them out. The player is actually offered a choice in the matter, in the sense that the game does a "yes/no" option after Leon asks you. Why would I have to be asked? This doesn't even offer an illusion of a choice, Leon just tells you to not be afraid if you say no.

This opens up the weapon screen. There are 3 primary weapons and 3 secondary weapons. The game itself doesn't explain any of these, but the manual does. When I originally started up this game, I didn't have access to the manual and the story from there, so I was playing this under the impression that the story in the intro was all there was. Before I get to the weapons, I'm just going to mention that batteries, the two batteries you get, power special equipment and act as the player's health. You only have one active at one time, and batteries are only switched when you want them to be. If the active battery runs out, you're dead.

• Hand Gun, battery powered, always available to the player. To compensate for always being available, it shoots much slower.
• Motor Cannon, a machine gun which "fires explosives at high speeds". Fancy description aside, it's just a machine gun. Uses ammo. Takes out most enemies in under two bursts.
• Mega Beamer, a laser cannon, uses the batteries. Takes out a lot of enemies in one shot, but takes a moment to recharge and eats up power.
• Lipp Shot, semi-auto cannon, uses ammo. Does decent damage, but moves around the target reticle every time you shoot with it. Supposedly hits the target every time, but your side weapon will miss unless you reaim. Somehow the worst of the three choices.
• Grenade Launcher, shoots grenades, of which you can carry 5 at a time. Kills most enemies in one shot if you can hit them.
• Sonic Launcher, causes nearby enemies to flee. Uses the battery. Kind of useless. Making enemies run away from you is not very helpful unless you desperately need to recharge your batteries, by which point you probably ran out of charge to use this, and you're screwed anyway.
• Sleep Launcher, puts enemies to sleep, assuming you aren't too close to the target. Comes with 10 shots. Kind of hard to use, but surprisingly helpful.

There are 6 levels to the game, the only real difference consists of the outer sections of the map. Each level consists of a central section, where Leon is doing something to the ship's computer. Then we have the central rooms, these must be defended later, the aliens take out three of these and it's game over. Some of these are very important, like the battery, the light room or the ammo room, others can be destroyed without any real harm to you. I note that it takes a long time to reach these rooms from anywhere else. Finally, you have a big central ring, from which you enter the new parts of the level.

The game controls pretty well. The D-pad moves fairly well, though I'm not on original hardware. Takes a section to build up speed though. The button 1 controls where your target reticle is, and the game does allow you to target different parts of the body. It's inconvenient to adjust it in the middle of the battle though. Button 2 shoots your primary weapon, while the Run shoots your secondary weapon. Select opens up the menu, which allows you to open up the map, select your battery and other things.

This is all Dungeon Master-esque, 90-degree angles, everything is tile based, including the location of you and your enemies. We've seen it before, we'll see it again. I can't say I felt any issues with the game were down to this, perhaps beyond a general boredom with the level design. Then again, it's hard to do generic sci-fi metal hallway in a way that isn't boring.

I like the HUD, it feels very modern in how much information it gives to you, but not so modern it feels like I'm being handheld. That mini-map isn't too effective as anything other than a general indication of where you are, but it's nice for the time. I would have liked the ammo counter to be lower, seems like it needed to be up there since the rest of the lower hud is taken up by other things later on, you don't even get an ammo count for the secondary weapon. Sound plays a big role in this game, a rarity this early. You have a radar that detects when aliens are near you. Turn in the right direction? It gets louder. And should an alien sneak up behind you? An arrow pointing to the direction the alien's in. Quite possibly the best such system for a while.

Level 1 consists of one giant corridor from which enemies remain in, so you can kill them at a leisurely pace. I say that, but beginning here is a bit creepy. These guys are your typical alien killing machines, though I don't quite think I've seen something like this before. Even with that sound system, it's easy for aliens to sneak up on you. Sure, they'll die in one or two bursts of machine gun fire, but they're fast, they're aggressive, and even as they're dying they thrash around, possibly missing a limb or two. Even the way they fight is a bit unsettling, they can get up right and close, and should they hit you, they knock you back. This first level does a pretty good job of putting the atmosphere of Aliens into a video game, better than any other game I've ever seen.

After taking out the aliens here, Leon unlocks the computer, called DR. DR tells us that we can now go to level 2, which I guess consists of moving the entire central room downwards. And Leon's access activated the self-destruct program and locked all the doors out. Lovely. To deactivate it, we need to reach the computer on Level 6. So, the rest of the game is on a 100 minute time limit. (Time limit is paused whenever a cutscene happens though) We do have enough time to read a log from the last captain of the space station, which insightfully tells us aliens have taken over the space station. This ends the cutscene and I can begin level 2...except Leon calls me back to the computer right away to inform me that some of the aliens, the green ones, can reach the central area.

