In this vintage 1986 Data East classic, you step into the snakeskin shoes of the toughest hombre in the West. In fact, you're so tough you never even use your guns when robbing odd-numbered trains. This translates into a game of two halves, each with distinct gameplay mechanics. It was certainly fresh back in 1986 and Express Raider was deservingly praised for it.
You begin your infamous heist career by the power of fisticuffs. When entering odd numbered train levels, you walk on foot and use a traditional two-button setup for punches and kicks. On some levels you even begin on the ground, having to deal with bank tellers and coyotes before hopping onto the top of the last car in the train, before traversing along its rooftops. Of course, there's plenty of things trying to stop you – railroad employees will do their finest to stand in your way (going as far as bombing the carriage couplers just to get rid of you,) as well as the need to duck under post signs and tunnels.
Things change up radically on those aforementioned odd-numbered trains. It's here you're finally given use to your six-shooter while riding alongside the train on your mighty steed. The game turns from a brawler into a shooting gallery game, with the first button firing and the second allowing you to ride sideways on your horse (making you invincible to bullets and other hazards like birds). But you can’t just spam bullets mindlessly - on several occasions in passenger cars, your mischievous lady companion throws out money bags for you to shoot/collect and hitting her will force you to lose a life.
Unlike previous Data East offerings, Express Raider has no end. After the tenth train the stages begin to loop, with ever increasingly harder enemies thrown at you, clearly showcasing the true coin-munching design philosophy from arcade games. With the lack of Caravan modes and infinite credits, it truly is just a matter of how long you can endure the punishment before giving up.
Both sides of the game are fun for short bursts, but we must give the fighting stages the definitive thumbs up. These play out like a re-skinned version of Spartan X (best know in the west as Kung-Fu Master) and connecting hits on opponents is extremely satisfying. While the shooting stages don’t really do anything particularly wrong, they end up being more of a shore and become just a distraction while you eagerly wait to get back to punching coyotes.
If you have been keeping up with our reviews of Johnny Turbo’s releases on the Switch, you know exactly what we are going to say about the emulation wrapper: it's lacklustre when stacked side-by-side with Hamster’s offerings. A few graphics filters and screen ratio options are no substitute for being able to access DIP switch settings or just turn off all filters completely. Yes, you are still forced to play with bilinear filtering turned on if you choose not to use any of the graphics filters which remains an annoyance if you like your emulated arcade games pixel crisp.
Here's something else we noticed with this port - the shooting stages do not feature the aiming cross-hair that made them less of a chore to play. The existence of this cross-hair in the original arcade board is currently under investigation (it most certainly existed on the ZX Spectrum home version) and after reporting it, Flying Tiger Entertainment is looking into this and will update this package if needed. It’s no deal breaker, but in case you played the original you may find the experience slightly different than the one you remember.
Conclusion
Express Raider remains a fun 2-in-1 game, with the fighting stages standing head and shoulders above the shooting ones, which is something of an oddity considering the Wild West setting. As such we recommend it to anyone who was a fan of the original or who played the home conversions and want to have the original on their virtual arcade Switch museum. But if you have an itchy trigger finger, we recommend you buy a ticket to a more steampunk kind of Wild West.
Comments 28
but why
@boop22 but why not?
better yet, but why maybe?
No...
IMO, it should be a criminal offense to force games like this into 16:9. Too bad, had they bothered to add proper emulation settings I would be more curious for those games.
There is a very good reason why Hamster are emulating Nintendos Arcade games on Switch.
God this looks bad to me... This is a perfect example of a game I would love in a compilation collection. Prob play once and then move on to the better games. Not worthy of a one-off purchase for me for sure
More blurry 16:9 screenshots from NintendoLife.
@Atariboy Wrong. These screenshots ARE NOT FROM US. these are the official screens being supplied by the publisher. I have already talked to them about this and hopefully these will change in the future.
I appreciate the low down on the filters and dipswitch situation. Really hoping they the do an update one day to make these versions more definitive, or really, more in line with what’s expected of emulators these days
@NiaBladerunner There are options for switching the screen ratio and disable filters
@NiaBladerunner ALL of Johnny Turbo's Switch games, have an array of options for Video. These are top notch releases
@Atariboy Open a website and do better....
Punching coyotes and riding trains? Count me in... although an online leaderboard would be nice
@NiaBladerunner These games let you adjust the aspect ratio and filters. I always play them in 4:3 with no filter.
The bad screen shots are just that, it's not a representation of any imposed limitations.
Please, please, please get your act together Flying Tiger and bring these games to the European eShops. I'm in the UK and so far we have only had DARK SEAL aka GATE OF DOOM, BAD DUDES vs. DRAGON NINJA and SLY SPY. Please bring over the other game releases on the US eShop like SUPER BURGER TIME, CAVEMAN NINJA, DARK SEAL II etc.
Despite supposedly professional and informed games industry types like IGN regularly selecting these releases as their 'Skip of the Week' on their NVC podcast, I'm thrilled to see Data East's arcade library come to the Switch. I think the aspect ratio and screen filters these games come with are actually pretty decent. You can play them in the correct 4:3 aspect ratio and whilst they lack a pixel perfect style option, they do allow for an image which to my eyes at least, feels like an actual arcade cab image.
