Crazy Taxi

The Short


Pros
- Faithful recreation of the breakneck arcade driving game
- Fantastic graphics for the Dreamcast
- Lots of settings let you tweak your experience to best suit you
- Challenge modes are a nice break from the regular game
- Very addicting, and also a lot of fun to just boot up and play a couple games
- Music by The Offspring and Bad Religion really bring the late 90s vibe home
- Seriously, this game is such a great time capsule

Cons
- Only has like four songs, and if you play a mode longer than 4-5 minutes you'll get them repeated
- XBLA/PSN version has NO licensed songs, just generic guitar stuff. Lame.
- Branding is also gone in the XBLA version, and this is the only time I'll say I liked in-game advertising
- The whole "CRAAAAZZZYYYY!!" aspect of the game can be really obnoxious
- Stuff your driver/passengers say is obnoxious
- Have to press a button to switch from drive to reverse. I know you jerks did that to take up time.
- At it's core, this game is very simple, and only has one real map

Time to make some CRAZY MONEY!

The Long

Crazy Taxi is yet another arcade game I saw frequently as a child and only got to play like three times. And the times I did play it I was so incredibly awful it wasn't a very enjoyable experience, mostly because I knew I could do better. I've always been oddly drawn to this game for some reason (maybe because I like both The Offspring and Bad Religion, thus proving I have awful taste in music) so when I finally picked up a Dreamcast this last week, I was stoked to find it was included in the bundle.

But now I'm old and jaded! Does the "rad," "crazy," "awesome" attitude of this late 90s arcade game still work today? Or is its repetitive arcade antics just too stupid and from a different time?

I'm gonna say this: I have played this game daily since getting my Dreamcast. So I'm gonna say it holds up.

And thus your adventure starts. Your CRAZY adventure!

Crazy Taxi is, at its core, an extremely simple game. Your goal is to pick up customers and deliver them to their desired locations as fast as possible, earning money and competing against the clock. Once you run out of time the game is over, and you are ranked and scored.

What Crazy Taxi does well is the little things that add to your score and time. Picking up customers gives a time boost based on how far away you have to travel, and delivering them quicker earns a bigger post-delivery time boost (usually just 2-5 seconds). You are given a standard fare based on distance, but doing CRAZY stuff in between can ramp up the fare. Driving recklessly between cars but not getting hit, doing sick jumps, or performing power slides will earn you extra change, comboing up as long as you can keep the CRAZINESS going. On one run I earned something like $200 extra between jumps, weaving through traffic, and just driving like a maniac. It's a great risk/reward system, and you have to use it to get any high scores.

This cannot possibly be safe. 

And that, in a nutshell, is the idea behind Crazy Taxi. It's an extremely addicting high score chase, and the game is great at popping up your current "rank" while you are playing so that you know if you smoked your old scores. While extended play can get a bit tiresome, it's absolutely addicting in short bursts.

There are a few other features that are worth noting. You are given four drivers to choose from, each with their own car and stats (and a fifth "secret" car which is just a bike with a cab attached). In the Dreamcast (and XBLA/PSN/PS2 versions) they have a variety of "challenge" missions included as well, that task you to do specific things in a time limit. These are hardly deep or anything, but are a nice diversion. 

The home versions also let you customize your time, difficulty, traffic density, and more. You can play where you don't get time added and just have 10 minutes to play, but let me tell you: removing the challenge of the timer makes this game boring. Just play Arcade. Trust me.

And now I have CRAAAZZZYYY insurance rates!

Is there anything negative about this bananas arcade action? Well...a few things. There's only one map, and while it's pretty large you can easily get stuck looping around the same areas each time. Sometimes the controls can come off as annoying (especially having to press one button to be in drive and another to switch to reverse; clearly this was because they wanted to suck up your quarters as you wasted seconds changing gears) and the car peels out randomly which is also obnoxious.

Perhaps the biggest point of issue for a lot of people is the sound. Now, with the "witty" banter between your driver and the customer is pretty much a no brainer for everybody: it's repetitive, lame, and sucks. The main point people bring up is the soundtrack. It consists of about four-five tracks from The Offspring and Bad Religion, two major punk bands the time Crazy Taxi was hitting arcades. Now, for me I like both these bands, and feel their hateful punk music blends well with the over-the-top rebellious attitude of Crazy Taxi. But some people straight up hate it, so if you do you can always turn the volume down.

