ÿþ<html> <head> <title>Encyclopedia Obscura: Wait And See!</title> <META NAME="author" CONTENT="Per Arne Sandvik"> <META NAME="language" CONTENT="English"> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Lurking in the shadows of pop culture - so you don't have to"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="encyclopedia obscura, obscure, movies, games, music, comics, toys, links, weird, humor, entertainment, nes, nintendo, warner bros, bugs bunny, battletoads, wait and see, bootleg, unlicensed"> <META NAME="robots" CONTENT="follow,index"> <META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="14"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mystyle.css" /> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- function MM_reloadPage(init) { //reloads the window if Nav4 resized if (init==true) with (navigator) {if ((appName=="Netscape")&&(parseInt(appVersion)==4)) { document.MM_pgW=innerWidth; document.MM_pgH=innerHeight; onresize=MM_reloadPage; }} else if (innerWidth!=document.MM_pgW || innerHeight!=document.MM_pgH) location.reload(); } MM_reloadPage(true); // --> </script> </head> <body bgcolor="#C3C3C3" topMargin=20 leftMargin=10 rightMargin=0> <script LANGUAGE="javascript" src="headergames.js"></script> <table width="720" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0> <!------------ MENU -------------> <tr valign="top"> <td width=220 rowspan=5> <IFRAME SRC="menu.html" width=220 height=1200 align=left frameborder=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0></iframe> </td> </tr> <!------------ /MENU -------------> </tr> <td height=12> <!------------ SPACER -------------> </td> </tr> <tr> <td background="gphcs/mwinheader.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat" height=54 width=500> <div align=left style="padding-left: 20; padding-right: 20; padding-top: 3"> <!------------ TITLE -------------> <table width=460 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 align=left> <tr> <td> <font class="header"> WAIT AND SEE! </font> </td> <td align=right valign=bottom> <font> November 21 2003 </font> </td> </tr> </table> <!------------ /TITLE -------------> </td> </tr> <tr> <td background="gphcs/bgmain.jpg" style="background-repeat: repeat-y" valign=top > <!------------ STUPID FRAME SETTINGS FOR OPERA USERS -------------> <table width=500 align=center cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0> <tr> <td width=20> </td> <td width=460> <!------------ /STUPID FRAME SETTINGS FOR OPERA USERS -------------> <br> <font> <!------------ TXT -------------> <a href="printgameswaitsee.html" target="_blank"><img src="gphcs/iconprint.gif" align=center border=0> Printer friendly</a> <p align=justify> <img src="gphcs/gameswait/bt.gif" align=right style="margin-left: 10; margin-bottom: 5"> The other day, I read what must have been the twentieth Battletoads review I've scanned through since my maiden voyage on the Internet's banner-clad waves. And like all the other twenty reviews, this one's main focus was on the difficulty level of the beast. I remember playing this game in an electronics shop for about ten minutes when I was ten or eleven years old, and while it seemed pretty tough, I couldn't imagine it could be <i>that</i> hard. So I gave it a spin on the old emulator. Sweet Jesus in a monstertruck, I was wrong. I got to the level with the big glowing ball that crushes you the moment you change directions one nanosecond too early or late at any point. I remember standing up in a blaze of fury and shouting <i>"The game cheated!"</i> more than once in my childhood years, but back then that mostly meant Dr. Wily's life meter was replenished just when I though I had bested him or a glitch caused me to fall through a platform. Those were just twists and acceptable bugs. Not accepting human error as a part of the equation and dancing around while masturbating to one's own 8-bit superior brain? That's cheating. Don't bother sending an e-mail to inform me you finished Battletoads back in 1991, I'll just put your name on my big list of liars. Liar. </p> <p align=justify> <i>"Well, Per Arne,"</i> I said to myself <i>"that was the hardest game you ever played."</i> And then I remembered I was wrong. After searching through the dustiest of folders, I rediscovered the hardest game I've ever played: <i>Wait And See!</i> Which is a lie, since I after all did finish this game, which is more than I can say about my Battletoads bout. And even Battletoads can't comptete with Ikari Warriors II, the hardest thing since the universe invented black hole singularities. This game made me tell a science joke, I hope you're happy. </p> <p aling=center> <img src="gphcs/gameswait/title.gif" align=center> </p> <p align=justify> Anyway, while Wait And See! maybe isn't the hardest game ever, it's up there. Actually, 'hard' isn't the word I'm looking for. There's a fine line between 'hard' and 'frustrating and stupid', and this one zoomed straight past the 'hard' mark and never looked back. As much as I would like to think there weren't any game testers involved before Battletoads was released, I'm sure there were. When it comes to Wait And See!, I feel I can say with great certainty that there weren't. Just like <a