Part nostalgia-bomb, part note-taking and part FAQ, what started in GameTrailers as a video game blog is now on Blogger. This blog is a look back at video games, both popular and obscure, from the video game industry's infancy all the way to the previous console generation.
We finally take on Lord Contaminous and provide a fitting end to Konami's NES era. It's been fun.
Vs. Lord Contaminous
First Form
He'll start breathing some sort of fire breath (I think that's what it is) from side to side, before he spits out some sort of spheres that roll around on the ground and seemingly track you. Hit him when he breathes the other way, and jump over the spheres he spits out. This is easy...compared to the second form, that is.
Second Form
Oh, boy. The Earth has a health meter. That's not a good sign at all.
You'll be destroying the debris that he sends plummeting into Earth, while avoiding Lord Contaminous (who flies around in a figure-eight pattern) and his fireball attacks. You won't be able to destroy all the debris before it heads into the planet, so take down at least two of the four pieces of debris he sends out whenever he's on either side of the screen, and focus all your attacks on him when he's in the middle.
When he's on one of the two sides of the screen, he'll send out four pieces of debris. Take out the two pieces next to him so you can hit him and the debris at the same time. He'll meditate twice, but if you can keep up with him and minimize damage, he's pretty easy.
If the Earth takes 100% damage, you lose a life. So be careful.
When you beat him, any damage done to the Earth will go all the way back down to zero.
Watch on for bone-infested swamps and an evil Zen clone.
Cave Stage (continued)
To beat the swamp monster, move around and keep up with it, while taking down the tiny frogs that it spits out. It'll fake you out into attacking with a splash, but when he actually shows up, hit him with a proton stick thrust.
The swamp monster also has an insta-kill water attack. To avoid it, simply duck. That's it. While it doesn't actually damage you per se, if it pushes you into the mucky, green water below, you're toast.
The next section is another cave with a parallax view. You'll fight another boss here - a magnetic robot that floats around and uses the metal objects around it as both a shield and as a projectile. Move around to avoid the projectiles, and stab it from a distance with proton stick thrusts.
You'll then enter a laboratory. The experiment inside will grow and give shape, becoming an evil clone of Zen. It'll be a proton stick thrust-filled duel to the death here, and he has as much health as you do. Take him down with proton stick thrusts, and remember to take the Meditation icon on the right-most side of the room.
If you touch him, you'll both get taken into the sky and be brought back down. The evil Zen will turn blue for a few seconds, which can be just long enough to confuse you.
When he's low on health, he'll climb back into the cloning tube to regain his energy (much like your Meditation ability). Keep the pressure on him and keep using your proton stick thrust when he's moving towards you to get the upper hand and stop him from doing that, and you'll basically cruise to victory.
An off shore oil rig? Reminds me of the BP Gulf incident all over again...
Off Shore Oil Rig Stage
"Rescue the people who are trapped by the fire. Use the fire extinguisher to save them!"
To use the fire extinguishers, hold Up and press B while standing next to a door. You'll use the fire extinguisher to cool the door down and rescue a worker. A fire extinguisher works like a key - you can only use a fire extinguisher on a single door before you're forced to hunt for another one.
The oil slicks that move around change shape and look like wizards (I guess) when they get close. Beat them up to get fire hydrants.
You'll also be avoiding fireballs that rain from the sky periodically as you make your way around the oil rig. Hope you have plenty of lives.
The grey ball is the shield that you can also win in the bonus game. The tiny Zen icon is a Zen doll, which gives you a 1-Up. And the brown circle with a light brown circle inside? That's a Mediation icon, which you can use by pressing Select to regain all your health in the middle on an intense battle. You're also invincible for a brief time after you use one, so keep that in mind.
When you save all seven people, go up the oil rig, avoiding bouncing balls that act as invincible force fields while smacking mice with your proton stick. Yes. Mice.
