RRR: Index of squibs

[Randorama]

Hello folks,

I am using this thread to index all the squibs and rants I have posted on the forum in the last few years and that I am going to possibly improve and certainly edit some time(s) in the future. I believe that editing and/or posting updates of all squibs in their respective threads would be confusing for indexing purposes (e.g. BIL's indexing of R2RKMF), or maybe unnecessary towards threads' progressions in whatever the topic at hand is.

I hope that people will enjoy the new versions and/or have questions, so hopefully I will not feel guilty about using a thread as some kind of inane pseudo-blog written by a man in his mid 40s (who can do one-hand push-ups and has decent butterfly stroke times, but still...). Hopefully, I am not actually infringing any of the forum's rules. As I post new material, I will also try to grow the thread into something more structured and meaningful, but consider anything I post as "draft X.0 of N drafts planned" (or: in my day job I re-write texts for years on end before publication, but maybe you can enjoy the intermediate steps).

[Randorama]

The first revision is about Warrior Blade/Rastan Saga III. The first draft (click to the left) was a...beginning. The new version below is a substantially revised version in which I attempt to flesh out a certain type of structure for the squibs. This new version is 2829 words, or roughly five word pages in Times New Unicode font 12, justified type-setting, single line space. Let us just say that is a new beginning, and possibly one in a direction that can appeal to readers and to myself, too.

Warrior Blade/Rastan Saga III (Taito, 1991) is a beat’em up/hack’n slash game borrowing mechanics from ARPG’s, thus similar to Gaiapolis but scrolling in the more common horizontal format. Rastan is Taito’s version of Robert Howard’s Conan, and starred in this and in the previous two platform/action titles. The eponymous protagonist Rastan returns to fight against “the evil tribe”, an army of demi-humans and humans captained by Lord Luderkawn. The game includes aspects and mechanics from ARPG’s (i.e. Arcade RPG’s), and also includes action-like stages in which the characters fight on mounts and drafts. It thus departs from the platform/action-style of R2RKMF fame and ventures into then-popular genres and approaches. Although it may be a perhaps obscure title among those in Taito’s vast library, I warmly suggest trying the game a few times if you are fans of “action games”. Hopefully, this squib should offer one good, overarching reason.

A bit of background about the game and the series may help you, dear readers, in better appreciating this game’s concept. The Rastan series was Taito’s attempt at adapting Howard’s stories into videogames. The first title, Rastan/Rastan Saga, was a popular 1987 platform in which Rastan fought against hordes of non-human creatures. The second chapter, Nastar/Nastar Warrior/Rastan Saga II, offered a 1988 prequel to the first chapter’s story. The first chapter was highly successful and was ported to several consoles; the second title was a half-disaster that somehow managed to receive a MegaDrive port. Taito staff probably thought that a third attempt could have reversed the fortunes of this series, or at least turned a series into a complete trilogy. Alas, the title received only a Japanese release, though the story is presented in Japanese and English. The game only re-surfaced on Taito’s PS2 collections, in the early 2000s.

The game’s overarching plot, as foreshadowed in the introduction, pits Rastan and his allies against a small army infesting Depon, possibly a land near Rastan’s homeland. Though impressive in numbers, this army is only known as the “evil tribe” in the game, and it is ruled a demon in disguise, Lord Luderkawn. Rastan teams up with Dewey, a blond ninja who wants avenge the death of his family at the hands of the evil tribe. The third character is Princess Sophia, whose kingdom was brutally annihilated by the tribe. As the attract screen explains via text-rich descriptions and the deep voice of an English-speaking narrator, Rastan is just seeking riches on his quest to become a king. As the ending sequence carefully explains, this is but one of Rastan’s many adventures. The game thus follows Howard’s template for Conan’s stories, as random recollections of an aged protagonist.

The game ARPG (i.e. Arcade RPG) mechanics involve the fighting system, stage structure and power-up system. The fighting system works as follows. Each character can perform a considerable array of standing, dashing and jumping attacks. The A button is for melee attacks: Rastan uses a broadsword with a considerable range, Dewey a pair of short-range kunai, and Sophia a mid-range, fast-attacking whip. Players can also grab enemies when at close range (A+enemy’s direction), throw them away or punch them in the guts before the throw. The B button is for jumps, which can be high (basic jumps) or low (B+low direction), and can involve aerial attacks. The C button triggers a special attack that consumes some energy from the vitality bar and, once players have a good understanding of the game’s fighting system, becomes quite useless. Tapping twice and then holding a direction results in a charge attack, of course.

The precise attack that each character performs tends to be context/situation-sensitive. However, the general rule is that characters can perform mini-combos if the first attack lands and the other attacks are unleashed in quick succession (i.e. by tapping quickly, really). Even when enemies parry, parries will usually damage weapons and shields. Once unarmed, enemies can only succumb to successive relentless hits. All three characters can thus launch dashing jump attacks to start combos. If these attacks connect or get parried, the characters can grab, impale, and disarm several enemies at once, via these hammering mini-combos. Aggressive playing is therefore encouraged, especially as a means of crowd control. Furthermore, enemies can parry or perform ripostes, but will lose weapons and shields after multiple parries/ripostes. This entails that characters (in particular, Rastan) can unarm and then slash to death even the most resilient enemies, if their combos are delivered fast enough.

Stage structure works as follows. The game has 10 to 14 stages. There is a prologue stage and an epilogue stage, four stages that are divided into two parts, and four stages that can be accessed only if players reach certain performance requirements (“bad fortune” conditions, in the game). Players can choose the next stage to after completing each pair or triplet of stages, starting right after the prologue. Stage order statically determines the difficulty of the stages, which amounts to the number of enemies appearing at each wave and their hit points. Rank/dynamic difficulty seems to affect enemies’ battle prowess, numbers and aggressiveness. The longer you survive and the less damage you take, the smarter, numerous more aggressive enemies will be. Conversely, taking damage will lower enemies’ aggressiveness and, if players survive long enough, will trigger more healing potions as RNG items, a typical Taito-style approach to rank.

The conditions to access the 4 extra stages appear all be related to performance (and thus, ultimately, rank). For instance, the North-West stages on the map include “Horsemen’s forest” and “Castle Zananstaff”. In the first stage, the characters fight against the local horsemen while riding a horse. If players can quickly kill four enemies, a fifth extra enemy will appear and, if quickly dispensed with, a new wave of enemies will appear. Players can thus kill at least the 20 regular horsemen (5 waves of four horsemen), but reach quote 25 if they also kill the extra enemies. At quote 22 or higher, a “Bad Fortune” event will be triggered, and players will enter the “Hulokatzia volcano” stage before entering the final “Temple of Gulestopalis” stage. A dipswitch set allows players to automatically access extra stages: the game thus features a prologue and epilogue stages plus four sections, each divided into three stages.

The power-up system is based on magic items’ collection. Rastan and the other protagonists do not level up but collect magic items after clearing a stage. These items have permanent effects: for instance, the Fairy’s potion permanently increases vitality (i.e. the total Hit Points/HPs). Some items (e.g. the “celestial globe” or the “thunder arms” attack) are temporary: enemies can drop these items and, once collected, their effects last 30 seconds. One item summons Maharadiasakhatzi, a mysterious blue-skinned wizard who can launch devastating spells when hit by the protagonists. This wizard has an MP (Magic Point bar) and, once the bar is empty he will disappear. If the protagonists however collect coins or other treasures, the MPs will increase back, even if MaharadiAsakhatzi will anyway disappear before an end-of-stage boss. If players clear all extra stages, the epilogue (final stage) will amount to a victory lap against the demonic lord Luderkawn.

Warrior Blade/Rastan Saga III thus plays like most other ARPG’s, even if it has a fighting system typical of beat’em ups. The game is generally generous with time, so players may proceed slowly and attempt to fight smaller enemy crowds. However, aggressive chain- and jump-based approaches have the undeniable advantage of putting pressure on crowds, especially when using Rastan. Again, the ability to unarm multiple enemies at once via chains that force parries and ripostes entails that good chains will dispose of sometimes sizeable crowds with ease. Furthermore, some sections involve interesting variations of this general schema by including horse-, canoe- and dragon-riding fights. Arguably, bosses are trivially easy: all can be killed by abusing safe spots and hit-and-dodge approaches. Stages can however be challenging, especially if players do not master chains and do not exploit specific game aspects (e.g. Rastan’s long range attacks when hanging from chains).

By this point you may ask yourself: is Warrior Blade/Rastan (Saga) III an interesting gaming experience? My answer is an overall “yes”, for at least the following reasons. First, the game can be played conservatively, but learning how to use dashing jump attacks and massacre crowds of enemies is a relatively easy but rewarding skill to learn. Second, each character provides different challenges and affect the overall difficulty. Dewey requires mastery of close-quarter (difficult) fights, Sophia has a wide choice of mid-range, mid-difficulty attacks, and Rastan is a long-range juggernaut that can easily pierce through stages. Third, players should have an easier time starting from the North-West stages and proceeding counter clockwise. Other stage orders are fine, even if they may increase difficulty; also remember that extra stages have tricky access requirements. The game can provide fast, frantic fights and manifold path variations, thus offering a balanced and entertaining challenge.

Another legitimate question that you may have, at this stage, is whether the game appears and sounds pleasant to the senses. I personally believe that the game looks gorgeous: the illustrations have a pulp-ish style reminiscent of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. The three characters have all very fluid animations and look like Vallejan/Frazettian Olympian athletes. All bosses, Enemies and other characters are also carefully designed, as Rastan and associates can slash through a considerable variety of evil minions. Bosses however clearly have more animations than their minions, with some enemies (e.g. the flying demons) apparently having few frames. Perhaps a minor complaint could be that the colour palette veers a bit towards dark, intense colours (e.g. red, purple, brown, navy grey). The impression is that Depon is a kingdom not blessed by the sun, or simply that the designers obsessed over giving the game a gritty look.

The OST by Masahiko Takaki (MAR or TAK of Zuntata fame) also offers an intense if peculiar experience. The prologue motif, “Close your eyes”, offers an elegiac opening to the action. The main theme, “Raising”, attempts creates an epic theme to accompany most stages and to give the feeling of the characters struggling through a coming-of-age ordeal. The peculiar aspect is that “Spiral Breath” and “Voice of Siren”, themes chiefly playing during the Axki tower and blah bah ship stages, are slow and melodic that offer a brooding atmosphere to the action. Sound and voice are even more peculiar. The first group is rich and complex and, in the case of weapons clanging, also quite evocative. For some reason, however, human enemies and bosses address the characters…in German. Aside this bizarre choice, the OST can sound extraordinarily atmospheric, if players absorb the different moods that they try to evoke.

I would then like to conclude my observations on the game itself by discussing its difficulty. As in my other mini-articles, I use the notion of facet to analyse the game’s difficulty in its basic components (please read here). For Warrior Blade/Rastan (Saga) III, I believe that the game’s fighting mechanics and the stage structure are the two main difficulty facet, with their weak interaction acting as a third, less relevant facet. I discuss them in this order. The fighting mechanics should require little time for players to master, if players can espouse the aggressive approach that they demand. Although the dash plus jumping attack combos are easy to perform and an intriguing mechanic, players may feel compelled to approach big crowds in a conservative manner. Big mistake: only Rastan can decimate bigger crowds by other attacking patterns. Players must thus learn how to exploit jumping attacks and consequent chains.

The stage design also influences difficulty in a non-trivial manner. Ideally, players should clear the extra “Hulokatzia Vulcan” stage and then the “Castle Zananstaff” stages (i.e. the North-West stages) first. Then, he corresponding magic items will grant characters twice the attack rate and lower enemies’ vitality/HPs. From this point onwards, jumping chain attacks may simply overwhelm weaker enemies, if players can tap fast enough. Even if rank increases as the game progresses, this simple choice considerably lowers the game’s difficulty. It is true that meeting the conditions to access the extra stages is tricky but, if players master those or simply use the relevant dip switch, they will have an easier time approaching the game. Bosses, once more, are near-trivial and energy items are relatively abundant, especially if players perform poorly during limited spans of time. Other stage order choices make the game harder, but in limited measure.

The weak interaction of these facets amounts to the North-West Stages and the extra “Fairy Forest” Stage in the South-West region featuring sizeable crowds. If players access these Stages in the latter half of their credit, numbers may become hard to handle easily. Once players follow an optimal route, master chain attacks and play conservatively when needed, the game is quite manageable. Out of 50 points, I would say that the first two facets attract 20 points each, and the third attracts 10 points. I would award six out of 20 points to the first two facets; two points out of 10 to the third facet. The total is 5+5+2=12/50 points when using Rastan on an optimal route. Using Sofia and Dewey may deserve a 14/50, 16/50, respectively: non-optimal routes may deserve a 18/50. Warrior Blade/Rastan (Saga) III is a game of mid- to high-intermediate difficulty, for a beat’em up/AARPG.

One innovation that I would like to add with this revision of this squib is meandering coda of personal musings and experiences regarding the game. Please feel free to skip to the conclusions, if you wish. In 2000, I dropped out of the Navy Academy of my country. I spent the first winter of my new, uncertain academic career as a lazy BA student playing games in MAME rather than studying for exams. As you certainly remember, at the time old CRT PC monitors were usually small. This entailed that playing the Taito multiscreen titles was quite a bland experience, and screen size issues also affected my game experience. I insisted on assuming that just playing conservatively would suffice to get a 1-CC. I never watched the attract screen, I hate to admit it, because I was too proud to learn the basics as intended by the programmers.

At some later time in 2005–2006, Taito released their first two volumes of their PS2 collections of “memories”. By that time I was doing my M.Phil. in Utrecht, so I had less time and definitely less desire to play games. At the time, I had access to a huge cathodic TV (40 inches) that however had this rather traditional pseudo-square shape. Taito multi-screen games did not simply look bland, but also played in an awkward manner. Again, thus, I ignored Warrior Blade/Rastan Saga III and, to be honest, several other titles that I did not successfully 1-CC in years pasts. I had a few casual runs enjoying the game for its worth: my mind, however, was focus on other matters than pursuing 1-CC’s. By the first of March 2007 I was in Australia for my doctoral studies, so games definitely faded in the background.

Fast forward to January 2022: in some sort of mid-life crisis, I decided that I had to resolve several decades-old grudges involving games I never 1-CC’ed as a boy. I decided that this title was my first grudge to solve, if only because it features a wanderlust barbarian, is a relatively simple beat’em up, and never graced non-Japanese arcades. I watched the attract screen, practiced the stages and, since I couldn’t figure out the relevant conditions, activate the dip switch giving automatic access to the extra stages. By March 2022, I finally cleared the game, solving an unofficial grudge with this game and the series. I can now 1-CC the title regularly, but only with Rastan: I remain a barely intermediate beat’em up player, indeed. Nevertheless, I feel that 1-CC’s are the gaming equivalent of Linus’ quilt: when I need some self-assurance, such a trivial goal does the trick.

In conclusion, Warrior Blade/Rastan Saga III is a good and entertaining AARPG/beat’em up/hack’n slash game. Genre pigeonholing aside, it is a well-designed if perhaps easy title that captures relatively well the subject matter it takes inspiration from, i.e. Robert Howard’s Conan. So, my general recommendation is that you could play this game mostly because it is a title that blends several styles and ideas in an ambitious final product. Having a big screen that properly captures the dual screen original feeling certainly helps: be sure also to pump up the volume, even the OST is epic and yet melancholic in equal terms. I feel that it is a shame that this game marked the end of a series so long ago: I would have loved to discover more of Rastan’s adventures before his ascent to the throne. But that is another story for another day, of course.

[BIL]

Very Important Thread. Looking forward to Warrior Blade's impending ACA release, when I'll revisit your writings with further appreciation! A fond ritual of recent years, now Hamster are hooking up we console plebes and/or Johnny Come Lateleys.

Also Thunder Fox and Dead Connection, lots of Taito gems inbound. (in a year with Rainbow Islands, Rastan, Ninja Kids, Volfied, and THE SUPREME LAW Crime City, at that!)

I hope that people will enjoy the new versions and/or have questions, so hopefully I will not feel guilty about using a thread as some kind of inane pseudo-blog written by a man in his mid 40s (who can do one-hand push-ups and has decent butterfly stroke times, but still...).

I'm always telling these young noobs, keep that CNS strong n' sharp!

[Lander]

I'm all for the concept - Blinge has his Video Concern, Steven has his Same! Same! Same! war tales, and I've been planning a Lander Project no Bouken thread of my own to contain a particularly ambitious work once it's ready for eyes-on, so I'd say there's plenty of precedent for Maverick In Shed content

And a well-cultured start too - ringing things in with a bit of Frazetta and Valleho

[Randorama]

Birru-Dono: thanks for the positive evaluation. Please keep in mind, anyway, that these are scaffolding drafts - I am still ruminating on exactly I would like to have in my squibs, as a pseudo-definitive version and template. Also, I could spend decades weeding out typos from anything I publish for work; please do not expect proper prose before the twentieth draft or so. Maybe I should work (out) more my Catholic Nuns Service, or perhaps Chinese Noodles Stir-frying skills

Lander: thank you too. Culture-wise...let's start with links to obvious references via, well, hyper-references. I am keeping the well-cultured aspects a bit under wraps for now - I may raise the bar as we progress with drafts, and perhaps even add proper lists of references. The trick is to be sure that all relevant references help readers reading rutilant paragraphs of no more than 150 words, lumped into usually nine sentences (topic sentence, concluding sentence, up to seven sentences in-between). Just in case, I tend to follow the Oshima & Hogue (2006) rules, if only because they are quite popular among Academia tortured souls.

Anyway, I will possibly also turn some of the rants/posts on more abstract topics (e.g. difficulty, facets) in RRR material. I believe that some of the ideas recurring in the squibs are best understood with the relevant background in place, rather than with lazy links. I am open to suggestions, of course (and, if the topic tingles my intellectual appetite, I am start dishing out links to actual research papers ).

[Lander]

Proper academia eh, there's a world I've longed to be part of. But alas, didn't get in on the ground floor, so am content implementing papers rather than authoring them. For now, at least!
Probably a bit of 'grass is greener' going on as well, given that no field is without its torture daresay I could do with implementing some of those writing techniques, as I've been winging it on intuition for three decades now.

Speaking of intuition, what's the formal definition of a squib? That one's unfamiliar, beyond those little firework things.

Full bibliography does sound a tad steep to start with - lot of work to maintain in my limited experience, especially in BBCode! Though good tooling helps a lot (c.f. my sig ) years of writing inline documentation has instilled a deep appreciation for good automated workflow; ain't nobody got time.

[Randorama]

The link to the dictionary I posted in the RSIII post offers "short, usually humorous article", although in most academic fields there is a clear dearth of appropriate humour. For references, quite a few papers these days are published via platforms offering plug-and-copy formats, so it should not be a big deal. Let me ruminate on the matter some more, though.

Next revision should be Dead Connection - the old post was too short and fragmentary, to be a real squib.

[Randorama]

We continue our index of revision with Taito's glorious Dead Connection. I am almost embarrassed to say that the first version was this one. This new version is a longer read of 3528 words, 5 pages and a half in the aforementioned format. I have published shorter academia articles, but they did not take me only a few hours of writing (and, well, quite a few more hours of playing). Notable Novelty: I am trying to discuss difficulty and scoring attempts, so I may revise previous works to include considerations on this matter. Feedback is welcome, especially if positively biased towards this humble scribe.

Dead Connection ( Taito, 1992) is an Arena shooter vaguely reminiscent of Cabal from Tad Corporation or Robotron 2084 from Williams. The game pits agents from the Vice Squad of a big U.S. metropolis from the 1950’s against a Marlon Brando-esque gangster, Nerozzia. The four agents want to avenge their friend and comrade in arms who fell in the battle against Nerozzia. In order to achieve their goal, they must first clear eight single-screen stages featuring an increasing number of enemies and a complimentary boss at the end. The game combines a cinematic presentation, an atmospheric OST and a brooding world setting with a one-of-a-kind game system. Characters can shoot, pistol whack, punch and roll around the screen to kill Mafiosi, collect tons of RNG items and secret bonuses, destroy stages’ scenery and uphold the law, somehow. If successful, their revenge will be complete, even if not necessarily at their hands.

The game seems to belong to a possibly aborted Taito line of production called “Taito Movies”, introduced during the cinematographic attract screen. An apparently poorly received game in Japan, the game seems to mix to influence citations from a wealth of gangster movies such as The Godfather and The Untouchables. Several aspects of the game suggest that the core production team possibly worked on another cinematographic Taito game, Elevator Action Returns. For instance, sprites are small but quite detailed and well-animated, and backgrounds also feature interesting vignettes (e.g. the two lovers escaping from their room on Stage 1). The game left its historical limbo when it received a port on the “Taito Legends” series, though lucky fellas like your humble scribe knew the game from an occasional encounter in the wild, circa 1992–1993. We however return to this point later in this squib: first, we discuss the game itself.

The Dead Connection narrative features four detectives (Philip, James, Eddie, Gary) chasing down Don Nerozzia, a powerful Mafioso who killed their cop buddy in a previous encounter. Though the game’s events take place during the 1950s, the game also exudes a Prohibition era style. Cars, characters and enemies’ dresses harken back to that era, though the story mostly recreates the Untouchables’ chase to Al Capone in the 1940s. Furthermore, attract screen and cut-scenes report non-matching dates: September 1952 for the former, July 1951 for the latter ones. Historical idiosyncrasies aside, Dead Connection presents an escalation of events (one per stage) that leads to the final showdown in an abandoned opera theatre. Players can thus enjoy a well-paced story and a surprise ending, along with a fast-paced action game. Continues are an option, of course, but seasoned players can 1-CC the game and enjoy its story in one single coin.

The game mechanics are deceptively simple. Players can shoot with the A button and perform a roll dive with the B button. The default weapon is a (semi)-automatic gun, so players can shoot a stream of bullets by briefly holding the A button (up to five or six). Holding intermittently will thus generate the equivalent of a slow auto-fire rate. Holding and tapping the button will increase fire rate, as the game system apparently reads each tap as a single fire rate. Players can thus create faster fire rates by holding and tapping frenetically, even if some caveats are due on this matter. First, the game has a limit to the number of objects onscreen: tapping may release bullets if this limit has not been breached. Second, the other weapons have different firing rates, and influence this limit in other ways: we discuss these more advanced aspects in a few paragraphs, however.

Let us finish exploring the basic mechanics. The B button allows players to perform several context-sensitive movements. If players use command moves when no objects are next to them (e.g. B+right), the characters will dive, roll and get up in one fluid movement. Hitting enemies will cause possibly fatal damage to any enemy or object being hit via this movement. The dive roll also allows characters to have i(nvicibility)-frames, so bullets, flames, explosions and other attacks will not damage the characters. Using the B button alone will force the characters to crouch and avoid bullets and possibly close range attacks from enemies, if the timing is right. Using the B button next to various scenery objects will make characters kick and possibly break those objects: often, this action reveals RNG items. When used next to enemies, a loud pistol/weapon-whack attack will possibly kill the enemies, instead.

Characters can thus attack with both action buttons, and can also use different weapons. The revolver has a slow firing rate but fires piercing shots; however, enemies will be worth a fourth of their value, when killed with this weapon. The shotgun delivers land damage and can destroy objects and multiple enemies; it is a devastating weapon that also triggers more RNG drops, though shotgun are worth only one eighth of their basic value. The machinegun is a full automatic weapon that can mow down crowds quickly, but at half of their original value. Players can thus decide which weapons to use for scoring purposes. Notably, all weapons involve a semi-automatic aiming system. Characters move in eight directions, but can shoot in 16 or even 24 directions, since the aiming trajectories automatically adjust to the enemies’ position and movement. The system is not perfect, so aim carefully all the time, anyway.

Characters can then perform several stage-specific actions, since each stage acts as a complex single-screen arena with several environmental features and hazards. For instance, Stage 1 is set in an Hotel Hall, so players can climb the stairs to the upper floor, or jump down to the main hall from the upper floor (B+down). If players land on enemies, they can kill any enemies with one or two H(it)P(oint)s. On stage 5, set in a warehouse, characters can use the A button to turn down a lever in the middle of the warehouse. On inflammable crate will fall and the flames can kill enemies. Stages contain several hidden RNG items which can be discovered by kicking their secret locations, too. In general, the game allows players to dynamically interact with each stage’s unique design, and exploit their unique aspects for both scoring and survival purposes.

We can discuss the more complex game mechanics when addressing the game’s difficulty. By this point, I would like to discuss the game’s aesthetics in more detail, so that we can better envision its appeal. For a 1992 game, Dead Connection has quite impressive well-animated sprites and includes a lot of detail: the pixel art of backgrounds and enemies is quite intricate. A bit like Warrior Blade, however, this game seems to exploit a somewhat drab and dark colour palette: the occasional flames are the only objects involving brighter colours. I can see the validity of this choice: the game attempts to create a dark and brooding setting, so a brighter palette might have been inappropriate. Be sure, however, that you get used to spotting fast-moving bullets when they appear on Stages four, five and seven, due to the mostly grey backgrounds.

The game also features some great choices for the stages’ settings. The first Stage is set in a Hotel hall full of Mafiosi, and the second in a junkyard at dawn. The third Stage opens with the characters smashing the panoramic windows of a big restaurant with their car, diving out from their vehicle before it explodes, and then moving down Mafiosi. Stage eight, the grand finale, takes place in a dusty and decaying Opera Hall. The cinematographic feeling and the highly detailed pixel art seamlessly combine with the intriguing cut-scenes advancing the plot, but do not hamper the action. The game thus has a powerful visual identity and design that may certainly confirm Taito’s elegant approach to design, but nevertheless establish the game’s unique setting. Stages can however become visually crowded very quickly: a lot can happen all at once. We discuss this topic when addressing difficulty, however.

If the visuals are intriguing, so are the aural effects and the O(riginal)S(ound)T(rack). The Zuntata member who worked on this title, Horie Yoshimo Horie is not exactly a household name such as Ogura Hisayoshi (OGR) or Watanabe Yasuhisa (YACK). Nevertheless, the OST offers a good and atmospheric support to the action, mixing the synth-pop Zuntata sound with vaguely jazzy undertones. The OST features four songs for Stages 1–4, with stages 5-7 repeating the themes from the first three stages. Since stage eight is one long boss battle, it features the darker, brooding boss theme on a loop. The game also includes themes for the attract screen, the ending theme and the cut-scenes, and a vibrant character selection theme. Though not Zuntata’s most memorable effort, it complements the game’s aesthetics poignantly, especially when the themes become more sombre (e.g. the boss theme) and melancholic (e.g. Stages 3, 7).

The game also features great sound effects and voice samples. Taito often included good voice acting in its games, especially for those titles that were clearly meant for the international market. Dead Connection thus includes a lot of different death screams, threats, cheesy lines, explosions and other mildly hilarious sound effects aptly enriching the frantic action on-screen. Narrative intermezzi also involve lines from Nerozzia and his scions and retorts from the characters to build up the dramatic aspects of the story. Weapon effects are loud and satisfying, with the pistol-whip sounds giving a pleasant feeling of goons’ skin crackling. When the action reaches high intensity levels, it is a bit hard to hear the songs: bullets hissing by the dozens and Mafiosi talking trash may cover the songs. As befits a cinematographic experience, the game offers a pleasantly rich if overwhelming approach to sound effects.

By this point, you may wonder if seemingly intense game and audio-visual experience is difficult to play. My answer to this implicit answer lies in the analysis of the games’ facets of difficulty, a concept that should be hopefully clear(er) to all attentive readers, by this squib. I believe that the game’s difficulty lies in three facets: the game’s unique mechanics, the stage designs, and a set of factors loosely connected to the game’s “proto-bullet-hell” style. Allow me to explain each step in detail, then. The game mechanics are for the most part intuitive: shoot enemies, dodge/roll bullets, punch/pistol whack anyone who gets too close, and collect RNG items. Items award points (500 or 1000 points, 5000 for the hidden “case files” item) or energy (hot dogs, 1 HP; booze, 2 HP’s; pure alcohol, 3 HP). Weapon items award the aforementioned different weapons, which however have limited ammo.

