The Mame Club! - This Week's Game is Bonze Adventure!

[zektor]

This week's game was chosen by jonjandran. The next person on the MAME Club list will get to choose their game the coming week and must PM me with the chosen title by Monday night at the very latest.

http://www.digitpress.com/dpsightz/arcade/bonzeadv.png

When writing your review, post it right here in the sticky topic and include any thoughts you have about the game. It would also be nice to let us know other aspects of the emulation. Here are some things that would be good to know:

Did you like/dislike the game? Why?
What type of machine are you running it on? Specs?
What version of Mame?
How long did it take you to beat it? Score?

Again, YOU are the reviewer. Let us know anything and everything you think about the game!


A download for this game will be posted shortly!



Club Members

Gamereviewgod
Wisesalesman
scooterb23
ddockery
AlanD
digitalpress
IntvGene
NE146
*jonjandran
Flack
IGotTheDot
zektor (me!)
buttasuperb
chadtower
Sotenga
Stark
ECWSandmanECW
christianscott27
TripppsK
vespertillio
ghsqb
TheSmirk
anotherfluke
BHvrd
ManekiNeko
MarioAllStar2600
Ze_ro
slip81
Qbert
k8track

* this week's entry was chosen by this member, the next to choose is the one below!

[Ze_ro]

What an odd game... It's like Ghouls 'n' Ghosts with an extreme Japanese twist to it. Why on earth does your "high priest" throw bubbles? Do the different colors do any thing special? I've noticed odd things happen sometimes, like a red bubble that results in fire scattering left and right across the screen, and a green bubble that shattered into a starburst, but I have no idea how it happened. Anyone figured out how to get past that force field partway through the first level?

Anyways, I managed to make it to the second level before I gave up. I'll have to give it a longer run some other time. This game also breaks a cardinal arcade game sin by letting you keep your score when you continue, so high scores for this game are essentially meaningless.

To get things going, feel free to download the game (http://supernova.ath.cx/bonzeadv.zip) from my computer (I'm still sitting with mame 0.70, so hopefully there hasn't been any changes for this game), and here's a screenshot while I'm at it:

http://supernova.ath.cx/pics/bonzeadv.png

--Zero

[ManekiNeko]

I liked this game. It's quirky but cute. It would have been more fun if the play mechanics had been tightened up a bit... the weapon system is a little unusual and I don't like how the enemies materialize out of nowhere.

JR

[ManekiNeko]

What an odd game... It's like Ghouls 'n' Ghosts with an extreme Japanese twist to it. Why on earth does your "high priest" throw bubbles? Do the different colors do any thing special? I've noticed odd things happen sometimes, like a red bubble that results in fire scattering left and right across the screen, and a green bubble that shattered into a starburst, but I have no idea how it happened. Anyone figured out how to get past that force field partway through the first level?

--Zero

Each of the bubble power-ups offer a unique elemental attack, which you can use by holding down, then releasing the fire button. If you continue to do this, however, you'll eventually run out of power, forcing you to use standard bubbles to attack enemies.

I need to play this one again. When I do, I'll give you more information about the way the bubbles work.

JR

[zektor]

Odd, I could swear I played this game on the PC Engine a long time ago. With all the games released for that system, I don't doubt it!

[IntvGene]

"Do not be left frustrated here. You can continue if you like"

Well, there is a lot of frustration to be had in this game. And, while it does have some likeable features, I don't think that it is worth it in the end. I like the attack system. I don't like the jumps, the single-hit death from anything (even water spouting up), and I really don't like enemies appearing out of nowhere.

The design is a little odd, playing the role of a Japanese priest through some sort of underworld (ruled by Emma?). But, there isn't enough variety here. There are usually only a couple of different types of enemies per level, and strangely very few bosses. None of the enemies are very appealing.

The graphics are nice, but the sounds are quite subdued. I sorta feel like I am playing the game in slow-motion at times.

All in all, it's not terrible, and has some interesting aspects to it both good and bad (like Ze_ro said with continuing with your score!). A very odd game and worth taking a look at, but something I wouldn't waste a roll of quarters on.

I got to the third level, with the fire, and the ohh-so-fun jumping parts, and called it quits. I had about 140,000 points in the end.

[scooterb23]

No sir, didn't like it.

Sorry, I just found it way too frustrating. The graphics were pretty neat, but I just did not finding myself enjoying this game while playing. Reminded me of a cross between Castlevania and Ghosts & Goblins starring the kid from Kung-Fu Heroes...

Maybe it's the fact that I can't get past the fourth platform of the game...

