F-Zero is a much-loved series, but it doesn’t get much love from Nintendo. With the Gamecube having the last F-Zero game, fans are wondering if the series is completely dead and shelved by the big N. Thankfully, fans who loved the SNES classic can have even more with Maximum Velocity.
Maximum Velocity is pretty much built on the same engine as the SNES, using Mode 7 graphics. However, this may not have been the best choice to go with as there are other more advanced racing games on the system. There are only four cars to select from, and I found the controls to be incredibly slippery and the AI to be extremely difficult to beat. The tracks are fun to drive, but the sense of speed is great, and the game is just lacking in overall content and polish.
You could write all that off on the age of the engine, the GBA’s inferior hardware, or its lazy design. Maximum Velocity feels more like an expansion pack to the original game than one that can stand on its own two feet. After you have memorized all the hazards and turns on each track, it does get easier, but not by much. This game is for players who want a serious challenge with a retro feel.
While the GBA isn’t exactly ideal for racing games, this one really stands out as one of the best. People going back in time may find it nearly impossible to play due to its ancient gameplay ideas and design. However, you are missing a great opportunity to spend a fun afternoon racing on your GBA.
Super Monkey Ball is one of those odd games that, these days, feels like it should be on a phone. It’s good for quick bursts or to beat your high score, but that’s about it. SMB is all about tilting the world around to get a monkey stuck inside a ball to a goal. It harkens back to Marble Madness and the days when motion control was a new thing. However, simulating physics and tilting on a GBA with a D-pad seems rather impossible, but it’s not. SMB Jr. looks pretty darn good and feels natural with the D-pad. It feels like the game was hand-tailored for the GBA.
My only concern is that there’s no goal or challenge mode. You can select from sets of 10, 20, and 30 courses; you get two lives per level and five continues per set. The goal is to try to collect all the bananas while also getting to the goal before the timer runs out. Some levels are easy, some are hard, and some feel nearly impossible. Tilting the world around to get the ball inside the goal is a lot of fun at first, but then it starts to wear thin fast. After you beat all 30 areas, there’s not much else to do.
I won’t say SMB is a bad game; it’s just shallow and lacks depth. It was more like the Gamecube version; it may have been better, but understandably, you can only fit so much on a GBA cart, and the hardware is extremely limited. What is here is impressive for a little handheld.
If you missed this little gem, pick it up cheap on eBay. You will have a fun and frustrating afternoon.
Deadly Alliance was a turning point in the series. MK4 got mixed reviews from fans and critics and wasn’t exactly what they wanted. Being only the second 3D Mortal Kombat game, it was another reboot that took itself more seriously and became more complicated and deep. It featured three different fighting styles and long combo chains that you had to memorize, and gone were the days of fast button mashing. You now have to think ahead about your next move and strategize. It was the most robust and sophisticated fighting game ever made at the time, but it didn’t come without its flaws.
Deadly Alliance was the first MK game to venture out from just fighting in a core title. The team added a Konquest mode, which is a giant tutorial on how to use every fighter and learn all their moves. This is pretty big for a fighter and can be a lot of fun. You follow Raiden down a long path across various MK worlds and learn about each fighter. They each have three different fighting stances: two regular and one weapon stance. That’s not all, though; these can combo into and out of each other for major damage. Characters with blade-type weapons can impale their weapons into the opponent to make them bleed out, but they lose the weapon for that round. This more technical fighting style for MK had mixed reactions, but I like it a lot.
One thing I wasn’t fond of was the lack of special moves and fatalities. There’s only one fatality per character, and a lot of them are mediocre at best. They aren’t as gory or as awesome as previous games. Cyrax is missing his net move; a few characters only have 2-3 special moves, so it feels weak. At least the mini-games make a return because they haven’t been seen since MK1. A new Test-Your-Sight mini-game is added, which is a cup-and-ball game. The team also added a currency system and a Krypt to unlock costumes, videos, art, and interviews. I love this a lot, and it is great fan service. However, once you unlock the entire Krypt, there’s not much else to come back to. Unless you are playing with a friend on the couch, the game is seriously lacking in single-player content, which is why I got bored with it after a couple of months.
The graphics were decent for the time, but the gore looks like balls of Jell-O, and the characters look like plastic dolls. The woman’s breast physics looks like swaying punching bags at 100 MPH, even when you tap forward slightly. The sound effects are a bit weak, and a few are recycled from MK4. The arenas are also kind of boring, and many of them are new. The overall game is pretty solid but needs more polish. I also wasn’t too fond of the new characters. A few were likable, such as Frost, Nitara, and Drahmin, but all the rest just felt forced or rushed. I also didn’t really like a lot of the redesigned characters, such as Sonya and Johnny Cage. The character design is just really lacking here, but that could be just me being a picky fan.
Overall, Deadly Alliance is a nice change for the series, and the more complex and strategic fight style may not be for everyone. The lack of content really hurts his game, and it suffers from an overall lack of polish. It’s still worth getting in your bargain bin for some couch time-fighting.
I know what you’re probably thinking. Deadly Alliance on the GBA? Puh-lease. Don’t criticize the game just yet. Deadly Alliance for GBA is a solid fighter with a trick 3D fighting system that is simplified from the console versions. The game features a full Krypt, mini-games, and a new survival mode. The graphics are surprisingly good, and the sound quality is excellent.
Unlike past Mortal Kombat handheld ports, this game is actually good. The fighting system is a mix of 2D and 3D with each character’s two main martial arts stances (the weapon stance was taken out). The fighting system may seem dumbed down or too simple because the GBA only has two face buttons. Using a combo of the D-pad and face buttons, you can pull off some great combos with ease. The whole transition feels natural and hand-tailored to the console. My main disappointment is the lack of characters. Only about 10 made it into the GBA version, but a new character, Sareena, made it into the game from Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. I am also disappointed that each character only has one fatality (like in the console version), but they are different and quite detailed for a GBA game.
The sound quality is excellent, with the announcer’s voice intact. The graphics are pretty decent, with full 3D backgrounds, but they are very muddy and lack any detail. The graphics are a love-hate type of thing. The Test-You-Might and Sight are fully intact here, which is nice, but the Konquest mode is obviously missing. Instead, there is a Survival mode that was stuck in here. There is a full Krypt with alternative costumes and other things. So this is a huge MK experience on the GBA, and probably the best one.
If you loved Deadly Alliance or just want a solid fighter on your GBA, then pick this up. There is a lot of content in here, and the fighting system is solid and fluid. The graphics look pretty, and the sound quality is excellent, so you have no reason not to play this!
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.