Mortal Kombat II Super Nintendo vs Sega Genesis Showdown!

I was going to post this last month, but something crazy happened in regard to my SNES copy of the game. Now, I finally can. Click the link below to not only find out the bizarre reason for the delay, but whether our beloved Super Nintendo or the dastardly Sega Genesis version of Moral Kombat II is best!

https://classicvideogamereviews.blogspot.com/2026/06/mortal-kombat-ii-snes-vs-sega-genesis.html

Breath of Fire

Released in North America on August 10, 1994 and translated by Square Soft, and developed by Capcom,  Breath of Fire fears traditional JRPG action

I spent much of my early 00s college video gaming on the SNES, rediscovering my love for the system with a Dreamcast and a GameCube sometimes gathering dust on my shelf, and PS2 tearing up the sales chart. A good friend saw this and gave me a stack of his SNES games from storage, one of which was 1994's Breath of Fire, his name written on the cartridge in magic marker. I don't know why, but I kept that cartridge in a drawer for over 20 years and randomly decided to suddenly pull it out and play through the game in its entirety, just a couple of months ago. Should I have just kept Breath of Fire in the drawer?

Font of Fire

Some 90's RPG's have simple storylines, but many do not, and Breath of Fire falls in the latter category. In fact, it's probably easier if I just quote the back of the box: In a distant land, peace was maintained for thousands of years by a fearful dragon clan who could transform into powerful monsters. One day they discovered a goddess who could fulfill their every wish. Greed split the clan into dark and light dragons, each battling the other to win her magic. One member of the light dragons, along with seven of his companions, emerged to keep the opposing forces from destroying the world. Using six magical keys, they sealed the goddess into another realm. Centuries have passed. The dark dragons are destroying the land in search of the keys. When they find the keys, they will once again release the magic goddess. Light Dragon -- the time has come to draw your sword and fight for the future of your people. 

Uh...I don't know?

Deep thoughts, brought to you by Capcom and Square Soft

Obviously, you, the player, are that Light Dragon, Ryu. You've got to travel around the world, according to the above plot, while encountering, what do you know(!) seven companions from the land's diverse races of animal-like people, forming a party as you engage in turn-based battles to proceed through the plot and level up your characters. And what I found, early on, that holds true throughout the game, is that just about every aspect of Breath of Fire is very good.

Look, a very good view!

The graphics aren't quite elite, but the game looks great. The sprite-work and animations are very good, and the environments and backgrounds are...very good. There are certain expected standards when it comes to SNES RPG's and Breath of Fire meets them. There are even some cool touches, like special animations when Ryu starts to learn the bigger dragon evolutions. The character design is fun and memorable. All eight of the main party members are highly distinct, original, and charming. Again, overall aesthetics and aspects like the magic attack effects don't stun, but Breath of Fire does certainly get the job done.

RAWR

Likewise, the music doesn't reach the upper echelon of Super Nintendo RPG's, but it's still very good. It's like a lot of Capcom music from the SNES era: good, though not highly memorable, though perhaps a bit more memorable than some of Capcom's other work from this period. The overworld music in particular sticks, and has a nice autumnal flair, as does the overall game in general. The battle theme and the music for a few of the dungeons are also quite good. The sounds effects, meanwhile, get the job done.

Bout to "get the job done" against this crab

The gameplay also falls in with the "very good," not quite upper echelon standard. In that regard then, the pros far outweigh the cons. Breath of Fire's world is huge and fun to explore. Visiting new towns and discovering the diverse races of intelligent creatures who live across thiis world is also fun. Each of the seven new party members Ryu gradually meets and wins to his cause throughout the game are fun additions. Some new members are better physical fighters, some are better with magic attacks, some are better healers. The fighting engine here is finely tuned and feels right. There's nothing highly complicated. The player either physically attacks, uses magic (also sometimes to attack), or uses an item. There aren't any cool combo moves the characters can do together--the fighting engine is fine-tuned, but rudimentary--however, there are some cool twists late in the game. For instance, Ryu learns different dragon transformations, allowing him to turn into that corresponding dragon, and perform its distinct attack for every turn until the fight is over (unless the player chooses to revert back to human form).  One of the later party members can find and learn magic, which combines them with other party members in a fight or even out of one, creating one super-character in order to perform more powerful physical attacks. Again, this doesn't lead to combos--your characters just permanently meld into one (until the player chooses to revert), and can perform a stronger physical attack during fights.

"Fuse" lets you use everyone in one fight, but the little mole guy. Sorry, little mole guy.

