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.

[caption id="attachment_399102" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_399100" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_399106" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Sega Arcade Arena

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_397812" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The brand that failed medical school

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

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

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

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

The mascot in my brain

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

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

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

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

Yep, that's a school

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_397815" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Eeeew, it's sticky!

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_397817" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Advertrauma

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

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

I remember when Mortal Kombat launched in 1992, or rather, I remember when it was ported to consoles in 1993. I was six at the time, but it was impossible to avoid the media fervor around its ultra-violence. My parents didn’t bat an eye when I rented it. My mother’s reaction to seeing me play it was to just ask if it was that game everyone was talking about. Then she continued with her day.

That would normally be an extremely weak way to start talking about Mortal Kombat 1. The original Mortal Kombat (which we can no longer refer to as Mortal Kombat 1) was 11 Mortal Kombats ago.

Yet Mortal Kombat 1 seems somewhat keen to tap into nostalgia for the ‘90s, and there’s nothing I have more abundance of than ‘90s nostalgia. It seems aimed at lapsed fans and dilettantes like myself. Through the Kameo Fighters, we get to see some of the Kombatants as they appeared in the original trilogy. However, this grab for nostalgia proved rather confusing to my thumbs, which tried to throw combos from muscle memory, only to have them not work in the new system.

[caption id="attachment_397789" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Those were $500 sunglasses

The beta weekend provided a decent way to get my feet wet with Mortal Kombat 1. It was enough to show my I’ve got a long way to go before I can compete at even the basest level. There’s a single-player tower mode, as well as a simple online versus. No practice mode, however. That really threw me.

It messed me up mostly because Mortal Kombat 1 doesn’t use a genre-typical combo system. In something like Street Fighter II, it’s mostly just a matter of finding out which moves flow best into each other. In Mortal Kombat 1, you need to dial-a-combo. You can view each combo in the movelist, which is helpful, but it means that if you fail a combo input, your character will throw a punch, then pause and wait for the studio audience to stop applauding before they’re primed to throw another.

This might be how it worked in the last couple of Mortal Kombat titles, but I only briefly played Mortal Kombat 11, so my memory is pretty hazy. It just felt extremely gluey to me, at first. If my mind ever wandered from keying in the inputs, I’d quickly be reminded of that by a sudden pummeling. It’s, uh, going to take some getting used to, I guess. Both online and offline, it started feeling like a sort of tug-of-war. One person would have the upper hand and would cycle through various moves and combos until they messed up an input or a combo breaker or a perfect block interrupted them.

[caption id="attachment_397786" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Pajama day

The Kameo Fighters are kind of dopey in terms of implementation. In theory, they represent an entirely new moveset, with you being able to change the attack by using direction input or charging. I guess this is something else I need practice on because, more often than not, my Kameo Character would rush in and either miss their attack or get interrupted by my fighter getting poked. They’d then stand awkwardly for a moment. They would look slightly embarrassed like they missed their cue. Then they’d just turn and run back offscreen.

Mostly, they served to add a little personality to grabs and Fatal Blows. And then they also pose with your fighter at the end, which is also a little strange when it comes to the original trilogy characters. Your fighter is in their overdesigned, color-coordinated outfit, while the Kameo wears their best pajamas and hockey gear. Not that I really mind since I’m kind of happy to see a bit of self-aware ridiculousness alongside all the gore.

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Big flex

The beta provides a handful of playable fighters and another small set of Kameos. I started off with my familiar main of Sub-Zero, but after a playthrough where I discovered he lacks a classic uppercut, I wound up trying out Li Mei. Likewise, I started off playing with the Kameo of Frost, but changed to Jax because I like his cigar-chomping style.

The single-player towers were no problem for me, even on their harder difficulty. However, my win/loss ratio online was dismal. I got a few successes under my belt, but it often felt like I was the only person on the internet who was unable to internalize the dial-a-combo system. I often fell back on the special moves and grabs, which obviously didn’t work out all that well. That’s not necessarily a condemnation of Mortal Kombat 1, at all. But I do have a long way to go to compete.

A few people I’ve spoken with about the game have said they mostly play Mortal Kombat games for the story. Unfortunately, it’s not really shown off in the beta. A few fighters, some Kameos, and a couple of levels. Not really surprising, but worth mentioning.

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Konsider this

Online worked fine, though. I didn’t get much opportunity to scrutinize it too hard, but I didn’t really get any visible lag, and the matchmaking worked quickly.

As it stands, however, I’m neither more nor less excited for Mortal Kombat 1. The biggest blow to my enthusiasm was finding out that Sheeva probably isn’t going to be in the launch roster. Otherwise, I didn’t really expect it to re-invent the fighting genre or push Mortal Kombat into a new era. Mostly, I expected it to compete with current forerunners, like Guilty Gear Strive, Street Fighter 6, and the upcoming Tekken 8. Sure, I can see it doing that.

If there’s one thing I wish, it would be that it would find a more unique aesthetic. Its gore-covered Hollywood blockbuster look is fine, but since we’re already bringing back the ‘90s look of some fighters, that could have been pushed hard. Why is there a flatscreen on the wall of the tea house? That should be a CRT. And maybe put an original Mortal Kombat arcade machine in the background of Johnny Cage’s penthouse. Liu Kang remade the entire universe. He should have transported it back to the most magical time of all. I’m an easy target.

The post Mortal Kombat 1 doesn’t look like it’s going to break any kombos 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.

[caption id="attachment_397527" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_397530" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_397531" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

Nintendo is hardly the worst company when it comes to localizing their games, but considering how many great titles they have, any single game that an audience doesn’t get is a real blow.

Leaving a game unlocalized wasn’t very common in the early days when there was less text in games. Mostly we missed out on games like Famicom Detective Club and Fire Emblem, both titles that eventually received translations and re-releases. Mainly, the number of unlocalized titles bloated out in the early 3D era, then retracted again once we hit HD and the world became better connected through the internet.

However, there are still a number of titles that Nintendo has yet to localize, and I would like to bring them to your attention. Maybe we just need to make a bit of noise, and we’ll finally get to see them in English.

[caption id="attachment_397404" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally (1988, Famicom Disk System)

Both the Famicom Grand Prix games remained in Japan and never got the cartridge treatment. Frankly, I’d love to see both of them get a tongue-swap, but of the two, the biggest standout is Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally.

It’s a bit like Outrun but more off-road. You drive one of three cars piloted by Mario and Luigi across branching tracks. It’s not a terribly big game, but it’s one of my favorite retro raster racers. The effort to translate this one would be rather minimal. There isn’t much Japanese text outside the menus. It wouldn’t be a bad choice to just release as-is on the Nintendo Switch Online NES channel.

[caption id="attachment_397406" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Famicom Wars (1988, Famicom)

The precursor to Advance Wars, Famicom Wars has been superseded by newer entries in a lot of different ways. However, I still love it as a curiosity. With fewer complexities and a fun campaign, I still think the original Famicom Wars is worthwhile.