The boss here is some sort of man made out of oil. The way he stands unintentionally makes him look like a Chippendale dancer. Anyway, he'll try to throw oil at you, and try to jump up and come crashing down into you in order to absorb you and cause some damage. When he's in his "human" form, hit him with a staff thrust and smack him into the ground, then avoid him when he changes himself into a sphere and bounces around. If he rockets downward into you, mash the B button to cause some damage and break free before he can cause significant harm to you.
Cave Stage
"Avoid obstacles while descending into the cavern. You must be quick so you don't get crushed!!"
The above sentence really says it all.
Maneuver Zen around so he won't land on the platforms that separate you from the goal and the crushing spiked ceiling above your head. That spiked crusher is instant death if it catches up with you, and you'll more than likely be losing a few lives trying to practice this stage.
There's a map on the left side of the screen in case you need to know how much further you'll need to descend before you done with this part.
Not only is there side-scrolling, there's also parallax view action!
Toxic Factory Stage
"Zen is in the toxic factory which emits harmful toxins into the air. Zen must escape before the bombs explode!"
At the beginning of the level, Zen will plant bombs on what looks like a generator before you can make your way to the other side of the stage. This stage, unlike the last one, is set in a 3/4 parallax view.
You only have 99 seconds to get to the other side of the stage...and guess what? It's gonna be a thrill ride!
There's a lot of jumping involved, so use your shadow as a guide as you make your away across conveyor belts and avoid cranes.
The light blue things that look like screws fly around everywhere, and you won't have much room to move around at that point because you're on a narrow bridge.
When you reach the blue space with the word "IN" followed by a arrow pointing to it, smash the force field that moves towards you repeatedly to keep it from pushing you out of this space. When the crusher comes down and you're standing here, you'll be safe. You'll have to wait for it to come down three times before you can continue on.
No sooner do you get past this crusher that a laser cutter comes to slice the section of bridge you're on. Jump back onto the bridge to get out of this deathtrap, then keep jumping to make it back onto land.
To beat the boss here, thrust at him, then repeatedly smack him with the proton stick while he's dazed. He'll transform into a puff of smoke, so move away from him and get back at it when he returns to his normal form.
"Jeremy has been kidnapped by Lord Contaminous! Climb to the top of the building and try to rescue him!"
So that's what the kid's name is? Well...
Anyway, wall jump from one end of the screen to the other to keep up with Lord Contaminous, and avoid his projectiles as well as their smaller sized particles when they split into three. He's not that hard, really.
High Speed Railway Stage
"Defend the Earth by stopping Garbageman from spewing his nuclear waste all over our environment!"
This is a mine cart level similar to the Toxic Factory stage, except it's entirely on rails. (Pun not intended.) Jump over the bottomless pits and the gravel, hit switches with the stab attack, and avoid the boulders as they bounce across the tracks.
When you fight the guys in the mine carts, use the stab attack to take them down. Stab the walls that get in your way, while jumping over or avoiding the flashing ones entirely (those are indestructible).
To beat Garbageman, strike down the brown things that he throws, and wait for him to stop attacking before you use your thrust attack and wailing away at him. When you bring his health down enough, he'll sink underground and try to grab you and cause damage. After a few attempts at this, he'll come back up and start throwing barrels of toxic waste at you. Avoid the barrels and keep the attacks coming like you did the first time.
Bonus Stage
"Knock the garbage into the furnace to recycle it. The more items Zen recycles, the greater the bonus!"
Yep, this again. Do your best, so you can get a buttload of power-ups to keep the game going.
Quadraxis makes his first appearance in forever on the PrinceWatercress blog, and this time around it's straight from his own channel! Can you believe it?
This one's pretty obscure. This is the last game Konami ever made for the Nintendo Entertainment System before they focused all their efforts on the still-fledgling Super Nintendo. Guess what? Despite the seriousness of the comic book series it comes from, the game is a Captain Planet rip-off (sort of). The main bad guy to beat here is Lord Contaminous, who is hell-bent on completely polluting planet Earth.
You choose from four stages at the very beginning. The first one we'll cover is the forest stage.