WarHog, I got a feeling your whole family is going down

Those are some pros. There are some cons here, as well. The first are the dreaded RPG random battles, meaning that while the player is walking around on the overworld or in a dungeon, the screen will suddenly randomly go to a battle screen, and the player will be forced to fight. In Breath of Fire, random battles happen a lot...far too often. I unintentionally grinded so much due to the frequent random battles and leveled up so much (as in most traditional RPG's, the player gains experience points from winning battles, and levels up after gaining so many points, becoming stronger, getting more hit points, etc., the more leveling up is done), I rarely if ever struggled in any fight, even in the vast majority of the game's boss battles. I only died once, and that was my fault for multi-tasking during one boss fight and not paying total attention. An overabundance of random battles is certainly a feature of many RPG's from this period, but the best found ways around that, and unfortunately, Breath of Fire, for as good as it is, just isn't one of the best.

Pictured: the game, striking me with lightning for saying that

Breath of Fire's other major con is the sometimes opaque nature of its story progression. Sometimes, it's nearly impossible to tell what is supposed to be done next. A guide is almost a necessity. Likewise, a lot of the game's extra content, like finding special armor and weapons, is absolutely esoteric. I'm not sure how the player is supposed to figure out some of these things without help, and on top of that, the random battles make exploring to find secrets a bit of a chore. This confluence of cons is the game's worst factor.

Like being stuck in a random battle cave!

Thankfully, Breath of Fire contains enough extra touches of excellence to even out the cons and keep the game in "very good" territory. Like many games from this era that contain too many random battles (and some that don't), the player eventually learns a way to both fast travel (through warping) and quickly travel across the map (one of the characters learns to turn into a giant bird (SIDENOTE: Almost every character learns a special ability, like digging, or lock-breaking)). This makes exploring the map a lot more enjoyable. The time of day changes when the player is traversing the overworld, and this changes the goings on in towns (at night, people are sleeping). The side-quests, if the player can figure them out, are pretty fun. Each town in the game is well-designed and distinct, and the game features several of the SNES' common visual landmarks, like the SNES waterfall, as well as the SNES view from a high place (when the player reaches a mountaintop or cliffside and can see off in the background) and does them well. One of Breath of Fire's side-quests even involves that most pastoral of 90s video game side-quests, fishing. It's very good fun.

It is fun to fly around this giant map as a bird, high, where no random battle can hurt you

Dopamine doesn't get much higher than fishing in a duck pond at sunset near a waterfall in a SNES game!

Unless it is literally going under that waterfall to a secret passage at sunset!

There's nothing like a SNES RPG. I think a particular SNES RPG is the greatest video game ever made. I don't think 1994's Breath of Fire is the greatest video game ever made, but it is a very good, very fun entry in the SNES RPG canon, and I am very happy that I've played through it, even if the random battles and winding story stretched the gameplay out to nearly 100 hours. If you ask me, that's a bit too long. Then again, for others, it won't be long enough.

I didn't know if I would survive long enough in real life for us to beat them...but I did!!!

Graphics: 8.0/10.0

Sound: 8.0/10.0

Gameplay: 8.0/10.0

Lasting Value: 8.0/10.0


Overall: 8.0/10.0

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures

Released in North America on October 11, 1994 for the Super Nintendo by Lucasarts and JVC, and developed by Factor 5, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures recreates the globetrotting archaeologist's cinematic adventures with 2D side-scrolling action. 

Like most children of the 80's, my cinematic youth's landmarks are signed by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Star Wars and Indiana Jones operated on some heavenly plane far above the Earth of other films, only sometimes visited for brief moments by Back to the Future and the Goonies. Indiana Jones rested on top of the pinnacle of mighty heroes, the man every boy, or at least this man when he was a boy wanted to be. The heroic archaeologist was brave, adventurous, virtuous, but not too virtuous, too cool for school, but also the teacher, and most importantly, able to take a licking and keep on ticking. While 90's action stars like Steven Seagal were too immaculate to even take a punch, 80's hero, Harrison Ford, was getting the crap kicked out of him by huge Nazi goons (before, of course, getting in a few good punches, and outsmarting them), getting drug through the desert by a truck, REALLY, and I mean REALLY getting drug through the desert by a truck WITH NO CGI ASSISTANCE, and partaking in so much dangerous action that Ford literally had to staple his hat to his head to keep it from flying away. What a guy.

There he is

Of course, when Lucasarts announced they would be releasing a Super Nintendo game based on all three films' worth of Indy action, I freaked out. The Super Star Wars games Lucasarts had released were some of my favorites. Now, the greatest hero of all was going to be immortalized in 16-bits, in a 2D side-scroller, just as Star Wars' heroes were. Be still my beating middle-school heart.
However, it looked like a different developer would be working on this game for Lucasarts. While Sculpted Software created the Super Star Wars games for the Super Nintendo, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures would be developed by German upstarts, Factor Five.

