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About
Tails' Skypatrol es un videojuego desarrollado por SIMS y JSH, y distribuido por SEGA en el segundo trimestre del año 1995 para el sistema de entretenimiento informático SEGA Game Gear, pero sólo para Japón. . Se puede disfrutar en Europa gracias a Sonic Adventure DX y Sonic Gems Collection, ambos de SEGA.
'Tails' Skypatrol' (テイルスのスカイパトロール) is a Sonic the Hedgehog spin-off based around one of the series' popular sidekicks, Tails, which the game is incidentally centered around. Despite not being released out of Japan directly (1995), it was featured outside the region as a bonus game in the 'Sonic Gems Collection'- a GameCube title including many other entries.
Bearing both strategy and shooter qualities, Tails' Skypatrol is not quite the traditional platformer. There are no Rings to collect (commonly known to reward extra lives), which instead is a projectile that Tails throws to garner points and extra lives. A new noticeable mechanic is the Flight Meter, which slowly drains as the stages pile on. In order to keep this meter filled and soaring, Tails can find Mint Candy- his favourite treat- scattered across areas to refill his energy. Keep Tails wound up to the very end, and push back fleets of enemies and massive bosses to win!
System requirements for GameCube
System requirements for Game Gear
System requirements for PlayStation 2
Tail's Skypatrol reviews and comments
This game's mechanics are fairly simple, you have a Fuel bar that is draining over time, or when you take hits from missiles or enemies, the objective is to get to the end of the level and beat the boss there. It's a simple premise, although one would think that a cute little game like this would have an easy playthrough, it turned out that it was more challenging than expected.
The challenge, however, comes more in technical issues than fair challenge or difficulty, the controls are in the stiff side and when you hit a wall or floor you'll lose a life, granted you have infinite continues (at least in the Gems Collection on which I played this game) but a lot of times you'll be dying from bad positioning or getting hit by stuff that seemed like background. To finish the stage you'll be doing a lot of trial and error since a lot of its traps are cheap and out of nowhere, if not for some checkpoints spaced through the level I wouldn't finish this thing off. Other big issues were the hitboxes or touchboxes in general, Tails is composed of two boxes, him and a big ring that he carries to throw it as a weapon and attach him to stuff like handles or poles, some items like points or lives at times responded by touching them with Tails and other times with the ring, or others times with neither, I didn't find out which was the sweet spot so you'll be dying a lot by this thing.
To be fair, the artwork is pretty like every Sonic game should be, the music tho' is pretty generic but serviceable, and for once the boss fights were somewhat fun and a little challenging in a fair way so not bad, they were even like a little puzzle, once you noticed how to deal with them the rest is just skill (and some luck).
Not everything is bad in this game, if not for all the technical issues I could say that it can also be OK, but the truth is far different. I don't know if anyone is interested in this kind of game in this day and age but maybe for a collector's of Sonic fan point of view it is worth to try it, I guess.