An explanation of what we're doing here can be found in the introduction post.

Last time, we passed through a hell of our own making (aka 1994) with Gridders, Guardian War, Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller, Mad Dog McCree, and Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold.

Last time on the PS1 we crossed into August '96 in the most painful way possible with The Hive, Triple Play '97, Worms, and NFL Full Contact.

We're continuing deeper into August and the beginning of the games season with Tecmo Super Bowl, Madden NFL 97, Jumping Flash! 2, and Alone in the Dark: One Eyed Jack's Revenge.

**This post is also featured on my site, fifthgengaming.blog, and can be found here.**

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tecmo Super Bowl

Developer: Tecmo

Publisher: Tecmo

Release Date: 8/10/1996

Time to Blitzing The League If You Know What I Mean: 51 Minutes

You read it correctly, there's a Tecmo Bowl on the PlayStation. Not only that, but it isn't even a lazy conversion of the SNES game, it's basically Tecmo Super Bowl IV with the number dropped. This was a whole franchise that no one remembers past the first game, despite each successive game being a quantifiable improvement of their formula. In fact, this franchise died off immediately following this entry. So, what happened? Let's first look at what this thing is and try to suss out an answer from there.

We're looking at a Football game in the traditional 2D style, except with the sprites on a three-dimensional field, which has been standard practice so far from second tier developers. Despite that, the full suite of game options and modes are on offer, which surprised me at first when I was assuming this was an up-port. This is so feature rich, that it even has systems no one would want or need, such as a pre-season mode. Who in their right mind would want to simulate out the most boring part of a football season? There's also the player editor. Despite having the full NFLPA license and use of player likenesses, there's a player editing feature that lets you change literally everything, name, face, number, and every stat with no guardrails. If you think that I wouldn't immediately abuse this mechanic to max out all of Jamal Anderson's stats, then you would be both oddly specific and very wrong.

The gameplay itself is perfectly fine. Being of the old arcade style, the inputs are simplified, and the playbook is fairly self-explanatory. The AI isn't the best, it has a hard time dealing with zone-blitz defense, but it can put up enough of a fight to be entertaining; and that's the point. These kinds of old-school sports games erred on the side of playability for new players and people who didn't know the sport. Anyone could pick this up and play at a basic level with a short on-ramp, which is a good thing. This ease-of-use makes it the best feeling Football game I've seen so far, and the robust feature-set lets me feel good about calling it good.

Why then did this series immediately die out after this release? One possible reason could have been Tecmo pulling back from sports game development. I don't know the full narrative of what was going on over there in the 90's, but it does look like they were starting a difficult realignment by this time that would eventually see them get bought out by Koei after the '08 crash. Also, another reason would be the shifting player expectations for the genre. The EA-fication of sports games is very much underway at this time and Tecmo Bowl is just one of several victims. Thankfully the first NFL Blitz will come out in '97 and fly the flag of arcade Football for at least a few more years.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Madden NFL 97

Developer: EA Tiburon

Publisher: EA Sports

Release Date: 8/15/1996

Time to Getting My Tight End Rushed If You Still Know What I Mean: 47 Minutes

Speaking of EA, it's now time for Madden NFL, the hulking behemoth of a franchise that crushed all beneath it for so many years. We've previously only seen the 3DO version of Madden NFL Football, which was serviceable by the standards of that console. This is the seventh proper entry in the series, and you can tell that it's already the flagship title for the entirety of Electronic Arts. They pulled out all the stops with the presentation, features, and modes, making this the best-looking and beefiest Football game on the market. It's also balefully miserable to play, as in every moment of gameplay was actively unpleasant.

Let's start with what makes Madden 97 the biggest game in town. This is the first properly polygonal Football game yet released to consoles. Each match is presented in as TV accurate a framework as possible, with FMV pre-game commentary that was good enough to not be cringey, which is super rare with old FMV. The in-game commentary is also the smoothest we've seen in a sports game so far, and everything about the audio-visuals is as top-tier as you could ask for. All the season, franchise, management, and light sim elements you would expect are here and I didn't see any obvious cut corners anywhere. This thing exudes budget everywhere you look, especially in comparison to something like NFL Full Contact, which felt like the early beta build of a Football game more than anything else. So, this year's Madden looks good in screenshots and ads, but video games are supposed to be interactive, which is the problem.

It's difficult for me to put into words how miserable this feels. All I can put together is a list of loosely strung together complaints. First, there's a strict timer on play selection which really hinders someone who doesn't know the standard playbook inside and out. It's a small nit but it sets a bad tone. Then there's the offense gameplay. Your options for handling the ball changes depending on the play (I think) ranging from the QB automatically throwing the ball, throwing the ball with a button press to a receiver outside of your choosing, and the familiar multi-button pass selection; there's no identifiable indication which type of passing is used from play to play, so you end up literally fumbling while playing rock-paper-scissors with the interface. Running the ball isn't much better, with the defensive AI being a little bit too good at its job. That runs counter to my experience with the defensive gameplay, where tackling is somehow unintuitive, and the collision detection is utterly borked. The general lack of communication about what's going on in the UX wouldn't even be that big a thing if this game wasn't trying to be a sim and putting those kinds of expectations on the player. After playing four quarters in this thing, I've developed a pathological aversion to the entire franchise.

