CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS (1993 ARCADE) ACCESSIBILITY REVIEW:

CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS (1993 ARCADE) ACCESSIBILITY REVIEW:

MESS O.: “HEY CREEP! GET AWAY FROM THAT DINO!”

VICE T.: “GET LOST OR LOSE TEETH! YOUR CARCASS WILL FATTEN UP THIS 

ROCK HOPPER BEFORE I SKIN IT!”

- Stage 1 Boss “Vice T.” Dialogue 

    Today, I played the most 90s thing I have ever seen. Why haven’t I ever seen this before!? Listen to this:  It’s a Final Fight ripoff based on a comic that became a Saturday morning cartoon. That is gnarly, dude! It’s about guys from an apocalyptic 2153 fighting dinosaur hunters the best way possible. By beating them up! And sometimes even their dinosaurs, because those are obviously bad dinos. The ones you are saving are good. Since 90s nostalgia is cool, and it’s the most recent thing I’ve played, I thought I’d share some of my experiences with this radical game.

Apparently, the game supports up to four players: Jack, (Your Cody Clone!) Hannah, (Obligatory female in orange suit.) Mustapha,( Tough Black Guy!) and Mess O., (Your Haggar Clone!) Now, it’s pretty much your standard beat-‘em-up sidescroller with scifi tough guys, fat guys, and people with whips (And dinos, of course!) to beat up as you find food and power-ups in conveniently-placed oil drums and containers. But, it’s main gimmick seems to be that this game has more guns than The Punisher arcade game. There are a lot. All over the place.

Unlike most beat-em-ups, you see, it uses an ammo system. Most beat-em-ups have you throw away your gun after a few uses, like a ranged weapon with 3 uses. (The Punisher, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, etc.) Not in this game! You can pick up ammo, and blast punks with your shotguns, or triceratopses with your uzis, ‘til you can’t reload. This is the first beat-em-up I’ve seen with such a reload system, and it is awesome.

By the way, on the flipside of awesome cheese, all 90s arcade beat-em-ups had frighteningly cheesy and potentially traumatic game over screens to get you to fork over another quarter. In this one, Vice T. shoots you in the face when the counter reaches 0, and says “ EAT LEAD -- BABY!” Terrifying cheesiness. But, in this emulation, simply pressing a button inserts a coin, thank goodness. So we can be spared the potential trauma of hearing: “EAT LEAD -- BABY!” in our nightmares!

I love the cheesiness. I love that the mission doesn’t make sense. Save good dinos, kill bad ones. Sure! And I love that everything is solved with a one-liner and a punch. I even love the bad dialogue. (Jack’s victory phrase is “You can’t touch this!”) Anyway, I did have a couple accessibility issues. Since this was an emulation, I couldn’t figure out how to do special attacks. I pressed all the buttons. But, since there was no instructions on how the emulation translates arcade buttons, I still haven’t figured it all out, but have done most the guesswork myself. Thankfully, beat-em-ups  are pretty straightforward and accessible. Just punch and move forward.

Before anyone asks…I haven’t read the comics, or seen the cartoon (Yet!) But, I thought the game was mind-blowingly RADICAL. If you want to revisit the 90s, or just have fun beating up bad guys with the power of one-liners and 90s catchphrases, this game is for you. Guns and dinosaurs! What more do you want? Check it out!

FINAL GRADE: A

ACCESSIBILITY GRADE: A-  (Straight-forward beat-em-up with minimal tricky controls. Punch and move forward if all else fails.)

FORGIVENESS FACTOR: A+ (Unlimited continues if you‘re playing an emulation!)

CONTROLS: A (Pretty straightforward for a beat-em-up. But, some guesswork. Figure out how to punch, and you‘re good to beat up punks and evil dinos! Rock on!)

Stranded II (PC+Mac 2007): Game Accessibility Review:

Stranded II (PC+Mac 2007): Game Accessibility Review:

Stranded II is a bit like Minecraft. Except Minecraft lets you build whatever world you want piece by piece. Stranded II appears to be the opposite philosophy. Namely, you have to build what it tells you you can build, and you have no idea what you’re getting as you randomly hit trees or the ground. Every tree you hit, you could get leaves, vines, or branches. There’s no telling what you’ll get whenever you hit a resource…it’s all chance!

    Also, the inventory is ridiculously small. I’ve played this game many times over to see if I could get the hang of it. I eventually did, but I don’t think it made it any more fun to play. The key strategy is to set up structures bit by bit. First, make a hammer by combining 1 branch + 1 stone. Then, click on the hammer and put it in your hand. Right click to build an available structure. Putting the hammer in your hand and clicking repeatedly? You have to do it EVERY time you build something.

Okay, let’s build a shelter: 20 branches, 30 leaves. Since the inventory is ridiculously small, you’re going to hear your character complain: “It’s too heavy!” a lot. So, basically, build the structure piece by piece, meaning once you have the materials, click 50 times (20+30) on the structure, and then, you’ll have it. And that’s the easiest structure to get in the game. Food, water, and fatigue are all measured separately too, rather than Minecraft’s unified hunger meter, so you always have to keep an eye on that.

I respect that the game is based on survival, but does: “Click on this graphically pre-determined structure, while clicking wildly on this tree to see if you can get materials to build the graphically pre-determined structure” sound fun? No, not to me; it’s tedious, and just reminds me I could be playing Minecraft. Minecraft at least let’s me take pride in what I build, because the buildings’ designs are up to me.

And before any Stranded II fans chime in, yes, I built the wood and stone storage. But, I found that, again, the inventory is so small, that I kept having to sacrifice food to carry back logs for the all purpose storage hut. Otherwise, “It’s too heavy!” And I would find that my dropped food would perish after a while, or else I’d just lose track of where I put it.

Now, to make matters worse for non-German speakers, I kept finding bits of the game that were untranslated even in the English version. These were mostly ok. “Alle” means “all” for taking all the materials in front of you. “Eingeborener” means native, as you will sometimes encounter natives. But, there was one German message where, if I didn’t speak German, I’d be toast: “Feuer! Feuer! Ein Gebäude brennt!” In English: “Fire! Fire! A building is burning!” I’d built my shelter too close to my campfire (10 branches+50 stones) and it burnt down.

 Overall, I had some fun with this game. Hunting animals, seeing how long I could survive. But, there are too many random elements in Stranded II, and the building process is way too tedious for my taste when gathering is so difficult to measure and at the same time I have to maintain supplies, and even sometimes avoid lions. Yes, lions. Now, click faster, before they kill you!

I’m posting this to prove a point about disability in gaming. Previously, I lambasted Minecraft for having nearly impossible controls. But, it was still kind of fun to build with, truth be told. But, Stranded II is proof that a game can be perfectly accessible control-wise, and still be bad. Even though most of Stranded II is controlled by simple point-and-click, other problems make the game pointlessly tedious, and the fun dies quickly. Sometimes fun transcends disability issues: If a game’s bad, a game’s bad.

FINAL GRADE: C

ACCESSIBILITY GRADE: B+ (Point-and-click for nearly all actions; some untranslated words, clicking to build gets tiresome.)

FORGIVENESS FACTOR: E (Resource management is incredibly critical; limited inventory space makes survival difficult.)

 CONTROL A-:  (Nearly all interactions are point-and-click; controls can be changed in the main menu.)