Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls - World 1 - Downtown (Perfect)
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- The first non-tutorial world is set in a smoggy urban environment. I remember the manuals stating how the towers are ancient structures, so either this is some weird technology advancement, the person in charge of writing the premise worked independently on those who made the artwork, or this is set far into the future. Whatever the case, you’ve seen this theme in Easy Street. Skyscrapers take up much of the backgrounds, and the platforms resemble asphalt roads with fire hydrants decorated throughout.
Since this is still World 1, things are pretty simple and straightforward, and the towers never really get too tall.
For this one, I’ve selected Amanda as my player character. She doesn't have any theme in particular, so I might as well put her here.
00:20 - Tower 1 - I’m Saying “Eleven!”
I’m not really sure what the reference in this tower’s name is, and I Googled it up and found nothing. Though as the first non-tutorial tower (not counting Baby Enchilada, which was really more of a review of what you had learned to that point), this one’s pretty short and simple. It introduces the goo platforms though, which are sticky and slow you down a lot.
02:13 - Tower 2 - Tube Ride
The name of this tower most likely refers to tubing, in which you ride an inflated inner tube down a river. This was a fairly popular and well-known pastime in the 1980s and 1990s, at least where there are safe rivers. Towards the end of each lap, I used a technique known in-game as flapping-I’ll explain that in more detail later, when it becomes a required technique and not just something to use to stay in the air for longer.
05:15 - Tower 3 - Nice Action!
You might have noticed by now, between this tower and the last one, that fans are a good way to skip some manual clmbing: just let the updraft send you upwards rapidly until you reach solid ground. The computer players do it, so you might as well!
08:17 - Tower 4 - Cooky Jar
I’m not sure why “Cookie” is spelled wrong for this tower’s name, but you’ll see at the beginning of this tower’s introduction that there are only 2 laps for this one. They tend to be reserved for the ones that take longer to complete a lap, though the final tower for each world, which always takes place in the ruins area, is always 1 very long lap.
10:31 - Tower 5 - Wobbler
Though it goes without saying in any racing game, it’s important to be at least passingly familiar with each racetrack. For this tower, the last segment is a series of long, irregularly shaped horizontal loops with one segment where you can grapple through. You want to know the optimal path through there, because you can bet the computer players in Hard difficulty will.
13:05 - Tower 6 - Super Happy Fun
I have my doubts about it, but I remember some people saying that this tower is named after the Super Happy Tree from Yoshi’s Story. That game had just come out the previous year, and people playing on the Nintendo 64 had it fresh in their minds. Here, I demonstrate, albeit unintentionally, that you can get hit by your own blue electric shot items. Very nice if you hit someone with it. Not so nice if you hit yourself.
15:37 - Tower 7 - The Ring’s the Thing
Crucial to me winning this race was sheer aggression against the computer players. And hey, why not? They’re very aggressive to me, so I might as well fight them. There’s relatively little infighting among them, so you might as well hold nothing back when they come around. Make them miss those moving platforms.
18:46 - Tower 8 - Clang Clang! (Armored)
For the record, every standard world has one “Armored” tower. This means that 75% or more of the tower is made of armored ground, which can’t be grappled through. Any non-grappling means of movement will work though, like bouncing on another racer’s head or dipping into the acid below (not that it’s practical in this specific tower). In hindsight, I’m not sure why this signifier exists. It’s not like your strategy is any different knowing that.
20:58 - Tower 9 - Maze of Torment
Though I like the design of this tower, the spiraling climb up feeling like something suitable for the last tower with the Downtown theme, there’s nothing maze-like about this.
23:19 - Final - Orbital
And finally, the tower set in the ruins, which, if it concludes a world, is only 1 lap. But as you can see, this lap is as long as a whole race in some other towers.
Tower 1- It looks like you got an item from the star-shaped object that allowed you to lay down bombs to slow down other racers.
Tower 2- The electric ball at the 2:38 mark caused both you and your opponent to spin out.
Tower 3- The CPU players were doing better here than in the previous towers. One of them caught you at the 6:25 and the 6:50 marks!
Tower 4- The pink racer nearly beat you. =O
Tower 5- The racer in last place froze everyone in front of them at the 12:15 mark. It reminds me of the Lightning in the Mario Kart series.
Tower 6- Gooey platforms? Icy platforms? Boost panels? This tower has all three!
Tower 7- Looks like you have to attack your opponents in the giant moving platform section. Otherwise, you'll be left behind.
Tower 8- You got hit by a bomb, bounced off of your opponent, and jumped right through a metal platform at the 19:05 mark. And you clipped through a metal platform after getting hit by an electric spark at the 20:16 mark. Must be a glitch, but hey. It's useful for advancing through the level.
Tower 9- It's not a maze, but you can roll right off of various parts of the track if you aren't careful.
Final Tower- The parts where you had to grapple through multiple narrow platforms to reach the top look tough, especially when you're dealing with other racers who can throw you around.
Indeed, the projectiles you saw at 2:38, the blue ones, CAN hit the character who shot them. Between that and how they just travel along a path until they fall off or enough time passes, I consider them useless to catch up to someone.
Not only was I attacked twice by grappling in Tower 3 ("Nice Action!"), but Skully also dropped a bomb directly in front of me. And yeah, Q-Tee almost beat me. This is a taste of how brutal the computer players can be on Hard difficulty.
What you saw at 12:15 was the Freeze item, which encases all opponents in balls of ice. This makes their movement slipper and hinders their grappling upwards. You can use a boost to break free of the ice, but you won't get a speed increase. There is a closer analogue to Lightning, which is Shrink. You may notice my character suddenly getting smaller and slower sometimes. This is that item at work. You'll see me use one at about 19:58.
What you saw at 20:16 is not a glitch. Armored platforms can't be grappled onto, but any other sort of upwards movement can let you pass through them. That includes getting bounced into the air from an item attack.
Orbital is tougher than the towers that came before it, but we're only about one-fifth through the game at this point. (Including Easy Street, 20 towers out of 100 in the game.) Naturally, it gets much tougher after this.
Predictably, the tower themes speed up in the last lap, which is another reason Iggy's Reckin' Balls 99 would be a doozy of a platforming racer royale. The dragonflies would eject people who finish below the Safe Rank.
I have not played Iggy's Reckin' Balls, yet I am already liking it because of how much of an interesting platforming racer it is. One idea for Iggy's Reckin' Balls 99 would be to have a battle royale world that has 10 towers in it, and each tower would have a higher Safe Rank than the last tower. Once all the safe racers make it through a tower, dragonflies come in on that tower to remove the racers who finished below the Safe Rank. It is why people call me the Great 99-Ifier for coming up with battle royale versions of other games.
For the record, Iggy’s might not work in multiplayer quite that well. Some towers have pretty distinct advantages where you even start, and the nature of some towers cause insurmountable leads after a short time.
Some of the towers later on, particularly the last ones in World 9, is barely playable with 4 racers, let alone 99.
I never knew the game had different victory themes for different characters. I always stuck to 1 as a kid. so this is pretty cool to learn in retrospect.
Some of them share themes (though the only difference is the instrument used for the main melody), like Sonny and Snow-eee, but yeah, they do sound different depending on the character.
I think King Jr. shares one with Amanda. I’ll use King Jr. for World 3, so it’ll turn up soon.
What a weird looking game, shame I missed out on this one way back when!
You didn’t miss much. It was mediocre. But it was an original idea, and I appreciate it for that.
Iggy got a Crash Bandicoot Facelift in Japan
Yeah, I heard. This is the US version, of course.