Post by Hucklebubba on Jun 10, 2006 1:38:16 GMT -5
On a recent foray to Sprinfield's north Vintage Stock location--and by "recent" I mean probably a couple of months ago, because that's evidently how I perceive time--I came across a wonderful little gem from the Super Nintendo era by the name of SOS. Or, as I like to call it, "Poseidon Adventure: The Game."
It seems that a Vintage Stock in Dallas had gone nipples-up, and the Springfield stores got to absorb its merchandise like carnivorous blob creatures. Hence the previously-unavailable goodies. A later trip to the south store yielded a very reasonably-priced copy of Breath of Fire 2. Sweet like I can't even say.
But that's neither here nor there. After I spotted the copy of SOS, and politely asked the clerk on duty if he might be so kind as to haul his flab over to the display case before I smash it in with my head (no, not really), I made a somewhat ill-advised remark.
"This is one of, like, three copies of this game that exists," said I, before remembering to my own horror that I was in a comic store environment; a place where the principle of supply and demand governs with exceptional fury.
"Ormaybeitsjustthatthisgameisn'tverypopularandI'mtheonlyonewholikesitandthat's
whyIcan'tfinditanywhere! Hahahahaha!" I retracted desperately.
Fortunately, I didn't get gouged--there was probably never any real danger--and in no time at all, I was vicariously trudging around a corpse-strewn upside-down cruise ship.
See, the plot of SOS goes a little something like this: The Lady Crithania, a British luxury liner, is sailing in the sea, as boats are wont to do. It's stormy. A monster wave happens, the ship capsizes, and a bunch of people die.
But there are a handful of very dopey survivors, and it's up to the player, as one of four selectable characters, to find locate as many of said survivors as possible, and escape out the ship's buttocks.
If this isn't exactly the plot of The Poseidon Adventure, someone please correct me. The only differences I've found are as follows:
1. The Lady Crithania is a British vessel, whereas the Poseidon was American (I think).
2. This game is set in 1921, versus the movie, which was a present-day yarn (as in, 1970s).
3. The basic idea in SOS is that seawater gets into the boiler room, causing an explosion which rips a hole in the aft hull, thus facilitating escape. In Poseidon, they're going to basically the same place, except with the motivation that the hull around the propellers is thin enough for Gene Hackman to gnaw through. Again, my recollection is somewhat fuzzy.
Other than that, complete rip-off. But at least it's a pretty good rip-off.
As previously mentioned, you have four characters to pick from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's Capris Wisher, an architect who, despite having the girliest name alive, is in the best physical condition of all of the characters; Luke Haines (or Heinz, depending on which part of the horrendous translation you're looking at), a sailor who's almost as healthy as Capris, and has the added benefit of carrying a map of the ship; Redwin Gardener, a somewhat thick-around-the-middle counselor who sacrifices some physical prowess for the ability to console frightened or reticent survivors; and Jeffrey Howell, a medical doctor who is, ironically, in the worst shape of the four (there's no cure for old, I guess), but who can patch up the injured.
Personally, I go with Luke most of the time, simply because he has the best chance of getting off the ship. There's a catch though: Playing as Luke, I can get out in ten minutes flat, but the thing is, the ending changes depending on how many survivors you take out with you, with the general formula being more=better. Getting out with just Luke treats you to an encounter with a couple of snotty rescue crewmen, who basically say, "Wow, what a wuss you are."
The fact that the quality of the ending is predicated on the number of survivors you escape with is made somewhat of a shame by the fact that the AI controlling said survivors is absolutely abysmal. You can't control your tag-alongs directly, rather, you can only command them to come to where your character is. Roughly half the time, they'll just hop around uselessly, or miss a jump and fall to their deaths. And they're all afflicted with Lemming Syndrome, which means if one of them goes, all of them go. The only remedy is to frantically abort the follow command that's dooming them all, and the only way to do that is to move somewhere else and issue a new one. In the interim, they will continue to make splats of themselves until the new command is successfully issued, or there aren't any of them left. Nothing says, "the game designers secretly hate me" like accumulating a whole mess of survivors, and then losing two-thirds of them one jump away from the exit.
Not all of the survivors' hang-ups are the result of hinky AI, however. Some are deliberate. For instance, sick, injured, and old survivors will occasionally request a rest stop, and if you deny them for too long--at least in the case of the elderly, I found out--they keel over on you. That's what I assume, anyway. I once had an old guy go "Aaaaaargh!" (As though falling. It's the only sound these people know how to make.) and flop onto his back. In retrospect, he may have just been having a tantrum.
Which reminds me: I don't think the ESRB existed in 1994, but if they had, they would've had to create a "little kids dying" category for SOS. It actually creeped me out a bit the first time I found out that child survivors in this game are just as mortal as any other kind.
And no, they don't "Aaaaargh!" like the adults. The designers went to the trouble of imbuing them with age-appropriate shriekery, although they still make as big a thud as the adults, which I thought was kind of sloppy.
