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Name: Plants vs. Zombies
Developer: BMB
Release Date: ???
Console: Genesis/Mega Drive
I already gave my opinion of Plants vs. Zombies in the last review, so let's just skip to the game.
Unlike the Famicom demake, this game actually does come on a cartridge, probably because Genesis/Mega Drive games are still being made and marketed to this day(in Russia.) ...And it's boring. It's just a very low-res print of the title screen of the game, with a few more plants and zombies Photoshopped on to drive the point home. ...Though if there IS a secret cloud level in the game where you can plant Cattails, please let me know how to access it! ...It probably has something to do with beating a level without plants.
I unfortunately only own the cartridge, as I couldn't find a copy with a case(besides a horrible case that's just a piece of paper wrapped around the cartridge.) They do exist, and they apparently even come with a manual, but I couldn't find one up for sale, let alone find one in time for this look. Maybe if I come across one in the future, I'll come back and add a blurb about it here, but don't hold your breath.
This is actually one of the more obscure pirate games I own, with basically no mention of it on the Bootleg Games Wiki. It's listed on the developer's page, but clicking on the link takes you to the Famicom version's page. So any information I can
Though, I said the same thing about Angry Birds Star Wars, and now that game has a page on the wiki, so let's hope and see something about the game pops up. ...And that someone cleans up the Angry Birds Star Wars page...
The company behind this game is one I briefly mentioned in the Angry Birds Showcase review: BMB. This company is one of the most prolific, iconic, yet mysterious Mega Drive developers in existence! They've produced dozens of games, and are possibly still making them to this day, but nobody knows who they are! There's no physical presence, no way to find any of the programmers or designers, and absolutely no way to trace their output back to them!
And yet, they've basically defined modern-day Genesis/Mega Drive gaming with the number of games they've outputted and their uniquely creative, yet lazy and disturbing method of game design! A lot of their output are graphical hacks of existing Genesis/Mega Drive games(including a number of sprite-swapped prototypes that never originally made it to the console)
But they're most well known for their 16-bit demakes(and, in some cases, REMAKES) of existing games. Some, like Darkwing Duck, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, and Felix the Cat, are straight ports of the 8-bit games, just with worse controls, most levels and features removed(especially the boss battles), and the soundtrack replaced with BMB's own eclectic tracks.
However, it gets REALLY interesting when they decide to make their own games! Titles like Lego Batman, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, Ben 10, Mario 3: Around the World, Mario 4: Space Odyssey, the previously featured Angry Birds in Russia and Angry Birds Star Wars, and today's offering, Plants vs. Zombies, while based on existing properties, are all "original" games that use assets from their official counterparts, yet have an almost completely built-from-the-ground-up-style of play! ...It's not a well made style, and their games are infamous for their clunky controls and unforgiving difficulty, but for any company to be producing ORIGINAL games for 16-bit systems in this day and age is MINDBLOWING! ...As long as you don't actually play them...
Despite BMB giving no sign that they actually exist, there are certain tells that hint at if a game was made by them. The most obvious way is to play it and look for their initials hidden somewhere in the background. ...However, them inserting their logo into their games is pretty uncommon, so you're unlikely to find it in most of their titles.
Another way is their random, stolen stock soundtrack, where they've cranked the volume up to ELEVEN! Most of the tracks are taken straight from TFM Music Maker and VGM Music Maker, two music programs used to create music for the soundchips found in Genesis/Mega Drive consoles and ZX Spectrum computers and similar, so each game contains a random mix of their preexisting libraries. Most commonly, you'll find a remix of Corneria from the Star Fox series, though the overworld theme from Super Mario Bros., the main theme from Mortal Kombat, and, most hilariously, 16-bit remixes of Erasure's "Always" and New Order's "Blue Monday" have been known to pop up. ...Just have your finger on the Volume control if you decide to listen.
A less reliable sign is how practically all graphical assets are stolen from something else. Backgrounds, sprites, powerups, even their stock sounds(that you can barely hear over the music) are all clearly taken from other sources(most commonly games made decades after the Genesis/Mega Drive), heavily compressed, and used in these games. So if a demake looks blurrier than usual, BMB's probably behind it.
