Sonic the Hedgehog first appeared in 1990’s Rad Mobile for arcade a few months before the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. He appears as an ornament dangling from the ceiling of the car.

I wanted to get that bit of trivia out of the way because it’s often all anybody knows about Rad Mobile. That is, if they even remember the name. I say that because I could never really remember it. Not until I became interested in pre-3D racing games.

This is mostly because Rad Mobile was only once ported to console and never in North America. That is, until it was chosen as one of the games for the Sega Astro City Mini. That’s still a pretty niche platform in this part of the world, so I’m still waiting for it to finally get the spotlight over here.

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That pesky hedgehog

Rad Mobile is interesting to me because it uses the “Super Scaler” pseudo-3D technique that Sega built their hardware around. It’s best remembered for Space Harrier, but it was used in OutRun and Hang-On. However, both OutRun and Hang-On used raster effects for their pseudo-3D road, whereas Rad Mobile just makes heavy use of scaling sprites. This is the same technique used by 1988’s better-remembered Power Drift.

So, rather than your car driving on a background layer or single sprite, you’re actually riding across a steady stream of overlapping sprites that gradually get bigger to simulate parts of the road getting closer to the screen. It’s as obvious as it is effective. Because it was easy to create bridges and hills using Super Scaler, racing games that used the effect typically had a lot of variation in elevation, to the point where they can sometimes feel like roller coasters.

Despite being designed by Yu Suzuki, Rad Mobile is hardly the best racing game of its era. The floatiness of the car and the difficulty in gauging depth with 2D sprites combined with the first-person perspective makes it feel quite janky. However, it still has a lot going for it and I love it all the same.

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Are we there yet?

Rad Mobile is your typical story about a race across the United States, from West to East coast. This would also be seen in Turbo OutRun and Cruis’n USA, among others. The journey is separated into 20 short tracks, each depicting a different location. Like many racing games at the time, you have to make each checkpoint within a short time limit to replenish your clock. However, on top of this, you compete against other racers on the same trip. If you’re careful, you can drive across the U.S.A. in less than half an hour, so I’m not sure why planes exist.

I’m not sure that Rad Mobile was ever intended to be played with a digital controller. The Astro City Mini version allows this, but most cabinets I’ve seen have a steering wheel. It’s a Sega System 32 board, so it most likely could have been installed in a real Astro City arcade cabinet, but the car controls are so sluggish and pressing an arcade button to accelerate is so uncomfortable it feels like a racing wheel is necessary. Still, it plays okay with a normal arcade stick.

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A long drive for someone with nothing to think about

A lot of Rad Mobile’s appeal comes from the variety it has stretched across the continent. Some tracks play at night, and you have to activate headlights to get a better view of the road. Meanwhile, it rains on others, and a pair of wipers keep your windshield clear. My favorite, however, is one that forces you to drive on train tracks and puts an impending locomotive in your rear-view mirror, threatening to clobber you if you clip a wall.

Speaking of clobber, there are police in some legs of the race. I’m not totally clear on why, but sometimes, if they get ahead of you, they’ll pull you over. Then, a police officer walks up to you and absolutely crushes your (formerly) radical automobile with one punch. It was a weird era in video games where people beat up a lot of cars, I guess.

One of the strangest parts, however, is the Rocky Mountains. If you slip off the edge of the track, you fall through nothingness for a few seconds before the road reappears beneath you and catches your car. It wrecks your car, but it was at least nice of the level to loop back around to give you something to land on.

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Scaling for consoles

The Sega Saturn version of Rad Mobile, Gale Racer, is something of a strange conversion. Largely, it’s a pretty reasonable port of the arcade game, but it’s also not as good. Mainly, this is because every track is separated by a loading screen, whereas the arcade version feels like one continuous journey. This not only kills the feeling of long-distance travel, it also eliminates the competitive feel of the game. You still pass cars on your journey, but it seems more like you’re doing it for score rather than to win a race.

Also, your speed tops out at around 300km/h for some reason, compared to the arcade's 170km/h. You still move at the same clip, the speedometer just reads differently.

The other vehicle are rendered in polygonal 3D, for some reason. The car also handles a lot crappier. There are police vehicles, but I don’t think they can pull you over anymore. The worst part about it, however, is the draw distance. It’s a lot smaller than the arcade version, which I’m guessing is because the Sega Saturn doesn’t have the same dedicated sprite scaling hardware. However, it could also be because it released in 1994, and most games of that time were rushed for the new hardware.

On the other hand, there’s a two-player mode. The soundtrack is a lot better. It’s also interesting that it didn’t come to North America, because it’s entirely in English. There’s even a text crawl at the beginning that is completely in English, but has Japanese subtitles.

Still, Rad Mobile is better than no Rad Mobile.

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Sega Arcade Arena

Sega seems to be having trouble figuring out what to do with all its arcade classics. They’ve provided a slow trickle of their best games through series like Sega Ages, but a lot of them are still inaccessible. The Sega Astro City Mini is nice, but it’s expensive and works better as a showpiece than as a mini console.

They need something like Capcom Arcade Stadium. Some sort of bigger compilation of their arcade titles that don’t absolutely need online connectivity. That, or they need to let Hamster dig through their back catalog for the Arcade Archives series. Or something. I just hate having to scour through old ports to try and find specific titles.

Rad Mobile is worth scouring for. It pokes me directly in my love for road trips and appeals to me through its weirdness. Too often, racing games are just monotone and serious. It’s no wonder I just cling to any driving game that offers more than just four wheel and an engine.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Sega’s Rad Mobile deserves to be remembered for more than just its dangling keychain appeared first on Destructoid.

I have an unhealthy fascination with advergames. Well, advertising in general, but advertising has gotten so boring since we started expecting companies to tell the truth and not try to kill us too blatantly. Advertising games in general aren’t super common anymore, usually relegated to browser or mobile platforms.

It’s not that I expect them to be good. Outside of a few exceptions, they’re usually not. At the very best, they’re inoffensive, but at worst, we have Mr. Pibb. Otherwise known as Mr. Pibb: The 3D Interactive Game. It might potentially be the worst first-person shooter I’ve ever played, but to truly confirm that, I’d have to delve through the fog of repressed trauma, and I don’t think it’s worth it.

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The brand that failed medical school

Mr. Pibb is essentially Coca-Cola’s version of Dr. Pepper. Or it was. It’s now sold as Pibb Xtra. I don’t think it was ever really sold here in Canada, or if it was, it was like Mello Yello in that it was only briefly marketed here.

For a short while – and this is all stuff I’m essentially learning right now – it was marketed using a character with the obvious name of Mr. Pibb. I’m curious to look up an old commercial, but I’ve heard his voice enough playing through this game, and I really don’t want to subject myself to it any further.

Released in 1998 it is, as far as I can find, the first game created by Brand Games, a company that is still around today. Unsurprisingly, their current webpage makes no mention of Mr. Pibb or even having worked with Coca-Cola, so I’m very happy to highlight their past abomination. Among their PC titles, they also created advergames for Taco Bell and Gap Kids, both of which are a bit more hilarious, but I decided to go chronologically here.

[caption id="attachment_397813" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The mascot in my brain

Mr. Pibb was built on the ACKNEX Engine, which is now better known as 3D Gamebuilder. It’s awful. It feels like it kind of belongs between Doom and Duke Nukem 3D’s build engine. There are moments of clever mathplay in the engine, like a single bridge across a room or sections where you go underwater. However, I imagine this is built into the engine since the game design is otherwise, uh, rough. I don't have much faith in the technical side of the development team, is what I'm saying.

Apparently, your school was taken over by a mad scientist and everyone was turned into zombies. Everyone except you and Mr. Pibb, who I guess lives in your head. You cure people from their zombification by burping at them. I guess that carbonated beverages make you burp, so that’s your weapon. That sort of sounds like something someone would bring up as a joke in a brainstorming meeting. It truly stretches the meaning of the phrase “There are no bad ideas.”

Beyond the gassy main character, the only other real link to the soft drink that I know of is its presence in the game as a health pick-up. Of course you gain health by grabbing a tall glass of Mr. Pibb. And each time you do, the eponymous character will scream at you the typical ‘90s-sounding slogan of “Put it in your head!” It’s really, um, unique.

[caption id="attachment_397814" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Yep, that's a school

If there’s one thing that Mr. Pibb does well, it’s in its environment. The school looks like a school, which sounds really bare minimum, but environments that actually look similar to the real world weren’t really guaranteed in 1998.

However, the level design is hardly suitable for some of Mr. Pibb’s eccentricities. Enemies, for example, can’t just be passed through. You’ll always collide with them, which isn’t necessarily unusual. However, once you cure them of their zombieism, they still just stand there, unwilling to give ground. There are a lot of choke points like doorways, and there were a number of occasions where I was alternating between jumping and ducking to try and get past someone.

You can burp at them, but that just makes them sass at you and causes you to take damage. It’s not ideal.

On the plus side, however, the whole game is just one big(ish) level. It took me 45 minutes to complete the whole game, and that includes time spent getting stuck behind immovable students and dying in the worst platforming section imaginable at the end of the game. Your main objective is to gather keys to get to new areas in the school. It’s not very unique.

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Eeeew, it's sticky!

Even at 45 minutes, I can’t believe I went to the effort of completing Mr. Pibb. The last section of the game is somewhat obtuse and entirely created to be as frustrating as possible. You have to traverse caustic slime using moving platforms, and every time you step onto one of them, Mr. Pibb exclaims, “Eeeew, it’s sticky!” This is regardless of whether or not you actually touch the slime.

If you do slip off a platform - and that’s extremely easy to do - there’s a good chance that you won’t recover and will just die. I made slow progress through the final stretch of the game. I heard “Eeeew, it’s sticky!” so many times that my husband screamed out from the bathroom how much he hated that "kid."

It doesn’t help that the same awful song loops for the entirety of the game. The only time this changes is during the final boss battle. However, it just plays a tune over top of the existing music, and I swear that it is one of the worst compositions I’ve ever heard in a video game.

Picture this: You’re in a store that sells musical instruments. Someone has left their child unattended. This child is walking around the keyboard section, mashing keys. That’s what the celebratory ending song sounds like. It’s like the composer had left on vacation, and they really needed someone to fill in before the deadline. So, one of the programmers, with no musical knowledge, tried their best. It’s incredible.

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Advertrauma

The only thing that kept me playing Mr. Pibb was my constant amusement at how badly designed it was. Not that it surprises me that a game based on a drink that is 90% high-fructose corn syrup is not very good. It’s most shocking when an advergame turns out to be decent, like in the case of Cool Spot. It’s hard to tap into someone’s passion when you tell them their objective is to sell sugar-water.

At the same time, there was a certain value to advergames in the ‘90s. You may think that it’s an incredibly bad idea to chain your product to a horrible experience, but as a child in the ‘90s, we’d basically play whatever we could get our hands on. These days, you can really stretch your dollar and get thousands of games for less than $5, or even for free, but in the formative days of the internet, it wasn’t so simple.

If you gave a ‘90s kid a free game, it’s almost certain that they would play it. Once they've played it, you’ve managed to put Mr. Pibb in their head. And that's the sort of trauma that can only be dislodged with expensive therapy that children can't afford.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Mr. Pibb: The 3D Interactive Game probably isn’t something you want to put in your head appeared first on Destructoid.

Everyone loves the Dreamcast. Okay, when the console needed people to buy it, it seemed like nobody loved the Dreamcast, but everyone loves the Dreamcast now. It was Sega at their best. The Genesis had some identity issues, and the Saturn compounded on them, but the Dreamcast presented a confident and focused Sega as they plunged toward the spot on the ground where they were about to leave a crater.

Like many people, I skipped out on the Dreamcast during its initial run, but I’ve been making up for it ever since. However, I never got around to Space Channel 5, one of the more unique experiments that came out for the system in 1999.

So, why now? I’ve been watching GameCenter CX again, and there’s an episode where Arino makes an attempt at it, and he’s just so bad. Completely awful. I wanted to see if I’d be similarly as bad, and of course, I’m not.

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Whaaaao!

1999 was still very early in the evolution of the rhythm genre, and Space Channel 5 shows its age. You play as a reporter for the titular future TV station, Ulala. She travels from one crisis to another perpetrated by the Morolians, an alien race of adorable Gumby people. They’ve been going around forcing people to dance, so it’s up to Ulala to go and save the day.

Which is a strange thing for a reporter to do. The whole news program thing doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but it ties into the twist at the end, so whatever.

Gameplay involves being in various situations where dance moves play out in front of Ulala, and she must repeat them. It’s a lot like the old Simon games where you have to repeat a sequence of colored lights. It’s also a bit like Parappa the Rapper, but without the visual cues, and that kind of drives me crazy.

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Space Cats

You repeat dance moves by pressing a direction on the stick or either the A or B button. You use the A button to zap aliens and the B button to save people. The scenes change between shootouts, dance-offs, and hostage situations, which is an absolutely bizarre mix. The dance-offs give you a healthbar that gets whittled down whenever you make an error in a section, but for everywhere else, you just need to keep your ratings up. You need to push ratings up past a certain threshold by the end of each level or you fail and have to repeat it.

It can be a bit harsh. You only need to make one mistake during a section of dance-off for you to lose a heart. Likewise, you might not know until the final tally if your rating will meet the threshold to pass a mission. Whenever you fail at one of these criteria, you’re pushed back to the start of the level. They aren’t very long, but I could only stand to hear Ulala say “Fab-u-lous” so many times before I needed to take a break.

Likewise, there are only four levels. While you’re unlikely to beat all of them on your first try, getting through Space Channel 5 doesn’t really take long. Unless you're a Japanese comedian with no rhythm. After that, there isn’t a whole lot of replay value. You get a harder mode, but I found this absolutely maddening.

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Blood on the dance floor

Don’t get me wrong, I found Space Channel 5 to be a pretty enjoyable game. It’s interesting in its absurd flamboyancy. It’s like a late ‘90s Brittany Spears music video on some mind-opening hallucinogens.

The strangest part is when you rescue “Space Michael,” which is a cameo appearance by Michael Jackson. By the late ‘90s, you were either holding onto the notion that Michael Jackson was still cool, or you found him deeply creepy. It’s really unclear which side Space Channel 5 is on because, for one thing, it’s a celebrity cameo, but I don’t know how anyone could see his appearance as cool. To put it charitably, a skin-tight chrome bodysuit doesn’t suit him.

On the other hand, I really had trouble with the lack of visual cues present on screen for a lot of the segments. There are some places where you can see how many button presses you need for each direction. But a lot of the time, it falls on you to memorize. I can do that. Mostly. However, I can’t predict when the game is going to throw it back to me. Sometimes, it will be going through a steady pace of a few prompts before sending it back to you. Then it'll suddenly switch to throwing out one or two prompts before switching rapidly, and it’s impossible to prepare for.

From Parappa the Rapper to Rock Band, most rhythm games have a visual way of telling you when you need to press buttons. That mechanic hadn’t been proven necessary by 1999, and it hurts the fun of Space Channel 5.

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The show's been cancelled

It also has a weirdly immemorable soundtrack for a rhythm game. It’s not bad, but it really gets lost behind the “Left, shoot, right, shoot, up, shoot, shoot.” I’m not saying it’s a huge issue, it just puzzles me that a rhythm game wouldn’t have more focus on providing a killer soundtrack.

It might sound like I didn’t enjoy Space Channel 5, and that’s not true. I have reservations, but I think it’s an interesting landmark in the gaming landscape. I mostly respect it because it’s such an extravagant presentation of something bizarre. Parappa the Rapper feels like an easygoing experiment, whereas Space Channel 5 busts through the door and starts pelvic thrusting while chanting its own name.

So few games have been so confident of their weirdness and so secure in their flamboyancy. Space Channel 5 is the unemployed couch surfer you defend by saying they have a “great personality.” I’m honestly curious about the VR-only Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash simply because I honestly don’t believe that the sheer naked style of the first two Space Channel 5 games can convincingly be replicated today.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Space Channel 5 for Dreamcast is a brief flash of sheer naked flamboyance appeared first on Destructoid.

I bought my Sega Saturn back when I was in college. Before that, I didn’t know a single person who had ever owned one. It had only been off the market for a decade, but games for it were tough to come by; still are. It sold nearly 10 million units. I have no hard numbers on this, but anecdotally, it seems to have barely made a ripple in Canada. Even knowing that the platform was mostly just popular in Japan, I would think I’d remember a section for Saturn games in Zellers.

Of the games I was able to sweep up in those early days, I mostly played Virtual On. However, a more absurd game got the second-most slice of my attention, and that was Street Fighter: The Movie. Or, as my roommates called it, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game. As it turns out, a sub-par port of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo plus a ridiculous ‘90s movie is the formula for magic. Embarrassing, nauseating magic.

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Educational television

If you didn’t see 1994’s live-action Street Fighter, I’m not sure I can make a recommendation. It’s a typical bad ‘90s adaptation of a video game, and sometimes it’s decent, sometimes it’s so bad it’s good, and then other times it’s just boring. For being based on a fighting game and including Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, you’d think it would at least have some great fighting sequences, but it seems almost afraid of putting fists in front of a camera.

On the other hand, Raul Julia as M. Bison is transcendentally fantastic. Sadly the actor’s last role, he brings incredible life to the character. It’s a dude who’s evil just for the sake of being evil, but Julia really makes it seem like a dude who loves evil. Absolutely fantastic. You could have just made a sitcom involving Raul Julia playing M. Bison in his everyday life, and I would have been glued.

Actually, there’s this scene where Chun Li is giving this big expositional monologue, and Julia completely steals the scene just by taking dismissive glances over at her while she talks. Incredible.

But even though it was already based on an extremely popular game, the licensing machine demanded that the movie have its own game. I mean, it probably helped that Street Fighter was one of the hottest licenses of the ‘90s, so putting it on anything was essentially printing Bison dollars. But, it didn’t just get one game; the console and arcade versions were completely different. The Saturn version of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, as noted earlier, is based entirely on Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

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Quick! Change the channel!

Essentially just being pasted over an already good game is a pretty safe bet, and sure enough, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game is not bad. It’s maybe only worth playing as a curiosity, but it’s nice that it’s also mostly enjoyable.

The big difference here is that all the characters have been replaced by digitized versions of their actors. Well, not all. Raul Julian and Jean-Claude are substituted with their stuntmen, unfortunately. Also, you can’t really tell if they’re the original actor because the graphics are so grainy. So, like, sure, I can believe that’s Ming-Na Wen as Chun-Li. I’ll take your word for it, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.

It also doesn’t have all the characters because someone at Capcom or Acclaim was a coward. T. Hawk and Dhalsim were both in the movie as characters with spoken dialogue, but no one was brave enough to give Dhalsim yoga-stretch powers or make any human stand in T. Hawk’s idle pose.

In their place, we get Sawada, who had maybe three lines in the entire movie. Sawada is kind of like Fei Long, but is dissimilar enough to count as a new, exclusive character. Lucky you, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.

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It was Tuesday

The big addition is a story mode where you play as Guile (the all-American hero with a Belgian accent) as he tries to take down Shadaloo. There’s a branching route to the finish line, but you’re essentially just choosing who you’ll be fighting against next.

Let me make it clear, though: you can only play as Guile in this mode. This suited me fine in College when Guile was my main, but I’ve lost my touch when it comes to his flash kicks and sonic booms. It’s a bit of a bummer that they didn’t write out narratives for each character, but I guess anyone who uses Guile as their main will be satisfied.

But seeing human actors trying their best to replicate the poses of the Street Fighter II characters is the real charm here. This isn’t like Mortal Kombat, where the characters' moves are based more on okay poses for humans to take on. This creates a ridiculous effect where two characters will interact in a way that looks like deep kissing or nipple tweaking.

It doesn’t help that the Saturn version of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game has a lot more slowdown than the arcade. You get a lot of time to really appreciate Zangief sticking his tongue down Deejay’s throat.

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Why do they still call me a warlord?

Every time I pick up Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, I’m surprised by how much I don’t hate it. I think that’s a testament to Street Fighter 2’s gameplay. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the characters and backgrounds are or if the music is so unspectacular that it’s barely there. It all gets held up by one of the greatest fighting game systems created.

My roommates and I played a lot of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, right up until I found Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for PS2 and migrated our fisticuffs to that. It’s a decent substitute, and the digitized actors lend an entertaining whiff of kusoge (crappy game) to the whole affair. I’m not saying it should be picked up by EVO, but… No, actually, that should happen. I would totally watch that.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game for Sega Saturn is worth every Bison dollar appeared first on Destructoid.

Konami was once such a fun company. Beyond just being successful at innovating and even defining various genres, they had a strong interplay between their games that put even modern Nintendo to shame. Their development teams weren’t just skillful and talented, but they seemed to have real pride in their company. It felt like they were fans. And through that passion, it was hard not to become a fan yourself.

It makes the trajectory of modern Konami feel like that much more of a betrayal. They’re sitting on the games they made us fans of. Or worse. Some are just getting sent to the graveyard that they send all the properties they’re not interested in making new games for: Pachislot parlors.

Parodius Da for Super Famicom is a good example of this. The opening cutscene shows a crowd of penguins watching a screen showing all the milestones of the Gradius series. Amusingly, this spanned 1985 to 1992. Video games moved quickly back then. Eventually, an octopus bursts through the screen, and that’s just a hint of the weirdness to come.

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All the challenge, twice the fun

First released in arcades in 1990, Parodius Da is sometimes thought of as the first game in the sub-series. Its title just translates to a blunt and factual “It’s Parodius!” However, it truly began its life on the MSX in 1988 with just Parodius. Parodius Da was the first one to hit arcades, however, and then in 1992 it was ported to the Super Famicom. Konami’s pretty stingy with the arcade ports these days, so the Super Famicom version is all I have currently. That’s okay since it’s the one with the bathhouse level.

