90s Archives -

Skitchin’ – Retro Review

Fixin’ for Some Skitchin’

I put on roller skates once in my life. It was at my friend David White’s house when I was a little kid. We were in a narrow outside space between the main building of his house and an outbuilding and for whatever reason we decided that I should try a spot of skating. I put them on and carefully pulled myself up with my back to the wall, and then immediately fell painfully onto my arse. I quickly removed the danger-wheels and probably went back inside to fire up David’s ZX Spectrum and play Gauntlet or How to be a Complete Bastard or something (yes that is a real game that he had).

Luckily, Electronic Arts provided me with the opportunity to skate around in an irresponsible and dangerous manner without the risk of breaking my coccyx with their 1994 Mega Drive exclusive title, Skitchin‘. Also, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that I mentioned that I might write about this game in my Bomb Rush Cyberfunk article. Consider this retro review an example of my ass cashing a cheque that my mouth wrote, or whatever that weird saying is.

Have you ever skitched in real life? Go on, you can tell me. I ain’t no skitchin’ snitch.

In Skitchin‘ the player takes on the role of a particularly fearless inline skater and attempts to dominate in a skating tournament spanning Canada and the USA. The races take place on the streets of such locations as New York and Vancouver, and players are able to accelerate, crouch and jump, and attack other skaters. The main hook, though, and the thing that differentiates Skitchin‘ the most from its most obvious inspiration (I’ll go into that more in a bit) is the ability to engage in the noble and titular art of “skitching”, in which one grabs on to a passing vehicle to increase one’s speed. So-called because it’s a portmanteau of “skating” and “hitching”, skitching is very illegal and very dangerous, so do not engage in such activities in real life. Although I’m sure that anyone who remembers the video game Skitchin‘ would be too old now to be physically capable of doing it anyway.

If you haven’t played Skitchin‘ but you have played Road Rash you’ve probably already noticed that those screenshots look mighty familiar. Electronic Arts repurposed the Road Rash engine for this game, and despite the differences in the nuances of the gameplay, Road Rash veterans picking this one up will be having a severe case of deja-vu. The graphics are almost identical, the music has a similar feel, and the competitors are represented by digitised sprites in the vein of Road Rash 3.

There’s nothing like skitchin’ on Miami beach. Do roads cut through the beach like this in Miami?

The gameplay does have its differences, though. While you can still claim weapons and attack your fellow skitchers, in order to have any chance of catching up to them to do so you’ll have to engage with the skitching mechanic, using the right timing to grab onto passing cars and then choosing an opportunity to let go, catapulting forward with a bit of momentum before hanging onto the next unassuming mini-van. Each race has an entry fee, and players can gain money by finishing in a decent position, and lose it by having to pay for bail if the cops catch you, medical fees if you break something vital, or new gear because your old stuff wears out over time. If you can’t make the entry fee for the next race, it’s game over – no more skitchin’ for you, bucko.

As the tournament advances the tracks get trickier and the cars upon which the art of skitching is to be performed move faster, making the timing a lot more precise. It’s still doable once you get into a flow, but by the time the difficulty ramps up you’ll probably be realising there’s not much in the way of variety. Skitchin‘ goes through the motions again and again, and while the same can be said for Road Rash, the gameplay loop of Road Rash is just that bit purer and more entertaining. Skitchin‘ complicates matters with its skitching mechanic, and arguably makes things more strategic than Road Rash, but the racing feels slower and the violence less impactful. Skitchin‘ is a fun distraction, but it doesn’t have the character or staying power of its older and more successful sibling.

Besides, motorbikes are way cooler than inline skates, right? If I tried to ride a motorbike in real life, though, I’d definitely break more than my coccyx.

Played via emulator (but I did play it on my Mega Drive back in the day).

The Ooze – Retro Review

It’s Slime Time

An oft-forgotten monster type in the preternatural pantheon (unless you’re a fan of JRPGs or Dungeons & Dragons, that is) is the humble ooze or slime. These corpulent masses of gelatinous gunk used to be a mainstay of the big screen in the era of B-movie horror, with Steve McQueen’s The Blob leading the way and such masterpieces as X the Unknown and Caltiki – The Immortal Monster also getting in on the sentient slime action.

