Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Hatris

Been too lazy to blog anything substantial this month, but I wanted to put something on here. The USA and Japanese versions of Hatris seem the same, but are different. I recently beat both versions and put the endings in my NES endings guide but haven't submitted the latest update to gamefaqs yet, so if you are curious about the 2 Hatris' endings, read on:

HATRIS (Bullet Proof Software)
-This is a neat Tetris style game where you have to arrange falling hats in order of what type they are. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but it seems to get a bad rap for some reason. At the beginning of the game you can select which Shop and Stage to start on. There are a total of 6 Shops (0-6) with each Shop having 9 Stages (0-9). Every time you beat the last stage of a shop you will get a quick intermission scene and it will go on to the next shop. When you finish Shop 5, Stage 9 (it says Shop 59 on the screen) it will show the two characters from the game (Alexy Pajitnov and Vladimir Pokhilko, the programmers) on the bottom of the screen. Alexy takes off his Abraham Lincoln top hat and pulls out letters and throws them into the middle of the screen to spell out GREAT GAME. He then floats up and bumps his head on the letters and his hat falls off. Alexy and Vladimir then proceed to run back and forth across the top and bottom of the screen. You can watch this for awhile and see both a smiley face and a bunny chase them at various points. Anyway, when you press A it will go tot he High Score screen. Enter your initials here and press start to return to the title screen. That's it??? Actually, not quite. You may have noticed on the High Score screen that it lists the Shop and Stage that the High Scorer's reached. Some of the Shop numbers have a T or an N in front of them. I wasn't sure what this meant, so I found the manual on line and discovered there is a Turbo mode to this game! At the title screen you can press DOWN and Start at the same time to trigger Turbo-Speed Mode. It won't seem like the code worked at first, but when you choose your Shop and Stage and start the gameyou will notice the word TURBO at the bottom right of the screen, above Vladimir's head on the wall. Unfortunately, you will get the same exact ending when you beat the 59 stages in Turbo-Speed Mode, so the ending to this game can officially be described as lame.

...and now for the Famicom version:

HATRIS (Bullet Proof Software)
-Wow, I wasn't expecting this. This game is made by the same company that made the USA NES version of Hatris (BPS) but even though the game looks similar, there are a ton of things different. Your helpers Vladimir and Alexy aren't in the Famicom version. You have a score instead of $$ cash. The intermissions are totally better and there is a cool ending here. I wonder why they butchered this game for the US?? The Shop/Stage layouts are kind of similar. Assuming you started at the beginning at Shop A0, you have to complete 9 stages before moving on to Shop A1. When you beat Stage 9 in Shop 0 you get an intermission showing the BPS Orchestra with a conductor but only 7 musicians in the orchestra. Now play through the 9 stages of Shop A1 and the intermission will have 11 people in the orchestra. As you keep progressing, more musicians are added to the BPS Orchestra during intermissions until you finish Shop A5, Stage 9, which is the last stage of the game. It will show a full BPS Orchestra (with 28 musicians) playing a nice little tune. It will then bring you to the High Score screen where you can enter your initials. When you do this it brings you to a screen that shows you a beautiful view out the window of a beach and ocean with a hot air balloon floating by. The credits will flash by at the bottom of the screen. As the credits roll the sun will set, butterflies will fly across the screen, a dog will walk by (and stop to scratch at fleas), the moon will go across the horizon while a volcano erupts in the background. Basically youjust get to see a bunch of cool sunsets, sunrises, lightning storms and even a rainbow. Eventually seagulls will flock across the screen and a cool sailboat will float by. It then repeats it all over again until you press reset. You can also play a Turbo-Speed Mode by pressing Down and Start at the title screen but it will not say TURBO on the screen when you start playing, but you will know it works because the Shops all start with the letter B instead of A. You do get the same exact ending that you got when beating the regular game though so this is only for people who love the game. This version of the game definitely should have been released in the States.

4 comments:

  1. Nice blog. Just wanted to comment on your remaining games. One thing I wanted to say in general is that you really need to let go of the fact that you wasted $70 on a weak port of one of Koei's oldest video games over twenty years ago. Suck it up!

    Gemfire: This actually isn't one of my favorite Koei games, even though it holds a special place in my heart (which will become clear when you play it) for reasons which don't have anything to do with it as a game. What's nice about this one is that I believe it's the only game of the inimitable oldschool Koei style that was in a fantasy setting. It's also got a fairly simple gameplay system compared to the other Koei games you've played.

    L'Empereur: This one's pretty interesting too, though I don't think you'll like it--it's densely packed with information that's mostly represented by useless icons and other signifiers. Anyway, if you want to beat this one the right way, you'll have to start from the beginning as a lowly commander with powers limited to a single city, which is pretty neat from a realism standpoint but makes it very hard to do much early in the game.

    Miracle Piano Teaching System: Not much I can say about this one. We've come a long way since those days, eh?

    Nobunaga's Ambition II: The biggest problem with this game is that you're not playing the 16-bit version of it (Lord of Darkness). On the bright side, it's pretty easy to beat if you want to wuss out and play Oda in the second scenario. Aside from that, it's a straightforward Koei game though it has a couple of interesting ideas such as Culture and an early form of the castle sieging which became standard in later games.

    Pirates!: The most accessible game on this list by quite a bit, and it's kind of surprising that you've left it this late. I can only guess it's because of how difficult it is to get the highest rank at the end; I've never done it myself, though I plan on trying when I get to the Gold version for the Genesis. Very fun for the most part, especially when you get powerful enough to conquer cities for your cause, and deep into the metagame involving your lost family. Land battles suck, though.

    Romance of the 3 Kingdoms II: Probably the best game on this list, especially if you play the 16-bit version. Vastly improved over the first game, and even the 8-bit version has an interface that makes a decent amount of sense. It's fun as hell to steal all of the best generals, train and arm them, then attack the people you just stole the generals from and behead them in duels. Especially if you can manage to swing a joint attack with another ruler.

    Silent Service: It's good for what it is. I've never been all that into realistic sub sims, though. Not too hard to get the best rank in if you cheat.

    Uncharted Waters: Nothing like any Koei game you've ever played. It's more like Pirates! than anything else, except a lot deeper and more interesting--you can explore the whole world, there are more things to see and do at the ports you find, and there's an actual story. If you don't at least like this Koei game, I'll eat my hat.

    Rob

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  2. Good to see the new NES endings update, especially a big one. It's a great resource for someone who wants to play through as many games as possible, and it's unfortunate that something like it hasn't been done for other systems. Maybe that will be a new genre of completion projects for another day?

    Rob

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  3. Hey Rob, I meant to thank you for the previous comments you left but completely forgot about this blog in the last week or so. I appreciate the kind words.

    I got a bit burnt out playing through some of those games in my last update and need to get back to playing games that I want to play for fun, so I'll take a siesta from gaming for a few months and see what happens.

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  4. "Maybe that will be a new genre of completion projects for another day?"

    Ughh no...
    If people race to "get all the endings" then you would have a ton of games with incomplete descriptions. It's better if someone that LOVES it (like AdamL) does it, that way you'll make sure he will exhaust all the possibilities to see if a game has more than one ending.

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