Category: Nintendo News

The Switch may still lack a Virtual Console, but HAMSTER is keen to fill that void. Having released many Neo Geo titles (with more appearing regularly), the company has now started to bring other retro delights to the system. It’s already released one of Nintendo’s own games and now here’s the first offering from Irem’s library: highscore-chasing racer Traverse USA.

The game is also known by a few other names, such as MotoRace USA and MotoTour. In Japan it went by the name Zippy Race and this version is also available to play from the main menu. This inclusion will not surprise anyone who has picked up one of HAMSTER’s Neo Geo re-releases and the various options, menu screens and modes will also seem familiar.

For those that haven’t picked up a title from the ACA Neo Geo series, know that these options allow you to remap buttons to your liking and to add scanlines (and even a scrolling horizontal video line) to the image for that old-school CRT look. There are game-specific options too and in this case you can adjust how quickly your fuel burns off or whether to have the speed displayed in kilometres or miles per hour. HAMSTER’s usual Hi Score and Caravan modes are also included that limit you to one credit and five minutes respectively. With these restrictions you try to get as high a score as possible to move up the online leaderboards, but otherwise the aim of the game is the same.

Said aim of the game is to race your bike across America from Los Angeles to New York. For reasons unexplained you are racing against cars and you’ll want to pass as many as possible, as points and fuel are awarded based on your placement when you reach a checkpoint. Further points can be gained by passing through certain narrow paths (indicated on screen with their points value), driving over jump ramps or passing through a “wheelie zone”. 

Your fuel burns off as you ride, with further deductions for collisions with cars and obstacles. Fuel cans are available along your route (ride over to refill) but should your tank empty it is game over. Extra credits are just a button press away however, so you can continue on your journey should you wish. This results in a score reset, but does serve as a way to see the sights of the game, although as this is a game from 1983 those sights are not particularly impressive.

The game takes two approaches to the cross-country bike-riding with you beginning in a top-down view, which is the main part of each trek between cities. Here is where you do your overtaking as you attempt to move up the 99-place field. Bends and obstacles in the road add to the challenge as does the fact cars will try to cut across your path. The visuals are basic, using block colours for the road and roadside, but your bike, your rivals and some objects/buildings use a bit more colour.

The second part of each ride (which the game cuts to somewhat abruptly) uses a behind the rider view and has you drive a short straight, avoiding oncoming traffic. Places cannot be gained/lost and you are simply trying to stay on your bike to avoid loosing too much fuel. A simple city can be seen on the horizon (the Las Vegas one is well done) and there’s no trackside scenery, making these short sections less varied and more basic looking than the top-down parts despite the pseudo-3D appearance.

If playing undocked you may want to make use of the option to rotate the screen 90 degrees, allowing you to play in TATE mode. By default the screen is still square, but it can be stretched to fit the Switch screen (as much/little as you wish) which actually gives the cars a more natural appearance compared to the squat default look.

Audio-wise there’s some basic but inoffensive music and some similarly simple sounds (screeching tyres, crunches) that actually work quite well as you work through (or try to work through) the field. The racing gets steadily tougher as you progress with more turns and harder to avoid traffic, and you have to make split-second decisions if you are hoping to stay on your bike.

After you’ve completed the trip to New York the game loops back to the beginning, only this time at a faster, tougher speed: 750cc compared to 500cc. Complete it again and you move up to 1200cc with further loops continuing at this class. Just playing through the game over and over gets dull, but if you’re highscore chasing then it’s a lot more fun as you try to improve your riding to stay on your bike as long as possible and move up the placings.

Trying to improve your score works best with the Hi Score and Caravan modes, but if you’d rather see how you do compared to one person rather than the world then the game allows two-player alternating play; the player changing when the current one comes off their bike. Play undocked and the game can be set to flip the screen when the current player changes, allowing people to sit opposite each other and pretend they are playing on a cocktail arcade cabinet.

Conclusion

Traverse USA is a game that looks, sounds and plays simply, but is one that gets surprisingly fun as you weave about the screen avoiding obstacles, gaining places and passing through narrow gaps for a points bonus. If you are just looking to complete the ride to New York then the game is not particularly entertaining, but it works well with the Hi Score and Caravan modes and it feels satisfying to stay on your bike for long sections of road; positions gained from this also helping your points tally. Traverse USA is unlikely to be the Irem game people wanted HAMSTER to start with, but still works as something to dip into for a quick bout of highscore chasing.

The Switch may still lack a Virtual Console, but HAMSTER is keen to fill that void. Having released many Neo Geo titles (with more appearing regularly), the company has now started to bring other retro delights to the system. It’s already released one of Nintendo’s own games and now here’s the first offering from Irem’s library: highscore-chasing racer Arcade Archives Traverse USA.

The game is also known by a few other names, such as MotoRace USA and MotoTour. In Japan it went by the name Zippy Race and this version is also available to play from the main menu. This inclusion will not surprise anyone who has picked up one of HAMSTER’s Neo Geo re-releases and the various options, menu screens and modes will also seem familiar.