Not to be outdone, Sega Technical Institute came up with the idea for a 16-bit video game with a focus on vengeful viscosity, offering ’90s kids the chance to live out every gamer’s dreams of becoming a formless, quivering mass of repulsive goop. They unleashed The Ooze in 1995.

The game is at its most entertaining when you’re slithering through cramped areas and Dr. Caine’s form assumes the shape of its surroundings.

The game kicks off with a simple cutscene detailing the dramatic story of how the titular ooze came to be. A scientist known as Dr. D. Caine uncovers a plot at a chemical plant involving an evil corporation unleashing a toxic gas amongst the populace and then making a killing selling the serum that cures its effects. Shocked and ashamed, as Dr. Caine was the one who invented the gas, our hero tries to put a stop to the corporation’s nefarious plans, only to be captured, injected with gunk, and disposed of with the rest of the sludge. The bad news for the bad guys is that Dr. Caine survived, gained a new, goopy form, and is out to stop their schemes and regain his humanity.

This schlocky set-up results in a top-down action adventure in which players are responsible for guiding the puddle that was Dr. Caine through a variety of levels, slapping various enemies with extendible, gooey tendrils, and utilising goop-spitting attacks to clear the way. As the ooze comes into contact with environmental hazards or enemy attacks the puddle will shrink in size, with Dr. Caine’s adventure coming to an untimely, slithery end if the puddle gets too small or his goopy head takes too many hits.

Dr. Caine’s fate is actually pretty brutal when you think about it.

Alas, controlling this bilious mass is a mixed bag. While it’s fairly satisfying to slither around and squeeze our slippery hero through gaps and around terrain, the choppy animation and lack of visual clarity as to Dr. Caine’s status do detract from the overall experience. It can be difficult to tell just how close our oozy hero is to expiration, resulting in some surprising game overs, and discouraging use of Caine’s slime spit attack as it takes away from his sludge reserves.

When it comes to presentation, The Ooze isn’t one of the Mega Drive’s finest. Sega Technical Institute, an American branch of the Japanese giant, were also responsible for Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball, and some similarities in the music and visual style are apparent, but that game is much more aesthetically and aurally memorable than this one. If The Ooze looked and sounded more like Sonic Spinball’s toxic caves opening level, it might have lingered longer in the minds and hearts of gamers, but it was not to be. Instead, The Ooze is a little bland visually and, in the earlier stages at least, looks strangely reminiscent of Bitmap Brothers’, The Chaos Engine, although less coherent in its artistic vision.

The Ooze got a fairly negative reception upon release, but this seems a little unfair. It’s an interesting game that’s entirely unique on the console. Moving the goopy protagonist around the stages is fun in its own way, and slurping up goop dropped by enemies to further bolster our hero’s mucilaginous form is a satisfying mechanic. The team at Sega Technical Institute had some great ideas, and for the most part, they implemented them well, but it just needed some additional polish and personality to take it to that next level of quality.

The game is actually kind of hard. You might find it easy though, being such an expert and everything.

It’s a tad expensive to pick up a complete copy nowadays, but if you do find the concept interesting and can play The Ooze through other means, I recommend giving it a go. You should at least have a decent amount of fun enveloping the minions of the evil corporation in your slithering, overwhelming, coagulated, quivering folds. That’ll show ’em ooze boss.

This article was written for a now-defunct Sega magazine and never used. Played on Mega Drive via emulation.

Aero the Acro-Bat – Retro Review

Bother in the Big Top

This review was written for Issue 8 of the sadly now defunct Sega Mania Magazine, as such it is written from a ’90s perspective.

Does anyone actually like the circus? I mean, I’m sure they were great in the olden times, when the only other forms of entertainment were gathering around the wireless or playing with a hoop and a stick, but do we really need them here in the futuristic ’90s? We have television, spectator sports and video games, bars and nightclubs, Pogs and Slinkies. I for one think that it’s time for circuses to go. The animals don’t want to be there, I question the motives and mental capacity of anyone who chooses to be a clown, and acrobats can use their impressive suppleness and contortionist abilities elsewhere. Maybe they can perform elaborate robberies or something.