A big downer, however, is that both the XBLA and PSN re-releases axed the licenses songs (as well as the product placement buildings like Pizza Hut or Tower Records). While you could argue that's an improvement, I'll still rather listen to The Offspring than bland generic guitar riffs. Just doesn't have the same 'tude, man. 

Brake, you fool, brake! 

As it stands, Crazy Taxi is a fantastic game, that is better on the PS2 and the Dreamcast if only because of its closer authenticity to the arcade original. While the "HD" re-release is fine (it isn't really very HD, to be completely honest) it loses a bit of the original flavor which, for a game like this, is like half of the game.

Regardless, Crazy Taxi still stands up as a fast, furious, and (dare I say it...) CRAZY arcade game even to this day. If you downloaded the demo off XBLA and dug it, by all means snatch it up either online or in a Sega compilation disc. Just be sure and blast some Offspring from your iPod for the full effect.

Four out of five stars for the original, three out of five for the rerelease.

But this guy will forever be creepy. 

Rampage World Tour

The Short


Pros
- Authentic to the arcade version
- Reboot/rerelease of the NES Rampage
- Three player co-op
- Unlimited continues

Cons
- Monotonous
- Repetitive in both gameplay and levels
- Graphics and sound are ho-hum
- Overall, doesn't stand the test of time

Smashing buildings in 64 bits

The Long

Rampage World Tour is one of the only two arcade games my local Wal-Mart had growing up, the other being the excellent fighter Samurai Shodown. Growing up I'd watch the demo play while my mother checked out at the store, wishing I had some quarters. Years later, I found out the game had come out on the N64, I figured it was time to finally fulfill my lifelong dream. \

And, just like Loopz, my childhood nostalgia was shattered. 

Rampage World Tour kind of sucks. A lot. 

So everybody's played this game's predecessor, Rampage, in its original arcade iteration, or at least heard of it and it's mediocre NES port. Here, I'll even give you a screenshot. 

GRAPHICS!

The basic premise of the original game is to climb buildings, punch them 'til they explode, and then move on to the next. After smashing all the buildings in an area you move on to punch some more. It gets tricky as the army and air force get pissed that you are leveling L.A., so they send tanks and planes and you have to punch those too. Also you can eat people. And that's about it. 

If it sounds tedious...it is. But this was back in a time of crappy arcade games that kept things simple and just adhered to an easy theme. You'd think that, two generations of consoles later, we'd have evolved this formula into something awesome. Well...no.

I honestly think this game is uglier than the 8-bit version. 

All you do is the same stuff. Punch buildings, punch planes, punch tanks, die a lot and have to continue. There really isn't anything unique or new in the whole system. You eat some things that heal you, and other things that hurt you. Pinnacle of gameplay. 

As for the "World Tour" aspect, that basically is just that you slowly work your way around different countries, smashing up similar looking locales based on where in the world you are. It's repetitive, stages recycle, and the game never seems to end. I know eventually you go to the moon, but after two hours of playing I just couldn't keep playing. It was the most boring, monotonous grind I've ever encountered.

The arcade version looks a very tiny bit better. But this game still is really boring. 

You can play this game with up to three people, who can hit each other, push them off buildings, and generally be jerks to each other. Since this isn't in widescreen and the camera is so zoomed in, you and your buddies will be fighting for space the whole way, and not in a good way. 

Graphically this game is hideous, especially on the N64. The flat sprites are poorly rendered, the enemies look poor, and even the explosions are dull. And in a game about destruction, when the destruction effects look like crap you really screwed up somewhere. And no amount of badly rendered high-skirted science ladies can make up for that. 

Skip this one. 

Rampage World Tour is a jump back into Lizzie, Ralph, and George's world destruction, but it isn't one you should take. Sure, the game was an arcade classic, but I now this thing is more of a mess than anything else. It's boring, ugly, and not even fun co-op. If you want to blow up the world, play Prototype or Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Just don't play this game.

One out of five stars. 

Be afraid, George: your game sucks. 