As the name implies, Parodius Da is a parody of the Gradius series. Despite that, it has the same depth of gameplay. You have four selectable ships, but the biggest difference is that it’s just consistently outrageous. The sub-boss of the first stage is a flying pirate ship with a cat’s head, and it just gets stranger from there.

However, if you’re not familiar with Gradius, then I’ll explain. It’s a horizontal shooting game with heavy emphasis on not touching obstacles. You bank power-ups to choose how you upgrade your weapons on the fly, which is the biggest bump in the learning curve. Generally, the key to performing well at a Gradius game is to power up your ship quickly and then don’t die. If you die, you lose all your power-ups, and it can be an ordeal to rebuild your power. Death also can happen from the slightest misstep.

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No laughing matter

I’m not a Gradius expert, but I’m also not new to the series. However, I found Parodius Da to be brutally difficult. The SNES version makes things as accessible as possible. You can choose your stock of lives, but even if you don’t, there are infinite continues and using one just places you at the last checkpoint. It’s entirely possible to just bash yourself against a segment of Parodius Da until you get through with some combination of luck, skill, and memorization.

The first stage is perfectly manageable, and the second isn’t too rough, either. The sub-boss on the second stage gave me a bit of problem until I memorized its movements. However, the third stage was a wall for me. There’s a segment in the middle where you need to blast your way through walls of Skittles, dodge bullets, and also know when to hurry to the next obstacle so you don’t get trapped.

It didn’t get much easier after that. Parodius Da really has a habit of screwing with you. And when it isn’t doing that, the screen is getting filled with projectiles and enemies. Again, the trick to getting through this is to stock up your ship and then just blast everything in your way.

Then don’t die. That’s really key here.

[caption id="attachment_396225" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Don't die

And if you do manage not to die, you get to see some choice weirdness. If there’s one benefit to the silliness of Parodius Da, it’s that it’s extremely difficult to predict. There are sumo wrestlers, for example, who come spinning into view. At first, they seem to just be a larger version of a typical wall-hugging enemy, but then they turn their back to the camera and whip at you with their mawashi. Naked ass staring you directly in the face. It’s absurd.

And then there are the bosses, who are fascinatingly varied. At one point, you just fight a huge woman. The Super Famicom exclusive level caps off with a fight against an octopus that is just trying to wash its hair. Even the sub-bosses have their own style, like the strangely evocative lips that fire entire rows of teeth at you. If there’s one reason to keep playing Parodius Da, it’s to see what else it throws at you.

Unfortunately, this also means that the difficulty curve is a bit all over the place, which I alluded to earlier. The last level, for example, was one of the easiest, following a string of tricky challenges. I’m not sure if the final boss is even a boss at all. I took it down before it could even attack, so maybe it was just the finish line. I’m not really sure, it was a strange end to a strange game.

[caption id="attachment_396221" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The absolute bare minimum

The Parodius series would have a pretty extensive lifespan. Between 1988 and 1996, there were five unique titles and a turn-based offshoot. Then you could also roll in the two Otomedius games, as they too were parody titles of Gradius. And then, of course, the series went to the Pachislot graveyard. Thanks, Konami.

As I said in the beginning, Parodius Da really makes you mourn for the glory days of Konami. Right now, the company has been licensing out their properties to other companies, which is probably as close as we’re ever going to get to their internal culture of the ‘80s and ‘90s. At least most of these games are going to be designed by fans or people with some reverence for the titles. Whether or not they’ll live up to the source material is another question.

But if not, I at least hope that we can get some sort of Parodius collection. Some of the titles were released in Europe, but none of them made it to North America. But for that matter, Konami hasn’t been all that great about porting the Gradius or Twinbee series. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection is a nice step in the right direction, but Konami really needs to do better for the sake of its legendary back catalog.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

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I have to wonder if the fighting game boom of the ‘90s would have lasted longer if companies didn’t pump out sequels at such a dizzying pace. When you have Street Fighter Alpha 2 and X-Men vs. Street Fighter alongside Street Fighter III: New Generation and Street Fighter EX, what do you choose? These all came out in a roughly two-year span. The arcade mentality generally meant you dedicated yourself to a particular cabinet so you could dominate all competitors. A lot of people still weren’t willing to move away from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

Of course, I wasn’t part of that scene at the time, so I’m kind of just talking out of my ass here.

But with that mindset, Bloody Roar 2 arrived just over a year after the first game. This was not at all uncommon. In fact, if Hudson didn’t have a new version of Bloody Roar available so soon after the last game, they’d be left behind by the Tekkens and the Virtua Fighters they were in direct competition with.

I don’t have to worry about that now. I just discovered the Bloody Roar series for myself. So I got to move on to Bloody Roar 2 when I was ready for it.

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Fighting in flip-flops

Bloody Roar 2 is largely a refinement of the first game. However, a lot of big changes were made. Only four of the eight playable characters from the original roster return (technically five if you count Bakuryu). Seven are added, but two have to be unlocked, which roughly brings the roster up to 11 fighters.

Once again, these fighters have their regular human flesh mode, but during the battle, they can build up a gauge that allows them to transform into a furry. While some of the more interesting transformations from the first game, like Mitsuko the Boar and Hans the genderfluid Fox were removed, we do get Busuzima the Chameleon and Stun the “Insect.” You win some, you lose some.

The ones that do remain have had their movesets rejiggered. My main girl Alice lost easy access to her deadly spinning roundhouse, but she still has her Frankensteiner grab. Her roundhouse is now part of a combo (down-back+kick, back+kick) and isn’t quite as vicious. So, I instead made friends with her dropkick as a way of launching foes across the arena.

Also, Alice is like, a nurse now. But she doesn’t dress in scrubs. She has on what is essentially a sexy nurse outfit with thigh-high stockings and a skirt that is way too short to be throwing kicks in. I dunno, I’m not big on it. You can unlock a black alternate version that puts pants on the girl, but I still prefer her sportier look from the other games.

Return of the roundhouse

The general gameplay is the same. It’s an era-typical 3D fighting game, but the ring is boxed in with fencing. This is sort of like Sega’s Fighting Vipers. You can break the walls, but unlike the first Bloody Roar, which gave the option to have walls breakable just by knocking an opponent into them enough, they’re only breakable in Bloody Roar 2 when you finish off your opponent. Kind of a drag, actually.

However, they added the all-important block button. You can still do a “light guard” the same way as the first game by just not moving. However, heavy guard is now mapped to the R1 button. After playing so much of the original, it was heard to make my brain learn to use this in Bloody Roar 2.

Finally, Rave Mode has been replaced by a “Beast Drive” special attack. Each character has this super powerful move in beast mode. This expends beast mode immediately, which really sucks if you don’t manage to land the attack. However, it can also be a really flashy way to empty the rest of your bar if you’re about to get kicked back into human form.

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Furry rights

The biggest addition to the PS1 port is a story mode, but the narrative is, at least, very poorly told. The Tylon Corporation that made the zoanthropes was taken out in the first game. Now, there’s a Zoanthrope Liberation Front who claim to fight for furry rights, but are actually just following in the footsteps of Tylon.

However, each character’s story just has a lot of dialogue between fighters and serves as a really weak basis for them to fight. Alice’s story, for example, has her trying to help Yugo find Bakuryu, and then, for some reason, Gado decides she’d make a good leader and fights her. It’s the kind of story that is just kind of unremarkable and dumb, which is typical for a fighting game of the era. However, trying to describe it in shorter terms makes me want to vomit.

Still, a story mode is a great addition to add alongside the arcade, survival, and time attack. Fighting games are at their best when you have someone to compete with, but having ways for unlikeable people such as myself to get enjoyment is always appreciated.

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Come back when you're ready

Aside from some give-and-take and a lame narrative, I don’t have any significant complaints about Bloody Roar 2. I wish it didn’t take me so long to finally try this series out because it has really clicked with me.

While I liked the simplicity of the first game, Bloody Roar 2 feels much more solid. Landing a deadly combo feels a lot more earned, and the strategy doesn’t lie solely on how well you manage your beast mode. I mean, choosing the right time to slip into your fursuit is still a big, big part of it, but it’s not quite as pronounced.

People have already been warning me that Bloody Roar 2 is where the series peaked. However, my local purveyor of retro games says it was Bloody Roar 3, while others have said Bloody Roar: Primal Fury. I haven’t heard anyone say Bloody Roar 4, so that’s worrisome. Unfortunately, I don’t have such easy access to any of the remaining titles in the series, so I’m going to have to take them as they come. Hopefully, Bloody Roar 2 is able to keep me satiated until then.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Bloody Roar 2 for arcade and PS1 expands the fluffy fighting appeared first on Destructoid.

I want to preface this Weekly Kusoge by saying that I absolutely love Tecmo’s Deception, but it is complete shit. I was inspired to try out the Deception series by community member Kerrik52. My only previous experience was watching a roommate try out 2005’s Trapt. However, upon looking at screenshots of Tecmo’s Deception, I fell in love.

Released in 1996, Tecmo’s Deception is just so PS1. While it established the foundation of the long-running series, it mostly failed spectacularly at everything it attempted. However, its King’s Field style first-person perspective and boxy, pixellated graphics just feel so cozy. A lot of what it failed to do was dropped by subsequent games in the series, which almost makes me feel like I won’t like them as much.

I will continue to send mixed signals throughout this article, I assure you.

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Invitation to kusoge

Tecmo’s Deception starts with you, a prince, getting your idyllic life fucked over by your hilariously evil brother. You were set to marry the love of your life and take the throne of the kingdom, but that dick got jealous and framed you for murder. Typical little sibling.

However, you’re saved from the gallows and whisked away to the Castle of the Damned, where, in return for your assistance in resurrecting Satan, you’re given the power to exact your revenge. As a player, you’re not really given much choice in the matter, so thankfully, it just feels so good to be evil. It helps that the people visiting your castle are hapless at best and giant walking cola-douches at worst. And they’re usually at their worst.

The story is probably one of the legitimately best-executed facets of Tecmo’s Deception. Like many games of its era, there isn’t a whole lot of depth to it, but the fact that you play as a fallen hero doing evil stuff is pretty tantalizing. Your character isn’t really given any lines of their own, so their actions and reactions are largely up to your own imagination. For me, it was a lot like being an evil homeowner and trying to keep everyone off my damned lawn. Homeownership is a great fantasy for my generation.

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Get off my lawn

You’re able to customize the Castle of the Damned at a great degree of depth. You can change the corridors and room placement as much as you want to make it feel more like home. You can, but there really isn’t much point in doing so.

Home customization is among the many, many undercooked features of Tecmo’s Deception. It sounds like a good idea on paper, and it still seems like a good idea when it’s presented to you. But then the gameplay gets applied to it, and you realize there’s no point.

You’re only ever invaded by a maximum of four intruders at a time. You deal with them by drawing them into traps that you set around the castle and activating them at the right time. However, I feel like the word “trap” implies a certain amount of automation, but there is none. Really, they’re spells that you set on the ground. You wait until someone steps on them, then manually activate them while the person is about five feet away. Satan should have just given you a powerful kick.

So, with the limited number of invaders and the fact that you have to be close enough to count an intruder’s nose hairs, you don’t really need a big castle. For most missions, I only used the room that intruders spawn in and the directly adjacent corridors. It actually would have been most efficient for me if I just shrank the overall footprint of the castle down as small as possible. The intruders aren’t after anything. You aren’t protecting something. They’ll just wander the castle until you choose to deal with them, so giving them less land to graze on would just expedite the process.

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Our house, our rules

Yet, you don’t really need to reach for any sort of exploit in Tecmo’s Deception. Everything is already extremely skewed in your favor from the beginning. It's unlikely you'll run out of gold or MP since it’s given to you so readily. You're eventually given the ability to upgrade your traps, and there’s no reason not to.

On the other hand, there’s very little reason to use most of the traps. At the start of the game, I experimented with confusion traps as a way of making it easier to kill or capture intruders, but I quickly realized that it didn’t really increase the chances of success much. Later in the game, I only used capture traps because they seemed most effective, and I could use the captured person as a building block for a monster.

Monsters are another great idea that was badly implemented. You collect the bodies of captured intruders and can turn them into various types of beasts who can collect experience and level up. You don’t get this ability until much later in the game, but it basically just removes the last threads of usefulness from the kill traps. With the traps, you have to lead someone into them and activate them at the right moment. Monsters you can just drop in whenever you want, as long as you have Block Orbs available.

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Monster problems

If you run out of Block Orbs, you can invite a merchant to your castle. Despite them being instantly aggressive once they see you, they’ll gladly open up shop if you walk up to them. You then have to kill them afterward, but somehow they’ve banked all your money. I guess if you could just buy whatever you want and then steal back your money, that would be going too far. As if Tecmo’s Deception is any stranger to pushing the margins of acceptable game design.

When you really get down to it, most of your time in Tecmo’s Deception will be spent grabbing the attention of an intruder and dodging their attacks as you lead them over a trap. Enemies don’t have any real willpower beyond walking directly toward you, so there’s very little strategy. Later games in the series would address this by having you create combinations of traps, but that is absolutely not the case here.

And then, just to cap everything off, I defeated the last boss within seconds by placing a trap directly next to them. The trap activated immediately when the mission started for some reason. There was no showdown. It was just over. A brilliant way to end the game.

[caption id="attachment_394487" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

If you have to fail, fail spectacularly

Yet, for whatever reason, I loved the time I spent with Tecmo’s Deception. There’s an earnest effort to innovate beneath all its failure and I find that really endearing. There was a lot of ambition driving it, and it feels like the team put their full effort into all these different features before eventually realizing that the pieces weren’t fitting together. But a product eventually has to ship, and everything was hastily crammed into a box and pushed out the door.

Or, at least, that’s how I interpret it. I haven’t been able to find any details on the development through interviews or elsewhere.

However, the thing with failed experiments is that very few are willing to try and replicate the experience. The Deception series would continue using the foundation of Tecmo’s Deception but would excise a lot of the parts that didn’t work and fine-tune the ones that did. In doing so, it lost a lot of what makes Tecmo’s Deception truly unique.

So, the moral of the story here is: if you want to truly stand out, fail like no one has ever failed before. Fail so spectacularly that your failure is indelibly burned into the memory of every human on the planet. Because, as anyone who calls themselves a pickup artist will tell you, pity is a type of love.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Tecmo’s Deception for PS1 is an unforgettable cluster of failures appeared first on Destructoid.

There haven’t been many fighting games that I’ve really connected with. I’m not a competitive person by nature, and it’s a genre that is built around competition. The two times I really got into fighting games were a rivalry with my brother-in-law around Street Fighter II and another with a college friend over Soul Calibur 3. I still play them with some regularity, but I just have a hard time falling into them and continuing after beating the arcade mode a couple of times.

1997’s Bloody Roar was recommended to me a few times, but I only now got around to playing it. This is despite owning a copy of it, given to me by a friend who was cleaning out their basement. If I had known how firmly I would click with it, I would have definitely gotten around to it sooner.

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A bloody good time

Bloody Roar was published by Hudson back in 1997 and developed by Raizing Co, a Japanese developer founded by former members of Toaplan. It was strangely released in North American arcades as Beastorizer, but on PS1 as its Japanese name of Bloody Roar.

It’s worth noting that in arcades, it was released using the hardware commonly (but not officially) known as the Sony ZN-1. Why is that important? Well, the Sony ZN-1 is essentially the arcade version of the PlayStation. I’m not quite familiar enough to be able to confirm that Hudson didn’t make any of their own custom tweaks to the arcade hardware, but the PS1 port is, under mild scrutiny, pretty much exactly the same as the arcade version. It just has some home console tweaks, like a new cinematic intro that looks dopey in that very specific early-3D way.

Speaking of early-3D, Bloody Roar landed during the 3D fighting craze that followed in the wake of 1993’s Virtua Fighter. It’s very similar to other games of its particular sub-genre. It uses three buttons (five if you have sidestepping turned on), and each level is a square stage. However, you can only ring out opponents if wall-breaking is turned on. The walls can either be broken by finishers only or just by bashing your opponent into them enough times. It’s your choice.

However, I think the official rules lean toward finisher breaks only. If your strategy in other games leaned toward ring-outs, then you’ll have to come up with a new technique.

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Select your fursona

Oh, I haven’t even gotten to Bloody Roar’s main hook. Everyone’s a furry! All the fighters can transform into anthropomorphic animals, and that’s where the main strategy comes from. You have a gauge that fills as you attack and get attacked, and you choose when to transform into beast mode. Once you’re in your fursuit, your character is more powerful, heals some of the damage caused to them, and gets a whole new set of moves. It gives you a major advantage.

The strategy comes from when to use this ability. Once you’re in beast mode, your gauge becomes a bit like a second health bar. It depletes as you take damage, and once it’s empty, you’re transformed back into a boring fleshy human. There’s a risk and reward to using it, and likewise, when your opponent unleashes their fur, then it’s time to get aggressive as you try to knock them out of it. There’s a cooldown period before they can transform again, so that might be a good chance to turn the tables.

It’s interesting because while the combat is simple and easy to learn, the strategy of transformation keeps things interesting. There are lots of combos to learn, and the fighting is very impactful and flows well. For a game that only uses two buttons, with another being unlocked via transformation, there’s a great deal of depth to be had.

[caption id="attachment_394241" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Go ask Alice

I wound up choosing Alice as my main. This is largely because she transforms into a bunny, an animal I have an affinity for. She clicked with me immediately, helped by the fact that she has a brutal spinning roundhouse kick and one of her grabs has her perform a Frankensteiner on her opponent.

Bloody Roar has a standard arcade mode, as well as versus and survival. It’s pretty standard for the time period. The story involves the Tyron Corporation, who created the “Zoanthropes” as weapons. They plan on brainwashing them, but a bunch of them break out, and that’s the cast of Bloody Roar. Like many fighting games of the era, the story doesn’t play into the game much. You get an end credit cutscene that you may or may not understand based on whether or not you read up on the background.

Strangely, at its default difficulty, I found Bloody Roar to be kind of easy. Most fighting games start you off against an opponent that barely competes before building you up to a big cheap boss that can read your mind. However, your first fight in Bloody Roar isn’t a complete pushover, and the last fights aren’t much harder. The boss isn’t entirely easy, but they aren’t cheap either.

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Follow the white rabbit

A lot of this kind of points to Bloody Roar being intended for competitive play. Unfortunately, it was before the time when online competition was really a thing, so I’d have to rope someone into a rivalry. Maybe someday.

It’s unfortunate because I clicked with Bloody Roar in a way that’s rare for me with fighting games. I want to build my skill with it and get better, but without direct competition, it’s hard to find the motivation. At the very least I have the rest of the series to play through. I’ve already managed to grab a copy of 1998’s Bloody Roar 2. There are five games in total for the series, with it ending completely in 2003.

The company that owns the license, Hudson, went bust in 2012, with all assets being bought up by Konami. They’re not the worst possible rights holders at the moment, but they certainly rank. I would be far beyond jazzed to see a compilation or new title in the series, especially one with online play. At the moment, you can at least grab the game using the PlayStation store on PS3 as part of the PSone classics lineup. That’s something.

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Home ports of arcade games can be a bit of a gamble. Often, they’re running on much less powerful hardware, and that can reflect in many different ways on the game. It might have less action, more slowdown, or it could just be a lot uglier. Other times, the home port of a notorious quarter-muncher might be rebalanced for the living room, as is the case with Super Smash T.V. or the NES Contra.

Old ports are also interesting from a design standpoint. Many were done by people who weren’t associated with the original production and didn’t have any access to the original code. They were, in a way, just sketching the closest facsimile they could to the original version. The faithfulness of the port was, therefore, all down to the analytical skills of the developer, as well as their access to the original source material and how many fucks they were willing to part with. Were they actually interested in the work, or were they just trying to get a project done before a deadline?

Pit-Fighter is an interesting example of this, as back when it was released in arcade in 1990, it wasn’t unpopular, but it also wasn’t 1991’s Street Fighter II. So, it was a bit of a crapshoot as to whether or not it was going to get a single decent port. There were a lot of them, and we’re going to take a look.

For simplicity, I’m going to look at the console and handheld ports. There were a number on the various home computer platforms at the time, but after struggling with the Commodore 64 port and having it crash on me midway through a loading screen, I cut my losses. Shame, the ZX Spectrum version is a thing of beauty.

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Sega Genesis (1991, Tengen)

The Genesis/Mega Drive version of Pit-Fighter is probably the best of the bunch, and I’m not sure that’s really a compliment. I think my fascination with it is more that it makes the game look magnitudes goofier. The digitized actors have lost a lot of fidelity, so it loses much of the oily BDSM club imagery. However, in its place, the quality and quantity of animation frames haven’t been increased, so everything has this delectable veneer of jank.

You only get three continues in this version, but the combination of easily exploitable moves and the relative passiveness of the opponents make it possible to get to the end. If you had to play a home console port of Pit-Fighter, this one at least meets the “so bad it’s good” threshold. It kind of proves that a bad port of kusoge isn’t necessarily just a bad game; it might just be a new flavor of kusoge.

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Super Nintendo (1991, THQ)

Pit-Fighter on SNES had to have been rushed. It released the same year the SNES did, which kind of demonstrates an effort to get it on the market during the fevered euphoria of a new console release. It doesn’t even try to replicate the UI, instead opting for something that looks like it’s from a development build.

The most egregious part about it is the AI, which seems to just be mashing various inputs. They’re extremely aggressive, and then when they get near you, their movements make no sense. They’ll jump randomly and start throwing attacks with no rhyme or reason. Then, once they knock you to the ground, they’ll continue to do little hops between stomping on you. It’s bizarre.

