After a forced hiatus due to real-life shenanigans (...holidays and a sense of laziness, really), your old friend Randorama is back with a squib about the mildly obscure but highly entertaining Dynasty Wars. Brush up your knowledge of Chinese history and literature (no knowledge? Start with the squib's references!). It seems that this game was really hard to find outside Japan, and you will discover by reading this squib that good ol' Rando had access to semi-legit but definitely dodgy versions of game. Let's just say that I saw lots of those "Notice this game is for XX regions only". Shady Italian Importing videogame practices aside, this squib should address a request by our own Dr. Birrufordo (i.e. BIL), so be sure to thank him for having such a fine curiosity about obscure gems.
What is next? Well, OK, let's put previous plans aside because I would like to upload several new squibs that may not stick to the original "revision+R2RMKF piece+shmup piece". I will probably upload a Kick and Run squib and a Forgotten Worlds squib within the next few weeks. I may add some material to the single screeners thread, so feel free to raise your hand for requests about games in the early list of future squibs. All clear? Without further ado:
Dynasty Wars (Capcom, 1989) is a one-of-a-kind game that mixes action, beat’em up and forced scrolling mechanics into an essentially R2RKMF experience. Players choose one of four knights who correspond four central characters from the Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The players must then clear eight stages in which Liu Bei and his generals against thousands of troops from a rival kingdom. Characters move to the right but, in a manner identical to Side Arms, can attack to the left and to the right. The game’s unique mechanics require some practice before they become intuitive, but the game’s luscious graphics, atmospheric OST and historically rich setting can certainly lure discerning players. In this squib I am going to offer an overarching argument about why you can and should become such a discerning player. Hopefully, the argument will be convincing.
Capcom released this title as part of a trilogy in collaboration with mangaka Hiroshi Motomiya. This author created the eponymous manga and was part of the “Moto Kikaku” collective who created the Strider Hiryu character. The collaboration between Motomiya and Capcom involved this title, an FC/NES RPG/strategical game and the arcade beat’em up Warriors of Fate. The three games focus on key events narrated in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, an epic Chinese literature work that fictionalises the birth of the Chinese Kingdom. By the 1980s, non-literary adaptations of this literary classic were still scarce outside Chinese movies and some anime. Capcom and Motomiya decided to capitalise on this author’s successful manga to open the gates for adaptations of this classic aimed at 20th manga readers and gamers. Dozens of subsequent videogames and manga confirm that multi-medial adaptions of this Chinese literary epic could be highly successful.
The game’s plot and setting can be summarised in highly schematic terms. King Liu Bei, king Dong Zhuo and king Cao Cao are three rivals who fight for the unification of a divided Middle Kingdom (i.e. China). In the game, players take king Liu Bei’s side and thus follow the events’ perspective presented in the book. Dynasty Wars focuses on the so-called “Yellow Turban rebellion”, as Liu Bei from the Shi kingdom and the generals from the “Peach Tree Garden Oath” fight against Dong Zhuo and his army. Historically, this was a war to determine which kingdom and king would gain control of (then) Western and Southern China. In the book’s (and game’s) fictionalisation, Liu Bei must quell Dong Zhuo’s rebellion against his righteous rule of China. The game concludes with a final clash and a premonition that Liu Bei will then fight Cao Cao in a sequel game.
My highly compressed description of the game’s history and Zeitgeist should hopefully indicate that the game is set in a time of mighty battles and epic fights. Note, furthermore, that the book usually depicts battles from the perspective of generals riding horses against armies, and felling enemies with glaives and lances. The historical manga Kingdom and its anime adaptation chronicle the events leading to the first formation of the Chinese kingdom by Liu Bei’s grandfather Liu Sheng. If you have read/watched either one, then you know how these battles and stories work. The game recreates this perspective by having all four characters riding their own horses and using mid- or long-range weapons. Characters can move in eight directions but via a nuanced movement system, can attack either to the left or to the right, and can use advanced tactics as super-joy/desperation moves. Some RPG elements round up the unique game’s mechanics.
Let us dive into the details. Players can move the horse-riding characters in any of the standard eight directions, even if continuous movements are not necessary. A single tap in one direction will move the character by a fixed distance. If a character starts from the bottom edge of the screen, six taps bring the horse-riding character to the top edge. Twelve taps suffice to bring the horse-riding character from the left edge to the right edge. Characters can thus only occupy 72 fixed positions on the screen, as in tabletop board games. Stages always scroll to the right, even if some passages involve uphill or downhill slopes limiting the field of vision. Characters can attack either to the left (A button) or to the right (B button). Fast tapping results in multiple weak attacks, which can however trigger a “multiple hit combo” animation if players can tap fast enough.
Players can also charge with either button and release a long(er)-range piercing hit as a “charge attack”. The charge attack bars, situated in the lower side of the screen have five levels of piercing power. Charging at least two seconds allows players to reach the maximal level and release a powerful attack that, at close ranges, can pierce through any enemy’s shields and parrying weapons. Weaker charges (e.g. a level four charge) may not pierce defences fully or they may even get parried. The C button triggers a “special tactics” attack that increases in power level as players level up, but consumes H(it)P(oint)s. Players can charge and release shots, tap quickly while releasing the charge attacks, and thus “chain” a charge shot with a multiple combo. The use of the tactics button can chain a further attack (e.g. a salvo of arrows from archer helpers) to these mini-combos.
Before dwelling deeper into the game’s mechanics, let me concisely explain the game’s RPG elements. Characters start with 48 to 64 HPs and increase these values to 144 to 172 HPs by levelling up, up to level eight. Characters can also obtain more powerful weapons (e.g. swords for king Liu Bei) once they collect three blue orbs, up to the powerful level eight weapons. Characters can obtain experience points by collecting orange orbs; blue and orange orbs are RNG items that appear more frequently if players use charge shots and combos. Special tactics attacks also increase in power as players level up, but always consume 16 HP when used. The game drops several types of health items, allowing characters to recover HPs via multiples of 16. However, only adding extra coins in-play will allow players to go beyond the fixed HP limit determined by the character’s current level.
Let us now connect these RPG aspects with the game’s mechanics. Aside increasing the number and frequency of dropped orbs, the use of special attacks becomes necessary to handle the dozens of swarming foot soldiers and knights. Furthermore, bosses, knights, and most varieties of foot soldiers (e.g. anti-knight troops with shields and lances) can parry the characters’ basic attacks. Thus, players should learn to always prepare charge attacks (hold attack buttons) and connect these attacks with combos (tap quickly as soon as you release the charge attack). Attacks are at their most devastating piercing power when characters occupy positions next to enemies and on the same x-axis, or just occupy the same position. Players thus need to get used to the “grid system” of 72 fixed positions and master positioning for killing entire armies of enemies as swiftly as they can. Capcom-style crowd control is a must, in this game.
I will discuss in more detail the finer aspects of the game as I will address complex topic of difficulty. First, however, let us discuss the visuals and the OST. The game is one of the first titles running on a CPS-1, so it features lovely graphics designed by Motoyama and his studio. Sprites are drawn in a quite detailed fashion and have fluid animations, from basic foot soldiers to the knights, bosses and main characters. Cut-scenes between stages originate in the manga, and offer simple but powerfully evocative depictions of the events in the story. By the late 1980s, only small companies like Technōs would use manga-style design in games (e.g. the Kunio games). Dynasty Wars was one of the earliest games from a “bigger” company that heralded a slow but steady transition to the Japanese-esque, manga- and anime-influenced style of modern videogames.
The visual style of the game also manages to summon the marvels of early China in a gorgeous manner, and portrays the book and anime’s battles in a sumptuous manner. Stage two features an initial and middle parts in which the characters fight while moving on contiguous barges occupying a river. On Stage four, the characters must invade a mountain camp during a winter blizzard, fighting the mid-boss and howling winds on a highly unstable wooden bridge. Stage seven is a desperate attempt at saving villagers from the wrath of the enemy’s army, while their village is ablaze at night. On Stage eight, the main characters invade Dong Zhuo’s imperial palace, which is depicted in a remarkably elegant and luscious manner. The game thus looks and plays gorgeous, as well as offering an immersive depiction of the battles depicted in the Romance of Three Kingdoms and Motomiya’s manga adaptation.
Regarding aural tapestry, the OST is by Matsumae Manami, one of Alph Lyla’s original ladies who became famous by sculpting Mega Man/Rock Man’s early soundscapes. For this game, Miss Matsumae created a soundtrack vaguely reminiscent of traditional Wu Xia movies. Most Stages feature themes that underline the action via simple melodies that underline the Stage’s setting(s). For instance, Stage four offers a brooding theme in matches the Stage setting in a mountain pass at the sunset; Stage eight provides an initial dramatic-sounding fanfare signalling the arrival of the characters in Dong Zhuo’s palace. The long final theme brings in a dramatic, then triumphal aura that underlines the epic clash between “the king” and “the usurper”. The game also features several voice samples for characters and enemies alike, and vibrant sound effects for weapons. Ultimately, though, the game’s aesthetic strengths lie in the gorgeous graphics rather than the certainly pleasant OST.
As we should now have a good overview of the game’s mechanics and presentation, we can move to a discussion of its difficulty. A brief reminder: I use the notion of Facet and the evaluation system outlined in early squibs, to offer my subject opinion of difficulty. If you have read at least one of the previously released squibs, you should be well acquainted with my approach. As I mentioned in my other previous squibs focusing on Capcom games (e.g. Side Arms and Last Duel), Capcom’s early games tended to offer two main sources of difficulty: the learning of a game’s mechanics, and the mastering of Stages’ layouts and pitfalls. Dynasty Wars follows this approach and thus its difficulty rests on two central sources, too. I anticipate the fact that I consider this a mid-range expert level game, though I quantify this judgement in the next few paragraphs.
We begin our discussion by analysing how game mechanics can affect players’ perception of difficulty, in my opinion. I propose that game mechanics and Stages layouts partition the total score space (i.e. 50 points) into two halves of 25 points. For game mechanics, I believe that the game’s unique controls, approach to characters’ position and strict requirements on mastering chaining techniques are the three sources of difficulty. Players who have played Side Arms and/or DeathSmiles, among games with similar attack mechanics, may be used to the idea of implementing direction-based attacks. Dynasty Wars requires players to master a key direction-driven mechanic: characters need half a second to turn direction, via fluidly rendered animations. Attacks can only be released once a character fully faces one direction, otherwise the attack animations will not start. Players thus need to learn timings for attacks especially when changing direction, lest attacks be in vain.
Once players learn how to use basic attacks and time them appropriately, they will also need to learn how to handle movement and position. Recall that characters must ultimately occupy one of 72 fixed positions: this entails that players must get used to not having pixel-defined control on movement. Players must thus learn how to avoid hits and position the characters to land hits by understanding which position best allows them to slaughter enemies. It is technically impossible to release attacks when transitioning through positions: attack animations start once characters are in the minimal radius defining a position. Thus, mistiming attacks during movements may result in trying to cut empty air and wisps of grass. Remember again that players must master the constant use of charge attacks chaining into multiple slashes if needed. Timing of these attacks is tricky to master, and so is deciding when to use which attack.
Before we quantify the difficulty associated to these facets, we can concisely discuss stages’ layouts and the difficulty they provide. Each stage in the game provides a specific challenge that players must overcome. Stage one requires players to learn how to handle bosses quickly. All boss battles time out after 50 seconds, so players must master efficiency in using charge attacks and avoiding parries from bosses. Stage two includes a section with moving flames hampering characters’ movement; Stage four includes a mid-boss battle on an unstable bridge, and so on. Each boss has attack patterns specific enough that require matching attack strategies. The fight with final boss Dong Zhuo is long and tortuous, as it involves four phases that can each trigger time-out shenanigans. In other words, stages and bosses all require that players must master the specific techniques that can make or break a run.
Let us quantify all these qualitative considerations. Learning the switching of attack directions is worth one point, and the timing of attacks when changing position is also worth one point. Add one more point for both techniques when we considering their mastering: these techniques require considerable practice. Learning and mastering charge attacks, multiple hits and possibly the use of special tactics, then, is also worth another two points. The first stage is straightforward, but the other seven stages require practice, so they are worth one point of difficulty each. Add one point per boss, with mid-bosses contributing to these points, and add four points for the long, rather annoying final boss. The total is six points for game mechanics, seven for stages’ layout, and 11 for bosses: the grand total is 24/50, i.e. a mid-range expert game. The game is quite unique and challenging, due to this uniqueness.
Now that we have an overview of the game in its entirety, I am going to force my dear readers to engage in a doorstopper of a story about my experiences with the game. What? You have already closed your browser and move to Ultima Centauri with Elon and its bold army of –[url=Longtermism: what is it and why do its critics think it is dangerous? | New Scientist]longtermists[/url]? Too bad, this story will accompany your hyper-sleep, then. This story is short, so please rest assured that you will have plenty of hyper-rest. If the xenomorphs I planted in your ships will be so kind to impregnate their hosts at a later stage, however. So: it is 1989 and I have discovered that there are other arcades other my uncle’s, in town. Some friends of mine convinced me to visit them, and to check their games. True, Flying Shark and Kyukyoku Tiger are everywhere, but other arcades have their own exclusive selections.
My uncle’s cousin must still open his arcade, so this option is an intriguing alternative. I thus go and visit this “new” arcade because I have been told that they import games from Japan from a different distributor than my uncle’s. Legal matters do not concern me at this age: I am mostly interested in playing as many games as I can. We visit this arcade on a snowy December Sunday and discover that it is huge, although it occupies only one floor. One entire room, at least 200 square metres in size, is for new games and latest imports and foosball tables. One of these is Dynasty Wars in its Japanese version, Tenchi wo Kurao. My friends find this game fascinating because it is entirely in Japanese and because it is about “some war in the history of Japan”, they say. Well, we were ignorant kids, at the time.
We try a few credits but struggle to figure out how to play the game. The command scheme is something I know from Side Arms, but translating this knowledge to this game and the awkward way by which characters move…well, it feels irritatingly hard. We leave the game after a few frustrating attempts at clearing the first stage: let us just say that we could not even figure out how to land charge shots. No charge shots, no proper survival in this game. The next Sunday, we try to at least reach the second stage. We succeed, but the connecting barges’ layout and the ninja-like enemies are way too much for us to handle. We are clumsy kids, and this game really feels like a challenge that more adult and expert players can begin to handle with a few 1-CC in their CV. Besides, Kyukyoku Tiger is irresistible: we switch “allegiances”.
It is now 1993 and I am an older lad in junior high school, with quite a few 1-CC in my CV indeed. By chance, I spot this game and probably the very same board of the game in a small bar near my home. The owner of this local neighbourhood bar is a gentle senior bartender who likes to play a few credits of old games he usually picks up from the arcades. This copy of Dynasty Wars, Time Soldiers from Alpha Denshi and a Raiden board grace his game room, along with a few pinball tables. The owner has demonic pinball skills, some fancy ashtrays and a passion for Petrus Boonekamp: a quiet credit shortly before dinner can be a bliss for my father and I. So, on a cold afternoon of April I start playing this game again, decided to finally master its apparently cumbersome fighting system.
Progress is steady, this time around. I can finally grasp the game’s subtleties and learn how to chain charge shots and multiple hits. Stages are tricky, but step by step I learn how to navigate them with a degree of confidence. So, by a rather cool June I can reach the final boss and…bang my head against this formidable wall. I spend an unsuccessful and cold summer trying to defeat Dong Zhuo: unification of China is beyond my reach. Yes, by 1993 I discover what the game is about, too: I read a translation of the novel once the bar’s owner suggests me to do so. The fine gentleman indeed cultivates refined readings, when not serving wonderful drinks to his suburban customers (no, kids cannot drink, but his fresh juices and teas were exquisite). I renounce to the 1-CC, by September: the owner must sell this (rather) unprofitable board.
It is now 2001: my first MAME summer, as I mentioned in several of the previous squibs. Pursuing grudges is still not a top priority of mine at this stage, or maybe it is and I am not even aware about my own obsessions. I discover that the Tenchi wo Kurao version of the game is in MAME. A burning need to unify the Middle Kingdom and beat Dong Zhuo once and for all grasp me with righteous intensity. This time, my fine general Shao Yan rips through armies with ease, because I am older and wiser enough to handle the intricacies of the game system with grace. Oh, I also discover the existence of save states, and thus practice the final battle ad nauseam. Dong Zhuo, move on: our victory is a triumph, even if Cao Cao is waiting to make his move behind the shadows.
Let us summarise. Dynasty Wars, known as Tenchi Wo Kurao in Japan, is a unique game that blends action, beat’em up and forced scrolling mechanics. The game pits king Liu Bei and other generals of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” fame against usurper Dong Zhuo, from the “yellow turbans” revolt. The game features some RPG elements as well (e.g. levelling up), and provides a non-trivial but balanced challenge via its “dual side attacks” mechanics. The game also features gorgeous CPS-1 graphics and a solid OST by Matsumae Manami to accompany the action. As a precursor to the vast numbers of games based on this immensely popular, timeless saga, it also plays an historical role in adaptation-based games. The game has a demanding learning curve and a mean final stage, but expert players may enjoy learning how to 1-CC this unique title. So, be sure to try unifying China at least once.
(3513 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I believe that it is hard to believe that this should be the first game on the "Romance" novel. By now, it would be possible to write a few books about the adaptations and how they vastly differ from the original work, which was not exactly historically accurate. Believe it or not, Legend of the Galactic Heroes and other works by Yoshiki Tanaka also include several references to and influences work this novel. This is hardly surprising: the book is a milestone about how to handle ensemble casts of hundreds of characters and historically dense material. You can get an English version here and some more technical readings here and here, anyway.)
RRR: Index of squibs
Dynasty Wars (Capcom, 1989)
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Mar 09, 2025 6:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Kick and Run (Taito, 1986)
As promised in my previous post, we continue with a squib dedicated to an early 1980s arcade football title: Taito’s Kick and Run. I am going to post the squib here and provide a link in the Sports games thread since the squib “belongs” to both threads. The squib is a bit shorter than the usual. I believe that certain early 1980s games simply require less discussion about their nuances, given their sometimes simple (but not simplistic) design and mechanics. Future plans seem clearer: I may add squibs about Jaleco's Momoko120% and V-System's Rabio Lepus in the backburner, since they are in the "grand plan for squibs" anyway.
Without much ado:
Kick and Run (Taito, 1986) is an association football arcade game that attempts to recreate the world championship tournament of the Mexico 1986 edition via a side-view perspective. The game is notable because it came in a JAMMA format but also in a dedicated cabinet that featured a pedal to trigger direct shots. The game also featured several more realistic game options (e.g. fouls) seamlessly blending with anime-style graphics and rather bombastic game mechanics (e.g. goals from nearly any part of the pitch). Anyone who had the pleasure of playing this game in arcades will probably remember the joyful theme song, the possibility to perform zany shenanigans to score goals (e.g. bicycle shots), and possibly those clunky, noisy, and brilliantly funny pedals. The rest of this squib argues that even if you missed this great 1980s experience, you should play this title at least once.
Let us sketch a bit of context as a Zeitgeist for the game. Mexico ’86 was a world cup that saw the demise of the Italian team who won the Spain ’82 world cup. It also saw the coronation of Diego Armando Maradona as the strongest player of the decade, and possibly one of the all-time greats. “El Pibe de Oro” (‘the golden foot’, in Spanish) scored the crucial goals for Argentina, including the two legendary goals against England (one a bit controversial, but both legendary). For European kids like your beloved Rando, the cup meant watching matches at improbable hours and a sense of joy when adoptive Italian “Dieguito” rose the world cup. The game does not follow this script, plot-wise: players can simply choose one team among West Germany, Italy, England, USA, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and then aim for the final victory and prize.
The game mechanics are simple by modern standards: forget modern absurdly detailed experiences such as P(ro)E(volution)S(occer) and enjoy a simple two-button (or pedal) game. The joystick controls your typical 8-directional movement; the A button is on the game deck aside the joystick and can activate volley shots and lobs. Hold the button to control the strength and height of the shot. The B button in the JAMMA version is the strike/direct shot; dedicated cabs have instead pedals at the floor level. Hold the button/pedal to increase the power level for the shot, to the effect of covering a whole side of the pitch with one shot. Players can use both types of shots to pass the ball. However, passages are only successful if players aim at a player from their team, unlike many football arcade games from the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. Taito’s later Hat Trick Hero series).
The JAMMA version offers a one-player and a two-player mode. The one-player mode pits one player and their team of choice against the other six teams: the two-player mode is a vs. match, with the winner facing the remaining five teams. The cabinet version offers a four-player mode in which two players (i.e. player one and two) can team up against two other players (i.e. player three and four). The winners, again, proceed to the championship mode and, if two players want to challenge a single player, “asymmetrical” matches become possible. For instance, player three and player four can team up to beat player one’s winning streak. The six total matches in the championship mode last two halves of 45 units roughly corresponding to 60 seconds per half. Players need to continue as soon one half is over and their team is losing (e.g. three goals under, by half time).
The game shines in two apparently contradictory departments: the relatively realistic approach to certain aspects of the game, and the possibility to play in a Captain Tsubasa manner. Character/players can commit fouls when they attempt strikes while not carrying a ball and hit players from the other team instead. The game awards second grade and first grade kicks, as per standard rules of the (Beautiful) game. If a player commits foul in the penalty area, the game awards a penalty kick. Players may also be in off-side; the ref(eree) will award a free kick to the defending team. Players can then perform bicycle kicks and diving shots, if they receive a passage with their back against the goal or the ball at a low height, respectively. Players must carefully aim passages, again, as players/characters do not automatically receive the ball after a passing shot of any type.
These games’ features may give the impression that the game may be an early precursor of modern, realistic games. This impression should crumble down once players start playing a few credits, however. First, the game allows players/characters to ride the whole length of the field without a real need to pass the ball. Players from the opposite team run in circular motion on designated areas of the pitch. However, they charge and attempt to dribble or tackle away the ball once a player/fielder is close enough. Players/fielders can however feint or evade these attempts by side-stepping them quickly (e.g. dash to one side, return to the selected running line). Furthermore, players/fielders can shoot at goal from any position of the pitch and, with the West Germany team, even score due to the goalkeeper napping. The goalkeeper can even leave the penalty area, dribble everyone and score!
As you can probably glean from these descriptions, the game is a delicious melange of simple 1980s arcade-style design (i.e. cheap tricks) and smart adaptations (actual sports rules). The visual and audio components complement these game mechanics brilliantly. The game has the typical simple colour palette of games from the early part of this decade; a few types of spectators appear over and over, on the stand. Jersey teams are only vaguely related to their real-life counterparts (e.g. Italy has a bright yellow uniform), and graphics feature in an anime-esque, almost caricatural style. The game includes a infectiously cheerful theme song that fades in the background after a few loops, archaic-sounding crowd samples, and hilariously endearing sound effects (e.g. the ball bouncing). A mix of the aforementioned Tsubasa and the many Kunio-Kun FC/NES games, Kick and Run is a deliciously camp arcade experience, and perhaps also a football videogame.
The simple elegance of the game permits to move to discussion of its difficulty in a compact manner. Please remember: the notion of Facet features prominently in this part of squibs: be sure to brush up the basics. Thus: the game two key facets of difficult hinge on learning the rather simple game mechanics and learning how to approach each team. As in similar other cases (e.g. the recent squib on Capcom’s Dynasty Wars), we divide a total of 50 points and award them as maximal difficulty values for each facet. For the game mechanics, players need to practice a bit before they can fully control volley shots and strike shots. Using these shots to pass the ball is never necessary: players may score goals by simply dribbling the whole adversary team, in Maradona style. A few credits will anyway suffice for any player to master the game’s controls.
The other facet that plays a role in the evaluation of difficulty involves the specific tactics to overcome teams. Each team has a key skill: West Germany players land cannon-like strike shots, Italy players have long, highly controllable volley shots. Japanese fastest have the strongest dribbling skills; USA players run the fastest. Brazil players have the best ball stealing skills, and Argentina players have the highest precision with shots; England players have the best defence, i.e. field positioning. Players need to learn how to handle each team’s skill to prevent them from scoring. For instance, West Germany players must never reach the players’ side of the pitch, or they shoot absurdly fast strikes; dribbling against Japanese players should be avoided, and so on. Once players master how to neutralise each team irrespective of the match at which they face the teams, players may end up scoring dozens of goals.
Scoring goals is the simplest action in the game: most arcade sports games revolve around fixed patterns for scoring, and Kick and Run is no exception. A general trick is to shoot a diagonal strike that should pass near the posts, and thus behind the goalkeeper’s back. An alternative is to use volley shots that fly higher than the jumping goalkeeper. Players can even just dribble every adversary including the goalkeeper and deposit the ball in the goal. To sum up, learning how to use volley and strike shots deserves a difficulty point each: game mechanics total a measle 2/25 points of difficulty. Learning how to handle each of the seven teams warrants a total of seven difficulty points, and the goal techniques attract one more point. Team-specific tactics thus total 8/25 points. At 10/50 points, Kick and Run is a higher-end game for beginners, and thus an easy 1-CC.
And now! The experience! Repent of your sins, oh ye who have…no, ok, no embarrassing introductions this time: let us get down to business. I met this game for the first time in…well, perhaps 1987, at the swimming pool I attended or in a small bar in “Poppletum”, my grandparents’ village. I do honestly remember the exact details, as memories of me playing both versions of the game overlap. Around Christmas 1987, I am attending the swimming pool in the morning due to the holiday season and I am staying at my grandparents’ big Tuscan villa in the countryside. The swimming pool’ small bar has a JAMMA version of the game that is always busy, so I can seldom play the game. The countryside bar has an underground room with pool tables and a cab of this game, Capcom’ Tiger Road, Technōs’ Double Dragon, and Jaleco’s Momoko120% and P-47: Phantom Fighter.
Or, was it 1988? For this title, memories are remarkably hazy. I do remember the Christmas atmosphere, the fact that the swimming pool cab was always busy, and people would spend endless hours in vs. matches. I also remember that the seedy countryside bar’s cab was often less busy, but people had the good habit of playing 2-player vs. 2-player mode. The mini arcade is excellent: pitch dark, smoky, and all cabs have printed instructions about the games in our own native language. Besides, there are hilariously noisy pinballs and foosball tables, too. Grandpa, uncle and cousins would shoot the breeze and drink Caffè Sport Borghetti shots. I would play videogames and maybe a round of pinball. The snow would fall copiously, under the eerie orange and unstable lights of countryside roads. The Christmas season is short, but this one season seems timeless and endless, in my rather hazy memory.
I am digressing with romantic sap, I know. However, I do remember that while my credits at the swimming pool are a rare event, in the two weeks I attend the village’s bar I learn to team-up with a local country boy. The guy speaks a thick version of our dialect, but I can understand him after all; I win his trust due to my language skills. He takes me under his banchō wing and we play tons of vs. matches together, belting punishment to everyone via our tight mastery of the West Germany team. The two weeks pass swiftly, and I manage to even 1-CC the game by myself and score 80 goals or so, with West Germany. We also end up watching Captain Tsubasa episodes again at the bar’s tv: adults are in denial about loving this anime, so they pretend that they are doing us a favour.
The holidays end but from time to time I visit the village and the bar: we keep in touch over the years, at time being involved in rowdy experiences worthy of banchō manga storylines. A few Christmas holidays later, 1991 or 1992, and my uncle decides that we need some sport games in the “old glories” room. He puts a cab of this game at the cheap price of 100 lire. A few days pass, and people go from ignoring this “old, unrealistic” game to forming queues to play 2-player vs. matches. People now like to cheat by randomly pushing other players’ pedals and doing similar acts of joyful vandalism. In general, though, another beautiful Christmas flows away while play silly, silly football games. Let us just conclude by writing that I played the game again: my banchō acquaintance bought the old cab and invited me over many happy Christmases.
Let us summarise with this sugary and vague final recollection in the background. Kick and Run is an arcade football game by Taito, released in 1986. The game is notable for its anime-like graphics, its quirky theme song and its gameplay mixing realistic mechanics (e.g. off-side rules) and zany options (e.g. attacking goalkeepers). Aside a JAMMA version for two players, the game also appeared in a dedicated cab with pedals for the strike shot, and four control that allowed players to enjoy 2-player vs. 2-player matches. The game is a rather easy title to 1-CC, but the vs. mode is in equal measures entertaining and hilarious. Anyone who wishes to explore the zaniest and silliest aspects of 1980s arcade gaming should try this game at least once. I am sure that “Dieguito” will smile and approve from on above, indeed.
(2225 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I do not hate association football, but Europeans’ attitude to the sport is grating. I do get headaches about 21st century football and its absurd over-reliance on coaches and their micro-management of each aspect of the game and players’ performance. Let us have a bit of creativity, FFS! I do tend to support teams performing impossible feats, like Bologna and Brest FCs qualifying for the Champions League. Allons-y! Let’s have fun when playing!).
Without much ado:
Kick and Run (Taito, 1986) is an association football arcade game that attempts to recreate the world championship tournament of the Mexico 1986 edition via a side-view perspective. The game is notable because it came in a JAMMA format but also in a dedicated cabinet that featured a pedal to trigger direct shots. The game also featured several more realistic game options (e.g. fouls) seamlessly blending with anime-style graphics and rather bombastic game mechanics (e.g. goals from nearly any part of the pitch). Anyone who had the pleasure of playing this game in arcades will probably remember the joyful theme song, the possibility to perform zany shenanigans to score goals (e.g. bicycle shots), and possibly those clunky, noisy, and brilliantly funny pedals. The rest of this squib argues that even if you missed this great 1980s experience, you should play this title at least once.
Let us sketch a bit of context as a Zeitgeist for the game. Mexico ’86 was a world cup that saw the demise of the Italian team who won the Spain ’82 world cup. It also saw the coronation of Diego Armando Maradona as the strongest player of the decade, and possibly one of the all-time greats. “El Pibe de Oro” (‘the golden foot’, in Spanish) scored the crucial goals for Argentina, including the two legendary goals against England (one a bit controversial, but both legendary). For European kids like your beloved Rando, the cup meant watching matches at improbable hours and a sense of joy when adoptive Italian “Dieguito” rose the world cup. The game does not follow this script, plot-wise: players can simply choose one team among West Germany, Italy, England, USA, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and then aim for the final victory and prize.
The game mechanics are simple by modern standards: forget modern absurdly detailed experiences such as P(ro)E(volution)S(occer) and enjoy a simple two-button (or pedal) game. The joystick controls your typical 8-directional movement; the A button is on the game deck aside the joystick and can activate volley shots and lobs. Hold the button to control the strength and height of the shot. The B button in the JAMMA version is the strike/direct shot; dedicated cabs have instead pedals at the floor level. Hold the button/pedal to increase the power level for the shot, to the effect of covering a whole side of the pitch with one shot. Players can use both types of shots to pass the ball. However, passages are only successful if players aim at a player from their team, unlike many football arcade games from the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. Taito’s later Hat Trick Hero series).
The JAMMA version offers a one-player and a two-player mode. The one-player mode pits one player and their team of choice against the other six teams: the two-player mode is a vs. match, with the winner facing the remaining five teams. The cabinet version offers a four-player mode in which two players (i.e. player one and two) can team up against two other players (i.e. player three and four). The winners, again, proceed to the championship mode and, if two players want to challenge a single player, “asymmetrical” matches become possible. For instance, player three and player four can team up to beat player one’s winning streak. The six total matches in the championship mode last two halves of 45 units roughly corresponding to 60 seconds per half. Players need to continue as soon one half is over and their team is losing (e.g. three goals under, by half time).
The game shines in two apparently contradictory departments: the relatively realistic approach to certain aspects of the game, and the possibility to play in a Captain Tsubasa manner. Character/players can commit fouls when they attempt strikes while not carrying a ball and hit players from the other team instead. The game awards second grade and first grade kicks, as per standard rules of the (Beautiful) game. If a player commits foul in the penalty area, the game awards a penalty kick. Players may also be in off-side; the ref(eree) will award a free kick to the defending team. Players can then perform bicycle kicks and diving shots, if they receive a passage with their back against the goal or the ball at a low height, respectively. Players must carefully aim passages, again, as players/characters do not automatically receive the ball after a passing shot of any type.
These games’ features may give the impression that the game may be an early precursor of modern, realistic games. This impression should crumble down once players start playing a few credits, however. First, the game allows players/characters to ride the whole length of the field without a real need to pass the ball. Players from the opposite team run in circular motion on designated areas of the pitch. However, they charge and attempt to dribble or tackle away the ball once a player/fielder is close enough. Players/fielders can however feint or evade these attempts by side-stepping them quickly (e.g. dash to one side, return to the selected running line). Furthermore, players/fielders can shoot at goal from any position of the pitch and, with the West Germany team, even score due to the goalkeeper napping. The goalkeeper can even leave the penalty area, dribble everyone and score!
As you can probably glean from these descriptions, the game is a delicious melange of simple 1980s arcade-style design (i.e. cheap tricks) and smart adaptations (actual sports rules). The visual and audio components complement these game mechanics brilliantly. The game has the typical simple colour palette of games from the early part of this decade; a few types of spectators appear over and over, on the stand. Jersey teams are only vaguely related to their real-life counterparts (e.g. Italy has a bright yellow uniform), and graphics feature in an anime-esque, almost caricatural style. The game includes a infectiously cheerful theme song that fades in the background after a few loops, archaic-sounding crowd samples, and hilariously endearing sound effects (e.g. the ball bouncing). A mix of the aforementioned Tsubasa and the many Kunio-Kun FC/NES games, Kick and Run is a deliciously camp arcade experience, and perhaps also a football videogame.
The simple elegance of the game permits to move to discussion of its difficulty in a compact manner. Please remember: the notion of Facet features prominently in this part of squibs: be sure to brush up the basics. Thus: the game two key facets of difficult hinge on learning the rather simple game mechanics and learning how to approach each team. As in similar other cases (e.g. the recent squib on Capcom’s Dynasty Wars), we divide a total of 50 points and award them as maximal difficulty values for each facet. For the game mechanics, players need to practice a bit before they can fully control volley shots and strike shots. Using these shots to pass the ball is never necessary: players may score goals by simply dribbling the whole adversary team, in Maradona style. A few credits will anyway suffice for any player to master the game’s controls.
The other facet that plays a role in the evaluation of difficulty involves the specific tactics to overcome teams. Each team has a key skill: West Germany players land cannon-like strike shots, Italy players have long, highly controllable volley shots. Japanese fastest have the strongest dribbling skills; USA players run the fastest. Brazil players have the best ball stealing skills, and Argentina players have the highest precision with shots; England players have the best defence, i.e. field positioning. Players need to learn how to handle each team’s skill to prevent them from scoring. For instance, West Germany players must never reach the players’ side of the pitch, or they shoot absurdly fast strikes; dribbling against Japanese players should be avoided, and so on. Once players master how to neutralise each team irrespective of the match at which they face the teams, players may end up scoring dozens of goals.
Scoring goals is the simplest action in the game: most arcade sports games revolve around fixed patterns for scoring, and Kick and Run is no exception. A general trick is to shoot a diagonal strike that should pass near the posts, and thus behind the goalkeeper’s back. An alternative is to use volley shots that fly higher than the jumping goalkeeper. Players can even just dribble every adversary including the goalkeeper and deposit the ball in the goal. To sum up, learning how to use volley and strike shots deserves a difficulty point each: game mechanics total a measle 2/25 points of difficulty. Learning how to handle each of the seven teams warrants a total of seven difficulty points, and the goal techniques attract one more point. Team-specific tactics thus total 8/25 points. At 10/50 points, Kick and Run is a higher-end game for beginners, and thus an easy 1-CC.
And now! The experience! Repent of your sins, oh ye who have…no, ok, no embarrassing introductions this time: let us get down to business. I met this game for the first time in…well, perhaps 1987, at the swimming pool I attended or in a small bar in “Poppletum”, my grandparents’ village. I do honestly remember the exact details, as memories of me playing both versions of the game overlap. Around Christmas 1987, I am attending the swimming pool in the morning due to the holiday season and I am staying at my grandparents’ big Tuscan villa in the countryside. The swimming pool’ small bar has a JAMMA version of the game that is always busy, so I can seldom play the game. The countryside bar has an underground room with pool tables and a cab of this game, Capcom’ Tiger Road, Technōs’ Double Dragon, and Jaleco’s Momoko120% and P-47: Phantom Fighter.
Or, was it 1988? For this title, memories are remarkably hazy. I do remember the Christmas atmosphere, the fact that the swimming pool cab was always busy, and people would spend endless hours in vs. matches. I also remember that the seedy countryside bar’s cab was often less busy, but people had the good habit of playing 2-player vs. 2-player mode. The mini arcade is excellent: pitch dark, smoky, and all cabs have printed instructions about the games in our own native language. Besides, there are hilariously noisy pinballs and foosball tables, too. Grandpa, uncle and cousins would shoot the breeze and drink Caffè Sport Borghetti shots. I would play videogames and maybe a round of pinball. The snow would fall copiously, under the eerie orange and unstable lights of countryside roads. The Christmas season is short, but this one season seems timeless and endless, in my rather hazy memory.
I am digressing with romantic sap, I know. However, I do remember that while my credits at the swimming pool are a rare event, in the two weeks I attend the village’s bar I learn to team-up with a local country boy. The guy speaks a thick version of our dialect, but I can understand him after all; I win his trust due to my language skills. He takes me under his banchō wing and we play tons of vs. matches together, belting punishment to everyone via our tight mastery of the West Germany team. The two weeks pass swiftly, and I manage to even 1-CC the game by myself and score 80 goals or so, with West Germany. We also end up watching Captain Tsubasa episodes again at the bar’s tv: adults are in denial about loving this anime, so they pretend that they are doing us a favour.
The holidays end but from time to time I visit the village and the bar: we keep in touch over the years, at time being involved in rowdy experiences worthy of banchō manga storylines. A few Christmas holidays later, 1991 or 1992, and my uncle decides that we need some sport games in the “old glories” room. He puts a cab of this game at the cheap price of 100 lire. A few days pass, and people go from ignoring this “old, unrealistic” game to forming queues to play 2-player vs. matches. People now like to cheat by randomly pushing other players’ pedals and doing similar acts of joyful vandalism. In general, though, another beautiful Christmas flows away while play silly, silly football games. Let us just conclude by writing that I played the game again: my banchō acquaintance bought the old cab and invited me over many happy Christmases.
Let us summarise with this sugary and vague final recollection in the background. Kick and Run is an arcade football game by Taito, released in 1986. The game is notable for its anime-like graphics, its quirky theme song and its gameplay mixing realistic mechanics (e.g. off-side rules) and zany options (e.g. attacking goalkeepers). Aside a JAMMA version for two players, the game also appeared in a dedicated cab with pedals for the strike shot, and four control that allowed players to enjoy 2-player vs. 2-player matches. The game is a rather easy title to 1-CC, but the vs. mode is in equal measures entertaining and hilarious. Anyone who wishes to explore the zaniest and silliest aspects of 1980s arcade gaming should try this game at least once. I am sure that “Dieguito” will smile and approve from on above, indeed.
(2225 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I do not hate association football, but Europeans’ attitude to the sport is grating. I do get headaches about 21st century football and its absurd over-reliance on coaches and their micro-management of each aspect of the game and players’ performance. Let us have a bit of creativity, FFS! I do tend to support teams performing impossible feats, like Bologna and Brest FCs qualifying for the Champions League. Allons-y! Let’s have fun when playing!).
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
BlockOut (Technos/California Dreams, 1989)
So, folks, we continue with a squib that I was preparing for a while, but that was in the plans I presented in previous messages. I thought that the single screen thread was languishing a bit, so I decided to bump it by posting the squib here, and a link to this squib in that thread. BlockOut is a great Tetris clone including ThreeDee mechanics before polygons became synonymous with the concept. Be sure to “play this at night”, to quite once more a favourite artist of mine also referenced to, in the squib. I am going to upload a revision of the Land Maker squib soon, as the first version was missing some of the parts that have now become standard in the squibs' structure.
BlockOut (Technōs/California Dreams, 1989) is a three-dimensional version of Tetris. Players must combine pieces of increasing geometrical complexity and form a fixed number of full planes, rather than lines, to clear a stage. Pieces fall in a three-dimensional pit that players see from the top side: imagine to have a pit in front of your eyes, and to manipulate fully three-dimensional Tetris pieces. Now, imagine to perform this apparently simple droning action against dark, wildly lysergic backgrounds and with smooth Quiet Storm-style jazzy tunes. The goal is to beat the “BlockMaster”, a fake AI that appears as a bald man and challenges to the game. Players cannot reach the goal: the game seemingly has an endless number of levels of increasing difficulty. Nevertheless, the rest of this squib has the goal of convincing my dear readers that this title is a little, obscure gem in the Tetris lore.
A bit of Zeitgeist: by 1989, Alexei Paginov’s Tetris was the kind of sensational game that everyone wanted to play, even if most people would probably struggle to clear four stages. Pit-based puzzle games, on the other hand, were a bit of an embryonal genre. SunSoft Puyo Puyo was still to come, and most single-screen puzzle games were titles like Tecmo’s Solomon’s Key, Tehkan’s Bomber Jack, Taito’s Puzznic or Konami’s Kitten Kaboodle. Players were thus used to solving finding objects or matching tiles, rather than to clearing objects from a pit. Tetris spawned several imitations/variations on the theme, some of them being quite brilliant (e.g. Sega’s Flash Point, SNK’s Joy Joy Kid). BlockOut appeared however as a stand-alone evolution that was designed by someone like Marvel’s Thanos, given its viscerally dark colour palette and absurdly high difficulty. The jazzy/ambient music…maybe the mad titan has a softer side.
Once more, the plot boils to down to a “survive as long as you can”. The game mechanics are simple, even if handling them in motion may result mind-bending. The joystick moves pieces in four directions, the A button rotates pieces on the lateral axis, the B button on the vertical axis, and the C button on the horizontal axis. Dedicated cabs have a button on the joystick that sends pieces immediately down to the pit from their position; the D button handles this mechanic in JAMMA versions. To an extent, this is all that players need to know: stages (“pits”, in-game) come into different bases (e.g. quadrangular, rectangular) and depths (e.g. from eight to 12 levels). Once pieces reach the top level, it is “game over”. Thus, the game indeed plays like a three-dimensional version of Tetris, but with an added “speed drop” button and variable size pits.
Clearing the bottom plane without leaving left-over triggers a “BlockOut” animation: the AI says “BlockOut” in his zany, ultra-musky voice and difficulty resets. The game features a quite nasty version of difficulty increase irrespective of its various revisions: the longer players take to clear a stage; the faster pieces appear and fall in the pit. Only performing “BlockOut” clearances can reset this simple but vicious form of difficulty. Although levels seem to be endless, players cycle through two groups of five pits. After five stages, there is a bonus stage with a 2 (width) x2 (length) x15 (depth) pit and pieces falling at break-neck speed. Every ten stages, players repeat the same two cycles of pits plus bonus stages. “Endless” is an adjective to describe the fact that the game seems to simply repeat these pits ad nauseam, even if pieces become increasingly complex.
This latter aspect (or, in our parliance, Facet) is perhaps the most challenging in the game. Pieces start from the four basic Tetris form, but become increasingly complex as the game progresses. By the 11th stage, the basic four pieces become longer or shorter (e.g. the “line” piece, the “tau” piece), or include extra cubes on their basic structure. The “square” piece may include a fifth cube on one of its quarters, and thus become a bi-dimensional piece. “Snake” pieces may also include cubes on their extremities, thus also becoming bi-dimensional. In other words, the game starts as a three-dimensional version of Tetris and explodes into its own geometrically complex interpretation of the genre’s basic problem. That is, let objects fall in a pit and find a way to “cancel” their presence from the pit. Flatland’s Dan Abbott would have probably adored this game, I suspect.
The game mechanics may appear cerebrally simple and austere, but our discussion of the game’s difficulty will paint a quite different landscape. But first, please allow me to explain better the appearance and sounds of the game. The graphics are simple yet elegant: pieces have the smooth design and saturated colour palette of other Technōs game of the time (above all, Double Dragon and Double Dragon II). Background for most stages feature intensely fluorescent colours with mostly dark tinges, complemented with lysergic simple flashing animations. Pieces appear transparent and only obtain a colour once placed; in this manner, players can have a better grasp of their shape and orientation. The third and eighth pits are perhaps the most visually intense and taxing for the eyes, as they feature dark purple and blue shades flashing in a neon-light manner. Players who may easily suffer from seizures should stay away, I suspect.
Regarding the OST, there are five rotating themes that can be described as blending simple Ambient themes (e.g. pits one, six), a certain amount of late night, Muzak-inspired Jazz (e.g. pits two, seven), and Quiet Storm-style Jazz pieces (e.g. pits three, eight). Pieces always make an annoying mechanic noise when rotating, but it should be easy to get used to this noise. A blurred slamming noise occurs when players drop pieces with the joystick/D button; the AI has this musky digitalised voice that should sound corny even after dozens of credits. The game thus appears like a Gigerian nightmare mixed with the darkest shades of synthwave chromatic palettes and with an OST envisioned by a teenage Pete Rock experimenting with ultra-lounge sounds. Again, when compared with other game in the genre, it feels like a creation straight out the mind of mad Titan Thanos.
By this point, readers may wonder if the game ends up being difficult for the simple fact that it can cause hallucinatory tripping after a few stages. The answer is that for some players, even the basic mechanics of the game may result being overwhelming, given that solving complex geometrical problems in three-dimensions can drain mental resources quickly. I believe that we can leave aside more linear approaches to difficulty and reason in a pseudo-generative manner, to calculate the emergent difficulty of the game. First, learning and mastering how to move pieces and how to rotate them with each button is not difficult, though it requires practice. Learning and mastering how to combine the interactive uses of these buttons is a different matter altogether. I attempt a brief explanation of how this combinatorial aspect ends up creating a smooth, ever-progressive experience of difficulty of the game that seems simple and yet quite complex.
Imagine that you need to quickly rotate a “Tau” piece on the vertical, horizontal and lateral axis because you must insert it with its vertical line in a single cube space. The first attempts should be incredibly clumsy: it will be hard to even understand what effect the buttons have on the orientation of the piece. The game furthermore requires players to be fast: difficulty increases quickly. The game also requires the players to perform “BlockOuts”, to reset the difficulty: players must clear pits in optimal manners. The best way to survive is to learn how to rotate pieces quickly and in a manner that fill holes and patterns thereof. For the sake of simplicity, I assume that this entails mastering all possible combined and ordered uses of the four buttons. Call this the “basic difficulty value”, and assume that each pit and set of pieces offers its own challenge.
I believe that this is a baseline value; Players need to master control and positioning of all pieces and their fitting in all kinds of holes. Stages vary in structure, but once players know how to handle these structures, knowledge of the right orientation and position of each piece can suffice to clear stages, if players are quick. Still, I believe that players will only clear the first 10 stages/pits or so once they can fully master the various permutations of possible moves with pieces. Thus, the basic “stage loop” of ten stages may be an advanced challenge for beginner players (i.e. a 10/50 difficulty value). Each stage seems to add one more layer of difficulty: by stage 20, the game is one for the experts (i.e. a 20/50 value); by stage 50, only grandmaster players may progress consistently (i.e. the game’s difficulty maxes out).
Perhaps this view of the game’s difficulty is simplistic: perhaps one can compute all the permutations of Facets forming the game’s system and corresponding difficulty. I believe, however, that in this case it is easier to simply assume that all possible permutations and combinations of pieces converge to one core challenge. Players must handle pieces quickly, often placing them in sub-optimal patterns and always aiming to perform BlockOuts. In a sense, this is the only one Facet that matters: constant implementation and optimization of the basic game task. New stages, new pieces and stamina seem to act as perhaps linear multipliers for this basic value. Players who may master all these combinations and have endless supplies of stamina may play endlessly, I believe. The road to such level may however be very gradual and steep, whence my approach to the analysis of difficulty in this game.
Let us move to my own experiences with the game. Xenny the wise Xenomorph, the adorable creature who chest-busted by the Aliens squib, has volunteered to be my supervisor regarding the writing of these short pieces of nostalgia. Rest assured: I will be brief and to the point or Xenny will exact just punishment, from now on. As I indeed mentioned in the Aliens squib, BlockOut and Aliens are two games that I discover in the Christmas season of 1990. BlockOut is actually a game that attracts me in a supremely queer manner. My uncle has set the game’s audio at a relatively high volume, so the supremely nostalgic attract screen theme and the zany BlockMaster’s voice often overlap with xenomorphs’ screams and Adachi’s OST. Arcade are or should be dark places: this game’s wildly psychedelic palette and the purple xenomorphs also offer an eye-burning experience to players.
Truth to be told, I avoid this game for quite a bit: I don’t like Tetris and as a kid I am too dumb to play puzzle games. Just let me blast some stuff or punch some mugs, please; cute games like The New Zealand Story are also OK, though. And still…. after a while, I am beginning to feel like I might, for the sake of novelty, try out a single credit in this game. I confess: I have spent some time watching people playing this game, and of course my uncle has been mastering it to extreme levels. He installed a board of this game and Sega’s Flash Point next to the cashier, so he can play a credit when business is slow. On peaceful nights, the rumours say that he can stay until closing time (11 pm) clearing dozens if not hundreds of levels.
As a kid, I cannot attend the arcade alone, but I have seen him reaching level 60 or so, once or twice. I confess that from stage 10 onwards, I have no idea on what exactly happens on screen. “Timidness does not conquer!”, says Rastan after Stage 2 in Nastar/Rastan Saga 2. I ask uncle if he can teach me how to play it, one day, with the tone of a kid that wishes to enter a dark, mysterious and exciting world. My uncle loves the prospect of giving some tough love by being a demanding teacher of arcade three-dimensional tile-matching lore. One punch on the head per game over, anime style, and a lot of yelling and cursing when I rotate the pieces in the wrong manner. For a few weeks, lessons double as impromptu cabaret shows for customers (“!@$, isn’t it obvious how to use bi-dimensional sah pieces?!”).
By March, however, I have developed skills good enough that reaching level 20 is not so difficult, most of the time. Over time, over the months, over the years even, my credits on this game become sparser; my skills however slowly grow, to the effect that by 1992 or 1993 I still play this game and an occasional credit still seems me reach level 40, even 50. My uncle, according to the legends, once closed up shop at 1.20 am, as he apparently reached level 121 while listening Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly on a loop. After this point, memories fade but I can confirm that I rediscovered the game in MAME, along with many others. No precise days, months or years. From 2000 or so, when I want enter a parallel world of abstract geometrical computations, dark, erotic colours and jazzy tunes, I play BlockOut in the heart of the night.
As Xenny seems to wriggle and hiss, impatient with xenomorph wrath, we move to our summary. BlockOut is a three-dimensional variant of Tetris that Technōs released in 1989 in collaboration with California Dreams. The game follows the standard rules of tile-matching and deleting puzzle games, even if the three-dimensional approach renders the challenge considerably more complex. Players who like classical puzzles in this sub-genre can find in this game a formidable progressive challenge, given the increasing complexity of pieces and the seemingly endless number of levels. Fans of Tetris may certainly appreciate the unique take on this classic title, as well. Any players who wish to explore an alternative take on “three-dimensional gaming” with respect to polygonal games should also experience this title at least once. Anyone else: try BlockOut at least once, anyway, since it is a brilliant and perhaps unique arcade gaming experience.
(2370 words; the usual disclaimers apply; “Xenny” is the cool meditating xenomorph statue I mentioned in the Aliens squib. I admit that the last time I played this game, I got whooped by level 25. I was almost in tears, as my mind gave up on figuring a way to use one of the more esoteric latter pieces. “How do I rotate this piece of junk?!”, I was about to scream at…3 am in the morning, whoops.)
BlockOut (Technōs/California Dreams, 1989) is a three-dimensional version of Tetris. Players must combine pieces of increasing geometrical complexity and form a fixed number of full planes, rather than lines, to clear a stage. Pieces fall in a three-dimensional pit that players see from the top side: imagine to have a pit in front of your eyes, and to manipulate fully three-dimensional Tetris pieces. Now, imagine to perform this apparently simple droning action against dark, wildly lysergic backgrounds and with smooth Quiet Storm-style jazzy tunes. The goal is to beat the “BlockMaster”, a fake AI that appears as a bald man and challenges to the game. Players cannot reach the goal: the game seemingly has an endless number of levels of increasing difficulty. Nevertheless, the rest of this squib has the goal of convincing my dear readers that this title is a little, obscure gem in the Tetris lore.
A bit of Zeitgeist: by 1989, Alexei Paginov’s Tetris was the kind of sensational game that everyone wanted to play, even if most people would probably struggle to clear four stages. Pit-based puzzle games, on the other hand, were a bit of an embryonal genre. SunSoft Puyo Puyo was still to come, and most single-screen puzzle games were titles like Tecmo’s Solomon’s Key, Tehkan’s Bomber Jack, Taito’s Puzznic or Konami’s Kitten Kaboodle. Players were thus used to solving finding objects or matching tiles, rather than to clearing objects from a pit. Tetris spawned several imitations/variations on the theme, some of them being quite brilliant (e.g. Sega’s Flash Point, SNK’s Joy Joy Kid). BlockOut appeared however as a stand-alone evolution that was designed by someone like Marvel’s Thanos, given its viscerally dark colour palette and absurdly high difficulty. The jazzy/ambient music…maybe the mad titan has a softer side.
Once more, the plot boils to down to a “survive as long as you can”. The game mechanics are simple, even if handling them in motion may result mind-bending. The joystick moves pieces in four directions, the A button rotates pieces on the lateral axis, the B button on the vertical axis, and the C button on the horizontal axis. Dedicated cabs have a button on the joystick that sends pieces immediately down to the pit from their position; the D button handles this mechanic in JAMMA versions. To an extent, this is all that players need to know: stages (“pits”, in-game) come into different bases (e.g. quadrangular, rectangular) and depths (e.g. from eight to 12 levels). Once pieces reach the top level, it is “game over”. Thus, the game indeed plays like a three-dimensional version of Tetris, but with an added “speed drop” button and variable size pits.
Clearing the bottom plane without leaving left-over triggers a “BlockOut” animation: the AI says “BlockOut” in his zany, ultra-musky voice and difficulty resets. The game features a quite nasty version of difficulty increase irrespective of its various revisions: the longer players take to clear a stage; the faster pieces appear and fall in the pit. Only performing “BlockOut” clearances can reset this simple but vicious form of difficulty. Although levels seem to be endless, players cycle through two groups of five pits. After five stages, there is a bonus stage with a 2 (width) x2 (length) x15 (depth) pit and pieces falling at break-neck speed. Every ten stages, players repeat the same two cycles of pits plus bonus stages. “Endless” is an adjective to describe the fact that the game seems to simply repeat these pits ad nauseam, even if pieces become increasingly complex.
This latter aspect (or, in our parliance, Facet) is perhaps the most challenging in the game. Pieces start from the four basic Tetris form, but become increasingly complex as the game progresses. By the 11th stage, the basic four pieces become longer or shorter (e.g. the “line” piece, the “tau” piece), or include extra cubes on their basic structure. The “square” piece may include a fifth cube on one of its quarters, and thus become a bi-dimensional piece. “Snake” pieces may also include cubes on their extremities, thus also becoming bi-dimensional. In other words, the game starts as a three-dimensional version of Tetris and explodes into its own geometrically complex interpretation of the genre’s basic problem. That is, let objects fall in a pit and find a way to “cancel” their presence from the pit. Flatland’s Dan Abbott would have probably adored this game, I suspect.
The game mechanics may appear cerebrally simple and austere, but our discussion of the game’s difficulty will paint a quite different landscape. But first, please allow me to explain better the appearance and sounds of the game. The graphics are simple yet elegant: pieces have the smooth design and saturated colour palette of other Technōs game of the time (above all, Double Dragon and Double Dragon II). Background for most stages feature intensely fluorescent colours with mostly dark tinges, complemented with lysergic simple flashing animations. Pieces appear transparent and only obtain a colour once placed; in this manner, players can have a better grasp of their shape and orientation. The third and eighth pits are perhaps the most visually intense and taxing for the eyes, as they feature dark purple and blue shades flashing in a neon-light manner. Players who may easily suffer from seizures should stay away, I suspect.
Regarding the OST, there are five rotating themes that can be described as blending simple Ambient themes (e.g. pits one, six), a certain amount of late night, Muzak-inspired Jazz (e.g. pits two, seven), and Quiet Storm-style Jazz pieces (e.g. pits three, eight). Pieces always make an annoying mechanic noise when rotating, but it should be easy to get used to this noise. A blurred slamming noise occurs when players drop pieces with the joystick/D button; the AI has this musky digitalised voice that should sound corny even after dozens of credits. The game thus appears like a Gigerian nightmare mixed with the darkest shades of synthwave chromatic palettes and with an OST envisioned by a teenage Pete Rock experimenting with ultra-lounge sounds. Again, when compared with other game in the genre, it feels like a creation straight out the mind of mad Titan Thanos.
By this point, readers may wonder if the game ends up being difficult for the simple fact that it can cause hallucinatory tripping after a few stages. The answer is that for some players, even the basic mechanics of the game may result being overwhelming, given that solving complex geometrical problems in three-dimensions can drain mental resources quickly. I believe that we can leave aside more linear approaches to difficulty and reason in a pseudo-generative manner, to calculate the emergent difficulty of the game. First, learning and mastering how to move pieces and how to rotate them with each button is not difficult, though it requires practice. Learning and mastering how to combine the interactive uses of these buttons is a different matter altogether. I attempt a brief explanation of how this combinatorial aspect ends up creating a smooth, ever-progressive experience of difficulty of the game that seems simple and yet quite complex.
Imagine that you need to quickly rotate a “Tau” piece on the vertical, horizontal and lateral axis because you must insert it with its vertical line in a single cube space. The first attempts should be incredibly clumsy: it will be hard to even understand what effect the buttons have on the orientation of the piece. The game furthermore requires players to be fast: difficulty increases quickly. The game also requires the players to perform “BlockOuts”, to reset the difficulty: players must clear pits in optimal manners. The best way to survive is to learn how to rotate pieces quickly and in a manner that fill holes and patterns thereof. For the sake of simplicity, I assume that this entails mastering all possible combined and ordered uses of the four buttons. Call this the “basic difficulty value”, and assume that each pit and set of pieces offers its own challenge.
I believe that this is a baseline value; Players need to master control and positioning of all pieces and their fitting in all kinds of holes. Stages vary in structure, but once players know how to handle these structures, knowledge of the right orientation and position of each piece can suffice to clear stages, if players are quick. Still, I believe that players will only clear the first 10 stages/pits or so once they can fully master the various permutations of possible moves with pieces. Thus, the basic “stage loop” of ten stages may be an advanced challenge for beginner players (i.e. a 10/50 difficulty value). Each stage seems to add one more layer of difficulty: by stage 20, the game is one for the experts (i.e. a 20/50 value); by stage 50, only grandmaster players may progress consistently (i.e. the game’s difficulty maxes out).
Perhaps this view of the game’s difficulty is simplistic: perhaps one can compute all the permutations of Facets forming the game’s system and corresponding difficulty. I believe, however, that in this case it is easier to simply assume that all possible permutations and combinations of pieces converge to one core challenge. Players must handle pieces quickly, often placing them in sub-optimal patterns and always aiming to perform BlockOuts. In a sense, this is the only one Facet that matters: constant implementation and optimization of the basic game task. New stages, new pieces and stamina seem to act as perhaps linear multipliers for this basic value. Players who may master all these combinations and have endless supplies of stamina may play endlessly, I believe. The road to such level may however be very gradual and steep, whence my approach to the analysis of difficulty in this game.
Let us move to my own experiences with the game. Xenny the wise Xenomorph, the adorable creature who chest-busted by the Aliens squib, has volunteered to be my supervisor regarding the writing of these short pieces of nostalgia. Rest assured: I will be brief and to the point or Xenny will exact just punishment, from now on. As I indeed mentioned in the Aliens squib, BlockOut and Aliens are two games that I discover in the Christmas season of 1990. BlockOut is actually a game that attracts me in a supremely queer manner. My uncle has set the game’s audio at a relatively high volume, so the supremely nostalgic attract screen theme and the zany BlockMaster’s voice often overlap with xenomorphs’ screams and Adachi’s OST. Arcade are or should be dark places: this game’s wildly psychedelic palette and the purple xenomorphs also offer an eye-burning experience to players.