href="gamesredhood.html">Little Red Hood</a>, this is an unlicesensed title from Asia. China, according to <a href="http://www.theredeye.net/20011127/" target="_blank">TheRedEye.net</a>. Quality testing isn't considered top priority when all you need is something that will run for five minutes without crashing and a label that can trick people into thinking they're buying a licensed Warner Bros game. </p> <p align=justify> By the way, you can stop trying to figure out what "HY,  OTOA!" is supposed to mean. If you haven't made sense of it yet you never will. I sure haven't. I hear the cartridge this dump is from was found in Russia, which could explain some of the characters. </p> <p align=justify> <img src="gphcs/gameswait/intro.gif" align=right style="margin-left: 10; margin-bottom: 5"> The plot is as follows: there is an intro where a wolf is chasing you, and then the game begins and he isn't there anymore. Still, you have to make your way through all the levels for no reason at all. You'd think there would be some Merrie Melody hijinks in this game since pseudo-Bugs is the main character, but there aren't any save the cyclone attack you can perform. No ten-ton weights, no Elmer Fudds, no falling anvils. Just generic platform conventions as far as the eye can see, all of which are poorly executed. </p> <p align=justify> There is a limit to how many flaws you can point out and make fun of when you're covering an unlicensed game. Yeah, the layout plans seem to have been delivered from the designer to the developer by a chain of retired people who whispered it to the guy next to them until it came out in the other end sounding like something close to 'Bug honey running prunes have your kids visited you lately'. Yeah, the graphics look like they were done on a solar cell calculator during an eclipse. Yeah, the music sounds like a couple of gnats digging through your tympanic membranes and straight into your brain to trigger your centers for Billy Ray Cyrus recognition and childhood trauma bottling at the same time. Yeah, the sound effects something about nausea and self-mutilation and retard monkeys and ending with a cartridge being shot into the center of the sun. I could do a hundred generic half-assed run-on sentences to describe every detail about this game, but the truth is that a) generic run-on sentences about sound effects resulting in self-mutilation and something being shot into the center of the sun get old really fast and b) all these elements are a given when you play a Chinese unlicensed game that might be Russian. You <i>knew</i> the graphics would be shit when you clicked the link that took you here, and there isn't much point in dwelling on it. </p> <p align=justify> <img src="gphcs/gameswait/skate.gif" align=right style="margin-left: 10; margin-bottom: 5"> There are however a couple of things worth pointing out. One is the carrot system. The coin substitute in this game is, not surprisingly, carrots. To gain an extra life, pick twenty-five of these. What's frustrating is that the carrot count is reset whenever you die. This is a problem since you only have three lives and no continues. In fact, the game would be damn near impossible if played on a console. Another problem with the carrot counter is that it's a toadstool counter. For some reason, the carrots turn into toadstools once you pick them up. This obviously doesn't affect the gameplay in any way, but it shows just how long the programmer was willing to go to deliver unto the world a high-quality product. </p> <p align=justify> On the first level, you'll find a skateboard. This helps you in no way whatsoever. Well, it lets you move faster, but you don't really want that. Unlike in Adventure Island, there is no ticking death clock over your head, and you can take all the time you want getting through the level. In fact, using the skateboard means you'll probably lose control and fall down a hole and die. But wait! You can only take three hits before you die in this game, and when you take into consideration that you get hit about once every twenty seconds and, like I said earlier, only have three lives and no continues, <i>every little safety measure is crucial to your survival.</i> Even when you're playing on an emulator. And since the skateboard can cushion one hit, it actually is necessary to use it to avoid losing all your lives in the first level. And speaking of shoddy controls: </p> <p align=justify> <img src="gphcs/gameswait/fall.gif" align=right style="margin-left: 10; margin-bottom: 5"> One of the first things I noticed when trying out the controls was that there were a couple of bugs in the code. Some, like the fact that you'll fall through platforms 50% of the time, are malevolent. Others are benevolent, but only up until the point where the programmer discovered them. If you for example run off a cliff, you still can jump while in mid-air. Also, if you jump straight up you can release all buttons and then press left or right and jump to take another leap. Same thing happens if you jump to one side and then realease all buttons and jump straight up. I thought this would give me an advantage on the carrot-strewn battlefield, but I was of course wrong. Rather than fixing these