Heck, we briefly got a re-release of the original Fire Emblem, and that’s a game that has been remade on DS. Famicom Wars would be easier to translate, as there isn’t really any dialog. On the other hand, I think Nintendo is terrified of cannibalizing sales. With Advance Wars Reboot Camp 1+2, freshly released, they might be afraid that people would start with the original and never move onto their shinier, more expensive modern remake. A ridiculous hypothetical, but you won’t stop me from speculating about the sort of evils that cigar-chomping corporate executives get up to.

[caption id="attachment_397407" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Joy Mecha Fight (1993, Famicom)

Joy Mecha Fight is an odd one. It came out late in the Famicom’s lifespan and seems to be an attempt to cash in on the arcade fighter boom. However, Nintendo had already secured Street Fighter II for the Super Famicom, so it almost seems irrelevant.

Nonetheless, Joy Mecha Fight is a pretty solid arcade fighter. It’s one of the few to ape the Street Fighter II formula on the 8-bit console outside of bootlegs. It also has an interesting single-player mode that has you unlock new robots as you go. There is a bunch of dialogue, but not a ridiculous amount. I imagine the only reason Nintendo didn’t localize it back in ‘93 is because the NES was already on the way out.

[caption id="attachment_397438" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via MobyGames[/caption]

Custom Robo (1999, N64)

The Custom Robo series felt like it was on the cusp of being something big. While Nintendo eventually got around to bringing the series westward with Custom Robo on the GameCube, the N64 originals never found their way over here.

Custom Robo is a pretty fitting name. You customize a robot, then enter them in arena battles. You collect parts, rise the ranks, and continually improve your killing machine. There was another Japan-exclusive sequel, Custom Robo V2, which added tag-team battles.

Both of the Custom Robo titles are available on Nintendo’s Switch Online N64 channel, but once again, only in Japan. We’re way past due for an official English release.

[caption id="attachment_397431" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via MobyGames[/caption]

Densetsu no Stafy (2002, Game Boy Advance)

We eventually got a single game from the Densetsu no Stafy series in 2008: The Legendary Starfy. However, there were four extremely well-received titles that came before it that have never been released outside of Japan. Developed by Tose, the Densetsu no Stafy series is a cutesy platformer similar to the Kirby games.

Actually, I don’t have a better way to describe Densetsu no Stafy aside from saying it’s a cute platformer. But the series is somewhat renowned – even in North America – as extremely good platformers. It’s kind of surprising that we only got the very tail end of the series and nothing else. But maybe it’s time for a Densetsu no Stafy collection. I mean, I don’t own any of the Stafy games. I’m just saying that I’m not opposed to owning all the Stafy games, Nintendo.

[caption id="attachment_397429" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via MobyGames[/caption]

Giftpia (2003, Gamecube)

I don’t think anyone has suffered more from Nintendo’s reluctance to localize some of their pre-HD titles than Skip, one of the offshoots from the legendary Love-de-Lic. Giftpia was the first game they put out after becoming established. It’s also the title that most resembles the classic Love-de-Lic formula.

You play as a kid who misses their own ceremony to advance into adulthood. They’re subsequently thrown in jail for their irresponsibility and has to make amends by making the inhabitants of their island home happy. It’s the same idea as games like Moon: Remix RPG and Chulip. It’s an important addition for fans of that very specific flavor, which makes it frustrating that we never got it over here.

[caption id="attachment_397435" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via MobyGames[/caption]

Mother 3 (2006, GBA)

I don’t feel like I even need to explain this one. Mother 2 was localized in North America as Earthbound on the SNES. While it didn’t make much of a splash when it was first released in 1994, it found an extremely devoted cult following that gradually spread its influence to the point where it’s still closely emulated today.

Fans have fought tooth and nail to get Mother 3 localized going as far back as its initial release in Japan back in 2006. A high-profile fan translation helped soothe the pain, but we’re still waiting for Nintendo to finally bring it to us in an official capacity. I’m not certain there has ever been a game with more demand for a localization than there is for Mother 3. Yet here we are. Coming on 20 years later with only a fan translation.

[caption id="attachment_397436" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via MobyGames[/caption]

Captain Rainbow (2008, Wii)

Here’s another Skip game built on the classic Love-de-Lic philosophy of creating games about making people happy. You play as a super-hero who has lost his powers. You wander an island, helping people, with the goal being to become popular again.

Captain Rainbow was extremely interesting in that it’s a real Nintendo fan’s game. Of the characters you interact with are such faces as Little Mac from Punch-Out!! and Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2. The sort of characters who kind of sit to the side of more popular ones like Mario and Link. But, I guess there are no Nintendo fans in the West.

[caption id="attachment_397413" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Okaeri Chibi-Robo! Happy Richie Ōsōji! (2009, DS)

This one is a real sore spot for me. The original Chibi-Robo on Gamecube is one of my absolute favorite titles on the console. However, Skip never really returned to the original formula, except for once. That’s this game, Okaeri Chibi-Robo.

While most Chibi-Robo sequels still have an emphasis on making people happy, Okaeri Chibi-Robo was the only other title in the series to cast you as a house-cleaning robot. You’re employed by Jenny, the daughter in the first game, and you’re let loose in her house to not only keep it clean, but to also upgrade it to give the family the life they deserve. Along the way, you once again assist the toys and ultimately help bring an end to the household’s pain.

The most recent game in the series is 2015’s Chibi-Robo Ziplash on the 3DS. I bought it for the Chibi-Robo Amiibo that came packed with it, because I really didn’t have much interest in the side-scrolling game that came with it. What burns me is that producer Kensuke Tanabe said that Ziplash might be “the last chance” for Chibi-Robo. Excuse me? You staked Chibi-Robo’s future on a game that is merely a sidescroller with the character in it? Nobody asked for that? We want Okaeri Chibi-Robo!

[caption id="attachment_397423" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Nintendo[/caption]

Buddy Mission BOND (2021, Switch)

I mentioned that a game not being localized by Nintendo is a rarity these days. Well, here is one of those rarities. Buddy Mission BOND was released for Switch in 2021. It’s mostly a visual novel with action segments. You select a pair of buddies who go out and investigate, find clues, and interview suspects. Afterward, it’s time to bust into the bad guy’s base. The route you take through the action scenes depends on what you found during the investigation.

It kind of surprises me that Nintendo went to the work of Famicom Detective Club, but seems to have no intention of localizing Buddy Mission BOND. It’s maddening because it sounds exactly like the sort of visual novel that I want to play. Maybe the success of Square Enix’s Paranormasight will convince Nintendo that there’s a market for visual novels in North America.

The post 10 games Nintendo needs to localize appeared first on Destructoid.

Now here’s a game I didn’t know I needed. Space colony management sims aren’t exactly a rare breed, even after you cross them with survival elements. However, I never realized that the one thing they were missing was the SDF-1.

