RGR016 - Inclement Weather

Once finished with his latest round of present-delivering, Santa begins the final leg of his journey, leading to more factory locations, deep underground ice caverns, and finally back to his house where yet another conspirator lies in waiting. After a visit to the gift-wrapping plant, Santa treads flying carpets and fights off toy helicopters to free more elves and gather more stolen gifts before reaching the North Pole once again. Inside his house, he follows the trail of evil RC cars (the first normal enemies of the game to take more than one hit to destroy) into his basement, only to run into the third mastermind behind this rotten plan to destroy Christmas.

Don't let him wake up, don't let him wake up...

It'd be funnier if the chain came from his nostril.

Santa goes in...

Neatly wrapped Santa comes out.

Found any good lamps recently?

See, THAT'S how he climbs down the chimney.

Third Boss: Louse the Mouse

Louse the Mouse is the most complicated boss thus far, requiring more than just brute force to defeat. As Santa approaches Louse, he begins chasing Santa, apparently intent to beat him with the bat-like object in his hand. The floor in the center of the room is a conveyor belt, and a 10-ton weight moves back and forth overhead. A switch has been kindly provided to release the weight, which reappears quickly after falling off the bottom of the screen.

Louse is initially immune to Santa's magic, possibly because his thug-like ways prevent him from believing in magic, but that's nothing ten tons of iron to the head won't cure. Once Louse begins his chase, Santa must quickly reach the switch to release the weight on top of Louse, stunning him and making him vulnerable to a single dose of Santa's magic. Several repetitions of this pattern bring Louse the Mouse down, returning safety to Santa's home and giving him just enough time to bring presents to all the kids in Japan and the US.

Man, the rats are big around here.

And the 10-ton weight only stuns him.

With a sleighful of giant robots, no doubt!

Every Christmas Eve, it's the same thing.

Look, a convenient landmark!

Take that, symbol of freedom!

Final Boss: Mr. Weather

In a last-ditch effort to ruin things for Santa, Mr. Weather himself appears to try and knock Santa out of the sky. But the epic intro screen portrayal of Mr. Weather is quickly discarded in favor of the ridiculous-looking little cloud guy you see below. The battle is actually pretty clever, though. See, the cloud Santa rides on can only move vertically, and Santa's magic can't reach Mr. Weather. But as Mr. Weather attacks with his lightning bolts, those bolts will sometimes pass through the wisps of clouds in the center of the screen, giving them a charge. Santa can then use that charge against Mr. Weather by adding his magic to the cloud itself, causing a lightning bolt to fire back at Mr. Weather. After absorbing enough lightning, Mr. Weather evaporates into the night air, leaving clear skies and smooth flying for the rest of Santa's flight.

I think he means business.

But he's much less impressive up close.

He dies like Pac-Man!

Santa should hire some guards... just in case.

So not only is Santa able to rescue his elves and reindeer, recover all the stolen presents and annihilate his enemies, but also still manages to get all the presents delivered on time. How's that for dedication?

Well, that concludes the latest chapter in the ongoing story of Retro Gamer Ryan. I know I had a lot of fun playing Daze Before Christmas, and I hope you had a good time reading about it. And I know not everyone out there celebrates Christmas or believes in Santa Claus, but remember... it's just a game.

If you've got a holiday to celebrate right around now, I wish you the best. If not, I still wish you the best.

RGR Game #016: Daze Before Christmas

Santa wins with DISCO POWER!

I fear no soulless rat.

Are you following this? Me neither.

Bow down before the mighty Anti-Claus!

In keeping with the spirit of the holiday season, the next game here at Retro Gamer Ryan is Daze Before Christmas for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive, a surprisingly fun little platformer starring everyone's favorite jolly gift-delivering magic man, Santa Claus. Though Santa has a couple of momentum issues that can make for an occasional difficult jump, the controls are nice and responsive. The game's a bit on the easy side, but it throws tricky obstacles at you here and there to keep you on your toes.

Before I get to the story and gameplay, I wanted to note that this game marks two firsts for Retro Gamer Ryan. First (yeah, the first first, first first of the firsts), it's the first game for a Sega system here on the blog; second, it's the first game to be released exclusively in PAL regions. From what I've been able to gather, the game only made it to market in Australia, and in limited numbers. A Super NES port followed shortly thereafter, but also never made it to retail outside the PAL regions. Sunsoft apparently planned to release the game in the US, but the game fell victim to Sunsoft's financial problems and subsequent bankruptcy restructuring in 1994, and was never heard from again.

The story is simple enough, so I'll paraphrase the "poem" above: one day, sometime shortly before Christmas Eve, some of Santa's enemies banded together to hatch a plot to ruin Christmas for kids all over the world, most likely to make Santa look bad. They kidnapped the elves, stole some plans of some sort, and did away with all of Santa's presents. When Santa woke up, he found everything in shambles, and immediately set out to fix everything and save Christmas.

An interesting aspect of the game is the concept of "Anti-Claus", an evil, demon-like version of Santa who takes over Santa's body whenever he drinks one of the cups of coffee that appear in strange places in some levels. Anti-Claus lacks Santa's magic, instead using his sack of presents to inflict blunt force trauma on his enemies. Anti is also unable to open presents, as that requires magic for some reason. However, Anti is invincible, and only he can defeat the golem-like creatures that appear in two or three stages. The transformation lasts 10-30 seconds, depending on the settings you've chosen on the options menu, with a default of 20 seconds. Unfortunately, I found myself standing around just waiting for it to wear off, and eventually just started avoiding the coffee. Which is ironic, since I'm a pretty big fan of coffee.

Don't ask me why the levels are mixed up.

He's getting too old for this.

He's following me again, isn't he?