Columns

The Short


Pros
- Addicting, somewhat unique puzzle game (if it is a bit like Tetris 2)
- Graphics/gems look ok
- Fun two-player game set up in a style that reminds me of Klax
- Can get quite difficult

Cons
- Music is so, so boring
- Game itself is also a bit boring and can get old pretty quick
- Speed picks up much too fast to make the game enjoyable
- Ancient Greece/Roman theme is meant to compliment Tetris' Russian theme, but doesn't pull it off

A puzzle game using jewels! How novel! 

The Long

It's fairly obvious where Sega was coming from with Columns. After seeing Tetris become a massive franchise for Nintendo, obviously they wanted something of their own to compete. Thus, Columns is born, spanning all Sega systems and even getting an arcade release. With its Greek/Roman theme, "drop stuff from the top of the screen" style and 16-bit graphics, was it able to overtake Tetris?

Well, you tell me. Are they re-releasing Columnes on every device known to man for inflated prices, or is that Tetris? This isn't a hard question.

Time to bust up some gems. 

The concept of Columns actually reminds me a lot of Klax, which I love (and Bejeweled, now that I think about it. And Pokemon Puzzle League. Huh.). The general goal is to get three of the same color of gem in a row to eliminate it. This can be done horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The trick is that once gems are placed you pretty much are stuck with them; no swapping once they are down. Every titular "column" that drops down has three colors which can be shifted but never actually flipped. It's a simple concept, perhaps deceptively so.

In truth, Columns can be hard to wrap your brain around after playing any of the aforementioned puzzle games. It quickly becomes a war of attrition, you against your bad moves, and unlike Tetris you really don't have an easy way out should you make a mistake. The game is relentless, where even one minor screw-up could ruin a whole chunk of rows for good. 

Like most old cartridge games, Columns doesn't save your high scores. Which sucks. 

The game also seems to reach insane drop speeds much quicker than other games of the genre. Right when you think you've finally figured the game out and can stop sucking, the pieces go from being on the moon to being on the surface of Jupiter, slamming down into the ground with insane speed. It's aggravating, but I will admit there's some weird appeal to starting on the hardest level and just seeing how long I can survive.

The game isn't completely merciless, though. Randomly it'll drop a multi-colored awesome block, and whichever color it touches will be completely deleted. This can really save your skin, but I didn't really find any rhyme or reason as to when this lifesaving piece drops, so I guess it's just crossing your fingers and hoping.

Magic jewel, save me!

Perhaps the biggest factor in why this game didn't outshine Tetris (because despite my gripes, Columns has a relatively solid puzzle foundation) is the awful presentation. The game just looks incredibly boring. Gems are easy to differentiate, sure, but the backgrounds are ugly and nothing looks particularly good. Tetris on the NES also was bland, sure, but the lack of an attempt at an art style worked in its favor. Columns tried to do something with its Greek theme and failed, resulting in an ugly looking game.

As a bonus, both the sound effects and music are really bad. Especially the music. While I'll admit the weirdly reverbed "CRASH!" every time you drop a piece is somewhat amusing, the background tune that plays is obnoxious and uninteresting. It's not the assault on your eardrums that is Loopz, but it comes close.

Thanks, Columns, I would have never figured that out on my own. 

Ultimately, while I think there's some fun to be had with Columns (when playing with my wife we both got quite competitive trying to get high scores, which was pretty intense) it's usually short lived and in very short bursts. It doesn't latch its hooks into you like most of the other puzzle classics, and after a few games you'll be tired of it. It's hardly an awful puzzle game, but it is a good example of how mediocre presentation can take a game down.

Since you can grab it in the Sega 6-Pak cart for the Genesis, that would probably be your best option for getting the game (or in one of the many collection discs). Though, again, you'll probably not spend that much time with it. 

Two out of five stars. 

But hey, it has two title screens, so there's that. 

Hogan's Alley

The Short


Pros
- Simple light gun game where you shoot the bad guys and don't shoot the innocents
- Three game modes
- Game where you shoot the cans is actually quite challenging and fun

Cons
- Games A and B (where you shoot pictures of people) are slow and very dull
- Almost impossible to lose if you are even remotely good with the light gun
- Cycling through the lineup of enemies/city between shooting parts is so slow
- Really isn't much here to get excited about

We're hittin' up the black box titles. 

