Rod-land

The Good
Two fairies, Tam and Rit, have the task of rescuing their mom who is held captive on top of the Maboots Tower. How can this happen? Well, the inhabitants decide to go berserk one day, kidnap their mom, and take her to the top of the Maboots Tower. To help them, they are equipped with a rod and some rainbow shoes.

There are 40 levels in the game, and each level is presented with a series of platforms and the monsters walking around on them. The gameplay is pretty neat, with you completing the level as you would do in Bubble Bobble. You can navigate each platform and use the rod to kill the monsters, only you smash monsters from side to side. Killing enemies this way gives me much pleasure than just trapping them in bubbles and bumping into them. If you choose to smash the monsters, you get a variety of weapons ranging from rockets to bouncing balls to exploding dynamite to bombs; but what weapon you get depends on pure luck.

If you feel like it, you can collect all the items scattered around the level like you do in Mr. Do!. This causes “Extra Game” to appear in huge letters and the monsters to change shape. One of the monsters carry a letter that are in the word EXTRA, and collecting all the letters will award you with an extra life. In the levels, you can also create ladders on the fly, and this becomes useful for not only collecting items that can't be collected on the platforms, but also for avoiding the monsters. The highlight of Rod-Land is riding on top of the balloons in the later levels and killing monsters as you go further up.

As well as the beginning of the game, the cut-scenes can be viewed in between some stages, adding some depth to the story. Watching the cut-scenes made me come to the conclusion that mom is the sexiest fairy in the game. There are some stunning backdrops behind the platforms, with outdoor scenes in the first half of the game, and indoor scenes in the rest of the game. I enjoyed viewing the title screen, with both fairies looking out onto the horizon.

The two-player option is useful in games such as Rod-Land. You get to work as a team and the levels can be finished much quicker with two player. There is cute background music which goes with the 'cuteness' theme of the game, and there are a wide variety of tunes to listen to. The controls are simple to learn. You navigate Tam or Rit mainly by moving the joystick left or right, and use the rod by pressing fire. Navigate ordinary ladders by pushing it up, and create your own ladders by pushing up and fire.

The Bad
You can only create one ladder at a time, and if you attempt to create a second ladder, the last one you made disappear. This means that you have the tedious task of creating a single ladder just to get an item that is out of reach and you have to repeat this for each item you want to get. Also, monsters are able to navigate ladders that you create on your own, only to fall down once they reach the top. It would have been funny if you had a series of ladders side by side, so that you can see the monsters dong this for each of the ladders.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, Rod-Land is a very good game. It looks similar to Bubble Bobble in that you navigate platforms and destroy monsters, but you get to each platform by climbing up and down ladders. What I like about the game is the way that you destroy the monsters and you can use the weapon they leave behind to destroy others in your path.

Alternatively, you can collect items scattered around the levels, and create ladders and use them to get to items that are sometimes hard to reach. The backdrops look very good, and the cut-scenes in between the levels add depth to the story. The background music that occupies each level go with the overall theme of the game. If you have played Bubble Bobble, then you will love Rod-Land. There is so much to do in this game.