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.

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.

[caption id="attachment_397528" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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The post Parodius Da for Super Famicom shows the height of Konami’s fall appeared first on Destructoid.

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.

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The post Bloody Roar 2 for arcade and PS1 expands the fluffy fighting 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.

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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.

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

The post Bloody Roar is far overdue for a return 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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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.”

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

No Brakes

Crazy Taxi is like a wonderful time capsule. It captures the best part of the ‘00s in perfect stasis: the part that was basically still the late ‘90s. It was a time when we celebrated the identity of being an asshole. Consumerism was both rampant and celebrated. Wait, that all makes it sound awful. Maybe it was, but in kind of a funny way. And although the developers probably didn’t intend it to be, Crazy Taxi encapsulates all of it.

My first experience with the series was Crazy Taxi on the GameCube. Acclaim ported the Sega arcade title right when Nintendo’s first disc-based console was fresh on the shelves. There wasn’t a lot to play at the time, so I wound up playing everything. I have some great memories of playing Crazy Taxi with my mother. One of my favorite arcade experiences was playing the game on an actual sit-down cabinet. I think I got an A Rank. I was rusty.

It’s weird that modern ports of Crazy Taxi are so hard to come by. You can get it on PC, but it doesn’t have the licensed music or the rampant product placement, which actually takes from the experience. The most definitive way to play the games still seems to be back on Xbox with Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller.

[caption id="attachment_380680" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Take me to the Original Levis Store!

While the concept of Crazy Taxi is arcade as heck, only the first Crazy Taxi was truly designed for the format. Crazy Taxi 2 remains exclusive to Dreamcast, and while Crazy Taxi 3 would make it to the arcade, it was first developed for Xbox.

Rather than just be a straight sequel, Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller is more like a definitive edition of the trilogy. New to it is the Glitter Oasis city based off Las Vegas, but it also includes the West Coast area from Crazy Taxi and Small Apple from Crazy Taxi 2. Missing are the console exclusive level from the first Crazy Tax and Around Apple from Crazy Taxi 2. So, not everything is accounted for, but you get the best of the first two games, with a third level added. The “Crazy Hop” from Crazy Taxi 2 is included, and the older two levels are reworked to take into account the new features.

Crazy Taxi 3 also looks a lot slicker than the other console ports. I’m not one to normally comment on a game’s UI, but damn, that’s a nice UI. For some reason, they added reflections to the edges of UI panels, and it just looks neat.

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Yo, I need to get to Flavor Town!

The downside is Glimmer Oasis runs like an eel. At least it does on the strip. It’s kind of weird that it has problems with the one area that is completely new to the game. You get into the city proper, and it begins to chug into slow motion. That would be kind of cool if this was an actual feature, but it’s definitely just the hardware struggling. I guess they just couldn’t stand to turn down the glitz.

Joining the eight drivers from the first two games are a new set of four. They are: Some guy, Bixbite, Mrs. Venus, and Guy Fieri. They actually fit right in with the other obnoxious mix of personalities from the other game.

Initially, the drivers are locked to the maps from the game they appeared in, but if you play through Crazy Box, you can unlock the ability to play them anywhere. Crazy Box is a series of mini-games that teach you advanced skills from the game. They can get pretty intense, pitting you against a tornado or on moving platforms. While they don’t change the fact that the core game is what you’re there for, they can be a fun palate cleanser.

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Are ya ready!?

If you’re unfamiliar with how Crazy Taxi works, your parents and I are both very disappointed in you. Essentially, you play as a cab driver with social anxiety. Rather than take the scenic route to run up the fare, your job is to barrel through traffic and pedestrians to deliver your passenger in seconds, rather than minutes.

It’s a rather bizarre world where someone doesn’t just need to get to Pizza Hut, they need to get there right now, and they care little for the lives of anyone using adjacent sidewalks at that time. It’s constantly chaotic. Your car drives like it runs on Pixie Sticks, and gravity has called in sick. The world’s physics are bouncy, your car is indestructible, and, don’t worry, everyone has really great insurance.

You race against the time to pick up fares and drop them off as expediently as possible. Longer distance passengers (marked by green circles) pay better, but people who just need a lift up the road (red circles) are quicker to pop off and have a greater chance at awarding more time on the clock. Using the standard rules, you need to keep delivering people under schedule to increase the extra seconds you have. It’s like urban Out Run in a smellier car.

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Pizza and fried chicken

Underlying Crazy Taxi 3 is an awesomely repetitive soundtrack by The Offspring, Bad Religion, Brian Setzer, Methods of Mayhem, and Citizen Bird. They’re all generally locked to specific tracks, so Glimmer Oasis has more of a rockabilly soundtrack, whereas West Coast is pop-punk. There are way too few tracks, but the tempo and sound of each one are spot on. Ask anyone who has put in significant time on Crazy Taxi and they’ll tell you that “All I Want” isn’t a song by The Offspring. It’s a song from Crazy Taxi.

Newer ports of any of the Crazy Taxi games tend to omit the licensed soundtrack, as well as the product placement. Product placement is a generally insidious intrusion into a video game, but retrospectively, it’s part of the series’ charm. People in West Coast aren’t going to just “City Restaurant,” they want to go to Pizza Hut. They want to go to KFC. Seeing someone demand quick transit to Tower Records is just something that doesn’t exist anymore, since the chain went bankrupt in 2006. At this point, it’s earnest kitsch, but even at the time, it was really amusing how blatant the product placement was. It's kind of become an inextricable part of the Crazy Taxi series' personality.

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Crazy money

The series didn’t necessarily die after Crazy Taxi 3, but it’s definitely a lot more sporadic. The 2007 PSP release of Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars was technically the last “new” game we got, but even then it was just a compilation of Crazy Taxi 1 and 2. Since then, Sega has been more interested in tapping into the disgusting mobile market with Crazy Taxi: City Rush and Crazy Taxi: Gazillionaire. Just writing that leaves a bad taste on my fingers.

Sega really needs to get their cabs in gear and give us a proper remaster. I’d take a new game, as well, but an updated port of Crazy Taxi 3 would do just fine. Bonus points if they included the missing console cities. 2022’s post-secondary simulator Two Point Campus gives you a Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller arcade machine that you can give to your students. Sega obviously knows that the game exists (or, at least, Two Point Studios does). So, that’s step one down.

For now, I guess Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller is just another reason to keep my Xbox plugged in. It’s perhaps the best way to make some cuh-raaaazy money these days. Yeah… yeah, yeah, yeah… yeah…

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

The post Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller on Xbox proves the series had more gas in the tank appeared first on Destructoid.

Dash! Dash! Dash!

It’s a great injustice that we never got to see more of Goemon in the West. While you can count the number of games we got over here on enough fingers if you have them, it was one of Konami’s flagship properties for over a decade in Japan. Part of the reason why we didn’t get more over here is that they’re just so Japanese. It takes place in Feudal Japan and ties in more local pop-culture references than you can shake a pipe at.

Despite this, I was enamored by 1991’s Legend of the Mystical Ninja when I was a kid. It was fun to just mess around and explore in. So, when Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon wound up being localized, I was all over it, and it was one of the most fascinatingly confusing moments of my young life.

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Breakdown!

I feel pretty reasonably well-versed in Japanese culture and history as a foreigner who only visited there once. But that’s now. In 1998, when Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon launched, there were very few avenues to learn about Japan. The internet wasn’t really as widespread and diverse as it is now, and any media that we got from the country was often heavily filtered and painted over to make it more palatable to Westerners.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon opens with a parody theme song with subtitled vocals. The closest I had ever seen to anything like it was some old Godzilla movies. Subtitled anime wasn’t super common in my part of the world just yet, so the vibe was completely lost on my younger self.

Beyond the culture shock, though, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon proceeds like you already know a bunch of these characters when none of them were in Legend of the Mystical Ninja. Yae, Sasuke, the Wise Old Man; at best, they only had brief appearances in the SNES title. The most bizarre addition was the giant robot, Impact.

Impact was introduced in 1993’s Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shogun Magginesu on Super Famicom. They’ve been a major mainstay in the series since then, most prominently in Ganbare Goemon Kirakira Dōchū: Boku ga Dancer ni Natta Wake, which was a story about them trying to become a celebrity. This is even referenced in the game. Impact talks about traveling to Hollywood, which would make sense if you played the previous game, but it’s just nonsense without it.

So, within Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, a giant robot shows up without explanation, complete with its own (absolutely awesome) theme song.

[caption id="attachment_377460" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Ore wa goooorgeous~!

Not that Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon makes sense without the missed references. The story involves the “Peach Mountain Shoguns,” a group of kabuki theatre actors (possibly from space), who appear and turn Oedo castle into a European castle to use as a stage. Their plan then escalates for no reason, and they eventually just straight up steal Kyūshū.

You could easily compare Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon with The Legend of Zelda. It’s largely an overword-to-dungeon affair, but it’s a bit more linear than that. What strikes me is just how badly the game actually flows.

There’s a bizarre, mostly-naked fortune teller who screams “PLASMA!” at you and will tell you what you should do next. That’s not strange. A Link to the Past had the same thing. However, at one point in Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, the developers seemed unable to figure out how to drop a hint on where you should go next, so one of the characters straight-up just suggests going to talk to the fortune teller. They could have just told me to buy the guide.

It’s helpful to have the fortune teller, though, because it’s not always clear where you should be going. There’s at least one moment where the fortune teller completely skips a step. You first need to find a certain power-up to overcome an obstacle, but Mr. Plasma just tells you to go to that obstacle with no way for you to overcome it.

[caption id="attachment_377461" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Ore wa Chaaaarming~!

This would be easier if exploration was better, but it’s a mixed bag.

To be fair, I think the Ganbare Goemon series is better when it’s representing a wacky tourist trip through feudal Japan. The series has no set formula, just a set of standards that keep recirculating. The one that comes up often is having Goemon and crew venture across all of Japan, stopping at hotels and restaurants and getting distracted by arcade games. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon nearly gets this perfect.

The world map is a segmented representation of most of the country. You literally walk across a minimalistic Honshū and Shikoku. There’s a map that helps you track your progress. It’s really awesome. The only problem is: the map is useless, and it’s hard to tell which direction you’re going.

A lot would be alleviated if you could more easily tell where you were going, where you had been, and where you still need to go. Then, if you felt stuck, you could just consult the map to see where you haven’t been. That’s not really possible in Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon’s world. So, while having the game drop overt hints on where you need to go next was an optional part of A Link to the Past, don’t be surprised if you’re throwing some coin to the Plasma guy.

[caption id="attachment_377463" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Ore wa fuuuuunky~!