And a final sign... Is something we'll get to in a minute. I want to save some surprises for the review, after all...
The game starts up with more stolen official artwork for a title screen
Followed by a heavily cut down version of the Menu screen from the console versions. Sort of surprisingly, the modes on the tombstone also correspond with their selection, with the top being Adventure(or, more literally, "Game"), and the bottom being a version of Endless(or "Quick Play")!
The Settings button is even selectable in the same place! Though the only options are to turn on/off the Sound and Music. That's why God invented the Mute button...
We'll get to Quick Play later. Right now, let's begin our Game!
When we start, Crazy Dave, as in the regular game, greets us and tells us about how zombies are coming to "pick our brains", so to speak. However, as with most BMB "cutscenes", it's not animated, and consists of Crazy Dave giving us walls of text to explain what's going on, while a jazzy track plays in the background. All in Russian, of course, so I have even less idea of what he's saying!
And get used to Crazy Dave, since he pops up after EVERY level! I was tempted to translate the various screens and post it all here, but I don't speak Russian, Google Translate doesn't recognize most of the blurry text, and translating it manually through their Handwriting option letter by letter was too long and tedious a task to bother. As far as I can tell from what I did translate, his dialog is just blandly telling us about each plant, how it works, and where you'll be fighting next, so there's not much point anyway. Though I will translate a few of the more "important" screens when we come to them, and you're welcome to try your hand at it. Heck, I CHALLENGE you to translate this game! Watch the video, take a screenshot of each screen of text, paste the translations over them, and either post them or send them to me! I DARE you! Now you have no choice but to do it! ...If you want to. Whatever.
Unlike the Famicom version, like the Genesis Angry Birds Star Wars game, and in keeping with BMB's "art style", the background and all the sprites are ripped directly from the original game, highly compressed and INCREDIBLY blurry! It's not as bad as the bosses from the Boogerman demake, as you can still tell what you're looking at, but they're so out of focus, you'd swear somebody wiped Vaseline over your screen! In fact, that would be an incredible prank. Show your friend this game and convince them they need glasses!
And I can't BEGIN to tell you how unfitting the soundtrack is for this game! Even if they weren't already at a level that would instantly blow the eardrums of all dogs and cats in the room, they have NOTHING to do with Plants vs. Zombies! Nearly every single track sounds like a death metal instrumental with the bass at full blast while the other instruments try and fail to overpower the lead bassist! Everything's so fast, so loud, and so cacophonous, that even Devin Townsend would have to plug his ears! I don't know if most of these tracks were used in actual games, but unless it involved me driving a monster truck with spikes, metal plating, and machine guns nailed onto it while demolishing other vehicles in a frenzy of road rage, I'd hit the mute button as soon as they came on! ...And that's what I'd recommend you do. Just mute your TV if you ever decide to play this game.
There were times where a level went so long, that the song actually ended and it went quiet for a few seconds while the next track queued up! SWEET, SWEET SILENCE!
The game plays almost exactly like the real thing, and in a more faithful and console-adapted way than the Famicom version! The directional pad moves the pointer around, while A/B cycles through the plants at your disposal and C plants if you have enough rubles. It can get a little clunky and confusing having to cycle through each plant like this, but it's manageable and nowhere near as frustrating as using the buttons to angle the slingshot in BMB's Angry Birds Star Wars(which I'll refer to from now on as BMBABSW to avoid confusion with the real thing)!
The really nice thing about this adaptation is that, unlike the real thing and the Famicom demake, you don't have to click on or drag over sunlight! You have a sun bank that grows over time, with the numbers increasing faster for every Sunflower you plant! I don't know if this is was an intentional feature, or done out of laziness so they didn't have to animate sun and implement a manual collecting mechanic, but this is a feature I can give them over other console versions! It's more annoying to collect sun with a directional stick than with a mouse, so this way, you can focus on planting your garden and shuffling through the plants to find the ones you need! ...It possibly makes it too easy, but in this game, you're never quite sure what level of difficulty they've cranked each level up to...