Truth to be told, I avoid this game for quite a bit: I don’t like Tetris and as a kid I am too dumb to play puzzle games. Just let me blast some stuff or punch some mugs, please; cute games like The New Zealand Story are also OK, though. And still…. after a while, I am beginning to feel like I might, for the sake of novelty, try out a single credit in this game. I confess: I have spent some time watching people playing this game, and of course my uncle has been mastering it to extreme levels. He installed a board of this game and Sega’s Flash Point next to the cashier, so he can play a credit when business is slow. On peaceful nights, the rumours say that he can stay until closing time (11 pm) clearing dozens if not hundreds of levels.
As a kid, I cannot attend the arcade alone, but I have seen him reaching level 60 or so, once or twice. I confess that from stage 10 onwards, I have no idea on what exactly happens on screen. “Timidness does not conquer!”, says Rastan after Stage 2 in Nastar/Rastan Saga 2. I ask uncle if he can teach me how to play it, one day, with the tone of a kid that wishes to enter a dark, mysterious and exciting world. My uncle loves the prospect of giving some tough love by being a demanding teacher of arcade three-dimensional tile-matching lore. One punch on the head per game over, anime style, and a lot of yelling and cursing when I rotate the pieces in the wrong manner. For a few weeks, lessons double as impromptu cabaret shows for customers (“!@$, isn’t it obvious how to use bi-dimensional sah pieces?!”).
By March, however, I have developed skills good enough that reaching level 20 is not so difficult, most of the time. Over time, over the months, over the years even, my credits on this game become sparser; my skills however slowly grow, to the effect that by 1992 or 1993 I still play this game and an occasional credit still seems me reach level 40, even 50. My uncle, according to the legends, once closed up shop at 1.20 am, as he apparently reached level 121 while listening Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly on a loop. After this point, memories fade but I can confirm that I rediscovered the game in MAME, along with many others. No precise days, months or years. From 2000 or so, when I want enter a parallel world of abstract geometrical computations, dark, erotic colours and jazzy tunes, I play BlockOut in the heart of the night.
As Xenny seems to wriggle and hiss, impatient with xenomorph wrath, we move to our summary. BlockOut is a three-dimensional variant of Tetris that Technōs released in 1989 in collaboration with California Dreams. The game follows the standard rules of tile-matching and deleting puzzle games, even if the three-dimensional approach renders the challenge considerably more complex. Players who like classical puzzles in this sub-genre can find in this game a formidable progressive challenge, given the increasing complexity of pieces and the seemingly endless number of levels. Fans of Tetris may certainly appreciate the unique take on this classic title, as well. Any players who wish to explore an alternative take on “three-dimensional gaming” with respect to polygonal games should also experience this title at least once. Anyone else: try BlockOut at least once, anyway, since it is a brilliant and perhaps unique arcade gaming experience.
(2370 words; the usual disclaimers apply; “Xenny” is the cool meditating xenomorph statue I mentioned in the Aliens squib. I admit that the last time I played this game, I got whooped by level 25. I was almost in tears, as my mind gave up on figuring a way to use one of the more esoteric latter pieces. “How do I rotate this piece of junk?!”, I was about to scream at…3 am in the morning, whoops.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Land Maker (Taito, 1998)
We start a cycle of revisions with a partial rewriting of Land Maker’s squib from one year ago. Xenny the friendly xenomorph read the first draft and decided that “Major Revisions” were necessary, to achieve current standards of excellence. I agreed with the evaluation and expanded the squib with discussion of the Zeitgeist/Milieu, a longer introduction, a more thorough discussion of difficulty and a coda with my own experiences. Roughly half of the material is new, and there are certainly more links/references to relevant sources. Future plans may go as planned (ahem): I am not writing more info for fear of contradicting myself in the arc of...one post. Please enjoy!
Land Maker ( Taito, 1998 ) is an obscure VS puzzle game that appeared at the end of the glorious Taito F3 board’s run. Players choose one of eight characters and must play eight encounters before challenging the two final bosses. If they can defeat all the adversaries, they become the king and land makers of “the land”, a fictional and mythological version of Japan. The game has a PS1 port that includes a console-only mode that focuses on the land-making aspects and is set in a modern, non-fictional context. The arcade version is however the original template for the game and offers players a great experience of late 1990s pit-based puzzle games and gorgeous Taito audio-visuals. The game is also not particularly difficult, so it can be a pedagogically gentle entry to the genre, as I am going to argue in the rest of the squib.
A bit of context will help us better understanding. By 1998, Taito and other big companies about to retire from the arcade market, and the mighty F3 board was nearing its arcade life. A few last puzzles like Land Maker, Cleopatra’s Fortune and Puchi Carat appeared and graced players with a last “Hurrah”. Arcades in general began to struggle, as consoles were pushing the boundaries for hardware and range of games that players could appreciate. Taito had a few other “big project” games with dedicated games (e.g. the Densha de Go! series) and Raycrisis as their last shmup title. Do not feel sad: their arcade legacy continued with third party titles (e.g. Success’ Psyvariar, Alfa System’s Shikigami no Shiro series). In the last few years, Taito are also making a comeback via new games in beloved franchises like Bubble Bobble. Nevertheless, Land Maker acts as a “last arcade memento”.
The minimalistic world setting suggests that each character is a divinity trying to conquer more land within a country vaguely resembling Japan. Once the player’s divinity of choice defeats the other divinities and the mirror character, a goddess vaguely resembling a goth version of Amaterasu will throw their challenge in; the TLB (True Last Boss) is however a demon-like creature. Land Maker is thus an apt moniker for a game that revolves around the control and conquest of “land”, and “making” this “land” (i.e. the whole country) into the character/divinity’s reign. The vaguely Shintō-based themes also permeate the game’s design rather elegantly. The game thus exudes a vaguely exotic and decadent fantasy style that would not be out of place in some of CJ Cherryh or Clive Barker’s more experimental works. At the same time, it offers a slender and elegant setting for a rather queer spin on the game of Go.
The game only implements the joystick for left and right movements and the A button. Players shoot coloured tiles/squares and fill a “territory” oriented according to an isometric perspective (i.e. turned by 45 degrees). Placing tiles of the same colour contiguously result in the tiles forming a “land” of the same colour. If two tiles become contiguous, the latter colour “wins”: a new red tile next to an old yellow tile yields two red tiles. If four tiles are placed together to form a 2x2 square, they transform in a small “land”, i.e. a place representing the divinity’s creative power. Players can create 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 lands, which have increasingly magnificent appearances. 5x5 lands occupy the entire width of the player’s territory and 5 of the 18 rows of territory. Every six seconds, new tiles appear next to the territory’s (upper) border for land-making attacks, and following stage-specific patterns.
The creation of lands has two goals in the game’s economy. First, when players make lands, they score increasingly higher amounts of points. A 5x5 land is worth 1 M points, a 4x4 land 100k points, a 3x3 land 10k, and a 2x2 land 1k. Second, players also have tools to “unmake” lands, thus turning them into weapons against the adversaries, and scoring points in the process. Any land, including basic tiles, can be unmade (i.e. removed) and sent to the adversary’s territory. Players must shoot a tile of the same colour as the land’s, against one of the land’s corners. In the simplest case, shoot one tile with another tile of the same colour, corner against corner. This will unmake the tile and send it in the adversary’s territory. Lands follow slightly more complex rules that can be summarised as follows.
First, unmaking lands results in the invasion of the territory and the shrinking of this territory. For instance, unmaking a 5x5 land sends 5x5=25 tiles in the adversary’s territory and lower the (upper) border of the territory by five levels. Second, unmaking lands creates “adamant tiles”, i.e. tiles that can be hit to raise the border when needed. When unmaking 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 lands, adamant tiles also respectively gain a “star”, “moon” and “sun-fire” icon. Hitting a “star” adamant tile will unmake all tiles and lands of the same colour as the hitting tile, thus launching a possibly conspicuous invasion and territory-clearing action. Unmaking a “moon” tile turns all tiles into the same colour as the hitting tile; unmaking a “sun-fire” fills out the territory with multiple lands. Making and unmaking lands thus amply boosts score, helps players managing their own territory, and invades the adversary’s territory.
Victory is achieved by completely invading the adversary’s territory, so that two conditions hold. Either at least one tile is below the fault line, or the border will have reached this line. After massive invasions by unmaking multiple lands, both conditions can be achieved at once. During the fights, characters appear on their lands sometimes via multiple avatars. Invasions and border drops trigger adorable animations of the divinities getting hit or chuckling due to their attacks, as well as still shots of a divinity appearing on screen. Memorable are Rinrei’s screens: she appears without any panties and bares her butt insofar as players unmake 3x3 or bigger lands. Each divinity sends invasive tiles according to patterns outlined during the character selection screen. Be sure to memorise them: conspicuous attacks can invade your territory with tiles that can potentially be turned into lands, for huge counters.
The last two paragraphs should have hopefully given you an overview of how the flow of the game works. Please let me expand this aspect with a few more considerations on scoring and on handling stages for the 1-CC. Scoring passes through the making and unmaking of 5x5 lands. First, making lands give bonus points, but unmaking points adds five times the “making” value. Unmaking a 5x5 thus results in 5 M extra points. Second, 5x5 lands can be turned into formless lumps: players send one tile to one corner of this land and turn into a “mere” collection of 24 tiles of the same colour. By sending again a new tile of the right colour in the same spot, a new 5x5 land will be created, and another 1 M will be scored. The counter-stop is at 99.999.990 points, but players can make and unmake lands indefinitely, apparently.
Winning battles for the land and thus 1-CC’ing the game passes through various techniques. First, unmaking tiles and invading the enemy’s territory is useful to create disruption. Second, unmaking smaller lands (2x2, 3x3) creates adamant tiles that can be used to raise the border if the adversary unmakes their own lands. Besides, it creates “start” adamant tiles that can be used to clean up one’s own territory. Third, making bigger lands (4x4, 5x5) requires speed and precision: characters can counter-attack all the time, so players must learn to quickly change invading tiles to useful land. Again, bigger lands result in potentially heavy invasions, and reward players with the very useful and lucrative “moon” and “sun” adamant tiles. Fourth, counter-invasions are crucial: the two final bosses will quickly invade, but will concede huge counter-invasions if they cannot win in one strike (e.g. if players counter-invade with a few tiles, very quickly).
Players can thus mix approaches according to the flow of the match. Low-score, small-land making approaches can “land” 1-CC’s by slowly invading the adversary’s territory with undesirable land (pun intended!). Higher-score approaches are riskier because they require players to make bigger lands while being invaded. However, they can result in invasions that will bring adversaries to their knees or alternatively in counter-invasions that fatally disrupt the adversary’s land-making flow. Players can then manage final blows as they best wish, and use small invasions (e.g. flows of tiles) to expand their own lands. A fun fact: the CPU tends to become less aggressive as time passes. Players can get a time bonus for quick territorial conquests, but after 72 seconds the time bonus will be null, and the CPU will become progressively mellow. Players who can endure battles of attrition may win even in seemingly desperate cases, to my experience.
Now that we have a good and deep grasp of the game, we can discuss its visual and aural merits in detail. The game features late 90s anime-style illustrations, a gorgeous use of pastel and full colours, and adorable mini-animations for the divinities, their attacks and stun animations. When characters attack or create bigger lands, they will move, jump or meditate via fluidly animated poses. When they receive an attack, their stun animations will often be hilarious. Naughty jokes about Rinrei aside, all the divinities also have their own charming style, with no character being stronger than the others. Since the game is a pit-based puzzle game, however, the beautifully decadent and elaborate graphics do not go beyond carefully crafted lands (i.e. pits) and animations. Nevertheless, the minimalist design and baroque illustrations conjure an exquisite atmosphere and world, in my view.
Let us talk about the OST and audio effects. The caramel J-Pop OST from Zuntata (Mu-Nakanishi, Yack, and others) is perhaps not their best work, but it creates a quite variegated sound tapestry with a strong melancholy feeling. This was one of the last F3’s games and Taito’s last in-house productions for the Arcade, after all, and some of these musicians went on to work for other companies and projects (e.g. Yack became a free-lancer). Nevertheless, the OST sounds sometimes electrifying and alien (e.g. Hiryu’s Stage 1), sometimes deeply melancholic (e.g. Soumei’s Stage six), and generally quite catchy. Voice samples and other sound bites, however, sometimes play at rather low and perhaps not pristine sample levels. For a Taito game on an F3 board, the audio sounds at time produced in a rush. Do not fret: the OST is deeply atmospheric, at any case.
Let us address the topic of difficulty, in the now familiar format of Facets. I believe that the game has three key facets that can determine how you can perceive its difficulty, and thus that the overall score of 50 points can be divided into 17, 17 and 16 points. Those are the game mechanics, the game’s quirky rank system, and the specific patterns to handle each adversary. Let us discuss them in this order. First, the game’s mechanics are easy to handle after some practice. Survival runs revolve around small but constant invasions (i.e. sending a stream of small lands), and those can be mastered quickly. Once players learn how to quickly make 2x2 and 3x3 lands, they can mix constant invasions with more elaborate attacks, and obtain adamant lands that prepare players for counter-invasions. Mastering this strategy requires some moderate practice, but it is rather feasible.
Second, the game’s apparent rank (system) seems supportive for players: only score-based runs seem to involve more aggressive behaviour from the CPU. If players aim at pure survival, the CPU seems to offer an almost linear challenge (i.e. stages progress in difficulty at a moderate pace). Only score-oriented runs seem to provoke the CPU into smarter and more elaborate attacks. Third, all adversaries have at least one initial pattern that can quickly exploited for quick, easy counter-invasions; these patterns seem to more frequently appear on low-scoring runs. This entails that players can disregard score and receive advantageous patterns as a “reward”, thus possibly reaching the last stages without ever receiving massive invasions. Late 1990s games would often feature this steep divide between survival- and score-oriented challenges, and Land Maker is no exception.
Overall, I would assign 4 points to each facet and its declinations, and a 12/50 score as a grand total (i.e. 4/17, 4/17 and 4/16 values for each respective facet). If players have a basic grasp of puzzle games, this game should be low-tier intermediate challenge, at least in my personal way of grading difficulty. I would then suggest that playing the game for score doubles the difficulty to a mid-tier expert level (i.e. 24/50 points), however. Players must master the technique that awards multiple Platinum lands and thus face increasingly aggressive adversaries. Counter-attacks become more difficult to perform, since players need to focus on building lands for points rather than for attack/defence. Nevertheless, the game might be a remarkably easy title to counter-stop in the genre, or among counter-stoppable games in general. Thus, my evaluation aims to reflect the fact that patient games may certainly achieve this result.
By this point of this revision, Xenny the wise Xenomorph is signalling me to wrap and skip my experiences with the game. Stupid alien assassin! I will write as much as I wish, about this and other games! But, of course, I wish to be concise and clear, dear readers: let us move to this final stanza. It is 2000 or so and I have discovered MAME during my first year as a civilian university student. Three years of military high school and (Navy) military academy have made me crave for a secluded life during the weekdays, and a party animal limbo during the weekends. I have no idea of what textbooks might be, and sometimes I forgot what BA I am enrolled in. These are really harrowing times, though I pretend that I am just catching up with life in general.
I start discovering new, unknown titles by the end of this year: I concentrate on Taito games I never had the chance to play in the arcade, like Land Maker, Elevator Action Returns and Warrior Blade. I admit that I have to use Raine to emulate Taito F3 games: these seem to be resource-consuming beasts, and my PC cannot handle them via MAME. Raine emulation is rather sketchy, and I frankly feel that this game suffers a lot from this emulator’s shortcomings. I decide to drop the game after a few frustrating attempts at clearing Stage four and making sense of the mechanics: the poorly emulated sound grates on my ears, too. It is now 2003, however, and I have steered my life in a better direction: I have almost completed my four-years BA by the third year, I have a solid but long-distance relationship; I am 1-CC’ing games regularly.
I buy this title on PS1, along with Namco’s Mr. Driller Great and Mitchell’s Puzz Loop ports. The Mitchell puzzle game is great but kicks my ass black and blue; Mr. Driller and Land Maker are glorious and much more approachable experiences, thankfully. I 1-CC arcade modes for both games easily, and I even start playing Land Maker for score. I give up once I reach the 40 M mark, as I find the game a bit too taxing for my current puzzle skills. Aside BlockOut, I actually suck at this genre. I admit that the game fades away in my gaming soon afterwards, but the OST accompanies until I complete my BA in 2004. When I visit my girlfriend on week-ends, I play it during the trips. When we split because I am moving to do an MA in The Netherlands, I play Stage six’s theme afterwards.
I believe that I could continue with the narration and add more uncomfortable details; I will let the thread hang in a precarious balance, instead. Let’s summarise, thus. Land Maker is a late 1990s pit-based puzzle game by Taito, released on their F3 board. The game vaguely resembles the game of Go, as players must win battles “for the land” by building structures of increasing complexity and conquer adversaries’ territory. The game features a lovely and quaint fantasy design, an intriguing OST by Zuntata, and a solid challenge for players who wish to pursue counter-stop scores. Lovers of all games Taito, puzzle games and of late era arcade games should try this title at least once. For those who may want a more traditional puzzle challenge, the PS1 mode also offers an interesting challenge. Have a try, and be the one divinity to rule all lands.
(2869 words; the usual disclaimers apply; the new material adds up to approximately 1000 words and two pages. Xenny seems satisfied, and I am having a case of “recursive nostalgia”. I am remembering the myself writing this squib one year ago, who remembered the myself playing the game in 2003, who remembered the 2000 me playing the title in Raine. Life and memory are complicated beasts. My girlfriend of then is fine, in case you wonder: she became my financial consultant for “homeland business matters”, of all possible outcomes in life).
Land Maker ( Taito, 1998 ) is an obscure VS puzzle game that appeared at the end of the glorious Taito F3 board’s run. Players choose one of eight characters and must play eight encounters before challenging the two final bosses. If they can defeat all the adversaries, they become the king and land makers of “the land”, a fictional and mythological version of Japan. The game has a PS1 port that includes a console-only mode that focuses on the land-making aspects and is set in a modern, non-fictional context. The arcade version is however the original template for the game and offers players a great experience of late 1990s pit-based puzzle games and gorgeous Taito audio-visuals. The game is also not particularly difficult, so it can be a pedagogically gentle entry to the genre, as I am going to argue in the rest of the squib.
A bit of context will help us better understanding. By 1998, Taito and other big companies about to retire from the arcade market, and the mighty F3 board was nearing its arcade life. A few last puzzles like Land Maker, Cleopatra’s Fortune and Puchi Carat appeared and graced players with a last “Hurrah”. Arcades in general began to struggle, as consoles were pushing the boundaries for hardware and range of games that players could appreciate. Taito had a few other “big project” games with dedicated games (e.g. the Densha de Go! series) and Raycrisis as their last shmup title. Do not feel sad: their arcade legacy continued with third party titles (e.g. Success’ Psyvariar, Alfa System’s Shikigami no Shiro series). In the last few years, Taito are also making a comeback via new games in beloved franchises like Bubble Bobble. Nevertheless, Land Maker acts as a “last arcade memento”.
The minimalistic world setting suggests that each character is a divinity trying to conquer more land within a country vaguely resembling Japan. Once the player’s divinity of choice defeats the other divinities and the mirror character, a goddess vaguely resembling a goth version of Amaterasu will throw their challenge in; the TLB (True Last Boss) is however a demon-like creature. Land Maker is thus an apt moniker for a game that revolves around the control and conquest of “land”, and “making” this “land” (i.e. the whole country) into the character/divinity’s reign. The vaguely Shintō-based themes also permeate the game’s design rather elegantly. The game thus exudes a vaguely exotic and decadent fantasy style that would not be out of place in some of CJ Cherryh or Clive Barker’s more experimental works. At the same time, it offers a slender and elegant setting for a rather queer spin on the game of Go.
The game only implements the joystick for left and right movements and the A button. Players shoot coloured tiles/squares and fill a “territory” oriented according to an isometric perspective (i.e. turned by 45 degrees). Placing tiles of the same colour contiguously result in the tiles forming a “land” of the same colour. If two tiles become contiguous, the latter colour “wins”: a new red tile next to an old yellow tile yields two red tiles. If four tiles are placed together to form a 2x2 square, they transform in a small “land”, i.e. a place representing the divinity’s creative power. Players can create 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 lands, which have increasingly magnificent appearances. 5x5 lands occupy the entire width of the player’s territory and 5 of the 18 rows of territory. Every six seconds, new tiles appear next to the territory’s (upper) border for land-making attacks, and following stage-specific patterns.
The creation of lands has two goals in the game’s economy. First, when players make lands, they score increasingly higher amounts of points. A 5x5 land is worth 1 M points, a 4x4 land 100k points, a 3x3 land 10k, and a 2x2 land 1k. Second, players also have tools to “unmake” lands, thus turning them into weapons against the adversaries, and scoring points in the process. Any land, including basic tiles, can be unmade (i.e. removed) and sent to the adversary’s territory. Players must shoot a tile of the same colour as the land’s, against one of the land’s corners. In the simplest case, shoot one tile with another tile of the same colour, corner against corner. This will unmake the tile and send it in the adversary’s territory. Lands follow slightly more complex rules that can be summarised as follows.
First, unmaking lands results in the invasion of the territory and the shrinking of this territory. For instance, unmaking a 5x5 land sends 5x5=25 tiles in the adversary’s territory and lower the (upper) border of the territory by five levels. Second, unmaking lands creates “adamant tiles”, i.e. tiles that can be hit to raise the border when needed. When unmaking 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 lands, adamant tiles also respectively gain a “star”, “moon” and “sun-fire” icon. Hitting a “star” adamant tile will unmake all tiles and lands of the same colour as the hitting tile, thus launching a possibly conspicuous invasion and territory-clearing action. Unmaking a “moon” tile turns all tiles into the same colour as the hitting tile; unmaking a “sun-fire” fills out the territory with multiple lands. Making and unmaking lands thus amply boosts score, helps players managing their own territory, and invades the adversary’s territory.
Victory is achieved by completely invading the adversary’s territory, so that two conditions hold. Either at least one tile is below the fault line, or the border will have reached this line. After massive invasions by unmaking multiple lands, both conditions can be achieved at once. During the fights, characters appear on their lands sometimes via multiple avatars. Invasions and border drops trigger adorable animations of the divinities getting hit or chuckling due to their attacks, as well as still shots of a divinity appearing on screen. Memorable are Rinrei’s screens: she appears without any panties and bares her butt insofar as players unmake 3x3 or bigger lands. Each divinity sends invasive tiles according to patterns outlined during the character selection screen. Be sure to memorise them: conspicuous attacks can invade your territory with tiles that can potentially be turned into lands, for huge counters.
The last two paragraphs should have hopefully given you an overview of how the flow of the game works. Please let me expand this aspect with a few more considerations on scoring and on handling stages for the 1-CC. Scoring passes through the making and unmaking of 5x5 lands. First, making lands give bonus points, but unmaking points adds five times the “making” value. Unmaking a 5x5 thus results in 5 M extra points. Second, 5x5 lands can be turned into formless lumps: players send one tile to one corner of this land and turn into a “mere” collection of 24 tiles of the same colour. By sending again a new tile of the right colour in the same spot, a new 5x5 land will be created, and another 1 M will be scored. The counter-stop is at 99.999.990 points, but players can make and unmake lands indefinitely, apparently.
Winning battles for the land and thus 1-CC’ing the game passes through various techniques. First, unmaking tiles and invading the enemy’s territory is useful to create disruption. Second, unmaking smaller lands (2x2, 3x3) creates adamant tiles that can be used to raise the border if the adversary unmakes their own lands. Besides, it creates “start” adamant tiles that can be used to clean up one’s own territory. Third, making bigger lands (4x4, 5x5) requires speed and precision: characters can counter-attack all the time, so players must learn to quickly change invading tiles to useful land. Again, bigger lands result in potentially heavy invasions, and reward players with the very useful and lucrative “moon” and “sun” adamant tiles. Fourth, counter-invasions are crucial: the two final bosses will quickly invade, but will concede huge counter-invasions if they cannot win in one strike (e.g. if players counter-invade with a few tiles, very quickly).
Players can thus mix approaches according to the flow of the match. Low-score, small-land making approaches can “land” 1-CC’s by slowly invading the adversary’s territory with undesirable land (pun intended!). Higher-score approaches are riskier because they require players to make bigger lands while being invaded. However, they can result in invasions that will bring adversaries to their knees or alternatively in counter-invasions that fatally disrupt the adversary’s land-making flow. Players can then manage final blows as they best wish, and use small invasions (e.g. flows of tiles) to expand their own lands. A fun fact: the CPU tends to become less aggressive as time passes. Players can get a time bonus for quick territorial conquests, but after 72 seconds the time bonus will be null, and the CPU will become progressively mellow. Players who can endure battles of attrition may win even in seemingly desperate cases, to my experience.
Now that we have a good and deep grasp of the game, we can discuss its visual and aural merits in detail. The game features late 90s anime-style illustrations, a gorgeous use of pastel and full colours, and adorable mini-animations for the divinities, their attacks and stun animations. When characters attack or create bigger lands, they will move, jump or meditate via fluidly animated poses. When they receive an attack, their stun animations will often be hilarious. Naughty jokes about Rinrei aside, all the divinities also have their own charming style, with no character being stronger than the others. Since the game is a pit-based puzzle game, however, the beautifully decadent and elaborate graphics do not go beyond carefully crafted lands (i.e. pits) and animations. Nevertheless, the minimalist design and baroque illustrations conjure an exquisite atmosphere and world, in my view.
Let us talk about the OST and audio effects. The caramel J-Pop OST from Zuntata (Mu-Nakanishi, Yack, and others) is perhaps not their best work, but it creates a quite variegated sound tapestry with a strong melancholy feeling. This was one of the last F3’s games and Taito’s last in-house productions for the Arcade, after all, and some of these musicians went on to work for other companies and projects (e.g. Yack became a free-lancer). Nevertheless, the OST sounds sometimes electrifying and alien (e.g. Hiryu’s Stage 1), sometimes deeply melancholic (e.g. Soumei’s Stage six), and generally quite catchy. Voice samples and other sound bites, however, sometimes play at rather low and perhaps not pristine sample levels. For a Taito game on an F3 board, the audio sounds at time produced in a rush. Do not fret: the OST is deeply atmospheric, at any case.
Let us address the topic of difficulty, in the now familiar format of Facets. I believe that the game has three key facets that can determine how you can perceive its difficulty, and thus that the overall score of 50 points can be divided into 17, 17 and 16 points. Those are the game mechanics, the game’s quirky rank system, and the specific patterns to handle each adversary. Let us discuss them in this order. First, the game’s mechanics are easy to handle after some practice. Survival runs revolve around small but constant invasions (i.e. sending a stream of small lands), and those can be mastered quickly. Once players learn how to quickly make 2x2 and 3x3 lands, they can mix constant invasions with more elaborate attacks, and obtain adamant lands that prepare players for counter-invasions. Mastering this strategy requires some moderate practice, but it is rather feasible.
Second, the game’s apparent rank (system) seems supportive for players: only score-based runs seem to involve more aggressive behaviour from the CPU. If players aim at pure survival, the CPU seems to offer an almost linear challenge (i.e. stages progress in difficulty at a moderate pace). Only score-oriented runs seem to provoke the CPU into smarter and more elaborate attacks. Third, all adversaries have at least one initial pattern that can quickly exploited for quick, easy counter-invasions; these patterns seem to more frequently appear on low-scoring runs. This entails that players can disregard score and receive advantageous patterns as a “reward”, thus possibly reaching the last stages without ever receiving massive invasions. Late 1990s games would often feature this steep divide between survival- and score-oriented challenges, and Land Maker is no exception.
Overall, I would assign 4 points to each facet and its declinations, and a 12/50 score as a grand total (i.e. 4/17, 4/17 and 4/16 values for each respective facet). If players have a basic grasp of puzzle games, this game should be low-tier intermediate challenge, at least in my personal way of grading difficulty. I would then suggest that playing the game for score doubles the difficulty to a mid-tier expert level (i.e. 24/50 points), however. Players must master the technique that awards multiple Platinum lands and thus face increasingly aggressive adversaries. Counter-attacks become more difficult to perform, since players need to focus on building lands for points rather than for attack/defence. Nevertheless, the game might be a remarkably easy title to counter-stop in the genre, or among counter-stoppable games in general. Thus, my evaluation aims to reflect the fact that patient games may certainly achieve this result.
By this point of this revision, Xenny the wise Xenomorph is signalling me to wrap and skip my experiences with the game. Stupid alien assassin! I will write as much as I wish, about this and other games! But, of course, I wish to be concise and clear, dear readers: let us move to this final stanza. It is 2000 or so and I have discovered MAME during my first year as a civilian university student. Three years of military high school and (Navy) military academy have made me crave for a secluded life during the weekdays, and a party animal limbo during the weekends. I have no idea of what textbooks might be, and sometimes I forgot what BA I am enrolled in. These are really harrowing times, though I pretend that I am just catching up with life in general.
I start discovering new, unknown titles by the end of this year: I concentrate on Taito games I never had the chance to play in the arcade, like Land Maker, Elevator Action Returns and Warrior Blade. I admit that I have to use Raine to emulate Taito F3 games: these seem to be resource-consuming beasts, and my PC cannot handle them via MAME. Raine emulation is rather sketchy, and I frankly feel that this game suffers a lot from this emulator’s shortcomings. I decide to drop the game after a few frustrating attempts at clearing Stage four and making sense of the mechanics: the poorly emulated sound grates on my ears, too. It is now 2003, however, and I have steered my life in a better direction: I have almost completed my four-years BA by the third year, I have a solid but long-distance relationship; I am 1-CC’ing games regularly.
I buy this title on PS1, along with Namco’s Mr. Driller Great and Mitchell’s Puzz Loop ports. The Mitchell puzzle game is great but kicks my ass black and blue; Mr. Driller and Land Maker are glorious and much more approachable experiences, thankfully. I 1-CC arcade modes for both games easily, and I even start playing Land Maker for score. I give up once I reach the 40 M mark, as I find the game a bit too taxing for my current puzzle skills. Aside BlockOut, I actually suck at this genre. I admit that the game fades away in my gaming soon afterwards, but the OST accompanies until I complete my BA in 2004. When I visit my girlfriend on week-ends, I play it during the trips. When we split because I am moving to do an MA in The Netherlands, I play Stage six’s theme afterwards.
I believe that I could continue with the narration and add more uncomfortable details; I will let the thread hang in a precarious balance, instead. Let’s summarise, thus. Land Maker is a late 1990s pit-based puzzle game by Taito, released on their F3 board. The game vaguely resembles the game of Go, as players must win battles “for the land” by building structures of increasing complexity and conquer adversaries’ territory. The game features a lovely and quaint fantasy design, an intriguing OST by Zuntata, and a solid challenge for players who wish to pursue counter-stop scores. Lovers of all games Taito, puzzle games and of late era arcade games should try this title at least once. For those who may want a more traditional puzzle challenge, the PS1 mode also offers an interesting challenge. Have a try, and be the one divinity to rule all lands.
(2869 words; the usual disclaimers apply; the new material adds up to approximately 1000 words and two pages. Xenny seems satisfied, and I am having a case of “recursive nostalgia”. I am remembering the myself writing this squib one year ago, who remembered the myself playing the game in 2003, who remembered the 2000 me playing the title in Raine. Life and memory are complicated beasts. My girlfriend of then is fine, in case you wonder: she became my financial consultant for “homeland business matters”, of all possible outcomes in life).
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Halley's Comet (Taito, 1986)
I have decided to work on a relatively simple goal for the shmup sub-series of squibs: Halley’s Comet. BareKnuckleRoo’s excellent ST can be an ideal companion guide to this squib. SturmVogel Prime ’s review concentrates on the Hamster port. Here I concentrate on the game’s context, mechanics, and add some more bor…ahem, personal experiences about the game. So:
Halley’s Comet ( Taito, 1986) is a wave-based (ro)TATE/vertical shmup centered on the arrival of the eponymous comet in the solar system. Players must guide a valiant spaceship against the many waves of threatening invaders that seem to arrive with the comet. If successful, they literally enter the comet, an alien mothership in disguise, and destroy the main central AI. The game features a wave-based approach to the action (i.e. enemies come in rhythmically paced waves), interesting mid-bosses and several innovative mechanics for the time. The audio-visual department is not exactly sterling, even for the time of release, but the fast-paced and intriguing gameplay compensates for these aesthetic deficiencies brilliantly. The remainder of this squib argues this case in some detail.
A bit of Zeitgeist and plot will help us situate the game. In 1986, Capcom released Side Arms as an HORI(zontal) mecha-themed game, and Taito released Tokyo/Scramble Formation, a dieselpunk-themed game. Several other shmups emerged on that year(e.g. Toaplan’s Slap Fight/Alcon, Konami’s Salamander), as the genre was (relatively) thriving. Taito was going to publish the legendary Darius the subsequent year, but for 1986, Halley’s Comet offered a novel take on the genre with some twists. The plot is simple: the aforementioned comet is in reality a huge mothership, and aliens are trying to invade each of the nine solar system planets (yes, including Pluto) plus the Sun. It is up to the valiant Earh forces to repel the alien forces by destroying the comet each time it tries to invade one of these celestial bodies, then. Perhaps, in this game world humans have colonized the whole solar system.
Plot holes aside, the game has relatively simple and yet interesting, sometimes innovative mechanics for the time. The joystick controls ship’s movement in eight directions. The A button is the main shot button, which has a complex upgrade system. The ship starts with a central pea shot, adds a left and side stream, and can then add two further streams at a 30 degrees angle. Each sub-shot can increase in power four times before maxing out; the jet power up increases the ship’s speed up to level five, too. Players can also collect a “formation” power-up: eight small side helper ships will appear behind the ship, in a reverse V/wing formation. When players shoot via the A button, the side helpers will each shoot one bullet in a straight line. Thus, the V formation adds considerable firepower to the ship’s attack.
When players press the B button, a side helper sacrifices itself to clear the screen of bullets and have the ship and the other helpers “rewind” the action. Players thus start again from approximately 10 seconds before, in the stages’ structure, and work their way ahead a second time. Though apparently a drawback (players may run in the same trap(s) as before), this type of “bomb attack” can also prevent sudden deaths from which players may struggle to recover. The system thus works in a manner partly reminiscent of Tokyo/Scramble Formation’s helpers and their function as kamikaze attackers. Players can thus use helpers as an attacking weapon and as a last resort defensive bomb, with a limit of eight helpers at a time. Helpers can bite the dust easily, especially when they are at their full formation, so be sure to always have some on stock.
The game mechanics appear quite linear and yet innovative for the time. The stage design also follows a simple and yet interesting formula. Players must save the nine planets plus the Sun, and can achieve this result by clearing 10 triplets of three stages, hence 30 stages. For each planet, the first stage is the “take off’ stage, the second is the “approaching the comet/mothership” stage, and the third is the “destroy the core” stage, Gradius style. Players must destroy all enemies, who appear in fixed waves, and must avoid that enemies shoot bullets as well. Each enemy reaching the bottom of the screen (i.e. advancing to a planet) increases the planet’s destruction rate by 1%: bullets increase this ratio, after a few planets. At 100% destruction rate, it is immediate “game over”: aliens invade and conquer humans’ space, Space Invaders style.
Players must thus be as destructive as they can: a 0% clearance rate awards an extra life that adds up to the extends obtained at 100k points, and at every 200k points. Recovering from death is never easy, as befits this type of old school games: enemy waves can be overwhelming when armed with only a pea shooter. Players who survive long enough, usually a minute or so, may receive a full power-up upgrade as a prize and max out all weapons at once. Stages have a highly rhythmic pace: different waves of enemies appear for 30 seconds or so, and then a mid-boss appears, boss fights being potentially 10 seconds long. After 80 to 90 seconds, players fight the stage’s boss (e.g. various bigger ships), and then the nameless AI core at the end of the mothership/comet core stages. Though long, Halley’s Comet has a brisk, frenetic pace.
As readers may have guessed, the game is indeed a child of its time: simple, fast-paced but long, and with some interesting mechanics. Visually and musically, however, Halley’s Comet appears a bit “weak”, for a lack of a better term. The graphics tend to be rather simple and perhaps worth of 1985 titles (e.g. Taito’s Return of the Invaders, given their bland colour palette and under-detailed though decently animated sprites. Once players seen the dozen or so wave types of enemies and types of mid-bosses, they will have experienced all the game’s design variety. Comet/mothership stages tend to look identical, and the AI indeed always appears in the same form. For every planet, a theme colour tinges stages and enemies (e.g. Red for Mars). I admit that this chromatic choice is hardly exciting, and the ship’s design as a giant coffeepot is hardly thrilling either.
The OST is similarly basic, if at least unobtrusive. The first and second stage feature a rather corny military fanfare with a distinctive bitmap sound. Bosses have their own rather jingle-like themes, and the phase in which the ship invades the comet features an embarrassing attempt at a menacing theme. The third stages inside the comet have their specific dramatic theme, with the fight with the AI switching to a faster tempo. Sound effects are also as basic, bitmap-ish and corny as possible. Enemies make improbable sounds when shooting, and so does the main ship. In general, the game sounds even more dated than it looks, for its year of publication. It thus seems unbelievable to discover that Zuntata’s OGR/Hisayoshi Ogura is credited with the game’s OST. The game ultimately gives the impression that Taito wanted to recycle then-old hardware to produce a new and rather interesting shmup.
As our discussion should have outlined so far, the game looks plain but seems to have interesting mechanics. A further source of interest is the game’s difficulty. In my view, the game is possibly one of easiest shmups and games that can be counter-stopped, barring perhaps Toaplan’s Batsugun Special Edition. Players who also want a 1-CC and have good stamina can clear one loop in roughly one hour, if they wish. This is the case because the main Facet of difficulty in this game is stage design, in the guise of enemies’ waves and their order of appearance. For the first two planets (i.e. six stages: Earth, Venus), players should have an easy time surviving as long as they quickly destroy enemies. Waves appear at a relatively sedated pace and bosses are easy to handle; getting 0% planetary destruction rates should be easy, too.
From the third to the eighth planet (i.e. Mercury to Saturn), players must memorise when kamikaze enemies releasing revenge bullets appear. These enemies develop very angled trajectory when crossing the screen and can easily corner players. The last two planets (Jupiter, Mars) and six stages require strong rote learning, as enemies’ waves overlap and kamikaze attacks abound. Each of these last stages offers a good challenge, unless once players know exactly what waves are approaching and when to bomb/rewind attack. I would thus assign zero points to the first two planets, one points to each planet until the eighth, and one point to each of the final six stages: the total is 12/50 difficulty points. Players can continue into the second loop and counter-stop the score once clearing this loop: difficulty doubles at 24/50 points. Mid-range expert players can certainly seize this counter-stop, I believe.
Xenny is now telling me to move on to the personal memories part of the squib, as time is tyrant and those annoying Weyland-Yutani guys are up to no good again. So, let us dwell on past experiences of mine, once again. I am not sure about the year. However, I do remember that the first time I play Halley’s Comet at my uncle arcade is already when the game goes through a second cycle. I notice one day that my uncle has prepared a cab with this board in the “old glories/100 Lire room”, and that a few people seem to enjoy the game. No wonder: they seem to know the game already from its first release, and they are breezing through the first loop with gusto. Once the cab is free, though, I can finally enjoy a quick credit.
The game seems easy, even if by this point I have already 1-CC’ed a few games, including shmups like Thundercade. My first credit ends around Stage 11 or 12, trying to save the Sun (…OK, I feel already perplexed about this matter at a young age). For the next three weeks, progression is smooth; once I start reaching the final two planets, I switch to “rote memorization” mode, use stock lives to trudge through stages when losing lives, and memorise the enemy waves. The game suddenly offers a decent challenge, and I relish committing myself to this challenge. The day I 1-CC the first loop, my uncle, and a friend of his are behind me clapping and commenting something like “This game’s too easy, even the runt can clear it!”. Welcome to the hard school of tough love, kids: do not expect motivational speeches, ever.
I admit that after repeating the feat a few more times, my interest in the game nosedives. I see my uncle’s friend counter-stopping the game once, shortly after clearing the second loop. He then turns off the cab, turns it back on, and goes away. The feeling is that for the true experts, this game is almost a warmup exercise. I admit that the game seldom features in my MAME periods: over the decades, I focus on more stringent grudges and missed 1-CC opportunities. It was only recently, as I explained in the 1-CC thread, that I decided to go for the counter-stop. A few weeks of energy-sapping attempts see me reaching this mildly entertaining result, after only 30 years or so. I close one more page in the big book of trivial pursuits in my gaming life and promise myself to write up a squib about the experience.
Time to wrap up, folks. Halley’s Comet is a shmup by Taito released in 1986 that pits a valiant Earh ship against the eponymous comet, an alien mothership in disguise. Players must clear 30 stages divided into 10 waves of aliens attack again the solar system’s planets and, for some mysterious reason, the sun. The game features modest graphics and music, but has a fast-paced and highly entertaining game system. Players who can summon enough stamina levels and doge bullets for more than two hours can manage to achieve one of the easiest counter-stop scores in an arcade game. As a zany but solid time capsule of the 1980s, it is highly suggested to all shmup players who have access to Hamster releases. Go and play it: history lessons are important, and Halley’s comet will not be back until 2044 or so.
(2009 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Xenny is quite happy that I kept it snappy, in this squib, but frankly the game is straightforward enough that writing 5+ pages is not necessary. Besides, once I realised that my experiences with the game are overall modest, it was an easy feat to finally wrap up the squib. Anyway, more material is going to appear soon, and this squib will appear also in the “reviews” section in one week’s time, in edited form).
Halley’s Comet ( Taito, 1986) is a wave-based (ro)TATE/vertical shmup centered on the arrival of the eponymous comet in the solar system. Players must guide a valiant spaceship against the many waves of threatening invaders that seem to arrive with the comet. If successful, they literally enter the comet, an alien mothership in disguise, and destroy the main central AI. The game features a wave-based approach to the action (i.e. enemies come in rhythmically paced waves), interesting mid-bosses and several innovative mechanics for the time. The audio-visual department is not exactly sterling, even for the time of release, but the fast-paced and intriguing gameplay compensates for these aesthetic deficiencies brilliantly. The remainder of this squib argues this case in some detail.
A bit of Zeitgeist and plot will help us situate the game. In 1986, Capcom released Side Arms as an HORI(zontal) mecha-themed game, and Taito released Tokyo/Scramble Formation, a dieselpunk-themed game. Several other shmups emerged on that year(e.g. Toaplan’s Slap Fight/Alcon, Konami’s Salamander), as the genre was (relatively) thriving. Taito was going to publish the legendary Darius the subsequent year, but for 1986, Halley’s Comet offered a novel take on the genre with some twists. The plot is simple: the aforementioned comet is in reality a huge mothership, and aliens are trying to invade each of the nine solar system planets (yes, including Pluto) plus the Sun. It is up to the valiant Earh forces to repel the alien forces by destroying the comet each time it tries to invade one of these celestial bodies, then. Perhaps, in this game world humans have colonized the whole solar system.
Plot holes aside, the game has relatively simple and yet interesting, sometimes innovative mechanics for the time. The joystick controls ship’s movement in eight directions. The A button is the main shot button, which has a complex upgrade system. The ship starts with a central pea shot, adds a left and side stream, and can then add two further streams at a 30 degrees angle. Each sub-shot can increase in power four times before maxing out; the jet power up increases the ship’s speed up to level five, too. Players can also collect a “formation” power-up: eight small side helper ships will appear behind the ship, in a reverse V/wing formation. When players shoot via the A button, the side helpers will each shoot one bullet in a straight line. Thus, the V formation adds considerable firepower to the ship’s attack.
When players press the B button, a side helper sacrifices itself to clear the screen of bullets and have the ship and the other helpers “rewind” the action. Players thus start again from approximately 10 seconds before, in the stages’ structure, and work their way ahead a second time. Though apparently a drawback (players may run in the same trap(s) as before), this type of “bomb attack” can also prevent sudden deaths from which players may struggle to recover. The system thus works in a manner partly reminiscent of Tokyo/Scramble Formation’s helpers and their function as kamikaze attackers. Players can thus use helpers as an attacking weapon and as a last resort defensive bomb, with a limit of eight helpers at a time. Helpers can bite the dust easily, especially when they are at their full formation, so be sure to always have some on stock.
The game mechanics appear quite linear and yet innovative for the time. The stage design also follows a simple and yet interesting formula. Players must save the nine planets plus the Sun, and can achieve this result by clearing 10 triplets of three stages, hence 30 stages. For each planet, the first stage is the “take off’ stage, the second is the “approaching the comet/mothership” stage, and the third is the “destroy the core” stage, Gradius style. Players must destroy all enemies, who appear in fixed waves, and must avoid that enemies shoot bullets as well. Each enemy reaching the bottom of the screen (i.e. advancing to a planet) increases the planet’s destruction rate by 1%: bullets increase this ratio, after a few planets. At 100% destruction rate, it is immediate “game over”: aliens invade and conquer humans’ space, Space Invaders style.
Players must thus be as destructive as they can: a 0% clearance rate awards an extra life that adds up to the extends obtained at 100k points, and at every 200k points. Recovering from death is never easy, as befits this type of old school games: enemy waves can be overwhelming when armed with only a pea shooter. Players who survive long enough, usually a minute or so, may receive a full power-up upgrade as a prize and max out all weapons at once. Stages have a highly rhythmic pace: different waves of enemies appear for 30 seconds or so, and then a mid-boss appears, boss fights being potentially 10 seconds long. After 80 to 90 seconds, players fight the stage’s boss (e.g. various bigger ships), and then the nameless AI core at the end of the mothership/comet core stages. Though long, Halley’s Comet has a brisk, frenetic pace.
As readers may have guessed, the game is indeed a child of its time: simple, fast-paced but long, and with some interesting mechanics. Visually and musically, however, Halley’s Comet appears a bit “weak”, for a lack of a better term. The graphics tend to be rather simple and perhaps worth of 1985 titles (e.g. Taito’s Return of the Invaders, given their bland colour palette and under-detailed though decently animated sprites. Once players seen the dozen or so wave types of enemies and types of mid-bosses, they will have experienced all the game’s design variety. Comet/mothership stages tend to look identical, and the AI indeed always appears in the same form. For every planet, a theme colour tinges stages and enemies (e.g. Red for Mars). I admit that this chromatic choice is hardly exciting, and the ship’s design as a giant coffeepot is hardly thrilling either.
The OST is similarly basic, if at least unobtrusive. The first and second stage feature a rather corny military fanfare with a distinctive bitmap sound. Bosses have their own rather jingle-like themes, and the phase in which the ship invades the comet features an embarrassing attempt at a menacing theme. The third stages inside the comet have their specific dramatic theme, with the fight with the AI switching to a faster tempo. Sound effects are also as basic, bitmap-ish and corny as possible. Enemies make improbable sounds when shooting, and so does the main ship. In general, the game sounds even more dated than it looks, for its year of publication. It thus seems unbelievable to discover that Zuntata’s OGR/Hisayoshi Ogura is credited with the game’s OST. The game ultimately gives the impression that Taito wanted to recycle then-old hardware to produce a new and rather interesting shmup.
As our discussion should have outlined so far, the game looks plain but seems to have interesting mechanics. A further source of interest is the game’s difficulty. In my view, the game is possibly one of easiest shmups and games that can be counter-stopped, barring perhaps Toaplan’s Batsugun Special Edition. Players who also want a 1-CC and have good stamina can clear one loop in roughly one hour, if they wish. This is the case because the main Facet of difficulty in this game is stage design, in the guise of enemies’ waves and their order of appearance. For the first two planets (i.e. six stages: Earth, Venus), players should have an easy time surviving as long as they quickly destroy enemies. Waves appear at a relatively sedated pace and bosses are easy to handle; getting 0% planetary destruction rates should be easy, too.
From the third to the eighth planet (i.e. Mercury to Saturn), players must memorise when kamikaze enemies releasing revenge bullets appear. These enemies develop very angled trajectory when crossing the screen and can easily corner players. The last two planets (Jupiter, Mars) and six stages require strong rote learning, as enemies’ waves overlap and kamikaze attacks abound. Each of these last stages offers a good challenge, unless once players know exactly what waves are approaching and when to bomb/rewind attack. I would thus assign zero points to the first two planets, one points to each planet until the eighth, and one point to each of the final six stages: the total is 12/50 difficulty points. Players can continue into the second loop and counter-stop the score once clearing this loop: difficulty doubles at 24/50 points. Mid-range expert players can certainly seize this counter-stop, I believe.
Xenny is now telling me to move on to the personal memories part of the squib, as time is tyrant and those annoying Weyland-Yutani guys are up to no good again. So, let us dwell on past experiences of mine, once again. I am not sure about the year. However, I do remember that the first time I play Halley’s Comet at my uncle arcade is already when the game goes through a second cycle. I notice one day that my uncle has prepared a cab with this board in the “old glories/100 Lire room”, and that a few people seem to enjoy the game. No wonder: they seem to know the game already from its first release, and they are breezing through the first loop with gusto. Once the cab is free, though, I can finally enjoy a quick credit.
The game seems easy, even if by this point I have already 1-CC’ed a few games, including shmups like Thundercade. My first credit ends around Stage 11 or 12, trying to save the Sun (…OK, I feel already perplexed about this matter at a young age). For the next three weeks, progression is smooth; once I start reaching the final two planets, I switch to “rote memorization” mode, use stock lives to trudge through stages when losing lives, and memorise the enemy waves. The game suddenly offers a decent challenge, and I relish committing myself to this challenge. The day I 1-CC the first loop, my uncle, and a friend of his are behind me clapping and commenting something like “This game’s too easy, even the runt can clear it!”. Welcome to the hard school of tough love, kids: do not expect motivational speeches, ever.
I admit that after repeating the feat a few more times, my interest in the game nosedives. I see my uncle’s friend counter-stopping the game once, shortly after clearing the second loop. He then turns off the cab, turns it back on, and goes away. The feeling is that for the true experts, this game is almost a warmup exercise. I admit that the game seldom features in my MAME periods: over the decades, I focus on more stringent grudges and missed 1-CC opportunities. It was only recently, as I explained in the 1-CC thread, that I decided to go for the counter-stop. A few weeks of energy-sapping attempts see me reaching this mildly entertaining result, after only 30 years or so. I close one more page in the big book of trivial pursuits in my gaming life and promise myself to write up a squib about the experience.
Time to wrap up, folks. Halley’s Comet is a shmup by Taito released in 1986 that pits a valiant Earh ship against the eponymous comet, an alien mothership in disguise. Players must clear 30 stages divided into 10 waves of aliens attack again the solar system’s planets and, for some mysterious reason, the sun. The game features modest graphics and music, but has a fast-paced and highly entertaining game system. Players who can summon enough stamina levels and doge bullets for more than two hours can manage to achieve one of the easiest counter-stop scores in an arcade game. As a zany but solid time capsule of the 1980s, it is highly suggested to all shmup players who have access to Hamster releases. Go and play it: history lessons are important, and Halley’s comet will not be back until 2044 or so.
(2009 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Xenny is quite happy that I kept it snappy, in this squib, but frankly the game is straightforward enough that writing 5+ pages is not necessary. Besides, once I realised that my experiences with the game are overall modest, it was an easy feat to finally wrap up the squib. Anyway, more material is going to appear soon, and this squib will appear also in the “reviews” section in one week’s time, in edited form).
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Mar 09, 2025 4:02 am, edited 2 times in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Sly Spy (Data East, 1988)
Let us continue with some improbable choices in the R2RMKF genre that your trustworthy Rando has however inserted in the planned list of squibs: Data East’s Sly Spy/Secret Agent. This game seems to have a quite maligned reputation, like most of DECO’s games from the 1980s (…and the 1990s, OK). Personally, I always adored DECO’s output precisely because it was janky and often full of terrible design choices. If you wish to criticise my taste and then habitually visit fast food chains and eat pre-processed food…guess who will laugh last? Vitriolic comments aside, we move forward at a brisk pace. One observation: Data East games from the 1980s often have several revisions. I gloss over this detail because often the differences are hard to spot:
Sly Spy/Secret Agent (Data East, 1988) is a R2RMKF game belonging to the “tactical action” sub-genre (definition courtesy of Sima Tuna). The game pits a US spy against cookie cutter group of terrorists who want to conquer the world, for some mysterious reason. Our mysterious agent grabs his trustworthy gun, wears a white shirt with a bowtie, and goes on a legal rampage. Terrorist fellas (plus sharks and tigers, yay!) end up slaughtered by the hundreds as a result, and the world ends up in the hands of Dubya senior, yay squared! The game features some interesting mechanics, some questionable design choices, and an OST that is an acquired taste and a brilliant work in equal measures. Please read the rest of this squib, as I will pursue the dodgy goal of convincing you that the game is worth a try, and maybe even the pursuit of a 1-CC.
Let us move the contextual Zeitgeist of the game. In 1986, Namco released Rolling Thunder as an attempt to adapt the atmospheres of spy movies into the arcade videogaming fold. Players had limited ammo and had to be extremely careful in how they approached environmental hazards and enemies. A mildly hilarious kusoge attempt at replicating the formula was SunA Rough Ranger, while Taito’s Crime City implemented the formula in their own series copycatting Miami Vice. Data East’s foray in this short-lived genre is Sly Spy, which continues the company attempts at riding USA’s dominance in 1980s’ pop culture (cf. their hilarious Bad Dudes vs. Dragoninja beat’em up). The game also clearly offers a long series of “copycat homages” to the James Bond franchise, and players could be excused if they think that the game is an actual license. Let us just gloss over this topic, and concentrate on the plot and mechanics.
The game’s attract screen shows that the CWD (Council for World Domination: what else?) corners Dubya senior and starts taking over the almighty US government. Our hero, Agent “XXX”, must save the president and the country and the world, of course. Players start a credit by choosing their own three digits code also acting as a player’s initials for score (my favourite: 000 or 006, in homage to The Prisoner). They then swiftly navigate through eight stages in which our secret agent kills enemies while ski-diving, scuba-diving, bike-riding and even just walking. Bosses include blatant Bond rip-offs who throw hats, giant killer sharks, and a the CWD leader who hides behind an energy wall unarmed. Our sly spy gets a fitting price for saving the world: a lot of scantily clad women who accompany him on his Ferrari. In short: the game offers a medley of lame Bond tropes.
The game mechanics, as we have indirectly anticipated via my flippant summary of the plot, attempt to reconstruct Bond moments in sometimes successful, sometimes nebulous manners. Players use the joystick to move our agent in possibly eight directions, and the A button to shoot bullets via different weapons. The B button controls jump movements: use command movements (e.g. B+up, B+up-right) to trigger a high jump. The agent starts with 100 bullets at his disposal for the handgun, and can collect “B(ullet)” icons to obtain 50 more bullets. Some zako enemies drop machine guns, which the agent can collect to mow down other enemies: after players use up 100 bullets, the agent reverts to the basic gun. Stages four and seven take place underwater, so the agent uses a harpoon (standard bullet stock) or an underwater rifle (100 bullets). In Stage two, the agent rides a bullet-shooting motorcycle.
Players can also collect (seven) golden eagle icons to activate the “Golden Gun”, a huge assault rifle that shoots piercing laser shots. The GG lasts about ten seconds and permits players to quickly smash through levels, since each laser beam cancels enemies’ bullets and kills everyone in its line of range. The agent starts with ten bars of energy, and dies at zero bars. All levels except the first and last level release cola cans, which refill three bars, with some levels releasing possibly two bars (i.e. 3*2=6 bars). The agent may lose his weapon during the fight against Stage three’s boss if hit, and be force to kick the guy to death. The same problem may occur during Stage eight final boss’ rush, forcing players to kill the other bosses (and the final boss’ energy field) with rather deadly kicks. Saving the world via kicks: Mr. Bond, take notice.
The game is thus notable for offering various forms of “moving to the right” action: standard jump/shoot action, bike riding, scuba-diving action that resembles HORI(zontal) shmupping. Stage two’s bike-riding action however appears rather hastily designed: players can remain tucked near the left side border, kill enemies on bikes as they appear, and perform the occasional jumps. Scuba-diving Stages two and four require players to learn at which spots enemies suddenly appear and corner our agent: the agent cannot jump, being under water. Stages three, five and seven have two possible paths to reach the boss: players can choose which one suits their taste best, as their difficulties are roughly equivalent. Stage design is thus ingenious, even if it features some notable weaknesses (cf. Stage two) but also interesting idea (i.e. the branching paths).
The game’s basic weak spots revolve around two basic aspects (or Facets, in our terminology) that define this micro-genre. First, the game is extremely generous with bullet power ups. Forget Rolling Thunder perennial scarcity of bullets: even though losing the gun’s on Stage three’s boss resets the bullet stock, replenishing this stock is always easy. Thus, players can forget that they may play with limited ammos. Second, all stages have a time limit, but these limits are so generous that players may simply ignore them. Time extension power-ups also do not make this matter better, indeed. Thus, the game starts as an apparent tactical action game, but becomes closer to a standard action game from Stage three onwards. The Golden Gun is also an interesting but useless gadget: players can easily clear stages without ever using it. Colas also occur often: the “one-life” mechanic is in truth not so harsh.
I believe that to appreciate the merits of the game and how they balance the game’s non-trivial flaws, we should discuss Sly Spy’s difficulty in detail. First, however, allow me to discuss the game’s aural and visual departments to a thorough extent. DECO’s games from the 1980s tend to invariably look rough along the edges, and maybe even inside them. Animations are sometimes choppy and the chromatic palette tends to be restricted to certain predominant colours, as in the case of Act Fancer. Sly Spy is not exception: brown, grey, black and golden-ish hues predominate, and everyone except our agent has low animation frames. Stages involve some interesting setting choices: Stage two is on a highway, with some US big city blazing in the background. Stages five and six are in the complimentary huge underground bases that all organisations like CWD obviously have, complete with nuclear submarines.
The game thus looks relatively choppy and drab from a chromatic point of view, but manages to summon a certain bond-esque atmosphere in a relatively accurate manner. It is the OST that however creates this atmosphere in a much more poignant way, even if players may need to learn how to appreciate DECO’s 1980s highly distinctive sound design. Data East’s in-house band, Gamadelic, apparently used their own custom sound chips and synthetizers when creating (early) game OSTs. As a result, their 1980s often had this vaguely metallic, squeaky, nocturnal sound tapestry that no other videogame company had. The Sly Spy OST combines this unique sound signature with the distinctive bond-esque blend of Jazz, swing, and other genres often considered by its composers as a genre onto itself. A more detailed discussion of the single themes may help readers to appreciate why this is the case.
Stage one has two parts: a sky-diving opening stance with a dramatically paced theme, and a second part with the game’s main theme. This theme acts as a moody Jazzy leitmotif for the main type of action that returns on Stages three, five, six and eight. Stage two might involve a bland bike chase, but it offers a menacing, rock-like riff; Stages four and seven veer into moody Easy Listening territory, to recreate the feeling of underwater action. Boss battles feature an intense swing-flavoured theme that would probably aptly find place in a Roger Moore-era Bond flick. Add solidly executed voice samples, a cool ending theme, and a glass of Martini (shaken, not stirred). The OST’s composers, the mysterious “Azusa” and “Maro”, clearly knew their Bond music well.
The game’s merits thus seem strongly lie in its cool OST and atmosphere. A cquestion that may at this point arise in readers, however, is whether the game’s mechanics also contribute to making the game an enjoyable experience. I answer this question by discussing my analysis of the game’s difficulty, executed via the now familiar tool of Facets. I believe that the game offers two main facets of difficulty: the game’s complex mechanics and the Stages’ and Bosses’ layout. We partition the total 50 points into two halves of 25 points each, and discuss how we can assign values to each facet of difficulty. First, the game basic mechanics should be easy to master, and the fact that time and ammo resources appear in ample supply may apparently trivialise the action. Players may simply decide to blast through the game shooting every and each enemy in sight.
