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Review Archives (All Reviews)

You are currently looking through all reviews for games that are available on every platform the site currently covers. Below, you will find reviews written by aschultz and sorted according to date of submission, with the newest content displaying first. As many as 20 results will display per page. If you would like to try a search with different parameters, specify them below and submit a new search.

Available Reviews
Sanrio World Smash Ball! (SNES)

Sanrio World Smash Ball! review (SNES)

Reviewed on July 15, 2009

So, Hello Kitty's Sanrio buddies DO have a competitive side. As the referee, she's above it all, but her pals grimace and showboat after each goal in the soccer and breakout amalgam that is Sanrio World Smash Ball. (SWSB.) It's still wholesome fun, from introductory-round enemies adorably whiffing easy kicks to the four-fruit passcodes for continuing at later matches. It even gets away with elevator music between matches. It's just far more intense than you'd expect from Sanrio.
Jawbreaker II (Apple II)

Jawbreaker II review (APP2)

Reviewed on July 12, 2009

Jawbreaker 2 left me wondering: how small can a maze game be before it's not really a maze game any more? It lowers the bar further than I thought possible, as you run a clacking pair of teeth through five rows of dots with roving trap-doors between them. For all the cheery graphics, there isn't much to do, and yet it's more sophisticated than Jawbreaker, that silly clone of Gobbler, with enemies who actually get faster and smarter. Still, it's one of those games you can't b...
Knight Lore: Majou no Ookami Otoko (Famicom Disk System)

Knight Lore: Majou no Ookami Otoko review (FDS)

Reviewed on July 12, 2009

Knight Lore was a breakout ZX Spectrum game where you walked through a huge castle presented in 45-degree-rotated view. You picked up reagents for a spell that would stop your nighttime lycanthropy, and each set of item locations offered a markedly different puzzle. The FDS version, which probably had to simplify some things due to memory constraints, tried to stretch itself with ungodly repetition. It achieved dilution, as anyone smart enough to solve its puzzles would see quickly.
Valkyrie no Bouken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu (NES)

Valkyrie no Bouken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu review (NES)

Reviewed on July 10, 2009

Valkyrie no Bouken: blah blah something grrarrh (VnB,) despite a fancy title, quickly establishes itself as mournfully bland before turning violently senseless. It achieves what personality it has by committing some baffling mistakes I haven't seen in other bad games. Unsure why anybody would write a translation patch for a game this weak, I Googled to find it was based on an anime series. I also found a detailed walkthrough on a dedicated website. Reading all the secrets hidden by the ga...
Bloodstone (PC)

Bloodstone review (PC)

Reviewed on July 08, 2009

Before Bloodstone, I always took boats in RPGs for granted. Maybe I'd have to complete a weird quest or even overpay a greedy merchant to acquire one, but really, there was little doubt I'd get a boat at some point. There'd always be someone there to help me with transport so I could save his world.
Number Munchers (Apple II)

Number Munchers review (APP2)

Reviewed on July 06, 2009

Number Munchers (NM) had six cut-scenes; Pac-Man had only three, and they weren't nearly as funny. It's more exciting than some lousy flash cards or even chalkboard problem solving races, and it has high score lists, with names, for each sub-game. And it's more ambitious than its better-known peers, the Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego series. The latter, after several plays through, become veiled, randomized multiple-choice exams a notch above vocabulary baseball and other didacti...
Power Soukoban (SNES)

Power Soukoban review (SNES)

Reviewed on July 03, 2009

Soukoban, though ported to many platforms, is really a better AI problem or programming exercise than a game. It's simple: push boxes in warehouse onto target squares, no diagonal moves please. For full game, repeat two hundred levels, expanding floor and number of boxes. Unfortunately, its faults are as simple: for nontrivial levels, the a-ha moment pales by the drudge work ahead. Ports that rehash levels with jazzier graphics or let you undo moves can't fully hide this. Power Soukoban t...
Esper Dream (Famicom Disk System)

Esper Dream review (FDS)

Reviewed on July 01, 2009

Esper Dream is a top-down RPG almost as captivating as someone blabbering about last night's dream thinks he is, until it inexplicably tries to get gritty. You play an Esper, a child who can enter the books he reads. Apparently you're a prolific reader, as your quest for the vanished mayor's daughter spans five different worlds. The starting town, which connects to them via grey houses, offers the usual cryptic hints about special items and shops with unaffordable arms. It is conventional...
Lutter (Famicom Disk System)

Lutter review (FDS)

Reviewed on July 01, 2009

For those of us disappointed we're at the end of the road with obscure NES titles to discover and love, Famicom Disk System games like Lutter give us one more chance to discover something new. Lutter features basic RPG, maze and puzzle elements without dedicating itself too much to any genre or bogging itself down in controls: combat is repeated collision, the A button chooses puzzle items, and B allows for save-game or surrender. It's not especially difficult, but it's hardly stupid. And...
Hoosier City - Return to Oil City (PC)

Hoosier City - Return to Oil City review (PC)

