Retro Revamp: Brutal Doom

Shortly before we participated in the Extra Life campaign, Carter told me about one of the heavier mods to the classic Doom games, called Brutal Doom. Strictly speaking, modding these games is nothing new -- there have been fan levels, replaced graphics, and total conversions out almost as long as the game itself. However, that really went up a notch in more recent years, when the game's programming was released Open Source.

Brutal Doom needs GZDoom to run, which by itself is basically an emulator that allows the older games to be run on 64-bit computers, as well as adding controls for mouse aiming, jumping, and crouching. BD takes it a few steps further, by updating the weapons and monsters to the point where just about every kill is extremely bloody and gruesome -- and yet kinda cool to watch, as well.

If you have the wads for Doom and Doom II, all you need to do is copy them into the same directory as these emulators. The level themselves are exactly the same as before, in their claustrophobic and hellish glory. But now the renewed controls make them feel even more timeless -- even if the addition of jumping over obstacles or being able to shoot at vertical angles does render some of the puzzles a bit superfluous (particularly in the final level of Doom II). This is a renovation that gives an old classic a breath of fresh air, while not taking away from what made it a classic in the first place, and is an absolute recommend.

Quake (1995)

So, the Doom series had its thing, in the early nineties... but where to go next? The plethora of clones and spin-offs -- Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic and Hexen, Dark Forces -- had pretty much pushed the Doom engine to its limit. So id Software went back to the drawing board, with the first truly 3D First Person Shooter: Quake.

A classic in its own right, the game starts off in a similar way to Doom -- it focuses on a futuristic soldier, who is tasked with stopping a Hellish invasion. You take the offensive, jumping headlong into the monsters' hometurf -- a medieval alternate world, populated with Lovecraftian monstrosities. Along the way, you collect runestones -- intended to help Shub-Niggurath send her minions to Earth, you instead will use them to crash her pad. That's pretty much it, for plot.

As with its ancestor, Quake is pretty much all about combat and horror, and Boy Howdy does it deliver on both! There may be less monsters per capita than, for instance,Doom II, but you have to beat the crap out of every living thing you come across. Adding to that, is that many levels are outright claustrophobic, the monster placement in general is almost sadistic, and while still not overly smart, the monsters are all quite able to rip the meat off of your bones if you aren't on your game.

Some of the levels tend to look the same, after a while, but they are very elaborate -- sometimes quite imaginative -- and spooky as all hell. This is especially so, going the Abandonware route, without the Trent Reznor score -- I've heard some of it on its own, and it's very gut churning, but to date I've never heard it in the context of the game. I've only heard the ambient sound and the mayhem... and frankly that can be surprisingly terrifying. Deathmatch is also a hell of a lot of fun, if you can find the servers and friends to do it with, these days.

However, I'm borderline on the sequels -- as much as its moot for a DOSBox blog -- because they have NOTHING to do with this game. At all. They are fun in their own right, but where I'm concerned, they aren't Quake.

Duke Nukem 3D (Atomic Edition)

To be honest, until mid-way through the dawn of first-person shooters, I had never heard of the Duke Nukem series. My understanding is that they're relatively low-rent platform shooters, sending up B-movies and 80's action cliches. It really went nuclear, so to speak, in the mid-to-late nineties, when the gang at Apogee/3D Realms decided to cash in on the FPS craze, with the third game. And the result was a wild, intense, clever, raunchy, and surprisingly controversial landmark in action game history.

After defeating the bad guys, in Duke Nukem II, our titular hero (and before anyone asks, I have no idea what his day job is) is flying back to Earth, when his ship is suddenly shot down. It turns out that another alien invasion beat him back to Earth, killing, enslaving and mutating everyone in its path. So he has to fight through cities, prisons, bases, and space stations, to stop the ETs from breeding us into extinction.

The graphics and gameplay have their similarities to Doom, but in a lot of subtle ways they definitely take it further in DN3D. At the very least, you can actually tilt your head, jump, and crouch. I'm not 100% sure if this was the first FPS to have these now common features, but it was a rather silly omission from Doom. Some of the weapons are also imaginative, in that they aren't all just plain shooting weapons -- there are laser trip mines (that you attach to walls), pipe bombs (that you throw and detonate), shrink rays (that make you step on enemies you've reduced to the size of apples), and a freeze gun (that makes you go in for a kick). Similarly, the graphics across the board are crisper and more colourful than Doom. It's not the quantum leap between Doom and, for instance, Quake III, but it does make for a much less grim experience.

That doesn't mean, though, that your heart won't still pound -- some of these enemies are sneaky and tough enough that they scare the bejesus out of me! lol

My favourite element, though, is the level design. For one thing, there's a ton of interactivity -- lots of things in each room that you can destroy or play around with in some ways (especially with Duke's sardonic one-liners). Also, you can have a surprising amount of fun just riding subways and trains. A lot of the time, the levels AREN'T just drab factories, spaceports, and hell locales... they're realistic Earth-bound places. We all know what hotels, office buildings, bars, etc. look like... and they are uncannily replicated in this game. In the expanded Atomic Edition, this is taken even further... with a Mission: Impossible send up, a fast-food joint, a police station, a post office, and a tanker ship. Many of which, have you getting struck by lightening, or getting perpetually crushed by collapsing rooms -- I don't get that in many shooters, even ones newer than this!

A lot of flak has been raised, about this game supposedly promoting the murder of scantily clad women. I'm not going to pretend that just about every woman you see in this game, wears almost nothing, and is sexualized in some way... but you never HAVE to kill any of them. In fact, very often shooting them sicks multiple enemies on you -- so you can easily argue you're PUNISHED for killing them. So please, spare the moral outrage for something like Manhunt.

Anyway, whether it's on Steam or in abandonware, PLEASE give this a shot. It's a ton of fun.

Doom II: Hell on Earth

So when Doom became the gargantuan hit that it was, of course the folks at id Software quickly came out with a sequel... or, a continuation, anyway (more on that in a bit). 

At the end of the original game, your character returns to Earth, having beaten the demonic hordes... only to find a city in flames. It turns out that, while you were off fighting the monsters on Phobos, some of them had portaled their way onto Earth, and the whole planet is under siege. 

The military has drafted you to infiltrate a city and shut down a forcefield that is keeping humanity from being evacuated to outer space, and along the way you discover that the enemy's entry point is a portal DIRECTLY TO HELL. And you can only seal it from the other side.

Fun.

