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NovemberJoy
01-06-17 08:20 PM
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endings
01-07-17 01:54 AM
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01-31-17
cooldragon1990

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The hardest game you'll ever play, but for all the wrong reasons

 
Game's Ratings
Overall
Graphics
Sound
Addictiveness
Depth
Story
Difficulty
Average User Score
6.1
3
3
1
8
N/A
10
NovemberJoy's Score
2
3
3
1
8
N/A
10

01-06-17 08:20 PM
NovemberJoy is Offline
| ID: 1323072 | 1472 Words

NovemberJoy
Level: 78


POSTS: 1304/1587
POST EXP: 161606
LVL EXP: 4316459
CP: 11611.5
VIZ: 514180

Likes: 2  Dislikes: 0
Mystery of Atlantis, also known as Atlantis no Nazo, is a good example of the worst that the 1980s had to offer in platforming games. The game is notable, however, for two major reasons. For one thing, it was featured in the very first episode of Game Center CX, a Japanese show that focuses on a man named Arino and his attempts to beat various classic Japanese games, and it was shown just how incredibly poor the game design is, to the point where a guide was required to even come close to defeating the game. The other thing that this game is notable for is that it almost came to America as Super Pitfall 2. Yes, this game's American version was going to be a sequel to one of the worst and most poorly-programmed games in the entire NES library! Thankfully, it never came to America, but I can only imagine that people would have the same complaints for this game as they did for the original Super Pitfall.

   Graphics:

Well, they certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall, but they're far from impressive either. There's not much detail to be seen, the sprites aren't very large, the backgrounds are sparse, and the foregrounds don't have all that much variety. One of the worst parts about the graphics, though, is that they actually trick you - in some of the cave levels, there's spikes lining the floors and ceilings. You'd think the spikes would harm you, right? Well, they don't. They're just background objects that LOOK harmful. Overall, the graphics aren't at all impressive, even for 1986. The Famicom had already been out for three years at this point, so there isn't much of an excuse.

   +They certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall
   -Graphics are unimpressive
   -Background graphics that deceive the player

   Sound and Music:

Like the graphics, they certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall. Like the graphics, they also aren't particularly great. Despite having 100 levels, you'll only be hearing two music tracks in those levels for the entire game, which gets repetitive real fast. There's only five music tracks that I can find: the two level themes, the introduction theme, the game over theme, and the title screen music. The sound effects aren't any better, being the kind of extremely simple sound effects you'd expect from a launch title of the Famicom.

     +Music isn't terrible
     -There's barely any music to listen to
     -Sound effects are very simple

   Gameplay:

Of course, this is the meat of the game, and this is where the high depth rating comes from. This game has 100 levels to explore, and that's fairly impressive for a Famicom game like this. They all seem to have their own gimmick, but they start getting very repetitive after you see the same themes repeated over and over again.

For one thing, this game clearly took a few notes from Super Pitfall, judging from the amount of secrets you'll be seeing. If you want to get to the end of this game in any reasonable amount of time, you'll have to discover quite a few of them, and they range from warps hidden in random, unmarked holes to warps that require you to commit suicide with your own bombs to reach them. Even if you do manage to discover a quick route to get to the final stage, though, you also need a specific item that is extremely rare and can only be found in a few rare areas if you're not a perfect machine.

Speaking of that, this game also suffers from awkward controls! Jumping is always a gamble simply because you have very little control in mid-air, and zero control if you make a running jump. In other words, if you jump at the wrong time and are landing on an enemy, there's literally nothing you can do about it simply because the controls won't allow you to move out of the way. It only gets worse when the game expects you to do precise platforming, which you'll be expected to do as early as Zone 10 depending on what route you take. Imagine trying to land on platforms that are slightly wider than your character when you have almost zero control over your jumps!

However, there are several power-ups to help you, some of them more powerful than others. Their use is not particularly self-explanatory, though. Can you tell me what the shoes do? Do they make you jump higher or run faster? Nope, they let you walk on clouds that look like part of the background. The most important power-up, though, is the star. Like in Mario, it makes you invincible to everything that isn't a hole. Unlike in Mario, it never wears off unless you die. It even sticks between levels! I think the developers knew just how powerful this item was, since it's practically a necessity to finish the game. The final room throws so many projectiles at you that it's impossible for a human being to dodge.

Now, considering that this game is an insane maze that's 100 levels long, you'd think they would have some mercy on the poor Japanese children, right? Well, that's where you'd be wrong. This game offers you seven lives to start off with, but no continues. There isn't even a hidden continue code! Did they really expect someone to find their way through with a human level of patience and skill without any continues?

If you thought they wouldn't go any farther, you'd be wrong, because this game's designers had a LOT of
fun with the level design. For example, there's a puzzle in one zone that you need to solve. The only text you're given is "-KEY WORD- NAGOYA", and that's it. How would you even realize that it's a puzzle from that alone? Not to mention the method of solving this "puzzle" is completely off-the-wall - those syllables just happen to represent different numbers, and the numbers are seven, five, and eight...which obviously means you need to stand on top of the three statues and throw seven bombs while on the first, five bombs while on the second, and eight bombs while on the third. Totally self-explanatory, right?