Another factor that may affect the perceived difficulty of mastering games’ mechanics lies in the characters’ skills. James and Gary (second, fourth) are the faster, more athletic characters that also have powerful attacking rolls and pistol whacks. Gary can shoot in 24 possible directions, so he is the strongest character. Philip and Eddie (first, third character) are slower and less athletic, but they pack more bullets: their shotgun and machinegun pickups last longer. Philip, however, is limited to shooting in eight directions and thus may cause impromptu aiming trouble in quite a few situations. Thus, Gary offers the most aggressive and defensive options to players, with the other characters display decreasing prowess and thus a higher usage difficulty. Players can therefore use Gary as a beginner’s character, and master the other characters once they feel confident enough about their mastery of the mechanics and stages.

Mastering these basic aspects of the game should be take little effort; mastering stages’ design should however require more time. Each stage has a unique layout, so players must carefully learn what actions they may or may not perform. For instance, Stage 4 has two rooms that the characters and enemies alike can enter. Characters can shoot enemies from these rooms’ windows while taking cover, but players need to learn how to move characters inside these rooms: walls obstruct the view, of course. Layouts can be also be exploited to easily kill enemies: for instance, on Stage 2 the characters can hide behind a statue and shoot enemies from this vantage point. Enemies can however suddenly appear and hit the hiding characters, who may thus lose their cover and get repeatedly shot or stabbed. Understanding how to use stages’ design thus may strongly determine progression in the game.

The third aspect lies in the fact that game appears to anticipate bullet-hell/danmaku games and takes inspiration from Caravan shmups, regarding enemy waves. Enemies appear in waves of up to eight Mafiosi, and some use machine guns to strafe the screen and hit the characters. The screen can quickly fill up with bullets, enemies, extemporary events (e.g. the aforementioned naked couple) and other moving objects. Players may thus need to dodge complex bullet patterns that may cause Taito’s F1 hardware to slow down, thus making the action more easily readable. Players can of course kill enemies quickly also to keep the object count and slowdown at low levels. This becomes a requirement in the second half of the game, as characters will not shoot if there are too many objects on screen. Players must learn to quickly clear the screen of enemies also because of this minor design’s quirk.

Boss fights lack this problem, since they include one Mafioso type promoted to a boss and two henchmen. However, time constraints become pressing by Stage four, so players must kill bosses quickly. Furthermore, the game has a highly flexible form of rank. Characters start with 10 HPs, and lose up to 3 HPs when shot or hit. Characters have few i(invicibility)-frames after being hit; two or three shotgun hits in succession may be fatal, as one hit takes away 3 HPs. Players who can endure long spells of low HP’s will be rewarded with extra energy items; rank increases and decreases quickly and suddenly, in perfect Taito style. There is not HP recovery after clearing a stage, so players should be careful in how they approach stages. The game can be rather erratic with RNG drops, even when rank decreases due to the players’ mistakes: approach stages wisely, thus.

Putting these facets together, I would assign a 4/17 difficulty to the game mechanics’ difficulty, 7/17 to the stage design facet, and 5/16 to the Danmaku/enemy design facet. The total is 16/50 difficulty points: the game falls in the upper spectrum of the intermediate difficulty level, provided that players use Gary. I would personally add one point per each increasingly more challenging character, thus having James at 17/50 points, Eddy at 18/50 points and Philip at 19/50 points. Players who choose these characters will thus face an advanced level of difficulty, since these characters are slower, less precise and less powerful with their close range attacks. Dead Connection should thus provide a solid challenge to any R2MKMF fan, even if the game lacks any scrolling (to the right). The bullet-hellish action approach and the unique combination of mechanics may be though, but should also result highly entertaining.

Starting from this revision of a previous squib, I would like to include a final difficulty discussion regarding difficulty and the pursuing of a high score-driven 1-CC. My experience is limited to Gary, but it should hopefully be useful to my dear readers. In order to pursue high scores, players have two options. One is to use the shotgun to trigger more RNG items but get one eighth of enemies’ assigned points. The other is to use the automatic gun and get full points for each kill, but less items. Players must then avoid other killing methods, and kick all the spots hiding secret items: all case files items are hidden. The shotgun method awards slightly higher scores, but both methods force players to master quick kills from a distance: handling enemies’ waves and items’ collection becomes a time-consuming affair.

My best efforts with Gary have been in the region of 320k points, but higher scores can be reached with the shotgun (around 340k or so). Any score over 300k points seems quite the achievement, as low-scoring 1-CC’s may net players 150k points or so. Crucially, items’ collection is the activity requiring the most time, as players must travel around the screen. Thus, bosses invariably become battles against time and often require the exploitation of techniques that permit players to hit them continuously. Enemies with multiple HPs will only retaliate if they are not being hit, so shoot the bosses without any breaks in the stream. With Gary, I experienced a noticeable bump in difficulty: let us say that the game reaches 22 or even 23/50 difficulty points. Playing for score is an advanced challenge, though seasoned players should not find the experience too difficult.

Before we move to the conclusions, I would like to rant a bit about my own personal experiences: these half-baked memories will be amusing, if nothing else. I remember briefly playing this game in early 1993 when I visited the gigantic arcade of the EUR Luna Park, in Rome. Until 2013, the EUR district in Italy’s capital city hosted a sizeable Luna Park that included a beautiful and gigantic arcade also acing as a national games’ distributors. Arcade operators and collectors could visit the arcade, try out the games and buy boards on the spot. My uncle brought me to visit the place on a cold February Sunday afternoon, as he did not want to endure the trip in the lone company of my sometimes very annoying father. I enjoyed the game for a few credits, but my uncle was unimpressed: hence, he did not bring a board home.

Fast forward to 2002 or so. My BA career of sorts has started taking momentum, and I am grinding exams at a brisk pace after a first year of struggles and self-inflicted failures. I discover Dead Connection again as one of the many Taito late 1980’s/early 1990’s I mostly forgot about. My faint memories of the game amount to recalling that I briefly played the game “when in Rome”, but not much else. Early emulation of Taito F1 system games is somehow sketchy in MAME, but I can safely use RAINE an emulator for Taito games. In 2002, I am not impressed by the title: drab style, not so captivating OST, and a game system that seems to overwhelm the players if they don’t clear the screen of goons as soon as possible. My 2002 self thus quickly sets aside the game as a Taito fluke, and no more.

It is then 2006-2007, the time at which I was transitioning between M.Phil. and doctoral studies (and countries, even: it is a long story). The game is on one of the two “Taito Memories” compilations, along so many other yesteryear gems. Emulation of the game seems not so smooth. Memories of my past interactions with this game are fainter than before, and the slowdown during hectic passages seems a poor early attempt at the danmaku style. Still, something about the atmosphere now clicks with me, and I can make sense of the game’s mechanics. Still, playing this game seems hard enough that I quickly renounce to pursuing a 1-CC. Other matters preoccupy my mind at this time, and so I never really manage to go beyond the sixth stage. The finer graces of the game escape me, once more: maybe I simply suck at this kind of titles.

It is now 2022, and I have started 1-CC’ing titles again. Warrior Blade has been some sort of catalyst to finding my way back to this sometimes toxic, sometimes excellent pastime. I refresh my memory of the game and start dabbling with auto-fire options. Low frequencies (15 kHz or lower) seem to reduce the risk of not being able to shoot when the screen is saturated with bullets. This time around, I also seem to simply have the right frame of mind to dissect the game and reach not only the 1-CC, but even a respectable score with Gary. Other characters give me trouble: a mere survival 1-CC for each character gives me enough satisfaction. It is only now in 2024, however, that I can write a fuller write-up of all these bits of memory. The 2022 version was an improvised and unintentional sketch for this longer squib.

In conclusion, Dead Connection is a unique approach to Arena shooters and single screen gaming that also attempts to create a cinematographic feeling for its world setting. The game was not popular upon its release, but has several merits such as quirky though interesting game mechanics and a strong aesthetic identity. The difficulty level starts at a middle intermediate level, but players can find an advanced challenge in pursuing high scores and/or playing with weaker characters. Single plays are relatively short: a 1-CC that exploits all the allotted time should not take more than 25 minutes, in case players savour all the cut-scenes and the finale. I wish that Taito and other companies would have pursued this micro-genre with more boldness: for now, however, be sure to enjoy this gaming chimera in all of its glory.

[Randorama]

Dear readers: any requests for revisions? The next one screener will be a DECO classic, in case you wonder.

EDIT:

A list of possibilities is now available, sorry:

1. Act Fancer (bare-bones version)
2. Capcom Sports Club (still missing a proper discussion of difficulty)
3. Bucky O’Hare (notes, it should be written up as a proper squib)
4. Gaiapolis (long and detailed, but it could incorporate material from discussions)
5. Pang (x3) (notes on the first three arcade games)
6. Devil’s World (notes)
7. Land Maker (it could be further expanded and discuss score, difficulty)
8. Teddy Boy Blues (it could be further expanded and discuss score, difficulty)
9. Night Slashers (notes)
10. Warriors of Fate (notes)
11. Funky Jet (it could be further expanded and discuss score, game revisions, difficulty)
12. City Connection (it could be further expanded and discuss score, game revisions, difficulty)

More "other games" options (a stub: suggestions are welcome if I know the game and I have 1-CC'ed it):

1. Rolling Thunder 2
2. Rolling Thunder
3. Wolf Fang
4. Crime City
5. Surprise Attack

A rudimentary list of shmups that I would be happy to write about is this one:

1. Side Arms
2. Tokyo
3. The four Darius (Arcade) titles
4. The Ray series titles
5. Batsugun (this would be really a "then and now" experience)

As I predict hordes of requests piling up in no time (c'mon oh reader, crack a smile by this point...), my policy will be "first come, first served". Please ask away, then

[BIL]

Last Duel always felt a little under-mentioned around these parts.

[Randorama]

Last Duel is one of those '80s titles that make me wonder if shmups haven't evolved in the worst possible way. The game has interesting genre-hybrid mechanics (shmups+jumping/forced scrolling action), simple but colourful and detailed graphics, and a great OST by my beloved "Golden Tamayo". In an ideal world, a modern version featuring some intriguing score system would have already been released and delighted the masses.

So, query accepted, and let's add Thundercade to the list, a revision of Thunder Fox, and a new entry featuring Deco's Tumble Pop, from here to the end of November. Where should we add Capcom's Mad Gear, by the way? I am tempted to consider it a driving/sports game of a highly idiosyncratic kind (...and think that modern games etc. etc.).

[Randorama]

Our new instalment is Last Duel, a now obscure but once also...moderately obscure hybrid shmup game from Capcom. I will make the required adaptations for duplicating the post if I see any "yay!" assessments to the task. An interesting factoid: we have some interesting holes among reviews and file regarding 1980s shmups. Again, a single "yay!" will green-light the endeavour. Future plans are as follows: Tumble Pop is coming, since we all love single screen classics.

Last Duel: Interplanetary War 2012 (Capcom, 1988) is a hybrid genre game alternating shmup stages with action/driving stages. The players must fight the Galden tribe invaders from Planet Bacula to defend their home planet Mu, and save their queen Sheeta. Players drive a three-wheeled car that can jump on obstacles and precipices during odd numbered stages, and a spaceship during even-numbered stages. Unlike previous titles (e.g. Konami’s Gradius and Taito’s Tokyo), Last Duel represents perhaps the first title in this genre allowing players to 1-CC the game after only one harder loop. The game also features a deeply atmospheric OST by Kawamoto Tamayo of Alph Lyra and then Zuntata fame, and beautiful alien vistas for the stages. The game was ported on several 1980s consoles (e.g. Amiga) and included in the various Capcom collections (e.g. Capcom Classics Collection on PS2, Capcom Stadium Collection on Steam). This mini-squib aims to shed some light and offer personal musings on this perhaps obscure but brilliant early Capcom game.

Last Duel is one of a few more experimental shmups that Capcom produced in the 1980s (e.g. Legendary Wings, Forgotten Worlds). Capcom designers during the 1980s were perhaps more oriented towards less clear-cut approaches to genres. Most companies in that decade, anyway, would produce more willingly experiment with unique mechanics and ideas, rather than fixating on genres. The game runs on perhaps older Capcom hardware (CPS0?), but nevertheless features colourful graphics and well-animated vehicles, as well as a groovy OST. The screen orientation is TATE and, as in several other Capcom titles, the game area corresponds to the screen: there are no extra lateral portions. Auto-fire was a controversial option in arcades at the time, so the game included automatic weapons when fully powered up. Several aspects of the game were quite innovative: we discuss them after we have offered an overview of the story.

The game features a typical 1970s’ Space opera or Science Fantasy psychedelic setting with a definite 1970s, Matsumoto Leiji- or Miyazaki Hayao-esque vibe. The planets Mu and Bacula are at war because the Bacunian Galden tribe seeks to conquer Mu, after having subjugated all Bacula reigns. The war turns for the worse for Mu, as the Galden are ruthless and better armed. As the attract sequence shows, the Galden abduct queen Sheeta from Mu to force their enemies to capitulate. The queen’s guards make a desperate attempt to save their beloved monarch by using an experimental vehicle. The guards drive three-wheeled armoured car that can jump obstacles at high speed, and that turns into spaceship that can also fly at low orbit and near-surface altitudes. The game thus presents this rescue mission and attempt to end the ongoing war between Mu and Bacula once and for all.

The game’s originality lies in the mechanics governing the “Land” stages (Stages one, three, five on both loops). The car maintains a fixed position on the screen, approximately at one third from the bottom of the screen. The player can move left and right, and increase or decrease speed by pushing up or down. Diagonal movements move the car on one side and accelerate or decelerate: for instance, movement to the up-left increases speed and moves the car to the left. Speed changes occur when tapping or when holding either direction for at least 2 seconds. The car starts at speed level 5, and can increase to level 12 or decrease to level one. Scrolling is constant, but the speed determines how fast the car moves and long the jumps can be. Thus, changing speed according to stages’ hazards becomes a necessary skill to acquire, to navigate the corresponding stages.

During the Land stages, the A button shoots bullets, and the B button controls jumps. The stages have quite complex layouts and environmental hazards such as precipices and holes. Furthermore, enemies can try to ram into the players’ car and bullets can of course destroy the vehicle. For all these obstacles, jumps are a valid solution: the car can jump (i.e. the sprite undergoes a rudimentary scaling animation) and can (hopefully) land in a safe(r) spot. During jumps, however, the car cannot shoot: players must thus use jumps with wisdom. The spaceship mode or “Sky” stages are simpler: the A button shoots bullets, the B button activates the “rolling” attack, and the ship can move in eight directions. The “rolling” attack activates an invincible, enemy-piercing, phoenix-shaped, incandescent shield that consumes “rolling” energy. Once depleted of energy, the attack becomes inactive for the rest of each stage.

Players can choose among three distinct attacks and obtain two extra weapons. The pearl white “P” power-up increases the number basic shots up to three: collect two of them to reach this level. The light blue “P” power-up activates a dual shot, fast auto-fire based attack. A first power up will trigger a three-way shot; a second, a two-way shot two streams at 60 degrees from the dual shot. The green “P” triggers a cool-looking green laser with an orange energy stream spiralling around the laser. This attack is also fully automatic and quite powerful, but has a slow cadence and an annoying sound effect. Players can also collect up to three “M” power-ups so that they can shoot three homing missiles, and a “symbol” power-up to obtain side pods. The pods shoot one bullet in front of them and one to their open side.

These power-ups are available on both stage types. On spaceship type stages, players can collect up to four “S” speed power-ups, too. Collecting power-ups of the same time when the attack is maxed out will just award players 1000 points: since, the game offers few scoring opportunities, however, it is a good idea to collect these items. The game offers several extends: first at 20k points, second at 80k points and then one every 80k points. The game awards extends only in the first loop: players will not receive any extra lives in the second loop. The game also has a survival rank system that increases enemies’ H(it)P(oint)s, aggressiveness, and bullets’ speed: rank resets after each death, of course. Overall, the game mechanics are rather simple, though for its time auto-fire-based weapons were an interesting innovation. We return to these matters when discussing difficulty, given their relevance for this aspect.

Before we tackle the game’s challenges, however, I would like to offer considerations about Last Duel’s aesthetic offers. Visually, the game features beautifully vibrant colours covering a wide palette, especially on the first four stages. Each stage features several unique and well-animated enemies (creatures and vehicles), detailed backgrounds and good-looking, chromatically rich, and attractive visuals. The players’ vehicles are also quite well-designed, with the car featuring a relatively detailed jumping animation and the spaceship turning into a burning phoenix during the rolling attack. A minor note is that some bullets may sometimes be hard to see, as they may partially blend against some backgrounds due to quirky palette choices. This problem happens only a few times, at any case. On the other hand, the players’ shots are well designed and, at least for the laser, big, colourful, and destructive enough to probably render enemies’ obliteration a pleasant matter.

Aside the praise-worthy quality of the graphics, Last Duel appears gorgeous also in its exotic half Science Fiction, half Science Fantasy design and surprisingly good combination of settings. Stage one, “Galden’s Route”, offers a beautifully futuristic view of Mu’s capital and its highways. Stage two completely changes style, has players fly through “Mystery Zone” and fight mostly organic creatures. Stages three, four, five and six respectively take place in gigantic subterranean cave, a field of dangerous asteroids in space, a vast icy region and Galden’s base in space. Ultimately, 1980s games often featured such bric-a-brac stylistic choices: Last Duel somehow manages to blend these choices relatively well via copious amounts of fluorescent pixel art. As in the case of City Connection, lovers of modern synth-wave aesthetics might find this game’s visuals gorgeous and pioneering at the same time. Embrace the game’s queerness and vaguely 1970s camp design, and you should be delighted.

The brief mention of Kawamoto Tamayo at the beginning of this mini-squib might have wetted your musical appetite, or so I hope. I must admit that this game features one of my favourite “Golden Tamayo” OSTs. Miss Kawamoto, after all, composed some absolute classics while at Capcom (e.g. the Wagnerian Black Tiger and the intensely surreal Ghouls’n Ghosts OSTs). For Last Duel, “TamaTama” created an interesting mix of J(apanese) synth-pop with jazzy influences and a dash of soul and funk. Stage one includes an interesting if modestly sampled keyboard solo; stage two is a slow, deeply melancholic minuet perfectly matching the otherworldly organic stage. All stages include interesting melodic lines, skilfully sampled instruments, and influences from various genres. As proof of “Tama-Chan”’s depth of musical knowledge, the name entry song for scores below the first place is a groovy, enthusiasm-infected samba. A certain degree of melancholy, nevertheless, cheerfully permeates the whole OST.

An interesting aspect regarding the game’s aural presentation pertains to the sound effects. One clear-cut memory I have of the game is that the sound effects are quite loud and moderately cheesy. When the car/spaceship receives a hit, a loud siren-like noise signals the event, drowning the OST and probably any other sound in the immediate surroundings. Arcade are noisy places, but Last Duel was always the loudest game in a room, in my memory. Other sounds effects are not so loud and perhaps annoying, apart from the spiral laser shot. Aside these zany, possibly irritating effects, the game features crisp and well-crafted soundbites that nevertheless have an 8-bit, “loud is better” taste. Ironically, as a kid I loved the flippant loudness. However, my adult age I would suggest to fiddle a bit with the sound settings so that the neighbours might not call the police due to an aliens’ attack.

By this point, you may of course wonder if the game offers an accessible challenge. After all, a stereotype about 1980s arcade games is that they were hard in often maddening ways. I believe that navigated shmuppers should have rolled their eyes to a full exposure of the sclera, by their reading of the word “accessible”: I apologise if this is the case. Last Duel may perhaps be one of the easiest shmups, or at least hybrid shmup/action game titles, that features a loop. I believe that only two facets contribute to the overall difficulty of the game: the game mechanics, and in particular the mechanics governing the car stages, and the stage design. The loop’s few specific rules operate as forming a minor facet, too. For this reason, I propose that the first two facets are worth 20 points of 50, and the third 10 points.

The game mechanics affect difficulty in a simple manner. Sky stages may feel bland. Power-up as per preferences, shoot anything that moves and use the rolling attack when needed: problem solved. Land stages require instead that players learn to handle the car in all situations, with the proviso that the car has a fixed position on screen. Furthermore, Land stages have a time limit: players have 400 (half) seconds to complete a stage, so opting to clear stages at a minimal pace (e.g. speed one) may be dangerous. Conversely, cruising through Land stages at full speed may be dangerous, as players can crash unto incoming bullets of enemies easily. Playing for score is however easy: kill all enemies, collect all extra power-ups, clear stages quickly and save the rolling attack. I would thus assign two points to Sky stages, five to Land stages, and 7/20 to the overall game mechanics.

The other key source of difficult lies in the stage design or, more appropriately, in the design of land stages. Once players understand and possibly master the car’s mechanics, they should also develop a good grasp of each stage’s layout and their pitfalls. Land stages require that players always stay without the boundaries of the surface the vehicle is driving on: highway on stage one, stone path on stage three, ice on stage five. Players can jump outside these boundaries or fall into precipices and chasms; they can also land on enemies or even bullets. They must thus learn how to avoid obstacles irrespective of the driving speed, and jump judiciously. Sky stages involve narrow junctures, but those are easier to navigate via free movement. I would thus assign 7/20 points to this facet: stage memorization should be easy for any committed player.

Clearing the first loop should thus reach an intermediate level of difficulty, at 7+7=14/50 difficulty points. Clearing the second and final loop does not represent a radically more difficult challenge for two reasons. First, the game’s rank system seems based on survival time and power level, but it maxes out early in the game (stage four or so). Once players can handle stages three to six at maximum rank, they can also handle their counterparts in the loop. Second, extends stop during the loop, so players can only count on the lives accumulated during the first round. However, recovering from deaths is easy because rank plummets, and an extra blue power-up should appear after a few seconds. I assign five points to these aspects, for a 14+5=19/50 difficulty points. In my view, 1-CC’ing both loops of Last Duel is mostly an advanced intermediate challenge, but certainly an entertaining one.

Before I conclude this squib, I would like to share some personal recollections of my experiences with the game, and the resolution of a 25 years old 1-CC grudge. If you are rolling your eyes to dangerous levels one more time, please skip to the final paragraph (but, well, speaking of grudges…). My earliest memories of Last Duel interweave with to those involving Capcom’s Black Tiger, 1943 and Wonder Boy in Monster Land. I remember visiting the arcade of the person who would become my uncle after the adoption. I remember feeling attracted to those games on the arcade’s second floor, and by other exotic titles such as Double Dragon, Road Blasters and [url=ttps://bubblebobble.fandom.com/wiki/Bubble_Bobble]Bubble Bobble[/url]. The second floor also has northern windows on the street level, southern windows on the internal shopping gallery. Pizza perfume often permeates the room: it is a sensory paradise, in winter.

As a kid, I struggle to reach the commands: my parents basically let me sit on a stool while they play games, and sometimes they let me play co-op with them, simply telling me to shadow their movements. I like Last Duel because it seems to mix anime space ships and weird planetary vistas from my father’s books. However, I have no idea on what I am supposed to do, most of the time. It is fine: I can enjoy my father going through the levels and even beating this final scary creature in space. Years and winters pass, and by 1991 I am in middle school. My new uncle has placed this game in the “cheap room”, so I can play the game for 100 Italian lire: five Euro cents, approximately. I still have no idea on how to approach the Land stages, though.

It is now 1994 and I go to a different arcade in a different part of the town. It is an extraordinarily dodgy place malignantly associated with junkies, cheap harlots, and spots for a random piss on drunken nights. The local arcade also has the unforgivable flaw of getting the newest cool games and having a gloriously furnished “cheap classics room” in which I can play Last Duel again. It seems that dodgy folks are nowhere around when I have time to play, so I find myself enjoying this and a few other games in peace. This is good: I can finally understand how to play the Land stages and, with some dedicated practice in winter 1994-1995, I can finally clear the first loop of this title and some other game (Chariot, perhaps? Readers, clearly, I am an unreliable narrator! It was 30 years ago!).

I give up after the first loop: as a young one, the idea of clearing stages multiple times simply irks me for no apparent reasons. Years pass, and I go through different levels of education in different countries and continents. It is winter 2012-2013 and I am currently working in Stockholm as a lecturer: my first artic winter is an experience traumatic and exhilarating in equal measures. Since 2007, my gaming has reduced to the odd use of MAME and credit-feeding or cheat codes: I feel unable to play games in a committed manner. Still, somehow, during the long Christmas nights of 2012 I slowly learn how to clear the second loop: a first shmup 1-CC after an eternity or so (Shikigami no Shiro III in 2007?) feels good. Solving a 25-years old grudge to the rhythm of Tamayo’s melancholic tunes during 18-hours long Christmas period nights feels even better.

In conclusion, Last Duel is a hybrid action/driving/shmup title that offers a good challenge via its genre-blending game mechanics. The game has an intriguing visual and aural presentation and a certain 1980s charm that may appeal to old nostalgic hearts but also retro-oriented players. The first loop should be an accessible challenge to most players who are willing to learn the quirks of the Land stages and the car form’s mechanics. Clearing both loops may possibly be a feat accessible to any dedicated player, I believe: the difficulty is manageable. Anyone who wishes to explore Capcom’s early catalogue and discover earlier more experimental titles should overall enjoy this little gem. Shmups evolved in quite different directions, so this title could be a perfect experience to glimpse alternate, almost counterfactual evolutions of the genre. My final suggestion is thus simple: please enjoy it with a tinge of nostalgic melancholy.

(2977 words; the usual disclaimers apply; the “review” version of this squib lacks the sappy rant on experiences, so you can read that one instead, if you do not like this type of sugary prose. Oh, too late? You have already read this version? My apologies indeed!)

[BIL]

Many thanks bud! I will print that to enjoy in my comfy chair this afternoon, I've not done that enough lately.

On the off chance, are you familiar with Konami's Metamorphic Force? It's on my mind this week, having received a home release after some thirty years, via ACA. I've not had time to sit down with it yet, but I have been blasting the astonishingly potent OST.

I'm hopeful we'll see your recent subject, its hardware stablemate Gaiapolis soon, too. Though Hamster are famously skilled at the slow burn. All eyes are on a future ACA Violent Storm, as well, which will complete the Hunger City Trilogy. (I wish Crime Fighters hadn't gone with that cruel Boss Revenge stage, but then it's very much of Gradius III's time, opposite Vendetta's XEXEX-vintage largesse!)

[Randorama]

We had a discussion about Metamorphic Force in either one of the beat'em up threads a couple of years ago so the answer is "yes, definitely so". A squib on this title is in the cards, as my "new material" list in the original post is thin on titles in this genre. It is just that I do not feel so confident on writing about belt scrollers when mechanics are involved. Then again, I will probably only ever discuss games I have 1-CC'ed, so I should be able to at least articulate what I know about a title that warranted me a clear, in the first place. Besides, new drafts and updates exist to improve old versions.

Let's just say that by the end of November a MM should be up...Sundays are excellent days to write material and relax. These days I mostly get pissed o...ehrm, practice video-games on working days (!).

I would like to follow the formula:

update(s) of old material+shmup entry+new single screener/other

On a monthly basis, more or less (or your money back!).

At some point, I will probably start writing up more pretentious notes about more heady and abstract thoughts, too, but maybe I will migrate them to...something else, format to be decided. Let's just say that my Uni has people doing research on videogames at psychology, Computer Science and AI (we now have an independent AI department, go figure). Long form and fancy formats in videogame publishing are becoming a thing, These days, so maybe one day I will manage a way to sneak in the field. For fun, of course.