The reason that I -- and many others -- are sketchy about calling Doom II a sequel, is because unlike most game sequels, there isn't a lot that is changed between this game and the previous one. Aside from some new monsters, a few new textures, a new weapon, and a handful of under-the-hood changes that the average person would never notice... it looks and plays EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE ORIGINAL DOOM. These days, with the game in abandonware and in classic game packages, it's not too big of a deal. However, I would have been a bit ticked, back in the day, to have paid $30 or $40 bucks for a brand new game, that is basically an expansion on an earlier one.

That being said, the new material is really good. I love the new weapon, the awesome super shotgun. It's more powerful than the standard shotgun, makes a satisfying sound, and is as close as this game gets -- aside from the notorious BFG 9000 -- to having a fire-and-forget weapon. Every time I go back to the earlier game, I sincerely miss the super shotgun. While many of the new monsters are modifications of existing ones -- the most obvious examples being the Hell Knights, basically being lighter and more fragile versions of Barons of Hell -- there are some original monsters that are quite imaginatively designed. Truth be told, the Arch-Vile still scares the shit out of me!

Level design was always something nicely done, by these games, and this version is no exception. Not counting the new episode, in Ultimate Doom, this was much more visually rich and just more intricate than just about every level of the previous game. Even though some of the puzzles may frustrate you, I can guarantee that there will never be a point in this game, where you will be bored. Especially, when many levels will have you fighting off DOZENS of monsters at once -- no joke.

There really isn't much more, that I can add. It still looks great and plays better, the action is still fun as hell, though some more originality and ambition would have been nice. You will not be disappointed, by getting this game.

Doom

Well, it's been a long time, since I've reviewed a classic PC game, but this is a good one to come back on. This Sunday is Father's Day, and one of my most prominent memories of my adolescence is my dad and I playing a certain computer game. A game that single-handedly popularized both online gaming, and the first-person shooter genre. A game blamed for lost productivity, and -- less intelligently -- for violence among teenagers, including a spike in mass shootings. A game that is also celebrating its 20th anniversary, this year. I'm talking about DOOM.

One can be understood for thinking there's no story, to this game, as a handful of text screens are all that we get, in the game itself. According to the manual, though, this is the setup: it's the near-to-distant future, and you play an ex-Marine deposited on Mars, for assaulting a superior officer wanting to fire on unarmed civilians. While the outpost is normally boring in the extreme, that changes when the United Aerospace Corporation conducts teleportation experiments, on the moons... and something demonic manages to come through.

In the ensuing fury, the Phobos base is overrun, and Deimos seems to have completely vanished. When the fireteam sent to Phobos is wiped out, it falls upon you, to pick up where they left off.

The game's original version is divided into three episodes (the first being the shareware version), each one covering nine levels on Phobos, Deimos, and Hell (the updatedUltimate Doom adds a fourth episode, set on Earth). While you can play these episodes in any order that you like, they do get progressively harder in sequence. The gameplay is so simplistic that it has been satirized many times: go into spooky place, find monsters, kill them, repeat. While the sheer numbers and firepower exerted by the zombies, demons, and other assorted monsters can be diabolical, most of the time they can be handled. This is because -- due to the technology of the time -- the monsters themselves aren't all that bright.

What can make the game mildly deeper than a mere shoot and loot, is the ways in which you can toy with and exploit the monsters. Very often, the monsters aren't too choosy on who they try to eviscerate, so as long as you've stirred up monsters of differing species then you can simply get out of the way and let natural selection take its course. In a less sadistic way (arguably), you can take advantage of the fact that the monsters' tactics basically consist of spotting you, following you, and trying to kill you. So if you can get a lot of them bottlenecked in a corridor and put some distance between you...

In its main element -- action and horror -- Doom very much succeeds. Even after all this time, even with the horror and violence bars being raised to the Nth degree, by media and real life alike... it is still intense, shocking, unsettling, and just plain heart-pounding. I've played this game, its sequel, and various fan-made levels countless times, and it is still incredibly exciting. The graphics are a bit primitive, by today's standards, but they are very colourful and well-drawn. The monsters and levels are very creatively designed, the sounds just plain terrifying at times, and the weapons purely awesome. And the music may be MIDI tracks, but they beg to be played on the best available sound cards.

I've even had a bit of experience, with the Deathmatch and co-op multiplayer modes... frankly I can't imagine hunting down your buddies in some of the larger levels, given that you can only play with 4 people at the most, but if you've never done on-line shooters before this is a great way to wet your feet. And for the record, yes I do find Deathmatch a lot more fun -- even a dumb human is going to be much more challenging to "kill" than the toughest of these monsters.

I suppose I should put on my Bored on the Corner hat, for a moment, to address the so-called controversial content. The game features plenty of demonic and Satanic elements, which have been attacked relentlessly by the Christian Right... completely ignoring that these elements ARE FROM THE BAD GUYS. Honestly, that speaks for itself. As for the violence... yes, it's gory. In its time, Doom probably was the most violent game of its time. However, there have been many studies into this issue, and NONE of them has found a link between violent gaming tastes, and overly violent behaviour. I've said my own piece about how non-violent I am, despite having grown up with games like this, but I can take it even further: I know several people who have played these sort of games to some extent, and I only know two of them, who have handled guns in any way whatsoever.

And one of those people, hates first-person shooters, because they make her motion sick.

ANYWAY! Doom is one of those games that was not only very popular, but truly set a standard. Unreal, Halo, Call of Duty, and countless other games owe their existence to the mammoth success of this one. You can find it ANYWHERE on the web now -- from Abandonware pages, to the Xbox Marketplace, to Steam -- and fan-made levels and mods are still being made to this day. As long as you have the stomach for it, I highly recommend checking it out.

Absolute Pinball

Am I the only one who saw that title, and remembered an ad for Absolut Vodka, tied in with The Who's Tommy? Nevermind.

One of the things I miss about modern arcades, is that it doesn't seem to be real often that you find honest-to-goodness pinball tables in them, anymore. I know that they're still out there, and still being made, but for some reason they're rather hard to find in any arcades in my area. While my video gaming skills are spotty at best, I'm reasonably good with the silver ball, and I've been known to be a genuine pinball wizard, more than once (I'll never forget winning a free game, on a Star Trek TNG table, at the Walden Galleria, when I was about 12). So not surprisingly, my dad had managed to track down a couple of pinball computer games, around the same time, and I used to play those plenty as well (specifically, Tristan [?} and Pinball Fantasies). And naturally, when I was browsing Abandonia for a game to try from scratch, this one popped out of the list (even if Windows 8 likes to regularly interrupt my playtime, with dialogue boxes about sticky keys...).

