Some Ugly Ducklings in Video Game Series : Terrible Twos and Threes

Finally, a chance to talk about games, not merely the hardware that allows them to run.  What I would like to talk about are those games in video game series that were strange, different, unusual or far outside the norm of the rest of the series. 

Super Mario Bros. 2

When I first played Super Mario Bros 2 for the NES, I was struck about how different it was from its predecessor.  It seemed like Nintendo went in a radically different direction for the sequel, sharing very, very few elements from its predecessor.  Unlike any other near-contemporary Mario game, you could choose between four different characters, each with different strengths and weaknesses.  All the enemies were different from the first game.  Instead of stomping on enemies, bumping them off a platform from below or shooting a fireball at them, you rode on them, tossed them into each other or picked up a vegetable and used it to defeat them.  Ducking down to charge up a super jump was unknown to other games.  There was a miniboss at the end of almost every stage.  There were no bricks to break or coin blocks to hit.  Pipes, floating platforms, and water levels were nowhere to be found. 

Some similarities were evident.  There were invincible stars and warp zones, but you found them by different means.  You could increase your lifebar from 2 to 4 hits by finding mushrooms. You could collect coins for use in the slot machine for extra lives.  You could duck into vases instead of pipes, but you always came out of the same vase. 

The degree of difference between this game and the rest was very obvious when Super Mario Bros. 3 was released on the NES.  When I first experienced SMB3, it seemed as though the designers did not acknowledge that SMB2 even existed.  However, virtually every enemy, power and design concept returned from SMB1.  Super Mario World for the SNES and the Super Mario Land series for the Gameboy took little from SMB2.  Outside the main series, the Super Mario Super Show took as many elements from SMB1 & 2 and mixed them together in the cartoon.

Today, we all know why SMB2 was so different from the other games in the main Mario series, it originally was not a Mario game at all!  It actually was little more than a sprite hack and cartridge conversion from the Famicom Disk System game Doki Doki Panic.  Back in 1988, Nintendo Power was the main official source of information about NES games, but Nintendo did not acknowledge at the time that SMB2 was a conversion of a non-Mario game.  Not until several years afterwards, until Nintendo released Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES did they really acknowledge that the overseas version of SMB2 was not the same as SMB2 released in Japan.  (Nintendo did release the overseas version of SMB2 in Japan as SMB USA.)

The Japanese SMB2 is also an oddity.  It was released for the Famicom Disk System, and was the only pre-Gamecube game in the series that was never originally released on a cartridge (except for as the Lost Levels in Super Mario All-Stars and in part in VS. Super Mario Bros. for the arcade VS System and Super Mario Bros. DX for the Gameboy Color).  As is well-known, it is much, much harder than SMB1.  Unlike any other game in the series, it really does not advance the series in any meaningful way.  It looks almost exactly like SMB1, offers no new enemies or powerups and controls like the first game with one exception.  SMB2 is a one player game and the player can choose between Mario and Luigi.  Like the overseas SMB2, Mario and Luigi in this game control differently; with Luigi being able to jump higher and further than Mario but taking longer to stop after landing from a jump. 

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Although Zelda did not reach trilogy status until A Link to the Past was released for the SNES, Zelda II is definitely the odd-man out of the Zelda series.  Unlike every other 2D Zelda game for Nintendo consoles (we are leaving those CD-i games out of the conversation), all the action in this game used a side-scroller perspective.  Other 2D Zelda games, including the original and LttP and all the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance and DS games all use a top-down perspective.

Zelda II had another oddity, an experience system.  As you defeated monsters in this game, they gave you experience points which you could use to improve your life, magic and attack power when you had accumulated sufficient points.  I am unaware of any other Zelda game that uses a traditional experience point system,  In other Zelda games, Link becomes stronger by finding new weapons, armor and items. 

Zelda II's magic system was also unique.  In this game, you learned spells from the wizards in the various towns and you had a magic meter that depleted as you cast spells.  To replenish your magic meter, you had to find magic jars which enemies could drop.  In LttP, you had a magic meter, but only the use of your items depleted the magic meter.  This approach was also followed in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask for the N64.

Unlike SMB2, which was turned into a Mario game by replacing character sprites, Zelda II was intended as a radically different direction for the sequel to the phenomenally popular Legend of Zelda.  The direction taken in later games in the series indicated that Nintendo recognized that the approach it took in Zelda II just did not work for the series as well as the approach of Legend of Zelda.  No one seemed particularly critical of this approach at the time, but in 1988, criticism was not to be found in Nintendo's semi-official organ of information, Nintendo Power.  In Japan, both Zelda and Zelda II were originally released for the Famicom Disk System.  Zelda I eventually got a cartridge rerelease, but no such luck for Zelda II in Japan. 

Zelda II is not the most influential game in the Zelda series.  The most notable elements it introduces that would be adopted in later games is the third Triforce, the Triforce of Courage, and the ability of Link to use magic.  In later games, Link only gets stronger by finding items or advancing the storyline, not by gaining experience points. 

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

In Castlevania, Konami made one of the NES's best-known sidescrollers.  It was also a very hard sidescroller to beat.  In Castlevania, your character went from stage to stage with a boss monster at the end of each of the six stages in the game.  Konami decided to experiment with its sequel by changing the emphasis of the gameplay from straight action to exploration and item collection like Zelda and Metroid. 