The action here is so frantic that I'm not sure if I shot off his head or what, which you seem to be able to do without killing them.

Once I can actually do something in level 2, one of the green aliens breaches into the interior. This basically amounts to the alien running through doors as it runs away from me. I said I thought the game controls pretty well, it does, but the movement screen is somewhat awkward when you're chasing down an enemy running away from you down snaking corridors. The game isn't shy about having them enter either. As I began my incursion into the outer regions, another one entered. By the time I tracked it down, one of the blocks was about to be destroyed. I reloaded, it wasn't terribly vital, just the light room, but at this stage, wandering around in darkness would be suicide. There are no actual saves, but for sanity's sake I used save states.

The death animation of one alien.

And it's a good thing too, because dealing with the invading aliens is kind of distracting. I go out into the cargo area, I'm quickly pulled back because I need to take out another one. And if a block is about to be destroyed, I have to reload because losing one this early basically guarantees I'm going to get a game over halfway through this level. I switched out the grenade launcher for the sleep launcher, and when that works, it works, but I still have to travel halfway across the damn interior area just to hit the guy. Unless you're chasing the thing across the outer hallway you have no chance of getting a good shot off, and even then you have to get lucky. Even though I eventually won, the amount of motor cannon ammo I've used is over 450 rounds, not very sustainable even though I haven't used the Lipp Cannon at all. Worse yet, these guys have been damaging the blocks despite them not being destroy, and the damage is enough that I have to restart despite what I've done. So...just camp out in front of the areas they can enter. Or...not, because the system the game uses to decide whether or not the green aliens can invade seems to be random, but mostly only happens whenever you're outside the area, primarily on changing in and out of the interior area. Which means if the game feels cruel, you can be put in an infinite loop and entering and exiting the interior area until all the green aliens are gone.

I save up a lot of ammo for the second time through. Use of short, controlled bursts and not wasting ammo on chasing the green aliens helps a ton. Aliens have death animations, but you can shoot them while they're dying, wasting ammo. It's pretty cool and reinforces their creepy factor, seeing them thrash around as they die. This level isn't terribly hard in of itself, but ensuring that you're not going to die on level 3 can be tricky.

Referring to the aliens, of course.

Like with the first level, more information is given. Not really important information, just that they faught the aliens before dying. The game is trying to make this all sound much more impressive than it really is, but compared to these days when every single horror-related game has some logs like this, it's kind of bland. I can see this being incredibly impressive in 1991 though. There's also someone at the bottom of the ship, as in someone else, not an alien. Probably.

The aliens, in addition to the space station, have a different kind of symbolism to them than your usual Giger knockoffs.

Level 3 adds black aliens, ones that are invisible to your sound detection system. Again, Leon teleports me away from combat to inform me of this. I do admit I wouldn't have given it much thought until one inevitably snuck up behind me, but I would have preferred it that way. If I leave Leon and then return to talk to him, he'll then give me a sensor capable of seeing the black aliens, and only the black aliens. Dealing with green aliens is still top priority, because battery power is quite expendable compared to blocks.

This makes me wonder, not about them specifically, but as to whether or not spawns are predetermined. It's hard to tell because aliens often move around, but the green aliens, based on their focus in running towards the interior, can be tracked. I know this level started off with me having to rush to deal with an alien south, then east. I sincerely hope that's how you're supposed to deal with it every time on this level, and not just get screwed randomly. I switch out the weapons a bit on this level, as I was using the motor cannon constantly. Seems like the mega beamer is the best, though if an enemy turns as you shoot, exposing his arm to your blast, while he loses an arm, you're still out a shot and have to wait for it to recharge. Sometimes when enemies advance their arms get in the way, and you get hit anyway. It's great when it hits though.

You get to see this person later, of course, and funnily enough they used the same image in both cases, but it doesn't quite work here.

Eventually, when I won this level, we get a message from the other person on the stage, basically just telling us we'll regret ever coming here. And then a mysterious side cutscene from someone saying he'll test our real abilities. Sentient alien leader being the same person saying both of these, I guess. Level 4 was going to be annoying anyway, all four doors lead to monster filled areas. Which means that green aliens can come from anywhere! And...there are doors everywhere in the exterior? Huh.

Once again, when I return to Leon, he gives me something, with a very forgetful tone. This happened on the last level too, but in that case you were kind of aware that was going to happen. Here, not so much. Considering how frequently the game pulled you away from the action to tell you something, like a modern game, you could get used to relying on the game to tell you things. I figured better. What do I get, why a muzzle breaker, which increases my attack power, but apparently I shouldn't use it too often?