Nothing Indy can't handle

I have 90's history with this game. My local Sears clearanced out a huge section of their SNES games to make room for Playstation, and the incoming Nintendo 64. They also had a demo Sega Genesis running Sonic & Knuckles at the time. I saw they were selling Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures for $20. I wish I would have bought it then. That's half of what I paid for it (in the box) recently. At some point in the 90's, I did rent it, and made it to the final boss, though I can't remember if I beat him or not. For some reason, 20+ years later, I just got the fever to buy it and play through it. Does it do Indy justice?

Run, Indy, it's my expectations!

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures looks good. It ran on the Super Star Wars engine, and those are good looking games, as well. Levels are colorful, detailed, and faithful to the aesthetics of the films. Indy himself is excellently animated, and it's a joy to see this gloriously 16-bit depiction of him running, jumping, and whipping around the world. Enemies are mostly well-rendered, as well. Special mention must go to the backgrounds. The original Indy films are famous for their incredibly realistic background matte paintings, which frankly put many computer-generated backgrounds of today to shame. The backgrounds for all 28 of Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures' levels are treated with equal love and detail. They're beautiful, and I died a few times admiring their distant mountain peaks, and bustling cityscapes.

Hey guys, can we stop fighting for just a second to look at these happy little clouds?

The music is also given great care, as each track is a meticulously rendered 16-bit interpretation of the themes composer, John Williams, created for the films. "The Raiders March," "Main Title: South Ameria 1936," "The Basket Game," "The Map Room: Dawn," and "Slalom on Mt. Humol," among several others are faithfully recreated, with all the glorious, warm, Super Nintendo textures you could want. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is not represented musically at all, and many themes from earlier in the game are simply repeated for the latter portions. Considering other Super Nintendo games released around the time of Greatest Adventures, i.e., Chrono Trigger, include more than 60 tracks, the fact that there is only a single digit amount of songs here, when the films include multitudes of musical cues, is inexcusable. Sound effects are great, with Indy's whip sounding exactly like his whip in the film, and some digitized speech, like Indy saying "Let's go!" at the start of each level adding an extra layer of immersion. The birds sound weird, though, and boy, will I get to those birds again later.

Let's, uh...swing away from that for now.

As far as gameplay goes, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures is a mixed bag. Factor Five have generally been known more for their technical prowess than game design. They were one of the only developers to get film-worthy sound out of the Nintendo 64, and their Rogue Squadron games look and sound incredible, but none of those games feature mind-blowing gameplay. Same thing here. Indy controls okay, his running, walking, and jumping movements feel right, and his trademark bullwhip handles like a dream. However, the crouch and roll mechanics feel a little off, which can be frustrating when those moves are needed in dangerous areas. That's a minor complaint, though. The more major problems with this game don't really lie in how Indy moves, but in the environments he moves through. As I've said, they look great, highly detailed, with stuff moving everywhere. However, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures falls prey to the same problems lesser 2D Castlevanias do.
Indeed, Indy's whip mechanics are quite similar to the Dracula-hunting series' weapon of choice, as Indy can swing from hooks, and like in absolute classic, Castlevania IV, strike with his whip in almost any direction. The problems come when Indy has to jump over one of the games many pits. Apparently, bio-diversity over pits is higher than in the rainforest, because when Indy's in mid-air over their depths, a previously unseen bird, bat, or rock will always strikes him from the sky...knocking him backward into the pit...and killing him.

A guy who can rip out a human heart with his bare hands? No problem. A two-pound bird with hollow bones? Insurmountable.

This is insanely frustrating, just as it is in the games I previously mentioned. Castlevania: Dracula X, which I just reviewed, is lousy with it. Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures does not at all need this cheap difficulty spiker. The player is forced to trial-and-error memorize their way through many of the game's levels, discovering where all the hidden airborne wildlife is. The game would have been just fine without this element. Sure, it would be a shorter adventure, but at least it would be more satisfying, less aggravating, and require more skill than repetition-ingrained memory. Also, this makes the game feel silly. Indy's greatest enemies should be Nazi's...not an unceasing horde of unladen swallows (and sometimes laden! I'm not kidding, some of them toss rocks at you!). Indeed, the parts where you actually fight Nazis are a blast, when you're also not being dive-bombed by pernicious birds.

Fighting a Nazi on top of moving tank #lifegoals Or, I guess I could fight a bird instead.