Castlevania II used the same basic sprite and play control for the title character and still used the side-scrolling perspective.  However, there are no stages, the main character, Simon Belmont wanders the Transylvanian countryside and creepy Mansions seeking to end Dracula's curse.  Simon's powers increase by collecting items, many of which are hidden and others are bought.  Enemies drop hearts which are used as currency in the game. Some special weapons will use up hearts, but not all of them.  Simon's health meter can increase after defeating so many enemies.  It can only be refilled by entering a town church in the daytime, but having a full life meter is not as crucial as it is in other Castlevania games.

The difficulty has changed in this game.  In Castlevania, the difficulty was in surviving the monsters to make it to the boss and defeating them. Castlevania II's bosses are pathetically easy and dying will not send you back to the beginning of the stage or block.  The real difficulty in Castlevania II is collecting hearts, the counter for which will reset to 0 if you get to a game over screen, and beating the game quickly enough to see the best ending. 

Castlevania and Castlevania II were originally released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan.  Just like DDP/SMB2 and Zelda II, the original games in these series were later re-released on a Famicom cartridge but the second game in each series was not.  Like the conversions of Metroid and Kid Icarus, the cartridge version of Castlevania II uses a password save system while the disk version wrote the data to a save file.
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Castlevania II's was very influential.  Elements of non-linearity popped up in its sequel, Castlevania III, had branching paths between levels and Akumajou Dracula : Rondo of Blood for the PC Engine Super CD had branching paths in levels.  Leveling up and exploring an open world, finding items and completing quests was done in Castlevania : Symphony of the Night to well-beloved acclaim.  In fact, Symphony and its progeny never managed to create the feel of a living countryside since they were almost always set solely inside a castle.  Its day/night system, where the enemies would get stronger at night and the towns would close, may have been a first.  (Ultima V has a similar system, but was first released half-a-year later).  Not bad for this small game.

Ys III: Wanderers from Ys

It took Falcom a third game before it started polarizing its fans across the pond.  The first two Ys games are top-down Zelda style games where the character had to physically touch an enemy to attack it.  There was no attack button!  Considering that these games were originally programmed for the Japanese NEC PC-8801 home computer family and that players would most likely be using the keyboard to move their character, this was a good design choice. 

Then the designers for Ys III, made for the same computer family, decided that a change was in order.  Seeing the popularity of side scrolling games and wanting to make their game more complex, they added attack and jump buttons and made a side-scroller.  The rest of the elements of Ys were still there, regular bosses, items to find and buy, quests to complete, great graphics and music and a dynamic storyline.  The side scrolling controls are rather "loose" and hit detection leaves something to be desired, as there is no feedback as there was in other games.  There was no real recovery time from hits, so monsters could touch you again and again, leading to quick deaths.  Having a world map with set areas eliminated the interconnected world of the earlier games. 

Falcom returned to the top-down style of gameplay for the next games in the series.  Unfortunately, Ys III was by far the best known game in the series to have been released outside of Japan.  Ys 1 was released for the Apple IIgs, IBM PC, Sega Master System and Turbo CD.  Ys 2 only got the Turbo CD release.  Ys III got a Turbo CD release and cartridges for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.  When Falcom decided to revive the Ys series early in the 21st century, they used something like a 3/4 top down mode.  This game was remade as Ys: The Oath in Felghana for Windows PCs in 2006, and it used the 3/4 top down style. 

Ninja Gaiden III : The Ancient Ship of Doom

Tecmo had created two awesome games in the Ninja Gaiden series for the NES, and riding high from the experience, they put out a third game.  Unfortunately the third game is not up to the standards of its predecessors.

Comparing the style of the games, one finds Ninja Gaiden III to be markedly different from its predecessors.  While the first two games had mystical enemies and villians, this game has science fiction monstrosities.  There is no sense of the ancient about this game, in stark contrast to its predecessors.  The levels and bosses are not as memorable as those in the first two games.  The first two games also tried to give a 3-D look to the platforms, but this game looks flat by comparison.  The sound effects are annoying as Ryu says "Ha" every time he swings his sword.  The storyline is passable and tries to be dramatic, but it just does not grab you like the other entries in the series. 

However, this is Ninja Gaiden, and the mechanics of the play are as solid as ever.  Obviously there was plenty of effort spared for this game, and much can be forgiven.  What cannot be forgiven, however, is the miserable localization job done for this game in the States.  Evidently, the first two games were not hard enough, so the localization jacked up the difficulty level to the unfair territory.  The Japanese game had a password feature and unlimited continues.  The former was eliminated and the latter reduced to five continues.  The enemies do double or treble damage to Ryu in the US NES version and knock him back far enough when hit that he often falls off platforms to his death.  Sword extension powerups are much harder to find, and these are necessary because your initial sword has a puny hit range.

Ninja Gaiden III was released during the twilight of the NES, so its sales were probably not spectacular.  Its ridiculous difficulty level probably put off many buyers.  There would not be a new Ninja Gaiden game released for a home console for over a decade afterwards.