068 - SQOON
SQOON
Episode 068
Show Notes
OUR THOUGHTS
MIKE
Let’s get the obvious out of the way, Sqoon does in fact feature a topless mermaid on it’s title screen. How that got past the Nintendo censors I have no idea. Did this game cause children to think less of mermaids? Well if it did, The Little Mermaid would come out 2 years later and hopefully restore cultural norms. Onto the actual game itself, what we have here is an interesting gameplay twist on the soon to be saturated SHMUP genre, but with an execution that leaves a lot more to be desired. I appreciate the little touches between the back of the box, manual, and in game backgrounds that went into telling a story in what would otherwise be a game about a submarine fighting off Atlantis (note: this is not the actual plot). What I don’t appreciate is that all enemy patterns and designs encourage you to keep your sub as far to the left of the screen as possible. It’s nice that you have to manage between saving humans, killing sharks, fighting off enemies, and watching your fuel. It’s bad that your ability to do these things happen ALL at the same time. It doesn’t make the game more complicated, it makes it less fun. The sharks are constantly on the screen so you have to take care of them, but the people only show up so often and they are required for fuel so you gotta take down the prisons to free the people to get the fuel, but you also have to make sure the sharks don’t eat them up. Oh, and there are plenty of enemies…did you forget about them? Probably not, but when did you have time to shoot them? This is multitasking: the game. A bunch of unique ideas for sure. Crammed into a tight package and repeated over and over again.
THE VERDICT - NOT ESSENTIAL
Swim fast little guys…
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