I really love Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, but it’s more of a good time despite its problems. It both suffered and benefitted from being an extremely early N64 game. A year earlier, Super Mario 64 demonstrated how a 3D platformer should work, and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon had not received the memo yet. You kind of get the feeling of talented developers struggling with new concepts.

As such, camera control is relatively non-existent. Usually, a game will, at the very least, allow you to reset the camera directly behind your character, but that’s not an option here. The only way to get the perspective you want is to carefully set it so your character faces there, and then after a lot of hesitation, the camera will swing in behind them. It makes a lot of the platforming feel really icky. Thankfully, you won't find a lot of instant death here. If you miss a jump, it usually isn’t a huge problem to just attempt it again.

On the other hand, I find the early 3D jank to be rather charming. You can see where the ambition exceeded the expertise. There were obviously a lot of great ideas about the project, but a lot of problems implementing them. The quality of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon has many tall hills and low valleys, and it’s interesting seeing them both.

The music is just excellent, however. The series has always had some great tunes, and it’s no different on the N64. The vocalized music is a bit of a weird choice, given the N64’s space limitations. It was definitely worth it, though, as those songs stand out in just making the game weirder.

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Aaaah Impakutoooo~!

The Ganbare Goemon series changed the formula and gameplay style constantly. There would be a follow-up to Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon called Goemon’s Great Adventure. While it would largely be a more solid game, overall, it’s more of a straightforward sidescroller.

I really wish Konami made another attempt at Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon’s approach. It did a lot of things right within the conventions of the series. It just needed some more love. With an expanded world filled with more interesting landmarks to see, it would deliver on the “wacky tourism through feudal Japan” angle that the series so frequently revisited.

Konami has all but ditched the series. The most recent game was 2005’s Ganbare Goemon: Tōkai Dōchū Ooedo Tengurigaeshi no Maki on DS, and the last major appearance of the crew was in a Gods-forsaken pachinko machine. That might as well be the gravestone for the series that Konami left behind in their endeavor to intentionally hurt their fanbase. There were some Mii costumes from the series in Ultimate Super Smash Bros., but that mostly just shows that Nintendo cares about the series more.

As for Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, it is a very N64 game. It’s enjoyable today, but only if you’re inoculated against early-3D jank because it is rife with it. Despite that, you can really see the life behind its eyes. Or you could before Konami smothered that out with a pillow.

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

The post Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for N64 is some premium jank appeared first on Destructoid.

Back to Kobe

I mentioned in my look at Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness that its developer, Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe, got a bit of a bad rap from their work. However, even in those sometimes maligned Castlevania efforts, there’s a spark of life that was lost in future 3D entries in the series.

It made me curious about the developer's other efforts, but it wasn’t my intention to move directly onto another one of their titles. However, when the credits rolled on Rakugakids, I realized I must have subconsciously picked up the cue since this Japan-only N64 title was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe.

Rakugakids has always fascinated me. The N64 was kind of a horrible console when it came to fighting games. There were some decent titles, but piled on top of that was a heap of the absolute worst. Rakugakids isn’t close to being competitive with the best fighters of the era, but its unforgettable visual style makes the experience worthwhile.

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The next mainstay

Rakugakids is your typical six-button arcade fighting setup. The bottom row of buttons are punches of varying speed and strength, while the top row is all kicks. There’s also the R-button, which triggers your “magical attack,” essentially just a super move. Special moves require your standard quarter-circle/half-circle flicks. It’s a pretty friendly setup. The characters don’t have very diverse special moves, so it’s rather friendly to beginners.

The one maddening part of the controls is that if you’re holding forward and hit the kick button, it becomes a throw. If you just want to kick, you have to remember not to hold forward while doing it. It’s not a big problem, but it makes the punches a bit easier to use for setting up combos, since you’re not running the risk of suddenly hugging the opponent.

We’d need Chris Moyse here for a full analysis on Rakugakids’ mechanical chops. I’m merely a dilettante when it comes to fighting games. By my approximation, Rakugakids isn’t egregiously sloppy, but it probably won’t become a mainstay of fighting game tournaments.

[caption id="attachment_376257" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Cheese, ham, and onions

Where Rakugakids stands apart, however, is with its aesthetics. The story involves children finding magical crayons that they use to create proxies to beat the crap out of each other. Anything they draw with the crayon comes to life! There’s actually only one bad guy. It’s the neighborhood bully who stole a magical crayon to create his own bootylicious drawing. The less problematic children are trying to get the crayons back, but first they need to… have a tournament or something?

Anyway, the result is that the fighters have a childhood doodle appearance to them. They’re also imaginative enough that they pass for something that the diseased mind of a youthful monster would come up with. I started of with Jerry and his fighter, Robot C.H.O. Not entirely sure what C.H.O stands for. He was an okay character but a bit slow. I guess it was my mistake for not realizing how awesome Beartank is.

Beartank is a lot like Street Fighter III’s Remy in that they don’t seem to care much about what’s going on. Their behavior also resembles a bear. They only have two modes: napping and terrorizing humans. I can relate to that.

Rakugakids features only nine fighters, with two of them locked at the start. That isn’t a lot, but it’s not exactly unheard of for the era. I wouldn’t say any of them are duds. How could they be? You have a cowboy, who is a bit similar to an astronaut. There’s a cat. One is just a girl with a chicken on her head. It’s pretty rad.

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Bootylicious

What’s impressive about Rakugakids is that it doesn’t look horrible by today’s standards. The visuals of the N64’s library have aged about as well as gravy, but Rakugakids kind of holds up. It helps that it didn’t stick with just being visually distinctive. Konami got a bit crafty with the graphics, with one of the stages being in front of a mirror for no reason aside from the fact that it’s cool. It sells the flat look by putting most stages right next to a wall so a shadow will be cast onto it.

There’s this weird option in the settings where you can change the combatants so they aren’t colored in. It’s neat, but I have no idea why you’d turn off the fill.

It also runs and animates really smoothly, which I am absolutely not used to seeing on the console. Like, compare it to Clayfighter 63⅓, which apparently had to cut a lot of animation to fit on an N64 cartridge. Rakugakids doesn’t have that problem. It looks and moves fantastically. I don’t know if I’ve given quite enough breathless praise to convince you of how impressive it is.

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Training Mode

Rakugakids is not the most inventive game, sure, and it’s maybe a bit too simple for its own good. You can get pretty far by button mashing, especially considering the flashiest moves are executed with one button. The AI is at least good enough that it doesn’t fail the shin test, but they’re also a bit manic.

The one thing that it does that’s a bit different is allow you to train a CPU. You can go into training mode and demonstrate all your best moves. The AI apparently learns from this, and then you can let them loose on their own into a special version of story mode. It’s… kind of dumb. That AI isn’t convincing in terms of how it learned from you, and I don’t see the value of it compared to just watching two computer-controlled characters go at it. I feel like this sounded really good on paper, and when it turned out to be a lame idea, someone just wouldn’t let it go, so it made it in.

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Beartank lives

Rakugakids never really made it across the ocean to North America. It was, however, released in PAL territories. The Japanese text is largely exclusive to the story narration, however. Even the settings menu is in English, so I’m not sure why it wasn’t released over here.

This is just one of those cool obscure games. The concept is unique enough to stand out, its visuals and personality are very appealing, so even though it doesn’t have top shelf gameplay, it’s still a worthwhile endeavor. Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe obviously had some affection for the property, since Beartank would find his way into cameo appearances within Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Konami Krazy Racers. Unfortunately, after the developer was re-absorbed into Konami Osaka, the publisher would forget all about the game. That’s not surprising, considering it’s Konami, and they want people to forget they were ever good.

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Only on WiiWare

Looking back, Excitebike would have benefited from being released a couple years later. Originally on Famicom in 1984, it was still stuck in the arcade mindset. It was very strictly round-based, there was no real progression, and the best you could do was compete for best time, which wasn’t actually recorded on the game itself.

The most console-specific feature that it had was a track builder, which was definitely cool. However, on NES, you couldn’t actually save your track, which was far less cool. If you were on Famicom, you could actually save tracks using the Famicom Data Recorder, which would save your data to a cassette tape. That’s extremely cool to a retro geek like me. I mean, the Famicom was marketed as being a family-friendly microcomputer (Famicom being shorthand for Family Computer), but because the NES tried to get away from that, we never saw it over here. It’s neat to be reminded that, through their own game design, they basically made a bunch of their own products obsolete.

What were we talking about? Right. Excitebike really needed some form of progression. It would take until 2009 until someone went back and actually did that with Excitebike: World Rally.

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Doot-doot-doot doo-doo-doo!

Excitebike: World Rally is like a really belated sequel to the first game. It essentially is just Excitebike, featuring all the same mechanics and features as the NES title, but turned 3D. More importantly, however, there’s actually progression.

Yes, there is a series of four “cups” that progress in difficulty. In order to progress, you have to hit a B rank in each of the individual courses. This is done by finishing the course in a specific time threshold. Of course, you can also push yourself to get S rank by getting even better times. Doing so on every course in a cup will unlock a new color for your bike.

Better yet, there’s more than one track background. It’s not much, but it’s something. Unfortunately, whenever there are stands in the background, the audience all look like emoji people. I mean, this was the Wii. Miis were a thing, but instead of using that style, we have the ugliest crowd possibly in existence.

[caption id="attachment_373905" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Souls contain CFC

If you’re unfamiliar with Excitebike, it’s essentially a side-scrolling dirtbike game. You ride your two-wheeled friend, and it’s your goal to ramp over hills and land as gracefully as possible. You can also boost, but that builds up heat and can blow out your engine. The strategy there is to push your engine as much as possible without crashing or blowing up.

There are other riders on the course, but they’re not your concern. You really just need to make it to the finish line in a fast enough time.

Your opponents are essentially just there to get in your way. This is mainly a problem when going between obstacles on the track. However, you can take them out by cutting them off or landing directly on top of them. It can be dangerous, but murdering your fellow riders will instantly cool off your engine. You see, the sheer anguish of their soul being ripped from their body acts somewhat like a refrigerant, immediately dropping the temperature of nearby internal combustion engines. The soul is subjected to excruciating torment, but that’s what they get for being slow.

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Thanks Nintendo

The track builder makes a comeback, and you can even share them on… Oh, right. The “Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection” service was taken offline in 2014.

It’s kind of a bummer. It’s not that I expect the online was ever popping for Excitebike: World Rally, but there’s no offline multiplayer. The best you can do is build tracks and compete for the best time on them. Sort of like, well, the NES version.

There were also some bike skins that are locked behind online play, and that drives me absolutely insane. It’s not even that WFC has been down for almost a decade, it’s the fact that I don’t even want to play online in the first place. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but humans are awful. I try to limit my interaction with them as much as possible. Just let me have my bike colors and leave me in peace.

