Saturday, June 30, 2018

Jurassic Park SNES LP part 1: Turn on the Power

I enjoyed the original Jurassic Park movie and I did play alot of the SNES version when I younger on my family's old Super Nintendo. Sadly I was unable to beat it. The reason is the game lacked a save feature or password system and it didn't help there was alot of locked doors that make you do some backtracking to get certain IDs that's scattered throughout the island.

To celebrate the new movie, here's a Let's Play of the Jurassic Park.


Click on the JP to load the menu and load up the game.

The very 1st screen you see. You also hear in a deep epic voice, "Welcome to Jurassic Park"

You play as Alan Grant, armed with a gun and firing on Dinos.
Does this guy look like an gun-slinging action hero?


If you stand still and do nothing on the world map. Mr.DNA will give you some random trivia.

Well the 1st thing I did is ran up into the fence and...well this happen.


I admit it is a funny animation seeing Alan turn into a skeleton.

No. You were more like... 


Let's see what happen if you repeatedly run up the fence.
 
So you get burnt to a crisp. Sadly this is the only comical death in the entire game.



There is some poles scattered throughout the island. They will give you tips and tell you your objective.

Another good thing about them is they are checkpoint place. If you get killed, it will put you back at the pole if you walked up to them.Entering and exiting a building where also be a checkpoint place. Anyways, let's see what the poles say.

Err...Ok but how? Just walk around the map and blast any raptors or what?
Most of these tips aren't that helpful. They give you vague clues on what to do.

Where is your "uhs" in the sentience?
Finally, an objective that makes sense.

Ok, according to the game manual. We need to head south then.



Be careful of these Compies. These small fry are very easy to kill with your already equipped Cattle Prod. Go ahead and electrify these losers. Also, it's better not waste your better guns on these guys. The problem with them is they are fast and they lower your HP if your not careful.

They didn't appear till the opening scene of the 2nd movie, The Lost World. From what I heard, they were present in the book the 1st movie is based on.

Picked up some shotgun shells and bolas. Continuing down south and...holy moley!!! Raptors start appearing.
Using the Cattle Prog is suicide. Use three shotgun blasts or fire bolas at it..


They can come out of nowhere and attack you. You better be prepare to fire when they appear.

Found a rocket launcher on the way. It's better than shotgun blasts. It kills dinos in one blast. 

Now three are here. Better hurry up and blow them up.
Or not because I'm dead.

The metal lane in the right of the pic can sap you with electricity, so hop over it.



 Well I cross the three raptor area and got close to the utility shed.
This pops up and he gives some advice. Anyways, moving south and..

 Watch out!! Watch out!!! Watch out!!!

The gamllimimus are harmless as long as you stay out of their way. Tim's advice sucks. You fire on them and all that happens is lessen the number of these runners bulldozing you.

Time to enter the shed.

 
 WOW!!! It's Jurassic Park in 3D. Look at the walls man. They look so real!!!!

Well I joking kinda. You do enter a 1st person view. I think this game came out before Doom. Wolfenstein may been out at the time.

I'm sure this was amazing to see back in the day. However it does look badly dated today and you can easily see the pixels. You do move at a sluggish speed.


That brown blob in the distance is a raptor. The AI of the dinos isn't the best. They won't attack unless you get in two feet of them. So rocket away.


 What's behind this door?
 It's a spitter.
 They spit balls of venom in my face.

 The same creatures that killed Dennis.



 Unfortunately for them, I have explosive ammo.

BTW, don't try to perform rocket jumps or commit suicide by firing close range at a wall. The only thing that explodes in the entire game is the dinos. It's like you gun switches with blanks when you hit anything but the dinos.


Good gosh, talk about being behind the times. A computer that's part of the wall.


You can walk to it and uses it's systems.

 However we have to turn on the generator and then reboot the systems before doing anything with this.

 Entered the next room that's full of spitters.
Walk up to it and the power is back on.

Hmm..The generator looks familiar...

 Go back to the computer on the wall and you get this.


Can't do anything else here. The power is back on so on to the next place.


Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Chrono Trigger Review

Chrono Trigger is consider one of the greatest RPGs ever made and it pretty much is

This pic is inaccurate. Marle didn't cast fire nor Heckran was in the ice ages.

The game is about time travel. It starts with a princess falling into a blue portal and the main hero follows her into the portal and lands in the middle ages.

After rescuing her and having a few more adventures, the real plot of the game is revealed. The heroes travel into the future of 2300 AD. There they out the world is a wasteland because in the year 1999 AD, a monster called Lavos bust out of the planet's crust and rain down fire on the entire planet. Our heroes made it their main goal to travel through time and to learn about and defeat the mysterious being know as Lavos.