Jumplight Odyssey bases itself on ‘80s sci-fi anime and does it with such incredible pizzazz and with such elegant depth that I’m absolutely stunned by the result. It feels like a missing Macross game, a title that bases itself not around the war going on but on the survivors aboard the SDF-1 as they cling to hope in the direst of circumstances. It is an exciting development by the team behind Armello.

Now, if only I could play it without getting hindered by bugs.

[caption id="attachment_396828" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Hope springs eternal

I want to be clear that Jumplight Odyssey is simply going into Early Access on August 21, 2023. That’s still over a week away, and after that, bug fixes are part of the path to Early Access. I have total faith that League of Geeks will be able to squash the biggest issues in short order, but I certainly had my share of issues with the pre-release.

But let’s put that aside for now.

Jumplight Odyssey has you managing a starship that is fleeing from an aggressive alien army. The crew’s homeworld has been destroyed, and their only hope is to reach “The Forever Star” on the far reaches of space. Currently, the only captain available is Princess Euphora, the last regent of the destroyed planet. Your only choice of ship is the SDF Catalina. It’s pretty clear that League of Geeks plans to add more captains and ships, but for now, we’ve only got one of each. That’s more than enough as a start.

The Catalina starts off in functional but damaged condition. Your first order of business is to get everything functioning again. Don’t get too comfortable, though. The Zutopans are right on your tail. As you work, energy is passively gathered by your jumplight drive. You need to make sure your course is plotted, keep one eye on the enemy position, and keep jumping to further star systems to stay ahead of the enemy.

https://youtu.be/4k7NmBF3Rdc

Bravely ran away, away

You also need to keep your crew alive. This means not only enabling the production of food and water but also keeping their morale up and gathering supplies from the planets you stop at. You choose missions and send off teams to bring back resources and other survivors. Crew members are also assigned to various teams, which you’ll need to balance as they’re required. There are combat, science, engineering, and supplies. Poor supply people. They just lift things.

You also need to defend yourself in Jumplight Odyssey, which I never really got to the point of having to do. Yeah, see, the bugs started cropping up pretty early for me.

My first attempt kept on getting stopped by things just not working right. One time, the last regent crammed herself against one of the shuttles, and everybody else chose to follow her. I think they were trying to unload it. Quitting to the main menu and reloading fixed everyone’s brain.

I then had an instance where the ship was running out of energy, but no one would man the generators. I told the crew to prioritize the delivery of supplies to them, but no one showed up to turn that biomatter into fuel. Eventually, the lights started going out, and someone came around to unload the stored biomatter. Okay, I guess we’re just giving up.

[caption id="attachment_396825" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Knees aren't supposed to bend that way

But the worst was trying to start a new game. On the default Catalina quest, if you don’t start with the tutorial, it doesn’t leave you a lot of time to gain jumplight fuel and warp to the next star system. It also doesn’t give you enough composite to build an item that makes jumplight fuel generate faster.

I realize that I could just start a custom journey and give myself more resources to start. Otherwise, I could play the tutorial again. But there are just too many headaches right now.

This is unfortunate, because I’m really excited about Jumplight Odyssey. The whole reason I took a chance with it was because I really liked Armello, a previous game by League of Geeks. I wasn’t sure if I’d like another attempt at space colony management, but once I got into it, I was in awe of how much there was to dig into and how accessible it was made to be.

However, right now, the bugs kill that accessibility. Once again, I have no doubt that they’ll get fixed. While there are a lot of interface tweaks I want to see happen, none of the bugs seem beyond fixable, so I have faith that they’ll get addressed. However, right now, I’m just going to be watching my Steam client for when updates start dropping. As it stands, I wholeheartedly recommend Jumplight Odyssey. It might just be a good idea to wait a little while before diving in.

The post Jumplight Odyssey is a tantalizing colony sim if you can get past the bugs appeared first on Destructoid.

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

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

[caption id="attachment_396632" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Educational television

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_396633" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Quick! Change the channel!

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_396634" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

It was Tuesday

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_396635" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Why do they still call me a warlord?

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_396227" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_396222" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

No laughing matter

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

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

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

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

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

Don't die

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

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

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

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

The absolute bare minimum

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

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

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

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

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

If you check my profile on any number of the dating sites I’m listed on, you’ll find I have some very specific criteria for my perfect match: non-smoker, no kids, vampire (demons and werewolves acceptable).

Gosh, I’m lonely.

So, it’s no surprise that Cabernet has attracted me to take a bite. It’s a unique narrative game set at the end of the 19th century where you get to play as a newly turned vampire trying to navigate high society. I know exactly where I’d navigate to.

In any case, Party for Introverts has released a demo alongside the Steam Visual Novel Fest, which gives me a chance to see if Cabernet has the bite I’m looking for.

[caption id="attachment_395710" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Delicious blueblood

You play as Liza, who has the good fortune of waking up dead in a spooky basement. She finds her way out of the depths and into the pleasant company of a bunch of bluebloods. After a quick wardrobe change, she learns that she’s a vampire. Rad, but it’s a lot to take in all at once. Rather than panic, she goes and mingles to learn about her new affliction through polite conversation.

The demo for Cabernet is teasingly short, but it lays out the basic concepts extremely well. Starting with your funeral, you’ve given points to put into four fields: Science, history, art, and literature. Having sufficient knowledge in any of these fields opens up dialogue options and other actions that affect how things progress. While proceeding through the game, you’ll gain experience. When you level up, you can put more points into these fields. Likewise, you can sit down with a good book, and at the cost of a chunk of a day, you can learn a bit more about those topics.

There’s also a good/evil dichotomy in the form of humanity and nihilism you get by either showing sympathy or just by being a prick. You also gain and lose relationship points by schmoozing with characters. All the above translates into additional actions you can take in conversation, which will affect the greater plot and provide a greater backstory and understanding of what’s going on.

[caption id="attachment_395711" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Careful ambition

It’s an ambitious system tangle of systems that we don’t really get a chance to see fully in action. There are certainly moments that demonstrate these systems in action, but the 45 minutes of the demo don’t really show how knotted these can get. With the small handful of scenes you are given, it’s easy enough to manage the number of branches that can shoot out from the varying options, but beyond that, the complications begin to increase exponentially.

That’s not to say it can’t be done, even by a small team. It’s just a pitfall that’s easy to fall into. Ambition has to be kept in check by careful planning. It’s my biggest concern, and while the demo doesn’t hint at it becoming a problem, it also doesn’t prove it’s being approached with due care. It’s something we’ll just have to wait and see.

[caption id="attachment_395712" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Just a bite

For that matter, what is present in Cabernet’s demo is extremely solid. The writing currently doesn’t allow itself to get weighed down by melancholy. The exposition is carefully woven into dialogue with other characters. So, while there’s a lot to get through, it isn’t just heaped on top of you but rather given bits at a time carefully over a few scenes. For that matter, dialogue isn’t needlessly long, either. It’s impressively lightweight and concise.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that Liza still has some agency of her own. You’re presented with a few situations where you, as a player, aren’t really given much control over her actions. At least at the beginning, you’re not allowed to just go ham at the opening party and start opening every mortal artery you bump into.