As you might expect, Absolute Pinball is a compilation of four virtual pinball tables. You are chauferred to them, by a cartoon robot. That's pretty much the extent of the conceptual depth, but hey, what do you want? The tables themselves have a decent variety to them: one has a baseball theme, another is about diving, another about highway driving, and finally about making movies. Each one has its share of mini-games, a plethora of targets, and lots of ways to keep yourself occupied and challenged.

In a lot of ways, reviewing a pinball game is a bit cheap, because all they really have to do is look good, sound good, and play well enough to be challenging without being impossible to do anything. AP mostly accomplishes that... though unfortunately this is another one where the abandonware neglects to include any music from the CD-ROM that I'm guessing this was released on. So not only is there no music to go with my fun, but it makes it very apparent that they were a bit skimpy on the sound design -- not only do the impact/table sounds rarely resemble the real thing, but often times there's nothing there.

Lots of gamers complain about the unrealistic physics in virtual pinball games. Now, since I'm a dental assisting student, former crossing guard, and sometimes filmmaker, I don't really know the details of what they're talking about. However, one thing I have noticed about the physics, is that the balls don't seem to have much weight or resistance to them. When they roll down the screen (representing rolling down the table slope), they feel more like they're in free fall. When you hit them -- with the somewhat shallow-looking flippers -- they seem to careen to the other end of the table without much difficulty. Maybe it's just me, but it feels more like a weird variation on ping-pong, than pinball.

My biggest beef, though, is with the graphics. Okay, they're in bright colours, they flash like the lights on real pinball tables, etc. and that's great. However, there are some rather big problems. First of all, the ramps and other protruding areas of the tables, aren't outlined in any way. So it can be very hard, to tell exactly where -- or what -- various parts of the tables are. I would hope that these days, this would be countered to a certain extent, by simply changing the angle of the view (to something more realistic than a bird's eye view of the whole table), but even if they were stuck with this at the time, there are ways to paint the table to simulate depth.

The second graphics issue, is all about the camera. Like some other pinball simulators I've played (like the aforementioned Pinball Fantasies), your view point is not only directly over the table, but constantly following the ball itself. And apparently you're doing this from about a foot over the table window, because your peripheral vision of everything else is almost non-existent. Now, lots of times this is no big deal -- but how are you supposed to "shoot the submarine" when you can't see it from where the camera's pointing? How are you supposed to take skill shots with lateral bumpers, when the camera zooms past them too quickly for you to notice them half the time?

I cringe to think of what these games much have cost in stores, when they first came out. At least today, they're free to download, and to be honest that's about what they're worth a lot of the time. Personally I prefer Pinball Fantasies overall -- especially since I know for a fact that you CAN hear music in that game, without a CD in the drive -- but this is alright for a quick diversion.

SPECIAL: Mortal Kombat AFTER The PC Era

Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the gaming world, knows that the Mortal Kombat games didn't end in 1996, when MK Trilogy was released. The problem, for my purposes, is that none of them were released for DOS computers. However, I can give my two cents in a more casual sense.

Mortal Kombat 4/Mortal Kombat Gold (upgrade for the Sega Dreamcast)
This is a landmark game in the series, for multiple reasons. It was the last game in the MK series to be released to arcades, as well as have a port to home computers (WIndows 9x only). It was also the first MK game to have totally computer-rendered characters, as opposed to the video-digitized performers seen in the prior games. By today's standards, the models are rather off-putting and goofy, to put it mildly (they are only a bit more contoured than the chiseled-puppet appearances of the original Quake engine's creations). At the time, however, this was a big deal (which the game itself drew attention to, by claiming to be in 3D and often breaking the fourth wall to sell that). To be fair though, the promotional renders of the characters are still very nice-looking, and I can only imagine how the game might have been received, if the hardware had permitted the use of them outside of magazines and FMV scenes. Mind you, I do wish that the mobile camera wouldn't move into the walls or otherwise obstruct what's going on, every so often.

The gameplay is a stranger story. The supposedly 3D aspect of it, was awkward by the standards of any timeframe; nearly all of the fighting, is along the same 2D plane as the earlier games, with only tiny and sluggish side-stepping being possible as a special move. Even the quaint Virtua Fighter had more fluid lateral movement, than that. Other issues stem from an overall sense of the final game being an unfinished product; the final boss is not only playable from the outset, with no special codes involved (a feat never done before or since, in the series, not counting MK Trilogy and Armageddon), but he is a rather bland and unimpressive Shang Tsung knock off who imitates the moves of the other characters (an issue confounded by the boss turning invisible any time he is frozen -- seriously, who tested this thing?). The sub-boss suffers from MK3's recycle syndrome -- it's Goro, who fights in pretty much the same way as in MK1. What's more, break-out villain Quan Chi, never appears as a character you can fight, in the single-player mode. This is the guy whose fearsome picture appears ALL OVER the arcade machine, and would have been a logical choice for the new sub-boss, but the only time you fight a CPU version of him, is in the practice mode.

On the plus side, the task of actually playing it, as a fighting game, is reasonably good. The controls are fluid, the special moves (mostly) accessible, the AI doesn't cheat at even the highest difficulty, and the gritty/no-nonsense approach of the earlier games has mostly returned. The only issue in that regard, is that some joker decided that you have to hold down four or five buttons AND do funky things with the direction controls, to perform certain specials and finishers. Suffice it to say, the cheat code allowing one button fatalities, is once again your best friend.

This was the first MK game to use melee weapons, and it was kind of a mixed bag overall. The weapons are devastating, to be sure, but they are also way too easy to drop. Honestly, the best thing you can do with any weapon -- yours, an opponent's, a rock that's lying around -- is to just throw the damn thing.

Overall, this was a reasonably fun game, to transition from the "classic" era, to the 3D era... I just wish it was a more complete one, which might have made it a truly awesome one.

The Adventure Games (Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, MK Special Forces, and MK: Shaolin Monks)
A side project, that the MK creators had experimented with, was branching into platform/beat-em-up adventure games. These were also intended to tell origin stories, for the primary characters (usually set before the original game, though Shaolin Monks is more-or-less a retelling of the events of MK2). These games were only released to the consoles (mostly the PS1 and Nintendo 64, though Shaolin Monks would be released for the PS2 and original Xbox), and thus the only personal experience I have with any of these, was one afternoon playing SM with my cousins.