There are also no continues. I had absolutely no hope of making it to the Chainman. I’m not the only one, either, as complaints about the port’s difficulty seem rather pervasive. I searched to see if there was a buried continue input and instead found the advice to just keep mashing R while using Ty to win. Weirdly, I think this is the absolute worst of the versions listed here.

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Atari Lynx (1992, Atari Games)

I have a soft spot for the Atari Lynx. It was a battery-sucking handheld you could land a harrier jet on. However, a huge portion of its library was coin-op ports, and that’s kind of what the system was worst at. Nowhere is this more apparent than, perhaps, Pit-Fighter.

The screen is far too low resolution to really depict the game’s digitized actors, but they tried it anyway. As a result, the sprites are pretty dopey looking, and it uses a palette that is largely just greys and beiges. It does try to get the sprite scaling in there, though. As you move further back from the front of the arena, the fighters appear smaller. It’s better to fight closer to the screen since then you can at least make out what things are supposed to be.

Thankfully, that’s an option, since the AI is dumb as rocks. Each fighter’s special move is mapped to the Option 1 button, which means you can just spam it, but I found this to be unreliable. The best way I found to fight is to just stand still and hold down the kick button. It uses a turbo function so once one kick is complete, your fighter immediately launches another one. There are only 6 continues to get you through to the end of the game, which didn’t even come close for me. However, try as I might, I couldn’t find a better strategy than just letting them run into my foot.

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Game Boy (1992, THQ)

The port for Nintendo’s monochromatic wonder, the Game Boy, is not as bad as you might think. It plays better than the Atari Lynx version. The AI is more dynamic and closer to the arcade version, and the moves feel more responsive with better hit detection.

The problem is with the graphics. They still try to use the digitized actors, but when you cram too much information on the classic Game Boy’s limited palette, you just get a fuzzy mess. What’s worse is that most of it blends into the background, so the best way to track the combatants is by their much darker pants. It’s like playing a fight between a pair of disembodied pants.

Pit-Fighter is practically incomprehensible on an original model Game Boy. Using a Super Game Boy or Game Boy Advance makes things better, but still not all that great.

I initially thought this version was really difficult. It doesn’t allow you to continue without a code (Hold down and hit A on the game over screen), and when the AI gets the advantage on you, it can really lead to a pounding. But then I once again discovered the technique of letting opponents walk into your outstretched foot. I also iterated on this by pulling off a super kick while an enemy started their animation to get up from being knocked down. They’d stand up right into the kick. It carried me right to the end. That’s how effective it was.

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Sega Master System (1991, Domark)

For whatever reason, the Master System version of Pit-Fighter was the one that finally decided to get creative with the graphics in order to better serve the gameplay. It shrinks down all the characters, and the tweaked color palette makes things more legible. The handheld versions probably should have done this, but here we are. It’s a shame that this foundation wasn’t tweaked for a Sega Game Gear version.

On the other hand, it’s not really that much fun to play. I think this is largely because my exploitative strategies don’t work here. The legs of your tiny fighter are much too short to keep their opponent at bay for too long. The Master System controllers only have two buttons (no start or select), so your repertoire is more limited than other platforms. I was at least able to make it up to the Chainman’s stage. I needed to find out how his underwear looks in this art style.

Only released in the UK, the Master System version also has this weirdly enjoyable soundtrack that is credited to “The Doomsday Machine.” It sounds inappropriately chirpy compared to the subject matter, but considering most of the other ports sound horrible, I’ll take it.

A sketch of kusoge

Arcade ports like we saw in the ‘80s and ‘90s are rather rare today. I mean, for one thing, in this part of the world, arcades are practically extinct. But then, they also tend to have more universal hardware powering them and are built on common engines, so it’s less of an issue to transplant them accurately to other hardware. Older games are a different story, as they require some form of emulation. Still, a developer is more likely to release something accurate than to take liberties with a game.

I’m not exactly nostalgic for those days. I hate having to worry about whether or not I’m playing the definitive version of a game. However, there’s a weird creativity that arose from the challenges of transplanting games. Ganbare Goemon on Famicom, for example, was initially an attempt to port Mr. Goemon from arcades and instead mutated into a sprawling series.

More often than not, you just took the version for whatever was your favorite platform at the time. Then, you had to hope that the publisher cared enough about the game to provide you with a reasonable facsimile. Will a version of Space Harrier provide you with a fun experience, or will it be a janky cash grab? That little gamble is often more fun than the version you eventually wind up with, especially in the case of Pit-Fighter.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post It’s time to oil up with the ports of Pit-Fighter appeared first on Destructoid.

Obligatory shake shake

When I was a kid, trying out different games for my new-fangled N64, I didn’t know what to make of Mischief Makers. Games like Pilotwings 64 were blowing my mind with their explorable 3D worlds, and here was a completely 2D game that didn’t even use the analog stick. Beyond that, though, its aesthetic was like something I had never seen, and nothing about it made any sense to my young mind. I don’t think I made it far during that rental period.

Then, in college, I had a friend who adored Mischief Makers and gave me an entirely new perspective on the game. It still made no sense to me. It makes no sense to me now. I love the developer, the legendary Treasure, to the Moon and back, but Mischief Makers is one tough piece of meat to chew on.

So, I’ve taken a few bites of this particular slice of ham, and now it’s time to really grind it up. To dig in and get right down to masticating. Someone fetch me my dentures.

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To punish evil forces, I have been charged

Mischief Makers was released promptly, around one year after the N64’s release. The console got very few sidescrollers throughout its lifespan. Polygons were the new thing developers were toying around with, and 3D was generally what big publishers were pushing their staff towards. So, right from the start, it’s a pretty odd game.

However, what makes Mischief Makers an absolutely unique experience is its aggressive and total lack of cohesion. It’s not a game that picks a direction and charges toward it. Instead, it prefers to just spin in place, faster and faster, until it eventually falls over and calls it a day.

The narrative follows Marina, the Ultra-InterGalactic-Cybot G, and her perverted creator, Professor Theo. They’re on vacation or something on planet Clancer, and then the professor just keeps getting repeatedly kidnapped. There’s some sort of Empire that is oppressing the Clancer people or just driving them to evil. I’m fairly certain that Mischief Makers just makes up the plot as it goes along. One of the first levels introduces a guy who seems like he’s going to be sort of a mentor to Marina in her quest, then several levels later, a character just off-handedly says, “You know that guy? Yeah, he’s dead now.”

It never gets any more coherent. Characters are dropped in out of nowhere, and there’s no sense of flow or progress. It just goes. It just keeps spinning.

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A hero with shining armor is called

The gameplay is centered around this central mechanic of grabbing things. People, missiles, balls; you grab them all. Sometimes you give it a good shake, causing Marina to emit her trademark “shake shake!” voice sample.

That’s largely it, but Mischief Makers gets a lot of mileage out of that one mechanic. Every boss is generally a game of figuring out what to grab and what to do with it. Sometimes it’s as simple as catching something and throwing it back, but other times it’s more specific. There are puzzles to solve, bombs to throw, and children to capture. The entire game is built up with the philosophy of, “We have this character that does this action. What are all the things we can do with it?”

It’s not really that far out of line with Treasure’s normal philosophy when creating games, but Mischief Makers seems to take it to the extreme. It opens up the game to Treasure’s signature variety. As a whole, the experience is unpredictable. One moment you’re exploring a ball-themed amusement park, and the next you’re defeating a small cat in dodgeball before riding them into battle.

[caption id="attachment_393004" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Though fire, justice is served!

There’s an almost nauseating glut of personality packed within. Beyond “shake shake!” I’ve had the line “Through fire, justice is served!” repeating through my head since first witnessing it in college. The fact that there’s no cohesiveness to the plot opens it to completely off-the-wall dialogue. Mischief Makers has a habit of expressing and introducing bizarre concepts and acting like they’re completely normal and should already be understood by the audience. It’s always hard to keep track of but also consistently funny.

One of the best running jokes that it actually manages to briefly focus on is with the murderous intent of the Beastector. The Emperor will send one out to capture the Professor, but they’ll loudly and dramatically scream their intent to bring Marina to justice. The Beastector, as a whole, are some of the most memorable bosses I’ve encountered in a while.

There’s also this strange sense where the N64’s hardware limitations actually played in Mischief Makers’ favor. The blurry, 2D digitized sprites, the muddy textures, and the muffled sound all create this aesthetic that just underlines the absurdity of everything.

[caption id="attachment_393005" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Help me, Marina!

On the other hand, Mischief Makers isn’t always fun to play. The levels range from considerably sized to over in seconds. The difficulty wavers throughout before skyrocketing directly at the end, like it suddenly realized that it should give the player some resistance.

I went through the entire game without seeing a game over screen until the last run of boss battles. The issue here is that it’s sometimes not clear what you’re supposed to be doing. There was one sub-boss where I could catch their attacks without issue, but once they were in Marina’s shakers, I couldn’t figure out what it wanted me to do. I tried throwing the boss in all directions before eventually finding out that it wanted me to shake it at a very specific moment.

Likewise, there was one boss that you have to steal a weapon from. I thought this was straightforward; you just throw the weapon back at them. However, Mischief Makers is so picky about exactly what moment you hit them. It bounced off with an audible “ting” most of the time, so I thought I was doing something wrong and began experimenting with other things in the environment. Sure enough, I just wasn’t hitting them in the half-second they’re vulnerable. It can get annoying.

[caption id="attachment_393006" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A ball-grabbing good time

I find that it’s very appropriate to have played Mischief Makers so soon after completing Brave Fencer Musashi. Both games are similar in the fact that they’re not always fun to play, but they are entirely unforgettable.

Mischief Makers is just pure insanity. The way its designed makes it feel like it was just chaotically assembled with no thought for how the final product would appear. I’d like to see a design document for it because I don’t believe anyone, at any point, planned ahead on what this game was actually going to be about.

Yet, in the end, the fact that it’s completely unpredictable and entirely unlike anything you’ve ever seen before is what makes Mischief Makers great. Video game design has always been about trends and iteration, and here is a game that exists entirely outside of both those things. It presents a chaotic vortex of ideas contained within a wobbly framework, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It never got a sequel and probably never will, which is fine, since I don’t think anything else could capture its compelling dissonance.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Mischief Makers on N64 is a wonderfully chaotic cluster of incohesive concepts appeared first on Destructoid.

Totally Studly

I have an affectionate fascination with video games that look fictitious. Whenever a TV show, movie, or even cartoon wants to depict a legally distinct video game for their characters to play, they always show something that looks familiar but is entirely wrong. It’s like the uncanny valley of video games.

It shows a charming unfamiliarity with the medium. However, when it happens in an actual game, you realize that couldn’t be possible. Someone who has to be familiar with other games made this. Looking like an accident was, in fact, an accident.

1990’s Pit-Fighter has an excuse. It was one of the first attempts at using digital images of actors in a video game, a technique that would be made popular by 1992’s Mortal Kombat. There is also an excuse for it being about as much fun as eating a bowl of glass. It was released before Street Fighter II came along and demonstrated how fighting games should be made. On the other hand, I’m not sure what its excuse is for looking like a tournament held at the local neighborhood sex dungeon. Someone in 1990 thought Pit-Fighter looked cool, and they were tragically wrong.

[caption id="attachment_392163" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Awesomely done

Pit-Fighter is about an underground fighting tournament. A tale as old as time. What makes it stand apart is its hairless, baby-oil-slathered protagonists. You’ve got three choices: a kickboxer, a karate guy, and a wrestleman who looks like he pooped himself. They’re macho in the way that bodybuilders are macho. That is to say, not at all, but I wouldn’t say that to their face.

Meanwhile, your enemies are a bunch of leather daddies and one woman who has decided to fight in thigh-high stilettos. The big bad boss is literally this big dude in a leather mask and bondage harness. I’m not one to kink-shame, but I feel that Pit-Fighter must have confused the development of a lot of young teenagers.

You fight your way through 10 rounds. This doesn’t last long, but Atari Games made sure to create it in a way that necessitated pumping in a few quarters throughout its playtime. You only have one health bar for the entire game, so unless you can somehow manage to never get hit, you’re likely going to need to slot a few more coins if you want to give Big Daddy Masochist a spanking at the end.

[caption id="attachment_392165" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Confusingly erotic

A lot of Pit-Fighter's actual mechanical issues are related to the timeframe it was released in. 1990 was pretty early for its digitized graphics. As such, there is absolutely no artistic flow to anything. There are few frames of animation, so there’s a jerky quality to everything. It uses a lot of sprite scaling to make things more dynamic, but it just makes things even more sickly and fake-looking. I never really liked the method of digitizing actors for games, even when it was done well in games like Mortal Kombat, but they had to start somewhere.

The whole product is just so viciously ugly. There are levels where cars are parked in the arena (for some reason), and you can jump on them and crinkle their hood. However, these are very plainly drawn and not digitized pictures, and boy, can you tell. They look like they were ripped from Top Gear and clash against the more realistic crowd and fighters.

Meanwhile, Pit-Fighter was a pre-Street Fighter II fighting game, so fun had yet to be incorporated into the genre. In many ways, it reminds me of 1989’s Street Smart, but somehow even tackier. It’s a three-button setup, and all this oily muscle bashing takes place on a 2.5D area. You can combine buttons to create fancier moves like grabs, but there’s so little reason to do so. It’s extremely difficult to hit an enemy without them immediately hitting you back, and likewise, they have no defense against you. You sort of just chase them around the arena and hope that you deal more damage than you take.

[caption id="attachment_392166" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Leather daddy

And then there’s Mad Miles, who looks like someone who won a bet and forced the developers to put them in. Unlike some of the other beef mountains you fight against, this guy looks like my dad could take him in a fight. I think maybe he’s supposed to make up for that by being kind of crazy, but that never comes across in the game. Instead, he just has a mustache that says, “My ex-wife won custody of the children.” The way he flops on the ground, I kind of feel sorry for him. He also only turns up in one fight, which makes him feel like an accident. Or a secret mode, like when you beat up the car in Final Fight. He’s not threatening, he’s just not welcome in this BDSM dungeon.

Then, once you finally climb a mountain of shaved cattle, you fight the biggest bottom to frequent this particular establishment. Pit-Fighter isn’t the only piece of media to think that wearing nothing but boxers and a leather harness is a sign of toughness, but that is absolutely not what it communicates to me. Especially not when partnered with a leather mask.

If you’re playing multi-player, you have to fight all your teammates to decide who gets to top the competition. I’m not sure why this is necessary, aside from the fact that maybe they didn’t want to palette-swap the leather daddy to make things fair. So the losers of this match pumped in all those quarters and don’t get to end the day as king of the S&M club. That’s a confusing sort of disappointment.

[caption id="attachment_392167" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Brutality bonus

Just to top this whole, writhing container of oiled flesh, Pit-Fighter also has an awful fascination with money. It’s as if Smash T.V. wasn’t exaggerating the depraved depths of human greed. Instead, your fighter gets to stand on a wooden skid as money is piled beneath them. Then at the end, you get the typical view of scantily clad women clinging to your leather beef sack.

Pit-Fighter is just a hilarious and unfortunate amalgam of all the worst parts of ‘80s style. All those embarrassing things that people once thought were cool are stuffed into this game. Because the internet came along and has told us all what those leather harnesses are actually for, Pit-Fighter just looks like a cluster of uncomfortable eroticism.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Pit-Fighter sure looks different in the light of an internet-connected word appeared first on Destructoid.

Aren't you a little short for a Samurai?

My household had an N64 for the late ‘90s, so all of my PS1 experience was had on a close friend’s console. However, they weren’t as focused on video games as I was in my youth, so I mostly just got to play the really big titles. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Twisted Metal, and whatever could be found on demo discs.

I’ve been making up for lost time, recently. My PS1 collection has been growing, and I’ve been paying close attention to the titles that slipped between the cracks. 1998’s Brave Fencer Musashi is one such title. It was made during what was probably Squaresoft’s most inventive period. Between all the Final Fantasy’s, we got Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story. Nowadays, it feels like between each Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest entry, we get a bunch of spin-offs and remakes from those series.

Brave Fencer Musashi interested me because I knew next to nothing about it.

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Not my problem, pal

The introduction to Brave Fencer Musashi does a hilariously great job of setting things up. The Alucaneet Kingdom is under attack by the Thirstquencher Empire, so the princess of the kingdom summons Musashi to fix things for them. He absolutely has no interest in doing this, everyone immediately makes fun of him for being a child, but he’s not allowed to go home until he solves their problems.

Screw setting up compelling motivation for the protagonist. Musashi is on a quest because he’s obligated to be. Many times when an NPC asks him for help, he responds with some variation of, “Isn’t this something you should be doing yourself?” But because the villagers absolutely refuse to help themselves, Musashi has to do it for them.

This is a subtext that a lot of games just ignore, but it’s literally the driving narrative force behind Brave Fencer Musashi. Musashi is someone who is just trapped in a video game. The villagers all play their parts, but that act is entirely coming up with some dangerous task for the hero.

The whole “you’re a hero, don’t ask questions” schtick has worked for video games since time immemorial, but every so often, it’s nice to have a hero whose catchphrase is, “Not my problem, pal.”

[caption id="attachment_391783" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Well, excuuuse me, Princess

While Squaresoft is largely known for its RPGs, Brave Fencer Musashi leans a little heavier into the nebulous action-adventure category. There are RPG stats and questing, but the focus isn’t on them. Instead, it plays closer to a Zelda game but with platforming elements. In some ways, its lighthearted and whimsical storytelling and tilted-angle platforming reminded me heavily of Super Mario RPG, but I was surprised to find almost no staff crossover between the two games.

You spend a lot of your time at the castle or the neighboring Grillin Village. All the action areas branch off from the village. Most chapters of the game begin with the village having a problem, and that points you in the direction of where you need to go next. It’s not foolproof, but usually, if you talk to the villagers, you’ll catch wind of a rumor.

Musashi’s goal is to collect five scrolls to power up his sword, Lumina. These scrolls (and the sword) are also what the Thirstquencher Empire is after, so they’ll be making a nuisance of themselves. It’s a pretty standard video game narrative, especially for the time.

[caption id="attachment_391784" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Delicious villagers

Anything generic about Brave Fencer Musashi’s plot is made up for by its whimsical quirkiness. There’s a day/night cycle that moves the townsfolk along their path, and as you quest, one of your goals is to save captured citizens from crystal-like “Bincho fields.”

The fact that you keep orbiting Grillin Village goes a long way towards making it feel like home. You learn people’s schedules over time and catch wind of how other townsfolk feel about them. There’s an unfortunate dearth of side activities to take on, but each character feels unique, and their interactions with Musashi are enjoyable.

There’s also an action figure collecting diversion that is completely there for its own sake. You can buy these figurines of many of the characters and enemies you encounter, then take them back to your room and view them. However, they all come mint-on-card. Will you break open that blister pack? You fool! You’ve destroyed their resale value! All well. At least now you can play around with them.

[caption id="attachment_391781" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Harass the wildlife

The biggest issue I had with Brave Fencer Musashi is that it isn’t much fun to play. The platforming is underwhelming at best and finicky at worst. The combat isn’t great, either. It’s sort of gluey and lacks any real impact.

You have the ability to absorb abilities from enemies, but aiming your fusion sword is just so crappy. Then, most of the abilities suck and are only useful in specific situations. Unless there was obviously something in the environment that I needed an ability to bypass, I’d often just forget that this ability even existed.

On the other hand, sometimes it has amusing effects. Like, one of them just makes you stink and puts flies on your screen. That’s a good one.

Brave Fencer Musashi also flows like a river of butts. The hardest part of the game for me happens early on when you have a limited amount of time to avoid a catastrophe. You do this with a mini-game that consists of hitting switches in the right order, pressing buttons at the correct time, and, worst of all, platforming with a fixed camera angle. The difficulty is all over the place. Certain segments drag or even repeat. It makes actually getting through the game rather unenjoyable.

[caption id="attachment_391786" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Should've hired a poet

Brave Fencer Musashi is one of those games that I kind of slogged through, finished, and then was left wondering why I enjoyed it so much. Then, as someone who will sometimes bashfully refer to themselves as a “critic,” it’s my job to figure out what I liked about it and then put it into words. That’s sort of difficult here. For one thing, I believe I like Brave Fencer Musashi so much just because of its general vibe, but that’s something else that isn’t quantifiable.

Truly, Brave Fencer Musashi’s weaker points actually play out in its favor. The fact that its pacing is practically broken and its story is so weirdly non-conformist makes the whole experience unpredictable. Power-ups are given sporadically, but you don’t know what you’ll be getting or when. There are droughts with no changes to your powerset and others where they’re coming in fast. It’s worth it to keep playing because you never know what’s over that hill.

Any beyond that, it’s like home. Grillin Village is a bit like Kattlelox Island from Mega Man Legends. Over time, it kind of grows on you, and it’s a comfortable feeling. The characters may not amount to much in the time you spend with them, but they become familiar faces.

Brave Fencer Musashi is just a special sort of game that pops up every now and then. It’s like the Dark Cloud series or Deadly Premonition; there’s an earnest warmth underlying everything. Maybe the game itself won’t rock your world, but you will remember it fondly. And I think beyond just being a fun diversion, that’s exactly what every game should strive for.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Brave Fencer Musashi for PS1 is an unusual Squaresoft title that will stick with you appeared first on Destructoid.

I'm a superstar at the cracker factory

Corpse Killer on the Sega 32X feels like the ultimate luxury game. You were already a rich kid if you owned Sega’s 32-bit Genesis/Mega Drive add-on, but to also have a Sega CD? Gosh, your parents must be pretty big wheels down at the cracker factory.

