GOTD 4/30/2016: Crush Roller (NGPC)
Crush Roller for the Neo Geo Pocket Color is another affirmation of SNK's mandate to bring their arcade brand to the handheld market. It is an update of ADK's 1981 arcade game of the same name, which was called Make Trax in the US. What we have here is a Pac-alike maze game, but with the goal being to paint the floor of the maze in order to advance instead of gobbling up dots. Crush Roller doesn't just mimic the popular game, though... it adds its own wrinkles in order to differentiate itself from Namco's classic, which is good... especially since Pac-Man is on the system as well.
You play as a giant paint brush, slobbering your way through the overhead mazes, leaving behind your own brand of sunshine while being hunted by monsters. There are four different colors of monsters, with blue being the slowest, then yellow, red, and pink all moving faster than you. There are no power pellets here, but rather a couple of paint rollers on bridges in each maze. Touching these will speed you across said bridge, killing any monsters in its path, multiples of course netting higher score bonuses. However, killing a monster will cause the next rank color to appear after a few seconds reprieve. Also, what the manual refers to as "irksters" can appear on each stage, each specific to that level. They will leave footprints in your paint, causing you to need to redo those areas. These can't hurt you, though, and can be captured for a healthy score bonus.
Crush Roller has a few more tricks up its sleeve to keep things fresh as well. Clearing six consecutive stages will garner you an ending, but there are loads of available paths to take, laid out like something you'd see in Darius or Bust A Move. You can view a gallery of your captured irksters (like the Fuk Fuk Owl I put a picture of up there), and there's even a time attack challenge where you must clear stages in a specific time limit. Perhaps coolest, though, is a vs mode in which two players can link up and race through mazes. In this mode, crushing monsters with your roller will send a powered up monster after your opponent, messing their day up. It's a cool feature you don't really see in these types of games.
The music is okay and upbeat, but it doesn't stick with me when I'm done, and the graphics serve their purpose in looking like a prettied up version of Make Trax, but they aren't mind blowing by any stretch. The combination of unique modes, alternate paths, and tricky gameplay make it a strong portable game that can be beaten in minutes or played for a few hours.
I dig this one. I tried a different method for shooting pictures this time, as it isn't a lit screen and it's super reflective, so hopefully they're easier to see than the Metal Slug ones in that thread. Anyway, played this one? Any memories of Make Trax ftom the arcades?
Reply With Quote
