12th May 2015, 12:19 AM
TurboGrafx-16
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Doraemon Nobita no Dorabian Nights - This is a game I got in my most recent box of import stuff. At first it seemed simple and average, but it actually gets pretty good. Dorabian Nights is a fairly standard Hudson platformer, so it's not one of the greats of the genre -- Hudson platformers never were -- but it is a good, solid game that's fun to play. The game has a good difficulty curve, starting out easy and getting much more difficult by the end. The game has four worlds of four levels each and a final level at the end. The first world is very easy, the second fairly easy, the third pretty tough, the fourth about on par with the third or maybe slightly easier, and the last level is hard. Overall I had the hardest time with level 3-3, I died more in that level than any other, and it had me stuck some time -- I've been playing this game on and off for a few days now. Yes, I left the system on that long; you can't save in this game, sadly, though you do have infinite continues... from the beginning of the world. Die in a level and you start it over, lose all your lives and it's back to level 1 of the world. This may be a kids' game, but it's not as easy as you might think. The first SNES Doraemon game is a lot easier than this game, for sure. That's good, though, I like some challenge in a platformer.
In the game, you have 4 hits per life. Green things you can dig up give you a hitpoint back, if you've been hit, and these do respawn... but so do the enemies. Doraemon has five different weapons, one of which you only use during the final boss fight. The other four have some nice variety. The starting gun stuns enemies, the second is the best all-purpose gun, the third is a homing gun which fires slowly but the shots will curve to hit a target, and the last is a cape which sends enemies flying back to damage other enemies, which can be fun. You also can collect some other items which give you a shield, invincibility, and more. You get these from doors; hit Up at a door to go in. Doors either have a powerup, a bonus minigame (for an extra life or health), or in a few cases some other scene in them. Never enemies, though. The bonus rooms are amusing and add more variety to this already varied game. This is a slow-paced game, though -- Doraemon moves slowly and there is no run. I don't mind, though some people do.
One odd thing about this game is that even though it's a licensed game based on a movie, from what I've read about the movies' plot, almost none of that happens in the game. The movie is almost entirely set in the fantasy Arabian setting of the title; Doraemon and his child friends go on an adventure there. The girl character gets kidnapped and the others have to rescue her, etc. But in this game? The four children went into storybooks, and Doraemon has to rescue them. Each book is set in a different time period. The first is dinosaur-themed, the second ancient Japan themed, the third creepy/horror themed, and the last Arabian themed. On the title screen Doraemon has a turban on, fitting the setting, but ingame he only wears this in world 4 and the final level. The children only have their Arabian outfits on on the title-screen image and in the second part of the end cutscene, too. So yeah, don't expect much of the movie here. Of course, games that try something different often end up better than movie games that strictly follow the plot, so it's okay. Plus, I like the variety of the four worlds. Every level has a different setting, and they're interesting to see as you progress.
Graphically, the game is a standard Hudson platformer, with Doraemon in it. It's cute and cartoony and looks nice, though of course there isn't much parallax -- only two stages have any, the rest are flat. The music is good, but not hugely memorable. Still, it's catchy, fun stuff. The graphics are better than I thought they'd be; I was expecting something maybe more like the mediocrity of Bakusho Yoshimoto Shingeki, but this game looks better than that one for sure, and it's a lot longer and harder as well. The game also has some nice gameplay and enemy variety. Almost every level in this game is unique! Every single level has multiple enemy types you will only see in that level, no enemies return when you go from one world to the next so the game is always mixing it up with new enemy types, and several levels have a gimmick you won't see again. There is one underwater level for instance, one level where you ride a dinosaur for part of the level, one level where you shuffle along platform edges where one hit knocks you back down (this is 3-3, the hardest level), one level is loaded with these pots you can break and pots that keep spitting out enemies at you, etc. I kind of wish some of the better ideas appeared more than once -- more later levels with platforming as hard as 3-3 might have been a good idea, for instance, or an animal or vehicle to ride on after the first stage other than those flying-carpet bits in the last level -- but still, it works, and the game is challenging even without more levels like that. The final boss is definitely a good challenge, for instance. I finally beat the game with 1 hit point left on my last life. Pretty tense! I thought that a death would send me back to 4-1, but I think that actually you might be able to start from the last level, since it has its own screen on the level-select map, though fortunately I didn't test it. That was close, though... I had to survive for quite a while with only that 1 hit point left! Tense stuff, it was pretty fun.
So yeah, overall, Dorabian Nights is a simple but fun platformer, and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. I didn't think this would be all that great, but it's a fun game for sure. It's not as good as the Bonk games, but after them it's better than some of Hudson's other platformers for the system. The game has decently nice graphics, lots of variety (every single level has a unique look and feel to it; that's not common in a game like this!), and good level design. It's a good game. The main flaws are that the game should have had saving (having to leave the system on for this long is annoying), I'd have liked to see parallax in a lot more levels than just two, and the difficulty is uneven -- why is 3-3 the hardest level (other than maybe the final boss), for instance? And why is the desert stage, 4-3, super easy, while the other levels in world 4 are a reasonable challenge? Ah well. The game is pretty good, these issues aren't too bad. The game is also slow paced, something some people really dislike, but I don't mind this; as with, say, the Bonk or Tempo games, the slow pace fits the design well.
Oh, and the other issue is that the CD version of the game, which released a year after this 1991 HuCard version, is INCREDIBLY lazy -- they just redid the intro and ending with voice acting and more animation, redrew some graphics to make them look a little better, put in vocal songs on the title screen and (new) end-credits sequence, and added some voiced sound effects. That's it, no other changes. It even still has chiptune music ingame. That's not an issue with this version, though, just with Hudson failing to improve the later CD port much at all. Anyway, this game is fun, try it out if you like platformers.
