Bio Menace Stargunner Jill

Well, that sounds like a wacky and possibly adult Japanese movie.

Bio Menace

Die, battle toad!

When mutants invade Metro City (hmm, aren't there always mutants in Metro?), the CIA sends their top operative Naked Snake to recon kill them all. As a 2D action scroller, Snake must blast his way through the teeming mutant horde to also rescue survivors and find keys to doors to score points and advance to the next level... where he needs to do it all again only against stronger enemies! While the controls are decent enough there are simply too many annoyance factors in this game for me - all of which are present in stage 1. Stupid looking enemies? Check. Helpless while climbing ladders? Check. Keys hidden to force backtracking? Check. Dying restarts level? Check. Definitely not one for me - I give it 1 plane crash you can walk behind out of 5. Not worth playing.

Insight: Jumping up ladders is much faster than the regular "climb" action.

Stargunner

Ugh, who designed this ship? Oh right, I did.

Much like Biomenace, this 2D space shooter was also made by Apogee in which you must destroy some aliens, preferably all of them! Starting with a Star Wars type scrolling intro is usually a bad sign, and the game doesn't improve much from there as it becomes a stock standard spaceship bullet hell type fare. I do quite like the ship customization ability in between missions, but not being able to flip around to use the cannon you put on the bottom of your vessel and make it shoot up, even temporarily, is just stupid. Sorry, another one not worth playing. It gets 1 random voice over out of 5. If you want a similar old school game try Tyrian 2000 instead.

Jill of the Jungle

Pacman would like his ghosts back.

This three game series has players platforming around as the titular Jill, who moves with all the grace of an ox and can't throw daggers below waist height. The graphics are somewhat/really bad, the controls clunky, and the story near non-existent. While the sound effects choices are also questionable the music on some levels is really good - which is a welcome surprise!  Also, because most of the levels are short and dying still achieves progress (at least in the early maps) this actually turned out to be a fun distraction! Unfortunately it did start getting repetitive later on but still not bad given its age. It certainly did better than the two above! I give it 1.5 sexy pixels out of 5.

Insight: Don't bother jumping if you are in climb mode. Just use the direction buttons.