Greenalink reviews Penny's Big Breakaway #AD

Developer: Evening Star

Publisher: Private Division

Price: Roughly £24.99/$29.99, different platforms and regions may vary on exact price.

Filesize: 2.75GB

Website: https://eveningstar.studio/games.html

Penny's Big Breakaway is a momentum based 3D Platformer developed by the team who was responsible for producing Sonic Mania; arguably one of the greatest Sonic games in the year 2000s.

There is a plot which involves Penny participating an audition to perform her showcase but her cosmic Yoyo had a mind of its own and destroyed Emperor Eddie's clothes to only show his boxers with hearts all over it. Furious at their actions, he sends in the penguin guards to arrest her and it's up to Penny to get away from them and outrun the law. The plot is straight-forward but the lore is expanded visually as props seen in the level themselves. What really sells the game is a mixture of good visual design and gameplay mechanics.

The visuals are very colourful and has likable character designs to the point you wanna shout "I can't believe it's not Sonic".
Despite the game being in 3D, the levels have a linear approach with some mini-detours along the way to enter secret areas/find hidden hexagons, this approach is best compared to say Super Mario Galaxy where there is very limited camera control, but not a major concern as it works well 95% of the time, the natural shots does a great job, it's only an issue if you had to backtrack to pick-up a missing item as Penny is running towards the camera.  The worlds are diverse as it includes many themes including town, beach, lava, waterslide park, electric industry and a few others without spoiling the game.

The gameplay side is where things get interesting, first of all you can play the game in different ways depending on your controller preference as it could be either: shoulder + trigger + twin sticks or use a single stick and four face buttons. For me I used the trigger to rev up Penny's dash, single stick to move and face buttons to use YOYO and jump actions. The former seems to be the intended method as it takes full advantage of twin directions so it's possible to move forward and fire Penny's yoyo the opposite direction at the same time. That said, the latter method is still playable, especially if you're used to executing action commands with just the face buttons.

As a 3D Platform game, Penny has a variety of moves in her arsenal with the majority being mobility based rather than combat. In the air she can shoot her Yoyo in a direction as a short ranged attack, her other aerial options are clearly mobility as she can either perform a flip to gain little height, freeze the Yoyo in the air to act as a swing or air dash, the air dash is a move that requires good spacing as there are moments where an air dash can overreach the platform you're trying to land on only to fall down into a bottomless pit. On the ground, she can perform the whirl-swing, a spinning attack that has some use besides combat, mainly cutting grass for money or rotating giant screws to solve puzzles. Each world has an unique identity by showcasing a combination of interactables for Penny to use along the way, whether it's the palm trees to act like a human catapult or temporary power-ups to help increase her attack power to destroy tougher blocks, a hot wheel power-up to allow her to traverse dangerous terrain for a longer period and a whirlwind yo-yo to act like a single use helicopter blade to gain vertical height only to descend slowly afterwards.

The money you find throughout the levels has 2 uses

1. To increase your score combo multiplier by an extra +0.1
2. Buying temporary power-ups from Extra HP to UFO pickup to give the player an easier time dealing with tougher levels.

Nearly every main level has 3 big items to pickup and 3 NPCs to help out. The former is to unlock bonus star levels that are only playable by spending with big hexagons, there's 15 of them to unlock which is nearly an extra 50% of the main story's traditional platforming stages. The latter are more varied as it involves completing a task for the NPC with a fair majority involve collecting items, defeating enemies or getting a high score combo in-between point A and point B. Some tasks have a time limit and running out of time can lead to failure. The toughest task request in my opinion is getting a high score combo as the points Penny can earn can either be really easy or really hard depending on execution and/or the layout of the level to help extend her combo. The reward for helping the NPCs is giving Penny a bigger bunker bonus score after completing the level, if the player gets a high enough score, they can unlock the bonus scrapbook image as a reward. These bunker bonuses are very vital if you want to get them all.

One interesting note as I was playing through this is the low enemy count. Unlike many other 3D platforming games, there's probably no regular level that has more than 10 killable enemies, though a fair majority of them have penguin guards that will try to catch Penny and take her away (along with losing 1HP). They're not as annoying as it sounds because they tend to patrol a certain area and are not fully persistent to chase you to the very end. She can shake them off easily by executing tricks.

