Elevator Action/ Erebētā Akushon (エレベーターアクション) - SG-1000

Donkey Kong was a major smash hit in video game history and it helped put Nintendo on the international entertainment industry map. It features a proto-Italian plumber dodging barrels and climbing up a single-screen tower of ladders and girders to defeat the giant gorilla Donkey Kong and rescue Pauline.

Donkey Kong

In the years following, a fairly large number of "clones" appeared in arcades and on home systems and computers, trying to capture whatever it was that made Donkey Kong such a money making hit: Hard Hat Mack, Jumpman, Popeye, Ponpoko, BurgerTime and so on. None were exact clones, they all tried various gimmicks and reformulations, and many of them became classics in their own right, but none of them strayed too far from the single screen vertical up-and-down action -- in this Elevator Action isn't too different (except this time with scrolling).

Elevator Action takes a start-at-the-top-and-climb-down-to-win approach. You take on the role of a secret agent, secretly gaining access through a secure building's elevator shaft. As you work your way down the building via elevator, counter agents try to stop you from stealing secrets conveniently located behind clearly marked red doors. At the bottom of the building you hop in a getaway car and move on to the next level where the challenge gets cranked up a notch, repeat until you run out of lives.

The arcade Elevator Action isn't exactly a flashy game, even by 1983's standards, but it's competent. Ports were released for every system under the sun, but the Sega SG-1000 version interests me the most because of how spare the system resources were at the time. (Note: there was an Atari 2600 port under development, but it was never finished and the leaked game is not quite complete enough to be called a complete game).

Not even as powerful as a ColecoVision (and almost compatible with it), the SG-1000 was Sega's first entry into the home console market and came out a year after Coleco released their console and the same year Nintendo released their gaming colossus, the Famicom -- the SG-1000 never really stood a chance in the market. However, Sega kept trying, releasing a home computer version (that may have informed the legendary MSX standard), an SG-1000 II, then the Mark III, then the Master System and finally achieving global success with the Mega Drive/Genesis. Every one of those systems traces lineage back to the SG-1000.

So it's interesting to see what developers did, faced with the challenge of porting a complex arcade game to hardware so limited it couldn't even display two colors on a given sprite and could only show 16 colors at a time.

One of the things that set Elevator Action apart from other Donkey Kong clones was that Agent 17 ("Otto") is a surprisingly expressive character to control. He has lots of game verbs for a 1983 video game avatar. He can shoot his pistol, jump kick, control elevators, ride on top of them, shoot out lamps (rendering the game dark for a time), ride escalators, jump across elevator shafts, duck under enemy fire, enter red doors and probably a couple more things I can't remember. I'm hard pressed to think of another video game character that can do so many things until Super Mario Bros. redefined how characters should control 2 years later.

Elevator Action is also a violent game. You literally clear a skyscraper by going floor to floor and shooting everybody you see, regardless of any hostile behavior on their part. If you aren't shooting them in the face, you're kneeling and shooting them in the legs or crotch, dropping light fixtures on them, jump-kicking them or in rare circumstances crushing them with the elevators themselves -- turning conveyance into deadly weapon. Philosophically it may be that you are actually the bad guy in this game.

Elevator Action on the SG-1000

Distillation is the process of heating a liquid composed of several components in order to separate them. It's used in the production of petroleum products from crude oil and the production of hard liquor. And this is what the SG-1000 port of Elevator Action is, the distilled hard liquor of the original. It keeps just enough of the game there that you know you are playing the same game, while tossing everything else that's wasn't necessary. It's a remarkable piece of design editing. The graphics are just this side of representational, the signature theme song is intact, your jump arc is correct, even the height of your duck position is correct -- something that not every port got correct.

When compared to other ports on other limited systems, like the ZX Spectrum, it really shines. The Speccy port is a complete redesign of the game and it suffers from this, elevators move too fast, the character's signature duck (allowing enemy bullets to zip right over the classic hair style) is turned into a dive, the bullets move wrong, escalators are weird two part affair and so on. Everything important is here in the SG-1000 version.

There's only a couple places where maybe a little too much was edited out. The first is that your enemies are far more aggressive than the original (or other home ports), often firing the moment you can be hit. This amps up the difficulty so it feels more like the second or third level of the original. There's also a weird bug that sometimes prevents Otto from getting onto available elevators, sometimes putting you into poor tactical positions.

Still, these are minor issues with an otherwise great port of the arcade original. Despite being (or maybe because) such a violent game, I find it strangely soothing to play after a frustrating day at work. You jump in, shoot guys in the face or crush them under elevators, steal secrets and make your getaway. It seems really simple on the surface, but there's a strange depth to the gameplay that keeps it fresher and more interesting than you would think. The SG-1000 port distills this down to perfection and I find myself returning to this version of the game more than any other port -- even later easier versions with more gameplay options.

The Revenge of Shinobi/The Super Shinobi (ザ・スーパー・忍) - Genesis/Mega Drive

Like any important, revelatory experience, I remember the first time I played The Revenge of Shinobi. A local friend had purchased a Sega Genesis right around the release and brought the whole kit over to my house. I vaguely remembered Shinobi as a very hard, quarter munching arcade side scroller and so passed on it at first. We played through the pack-in Altered Beast a few times, had some fun repeating the terrible voice acting,  "RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE", and then found ourselves promptly bored. Arcade games just don't play the same when you don't have to worry about feeding quarters into the machine -- a fundamental issue with many Arcade-to-Console ports. I think it's also because I was so used to Altered Beast as an arcade title that seeing it reproduced on a home machine, as good as the port was, wasn't terribly impressive to me. It was just a game.

