So let’s start with the numbers and get those out of the way, it’s probably going to be one of the shorter sections, though I might combine a few numbers, like P and Q together because I’m guessing I don’t have a ton of Q’s.

7 Wonders Duel (And Pantheon)

This is the two player version, the way it should be done of 7 Wonders, in fact, 7 Wonders no longer lists itself as a 2-7 player game, but a 3-7 player game, because the 2 player game in the original 7 Wonders wasn’t that good. In this one you are still drafting cards, but you are doing so from a layout of cards on the table, as you draft cards, you unlock other cards to be drafted which you can then put in and will help you build your wonders and score points. The differences aren’t a ton, besides the layout of cards to draft from versus a hand of cards, but there are two main ones. If someone gets every different type of science card, they win the game. If someone gets enough military power, they win the game. Otherwise, it comes down to points at the end of the game. I like how that little twist is pretty clever because it means that you can’t ignore military completely and you can’t ignore science completely, which is a bad plan anyways.

Status: To Be Played

The 7th Continent

This is a massive adventure, exploration game where you wake up on the 7th Continent and you are cursed. You need to go around and deal with the story elements that you find on the land in order to break the curse. This game takes up a lot of table space and has an okay written rule book. It, like the one above, is one that I need to play. I have messed around with it a little bit, but I haven’t dove into the game play fully. It has an interesting mechanic where you are pushing your way through what could be considered a health deck trying to get successes to complete challenges, but if you hit a curse, it resets it, and you hit it a second time you are dead. So you need to balance that push your luck and hope to find everything you need. But to solve the curses you are always exploring the same continent. From what I’ve heard, the first curse should be played or attempted a couple of times, and it’s very long, because it tries to get you around the whole continent. And even if you don’t beat that first one, then move onto the shorter ones.

Status: To Be Played

8-Bit Box

This is another too be played, I’m so bad at this right now. I picked this one up because the concept is such an interesting idea. This game basically gives you four different games. They are all kind of based off of 8-bit video games that you’d find on a Sega System or NES or SNES. The game components are used across all of them, with just some specific components for each game. It’s a clever idea that seems like it’ll bring some nostalgia when you play it, but it’s also clever because of how it manages to reuse so many of the pieces. There is an expansion for it as well, but I want to play what’s in the main box before I get the expansion and get more games for the system.

Status: To Be Played

Which one should I get to the table first, I’m thinking 7th Continent, but I could probably get 7 Wonders Duel easily to the table as well? What is your favorite of the games on the list?

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Now, I don’t have the same nostalgia that a lot of people my age would towards Jurassic Park. I didn’t grow up watching those movies, but as an adult, I’ve enjoyed going back and watching them and have seen Jurassic World which I liked as well. So, has that colored my view of the game? It’s possible that I might enjoy it as well as some because of that, but thus far, I’ve found the game fairly entertaining.

Let me say that I’m not that great at these older games. While most people probably have few issues with them, I have plenty of troubles trying to aim the gun and just navigate through the world. Doesn’t help that I don’t remember where anything is in the world either. But even with that, this has been a fairly fun game. You run around zapping, tranquilizing, and shooting with grenades(?) various dinosaurs. And you get facts about them as you travel around which can be helpful.

The goal of the game is to escape the park or at least get the park back to normal enough that you can escape, and again, I haven’t done well at this objective. I tend to do better a finding the eggs than anything else, because that’s one of the side  quests, finding dinosaur eggs. Really, my goal of the game is to zap dinosaurs, but I probably won’t do well beating the game that way. It feels like there isn’t enough direction to start the game as to what your goal really is, because you’re mainly just tossed into the world. They expect you to identify from your knowledge of the movie what is going on, and continue from there.

That lack of direction isn’t great in this game, because it’s generally open world so you can wonder far before you realize you’ve probably headed in the completely wrong direction and are just running away from T-Rex for no great reason. So that is a fairly major knock on the game because it is  a top down view and you’re wandering through the world, fleeing dinosaurs and such, it means that you can really do nothing in the game for a while. I will say that I had to look on Wikapedia to figure out what the main plot and goal is actually supposed to be, and I still haven’t found where I need to go exactly, because I’ve been fleeing from dinosaurs.

That said, being able to zap the dinosaurs and take down the small ones is a fun time. I probably should feel bad about killing such majestic creatures, but then again, they are trying to eat you. If I was better at aiming the cattle prod, that would make it easier for me to get through the game, but I’m not great at it. The one thing that I haven’t figured out to do and I’m not sure if it’s possible is figure out how to cycle through your weapons as you get them. I’m pretty sure that you just pick up something, use it until it’s gone and you get back to using the zapper. The downside to this is that you need the electricity from the zapper to open up some gates and move a bridge across some water so you end up wandering around some more looking for dinosaurs to use your ammo on. I’ll probably research that to see if I can swap weapons, but if you can, it isn’t intuitive.

Finally, another downside to the game is going into buildings. I realize that the top down view isn’t the best for inside a building, but going into a “goggle” view, since you don’t just have a pure first person view of the whole screen is annoying. The controls are fairly touchy, and while you only have straight ahead to shoot a dinosaur who might show up in front of you, it might take a little bit to get your aim actually right. I would prefer if they had just kept it down and used some sort of fog of war or a view where you could only see the room you were in, instead of changing it to first person.

So, is this a bad game? I don’t think it’s a bad game, because, like I said, it is fun shooting the dinosaurs, and exploring is fun as well. That said, the game needs more direction from what it gives you and while open world can be fun, this is too open for the type of game that it is. I would say, give it a try and give this game a rating of Play on the (Buy/Play/Pass) scale, but it is fairly close to just being a pass. Again, not a bad game, but not great as well. I’ve sat down and played it a couple of times, and I’m sure I’ll play it more, because of zapping dinosaurs, but I’ve played better games for Cartridge Capers and better ones even based on movies for Cartridge Capers.