The Long

I really like the concept of the lightgun. It's just...a gun, and you shoot at things on your tv, and magically it works (if your TV is old. If you have a new TV, you're SOL). I like it so much I own two of these things for some reason (the orange and original gray one), as well as a handful of the lightgun games for the NES. I say handful, because seriously...they didn't release a whole lot.

This has nothing to do with the Hogan's Alley review, by the way. I was just pointing out I'm desperate for lightgun games, so I'll try anything at this point. Unfortunately, after replaying Hogan's Alley, I'm just not feeling it. With the exception of Game C, of course.

Plus, I always shoot the professor. Not my fault he looks like Gang-A!

So what do you do in Hogan's Alley? Well, if you thought "shoot gangsters," you were wrong, because these aren't real gangsters! The concept behind Hogan's Alley is that the alleged "alley" is actually a police station, and you are participating in one of those practice ranges that cops use to test their marksmanship. Well, that's too bad, and here I thought I was actually going to be able to shoot some dudes.

You have three game modes, which I will now briefly outline, complete with screenshots because text is for tools. 

Protip: Don't shoot the guy on the right. I know you want to, but...he isn't bad, I swear. 

So the first game mode involves wheeling out three characters with their backs to you. The game then flips them around and you have to shoot the bad ones (and not the good ones) within a time limit (usually a couple of seconds). They then wheel out the next batch and it repeats. That's it. That's the whole mode.

If this sounds monotonous, you are right. Had the game some sort of technological ability to tell you how close to the head or chest or whatever your shot landed, perhaps you'd have some goal to strive for. Or if it didn't take eight years between shooting sessions while it was moving the stupid cardboard dudes in and out, maybe it would be more tolerable. Or if it was actually, you know, hard. The only difficulty I ever had was I kept shooting the stupid Professor, and that was because I legitimately didn't know he wasn't a bad guy. Once I figured that out, I played for something like ten minutes without dying. Just going and going and going, never really getting any harder, never getting interesting either. 

NEXT.

At least Game B takes you outside. 

Game B ditches the boring lineup thing for an "urban" setting. Now you circle around a fake city, and instead of wheeling out the guys three in a row it wheels them out through various windows and what not. You then shoot the professor about ten times before realizing he isn't a bad guy, then shoot the bad guys. As you cycle around it goes from day to night, which was a nice touch, but ultimately this is just as boring as Game A, except now you don't have to look in just a straight line. And, like Game A, it takes forever to move between shooting sessions.

Couldn't they have the guys move more? Or move back and forth, or hide behind things for trick shots? Duck Hunt and To The Earth had moving targets, so I know we have the technology. Why are they all stationary? Why is this game so BORING?!

NEXT.

Game C is easily the best on the cart. 

After the awful first two games, does it get any better? Well, yes. For Game C Hogan's Alley ditches the "shoot cardboard cutouts of people" idea and instead just throws cans at you. Yep. The goal of the game is to shoot the cans and knock them up into the air, trying to land them on different areas for more points. The lower down the more points you get, and if you are the best shot in the west and land it on that little platform you get MEGA POINTS. 

Yeah, where did this game mode come from? It's totally unrelated to the rest of the game, the title, or anything else offered here. Maybe that's why it's actually the only interesting part in the game. 

While it won't exactly hold your interested for extended periods of time, it's actually challenging (unlike Game A or B) and shooting for high scores can be fun. Eventually there are so many cans on the screen it gets kind of bananas, and you'll find yourself shooting like a crazy person to survive. So hey...it actually scales in difficulty. Novel. 

This one gets a pass, even if it does get a bit repetitive due to it's simplistic nature. 

Whoops. Sorry, lady. 

As it stands, Hogan's Alley hasn't weathered the test of time very well. While I'm certain the concept and execution was something pretty impressive back when the NES came out, playing it these days is boring, fruitless, and honestly unenjoyable. While I do like Game C quite a bit, it isn't enough to pull this whole game up to the "worth playing" territory, and while collectors will want to own it to complete their "Black Box NES" collection, I hardly doubt anybody comes home from work thinking "Oh may! I can't wait to bust out the Zapper and play some Hogan's Alley!"

While it doesn't have as slow a start a To the Moon, considering only one game in this whole package is worth even looking at, I say with a heavy nostalgic heart that Hogan's Alley is weak. 

Two out of five stars. 

Both those stars were for you, can game. I'm sorry it had to end like this. 