But those were the requirements for Corpse Killer on 32X. It was right there on the cover of the game: Sega CD 32X. You needed both of the system’s expensive attachments to play this super-deluxe version. Otherwise, you had to just buy the Sega CD version. Don’t get them confused! If you’re unsure, just ask the sleep-deprived clerk at K-Mart for the Sega 32X version of Corpse Killer. I’m sure they wouldn’t make that mistake.

So, wow, a game that requires two very expensive add-ons just to play. That must be one extra-special game, right? No, not at all. I was going to make a joke about how it’s “special” in the way a mother might use the word to explain to a relative how you can remember the names of 151 Pokemon, but can’t correctly spell Saskatchewan or remember its capital city. But even then, its brother, the Sega CD version, is just as “special.” So, I guess the only way that Corpse Killer on 32X is extra-special is in the way that it’s extra-special disappointing, because it’s an extra-specially pointless way to play a bad game.

[caption id="attachment_391011" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Full-Motion Vomit

The era of FMV games was pretty embarrassing. We probably should have known by the rise and fall of the LaserDisc arcade games that this style of barely interactive movie games is better as a curiosity. However, I still sort of respect developer Digital Pictures for giving it their all. They were behind Night Trap and Ground Zero Texas, and while their videos were in the sub-basement of B movies, they obviously had some effort behind them.

Released in 1994, Corpse Killer is a Digital Pictures game that maybe most resembles a video game. While it makes heavy use of live-action footage, it’s largely a shooting gallery. However, this isn’t in the same style that 1991’s Mad Dog McCree went with. While Mad Dog McCree just showed you a video and then judged if you pulled the trigger while your lightgun was pointed at the correct part of the screen, Corpse Killer has a slow pan of a background and then super-imposes people in their pajamas wobbling across the screen.

In 1995, versions came out for the 3DO Interactive Mutliplayer and Sega Saturn platforms, and they seem to better capture what Digital Pictures was going for. Not only does the actual video portion of the game take up more of the screen, but the actors also look much clearer. Even with the bottomless power of the 32X, the actual zombies look like the film crew wandering in front of the green screen while it was being filmed with a Game Boy Camera. When you look at a better version and what they should look like, it all makes sense. But the versions of Corpse Killer that run on Genesis appendages look rough, to say the least.

[caption id="attachment_391012" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Powered by the Sega Slab

One of the things that drew me to Corpse Killer beyond having a use for my Sega monstrosity is its use of lightgun peripherals. However, for some reason, Digital Pictures only chose the Menacer and the “American Laser Games’ Gamegun.” I own Konami Justifiers for my Genesis, which is fine, because I didn’t want to truck my Sega Stack into another room to plug it into a CRT. However, I did try it with a Sinden, and it didn’t like that. So, eventually, I gave up and just went with moving a cursor with the gamepad.

That sucks. It would probably be okay if the movement was smooth, but not only is the cursor choppy in the most ideal of conditions, but the game constantly hitches whenever the Sega CD has to seek anything on the disc.

[caption id="attachment_391013" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Must not accidentally type “Corpse Party”

However, a lack of lightgun is the least of Corpse Killer’s discomforts. The game, in general, just vociferously sucks. A lot of this comes down to the fact that the gameplay and the video exist in separate rooms. It doesn't explain many mechanics well, such as the difference between enemy types.

Every so often, a mean-looking zombie or one that’s enveloped in the flashing lights of a rave wander on screen. Shooting the walking personification of a meth-infused party will cause it to die the same as any zombie, but sometimes it will hurt you, and other times it will kill everything on screen. The game tells you to shoot it when it’s glowing, but what the fuck does that mean? It’s always just a single flashing color. It is always glowing by my definition. However, it gets maybe, like, more saturated. That’s what it means, apparently. Shoot Captain LSD when he’s the most colorful.

And then there are the more mean-looking zombies who fly at you. They’re impervious to bullets, and the game doesn’t tell you why. It just lets them hurt you as your shots ricochet off. You need to use Datura-infused bullets on them because… Because. However, these bullets are always in limited supply, so you need to scrounge for more, and Corpse Killer does a poor job of telling you that these are required. And considering you can only hurt bosses with these bullets, you’d better not waste them.

And you might. You have four different ammunition types, and you swap to them by hitting B. However, Corpse Killer doesn’t give you any convenient times to do this. You’re always being swarmed by zombies. You never know when these reaper guys will jump out, and to see what bullets you loaded, you have to take your eyes off the screen. It’s easier to remember that your Datura bullets require three presses of the B button, then hope that the video hitching doesn’t interrupt a press. If you choose an ammo type that you weren’t intending, it will swap right back to regular rounds if there are no shots remaining.

This means that Corpse Killer requires you to observe an enemy that requires a special type of ammo, look away from the screen to ensure that you’re selecting the right ammo, then aim and fire within the two-or-so seconds you have before taking damage. It is absolutely ridiculous.

Oh, and if you’re using a lightgun, you need to shoot the tiny text at the bottom of the screen to select your ammunition. It is not, in any way, a better choice.

[caption id="attachment_391014" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Plastic anatomy

Underlying this is a campy B-plot about a government cover-up. You play as some hapless jerk who parachutes onto this zombie-infested island and is immediately bitten before getting saved by a stereotypical Rastafarian. Said Rastafarian, Winston, is played by Jeremiah Birkett, who I’m reasonably sure isn’t actually Rastafarian. He puts on a good performance, but you can tell he isn’t comfortable with the accent. Even if he was, half his dialogue is indecipherable beneath the act.

You’re there to stop an evil mastermind, Dr. Hellman, played by the late Vincent Schiavelli. He hams it up as a mad scientist who has unlocked the secret of resurrecting the dead. You’re assisted by Bridget Butler as Julie, who is given absolutely the worst lines in the script. She’s a reporter who is trying to prove that the Pentagon was behind the zombie project, which is pretty obvious from your briefing material.

All in all, it’s bad, but in a way where Corpse Killer seems to know how bad it is. There’s the one scene that I’m a fan of where Dr. Hellman has a little action figure rigged into a model electric chair. He pulls the switch to execute the action figure, and after a few seconds of blue lights and smoke effects, the toy is replaced by a little plastic skeleton. Genius.

[caption id="attachment_391017" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Double down on trash

If there’s one thing that Corpse Killer does well, it’s allowing you to move about the island on your own. If you abort during the initial raid on Hellman’s fortress, you can take on side missions, build up your supply, and prepare yourself for another raid. It would be a worthwhile addition to a gallery shooter if it was a better one than Corpse Killer.

Overall, though, Corpse Killer holds up as an awful curiosity. It’s really the fitting embodiment of kusoge (crap game in Japanese). It’s dopey and painful to play, but in an interesting way. That’s perhaps why Limited Run Games decided to re-release it. You can now get it on Switch, PC, and PS4 through Corpse Killer: 25th Anniversary Edition. This is thankfully not just a port of the Sega CD and 32X versions, so you can see what the enemies should look like, but also it sadly loses that bit of trash appeal.

I don’t know why you’d want to play Corpse Killer with less trash. Corpse Killer is all trash, so you might as well double down on it.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Corpse Killer for Sega 32X is trash for rich kids appeared first on Destructoid.

In AD1987, development was beginning...

The retro homebrew scene has really spread its tentacles and started grabbing us in new ways. What used to be a very underground niche has started gaining traction with what you could reasonably call big publishers like iam8bit and Limited Run Games. The retro market is going to keep getting bigger, and the appreciation for retro hardware continues to grow.

If the tale of homebrew started with bootlegs and ROM hacks, progressed into hacked cartridges, then new cartridges produced by small companies like Super Fighter Team and RetroUSB would be the third phase. For Super Fight Team’s part, they began by translating and porting Chinese Sega Genesis games and reproducing them on new cartridges. These were Beggar Prince and Legend of Wukong, and they were notable for having the full retail look. Clamshell cases, instruction booklets, a hangtag – they had the works.

Perhaps the strangest of Super Fighter Team’s releases, however, was Penguinet’s 2009 shoot-’em-up, Zaku. Rather than a late localization of an existing game, Zaku was a brand new game developed for Atari’s ill-fated handheld, the Lynx. It got all the love that Super Fighter Team’s previous games got, but for a less prevalent and beloved system.

I actually bought an Atari Lynx specifically for Zaku and picked it up during its first production run. It’s no longer in production, but rather than let it slip into obscurity, I want to do my part in helping it achieve immortality in homebrew history. So, I’ve spoken with Super Fighter Team’s Brandon Cobb and Penguinet’s Osman Celimli about its creation.

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Meandering towards the Lynx

As far as handheld consoles go, the Atari Lynx wasn’t a total failure, but it definitely left a crater. It was released in 1989 before finally being discontinued in 1995. It sold an estimated 2 million units, far short of the Game Gear’s 10 million and the Game Boy’s kajillion. The Wonderswan, which was only released in Japan, sold more than the Atari Lynx. So you can see how it didn’t exactly cement itself in video game history. I was curious why someone would want to create a game for it more than a decade after it left the market.

“It was moreso a slow meandering towards the Lynx rather than direct inspiration to create software for it,” Osman Celimli told me. “Nintendo’s Game Boy was my first target, and I failed to assemble a single binary. It wasn’t due to a lack of resources, but rather my skills were at absolute zero - the instructions for running an assembler or linker read like complete gobbledygook. So I put the Game Boy aside and looked for more premade games to buy instead. The Lynx introduced itself soon after when I discovered it was the original home of Chip’s Challenge. Now, learning one of your favorite games was first developed for some giant plastic hoagie that devoured batteries was pretty out there, so I dove deeper.”

“It was then, by full coincidence, that I ran into the Lynx Programming for Dummies guide written by Björn Spruck - now, here was some literature on my level! The guide explained, step by step, how to set up Bastian Schick’s BLL Kit and build an example program. All it did was display a texture and move it leftward, but it was exactly what I needed. I spent countless hours modifying the example program, deleting or changing lines, and seeing what happened, and learned 6502 assembly through complete trial and error like this.

"I found the Lynx’s graphics hardware extremely friendly and became invested in the platform after making just a few test binaries. It felt very underutilized and seemed like a good home for the style of frenetic action game I wanted to make. This first materialized in 2003 as a fangame combining assets from Air Zonk and Sonic the Hedgehog, which eventually became Zaku.”

[caption id="attachment_390723" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A fistful of Air Zonk

If I had to quickly describe Zaku, I'd say it's the Turbografx-16’s Air Zonk designed for less powerful hardware and a much crummier screen. You play as the eponymous Zaku, who is trying to stop a flood of shovelware being churned out. Zaku flies with rocket boots and can blast enemies behind her with jets from them.

I think it holds up pretty well, especially when you compare it to other homebrew of the era. Osman has a different take on it.

“Zaku’s content feels very janky and amateurish to me now,” he told me. “But sealed within this clumsiness are the memories of its wondrous, jovial development cycle. We were all just having fun making stuff, and I treasure that deeply.”

The whole project kicked into gear when Super Fighter Team’s Brandon Cobb saw a demo that Celimli put out into the world.

[caption id="attachment_390725" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image by Destructoid[/caption]

Teensy Little Demo

“I saw a teensy little demo that Osman had shared with the community,” Cobb recalled. “It was clear he had the talent and passion to flesh it out into an incredible game, and I felt I was the right producer for him to partner with in order to achieve that goal.”

“I was enamored of the Lynx hardware and had dreamed about publishing a game for it. Not just any game, mind you: It had to be something incredible that people would be talking about for years to come. Otherwise, why bother? It’s such a special platform. I didn’t want to waste my chance.”

“Zaku presented the perfect chance. Although other publishers were all doing bare circuit boards at the time, I promised Osman that we would manufacture authentic, ‘curved lip’ plastic cases for the PCBs. This proved to be a tall order indeed for our factory, who actually tried to talk me out of doing a Lynx game at all! Once they saw our sales numbers, however, they realized we were on to something.”

Celimli tells the story in a similar manner. In his recollection, he says, “Brandon contacted me after playing an early prototype of Zaku in 2006 and expressed interest in publishing it. His offer sounded totally improbable. This ‘game’ had one stage and no sound, yet he was already thinking about manufacturing authentic-looking cartridges. It was completely unprecedented - nobody was making new plastics back then. But after seeing a copy of Beggar Prince, I knew he was legit, and it’d be better to have Zaku published by Super Fighter Team than on my own.”

“In hindsight, the game wouldn’t have shipped if Brandon hadn’t stepped in. I’m glad he did, too - not just for the sake of the game, but because we also became very good friends.”

[caption id="attachment_390728" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Super Fights

There were multiple production runs of Zaku before production ceased entirely. Now, Super Fighter Team is out of the physical market entirely.

As Cobb tells me, “Super Fighter Team ceased all manufacture and sales of physical product back at the end of 2019, returning to our roots as a freeware developer. That’s where we started back in ’98, and it’s where I feel most content.”

“Our most recent release is Sango Fighter Special Edition, for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Not only did we completely redo the mechanics, but there’s an enhanced soundtrack and the ability to play as versions of the fighters from both the MS-DOS original and Super A’can console adaptation of the game.”

Osman Celimli went on to create Rikki & Vikki for the Atari 7800. Once again, this was released as a physical cartridge, but not with Super Fighter Team. On this, Cobb tells me, “For Rikki & Vikki, he decided to self-publish, which I feel was the right decision as I don’t think I’d have been able to market the game as effectively as PenguiNet did.”

Unlike Zaku, which has only ever been available on Atari Lynx, you can buy a digital version of Rikki & Vikki on PC.

[caption id="attachment_390730" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Zakone Zaktwo

There were plans for collaboration between Penguinet and Super Fighter Team on further Lynx games. While none of these ideas took off, Penguinet had played around with a sequel to Zaku named Zaktwo.

“The story picked up immediately after the events of the first game - Zaku returns home only to find it completely overrun by gigantic fish. She blames the Penguin Bros. and Captain Bran for the outbreak and dashes off to confront them. So many of the enemies and bosses were various types of fish or other sea creatures. Keeping with tradition, some of them wore business attire.”

“Zaku’s moveset was also redesigned so that her interactions with each enemy, especially the bosses, could be far more nuanced. Each of her abilities became a tool in figuring out how to damage an opponent or manipulate a stage hazard. It was mostly in reaction to the abundance of bullet hell shmups at the time, and I wanted the game to feel much more physical.”

“Unfortunately, it languished more and more after I started working full time - and this also caused it to accrue technical debt extremely fast. At the time of its cancellation, there was only one fully playable stage and another handful were partially complete. I didn’t throw away any of my design notes, though, and would like to incorporate some of the ideas planned for ZakTwo into other projects.”

It was canceled in 2016 as Celimli moved on to Rikki & Vikki.

[caption id="attachment_390721" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Penguinet[/caption]

Atari escape velocity

Speaking with Brandon Cobb and Osman Celimli, I really got a sense of the adventure the whole project was. I don’t get the sense that it was an easy endeavor, but certainly, it was a worthwhile one.

“Seeing Zaku reach… I guess you’d call it ‘Atari Escape Velocity,’ really left an impact,” Celimli reflected. “I never thought anyone would buy a Lynx just to play the game, but it happened. This really helped keep Rikki & Vikki on the Atari 7800. With the addition of a digital version, it’d be an opportunity to finally see if using a console solely for its aesthetic could work.”

My favorite story Celimli imparted to me, however, was definitely around the acquisition of an actual Atari Lynx dev kit that he and Cobb went through.

He told me, “Shortly after Brandon and I arranged to have the game published through Super Fighter Team, we went in 50/50 on the purchase of an original Lynx Development Kit. This way, we’d have access to Epyx and Atari’s libraries, in particular their sound driver. It consisted of an Amiga 2000 and a large metal box containing a modified version of the Lynx hardware. However, the kit arrived in much worse shape than we anticipated! The Amiga’s clock battery had exploded, and the Lynx’s stereo board had dislodged itself and broken some of its connectors. I remember spending a week or two just restoring the kit.”

“This was also my first time using an Amiga. I didn’t really enjoy the user interface but found its multitasking capabilities very impressive. You could edit a text document while simultaneously formatting two floppy disks.”

[caption id="attachment_390727" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Penguinet[/caption]

Digital archeology

While Super Fighter Team has backed out of physical products, Brandon Cobb and Osman Celimli remain good friends.

“I can talk about all the gross software archaeology work that Brandon and I have been collaborating on,” Celimli told me. After years of poking fun at the Watara SuperVision, we seem to have landed the responsibility of documenting and preserving its… er… legacy isn’t really the correct term, so let’s say ‘residue.’ At the moment, I’m slowly reverse engineering the TV-Link and putting together an assembly development kit for the platform.”

When I reached out for this interview, I initially intended to just grab a few statements from Celimli. He insisted I speak to Cobb as well, and I’m glad he did. This whole experience was extremely enlightening to me, and I’m overjoyed to share it.

The passion around the development of Zaku is palpable. This wasn’t just a commercial enterprise to see if people would be keen on buying new games for old hardware. This was a group of people who just wanted to create something. No one here made any compromise, and it shows in the end product.

I already appreciated Zaku as a game. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with actual commercial games released for the platform, and I’d be willing to elevate it by saying it’s one of the best on the Lynx in general. However, after speaking with its creators, I can only say that I respect it more now.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Zaku is passion compressed into an Atari Lynx cartridge appeared first on Destructoid.

You Fool!

I’m not looking to start a fight here. When The Genji and the Heike Clans was released in Japanese arcades by Namco in 1986 as Genpei Tōma Den, it was generally well-respected. However, here at the Destructoid Institute of Critiquing Kusoge (DICK), we have a saying: If it walks like Kusoge, quacks like Kusoge, and smells like Kusoge, it’s definitely Kusoge (crap game). So, are you going to take the word of Japan, the experts on Kusoge? Or would you rather be daring and listen to the brash, upstart DICK?

I don’t know why I’m so hesitant to talk about The Genji and the Heike Clans with the perspective of it being a bad game. If someone trots in with Altered Beast, I’d be the first one to stand up and tell them how much it sucks. It’s perhaps because, culturally, I understand Altered Beast. The Genji and the Heike Clans shows me that I understand Japan as much as I do deep space. I may think I know a lot, but then I see all sorts of things I don’t understand.

[caption id="attachment_389859" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Big Bushido

You play as the resurrected Taira no Kagekiyo, and you’re kind of pissed off that your clan lost the Genpei War, so you’re off to take Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first Shogun. It’s all right. This isn’t just revenge; the guy is more evil than the history books let on, so there are demons and stuff. Kagekiyo must travel across feudal Japan to Kamakura to get their revenge.

The Genji and the Heike Clans boasts three different modes of play. There’s side-scroller platforming, “big mode,” and a top-down view. You’re most often going to find yourself in the normal side-scroller view, with the other two peppered in.

Big mode presents Kagekiyo in huge detail as he traipses across the screen. It reminds me of my old nemesis Predator on the NES. It might actually have been influenced by The Genji and the Heike Clans, since I think it called it big mode there, as well. They both present the protagonist as impractically big, showing off some nice detail but not moving much room for maneuvering. As such, it’s as clumsy as a newborn deer on an escalator. It gets even funnier when Kagekiyo picks up a scroll and just starts swinging his sword around like a windmill.

[caption id="attachment_389860" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Orgy in a tumble dryer

None of the modes work particularly well. The Genji and the Heike Clans’ approach to enemy placement is to just stick a bunch of spawners around and have them dumping bad guys on you. You take so much unavoidable damage as you make your way to the exit and the hit detection is just terrible, so it’s more chaotic than an orgy in a tumble dryer.

The worst part is the platforming. There are a lot of moving platforms that you have to traverse, and Kagekiyo just doesn’t stick to them. If there’s one that goes up and down, he has trouble jumping because he’s technically falling the whole time. Whenever a platform moves horizontally, he doesn’t move with it, which is just so, so strange. If you land on one, you have to physically keep moving with it to stay on top, otherwise, it just slides out from underneath Kagekiyo.

If you fall in a hole, you don’t die instantly. You fall into Yomi, where you then have to fight your way to a circle of crates. You open the crates, and you’ll either be killed instantly or respawned at the last level you were on. I’d rather it just kill me outright. This probably made more sense in the arcade, where luck of the draw would spare you a quarter, but playing it on a console just highlights it as a nuisance.

[caption id="attachment_389861" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

One last Heike

I first learned about The Genji and the Heike Clans from Game Centre CX. The host, Shinya Arino, played the PC-Engine version, which is considered to be a pretty faithful conversion of the game. He failed to clear it so hard.

Part of the problem is that, after you hit the mid-point of Kyoto, you start back there whenever you die, rather than the last level you made it to. He came nowhere near Kamakura, and having played it now, I can absolutely understand why. It’s brutal, and that is completely uncalled for.

For starters, it has a mystifying health system. It’s measured in candles that get burnt down, and you can increase the maximum number of them. However, you get a certain number restored each time you start a new level, but I couldn’t tell you why it gives you that amount. I’m also not totally clear on how much each pick-up gives you in terms of extra health. Generally, this was just a game of trying to blast through a level as quickly as possible before I died.

Your sword also has health, and this gets depleted by hitting “hard” enemies. What constitutes “hard” is less clear. Skulls are pretty soft. Caves that are clearly made of stone don’t weaken your sword. But when Benkei blocks your attack, that’s hard. What a block looks like, that’s another matter. However, there’s a lot of importance put around strengthening your sword. Not only does this make it more powerful, but if your sword gets depleted, it gets bent and can’t do much damage at all. It’s just… ugh, it’s so dumb.

Part of Arino’s strategy was to just focus on building up his sword gauge. This makes bosses a lot easier, but you can also lose your entire gauge by falling down a hole and getting a bad pull in the lottery. So, really, I'm not sure if that actually makes the game any more beatable. It’s just so slapdash.

