The Twisted Tales Of Spike McFang (SNES) :-
Ah yes, time to catch up with our little vampire chum Prince Dorobochan again now, or Spike McFang as he seems to be calling himself now one of his games has been translated to English....You'll remember I took a quick look at his previous game Makai Prince Dorobochan on the PC Engine recently...
That one was a platformer, but our pal Spike is set for bigger things this time round and is now starring in an action RPG! One that thankfully keeps the cute horror style and general weirdness...
We join Spike as he's about to start fight training on a far off island, unaware that back home trouble is brewing in a big way! The greedy zombie ruler, General Von Hesler has decided that his zombie island isn't big enough, and using his dark powers and army of undead he takes over the other two islands in Vladamasco and battles the two other leaders, Vampra and Dracuman.....
Dracuman happens to be the father of our hero, and Spike would have remained unaware of the situation were it not for Vampra's daughter, Camelia, who managed to escape to seek out McFang and get his help! After a quick bit of training, Spike rushes back home and gets down to sorting this whole mess out....
He has a few tricks up his sleeve to help him out with his quest....his basic form of defence being a spin attack that will smash his enemies when they approach, although you have to be careful not to spin him around too much or he gets dizzy and becomes uncontrollable. He can throw his hat at enemies too, and also use special magic cards which have different abilities...including restoring health, causing a swarm of bats to appear or freezing enemies in their tracks! These can be purchased in shops along with hat upgrades, or in other places in the game...
Rather bizarrely, tomatoes are your main source of health instead of blood in the game...which led me to assume that perhaps Spike was a vegetarian. However, apparently this was changed from collecting hearts in the Japanese version of the game? Maybe a vampire using hearts seemed too much for Nintendo, but it's a bit weird when you consider how many other games have you collecting heart pick ups....
The American release also saw a few other changes. The enemies have a higher defence & Spike doesn't regain his health after going up a level, both of which mean the game is harder in the US version.
The one-eyed mummy shopkeeper you can see in a screen above was originally a pretty blonde girl too, but again censors must have changed that for some weird reason....
I've only just started playing Twisted Tales, but already I'm loving the wacky style and all the encounters with the freaky characters. It's charming and filled with nice little touches....I love Spike's pet in the moat for instance, or being kicked by one of those Easter-Island-type butler things so I can break through a wall in the castle....
I look forward to playing through it properly once I can discipline myself to stick with one game long enough, but even with what I've played up until now I can heartily recommend it as a fun, funny, action-packed RPG for those with the time to spend playing it!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please remember to go and check out the other groovy ghouls and boils that are taking part in the Countdown To Halloween, as they're posting lots of cool stuff on their blogs too!
Just click the pumpkin below to be taken to the hub, where you can access all of the Halloween horror from!
No comments:
Post a Comment