Have you played the SNES Jurassic Park game? Did you like it? Or did you mainly just find dinosaur eggs like me?

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The game itself is a side scrolling game, but I would call it a fairly easy side scrolling game. There are a few things that you have to figure out with the game, but most of it is intuitive and there are a few fun things. The best part is that when you get a whip, you can use it in certain spots to swing over dangerous areas of swing through water. The speed of the side scrolling and your ability to deal with things pops up means that unless you’re not paying attention, you’ll probably be able to avoid most things.

One of my favorite levels thus far on the game is running from the boulder. With the boulder, there is a fair amount of luck involved as it is rolling after you and you are trying to avoid being squished. However, because you are running so close to the right edge of the screen (going right), you can’t see everything that is coming up, so you almost have to learn where the dangers are so that you can jump at the right times. Now, you probably won’t ever do it perfectly, but you can start to figure out when you might have to jump and what to look for. They only have the traps or monsters along the bottom of the screen and when it’s level. So it took a number of times to make it through it, but it was a blast trying to figure out exactly how to make it work.

Beyond the actual game play, which I like for it’s level of difficulty, there are some other interesting things. It really leans into the story with cut scenes in the game that are movie stills and then text showing up. That’s a fun feature to the game because you do get that story as compared to some of the other games where it just takes you from level to level. The fact that is part of the movie also makes it fun and makes it feel more thematically tied into the game. Add in a few voice acting cameos from Harrison Ford and Sean Connery there is a nice nostalgia to the game.

So, is this a game that is worth checking out? Grading this out, I would say that this game is a PLAY on the scale of buy, play, or pass. There’s a definite nostalgia to Indiana Jones that makes it really enjoyable and makes me glad that I bought it, but when thinking about it as compared to other side scrolling games like Super Mario Bros., Indiana Jones just isn’t as iconic a game for the genre. If you’re an Indiana Jones fan I think that this can definitely be a buy for you, but generally, I think it’s a fun one to play, and I’ll definitely get back to it, I’m still grinding through Final Fantasy.

Have you played this game back in the day or even recently? Have you tried any other Indiana Jones games, like the one for the NES which sells for around $120 now?

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Mortal Kombat is one of the classic fighting games. You are going through a tournament trying to become the greatest fighter. With my skill level thus far at the game, I am far from the greatest fighter. However, games like this are fun to sit down and play, because I’m not that good, but I can button mash and sometimes accidentally stumble across a special move.

Mortal Kombat featured unique ways in which special moves were performed, being the first game to introduce special moves performed exclusively using the joystick. Most special moves were performed by tapping the joystick, sometimes ending with a button press.

As the Mortal Kombat Wikapedia link talks about, these special moves are what make characters that otherwise fought basically identically seem different. Since I’m playing with the Retron system with a Super Nintendo, I am going to have to learn the special moves myself. I was able to figure out a throw, and then immediately forget how that worked.

Like I said, one of the things that I like a lot about this style of game is the ability to just sit down and play it. It isn’t anything all that difficult to learn, and while the special moves require knowing how to do them, you can still get a fun experience from it. I’m also not playing this game on any sort of difficulty so that I can actually get through a few fights.

It’s a game that will continue to get more play and a game that I’m going to actually glance through the manual that game with the game. Another game that I picked at Heroic Goods & Games in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I got this one as part of a sale, I think it was minimum 10% off for the sale, and roll a D20 (twenty sided die) to see if you can get a higher percentile off, I am pretty sure I got 17% off. The game cam with the box and with the manual. So I flipped through it just to see what it looked like, but it’s probably going to be one of the spots to really get the story of the game. Since it’s basically just a fighting game, they don’t have much in way of story development in the part of the game that I’ve played. However, in the “attract mode” screen, the screen that plays in arcades or while the video game is waiting for someone to play it, it does tell some of the story. The Wikapedia article has some more about the story.

One final thing about this game, it uses screen capture for actual actors in the fighting. I remember this from some video games like Return to Zork that I played on a computer, but on a gaming system like the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) they don’t look as good. This was something that I always found interesting in games how they would use them sometimes just for cut scenes. But when they would blend them into the game it was generally an interesting choice. It works in a game like this as it stands out from the standard graphics for NES/SNES games.

I’m trying to figure out how to wrap up these articles on the Cartridge Capers. Normally I’d give it a grade, which I think I’ll do, but do classic games like this need a grade? I’m going to ask if people have played the games, but it feels like there needs to be some sort of metric as I play through more common/well known games now, but will eventually end up playing more obscure games, because I’ve picked up some random ones.

So, I think I’ll try this:

Final Thoughts on the Game

This is one of the classic arcade games, and while on the SNES it’s a little bit cleaner because they didn’t want the blood of the arcade version, it’s been a fun time playing it. Along with the likes of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat is a classic fighting video game and there’s always going to be a spot on my shelf for games like it because of the nostalgia factor, even though I didn’t grow up with a gaming system. They were the games that had that “attract mode” screen that was eye catching when you’d walk past it in an arcade or looked the coolest when you saw people playing them.

Game Suggestion: Own

So instead of doing my normal grading, I’m going to go with Pass/Play/Own. Own is the highest rating meaning that I think it’s a good one to have and keep in a collection. Play means that the game is fun and worth a play, but I wouldn’t go out hunting for it. Pass means that the game isn’t all that interesting to me or has some weird mechanic or annoying part to the game and I wouldn’t recommend it.

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