Rolling Thunder

The Short


Pros
- Relatively faithful port of the arcade original
- Simple yet addicting game of shooting your way to the ending
- Really encourages you to be careful and take your time
- Unlimited continues
- Ten levels
- The art style is a bit bland, but I like the thin pixelated characters
- That box art is pretty freaking awesome

Cons
- Excruciatingly difficult, but doable
- Only two hits (really just one if they shoot you)
- Jumping controls (and shooting controls) are limited and clunky
- Music is lame
- The relentlessness of this game (coupled with cheap deaths) will put a lot of people off

Time to shoot multicolored hooded guys 

The Long

Ah, Tengen, you and your unlicensed Nintendo games. You brought us the best version of Tetris. You brought us Klax. And now you brought a port of Rolling Thunder, an arcade action game that reminds me a bit of Contra, though in truth it sort of is its own thing.

One thing is for sure, though, I hate their stupid off-brand cartridges. I'm guessing with a top-loader it wouldn't be a problem, but with my new tight pin connector it's impossible to pry their stupid cartridges out!

URRR I CAN'T GET A FREAKING GRIP!

Anyway, Rolling Thunder was an arcade hit way back in the day. The core concept was simple: you are Agent Albatross, and the bad guys stole your attractive female sidekick. Your mission (which you choose to accept) is to bust in and blast everything in sight, since this is before stealth games so spies just murdered everything that annoyed them. Kind of like James Bond. 

Aim for the face!

At its core, this game is incredibly simple. You kill the guys with bullets, and don't let them kill you. Most enemies are melee. Others take cover behind boxes and shoot you. Even more annoying ones lob grenades. You still gotta shoot them all, no matter what. 

The trick is the fact that your guy can defy gravity, and by pressing up and jump at the same time you leap super high to the floor above (Sunset Riders totally stole this idea for their game), and down and jump drops down. This allows you to dodge enemies and perform more strategy...to a point.

Going into doors gives you more bullets, or machine gun (MG) shots

There are two main things you need to be aware of before giving Rolling Thunder a shot. First, the game controls rather clunky. You have to be pressing a direction and then jump in order to jump forward/backward (meaning no in-air jump trajectory changes), which can take a lot of getting used to. You also can't shoot any direction but forward, and can't shoot in the air. Your only options are shooting while standing or shooting while ducking. Compared to games like Contra, this is very limiting.

The other big thing to be aware of (probably the biggest) is the fact that this game is very, very difficult. You are given two hits per life, but in truth they might has well have just not given you a health bar. Sure, enemy melee attacks take one hit off so you get two of those, but any projectile weapon (grenade, bullet, etc.) kills you instantly. Yeah.

Expect to see this a lot.  

I can actually sort of understand the idea here, if I allow myself a little speculation (that is probably incorrect). Ignoring this fact that this is clearly an arcade game meant to eat quarters, if anything this game is realistic. No, seriously. It's hard to aim accurately with any weapon while jumping, especially in the heat of combat (though I would imagine he could aim up, for crying out loud). Also, while you might survive a punch, taking a grenade to the face would pretty much kill anybody. Enemies in this game don't respawn, so if you play like an actual spy, moving slowly and carefully, your odds will be much better.

Granted, it's still stupid hard even if you think of it this way, but filing it under "realism" actually sort of works, and changed the way I played the game. It's more Castlevania than Contra, essentially. 

Between the levels you see the bad guys doing...uh...stuff to your captured agent. 

The game luckily provides unlimited continues, though its checkpointing system is a big obnoxious. I only found one checkpoint per level, and considering how frequently you die, you'll be probably doing the same segments over and over. Continuing drops you back to the beginning of the stage, but since the checkpoints are kind of useless they might as well just be lives. 

You also lose all powerups on death, but since all the powerup rooms recharge, it's just the matter of getting to them a second (or third, or fourth) time. Again, it can be frustrating, but I honestly feel this game has a level of fairness to it. You have to be perfect or else those bastard grenade throwers will ruin all your hard work, but if you are both quick and careful (and good at memorizing enemy placement) you'll walk through whole levels without getting a single hit. 

I really freaking hate those grenade guys. 

Graphics look decent. They're a far cry from the arcade version, but that's pretty much to be expected. I actually kind of like the super lanky, almost stick-figure look of Albatross, and the enemies are color coded based on their attacks, which is helpful. 