Speaking of animation, you may notice it's about as good as the Famicom version... None of the plants move, and the zombie shuffle has been reduced to 3 frames. The zombies don't even have a death animation, they simply pop out of existence when defeated. Even the projectiles are simply an image of a pea being dragged across the screen!
I shouldn't be surprised that they either couldn't or wouldn't attempt to add more animation from the original game into this version, but I never thought I'd be playing a Plants vs. Zombies game with stiffer animation than the I, Zombie minigame!
Also, the lack of an eating animation results in the zombies appearing to do something very inappropriate when they walk up to a Wall-Nut... Dude! You're dead, not some kind of animal! Show some standards!
You may have noticed that the cursor is comprised of either the shovel or whatever plant you currently have selected to plant. Since there's no actual selection bar like with the original or the Famicom, this helps keep track of what you're going to plant. Especially since the top bar also includes how much the plant costs and a red/green light to tell you if you have sufficient sunlight!
However, it can get confusing later when you have rows and rows of the same plants, and you lose track of where your cursor is. You can easily think that you've planted a plant, only to realize that it's your cursor and a zombie's near the end of the row and there are no plants to stop it! They could have made the cursor transparent or an outline of the plant or some other indicator to set it apart from the plants in the game, but NOPE!
So enjoy thinking you've planted a cherry bomb, only to wonder why it hadn't exploded while the zombies ate your Peashooters!
Despite the other limitations, you're given a decent amount of plants and tools from the original to use here. In fact, nearly the entirety of the game's first zone are dedicated to introducing you to the plants! In order, you receive Peashooters, Sunflowers, Wall-Nuts, Shovel, Potato Mine, Snow Pea, Repeater, Cherry Bomb, and Chomper, giving you the entire "Day" plant library of the original game.
It can get a little awkward once your collection is complete, cycling through each plant, trying to find the one you want, but it still gives you choices of how you're going to fend off the zombie invasion, and forces you to plan a strategy for later levels! These plants give the illusion that there's a need to manage and strategically place your troops, and it doesn't boil down to mindless planting! ...At least, not as mindless as the Famicom version...
Once you have all those "standout" mechanics down, you've mastered the game! The only zombies you encounter are the standard Zombie, Conehead Zombie, and Buckethead Zombie, so you don't have to worry about Pole Vaulting Zombies, Newspaper Zombies, Digger Zombies, Balloon Zombies, the dreaded Gargantuar, or any other zombies that might require stronger plants, so plant a good number of Sunflowers, set up a Wall-Nut defense, plant your Pea Shooters and their cousins wisely, and ride out the levels to the end! For beginners, there's plenty of room to learn, and for veterans, it's a breeze!
...At least, it would be, if the game played right. This is the first game I've come across where you're actually PUNISHED if you take advantage of how easy it is! On one level, I managed to fill up the entire screen with Snow Peas and Repeaters, and the zombies just stopped coming! Sure, one or two would eventually appear and possibly take out a plant, but for the majority of the level, it was just nothing! It seems they forgot to put a cap on the number of objects and projectiles that the Genesis/Mega Drive could handle, so the poor system processor strains under trying to keep up with an entire screen of plants AND sending zombies after your brains! I guess the game is technically still beatable in this state, but the levels obviously work on a counter to decide if the player has destroyed enough zombies to progress to the next stage, and with how rarely they appeared with this setup, it would take a long, LONG time(and make for one boring video!) Well, sorry for being intelligent!
Only after I removed a few columns of plants did the zombie rampage resume, and play continued as normal. From this point on, I tried not to plant further than the 5th or 6th column, to avoid having an overlong video and the possibility of the game crashing. ...Still, that was enough. After all, in order to undermine oppression, the Fifth Column's usually all you need!