For those that haven’t picked up a title from the ACA Neo Geo series, know that these options allow you to remap buttons to your liking and to add scanlines (and even a scrolling horizontal video line) to the image for that old-school CRT look. There are game-specific options too and in this case you can adjust how quickly your fuel burns off or whether to have the speed displayed in kilometres or miles per hour. HAMSTER’s usual Hi Score and Caravan modes are also included that limit you to one credit and five minutes respectively. With these restrictions you try to get as high a score as possible to move up the online leaderboards, but otherwise the aim of the game is the same.

Said aim of the game is to race your bike across America from Los Angeles to New York. For reasons unexplained you are racing against cars and you’ll want to pass as many as possible, as points and fuel are awarded based on your placement when you reach a checkpoint. Further points can be gained by passing through certain narrow paths (indicated on screen with their points value), driving over jump ramps or passing through a “wheelie zone”. 

Your fuel burns off as you ride, with further deductions for collisions with cars and obstacles. Fuel cans are available along your route (ride over to refill) but should your tank empty it is game over. Extra credits are just a button press away however, so you can continue on your journey should you wish. This results in a score reset, but does serve as a way to see the sights of the game, although as this is a game from 1983 those sights are not particularly impressive.

The game takes two approaches to the cross-country bike-riding with you beginning in a top-down view, which is the main part of each trek between cities. Here is where you do your overtaking as you attempt to move up the 99-place field. Bends and obstacles in the road add to the challenge as does the fact cars will try to cut across your path. The visuals are basic, using block colours for the road and roadside, but your bike, your rivals and some objects/buildings use a bit more colour.

The second part of each ride (which the game cuts to somewhat abruptly) uses a behind the rider view and has you drive a short straight, avoiding oncoming traffic. Places cannot be gained/lost and you are simply trying to stay on your bike to avoid loosing too much fuel. A simple city can be seen on the horizon (the Las Vegas one is well done) and there’s no trackside scenery, making these short sections less varied and more basic looking than the top-down parts despite the pseudo-3D appearance.

If playing undocked you may want to make use of the option to rotate the screen 90 degrees, allowing you to play in TATE mode. By default the screen is still square, but it can be stretched to fit the Switch screen (as much/little as you wish) which actually gives the cars a more natural appearance compared to the squat default look.

Audio-wise there’s some basic but inoffensive music and some similarly simple sounds (screeching tyres, crunches) that actually work quite well as you work through (or try to work through) the field. The racing gets steadily tougher as you progress with more turns and harder to avoid traffic, and you have to make split-second decisions if you are hoping to stay on your bike.

After you’ve completed the trip to New York the game loops back to the beginning, only this time at a faster, tougher speed: 750cc compared to 500cc. Complete it again and you move up to 1200cc with further loops continuing at this class. Just playing through the game over and over gets dull, but if you’re highscore chasing then it’s a lot more fun as you try to improve your riding to stay on your bike as long as possible and move up the placings.

Trying to improve your score works best with the Hi Score and Caravan modes, but if you’d rather see how you do compared to one person rather than the world then the game allows two-player alternating play; the player changing when the current one comes off their bike. Play undocked and the game can be set to flip the screen when the current player changes, allowing people to sit opposite each other and pretend they are playing on a cocktail arcade cabinet.

Conclusion

Traverse USA is a game that looks, sounds and plays simply, but is one that gets surprisingly fun as you weave about the screen avoiding obstacles, gaining places and passing through narrow gaps for a points bonus. If you are just looking to complete the ride to New York then the game is not particularly entertaining, but it works well with the Hi Score and Caravan modes and it feels satisfying to stay on your bike for long sections of road; positions gained from this also helping your points tally. Traverse USA is unlikely to be the Irem game people wanted HAMSTER to start with, but still works as something to dip into for a quick bout of highscore chasing.

The Switch has been a bit of a sales sensation, leading to an inevitable glut of eShop releases ahead of Christmas. But while increased third-party support is never to be sniffed at, games like MUJO help no-one.

If you’ve been following smartphone games over the past several years, MUJO may well feel familiar to you; it was released onto iOS and Android in late 2014 to generally favourable reviews. The original was a very approachable and polished match-three puzzler with a cute Greek myth twist. You’re getting the same basic experience here.

MUJO is all about gathering together clumps of coloured blocks in a grid and touching the screen or pressing a button to make them disappear. Each colour feeds into a tussle that’s occurring between your trio of Greek gods and their rivals (think the Minotaur and Medusa). Red blocks initiate attacks, while the other colours help empower your Gods.

Before long you’ll encounter foes with thousands of hit points who need to be felled in just one or two almighty attacks. This is where your ability to gather together multiple red blocks into one high-value unit comes into play. By doing so, and then matching those souped-up blocks in kind, you can lay the smackdown on your opponent.

Stirring things up are the occasional boss character, often with a strict move limit, as well as bombs that threaten to wipe out your level-1,000 attack block. You’ll also encounter chests that, once matched or destroyed, grant you a random new Greek God to add to your roster. Each God has their own special abilities, such as being able to rearrange the grid or safely remove bombs, and you’re free to swap individual members out to put together the ideal team.

