PlayStation Basement #38 - Floating Runner: Quest for the Seven Crystals

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on May 18th, 2019. A few typos have been corrected.

It’s a warm Saturday today. It’s time for PlayStation Basement. PlayStation Basement is brought to you every Saturday with a review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!

Let’s continue on from last week’s FoxKids.comMicro Maniac Racing and talk about more cartoony running games. There are actually a lot of running games on PS1: Running High, Oh No!, and Pepsiman come to mind. Floating Runner: Quest for the Seven Crystals is more of a platformer, but it has those classic tank controls that the PlayStation made famous. The game was published throughout 1996 by Kokopeli in North America, Xing in Japan, and THQ in Europe. The game was developed by Xing who handled ports of In the Hunt, Pu-Li Ru-La, Three Wonders, and console versions of PC adventure game Prisoner of Ice. Xing also worked on many licensed anime games for Gun Frontier, Tenchi Muyo!, and 3x3 Eyes. Let’s get running.

The North American and European cover art for Floating Runner shows one of the heroes, Lay (presumably supposed to be “Ray”) firing a pistol in the air among some floating islands. I like the CG style employed here, especially the many shades of blue. Interestingly, the muzzle flash of the pistol carries into the black spine that says “PlayStation”. The title text is a very fiery, 90s gradient on block text. The Japanese version shows the same scene with some differences. This time the image is a drawing and shows both heroes, Lay and Cress. Lay looks angry, while Cress looks a bit shocked. The text here is a rainbow of pastels.

Both cover arts represent the game well enough. Floating Runner is a time capsule of early 3D. It has bright colors, blocky characters, minimal shading/textures, and lots of floating platforms as seen in other games like Crash Bandicoot and Bubsy 3D. The enemies and worlds have varied designs. I really like the cool blue colors that were in a few other Kokopeli games too (Robo Pit and In the Hunt come to mind). Unfortunately, I can’t appreciate the graphics as much as I should be able to. The game has a low draw distance, pop-up, and a camera that’s too close. You see your character mostly from above, but, with the fast movement and platforming, you really need to see ahead. The game is also one of a few titles from this era, mostly N64 along with MediEvil 2, that make me feel sick.

Floating Runner’s sound is fine. The sound effects are what you expect – bright, cheery blips. The music varies between memorably great and minimally mediocre. It’s similar to the superior tracks in Bomberman 64 and the Kirby series, which makes me want to just play those games.

The gameplay is the real problem here. There are problems all over the design. The tank controls are clunky but doable. You can strafe too, but your character jumps when doing so. Often, I just fell of a platform when trying to strafe. The close camera and smooth polygons make platforming difficult. It’s hard to tell what’s ahead or get a sense of depth. I got stuck on the same jumps numerous times. Other times, I had trouble navigating the levels. At times, you really need to explore the different worlds to figure out where to go. This is a good idea, but the execution makes it painful.

Floating Runner features tons of enemies. Either character, Cress or Lay, can shoot and also utilize other weapons such as shields, bombs, or fire rods to attack. The extra weapons have to found in the levels and require gems to use. Enemies drop gems, which also increase your score. The weird thing is the enemies are mostly just a nuisance. If you run out of health, you can continue immediately from where you fell with almost no repercussions other than resetting the score and gems. You have infinite continues too. Shooting is awkward anyway; your shots fly in a short arc, requiring a precise distance to make contact. Jumping on an enemy’s head is easier. Mostly, it was the easiest to avoid enemies.

The real enemy here is time. You start each level with a counter of 99. Confusingly, what would seem to be a second on the counter is more like 10 seconds of time. Therefore, you have over 16 minutes to finish each level. If you run out of time, you lose the game. You can’t save or continue from there either; it’s just game over. I guess, technically, you can save, but you only save high scores. There doesn’t seem to even be an option to view them afterwards, so I don’t know what the point even is. I didn’t even get the chance to put m initials in except for one time.

The 16 minutes of time is often more time than necessary, but a few levels are really impacted by the camera or the slippery platforming. Sky world’s second stage is composed of slides that require precise jumps to continue. If you miss the jump, some make you start from nearly the beginning of the level. There are a few other places like that in the game too. When I finally did the jump, I didn’t even see how I did it; I randomly pushed the jump button and made it. Forest world suffers from slippery platforming on trees. Swamp world requires the player to look around with the stiff camera. It is important to note that you can set the camera to be more directly overhead in addition to the default behind (but mostly overhead).

There are six main worlds in total along with a final world and a very short beginning world. Each world is made up of two stages. When you finish a world, you touch a crystal. The crystal changes color every few seconds. The color determines which world you will end up in next. Completed worlds cannot be done again. The color situation is really weird and confusing at first. I think it would have been better looking and more understandable to have a Mega Man-esque level select screen.

Floating Runner: Quest for the Seven Crystals has some interesting ideas, but the game does not know how to handle them. Platforming with tank controls is weird enough, but the camera, annoying enemies, lack of real continues, and mish-mash of ideas hurt the game considerably. I thought I would like this game a lot, but it mostly ends up annoying.

Floating Runner: Quest for the Seven Crystals receives a Bad.

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