The game punishes this attitude in a subtly designed manner. First, the agent can only shoot at a relatively low pace, and enemies can quickly close in to the agent and shoot him, punch him in the face or even just touch him to cause damage. The agent’s jumps are not so immediate as they seem, and enemies can also drop grenade bombs against which the agent may inadvertently stumble. Add roaring tigers, jetpack-based enemies and rolling barrels. Stages often involve dozens of moving hazards and traps, and enemies with two H(it)P(oint)s (e.g. fat guys, tigers) have generous i(invicibility)-frames. Players must thus learn to time their shots and carefully manipulate the flow of enemies: bullets may be near endless, but tactical shooting and kills is nevertheless necessary. It is difficult, otherwise, to progress more than Stage three or four even if time limits are generous enough, as we have mentioned.
Second, the Stages require not only careful pacing, but also a good understanding of how to approach certain sections and bosses. Stages one and two are border-line trivial: Stage three’s boss may unarm the agent, so be sure to avoid his sudden attacks. Stages four and seven are underwater: be sure to know when sharks or enemy divers can hit the agent from the back. The bosses require simple but non-obvious tricks to die quickly: be sure to master them. The same reasoning applies to Stage five’s “Tigers pit” boss, and to Stage Six hat-throwing Bond rip-off. Stage eight requires patience and good knowledge of the key jumps, to conclude. Overall, I value the game’s complex mechanics (i.e. paced shooting) at 2/25 points, and the stages’ layout at 6/25 points (i.e. one point per Stages three to eight). At 8/50 points, Sly Spy is a higher-end beginners’ action game, indeed.
The game therefore offers a deceptively accessible challenge and elegant if quirky OST, though some Facets of the game may involve challenges and designs of lesser quality. As kid, however, all these concerns did not bother much, since I was quite delighted to play the game across various places and times. Xenny is signalling that we can move the discussion of the experiences and be snappy about it, possibly channelling a bit of Michael Caine’s attitude while exposing these memories (duh, Xenny, how to do so?). Anyway: In 1989, I sometimes frequent one arcade with a shady fame located in small, secluded nexus of alleys and a square in my hometown. The arcade has a good selection of games, but some of the people frequenting seem more interested in “that kind” of illegal deals than in games. My uncle is a cocky bastard: we sometimes visit to “spy the competition”.
One of the games that I play when visiting this arcade is indeed Sly Spy, along with other titles such as Capcom’s Ghouls’n Ghosts. I admit that my early attempts at both Sly Spy and Capcom’s maligned classic tend to end up in tears. My ability to dodge, jump and shoot in a carefully planned manner tends to be poor at this age. My visits usually involve me reaching the “Continue?” screen after a few minutes, embarrassingly enough. It is now 1990, and for this winter I must go to a different swimming pool in town, as the main swimming pool is under renovation. There are a few cabs at the entrance, including Taito’s Night Striker dedicated cab and Sly Spy. This time around, I have a torrid period of training on Rolling Thunder to support me, and thus a deeper grasp on how to approach this genre of game.
In the cold Winter in which I train at this location, I manage to 1-CC this title, Night Striker]’s many routes and The New Zealand Story, even. Sometimes people think that I attend the swimming pool to 1-CC games rather than to improve my swimming skills. The truth is: only the third title is relatively challenging, to discerning players who know how to play games. My gaming budget is scarce, so I learn quickly games because I do not want to be a spectator of gaming glory. In 2000, during my bittersweet “MAME year”, I rediscover this game again and quickly recover the 1-CC. From that day onwards, I spend quite a few Sundays getting the occasional 1-CC, across different places and times. When the day is cloudy and dreary and Data East’s soundbites appropriate for the day, I am 006 or 000 and quickly save the world from CWD.
Let us recap, as I see Xenny fatally suffocating from an overdose of juvenile tacky prose. Sly Spy is a R2RKMF title of the “tactical action” variety that heavily riffs off James Bond games. Players wear the dress of a US secret agent saving the world from CWD, some pesky secret organisation bent on world domination (as per acronym). The game features eight stages and different types of shooting action and a more accessible if sometimes sloppy approach to the “limited resources” style typical of the genre. Though perhaps not the most visually striking game, its OST has a peculiar charm and the game’s low difficulty allows beginner players to easily collect a 1-CC. Data East in the 1980s was a peculiar beast with its own charm: if you play this game, you should be able to appreciate this charm in its multi-faceted form with ease.
(2593 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Xenny is alive and well, but writing rather embarrassing prose in the “experiences” parts of squibs makes me chuckle quite a bit. I admit that I have never been that much into Bond movies, though I liked some of Ian Fleming’s original books and some of the modern novels and comics. I am quite more partial to Data East and, for that manner, other minnow late companies such as Jaleco and Video-System. Their ability to create generally flawed yet entertaining games made me cheer for them, as if they were the “arcade floor underdogs”. Thanks for all your games, guys.)
Sly Spy/Secret Agent (Data East, 1988) is a R2RMKF game belonging to the “tactical action” sub-genre (definition courtesy of Sima Tuna). The game pits a US spy against cookie cutter group of terrorists who want to conquer the world, for some mysterious reason. Our mysterious agent grabs his trustworthy gun, wears a white shirt with a bowtie, and goes on a legal rampage. Terrorist fellas (plus sharks and tigers, yay!) end up slaughtered by the hundreds as a result, and the world ends up in the hands of Dubya senior, yay squared! The game features some interesting mechanics, some questionable design choices, and an OST that is an acquired taste and a brilliant work in equal measures. Please read the rest of this squib, as I will pursue the dodgy goal of convincing you that the game is worth a try, and maybe even the pursuit of a 1-CC.
Let us move the contextual Zeitgeist of the game. In 1986, Namco released Rolling Thunder as an attempt to adapt the atmospheres of spy movies into the arcade videogaming fold. Players had limited ammo and had to be extremely careful in how they approached environmental hazards and enemies. A mildly hilarious kusoge attempt at replicating the formula was SunA Rough Ranger, while Taito’s Crime City implemented the formula in their own series copycatting Miami Vice. Data East’s foray in this short-lived genre is Sly Spy, which continues the company attempts at riding USA’s dominance in 1980s’ pop culture (cf. their hilarious Bad Dudes vs. Dragoninja beat’em up). The game also clearly offers a long series of “copycat homages” to the James Bond franchise, and players could be excused if they think that the game is an actual license. Let us just gloss over this topic, and concentrate on the plot and mechanics.
The game’s attract screen shows that the CWD (Council for World Domination: what else?) corners Dubya senior and starts taking over the almighty US government. Our hero, Agent “XXX”, must save the president and the country and the world, of course. Players start a credit by choosing their own three digits code also acting as a player’s initials for score (my favourite: 000 or 006, in homage to The Prisoner). They then swiftly navigate through eight stages in which our secret agent kills enemies while ski-diving, scuba-diving, bike-riding and even just walking. Bosses include blatant Bond rip-offs who throw hats, giant killer sharks, and a the CWD leader who hides behind an energy wall unarmed. Our sly spy gets a fitting price for saving the world: a lot of scantily clad women who accompany him on his Ferrari. In short: the game offers a medley of lame Bond tropes.
The game mechanics, as we have indirectly anticipated via my flippant summary of the plot, attempt to reconstruct Bond moments in sometimes successful, sometimes nebulous manners. Players use the joystick to move our agent in possibly eight directions, and the A button to shoot bullets via different weapons. The B button controls jump movements: use command movements (e.g. B+up, B+up-right) to trigger a high jump. The agent starts with 100 bullets at his disposal for the handgun, and can collect “B(ullet)” icons to obtain 50 more bullets. Some zako enemies drop machine guns, which the agent can collect to mow down other enemies: after players use up 100 bullets, the agent reverts to the basic gun. Stages four and seven take place underwater, so the agent uses a harpoon (standard bullet stock) or an underwater rifle (100 bullets). In Stage two, the agent rides a bullet-shooting motorcycle.
Players can also collect (seven) golden eagle icons to activate the “Golden Gun”, a huge assault rifle that shoots piercing laser shots. The GG lasts about ten seconds and permits players to quickly smash through levels, since each laser beam cancels enemies’ bullets and kills everyone in its line of range. The agent starts with ten bars of energy, and dies at zero bars. All levels except the first and last level release cola cans, which refill three bars, with some levels releasing possibly two bars (i.e. 3*2=6 bars). The agent may lose his weapon during the fight against Stage three’s boss if hit, and be force to kick the guy to death. The same problem may occur during Stage eight final boss’ rush, forcing players to kill the other bosses (and the final boss’ energy field) with rather deadly kicks. Saving the world via kicks: Mr. Bond, take notice.
The game is thus notable for offering various forms of “moving to the right” action: standard jump/shoot action, bike riding, scuba-diving action that resembles HORI(zontal) shmupping. Stage two’s bike-riding action however appears rather hastily designed: players can remain tucked near the left side border, kill enemies on bikes as they appear, and perform the occasional jumps. Scuba-diving Stages two and four require players to learn at which spots enemies suddenly appear and corner our agent: the agent cannot jump, being under water. Stages three, five and seven have two possible paths to reach the boss: players can choose which one suits their taste best, as their difficulties are roughly equivalent. Stage design is thus ingenious, even if it features some notable weaknesses (cf. Stage two) but also interesting idea (i.e. the branching paths).
The game’s basic weak spots revolve around two basic aspects (or Facets, in our terminology) that define this micro-genre. First, the game is extremely generous with bullet power ups. Forget Rolling Thunder perennial scarcity of bullets: even though losing the gun’s on Stage three’s boss resets the bullet stock, replenishing this stock is always easy. Thus, players can forget that they may play with limited ammos. Second, all stages have a time limit, but these limits are so generous that players may simply ignore them. Time extension power-ups also do not make this matter better, indeed. Thus, the game starts as an apparent tactical action game, but becomes closer to a standard action game from Stage three onwards. The Golden Gun is also an interesting but useless gadget: players can easily clear stages without ever using it. Colas also occur often: the “one-life” mechanic is in truth not so harsh.
I believe that to appreciate the merits of the game and how they balance the game’s non-trivial flaws, we should discuss Sly Spy’s difficulty in detail. First, however, allow me to discuss the game’s aural and visual departments to a thorough extent. DECO’s games from the 1980s tend to invariably look rough along the edges, and maybe even inside them. Animations are sometimes choppy and the chromatic palette tends to be restricted to certain predominant colours, as in the case of Act Fancer. Sly Spy is not exception: brown, grey, black and golden-ish hues predominate, and everyone except our agent has low animation frames. Stages involve some interesting setting choices: Stage two is on a highway, with some US big city blazing in the background. Stages five and six are in the complimentary huge underground bases that all organisations like CWD obviously have, complete with nuclear submarines.
The game thus looks relatively choppy and drab from a chromatic point of view, but manages to summon a certain bond-esque atmosphere in a relatively accurate manner. It is the OST that however creates this atmosphere in a much more poignant way, even if players may need to learn how to appreciate DECO’s 1980s highly distinctive sound design. Data East’s in-house band, Gamadelic, apparently used their own custom sound chips and synthetizers when creating (early) game OSTs. As a result, their 1980s often had this vaguely metallic, squeaky, nocturnal sound tapestry that no other videogame company had. The Sly Spy OST combines this unique sound signature with the distinctive bond-esque blend of Jazz, swing, and other genres often considered by its composers as a genre onto itself. A more detailed discussion of the single themes may help readers to appreciate why this is the case.
Stage one has two parts: a sky-diving opening stance with a dramatically paced theme, and a second part with the game’s main theme. This theme acts as a moody Jazzy leitmotif for the main type of action that returns on Stages three, five, six and eight. Stage two might involve a bland bike chase, but it offers a menacing, rock-like riff; Stages four and seven veer into moody Easy Listening territory, to recreate the feeling of underwater action. Boss battles feature an intense swing-flavoured theme that would probably aptly find place in a Roger Moore-era Bond flick. Add solidly executed voice samples, a cool ending theme, and a glass of Martini (shaken, not stirred). The OST’s composers, the mysterious “Azusa” and “Maro”, clearly knew their Bond music well.
The game’s merits thus seem strongly lie in its cool OST and atmosphere. A cquestion that may at this point arise in readers, however, is whether the game’s mechanics also contribute to making the game an enjoyable experience. I answer this question by discussing my analysis of the game’s difficulty, executed via the now familiar tool of Facets. I believe that the game offers two main facets of difficulty: the game’s complex mechanics and the Stages’ and Bosses’ layout. We partition the total 50 points into two halves of 25 points each, and discuss how we can assign values to each facet of difficulty. First, the game basic mechanics should be easy to master, and the fact that time and ammo resources appear in ample supply may apparently trivialise the action. Players may simply decide to blast through the game shooting every and each enemy in sight.
The game punishes this attitude in a subtly designed manner. First, the agent can only shoot at a relatively low pace, and enemies can quickly close in to the agent and shoot him, punch him in the face or even just touch him to cause damage. The agent’s jumps are not so immediate as they seem, and enemies can also drop grenade bombs against which the agent may inadvertently stumble. Add roaring tigers, jetpack-based enemies and rolling barrels. Stages often involve dozens of moving hazards and traps, and enemies with two H(it)P(oint)s (e.g. fat guys, tigers) have generous i(invicibility)-frames. Players must thus learn to time their shots and carefully manipulate the flow of enemies: bullets may be near endless, but tactical shooting and kills is nevertheless necessary. It is difficult, otherwise, to progress more than Stage three or four even if time limits are generous enough, as we have mentioned.
Second, the Stages require not only careful pacing, but also a good understanding of how to approach certain sections and bosses. Stages one and two are border-line trivial: Stage three’s boss may unarm the agent, so be sure to avoid his sudden attacks. Stages four and seven are underwater: be sure to know when sharks or enemy divers can hit the agent from the back. The bosses require simple but non-obvious tricks to die quickly: be sure to master them. The same reasoning applies to Stage five’s “Tigers pit” boss, and to Stage Six hat-throwing Bond rip-off. Stage eight requires patience and good knowledge of the key jumps, to conclude. Overall, I value the game’s complex mechanics (i.e. paced shooting) at 2/25 points, and the stages’ layout at 6/25 points (i.e. one point per Stages three to eight). At 8/50 points, Sly Spy is a higher-end beginners’ action game, indeed.
The game therefore offers a deceptively accessible challenge and elegant if quirky OST, though some Facets of the game may involve challenges and designs of lesser quality. As kid, however, all these concerns did not bother much, since I was quite delighted to play the game across various places and times. Xenny is signalling that we can move the discussion of the experiences and be snappy about it, possibly channelling a bit of Michael Caine’s attitude while exposing these memories (duh, Xenny, how to do so?). Anyway: In 1989, I sometimes frequent one arcade with a shady fame located in small, secluded nexus of alleys and a square in my hometown. The arcade has a good selection of games, but some of the people frequenting seem more interested in “that kind” of illegal deals than in games. My uncle is a cocky bastard: we sometimes visit to “spy the competition”.
One of the games that I play when visiting this arcade is indeed Sly Spy, along with other titles such as Capcom’s Ghouls’n Ghosts. I admit that my early attempts at both Sly Spy and Capcom’s maligned classic tend to end up in tears. My ability to dodge, jump and shoot in a carefully planned manner tends to be poor at this age. My visits usually involve me reaching the “Continue?” screen after a few minutes, embarrassingly enough. It is now 1990, and for this winter I must go to a different swimming pool in town, as the main swimming pool is under renovation. There are a few cabs at the entrance, including Taito’s Night Striker dedicated cab and Sly Spy. This time around, I have a torrid period of training on Rolling Thunder to support me, and thus a deeper grasp on how to approach this genre of game.
In the cold Winter in which I train at this location, I manage to 1-CC this title, Night Striker]’s many routes and The New Zealand Story, even. Sometimes people think that I attend the swimming pool to 1-CC games rather than to improve my swimming skills. The truth is: only the third title is relatively challenging, to discerning players who know how to play games. My gaming budget is scarce, so I learn quickly games because I do not want to be a spectator of gaming glory. In 2000, during my bittersweet “MAME year”, I rediscover this game again and quickly recover the 1-CC. From that day onwards, I spend quite a few Sundays getting the occasional 1-CC, across different places and times. When the day is cloudy and dreary and Data East’s soundbites appropriate for the day, I am 006 or 000 and quickly save the world from CWD.
Let us recap, as I see Xenny fatally suffocating from an overdose of juvenile tacky prose. Sly Spy is a R2RKMF title of the “tactical action” variety that heavily riffs off James Bond games. Players wear the dress of a US secret agent saving the world from CWD, some pesky secret organisation bent on world domination (as per acronym). The game features eight stages and different types of shooting action and a more accessible if sometimes sloppy approach to the “limited resources” style typical of the genre. Though perhaps not the most visually striking game, its OST has a peculiar charm and the game’s low difficulty allows beginner players to easily collect a 1-CC. Data East in the 1980s was a peculiar beast with its own charm: if you play this game, you should be able to appreciate this charm in its multi-faceted form with ease.
(2593 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Xenny is alive and well, but writing rather embarrassing prose in the “experiences” parts of squibs makes me chuckle quite a bit. I admit that I have never been that much into Bond movies, though I liked some of Ian Fleming’s original books and some of the modern novels and comics. I am quite more partial to Data East and, for that manner, other minnow late companies such as Jaleco and Video-System. Their ability to create generally flawed yet entertaining games made me cheer for them, as if they were the “arcade floor underdogs”. Thanks for all your games, guys.)
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Mar 09, 2025 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Momoko 120% (Jaleco, 1986)
This squib about Momoko 120% aims to situate the game between R2RKMF genre and the single-screen genre. OK, what I really mean is that the game mixes mechanics from the first genre with a handling of the camera close to the second genre. Or maybe that in the game you kill stuff to the right, mostly, because stages loop endlessly or…OK, the squib offers a better explanation of how the game works, please trust me. It is just that the links will appear in both the relative threads. Liminal game? Maybe. Member of both genres? Perhaps. Before we start, it is worth mentioning that Momoko appears as a flying character/ship in Jaleco’s Game Tengoku their quite impressive 1995 shmup (complete with Kawaii bomb animations). So, Jaleco time:
Momoko 120% (Jaleco, 1986) is an action/platform game in which the titular heroine Momoko must fight an evil fire demon, grow up and get married. The game features an outlandish and ultimately irrelevant premise, an interesting take on the “looping stage” variant of the single-screen formula, and music from Rumiko Takashi’s Urusei Yatsura anime adaptation. The game certainly represents Jaleco’s 1980s portfolio well, since its game mechanics are ultimately sound but carry a bit of jank, and has a distinctive 1980s anime-like look. Players who want to taste some of the more exotic and less polished but still entertaining aspects of 1980s’ arcade gaming will likely merit in this zany little game. My goal in this squib is to offer an argument about why this assertion is not as downright irrational and profoundly imbued with synth-wave-poisoned nostalgia. Jaleco games were cool: keep reading and you may see merit in my apparently outlandish statement(s).
The specific Milieu in which this game appeared is quite the intriguing story. By 1986, Urusei Yatsura’s was a supremely popular rom-com anime that incarnated some of the worst aspects of late Shōwa era. Millions of Japanese TV spectators were following Lum and Ataru Moroborshi’s misadventures, and the manga was also selling inordinate amounts of tankōbon. Game adaptations were however still in embryonal form: Jaleco obtained the rights for an arcade game, but at some point, and for mysterious reasons, they lost the license. A similar event happened for Konami’s Surprise Attack, originally slated to be a Batman movie tie-in; Capcom’s Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Aliens vs. Predators are two highly successful game that never received console ports. Apparently, game tie-ins are volatile affairs, at least in Japan. Jaleco programmers released the game anyway by introducing Momoko as the protagonist, but also by using Urusei Yatsura’s anime opening song.
The result is Momoko 120%, a game that uses builds a plot centered on marriage and that features U(rusei)Y(atsura)’s ultra-famous theme as the main theme. The plot is simple: a mysterious monster from the land of fire decides that Momoko must marry as soon as possible. The monster appears throughout Momoko’s childhood and teenage years, chasing her through building of increasing height and guiding hordes of other monsters against her. Momoko must fight these monsters with a gun-like weapon that can increase in power but can dodge fights by entering strange “warp zones”. Those zones test her jumping skills but reward her with a more powerful gun if she does not trip too many times. Once Momoko survives five stages and reaches the legal age for marriage (19 years, I guess), she can reach her betrothed and marry in a Christian church of unknown denomination.
The plot appears certainly campy to rugged readers unused to tackiness of rom-coms (and fiction, really) from past decades. It however follows a thematic thread from City Connection, the other Jaleco title that we previously discussed and that has US references. Luckily, the plot’s relevance for the game mechanics is minor though interesting. The joystick moves in eight directions: Momoko can walk left and right and crouch (down, and she shows her panties, ahem). The A button controls the gun: hold down to use a rather slow auto-fire rate (8hz or so), or tap for increased frequency. The gun can reach level 12 in power when Momoko collects “P” power-ups. These appear when Momoko kills a green, slug-like enemy or when she completes warp stages by tripping two or less times. The B button controls jumping in a nuanced manner, as we discuss next.
Momoko jumps when players press the B button: the exact type of jump depends on the command move that players execute. Momoko can jump to the left and to the right (A+left and B+right, respectively), but players can reduce the jumping length by tapping the opposite direction midway. Momoko can then high-jump and reach higher Stages floors when she jumps on the trampolines occurring throughout stages (B+up-right or B+up-left). Players must execute the move exactly when Momoko hits the trampoline, or it will be ineffective. Momoko can jump from the crouching position to perform a lower jump, and can also ascend or descend escalators. When bars and other ceiling supports are available, Momoko can jump and use her apparent impressive arm strength to move around and overcome chasms. Pushing down will let Momoko drop to the floor or, if players are clumsy enough, fall through chasms.
I offer this latter comment to explain the platforming aspects of the game. Each Stage is vertically divided into floors, i.e. levels separating Momoko from the exit. Stage one has five floors before Momoko can reach the ceiling, jump, and grab the supporting bars of a small blimp that brings her to safety. Stages two to five and seven to 13 floors, respectively. Stages form closed, looping environments, much like City Connection’s stages. If Momoko walks roughly two screens of length in one direction, she will appear again in the same starting point. Momoko can move to the upper or lower floor(s) by climbing stars or escalators: push up or down when close to either tool. She can then jump over the many floor holes and chasms, but will fall off to death if she mistimes her jumps.
The fire monster chases her in each stage by burning the floor immediately below Momoko’s starting floor and slowly raising this fire. When flames are close, a threatening theme start signalling that Momoko is about to fall into the flames. Momoko must thus move to the upper floors and then to the ceiling to catch the blimp as soon as possible, otherwise the fire monster will consume the Stage/building and Momoko with them. Monsters of various shapes and with various attacking patterns try to prevent Momoko from reaching safety: be sure to shoot them down as soon as possible, since each kill rewards points when the game computes the end-of-stage bonus. Enemies can also shoot bullets or appear very close to Momoko, often to catch a jumping Momoko. Be sure to shoot all the time and kills monsters as soon as they appear.
Momoko can also enter doors and rooms that appear on each floor (press Up when in front of a door/room). This action allows Momoko to warp to a different point of a floor or to enter Warp Stages: Momoko must quickly move to the right and jump obstacles that appear in her way (e.g. rolling tree trunks). If Momoko trips two, one or no times into the obstacles, the game will award one power-up to her gun (two, when clearing the stage without tripping). Warp stages are random: be sure to enter each room that is accessible on a floor, even if this may entail that Momoko ends up in a tricky part of a floor. After clearing five Stages, Momoko enters a final bonus stage: the church. Collect as many items as possible in 30 seconds, and then Momoko reaches the altar to finally get married.
As this description of the game mechanics entails, Momoko 120% is a blend of platform and action genres. The game loops indefinitely and awards two extends at 30k and 100k, so players can play if they can manage their lives and the apparently constant difficulty. The game simple mechanics and concept dovetail nicely with simple but clear graphics and music. Momoko has a simple palette typical of early 1980s titles (e.g. Teddy Boy Blues, as we discussed in a previous entry). Momoko grows into a different age after each stage (five, seven, 11, 15 and 18) and thus blossoms as the game progresses. Quite a few animations involve “accidental” panty shots, but the lack of sprite details to cursory curiosities. Momoko and the monsters have simple animations, and the various Stages (kindergarten, grade, junior and senior high, work/tv studio) have static though cute backgrounds.
The functional graphics have nevertheless a certain anime look that combines well with the sounds. Again, the one song that players hear when they play is a relatively well-rendered 8-bit version of “Lumo no Lobu theme” from US. If players have never heard the song, they will not recognize it and probably ignore it after a few loops. If they know, they may indeed concede a smirk and may pass judgement if they do not know the game’s peculiar history. Either way, the theme song swaps places with the “fire theme” if flames are encroaching a floor, but the theme resumes once Momoko ascends to a safer floor. The warp stages have their own simple theme, and so does the final stage. Sound effects are “8-bit simple” and deliciously loud, whether they come from monsters or from the shooting gun. The game looks and sounds simple but cute, overall.
Now that we should have a good grasp of the game’s mechanics and Stage design, we can approach the discussion of Momoko 1020%’s difficulty via our usual conceptual tool of Facets. I propose that the game’s difficulty originates in two macro-facets: the game mechanics and the specific attack patterns of the various monsters. Once players master these facets, they could potentially play the game forever or until their stamina fails them. I argue with this is the case in the next few paragraphs. First, players can use the gun by exploiting the low-frequency auto-fire or by tapping quickly. The gun shoots different types of bullets depending on power level, so players may need some time to learn which approach better suits a gun level. Second, players may need time to master the five command jumps (high and low, up-left, and up-right, trampoline jump). Timing jumps is thus essential and tricky.
I take that these five facets represent the total of game mechanics that players must master towards the 1-CC, however. I also assume that levels per se do not offer specific challenges, though players may need to be careful to enter warp rooms and doors. Monsters, on the other hand, require some practice before they can transform to manageable threats. Personally, I believe that five monster types have attacking or spawning or attacking patterns that require specific killing strategies. Those are blue flying fish, yellow ghosts, fire demons from Stage two onwards; pink floating amoebas, green-ish blobs (respectively Stage three, four); and grey UFOs (Stage five). Players should kill these monsters as soon as possible or learn the exact evading manoeuvre if they close in; once they learn these manoeuvres, they should perform them consistently. Movement across floors and Stages is only safe with no enemies in sight.
As this compact discussion suggests, the game’s difficulty does not appear excessive. If we partition our standard score of 50 into two facets worth 25 points each, then we can assign 5/25 points to the (five) game mechanics and 6/25 points to the (five) monster patterns. Momoko 120% thus receives a 11/50 total score for difficulty, i.e. a value that places the game at the beginning of the intermediate level of difficulty. The loops seem to marginally increase in difficulty, with the game apparently rising to “hard” and “very hard” dipswitch levels. We can add 3 points for each increase for a total of 17/50 points (i.e. higher intermediate level). From loop four or so, the difficulty seems to plateau, and stamina may kick in as a deciding factor for the end of a credit. However, players with intermediate skills may clear one loop easily, as an “unofficial” 1-CC.
Xenny has been looking at the clock for a while, now, so I guess that it is time to switch to my discussion of personal experiences, I guess. For this game, I can offer a perhaps short but maybe interesting yarn, as my experiences with the game are somewhat limited. It is 1989 and for several family reasons, I am going each weekend to my grandparents’ villa in the small village whose name evokes Poplars’ forests. Winters are just harsh in this part of Italy, but this village is at the lowest point of the valley, a mere 630 meters. We get more snow but less wind, which makes winter weekends quite atmospheric and enjoyable. This, of course, for those of us who like skies overcast for months and mostly indoors activities like studying, swimming, playing videogames and the occasional night walk in the dark, dangerous woods.
The village’s bar has a tradition of having older games, as renting boards from past years means paying a lower fee to distributors. The bar’s owner knows that people will play games anyway, so it is a wise business move for her. In this particular winter, the distributor has put up Momoko 120% in one cab, Capcom’s Tiger Road in another cab, and probably Technōs’ Super Dodge Ball in the third cab. “Somebody must hate people attending this mini-arcade”, I think after trying a credit of each game. Luckily, my banchō mate knows how to handle the games already, and he is very happy to spend dark winter afternoons teaching me each game. His thuggish, rough persona is in truth pleasant when complemented with a genuine display of friendship and that mildly flippant pleasure he finds in “teaching the city boy about dominating games”.
We will return to Tiger Road in the next squib, and Super Dodge Ball may be material for future musings. For now, I can say that we have many discussions in impeccable Aquilan dialect about how to handle the “poopy” (i.e. janky) types of jumps and how to handle each enemy type. I swear that if I can speak my own local and ancient language with a good degree of fluency, it is because I played very modern games with this very genuine lad. Over five weekends, we spend some good times slowly mastering each Stage. By Christmas or so, I can clear the first loop and celebrate with local torrone chocolates and pear juice with my friend: I play. Hey, we’re kids and the owner is the kind of lady that would call the cops and report kids who even dream of buying alcohol.
Let us set aside the fact that videogames had an illegal status for anyone younger than 14. We also leave aside the Tiger Road story: please just wait for the next squib. We move to 2013, when I decide to 1-CC the game again when I am spending my first year of work in Sweden. This time around, it is a very cold and dark January and I am just fiddling with MAME games. My wife, by chance, sees me playing this game and thinks that I am doing it only for the panty shots (ahem). She then recognizes the theme from UY. We leave the game aside and spend some time to discover that the game was based on a missed license. The game can wait, as we decide on a whim to watch the old UY anime movies during the cold January nights of Stockholm.
Let us recap, instead of dwelling too much into nostalgic and bittersweet memories. Momoko 120% is a R2RKMF/platform game with a “bounded stage” structure. Players control Momoko, a girl who must escape from the “Fire Monster” and navigate five Stages before she can finally marry. The game should have been a U(rusei)Y(atsura) tie-in, but ended up being a solid game featuring the “Lumo no Lobu theme” as the main theme song. Players who want to experience one of the easier arcade platform/action titles of the 1980s and appreciate Jaleco’s crafty if slightly janky early efforts should have a go at the game. Shmups fans who know Jaleco’s Game Tengoku may also wish to check Momoko’s origins as an anime-like heroine. As a time-capsule of the 1980s and of Jaleco’s output, Momoko 120% is a warmly suggested game from your humble Rando.
(2633 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I honestly feel that Momoko’s design in Game Tengoku is quintessential “1990s moe”, without being too morbid. This is one of those games that I like to play on a certain type of dreary winter day, as I feel that bright and simple colours wake me up when the overcast skies make me sleepy. It is not that I like overcast skies. It is just that I feel more at home during those days, given that my hometown is one of those high-altitude places that do not enjoy a single ray light, from October to April.)
Momoko 120% (Jaleco, 1986) is an action/platform game in which the titular heroine Momoko must fight an evil fire demon, grow up and get married. The game features an outlandish and ultimately irrelevant premise, an interesting take on the “looping stage” variant of the single-screen formula, and music from Rumiko Takashi’s Urusei Yatsura anime adaptation. The game certainly represents Jaleco’s 1980s portfolio well, since its game mechanics are ultimately sound but carry a bit of jank, and has a distinctive 1980s anime-like look. Players who want to taste some of the more exotic and less polished but still entertaining aspects of 1980s’ arcade gaming will likely merit in this zany little game. My goal in this squib is to offer an argument about why this assertion is not as downright irrational and profoundly imbued with synth-wave-poisoned nostalgia. Jaleco games were cool: keep reading and you may see merit in my apparently outlandish statement(s).
The specific Milieu in which this game appeared is quite the intriguing story. By 1986, Urusei Yatsura’s was a supremely popular rom-com anime that incarnated some of the worst aspects of late Shōwa era. Millions of Japanese TV spectators were following Lum and Ataru Moroborshi’s misadventures, and the manga was also selling inordinate amounts of tankōbon. Game adaptations were however still in embryonal form: Jaleco obtained the rights for an arcade game, but at some point, and for mysterious reasons, they lost the license. A similar event happened for Konami’s Surprise Attack, originally slated to be a Batman movie tie-in; Capcom’s Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Aliens vs. Predators are two highly successful game that never received console ports. Apparently, game tie-ins are volatile affairs, at least in Japan. Jaleco programmers released the game anyway by introducing Momoko as the protagonist, but also by using Urusei Yatsura’s anime opening song.
The result is Momoko 120%, a game that uses builds a plot centered on marriage and that features U(rusei)Y(atsura)’s ultra-famous theme as the main theme. The plot is simple: a mysterious monster from the land of fire decides that Momoko must marry as soon as possible. The monster appears throughout Momoko’s childhood and teenage years, chasing her through building of increasing height and guiding hordes of other monsters against her. Momoko must fight these monsters with a gun-like weapon that can increase in power but can dodge fights by entering strange “warp zones”. Those zones test her jumping skills but reward her with a more powerful gun if she does not trip too many times. Once Momoko survives five stages and reaches the legal age for marriage (19 years, I guess), she can reach her betrothed and marry in a Christian church of unknown denomination.
The plot appears certainly campy to rugged readers unused to tackiness of rom-coms (and fiction, really) from past decades. It however follows a thematic thread from City Connection, the other Jaleco title that we previously discussed and that has US references. Luckily, the plot’s relevance for the game mechanics is minor though interesting. The joystick moves in eight directions: Momoko can walk left and right and crouch (down, and she shows her panties, ahem). The A button controls the gun: hold down to use a rather slow auto-fire rate (8hz or so), or tap for increased frequency. The gun can reach level 12 in power when Momoko collects “P” power-ups. These appear when Momoko kills a green, slug-like enemy or when she completes warp stages by tripping two or less times. The B button controls jumping in a nuanced manner, as we discuss next.
Momoko jumps when players press the B button: the exact type of jump depends on the command move that players execute. Momoko can jump to the left and to the right (A+left and B+right, respectively), but players can reduce the jumping length by tapping the opposite direction midway. Momoko can then high-jump and reach higher Stages floors when she jumps on the trampolines occurring throughout stages (B+up-right or B+up-left). Players must execute the move exactly when Momoko hits the trampoline, or it will be ineffective. Momoko can jump from the crouching position to perform a lower jump, and can also ascend or descend escalators. When bars and other ceiling supports are available, Momoko can jump and use her apparent impressive arm strength to move around and overcome chasms. Pushing down will let Momoko drop to the floor or, if players are clumsy enough, fall through chasms.
I offer this latter comment to explain the platforming aspects of the game. Each Stage is vertically divided into floors, i.e. levels separating Momoko from the exit. Stage one has five floors before Momoko can reach the ceiling, jump, and grab the supporting bars of a small blimp that brings her to safety. Stages two to five and seven to 13 floors, respectively. Stages form closed, looping environments, much like City Connection’s stages. If Momoko walks roughly two screens of length in one direction, she will appear again in the same starting point. Momoko can move to the upper or lower floor(s) by climbing stars or escalators: push up or down when close to either tool. She can then jump over the many floor holes and chasms, but will fall off to death if she mistimes her jumps.
The fire monster chases her in each stage by burning the floor immediately below Momoko’s starting floor and slowly raising this fire. When flames are close, a threatening theme start signalling that Momoko is about to fall into the flames. Momoko must thus move to the upper floors and then to the ceiling to catch the blimp as soon as possible, otherwise the fire monster will consume the Stage/building and Momoko with them. Monsters of various shapes and with various attacking patterns try to prevent Momoko from reaching safety: be sure to shoot them down as soon as possible, since each kill rewards points when the game computes the end-of-stage bonus. Enemies can also shoot bullets or appear very close to Momoko, often to catch a jumping Momoko. Be sure to shoot all the time and kills monsters as soon as they appear.
Momoko can also enter doors and rooms that appear on each floor (press Up when in front of a door/room). This action allows Momoko to warp to a different point of a floor or to enter Warp Stages: Momoko must quickly move to the right and jump obstacles that appear in her way (e.g. rolling tree trunks). If Momoko trips two, one or no times into the obstacles, the game will award one power-up to her gun (two, when clearing the stage without tripping). Warp stages are random: be sure to enter each room that is accessible on a floor, even if this may entail that Momoko ends up in a tricky part of a floor. After clearing five Stages, Momoko enters a final bonus stage: the church. Collect as many items as possible in 30 seconds, and then Momoko reaches the altar to finally get married.
As this description of the game mechanics entails, Momoko 120% is a blend of platform and action genres. The game loops indefinitely and awards two extends at 30k and 100k, so players can play if they can manage their lives and the apparently constant difficulty. The game simple mechanics and concept dovetail nicely with simple but clear graphics and music. Momoko has a simple palette typical of early 1980s titles (e.g. Teddy Boy Blues, as we discussed in a previous entry). Momoko grows into a different age after each stage (five, seven, 11, 15 and 18) and thus blossoms as the game progresses. Quite a few animations involve “accidental” panty shots, but the lack of sprite details to cursory curiosities. Momoko and the monsters have simple animations, and the various Stages (kindergarten, grade, junior and senior high, work/tv studio) have static though cute backgrounds.
The functional graphics have nevertheless a certain anime look that combines well with the sounds. Again, the one song that players hear when they play is a relatively well-rendered 8-bit version of “Lumo no Lobu theme” from US. If players have never heard the song, they will not recognize it and probably ignore it after a few loops. If they know, they may indeed concede a smirk and may pass judgement if they do not know the game’s peculiar history. Either way, the theme song swaps places with the “fire theme” if flames are encroaching a floor, but the theme resumes once Momoko ascends to a safer floor. The warp stages have their own simple theme, and so does the final stage. Sound effects are “8-bit simple” and deliciously loud, whether they come from monsters or from the shooting gun. The game looks and sounds simple but cute, overall.
Now that we should have a good grasp of the game’s mechanics and Stage design, we can approach the discussion of Momoko 1020%’s difficulty via our usual conceptual tool of Facets. I propose that the game’s difficulty originates in two macro-facets: the game mechanics and the specific attack patterns of the various monsters. Once players master these facets, they could potentially play the game forever or until their stamina fails them. I argue with this is the case in the next few paragraphs. First, players can use the gun by exploiting the low-frequency auto-fire or by tapping quickly. The gun shoots different types of bullets depending on power level, so players may need some time to learn which approach better suits a gun level. Second, players may need time to master the five command jumps (high and low, up-left, and up-right, trampoline jump). Timing jumps is thus essential and tricky.
I take that these five facets represent the total of game mechanics that players must master towards the 1-CC, however. I also assume that levels per se do not offer specific challenges, though players may need to be careful to enter warp rooms and doors. Monsters, on the other hand, require some practice before they can transform to manageable threats. Personally, I believe that five monster types have attacking or spawning or attacking patterns that require specific killing strategies. Those are blue flying fish, yellow ghosts, fire demons from Stage two onwards; pink floating amoebas, green-ish blobs (respectively Stage three, four); and grey UFOs (Stage five). Players should kill these monsters as soon as possible or learn the exact evading manoeuvre if they close in; once they learn these manoeuvres, they should perform them consistently. Movement across floors and Stages is only safe with no enemies in sight.
As this compact discussion suggests, the game’s difficulty does not appear excessive. If we partition our standard score of 50 into two facets worth 25 points each, then we can assign 5/25 points to the (five) game mechanics and 6/25 points to the (five) monster patterns. Momoko 120% thus receives a 11/50 total score for difficulty, i.e. a value that places the game at the beginning of the intermediate level of difficulty. The loops seem to marginally increase in difficulty, with the game apparently rising to “hard” and “very hard” dipswitch levels. We can add 3 points for each increase for a total of 17/50 points (i.e. higher intermediate level). From loop four or so, the difficulty seems to plateau, and stamina may kick in as a deciding factor for the end of a credit. However, players with intermediate skills may clear one loop easily, as an “unofficial” 1-CC.
Xenny has been looking at the clock for a while, now, so I guess that it is time to switch to my discussion of personal experiences, I guess. For this game, I can offer a perhaps short but maybe interesting yarn, as my experiences with the game are somewhat limited. It is 1989 and for several family reasons, I am going each weekend to my grandparents’ villa in the small village whose name evokes Poplars’ forests. Winters are just harsh in this part of Italy, but this village is at the lowest point of the valley, a mere 630 meters. We get more snow but less wind, which makes winter weekends quite atmospheric and enjoyable. This, of course, for those of us who like skies overcast for months and mostly indoors activities like studying, swimming, playing videogames and the occasional night walk in the dark, dangerous woods.
The village’s bar has a tradition of having older games, as renting boards from past years means paying a lower fee to distributors. The bar’s owner knows that people will play games anyway, so it is a wise business move for her. In this particular winter, the distributor has put up Momoko 120% in one cab, Capcom’s Tiger Road in another cab, and probably Technōs’ Super Dodge Ball in the third cab. “Somebody must hate people attending this mini-arcade”, I think after trying a credit of each game. Luckily, my banchō mate knows how to handle the games already, and he is very happy to spend dark winter afternoons teaching me each game. His thuggish, rough persona is in truth pleasant when complemented with a genuine display of friendship and that mildly flippant pleasure he finds in “teaching the city boy about dominating games”.
We will return to Tiger Road in the next squib, and Super Dodge Ball may be material for future musings. For now, I can say that we have many discussions in impeccable Aquilan dialect about how to handle the “poopy” (i.e. janky) types of jumps and how to handle each enemy type. I swear that if I can speak my own local and ancient language with a good degree of fluency, it is because I played very modern games with this very genuine lad. Over five weekends, we spend some good times slowly mastering each Stage. By Christmas or so, I can clear the first loop and celebrate with local torrone chocolates and pear juice with my friend: I play. Hey, we’re kids and the owner is the kind of lady that would call the cops and report kids who even dream of buying alcohol.
Let us set aside the fact that videogames had an illegal status for anyone younger than 14. We also leave aside the Tiger Road story: please just wait for the next squib. We move to 2013, when I decide to 1-CC the game again when I am spending my first year of work in Sweden. This time around, it is a very cold and dark January and I am just fiddling with MAME games. My wife, by chance, sees me playing this game and thinks that I am doing it only for the panty shots (ahem). She then recognizes the theme from UY. We leave the game aside and spend some time to discover that the game was based on a missed license. The game can wait, as we decide on a whim to watch the old UY anime movies during the cold January nights of Stockholm.
Let us recap, instead of dwelling too much into nostalgic and bittersweet memories. Momoko 120% is a R2RKMF/platform game with a “bounded stage” structure. Players control Momoko, a girl who must escape from the “Fire Monster” and navigate five Stages before she can finally marry. The game should have been a U(rusei)Y(atsura) tie-in, but ended up being a solid game featuring the “Lumo no Lobu theme” as the main theme song. Players who want to experience one of the easier arcade platform/action titles of the 1980s and appreciate Jaleco’s crafty if slightly janky early efforts should have a go at the game. Shmups fans who know Jaleco’s Game Tengoku may also wish to check Momoko’s origins as an anime-like heroine. As a time-capsule of the 1980s and of Jaleco’s output, Momoko 120% is a warmly suggested game from your humble Rando.
(2633 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I honestly feel that Momoko’s design in Game Tengoku is quintessential “1990s moe”, without being too morbid. This is one of those games that I like to play on a certain type of dreary winter day, as I feel that bright and simple colours wake me up when the overcast skies make me sleepy. It is not that I like overcast skies. It is just that I feel more at home during those days, given that my hometown is one of those high-altitude places that do not enjoy a single ray light, from October to April.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Tiger Road (Capcom, 1987)
My plans were to add some more shmups elucubrations in this post, but I had this moment of inspiration and I decided to conclude the Tiger Road squib and with the “Poplars’ place story” from last squib. Without dilly-dallying:
Tiger Road (Capcom, 1987) is a R2RKMF game with strong platform elements that takes place in a mythical, Wuxia-inspired version of China. The evil Ryuken boss decides to kidnap the children studying at a prestigious martial arts monastery. It is up to Lee “tiger” Wong, the strongest monk in the monastery, to rescue the children and bring them home. Lee Wong must thus navigate perilous lands and slaughter hordes of evil-does in league with Ryuken to achieve his goal. After defeating four generals in their castles, Lee Wong and Ryuken have their showdown, in perfect “Tiger vs. Dragon” showdown. The game is notable for featuring stages neatly divided into distinct areas (or castle rooms), each requiring its own puzzle-like approach and tactics, and a distinctive Wuxia setting. The goal of this squib is to argue that the game is entertaining and well-designed, notwithstanding some idiosyncratic challenges players can face.
A bit of context, s’il vous plait. In 1987, Capcom was an up and coming but still relatively young videogame company that had to land big arcade hits. During their first few years, Capcom programmers released several platform/action games that quickly established their design prowess in the genre. Black Tiger, Bionic Commando/Top Secret and Ghosts’n Goblins could certainly compete with other platform/action games like Taito’s Rastan, Tecmo’s Rygar or Sega/Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land. These Capcom games placed a perhaps strong emphasis on immediate action and multi-directional stages but also offered interesting dilemmas regarding how to “solve” each stage. Tiger Road saw thus its release in a juncture of the 1980s in which the R2RMKF genre, platform titles and aspects of puzzle games began to interact in deeply interesting manners. Tiger Road also offered a exquisitely novel setting, for the time.
This novelty can emerge once we discuss the plot and game setting. The game pits the Shaolin-like monk Lee Wong against warlord Ryuken (lit’ Dragon punch’) and his armies. Monks must profess celibacy, so it is imperative for them to train young disciples to maintain their order alive. Ryuken seems to have a similar problem: his army needs fresh blood to survive. After a short intro animation showing Ryuken’s zakus kidnapping these children and slaughtering monks, we see an old seer trusting Lee Wong with a rescue mission. This summary may seem like the premise of a Wuxia novel or movie, i.e. one of those “martial errant knights” so popular in Chinese and Asian cultures. Case in point, “Lee Wong” is also the pseudonym of the main director and martial artist spear-heading the game’s production, who apparently only worked on this project while at Capcom.
The game uses this genre-tailored premise and rich setting to devise a peculiar gaming experience. The joystick controls Lee Wong’s movement in eight directions. Lee Wong can move left and right, crouch (down) and jump (up); on certain stages, he dons his magic vest and fly in any direction. The A button is for attacks with any of the three weapons of choice. Lee Wong starts with a flail axe but can also switch to a long spear or a Chinese-style flail as alternative weapons. The axe has mid-range reach and a relatively high attack frequency; the spear has long range but narrow reach and high attack frequency. The flail has mid-range reach and mid-low frequency, but it moves according to a zig-zagging movement that can easily hit jumping and crouching enemies. When Lee Wong collects a “POW” item, weapons sensibly increase in reach and attack frequency.
Lee Wong can also jump in various directions, though the nature of the jumps may require some frustrating amounts of time to learn and master. Pressing the B button results into a short, low jump to the left, up, or to the right. Holding the B button results into an increasingly high jump in any of these directions. Lee Wong can land multiple attacks while performing these high attacks but becomes highly vulnerable to any aerial attacks. Some stages include stairs that Lee Wong can climb to raise or descend floor(s) within the stage: often, Lee Wong can also jump up to the next floor (e.g. in Stage 1-2). High jumps thus can quickly turn into hazardous moves possibly resulting into instant deaths, often in the most infuriating manners. If players are very careful about when and how they perform them, these deaths can occur sparsely across credits.
Lee Wong can collect various types of power-ups and bonus point items when killing zakos. Blue and red gourds give refill some and all of Lee Wong’s 16 H(it)P(oint)s, respectively (20 or 24 under certain conditions). Golden gourds contain poison reducing his energy but also offering bonus points. The iron sphere gives a cloak of invisibility; the red scroll deals one HP to all enemies on screen; the talisman stops all enemies’ movement for five seconds. Every 70 RNG item drops or so, an extra life appears in the form of a chibi Lee Wong. Other power-ups appear once Lee Wong can complete bonus stages successfully and can turn the monk into a veritable killing machine piercing through stages. To properly understand how these power-ups work, we can turn our discussion to the structure of Stages and the challenges they offer to players.
Players start by choosing from which Stage they begin their journey. There are four Stages and generals to clear before players can face Ryuken, so players can decide whether to start from Stage one, two, three or four. Irrespective of their choice, players must advance through each Stage/general’s castle by clearing eight sub-sections/sub-Stages. Each sub-Stage has its own distinctive design and requires a specific puzzle-like approach from players. In some sub-Stages, Lee Wong fights while flying thanks to his vest (i.e. sub-Stages 1.6, 2.8, 3.2 and 4.3). In other sub-Stages, Lee Wong can also move across several floors forming the sub-Stages (i.e. sub-Stages 1.2, 3.3, 3.5, 4.2, 4.3 and Stage four’s secret rooms). Some stages involve traps or jumping hazards from which Lee Wong must quickly evade (i.e. sub-Stages 1.7, 2.7, 4.7). Sub-Stages 1.4, 2.4, 3.4 and 4.4 involve mid-boss fights, and 1.8, 2.8, 3.8, 4.8 and 5 boss fights.
Lee Wong can challenge a bonus Stage after clearing each Stage/general’s Castle. If successful, he will collect a power-up that considerably increases his skills if players can maintain certain conditions. After clearing one bonus stage, Lee Wong obtains four extra HPs. After two bonus stages, he obtains a long-range “flying tiger” magic projectile attack covering the whole screen. If players clear a third bonus stage, the magic attack delivers two HPs of damage; a fourth cleared bonus stage nets another four HP points. The magic attack is active when Lee Wong has extra HPs, appearing as yellow-green bars against the other blue 16 HPs. The monk loses this attack when energy goes below this level but recovers it when back to this extra HP level. Players who start from Stages two to four can collect fewer special power ups, so must clear the game with a potentially weaker Lee Wong.
My description of the game’s mechanics should hopefully offer a picture of the game as a sophisticated blend of action, platform, and puzzle genres’ elements. Once we move to the audio-visual component, we can get a more detailed understanding of Tiger Road as a gaming experience. The game runs on the Capcom’s hardware preceding their CPS-1 board, and provides interesting graphics and music, though some design aspects appear unrefined. Most characters tend to have relatively simple animations and simplified movements, a fact that partially clashes with the martial, highly kinetic nature of the action. The colour palette is quite deep and wide, but it resembles the coarse-grained choices of Bionic Commando rather than the subtle shades of Black Tiger. Some enemies’ animations and sprites may lead to consistent hit detection: players may need time to figure out when and how to hit them. Visual choppiness is sometimes an in-game issue.
The general design of stages and enemies is however impressive and aptly uses Chinese folklore and myths. Aside Lee Wong looking like a cool Shaolin monk, enemies offer detailed renditions of Chinese dragons (e.g. Stage 1.6), zombies (or Jiangshi, Stages 2.2, 2.3), and warlords (e.g. general Ryuken). Stages are set in beautiful Chinese buildings that include finely carved columns, or highly detailed fighting rooms. Stage three is mostly set in the countryside and offers some intriguing scenery; Stage two is the “undead castle”, complete with dark rooms, giant spiders, Jiangshi and bats. The game’s backgrounds are luscious if quite static, and offer the feeling of traversing an illustrated Wuxia book, with some hints at the story being set in Southern or Central China. Ultimately, the game appears a bit choppy due to hardware limitations, but offers players a strong and distinctive visual identity, like China-inspired Capcom’s Dynasty Wars.
The OST and sound effects are probably the weakest aspect of the game. The background themes are functional to the stages even if they feel non-descript, in my view. The final battle with Ryuken involves a more brooding theme following a triumphal march beat in the first part of Stage five. Stage one and three’s themes mix sonorities typical of early Capcom/Alph Lyla games with themes vaguely reminiscent of Wuxia movies. The game uses the typical bombastic, simple sound effects of early Capcom as well; the JP version is notable for having some sampled voices (e.g. Lee Wong’s, Ryuken’s). After a few runs, however, the OST should slip in the background unnoticed. Overall, Tiger Road appears a bit rough in design with not so smooth animations, with the OST being functional at most. It however offers highly evocative design that communicates well its deeply Chinese settings.
My discussion of the game’s audio-visual presentation should also offer an image of a culturally informed game with some acceptable rough edges. It is however my discussion of the game’s difficulty that should offer a counter-balancing view of the game’s idiosyncrasies in its attempt at combining these genres. As always, please brush up our main conceptual term for the discussion: Facets, before moving on. Let us turn to the main analysis, then. For other Capcom games such as Black Tiger and Dynasty Wars, I propose that their difficulty can be partitioned along two Facets: basic game mechanics and Stages’ layout. As interactions between these two facets are negligible, we can split the total of 50 points into two halves of 25 points. Again, many of these 1980s Capcom games to require mastery of the mechanics and a working solution to Stages’ puzzles, to achieve the 1-CC.
The game’s basic mechanics require some practice to master, since they require players to understand how to use weapons and how to time jumps. The spear and the flail have weapon-specific quirks that may render then secondary choices: players may wish to use them once they know well how to use them. The swinging axe requires some practice before its range and sweep become intuitive. Jumps, too, require players to learn their precise heights and range, as well the specific times at which Lee Wong is vulnerable to sudden attacks. Once players know these values well, they can jump around at different heights and spam attacks with gusto. Before their mastery, every jump should follow careful planning on how to use it to advance in a stage. High and low jumps have their own quirks and uses; be sure to master them both.
The game also has certain mechanics closely resembling standard rank. All stages have a time limit, and the longer players take to clear a sub-Stage, the higher the number of zakos on-screen will be. The game awards extend lives at 20k points, 70k points and then every 60k points. When players have more than the two standard lives, difficulty will switch from “normal” to “hard”, “hardest” being the maximum level. At two or fewer lives, the difficulty will remain unaltered. Notably, obtaining each of the bonus Stage’s power-ups lowers difficulty, since Lee Wong’s HPs, attacking power and range increase. Starting from later Stages progressively removes the chance to obtain these power-ups, and thus levels the difficulty in an indirect manner. A fully powered-up Lee Wong can kill the two mid-bosses and Ryuken on Stage five by keeping a safe distance and spamming long-range magic attacks; the final showdown becomes trivial.
Stages are nevertheless the main source of difficulty in the game, in my view. Several stages work like mini puzzle/platform games in which Lee Wong can only survive and advance once players figure out their solution. For instance, Stage 1.7 sees Lee Wong crossing a chasm in which several flying platforms descend toward a floor full of spikes at different speeds. If players learn to jump on specific sequences of platforms (e.g. third, seventh, tenth), the stage is trivial: otherwise, death is almost certain. Mid-bosses and Bosses also require specific killing techniques that turn each fight from a slugfest to an easy kill for Lee Wong. Some stages simply require players not to get distracted: kill zakos and do not get cornered but also be sure that respawning zakos do not swamp the screen. Players may however want to create save states specific to each sub-Stage, for stress-reducing practice sessions.
With these premises at our disposal, I propose the game’s difficulty works as follows. Weapons and jumps’ mechanics each attract a difficulty point, for a total of 3/25 points. The time-driven and the embryonal rank mechanics raise the level to 5/25 points. If Lee Wong is fully powered up with all four “gifts”, one can lower the game’s difficulty by four points. However, I believe that several stages require their own time-consuming mastery: those are 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7; 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6 and 2.8. Sub-stages 3.2, 3.3, 3.5, and 3.6; 4.2 and its access to the secret rooms, plus sub-Stages 4.4, 4.6 and 4.7 require considerable patience. In other words, the game has 19 out of a total of 32 sub-Stages creating curse-inducing scenarios. By assigning one point to each stage, we reach a hefty 19/25 partial difficulty for this Facet. Tiger Road will make you curse, trust me.
The grand total is thus 24/50 points if players attempt to 1-CC the game without obtaining power-ups, but it lowers down to 20/50 points for each successive magic power-up. An interesting “extra” facet pertains to the J(a)P(anese) version of the game, Tora Eno Michi. This version includes a second loop of the game that seems to raise the average difficulty at the “hard” level: enemies are faster and increase in numbers quicker. Players lose all power-ups and must regain up in the standard manner, thus facing a steeper challenge that involves all four castles by default. For the sake of simplicity, I propose that the difficulty raises to a robust 28/50 points, or 24/50 points if Lee Wong collects all magic power-ups. Tiger Road’s difficulty sits at a mid- to higher-tier expert level: expect to face a game that will make you curse to Ghosts and Goblins, Ghouls’n Ghosts levels.
I see that Xenny is raising his hand to signal me that we should move to the closing stanzas. Who am I, to question his directions…who, his owner, bluntly put. OK, let us follow the indications of our trustworthy staff: we are professionals. As I mentioned in the Momoko 120%squib, again, we are back to the late months of 1989 and to my grandparents’ village. I visit often the main bar in the village, and I play the few local games with my age group’s local banchō. The lad likes me because I am not afraid of him (…I am taller, anyway), I speak the dialect, and I can be his pilot when he tries runs on videogames. He is perhaps unrefined but his attitude to gaming is spot-on: he has a habit of watching other people’s runs and trying to figure out good techniques to overcome stages.
With Momoko 120% we honestly have an easy time; the game is not particularly challenging though it is endearing (and we like Momoko-chan, yes). Tiger Road is however a different proposition, and we spend quite a few afternoons cursing the game and raking our brains on how to pass certain sections. My banchō mate gives up after a few sessions and…brings a notepad to the mini arcade, sometime around Christmas. He is not going to get kicks in the ass by a stupid game (!), so he is going to takes notes during my runs (‼), and figure out how to “pass stuff, bro!” (‼!). My banchō mate is now a highly sought after expert in the restauration of historical buildings, and thus the kind of guy who married vocational training with a knack for artisanship. In 1989, he is a rough kid who can however draw skilfully and observe carefully.
Still, the game is though. By the end of March, we compromise on pursuing the 1-CC in the following manner: each of us has specialised in clearing certain stages with little or no damage, and so we can take turn when playing the game. Unbelievably, the strategy is sound once we learn to be lightning fast in “going to the deck”; a few times we do lose lives due to being tardy in swapping places. By the end of April 1990, however, we 1-CC the game for the first time, explode with joy due to this achievement, and win a symbolic prize of a free Cedrata Tassoni from the lady owner. While drinking the ultra-vintage soft drink, the lady asks us we plan on also “completing” Super Dodge Ball. The lady owner also knows how to bully kids with some tough love: let us say that it is the local specialty.
It is now 2018, and I am in China looking for fortune and a better path of my career. In my second year in Guangzhou, I reminisce that my various attempts at 1-CC’ing this game in 2000 (i.e. my MAME gap year) and 2012-213 (i.e. my first Swedish year) fell short. I felt the need to 1-CC “solo”, but I gave up twice due to the choppiness or jankiness of the game. Years have not been kind, to this title. This time around I have two trustworthy allies: save states, and memories from my ancient runs with my banchō bro. Patience is the virtue of the strong and the whole damn country seems to force me in a 24/7 exercise in patience. I swear it will be my last laugh, when I will sit and watch the corpse of this game floating in the river.
I spend quite a few boiling monsoon summer nights practicing the game, and then I finally have the one smooth run in which I 1-L(ife)C the game, somewhat incredulously. The next few nights I repeat the feat even though I do drop lives. The embryonic rank mechanic can be unpleasant to handle, so I am OK in shifting down gears. I then remember: the JP version has a second loop, and the loop is not much harder than the first iteration. I keep pushing towards the 1-CC of this version, even though the two times I achieve it, I feel more relief and elation than actual satisfaction. It is a dark and stormy night, and storms in Guangzhou trigger red alert warnings: still, it is my victory. And, in February 2025, I have an occasion to meet banchō bro and share the achievement with him, though a bit late.