Once you're past that certain "feature", the game's still relatively easy. There were a few times when I didn't plant fast enough and a zombie made it to the end of the lawn, but, luckily, the mower mechanic is also present in this game! I don't want to be the guy who has to clean rotting guts and fabric out of the blades at the end of the day, but it helped when I was up to my neck in the undead! ...Also, don't bathe in a pile of zombies. It's unhealthy...
After every level, a stock picture of a PvZ zombie pops up, where some disembodied narrator(or Crazy Dave) then throws a Random taunt at the zombie or random advice towards you. This was one of the more enjoyable parts to translate, as they gave us a number of quotes with each slide, including:
Stupid Zombies, Get Out Of My Yard
The Battle Was Glorious
Victory
Keep It Up Soldier
You Won The Battle But Not The War
Well Done Neighbor
This Time Carried(I'm assuming there was either a typo or some punctuation got lost)
Victory But Rest Is Still Early
I Am Heavy Weapons Guy And I Destroy Coward Toys
...Maybe not that last one...
After you've completed the first ten levels, the second half and nighttime portion of the game begins, which Crazy Dave introduces you to by saying, and I paraphrase, "Boy, these zombies don't give you a pass, huh? You will soon find out that fighting the zombies at night is more difficult than during the day, as you can't get sunlight from the sky. However, you can still get sun from sunflowers. Let me tell you a secret: You've been guarding my house!/Will you guard my house?* ...Haha! Just a joke! Just remember everything I told you and you'll survive. Now go!"
*Google Translate gave me both translations, so he's either telling me that I've been guarding his house all this time and leaving mine unguarded, or he's asking if I can guard his house too. ...Either way, not a good joke...
Since no new plants or mechanics are introduced, this section is no different than the daylight levels. The only difference is that, like Crazy Dave said, sunlight doesn't drop from the sky, so you're completely reliant on sunflowers. However, because of how often the flowers produce light and the lack of a cooldown period when planting, you likely won't even notice. For the most part, just keep planting plants and placing Chompers and Cherry Bombs where they're needed, and you'll do fine!
...Until the game throws a left curve at you! On Stage 2-6, You're suddenly given 500 sun, no lawnmowers, and only Sunflowers and the Pea family to plant. Even more strangely, the ONLY zombie that appears is a Conehead. And there's only ONE Conehead! So you may just figure "Guess the programmers got lazy and left an unfinished level in. This'll be a snap" and just plant plants as usual, thinking the battle will be over in a second.
...Until you realize that this zombie is INVINCIBLE! ...Or at least it seems that way, as it takes a few dozen hits, isn't slowed down by the Snow Pea, and starts humping and mulching your plants like soggy bread! It's almost guaranteed that you'll be completely caught off guard and will have used precious sun planting plants in every lane BUT the one you need to focus on defending! And by the time you realize this is a Gargantuar-level zombie they didn't bother making a new sprite for, the zombie's broken through your defenses and is currently at your doorstop. And he's not there to sell Girl Scout cookies or hand out a Book of Mormon...
And once the zombie's eaten your brains, you're then treated to the most infamous and biggest tell of a BMB game: The disturbing Continue/Game Over screen. These will ALWAYS be comprised of stolen artwork, usually fan projects from DeviantArt, and will, more often than not, feature a disturbing, gory, taken-out-of-context picture that somehow relates to the game. In this case, you get to see fanart from DeviantArtist KenZacal featuring a zombie brutally tearing apart and eating a sobbing Pea Shooter! ...This isn't as bad as it gets, and I'll absolutely be pointing out the various BMB screens as we come to them, but this IS pretty messed up! Just... WWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!
Admittedly, I might have been able to prepare for this encounter, IF I spoke Russian. Before this stage, Crazy Dave warns you about rumors of a zombie killer/assassin, who will be VERY tough to beat. Also, at the same time, he's coincidentally run out of all but Sunflower and Pea seeds, though he does have some spare sunlight on hand, so he gives them to you and wishes you luck. ...And that, if the zombie grabs you, to "scream really loudly so he'll know to run away!" Ah, Crazy Dave. Your weirdness and unpredictability are why you're inadvertently the villain in Plant vs. Zombies 2...