Wow this is getting morbid. Which brings me handily to my next point, that being that the time setting is ideal for this game. Personally, at least, as I regard the stretch from about 1880 to 1935 or so as being the Age of Death. The 50s through whenever was the Atomic Age. The 80s was the Me Decade. We're presently in the Information Age. But from the late 19th century to the early-middle 20th, the spotlight was occupied by fainting couches, pandemics, trench warfare, unbelievably creepy windowed coffins, and people occasionally just dropping dead for no reason. Bleah. I think this is why I don't find Silver Dollar City to be quite as charming as everyone else does.
Which does not segue well at all into the part where I talk about how well done the sound is. Which is starting. . .now. Hey, the sound is well done!
Music and fx always were the Super Nintendo's forte, and SOS is no exception. There's basically only one song in the game, but it's quite memorable. Sound effects follow the same pattern of being sparse but high quality. There's a lot of screaming and flumping, but of particular interest is the ominous rumble that precedes the ship's angle-shifting, and the laborious groan of the actual event.
Crikey! That reminds me that I completely forgot to say anything about what may be the core gameplay mechanic! Namely, that the capsized ship, by way of buffeting waves or giant poltergeists or something, will randomly shift its attitude (sometimes from surly to over-nice) along its x-axis (Is that the one that deals with pitch?), which results in the opening of previously inaccessible areas and vice-versa. It can also have the effect of turning what was once a passable hallway into a Long Drop of Doom.
Good thing that your character is semi-invulnerable. Otherwise fatal injuries result in naught but a five minute deduction from the timer counting down to the Crithania's final descent, which doesn't sound like a big deal until you consider that you've only got an hour.
Which may be one of the most remarkable things about this game. The Super Nintendo era saw the first entrants into the 40-hour Life Eater category, and here's a game that's specifically designed to be completed in an hour or less.
And while I'd like to say that failing to get out in the requisite hour results in a simple "You dead, sucka" screen, somebody evidently thought that wouldn't be disturbing enough. Instead, you get a shot of the Crithania's stern going vertical, and then you get to control your character for another thirty seconds or so, as they swim around in a now completely water-filled ship, and eventually drown. Granted, you don't actually see them drown. The game just flips to a Game Over screen, (which you go straight to if your guy bumps his noggin with less than five minutes remaining) and you're left to assume that your character probably didn't teleport out at the last second. Or maybe they did. Using a 1920s teleportation device powered by steam, gas bladders, and comical non-functioning wings.
So, in conclusion, it's a very macabre game, but it's also a classic or something. The music is good, the AI isn't, the boat turns over, and everything's upside-down silliness. The End.
It seems that a Vintage Stock in Dallas had gone nipples-up, and the Springfield stores got to absorb its merchandise like carnivorous blob creatures. Hence the previously-unavailable goodies. A later trip to the south store yielded a very reasonably-priced copy of Breath of Fire 2. Sweet like I can't even say.
But that's neither here nor there. After I spotted the copy of SOS, and politely asked the clerk on duty if he might be so kind as to haul his flab over to the display case before I smash it in with my head (no, not really), I made a somewhat ill-advised remark.
"This is one of, like, three copies of this game that exists," said I, before remembering to my own horror that I was in a comic store environment; a place where the principle of supply and demand governs with exceptional fury.
"Ormaybeitsjustthatthisgameisn'tverypopularandI'mtheonlyonewholikesitandthat's
whyIcan'tfinditanywhere! Hahahahaha!" I retracted desperately.
Fortunately, I didn't get gouged--there was probably never any real danger--and in no time at all, I was vicariously trudging around a corpse-strewn upside-down cruise ship.
See, the plot of SOS goes a little something like this: The Lady Crithania, a British luxury liner, is sailing in the sea, as boats are wont to do. It's stormy. A monster wave happens, the ship capsizes, and a bunch of people die.
But there are a handful of very dopey survivors, and it's up to the player, as one of four selectable characters, to find locate as many of said survivors as possible, and escape out the ship's buttocks.
If this isn't exactly the plot of The Poseidon Adventure, someone please correct me. The only differences I've found are as follows:
1. The Lady Crithania is a British vessel, whereas the Poseidon was American (I think).
2. This game is set in 1921, versus the movie, which was a present-day yarn (as in, 1970s).
3. The basic idea in SOS is that seawater gets into the boiler room, causing an explosion which rips a hole in the aft hull, thus facilitating escape. In Poseidon, they're going to basically the same place, except with the motivation that the hull around the propellers is thin enough for Gene Hackman to gnaw through. Again, my recollection is somewhat fuzzy.
Other than that, complete rip-off. But at least it's a pretty good rip-off.
