S.O.S.

"A disaster flick on your SNES. Awesome!"

First off, let me start by saying--- man, I wish I still had this cart. A bit of a background story: sometime around 1997, me and my cousin walked to the local K-Mart in the middle of a blizzard. I mean, like 3-4 feet of snow. Why? K-Mart was open, and they had pizza. Anyhow, to make a long story short, while browsing the videogame aisle, we found S.O.S. and Super Battleship. Having some money, I picked both up. We almost died walking back through that snowy hell, on that cold morning. Was it worth it? Yes. But I still wish I had that cart.

Anyway, on to the actual review!

The storyline is something quite innovative. Several guests are aboard a cruise ship. You can pick which one you play as, with each having different abilities and advantages. For example, the sailor starts with a map of the ship. The doctor can help heal peoples' wounds, but isn't so physically fit. For some reason, I always played as the bearded guy. I think he was a psychiatrist, but I forget. :(

You get to walk around chit-chatting for awhile, while you get to know some of the people who will later become corpses.

As usually happens to videogame cruise ships, the boat is struck by lightning. It catches fire, and soon begins to sink. You then spend the next hour of your life hopping, climbing, crawling, and swimming to find a way out. Sure, you can get people to come with you--- but I'm of the opinion that women and children will only slow down your own rescue! Anyway...

Graphics- 9. Very nice, detailed graphics, for its day. They adequately convey the feeling of a burning, claustrophobic nightmarish ordeal. Kudos!

Sound- 10. Sound wasn't that great. It seemed to me that alot of the burning or crashing effects were white noise. But the music? The music was intense. Hence the 10. Oh, and the screams as you fall/get hit/get burned are chilling, in a way.

Controls: 6. Yes, 6. Why? As stated before, the controls are quite sluggish, especially when jumping. Personally, I spent 10 minutes trying to climb to the top of that darn smokestack--- only to have the ship shift in MID-JUMP, cause me to miss the concrete girder completely, and fall about 100 feet... where I lied unconscious for a good 5 minutes. And forget about trying to get the civilians to follow you. All of them... yes, all of them... will either fall to their death or become hopelessly trapped behind an obstacle that they can't seem to figure their way over. Leave them behind, I say.

Replayability: 10. Okay, this is odd. I know that the darn exit is in the same place EVERY GAME. I know it doesn't change. And yet, I kept going back over and over. Not to mention, every time I went back, I forgot how I had gotten to the exit. But, yes, this game is fun to replay. I know I've beaten it twice, and probably played it hundreds of times. And when trying to find the exit got old, I laughed in glee as I repeatedly hurled the fat doctor down an elevator shaft! Wheee!

Broken Spine Rating: 10+! Speaking of which, have you noticed the sick angle at which peoples' backs arch when they fall? I know I spent at least a half hour of my life letting my guy jump to his death just to see that.

Final verdict: I didn't know this game was hard to find, but it was one of my all time favorites. It also brings back fuzzy memories of hypothermia and bad pizza. Man, I wish I still had that cart.
10 points for concept
-3 points for the controls
-1 point for using white noise as a sound effect
+2 points for that nasty back-arching thing
and +1 point for reminding me of my innocent teenage years.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/01, Updated 11/05/01