Acidic Forest Stage
"The flowers in the forest are being destroyed by acid rain. You must strike the flowers with your photon stick to revive them, then defeat Sulfura to save the entire forest!"
You don't have to tell me twice.
This stage is pretty easy. Just use the bushes to leap your way to the top of the level to fight Sulfura. She'll throw test tubes full of sulphur at you, but if you use your proton stick thrust to grab her and smack her into the ground, you'll come out on top as long as you jump over the tackle she attempts after she gets back up.
You'll have to go down every so often to revive the flowers, and thankfully the game reminds you to do this with a arrow pointing downwards popping up, telling you to go back down to the planet. To revive the flowers, just hit them with a regular attack. That's it. They'll keep wilting, though, so you'll probably be making at least two or three return trips before your battle with Sulfura is over.
Bonus Stage
"Knock the garbage into the furnace to recycle it. The more items Zen recycles, the greater the bonus!"
This is pretty easy when you've gotten a bit of practice in. You have three chutes in the ceiling shooting down garbage. Move around and whack them into the furnace with the B button. If you get everything into the furnace, you'll get all five bonuses. The bonuses are pretty good, since you have health replenishments, shields, 1-ups and even bonus points, which are always useful in a Konami game! :D
The Meditation items can be used by pressing Select. This lets you replenish all your energy in the middle of an intense fight, so stockpile as many of these as you can!
Here it is! The conclusion to this battle that you've been waiting for!
Act 6 (continued)
The next section has Foot Clan soldiers as well as ceiling-mounted lasers. Wait for the Foot Clan soldiers to do their ambush attack before jumping over them, then move right and destroy the laser cannons with a jump kick between blasts.
The next set of obstacles is a bunch of robots that shoot out some sort of whip. You can jump over them one by one if you can time it just right.
You'll then be dealing with pillars of fire and Foot Clan soldiers shooting endless waves of bullets. Avoid the flamethrowers and time your jumps right so that you can defeat the soldiers without taking damage. After the flamethrowers, you'll be able to get a pizza.
You'll then be on an elevator fighting off some more Foot Clan soldiers. You can move around in all directions here, so don't be afraid to move around.
You'll meet Krang again, but you'll be forced off the platform and onto a lower level. You'll be fighting some more Mousers while climbing up and down this section. The Mousers come out every few seconds, so it's a bit easy to time your movements so that you can get through this part without getting hit.
The next elevator is another fight with Shredder. He'll try to slash you with his sword before doing some weird teleportation trick. When he reappears, hit him with your flying kicks and move around until he decides to teleport again. Hopefully he won't hit you.
When you get off the elevators, it's more Foot Clan soldiers and those flying things again. After a while, you'll see machine gun blasts in the background (the same attack Krang used against you earlier.)
You'll then face the final boss: Krang in his android suit. He's really easy, as all he does is stomp and jump around. Jump before the screen shakes so you're not frozen to the ground, and kick him. It doesn't take that long to kill him, fortunately, and he rarely touches the far left side of the screen (save for when he makes a humongous leap from one side of the screen to the other, but you should have time enough to run under him when that happens), so use that as a safe spot!
And that's it for this one! I hope you guys enjoyed this one...especially you, SaiboTation.
Shredder knows you're getting close and is pulling out all the stops!
Act 5 (continued)
When you finally reach the end, you face Baxter Stockman in his fly form.
He'll go to one side and fly up and down, shooting three times before swooping down and heading to the other side and doing the same thing. Lather, rinse, repeat. It only takes a few shots to get him to buzz off.
When you go into the building, you'll be surrounded by Foot Clan soldiers. When you enter the next room, there will be a pizza power-up waiting. Go left to enter the next room, and fight Lieutenant Granitor, who only appeared in one episode, strangely. He'll follow you around, shoot at you with a flamethrower and roll into you. Avoid him when he's rolling, and stand so that your weapon will hit him just above his legs so that you won't take damage (which takes some practice).
When you beat him, you'll go up the stairs and rescue April O'Neill!
Act 6
This final act starts with some sewer surfin'!
