Received: August 17th, 2019 / Written: September 25th-27th, 2019
Year: 1991, 1992 | Developed by: Wolf Team
Published by: Renovation
Considering the vast multitude of video games are available to play on a CD-based format nowadays (at least, when not taking into consideration downloadable games), it's easy to take for granted that it was not always the case as for the longest time during the '70s and '80s the only real medium to play video games on at home regardless of the system, outside of coin-operated arcades in arcade zones, were cartridges and floppy disks.
It wasn't until 1988 when video games started being converted to compact disc format, particularly with NEC's PC Engine Super CD-ROM² in Japan which fittingly was where CDs as a whole made their first debut in October 1982 initially created to store and play sound-only recordings (CD-DA) until it was later adapted to store data (CD-ROM) which is its more common purpose.
Images from Wikipedia; for the sake of posterity, I wanted to show the first and second models
One company that wanted to capitalize on the new interactive CD format was Sega who at the time was focusing their energy on their cartridge-based MegaDrive/Genesis console, so rather than create an entirely new console they instead opted for a CD-based add-on which you could connect to the MegaDrive/Genesis--that way they could still continue distributing Sega cartridges while also distributing CD games as well during the console run. After overcoming various developmental challenges in creating it (to varied results), enter Sega's foray to the CD format, the Mega-CD, which launched in Japan on December 12th, 1991, in North America on October 15h, 1992 (as the Sega CD), and in Europe on April 1993. In Japan it launched with two games: Holocronet's Heavy Nova and Wolf Team's Sol-Feace.
Speaking of Wolf Team, there was one other game they made that was among the Mega-CD's first games, and
Image from GameFAQs
that game was Earnest Evans, the first in a trilogy of games which I'll touch upon later, which they released in Japan on December 20th, 1991, directed and programmed by Yukihiko Tani, produced by Masaaki Uno, and executive produced by Masahiro Akishino. This version was never given an American Sega CD release, but it would see a localized edition in the form of
Image from GameFAQs; nice try, but you're not fooling anyone with that bland Americanized cover art, there is only one Indiana Jones and Earnest Evans is not him, not to mention a highly inaccurate representation of the game
the cart-based Genesis version in an unspecified 1992 date which got distributed by Renovation; and just like the CD version wasn't given an American release, so too was the cart-based version not given a Japanese one. Guess that evens things out? π This review covers the Genesis conversion.
Taking place in an alternate version of Earth in the early 20th century (I'll presume it's the '20s because of the year the subsequent iteration takes place), this game centers on a treasure hunting explorer named Earnest Evans III who is following in his grandfather Earnest Evans' footsteps to save humanity from the three ancient idols which he learned hold enough power to summon an entity called Hastur who will destroy the earth; before his grandfather could find them all he got terribly injured, so now the fate of the world rests on his grandson before it is too late.
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| Starting off by fighting worms |
In this sidescrolling platformer you control the eponymous treasure hunter/explorer Earnest Evans (III) who can move left and right, climb ropes and on certain occasions walls, crouch by pressing down once and can move while still crouching and if you wish to revert to your standing position press up while crouching, but if you press down again after crouching then Earnest's body will be fully on the ground where you can strafe left and right while in this position where you can press up to go back to crouching and press up again to go back to standing position.
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| Traps abound |
Earnest Evans' default controls, which can be changed to your liking in the options screen, are B to jump (no matter how lightly or how hard you pressed the button, his altitude will remain the same) and when underwater press it repeatedly to float upward, the A button lets you use your weapon as you can use it ahead of you and above you, and lastly the C button lets you switch weapons, but that only applies in a handful of stages. Earnest Evans' default weapon is his whip which can be used an indefinite amount of times, but when it comes to the alternate weapons they can only be used in the limited number that you're accorded
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| Whip that double-scythe wielding skeleton |
and if you are to come across them then their usage will exclusively be relegated to the stage in question (rocks for the third stage, the morning star in the fourth stage, and in the ninth stage you wield a weapon that's hammer-like) as they won't be used elsewhere (even if you still had some by the time you beat the stage in question). You can also swing yourself across if you successfully latch your whip onto a hook-like substance and if you press B while in crawl mode you'll make Earnest roll forward
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| First boss |
but be very cautious if you are to do that for you might temporarily lose control. Other items you may stumble across are replenishing items such as apples (which replenish one full bar of health), ham, and red potions, items for points (like crystals in the third stage), stage-specific items like a skeleton key in the first stage, but the thing to watch out for the most is the blue sleeping potion in a couple of stages for if you come in contact with it then Earnest will succumb to a brief moment of sleep leaving him vulnerable to enemy attack if you haven't dealt with that beforehand.
