Journey to Silius (NES) Review
|
System NES
Developer Sunsoft Publisher Sunsoft Genre Side Scroller # of Players 1 Release Date September 1990 |
Pros
Great Music Cons Short Game |
Review
by Thonos
12/12/2015
Growing up there was some games that were memorable to me. That doesn't mean they were great games, just games that I remember and spending a lot of time with. Journey to Silius is one of these games. This was a game that I played many, many times growing up. And while there have been plenty of better side scrolling games that have come along, I'm still partial to this one.
In Journey to Silius you play as Jay, the son of a space colony scientist who is killed by a group of terrioists. Shortly afterwards you find a message from you father asking you to finish his work. So this sets you on a quest to go and defeat every terrorist in your way. Now I know that the original story had to do with the Terminator movie and that Sunsoft lost the rights to it and they had to salvage this game. This explains why every terrorist you fight looks like different robots. The story here is pretty forgettable.
The game plays like a regular side scrolling game. You start with a standard handgun and a machine gun as your first special weapon. Right before you get to each stage boss you fight a strong enemy, I call them guardians, which upon beating them they give you a new special weapon. All the special weapons use the same ammo pool so you have to be selective on when to use them. While enemies do drop ammo refills occasionally, health drops from my experience happened rarely and didn't offer much when they do.
The game is short, only consisting of five stages which takes under a hour to beat if you know what you are doing. The replayability is that you get three lives and three continues to beat the game in, which sounds like a lot but it will take you a few tries to get through this game. I had plenty of times I jumped down through the stage and fell right into a enemy that I didn't see until it was too late. Just like other side scrolling games, timing your jumps and dodging obstacles is the big thing to learn and once you learn that the game becomes much easier. I actually felt the earlier stages were harder compared to the latter ones.
If I had to pick a game I felt had one of the best opening soundtracks, Journey to Silius would be near the top of that list. This is a game that I could throw in and just listen to the opening over and over. If I got bored of that I would just go to stage one and listen to that amazing stage music. This is good since the graphics where kind of average at best. Sound effects were a little bit better, but still pretty much what you would expect from a NES game from the early 90's.
Looking back this whole game was kind of average. If it wasn't for the music, I probably would not have played it was much as I did. Due to this fact, the game did grow on me over the years and I still enjoy playing it even today. For someone new who didn't have as much exposure to the game as I did you might not feel that this game is that great.
by Thonos
12/12/2015
Growing up there was some games that were memorable to me. That doesn't mean they were great games, just games that I remember and spending a lot of time with. Journey to Silius is one of these games. This was a game that I played many, many times growing up. And while there have been plenty of better side scrolling games that have come along, I'm still partial to this one.
In Journey to Silius you play as Jay, the son of a space colony scientist who is killed by a group of terrioists. Shortly afterwards you find a message from you father asking you to finish his work. So this sets you on a quest to go and defeat every terrorist in your way. Now I know that the original story had to do with the Terminator movie and that Sunsoft lost the rights to it and they had to salvage this game. This explains why every terrorist you fight looks like different robots. The story here is pretty forgettable.
The game plays like a regular side scrolling game. You start with a standard handgun and a machine gun as your first special weapon. Right before you get to each stage boss you fight a strong enemy, I call them guardians, which upon beating them they give you a new special weapon. All the special weapons use the same ammo pool so you have to be selective on when to use them. While enemies do drop ammo refills occasionally, health drops from my experience happened rarely and didn't offer much when they do.
The game is short, only consisting of five stages which takes under a hour to beat if you know what you are doing. The replayability is that you get three lives and three continues to beat the game in, which sounds like a lot but it will take you a few tries to get through this game. I had plenty of times I jumped down through the stage and fell right into a enemy that I didn't see until it was too late. Just like other side scrolling games, timing your jumps and dodging obstacles is the big thing to learn and once you learn that the game becomes much easier. I actually felt the earlier stages were harder compared to the latter ones.
If I had to pick a game I felt had one of the best opening soundtracks, Journey to Silius would be near the top of that list. This is a game that I could throw in and just listen to the opening over and over. If I got bored of that I would just go to stage one and listen to that amazing stage music. This is good since the graphics where kind of average at best. Sound effects were a little bit better, but still pretty much what you would expect from a NES game from the early 90's.
Looking back this whole game was kind of average. If it wasn't for the music, I probably would not have played it was much as I did. Due to this fact, the game did grow on me over the years and I still enjoy playing it even today. For someone new who didn't have as much exposure to the game as I did you might not feel that this game is that great.