[caption id="attachment_373907" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The moral of the story

I think the elephant in the room here is Vs. Excitebike. This was a 1988 follow-up to Excitebike released exclusively on the Famicom Disk System. Not only did this have progression in much the same way that Excitebike: World Rally does, but it also had bonus levels that had you jumping over trucks.

Furthermore, it had a two-player mode, that actually put both riders on the same track to compete directly. I’m honestly not sure why Excitebike: World Rally doesn’t support splitscreen. It would have certainly been helpful after online support went down.

For that matter, you can’t even buy Excitebike: World Rally anymore because it was a WiiWare exclusive. Nintendo isn’t the worst company when it comes to preserving their back catalogue, but they leave a lot to be desired. It would have been the perfect fit for the 3DS, but even if they did port it, the 3DS eShop has been taken offline. This is why Santa doesn’t bring Nintendo any shit for Christmas.

You know what you can still play? Vs. Excitebike. I don’t even mean by purchasing a Famicom Disk System and the physical game. It’s on Nintendo’s Switch Online NES app. In North America. Were you aware of that? Did you know about the difference? I know that this article was about Excitebike: World Rally, but the moral of the story is really to go play Vs. Excitebike.

With that out of the way, now Nintendo should port Excitebike: BunBun Mario Battle Stadium.

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

The post Excitebike: World Rally is fun but essentially non-existent appeared first on Destructoid.

Remarkably unremarkable

I find scrolling shoot-’em-ups to be one of the most difficult genres to talk about, right up there with puzzle games. It’s a formula that has been utilized many times, and frequently the changes are very small. Most of the time, you maneuver your spaceship, unicorn, or spaceship with boxing gloves around on an automatically scrolling background until a much larger boss shows up.

I can’t say that Axelay is much different. The formula could be described as a close companion to Life Force or Abadox where it alternates between vertical and horizontal scrolling stages. Its weapon system is a little lackluster. Axelay is, by most metrics, a pretty flacid shoot-’em-up.

Except, it’s still worth experiencing if you have eyes and ears.

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It's on

Continuing the theme of being unremarkable, Axelay’s story is that an evil empire is invading a peaceful planetary system and absolutely kicking its ass. But thankfully, there’s, like, this one spaceship that is really great. It alone can beat back the bad guys.

This is the storyline of approximately 80% of shoot-’em-ups. That’s a completely made-up number, but off the top of my head, I can name a few. Gradius, for example. One of my personal favorites: Raiden. Gun*Nac. They’re narratives that aren’t really worth telling, and many of them just don’t.

Axelay could have skipped this too, but it decided to do it in the same way it approaches everything in the genre: as stylishly as possible. There’s a planet that gets covered in explosions, goes dark, and is left just outlined by a corona. Someone snaps a locket shut for some reason. Who were those people? I don’t know. But that forceful snap means that it’s on.

[caption id="attachment_371903" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The bends

The soundtrack immediately starts crawling into your ears and laying eggs in your tympanic cavity. However, the visuals kick into high gear in the first level.

Axelay approaches vertical stages in a novel way, and it’s one that’s really hard to describe. It uses the SNES’ mode-7 sprite scaling to give a 3D effect (update: this was done with a raster effect rather than mode-7), but it’s so difficult to really pin down what it’s trying to do. I think it’s trying to do a perspective that makes it look like you’re following the ship, but that’s not how it looks. It kind of looks like you’re flying toward the horizon. But the way they do it makes it look like the curvature of the planet is about 10 meters in front of you, and everything is affected by it.

Large enemies will actually distort toward you like they’re curling around the edge of the world. It’s like the entire game is just painted on a conveyor belt, and you’re watching the very end of it as objects roll up over the end.

I will say the effect is better on a CRT screen, but not much. It’s still really cool, and I would honestly be shocked if there was anything else like it in video games. The sort-of misty appearance of it is striking. It’s like the developers tried to create an effect, failed, and were like, “I still like the look of it.”

[caption id="attachment_371904" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

O'Neill Cylinder

Axelay alternates to horizontal shooting sections that are a lot more conventional but still visually impressive. The second level is one that really sticks with me. It has you fly into an orbital colony that’s set up in an O’Neill cylinder. It’s a type of theoretical design that uses centrifugal motion to simulate gravity. You essentially fly from one end of the cylinder to the other as it rotates in the background.

It is awesome.

You see the city, the natural areas between, and there’s a part where a bridge crosses empty space. Just looking at it makes me want a game set on an O’Neill cylinder. But not like, the Citadel from Mass Effect. More like Kamurocho from Yakuza, but in space. Don’t even make the game about living in space. Just use the setting as an extra bit of visual pizazz.

And then you fight the bad robot from Robo-Cop. You know, the one that can’t take stairs but can blow away a corporate executive?

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Tell your children not to walk my way

Then you get to yet another awesome city level, which I know as “Mother,” because that’s the track name of the song that plays over top. The background once again depicts a space colony, but this one is like a double-decker. Remember the Hengsha megacity in Deus Ex: Human Revolution? Apparently, that concept was already in Axelay in 1992.

However, this level isn’t as visually arresting as the second level. The music, on the other hand, is one of my favorite sounds to be processed through the SNES sound chip. The whole soundtrack is absolutely amazing. It was done by Taro Kudo, who is maybe more known for his design work in UFO: A Day in the Life or Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland. Absolutely legendary design stuff, but when he was focused on compositions in his early days: incredible.

He had a hand in the music for Super Castlevania IV, but whether he composed the absolutely radical Theme of Simon Belmont, I couldn’t find.

The point is, Mother is a fantastic track. If you’ve got a “best of the SNES” playlist somewhere, this should be on it.

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Sponge fire

The levels after that aren’t quite as interesting, which is fine, because there are only six of them. The fifth level is on a fiery planet, and it’s kind of cool, but I guess I’m more into seeing humans live in cozy space tubes.

The gameplay is also less notable. You choose three weapons at the beginning of each level. If you take a hit, that weapon gets destroyed, which allows you to take up to three projectiles to the face before dying. However, if you collide with the environment or an enemy, you’ll be gone regardless of what you’re still packing.

The weapons are not all that interesting. The coolest design is a dual-laser thing that starts firing behind you, then curls around as you hold the button down. You can tap the fire button to keep them shooting in separate directions, which is really helpful in horizontal stages.

The problem is, they don’t feel very impactful. The lasers may as well be dish sponges, as they just kind of tickle the enemy until they explode. Even the missiles just kind of sparkle in front of enemies. And yet, despite the lack of over-the-top weaponry, there’s still a tonne of slowdown once the enemies start piling into the screen. It’s just kind of disappointing.

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Superficial attraction

It’s not an entirely bad shooter, but it’s not, say, Raiden. It’s just that all of its stat points were put in graphics and audio. It’s not a very long shooter, nor is it terribly difficult (aside from the fact that there are limited continues). It’s just average, whereas the visuals and music are outstanding.

So, it’s still worth playing Axelay for the aesthetics. There’s nothing quite like it. From its somewhat bizarre take on 3D to its unforgettable soundtrack, it’s completely top-shelf. Considering how well I remember Axelay and how much I appreciate it, I feel like that goes a long way when it comes to standing out in the genre. As much as I love Raiden, I couldn’t tell you what most of the backgrounds look like or how it sounds. Hopefully, that helps emphasize just how great Axelay’s aesthetics are, if I haven’t gushed enough about them already.

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Get ready

If someone told me they were creating a new OutRun with 3D graphics, I’d be extremely skeptical. OutRun was not merely a raster racer through and through, it’s the God-empress of raster racers. I would think that adding some depth to that would hurt the appeal. Not so, because OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast is about as faithful as I could imagine.

To be clear, OutRun 2006 is sort of the sequel to the sequel. OutRun 2 was released in arcades in 2003, and followed up with a port to Xbox in 2004. Afterwards, OutRun SP was released in 2004 as an upgrade to OutRun 2. OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast is a console (and PSP) combination of the two titles. It is the ultimate version, and I have no idea why it hasn’t been ported since. Probably the Ferrari license. It’s always licensing.

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Magical Sound Shower

I feel like OutRun 2006 is unexpected since the racing genre had long moved on from the seminal 1986 arcade title. What I thought would have happened is some soulless simulation racing game with the OutRun name slapped on. Instead, OutRun 2006 is OutRun. The only thing that really changed is that now the graphics are in 3D. New mechanics and progression are piled on top of it.

The setup is the same; you take the wheel of a Ferrari, with your girlfriend sitting next to you. Then, you take off on a journey across a branching course. While there are rivals on the road this time around, you’re not required to pass them. You merely have to get to the end of the course before your time expires.

That’s easier said than done, but the addition of drift is a welcome feature. The drift is that special kind of unrealistic that we’ve seen in the Mario Kart series. You can throw your car into a drift by pumping the break in a turn, and then it’s stuck there until you deliberately steer out of it. You can snake back and forth with it, in a way, never having to leave it at all. It’s an amazingly perfect fit for the series.

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Love kills

Or, at least, that’s the regular mode. There are two of these big branching courses: OutRun 2 and OutRun SP. That’s already a lot of course, but to ensure that you don’t put the game down immediately after completing a run of each, there are alternate modes. There’s something of a campaign that have you completing smaller missions and beating rivals in a race. That’s probably the best way to gather Out Run miles that can be used to unlock more Ferraris and additional tracks on the soundtrack.

The most unique is perhaps the Heart Break Mode. While the OutRun games have classically had you travel alongside your girlfriend, this time around, she tells you to kill. Okay, I’m being slightly facetious. She doesn’t just tell you that you must commit vehicular manslaughter by crashing into other cars, sometimes she tells you to evade aliens or run into ghosts. If you’re unable to fulfill her perfectly reasonable demands, or even if you’re just too slow, she’ll start physically abusing you from the passenger seat.

I really think the protagonist of OutRun could do better. A woman who leaves you because you don’t wreck your high-performance sports car by turning it into a murder machine is probably not worth your time. I get wanting a little excitement, but my idea for excitement is going through the Popeye’s drive-thru.

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Splash Wave

There’s a wide spread of what you can unlock, from over a dozen Ferraris to remixed and classic tunes. Considering Splash Wave is unequivocally the best piece of music ever composed for a video game, it’s unusual that there are even other tracks available. However, there are three versions of Splash Wave, including the original. That’s immediately the best soundtrack ever assembled.

My biggest complaint is that it takes a long time to unlock new gear, and that means you’ll be driving the same courses a lot. Regardless of how much unique mileage is in the game, you’ll always have to drive the first stretch of road, and frequently need to see the second areas. As much as I love OutRun, I feel the formula works best in small sessions as opposed to grinding through it to unlock more stuff. You can choose individual slices of tracks, so you’re not just racing the same ones repeatedly, but I feel shortening the experiences drains Out Run of some of the things that make it special.

