Alisia Dragoon (アリシア ドラグーン) - Genesis/Mega Drive

Originally known for the impossibly cool but virtually unplayable mess known as Thexder, Game Arts was already a pretty mature, but small, Japanese computer game developer when they released Alisia Dragoon (AD). A poor seller during its release period, AD practically oozes with solid competency. Add some innovative light RPG features sprinkled in to spice up the highly responsive action platformer formula and you end up with a really good game that's earned a well deserved cult following over the years. Like fine wine, it's only gotten better with time.

The basic gameplay in Alisia Dragoon is fairly typical for the genre, run around a level jumping from platform to platform, shoot at bad guys, survive until the end. Mechanically, there's not much new here. Yet, AD advances the formula in a few key ways that have earned it much love:

• Your attack is an auto-targeting lightning attack.
• Levels are fairly large and reward exploration with powerups and loads of secret areas.
• You have an AI buddy (well actually four) that follow you around and assist.
• Light RPG elements

Reminding me of Thexder's auto-targeting laser attack in robot mode, I was not surprised to find out the same developer worked on both games. This lightning attack made me think this game would be a breeze at first: face an enemy and push fire, no targeting or strategy. But AD balances out the seemingly overwhelming power of your attack in a few really well designed ways. First, you are practically overwhelmed with enemies, which forces you to pace your progression. Second, as the game advances they simply absorb more punishment, even powering up all the way doesn't completely remedy this. Third, the more intensely you use your attack the weaker it gets (reminiscent of The Legendary Axe on the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine from a couple years before). You have to find a space to rest for a moment to recharge your attack. The late game really requires a surprising amount of nuanced strategy to make it through and can't really be appreciated till you're there (and have found yourself at a bitter end many times to learn your lessons).

The levels in AD are varied, interesting and just large enough to get a little lost in, but not so big that you can get lost in them. You never really wonder where to go as you wander around, yet they at least pretend to offer several choices as you work your way through them. Since there's no time-limit, it's worth taking the time to explore as you'll almost always find something valuable: a power-up, food, fairy helpers, etc. They're really well designed and you never feel like the game is being cheap or cheating.

AD introduces what may be one of the earlier AI controlled allies in a game. Often called "familiars" or "companions", AD let's the player select from one of four (or even none at all) friendly helpers creatures. Each helper has their own life bar and attack level (up to 3). The helper AIs each have different kinds of attacks and use-cases, from tossing boomerangs to unleashing a devastating screen clearing lighting attack. Cultivating your AIs is an important strategy element in the game.

The companions are interesting, and building them up and keeping them alive is definitely an interesting part of the game -- and they can be helpful. But I also kept wishing for them to be a little more...aggressive. There were plenty of times that I was being mercilessly beat upon only to have my dragon or ball of fire or whatever simply sit there and not do much of anything as I yelled at the screen "some friend you are!" Even with everybody all powered up, you never really reach the kind of havoc you wish you could unleash on the enemy. So they're really more of an enhancement than a core game-play mechanic. They're optional enough that I'm sure there's a group of AD players that simply turns the familiar off for a more hard-core game-play experience.

Graphics in Alisia Dragoon are generally very good. You'll see interesting characters in fascinating settings. The range from fantasy to techno alien. However, they have a flavor to them that's like nothing else on the system. I think that's because Game Arts really cut their teeth in the computer games market as well as most of the design work and graphics done by anime studio, Gainax, better known for computer dating sims when they do work on games.

It's almost like AD looks like a very good guess of what a computer games company thinks arcade style graphics on a console look like. It's like having a world class classically trained portrait painter draw a picture of Mario. It'll be beautiful, accurate, have sophisticated brush technique and treatment of lighting, but it won't really be the cartoon Mario everybody's used to seeing. In the same sense, the character designs in AD seem almost overworked and scream for a higher resolution screen to capture it all - they would definitely be more at home on a Japanese computer.

Music and sound effects are in many ways the same bag. Like nothing you've ever really heard on the console, but really well done. Perhaps then it won't come as a surprise that the music and sound engineering also was sub-contracted out to a company they worked with on other occasions Mecano Associates (also known for the music in Silpheed).

