Rodland
Manufacturer: Jaleco
Year: 1990

Rods of Sheesanomo Rainbow Shoes

a lovely forest to start our journey from

In an unknown era, a noble warrior fell in battle with glory. He presented his lovely sweet daughters with powerful weapons, the Rods of Sheesanomo, so they could keep defending their Fairy Village from evil. The village elder also provided them with wonderful Rainbow Shoes, having the power to release magical ladders.
Little time passed when a winged monsta was sent by a cowish/human-shaped beast, and kidnapped the babies mother, and locked her in the top of a tower. The first story begins here: Rit and Tam are the names of the children, and they're setting up in a travel to rescue their beloved mom.
They'll have to travel across 31 areas, each composed of four colourful platforms connected by wooden ladders. Flowers grow over platforms, and they're worth 50 to 800 points each. Each location is inhabited by odd characters who'll try to make our journey longer and harder: by touching them, our fairies will die in a while, so take care!

Babies have their powerful weapons though. Rods are used by pressing the fire button: an energy charge will be released and shock enemies for a few instants. By keeping on pressing button they'll even be shaken back and forth until they explode and release a special bonus weapon. Each hit is worth 100 points.
There's another action button, and it allows us to control the magical ladder, which appears from our Rainbow Shoes. It's useful in order to reach hardly accessible places or to escape from painful situations.
There are two different ways to complete stages: the former by killing all opponents; the latter by collecting all letters composing the word "EXTRA". In this case, all you have to do is collecting all flowers in a stage, entering the bonus game, killing all red onion-shaped enemies and collecting letters. As the word is complete, a modern looking and sexy Queen Fairy appears, presenting us with a life energy sphere that's wrth a bonus life, and wishing us good luck.

collect flowers and get rid of sharkies
lovely fairy gives us a life energy sphere

If you've not been quick enough in killing all red enemies, the flowers enchantment will vanish in a few seconds, and enemies will go back to their original shape. As you kill them normally, they'll release special weapons which are actually useful. Bombs, dynamite pieces, air-earth missiles, bomb balloons, flame throwers and much more. Those weapons can be used to smash more enemies in a row, making them release special fruits boxes worth 1000 to 5000 points.
And of course there can't be platformer without area bosses. They're huge, very well-drawn, sprites. They have animal shapes in the first part of the game (crocodiles, a whale, an elephant) each sending us their own tiny children, coming against us from any possible direction. It won't be easy to beat them, but if we'll do that we'll gain 10.000 bonus points.

As you reach level 31, after climbing the whole tower, you'll finally meet the satanic beast and fight him strongly in a really hard duel. At the end of this all, we'll have set Rit and Tam's mom free and the first part of the story will come to an end!
In the second adventure, game scheme remains the same but we won't see any flowers growing over platforms: there are diamonds! Also, nicely-looking aliens took the place of all those furry and cute animals... Bosses have the shape of war machines (giant tanks, fighter robots etc).
This all begins five years the first story, when a mysterious pyramid fell from the sky to a place near the Fairy village. Rit and Tam's father immediately ran to investigate the building, and no one had news about him since. The babies went in seek for their papa, entered the pyramid and hit all aliens and their dedly machines...

sweet furries in an orchid field
it requires brains to kill the final boss hah!

The pyramid reveals as actually being a factory whose aim was to build an infernal mobile fortress named Moquino, built in order to conquer that world.
As you reach and beat the final boss (level 31) a strange brain-shaped being, who operated the entire fortress, flies down and fights the two lovely children on the ground.
Evil is represented by a multicolour sphere, which bounces around the game screen and tries to squash the babies. We have to hit it many times with the use of our rod as it approaches. As time passes by, more spheres will appear, making our goal even harder... until the entire screen will be full of spheres! Then after hitting those spheres many many times, the entity will surrender and fly away from the planet... and go to other worlds to conquer aah!

flyer

 

Ratings

PRESENTATION: 84%
Very refined, showing nice
text and pictures intermissions
explaining the game plot.

GRAPHICS: 84%
Colourful and cheerful, rich
of cute monsters and bosses. Backgrounds are not that
great though.

SOUND: 73%
Game tunes are OK for this
sort of game. Second game mode
music is much better.

ORIGINALITY: 48%
It's almost a mistification of a
lot of other games of this genre.

HOOKABILITY: 83%
Such simple gameplay and
cheerful characters hook
player immediately.

LASTABILITY: 77%
It lacks "something" to make
it last for long time.


OVERALL: 75%
Cool, funny and well-designed
platform... destinated not to last
long though.

Zaxxon1Rodland is nice, no doubt about this, but it lacks something which would have made it an everlasting masterpiece as Bubble Bobble is. Maybe it's because of its slow action or the excessive ease of earlier stages, but the final result is just average. Jaleco presents such game featuring parts taken from many of the platformers available in the Eighties: wooden ladders, collectable bonuses, the EXTRA game (all taken from Mr. Do!) everything is then enriched with nice presentation, cool and tender sprites, and a suitable soundtrack accompanying the whole game.
Conclusion: it attempts and fails to show the best from old classics - a real pity because of its wide potential.

TalasWell this was a nice surprise. I never heard about this game and it turned out to be one of those Bubble Bobble clones - a very nice one though! You get a nicely drawn intro at the beginning, though there's no explanation of the gameplay, but this is not a problem since gameplay is very simple. Graphics are very good and colourful - if you cinsider the times when it was designed especially. Sound is very good too, and I like the melodies. You start playing the game and just want to continue: enemies have a great variety and the small differences from Bubble Bobble throw in some spice. I also like the area bosses: their graphics are nice too and they are quite challenging. For this little baby, thumps up. Try it out!

RoyJWell, speaking in terms of pure "style", game is very well designed: average graphics, funny sound tunes and good effects.
But it lacks originality... I believe platformers (and shooters too) are the most popular videogames genre, so any variation would have been enough to make this game come out from the masses: this game is a clear example of this all: you won't find anything new within the first twenty minutes of gaming, and game gets boring in a while.
Another fault is the excessive ease of the whole game: you play over and over, overcome stages and bosses without even sweating in your hands. My advice: get Bubble Bobble!
 

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