I've already given my opinion of the Angry Birds game series in my look at some unofficial Angry Birds Nanoblock models. I think the core games are OK. ...And that's it. I'm not that into physics-based puzzle games(unless it's Cut the Rope), and trying to get through each level is a time sink I just don't have anymore. I'm a bit into the spinoffs, like Angry Birds POP!, Angry Birds Epic, and Nibblers, but I mostly play either card games or Match-3 games when I'm bored. Still, if I was in a place based around Angry Birds, and there was nothing else around, I wouldn't hesitate to play it. ...Especially if it's on one of those giant touch screens I've heard about!
However, it's impossible to ignore the craze that is the Angry Birds game series. Since 2009, it's been downloaded BILLIONS of times, given dozens of ports and variations, and has seen billions of dollars flow into the pockets of the lucky guys at Rovio and whomever was lucky enough to partner with them. If you own a smart phone or a touch screen of any kind, you've likely played Angry Birds, its many sequels and spinoffs, or a clone of Angry Birds at least once. It's like Minecraft, Pokémon, Call of Duty, Tetris, Bejeweled, and Mario. It's literally impossible to avoid! They've become pillars of many worldwide cultures, and they're not leaving anytime soon.
And, as Spider-Man's tagline states: "With great games, come many bootlegs." ...Or something along those lines. It's been years since I've read a Spider-Man comic, so I might be a little rusty on the mythos.
But yeah, there have been a LOT of demakes of everyone's favorite bird & pig-brutalizing game series for both the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles. Most were developed in countries where more modern game consoles haven't quite taken off, are prohibitively expensive/hard to find, or are straight-up banned in that country, so a "retromake" of a super popular franchise gives these people a chance to join on on the global phenomenon. ...As well as rake in that sweet black market money for the underground developers who sure as hell didn't give the copyright holders a cent!
Like with most unofficial demakes of games, there's a certain curiosity surrounding these downgrades of flightless birds and slingshots. How DO you make a heavily physics-based app meant to be played on a touchscreen where accuracy is key into a game that can sit comfortably next to the original Super Mario Bros or Sonic the Hedgehog? Obviously, they're not going to include a CRT TV with swipe capability, so all controls have to depend on the standard controller buttons of the respective system. Also, physics algorithms for games weren't quite a thing back in the late 80s-early 90s, so each movement would have to be programmed in advance, while still giving the illusion of random chance. So again, with all that in mind, how DOES an Angry Birds game work on a Famicom/NES or a Mega Drive/Genesis? ...Let's find out!
Let me get a few things out of the way first. All these games are original takes on the Angry Birds series of games. I am NOT covering hacks or modifications. There do exist at least two that go under the name "Angry Birds", but they're just graphical hacks of Moai-Kun or The NewZealand Story/Kiwi Kraze. Since the gameplay remains the exact same, there's no point in critiquing or criticizing it just because they badly replaced the main character with a Red sprite.
Also, this is NOT a complete look at EVERY console knockoff of Angry Birds there is out there. There's a handheld console known as the BaoBaoLong BBL-380, which also has its own version of Angry Birds on some systems, but it's almost impossible to find nowadays(especially since it was a European-based console and I'm stuck over in America.) There's also a cheap LCD console that contains versions of Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies in the style of a Tiger handheld game, which IS easier to get, but isn't relevant to the theme of this showcase. There may be more out there, but, given their age and obscurity, I don't know about them.
Also also, I'm just going to admit upfront that I didn't play most of these games all the way through. ...Yes, I know I like to brag about my dedication to completing the games I feature here, but in this case, not only were the games surprisingly difficult, but I just didn't see that much point in finishing them. I'll explain more later, when I get to the certain games.
Finally, since I'm looking at a number of different games and I haven't finished most of them, I'm going to forego my usual summary and ratings at the bottom of this post. There's no reason to give an overall score for the entire group of games, and since I couldn't get through them, I don't know if I have enough to judge them fairly. I'll give my thoughts and opinions for each of them, but this is an instance where the regular ratings system won't do these games justice.
Alright, that's all the boring stuff. Let's dive to the bottom of the barrel and see if we can pluck out some gold!
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Angry Birds(Famicom): First up is the only conversion to an 8-bit system: The game that simply goes by the regular title "Angry Birds".