The green aliens get really annoying on this level. No longer do they seem to obey any real rules, just popping out of any door you didn't just open. Which is great, because if they're far away from where I started the level, a single block loses a bit under 50% integrity, three of those and the block goes. One block, just the lights, is already in the danger zone. I sort of figure out how to defeat these guys without getting hit. Check each door, if an enemy is outside it, it should be a green alien. Walk in and out quickly, green aliens only head towards the center when you're outside the center. And now I can go through the area at my leisure.

Even with these guys dead, I'm struck at how often I need to circle around the level. First I do a general clean-up of the area, then I go around again, to clear up any stragglers. Okay, one final sweep...and there are still quite a few more. And again. I haven't even used the scanner for the black aliens yet, though some have been eliminated. In the end I just got the black aliens by sweeping for the rest of the regular ones. Huh.

[Random] words the game seems to think are [important] are randomly done up like that for some [reason].

End level briefing, Leon tells me that there's just one more floor, guess that's the last regular floor? I sense something's going to seriously change up for the sixth floor. Leon got another message from our enemy, mocking us for trying to loot the place. Leon brings up some interesting points, talking about how there are no humans or cargo here or any sign of it, along with how we get convenient information and use of the computers. I admit, I wouldn't have noticed that if the game didn't bring it up, because it's not unusual for games to work that way. It's fairly typical for a first-person game around this time to gloss over anything remotely realistic, so I just sort of don't pay any attention to it. It's interesting to see a game work in a limitation that in most other games would be completely ignored.

Level 5's design looks to be the most annoying yet. Before now it was all sort of simple, easy to maneuver blocks, as opposed to the vaguely mazey design of this one. Well, I won't complain too much...yet. I try my new method of killing the green aliens on this floor. It works...at first, but while I get one, another one always gets in while I'm killing the first. From places that don't seem to have one to begin with, and then it seems like they don't come in anymore. It's a trap, it's a trick, but there's not a lot I can do about it.

The green aliens work really strangely now. There are some on the inside, but they never seem to be the ones that appear inside, instead, green aliens seem to warp inside, always at a door I'm not in. So the game is just straight-up breaking its rules. That's fun. The new rules seem to be that if you encounter an enemy, a green alien spawns in the central area.It's not that other aliens aren't that difficult to kill, they can be, it's just that between aliens that charge after you, aliens that try to trick you into following the, and aliens that just run away from you, while potentially giving you a game over, one of these is more important than the others.

Finally, level 6. In preparation when I ran out of green aliens, I switched to the grenade launcher. Something told me the gameplay would switch up, at first it seemed in the opposite direction I was expecting. An alert sounded and...nothing happened. Instead I get another warning from the bad guy, saying that these aren't ordinary monsters. Look man, I've seen Alien, I know they're really colonists or something. Leon tells me there are no monsters here. More concerning, there is no map for this level. Just guess.

Once you see it, it does look like enemies are always in the same pose...

Level 6 starts, Leon says "Morpheus, look out, there are monsters". Couldn't Leon have just said this looks funny when he talked about the monsters? Only...they're in the central area, and they're invisible. Oh. They're tough to fight too, eating more than one grenade and two laser shots. I die, for the first time this playthrough. The game allows you to continue, with energy restored, but not ammo. Unfortunately, there is no way to recharge energy at this point beyond that. After the fact, I found out there's supposed to be an energy recharging device, but I imagine you only get that if you lose the battery block. Thankfully I had 27 minutes when I started this level, hopefully that'll be enough. Still, there are only four or so aliens here.

Given what's just about to happen, I presume this means we're the only Debuggers to make it this far.

After defeating this, I can then open the only door out, which enters a room with a computer explaining what's going on. Leon tells me that this is a trap, which tracks, and that the station was used by Project Bioroid...he dies. That sucks, Leon actually kind of improved this game. I mean, not as much as a character in a half-way decent modern game, but you know, pretty good for an oldie.

He doesn't look very impressive, but previous aliens were missing legs too.

Then I meet the head bioroid...who tells me I'll make a good bioroid...he doesn't look like the character mocking me the entire time. So who is that character?

That's a very polite way to put it...

And it turns out that the character mocking us the entire time is actually a friendly of some sort...? And a woman, which I think was supposed to be secret revelation, but those boobs are kind of obvious. Everyone I shot was formerly a human. Leon comes back to shoot the evil bioroid...and someone called Smith was doing the experiments to turn humanity into a stronger version of itself, which obviously wasn't working out considering these aliens have the intelligent of a potato. Guess Smith is the head bioroid.

We escape without incident, we find out that the friendly's name is Sara Bentury, and that this whole thing was done by rogue members of one nation's army. Leon, apparently, used to be in that nation's army and isn't surprised they're doing this kind of crap. The two argue about some stuff, but seem resigned to continuing to work together and the player is completely forgotten in the scuffle. 