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Avoid the mines and the bullets. As you can see, you'll be doing a [b]lot[/b] of jumping and moving around, so be thankful you can do both at the same time! Sometimes, the mines will pop up as you go, making them a little difficult to avoid at times.
The next section has Foot Clan soldiers...and lasers! Avoid the Foot Clan soldiers, since all they do is move quickly towards you and kick, and jump over and duck under the lasers. (This is a little harder than one would think.) You'll soon start seeing Mousers, which you fortunately can destroy. The bad news is, they'll be in threes and fours, which makes it a bit easy to be ambushed by these things...and during all this, you're still having to deal with the lasers. It's enough to make the Angry Video Game Nerd eat the rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk...and down it with beer!
Wait...
Anyway, when you manage to get past all that, you'll get some pizza and see the Technodrome. (It has to make another appearance, doesn't it?)
This time, you'll be inside the Technodrome, and it'll start caving in as soon as you go inside. You'll jump on a conveyor belt and fight General Traag, who fights a lot like Lieutenant Granitor. (He appeared with Granitor in that same episode. Go figure.) He'll roll around, then fire three times, walk forward, fire three times, walk forward, fire three times, then move back and roll around again. He'll then fire three salvoes of three shots without moving at all and roll around before he repeats his pattern. The best time to hit him is when he's not firing. If somehow you get hit when he's moving forward, get behind him and start swinging until he curls into a ball...that'll learn 'im!
Hooray! A pizza monster! Wait, why do they call it that?
Act 4
When you jump down into the cave, you'll soon see the ceiling trying to cave in on you. Once that stops, you'll soon see boulders coming from the left to crush you. Jump over them when they're on the ground, and run under them when they're bouncing around.
You'll soon be running down a slope. Jump over the rocks ahead of time in order to keep from getting hit. You'll soon reach the bottom, leaving you free to move around again.
Stay on top, as most of the pits lead to flamethrowers. One of them will lead you to a pizza power-up that refills your health.
The next section brings you back to fighting more Mousers. Shortly afterward, you'll fight the Pizza Monster. You'll see his shadow as he moves about underwater, then he'll pop up and try to attack you, which is the only time you can hit him. The best thing you can do here is stay at the sides of the screen where the water isn't at and hit him from there. He goes down after a few hits and leaves a pizza power-up once you defeat him.
All that's left is a handful of craters that Mousers jump in and out of. If you're agile enough, you can jump between them without having to deal with the Mousers very much. The last one has a Foot Clan soldier carrying another pizza power-up. If you're doing well so far, you can completely refill your health.
Just when you think the game is being merciful, though, your boss battle here is with Shredder. He'll shoot a projectile at you, and then run at you as he charges to the other side. If he raises his elbow again after shooting the projectile, he's going to jump kick you. Run under him to avoid it.
When you defeat him, he runs away. Krang rides along on a platform that Shredder grabs onto, helping him escape. You'll definitely be fighting him again.
Act 5
This one is a bit different, since this stage doesn't seem to have a top or a bottom. Instead, it's a series of platforms and a race to the right-most side of the section.
You start off jumping off the bottom of an airship (why Splinter is on it, I'll never know), and down onto one of a zillion flying platforms. There are numerous Foot Clan soldiers as well as cannons on some of the platforms that shoot in three directions. Some of them also drop bombs from the bottom. Thankfully, you can hang off the bottom of some of these platforms when necessary.
Now it's time for construction site shenanigans in Act 3!
Act 3
The beginning of this stage is pretty straightforward. You'll be fighting Foot Clan ninjas for the first few seconds as you head forward. Jump onto the wall below the fence when you see what looks like the tops of Vileplumes on the ground. Those are mines.
You'll soon reach a giant wall, and you'll be forced back to the floor. Avoid the buckets as they fall from the sky. You'll soon see the Mousers. Hit them when they jump towards you.
You'll take an elevator upwards, and you'll fight some Foot Clan soldiers on the way. You'll be able to move in all directions now, so be ready to move!