Still, even if you didn't read Crazy Dave's warning and got your butt ripped off and handed to you on a silver platter, you restart at the beginning of the level, and NOW you're prepared! It's the same zombie in the same lane, so plant as many Repeaters as you can, install a few Wall-Nuts where they're needed, and watch the menace be reduced to nothing! ...It's not as cool as seeing an actual Gargantuar being taken out, though... ...Not even in the ballpark.
Then it's right back to your regular zombie-blasting, letting the lawnmowers take out what you couldn't, because, hey, there's no penalty to using them in this game!
Eventually, you arrive at Stage 2-10, and the second incarnation of their version of Last Stand. Crazy Dave tells you that the main zombie is coming and he's dangerous, and if you can beat him, the zombies will call the whole thing off! ...However, he's run out of seeds again, so we all hope you can beat the boss using Pea Shooters!
It's the exact same thing as Stage 2-6, only it's a slightly tougher Buckethead Zombie. However, by this point, you know what to do. Line up your Pea Shooters, place some Wall-Nuts at the front, and watch and wait as the zombie loses his bucket and, eventually, his head! ...At least, I assume he loses his head. It just goes black when you beat him...
And thus you're given one last defeat message from the zombies before you're kicked back to the main menu: "Forgive us. We will no longer disturb you or your neighbor. Respectfully, The Zombies." P.S. Please inform this Rob Zombie guy that he is slandering our good name, and that we will sue if he makes Halloween III.
Once you've completed the main game, you may be curious what "Quick Play" is. ...It's as the name suggests. It's the same thing as the "Game", only you're given all plants from the start, and the level repeats over and over again. ...Honestly, if you want the full bootleg PvZ experience without having to sit through the tutorial levels again, just play this.
And that was the 16-bit version of Plants vs. Zombies! HUGE improvement over the Famicom version! ...Though that's like saying a blow to the head with a wooden mallet is less painful than a blow with a spiked steel hammer. It's not as painful, but you still don't want it!
So, without further ado, I will go ahead and toss this cartridge as I've done with other games in the past.
...Anyone have some Melon-Pult seeds handy?
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Design: It's a standard cartridge with a low-res picture of the Plants vs. Zombies title screen. The Photoshopped pictures of additional zombies and plants, while interesting that they decided to use them to try to make the image stand out more, are ultimately unnecessary and pointless.
Controls: Since the game is solely comprised of selecting and placing troops, it's pretty hard to mess up controls for that. The movement is tile-based, so every push of the button in any direction moves to the next space. Since you don't need to collect sunlight in this version, this makes it much easier to move the cursor around and plant. My only major issue is finding the plant you need by scrolling through each individual plant until you find it. I know the Genesis/Mega Drive controller only has 3 standard face buttons, but with how many plants you're given to work with, it can be quite laborious to plant one plant, then have to scroll through the wheel again to find the next plant you want. Still, I don't know how they could have fixed this, since a Menu option would have slowed things down more, and a banner like the regular games wouldn't work with this limited control scheme. I guess, with the limitations they were faced with, the controls are just fine. ...Though I'd question why they wanted to make a game that would require this control scheme in the first pace...
Graphics: Every single graphic is ripped straight either from the original game or DeviantArt. Every sprite, background, still shot, and title screen has simply been taken from another source(either through a sprite-ripping program or Photoshop), heavily compressed to fit the cartridge's limited memory, and used as a basis for their own versions of these plants, enemies, and environments. That's why, no matter how high definition your TV is, they'll ALWAYS appear blurry, like they were toys someone only JUST decided to play with again after leaving them in a corner to collect dust for 4 years! The animation's also practically nonexistent, with the plants not moving at all(save for alternate frames for the Cherry Bomb, Chomper, and Wall-Nut), and the zombies having a grand total of 3 different frames for their walk cycle! There's never any text layered over the main game, and it abruptly cuts to black when the level is finished. I guess it looks better than that trace job they did for the Famicom version, but, seeing as how everything's taken straight from something else, I can't give a SINGLE point for creativity! ...Though maybe a few nightmare points for the Game Over artwork...