Music is a section that is very well done, with the tracks composed by Tee Lopes and/or Sean Bialo, the melodies are mostly up beat with a high tempo. Town theme which is the first world even gets an act 2 style remix much later on in the game. The beach style track slows the tempo down to a soothing vibe, sadly that theme is only used for two levels. The bosses are intense to listen to, most notably Mr Q which you can listen to below.

The boss fights are puzzle based, whereas Sonic games usually involves spin jump attacking the enemy's body, this one takes advantage of using assets found in the level to exploit the bosses' weakspots. One boss battle for example is Mr Q where his gimmick starts off with the classic tennis rally sequence where you return the ball back to the sender but after that, you have to shoot one of his head orbs into a 1 of the 6 pool table holes. This sequence repeats itself 2 more times with a tougher rally sequence and more head orbs to put into the pool table along with extra traps to hinder the player's progress.

During my time playing the game, there were some gameplay issues that were fixed in a later update. The most notable fix is a boss where you have to race against your puppet clone, some parts of that level had some questionable respawn locations as once Penny fell into a void, there was a good chance she will respawn up in the air, giving the player little time to react before ending up losing another HP. Another bug involved fighting against the giant penguin boss where pausing the game during the super slo-mo just before/after getting a hit retained the effect, even after resetting the level and the only way to disable it was to go back to the level select screen and reselect that stage, I tried it again on the latest patch and that got fixed as well. This is what makes reviews tough as my experience can be considered to be outdated sometime in the future as newer players will be playing on the latest build... unless you are on PC and know a way to downpatch it.

Overall, the game is a mixture of easy to play yet hard to master at the same time. It's one of those games where a perfect run requires a lot of dedication like trying to pull off a massive score in just 1 combo when playing Tony Hawk games. I'd suggest that you should play this with sticks that doesn't suffer from drift issues as it can lead to unintentional problems when executing stick input for bunker bonuses and in other cases trying to keep the stick in neutral to allow her perform a peel out (think of it as Sonic trying to rev up a spin dash), just don't expect your first playthrough to be a breeze all of the time as some parts can be challenging.

Big Breakaway

Colourful visuals with great character designs

High Quality soundtrack

Surprisingly lengthy levels with the average being 8-10 minutes for a blind playthrough.

Movement looking slick if done correctly.

Big Yo-yo fraud.

 

Movement has a learning curve which is a nitpick negative as using the wrong type of jump follow-up can lead to doom.

No accessibility for landing prediction (jumps can be hard to judge where to land sometimes)

Limited camera controls, notably bad when backtracking.

Rating: B+

Review code provided by Private Division.
Platform: Steam
#AD added to the title to follow the UK rules by the ASA..

#AD Thrustmaster Eswap X Forza edition thoughts.

A mini review on the eSwap XR Pro controller product.

This post is marked as an #AD to follow the rules from the ASA here in the UK as this controller was provided to me from Thrustmaster.

It's a limited edition release based on the eSwap X model which includes a 1 month coupon of free Xbox Games Pass Ultimate and a new module to insert into a main slot, the racing wheel module.

Now personally I don't play many realistic themed driving games such as Burnout, Forza, etc but I had a few in my Steam library to take advantage of, mainly Dirt 3 Complete edition.

By inserting the wheel add-on to the top left slot, it has its logo not facing upright despite the boxart clearly showing it having the logo upwards. Like many wheel related controls, the steering wheel itself will reset into neutral when left alone.

Context: Look at the wheel's logo that is attached to the controller and the one that is on the box art. 

As it is based on the older X model, it uses the older style USB cable, not type C as seen on the eSwap S controller.

 The racing wheel module extra replaces two suitable alternative analogue sticks that have a different metal pole height when compared to the default sticks that were already connected to the controller.

So I tried using my thumb on the edge of the wheel and rotate to turn my car and it strangely works, I could start turning the wheel from any position and the wheel add-on will stop going further (so don't expect full 360 spins) indicating that I've hit max [x] value on a certain direction.

The add-on isn't just for driving games.

It can function as a pseudo-spinner for retro gaming too. I tried this out using the MiSTER FPGA. 

The success of using the wheel varies from game to game. The main rule is that games with less buttons tend to have an easier time for optimal play.