This gets back to my rant in the previous post about EA Sports. This is the type of game that the entire industry will spend the late 90's adjusting to, and it turned the entire genre into a silo of football guys and people who put in the time and energy to become football guys. I'm still mad, even though it's crying over historical spilt milk at this point.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jumping Flash! 2

Developer: Exact

Publisher: SCEA

Release Date: 8/21/1996

Time to Completion: 2.5 Hours

Now that video game season has kicked-off, it's time for the real shit. The first Jumping Flash! was one of my favorite games of 1995 and currently sits at number two on the overall rankings. I was looking forward to this, and I probably should have tempered my expectations with research before jumping in.

Here’s the thing, this is just more Jumping Flash!, and while that sounds obvious, I mean it's literally just that game but with different levels. There are six worlds, each consisting of two levels and a boss with the last world having one level and two bosses. Each level is an open area suspended in midair where you need to run around collecting four things before reaching the exit. Each boss is some kind of big guy that you have to run around and shoot, with the final bosses being a large robot with multiple stages and weird homing attacks. You jump and shoot the same way as before, collect the same power ups, and even go to the same kind of bonus levels. Really, the only difference is in the difficulty and level design. This game is more vertical, with smaller platforms that move more and demand tighter platforming. There are a few sections that would be complete pains in the ass without modern save states, but with those this thing is of an equivalent size and length to the original.

Really, this feels more like an expansion pack than anything else. Ok, sure, the draw distance is a bit better and there are more textures, but these are basically challenge levels for the first game. There's no reason to fix what isn't broken, but sequels should at least be mechanically additive or have more content, not just swapping out levels in the exact same structure with the same mechanics. I'm coming off as harsh, but I still had a decent time in spite of everything, and a somewhat disappointing Jumping Flash! still qualifies as one of the best games yet released on the Playstation. The contemporary reviews were also positive, which helps back up that assertion. Yet this would have seemed like a rip-off if I bought it in '96. The developers would eventually tinker with the formula with the third game in a way that seems interesting, which is probably why it was never released outside of Japan.

If I'm being honest, the main thing I'm mad about is that the heavy recycling of everything gives me almost nothing to write about. Let's see…oh, here's something. This kind of First-Person Platformer would feel so much better to play if it had proper strafe buttons like in contemporary First Person Shooters. I wonder if anyone's tried to do a spiritual revival of this series on Steam…

Finally, I would feel weird having all these screenshots without sharing any.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alone in the Dark: One Eyed Jack's Revenge

Developer: I*Motion

Publisher: Kokopeli Interactive

Release Date: 8/22/1996

Time to Please Wait, Loading: 30 Minutes

If there's anything I've come to associate with the early Alone in the Dark games, it's technical issues that render them unplayable. Now, Alone in the Dark II (I'm not typing out that full title more than I have to) is a pile of crap on its own terms, so it's hard to get a sense of how much the technical ineptitude of this port really harms the experience. I'm not even going to go into the plot or what the gameplay is supposed to be, since we're going to look at the 3DO version of this thing before the end of the year and I'm pretty sure that's the most technically sound of all the console ports. That's how cursed this game is, the 3DO has the best version.

The problem with this release I keep alluding to are the loading times. They get so bad that they're more like loading crimes, am I right? Eh? I'm so tired. I mean this thing is constantly loading, even multiple times during cutscenes. When playing, the game will slow down when you run to the edge of a screen to pre-load the next screen, and then hit you with a full load for the transition itself. I saw the sepia-toned loading overlay enough that in my head whenever it came up, I would play the beginning of Roundabout and imagine it saying "to be continued…" And you know what? There was usually enough time for me to get through the full opening of that song. I could put together a tight five minutes just on how busted this game is on every level.

That's not even talking about the garbage controls, ill-conceived combat, bad item management, crap puzzles, and instant death bullshit. I'll save those features for when I get my hands on a functioning version of this thing. What really boggles my mind is the fact they released this garbage five months after Resident Evil. The original PC release of Alone in the Dark II was in 1993, so that should excuse it being worse in every way to the more modern RE, but to rush out a half-baked port of such an objectively inferior game in an attempt to ride some coattails is just sad and embarrassing.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We're finally over the hump of Football games, so now we can get back to our usual programming of Soccer and Fighting games! Yay! Let's update the Ranking of All PS1 Games with today's winners and losers and hit the locker room.

1. Air Combat

…

6. Jumping Flash! 2

27. Tecmo Super Bowl

72. Madden NFL 97

95. Alone in the Dark: One Eyed Jack's Revenge

…

119. World Cup Golf: Professional Edition

Next time we see each other it's back to the 3DO with an extremely questionable entry where we go past the beaded curtain in the back of the game store to look at Mind Teazzer, NeuroDancer: Journey into the Neuronet!, Night Trap, Novastorm, and PaTaank.

When we next get back to the PS1 we're still going to be in August as we look at Adidas Power Soccer, Beyond the Beyond, The Final Round, and The King of Fighters '95. That next entry is going to mark a special milestone for this project, so remember to check it out!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can find me streaming two or three times a week over on my twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/fifthgenerationgaming. There, we're looking over the games covered in these entries along with whatever other nonsense I have going on. I swear I'll eventually beat The Legend of Grimrock II.

You can watch the stream archive featuring these games below.