Aero the Acro-bat for the Mega Drive has an unavoidable big top vibe, with the titular Aero being the game’s protagonist and the star of the in-game show. A villainous industrialist named Edgar Ektor has sabotaged the World of Amusement Circus and Funpark, and has kidnapped all of its performers, replacing them with nefarious, evil clowns and other such appropriately-themed bad guys. It’s fallen upon Aero to use his high-flying skills and acrobatic feats to save the day, rescue his girlfriend Aeriel, and put a stop to Ektor’s machinations. This includes taking care of Ektor’s lead henchman, a certain Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel.

Aero is contemplating the tiny, one-hit-kill spikes that infest every stage. Can you see it?

If you’ve seen Aero the Acro-bat before, you’ll know that he represents yet another developer having a dip into the “critters with ‘tude” well. This time it’s Sunsoft who have their straws out, attempting to slurp up some of Sonic’s lucrative success water. Have they backed a winner with this Chiropteran tumbler? I’m not so sure. The designers doubled down on the mean and cool attitude and forgot to add any charm or charisma. Also, he’s a circus performer, which means I immediately question his moral and social ideals.

Initial impressions paint Aero the Acro-bat as a fairly standard platformer, and it feels a little dated compared to some of the platformers that have appeared in recent years. Aero himself is somewhat stiff to control, and he commits that platformer hero sin of not being able to stop quickly, which can result in some aggravating slides into certain doom. The stages, while colourful, seem fairly lifeless, with levels that don’t evolve as you progress and forgettable enemy designs. There is some stage variety later on, with a few cool gimmicks that are mostly based on fairground rides, but nothing really stands out or sticks with you. Visually, this is closer to James Pond or Krusty’s Super Fun House than it is to Ristar or our iconic hedgehog pal.

A bat in a barrel, rolling past featureless trees and hills.

Mechanically, the level design philosophy seems frustratingly centred on catching the player out with traps that they could not have foreseen. The admittedly-large levels are littered with spikes, and said spikes are small and inconspicuous, and are often found in the most annoying of places. For example, some of the levels ask you to jump on certain platforms, which causes them to disintegrate, and you can be darned sure there are going to be spike pits underneath all of them. There’s a particular spiked pit during act two that you get dumped into immediately after a unicycle tightrope ride, the likes of which have thus far given you no reason to think they’re going to end in certain, spiky doom. This would all be fine if the spikes just made you lose some health, but these barbed bad boys are insta-death, baby.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, have oodles of time to spare, and enjoy memorising massive levels using a process of trial and error that involves lots and lots of dead bat, then you might get a lot of enjoyment out of Aero the Acro-bat, as there is satisfying gameplay to be found once you’ve mastered Aero’s initially-awkward dive attacks and formed your mental map of the levels. It’s a heck of a slog to get there though, and with its forgettable mascot, uninspiring visuals, small sprites and irritating, circus-themed music, you might not want to go through the trouble.

The rollercoaster section is just another memory test.

I can’t help but feel that the game doesn’t want you to have fun. Did you know that bats are the only mammal capable of true, full flight, and are even more nimble and agile when airborne than most birds? Not this one. He can hover for a bit, and can only fly temporarily after collecting a certain power-up. He’s also able to fire star projectiles, but they’re extremely limited, he starts with none, and the pick-ups are located in fiddly places to get to. Enemies are positioned specifically to catch you out, which you could say about your average Sonic the Hedgehog level, but Sonic’s zones are mostly focussed on fun, spectacle, exploration and a satisfying challenge, rather than just aggravating schmuck bait.

The Mega Drive is absolutely stuffed with top quality mascot platformers, and Aero, despite all of his impressive acro-bat-ics, struggles to even trouble the top 20. Perhaps he should go back to shooting soundwaves at unsuspecting moths or sucking blood out of horses. You know, all that bat stuff that real bats do.

I hope this was an enjoyable little extra for any Sega Mania fans out there. I wrote one more review for Issue 8 which I will be posting at a later date, and I may also be uploading some of my favourite reviews from throughout the mag’s seven issue run, so stay tuned!