GRAPHICS SOUND CONTROL FRUSTRATION FUN FACTOR OVERALL

NES 2 Player Adventure/Platformer Fat cat's back, rangers and he has learned his lesson from last time.. hire better bad guy bosses! Before I turn this whole review upside down, I will work my way up to the good. The first Rescue Rangers had some of the best music in any NES game. You would think Capcom would continue this streak with RR 2, but the final product offered nothing more than average tunes that didn't stick in your head as RR 1's songs did. I was expecting a lot more in the sound department! Next on my 'chipmunk checklist' is the game's control. One hundred percent of the first RR controls remain the same. Hey, it was a good formula to begin with, why fix it if it ain't broke? There is only one very small difference, and it manages to bug the hell out of me. When you pick up a crate, the new programmed feel is shaky. Hard to describe to a fine point, but when you are trying to pick one up it feels a lot more clumsy than casually flipping a crate up with ease. You may call this nitpicking, but it's the small things like this that really bug me and affect the entire quality of the game. While on the subject of crates, instead of in RR 1 having choices of picking up apples, concrete blocks, bombs, etc.; RR 2's main weaponry are plain, ordinary crates. No variety at all. A nice, new touch is the ability to pick up stunned enemies and throw them the same way as a crate, but it does not make up for not having more items to throw. Other speciality items have also been taken out of the game completely. RR 1 had a boat, hammer, and Zipper. Level one of the game is the only time you get to use an item box, only for a faucet to turn on to continue onward. However, like the boat in RR 1, they expanded a little on the transportation idea. Later on in the game, you have to ride a mining cart through 3 or 4 screens. Not as unusual as RR 1's boat, but at least they added in something new. I have checked off sound/music, control, and gameplay. Next up is graphics. Boy does RR 2 shine in this category. Comparing the graphics of RR 2 to RR 1 would be like comparing Super Mario Bros 2 with SMB 1. The sprites and backgrounds are much, much more detailed but less colorful than in the first game. The variety of levels are nice, even though some complete cliched. There's a cafe level, ship level, haunted house level, futuristic level, Old Western level, and a machinery level. Character sprites are more detailed, but oddly enough Chip and Dale look less appealing with an extra graphic job. Common enemies look like RR 1's rejects. Not bad, but not too interesting either. Only a few baddies here and there take you for surprise, and they usually are too far a part from each other in the game. The end boss levels, on the other hand, are superb. Speaking of which... Anyone with two working hands will be able to tell the sequel's biggest improvement over the first- the bosses! Capcom went all out to amaze players with the end level bosses, and they surely did a great job. Unlike RR 1, there are special strategies for almost every boss. And remember those red bouncy balls from the first game? They are no more for the boss stages. I will go as far as to say without these much more advanced boss levels, I would have given this game a 2 in overall score. Wondering about the challenge of the game? Remember how easy the levels in RR 1 were? Well, so are the ones in the sequel. There are only two real problem spots I can think of on the top of my head: getting used to controlling the mining cart in the Western level and some of the final stage. But, as I mentioned in my review of Rescue Rangers, we must remember this is a game targeted to the young NES fans. And even if the levels are easy, they are well varied. For example, at one point of the game Fat Cat traps you inside of a refrigerator. A 3 minute timer starts and you must find your way to the end or else Chip and Dale will turn into ice cubes for Fat Cat's drinks. Of course, getting back to the challenge problem, I finished the level with a little less than two minutes still left on the timer. ......BOTTOM LINE: You should be worried that I haven't mentioned the word 'fun' yet in the review. The game IS fun at times, but not nearly as much as the first game. Good try, Capcom. I recommend everyone to pick it up if they ever get the chance to. -Mike