Another large portion of this game's difficulty is its cheap shots. There are quite a few cheap shots and extremely difficult parts, but the worst cheap shot of all has to be the black hole. No cheap shot in any other game even compares. Can you guess what the black hole does? Well, if you enter certain completely unmarked doors that look no different from any other door, you'll be sent to Zone 42, the black hole, and it's a bottomless abyss that just drops you into a pit over and over again until you lose all of your lives...How do these level designers sleep at night, knowing that they made at least a few Japanese children cry with rage?

This game honestly had potential. 100 levels? That's far, far more than some platformers made recently have, but they squandered all their potential by throwing numerous cheap shots at the player, having terrible controls, and not bothering to make those 100 levels different from each other. Look at other games on the same system...for example, SMB2 USA. That game only has 20 levels, and yet it's looked at far more positively than this game. Why? Well, to put it shortly, they actually put effort into having creative level design and making each level feel different from the last.

+100 levels
-100 levels that are very repetitive
-Awful controls
-Completely illogical puzzles
-Numerous cheap shots
-THE BLACK HOLE. This one deserves its own point just for being so bad.
-The entire game is a confusing maze of nonsense
-Warps and secrets that would make any Zelda game blush

   
Overall:

In closing, this game represents the worst of 1980s platformers. Instead of focusing on great level design, good enemy placement, or anything else that makes a good platformer, they just threw together 100 uninspired levels and used every cheap tactic in the book to make the game harder in the worst possible way. It might interest you if you really want to play an incredibly difficult retro platformer, but that's it.

   Pros:

+Graphics certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall
+Music isn't terrible
+100 levels

   Cons:

-Graphics are unimpressive
-Background graphics that deceive the player
-There's barely any music to listen to
-Sound effects are fairly simple
-100 levels that are very repetitive
-Awful controls
-Completely illogical puzzles
-Numerous cheap shots
-THE BLACK HOLE.
-The entire game is a confusing maze of nonsense
-Warps and secrets that would make any Zelda game blush

Final Rating: D (It had a lot of potential, but it goes out of its way to be an aggravating exercise in frustration.)
Mystery of Atlantis, also known as Atlantis no Nazo, is a good example of the worst that the 1980s had to offer in platforming games. The game is notable, however, for two major reasons. For one thing, it was featured in the very first episode of Game Center CX, a Japanese show that focuses on a man named Arino and his attempts to beat various classic Japanese games, and it was shown just how incredibly poor the game design is, to the point where a guide was required to even come close to defeating the game. The other thing that this game is notable for is that it almost came to America as Super Pitfall 2. Yes, this game's American version was going to be a sequel to one of the worst and most poorly-programmed games in the entire NES library! Thankfully, it never came to America, but I can only imagine that people would have the same complaints for this game as they did for the original Super Pitfall.

   Graphics:

Well, they certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall, but they're far from impressive either. There's not much detail to be seen, the sprites aren't very large, the backgrounds are sparse, and the foregrounds don't have all that much variety. One of the worst parts about the graphics, though, is that they actually trick you - in some of the cave levels, there's spikes lining the floors and ceilings. You'd think the spikes would harm you, right? Well, they don't. They're just background objects that LOOK harmful. Overall, the graphics aren't at all impressive, even for 1986. The Famicom had already been out for three years at this point, so there isn't much of an excuse.

   +They certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall
   -Graphics are unimpressive
   -Background graphics that deceive the player

   Sound and Music:

Like the graphics, they certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall. Like the graphics, they also aren't particularly great. Despite having 100 levels, you'll only be hearing two music tracks in those levels for the entire game, which gets repetitive real fast. There's only five music tracks that I can find: the two level themes, the introduction theme, the game over theme, and the title screen music. The sound effects aren't any better, being the kind of extremely simple sound effects you'd expect from a launch title of the Famicom.

     +Music isn't terrible
     -There's barely any music to listen to
     -Sound effects are very simple

   Gameplay:

Of course, this is the meat of the game, and this is where the high depth rating comes from. This game has 100 levels to explore, and that's fairly impressive for a Famicom game like this. They all seem to have their own gimmick, but they start getting very repetitive after you see the same themes repeated over and over again.

For one thing, this game clearly took a few notes from Super Pitfall, judging from the amount of secrets you'll be seeing. If you want to get to the end of this game in any reasonable amount of time, you'll have to discover quite a few of them, and they range from warps hidden in random, unmarked holes to warps that require you to commit suicide with your own bombs to reach them. Even if you do manage to discover a quick route to get to the final stage, though, you also need a specific item that is extremely rare and can only be found in a few rare areas if you're not a perfect machine.