[caption id="attachment_389862" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Culture shock

I think a lot of the praise toward The Genji and the Heike Clans is aimed at its graphics and sound. There are a lot of voice samples mixed in there. For a 1986 release, yeah, it looks pretty good. I just can’t explain why it plays so badly. Castlevania also came out in 1986, and it had figured out platforming just fine.

It does have a unique visual style, I’ll give it that. It draws heavily from Japanese history and folklore. You’d need to be pretty deeply familiar with both of those things to understand half the references found mixed in here. Even still, it’s pretty trippy and nightmarish. Especially when a towering Minamoto no Yoritomo pops up in the background and smacks you with his powerful spoon.

There are also multiple routes you can take to Kamakura, which kind of makes the fact that it changes the rules of continuing past the game's mid-point. It’s still going to suck the quarters out of kids, and there is a decent amount of replay value that comes from plumbing it for secrets, so why go to the extent of making it impossibly difficult. It just makes The Genji and the Heike Clans feel even more slap-dash.

[caption id="attachment_389865" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Indispensible crap

It first got released over here as an unusual inclusion in Namco Museum Vol. 4 on PS1. It was rather perplexing to contemporary critics at the time. However, nowadays, you can get it on PlayStation and Switch platforms as part of Hamster's terrific Arcade Archives series. There was also a sequel released on PC-Engine/Turbografx-16 called Samurai-Ghost. It only included big mode, and I’ll have to report back on that when I finally pick up a PC-Engine. I’m not paying the hundreds of dollars for a TG16 copy.

As I said in the beginning, The Genji and the Heike Clans was well-received when it came out in Japan. I think this has to do with the palate of Japanese arcade gamers at the time that just didn’t translate in the West as we recovered from the Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Playing it today as a North American, though. Oof. It is just so bad.

But it’s also the good kind of bad. It’s an absolutely loveable bit of suffering to endure. It’s this painful mess of poor execution and culture shock. I sort of love it.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post The Genji and the Heike Clans is a lovable bit of suffering appeared first on Destructoid.

Incredible timing

This week I was supposed to be doing Brave Fencer Musashi. However, I forgot to save at one point and lost more than two hours of progress, which really took the wind out of my sails. Years of autosave have completely atrophied my "save early, save often" instinct. So I needed something else on my shelf that I could play in short order. Incredible Crisis wasn't something I had played before, but it seemed like it would fit the bill.

I knew two things about this game: it’s weird, and it’s really short. Oh, wait. That also means that I don’t know if it’s good or not. Did I choose the right column for it? Oh no, what if it’s bad? I really should have done more homework first.

[caption id="attachment_389850" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Incredible credentials

Actually, if I had done my homework, I probably would have been reassured that Kenichi Nishi of Chibi-Robo and Love-de-Lic fame worked on the script for Incredible Crisis. Beyond that, hm…

In any case, Incredible Crisis released in 1999 in arcade and PS1 in Japan under the name Tondemo Crisis. Tondemo means “ridiculous” or “outrageous,” so the translation is pretty accurate. In 2000, it was localized in Europe and North America by none other than Titus Interactive. I generally know Titus as being one of the worst publishers of the early 3D era, being responsible for games such as Carmageddon 64 and Superman (on N64). I have a phrase that references their logo, “It ain’t no fun if there’s a fox on the box.” Incredible Crisis is one of the rare exceptions.

That’s probably largely because they only handled the localization of the game. Polygon Magic handled development and Tokuma Shoten Publishing published it in Japan. The translation is rather faithful, at the very least, but they cut out two of the 26 mini-games because they relied heavily on kanji. It’s kind of obvious, but also not that big of a loss because 24 is already a lot of mini-games.

[caption id="attachment_389851" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Incredible concept

Incredible Crisis is really just a string of disparate mini-games connected by a narrative. It’s sort of like if WarioWare had longer microgames and more cohesive progression.

Surprisingly, Incredible Crisis isn’t quite as weird as I expected. It starts with the patriarch of the family, Taneo, exercising with his co-workers at the office through some light disco. Then he’s chased by a vengeful objet d’art. It’s not long before he abandons the holy institution of marriage to fuck a woman in a ferris wheel, only to have her leave a bomb behind as she jumps into a helicopter. Typical. I guess they were aiming for a scenario that most people would find relatable.

Taneo’s wife, Etsuko, on the other hand, finds herself helping some furries rob a bank. After decoding a piggybank by performing a musical number, she escapes via snowboard before returning home in a Harrier Jet.

Meanwhile, one of the family kids gets shrunk by an enormous teddy bear and chased by a praying mantis. The daughter skips school to go shopping before finally returning an alien back to its mothership.

All this is just so the family can avoid the wrath of the matriarchal grandparent. It’s her birthday, and she just wants everyone to be together for dinner, the selfish coot.

[caption id="attachment_389852" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Incredible narrative

While the mundane themes of family life permeate the narrative, the mini-games also bare a similar level of humdrum. Many of the levels mirror slice-of-life dramas like Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones. One mini-game has you trying to balance the weight of your groceries so you can disarm the trap beneath a piggy bank. A few of them have you avoiding obstacles as you coast to your destination, and a bunch of them have you furiously mashing the X button.

Incredible Crisis is rather enjoyable. It can feel unfair at times as you try to grapple with timing, rules, and controls based on a short instructional window. They’re not particularly complicated, but some of them can take a few attempts to get perfect. It really succeeds by presenting you with something new at every turn. There are a lot of attempts to screw with you, but it’s all enjoyable fun.

As it turns out, though, it really only takes 2-3 hours to finish Incredible Crisis for the first time. This is taking failures and game overs into consideration. I suppose if you have flaccid thumbs, it might be a bit more of a challenge, but I found it just right when it came to getting acclimated on the fly.

If there’s one major downside, it’s that the difficulty is kind of all over the place. This might just be a case of how quickly you adapt to certain concepts, but there would be some that I’d drop a slew of lives on, while the very next one I’d clear in one attempt.

[caption id="attachment_389853" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Incredible header

However, I think a lot of the complaints are only a problem if you take Incredible Crisis seriously, and I don’t think that’s the right mindset to go into it with. It’s clearly just here to entertain while telling the tragic story of a lonely old woman who just wants to spend her birthday with her family.

Everything is told through lavish cutscenes that make the smart decision of sticking with the low-poly visuals of the actual gameplay. Many PS1 games aimed for some manner of realistic CG cutscenes, that kind of feel isolated from the actual gameplay. Having the cutscenes mimic the in-engine graphics helps everything flow together. It’s enough that I’d like to see a remaster of the game with the visuals upscaled and cleaned up but otherwise intact. They’re masterfully done, and I think they would shine better without having to deal with compression artifacts.

Incredible Crisis isn’t exactly a revolutionary game, but it’s a charming and lovingly assembled game that sparkles under its bright personality. It makes me want to retch having to give Titus props for anything, but I appreciate them for having brought this title to us. It seems like a risky venture since it is extremely Japanese and was released during a time when we weren’t quite acclimated to the country’s unique culture. But here it is. Thank you, Titus. Ugh. I suddenly feel like I need to brush my teeth.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Incredible Crisis is an insightful look at the life of an average Japanese family appeared first on Destructoid.

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

Woody Woodpecker is how the Gods of Animation punished humankind for creating anime. I will never understand the appeal of centering an entire property around a character deliberately created to be annoying. He’s like Bugs Bunny, except you never feel the need to root for him. No, he’s more like Batman’s Joker, but you replace all the charisma with just a second heaping of insane malice. I hate him so much.

So, I bought a game that headlines him. It’s 2000’s Woody Woodpecker Racing for PS1 and Windows. I bought this specifically so I could remind my brain that it’s trapped here in this hell with me. However, it kind of seems like the developers weren’t exactly fans either, since that blasted Woodpecker isn’t my biggest complaint with the game.

[caption id="attachment_388789" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

If you’re not familiar with Woody Woodpecker, I’ll try to explain him to you. He’s the most annoying creature on the planet. Most of his cartoons involve him pestering someone until they’re provoked to violence. I’m certain that one of his creators was roused at 5 a.m. by a woodpecker outside their window and just said, “I’m going to make this everyone’s problem.”

If Wally Walrus was just trying to eat his breakfast at his favorite diner, Woody Woodpecker would come in, set the jukebox to play MMMBop indefinitely, then lock himself in the women’s bathroom. Wally would eventually get up and unplug the jukebox, but whenever he’d go and sit back down, Woody would just burst out and plug it back in, continuing the onslaught of Hanson. The Walrus would eventually get fed up, kick down the bathroom door, and get beaten up by some old woman and called a pervert before being thrown out of the diner. And, I don’t know, you’re supposed to root for Woody because he represents the insane lust for chaos that exists deep within our souls. Like, fuck that Walrus for wanting to enjoy breakfast at his favorite spot.

He’s just a massive dick. At least for Bugs Bunny cartoons, the people he’s harassing are worse than he is. Meanwhile, Woody Woodpecker’s catchphrase is just derisive laughter played to a melody more vexing than what could ever be conjured in the worst nightmares of the Hanson brothers. It was no doubt created so children would imitate it to annoy their parents and start fights on the schoolyard.

[caption id="attachment_388790" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

HUHUHUHUHUHUHU!

Mercifully, you don’t need to be familiar with the Woody Woodpecker cartoons to understand what’s going on in Woody Woodpecker Racing. No, it’s the common story of a company being too lazy to figure out an inventive way for their property to fit into the medium of video games, so they have someone make Mario Kart, but replace the characters with their own.

That’s it. There’s a “Quest” mode, but it doesn’t have any cutscenes or storyline. You don’t even really have to hear that much of the Woodpecker’s piercing voice. I was concerned that this would have the audio design of an actual Mario Kart and the soundtrack would always be drowned out by a cacophony of cartoonish screams, but that really doesn’t happen. You can select Chilly Willy and hear very little dialogue at all.

I’ve never been so relieved to be left with what is essentially just a generic karter. I mean, it’s really not that great, but it was bracing for a painful woodpecker-centric experience. My expectations couldn’t possibly be much lower, so the pain I received instead is much more appreciated.

[caption id="attachment_388791" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

If there’s one place that Woody Woodpecker Racing tries to differentiate itself from its contemporaries, it’s in its range of vehicles. You have open-wheeled “Racers,” stock cars, monster trucks, and jalopies. They all control exactly the same, as far as I can tell. I guess the visual variety is appreciated.

There are 16 tracks that take you all over the world, and they’re… y’know, fine. They’re mostly just variations of circles, but again, let’s not diminish the importance of variation.

The weapons all suck. Most of them are just projectiles or mines. There’s a boost, of course. Then there’s a stopwatch that just slows down everyone else. That’s sort of like the lightning bolt from Mario Kart but lazier.

Of course, none of that matters because Woody Woodpecker Racing has some of the most heinous rubber-band AI I have ever encountered.

[caption id="attachment_388792" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

If you’re not familiar, rubber-band AI is the mechanic wherein the people losing in a competition are given a slight boost or other advantages that allow them to keep pace. The further someone falls behind, the more they are assisted by the system. It’s employed in sports games, but it’s extremely prevalent in racing games going all the way back to when they started. There are probably more racers that employ rubber-band AI than ones that don’t. The trick is to sort of disguise it. Otherwise, it can feel unfair.

I can name some titles that benefitted from having rubber-band AI and others that suck because of it. Woody Woodpecker Racing sucks because of it.

It’s so bad that I felt most races are won due largely to luck rather than any sort of skill. The system is very focused in keeping racers in a pack so they can lay into each other, even though the combat sucks out loud. This means that someone is always on your ass, and you’re one slight miscalculation away from them gaining a lead. However, they don’t even rely on that. The pull of the rubber band means they can gain more speed than you, so your time in first place is always limited by how long it takes them to catch up. It’s inevitable; you will be passed. And I can’t imagine a worse punishment for doing well.

[caption id="attachment_388793" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

HUHUHUHUHUHUHU!

The worst part about all of this is that the save system failed me. I was working my way through quest mode but got frustrated by all the rubber-banding, so I saved and put it away for a while. When I came back, I found most of my progress was gone. I started from some track way earlier in the quest. So, I took my lumps and pushed through again before I was interrupted in the final race. I had made damned sure that saving was successful each time I did it throughout my progress. However, when I returned, I was back on that same damned track.

I know that the game did save, though. All the characters I had unlocked along the way were available. However, it was still keen on starting me way back near the beginning of the entire game. If I had any intention on finishing the game entirely, it was gone right there.

The best thing I can say about Woody Woodpecker Racing is that you don’t have to deal with Woody much. There’s none of his antics. You don’t have to sit through any cutscenes where he cuts people’s brake lines and then plays the victim when they get perturbed about his attempted murder. He’s just there.

On the other hand, Woody Woodpecker Racing was part of a period of gaming that was absolutely turgid with kart racers. This one is pretty distantly behind Mario Kart 64, Diddy Adventure Racing, and Crash Team Racing. For that matter, even Mickey’s Speedway USA can barely see it in the rear-view mirror. And there, I just named four kart racers from the same period that are better than it, and didn’t even have to make any deep cuts. Plus, all those games I just named don’t involve any red-crested woodpeckers.

It’s certainly not the worst kart-racing game I’ve ever played, but this one is made worse by the woodpecker-shaped anchor it’s chained to.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Woody Woodpecker Racing for PS1 is an abomination full of speed holes appeared first on Destructoid.

Of course, you realize this means war...

Publisher Warner Bros Games and developer Player First Games have officially called time on both Wabbit Season and Duck Season — The extended "beta" for platform fighter MultiVersus has been officially taken offline, bringing brings an end to one of the most questionable fighting game debuts in recent history. MultiVersus is currently expected to relaunch in "early 2024".

The free-to-play scrapper's servers are closed, ending a bizarre "test" phase that simultaneously had multiple seasons and additional paid DLC characters, skins, and stages. While MultiVersus players still have access to local Vs. matches and the fighter’s training mode, (known as “The Lab”), the community is now unable to play online in any capacity. Additionally, the studio has already noted that no refunds will be offered for any items purchased during the beta test, or the paid "Founder's Edition" of the title.

https://twitter.com/multiversus/status/1671966638000709645?s=20

Until the game's eventual relaunch, Player First Games is unlocking every character of the MultiVersus roster. While this could be seen as a form of damage control for the bizarre handling of the title, it no doubt leaves players who had invested their money in the title wondering why they even bothered. These players cannot enjoy the fighter online anymore, and now the characters/skins/content they purchased with real money are now readily available to everybody for the foreseeable future.

The MultiVersus story is morbidly curious. Launching its open beta in July 2022, the title saw incredible success out of the gate, and still holds the Steam record for the most concurrent players of a fighting game in history, as well a reported 20 million total downloads. This was mostly deserved, as MultiVersus is a fun and enjoyable fighter with plenty of character and charisma. Dataminers would also discover solid evidence of some big plans, which included some interesting DLC characters, alternate commentators, and placeholders for franchises such as The Goonies and The Wizard of Oz.

But, as the weeks and months passed, the beta's playercount fell off in staggering fashion, as the more dedicated members of the community were left frustrated by a lack of both content and communication, both of which became sparse by the end of 2022. When 2023 rolled around, the success of the previous summer seemed a distant memory. And, come spring, Player First Games announced that it would close the servers ahead of the title's still-undesignated launch. This left the MultiVersus community with myriad questions. Why was DLC even sold? Why were additional skins, stages, and modes developed? Why even launch a beta in seasons, with paid content if it was, in essence, just a testing phase?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvborgKG7fw

But the big questions, hanging over the situation like a fucking vulture, are When is it coming back, Is it coming back, and Who is it coming back for? If MultiVersus ended its testing phase as, essentially, a "dead game", then why would Warner Bros. have any interest in committing time, money, and marketing into a relaunch? We don't live in an era where publishers release games simply because "They owe it to the community" or just because "They said they would". We arguably never have.

The whole scenario reeks, and only time will tell how this MultiVersus scenario plays out. Either the fun fighter returns, in which case it has to essentially reignite the interest of a market that has already left it in the dust, or it gets quietly canned, in which case it disappears like a thief in the night, holding the cash of those players that showed passion and support in the project and its future.

At this point, MultiVersus essentially has no choice but to continue on its road to release. But, when that release comes, the franchise is essentially starting from scratch all over again. The casual audience has long moved on from the excitement of that record-breaking summer, while the brand's dedicated, money-paying audience understandably feels somewhat abandoned at best and ripped off at worst.

That's all, folks?

The post MultiVersus beta now offline, to return ‘Early 2024’ – but for whom? appeared first on Destructoid.

We do a little bowling and we drink a little vino

This one is another recommendation from my local video game dispensary. They told me they thought I had asked them to keep an eye out for The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling on PS1 (also on PC). I did no such thing. I had never heard of this game since then. However, I can understand why you would want to exploit a boon, such as someone who intentionally buys bad games. You don't have to be dishonest about it.

The Flintstone’s was something that was perpetually syndicated when I was a kid, so even though it was off the air for 20 years before I was born, I’m rather familiar with the source material. I also love bowling when I was growing up. It was the sport that took place in the closest proximity to a Metal Slug arcade cabinet. I also love games that I can wrap up in 20 minutes, so The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling really has a lot going for it out of the gate.

[caption id="attachment_387615" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

New saucer-sled land speed record

The story sees the stars of the popular vitamin bottle really wanting to go bowling. However, Fred Flintstone’s boss demands he put in overtime in the quarry, which threatens their evening activities. I guess they didn’t have unions back in the Stone Age. Wait, yes they did. Unions were the butt of a joke once. I guess it’s not so funny when Fred is having his job threatened by his employer unless he does overtime.

Anyway, The Great Gazoo, the universe's most lovable genocidal maniac and one of the show’s worst ideas, shows up and decides he’s going to help out. He converts the quarry into a giant bowling course complete with bowling sleds, and sends Fred, his neighbor, his children, and his dog hurtling down it on a collision course with various trash. I'm not sure how much you know about bowling, but this is entirely not it. This is more like tobogganing down one of those hills with “No Sledding” signs everywhere.

I chose Fred as my bowling ball because Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, and Dino are all just variations of the worst things imaginable. Every utterance they make is like a hailstorm of glass raging in my ear canals. I also tried Barney once, and he controls like an oiled-up sea lion.

[caption id="attachment_387614" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Prolonged exposure

I may have hinted at this already, but The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling doesn’t really share anything in common with actual bowling aside from the pins. That’s a shame because the early 3D era of video games definitely didn’t give us enough mediocre bowling titles.

Instead, Fred and everyone less tolerable get dropped into little sleds and are sent down twisting hills. You need to steer into pins and gems. There are also obstacles you need to avoid, but these just seem to slow you down. Let me be clear that there is no time limit to Bedrock Bowling, and I don’t think you get a bonus for doing a lane quickly, so I have no idea why getting slowed down would be considered a punishment. Similarly, I also don’t know why there is a boost button. Wait, yes, I do. It’s so the pain will end quicker.

For that matter, there are also three “Dodos” on the track. If you hit them all before getting to the finish line, the track gets extended, which is necessary to hit the three-or-so more pins needed for a strike.

If you manage to hit all the Dodos in a group of lanes, you’ll get to visit a secret stage. There are three secret lanes in total, with the last one being a reward for turning every Dodo into road kill. Once again, The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling rewards you by giving you more game to play, which seems more like a loss here.

[caption id="attachment_387616" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Dum-dum

I’m a Canadian, so tobogganing is in my blood. However, I’m not sure you need to be a walking perversion of gravity to win at The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling. I can’t even say if losing is possible. From what I can tell, this is supposed to be a competitive sort of affair, which sounds like a good way to progress a relationship beyond simple friendship and into the realm of a mutual nap.

If you play it by yourself, you just get a tally of your score at the end. The Great Gazoo doesn’t call you a dum-dum if you do poorly. Or, perhaps I just didn’t do poorly enough to get cussed out by the spaceman.

I suppose that’s sort of what bowling actually is. It’s a game of physical solitaire that we usually play in proximity to other people to make it more interesting. Nobody interacts aside from hoots and butt-pats when a strike is landed. There’s an overall cap on how well you can do, so playing by yourself is only beneficial in improving your consistency and technique. In a way, that’s what The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling is doing for you, only you’d have a much tougher time finding anyone to play with you.

Actually, I never checked. Can you add an AI player?

No, you can’t. Nevermind.

[caption id="attachment_387617" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Cooked turkey

I said this earlier, but a complete playthrough of The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling takes about 20 minutes for an entire playthrough. That’s probably a good thing, because it doesn’t even really earn that runtime. It also could have been longer. There is at least a good variety to the tracks, with one of them even letting you jump inside of a movie. So, they could have gotten more mileage out of repeating themes, but let’s pretend I didn’t say that.

At my very most generous, I’d say that The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling is at least not offensively bad. Unless you really like The Flintstones. Or bowling. Or just fun in general. Um, okay, that wasn’t very generous. Let’s try: it took me less time to play The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling than it did to scream out all the lasting trauma that it inflicted on me. I think that’s the best I can do.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling for PS1 falls short of being a gay old time appeared first on Destructoid.

I know butt-fu

If you want to see what procrastination looks like, put 1998's Fighter Maker in front of me. If you ever noticed me miss a week with these Kusoge articles, it’s probably because I planned to cover Fighter Maker that week and just couldn’t bring myself to play it. Never has a bad game asked me for so much commitment.

Blame The Industry’s Chris Moyse. It was his suggestion. Considering he’s the leading expert on all things fists, I trust him when he tells me a fighting game is going to be bad. And Fighter Maker is… Well, maybe not bad, but it’s extremely misguided.