Time to wrap up, folks. Tiger Road is an action/platform game following the R2RKMF formula and offering complex, puzzle-like challenges in the form of Stages. The game features a luscious Chinese setting that would well figure in a Wuxia novel of movie and solid if a bit outdated game mechanics. The game offers a considerable challenge to seasoned players in the genre, but expert players can certainly 1-CC it with time and dedication. The JP version offers an extra challenge in the form of a second loop, and players looking for an extra layer of difficulty can opt to choose from Stages two to four. Players who relish considerable challenges and have solid degrees of patience may enjoy cracking open this veritable “gaming Pandora’s box”. Explore mythical China and challenge the game with gusto and patience: this is an excellent 1-CC to have in anyone’s gaming portfolio.
(3397 words; the usual disclaimers apply; my banchō mate loves to say that he speaks four foreign languages: English, French, German and…Italian. He really does speak dialect all the time, with locals. He played rugby for a long time and went to a vocational high school, then spent a few years attending higher vocational training courses and apprenticeships in France and Germany. He is a superb craftsman and artisan with a very meticulous attitude; you know this already, since I mentioned him taking notes while gaming. It is beer taste that gets me all the time: he mostly drinks Radler and Weiβ beer type, almost as if he became a typical Bavarian tradesman. After all these years, he still calls me “bro” and pokes fun at me for being a “world wanderer who never goes back home”, eh).
Tiger Road (Capcom, 1987) is a R2RKMF game with strong platform elements that takes place in a mythical, Wuxia-inspired version of China. The evil Ryuken boss decides to kidnap the children studying at a prestigious martial arts monastery. It is up to Lee “tiger” Wong, the strongest monk in the monastery, to rescue the children and bring them home. Lee Wong must thus navigate perilous lands and slaughter hordes of evil-does in league with Ryuken to achieve his goal. After defeating four generals in their castles, Lee Wong and Ryuken have their showdown, in perfect “Tiger vs. Dragon” showdown. The game is notable for featuring stages neatly divided into distinct areas (or castle rooms), each requiring its own puzzle-like approach and tactics, and a distinctive Wuxia setting. The goal of this squib is to argue that the game is entertaining and well-designed, notwithstanding some idiosyncratic challenges players can face.
A bit of context, s’il vous plait. In 1987, Capcom was an up and coming but still relatively young videogame company that had to land big arcade hits. During their first few years, Capcom programmers released several platform/action games that quickly established their design prowess in the genre. Black Tiger, Bionic Commando/Top Secret and Ghosts’n Goblins could certainly compete with other platform/action games like Taito’s Rastan, Tecmo’s Rygar or Sega/Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land. These Capcom games placed a perhaps strong emphasis on immediate action and multi-directional stages but also offered interesting dilemmas regarding how to “solve” each stage. Tiger Road saw thus its release in a juncture of the 1980s in which the R2RMKF genre, platform titles and aspects of puzzle games began to interact in deeply interesting manners. Tiger Road also offered a exquisitely novel setting, for the time.
This novelty can emerge once we discuss the plot and game setting. The game pits the Shaolin-like monk Lee Wong against warlord Ryuken (lit’ Dragon punch’) and his armies. Monks must profess celibacy, so it is imperative for them to train young disciples to maintain their order alive. Ryuken seems to have a similar problem: his army needs fresh blood to survive. After a short intro animation showing Ryuken’s zakus kidnapping these children and slaughtering monks, we see an old seer trusting Lee Wong with a rescue mission. This summary may seem like the premise of a Wuxia novel or movie, i.e. one of those “martial errant knights” so popular in Chinese and Asian cultures. Case in point, “Lee Wong” is also the pseudonym of the main director and martial artist spear-heading the game’s production, who apparently only worked on this project while at Capcom.
The game uses this genre-tailored premise and rich setting to devise a peculiar gaming experience. The joystick controls Lee Wong’s movement in eight directions. Lee Wong can move left and right, crouch (down) and jump (up); on certain stages, he dons his magic vest and fly in any direction. The A button is for attacks with any of the three weapons of choice. Lee Wong starts with a flail axe but can also switch to a long spear or a Chinese-style flail as alternative weapons. The axe has mid-range reach and a relatively high attack frequency; the spear has long range but narrow reach and high attack frequency. The flail has mid-range reach and mid-low frequency, but it moves according to a zig-zagging movement that can easily hit jumping and crouching enemies. When Lee Wong collects a “POW” item, weapons sensibly increase in reach and attack frequency.
Lee Wong can also jump in various directions, though the nature of the jumps may require some frustrating amounts of time to learn and master. Pressing the B button results into a short, low jump to the left, up, or to the right. Holding the B button results into an increasingly high jump in any of these directions. Lee Wong can land multiple attacks while performing these high attacks but becomes highly vulnerable to any aerial attacks. Some stages include stairs that Lee Wong can climb to raise or descend floor(s) within the stage: often, Lee Wong can also jump up to the next floor (e.g. in Stage 1-2). High jumps thus can quickly turn into hazardous moves possibly resulting into instant deaths, often in the most infuriating manners. If players are very careful about when and how they perform them, these deaths can occur sparsely across credits.
Lee Wong can collect various types of power-ups and bonus point items when killing zakos. Blue and red gourds give refill some and all of Lee Wong’s 16 H(it)P(oint)s, respectively (20 or 24 under certain conditions). Golden gourds contain poison reducing his energy but also offering bonus points. The iron sphere gives a cloak of invisibility; the red scroll deals one HP to all enemies on screen; the talisman stops all enemies’ movement for five seconds. Every 70 RNG item drops or so, an extra life appears in the form of a chibi Lee Wong. Other power-ups appear once Lee Wong can complete bonus stages successfully and can turn the monk into a veritable killing machine piercing through stages. To properly understand how these power-ups work, we can turn our discussion to the structure of Stages and the challenges they offer to players.
Players start by choosing from which Stage they begin their journey. There are four Stages and generals to clear before players can face Ryuken, so players can decide whether to start from Stage one, two, three or four. Irrespective of their choice, players must advance through each Stage/general’s castle by clearing eight sub-sections/sub-Stages. Each sub-Stage has its own distinctive design and requires a specific puzzle-like approach from players. In some sub-Stages, Lee Wong fights while flying thanks to his vest (i.e. sub-Stages 1.6, 2.8, 3.2 and 4.3). In other sub-Stages, Lee Wong can also move across several floors forming the sub-Stages (i.e. sub-Stages 1.2, 3.3, 3.5, 4.2, 4.3 and Stage four’s secret rooms). Some stages involve traps or jumping hazards from which Lee Wong must quickly evade (i.e. sub-Stages 1.7, 2.7, 4.7). Sub-Stages 1.4, 2.4, 3.4 and 4.4 involve mid-boss fights, and 1.8, 2.8, 3.8, 4.8 and 5 boss fights.
Lee Wong can challenge a bonus Stage after clearing each Stage/general’s Castle. If successful, he will collect a power-up that considerably increases his skills if players can maintain certain conditions. After clearing one bonus stage, Lee Wong obtains four extra HPs. After two bonus stages, he obtains a long-range “flying tiger” magic projectile attack covering the whole screen. If players clear a third bonus stage, the magic attack delivers two HPs of damage; a fourth cleared bonus stage nets another four HP points. The magic attack is active when Lee Wong has extra HPs, appearing as yellow-green bars against the other blue 16 HPs. The monk loses this attack when energy goes below this level but recovers it when back to this extra HP level. Players who start from Stages two to four can collect fewer special power ups, so must clear the game with a potentially weaker Lee Wong.
My description of the game’s mechanics should hopefully offer a picture of the game as a sophisticated blend of action, platform, and puzzle genres’ elements. Once we move to the audio-visual component, we can get a more detailed understanding of Tiger Road as a gaming experience. The game runs on the Capcom’s hardware preceding their CPS-1 board, and provides interesting graphics and music, though some design aspects appear unrefined. Most characters tend to have relatively simple animations and simplified movements, a fact that partially clashes with the martial, highly kinetic nature of the action. The colour palette is quite deep and wide, but it resembles the coarse-grained choices of Bionic Commando rather than the subtle shades of Black Tiger. Some enemies’ animations and sprites may lead to consistent hit detection: players may need time to figure out when and how to hit them. Visual choppiness is sometimes an in-game issue.
The general design of stages and enemies is however impressive and aptly uses Chinese folklore and myths. Aside Lee Wong looking like a cool Shaolin monk, enemies offer detailed renditions of Chinese dragons (e.g. Stage 1.6), zombies (or Jiangshi, Stages 2.2, 2.3), and warlords (e.g. general Ryuken). Stages are set in beautiful Chinese buildings that include finely carved columns, or highly detailed fighting rooms. Stage three is mostly set in the countryside and offers some intriguing scenery; Stage two is the “undead castle”, complete with dark rooms, giant spiders, Jiangshi and bats. The game’s backgrounds are luscious if quite static, and offer the feeling of traversing an illustrated Wuxia book, with some hints at the story being set in Southern or Central China. Ultimately, the game appears a bit choppy due to hardware limitations, but offers players a strong and distinctive visual identity, like China-inspired Capcom’s Dynasty Wars.
The OST and sound effects are probably the weakest aspect of the game. The background themes are functional to the stages even if they feel non-descript, in my view. The final battle with Ryuken involves a more brooding theme following a triumphal march beat in the first part of Stage five. Stage one and three’s themes mix sonorities typical of early Capcom/Alph Lyla games with themes vaguely reminiscent of Wuxia movies. The game uses the typical bombastic, simple sound effects of early Capcom as well; the JP version is notable for having some sampled voices (e.g. Lee Wong’s, Ryuken’s). After a few runs, however, the OST should slip in the background unnoticed. Overall, Tiger Road appears a bit rough in design with not so smooth animations, with the OST being functional at most. It however offers highly evocative design that communicates well its deeply Chinese settings.
My discussion of the game’s audio-visual presentation should also offer an image of a culturally informed game with some acceptable rough edges. It is however my discussion of the game’s difficulty that should offer a counter-balancing view of the game’s idiosyncrasies in its attempt at combining these genres. As always, please brush up our main conceptual term for the discussion: Facets, before moving on. Let us turn to the main analysis, then. For other Capcom games such as Black Tiger and Dynasty Wars, I propose that their difficulty can be partitioned along two Facets: basic game mechanics and Stages’ layout. As interactions between these two facets are negligible, we can split the total of 50 points into two halves of 25 points. Again, many of these 1980s Capcom games to require mastery of the mechanics and a working solution to Stages’ puzzles, to achieve the 1-CC.
The game’s basic mechanics require some practice to master, since they require players to understand how to use weapons and how to time jumps. The spear and the flail have weapon-specific quirks that may render then secondary choices: players may wish to use them once they know well how to use them. The swinging axe requires some practice before its range and sweep become intuitive. Jumps, too, require players to learn their precise heights and range, as well the specific times at which Lee Wong is vulnerable to sudden attacks. Once players know these values well, they can jump around at different heights and spam attacks with gusto. Before their mastery, every jump should follow careful planning on how to use it to advance in a stage. High and low jumps have their own quirks and uses; be sure to master them both.
The game also has certain mechanics closely resembling standard rank. All stages have a time limit, and the longer players take to clear a sub-Stage, the higher the number of zakos on-screen will be. The game awards extend lives at 20k points, 70k points and then every 60k points. When players have more than the two standard lives, difficulty will switch from “normal” to “hard”, “hardest” being the maximum level. At two or fewer lives, the difficulty will remain unaltered. Notably, obtaining each of the bonus Stage’s power-ups lowers difficulty, since Lee Wong’s HPs, attacking power and range increase. Starting from later Stages progressively removes the chance to obtain these power-ups, and thus levels the difficulty in an indirect manner. A fully powered-up Lee Wong can kill the two mid-bosses and Ryuken on Stage five by keeping a safe distance and spamming long-range magic attacks; the final showdown becomes trivial.
Stages are nevertheless the main source of difficulty in the game, in my view. Several stages work like mini puzzle/platform games in which Lee Wong can only survive and advance once players figure out their solution. For instance, Stage 1.7 sees Lee Wong crossing a chasm in which several flying platforms descend toward a floor full of spikes at different speeds. If players learn to jump on specific sequences of platforms (e.g. third, seventh, tenth), the stage is trivial: otherwise, death is almost certain. Mid-bosses and Bosses also require specific killing techniques that turn each fight from a slugfest to an easy kill for Lee Wong. Some stages simply require players not to get distracted: kill zakos and do not get cornered but also be sure that respawning zakos do not swamp the screen. Players may however want to create save states specific to each sub-Stage, for stress-reducing practice sessions.
With these premises at our disposal, I propose the game’s difficulty works as follows. Weapons and jumps’ mechanics each attract a difficulty point, for a total of 3/25 points. The time-driven and the embryonal rank mechanics raise the level to 5/25 points. If Lee Wong is fully powered up with all four “gifts”, one can lower the game’s difficulty by four points. However, I believe that several stages require their own time-consuming mastery: those are 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7; 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6 and 2.8. Sub-stages 3.2, 3.3, 3.5, and 3.6; 4.2 and its access to the secret rooms, plus sub-Stages 4.4, 4.6 and 4.7 require considerable patience. In other words, the game has 19 out of a total of 32 sub-Stages creating curse-inducing scenarios. By assigning one point to each stage, we reach a hefty 19/25 partial difficulty for this Facet. Tiger Road will make you curse, trust me.
The grand total is thus 24/50 points if players attempt to 1-CC the game without obtaining power-ups, but it lowers down to 20/50 points for each successive magic power-up. An interesting “extra” facet pertains to the J(a)P(anese) version of the game, Tora Eno Michi. This version includes a second loop of the game that seems to raise the average difficulty at the “hard” level: enemies are faster and increase in numbers quicker. Players lose all power-ups and must regain up in the standard manner, thus facing a steeper challenge that involves all four castles by default. For the sake of simplicity, I propose that the difficulty raises to a robust 28/50 points, or 24/50 points if Lee Wong collects all magic power-ups. Tiger Road’s difficulty sits at a mid- to higher-tier expert level: expect to face a game that will make you curse to Ghosts and Goblins, Ghouls’n Ghosts levels.
I see that Xenny is raising his hand to signal me that we should move to the closing stanzas. Who am I, to question his directions…who, his owner, bluntly put. OK, let us follow the indications of our trustworthy staff: we are professionals. As I mentioned in the Momoko 120%squib, again, we are back to the late months of 1989 and to my grandparents’ village. I visit often the main bar in the village, and I play the few local games with my age group’s local banchō. The lad likes me because I am not afraid of him (…I am taller, anyway), I speak the dialect, and I can be his pilot when he tries runs on videogames. He is perhaps unrefined but his attitude to gaming is spot-on: he has a habit of watching other people’s runs and trying to figure out good techniques to overcome stages.
With Momoko 120% we honestly have an easy time; the game is not particularly challenging though it is endearing (and we like Momoko-chan, yes). Tiger Road is however a different proposition, and we spend quite a few afternoons cursing the game and raking our brains on how to pass certain sections. My banchō mate gives up after a few sessions and…brings a notepad to the mini arcade, sometime around Christmas. He is not going to get kicks in the ass by a stupid game (!), so he is going to takes notes during my runs (‼), and figure out how to “pass stuff, bro!” (‼!). My banchō mate is now a highly sought after expert in the restauration of historical buildings, and thus the kind of guy who married vocational training with a knack for artisanship. In 1989, he is a rough kid who can however draw skilfully and observe carefully.
Still, the game is though. By the end of March, we compromise on pursuing the 1-CC in the following manner: each of us has specialised in clearing certain stages with little or no damage, and so we can take turn when playing the game. Unbelievably, the strategy is sound once we learn to be lightning fast in “going to the deck”; a few times we do lose lives due to being tardy in swapping places. By the end of April 1990, however, we 1-CC the game for the first time, explode with joy due to this achievement, and win a symbolic prize of a free Cedrata Tassoni from the lady owner. While drinking the ultra-vintage soft drink, the lady asks us we plan on also “completing” Super Dodge Ball. The lady owner also knows how to bully kids with some tough love: let us say that it is the local specialty.
It is now 2018, and I am in China looking for fortune and a better path of my career. In my second year in Guangzhou, I reminisce that my various attempts at 1-CC’ing this game in 2000 (i.e. my MAME gap year) and 2012-213 (i.e. my first Swedish year) fell short. I felt the need to 1-CC “solo”, but I gave up twice due to the choppiness or jankiness of the game. Years have not been kind, to this title. This time around I have two trustworthy allies: save states, and memories from my ancient runs with my banchō bro. Patience is the virtue of the strong and the whole damn country seems to force me in a 24/7 exercise in patience. I swear it will be my last laugh, when I will sit and watch the corpse of this game floating in the river.
I spend quite a few boiling monsoon summer nights practicing the game, and then I finally have the one smooth run in which I 1-L(ife)C the game, somewhat incredulously. The next few nights I repeat the feat even though I do drop lives. The embryonic rank mechanic can be unpleasant to handle, so I am OK in shifting down gears. I then remember: the JP version has a second loop, and the loop is not much harder than the first iteration. I keep pushing towards the 1-CC of this version, even though the two times I achieve it, I feel more relief and elation than actual satisfaction. It is a dark and stormy night, and storms in Guangzhou trigger red alert warnings: still, it is my victory. And, in February 2025, I have an occasion to meet banchō bro and share the achievement with him, though a bit late.
Time to wrap up, folks. Tiger Road is an action/platform game following the R2RKMF formula and offering complex, puzzle-like challenges in the form of Stages. The game features a luscious Chinese setting that would well figure in a Wuxia novel of movie and solid if a bit outdated game mechanics. The game offers a considerable challenge to seasoned players in the genre, but expert players can certainly 1-CC it with time and dedication. The JP version offers an extra challenge in the form of a second loop, and players looking for an extra layer of difficulty can opt to choose from Stages two to four. Players who relish considerable challenges and have solid degrees of patience may enjoy cracking open this veritable “gaming Pandora’s box”. Explore mythical China and challenge the game with gusto and patience: this is an excellent 1-CC to have in anyone’s gaming portfolio.
(3397 words; the usual disclaimers apply; my banchō mate loves to say that he speaks four foreign languages: English, French, German and…Italian. He really does speak dialect all the time, with locals. He played rugby for a long time and went to a vocational high school, then spent a few years attending higher vocational training courses and apprenticeships in France and Germany. He is a superb craftsman and artisan with a very meticulous attitude; you know this already, since I mentioned him taking notes while gaming. It is beer taste that gets me all the time: he mostly drinks Radler and Weiβ beer type, almost as if he became a typical Bavarian tradesman. After all these years, he still calls me “bro” and pokes fun at me for being a “world wanderer who never goes back home”, eh).
Last edited by Randorama on Sat Mar 22, 2025 7:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Rabio Lepus (Video System, 1987)
We move forward at a relentless pace, and finally zoom in on the shmup I planned to squib about in February: Rabio Lepus. You can find SturmVogel’s review of the PS4/5 port here, and there is a PS2 port. The game also saw an updated port back in the day on the PC Engine (i.e. Rabio Lepus Special), but the version I use as a reference is the arcade one, via emulation. As I kid, I adored this game, even if its non-trivial difficulty was a mountain to climb for my kid self. I admit that clearing the “hard” course became one of the earliest grudges in the shmup domain that I decided to clear, aside the one I had with Side Arms. An abridged version without the bitter sap of memory will appear next week in the "Reviews" sub-forum: you may wish to wait until then, instead of reading this squib (or you may just "skip the sap"). Without further procrastination:
Rabio Lepus/Rabbit Punch! (Video System) is an HORI(zontal) shmup from Video System, the small but glorious company that created the Sonic Wings series. The game combines typical 1980s anime visual tropes with classical 1970s S(cience)F(iction) themes and involves rabbit-looking giant robots rescuing the royal family of Planet “BunnyLand” from evil forces. The game is notable for being one of the first games on which Psikyo founder and main brain Shin Nakamura honed his skills. Many mechanics introduced in this shmup also resurfaced in Psikyo shmups via various iterations and influenced other companies’ titles as well (e.g. Success’ Cotton series). A cult classic with a loyal following (viz. the game’s wiki entry), the game should be a necessary stop in any shmup player’s grand tour of the 1980s. The goal of this squib is to offer an argument on why you, dear readers, should indeed undertake such gaming stop.
Rabio Lepus saw its release in a year that was quite intense for shmups, both HORI(zontal) and in TATE (vertical) formats. The direct competitors to this tile in the genre were the legendary Irem’s R-Type and Taito’s Darius. For TATE games, Rabio Lepus had to compete against Toaplan’s Flying Shark and Kykyoku Tiger, Capcom’s 1943: The Battle of Midway and quite a few other titles. 1987, for the shmup genre and its fans, was a golden year indeed. With such a fierce and blazoned competition, players could justify themselves if they would not have noted this perhaps less eye-catching title. The game however built its own cult following and success, probably due to its high production values, innovative anime-looking design, and intriguing mechanics. It also laid the foundations for Psikyo’s approach to the genre, as Shin Nakamura apparently started his designer career on this title.
The story underpinning the game and its overall theme is rather simple and quite camp. The planet “Bunnyland” is a peaceful and tranquil kingdom in which citizens lively happily. One day, the evil army from “Mahou Land” come and kidnap the royal family. It is up to the robot fighters “Rabio” and “Lepus” to kick the bad guys’ army ass into oblivion and save the royal family. Interestingly, the royal family trio are human-looking individuals who however were bunny suits of differing degrees of silliness. Rabio and Lepus are giant rabbit-looking mechas, complete with complementary buckteeth and giant bunny ears. The game thus offers a rather silly twist to another rather bland setting, anime-style. The royal family members, Rabio and Lepus appear in the Sonic Wings games and other Video System games in various forms. The game thus played a lasting influence in Video System’s lore.
The game mechanics work as follows. Players control the robots and move them in eight directions with the joystick; the A button is for shooting; the B button is for missiles attacks. Rabio and Lepus can walk on surfaces and jump up via quick down-up movement while walking. Players can tap the A button to obtain a high-frequency stream of bullets or hold it down to use a slow auto-fire mode (8hz or so). Tapping in a semi-automatic manner releases fast salvos of bullets approximating higher auto-fire frequencies when players can time these salvos properly. The B button releases a salvo of missiles that work as smart but not so powerful bombs: a full salvo is about eight ammos; players start with 20 ammos and can get more stock as they proceed. Missiles can deliver good damage and have limited homing functions: do not expect them to be efficient.
Shot rate can increase if the robots get very close to enemies, thus allowing players to land quicker damage. When the robots are roughly at one sprite’s distance from an enemy or some other objects, they can also land a powerful physical blow: a punch, as per alternative title of the game. The robots can collect a ribbon power-up that increases shot frequency and aim and power of the missiles, and a tanuki-looking power-up. This power-up grants temporary invincibility: the robots gain a flashing tail-like weapon and can destroy any adversary upon touching them. The tail shortens as time passes, to signal the duration of the power-up. Robots can also stock up further missiles and collect bonus items, too. Most items appear after the robots shoot giant floating cans that carry carrots icons, in line with the “rabbit theme”. The two extend lives are at 300k and 600 points, respectively.
Rabio Lepus approaches the problem of HORI shmups being a tricky genre by adopting some aspects of so-called ”Euro shmups”. The robots start with three lives that correspond to three energy bars. Hit deplete H(it)P(oints) to varying degrees, so that the robots perform a dramatic death animation when they lose one bar. After resurrecting back, the robots can keep fighting: if they collect the giant “carrot” power-up, they regain some energy. At the end of each stage, after the boss fight, the robots can replenish their energy by collecting carrots falling from the ceiling. The carrots fall in increasingly random trajectories as the game progresses. Furthermore, the robots have no i(invicibility)-frames, so they may take multiple hits and lose lives quickly, especially against enemies landing multiple contact hits or multiple ultra-fast shots. Hence, be sure to dodge bullets and enemies anyway, as the energy bar can be rather misleading.
The game thus anticipates quite a few of Psikyo’s mechanics, except maybe for charge shots. The foundational aspect of the game also emerges once one looks at the game’s structure and stages. The game has 12 stages, with three environments of four stages each. The first three stages for each environment (“Space Ship”, “Asteroid Base”, “Planet”) are relatively short battles (around two minutes) concluding with intense and brief boss fights. The fourth stage of each environment is an equally brief and intense boss fight, after which the robots rescue one member of the royal family. Bullets are always fast and lethal, with bosses and bigger enemies shooting thick, vicious patterns. At the start, players can choose between the “easy” and “hard” courses, with the “hard” course featuring faster and nastier patterns and enemies. Players can thus directly access the equivalent of a second, quite more difficult loop of the game.
With this compact description of the game mechanics, we can move to the audio-visual department. The game has excellently detailed graphics and rather fluid animations for the time. The colour palette is rich, and the design of most sprites is quite intricate. The two rabbit robots have lovely walking animations when they land on surface and thus walk rather than fly. In general, the game looks sharp and detailed, with stages including high levels of detail in their background (e.g. Stage three’s giant human faces in the background). A perhaps weak point in the game is that bosses seem a heterogeneous bunch: The “Space Ship” bosses are robots, but the “Asteroid Base” and “Planet” have less mechanical appearance. Stage six’s boss looks like a ghost from Namco’s Pac-Man, Stage 10 is a giant Mammoth. The exact links to the “Rabbit” theme and the S(cience)F(iction) genre may appear uncertain, I believe.
The OST may be the weaker aspect (or Facet, to broaden the use of our terminology), at first glance. The game features mostly music that I would label as “generic, non-descript anime music”, perhaps with some stages offering a more SF-oriented sound. The themes for the “boss battle” stages (i.e. Stage four, eight, 12) are simple, dramatic-sounding themes that seem to aim at creating a tense atmosphere. An impressive aspect about the game is that it features voice samples for the announcer (in English, even), and minimal voice acting for the royal family. Once you save them, they will offer a few words of gratitude but in the J(a)P(anese) version only, however. Overall, however, the game looks visually impressive for its period and has a strong SF, anime vibe: the non-descript OSTs are certainly fine enough in how they accompany the action.
Let us now move to the discussion of the difficulty, benefitting from the fact that we have already introduced Facets as our terminological and conceptual tool. I believe that Rabio Lepus follows a trend akin to Capcom’s games. Players need to master mechanics and Stages’ layouts as distinct aspects, before they can 1-CC both versions of the game. The two facets seem not to interact in significant manners: once players can use the robots well and know how to handle stages, the 1-CC can boil down to question of good performance. Game mechanics present a subtle but not so difficult challenge: mastering the semi-automatic tapping requires some practice, and so do close-range shooting and rabbit punches. Using missiles may also reduce risks, but one can clear the game without ever using missiles. Collecting carrots as end-of-stage bonuses becomes tricky on the last few stages: be sure to master the technique.
Stages and their layout act as the main source of difficulty, in my view. I would suggest that the first two stages are rather easy. However, from Stage three players begin to face environmental hazards and tricky situations (e.g. narrow passages, enemies shooting from vantage points). The first boss battle (i.e. Stage four) is a short but tense affair: the bullet count increases considerably. Bullets become faster from Stage five onwards, bullet patterns become thicker and kamikaze enemies start appearing as well. The last four Stages require very fast dodging and rote memorization, with Stage 11 being a tricky “boss rush” Stage, Gradius-style. The final’s stage dual boss requires precise dodging movements in its two forms, even if stocking up lives and missiles and adopting a kamikaze approach may reduce the difficulty. Players ultimately need to work on having safe routes for stages, once they know the mechanics well.
Overall, I suggest that we have a 4/25 level of difficulty for the four mechanics. We then have a 11/25 level of difficulty for the ten stages and the dual final boss (N.B. we divide a total of 50 points in two halves). The “easy” course sits at 15/50 points, what I consider to be a mid-tier difficulty for intermediate players. The “hard” course is, in my more limited experience, twice as hard. From Stage one, enemies shoot more and faster bullets, have more hit points, and move at faster speeds. Thus, each Stage offers a supplementary layer of difficulty, clocking the partial difficulty for this Facet a steep 23/25 points. At a grand total of 19/50 points, the game becomes a high-tier challenge for expert shmup players. A supplementary observation is that Psikyo fans may find the challenge more immediate, given how Rabio Lepus plays as a proto-Psikyo game.
Xenny is signalling me that we should move on and talk about my experiences with the game, if I really need to bore readers to death with such trite prose. I believe that Xenny is right: let us thus count how many bodies will lie lifeless, after a few paragraphs of penny dreadful-like reading. It is October 1989, and I am at my uncle’s arcade, enjoying another afternoon of intense gaming on a dreary, overcast, and cold Sunday. I admit that I remember little about the exact set-up of the upper floor, at this stage: my memories of me playing this game are quite hazy. What I do remember is that I notice this game almost by mistake, because my uncle placed the board in the north-west corner of the east side of the floor (or: top-left corner, right side in a relative reference system).
Oh, in short: the game is tucked in an older cab in the darkest, vaguely smelling corner. Ah, Toaplan’s Truxton and Seta/Taito’sTwin Eagle are the other two games in this corner and my uncle moved Thundercade closer to the Eastern windows facing the city’s cobbled alleys. It is the shmups side of the floor, all right. I notice the zany anime-looking game and design, and chuckle thinking that these guys might be in City Hunter or some other “Mokkori” anime. What I recall from this point onwards is that I start playing the game at a regular pace but always making slow progress, and always saving my practice for last. Once it is fully dark outside and the arcade becomes scarcely populated, I run a few credits and slowly trudge my way through the stages. I find HORI shmups hard, and this game is no exception.
It is no exaggeration saying that I progress one painful stage every fortnight or so. I can only remember that it is early March when I 1-CC this game for the first time by simply reaching the last boss with all lives in stock, and using the rabbit punch and missiles to clumsily open my way. Blah, what a terrible achievement, and nevertheless I am happy. I repeat the feat a few times, and then I leave the game aside. The “hard” course is clearly well above my 1990 skills. I do clear this course in 2003. I is the unpleasant October of my fourth BA year, when I am writing my BA dissertation and living like a hermit in my grandparents’ basement. By this point, I know that I will leave my current life behind and study abroad, even if the price to pay is clearly brutal.
At this stage, I am also playing a lot of ports on PS1 and Saturn, but those stories will appear at a later stage in our cycle of squibs. I am also using MAME from time to time, because I periodically feel the desire to handle grudges with games that I did not 1-CC back in the day. I decide on a whim to focus on Rabio Lepus. I admit that I spend most of the time practicing save states and feeling like it is a torture to play the “hard” course. I spend a considerable amount of time practicing stages, make a few full runs to put all the pieces together, and land the 1-CC exactly twice out of 50 attempts or so. This is good enough, for all I care: my 2003 persona focuses on solving grudges and feeling like all old outstanding problems find a solution.
By this point, I abruptly move to the conclusions before we drown in self-indulging sorrowful prose. So: Rabio Lepus is a HORI(zontal) shmup with an anime-style SF design in which two rabbit-shaped robots must save the royal family of their planet. The game introduces in prototypical form many mechanics that will recur in Psikyo games, such as close-range attacks and fast bullets. The game features great design and colourful stages, interesting bosses, solid game mechanics and two notable challenges via the “easy” and “hard” modes. Players who wish to discover the roots of Psikyo unique style can experience this title as a genuine time capsule for its company, and for the 1980s in general. Try it out, as a less-trodden but excellent path to classic shmups.
(2613 words; the usual disclaimers apply; the somewhat darker experiences I have etched onto this game are a bit of a surprise. I remember that I chose to write about this game because I remember it as a quite innovative title for the era, and one with a noticeable historical value. It turns out that this is probably an accurate description of the game even if my experiences with it were perhaps rather brooding. I guess that a future squib on Double Dragon II will turn out to be a harrowing experience. I am digressing too much, and those memories will have to wait for a while, still).
Rabio Lepus/Rabbit Punch! (Video System) is an HORI(zontal) shmup from Video System, the small but glorious company that created the Sonic Wings series. The game combines typical 1980s anime visual tropes with classical 1970s S(cience)F(iction) themes and involves rabbit-looking giant robots rescuing the royal family of Planet “BunnyLand” from evil forces. The game is notable for being one of the first games on which Psikyo founder and main brain Shin Nakamura honed his skills. Many mechanics introduced in this shmup also resurfaced in Psikyo shmups via various iterations and influenced other companies’ titles as well (e.g. Success’ Cotton series). A cult classic with a loyal following (viz. the game’s wiki entry), the game should be a necessary stop in any shmup player’s grand tour of the 1980s. The goal of this squib is to offer an argument on why you, dear readers, should indeed undertake such gaming stop.
Rabio Lepus saw its release in a year that was quite intense for shmups, both HORI(zontal) and in TATE (vertical) formats. The direct competitors to this tile in the genre were the legendary Irem’s R-Type and Taito’s Darius. For TATE games, Rabio Lepus had to compete against Toaplan’s Flying Shark and Kykyoku Tiger, Capcom’s 1943: The Battle of Midway and quite a few other titles. 1987, for the shmup genre and its fans, was a golden year indeed. With such a fierce and blazoned competition, players could justify themselves if they would not have noted this perhaps less eye-catching title. The game however built its own cult following and success, probably due to its high production values, innovative anime-looking design, and intriguing mechanics. It also laid the foundations for Psikyo’s approach to the genre, as Shin Nakamura apparently started his designer career on this title.
The story underpinning the game and its overall theme is rather simple and quite camp. The planet “Bunnyland” is a peaceful and tranquil kingdom in which citizens lively happily. One day, the evil army from “Mahou Land” come and kidnap the royal family. It is up to the robot fighters “Rabio” and “Lepus” to kick the bad guys’ army ass into oblivion and save the royal family. Interestingly, the royal family trio are human-looking individuals who however were bunny suits of differing degrees of silliness. Rabio and Lepus are giant rabbit-looking mechas, complete with complementary buckteeth and giant bunny ears. The game thus offers a rather silly twist to another rather bland setting, anime-style. The royal family members, Rabio and Lepus appear in the Sonic Wings games and other Video System games in various forms. The game thus played a lasting influence in Video System’s lore.
The game mechanics work as follows. Players control the robots and move them in eight directions with the joystick; the A button is for shooting; the B button is for missiles attacks. Rabio and Lepus can walk on surfaces and jump up via quick down-up movement while walking. Players can tap the A button to obtain a high-frequency stream of bullets or hold it down to use a slow auto-fire mode (8hz or so). Tapping in a semi-automatic manner releases fast salvos of bullets approximating higher auto-fire frequencies when players can time these salvos properly. The B button releases a salvo of missiles that work as smart but not so powerful bombs: a full salvo is about eight ammos; players start with 20 ammos and can get more stock as they proceed. Missiles can deliver good damage and have limited homing functions: do not expect them to be efficient.
Shot rate can increase if the robots get very close to enemies, thus allowing players to land quicker damage. When the robots are roughly at one sprite’s distance from an enemy or some other objects, they can also land a powerful physical blow: a punch, as per alternative title of the game. The robots can collect a ribbon power-up that increases shot frequency and aim and power of the missiles, and a tanuki-looking power-up. This power-up grants temporary invincibility: the robots gain a flashing tail-like weapon and can destroy any adversary upon touching them. The tail shortens as time passes, to signal the duration of the power-up. Robots can also stock up further missiles and collect bonus items, too. Most items appear after the robots shoot giant floating cans that carry carrots icons, in line with the “rabbit theme”. The two extend lives are at 300k and 600 points, respectively.
Rabio Lepus approaches the problem of HORI shmups being a tricky genre by adopting some aspects of so-called ”Euro shmups”. The robots start with three lives that correspond to three energy bars. Hit deplete H(it)P(oints) to varying degrees, so that the robots perform a dramatic death animation when they lose one bar. After resurrecting back, the robots can keep fighting: if they collect the giant “carrot” power-up, they regain some energy. At the end of each stage, after the boss fight, the robots can replenish their energy by collecting carrots falling from the ceiling. The carrots fall in increasingly random trajectories as the game progresses. Furthermore, the robots have no i(invicibility)-frames, so they may take multiple hits and lose lives quickly, especially against enemies landing multiple contact hits or multiple ultra-fast shots. Hence, be sure to dodge bullets and enemies anyway, as the energy bar can be rather misleading.
The game thus anticipates quite a few of Psikyo’s mechanics, except maybe for charge shots. The foundational aspect of the game also emerges once one looks at the game’s structure and stages. The game has 12 stages, with three environments of four stages each. The first three stages for each environment (“Space Ship”, “Asteroid Base”, “Planet”) are relatively short battles (around two minutes) concluding with intense and brief boss fights. The fourth stage of each environment is an equally brief and intense boss fight, after which the robots rescue one member of the royal family. Bullets are always fast and lethal, with bosses and bigger enemies shooting thick, vicious patterns. At the start, players can choose between the “easy” and “hard” courses, with the “hard” course featuring faster and nastier patterns and enemies. Players can thus directly access the equivalent of a second, quite more difficult loop of the game.
With this compact description of the game mechanics, we can move to the audio-visual department. The game has excellently detailed graphics and rather fluid animations for the time. The colour palette is rich, and the design of most sprites is quite intricate. The two rabbit robots have lovely walking animations when they land on surface and thus walk rather than fly. In general, the game looks sharp and detailed, with stages including high levels of detail in their background (e.g. Stage three’s giant human faces in the background). A perhaps weak point in the game is that bosses seem a heterogeneous bunch: The “Space Ship” bosses are robots, but the “Asteroid Base” and “Planet” have less mechanical appearance. Stage six’s boss looks like a ghost from Namco’s Pac-Man, Stage 10 is a giant Mammoth. The exact links to the “Rabbit” theme and the S(cience)F(iction) genre may appear uncertain, I believe.
The OST may be the weaker aspect (or Facet, to broaden the use of our terminology), at first glance. The game features mostly music that I would label as “generic, non-descript anime music”, perhaps with some stages offering a more SF-oriented sound. The themes for the “boss battle” stages (i.e. Stage four, eight, 12) are simple, dramatic-sounding themes that seem to aim at creating a tense atmosphere. An impressive aspect about the game is that it features voice samples for the announcer (in English, even), and minimal voice acting for the royal family. Once you save them, they will offer a few words of gratitude but in the J(a)P(anese) version only, however. Overall, however, the game looks visually impressive for its period and has a strong SF, anime vibe: the non-descript OSTs are certainly fine enough in how they accompany the action.
Let us now move to the discussion of the difficulty, benefitting from the fact that we have already introduced Facets as our terminological and conceptual tool. I believe that Rabio Lepus follows a trend akin to Capcom’s games. Players need to master mechanics and Stages’ layouts as distinct aspects, before they can 1-CC both versions of the game. The two facets seem not to interact in significant manners: once players can use the robots well and know how to handle stages, the 1-CC can boil down to question of good performance. Game mechanics present a subtle but not so difficult challenge: mastering the semi-automatic tapping requires some practice, and so do close-range shooting and rabbit punches. Using missiles may also reduce risks, but one can clear the game without ever using missiles. Collecting carrots as end-of-stage bonuses becomes tricky on the last few stages: be sure to master the technique.
Stages and their layout act as the main source of difficulty, in my view. I would suggest that the first two stages are rather easy. However, from Stage three players begin to face environmental hazards and tricky situations (e.g. narrow passages, enemies shooting from vantage points). The first boss battle (i.e. Stage four) is a short but tense affair: the bullet count increases considerably. Bullets become faster from Stage five onwards, bullet patterns become thicker and kamikaze enemies start appearing as well. The last four Stages require very fast dodging and rote memorization, with Stage 11 being a tricky “boss rush” Stage, Gradius-style. The final’s stage dual boss requires precise dodging movements in its two forms, even if stocking up lives and missiles and adopting a kamikaze approach may reduce the difficulty. Players ultimately need to work on having safe routes for stages, once they know the mechanics well.
Overall, I suggest that we have a 4/25 level of difficulty for the four mechanics. We then have a 11/25 level of difficulty for the ten stages and the dual final boss (N.B. we divide a total of 50 points in two halves). The “easy” course sits at 15/50 points, what I consider to be a mid-tier difficulty for intermediate players. The “hard” course is, in my more limited experience, twice as hard. From Stage one, enemies shoot more and faster bullets, have more hit points, and move at faster speeds. Thus, each Stage offers a supplementary layer of difficulty, clocking the partial difficulty for this Facet a steep 23/25 points. At a grand total of 19/50 points, the game becomes a high-tier challenge for expert shmup players. A supplementary observation is that Psikyo fans may find the challenge more immediate, given how Rabio Lepus plays as a proto-Psikyo game.
Xenny is signalling me that we should move on and talk about my experiences with the game, if I really need to bore readers to death with such trite prose. I believe that Xenny is right: let us thus count how many bodies will lie lifeless, after a few paragraphs of penny dreadful-like reading. It is October 1989, and I am at my uncle’s arcade, enjoying another afternoon of intense gaming on a dreary, overcast, and cold Sunday. I admit that I remember little about the exact set-up of the upper floor, at this stage: my memories of me playing this game are quite hazy. What I do remember is that I notice this game almost by mistake, because my uncle placed the board in the north-west corner of the east side of the floor (or: top-left corner, right side in a relative reference system).
Oh, in short: the game is tucked in an older cab in the darkest, vaguely smelling corner. Ah, Toaplan’s Truxton and Seta/Taito’sTwin Eagle are the other two games in this corner and my uncle moved Thundercade closer to the Eastern windows facing the city’s cobbled alleys. It is the shmups side of the floor, all right. I notice the zany anime-looking game and design, and chuckle thinking that these guys might be in City Hunter or some other “Mokkori” anime. What I recall from this point onwards is that I start playing the game at a regular pace but always making slow progress, and always saving my practice for last. Once it is fully dark outside and the arcade becomes scarcely populated, I run a few credits and slowly trudge my way through the stages. I find HORI shmups hard, and this game is no exception.
It is no exaggeration saying that I progress one painful stage every fortnight or so. I can only remember that it is early March when I 1-CC this game for the first time by simply reaching the last boss with all lives in stock, and using the rabbit punch and missiles to clumsily open my way. Blah, what a terrible achievement, and nevertheless I am happy. I repeat the feat a few times, and then I leave the game aside. The “hard” course is clearly well above my 1990 skills. I do clear this course in 2003. I is the unpleasant October of my fourth BA year, when I am writing my BA dissertation and living like a hermit in my grandparents’ basement. By this point, I know that I will leave my current life behind and study abroad, even if the price to pay is clearly brutal.
At this stage, I am also playing a lot of ports on PS1 and Saturn, but those stories will appear at a later stage in our cycle of squibs. I am also using MAME from time to time, because I periodically feel the desire to handle grudges with games that I did not 1-CC back in the day. I decide on a whim to focus on Rabio Lepus. I admit that I spend most of the time practicing save states and feeling like it is a torture to play the “hard” course. I spend a considerable amount of time practicing stages, make a few full runs to put all the pieces together, and land the 1-CC exactly twice out of 50 attempts or so. This is good enough, for all I care: my 2003 persona focuses on solving grudges and feeling like all old outstanding problems find a solution.
By this point, I abruptly move to the conclusions before we drown in self-indulging sorrowful prose. So: Rabio Lepus is a HORI(zontal) shmup with an anime-style SF design in which two rabbit-shaped robots must save the royal family of their planet. The game introduces in prototypical form many mechanics that will recur in Psikyo games, such as close-range attacks and fast bullets. The game features great design and colourful stages, interesting bosses, solid game mechanics and two notable challenges via the “easy” and “hard” modes. Players who wish to discover the roots of Psikyo unique style can experience this title as a genuine time capsule for its company, and for the 1980s in general. Try it out, as a less-trodden but excellent path to classic shmups.
(2613 words; the usual disclaimers apply; the somewhat darker experiences I have etched onto this game are a bit of a surprise. I remember that I chose to write about this game because I remember it as a quite innovative title for the era, and one with a noticeable historical value. It turns out that this is probably an accurate description of the game even if my experiences with it were perhaps rather brooding. I guess that a future squib on Double Dragon II will turn out to be a harrowing experience. I am digressing too much, and those memories will have to wait for a while, still).
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Mar 16, 2025 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Act Fancer: Cybernetic Hyper Weapon (Data East, 1989(
We continue with a revision: Act Fancer: Cybernetic Hyper Weapon. The original notes I wrote about the game are here. I wrote them up once I decided to go for the 1-CC, solving a grudge “only” 35 years in the making. The squib I present in this post follows the “longer and more articulated” model I started using in this thread. We have some other DECO games to cover in our “1980s were chaos” run, so some readers might wonder if we should not pursue new material first. However, I also believe that revising this entry while the overcast sky puts me in a moody spirit is perhaps the most appropriate choice. One observation: Data East games from the 1980s often have several revisions. I gloss over this detail because often the differences are hard to spot. Without hesitation, we go forward:
Act Fancer Cybernetic Hyper Weapon ( Data East, 1989) is a run’n gun game set in a Dying Earth/Grey goo world with Nausicäa undertones. Players take control of a mysterious cyborg that starts as a puny creature with a big tail but that can metamorphose (or, alternatively, evolve) into a towering man/weapon of mass destruction. The action cover five short but intense stages, and loops indefinitely: a loop is however at most 15 minutes long. The game acts as an R2RKMF spin-off to the two Data East Darwin 4078 “evolutionary body horror” shmups, and plays at a brisk and brutal pace. Players who like Data East games and wish to revisit one of the less stellar but nevertheless entertaining 1980s of this maligned publisher will find the game delightful. My goal in this squib is to convince everyone else that they can also enjoy the game.
Act Fancer’s design does not appear in a vacuum, as we can glean once we attempt a minimal analysis of the game’s Zeitgeist. The game seems to take inspiration from various horror sources, as the genre experienced a strong level of popularity in the 1980s. Act Fancer as a cyborg character seems to find its roots in manga cyborgs like Araki’s Baoh, among many such protagonists. The idea that the world becomes a new, hostile, and highly mutated ecosystem probably originates from Miyazaki’s Nausicäa manga and anime. John Carpenter’s The Thing seems a possible inspiration for the “alien takeover” side of the plot, even. Data East programmers thus possibly wanted to create a SF/horror crossover with a dash of super-hero undertones that combines various 1980s influential tropes from these genres. The result may appear perhaps under-developed or campy: it is a DECO game, after all.
The plot can be summarised as follows. Players take control of “Act Fancer”, a mysterious cyborg traversing the ruins of a dilapidated Earth. Act Fancer seems bent on a “total destruction” mission against hordes of non-human mutated creatures such as giant snakes, cockroaches, spiders, and walls of quivering flesh. The arcade version offers next to no explanation about the nature of this apocalyptic scenario, but the M(ega)D(rive) port sheds some light. Some big bio-tech corporations decide to experiment with bio-weapons based on mutations induced via nano-machines. This technology gets out of control due to the intervention of alien invaders who wish to seize Earth, and life as we know is turned into grey goo, in Greg Bear’s Blood Music style. In this entirely mutated world, Act Fancer must find the alien overlords pulling the strings and killing them, with the hope that humans can reverse the global mutation process.
The game has simple mechanics. The joystick controls movement in eight directions. Act Fancer can move to the left or to the right, but once Act Fancer jumps, the joystick determines the character’s gliding movement. The A is for shooting, and the button B is for jumping. Players can tap the A button to shoot various attack forms, or they can hold it to have a slow but automatic shot. The use of auto-fire beyond 10hz seems a bad choice, as the game seems to detect it and increase difficulty accordingly. Players can then make Act Fancer jump via the B button. If players press B and an “up” direction (up, up-left, up-right), Act Fancer will jump, with height determined by the holding of the B button. Once Act Fancer reaches peak jump height, players can hold B to glide downwards (down, down-right, down-left), or release it to immediately fall.
The power-up system for the main shot includes blue and pink orbs. The blue orbs trigger the metamorphosis of Act Fancer into a bigger, more powerful creature. Act Fancer can metamorphose/evolve six times, acquiring increasingly powerful attacks and a bigger sprite. Act Fancer starts as a level two creature, so the peak is a level seven badass cyborg with wings, giant tail, and homing attacks (i.e. the “Zacross” form). A single hit will revert Act Fancer to a level one midget (i.e. the “Nuts” form). A second hit will kill the character. The pink orb extends the duration of a form by ten seconds, without an upgrade; blue orbs trigger a new level and reset the time that a form is maintain (ten seconds). Players must thus collect a stream of orbs during stages to keep a power level sufficient to handle enemies, or at least to avoid immediate death.
Basic game mechanics are thus rather standard, for an action game from the 1980s. Crucially, Act Fancer’s sprite grows bigger due to mutations, and so does the sprite’s hit box. Enemies can often shoot extremely fast bullets or just collide with the character, so the risk of reverting to the Nuts form is ever present. However, Act Fancer is invulnerable while reverting, and can collect blue and pink orbs anyway: a new evolution phase starts, based on the number of collected orbs. Thus, players can exploit this apparent phase of weakness to kill enemies and collect more orbs. This technique is certainly tricky. There are no explicit i-frame markers (e.g. flickering), and well-timed hits from enemies are possible, the moment players start evolving again. Thus, players must be rather careful in handling evolving/involving phases, but can exploit this mechanic to their own advantage, to traverse the relatively difficult stages.
Before we fully explore the topic of difficulty, let me compactly discuss the “sound and vision” departments of the game. The title is an early Data East/1980s title with the typical bio-mechanic design of the era. The colour palette is drab, and includes metallic blue shades, copper hues and a few other colours suggesting late autumn atmospheres. Sprites look disgusting enough but not so detailed, and animation level is not exactly superb. Aside Araki’s Baoh, cyborgs like Guyver come to mind. Stages and their settings also have strong whiffs of bio-horror and post-apocalyptic movies: Stage one is set in the roads a completely overrun New York, while Stages two to four move to the inner, organic nest of the aliens and their grotesque underlings. Drab palette, formless flesh walls and shiny cyborg components combine well, even when poorly animated: the game has its own distinctive visual identity.
The OST by the Gamadelic composer XX is simple but efficient. Stage one has its own theme: Stages two and four include a distinct theme, and Stages three and five have a third theme. If you have read my Sly Spy squib, then you will know that Gamadelic musicians used synthesizers with rather unique metallic sounds and their musicians had a good grasp of the “Bond style” of soundtrack music. Their late 1980s titles thus featured OSTs with quite moody and unique sound tapestries, and Act Fancer is no exception. The three themes, the boss themes and the final boss rush themes conjure the atmospheres of classics like the Aliens movie. The deeply brooding and oppressive sound of the OST aptly combines with loud sound effects that Data East often used in their titles (e.g. explosions). Overall, Act Fancer sounds and looks drab and moody, but also nails the genre’s tropes in an elegant manner.
Let us now discuss the topic of difficulty, via our well-established if perhaps slightly vague notion of Facet. The game involves two key facets that make up its difficulty: Game mechanics and Stages’ layouts. Once players know how to move Act Fancer around and know how to handle stages and bosses, they may potentially 1-CC/loop the game at their leisure. We thus discuss these facets in detail. Specifically, we follow the assumption that we assign partially difficulty values not going over the 25 points mark (i.e. we partition the grand total of 50 points in two halves). For game mechanics, I propose that there are three sources of difficulty: the mastering of the hovering mechanic, the mastering of the various forms’ attacks, and the evolution-involution mechanics. Players must simply develop a firm grasp of each of these facets, if they wish to proceed beyond Stage two.
For Stages, I can observe that Stages two to five involve two short but distinct sections before the boss fights. Players need to memorise enemies’ placement and possible cheap shots, and learn how to handle certain enemies (e.g. the “teleporting” cockroaches in Stage five’s opening phase). Each boss fight then involves a specific pattern that allows players to quickly solve the fight; if players will not implement, quick and frustrating deaths will usually follow. The final boss rush includes four different bosses that Act Fancer must destroy before involving to the Nuts form. There are no blue orbs spawning during this fight, so the game provides an extra layer of difficulty before Act Fancer can save Earth (more or less). Players may experience frustrating strings of deaths until they develop reliable strategies for each of these sections. Once they do so, clearing stages may become easy if not trivial.
I thus propose that the game mechanics sub-Facet deserves a 3/25 difficulty value, as players must master three key mechanics. The stages’ layout mechanics deserves a 11/25 difficulty value. Players must develop reliable route for the two halves of Stages three and four, plus Stage five. The third and fourth bosses require their own routes, and so do the final four boss forms. The grand total is a 14/50 difficulty value: Act Fancer is a mid-tier game within the intermediate player level. Loops seem to increase the static difficulty to “hard” and “very hard” levels; I propose that the difficulty increases to 16/50 and 18/50 points, respectively. Beyond the second loop, players may succumb to boredom or tiredness, but may also play for hours on end. As always, difficulty in endlessly looping game becomes also an indirect function of players’ attention, stamina, and patience.
Xenny has just raised his (its? Her? “Xen”, the pronoun for xenomorph creatures?) tail to signal me that we should move onto the most controversial part of the squibs: personal experiences from your scribe. Let me just start by saying that there are certainly much better-looking and sounding games in October 1989: you will read about Rabio Lepus as soon as I upload its squib in this thread. However, I am a kid with a certain sense of dark humour and a soft spot for the janky artisans of videogame creation, as you have read in the Momoko 120% squib. This game and the UPL cult classic Mutant Night occupy the Northern side of the central room in the lower flower of my uncle’s arcade. I also remember Taito’s (e.g. Puzznic and Crime City) in this room. My uncle does not believe in thematic organisation of games and rooms.
I admit that I do not spend much time on this title, even if I always try out one or two credits on rainy or snowy days. Again, I believe in atmosphere and on mood: killing giant mutated cockroaches on dreary dark afternoons has its merits. Embarrassingly enough, though, I never quite bother to master the gliding game mechanics and the complex evolution/involution phases. My best run is a rather pathetic attempt at killing the third boss, when this is a title that quite a few people can 1-CC after a few days of practice. My uncle decides to remove the board some time in February, because he is losing money even if people follow an unwritten agreement of leaving the cab after clearing two loops. Hey, I am a kid: there is no shame in sucking at most games except the few I can 1-CC.
Let us fast forward to 2024. I am skipping the dozens of attempts at learning the game over the decades: the MAME gap year of 2000, the harrowing attempts in 2004, and a few others. It suffices to say that from time to time, I decide that no, I must 1-CC this game at all costs but well, I lack the temperament to do so. In 2024, I am an old or at least middle-aged guy in his mid-forties: at least I have more patience than before. I sit down and study a few replays of the game, create save states to practice Stages and the final boss rush. I thus spend a couple of weeks of my Spring Festival holidays to practice the game. The weather is particularly rainy and bleak: I could not ask for a better atmosphere for this game.
The post with which I opened the set of reference links in this new squib chronicles my fresh impressions after the first 1-CC. What I can now add is that, on a good day, I can occasionally 1-CC the game without getting too many headaches. I can also end my credit on Stage one, when I simply lose the pace immediately and start running Act Fancer into enemies and bullets as clumsily as I possibly can. The game is not difficult, but it is certainly more prone to random jank than titles like Sly Spy. What matters for now is that I can 1-CC or even 1-LC a single loop in less than 15 minutes, and thus enjoy some quick and moody action on any overcast day. Hey, I am all for atmosphere, especially when the weather is dreary and I play games when it rains outside.
(2226 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I think that Data East was also a company with a strong drive to offer cinematographic approaches to game design and atmosphere. Too bad that they would often forget to polish the game mechanics, honestly. In the case of this game, it really feels like they had a lot of leftover design material left from the other Darwin games and decide to whip them up into an action game. Still, today is the perfect example of a dreary, grey day in which 1-CC a loop of this game and Sly Spy feels like a moral obligation, almost. Oh well, I ranted too much again…).
Act Fancer Cybernetic Hyper Weapon ( Data East, 1989) is a run’n gun game set in a Dying Earth/Grey goo world with Nausicäa undertones. Players take control of a mysterious cyborg that starts as a puny creature with a big tail but that can metamorphose (or, alternatively, evolve) into a towering man/weapon of mass destruction. The action cover five short but intense stages, and loops indefinitely: a loop is however at most 15 minutes long. The game acts as an R2RKMF spin-off to the two Data East Darwin 4078 “evolutionary body horror” shmups, and plays at a brisk and brutal pace. Players who like Data East games and wish to revisit one of the less stellar but nevertheless entertaining 1980s of this maligned publisher will find the game delightful. My goal in this squib is to convince everyone else that they can also enjoy the game.
Act Fancer’s design does not appear in a vacuum, as we can glean once we attempt a minimal analysis of the game’s Zeitgeist. The game seems to take inspiration from various horror sources, as the genre experienced a strong level of popularity in the 1980s. Act Fancer as a cyborg character seems to find its roots in manga cyborgs like Araki’s Baoh, among many such protagonists. The idea that the world becomes a new, hostile, and highly mutated ecosystem probably originates from Miyazaki’s Nausicäa manga and anime. John Carpenter’s The Thing seems a possible inspiration for the “alien takeover” side of the plot, even. Data East programmers thus possibly wanted to create a SF/horror crossover with a dash of super-hero undertones that combines various 1980s influential tropes from these genres. The result may appear perhaps under-developed or campy: it is a DECO game, after all.
The plot can be summarised as follows. Players take control of “Act Fancer”, a mysterious cyborg traversing the ruins of a dilapidated Earth. Act Fancer seems bent on a “total destruction” mission against hordes of non-human mutated creatures such as giant snakes, cockroaches, spiders, and walls of quivering flesh. The arcade version offers next to no explanation about the nature of this apocalyptic scenario, but the M(ega)D(rive) port sheds some light. Some big bio-tech corporations decide to experiment with bio-weapons based on mutations induced via nano-machines. This technology gets out of control due to the intervention of alien invaders who wish to seize Earth, and life as we know is turned into grey goo, in Greg Bear’s Blood Music style. In this entirely mutated world, Act Fancer must find the alien overlords pulling the strings and killing them, with the hope that humans can reverse the global mutation process.
The game has simple mechanics. The joystick controls movement in eight directions. Act Fancer can move to the left or to the right, but once Act Fancer jumps, the joystick determines the character’s gliding movement. The A is for shooting, and the button B is for jumping. Players can tap the A button to shoot various attack forms, or they can hold it to have a slow but automatic shot. The use of auto-fire beyond 10hz seems a bad choice, as the game seems to detect it and increase difficulty accordingly. Players can then make Act Fancer jump via the B button. If players press B and an “up” direction (up, up-left, up-right), Act Fancer will jump, with height determined by the holding of the B button. Once Act Fancer reaches peak jump height, players can hold B to glide downwards (down, down-right, down-left), or release it to immediately fall.
The power-up system for the main shot includes blue and pink orbs. The blue orbs trigger the metamorphosis of Act Fancer into a bigger, more powerful creature. Act Fancer can metamorphose/evolve six times, acquiring increasingly powerful attacks and a bigger sprite. Act Fancer starts as a level two creature, so the peak is a level seven badass cyborg with wings, giant tail, and homing attacks (i.e. the “Zacross” form). A single hit will revert Act Fancer to a level one midget (i.e. the “Nuts” form). A second hit will kill the character. The pink orb extends the duration of a form by ten seconds, without an upgrade; blue orbs trigger a new level and reset the time that a form is maintain (ten seconds). Players must thus collect a stream of orbs during stages to keep a power level sufficient to handle enemies, or at least to avoid immediate death.
Basic game mechanics are thus rather standard, for an action game from the 1980s. Crucially, Act Fancer’s sprite grows bigger due to mutations, and so does the sprite’s hit box. Enemies can often shoot extremely fast bullets or just collide with the character, so the risk of reverting to the Nuts form is ever present. However, Act Fancer is invulnerable while reverting, and can collect blue and pink orbs anyway: a new evolution phase starts, based on the number of collected orbs. Thus, players can exploit this apparent phase of weakness to kill enemies and collect more orbs. This technique is certainly tricky. There are no explicit i-frame markers (e.g. flickering), and well-timed hits from enemies are possible, the moment players start evolving again. Thus, players must be rather careful in handling evolving/involving phases, but can exploit this mechanic to their own advantage, to traverse the relatively difficult stages.