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Passing Breeze

I may be repeating myself, but I didn’t think a 3D OutRun would really work, let alone one that was created in the ‘00s. I suppose it’s important to remember that in the late-’90s and early-’00s, Sega was creating some of the most unique games that hit the market. Even if some of them aren’t the best (I don’t like the Sonic Adventure games, I’m sorry), titles like Crazy Taxi and Panzer Dragoon Orta were in a class of their own. They just don’t make games like these anymore.

Speaking of which, it pains me that we haven’t gotten ports of any of the games I just mentioned. It feels like Sega was on an apology tour, and we chose to forgive and literally forget. OutRun is even worse since we’ve received ports of the original title but not Turbo OutRun, OutRunners, OutRun Europa, OutRun 2019, or OutRun 3-D. Considering Sega is one of the better companies when it comes to making its classic library available, this seems like an issue that needs addressing. Especially when it comes to OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast.

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Space Bazooka

Expanding on everything that made Battle Clash great, Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge is a sequel in everything but name. I have no idea why. It’s not that Battle Clash is a great name, but changing the brand and then attaching a subtitle makes it sound unrelated. I guess we should be happy that they didn’t change over to the Japanese nomenclature for Battle Clash. They called it Space Bazooka. That’s just what I’d call the Super Scope if I was trying to make fun of it.

If you didn’t read my article last week, Battle Clash was a game for Nintendo’s space bazooka, the Super Scope. Nintendo decided to follow up the success of their ubiquitous NES Zapper by severely overcompensating. The Super Scope was absolutely a space bazooka. You rested that baby over your shoulder and fired digital death at your TV. It was actually pretty awesome, as long as you remembered to turn it off when you were done. Otherwise, it would completely drain the six AA batteries required to power it.

Battle Clash was one of the best games to utilize this escalation of infrared arms. Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge does even better than that; it’s one of the best lightgun games ever developed.

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More layered than a lasagna

Supposedly picking up after Battle Clash, Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge basically goes over the exact same story as the previous game. There’s some sort of “battle sport,” and you and your pilot are using it to take down a big boss because they’re doing bad things. Sometimes, the characters reference things that happened before, but no one says anything about having already taken down the big bad boss.

What’s funny is that there’s more focus on story in Metal Combat, but no one seems interested in explaining why saving the world didn’t work last time.

Metal Combat’s story has a lot of misdirection in it. By the time you get to the baddie from the last game to re-kick his butt, you’ve probably already started wondering why the game seems to be so short. But then you just keep going deeper and deeper into space, even journeying to Uranus to beat Momma. I’m sure there’s an obvious joke in there somewhere, but the humor center of my brain seems to have called in sick today.

It really pulls the “they were just a pawn” to a comical extent. Like, you are absolutely a fool for thinking the past three dudes were the real dude. This master plan has more layers than a lasagna. What’s funnier is that Metal Combat really plays it straight, going as far as having three endings. Like, just get off my screen and let me shoot robot dongs.

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The levels of engorgement

There are a number of obvious enhancements to Metal Combat. The biggest difference is that they’ve doubled down on ensuring that your rapid-fire is used primarily for eliminating enemy projectiles. In Battle Clash, it could at least tickle an enemy’s sensitive areas, but in Metal Combat, it’s barely a gentle caress.

The trade-off to this is that now your charged shot has three levels of engorgement. The final level, the treble shot, is devastating if you can land it on a weak point. It gives the strategy a bit of risk and reward, as waiting to fire until your space bazooka is turgid with power will leave you vulnerable to attack.

You also get a selection of side weapons that grow after each fight. Unless the game told me specifically to do so, I never used anything aside from the basic bomb. Those things work just fine, and I’m afraid of learning new things.

Speaking of which, there's actually a second ST you can play as, Tornado. She's unlocked after completing the base game. The functions of it are just different enough to shake things up without completely flipping the game on its head. Unused data from Battle Clash implies that alternate mechs were planned for that game, so it's nice to see the feature was followed up on.

It also makes better use of weak points. You can still shoot the limbs off many of the enemies, but a lot of them don’t even have limbs. In Battle Clash, as long as your shots hit the enemy, you’re probably doing damage, but Metal Combat requires a bit more thought. It’s extremely satisfying to trim off three-quarters of an enemy’s life bar with a single shot, and that’s one place that Metal Combat is a big improvement.

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What a bad run of luck

The multi-player mode deserves special mention. Since having two Super Scopes on a single TV is neither an option, nor a practical expectation, one of the players uses the control pad. They control one of the enemy boss mechs and battle against the armed player in the Falcon. It’s actually a really fun mode, especially considering that in games like Yoshi’s Safari, the second player was usually relegated to distracting support roles.

Metal Combat is just good fun. When compared to a lot of light gun games that were trying to be edgier and more hardcore, it’s a colorful and entertaining mix. The one-on-one mech battles feel a lot more personal and intimate than mowing down legions of interchangeable dudes. The added story is ridiculous, but feels appropriately Super Nintendo.

I don’t really think Nintendo had much faith in the product. The Super Scope was already something of a flop, with Metal Combat never even being released in Japan due to it being even more unpopular there. However, the team at Intelligent Systems was undeniably a talented one. Many of them continued with the developer for years to come. It’s just unfortunate that it kind of got sucked into the space bazooka’s failure. The Wii probably would have been a great platform for a revisit to the series, but I have my doubts that very many of the higher-ups even know it ever existed.

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Buffet of games

There wasn’t exactly a buffet of games for Nintendo’s Super Scope. It was only supported from ‘92 until ‘94, receiving 14 titles if you’re being generous and 12 titles if you’re being slightly less generous. Of them, a lot are missable. The one that usually comes to mind for anyone not intimately familiar with the shoulder rod is Yoshi’s Safari, but those in the know are aware of Battle Clash and its sequel Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge.

Both games were developed by Intelligent Systems exclusively for Nintendo’s grey wrapping-paper tube. Mario may have got all the attention for his unhinged rampage, but it was the mechs that showed what the space bazooka could do.

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Radical assault weapon

If you’re unfamiliar with the Super Scope, it was essentially Nintendo’s successor to the NES light gun, the Zapper. However, they completely overcompensated by turning it into a bazooka. Hilariously, during his crusade against violent games, former Senator and permanent gravy-stain on U.S. legislative history Joe Lieberman, described it as looking “like an assault weapon.” That is one radical assault.

The Super Scope gets made fun of regularly, but reports of its inaccuracy are unfounded. With its eponymous scope, it’s one of the most accurate and easy-to-use light guns I’ve experienced. The only downside is that it absolutely devours the six AA batteries required to power it, and if you make the mistake of leaving it on, you can absolutely kiss them goodbye.

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Eating spiders

Battle Clash is set in some possible post-apocalyptic future where I guess some competition has been going on that decides the ruler of Earth. Or something. Not much is given in the game beyond the fact that you and your pilot are trying to kill Thanatos because he’s a bad guy. In order to get there, you need to first take out a bunch of his goons across the world.

You’re put behind the guns of an ST (standing tank). Gameplay is strictly point-and-shoot, as the controls are helmed by some other guy. You play with the turbo switch on, and when you let go of the hold button, a more powerful shot is charged up. Typically, you use your rapid fire to take down enemy projectiles, since your foe can only be significantly damaged with a charged shot.

This isn’t too much unlike the boss battles in Yoshi’s Safari. A typical enemy has a specific weak point for you to find, and each one is different. However, the other STs are made from destructible components, so if you’re feeling sassy, you can take out crucial pieces of equipment, leaving them helpless. Personally, I love picking the legs off like a spider I’m about to eat. Some enemies switch to hover mode once their appendages have been eliminated, but others fall to the ground, unable to move.

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Boss battles

Bosses range from fast to heavily armored. The graphics are extremely detailed and colorful, and the backgrounds scroll at warp speed. The combatants remind me a bit of Super Punch-Out!! or Teleroboxer, just in terms of size and animations.

There’s a story given through short exchanges of dialogue at the beginning and end of each level, but it doesn’t amount to much aside from beating the bad guy. Still, the extra characterization is welcomed, even if it isn’t necessary.

Battle Clash is a rather short game with nine bosses to beat. There’s a time trial mode to provide you incentive to beat your best times and a harder difficulty that can be unlocked via code. However, in terms of replay value, there isn’t a lot. It’s a bit better as a game that you break out occasionally whenever you have the urge to feed batteries to your Super Scope.

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Avenue for being vindictive

I just can’t overstate how much fun it is to blow the limbs off of enemy robots. Sure, it might be more efficient just to aim for the weak point, but I feel like Battle Clash is strongest when you’re taking advantage of the damage system. However, it would have been nicer if it was better utilized in actually fighting the bosses. As it is, it feels more like an avenue for being vindictive.

As much as I love Battle Clash, that’s about all I have to say about it. It’s a fun but fleeting experience. If you’ve still got a CRT hanging around and a Super Scope to throw over your shoulder, it’s absolutely a title that you should own. Even with my squishy soft spot for the peripheral, I can’t deny that it was never very well utilized. Battle Clash is one of the few games worth playing for it.

But while Battle Clash may have been insubstantial, it would get a sequel a year later in Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge. But that’s a story for another day.

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Storm on the horizon

While the N64 was still drinking backstage, preparing itself to stagger out and trip over the drummer, I was drooling over screenshots in various magazines. The game I was most excited about in the lead-up to launch was Pilotwings 64. Listen, I know that’s not everybody’s favorite game, but this was the first time I saw big, explorable worlds in a video game. I thought every game was one day going to be like that, before someone decided that the only way for a world to be worthwhile is if it was peppered with animals to skin every five feet.

I didn’t even know there was a Pilotwings on SNES until much later. Granted, it can be hard to miss one of the SNES launch titles, but I was four at the time of the SNES release, so cut me some slack. I only found out about it years later while perusing an old password guide from the era.

So maybe Pilotwings isn’t the most obscure game to ever hit the market, but while there’s often a lot of buzz around Nintendo’s other franchises, I only just remembered Pilotwings Resort was a game on 3DS this morning. In my books, that’s obscure enough.

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Obscure enough

Pilotwings is the story of the Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 sprite-scaling effect. It was an entire graphical layer that allowed sprites to be manipulated in all sorts of ways. It wasn’t as advanced as a lot of games showing up in arcades, but it was something that their competition couldn’t do as readily, so Nintendo put a lot of emphasis on it. Since 3D games were still a rarity in the market, clever use of Mode 7 sprite-scaling could create pseudo-3D environments that enabled styles of gameplay that were still novel. Of the SNES’ five launch titles in North America, both Pilotwings and F-Zero could reasonably have been titled “Mode 7: The Game.”