Wee suggestion: I write the squibs in word but then check their forum layout on a tablet, so a print-out may work better if you paste the test back to a word file, convert into .pdf, and then eventually print. I cannot guarantee that the links will work fine, though

EDIT:

Gaiapolis on ACA is justice, really. At some point I will edit the original squib (well, mini-article, given its length...) to incorporate all material into one file (i.e. original squib+discussion with Roo, etc.).

[Randorama]

It's already mid-November, so it is time to update this thread with some new material. The new squib is about Metamorphic Force and comes at 3848 words. By this point, I am slowly moving towards "short papers" rather than remaining into the "squib" format, but the hopefully humorous tone should still be easily gleaned from reading the entry. I will post a link to this entry in the relevant fighting games thread, but I believe that by this point all the squibs will appear here. I imagine that some forumites will be annoyed at encountering a mammoth entry disrupting the flow of conversation in another thread.

Next on the menu: Thunder Fox requires some more work, but ThunderCade and a few other drafts are proceeding at a lovely pace. Please try to sleep at night, even if the anticipation might cause you tachycardia

Metamorphic Force (Konami, 1993) is a scrolling beat’em up in which four valiant heroes who can metamorphose into were-creatures must fight against an army of demi-creatures. In 19XX, a mysterious island emerges in one ocean and an army of humanoid entities emerges from this island. The ominous “Death Shadow” acts as their emperor, declaring war to the rest of the world. The Greek goddess “Athena” summons four heroes from different parts of the world to prevent that this army conquer, armed with…well, spears and axes. The players must thus clear six stages choke full of enemies and then beat up the living daylights out of this pesky Death Shadow guy. At their disposal are four powerful characters that can rip stages apart thanks to their impressive fighting power and wide array of attacks. Hopefully, this squib can act as an invitation to embrace this game’s fast-paced game style and epic presentation, 1990s’ campiness notwithstanding.

Metamorphic Force saw its genesis at an interesting period in arcade gaming history. Capcom was flooding the market with its certainly excellent but often demanding beat’em ups. One could find Cadillacs and Dinosaurs’s cabs just about everywhere, and that the heavily crowd control-oriented Capcom style had become the norm in this volatile genre. Konami also found some popularity via its tie-in games (e.g. the two T(eenage)M(utant)N(inija)T(urtles) titles), but also produced a few belt scrollers that were original IPs but with a strong “licensed vibe. Furthermore, by this year beat’em ups were probably already entering a phase of considerable change in design. Move sets began to expand, and to become increasingly technical and oriented toward free-form fighting styles; pacing also became increasingly fast and frenetic. Metamoprhic Force and Violent Storm were possibly forerunners of this “evolution”, as they mixed typical Konami game mechanics (e.g. Enemies with only few H(it)P(oint)s) with a faster tempo and aggressive tactics.

Before we expand on the game’s mechanics, let us discuss the general setting and plot. The game introduces a modern Animal Fantasy setting that exudes a typical 1990s’ Saturday morning cartoon, e.g. the old X-Men cartoon. Death Shadow’s island includes statues and buildings reminiscent of Classical Greco-Roman architecture , a volcanic and frozen caves, a vast forest and a castle with Gothic architectural undertones . In this cacophony of locations, the four protagonists must fight different hordes of humanoid creatures (e.g. lizard-folk and ogres), thus renewing an ancient, mythical battle in modern battles. In perfect 1990s’ style, the game patches rather disparate ideas into a somehow cohesive even if remarkably camp setting, and develops a surprisingly strong design identity. Players may wonder why anyone need to fear an army of lizard-men with spears: the game, however, plays too fast and smooth to let players worry about these details.

The game mechanics give considerable substance to this apparently bold claim. Players can use two buttons: the A button is for attacks, and the B button is for jumps. The type of attack depends on the choice of character and form, plus the fighting context. Players can choose among four characters, the Earth protectors that Athena has selected for this ordeal. These are Claude, the French werewolf; Max, the Brazilian were-panther; Ban, the Japanese were-bull; and Ivan, the Russian were-bear. The four characters all take inspiration from various legends on were-creatures (e.g. European myths regarding bears and, of course, lycanthropes). In the game, these “animal totems” determine the characters’ metamorphic form and their set moves once they collect an “Athena golden statue” item. Characters thus have different forms for each attack based on their were-forms, but share roughly identical move-sets.

All characters can punch enemies (A button), defend themselves via sudden backwards attacks (opposite direction+A), and perform body blows plus throws (connect to enemies+push A+opposite direction after one/two blows). Furthermore, characters can perform mid jumps (pusb B) or high jumps (jump+up or u+right/left), and perform flying attacks. Low jumps can continue into mid-air kicks/punches, whereas high jumps can continue into descending attacks. Both jump attacks can knock down several enemies if they connect, and even hit enemies already on the floor. When enemies are down, characters can kick/punch them freely (same A+position as the enemy+A). Characters can perform a special attack (A+B buttons) that consumes some energy but renders the characters invulnerable and knocks down any enemy in contact. Characters in human form have weaker attacks, shorter ranges and move at a slower pace. Enemies also deliver more damage and may counter moves because they are faster than human forms.

The description of the basic game’s mechanics may perhaps give the idea that the game has (relatively) simple controls. Personally, I would agree with this view, but mostly because I believe that the mechanics favour the aforementioned fast-paced approach. Most enemies in the game have six HPs (e.g. lizard-folk, ogres), though stage-specific enemies may reach eight HPs (e.g. Elephant-folk on Stage 3). Characters can move very fast, so players can perform simple but devastating combos to handle crowds of any size. For instance, Claude in werewolf form can perform an ascending kick crossing the whole screen. If the kick knocks down a group of enemies, it deals one HP of damage and allows Claude to quickly kick the floored enemies for six HPs. In roughly two seconds, characters can slaughter a crowd of enemies effortlessly, provided that players execute the right moves quickly and precisely.

Were-forms are thus incredibly powerful, and allow players to tear apart crowds at a brisk pace and with gusto. Characters can also collect golden Athena statues when in were-form to activate a special attack: the characters will dash around the screen in i(invicible)-form and kill upon contact any enemy. Only bosses will not die on the spot, but may receive up to three HPs of damage during a special attack. Furthermore, an item-carrier helper looking like a teen were-lion also appears every 30 seconds or so to dispense golden statues, extra energy or even extra points. Thus, players can use were-forms and their attacks to cleave enemies apart, and can exploit extra Athena power-ups to perform lightning-fast sweeps of all enemies on-screen. Once more, the game promotes a breakneck approach to fighting; the special items give players plentiful opportunities to pursue this approach.

In perfect Konamy 1990s style, the game has three versions: Japanese (label: JAA), European (label: EAA), and US (label UAA). These versions differ in two aspects: difficulty and health/metamorphic bar, as we previously discussed in this thread . The JAA version features an HP bar and a bar measuring the duration of the were-form, plus a stock life. Losing HPs lower both bars, but metamorphic energy goes down at a faster rate. Shortly before turning human, a warning message will appear next to the characters; the same happens when at risk of (final) death. Replenishing HPs via item also replenishes metamorphic energy; Athena status only replenish metamorphic energy. The UAA and EAA versions do not have an HP bar but an HP counter starting at 100 points, and slowly ticking down. Thus, they literally force players to pursue the breakneck approach, in order to avoid death by HP depletion.

These differences have interesting consequences regarding the game’s difficulty, as we are going to discuss in the next paragraphs. Please allow me, however, to offer an overview of the game’s presentation before we touch on that topic. As readers may have guessed even by just reading the preamble to this squib, the game looks like a 1990s cartoon, and may look gorgeous to fans of the general style. The game’s visual strengths should however suddenly emerge once the action starts: the game has fluid and detailed animations. All four characters have wide move-sets with each move carefully illustrated, and even their gaits are fluid and evocative. For instance, Jean in were-form always looks like a wolf struggling to keep an erect posture; Ban can kick enemies down via an alternating, hypnotic stampede. Even lizard-folk as zakus have fluid movements and gaits. The game looks like a vivid, well-animated cartoon.

The visual design is also powerfully atmospheric. The stage settings might feel random, but they involve plenty of well-designed effects (e.g. the fire flares midway through Stage two). Enemies look distinctive and perhaps more beastly than the characters, giving the feeling that the fight is “human-beast” vs. “beast-human This is particularly clear in the case of stage-specific enemies (e.g. humanoid hedgehogs in Stage two; humanoid spiders in Stage six). Zooming and rotational effects are well-used if not frequent, and some backgrounds are highly detailed and evocative (e.g. a giant mosaic appearing in Stage six’s elevator section). Bosses also benefit from having impressively fluid animations, even if their design may appear a bit aleatory. For instance, the first two bosses seem demon-like creatures; the third boss is a robot, and the fourth a fusion of two minor demons. Minor issues aside, the game has a powerful and distinctive visual identity.

If the visual identity is powerful, then the OST and sound effects are a tidal wave of style statements. By the early 1990s, Kukeiha club appeared to be less of an in-house band for Konami and more of a musical label for a diverse group of musicians. Metamorphic Force’s OST steers away from the more fusion/Jazz oriented, Casiopeia-influenced sounds and dives deep into a style akin to Epic Metal. Intense guitar riffs match with relentless drums and synth, in an attempt to summon an ultra-dramatic, relentless battle against Death Shadow’s army. Stage one and Stage two’s metal tones are brutal enough, so Stage three veers towards a more Progressive Metal sound. Stage four even features a first movement akin to a pastoral theme for chamber music, which however leads to the “fast bangin’” metal second half. Boss themes are brooding (Stage four) or fast (Stage five, final boss), to match the fights.

Audio effects and voice acting complement the OST’s intensity in an intriguing manner. Konami beat’em ups featured voice samples and rich sound effects from the beginning of Konami’s journey into the genre (e.g. the TMNT game). In Metamorphic Force, Bosses give short battle declarations that could be perfect “Action Cartoon” one liners, and the four characters have a variety of mildly hilarious, aninmal-esque damage grunts. Fighting sound effects are usually loud though sharp and short. When characters pummel enemies, a satisfying cornucopia of bone-cracking sounds accompany punches and kicks. The game is loud and often bombastic in style, but there is a good balance between OST and the effect tapestry. Furthermore, this aural balance generally seems work in unison with the visual presentation. From an aesthetic perspective, Metamorphic Force screams “fierceness”, but does so by always providing clear visual action and powerful but no overbearing sounds.

Now that we have discussed the aesthetics of the game in some detail, we can veer our conversation towards the always volatile topic of difficulty. I invite readers to brush up their knowledge of my rather individual-oriented method in the fabulous Land Maker squib, the post in which I first introduced the concept. For this game and in this squib, thus, I assume that readers have an inkling of my use of facets for the analysis of difficulty. I then propose that Metamorphic Force’s difficulty consists of at least two facets: game mechanics and enemy/boss design, rather than a perhaps more abstract “level design” facet. I believe that the two aspects do not really interact, not even in a weak manner: learn the moves, learn the enemy patterns, and then kill’em all. The game has three different revisions, with their specific mechanics: they thus provide a third facet.

Let us discuss these facets in their order of introduction. The game mechanics that the game offers may be distinguished into two closely related sub-components, as we have discussed so far: the fighting system and the energy/metamorphic system. In my personal experience, the fighting system is simple and immediate: players can fiddle with each character and decide which fighter suits their fighting style best. Moves tend to offer an intuitive appeal in terms of range and utility: players will probably learn range of punches, usefulness of aerial attacks and other technical details quickly. Combos may require a little more learning time but they are also intuitive: jump and knock down enemies, throw them around when you can, learn when to use back kicks, special attacks and specials. The fighting system, I believe, should simply be easy to learn even for beginner players and/or beat’em ups lightweights (like yours truly).

The energy/metamorphic system involves some considerable differences among versions that we have already discussed. Let us summarise again, to explain how they affect difficulty. In the EAA versions players start with 100 HPs. Every ten seconds or so players will lose two HPs, aside also losing HPs from hits. Hits will also deplete metamorphic force, which comes in a bar approximating 75 HPs. Losing all HPs results in death, but losing all metaphoric points results into reverting to humans: at times, a fate worse than death (e.g. Stage six or any boss fight). Consequently, players should proceed through stages at a brisk pace and avoid hits at all costs. The UAA revisions works in the same manner; the JAA revions offers two lives of 60 HPs each, but lacks the energy timer. Players should avoid hits but may take a slower approach in cracking stages, and enemies’ skulls.

Enemy design provides, in my view, the second facet of difficulty in the game. Lizard-folk and Ogres come into a number of variants based on weapons and skin/armour colour. Once players know how to handle their basic attack patterns and specific weapon attacks, enemies should provide just an easy source for combos. For instance, pink lizard-folk carry lances that can hit at a moderate long range, but are useless at close range. As long as players can quickly close in, these enemies provide a meek challenge. Stage-specific enemies provide a similar challenge. For instance, Hedgehog-folk will dash through the screen, Sonic-style, as soon as they have a clear line to hit characters. Let them dash and combo them into oblivion while they are temporarily stunned and still on the spot. All six bosses have specific bosses after each attack, which provide splendid baiting occasions for counter-attacks.

Crucially, knowledge of environmental level design (e.g. chasms and lasers in Stage three) may sometimes help, but players do not require specific tactics to handle these hazards or crowds. Furthermore, enemies are more aggressive in the EAA and UAA versions, with bosses offering temporally shorter openings but also stage enemies attacking and countering faster. Nevertheless, players who can master when to punch (i.e. the fighting system) and when to dodge or side-step on the z-axis (i.e. the enemy/boss design) may easily tear the game apart. As the last few passages should hopefully show, however, players who can handle enemies’ specific openings and weakness and perform quick counters and combos may handle single enemies, crowds and bosses easily. Again, the basic philosophy behind this game is “play at speed and with aggression”: espouse this philosophy, and the game will provide a smooth and approachable challenge.

The third facet of difficulty pertains to how energy refilling mechanics work in each revision, and more in general to how revisions render the game easier or hard. The EAA and UAA versions appear to offer the initial model for the game: the JAA version includes sub-titles during cut-scenes, as a possible later addition for localisation purposes. Furthermore, the UAA version involves a boss rush on Stage five that is reduced to the lone Succubus boss in the other two versions. A conjecture is that the UAA version was the first, rather harder revision that offers scarce energy refills, includes more aggressive enemies and lacks the power-up trick. The EAA version appears as a toned down revision of the UAA version that however also includes HPs and the “energy timer”. The JAA version seems a final revision attempting to offer a perhaps more balanced set of mechanics.

Time to quantify, then. We have 50 points split “evenly” for three facets, i.e. 17 points per facet. I suggest that the fighting mechanics offer four of the 17 fighting system points, whereas the energy/metamorphic mechanics respectively cover four and two points (EAA and UAA, JAA versions). The enemy design facet covers four points for the JAA version, five points for the EAA version, and six points for the UAA version. The other mechanics respectively cover zero, four and eight points in the JAA, EAA and UAA versions. The totals are 4+2+4+0=10/50 points (JAA), 4+4+5+4=17/50 points (EAA), and 4+4+6+8=22/50 points (UAA). The JAA version is for top beginner players; the EAA version, for advanced intermediate players; the UAA version, for bottom expert players. The game has infinite loops, apparently, but difficulty should max out at “very hard’ at the third loop. Add two points per loop, as an endurance test.

My last remark suggests that, if a player loops the UAA version a staggering 22 times, the difficulty should reach the fabled 50/50 value. I believe that a player spending 11 hours on the game might indeed face a supreme challenge, but maybe the right amount of caffeine and food may tone down the difficulty. Rather than continuing with these ramblings, I would like to suggest that characters’ choice might be another facet of difficulty for some players. If that would be the case, I would consider it a sub-component of the fighting system facet. However, my experience is that one can master all characters and 1-CC the game without facing steeper character-based challenges. Thus, my experimental proposal is that character’s choice is worth a 0/17 points in value, or: I do not find a relevant facet, difficulty-wise. Readers may disagree, but in this model disagreement is just a number.

We have reached the passage of the squib by which we have discussed the game in detail. Some readers may already eye the exit before they are treated to my own personal story regarding this game. Please don’t do that: I swear that this time you will snooze in tranquillity by the end of this paragraph. Alternatively, the conclusion is…the last paragraph, as always. So…it is February 1994 and my uncle has bought a few new games for the arcade. He mentions that I should like some of them, since they are “fighting games that you could also finish, even if you suck at them”. My uncle seems to believe that everyone who cannot 1-CC Capcom belt scrollers is a wimp. To be honest, he also believes that shmups aficionados should 1-CC Truxton without breaking a sweat, and that bullying me is really a pleasant past time.

One day, I will tell you of how I 1-CC’ed Master of Weapon while he was mocking me during the whole credit. For now, however, I can tell you that he prepares one of the huge-ass cabs with this game, looks at me, and tells me that “Even you should finish the game easily. Maybe.” Well, I admit that I was seething inside, because my 1-CC list should be quite decent, for someone who is 13 years and a ½, and still needs to attend arcades while accompanied by an adult. Italian/local laws at the time were weird like that, I know. Anyway, The first few credits tell me that I should really become better at beat’em ups. The game is not punishing me as Final Fight or even Violent Storm, but I simply struggle to clear the first stage. Also, energy ticking down all the time is really, really annoying.

Progress is however steady, once I figure out how Jean should be used and how the game should be played. Well, I understand that speed is fundamental, since energy goes down all the time. I also quickly learn the double-triple bonus hit, if by accident. I am also getting the clear message that bosses are annoying because of their ability to hit characters a split second before you land punches. Still, this game makes me feel like Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is the most irrationally difficult belt scroller ever. If I can reach the fourth boss after two weeks of practice, then it has to be easy enough. Well, I am pretty sure that my uncle ranked up the difficulty to max, since some people already 1-CC’ed the games; those Capcom freaks! Still, the game feels approachable, if only because it is short-ish and lacks huge enemies crowds and f%$#ing Konami i(nvicibility)-frames.

The 1-CC comes in the form of a rocambolesque run in which I seem to fail each and every key passage in the game and yet reach the final stage with some energy. From the beginning of the stage onwards, however, I do not miss a beat and I end up recovering HPs due to my speed of execution. Play the game at an oppressively fast pace, and the HPs will go up thanks to energy refills. By the final boss I am certain that I can clear the game: hubris and a complete sealing of Shadow Death’s patterns are confirmation of this belief. My hands are shattering and I only have 25 HPs when the second loop starts: I just leave the cab to someone else. This 1-CC feels absurdly good, if only because I am useless at the genre.

Until September 1994, I return to the game to 1-CC it with all four characters, and then to test myself with endurance runs. At least once, I reach the fifth loop or so and decide to leave the credit to someone else, simply because I feel bored. I have just lost track of how many times I completed the game, and playing it feels too much like a time-killing task. The initial love fades away, and at some point my uncle swaps the game with some newer title, though I do not remember which one. I forget all about the game until I discover it again via MAME, and I explore the other versions a bit, 1-CC’ing the JAA version at first try. Some of these memories, you might know them already: they are now also part of this very forum, after all.

In conclusion, Metamorphic Force is a 1993 beat’em up by Konami that features lightning fast action, richly animated and detailed graphics and an epic OST. The game offers a simple but engaging fighting system and a challenge that varies from “moderately easy” to “moderately difficult” depending on which revision players approach. Fans of the beat’em ups genre will probably know the title already, but the recent ACA release offers us a good reason to revisit this title. For newcomers to the title, it offers an excellent introduction to Konami’s journey in the genre, and an adroit throwback to the time of cheesy 1990s cartoons. Have fun exploring this game and its carefully crafted stages, and be sure to enjoy the journey to the 1-CC. With a bit of dedication, it should be an accessible goal to any decent player.

[BIL]

Splendid work, worthy of a historic release. I'm encouraged to hear the Timer HP variants are playable to 1CC standard! I never know what to assume with those, after the truly cynical Dark Adventure. (never to be confused with its JP/EU reworkings Majuu no Oukoku and Devil World, ofc! their tickdown is merely ravenous ) AFAIK, that transcendently killer Coliseum Shredfest is Overseas only. (better soloing than some of the scene's prominent guitarists, imo... distinctly Paul Gilbert razor-precise, rather than Vinnie Vincent wankfest)

Regretfully only had time for a very brief tryout, atop a manfully big ACA backlog. Got my weekend cleared for MF, Riot, Blast Off, Crime City, Lead Angle, and VS Quest of Ki + Battle City. (the latter two, home-to-arcade ports every bit as hardcore as their progenitors Druaga/Ishtar and Tank Batallion) And Ping Pong ofc. Good god damn it's rad in 2P. (maybe one for the We Are The Champions thread? even has Authentic STG Cred via Penta )

Something I cannot help gravitating to, with Konami's beaters, is the recurrence of Crime Fighters' stomp mechanic, as well as attacks on downed enemies. (and players!)

PRESS BUTTON REPEATEDLY to STOMP EM IN THE NUTS (■｀w´■)

Yeah you're gonna be hawking vitamins and BBQ grills from now on, Junkyard-san 3;

A proud mark of Technos's unrefined fury, one I'm always happy to see survive the genre's rocky mid-80s genesis. I had the dumbest grin seeing MF's combo-integrated, floorboard-splintering take. "Who are you?! BWAAARK!"

While I appreciate DMC visionary and authentic Darius II bro Hideki Kamiya's approach to floored players - you spring back up until you don't, ie, you dead - if the ground is gonna get involved, I like it to be No Refuge. As a newcomer to these games, Vendetta's evolution of quasi-desperation floor attacks felt downright preternatural, as did stomped enemies recovering in stagger. The definition of "knock down drag out," when even a floored player (or enemy) can take a chunk out of the over-eager. (final boss spoilers) <-- a dozy, near-fatal lapse turned absolute car crash for all concerned - if you're gonna fuck up, fuck up big

[Randorama]

Birru-dono, glad to hear that you like this new effort. Let me summarise the route so far, if I may:

We are veering towards the long-form/long blog post format, but by this point we sail into the uncharted territories of thoroughness with a dash of personal musings and a decent helping of relevant references (e.g. links to previous discussions, entries on games, videos), plus random but probably interesting further readings (hey, the book on the Bear myth is great! As a proud holder of a ursine surname, I am happy to share this piece of Open Access research!). I need to figure out if I want to pursue a method to the referencing, but I suspect that I need more critical mass in the amount of text I have uploaded. Sometimes, I just need to write N variations of a template before I can find the right form for my purposes.

Anyway:

General aspects:

the UAA and EAA variants are 1-CC'able, but expect to feel frustrated at the sudden jumps in difficulty. If you re-read the old discussion, you should however find the links to the videos showing how to handle the UAA version; those should help. I decided not to summarise the main points of the discussion beyond the basic mention of the differences among versions, as I thought that interested readers should really dig back to the original sources for more. This is one aspect of the squibs' layout (or...facet, indeed) that I am mulling over. I would prefer leaving detailed discussions of strategies and tactics in the original references, so that readers should feel compelled to also read the linked references.

More specific tidbits:

...the guitar player sounds a lot like the guy who worked on several early SNK titles. I believe that the first riff on the first stage might be a sample of some early Neo Geo title like, dunno, Fatal Fury? But then again, this should be a guitar style stemming from Casiopeia, T-Square and these Japanese rock/fusion bands that were deeply influential in the 1980s/1990s (Kukeiha Club and Sega S.S.T.'s band sound like professional plagiarists, if you listen to some of their more rock/fusion oriented OSTs).

Gonads-stomping is good, and in this game it becomes a requirement. In the UAA and EAA versions, it feels like the game and the designers are constantly screaming: "do NOT waste time! Kill enemies fast! If you wanted slow, plodding action, you could have chosen some Capcom title, tosser!". Personally I like it if only because it originates in Technos' original vision for the genre, I think

Ping Pong and We are the Champions thread? Oh yes, please. I swear that one day I will start reviewing all those early 1980s titles and praise the glories of 8-bit attempts at capturing the intricacies of real-life sports. I do plan on a squib for the legendary Kick'n Run, after all

Regarding backlogs...well, while I am "on-site", my father buys the titles "in the motherland", and complains that they should slow down to one release per month. He is retired, luckily, but the obsession with pursuing the 1-CC'ing of any game that meets his fancy will not fade away any time soon, I guess. Bad habits die hard

[Lander]

Great write-up, Rando! I'd say the personal anecdote is a highlight; adds some relatable striving against adversity to the academic proceedings.
Origins of grit: For some, ranking systems. For others, peer pressure. And for the fortunate few: A mean arcade op relative

Format-wise, I may start reading these in Emacs; the wee forum font makes for a dense parse, though is of course worth battling back any latent undiagnosed ADD for.
A screenshot or two might do well to break up the content; As shown in Fig. IV, testicular violence is highly effective against a downed opponent. or such

The observations on version differences are interesting - there's a pattern of "fuck the US, have small mercy on EU, save the best for JP" that emerges with long enough spent sifting through arcade games. Gets me wondering whether there was an explicit policy to that effect within the big arcade houses, and whether evidence of it ever crept out by way of shmuplations or other enthusiast interview sources. Easy to take as simple business cynicism - bigger target, larger tolerance - but the iterative development angle makes for a pointed Occam's.

While I appreciate DMC visionary and authentic Darius II bro Hideki Kamiya's approach to floored players - you spring back up until you don't, ie, you dead - if the ground is gonna get involved, I like it to be No Refuge. As a newcomer to these games, Vendetta's evolution of quasi-desperation floor attacks felt downright preternatural, as did stomped enemies recovering in stagger. The definition of "knock down drag out," when even a floored player (or enemy) can take a chunk out of the over-eager. (final boss spoilers) <-- a dozy, near-fatal lapse turned absolute car crash for all concerned - if you're gonna fuck up, fuck up big

I suspect the DMC approach comes from fighting games, where being grounded is a kind of honour rule, making attacks that hit OTG feel especially impolite. I recall the lamentations of my Tekken buddies when I learned how to tack a lengthy cartwheel kick onto my Jin juggles as a farewell toe-tap; utterly rude, but very effective at chipping away at both the health and (arguably more important, if you take Miyazaki at his word) morale bars!

Always seemed a bit weird after fighters began escalating from straight-laced tournament framing to WorldStar Nobody fucks with Dudley pavement brawls and beyond. There's no manners on THA STREETZ

[Randorama]

Lander-dono: thanks a lot, as always.

re: grit: in my part of Italy we have a specific word for it, which is 'gnoranza (not "ignorance": that's when someone should read more). It's pronounced/spelt in that way because it is supposed to describe the property of someone being ignorant of any kind of adversity. Being a local means being 'gnorante, regardless of any fancy-pants identity one can also have: my uncle was just showing me how much he appreciated my budding skills, in a very local, gritty/'gnorante way of doing it

Format: a mildly inconvenient solution is to copy entries and paste them into a word file, since I write in this format. I can easily read three pages on a 40" screen and with text resolution in word at 60% (OK, I also like smaller size fonts). Alternatively, I use an iPad with .pdf and read/edit a whole page at a time, or even use my TATE monitor (34", and I read one or two pages at a time). The iPad solution is great if you read these during morning "needs" (ahem!) or you have good comfy chair, I believe.

I admit that at some point I would like to migrate newer drafts into something like a WordPress blog, but for the moment being I feel rather lazy about preparing multi-modal documents. I would need to take screens, upload them somewhere, then embed them in the squib. I would prefer to save this type of work for when I feel satisfied with the format. I am guessing that I may start after 18-20 squibs or so, i.e. some time in summer 2025 (I guess).

version differences: I honestly do not remember which scanlation gave a clue about this aspect, though very indirectly. In one scanlation, some influential programmer mentioned being rather surprised to know that US players tend not to care about 1-CC's and are fine with pumping coins, and thus being more or less fine with US versions being perhaps less balanced or more "operator-friendly", so to speak. I believe that Konami were the worst offenders, though: other big companies (e.g. Taito, Capcom, Sega) had a tendency to offer more homogeneous versions. That's the impression I have from the games I tried via emulation, though.

