| Product: |
Forgotten Worlds |
| Date: |
24.05.07 (92 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Quick to start, and a lot of fun for two players, with handy shop system.
Disadvantages: Not much different from the other R-types, and inferior to the genre leaders.
My seemingly endless trawl through the obsolete Sega MegaDrive archive this week highlights ‘Forgotten Worlds,’ a game that may, indeed, have become forgotten in the nineteen years since it first hit arcades partly due to its uselessly misleading title. Rather than being one of those early role-playing ‘Lord of the Rings’ style games that were quite good, if a little unoriginal, it is instead a scrolling shoot-em-up set in a post-nuclear ‘The Terminator’ style world in which the player’s goal is to blast the hell out of everything. Again, not the most original concept, but still something of an arcade niche in 1988.
Published by Capcom, ‘Forgotten Worlds’ has much in common with the ‘R-type’ shoot-em-up, replacing the standard spaceship with a meataxe Aryan marine dressed in blue, with shades (or if you’re playing in two player mode, a black marine dressed in red, with shades). These characters hover in a crouched position through the level by means that are probably explained in the original game manual, though perhaps not; suspension of disbelief is pretty much required in these 80s arcade games, and a swarm of enemy craft make sure to zip onto the screen before too much time is allowed to dwell on such things.
The object of the game is essentially to shoot everything you can as the screen scrolls along to the right, pausing only when confronted with a ridiculously oversized boss at the end of each stage. As well as the floods of hostile spaceships, robots and monsters, the game features many obstacles of terrain that have to be navigated carefully. The game makes some effort to differentiate itself through featuring a human character rather than the traditional spaceship, meaning that touching walls does not mean instant death, and that the bottom of the level is indeed the ground of some post-apocalyptic city, from which convenient shops can spring. As usual in games of this type, money can be collected from destroying enemies, and this can be used to upgrade weaponry and defences in the store, which become more elaborate and destructive as the game progresses. The ability to buy back the player’s health makes the playing experience less frustrating and terrifying than something like ‘Zero Wing,’ where one touch by an enemy laser would cause instant death.
The most notable idea incorporated into the game is the ability to shoot in a complete circle, 360 degrees around the character, although the game continues to scroll to the right and this is where most of the enemies originate. This handily eliminates the blind spot when a group of ships snakes its way back and forth along the screen, but also takes a degree of practice to master. Helpful in the initial stages, this technique proves vital in later levels, and on the static screens of the end-of-stage bosses. It’s not too difficult to master, but it does become something of a burden having to return to the ‘base’ forwards position after pretty much every wave of enemies.
Ported to the Sega MegaDrive, the arcade controls are adapted to the three-button joypad, with the directional buttons logically moving the character up, down, left or right along the scrolling playing field, while the B button shoots. The A and C buttons rotate the marine clockwise and anti-clockwise respectively, spinning rapidly if the button is held down or simply nudged a little in each direction if tapped. The options screen offers the helpful ability of ‘autofire,’ which eliminates the need to press the B button by making the buzzing stream of friendly fire constant, and all but necessitates muting the television to avoid being driven insane by the relentless uninventive sound effect of the guns.
The sound effects are all practical and unambiguous, as would be hoped and expected, and the in-game music is typical arcade fare: a weakly synthesised techno bass rhythm overlaid by a jarring dramatic score of beeps that strives to be an electric guitar on occasion, but fails to compare to something like ‘Golden Axe.’ Even the main title theme is nothing to write home about, which always disappoints me in games of this type which have the potential to sound really good. The graphics are similarly standard, and evidently not an area in which the producers decided to be innovative; the players and enemies look vastly different, largely the result of the typical multi-coloured format, and while it’s nice that a little attention has been paid to the background, it amounts to little more than a skyline and starfield so as not to distract the player. The walls and boundaries make themselves very obvious, and it’s impossible to miss the flashing laser bullets approaching from all angles.
‘Forgotten Worlds’ is far from being one in a million. It’s probably more like one in five or so, in that it’s pretty much exactly the same as a ton of other games, but is able to grab the passing arcade customer’s attention with its fancy rotating gun technique, and super-short demo clips that show the two players working cooperatively with some seriously impressive firepower that the player can’t seriously hope to acquire for some considerable time. Like all of these games, it becomes repetitive and tedious after a very short time, and the incentive of beating the game or racking up the highest score is clearly far more suited to its original free-standing environment than a home console cartridge, but this game still manages to remain more memorable than most other R-types, mainly for featuring a half-naked, flying, beefy Duke Nukem guy rather than just another spaceship. You know, just because it’s different and stuff. There’s nothing funny about me.
Summary: For one or two players.
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