Fighter Maker is part of the ASCII Entertainment “Maker” series. That kind of makes it sound like it covered a lot of genres, but really it was just rail shooter, fighting game, and RPG. The RPG Maker games had the most longevity, and we even got a bunch of them over here in the West. I even tinkered with RPG Maker 2000 on PC back in the day. It’s just funny that the fighting genre seems much simpler on the surface but is infinitely more difficult to do well.

[caption id="attachment_386207" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Fist injection

I had big plans for Fighter Maker, and the moment I saw the creation system, I threw them all away. First of all, you can’t edit the look of the combatants. Secondly, my hopes for a butt-centric arsenal of attacks were dashed the moment I found out how much effort it takes to create a single move.

Backing up for a moment here, Fighter Maker is sort of a Virtua Fighter setup. It’s 3D, and you can move in and out of the background. It’s not a terrible-looking game. It also subscribes to Virtua Fighter’s more minimalistic control method. There are three attack buttons for high, mid, and low. That’s one more attack button than in Virtua Fighter. These can be partnered with the block button for grabs and fancier attacks.

If you just choose a fighter and try out the combat system, it’s a little shallow but not terrible. I’ve intentionally played enough bad fighting games to really appreciate when one isn’t horrifically bad. There’s a supreme dearth of personality, to say the least, but that’s where you come in.

[caption id="attachment_386208" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The under you wear

The editing tools of Fighter Maker also fall into the category of “not bad.” However, note that this isn’t like the RPG Maker games, where you can go ham with the tools and come away with a top-to-bottom product that could be sold as a standalone. There’s a lot you can do here, but they’re very limited.

As I mentioned before, you can’t customize a fighter’s appearance. There’s a buffet of fight-people to choose from, but there’s no option to tweak the color of their costumes or the size of their nipples. This made me realize that there were other games on the N64 and PS1 that allowed you to make your own fighter. Does this mean that WWF: No Mercy is the best Fighter Maker of that era? Yes! By some metrics!

I think a more appropriate term for Fighter Maker would be “fighter animator,” as that’s essentially what this is. Everything your battle-person does can be defined by you in fine detail. Want their punch to be more of an open-hand slap? Totally possible. And I mean that, because there aren’t really any limits to what can be accomplished in the editor.

[caption id="attachment_386209" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Sharing your butt-battler

It’s actually pretty intimidating. As I said, I had ambitions for a butt-centric fighting style, but I dialed it back for a few reasons. The biggest one is that I don’t see the point. Regardless of how much time I spend perfecting my fighter, they’re still going to be dropped into a middling fighter and then go nowhere else.

I have difficulty imagining the climate that would make Fighter Maker’s tools worthwhile. Maybe you’re someone who has a tight-knit group of friends who would spend a bunch of effort on a battle-artist and then bring their memory cards together for a tournament. That would be pretty cool. Today, this would be something that you’d upload to the internet like you would with custom wrestle-folks in WWE 2K23, but that wasn’t really an option for the PS1. So, you would need this very specific social group to make the hours you’d spend fine-tuning a creation pay off.

I don’t have that social group. I don’t really have A social group. So, I didn’t create a posterior pugilist. Instead, I created one (badly) bespoke victory animation and changed the block animation so my character just leaves themselves wide open. Then I edited the capoeira preset so my character’s arms just stay glued to their side.

It was honestly hilarious. My character, Captain Ketsu, would just kind of dance around while holding onto their butt. It looked like they were desperately trying to prevent a sudden and unwanted bowel torrent from erupting while also participating in a fight. I have to say that even though I put in the bare minimum of effort, I’m still quite proud of my accomplishment.

[caption id="attachment_386210" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

How much is weirdness worth?

That’s sort of another strength of Fighter Maker. It doesn’t put any barriers in front of expressing your weirdness. Well, I suppose aside from giving you any control over the visuals. You also can’t super-power your brawl-buddy. You aren’t able to pump up their spirit so they can throw fireballs. You’re very much stuck to just playing by some poorly defined rules.

And that’s what it all comes down to. How much is your weirdness worth? Do you actually want to spend your time tweaking the position of someone’s ankle and fine-tuning their frames of animation? I can’t answer that for you. For me, I’d rather just create another wrestler for my fictional promotion.

I suppose enough people were into Fighter Maker that it got a sequel. Fighter Maker 2 was released on PS2 in 2002, and it allegedly allows you to change the look of your fight-guy. I’ve actually seen it in the bin at my local kusoge dispensary, but I haven’t yet picked it up. Maybe I will, just for fun. I doubt I’ll actually put the effort into making a butt-boxer, but maybe I’ll spend the fifteen minutes required to desecrate the esteemed art of capoeira.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Fighter Maker for PS1 lets you be your weird self appeared first on Destructoid.

Full Metal Max

Getting into the Metal Max series has been one of the most exciting experiences to come my way in this hobby recently. I picked up Metal Max Xeno Reborn on a whim, and the next thing I know, I’m hungrily trying to consume everything from the series I could get my hands on. That’s unfortunately not a lot. Most of the series has never left Japan. While there are some fan translations landing for some of those titles, there was only one official release for the series in North America before Metal Max Xeno. That was 2005’s Metal Saga on PS2.

Don’t let the name fool you. This isn’t some spin-off. Metal Saga is a whole-fat entry in the series. There were some trademark issues resulting from Data East going bankrupt, so the developers at Crea-tech couldn’t actually call it Metal Max for a time, but that’s the only disruption. It takes place in the same world as the previous games, making reference to those narratives, and the mechanics all follow the formula set out by the previous two titles. It’s the true Metal Max 3 in everything but name.

Unfortunately, the shift to the 3D perspective wasn’t an effortless one.

[caption id="attachment_387134" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The stupid end of the world

Metal Saga starts out in much the same way that the original Metal Max does: the protagonist tells his parent that he’s setting out in the world to become a hunter. Taking place in a post-apocalyptic future, Hunters travel around and take down the various monsters that roam the devastated planet.

Like the original Metal Max, the actual over-arching narrative isn’t clear from the start, and only takes shape at the very end. Largely, you’re let loose on the world and left to do whatever you feel like, and Metal Saga just trusts that you’ll eventually find your way to the conclusion. It’s up to you to just travel around, get stronger, and make money by defeating Wanted Monsters. In tanks.

I can’t stress this enough: Metal Saga, like the series before it, is a game about tanks. There are vehicles in there that aren’t tanks, but everyone talks about tanks like they’re mankind’s greatest achievement. If you want to actually complete the game, you’ll need to scour the world for the best tanks, then outfit them with the best equipment. It’s amazing.

[caption id="attachment_387135" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

You remind me of my grandson

The post-apocalypse of Metal Max is a tale as old as time. Humans were starting to get a little panicked about how they were destroying the planet. Rather than take personal responsibility, they created an AI called NOAH to help them fix it. NOAH decided that the best way to save the planet was to get rid of the source of the problems: humans.

That’s pretty realistic. Humans would definitely try to take a shortcut for solving their problems, and an AI would almost certainly follow a request right down to the letter.

Not a lot of people in Metal Saga know what caused humans to get pushed to the brink of extinction. Furthermore, the plot of Metal Max involved the protagonist finally shutting NOAH down, but since no one knew the world was even still in peril, few people really know that even happened.

But while the Metal Max series is incredibly on the nose for something that was created in 1991, it’s incredibly lighthearted about the whole affair. If The Last of Us is a finger wag and Fallout is a head shake, then Metal Max is a roll of the eyes. It’s not just about man’s inhumanity to man; it’s about man’s baffling, ceaseless stupidity.

While you travel the world, you keep bumping into survivors who just have the strangest priorities. There’s a cult that worships bodybuilding. You might find a retirement home full of elderly people driven to crime by neglectful grandchildren. Your primary rival in all of this is a rich heiress who is more interested in collecting tanks than taking down the monsters that threaten the remnants of humanity. It’s nowhere near as ridiculous as Metal Max 2 could get, but it certainly doesn’t wear a straight face.

[caption id="attachment_387136" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Tasty corpses

This sort of leads to Metal Saga’s biggest issue: it’s empty. Metal Saga has a huge world, and a tonne of Wanted Monsters to hunt, but not a lot in between.

It’s always been a series standard to kind of just let you loose on the world with a few gates to keep you from wandering straight to the end of the game. Metal Saga is much the same, but there’s less to distract you. There’s a dearth of side quests, and they're actually difficult to bump into. There are so many rooms in the dungeons and towns that are just empty, and that takes a lot of the fun out of exploration.

Those empty rooms might be by design rather than just an indication of unfinished content, but that’s actually worse. I don’t want to check each and every room in case one of them might have a fridge to loot.

There was one dude credited with monster design, Masato Kimura, and he went absolutely nuts. This big empty world is absolutely packed with different monster attacks, including howitzers wearing fishnets and a stealth bomber that is actually just a big manta ray. According to a guide I found, there are 232 types of regular monsters. While some of them are mostly palette swaps, a huge number of them are unique. It also doesn’t lean too hard on just recreating monsters from past games. It’s an impressive effort.

[caption id="attachment_387137" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Optimus Swine

At this point, I’ve played a decent chunk of the Metal Max series. I have to say, Metal Saga currently sits near the bottom of my list of favorites. The core gameplay that I love so much about the series is still there. Everything built around that isn’t anything too insulting, but it’s a lot weaker than anything that came before it.

On the other hand, before Metal Max Xeno, this was the only game in the series that came West. Even now, the only way for hardcore anglophones to experience the other games is to use fan translations. In no small way, Metal Saga is way better than no Metal Max at all. If fan translations aren’t your thing, then this is absolutely something you should play.

My eyes are constantly peeled for any news on the series. Cygames bought the rights up in 2022 directly after the release of Metal Max Xeno Reborn and the cancellation of Metal Max Xeno: Wild West. The series director (who actually didn’t have a creative role in Metal Saga) is even on board. Currently, it looks like we’re getting a remake of the first game of the series, but I have my fingers crossed that they’ll also look to finally localize previous games in the series. At the very least, re-release Metal Saga.

The series has had a mess of ownership issues. It has never really received the attention or the love that it deserves. I’m hoping Cygames winds up being the parent it really needs. I just want someone to love Metal Max as much as I do.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Metal Saga for PS2 is a lot better than no Metal Max at all appeared first on Destructoid.

Have you played Atari today?

Atari is a company that has almost always been mired in problems. Before the Atari VCS (2600) console even launched, founder Nolan Bushnell sold the business to Warner Communications, which fired him shortly thereafter. It’s traded hands throughout the years, eventually landing with Infogrames in 2000, who gradually rebranded to the Atari name before nearly becoming bankrupt in 2013. They restructured, sold off a number of assets, and managed to come out of bankruptcy.

Say what you will about the Atari Lynx and Jaguar platforms, but nothing is as bad as post-bankruptcy protection Atari. They oversaw such tragic releases as Haunted House: Cryptic Graves and Asteroids: Outpost. Atari’s business model also shifted heavily toward micro-monetized mobile games.

In 2021, when no one was looking, Wade Rosen took the helm of Atari as CEO. While there is much still to be seen as to whether he can gain back the goodwill of video game hobbyists, this is, perhaps, the first time in a long time that one can be optimistic about the direction of the company. Rosen was gracious enough to quench my curiosity by answering a few questions for Destructoid, and he’s joined by Larry Kuperman of Nightdive Studios, a recent acquisition by Atari.

[caption id="attachment_386595" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Atari[/caption]

The new face of Atari

“When I took on the role of CEO, one of my primary objectives was to establish a clear strategy for the business; one that would provide a solid base for our long-term success and one that would be true to our legacy,” Rosen explained. “Part of the transition we undertook involved exiting businesses that we did not think were core or made sense going forward. One of the areas we decided to exit was the casino business, and we have successfully unwound all of our casino-related partnerships.”

“Our business now has four focus areas: software, hardware, licensing, and web3. Atari is and will remain, a video game company, so our efforts across those four business areas are all to support that core gaming identity. We made a conscious decision to start making premium games again, and we have made continual progress towards that goal. We have published 12 new titles in the last 18 months, we have announced another four, and we have many more under development.”

Web3 is something of a nebulous concept of a future direction for the internet based around blockchain. It’s, um, not particularly well-loved by the video game community, to say the least. This is something that Rosen acknowledges.

“We can’t predict exactly how our web3 business will evolve,” Rosen explained, “but we have built a very smart team that has prioritized development in the areas of gaming, utility, and, most of all, community. We have strong partnerships in place with platforms such as The Sandbox, where we launched a massive, immersive brand experience. Most recently, the team launched a beta version of the Atari Club, which is designed as a community centered around all things Atari. The goal is to make the community accessible and inclusive to all of our fans. So after its initial rollout with our web3 audience, it will be expanded so that all of our fans can contribute, collect, and collaborate around our brand initiatives.”

“We know web3 remains controversial, especially within the gaming industry, but we think the underlying technology has long-term potential for companies that focus on the long-term benefits it can provide and do their best to sidestep short-term hype.”

[caption id="attachment_375703" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Atari[/caption]

Merchandising! Merchandising!

The announcement of Atari-themed hotels in 2020 raised some eyebrows. Since then, news has been quiet about that project. But while Atari may have backed out of the casino business, they're still moving forward with hotels.

“Our licensing business remains quite strong, and our goal is to enter only high-quality partnerships that can contribute to our brand awareness and satisfy our fans in a meaningful way. The Atari Hotel partnership you mentioned is one of those licensing deals, and we believe it has strong potential. By its nature, it has a very, very long timetable, and it will be many years before we see its impact.”

“We also have partnerships with LEGO, Cariuma, New Wave Toys, and several other high-quality brands, and we are exploring opportunities in media, including television and film. Like many large, successful pop-culture brands, we expect licensing to remain an integral part of our mix going forward.”

Licensing seems like something the Atari brand has never been far from. I think I owned an Atari t-shirt before ever even touching a 2600. However, their most recent moves seem more like they’re aimed at video game hobbyists rather than just brand nostalgia. The New Wave Toys partnership, for example, involves the creation of Replicade cabinets. These are playable miniaturized versions of classic arcade cabinets, and Missile Command has recently received the treatment.

[caption id="attachment_386593" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via MobyGames[/caption]

Back to the past

What fascinates me most about Atari’s recent movements, however, is their focus on game preservation. Last year, they purchased the game database, MobyGames. Meanwhile, their Atari 50 compilation has been acclaimed as one of the best classic game collections ever released.

“Preservation, and more specifically, innovation in retro gaming, is a priority for Atari,” Rosen said. “This is a topic I’m personally very passionate about. Video game history is a part of our DNA, and leveraging retro IP in interesting and futuristic ways is core to our business. There is so much amazing classic content, and giving fans a way to access not only the original content, but new content that iterates and expands upon the original, is what you can expect from us in the coming years.”

However, Atari isn’t unique in this approach. Game storefront GOG began as an effort to make old PC games available to modern platforms. I wonder about the profitability of this effort. MobyGames, specifically, has traded hands a few times over the years. Its previous owners, Simon Carless and Jeremiah Freyholtz were quite open with the community about the difficulties of managing the database and had to turn to Patreon to supplement income for development. So, I had to wonder what drove the choice for Atari to focus on preservation.

Rosen told me, “There is a huge community of retro game fans that seems to be growing every day. I believe it absolutely is a viable business and one that has significant growth potential. The beauty of retro is that it’s constantly being created and recreated. The PS3 is starting to be considered retro, and each year that passes, more modern games are being reclassified. In that sense, it is always growing, and the way people consume and access the content is ever-changing.”

[caption id="attachment_386580" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Atari[/caption]

The business of back catalog

Moreover, a number of companies are extremely leery about keeping their back catalogs available. Electronic Arts is one of the companies I point to as an example of one of the worst. They have games like The Sims or Black and White that are considered to be of historical importance, but despite having their own digital storefront, EA refuses to make these games available.

Usually, when larger publishers choose to release older games, they will often do so in a rather token way. Numerous old PC games are just bundled with DOSbox, and some Windows games aren’t updated to support modern hardware.

“I can’t speak to the decisions that other companies make as I don’t have any insight into their thought process. I can say that, for a while, re-releasing titles 'as-is' kind of worked,” Rosen explained. “It was a way for companies to make their back catalog widely available, and it scratched an itch for players. But studios like Nightdive have raised the bar, using their proprietary KEX engine to rebuild and improve the original games and add modern features, significantly improving the graphics, improving and expanding input control, and adding deep platform support, including social integration."

"Player expectations have changed, and what we are seeing is that companies that do have important game IP are turning to studios like Nightdive to bring them back to market in a way that players value. Based on the dedicated fanbase that Nightdive has built, that’s a significant advantage over more barebones releases.”

That’s actually a rather sober way to look at the approach. I may want every game to get the source port treatment, but that’s not always feasible. At the end of the day, as long as it runs well with minimal effort for setup on my part, that’s sufficient. Bonus points if it wasn’t originally released in English.

[caption id="attachment_386578" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Raising the bar

Nightdive wasn’t alone when it comes to raising the bar for modern re-releases, though. It's important to note that M2 and Digital Eclipse have been at it since the ‘90s, being responsible for many moves from arcade to console or handheld.

Wade Rosen goes on to say, “I think talented studios like M2 and Digital Eclipse are starting to get the recognition they deserve for their incredible work. Digital Eclipse, who we worked with to create Atari 50: the Anniversary Celebration, was recognized and praised by both players and industry professionals for their efforts.”

Nightdive is something special, however. Most of all, they seem to be better known among gamers themselves, whereas M2 and Digital Eclipse are more known to those more deeply intimate with the hobby.

Rosen explained, “Nightdive starts by working with retro titles that have an incredibly strong fan base and following. They’re games that resonate with players in a visceral way. Nightdive has also developed a style of remastering content that is unique and recognizable. For Nightdive, the goal is always to recapture the experience that people had when the game was new and "state of the art." The challenge is to create a game that is pleasing to new fans, while recapturing the original experience for older fans, and to remaster a game so that it ‘plays the way you remember it playing.’ That creates a unique experience where fans can look at a game and almost immediately know ‘that came from Nightdive.'”

Larry Kuperman, Director of Business Development at Nightdive added, “Nightdive has always drawn our talent from the modding and support communities. Samuel Villarreal, also known as ‘Kaiser’ in the Doom community, was a legend even before he joined Nightdive as our Lead Engine Developer. The same was true of a number of our other developers. That is one reason. And our founder at Nightdive, Stephen Kick, continues to maintain an active presence on social media, as I do to a lesser extent."

"We think it is important to have that direct connection with our fans.”

[caption id="attachment_386587" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Curation through source porting

Moreover, I appreciate Nightdive for introducing me to games I had previously missed. I had never heard of Strife until they released Strife: Veteran Edition, and I may have never played PowerSlave without PowerSlave: Exhumed. More than just a developer, I appreciate Nightdive for their curation.

I’m not alone, as Rosen put it more eloquently, “I personally came to Nightdive through their work on System Shock 2. Once I was done exploring the Von Braun it was a short jump to all of their other titles (Strife: Veteran Edition was also my first time playing Strife). If you like one of their games, you’re probably going to like the others. That kind of discoverability is part of the Nightdive magic: their releases have a broad, multigenerational appeal.”

Larry Kuperman responded, “I can’t tell you how often we hear similar stories. ‘I didn’t even know a certain game had ever existed until you brought it back.’ It really is inspiring to hear those things.”

“Interestingly enough, Strife: Veteran Edition was really important in the history of Nightdive. It was the first game that we were able to substantially improve, as opposed to our prior ‘just make it work on modern systems’ approach. Remember that this was very early in Nightdive’s growth. In order to improve on the original, we brought on James Haley, another member of the Doom community.”

I feel a bit of kinship here. I often say I got into writing about video games as a way of sharing my passion for the hobby. Though I haven't made any of the games I talk about, I love sharing them as though they’re a part of me. Kuperman’s explanation of it kind of makes it sound like what Nightdive tries to do. They’re sharing the games they’re passionate about by repackaging them.

https://youtu.be/VHIpL5Mz1JY

The retro boom

Another direction that Atari has been heading has been back into the realm of physical hardware. In 2021, they released the Atari VCS, which was an attempt at a modern console. The VCS started development in 2018 before Wade Rosen was CEO of the company. We didn’t really talk about this, but according to Axios, the platform has struggled to find its place. However, they’ve also recently started reproducing actual Atari 2600 cartridges as part of their Atari XP line-up.

I asked if there were plans to further develop such cartridges, specifically asking if there was any chance of new games being released in the format. Rosen told me, “Our Atari XP cartridge business started off small and experimental, and the reception has been quite positive. There is a demand for the simplicity and skill-gating of retro hardware and software. As a result, we’re exploring ways to bring more cartridges to market, and to make it easier to play those cartridges. Stay tuned.”

This was before they announced that they’d be releasing Mr. Run and Jump on a 2600 cartridge. However, the “easier to play those cartridges” comment is still curious. In the previously mentioned Axios interview, he also teased that they might be releasing new hardware. This sounds to me like we may be seeing a new console capable of playing 2600 games, which excites me greatly.

[caption id="attachment_386575" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Mobygames[/caption]

Going forward with retro

Atari has also been making moves toward acquiring the back catalogs of other publishers. Mostly, these have been titles that are adjacent to Atari, including ones that the company even previously owned.

I asked Rosen what games were even worth preserving. He told me, “All games are worth preserving. I think the differentiation comes in the degree of restoration. Will all games have the same level of details, or get as robust a restoration? Will all games be interpreted in new games? No. There isn’t enough time, development capacity, or probably interest to touch every game from the past 50 years and optimize them for modern hardware. But I think there should be legal ways to at least access all of the games from the past. Today we’re seeing companies focus on games and franchises that were popular, or somehow novel, because those have the most commercial potential. But as time goes on I believe there will be more opportunity to explore the deep cuts of the last 50 years, and I welcome that.”