So: next two squibs will be Thundercade and Thunder Fox. I need to focus more on revising the early version of Taito's manly action title, so I will probably follow this order. The plan is to release squibs every second, third, fourth week of a month, ideally, and to close off the month with a revision of older material. If I change schedule, you will certainly know it

[Randorama]

We are getting closer to Winter, and I feel the need to post more about my earliest videogame memories. My original plans were to upload a shmup squib by the end of each month, but for this rainy November I decided to anticipate the second shmup release and procrastinate the Thunder Fox revision to next week. My approach to procrastination is simple: when in the wrong mood, I complete a different task from the one in the original schedule. Sure, I get the job done and according to the schedule, but I may do it in an apparently chaotic manner. Since we live in a brutal world were only results matter, it's all good anyway, isn't it? This month I cover my first 1-CC in the shmup world that, sadly, does not receive as much love as it should, in this soulless 2020 decade.

I hope that you enjoy it; I will release the edited in the "reviews" section at a later stage, in case anyone wonder. Next shmup squib should be...either Taito's Tokyo or Capcom's Side Arms, as I am simply undecided on the order of release. The overarching plan for the academic year 2024-2025 is "1980s were Chaos", in the beautiful sense envisioned by Ogura Hisayoshi for his Chaos - Main Theme masterpiece included in the Darius OST (read more about it here). I might flesh out the intuition on request - it's no fun if I expose my half-baked ideas in prose without someone actually asking me to do so (3073 words; the usual disclaimers apply, but I almost miss the days in which monolingual users would complain about my ability to correctly spell definitely rather than, say, write the word as definit-ackpbthhhtfnord!-ely).

Thundercade (Taito/Seta 1987) is a shmup in which one or two players riding armed motorcycles invade some (foreign?) country to stop some terrorists’ nuclear weapons program. Seta, a now obscure but once relatively prolific arcade games company, created the game and Taito distributed it. The title Twin Formation is for the international market, as the Japanese version’s title is Tokushu Butai U.A.G.. The game features pioneering pre-rendered graphics, a complex sub-weapon system allowing players to shoot forward but also sideways, and a weapon/bomb attack that invites aggressive use for scoring purposes. The game also features gigantic bosses and seamless action: no clear stage breaks exist, even if lulls in action occur after beating bosses. Although the action is at times frantic, the powerful weapons and bombs render the game a potentially easy target for 1-CC endeavours. Players can thus enjoy easy shmup action and perhaps appreciate an old school unpolished gem.

Thundercade was published in a period in which Taito was acting as a distributor/publisher for several minor companies, one famous example being Toaplan. Seta published this title, the rather obscure Arbalester and the quite notorious Twin Eagle under the Taito Aegis. However, the other titles that I am aware of appeared as Seta games. The game is possibly one of the earliest titles featuring a primitive form of pre-rendered graphics, even if this technique seems mostly used on vehicles inspired by real-life machines (e.g. the characters’ motorcycles). It seems that in the 1986–1988 period, auto-fire was a taboo concept for some companies. If players activate any auto-fire rate higher than 20 kHz, the vehicles will not shoot. This or lower frequencies are fine, and turn the game into a rather easy challenge, as I am going to explain in the remainder of this squib.

First, however, let me discuss the world setting in some detail. The game’s setting is rather interesting, given the “1980s improbable Hollywood action/war flick”. The game starts with a brief introduction showing an Hercules C-130 look-alike plane hovering at speed over some undefined city outskirts. Terrorists have taken hold of a nuclear plant, somewhere, so the good guys deliver one or two soldiers on motorcycles behind enemies’ lines. The task of these unnamed pilots is to destroy a gargantuan terrorist army while riding through the seemingly immense terrorists’ territory. After crossing cities, deserts, mountains and then finally invading the terrorists’ base, the soldiers blow up the nuclear plant, obviously escape just in time to avoid dying in a radiation bath. Their plane picks them up leisurely, and players can enjoy a final victory screen with the plane flying in the sunset, as freedom prevails.

If my summary the plot gives you the impression that the game’s action rests on rather shaky premises, fear not. As with all shmups, the game’s mechanics are the core of the game and the campiness of plots and settings is a minor and usually zany but, potentially, charming aspect. The game’s mechanics are quite simple, as befits a 1980s title. Tap the A button and the motorcycle will shoot a stream of thin, very weakly destructive bullets. Hold the A button and a slow stream of bullets will start at the measly rate of one bullet per second or so. Auto-fire rates, if they respect the programmers’ constraint, turn this stream into a fast and reliable barrage. When the vehicle power-ups, the central shot disappears: die or lose the power-ups, and the motorcycle will revert to the basic shot.

The B button triggers the special weapon/bomb attack: the aforementioned C-130’s shadow briefly passes over the screen with a loud turbo-engine noise to carpet bomb enemies. The first or basic use of the bomb will release a stream of explosions appearing to the sides of the motorcycle’s vertical line. If the motorcycle is exactly along the vertical centre of the screen, then two streams of explosions will travel from the bottom screen upwards, roughly covering 30% of the screen. A second bomb immediately released after the first bomb will trigger zig-zagging explosions that will however destroy all enemies and background objects on screen, instead. A third consecutive bomb, while strategically unsound, may release a single stream of explosions on the motorcycle’s trajectory or a zig-zagging bomb. The exact form is context-sensitive, so players may not worry about which option will activate. Double bombs can be devastating: use them wisely.

The power ups are perhaps the most interesting part of the game. Every ten seconds or so, a sidecar appears on screen in either military green or mild orange colour. The sidecars carry extra weapons that come into three types of increasing power: 7-millimetre shotguns, 15-millimetre machineguns and 30-millimetre cannons. Shotgun sidecars appear at the very beginning of the game and occur for the whole game; the first machinegun sidecar appears shortly before the first boss. Cannons do not appear until shortly after the third boss: the final power-up is a double-barrelled orange cannon sidecar. Sidecars can include one or two barrels, and can be shoot frontally or sideways. Green sidecars have limited shot range, though the range increases with power level. Ideally, a single motorcycle can have two double-barrelled orange cannons, which cover the whole screen in range: remember that the central shot becomes inactive, however.

The mention of bosses may perhaps have led readers into believing that the game has stages. This is perhaps not incorrect: the game features five huge vehicles acting as bosses of sorts. However, once players defeat those bosses, a few seconds of apparent peace on screen lead to the arrival of new enemies’ waves. Technically, thus, the game only has one long stage with a final boss awaiting players in the terrorist base: the five preceding bosses may act as intermediate bosses. This approach to level design may sound like a daunting proposition if stages were long. However, the whole game lasts roughly 21 minutes if players obtain a 1-CC, and bosses appear at regular intervals. Since the lulls after the boss concede players a bit of respite, the game manages to offer a compact experience and a fast-paced, but balanced pace.

The game’s mechanics thus offer an approach to the experience that was relatively original for the time. The visuals, as we have mentioned in the introduction, also offer a perhaps interesting technical innovation via their pre-rendered style. Enemy vehicles include tanks of various sizes and with differing H(it)P(oint)s, foot soldiers dressing either military green or bright red uniforms, and various other vehicles. Bosses are huge and noisy, and include a giant tank with multiple turrets, a submarine somehow popping out of a relatively small channel, a giant helicopter and…a giant robot crab. Quirky bosses aside, the game’s aesthetics strongly focus on (relatively) realistic mechanic designs, even there are some considerable odd choices involving enemies’ sizes. Foot soldiers seem as big as the dark grey tanks, helicopters seem able to occupy the same location at the same time, and the giant crab…shoots lasers. Realism, 1980s’ style.

The general settings and background also present a mix of pseudo-realistic aspects and some definite oddities. Stages involve different and rather heterogeneous locations: the characters travel from a big city to a military base in a mountainous range, crossing deserts and rugged wastelands. Thus, the game features a lot of drab colours such as dark and light grey, orange, green and a few bluish bodies of water. Notably, most bullets are orange, exceptions being cannon shots and rockets in dark grey. From time to time, spotting bullets may be hard as backgrounds may be in a similar shade. Some passages can also become overcrowded with enemies if players do not clear the screen quickly. Overall, the game has a distinctive visual style that however presents quirky or perhaps just under-designed aspects. For an 1980s military-themed shmup, however, Thundercade has a distinctive if perhaps quixotic visual identity.

A topic that we should touch even if I admit feeling slightly embarrassed about it is the OST and the sound effects. Easily the weakest aspect of the game, the OST sounds like a snippet of non-descript Muzak that apparently loops every two minutes or so. In practice, however, the pseudo-loop involves minor variations near each end of the cycle. Players should thus have the feeling that they are listening to the same soundbite for 20 minutes or so, if they manage to 1-CC the game. More accurately, players will listen to this soundbite until they reach the final boss. A more funky-like soundbite will then start and play during the 30 seconds or so that it takes to destroy this final obstacle. OST-wise, thus, Thundercade offers a modest experience, akin to early 1980s shmups and their often bare-bones “soundtracks” of sorts.

The sound effects also offer a similarly idiosyncratic experience. The three types of sidecar attacks have each their specific sound effects. While the shotguns and the machineguns may sound like their actual counterparts, their sound effects are not particularly invasive. The cannon sidecars, however, feature a loud, squeaky, and rather mysterious sound effect that may become quite irritating after 30 seconds or so. The bomb weapon is interesting, since it seems to sound a brief sample of some plane’s turbo-propeller engines…and then another mysterious sample perhaps simulating a bomb explosion. Other sound effects may be realistic, but several of them may become irksome to the ears, given their loudness and high pitch-ness. It is overall fair to say that Thundercade may not offer the best aural experience among shmups, but players may develop a queer taste for its quirky OST and sound effects, perhaps.

We can now move to the final passages that involve the game itself: those involving the game’s difficulty. I will offer a link to my first discussion of the Facets approach, but a mini-introduction to this topic may help new readers to navigate this part. I propose that difficulty in games depends on the game’s aspects or facets that players can access and interact with, when they play. Players may approach games in different manners and thus find aspects/facets of a given game “difficult”, i.e. challenging to grasp, master, and control. For Thundercade, I propose that there are only two facets that contribute to the game’s overall difficulty: the motorcycle’s mechanics and the enemies’ attacking patterns and waves. Players can master each Facet independently, so in my view there are no interacting facets that may affect difficulty; auto-fire and its role deserve its own facet, though.

The motorcycle’s mechanics should be relatively easy to learn and master. The vehicle does not have any special moves, but under certain conditions the motorcycles can jumps obstacles or change planes. For instance, players can destroy the submarine (i.e. the first boss/mid-boss) and then jump over the channel in which the submarine waits. Players simply need to move forward, and the motorcycle will jump, becoming invulnerable to bullets while airborne. If a section is at a different elevation from other sections, some procedure will let the motorcycle land on the detached section. Aside this small detail, players must simply learn which sidecar they prefer using and learn when to use bombs. In my view, a 7/25 points suffices to capture this facet of difficulty.

The other key facet regarding difficulty involves enemy waves and their attacks. As befits old school types of shmups, enemies tend to occur in rigid order and in waves or clusters. Foot soldiers, for instance, appear in small trios or quartets from the top, or single individuals or pairs from the sides. Smaller tanks also follow a similar pattern. Helicopters invariably appear in fixed formations of five or six units (black windshield) or in two consecutive waves of eight units (jet-like model). Each enemy wave follows one or two movement patterns and each enemy shoots via fixed attacking patterns. Players can memorise enemies’ appearance on screen and shoot them down immediately; if enemies can attack, avoiding their often poorly strafing attacks may be trivial. Enemy waves are thus a static facet of the game that is not worth more than 7/25 points of difficulty, as far as I am concerned.

The use of auto-fire acts as a third facet for three reasons. First, the use of auto-fire can increase the “thickness” of the bullet stream in such a way that destroying buildings and other scenery becomes easy if not trivial. Several sections become quite easier to handle once players obliterate scenery: thicker enemy waves can go down faster, without obstacles. Second, if players enter the second boss’ fight (a giant tank) only with the basic shot but quickly destroy this boss, a “laser” power-up will appear. The main shot turns into a free-range piercing laser, and sidecars will also carry with this weapon. Without auto-fire, obtaining the laser is almost impossible as the boss must find their death quickly. The laser may render difficulty trivial, but a decent player using auto-fire will already have an easier time anyway.

Overall, the overall difficulty I propose for the game is 7+7=14/50 points without auto-fire. The use of auto-fire considerably lowers difficulty in my view, it halves it to 7/50 points. The game offers a middle intermediate challenge without auto-fire, but the use of auto-fire lowers it to 7/50 points, to higher beginner levels. Let me also mention that the game offers one extend at 50k points (i.e. very early on in the game), and one extend power-up near the final boss. If players have 777k points and use a bomb, a power-up awarding seven lives will also appear. Thus, exploiting the game’s secrets can make the game easier (perhaps, a 5/50). The Difficulty Wiki offers slightly different scores, but also fewer motivations for the scores; let us just say that we reach similar conclusions via different approaches to difficulty.

I hope that the squib has offered a good overview of the game and its manifold facets, up to this point. Before I conclude, I would like reminisce about my experiences with this game. After all, this is the first shmup I ever 1-CC’ed, if not the first game (or was it Black Tiger? Ah, uncertain memories and unreliable narrators!). It is November 1988 and I am slowly beginning to understand how to play shmups by myself. I have seen people playing and clearing this game several times, but I admit that I am amazed at how they can dodge all the bullets on screen. It seems like the game just floods the screen with bullets and enemies. There is another “shooting game”, as I have begun to call them, that seems quite worse: Truxton. Thundercade seems more approachable, somehow: at least it is “only” 20 minutes long/short.

I am just a kid so I can only go to the arcade a few times per week, with my father. Still, some practice is better than no practice. It feels like swimming or writing: great care must go into single movement and every movement most follow a pattern, and anyway it is hard to play on a stool. Cabs feel gigantic, even if the Darius cab is almost like a distinct place onto itself. Months pass and progress is painfully slow: basically, I progress at the pace of one more enemies' wave further into the game, per credit. The long winter makes me feel like this game and the cold will never end. By March, however, I can consistently hit the final passages of the base and, on 28th of March 1988, I start reaching the final boss on a regular basis. Yes, I can potentially finish the game.

I remember that the first 1-CC was in mid-April: two lives in stock, the routine for the final boss is not so hard anymore, three bombs in stock. I bomb to clear the final four pillars and yes! It is over! The credits start! I am a superior soldier...and so on. My uncle and one of his friends sport some ridiculously wide grin and comments that kids are not supposed to finish games on one credit. Anyway, they should not be shaking and sweat copiously, as if they just finished a football match. My head is dizzy and I do not know what to say, so I just go and wash in the toilet. I am also not sure about what I just achieved: was it a fluke? Did I really use only one coin to complete Thundercade? Did my uncle turn difficulty down to mock my kid’s skills, or something?

I spend the next few months, until September or so, to repeat the feat two or three times per week: stress and sweatiness fade away, and regular 1-CC’s become the norm. Roughly one year later, my uncle sells the board: the game had its fair run. It is now 2000 or so, and I just dropped out of the Navy Academy: not for me, bad choice, let us start again and pretend it was a nightmare. I discover MAME exactly when Thundercade is the newest addition, and roughly another 1000 titles are in its list. My first semester of civilian life and university is just games, to recover the lack of personal life in the last few years. Years pass: a game of Thundercade becomes a Christmas, Easter, Birthday tradition. When certainties of life seem to falter, I 1-CC this title and reassure myself that I can achieve something, every day.

In conclusion, Thundercade/Twin Formation is an interesting shmup from Seta that Taito published in 1987, and that features some interesting and innovative mechanics for its time. The game offers an approachable challenge for players who wish to develop their 1-CC skills. Indeed, its difficulty is not high, and the game mechanics provide a (relatively) gentle learning curve. The game may appear and sound rather outdated by these days, but for its time it provides an early if preliminary approach to pre-rendered graphics. Players who love the old school, 1980s style of shmups tinged with some manic aspects should find the game entertaining. All players, however, may enjoy the game as a time capsule or interactive documentary about that period of the history of the genre. Play it with an open mind and a dash of nostalgia on the screen, and you will find merit in the game’s overall experience.

(3043 words total; The usual disclaimers apply; I know that you spent sleepless nights waiting for this squib. All shall be satisfied! The 1980s will never end and we will see endless re-runs of awful tv shows and individuals in tank top t-shirts!)

[Randorama]

Good morning and good Sunday, readers. I hope that you bought an advent calendar offering calisthenic exercises rather than chocolates, as it will prepare you for the astounding revision of my early Thunder Fox squib I present before your eyes. As always, the squib is meant to be read in any format you like, but tablets but offer a better reading experience. Score-oriented players can also carefully study the replay I link to in the very first paragraph: I'd be happy to offer my conjectures on the scoring trick in the video in the R2RKMF thread (or you might just check the original youtube video, eh).

We are approaching Christmas so I may be tempted to become a better and nicer person: I might accept requests for further revisions of squibs and for new material, but I may also remember that I do not celebrate Christmas at all! Anyway, I am mulling over future plans so readers who chime in with suggestions are welcome. Please have a look at the list of future possible squibs, first, but the rest is actually negotiable. A new list should appear by midnight of today (2024-12-01), +7 GMT time.

Without much further ado:

Thunder Fox (Taito, 1990) is an R2RKMF-style game with some platform aspects, shooting/vehicle action sections, and “tactical action” mechanics. The game pits two calisthenics-obsessed mercenaries against hordes of terrorists armed with flying fortresses and knives. The game features a fast, hectic approach to action, moderately challenging stages and surprisingly variegated scoring opportunities. Players can storm through stages set in stormy dilapidated fields, giant carriers and secret bases in order to free the world from the terrorist threat. Aside their trusted knives, the protagonists can use various weapons to shoot enemies (e.g. handguns) or, alternatively, smash their kissers to tiny pieces (e.g. bazookas as blunt weapons). A game living and breathing the extremely camp style of 1980s action flicks, Thunder Fox can potentially attract any player who can enjoy its smooth and fast game mechanics. In this squib, I will try to argue why this is the case.

By 1990, Taito were releasing dozens of games and most were glorious and fun, though often glitch-prone and not necessarily well-balanced. Thunder Fox is a good example, for a number of reasons I discussed in the first iteration of this squib [/url]. Minor glitches aside, the game is an ideal sequel to a cluster of actions games that several companies released in the late 1980s. Some readers will probably know Taito’s Crime City and Namco’s Rolling Thunder, but Konami’s Rush’n Attack likely offered inspiration for this game. The idea of a lone soldier winning a little war by using a knife and the occasional weapon was not new, and neither was movement between upper and lower platforms/planes. Thunder Fox even takes some inspiration from DECO’s Sly Spy’s vehicle-themed actions. Nevertheless, the game elegantly merges several concepts and mechanics from action games into a smooth gaming experience.

Let us discuss the game’s background story a bit, before we address these matters further. The game is set in 19XX: terrorists have ruined the whole world by using…machetes, jump kicks, and giant air fortresses with laser beams. It is up to two bronze-tinted, knife-wielding, jump-kicking, perennially grimacing and somersaulting badasses to defeat the baddies and restore peace. Given this “80’s action flick” premise, it is not surprising that the game features a lot of intensely manly action and rather peculiar stage settings. Stage one is set in some non-descript dilapidated war zone; Stage 2 features an assault to a giant aerial fortress, in Capcom’s Strider style. Stage 3 sees the characters escaping the exploding aerial fortress with a waterjet and splashing down some ocean to attack the enemies’ airplane carrier. Stages 4 and 5 see the characters invading the enemies’ base and killing their overlord in his…throne room.

If the plot sounds shamelessly excessive, then the game mechanics also offer a robust dose of camp aspects in how they deliver the action. The game uses 3 buttons: A is the knife attack, B is the jump action, and C is the weapon attack(s). The knife attack has limited range but it is fast. There are then four weapons: handguns, rifles, bazookas and hand grenades. For rifles, handguns and grenades, the character shoots if players use the C button. With handguns, the player uses the knife with the A button; with the rifle and the bazooka, the characters can kill enemies by smashing the rifle/bazooka onto enemies’ skulls. Bullets depend on weapons: 20 bullets for handguns, 30 for rifles, three grenades and three bazooka missiles. Collecting a weapon of the same type add 10, 15 bullets (handgun, rifle) or a full stock (grenades, bazookas).

Jumping comes in different variations. The first variation is a standard jump (push B) by which the character jumps a third of a screen, and one character’s height. The second is a command move (B+up) that triggers a somersault kick. This kick delivers two H(it)P(oint)s and renders the character invulnerable for the whole jump: the i-frames stop once characters land. It is possible to do a rolling attack (B+down) to perform a safety attack before landing (i.e. the character rolls in the air and damages adjacent enemies). A+B triggers a jumping kick action: the character does half-height forward jump that will kill any enemy. Characters can jump-kick, somersault and walk from a crouching position, similarly to the ninjas in The Ninja Warriors. Players start with two lives and 12 HPs: hits do between 1 and six HPs, but there are some insta-deaths (e.g. falling into pits).

The “mixed genre” approach certainly plays an interesting role in how the game mechanics work. Stage one offers players the chance to ride a jeep in co-op mode, with one player diving the vehicle and the other player killing terrorists with the jeep’s machinegun. Stage two, instead, opens with a simple shmup-like section in which the characters fly a single pilot VTOL vehicle. Once they reach the flying fortress, the game reverts to the “standard” action mode. Stage three has an initial section closer in style to vehicle-based action games. Characters ride their jet-ski vehicles, shooting and jumping to avoid sea mines before they reach the Carrier. The final parts of stages four and five have platform-like sections, as players must carefully pass through hazard-ridden sections (e.g. electrified pavement sections). Action is fast-paced, so players can get a feeling of rushing through stages and gaming styles at a devastating pace.

Overall, the game system seems to place a great emphasis on speed of execution and precision. This may not appear obvious at first glance, since time limits are generous: 300 seconds for Stage one, three, four; 150+80 second for Stage 2; 400 for Stage five. However, the End-Of-Stage bonuses are quite generous too: 5k points for Stage 2, and 1.5k points for the other stages. Players can mow down crops of enemies quickly, even if enemies will try to hit characters via shoulder charges if players never stop moving. Well-timed jump kicks, however, seem designed precisely to kill charging terrorists. More in general, most enemies/terrorists seem just to exist to be mowed down mercilessly. Thus, once players play with aggressive tempo and know which attacks to perform, playing for quick clears also becomes a safe though skill-demanding approach to survival and eventually the 1-CC.

Before we explore this topic and the broader topic of difficulty, I would like to focus on the game’s audio-visual presentation in some detail. The game tends to be colourful and has well-animated though not exceptionally fluid human characters. The main characters distinguish themselves in being bronze-tinted, sporting a perennial grizzled grimace, and having the most fluid animations in-game. The stages feature some great settings (e.g. the Flying Fortress and Air Carrier attacks), and some impressive parallax effects for the time. Worth of mention is the final part of Stage two, as it features a frantic escape from the falling fortress with characters forced to dodge various types of debris. More in general, the atmosphere exuding from the game is one of dangerous but thrilling adventures in extravagant settings, as befits old school action games. The world may be war-torn, but killing terrorists and maniacal dictators looks absolutely smooth.

The game’s design also has its rugged charm. Enemies mostly come in “grizzled merc with a neckbeard” and “crypto colonialist grunt” formats, with some further types (scuba divers, vehicle operators) appearing sporadically. The terrorist army may be short on guns and rifles, but it has an impressively advanced (and well-designed) flying fortress and a beautifully designed Carrier. Human bosses also clearly show just how mighty the terrorists are: Stage three features a three-metre-tall guy with a harpoon and a horrendous haircut. Stage five mid-boss and final boss feature the same unlikely height and are armed with a rifle and some kind of sickle-and-chain weapon. Overall, the game offers rather camp settings that nevertheless should result adorable to anyone wearing the right shade of nostalgia googles. Most importantly, the game’s design and graphics manage to be evocative and yet functional for the action.

The OST by Karu, of Zuntata fame offers an interesting counterpoint to the visual action. Karu is mostly famous for cutesy soundtracks such as Puzzle Bobble and Cleopatra’s Fortune, but Thunder Fox is also another interesting in this artist’s portfolio. The OST may be defined as a mix of vaguely fusion- and jazz-tinted pieces that attempt to capture an action flick type of sound. Still, Zuntata’s style of City Pop is always in the background. Stage one’s theme is a slower and more brooding theme that flows in the fast-paced boss theme, after the usual “warning” klaxon alerts players of the boss’ arrival. Stage two plays like an epic rock cavalcade, as one would expect from an aerial stage; stage three and four’s incursion-style missions are completed with jazzy pieces giving off a faint Bond-esque thrill. Stage five pseudo-military march and the ending theme round up an overall solid OST.

The sound effects also complement the OST in an intriguing manner. Taito games featured voice samples and realistic weapon effects since the advent of [The Ninja Warriors, or so I would like to believe. Guns, rifles and other weapons sound loud and gratifying, explosions are ridiculously bombastic, and the knives’ swing noise has a lovely whooshing sound. Players thus have the impression that both characters and enemies are fighting with real weapons, even if these sound effects are always perfectly balanced against the OST. The voice acting is certainly basic, but voices sound crisp and amusingly intense, I daresay. Certainly, the recycling of the “kill you!” sample from The Ninja Warriors is a cheeky choice that however fits well the game’s style. Overall, Thunder Fox looks and sounds good and slick, and can summon properly cheesy 1980s action flick atmosphere with rather histrionic nonchalance.

Let us turn to the delicate topic of difficulty (reminder: background reading on facets is in this thread: scroll up, please!). I believe that the game’s difficulty can be partitioned into four facets: general fighting mechanics, stage design, bosses design and score-driven mechanics. I will spend the next few paragraphs motivating this perhaps not so intuitive division of labour among facets. The general fighting mechanics should be intuitive for most players as long as weapons are involved. The knife has a short range, weapons have long range but limited ammos but can also be used as blunt weapons, and grenades have an awkward throwing range/trajectory. Mastering their use seems not a daunting task, I believe, but umping attacks require some more practice. Players must learn the i-frames for the somersault kick and the jump-kick range before they can deliver considerable callisthenic violence to any enemy, including bosses.

General fighting mechanics can be thus mastered with practice, and players can exploit them to clear stages with gusto. Players will however also need to learn stage-specific mechanics and, more in general, the specific design of each stage, before they can master the game. For instance, the first section of Stage two requires modest shmups skills for a no-hit bonus, but it still demands players to learn its specific quirks. The jet-ski stanza opening Stage three offers a similar mini-challenge. The same reasoning applies to the falling rocks on Stage four plus the “hazard” passages on Stage five (electrified floor, falling spikes). A peculiarity and perhaps a beautiful aspect/facet of Thunder Fox is that it offers mini-games of sorts on each stage that players must successfully overcome. Let us quantify: I propose a 4/13 evaluation for the fighting mechanics facet, and a 5/13 evaluation for the stage design facet.

Boss design acts as third and perhaps less intuitive facet, in my opinion. I propose this facet as a distinct source of difficulty especially because I struggled deeply in overcoming the bosses, as you will learn from my own experiences. In a nutshell, though, players must learn specific and sometimes counter-intuitive techniques to beat each boss. For instance, the first tank boss requires that players kill the gunner from the tank, grab the grenade dropping from its corpse, and then throwing the grenade against the tank. The second boss is the flying fortress’ energy core, and it is only vulnerable to somersault kicks when the core is open (yes, this sounds bizarre in written form). The third and fifth bosses plus the final overlord require gimmicky techniques that I described in the previous revision, or they will act as bottlenecks. Six bosses thus give us a 6/13 evaluation for the boss design facet.

