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The past few years the NES homebrew scene has become more and more active, resulting in a lot of homebrew actually worth playing. One of the pioneers in quality homebrew is Kevin Hanley of KHAN Games. His first
game called Ultimate Frogger Championship was one of those releases that raised the bar as well as showing that anything is possible if you're persistent enough. Another KHAN project worth mentioning is is the
NES port, or remake, of Leisure Suit Larry - a project that has been in development for quite some time now, but one looks like it's definitely worth the wait.
And while we wait for Larry to arrive, it's time to check out another, to be released, KHAN production. I present to you.... Study Hall, the NES homebrew with the most goofy graphics I've ever seen!
Study Hall is about the student, that could've been me, who is tired of studying and is eagerly awaiting spring break, only one week away, how on earth are you going to survive? You have to find a way to pass time!
Starting monday at 9:00am you begin jotting down small puzzles on a piece of paper and as time goes by, the puzzles gets more and more advanced.
So basicly the idea of the game is to pass time without getting caught, but if you do - it's detention time! and you're game over.
What I've played is not the complete version but still enough to get an idea of what the game is like and even though the plot may seem simple, the puzzles soon gets madly hard and it's going to be a truggle to make
it through the entire week. During each of the puzzles you collect points that are used to calculate your final score when you end up in detention or complete the game (I suppose).
The game is said to also include some sort of bonus stage, but this part wasn't included in the beta build I've played.
I did see an odd feature in the game though, when writing the review I let my character wander the school halls when he magically changed sex, yeah just out of nowhere - just like that. I don't know what the purpose of
this is other than maybe a gimmick for those that are insanely slow at playing - but then again if you're that slow you probably will never make it to the cut scene anyway.
If you accidently turned into a girl, wait during the next cut scene and you'll change again, no not to a horse or anything, but the human male species.
All in all this is a fun little game with some insane puzzles as time passes, the most goofy graphics I've seen, next to Hangman, but with that said - the goofy graphics actually fits the theme of the game quite well.
One thing I did miss though was the ability to skip the intro cut scene, but if I had to watch the cut scene, maybe a nice tune to go with it. KHAN told me that the final version will indeed be able to ship cut scenes.
Once the game is completed it'll be available at RetroZone and it'll be intersting to see people fight to get the highest score. But it you loose - don't be a girl
about it, errr ;-)
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