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RETROspectives: Cheetahmen II part 1
Cheetahmen II is considered the unholy grail of the gaming world, it is plagued by dreadful gameplay and complete inconsistency between levels. Why didn't I start with Cheetahmen I? Mainly because the game doesn't as a stand alone game but as part of the huge compilation of games that was Action 52. This game is equally notorius and it's 52nd game was the first Cheetahmen game, we'll take a brief digress here first before discussing Cheetahmen II.
Action 52 was released in 1991 on the NES and SEGA Genesis (Mega Drive outside America) for the whopping price of $200! $200 for one game? Well in actual fact it was 52 different games but they were virtually all terrible games plagued with horrific controls and games that were either impossible to win or impossible to lose! We'll skip the first 51 games on the NES version though and go straight to Cheetahmen (this is the 13th game in the Genesis version). Cheetahmen is the only game with a story in Action 52 where the Gamemaster has been pulled into the TV and meets the Cheetahmen. The Cheetahmen say they will fight for the Gamemaster and as the game puts it: "And now the Cheetahmen". That's how the game begins and we never hear of the Gamemaster again but this complete abandonment of story is only the icing of the cake of how horrendous this game truly is!
The Cheetahmen cannot go into pits or water otherwise they explode into four yellow diamonds. The enemies often appear on the ground or the sky making hitting them almost impossible. The Cheetahmen can take about four hits before they die but don't expect a health bar (yet). At one point in the game a ladder appears on the screen, your first instinct is most likely to climb the ladder but that doesn't work. To climb the ladder and move the screen up you first have to move the screen fully to the right and move back to the left to climb the ladder! As i mentioned in the Hotel Mario post the level ends suddenly. Take Super Mario Bros as an example, to complete a level you jump on the flagpole, it's clear when you are at the end of the level but with Cheetahmen the level ends as you keep moving forward and fighting enemies. It will suddenly just say "Level 2"! There's no clear indication!
The level numbering is also a mess! There are two level 3s. That could be a simple mistake, right? We'll get to why I'm skeptical about that later (by the length of this so far it will definitely a later post). The game is notoriously dificult but the game does lend a helping hand, you can perform a jumping glitch to jump over most of the enemies. This glitch only begins to work in level 2 where most of the enemies are in the sky! In retrospect probably not the best glitch to use but it will come in handy later. The glitch stops working in level 3, which level 3 I hear you ask, the second level 3. But new from the first level 3 is a health bar, don't expect to see a lot of that because it's gone by the second level 3. You eventually beat the game and still find no mention of the Gamemaster, you know, the whole reason you're on this adventure! Well this brief digress went on for far too long so next time we'll look at Cheetahmen II and the Cheetahmen game on the SEGA Genesis' Action 52, they can't be any worse, can they? Find out next time!