I pushed a bit further, asking what games he’d like to see re-released. “I could answer this question all day, but I’ll limit myself to some of the games in our catalog. No doubt we will do something with Berzerk and Frenzy. Those games are just too seminal not to explore. Bubsy and Mr. Nutz are both franchises that have some creative depth and would be fun to work with. When the right concept comes along, we won’t hesitate to revisit Adventure. And the Yars universe, it has so many branches. We expanded that gameplay with Yars: Recharged, and going forward we’d like to advance that story and world. And then, of course, there’s Centipede, Asteroids, and Missile Command. That’s the best part about this job, there’s so much here to work with.”

“I think it would be a shame for Bubsy not to have some sort of collection to celebrate his colorful history (both the highs and the very lows).”

[caption id="attachment_386586" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Mobygames[/caption]

Hope to dream

If I can make a wish, it’s that Atari gets a hold of the back catalog of Midway and (the separate company) Atari Games. If I’m not mistaken, Warner Bros. currently have those rights, and outside of Mortal Kombat, have been doing nothing with them. Rampage, Ramparts, Smash TV; are all languishing in WB's assets. It’s disgusting.

I never really expected that there’d be a day when I’d start rooting for Atari. As I said in the opening, the company has been troubled for almost its entire existence, and some pretty heinous things have gone on under the name. However, it doesn’t sound like Wade Rosen is trying to ignore that. Rather than pretend that Atari has always been a monolithic and prestigious brand, he’s instead attempting to regain the goodwill of gamers.

Moreover, his goals seem to align with what’s important to me. I can understand why Nightdive decided to get on board. There’s absolutely a chance that none of this will pay off and Atari will again trade hands and go searching for money elsewhere, but I’m hoping that doesn’t happen.

That’s not to say that Atari under Wade Rosen is absolutely perfect. There’s still a lot to be proven and a lot of grievances I still have. However, anything is better than Asteroids: Outpost.

The post Atari CEO Wade Rosen talks preservation, Web3, and the future of retro appeared first on Destructoid.

So many potential builds, but only a few being played

Over the years, "Action RPG" games have evolved quite a bit, adding more and more player customization with each new entry into the genre. Diablo 3 released in 2012 with over a billion unique build possibilities across all of its classes. Hit ARPG Path of Exile has been constantly adding new abilities via its unique skill gem system for almost ten years.

As we began to learn more about Diablo 4 leading up to its release, just one week ago, it quickly became apparent we'd once again get a massive amount of potential builds. With five classes each with their own unique skill trees full of active and passive skills, the possibilities seemed endless. But now less than two weeks since the early access release of the game, it's starting to look like Diablo 4 may have a bit of a skill diversity issue. Let's take a bit of an analytics look at the situation and try to determine if things are as bad as they seem, or if this is just an early exaggeration.

Examining Diablo 4 skill diversity

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/145l33t/skill_diversity_or_lack_thereof_top_sc_skill/

Thanks to a nifty spreadsheet compiled on the /r/diablo4 subreddit, we can see what skills players are using.  This sheet shows us what percentage of skills the highest level players in non-hardcore Diablo 4.

We obviously can't draw conclusions based on this limited sample size of the top players. But this information at least gives us a glimpse at what may be some pretty lacking skill diversity. For leveling, some skills are better than others but most are viable enough. This data is based on the highest-level players, so these builds are intended for the all-important endgame.

[caption id="attachment_383879" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The boring life of an elemental master

Let me start by saying my main class is a Sorcerer. Even though I'm not at max level, I'm over Level 50 and participating in endgame content. While I'm still enjoying the class, I've considered rolling as another primarily for the issues apparent by looking at the above spreadsheet. Once you've reached the endgame as a Sorc, you take all four defensive skills.

Teleport is arguably the best mobility skill in the game, so it's understandable that over 99% of Sorcs are using it. Ice Armor and Flame Shield both give extreme tankiness to an otherwise squishy class. Frost Nova is not only great for crowd control, but also for applying Vulnerability, which is extremely important.

Even still, it's very telling that about 97% of Sorcerers are using at least 3 defensive skills.

From there, we have two slots for offensive skills. As you can see, the choice really comes down to Ice Shards paired with Deep Freeze or Arc Lash paired with Unstable Currents. About 10% of players are attracted to the slower but high-burst damage Meteor build. This class has six potential core skills, and five basic skills. Despite this, only two or three of those are actually being used. Furthermore, Sorcerers have three unique Conjuration skills, but 95% of players aren't using any of them.

Overall, we can see that despite the class having many possibilities, only a couple of those are practical.

[caption id="attachment_384205" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Spinning and winning

Barbarians have been through a series of nerfs and balance changes in the short time since Diablo 4 released. They've also had several of their most effective Aspects get completely disabled, leading to less build variety until their full arsenal is available to them. Despite the nerfs, however, one thing is certain: shouts are strong. Nearly every Barbarian is using all three shouts; Rallying Cry, War Cry, and Challenging Shout. Similar to the mass use of Teleport, most Barb players use their Lunging Strike mobility skill.

Whirlwind has been a staple Barb skill since Diablo 2. The popularity of the skill continues in Diablo 4, with 84% using it as their primary skill. Almost all Whirlwind Barbs are using the Wrath of Berserker Ultimate. If not running this build, most other players are using Hammer of the Ancients with the Call of the Ancients Ultimate.

Unfortunately, that is pretty much the current variety for Barbarians in Diablo 4.

[caption id="attachment_383863" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Rogues prefer melee over ranged

For the Rogue class, most players seem to be leaning towards melee play. Twisting Blades is the most popular build by far, followed by Death Trap. These two are very similar to each other, and focus on the melee-style gameplay of the class. Even though the ranged Penetrating Shot skill has viability, only about 10% of the top players are running it.

Understandably, a large portion of Rogues are using the two mobility skills Dash and Shadow Step regardless of their build. The mobility of the class paired with their high damage is what makes them so strong, as they don't have much in the way of defensives.

[caption id="attachment_386186" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Bone Necromancers

A last-minute nerf to Necromancer Minions during the Server Slam beta has led to Bone being the favorite skills for Necro. Nearly 70% of Necros favor the high-damage Bone Spear build. The tight AoE-focused Bone Spirit is also seeing quite a bit of play. Minions were extremely popular in the first two beta weekends, which makes me wonder if they'd be as popular as the two Bone-focused builds if Minions weren't nerfed.

[caption id="attachment_386412" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Druids are perhaps in the best spot

As we look at the final class, we can see that Druids may have the most viable end-game builds right now. Most Druid players are using Earthen Bulwark, Debilitating Roar, and Grizzly Rage, because all three skills are beneficial regardless of damage skills. From there, we see Trample getting a lot of use. Trample is part of the strong AoE Pulverize build as well as Trampleslide. Another increasingly popular AoE skill is Tornado, which is being used with Grizzly Rage to eventually achieve permanent werewolf form.

What does this all mean?

So does Diablo 4 have a skill diversity issue? It's obviously way too early to claim the sky is falling. With nearly three million players, this ~2,500 sample size is definitely too small to consider anything as proven fact. Furthermore, we have to remember this data is based on the top player pool. Some players play whatever they want, regardless of what is meta or optimal.

But the fact that these players are essentially choosing between the same two or three builds for each class when they are hundreds of possibilities is a bit alarming. Is it a balancing issue? Do these popular builds do too much damage and simply need to be balanced to encourage others to pick whatever skills are most fun to them? There's plenty of room for improvement, and I'm not exactly sure what ideal diversity would look like in Diablo 4. I think an optimistic, (although unrealistic), scenario would include every Core Skill having a viable build. As of now, less than half of them seem to.

The developers have made it clear they plan to balance things. On top of the nearly daily hotfixes and balance changes, they are intentionally waiting to add competitive leaderboards. Hopefully, by then, we will see even more diversity in skills across Sanctuary.

The post Does Diablo 4 have a skill diversity issue? appeared first on Destructoid.

Is the endgame content your endgame?

When I took on review duty for Diablo 4, I knew it would come with some controversy. As someone slightly more critical of the game than the average consensus, I expressed concern with the online requirement and the live service nature of the game. Yet one conversation I absolutely didn’t expect to see post-launch was about the state of the content itself.

Though the game’s barely a week old, the endgame of Diablo 4 has sparked fierce debate. From what I’ve observed, opinions fall into two camps. On one side, you have people who sped through the campaign to get to the endgame. Many here insist that it’s too repetitive, funneling players into a couple of types of content without any notable variety. Others say that the crowd who rushed to the endgame got what they deserve since they didn’t bother to enjoy the journey along the way. Essentially, if you didn’t bother to enjoy the main course, don’t complain if you’re hungry after dessert.

For me, it’s wild to see this conversation pop up. I’ve probably played the game for 50 hours if we include the review period, and I'm already satisfied with it. A Link to the Past inspired me to argue for quality over quantity some months ago, so I’m happy to say I've gotten enough entertainment out of Diablo 4 to call it worthwhile. But even if the way I play the game completely differs from someone who just wants to race to max level, I still find it fascinating how different perspectives can completely change the way we look at a game.

Let’s explore this topic together.

[caption id="attachment_385530" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

“Endgame is when the real game starts”

If you’re into gaming enough to read a site like Destructoid, you’ve probably heard variations of this sentiment. Many MMORPG players will proudly say their game really starts once you reach max level. Heck, titles like Borderlands 2 literally say this in the game. To be charitable, I think the intended effect of these words is “Oh, you’re having fun now? The game’s only going to get better from here!”

In actuality, years of “endgame is when the game starts” has created some deeply negative conditioning. After all, if the fun part of the game is potentially 40 hours in, why wouldn’t you just rush there? This is prevalent in MMORPGs, where the crunchy gameplay of coordinating with friends to take down raids is usually reserved for the end. And since Diablo 4 is now riding an awkward line of kind of being an MMORPG but also kind of not, I can understand why players would approach it that way.

In truth, if something straight-up isn’t fun for such a long period of time, that isn’t a player problem. That is a game problem. If you assume you won't have fun until endgame, maybe you should play something else. For example, the “It’s not good for 40 hours” argument was often thrown around for Final Fantasy XIV. This caused the developers to take some drastic measures. The team cut huge swaths of the base game, remade several dungeons, and offered the whole thing for free.

Clearly, they didn’t feel happy treating their early game like a wall, and we should hold what we play to the same standard.

With the limitations of technology two decades ago, we can see why “the game starts at endgame” was a comfortable mantra for online games. However, game design has evolved since then, and we’ll miss out on great experiences if we assume so much of them will bore us. To this extent, I can understand why someone would feel mad that others are speedrunning the campaign of Diablo 4.

[caption id="attachment_385532" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Endgame content offers its own experience

Having said all that, I also get why someone would want to get to endgame as fast as possible.

In a good endgame, the world becomes your oyster. You’ve unlocked everything, you’ve finished the story, and now you can focus solely on becoming stronger. In a series like Diablo, early progression differs dramatically from the endgame.

Initially, you'll pick gear with better numbers. Later, you'll equip gear that makes one skill gain an additional effect where enemies explode after two seconds, which synergizes perfectly with your other gear that arguments your passive so exploding enemies explode three more times, which really cranks up your main skill that gets a +30% damage bonus for every explosion in the last ten seconds. Or maybe the build where enemies freeze instead of explode could be considered "better."

A good endgame can provide an engaging, long-term gameplay loop as you inch closer toward a “perfect” build. And watching your character take on greater challenges with every increase in power can feel remarkably satisfying. Maybe the core gameplay won’t change much from the early or mid-game, but the sense of progression completely differs. So for someone specifically looking forward to that end of the experience, I can understand the disappointment of never finding it.

Of course, I can’t really say for myself if Diablo 4 fails or succeeds in its endgame loop yet. I’m just taking my time and enjoying the game until I get there, which makes it easier to accept whatever state it's actually in.

Finding your own way to play

I’ve always been a completionist. Pokemon Red was the first game to ever inspire me to “100%” a game, what with all the marketing about needing to catch 'em all. Since then, I haven't cared so much about getting something specific out of a game, but just seeing everything it offers.

This is why I still feel excited to explore a game like Diablo 4, despite needing to start my character from scratch. I love uncovering all the corners of the map and completing side quests. I adore finding Lilith Statues in the wild and conferring with others on where to find more. Even the prospect of replaying the game with different classes and builds sounds exciting to me. Every aspect of the game may not connect with me, but I at least want to experience them for myself.

I don’t mind taking my journey slower and savoring the experience. Since I’ve taken up employment at Destructoid, I’ve realized how special it is when a game really connects with me. I want to enjoy those moments while they last, and I’d hate to ruin the fun by racing to see what’s around the corner.

If we visualize games as mountains to climb, some want to see the view at the top while others enjoy the journey itself. I’m the person who’s off in the woods somewhere because it’s a beautiful day outside and someone told me I could find mushrooms out here. And you know I’m not going to miss an opportunity to snap a photo of a cool mushroom.

[caption id="attachment_385534" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Let’s hear from you

My thoughts are slightly more scattered than my usual opinion piece, but honestly, that’s deliberate. While I know the way I like to play video games, seeing this conversation really sparked my curiosity. Sure, I’ve framed this article around Diablo 4, but discussions surrounding endgame content have existed long before now. Heck, I remember people told me I hadn’t even experienced Final Fantasy 7 unless I defeated Ruby Weapon.

So this is where I ask you, Destructoid: how much do you value endgame content? Do you want a game to provide a fun loop that can keep you engaged for dozens of hours? Will you drop a game as soon as you complete the main story? Or maybe your expectations depend on the genre of the game. There are no wrong answers unless you slam your head on your keyboard and type an incoherent string of letters. That might provoke Professor Tim to give you a failing grade.

Regardless of your take, I hope you enjoy the games you like and accept other perspectives. In an ideal scenario, maybe approaching a game from a new mindset can turn it into a new, exciting experience. That said, I’m still not going to play a game that only gets good at 40 hours. I’d rather beat A Link to the Past five times instead.

The post How much does endgame content matter to you? appeared first on Destructoid.

The Nukem Paradox

I simultaneously subscribe to two opposing beliefs about Duke Nukem. The first is that, anecdotally, many people don’t recall or even realize that there were two games starring the character before Duke Nukem 3D. The second is that everyone who owned a capable PC in the early 90s played Duke's first adventures. In either case, Duke Nukem 3D greatly overshadowed the games that came before it.

Apogee’s shareware distribution model meant that the first episode of many of their games were completely free. This put games like Duke Nukem on a lot of hard drives, even before the internet was really widespread. People selling Intel-based PC-compatibles could load the systems up with these games, then advertise them as additional features. Buying a computer for work? Well, the kids might dig these games. You should definitely spring for the 486 model.

It’s this practice that made me a fan of Duke Nukem even before he was spitting wisecracks. My Aunt owned an IBM PC, and she had the shareware version of Duke Nukem. When my family finally got a computer, it had the first episode on it. By the time the character started doing his best Ash Williams impression, I was already indoctrinated.

[caption id="attachment_385639" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Mobygames[/caption]

Hail to the compatibility

Duke Nukem first hit computers in 1991. The Sega Genesis had already been on the scene for two years, and the SNES came out that same year, but this is what games on DOS looked like. It’s easy to see PCs as a bastion for cutting-edge tech nowadays, but at the time, compatibility was king, which typically meant supporting the 8088 processor. Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons came out in 1990 and was fancy enough that you needed a 286 at the minimum, but I’m getting carried away here.

What I’m saying is that, yes, Duke Nukem is kind of ugly compared to contemporaries on other platforms. That was normal.

It also didn’t scroll especially well. One of the things that early 8-bit consoles did really well was their scrolling, but that was the benefit of having the hardware designed around it. Duke’s movements and the levels themselves are very choppy. This never really bothered me. It does four-direction scrolling pretty well, and because the whole game is choppy, it doesn’t really take long to grow accustomed to it. It’s just one of the quirks of the era.

[caption id="attachment_385641" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Mobygames[/caption]

Oprah of the Future

Anyhoo, Duke Nukem is the timeless story of Dr. Proton, a bad guy that attacks L.A. for some reason. He’s using fancy techbots to cause destruction, and only Duke is a bad enough dude to stop him. Also, Duke wants to end this quickly so he can get back home to watch Oprah. The stakes are high!

Given the time period, you’d kind of expect that Duke Nukem would just be Apogee’s in-house take on Commander Keen, and it’s really not. It actually has more in common with Duke Nukem 3D. You drop in a level, and you need to scour it to find keys, unlock doors, and get to the exit. It’s not at all that different from what would become the maiden formula for first-person shooters.

It works. As someone who has always been in orbit around Duke Nukem, I may not be the best judge of this, but the formula stands up well. It’s possible that a game about a dude jumping on platforms and shooting robots with his ray gun may come across as really generic, but I think it still stacks up. It’s maybe not Commander Keen, but it compares all the same.

[caption id="attachment_385642" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Mobygames[/caption]

Time to Squeeze

This could be attributed to its excellent sense of progression in each of the episodes. As an episode continues, you gain power-ups that you'll keep throughout its duration. Things like weapon upgrades (that increase the number of projectiles you can have on-screen at a time), grappling claws that let you stick to certain ceilings, or even a hand that lets you touch a thing. Each episode is often less than two hours long, meaning the whole set of three will run you maybe 4-6 hours.

Apogee squeezed a decent amount of variety out of Duke Nukem’s mechanics. There’s a certain rigidity to it, as Duke doesn’t have much more to his repertoire than jumping and shooting. However, the key-hunt formula allows for some creative design with the maze-like levels. The three episodes explore everything this engine can do, so by the time you hit the third episode, there isn’t much left to surprise.

It at least does well with themes. The first episode is Shrapnel City, taking place in and below L.A. Next, you’re on the moon, and finally, you travel to the future. The locales don’t have much bearing on the gameplay itself, but there’s enough change in backdrops and some creative level designs to at least make each one distinct.

[caption id="attachment_385643" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Mobygames[/caption]

Insatiable taste for babes

Most notably, this is before Duke really got his attitude. He doesn’t wear sunglasses, for example, and he’s a bit more cartoony than some of the more serious action heroes at the time. I don’t think, at this stage, someone was really thinking hard about what kind of character he would be. He’s sort of like discount bin Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that was enough to carry the game.

1993’s Duke Nukem 2 was when he started to get his edge. Certain standards established in this first title stay true throughout the series, you just shouldn’t expect to see tits here. In fact, Duke’s insatiable taste for “babes” doesn’t really factor in yet. He’s just the only competent person on Earth, and it's up to him to stop Dr. Proton.

Because of that, playing Duke Nukem is perhaps more useful in seeing how the series evolved into one of the biggest first-person shooters of all time. On the other hand, if you just want to see Duke as he is now, it's completely missable.

I do want to point out that because Duke shares his name with a Captain Planet character for some reason, Apogee later released a version where he was named "Duke Nukum." That's not canon, nor was it how it was originally. Someone was definitely going to mention that little piece of trivia, so I wanted to get the jump on it.

Unfortunately, Duke’s current rights holder, Gearbox, hasn’t made playing the original episodes of Duke Nukem easy. They’re available on the Zoom Platform due to a pre-existing agreement. A “remastered” version is also coming to Evercade this Fall that touches things up and smooths out the scrolling. That’s currently the only slated platform for the remasters, which I respect. Especially since it might be the killer app needed to get me to buy an Evercade, but I still hope it comes to other platforms. More people need to see a future where Oprah is still on broadcast TV.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Duke Nukem existed before he could perceive three dimensions appeared first on Destructoid.

Games have CHAINGED

Anthology games are not my thing. I just can’t get into DreadX titles and prefer to take my short-form narrative experiences à la carte. The concept itself, however, is rad as hell, which is demonstrated by CHAINGED. The overarching idea is that a buttload of developers all contributed short experiences that make up a choose-your-own-adventure. It’s like Give Yourself Goosebumps books, except sometimes it’s a disturbing version of animal crossing.

CHAINGED was organized by Andrew Pype and consists of a heaping helping of the HauntedPS1 Community. However, the real draw here is just how unhinged things can get. Each developer was only given the context of the games preceding theirs in the branch and wasn’t allowed to communicate with one another. The result is extremely unique.

[caption id="attachment_384838" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Antichrist on a tidal wave

You play as Catherine, who finds herself at the end of the world. She clings to the last precious possession she has: her daughter, Lucy. Unfortunately, Lucy is snatched away by the Antichrist, and Catherine turns to her good friend Chronos for help. Her plan is to travel back in time and prevent the Antichrist from ever happening.

Your first choice is a whole lot of nothing. You get to choose whether you travel to Wyoming or Kyoto with no guidance on which one makes more sense. The choices from there, however, get a little more clear-cut. Do you fight tooth and nail, or do you seek help and cut a deal? It’s always a binary choice, though one is not obviously meant to be “good” and the other “bad.” Often, both decisions suck, but you just have to choose the one that might suck the least.

Whatever you choose, you’re dropped into a game that could be any genre. First-person games are well-represented, but you’ll also find games that lean more toward RPGs or even rail shooters. None of them are particularly deep, nor are they very long, but that’s kind of the point of the whole experience.

[caption id="attachment_384843" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The CHAIN gang

I initially chose a route that wound up turning me into some kind of time god. That’s pretty cool. Once you’ve reached a conclusion somewhere along the chain, you can view the whole string of games and choose a different branch. You can replay games, but if you just want to skip ahead to the decision-making, there’s the option to fast forward. One of the best parts of CHAINGED is the ease with which you can explore new narratives.