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Well, it's not an archaeological dig unless
there's something that tries to kill you
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Earnest Evans' graphics were done by Toshio Yamamoto (who also contributed to the title character design), Masayuki Kaneda, Kazuhiro Nagata, and Jun Hoyano (who was also involved in this game's cooperation role alongside RyΕta Furuya), and they all vary in terms of color usage and innate sense of detail which does lend the game a sense of atmosphere. The first stage has a deliberately rocky nature to its design excepting some moments when you're in front of a bricked wall, there is a smooth parallax scrolling backdrop
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| Sentient spiked vines |
in the second stage with the mountains and the clouds above you adorning the refreshingly blue sky after the largely colorless cave you've been in, the third stage has got a red motif about it all, the fourth stage is appropriately dark-looking with a haunting quality about it, the sixth stage has got a neat array of parallax scrolling city houses below the city's night sky, there's some piercing dithering lights in the seventh stage, the ninth stage is full of nothing but foliage with the almost exclusively green setting with the trees and swamp you occasionally come across,
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I'm sure there's a Konami game that might
require the services of that Moai head
|
the penultimate stage which transpires completely underwater has got blue coating with occasional wavy effects wizardry in the backdrop, and during the last phase of the fight against Hastur there's a cool fluctuation effect in the background as the screen will slowly flash in white every few seconds. Earnest Evans' in-game design is a little hard to describe in words, so please bear with me as I try to put it as best to my ability in words, so here we go: most games of this genre would involve a singular sprite for the main character,
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| Under (dithering) water |
but that surprisingly is not the case for the main protagonist of today's game because he's comprised of several individually-integrated sprites (such as the arms, and legs, and head, you name it) regardless when he moves and crouches and crawls and swings and flips and climbs or falls back when he's fully deprived of health; for a game that was made in the early '90s it's so unnatural to watch and a little distracting at first but by the same token the fluid ragdoll nature of his animations gives Earnest Evans a unique quality about itself because of it, the same also applies to the two human enemy types you face in the fifth and sixth stages.
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Now who would leave these much conveniently
needed apples in this cave-like compartment? π
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There are a variety of otherworldly enemies that you'll have to contend with throughout this game (some of which also involve more than one sprite), like bats and porcupines, tall skeletons wielding a stick with scythes attached to both ends, sentient vines that twist and contort themselves, bouncing skull ribcage monsters(?), spiders, turtles with a spiked shell, large centipede creatures whizzing by, and lethal plant enemies, et al.
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| Whip that monster out of existence |
In terms of (mid)bosses, there's the end of stage cave boss in the third stage that sticks its head out with the flailing arms a la the brain boss in Konami's Salamander/Life Force, the coal monster in the fifth train stage, the mechanical spider boss in the eighth stage, a large mutated fish in the penultimate stage, and Hastur at the end has got different forms. There's also some nifty effects wizardry in terms of scaling and rotating which is pretty much uncommon for the MegaDrive/Genesis,
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| Fireballs |
like the phantasm heads that scale in and out of the screen in the fourth stage, as well as the skulls that zoom in and out of the screen in the final stage leading up to the fight against Hastur, and during the third stage there are a few sets of spikes that rotate at you upon being activated including one isolated portion where a bed of spikes perpetually rotates itself indefinitely, and during the first stage's boss battle you're confined within a literal circle of skulls looking at you as it swiftly spins around which is pretty creepy.
Left: Oh God, that forest midboss with its googly eyes is adorable~ π | Right: AHHH, go back to cute giant wriggling forest worm! π±
Not quite as smoothly handled as the Nintendo 16-bit's Mode 7 but for Sega's 16-bit console it comes pretty close.