And they never saw them again. Why is it that games having a "to be continued" bit at the end always seems to result in never showing up again? That was a bit lame for a final battle, but it shouldn't affect the rating too badly.

Weapons:
Seven weapons, a dinky pistol, three primary weapons and three secondary weapons. Only one of these weapons is truly useless, a weapon that causes enemies to flee, useless when enemies are faster than you. That said, there is generally a best primary weapon in the laser weapon, which kills most enemies in one hit, though it fails to completely outclass the others thanks to a slow rate of fire and it's thirst for battery power. 4/10

Enemies:
There are basically four enemy types, though mostly reskins of the same general enemy. The green aliens, which run to the interior of the station to damage the blocks, which is the most troublesome aspect of the game; The rest of the aliens, some chase after you, some try to bait you, some need a special scanner, but mostly they come to you; Slimes, which are sort of there, walk into them and they die; And the boss aliens, not that they seem all that bossy at the time, considering you fight four of them in a row. They're invisible, but your sound system still works. There's enough variety here to last the game and not just make you feel like you're killing the same thing over and over again, also helped by how creepy they are. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Very plain, to the point at times where it doesn't quite feel like they did much to think up the levels. But designing these kinds of levels is a rare skill, and what the game does works in context of how the rest of the game plays. It also helps that when the game does try to get more complex level design you have a decent map. 4/10

Player Agency:
The whole aiming mechanic feels half-baked, I could take out an alien's limbs, but I for the life of me can't figure out why I would want to do that. It's cool, I guess. I kind of question how the keys are laid out. Button 1 is aim, button 2 is your primary weapon and for your secondary weapon you press run, the Turbografx-16's start button. Select instead opens the menu. Speed is an issue, but I guess they're trying to increase the length of the game by making your sprinting speed, when you've walked over several tiles, less than the green aliens. Otherwise I have no complaints, in fact, otherwise it seems incredibly modern by 1991 standards, the menus practically are! 6/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
I said the game felt like it perfectly captured the atmosphere of Aliens, and I still feel that. Sure, no acid blood, but that's a minor quibble. A heavily armed soldier in an isolated place against a horde of terrifying, practically unknowable alien creatures, flitting between the corridors as you try to track them down with your radar. Nearly perfect. 9/10

Graphics:
The aliens look great in motion, I think they might have a limited amount of animation, but they shift around so much that it's hard to notice. The faux-3d looks pretty good, but generic sci-fi corridors are hard to make spectacular. The anime cutscenes are okay, not the kind of anime where the characters eyes are so big you could punch them, but not something inspired. 5/10

Story:
I actually grew to like my companion with a questionable grasp of English, Leon. It's a fairly obvious story, but it just feels that much better in having your companion note that the suspicious happenings are in fact, suspicious. I do wish he would give me the items he was going to give me without me having to go back to him. 3/10

Sound/Music:
What I thought before playing this game was that this early, you couldn't make a game on this kind of hardware and it would have great environmental sound. All with a single beeping sound and some deep breathing. I never thought that beeping sound was annoying, I was too focused on killing the thing that was making it. Music-wise it's okay, wisely it never overlaps with the sound, but that sound is just a step above every game I've played so far it's hard not to be impressed. It's just that good. 6/10

That's 42. Which is as of this writing the highest I've rated a pre-Doom FPS, and any game released before 1992.

I really liked Silent Debuggers, at the very least, of the faux-3d FPS titles, it's the best. Well, the best so far, Amiga developers have really tried to make that system work. It takes a genre that at this stage, still didn't quite work and makes something interesting and tense out of it. While the game resorts to several cheap tricks to lengthen the game, these aren't so bad as long as you're not on original hardware.

There aren't a lot of period reviews, but the ones I could find are positive. Helps that the sound system is just as impressive then as it is now. Modern reviews are somewhat mixed. Firstly, I'm going to go over the Gamespot, Nintendolife and IGN reviews, because they're basically the same old garbage. "Oh, faux-3d, it's like walking down the street and blinking. Oh, my head." before describing the gameplay as repetitive and slow. Now while the general gameplay loop doesn't change up that much throughout the game, what they write reveals that they just finished the first level and then their review. No mention of protecting the blocks, and the time limit is practically treated like an afterthought. This is the reason why people treat games journalism as a joke. Imagine someone for a major publication writing a review of a silent movie, only to complain that nobody talks and only describes things that happen in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

More positive reviews, though still not quite as positive as myself, point out the interesting aspects of the game, but also point out how dealing with the blocks is something of a chore. Which is a good point, since a shot of bad luck there can put you in an unwinnable situation, especially when the game decides to just spawn green aliens without any logic to them.

There's only one "new" title left in 1991, Armored Trooper Votoms: Dead Ash, a Japanese-exclusive game with a somewhat thick story. It's going to take a while on that one.