Reviewed on June 29, 2009

As a huge Purdue fan, I should on principle be glad to see anything Hoosier tank so quickly. Not the Hoosier City series, though. It's not the first time a sequel failed to match the original, but here it's shocking considering that the flippant humor that makes the original such a laugh seems natural enough to continue. Also, part one was shareware, with nags to order the last two. They weren’t worth it. The three games share the same engine but little else. The corny jokes and puzzles h...
Airball (NES)

Airball review (NES)

Reviewed on June 22, 2009

Any boy transformed into an inflatable purple ball by a wizard probably needs a few breaks. Especially when the wizard won't reverse the spell until the boy retrieves a spell book and six trinkets from inside a massive isometric spike-garden maze. That's the story of Airball, ported from an opaque, over-exacting PC game to a fascinating prototype in the NES's twilight era. It's still got over two hundred junior-grade Escher rooms with the forty-five degree rotated isometric view, but it a...
The Usurper: Mines of Qyntarr (PC)

The Usurper: Mines of Qyntarr review (PC)

Reviewed on June 19, 2009

Imagine if Dimwit Flathead had written Zork I. 1/10
Trinity (Apple II)

Trinity review (APP2)

Reviewed on June 12, 2009

Infocom's text adventures were usually better at being funny than serious. For example, Zork I and II were better games than Zork III. But Trinity, based on your efforts to prevent the first atom bomb from exploding, works, and staggeringly well. It places you, as a tourist, in Kensington Gardens, with the first missile of World War III about to land. You find a deformed lady, take an interesting transport to the shore, and enter a white door you'll see again later, to wind up in a place ...
Snake Byte (Apple II)

Snake Byte review (APP2)

Reviewed on June 12, 2009

Snake Byte was a simple, high-resolution graphical update to White Lightning, one of the first games made for the Apple, in BASIC and low resolution graphics. I knew it first as Hustler, from the TRS-80 at our school, and then after the librarians got more diligent deleting games, Snake Byte and its wonderful graphics left me captivated. It's a fairly simple game: you're a snake, chasing apples on a board around barriers. The more you eat, the longer the snake goes. C...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Apple II)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy review (APP2)

Reviewed on June 12, 2009

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGG,) based loosely on the Douglas Adams book of the same name, was the best text adventure from Infocom and likely will continue to be the best for all time. The puzzles were funny and clever. So were the ways to die, the side characters, the ways to lose points, and the hint book. It's free many places online, and some of them even offer graphics enhancements. But unlike some cheesy $30 three-level action game, it was worth the money back when it came ou...
Super Black Onyx (NES)

Super Black Onyx review (NES)

Reviewed on June 12, 2009

Powerful, mysterious, doing-not-saying characters are a cliche in computer RPG's, but games like that are sadly rare. Super Black Onyx (SBO) is such a game. Released in Japan but using English characters, SBO relies largely on the graphic talents of Roger Dean, who designed many of Yes's and Asia's album covers, to cut through RPG red tape people take for granted. The story, you can guess from the title: there's an Onyx to find. It's up a boggle-box of a sixty-level first-person maze. But don't ...
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (PC)

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards review (PC)

Reviewed on May 28, 2009

Leisure Suit Larry (LSL,) despite notoriety after its first release was less disgusting and offensive than its sequels, most of which overused weak riffs on material from the original game anyway. It's surely one of Sierra's very best graphic adventures, as it doesn't take itself too seriously and goes beyond just some hapless forty-year-old's quest to lose his virginity. It pokes fun at the awkwardness we all felt during our teenage years and makes Larry a poor schlemeil who can't even do the b...
Laser Blast (Atari 2600)

Laser Blast review (A2600)

Reviewed on May 28, 2009

For years, I remembered Laser Blast (LB) as the game that I should've won, but I had to go to the bathroom. LB has an appealing, amusing concept. You are a UFO, elliptical and with windows spinning around the center. You must fire down at three ground cannons. You are also, apparently, the bad guys: your lasers are red, theirs blue. If you win, a new round appears. This goes on until you get a million points. You can get 270 points per round, which can take two to five seconds. Doing the ...
Hard Hat Mack (Apple II)

Hard Hat Mack review (APP2)

Reviewed on May 22, 2009

Donkey Kong inspired a number of three-level looping spinoffs in the eighties, and one of the most successful ideas was Hard Hat Mack (HHM,) a cute little platformer about a construction worker with various tasks to perform. He starts off drilling cement blocks in place on the first level, gathers lunch boxes, and apparently in the afternoon he has crates to drop into some crazy machine. He's obstructed by Osha or the Vandal. Each looks different but move in exactly the same predet...
Sammy Lightfoot (Apple II)

Sammy Lightfoot review (APP2)

Reviewed on May 20, 2009

Sammy Lightfoot(SL) is a step down from the better-remembered Hard Hat Mack in fun, playability and fairness, but it's still the sort of interesting old-school title worth a brief spin. Sammy's this tubby orange-haired fellow who makes squip noises when he walks and boingy noises when he jumps. His hair even spins around when he dies! The game's object is just to reach the platform at the top, navigating obstacles in three scenarios. Then you start all over again with a different, ...

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