While F-Zero is rad as heck, Pilotwings took the effect and made a flight simulator using it. But not just any commercial jet simulator; Pilotwings is a recreational flight simulator. So long as you consider zooming around with a jet pack “recreation.” I and all my unimaginably wealthy friends do.

The premise has you attending school, which is the worst premise ever to enter the interactive world. However, as this is flight school, it barely gets a pass. You’re graded on a variety of activities: fixed-wing plane, jetpack, hang glider, and sky diving. In each area, you have to score enough combine points to pass a threshold. Succeed, and you get your license.

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First class

For me, Pilotwings is one of the most relaxing games ever. While the pacing is a big part of this, the sound design is the major factor. The soundtrack was done by Soyo Oka under the supervision of Koji Kondo. Even though she wasn’t credited under very many games before leaving Nintendo in 1995, her soundtracks are the ones that I think of first when I think of the sounds of the SNES. Super Mario Kart, Simcity, and Pilotwings are all games she provided the musical compositions for, and they’re all peerless.

Combine that with the droning sounds of the plane engine or the woosh of the jetpack, and I’m ready to start purring.

The gameplay isn’t all that demanding, either. While it’s certainly challenging, normally, any real focus you need to give it comes in short bursts. You zoom around, floating like cigarette ash in an updraft, right until you have to come to a landing. Pilotwings is hardly an easy game, but there are plenty of peaceful moments in between battling against the wind and controls. It’s a perfect, Zen-like mix of subtle trances interrupted by demands for concentration.

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Terminal velocity

And then after you complete four levels, you’re fighting for your life. Yeah, all your flight instructors are kidnapped by an evil organization. Only you have the license qualifications to fly an attack helicopter into enemy territory to save them.

No. Surely there’s someone else. Why does our flight school even have an attack helicopter? Five minutes ago, these people were rubbing in how much I suck at landing a hang glider, and now I have to risk my neck for them?

I’m not even joking about any of this. The fifth level puts you in an attack helicopter, and you need to reach and land at a building in the center of the map while anti-aircraft guns try and down your papier-mâché helicopter. One hit and you’re done, and the guns don’t make a habit of missing. Pilotwings quickly changes from light-hearted, “try not to fail your test, but if you do, you can make up those points in another event,” to “you’re dead if you don’t fly perfectly.”

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Mayday! Mayday!

This mission is substantially more difficult than what came before, to the point where I think this is the spot a lot of people give up. In order to overcome it, I had to keep my helicopter at a slow pace and constantly turning. I’d try my best to arch my targeting reticule over the guns on the ground while staying in constant movement. It helps, but I still went earthward in a burning pile of steel more often than I’m willing to admit.

Then, after you finally manage to complete that, you’re put through harder versions of the stages you completed. While this may seem like a bit of a cop-out, the challenges are made more interesting by things like high winds and icy runways. It’s honestly a breath of fresh air after fighting for your life in the helicopter.

Speaking of which, once you finish those harder levels, it’s back in the helicopter with you. This time it’s even more challenging, so…

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Dodging gunfire

I love Pilotwings, but I think the only way you’re getting me back in the seat of that helicopter is if I’m demonstrating to someone what hogwash it is. I’m not even sure how combat missions got in here. Your flight training doesn’t even translate into the mechanics of the helicopter stages. One minute you’re gliding through the air to a neat landing; the next, you’re dodging gunfire. It’s so inconsistent you could get whiplash from the change. There are, thankfully, passwords so you can ignore those levels.

Everything around the sudden and violent combat is crackerjack. Again, Pilotwings is my game to relax to. If you haven’t tried it, it is available on the Switch’s Online SNES platform… thing. Just don’t say I never warned you.

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Oh no, you can’t skip the tutorial

Wetrix was an easily overlooked little puzzler. Released in 1998 for the N64 before getting ported to PC and Dreamcast, it was unconventional, to say the least. While the name is probably supposed to remind you of Tetris, there’s a lot more to it than trying to wipe out a wall of tetrominoes. The goal is to wall up areas to hold water, and doing a good job rewards you with ducks. I think we can all agree that ducks are a pretty great reward. They’re like chill geese that won’t drag your child away.

If Wetrix was easily overlooked, its 2000 sequel blended in with the carpeting. Despite enjoying the original and knowing the existence of a follow-up, I only recently got around to trying it. That’s because it’s not named Wetrix 2 in North America. It’s Aqua Aqua.

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Uppers, downers, lefters, righters

To be clear, it’s only Aqua Aqua in North America. In Europe, it was Aqua Aqua: Wetrix 2.0, which gets the point a lot clearer. On the other hand, Japan had the stylized Aquaqua, which is slightly more fun to say. “A-kwa-kwa.”

The box art was also awful in North America. If the name wasn’t unrecognizable enough, the cover looks like it belongs at the bottom of a bargain bin. The game, on the other hand, doesn’t belong there. I mean, as long as you like Wetrix, it doesn’t. And you should.

I outlined the basics above, and that largely remains accurate. In fact, I’m scouring my brain for any major differences between Wetrix and Aqua Aqua, and I’m coming up with bupkiss. You make ponds. Except for this time, your reward varies depending on the board you’re playing on. Sometimes it's dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are nearly as awesome as ducks.

You’re given a square of land to build on, and you create your pools by setting various block shapes on it that fall from the sky. These “uppers” aren’t the only things that drop on you, however. There are also “downers,” bombs, fire, water, and ice. You have to manage all these various terrain movers to create the biggest, deepest pools for your dinosaurs.

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Rainbow!

Actually, saying “biggest, deepest,” pools might be a bit inaccurate. Scoring is a bit of a mystery in Aqua Aqua, even after playing the tutorial. Essentially, points are scored for most actions you take, whether it’s fixing a hole in the landscape or dropping enough uppers. To get higher scores, you need to build your multiplier, and there’s a slew of ways to do this.

One of the most obvious is simply by having more lakes. While having one big body of water has its advantages, more lakes will increase your multiplier. Having a certain amount of depth in one of these lakes will also attract the aforementioned “lake mates” like dinosaurs. They’re multipliers too. If you have enough water on your board, a rainbow will stretch across; that’s another multiplier. Finally, clearing water by dropping fire on it might land you with an item for your bingo board. Completing lines will do various things like… increase you multiplier.

Aqua Aqua is more of an art than a science. It’s hard to be exact with it, but the main factor in deciding your success is not spilling a lot of water. As you spill water, a gauge fills, and when it’s at maximum, the round is over. The gauge also depletes, so losing a bit of liquid isn’t the end of the world.

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Ducks and Dinosaurs

One of the main new additions to Aqua Aqua is a story mode. Well, “Story” is a little generous, but it gives you a series of levels to play through. Four to be exact, which isn’t a lot and won’t take you very long provided you know the basics of how to play. The basics are something you have to know going into the story mode because it’s not unlocked until you play through an excruciating tutorial. However, there is motivation to pursue higher scores on each of the stages.

The main wrinkle here is twofold. First, the matches aren’t endless. Survive for enough time, and it ends. Second, there are monsters who will occasionally bombard your landscape. By getting enough points in the time before they show up, you can block their attacks, but even if they do hit you, it isn’t the end of the match. Usually, it will just jazz up your landscape a bit.

Be careful, however, if your aquascaping gets a bit too undulating, you’ll trigger an earthquake. While these are survivable, they’re pretty devastating. You’ll need to pop some downers to prevent your board from becoming too bumpy. It’s a pretty nice mechanic that rounds out the skill you’ll need to keep water held in.

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Another Wetrix

Aqua Aqua, and by extension, Wetrix, isn’t my favorite puzzle game, but it’s a nice deviation from block stacking and bit matching. There’s a lack of precision in a lot of its mechanics, but it’s easy-going enough to make up for these. Building ponds isn’t exactly as relaxing as it sounds, but it’s fun, especially if you have a second player to join in.

On the other hand, Aqua Aqua doesn’t really make much of a case for being a sequel. There were some new features planned, like the ability to expand the size of your board, but it was scrapped, and nothing was really dropped in place of it. There are these disgusting goblin things that roam around the screen, but they’re better off ignored. Instead, it’s mostly just Wetrix again, which is fine because it’s a pretty decent game. I wish there were nicer, more feature-packed modern ports, but Aqua Aqua was the last we’d see of the series.

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Perrrrfect

I don’t really watch video game shows or streamers. If you want the snarky response, I’d say that I prefer to play games rather than watch them, but that’s not really true. I don’t watch much of anything, regardless of it's TV or movies. I’m too busy playing video games.

There’s one exception to this, and that’s GameCenter CX, a Japanese video game show that started in 2003 and still runs today. Something of a precursor to the various skits and shows today, it involves a comedian named Shinya Arino as he tackles a wide variety of retro games. The joy comes from the dramatic focus on his struggles. He has his successes, but even after two decades of hosting the show, he’s really not that great.

I love it because it’s a great way to discover games from Japan. Beyond that is the usual parasocial reasons. I sometimes like playing the games “alongside” Arino, experiencing them as he does. One of the more recent examples is a Playstation game called I.Q.: Intelligent Qube. It’s a game I did experience in my youth, but it was such a perfect fit for the show’s dramatic embellishments that I felt compelled to play it again.

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Forbidden qubes

I didn’t own a PlayStation when I was younger. Most of my experience with it comes from playing on a friend’s. He had a demo disc, which I.Q.: Intelligent Qube was demonstrated on. I didn’t really get it back then. Having it flanked by games like Crash Bandicoot and Parappa the Rapper was pretty distracting.

Intelligent Qube is a puzzle game that drops you on the field. Imagine playing Tetris while trying not to get crushed by the tetrominoes. You’re placed on a grid-like runway, and a horde of qubes try to run you down. You need to drop bomb tiles to clear them to get through. The strategy goes deeper than just survival, however. Ideally, you clear as many blocks as you can while avoiding the black “forbidden qubes.” Allowing too many good qubes to fall off the edge or destroying a forbidden qube will slice a row of blocks off the runway, giving you less room to maneuver. There are also green qubes that will clear out a 3x3 row and can be detonated separately from your normal bomb block.

That’s the whole of it, but in practice, it’s a lot more hectic than it sounds. There are a lot of tense moments when you’re running out of room, and a lot of thought is needed to clear the sets of blocks as efficiently and safely as possible.

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Undiagnosed stupidity

Intelligent Qube is a play on the concept of Intelligence Quotient, which is a measurement of how superior or inferior someone should feel in comparison to others. From a psychological standpoint, I can see the reasoning for having a metric for measuring intelligence, but I’ve never had someone tell me about their I.Q. without it being an insufferable way of explaining why they’re insufferable. I don’t need something like that to feel superior to everyone else. I do perfectly well with my undiagnosed stupidity.