This is the cast of Chrono Trigger. A very colorful group of people from different time periods. You got the silent protagonist, Chrono. The rebellious princess dressed as a commoner, Marle. The inventor Lucca. The medieval knight turned Frog... well Frog.(You learn his real name later on). The cave woman Ayla, and the metal powerhouse Robo.
Another character to point out is this mysterious dark character named Magus who may or may not have a connection to Lavos. 


If you haven't notice, they resemble Dragonball characters. That's because the designer for the characters was the guy behind Dragonball. Most people were unaware back in the Super Nintendo days because they were 16-bit sprites and it was hard to tell. When the game got re-released in PS1 and Nintendo DS, they did have animated cartoon cutscenes where you see a red-hair samurai Goku attacking monsters. It became more obvious then.

Gee, it be funny to see that some bias anime hater or bias Dragonball hater who was a big fan of this game find out about the character designs. Also to point out, the Dragon Warrior games who had the same designer. However  the earliest games had their covers and manuals heavily redrawn to be "Americanize". This was years before Pokemon/Sailor Moon/Gundam made anime popular in America. No, I never played Dragon Warrior but knew some people who did.


There are multiple time periods to explore the world of Chrono Trigger. You explore the battle of the fittest between humans and reptites in 65 million BC. Explore the icy surface world and a magical kingdom floating in the sky in 12,000 BC(This was sort of like Atlantis), the medieval war between humans and mystics in 600 AD, the peaceful present of 1000 AD, or the post apocalyptic world of 2300 AD.

The BC/AD calendar doesn't make sense in the world of Chrono Trigger. Christianity does't seem to be established in this world. It seems the calendar change it's date from the founding of Guardia Kingdom, meaning it should be BG/AG instead.

One thing that's unique to the gameplay of Chrono Trigger is you got the ability to combine attacks called double techs and triple techs. You can have characters perform powerful attacks on your foes and have fun experimenting on which combo abilities your character has.

The graphics is good for it's time and the music of this game is very very memorable. Speaking about the music, Robo's theme sounds alot like Rick Astley's Never Give You Up.
I'm not joking, listen to the music.


At a certain point 3/4 in the game, you have access to several sidequests. They are there to help resolved left over storylines and wrap up your characters story arcs. They also help give your characters the best weapons and armor.
Chrono, your main leader your stuck with is the best character to play. He's great with strength and magic. 
Frog is sort of a "Red Mage". He has a descent fighter, healer, and magic caster. 
Lucca is your "Black Mage", she has powerful magic, especially late game.
Robo is good with his attacks and techs. Sadly, he and Lucca are the slowest in the game, so give them your speed tabs if you want to use these guys.
Marle is..well not the best. She has a few descent spells and healing but others surpass her.
Ayla is a powerhouse. She has the best strenght in the game. She uses her fist, means she doesn't have a weapon to equip. If your characters are captue in the Blackbird, having her will prevent you from going all playing stealth on the plane.

And the rest of the article with have spoilers. You been warned.






At one point, Chrono dies in the game. You can revive him by going through a sidequest. It's still optional and you can beat the game without him.

You do encounter Magus after Chrono's death and you have the option to either fight Magus to the death or recruit him.
Magus is a great magic caster in the game. Sadly, he gets recruited at late game and you have to level up his character to get his more powerful spells. He also can't do duel and triple techs unless you find these rare colored rocks hidden in the game.

The game has multiple endings. You have different endings depending if you revive Chrono or not. Also if you recruited Magus or not. If you do kill him, Frog be back to human form in the end.

There are multiple ways to get to Lavos. You can use the bucket at the End of Time to time travel and go straight to Lavos. Use the Epoch(your flying time machine), to ram through Lavos' armor and fight his core. The last one is going on the Black Omen, a floating fortress controlled by Magus; power hungry mother who awakens Lavos after defeating her. The different way you get to Lavos will effect the ending of the game.

After beating the game, you get access to New Game+. This will make you replay the game but with the same levels, items, and stats you had at the end of the game. You have the option to attack Lavos from 1000 AD. Depending where you are at in New Game+, after defeating Lavos you have access to a exclusive ending. Some are funny, some are boring, some show cool events. There's one ending where Chrono talks for once. If you beat the game with only Chrono and Marle at the very beginning, you get access to the developer's ending where you can talk to the makers of the game.

The PS1 version did come with an animated ending. It sort of sets up Chrono Cross. I would not recommend that version because it seems famous Squaresoft SNES games end up with terrible loading times.

The DS version has a bonus dungeon and a different ending that ties in more the Chrono Cross.

Well I hope you guys enjoy this game. I recommend it if your into RPGs.