[Flack]

It definitely had a Ghouls and Ghosts flavor to it -- not only from the backgrounds, but also the "arcing path" of the weapons, and the sudden enemy in your face (instead of zombies popping up, this time it's tombstones). Maybe that's the other thing, the tombstones remind me of G&G heavily too.

It was okay, fun to check out but not a favorite. Who knows, maybe it will grow on me!

[Ze_ro]

Alright, I finally took it upon myself to give this game a good, solid run, and I now consider myself a bonified Bonze. I don't recommend trying to beat this game, since after the second level, things quickly become very frustrating.

The third level involves an awful lot of platform jumping, as well as flying eyeball enemies that show up at the absolute worst times.

The fourth level is some macabre river of blood with body parts that occaisionally stick up so you can jump on them. For some reason the eyeballs here are safe to touch, and will actually catapult you into the air. The "music" here is even more bizarre. Seriously, try playing at least up to the fourth level, since this level is some seriously messed up crap.

The fifth level is all ice, so your character slides around constantly, and for some unexplained reason, you seem to bounce off walls if you jump into them (and it's much more annoying than it sounds, really).

The sixth level is titled "The Lose-Your-Way Maze". I don't think I have to say anything more about that.

The seventh level is nothing special, except for this one extremely annoying area with two fat red women who are almost impossible to kill... This part took me forever.

The final boss fight is completely perplexing. I better explain it, since I had no idea what the hell I was doing until I kept trying things. You start off in a big room with two black rocks on either side of a pedestal with a necklace (I don't know what it is, maybe it's some japanese thing). The time limit ticks away while you have no idea what to do. Well, shoot the two black rocks until they break and some fairy/god/whatever comes out. Grab both of them, and then shoot the middle block until it breaks. When this is done, "Emma" will attack you.

"Emma" is this weird, red-skinned, japanese samurai warlord charicature thing that floats around, shoots fireballs everywhere, and drops bouncing spike balls. Once you "beat" him, he transforms into this flaming tiger and flies back and forth raining fireballs all over the place. As far as I can figure out, you HAVE to die here... once you do, you turn into a blue dragon for whatever reason, and you have to chase this tiger thing around the screen shooting fireballs at it.

That's as far as I could get. I couldn't manage to beat it. The control for this part is thoroughly awful, so you're pretty much guaranteed to die. At least the dragon can take two or three hits before dying. I might try to take some screenshots of the bosses later on.

[Edit: Heeeeerrreee's Emma!
http://supernova.ath.cx/pics/bonze-emma.png
And here's where you transform into a dragon
http://supernova.ath.cx/pics/bonze-dragon.png
I guess Emma's more of a dragon than a tiger, but it's hard to tell with the artwork.]

It took me about an hour and 24 credits to get to that point, plus a whole lot of state-savin' at the bosses (since one hit kills you, they're extremely annoying... there are only two actual bosses though, including Emma).

I still don't fully understand what the different bubble colors do (I assume they do different damage to different creatures, but I didn't bother to figure it out... throw enough bubbles at anything, and it'll die), and I can't figure out how to reliably do the "super shots" with the bubbles. It just seems to happen from time to time for me. One trick I figured out is that after you lose a life, you're invincible for a very short time when you come back... I used this invincibility to get past a LOT of crap.

The high scores are stupid, since you never lose your score... and at the end of every credit, you can put your name in again, so it fills up fast. I had something like 728,000 points by the time I got to the tiger boss.

One thing that I really liked about this game was that you didn't have to start each level from the beginning each time you die. There are a lot of midway points where you'll come back to... not only that, but some of the enemies will stay dead when you come back... especially the harder ones, which makes this game a lot less frustrating than it would have been otherwise (although it's still pretty frustrating).

Oh, and the buddha statue will taunt you with different sayings as the game progresses, like "You still need traiining" (Yes, spelled wrong), "You must be mortified", and "Nothing remains constant in the world" (??).

This game really feels like a console game to me... it would be perfectly at home on the Genesis or TG-16. It also really reminds me of Liquid Kids, although frankly, Liquid Kids is much better.

--Zero

[Ze_ro]

In case anyone is interested in trying out the final boss fight, here's some save states I made:

The initial fight with Emma (http://supernova.ath.cx/bonzeadv-1.sta)
The dragon dogfight (http://supernova.ath.cx/bonzeadv-2.sta)

I don't know if these will work for anyone... I made them with XMAME. Anyone know if MAME states are binary or platform specific? I also have no idea how you load them in Windows. In Linux, you can stick them in ~/.xmame/sta, and then hit F7 while playing the game to load them.

--Zero

[NE146]

Nice writeup as usual Zero. )

Dang that looks pretty good! I'm on it... and I fully intend on commenting on previous mame games of the week as well. Damn this no gaming time life :angry: Oh well.. it's just a matter o' time