Arkanoid: The current settings on the wheel doesn't have the perfect sensitivity. It's probably better to play the game with a slower ball speed settings.

Forgotten Worlds: Capcom's first arcade game to use the CPS-1 board. It's a shmup but the gimmick is that your player can rotate 360 degrees to aim. This wheel controller does it pretty well and only a single action button which is used to fire makes it possible to bind the controls to a comfortable layout with LB/RB as the firing button, D-pad in either top/bottom left slots to move and the wheel in the right side slot to aim your weapons.

Midnight Resistance: An early run n gun game with some resemblance to Contra where the player has powerful guns but in return can die in 1 hit, the main gimmick is 360 aiming rotation which allows the player to aim backwards or crawl and aim at any direction. This one doesn't work as well as Forgotten Worlds and the fact it requires 2 action buttons (Jump and Fire) makes it a bit harder to get an optimised control layout. 

Hang On and Outrun - Partly based on the Sega System 16 arcades but with super scaler effects. This wheel setting does make it easier to get a certain X value when steering left/right giving it a true analogue feel.

Eco Fighters: A CPS 2 side scrolling shooter that's similar to Forgotten Worlds in terms of controls. The rotation control on the wheel makes it naturally easier to operate the cannon in the correct direction, especially if it is currently placed below the ship. You get various powerups including a spike ball which becomes huge by charging up the weapon before firing.  Optimized controls had the D-pad placed to the lower left side, racing wheel to the right side and RB mapped as the firing button.

The Japanese SEGA Mark III (Master System in the west) had some games that either required or supported the Paddle Spinner as a controller. I've tested 4 games and they're actually work very well. Galactic Protector and Alex Kidd BMX Time Trial stood out for being obscure spin-offs to popular IPs from the mid-1980s.

Galactic Protector has Opa-opa circling around defending a planet by destroying asteroids/meteors. It's a straight forward arcade game aiming for the high score.

Alex Kidd BMX Trial, a japan only SEGA MARK III game where you use the spinner to adjust his steering direction. 

Megumi Rescue, is a game that's technically a port of the arcade System E build of the same name, one notable difference is that the screen's orientation is horizontal rather than vertical (TATE mode) which means it requires the camera to pan upwards/downwards depending on the player's positioning. It's an interesting take on the Arkanoid's paddle and ball genre.

WarioWare: Twisted! Is a hit and miss with this wheel module. One of the reasons is that it's very sensitive, a lot more than the Arkanoid arcade games. The other reason is that, the input going to the other direction feels odd, like during the arm pumping microgame, if you "steer" to the right to pump his right arm for 2 seconds, the game wouldn't accept the other direction's input unless it is held for two seconds to pump his other arm. Lastly the gravity theme microgames aren't really suited for the more complicated challenges such as the Stumblebot's many micro-adjustments as you're unable to look at the screen's adjusted rotation(s).

While the add-on may lack the gears and probably the pedals from the more expensive big steering wheel sets, it does have the utility of being a suitable control method for certain arcade games from before the year 2000s.

The add-on is available to buy separately for the recommended retail price of £27 which is compatible on previous eSwap X and eSwap S controllers. If you have access to a retro device like the MiSTER, the ideal purchase combo is to buy both eSwap S and the wheel add-on if you want to experience a huge library of modern & retro titles that can cover both traditional controls and niche spinner games.  This combo costs £136.98 (RRP) from their website and while it does nearly cost as much as a premium spinner controller for roughly the same price, the eSwap controller method is far from limited to a few titles.

The new Forza themed eSwap XR bundle package is okay but notably pricey being £40 more dearer than the eSwap S + racing wheel combo with ability to have 1 more swappable slot. Personally, I wish that the X module gets an update to take advantage of supporting USB type C and a more up to date D-pad as this one had a hard time to input diagonals, mainly the upper right direction.

That's my thoughts on the controller/racing wheel module for now.

Greenalink reviews Gimmick! Special Edition (2023) #AD

Developer: CityConnection

Publisher: Bitwave Games

Price: Roughly £13/$15, different platforms and regions may vary on exact price.

Filesize: 204MB

Website: https://city-connection.co.jp/gimmick/en/

Gimmick is an 8-bit video game released far back in January 1992 for Nintendo Famicom in Japan and Nintendo Entertainment System only in Scandinavia, this was due to the fact the market in the 90s was a different era and found it difficult to release in other countries as the biggest western markets assumed it looked childish. 