Music is...really poor. It isn't obnoxious like Loopz, but there is a limited number of tracks and none are particularly compelling. This game could have done good with some serious spy music going down, but instead it's just kind of background noise. 

Seriously, the whole "almost raping the woman" thing between levels is a bit much, Tengen. 

With ten levels, Rolling Thunder will take a great deal of your time to beat. Despite my initial frustrations with the game (I was about ready to throw it against the wall, but I couldn't get the damn thing out of my Nintendo) I actually got into a sort of Rolling Thunder groove and really began enjoying it. Putting on the Mission Impossible soundtrack would probably help, but the fact of the matter is that, while the game certainly has its shortcomings, if you like old arcade-style challenges than this game is very much worth looking into.

Plus, I got it for $1.50, so I'm really not complaining. 

Three out of five stars, BUT if you are the kind of person who really hates hard games with somewhat clunky controls, feel free to knock a star (or even two) off the final score. 

At least it has a happy ending, even if she never does get her red sweater back. 

Mega Man 3: The Robots are Revolting (PC)

The Short


Pros
- Has the sad, sad honor of be the first Mega Man game I ever played
- Stages are actually sort of non-linear, which is totally different from all other Mega Man games
- Has a stage where you spend most of the time swimming, which is also kind of unique
- Actually isn't the worst thing ever if you've never played another Mega Man game

Cons
- Is pretty much the worst thing ever
- Graphics for robot masters ripped from other Mega Man games
- No music. At all.
- Looks awful in general.
- Sound effects are the usual "3 1/4 floppy DOS" fare. Read: Quant, but awful.
- Controls are abismal
- Seriously, I can't believe this is how I was introduced to Mega Man

This is NOT the Mega Man 3 you're looking for. 

The Long

Let's get something absolutely straight right off the bat: This is NOT a review of the NES version of Mega Man 3. That game is awesome. So before you go writing hate-mail in my direction, look at the picture above and realize you can't stick floppy discs in an NES. Ok, you can, but they won't do anything but rattle around.

Taken a deep breath? Let's dive into this. 

Shark AND Wave man? Two water themed enemies? 

So way back when I was a lad my parents only let me own a computer, because they hated video games. Fair enough, normal stuff I'd imagine. But as a young lad who only had a Windows 3.1 computer, I heard from all my NES owning friends about how awesome this "Mega Man" guy was. After some digging at a local video game store with a friend I discovered that, amazingly, there was a Mega Man game on the PC! (actually there was two, but I never found that one, thank goodness)

Keep in mind this was in the era of Commander Keen and that batch of DOS games, so I was starved for just about anything since I'd exhausted every Keen game known to man. So we got the game, fired it up, and looky what we were playin!

Oh sweet mother of mercy. 

That's right, fat-faced, ugly Mega Man 3 on your COMPUTER! Incredible! Starring Robot Masters totally ripped off from the NES Robot Masters of previous games! No, seriously, look!

It's like they didn't even try. 

So...what is Mega Man 3: The Robots are Revolting (seriously, that's the subtitle, though it only shows up on the back of the box) all about? What makes it tick? If you are a hardcore Mega Man fan who didn't know this game existed, do you have to boot it up to experience the full range of the Mega Man spectrum?

Well I sure hope you don't, because this game is freaking awful. And, though I hate to admit it, really, really endearing for me. 

If it looks like that boss isn't animated, it's because it isn't. Seriously. 

Ok, so first things first: this game is garbage. There are so many differences between it an actual Mega Man games it's almost impossible to cover them all, but what the heck: let's try.

First off, obviously this game looks like a DOS game rather than an NES game. It isn't that awful, to be honest, but fat-faced Mega Man is a little weird and not at all awesome like the original sprite. 

Next, the sound design in this game is straight up DOS to the max. Seriously, it sounds so DOS I can't help but love it. The grainy sound effects, the weird reverb, the sounds that probably came from the computer instead of your speakers...it's bananas! I love/hate it! Also there's no music, but hey, since when has kickass music been a Mega Man staple? NEVER, OF COURSE.

They put Torch Man in a sewer, and his boss room is in water. No, seriously. 