I'd rate the music in Alisia Dragoon a tad higher than the graphics. There's some really great music in the game. Stretching from Baroque harpsichord music to upbeat new age rock the music services and enhances each level well. The Genesis sound chip is bent in some pretty great ways to provide subtle reverb and echo effects, drum machine, orchestrations and organ leads that really sound fantastic. Sound effects are likewise well designed and get out of the way. You main attack sound never gets annoying, and various clumps, bumps and explosions are sound about as good as you'd expect. A few of the sound effects, namely an enemy teleportation effect, are simply awesome and really caught my attention the first couple times I'd heard it.

Gameplay in Alisia Dragoon is interesting. I kept finding I wanted to compare it to something else. And I think this is one of the reasons the game never really broke out on its own. For me the main game that kept coming up in my thoughts was Castlevania.

For many years Sega sought to produce a Castlevania clone for their systems. Master of Darkness for the Sega Master System is one early attempt. But none of them really quite caught the Konami magic. Despite different gameplay mechanics, the great music and fantasy setting really kept bringing me back to that conclusion however. A real Castlevania game wasn't to hit the system until two years later.

There's really not much else to say about Alisia Dragoon. It's an unbelievably solid and polished game, well worth playing. But it probably won't drive you histrionic with unbelievable levels of fandom. You'll be rewarded with about an hour long playthrough, some great music, some cool locations and interesting gameplay. If you beat it, you'll be rewarded with a pretty cool ending and one of the better songs in the soundtrack. It's kind of sad that AD doesn't have a bigger legacy. It's not even a virtual console game. Game Arts these days is too busy printing money with its Lunar games to really try and revive a pretty great game.

Further Reading

• http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/alisia/alisia.htm
• http://www.retrocollect.com/Reviews/retro-review-alisia-dragoon-mega-drive.html
• http://www.honestgamers.com/7549/genesis/alisia-dragoon/review.html

Revenge of the 'Gator/Pinball: Revenge of the Gator/Pinball: 66 Hiki no Wani Daikoushin (ピンボール 66匹のワニ大行進) - Game Boy

Pinball has a surprisingly long, complex, and sometimes seedy history. The progenitors of pinball started from a 17th century variant on various cue sports like billiards (which was itself a variant on the ancient game of bowling) played by the aristocratic class during the reign of the builder of the Palace of Versailles, the Sun King himself, Louis XIV. That's right, early versions of pinball probably filled the recreational areas of the absolute monarch of France.

Pinball's name derives from the historic source of these kinds of table bowling games. It turns out that knocking over tiny pins (a la Bowling) takes forever to set back up for another round. So some early game maker simply nailed the pins into the board, found that the little ball ricocheted nicely and put targets and holes and such around the playfield.

Eventually, the game was refined in different directions and spun out in a number of directions, two of which bagatelle and billard Japonais (Japanese billiards) are important today. Bagatelle remained a popular game and was even brought over by French soldiers to the U.S. during the American War for Independence and remained popular enough for Civil War era cartoons to feature it.

Examples of these games continued to find their way East and West until becoming Pachinko in Japan and Pinball in the U.S.

Okay, maybe not that simple, early games required people to roll the ball up, or hit it with a cue stick, and bounce off of the now embedded pins into scoring holes or targets. It was eventually found, circa 1770 that using a spring launcher to launch the ball to the top of the table and let gravity pull the ball down into a labyrinth of pins was more fun and voila! Pinball!

In the early 1930s coin-operated "pin games", often called "bagatelles", were introduced. The first major hit was Baffle Ball by David Gottlieb (lovingly recreated in Microsoft's Arcade Pinball). Other than the plunger, these were almost entirely games of chance. A shortage of "Baffle Balls" inspired a Gottlieb distributor who started making their own games, starting with "Ballyhoo" and eventually spun out to become Bally.