Before we fully explore the topic of difficulty, let me compactly discuss the “sound and vision” departments of the game. The title is an early Data East/1980s title with the typical bio-mechanic design of the era. The colour palette is drab, and includes metallic blue shades, copper hues and a few other colours suggesting late autumn atmospheres. Sprites look disgusting enough but not so detailed, and animation level is not exactly superb. Aside Araki’s Baoh, cyborgs like Guyver come to mind. Stages and their settings also have strong whiffs of bio-horror and post-apocalyptic movies: Stage one is set in the roads a completely overrun New York, while Stages two to four move to the inner, organic nest of the aliens and their grotesque underlings. Drab palette, formless flesh walls and shiny cyborg components combine well, even when poorly animated: the game has its own distinctive visual identity.
The OST by the Gamadelic composer XX is simple but efficient. Stage one has its own theme: Stages two and four include a distinct theme, and Stages three and five have a third theme. If you have read my Sly Spy squib, then you will know that Gamadelic musicians used synthesizers with rather unique metallic sounds and their musicians had a good grasp of the “Bond style” of soundtrack music. Their late 1980s titles thus featured OSTs with quite moody and unique sound tapestries, and Act Fancer is no exception. The three themes, the boss themes and the final boss rush themes conjure the atmospheres of classics like the Aliens movie. The deeply brooding and oppressive sound of the OST aptly combines with loud sound effects that Data East often used in their titles (e.g. explosions). Overall, Act Fancer sounds and looks drab and moody, but also nails the genre’s tropes in an elegant manner.
Let us now discuss the topic of difficulty, via our well-established if perhaps slightly vague notion of Facet. The game involves two key facets that make up its difficulty: Game mechanics and Stages’ layouts. Once players know how to move Act Fancer around and know how to handle stages and bosses, they may potentially 1-CC/loop the game at their leisure. We thus discuss these facets in detail. Specifically, we follow the assumption that we assign partially difficulty values not going over the 25 points mark (i.e. we partition the grand total of 50 points in two halves). For game mechanics, I propose that there are three sources of difficulty: the mastering of the hovering mechanic, the mastering of the various forms’ attacks, and the evolution-involution mechanics. Players must simply develop a firm grasp of each of these facets, if they wish to proceed beyond Stage two.
For Stages, I can observe that Stages two to five involve two short but distinct sections before the boss fights. Players need to memorise enemies’ placement and possible cheap shots, and learn how to handle certain enemies (e.g. the “teleporting” cockroaches in Stage five’s opening phase). Each boss fight then involves a specific pattern that allows players to quickly solve the fight; if players will not implement, quick and frustrating deaths will usually follow. The final boss rush includes four different bosses that Act Fancer must destroy before involving to the Nuts form. There are no blue orbs spawning during this fight, so the game provides an extra layer of difficulty before Act Fancer can save Earth (more or less). Players may experience frustrating strings of deaths until they develop reliable strategies for each of these sections. Once they do so, clearing stages may become easy if not trivial.
I thus propose that the game mechanics sub-Facet deserves a 3/25 difficulty value, as players must master three key mechanics. The stages’ layout mechanics deserves a 11/25 difficulty value. Players must develop reliable route for the two halves of Stages three and four, plus Stage five. The third and fourth bosses require their own routes, and so do the final four boss forms. The grand total is a 14/50 difficulty value: Act Fancer is a mid-tier game within the intermediate player level. Loops seem to increase the static difficulty to “hard” and “very hard” levels; I propose that the difficulty increases to 16/50 and 18/50 points, respectively. Beyond the second loop, players may succumb to boredom or tiredness, but may also play for hours on end. As always, difficulty in endlessly looping game becomes also an indirect function of players’ attention, stamina, and patience.
Xenny has just raised his (its? Her? “Xen”, the pronoun for xenomorph creatures?) tail to signal me that we should move onto the most controversial part of the squibs: personal experiences from your scribe. Let me just start by saying that there are certainly much better-looking and sounding games in October 1989: you will read about Rabio Lepus as soon as I upload its squib in this thread. However, I am a kid with a certain sense of dark humour and a soft spot for the janky artisans of videogame creation, as you have read in the Momoko 120% squib. This game and the UPL cult classic Mutant Night occupy the Northern side of the central room in the lower flower of my uncle’s arcade. I also remember Taito’s (e.g. Puzznic and Crime City) in this room. My uncle does not believe in thematic organisation of games and rooms.
I admit that I do not spend much time on this title, even if I always try out one or two credits on rainy or snowy days. Again, I believe in atmosphere and on mood: killing giant mutated cockroaches on dreary dark afternoons has its merits. Embarrassingly enough, though, I never quite bother to master the gliding game mechanics and the complex evolution/involution phases. My best run is a rather pathetic attempt at killing the third boss, when this is a title that quite a few people can 1-CC after a few days of practice. My uncle decides to remove the board some time in February, because he is losing money even if people follow an unwritten agreement of leaving the cab after clearing two loops. Hey, I am a kid: there is no shame in sucking at most games except the few I can 1-CC.
Let us fast forward to 2024. I am skipping the dozens of attempts at learning the game over the decades: the MAME gap year of 2000, the harrowing attempts in 2004, and a few others. It suffices to say that from time to time, I decide that no, I must 1-CC this game at all costs but well, I lack the temperament to do so. In 2024, I am an old or at least middle-aged guy in his mid-forties: at least I have more patience than before. I sit down and study a few replays of the game, create save states to practice Stages and the final boss rush. I thus spend a couple of weeks of my Spring Festival holidays to practice the game. The weather is particularly rainy and bleak: I could not ask for a better atmosphere for this game.
The post with which I opened the set of reference links in this new squib chronicles my fresh impressions after the first 1-CC. What I can now add is that, on a good day, I can occasionally 1-CC the game without getting too many headaches. I can also end my credit on Stage one, when I simply lose the pace immediately and start running Act Fancer into enemies and bullets as clumsily as I possibly can. The game is not difficult, but it is certainly more prone to random jank than titles like Sly Spy. What matters for now is that I can 1-CC or even 1-LC a single loop in less than 15 minutes, and thus enjoy some quick and moody action on any overcast day. Hey, I am all for atmosphere, especially when the weather is dreary and I play games when it rains outside.
(2226 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I think that Data East was also a company with a strong drive to offer cinematographic approaches to game design and atmosphere. Too bad that they would often forget to polish the game mechanics, honestly. In the case of this game, it really feels like they had a lot of leftover design material left from the other Darwin games and decide to whip them up into an action game. Still, today is the perfect example of a dreary, grey day in which 1-CC a loop of this game and Sly Spy feels like a moral obligation, almost. Oh well, I ranted too much again…).
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Teddy Boy Blues (Sega, 1985)
Our newest squib is a revision of the original squib on Teddy Boy Blues. I admit that even revisiting this squib has made me fell uneasy to mildly irrational levels: when pursuing the “pseudo 1-CC”, I had several moments in which I simply exploded and rage-quit the game. Once you read, perhaps a second time, how the game mechanics work, you might (might!) even sympathize with my darkest gaming moments. Or maybe just think: “Oh blimey, Rando too? I am not so queer after all!”. Rage outbursts be gone, and we move to the squib:
Teddy Boy Blues (Sega, 1985) is a platform/run’n gun game that pits a “Teddy boy” character against hordes of bizarre creatures in short but intense stages. The main character, which I call “Teddy Boy”, uses a machinegun to shoot down creatures popping out of giant dice-shaped containers. The game is notable for its darkly surreal atmosphere, simple and almost lysergic colour palette, and for its quirky controls that make the game a frustrating and edgy experience. The game has by now fallen in the dustbin of history, but connoisseurs of horribly difficult 1980s arcade games might heap praise and scorn about the game in equal measure. My goal in this squib is to explain why modern players might play this game and find it enjoyable even if today’s standards is might offer a brutal challenge. Hopefully, you will not have dreams after trying out the game.
Defining the game’s Zeitgeist/context is a bit tricky. The game’s basic design idea apparently originates in a City Pop song that was popular in 1984/1985 in Japan. The singer of this past mainstream hit, Yoko Ishino, features in the game’s attract mode while surrounded by an orchestra composed of the game’s enemy creatures. The song itself is the theme playing in each stage except for the bonus stages. Building on this popular mainstream song, Sega programmers veer into a liminal territory, genre-wise. In 1985, Capcom had their Ghosts’n Goblins smash hit and Taito was going to hit arcades with classic single screen platforms such as Fairyland Story and Bubble Bobble. Teddy Boy Blues combines elements from these games but also anticipates Jaleco’s Momoko 120% and City Connection, via “limited scrolling” approach and use of platform-based levels. Its liminality thus originates in its ability to merge several genres into one game.
The plot game is also notable in being completely unrelated to the song. Teddy Boy appears on an undefined mission. The SMS port suggests that Teddy Boy must escape from an “Endless Nightmare Dimension”, fighting against hordes of recurring monsters. On bonus stages, an 8-bit, chibi-looking version of Yoko Oshino appears in one of the two types of bonus stage, the treasure hunt. Beyond these vague details, however, not much else transpires about the game’s setting. Interestingly, the game features 43 unique stages. From stage 44, the player will face harder versions of these stages, and the game appears to loop endlessly. Thus, Teddy Boy seems doomed to spend an eternity in this nightmare dimension, if the monsters do not kill him and send to heaven first. The liminality of the game seems also to transpire via the mildly absurdist, bare-bones plot and its arbitrary connection to 1980s pop culture.
Let us start with some basic aspects of the game to frame this discussion, however. I clarify the notion of “limited scrolling”, first. The game combines platform aspects with an action/R2RKMF approach. The camera always moves with Teddy Boy at the centre, while Teddy Boy happily shoots enemies in all directions and jumps across platforms, in each stage. Players can thus move Teddy Boy in eight directions via the joystick and command controls.
The A button releases bullets from Teddy Boy’s machine-gun; The B button makes Teddy Boy jump in an inputted direction (up, up-right, up-left); Teddy Boy can also directly walk into platforms at lower levels (input down, down-right, down-right). Players can tap for faster shot rates or use the moderate auto-fire that the game provides (8hz or so); point-blanking enemies results into faster shooting rates, and players can activate the C button to shoot alternate shots.
A key innovation of the game, for the year, pertains to management of scrolling. All stages are slightly bigger than the screen (i.e. stages have limits). Reaching one edge of the stage will result in popping up on the other side of the stage (i.e. stages are not bounded). Since the camera always places Teddy Boy at the centre, the character appears to move across endlessly repeating stages. This entails that Teddy Boy can shoot in the back enemies chasing him, if he moves fast enough. Enemies can however attack him in the back by apparently fleeing Teddy Boy’s attack: the technique works both ways. The “endless” aspect of the game thus also involves endlessly repeating but constantly changing stages. Furthermore, many platforms consist of destructible tiles that Teddy Boy can shoot into oblivion: the platform layout of each stage can thus become rather different from the initial structure.
Crucially, the two mechanics that can make or break players’ appreciation of the game revolve around movement and attacking patterns. First, Teddy Boy has some inertial movement: even a single tap in one direction will result in two steps. Visually, this choice gives the impression that Teddy Boy constantly slips in one direction: precision movements are hard. Players can thus struggle to master precision jumps and static positioning. As the game progresses, this makes stages increasingly difficult because precise jumps and positioning may determine life or death in many situations. Second, enemies are wickedly smart. There are seven types of enemies, each with distinctive attacking and evading patterns. Irrespective of the type, each single enemy can manipulate motion speed and trajectory to literally move between gaps in Teddy Boy’s machine-gun stream. Enemies can effectively change direction of motion and speed within frames, thus suddenly killing Teddy Boy upon contact.
Readers may interpret my description of these two mechanics as a suggestion that the game is brutally unfair when the CPU “decides” to kill Teddy Boy. The truth is a bit more nuanced: the programmers might have possibly tried to simulate swarm behaviour. Enemies follow certain fixed motion patterns, as single entities or as “swarms” (e.g. the Dharma-like bouncing heads). When certain conditions hold, however, (e.g. Teddy Boy is not moving and enemies are closing in from the “back”) enemies drop this behaviour and individually hit Teddy Boy in a few frames. Given this mechanic, players must always be aware of where enemies’ trajectories and conditions by which they can play their “sudden attack” card. Players must also shoot with precision. Again, fast-moving enemies can pass through gaps in the bullet stream, if players tap A aimlessly. Kill with ruthless pace, be fast and always on the move.
The truth about jumps and positioning is also very nuanced, to be fair. If Teddy Boy remains for more than three seconds in one spot, a floating fireball will land on the occupied platform and destruct it. Teddy Boy remains unscathed, but he will fall to the next platform, or into an enemy. Micro-movements will usually avoid this problem, as in the case of sudden enemy attacks. It is undeniable that, in many situations, players require precise if temporary positioning and shooting, and inertia movement makes all these actions harder. Chibi forms, however, bounce around a lot and enemies can literally swamp stages with their sheer numbers. As the attract movies show, “always on the move in the Endless Nightmare” seems the game’s main design philosophy. This is however easier said than done, as difficulty increases very quickly and stages are short (max one minute) and brutally difficult.
The game also offers an interesting score system that works as follows. After a hit, the creatures transform into chibi versions of themselves, and become items worth various amounts of points. Failure to collect them results in the chibi forms transforming into flies that move to the bottom of the screen and eat up the time bar, in Pac-Man style. Collecting one form starts a chain: players can collect several chibi forms in a row (and within 0.5 seconds) to increase their point value. The progression is from 100 points to 1000, then 10k and finally 50k points. Players can create dozens of chibi forms and score big points, if they can handle treacherous stages. Failure to collect chibi forms is risky, because the presence of too many fly forms usually results in death by time expiration. Players must thus at least collect chibi forms, and possibly chain them.
The game offers some breaks from this seizure-inducing action via the bonus stage. The bonus stage offers players a choice between polygon practice (choose Teddy Boy) and Treasure Hunt at Home (choose Yoko). If players can land a perfect score on the first polygon practice (20 hits), or collect at least 12 hidden items in the treasure hunt, they can “warp” stages by choosing to start again on either stage 3, 7, 11 or 17. Completing successfully stage 7, 11 or 15 after a warp will award a hefty bonus: stage 3 will not award one. If players can collect all 48 treasures in the treasure hunt, they will switch to polygon practice for the remainder of the game. If they choose polygon practice, they will stick to it until the “game over” screen. Polygon practice becomes extremely fast by the seventh iteration (i.e. after stage 30), anyway.
Our discussion of the game so far suggests that the game has a complex engine. The game's score system also includes an apparent Easter egg further confirming this potential impression. When players approach the maximal score (i.e. 9,999,990 points), the game starts using a different scoring system. It suffices to say that at around 9,990,000 points, all scoring opportunities should downgrade by a power of ten. Chibi forms that give 100 points when collected instead seem to give 10 points. This entails that even excellent score runs will require extraordinary endurance feats from players who wish to max out the score. If players ever achieve this result, the game loops endlessly anyway; I tested this hypothesis by spending a few hours trudging through hundreds of levels via cheat codes. This complexity entails that the game’s difficulty may be prodigious, as we are also going to discuss in detail.
First, however, please let me spend a few words on the game’s audio-visual presentation. The game features a very simple palette with ultra-bright colours (16 of them, I guess) and the same theme song playing ad nauseam (except for the bonus stages as we mentioned before). Enemies have interesting and non-sensical designs, and for the times they also feature fluid animations. Ultimately, though, the game’s design may appear simple even by 1985’s standards, and especially if we consider that Sega released games like Space Harrier or even just Alex Kidd in the same year. It does not help that sound effects tend to be rather bare and loud: players may end up finding them irritating after a few stages.
By this point, we can discuss the game’s difficulty via the now familiar theoretical tool of Facets (well, I hope that my readers have an inkling of the tool). I suggest that the game’s subjective difficulty may lie in three Facets: game mechanics, Stage layout/design, and the relatively robust interaction of these two Facets. I divide the total possible score of 50 as follows: 20 maximal points for the first two Facets, 10 for the third Facet. I anticipate matters by saying that “just” clearing the first 43 stages, thus reaching the equivalent of a “1-All 1-CC”, is a mid-tier challenge for master players (i.e. a 35/50 points). A “2-All 1-CC” and beyond max out the difficulty at 50/50 points, especially if one pursues the perhaps idea of maxing out the score. Please let me argue why this in the case in the next few paragraphs, then.
First, when it comes to game mechanics, players need to master in great details all of Teddy Boy’s moves and quirks. Players must carefully use shooting frequencies and avoid gaps in the bullet stream, and must land precise hits against enemies. Players must then learn how to handle Teddy Boy’s inertia when moving, when jumping, and even when going up or down the stages. Perfect micro-tapping is a necessary skill, in general. Furthermore, players must learn how chibi forms bounce and when they must collect them, and possibly how to create mini-chains so that collection is swift and avoids the creation of flies. These ten game mechanics require mastering for players to progress smoothly, so they raise difficulty to a 10/20 value. They also affect how interaction Facets also determine difficulty in non-obvious forms, as we are going to discuss next.
The second Facet we discuss involves Stage level/layout as a scaffolding analysis for the third Facet. Not all stages are difficult, but all Stages require precise strategies for either pure survival (i.e. kill enemies without risks, collect chibi forms) or score-based plays. I personally believe that some stages simply require that players figure out how to approach them in the right manner, whether they pursue survival or score. As befits a 1980s arcade game, Stages design has always a degree of “puzzle-solving” Facets to them that requires careful planning. To cut a long story short, I assign 20/20 points of difficulty to this Facet: The Stages in this game are though. For the interactional facet, I propose a value of 5/10 difficulty points. Again, handling inertia and enemies that can hit Teddy Boy in a single frame is always hard, even during the first Stages.
If we consider levels 44–86 (i.e. "the second loop") and beyond, difficulty becomes staggering. My experience is not exactly of first-hand quality: players cannot continue, so I explored the game via cheat codes as I never went beyond stage 54 on one credit. My general impression, nevertheless, is that loop stages are considerably more difficult and require new strategies, as enemies become even more aggressive and fast. Fatigue can become a determining factor for players, but the game will obviously proceed at its own relentless pace. From stage 87, a third loop starts, even if the game stops counting stages a 100. I would argue that a “2-All 1-CC” clear (and beyond) is a 50/50 difficulty, especially if we consider that players can pursue a max-out scores only via “Stage grinding”. In my own opinion, only top-tier grand master level players can achieve this type of result.
By this point, Xenny wishes that we could just move to the conclusions and wrap this revision. Xenny, do not be a sour chap: tally oh, we discuss my experiences with a game. In a compact manner, as they only involve to periods of my life. There is a third arcade that I visit from time to time, in my childhood, because my father likes their “retro” section. My uncle has his “100 Lire” room, but the room is the east corner of the side of the lower floor, and seldom has more than four or five titles. This other arcade has an entire underground floor with cabs from the first half of the 1980s, and even a sign presenting it as the “classics room”. In 1990, it still has all the dedicated cabs for Sega’s Mode 7/scaling games (e.g. Out Run, After Burner, Thunder Blade, and so on).
They also have this title and a lot of old titles that I simply cannot recall now, in 2025. But in 1990, I remember that we visit this arcade at least once per week because my uncle has sold his Out Run “full motion” cab to a collector, and this has not sit well with my father. When my father wants to listen to the Latin Jazz vibes of Passing Breeze, we boycott the family business and go to this arcade. I am mostly attracted to Teddy Boy Blues and Konami’s Battlantis, and maybe some other title. I am an unreliable narrator, so I am probably forgetting exactly what games I play in this arcade. I am certain of one fact: this game kicks my ass black and blue, every time I play it. We stop visiting this arcade at some point, and my best result is reaching Stage 11.
Fast forward to the MAME gap year, 2000: after several attempts, I can finally reach Stage 21 and I give up in frustration. Utrecht, 2006: same result; Sweden, 2013: the same with potatoes; Guangzhou, 2019: hey, Stage 26 is some progress. Over the decades, this game keeps acting like a formidable wall against I bang my head repeatedly, often in a pointlessly unfocused manner. It is in February 2023 that I finally decide to learn the game and clear at least the “first loop”, i.e. the first 43 stages. From this Spring festival to Spring festival 2024, I keep practicing stages regularly, at some point having a save state for each stage. In late February 2024, I finally manage a few consistent runs that see me reaching Stage 45, 47, and even 53 at some point. A grudge is over, as I mentioned in the first version of this squib.
Let us conclude. Teddy Boy Blues is an action (R2RKMF) game with a platform-based approach to design a “limited scrolling” design. Players must help Teddy Boy to escape from a nightmare dimension full of monsters that want to kill him at all costs. When Teddy Boy shoots and hits enemies, they turn into chibi-style creatures that can award points via chain/combo collection. If Teddy Boy fails to collect these chibi forms, they turn into flies eating up the time allotted for clearing a stage. After 43 Stages, a harder loop starts: the game seems endless, so there is no real escape from the nightmare. If you want to challenge yourself with a liminal case of early multi-genre, intense arcade action, Teddy Boy Blues represents a massive if frustrating endeavour. Be sure to stock on patience and wear your best nostalgia googles, as the experience may be equally frustrating and exhilarating.
(2934 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I swear that I tried to run a few credits before revising this squib but ended up rage-quitting at the fifth Stage on my best run. Xenny was clearly laughing after my outburst, to which I yelled a foam-laden “Who the f#@k you laugh at, filthy low-cast drone!”. Xenny, in his lotus pose, answered to me with a simple: “excellent, you now talk to 3D-printed models of xenomorphs sitting on your desk”. I swear, this is the last time I touch this bloody game ever. I will have the raw heart of whoever designed this game with fries, cooked crisp, and a glass of tap water for my 50th birthday!).
Teddy Boy Blues (Sega, 1985) is a platform/run’n gun game that pits a “Teddy boy” character against hordes of bizarre creatures in short but intense stages. The main character, which I call “Teddy Boy”, uses a machinegun to shoot down creatures popping out of giant dice-shaped containers. The game is notable for its darkly surreal atmosphere, simple and almost lysergic colour palette, and for its quirky controls that make the game a frustrating and edgy experience. The game has by now fallen in the dustbin of history, but connoisseurs of horribly difficult 1980s arcade games might heap praise and scorn about the game in equal measure. My goal in this squib is to explain why modern players might play this game and find it enjoyable even if today’s standards is might offer a brutal challenge. Hopefully, you will not have dreams after trying out the game.
Defining the game’s Zeitgeist/context is a bit tricky. The game’s basic design idea apparently originates in a City Pop song that was popular in 1984/1985 in Japan. The singer of this past mainstream hit, Yoko Ishino, features in the game’s attract mode while surrounded by an orchestra composed of the game’s enemy creatures. The song itself is the theme playing in each stage except for the bonus stages. Building on this popular mainstream song, Sega programmers veer into a liminal territory, genre-wise. In 1985, Capcom had their Ghosts’n Goblins smash hit and Taito was going to hit arcades with classic single screen platforms such as Fairyland Story and Bubble Bobble. Teddy Boy Blues combines elements from these games but also anticipates Jaleco’s Momoko 120% and City Connection, via “limited scrolling” approach and use of platform-based levels. Its liminality thus originates in its ability to merge several genres into one game.
The plot game is also notable in being completely unrelated to the song. Teddy Boy appears on an undefined mission. The SMS port suggests that Teddy Boy must escape from an “Endless Nightmare Dimension”, fighting against hordes of recurring monsters. On bonus stages, an 8-bit, chibi-looking version of Yoko Oshino appears in one of the two types of bonus stage, the treasure hunt. Beyond these vague details, however, not much else transpires about the game’s setting. Interestingly, the game features 43 unique stages. From stage 44, the player will face harder versions of these stages, and the game appears to loop endlessly. Thus, Teddy Boy seems doomed to spend an eternity in this nightmare dimension, if the monsters do not kill him and send to heaven first. The liminality of the game seems also to transpire via the mildly absurdist, bare-bones plot and its arbitrary connection to 1980s pop culture.
Let us start with some basic aspects of the game to frame this discussion, however. I clarify the notion of “limited scrolling”, first. The game combines platform aspects with an action/R2RKMF approach. The camera always moves with Teddy Boy at the centre, while Teddy Boy happily shoots enemies in all directions and jumps across platforms, in each stage. Players can thus move Teddy Boy in eight directions via the joystick and command controls.
The A button releases bullets from Teddy Boy’s machine-gun; The B button makes Teddy Boy jump in an inputted direction (up, up-right, up-left); Teddy Boy can also directly walk into platforms at lower levels (input down, down-right, down-right). Players can tap for faster shot rates or use the moderate auto-fire that the game provides (8hz or so); point-blanking enemies results into faster shooting rates, and players can activate the C button to shoot alternate shots.
A key innovation of the game, for the year, pertains to management of scrolling. All stages are slightly bigger than the screen (i.e. stages have limits). Reaching one edge of the stage will result in popping up on the other side of the stage (i.e. stages are not bounded). Since the camera always places Teddy Boy at the centre, the character appears to move across endlessly repeating stages. This entails that Teddy Boy can shoot in the back enemies chasing him, if he moves fast enough. Enemies can however attack him in the back by apparently fleeing Teddy Boy’s attack: the technique works both ways. The “endless” aspect of the game thus also involves endlessly repeating but constantly changing stages. Furthermore, many platforms consist of destructible tiles that Teddy Boy can shoot into oblivion: the platform layout of each stage can thus become rather different from the initial structure.
Crucially, the two mechanics that can make or break players’ appreciation of the game revolve around movement and attacking patterns. First, Teddy Boy has some inertial movement: even a single tap in one direction will result in two steps. Visually, this choice gives the impression that Teddy Boy constantly slips in one direction: precision movements are hard. Players can thus struggle to master precision jumps and static positioning. As the game progresses, this makes stages increasingly difficult because precise jumps and positioning may determine life or death in many situations. Second, enemies are wickedly smart. There are seven types of enemies, each with distinctive attacking and evading patterns. Irrespective of the type, each single enemy can manipulate motion speed and trajectory to literally move between gaps in Teddy Boy’s machine-gun stream. Enemies can effectively change direction of motion and speed within frames, thus suddenly killing Teddy Boy upon contact.
Readers may interpret my description of these two mechanics as a suggestion that the game is brutally unfair when the CPU “decides” to kill Teddy Boy. The truth is a bit more nuanced: the programmers might have possibly tried to simulate swarm behaviour. Enemies follow certain fixed motion patterns, as single entities or as “swarms” (e.g. the Dharma-like bouncing heads). When certain conditions hold, however, (e.g. Teddy Boy is not moving and enemies are closing in from the “back”) enemies drop this behaviour and individually hit Teddy Boy in a few frames. Given this mechanic, players must always be aware of where enemies’ trajectories and conditions by which they can play their “sudden attack” card. Players must also shoot with precision. Again, fast-moving enemies can pass through gaps in the bullet stream, if players tap A aimlessly. Kill with ruthless pace, be fast and always on the move.
The truth about jumps and positioning is also very nuanced, to be fair. If Teddy Boy remains for more than three seconds in one spot, a floating fireball will land on the occupied platform and destruct it. Teddy Boy remains unscathed, but he will fall to the next platform, or into an enemy. Micro-movements will usually avoid this problem, as in the case of sudden enemy attacks. It is undeniable that, in many situations, players require precise if temporary positioning and shooting, and inertia movement makes all these actions harder. Chibi forms, however, bounce around a lot and enemies can literally swamp stages with their sheer numbers. As the attract movies show, “always on the move in the Endless Nightmare” seems the game’s main design philosophy. This is however easier said than done, as difficulty increases very quickly and stages are short (max one minute) and brutally difficult.
The game also offers an interesting score system that works as follows. After a hit, the creatures transform into chibi versions of themselves, and become items worth various amounts of points. Failure to collect them results in the chibi forms transforming into flies that move to the bottom of the screen and eat up the time bar, in Pac-Man style. Collecting one form starts a chain: players can collect several chibi forms in a row (and within 0.5 seconds) to increase their point value. The progression is from 100 points to 1000, then 10k and finally 50k points. Players can create dozens of chibi forms and score big points, if they can handle treacherous stages. Failure to collect chibi forms is risky, because the presence of too many fly forms usually results in death by time expiration. Players must thus at least collect chibi forms, and possibly chain them.
The game offers some breaks from this seizure-inducing action via the bonus stage. The bonus stage offers players a choice between polygon practice (choose Teddy Boy) and Treasure Hunt at Home (choose Yoko). If players can land a perfect score on the first polygon practice (20 hits), or collect at least 12 hidden items in the treasure hunt, they can “warp” stages by choosing to start again on either stage 3, 7, 11 or 17. Completing successfully stage 7, 11 or 15 after a warp will award a hefty bonus: stage 3 will not award one. If players can collect all 48 treasures in the treasure hunt, they will switch to polygon practice for the remainder of the game. If they choose polygon practice, they will stick to it until the “game over” screen. Polygon practice becomes extremely fast by the seventh iteration (i.e. after stage 30), anyway.
Our discussion of the game so far suggests that the game has a complex engine. The game's score system also includes an apparent Easter egg further confirming this potential impression. When players approach the maximal score (i.e. 9,999,990 points), the game starts using a different scoring system. It suffices to say that at around 9,990,000 points, all scoring opportunities should downgrade by a power of ten. Chibi forms that give 100 points when collected instead seem to give 10 points. This entails that even excellent score runs will require extraordinary endurance feats from players who wish to max out the score. If players ever achieve this result, the game loops endlessly anyway; I tested this hypothesis by spending a few hours trudging through hundreds of levels via cheat codes. This complexity entails that the game’s difficulty may be prodigious, as we are also going to discuss in detail.
First, however, please let me spend a few words on the game’s audio-visual presentation. The game features a very simple palette with ultra-bright colours (16 of them, I guess) and the same theme song playing ad nauseam (except for the bonus stages as we mentioned before). Enemies have interesting and non-sensical designs, and for the times they also feature fluid animations. Ultimately, though, the game’s design may appear simple even by 1985’s standards, and especially if we consider that Sega released games like Space Harrier or even just Alex Kidd in the same year. It does not help that sound effects tend to be rather bare and loud: players may end up finding them irritating after a few stages.
By this point, we can discuss the game’s difficulty via the now familiar theoretical tool of Facets (well, I hope that my readers have an inkling of the tool). I suggest that the game’s subjective difficulty may lie in three Facets: game mechanics, Stage layout/design, and the relatively robust interaction of these two Facets. I divide the total possible score of 50 as follows: 20 maximal points for the first two Facets, 10 for the third Facet. I anticipate matters by saying that “just” clearing the first 43 stages, thus reaching the equivalent of a “1-All 1-CC”, is a mid-tier challenge for master players (i.e. a 35/50 points). A “2-All 1-CC” and beyond max out the difficulty at 50/50 points, especially if one pursues the perhaps idea of maxing out the score. Please let me argue why this in the case in the next few paragraphs, then.
First, when it comes to game mechanics, players need to master in great details all of Teddy Boy’s moves and quirks. Players must carefully use shooting frequencies and avoid gaps in the bullet stream, and must land precise hits against enemies. Players must then learn how to handle Teddy Boy’s inertia when moving, when jumping, and even when going up or down the stages. Perfect micro-tapping is a necessary skill, in general. Furthermore, players must learn how chibi forms bounce and when they must collect them, and possibly how to create mini-chains so that collection is swift and avoids the creation of flies. These ten game mechanics require mastering for players to progress smoothly, so they raise difficulty to a 10/20 value. They also affect how interaction Facets also determine difficulty in non-obvious forms, as we are going to discuss next.
The second Facet we discuss involves Stage level/layout as a scaffolding analysis for the third Facet. Not all stages are difficult, but all Stages require precise strategies for either pure survival (i.e. kill enemies without risks, collect chibi forms) or score-based plays. I personally believe that some stages simply require that players figure out how to approach them in the right manner, whether they pursue survival or score. As befits a 1980s arcade game, Stages design has always a degree of “puzzle-solving” Facets to them that requires careful planning. To cut a long story short, I assign 20/20 points of difficulty to this Facet: The Stages in this game are though. For the interactional facet, I propose a value of 5/10 difficulty points. Again, handling inertia and enemies that can hit Teddy Boy in a single frame is always hard, even during the first Stages.
If we consider levels 44–86 (i.e. "the second loop") and beyond, difficulty becomes staggering. My experience is not exactly of first-hand quality: players cannot continue, so I explored the game via cheat codes as I never went beyond stage 54 on one credit. My general impression, nevertheless, is that loop stages are considerably more difficult and require new strategies, as enemies become even more aggressive and fast. Fatigue can become a determining factor for players, but the game will obviously proceed at its own relentless pace. From stage 87, a third loop starts, even if the game stops counting stages a 100. I would argue that a “2-All 1-CC” clear (and beyond) is a 50/50 difficulty, especially if we consider that players can pursue a max-out scores only via “Stage grinding”. In my own opinion, only top-tier grand master level players can achieve this type of result.
By this point, Xenny wishes that we could just move to the conclusions and wrap this revision. Xenny, do not be a sour chap: tally oh, we discuss my experiences with a game. In a compact manner, as they only involve to periods of my life. There is a third arcade that I visit from time to time, in my childhood, because my father likes their “retro” section. My uncle has his “100 Lire” room, but the room is the east corner of the side of the lower floor, and seldom has more than four or five titles. This other arcade has an entire underground floor with cabs from the first half of the 1980s, and even a sign presenting it as the “classics room”. In 1990, it still has all the dedicated cabs for Sega’s Mode 7/scaling games (e.g. Out Run, After Burner, Thunder Blade, and so on).
They also have this title and a lot of old titles that I simply cannot recall now, in 2025. But in 1990, I remember that we visit this arcade at least once per week because my uncle has sold his Out Run “full motion” cab to a collector, and this has not sit well with my father. When my father wants to listen to the Latin Jazz vibes of Passing Breeze, we boycott the family business and go to this arcade. I am mostly attracted to Teddy Boy Blues and Konami’s Battlantis, and maybe some other title. I am an unreliable narrator, so I am probably forgetting exactly what games I play in this arcade. I am certain of one fact: this game kicks my ass black and blue, every time I play it. We stop visiting this arcade at some point, and my best result is reaching Stage 11.
Fast forward to the MAME gap year, 2000: after several attempts, I can finally reach Stage 21 and I give up in frustration. Utrecht, 2006: same result; Sweden, 2013: the same with potatoes; Guangzhou, 2019: hey, Stage 26 is some progress. Over the decades, this game keeps acting like a formidable wall against I bang my head repeatedly, often in a pointlessly unfocused manner. It is in February 2023 that I finally decide to learn the game and clear at least the “first loop”, i.e. the first 43 stages. From this Spring festival to Spring festival 2024, I keep practicing stages regularly, at some point having a save state for each stage. In late February 2024, I finally manage a few consistent runs that see me reaching Stage 45, 47, and even 53 at some point. A grudge is over, as I mentioned in the first version of this squib.
Let us conclude. Teddy Boy Blues is an action (R2RKMF) game with a platform-based approach to design a “limited scrolling” design. Players must help Teddy Boy to escape from a nightmare dimension full of monsters that want to kill him at all costs. When Teddy Boy shoots and hits enemies, they turn into chibi-style creatures that can award points via chain/combo collection. If Teddy Boy fails to collect these chibi forms, they turn into flies eating up the time allotted for clearing a stage. After 43 Stages, a harder loop starts: the game seems endless, so there is no real escape from the nightmare. If you want to challenge yourself with a liminal case of early multi-genre, intense arcade action, Teddy Boy Blues represents a massive if frustrating endeavour. Be sure to stock on patience and wear your best nostalgia googles, as the experience may be equally frustrating and exhilarating.
(2934 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I swear that I tried to run a few credits before revising this squib but ended up rage-quitting at the fifth Stage on my best run. Xenny was clearly laughing after my outburst, to which I yelled a foam-laden “Who the f#@k you laugh at, filthy low-cast drone!”. Xenny, in his lotus pose, answered to me with a simple: “excellent, you now talk to 3D-printed models of xenomorphs sitting on your desk”. I swear, this is the last time I touch this bloody game ever. I will have the raw heart of whoever designed this game with fries, cooked crisp, and a glass of tap water for my 50th birthday!).
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Insector X (Taito, 1989)
In this shorter squib I want to discuss Insector X with the readers of these eccentric yarns of mine. This is a little known shmup by Taito that also qualifies as one of the easiest arcade titles in the genre, courtesy of the shmups difficulty wiki. The game received a Mega Drive port that swapped the anime-ish characters with more “serious” characters, a Famicom/NES port, and it and appears in the Taito Memories collection too. Let us focus on the squib, however:
Insector X (Taito, 1989) is an HORI(zontal) shump that pits an hybrid bee/human soldier, “Kai”, against the evil army of cyborg insects that threaten the delicate balance between humans and insects. The game is possibly Taito’s easiest shmup and one of the easiest HORI’s that players can 1-CC. The game is also notable in featuring manga/anime-like graphics and a relatively cute OST. As a “pedagogical” shmup and obscure 1980s game, Insector X appears to be an ideal first step in the sometimes-cruel world of arcade shmups. Players who may thus wish to spend some time playing a less demanding but still entertaining HORI shmup may thus enjoy Insector X neat presentation and gentle challenge. My goal in this squib is therefore to convince my readers that this is possibly a good gateway to achieving more challenging but also more frustrating shmup 1-CC’s.
A bit of context can certainly help readers in framing the game’s appearance. By 1989, shmups in general and HORI shmups in particular could offer quite a wide range of formidable challenges. Players who want to test their tactical skills could try out classics such a Konami’s Gradius, or Irem’s R-Type. Players who wanted to focus more on action could instead play Taito’s Darius and Darius II. Capcom also release the quite solid U.N. Squadron a year before, along with the impressive rotary joystick Forgotten Worlds. Insector X was a minor title that however offered two interesting innovations. First, the main character Kai has no hit points, shields, pods, or other tools to defend him: one hit amounts to one death. Second, the game has cute a 1970 design style, with enemies straight out of a Fujio Akatsuka anime/manga series. It offered some simple and innovative concepts, indeed.
The plot is interesting, though it reverberates the kind of sappy “balance between nature technology” rhetoric that one can find in Hayao Miyazaki’s works, among other creators. Kai is a humanoid bee with some cybernetic implants that takes up arms again the Bee Empire. This horde of cybernetically enhanced bees forms an alliance with other species from the insect kingdom and decides to wage a war to conquer the planet. Judging by the backgrounds and the size of some objects in these backgrounds, all these creatures maintain their insect size. Players may thus wonder exactly how cybernetic bees can be any more threatening than normal bees, even though these cyborg lads have tiny laser cannons. Anyway, Kai sets on his mission to defeat the Bee Empire and bring down the Mantis emperor, perhaps wondering why these guys do not have a Queen Bee as their leader.
The plot may appear problematic, I agree. The game mechanics are however pleasantly simple. The joystick controls Kai in eight directions; the A button shoots the main bullets, flying a straight direction; the B button shoots the secondary attack. The main shot follows a power-up cycle vaguely reminiscent of Darius. Kai starts from a single shot, obtains green laser extra bullets after a few power-up “P” icons, and maxes out at a wave laser shot that can pass through walls. The secondary shot has two variants: blue and brown. Kai hops on a rocket-like vehicle and shoots an extra array of missile-type weapons (blue) or bomb-type attacks (brown). Kai can also become faster (“S” icon), obtain an auto-fire option (“A”), extra lives (“1up”) and retain weapons after death (“?”, before the last boss). No shields or other defences: Kai always dies after one hit, via a fun-looking “fulminated” animation.
The game’s simplicity dovetails with its pleasant audio-visual neatness. The stages take place in Egypt, with a mission in the pyramids (Stage one); in some undefined garden and big city (Stages two and three). The action then moves an amazon swamp (Stage four), and finally deep into the Bee Empire (Stages five). While generally static, background have good colour choices; the Bee Empire is a complex cave in which cyber bees have encroached their hive, a cybernetic creation glowing in the dark. Bosses are huge insects with humanoid features and almost caricatural looks, a far cry for the realistic bugs of Cave’s Mushihimesama. The OST and sound effect provide a solid effort by Zuntata’s lesser known collaborators (e.g. Pinch Punch), and serves the game well, again by pursuing a vague anime-style approach (e.g. a vaguely dramatic boss theme). The game thus also appears “simple but pleasant”, indeed.
By this point, it should be clear that the main theme of the game aside the “technology vs. nature fight” is “simplicity”. The game’s difficulty follows this trend, as well. For this reason, I propose that the main Facet one can experience as providing some difficulty consists of the Stage design/layout. I propose this approach because the game mechanics should be trivial for any player: tap the attack buttons all the time and dodge bullets. Stages one and two, furthermore, are trivial, since enemies shoot only a few bullets that are easy to dodge. Stage three is easy, but the Boss Moth’s main attack may require some practice to learn. The same reasoning applies to Stage four’s Boss Spider and its Stage. Stage five has a final section before the boss that requires some memorization, and the Boss Praying Mantis’s attack is rather tricky to master.
Players may also find a bit hard to recover from deaths, since Kai goes back to the basic shot, loses the auto-fire option and the pod secondary attack. Furthermore, Stages award a fixed number of power-ups: while four secondary weapon power-ups appear quickly, deaths on Stage four and five may result in Kai remaining underpowered. However, the game awards an “?” power-up before the final passage of Stage five, so players reaching this phase can make two attempts at full power to clear the section, the final boss, and the game. Do not worry: a decently skilled player can 1-CC the game anyway with a pea shooter. The last three Stages and the respawning handicap motivate a 4/50 difficulty value: the game should be an easy 1-CC for any mid-tier beginner player, and any player who can simply sit down and try a few credits.
Xenny is currently scratching his elongated cranium, wondering why I have spent time writing about this easy-peasy shmup. The reason is simple: this is possibly the first HORI I ever 1-CC’ed in my life. It is April 1989 I still have a few 1-CC’s in my gaming CV. Thundercade, Black Tiger and Sly Spy are beginners’ games, but as a kid I must out-perform myself, to achieve a 1-CC on these games. Side Arms and other titles have been humbling experiences, and at this point in my life I believe that I will never have the chance to clear them: mission failed, in my goal-obsessed tiny little skull. It is at this stage that I start playing this game and begin my year-long epic quest to 1-CC Darius II. I start playing Insector X only because my uncle explicitly tells me that it is a “soothing” game, according to him.
My first few credits leave me perplexed, because I can at most reach Stage two. Over the next few days, however, my rapid progression sees me reaching Stages three and four, and I even see some other folks (e.g. Lucius, my Black Tiger mentor) 1-CC’ing the game. In fact, I the next ten days or so to reach Stage five, master the final passage and then the final boss. They are tricky steps, but a bit or rote memorisation and a better understanding of dodging the final boss’ attack suffice to get the 1-CC. Until I also 1-CC Darius II, I periodically clear this game to confirm with myself that I can “make it”: I now fully understand the “soothing” label. Once I discover the game again via MAME in 2000, it becomes my Linus’ quilt: a 1-CC of Insector X always soothes my soul, especially during harrowing times.
In conclusion, Insector X is a HORI shmup by Taito (1989) that pits Kai, a humanoid bee/cyborg, against the cybernetic bees of the Bee Empire. In a fight to re-establish a balance between technology and nature, players must progress through five Stages and finally defeat the Bee Empire. The game is notable for using insects as a main design concept for character and enemies alike, an almost caricatural anime/manga style and a pedagogically gentle difficulty level, notwithstanding the “one hit, one death” mechanic. Players who wish to downshift a bit in their shmupping journeys and add a simple yet pleasant 1-CC in their CV should try the game. The game can also be a soothing, calming shmup experience for anyone who just wants a break from the more toxic aspects of “hardcore gaming”. Relax a bit: try out the game and snatch the 1-CC at your leisure.
(1472 words; the usual disclaimers apply; this is a shorter entry for, you guess it, a simple reason. The game is really one of the simplest and most straightforward shmups around, and nevertheless is a nice if obscure Taito classic. I have had moments in which I quite literally fired the game up, 1-CC’ed quickly and told myself that for that day, I achieved at least one good result. I guess that by this point you can see the merit in me mentioning “Linus’ quilt” to describe my experience with this game, I hope.)
Insector X (Taito, 1989) is an HORI(zontal) shump that pits an hybrid bee/human soldier, “Kai”, against the evil army of cyborg insects that threaten the delicate balance between humans and insects. The game is possibly Taito’s easiest shmup and one of the easiest HORI’s that players can 1-CC. The game is also notable in featuring manga/anime-like graphics and a relatively cute OST. As a “pedagogical” shmup and obscure 1980s game, Insector X appears to be an ideal first step in the sometimes-cruel world of arcade shmups. Players who may thus wish to spend some time playing a less demanding but still entertaining HORI shmup may thus enjoy Insector X neat presentation and gentle challenge. My goal in this squib is therefore to convince my readers that this is possibly a good gateway to achieving more challenging but also more frustrating shmup 1-CC’s.
A bit of context can certainly help readers in framing the game’s appearance. By 1989, shmups in general and HORI shmups in particular could offer quite a wide range of formidable challenges. Players who want to test their tactical skills could try out classics such a Konami’s Gradius, or Irem’s R-Type. Players who wanted to focus more on action could instead play Taito’s Darius and Darius II. Capcom also release the quite solid U.N. Squadron a year before, along with the impressive rotary joystick Forgotten Worlds. Insector X was a minor title that however offered two interesting innovations. First, the main character Kai has no hit points, shields, pods, or other tools to defend him: one hit amounts to one death. Second, the game has cute a 1970 design style, with enemies straight out of a Fujio Akatsuka anime/manga series. It offered some simple and innovative concepts, indeed.
The plot is interesting, though it reverberates the kind of sappy “balance between nature technology” rhetoric that one can find in Hayao Miyazaki’s works, among other creators. Kai is a humanoid bee with some cybernetic implants that takes up arms again the Bee Empire. This horde of cybernetically enhanced bees forms an alliance with other species from the insect kingdom and decides to wage a war to conquer the planet. Judging by the backgrounds and the size of some objects in these backgrounds, all these creatures maintain their insect size. Players may thus wonder exactly how cybernetic bees can be any more threatening than normal bees, even though these cyborg lads have tiny laser cannons. Anyway, Kai sets on his mission to defeat the Bee Empire and bring down the Mantis emperor, perhaps wondering why these guys do not have a Queen Bee as their leader.
The plot may appear problematic, I agree. The game mechanics are however pleasantly simple. The joystick controls Kai in eight directions; the A button shoots the main bullets, flying a straight direction; the B button shoots the secondary attack. The main shot follows a power-up cycle vaguely reminiscent of Darius. Kai starts from a single shot, obtains green laser extra bullets after a few power-up “P” icons, and maxes out at a wave laser shot that can pass through walls. The secondary shot has two variants: blue and brown. Kai hops on a rocket-like vehicle and shoots an extra array of missile-type weapons (blue) or bomb-type attacks (brown). Kai can also become faster (“S” icon), obtain an auto-fire option (“A”), extra lives (“1up”) and retain weapons after death (“?”, before the last boss). No shields or other defences: Kai always dies after one hit, via a fun-looking “fulminated” animation.
The game’s simplicity dovetails with its pleasant audio-visual neatness. The stages take place in Egypt, with a mission in the pyramids (Stage one); in some undefined garden and big city (Stages two and three). The action then moves an amazon swamp (Stage four), and finally deep into the Bee Empire (Stages five). While generally static, background have good colour choices; the Bee Empire is a complex cave in which cyber bees have encroached their hive, a cybernetic creation glowing in the dark. Bosses are huge insects with humanoid features and almost caricatural looks, a far cry for the realistic bugs of Cave’s Mushihimesama. The OST and sound effect provide a solid effort by Zuntata’s lesser known collaborators (e.g. Pinch Punch), and serves the game well, again by pursuing a vague anime-style approach (e.g. a vaguely dramatic boss theme). The game thus also appears “simple but pleasant”, indeed.
By this point, it should be clear that the main theme of the game aside the “technology vs. nature fight” is “simplicity”. The game’s difficulty follows this trend, as well. For this reason, I propose that the main Facet one can experience as providing some difficulty consists of the Stage design/layout. I propose this approach because the game mechanics should be trivial for any player: tap the attack buttons all the time and dodge bullets. Stages one and two, furthermore, are trivial, since enemies shoot only a few bullets that are easy to dodge. Stage three is easy, but the Boss Moth’s main attack may require some practice to learn. The same reasoning applies to Stage four’s Boss Spider and its Stage. Stage five has a final section before the boss that requires some memorization, and the Boss Praying Mantis’s attack is rather tricky to master.
Players may also find a bit hard to recover from deaths, since Kai goes back to the basic shot, loses the auto-fire option and the pod secondary attack. Furthermore, Stages award a fixed number of power-ups: while four secondary weapon power-ups appear quickly, deaths on Stage four and five may result in Kai remaining underpowered. However, the game awards an “?” power-up before the final passage of Stage five, so players reaching this phase can make two attempts at full power to clear the section, the final boss, and the game. Do not worry: a decently skilled player can 1-CC the game anyway with a pea shooter. The last three Stages and the respawning handicap motivate a 4/50 difficulty value: the game should be an easy 1-CC for any mid-tier beginner player, and any player who can simply sit down and try a few credits.
Xenny is currently scratching his elongated cranium, wondering why I have spent time writing about this easy-peasy shmup. The reason is simple: this is possibly the first HORI I ever 1-CC’ed in my life. It is April 1989 I still have a few 1-CC’s in my gaming CV. Thundercade, Black Tiger and Sly Spy are beginners’ games, but as a kid I must out-perform myself, to achieve a 1-CC on these games. Side Arms and other titles have been humbling experiences, and at this point in my life I believe that I will never have the chance to clear them: mission failed, in my goal-obsessed tiny little skull. It is at this stage that I start playing this game and begin my year-long epic quest to 1-CC Darius II. I start playing Insector X only because my uncle explicitly tells me that it is a “soothing” game, according to him.
My first few credits leave me perplexed, because I can at most reach Stage two. Over the next few days, however, my rapid progression sees me reaching Stages three and four, and I even see some other folks (e.g. Lucius, my Black Tiger mentor) 1-CC’ing the game. In fact, I the next ten days or so to reach Stage five, master the final passage and then the final boss. They are tricky steps, but a bit or rote memorisation and a better understanding of dodging the final boss’ attack suffice to get the 1-CC. Until I also 1-CC Darius II, I periodically clear this game to confirm with myself that I can “make it”: I now fully understand the “soothing” label. Once I discover the game again via MAME in 2000, it becomes my Linus’ quilt: a 1-CC of Insector X always soothes my soul, especially during harrowing times.
In conclusion, Insector X is a HORI shmup by Taito (1989) that pits Kai, a humanoid bee/cyborg, against the cybernetic bees of the Bee Empire. In a fight to re-establish a balance between technology and nature, players must progress through five Stages and finally defeat the Bee Empire. The game is notable for using insects as a main design concept for character and enemies alike, an almost caricatural anime/manga style and a pedagogically gentle difficulty level, notwithstanding the “one hit, one death” mechanic. Players who wish to downshift a bit in their shmupping journeys and add a simple yet pleasant 1-CC in their CV should try the game. The game can also be a soothing, calming shmup experience for anyone who just wants a break from the more toxic aspects of “hardcore gaming”. Relax a bit: try out the game and snatch the 1-CC at your leisure.
(1472 words; the usual disclaimers apply; this is a shorter entry for, you guess it, a simple reason. The game is really one of the simplest and most straightforward shmups around, and nevertheless is a nice if obscure Taito classic. I have had moments in which I quite literally fired the game up, 1-CC’ed quickly and told myself that for that day, I achieved at least one good result. I guess that by this point you can see the merit in me mentioning “Linus’ quilt” to describe my experience with this game, I hope.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Time Soldiers (Alpha Denshi, 1987)
I am not a fun of Kusoge games but I may have a lower bar than the average player, when it comes to video-ludic appreciation. I grew playing arcade games and sometimes I became attracted to less-than-stellar titles. Alpha Denshi (and later ADK) created Time Soldiers in 1987 and then went on to produce several other games featuring time travel as the main plot device. The game received a wide array of ports (e.g. S(upper)M(aster)S(ystem), Famicom/NES), but seem absent from modern catalogues. The many revisions of the game differ in the OST’s quality but also in various minor details such as enemy placement and H(it)P(oint)s. I will post a review of this game in the “Reviews” section because the game may qualify as a run’n gun/shmup hybrid, as we are going to discuss in the squib. We thus move onto the main feature of this post:
Time Soldiers (Alpha Denshi, 1987) is a top-down action/shmup hybrid game with rotary joystick and pioneering Alpha Denshi’s obsession with time travel-based plots. Players take control of “Red” and “Blue”, two nameless warriors from a far, post-apocalyptic future who must save their comrades stranded in time after an attack by their rival army. Players can move in eight directions but also rotate their Red and Face so that their shots may face a different direction from their moving line. Red and Blue thus cross five time periods rife with war and rescue their comrades, before heading to their home temporal zone and defeating the enemy one final time. Though far from a perfect game, Time Soldiers provides an interesting take on the short-lived micro-genre of “rotato” (i.e. rotary joystick-based) shmups. My goal in this squib is to explain why this is the case.
By this point in our squib-based journey into arcade games, you might start having a better picture of 1987 as a great game for the field. My squibs might not be as clear and cohesive as a single article discussing the year and releases in accurate detail, I concede. For this squib, however, I want to zoom into the mini-milieu/context/Zeitgeist of “rotary” (or “rotato”) games, a short-lived genre centring on a hardware innovation. Rotary games use a joystick that allows movement in eight direction and rotation of the character via rotation of the joystick, usually via 45° or 22.5° rotations (i.e. 8 angles, or 16 angles in some titles). I believe that SNK’s Guevara and this title pioneered the concept, Data East’s Heavy Barrel and Midnight Resistance pilfered it; Capcom’s Forgotten/Lost Worlds and Seta’s Caliber 50 are other examples. SNK’s SAR in 1989 seems the last micro-genre’s release.
Rotary/rotato games seem to anticipate modern twin-stick games (e.g. latter ports of Under Defeat). They also seem to partly evolve from dial-control games (e.g. breakout genre titles like Taito’s Arkanoid, Atari’s unique shmup series Asteroids). Time Soldiers’s approach to this micro-genre is interesting because of how it combines with the game mechanics in some nuanced ways. First, however, we offer an overview of the plot. Red and Blue are two warriors from a far, post-apocalyptic future that must rescue their comrades, stranded in time by the evil “Gylend” army. They must travel to five war zones from diverse time epochs and rescue one of their comrades (“World War III”, “Imperial Rome”, “Primitive Age”, “Sengoku Era”, and “30th century”). Once Red and Blue return to their bleak and derelict era, they must vanquish Gylend and its underlings, to save their sixth and last comrade.
Alpha Denshi recycled this idea in many of their future titles, e.g. the World Heroes series on Neo Geo. In this title, the plot device allowed designers to pit players against historically different types of warriors, with some fantastic licenses to embellish the result. Let us focus on the mechanics, before we discuss these design choices. Players control Red and Blue via the joystick: they can move the characters in eight directions and rotate their orientations by 30° per rotation. Red and Blue can thus walk in one linear direction but shoot in any other angular direction, often looking like they are striking fancy poses to kill enemies. The A button controls the main shot, and requires frenetic tapping because the main shots are quite weak. The B button controls the secondary attacks: laser, missile, and wide shot. Each secondary shot can reach level 3 power via two consecutive power-ups.
Red and Blue can use the secondary attacks as far as their “energy bar” is not empty. If players collect a new item of the same type when the bar is not full (e.g. missile), the bar will refill and the weapon will upgrade if possible. If they switch secondary attack (e.g. from missile to laser), the power level resets but the energy bar refills nevertheless. Players can also collect a “P” icon that transforms Red and Blue into Hulk-like or Kenshiro-like muscular giants. They acquire a much faster automatic shot with a longer attacking range, increase the damage level of their secondary attacks, and develop partial invulnerability to attacks. Each hit they take depletes the secondary attack energy bar, and once the bar is empty, they revert to normal form. A single hit kills them, in this form; instead, their hulk form may easily take dozens of hits.
The secondary attacks can thus double as sources for extra HPs when in Hulk/Kenshiro forms. Players can thus consume energy when using these attacks or when Red are Blue receive a hit; taking any secondary attack icon however refills the bar in full. Interestingly, secondary attacks have one more function that involves the limited use of the vertical axis. The game offers a top-down view. However, some enemies are located on elevated parts of the game field and can only receive damage via the missile secondary attack. The laser, wide shot or main shot attacks may reach only those enemies that are on elevated surfaces by adjacent to the player’s plane. P icons are scarce, and the use of the main shot can handle most enemies aside elevated strikers. Players may thus aim to use secondary attacks when in Hulk/Kenshiro form and always refill the energy bar to gain HPs.
The game’s plot interweaves with the game mechanics and Stage structure in a distinctive manner. It is useful to explain this Facet of the game both as a game mechanic and source of difficulty, and to start using this consuetudinary term by this point already. Each time epoch consists of three stages that players can loop indefinitely. Once players clear Stage three of the “World War III” epoch, they loop from Stage one. After clearing each Stage, players can either continue or Warp into another epoch. When the “epoch counter” at the centre of the screen flashes, they are in the right time epoch to save their next comrade. Players must clear the “World War III” “Imperial Rome” and “Primitive Age” epochs first. They will move to the “Sengoku Era” and “30th century” epochs, and then to their original epoch last, before they can clear the game.
The game system is thus slightly sophisticated and yet relatively simple. The audio and visual Facets are possibly the weakest parts of the game, alas. The game has a certain visual identity that combines two interesting concepts: enemies from distinct historical periods and a certain 1980s manga/anime style. The elaboration of these concepts is not exactly stellar, alas. The problems with the visual amount to two factors. First, the game has a few templates for recurring enemies in each epoch. Their animations and attacking patterns are mostly identical: only their appearance changes in each epoch. Bosses also follow the same few templates, with the “Sengoku Era” and “30th Century” repeating the same boss on each stage. Second, backgrounds tend to be drab and design simplistically, with little detail on most stages. In other words, the game tends to look plain, if not on the ugly side.
The OST deserves some specific considerations, as well. In my experience, the MAME versions still do not emulate the OST correctly, as they sound “under-sampled”, for a lack of a more precise word. The various themes nevertheless amount to plain arcade music vaguely trying to evoke the atmosphere of each battle epoch. For instance, “World War III”’s theme sounds like a vaguely dramatic war fanfare; “30th century” theme attempts to have a techno-futuristic vibe. The problem is that explosion and shooting sound effects are loud, and Red and Blue’s sampled death screams are so loud that people may turn and wonder who died in a grisly manner, in arcades. The boss battle has its own fast-paced, dramatic charm at least. Overall, though, the game can get at most a “pass” in the presentation Facets, even if the quality is decent enough that players can focus on the action.
The topic of difficulty that I address next may require a subtle positioning of the game. I believe that the game’s design is simple enough that game mechanics and Stages design/layout qualify as the two key Facets of difficulty. Game mechanics involve the rotary controls; Stages design includes two Facets that deserve some further elaboration. Game mechanics include easily mastered Facets (movement, shot, secondary attack) and Facets that require mastering (rotation mechanics, “Hulk” power-up, tactical use of the secondary attacks). Players can kill most enemies with the standard shot and use the missile secondary attack to kill enemies on elevated surfaces. Rotation mechanics are trickier, however: players must simply learn how to rotate Red and Blue to obtain optimal attacking angles, especially if barriers or obstacles are in the way. This Facet ultimately takes time for its mastery: rotary joysticks and characters were a fleeting trend, not a stable mechanic.
The “Hulk” power-up is trickier. When Red and Blue transform, they gain a source of HP(s) that can make the game much easier to handle. Players may however refrain from using the secondary attack to keep their energy levels high. Energy starts draining in “Hulk” form, and using the secondary attack speeds up this process considerably. Players may simply collect all secondary weapon power-ups and use secondary attacks on the fly, or avoid hits and play conservatively while using a bigger sprite. In this form, players must therefore be wise in using secondary attacks: they can focus on only killing enemies on elevations with these weapons. Once players can master these three Facets, however, they should have developed a tight control of the game’s mechanics: this is why I award a measly 3/25 difficulty points to this Facet. With some practice, they should be easy to handle.