bugs, the creator, and I refuse to believe there was more than one person involved in making this game, decided to design the whole thing <i>around</i> the errors starting with the second level, which is where I suspect he discovered the bugs. It's getting hard to resist doing a 'Bugs/bugs' pun, luckily I'm too tired to come up with one. Instead, here's how to get across the gaps that completely dominate the landscape from level two on and until the very end of the game: </p> <p aling=center> <img src="gphcs/gameswait/jump.gif" align=center> </p> <p align=justify> To get from the crocodile to the platform, follow my instructions: when the crocodile has moved as far to the right as it can (1), and I'm talking not one pixel too soon here, run and fall downwards and to the right until you reach point (2). Here, you have to jump to the right, release all buttons at point (3), wait one fifth of a second, and then jump straight up. Then you push the B button to perform your cyclone attack at point (4), and you'll land on the platform at point (5), perhaps with a couple of pixels to spare. I lost count around the fiftieth quickload when I did this, so I'm not sure how many times I attempted this before I finally made it, but I can assure you it was more than fifty. Anyway, do the same procedure to get over to the hippo (just remember that nine times out of ten you'll fall straight through it), and then do it thirty more times to finish the level, only this time on logs that fall down the rapids. Use the same five-point maneuver, but take into consideration that the logs are at different levels and you can't actually see where the next log is until you're in mid-air. Don't worry about the enemies that await when you make it to solid ground, there is no way to avoid their spears anyway since you can't see them before they hit you. But don't get so caught up in the technicalities that you forget to HAVE FUN! </p> <p align=justify> <img src="gphcs/gameswait/end.gif" align=right style="margin-left: 10; margin-bottom: 5"> I'm sure there are more bugs in the controls, and I won't rule out the possibility that there are some more far-fetched sequences you can punch in to make things easier, but I have been experimenting for far longer than I can justify already. In fact, I'm ready to cap this off and never think about this game ever again. If you feel like I'm jumping from the train halfway to the station, I can assure you I'm not. This is all there is to say about this game. Bosses, you ask? No bosses in this game. Just run along and do impossible jump after damn impossible jump, sometimes in a little train or on jetski, until you reach the end and run off the screen and are rewarded with a picture of the rabbit in a spotlight against an impressively detailed backdrop. The wolf? Never seen again, except when you die and he comes along to eat your carcass. That's right, you have to cross the most hostile enviroment on earth, which probably will kill you, to avoid a guy who's not showing up until you're dead and probably would have left you alone if you just stayed put and alive. GREAT PLAN. </p> <p align=justify> Oh, and guess what? Now that I browsed around for a zip file for you to download, I found a NESten cheat file included with the ROM. If I had only known about that before I started playing it my life would probably turn out quite differently. Have fun! <p> <table align=bottom cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 border=0> <tr> <td width=18 valign=center> <a href="roms/waitandsee.zip"><img src="gphcs/iconnes.gif" border=0 align=left></a> </td> <td valign=center> <font> <a href="roms/waiandsee.zip">Wait And See (116 KB)</a> </font> </td> </tr> </table> <p> <script LANGUAGE="javascript" src="sign.js"></script> <p> <img src="gphcs/hrslim.gif" align=center> <p> <center> <img src="gphcs/rel.gif" align=center> </center> <p> <table height=50 width=460 align=center cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0> <tr> <td background="gphcs/bgindex.gif"> <font> <a href="gamesredhood.html" onFocus=blur() ><img src="gphcs/newsgamesredhood.gif" border=0 align=left><b>LITTLE RED HOOD</b></a> <br> <div style="margin-right: 4"> The Taiwanese company Sachen presents <i>Little Red Hood</i>. Will the wolf eat grandma? Will the wolf even be in the game? Click and see! </td> </tr> </table> <br> <table height=50 width=460 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 align=center> <tr> <td background="gphcs/bgindex.gif" align=left> <font> <a href="gamesripoff.html" onFocus=blur() ><img src="gphcs/newsgamesripoff.gif" border=0 align=left> <b>KNOCK-OFF AHOY!</b></a> <br> Some games are not what they appear - sometimes the developers try to polish a turd and re-release bad games with altered graphics. Just ask Swamp Thing. </td> </tr> </table> <p> <!------------ /TXT -------------> <!------------ STUPID FRAME SETTINGS FOR OPERA USERS -------------> </td> <td width=20> </td> </tr> </table> <!------------ /STUPID FRAME SETTINGS FOR OPERA USERS -------------> </td> </tr> <tr> <td background="gphcs/bgfooter.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: top left" height=8 width=500> </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>