Though it's also sometimes known as Angry Birds 3. ...I'm guessing the graphical hacks were created first and had already called dibs on Angry Birds 1 and 2, so they had to take 3rd in order to stand out. ...Talk about being late to your own naming...
While the game has been released on its own cartridge, I haven't come across one in the wild.
However, it is a common feature on many multicarts, as seen with this one I have that also contains demakes of SNES Aladdin and Genesis The Lion King. ...And some actual games that I don't really care about...
It's also featured on two bootleg handhelds I own: the Game Prince and the PVP 3000(though they renamed it to "Anger Birds" for the latter.) So no matter where you look, it seems you'll always get your bootleg Angry Birds fix. Hey, it's the same with the actual franchise, so I'm on board.
While the developer isn't credited, it's suggested by the music tracks and how they're one of the few Famicom developers still in existence that this game was made by Nice Code.
Nice Code(or Nature Color Game/Nature Clan/Nice Code Software) is a Chinese-based knockoff game company, and is one of the longest lasting pirate game developers, established in 1999 and still going to this day.
Since I'm already talking about several games in this post, I'll save a detailed history for another time. However, they're responsible for about 90% of knockoff Plug n Play games, so when we finally start talking about one of those consoles, I'll finally know who to levy my anger toward...
The game starts off with a redrawn and lower-res version of the Angry Birds menu screen, as it offers 4 episodes consisting of 5 levels each. Of course, the other levels are inaccessible until you complete them, and there's no way to save(as is common with multicarts), so the option is basically pointless.
I'm also pretty sure they killed and stuffed the birds in order to pose them for this screen. ...A pointless step, if you ask me. I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to get limbless birds that require a slingshot to get around to stay put...
As with the original games, each level starts with a pan across to the Bad Piggies and their makeshift towers, to give you an idea of where you're firing.
As you can see here, the structures in this game aren't quite as elaborate as the real game's. Most are comprised solely of stacks of boxes or thin sticks, and it's like this throughout the game, which is a bit of a disappointment for a game series based around physics and knocking down large-but-flimsy structures. ...Still, given the "physics" in this game, maybe it's for the best that the buildings are kept simplistic.
Since the programmers were obviously not going to mess around with what primitive physics programs would be possible on this hardware, especially for a game with a filesize of only 97KB, movement is limited to 5 positions and no power meter. Simply choose which direction you think a pig is in and FIRE! If you're lucky, you'll hit it dead on.
If certain criteria are met, such as where you aim and if enough pigs have been killed, the game DOES mimic the demolition of the Angry Birds franchise with an animation of the towers toppling over, leading to all remaining pigs being defeated and the level completed, automatically moving on to the next. And while I should expect this in an Angry Birds game, I'm happy that they added this touch to a cheap knockoff, despite not needing to given what they had to work with. Like I say, it's the little things that make looking at these games so much fun.
And that's pretty much the whole game. Select a direction, fire a bird, hit a pig, later, rinse, repeat. It's practically as bare bones as you can get with an Angry Birds clone. Heck, the only bird you'll see throughout the game is Red(or Red if he was drawn like the Christian fish symbol), and the only pigs to fight are the standard Minion Pigs, so you'll know what you're up against as soon as you complete the first level.
There DOES exist an "enhanced" version called Super Angry Birds, with better graphics and a larger roster of birds and pigs, but it's nowhere near as easy to find as its predecessor, and I've yet to find a copy I can play. Too bad. I really wanted to see what their take on Matilda's deflated corpse would be...
While the limited number of directions and heavily simplified gameplay makes this sound like the most boring game in existence, it's actually the most playable game of the lot. They knew what to include to make an Angry Birds game work on 8-bit hardware, and they stuck with it. As I'll show, most other Angry Birds demakes got a little too ambitious with trying to be as accurate to the real game as possible, and the end result is pretty confusing. Here, they give you 5 directions to shoot a bird in. ...End of story. Nothing more was expected and nothing more was given.
Heck, it's actually too short to be boring. Once you know what you're doing, the entire game(consisting of a Plains, Night Forest, Desert, and Grasslands zone) can be completed in under 20 minutes! Possibly even quicker than that, since I had to replay a few levels in my playthrough. You'll literally complete all 20 levels in the time it takes you to three-star a standard Angry Birds level! ...And yes, stars are also absent from the demake, so that's another thing you don't need to worry about.