Speaking of that, this game also suffers from awkward controls! Jumping is always a gamble simply because you have very little control in mid-air, and zero control if you make a running jump. In other words, if you jump at the wrong time and are landing on an enemy, there's literally nothing you can do about it simply because the controls won't allow you to move out of the way. It only gets worse when the game expects you to do precise platforming, which you'll be expected to do as early as Zone 10 depending on what route you take. Imagine trying to land on platforms that are slightly wider than your character when you have almost zero control over your jumps!

However, there are several power-ups to help you, some of them more powerful than others. Their use is not particularly self-explanatory, though. Can you tell me what the shoes do? Do they make you jump higher or run faster? Nope, they let you walk on clouds that look like part of the background. The most important power-up, though, is the star. Like in Mario, it makes you invincible to everything that isn't a hole. Unlike in Mario, it never wears off unless you die. It even sticks between levels! I think the developers knew just how powerful this item was, since it's practically a necessity to finish the game. The final room throws so many projectiles at you that it's impossible for a human being to dodge.

Now, considering that this game is an insane maze that's 100 levels long, you'd think they would have some mercy on the poor Japanese children, right? Well, that's where you'd be wrong. This game offers you seven lives to start off with, but no continues. There isn't even a hidden continue code! Did they really expect someone to find their way through with a human level of patience and skill without any continues?

If you thought they wouldn't go any farther, you'd be wrong, because this game's designers had a LOT of
fun with the level design. For example, there's a puzzle in one zone that you need to solve. The only text you're given is "-KEY WORD- NAGOYA", and that's it. How would you even realize that it's a puzzle from that alone? Not to mention the method of solving this "puzzle" is completely off-the-wall - those syllables just happen to represent different numbers, and the numbers are seven, five, and eight...which obviously means you need to stand on top of the three statues and throw seven bombs while on the first, five bombs while on the second, and eight bombs while on the third. Totally self-explanatory, right?

Another large portion of this game's difficulty is its cheap shots. There are quite a few cheap shots and extremely difficult parts, but the worst cheap shot of all has to be the black hole. No cheap shot in any other game even compares. Can you guess what the black hole does? Well, if you enter certain completely unmarked doors that look no different from any other door, you'll be sent to Zone 42, the black hole, and it's a bottomless abyss that just drops you into a pit over and over again until you lose all of your lives...How do these level designers sleep at night, knowing that they made at least a few Japanese children cry with rage?

This game honestly had potential. 100 levels? That's far, far more than some platformers made recently have, but they squandered all their potential by throwing numerous cheap shots at the player, having terrible controls, and not bothering to make those 100 levels different from each other. Look at other games on the same system...for example, SMB2 USA. That game only has 20 levels, and yet it's looked at far more positively than this game. Why? Well, to put it shortly, they actually put effort into having creative level design and making each level feel different from the last.

+100 levels
-100 levels that are very repetitive
-Awful controls
-Completely illogical puzzles
-Numerous cheap shots
-THE BLACK HOLE. This one deserves its own point just for being so bad.
-The entire game is a confusing maze of nonsense
-Warps and secrets that would make any Zelda game blush

   
Overall:

In closing, this game represents the worst of 1980s platformers. Instead of focusing on great level design, good enemy placement, or anything else that makes a good platformer, they just threw together 100 uninspired levels and used every cheap tactic in the book to make the game harder in the worst possible way. It might interest you if you really want to play an incredibly difficult retro platformer, but that's it.

   Pros:

+Graphics certainly aren't as bad as Super Pitfall
+Music isn't terrible
+100 levels

   Cons:

-Graphics are unimpressive
-Background graphics that deceive the player
-There's barely any music to listen to
-Sound effects are fairly simple
-100 levels that are very repetitive
-Awful controls
-Completely illogical puzzles
-Numerous cheap shots
-THE BLACK HOLE.
-The entire game is a confusing maze of nonsense
-Warps and secrets that would make any Zelda game blush

Final Rating: D (It had a lot of potential, but it goes out of its way to be an aggravating exercise in frustration.)
Vizzed Elite

Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'

Registered: 06-24-11
Last Post: 755 days
Last Active: 662 days

(edited by NovemberJoy on 01-06-17 08:30 PM)     Post Rating: 2   Liked By: endings, Lexatom,

01-07-17 01:54 AM
endings is Offline
| ID: 1323154 | 13 Words

endings
Level: 58


POSTS: 726/828
POST EXP: 193055
LVL EXP: 1504181
CP: 19834.2
VIZ: 1243384

Likes: 1  Dislikes: 0
NovemberJoy : What a great review of such a fine tragedy of a game!
NovemberJoy : What a great review of such a fine tragedy of a game!
Trusted Member
A reviewer prone to flashbacks


Affected by 'Laziness Syndrome'

Registered: 04-30-13
Last Post: 254 days
Last Active: 119 days

Post Rating: 1   Liked By: Lexatom,

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