At a total of 4+5+6=15/50 points, Thunder Fox is a game for middle-range intermediate R2RKMF players. Players who decide to ignore scoring challenges can thus relish a good game that will test their skills without pushing them to their limit. Pursuing high scores, however, complicates matters considerably but also opens the game in intriguing directions. Completing a stage with multiple bazooka bullets awards a considerable bonus, but the bazooka as a blunt weapon is hard to use. However, this and the other weapons become key tools to activate the secret bonuses. This will however become clear once you will carefully study the replay I linked to, at the beginning of the squib. Also do not forget: enemies become much more aggressive, if you advance recklessly. Thus, proceeding quickly through stages is important, but so is carefully disposing of cannon fodder enemies with surgical precision via a bazooka as a blunt weapon, indeed.

If players take up against all these aspects of the game (or, in our words: facets), scores can levitate considerably. At the same time, though, the game will transform from a carefully calculated exercise in terrorists’ massacre to a lightning fast, highly risk-oriented disassembling of armies. In plain words: players must take continuous risks to advance through stages and keep a constant eye on the clock while using “handicap” weapons. Furthermore, they must learn how to beat the human bosses, the key bottlenecks in the game, using these handicap weapons. So, players who will decide to add these facets of difficulty to their runs will add 9/13 points, in my evaluation. The game’s overall difficulty rises to 24/50 points, an intermediate challenge for advanced players who enjoy the optional thrill of playing action games at relentless pace. Score-averse players can just enjoy the solid moderate challenge that the game proposes.

Now that we have a lovely picture of the game’s ludic merits and aesthetic pleasantries, we can discuss the part that all readers crave to know more about. Dear readers, please do not jump to the conclusions: my experiences with the game will surely entertain you warmly. Maybe. Anyway: it’s 1991 and late October seems to be particularly cold, witness the fact that some schoolmates of mine have already started skiing. From time to time, I must admit, I sneak into another arcade from my uncle’s, all by myself. Never mind that I am turning my back to my video-ludic alma mater, I am also doing without the supervision of an adult. By the Italian laws of the time, I am technically committing a crime, indeed. Oh dear, who said that videogames were going to warp my growth and turn me to a life of lawlessness?

OK, the owner of this arcade is actually my uncle’s cousin, so technically part of my extended family, and he keeps an eye on me. My uncle asked me to check on which games this arcade has. Basically, the uncle wants to be sure that the cousin does not turn the place into a Street Fighter II-infested dungeon to squeeze a quick buck out of shoryuken junkies. Diversification leads to a solid business or something like that, and anyway the cousin sponsors me quite a few credits insofar as give game feedback: lawful business! The cousin is a smart lad, so the action/shmup room has a solid choice of titles that people enjoy when the queues for SFII are too oppressive. I am really appreciating Capcom’s Magic Sword and Thunder Fox, but both games are kicking my pride in the teeth, I must admit.

Months pass and, in all due honesty, progress on this game lags to embarrassing levels. I must admit that my focus is mostly on Magic Sword, which is the kind of horrendously brutal game that drains energy from characters and players alike. I must also admit that I find Thunder Fox’s third boss all but intuitive, and at 11 years I like games that require intuitive or easily deducible strategies for bosses. At some point I learn to defeat this guy by brute force and by dropping two lives: hardly a good result, when the final two bosses offer an identical wall of difficulty. Christmas holidays pass by, and January leads to February: by Mardi Gras 1992, I give up on 1-CC’ing this title and Magic Sword . More titles keep coming out, and my pride feels better when I can avoid resorting to note-taking in a dimly lit arcade.

Months turn into years: it is 2000 and I discover MAME, as a BA student who is clueless about the future. When Thunder Fox becomes part of MAME, I simply repeat the mistakes of my teen self. By the time the Taito Memories collections appear on PS2, I am focused on my M.Phil. rather than on gaming. As I mentioned in the Warrior Blade squib, grudges are slowly taking shape but gaming must yield to real life goals. The right time finally comes, however: in spring or summer 2022 I finally find the resolution to crack the game and 1-CC it once and for all. After 31 years, I can cross down a name from the list of the “arcade offenders”, as readers of the R2RKMF thread know. Another grudge solved, and another tale from the arcade is concluded, I dare say without a glint of shame.

In conclusion, Thunder Fox is a tactical action game with influences and aspects (pardon, facets) from other genres that Taito released in 1990. The game features two bare-chested machos saving the world from terrorists with the bare power of their knives and absurdly masculine frowns, in five stages of exhilarating action. The game offers a short but intense experience that good players can easily 1-CC, provided that they are patient enough to learn how to handle bosses. Players can also pursue score-based runs and enjoy the game’s hidden layers of difficulty and fast-paced action, but everyone can appreciate the game’s elegant rendition of the genre. Anyone who loves R2RKMF action will be delighted to play it, I believe, if only because the game shamelessly blends a great gaming experience with 1980s camp style. So, go and play it now: the world needs some saving!

(3212 words total; the usual disclaimers apply; do not forget that manly men do longitudinal monkey bars exercises like our protagonists in TF while bare-chested, irrespective of the season and weather. Have you tried to do that kind of exercise/maneuver? My own experience: strength-wise it is very demanding, and anyway it requires tons of coordination between core and legs to just swing forward correctly. Somebody should write a workout regime based entirely on videogames from the 1980s, I swear).

[Randorama]

Double post, but that is because I am feeling inspired and I believe that "I got me a plan!", As Mel Brooks playing a certain 20th century figure sang in an absolutely offensive and splendidly hilarious music video. I have updated this post on the 2024-12-15, so please feel free to check what is new (I mark it as such).

[OLD] Some plans: I believe that I will proceed by releasing one revision, one new R2RKMF/single screen/other title and one shmup per month. The squibs will be respectively released on the second, third and fourth Sunday of the month. In what are recess/holiday months for me (i.e. February, August), I may follow a different schedule or just revise every squib so that the general themes, style and concepts will possibly form a (more) coherent body of work. For instance, I may sit down and write a proper squib regarding "Facets" and the way I use this concept in the squibs. If that is the case, please expect bibliographic references at the end of the squib (!).

For those who care about numbers, all of these plans entail that I may reach a total of 30-36 squibs in one "academic" year (2024-2025), and at roughly 3k words per squib, it is 90k-108k words in total. Endless self-deprecating, meta-fictional or both types of jokes are running in my head while re-reading this paragraph, so I will grace you from writing them down (Christmas is coming!) and just move to the lists.

[NEW] December will see Pang, Black Tiger and Tokyo going on-line, plus possible extras if I can manage to avoid Christmas commitments and do something enjoyable such as writing down squibs and playing videogames (and maybe drink some Martinis?). Regarding revisions, I am oriented towards either completing the Pang trilogy or revisioning Night Slashers and/or Devil World. Again, requests are welcome. For new material, I would be tempted to focus on Wonder Boy in Monster Land and Aliens regarding the R2RKMF posts, possibly with Side Arms to round up the entries in the shmups department. Everything else is "available upon request", though I am guessing that the numerous readers of these squibs trust my judgement on choosing the next chapters (or maybe bots are just shy, I guess).

The lists:

Revisions (December-August 2025, and I may do upload something else in February and August):

1. Super Pang
2. Pang 3
3. Gaiapolis
4. Night Slashers
5. Devil World
6. Warriors of Fate
7. Bucky O’Hare
8. The entries already posted in this and other related threads

New material: I will pursue the "1980s were chaos" theme, as I mentioned in the Thundercade post (same rules for posting as above):

R2RKMF/single screen/other

1. Momoko 120%
2. Rolling Thunder
3. Tiger Road
4. Surprise Attack
5. Crime City
6. Psychic 5
7. Bionic Commando
8. Robocop
9. Cadash
10. Dark Seal

Shmups

1. Forgotten Worlds
2. Darius
3. Darius II
4. 1943
5. Rabio Lepus
6. ASO/Alpha Mission
7. Battlantis
8. Master of Weapon
9. Omega FIghter
10. Phelios
11. Insector X

[Randorama]

For those of you who must still get into Christmas mood, I have decided to anticipate my Santa shenanigans and deliver the newest squib while all good boys and girls are sleeping. Bad girls and boys also get the squib while sleeping, because I definitely do not believe in good and evil and anyway, I am not Santa. Still, I believe that (Saturday) Midnight in a perfect world involves uploading long texts into the interwebs, to quote DJ Shadow (...and some of you might ask: "quote, instrumental hip-hop...Rando, uh?". Well, quoting titles is possible, isn't it?). We begin December with Pang, and thus a revision of old material that I scribbled down a long time ago (read here, if you wish). Next entries will be about Capcom's Black Tiger (2024-12-22) and Taito's Tokyo (2024-12-29). I may suddenly have a Santa Claus attack and write more squibs, though, so please keep an eye on this thread, the reviews forum, the single-screen thread and the R2RKMF thread (and, maybe just maybe the sports thread). Please note that I will also update the previous post to reflect status updates, in case you are wondering what may come up next.

Pang (Mitchell, 1989) is a single-screen platformer with strong puzzle-like elements that pits a pair of intrepid adventures against a planetary invasion of mysterious bouncing spheres. The two adventurers must use harpoon-like weapons or shotguns to clear 50 stages divided into 17 iconic places (e.g. Paris, Angkor Wat) from spherical aliens. The game features a nuanced score system, graphics that pilfer Akira Toriyama’s legendary style, and another early OST by Tamayo Kawamoto, then an Alph Lyla member at Capcom. Players who love single-screen platforms and puzzle-like action will likely find the game adorable, if they can handle the steep learning curve with patience. As stages become increasingly long over the course of the game and rank increases relentlessly, testing players’ endurance and patience in earnest. Aficionados of cute puzzle-like levels may nevertheless enjoy this classic game’s formidable challenge possibly due to its adorable presentation and design.

A bit of context: by the second half of the 1980s, there were some highly complex and score-oriented single-screen platformers available. Solomon’s Key and Rainbow Islands were just two titles that offered players tons of secrets and scoring mechanics that could require months to learn, let alone master. Capcom was a relatively newer company, as they started releasing games in 1983/1984 and quickly became fan favourites. Mitchell was however a small studio that often relied on bigger companies for their releases, as in the case of Funky Jet that we discussed earlier in this thread. As far as I know, Mitchell developed most of the game, with Capcom providing support via Miss Kawamoto’s OST and with the publishing. Capcom. Although the trademark is Mitchell’s, a few Capcom icons appear in the game, as we discuss in the remainder of the squib.

The game’s apparent plot is deliciously trivial. Mysterious sphere-like entities have swamped several iconic places in the world and threaten humankind via their random and rather violent bouncing. It is up to two adventurers in safari gear, probably a reference to this Takeshi Kitano-created tv character, to save the world from these Rover rejects from The Prisoner. The adventurers must thus visit 17 landmark places across the world and clean these places off the bouncing balls in three waves per stage. A first wave is roughly at noon, one at sunset, and one at night. Thus, the adventurers must clear 16x3=48 stages. Only the final place, Easter Island, lacks a noon-set stage: the 49th and 50th stage are the sunset and night stages. Once characters players clear all stages, they will enjoy an ending scene featuring a leisurely drive on Easter Island beaches, and the well-deserved game credits.

The game mechanics are deliciously simple and yet quite complex. Players need only to use the A button to shoot harpoon-like projectiles with a screen-long chain attached to them. Once the harpoon/chain hits a balloon, an enemy or a platform/ceiling, players can shoot another harpoon because the first harpoon disappears. Characters can however collect three different power-ups to improve their firepower: the double harpoon, the hook harpoon, and the machine gun. The double harpoon will release two adjacent harpoons in a row, whereas hook harpoons connect to the ceiling and act as barriers against enemies for roughly 4 seconds. Since only one harpoon per player can be on screen, players can quickly tap to “cancel” one hook harpoon and shoot a new one. The machinegun shoots two close bullets going upwards and disappearing as per aforementioned rules, but four pairs of bullets at a time can be on screen.

The basic intuition behind the harpoon mechanics is that harpoons act as barriers against which enemies can crash and possibly die. When characters shoot, harpoons travel upwards at a relatively fast speed: roughly half a second to reach the ceiling. However, if harpoons quickly hit an enemy and thus disappear, characters can shoot more harpoons. Thus, players can quickly destroy balloons, enemies, and disposable barriers by shooting the harpoons as close as possible to targets. Conversely, shooting a harpoon while enemies are distant may not achieve any result, as enemies will possibly avoid the weapon and the harpoon will only disappear upon hitting a platform. The machinegun can release 4 pairs of bullets and thus provide more firepower against enemies: however, the fast-moving bullets will not provide an extended barrier against balloons and critters. Players must thus quickly learn the subtleties of harpoon use, to clear stages successfully.

Balloons are the central “enemy” in the game: players can clear a stage only once they clear all balloons. These peculiar antagonists occur in four sizes: big, medium, small, and tiny. Big balloons split into two medium balloons with a loud popping explosion once hit: medium balloons split into two small ballons, instead. Small balloons split into tiny balloons, and tiny balloons “die” once hit. Thus, a big balloon splits into to eight tiny balloons, and these tiny balloons must be mercilessly disposed of. Balloons start as entities following the basic laws of physics and bouncing around stages and against platforms in a purely mechanic way. The game has a simple rank system apparently based on survival time and numbers of extends in stock. As rank increases, balloons become smarter and more aggressive, finding ways to bounce against characters and kill them in sudden and brutal manners.

Characters can conversely handle the extermination procedure depending on whether players aim for survival or for score. Players can destroy balloons by splitting them down to tiny, disposable balloons. Players can exploit harpoon mechanics for quick “kills”. Hit a balloon as close as possible, hit again the resulting smaller balloons as close as possible, and repeat until the massacre is complete. Players can however also pursue bigger scores. Splitting a big balloon awards 100 points; splitting medium balloons awards 200-400-800 points if players trigger chains; small balloon chains award 300-600-1200 points. A player can split a big balloon into two medium balloons (100 points) and then split those two medium balloons into small balloons (200+200=400 points). Chaining small balloons activate 300-600-1200 (x N hits) points chains; tiny balloons activate 100-400-800-1600(x N hits) chains. Chaining is hard: quickly killing balloons…less hard.

Aside balloons, players must also be careful about and potentially deliver violence to various animals popping up on stage. Vultures, owls may fly on screen and change balloons’ bouncing patterns; if they hit characters, then character will not be able to shoot until they stop flashing. Crabs are innocuous and can destroy balloons with their claws; colibris and mollusks may stun characters but may also destroy balloons. Characters can also shoot disposable blocks/platforms and, in various key spots in most stages, they can destroy invisible blocks to obtain power-ups or bonuses. Bonuses occur in two types: bonus points items and power-ups. Bonus points involve a nuanced system that we can discuss when addressing difficulty matters, due to their relevance for extends and rank increase. Power-ups include the three extra weapons, one-hit shields, extra lives, and the rank-affecting items: alarm clocks, dynamite and sand clock(s). We also discuss them when addressing difficulty matters.

Before dissecting this aspect of the game mechanics, I would like to give readers an overview of the “video” and “audio” components, first. As mentioned in the introduction, the game pursues a Toriyama style to visuals, with characters sporting big eyes and smiles and stubby, stout bodies. Animals also involve vaguely caricatural looks and, at least for vultures and crabs, big eyes. Stages offer quite detailed backgrounds featuring some iconic landmarks from a famous place. The first three stages are in Japan and feature a typical portrait of Mount Fuji from afar; The Paris stages offer a view of L’Arc du Triomphe from a non-specified observation point. Crucially, all characters are well-animated, colourful, and highly detailed. Stages are often full of moving objects and can have complex layouts, but it is usually easy to appreciate the attention to detail that designers pursued for visual aspects.

The general design style also offers a cohesive if perhaps quirky visual identity. The game is a single-screen platformer in which characters can move up and down platforms via stairs. However, the complexity of the platform layouts increases in a very gradual manner, so that early stages allow players to get acquainted with the mechanics and the rather cute, colourful illustrations. Animal enemies, power-ups, characters and even balloons include delicately shaded colour palettes that may likely inspire a gentle and cute atmosphere of platforming mayhem. Even when latter stages become almost overloaded with enemies and items, the general feeling is that Pang !’s world is a caramel-shaded cute world of cartoony action. This was not an infrequent approach to platform design in the 1980s, but this game manages to find a balance among colourful graphics, attention to detail and visually understandable action.

The OST by Tamayo Kawamoto matches this clean and gentle style with a non-trivial amount of confidence, I daresay. The best description I might offer for the OST’s style or genre is that most pieces sound as mellow muzak or movie themes. Case in point, the theme playing during the London and the Tenochtitlán ruins stages (i.e. Stages 28–30, 42–45 respectively) is a “cover” of the Blue Lagoon theme. All themes will stop once the timer reaches 50 seconds. A “hurry up” theme going at a somewhat faster pace plays for 30 seconds, which then leads to creepy “last 20 seconds fanfare”. Furthermore, sound effects are few but well-designed. Balloons always explode with a loud popping sound, harpoons and shot gun have faint “running chain” sounds, and even animals have cute accompanying sounds. Visually and aurally, the game offers a mellow and pleasant experience.

Now that we have a good overview of the “game” part and of the “video” part, we can discuss Pang’s inner aspects or facets of difficulty. Hopefully, the terminology that we now have in place should be clear and intuitive, but the introduction is here, just in case. For this game, I propose three facets of difficulty: basic game mechanics as a weak facet, stage design/solution, and rank. A fourth weak facet is the interaction stage design and rank, which also affect the difficulty of score-driven approaches. I would thus suggest that basic mechanics take five points out a total of 50, stage design plays a key role at 30, rank weighs in for 10 points. The fourth aspect takes the final five points, even though the reason I distinguish this facet will become clear as we discuss the game’s scoring experience.

Let us discuss the basic mechanics, first. A basic aspect that players should learn if they wish to pursue a 1-CC, or even go beyond the first few stages, is the use of weapons. Harpoons and the machine gun force different approaches to how players can destroy balloons as soon as possible, and thus avoid deaths due to the weapons’ bullet limits. Players should learn to destroy balloons by reducing the travelling time of harpoons/bullets, so that they can shoot further items immediately. Once they master this skill, survival chances increase even in the most chaotic situations. Thus, this facet weights in the total difficulty score at 3/5 points, one point per weapon. Stage design provides the second and most relevant facet for a simple reason: each stage acts as a mini-puzzle involving solutions of increasingly complexity. The reasons can be summarised as follows.

First, for each stage there is an ideal survival-oriented approach to the destruction of balloons. Players must learn the increasingly complex stage layouts in order to figure out which balloons must be destroyed first. This is not a simple task, as stages become increasingly full of platforms, disposable barriers and other traps devised to quickly kill characters. Even early places and their stages (e.g. Angkor Wat, the fourth place covering Stages 9–12) can be hazardous if players disregard the “pure platform” facet of the game. Second, time quickly becomes an important factor when clearing stages. Time becomes a key factor roughly from the sixth place, Uluru/Ayers Rock (Stages 16–18): players should have a clear-cut strategy for each stage or it will be rather easy to time out. Third, animals appearing on screen interfere with balloons’ destruction: players should avoid interacting with them to avoid losing time.

The intuition behind these micro-facets of difficulty is that players will need to approach the game as if it were also a puzzle game. Seasoned veterans of old school platformers will certainly find this assertion unsurprising, since classics such as Bubble Bobble also centre on this “hybrid” approach. Players will thus need to enter in their best puzzle-solving frame of mind, as the game provides quite complex challenges from the very early stages (i.e. Angkor Wat, really). The last place, Easter Island, should furthermore provide a formidable challenge to any player since it requires a very tight solution to the puzzle and razor-sharp platforming skills. For these reasons, I would suggest that this facet motivates a stern 24/30 points. Since roughly 80% of stages requires precise solutions, the final score should take 80% of the allotted points. Via two facets, the game’s difficulty reaches already 27/50 points, indeed.

The third facet involves dynamic difficulty or rank, and involves the degree to which players decide to pursue score-based runs. The game offers generous amounts of extends: players can collect five secret bonus lives that appear as Capcom’s pinwheel item, and can extend five more lives upon scoring at least 1M points. Rank apparently increases via two factors: survival time, and number of lives in stock. This entails that players may be happy to get extra lives as the game progresses, but will also need to face increasingly cunning balloons and animals. Once beyond the five lives mark, balloons will bounce increasingly long distances and always aim at characters; animals will often appear out of nowhere, in consistent numbers, to stun players. The rank seems to max out at a level by which balloons will become brutal fast-killing machines quickly swarming the screen, with animals complicating matters.

Players can however manipulate rank via three power-ups: dynamite, alarm clocks and sand clocks. The dynamite power-up splits all balloons down to their tiny units, and thus appears to create pure mayhem. However, tiny balloons slow down for roughly three seconds and, in the opportune conditions, cluster into easily destroyable patterns. Players can thus exploit the dynamite to gamble on “rush destruction” approaches to stages, provided that their ability to destroy clustered balloons is high. The other two power-ups provide less risky aids. Each alarm clock freezes balls and animals for three seconds. Each sand clock instead slows down balloons and animals’ movement, effectively lowering rank. Once rank goes up considerably, these power-ups appear in droves; conversely, at lower rank levels the two power-ups seem rarer in frequency. Players can of course die to lower rank: the game is generally at its most approachable with two (default) stock lives, Battle Garegga-style.

My description of rank may perhaps be ambiguous, as readers may wonder why rank seems a an apparently weaker facet if it can be so fierce in-game. My answer is simple: players may actually die and extend at regular times and even 1-CC the game without experiencing this mechanic in its meaner aspects. Rank seems to become an issue when players can handle it for longer stretches, and may fade into the background once lives in stock are at default. Players who simply lose lives regularly may never experience rank at its full power. Nevertheless, I would give an 8/10 score to this facet, since it will appear to affect any run if only via its related power-ups. Besides, rank also plays a role in the overall difficulty once we consider its interaction with stage design. We conclude this discussion with this fourth, weak facet.

Players pursuing score-oriented runs need to also collect bonuses on each stage, secret and open alike. Each stage offers a bonus item in the form of a fruit, pastry or cake that appears after some seconds. Players can also shoot invisible disposable barriers and collect other items, and can destroy other special items upon their appearance (e.g. Capcom’s Mobi-chan). Furthermore, players should ideally pursue the intricate chaining approach outlined when we discussed basic mechanics. In practice, however, once rank reaches top levels, chaining may become near-impossible and players may simply use dynamite to rack up long chains of tiny balloons at 1600 points. The interaction of stage design and rank thus render score-oriented runs harder, but not much harder than survival-oriented runs. I propose that this facet takes 5/5 points, so the total difficulty is 35–40/50 points: Pang is a game for intermediate to advanced master players of the genre.

Before we conclude, I would like to discuss my personal experiences with the game, which involve one of the earlier “game grudges” that I solved in adult life. Case in point, the original post from which this revision takes its inception from my solving of a (approximately) 28-years old grudge bout 1-CC’ing the game. So: It is a warm spring of 1990 and, from time to time, I accompany my father to check out on other arcades in town. My uncle is generally well-prepared and reads extensively on the latest trendy games and successes. Sometimes, however, he requires “field work” to know what games fans of other arcades are playing, that he can buy and add to his own arcade. Father and I spend a Sunday afternoon playing a few Konami games and, after a short tea break, we join forces to try out Pang.

The first two credits are hilarious, from what I can recall. We have no idea on how to play the game and we get our ass kicked in no time. We decide to take a break and, when we are back, we see two guys in their late teens or early twenties playing the game. Their team work is impeccable, but they still must learn the final stages. Still, we are in awe for 40 minutes or so, as they reach Stage 46 (sixteenth Place: Antarctica), before they conclude their epic run. In the next week, my father convinces my uncle to buy three boards: two for his arcade, one for the cousin’s arcade (cf. the Thunder Fox squib). My father’s intuition is prescient: “professional” players love the game, so one board/cab is always busy. Luckily, the other cab is often free “for the casuals” like yours truly.

For the next four months, I spend quite a bit of time slowly learning the game’s intricacies and failing to replicate strategies from a few ladies who learn to 1-CC the game. Two friends of my older step-sisters can clear the game regularly and are learning the finer aspects of score. Sadly, their pedagogical skills are not exactly superb: their general comments when I “peep” at their runs involve a lot of sexual innuendos and remarkably unclear explanations. I will probably always remember that time at which they attempted to show me how to handle the New York Stages (i.e. 14th place, Stages 40–42). Their explanation could be summarised as: “Well, do this, this, and this. Done!” Unsurprisingly, I failed to replicate the strategy: surprisingly, they become esteemed high school teachers in their adult life. Probably, they would also kill me if they would read this squib.

By September 1990, I admit giving up on the game, also because my uncle sold the boards once they completed their arcade cycle. I therefore my chance to 1-CC the game for possibly ever, at least in the eyes of my 10 years old self. Besides, Super Pang is out and it seems more approachable than the first chapter. That is another story for the future: for today, I admit that my second attempt at 1-CC’ing the game in 2000 or so also failed. I remember only a few details and the year in which I dropped out of the Navy Academy as a “lost MAME year” (cf. the Thundercade squib). The results were the same: I distinctly recall the moment in which I rage-quit the game on a torrid August 2000 day, and swear that I will never play it again.

Dear readers: I am feeling anxious now, sorry. Please allow me a brief tangent regarding real-life matters. “Denise”, “Barbara”, dear ladies, I love you: you were my precious platform/puzzle/maze games teachers and it is my fault if I did not learn from your teachings. If you are reading this squib, please have mercy on me the next time we meet (please!). I am an unreliable narrator, I admit it, and I heard you have become fifth dan kyokugenryu karatekas. Jokes aside, I am quite happy to have recalled that I had some good teachers for this game, even if I would often not understand their sometimes-technical explanations. In retrospective, I wish I were smarter, when I was a “gaming brat”, and that I had a better grasp of your “this, this, and this” language. Hopefully I grew up to become a marginally better player, or so I hope.

It is now 2018, and I am currently living in Guangzhou, China, for work purposes. From time to time, I have begun to play arcade games via MAME again, with a crazy idea floating in the back of my mind. As I accumulated dozens of failed attempts at 1-CC’s (“grudges”) over the decades, I could go back to those games and clear at least the ones for which I own a copy. For some mysterious reason, the idea begins to make sense to me, and somehow it makes sense that I also start from this title and a few other 1980s titles that blemished my “arcade score”. This time around, I am using save states and I am practicing latter stages with methodical patience. Besides, I can play on a huge 50” screen, and I can use headphones when practicing late night runs. Swearing in a bag also helps, indeed.

The 1-CC arrives on a particularly late run night. I do not remember exactly when, but I remember that the horrendously humid and hot Guangzhou summer nights were seeping into the room, even with an A/C at full power. My hands are shaking throughout the whole 50th stage but I have reached this final stage with five lives. Rank is fierce but manageable, and I am entering a zen-like like of focus if only because I am currently loathing this f#$@ing game. I am quite lucky, because I hit the dynamite power-up, panic and somehow manage to clear the stage in 20 seconds or so. A river of frustration evaporates after 28 years or so, and I just spend some time looking at the Pearl River and the megalopolis lights from the balcony. Victory is always an amnesia-inducing blessing that evaporates awful experiences, I guess.

Perhaps I could add more pretentious considerations and murky memories, but I will stop here before my readers abandon me out of desperation. So, to summarise: Pang is a single-screen platform game with puzzle-like stage design in which characters looking like rejects from a Takeshi Kitano’s show must save the world from reject balls from a Patrick McGoohan show. Players can guide characters through 50 stages and 17 famous places in their fight and play for either highly frantic score- or survival-based runs. A 1980s classic in the genre, fans of old school/classic platform games will find the game certainly difficult but also highly enjoyable and endearing, due to its pastel/caramel/sugar-based elegant design. Mitchell went on to produce great games like Funky Jet, before becoming a dormant company. Be sure to play this classic game, to honour their adorable arcade legacy and discover a piece of arcade history.

