REVIEW: Spectask (4-in-1, Volume 3)
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"On the remote mountains, a secret military base is under cover of these lush trees, It’s not an army of any country, but a secret base of terrorists. In order to destroy the base, our special unit sneak into the base , make preparation for cosmical attack."
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As you begin to explore the further reaches of the Game King’s multi-cart library, one thing starts to become clear. Timetop were often quite shameless in re-skinning existing engines and marketing them as entirely new games.
In the parallel universe where people actually bought Game King games, it must have been quite disappointing to plug in a new cartridge and find that you were simply playing the fifth or sixth iteration of Carlo Adventure Legend. While there is nothing wrong with re-using an engine to create new stages and challenges based around a familiar title, Timetop’s propensity to simply alter the graphics instead of the level design or gameplay is a bugbear that becomes annoying the deeper you delve into the systems catalogue of multi-carts.
As a result we weren’t expecting much from Spectask when it revealed itself to be running on the Street Hero engine, having already played at least one other title that did little more than re-skin the graphics. Thankfully, whoever coded Spectask was not quite so happy to rest on their laurels and the result is an excellent upgrade.
In the parallel universe where people actually bought Game King games, it must have been quite disappointing to plug in a new cartridge and find that you were simply playing the fifth or sixth iteration of Carlo Adventure Legend. While there is nothing wrong with re-using an engine to create new stages and challenges based around a familiar title, Timetop’s propensity to simply alter the graphics instead of the level design or gameplay is a bugbear that becomes annoying the deeper you delve into the systems catalogue of multi-carts.
As a result we weren’t expecting much from Spectask when it revealed itself to be running on the Street Hero engine, having already played at least one other title that did little more than re-skin the graphics. Thankfully, whoever coded Spectask was not quite so happy to rest on their laurels and the result is an excellent upgrade.
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Up to four baddies at a time can plague you, including larger style 'Andore' types, thankfully knives aren't the only upgrade available in this superior use of the Street Hero engine .
At its heart, Spectask is still the same scrolling brawler that we covered in our review for Street Hero but it improves on that title in pretty much every way imaginable.
Let’s start with the first thing that should raise a smile among children of the 90’s: The music. While Street Hero went for a depressing ditty lifted from turgid SNES ARPG Lagoon, Spectask rocks up to the show with what appears to be an originally programmed cover of 2-Unlimited’s 90’s techno hit ‘No Limits’ complete with a voice sample yelling ‘action, action’ every so often. It’s a far more fitting accompaniment to the brawling that’s going to take place and sets the tone nicely.
Things begin fairly normally, you still have the same punches and flying kick from Street Hero, although by pushing A + B together, your baseball cap wearing protagonist is now able to unleash a Ken Masters style Hurricane Kick that drains a little of your life but deals death to most generic baddies instantly.
Let’s start with the first thing that should raise a smile among children of the 90’s: The music. While Street Hero went for a depressing ditty lifted from turgid SNES ARPG Lagoon, Spectask rocks up to the show with what appears to be an originally programmed cover of 2-Unlimited’s 90’s techno hit ‘No Limits’ complete with a voice sample yelling ‘action, action’ every so often. It’s a far more fitting accompaniment to the brawling that’s going to take place and sets the tone nicely.
Things begin fairly normally, you still have the same punches and flying kick from Street Hero, although by pushing A + B together, your baseball cap wearing protagonist is now able to unleash a Ken Masters style Hurricane Kick that drains a little of your life but deals death to most generic baddies instantly.
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(Left) Stage 2's Boss brings a gun and a mean hurricane kick to the party. (Centre) "Ho Ho Ho, now I have a machine gun." (Right) Game Over. You'll see this fairly often.
The throwing knives found in Street Hero can still be collected and used, although we were pleasantly surprised to discover that they are now accompanied by a range of other artillery, in keeping with the game’s military feel. In addition to the ninja weaponry of the original it’s now possible to pick up and use grenades (hard to aim but effective) and an AK47 rifle (reloadable with ammo pickups) familiar to those who have played Cyclone Action.
These weapon pickups radically alter the monotony that plagued Street Hero by giving you a variety of ways to dispatch enemies who can now come at you up to four at a time.
Enemies themselves have also had an upgrade in this outing. As well as the standard grunts you’ll encounter ‘Andore’ style giants who will take double the damage before being defeated while the games three stages (sadly repetitive in backgrounds) now comes with nicely unique bosses, each of whom brandishes a different weapon (Katana, Machine Gun and Rocket launcher respectively) and is capable of their own special move.
As impressive in variety as they are, these bosses provide the only downside of Spectask’s gameplay alterations. While Street Hero’s chortling giants were tough but ultimately beatable with your kung-fu alone, it takes a full complement of machine gun ammo plus five throwing knives to defeat Stage 1’s boss. This ultimately affects the way you approach levels, with conservation of special weaponry that should have been used for fun now necessary to defeat these super hard bosses. The downside of saving up your weapons (accessed and chosen from a special inventory screen with the select button) is that, should you lose one of your three lives during a stage, then you automatically lose any weaponry you have collected as well. This can have a Gradius effect, in that that dying once while fighting a boss pretty much spells disaster if you haven’t already significantly weakened him.
Grumbles about the games difficulty alone, it’s hard not to respect the effort that the developer has gone to with Spectask. While they could have just rested on their laurels and churned out the sort of empty clone that Timetop was apparently fine and dandy with, they have instead taken the time to re-tool and expand everything that the Street Hero engine promised but ultimately didn’t quite deliver on.
The Game King may offer developers the athithesis of ‘No Limits’ when it comes to processing power but Spectask is proof of just what could be achieved on the under-powered little beast when a developer with passion for a genre pushed the system as far as it could go.
Score 8/10
These weapon pickups radically alter the monotony that plagued Street Hero by giving you a variety of ways to dispatch enemies who can now come at you up to four at a time.
Enemies themselves have also had an upgrade in this outing. As well as the standard grunts you’ll encounter ‘Andore’ style giants who will take double the damage before being defeated while the games three stages (sadly repetitive in backgrounds) now comes with nicely unique bosses, each of whom brandishes a different weapon (Katana, Machine Gun and Rocket launcher respectively) and is capable of their own special move.
As impressive in variety as they are, these bosses provide the only downside of Spectask’s gameplay alterations. While Street Hero’s chortling giants were tough but ultimately beatable with your kung-fu alone, it takes a full complement of machine gun ammo plus five throwing knives to defeat Stage 1’s boss. This ultimately affects the way you approach levels, with conservation of special weaponry that should have been used for fun now necessary to defeat these super hard bosses. The downside of saving up your weapons (accessed and chosen from a special inventory screen with the select button) is that, should you lose one of your three lives during a stage, then you automatically lose any weaponry you have collected as well. This can have a Gradius effect, in that that dying once while fighting a boss pretty much spells disaster if you haven’t already significantly weakened him.
Grumbles about the games difficulty alone, it’s hard not to respect the effort that the developer has gone to with Spectask. While they could have just rested on their laurels and churned out the sort of empty clone that Timetop was apparently fine and dandy with, they have instead taken the time to re-tool and expand everything that the Street Hero engine promised but ultimately didn’t quite deliver on.
The Game King may offer developers the athithesis of ‘No Limits’ when it comes to processing power but Spectask is proof of just what could be achieved on the under-powered little beast when a developer with passion for a genre pushed the system as far as it could go.
Score 8/10