Then we decided to have a go at The Revenge of Shinobi (RoS). At that time the arcade Shinobi was already considered a little long in the tooth, so it seemed natural to us that it would be essentially the same game, running left to right tossing shuriken at a couple types of bad guys, rescuing hostages, that sort of thing. Perhaps it would have some cleaned up graphics and maybe some more digital voices. If I remember correctly, the sequel to Shinobi, Shadow Dancer had already hit arcades and, while adding a new dog helper mechanic, more or less doubled down on the first game's concept. There was no reason to not assume that RoS wouldn't be more of the same -- the arcade experience at home was Sega's modus operandi after all.

What we got was something oh so much better.

In an odd move, Sega, a company who's mainstay at the time was pretty direct arcade to home ports, completely reimagined what Shinobi could be. This was something more commonly seen on the NES with games like Contra or Ninja Gaiden -- a complete rework of the game from quarter munching quick arcade play style to a deeper and more balanced home console gameplay. RoS was an overhaul of the entire franchise, gone were single hit deaths, and simple left-to-right level designs. In was limited ammo, multiple attack options, elaborate ninja magics, power-ups and more complex level designs.

The other impression that hit us immediately was the sense that this was a game that really couldn't be done on previous systems. If you squinted you could imagine a semi-faithful Shinobi on the NES (which did actually happen) or the Sega Master System (which was even better than the NES version), but Revenge of Shinobi was impossible on previous systems -- with parallax scrolling and beautiful lush backgrounds, huge detailed characters and incredible sounding music and digitized voices -- this was something that the old 8-bit machines simply couldn't do. Nothing announced the arrival of 16-bit to me better than RoS.

It's not to say that developers on the older consoles didn't try to respond. I think the closest response any developer could manage came two years later in the form of Sunsoft's Batman - Return of the Joker for the NES. Characters in that game look and move remarkably similar. Heck, even the basic play mechanics are identical -- walk around jump and shoot relatively static bad guys, destroy boxes for power ups. The influence of RoS on the Sunsoft title is noticeable.

I think the influence was more important in attracting developers who wanted to work on this more powerful system. A slew of games followed RoS that also had a similar character size and playstyle -- almost like a game engine that had been licensed out and reused (ESWAT, Dick Tracy, Decap Attack, Alisia Dragoon, Chakan - The Forever Man come to mind immediately). This visual and gameplay style became almost a Genesis hallmark until Sonic and the mascot games of the 90's replaced it.

The music is astonishing. Written by Yuzo Koshiro, it's an imminently intense synth-jazz-pop with occasional rock elements and is highly listenable outside of the game. I personally believe it's the best soundtrack ever produced on the system. It has a certain sound and sense of style (with a very particular sounding drum-kit) that was never replicated. For a soundtrack on one of the first releases on the system this is astonishing.

Graphics in RoS are, like I mentioned before, something that couldn't be done on an 8-bit system. However, they aren't amazing beyond being a conscious improvement on any 8-bit system's graphics. Sprites move a little stiffer than then contemporary 8-bit characters and the increased size of the characters meant that there was simply less you could see on screen. To compensate RoS and similar games took a decidedly slower pace to the action i.e. Ninja Gaiden's Ryu Hayabusa's run would have introduced new enemies onto RoS' Joe Musashi's playfield too quickly to be reacted to. This is simply one of those cases where graphics do impact gameplay.

There are a few places where the graphics are out and out amazing. The waterfall in stage 2 put the expanded color palette of the Genesis to incredible use - completely outshining other similar levels (the NES Contra's waterfall springs to mind). Most of the bosses are ho-hum, the levels are far more interesting than the boss fights. The most memorable thing about the bosses is that in early versions of the game, bosses were copyright unfriendly rip-offs of well known comic book and movie characters. But then again, the Godzilla boss was huge, reasonably well articulated and filled the screen in a way you wouldn't see in 8-bit gaming.

Curiously, when the individual components of the graphics are synthesized into a play screen, the graphical issues largely go away. The sum is greater than its parts and the graphics hold up strongly against any other game in the Genesis/Mega Drive library.

Gameplay-wise RoS plays great. Your character goes pretty much exactly where you want him to go and enemies and levels have a surprising variety. RoS is the first game I remember having a double-jump mechanic as well - though the timing was sometimes difficult (the Internet says that Dragon Buster from 1984/85 was the first game though). If performed it also unlocked a more powerful shuriken attack. The double-jump is also a required technique for certain levels, not just because of high jumps, but it also transitions the character between foreground and background elements in certain levels. The game normally plays with limited shuriken, so up close you use a melee attack. Depending on your power-up level (there are 2), you might even pull out your sword once in a while.

I'd say the only part of the game I don't enjoy is the final level and boss. Everything form the music to the level layout (an infinite maze) to the difficulty of the final boss simply don't fit the game. It's like a modern glass and steel office building in the middle of a historic downtown area. The music feels like Yuzo phoned it in and the maze just feels like a way to extend the game artificially.

The final boss is likewise out of place. Overly difficult, previous boss fights do nothing to prepare you for the methods you need to use to defeat him. Stacked on top of that is a high pressure timer and it just doesn't work.

Overall, The Revenge of Shinobi is an awesome game. It created a parallel Shinobi universe to the arcade that carried on for quite a while (influencing a fantastic sequel, two Game Gear games and a Saturn game), giving Sega two entirely different takes on the same basic franchise. I have a few small quibbles with it, but when I feel like playing a Genesis game, it's always at the very top of my list -- probably my favorite game on the system. It has a pick-up and play sensibility that's fantastic.