After all those 'orrible 3D Bond games last year, I'm sure you're dying to see a colourful, sprite-filled James Pond romp instead!
James Pond's had a hell of a life. First he was an ordinary(-ish) fish, an Underwater Agent for F.I.5.H. Then Dr. Maybe's goons blasted his body into a bloody pulp with shotguns (I assume) and F.I.5.H replaced his entire torso with an extending mechanical contraption, turning James into RoboCod and giving him the ability to breathe above water.
(Don't you think those penguins look like they're giving Pond some kind of psychiatric evaluation? Maybe we're seeing the world through the eyes of a crazy man who just thinks he's a fish?)
This game raises all manner of important philosophical questions. When does a fish cease to be a fish? When he can live outside of water? When he can run, jump and use tools? James seems pretty happy about it, with that awful, manic stare of his. What does he care! He's a world class athlete, able to compete on the same level as a... frog!
My twitchy pal there is new to James Pond world. The score screen simply refers to him as FROG, so that's what I'll call him.
And we're off! I think!
Hey! Give it a rest! I'm trying to figure out the controls!
It's a joystick waggler. Whoop-de-doo.
Get back here, FROG! This is all your fault somehow!
Running 100 metres across the surface of deep water is definitely an achievement, especially for a bionic fish, but it doesn't let him qualify for a medal.
Because I didn't qualify, I get zero points. Great start!
And you run back and forwards, hitting the balls out the way. For 2 minutes.
It doesn't get any more interesting. Anybody remember Bad Cat?
This game's got great music as far as James Pond-y music goes, but you wouldn't want to listen to it for any amount of time.
For a Gold medal, you need to do this for six minutes. Hooo-nope.
This time I'm playing as FROG and I can take as long as I want.
Aaand... go!
How do I-
But the game gives me three attempts at this one, which is kind.
Attempt 2 is FAILED also because I thought 'up' would be jump, but it's really the fire button.
He stops. I hit fire in panic.
I've... not quite got the hang of it yet.
C'mon James, get your ass up! We're using the mystery box!
The penguin judges must've taken pity on me and given me the springy mystery box to get me started.
And they take it away after one use because they're funny like that.
It's another Game and Watch game. I've never been a fan of games where you need to last as long as possible. If you get hit and retry, you have to sit through the first few minutes of 'no challenge' before you get up to the part which gave you difficulty. That's boring!
Yes, I'm arguing for quick saves in endurance games. Forgive me, I've got a cold and this music is turning my brain to snot.
The cast all cringe in anticipation as the cannon slowly releases a feeble waft of smoke instead of a 'KABOOM' and I miss the start of the race.
Now it's fire to jump!
Why do all these events have different jump controls!? There has to be a system... so far, FROG fires to jump, James jumps with up. Except in the first event, when James jumps with fire.
Zero points! Get out!
Meanwhile...
What usually happens is that you get got by one of these electric spiky bastards:
Quick, look over there!
This isn't a waggling race, it's a whirling race, and I don't like it.
Let me tell you about Amiga joysticks. My favourite type of Amiga joystick is the Zipstick (external link), a hard-as-nails super-clickety microswitched marvel. It's an arcade style one button joystick, which is sturdy enough to be stuck to a surface and small enough to be held in the hand. It's got well-defined motion and responds to each change in position with a loud click. There's no better way to play arcade conversions like Volfied, Pang or Rod-Land.
When I play these mini-games, I can hear it crying. It sounds like a person being crushed to death.
Why am I still playing this game? Why would anyone ever want to play this game!?
Technically, it's great. It's full of large, well-animated sprites and only slightly painful backgrounds. It's got music and sound effects playing together. All the events were fun to see. Even the platformy bits worked as platformers in their own right, sort of.
It's just a damned party game, though. A very short party game at that. Is The Aquatic Games at all fun when you play it with friends?
Do you get to pick the events you want to play? No! Does it keep records? No!
You take each turns playing all the events with your own copy of the Aquabat team, each team distinguished by having its own trainer. Do you get to input your own name for your team? Don't be silly. Do you get to pick a flag? No! A colour? No!
Is it fun for anyone, ever? No!
There are few enough Amiga joysticks in the world already. Please, please, don't waste the last few on this.
And speaking of joysticks, I only found out recently that this game was on the SNES and Mega Drive too!
It looks better, has nicer music and doesn't spend ages loading between events. It still kills pads though, so you'd only ever buy the game as a present for somebody you didn't like.
The SNES version replaces the event Hop, Skip and Jump in the training list with the event Relay Race, where you play as all the different characters one after another!
The poor Amiga is a bit too feeble to handle multiple things on screen at once, never mind multiple different things.
And finally, here's the Genesis version. Basically the Amiga version except you have to suffer that ghastly, ridiculous, nearly-naked Pond in the corner staring at you. Always staring.
Ugh.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteGood Day!
I am very interested to contribute an article on your blog about The Aquatic Games (Amiga). I was going through your site's content and I think this article will be a good fit to the message you want to send out to your readers. What do you think? Also, if you have other suggestions let me know and I’ll be happy to work on that as well.
To return the favour, I can do free social media promotion for your website or reference it on my next blog posts.
Thank you for your time and hope to hear a positive response from you soon!
Regards,
Patrick Del Rosario
https://www.sitepoint.com/author/pdelrosario/
https://twitter.com/pdelrosario1018
Thanks for your interest, however there's already plenty of words about The Aquatic Games on my site and I'm concerned that if people write any more then the article may collapse in on itself due to own gravity, forming a black hole that will consume my entire blog.
DeleteAlso writing these long tedious game articles is a misery that I'd only inflict upon myself and my closet friends. Apologies for the negative (and flippant) response.