Next is the actual gameplay itself. Aside from the controls, which are stupendously clunky, this game doesn't play like any Mega Man game ever made before or since. It actually plays more like the old DOS platformers, like Commander Keen. You have one massive, somewhat open-ended level that you have to traverse. There are no linking screens or linear pathways or bits of perfectly crafted level design. In fact, most of your obstacles are in the environment. Fire, oil drips, goo drips, etc.

Enemies, another unique staple of the Mega Man-verse, are simple as well. Regular ones usually just walk around doing nothing (again, reminding me of Commander Keen) hoping you'll bump into them. A few shoot randomly in directions, but that's it. Every single Robot Master except Bit Man has the exact same attack pattern, where they jump, fire their weapon, and land on the other side of the screen. Bit Man charges in the middle of his, because he's an overachiever. So there is no such thing as enemy AI in the game, whatsoever. 

Enemies are also harder and take more hits, and have no strategy for taking down other than mashing shoot. I'd say more on that, but I pretty much covered it, so PICTURE TIME. 

Based on his expression, Mega Man's making an oil stream in his pants. 

Weirdly enough, I kind of like the change in pace. I mean, it's awful and the levels are horribly designed, but having bigger ones that are all interconnected gives a different sense of scale. You never really went back in Mega Man on the NES, but in this one you'll see areas far off and work your way towards them. That's...sort of cool, I guess, if not like Mega Man at all.

You can also SWIM, and there are whole stages devoted to this. Which, again, never really happens much in Mega Man games, at least on the NES.

But he can't shoot through walls, which I'm pretty sure is important. I don't know why I bothered mentioning this, but I figured it should be noted because I noticed it. 

If he's a robot, wouldn't water be bad for him AW SCREW IT. 

Is there anything here that's Mega Man-esque? Well...a little bit. You still get powers from your enemies in the form of their super-lame weapons, though it makes the other Robot Masters a total cakewalk. Each one goes down in exactly four shots from their weakness's weapon, so once you figure the order out the bosses (who, remember, have no real attack pattern) are stupid easy.

You also get Energy Tanks which you can use (crazy, I know) and...uh...he's blue? You cna pick the order you are fighting the enemies in and after you beat them all you fight Dr. Wiley's stage, and you re-battle all the Masters (though with your power-ups they are all stupid easy...again) but...uh...yeah this game isn't really like Mega Man at all.

Oh, and all the enemies are just made up crap, nothing from the original games. Sorry, I know I said I'd so stuff that made this like the other games, but I ran out. 

Thought that sprinting, legged fish man might be my favorite enemy in any game ever.  Just...LOOK AT HIM!

What's really weird is this game is actually...hard. Enemies, as mentioned before, take a lot of hits and hardly ever drop any power-ups or health items. Because the jumping is so clunky and the shooting so poor it's easy to get overwhelmed or make stupid mistakes (especially since some levels require some crazy jumps or you'll fall and have to do the whole level over). Dr. Wiley's stage is also absurdly long with very difficult enemies and no health to be seen. So I guess they got the "difficulty" thing right, if in the most asinine way possible.

Like Shredder, Dr. Wiley rises from the goo. 

This was my first Mega Man game. And so, when I watch the extremely limited number of videos of it on YouTube, I still get that funny nostalgia feeling. Back in the days when DOS was the best we could do, when games were simple and in 256 colors (or less) and highly pixelated. Back when you could hear the floppy disc drive grunt and groan, and when floppy discs were actually floppy. When you'd have to type "dir" to find install files on discs in DOS, and remember drive names and commands to run programs. And when "Shut Down Windows" took you to a DOS prompt, where you'd have to hard-power down rather than have the system know to do it automatically.

You know, back when computers sucked.

Shark Man knows whats up. 

The point is, despite whatever idiotic nostalgia I might have for this hunk of crap, it still is just that: absolute garbage. Even when compared to other archaic platformers of its time, Mega Man 3: The Robots Are Revolting is...(wait for the easy joke)...REVOLTING.

Point being it sucks and you shouldn't play it. Or you should, if you can find it and get it to run, because it's just so amusing. Also it was made by two brothers and that's it so that's actually kind of awesome.

No, it isn't, this game's garbage. Childhood, like with Loopz before it, you again are nothing but empty memories and lies. 

One out of five stars.

And that one star was solely for nostalgia, I can assure you.