ALL OF TREASURES

HADOUKEN!!!

Santa Smash!

It's like the eyes follow you...

Is it safe to come out now?

All right, on to the game. Santa's adventure starts in his own house, where he's forced to do battle with possessed toys and zombie-like rats that pace back and forth staring soullessly. After navigating the convoluted structure of the house, it's time to brave the cold of the North Pole on foot, to continue rounding up presents and liberating elves. After rescuing a reindeer deep within a frozen cave, Santa continues on to a magical area with flying carpets and inexplicable wavy fabric-like backgrounds, only to emerge in the lair of the first boss, the Evil Snowman.

First Boss: The Evil Snowman

Contrary to his stage intro screen, the Evil Snowman actually isn't very large at all, and equally non-threatening. He attempts to batter Santa with snowballs, but the fire magic Santa picked up along the way makes short work of him. The Evil Snowman can't even move from his spot, since whoever built him didn't have the sense to give him legs. Then again, legs made of snow probably wouldn't support the weight of a body made of snow, so he was doomed from the start.

After defeating the Evil Snowman, Santa immediately takes to the skies, choosing England as the starting point for his present-delivery route. This results in something of a bonus stage, where presents have to be dropped into as many active chimneys as possible. I just hope the wrapping paper is fire-retardant.

Frosty would never pull this stuff.

Heh, you're not so big.

Shouldn't they have put out the fire first?

Hey, lights out!

Ho ho *glug*!

They killed Santa!

This factory makes no sense.

You shall not pass! Ow!

Santa's quest next takes him to a series of factories, probably the ones where all his toys are made. The wood factory and steel factory are of course now overrun with enemies, and part of the path has begun to flood. This is probably the toughest area of the game, since it's necessary to quickly jump between platforms that sometimes recede into the walls, sometimes move back and forth or up and down, and are very narrow. And Santa can't swim in that heavy winter suit, so one wrong move means Santa drowns. This single stage swallowed more lives than the rest of the game, and resulted in my only game over. Finally, though, I made it across safely and took on the next boss.

Second Boss: The Timekeeper

You can tell right away that the Timekeeper is a tougher boss than the Evil Snowman. See, he has legs. But he only uses them to stand while he attacks from a distance. Once Santa gets close enough, the Timekeeper shows off his real talent, the half-pipe. His arms, legs, and little winding dial disappear into his body, and he rolls right into the half-pipe, trying to crush Santa in the process. Luckily, Santa can jump right over him, hitting him with magic as he passes. After a few passes, the Timekeeper is history. Get it? History? Ahem... nevermind.

With the Timekeeper amply punished, it's time to head out and deliver more presents, this time to all the little children in Russia. This is a little confusing, though, since the first stop was England. Santa really should be moving from east to west, to keep up with the time zones. But who am I to argue with Santa Claus, right?

The Timekeeper...

master of the half-pipe!

Santa makes stops out of order.

In Soviet Russia, satellite shoots YOU down!

Will Santa be able to overcome adversity and prevail over his nemeses? Will he save Christmas for the rest of the children of the world?

Will Anti-Claus finally step up and serve a real purpose? Probably not, but for these answers and more, stay tuned for the conclusion of Daze Before Christmas!

RGR015 - Sticking With the Formula

After a bit of a delay, Masato and Mizuki have returned to the Fortress to finish the job they were sent in to do. The final stage went much more smoothly the second time, mainly because I sort of remembered the path. I also made better use of the medpacks scattered around this time, so by the time I reached the plasma ball leading to the boss, Masato was full-powered, and Mizuki had only lost one unit of life (I flubbed a jump over some spikes on the way back from grabbing a medpack for Masato). I decided to start the battle with the boss as Mizuki, expecting her to die and let Masato finish the job.

Restart, you mean.

We meet again, plasma ball.

Final Sub-Boss: Hovercraft

I was much more wary of the Hovercraft's movements this time, since I already knew it could pin me to the wall and kill me. So I tried to stay beside it and fire grenades diagonally at it. Luckily, this is another one of those bosses that takes damage no matter where it's hit. Its missiles weren't a threat, but I still had to be on my toes when it started moving toward me and charging forward. It would also fire its machine gun at me as it charged, but some careful dodging kept Mizuki alive.

After destroying the hovercraft, I found myself back on the first floor, in a walled-off section of room I couldn't access before. Just like the first game, the final stage had a sub-boss with an extra bit of stage before the final boss. I blew a hole in the floor and dropped down, fought off a few normal-ish enemies, and blew up another plasma ball.

This was the last thing I remember.

But I like the way it ended this time.

But wait, there's more!

Ooh, I'm in the inner sanctum!

Final Boss: Massive Turret

The final boss was kind of a disappointment. It was very large, but completely immobile, and its pattern was easy to get the hang of. After firing three sets of missiles from its front cannons, it would pause, and then start firing the machine guns on its "hands". I could sometimes manage to get a grenade in during the missile launches, and could easily fire off two before the machine guns began firing. Starting from one lower corner of the room, it's not difficult to walk nearly full speed toward the other side to avoid the machine guns, though I did get caught off-guard once. Still, that's one point of damage I took during the entire fight.

At least the hovercraft moved.

You just blow up in place.

That's more like it!

The first game had a better ending.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of Masato and Mizuki, the world is most likely saved from some mysterious evil army once again. Congratulations, guys!

I believe that concludes the saga of Masato and Mizuki; Operation Logic Bomb has its own hero, a cyborg soldier named Logan. So our heroes have plenty of time to take a well-deserved vacation.

The next game is once again up in the air, but I've got a little something new coming. Kari made a teaser post about it a few weeks ago.

Are you excited? I know I am!