(4106 words; the usual disclaimers apply, and I swear that recollections of my personal life are not far off the mark but yes, “Denise” and “Barbara” are pseudonyms. They also probably do not know kyokugenryu karate but Denise really liked Art of Fighting, and loathed Chun Li and Mai Shiranui because “curves and muscles don’t mix”. She played handball and sported a G cup, so she was seemingly obvious of the irony of her claim. In case you wonder, I am trying to write the final disclaimers in the style of the late Harlan ellison’s dust jackets. However, it is fair to say that perhaps Mr. Ellison was a bit more skilled than me at writing in general and at writing hyperbolic tall tales in particular. Do read some of this works, if you want to know more about the subject, and do not forget to taste monkey brains (fresh) and freshly cooked fries (crisp), for dinner.)

[Randorama]

I am aware that everyone is focusing on Rastan's third chapter, but I also promised that I was going to release the Black Tiger squib today. The remainder of this post should fulfill this promise and put you in a cozy, Christmas-y mood. The plan is unchanged, so next week I will upload the Tokyo squib as well. Further squibs, we will see, as I am proceeding in a chaotic manner and on several fronts (i.e. I am preparing a few squibs at the same time). 'Tis the season, anyway, so I hope that you will enjoy this newest squib and feel compelled to play a few credits (More? Again?) of this classic gem.

Black Tiger (Capcom, 1987) is a multi-scrolling, free-form platformer with A(rcade)RPG elements in which the eponymous barbarian-like hero must free his reign from the tyranny of three legendary dragons. The game distinguishes itself from most platformers/action games in having (relatively) vast levels that the player can explore in any direction. If players reach and defeat the level boss within the allotted time, any route through the dark and torturous levels will achieve this result. Players must however collect enough money to buy weapons and other upgrades in the shop, and can certainly benefit from exploring levels and discovering secret items and bonuses. This game offers a dark fantasy setting and graphic style and an atmospheric OST by “Golden Tamayo” (i.e. Tamayo Kawamoto as an Alph Lyla/Capcom member). Though an arguably easy game, the free-form model and the fast-paced action should inevitably enthral any R2RMKF players.

The game’s context of release can be summarised as follows. Western-style games were not a rare occurrence in arcades, in the 1980s. Classics like Namco’s Dragon Buster and Tower of Druaga and Atari’s Gauntlet provided evidence that players could enjoy the setting, and Capcom’s Ghosts’n Goblins success certainly confirmed this conjecture. One might however argue that the first three of those pioneering games were prototypes for the dungeon crawler-style of game for which we have a highly informative thread. Latter games like Black Tiger and Taito’s Rastan however confirmed the intuition that Fantasy settings could be suitable (world) setting material for platform and action (i.e. R2RMKF) games. Within the end of the decade further titles appeared that also took (heavy) inspiration from sources such as the (then) novelty of RPG’s such as Dungeons and Dragons. ARPGs elegantly embodied this inspiration, though via the limits of the hardware of the times.

The plot is simple in its austere Dark Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery themes. The warrior “Black Tiger” aims to free his kingdom from the tyranny of the three dragons (Blue, Golden, Black), mythical creatures who decided to conquer humans’ lands out of cruelty. Black Tiger must thus travel through eight dungeons and conquered territories to defeat the dragons’ armies and generals, and then the dragon themselves. Though an inherently western Fantasy-themed game, Black Tiger features a Dragon-Tiger duality theme that also permeates Capcom’s Tiger Road R2RKMF/platformer from the same title. Nevertheless, Robert Howard-esque undertones are evident, and Black Tiger himself appears as an extremely bulky barbarian straight off a Frazetta painting. Furthermore, Miss Kawamoto’s OST includes a Wagnerian use of a recurring Leit Motif that creates a pseudo-baroque atmosphere. Black Tiger is thus a rare but intense game steeped in the darker genres of Fantasy.

The game mechanics are also simple. The A button is for attacks: Black Tiger shoots two triplets of daggers flying across the screen, and handles punishment via blunt flail-style weapons delivering increasing damage. The daggers fly across the whole screen until they hit an enemy or a wall: one dagger flies parallel to the floor, at the character’s height, while the other two go upwards at 30 and 60 degrees. The flail weapons cover roughly half screen in front of Black Tiger’s sprite. The B button is for jumps, which come in three varieties. Normal jumps reach roughly twice Black Tiger’s height and can overcome most pits and chasms. Low jumps (down+jump) allow the character to jump at a lower height and for shorter lengths. High jumps (up+jump) allow the character to reach slightly higher heights, and are necessary in a few key spots across stages.

The other game mechanics involve the aspects that bring the game closer to tabletop RPGs’s mechanics. In Black Tiger, virtually every enemy drops coins as RNG items, once killed. These are known as “Zenny coins” in-game, and present the first instance of Capcom using this name for their in-game currency. Players can meet a character appearing as a petrified bald sage with a long beard, who may either dispense suggestions or activate the “shop mode” once freed from his spell. Players can upgrade the flail weapon up to level five, or upgrade to a level one-to-five armour, and they can buy key and venom antidotes. Weapon upgrades should be self-explanatory, whereas the other upgrades are slightly more complex. Key and venom antidotes are however simple: they respectively allow Black Tiger to open treasure chests (one key per chest) and to resist poisoning, which prevents the character from shooting daggers.

The armour and energy power-ups work as follows. Black Tiger starts with 2 H(it)P(oint)s of armour and 1 HP of energy: energy HPs increase up to five upon reaching score milestones (e.g. 240k points for the fifth energy HP). When buying armour in the shop, a level two armour will bring the armour HP back to 2 if lower than this value (i.e. one HP, no armour). Level three, four and five respectively raise the armour to four, six and eight HPs, provided that the HPs are lower than the target increase. If they are not, the purchase is useless. Black Tiger can thus reach five energy HPs and eight armour HPs. Since some enemies deliver multiple HP attacks, the need to replenish armour levels may remain constant and the risk of redundant purchases may remain low. Obviously, this is the case if players do not want to take risks.

The game’s generosity with resources also emerges once we take in consideration RNG items. Since the game is extremely generous with Zenny coins from Stage five onwards, players can buy redundant armour just to spend money. Many enemies on latter stages may release 100, 500 or 1000 Zenny coins items, and a level five armour costs 2400 Zenny coins. Thus, players may find themselves buying redundant armour just to find a way to use extra Zenny coins. Furthermore, each stage has several secret items that can players can collect by shooting against hidden spots in walls (e.g. three extra lives on Stages two, four and seven). Players can thus collect extra armour power-ups, point items (i.e. cow and elephant icons), and sandglass (i.e. extra time) power-ups. The latter items become useful if players wish to explore stages in their entirety, as stages tend to be of considerable size.

A full discussion of stages’ layout and the challenges they provide is the main topic of our discussion on difficulty. Before we address that aspect (facet in our terminology), however, we can discuss Black Tiger’s aesthetic presentation in some detail. Though a game of its time running on a (relatively) not so powerful board, Black Tiger features detailed graphics and well-animated if sometimes tiny sprites. The game also offers impressively evocative settings. Stages one to four are dark dungeons apparently set in the deepest netherworlds of the kingdom. Stage five appears set in the outer sections of a palace but at night, with forlorn mountain ranges in the background. Stage six is set during the day, with floating temples in the background. Stage seven appears set in a gigantic gothic cathedral, and Stage eight is the final battle against Black Dragon in the ethereal imperial palace.

The game’s superbly designed settings come with a restricted though highly poignant colour palette. Stage three and four, for instance, mostly feature almost bloated reds, yellows and oranges that capture their setting in the Vulcanic entrails of the kingdom. Often, Black Tiger seems to fight through immense spaces not designed for humans, a concept that may originate in Lovecraftian stories (e.g. The colour out of space). The abundant use of floating objects (stones, temples, pillar) in the background also gives a sensation that the game’s setting is quite alien, magical, and dangerous. Enemies may appear tiny but are also highly evocative. One obvious case is Red Arremer of Ghosts’n Goblins fame, but even skeletons, hulking orcs and ninjas provide the idea that Black Tiger’s world is highly alien and lethal. Black Tiger thus acts as a seminal title amongst those games featuring Dark Fantasy settings and design.

Tamayo Kawamoto’s OST is perhaps a perfect match for the game’s almost morbid visuals. Via her early trademark style of jazzy influences, sombre tones and high-pitched staccatos, Miss Kawamoto created a simple melody acting as a leit motif for Black Tiger and his ordeal. Wagnerian Leit Motifs and Minimalist variations were popular in the 1980s, witness Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi and Joe Hisaishi’s Laputa’s scores. Black Tiger’s OST pursues the idea within the constraints of Capcom’s hardware of choice. Each stage introduces a re-arrangement of the melody that may at first glance sound dramatically different from the Stage one theme (“Ancient Cave”). For instance, Stage three’s theme (‘Flame Wall”) seems played via baroque-inspired instruments (e.g. a klavier, very low tone timpans). Stage eight’s theme (“Dragon’s Castle”) begins with harps-like trills and returns to the main Leit Motif as a triumphal march. The OST thus plays like a thick “dark symphony”.

Black Tiger’s OST may mark Miss Kawamoto’s first foray into darker and more epic scores, in many aspects, and may have an aural mark closer to 16-bit era sounds. The choice of sound effects may however sound a bit quirky, since they often sound like early 8-bit and somewhat goofy noises. For instance, the noise of rocks falling on the main character may sound as something sampled straight out of an Atari 7800 game, or one of Capcom’s early titles. In my opinion, however, the sound effects subtly add an eerie touch to the action, if only because of their loudness and mildly bombastic quality. Weapon attacks are loud and weird, and thus help conjuring a world of intense if fantastic violence. Somehow, they elegantly match the OST’s atmosphere, even if by contrast. Overall, the Wagnerian OST and the quirky OSTs offer a formidable counterpoint to the game’s unique visuals.

We can thus say that Black Tiger has a unique “video” identity, as also the Gothic fonts of the game’s title suggest. The mechanics, when one takes in consideration the year of release, also offer a unique “game” identity. The question, then, is whether the game provides a level of difficulty that may perhaps match this uniqueness. My answer is a “no”, though the next few paragraphs clarify why this is the case. A brief reminder: we discuss difficulty according to the notion of “facet”, which I introduced in compact form in Warrior Blade’s squib. Once you feel confident with the notion, we can just move onto the discussion. I believe that the game provides two facets of difficulty: basic game mechanics and level design. No other facets seem relevant as far as I can tell; this fact may already suggest that the game is rather easy, indeed.

Let me just assume that we split even the usual 50 points of difficulty between the two facets, and that each facet may reach a maximal value of 25 points. As our discussion of the basic game mechanics suggest, players need to master simple rules to use Black Tiger as a brutal destroyer across stages. Players may need some practice to learn the command jumps and to refine their use of jump attacks. Before players can attain the level five weapon, players may also need to learn how to handle enemies with higher HP counts. Once they obtain this weapon, players can quickly dispose of most enemies and to accumulate enough Zenny coins to always have the strongest armour. At default difficulty settings, players should be able to buy this weapon by the beginning of Stage five and pierce through stages from this point onwards.

As far as I am concerned, then, the game mechanics motivate a score of 3/25 points: once players know the very basics, they are halfway to the 1-CC already. The other facet that requires some practice involves stage design, but this facet also provides an ultimately modest challenge. Players can choose whichever path they wish, to reach each boss battle, and can benefit from generous amounts of time, Zenny coins and, from Stage 5 onwards, armour. The final boss (Black Dragon) and perhaps the Stages five and seven humanoid lizard bosses may provide minor challenges. However, any player who proceeds slowly and carefully through stages should be able to 1-CC the game without too many difficulties. I would thus award 5/25 points of difficulty to this facet, and a total of 8/50 points to the game. Advanced beginner players should comfortably 1-CC Black Tiger once they have practiced enough.

As you can guess by now, I believe that Black Tiger offers an incredibly immersive gaming experience, if players do not mind its low difficulty. Perhaps, some players will fall in love with the game or have adored it for a long time precisely of this reason. As a kid, however, I was of a different opinion. Do not turn off the device on which you are reading this squib to avoid reading about my own experiences, dear reader! I promise that some aspects are quite entertaining. Let me start with a proviso, first: at some point in life, I decided that I had to write some “game journalism” piece about these experiences. Let us just say that some rabid and rather dodgy fan of Friedric Nietzsche and video games asked me to write the piece, and I accepted the proposal. Some parts are summarised here; the rest, best forgotten.

It is 1987 again, and it is November. I am a kid who has started going to the arcade with my parents, as my father’s older brother owns a 2-floor place with roughly 100 cabs in it. The arcade is inside a small shopping arcade. A fond memory as a kid is walking inside the building in the evening while swimming in the delicious smell oozing from a nearby pizza place. A not so fond memory is my uncle making jokes about me being a pipsqueak needing a stool to reach the cabs’ commands. That is traditional tough love from family members, in my hometown: consider it a way to bond with the newly adopted member of the vast “ursine” clan. As mentioned in the Thundercade squib, this and Thundercade are the first two arcade games I ever 1-CC’ed, and thus fond memories forever etched in my mind.

Back in November 1987, anyway, I am still a pipsqueak who must even understand the notion that videogames are interactive. Oh, would you like some vitriol on the state of modern gaming? Next time, I promise! This time, we focus on my memories instead. Anyway: I must slowly familiarise myself with joysticks, buttons, and the concept that physically interacting with these pieces of hardware has consequences on what happens on screen. Well, if I insert coins in the machine and press the start button, of course. I am in second grade, so my English is still basic: my father and an acquaintance translate for me the introduction. It is a cold winter night and there is already half a metre of snow in the countryside, just outside the city. There and then, the chthonian visceral charm of Black Tiger immediately bewitches me for the first time.

I hope that you have not thrown Molotov cocktails and/or morning lattes against the screen after reading this last sentence. I acknowledge its pretentiousness, but I also admit that my first credits on this game are an ordeal. For my young age, the “action genre approach” to the jumping mechanic is hard to learn. I remember that, for a while, every chasm in the first stage required amazing coordination skills (and myself jumping on the stool). Lucius, a then engineer student who oftens comes to my uncle’s arcade and is friends with father and uncle, decides to become my mentor. Apparently, he feels anxious seeing a kid jumping on a stool and risking to fall off every time he attempts a jump in the game. He also knows that my male relatives’ approach to eventual injuries would probably be brutal, given their Spartan core beliefs.

The next winter is a period in which I play this and several other games, though the full list simply is off my reach: the memories are too deeply set and vague to recall them now. I do however remember that Lucius teaches me many simple tricks and the locations of the secret items, on the many times we meet. I also remember that whenever I play Black Tiger, the nights seem particularly harsh and snowy, with the orange anti-pollution lights giving a spectral tinge to the tortuous medieval alleys of my hometown. Months pass slowly, but after endless mistakes and patient guiding by Lucius, I can reach and beat Black Dragon for my first time some days after the spring solstice. All I really remember is Lucius witnessing the feat and telling my uncle, who produces an indecipherable smirk and comments: “Well, who knows what lies next, eh, kiddo?”.

It is then 2000 and I discover MAME during my first year as a civilian university student. Again, the Thundercade squib sets the scene. Now, I can add that I am really bordering a shut-in/hermit lifestyle on weekdays, and a party animal style on weekend nights. Black Tiger is one of the first games I clear again when I discover MAME and I am wearing my hermit skin. It then becomes a gaming Leit Motif across the many other skins that I start wearing over the years, decades, places, and situations. When the nights become cold and eerie, no matter where and when and who I am, I like traversing this game’s dungeons and enjoy the game’s simple challenge. Perhaps the dark amber caverns and dissonant soundtrack tones are a Gormenghastian reminder of home and my first foray into 1-CC’s. All memories fade away, anyway.

In conclusion, Black Tiger is a platform/action game with ARPG elements and an overarching R2RMKF approach. Players can enjoy the adventures of the eponymous character in his quest to free his kingdom from the tyranny of three dragons in eight levels of free-form action. The game does not offer a stern challenge in the least, but it offers an immersive atmosphere and a hypnotic Dark fantasy setting that can lure all kinds of players. The game also acts as a veritable time capsule representing Capcom’s early and glorious evolution as a pillar of arcade history. Players who want to discover a page of game history can certainly appreciate Black Tiger’s weaving of different if diverging design choices and game mechanics into one smooth game experience. Play this (only?) at night and with generous amounts of snow and cold lurking in the shadows: you will not disappointed.

(3104 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Lucius ended up working for a big ship-building company even if his original goal was to land a mechanical engineer job at Ferrari. The irony is that we come from a mountainous city and we are supposed to consider life below 700 metres of altitude as “stuff for the pansies”. Oh, wait, I have now spent most of my adult life at low altitude…there we go. There is a Pete Rock reference in the final paragraph of the squib but I want readers to spot it on their own. I am *certain* that His HipHop Majesty was referring to this game, when he composed the classic piece. C’mon, it should be easy and it should be a good reason to listen to the original song!)

[Randorama]

The year is almost over, and days are already getting longer, or so I believe. As promised, here is a squib about an old shmup that I loved deeply as a kid, in all of its imperfections. A slightly edited version will appear in the "reviews" forum after a few days, as in the case of Last Duel and Thundercade. Be sure to read both of them if you missed them the first time around: 1980s shmups were good, I daresay. Something else is brewing, so the chances that I might post some more material by today are higher than zero, folks.

Without much further ado:

Tokyo/Scramble Formation (Taito, 1986) is a TATE/vertically oriented shmup in which a mysterious red biplane fights against an army of futuristic vehicles invading the Japanese capital. The game follows the Xevious template: the plane shoots aerial bullets against jets, and terrestrial missiles against tanks, ships and cars. However, the game also adds an “options” mechanic: small drone-like planes accompanying the biplane and fulfilling a variety of attack functions. Players must thus fight waves of different types of enemies and periodically challenge a mysterious “Black Plane” vaguely resembling a B-2 bomber, flying over Tokyo’s landmarks during these fights. This shmup offers a gritty urban setting mixed with a “retro-futuristic” approach to vehicles’ design, and a droning, hypnotic musical theme. Wave-based action is intense and offers interesting if simple scoring opportunities. Players can thus enjoy this game as a time capsule from the 1980s that elaborates several shmup mechanics in original manners.

It would be challenging to condense the historical context in which the game appeared, but I will briefly mention some key aspects of the time, in the way I remember them. Shmups in 1986 were still a genre with vague contours, but classics like Namco’s Xevious and Capcom’s 1942 suggested two possible ways forwards for the genre’s core game mechanics. The first title differentiated between aerial and terrestrial fighting “layers”; the second title placed all enemies on the same layer. Capcom’s Gun Smoke and Side Arms also suggested that players could shoot in different directions via different buttons; Irem’s R-Type and Taito’s Darius were about to further revolutionise Hori shmups. Tokyo may therefore appear as a brief, minor chapter in shmups’ history, but the goal of this squib is to suggest that this chapter is an interesting and important reading for a proper education in shmups’ lore and appreciation.

Tokyo and its plot and world setting are, once more, rather simple. Mysterious aliens with superior technology invade Tokyo and it is up to a red biplane plus its seemingly endless red drone helpers to save the city. The red biplane takes off from the Diet building and then flies over 10 landmark places around the city while obliterating the alien forces. Once players clear a place from terrestrial and aerial enemies, the action moves at altitude as the biplane dives into the clouds. Cloud intermezzo sections thus feature only against aerial-only intercept forces. After clearing all 10 places from the invaders’ presence, the players start a new loop by flying once more over the Diet building. Though the game seems to loop indefinitely, players may 1-CC a single loop in roughly 30 minutes of play, with sections lasting between 20 and 120 seconds of fast-paced action.

The game mechanics may appear simple to 21st century players but, in my experience, it was highly innovative for 1986. The A button is the attack button: players can either tap or hold the button to shoot an attack whose type depends on the attack formation set via the B button. The B button is the formation button: when players collect the “red drone” icons, they will add up to four drones as option-like helpers. The default formation for the drones/helpers is the “Line” formation: the four drones align behind the main plane. When holding this formation, the plane shoots a double aerial shot and one terrestrial missile. Aerial shots obviously destroy airborne crafts but travel the whole screen’s length, whereas missiles only travel two thirds of a screen’s length and can only destroy terrestrial crafts, if they reach them. The Line formation thus allows players to use mixed attacks.

After pressing the B button once, the “Diamond” formation appears. The drones form a diamond (i.e. rhombus-like) formation around the main plane, and each drone shoots a terrestrial missile. However, the drones will not shoot any aerial bullets, thus leaving themselves and the plane defenceless again aircrafts. A further B button pressure will trigger the “Triangle” formation: the drones form a pseudo-triangle around the plane and only shoot aerial bullets, thus becoming defenceless again terrestrial enemies. A third pressure of the B button resets the formation cycle, as drones take the Line formation again. When holding the A button in the Line formation, the plane maintains a slow auto-fire rate (no more than 5 hertz). The diamond and rhombus formations involve slightly faster auto-fire rates, but tapping or other auto-fire options offer better fire rates. Point-blanking enemies to quickly reduce on-screen bullets does indeed help, due to bullets numbers’ limitations.

If players push A and B simultaneously, the drones act as suicide units and explode upon colliding with enemies. The explosion releases a colourful gem-like object moving in a spiral trajectory and acting as a shield from bullets and enemies. Any bullet and item hitting one of these objects disappears. The objects may thus act as bullet-cancelling items long before Takumi and other companies active in the 2000s developed whole games centred on this mechanic. Once the plane has four drones under its control, any further drone icons will increase the stock of disposable drones (up to 99). A full-fledged drone attack uses up to four drones, and enemies destroying drones will also cause the appearance of objects and the immediate respawning of a drone, if in stock. Thus, drones can also act as weapons with multiple and highly flexible uses.

An interesting aspect of the game that also inspired various successors (e.g. the Ray’z series) is the use of the diamond formation and its land attack. The game offers a peculiar approach to “stage design”. The biplane moves back and forth sections crossing banks of thick clouds, and sections visiting one of Tokyo’s iconic landmarks. When the biplane is close to surface enough to engage land enemies, it becomes possible to destroy several enemies with one sweep of the land attacks. For each destroyed enemy, the game awards chain points based on a power of 2 multiplied by 1k points. Thus, five terrestrial enemies destroyed via a single diamond formation attack can bet 24*1k=32k points. Although most points come from destroying enemies’ waves in their entirety, chain occasions can provide good boosts to overall scores and offer a quick, efficient way to clear trickier passages.

Before we fully address score aspects (or facets) of the game, we may discuss in fuller detail the game’s audiovisual presentation. Tokyo is a 1986 game so you should expect 8 bit-like graphics, if we wish to summarise the game’s visual style. Certainly, the chromatic choices summon a drab atmosphere: the cloud stages feature shades of white and grey, and the street level stages only add darker hues and some beige. Landmark places are highly stylised and not in scale: Tokyo Disneyland and the Diet Building only vaguely resemble their real-life counterparts. The game nevertheless has relatively well-animated sprites and an intriguing contrast in the futuristic enemies and the retro-themed biplane and drones. Mix embryonal Dieselpunk design undertones often featured in Miyazaki’s early works and Clamp’s city views of Tokyo in their early manga and anime, and you will get a feeling of Tokyo’s overall deeply 1980’s atmosphere.

The OST, apparently by Hisayoshi Ogura/OGR (i.e. the Zuntata founder), is interesting in its simplicity. Before readers acquainted with the game will visit me with a Scythe and elegantly lop off my head screaming with justified outrage, please allow me to explain. The game features a simple tune that roughly last thirty seconds. The “Black Plane”, the recurring boss appearing in cloud intermezzo stages, has a short theme that stops after the boss’ demise. Only these two short themes alternate as the game progresses, the main theme playing most of the time. Though the idea of listening to the same short tunes ad nauseam may sound like torture, both themes have their own minimalist charm. Both themes also quickly fade in the background once stages become more action-packed. Add some quintessentially 1980s loud and basic sounds effects, and a sensorial time capsule is ready.

After this brief celebration of Tokyo’s austere and simple beauty (somehow), we can move to a discussion of difficulty. As always, I assume that my readers may feel a degree of nausea by the sheer mention of Facets by now, but the link may be a good refresher for those who need it. I always believed that Tokyo is a relatively easy game, if players learn to handle two core facets: the formation mechanics, and enemies’ waves. Level/section design comes down to waves of different enemies and strategies to handle them that involve a third, weak interactional facet: an optimal approach to the final stanzas of the game. I thus suggest that the first two facets each attract 20 out of the 50 total points, and the third facet attracts 10 points. The values I propose for these facets in the game are as follows.

The formation mechanics may require some practice and patience to master. The Line formation allows players to destroy both types of enemies but requires precision; the Diamond and Triangle formations are useful for sections only having either type of enemy. The use of drones as suicide attackers and their ability to cancel bullets when hit certainly come handy in more hectic sections: mastering these techniques also requires some time, though. However, once players master all these aspects, they should have an easy time quickly disposing of enemy waves and collecting dozens of extra drones. Furthermore, once players have a good stock of drones, even latter sections and enemy waves become almost trivial via a careful use of drone suicide attacks. Thus, I propose that the five single facets sum up and motivate a 5/20 score: formation mechanics are not a particularly difficult facet of the game.

Enemy waves contribute in a more relevant manner to difficulty, but mostly due to their sheer numbers. The game provides four types of aerial enemies and four types of terrestrial enemies. Although their numbers increase and their formations change as the game proceeds, players should learn their basic attacking patterns already after the first few minutes of a play. Terrestrial enemies, one aerial enemy type and the Black Plane shoot anti-air rockets that require a split second to reach the plane’s altitude. Learning how to dodge these delayed attacks also quickly becomes a quickly acquired skill out of necessity. Players who can master how to control and obliterate enemy waves of any size could potentially 1-CC the game simply by adopting the right tactic against the right enemy wave ad nauseam. Add a quick method to kill the Black Plane, and we have 8/20 difficulty points assigned to this second facet.

The third weak facet involves the latter quartile of the game in which players turn back from their trip around Tokyo to the Diet Hall building. The last two or three terrestrial sections involve relatively high amounts of aerial and terrestrial enemies. For these sections, players can certainly benefit from a bit of memorization of enemies’ placement and the aggressive use of suicide drones to quickly destroy attackers. Tokyo is an old school shmup, so clearing the screen from enemies before they can shoot becomes a necessary tactic to master. Only two or three passages near the end of the loop require 20 seconds or so of moderately challenging ro(u)te learning: they thus justify another 2/10 points of difficulty added to the total. Overall, I would suggest that Tokyo sits at 15/50 points of difficulty (i.e. middle intermediate difficulty): add three points each loop, until difficulty and stamina max out.

I believe that, by this point, it is high time that I deliver the most important part of the squib. Perhaps, this is the one part that some readers certainly dread even if they do not want to admit it, and that usually takes me the most time to write: my memories. It is 1989 and it is early November or so. My uncle has bought a few interesting titles like Data East’s Act Fancer and Taito’s The New Zealand Story. When I go to the swimming pool, however, I often have some extra time to spend before my parents pick up me and the step-sisters. The local snack bar always has some cabs with rather old games, and for two or three year has allowed me to delve into “yesteryear” games (e.g. Tecmo’s Shadow Warriors). A credit after a tough swimming session is certainly a great pleasure of life.

Tokyo is a “new” game that some unknown cab/coin-op operator decides to put in one of the three cabs, probably thinking that the game still has some charm for players. As far as I can understand, I am the only person who likes this game aside the snack bar owner, who would play just anything, when he is free. At least, that is what his jealous wife would often comment, with a spiteful and angry face. I am nine, so I do not really understand what she implies with this kind of comment; therefore, I infer that she has a low opinion of Tokyo. I can understand her because the short looping theme gets on my nerves, during my first few credits. Latter credits, however, summon sharply different feelings. December and the snow have arrived and playing Tokyo during late, dark evenings feels good and atmospheric, endless loop notwithstanding.

