I told you it was comin'.
When I first played Cheese Cat-Astrophe for the Sega Game Gear back on April 16, 2024 for Try It Out Tuesday #329, I didn't know what to expect other than it was a platformer based on the Looney Tunes property starring Speedy Gonzalez that I had barely heard of. When I played the game for the first time, I initially liked it at first, and while it took a few minutes to figure out what to do in the first level of the game, I eventually learned what to do. From there, it was just a matter of not just learning the levels, but learning how to fight the bosses, with the first one feeling a little bit weird due to having to figure out how to grab the dynamite, throw it at just the right time, and damage the boss without hurting yourself.
The first world of the game was interesting enough on its own. Then came the second world, which was lush with pools of lava flowing at the bottom of the screen, moving platforms that floated from one side to the other, plenty of places to jump to...and falling lava droplets dropping from the top of the screen not just where I was, but also from off-screen, where I couldn't see them until I was jumping around and it was almost too late to react. When I played part of the second world for Funk It Up Friday three days later, I was frustrated with the level to the point that I didn't want to play past the first half of that world and just stopped it right there. I gave it the Red Pass, making it one of only a handful to ever receive the worst pass rating (until and unless I make a Black Pass) from the then-Twitter tryouts.
As I vented my frustrations with the game for my final thoughts, I referenced the Master System version and how everything looked better and had more real estate and more screen space to work with. By the time I closed in on the game as I worked through my Let's Play backlog, however, my frustration with the game had subsided somewhat. I would eventually forget about my irritation with the second level of the game as I worked on the Let's Play backlog built up by earlier game tryouts. When I finally got to recording this game, however, the frustration with the second level and all the problems that I had with it suddenly bubbled back up.
My experience with playing through the first level went as expected. Compared to the Try It Out Tuesday session, I had everything figured out thanks to the notes that I took trying to get through the first level. Then came the second level...and everything went completely awry.
As I've mentioned in the past, I always - and usually - do practice runs before recording and playing through the game for real. Not only does it give me a better idea of what to expect as I play through the game, but it also allows me to make mental note of the things that I encounter when I play through the portion of the game that I want to play through for the video that I am recording. Somehow, when I did the practice run of the entire second level of the game, I was able to go through the first half of the level well enough. The third part is dead simple compared to the first two, since you're just swimming around in the water looking for a key while avoiding things and then heading to the exit. The boss didn't give me trouble, either, since I was able to quickly figure it out.
When it came time to record, however, the game decided to have a mind of its own and decided that it didn't want to be Let's Played. I could make it through the first stage with some effort, but when it came to the second stage, I always fell victim to the lava droplets, as they were constantly in the path of my jump, and I could not see them until it was too late. This time around, I was more committed to getting through the second world of the game than I was during the try-out, and made the decision that since I had knowledge of what I was getting into when I played the first half of the second world of the game, I would have a slightly better chance of making it through this time around.
Imagine my surprise when I had lost all of my lives in the first half of the second world about seven times, either due to the lack of an ability to look up or down, or because of all the lava droplets being in the way at the last second. I would either run into them, or I would die trying to avoid them. I would just keep losing lives again and again and again, wondering why nothing was going on the way that my practice run did.
After an hour of this, I gave up, got on YouTube, and watched videos of the Master System version of the game. It was then that I noticed not one, but two things about the game that brought my blood to a boil. The first is the most obvious: the resolution was larger and the player was allowed to see a lot more. It may have made the first world of the game look a lot more barren at the beginning, but when you entered the third part of the first world, you could actually see the vulture that was repeatedly diving at you. There was also the minor difference of Sylvester hanging off the talons of a big bird in the first boss battle instead of having a jetpack strapped to his back, but that was just it: minor.
Then came the second level. It was then that I noticed that the lava droplets that fell from the top of the screen could fall from anywhere, but at the same time, you could always see when it was going to happen. You also had some more advance warning of what was going on ahead. This was on the Sega Master System version. On the Game Gear version, however, things were different.
Compared to the Master System, there's a lot less on the screen on Game Gear. It's not too bad when you're in the first level, but as you go on, you'll notice that everything is WAY too big. What constitutes one whole room on Master System is humongous on the Game Gear. Whenever I'm rescuing a mouse in order to get an exit opened up, I'm always scrolling the screen to the right on the Game Gear's smaller screen, whereas the Master System shows the entire room at once. When I'm going through the cliffs area after the desert, the cliffs are much bigger and much more seemingly spaced out in handheld form compared to on your TV screen. The last desert area itself is even worse, as when you're playing on Game Gear, you can't even see the vulture that is flying around and swooping down at you every chance it gets. On Master System? You can see that vulture at all times.
