I love spaceship shooters, and I love Japanese weirdness.  Otomedius Excellent is a shoot-em-up released exclusively for the Xbox 360 by Konami in 2011.  As far as Japanese weirdness goes, the opening video is an untranslated J-Pop song, the characters are all buxom girls, and the special edition version of the game comes with a pillow case.  Still though, there has to be a good game underneath it all, and I’m afraid that Otomedius Excellent could have been much better.

Since I opted for the $10 bargain bin version of the game, the pillowcase was not included.

This is a horizontally side scrolling spaceship shooter where you control one of the buxom girls on a quest to um… defeat the enemy I suppose.  The manual gives a vague description of the story, and even the story mode in the game didn’t give much of a story as it was mostly just trash talking between you, and the boss characters.  The game play is not nearly as crazy as something like Deathsmiles, or GigaWing, but there is still plenty to shoot at.  The main problem I have with the game is how pathetically weak all of the weapons are.  You start off with a ship capable of only having two shots at a time on screen, which is the same fire power as the Galaga ship from 1981.  Naturally you can pick up powerups, but you need to pick up a lot of them to have a chance at most enemies.  One thing that is neat is that you can choose which weapon powers you want before you start the game.  The bad thing about this is that you don’t have access to all of the weapons when you first start the game.  Like an RPG, your character gains experience points each time you play.  If you keep playing over and over, you will eventually get access to stronger weapons.  Some people may like this RPG aspect of the game, but I hate it.  I think that shoot-em-ups should be based on skill rather than powering up your character.  The same goes for online first person shooters like Call of Duty.  At least in games like Gran Turismo, your little Ford Fiesta races against similarly slow cars.  In Otomedius Excellent your starting ship needs a billion shots to take out stronger enemies.  The bosses can be especially frustrating, and you won’t even get the satisfaction of defeating them if you take too long, as they will leave the screen if you don’t defeat them within a certain time.  The bosses are all a bit too similar to each other as well.  I played this game enough to get my character more powered up, and the game became a bit more fun, but my success had to do with better weapons rather than my skill improving.

The graphics look pretty good, but there were a couple of levels where the enemy shots got lost in the backgrounds.  The soundtrack has a few catchy tunes, and overall it doesn’t offend.  There is a lot of chatter going on when you are playing the game, and it’s all in Japanese, and it helps to add to the mayhem.  There is a three player co-op mode which probably makes the game more fun, but I wasn’t able to try it out.  If you like shoot-em-ups, and if you like to play a game over and over to power up your characters, then you will love this game.  For me though, I like to play these arcade type games to see how well *I* can do, and not have to rely on levelling up my characters.  This is the only thing that brings down an otherwise fun game.

From the makers of Metal Gear Solid, Contra, and Castlevania, this is Frogger from Konami.  Frogger was first developed for the Arcades by Konami in 1981, but distributed by Sega in North America.  This Super NES port was released by Majesco on October 6, 1998, which is over three years after the debut of the original PlayStation.  I had no idea Super NES games were still being made in 1998.  It turns out that Frogger was the only game released for  the Super NES in 1998, and the last licensed game ever released for the Super NES in North America.  It’s also the last licensed game released for the Sega Genesis as well.  I will have to try to find that version, because I hear it’s different from this Super NES version.

The label has taken a beating over the years, but the cartridge still plays perfectly everytime.

If you don’t know by now, Frogger is a game where you try to move your frog across a highway, and across a swamp to the other side.  What’s on the other side?  I don’t know if that has ever been explained.  Maybe Frogger lives there or something.  On the highway there are cars to avoid.  Once you cross the highway, you have to jump on logs, and on the backs of turtles and crocodiles in order to avoid the water.  I’m going to assume that Frogger gets eaten by crocodiles if he lands in the water.  There are five designated spots to land your frogs, and once you do so you move on to the next stage where the traffic is faster and more dense, and there are less logs to help you through the swamp.  The controls are as simple as can be.  You control your frog by press up, down, left or right.  There are no diagonal movements, and no buttons are used.  I think this simplicity is one of the reasons of the widespread popularity of Frogger.

The Super NES port takes some liberties with the original arcade version.  The graphics are “enhanced”, but I prefer the more simplistic graphics of the arcade original, because it is easier to see what is going on.  The sound of this port is extremely disappointing.  The arcade Frogger has these cute little tunes that would play at the start of the level, and when you landed a frog on the other side.  In the Super NES version, all of the music has been removed.  There is really no excuse for this, and it takes away a bit of the nostalgic factor, and not to mention how eerily quiet it makes the game.  Despite the quietness of the game, the Super NES version is great.  It’s available for a number of other game systems, and is a must play for everyone.