Though its brevity is welcomed, thanks to its soundtrack. Literally the only sound in the entire game is a 10-second loop background track, and trust me when I say it's some of the most bleepy and annoying video game music you'll ever come across! Even for a low quality game such as this, it's an obvious hack-job, and you'll be reaching for the Mute button before the third repetition. ...Provided you haven't been rushed to the hospital with your ears bleeding profusely
So what do you get once you've completed all 20 levels in the time it takes to microwave TV dinner lasagna? ...A barely visible "Congratulations" screen, followed by a boot back to the main title. I'd say I'm upset, but that would involve me expecting something more from a game like this, which I've learned not to by this point...
Despite its low quality in graphics and gameplay, this game's alright. The graphics are nearly incomprehensible, the music is ear-bleedingly annoying, and the gameplay just barely resembles Angry Birds', but the goals are straightforward, the directions are clear cut, and there's enough variety in the levels and zones to make you wonder what's coming next. It also has some of the best controls I've come across in a demake, as it only has 5 directions to aim in and the A button to fire, so it's a welcome break from the slippery, glitchy controls of most other knockoff Famicom games I've had to put up with. Plus it's short and I could play all the way through in a decent amount of time, so it also has that in its favor compared to so many other demakes. I wouldn't necessarily call it a good game or conversion of the Angry Birds series, nor go out of my way to recommend it, but I can say that it's playable and not a frustrating experience to get through. Which, considering the games I have to play on this blog, amounts to genius...
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Angry Birds Star Wars(Genesis/Mega Drive): Moving on to the 16-bit generation, and our first look at a Genesis/Mega Drive demake, and a Russian-produced game.
The Mega Drive is to Russia what the Famicom is to China. There's been a HUGE resurgence for the console in that country in recent years, for reasons I unfortunately can't find. It's possibly due to how political and economic factors before and after the fall of the Soviet Union made it(and still, to an extent, make it) impossible to import most of the popular games and systems, and major names like Nintendo and Sega didn't find it profitable to market their products in this country. That's why knockoff consoles like the Dendy, an NES clone, flourished in Russia, despite the major market having moved onto the SNES by this time. So the popularity of the Mega Drive might be attributed to the country only getting it recently and/or it's the most affordable console for most of Russia's 144.5 million people.
Whatever the reason, the market for a console most of the rest of the world moved on from 20 years ago is huge over there, leading to new games still being produced and distributed for it! Most are unofficial ports of games from other systems of the time(notably the NES and Game Boy), but some ports/takes of games originally on more modern formats(such as Java and Android), and a few original games based on copyrighted franchises also exist. And, given Russia's loose international copyright laws, it's unlikely successful legal action will be brought against these developers, whoever they are. Bad news for Nintendo/Sega, good news for me, a pirate game collector!
And that's the case with Angry Birds Star Wars, a demake of 2012's game of the same name for PC, smartphones/tablets, and current generation consoles. So they're violating copyright laws for two franchises at once! Score!
This is also a game I couldn't find on its own cartridge, only appearing in multicarts I found from shopping in online stores. ...Heck, I wasn't even looking for it. The only descriptor they gave for this game was "Angry Birds(or Angry Bird or Anger Birds)", so I thought it was actually one of the other games I've shown in this showcase. So if you're looking for the more famous retromakes of Angry Birds for the Genesis/Mega Drive, and you snatch up a cartridge that simply says "Angry Birds" please note that the game contained might actually be this one.
Another reason I thought this game was something else is because I didn't even know it existed! To date, this is the most obscure bootleg game in my collection, with not even a mention on the Bootleg Games Wiki, where I get most of my information about bootleg/knockoff games! The only other mentions I could find were short videos on YouTube, most of them not exceeding the 10 minute mark! I don't even know who made this game, I can find literally nothing else! Therefore, I might just be the first guy to try to talk about this game in depth. ...Hooray...
What makes most Russian bootleg Mega Drive games unique are three factors. The first is that most of the backgrounds, still shots, and most sprites are actually screenshots taken from other sources, usually the original game/movie/show, heavily compressed to fit on a Genesis/Mega Drive cartridge and with Russian text plastered over it. On the one hand, it does look interesting to see these pictures on a Genesis cart from sources made decades after the console died. ...On the other hand, it's phenomenally lazy and can result in everything being REALLY hard to make out with how low-res everything is...