The Stage design Facets that shape the game’s difficulty require the aforementioned elaboration due to some of them having a slightly unintuitive design. Let us start with the intuitive Facets, first. Each epoch and its three looping stages have sections that scroll sideways and that may present layout challenges, usually via enemies in elevated spots. Players must thus learn how to navigate these layouts and how to attack and kill all the enemies. Slow progression is useful (players control the scrolling, most of the time), but in some cases the game will switch to auto-scrolling. Be sure to know how to handle these sections. Although players can 1-CC the game without using secondary attacks and by de-spawning enemies on elevations, having a first grasp of stages’ obstacles, sections’ scrolling direction, and structure seems necessary. Each epoch and triptych of Stages presents its own environmental hazards.
Once players master the six epochs’ layouts, they should also learn guardian bosses’ battles. Each epoch has a “guardian boss”, i.e. a boss appearing after a Stage boss and releasing a comrade after its demise. These bosses recycle the same attack pattern except for the “Imperial Rome” guardian boss; players must nevertheless master this attack and the specific stage layout of the zones in which they appear. Players must then learn the warp gates paths, i.e. the Stages and epochs to which each gate conducts. For instance, the gate after Stage one of the “World War III” epoch takes Red and Blue to Stage two of “the Primitive age”. Players can follow the shortest path and use warps so that they only visit each Stage once. Be careful: this entails that players may only get the semi-random “P” power up once, during a credit.
Longer paths avoid this problem: players may obtain the “P” power-up multiple time. These paths have a drawback: if players repeat a stage, the simple rank system will increase the Stage’s difficulty to “hard” and then to “hardest”. Players can thus decide which path to use to stock up or renew power-ups and secondary attacks. There are only two extends at 100k and 400k, so there is a merit in levelling up secondary attacks or renewing the “Hulk” form. However, the longer the path, the more difficult the game will be. We thus have ten Facets forming the difficulty value of the Stage layout Facet. 10/25 and 3/25 points give us 13/50 total points: Time Soldier is a low-tier game for intermediate players, in my view. Once players get a grasp of the rotatory mechanism and develop a good path to the final boss, a 1-CC should be feasible.
By this point of the squib, Xenny is beginning to feel restless, and wants to wear sleeveless body suits, shoulder pads and boots like Red and Blue. Before this quixotic variant (pardon, “Facet’) of the unthinkable comes to be, I quickly wrap up this squib by discussing my experiences with Time Soldier. The first time I play this game is Christmas 1989, and it is during my first visits to the neighbour’s bar with my father. Father is going a rough patch and having a pre-dinner aperitif with the local neighbours helps him feeling some connection to other human beings. By this part of late 1989, he also begins to think of these short forays into “a place with cabs” as good sources for gaming action. My uncle’s arcade is fine, but it takes an extra ten minutes of walk to get there: these visits must be brief.
The owner of the bar is a refined gentleman who treats me like an adult: with politeness but also with friendliness, and with an immediate understanding that I should deserve this treatment. I sit on a stool when playing games, make no noise, and wait my turn if necessary. A glass of Sprite is a must after finishing the credits, and I always thank for the service and the free nuts. Time Soldiers is the first game I experience in his cute “arcade room”, with a friend of father’s giving me a short tutorial on rotary joysticks before I start. The man, a famous goldsmith and artisan in my hometown, also briefly mentions his long-standing grudge involving Guevara and rotary games in general. Arcade gaming seems to attract people from all levels of society, and to form long-standing grudges involving high scores and 1-CC’s.
Let us cut this part of the story short. After a month or so the owner must swap the board with a Forgotten Worlds board, due to an agreement with the games’ distributor. That is a story for another squib in our schedule: for now, I fast forward to June of 1990, when the other swimming pool I attend during this summer puts this game, a US version of Aliens, and a Night Striker cab. We focus on Time Soldiers, however: in a week or so, I recover my grasp of the rotary mechanic, and my ability to save two comrades. A few more weeks of practice see me reaching the fifth Guardian boss in the “30th century” epoch regularly. Quite a few kids attending the swimming pool start watching my runs because they seem to have no idea about how I can handle the game (“You actually dodge bullets?!”).
The crowd thins out when I start reaching the final epoch and my progress slows down considerably. The curious mutated creatures fighting against Red and Blue in this epoch have tons of HPs and require careful handling: it is no exaggeration to say that I progress one further enemy per credit. Accidentally, one day, I also do not follow the shortest path and discover an alternative path that allows me to enter the final stage in “Hulk” form. These enemies become quite easier to handle, and Gylend as a final boss simply repeats the attacks from the other Guardian bosses. Another 1-CC becomes part of my gaming CV, even if only another kid is there to witness it. It is July, it is quite hot, and afterwards I really have a splendid training session. This kid and I become friends and remain in touch over the years, too.
I re-discover the game in my MAME gap year, 2000, but from this point onwards I do not full a burning need to play the game again. No proper controls for the game, no desire to play it. Over the years, however, the kid who befriended me because of this game periodically mentions it, and asks me if I miss “the ancient Rome” game. Hey, Imperial Rome as a setting in games must occur in 2-3 games: Konami’s Asterix for obvious reasons, and maybe another pair. For him, this design detail was salient enough. A few times this guy and I have played the game on MAME while I visited his wife and children for dinner. He seems happy to receive visits from his Clerc Vagant friend, and listen to my stories of how I 1-CC’ed this and that game, wandering around our hometown and the blue Earth.
I will continue these stories in my other squibs, however: for now, I wrap up. Time Soldiers is a shmup/run’n gun hybrid game from Alpha Denshi, released in 1987. Two soldiers from the far future, Red and Blue, must rescue their comrades after they end up stranded in time by their arch-nemesis Gylend. Red and Blue thus traverse six different historical epochs of war and strife to rescue these comrades and vanquish Gylend a final time. Time Soldiers is notable because it belongs to the micro-genre of “rotary/rotational” joystick games, has a non-linear stage structure based on the time travel concept and looks somewhat plain. The game can however be an affordable 1-CC, and an interesting way to discover this micro-genre that was ahead of its time, design-wise. Go and play it, also because Alpha Denshi was another flawed but lovable arcade games company.
(2944 words; the usual disclaimers apply; the guy I mention in the passages discussing my experiences is now the CEO of the company handling garbage collection and recycling in my hometown. He is one of those guys who somehow ends up with a degree in law and even a job, though he spent most of his BA years partying. After “sobering up” in his ‘30s and raising a family like many Italians do, he also started looking at his younger years with a certain degree of contempt. He keeps asking me for the odd MAME runs when I am in town and I can visit. He also keeps saying that I am not aging much, at least in his eyes. This is a “fact” he takes as clear proof that I am wicked, evil and probably in collusion with Satan, or Cthulhu, or Licio Gelli, or Il pupazzo Uan. I do not wish to comment on the veracity of this fact, to be fair (my aging, evilness, or my connections to any of these entities).)
Time Soldiers (Alpha Denshi, 1987) is a top-down action/shmup hybrid game with rotary joystick and pioneering Alpha Denshi’s obsession with time travel-based plots. Players take control of “Red” and “Blue”, two nameless warriors from a far, post-apocalyptic future who must save their comrades stranded in time after an attack by their rival army. Players can move in eight directions but also rotate their Red and Face so that their shots may face a different direction from their moving line. Red and Blue thus cross five time periods rife with war and rescue their comrades, before heading to their home temporal zone and defeating the enemy one final time. Though far from a perfect game, Time Soldiers provides an interesting take on the short-lived micro-genre of “rotato” (i.e. rotary joystick-based) shmups. My goal in this squib is to explain why this is the case.
By this point in our squib-based journey into arcade games, you might start having a better picture of 1987 as a great game for the field. My squibs might not be as clear and cohesive as a single article discussing the year and releases in accurate detail, I concede. For this squib, however, I want to zoom into the mini-milieu/context/Zeitgeist of “rotary” (or “rotato”) games, a short-lived genre centring on a hardware innovation. Rotary games use a joystick that allows movement in eight direction and rotation of the character via rotation of the joystick, usually via 45° or 22.5° rotations (i.e. 8 angles, or 16 angles in some titles). I believe that SNK’s Guevara and this title pioneered the concept, Data East’s Heavy Barrel and Midnight Resistance pilfered it; Capcom’s Forgotten/Lost Worlds and Seta’s Caliber 50 are other examples. SNK’s SAR in 1989 seems the last micro-genre’s release.
Rotary/rotato games seem to anticipate modern twin-stick games (e.g. latter ports of Under Defeat). They also seem to partly evolve from dial-control games (e.g. breakout genre titles like Taito’s Arkanoid, Atari’s unique shmup series Asteroids). Time Soldiers’s approach to this micro-genre is interesting because of how it combines with the game mechanics in some nuanced ways. First, however, we offer an overview of the plot. Red and Blue are two warriors from a far, post-apocalyptic future that must rescue their comrades, stranded in time by the evil “Gylend” army. They must travel to five war zones from diverse time epochs and rescue one of their comrades (“World War III”, “Imperial Rome”, “Primitive Age”, “Sengoku Era”, and “30th century”). Once Red and Blue return to their bleak and derelict era, they must vanquish Gylend and its underlings, to save their sixth and last comrade.
Alpha Denshi recycled this idea in many of their future titles, e.g. the World Heroes series on Neo Geo. In this title, the plot device allowed designers to pit players against historically different types of warriors, with some fantastic licenses to embellish the result. Let us focus on the mechanics, before we discuss these design choices. Players control Red and Blue via the joystick: they can move the characters in eight directions and rotate their orientations by 30° per rotation. Red and Blue can thus walk in one linear direction but shoot in any other angular direction, often looking like they are striking fancy poses to kill enemies. The A button controls the main shot, and requires frenetic tapping because the main shots are quite weak. The B button controls the secondary attacks: laser, missile, and wide shot. Each secondary shot can reach level 3 power via two consecutive power-ups.
Red and Blue can use the secondary attacks as far as their “energy bar” is not empty. If players collect a new item of the same type when the bar is not full (e.g. missile), the bar will refill and the weapon will upgrade if possible. If they switch secondary attack (e.g. from missile to laser), the power level resets but the energy bar refills nevertheless. Players can also collect a “P” icon that transforms Red and Blue into Hulk-like or Kenshiro-like muscular giants. They acquire a much faster automatic shot with a longer attacking range, increase the damage level of their secondary attacks, and develop partial invulnerability to attacks. Each hit they take depletes the secondary attack energy bar, and once the bar is empty, they revert to normal form. A single hit kills them, in this form; instead, their hulk form may easily take dozens of hits.
The secondary attacks can thus double as sources for extra HPs when in Hulk/Kenshiro forms. Players can thus consume energy when using these attacks or when Red are Blue receive a hit; taking any secondary attack icon however refills the bar in full. Interestingly, secondary attacks have one more function that involves the limited use of the vertical axis. The game offers a top-down view. However, some enemies are located on elevated parts of the game field and can only receive damage via the missile secondary attack. The laser, wide shot or main shot attacks may reach only those enemies that are on elevated surfaces by adjacent to the player’s plane. P icons are scarce, and the use of the main shot can handle most enemies aside elevated strikers. Players may thus aim to use secondary attacks when in Hulk/Kenshiro form and always refill the energy bar to gain HPs.
The game’s plot interweaves with the game mechanics and Stage structure in a distinctive manner. It is useful to explain this Facet of the game both as a game mechanic and source of difficulty, and to start using this consuetudinary term by this point already. Each time epoch consists of three stages that players can loop indefinitely. Once players clear Stage three of the “World War III” epoch, they loop from Stage one. After clearing each Stage, players can either continue or Warp into another epoch. When the “epoch counter” at the centre of the screen flashes, they are in the right time epoch to save their next comrade. Players must clear the “World War III” “Imperial Rome” and “Primitive Age” epochs first. They will move to the “Sengoku Era” and “30th century” epochs, and then to their original epoch last, before they can clear the game.
The game system is thus slightly sophisticated and yet relatively simple. The audio and visual Facets are possibly the weakest parts of the game, alas. The game has a certain visual identity that combines two interesting concepts: enemies from distinct historical periods and a certain 1980s manga/anime style. The elaboration of these concepts is not exactly stellar, alas. The problems with the visual amount to two factors. First, the game has a few templates for recurring enemies in each epoch. Their animations and attacking patterns are mostly identical: only their appearance changes in each epoch. Bosses also follow the same few templates, with the “Sengoku Era” and “30th Century” repeating the same boss on each stage. Second, backgrounds tend to be drab and design simplistically, with little detail on most stages. In other words, the game tends to look plain, if not on the ugly side.
The OST deserves some specific considerations, as well. In my experience, the MAME versions still do not emulate the OST correctly, as they sound “under-sampled”, for a lack of a more precise word. The various themes nevertheless amount to plain arcade music vaguely trying to evoke the atmosphere of each battle epoch. For instance, “World War III”’s theme sounds like a vaguely dramatic war fanfare; “30th century” theme attempts to have a techno-futuristic vibe. The problem is that explosion and shooting sound effects are loud, and Red and Blue’s sampled death screams are so loud that people may turn and wonder who died in a grisly manner, in arcades. The boss battle has its own fast-paced, dramatic charm at least. Overall, though, the game can get at most a “pass” in the presentation Facets, even if the quality is decent enough that players can focus on the action.
The topic of difficulty that I address next may require a subtle positioning of the game. I believe that the game’s design is simple enough that game mechanics and Stages design/layout qualify as the two key Facets of difficulty. Game mechanics involve the rotary controls; Stages design includes two Facets that deserve some further elaboration. Game mechanics include easily mastered Facets (movement, shot, secondary attack) and Facets that require mastering (rotation mechanics, “Hulk” power-up, tactical use of the secondary attacks). Players can kill most enemies with the standard shot and use the missile secondary attack to kill enemies on elevated surfaces. Rotation mechanics are trickier, however: players must simply learn how to rotate Red and Blue to obtain optimal attacking angles, especially if barriers or obstacles are in the way. This Facet ultimately takes time for its mastery: rotary joysticks and characters were a fleeting trend, not a stable mechanic.
The “Hulk” power-up is trickier. When Red and Blue transform, they gain a source of HP(s) that can make the game much easier to handle. Players may however refrain from using the secondary attack to keep their energy levels high. Energy starts draining in “Hulk” form, and using the secondary attack speeds up this process considerably. Players may simply collect all secondary weapon power-ups and use secondary attacks on the fly, or avoid hits and play conservatively while using a bigger sprite. In this form, players must therefore be wise in using secondary attacks: they can focus on only killing enemies on elevations with these weapons. Once players can master these three Facets, however, they should have developed a tight control of the game’s mechanics: this is why I award a measly 3/25 difficulty points to this Facet. With some practice, they should be easy to handle.
The Stage design Facets that shape the game’s difficulty require the aforementioned elaboration due to some of them having a slightly unintuitive design. Let us start with the intuitive Facets, first. Each epoch and its three looping stages have sections that scroll sideways and that may present layout challenges, usually via enemies in elevated spots. Players must thus learn how to navigate these layouts and how to attack and kill all the enemies. Slow progression is useful (players control the scrolling, most of the time), but in some cases the game will switch to auto-scrolling. Be sure to know how to handle these sections. Although players can 1-CC the game without using secondary attacks and by de-spawning enemies on elevations, having a first grasp of stages’ obstacles, sections’ scrolling direction, and structure seems necessary. Each epoch and triptych of Stages presents its own environmental hazards.
Once players master the six epochs’ layouts, they should also learn guardian bosses’ battles. Each epoch has a “guardian boss”, i.e. a boss appearing after a Stage boss and releasing a comrade after its demise. These bosses recycle the same attack pattern except for the “Imperial Rome” guardian boss; players must nevertheless master this attack and the specific stage layout of the zones in which they appear. Players must then learn the warp gates paths, i.e. the Stages and epochs to which each gate conducts. For instance, the gate after Stage one of the “World War III” epoch takes Red and Blue to Stage two of “the Primitive age”. Players can follow the shortest path and use warps so that they only visit each Stage once. Be careful: this entails that players may only get the semi-random “P” power up once, during a credit.
Longer paths avoid this problem: players may obtain the “P” power-up multiple time. These paths have a drawback: if players repeat a stage, the simple rank system will increase the Stage’s difficulty to “hard” and then to “hardest”. Players can thus decide which path to use to stock up or renew power-ups and secondary attacks. There are only two extends at 100k and 400k, so there is a merit in levelling up secondary attacks or renewing the “Hulk” form. However, the longer the path, the more difficult the game will be. We thus have ten Facets forming the difficulty value of the Stage layout Facet. 10/25 and 3/25 points give us 13/50 total points: Time Soldier is a low-tier game for intermediate players, in my view. Once players get a grasp of the rotatory mechanism and develop a good path to the final boss, a 1-CC should be feasible.
By this point of the squib, Xenny is beginning to feel restless, and wants to wear sleeveless body suits, shoulder pads and boots like Red and Blue. Before this quixotic variant (pardon, “Facet’) of the unthinkable comes to be, I quickly wrap up this squib by discussing my experiences with Time Soldier. The first time I play this game is Christmas 1989, and it is during my first visits to the neighbour’s bar with my father. Father is going a rough patch and having a pre-dinner aperitif with the local neighbours helps him feeling some connection to other human beings. By this part of late 1989, he also begins to think of these short forays into “a place with cabs” as good sources for gaming action. My uncle’s arcade is fine, but it takes an extra ten minutes of walk to get there: these visits must be brief.
The owner of the bar is a refined gentleman who treats me like an adult: with politeness but also with friendliness, and with an immediate understanding that I should deserve this treatment. I sit on a stool when playing games, make no noise, and wait my turn if necessary. A glass of Sprite is a must after finishing the credits, and I always thank for the service and the free nuts. Time Soldiers is the first game I experience in his cute “arcade room”, with a friend of father’s giving me a short tutorial on rotary joysticks before I start. The man, a famous goldsmith and artisan in my hometown, also briefly mentions his long-standing grudge involving Guevara and rotary games in general. Arcade gaming seems to attract people from all levels of society, and to form long-standing grudges involving high scores and 1-CC’s.
Let us cut this part of the story short. After a month or so the owner must swap the board with a Forgotten Worlds board, due to an agreement with the games’ distributor. That is a story for another squib in our schedule: for now, I fast forward to June of 1990, when the other swimming pool I attend during this summer puts this game, a US version of Aliens, and a Night Striker cab. We focus on Time Soldiers, however: in a week or so, I recover my grasp of the rotary mechanic, and my ability to save two comrades. A few more weeks of practice see me reaching the fifth Guardian boss in the “30th century” epoch regularly. Quite a few kids attending the swimming pool start watching my runs because they seem to have no idea about how I can handle the game (“You actually dodge bullets?!”).
The crowd thins out when I start reaching the final epoch and my progress slows down considerably. The curious mutated creatures fighting against Red and Blue in this epoch have tons of HPs and require careful handling: it is no exaggeration to say that I progress one further enemy per credit. Accidentally, one day, I also do not follow the shortest path and discover an alternative path that allows me to enter the final stage in “Hulk” form. These enemies become quite easier to handle, and Gylend as a final boss simply repeats the attacks from the other Guardian bosses. Another 1-CC becomes part of my gaming CV, even if only another kid is there to witness it. It is July, it is quite hot, and afterwards I really have a splendid training session. This kid and I become friends and remain in touch over the years, too.
I re-discover the game in my MAME gap year, 2000, but from this point onwards I do not full a burning need to play the game again. No proper controls for the game, no desire to play it. Over the years, however, the kid who befriended me because of this game periodically mentions it, and asks me if I miss “the ancient Rome” game. Hey, Imperial Rome as a setting in games must occur in 2-3 games: Konami’s Asterix for obvious reasons, and maybe another pair. For him, this design detail was salient enough. A few times this guy and I have played the game on MAME while I visited his wife and children for dinner. He seems happy to receive visits from his Clerc Vagant friend, and listen to my stories of how I 1-CC’ed this and that game, wandering around our hometown and the blue Earth.
I will continue these stories in my other squibs, however: for now, I wrap up. Time Soldiers is a shmup/run’n gun hybrid game from Alpha Denshi, released in 1987. Two soldiers from the far future, Red and Blue, must rescue their comrades after they end up stranded in time by their arch-nemesis Gylend. Red and Blue thus traverse six different historical epochs of war and strife to rescue these comrades and vanquish Gylend a final time. Time Soldiers is notable because it belongs to the micro-genre of “rotary/rotational” joystick games, has a non-linear stage structure based on the time travel concept and looks somewhat plain. The game can however be an affordable 1-CC, and an interesting way to discover this micro-genre that was ahead of its time, design-wise. Go and play it, also because Alpha Denshi was another flawed but lovable arcade games company.
(2944 words; the usual disclaimers apply; the guy I mention in the passages discussing my experiences is now the CEO of the company handling garbage collection and recycling in my hometown. He is one of those guys who somehow ends up with a degree in law and even a job, though he spent most of his BA years partying. After “sobering up” in his ‘30s and raising a family like many Italians do, he also started looking at his younger years with a certain degree of contempt. He keeps asking me for the odd MAME runs when I am in town and I can visit. He also keeps saying that I am not aging much, at least in his eyes. This is a “fact” he takes as clear proof that I am wicked, evil and probably in collusion with Satan, or Cthulhu, or Licio Gelli, or Il pupazzo Uan. I do not wish to comment on the veracity of this fact, to be fair (my aging, evilness, or my connections to any of these entities).)
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Mar 23, 2025 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Surprise Attack (Konami, 1990)
I admit that I was surprised to see that Hamster finally offered us a faithful port of Surprise Attack, via their “Arcade Classics” collection (PS4/5 and Switch, of course). The game should have a few revisions and three regional versions (US(A), EU(rope), J(a)P(an) but please do not ask me in what exactly they differ. This is one of the games I had the most fun getting a 1-CC on, as a kid, and one of those games that I adore to play at least once per year. I admit that this squib had a long gestation because I felt that my memories about how I 1-CC’ed the game were simply too hazy, for the squib to be truly complete. I admit it: I am an unreliable narrator, but I decided to fully acknowledge this flaw of mine in full only a few days ago. Lo and behold, I find the way to complete this and other few squibs. Without further procrastination offered via deceptive prose:
Surprise Attack (Konami, 1990) is an R2RKMF game that mixes tactical shooting aspects with a fast-paced cinematographic approach to presentation and action. Players take control of sergeant major John Ryan, code name “Red Thunderbolt”, to rescue a key lunar base from the clutches of space-age terrorists. Sergeant Ryan uses a “wrist gun” embedded in his space suit to mercilessly snipe the hordes of bad guys attempting to strike fear in the governments of the Blue Earth. Kicking ass on two planes, low G stages and upside-down spacewalks, sergeant Ryan must clear seven stages with multiple sections before he can achieve his mission. Some breaks featuring shamelessly zany “science & science fiction” quiz mini-games offer players the chance to take a breather between Stages, even. Surprise Attack is, in my opinion, an unsung arcade classic. The goal of this squib is therefore to convince my readers to discover this Konami’s gem.
Let us switch to a discussion of the context of release, which a narrow zoom on genre and multi-medial inspirations. Surprise Attack is a variant of the “tactical action game” micro-genre that includes Sega’s Shinobi, Namco’s Rolling Thunder and Rolling Thunder 2, and DECO’s Sly Spy. Sg. Ryan can jump between planes on several Stages, must clear each Stage from the terrorists’ mines in two minutes, and must proceed with tactical acumen. His wrist weapon has infinite bullets, the lone concession to the wider action genre. Director Hitoshi Akamatsu probably had to re-design the game from a Batman movie tie-in to an hard SF-themed game. The attract sequence and attract screen pay homage to Scott’s Blade Runner, Kubrik’s 2001; cut-scenes echo Bond movie Moon Raker. Like the other games in this genre, Surprise Atttack wears its cinematographic ambitions with panache and grace.
The game’s plot clearly supports these ambitions with quite a degree of chutzpah and flippant attitude. It is the year 2031 and humankind (more likely, the USA) has created big space stations, lunar bases, and other groovy forms of space colonisation. The terrorist organisation “Black Dawn”, unhappy with the way governments act in space, takes control of some of these stations and plants time-based mines. Earth governments have 25 hours to follow Black Dawn’s bidding, or they will stand to lose their foothold in space. Enter sergeant major Ryan, a special US “space marine” with a gaze so intense, it could split atoms asunder. The poor space terrorists may have hordes of zako goons in their ranks, but sg. Ryan knows how to deal with punks and how to chew bubble gum while kicking ass. The Blue Earth and the White Moon will sleep well tonight, trust me.
The game plot provides an incredibly well-defined setting to the action. Sg. Ryan can move in eight directions via the joystick and jumps. Since all stages are either in space or on the Moon, sg. Ryan moves in low G environments and his jumps have a parabolic trajectory. The A button controls the wrist gun shots, which travel in a straight line. Bullets kill enemies immediately, but some enemies have two H(it)P(oint)s: after the first hit, they will enjoy half a second of i(invicibility)-frames but will die once hit again afterwards. Sg. Ryan can take a “G” power-up that increases the fire power with explosive bullets landing 2 HPs and having partial armour-piercing power. Some enemies wear armour, and hitting their weak spots requires precise shots/timing; the G power-up reduces the difficulty of this task. The power-up lasts until the end of each Stage, and if players drop a life.
The B button control the jumps and movement between planes in various manners. For instance, on Stage 2.1, sg. Ryan can move to the upper platforms (B+up) or jump down to the lower platforms (B+down). On Stage 2.2, the sarge can perform “power jumps” between the foreground and background planes, Shinobi-style. By Stage 3.1, sg. Ryan can flip orientation: he can jump up, flip his body “upside down”, and walk on ceilings via these command moves. Subsequent Stages also follow one of these rules per stage, and in Stage 5.2 the sarge spends the entirely time with his body “upside down”. I use quote marks because in space the notions of “up” and “down” are defined with respect a larger body, of course. For players, this simply means that they need to learn how to handle jumps and movement across different situations and their rules of engagement.
Stages have a time limit of two minutes, and one minute for boss battles. Sg. Ryan can leave enemies alive but can only reach the end of the Stage and progress if he defuses (collects) all the bombs. Clearing each Stage results in a time bonus and a hilarious evaluation such as “Hi-speed dude” or “laid back turtle”. Sg. Ryan’s nickname, “Red Thunderbolt”, seems related to the special attack that he can use once per Stage. At key spots in each Stage, the sarge can collect “mover fuel” icons for a lightning attack. Sg. Ryan is struck by lightning and becomes invulnerable. He discharges electric energy around his body that can kill any enemy on teach. Since he can also fly, he can move in all eight directions while being immune to any attack. Players can also clear a Stage without using the attack, to receive a hefty bonus.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the game has a zany component to it: a “science & SF” bonus game appearing between Stages (e.g. between Stage two and three). Players must indeed reach a question/incomplete statement and choose the right answer/completion (A, B or C). Players can miss up to three times before they fail but can receive a bonus for ten exact answers and a bigger one for a perfect (i.e. error-free) score. For those players who cannot endure this slow-paced part of the game, there is an option to disactivate it and turn Surprise Attack a “pure” action game. Nevertheless, there should be a grand total of 70 or 80 possible questions: once players know all the right answers, the quiz becomes an exercise in memory and perhaps patience. The game has generous extends at 50k, 100k, 200k and 400k points: be sure to use them wisely.
Before we connect the discussion of the game’s difficulty, we must fully explain how the “vision” and the “sound” of this game contribute to the experience it can offer. Surprise Attack seems to include a group of designers from Konami that displayed a strong grasp of “western-looking, vaguely realistic” graphics. Two games with a similar look are the glorious if imperfect Crime Fighters and Crime Fighters II/Vendetta. Surprise Attack offers a particularly prototypical interpretation of this style. Most characters are blond, blue-eyed, and square-jawed, our hero sg. Ryan being the ultimate example. The colour palette is rich, with a tendency to offer veer to bright reds and oranges. There is a sapient though minimal use of rotating effects (e.g. wheels, the background on Stage 3.3), and scaling effects (e.g. some enemies on Stage 6.2). Characters are well-animated and often move in dramatic, almost JoJo manners.
The way the visuals outline the game’s world and setting is however the strong point of the game. Cutscenes introduce players to each Stage and location: orbital base, moon cargo ship, Moon base. Locations appear futuristic and realistic at the same time. The cargo ship appears like a future vehicle for the colonisation of our Satellite, but one that has seen plenty of work: its environments look a bit battered and bare. The moon base has some grime on its walls and the spaceport looks overcrowded even when civilians were using it. It seems clear that sg. Ryan needs to bring the Status Quo back, rather than saving the far reaches of humankind. The game thus offers the kind of carefully crafted visual experience that one can find in the classic movies that the game pays homage to. The experience, crucially, looks great when in motion.
The OST is, in my own absolutely biased opinion, the strongest element (or, perhaps, aesthetic
Facet) of the game. Several members from Konami’s in-house band Kukeiha Club offers a powerful brand of “videogame music”, the kind of J-Pop/fast-paced rock that one could find in 1980s arcade games. The game has a strong electronic sound and a ample use of synthetisers, as one would expect from a strongly-themed SF game. Echoes from various SF movies reverberate across stages, too. The game involves a few recurring themes, and a few songs that only play on key stages. Stages 2.1, 4.1, 5.1, have the fast-paced, dramatic “Attack the emeny” theme to accompany them. The moody beats of “Rat trap” match the vaguely claustrophobic action of Stages 2.2, 3.2; the tense drum rolls of “Run through the battlefield” occur on Stages 4.1 and 6.1. Action follows an epic SF scale, and the OST marches in unison.
It is the legendary ]Red Thunder that offers one of the most intense if brief aural experiences in a Konami game, and perhaps in the whole R2RKMF genre. A mix of Bond-style fast-paced, dramatic Jazz and frenetic drum beats in the refrain, the theme sculpts the unmatched sense of urgency. It thus aptly serves as the “main theme” for sg. Ryan, the protagonist who must cut through stages at lightning speed, and for a game requiring split-second decisions and actions. The OST also finds a marvellous complement in a vast offer of loud explosions, mechanic noises and other bombastic sound effects. One can wonder how there can be explosions in space: leave such tiny details aside and enjoy the sheer loudness of the game. In short: Surprise Attack aims to have the class of a SF movie, and looks and sounds the part effortlessly, even with a tinge of hubris.
Let us move to the topic of difficulty, once more with the notion and term of Facet as our main (lightly) theoretical tool. I propose that Surprise Attack’s difficulty emerges at a not so immediate level. Players may quickly master basic game mechanics, but the more advanced mechanics may require practices. Stage design and layout offers a source of difficulty when players tackle certain sub-stages, too. In my opinion, though, it is the interaction of these two Facets that operates as third, distinct Facet and the key source of difficulty. I thus partition the maximal score, 50 points, by assigning a maximal score of 15, 15 and 20 points respectively. Anticipating matters a bit, I suggest that players need to master how to handle the more complex mechanics (e.g. “upside down” movement) and their use in Stages, while also learning boss battles’ tactics and the subtleties of attacks and jumps.
Let us start with mechanics, however. Basic mechanics are simple: players should have an easy time to adjust to the low G jumps. Three advanced mechanics may require some time to master: the timing of shots against armoured enemies, the landing of jumps between planes, and the invulnerability window for the special attack. First, basic and powered-up shots can certainly kill armoured enemies, but players must learn their weak spots and timing to safely hit those spots. Second, switching planes leaves players vulnerable against attacks for a few frames: players must time them wisely and land them not too close to enemies. Third, the special attack can help players to pass unpleasant sections, but the i-frames wear off a moment before the flashing animations end: be sure not to mistime attacks and underestimate bullets. Advanced game mechanics thus amount to a 3/15 difficulty value.
Stage layout/design in its basic aspects poses challenges on some key stages. Stages 5.1 and 6.1 require that players figure out the positioning for some jumps and weak spots of some enemies and perform quick kills in sections with denser crowds. Stage 7.2 is a tense platform-oriented Stage in which players must learn how to time the right jumps: Stages 6.3 and 7.3, the fourth and final bosses, require boss-specific tactics. Thus, these Stages do not require specific use of the game’s mechanics but provide each a distinct challenge. They thus amount to a 6/15 difficulty value; the intermediate difficulty value for these two Facets is 8/30 points. The game in its less unique Stages does not present a particularly overwhelming challenge and does not seem to offer a considerably different challenge from other games within this genre.
Matters become interesting once we look at Stages in which players must understand how these Facets interact. Stages 3.1, 3.2, 3.3. (the third boss), 4.1., 4.2. and 4.3 (the fourth boss) plus 5.2 require that players master movement “upside down”. In Stage 5.2 sg. Ryan always moves upside down, and the stage involves precisely timed jumps over intermittent burning engines. In stage 6.2, players must time jumps to upper planes to avoid enemies landing free kills. On Stage 7.1, players must learn how to move to lower planes and quickly kill giant-looking enemies using humongous machineguns as shields. For these Stages, plane-changing jumps and “upside down” movement require complete synchronised mastery. The total difficulty value I propose for this Facet is 11/20, for a grand total of 20/50 difficulty points. The game thus seems a top-tier 1-CC challenge for intermediate players, with “upside down” Stages acting as bottleneck challenges.
By this point, Xenny feels the need to cut off short the squib and move to the conclusions. Nay! We must persevere in the discussion of perhaps trite but often bemusing narrations this scribe’s experiences with the games, Xenny. Life is cruel indeed, so we move to the sappiest part of this squib for a few paragraphs, before concluding. It is November 1991, and it is already Winter, as one would expect from my hometown’s weather. Snow is falling copious and the perennially dreary skies are a powerful motivation to perform three indoors activities: studying, swimming, and videogaming. What saved me as a kid was the ability to do something useful without ending up a shut-in, and a certain sense of guilt that forced me to have fun once I completed my duties. I am not sure what counts as a duty, though, whether it is 1991 or 2025.
Anyway, my uncle has “finally found a copy of this game”, as he tells me once I visit the arcade on a busy Friday. A bit puzzled, I ask him what he plans to put in one of the cabs in the central room of the lower floor, North corner. The smirk on his face pisses me off a bit, as the actual snappy line is: “Oh, a game. Konami, good stuff. Trust me, play three credits and report to the desk, young man”. I get a total of three 200 lire coins that he leaves on the controls, and wait until the cab boots. A moment of pure lightning strikes my young, excitable mind. There is this absurdly cool attract sequence that clearly pilfers from half a dozen SF and action games and offers a screen title pilfering from Kubrik’s 2001. I almost scared to insert a coin, indeed.
The first three credits feel like I am suddenly in space with sg. Ryan. Please excuse me the almost trivial bit of rhetoric: it is 1991, I am in the first year of Junior High School, and my writing skills need to bloom. However, for the time the game’s OST and design are so quintessentially “Hard SF movie” that each credit feels like a brief journey to the game’s world. The gameplay is faster than the similar but more punishing Rolling Thunder, and much tighter than Shinobi and Sly Spy. Sg. Ryan can shred stages and enemies like fragile sheets of paper, if the player is good: the hi-tempo stage themes give cues on when to hit intermediate stages phases. The game has a fluidity in design that is almost intoxicating, for the first three weeks or so of my playing attempts. Even the quiz stages seem fun, for now.
By the first days of December, I can regularly hit Stage 5.2 and, well, choke hard. The idea of having Sg. Ryan fighting in “reverse G” environments is brilliant, full stop. Performance is another matter entirely, and at some point, I concede defeat. I decide to use the special attack before the difficult jumping sequence involving thrusters: I will learn this part some other day. Another bottleneck comes in early December: the lunar rover/vehicle on Stage 6.3 is just a test of patience for any player who wants to play the game fast. I pass the test, and then I am again, once more, fulgurated by the sheer beauty and creative genius behind this game. I enter Stage 7.1 for the first time, listen to a few notes of Red Thunder, and stop advancing. I have what I discover to be a short bout of so-called Stendhal’s syndrome.
I lose a life to timing out the stage, because for the remaining 90 seconds I just listen to the song, completely awe-struck and slightly shaking due to sheer intensity of the emotive experience. The feeling lasts for at least the first ten times I reach this stage: this song/theme simply acts as an emotional tsunami for my 1991 self. Enough life-threatening sappiness, though: with another ten days or so of practice, I can manage to 1-CC the game. It is the first of the many clears I achieve over the next few months: at least until the next June, when my uncle removes the board. Red Thunder remains with me as a memory of a powerful song that I summon whenever I feel crushed by life (e.g. any day of my Navy days). In my head, it is the ultimate melody incarnating the “one man against an army” spirit.
In 2000, while I am spending an unnecessary gap year playing MAME, I have this brilliant intuition of creating mix-tapes with videogame music. Over the years, dozens of people listen to, are bemused by, and engage with these mix-tapes. Most switch from a scornful attitude (i.e. “this is not real music!”) to a celebration of the geek spirit (“hey, do you have the Third Strike OST on tape?”). The mix-tape with the Surprise Attack’ OST accompanies me from Italy to Germany, The Netherlands, Australia. At some point, I finally have an MP3 and then a CD version of this OST. Hungary, Sweden, China: by this point I have this and hundreds of games OSTs in my cloud playlist. When I need a fulgurating moment, Red Thunder is the one song that cancels all fears, all the pain, all that is not victory. In 2025, like in 1991: thanks, Konami.
Let us conclude, before my readers die due to devastating laugh-induced cramps in their abdomen and respiration failure caused by the outrageously cheesy prose. Surprise Attack is an R2RKMF game that mixes platform, action, and tactical action/shooting elements. The game pays homage to classic Hard SF movies via its setting in a near-future in which sergeant major John Ryan must thwart a terrorist plan in space. The game is notable not only for its immensely classy cinematographic design, but also for its impressive OST and smoothly fast-paced game engine. Players may not enjoy the quiz bonus stages acting as interludes, but the game offers options to remove them. The game is a veritable gem of the genre, and possibly one of the best-designed 1980s arcade from Konami. Dear readers, love yourself and enjoy this game as much as you can: Surprise Attack is an ultimate arcade experience.
(3250 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Some may wonder if I ever feel embarrassed in writing certain bits of purple prose celebrating games via the pink sugar rose-tinted googles of nostalgia. The truth is simple: I am already re-reading some of my earlier squibs and larfing me socks off when reading these bits. Modern world and modern humour seem to lack in self-awareness and the right amount of self-irony. I produce copious amount of silliness to take it off my chest and have a cathartic laugh about it, later. If you have a similar reaction, I have done my duty. Anyway yes, these days I just remove the quiz stages on occasional runs, even though I liked them as a kid. Questions about Mr. Spock and not a question on linguistics?! Bah! Humbug!)
Surprise Attack (Konami, 1990) is an R2RKMF game that mixes tactical shooting aspects with a fast-paced cinematographic approach to presentation and action. Players take control of sergeant major John Ryan, code name “Red Thunderbolt”, to rescue a key lunar base from the clutches of space-age terrorists. Sergeant Ryan uses a “wrist gun” embedded in his space suit to mercilessly snipe the hordes of bad guys attempting to strike fear in the governments of the Blue Earth. Kicking ass on two planes, low G stages and upside-down spacewalks, sergeant Ryan must clear seven stages with multiple sections before he can achieve his mission. Some breaks featuring shamelessly zany “science & science fiction” quiz mini-games offer players the chance to take a breather between Stages, even. Surprise Attack is, in my opinion, an unsung arcade classic. The goal of this squib is therefore to convince my readers to discover this Konami’s gem.
Let us switch to a discussion of the context of release, which a narrow zoom on genre and multi-medial inspirations. Surprise Attack is a variant of the “tactical action game” micro-genre that includes Sega’s Shinobi, Namco’s Rolling Thunder and Rolling Thunder 2, and DECO’s Sly Spy. Sg. Ryan can jump between planes on several Stages, must clear each Stage from the terrorists’ mines in two minutes, and must proceed with tactical acumen. His wrist weapon has infinite bullets, the lone concession to the wider action genre. Director Hitoshi Akamatsu probably had to re-design the game from a Batman movie tie-in to an hard SF-themed game. The attract sequence and attract screen pay homage to Scott’s Blade Runner, Kubrik’s 2001; cut-scenes echo Bond movie Moon Raker. Like the other games in this genre, Surprise Atttack wears its cinematographic ambitions with panache and grace.
The game’s plot clearly supports these ambitions with quite a degree of chutzpah and flippant attitude. It is the year 2031 and humankind (more likely, the USA) has created big space stations, lunar bases, and other groovy forms of space colonisation. The terrorist organisation “Black Dawn”, unhappy with the way governments act in space, takes control of some of these stations and plants time-based mines. Earth governments have 25 hours to follow Black Dawn’s bidding, or they will stand to lose their foothold in space. Enter sergeant major Ryan, a special US “space marine” with a gaze so intense, it could split atoms asunder. The poor space terrorists may have hordes of zako goons in their ranks, but sg. Ryan knows how to deal with punks and how to chew bubble gum while kicking ass. The Blue Earth and the White Moon will sleep well tonight, trust me.
The game plot provides an incredibly well-defined setting to the action. Sg. Ryan can move in eight directions via the joystick and jumps. Since all stages are either in space or on the Moon, sg. Ryan moves in low G environments and his jumps have a parabolic trajectory. The A button controls the wrist gun shots, which travel in a straight line. Bullets kill enemies immediately, but some enemies have two H(it)P(oint)s: after the first hit, they will enjoy half a second of i(invicibility)-frames but will die once hit again afterwards. Sg. Ryan can take a “G” power-up that increases the fire power with explosive bullets landing 2 HPs and having partial armour-piercing power. Some enemies wear armour, and hitting their weak spots requires precise shots/timing; the G power-up reduces the difficulty of this task. The power-up lasts until the end of each Stage, and if players drop a life.
The B button control the jumps and movement between planes in various manners. For instance, on Stage 2.1, sg. Ryan can move to the upper platforms (B+up) or jump down to the lower platforms (B+down). On Stage 2.2, the sarge can perform “power jumps” between the foreground and background planes, Shinobi-style. By Stage 3.1, sg. Ryan can flip orientation: he can jump up, flip his body “upside down”, and walk on ceilings via these command moves. Subsequent Stages also follow one of these rules per stage, and in Stage 5.2 the sarge spends the entirely time with his body “upside down”. I use quote marks because in space the notions of “up” and “down” are defined with respect a larger body, of course. For players, this simply means that they need to learn how to handle jumps and movement across different situations and their rules of engagement.
Stages have a time limit of two minutes, and one minute for boss battles. Sg. Ryan can leave enemies alive but can only reach the end of the Stage and progress if he defuses (collects) all the bombs. Clearing each Stage results in a time bonus and a hilarious evaluation such as “Hi-speed dude” or “laid back turtle”. Sg. Ryan’s nickname, “Red Thunderbolt”, seems related to the special attack that he can use once per Stage. At key spots in each Stage, the sarge can collect “mover fuel” icons for a lightning attack. Sg. Ryan is struck by lightning and becomes invulnerable. He discharges electric energy around his body that can kill any enemy on teach. Since he can also fly, he can move in all eight directions while being immune to any attack. Players can also clear a Stage without using the attack, to receive a hefty bonus.
As I mentioned in the introduction, the game has a zany component to it: a “science & SF” bonus game appearing between Stages (e.g. between Stage two and three). Players must indeed reach a question/incomplete statement and choose the right answer/completion (A, B or C). Players can miss up to three times before they fail but can receive a bonus for ten exact answers and a bigger one for a perfect (i.e. error-free) score. For those players who cannot endure this slow-paced part of the game, there is an option to disactivate it and turn Surprise Attack a “pure” action game. Nevertheless, there should be a grand total of 70 or 80 possible questions: once players know all the right answers, the quiz becomes an exercise in memory and perhaps patience. The game has generous extends at 50k, 100k, 200k and 400k points: be sure to use them wisely.
Before we connect the discussion of the game’s difficulty, we must fully explain how the “vision” and the “sound” of this game contribute to the experience it can offer. Surprise Attack seems to include a group of designers from Konami that displayed a strong grasp of “western-looking, vaguely realistic” graphics. Two games with a similar look are the glorious if imperfect Crime Fighters and Crime Fighters II/Vendetta. Surprise Attack offers a particularly prototypical interpretation of this style. Most characters are blond, blue-eyed, and square-jawed, our hero sg. Ryan being the ultimate example. The colour palette is rich, with a tendency to offer veer to bright reds and oranges. There is a sapient though minimal use of rotating effects (e.g. wheels, the background on Stage 3.3), and scaling effects (e.g. some enemies on Stage 6.2). Characters are well-animated and often move in dramatic, almost JoJo manners.
The way the visuals outline the game’s world and setting is however the strong point of the game. Cutscenes introduce players to each Stage and location: orbital base, moon cargo ship, Moon base. Locations appear futuristic and realistic at the same time. The cargo ship appears like a future vehicle for the colonisation of our Satellite, but one that has seen plenty of work: its environments look a bit battered and bare. The moon base has some grime on its walls and the spaceport looks overcrowded even when civilians were using it. It seems clear that sg. Ryan needs to bring the Status Quo back, rather than saving the far reaches of humankind. The game thus offers the kind of carefully crafted visual experience that one can find in the classic movies that the game pays homage to. The experience, crucially, looks great when in motion.
The OST is, in my own absolutely biased opinion, the strongest element (or, perhaps, aesthetic
Facet) of the game. Several members from Konami’s in-house band Kukeiha Club offers a powerful brand of “videogame music”, the kind of J-Pop/fast-paced rock that one could find in 1980s arcade games. The game has a strong electronic sound and a ample use of synthetisers, as one would expect from a strongly-themed SF game. Echoes from various SF movies reverberate across stages, too. The game involves a few recurring themes, and a few songs that only play on key stages. Stages 2.1, 4.1, 5.1, have the fast-paced, dramatic “Attack the emeny” theme to accompany them. The moody beats of “Rat trap” match the vaguely claustrophobic action of Stages 2.2, 3.2; the tense drum rolls of “Run through the battlefield” occur on Stages 4.1 and 6.1. Action follows an epic SF scale, and the OST marches in unison.
It is the legendary ]Red Thunder that offers one of the most intense if brief aural experiences in a Konami game, and perhaps in the whole R2RKMF genre. A mix of Bond-style fast-paced, dramatic Jazz and frenetic drum beats in the refrain, the theme sculpts the unmatched sense of urgency. It thus aptly serves as the “main theme” for sg. Ryan, the protagonist who must cut through stages at lightning speed, and for a game requiring split-second decisions and actions. The OST also finds a marvellous complement in a vast offer of loud explosions, mechanic noises and other bombastic sound effects. One can wonder how there can be explosions in space: leave such tiny details aside and enjoy the sheer loudness of the game. In short: Surprise Attack aims to have the class of a SF movie, and looks and sounds the part effortlessly, even with a tinge of hubris.
Let us move to the topic of difficulty, once more with the notion and term of Facet as our main (lightly) theoretical tool. I propose that Surprise Attack’s difficulty emerges at a not so immediate level. Players may quickly master basic game mechanics, but the more advanced mechanics may require practices. Stage design and layout offers a source of difficulty when players tackle certain sub-stages, too. In my opinion, though, it is the interaction of these two Facets that operates as third, distinct Facet and the key source of difficulty. I thus partition the maximal score, 50 points, by assigning a maximal score of 15, 15 and 20 points respectively. Anticipating matters a bit, I suggest that players need to master how to handle the more complex mechanics (e.g. “upside down” movement) and their use in Stages, while also learning boss battles’ tactics and the subtleties of attacks and jumps.
Let us start with mechanics, however. Basic mechanics are simple: players should have an easy time to adjust to the low G jumps. Three advanced mechanics may require some time to master: the timing of shots against armoured enemies, the landing of jumps between planes, and the invulnerability window for the special attack. First, basic and powered-up shots can certainly kill armoured enemies, but players must learn their weak spots and timing to safely hit those spots. Second, switching planes leaves players vulnerable against attacks for a few frames: players must time them wisely and land them not too close to enemies. Third, the special attack can help players to pass unpleasant sections, but the i-frames wear off a moment before the flashing animations end: be sure not to mistime attacks and underestimate bullets. Advanced game mechanics thus amount to a 3/15 difficulty value.
Stage layout/design in its basic aspects poses challenges on some key stages. Stages 5.1 and 6.1 require that players figure out the positioning for some jumps and weak spots of some enemies and perform quick kills in sections with denser crowds. Stage 7.2 is a tense platform-oriented Stage in which players must learn how to time the right jumps: Stages 6.3 and 7.3, the fourth and final bosses, require boss-specific tactics. Thus, these Stages do not require specific use of the game’s mechanics but provide each a distinct challenge. They thus amount to a 6/15 difficulty value; the intermediate difficulty value for these two Facets is 8/30 points. The game in its less unique Stages does not present a particularly overwhelming challenge and does not seem to offer a considerably different challenge from other games within this genre.
Matters become interesting once we look at Stages in which players must understand how these Facets interact. Stages 3.1, 3.2, 3.3. (the third boss), 4.1., 4.2. and 4.3 (the fourth boss) plus 5.2 require that players master movement “upside down”. In Stage 5.2 sg. Ryan always moves upside down, and the stage involves precisely timed jumps over intermittent burning engines. In stage 6.2, players must time jumps to upper planes to avoid enemies landing free kills. On Stage 7.1, players must learn how to move to lower planes and quickly kill giant-looking enemies using humongous machineguns as shields. For these Stages, plane-changing jumps and “upside down” movement require complete synchronised mastery. The total difficulty value I propose for this Facet is 11/20, for a grand total of 20/50 difficulty points. The game thus seems a top-tier 1-CC challenge for intermediate players, with “upside down” Stages acting as bottleneck challenges.
By this point, Xenny feels the need to cut off short the squib and move to the conclusions. Nay! We must persevere in the discussion of perhaps trite but often bemusing narrations this scribe’s experiences with the games, Xenny. Life is cruel indeed, so we move to the sappiest part of this squib for a few paragraphs, before concluding. It is November 1991, and it is already Winter, as one would expect from my hometown’s weather. Snow is falling copious and the perennially dreary skies are a powerful motivation to perform three indoors activities: studying, swimming, and videogaming. What saved me as a kid was the ability to do something useful without ending up a shut-in, and a certain sense of guilt that forced me to have fun once I completed my duties. I am not sure what counts as a duty, though, whether it is 1991 or 2025.
Anyway, my uncle has “finally found a copy of this game”, as he tells me once I visit the arcade on a busy Friday. A bit puzzled, I ask him what he plans to put in one of the cabs in the central room of the lower floor, North corner. The smirk on his face pisses me off a bit, as the actual snappy line is: “Oh, a game. Konami, good stuff. Trust me, play three credits and report to the desk, young man”. I get a total of three 200 lire coins that he leaves on the controls, and wait until the cab boots. A moment of pure lightning strikes my young, excitable mind. There is this absurdly cool attract sequence that clearly pilfers from half a dozen SF and action games and offers a screen title pilfering from Kubrik’s 2001. I almost scared to insert a coin, indeed.
The first three credits feel like I am suddenly in space with sg. Ryan. Please excuse me the almost trivial bit of rhetoric: it is 1991, I am in the first year of Junior High School, and my writing skills need to bloom. However, for the time the game’s OST and design are so quintessentially “Hard SF movie” that each credit feels like a brief journey to the game’s world. The gameplay is faster than the similar but more punishing Rolling Thunder, and much tighter than Shinobi and Sly Spy. Sg. Ryan can shred stages and enemies like fragile sheets of paper, if the player is good: the hi-tempo stage themes give cues on when to hit intermediate stages phases. The game has a fluidity in design that is almost intoxicating, for the first three weeks or so of my playing attempts. Even the quiz stages seem fun, for now.
By the first days of December, I can regularly hit Stage 5.2 and, well, choke hard. The idea of having Sg. Ryan fighting in “reverse G” environments is brilliant, full stop. Performance is another matter entirely, and at some point, I concede defeat. I decide to use the special attack before the difficult jumping sequence involving thrusters: I will learn this part some other day. Another bottleneck comes in early December: the lunar rover/vehicle on Stage 6.3 is just a test of patience for any player who wants to play the game fast. I pass the test, and then I am again, once more, fulgurated by the sheer beauty and creative genius behind this game. I enter Stage 7.1 for the first time, listen to a few notes of Red Thunder, and stop advancing. I have what I discover to be a short bout of so-called Stendhal’s syndrome.
I lose a life to timing out the stage, because for the remaining 90 seconds I just listen to the song, completely awe-struck and slightly shaking due to sheer intensity of the emotive experience. The feeling lasts for at least the first ten times I reach this stage: this song/theme simply acts as an emotional tsunami for my 1991 self. Enough life-threatening sappiness, though: with another ten days or so of practice, I can manage to 1-CC the game. It is the first of the many clears I achieve over the next few months: at least until the next June, when my uncle removes the board. Red Thunder remains with me as a memory of a powerful song that I summon whenever I feel crushed by life (e.g. any day of my Navy days). In my head, it is the ultimate melody incarnating the “one man against an army” spirit.
In 2000, while I am spending an unnecessary gap year playing MAME, I have this brilliant intuition of creating mix-tapes with videogame music. Over the years, dozens of people listen to, are bemused by, and engage with these mix-tapes. Most switch from a scornful attitude (i.e. “this is not real music!”) to a celebration of the geek spirit (“hey, do you have the Third Strike OST on tape?”). The mix-tape with the Surprise Attack’ OST accompanies me from Italy to Germany, The Netherlands, Australia. At some point, I finally have an MP3 and then a CD version of this OST. Hungary, Sweden, China: by this point I have this and hundreds of games OSTs in my cloud playlist. When I need a fulgurating moment, Red Thunder is the one song that cancels all fears, all the pain, all that is not victory. In 2025, like in 1991: thanks, Konami.
Let us conclude, before my readers die due to devastating laugh-induced cramps in their abdomen and respiration failure caused by the outrageously cheesy prose. Surprise Attack is an R2RKMF game that mixes platform, action, and tactical action/shooting elements. The game pays homage to classic Hard SF movies via its setting in a near-future in which sergeant major John Ryan must thwart a terrorist plan in space. The game is notable not only for its immensely classy cinematographic design, but also for its impressive OST and smoothly fast-paced game engine. Players may not enjoy the quiz bonus stages acting as interludes, but the game offers options to remove them. The game is a veritable gem of the genre, and possibly one of the best-designed 1980s arcade from Konami. Dear readers, love yourself and enjoy this game as much as you can: Surprise Attack is an ultimate arcade experience.
(3250 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Some may wonder if I ever feel embarrassed in writing certain bits of purple prose celebrating games via the pink sugar rose-tinted googles of nostalgia. The truth is simple: I am already re-reading some of my earlier squibs and larfing me socks off when reading these bits. Modern world and modern humour seem to lack in self-awareness and the right amount of self-irony. I produce copious amount of silliness to take it off my chest and have a cathartic laugh about it, later. If you have a similar reaction, I have done my duty. Anyway yes, these days I just remove the quiz stages on occasional runs, even though I liked them as a kid. Questions about Mr. Spock and not a question on linguistics?! Bah! Humbug!)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Re: RRR: Index of squibs
I am posting a quick update regarding upcoming squibs. This week I will release Jaleco's City Connection (revision), Data East's Robocop, Konami's Battlantis, and Technos' Super Dodge Ball (the 1987 version). Expect links in the single screen, sports and R2RKMF threads. I will upload review versions of Insector X and Time soldiers, too. From here to the end of April, the plans include these titles:
- Super Pang! (Revision)
- Devil World (Revision)
R2RKMF/single screen/other - Bionic Commando
- Dark Seal
- Crime City
- Rolling Thunder
- Rolling Thunder 2
- Psychic 5
- Cadash
Shmups - 1943 (with notes on Kai)
- Forgotten Worlds
- Carrier Airwing
- Phelios
- Master of Weapon
- Darius
- Darius II
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Apr 20, 2025 10:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
City Connection (Jaleco, 1985)
We start the weekend with the revision of the City Connection squib. The original squib can be found here, but faithful fans may actually also want to read this longer yarn of mine. Again, I implore my readers to remember that as a kid and teen I had this mildly irrational weak spot for arcade minnows such as Toaplan, Jaleco and Data East. This and other squibs I have been posting of late should be robust proof of this love still lingering somewhere in my heart (or maybe my colon? Oh well). The game has been ported to several platforms, but the most recent release is Hamster’s Arcade Archives PS4/Nintendo Switch port. The game has two revisions in MAME, plus a US version called Cruisin’. “Revision 1” repeats the platform layout from Stage four onwards, so you may want to play the other two versions. Now, let us proceed:
City Connection (Jaleco, 1985) is a platformer in which players control a car that must colour all the platforms distributed along stages spanning several screens. The platforms first appear in grey/silver colour but change into a stage-specific colour once the car drives on them (e.g. green for Stage 1). Players must completely colour each platform on a stage, to proceed to the next stage. The player’s car always occupies one of four positions, depending on which platform(s) the car is colouring: top, upper, lower, or bottom centre. City Connection is thus not a single screener in the strictest sense of the word, but features a fixed-point camera and looping backgrounds, as in Teddy Boy Blues. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that it is a great and highly entertaining game even if it may often drive players nuts, given its unique if quirky mechanics.
The Zeitgeist of the game is quite peculiar. By 1985, arcade games were transitioning to more complex pixel art graphics and scrolling had almost become the norm. Colour palettes were also getting increasingly richer and OST’s more complex. New companies such as Capcom and Jaleco entered the market by producing innovative games such as the pseudo-rail shmup Exerion or the single screen puzzle game Higemaru. Other minnow companies like Seibu Kaihatsu and Nichibutsu were also producing intriguing games. Two examples are Empire City 1931, a first-person shooter set in prohibition era New York, and Galivan a platform/action game with a Sentai setting. Technōs was also about to release Nekketsu Renegade Kunio-Kun and start the belt-scrolling genre. I could mention dozens of other arcade games from the 1985–1986 but one fact should be clear: the arcade scene and minor companies were overflowing with great ideas and chaotic creativity.
City Connection expresses this boiling creativity already via its plot. Clarice is the pilot of “The Car”, a Honda Civic model from the mid-1980s. Clarice is chasing the love of her dreams so that they can get married and live happily thereafter. Case in point, the end-of-stage bonus screens shows a happy Clarice in driving gear and throwing a V sign (“now, you’ve driven the whole highway!”). Clarice must drive on the global “highways” (i.e. platforms) in an endless quest for her betrothed. Stage 1 is set in New York, Stage 2 in London (with Lum from Urusei Yatsura in the background), and other stages include Paris, Beijing and The Easter Islands. While looking for a soulmate, Clarice must avoid the local fuzz and suicidal cats, too. The game loops endlessly, which may mean that Clarice will never find eternal love; life can be harsh, indeed.
The game’s mechanics are rather simple. The joystick controls The Car’s movements (left, right) while driving on platforms. While Clarice drives (i.e. colours) the highways, cars from the local police forces chase The Car and try to bump it. A hit results in The Car exploding in a rain of hearts, and the loss of a life. Players can however shoot oil cans with the A button: once oil cans hit the police cars, they will make them spin on the collision spot. Clarice must thus collect oil cans while driving, or risk being “bullet-less”. Once The Car hits a spinning police car, they bump off the screen. One bumped off awards between 1k and 5k points, depending on how short a distance the oil can has to travel before hitting the police car(s). The upper limit of cans is “99”; afterwards, each oil can is worth 1k points.
The B button is for jumps: The Car must jump on platforms at different heights, to colour/drive all the highways/platforms in a stage. Jumps cover an arc-like trajectory: roughly, half a screen at full speed. To rise in platform level, players can use a command jump (B+up), which results in a high jump in the direction of movement. A normal jump suffices to dodge incoming obstacles (e.g. police cars, “The Cat” and “The Walls”), but not to move to higher platforms: it only covers half a screen. A third type of jump is the “U-turn” jump. Perform a high jump and then change direction of the jump (e.g. from left to right) once the car detaches from the current highway. The Car performs a physics-defying U-turn in air. If falling off a platform, The Car can also do a “floating”, also physics-defying U-turn (down-right, down-left turn).