Sub-Zero, from what I've seen and heard about it, was a bold start to this brand, with interesting levels and puzzles, and a decent variety of enemies. However, two rather large problems come to mind. One -- in the Playstation version -- is the ridiculous FMV cutscenes. As nice as it is to see Mortal Kombat in live-action (especially with the same people who performed the fighters in the classic games), it was painfully apparent from the word go, that none of these martial artists could act at all. John Turk is very stiff, as the title character, Rich Divizio hams it up like a beast, as Quan Chi, and often times the actors will adopt these hilariously awful stances for no reason whatsoever.

The other issue, is not only much more important, but common to all versions of the game -- the controls are terrible. I don't recall exactly what the issue was said to be, but every review, casual remark, or gameplay video I've come across points to some control issue making the game needlessly difficult to play (especially on the more delicate puzzles).

I have even less knowledge, of Special Forces, save for these two things: it was rushed to release, and that it is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever released for the PS1 and N64. It goes without saying, that the former probably directly contributed to the latter. Not only was a ton of promised/developed content, never released to the general public (eg. it was originally going to be a two-player game, focusing on Jax and Sonya, but the final game was carried by Jax alone), but my recall is that the controls and camera were once again out to lunch.

The creators seemed to have learned their lessons, by the time Shaolin Monks hit the market. While it took -- and deserves -- some flak for seriously monkeying with the continuity or the series (and writing Liu Kang and Kung Lao as overgrown ten year olds), it more than made up for it by delivering crisp and intuitive controls, fun combat, and a cool game to look at in every way. It also offered a "Versus" mode, that was its own spin on standard MK fighting, and a good port of MK2 as a hidden bonus. It also makes the best use of weapons, that maybe the whole series has done to date -- they stick to the owner like glue, they aren't sluggish, they're knarly to be on the business end of, and they're easy to use. As you're about to see, that's not something that this series always keeps in mind.

 

The 3D Era -- MK: Deadly Alliance, MK: Deception, MK: Armageddon

The brand in general fizzled, in the late nineties. Not only were MK4 and Sub-Zero not very well received, but several film and television projects were generally groaned away (and for good reason -- they were all fecal matter). So about five years passed, before Mortal Kombat finally returned to the fans. Once again, major risks were taken; for the first time, an MK fighting game was not released to the arcade in any form; the CG character models and 3D gameplay were vastly redesigned; the narrative took a sharply darker tone (shown from the get go, by killing off Liu Kang and Shao Kahn); and it would also debut the Konquest mode...

The Konquest mode, was very different, in each game that featured it. However, it was an interesting game changer, so to speak. In Deadly Alliance, it was basically just a training mode that featured some backstory. In Deception, it was a clunky sandbox adventure game, that was considered too much trouble for a mediocre reward (namely, an awkward mashup character that no one particularly liked). In Armageddon, it was a spiritual succesor to Shaolin Monks that truly showed the best that the series had to offer. The games from this era onward, had all tinkered with various extra modes, but Konquest was the mainstay of these three games.

The gameplay of the arcade mode (ie. the classic versus-style combat), was always a mixed bag from these three games (for these purposes, I've played a ROM of the Deadly Alliance GameBoy Advance port, as well as Deception; I've never personally touched Armageddon). On the plus sides, the arenas are very layered, and the lateral movements are far more slick than in MK4. In all other ways... quite frankly, I want to ask the creators what they were thinking.

For one thing, the controls are spongy as hell. I'm told that this was done, to convey a more realistic fighting experience (yeah sure, in a game where you fight lava giants, four-armed behemoths, and at least four separate gods). Whatever the excuse, the result is a fighting engine that is so sluggish, that it feels like I'm trying to play a game while wearing boxing gloves. The other issue, is that someone decided that everyone would have at least two distinct fighting styles, each with about a dozen separate moves. On paper, this was to get around the fact that apart from special moves (in the good games), everyone fought in pretty much the same way (personally, this never bothered me -- that's why they're called basic moves). In practice, this just added yet another thing that you would have to spend forever to memorize, and needlessly complicated something that is supposed to be not only primal, but fun.

The Mortal Kombat series doesn't necessarily have to turn into a button mash, but when it was at its best, you had a lot of room to experiment and improvise. In order to do well in these games, though, you have to follow a very exact routine (especially since in at least some versions of Deadly Alliance, the game flat out cheats in the final boss match -- it's the only time EVER, when your health doesn't recover, between rounds). It doesn't help at all, that the button to switch fighting styles if basically the same one used for blocking -- so guess what's going to constantly happen by accident, when you're trying to guard against a hit? Maybe it's just me, but this kind of tomfoolery isn't my idea of a good time.

Losing the Plot: Mortal Kombat vs.DC Universe
No, you're not misreading that. I'm not sure why, but someone decided that it would be a good idea to crossover the Mortal Kombat games with -- of all things -- the DC Comics characters. Even now, several years after its release, I still don't understand why this was thought to be a good idea. For one thing, the two franchises have nothing in common -- not in tone, not in plot, not in genre, nothing. Secondly -- and to the long-standing chagrin of fans -- due to the kid-friendly nature of the DC characters, the trademark MK fatalities had to be seriously toned down... to the point of them looking more than a little cartoonish.

The sad part of this, is that by all accounts, the game itself was actually rather good. Every single review I've read or seen, praised gameplay that had gone back to the simplified and fast-paced system that made the classic games work (along with some killer innovations that haven't been repeated so far). The problem is that so many hardcore fans were so put off by the bizzare mashup, that they wouldn't have touched this game if would cure cancer.

Reboot! (Mortal Kombat [2009], aka MK9)
While it wasn't intended as an apology for MK vs. DC* (this was honestly in the works before then), the creators more than made up for the polarizing previous game, with this Abramstrek-esque sequel/reboot that not only retold the classic games, but made them rougher and more brutal than ever.

* (if you're wondering, this game completely ignores the events of MK vs. DC, which itself seemed to be set in its own timeline)

The epic story mode -- easily the best Mortal Kombat "movie" ever made -- opens on a startling note. Not only did practically ALL of the characters die, during Armageddon, but Shao Kahn won the power of the universe itself. In his final moments, Rayden sends an annoyingly cryptic message back in time, to his younger self -- his self, at the start of the original Mortal Kombat tournament. Something in the very near future, is key to preventing this disaster, and the younger Rayden has to make that happen, while other things completely fall apart around him and our heroes.

