19th September 2008, 1:08 AM
Erm, that's odd...
SNES
--
Power Piggs of the Dark Age -- I decided to play this yesterday, after going through my SNES games and sorting them into piles by genre and maximum number of players, and got through the first four levels -- half of the game -- last night. It didn't take too long to beat levels 5-7 (some tricky parts, but not too bad), but level 8 was quite hard... you'd hope the last level would be tough, and it was. Enemies all over, lots of very hard to avoid hits, blowholes, frustrating jumps that are easy to miss (there are no instant-death pits in this game so all this does is forces you to backtrack and try it again, but frustrating sometimes), long distances between checkpoints (the stage has three checkpoints, two in the middle and one before the boss... which isn't much, with how far you go between them)... yeah, a nice, tough classic side-scrolling platformer.
Really, I think I like the game quite a bit. The artwork is great, in that Western cartoon style, the music is pretty good, the level designs come straight out of the "huge and complex" field with many alternate routes or secret areas full of items to find along the way and often seemingly as many screens of height as length, the unique 'blowholes' concept (vents that push you upwards into the air -- not utterly unique, but this game has far more of them than anything else I've seen... they're all over!)... good stuff. The last level may have been tough, but I wouldn't have wanted it easier... it was hard, but not impossible once you learned the level, were careful, and used your special weapons strategically on the tougher enemies.
The game has a couple of flaws, though. The most obvious is the password system. For some bizarre reason, while the game has password save, it only gives you one at ONE point in the game -- at the beginning of level five, halfway through the game. What the heck? Why... why not every two levels or something? That's so weird... and annoying. Sure eight levels isn't long, but the last level takes a long time. It'd be great to be able to turn off the game and then later start right from that point, or at least from level seven (because there are only real bosses every two levels or so). You do have infinite continues (from the beginning of the level), but while great, that doesn't help if you want to turn off the game. Oh well.
Also, despite the box, manual, and backstory all clearly mentioning and describing the three Piggs in your heroic team (they own a donut shop, by the way; if Mohawk & Headphone Jack was designed by someone on drugs, then Power Piggs was designed by someone who was really, really hungry for donuts... your special weapons are all donuts, the pickups you collect (100-for-an-extra-life) are donut holes, your character owns a donut shop, etc... :)), there's only one in the actual game: Bruno, the Pigg you play as. The other two only appear in the manual and main-menu screen art (except one of the other one's head is used as the continue point marker, once you've touched it and activated the point... I have no idea why). Um... strange. The other two weren't kidnapped by the bad guy or anything like that; they simply aren't in the game. Odd. Was this game shipped only partially complete or something? Was it originally supposed to be much more ambitious with multiple playable characters, but they had to cut back (the fact that there is a password system but only one password also makes me wonder about this...)? Was it supposed to create a franchise and later titles would bring in the other characters in a more substantial way? The ending is sufficiently "there could be a sequel, so be prepared!" to think that any or all of those may have been the case... but despite how much the artwork and design make the game look like it's a licensed game based on some obscure early '90s cartoon, it's not. It's an original design.
Oh, and that initial "erm, that's odd..." was a reaction to what I just saw now, after beating the game and watching the ending cutscene (the Power Piggs saved the day from the evil Wizard of Wolff! Joy!)... it sent me back to the beginning of level 8 again? Uh... I don't get it, I don't know if I've seen a game do THAT before... oh well, I won. Fun game. Kind of rare, too -- only a couple copies are ever on EBay... not expensive, but rare.
Oh yeah, and it has a pretty cool manual. THAT's probably rare... again not valuable I'm sure, but rare. It's almost all drawn artwork showing the backstory -- the entire how-to-play explanation is three pages long, then the rest of the book is the backstory.
SNES
--
Power Piggs of the Dark Age -- I decided to play this yesterday, after going through my SNES games and sorting them into piles by genre and maximum number of players, and got through the first four levels -- half of the game -- last night. It didn't take too long to beat levels 5-7 (some tricky parts, but not too bad), but level 8 was quite hard... you'd hope the last level would be tough, and it was. Enemies all over, lots of very hard to avoid hits, blowholes, frustrating jumps that are easy to miss (there are no instant-death pits in this game so all this does is forces you to backtrack and try it again, but frustrating sometimes), long distances between checkpoints (the stage has three checkpoints, two in the middle and one before the boss... which isn't much, with how far you go between them)... yeah, a nice, tough classic side-scrolling platformer.
Really, I think I like the game quite a bit. The artwork is great, in that Western cartoon style, the music is pretty good, the level designs come straight out of the "huge and complex" field with many alternate routes or secret areas full of items to find along the way and often seemingly as many screens of height as length, the unique 'blowholes' concept (vents that push you upwards into the air -- not utterly unique, but this game has far more of them than anything else I've seen... they're all over!)... good stuff. The last level may have been tough, but I wouldn't have wanted it easier... it was hard, but not impossible once you learned the level, were careful, and used your special weapons strategically on the tougher enemies.
The game has a couple of flaws, though. The most obvious is the password system. For some bizarre reason, while the game has password save, it only gives you one at ONE point in the game -- at the beginning of level five, halfway through the game. What the heck? Why... why not every two levels or something? That's so weird... and annoying. Sure eight levels isn't long, but the last level takes a long time. It'd be great to be able to turn off the game and then later start right from that point, or at least from level seven (because there are only real bosses every two levels or so). You do have infinite continues (from the beginning of the level), but while great, that doesn't help if you want to turn off the game. Oh well.
Also, despite the box, manual, and backstory all clearly mentioning and describing the three Piggs in your heroic team (they own a donut shop, by the way; if Mohawk & Headphone Jack was designed by someone on drugs, then Power Piggs was designed by someone who was really, really hungry for donuts... your special weapons are all donuts, the pickups you collect (100-for-an-extra-life) are donut holes, your character owns a donut shop, etc... :)), there's only one in the actual game: Bruno, the Pigg you play as. The other two only appear in the manual and main-menu screen art (except one of the other one's head is used as the continue point marker, once you've touched it and activated the point... I have no idea why). Um... strange. The other two weren't kidnapped by the bad guy or anything like that; they simply aren't in the game. Odd. Was this game shipped only partially complete or something? Was it originally supposed to be much more ambitious with multiple playable characters, but they had to cut back (the fact that there is a password system but only one password also makes me wonder about this...)? Was it supposed to create a franchise and later titles would bring in the other characters in a more substantial way? The ending is sufficiently "there could be a sequel, so be prepared!" to think that any or all of those may have been the case... but despite how much the artwork and design make the game look like it's a licensed game based on some obscure early '90s cartoon, it's not. It's an original design.
Oh, and that initial "erm, that's odd..." was a reaction to what I just saw now, after beating the game and watching the ending cutscene (the Power Piggs saved the day from the evil Wizard of Wolff! Joy!)... it sent me back to the beginning of level 8 again? Uh... I don't get it, I don't know if I've seen a game do THAT before... oh well, I won. Fun game. Kind of rare, too -- only a couple copies are ever on EBay... not expensive, but rare.
Oh yeah, and it has a pretty cool manual. THAT's probably rare... again not valuable I'm sure, but rare. It's almost all drawn artwork showing the backstory -- the entire how-to-play explanation is three pages long, then the rest of the book is the backstory.