Before FPS, RTS, and MMORPGS became the norm, it was adventure games that dominated the PC. These games challenged players to think logically in a way that can’t be surpassed by today’s games. Weather it’s the point/click interface, command prompt, or first person adventure, the games challenged players to think their way out of predicaments rather than simply blow away their enemies. They came in all different flavors from Sam and Max and Leisure Suit Larry, to Myst and Monkey Island. Sierra’s King’s Quest series was one of the great standouts of the genre. With stories penned by Roberta Williams, the series told about the trials and tribulations of the royal family of Daventry.
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As you no doubt know, Spider-man returns to theaters this weekend in a big way. In honor of his return, this week’s extended Lost Classics and $20 GOTW will take a look at some of the best games featuring the web slinger. So click below for some interactive web slinging action.
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Long before merging with Squaresoft, Enix released this launch window SNES title which bought together Castlevania-caliber action and Sim-City style level building. Playing as “The master” (or God, as he was known in the Japanese release) you awaken from a sleep of hundreds of years to take down “The Evil One” (or Satan, as he was called in Japan). First however, you have to restore your powers by restoring the people’s faith in you by helping re-develop their land in simulation-style segments and by destroying the Evil One’s minions via side scrolling action segments. By preforming certain tasks during the simulation levels, the Master will unlock new powers and magic. For those who didn’t care much for the simulation levels, a hidden professional mode was available which featured a high difficulty and maxed out attributes for the main character. A sequel was released a few years later which left out the simulation levels altogether, although it was still every bit as enjoyable as the first. Actraiser has already been re-released on the Japanese and European Virtual Console, so I have no doubt that it will be arriving here shortly.

A little trivia on this game: Although the game was heavy on Judeo-Christian themes, Nintendo of America policy strictly forbade content which could remotely be deemed offensive (i.e. gore and religious themes). This same policy caused the spells ‘holy’ and ‘death’ from the American SNES versions of Final Fantasy 4 and 6 to be renamed ‘pearl’ and ‘doom’.

In 1994, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise was waning in popularity. As it would soon go dormant for a while, Konami decided to make one last attempt to cash in on the franchise by releasing a trio of fighting games for the SNES, Genesis, and NES. In an era where the difference between multiplatform releases meant more than simple graphical upgrades, the three games were vastly different.
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This is actually the second game in what is know in Japan as the “Rushing Beat” series. It’s the sequel to what is known over here as “Rival Turf” and the predecessor to what is known over here as the Peacekeepers. Lousy names aside, the Rushing Beat games added their own small but innovative spin to the side-scrolling brawler formula popularized in games such as Final Fight. Rival Turf featured a secret code that allowed players to rename the game’s characters and enemies while Peacekeepers would feature exploration elements. Brawl Brothers little quirk was that at the start of the game, you selected two characters to start with. The main villain Dieter would kidnap the other three, clone them, and force you to rescue them throughout the game’s 4 levels. They tried to work in some exploration elements, but players would find themselves stuck if they didn’t follow the right path. Other than that, nothing stood out in the game, but there was no glaring weakness either. Just a nice game which you can play with a friend. their is also a one on one versus mode for when players wanted a diversion from the main game.

Oh yeah, as an added bonus, the original Japanese version is hidden on the cart as well, accessible by a code (repeatedly press BAXY in that order before the Jaleco logo appears) It removes the exploration elements, changes the character names, and adds in a new Time Attack multiplayer mode. This is probably one of the nicer easter eggs hidden in the game.

Perhaps one of the last great Super Nintendo platformers, Kirby Super Star went above and beyond other games of its kind in terms of content. While most games simply offered huge overworld maps, this game divided its content up into 9 different games, each with their own distinct gameplay features. Although it can be beaten in a weekend, the game is still one of the best in the series. For those of you who don’t know about Kirby, he’s a little pink puff ball who swallows enemies. He can then either take on their powers for himself or spit out the enemy for use as a helper character, who can then be controlled by a second player.
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Note: Despite the similarities in gameplay (the charging attacks and command ring menu system among others), this game is not in any way related to Square’s Seiken Densetsu series (speaking of which, I featured the third game on last week’s column), nor is it meant to be any kind of sequel or spin-off to Secret of Mana. However, those who played the game will discover that there are plenty of differences which will make this game stand out on it’s on, even if it isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Final Fantasy or Secret of Mana.
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If this game had been released over here, it would have been known as Secret of Mana 2. However translation problems, as well as the decreasing support for the Super Nintendo, kept this game from being released over here. However, I have it on good authority that an English translation may be floating around on the net. Because I don’t want the game companies coming down on us, that’s all I’ll say.

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