After completing the entire first level, it's time to take on the second. As soon as you start playing the first half, you'll notice that just like in the first level, you can't see very much. But it isn't until you're going from the left side of the stage to the right that you start noticing things. The first thing you're going to notice that isn't the massive amounts of brown and orange making up the walls and platforms is all of the lava droplets dropping down from...the sky? The ceiling? The heavens themselves?!?
In addition to having to jump from platform to platform, which is hard to do when you can barely see the platforms and everything feels like a leap of faith, the lava droplets are also dropping down from slightly off-screen, and sometimes, you won't be able to see them until it's too late. It also doesn't help when the camera is always moving when you are and you have to jump onto a platform traveling back and forth across the lava that turns around a half-second earlier than when you'd expect just to keep you from merely stepping on it just to take a ride.
After a whole hour of being completely unable to make any progress, I became absolutely livid with myself and watched the whole second world to see how it looked on Master System. I expected everything to look better, but I didn't expect my view of the level I was playing through to be so vast that not only would the lava droplets not be able to get the drop on me, but I could actually see where I was jumping at all times.
This is when I realized that when it comes to this particular part of the game in the Game Gear version, the action is really zoomed in. By comparison, Desert Speedtrap starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote had the same thing going on, but after having played the Master System version of Desert Speedtrap, however, I would still be able to play through the game on Game Gear despite that version of the game showing a good amount less of the level than Master System would.
That's probably because when I played through the whole game on Normal, I had sound cues whenever Wile E. Coyote showed up. It didn't matter if he was on the rocket, driving a bus, strapped to a jetpack or using any other means of technology that he purchased from ACME. If I heard a rushing sound, that was my cue to move and keep moving.
Sadly, you don't have that with the lava droplets in this game. Especially when they're coming down from off-screen and you can barely see them. It's like the weasel soldiers from Mickey Mania, if they were dropping hot molten pitch downward and not throwing daggers or shooting crossbow bolts at you. Oh, they'll still make a distinct sound that you can easily hear...but only when they land on the platform, signaling the next drop of lava to come down from the ceiling.
It also doesn't help that due to how the camera is zoomed in compared to the Master System version, you have a camera following you everywhere, which makes keeping track of where you're supposed to land every time you jump harder, and - thanks to the zoomed in perspective where everything is too big - makes a jump that is very easily doable on the Master System look like a leap of faith on Game Gear. The second half of "A Weekend in Hawaii" became torture to the point where I just wanted to get through it as quickly as possible because of this.
If I wasn't accidentally running into an enemy from making a jump, or if I wasn't making a jump only to land right into lava and immediately die, I was leaping right into the path of a lava droplet that I could not avoid...which was something that I was doing a lot more often than I would have liked. And after a whole hour of trying desperately to complete the second level just for one video in a Let's Play, I was done. I deleted all of my work - not counting what I saved for this - got the Master System version, and started from square one. This time, when I made it to the second level, I could actually see what I was doing, and I was able to get through the level and ultimately beat the game.
The Game Gear version of this game is nothing more than a lazy port. Sure it looks just like the Master System version that was released solely in Europe and plays just like it, but in the end, the camera and the zoomed-in graphics ruin the proceedings. There are two reasons why the camera follows you everywhere and keeps Speedy completely in the center of the reason. The first is to supposedly ensure that you see all of the level without having to move the camera, and it does it by focusing squarely on Speedy...but by doing less simply by zooming in and focusing entirely on Speedy, the game does no favors to the player. Because of this, you can't see what you're doing, hazards that should be visible at all time seem to show up right out of nowhere, and the difficulty is artificially inflated as a result.
The second is because the developers seemingly never gave any thought to putting the game on Gear Gear and only thought about putting it on Master System - at least, that's how I personally feel - and with time and money both being tight and the Master System being officially discontinued west of the Atlantic outside of Brazil, the developers just zoomed the action in just to make everything seemingly make sense and fixed the game's camera to focus squarely on Speedy Gonzales, then called it a day. Even GamePro, which looked at the game fairly favorably and gave it 3's and 3.5's back in page 82 of its July 1995 issue, briefly brought this up. The only difference between myself and GamePro is 30 years and knowledge of the Sega Master System version, and while GamePro may have been understandably nice towards the game, I can't...and that's why I switched from Game Gear to Master System.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIJfWsLe0dE - Part 2 of the Let's Play by PrinceWatercress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeNCcHzF3vQ - Game Gear longplay by Longplay Archive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCnaQmNgSsc - Master System longplay by Longplay Archive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77SmeHUM1Jg - Desert Speedtrap Master System longplay by Longplay Archive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fno6O-hh3tg - Desert Speedtrap Game Gear longplay by Longplay Archive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deImgaBWoQo - Mickey Mania Super Nintendo longplay by Longplay Archive
COMING TOMORROW - PrinceWatercress' aborted Game Gear Let's Play footage
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