As previously mentioned, you have four characters to pick from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There's Capris Wisher, an architect who, despite having the girliest name alive, is in the best physical condition of all of the characters; Luke Haines (or Heinz, depending on which part of the horrendous translation you're looking at), a sailor who's almost as healthy as Capris, and has the added benefit of carrying a map of the ship; Redwin Gardener, a somewhat thick-around-the-middle counselor who sacrifices some physical prowess for the ability to console frightened or reticent survivors; and Jeffrey Howell, a medical doctor who is, ironically, in the worst shape of the four (there's no cure for old, I guess), but who can patch up the injured.
Personally, I go with Luke most of the time, simply because he has the best chance of getting off the ship. There's a catch though: Playing as Luke, I can get out in ten minutes flat, but the thing is, the ending changes depending on how many survivors you take out with you, with the general formula being more=better. Getting out with just Luke treats you to an encounter with a couple of snotty rescue crewmen, who basically say, "Wow, what a wuss you are."
The fact that the quality of the ending is predicated on the number of survivors you escape with is made somewhat of a shame by the fact that the AI controlling said survivors is absolutely abysmal. You can't control your tag-alongs directly, rather, you can only command them to come to where your character is. Roughly half the time, they'll just hop around uselessly, or miss a jump and fall to their deaths. And they're all afflicted with Lemming Syndrome, which means if one of them goes, all of them go. The only remedy is to frantically abort the follow command that's dooming them all, and the only way to do that is to move somewhere else and issue a new one. In the interim, they will continue to make splats of themselves until the new command is successfully issued, or there aren't any of them left. Nothing says, "the game designers secretly hate me" like accumulating a whole mess of survivors, and then losing two-thirds of them one jump away from the exit.
Not all of the survivors' hang-ups are the result of hinky AI, however. Some are deliberate. For instance, sick, injured, and old survivors will occasionally request a rest stop, and if you deny them for too long--at least in the case of the elderly, I found out--they keel over on you. That's what I assume, anyway. I once had an old guy go "Aaaaaargh!" (As though falling. It's the only sound these people know how to make.) and flop onto his back. In retrospect, he may have just been having a tantrum.
Which reminds me: I don't think the ESRB existed in 1994, but if they had, they would've had to create a "little kids dying" category for SOS. It actually creeped me out a bit the first time I found out that child survivors in this game are just as mortal as any other kind.
And no, they don't "Aaaaargh!" like the adults. The designers went to the trouble of imbuing them with age-appropriate shriekery, although they still make as big a thud as the adults, which I thought was kind of sloppy.
Wow this is getting morbid. Which brings me handily to my next point, that being that the time setting is ideal for this game. Personally, at least, as I regard the stretch from about 1880 to 1935 or so as being the Age of Death. The 50s through whenever was the Atomic Age. The 80s was the Me Decade. We're presently in the Information Age. But from the late 19th century to the early-middle 20th, the spotlight was occupied by fainting couches, pandemics, trench warfare, unbelievably creepy windowed coffins, and people occasionally just dropping dead for no reason. Bleah. I think this is why I don't find Silver Dollar City to be quite as charming as everyone else does.
Which does not segue well at all into the part where I talk about how well done the sound is. Which is starting. . .now. Hey, the sound is well done!
Music and fx always were the Super Nintendo's forte, and SOS is no exception. There's basically only one song in the game, but it's quite memorable. Sound effects follow the same pattern of being sparse but high quality. There's a lot of screaming and flumping, but of particular interest is the ominous rumble that precedes the ship's angle-shifting, and the laborious groan of the actual event.
Crikey! That reminds me that I completely forgot to say anything about what may be the core gameplay mechanic! Namely, that the capsized ship, by way of buffeting waves or giant poltergeists or something, will randomly shift its attitude (sometimes from surly to over-nice) along its x-axis (Is that the one that deals with pitch?), which results in the opening of previously inaccessible areas and vice-versa. It can also have the effect of turning what was once a passable hallway into a Long Drop of Doom.
Good thing that your character is semi-invulnerable. Otherwise fatal injuries result in naught but a five minute deduction from the timer counting down to the Crithania's final descent, which doesn't sound like a big deal until you consider that you've only got an hour.
Which may be one of the most remarkable things about this game. The Super Nintendo era saw the first entrants into the 40-hour Life Eater category, and here's a game that's specifically designed to be completed in an hour or less.
And while I'd like to say that failing to get out in the requisite hour results in a simple "You dead, sucka" screen, somebody evidently thought that wouldn't be disturbing enough. Instead, you get a shot of the Crithania's stern going vertical, and then you get to control your character for another thirty seconds or so, as they swim around in a now completely water-filled ship, and eventually drown. Granted, you don't actually see them drown. The game just flips to a Game Over screen, (which you go straight to if your guy bumps his noggin with less than five minutes remaining) and you're left to assume that your character probably didn't teleport out at the last second. Or maybe they did. Using a 1920s teleportation device powered by steam, gas bladders, and comical non-functioning wings.
So, in conclusion, it's a very macabre game, but it's also a classic or something. The music is good, the AI isn't, the boat turns over, and everything's upside-down silliness. The End.