I think the softened humanity/nihilism nomenclature for the moral choices you make is probably for the best. At least in the beginning, you’re not allowed to go full paragon or hopelessly evil. You can shape Liza’s moral fiber, but you can’t choose to throw all caution to the wind. You wouldn’t want to commit a faux pas.

[caption id="attachment_395713" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The smell of blood

The demo also hints that you’re going to have lots of space to do your whole vampire thing. You’re only given access to two of your four spooky powers throughout the runtime, and with them comes a short list of rules you have to follow. I’m looking forward to seeing how they’re both enabled and restricted throughout the rest of the game. Likewise, I’m interested to see the day/night system in action and what ultimate conclusion the narrative works toward.

Cabernet’s demo is everything I wanted it to be and more. I am well beyond excited to see where things go and am already looking forward to my chance to peer beyond what I’ve seen already. The fangs are what brought me here, but the careful worldbuilding has convinced me to stay.

The post The Cabernet demo provides a bite of something delicious 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.

[caption id="attachment_395081" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_395083" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_395084" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Come back when you're ready

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

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

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

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

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

One of the publishers that I find most irksome in this industry is Warner Brothers. They currently own most of the properties of defunct published Midway Games, and by extension, Atari Games. Despite owning the rights to a lot of great game franchises, they only seem interested in Mortal Kombat. They’ve done dick all with everything else. This includes some of my all-time favorites, like Tapper and Smash T.V.

It’s enough that I’ve considered these games to be unavailable, or as a recent study termed them, “critically endangered.” However, that’s not technically true because they are available. You can find them on Antstream Arcade.

While Antstream Arcade has been around for a while, I have an innate dislike for streaming games. I’d rather own them in some form. I don’t like the idea that they may be ephemeral. Relying on a corporation to allow me to do what I want is not something I can trust. However, I feel that the game preservation goals of Antstream Arcade are earnest ones. As I heard someone mention, publishers may be more willing to allow games to be re-released on streaming services, so this is a way to get at licenses that would otherwise be out of reach.

With its recent Xbox release, I was given the opportunity to try out the PC version of Antstream Arcade myself. Since it’s been I was able to get a round in with Tapper, I decided it was worth a shot. As it turns out, there are more reasons to try out Anstream Arcade than just easy access to critically endangered games.

[caption id="attachment_394501" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Pixels besmirched

I first want to get the technical side out of the way, as that’s my first concern when playing streamed games. I tried the Xbox Cloud Gaming service a while back, and while I thought it was fine, I hated seeing compression artifacts everywhere. The question on the top of my mind was if Antstream Arcade would be any different. It Isn’t.

Note that my internet connection is probably more ideal than most people have access to. My apartment has a full fibre connection. The only time the internet touches copper is the Cat8 ethernet cable between my modem and NIC. It’s a 1.5Gbps connection, but my NIC only supports 1Gbps, which is still a lot faster than most people have.

My main test game was 1996’s Metal Slug. It’s known for its transcendental pixel art graphics, which provide a much busier pixel than, say, Chack’n Pop. It’s also a game that I’ve been playing through repeatedly recently, trying to drive down how many continues it takes me to finish it. So, I figured it was the best candidate since I know it inside out and can see if any added input lag has a huge effect on me.

Firstly, the visuals suck in a lot of places. While the image is sharp at the best of times, even on a 4K monitor, a lot of motion causes it to lose fidelity. A lot of noise gets added to the image, which is less than ideal. How much noise depended on the scene and the time of day. It was always legible and didn’t affect gameplay much, but was certainly less than ideal compared to the Arcade Archives or Metal Slug Anthology releases.

[caption id="attachment_394502" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Marco!

It took me 7 continues to finish Metal Slug on Antstream Arcade, which is in comparison to my best effort of 5 continues. However, to be fair to Antstream, this was mostly because I was waiting for the polish on my nails to harden, so I was avoiding the ends of my fingers while playing on an arcade stick. I didn’t really notice any input lag. There probably is some, just based on the technology, but it was imperceptible to me. There was slowdown, however, but it never struck me as more than the slowdown that Metal Slug normally has. It slowed down in all the regular spots. Spots where I was used to seeing it. It isn't added slowdown, is what I mean.

You can’t, however, touch the settings on any of the magnitudes of games I tested. Like in an actual arcade, the DIP switches are locked away. This gives an advantage to home versions, like the Arcade Archives or various compilations, where you can usually tweak the difficulty and scoring modifiers. This is probably not a problem for most people. The biggest issue I had with it was with Metal Slug, the blood is off, and there’s no way to turn it on. This was set this way for North American releases, but Arcade Archives lets you turn the blood back on.

What’s even more vexing is that you can’t remap inputs. You’re stuck with what they give you, and that means the inputs for an Arcade Stick will be exactly the same as those on an Xbox Controller, and that’s rarely ideal.

Pound for pound, I’d rather play a downloaded, local copy of the games available. However, it’s worth noting that something like that can really put the hurt on your bank account. Just buying the Arcade Archives versions of the three Metal Slug games (1, 2, and X) that are featured on Antstream Arcade puts you just 10$ short of an annual subscription. So, you’d have to weigh that based on your personal situation and preferences.

[caption id="attachment_394503" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Outside the cabinet

What I didn’t expect to grab me was the online challenges and tournaments. Each game has a set of challenges associated with them that can provide you with new ways to interact with some of these games. Going back to Metal Slug, as an example, one challenge starts you off on the second level with only a pistol, and the ability to pick up new weapons is disabled. So, it challenges you to get the highest score possible with only a pistol and grenades. You then get ranked on that.

Various tournaments also run at all times. They pick a game, then give you a challenge, such as scoring as high as possible on a single life, then you’re ranked against the other competitors. The prize is just gems, a currency used for participating in challenges. That’s not too exciting, and the gems are so easy to come by that they’re practically inconsequential, but at least you have some skin in the game.

The challenges are what keep me coming back to Antstream Arcade. It’s not even necessarily that I want to compete or win. It’s more that it gives me a reason to dive into games that I don’t know very well and try to build my skill and confidence in them. It’s a helpful metric to see how close I am to mastering a game, and it’s something I appreciate that I don’t necessarily see in other releases of arcade titles.

On the other hand, some of the challenges aren’t well thought through. Going back to Metal Slug, there are a couple of “survive as long as you can” objectives that were clearly not tested by anyone intimately familiar with the game. One was surviving the submarine section on the last level, which can be gamed by leaving a plane alive and just dodging its bomb repeatedly. Doing so makes the section never end, so you’re never in peril and can continue until the timer runs out. That is not how I think they expected it to be done.

