Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced

Screenshots

Notes

Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced is a collection of 6 classic Konami arcade games ported to the GBA. There are a couple of these arcade collections on the list, and if I'd realised I might have been tempted to filter them out. Playing old arcade games doesn't interest me greatly for the purposes of this challenge.

So, I played each game enough to get a good sense of it, and now I'm moving on.

Frogger


It's Frogger. I think I can say conclusively this is the most famous of the titles included. Certainly the only one I'd heard of. Seems like a perfectly functional port.

Scramble


Scramble is a shooter where you're apparently invading an alien planet. You fly over a landscape, scrolling left to right, dropping bombs and shooting. Your object is to get as far as possible without dying or running out of fuel (which can be replenished by shooting fuel stations on the ground - somehow). Fun enough. The palette swaps occasionally, possibly to try and create a sense of progress but I found it quite jarring.

Time Pilot

Time Pilot is another shooter, this time you can move freely in any direction. You seem to be a futuristic ship shooting down biplanes in level 1 and spitfires in level 2. Presumably you've gone back in time for some reason and are massacring the natives? The graphics look better in motion as the ships rotating in different directions gives a good sense of how they look. Seemed a bit repetetive to me.

Gyrus

Yet another shooter, this time you're in space warping between planets. In the process you fly along a tunnel and shoot alien ships flying towards you. Nice perspective effects on the tunnel, and you actually reach planets periodically which are show on screen.

Yie Ar Kung Fu

A simple fighter where you have to beat a series of unique opponents. Better graphics than others in the collection. The gameplay is a little odd. Just pressing punch does nothing, you have to be holding a direction. Good variety of moves though. I got stuck on a guy with nunchucks who seems to have a much bigger reach and be much faster than you.

Rush'n Attack

Rush'n Attack is a proto-Metal Slug run'n'gun type game. You run left to right stabbing Russians (see what they did there?) and are trying to free POWs. The only gun appears to be a flamethrower which drops from certain enemies. Not as intense as Metal Slug eventually became but a good step on that path.

Overall Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced is a decent set of ports, but it doesn't make good use of the GBA hardware (as they are just straight ports), and isn't really what I look for in a game.