You'll then come out and fight off a host of Foot Clan soldiers and Mousers. You'll be going upwards and downwards as you move up and down the construction site and traversing through a maze. After the second steel beam, the flying things with the rotor blades return...and they'll be at you with full force. Keeping as few enemies on the screen as you can will definitely help out. Climbing on the bottoms of some levels also helps out, too.
The boss here is Krang in some sort of battle robot. When the battle begins, three bombs will drop. Avoid those, and you'll be face to face with Krang. He'll shoot at you twice, then he'll back off, shoot some more bombs into the air and then fly into the air. When you're right under him, he'll drop down and try to land on you.
Obligatory Hints
Raphael has a faster attack speed than the rest of the Turtles.
This one's for you, SaiboTation! (Note: This was a request of sorts that I took on GameTrailers, and so far the only one I've ever really taken, hence the intro being as it is.)
Anyone remember the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers game for Game Boy that I covered? If you don't...good. If somehow you do, watch this. This will immediately erase any memories you have of that game, since this was made before MMPR for Game Boy...and it does everything that game does far better.
Act 1
Anyway, the first act is really easy. Not much of a strategy to put in around here. If you enter the second manhole in the city section, you can find a pizza (the first one damages you).
In the second sewer section, the first pipe you climb upon explodes as you make your way to the right. The Foot Soldiers that hide behind the walls slide quickly towards you; jump over them to avoid damage. Don't attack the guys throwing the bombs; instead, just wait for them to go away.
To beat Rocksteady, jump over his bullets and kick him. Watch out for the Foot Clan soldiers throwing beakers full of what looks like nitroglycerin out of the windows down to the ground. When he laughs, he's briefly open to attack. When it comes time to jump over him as he charges, jump over him when he's on his way down...if he jumps. He'll either run and then jump, or simply run straight across. Ducking also works, too.
When you defeat him, he runs away.
Bonus Game
The bonus games are simple. Grab the pizzas as they show up. You have to be quick to get all 12 halves.
The more pizzas you get, the more points you receive and the more health you refill. Simple enough, right?
Act 2
Well, this one's pretty interesting.
You ride a skateboard on a highway. What's really interesting about this stage is that you can go in all directions this time and not just left and right, similar to TMNT: The Arcade Game.
The enemies are pretty straightfoward: hit the guys on the skateboard with your weapon, and jump kick the guys on the jet cycles that shoot at you. You'll probably take a hit or two, but once you get used to fighting them you'll know exactly where to stand and when to attack.
Some of the Foot Clan ninjas come at you faster than usual, stay on one side of the screen and throw what look like double-layered boomerangs at you which you can deflect just like anything else they throw, or shoot at you with a gun. These guys will disappear after three attacks. The flying things (I don't know what they are) with the rotor blades on top can be destroyed in a single hit, thankfully.
A Foot Clan tank will drop barrels in your path. Jumping over them is the simplest thing to do here, since you can easily jump over a whole phalanx of barrels doing this.
At the end, you'll jump off your skateboard and fight Bebop. Jump over his gunshots, then hit him and run away so that you don't get punched or kicked. If you have Donatello on-screen, you'll have some extra range that will allow you to take fewer hits.
Rescue Game
This one is pretty simple. If you've lost a turtle, you can get that turtle back in the Rescue Game. You have to destroy the robot that blocks the jail cell before you can get the turtle back, though. If you get hit, you lose some time on the timer. If you can get his patterns down, you won't have a problem at all.
You'll also restore some health for your current turtle at the end, regardless, so it's not a total loss.
Obligatory Hints
You can turn your character around to hit an enemy in front of you and an enemy that's behind you at almost approximately the same time. Mastering that kinda helps, especially if you're trying to speedrun this game.
Donatello has the most range, obviously.
The "Pizza Time" screen is the pause screen. Making sure you were aware. XD
When an enemy is carrying an item, hit them to make them drop the item.
You can deflect or destroy the objects that Foot Clan soldiers throw at you with your weapon.
