Athena

Developer: SNK
Year: 1986

That Athena would be immediately after Amagon alphabetically is just one of those little serendipitous things. The two games are a lot alike, except that Athena stinks and Amagon is awesome, to the point that when we were finally fed up with Athena, Laura immediately wanted to play Amagon again.

So, there are some differences:

• Athena fights pigs and horse-headed guys with a club and also swords.
• Athena has bricks to break, a la SMB.
• There's a life meter.
• When you die, you go all the way back to the beginning of the level every single time.
• The game looks like shit.
• The music stinks.
• You're an anime woman with no discernable powers instead of an awesome stranded marine who can turn into Megagon.

Athena is wholly unremarkable. The controls stink -- there's a double-jump, sort of, though it's impossible to activate consistently, and there are numerous cases where you get trapped by an enemy and can't get out because they keep shooting you back when you run -- so much for the life meter. We got to the first boss, but it kicked our asses repeatedly because the framerate dropped to like 6 when it started shooting. You wind up not so much fighting the enemy as the game itself, which seeks to outsmart you by not working. Whatever.

Interesting note: there are these big flowers the grow and bite you which look exactly like the deku in Zelda. They also have their own music when they grow that plays over the actual score. It's sort of trippy.

So, there you have it. Athena made me want to go back and bump my score for Amagon up to an 8, but in the end, I think I'll just give Athena a 4 instead.

Rating: 4/10 Not horrible, but I'll never play it again.
Advice: The red skull shield removes all of your armour. Found that out the hard way.
Best Moment: Hearing the opening music from Amagon.