And here I was, giving Famicom demakes crap for their attempts at copying graphics... At least they bothered to redraw things...
The second is the... "Eclectic" soundtrack. If lifting graphics and artwork from other sources wasn't enough, most Russian bootlegs also straight-up lift music from other games! Most of it is from other systems, a lot is recycled from game to game, and all of it has exactly NOTHING to do with the game it's featured in! You can be playing Lego Batman, and the game will suddenly begin blaring the SNES Starfox theme at you!
And I mean BLARING! The volume on the music is so high, I actually had to turn my TV's volume down to the lower digits. It's so loud, that I nearly didn't catch that the game had sound effects; one for when the bird is launched from the slingshot, and the other when the bird hits something. They're standard stock sounds that sound like Mario's swimming noise or when he steps on a Goomba from the original SMB, but I couldn't tell they were there until I reviewed the footage, since the music nearly overpowers all other audio tracks! They stole this music, they're proud of it, and they're going to make sure it sticks with you for the entire game!
But if having a random soundtrack isn't enough, how about the fact that the random soundtrack itself is completely random?! While things like the title and the menu themes might remain consistent, it's left up to chance what track will play for each level! Every time(EVERY time!) you replay a level, the game will randomly select a track to play over it! It's a total crapshoot what you'll be listening to, and the familiar game music might even prove to be distracting, since you're suddenly thinking about how much more you'd like to be playing THAT game than this!
Special mention goes to the 16-bit mix of "Always" by Erasure. ...You know, the theme to the Robot Unicorn Attack game that was everywhere several years ago? Only the freshest references on this blog, folks!
Heck, even the backgrounds and textures all want a chance to shine at once, since the ground and backdrop will also randomly circulate with every replay! Of all the pirated Genesis games I've come across, I've never found a game more needing of Ritalin!
And the third factor... Isn't a part of this game. Yes, this is a rarity where not all three signs of a Russian bootleg are present, because this game doesn't have an actual Game Over screen. As such, I'll save the reveal of what the third factor is until I feature a Russian bootleg that DOES feature all three. See you then!
Alright. The graphics and music are completely spastic. How's the gameplay? Well, in a way, it's a LOT more accurate to the original game! ...Though that might not be a good thing in this case...
The way this system works is a little more complicated than the Famicom version. Instead of choosing from a few select positions, you point the arrow in the direction you want, then adjust the power bar to how much effort you want to put into the shot, and press C to fire. Aim it in the right direction with the right amount of force, and you'll destroy a pillar and/or knock out a pig.
Later levels even introduce Chuck and Bomb. Neither have their triggered abilities from the original game, but they can crash through more enemies/platforms before they burst. Used right, they can be crucial to finishing the puzzle.
So there's a lot more to this game than the Famicom version, meaning that it's a lot more fun and immersive, right? ...Actually, it makes the game virtually unplayable. Since the slingshot itself doesn't move, you're given almost no perspective of where the shot might end up. The arrow doesn't help, since it's out of alignment with the rest of the shot, and since the power bar has to be manually set separately from the direction, you're never given an idea of just how much power is behind the shot. It's like trying to shoot a basketball with a remote-controlled robot and a stationary video camera. Since you're not actually there, and you have no visual suggestion or confirmation of where the ball's going to go, it's much more difficult to judge what force or angle to put behind it and you'll likely miss the hoop 9 times out of 10, even if you were Shaquille O'Neal!
It's not helped by how inconsistent the physics feel. Some directions actually send the bird in an arc, as you'd expect
While things like shooting straight ahead send the bird flying in a straight line, where gravity apparently doesn't exist! You never know how literally the game will interpret a direction, so a shot will send the bird either flying straight or in a realistic trajectory, depending on the angle and power behind it. It feels completely random...
Also, beware of firing at an angle that would launch the bird into the sky. Instead of coming down, it'll travel upwards through the GROUND until it reaches the other side of the screen. And don't think you can cheat by using this method to knock down pillars and pigs that would be harder to hit normally. The bird just passes through everything on its way through the spacial rift you created.
Despite the wonky physics, slingshotting the birds might be a little easier if the game controlled better. ...Yes, they actually messed up the controls on a PUZZLE game! With how it's set up, you'd assume that Up/Down controls the angle, while Left/Right determines the amount of power. ...That's not the case. Actually, Up/Down controls the Power, while Left/Right scrolls through the level. That means that the angle controls have been relegated to the A and B buttons, which also feel completely backward, as A moves downward and B moves upward! You'll spend at least half your time on each level fighting with this bizarre allocation, trying to get the arrow and meter in the right positions and constantly forgetting which button does what! These controls are so ugly, they belong in the Grand Theft Auto series!