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures' weapons include the previously mentioned whip, Indy's fists (the punching mechanic is fun in theory, but Indy seems to miss when his fist is dead on just a few too many times), and at select moments, a gun with unlimited ammunition. The gun is weaker than the whip, but obviously has greater range. To highlight the scatterbrained level design, there are a few stages where Indy is given the pistol, or some health refuel (health in the shape of hearts is hidden around the levels) just as he's exiting the stage...which does him and the player no good. The game also features collectible jewels, or maybe gold balls, I'm not sure, scattered through each level. Collect 100, and in true Nintendo fashion, you receive an extra life. There are also some extra lives hidden throughout a few of the game's levels. The player starts with three, and is allowed three continues when their lives are expired. Each geographic area of the game, generally composed of 2-4 levels, has its own password, which the player can use to return when they've had a game over, or God forbid, turned off their SNES. This means that during a difficult, four-level area, if the player suffers a game over at the boss, of which the game has several, they have to start the entire area over. True to an old-school difficulty vibe, but annoying to modern gaming sensibilities. True to the films, a map is superimposed over images of Indy traveling from area to geographic area, when he completes the former, and a red line follows his progress.

Anywhere they don't have birds

On a production value level, the game features text-supported screenshots from the films that loosely tell their stories between levels, though these screens are not as impressive as the more interactive animated ones in the Super Star Wars games, as unfair a comparison as that may be. There are also three awesomely Mode 7 vehicle levels, one on a raft going down a mountain, one on a mine cart, and one in a plane. The first is thrilling, the second has its frustrations, and the third requires an exploitation of the frame to complete. If you'll remember, Mode 7 is a utilization of the Super Nintendo's highly touted ability to create the highly-pixelated illusion of movement through a 3D space.

In other words, it's basically a PS4 game.

Ugh. I love the aesthetics and vibe of this game. It captures a period of time where Indiana Jones and Star Wars, free of the Crystal Skull and prequel debacles, were unassailable. I looked at incredible console and computer games, lithographs, and other assorted Lucasfilm merchandise in the Lucasarts catalogue, under a blue, relaxed, puffy-cloud pocked sky. I read books by Timothy Zahn, and watched all my favorite Lucasfilm works, except for Howard the Duck, which I pretended didn't exist, on the USA Network. Life couldn't get any better. Looking back, though, underneath the dreamy vibe, Indy deserved a better 16-bit game than this. It's fun on a nostalgic, and dopamine-releasing level, but it's too flawed to be a classic like the films upon which it's based.


Graphics: 8.5/10.0

Sound: 8.0/10.0

Gameplay: 6.5/10.0

Lasting Value: 5.0/10.0


Overall: 6.8/10.0

Super Metroid

Released in North America on April 18, 1994 by Nintendo, and developed for the Super Nintendo by Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems, Super Metroid sends bounty hunter, Samus Aran, into the 2D caves of Zebes to hunt down the titular creatures.

Everybody's got that game: you spend hours upon hours on it, get close to the end...and then your save file gets erased. You slam the game back into the box, and you move on. Stupid game. Well, if that game is Super Metroid, you better boot it back up.

It's super! I wish Nintendo would have continued to title their consoles with superlatives. We could have had the Excellent Nintendo, the Incredible Nintendo, the Awesome Nintendo and the Magnificent Nintendo, the latter of which would have surely sold better than the Wii U. No confusion about what a Magnificent Nintendo is. It's magnificent!

My Super Metroid tale is twisted, but brief. The first Metroid for NES was too obtuse for me. I skipped the SNES one, though I did play it a little bit at Toys r Us. Finally, the greatest game of all time candidate, Metroid Prime, woke me from my Metroid stupor. That game blew my mind, and was a one-of-a-kind, personal experience. I then decided to break my Super Metroid fast. I picked it up for my SNES, and dove in, enjoying the experience on the same level I did Metroid Prime...and then, just before Ridley, right before the final portion of the game, my file was erased. Goodbye Super Metroid.

I guess I'll find some other planet full of life-force sucking jellyfish!

I don't know what recently brought me back, but I think it was a combination of Axiom Verge re-awakening those Metroid feelings, and me just missing the eight-years dormant Metroid series. Whatever the case, I booted up my SNES and dove back into the caves of Zebes. Super Metroid is awesome on such a fundamental level, reviewing it will be easily brief.

Even for me, though that means I'll have to cut my 28-paragraphs of remarks about the game's awesome weather effects.

