One thing you gotta love about the 80s is the over abundance of video games claiming to be 3D. I can’t count the number of titles that made use of some type of stereoscopic glasses. It was hugely popular in this decade, but it wasn’t until the mid 90s that we actually had true three dimensional gameplay. That didn’t stop developers from trying their hand at advertising their sprite based games as offering this style. One of the most unusual choices here is the 3D Battles of WorldRunner. This is a title developed by Squaresoft of all companies, and it’s one of their rare releases that predates Final Fantasy. Because Square had not yet hit their groove in the market this platformer was doomed to obscurity. For some reason I’ve always loved the early Squaresoft releases, and so I had to check out this title especially considering it has had some modern buzz about it. There’s some definite confusion over the name of this game considering the fact that the boxart and start screen depict a different title so I’m just going to refer to the boxart title in this review. 3-D WorldRunner is pretty decent but it’s nothing spectacular which I assume is why it didn’t have a sequel.
I’m not really sure there’s a story here. I wasn’t able to find one at least, and so let’s cut straight to the gameplay. You view the action from behind your character which creates a pseudo 3D perspective. You can move your character left and right, and you can also jump. The protagonist by default runs straight and you cannot move backwards. You can however guide him left or right and the stages are actually pretty wide open though when you reach the horizontal end it just starts repeating. You’re faced with a myriad of enemies that deplete your life bar and when that’s gone you lose a life and continue from just a little ways back. The main obstacle however are the holes in the terrain. These stretch across the entire stage horizontally and this is the main reason your character can jump. They differ in how far you need to jump to clear them, and falling results in instant death. This is really what keeps you on your toes, because holding the up button on the directional pad makes you move faster (regardless of if you’re midair or on the ground) and down slows your progress. The first few stages introduce you to areas where you have to land on small slits of land and then jump again which can be tough to time, but things get significantly more complicated.
I was initially disappointed with the game because the first few stages are too easy. Navigating across the chasms isn’t too difficult, and the enemy patterns make avoiding them super simple. Later on 3-D Worldrunner introduces a wider variety of foes and platforming elements which makes gameplay downright frustrating. At first you’re just tasked with leaping over chasms and timing your vertical presses on the directional pad in conjunction with how long the pit is. Later on these become far too long to make in a single bound. This is where the springs come in to play, and believe you me, you will grow to hate these things as much as I do. You must aim yourself at them so that you’re sprung upward once more and can continue on. It can be super difficult to time this just right and aim your character, but it’s an absolute requirement and can be frustrating as all heck. Then the game takes things a step further by introducing obstacles while you’re airborne and aiming for the springs. The game becomes super difficult at this point and you’ll find yourself having to rely on trial and error. The later stages are almost entirely airborne which will result in a lot of controllers being thrown across the room. Many of the enemies simply push you back but that’s the kiss of death when you’re making intricate jumps that require a significant amount of precision.
Unfortunately that’s about all there is to this game. The developers thought of a few interesting mechanics and just upped the difficulty by requiring more precision as you go on. That in itself wouldn’t be a bad thing but it’s highly repetitious and far too frustrating to be fun. There’s very little variety here with stages following the same exact formula in some very not creative ways. What saves 3D Worldrunner a bit is that there are a ton of secrets, but I still couldn’t really be bothered to track all of them down. The only break you have from repetition is during the boss encounters. Here you’re given the ability to fly all around the screen (ala Space Harrier) and shoot at the hulking foe (actually, it’s exactly like Space Harrier). These sequences are actually quite fun and offer a nice break from the mundane level design, but they hardly make 3-D Worldrunner a great game. It’s kind of sad but my favorite part of reaching a new stage was that the background graphics would change because they’re really well done. And this leads me now to…
It’s time to discuss the graphics. Now, the original Nintendo was not well equipped to handle 3D titles. It couldn’t scale sprites well, and most games that tried just looked like a mess. With that said Battles of 3D Worldrunner is a bit of a technical feat. Squaresoft was a small studio back then and to see them able to do what so many other developers were unable to is truly impessive. The ground tiles move in an exceptionally smooth manner, and enemies scale into view very smoothly. You’ll never misjudge a jump because of the graphics engine. What’s more is that art style is absolutely fantastic. I loved seeing the backdrops to each stage full of fantasy based flora and architecture. Some of the enemy designs are pretty cool and definitely show an early start to the Final Fantasy series. The ground is composed of differently colored tiles, and while that’s boring at least the scrolling is smooth. This is a very good looking game and I’m impressed that such a small studio was able to get it running so well. The soundtrack on the other hand is far from exceptional. You’ll be greeted with the same bouncy tune for each stage which just feels lazy. It’s a good song but it gets old after a while. Boss fights break up the monotonous audio temporarily but that theme isn’t particularly well done in my opinion. The soundtrack in 3-D Worldrunner is a bit underwhelming to be honest.
You know, I really wanted to like this 3-D Worldrunner. Squaresoft got a lot right here (particularly the graphics engine) but it just feels like an uninspired effort overall. There just isn’t a lot of diversity in the gameplay. It feels like the same thing through each level, and by about world four the developers ran out of ideas. It’s fun for a while, but this isn’t the type of game that you’re going to want to replay. Plus, you’ll probably want to play only for a few minutes before it gets old. It’s an interesting cliff note in Squaresoft’s history, but don’t feel bad for passing on this one. It’s not a good indication of where the company was going.