Thankfully, you don’t need to be smart to play Intelligent Qube. While it may bake your noodle at times, it actually leans heavier on the typical video game tenants of pattern recognition, situational awareness, and reaction speed. There’s no need to do any math or articulate good. Thank goodness. You can get by on your beefy thumbs and ability to concentrate for short periods at a time.

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Worship me

Arino wasn’t very good at it. While he’s had a lot of success with puzzle games in the past, it took him 15 hours, and 30 minutes to clear Intelligent Qube on the easiest difficulty. That was part of my reason for playing it. It didn’t look that difficult to me. Surely I could complete it on medium (difficulty level 3).

I did. I’m just great, I guess. Worship me.

Intelligent Qube feels great. Not only did I get to feel superior to Arino for completing it with less difficulty, it feels like it’s designed to make you feel like the smartest person in the room. If you manage to clear every block without destroying a forbidden qube, a voice cuts in to declare, “perrrrfect!” I need to hear that more often.

Not only that, but did you know I have an I.Q. of 205!? Shocking, I know. It might also possibly be 15, but let’s ignore all the less positive outcomes.

One of the major differences between Arino’s level-1 difficulty and my big-brained level-3 is that easier difficulty levels place an arrow above your bombs that can be seen through the blocks. On harder difficulties, you have to mentally remember where your bombs are to detonate them safely. It makes a huge difference and adds an entire level of challenge. Intelligent Qube defaults to level-1, so maybe keep that in mind.

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Puzzle-buchou

Intelligent Qube also features a bizarrely amazing soundtrack that makes your blockbusting feel like the most crucial job in the world. Most of it sounds like John Williams wrote the score for the loss of his virginity. I don’t know what the stakes are in this frantic game of block detonation, but I can tell you that I’m a hero for avoiding those forbidden qubes. The soundtrack makes that clear.

A sequel called I.Q. Final would be released in Japan and Europe, and two more would be exclusive to Japan. I’m not sure how you can expand on Intelligent Qube’s mechanics, but I’m definitely interested in finding out.

I actually really enjoyed Intelligent Qube as a grown-up who’s already played Parappa the Rapper and Crash Bandicoot. It captivates the mind like a Rubix Cube rigged to explode. The abstract, early-3D graphics, and reverberating sound effects lock you in a trance as you eliminate the vile hexahedrons. It’s fortunate that it’s one of the few PS1 games made readily available by Sony on their digital platforms. Maybe try it out and immediately feel better about yourself. Or substantially worse. The same sort of effects that knowing your actual Intelligence Quotient can have.

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

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Past the kill screen

Do you know what the best Mario game on the Game Boy is? No, it’s not Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. No, it’s not Dr. Mario. Alleyway? No. What? Now you’re just making things up. Listen, shush. Stop making me regret asking you to play this guessing game. The answer is Donkey Kong.

At this point, Donkey Kong might be the Game Boy’s worst-kept secret. At the time of its release in 1994, I didn’t hear much about it. The fact that it’s just called Donkey Kong makes it sound like a port of the original arcade title, and it seems willing to keep that illusion going. There was also a push to make it the poster child of the Super Game Boy, which seemed to further muddy the waters. But if you took a chance on it, you’d find that it’s not only a terrific game in its own right, it’s one of the best games on Nintendo’s brick-like handheld.

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Communication breakdown

The best and worst part about Donkey Kong on Game Boy is how unwilling it is to explain itself. When you start up the game, you’re dropped into the familiar construction site of the arcade title. The eponymous Kong stands atop the girders, throwing barrels in your general direction. The graphics, sound, and music all harken back to the original title.

If you take the time to experiment with the controls, you might learn that Mario has quite a few new tricks up his sleeve, but there’s no indication that you should (assuming you didn’t read the instruction manual while eating Pizza Hut with your mom on the way home.) Donkey Kong then continues this illusion through four stages of arcade action before it finally plays its hand. Pauline is snatched from Mario’s grasp, and Donkey Kong takes off through about a bajillion more stages.

You may be wondering how you can stretch the arcade gameplay of Donkey Kong across a hundred-or-so levels. Rampage tried that, and anyone who has played through its 768 levels will tell you that it wasn’t a good idea. However, Donkey Kong greatly expands the basic mechanics in a lot of different ways. It also incorporates features from Donkey Kong Jr. and breaks from the original formula by adding scrolling screens. It all gradually evolves into something that doesn’t feel quite like the legendary arcade title, and instead feels like the perfect Game Boy game.

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Mmm... Pizza Hut

It would actually be better if you kept your pizza grease-coated fingers off the instruction manual since one of the things Donkey Kong does well is gradually revealing all its secrets to you. The game is divided into four level slices, and between each one, you’re given a vignette with the hairy primate antagonizing the hairy plumber. Through these, Mario demonstrates some of his new moves and what can be done with them, as well as any new level mechanics that are coming up. Through this, Donkey Kong presents that it has faith in you figuring things out, which is more respectful than any game with a forced tutorial.

Mechanics are introduced gradually, giving plenty of time to come to grips with them. Some of your moves are more or less optional, but they will make for a more impressive experience. Donkey Kong shows Mario at the spriest he’s ever been. Before Super Mario 64, the little Italian was doing handstands. That little skid-stop super-jump even shows up here. Who would have guessed it would become a mainstay in Mario’s repertoire?

Each stage is largely completed by collecting a key and carrying it Super Mario 2 (USA)-style over to a locked door. It’s a straightforward goal, but some of the stages get a bit puzzling when it comes to actually getting the key to the door.

There are often enemies in your way, and this is one of the places where Donkey Kong stumbles. Some enemies you can touch, while others kill you outright. Others will allow you to pick them up and throw them, and some don’t give you the option. There are a few enemies that look like they’re making an attack, but really, they just push you. It’s a bit of a communication breakdown, and while it’s hardly game-breaking, it is a notably weaker point of the game.

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Hop-skip-jump

Every fourth level has you squaring off against the titular ape. While some of these are a matter of reaching Pauline, like in the arcade title, others have you on the offensive, hurling barrels right back at the hairy boy. Predictably, the business ape just gets back up and grabs Pauline again right up until you can put him down for good.

At the beginning of each slab of levels, you’re treated to Donkey Kong wiggling his butt as he crams his way into the door. I don’t know why I bring this up, aside from the fact that I find it extremely distracting. It makes me uncomfortable. I want to avert my eyes, but who can turn away from such a shapely posterior posturing so brazenly? It’s not just me, right?

What were we talking about? Right, yeah, Donkey Kong. It’s uh… hm.

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What?

I find it interesting that a number of the level designers for Donkey Kong came from the scenario group that did Mother. I’m not sure that has much bearing on how the game turned out, but it is neat that a group from a mostly unrelated title hit it out of the park with this one.

Donkey Kong was going to get a remake on the Game Boy Advance, but it quietly disappeared and was later replaced with Mario vs. Donkey Kong. While it’s obviously a follow-up, Mario vs. Donkey Kong went further into the puzzle-platformer direction, and this transition continued through to Mario vs. Donkey Kong: March of the Minis. So, the series lives on (Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars being the most recent in 2015); it just continued the route of finding its own identity separate from the arcade inspiration.

As for the 1994 version, however, it’s an easy one to overlook. It would have perhaps been better off called Mario vs. Donkey Kong to make the distinction clear. Even today, if you had never heard of the game and were looking through a display of Game Boy games, you might just mistake it as a stripped-down port of the arcade title when it’s anything but. Anything butt. Butt.

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The trifecta

Konami is responsible for my top three games on the Sega Genesis console. I’ve covered Rocket Knight Adventures and Castlevania: Bloodlines already, but the third is Contra: Hard Corps. The thing is, while the former two titles are difficult trials in their own right, Contra: Hard Corps is one that I’ve never been able to fully consummate with. It’s hard. It’s right there in the title.

The biggest reason why these three titles are even difficult is that Konami had this strange insistence on using limited continues at the time. Contra has always limited how many continues you get on the console games, but Castlevania? That’s just dirty. But even then, Contra: Hard Corps is difficult beyond what I’ve experienced in previous games, and I’ll delve deeper into the reason. The biggest difference here is that it wasn’t designed to be.

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Yes, I know what a Probotector is. Stop asking

Contra is a series of games about playing as Sylvestor Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as they work to kill joggers and football dudes until aliens show up. Things kept getting weird and weirder in the games until we hit the Sega Genesis, at which point the developers were like, “This isn’t cool enough for this console, it needs more ‘90s. Someone get me a werewolf and graft a chaingun to his arm.”

For this entry, there are four selectable characters. A dude, a gal, a dog, and a robot. As much as Fang the half-wolf is awesome, he’s probably the most difficult to use. Ray stands in for Bill and Lance, so if you can’t fathom a Contra without the spread gun, he’ll fit you like a jockstrap. I stuck with Sheena, the lady, as I have difficulty believing aliens could be defeated by anyone incapable of live birth.

A lot of people say Gunstar Heroes is the best run-and-gun on the console, and it’s pretty great. But people probably only say that because getting past the first level in Contra: Hard Corps is a challenge. That’s because not only does your character bite it when someone bumps into them, but the gameplay changes rapidly. It’s like a police chase involving bumper cars.

Contra: Hard Corps a situation rush-style game where one minute, your feet are planted on solid ground, and the next, you’re riding an ostrich at breakneck speeds. It’s like Battletoads, and limited continues weren’t a good idea for that game, and they’re not a good idea here.

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It's pronounced "core"

And like Battletoads, things were different in Japan. Did you know that Contra: Hard Corps doesn’t have limited continues in Japan? You can continue as often as you want. It gets better, though, because your character can take three hits before they die.

It’s a completely different game. To be fair, the one-hit death thing has been pretty standard in Contra games, so having more rugged protagonists is actually a departure. I also only learned this recently, so I’ve taken multiple runs at it while playing as our porcelain protagonists. I completed Contra dealing with the limitation, so I just thought that was an expectation of me. However, I never quite had the patience to play and replay until I attained perfection.

Playing the Japanese Mega Drive version was a cakewalk in comparison. The extra health was enough to get me through many of the stages before I even realized that I could continue as often as I wanted. My concept of challenge is so warped by my prior experiences that I can’t even speak of the difficulty of the Japanese version. I feel like I plowed through it without faltering, but I could say the same thing about something like Super Castlevania IV. And when I was already cleansed in the crucible of the North American version, I suppose it would make sense that the Japanese difficulty wouldn’t have me breaking a sweat. I feel like I’ve been living a lie. I can’t even say which version I prefer.