As a kid, I cannot really understand exactly why I can appreciate this almost simplistic game: it feels like a long chain of wave-based fights rather than a coherent experience. Still, I end up liking the game enough that by Christmas time I can consistently reach the final sections of the game. Alas, the mysterious coin-op operator decides that we must play Omega Fighter, and my 1-CC fades away when agonisingly close. A decade or so passes, and Tokyo becomes a blurry memory involving a short soundbite and some Tokyo backgrounds. When I discover it in MAME as Scramble Formation, I am almost amazed that my 1989 self liked this game. I am however even more amazed when I spend the 2000-2001 Christmas holidays playing this game for hours on end, along with a few other titles (e.g. Black Tiger). It is dark, cold, snowy: perfect weather for brooding videogames.

I nail the 1-CC around the 10th of January 2001 or so: it is a stormy day, and another 40 centimetres of snow fall this day alone. I am so happy to solve this 10-year-old grudge that I go out and shovel snow until my grandpa announces that no, I should have cleaned the main door’s entrance. Even if I get my snow-cleaning duties right, my grandpa is quite satisfied that I do something useful aside playing videogames. When he asks me why the sudden enthusiasm and hears the explanation, though, his smirk is telling: maybe, he approves of “closing long outstanding disputes”, in his own words. In 2022, I decide to close the other outstanding grudge: over the Christmas holidays, I 1-CC two loops of the game and start 1-CC’ing all of Darius’s possible routes. Maybe they are not really grudges but rather encounters with old friends, I daresay.

In conclusion, and before I drown myself in sappy rhetoric: Tokyo is a vertical/TATE shmup released by Taito in 1986. The game features interesting and somewhat unique mechanics for the time, minimalist but evocative audiovisual design, and fast-paced dual-layer action. Players guide a red biplane and use the plane’s drones and their suicide attacks against mysterious alien spaceships invading Tokyo. The game lacks fully distinct stages but features 10 landmark places as fighting locations, and in which they destroy waves of enemies. The game has been influential enough that Cave’s Ketsui homages Tokyo in the first stage (i.e. the “Scramble Formation” advertisement and the drones/pods’ mechanic). Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours players may also enjoy using Murakumo as a Silver Hawk-esque version of the biplane, together with the red drones’ quartet. Players who want to uncover a perhaps unpolished 1980s cult game may therefore enjoy Tokyo as a compact, brief shmups history lesson.

(2783 words; the usual disclaimers apply; exactly how I end up writing such verbose musings over old videogames that only ancient dinosaurs could have appreciated is beyond me. Can you also imagine that I now like the game’s theme? I can even appreciate a properly overcast sky, given that my hometown is one of the rainiest cities in otherwise “sunny Italy”. I wanted to remind everyone that his majesty Malc wrote a review about the game back when the site was new and everything was shiny. Be sure to read it, lads, because history lessons are important especially when they are ancient!).

[Randorama]

It took me more than I expected, but this squib can be considered as a Christmas/New Year gift. Not much to add beyond a: please enjoy (Rarr! hiss! and other Xenomorph sounds. No waitaminute, I just want to add that I always preferred the comi..ahhhhh *chestburster rips Rando's chest apart and hits the "submit" button out of desperation*. Enough already, human, rarr!).

Aliens (Konami, 1990) is a (mostly) R2RKMF game with beat’em up-like scrolling and FPS stages in the US and EU versions. Players take the roles of Lt. Ripley and Lance Corporal Hicks, the two main protagonists in the eponymous movie Aliens). They land on LV-426/Acheron and mete harsh punishment against the Xenomorphs, the creatures who have overrun Weyland-Yutani’s colony and turned it into a breeding nightmare. The game is one of Konami’s earliest forays into licensing territory, and has the peculiar feature of having never received a port, together with Capcom’s Aliens vs. Predator. The game is also amongst the first Konami games featuring considerable changes amongst its revisions (cf. our early squib on Metamorphic Force). Though an overall easy game, Aliens features one of the most intense and immersive settings and OST among Konami’s 1980s/1990s creations, as I am going to discuss in the remainder of this squib.

It would be difficult to compress the general context in which this game appeared, but some key aspects can be summarised as follows. James Cameron’s Aliens movie was an 1986 sensation that started one of the earliest multi-media tie-in franchises. For instance, the Dark Horse comics line began in 1988 and offered a rich if perhaps non-canonical setting in which authors feverishly developed the movie’s fictional universe. Other companies produced hobby models and tabletop RPG, though in general the franchise did not reach a wide diffusion. Part of this complex world-building effort influenced future movies: Aliens vs. Predator was a mini-series by Dark Horse that combined the two main Fox studios’ licenses. Konami started their foray into licensed games with the TMN Turtles games; Surprise Attack was initially a Batman tie-in. Aliens thus seems to have involved complex negotiations, since it appeared four years after the movie.

The game’s plot and setting are simple, as they offer an alternate and more action-oriented rendition of the movie’s plot. Ripley and Corporal Hicks arrive on LV-426 (Acheron) to handle an xenomorph infestation. Armed with Vulcan machineguns and other weapons, they must kill the hordes of xenomorphs, rescue Newt (US and EU version), and flee from the planet onboard the Sulaco, once all critters are gone. Of course, the hundreds of xenomorphs will do everything in their power to stop the humans. Thus, Ripley and Hicks must battle dozens of different xenomorph variations and then fight the xenomorph Queen waiting on the Sulaco. The game thus introduces several xenomorph variations resembling those occurring in early Dark Horse comics (e.g. the praetorian hive guards). For the most part, however, it remains close to the movie’s “bug hunt gone horribly wrong” concept.

The game’s mechanics are relatively simple. Players move on a pseudo-isometric plane as in belt scroller beat’em ups (i.e. (up and down, left and right), but use weapons and do not jump. The A button is the upright shot button: when armed with the default Vulcan machinegun, players can use auto-fire and the gun releases a stream of bullets. The B button is the crouching shot button: characters crouch and can hit smaller targets such as face-huggers. Players can open weapon pods in key spots across the stages and switch to “Missile”, “3 Bullets”, “3-way” or “Flame” weapons. These weapons lack auto-fire but, for players who do not fear a carpal tunnel, they offer more firepower. Players can then collect landmines and bombs (two per power-up) and release them by pushing A+B. Players thus can use a solid arsenal of weapons on third person, belt-scroller-like stages.

The extra weapons are interesting in the attacking options they offer. Missiles are slow frequency homing weapons: each shot from the shoulder-mounted launcher releases two missiles that do moderate damage and seek the closest enemies to destroy them. 3 Bullets weapons create a stream of three rockets from the launcher that traverse the full screen at high speed, but deliver weak damage. The 3-way weapon appears as flamethrowers that shoot one forward energy shot, and two lateral energy shots travelling at 45 degrees along the z axis: damage and shot frequency are moderate. Flame(thrower) has a fast shot frequency and delivers high damage, but the range is limited (half a screen): most smaller targets can be hit via the A button, however. Landmines destroy all xenomorphs on the spot in which they land once thrown; bombs clear the screen from all xenomorphs and land several H(it)P(oint)s of damage to bosses.

The different weapons allow players to choose stages’ difficulty and approach in a flexible manner. We however discuss this matter once we tackle the topic of difficulty. Before we do that, we discuss how the different versions of the game affect the game’s mechanics. As we discussed to some extent in the Metamorphic Force squib, among other sources, certain Konami games involve considerable differences among versions. In Aliens’s case, the EU(ropean) and US(A) versions include two extra stages that are absent in the J(a)P(anese) version. The second and fourth stages in these versions involve short first-person action in which the players must shoot xenomorphs and obstacles while riding their A(rmored)P(ersonal)C(arrier) vehicle and using (only) machineguns. Characters can only move left and right, and thus have limited movement/dodging options. Once the players kill or dodge all xenomorphs and reach the end of the stage, they will switch back to the “belt” stages.

The US and EU versions thus feature eight stages, with Stage two and Stage four being the FPS stages. The Japanese version lacks these stages and the “rescue Newt” sub-plot, but feature short single-screen headers introducing the stages (with names, e.g. “Factory” for the fourth/second stage). The second and third-person stages are longer than the other stages and feature a few mid-bosses and sections: the other stages are (relatively) short. In each version, players can use the Power Loader at the end of Stage two and during the final battle. Characters start with eight HPs per life and lose two or three HPs when colliding with xenomorphs, or when hit by (rare) acid bullets or objects. If players have less than five HPs, energy power-ups replenishing two HPs appear in key spots. At six, seven or eight HPs, characters qualify as “healthy”, so the game will not award these power-ups.

The game offers an interesting trick regarding energy refills and extends that rewards risk-taking players. I however opt to discuss this matter once I discuss my experiences with the game, since I discovered this trick after 1-CC’ing the game first. For the next few paragraphs, instead, I would like to discuss the game’s audiovisual presentation in some detail, as this aspect certainly has impressed many a player over the decades. The original movie distinguished itself for its dark environments and oppressive settings in which the xenomorphs act as predators. The Aliens game opts for a different palette, however. Xenomorphs come in various vivid colours and stages often involve steel grey, dark shades of oranges and purple, and the occasional dark crimson. Xenomorphs also come in several different mutations (e.g. flying aliens), thus enriching the more restricted inventory of castes introduced in the first two movies.

The game’s settings are also quite variegated. Players/characters start their journey in the colonists’ living quarters (Stage one) but move through a vast factory overrun by the xenomorphs (Stages two to four). The last two stages feature the characters’ escape from the soon-to-explode colony, and the final confrontation with the Queen on the Sulaco. The Aliens game therefore offers a re-interpretation of the colony as a far more advanced and vaster environment. The sections overrun by xenomorphs, however, are also far more morbid: The Queen’s hive (i.e. Stage four), for instance, appears as an immense organic cathedral bathed in orange and purple lights. The second FPS stage in the non-JP versions offer a dark night sky with yellow clouds and alien constellations. Overall, the game’s use of colour and expansive design pursues the creation of a morbid, indeed alien atmosphere that reaches almost Lovecraftian undertones in how xenomorphs appear on-screen.

In my head, the Konami game bears a more than passing resemblance to early Dark Horse Comics and especially Earth War, illustrated by Sam Kieth. The OST then represents a perfect soundtrack for both the game and the comics, as far as I am concerned. Masanori Adachi, a member of Konami’s Kukeiha Club. The OST follows a cinematographic style, since it mixes fast electronic pieces with slow, brooding orchestral-oriented scores. Stage one is a fast-paced electronic piece that might evoke atmospheres of early cyberpunk movies. Stages fives and portions of stage three, as well as the FPS stages, follow a similar style in which the use of high-pitch synthesized sounds features heavily. It would not be inappropriate to say that the game’s OST anticipated Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral by a few years.

Stage two, however, begins with a short pulsating percussion loop for the tunnel section, and moves to an industrial-like theme for the elevator passage. The remainder of Stage two involves what I am tempted to define as a “dark minimalist industrial symphony”, instead. The initial electronic percussion theme slowly expands to a complex brooding melody that exudes epic, dark undertones. Stage three and Stage four’s themes follow a similar style, with Stage six’s final confrontation being a slower but also epic “final battle” vibe. Xenomorphs’ screams, probably directly sampled from the movie, are also deliciously loud. As far as I am concerned, the use of heavy synthesised, “acid” sounds, short droning percussion loops and more slowly building epic melodies creates an incredibly immersive atmosphere. From a visual and aural point of view, Aliens can be an intense experience for players, precisely because it fuses cyberpunk style and Lovecraftian feverish visions.

Let us focus now on the topic of difficulty. At the risk of being staggeringly tedious, I reminder my/our beloved readers that I use the word/term Facet to analyse the various aspects defining how I personally experience the difficulty of a game. An introductory reading is in this earlier squib. The game offers two facets of difficulty to players: basic mechanics and stage level design/layout, which considerably depends on which version players choose to play. A third weak facet lies in the interaction between these two basic facets: players may choose different weapons and adopt certain techniques to purposefully make the game harder or easier. I would thus propose that the first two facets attract 20 points each, and the third interactional facet attracts the remaining 10 points (out of 50 total, as always). The actual values I assign to each facet can be defined as follows.

The basic game mechanics may appear borderline trivial to any player with minimal experience with run’n gun games. The use of standing/crouching attack modes may require some practice at the beginning. However, once players have a quick grasp of which enemies and weapons require crouching attacks, no further issues should arise. The FPS sections in the US and EU versions require tapping, as players will lose whatever weapon they were previously holding and revert to the Vulcan cannon. movement is also limited to the APC’s space, so dodging enemies may look tricky. The effective use of land mines may require some practice, but only if players wish to destroy those xenomorphs requiring them to explode. A few credits of practice should suffice to any player, so 5/20 points of difficulty should suffice for this facet.

The stage layout/design requires some extra practice, but once more decent players should have an easy time handling the relevant sources of difficulty. Bosses are generally easy to handle once players learn how to dodge their acid/long range attacks. The Stage four, five and six bosses require some practice since they can use multiple attacks: the (final) Stage six battle against the Queen represents a decent challenge, as befits final bosses. In the US and EU versions, however, players need to learn the FPS stages and their specific traps. The game offers a second loop in which all enemies have more HPs and move slightly faster, but little else remains unchanged: add one point. The EU and US versions are less generous with extra energy: some revisions even lack the extra life on Stage two. Add another four points, also because xenomorphs have more HPs from the first loop.

Overall, the JP version offers 4/20 points of difficulty for this facet; the EU and US versions offer 10/20 points, instead. The third facet perhaps provides the most relevant contribution to the overall difficulty. Players can choose to face harder challenges by using different weapons during the game. The flamethrower offers the easiest challenge: just tap furiously. Players can stick to the Vulcan or use the 3-way shot to increase the difficulty a bit (two points, I believe), or they can use either the rocket or missile weapons (four, six points respectively, for me). The totals are thus 10-16/50 points for the JP version, and 15-21/50 points for the US and EU versions. The JP version is a good 2-All, 1-CC challenge for advanced beginner players; the other versions should be of interest for upper/advanced intermediate players. Choice of weapons matters, as each weapon determines how players can approach stages.

So far, so good. So, time for a little story regarding my experiences with the game. Please do not try to gain access to the exit: my trusted Praetorian lads and a multitude of face-huggers will ensure that you will be…interested in reading this final part of the squib. It is 1990 and it is the last few days of Christmas. Snow falls heavily and, as always, my hometown transforms into a land of icy, white panoramas that become orange when the night falls. Anti-pollution lights perhaps help the planet, but they drown the city’s cobbled, snowy alleys with an eerie dark shade that aptly matches the threatening blizzard clouds on the city. My uncle’s arcade, by this year and this period, is abuzz with customers and players that appear blissfully obvious to blizzards, cold, and treacherous driving conditions. Christmas means new games: snow is an easy challenge to overcome.

The night in which I met Aliens for the first was unpleasantly cold and snowy, and my uncle decided to celebrate the Winter solstice and the new games. Only the lights from the cabs could be seen from the outside, and the volume of the new games’ OSTs reverberated at maximum volume over any other sound. I still remember it vividly: Aliens and the very psychedelic 3D Tetris Block Out from Technos were in the new cabs, side by side. The growls of the xenomorphs and the deep voice of Block Out’s grandmaster seem almost like an invitation; the intensely flashing, dark shaded backgrounds lure me almost hypnotically. I will tell you the story of my experiences with Block Out, one day, but today we are going to discuss my experiences with the arcade xenomorphs, first.

I play my first credit after seeing some older lads chocking near the end of Stage three, and get the impression that the game is…easy. I mean, the two players seem to believe that crashing their characters onto the aliens is a wise move. Their dodging skills seem inexistent, as if nobody told them that, in general, avoiding hits in videogames is a quite wise action to perform. Oh well, the cab is free and I can start my credit in peace. Except that the peace is short-lived, because the attract screen has this intense drumming industrial sound and scenes from the movie. A short-circuit of fearful memories quickly invades my memory and I realise: the game is an adaptation of that SF flick that gave me weeks of nightmares, a year before. For weeks, I dreamt of xenomorphs sleeping at my side, like terrifying guardian angels.

I am almost tempted to drop my credit run away, honestly: why bother with a game that will drive me sleepless for more weeks? But after 10 seconds or so of ruminations, I decide that I can handle blasting a few monsters more easily than listening to my uncle’s taunts. Then again, my uncle’s attitude seems now almost justified. If your young nephew insists on watching a movie and remains terrified for weeks due to the movie’s content, it’s your avuncular right to make fun of your nephew’s hubris. So, let me press “Start” and see what happens: Oh, Stage one is called “Living Quarters”, interesting. Well, the stage is easy: just dodge enemies. The boss is also easy: its attacks are trivial to dodge. Stage two, “Factory”, seems also trivial but quite long. I get hit a few times, but the extra life on Stage two comes useful, indeed.

So, my first credit ends as a “double knock-out” on Stage four, against the Queen: the game is certainly scary, psychedelic and with a superb OST. I am not so sure that the lavender-coloured xenomorphs scare me much, but the game’s atmosphere certainly is oppressive. Still, after one credit I feel almost perplexed: Stages two and three seem too long, and the difficulty seems too low. I wonder if my uncle checked the game, before activating it. I can already foresee people 1-CC’ing this game within hours, since I was able to cover four stages at my first try. I decide not to try again and test Block Out, instead: its OST also seems superb. Besides, a few stages of Aliens reminded me that Acheron/LV-426 is a rather terrifying place. I am sure that one credit only will save me from the old, extremely morbid dreams.

The 1-CC of the first loop arrives on Christmas 1990, with my uncle commenting there is a second loop to clear. I am almost startled when I hear his comment, and just ask him if the game is really supposed to be this easy. My uncle muses that almost everyone else seems to miss the point behind the game and just smash their characters into the xenomorphs. The game is hard enough that he can make a profit, he says with his proverbial Cheshire Cat-like grin. A few days later, the 2-All is a sweet result opening the score sheet for 1991. I decide to play for score, so I figure out that I can milk Stage four’s Queen battle until time out (and insta-death via a bomb), to increase points. A bit of milking surely is tedious, but I am curious to see how far I can push it.

The game however resets scores at 1 M(illion) points, so I attempt several times to stop at 999.900 points. At some point, I hit the precise score and then decide to see how far I can go beyond this score. Too bad if I can get a 2-All but not enter the top 10 scores, and I am getting used to the milking sections. A few more credits and I discover a nice strategy: go down to 5 HPs by the beginning of Stage two, collect two energy pods when the tunnel bifurcates. The energy rolls over to five+(two)*(two)=nine HPs=one extra life and one HP. In theory, this is possible on both loops, even if it is hard to pull the trick off. For a few months, I try several attempts at the trick: I feel that it could signal my true mastery of this immersive but easy game.

By the end of April or so, my uncle decides to sell the board and leave my attempt unfinished. I am quite grumpy about it, also because I felt that I was not really getting any close to the deed after months of failed attempts. It is May and the swimming pool café/bar has a new game: Aliens, in a version with two extra stages and no stage titles. Well, the xenomorphs also have these rather peculiar colours: fuchsia, green? OK, whatever. I must re-learn to play this game because the small difference gives me more trouble than I expected, but a 1-CC comes quickly and easily enough. The attempts at getting the extra one life trick on both loops however frustrate me for long enough. I give up once summer arrives. Still, an occasional credit is always a good way to listen to the sublime OST.

At some point, the game falls off my radar, but once the Dark Horse comics are translated into Italian, I suddenly desire to play the game again. Well, I desire to read the comics while listening to the game’s OST, which is a bit of a pipe dream. The comics are great and at some point, we even get an Aliens vs. Predator cross-over, which is probably the impossible dream of us kids reading non-mainstream comics. Years pass and Capcom actually releases a game based on this cross-over. Memories of Konami’s Aliens have faded away and do not resurface until the game is emulated. As a BA student, I play it a few times out of nostalgia. I then discover that dumps of the OST exist: I spend a lonely Christmas night (2005, 2006?) fulfilling my wish of reading the comics to this majestically dark OST.

In conclusion, Aliens is a fast-paced run’n gun 1990 Konami game that includes elements from belt scrollers/bmups and shmups. Players must slay a lot of xenomorphs of various shapes and forms slaughter the Queen alien, in a rather liberal re-interpretation of the 1986 movie. The game distinguishes itself in having an incredibly immersive atmosphere and OST that seem to harken to other licensed products or sources, in inspiration. As with many other Konami games, the JP version is considerably easier and better balanced; all versions should however provide easy 2-All 1-CC to any seasoned players. Irrespective of the difficulty, the game is worth playing for its classy design and for its more unique, genre-blending aspects. Further games based on the Alien franchise appear over the decades; in its arcade simplicity, Aliens remains a cornerstone of the R2RKMF genre and a quintessential experience for its fans.

(3690 words, and the usual disclaimers apply. All errors and typos are due to Xenny, the affable desk-size xenomorph I bought this Christmas and who looks like this. I managed to get the extra life trick on both loops at some point in 2021 or 2022 and I posted it in the R2RKMF thread, I believe. I also had a picture with a real size xenomorph from the SF bookstore in Gothenburg, in which I hug the big boy in adorable pose. Ah, my darling xenomorphs! I should be getting a plushie xenny soon, and probably some cute face-huggers with which to scare the neighbours’ dogs to their deaths. Maybe I should also hang my Sulaco model from the ceiling…?).

[BIL]

Sorry I've been rather absent lately Rando; got reacquainted with Thunder Fox on ACA, came straight here after to read. Enjoying some easy and fruitful but distracting work, just as ACA quality+quantity underwent a periodic stratospheric explosion. Nice problems to have tbh.

What an exceptionally fine game. I only wish the scoring didn't encourage Bazooka hoarding; it's nowhere as offputting as suiciding and/or endless leeching, but still an unfortunate clash with the "smoke 'em if you got 'em" blockbuster mindset. I could hold back on the others, but once I've liberated that bad boy from its jolly portly bearer, I gotta let it off the chain and enjoy the violence.

(ha, just twigged what game it was reminding me of... AC Super Contra, it's like having its floor-shattering boss explosions on tap )

Still, holds up remarkably well there, compared to countless fellow action luminaries. Great choice of replay. And for the simple pleasures of a deftly storming clear, it's absolutely first-rate. At first I was wishing the hitboxes were a little kinder; but as I soon recalled, for all its agility, it's a classical precision game at heart. More about outzoning threats than darting between them. As you say and as another good friend of shumpsfarm put it, The Real Green Beret 2.

BTW I think you might need to reformat the replay link; it seems to not work currently. Here's the URL I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB-tXC0brkU

[Randorama]

Dr. BirruFordo, I am glad that you are enjoying Thunder Fox; it was the other "Zeitgeist" game in the late 1980s, beside Capcom's Strider.

I honestly had no idea on how the secret bonuses worked until I discovered the replays, so I always played it for the quick, brutal and splendidly entertaining 1-CC/1LC. It rewards perfect knowledge of the basics: never get hit or even touched; do not use anything but your body as a weapon. Hopefully my attempt at proselytizing about the game via the squib will maintain a good momentum over time Thanks for the link: I have updated the squib.

Tangent: I have finally learnt the single bar movement that our bronzed calisthenic freaks perform when grappling tubes (hint: control the lower body and legs when swinging). All I need to do is to get bronzed and try the technique while carrying a massive bazooka on my shoulders (bare-chested and grim-faced, of course).

General: it is recess time for me, so I am spending time in the motherland. I will update the thread with a few squibs this weekend, boy scout's promise!

[Randorama]

Life is complicated and pursuing excellence in hobbies during my official rest weeks has become trickier than expected. Fear not! I went to swim to the swimming pool I mention in this new squib, and I feel rejuvenated and briskly refreshed. We thus continue with a shmup squib, Side Arms, and with a soon-to-be published R2RKMF squib about Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Time to brush up your real mecha anime genre knowledge, Zeta Gundam-style.

Side Arms (Capcom, 1986) is a HORI(zontal) scroller shmup that pits two pilots and their mechas as the last hope of humankind against an alien invasion. A game rife with references to anime and manga, Side Arms features a control system similar to Capcom’s early title GunSmoke. the joystick controls the mecha(s) movement, and the shot buttons determine the direction of attack (i.e. left or right). Players must clear 12 stages of variable length and difficulty and then face the aliens’ emperor in the mothership’s core. The game has received several ports across the decades (e.g. Turbografx-16, then PS2 via the Capcom’s Classics Collection ), and inspired Cave’s DeathSmiles for its control system. The game is probably one of Capcom’s lesser-known early games, but it aptly represents the company’s early pursuit of unique game design ideas. In the remainder of this squib, I will discuss what ideas form this multi-faceted uniqueness.

A bit of historical context can certainly help readers in appreciating this game’s freshness. In 1986, Zeta Gundam concluded the franchise return to TV, and Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä was a still exerting its influence in manga and anime. The Real Robot genre was at its zenith of popularity, and the Macross franchise was also highly influential. Videogames still did not have enough processing power to feature anime-like visuals and City Pop OSTs, but VG artists were nevertheless pursuing cross-media contaminations. Taito joined forces with Tatsunoko for Darius’s design, and one could write several books on Konami’s pilfering of movie and music (western) icons. Side Arms contains homages/rip-offs from the three aforementioned anime sources and a few other series and, in general, acted as a pioneer of the “mecha shmup” micro-genre. It thus viscerally incarnates a 1980’s “Otaku Zeitgeist” facet.

The game’s plot is simple: the Bozon empire decides to invade Earth and it is up to two valiant mecha pilots to save the planet. Piloting their trusted α and β mechas/Mobilesuits (P(layer)1/Lieutenant Henry and P(layer)2/Sergent Sanders, begin the fight for the survival of life on Earth once they return to Earth from orbit. Players must thus battle the Bozon armies through 12 stages that begin over a submerged Tokyo (Stage one), and then move to the Bozon’s underground base (Stages two-six). After this first stanza, players/characters invade the enemy’s mothership (Stages seven-11) and then battle the Emperor’s warship in the ship’s core (Stage 12). The game does not feature a full-fledged ending sequence beyond showing the credits. However, it represents one of earliest shmups, and possibly arcade games in general, offering a “proper” 1-CC opportunity (i.e. no loops). It thus presented a novel format to the arcade game experience.

The game mechanics also present some noticeably innovative aspects. Similarly to Capcom 1985’s predecessor Section Z, the game uses a three-button layout. The A and B button are the fire/shot/attack buttons. The A button allows players to shoot in the left direction, and the B button allows players to shoot in the right direction. The joystick controls movement in eight directions; thus, players must use the two buttons to decide in which direction to shoot. The C button allows players to choose which weapon to use among a potential of five weapons: “BIT”, “Shotgun”, “MBL”, “3-way” and “Auto”. Aside Section Z, Capcom 1988’s Forgotten Worlds acts as the third title in a “multiple direction” shmup series, even if it is based on rotating joystick controls. Cave’s Death Smiles games act as explicit legacy sequels, since they feature near-identical control schemes to Side Arms.

The five weapon types activate once players collect their respective icons, or by shooting at a multi-purpose power-up icon. The icon starts with a BIT power-up, which triggers spherical options circling the player and shooting single shots. Players can collect a maximum of three BIT power-ups, and then obtain 100 points per icon. If players shoot the multi-purpose icon, the icon changes into a red “Pow” power-up increasing movement speed by one level (max, three levels). The next power-up is the Shotgun (two levels), and then a speed power-up again. The third and fourth weapon power-ups are the M(obile)B(azooka)(Laser) (one level), Speed up, and 3-way (two levels). Afterwards, the purple “Pow” power-up appears and allows players to speed down, if the speed level is three or two. The “Auto” power-up comes in two variants: a full frontal, powerful stream, and a weaker 3-way (frontal, up- and down-ward) stream.

