The Morgue Reviews #8
Written By: Adrian V.

Well, I had to go to the net for some titles this time. Not that it’s such a bad thing. I mean, you have to possess an internet connection to even read this, so it’s not as though you’re going to be left out. Also, since I located this stuff on the net, it doesn’t matter where you live, (in the continental US, anyway) you can order it.

But before I go there, I want to point out two games I found this week at Toys ‘R’ Us that had just been put into the Morgue price range. And they are:

-and-

I know what you’re thinking. ‘Is the Morgue becoming a Pokémon wasteland? With no titles of interest to be found other than those emblazoned with the visage of that ominous, mighty electric rat?’

The answer would be: Piss off. I may not be a huge Pokémon fan either (though I did think the idea had merit and enjoyed the hell out of Red, Blue and Snap!) but the fact is, the games have been pretty decent, and the fan base is so big that ignoring it would be ridiculous. So save your ‘hardcore gamer’ indignation and just admit that you probably tried to catch ‘em all yourself.

Now, I don’t really know that either of these games is worth the $19.97, but they do both come with the required accessories (microphone for Hey You! and Gameboy cartridge adapter for Stadium) and they probably won’t be on the shelves for long. I’ve heard there are only occasional interface problems with the Pikachu title, and those of you who haven’t beat the hell out of enough little creatures on the Gameboy with Red and Blue can have a go at it in 3D on the N64. Might be interesting.

So I promised two reviews in the last Morgue. I’ve debated this for a while, and I finally came to a decision. It might help if you had some idea of what I could possibly be debating, so here it is.

You see, I originally conceived of the Morgue as a place to find out about older games on the N64. I had noticed that a lot of quality titles were incredibly cheap, and felt it would be beneficial to others if I were to make them aware of this, after having spent their hard-earned money on a gaming system and getting screwed both by the price of the games, and their rare, often inconsistent quality.

Of course, I also needed to justify all the time I spent at Software Etc. and Electronics Boutique. The girlfriend was beginning to put the foot down, so ‘research’ was a better excuse than ‘I wanna’.

And here we are.

Since that time, I have developed a ratings system (Morgue #3), had celebrity guests (Morgue #4) and even poured out my soul on the issue of game length (Morgue #5). I get off-track with this topic again in both my Zone of the Enders (PS2) and Advance Wars (GBA) reviews as well.

How was that for shameless self-promotion?

So when I promised to review two titles in this Morgue, I was confounded. Should it be an old title? That was the whole point of this feature initially. Should it be a title recently dropped to the Morgue price range? That seems more relevant, since you would be able to go out and buy it after the review. Should it be a good game? While it’s nice to hear about a game that’s worth far more than the money you spend on it, I have a particular love for ripping poor games to shreds.

I had no answers. I had a lot of tenuously enforced rules and a few ideas. But answers? Snake eyes on that roll.

So I decided to give up. It wasn’t worth the effort of searching, writing and getting inebriated out of my brain while playing and writing anymore. Without focus, I had neither goal nor vision. And in the midst of my surrender to utter slackitude (made that one up), the answer came to me.

Who cares? By this time, if you’re still reading the Morgue, you do it because you want to experience my own little brand of gaming hysteria. So if I want to review a game I just bought, or one I just rediscovered on my shelf, I’m going to do it. To make it fair, I’ll at least tell you what price I’ve found it for lately. I will still continue to give updates on lower-priced games, but let’s face it, the N64 is going out. The Gamecube is right around the corner, but those games won’t be on the cheap for months at the earliest. So I’m going to fill the time with whatever the hell I want.

So deal.

And my first nod to self-fulfillment is breaking my promise. I’m not going to review two games for you. If you really thought that would happen, I must congratulate you on your stupendous amount of faith in an editorial not widely known for its reliability. In fact, the regularity with which my irregularity is prone to demonstrate itself is a far more reliable constant by which to set your watch.

What the hell did I just say?

So here’s the review. It’s of a game that’s dear to my heart, and also sells for anywhere from $9.99-$14.99 in most places these days. I’ve decided to revisit the title as an homage to the circuitous nature of the universe. Not only is it the game that got me onto the Video Game Heaven (the grandfather of the site you’re visiting now) staff over two years ago with my first primitive review, it now has a sequel that debuted with the release of the next Nintendo console.

Without further ado, I give you; Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Rating: 14 or 18

14 if you’re not a Star Wars fan.

18 if you’re a normal human.

Can be found: At just about any software store for under $20.00. If you can find it for under $10.00, I encourage you not to even think. In fact, breathing should take second place to your mad dash for the cash register with this game clutched to your chest in a death grip to shame the Jaws of Life. TAKE IT HOME. Even if you don’t own a Nintendo 64, it will be worth it just for the box art, geek factor and faint possibility that you might someday buy the system to play it on. That was my excuse for Empire Strikes Back on the Atari 2600, and I stand by that decision, regardless of my girlfriend’s sideways comments.

Justifying the score: Well let’s see. Should I start with the mission structure, the control or the sound effects? I know, I’ll start with the Bonus missions.

There are three of them, and each one is increasingly difficult to unlock. Starting with Beggar’s Canyon, followed by The Death Star trench run and culminating in the Battle on Hoth. To get the canyon, you have to earn bronze medals on all the regular missions. Silvers are needed to get the Death Star run, and the mission on Hoth requires the pledge of your first-born written in blood. I mean gold medals. Gold medals on all the missions.