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| Whipping a bouncing ribcage skull monster |
Earnest Evans' soundtrack was composed by prominent Wolf Team composer Motoi Sakuraba, who also provided music for the same developer's Zan: KagerΕ no Toki, the Sharp X68000 version of Mugen Senshi Valis II, Granada, Zan: Yasha Enbukyoku, FZ Senki Axis/Final Zone, Sol-Feace, and Arcus Odyssey, and it is the best thing about today's platformer as it's truly engaging stuff and elevates the settings' sense of atmosphere remarkably, and considering he was 26 back when he composed the music that's very impressive. π
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| Rotating spike bed |
The very first stage theme really kicks off Earnest Evans' adventure into high gear with its frenetic and energetic flair plus it sets the bar for the quality of the soundtrack (which is high), the second stage theme set in the canyons has got an atmospheric quality, the third stage theme set inside the fire cavern is immersive and catchy, the fourth stage theme sounds menacing in nature, the fifth stage theme has a breezy quality about it as you're riding the train, the sixth stage theme is a pleasant listen,
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| End of stage cave boss |
the seventh stage theme is engagingly atmospheric, the eighth stage theme is appropriately short considering you're battling a mechanical spider boss, the ninth stage theme is wonderful and signals that things are to come to an end relatively soon, the tenth stage theme amplifies that sense as you're getting closer, and the final stage theme where you confront Hastur sounds ominously intimidating and foreboding. One of my favorite themes in the game plays in the introductory cutscene where we first see Earnest
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| Spooky phantom heads |
but unfortunately in-game it cuts off roughly twenty-four seconds in as there's fifty seconds more of great quality music afterward (which luckily can be listened in full in Earnest Evans' in-game sound test or online on YouTube), the normal boss theme is fast-paced and energetic yet strangely only applies to five of the bosses (the other bosses are fought with the stage theme music playing in the background), and finally the ending credits theme is relaxing and rewarding to hear once all is said and done.
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| Making a huge leap across |
Motoi Sakuraba would continue to compose music for Wolf Team and also games not directly developed by them (like Telenet Japan's Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori and Camelot Software Planning's Beyond the Beyond: Harukanaru KanΔn e) and he would become a higher profile composer once he's started contributing his talents to the soundtracks of the (Bandai) Namco-published Tales, tri-Ace's Star Ocean, Camelot Software Planning's Golden Sun, and FromSoftware's Dark Souls RPG franchises since their debut, and among his more recent work was being in a quintet sound team (along Yuzo Koshiro, Michiru Yamane, Keiki Kobayashi, and Takeshi Yanagawa, which is good company) behind the music for Game Atelier's Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom in 2018.
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| Swing yourself across |
Earnest Evans has only got one difficulty mode and can only be beaten in one sitting, the health cap is four bars, each of which will be removed once the life gauge is completely depleted, but if all your health is depleted Earnest will lose a life and you have a choice to use one of five continues or not, and the good news is that in doing so you'll pick up at the exact spot that you lost said life. Whenever you start a game and whenever you use up a continue you begin with two bars of health with a full life gauge, and once you beat a stage in the next one your life gauge will be full regardless of the amount of bars of health you had.
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| Fighting against a wizard |
The original Mega-CD version of this game had a series of anime cutscenes that served to progress the narrative provided by Japanese animation studio Madhouse (who would also do the anime cutscenes for other video games such as Media.Vision's Wild Arms and CyberConnect2's Soratorobo -Sore Kara KΕda e-/Solatorobo: Red the Hunter) which incorporated the vocal talents of Kazuki Yao, YΕ«ko Minaguchi, and Ryou Horikawa in the earliest roles of their career.
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| Up against a couple of sunhat wearing henchmen |
Unfortunately because the cart-based MegaDrive/Genesis could not handle cutscenes of this caliber not to mention would be incapable of replicating the digitized audio quality of CD-based consoles many of them had to be cut out for the Genesis incarnation of Earnest Evans. The gameplay structure has not been changed, as far as I noticed when I looked up gameplay footage of the Mega-CD original, but what little cutscenes remained in the cartridge edition was a tiny snippet of the intro introducing Earnest Evans on a boat and Earnest running away from a boulder chasing him during the credits; making the proceedings of the Genesis take story-less in-game unless you looked up the plot from another source.
