Deliberating “Defenders of Dynatron City”

Defenders of Dynatron City is definitely one of the lesser known titles on the NES. Featuring a team of unique super heroes, the players goal was to protect the entire City of Dynatron with each hero’s wacky super power.  It appealed to me back in 1992 when I first saw it in a game magazine because it was by Lucasfilm Games and Gary Winnick. Winnick was the co-designer of Maniac Mansion and having really enjoyed that game, I figured I would enjoy Dynatron just as much. Sadly, the game didn’t seem to have a large print run and never popped up at my local video store to check out. Getting a SNES in 1993 didn’t help either as any money I acquired would be going to my new 16-bit system and so my desire to get the game was swept away.

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Unique heroes? Most definitely.

Upon my discovery of NES emulation in the mid 90s, I did check the game out; but I only played for a very brief moment. Either the game wasn’t any good or maybe I was too blown away by the fact I could play any NES game I missed in moments, but I definitely didn’t give it a fair shake. So I was interested in checking it out again and decided to track down a cartridge of it.

Defenders of Dynatron City

These are your defenders. Choose wisely.

You can’t help but to laugh as soon as you fire up the game and it displays the different defenders you have to choose from. Ever wanted to play as a monkey who can throw exploding bananas or a robot with a hammer for a head? You can in this game! When it comes down to originality itself, this game deserves recognition. The city is large, with quite a diverse amount of buildings you can enter and explore; provided you’ve cleared the streets of evil robots. Every chapter has as list of requirements you must meet before you can fight the end level boss and move on. You can switch between heroes at any point in the game, as well as view a in-game map. The music in the game is also quite catchy and feels like something that would have come out of the Maniac Mansion soundtrack.

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Radium Dog looks to be looking for another NES game to play.

Unfortunately, the game has a few issues that keeps it from being a must play. Hit detection is a major issue as you will repeatedly attempt to line your hero up with the same horizontal line as the enemy and miss; only to have that same enemy hitting you multiple times seconds later. Patience can help destroy enemies with little damage, but you must constantly be on the move due to a mission timer. If the time goes out? Game over. Finally, while you have a in-game map; the streets just don’t seem to follow it very well. I found myself constantly having to jump out of action and check the map; just to make sure I was heading towards my objective. All of these issues combined can lead to a very frustrating experience that will make the player not want to come back to it.

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Even super heroes have comics they need to check out!

So will I ever give the game another chance? Maybe someday, but for now there are many other games out there that take priority for a revisit over Defenders of Dynatron City.