I have just mentioned two other mysterious obstacles: “The Cat” and “The Walls”. Clarice can lose a life by hitting a tabby cat holding a pair of flags, and/or walls suddenly appearing on the highway. Both obstacles appear when the player rides for too long a stretch on the same platform and, during latter stages, the same direction. If the Car hits The Cat, the suicidal tabby kitty will fly away while this folk Japanese song plays in the background. The Walls can also result in The Car exploding in heart confetti (i.e. death) when hit. Players must be careful because they emerge from the highways suddenly, even if last-second high jumps can avoid them. Landing on a police car as a result is however a common outcome, alas. Thus, The Car must avoid other objects on platforms at all costs.
An alternative approach to clearing stages and loops is however accessible. Players can collect three orange flying balloons floating across stages and thus warp a random number of stages forward. Once a player collects a third balloon, the screen fades to black, a beeping sound starts for 3 seconds or so, and the game awards a bonus based on oil cans in stock (i.e. Number*100 points). The Car then lands directly on a platform from a new stage, and action starts immediately. Balloons, however, appear approximately every three minutes or so. Players may stall and wait the release of a balloon by driving the platforms of a stage ad nauseam: a stage is only over when all highways are coloured. Players may thus only collect balloons and warp all the time, if they can handle driving the same platforms in a Stage for minutes without dying.
By this point, you may wonder about the game’s visual and aural appeal. I believe that the adorable “early 1980s” Manga looks of the game might have influenced many a pixel artist and “synth-wave” designer. The attract screen showing a dusk in bright fluorescent pink, police cars chasing Clarice’s Honda, must have impressed a lot of kids owning the game’s NES port. Personally, I still enjoy the simple but colourful Stage designs and the cosmopolitan-looking backgrounds. Chasing love across the cities of the world while beating up local fuzz forces feels like a bliss scenario, for a platform. It is true that the game plays midi-style medleys of various songs ( a list is here). However, for 1980s videogame OSTs’ standards, these musical pastiches can sound endearing to players, at least for (relatively) shorts amounts of time. If you are a fan of synth-wave, City Connection is retro perfection/anticipation.
Let us thus move into the thorny issue of difficulty. Once more, I follow the facet-based analysis outlined in previous posts of mine (e.g. this one ). Personally, I believe that the game offers two sources of difficulty: mastery of the controls and enemies’ behaviour. I would not consider the interaction of these two Facets to be significant, difficulty-wise. In general, The Car is easy to control, but mastering to the jumps and oil can shots’ properties should take little time. However, The U-Turn jump should require quite a bit of (frustrating) practice: it requires quite precise timing and, if performed recklessly during later stages, it may result in easy deaths. Enemies become more aggressive as players progress through stages but also survive longer. The game has a light rank mechanic based on survival time that makes all enemies more aggressive, and rather bothersome by Stage seven.
The game also loops indefinitely, but there are only two extends: at 100k and 400 points. Thus, clearing one loop can be a challenge if the U-Turn jumps remain impenetrable to players. Clearing two or more loops, which feature highways with highly challenging structures and hordes of police cars, may become a remarkable task indeed. Still, I would divide a total score of 50 points among two Facets (controls, enemies) and assign 10/25 points to each Facet. I would thus propose that City Connection’s first loop is a 20/50 score in difficulty. The first loop thus appears as a top-tier challenge for intermediate players. Players must obtain a full grasp of the mechanics and then come to grips with the layouts of Stages and their platforms. Complete control of the U-turn is necessary but should not be too difficult to obtain.
The second loop seems to include Stages roughly at the same difficulty level of Stage 12, more aggressive cars, and a quite more suicidal Cat, and oppressive Walls. Briefly, the game’s rank maxes out and stays at the maximum even after Clarice drops lives. I would thus suggest that clearing the second loop increases the difficulty at 25/50 points, and further loops may become stamina tests. A loop is about 36 minutes in length if players are relatively fast at clearing Stages (e.g. Three minutes per Stage). Playing the game for hours on end may increase the difficulty by five points per loop, in my opinion, but obtaining the 2-All clear corresponds to 30/50 difficulty points. The equivalent of a 1-CC is thus a challenge for top-tier expert players, and further progression belongs to the realm of master and grandmaster players.
Let us now move to the part that Xenny likes so much: my own experiences with the games. Please do not worry: Xenny is out for dinner (or impreg…ok, you know the deal with xenomorphs). He will not have to deal with my sugary prose as I unravel it into mellifluous sentences on the word files. Until he is back, of course. It is 1990 and my father wants to play some old games that my uncle has removed as he was not turning a profit out of them. My uncle is this kind of ruthless businessman who runs the arcade as a well-oiled machine to separate unskilled players from their money. As soon players get bored or skilled, he rents the boards to other smaller places, like the bar near my home, or sells them to collectors. It is a shark tank business, this arcade games stuff.
The other arcade has tons of old but cool Sega cabs, but also several old glories like Konami’s Battlantis, as I am going to discuss in the next squib. I will not discuss Konami’s gem until next squib because I am not going to play it until 1991, go figure. What matters for today, now, and 1990, is that I notice this old glory for the first time. Somebody is playing the game and is driving a funny looking a car around on platforms, and there is this huge background image of the Opera House in Sydney. It is suddenly 2007 and I have my laptop with me, and I am playing City Connection on the stairs leading to Sydney’s famous concert hall. I have to play this title and Data East’s Rohga Armor Force, here, at least once, as both games have Stages set against in Sydney, while completing my PhD.
However, we are now back to 1990, a particular cold April Sunday, and to my first credit of City Connection. This is an unmitigated disaster: I have no idea on how the game works, and I lose three lives in quick succession by hitting a poor tabby cat and feeling rather bad about it. The folk-sounding theme when hitting the cat also gets to my nerves in notime whatsoever. I know Jaleco from other games such as Ginga Ninkyouden and Momoko 120%, so I know that this theme is some kind of practical joke to poke fun at players. My next three credits seem me losing lives miserably but also figuring out how the game works, at least. For today, it is enough, even if I spend some time looking at one guy playing the game and wondering how does he perform the U-turn move.
The Sundays from April to July become a pilgrimage to this other arcade: a cold war is ongoing between my father and uncle, however limited to Sunday afternoons. My progress on this game is hilariously slow, as I barely make it to Stage seven during this time. It goes a bit better with Battlantis, as you are going to discover soon, but ultimately my performances on Sunday afternoon are…disappointing. Never mind the U-torn move, I feel like I simply do not understand how to play this game. For a decade or so, then, I almost forget about City Connection. It is during my MAME gap year in 2000 that I rediscover the game and decide that this time, I will drive all the highway and Clarice will finally…uh, get married, right. Let us leave the opprobrious dirty jokes aside: we may have young readers amongst us.
I admit that I start playing this game intermittently around August or so, and then I choose as one of my “grudges to solve” in my second year of BA. I magically turn into a model student or, more accurately, I have an epiphany about having squandered inordinate amounts of time chasing game accomplishments drugs would have been better. Still, a few credits per night see my slowly progressing through the first loop and even mastering the U-turn move, finally. By the end of October, I have completed most of my first-year exams and I finally manage to clear the first loop. The Cat is safe, but I decided to go for a second loop, dammit. I am sure that I can get the 1-CC. Around Christmas 2000, thus, I reach the third loop: OK, I officially consider the job done, if the loops are infinite. Sorry, Clarice.
In conclusion, City Connection is a fun little platformer that aptly represents the experimental times of the early 1980s. Jaleco built a “solid” reputation of inconsistent game-makers and released quite a few titles deserving the fame. City Connection might even be one of those titles attracting the unpleasant label, but it still holds a special place in my heart. Bigger companies like Taito, Sega or Konami had big budgets and could create games that looked westernised enough. Jaleco and a few other companies brimmed with skilled artisans who could create manga-esque games with a few imperfections but tons of interesting ideas. If you want to experience this genuine, early style of arcade (pseudo) one-screen gaming, then City Connection is a classic little gem you should try at least once. Just be sure to stock up with patience regarding suicidal cats and fuzz cars, and enjoy this veritable time capsule.
(2578 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Readers who want to continue experiencing praise about this game and actually want some information on the game’s legacy can enjoy this splendid page. I admit that every time I see something that might pass as Synth-wave, my mind goes to this game and to Creamy Mami or perhaps Jem. I am not a fan of the genre, since I actually “lived in the 1980s”: I do not need fake nostalgia. Now where are my tank tops, “Wayfarer” Ray-bans and oversized trousers…?)
City Connection (Jaleco, 1985) is a platformer in which players control a car that must colour all the platforms distributed along stages spanning several screens. The platforms first appear in grey/silver colour but change into a stage-specific colour once the car drives on them (e.g. green for Stage 1). Players must completely colour each platform on a stage, to proceed to the next stage. The player’s car always occupies one of four positions, depending on which platform(s) the car is colouring: top, upper, lower, or bottom centre. City Connection is thus not a single screener in the strictest sense of the word, but features a fixed-point camera and looping backgrounds, as in Teddy Boy Blues. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that it is a great and highly entertaining game even if it may often drive players nuts, given its unique if quirky mechanics.
The Zeitgeist of the game is quite peculiar. By 1985, arcade games were transitioning to more complex pixel art graphics and scrolling had almost become the norm. Colour palettes were also getting increasingly richer and OST’s more complex. New companies such as Capcom and Jaleco entered the market by producing innovative games such as the pseudo-rail shmup Exerion or the single screen puzzle game Higemaru. Other minnow companies like Seibu Kaihatsu and Nichibutsu were also producing intriguing games. Two examples are Empire City 1931, a first-person shooter set in prohibition era New York, and Galivan a platform/action game with a Sentai setting. Technōs was also about to release Nekketsu Renegade Kunio-Kun and start the belt-scrolling genre. I could mention dozens of other arcade games from the 1985–1986 but one fact should be clear: the arcade scene and minor companies were overflowing with great ideas and chaotic creativity.
City Connection expresses this boiling creativity already via its plot. Clarice is the pilot of “The Car”, a Honda Civic model from the mid-1980s. Clarice is chasing the love of her dreams so that they can get married and live happily thereafter. Case in point, the end-of-stage bonus screens shows a happy Clarice in driving gear and throwing a V sign (“now, you’ve driven the whole highway!”). Clarice must drive on the global “highways” (i.e. platforms) in an endless quest for her betrothed. Stage 1 is set in New York, Stage 2 in London (with Lum from Urusei Yatsura in the background), and other stages include Paris, Beijing and The Easter Islands. While looking for a soulmate, Clarice must avoid the local fuzz and suicidal cats, too. The game loops endlessly, which may mean that Clarice will never find eternal love; life can be harsh, indeed.
The game’s mechanics are rather simple. The joystick controls The Car’s movements (left, right) while driving on platforms. While Clarice drives (i.e. colours) the highways, cars from the local police forces chase The Car and try to bump it. A hit results in The Car exploding in a rain of hearts, and the loss of a life. Players can however shoot oil cans with the A button: once oil cans hit the police cars, they will make them spin on the collision spot. Clarice must thus collect oil cans while driving, or risk being “bullet-less”. Once The Car hits a spinning police car, they bump off the screen. One bumped off awards between 1k and 5k points, depending on how short a distance the oil can has to travel before hitting the police car(s). The upper limit of cans is “99”; afterwards, each oil can is worth 1k points.
The B button is for jumps: The Car must jump on platforms at different heights, to colour/drive all the highways/platforms in a stage. Jumps cover an arc-like trajectory: roughly, half a screen at full speed. To rise in platform level, players can use a command jump (B+up), which results in a high jump in the direction of movement. A normal jump suffices to dodge incoming obstacles (e.g. police cars, “The Cat” and “The Walls”), but not to move to higher platforms: it only covers half a screen. A third type of jump is the “U-turn” jump. Perform a high jump and then change direction of the jump (e.g. from left to right) once the car detaches from the current highway. The Car performs a physics-defying U-turn in air. If falling off a platform, The Car can also do a “floating”, also physics-defying U-turn (down-right, down-left turn).
I have just mentioned two other mysterious obstacles: “The Cat” and “The Walls”. Clarice can lose a life by hitting a tabby cat holding a pair of flags, and/or walls suddenly appearing on the highway. Both obstacles appear when the player rides for too long a stretch on the same platform and, during latter stages, the same direction. If the Car hits The Cat, the suicidal tabby kitty will fly away while this folk Japanese song plays in the background. The Walls can also result in The Car exploding in heart confetti (i.e. death) when hit. Players must be careful because they emerge from the highways suddenly, even if last-second high jumps can avoid them. Landing on a police car as a result is however a common outcome, alas. Thus, The Car must avoid other objects on platforms at all costs.
An alternative approach to clearing stages and loops is however accessible. Players can collect three orange flying balloons floating across stages and thus warp a random number of stages forward. Once a player collects a third balloon, the screen fades to black, a beeping sound starts for 3 seconds or so, and the game awards a bonus based on oil cans in stock (i.e. Number*100 points). The Car then lands directly on a platform from a new stage, and action starts immediately. Balloons, however, appear approximately every three minutes or so. Players may stall and wait the release of a balloon by driving the platforms of a stage ad nauseam: a stage is only over when all highways are coloured. Players may thus only collect balloons and warp all the time, if they can handle driving the same platforms in a Stage for minutes without dying.
By this point, you may wonder about the game’s visual and aural appeal. I believe that the adorable “early 1980s” Manga looks of the game might have influenced many a pixel artist and “synth-wave” designer. The attract screen showing a dusk in bright fluorescent pink, police cars chasing Clarice’s Honda, must have impressed a lot of kids owning the game’s NES port. Personally, I still enjoy the simple but colourful Stage designs and the cosmopolitan-looking backgrounds. Chasing love across the cities of the world while beating up local fuzz forces feels like a bliss scenario, for a platform. It is true that the game plays midi-style medleys of various songs ( a list is here). However, for 1980s videogame OSTs’ standards, these musical pastiches can sound endearing to players, at least for (relatively) shorts amounts of time. If you are a fan of synth-wave, City Connection is retro perfection/anticipation.
Let us thus move into the thorny issue of difficulty. Once more, I follow the facet-based analysis outlined in previous posts of mine (e.g. this one ). Personally, I believe that the game offers two sources of difficulty: mastery of the controls and enemies’ behaviour. I would not consider the interaction of these two Facets to be significant, difficulty-wise. In general, The Car is easy to control, but mastering to the jumps and oil can shots’ properties should take little time. However, The U-Turn jump should require quite a bit of (frustrating) practice: it requires quite precise timing and, if performed recklessly during later stages, it may result in easy deaths. Enemies become more aggressive as players progress through stages but also survive longer. The game has a light rank mechanic based on survival time that makes all enemies more aggressive, and rather bothersome by Stage seven.
The game also loops indefinitely, but there are only two extends: at 100k and 400 points. Thus, clearing one loop can be a challenge if the U-Turn jumps remain impenetrable to players. Clearing two or more loops, which feature highways with highly challenging structures and hordes of police cars, may become a remarkable task indeed. Still, I would divide a total score of 50 points among two Facets (controls, enemies) and assign 10/25 points to each Facet. I would thus propose that City Connection’s first loop is a 20/50 score in difficulty. The first loop thus appears as a top-tier challenge for intermediate players. Players must obtain a full grasp of the mechanics and then come to grips with the layouts of Stages and their platforms. Complete control of the U-turn is necessary but should not be too difficult to obtain.
The second loop seems to include Stages roughly at the same difficulty level of Stage 12, more aggressive cars, and a quite more suicidal Cat, and oppressive Walls. Briefly, the game’s rank maxes out and stays at the maximum even after Clarice drops lives. I would thus suggest that clearing the second loop increases the difficulty at 25/50 points, and further loops may become stamina tests. A loop is about 36 minutes in length if players are relatively fast at clearing Stages (e.g. Three minutes per Stage). Playing the game for hours on end may increase the difficulty by five points per loop, in my opinion, but obtaining the 2-All clear corresponds to 30/50 difficulty points. The equivalent of a 1-CC is thus a challenge for top-tier expert players, and further progression belongs to the realm of master and grandmaster players.
Let us now move to the part that Xenny likes so much: my own experiences with the games. Please do not worry: Xenny is out for dinner (or impreg…ok, you know the deal with xenomorphs). He will not have to deal with my sugary prose as I unravel it into mellifluous sentences on the word files. Until he is back, of course. It is 1990 and my father wants to play some old games that my uncle has removed as he was not turning a profit out of them. My uncle is this kind of ruthless businessman who runs the arcade as a well-oiled machine to separate unskilled players from their money. As soon players get bored or skilled, he rents the boards to other smaller places, like the bar near my home, or sells them to collectors. It is a shark tank business, this arcade games stuff.
The other arcade has tons of old but cool Sega cabs, but also several old glories like Konami’s Battlantis, as I am going to discuss in the next squib. I will not discuss Konami’s gem until next squib because I am not going to play it until 1991, go figure. What matters for today, now, and 1990, is that I notice this old glory for the first time. Somebody is playing the game and is driving a funny looking a car around on platforms, and there is this huge background image of the Opera House in Sydney. It is suddenly 2007 and I have my laptop with me, and I am playing City Connection on the stairs leading to Sydney’s famous concert hall. I have to play this title and Data East’s Rohga Armor Force, here, at least once, as both games have Stages set against in Sydney, while completing my PhD.
However, we are now back to 1990, a particular cold April Sunday, and to my first credit of City Connection. This is an unmitigated disaster: I have no idea on how the game works, and I lose three lives in quick succession by hitting a poor tabby cat and feeling rather bad about it. The folk-sounding theme when hitting the cat also gets to my nerves in notime whatsoever. I know Jaleco from other games such as Ginga Ninkyouden and Momoko 120%, so I know that this theme is some kind of practical joke to poke fun at players. My next three credits seem me losing lives miserably but also figuring out how the game works, at least. For today, it is enough, even if I spend some time looking at one guy playing the game and wondering how does he perform the U-turn move.
The Sundays from April to July become a pilgrimage to this other arcade: a cold war is ongoing between my father and uncle, however limited to Sunday afternoons. My progress on this game is hilariously slow, as I barely make it to Stage seven during this time. It goes a bit better with Battlantis, as you are going to discover soon, but ultimately my performances on Sunday afternoon are…disappointing. Never mind the U-torn move, I feel like I simply do not understand how to play this game. For a decade or so, then, I almost forget about City Connection. It is during my MAME gap year in 2000 that I rediscover the game and decide that this time, I will drive all the highway and Clarice will finally…uh, get married, right. Let us leave the opprobrious dirty jokes aside: we may have young readers amongst us.
I admit that I start playing this game intermittently around August or so, and then I choose as one of my “grudges to solve” in my second year of BA. I magically turn into a model student or, more accurately, I have an epiphany about having squandered inordinate amounts of time chasing game accomplishments drugs would have been better. Still, a few credits per night see my slowly progressing through the first loop and even mastering the U-turn move, finally. By the end of October, I have completed most of my first-year exams and I finally manage to clear the first loop. The Cat is safe, but I decided to go for a second loop, dammit. I am sure that I can get the 1-CC. Around Christmas 2000, thus, I reach the third loop: OK, I officially consider the job done, if the loops are infinite. Sorry, Clarice.
In conclusion, City Connection is a fun little platformer that aptly represents the experimental times of the early 1980s. Jaleco built a “solid” reputation of inconsistent game-makers and released quite a few titles deserving the fame. City Connection might even be one of those titles attracting the unpleasant label, but it still holds a special place in my heart. Bigger companies like Taito, Sega or Konami had big budgets and could create games that looked westernised enough. Jaleco and a few other companies brimmed with skilled artisans who could create manga-esque games with a few imperfections but tons of interesting ideas. If you want to experience this genuine, early style of arcade (pseudo) one-screen gaming, then City Connection is a classic little gem you should try at least once. Just be sure to stock up with patience regarding suicidal cats and fuzz cars, and enjoy this veritable time capsule.
(2578 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Readers who want to continue experiencing praise about this game and actually want some information on the game’s legacy can enjoy this splendid page. I admit that every time I see something that might pass as Synth-wave, my mind goes to this game and to Creamy Mami or perhaps Jem. I am not a fan of the genre, since I actually “lived in the 1980s”: I do not need fake nostalgia. Now where are my tank tops, “Wayfarer” Ray-bans and oversized trousers…?)
Last edited by Randorama on Sat Mar 22, 2025 2:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Battlantis (Konami, 1987)
I admit that I have been quite moody these days, so I have decided to complete a few squibs that were not even in my original plans for 2024–2025. Battlantis is a single-screen Konami (ro)TATE shmup that combines the core ideas from Space Invaderswith quite a few innovations. The game is now obscure enough, even though it was ported to XBOX 360 and PC in 2010. Konami released several versions of this game (e.g. versions E, F, G, J(a)P(an), International), which differ in order of stages and on enemies’ placement and attacks. The international version is also a bit harder than the other versions, since enemies shoot slightly faster bullets. Due to its hybrid nature as a shmup and a single screen game, I will post the link to this squib in the single-screen thread, and the review redux in the “Reviews” sections. Let us make haste, anyway:
Battlantis (Konami, 1987) is a single screen shmup in which the young king of Atlantis, Cripeus III, must defeat the evil demon king Asmodeus. Battlantis combines all the basic elements of Taito’s Space Invaders with an Heroic Fantasy setting, an atmospheric OST, and a fast if remarkably difficult game experience. The level design is intricate enough that players must develop precise killing strategies to clear stage. Thus, the game also displays the typical puzzle-like challenges of many 1980s arcade games, and an often frustrating but seldom boring tight challenge to players. The game is also one of the earliest shmups featuring a loop with harder stages and a considerably higher difficulty. The Shmups difficulty wiki considers this a game for master players, at an hefty 34/50 points difficulty. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that the game is excellent, so you should try it difficult challenge notwithstanding.
Battlantis is part of an historical arcade gaming context in which the influence of Heroic Fantasy and of authors like Robert E. Howard entered videogame design. In the same year, Capcom’s Black Tiger, Taito’s Rastan and Sega/Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land appeared. Namco previously released other fantasy-themed games (e.g. Dragon Buster) and would release the shmup Phelios in 1988. Battlantis is thus part of this wider aesthetic and thematic movement of the second half of the 1980s, with Konami’s title being one of the few shmups with fantasy-based themes. At the same time, it is part of a lineage of Konami TATE shmups (e.g. A-Jax) that may not be as famous as their HORI(zontal) counterparts (e.g. Salamander). At the same time, the game acts as an heir to Konami’s single screen classics such as Gyruss and Juno First. It is thus a quite unique game, from an historical perspective.
The plot may sound like Konami wanted to pilfer Howard’s King Kull stories, given the Atlantis setting. The valiant king Cripeus III must defend the beautiful kingdom of Atlantis from the great demon Asmodeus and his underlings/enemies. Armed with a powerful arbalest, he wages a defensive war to avoid that the demi-humans invade his kingdom. Cripeus III moves from one rampart of the immense walled city to another rampart, and slaughters Asmodeus’ armies with relentless precision and violence. Asmodeus decides that he will take matters on his own claws after his three monstrous generals fail him. The final battle between the two kings ensues, to determine which kingdom will survive. No, I do not know if Hayao Isayama of Attack on Titan took inspiration from this game for the giant walled cities in his manga. Asmodeus, however, seems to be the twin of Gava from Konami’s Super Contra.
With this background knowledge in place, we can talk about the game’s basic mechanics. The joystick controls Cripeus III’s movement to the left and to the right. Cripeus always moves along the border of a rampart, so players do not need to use the other directions. The A button controls the shots from the arbalester, which follow a common rule of single screen shmups: only one bullet can be on screen, under normal conditions. Players can also use the B button if this button is active, but the rule regarding bullets remains active. Ramparts have defensive bastions behind which Cripeus can hide from bullets, but those will crumble once enough enemies’ bullets hit them. Demi-human invaders can climb the walls and immediately erase a bastion if they touch it. Furthermore, Cripeus dies if an enemy touches him after invading the ramparts, or if any bullet strikes the young king.
The game awards several power-ups when Cripeus can hit an enemy’s carriage moving in the back lines of the enemies’ formations. Power-ups include a dual shot (i.e. two bullets can be on the screen at once), a side-shooting arbalester (i.e. Cripeus can shoot invading enemies on his flanks), and a few others. Extends are at 20k, 70k points and then every 70k points. Most enemies slowly move towards the ramparts with the goal of climbing them and killing Cripeus via the classic Space Invaders-style zig-zag patterns. However, some enemies also follow other patterns and may simply run against the ramparts to invade Atlantis via a potentially kamikaze attack. Some stages have flying enemies and other creatures that move in more creative patterns. Thus, Cripeus and with him the players must land shots with ruthless precision, especially when enemies have 2 or more H(it)P(point)s.
The stage design/layout aspects exploit these mechanics in often complex manners and strongly affect the game’s overall non-trivial difficulty. First, however, I want to sketch the basic aspects or Facets of game to getter a better conceptual footing, and by using our by now standard term. The game has two loops of 16 Stages each. Each Stage takes place in one of many Atlantis’ districts under siege, such as the ramparts below the main cathedral (Stage 14), or near the Vulcanic outskirts (Stage eight). Each Stage has a first phase in which Cripeus must kill each enemy as soon as possible, and possibly a second phase with enemies attacking in free-form patterns. In the final phase, one enemy type appears as a Stage boss, with a bigger sprite and a shield. Stages two, six, 11 and 16 feature battles against the three generals and then demon king Asmodeus.
The game’s 32 stages follow a regular structure, but the loop stages offer a considerably higher challenge. Let us however spend a few words on the visual and musical Facets, before we address these matters. The game has a highly distinctive Heroic Fantasy setting, even though it runs on older Konami hardware that poses certain (minor) limits to the quality of the graphics. Enemies come in several colourful and detailed varieties, even if the basic templates are three: enemies walking with(out) a shield, running enemies, and flying enemies. Walking enemies’ animations are rather simple, but running and flying enemies offer more detail. Enemies’ pixel art quite detailed especially when enemies appear as larger sprites (boss form or when walking on ramparts). The game implements minimal scaling and rotating effects that embellish the bosses’ and generals’ animations, and more in general it pushes the underlying hardware to considerable efforts.
The game’s design creates a particularly vibrant and evocative atmosphere. The 32 stages take places around Atlantis: intuitively, the city has the roughly circular shape that players can glean in the title screen. Cripeus thus seems to move on the ramparts defining the city’s borders and walls, with dramatically different environments lying outside these walls. In some Stages (Stage six, 22 in the International version), Cripeus seems to simply face a sea of clouds hovering some deep chasm, and from which flying enemies appear. In other stages (e.g. Stage eight), the outside lands are full of lava lakes and vulcanoes. Cripeus is designed as a powerful warrior in the vein of Frazetta or Vallejo warriors. Enemies are bulky creatures straight of a Game Workshop’s WarHammer expansion, and the four main bosses are huge and well-animated. The game exudes its Heroic Fantasy appearance in a bombastic manner.
The OST provides an equally intense experience, even if it has a peculiar design aspect. The game has four themes, one per “Act”, intended as sequence of Stages between fights with the generals. The four themes open with two distinct introductory motives: a fanfare for “Act I” and “Act III” and fast-paced theme for “Act II” and Act “IV”. Each theme then proceeds with a distinct intermediate motive: after 50 seconds or so, the ending coda of the motive will loop. Players should clear Stages quickly, so the opening themes signal when most of the kills should happen. The intermediate themes may correspond to the appearance of free-form enemies, and the looping codas cover the quick boss battles. Bosses have their own dramatic, longer, and more intense themes, as befits boss battles in Konami games. Players can thus use the themes as pacing cues in their slaughtering of demi-human invaders.
The OST’s style is perhaps the campiest, zaniest, and coolest aspect of the game. The opening motif for the Act I and III themes attempts at creating the sound of a melody-rich fanfare that might appear in a traditional fantasy movie. The opening motif for Acts II and IV sounds like standard action movie theme from the 1980s, and so do the boss themes for the three generals. King Asmodeus’ fight comes with a theme that could vaguely remind players of organ-based music. What is campy and zany about these themes is that the Konami musicians used the trademark high pitch synthetisers that appear in most of Konami’s 1980s games (e.g. Contra). Thus, the OST sounds like a chiptune version of a probably solid “orchestral fantasy” score, and therefore a glorious arcade experience. Battlantis sounds and looks “1980s Fantasy” to fantastic levels, and revels in its own camp style shamelessly.
Now that we have a good understanding of this game’s smirk-inducing audiovisuals straight out of a Manowar album, we can dissect its difficulty in detail. I believe that, as in the case of Surprise Attack, the basic game mechanics and level design/layout do not provide significant sources of difficulty. It is the way designers combined the two Facets and created Stages with a strong puzzle-like component that provides the core challenge, in my view. I thus suggest that the two basic Facets provide each 10 points out of the 50 total, and the remaining 30 come from their combination into a third Facet of difficulty. I also anticipate matters and suggest that the final score I propose for this game is 30/50 difficulty points, i.e. a top-tier challenge for expert level players. The reason I provide this score, which is slightly lower than the wiki’s score, works as follows.
Players should find a certain challenge in mastering Cripeus’ limited fire rate: Space Invaders-style limitations may require some time, before players master them. Power-ups are another Facet that players must handle with care. For instance, the side-shot power-up allows Cripeus to kill enemies that reach the ramparts, but the side shots are nevertheless slow. More in general, power-ups can considerably help players in clearing stages, but players must learn how to use them wisely. I thus award 2/10 difficulty points to these Facets. The two stage design Facets that I then consider as providing a source of difficulty are the use of bastions and the killing of climbing enemies. Players may decide to destroy bastions on some stages because they can be in the way for slaughtering enemies, but can also absorb bullets. Cripeus can also shoot enemies while they are climbing but not on the ramparts, as last-defence attacks.
These mechanics work in the same way irrespective of the Stages, and thus I include them in the second Facet. For this reason, too, I assign a 2/10 total difficulty points to this Facet. At 4/20 difficulty points, it seems like the basic Facets of this game do not provide a massive challenge. The Stages, as we mentioned in the previous passages of this squib, provide considerable challenges in their puzzle-like structure. Each stage has a precise enemy layout, and Cripeus is a slow shooter. Furthermore, in most stages there will be running and even flying enemies mixing with the hordes of approaching enemies, and possibly free-form phases. Bosses, then, require specific killing techniques, with bosses from latter stages providing harder challenges than the generals’ challenges. Power-ups can help Cripeus, but they may often be hard to get: Players must count on their own solutions to each Stage.
I thus propose that the Facet corresponding to the combination of mechanics and design is worth 26/30 difficulty points. Every Stage after Stage three requires a carefully designed solution to the puzzle it provide, i.e. 30 Stages out of 32 require mastering. Bosses in the loop stages do not however provide a considerably more difficult challenge, and so “only” 26 Stages require careful practice from players. I propose a total of 26/30 difficulty points for this Facet, and therefore the aforementioned total of 30/50 points. The International version of the game has a slightly different order of Stages that can increase the difficulty by two or three points, perhaps raising the total to 32 or 33/50 points. My evaluation may be excessively hinging on one Facet of the game, but I believe that the point remains. Battlantis is a tough game, as players must master each Stage and its “solution(s)”.
And now, since Xenny is still out, fighting for the welfare of his species and simultaneously enjoying a snack, we move to the discussion of my experiences with the game. A first snapshot: 1987 or 1988, winter season, and the time of Thundercade and Black Tiger. There is cab with Konami’s Contra, in the upper central room, and next to it I see this game. My father plays it from time to time but without particularly good results. I try the game a few times under his guidance and I feel that the stiff game mechanics are a special kind of torture for us unskilled kids. So many enemies and so few bullets: this game seems unbalanced and poorly designed, I am certain of it. The music is however hypnotic, even if it sounds like copied from those weird fantastic movies with fairies, demons, and such.
Fast forward to 1990, as my uncle gets rids of this board quickly. As I mentioned in the previous squib, I am visiting the other arcade with the big room full of old games, due to my father and uncle’s “Sunday cold war”. I mostly play City Connection and occasionally other old titles whose exact identity escapes me now. I also rediscover this title. Now, I am also old and wise enough to realise that it is modern interpretation of the more modern Space Invaders[ title lying in one dark corner of this room. I like this title, and I feel that I have seen it somewhere, already, but the exact time and place escapes me. It does not matter. I start playing this game and City Connection regularly, but I seem to understand how to progress through Stages only on this title.
By July 1990, the Sunday cold war is temporarily over. My City Connection progress is…embarrassing. However, I manage to beat the Demon Lord entity straight out of Super Contra several times, in Battlantis. Credits, yes: but then I see that the game has a second loop that feels like a remarkably more difficult challenge. Once I reach Stage 19, I consider myself satisfied; see you around, Battlantis. Now, now it is 1994 instead: I am a cocky teen with a lot of swaggers and I play a lot of tabletop RPGs, read comics and books in English and French, and believe that I will get some brilliant results in life. The 2025 would have thrown the 1994 me in the meat-grinder, I guess, even if that younger version was wise enough to read Moorcock’s books. In 1994, however, I go to the other arcade more often, to play old and forgotten titles.
In a remarkably cold Spring that leads to a summer with snow on the mountains surrounding my hometown, I start playing Battlantis again. Some of my RPG friends wonder why I bother to play this “old game”, but do visit the arcade when I come here to practice Battlantis in peace. Nobody plays this old 1987 game, so the cab is still in good shape. Besides, I like solitude when I play: it is me and the game. It takes me one month to clear the first 16 stages again: will not have a summer, this much is clear. In the anticipated autumn stretching to the first snows of early October, I progress one stage per fortnight. Figuring out how to pass Stages on the loop is akin to playing a puzzle game. And yet, progress is constant, from October to January and then the next March.
Around the arrival of spring, we get some more snow to celebrate the new season. Unfazed by the usual extra loop of winter, I also finally have a solid route for all 32 stages of Battlantis. The big demon face dies a second time on my first attempt of the day. Well, for some mysterious reason, I respawn on the last stage after the credits and fight the ugly demon again. OK, this happens a third, fourth, fifth time. I take it as a victory lap and consider my seven-years old journey complete: Atlantis, I guess, is safe. And then the years pass, and I completely lose my ability to 1-CC the game, but I do not really bother with this loss of game-specific skills. Occasionally, I play a few credits of this game, enjoy the ultra-zany atmosphere, and smirk thinking about 1980s fantasy and my 1990s grudges.
By means of a conclusion, Battlantis is single screen shmup in which the king of Atlantis, Cripeus III, must slaughter the invading armies of Demon King Asmodeus. The game plays like a more elaborate version of Space Invaders in a Heroic Fantasy setting, and has a gloriously camp OST. It is possibly one of the hardest single screen/proto-shmups in the genre, as most Stages require careful, puzzle-like planning for players to overcome them. If players are willing to challenge themselves with this approach to shmup action, however, they will find an carefully designed shmup with a steep but constant difficulty progression. They will therefore enjoy a glorious and shamelessly camp interpretation of the genre and of a heroic fantasy setting in arcade games. Wear your best NWBHM t-shirt, let your long perm hair and mullet explode, and enjoy one of Konami’s finest and most obscure gems.
(2956 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I currently have long hair but they do not look like awful metalhead curly bushes. I still think that my previous personas are detestable, but it should be clear by now that I can sometimes look at the myself of yesterday and have my eyes full of contempt. Now, imagine what will happen tomorrow when I will read this squib again…anyway, I suspect that Data East took inspiration from Cripeus III for the protagonist in Dragon Gun; OK, maybe they pilfered the design, in perfect Data East style. Anyway, I need to shorten my mullet, whoops!)
Battlantis (Konami, 1987) is a single screen shmup in which the young king of Atlantis, Cripeus III, must defeat the evil demon king Asmodeus. Battlantis combines all the basic elements of Taito’s Space Invaders with an Heroic Fantasy setting, an atmospheric OST, and a fast if remarkably difficult game experience. The level design is intricate enough that players must develop precise killing strategies to clear stage. Thus, the game also displays the typical puzzle-like challenges of many 1980s arcade games, and an often frustrating but seldom boring tight challenge to players. The game is also one of the earliest shmups featuring a loop with harder stages and a considerably higher difficulty. The Shmups difficulty wiki considers this a game for master players, at an hefty 34/50 points difficulty. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that the game is excellent, so you should try it difficult challenge notwithstanding.
Battlantis is part of an historical arcade gaming context in which the influence of Heroic Fantasy and of authors like Robert E. Howard entered videogame design. In the same year, Capcom’s Black Tiger, Taito’s Rastan and Sega/Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land appeared. Namco previously released other fantasy-themed games (e.g. Dragon Buster) and would release the shmup Phelios in 1988. Battlantis is thus part of this wider aesthetic and thematic movement of the second half of the 1980s, with Konami’s title being one of the few shmups with fantasy-based themes. At the same time, it is part of a lineage of Konami TATE shmups (e.g. A-Jax) that may not be as famous as their HORI(zontal) counterparts (e.g. Salamander). At the same time, the game acts as an heir to Konami’s single screen classics such as Gyruss and Juno First. It is thus a quite unique game, from an historical perspective.
The plot may sound like Konami wanted to pilfer Howard’s King Kull stories, given the Atlantis setting. The valiant king Cripeus III must defend the beautiful kingdom of Atlantis from the great demon Asmodeus and his underlings/enemies. Armed with a powerful arbalest, he wages a defensive war to avoid that the demi-humans invade his kingdom. Cripeus III moves from one rampart of the immense walled city to another rampart, and slaughters Asmodeus’ armies with relentless precision and violence. Asmodeus decides that he will take matters on his own claws after his three monstrous generals fail him. The final battle between the two kings ensues, to determine which kingdom will survive. No, I do not know if Hayao Isayama of Attack on Titan took inspiration from this game for the giant walled cities in his manga. Asmodeus, however, seems to be the twin of Gava from Konami’s Super Contra.
With this background knowledge in place, we can talk about the game’s basic mechanics. The joystick controls Cripeus III’s movement to the left and to the right. Cripeus always moves along the border of a rampart, so players do not need to use the other directions. The A button controls the shots from the arbalester, which follow a common rule of single screen shmups: only one bullet can be on screen, under normal conditions. Players can also use the B button if this button is active, but the rule regarding bullets remains active. Ramparts have defensive bastions behind which Cripeus can hide from bullets, but those will crumble once enough enemies’ bullets hit them. Demi-human invaders can climb the walls and immediately erase a bastion if they touch it. Furthermore, Cripeus dies if an enemy touches him after invading the ramparts, or if any bullet strikes the young king.
The game awards several power-ups when Cripeus can hit an enemy’s carriage moving in the back lines of the enemies’ formations. Power-ups include a dual shot (i.e. two bullets can be on the screen at once), a side-shooting arbalester (i.e. Cripeus can shoot invading enemies on his flanks), and a few others. Extends are at 20k, 70k points and then every 70k points. Most enemies slowly move towards the ramparts with the goal of climbing them and killing Cripeus via the classic Space Invaders-style zig-zag patterns. However, some enemies also follow other patterns and may simply run against the ramparts to invade Atlantis via a potentially kamikaze attack. Some stages have flying enemies and other creatures that move in more creative patterns. Thus, Cripeus and with him the players must land shots with ruthless precision, especially when enemies have 2 or more H(it)P(point)s.
The stage design/layout aspects exploit these mechanics in often complex manners and strongly affect the game’s overall non-trivial difficulty. First, however, I want to sketch the basic aspects or Facets of game to getter a better conceptual footing, and by using our by now standard term. The game has two loops of 16 Stages each. Each Stage takes place in one of many Atlantis’ districts under siege, such as the ramparts below the main cathedral (Stage 14), or near the Vulcanic outskirts (Stage eight). Each Stage has a first phase in which Cripeus must kill each enemy as soon as possible, and possibly a second phase with enemies attacking in free-form patterns. In the final phase, one enemy type appears as a Stage boss, with a bigger sprite and a shield. Stages two, six, 11 and 16 feature battles against the three generals and then demon king Asmodeus.
The game’s 32 stages follow a regular structure, but the loop stages offer a considerably higher challenge. Let us however spend a few words on the visual and musical Facets, before we address these matters. The game has a highly distinctive Heroic Fantasy setting, even though it runs on older Konami hardware that poses certain (minor) limits to the quality of the graphics. Enemies come in several colourful and detailed varieties, even if the basic templates are three: enemies walking with(out) a shield, running enemies, and flying enemies. Walking enemies’ animations are rather simple, but running and flying enemies offer more detail. Enemies’ pixel art quite detailed especially when enemies appear as larger sprites (boss form or when walking on ramparts). The game implements minimal scaling and rotating effects that embellish the bosses’ and generals’ animations, and more in general it pushes the underlying hardware to considerable efforts.
The game’s design creates a particularly vibrant and evocative atmosphere. The 32 stages take places around Atlantis: intuitively, the city has the roughly circular shape that players can glean in the title screen. Cripeus thus seems to move on the ramparts defining the city’s borders and walls, with dramatically different environments lying outside these walls. In some Stages (Stage six, 22 in the International version), Cripeus seems to simply face a sea of clouds hovering some deep chasm, and from which flying enemies appear. In other stages (e.g. Stage eight), the outside lands are full of lava lakes and vulcanoes. Cripeus is designed as a powerful warrior in the vein of Frazetta or Vallejo warriors. Enemies are bulky creatures straight of a Game Workshop’s WarHammer expansion, and the four main bosses are huge and well-animated. The game exudes its Heroic Fantasy appearance in a bombastic manner.
The OST provides an equally intense experience, even if it has a peculiar design aspect. The game has four themes, one per “Act”, intended as sequence of Stages between fights with the generals. The four themes open with two distinct introductory motives: a fanfare for “Act I” and “Act III” and fast-paced theme for “Act II” and Act “IV”. Each theme then proceeds with a distinct intermediate motive: after 50 seconds or so, the ending coda of the motive will loop. Players should clear Stages quickly, so the opening themes signal when most of the kills should happen. The intermediate themes may correspond to the appearance of free-form enemies, and the looping codas cover the quick boss battles. Bosses have their own dramatic, longer, and more intense themes, as befits boss battles in Konami games. Players can thus use the themes as pacing cues in their slaughtering of demi-human invaders.
The OST’s style is perhaps the campiest, zaniest, and coolest aspect of the game. The opening motif for the Act I and III themes attempts at creating the sound of a melody-rich fanfare that might appear in a traditional fantasy movie. The opening motif for Acts II and IV sounds like standard action movie theme from the 1980s, and so do the boss themes for the three generals. King Asmodeus’ fight comes with a theme that could vaguely remind players of organ-based music. What is campy and zany about these themes is that the Konami musicians used the trademark high pitch synthetisers that appear in most of Konami’s 1980s games (e.g. Contra). Thus, the OST sounds like a chiptune version of a probably solid “orchestral fantasy” score, and therefore a glorious arcade experience. Battlantis sounds and looks “1980s Fantasy” to fantastic levels, and revels in its own camp style shamelessly.
Now that we have a good understanding of this game’s smirk-inducing audiovisuals straight out of a Manowar album, we can dissect its difficulty in detail. I believe that, as in the case of Surprise Attack, the basic game mechanics and level design/layout do not provide significant sources of difficulty. It is the way designers combined the two Facets and created Stages with a strong puzzle-like component that provides the core challenge, in my view. I thus suggest that the two basic Facets provide each 10 points out of the 50 total, and the remaining 30 come from their combination into a third Facet of difficulty. I also anticipate matters and suggest that the final score I propose for this game is 30/50 difficulty points, i.e. a top-tier challenge for expert level players. The reason I provide this score, which is slightly lower than the wiki’s score, works as follows.
Players should find a certain challenge in mastering Cripeus’ limited fire rate: Space Invaders-style limitations may require some time, before players master them. Power-ups are another Facet that players must handle with care. For instance, the side-shot power-up allows Cripeus to kill enemies that reach the ramparts, but the side shots are nevertheless slow. More in general, power-ups can considerably help players in clearing stages, but players must learn how to use them wisely. I thus award 2/10 difficulty points to these Facets. The two stage design Facets that I then consider as providing a source of difficulty are the use of bastions and the killing of climbing enemies. Players may decide to destroy bastions on some stages because they can be in the way for slaughtering enemies, but can also absorb bullets. Cripeus can also shoot enemies while they are climbing but not on the ramparts, as last-defence attacks.
These mechanics work in the same way irrespective of the Stages, and thus I include them in the second Facet. For this reason, too, I assign a 2/10 total difficulty points to this Facet. At 4/20 difficulty points, it seems like the basic Facets of this game do not provide a massive challenge. The Stages, as we mentioned in the previous passages of this squib, provide considerable challenges in their puzzle-like structure. Each stage has a precise enemy layout, and Cripeus is a slow shooter. Furthermore, in most stages there will be running and even flying enemies mixing with the hordes of approaching enemies, and possibly free-form phases. Bosses, then, require specific killing techniques, with bosses from latter stages providing harder challenges than the generals’ challenges. Power-ups can help Cripeus, but they may often be hard to get: Players must count on their own solutions to each Stage.
I thus propose that the Facet corresponding to the combination of mechanics and design is worth 26/30 difficulty points. Every Stage after Stage three requires a carefully designed solution to the puzzle it provide, i.e. 30 Stages out of 32 require mastering. Bosses in the loop stages do not however provide a considerably more difficult challenge, and so “only” 26 Stages require careful practice from players. I propose a total of 26/30 difficulty points for this Facet, and therefore the aforementioned total of 30/50 points. The International version of the game has a slightly different order of Stages that can increase the difficulty by two or three points, perhaps raising the total to 32 or 33/50 points. My evaluation may be excessively hinging on one Facet of the game, but I believe that the point remains. Battlantis is a tough game, as players must master each Stage and its “solution(s)”.
And now, since Xenny is still out, fighting for the welfare of his species and simultaneously enjoying a snack, we move to the discussion of my experiences with the game. A first snapshot: 1987 or 1988, winter season, and the time of Thundercade and Black Tiger. There is cab with Konami’s Contra, in the upper central room, and next to it I see this game. My father plays it from time to time but without particularly good results. I try the game a few times under his guidance and I feel that the stiff game mechanics are a special kind of torture for us unskilled kids. So many enemies and so few bullets: this game seems unbalanced and poorly designed, I am certain of it. The music is however hypnotic, even if it sounds like copied from those weird fantastic movies with fairies, demons, and such.
Fast forward to 1990, as my uncle gets rids of this board quickly. As I mentioned in the previous squib, I am visiting the other arcade with the big room full of old games, due to my father and uncle’s “Sunday cold war”. I mostly play City Connection and occasionally other old titles whose exact identity escapes me now. I also rediscover this title. Now, I am also old and wise enough to realise that it is modern interpretation of the more modern Space Invaders[ title lying in one dark corner of this room. I like this title, and I feel that I have seen it somewhere, already, but the exact time and place escapes me. It does not matter. I start playing this game and City Connection regularly, but I seem to understand how to progress through Stages only on this title.
By July 1990, the Sunday cold war is temporarily over. My City Connection progress is…embarrassing. However, I manage to beat the Demon Lord entity straight out of Super Contra several times, in Battlantis. Credits, yes: but then I see that the game has a second loop that feels like a remarkably more difficult challenge. Once I reach Stage 19, I consider myself satisfied; see you around, Battlantis. Now, now it is 1994 instead: I am a cocky teen with a lot of swaggers and I play a lot of tabletop RPGs, read comics and books in English and French, and believe that I will get some brilliant results in life. The 2025 would have thrown the 1994 me in the meat-grinder, I guess, even if that younger version was wise enough to read Moorcock’s books. In 1994, however, I go to the other arcade more often, to play old and forgotten titles.
In a remarkably cold Spring that leads to a summer with snow on the mountains surrounding my hometown, I start playing Battlantis again. Some of my RPG friends wonder why I bother to play this “old game”, but do visit the arcade when I come here to practice Battlantis in peace. Nobody plays this old 1987 game, so the cab is still in good shape. Besides, I like solitude when I play: it is me and the game. It takes me one month to clear the first 16 stages again: will not have a summer, this much is clear. In the anticipated autumn stretching to the first snows of early October, I progress one stage per fortnight. Figuring out how to pass Stages on the loop is akin to playing a puzzle game. And yet, progress is constant, from October to January and then the next March.
Around the arrival of spring, we get some more snow to celebrate the new season. Unfazed by the usual extra loop of winter, I also finally have a solid route for all 32 stages of Battlantis. The big demon face dies a second time on my first attempt of the day. Well, for some mysterious reason, I respawn on the last stage after the credits and fight the ugly demon again. OK, this happens a third, fourth, fifth time. I take it as a victory lap and consider my seven-years old journey complete: Atlantis, I guess, is safe. And then the years pass, and I completely lose my ability to 1-CC the game, but I do not really bother with this loss of game-specific skills. Occasionally, I play a few credits of this game, enjoy the ultra-zany atmosphere, and smirk thinking about 1980s fantasy and my 1990s grudges.
By means of a conclusion, Battlantis is single screen shmup in which the king of Atlantis, Cripeus III, must slaughter the invading armies of Demon King Asmodeus. The game plays like a more elaborate version of Space Invaders in a Heroic Fantasy setting, and has a gloriously camp OST. It is possibly one of the hardest single screen/proto-shmups in the genre, as most Stages require careful, puzzle-like planning for players to overcome them. If players are willing to challenge themselves with this approach to shmup action, however, they will find an carefully designed shmup with a steep but constant difficulty progression. They will therefore enjoy a glorious and shamelessly camp interpretation of the genre and of a heroic fantasy setting in arcade games. Wear your best NWBHM t-shirt, let your long perm hair and mullet explode, and enjoy one of Konami’s finest and most obscure gems.
(2956 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I currently have long hair but they do not look like awful metalhead curly bushes. I still think that my previous personas are detestable, but it should be clear by now that I can sometimes look at the myself of yesterday and have my eyes full of contempt. Now, imagine what will happen tomorrow when I will read this squib again…anyway, I suspect that Data East took inspiration from Cripeus III for the protagonist in Dragon Gun; OK, maybe they pilfered the design, in perfect Data East style. Anyway, I need to shorten my mullet, whoops!)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Robocop (Data East,1988)
The choice for this new squib might surprise quite a few readers. Robocop was one of those cult movies from the 1980s that proposed a few interesting ideas but developed a questionable legacy over the decades (pardon, “franchise”). As a kid, however, I liked the movie quite a lot for its vaguely cyberpunk leanings. The arcade version has also several revisions and versions that however mostly differ in minor aspects, in perfect Data East style. I also remember trying the Pinball machine, also a Data East effort, and thinking that it was a good table; I cannot add much else, sadly. The game had tons of ports thanks to Ocean software (read the wiki reference below), but my DECO experiences have been almost entirely arcade, of course. Whoops! Now you know: we needed a bit more Data East in our squib diet, whence this squib. Onwards and forwards:
Robocop (Data East, 1988) is a run’n gun/action game with strong platform elements. A quintessential R2RKMF game with the occasional left-scrolling section, Robocop pits Alex Murphy/Robocop against waves of criminals haunting Detroit. Alex/Robocop however discovers that OCP, the company behind its cyborg bodies, is also behind the violent wave of crime. It is thus time to clean the streets from cheap thugs and the building from corporate scumbags, via a powerful automatic gun and plenty of snarky one-liners. The game features solid action, pseudo first-person shooting bonus games, surprisingly good graphics for a 1980s Data East game, and a solid if not offensive difficulty level. My goal in this squib is therefore to convince you to play this game because it is a Data East title, but also because its R2RKMF credentials are solid. This, of course, if you were not already on board at the DECO part.
Let us not waste time on molest jokes and focus instead on outlining the contours of the game’s context. In 1988, Data East released quite a few games, including the Sly Spy Bond-esque romp of which I already penned a squib. Unlike this game and other similar “tactical action” titles (e.g. Taito’s Crime City), Robocop offers infinite ammo to players. Differently from other platform-heavy action titles, too (e.g. Capcom’s Bionic Commando), Robocop also offers a more streamlined approach to action. In most stages, Robocop moves along a fixed path but can ascend or descend stairs, take elevators to move between levels, and in general progress on the vertical axis. Alex Murphy/Robocop has only one life bar, but can collect energy power-ups; he can perform clunky jumps and punch criminals, vehicles, and other enemies. The game thus represents an interesting mix of elements from different “action” micro-genres.
The game’s plot is simple, even though it does not seem to follow the movie closely. In the first two Sages, Alex/Robocop must pursue a local criminal gang and discover who is supplying them with weapons. Stages three and four see Alex/Murphy infiltrating the gang’s hideout and discover that OCP is behind their actions and the general wave of crime. Stages five, six and seven see Alex/Robocop “invading” the highly futuristic OCP headquarters and kick the asses of their private army. Once Alex/Robocop reaches the upper echelons of the OCP skyscraper, he can obliterate a few modified ED-209’s and solve the problem after a quick talk with the company’s CEO. The game thus focuses on the action side of the movie and takes a few licenses with its original setting (e.g. OCP agents in jetpacks). However, it offers an even more cyberpunk-ish, dystopic, and generally cool world.
The game’s mechanics are also simple. The joystick controls Alex/Robocop’s movement in eight directions. Alex can move left and right, jump in the directions (up, up-left, up-right), and crouch (down). When Alex/Robocop encounters stairs and elevators, he can go up and down (up-right, up-left, down-right, down-left on stairs; up or down on elevators). The A button controls shots: Alex/Robocop has a semi-automatic gun, so tapping rhythmically creates compact streams of bullets. Players can also use a slow auto-fire rate by holding the button, however. When enemies are in close range, Alex/Robocop can use powerful punches to deliver serious damage. The B button controls jumps, which have a low but relatively long parabolic trajectory. In a few spots, Alex/Robocop risks death between press/demolition machines: tap A repeatedly to break free of these enemies. Alex/Robocop can also shoot up (A+up, up-left, up-right, possibly during jumps) or down (jump, A+down, down-left, down-right).
Alex/Robocop starts with one life bar, and gets some energy after clearing each stage but also by collecting “E(nergy)” power-ups. The bonus Stages after Stages two and four involve a first-person practice shooting session, vaguely similar to some Stages in Konami’s Combat School. If Alex/Robocop destroys all the 50 targets in the shooting range, he will get permanent extra energy added to his life bar. Aside the basic machinegun, Alex/Robocop can also use a “the laser shot” and a “three-way shot” weapons, when he collects the relevant power-ups. The laser shot has piercing power and can even pass through walls, a feature that comes handy during some stages (e.g. Stage six). On Stage five, Alex/Robocop can also take a huge-ass laser gun and deliver a few devastating blows. Special weapons all have limited ammo but deliver considerable damage, so players should use them with a good degree of tactical acumen.
These few passages exhaust the discussion of the game’s mechanics, and sketch some aspects regarding stage design (or Facets, in our current and semi-standard terminology). Let us move onto the sound and vision Facets, thus. The game is a 1980s Data game, so you should expect a (relatively) drab color palette and choppy but not so choppy animations. Enemy sprites vary quite a bit in design, and Alex/Robocop has a cool, clunky way of moving that aptly reconstructs his movie stodginess. The ED-209 bosses are big and noisy, moving in those creepy artificial sweeping motions from the movie. The final three stages are intriguing, as OCP’s headquarters have a futuristic, technological aspect that gives a more menacing edge to the fight against the big corporation. The game’s graphics thus manage to create a good sense of the setting, in a sense being more creative than the movie’s design.
The OST is also simple but functional. Stage one and two include variations of the main two themes from the movie, but with a twist: they receive a re-interpretation via Data East’s trademark “metallic synthetisers”. As a result, the game has that unmistakably moody and dusk-tinged sound and atmosphere that seeped from all Data East’s games of the decade. Aside these two themes that repeat on the other five Stages, the game has a boss theme and a bonus theme; the OST amounts to a few themes/songs. Sound effects, though, add some interesting aural colour to this simple sound track. Alex/Robocop has a few accompanying voice samples, his jumps have an interesting metallic sound, and weapons are sometimes rather loud. The ED-209’s produce some hilarious roars, and a few objects have zany 8-bit accompanying sound effects (e.g. hand-grenades). The game’s aesthetics are thus functional to the setting and game mechanics.
Let us turn to the topic of difficulty, using the “Facet” term as our tool. The game’s difficulty stems from two Facets: basic game mechanics and stage layout/design. First, players must develop a good grasp of Alex/Robocop’s key movements for attacks. Punches are powerful but require careful timing and a short distance for their use. A loud thumping noise act as an aural cue that punches are successful, and the range is precise. The control of shooting directions is also tricky: players can quickly tap in one upward direction to shoot, but Alex/Robocop will move one or two steps. Players must thus learn to carefully control shots. Furthermore, jumps tend to follow low parabolic arcs: Alex/Robocop is heavy and clunky. Players should be able to quickly masters these Facets with some practice, a fact that motivates a 3/25 difficulty value for game mechanics.
Stage design attracts a higher but not so high value. The two bonus stages are also central to a player’s chances of achieving a 1-CC. If players can land a perfect score on both stages, the energy boost is considerable. Players have twice the amount of energy to attempt the clearing of the OCP Stages (i.e. Stages five, six, seven). Even though I would not consider the first and second Stage difficult, the other Stages have increasingly high densities of enemies, and challenging bosses. Luckily, the game offers generous time limits, so players can progress slowly and carefully. I would thus assign a difficulty point to Stages three to seven, to the two bonus Stages, and to bosses five to seven. The total difficulty value for this second Facet is 10/25, and the total 13/50. The game is a low-tier challenge for intermediate players.
Xenny feels rather drowsy tonight and would honestly buy the quick dismissal of this squib for a dollar, especially after this soporific reference to the movie. I will try to be brief, so that Xenny and your scribe can go to sleep and get some well-deserved rest. It is October 1988 and my uncle has put on a new game in the central room of lower floor. I do not remember the exact plan of the room in this period, but I remember that my uncle is sure that this new DECO game will be a success. My uncle tells me that it is an adaptation from a cool SF/dystopian movie that I am too young to watch, given its violence and crude social commentary. I try out the game and the general DECO-ness of the game is appealing to me, but I am apparently the only one enjoying it.
After a month or so of practice, I can regularly reach Stage four. However, nobody seems to care about the game. My uncle grumbles quite a bit about this turn of events, and after another week or so he sells the board. I must give up on my first 1-CC attempt, alas. It is now 1989, around Christmas, and I visit the other arcade with the vast “erstwhile glories room” on a relatively regular basis. I finally notice the Robocop cab around the end of November, and recover my knowledge of the game relatively quickly. The game is not so difficult if players progress slowly and the time limit is generous. A month of Sunday/weekend practice seems me reaching the final boss first, and then finally land my first 1-CC of the game. A friend of my father who also frequents this arcade compliments me, after witnessing the achievement.
The next Sunday, though, the cab is gone. The owners apparently were not getting any money from the game, and they were not happy that the few players were 1-CC’ing the game. I am again disappointed: as a kid, I feel this strong need to repeat my achievements to confirm their validity. I feel that I can wear an invisible badge of honour and validate my gaming CV once I hit at least 20 1-CC’s of one game. Luckily, the swimming pool in the suburbs that I attend during the 1989-1991 period gets this game in October 1991. Maybe my memory is faltering again, but my uncle’s cousin has Robocop II, in his arcade. That is another story: here, I confirm that I spend my time until Christmas getting another few dozen 1-CC’s on this game, before my swimming lessons. Alex/Robocop and I are quite good friends, at this point.
I have played the two Data East games from time to time, but for today we can leave aside those fleeting episodes, and instead move to the conclusions. Robocop is an R2RKMF, action/run’n gun game with platform elements. The game pits Alex Murphy/Robocop against the criminal infesting Detroit, and then the evil OCP corporation guiding this crime wave. The game offers a solid if relatively linear challenge, an interesting take to the action formula, and a more SF-oriented take to OCP’s armies. Players who wish to try out one of Data East’s better attempts at the formula and want to enjoy their unique audio-visual style should try this game. The 1-CC is an interesting proposition and a moderate challenge, so players can also focus on clearing the streets of Detroit of criminal and corporate scum alike. As a Data East time capsule from the 1980s, you will not be disappointed.
