Smash TV was originally a game made by Williams for the Arcades in 1990. It would be ported to the SNES by Beam Software and published by Acclaim in 1992 in North America and Japan, and in 1993 in Europe, which is the one I will be reviewing. It was also ported to the NES, Game Gear, Master System, Mega Drive, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and Amiga.
It takes place in a dystopian future in the year 1999, and you play as one or two lucky contestants taking part in a game show where you must kill or be killed, in that sense borrowing from the film The Running Man.
The gameplay is incredibly simple, you move through a series of rooms by shooting every enemy that you see. At the end of each level you will face a boss, which seriously takes like a million hits to kill. Moving through the game you can collect different temporary weapon upgrades that make your weapon stronger, shields, temporary invincibility, and stuff like a brand new VCR or money. This game is full of violence, and even includes blood, something that is rare in early SNES games.
The presentation of this game is just so 90s and I love it. The sleazy TV-show host surrounded by scantily clad women is just hilarious. But there isn’t really too much to say about the game, and I guess the biggest flaw is that it gets very repetitive. There’s only three levels, but they will take some time to get through.
This game has great controls. The original arcade machine used two joysticks where one controlled your character, and the other one controls your shots. This translated really well to the SNES controller, where the D-pad moves, and the four main buttons acts like second D-Pad letting you shoot.
Super Smash TV is really hard though. You get a limited amount of lives and continues to get through the game. There are three difficulties, but if you play it on Easy you only get to play the first stage. You must play on Normal to be able to play all the stages. This is a stupid thing I think, but then again, I barely noticed any difference between Easy and Normal, they were both brutally hard. Especially considering the vast amount of enemies you must deal with. The bosses also take forever to beat, seriously. I personally wasn’t able to get past the second boss.
Graphically, it doesn’t look too exciting, but it looks close to the original arcade game. In general, it looks more like an updated NES game rather than a SNES title. However, there is no slowdown, despite the many enemies on screen at once. Super Smash TV does contain some cheesy voice clips. They sound quite muffled though, but it’s still funny. The music is decent enough, nothing particularly special about it, but it isn’t bad.
Overall, Super Smash TV is a fun game. I love the presentation of it and just how 90s it feels. The only real flaw it has is that it gets very repetitive quite fast. Playing with a second player will make this more fun though. Also, sometimes it is fun playing a mindless game like this where the sole purpose is just to blow stuff up.
Is it worth Playing?
I would say that this game is only really worth playing if plan to play the multiplayer mode. Playing alone is fine enough, but it does get a bit old after just playing for a short time. It might be fun if you just feel like killing some time and want a gory, mindless shooter or just some simple arcade-style action. I certainly recommend it for anyone wanting a difficult challenge. It certainly isn’t a bad game, it is just very repetitive.
Final score: 7/10
Screenshots via MobyGames: http://www.mobygames.com
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