r/bandainamco

Song: Uman - The White Spirit

I’d recommend listening to this music while reading. 

STORY (7/10) 

• Storytelling was pretty basic, with the main character embarking on a quest to save his own soul from eternal torment. 
• It had nice little cutscenes with dialogues, which expanded on some interactions. 
• You played as Tarosuke, the mischievous boy who tormented his own village with pranks. Guess the villagers had enough! 
• Other than the main character, you could summon his Grandpa to help defeat some bosses. Plus, gamble some money in a game of dice, have a private dance from a Princess, and even prove your worth to the River Styx guard. 
• While pacing wasn’t too extensive, the game did overstay its welcome with the outrageous difficulty! 
• While I got only 3 main endings, there were 2 remaining with Tarosuke going to the Demon and Beast worlds!

 

GAMEPLAY (3/10) 

• Starting with controls, which were pretty straightforward and simplistic. You could jump, attack with projectiles or press down to charge your super attacks. Be careful though, as holding for too long would freeze you for a couple of seconds! 
• Other than the ground controls, you could swim underwater and even dash by pressing jump. 
• The game also had an awesome upgrade mechanic with other goodies as a bonus. You could buy attack upgrades, health, speed boots or even companions. The cat and dog were useful to an extent, unfortunately they couldn’t keep up as they always stopped to lick their ass! 
• On top of all the upgrades, you could buy health replenishers and even extensions. I still don’t know what the mysterious health item did, oh well.. 
• Enemy, mini-bosses and boss variety was really good, with most encounters feeling like a new challenge. Unfortunately they were clearly too many to handle! 
• While platforming was brutal, the traversal was even crazier. I simply hated the whole experience, mostly because the whole game felt like some psychopath wanted to torture the players! 
• Upon death, you began at the start of the level, with all your coins and collectibles remaining. That didn’t help with its tremendous difficulty spikes, as the game punished you for exploration, staying in one place and even killing too many enemies. You basically had to know exactly where to go and go fast, because god forbid players could get their quarters worth!

 

AUDIO (9/10) 

• Sound design was mostly stereo, which surprised me as the game came out in 1987. 
• The music was really good on most locations, with some having great tunes! 
• The sound effects themselves were pretty diverse for that year, having crunchy and spicy killing effects!

 

VISUALS (10/10) 

• Fidelity was outstanding for 1987, and I really loved the whole map concept. During shops, the top would come off and the overall field of view would increase. All that coupled with extensive visual effects, awesome character animations and game fluidity! 
• The character models themselves were something special, including all the weird mini-bosses. 
• The art style kept a fresh vibe on every location, with the parallax scrolling helping during those awesome landscapes!

 

WORLD DESIGN (9/10) 

• Level design was divided into multiple sections, either underwater, mountains, forest, desert or underground. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, as for 1987, that was truly mind boggling! 
• The atmosphere was there, but mostly ruined by the constant pressure. I couldn’t enjoy the sights, as the overall enemy encounters were simply too much! 
• World destruction while reduced to enemy killings, did have those annoying boulders!

 

TL;DR -> An awesome journey through hell, with a clear drawback on gameplay pressure. I did enjoy most of the game, but when you force someone into madness, the result does bring heavy judgement. A (7.6) game, very good in my book. Wouldn’t replay it though, as even if I left 2 endings behind, I’d rather go blind than proceed with the grind! 

Here is my third model completed. I found this kit for $5! I wanted to practice something smaller and work on clean panel lines with my homemade oil washes. I ended up absolutely hating the stickers it came with, so I created my own masks for the stripes and tried to mix my own orange color and worked on clean finishes on the cockpit canopy. Sealed the whole thing in a satin varnish to tone down the shine. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

Bandai has been a huge step up in quality from the 1970s Tamiya kits I've been building this year... I already got an X-Wing and an AT-AT for the stash.

Feel free to give advice!