So...close! Not...
Title: 3D World Runner
Year:1989
Developer: Square
Publisher:Acclaim
Genre: Action
Everybody knows who Square-soft-enix is now a days, but back in the days before Final Fantasy, Square released their first US title, 3D World Runner. At a time when 2D side scrollers ruled the NES, Square decided to break away from the norm, creating the first 3D game for the NES. By pressing Select, it would enable its 3D mode, and though I haven't gotten the chance to give it a try, but it's still impressive that Square's programmers could enable it on the NES.
When you first start playing, first thing you notice is the forward scrolling setup, your character, Jack, pops up from in front of the bottom info display, your first clue that this game is something pretty out there. The checkerboard world gives an awesome perception of depth. Could you imagine popping this cart into your NES back in the late 80's to be greeted by such an awesome game. Hell, even I'm impressed. The enemy's pop into view, growing larger as they get closer to you. Running left and right does give the impression of depth by the way all the enemies and obstacles move around on the screen.
There are various power ups ranging from rockets, potions that allow you to take more than one hit of damage, and temporary invincibility. Mushrooms are instant death items, and somehow I think Square was poking fun of Mario a little bit.
The bosses in the game are basically all the same, with small differences in their looks, movement patterns, and defensive strength. The boss battles are also where the games changes a bit. Instead of running around, you're flying around on the screen to shoot at the boss. It can be a bit tricky to judge the distance of the boss to the screen simply because it is technically a 2D game pretending to have depth, but the bosses aren't all that tough. More likely, you'll run out of time on some of the tougher bosses.
The games difficulty goes from "Ok I got this" to "Are you fucking kidding me" at times, especially once they throw in things like pillar hopping. Now see, this is where this whole psuedo-3D thing starts falling apart. The game has you jump on top of pillars. 2D sprite pillars. You'll either slam into them George of the Jungle style, or fly right over them. It's almost hit or miss whether you'll land on them or not. It gets even worse in the last world, that decides you have to jump on top of the red cacti instead of pillars.
I should also mention the catchy music. While it isn't anything incredible, and I doubt it really shows off what the NES is capable of, it's catchy, and I found out it was also done by Nobuo Uematsu, who would later create some pretty awesome music for Square in the Final Fantasy games for years to come.
I read that a lot of people see 3D World Runner as a rip off of Space Harrier, and I can understand why that would be. I read an article that said that Square wanted to make the game to show off their programmers ability (for making the games 3D red/blue system) and that they admitted to liking Space Harrier as well. So even though it's similar, I think 3D World Runner may be more of a homage to Space Harrier, since 3D World Runner does have its own uniqueness as a platforming game.
When you first start playing, first thing you notice is the forward scrolling setup, your character, Jack, pops up from in front of the bottom info display, your first clue that this game is something pretty out there. The checkerboard world gives an awesome perception of depth. Could you imagine popping this cart into your NES back in the late 80's to be greeted by such an awesome game. Hell, even I'm impressed. The enemy's pop into view, growing larger as they get closer to you. Running left and right does give the impression of depth by the way all the enemies and obstacles move around on the screen.
There are various power ups ranging from rockets, potions that allow you to take more than one hit of damage, and temporary invincibility. Mushrooms are instant death items, and somehow I think Square was poking fun of Mario a little bit.
The bosses in the game are basically all the same, with small differences in their looks, movement patterns, and defensive strength. The boss battles are also where the games changes a bit. Instead of running around, you're flying around on the screen to shoot at the boss. It can be a bit tricky to judge the distance of the boss to the screen simply because it is technically a 2D game pretending to have depth, but the bosses aren't all that tough. More likely, you'll run out of time on some of the tougher bosses.
The games difficulty goes from "Ok I got this" to "Are you fucking kidding me" at times, especially once they throw in things like pillar hopping. Now see, this is where this whole psuedo-3D thing starts falling apart. The game has you jump on top of pillars. 2D sprite pillars. You'll either slam into them George of the Jungle style, or fly right over them. It's almost hit or miss whether you'll land on them or not. It gets even worse in the last world, that decides you have to jump on top of the red cacti instead of pillars.
I should also mention the catchy music. While it isn't anything incredible, and I doubt it really shows off what the NES is capable of, it's catchy, and I found out it was also done by Nobuo Uematsu, who would later create some pretty awesome music for Square in the Final Fantasy games for years to come.
I read that a lot of people see 3D World Runner as a rip off of Space Harrier, and I can understand why that would be. I read an article that said that Square wanted to make the game to show off their programmers ability (for making the games 3D red/blue system) and that they admitted to liking Space Harrier as well. So even though it's similar, I think 3D World Runner may be more of a homage to Space Harrier, since 3D World Runner does have its own uniqueness as a platforming game.
Yeah, I cut out the bit showing how to enable hard mode, but I like this ending more.
Rating: B+
Difficulty: 6/10
Completion Time: 3-4 hours
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