The Mega-CD version also introduced a young green-haired girl named Annet Myer who becomes Earnest Evans' companion after saving her from the Peruvian ruins, but most of her contribution was during the cutscenes whereas in the Genesis version her only appearance is at the start of the sixth stage as she drives at a high speed and careens through a horde of knife men and missiles raining down at you at high speeds, a sequence that's very brief.
Apparently a PAL MegaDrive version was to be released by Ubisoft, but never came to pass; had it not been cancelled it would've been the only game in the trilogy to have seen a European release
Now like I said Earnest Evans served as the first game in a trilogy of games which would be followed up by the release of the MegaDrive/Genesis-exclusive El Viento, though you wouldn't think that based on its September 1991 release in Japan and later that year in America by Renovation (completely preceding the release of the last game, I'd like to think it's a case of made second, released first, because that's the only way that can make sense in terms of continuity). Taking place in alternate Earth in 1928, you take control of Annet Myer, a Peruvian sorceress descended from Hastur's ancient bloodline, who is burdened with the destiny to stop Hastur's resurrection from evil cult members,
and along the way she receives assistance from her father figure Earnest Evans and the ambiguously motivated Zigfried (who was in the Mega-CD cutscenes of Earnest Evans but got completely cut out of the Genesis version).
The gameplay is a lot nimble and faster-paced, the varied magic system is intuitive and fun to utilize, Annet's unlimited array of boomerangs have got a lot of range, Motoi Sakuraba's soundtrack is superb, the visuals are brighter and more colorful (with Annet being one sprite instead of being made of several sprites like her predecessor Earnest Evans was), the stage layouts are good for the most part, the story is interesting and progressed through static image cutscenes, and I think El Viento is a lot of fun and a vast improvement over Earnest Evans, and the best thing about it is that it works just as much as a self-contained title as much as it does as a continuation. π It definitely feels more polished and its difficulty is mostly manageable, but what ruins it a little for me is the final stage leading up to the final boss feeling incredibly cheap with it having you constantly charge up your homing magic, but overall I recommend playing it if you get the opportunity or were curious to play just one Wolf Team game,
and if you like your 16-bit games to incorporate pixelated explosions, then you're in luck, as El Viento is absolutely replete with them. π
Image from GameFAQs
The third and final game in the trilogy taking place two years later, Annet Futatabi, would cap off the Hastur storyline on the Mega-CD on March 30th, 1993 and later that year by Samsung in Korean regions (as Anett Futatabi); a localized American Sega CD conversion by Renovation was in the works under the title Annet Again, but alas it got cancelled. Once again you took control of Annet Myer, but unlike El Viento which was a sidescrolling platformer this trilogy ender instead vied for a beat'em up flavor a la Capcom's Final Fight, Ancient's Bare Knuckle/Streets of Rage, and Jaleco's Rushing Beat. Upon release it got very poor reviews, with common criticism leveled towards its repetitious gameplay (it being a beat'em didn't help matters) and difficulty but was praised on the quality of its anime cutscenes (with Minaguchi, Yao, and Horikawa reprising their roles for Annet, Earnest, and Zigfried from Earnest Evans). It seems to me that the consensus of this trilogy in a nutshell, apart from El Viento, is that they're worth playing exclusively to watch its cutscenes while the gameplay in-between serves as merely an afterthought, speaking as someone who's presently only played two-thirds of it. I haven't played Annet Futatabi as I don't own a Mega-CD console (I doubt it would work when connected to a Genesis like a Sega CD would), but it does have a hefty price tag if you were curious about it.