This game, I have played, and it is a HUGE improvement over many of the preceding ones in the series. The controls are still a bit wacky, but it the combat is back to good old-fashioned beating the shit out of people. The characters and arenas are as close as they've come so far, to actually being there -- they're that detailed and rich. Finally, this might be -- for better or worse, and absolutely hands down -- the most gruesome and brutal Mortal Kombat game, ever. Not only are several of the fatalities downright disturbing to watch, but one of the new special moves is something called an X-Ray move; a character tazes, shoots, stabs, or just plain breaks bones of his/her victim, in the kind of grisly detail that shows beyond a doubt that you should NEVER try to do this to your buddies in real life. How bad are they? Let me put it this way, many of the X-Ray moves could have been fatalities, in the classic games (and a couple of them were).

My main complaint, about MK9, is its additional content. For one thing, there's too damn much of it -- more alternate costumes than I can count, often with additional moves, and even a few new characters. While this was addressed, to a point, with the Complete Edition (that featured all of these add-ons), it does feel a bit like a cash grab. My other issue is that some of the extra characters not only come out of left field, but make absoultely no sense in this series. The Playstation 3 version, for instance, has God of War's Kratos as a "guest warrior". Even worse is the DLC of -- I kid you not -- Freddy Krueger. This probably isn't a surprise, but the first time I heard about that, I thought I was being punk'd (or trolled). I'm still not behind it, to be honest.

Either way, Mortal Kombat is back and not only as popular as ever, but arguably better than ever. It's going to be genuinely interesting, to see where this goes.

Mortal Kombat Trilogy (PC Port)

When Mortal Kombat 3 became an arcade smash, the Midway creators pulled a complete Street Fighter II; not only were there at least two upgrades (for arcades and home consoles) but you couldn't swing a dead cat, without seeing Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, or its final version: Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

Following the exact same story as MK3, what sets Trilogy apart is that it features all of the characters, and most of the arenas, from every prior Mortal Kombat game. Yes, that includes all of the ninjas -- male and female -- that were missing from the original MK3 but restored for Ultimate. It also features a plethora of new moves, new finishers, and a new hidden character (ONCE AGAIN, a ninja).

The graphics are pretty much like the port of MK3, except for the minor difference that the warrior names are much more legible in the life bar (which were oddly garbled in the MK3 port). A welcome improvement over the MK3 port, however, is that you see far more of the incredible stages, from all of the classic games. However, for a game that was released at the dawn of the Pentium era, it is disappointing that the graphics are not at a higher resolution -- in fact, if you were to play this in Windows 9x, the default display is a window about the size of an audio cassette. Given that the previous games had no trouble being in full-screen, and this one still plays fine at that setting, I don't understand this decision.

One area where the graphics have a problem, in every version of the game, has simply to do with the fact that several characters are ninjas. Now, I'm a ninja fan, but it's really obvious that the ninjas in this game -- male or female -- use exactly the same graphics as each other. The only difference, aside from what special moves they use (sometimes) is merely the colour of their outfit. So not only can it make for a bland visual experience, but there are moments where one can't be blamed for wondering if they've popped in a hyper-violent Power Rangers game, by mistake. This is especially so, when the vast majority of the characters the game makes you fight against, are ninjas, as opposed to the plethora of other characters.

Another graphics issue, has to do with the endings for each character. One of my favourite parts of the series, is that when a player beats the game, their epilogue is presented with unique and often cinematic artwork. However, this game not only cheats with certain characters, by only showing a text crawl over their versus portrait, but it confounds the issue by reusing the ending pictures from the original MK3! Shit, or get off the pot, guys.

The audio... well, I can only comment so well. The sound effects are exactly the same as MK3, so they're still intense and action-packed (even if the game neglects to have a voice cue for Goro, for no apparent reason). The music, however, I know absolutely nothing about; I've only played this through abandonware downloads, which don't rip the music off of the CD-ROM, so I can only guess that it was using the music from the arcade takes of the earlier games.

The gameplay, is the single largest flaw in this game -- it is downright horrible. This includes the absolutely absurd task of finding the control mapping feature, AND getting it to configure the keys the way I'd wanted, WITHOUT stepping on start/pause buttons that it never told me about, OR overlapping with controls for the other player. I don't think I've ever had that experience with a game, before.

Even once you get into the game itself, it's not exactly smooth sailing. The AI fighters can be all over the place, in terms of difficulty -- one moment the same opponent will be murdering you several rounds in a row, the next he will suddenly be a punching bag. The two newest characters -- Noob Saibot and Rain -- are so insanely overpowered that they can even beat bosses without breaking a sweat (mind you that can come in handy, on the Champion ladder's FIVE OPPONENT Super Endurance match). However, it's also way too easy to rely on supermoves, when using them; the odd time you have to actually use your hands and feet, you've almost forgotten what it was like. I'm also not convinced that the hit detection works that well. Yes, that's right: in a FIGHTING GAME, there's a fairly good chance that your attacks will go right through an opponent, that is close enough for you to blow on.

It doesn't help, either, that the PC port of Trilogy is taken pretty much bang-on, from the notoriously buggy Playstation version. While I can't speak for how many of the glitches carry over from the Sony game to the PC one, something that I have noticed is the odd tendency for fatality moves to not work (even if you've used the correct command). This is especially obvious when you've been beaten by retro characters who don't have Animalities, Brutalities, or even second plain Fatalities... yet the computer still has them try to perform those moves, meaning that the screen darkens and nothing else happens.

By the way, those goofy finisher names are not misprints, nor are they practical jokes on my part. I'm not really sure what the thought process was, but the silly finisher trend that started in MK2 with Friendships and Babalities, added Animalities with MK3 (where the victor turns into an animal -- for some reason -- and maims the opponent), and this game added Brutalities (where the victor literally auto-combos the loser until they explode). On top of being inappropriately absurd, for a game about people murdering each other during a demonic invasion, it means that the vast majority of finishing moves in this game, involve the loser being blown up -- once again, rather dull after a while.

Probably the only saving grace, in terms of the gameplay, is that someone had the sense to have a regular menu option, for the "dial-a-kombos" to be fully automatic for the player. Believe me, between saving wear-and-tear, and leveling the playing field a bit against the spitfire AI, this will do you a huge favour.

