TharosTheDragon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Were You a Nineties Gamer]

So much nostalgia!

Zelda isn't an RPG series. It's an action adventure series. I suppose some of the games have limited RPG elements though. Zelda II is the best example with its experience and leveling up, but it's known as the black sheep of the Zelda family. And I think it's a stretch to say Secret of Mana is in the style of Zelda. And I wouldn't call Mario RPG an action RPG. It has less action than most RPG's. The combat is turn-based.

Hey, you used music and a screenshot from Donkey Kong Country 2. I typed in Diddys Kong Quest and it didn't work. Donkey Kong Country did work, but one of the hints said I needed to type the full name, and the full name is Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest.

It's funny that you call Tetris the most famous game ever. I had a college teacher who said he hadn't heard of Tetris when I was giving a presentation on video game history and assumed everyone knew about it.

Ristar gives away the name in one of the trivia clues.

You say George Clooney played Batman in both of the Schumacher movies, but actually Val Kilmer played Batman in Batman Forever.

In the Pac Attack trivia you spelled Cosmo Gang "Comso Gang" one time.

It would have been nice to see PC games on there too. I'm a big fan of 90's PC games. Warcraft. Worms. Duke Nukem. Major Stryker. Lemmings. Monkey Island. And how come this is all the early 90's? The N64 came out in the 90's as well. And some more great PC games came out in the late 90's. Abe's Oddysee. Sanitarium. And so on. It should be called "Were you a Genesis and SNES Gamer"?

[Viaduct Designer]

For those who are saying you like the bridge-building and think it's original, you should check out the Cargo Bridge series. It's even better since you don't have to restrict your bridge to a little grid and there are all kinds of cool level setups. The series has three installments I think.

A big problem I have with this game is that you have to build the same exact track every single level. There's no variation in how you make the horizontal bridge pieces that the train goes on. It's always just one two-tile piece after another all the way across. The game should just put those there automatically.

[Gerry's Grueling Garden]

It's way too slow. Maybe you should have the option to make the vine grow faster. Also if you die you should have a choice between restarting from before you grew the vine and restarting from after you grew the vine. Good job for getting the game done in the time limit though.

[Snowdrift]

Not sure if anyone's done this, but I made a map: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/
72/snowdriftmap.jpg/

I only got the good ending, so I don't know if the screen in the upper left is significant for other endings.

In case anyone else didn't realize this, you can harvest berries twice from each bush each day. I played most of the game thinking you could only do it once.

Also, there's a glitch where you can walk off the edge of the screen. It's usually around where you're supposed to be able to enter another screen, but you can also do it at the left edge of the top-left screen.

[The Movefastinator]

Um, hello guys? People are complaining about how the keys don't work. The keys work exactly the way they're supposed to. The point of the game is that you can't go in the same direction twice in a row. It would be way too easy if you could.

I guess that should be made clear in the game, though.

Jhomas responds:

Currently adding an icon that indicates this, I hope it clears this up for people :D

[Running Warrior]

I like the game, but there are many problems. It would be much better if there was at least a little randomization in the landscape. Pretty much the only thing that's random is the items you get from shops and chests.

Also, it seems like there's no way to tell if an enemy that's too strong for a normal attack will be vulnerable to your special attack. When I was using the dark mage's ice spell, sometimes it would kill the bad guys with the exclamation point and sometimes it wouldn't.

There's a glitch where after you leave a shop sometimes your controls will be frozen and you'll just slide along the ground until something happens to you like you get hit or fall.

The thief's invulnerability is misleading. It only protects you from enemies, not spikes or pitfalls. I guess it makes sense since it should be called invisibility.

I think it would be nice if the priest's free feather regenerated every time you touched a priest statue, instead of just getting one save for the entire run. Maybe each job could have a one-time use ability that regenerates when you touch the statue.

[Perspective]

The way the gameplay keeps tying in with the story reminds me of The Company of Myself and Fixation.

[Caveman Prototype]

I don't imagine many people are able to beat this game like I was. It's incredibly difficult. With regards to what Geektard said, it's important to only be able to pick up blocks while standing on them so that you have to plan ahead if you're going to freeze a caveman.

Hints:
- Chase cavemen into the water by waving your torch from a distance to turn them into sideways blocks.
- Throw blocks farther by holding left or right when you press space.
- After using a block to reach a ledge, you can bring the block with you because grabbing a block will make you automatically jump. You can do the same with blocks in the water.
- If there's a block that's too far out into the water to retrieve, you can throw another block in the water to use as a stepping stone. After you grab the block from the middle of the water and land on the stepping stone, you can retrieve the stepping stone since it's closer to land.

Here's a screenshot from the last level to prove I made it at least that far: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/
259/cavemanprototype.jpg/

JoSilver responds:

AWWW!!! YOU MAKE ME SO PROUD!

Hopefully when (or if) the full version is done it will have a simple training level to get the player familiar with the mechanics of the game.

[super cartographer]

This game has nothing to do with cartography. I was disappointed. There's no point in having the map be revealed to you as you go along because your field of vision takes up nearly the whole Flash window. And the gameplay is pretty linear anyway, so there wouldn't be any reason to view the whole map even if you could. It's not like you need to explore more of the map to plan out your strategy better or anything.

A real game about mapping could perhaps do a Heroes of Might and Magic thing where you have a partial treasure map and you need to match up land formations on the treasure map with what's on your own map that you're making. Or maybe you need to make a map for an NPC to follow. Maybe you have limited space or limited time to make the best map possible. Maybe the game could be about distinguishing permanent land masses from temporary objects and making sure you only mark on your map the things that will stay there. Or maybe you have to have to keep up with changing geography over time as borders between countries move around. At any rate, what you have isn't a mapping game. What you have is an exploration game with a bit of turn-based avoiding.

I know my game ain't that great, but at least we got the core mechanic right. I'm surprised Austin's team was the team to follow the rules the least. I don't even see the core mechanic diagram in the game. Maybe Austin just sat back and didn't give any input so that he could see how the team would do on its own.

And what are berry bushes doing inside a temple?

[ir/rational Redux]

So here's the thing. People are confused by this:
G
M->(G->A)
M
Because they think it's all one line and the G over the 2 M's is all one symbol, like putting a letter over another letter is some kind of operation. You could make it clearer by numbering each line the way the lines were numbered in all the other puzzles, like this:
1. G
2. M->(G->A)
3. M