[caption id="attachment_394504" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The future of retro

That’s also really the only online multiplayer available. You can duel over challenges, but that’s once again competing for score. There is local multiplayer when it’s supported, but right now, that’s all you get in terms of direct competition.

There’s also some badly needed housekeeping on the service. It uses a recommendation and category system that you’d find on Netflix, which isn’t all that helpful. I had an easier time keeping an external list open on a website to figure out what was available and what wasn’t. Then I could just search for it and find it that way.

Antstream Arcade also has titles from other platforms, such as microcomputers and consoles. For whatever reason, though, you can’t browse by console.

They are planning on overhauling everything in what they’ve termed “Project Vision.” However, I can’t find any hard information on what this will include. They’ve teased multiplayer and UI upgrades, so we’ll see what this involves. I’m interested since any number of my complaints may be addressed.

[caption id="attachment_394506" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The quarter hole

Antstream Arcade is also noticeably lacking content from certain publishers, which isn’t all that surprising. While Namco, Taito, SNK, and Atari (both Atari Games/Midway and Atari Interactive) are on board, we’re lacking other big players like Capcom, Sega, and Konami. I have no doubt that Antstream Arcade would want content from these publishers, so I can only imagine they’re continually pushing for a deal.

However, there are still an advertised 1300 games on Antstream Arcade, so I haven’t hit the bottom of what I want to play and discover. It’s always going to be growing, so a lack of content is just something you’re going to expect. It being a streaming service, there’s also a potential for content to be removed when a contract expired, so that’s something else to keep in mind.

But for all my complaints, I still like Antstream Arcade. It’s not a perfect service, but it’s cheap enough that it’s worth having for access to games unavailable elsewhere and challenges for some of my favorites. Having more than one method for preservation is always ideal. I always have the option to buy Metal Slug on other platforms. On the other hand, I don’t have the option to buy Tapper elsewhere, but that’s not Antstream Arcade’s fault. They’re just doing what they can. So where you at, Warner Brothers?

The post Antstream Arcade might be worth your quarters appeared first on Destructoid.

The best stages of fighting games transport us to an exciting arena. It could be a stunning wilderness, a ruckus crowd, or an ancient temple. What's most important is how they set the tone of the fight and if the intractable nature of the stage is well suited to a fighting game. Let's hear the roar of the crowd and get stuck in on what makes an exciting fighting game stage.

[caption id="attachment_394297" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Capcom[/caption]

The stunning setting from stages of fighting games

Arguably, the most important element is the graphics of each stage. There's always a balance between being too simple and too distracting. For example, I hate it when pro fighting game players always pick the plain white training stages during EVO or local meetups that take me out of the experience. On the other side of the coin, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's Final Destination has way too much going in the background that keeps me off focus.

The best fighting game stages have enough flair to be entertaining but not too still to the point of boredom. Duomo di Sirio is one of my favorites from Tekken 7, for example. There's not a lot going on in the background, but there's an elegance to the European-inspired setting. There are sculptures in the background and illustrative architectural touches that make it stand out. As the battle continues, you can punch your foe off the balcony, giving a more dynamic feel to the fight. The stage's music is also exhilarating.

Bustling or serene, fighting game stages can fit different qualities

Additionally, the best stages show the environment's culture perfectly. Street Fighter 2's Shopping District depicts a bustling Chinese market. There's a cyclist rolling down beside the fight as a chicken flaps its wings inside a cage, a woman is washing her hands in a bowl, and meat is hung up by hooks. To give a more recent example, Street Fighter 6's Fete Foraine presents a stunning Parisian night. The Eiffel Tower is glowing in the background of a market filled with a clown, food stalls, and a spinning ride. There are also people enjoying their food on red and white cloth tables. Capcom does a great job of detailing its stages with all sorts of references and cultural reflections of each environment.

If you want a stage that's more serene, take a look at Genbu Temple, also in Street Fighter 6. It's not populated with onlookers to the fight, but the slight monochromatic styling of the stage next to the pink blossom trees is so striking. Awesome stages can take different forms.

[caption id="attachment_394294" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Cinematic stages

NetherRealm's recent fighting game output has provided interactive stages. They're cool because your environment presents a new layer of strategy to each bout. In Injustice: Gods Among Us, you're able to bounce off a car's hood to get out of the corner or ride a motorcycle into your opponent in Wayne Manor. There's even the option to smash The Joker's face into the car. You can also launch your opponent out of the arena with an impressively detailed cinematic cutscene.

Meanwhile, Dragon Ball FighterZ impresses anime and fighting game fans alike with its thrilling animations that seem ripped straight from the show. One critical element of the stages in this game is how they can crumble around you. If you use a powerful ability, the environment is wiped out, adding believability to the intense cutscenes that play beforehand.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6WdFcnGJNgLOeL4RBCU95l?si=5e500366ef3a46c8

The music

While some games focus more on the character themes nowadays, each stage's music is important in capturing excitement in a fanbase. While Jin and Heihachi are simply fighting on a shallow ocean floor and nothing else, the "Infinite Azure" track is spectacular. The beats are addicting and maintain an intense tempo, but there remains a calm tranquil tone that's refreshing to listen to. It features a few surprises in the composition, like a heavier emphasis on the percussion mid-song. Without this music, it would be a dull yet beautiful stage to fight in.

Going back to Dragon Ball FighterZ, "West City" retains the upbeat yet heavy stakes of battle. The deep bass, strings-focused melody, and then the horns all make for an epic theme while you're fighting against the likes of Tien, Cell, and Goku. While the environments show an accurate recreation of West City from the anime, the music truly makes it a fantastic stage I go back to over and over again.

You cannot talk about great fighting game stage music without mentioning "Jazzy NYC" from Street Fighter III: Third Strike. The deeper cymbal section at the beginning represents a hip-hop energy as you enter New York City. The theme is lively and has you bobbing your head up and down. The jazzy saxophone-like MIDI has an amazing solo in the middle of the song that just exudes energy. It's one of, if not the, most popular stage theme in Street Fighter history. If the music is right, it will emphasize the stage's vibe perfectly.

What are your favorite fighting games stages?

There are so many fantastic fighting game stages out there. I personally have a soft spot for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale's novelty approach to mixing two games into one area, like God of War and Ratchet & Clank in Metropolis. There's also the majesty of Tekken 5's Moonlit Wilderness with its gorgeous moonlit sky and flowers that glow from its light; it has an epic theme with it, making this stage the ultimate package. What are your favorite fighting game stages?

The post What makes an exciting fighting game stage? Let’s dive in appeared first on Destructoid.

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_394483" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Invitation to kusoge

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_394484" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Get off my lawn

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

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_394485" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Our house, our rules

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_394486" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Monster problems

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

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

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

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

If you have to fail, fail spectacularly

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

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

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_394235" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

[caption id="attachment_394237" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Select your fursona

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

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

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

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

Go ask Alice

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_394242" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

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.