So far, so decent. What’s the problem here? We’ve already mentioned the most glaring issue: MUJO on Switch is the same as MUJO the mobile game. As in, exactly the same.

The developer has essentially ported this three-year-old mobile title onto Nintendo’s console with no thought of optimisation or enhancements. The game retains its portrait perspective on the landscape Switch display, leaving ugly great borders to the left and right side. 

You can press Y to zoom into the grid, but this feels like a fudge. Would it really have been so hard to shift the Gods and the rest of the UI elements to the sides?

Meanwhile the game’s touch-driven controls have been mapped scruffily to the Joy-Con buttons. Selecting blocks in the grid with the left stick isn’t so bad, but needing to scroll right down to use your God powers seems poorly thought through, as does needing to press two different buttons to activate a special ability.

You can use the Switch’s touchscreen more directly in handheld mode, but thanks to that un-optimised view it’s all too small and pokey to be truly effective.

All this is bad enough, and you’d probably stop at ‘incredibly lazy’ if that was the extent of MUJO’s crimes. Slapping a notable price tag on this completely un-enhanced game is tougher to swallow, while keeping the original free-to-play game’s energy system and related in-app purchases in place seems downright cynical.

There’s an energy system at play here that sees you ‘spending’ lightning bolts to remove bothersome individual blocks and shortcut the whole God-collecting mechanic. After a while you may find that you run out of these bolts, leaving you with a choice of waiting for the daily replenishment or paying real money.

Such a system arguably has a place in a free-to-play mobile game. We struggle to see how it has a place in a paid Nintendo Switch game – even a budget one.

It’s true that you don’t have to spend money to play MUJO. But the very fact that this legacy system remains in place is indicative of the lack of thought and effort that’s been put into this port.

Conclusion

MUJO is a decent casual puzzler with a pleasant aesthetic, but the total lack of effort made to bring the game in line with its new platform is deeply disappointing. The game’s poorly optimised user interface and ill-fitting legacy in-app purchase system smack of a rush job.

We’ve got no problem with developers bringing mobile games across to Switch. This is a portable system that’s built on mobile technology, and there are plenty of top mobile games out there that would make for a good fit with just a little effort. MUJO, however, is a deeply lazy and cynical port.

Plague Road is a game that defies the constrictions of definition. It amalgamates so many disparate elements that it feels both familiar and refreshing. Set in a world ravaged by an indelible scourge, you play as the Doctor, a beak-masked hero who left the disease-ridden city and is now trying to make their way back to their home, even if it’s been ravaged by fate.

The game tasks you with working your way through various and randomly generated areas in order to reach your destination. The world of Plague Road is unforgiving; at the beginning of the game the Doctor is summarily wiped out but saved by a traveling merchant and taken to safety at an abandoned farm. Thus begins the gameplay loop Plague Road builds itself upon: you go out into the world, pushing your way through oppression to find survivors of the apocalypse that are willing to aid you, thus making the Doctor stronger and stronger until he can push on into new zones. These survivors can be used in one of two ways: you can recruit them into your party as you venture forth, or you can “retire” them into various dilapidated buildings on your farm that will raise meters, which then strengthen the Doctor with stat boosts or skills.

As you push onward in Plague Road you’ll be greeted by enemies in the form of bandits, wildlife, mystical beings and clockwork machines. When they reach you, a grid turn-based battle begins. Although there are occasionally obstacles on each map, most fights are duked out based on the type and range your attacks have, the amount of stamina it takes to execute them and the distance each party member can move. Although there is a hefty variety of characters to choose from, they repeat often and are only delineated by the barest of statistics. You’ll often find yourself favouring certain types and sending the repeats to build up your base.

The presentation lends itself to the desolate world the Doctor finds himself in. Although most areas are elongated hallways with connections to new zones, they are creepy in an interesting way. Skeletons hang from swaying trees, cobblestone streets are punctuated by a red dusk and piled up corpses drive home that sense of destruction. Likewise the sound effects are stark and gruesome against a solemn and windy soundtrack. The ambience is grim, and Plague Road is intriguing because of it.

However, while elements like rescuing survivors to build your party and base, a strategic-minded battle system and roguelike tendencies sound like the perfect formula, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. Your menagerie of party members are useful, but not endearing. While there are visible improvements to the buildings in your abode, they don’t feel like anything more than the metrics of leveling up they provide. The lack of a wide variety of enemies married with the regularity of finding combat also dulls the experience a little. It feels like the developers just missed the mark in terms of what they were trying to achieve, and that’s a pity.

Conclusion

Plague Road is a valiant attempt at combining divergent concepts into a cohesive and interesting package. But as interesting as it may be to make the first roguelike base-building strategy RPG, it’s missing a layer of depth to drive it beyond curiosity into the realm of compulsory design. There’s plenty to like here, and if you’re in the mood for a morose adventure down a bleak path to a ruined world this may be for you. If you’re just looking to casually save the world from an outbreak, however, you may want to think carefully.