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| Whipping that coal monster |
Earnest Evans was never a game I was that interested or intrigued in playing for the longest time, whenever I saw it brought up people nary had a good thing to say about it and what little screenshots I saw of it online at the time didn't really strike my fancy as the titular protagonist's in-game sprite was a real turnoff point for me (and I wager that if you haven't played this game but are looking at these screenshots while reading this review you probably feel the same). It wasn't really high on my list of games I was curious to play pretty much, even long before I got a RetroGen peripheral cartridge and years later a Genesis console,
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| Escaping by biplane |
but sometime this Summer I decided to watch a playthrough of the first stage of both the Mega-CD and Genesis version on a World of Longplay video on YouTube played by none other than Valis77 (or is it ValisHD, I'm not entirely sure what he goes by now) given I recalled at one point learning it was among a trilogy of titles (which Valis77/HD refers to in the description of the World of Longplay videos of Earnest Evans, El Viento, and Annet Futatabi as the "Hastur" trilogy of games).
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| Combating knife men with Guile's color palette |
One thing I never took into account prior to watching a bit of gameplay footage was what kind of animation it would have, and when I saw it in motion for the first time I was just floored and couldn't believe what I was seeing. π² This is an early '90s 16-bit game exhibiting this jarring level of fluid ragdoll animation? It's so unreal for the time it was made, it couldn't be real but it was. π€―
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| Averting machine gun fire while attacking |
I cannot think of another platformer at the time where the main character was comprised of several individually-integrated sprites instead of being made up of one whole one; so I knew I had to try this game one day. Earnest Evans has the honor of being the first Genesis cart I purchased post obtaining a Genesis console at end of July 2019 after several years of relying on a RetroGen cart on a Nintendo 16-bit console (whether on the SNES or Super Famicom) to play physical Genesis carts, so let's give this game a round of applause. π
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| Piercing dithering lights |
Having played the game for myself, I can see and understand the complaints that people generally lob against it: it lacks polish, it's awkwardly wonky in execution, it lacks a solid structure, there's no invincibility time after taking damage as you'll still sustain it unless you immediately get to a safe spot, the collision detection is hit and miss, Earnest Evans' in-game design is very unappealing to look at, and it's got some annoying design flaws that put a damper to the experience.
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| Disassemble that mechanical creature |
All these points are accurate and I do concur with all of them, however in spite of all that I didn't find this game to be either bad or unplayable, in fact I actually quite enjoyed it in a guilty pleasure sort of way. π Let's get this out of the way: this is not a good game as there's enough preventing it from reaching that status and I'm fully aware of its problems, but I still ended up liking it once I familiarized myself with the layouts and monster patterns. What kept me going was Motoi Sakuraba's exquisitely atmospheric soundtrack
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| Destroy the lethal plant life |
and wanting to know what kind of stages I would explore next, as now that I was playing it I was genuinely intrigued. I liked the variety of location settings and how it incorporated parallax scrolling in certain stages (including one of the vertical variety in the tenth stage), plus the monster gallery Earnest Evans had to face was out of this world as each had their own fascinating and distinctive design to them. I'm not quite sure what compelled the art department of Wolf Team
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| TIMBER!!!!! |
to go in the direction they did when animating Earnest and several of the monsters in the game, but it does give the proceedings a uniquely organic quality about it (if that makes any sense) which is unusual for the console and yet it fits the atmosphere so well. The game has been commonly referred to along the lines of a poor man's equivalent to Konami's AkumajΕ Dracula/Castlevania series. Sega's 16-bit console had no shortage of games that were likened
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| Running towards a swamp |
one way or another to the aforementioned vampire slaying platformer series, chief among them Renovation Game's port of Telenet Japan's Valis III and Riot's take on Mugen Senshi Valis/Valis: The Fantasm Soldier (originally a Wolf Team developed game in its 1986 PC debut), in regards to gameplay structure (most of them preceding the official Sega 16-bit chapter of the franchise Castlevania: Bloodlines/Vampire Killer/Castlevania: The New Generation on March 1994). I think what separates Earnest Evans from the rest of the ilk is that it's a lot faster and speedier in terms of pacing as Konami's franchise was always slow paced with purpose, also Earnest Evans can control his jumps in midair which for the most part was not the case in the series it gets compared to.