Speaking of the power bar, it's practically useless. The only two settings that seem to do anything are all the way down, which fires in a straight line, and all the way up, which fires in an arc. Anything in between, unless the target is close and the EXACT direction is chosen, will drop the bird after a few feet, usually wasting it.
And yet, even after all that, this game MIGHT have been salvageable, IF it included a way to save your progress, so you could at least pick it up and play a few levels at a time and slowly work your way to the end, as the real games(and most other puzzle games) do. ...It does not.
This game contains FORTY different puzzles, each steadily harder than the last, and every time you boot up the game, you have to play through them ALL! No save files, no passwords, no cheat codes, NOTHING to continue your progress! Once you turn the console off, you'll have to start ALL OVER AGAIN!
Again, give the Famicom version credit. They knew they couldn't stuff a way to continue the game in there, so they designed the entire thing to be beaten in under half-an-hour! You can't continue from a point, so they made it so you can just zip through everything!
Here, each puzzle can take HOURS, and that's only if you have more patience than I do! I managed to slog through the first ten levels, but Level 11 is designed in such a bizarre way, that I couldn't find the right combination of Power and Angle to get through. I tried for over an hour with every combination I could think of, but there was always one more pig at the end...
I did find a playthough of the game by Retro Longplays, so I thought I could just copy the positions of the power bar and angle when I got stuck on a puzzle and get through the game that way.
...Unfortunately, they seem to be playing a different version of the game than the one I own. Possibly a later update, where the power bar actually works(and is brown instead of gray), and the physics are more accurate.
So trying to mimic the actions from the video led to absolutely nothing...
This, combined with the fact that I still had 29 levels to go, finally made me give up and throw in the towel. I'm not proud that I did, but the game was wasting my time at this point, so there was no point in continuing...
And yes, I know that I could try again and play this on an emulator or a console that supports save states, so you can technically save your progress and come back to it, but the point of me playing these games is to experience them the way they're MEANT to be played! How the developer made them to be played. I test these games on a regular system so that I know what it's like for people who don't review video games and who just want to play a game for fun. ...And they're in an area where they have nothing better than these to choose from... So no. I'm not going to cheat and then try to pass it off as legit footage...
Plus, I could only find one site that offered a ROM, and it wouldn't work on any of my emulators, so even if I wanted to take that route, I couldn't...
So, considering that I couldn't get very far in this game, among other problems, I have to say that I don't like this game very much... The graphics, despite all being ripped from other sources, are really good, given the system that has to process them, and the music, though stolen, does give you that pumped-up Genesis music feel, but everything else falls flat. The controls are wonky, the physics are inaccurate and inconsistent, the lack of perspective in where you're shooting is distracting, and it's just too hard! None of the levels feel like they take skill, and every time I beat a level, I never felt any sense of accomplishment since I felt I won by random chance. Again, I wouldn't be so hard on it if there was some way to resume your progress, so you could come back and beat them one at a time, but there's literally NO method included! And even if I could breeze through each puzzle in a decent amount of time, the thought of having to go through FORTY levels at once makes me nauseous... With all that, I can't recommend this game. It's too ambitious for its own good, and just ends up a clunky, unplayable mess. Like the movie! ...If it was a game! ...This analogy fell flat, didn't it...?
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Angry Birds(Genesis/Mega Drive): And here we go with the more well known of the Genesis/Mega Drive Angry Birds bootlegs. And also, the most technically impressive of the games here. ...Technically..
Unlike the previous two games on this list, this take on Angry Birds is apparently fan made, as opposed to being developed by a pirate game studio. It was still made in China(by a fan named Zheng Ya Xin according to The Iso Zone), but it wasn't made for profit and can be downloaded for free.
...Of course, that didn't stop bootleggers from packaging it into a cartridge and selling it themselves.
Unlike a lot of other bootleg/knockoff games, this one actually got a bit of attention when it was first released in 2012. A good number of Let's Players have made their own gameplay and reaction videos, and it even got an article on online publications like Geek. ...Ok, it's not exactly The New York Times, but for an obscure bootleg game not meant for distribution outside the country that released it, this is more attention than it deserves!