The story is fairly straight forward, a girl gets a new present which is mistakenly looks like a toy. This green yokai creature called Yumetaro was given a lot of attention that made the other toys very jealous so they took her to a different dimension. It's up to Yumetaro to save her. 

Its initial release was a mixed reception, for starters it was given praise over clean visuals/presentation for an 8-bit game and complex audio tracks by Masashi Kageyama thanks to the addition of the Yamaha YM2149 PSG audio chip which added 3 more music channels (along with the base console's 5 making a total of 8 channels). These new channels were used for Sunsoft's signature bass sound which was later used for Inti Create's Blaster Master Zero trilogy from 2017-2021. 

On the other side of the coin, it received criticism for being released a year after the juggernaut Super Famicom over in Japan, to simply put there was less interest towards the 8-bit console than say the majority of the 1980s and brutal difficulty for both in game design and not supporting password/battery saves. 

Jump over to mid-2000s and beyond where the internet became more accessible to research hidden gems and it seems to have gathered a much more positive response. This is mainly thanks to the star projectile which can be used as either a weapon to harm enemies or a mobile platform to get to hard-to-reach places. In a way this is one of the earliest physic platformers before the domination of the indie market decades later.

The star is a wild mechanic, best described as a bouncing ball. The higher the height it has to fall down, the higher the launch after bouncing on the floor. The most common example is using it against the side of a platform from the peak of Yumetaro's jump to make the star bounce towards the player and use it as a mid-air stepping stone to reach higher ground.

 

Each level has a few secondary items that can be found from specific locations and drops from enemies based on score, these items can be stored to Yumetaro's inventory which can be used at any time by holding UP + hitting the attack button. 

You have bombs, a pink energy ball and a potion. The potion is straight forward, being able to heal up a few HP depending on max available HP at the time, next is the pink energy ball which goes at a pure horizontal direction, making it easier than a frantic star. Lastly, the bomb is the hardest item to use as it is tossed in an arc like a grenade and can explode directly or overtime. 

There's another type of item known as a hidden treasure which can be found in stages 1-6. They are worth a lot of points, usually enough to give the player a few extra lives but the real incentive is finding these treasures in all 6 levels to unlock the bonus 7th level and reveal the true ending. 

But the journey won't be an easy one, even if you don't go for all treasures for the true ending, for starters you usually have 2 HP most of the time and it will take a couple of tries to take out the mid-bosses/end of level boss as you need to pull off some precise star tossing. 

Fortunately, in 2023, the official re-release is probably the most accessible way to beat the game, with save states, load states and rewind, it's easier than ever before to redo past mistakes. There are only 3 save state slots which is okay and better than just having 1 but for diehard players, 20 should have been the minimum, it does sound a lot but having 20 enables you to have a save state at the start of levels 2-7 and right before the boss battle of levels 1-7, the remaining 7 can be used for practising tougher platforming rooms. 

The rewind only covers the last ~25 seconds which is okay for single screen adjustments but if you wanted to go back 2-3 screens earlier, you're out of luck. Comparing it to Nintendo Switch Online method, while that method is a bit slower, it does allow more precise rewinding, heck you could go back or go forward in the rewind timeline, for this game when you go back you can't undo the rewind.

If you want to play the game as if it was 1992 without the quality of life features, there's SERIOUS Mode which disables these tools but in return allows the player to unlock achievements for bragging rights, most of them are either obtaining a high score milestone, clearing a level, finding the hidden treasure and reaching both normal & true endings, because it lacks savestates/rewind tools, you have to beat the game at least twice to get all achievements. 

If you want to play the game at a high level, there is a speedrun mode which has its own livesplit-like timer, showing all of the stages, current time, level splits. It starts when you visit the map screen which does mean a bit of mashing is required to get an optimised run before you even start the main gameplay, ideally it should have started after the map screen but I cannot say whether or not that affects RNG in any way, it's probably done like that to make it comparable to Famicom speedruns that were done before this release.

Screen resolution is an upscale of a pixel perfect resolution so it does make the game look a bit skinny than say most standard 4:3 resolutions from that era. Chances of having a standard resolution are slim as one or both sides depending on the game mode are covered with info, for example speedrun mode shows both current splits on the left side and the personal best splits on the right side. 

