{"id":3028,"date":"2014-01-30T04:00:53","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T04:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=3028"},"modified":"2014-01-30T04:17:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T04:17:56","slug":"okay-can-i-still-be-garth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=3028","title":{"rendered":"“Okay. Can I still be Garth?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are games that I rented through the years that were really not that memorable.\u00a0 For some reason, even though I didn’t have fun with it at all, Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum<\/i> still manages to bring back memories of a pretty fun day in our little neighborhood.<\/p>\n

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\"1990<\/a>

1990 – NES<\/p><\/div>\n

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In reflecting on this game\u2019s lanky visuals and awkward controls, I thought for sure it was an LJN title.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite baffling that even with the best source material \u2013 X-Men<\/i>, Nightmare on Elm Street<\/i>, Back to the Future<\/i>, The Karate Kid<\/i>, Jaws<\/i>, among many others \u2013 a company could still manage to consistently make games that were genuinely difficult to have fun with.<\/p>\n

It seemed like LJN always found a way to screw it all up\u2026<\/p>\n

Dash Galaxy<\/i> was actually a Data East title, however.\u00a0 Having released classics like BurgerTime<\/i> and BreakThru <\/i>in the 80\u2019s, they struggled to compete with other smaller publishers like Taito and Sunsoft.\u00a0 They managed to break thru with a few other hits (see what I did there?), but with the exception of Caveman Ninja<\/i> \u2013 also known as Joe & Mac<\/i> \u2013 there weren\u2019t enough quality titles to save Data East from bankruptcy in the early 2000\u2019s.<\/p>\n

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\"This<\/a>

This has been on my wishlist for a while, but I can’t find it anywhere… even online.
Sad face. \ud83d\ude41<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum<\/i> seems to be a love letter to the early batch of sci-fi movies and TV shows.\u00a0 The game\u2019s box art, title screen and short introduction scene are reminiscent of something you\u2019d see in Flash Gordon<\/i>, Buck Rogers<\/i>, or even The Jetsons<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Not a bad concept, but it didn’t translate into anything all that fun to play.<\/p>\n

The game suffers from a bit of an identity crisis as it tries to be two things all at once.\u00a0 On one hand, you have the top-down, block-pushing puzzle element, which serves as a way to travel from one level to the next.\u00a0 Once you get into the levels themselves, you control Dash in a side-scrolling environment to collect items you can use on the puzzle side to progress further into the game.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t much shooting going on, so it\u2019s no Mega Man<\/i> or Contra<\/i> by any stretch of the imagination.\u00a0 Instead of killing enemies, you\u2019re relegated to avoiding them as much as possible, although touching them and losing precious oxygen is sometimes unavoidable.<\/p>\n

The controls aren\u2019t great, but they might not be so bad if the enemies didn\u2019t have such unforgiving patterns.\u00a0 As you\u2019ll see in the video below, there are times that the player has to stop bouncing on a platform, wait a moment, then start the process all over again just to collect a star.\u00a0 It\u2019s a tedious part of the game that happens way more than it should.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be the first person to tell you that graphics don\u2019t necessarily make or break a game\u2026\u00a0 but these are really quite bland, aren\u2019t they?\u00a0 There\u2019s no character on the screen that looks interesting enough at any given time to make me care about any of them.<\/p>\n

The morning after renting it at the Co-op, I went down to the basement and played it for a few minutes.\u00a0 To put it mildly, I wasn\u2019t impressed.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t get to rent something every weekend, so I had to pick my game of choice carefully on our trips to the video store.\u00a0 Whenever I got home to something I didn\u2019t enjoy, it was quite a bummer.\u00a0 It\u2019d have to wait until my mom was feeling generous enough to rent another game for me.<\/p>\n

#firstworldproblemforan80skid<\/p>\n

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