Unfortunately, despite copies apparently existing, this is another game I couldn't find in the wild. Even on a multipack like Angry Birds Star Wars. Instead, I downloaded the ROM and stuck it on one of the atGames Genesis systems I own, the multitude of which have the nice bonus of being able to emulate games stuck into the SD card slot. ...This did cause problems, which is why I prefer to play the physical cartridge, but when you're out of options, what can you do?
Upon starting the game, you'd swear you had just started up the legitimate PC port! A title screen, the theme playing, birds launching through the air in the background, a WORKING CURSOR?! I haven't even started the game yet, and I'm almost worried the system will explode from having to process this near-perfect quality!
The game contains the first two worlds from the game(Poached Eggs and Mighty Hoax), with 21 levels each, meaning this game has more levels than the Angry Birds Star Wars bootleg! Impressive for one guy(or a small group of people) to replicate!
And, once again, you'd SWEAR you were playing the actual game when you select a level. The scrolling background, the accurate sprites, the freely moving cursor, the starting sounds, everything is almost perfectly emulated here! It's a bit compressed to get it to fit, but to get a game from 2009 to work on a console from 1989 and function this smoothly is mind-bogglingly amazing!
There is a bit of graphic corruption sometimes, which seems to randomly increase/decrease every time you reset the level, but I'm attributing this to the Firecore emulation technology used with the system I played it on. I've seen other playthroughs, and they look just fine. It's just me that was too cheapskate to find a decent cartridge or emulator for this look...
And look at that! It's right back to using the slingshot to fling the birds at the pigs! No mucking around with power bars or vague arrows. Just put the bird in the slingshot, aim, and fire! The way the game is MEANT to be played!
...It's a shame then that it still plays so badly...
Like the Famicom Angry Birds game, there's a limited amount of positions for the slingshot to fling a bird from. More than the 8-bit version, of course, and I can't get an accurate count of how many there are(probably 8-10), but the angles are still fixed where you can shoot the birds. So, despite the cosmetics that suggest otherwise, the freedom to move that the original game gives you is still missing, and that hampers how the game feels a LOT!
Ironically, the addition of a cursor actually HINDERS the game. Because they're trying to trick you into thinking this game also has free movement, the cursor suggests that there are more positions to select than what you're actually given. As such, you're never quite sure of where you can move to, what you can select, or where each shot will land. If you need a specific shot to win the level, it's up to chance if that position is an option...
So expect a LOT of shots to over/undershoot the mark from positions that really shouldn't...
Once again, the breakable environments have been reduced to disappearing blocks. There are no collision physics; when a bird shoots into something, either it breaks or the bird does. The best the game offers is that blocks will float down to the next level if the blocks underneath are destroyed. So, in a way, there's actually LESS than the 8-bit version at play in the way of breakage!
As such, you need to VERY carefully plan out each shot, as it has to hit the blocks dead on in order to destroy them, which really removes the core of what makes Angry Birds a lot of fun. It's like removing the rag doll physics from Destroy All Humans, or the reckless driving from Grand Theft Auto, or the leveling/evolution system in Pokemon. They're these little touches that you kind of overlook or take for granted, but then realize that they're part of what makes the game so unique. Without the physics engine, Angry Birds becomes no more fun than a long session of golf. ...Where you're controlling a robot to putt for you, who only has a few ambiguous directions to shoot in, and came with no manual.
I will admit that I'm impressed that they not only included the 5 main characters, but they even included each of their powers. Chuck rockets through things, the Blues split up, Bomb causes a big explosion, and Matilda drops a destructive egg. That's a lot more than can be said for Angry Birds Star Wars, where the only difference is that some can withstand more damage than others...
However, it makes little difference when you don't know where they're going to end up, and the physics are iffy at best. I couldn't even get past the second level, everything felt so stiff and unpredictable, despite playing it for HOURS! I couldn't tell what direction I was shooting in, how much power was behind the shot, or what brick I was going to hit and if it would destroy what I needed destroyed!
And, once again, there's no way of saving progress. No passwords, no save slots, no cheat codes, nothing. It's a game where all 42 levels have to be completed in one sitting. And hell with that!
