Video Game Slush Pile: Uncharted Waters New Horizons

Last time I did my best to convince you that managing an airline via a gaming system that is now mostly confined to museums is a lot more fun than the latest murder simulator. Today it's back to the Super Nintendo for another forgotten classic. What can I say, I was never made aware of blast processing or how "Sonic's fast!" so I ended up with a SNES. What was lost in tiny spiny mammals of above average speed was more than made up in bizarre role-playing offerings such as our current subject. I was a big fan of "Pirates!" back on the Nintendo, so this seemed like a spiritual successor I'd get right into. Well, not exactly. Playing it again as an adult I can both appreciate the depth and shake my head at some of the more tedious elements that scared me away when I was young and more demanding when it came to electronic sixteenth century ship simulators.

Trade various types of wool! Engage in highly abstracted battles!

Reading the manual (Yes, I read game manuals and even derive enjoyment from said activity. I'm well aware that this makes me the hardcore 0.01% of Old School gamers) suggests that you're getting into a very demanding and gritty historical RPG. It's somewhat jarring when you actually start playing and are faced with various cartoony nonsense. You can choose from six different characters who each have their own storyline and goals, usually wacky stuff like finding lost continents, repaying tea debts and bloody vengeance against the murderers of your lover. All right, maybe that last one is a little less goofy. Either way, the colorful 16-bit presentation lends a certain whimsy to your floating rob/murder/exploit natives operation.

Let's be very clear: they are two different men.

Depending on your character choice you'll be pushed toward either exploration, trade or piracy and the game keeps track of your success in all three of these areas. This means you can treat the game as a sand box and just ignore whatever quest you're supposed to be doing, although it's definitely easier to just do what the game wants you to do. Exploration was my favorite type of game. The combat just didn't seem very engaging and trade is just mind numbing once you figure out a few good routes and have to repeat them over and over to gain gold. Adding insult to injury the character that's supposed to trade takes a bunch of loans where he promises to pay back 1000% returns on the initial investments. Maybe business isn't really his thing after all. Or totally is, if he pulls an ENRON.

Take one lousy galleon and everyone gets all pissy.

Exploring earns money either by discovering monuments, cultural items and exotic animals and returning the finds to a wealthy patron or mapping the world for a cartographer. There's a large and reasonably accurate map of the world to explore and it's fun to see what you'll uncover next. Once you get back home you can wow local cocktail waitresses with your amazing tales of adventure. Sadly, these women are firmly from the four magic phrases school of communication and also think it's socially acceptable to respond to a story of a penguin encounter with "Did it bite you?" No, but you can.

Wait until you see some of the "interesting plants" I've got back at my place.

Various storyline elements trigger as you gain fame and open up more opportunities. You might even get to meet with a ruler (they're all autocratic jerks, even the ones from Republics) and earn a royal title by appeasing the whims of inbred European nobility. The game keeps track of your "friendship" with the major nations and even let's you defect to another unlikable crowned head, an act that will probably make the game unwinnable for most characters.  

That's another somewhat surprising game element: some choices can totally ruin things. For example, I tried to low ball the price of a ship and the merchant was so offended he wouldn't deal with me again. On the plus side, you can invest in ports and grow their industry, even winning neutrals over to your nation. Money talks, let me put this Spanish flag up, etc.

Sounds awfully familiar.

The game had some "controversial" elements that, in typical wussy Nintendo fashion, were toned down (Gray blood, yay!). The churches were changed into the bizarre "Round Earth Society" and taverns are "cafes" where you might eat too much food and get a belly ache. It's gutless, but hardly surprising. We don't want completely marginal groups getting offended and creating massive free publicity, after all.

 

Charging backward with its brightly colored rear...so much like a human.

I still haven't beaten this game, although I'm pretty far into it. After I finish the exploration character I've been playing as I might try some piracy one more time, but selecting a ship and watching numbers go down isn't as awesome as it sounds. Don't even get me started on the dueling card game. It makes one long for the massive strategic depth of "War."

Graphics: Pretty standard 16 bit stuff, not even any token Mode Seven effects. A lot of the characters look like elves for some reason. The ships look like ships. Probably a bit below average, over all.

Control: Sailing the ship is easy and you can even use "auto sail" to cut out the tedium that even the game manual admits can easily crop up. The menus are a little confusing at first, but for the most part are decent. Combat is a turn-based abstraction, so nothing to say about that.