Music & Sound: The music is HORRIBLY ill-fitting and discordant! I can't tell if the tracks are from something else, but if they were, they must be some of the filler tracks the composer wrote, since they are AWFUL! And to have them in a fun puzzle game featuring plants and zombies makes NO sense! It's made all the worse that the volume is dialed to 11, meaning you'll need to turn down the volume on your TV even if it was already at a reasonable volume! The music's so loud, you can barely even tell there are sound effects, which mostly consist of stock dinging and hitting sounds from the homebrew game Uwol: Quest For Money. If they at least included a remix of the Plants vs. Zombies theme somewhere, I could give them ONE point, but they didn't. This is yet another game where you're better off just muting your TV while playing.
Gameplay: Ever wanted to play a slow version of the original with the controls reworked for consoles and only 20 of the levels, 8 of the plants, and 3 of the zombies? Well, this game is for you, you very strange person! While it's not as slow and tedious as the Famicom version, any threat or fun is basically nullified by how few zombies there are on screen at a time and how slowly they move! They also take more punishment to make up for how slowly they approach the plants, which makes it more frustrating than fun! Especially with how easily the zombie are taken care of regardless, with a quickly refilling sun bank and no recharge time between planting the same plants! This should be a game where you can finish the zombie invasion off within 30 seconds, but once you fill up the field, the game barely even runs, so you're stuck planting only as many plants as the game can handle and constantly removing plants so zombies will show up! It's an annoying handicap that you have to give yourself throughout the entire game! Besides that, the game just plays out as a monotonous version of the original, with most of the levels comprised of simply planting a few rows and waiting for the zombie counter to max out before you head off to the next level. The only thing that broke the monotony were the levels where a seemingly invincible zombie attacked, as, unless you speak Russian(and possibly even if you did), you have NO chance of knowing what you're up against! ...But, since you can replay the level afterwards, you're perfectly prepared for that attack and the attack following, so even that's not as much of a sudden celebration! And once you're done, you don't get to keep your plants and start over... I'm impressed that the gameplay of Plants vs. Zombies has been put on a Genesis cart, but it's so bare bones, absolutely nothing about the variety, humor, and strategy of the original games show! You are legitimately as well off playing the Quick Play as you are the actual game.
Replay Value: The game lasts about 2 hours, and once you're finished, it starts over from the beginning, meaning you don't get to replay it with the plants you picked up. And with how simple and easy the gameplay is, you're likely not even going to be playing the game most of the time you ARE playing the game, as, once you've planted enough plants, you can just leave the controller alone and grab a sandwich. There's nothing to collect and no consequences to losing your lawnmowers, so why not? It's once again a game where, if you've played it once, you've seen everything it offers. Also, you're better off playing the real thing since this has NOTHING to add!
Overall:
It's slightly higher than the Famicom version, since the graphics and gameplay are slightly better, but it's still a game I wouldn't score that high if not for the novelty. All the assets are stolen, the music and sound is TERRIBLE, and it's an overall boring slogfest where you never feel like one level is that much different from the other. I guess you could make the same argument about the real game, but that one at least gives you several dozen plants to choose from to fight against dozens of different zombies across numerous worlds. This is just 8 plants, 3 zombies, 2 worlds, and 20 levels, with none of the extra fun or flair that the original included. Since it's just a bare bones version of the real thing, lacking even the bugs and WTFery of most pirate games, there's legitimately no reason to play this over the real thing. Unless you're learning Russian and you want a cheap game to play that'll challenge your knowledge... just watch the gameplay video. Avoid this game like the zombies avoid Garlic.
...In fact, try giving the zombies this game instead of Garlic! Makes for a much better deterrent!
And those were the two demakes of Plants vs. Zombies! ...What's that, you say? There's ANOTHER unofficial port of PvZ? And it's even more obscure than these? And it's for handheld systems nobody has heard of? ...Well, I guess I'd better play it, then! ...Some other day, since I'm done with PvZ for a while!
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