I'm actually curious how many fans of retro games like these actually do prefer pixel perfect image quality? For games like these and games on 8-bit and 16-bit consoles from the past, I vastly prefer a CRT and scanline filter. To me razor sharp pixels look really ugly on a huge HD TV.
Anyway, as I stated above, folks like IGN only illustrate their inexperience or lack of appreciation for the Arcade era when they pour over zealous scorn on these Data East titles. It is a trend I have noticed repeatedly on that site over the years. We may be a small minority but for those of us who grew up in the arcades, these releases of Data East, Psikyo, Neo-Geo, Taito, Technos, Irem, Nintendo arcade titles are a massive cause for celebration. These games may be old but they deserve so much more respect from the industry. If you haven't played these games or don't have any meaningful insight into their legacy, just keep your mouth shut rather than try to make disparaging remarks about an old game you know nothing about.
Sorry for the rant there, not sure where that came from ☺️
@Lroy I'm confident they will come eventually. There must be some licensing issue or age rating hold up. Really looking forward to Express Raider.
@JayJ & everybody else. I was under impression you couldn't turn off filters? 4:3 and no filters would be a game changer for me. Yeah, odd they use 16:9 to promote their games, as that actually puts me off.
"A few graphics filters and screen ratio options are no substitute for being able to access DIP switch settings or just turn off all filters completely"
@NiaBladerunner You can select 4:3 aspect ratio but this option has a smoothing filter built-in. I believe the term used in the review is 'bilinear filtering'. Now I personally don't mind this. I think it makes the pixels look less sharp and ugly on big LCD TVs. However, I appreciate giving the user the option to determine how much of any bilinear filtering is present would be preferable.
For example, the Hamster Arcade Archive Releases and the Neo-Geo titles allow the user to decide how strong any filtering or scan lines are. Or if you prefer, you can just have the raw, unfiltered image on those releases.
@Lroy IGN has almost always failed where classic games are concerned. I remember them whining in a review for a Midway collection on the Nintendo 64 years ago for example, complaining about slowdown.
The only thing was is that when this was happening in Tapper for one example, it was because Digital Eclipse back in that era of 5-6 games per compilation, had got it right. Accuracy sometimes slipped with later collections with dozens of games each, but these were slowing down just as they would on the actual arcade cabinet.
They essentially penalized it for being accurate to the source material, lol.
@Atariboy You're absolutely right. IGN has a long history of 'bad form' in this regard. It has been pointed out by the likes of Hardcoregaming101 in their arcade developer dedicated books that IGN once dismissed Taito's arcade compilation discs for the PS2 on little more grounds than 'these games are old and I've never heard of them which must make them bad'. Ignorant and pathetic.
The current NVC IGN crew were even worse in their disdain for games like BAD DUDES... Seems youth and being photogenic to allure 'hits and clicks' are more qualification for the games journalism industry than actually having experience of all eras of gaming. Arcade gaming and its legacy is arguably the most important aspect of the history of the medium but is so often just ignored or dismissed by people who simply haven't the intelligence to comment.
NLife itself isn't immune from this mentality either with many genuine classics being awarded '6/10' status 😢
@NiaBladerunner The only one you cant disable is the bilinear filtering one. So no pixel crisp gameplay on any of Johnny Turbo's Arcade releases.
There are classic games and games that are old. This one is just old. No classic in any form or way. There is an easy way to find out if something is classic or not: just Google if there is somebody on this planet who asked for that game to be re-released.
classic
ˈklasɪk
adjective
1.
judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.
I had this on the spectrum and really enjoyed it. I was a kid and could tolerate this style of perfect gameplay and memorization stuff as it was fairly new to me.
Now? Nah.
@Shiryu My apologies for not fully understanding the situation. It's also nice to hear that a member of the NintendoLife staff has requested a change here. Hopefully the publisher listens.
Especially if some of the classic vertically oriented classics from the Data East library show up, these stretched images will look simply terrible. 3:4 arcade games stretched to 16:9 proportions are awful looking, where as even though I'm a stickler for the correct aspect ratio, many 4:3 games don't look half bad when stretched.
Out of curiosity, does Nintendo Life not have the capability to take screenshots? It would be preferable for these reviews in my opinion. It's my understanding in fact that the Switch OS has such functionality built right into it, although I've yet to go looking to learn how to do it.
That is if Flying Tiger Entertainment doesn't mandate that the supplied screenshots be used? I suppose your hands might be tied or risk not getting review copies if you deviate from what's been supplied.
@Atariboy I most certainly have the capability, but as policy we use the assets that are provided along with the review codes. Best I can do and as always is also to provide actual gameplay footage from the games I review (including all filtering options).
It's good that Hamster has competition, but it's a really lackluster competition. Johnny Turbo definitely need to look into implementing non 16:9 viewing modes, Caravan and Hi Score.
I missed this review, and I'm constantly entering Nintendo Life for reviews chiefly. Weird.
Anyway, can anybody please explain to me what a "bilinear filter" is? I can't find it even googling. Better with a screenshot.
I don't like these releases aren't nearly as complete as Hamster's (although Hamster's lack border pictures, for example, and the ability to upload scores achieved when offline), but I gotta say something: with retro games I'm getting more and more used to some king of filters. If done well. If not exaggerated.
Not a stone cold classic, but I remember playing a credit or two in arcades/take aways that had it. I bought this and it's a good time, but I could do without Johnny Turbo's arcade and everything that entails
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