Depth: There's a lot of opportunities to dig deep into the game's economic engine, but that basic game play is actually pretty shallow, relatively speaking. It can really turn into a grind, although you're free to try something new at any time. Things like national loyalties and the individual wealth of ports are a lot less pressing when you're just playing an individual instead of running a country.

Overall: I didn't fall off the edge of the world.

 ...who are two different people.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Choose Your Own Adventure #2: Journey Under the Sea

After killing a witch for the final time and lifting the death curse I decided I'd stay with more of that single-digit goodness, this time with a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea knockoff. Amazing adventure, just add water. I usually don't talk about the copy I'm using, but I'd like to mention that I got stuck with the lame 2005 reprint that looked like it had been used as the only ball in a week long rugby tournament. In other words, it's not the good, old version, it just looks like it. Wonderful, haven't even cracked the cover (not like it needs it!) and I'm already prejudiced against this book. Plus, it's R.A. Montgomery, so I'm sure we'll be getting all his weird little trademarks, like anti-nepotism and an obsession with gliders.

Living under the sea: the solution to all of life's problems.

I'm an expert "deep sea explorer" who one day just decides to go take my wussy one-man submarine and find Atlantis. I mean, how hard can it be to locate something that probably doesn't exist? Yup, gonna go find a metaphor Plato used to make a point. No problem. Sadly, we don't get page after page of wet-brain ancient astronauts theorizing, instead it's just "yeah, I'm looking for Atlantis, so what?" I'm a man of action, clearly. Certainly not a man of thinking or doing research. 

If we make history "cool" and fill it with lies people will care about it again!

My personal sub Seeker, the obvious glider analogue in this book, is deployed from a research vessel. This is probably not even in the top one hundred ridiculous uses of tax payer money, but it's still pretty bad. I'm lowered via a cable into the darkest depths of the ocean. Then I'm told I've got this special anti-pressure diving suit that will allow me to leave the relative safety of the goofy dive-boat. As dumb as this is it's still better than "The Abyss."

I'm reminded this is the cash-in reissue, now with significantly worse illustrations, by the unbelievably stilted attempts to modernize the story by references to a "PDA" and the "latest microprocessors." Ugh. I leave the Seeker, maintaining radio contact with the research ship.Thankfully this revision is from 2005 or there would probably be mentions of taking pictures for Facebook and tweeting under hashtag AtlantisIsRealYOLO.

Technology and genital humor: combining them is not as easy as you might think.

I decide to cut loose from the line and head toward the ocean floor. Incredibly this suicidal plan is approved by the paper-pushers up above, suggesting they either don't fully understand the risks or just don't like me. So I'm descending into what Montgomery describes as a "canyon" but is presumably an undersea trench. We get exciting encounters with "bubbles" and a possible "grotto." Man, I can see why this whole "under the sea" genre got to be so popular. All the excitement of being wet, combined with slow movement and bad lighting. Yeah that's the good stuff. 

I decide to investigate a "round entrance." Really. Long, hard, tube-shaped object entering a wet hole. Paging Doctor Freud.

Imagine this, but in book format.

Anyway, through the entrance. I see what looks to my eyes like a dock, but probably represents the early stages of that kind of madness you get from a combination of crushing pressure, isolation, oxygen depletion and innuendo overdose. The searchlight attached to my sub isn't doing a very good job, so I get the choice to turn on the "laser." 

I hit the laser light and immediately get hit back with refined nonsense. There's a submarine that I immediately, somehow, recognize as one that got lost in the Bermuda Triangle a year ago! Did I mention the Bermuda Triangle is 2000 miles away! Whoa! Honestly, this is what should have been rewritten, instead of adding dated 2005 references to clash with the 1978 Sea Hunt nonsense.

And the main hatch is free of algae! What is going on!

I'm practically begging for the next entry to have a "The End" at the bottom of it.

The logical explanation behind the Bermuda Triangle.

I decide not to mess with the submarine. Instead, I keep going, finding the surface littered with strangely undamaged shipping. I speculate that Atlantis is capturing ships in the Bermuda Triangle and then taking them here. It certainly passes the Occam's razor test. I decide to get a closer look and am promptly murdered by sea snakes. There's even a loving description of toxins hitting the old "cerebral cortex." I'm told my life was "short and sweet." Yup, at least I'm gonna leave a beautiful corpse.

This is what my special diving suit probably looked like.

 

Yeah, I didn't get into this one. Putting the nautical equivalent of the bigfoot legend front and center didn't do this one any favors and the writing was surprising flat, considering we're in this underwater wonder world. Maybe I'll try it again when I get the proper original version. 

I regret nothing.

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.