Obscure & Underrated #2: Todd's Adventures in Slime World (Atari Lynx)

Something you often see people complain about on the internet is that "video games are easier then they used to be".  There's a lot of differing opinions as to why this is - too many tutorials, too much dumbing down, trying too hard to appeal to a broader audience, etc.  But in my mind, it boils down to one simple fact: modern video games are about simulating what it's like to be awesome and unstoppable, whereas old-school video games are about simulating what it's like to be in incredibly dangerous situations.

Take, for example, Todd's Adventures in Slime World.

The gameplay of Slime World consists of side-scrolling platforming through a series of rooms connected by shootable doors, a la Metroid.  As the name suggests, everything in Slime World is made out of slime - Todd can scale the sticky walls, and there are waterfalls and flowing slime walls to impede your progress.  Everything in the game - from the background to the game's logo - oozes and drips and pulsates with a life of it's own.  Instead of a health bar, Todd slowly turns green every time he gets slimed by an enemy.  If you turn completely green, it's game over, but if you find a freshwater pond to wash off in, you can restore yourself to full health.

As previously mentioned, Slime World is an extremely dangerous place.  Destroying most enemies causes a spray of green slime; get covered with too much, and you're dead.  Get sprayed with red slime, and you die instantly, even if shielded.  Also fatal are the underground Red Snappers, which require looking for tell-tale clues to detect. There are limited-use tools scattered around, such as a jetpack, purifiers that turn slime pools into life-restoring water pools, and my personal favorite, a bomb that blows up everything in the room (you throw it, then quickly run back out the door and watch it detonate).  Similar to a rougelike, the game takes careful planning and deliberation, and a session can take a couple of hours to complete.  Although there aren't any randomly generated levels, Slime World makes up for it by offering seven different "adventures", each one a different game mode with it's own rules, subtleties, and unique map layout.

Slime World was made for the Atari Lynx, an oft-forgotten handheld video game system that existed around the same time as the better-selling Nintendo Game Boy and Sega Game Gear.  Besides boasting full color, the Atari Lynx's biggest selling point was it's multiplayer; Todd's Adventures in Slime World could support up to eight players at one time. (Or so they claimed; I haven't been able to verify this fact, since no one has ever had eight Atari Lynx systems at one time)

Despite it's amazing graphics and features, Todd's Adventures in Slime World didn't find much of an audience, due mostly to the rarity of Atari Lynx (they were only sold at Babbage's, a computer store you could only find in malls back in the nineties).  There are Genesis and TurboGrafx CD ports, but somehow the scaling and dripping effects of the slime actually look better in the Lynx version.  The game was clearly a labor of love, and I sincerely hope that someday the game's creator will do a Kickstarter for a Steam version - imagine eight simultaneous online players in a side-scrolling randomly generated slime-infested nightmare!  ...Ah, well, I can only dream.

Obscure & Underrated #1: Trax (GB)

Nowadays, HAL Laboratory really only makes two kinds of games: Kirby games and Pokémon games.  So it may surprise you to learn that HAL was responsible for everything from Earthbound to Daydreamin' Davy to the excellent Adventures of Lolo/Eggerland series.

But today... today we are here to talk about Trax.

Trax released for the Game Boy in 1991, a year before the first Kirby game debuted, but right away the similarities are immediately obvious.  The spherical hero, the solid black projectiles, the four-pointed explosions - it's all classic HAL Laboratory.  But what sets this game apart from it's brethren is the gameplay.

In Trax, you play a tank that can fire in eight directions.  The A button rotates your turret and the B button fires.  It's nowhere near as convenient as the twin analog sticks of Robotron or Geometry Wars, but for the Game Boy it was pretty clever.  Various power-ups appear along your way, with a lot of them the shmup variety that toggle through different types before you pick it up.  There are four levels, each with mini-bosses and a gigantic boss at the end.

All that would still just be a pretty standard game though.  What really makes Trax worth your time is the sheer insanity of this game.  Bosses are huge.  Levels take place in Japanese villages and valleys, and nearly everything on the screen is destructible.  You fight tanks that look just like you.  You fight tanks that look just like you but are so big they can't even fit on the screen.  There's cut screens, showing beaten bosses chasing after you or blowing up.  My favorite is the first mini-boss - a helicopter with hands who throws his propeller at you like a boomerang.  It's the kind of creativity you'd expect in a game like Intrusion 2, except in pixelated black and white glory.

So there you have it.  It's a shame HAL has never returned to Trax... the tank's only other appearance was as a mini-boss in Kirby Super Star (tucked away in the Meta Knight level).  Too bad... the world could use more games like Trax.