CHAINGED is the sequel to a previous anthology simply called CHAIN. CHAIN was a linear experience with the same idea of having different developers forge ahead in a narrative using incomplete knowledge of what’s going on. The choice-based progression in CHAINGED is not only structurally more interesting, but it also means that if you hit a game that isn’t as well executed as the others (it happens), you can choose another direction and hit a conclusion elsewhere. You can then easily return to the link that you backed out of and try again.

The downside to the format is that I don’t feel it really highlights the developers involved all that well. While the final product is compelling as a whole, the inset games are too short and simple to really get a feel for a creator’s approach. I was more excited to see folks that I recognized, but I don’t think I came away with any new back catalogs to dig through.

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Communal toil

It’s great to see communal art projects become more widespread in video games. Considering any singular creator is a mash of focuses, perspectives, and skills, seeing them all directly compare in a singular context is always interesting. I also like to see it evolve past simple themed anthologies and into cohesive narratives.

I sort of wish that the package was similarly cohesive, however. Really, CHAINGED is a launch platform. Every time you select one of the nodes along the chain, it launches a separate executable, possibly in a completely different resolution. I imagine compiling them all into a singular executable would be extremely time-consuming, and CHAINGED is offered for free, so it’s something not worth complaining about. My capture program just really hated it, so I couldn’t record video of it. Whatever.

Oh, wait. It recorded. But it saved it under Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones. That's weird. I wonder why that is.

Anyway. As I mentioned, CHAINGED is free, and while there’s a lot of content to sift through, it can be easily put down and picked back up later. It’s a well-executed concept and a great showcase for the community’s talent, even if the format makes it difficult for any of them to stand out. It’s exactly the sort of thing that reminds me of why I love this community.

The post CHAINGED strings together haunted games in a horrifying anthology appeared first on Destructoid.

Or "the late 1900s" as it is now called

If there were two things I was obsessed with as a pre-teen, it was Duke Nukem and sight-seeing. Those two things may be related. When Duke Nukem 3D was released in 1996, first-person shooters were widely using very abstract level design. Doom 2 was supposed to have levels that were set on Earth, but did it actually look like Earth? Not really.

Most of Duke Nukem 3D was set in Los Angeles. While its best-designed levels all took place in space, the most memorable and interesting ones were set in movie theatres and drive-thrus. I can’t describe how exciting this was for me at the time without sounding really stupid, but just trust me, it was amazing.

With that in mind, the Duke It Out in DC expansion pack was mind-blowing. I didn’t get to play it right away as a kid – not until I borrowed a friend’s Kill-a-Ton Collection – but I remember vibrating with excitement at just hearing about it.

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E1M3

Duke it Out in DC is exactly as it sounds. It transplants the action of Duke Nukem 3D to Washington D.C. Or at least the best representation that could be managed in Ken Silverman’s legendary Build Engine.

It was developed by Sunstorm Interactive, who were essentially Duke Nukem’s second family. The designers behind it went on to release another expansion, Duke Carribean: Life’s a Beach and the spin-off Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project. Duke it Out in DC is a pretty modest start. While Duke Carribean would have a tonne of new assets created for it, Duke it Out in DC heavily repurposes ones from the base game.

The most amusing example of this is the level based in the Smithsonian Institution. Placards were just cropped from an image of the map appearing in the E1M3, and a lot of the art exhibits are just wholesale textures presented as modern paintings. Honestly, I love to see it. Points for creative re-use of assets.

[caption id="attachment_383678" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Bad enough dude

The plot is really generic “save the president” stuff. We already know Duke is a bad enough dude. However, when you think about it, why did the aliens just attack L.A. to begin with? Washington D.C. isn’t the center of the world like some people think it is, but L.A. definitely isn’t that important.

Duke it Out in DC starts your tour off in the White House. You then move onto the National Mall, the FBI headquarters, the Smithsonian Institution, the Capitol Building, and then it runs out of ideas. You’re put through a sewer level and one on the metro, both of which are ideas that Duke Nukem 3D already used in the base game. To be fair, the sewer ends in the Pentagon, but only briefly. I also feel like having a sewer terminate at the Pentagon could be a clever analogy, but I’m not going there.

The point is that Duke it Out in DC is very uneven when it comes to the quality of levels, and it largely sags in the middle. The first few D.C.-themed levels are great, but then you hit the Smithsonian, which is the worst of the whole bunch. It’s a large, sprawling area that has a very mystifying critical path and a lot of superfluous places to search for keys.

After that, the Capitol Building level feels unfinished, and the next couple are the metro and sewer levels. You’d be forgiven for giving up there, but the “Dread October” level, while not being very D.C., is probably the best designed of the expansion. The last one, set in an underground bunker, isn’t a slouch either.

[caption id="attachment_383682" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Build Engine Chops

The developers at Sunstorm were more adept at using the Build Engine than your usual modders. I’m assuming this is because they’d have a hotline to 3D Realms. However, they use some of the fancier technical trickery the engine is capable of. The aforementioned Dread October level uses the classic spiral-staircase technique to create a multi-storied level rather convincingly.

On the other hand, the team doesn’t have the same chops as the original level design team. Even the best levels are built more around concept than flow. They’re really nothing egregious, but when you stack them up against the base game – and it’s impossible not to – they don’t fair well.

For that matter, needing to be compared to Duke Nukem 3D is probably why Duke would never find the same success again. Having to stack up next to what is literally and without hyperbole the best first-person shooter ever created is always going to lead to disappointment. And that’s what you get here.

[caption id="attachment_383683" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Maximum '90s

Duke it Out in DC is at least an interesting curiosity. It’s maximum ‘90s. Duke Nukem 3D is already one of the most ‘90s games in existence, but then Sunstorm went the extra mile.

The president you’re trying to save is none other than Bill Clinton, and there are pictures of him along with Janet Reno in all the government buildings. It’s made more amusing by the fact that the Duke Nukem games are supposed to be set in the near future. It reminds me of that episode of Pinky & The Brain when they’re time-traveling. They go to the future, and the U.S. is still being led by the disembodied head of Bill Clinton. It’s like everyone thought the ‘90s were just never going to end. We had reached the peak of human existence, and we were ready to dig our heels in.

For that matter, I'm surprised there was no outcry about Duke it Out in DC using a real-world environment as its battleground. Considering politicians were targeting violent games pretty hard back in those days, they really missed an opportunity here. For that matter, after the January 6 Riots at the U.S. Capitol Building, someone could have pointed at it and said, "Look! This wasn't the result of radical political partisanship! Duke Nukem was training people for it."

Maybe I was just a sensationalist pundit in a previous life.

[caption id="attachment_383686" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Not nothing

That’s sort of how Duke it Out in DC still proves its relevancy. It’s not only just more Duke Nukem 3D, which is never a bad thing, but it’s also an interesting time capsule. Certainly, the expansion is not as indispensable as the game that it was spawned from, but it’s worth seeing all the same.

It’s just too bad that it’s not really available anymore (Update: Apparently it is available through the Zoom Platform). The Duke Nukem property is owned wholly by Gearbox now, and despite Randy Pitchford getting his start at 3D Realms, they don’t seem to have much reverence for the series. If anything, they seem to just love the character and not understand that it was the game that made him great.

So, we had Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition, which had its flaws but was, at least, a rather definitive collection. They replaced it with Duke Nukem 3D: World Tour, which omits the expansions in favor of some levels created by the original developers. It’s not nothing, but it’s less than ideal, which is a phrase you could apply to basically everything involving Duke these days.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Duke Nukem 3D: Duke it Out in DC is maximum ’90s appeared first on Destructoid.

The path to victory begins here

If you picked up Street Fighter 6 today, then chances are that you're feeling a little overwhelmed by all of the characters, modes, mechanics, control systems, and more. It's understandable, fighting games are not easy. In fact, they're one of the hardest and most skillful genres in the whole of gaming. Always have been.

Victory isn't a matter of learning the biggest combo and performing it over and over again. It's a long road of building upon yourself, learning the intricacies of the characters, learning what to do, and — equally as important — when, where, and why to do it. But while I will never claim to be a fighting game expert, I can at least help you to start finding your feet, and the rest is up to you and your patience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_3cIvwbo98

Below are several individual guides written for Destructoid, but collated here for your reading pleasure. They focus on the new mechanics of Street Fighter 6, specifically the Drive Meter, while also taking a look at instances such as Burnout, and offering advice on characters that you should check out. None of these guides explain How to Win Online, no guide can tell you that, regardless of its "shocked face" thumbnail.

Winning comes as a result of playing better moment-to-moment. Learn to do that, and winning follows automatically. Wishing you luck on your journey with Street Fighter 6. This article will be updated over the coming weeks as more guides are added. Don't get disheartened, go at your own pace, and understand that losing is part of improving.

But do accept the hardest pill to swallow in fighting games: You have to put in the practice.

Street Fighter 6 Mechanics Guides

• Five characters beginners should check out
• Drive Impact, explained
• Drive Reversal, explained
• Drive Rush, explained
• Drive Rush Shortcut, explained
• Drive Parry, explained
• Burnout, explained
• How to Taunt
• How to perform Screw Piledriver consistently
• How to change your controls in Battle Hub

World Tour & Other Guides

• How to Change Your Appearance
• How to Deepen Masters Bond/Gift Guide
• How to Earn More Zenny
• Voice Actors & Cast List
• Fighter Coins Explained

The post Here’s are our guides to mechanics and more in Street Fighter 6 appeared first on Destructoid.

Say hello to the bad guy

If you’ve played the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, you probably know Red Arremer, even if the name doesn't ring a bell. The red gargoyle was a memorable addition to the classic arcade title, as their AI was extremely cruel. They would hover just outside of range, then swoop down at opportune moments to trip you up. At a time when most enemies did little more than move from right to left and maybe bounce if they were feeling sassy, Red Arremer stood out as a worthy (and vexing) foe.

You can scarcely tell by looking at it, but Demon’s Crest is the third in a series of Ghosts 'n Ghouls spin-offs that was originally titled Gargoyle’s Quest. So, after Gargoyle’s Quest 1 and 2, we got Demon’s Crest. I often complain about the bonkers nomenclature for the Ghosts 'n Goblins localized titles. But in this case, the Japanese version of Demon’s Crest (Demon’s Blaze: Makaimura Monshou Hen) doesn’t follow their established nomenclature either.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about the title. I’d rather discuss what a work of art Demon’s Crest is.

[caption id="attachment_382100" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Naked, sinewy combat

Demon’s Crest starts with one of the best intros to a video game since Jake Armitage kicked his way out of his own morgue slab in Shadowrun. It immediately cuts in with Firebrand (the localized name of Red Arremer) standing aimlessly in a ruined colosseum. Suddenly: zombie dragon.

Before you’ve even established the difference between jump and shoot in your brain, you’re fighting a huge undead dragon. After you kill it, you break out of a window, and then the dragon’s head pops out behind you. Firebrand could just leave the dragon to be stuck there, but Demon’s Crest wants you to know one thing about the humpable piece of demon meat; he’s an absolute badass. So, he melts the head off the dragon before setting out.

Demon’s Crest quickly establishes that you are in control of the most amazing creature to walk the demon realm. There isn’t a lot of dialogue, but if you’re not talking to a shopkeep, usually the NPC is saying something along the lines of “Holy shit, you’re awesome!” One of the main recurring baddies is General Arma, and every time you kick his butt, he invariably says, “I am left aroused by your combat prowess. We must lock in naked, sinewy combat again sometime.”

And yet, the goal of Demon’s Crest is to become more powerful.

[caption id="attachment_382096" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Irresistible force

The narrative picks up some time after Firebrand tried and failed to assemble the eponymous Demon’s Crests. Each one contains special powers, and he nearly has the last one when someone finally takes him down. This is an important lesson. No one is perfect. Even the most irresistible forces sometimes fail. You just have to get back up and try again.

So, that’s what you’re doing. Firebrand has re-awoken, and it’s time to regain the crests that are rightfully his. As is law in video games, he does this by beating bosses.

The weird thing about Demon’s Crest is that it isn’t linear, nor is it heavily gated. You select your level by flying over a Mode-7 landscape and landing somewhere that looks interesting. The action stages themselves actually fork in many places, with some only being accessible when you have a specific skill. It’s rare that the game will outright stop you, but to be helpful, it tells you the ideal path if you hit the start button while flying.

The worst that is going to happen is you’ll get your fantastic, chiseled butt kicked by a boss. There isn’t much of a penalty for death. You can either try again or go elsewhere. The goal is to keep on gaining items, crests, and power-ups to overcome anything that gets in your way. This can be a little frustrating for a couple of reasons, including the fact that it has worse endings if you take on the final boss too early.

[caption id="attachment_382098" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A real firebrand

As a platformer, Demon’s Crest is great, but it isn’t the best. Don’t get me wrong, in terms of gameplay, it’s definitely top-shelf. The level design is rather routine, and it doesn’t do much that wasn’t already established in the NES and Game Boy titles that came before it. It starts you off weak, and then it doesn’t take long before you live up to the name of Firebrand. After that, it doesn’t really know what to do with you.

You get your most important powers before the halfway mark, and then you'll spend the rest of the game just getting health power-ups and inventory items. These are necessary to get the best ending of the game, but it makes the latter half of the game feel a bit flat when your rewards are just more on top of a lot. It thankfully doesn’t drag on long. Like the previous games in the Gargoyle’s Quest series, Demon’s Crest is a pretty short game. Despite this, it doesn’t feel truncated or short on content. It just gets its point across efficiently and doesn’t drag things out.

However, aesthetically, it’s one of the greatest things committed to grey plastic. The title screen alone is worth seeing. Everything about the visual and audio design has extra flare to it that is both uniquely gloomy and incredibly Super Nintendo. It has a lot in common with Super Castlevania IV in that it’s a surprisingly dark look on a console known for its bright colors. Yet, it still does a lot of audio and visual effects that were common on the console, such as chain explosions and that weird farting noise bosses sometimes do when they die.

[caption id="attachment_382101" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Sexy gargoyles

Demon’s Crest is among my favorite games on the SNES, and I feel like I appreciate it even more each time I return to play it again. Thankfully, Capcom is pretty respectful toward the title. It landed on the Wii U and 3DS Virtual Consoles, and it's currently on the Switch Online SNES app. Considering an original cartridge copy is worth hundreds of dollars, having it more accessible on other platforms is really appreciated.

Despite this, I find that it’s still overlooked. I had never heard of it when I was growing up with a Super Nintendo in my household and only tried it years later as I gradually uncovered the Gargoyle’s Quest series.

Strangely, there are no in-game credits to Demon’s Crest. Outside the music composers and the fact that the fantastic Julie Bell did the North American artwork, I can’t find information on who designed Demon’s Crest. Capcom wasn’t the best at crediting their development teams in the ‘90s, but they at least usually did a roll with pseudonyms. Not with Demon’s Crest, which is almost distressing.

Nonetheless, if you dig sexy gargoyles and gloomy demon visuals, then Demon’s Crest is something you should check out. Actually, even if you don’t like those things, that’s weird, but you should check it out anyway. Demon’s Crest is the Super Nintendo and Capcom at their best. It received an honorable mention when Destructoid’s Timothy Monbleau made his 15 Greatest SNES Games list, but I’d go even further than that. At the very least, I would give it a very honorable mention, but depending on the day, it could also have a number next to it.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post Demon’s Crest for SNES is a 16-bit power fantasy appeared first on Destructoid.

Test your Bible skills

I may be one of the few people in the world who can be upsold on Kusoge (crap game). I was minding my own business, spending all my money at the local game store. The clerk there, perfectly aware of my infamous lack of taste, pulled out a boxed copy of King of Kings: The Early Years. Usually, I don’t collect boxed NES titles, but the price was right, and he made a convincing argument. I did need another subject for my column. I also could probably use more Jesus in my life.

Perhaps this was God speaking through my friendly neighborhood game dispenser. He led me to the promised kusoge, and it was my sacred duty to play it. I lasted about an hour because, while God may provide, He has no guarantees on quality.

[caption id="attachment_380890" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Jesus' lawyers

King of Kings: The Early Years was part of Wisdom Tree’s infamous run of games based on the Bible. Back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Nintendo had a lot of (very illegal and anti-competitive) rules that it placed on retailers and publishers. If you wanted to sell Nintendo games, you couldn’t also sell unlicensed cartridges. Color Dreams figured out a way around it: Jesus. They rebranded to a Christian-themed company and began developing games based on the Bible.

Christian bookstores didn’t have to worry about Nintendo for a few reasons. First, they didn’t typically carry video games, so they didn’t need to worry about Nintendo withholding anything from them. Secondly, both they and Wisdom Tree didn’t need to worry about getting sued, because Nintendo wouldn’t want to be known as the company that brought the hammer down on Jesus. Also, if they did, Jesus has great lawyers.

King of Kings released in 1991, the same years as Bible Adventures and Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land hit consecrated shelves. It shares the most in common with Bible Adventures in the way that it features three unique games. So, we’ll go through all of them.

[caption id="attachment_380891" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The Wise Men

When Jesus was born, a bright star lit up the sky, and these three guys are told to follow it. You play as the Wise Men, who travel on the backs of camels to lavish baby Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The camel spits, which is appropriate, because that’s what camels do aside from just retaining water. Their spit is laced with a deadly venom that is only effective against certain animals. Which animals? I don’t know. The only classification I can give you is that it’s effective against the animals that are weak to spit. It’s otherwise completely arbitrary. Porcupines? Impervious to hork. Birds? Saliva is deadly against them.

For the animals who aren’t impressed by your steed’s expectorations, you can use fruit. Scattered around some of the stages are various fruits like grapes, pears, or apples. Your camel can eat these, then puke them out with a press of the select button. If an animal or obstacle endures your camel's spit, you can bet that it hates fruit.

However, it doesn’t matter how much of the wildlife your camel kills, The Wise Men is still excruciating. Wisdom Tree obviously developed King of Kings with the goal of Bible plus video games, and everything beyond that just wasn’t a priority. The game uses no invincibility frames after you take damage, and enemies tend to pop up in spots to exploit this. You’ll often find them at the edge of platforms or beside walls where you can get stuck. It doesn’t help that the camel won’t jump unless conditions are perfect, so it’s completely possible that you’ll latch onto an enemy and just have your health drained.

I struggled through level three. After I finally toppled level five, I checked the manual to see how much pain I was in for. Fifteen levels? Fuck that. Jesus can have a crappy birthday for all I care.

[caption id="attachment_380892" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Flight to Egypt

In the next game, Mary and Joseph are taking baby Jesus to… Egypt, I guess. My Bible camp days are failing me here. I absolutely do not know this story.

This is a good place to note that you restore health in King of Kings by stepping on scrolls. The scrolls will give you a quiz on various parts of the Bible, which I’m always bad at. Thankfully, there aren’t that many questions, so I had most of the answers memorized after suffering through The Wise Men. Even still, I definitely have not learned anything about the Bible, since these questions completely lack context. This might be educational if you’re, like, trying to memorize the Bible, but not if you’re just trying to learn from it.

Mary and Joseph are climbing mountains with the assistance of their ass. Their ass is stout and mighty, capable of a kick that is a lot more reliable than camel spit. Flight to Egypt is actually not all that horrible, but it’s still painful enough. The mountain starts getting all these slopes, and the ass doesn’t have great traction. You have to hop repeatedly up certain inclines, which King of Kings doesn’t seem to understand makes dodging obstacles next to impossible, so it happily drops boulders and enemies on you while you attempt to get up these slopes.

I made it to level eight this time. My greatest frustration was constantly having my ass kicked off the edge of a waterfall by a duck. After enough mallard abuse, I checked the manual to see how many levels were in this game. Twelve of them? Fuck that.

[caption id="attachment_380895" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Jesus and the Temple

This is another story I don’t know. Apparently, Mary and Joseph are returning from Passover and they “noticed” that 12-year-old Jesus has gone missing. I’m sure there’s actually something to this story, but the description just makes it sound like someone losing their child in the supermarket.

I was struggling through the first level when I gave up. There are apparently eight levels in this one, but my willpower has been whittled down to a useless nub. God has tested me, and I have failed.

To be fair, Jesus and the Temple had no chance of being the secretly good part of King of Kings. The first level has you jump into a river and swept downstream. The water always terminates in a bottomless pit, but the jumping controls don’t like it when your character is being pushed, and King of Kings continues its habit of putting enemies right next to pits. So not only are you mashing the jump button, trying to get Joseph to leap over a pit, but there’s also an enemy there waiting to stun-lock you to your doom.

That's to say nothing of the music. It's been extremely bad and very repetitive throughout all of the included games, but it's the worst in Jesus and the Temple.

So, fuck that.

[caption id="attachment_380896" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Amen

King of Kings has some weird technical prowess behind it. The pixel art really isn’t that bad, and it uses effects like pseudo-parallax scrolling. Someone knew how to get the best out of the NES, while another someone didn’t care to apply it in any competent way. I say “someone” because the entire development team decided to take an Alan Smithee on this one, and there are no credits.

It’s also amusing to me that King of Kings is one of the few Wisdom Tree titles not to get ported to any other system. A number of their NES titles quickly moved over to the Sega Genesis and DOS. Not King of Kings, though. Maybe that’s related to sales or something technical that I can’t glean from just playing the game. However, it’s worth noting that Bible Adventures and Spiritual Warfare do have some redeeming qualities, and King of Kings is just awful. Maybe not sacrilegious, but definitely a test of faith.

I lasted just over an hour with King of Kings. I normally aim to actually complete the kusoge that I tackle, but there was just no chance here. I’d like to point out that I spent double this time on Mary-Kate and Ashley: Winner’s Circle just recently and actually finished it. So, what I’m saying is, between Mary-Kate and Ashley and Jesus, Mary-Kate and Ashley deserve your worship.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post King of Kings: The Early Years on NES is holy crap appeared first on Destructoid.