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

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

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

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

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Sega Genesis (1991, Tengen)

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

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

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Super Nintendo (1991, THQ)

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

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

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

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Atari Lynx (1992, Atari Games)

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

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

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

[caption id="attachment_393299" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Game Boy (1992, THQ)

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

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

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

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

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Sega Master System (1991, Domark)

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

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

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

A sketch of kusoge

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

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

Obligatory shake shake

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

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

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

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To punish evil forces, I have been charged

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

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

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

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

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A hero with shining armor is called

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

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

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

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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.

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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!

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

Totally Studly

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

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

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

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Awesomely done

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

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

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

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Confusingly erotic

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

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

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

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Leather daddy

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

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

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

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Brutality bonus

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

Aren't you a little short for a Samurai?

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

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

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

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Not my problem, pal

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Pluck me sideways

There’s no real reason why I should love Pikmin as much as I do. On paper, the idea of having a salad army run around picking up rocket parts doesn’t sound too exciting. However, Nintendo hooked me right away back in 2001. My new GameCube was hungry, and I was eager to feed it more.

Nowhere has my enthusiasm for the game been tested quite like with the wait for Pikmin 4. Shigeru Miyamoto first teased us about it back in 2015, and then Nintendo remained coy about it until just recently. Pikmin 4 is finally happening, and it’s happening very soon.

So, while I eagerly sit here, chewing on my fingernails and waiting for it to reach my local game shop, I’m going to take a look back at the series up to this point. Once the new game does reach my big meaty claws, I’ll circle back and update this list. But for now, here are all the Pikmin games ranked.

5. Pikmin Bloom

I can’t fault Niantic for continually trying to build on their success with Pokemon Go, but I feel like Pikmin Bloom is kind of a demonstration of their dearth of innovation. In general, it feels like a pretty forceful shoehorn of the Pikmin concept into Niantic’s real-world exploration format.

On the other hand, it’s not terrible. That’s sort of the thing with this list; none of the games here are bad. It’s just some are more valuable to the property than others. Pikmin Bloom would need a rather large overhaul to be really worthwhile, and I don’t see that happening.

https://youtu.be/iHGTVVLmxBI

4. Hey! Pikmin

Hey! Pikmin is a pretty innocuous attempt at translating the series’ formula to a sidescroller format, but I typically pull “innocuous” from my lexicon when I’m short of nice things to say. It’s really not bad, but it kind of feels like Nintendo focused on pushing the whole Amiibo integration instead of pushing the series forward and innovating in any way.

When Hey! Pikmin was announced, it was during a time when we were waiting for news on Pikmin 4. The news we got was this 3DS entry wasn’t it. And because it’s so lackluster and inoffensive, it’s easy to omit it when thinking of the series as a whole.

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3. Pikmin 2

The first follow-up to the GameCube original was definitely a bigger game that tried a number of new things, but the result is a lot of bloat and what feels like a betrayal of the first game’s charm. Pikmin 2 brought a lot to the series with its vast array of treasures, new Pikmin types, and the introduction of multiple captains. Then they buried it all underground.

Most of Pikmin 2 takes place in underground, maze-like caves. The gameplay still largely involves trying to find treasure and return it to your base, but down in the procedurally pieced-together labyrinths, it’s less about survival and puzzle solving and more about straight combat. While you may have been protective of your tiny carrot-people in the first game, Pikmin 2 doesn’t give you that luxury, instead necessitating that you view them more as a health bar.

It’s unfortunate, but not everyone is going to hate the different focus as much as I did. While I see Pikmin 2 as the most bloated and inhuman game in the series, others will see it as the most challenging and full-featured entry.

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2. Pikmin

Following right on the heels of the GameCube’s release, Pikmin was a perfect showcase of what the console was capable of. Its hundred tiny carrot-people felt seemingly impossible on the N64. However, its technical prowess isn’t all that important today. What’s important is that it’s still an excellent game.

Nintendo took the concept of commanding a hundred little workers and ran with it in some extremely unexpected directions. It’s a survival game without the genre’s usual trappings. You cultivate sentient vegetables and try to keep them alive as you recover parts of your ship. While we, thankfully, got sequels that turned Pikmin into a series, the first game does a great job of covering all the possibilities of the concept. Though things have been expanded, rejiggered, and refocused, the core has always stayed the same, proving that Pikmin got it right the first time.

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1. Pikmin 3

I should be able to just say that this is the game that introduced Brittany as a character, and that would tell you all you need to know. Brittany’s the best.

If that’s not sufficient, Pikmin 3 feels like the best delivery of the series’ mechanics. It takes multiple captains and makes them worthwhile. It doesn’t go back to the thirty-day time limit of the first game, but it does have a supply mechanic that encourages you to continually tighten your efficiency. On top of that, it does a much better job with pacing. You know, after you get past all the tutorials about what your Pikmin do.

When it released on Wii U back in 2013, it was the first game for the system that had me playing until the tea tray controller was drained of batteries. Then, when its Deluxe edition came out for Switch, my husband and I played through its added co-op mode. It's still fun to break out to play a round of Bingo Battle or just relive the joy that is Brittany. There isn't a bad Pikmin game, but Pikmin 3 is the best.

The post All Pikmin Games, Ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

I'm a superstar at the cracker factory

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

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

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

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Full-Motion Vomit

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

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

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

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

Powered by the Sega Slab

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

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

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

Must not accidentally type “Corpse Party”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plastic anatomy

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

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

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

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

Double down on trash

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

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

In AD1987, development was beginning...

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

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

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

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

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Meandering towards the Lynx

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

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

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

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

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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.

You Fool!

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

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

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Big Bushido

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

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

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

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

Orgy in a tumble dryer

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

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

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

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

One last Heike

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culture shock

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

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

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

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

Indispensible crap

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

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

I hope that means what I think it means

Even though the retro-inspired first-person shooter sub-genre has been running at full steam for a while, I feel like it just keeps getting better. Sure, I feel like a lot of it is mowing down demons or cultists to heavy metal music, and it can sometimes be hard to tell your Hyperviolent apart from your Turbo Overkill, but still new approaches pop up that are easy to miss.

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer is one of my favorite releases this year. It combines the weird aesthetic of the late-’90s FPS era with extremely effective character exploration. It stands out from the crowd, even if its gameplay is almost deliberately hobbled to evoke the feeling of an amateur mod.

Calcium Contract similarly defies explanation. Unlike Slayers X, it seems like an earnest attempt to provide an experience that plays and feels good, but it’s partnered with this absolutely bizarre aesthetic. It feels like if Duke Nukem 3D was designed by a studio localized within McDonaldsland.

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Grimace blood

Calcium Contract is the story of a chicken serpent who is not really all that big on the idea of dying. However, everything that lives must eventually meet its end, so you’re the latest in the line of doomed attempts to force the mighty beast to obey the laws of the universe. You’re essentially a grim reaper.