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The aural dream team

Is it easy mode, or is North America, like, hard or expert? It would have been nice if playing with the Japanese settings was an option. The fact that it was changed and even omitted is no doubt due to the rental market. While renting games was normal in North America, it was illegal in Japan. Publishers over here worried that someone would rent a game, complete it in a weekend, then wind up not buying a copy. The solution wasn’t to make the game longer, but rather more difficult, and the easiest way to do that is to just send players back to the beginning when they inevitably fail. The same thing was done to Dynamite Headdy, and I’m similarly upset about that.

For a lot of players, especially younger ones, this means not seeing a lot of what Contra: Hard Corps has to offer. It’s constantly pulling new situations out of its butthole to shove at you. It’s so rapid-fire and fast-paced that you have no time to get comfortable or even get a handle on its controls. It also presents multiple paths and hidden endings while all the characters have their own weapons and abilities, which means that it really isn’t short for content.

Its soundtrack is particularly outstanding. The list of sound design contributors consists of six people, and it’s a veritable dream team. Two of my favorite composers, Akira Yamaoka and Hirofumi Taniguchi, are on that list, alongside Michiru Amane. It’s hard to tell how much each composer contributed, and Hiroshi Kobayashi is usually named as the lead. Nonetheless, it’s a jampacked soundtrack with wall-to-wall quality. Better yet, its manic quality fits the gameplay perfectly.

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What even is correct anymore?

Some people like to point at Contra 3: The Alien Wars as the pinnacle of the Contra series, but give me the absolutely batshit Contra: Hard Corps any day. I’d be saying that even if I hadn’t discovered the much more agreeable difficulty of the Japanese Mega Drive version. It's just complete madness, and I respect that.

Contra: Hard Corps also feels extremely Sega Genesis, pushing everything that made the console unique. It’s a little ball of energy, ready to snap at your hand if you reach to touch it. It’s a congealed effort, and it’s so happy to be here it doesn’t care if it’s making a spectacle of itself. Be that spectacle, Contra: Hard Corps. Grab that blast processor by the tail and swing it around. Let’s rock!

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It's a fun word to say

I don’t know how Steel Empire snuck up on me, but I had never heard tell of it until I held the Genesis clamshell case in my hands. A horizontal shoot-’em-up where you can pilot a blimp? Get out of my dreams and into my Genesis. However, I later learned that Steel Empire had been ported to 3DS and then to PC. Our boy, Chris Carter, even reviewed it back in the day. Since I was an avid reader of Destructoid at the time, I probably saw it, but it didn’t connect.

So, here I thought I discovered some lost gem of the Genesis library, and really it’s been in circulation this whole time. Ah well, it’s not some sort of competition. If it was, I would have so many participation trophies.

Rigid airship

Steel Empire is a 1992 game by Hot-B. Hot-B was the developer responsible for Hoshi wo Miru Hito, which was a Japan-only release that achieved the reputation of “kusoge no densetsu” or “crap game of legend.” Despite this, they were never really considered a bad developer. They had some success in the fishing genre, and previously created Insector X on the Genesis. Most developers have their off days. Just ask John Romero.

Truth be told, and blimp aside, Steel Empire is more of a mid-tier shoot-’em-up. I could name, off the top of my head, a number of better shooters that came out before and around the same time as Steel Empire. That’s fine because I’ve played those a bunch, but not as much Steel Empire. It’s not like there’s only room to play one shoot-’em-up. How long does the typical game in the genre actually run? Like, an hour, tops?

What I like about Steel Empire is that there’s an earnestness about it. It doesn’t feel like an all-in effort. It wasn’t made by veterans of the industry. Steel Empire isn’t Raiden. It just is. It has a vision, and it shoots for it. Comparing it to other games in the genre doesn’t seem useful because it doesn’t seem to be trying to compete. However, I’m going to do that anyway to let you know how excited you should be to try it. You should be medium excited.

Emperor Lenny

Steel Empire tells the story of an evil empire that’s kicking everyone’s ass until its neighbor decides to stop them with their wicked blimp. Pretty much every shooter tells the story of someone’s cool, cool spaceship, but Steel Empire is the only one that’s, like, “Aw, check out our awesome blimp.” I don’t really know what makes this blimp so special, but it is definitely better than any of the rigid airships that the enemy can throw together. It is absolutely the best lighter-than-air combatant in the sky.

There’s a plane too, which has different stats. It’s actually a good idea to pick it for certain stages. It’s kind of neat, but it’s not full of hydrogen, so that sucks.

You then go through a series of stages that has you pushing back the Motorhead Empire. You start off by kicking them out of your territory, and then you invade theirs and go for their emperor. It’s kind of a neat bit of cohesion that builds as you go. Most shoot-’em-ups don’t really tell much of a story, so it’s sort of fun that there’s a whole narrative arc to Steel Empire, as simplistic as it is.

The downside is that they chose to present all the cutscenes in a way that’s supposed to emulate the flicker of a projector. This might have looked okay on a CRT back in the day, but on any modern display, it’s a good way to ruin an epilepsy sufferer’s night.

Going all Hindenburg

The actual gameplay is rather straightforward. You try to get from the left side of the level to the right while losing as few lives as possible along the way. The levels are nicely varied, and the pixel art is fine. Power-ups are linear, but you get to keep everything but your options (little floaty balloons that shoot alongside you) when you die. You keep leveling up, and I’m not sure if it actually caps out. Eventually, you stop getting more bullets, but it’s hard to tell if your shots become more powerful.

There's also a health bar, which is somewhat unusual for the genre. You can take multiple hits before going all Hindenburg, and the amount you have each life is increased as you gain levels. You can also grab dropped items that will refill your bar. The plane has, by default, less health than the blimp, which makes sense because that sort of airplane is usually made of canvas, while a blimp is made of blimp.

If there’s one major downside to Steel Empire, it’s that the Genesis version suffers from severe slowdown when things get messy on screen. It’s noticeable, but I don’t personally mind. I bring it up because slowdown is one of the biggest sins a shoot-’em-up can commit to some people, so it sounds like an important detail.

If there’s another major downside, it’s the repetition toward the end. Certain sub-bosses repeat with only minor differences, so while the background action may change up constantly, things can get kind of repetitive where it really matters. Like most shoot-’em-ups, Steel Empire is a rather short experience, so it doesn’t get too stale, but it does diminish its climax.

I'll say it again: Blimps

I was somewhat surprised to see that Steel Empire had received multiple ports. I’m not saying it isn’t deserved. I believe that every game, regardless of quality, should be available and playable in perpetuity. It’s just that there are plenty of other games less obscure than Steel Empire that have never been renewed for later hardware.

However you choose to do it, Steel Empire comes recommended if you enjoy fun or blimps. Or both. Just don’t come in expecting it to set your hydrogen alight because it probably won’t do that. It isn’t Raiden. The only thing that could be better than Raiden is Raiden but with a blimp.

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Fascism? Not in my city

After writing about Final Fight 2 for the SNES, a few people suggested I look more into Final Fight 3. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I last played it. Thinking about it, I was probably just out of college when I last went through it with a roommate. It has at least been long enough that I forgot about the enemies that are literally Nazis. Stahlhelm, stielhandgranate, the name “Fritz.” Guys are Wehrmacht as all get out. So now I get to see Mike Haggar pile-drive Nazis into the pavement, and I wonder how I’ve gone so long without it. I previously said the original arcade Final Fight was the only one worth playing, but anything that lets you suplex the German infantry is required reading in my book.

In any case, Final Fight 3 is the last sequel to the brawler that we’d see for a good while. If you want to exclude 2006’s Final Fight: Streetwise, there has never been another sequel. And really, it’s tempting to.

Jingle All the Way: The Game

Final Fight 3 returns us to Metro City where a different gang has taken over. I guess it’s kind of difficult to come up with a plot that doesn’t just involve a gang taking over, but let me try. Okay, so it’s Black Friday. Your child desperately wants one particular toy for Christmas, and you’re being pressured by your wife to get it. You have to bash your way through holiday shopper crowds. Crap, that’s just the plot of Jingle All the Way. Was there a Jingle All the Way game? No? Obviously, that was a missed opportunity.

In any case, Mayor Mike Haggar teams up with Guy from the first Final Fight, a lady cop, and Dean, a guy who Capcom thinks is far more interesting than I do. If you asked a robot to come up with a Street Fighter character, Dean is what it would churn out. It doesn’t matter, though, since Mike Haggar is here, and as we’ve already established, anyone who is not Mike Haggar is at a steep disadvantage.

This time around, Mike Haggar has become a fashion disaster. He’s wearing baseball catcher shinguards, bike shorts, a single suspender, and somehow grew out a tremendous ponytail since the last game. Once again, someone at Capcom thought this looked cool, and they are offensively wrong. This time, however, it was plainly done by someone with a soul, because no machine could create such visual disarray. Hopefully, that person’s soul can feel shame, as it should be steeped in it.

Unfriendly framerate

One cool feature of Final Fight 3 is that, if you’re like me and don’t have friends, you can enlist a computer-controlled character to join you. This is a welcome feature, but it has some substantial drawbacks. The biggest is that it slows the game to a crawl. Having a second protagonist on screen is obviously too much justice for the SNES to handle because every action brings the framerate to its knees. It’s surprising the feature made it through in this state, but I also welcome it. I accept the decision to choose between multi-player fun and a stable framerate. I appreciate the option.

However, if you choose to have a computer-controlled second player, make sure that you go into the options menu and tweak the setting HIT CONFIG into the off position. What does HIT CONFIG mean? It’s friendly fire. While this is often an option in beat-’em-ups, it really only makes sense when the other player is actually rubbing two brain cells together. The AI does not care about your feelings and will mercilessly unload a flurry of punches to the back of your head. To make matters worse, you can’t just turn and charlie horse them like you could a physical person.

Finally, the computer-controlled character has their own stock of lives. Once they run out, they go into a game overstate, and I don’t know how to feed them a continue. I’ve researched it, pressed random buttons, and read the manual, but found no way to revive them. I considered plugging in a second controller and pressing start, but I was afraid that would communicate to the game that another human wanted to play and I’d be stuck juggling two controllers. No, thank you. Better just to skip the option unless you’re painfully lonely and have a really good imagination.

Big dad energy

The combat has also been overhauled, and it’s awesome. Things like dashing/charging have been added. The characters have special abilities, including one that you can trigger after filling up a pain gauge. It’s not only the best the series has seen, but it’s also a damned good beat-’em-up system. It’s fast, varied, and allows for some extra strategy where it’s needed. On the other hand, it’s a bit more on the cartoon-y side, eschewing much of the grit the original arcade title was touting. To be fair, though, Streets of Rage 3 had a playable boxing kangaroo, and fortunately, we’re not quite there.

On top of those improvements, there are branching paths that open up when you break doors in the background and walk into them. It’s not the biggest shake-up, but it does add some nice replay value, which is always helpful in the genre.