So, once again, I just gave up. This game LOOKS the part, and it's unbelievable all they could fit into a Genesis cartridge! ...But they left the fun stuff out. The mindless destruction that leads to a domino effect to knock over the structures and crush the pigs. You can't tell where you're shooting, you can't tell where each shot will land, and you can't knock things into other things. Any risk/reward system is absent, and it gets boring REALLY quickly.
Still, I can't get as mad at this game as I could with Angry Birds Star Wars. This was a fan game that you can get for free, and the description even makes it clear that it's just a beta demo. It's something that someone made in their off time(which I'm surprised people in China HAVE), and it's just an experiment to see if the game would work on a console nearly 25 years out of date. And hey, it LOOKS great! If I just saw the footage(and it wasn't on a cheap emulator like what I used), I'd assume it was the real thing! As such, I'd suggest checking out this game at least once, if just to see these amazing graphics in action. It's even more ambitious than the previous game, but it admits it's unfinished and it's certainly on the right track! I look forward to testing the game out again once it's completed! Maybe it'll be bundled with Half-Life 3?
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Angry Birds in Russia(Genesis/Mega Drive): Finally, the last original console port of Angry Birds and the third in the Angry Birds Genesis lineup. And yes, it's actually called Angry Birds in Russia. ...Considering this was likely made IN Russia for a Russian audience, it's like saying "Grand Theft Auto V In America" or "Persona in Japan", or "Civilization in The Most Unlikely World Landscape To Ever Exist." Kind of redundant.
While we once again have no definite company attached to this, similarities in the engine and soundtrack point to developer BMB being behind this title. Their titles are basically the personification of Russian Mega Drive bootleg: Lifted graphics, stolen and unfitting music, a similar Russian text font plastered on still images, etc. You can thank them for such classics as Lego Batman, Mario 3: Around the World, Mario 4: Space Odyssey, Ben 10, Plants vs. Zombies, and Felix the Cat. ...And the dark surprises they've inserted into most of them...
...And that's pretty much all I can say about this game, because I don't actually own a copy. No cartridges found in the wild, and not even a ROM I could play on any of my emulators... I'm just including it here for completion's sake.
However, according to footage from people who HAVE played it, it appears to be almost the exact same game as Angry Birds Star Wars! Same format, same controls, same stupid arrows and power bar, even the soundtrack is the same!
They even recycle the 16-bit "Always" song for THEIR menu! ...So Angry Birds Star Wars was actually the sequel to this?!
It appears so. Sure, minor details have been changed, like the characters and backgrounds have been switched to more down-to-earth designs, and they've replaced Bomb with the Blues(or one Blue in this case), but otherwise, it's the same game. So even if I could get a copy, I don't even know if I'd play it. If I've already played Angry Birds Star Wars, what's the point? Probably has the same problems and no save feature, so attempting to play it would result in the same outcome.
Since I didn't actually play this game, I can't give a fair final verdict. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not, but based on how similar it looks to Angry Birds Star Wars, I'm going to assume the latter. Just copy-paste my analysis of Angry Birds Star Wars here and add a question mark at the end. I know my judgement isn't fair or sound, but based on what I've seen, I think this is one book I CAN judge by its cover. ...Or boxart. Whatever.
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And that was my look at the bootleg cartridge ports of Angry Birds, and while I can't really call any of them bad, they weren't that good, either... Each one seemed to have its own style, its own way to play the game, and its own cosmetic look with the sprites and backgrounds, and overall... It made me appreciate the real game more. The game is meant to be played on a touchscreen, or some other method that allows for precise control, and it's meant to have things collapse and fall into one another. Playing these cheap ports on a primitive console with virtually no way to replicate that just feels wrong, and turns what was originally a unique, immersive experience into a frustrating, clunky chore. You know there's something wrong when the 8-bit version is the most playable...
However, as with most bootlegs, these games exist as a curiosity. Something that shouldn't exist, but do. They're clunky, they're boring, they're inferior in nearly every way, but they're something that you should check out anyway. I don't recommend you go out and buy them, or even find a ROM of them, but you should check out reviews such as these and gameplay videos from people who DO own them, just to see what they're like. If you're curious how they could emulate a touchscreen smartphone game on third- and fourth-generation consoles... Well, they couldn't, is the short answer. But you should still check out their attempts. They're pointless, they're broken, and they're highly inaccurate to what they were based on, but they're there and you deserve to know that they exist. Check them out and see for yourself.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some cartridges to jettison from my house...
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