These are great additions to the game...at first. Navigating Beggar’s Canyon during the first bonus in a T-16...what is that you ask? Remember the model that Luke was playing with while C-3PO was taking an oil bath in the first film? That was a T-16 Skyhopper. Actually, it was a concept sketch that supposedly evolved into the X-Wing we all know and love, but since then Star Wars fans have filled in a lot of Lucasfilm backstory gaps that didn’t actually exist. As I was saying, going through Beggar’s Canyon on a T-16 is somewhere just above sewing and just below a Charlie Chaplin marathon on the ‘exciting’ scale in this game. Which is a true shame, since that race was supposed to be incredibly difficult and dangerous according to ‘Wars lore. So much for adhering to the legend.

Amazingly, flying through Beggar’s Canyon makes the Death Star mission look like a Lalapalooza tour where the drinks are free. Anyone got a match?

What gives the Trench Run the ‘What the Hell Were They Thinking?’ award for this game is that not only is Vader entirely missing from the event, but there are quite a few 90 degree turns as you make your way to the exhaust shaft hole that, according to some sources, isn’t much smaller than a womp rat. Note the large, bold typeface for emphasis. See, if you make enough 90 degree turns, you end up with a square, which is a feature I distinctly recall the Death Star lacking at it’s equator. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough though.

However, the Hoth Mission is completely awesome. Makes the first level of Shadows of the Empire (the beta version of Rogue Squadron) look like the first-generation piece-of-filth money printing marketing blitz that it was. Of course, we all loved that first level more than our own mothers at the time, but such is the finicky nature of gaming enthusiasts.

On the Hoth mission you have multiple probe droids, AT-ST’s and AT-AT’s to deal with, and in the distance is the shield generator that made all of us wonder why the hell they didn’t just throw a tarp over it if they were so worried about being seen. Great level, but ultimately, not so amazing that it justifies the gold medal requirement.

There was a way around this, of course. You could just put in a code. There were so many secrets in this game, that I’m still not sure Lucasarts has given them all up yet. They waited nearly a year to give us the Naboo code, which opened a Naboo Fighter that you could use on any level (that didn’t require an airspeeder) and kicked all the other ships’ collective asses. You could also unlock the Millenium Falcon (which was great, since it was sitting in the ship selection hangar the whole time, sneaky pricks) and a TIE Interceptor. If you didn’t want to use codes, beating enough levels would allow you to play previous missions with alternate ships, often lessening or increasing the difficulty, depending.

Well, I’m into the 1,500 word range, so let me get through some of this, eh? I should point out that the sound was the best representation of the Star Wars license on a console. (PC gamers had the X-Wing/TIE Fighter and Dark Forces series’ under their belt, the bastages.) You honestly came to fear the whine of TIE fighters in the distance, and a quick fly-by of an AT-AT gave you a sample of those horrendous cannon blasts that were the demise of many a Rebel. The control wasn’t the best at the default, but there were so many options for button set-ups, barrel-rolls and cockpit views that little was left out. If you could hold a controller, there was a configuration for you.

Essentially, this was the Star Wars game to own.

Counterpoint: All right, it’s just a shooter. It may not be on rails, but the areas you fly in are certainly limited, as is the draw-distance. The ability to use the 4-meg RAM cart is nice, but high-res just means that you can see exactly how close the horizon is. The voices are almost all knock-offs, and as I said before, the bonus missions weren’t really worth all the effort you put into opening them.

Also, what the hell is up with the Naboo Fighter being so powerful? It’s only about fifty years older than the ships available from the original trilogy. And while everyone loves that you can fly the Falcon, the lumbering beast is relatively useless. It can’t shoot straight ahead, so you have to face either the top or belly at the target and pray the turret gunners are able to hit it for you. And unless 3PO and a Jawa are manning the guns and smoking some serious herb, there’s no excuse for the pathetic accuracy.

I have also been told that the game is too slow. I have occasionally remembered to check this theory out, and I have found that there is a small amount of water held by it. The game definitely could move faster, but also, the perspective needs to be taken into account. Since we can’t actually feel any acceleration, and the air has little frame of reference by which to judge your speed, only by doing some dangerous ground-skimming can you see the true speed of your craft. And even here, you need to remember how much bigger your X-wing is than a person. An aircraft carrier may move really fast, but it’s so big that you don’t feel a lot of the speed. Now, stick your ass in motorboat and try to keep up with it, and you’ll see how much distance it eats up.

Lastly, the dogfighting is primitive. A bus driver with a hangover could out-fly these guys, without his contacts in. So to throw in a little more challenge than the pattern-driven drones they populate the levels with, occasionally you’ll get an Interceptor on your tail that is almost impossible to shake. Since every ship in the game breaks all laws of physics regarding flight in an atmosphere, a discourse on the incapability of these pursuers actually staying with you is only pointless from the perspective that we’re talking about a Star Wars video game, so I’ll just say; thank whatever gods you pray to they decided to include homing missiles in the game.

Unnecessary recap: Buy this game now. If you haven’t already purchased it, the new price of under $10 in some places is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. Wink Martindale is screaming at the top of his lungs right now, and if you don’t buy this damn game, you’re going to put him in his grave. And nobody wants that on their conscience.

Next time on the Morgue, I’ll likely be speaking at great length about how wonderful my Gamecube is. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Posted: 12-17-01