However, while that sounds pretty heavy metal in its own right, the aesthetic is anything but. The weapons and enemies look like they were designed by someone who passed out at daycare while fried out of their mind on peyote. They’re a colorful, toy-like cast that keeps them easy to read at a glance. The chickens? They run at you. The lizards? They cast fire spells.

The weapons, on the other hand, are a bit harder to read. Your basic weapon is a pitchfork that fires three projectiles. You’ll also find a shotgun and an automatic weapon that fires musical bones. That’s just the start, but you aren’t exactly given a vast, destructive arsenal.

[caption id="attachment_389944" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The end of wall humping

I think this may be to reduce the need to backtrack and scour the environment. There’s no wall-humping for secrets in Calcium Contract, which is something that I kind of appreciate. Instead, you’ll spot weird characters hauling around treasure chests, and you have to try and take them down before they escape. It’s a cool way to handle “secrets” since it ensures that exploration doesn’t bog down gameplay and tests whether you can quickly identify and take down a target rather than just how well you can drag the spacebar across a wall.

The levels themselves feel very familiar to someone who has played a lot of raycast shooters. Stages are largely of the key-hunt variety, and they vary in size and openness. Some of them depict environments that are somewhat recognizable, while others are much more abstract.

Of course, all of them share the same sugar-fueled nightmare aesthetic as the enemies. The skybox is one of the most peculiar I’ve ever seen. You can see the interior of the island towering in the distance, sometimes with the chicken serpent looking down on you. As you progress, it changes perspective, giving you views of various landmarks and making it feel like there’s tangible progress being made. It’s a nice, ridiculous touch.

[caption id="attachment_389945" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Drink plenty of Malk

I’ve said it before, but my favorite part of retro shooters is when they try to represent real-world locations in their primitive engine. It gives a charming quality that feels like home to me. Calcium Contract doesn’t seem to be aiming for that, or at least, it doesn’t, from what I’ve seen so far. However, it more than makes up for it by just being a blast to play.

While the firepower isn’t weighty and the action is rather measured, there’s a lot of neat stuff that goes on in a typical battle. There are jerks who resurrect fallen enemies, snipers who cast laser pointers across the battlefield, and mages that spray fire everywhere. The developer, Igor Aleksandrowicz, told me that they’re focusing on a “good game feel and also giving in its own unusual identity.” I can confirm that it’s largely a success.

There’s a demo available for Calcium Contract, which gives you access to four levels that are modified a bit from the development version of the game to give better access to weapons and a taste of enemies that would otherwise be differently paced. The final version is scheduled to drop later this year. Definitely give it a try. It almost certainly will tickle something in your brain.

The post Calcium Contract has a demo that will rattle your bones 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.

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

Incredible concept

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

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

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

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

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

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

Incredible narrative

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

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

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

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

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

Incredible header

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

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

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

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

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

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

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

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

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

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

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

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

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

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

HUHUHUHUHUHUHU!

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

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

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

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

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

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

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

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

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

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

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

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

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

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

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

HUHUHUHUHUHUHU!

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

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

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

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

We do a little bowling and we drink a little vino

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

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

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New saucer-sled land speed record

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

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

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

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

Prolonged exposure

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

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

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

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

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

Dum-dum

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

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

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

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

No, you can’t. Nevermind.

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

Cooked turkey

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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

Measure twice, cut once

I can’t really imagine a future where I can afford to buy a home for myself, let alone one where I could make a living buying up repair jobs and selling them at a higher price. Not that I think I’d want to. But regardless, House Flipper is probably as close as I’m going to get.

Released in 2018, House Flipper had a profound effect on the simulator genre. Not that I think it meant to. However, it hit upon a nice balance of ugly jank and tactile gameplay. It wasn’t the first of its kind, but a combination of its engaging execution of its core concept and ability to connect with audiences made it a success that others hurried to emulate. We still live in a market glutted with job simulators, and while some of them are good in their own right, it’s hard for any of them to stand out.

Nonetheless, after years of being supported by DLC, we’re finally getting House Flipper 2, and Steam Next Fest gives us an opportunity to test drive its demo.

[caption id="attachment_387933" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Just move a bookcase in front of it

House Flipper 2 starts off by stranding you on an island with a dilapidated house on it. Your job is to make it suck less and then sell it. You’ll notice a lot of books lying around that tell you how to work the various systems within the game, and I read exactly none of them. While almost everything has changed in House Flipper 2, it’s all relatively easy to figure out.

Like with renovating the house itself, I’m not exactly sure where to start here. I suppose I’ll just assume you haven’t played House Flipper. The idea is that you’re given a task – or a series of tasks – and you need to accomplish them to the best of your abilities. This involves cleaning up garbage, removing stains, cleaning windows, vacuuming up debris, painting walls, laying floors, repairing walls, and general furniture placement.

A lot has changed in the individual mechanics of House Flipper 2. The painting, for example, is no longer in vertical strips. Instead, you can outline where you want your paint to go and then just roll your ridiculously oversized paint roller of that area. Trash needs to be bagged instead of just sucked into your body like it’s an evening at KFC. You can spray stains to make them easier to mop up. Nothing that’s going to make your jaw drop, but at least it does some things to differentiate itself from the first game.

[caption id="attachment_387934" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

No one will notice

Unfortunately, the demo doesn’t include any of the tactile bits of the original title aside from painting and cleaning windows. Before, when you’d install something like a radiator or sink, you’d have to manually click to screw it into place. Now, every piece of furniture just drops into place.

This may be something that just hasn't made it in the game yet, as things like building walls and picking up garbage have more physicality to them. I’d hate to think that these things have been cut since entire simulators have been spun off the simple handyman tasks you’d handle.

For that matter, I don’t really see House Flipper 2 as much of an improvement thus far. It seems just to be a different take on all the same stuff from the original. Even the graphics don’t really show much improvement. Early material suggests that decorating and customizing might be the big feature here, and I absolutely couldn’t care less.

In fact, while playing the demo, I accidentally sealed up part of a wall that the game wanted me to put windows in. The demolition tool didn’t want to target my new walls. I knocked out the only brick that it would actually let me target and left it. I also accidentally painted over things I shouldn’t have because there’s currently a bug where if you start with your roller outside the designated painting area, it will paint over it anyway. Instead of fixing these things, I just left them. The game still gave me three stars. It will be the new tenants’ problem.

[caption id="attachment_387935" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Good enough

If you’re just looking for a slice of House Flipper 2, the demo certainly gives you that. However, if you’re looking for a peek at potentially new gameplay, that’s not here. Some things are different, but I’d hesitate to call them new. Right now, I’m not even sure why I should pick this up over the first game.

However, this is a demo. House Flipper 2 has a release window of 2023, so certain things might not be implemented. We’re also not getting any kind of look at the story or sandbox modes here. So, while the demo might be kind of underwhelming, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it offers nothing new. We’ll just have to wait for the renovations to finish.

The post House Flipper 2 shows off its renovations in its demo appeared first on Destructoid.

