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RAILWAY (MGDK)
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Publisher: Timlex (unconfirmed).
Developer: Sachen. Released: 1993. Genre: Puzzle. Posted 22nd June 2022. By Tom Clare © 2022 |
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Imagine you’re a kid again. It’s 1993, your birthday is fast approaching and you’ve asked for a handheld games console. A Game Boy would be awesome. You certainly wouldn’t mind a Game Gear though, provided you’d had the foresight to stockpile hundreds of batteries. Heck, you’d even settle for a Lynx. Somewhere though, some well-meaning relative will have managed to bypass the three most popular avenues of portable gaming in favour of a Mega Duck. Disaster, right? Well, not necessarily.
Competition would have been fierce enough during the period even without Timlex’s portable outsider being lumbered with such a name. The device was manufactured and distributed by several different entities and known (well, that’s perhaps a stretch) throughout South America by the equally-ridiculous Cougar Boy moniker. Except for Timlex’s own The Brick Wall, every game on the system was developed by Taiwanese unlicensed specialists Thin Chen Enterprise, through their Sachen and Commin brands. This may not sound like a recipe for guaranteed success, but dry your tears faithful reader, as owners of this cute Game Boy-alike might also have possessed an unlikely saviour.
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Railway offers its own spin on the Pipe Mania idea. Laying tracks is quite a bit of fun
The saviour in question is Sachen’s answer to Pipe Mania, the unimaginatively-titled Railway. Admittedly, the game’s cover art was unlikely to assuage any fears players might have had as to the overbearing sense of obscurity the console emanated. Let’s be honest, the train looks like it’s fleeing Thomas the Tank Engine with a serious bout of anxiety, a bit like that time Henry got bricked up for his questionable work ethic. Normally, this kind of cover art is a cue for low-hanging comedic fruit: “the train’s obviously played the game!” etc. This, however, is where Railway breaks from the script, defying utterly the route logic appeared to be leading us in.
Whilst many of the Mega Duck’s games stray fairly close to clone territory, Railway delivers a glut of well-designed levels, a good deal of fun and some legitimately well-realised features of its own. As you might have gleaned from two earlier clues, it’s a 1993 circuit-connection puzzler that trades pipes for train tracks and running water for, erm, running trains. You know the drill: there’s a limited amount of time to start laying track pieces before your train begins its inexorable journey along the line. The goal is simply to connect the beginning of a route to an endpoint and, provided the layout has met the minimum number of segments required, it’s on to the next level. Get your pieces crossed, or fail to make the route sufficiently lengthy and you lose a life.
Whilst many of the Mega Duck’s games stray fairly close to clone territory, Railway delivers a glut of well-designed levels, a good deal of fun and some legitimately well-realised features of its own. As you might have gleaned from two earlier clues, it’s a 1993 circuit-connection puzzler that trades pipes for train tracks and running water for, erm, running trains. You know the drill: there’s a limited amount of time to start laying track pieces before your train begins its inexorable journey along the line. The goal is simply to connect the beginning of a route to an endpoint and, provided the layout has met the minimum number of segments required, it’s on to the next level. Get your pieces crossed, or fail to make the route sufficiently lengthy and you lose a life.
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Happily, it was never going to be this routine and Railway has some clever quirks up its sleeve. Firstly, the player is regularly faced with geographical obstacles that bar direct passage to the goal. Tunnels must be navigated, with ones entered at the top of the screen exiting at the bottom and those entered from the left exiting on the right and all of the assorted vice versas. Pinch points mean the player is occasionally forced to double back over special four-way track pieces and this requires a bit of forward-planning, especially in the final few levels. It’s safe ground, certainly, but Sachen reworks the formula with solidity and no shortage of charm.
It isn’t quite as cerebral as Pipe Mania, as players can spam through unwanted block pieces at speed with no harm to their score and no time delays accumulated for doing so. This does remove some of the pressure that made the Amiga classic so enthralling, as in most instances the player can brute-force a layout to suit what they’re after.
It isn’t quite as cerebral as Pipe Mania, as players can spam through unwanted block pieces at speed with no harm to their score and no time delays accumulated for doing so. This does remove some of the pressure that made the Amiga classic so enthralling, as in most instances the player can brute-force a layout to suit what they’re after.
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For a truly obscure release though, Railway continues to surprise with positives. For starters, there are a quartet of power-ups that, along with the occasional extra life, can be sourced from bonus stages. These provide small but useful boons such as doubling the time before departure or briefly halting the train on the route. The password system rewards a code every ten levels, with variously shaped track pieces used to form an elegant, easy-to-store sequence. The HUD is compact and helpful, whilst the ‘A’ button can be used to speed up the train’s journey if and when the player is satisfied with the layout, a useful quality-of-life touch. There aren’t the usual signs of corner-cutting. If anything, Railway is nicely fleshed out. Not only are there fifty levels to play through and three difficulty settings to ramp up the challenge, but there’s even a jolly, animated credits sequence as a reward for completing the game. It depicts, in light-hearted cartoony jeopardy, a car being pursued, pixel-by-pixel, by a train.
The graphics are functional when they need to be and pretty when they have the opportunity. Its clean grid design ensures even busy levels rarely feel cluttered. Performance is fine, with a little sprite flicker the only noticeable blemish. Small details like the train parping steam, or a driver with a flat cap walking the route on bonus stages, are lovely. Railway sports one of the most impressive title screens you’ll see from a Mega Duck game: a side-on shot of a train chugging along with a detailed, city skyline in the background. This, along with the aforementioned credits sequence, shows Sachen was capable of delivering significant artistic and technical prowess.
The graphics are functional when they need to be and pretty when they have the opportunity. Its clean grid design ensures even busy levels rarely feel cluttered. Performance is fine, with a little sprite flicker the only noticeable blemish. Small details like the train parping steam, or a driver with a flat cap walking the route on bonus stages, are lovely. Railway sports one of the most impressive title screens you’ll see from a Mega Duck game: a side-on shot of a train chugging along with a detailed, city skyline in the background. This, along with the aforementioned credits sequence, shows Sachen was capable of delivering significant artistic and technical prowess.
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Elegant presentation and good design mean Railway overcomes the relative deficiencies of its hardware to make for an ideal puzzler
Though the Mega Duck’s speakers render it somewhat shrill and pitchy at times, even Railway’s music is on the money. There’s a surprisingly exciting title screen jingle to get pulses racing, as well as a melodious medley of compositions accompanying the levels. Granted, one sounds very similar to a BGM from Land of Illusion, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Would it have made you the envy of your classmates? Probably not, but a good game is a good game and Railway has plenty going for it. The Mega Duck will forever live in the shadow of the Game Boy, but Railway is proof that it could run decent software on its own terms. It doesn’t supplant the likes of Tetris or its own inspiration Pipe Mania at the top of the puzzler pile, but a sprinkle of nice ideas, endearing visual touches and strong gameplay prove an ideal foundation for an on-the-go equivalent.
Would it have made you the envy of your classmates? Probably not, but a good game is a good game and Railway has plenty going for it. The Mega Duck will forever live in the shadow of the Game Boy, but Railway is proof that it could run decent software on its own terms. It doesn’t supplant the likes of Tetris or its own inspiration Pipe Mania at the top of the puzzler pile, but a sprinkle of nice ideas, endearing visual touches and strong gameplay prove an ideal foundation for an on-the-go equivalent.
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VERDICT
"It’s not as cerebral as Pipe Mania, but a sprinkling of ideas, endearing visual touches and strong gameplay prove an ideal foundation for an on-the-go puzzler." OVERALL: 7/10 |