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Doraemon Nobita no Dorabian Nights - This is a game I got in my most recent box of import stuff. At first it seemed simple and average, but it actually gets pretty good. Dorabian Nights is a fairly standard Hudson platformer, so it's not one of the greats of the genre -- Hudson platformers never were -- but it is a good, solid game that's fun to play. The game has a good difficulty curve, starting out easy and getting much more difficult by the end. The game has four worlds of four levels each and a final level at the end. The first world is very easy, the second fairly easy, the third pretty tough, the fourth about on par with the third or maybe slightly easier, and the last level is hard. Overall I had the hardest time with level 3-3, I died more in that level than any other, and it had me stuck some time -- I've been playing this game on and off for a few days now. Yes, I left the system on that long; you can't save in this game, sadly, though you do have infinite continues... from the beginning of the world. Die in a level and you start it over, lose all your lives and it's back to level 1 of the world. This may be a kids' game, but it's not as easy as you might think. The first SNES Doraemon game is a lot easier than this game, for sure. That's good, though, I like some challenge in a platformer.
In the game, you have 4 hits per life. Green things you can dig up give you a hitpoint back, if you've been hit, and these do respawn... but so do the enemies. Doraemon has five different weapons, one of which you only use during the final boss fight. The other four have some nice variety. The starting gun stuns enemies, the second is the best all-purpose gun, the third is a homing gun which fires slowly but the shots will curve to hit a target, and the last is a cape which sends enemies flying back to damage other enemies, which can be fun. You also can collect some other items which give you a shield, invincibility, and more. You get these from doors; hit Up at a door to go in. Doors either have a powerup, a bonus minigame (for an extra life or health), or in a few cases some other scene in them. Never enemies, though. The bonus rooms are amusing and add more variety to this already varied game. This is a slow-paced game, though -- Doraemon moves slowly and there is no run. I don't mind, though some people do.
One odd thing about this game is that even though it's a licensed game based on a movie, from what I've read about the movies' plot, almost none of that happens in the game. The movie is almost entirely set in the fantasy Arabian setting of the title; Doraemon and his child friends go on an adventure there. The girl character gets kidnapped and the others have to rescue her, etc. But in this game? The four children went into storybooks, and Doraemon has to rescue them. Each book is set in a different time period. The first is dinosaur-themed, the second ancient Japan themed, the third creepy/horror themed, and the last Arabian themed. On the title screen Doraemon has a turban on, fitting the setting, but ingame he only wears this in world 4 and the final level. The children only have their Arabian outfits on on the title-screen image and in the second part of the end cutscene, too. So yeah, don't expect much of the movie here. Of course, games that try something different often end up better than movie games that strictly follow the plot, so it's okay. Plus, I like the variety of the four worlds. Every level has a different setting, and they're interesting to see as you progress.
Graphically, the game is a standard Hudson platformer, with Doraemon in it. It's cute and cartoony and looks nice, though of course there isn't much parallax -- only two stages have any, the rest are flat. The music is good, but not hugely memorable. Still, it's catchy, fun stuff. The graphics are better than I thought they'd be; I was expecting something maybe more like the mediocrity of Bakusho Yoshimoto Shingeki, but this game looks better than that one for sure, and it's a lot longer and harder as well. The game also has some nice gameplay and enemy variety. Almost every level in this game is unique! Every single level has multiple enemy types you will only see in that level, no enemies return when you go from one world to the next so the game is always mixing it up with new enemy types, and several levels have a gimmick you won't see again. There is one underwater level for instance, one level where you ride a dinosaur for part of the level, one level where you shuffle along platform edges where one hit knocks you back down (this is 3-3, the hardest level), one level is loaded with these pots you can break and pots that keep spitting out enemies at you, etc. I kind of wish some of the better ideas appeared more than once -- more later levels with platforming as hard as 3-3 might have been a good idea, for instance, or an animal or vehicle to ride on after the first stage other than those flying-carpet bits in the last level -- but still, it works, and the game is challenging even without more levels like that. The final boss is definitely a good challenge, for instance. I finally beat the game with 1 hit point left on my last life. Pretty tense! I thought that a death would send me back to 4-1, but I think that actually you might be able to start from the last level, since it has its own screen on the level-select map, though fortunately I didn't test it. That was close, though... I had to survive for quite a while with only that 1 hit point left! Tense stuff, it was pretty fun.
So yeah, overall, Dorabian Nights is a simple but fun platformer, and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. I didn't think this would be all that great, but it's a fun game for sure. It's not as good as the Bonk games, but after them it's better than some of Hudson's other platformers for the system. The game has decently nice graphics, lots of variety (every single level has a unique look and feel to it; that's not common in a game like this!), and good level design. It's a good game. The main flaws are that the game should have had saving (having to leave the system on for this long is annoying), I'd have liked to see parallax in a lot more levels than just two, and the difficulty is uneven -- why is 3-3 the hardest level (other than maybe the final boss), for instance? And why is the desert stage, 4-3, super easy, while the other levels in world 4 are a reasonable challenge? Ah well. The game is pretty good, these issues aren't too bad. The game is also slow paced, something some people really dislike, but I don't mind this; as with, say, the Bonk or Tempo games, the slow pace fits the design well.
Oh, and the other issue is that the CD version of the game, which released a year after this 1991 HuCard version, is INCREDIBLY lazy -- they just redid the intro and ending with voice acting and more animation, redrew some graphics to make them look a little better, put in vocal songs on the title screen and (new) end-credits sequence, and added some voiced sound effects. That's it, no other changes. It even still has chiptune music ingame. That's not an issue with this version, though, just with Hudson failing to improve the later CD port much at all. Anyway, this game is fun, try it out if you like platformers.
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