Our mother shoulda just named you Laika

Excitebike crossed with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night isn’t a mash-up I really considered, but that’s how Laika: Aged Through Blood is pitched. A “motorvania” as they put it. It’s gated, side-scrolling exploration, but you’re also playing a dark version of Uniracers. Goodness.

As part of Steam Next Fest, a demo lets us get all our paws on it to find out exactly how Laika pulls off this unholy union. At over an hour long, it’s a surprisingly big bite of the game, and it reveals quite a bit.

[caption id="attachment_387642" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The depressing Mad Max

You play as the eponymous dirtbike-propelled dog, Laika. From the very first moments of the game, it's made evident that we’re in for a dark ride. Poochie has been killed. He was killed by the birds and crucified “with his own guts.” Oh, lovely.

The whole anthropomorphic animal angle gives Laika: Aged Through Blood a feeling like Redwall mixed with Mad Max (the first one). Everything is really wasteland-y, and while I don’t recall anyone mentioning an apocalypse, it certainly looks like the world ended at some point.

The story is revealed painfully slowly. You’re dropped a lot of information without knowing who these characters are or what you’re fighting against. It certainly gets there, but that’s a lot of weight to get dumped on your shoulders when you’re first learning how to dirtbike.

[caption id="attachment_387643" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Uniracers but with two wheels

The Excitebike comparison is rather apt, but I think a closer one would be Joe Danger or even the aforementioned Uniracers. You have to constantly roll your bike in midair to try to land in the best way possible. However, Excitebike didn’t let you flip your bike completely, which is key in Laika. Partway through, you’re provided with a pistol, and in order to reload it, you have to, strangely, do a backflip. You can also block incoming bullets by putting your bike between yourself and your furry hide.

It’s a lot to keep track of, even when it’s just a sidescroller. Thankfully, when you go into aiming mode, the game drops into slow motion. This gives you the ability to pick your target with greater ease, as you’ll often be doing this while trying to protect yourself. Even still, my thumbs would get confused on the controls. There’s a high skill ceiling here, and you’ll need to put in a bit more work than you would if you had your feet planted firmly on the ground.

The greatest issue I had with Laika wasn’t actually the difficulty of the controls, but how demanding they are. You do get off your bike for sections, but you’re saddled up the vast majority of the time. This made the time I spent with the demo feel all the longer, because I had to be constantly engaged, and that can be stressful. I felt the need to take a break before the hour was even up, but didn’t allow myself to because I didn’t expect the demo to go on for so long. It concerns that, when it’s time to play the full version, I might have difficulty getting through the runtime, as it would necessitate me taking more stops than usual.

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Blood red wall

This isn’t to say that Laika: Aged Through Blood is any sort of failure. The level design actually impressed me, though I do wonder if it will be able to deliver enough variety to carry whatever runtime it’s aiming for. It has some rather lavish animated cutscenes and great characters to spruce things up, so I don’t doubt that it’ll find some way to be worthwhile.

The soundtrack is done by Beícoli, who is sort of the Brainwash Gang’s in-house composer. She makes some fantastically melancholic music that is completely up my alley. I skipped over Brainwash Gang’s The Longest Road on Earth and Friends vs. Friends, but now I’m listening to the former’s soundtrack, and it is some great atmospheric stuff. Is Laika’s soundtrack going to be pressed on vinyl? Because I am already there.

Despite my discomfort, I’m definitely on board with Laika: Aged Through Blood. I love the vision that the Brainwash Gang has for it, and the production as a whole looks absolutely spot on. Even with its meaty demo, I have a lot of questions I still need answered and a whole lot that I’m looking forward to. There’s no announced release window for Laika, but given how polished the demo experience is, it feels like we won't be waiting until the end of the world.

The post Laika: Aged Through Blood gives you a taste of grit and exhaust in its demo appeared first on Destructoid.

High caliber dinner

I appreciate what Henry Hoare and Jordan King (Black-Eyed Priest) bring to the indie-horror cafeteria. They definitely understand the assignment, delivering rickety packages of gameplay, spartan visuals, and deliberately tacky and uncomfortable subject matter. Bloodwash still stands as one of my favorite titles of the lo-fi horror genre, and the amusing part of that is it’s largely just creeping dread and atmosphere. The actual horror game only takes up a small portion of its final act.

As part of Steam Next Fest, Torture Star Video brings us a demo of their upcoming game Sniper Killer as part of Steam Next Fest. Having chewed on its 25-30 minutes of gameplay, I have to say I’m excited to see the final product. I can really dig its routine of getting shot, shoot, repeat.

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Herr Hans Fotostein!

The Sniper Killer demo opens up with you in the heels of Pamela. She’s degraded herself to taking on a sketchy modeling job in the basement of some awful apartment building. She finds herself posing for a diminutive German stereotype named Hans, who references a hilariously sordid past as a modern Dr. Frankenstein. This all ends with murder.

Next, you’re placed in the shoes of the eponymous Sniper Killer. You hang up your shoes, get to examine the tattered dregs of their life, then quickly get another call. Someone else needs to have their brains aerated.

You travel to the local carnival where you’re told you’re hunting the person dressed as a werewolf. Find your target, find a vantage, and take your shot. I’m not sure who lets someone on a carnival ride with a rifle, but I’m going to assume a very long and unseasonal coat was involved.

After claiming your victim, you take the wheel of Gail, a journalism student and acquaintance of Pamela. She takes a short reprieve from studying toward a life of constant poverty to investigate the mess you made at the carnival. After poking your nose around where it doesn’t belong, you once again find yourself on the business end of the Sniper Killer.

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Protect national security

The narrative scenes of Sniper Killer are rather restricting, and the murder scenes are pretty simple. However, I couldn’t help but find the whole demo rather entertaining. The tone strikes a nice balance between seedy and amusing. I’m not sure about it being scary or even tense. The part of my brain that feels fear has long since been eroded away by a lifetime of digital headshots. However, I appreciated the small touches, like dropping a coin while trying to pay for a turnstile.

Overall, I feel like what’s been demonstrated of Sniper Killer is enough to keep me interested in seeing the final product. Alternating between the perspective of the murderer and their victims is a fun narrative approach, and I’m looking forward to seeing it extended throughout a complete story. I also enjoy the lo-fi, neon heavy visuals that Henry Hoare and Jordan King lean on. It’s a great way of encapsulating everything in urban gloom.

Puppet Combo is also releasing a demo of Power Drill Massacre for Steam Next Fest. I was going to do this post as a double-feature, but when you start up the demo, you’re given a static screen that tells you the demo isn’t finished yet, and to check back after an update on Wednesday. What a shameless prank to pull. I guess I’ll have to circle back on that one for a separate matinee.

The post The Sniper Killer demo shoots its shot as part of Steam Next Fest appeared first on Destructoid.

I know butt-fu

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

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

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

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Fist injection

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

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

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

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The under you wear

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

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

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

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Sharing your butt-battler

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

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

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

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

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How much is weirdness worth?

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

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

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

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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