The enemy variation is also a lot better in Final Fight 3. I mentioned punchable Nazis, but there are also little hairy dudes and even lady brawlers, which is a nice change from the usual censorship the North American versions get. There are some returning faces, such as Andore/Hugo, just in case you pine for the old days.

Finally...

The soundtrack is also decent, bordering on enjoyable. I wasn’t a fan of the sounds of Final Fight 2, so I feel like breathing a sigh of relief. Weirdly, Final Fight 3 doesn’t have credits anywhere that I could find. I did some research and was only really able to find a few without any stated source. It suggested that the music was done by some of the same composers, but I guess they hit on a better theme this time around.

Overall, Final Fight 3 is a much better package than Final Fight 2 for a number of reasons. Heck, it feels a lot better than the SNES port of the first title. If it hadn’t been released so close to the end of the Super Nintendo’s lifespan, it probably would have been better remembered. It’s still a good Saturday afternoon affair, but you will definitely want to consider if pulling in a second player is worth sinking the framerate to the depths.

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Vote Haggar

In the debate between 1989’s Final Fight and 1991’s Streets of Rage, I’m in the latter camp. Don’t get me wrong, I love Final Fight and understand that Streets of Rage was just Sega’s answer to Capcom porting their seminal brawler to the SNES. I also realize that Streets of Rage is a blatant rip-off of Final Fight. However, I just love the sense of style and the fact that it’s better suited to consoles.

However, Streets of Rage doesn’t have Mike Haggar, former pro-wrestler and beloved mayor of Metro City. Haggar is amazing not just because he’s built like a pizza oven, but also because his backstory is so sparse you can apply whatever features you want onto him. Is he a mayor who only knows how to address crime with his fists? Maybe. Or perhaps he was working on addressing crime through social support programs to help the vulnerable population and guide them to making better choices than crime. Then Mad Gear kidnaps his daughter, so he has to put that on hold while he pile-drives some punks. He doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.

Unfortunately, Final Fight was clearly made for arcades, which made its Super Nintendo port a bit of a disappointment. It was made to eat quarters, and when you add on limited lives, it becomes a near-impossible endeavor. Also, it was single-player, which is just bizarre.

Final Fight would get two sequels that were exclusively on the SNES. There’s a good reason why they’re not quite as well-remembered as the original, but Mike Haggar is still in it, so I don’t care.

Guy's Fiancee's Sister

I’m not going to try and convince you that 1993 Final Fight 2 is as worth playing as the original arcade title, but there are two ways that it’s better than the original SNES port. First, it has two-player co-op. Beat-’em-ups are best enjoyed with friends, always. Secondly, one of the playable characters is a female ninja. The first game completely omitted the fairer sex when it comes to playability. However, this doesn’t really matter much because I’m only interested in playing as Mike Haggar.

This time around, the whole kidnapping thing is a mess. Guy’s fiancee, Rena, has been kidnapped along with his sensei. So Guy’s fiancee’s sister joins Mike Haggar and some other dude to get them back. It’s the Mad Gear gang again, but rather than just being some local roughs, they’re all over Europe. That kind of international expansion seems like quite a step up.

It’s really just an excuse to have Mayor Fridge pile-drive abroad. Unfortunately, the locals are kind of lame. All the colors are muddy and washed out, and Holland is full of landmines for some reason. I dunno. I guess riding a train through London might be a bit better than suplexing Beefeaters in front of Buckingham Palace. Wait, no it isn’t…

Chest Toupee

It’s a lot more monotonous than the first game in the series, which wasn’t all that varied, to begin with. There’s a very small collection of enemies, and while Andore/Hugo shows up, Poison doesn’t. In fact, no women do in the North American version. I understand that Nintendo was pretty cagey about having women as villains in fighting games, but it doesn't really help the visual diversity when every dude's a dude.

Even the bosses aren’t all that special. Sometimes, I wasn’t even certain I was fighting a boss at all because the music wouldn’t change. The second boss looks vaguely like Macho Man Randy Savage with a chest toupee, but that’s the only reason I remember him.

Speaking of the music, it’s awful. I don’t usually bring up soundtracks unless they’re really good or really bad, and Final Fight 2 fits into the second category. I don’t know how this happened, as it was created by a group of Capcom composers, many of whom worked on the publisher’s Mickey & Minnie games. The tracks just seem to be meandering messes with no core theme. Not that I really remember Final Fight’s soundtrack very well, but I don’t recall it being this bad.

Doable difficulty

On the plus side, however, Final Fight 2 is a perfectly serviceable beat-’em-up. While I have my complaints, there are ones out there that are substantially worse. The gameplay in Final Fight 2 is in the upper regions of okay. The grabs have always been my favorite part of the series, and Final Fight 2 allows Mike Haggar to grab an enemy, then jump high into the air to slam them back down in a spinning piledriver. Yes. Even if the overall package is a little bland, I can’t knock the combat.

Plus, as I mentioned before, this supports a second player, which means it’s a great little title to break out in the afternoon with a chum. Unlike the SNES port of the original game, getting through it on its default difficulty is totally doable. A little tricky but more in line with the difficulty of other console beat-’em-ups.

The greatest

Final Fight only had one true classic in the series, and that was Final Fight. But if you want more than that, the SNES sequels are as close as you’ll get. They’re not bad. They’re just not great, either. I kind of wish Capcom put their whole ass into creating some great platforms to showcase Mike Haggar, but we remain to be weirdly deficient.

And that’s a shame because Mike Haggar is the greatest. What they really need to do is add Mike Haggar to Streets of Rage 4, because then we’d have the perfect beat-’em-up. I’m not sure how anyone would make that happen, but if I had three wishes, that would be one of them. The main reason why I chose this game for my column was so I could talk about Mike Haggar. You can mark my words that this won’t be the last time you find me writing about Mike Haggar. Vote Mike Haggar.

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Perfectly level flying is the supreme challenge of the scale-model pilot

Sky Odyssey was a community recommendation from way, way back. Since then, I’ve had it earmarked, and I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get around to it. It was pitched to me as “like Pilotwings,” and I’m an absolute sucker for Pilotwings. As it turns out, it’s an apt comparison. It feels like the logical conclusion to the original SNES title’s fixed-wing biplane challenges.

I’m also something of a fan of flight sims, but have you noticed that there’s a dearth of arcade flight simulators? There are plenty of games about spitting ordinance at other aviators and many about just flying, but why am I not seeking out treasure or being encouraged to fly recklessly? A game that’s like, “there’s a massive storm; why not land on an aircraft carrier?” and you do that because there’s nothing more awesome to do.

And that’s 2000's Sky Odyssey. It’s one of those games that makes you wonder why we don’t get more games like it.

There's nothing more awesome

Here’s how a typical mission is set up in Sky Odyssey: cross the strait between islands. You are low on fuel. Rendezvous with an air tanker for more fuel. There’s fog. There are strong gusts. The islands below you are crumbling. Try not to die.

Sky Odyssey is a game that tells you to fly through air currents to pick up speed, then you find yourself fighting for control of your plane as it’s swept along. There are no half-measures here. In the first mission, you’re already threading through a ravine. The second mission of Sky Odyssey starts with your fuel line leaking, and you’re forced to match speeds with a train to top up and make it to the runway. I don’t know why you took off in the first place. Everyone told you that your fuel line was leaking; were you just not listening? It’s pretty fortunate that there’s a fuel train leaving the station right when you’re set to take off.

It feels like the design document was, “What’s the coolest thing you can do in a plane?” Below that was “Without combat.” And then below that was, “Not in the bathroom.” Every mission starts with “go to this location,” and then they just start adding in the sorts of nightmares that planes wake up screaming from. If Sky Odyssey ever got a sequel, they could only top these things with dragons and exploding zeppelins. Which I’m on board for.

This isn't about transportation, it's about survival

It aims for a sweet spot between flight simulator and action game and nails it with unimaginable accuracy. The whole story involves hunting for treasure in the most air transportation unfriendly chain of islands in existence. It’s mostly just a framework to connect a bunch of harrowing flight missions around. This isn’t about transportation, it’s about survival. Survival in a world that really hates powered flight.

Along the way, you get to customize your plane, and this is sort of where I find Sky Odyssey to be at its weakest. There are three planes to start with, and anything beyond that is locked behind ridiculous criteria that are unexplained. Usually, this means beating the game’s other modes within time or point constraints, but one involves landing on alternate runways. It’s cool as an extra special feature, but the three planes you're left with aren’t that exciting.

You get to choose a custom part every time you complete a mission. There are lots of ways to tweak your plane’s weight and power, but there’s usually little indication going into a mission that giving a specific attribute attention is beneficial. So, if you start a mission and find that a lightweight plane gets thrown around too easily, you have to fully exit back to the initial menu to be able to tweak things. It really throws a damper on experimentation and maximizing efficiency.

Orchestral defense

Sky Odyssey is also not a very long game. There aren’t a tonne of missions, but frustratingly, if you crash during a level, you have to start the whole thing from the beginning. Some flights can take up to 10 minutes, and it’s an absolute pain to do the whole thing again because of a small mistake. One time, I made the mistake of pulling up too hard while I was decelerating on a runway, and my plane spontaneously disassembled itself on the tarmac. I’m not sure whether it was a glitch or just something I don’t understand about aviation, but having to do the whole mission again when I was literally at the finish line is a horrible feeling.

This leads to this horrible problem that I’m not sure anyone else has. After a setback, I want to walk away from Sky Odyssey, but it’s just slightly not compelling enough to make me eager to come back to it.

One of the most striking things about Sky Odyssey is its soundtrack. It was scored by Kow Otani, who also did Shadow of the Colossus. It’s incredible. It’s intense. While Pilotwings leaned hard on some weird electro-jazz, Sky Odyssey feels like someone composed for a historical epic that got canceled, so they shifted all the tracks over to this flight simulator. When a pack of wolves is let loose in a concert hall, this is how an orchestra pleads for its life. It makes flying through a ravine sound like a climactic moment.

Citizen Plane

I think Sky Odyssey came out at the wrong time when we didn’t realize we’d be in for a rather homogeneous two decades of flight games. It’s like Citizen Kane: misunderstood in its own time but worth re-examining today. It’s Citizen Plane. Yes, I think I’m really clever for coming up with that one.

I can imagine two ways that Sky Odyssey could be improved for a sequel. The first is simply to move it to modern hardware so more severe weather situations could be incorporated. Things like tornados, for example. The second way would be to embrace the ridiculousness. Add in aliens, end-of-world weather, and make me fly to space or something. Activision or Sony or whoever owns the rights, give me a call, and I’ll put together some design ideas. Except, I keep my phone on silent, so if I don’t pick up, I’ll call you back.

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