Retro Review: Athena for NES

Long before Kratos went postal on Zeus and the gods on Mt. Olympus Athena was battling "strange and fearsome creatures" on the NES.

Athena is a side scrolling platformer that has the player fighting enemies and "breaking bricks" to pick up armor and weapon upgrades. There were four weapon types Club, Arrow, Magic and Blade. The first three had three levels of strength the Sword had a forth level.

Athena can pick up Armor, Helmets and Shields to protect her against the "strange and fearsome creatures" in the game.

The game also has many items Athena can use to help her such as Pegasus wings, Harp of Protection and umm a Sailor Fuku O.o and a few that actually make the game even more infuriatingly difficult like the Broken hourglass, Goblin Hand and Skull Shield.

SNK could've had a decent game here if there was some QA involved, but regrettably this game suffered tremendously because of non existant hit detection, incredibly poor enemy AI and a zero tolerance learning curve.

The graphics were decent for the time, and the levels had enough variety to keep the player from feeling the repetitious nature of the game. The boss's were large and hard as hell if you came unprepared. Getting to the boss's was challenging enough, if you died you were whisked back to the start of the level with none of your equipment or weapons.

Athena has eight worlds to play thru (good luck!) and the final world actually incorporates a game mechanic any Megaman fan will instantly recognize, the final world in Athena has the player battle all 7 previous boss's in short succession before finally facing the final boss Dante.

The story itself is absolutely ridiculous...a goddess gets bored living in a castle and sneaks out to fight "strange and fearsome creatures". Not exactly Edipus Rex...

Later Athena made the transition from platformer to fighting game vixen in SNK's KOF franchise.

Athena's debut game gets a 3/10

Game Review: Okami

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more aesthetically impressive game. The game is fairly straight forward, you play Amaterasu Okami the reincarnation of Shiranui the white wolf that fought alongside Nagi 100 years ago to protect Kamiki village from the demon Orochi.

The pen is mightier than the sword...

Okami is accompanied by Issun on his journey thru Nippon to restore beauty and revive cursed lands. In order to accomplish this Okami must master the hidden arts of the celestial brush. Thru your travels Okami will be blessed by other gods with new brush techniques that literally transform the envirnoment you are in. By holding R1 you access the brush and holding triangle or square, useing the left analog stick Okami can transform her surroundings to restore beauty and wildlife to the area.

As Amaterasu restores the land she gains praise from the land, when she helps an NPC like Kushi, the sake brewer, she'll gain praise, or when Amaterasu shares her food with the animals of the lands. These praise points can be used to boost Amaterasu's attributes like health, ink jars..the more ink jars the longer you can use the celestial brush. Praise points can also be used to increase her astral pouch...how much food she can carry, a finally praise points can increase Amaterasu's purse.

As I mentioned earlier Okami is accompanied by Issun thru her journey thru Nippon, Issun's gender is never determined. Issun travels with Amaterasu to learn to secret techiniques of the celestial brush. Issun acts as a guide for the player as well as comic relief. The dialog is smart and witty even though some times the conversations seemed childish. The NPC's seem a bit childish but upon further research many of them actually are from native Japanese religion, Shinto. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto

Amaterasu is portrayed as the sun goddess in Shinto and many other characters in the game stem from Shinto.

So for those parents who believe nothing beneficial comes from video games I would say give your son or daughter this game, they might actually learn something interesting if they get into Okami. This brings me to my next point, Okami didn't sell to well here in the states unforunately, most likely because the game is so heavily influenced by Japanese lore many kids here will not be able to connect with it. It's kind of sad that American kids are more likely to pick up Halo, Socom, or Ghost Recon than a game like Okami that isn't just beautiful but fun if you're willing to give it a try.

The only issue I have with Okami is there are times where I can't fiqure out what I'm supposed to be doing to proceed. There is an ingame log book which will come in handy if you put this game on the back burner for a few weeks. There's also a beastiary and animal tome that logs all the different animals you've feed thruout the game. The Music is subtle yet as beautiful as the games visuals. The battles in the game are very easy especially once you are familiar with the celestial brush, the boss fights however are far more interesting and challenging, making the player use the techinques learned. There's also plenty of secrets in the game that are worthwhile to uncover.

8/10

Game Review: MegaMan Anniversary Collection

Remember the good ol' days of 8 bit side scrollers, where all ya needed was a square controller with a D-pad and 2 buttons. Where you didn't need a keyboard, a headset, a broadband connection (which didn't even exist then anyway). It was just you verses the hordes of pallet swapped baddies and the evil bosses! Well someone at Capcom does, and thanks to thier fondness for this extinct 2-D genre we will get to play one of gamings historic characters Megaman in his first 8 titles! The blue bombers one of those characters who've stood the test of time like Mario and his brother......what's his name , Sonic, the Belmont clan, and Link. So if you're a younger video gamer who doesn't remember the glory days you should definately check out this game! You'll get to kick Dr. Wily's mad scientist but 8X for less that the current 3-D super platformer-MMORPG-fighting bonanza.....and you may have more fun too! If I were to rate this game on it's visuals it would probably recieve below a 5 but fortunately for Rocks sake I'm not. What you don't know who Rock is? Well in Japan Megaman is called Rockman (think stone not music) The basic idea is Rockman is created by doctor light to stop Dr Wily's mad robots from destroying earth! Each of Wily's robots has a special attack that causes extra damage compared to MM's peashooter, with this knowledge you must figure out which weapon to use against which Boss....think ROCK, paper, scissors. Although very outdated the music fits Megamans world perfectly and it's nice to see the slight improvements from MM1-MM8 in sound and visuals. This is simply a fun compliation when you want to delve into a quality classic game with simple gameplay and a decent challenge. 10 Megaman games + loads of goodies like art work, videos for $29.99!

7/10