Super Metroid immediately establishes the series' trademark feelings of isolation,. The opening cinematic, set to haunting, atmospheric music, catches the player up to speed with series protagonist, the heavily-armored bounty hunter, Samus Aran. After answering a distress call in a remote, lonely corner of space, Samus ends up on the planet Zebes. She finds that those dastardly Space Pirates are again experimenting with the terrifying, life-force sucking creatures known as Metroids, and only she can stop them. To do so, she must traverse the vast, environmentally diverse, underground caves of Zebes, fighting Zebes' antagonistic native life forms, and avoiding its spiky, often lava-filled perils. Along the way, she'll earn new items and abilities to help her in her quest.

Out of the mouth of madness. Did I mention the architecture in this game is awesome?

Super Metroid helped introduce the concept of exploring a large, 2D world, where gaining new abilities allows the player to explore heretofore inaccessible portions of the map. The map, which is accesible at all times, shows visited areas as pink, and unvisited as blue. The blue portions will tantalize all but the least curious gamers. Opening more and more of the map is incredibly satisfying--it's nuts that Nintendo was able to perfect this concept on the first try. While some other 2-D games following suit have been excellent, particularly those in the Castlevania series, they're all pretenders to Super Metroid. The map layout is incredible, and the terrain is so varied and full of well-designed, sometimes dastardly life, it's always a joy to explore. Samus' isolation (she doesn't run into a single other speaking character throughout the game) gives Super Metroid a meditative quality, an incredible feat given the game's high-octane action.

Teach me your ways, oh wise bird!

Samus can run at blazing fast speeds, and is given an ever more destructive arsenal to destroy aggressive alien life, as well as parts of her surroundings. The game encourages running and firing at the same time, and maps the weapons and Samus' expanding gamut of abilities to the controller with precision and excellence. Samus also has several inborn abilities that the game only shows to the player when Samus runs into some of Zebes' less antagonistic lifeforms. There's a section where the player learns how to high jump by watching a native bird-like creature do it, which is so fluid and intuitive, it is miraculous that at no point does the game actually spell out how to do it. There are even some abilities, like wall jumping, that take mastery to consistently pull-off, and yet aren't actually needed to complete the game. They're just welcome augmentations on perfection. The same goes for the game's dozens of hidden areas, which don't have to be found, but hold upgrades that give Samus a larger life meter, and more ammo capacity for missiles and bombs.

I'm coming for you, Ridley, you freaking pansy.

Boss battles are especially satisfying in their epic, cinematic qualities, with some bosses filling, or larger than the entire screen, and often having death animations or scripted moments that only make Super Metroid feel like the greatest 16-bit movie ever made even more. The greatest part is that these moments are only accessible because of your efforts. Indeed, Super Metroid never holds the player's hand and offers quite a challenge, in all of its alien-battling, lava-pit-jumping glory. Save points are generously placed around Zebes (the game offers three save slots), but not to the degree that the game is coddling the player. The aforementioned exploration isn't only encouraged, but also necessary. Sometimes, rolling into Samus' tradmark "morph-ball" form, and finding a tiny, bomb-able crevice, might be the only way to progress.

I'm gonna shove that tail down your throat, bitch. Er...sorry, my video game trash-talk isn't appropriate here. This is a family review site. I'm gonna shove that tail down your throat...sir?

Super Metroid features a very cohesive, beautiful, minimalist art style. The animations, particularly of Samus herself, as well as the game's mammoth bosses, are excellent. Gameplay is never negatively affected by performance issues, no matter how many of those trademark SNES explosions are filling the screen. The soundtrack is immersive and diverse, creepily ambient when it needs to be, and high-energy and melodious in its livelier moments. It's just perfect. It i's essentially, like the SNES-sharing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the archetypal perfect game. While the latter is THE isometric action-RPG game, Super Metroid is THE 2-D explorative action game.

Eh, now you do eventually plan to have Metroids in your Metroid game, right? *Five minutes later* Get them away! Get them away!!!

So if you've avoided Super Metroid to this point because you're too young, you're too old, you just missed it, or your save file got erased right before the end, and you're still angry, just play it. It's one of the greatest games of all time. The main mission may only take you 15-20 hours to complete, but it's a perfect 15-20 hours. There are seemingly hundreds of hidden items strewn around Zebes that you can collect afterward, and doing so will increase your completion percentage...which leads to a better ending. For completionists, or those who simply don't want to leave the orbit of FS-176, this essentially doubles the gameplay. I can't overstate it: Super Metroid is gaming perfection.


Graphics: 10.0/10.0

Sound: 10.0/10.0

Gameplay: 10.0/10.0

Lasting Value: 10.0/10.0


Overall: 10.0/10.0