Tips on beating the bosses, are pretty much the same as the previous games (with the exception of Shang Tsung, since he appears as a standard character in every variation of MK3). In other words, stay sharp, keeping moving, and take advantage of any opening you can get. In fact, with Kintaro I would strongly recommend fighting with Rain -- his control orb move is probably the fastest projectile in the game, and if you don't let up he will fall for it every single time. You're going to have to be more on guard, with Shao Kahn and Motaro, simply because they each have new throw moves (and if you don't know, those moves are unblockable). Considering that their offense is already extremely high, this means you're in for an even rougher ride than in the standard MK3. Then again, newly playable ninjas Rain and Noob Saibot are so overpowered, that perhaps it balances out to a certain extent. It's a matter of personal choice.

Personally, I'm not sure whether or not you should play this game or not. With all three  other PC versions of Mortal Kombat being downloadable, these days, there's no real value to a semi-best of edition that wasn't even that well made in the first place (despite the developers having voice cues for "Outstanding", "Excellent", etc. play over their logos in the intro sequence). Actually, scratch that -- if you want to play MKT, download a Nintendo 64 emulator and play the version designed for that console (just because it's more or less glitch free). Unless you want to be a completest (as of 1996), and can't get the 2011 reboot game (which pretty much remakes this one), just skip it in favour of the three individual games. Consign this abomination to the pits of Outworld, where it belongs.

Mortal Kombat 3 (PC Port)

By the time I was old enough to really want to visit arcades on any sort of frequent basis, the Mortal Kombat series had moved onto its third edition. Probably the most vivid memory of it that I have, is watching this one guy manage to work his way up the Master ladder, while periodically beating the snot out of a whole line full of people trying to take him on in the two-player mode. Suffice it to say, I had my head handed to me on a platter, but at least I wasn't alone by any means.

Anyway, the third game picks up some undisclosed time after the second, where Shao Kahn has regrouped and managed to launch an all-out invasion of Earth. This is supposed to be against the rules of the Mortal Kombat tournaments, but he and Shang Tsung got around this, by infusing an Earth woman with the soul of Kahn's long-dead wife, Sindel (a wife whom he took as a war trophy -- there's that "traditional marriage" thing that conservatives must be going on about). Anyway, with the Elder Gods (as well as Rayden) helpless to stop Kahn, a handful of "chosen" Earth warriors must defeat the Outworld invaders on their own.

It has to be said, this may be one of the more controversial games in the series, but not for the reasons one might think. This was really polarizing in the fan community, largely because of the radical changes in style from the previous games. While some of the classic characters are there, and certainly the layout of the screen is much the same, MK3 has the distinction of moving away from the exotic/fantasy elements that started the series, and taking a much more urban/high-tech approach. Returning characters have taken on a decidedly more "street" appearance, the traditional ninjas are completely gone, and several characters are now augmented with cybernetic implants. Even the backgrounds and overall setting, have mostly changed to subways, back alleys, and skyscrapers, with only a handful of levels set within Shao Kahn's new palace bringing any sort of fantasy credentials.

(that being said, Stryker is one of the best characters in the game, even if he looks like a traffic cop)

Even the gameplay has been significantly altered, thanks to the now-infamous introduction of the "dial-a-kombo" system. By rapidly pressing certain attack buttons -- in a pre-determined order, varying by character -- the player can unleash a rapid-fire assault on his/her opponents. As a spectator, it's pretty cool. As a player, however, it's rather frustrating -- never mind having the time and recall to remember the various combos for each character, your success will hinge largely on you having very quick reflexes, and a controller that hasn't already been smashed to pieces. I seriously wouldn't be surprised if the PC version of this game, is the main reason why we went through so many keyboards when I was a teenager. It also became infuriating, in various updates of the game, as the CPU became prone to unleashing combos on you, that were physically impossible to replicate -- and, naturally, were performed the instant that you began inputting an attack.

Anyway, despite all of these questionable changes, there is a lot to like about MK3. The music is pretty badass, the sounds keeping up nicely. The characters have probably never looked better (at least in the classic era), and all of the moves are fun and creative (even if exploding characters will have MULTIPLE skulls, ribcages, etc. for no apparent reason). The backgrounds not only look incredible, but are increasingly interactive. Stage-centric finishing moves have been in the series from the beginning, though they are more elaborate in this game. There is also a feature called "Battle Ascension", where uppercutting opponents on certain stages, will launch them through the ceiling and into a whole other level!

In terms of the PC port -- which, I must point out, is a pig to get working in DOSBox, and rather hard to find a working version of on Abandonware sites -- it plays rather authentically to the arcade version, but it has some phoned-in elements. For instance, I've made it clear how much I like the varied and elaborate stages that you fight on... so why is it that for the most part, the game will only let you play on about four of them? Out of eleven? That's not the only place where it gets tedious; as I've previously made clear, I am nothing special as a gamer. So naturally, I lose matches somewhat often. To be fair, Mortal Kombat as a series can make this somewhat entertaining, with the various finishing moves that the CPU can inflict on you (if you don't manage to beat it to that, of course). In this game, however, that rarely happens -- so what can already be an exercise in going in circles, feels even more monotonous, because the exact same thing happens in most matches.

That being said, the PC version has its charms as well; the difficulty curve is about as reasonable as the original game, the controls reasonably responsive (at least on my old computer -- still trying to figure out the quirks of my new laptop), plus it is the first PC version of a Mortal Kombat game that has EXTRAS! The previous two games, while good overall, were pretty much straight conversions of the arcade versions. However, the computer port of MK3 has unique features that are rather cool in their own right. One is the support for online play (albeit through LANs -- remember, this was before MSN Gaming Zone). Even if it was a bit limited -- and truth be told, I have no idea how popular MK3 was in LAN circles -- it still fulfilled Jim Carrey's Cable Guy prediction of one day being able to fight your "friend" on the other side of the world. What's more, it would be about ten years, before the console versions of Mortal Kombat had managed the same feat (and took all of the credit).

Another cool PC feature -- and this one, I have tried -- is the "Tournament Mode". The name is a bit misleading, as rather than a ladder-style tournament variation, as you might expect, this is actually a tag-team/endurance match... with each player having up to twelve warriors involved! While it's still straight fighting in the style of the rest of the game, it's a nice change from the norm. There are also several unlockable "cheats" -- some not so unique, like the ability to play as Smoke, or the boss characters -- and some which are unique to this port (like two different invisibility modes).

