Vigilante 8 Game by Activision, Gameboy port by Vatical Reviewed by John Craig john@dmgice.com Size: 8 megabits Save: none Released: 1999 Works with: Gameboy Color only **************************************************************************** Opening Snide Remarks: As expected, a year after it's release, the Game Boy Color has acted as a giant jump start for the 11 year old system. In respect to the 3rd party developers, this is sometimes good... and sometimes not so good. Some go along the trend Nintendo has set, and 'colorize' some of their best sellers, as well and porting over popular, and creating original games for the system. Unfortunately, some games are created to leach off the 're-popularity' of the Gameboy. Games that are slapped together and kicked out into the cruel word faster than they can be shrink wrapped in an effort to make a quick thirty bucks off the kids and parents who'll buy any game with a pretty box. If only there were something... like a websight... something dedicated to bringing people the latest Gameboy news and reviews... something... with a lot of blue dancing things.... and if only they had a good looking editor who enjoyed jazz... and... oh.... er... Vigilante 8 is well known as a very fun console game... but did Vatical use this fact to make a disappointing game, or did they really capture the fun factor of Activision's game in a portable cart? **************************************************************************** Gameplay Description: A very pointless game... and to most gamers, that's not an insult. Take your average vehicles, right off the street - cars, vans, school buses, ect., nothing special... and put some very large guns on them. You get the basic premise of Vigilante 8. It's you and 1 to 3 enemies in an arena. Simple as it is, there are 7 modes of play to choose from, including a main 'campaign' mode, a quick 'arcade' mode, and other various timed attacks or survival games. Also included is a two player cooperative, and one-on-one game, which is undoubtedly the best of the 7. You're armed with a very nice assortment of weaponry, which you collect by running over their icons on the ground. You always have you main machine gun with infinite ammo, and if your enemy doesn't have any special weapons, that's unfortunately usually all to need to destroy the mindless computer drones. The weapons you can collect, however, and nice and varied. There are guided missiles, strait rockets, and a weird alien guided mortar. Shoot the bad guys (or good) and don't get shot. Absolutely no strategy to it, dispite what the instruction book says. Liked: Mindless blasting in ordinary street cars. Fun multiplayer. Hated: Mindless blasting gets old. No strategy to it. Ramming and blasting frantically is the only way to get the job done. **************************************************************************** Graphics Description: It's a port of a N64 game, and by looking at it, you'd never know. After moving through a very nice looking title screen and character select screen, you then proceed to duke it out in bland city. While the cars are nicely animated, they fight in 5 arenas, each filled with solid colored groundings and badly drawn, undetailed objects and buildings. None of which are destructible or in any way interactive, by the way. Some damage or explosion graphics would have been nice, too. The only way to tell if your weapons are connecting with the enemy is by the sound made, and the destruction of a car is signified by the car flashing and disappearing. The game is viewed from an overhead 3/4 perspective, the cars control like RC Pro Am. Liked: The character select screen and cars themselves seem to be rendered, and look nice. Hated: Everything else isn't, and doesn't. **************************************************************************** Sound/Music Description: This cart is one of the first to feature a new audio technique allowing more detailed sound. Namely... speech. It's crackly, but it's there. It's much like when you talk to Pikachu in pokemon yellow, but there's a lot more of it. There are only two times when you'll hear your character talk. When you select them just before you start playing, they give you a humorous saying, and when you fire their special weapon, they yell out it's name. It's nothing special, or even that impressive, but it's there, and it's a nice touch. The only music in the game is on the title screen, which it too bad, it's a pretty funny techno/disco mix, complete with people 'whooping' (I guess that counts as speech too.) Liked: Speech for each character, the title music. Hated: No in-game music, speech is crackly. **************************************************************************** Play Control/Game Design: This game has a GB rumble pak, extending the cartridge a inch or so from the top of the Gameboy and rumbles like a N64 controller would when you're shot, or run into something, ect. Always a nice touch, but it puts the price up $5 whether you want it or not. Other than that, there many little inconveniences in the game keep it from being great. The control is weird, having to hold select and press up to lock on to an enemy car, but that's forgivable. Other things make what would be a fun game very frustrating. The cars seem to accelerate and turn way too slow, and it is VERY easy to accidentally wedge yourself in-between two objects. Although the instruction book warns of this, and tells you that if you keep moving forward, and backing up you'll eventually work yourself out, it's simply not worth it. Resetting the Gameboy always got me out much faster. The cars take a lot of damage before they give out... perhaps too much. If you have enough patience, the game can be too easy! Even on the hardest setting. If you take to much damage, just run around looking for repair power ups. On the same note, the computer cars take too long to destroy. I'd rather face waves of enemies that take only a minute to kill, as opposed to 2 or 3 that take a few minutes each. Liked: GB rumble pak Hated: The play control overall makes the game needlessly frustrating and monotonous. **************************************************************************** Improve: Complete overhaul of the arena and graphics, lots of tweaking of the game engine and control. Make the cars accelerate and turn faster, ect. Allow for more strategic fighting. RIYL: RC Pro Am **************************************************************************** Final Words: This game is better borrowed or rented. It's not a 'bad' game to say, but it could have been much better, and it may not suit your taste if your looking for a complicated game. It's something that's not been on Gameboy before, and the Vigilante 8 name and design is recognizable, but the control is frustrating. Really, very.... average. I make it a rule to myself not to contrast different games in my reviews, but I might dare say you should wait for GB Battle Tanx. **************************************************************************** Score Gameplay: **** Graphics: ** Sound/Music: **** Play Control/Game Design: ** Personal Opinion: ** Total: 14 Final Score: 56% **************************************************************************** Currently Known Codes: Is the UFO in this version? I'm still looking...