Though the power-up system certainly pilfers from Konami’s Gradius via a slightly simpler activation mechanism, it provides some key innovations. Each weapon has different maximum levels; the “single stream” variant of the “Auto” weapon is also one of the earliest examples of (overclocked) auto-fire in shmups. The game’s most noticeable feature is however the “absolute fusion”, αβ power-up: players can shoot secret spots to reveal this icon and fuse the two mechas into a single unit. In single player mode, the other mecha appears on the screen, all enemies become frozen in place, and subsequently the two mechas fuse into a single unit. In two player mode, the mechas directly fuse at the centre of the screen. Either way, the fused mecha shoots an additional eight multi-directional bullets, with patterns based on which player collects the icon. Furthermore, the fused form can withstand two hits before reverting into normal form.

The fusion form warrants more firepower and the equivalent of a 2 H(it)P(point) armour in 1P mode. In 2P mode, it introduces a co-op feature: the player collecting the icon controls the fused mecha, and the other player controls the attacks’ direction. The mechanic is quite rare if not unique, since it forces players to truly cooperate when playing. The 1P mode is certainly less demanding and, if properly used, it warrants characters/mechas with constant armour. If the fused mecha has already received a hit, get hit one more time before collecting a new αβ power-up. The mecha will metamorphose back to a 2 HP armour level. Aside power-ups, bonus point items hide across stages and appear when hit (e.g. the 3k points strawberries). The Mobi-chan icon gives one extra life aside the one at 100k: four Mobi-chans are scattered across the 12 stages, as players can easily find out.

Side Arms is a game that runs on an early Capcom board (“CPS-0”?), and so its visual and aural power appear modest even by 1986 standards. However, the game’s visual strengths lie in how the programmers exploited this reduced power in full. Both characters/mechas sport detailed designs and include a lot of detailed parts, notwithstanding hardware limits on animation frames. Most enemies are also well-animated (e.g. the basic zaku ripped from Macross) and feature interesting attacks patterns and movements. Most noticeably, the fusion form has two intriguing, bulky variants based on which player/character collects the αβ power-up. Both are reminiscent of early Transformers models. Stages’ backgrounds are mostly static, but riff on anime series (e.g. Macross for the final three stages) and feature vibrant if limited colour palettes. Players can certainly enjoy spotting the several anime visual homages and several sections including flickering starry skies (e.g. Stage one).

The OST by Takashi Tateishi, an early Alph Lyla member, offers a similarly simple though interesting experience. The game features particularly loud, very 8 bit-style sound effects. Each weapon has a distinctive sound, and the MBL sound seems sampled (or, perhaps, just ripped off) from the equivalent weapon in Zeta Gundam). Most stages feature up-tempo but vaguely defined themes that could fit well in most robot anime. The game features four recurring bosses increasing in fire-power and aggressiveness at each recurrence but always appearing with their own repeating theme. Stage 10 and 11 involve a more dramatic theme including a fast-paced beat underlying the fact that players have entered the enemy mothership’s inner core. Stage 12 features a funereal march for the final boss’ battle. Though perhaps straightforward in style, the OST aptly creates the kind of atmosphere one would expect from 1980s Robot anime.

My compact discussion of the game’s audiovisual presentation may have led you into thinking, perhaps, that the game’s difficulty may be Side Arms’ key aspect (or Facet in our terminology). I confess that this potential fear should not be borne out; however, let me explain why this eventuality may be the case. In my view, the game’s difficulty evenly distributes among two facets: basic game mechanics and stage/level design/layout. These two aspects do not involve any consistent interaction to the best of my experience: I evenly split the 50 total points used in our assessments between the two facets, for 25 points. You may have noticed that I proposed a similar analysis for Capcom’s Black Tiger in an earlier squib. In general, I believe that difficulty in Capcom’s early games lies in learning how to play and learning how to “solve” stages/levels as survival puzzles.

The next few paragraphs motivate the case for Side Arms as follows. The basic game mechanics become quite intuitive after a little practice, but the use of specific weapons presents two hidden challenges. First, BIT and 3-way weapons are not powerful, but they are simple to use; the shotgun has a slow shooting frequency and is not powerful, whereas the MBL shoots slow but powerful, armour-piercing lasers. Both types of Autos are quite powerful, and their fast-shooting frequency is rather helpful. Crucially, when a character/mobilesuit dies, they lose their current weapon and respawn with the next active weapon in the inventory (BIT, shotgun, MBL, 3-way, Auto). Players must thus quickly change weapon when respawning to avoid a quick second death by e.g. using shotgun or MBL and end up quickly overwhelmed. Two points are thus for learning how to use the weapons and how to recover from death.

The fusion mechanic can be very useful when players learn all the locations for the αβ icons: players can enjoy up to six armour HPs per stage (e.g. Stage 10). However, characters only get back two full points when triggering the fusion mechanic a new time (again: downgrade, upgrade again). This facet requires some practice before players master it and using it on latter stage is always risky; so, it warrants one difficulty point. The four boss types require some practice apart from the first boss, which also appears only on Stage one. Personally, I suggest players to use the MBL for boss fights, but any weapon is OK after mastering them (except the shotgun: avoid it like the pest). The final boss also requires some (but not much) practice, though it is overall a relatively easy challenge: four difficulty points for learning these four boss types.

The game features multi-directional scrolling on some stages, which renders the action in hori mode a bit tricky to handle. Stages two and five have short ascending and descending passages, but Stages three, six and eight scroll downward, downward, and upward, respectively. Memorising enemies’ spawning points and killing them before they shoot is always useful; on these stages, it is almost necessary. These vertically scrolling stages thus collectively deserve one difficulty point. Stages nine, ten and eleven (i.e. the Bozon’s base inner core) deserve a point each, instead. They are replete with enemies and thus require pre-emptive killings via rote learning of enemies’ placement: practice them and be sure to quickly kill as many enemies as possible. Finally, re-spawning grants no more than half a second of i(nvicibility)-frames: avoid multiple successive deaths that can occur by simply getting distracted and getting a hit as soon as invincibility wears off.

Interestingly, playing for score requires no extra considerations or effort. Most bonus point icons lie hidden around stages, but chances are high that you will shoot and reveal them while trying to kill enemies. Collection is also simple and usually risk free: pick icons up once the screen is clear of enemies. Note, furthermore, that power-ups for maxed out weapons grant 100 points, and slowly but inexorably add up to the final score. My total score is thus 14/50 difficulty points; I would place the game in the middle intermediate bracket of difficulty. The difficulty wiki places this game at a lower 12, however. As always, divergences may revolve around how the wiki compilers have evaluated difficulty facets, and which facets they may have considered. In other words, opinions and methods can differ across evaluators: please do not lose too much sleep over these numbers and minor divergences.

As we have discussed all the relevant facets and I have remotely locked the exits of your rooms, dear readers, we can happily discuss my experiences with the game together. Fear not: this story is no more painful that all the other stories I have presented in previous squibs. The number of tormented nights it should cause may therefore end up being in the single digits. It is December 1989 and the swimming pool café’ I frequent before or after swimming training has new games. Both look groovy: one is called Omega Fighter and looks like an incredibly cool vertical shmup. The other one is some old Capcom title from 1986…but it does look spiffy. Mechas, references to Gundam and Macross, pointlessly loud, older Capcom style sound effects. I try a credit before my usual evening training: good stuff, even if the Section Z/Gun Smoke control scheme is a pain.

I last up until the second stage, as a I do not immediately figure out how the weapon system works and the very short i-frame respawning is very punishing. Hey, game, just give me a second to figure out what to do, please! Anyway, I spend another “200 lire”, the rough equivalent of 10 (euro) cents, and crash by the end of Stage three. The downward scrolling stage is a great idea, though it is certainly hard. A few weeks pass: it is the end of January 1990, and my uncle comments that he re-activated a few games from before I could go to the arcade. One is called Rolling Thunder and it looks really cool but also incredibly hard, and another is this funny-looking TATE shmup called Halley’s Comet. Oh, and a third one is my uncle’s copy of Side Arms, which looks in perfect shape too.

Upon my uncle’s suggestion, I go to the “retro cheap room”, and try the first two games only to have my ass handed down quickly, to put it in a formulaic manner. Side Arms, however, is a game that I already know better: so, with my first 100 lire I manage to reach the sixth boss. My uncle’s arcade as a room on the top floor with smaller cabs that run half price, since they host old games. The problem is that uncle is, well, my uncle, so he likes to offer further exposure of old glories to customers at half price and maximum difficulty. To some VG parishioners complaining, he offered this gem of wisdom: “People, they’re half price: you can spend twice the number of credits to master them, can’t you?”. I often wonder why nobody has tried to brutally roast him; Aquilans are notoriously violent and vindictive.

From January to May, thus, I can practice the game at the swimming pool at a less insane difficulty level. I can then push my skills at half the price, when I visit my uncle’s arcade, and develop Odin-like levels of patience due to the game being oppressively difficult. I would like to conclude the story with a happy ending, but I am afraid that this is not the case, dear readers. I know: you are already feeling a robust streak of schadenfreude in assuming that I did not 1-CC the game. Well, keep reading. By May, the swimming pool café’ changes both games in the cabs: “shooters” do not sell that much anymore. My attempt to clear the game dies on a last attempt against Stage nine’s boss. My uncle takes off his board in June, when I can reach the Stage eight boss on this maxed out version.

It is then the summer of 2001, the first summer in which my newfound MAME addition can run wild. I know that Side Arms is in MAME, but I have been busy with other games for most of my first academic year (e.g. Black Tiger, as we discussed before). One particularly hot July night I decide that it is high time to 1-CC this game and put an end to a decade-old grudge. Yes, an embryonal form of the grudge mentality was already maturing in my head. For the rest of July and August, I dedicate at least three or four daily sweaty credits on this game, cursing the fact that I do not have a proper A/C. Bah, Italians and their love of horridly hot weather. The summer of my first BA year is just MAME and studying to pass the exams I bombed in June: will I ever graduate?

One late August night, I am playing the right credit: no mistakes until Stage 10, a quick downgrade, and a new αβ icon, and I then pulverise the final boss. It is a 1-LC, and my head feels clear and fresh. It a few minutes after 2 AM, but a cold beer is a good prize for the achievement. Yes, yes, I will graduate, I will clear all the games I did not clear as a kid, I will achieve something, I will do my bed first thing in the morning. Years pass and I sometimes I play the occasional credit. On a good day, I can easily 1-CC the game and on a bad day, I know that I have 1-CC’ed dozens of times. Maybe one day I will buy Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours and play the Side Arms expansion and update this squib; now, however, I wrap up.

Side Arms is a hori shmup in which players control two mechas/mobilesuits and fight against the Bozon, an alien empire invading Earh with genocidal intents. The game features a control scheme that allows players to shoot in either left or right direction and to choose one out five types of weapons. The game also features the fusion power-up mechanic, triggered via the αβ icon: the two mechas fuse and create a more powerful character. The game offers an intermediate challenge and some charming audiovisuals that pay a clear homage to classic mecha anime, in particular Gundam Z and Macross. Players who want to explore one of the earliest mecha shmups and a bona fide Capcom classic title will certainly enjoy the game. Be sure to try it, anyway: history lessons are important, and Side Arms is also a gloriously fun lesson to learn.

(3237 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Really, playing this game after all these years makes me want to grow a mullet, wear a sleeveless jacket and improbable sunglasses while playing with my Gundam Zeta models. A slightly edited version of the squib will appear in time, in the reviews section).

[Randorama]

Double post, because I seem to lag behind with some unwritten schedule that may be too taxing on my real life schedule (TM). We continue with Wonder Boy in Monster Land, a nice ARPG that was something of a cult title back in the glorious 1980s. My father saw me playing this game briefly before I prepared this post and just commented "you are so retro, you might land a job as a radio host". I did not understand the joke, but this game definitely falls in the "hidden gems from the "Golden 8-bit Age"" camp. Please enjoy, but some plans first: I will probably edit old material during February, even though I may indeed release my Dynasty Wars squib as per promise. Maybe there will be a surprise related to the "Beautiful Game", as I *might* be able to play the mystery title again, in its full arcade glory. Fear not: everything will be revealed in due time

Wonder Boy in Monster Land (Sega/Westone, 1987) is an ARPG game with several R2RMKF features such as a nifty game combat and platform-like levels. The game acts as a direct sequel to Wonder Boy, a unique action/platform title that the two companies released in 1985 and that lived and breathed the R2RMKF style. Wonder Boy in Monster Land (henceforth: WBML) distinguishes itself for relatively complex RPG mechanics, a good pace to action and exploration, and a quintessential 8-bit audio-visual appearance. Players can thus enjoy elements or RPGs such as mini-quests and minimal interactions with N(on)P(laying)C(haracter)s, while also fighting enemies via relatively simple hack’n slash mechanics. The game thus represents an interesting early example of ARPG and a little if now forgotten gem in Sega’s library that wise players should enjoy at least once. In the remainder of this squib, I am going to argue why this is the case.

The game’s more detailed plot can be summarised as follows. In the first entry of the series, the hero Book was a kid looking like a stereotypical “caveman” who had to defeat an evil wizard and save his girlfriend. The first title was a blend of action and platform elements with an emphasis on clearing stages at running speed, a bit like early Sonic games. In this second entry, our hero Book must save Wonder Land from the evil Mecha Dragon alien invader. The hero thus sets on an adventure in nappies and slowly builds a legendary set of weapons that allows him to beat Meka Dragon into submission after 11 action-intense stages. Briefly: collect money, buy upgrades and spells, talk with NPCs across different lands and navigate the final labyrinth to finally beat Meka Dragon. Since this is an arcade game, a 1-CC will take players roughly 45 minutes.

A bit of context, as always. As I mentioned in the Black Tiger squib, several arcade companies in the 1980s were experimenting with the RPG in arcade format by inserting few RPG mechanics in R2RMKF-style games. WBML seems to take inspiration from its contemporary console games, to an extent (e.g. Zelda, Dragon Quest), since its includes a relatively complex plot, shop system and plentiful hidden items. Unlike these “proper” RPGs, however, WBML retains a more linear plot and a stronger emphasis on fast-paced action. Stages require little time to clear, and a strict time mechanic also guarantees that players will want to advance at a brisk pace. Thus, WBML balances arcade and RPG mechanics in a perhaps more even manner than other ARPGs. The game spawned a series of console-only sequels that retained the ARPG approach and a Wonder Boy III, an arcade sequel combining run’n gun and shmup stages.

The basic game mechanics are relatively simple. The A button is the attack button: once players collect their first sword, they can hack enemies with it. The B button is the jump button. Players can make the character jump at various heights, and when Book has flying boots, they can hold the button to let Book hover around. Pushing A+down when Book is equipped with spells or bombs (i.e. “extra attacks”) will result in using an extra attack. When Book is equipped with a shield, the shield can block enemies’ projectiles weapons if they hit the should: just do not press any buttons. Book starts with five hearts and loses energy/hearts upon contact with enemies or weapons. A sand hourglass marks the passage of time and, every forty seconds, flips over causing Book to lose half a heart. Be sure to move fast, to avoid losing energy.

Fights against enemies are rather simple. If Book is close enough to an enemy, the character sprite can stab the enemy sprite. Most enemies with more than 3 H(it)P(oint)s have a small dot on their body marking their HPs: some enemies start at “blue”, and die after they receive a hit at the “red” level. HPs vary with the weapon’s level and power-ups, but dots automatically keep track of this factor. Book can upgrade from a tiny knife to the level five “Sword of Legend” by defeating some bosses and visiting some NPCs. Players must however buy Shield, Boots (i.e. movement speed) and armour upgrades possibly up to “Legend” level (i.e. level five). Players can use extra weapons as they wish, with some spells (e.g. lightning) doing extensive HP damage. All swords are close-range weapons, whereas extra attacks are (mostly) long range weapons (e.g. lightnings hit each enemy on screen).

The game is rife with secrets of various kinds. For instance, players can collect dozens of secret items, sometimes in a very simple manner. When Book’s sprite occupies a secret item spot, a secret item appears for collection (e.g. a coin). Oftentimes, this involves players jumping to seemingly reach empty spots. The value of monetary items seems to vary based on how players move Book when triggering the item. For instance, if players can perform a well-timed down movement after jumping, coins and money bags seem to increase in value. If players have spells (e.g. the tornado spell), this command moves results a spell use that may trigger far higher values for items. For instance, coins may become worth 65-68 credits against the usual 1-4 credits (5-8 in latter stages), via the command move “trick”. Players can thus spend considerable time discovering all hidden items scattered across stages.

The RPG mechanics amount to the levelling up of weapons, extra attack, the energy bar, and the relatively detailed interaction with NPCs. Each stage has several locations for shops in which Book can buy different tools (e.g. the shield or the extra attack shops). Each shop offers two options: a less expensive or more expensive weapon (e.g. a level two or level three shield), or two distinct extra attacks (e.g. bombs or lightnings). Players can choose which items to buy based on their cost, but it is generally useful to buy higher level weapons as soon as possible. Upgrades do not need to be progressive (i.e. buy level two, then level three shield), but higher-level tools become accessible only after players already obtain lower-level ones. A suggestion is therefore to obtain as much money as possible early in the game, possibly by mastering the command move “trick” for secret items.

The energy bar follows a relatively standard approach to levelling up. At key scores (e.g. 30k points, 100k points), an extra heart will be added to the five starting hearts. The maximum number is 10 hearts; when players visit the infirmary shop and buy treatment, Book will get a full bar of hearts. Extra energy can be obtained via drinks at the Bar (shop), and via heart power-ups. The big heart power-up gives a full recharge, irrespective of the situation. Players can also buy a healing potion, which grants five extra hearts of energy once Book loses all hearts of (energy). The potion thus operates as a resurrection spell/extra life, so players can only have one at any given time during a run. Potions can be bought at extra attack shops, but can also appear as R(andom)N(umber)G(enerated) items. In general, though, be sure to always have one in stock.

The interactions with NPCs round up the RPG aspects. Book can enter any door in the game, including secret doors. Aside shops, many doors lead Book to NPS’s dens and houses. NPCs can reveal information about Book’s quest and almost invariably trigger events and side-quests that can lead to Book collecting extra items. I would like to avoid full spoilers in this squib. However, I can certainly mention that if players complete all mini-quests, they can obtain an item that automatically indicates the right direction in the final labyrinth stage. Similarly, completing a certain mini-quest on Stage four can lead players to access an otherwise locked and very lucrative, money and power-wise, section of Stage seven. Players who learn how to solve all mini-quests may simply jump ahead and just collect items, of course. In the first credits, however, players can certainly enjoy learning how to solve all these mini-quests.

The game system has a few other interesting aspects (pardon, Facets) that we can however discuss once we address the topic of difficulty. Before we do so, I would like to spend a few paragraphs regarding the audiovisual department. Let us start with graphics by acknowledging that the game looks modest if not perhaps ugly. Although released in 1987 (i.e. the year of Shinobi and After Burner), the game seems to run on Sega’s older hardware. Stages do not seem to have more than 16 colours per screen, and sprites are simple even if they even decent animations and an anime-like style. All first-person interactions with NPCs are completely static, as they consist of a picture of the NPC and text ballons. Though rather basic, the visuals have however their own charm: Monster Land is full of queer creatures and interesting bosses (e.g. Grim Reapers, Demons, Mecha Dragons).

The aural component follows a similarly “turbo-retro” style. The OST has certainly cute themes that accompany the stages well. However, the style is definitely 8-bit and rather plonky at that. Furthermore, the warning jingle when players are near death (one heart or less) can become very annoying very early on, given its short duration, looping style, and shriek-like annoyance. Sound effects are also quite bare-bones, and only cover the swinging of Book’s sword, the appearance and collection of coins, and a few rudimentary sounds. Audio-visually, WBML gives off an early to mid-1980s vibe heavily reminiscent of Teddy Boy Blues and its predecessor Wonder Boy. Players who are fans of this style will then certainly enjoy the game’s looks and sounds, and some players may also drown in feelings of nostalgia. Other players may instead appreciate the game has a very clear-cut representative of the style, and a veritable time capsule.

Let us now turn to the topic of difficulty, then, even if you know the basics, by now. Facets are the various aspects of the game, and I explain which facets I found difficult to understand, when I 1-CC’ed the game. For this game, I propose that basic game mechanics form one facet, and levels plus mini-quests form a second facet; their weak interaction form a third, also weak facet. I thus assign 20 points to the first two facets, and the remaining 10 points out of 50 to the third facet. I want to anticipate matters a bit and propose that the final score is 20/50 points: the game is for higher level intermediate players. I am going to spend the next few paragraphs to motivate this score and evaluation, but you can skip those paragraphs if the score is informative enough.

The game has several basic mechanics that will probably result quirky but easy to master for most players. First, Book is equipped with a sword that has pitifully short range even at level five (i.e. the “sword of legend”). Second, Book can buy boots to increase movement speed and control, but speed increases come before control improvements. Level two and three boots will make Boot fast but mostly slave to inertia, causing several headaches to players. Third, the use of shield is simple but not intuitive: do not do anything and the shield will you block projectiles for you. However, expect some ricochet upon parrying powerful attacks (e.g. those from bosses). Fourth and fifth, extra attacks require proper timing especially when players try to trigger highly valued coins, and jumps vary in height and length depending on boots’ level. These mechanics attract 5 out of 20 points: just be patient.

Let us move to levels and quests a, i.e. stage design as a facet. Levels one to seven are not particularly difficult. Players should however need some time to discover how each of the sub-quests can lead them to the special items playing a key role on Stage 11, the labyrinth. The mini-quests on stages seven, nine and 10 require each some experimentation, unless players look up guides and videos to solve them. Similarly, only the second boss (the jumping mushroom), the two gorilla bosses (Stage five, eight), and Meka Dragon are genuinely challenging irrespective of Book’s power level. The mini-quests and the bosses attract one point per stage, for a total of six points. Stages eight to 11 have specific design features that require practice: the final stage 11 is a labyrinth with some tricky passages. Players should thus experience some difficulty in overcoming these four stages.

These two facets contribute a total of 15 points of a possible 40. Their weak interaction attracts another five points as follows. If players are unlucky with money, there may be long stretches of the game in which they will be underpowered except for swords. The sword level depends on defeating bosses, some of them being hidden: be sure to know their location and defeat them. Furthermore, the game involves some high precision jumps that may occur when Book moves over slippery or small surfaces (e.g. Stages eight and nine, respectively). The game involves some harder extra sections on stages seven and eleven: be sure to practice them both. Playing for score involves milking certain respawning enemies, but does not involve other excruciatingly difficult aspects/facets. Be sure to reach at least 300k points, to reach 10 hearts in the life bar. 15 plus 5 gives the proposed 20/50 points, thus.

Let us converge to the conclusions, thus. Once I have told you about my personal experiences with the games, of course. Please do not worry: the hounds of tindalos behind your back are currently not hungry, at least not yet. Do not provoke them by moving or breathing too frequently, however. Now, where was I? Ah yes, 1987. Black Tiger and Thundercade are two of the games that I remember in my first visits to the arcade. The smell of pizza during Christmas holidays is also another bittersweet memory along the snow sludge and the orange, anti-pollution lights. I also remember other games: Capcom’s 1943, Namco’s Pac Mania, and a few other 1980s’ classics. Somebody is playing Taito’s Kick’n Run/Mexico ‘86 and scoring tons of goals with the German team, I guess. While I wander around the upper floor of my uncle’s arcade, I spot (well, hear) WBML.

I am a kid but I can already figure out that the game looks simpler than other games: few basic colours, beep-y and mildly annoying sounds, and the main character is in…nappies? I see an older lady playing the game and reaching a boss that looks like a gorilla throwing rocks. She ends her credit there, says something rather vulgar (hey, I am a kid but I am not naïve), and goes away in a foul mood. Nobody seems to be going forward to play the game and, frankly, I get the impression that nobody is interested to play it. So, I summon my courage, ask uncle to help me with a stool, get a resounding “help yourself, young man!” as an answer, and curse in my mouth. No wonder I grew up becoming such a foul-mouthed adult, dear uncle: I blame you.

After moving a heavy stool and climbing it to play, I can finally start my credit. Well, I quickly understand why everybody seems cautious: the controls feel strange, and the character seems really, weak at the beginning. Besides, I clearly do not have sufficient English skills yet, to understand what is going on. And then there is this ridiculous anime-like grim reaper as a boss that however kills me with his weird movements…the first credit is disappointing and short. I decided to try a second credit, which ends in the same manner. I grab the stool and mumble something while dragging the gigantic (for me) object to a different cab. I feel like I have just thrown away two “200 lire” to play something that might be even a nice game, but is well beyond my skills. Well, my friend’s Zelda game gives me similar vibes, honestly.

I try to play this game a few more times over January 1988 and I figure out how to beat the Stage one boss. Well, I succeed, but it feels like an ordeal. I see people reaching far more advanced stages, even the final stage, and I figure out that I will never progress much further in this game. Everything looks too hard and the character seems to become manageable only when fully powered up. Also, I am a kid who does not know English well enough to learn all the actions and interactions to progress in the game. Well, let us add that the Stage two mushroom boss and its erratic jumps simply drive me nuts. I become content with watching other people clearing the game, even if nobody ever figures out how to clear the labyrinth stage.
For this phase of my life, WBML fades into background.

When I discover MAME in 2000, I fiddle a bit with this game, and with hundreds of other games really. I attempt to make some progress into the game several times over the years, usually during the Christmas period. I swear, by 2008 or so my futile attempts at learning the game have become a Christmas tradition. It’s 2009 and I am spending a hot Ozzie Christmas by myself, trying to learn the game without resorting to guides and/or video tutorials. I might as well as try to learn to fly without arms, for a lack of a more carefully crafted metaphor. For the next few years, I stop playing the game altogether and decide that I should quit Christmas traditions. OK, I did 1-CC Last Duel in Christmas 2012, when in Stockholm. Aside that brief outburst of passion, my Christmas holidays became rather quiet in the 2010s.

In January 2018 I am living and working in Guangzhou, and I am slowly getting back into 1-CC’ing games and solving old grudges. I finally give in to temptation, get a video showing how to 1-CC the game, and practice the game methodically. It takes me some time to put all the pieces together also because this game’s controls still drive me nuts, after 31 years or so. Well, anyway I can get the 1-CC some warm February night and start feeling a sense of elation (I guess? Here is an actual report ). Maybe I can still play games decently, I guess, and maybe I can even 1-CC some of those decades-old bastards that pissed me off as a child. A bitter old man and his grudges can be a fearful proposition indeed! Not that I am old, but I started being bitter decades ago, too (and foul-mouthed: thanks, uncle).

Let us wrap up. Wonder Boy in Monster Land (WBML, for short) is an ARPG with strong platform/action elements that Sega and Westone released in 1987. The game acts as a sequel to Wonder Boy and has spawned a distinct, console-only series of sequels. Aside a mostly linear plot, the game features a shop-based level-up system and mini-quests as quintessential RPG elements. Players can also discover lots of secret items and fight lots of variegated monsters. The final stage is notable in being a labyrinth that may test players’ patience considerably, at least until they learn the right route. Players who want to get a feeling of the less refined but perhaps more intriguing forms of ARPGs can certainly try their hand at this game. If they are ready to navigate a quite idiosyncratic but perhaps rather adorable early attempt, this 1980s’ time capsule will be a pleasant experience.

(3348 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I remember that someone I knew decided to adapt the game into a tabletop RPG campaign, with players starting in nappies (of course). I swear that I never played that campaign, also because it was designed in an RPG that I never really liked. I will revise the Gaiapolis squib at some point or another, but you can discover what RPGs I played as a teen, and which I definitely did not play, by reading the first version).