Turbografx-16 Reviews S

Silent Debuggers is a sophisticated, high-tech dungeon crawler that you'll forget about the minute you shut it off. Assuming the role of a space "debugger", your mission is to exterminate aliens in six levels of a space station, preventing it from self-destruction. In the cheesy intro, an androgynous redhead introduces himself (?) as your partner. "I'm Leon. Be my buddy. Debuggers do the dirty work and I love it." Is it just me, or does that sound like something you'd hear in a gay bar? Equally amusing is how the manual describes the space station as "evil". How can an inanimate object be evil? Silent Debuggers is played from a first-person perspective, and each level is a maze of hallways that all look exactly the same. The illusion of movement is adequate but jumpy as you move in 10-foot increments. Sensors indicate your proximity to the monsters, which typically reveal themselves as big heads with dangling arms. Silent Debuggers makes fine use of stereo effects to indicate your target's direction. If you turn down a hallway and the sensor audio becomes muffled, that means you're headed in the wrong direction. But even when you track down the creep, he moves so fast the game turns into an unpleasant game of cat and mouse. When you finally blast him, his arms catch fire and he unleashes a shrill scream. It's satisfying the first time, but after that the game becomes monotonous and unsatisfying. Leon guides you from a central computer room and provides upgraded weapons and items. Advanced levels introduce unwelcome complications like power outages, ammo shortages, and losing the use of your sensors. The game's single bright spot is its soundtrack, which would have been better used in a side-scrolling shooter. Silent Debuggers tries to be a sophisticated space adventure, but just because a game has a lot of pieces doesn't mean it's going to add up to anything. © Copyright 2009 The Video Game Critic.

This novelty item attempts to add a sexy twist to the Street Fighter 2 formula, pitting six female fighters against each other. The obligatory Chun Li knock-off looks okay, and Medusa looks fine in her red pumps and snake bikini. The other chicks however look more freakish than sexy. And with names like Bella and Martha, it's clear that the developers were out of touch with stripper naming conventions (Destiny, Angel, Candy, Chastity, Desiree, etc). Strip Fighter 2's graphics aren't too shabby, and one could argue they're in the same ballpark as the Street Fighter 2. The characters are detailed but their animation is stiff, slow, and floaty. The soundtrack is surprisingly strong, but the stage locations aren't very memorable. The snowy Japanese village looks nice, but the park with the static waterfall looks terribly fake. The one-on-one fighting action is weak but the game is playable. The controls suffer from a three-button control scheme - one of which is used to toggle between punches and kicks (ugh). Hits are punctuated by a strange visual effect that's probably supposed to be blood. Jump-kicks often deliver two hits, which feels unnatural but strangely satisfying. Some special moves are Street Fighter-derived, but most tend to be of the "what the [expletive] just happened" variety. A few ill-conceived moves incorporate the butt or breasts, but the less said about those, the better. The "stripping" element only comes into play in the single player mode. Winning a round treats you to a digitized photo of a scantily-clad babe, and upon winning the second round she gets butt-naked (with the lower region blurred). Since the default difficulty is pretty low it's not hard to see everything the game has to offer. My friends Scott and Chris were not impressed with the digitized babes, and Chris remarked how one looked like Zangief! My friend Steve, on the other hand, thought the girls looked pretty hot - especially the one who looked like Zangief! Strip Fighter II is a marginal Street Fighter knock-off, and I'm still trying to figure out if it's meant to be funny or not. Note: A converter is required to play this Japanese game on an American system. © Copyright 2013 The Video Game Critic.

Readers have been begging me to give this one another look for some time, since I apparently mistakenly reviewed it the first time around with my turbo switch set to "on". As with certain other T-16 games (Splatterhouse comes to mind), that can have a detrimental effect on a game's playability. Now that I've played Super Star Soldier as it was intended, I can verify that it is a genuinely terrific vertical shooter. The weapons are satisfying, the difficulty is fair, and there's no slowdown, even when things get crazy (and they will). This game skillfully straddles that fine line between exciting and chaotic by throwing just enough stuff at you at any particular moment. The stages are typical, including the obligatory space stations, water planets, and deserts with swirling sands. It's the weapons that really steal the show. You can select between red missiles, blue rings, yellow flames, and green lasers. When the laser is fully powered, you can practically wipe the screen with it (sweet). All of the weapons are effective, and once you tack on the homing missiles or protective pods, the game reaches a level of mayhem that most shooters can only dream about. I also like how taking a hit only degrades your firepower instead of destroying your ship outright. Of course, once you acquire your preferred weapon, you'll face the problem of avoiding other weapon icons. That can be problematic because the icons sometimes like to "hang out" in the field of play. The legions of tanks, cannons, and ships you'll face are forgettable, but the large bosses with so many moving parts are interesting. The only thing that truly annoyed me about Super Star Soldier were those green "beans" in stage four - they're hard to avoid and even harder to destroy. In addition to the main game, there are some entertaining "2 minute" and "5 minute" modes, which challenge you to maximize your score within these fixed periods of time. Super Star Soldier is one of many fantastic shooters for the Turbografx. With its brisk pace and tight controls, you'll really get into a groove playing this one. © Copyright 2006 The Video Game Critic.