Speaking of those people... the hidden characters (in terms of just fighting them) are much easier to access in this game, just because all you have to do is input a six-character code, before a two-player match. Fighting them is still tricky, but it is toned down, compared to the previous games. Sub-boss Motaro, is still one of the more creative-looking characters (a freaking CENTAUR!), and is interesting to fight in a lot of ways. He's strong, agile, brutal, and he can even rebound projectile moves... yet all you have to do, to beat him, is uppercut him whenever he comes close to you. Shao Kahn is once again the final boss -- which, quite frankly, I always found kind of lame -- but going against him this time, is a much different experience than in MKII. He's a lot faster, has several new moves, and on top of that your recovery between hits takes longer, so some of the tactics used in the previous game won't work anymore. However, he still loves to talk a lot -- punish him, for that. Also, be on the lookout for a move where he'll leap a few feet in the air, leaving a trail of shadows behind him -- duck under this, and chances are you can nail him with an uppercut on the way down. If you play someone with fast stun moves, you can then wail on him until he's dead.

So I'm not sure, ultimately, what to give this for a verdict. In a lot of ways, Mortal Kombat 3 is a fun and exciting game. However, it's also boring in other ways, and such a stylistic departure in other ways that it barely resembles the previous two games.  Thankfully, this was rectified in a lot of ways, by the upgrades Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Unfortunately, for a lot of DOS PC gamers, they were stuck with plain old stock MK3 (especially since Ultimate only appeared for the PC in the last year or so, with the HD Arcade Kollection, that has been widely called a disaster). If you're curious, and can somehow find a reliable version of it cheaply/for free, I'd recommend giving it a look... if only because, for better or worse, this game set the tone for what all subsequent Mortal Kombats would become.

Mortal Kombat II (PC Port)

Previously, in the Mortal Kombat series...

The ancient sorcerer Shang Tsung, lured a group of elite warriors, from various walks of life, to his forsaken island. There, they fought to the death in a martial arts tournament called... well, Mortal Kombat. That is, until Tsung was defeated by the Shaolin monk Liu Kang.

With Tsung defeated, and his allies having either abandoned him or been killed in the tournament, he alone faces execution by Emperor Shao Kahn of the Outworld. Most of us wouldn't have the stones to weasel with a giant, who wears a helmet made out of someone's skull, but Tsung manages to convince Kahn to bait the survivors into a new tournament, in Outworld itself. Suffice it to say, the odds are stacked against our heroes.

Mortal Kombat II was made about a year after the original, and the lineage is definitely there, yet everything looks, sounds, and (mostly) plays so much better than the original. The gameplay is much faster, the backgrounds more elaborate and imaginative, the sound effects more exciting (and present, in the PC version), and not only do the characters look more crisp and detailed, but there are more of them. To be exact, five of the original seven playable characters are back (Sonya and Kano have been relegated to background cameos), and seven additional characters have been brought in -- including Reptile and Shang Tsung, making their debut as playable characters.

The controls are basically the same as in the original game, but in addition to responding somewhat faster, there are a few new incidental moves thrown in. Another welcome improvement (at least for the PC version) is that some of the multi-button special moves have been simplified enough that you only need to hold down three keys at once, to execute certain attacks. The second player controls are also free of the infamous somersault glitch, that had plagued the original game's port.

As before, if you can't find a vintage gamepad to play this on, I strongly recommend playing this on a very robust keyboard... with a replacement one on the horizon, should you be hooked enough to play this a lot. Interestingly enough, I remember that when this game was available in stores, there was a version that came with the Gravis gamepad that bore a strong resemblance to the SNES controller.

The graphics and art style are a nice change from the original game, though I do have to make a couple of comments about the sounds, particularly where incidental vocals are concerned. Most of the time, they're just fine, but there are two that I've always found a bit annoying. One is he rather pathetic howling sound, whenever Player One (as a male) gets hit by an attack. Player Two gets more dignified grunts and yells, why couldn't they have used that for all of the male characters (and in case you're wondering, none of the female warriors wail like this). The other irk for me, is the high-pitched chop-socky that voices Liu Kang. I know that this game was made in the early-to-mid nineties, and that it was intended to pay tribute to cheesy martial arts movies of the previous decades... but to be honest, even at that point, it was cliched for Asian men to sound like that. I won't get into tirades about political correctness, I'll just flat out say it: it's a stupid sound, that I'd heard to death even by the dawn of my teenage years.

My only other comments stem from the actual playing experience. Frankly, it's exasperating. I thought that maybe I just really blew at this game, but I've looked into it: MANY players, can only get through this thing at all, on "Very Easy". Anything higher than that, and the computer players will not only counter moves that you've barely started to make, but will throw you across the room every chance it can get. This is annoying for multiple reasons: it's tied for the strongest non-boss move in the game, it's fast, you can barely touch the opponent, and it can't be blocked. So if you wish to try even the "Easy" mode, here's a quick word of advice: forget about punching anyone. Kicks are your new best friends.

The perverse thing, is that on "Very Easy", getting through the AI versions of the playable characters is almost too easy. I wouldn't quite call them cannon fodder, but once you've gotten the hang of the game, it isn't particularly hard to win every single round (that's 24, before the bosses, assuming you don't make any diversions with hidden characters). However, once you reach the bosses, that's a whole other ball game.

Not surprisingly, final boss Shao Kahn is rather tricky, but not too bad once you notice certain patterns. For one thing, the guy loves to taunt you -- any time he points his finger at you or laughs at you, hit him with your most powerful move (preferably a stun move, so you can get a free uppercut). While it may seem like suicide, you should also hide in the corners and let him shoulder-charge you; you can recover quickly enough to uppercut him before he parries. You can also take advantage of the fact that Kahn will occasionally just stand still for no reason... 

Kintaro, on the other hand, is literally a giant pain in the ass. The guy will spam throw you, or stomp on you (neither of which you can block) with infuriating regularity. He'll also block or nullify the majority of your attacks, and in my experience most cheap tricks said to confuse the AI do not work on this version of him. To be blunt, I can count on one hand the number of times I've even won one round against this bastard -- until just before I was due to post this article, I'd never won a full match against him, without cheating my ass off (and just to rub it in, the cheat mode is damn near impossible to activate, on today's ultra-fast computers). What seemed to work for me, was to stay as far away from him as possible, occasionally fly-kick him, and be ready to use a stun move on him any time that he leaped or roared (in case it's not apparent yet, I really love the ninja characters). Even that, however, is subject to how the CPU is behaving on any given day. Good luck, and try not to be turned into burger meat too often.

The hidden characters in this game (three ninjas, pallete swapped from either Scorpion or Kitana), are much easier to reach in this game, than the original. However, beating them is much harder. They seem to default to the higher difficulty levels (and sure enough, after fighting them, the game switches difficulties when you aren't looking -- yes, I've checked). In other words, in addition to already being really hard to hit, and blisteringly fast, they spend much of the time throwing the shit out of you.