I remember as a kid watching what I thought was a bizarre game of pinball on the Honeymooners (The Jackie Gleason Show). In the episode, Two Men on a Horse, the main character Ralph attempts to win some quick money from a Pinball machine by drawing back the plunger, shooting the ball and then...nothing. No flippers or bumping the table or anything. The scene puzzled me for years.


It turns out flippers weren't introduced (Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty) and made common until around the time of that episode. The familiar double flipper system, common to all modern pinball games, finally stuck with Gottlieb's Spot Bowler in 1950. And with that the basic format of modern pinball was set.

Additions since then, score keeping, bumpers, sounds, lights are all derivative of this basic system. Pinball machines eventually shed their gambling past with a virtuoso display of flipper skills in court and it opened the game up to play by people young and old for years.

The ban ended when Roger Sharpe (a star witness for the AMOA – Amusement and Music Operators Association) testified in April 1976 before a committee in a Manhattan courtroom that pinball games had become games of skill and were not games of chance, that is, gambling. He began to play one of two games set up in the courtroom, and – in a move he compares to Babe Ruth's home run in the 1932 World Series – called out precisely what he was going to shoot for, and then proceeded to do so. Astonished committee members reportedly voted to remove the ban, which was followed in other cities. (Sharpe reportedly acknowledges his courtroom shot was by sheer luck.)

At about the same time, it was realized that pinball could be simulated reasonably well with current game technology and video pinball was born. Versions of more or less faithful video pinball games started coming out for computers, arcades and home consoles and have continued on to smart phones and probably far into the future.

A early 1989/1990 release by HAL Laboratory for the Game Boy (and later 3DS and Virtual Console), Revenge of the 'Gator (RotG) is a classic on the platform. At first glance it seems like a basic enough, 'Gator themed pinball game for the portable. There's a couple of easily accessible levels on the playfield with some interesting targets and bumpers and such. A fun, light and upbeat tune plays on in the background. There's nothing amazing about RotG, but it's supremely competent at first glance. Good enough for casual play for a few minutes, but like any pinball game, deep enough for long play.

As you play, you soon realize that the targets are more than just point multipliers, hitting sets of them open up doors to new areas and turn on blockers to keep your ball from draining to a lower part of the field or down the final drain where it's eaten by a waiting, exaggerated cartoonish alligator.

Two more entire single screen playfields are reachable through these unlocked doors. Other paths lead to single screen bonus stages. And it's here that the designers went wild and had some fun. These other areas play really nothing like the traditional pinball we've come to know and love over the past several decades. Sure there's flippers, but the playfields combine bits of breakout and whack-a-mole with flying baby alligators and other madness. They're fun and a nice reward for climbing the screens that far.

Play-wise, there's some interesting design decisions. Lots of modern pinball games have an elevated track, that's not here. Nor is multiball, bumping the table, or other various themes common to modern pinball. In many ways it feels like a pinball game from the early pre-digital years. The game never really elevates to the kind of panicked frenzy that lots of modern games bring you to. This is really a game you can pick up quickly, play a few relaxing rounds, then put down.

The screen also doesn't scroll, which, while initially alarming, surprisingly helps the game be more playable on the Game Boy's blurry screen. Ball physics are pretty good, with some time you can get a feel for the ball and usually get it to go where you want after a couple hits. One frustration, certain targets reset if you go off that playfield, meaning that a long effort to unlock a door can end with a momentary dip to a lower part of the game.

There's a few songs, a title song, a main playfield song and one for bonus rounds. They all sit comfortably in the background without becoming annoying -- though there's no way to turn it off. Sound effects are well designed and distinct, with different kinds of targets giving appropriate sounds.

Graphics are pretty good for the such an early release and hold up well even to games later in the system's life, and quite frankly even against more modern, colorful games. The art direction has kept the game fresh feeling, and the decision to go with 'gators means the green screen of the Game Boy has meaning.

I think Game Boy Crammer has a good take on the game.

Revenge of the 'Gator is a fun game, it's not the best game, but it's a fun diversion for a bit. The extra play areas and bonus stages means that long play, and investing some time into the game are rewarded. You'll probably see everything there is to see in the game after no more than 5-10 hours of game play, but that's okay -- It's pinball.