There's extra gallery related content where you can read through both Japanese and Scandinavian manuals (spoiler alert, neither of them are using the English language), a front and rear shot of the carts. There is a sound test mode that is in-game unlockable by holding SELECT and pressing START.​

Overall, Gimmick finally gets a first proper worldwide release and the new tools does lessen the frustration of the experience, it doesn't mean it will be a cakewalk to beat it. The craziest thing is how tough levels can be solved with a creative and/or precise star toss to navigate some of the toughest platforming with ease.

The skill gap is very extreme like comparing it to a novice and a grandmaster playing Tetris The Grandmaster series, as the novice probably knows how to fast drop and clear 4 bars. whereas the other can clear rows with max falling speed and with invisibility curse on the blocks that were already stacked. For Gimmick, it's a game that will require a lot of practice to pull off every nook and cranny, don't be fooled by the very fast times such as normal ending in under 6 minutes as they are probably the most challenging 6 minutes in 8-bit gaming history.

One big saving grace for an official release is that it's not locked to an online only subscription service, and just to be clear this is not the 16/32-bit ex-Arcadia release that was out in the late 2020s, that one is only out in the arcades and doesn't look like that version will be ported to home consoles/PC anytime soon.

Sunsoft finest:

It's simple to understand but very hard to master gameplay

Visually clean besides the occasional 8-bit flicker and very catchy melodies thanks to the additional audio chip.

It's not £400 expensive, take that filthy eBay scalpers.

Sunharsh: 

As it is an 8-bit game from the early 90s, expect it to be unfair hard at times. 

No individual level speedruns support for the hardcore players 

No new content aka M2's Sega AGES style input such as a boss rush or a single button press to use/charge up a secondary item. 

Limited screen settings and no scanlines 

No input replay support to download and watch the best runs. 
Rewinding needs a bit of polish, it's only good for very quick undos but nothing else.

Rating: B

Disclaimer:
Key provided by Bitwave games.
Platform: PC Steam
#AD added to the title to follow the UK rules by the ASA.

Greenalink's mini review: Toaplan Arcade Shoot 'em up Collection Volume 1.

Disclaimer: The aim of this review is to focus on the games' quality of life features that were *officially* introduced in the 2023 release. 

Toaplan as a company has a reputation of high quality side scrolling shooters that were released from late 80s to early 90s and in 2023 some of these titles were given a re-release. 

The first volume contains four games and all share something in common, spray and pray your firearms and try to avoid getting hit.

The games from volume 1 include the following:

Twin Cobra (1987),
Truxton (1988),
Zero Wing (1989) and
Out Zone (1990)

Twin Cobra and Truxton are both vertical scrolling shooters, Zero Wing is a horizontal scrolling shooter and Out Zone is a top-down shooter, with the last not having automatic scrolling like the other three, it does encourage the player to keep on moving forward due to a draining energy meter that can kill the player when that energy bar reaches 0.

Now a fair amount of re-releases would just make a minimalistic effort by producing their own emulator to run the Toaplan roms and call it a day, but Bitwave Games decided to push it further.

For starters, it has a lot of visual options, including:
Frame size, scanlines, borders such as channel viz/music viz, tutorial and in-game stats.

There is also an extra bonus for two of the four games from volume one, a new widescreen option for both Twin Cobra and Truxton. With this option enabled, the player has more space to move around, but the enemies will appear instantly on-screen from the left/right side of the gameplay field rather than slowly appearing in-game by leaving the black border when using the standard aspect ratio method.

The third game: Zero Wing is a game that needs no introduction thanks to the infamous Engrish line "All your base are belong to us" that was first introduced in the Sega Mega Drive release to both Japan and Europe.

That's right, this meme cutscene doesn't appear in the arcade version and currently some users online were gutted to not see this in the original arcade version when the 2023 version was first released. 

But, the team Bitwave Games has updated the game as of March 2nd 2023 and added this remastered intro with better English translation ... other than that one line due to its old school meme legacy, I still prefer the Mega Drive version due to having a better music track as the tone of the melody changes the moment after the antagonist CATS leaves the conversation, still better than nothing.

All your memes are belong to me!!