I must also address the elephant in the room, among MK fans. In response to the outcry that the first game received, the sequel took on a decidedly cheekier tone. So while it boasts grislier fatalities than the previous game, it also boasts finishing moves where you turn your opponents into babies, give them dolls, make them cakes, or just do a silly dance. This is in addition to a superimposed head sometimes popping onto the screen, singing "Toasty!" (which became something of a gaming/sports meme, for a little while). Personally, I'm not averse to the humour overall, but think it should have been reserved for easter eggs, instead of an official part of the game.

If you're a very good game fighter... or just have a soft spot for classics in the genre, then by all means add this to your collection. However, you will need a lot of patience, in order to beat this game. Unless you're the virtual cousin of Bruce Lee, be prepared for a rough ride.

Rebel Assault I & II

I have to be honest, even though I've liked the Star Wars movies ever since I was a kid, I wasn't exactly a die-hard fan, until I was in my teens. So as far as the gaming was concerned... well, it didn't concern me. My first experience with the computer game off-shoots of George Lucas' financial empire, came in the mid-nineties, when my dad bought a CD-ROM drive for our computer at the time, and one of the free discs was a three-level sample version of Rebel Assault II. I'm not sure I'd say I was blown away, but I was intrigued... so when game developer LucasArts came out with a collection of several Star Wars discs, including full versions of BOTH Rebel Assault games, I was in.

These games have somewhat fallen into obscurity, so I'll fill you in (and for simplicity's sake I'm going to review both games in this one article). Both games take place in a sort of parallel universe to the classic trilogy -- so while there's a Darth Vader, Emperor, Princess Leia, etc. there is no Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. This is particularly apparent in the first game, where you take the role of "Rookie One" (yes, that's the only name we get). Rookie One is a wide-eyed farm boy* who joins the heroic Rebel Alliance as a hot-shot pilot, and after blowing up asteroids, flying through canyons, and shooting TIE Fighters left and right, eventually has to destroy the Death Star.

* (in the first game, the option exists to play Rookie One as a man or a woman -- this is not the case in the sequel, for reasons that will become apparent)

In Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire, Rookie One is assigned to investigate the disappearance of several ships in an area of space called The Dreighton Triangle. It turns out that the Empire is processing a rare ore, that fuels a new class of TIEs that are effectively invisible. As you might have guessed, eventually you have to meet up with Rookie One's former CO to track down and destroy the flagship carrying all of these fighters, before they can be used on the Rebels en masse.

The gameplay approach for this series is pretty much a rail-riding arcade-style shooter, presented as an interactive movie. In other words, there are tons of cutscenes, and even the parts that the player has any control over, limit you solely to where you can shoot pre-arranged targets, or where you fly a ship within a frame. All other particulars about where you're going and what you're doing, are taken care of automatically by the game -- so while it's a nice diversion, I wouldn't call it particularly engaging.

In keeping with this approach, the levels are designed to be short and shallow shooting fests, which I might not mind too much but they have a tendency to be repetitive and not have much to do with the story. This is especially apparent in Rebel Assault I, where you will often do laps of a given course, until you've destroyed everything that you're supposed to destroy... or run around mazes for no apparent reason, with no way of knowing how to get out of them.

"All too easy."

I freely admit that my gaming skills are not especially high, but some of my issues with the first game very much come from the controls (incidentally, you can play either game with a mouse or joystick, though the second game also allows for keyboard control). Once again, I'm not sure what anyone was thinking, but the mouse/joystick sensitivity in  Rebel I is ridiculously high. You know your game has issues, when the first level is extremely hard to survive, for reasons that have nothing to do with the difficulty setting -- like the freaking controls being so sloppy and loose that it makes it look like I've downed a bottle of Screech! So never mind hitting the broad side of a Star Destroyer, you have a hard time flying anywhere but straight down!

Thank the Force, by the time the sequel came around, they'd found a programmer who knows what a straight line is supposed to look like, because it's a LOT easier to be precise and fluid in Rebel II. There's also a bit more variety and sense to the missions (so, for instance, you have plausible reason to get out of your ship and blast stormtroopers, and no maze-running that will bone you at random).

There's not a lot to choose between these two games, graphics wise, though Rebel II is slightly better here, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, as you might imagine, the various structures you see are a lot crisper and more photorealistic (frankly there are better visual effects in this game, than some parts of the prequels). For another thing, while the second game uses live-action video for most cutscenes (hence why Rookie One is stuck as a guy in the sequel), the first game uses this weird hybrid of hand-drawn animation and some sort of Photoshopping, to portray the characters. Leaving aside that jumping between the two art styles is FAR from seamless, there are characters who look like some sort of deformed puppets when they talk. Then there's Darth Vader, whose scenes in the first game are pulled right out of a still frame from The Empire Strikes Back (when he's sitting in his meditation chamber/bathroom), and his only movement is a slight shuffling of his head.

It's a similar story, with the sound. While the effects are largely the same, between games, there is one choice in the first game that has always annoyed me. You see, pretty much all of the sound effects are pulled right from the Star Wars movies, or at least designed in such a way that they sound somewhat like real machines/explosions/etc. But for some reason, the shipboard lasers fired by the player sound HORRIBLY synthesized. There is literally NO excuse for this -- the same laser sounds used in the movies, appear whenever anyone else fires weapons; if the creators were worried about the player not being able to tell which sounds came from him/her... which would imply that the player is either blind or deaf, making the entire issue moot... simply making the player's laser a little bit louder than the others, would take care of that. Once again, this issue was (thankfully) remedied in the second game. The only other thing of note, is that while score for Rebel II uses music from the whole original trilogy, Rebel I only uses music from the first movie -- which is a bit odd, but not really something worth complaining about.

It's really hard to sum this up. To varying degrees, both games are satisfying popcorn, but they're so shallow and detached that I'm not even sure if it's right to just call them comfort food (maybe if you grew up playing a lot of Dragon's Lair, or something). The first game is so exasperating that unless you're a wizard with a joystick, you will have to cheat just to make it playable, but at least the second game is designed with some sanity -- so if you can only play one, I'd very much recommend Rebel Assault II for that reason alone. Since both games have been out of print for ages, I guess you would have to go on eBay or something, to find a copy. It may be worth checking out, just as a light example of the CD-ROM/interactive movie fad in 90s gaming.