WedSNESday - SkyBlazer
In times where Internet wasn't a common household, games were bought according to the magazines and the picture on the box rendering them more a bet than anything else. In Europe the gaming scene then was full of imports Super Famicom games and Super Nes NTSC games.
Came with that the adapters, and there were loads of them. One official pal cartridge on the back, one on the front to bypass the lock technologies (and also to circumvent the odd american looking cartrigde)
There was a used game that I bought only based on the appearance of the sticker (which was a very common tactic to buy games as well) which seemed very cool to me at the time.Please do not use this tactic now that would avoid thinking Jet Ion GP on PS2 is actually a good game.
SkyBlazers a side scrolling action game from Sony Imagesoft but not just - there's also some mode 7 seven thrown in there and some pretty effects with rotation given that the game came out in early 1994 where the development for SNES had been fully mastered.
What comes out of this is an action game that gives you control of Garuda a hero and the skyblazer in search of Ashura the lord of war who kidnapped the sorceress Vishnu. Your search would be spread within 17 levels out of which some backtracking would be involved in order to fully develop its power and some level can be skipped.
It is a pretty easy game by any standard as 100 crystals give you one ups and every enemy drops either crystal or mana that can be used to trigger the different powers. It is not rare never to have usage of the several passwords you're receiving within the game as you're nerfed by the end of it.
Not challenging enough ? Probably but nevertheless there is enough to eat within the adventure and satisfaction of completing that one is actually quite high.The only challenge would be in some of the later stages bearing an element of puzzles really.
The bosses are all memorable and pattern based, which means that if you're not controller skilled there's always a way around to learn in what order you're gotta get pounded.
All of which within makes for an enjoyable experience, despite being quite short you're still going to sink in something around the 4-6 hours. Replayability would be only boss challenge based and you're going to try Speedrunning that one because the game lends itself to this practice.
For the effects presents within the game, all of them are present and accounted for, mode 7, scrolling, zoom it looks like somebody looked at the Super Nintendo promo VHS and decided to incorporate it within the game. ( Whilst I'm at it, it is easily find-able on Youtube so I recommend you give it a watch)
Sadly, SkyBlazer had been often ignored and has now fallen into a niche market whilst this should have been known. Has the game hasn't been released on Virtual console. As such the price has now being driven to $50 in its US release and up to $ 180 in its SFC version (price for the loose cart)