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| UGH, screw pollen so hard! π€§ |
There's also the fact that he flails his whip ahead of or above him before it makes contact with the enemies you're aiming at instead of straight... and that's if it hits them anyway because the collision detection sometimes works and sometimes doesn't unless you get closer since his whip has a short range, enemies take several hits in order to bite the bullet, and Earnest has a tendency to be rather picky when it comes to clinging to a wall at certain points or when attempting to swing from a hook. There's also elements that might cheapen things,
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Vertical parallax scrolling, my weakness!
Also, there's a reason you shouldn't fall smackdab in the middle
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like say an enemy was launching a projectile at you causing you to backtrack but if you do it too much you're in the clear; yes, evading enemy fire can be as easy as scrolling the screen just enough until said projectile disappears offscreen. I think the most disappointing thing about this platformer was the boss fights as the solution to their defeat is the same (whip at them until they're defeated)
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| Get in the water |
despite their different patterns but lacked real challenge as you could easily get out of their way (some don't put up a real fight at all); though I liked how the first stage didn't immediately end after the first boss' defeat as you had to go back to the exit while avoiding a slew of boulders, in the fifth stage you could choose to fall straight down to the trolley or when you begin you can move towards the left to get on it, and in the seventh stage it was a race to end of the stage as you had to avert and/or overcome some monsters that whizzed by at different speeds, to name some. The lack of an in-game narrative does hinder the Genesis version of Earnest Evans a bit because it just seems you're location-jumping around the world for no reason
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Thank God Earnest Evans can breathe underwater
as he perpetually sinks (and floats) otherwise
he would've drowned a long time ago
|
(the Mega-CD version also had a map screen on occasion, but those were integrated into the cutscenes and since the Sega 16-bit wasn't designed to handle those, maps were out of the question) and when you get down to it his adventure doesn't really have a proper ending, and watching Earnest being chased by a boulder until he seemingly gets crushed by it during the credits is less of a real ending and more of an extended outtake. Maybe this game was given a Genesis conversion to compensate for the fact that the Mega-CD original didn't get a localized Sega CD version, but probably didn't want to spend money to hire new voice actors for the English language version to predictably deliver their lines with less passion and conviction than the Japanese original and possibly change details to the developer's chagrin (just like American video game distributors, voice actors didn't take video games seriously during the early to mid '90s). π …... Time, I swear. π
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| It's Hastur |
But despite the problems it's got I did find myself enjoying this game, even though I admit it's less of good game and more of a guilty pleasure one, and I do find it to be a harmless half hour worth of fun as the quality was fairly consistent plus the ragdoll aesthetic is simultaneously silly yet fascinating. I can't really comment on Wolf Team's quality as a whole (given I've seen people comment online that outside of El Viento and Tales of Phantasia they were a deeply flawed or not good developing company) since I currently have only played four games by them (Arcus Spirits, the Super Famiport of Arcus Odyssey; this game; El Viento; and Neugier: Umi to Kaze no KΕdΕ) but from what I've played I found them interesting and mostly enjoyable. If you like the platforming genre, there are better games you could play, and by the same token much worse, but if you're forgiving, mildly curious, and/or are in the mood for a guilty pleasure, then if you can work around its flaws I do think it's worth taking a crack at.
My Personal Score: 6.0/10
d(^-^)bTO EACH THEIR OWNd(^-^)b
● Well, it only took over nine years after I started writing my reviews for my blog, but I finally fixed that pesky time stamp issue because apparently pacific time was the default time zone setting when I started it and I didn't realize that until very recently (I was wondering why when a review says it was published at, say, 5:45 PM when it was actually published at 7:45 PM) so I finally changed to the accurate time zone (where I live): central time.
● There is a stage skip code in case anyone is curious (pause, up, A, down, B, left A, right B), but personally I find it more satisfying to beat without relying on it, and the game is manageable to play through.
Thank you for reading my review, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think (neither spam nor NSFW allowed); hope you have a great day, take care! π
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Recently I've been feeling self-conscious about my blog and am worried that ever since I doubled down on the research and credit highlighting in my reviews this year I may have unwittingly created sleep fodder. I sincerely hope that is not the case, because if it is then I'm truly, very sorry. π I can't help it if I'm passionate about video games, not just playing them but writing about them.
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