One of the most notable changes when playing Zero Wing is the removal of the distracting red flash that occurs after destroying enemies, an adjustment I have no complaints about, giving it a notable advantage than say the Toaplan core on MiSTER FPGA for now.

So Twin Cobra, Truxton as base games have the optional widescreen support and Zero Wing "Arcade" version has a remastered meme intro based on the Sega Mega Drive release and the removal of the red flash after destroying enemies. What about Out Zone? After a quick look, there doesn't seem to be anything noteworthy. 

That's all the unique tweaks I've noticed so far. Now onto the general tweaks.

All four games from volume 1 have a very fast boot-up when launching the game via Steam that it makes you think it was a "quick boot rom from commercial emulator" but hitting the menu button brings up its own options in a flash without any animation delays, I already mentioned visual options earlier but there's a ton of gameplay options too.

New toggles for a very easy/less stressful playthrough can be done by reducing your character's vulnerability hitbox, giving it up to 2 extra HP before dying, rapid fire up to 30 presses per second, auto dodging where the character will automatically dodge most harmful objects by moving very slightly though it's not very useful in tight spaces, lite-bullet hell moments and non-projectile elements such as enemies.

Practising for a high score, 1CC, speedrun is very accessible, as the player can:
Create save states and then load them,
able to rewind gameplay up to 10-16 minutes which I tend to use if I just lost a life.
There is even a dedicated practice mode where you can select any level, spawn at any checkpoint with a selectable current weapon of your choice, weapon's power level and even a cycle counter which tracks how many times the player has cleared the game. While it doesn't sound like much, having the option to practice in nearly every segment in the game without resorting to save-state packs that were downloaded from the internet is a huge boon.

Assist toggles to make the playthroughs less stressful.

Practice menu to master every segment in the game.

The input latency is very good, while I don't have the tools to measure an accurate reading, it felt very instantaneous. This was tested on a PS5 controller wired, so your mileage may vary on the controller used to play this game.

That said, there are some possible improvements I would like to see in future patches.

1) Have visual arrows and buttons on highlighted menu options. Right now when you highlight them, you will have to read a text from the lower half of the screen to know what you can do to change its settings, but by having two arrows and a pushing button icon, should make it a lot clearer. It took me a while to figure out how to disable scanline/bloom effects in one of the games, but by using the D-Pad I was able to change it to a clean pixelated look as seen on emulators.

2) Background frame bugs, when both screen backdrop and overlay are turned off, changing the overlay to tutorial and then to a different option will automatically set the screen backdrop to option 2 despite being currently set at 0. I have to go to screen background and hit right to re-select option 0 for a pure black screen background. This bug doesn't happen when the game has been booted up with all background options set to off, it's only when backdrop has selected to 2 at least once for the bug to occur.

Backdrop bugs, background stars still showing despite being set to "off".

3) Stat text colours. This issue occurs in some games where important data such as "Red" "Green" and "Blue" used the incorrect font colour on display. I don't think it occurs in Twin Cobra.

Red = Grey, Green = Red,  Blue = Brown ?????

4) On the current version, starting up a game by using the practice menu disables in-game sound effects and only has the music playing, the only way to restore this is to complete a stage, dying doesn't work because you only have 1 life and no continues which takes the player back to the title screen.

5) Hitbox viewer doesn't make 100% sense at times. For example, at the end of the first stage in Out Zone has four robots, yet the third robot has no visual yellow hitbox. Despite this, walking up to that enemy can still kill you.

The third one looks suspicious.

Overall this is a great way to play these side scrolling shooters, accessible options for the newer players, dedicated practice tools for the purists to master every checkpoint with nearly any option available just to make their future 1CC runs a reality. It's not perfect as I mentioned some issues did occur when ing the games.

That said, the filesize for each game is extremely tiny in 2023 standards, which is great for the customer as they can play these classic games as soon as possible, but for certain players hoping to have unlockable content as seen in many other retro collections will be disappointed with this one as there is only sound test option unlocked by default. Simply put, adding unlockable gallery images would have made the filesize bigger.

Cunning Toaplan

Quality of life features

Low latency

Great version for practising

Toaflop

For players expecting "flashy" presentations menus with galleries, history videos, interviews, etc. This is not it.

Some minor bugs that can be fixed in later patches if it happens.

Review codes provided by Bitwave Games