(1927 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I saw the movie on VHS thanks to the friend of my father who saw me 1-CC’ing the game for the first time. The guy invited my whole family for dinner, and then dropped me and his kids in front of the tv to watch the movie, well knowing that we would have found some of the few gore-ish scenes hard to stomach. I admit that the dystopian setting and the perverse attitude of OCP corporate puppets left me scarred for a while. The thought that we could end up living in that kind of world was hard to swallow. Damn, was I really that naïve, as a kid?).
Robocop (Data East, 1988) is a run’n gun/action game with strong platform elements. A quintessential R2RKMF game with the occasional left-scrolling section, Robocop pits Alex Murphy/Robocop against waves of criminals haunting Detroit. Alex/Robocop however discovers that OCP, the company behind its cyborg bodies, is also behind the violent wave of crime. It is thus time to clean the streets from cheap thugs and the building from corporate scumbags, via a powerful automatic gun and plenty of snarky one-liners. The game features solid action, pseudo first-person shooting bonus games, surprisingly good graphics for a 1980s Data East game, and a solid if not offensive difficulty level. My goal in this squib is therefore to convince you to play this game because it is a Data East title, but also because its R2RKMF credentials are solid. This, of course, if you were not already on board at the DECO part.
Let us not waste time on molest jokes and focus instead on outlining the contours of the game’s context. In 1988, Data East released quite a few games, including the Sly Spy Bond-esque romp of which I already penned a squib. Unlike this game and other similar “tactical action” titles (e.g. Taito’s Crime City), Robocop offers infinite ammo to players. Differently from other platform-heavy action titles, too (e.g. Capcom’s Bionic Commando), Robocop also offers a more streamlined approach to action. In most stages, Robocop moves along a fixed path but can ascend or descend stairs, take elevators to move between levels, and in general progress on the vertical axis. Alex Murphy/Robocop has only one life bar, but can collect energy power-ups; he can perform clunky jumps and punch criminals, vehicles, and other enemies. The game thus represents an interesting mix of elements from different “action” micro-genres.
The game’s plot is simple, even though it does not seem to follow the movie closely. In the first two Sages, Alex/Robocop must pursue a local criminal gang and discover who is supplying them with weapons. Stages three and four see Alex/Murphy infiltrating the gang’s hideout and discover that OCP is behind their actions and the general wave of crime. Stages five, six and seven see Alex/Robocop “invading” the highly futuristic OCP headquarters and kick the asses of their private army. Once Alex/Robocop reaches the upper echelons of the OCP skyscraper, he can obliterate a few modified ED-209’s and solve the problem after a quick talk with the company’s CEO. The game thus focuses on the action side of the movie and takes a few licenses with its original setting (e.g. OCP agents in jetpacks). However, it offers an even more cyberpunk-ish, dystopic, and generally cool world.
The game’s mechanics are also simple. The joystick controls Alex/Robocop’s movement in eight directions. Alex can move left and right, jump in the directions (up, up-left, up-right), and crouch (down). When Alex/Robocop encounters stairs and elevators, he can go up and down (up-right, up-left, down-right, down-left on stairs; up or down on elevators). The A button controls shots: Alex/Robocop has a semi-automatic gun, so tapping rhythmically creates compact streams of bullets. Players can also use a slow auto-fire rate by holding the button, however. When enemies are in close range, Alex/Robocop can use powerful punches to deliver serious damage. The B button controls jumps, which have a low but relatively long parabolic trajectory. In a few spots, Alex/Robocop risks death between press/demolition machines: tap A repeatedly to break free of these enemies. Alex/Robocop can also shoot up (A+up, up-left, up-right, possibly during jumps) or down (jump, A+down, down-left, down-right).
Alex/Robocop starts with one life bar, and gets some energy after clearing each stage but also by collecting “E(nergy)” power-ups. The bonus Stages after Stages two and four involve a first-person practice shooting session, vaguely similar to some Stages in Konami’s Combat School. If Alex/Robocop destroys all the 50 targets in the shooting range, he will get permanent extra energy added to his life bar. Aside the basic machinegun, Alex/Robocop can also use a “the laser shot” and a “three-way shot” weapons, when he collects the relevant power-ups. The laser shot has piercing power and can even pass through walls, a feature that comes handy during some stages (e.g. Stage six). On Stage five, Alex/Robocop can also take a huge-ass laser gun and deliver a few devastating blows. Special weapons all have limited ammo but deliver considerable damage, so players should use them with a good degree of tactical acumen.
These few passages exhaust the discussion of the game’s mechanics, and sketch some aspects regarding stage design (or Facets, in our current and semi-standard terminology). Let us move onto the sound and vision Facets, thus. The game is a 1980s Data game, so you should expect a (relatively) drab color palette and choppy but not so choppy animations. Enemy sprites vary quite a bit in design, and Alex/Robocop has a cool, clunky way of moving that aptly reconstructs his movie stodginess. The ED-209 bosses are big and noisy, moving in those creepy artificial sweeping motions from the movie. The final three stages are intriguing, as OCP’s headquarters have a futuristic, technological aspect that gives a more menacing edge to the fight against the big corporation. The game’s graphics thus manage to create a good sense of the setting, in a sense being more creative than the movie’s design.
The OST is also simple but functional. Stage one and two include variations of the main two themes from the movie, but with a twist: they receive a re-interpretation via Data East’s trademark “metallic synthetisers”. As a result, the game has that unmistakably moody and dusk-tinged sound and atmosphere that seeped from all Data East’s games of the decade. Aside these two themes that repeat on the other five Stages, the game has a boss theme and a bonus theme; the OST amounts to a few themes/songs. Sound effects, though, add some interesting aural colour to this simple sound track. Alex/Robocop has a few accompanying voice samples, his jumps have an interesting metallic sound, and weapons are sometimes rather loud. The ED-209’s produce some hilarious roars, and a few objects have zany 8-bit accompanying sound effects (e.g. hand-grenades). The game’s aesthetics are thus functional to the setting and game mechanics.
Let us turn to the topic of difficulty, using the “Facet” term as our tool. The game’s difficulty stems from two Facets: basic game mechanics and stage layout/design. First, players must develop a good grasp of Alex/Robocop’s key movements for attacks. Punches are powerful but require careful timing and a short distance for their use. A loud thumping noise act as an aural cue that punches are successful, and the range is precise. The control of shooting directions is also tricky: players can quickly tap in one upward direction to shoot, but Alex/Robocop will move one or two steps. Players must thus learn to carefully control shots. Furthermore, jumps tend to follow low parabolic arcs: Alex/Robocop is heavy and clunky. Players should be able to quickly masters these Facets with some practice, a fact that motivates a 3/25 difficulty value for game mechanics.
Stage design attracts a higher but not so high value. The two bonus stages are also central to a player’s chances of achieving a 1-CC. If players can land a perfect score on both stages, the energy boost is considerable. Players have twice the amount of energy to attempt the clearing of the OCP Stages (i.e. Stages five, six, seven). Even though I would not consider the first and second Stage difficult, the other Stages have increasingly high densities of enemies, and challenging bosses. Luckily, the game offers generous time limits, so players can progress slowly and carefully. I would thus assign a difficulty point to Stages three to seven, to the two bonus Stages, and to bosses five to seven. The total difficulty value for this second Facet is 10/25, and the total 13/50. The game is a low-tier challenge for intermediate players.
Xenny feels rather drowsy tonight and would honestly buy the quick dismissal of this squib for a dollar, especially after this soporific reference to the movie. I will try to be brief, so that Xenny and your scribe can go to sleep and get some well-deserved rest. It is October 1988 and my uncle has put on a new game in the central room of lower floor. I do not remember the exact plan of the room in this period, but I remember that my uncle is sure that this new DECO game will be a success. My uncle tells me that it is an adaptation from a cool SF/dystopian movie that I am too young to watch, given its violence and crude social commentary. I try out the game and the general DECO-ness of the game is appealing to me, but I am apparently the only one enjoying it.
After a month or so of practice, I can regularly reach Stage four. However, nobody seems to care about the game. My uncle grumbles quite a bit about this turn of events, and after another week or so he sells the board. I must give up on my first 1-CC attempt, alas. It is now 1989, around Christmas, and I visit the other arcade with the vast “erstwhile glories room” on a relatively regular basis. I finally notice the Robocop cab around the end of November, and recover my knowledge of the game relatively quickly. The game is not so difficult if players progress slowly and the time limit is generous. A month of Sunday/weekend practice seems me reaching the final boss first, and then finally land my first 1-CC of the game. A friend of my father who also frequents this arcade compliments me, after witnessing the achievement.
The next Sunday, though, the cab is gone. The owners apparently were not getting any money from the game, and they were not happy that the few players were 1-CC’ing the game. I am again disappointed: as a kid, I feel this strong need to repeat my achievements to confirm their validity. I feel that I can wear an invisible badge of honour and validate my gaming CV once I hit at least 20 1-CC’s of one game. Luckily, the swimming pool in the suburbs that I attend during the 1989-1991 period gets this game in October 1991. Maybe my memory is faltering again, but my uncle’s cousin has Robocop II, in his arcade. That is another story: here, I confirm that I spend my time until Christmas getting another few dozen 1-CC’s on this game, before my swimming lessons. Alex/Robocop and I are quite good friends, at this point.
I have played the two Data East games from time to time, but for today we can leave aside those fleeting episodes, and instead move to the conclusions. Robocop is an R2RKMF, action/run’n gun game with platform elements. The game pits Alex Murphy/Robocop against the criminal infesting Detroit, and then the evil OCP corporation guiding this crime wave. The game offers a solid if relatively linear challenge, an interesting take to the action formula, and a more SF-oriented take to OCP’s armies. Players who wish to try out one of Data East’s better attempts at the formula and want to enjoy their unique audio-visual style should try this game. The 1-CC is an interesting proposition and a moderate challenge, so players can also focus on clearing the streets of Detroit of criminal and corporate scum alike. As a Data East time capsule from the 1980s, you will not be disappointed.
(1927 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I saw the movie on VHS thanks to the friend of my father who saw me 1-CC’ing the game for the first time. The guy invited my whole family for dinner, and then dropped me and his kids in front of the tv to watch the movie, well knowing that we would have found some of the few gore-ish scenes hard to stomach. I admit that the dystopian setting and the perverse attitude of OCP corporate puppets left me scarred for a while. The thought that we could end up living in that kind of world was hard to swallow. Damn, was I really that naïve, as a kid?).
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Super Dodge Ball (Technos, 1987)
Super Dodge Ball (Technōs, 1987) is a sports game featuring one Dodge Ball, a sport/past-time that many may know from Physical Education classes. The game imagines a world in which there is a professional world league and legendary Technōs character Kunio-kun is the captain of the Japanese team. The game features mildly super-deformed, pseudo-caricatural character design, often wonky but also entertaining game mechanics, and that charming if vaguely creepy atmosphere that all 1980s Technōs games had. Players must thus beat the living daylights out of their enem…ehrm, adversaries to reach the coveted price of “world Dodge Ball champion”. The game is notable not only for being one of the few arcade sports games from this company, but also for being remarkably tough 1-CC. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that Super Dodge Ball is nevertheless a glorious sports game, its manifold quirks notwithstanding.
I believe that the best way to under the context of release for this game is to discuss a bit Technōs as a company. In 1987, this company was establishing itself on the arcade market and the Famicom/NES front via their most famous titles: Double Dragon and River City Ransom. Kunio-kun appeared as the protagonist of the 1986 arcade classic beat’em up Renegade , but lived his glory days in the dozens of Famicom games dedicated to his world. Many of these games may be well-known and beloved for my readers, because they feature Kunio-kun and company in a wealth of sports (e.g. association football, Ice Hockey). Super Dodge Ball is the first title of this long series of games and acted as unlikely sequel to Renegade: the programmers added Kunio-kun to boost sales. It however ended as being a foundational title.
The plot differs between US and J(a)P(an) versions in certain small details, but the gist is basically the same. Kunio-kun and his Nekketsu high school team must win the Japanese dodgeball team against their rival, the Hanazono high school team. After winning this final, they officially become the Japanese national team and hop on a tiny plane for a world tour. They visit England, Iceland, China, “Africa” and USA, beating into submission teams of increasing power and masculine violence. Once they defeat USA, they officially become the true masters of the dodgeball world. You may wonder how it may be possible that Japan can play against a team representing a whole continent (“Africa”), or that the Iceland team plays in some kind of frozen Inferno. Please suspend your belief for the whole duration of a credit: the core point is that Kunio-kun and team-mates must win the world dodge ball championship.
The game mechanics may need some time to learn, since they are relatively complex. The joystick controls Kunio-kun and the six teammates (three in-field, three out-field) in eight directions, as the game features a side view. The A button controls passages. Kunio-kun and teammates pass the ball to the out-field teams if they are facing right (i.e. out-field), or to the in-field teammates if they are facing left (i.e. in-field). The B button controls shots: Kunio-kun teammates shoot the ball to hit adversaries if they are facing right, and to the out-field adversaries when they are facing left. Players can control the ball’s trajectory with the joystick after a throw, giving the impression that Kunio-kun and co. remotely control the ball. Note that out-field players cannot “die”, so there is no need to hit them. Players choosing the 2P side must flip the directions of the commands, of course.
Players can thus shoot and pass, but they can also jump, run, dodge, and catch the ball. When Kunio and co. do not have the ball in hand, pressing the A button results in a dodging animation (i.e. the character(s) crouch for a second). Pressing the B button, instead, results in a ball-catching motion: Kunio and co. can grab shots if the timing is right or collect the ball from the floor. Kunio and co. can jump if players press A and B simultaneously. A double-tap and holding in one direction results in a run, which can end in a running jump. Jumping and running plus jumping shots are also possible when Kunio and co. have the ball and players use the B button during a (running) jump. Shooting right before peaking in a jump triggers a devastating Super Shot that can kill normal teammates.
You may wonder why I talk about “killing” in a sport game. The reason is simple: when the H(it)P(oint)s of in-field players end, the player “dies” and leaves the field as an angel with a red cross on his white shroud. Do not worry: Kunio and co. start with their full field number after each victory. Nevertheless, the game assumes that Dodge Ball is more of a violent contact sport that a relatively peaceful game for kids doing PE. Gratuitous violence aside, players win a match by killing all the in-field of the CPU/other player. In CPU/tournament mode, the national final team has four players. England and Iceland teams have five players: after the first kill, another player takes the in-field. China, Africa, and USA have six players, instead. Players have three minutes to win a match and must shoot within 15 seconds or lose possession.
1P and 2P have four teammates with Kunio-kun and Riki-kun as captains, three shorter and average players as in-field teammates, and another three as out-field teammates. England has three skinnier players with less HPs but more powerful shots and a guy with a Neanderthal-looking forehead as the more powerful captain; the extra player is also a captain. Iceland introduces the chubby players with more HPs but slower movements and two captains. China has three skinny players and three captains; Africa, a mixed team of six players. USA, being the final team, has all captain in- and out-field. Captains and occasionally other players can shoot super shots that Kunio and co. can dodge but not grab. While Kunio-kun’s super shot looks like a ball getting deformed due to the super-sonic speed, CPU’s super shots make the ball intermittently appear bigger. Kunio and co. exude tons of youthhood power, indeed.
When super shots or running/jumping shots hit, characters need some time to recover. For three seconds, they thus display the “stunned” animation and cannot move. Hits can also stun and knock down teammates when they hit. When Kunio and co. are on the floor, players must tap the buttons and wiggle the joystick to get the guys back on their feet. Players can run and shoot the ball, but they cannot keep the ball in their hands when in the adversaries’ in-field: they will drop it to the ground if they do not complete the shot. Teammates receiving a hit when performing an invasion run back to their in-field but then enter a “stunned” animation. Players can of course hit stunned and knocked down adversaries and, if they are at a short distance and press in the character’s direction, they can grab the bouncing ball for further hits.
Now that my readers should have a clear idea of the game’s slightly convoluted mechanics, we can talk about the game’s aural and visual presentation. The Kunio-kun series is probably notorious for its wacky sense of humour, banchō manga allure and surreal violence. This game represents the founding stop of this style for the “sports section”, indeed. The player types from the rival teams have mildly surreal appearances befitting of a Fujio Akatsuka manga, adding to the sense that the world game is highly caricatural. The colour palette is quintessential Technōs, with highly saturated colours and a certain preference for darker, creepier shades. Animations are overall good, but the game often gives the impression of running at 30 or 40 F(rames)P(er)S(econd), due to a certain degree of flickering during more intense exchanges. Stages follow this theme: have a look at the Iceland Stage to get a feeling of the zany creepiness.
The OST also follows this theme. Each Stage has its own theme, with the England Stage offering a chip-tunesque medley of Beatles’ songs. The Iceland stage tries to evoke the howling cold winds of this island’s winter, or something like that: Stage four’s fight/match against China involves a Chinese-flavoured fanfare. The themes are cute if functional, even if they may sound even a bit irreverent to more refined musical palates. The sound effects are just plain hilarious. Hitting balls always make a slapping sound of leather against a surface, and captains from the adversaries’ teams can make ogre-like grunts on Stages three and five. When characters die, their choking grunts are the same of enemies from Double Dragon. The sense of anime-style, surreal violence thus permeates the design of the game and offers a visual experience that is simultaneously hilarious and menacingly creepy.
By this point, I believe that my dear readers are ready to discuss the subtleties of the game’s difficulty in fine-grained detail. Please remember: I use the notion and term Facet to eviscerate this matter, so be sure to brush it up with gusto. I believe that for this game players need to master two Facets of the game: the mechanics and the strategies to quickly kill off enemies (or just: killing strategies). Though these strategies are not Stage-specific, they rely on how the teams and the camera use the playing fields/Stages and hence are distinct enough from the game mechanics. I anticipate matters a bit and say that the game deserves a 30/50 difficulty value: it is a top-tier challenge for expert players who want to 1-CC at least the first loop of the game. Please let me motivate this score in the next few paragraphs.
The game mechanics, as our relatively long discussion suggests, verge on the “slightly convoluted” side. Players must learn how and when to pass and shoot in attack, and how to control shot trajectories. Players must also learn how to jump, dash/run and perform normal and super shot jumping attacks. In defence, players must learn when to dodge and when to grab the ball. Furthermore, players must learn when Kunio and co. will end up stunned or knocked down after a hit, and wildly wiggle the joystick and tap button to get them up. If we have two main Facets, we can partition the total score of 50 points into two halves of 50 points. We thus have a difficulty value of 10/25 points for the game mechanics Facet. From a qualitative perspective, the game mechanics require some time and patience to masters, since they are aplenty.
The Stages/fields and their specific rules of engagement, however, are the Facets that provide most of the difficulty points in my evaluations. First, the camera always focuses on the ball-carrying teammate but may lag a bit to refocus after a shot or a pass. Players must learn to exploit this mechanic to de-spawn adversaries and/or limit their movements, as we are going to explain in detail. Second, and a consequence of the first point, running adversaries can be so aggressive that they can invade until mid-way into Kunio-kun and co.’s side. The lagging camera will keep them in “invading” position, where they are subject to free hits: they cannot grab the ball for either defence or offense and can only dodge. Players must thus learn to bait adversaries to fall into this trap and hit them repeatedly while they are “space invaders” and possibly knocked down on the floor.
Third, and another consequence of the first point, players must learn to kill the adversaries that take the field after a death before they even reach the in-field. Kills a first adversary, then pass the ball to the outfielder on the low-right side, wait for the adversary to enter the screen but not the field. In the half second that the adversary is out-field and giving the back to the outfielder, hit him and knock him down, repeatedly landing hits on his floored body. If the other adversaries try to run and grab the ball, hit them while they are entering the ball’s trajectory. If the CPU becomes aggressive, players can kill off a whole team trying to defend one of their teammates (usually, their captain) from the attacks of an out-fielders. Be sure to use this technique on each stage to quickly dispose of extra players.
Fourth and final point, out-field players do not have HPs but have limited left-right or up-down movement, for they can only move between the in-field and out-field lines. Using them effectively is important: they land more HPs with a hit. It also difficult, due to the risk that passes to them may undergo interception unless players exploit the lagging camera. When Kunio and co. are down to one or two teammates (usually, Kunio and another guy), it is time to use the outfielders to finish off the adversary team. Ideally, pass the ball to bait the adversaries into intercepting the pass near the field lines, hit and knock them down when they are close to them, and kill them while on the floor. Consider each of these points worth five difficulty points: the total for this Facet is 20/25 points, and the grand total is the aforementioned 30/50 points.
The game is thus hard, to put it succinctly. I learnt this basic fact in a rather entertaining manner, however, when I was a kid and I played this game with my banchō friend, in the countryside bar. Xenny seems fine with my sudden change to the discussion of my personal gaming experiences, so let us ride the moment happily. It is 1989 again and I am playing Momoko 120% and Tiger Road at the village’s bar when visiting my grandparents. Let us just say that these visits are almost daily and not pleasant; the gaming sessions are the only moment of peace in the day. By this point in 1989, my friend and I have progressed quite a bit in the first two games, but we have almost ignored Super Dodge Ball. The people who play it seem to constantly gripe about its brutal difficulty, after all.
My friend, however, is already playing rugby and therefore sees an appeal in a sports game in which violence finds an outlet via rules. I believe that he does not understand rugby well but let us just say that some games for ruffians may have gentlemanly players. Lame quotes aside, my friend keeps saying that we should try the game out and ask “the adults” to teach us, since he certain that we would never passage Stage one by ourselves. My friend is rough as they come, but he is also quite smart and lives but the motto “If you don’t know, ask around”. He thus decides to bother the head banchō in the mini-arcade, the son of “the boss lady” who runs the bar. The lady is the kind of woman who can put village thugs in line with a stare: her son knows how to comply.
The “boss son” is notorious for being though to ridiculous levels. He is a carpenter who works without gloves irrespective of the weather and he is notorious for having saved puppies and kitties without ever worrying about the situation. I think that a guy who abandoned his dog is still drinking and eating from a straw, because the boss son caught him while performing this cruel act. I am almost terrified when my friend asks the boss son to teach us the game. He is playing foosball with friends and, as we ask, he looks at us with a slaughtering stare. He sharply changes into a gentle, smiling face, scores the winning goal of the game, and answers us in perfect dialect that we just need to wait a bit. He needs to handle a lesson to the pretenders from the village nearby who think that they can play foosball.
Once he joins us, the boss son grabs some notes from his wallet and tells us to read them while he plays a credit and explains it how the game works. It turns out that he often wrote notes and taped them on the cabs, but the boss lady felt upset about players having some help and thus lasting more time on a single credit. The son knows how to comply with boss lady’s orders. For the next four months or so, we spend quite a bit of time playing this game along Momoko 120%, which gives us the least resistance for the 1-CC, and Tiger Road. We need to wait May 1990 and the blooming almond and cherry trees, before we can manage to get a 1-CC by a whisk of a beardless cat. I win the Stage six match with three seconds to spare; my friend, with six.
In the next few months, we irregularly repeat the feat, because the game feels so whimsical and quirky that we can sometimes lose on Stage two. Nevertheless, we manage to reach the second loop quite a few times and even reach Stage six on the loop. It feels like we have achieved something epic, indeed. I do not have other stories to tell about this game; I never played beyond a few credits in MAME, over the years. My banchō friend, however, developed a love for Kunio-kun games and even started importing the titles not available on the EU(orpe) market. When we meet, we play a few rounds of the Neo Geo sequel Super Dodge Ball and reminisce about the past. The boss lady retired but the bar is still there, and the boss son convinced her to add a MAME cab. That, however, is a story for another squib.
Let us wrap up. Super Dodge Ball is a Dodge Ball-based sports game from Technōs that combines this sport with a healthy dose of violence/fighting game approach. Players control Kunio-kun and teammates, who encounter teams from various countries with the aim of becoming “Dodge Ball champions”. The game is notable for the quirky controls, the hilariously manga-like design and exaggerated violence, and the general flippant atmosphere. It is a remarkably hard game due the often-erratic camera mechanics, but it can also be incredibly fun to play when players can exploit these mechanics. Anyone who wants to dabble in some of the more “esoteric” arcade games from the 1980s must try out this title, if only to play vs. matches. A 1-CC of the game certainly can feel like an impressive result, but be sure that you master the mechanics first, lest attempts turn into tears.
(3016 words; the usual disclaimers apply; by this point, I acknowledge that my knowledge of the local dialect comes mostly from my interaction with these villagers. Some of you might dismiss the village and its folks as “rural people” or just “rednecks”, perhaps, but the village is this one. My hometown university, which has a solid international ranking for a small-town city, built the natural sciences block in this village, for instance. Rural roughness and urban refinedness cannot be easily decoupled, in Italy. The boss son still saves stray animals with gusto and still loves banchō manga, in case you wonder.)
I believe that the best way to under the context of release for this game is to discuss a bit Technōs as a company. In 1987, this company was establishing itself on the arcade market and the Famicom/NES front via their most famous titles: Double Dragon and River City Ransom. Kunio-kun appeared as the protagonist of the 1986 arcade classic beat’em up Renegade , but lived his glory days in the dozens of Famicom games dedicated to his world. Many of these games may be well-known and beloved for my readers, because they feature Kunio-kun and company in a wealth of sports (e.g. association football, Ice Hockey). Super Dodge Ball is the first title of this long series of games and acted as unlikely sequel to Renegade: the programmers added Kunio-kun to boost sales. It however ended as being a foundational title.
The plot differs between US and J(a)P(an) versions in certain small details, but the gist is basically the same. Kunio-kun and his Nekketsu high school team must win the Japanese dodgeball team against their rival, the Hanazono high school team. After winning this final, they officially become the Japanese national team and hop on a tiny plane for a world tour. They visit England, Iceland, China, “Africa” and USA, beating into submission teams of increasing power and masculine violence. Once they defeat USA, they officially become the true masters of the dodgeball world. You may wonder how it may be possible that Japan can play against a team representing a whole continent (“Africa”), or that the Iceland team plays in some kind of frozen Inferno. Please suspend your belief for the whole duration of a credit: the core point is that Kunio-kun and team-mates must win the world dodge ball championship.
The game mechanics may need some time to learn, since they are relatively complex. The joystick controls Kunio-kun and the six teammates (three in-field, three out-field) in eight directions, as the game features a side view. The A button controls passages. Kunio-kun and teammates pass the ball to the out-field teams if they are facing right (i.e. out-field), or to the in-field teammates if they are facing left (i.e. in-field). The B button controls shots: Kunio-kun teammates shoot the ball to hit adversaries if they are facing right, and to the out-field adversaries when they are facing left. Players can control the ball’s trajectory with the joystick after a throw, giving the impression that Kunio-kun and co. remotely control the ball. Note that out-field players cannot “die”, so there is no need to hit them. Players choosing the 2P side must flip the directions of the commands, of course.
Players can thus shoot and pass, but they can also jump, run, dodge, and catch the ball. When Kunio and co. do not have the ball in hand, pressing the A button results in a dodging animation (i.e. the character(s) crouch for a second). Pressing the B button, instead, results in a ball-catching motion: Kunio and co. can grab shots if the timing is right or collect the ball from the floor. Kunio and co. can jump if players press A and B simultaneously. A double-tap and holding in one direction results in a run, which can end in a running jump. Jumping and running plus jumping shots are also possible when Kunio and co. have the ball and players use the B button during a (running) jump. Shooting right before peaking in a jump triggers a devastating Super Shot that can kill normal teammates.
You may wonder why I talk about “killing” in a sport game. The reason is simple: when the H(it)P(oint)s of in-field players end, the player “dies” and leaves the field as an angel with a red cross on his white shroud. Do not worry: Kunio and co. start with their full field number after each victory. Nevertheless, the game assumes that Dodge Ball is more of a violent contact sport that a relatively peaceful game for kids doing PE. Gratuitous violence aside, players win a match by killing all the in-field of the CPU/other player. In CPU/tournament mode, the national final team has four players. England and Iceland teams have five players: after the first kill, another player takes the in-field. China, Africa, and USA have six players, instead. Players have three minutes to win a match and must shoot within 15 seconds or lose possession.
1P and 2P have four teammates with Kunio-kun and Riki-kun as captains, three shorter and average players as in-field teammates, and another three as out-field teammates. England has three skinnier players with less HPs but more powerful shots and a guy with a Neanderthal-looking forehead as the more powerful captain; the extra player is also a captain. Iceland introduces the chubby players with more HPs but slower movements and two captains. China has three skinny players and three captains; Africa, a mixed team of six players. USA, being the final team, has all captain in- and out-field. Captains and occasionally other players can shoot super shots that Kunio and co. can dodge but not grab. While Kunio-kun’s super shot looks like a ball getting deformed due to the super-sonic speed, CPU’s super shots make the ball intermittently appear bigger. Kunio and co. exude tons of youthhood power, indeed.
When super shots or running/jumping shots hit, characters need some time to recover. For three seconds, they thus display the “stunned” animation and cannot move. Hits can also stun and knock down teammates when they hit. When Kunio and co. are on the floor, players must tap the buttons and wiggle the joystick to get the guys back on their feet. Players can run and shoot the ball, but they cannot keep the ball in their hands when in the adversaries’ in-field: they will drop it to the ground if they do not complete the shot. Teammates receiving a hit when performing an invasion run back to their in-field but then enter a “stunned” animation. Players can of course hit stunned and knocked down adversaries and, if they are at a short distance and press in the character’s direction, they can grab the bouncing ball for further hits.
Now that my readers should have a clear idea of the game’s slightly convoluted mechanics, we can talk about the game’s aural and visual presentation. The Kunio-kun series is probably notorious for its wacky sense of humour, banchō manga allure and surreal violence. This game represents the founding stop of this style for the “sports section”, indeed. The player types from the rival teams have mildly surreal appearances befitting of a Fujio Akatsuka manga, adding to the sense that the world game is highly caricatural. The colour palette is quintessential Technōs, with highly saturated colours and a certain preference for darker, creepier shades. Animations are overall good, but the game often gives the impression of running at 30 or 40 F(rames)P(er)S(econd), due to a certain degree of flickering during more intense exchanges. Stages follow this theme: have a look at the Iceland Stage to get a feeling of the zany creepiness.
The OST also follows this theme. Each Stage has its own theme, with the England Stage offering a chip-tunesque medley of Beatles’ songs. The Iceland stage tries to evoke the howling cold winds of this island’s winter, or something like that: Stage four’s fight/match against China involves a Chinese-flavoured fanfare. The themes are cute if functional, even if they may sound even a bit irreverent to more refined musical palates. The sound effects are just plain hilarious. Hitting balls always make a slapping sound of leather against a surface, and captains from the adversaries’ teams can make ogre-like grunts on Stages three and five. When characters die, their choking grunts are the same of enemies from Double Dragon. The sense of anime-style, surreal violence thus permeates the design of the game and offers a visual experience that is simultaneously hilarious and menacingly creepy.
By this point, I believe that my dear readers are ready to discuss the subtleties of the game’s difficulty in fine-grained detail. Please remember: I use the notion and term Facet to eviscerate this matter, so be sure to brush it up with gusto. I believe that for this game players need to master two Facets of the game: the mechanics and the strategies to quickly kill off enemies (or just: killing strategies). Though these strategies are not Stage-specific, they rely on how the teams and the camera use the playing fields/Stages and hence are distinct enough from the game mechanics. I anticipate matters a bit and say that the game deserves a 30/50 difficulty value: it is a top-tier challenge for expert players who want to 1-CC at least the first loop of the game. Please let me motivate this score in the next few paragraphs.
The game mechanics, as our relatively long discussion suggests, verge on the “slightly convoluted” side. Players must learn how and when to pass and shoot in attack, and how to control shot trajectories. Players must also learn how to jump, dash/run and perform normal and super shot jumping attacks. In defence, players must learn when to dodge and when to grab the ball. Furthermore, players must learn when Kunio and co. will end up stunned or knocked down after a hit, and wildly wiggle the joystick and tap button to get them up. If we have two main Facets, we can partition the total score of 50 points into two halves of 50 points. We thus have a difficulty value of 10/25 points for the game mechanics Facet. From a qualitative perspective, the game mechanics require some time and patience to masters, since they are aplenty.
The Stages/fields and their specific rules of engagement, however, are the Facets that provide most of the difficulty points in my evaluations. First, the camera always focuses on the ball-carrying teammate but may lag a bit to refocus after a shot or a pass. Players must learn to exploit this mechanic to de-spawn adversaries and/or limit their movements, as we are going to explain in detail. Second, and a consequence of the first point, running adversaries can be so aggressive that they can invade until mid-way into Kunio-kun and co.’s side. The lagging camera will keep them in “invading” position, where they are subject to free hits: they cannot grab the ball for either defence or offense and can only dodge. Players must thus learn to bait adversaries to fall into this trap and hit them repeatedly while they are “space invaders” and possibly knocked down on the floor.
Third, and another consequence of the first point, players must learn to kill the adversaries that take the field after a death before they even reach the in-field. Kills a first adversary, then pass the ball to the outfielder on the low-right side, wait for the adversary to enter the screen but not the field. In the half second that the adversary is out-field and giving the back to the outfielder, hit him and knock him down, repeatedly landing hits on his floored body. If the other adversaries try to run and grab the ball, hit them while they are entering the ball’s trajectory. If the CPU becomes aggressive, players can kill off a whole team trying to defend one of their teammates (usually, their captain) from the attacks of an out-fielders. Be sure to use this technique on each stage to quickly dispose of extra players.
Fourth and final point, out-field players do not have HPs but have limited left-right or up-down movement, for they can only move between the in-field and out-field lines. Using them effectively is important: they land more HPs with a hit. It also difficult, due to the risk that passes to them may undergo interception unless players exploit the lagging camera. When Kunio and co. are down to one or two teammates (usually, Kunio and another guy), it is time to use the outfielders to finish off the adversary team. Ideally, pass the ball to bait the adversaries into intercepting the pass near the field lines, hit and knock them down when they are close to them, and kill them while on the floor. Consider each of these points worth five difficulty points: the total for this Facet is 20/25 points, and the grand total is the aforementioned 30/50 points.
The game is thus hard, to put it succinctly. I learnt this basic fact in a rather entertaining manner, however, when I was a kid and I played this game with my banchō friend, in the countryside bar. Xenny seems fine with my sudden change to the discussion of my personal gaming experiences, so let us ride the moment happily. It is 1989 again and I am playing Momoko 120% and Tiger Road at the village’s bar when visiting my grandparents. Let us just say that these visits are almost daily and not pleasant; the gaming sessions are the only moment of peace in the day. By this point in 1989, my friend and I have progressed quite a bit in the first two games, but we have almost ignored Super Dodge Ball. The people who play it seem to constantly gripe about its brutal difficulty, after all.
My friend, however, is already playing rugby and therefore sees an appeal in a sports game in which violence finds an outlet via rules. I believe that he does not understand rugby well but let us just say that some games for ruffians may have gentlemanly players. Lame quotes aside, my friend keeps saying that we should try the game out and ask “the adults” to teach us, since he certain that we would never passage Stage one by ourselves. My friend is rough as they come, but he is also quite smart and lives but the motto “If you don’t know, ask around”. He thus decides to bother the head banchō in the mini-arcade, the son of “the boss lady” who runs the bar. The lady is the kind of woman who can put village thugs in line with a stare: her son knows how to comply.
The “boss son” is notorious for being though to ridiculous levels. He is a carpenter who works without gloves irrespective of the weather and he is notorious for having saved puppies and kitties without ever worrying about the situation. I think that a guy who abandoned his dog is still drinking and eating from a straw, because the boss son caught him while performing this cruel act. I am almost terrified when my friend asks the boss son to teach us the game. He is playing foosball with friends and, as we ask, he looks at us with a slaughtering stare. He sharply changes into a gentle, smiling face, scores the winning goal of the game, and answers us in perfect dialect that we just need to wait a bit. He needs to handle a lesson to the pretenders from the village nearby who think that they can play foosball.
Once he joins us, the boss son grabs some notes from his wallet and tells us to read them while he plays a credit and explains it how the game works. It turns out that he often wrote notes and taped them on the cabs, but the boss lady felt upset about players having some help and thus lasting more time on a single credit. The son knows how to comply with boss lady’s orders. For the next four months or so, we spend quite a bit of time playing this game along Momoko 120%, which gives us the least resistance for the 1-CC, and Tiger Road. We need to wait May 1990 and the blooming almond and cherry trees, before we can manage to get a 1-CC by a whisk of a beardless cat. I win the Stage six match with three seconds to spare; my friend, with six.
In the next few months, we irregularly repeat the feat, because the game feels so whimsical and quirky that we can sometimes lose on Stage two. Nevertheless, we manage to reach the second loop quite a few times and even reach Stage six on the loop. It feels like we have achieved something epic, indeed. I do not have other stories to tell about this game; I never played beyond a few credits in MAME, over the years. My banchō friend, however, developed a love for Kunio-kun games and even started importing the titles not available on the EU(orpe) market. When we meet, we play a few rounds of the Neo Geo sequel Super Dodge Ball and reminisce about the past. The boss lady retired but the bar is still there, and the boss son convinced her to add a MAME cab. That, however, is a story for another squib.
Let us wrap up. Super Dodge Ball is a Dodge Ball-based sports game from Technōs that combines this sport with a healthy dose of violence/fighting game approach. Players control Kunio-kun and teammates, who encounter teams from various countries with the aim of becoming “Dodge Ball champions”. The game is notable for the quirky controls, the hilariously manga-like design and exaggerated violence, and the general flippant atmosphere. It is a remarkably hard game due the often-erratic camera mechanics, but it can also be incredibly fun to play when players can exploit these mechanics. Anyone who wants to dabble in some of the more “esoteric” arcade games from the 1980s must try out this title, if only to play vs. matches. A 1-CC of the game certainly can feel like an impressive result, but be sure that you master the mechanics first, lest attempts turn into tears.
(3016 words; the usual disclaimers apply; by this point, I acknowledge that my knowledge of the local dialect comes mostly from my interaction with these villagers. Some of you might dismiss the village and its folks as “rural people” or just “rednecks”, perhaps, but the village is this one. My hometown university, which has a solid international ranking for a small-town city, built the natural sciences block in this village, for instance. Rural roughness and urban refinedness cannot be easily decoupled, in Italy. The boss son still saves stray animals with gusto and still loves banchō manga, in case you wonder.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Super Pang! (Mitchell, 1990)
We begin the long week-end with a sequel to a squib that I released a few months ago, but I did leave aside for a while: Super Pang!. The game experienced quite a bit of popularity and received tons of different ports: readers may probably remember the Super Famicom/SNES version. The one reason I kept waiting to finish this game’s squib is that, well, once I completed my grudge with this game, I left it aside with a certain bitter aftertaste: I much preferred the first chapter. I honestly did not want to write about this chapter and the third one, but manly men get the job done and complete their tasks, no matter how trivial they are. So, without much further ado:
Super Pang! (Mitchell, 1990) is a single screen platform game with strong puzzle-like design elements and a close relationship to shmups. It is the direct sequel to Pang!, Mitchell’s worldwide success that we discussed in the previous squib of mine in the link. Super Pang! (or also Super Buster Bros, Super Pomping World) apparently takes a new pair of explorers/adventures to fight another invasion of bouncing balls from space. The game is notable in introducing the “Panic mode” to the franchise, having a less manga-oriented design but more detailed graphics, and a lower difficulty level. The game went to be a solid success for the company as well. However, it did not warrant a third immediate title in the series until 1995, in the form of the usually maligned Pang 3!. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that the game is a solid sequel worth playing.
The specific context in which this game appeared might receive this brief synthesis. Pang! was a worldwide success that spawned several revisions and quite a few bootleg versions, if it was a quite hard game. Mitchell decided to capitalise on this success by releasing a sequel as soon as possible. Apparently, Capcom allowed them to pursue this endeavour by working on their CPS-1 board, and also offered musical support. Given the market need to release the game quickly but also to provide new challenges to players, the Mitchell programmers went for a shorter overall length in the “tour mode”. They also decided to add a new mode at a later development stage, and to give the game a more immediate and international appeal. Thus, the two player characters featured a “1990s cool” look and the game lost the Akira Toriyama-esque design.
The game’s plot is nearly identical to the first entry in its simplicity. After the first attack, the mysterious “bouncing ball” aliens decide to invade Earth again, this time with the aid of their allies “floating hexagons”. Two fearless explorers turned alien busters don the mantles of Earth’s saviours and decide to travel across the globe and destroying these fiendish enemies. Critters of various nature enter the frame (e.g. mockingbird formations), even if it is not clear whether they are friends or foes. Once our explorers reach a beach in the Caribbeans and fight the last onslaught of bouncing balls, Earh is safe once more from the threat of these weird aliens. On the other hand, the “panic mode” does not have a real plot. The two explorers must survive the onslaught of enemies until none remains and thus can declare themselves the winners of this battle.
The game works much like the first Pang!, but a synthesis of the basic mechanics for new readers is as follows. Players control the explorers with the joystick: explorers can move left and right on a platform, and climb or descend stairs (up, down). When climbing or descending stairs in this game, players can now input any diagonal movement to move away from the stairs and fall, hopefully without bumping into balls. Players can shoot harpoons with the A button but also use the B button to obtain faster shooting frames. In Super Pang!, harpoons must also travel the whole length of the screen or hit an object to disappear: the “one harpoon” rule also applies. Harpoons however move faster, and respawning time is thus faster. Particularly skilled players can thus shoot harpoons as soon as they hit a balloon, thus creating the impression of having two harpoons on screen.
The power-up weapons have all received upgrades from the first title. The double harpoon shoots two harpoons at once and has even faster respawning times. The hook harpoon only remains in place for two seconds, flashing yellow before disappearing. The machinegun shoots four bullets in a “wide shot” arc, and can hit balloons at lower heights, thus reducing the risk of creating defenceless space above the explorers. The other power-ups work in the same way as in the previous title, however. The dynamite splits all balloons down to their tiny size. The sandglass temporarily lowers rank and thus the aggressivity and intelligence of balls. The clock freezes balloons; the shield offers the explorers protection for one hit from the bouncing balls. Bonus food awards twice the number of points: the first stage item is worth 1k points, and the last one, a big slice of cake, is worth 100k.
The rank system works in a manner similar but not identical to the first title. Players can collect up to ten extends, thus reaching 12 stock lives. However, extends occur at higher fixed scores than in the first title; for instance, the first extend is at 50k points. Therefore, the rank increases at a slower pace; furthermore, the sandglass power-up seems to have a longer effect, so players can control rank in a relatively more direct manner. Game critters are lower in numbers and types too and generally render the handling of Stages less chaotic when rank goes up. One type of critter are the mockingbirds, who appear in a formation and release a power-up plus bonus points if quickly dispensed with. The other are crocodiles, who walk around eating balls and can release a balls-obliterating mini-explosion if the explorers murder them mercilessly.
The game features two three innovations regarding enemy types. In Pang!, balls can start at the “huge” size, and split into medium, small and tiny balls. In Super Pang!, some stages feature the “massive” size, which explorers can split into two balls of the “huge” size upon hitting them. In this case, the score progression is 100 points (massive to huge), 200 points (huge to middle), 400 points (middle to small), and 800 points (small to tiny). Chaining kills of tiny balls follows the progression 100, 200, 400, 800, 1.6k and 3.2k points: players can thus score quite more points from chains. Aside massive size ball, a new type consists of balls with a lighter colour shade. These balls split into four rather than two balls of smaller size and offer a lower number of points per hit (e.g. the top chain value is 2.4k points).
The third new enemy type are floating hexagons. These enemies rotate on one of their vertices and move across the screen in diagonal lines: they do not have a “massive” size and appear in the “huge” size only in the final stages. However, due to their diagonal-based movements, they can disrupt the players’ attention from bouncing balls easily. Although hexagons start by following movement lines at 30° angles from the top screen side, they can bounce against surfaces and change their angle of movement accordingly. The net effect is that stages featuring both balls and hexagons require that players are aware of two types of moving enemies at once. Furthermore, hexagons develop the ability to change their angle of motion and speed as rank increases and can become even more lethal enemies than bouncing balls. Players must thus learn also how bouncing balls and hexagonal trajectories interact, to survive.
The most meaningful addition to the series from this game is the “Panic Mode”. Players can choose between “Tour Mode” and “Panic Mode”, before starting their credit. Tour Mode features 40 Stages distributed along three continents (Asia, Europe, The Americas), and mostly plays like the first. In Panic mode, players start from the last place (“The Caribbean”) and “travel back to the first place (“Hong Kong”). There are no fixed enemy formations: each three seconds, balls and hexagons of different shapes enter the screen. Players must thus kill them as soon as possible, lest the screen become overflooded with enemies. Once players accumulate 70 levels worth of kills, the mode is over, and players win. A small help are “star” balloons/hexagons and clocks, which respectively destroy all enemies on screen or freeze them for up to seven seconds. Nevertheless, players must simply survive until no balloon/hexagon is on screen.
With this overview of the game mechanics aside, we can focus on the visual and aural Facets of the game. The game changes a bit in style from the first title: aside the two protagonists having an “early 1990s cool” design, the colour palette is less caramelised and coves more shades. Backgrounds include more detail and seem drawn/scanned at a higher resolution, and characters and critters have more fluid animations. A peculiarity is that sprites appear slightly bigger than in Pang!: players may thus feel that they need to be more careful when moving around. For the most part, however, Super Pang! also presents a cute world of killer balloons and hexagons coming in various shades, chubby crocodiles, birds and balloon-hunting kids. The design and the graphics may not be outstanding, but they are certainly pleasing to the eye and create a joyful atmosphere.
The OST, however, represents a Facet in which the game seems to falter especially when compared to the first title. Mitchell used the help of Alph Lyla member Hiromitsu Takaoka, thus receiving support from Capcom as in the case of Pang!. The OST often sounds inspired and sometimes even pleasant (e.g. Stages 32–35, set in the Grand Canyon), but a few aspects appear poorly produced. For instance, the theme for Java (Stages two to four) seems to play at a rather low volume and with instruments sometimes being indistinct one from the another. Sound effects are generally loud, particularly the crocodile explosions, so the OST sometimes is not very clearly audible. Overall, though, the OST is functional enough to the game, and the graphics appear colourful and well animated, so Super Pang! appears pleasant enough to the senses, though with a less distinctive style.
Let us now move to the complex topic of difficulty, then. A brief summary: for Pang!, I proposed that the three Facets of difficulty were game mechanics, Stage design/layout and Rank, given that it operates as a distinct enough mechanic. For Super Pang!, I propose the same three Facets. However, I also propose that the overall “Tour Mode” difficulty is lower and flattens at a 25–30/50. The game starts as a mid-tier challenge for expert players but become a top-tier challenge if players play for scores. It thus is five points easier than Pang!, but it is nevertheless a veritable tough challenge for any player who wishes to 1-CC the game. The reasons are several but, before I elaborate in some detail upon them, please keep in mind that I divide the 50 difficulty points as follows: 20 (game mechanics), 20 (stage layouts) and 10 (rank).
The first Facet, the game mechanics, does not offer a challenge as steep as in the first game. Players need to learn how the various weapons work but, given their higher offensive power and shooting frequency, the four possible weapons may require less practice to master. Critters are not a particular threat in this game, but the use of crocodiles as a weapon requires some practice. Thus, we can settle for a 5/20 points of difficulty: learning the game’s basic mechanics should be simple enough, but not so simple. The second Facet, the stages design, seems to attract the most difficulty points. The game has 40 stages: 13 for the “Asia” continent, 13 for the “Europe” continent, and 14 for the “Americas” continent. In my personal experience, the 14 “Americas” Stages are the closest to puzzle-like stages: players must develop a “solution” for the last ten stages, given their difficulty.
The Stages preceding the final block/continent, however, provide fewer steep challenges. Europe has five Stages that can be remarkably annoying: Stages 17, 18, 19, 21 and 25. Other Stages, however, do not require precise “solutions”. The Asia continent appears almost as a warm-up to the actual action, once players have a good grasp of the mechanics. The difficulty value for this second Facet is thus 15/20: the Stages are the main challenge in the game. Rank, then is the third Facet that attracts 5/10 points and motivates the basic 25/50 score. Players start collecting extends at higher score values in the game but can potentially score way more points. Conversely, however, if they carefully avoid scoring occasions, they can obtain extends a relatively slow pace, aside extends obtained as bonuses in key stages. Via this method, rank can go up in a slower and gentler manner than in Pang!.
If players however pursue higher scores, they must chain balls and hexagons with gusto and precision, and they must avoid dynamite power-ups while taking sandglass power-ups. They must also know the locations of secret bonuses and how to manipulate critters successfully. Players must have better grasp of the advanced game mechanics (i.e. overcome 10/20 difficulty points) for a total of 30/50 points. Readers may now wonder if the “Panic” mode offers a similar challenge, then. My answer is that players must still know the proper use of weapons (First Facet, 4 points), and handle the lighter rank increase, as the mode awards fewer points and extends (Third Facet, 2 points). However, they must learn how to handle the increasingly high number of balloons on screen, which becomes nightmarish after level/Stage 25 (Second Facet, 14 points). At 20/50 difficulty points, the “Panic mode” is a top-tier challenge for intermediate players.
We can sum up by asserting that Super Pang! is gentler second chapter in the series, though a still really difficult game overall. Xenny would honestly be happy to stop here, too, but I would like to add some personal experiences regarding the game. Those will be short, I guess, but it is worth discussing due to their “exotic” flavour. So, we are in early October 1990, and I have recently given up my attempt to clear Pang!. I have two good reasons for this forfeit. First, my uncle has bought a board of Super Pang!, which seems to offer a gentler approach to the concept. Second, “Denise” has lost her game companion “Barbara” to love, of all disgraces. The seemingly inseparable “girl gaming duo” have temporarily split ways and Denise wanders the arcade restlessly, in search of another gaming soulmate with which conquer games without remorse.
My uncle feels that Denise should either get a boyfriend, too, or get another gaming companion. Denise is a certain type of Mediterranean woman with a rather masculine but a remarkably well-built and voluptuous body. Never mind her looks: she is the eldest of five siblings in a trouble-ridden household, well-read, devoted to sports, and already does part-time accounting work for my uncle before closing time. At 17, she commands awe and a bit of fear from most men attending the arcade, never mind boys her age. My uncle proposes her to take me under her wing since he has just installed the Super Pang! board. Besides, he cannot stand anymore her perennial growling and grinding of teeth because she plays alone. Remember: my uncle always has these wildly flippant ways of displaying tough love to the people closest to him, and Denise keeps the accounting books in superb shape.
Denise’s tutelage for the first week consists of her snarling and growling at me when I make mistakes, and then talking of me in indirect form, as I were not present. “Kid, you have no sense of space and always steal all power-ups” seems a frequent complaint, and I admit that she is right about my flaws. After one week, I dare opening my mouth: the first week, I was simply too scared to speak out of line and end up in the garbage bin head-first, honestly. Denise remains frozen after I admit that I stole a power-up again and I apologise. It turns out that Barbara never ever apologised to her about anything, and certainly not about in-game mistakes. She becomes a shade lighter than purple, begins to stammer a few syllables, and just tells me to follow our usual strategy for Stage 18.
For the next two weeks or so, our conversations amount to laconic questions (e.g. “Stage 18. Remember?” “Yes”). My uncle asks me one or two times if I have made her fall in love with me, or I have discovered some horrible secret about her. Of course, he concludes that I know where “she has hidden the babies’ corpses”, as he cannot see any way that a 17 years-old perennially brooding girl can fancy a silly 11 years-old brat. The truth is simpler: Denise usually endures Barbara’s lashing out at her, and horrible human interactions at home. My timorous politeness has shocked her considerably: she does not know how to interact in a calm way with people. Once my uncle discovers this fact from her mouth, he just tells me to keep going with the politeness. She needs to develop manners, and her purple face and stammering amuses him.
For the next two months or so, we often practice together and follow dialogues that I remember with a tone of surrealism. Simply put, most of what I can recal is her stuttering when giving instructions, my answering politely, and her becoming purple and trying to be polite as well. By the third month, we can have relatively simple conversations but, most importantly, we are close to the clear in both the “Tour” and “Panic Mode”. We obtain both at some time in late February: Denise starts acting completely wild, jumping, and singing and bragging about it to random people in the arcade. Most people refrain from saying anything bad to a tall, masculine-looking girl with the body of a female rugby player (…with a large bosom, OK). By this time, I know that her life his dreadful enough: I would never dare criticising her for this lapse of light-heartedness.
After that day, Denise and I played some more games together, even if she also teamed with Barbara again, and then with her future husband. Yes, we had a few “arcade couples” at our place. It is however 2018 and I am in Guangzhou for work, as I mentioned in the squib dedicated to Pang!. I still have a few grudges to settle, after all these years of MAME phases, console-based 1-CC marathons, and other moments of “videogame remorse”. A few weeks after I 1-CC Pang! on a stormy night, I also 1-CC Super Pang! in “Tour Mode”, but in One Player mode. This time, I do think about Denise, and I hope that all is well with her family. But this victory had to be mine, by myself. All is good, and the third chapter is next; but that story will have to wait for another squib.
In conclusion, Super Pang! is a single-screen platform game with puzzle-like Stage design and quite a few connections to shmups. Two intrepid kids wearing cool sunglasses, varsity jerseys and baggy trousers early 1990s must save the world from the invasion of the killing balloons and assassin hexagons. In this fight for survival, the two kids must also face critters who turn out to be useful in death and eat a lot of bonus fruits and cake while they tour the world. The game is 40 stages and thus shorter and a bit easier than the first chapter, Pang!. Perhaps for this reason, the game provides a considerable challenge to players who want to 1-CC it, but also a less stressful and more accessible challenge. Difficult or not, the game can be great fun in the “Panic Mode” and should be a joy to play to any well-motivated player.
(3246 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Denise mentioned that she has fond memories of the games we played together, if only because people kept asking her if I was her little brother. The problem is that Denise looked a lot like Misuzu from the Neo Geo Super Dodge Ball game, and I looked a lot like a younger Daniel Radcliffe. Hey, people to these days call me “Harry P”. Her husband was a Lock player in a local rugby team (…check the image again), so you can guess that their children ended up being quite tall. Both parents despair that they buy Hamster ports but these children, now actually adults, do not play them. If I were them, I would use some special moves from the Dodgeball games to teach them better.)
Super Pang! (Mitchell, 1990) is a single screen platform game with strong puzzle-like design elements and a close relationship to shmups. It is the direct sequel to Pang!, Mitchell’s worldwide success that we discussed in the previous squib of mine in the link. Super Pang! (or also Super Buster Bros, Super Pomping World) apparently takes a new pair of explorers/adventures to fight another invasion of bouncing balls from space. The game is notable in introducing the “Panic mode” to the franchise, having a less manga-oriented design but more detailed graphics, and a lower difficulty level. The game went to be a solid success for the company as well. However, it did not warrant a third immediate title in the series until 1995, in the form of the usually maligned Pang 3!. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that the game is a solid sequel worth playing.
The specific context in which this game appeared might receive this brief synthesis. Pang! was a worldwide success that spawned several revisions and quite a few bootleg versions, if it was a quite hard game. Mitchell decided to capitalise on this success by releasing a sequel as soon as possible. Apparently, Capcom allowed them to pursue this endeavour by working on their CPS-1 board, and also offered musical support. Given the market need to release the game quickly but also to provide new challenges to players, the Mitchell programmers went for a shorter overall length in the “tour mode”. They also decided to add a new mode at a later development stage, and to give the game a more immediate and international appeal. Thus, the two player characters featured a “1990s cool” look and the game lost the Akira Toriyama-esque design.
The game’s plot is nearly identical to the first entry in its simplicity. After the first attack, the mysterious “bouncing ball” aliens decide to invade Earth again, this time with the aid of their allies “floating hexagons”. Two fearless explorers turned alien busters don the mantles of Earth’s saviours and decide to travel across the globe and destroying these fiendish enemies. Critters of various nature enter the frame (e.g. mockingbird formations), even if it is not clear whether they are friends or foes. Once our explorers reach a beach in the Caribbeans and fight the last onslaught of bouncing balls, Earh is safe once more from the threat of these weird aliens. On the other hand, the “panic mode” does not have a real plot. The two explorers must survive the onslaught of enemies until none remains and thus can declare themselves the winners of this battle.
The game works much like the first Pang!, but a synthesis of the basic mechanics for new readers is as follows. Players control the explorers with the joystick: explorers can move left and right on a platform, and climb or descend stairs (up, down). When climbing or descending stairs in this game, players can now input any diagonal movement to move away from the stairs and fall, hopefully without bumping into balls. Players can shoot harpoons with the A button but also use the B button to obtain faster shooting frames. In Super Pang!, harpoons must also travel the whole length of the screen or hit an object to disappear: the “one harpoon” rule also applies. Harpoons however move faster, and respawning time is thus faster. Particularly skilled players can thus shoot harpoons as soon as they hit a balloon, thus creating the impression of having two harpoons on screen.
The power-up weapons have all received upgrades from the first title. The double harpoon shoots two harpoons at once and has even faster respawning times. The hook harpoon only remains in place for two seconds, flashing yellow before disappearing. The machinegun shoots four bullets in a “wide shot” arc, and can hit balloons at lower heights, thus reducing the risk of creating defenceless space above the explorers. The other power-ups work in the same way as in the previous title, however. The dynamite splits all balloons down to their tiny size. The sandglass temporarily lowers rank and thus the aggressivity and intelligence of balls. The clock freezes balloons; the shield offers the explorers protection for one hit from the bouncing balls. Bonus food awards twice the number of points: the first stage item is worth 1k points, and the last one, a big slice of cake, is worth 100k.
The rank system works in a manner similar but not identical to the first title. Players can collect up to ten extends, thus reaching 12 stock lives. However, extends occur at higher fixed scores than in the first title; for instance, the first extend is at 50k points. Therefore, the rank increases at a slower pace; furthermore, the sandglass power-up seems to have a longer effect, so players can control rank in a relatively more direct manner. Game critters are lower in numbers and types too and generally render the handling of Stages less chaotic when rank goes up. One type of critter are the mockingbirds, who appear in a formation and release a power-up plus bonus points if quickly dispensed with. The other are crocodiles, who walk around eating balls and can release a balls-obliterating mini-explosion if the explorers murder them mercilessly.
The game features two three innovations regarding enemy types. In Pang!, balls can start at the “huge” size, and split into medium, small and tiny balls. In Super Pang!, some stages feature the “massive” size, which explorers can split into two balls of the “huge” size upon hitting them. In this case, the score progression is 100 points (massive to huge), 200 points (huge to middle), 400 points (middle to small), and 800 points (small to tiny). Chaining kills of tiny balls follows the progression 100, 200, 400, 800, 1.6k and 3.2k points: players can thus score quite more points from chains. Aside massive size ball, a new type consists of balls with a lighter colour shade. These balls split into four rather than two balls of smaller size and offer a lower number of points per hit (e.g. the top chain value is 2.4k points).
The third new enemy type are floating hexagons. These enemies rotate on one of their vertices and move across the screen in diagonal lines: they do not have a “massive” size and appear in the “huge” size only in the final stages. However, due to their diagonal-based movements, they can disrupt the players’ attention from bouncing balls easily. Although hexagons start by following movement lines at 30° angles from the top screen side, they can bounce against surfaces and change their angle of movement accordingly. The net effect is that stages featuring both balls and hexagons require that players are aware of two types of moving enemies at once. Furthermore, hexagons develop the ability to change their angle of motion and speed as rank increases and can become even more lethal enemies than bouncing balls. Players must thus learn also how bouncing balls and hexagonal trajectories interact, to survive.
The most meaningful addition to the series from this game is the “Panic Mode”. Players can choose between “Tour Mode” and “Panic Mode”, before starting their credit. Tour Mode features 40 Stages distributed along three continents (Asia, Europe, The Americas), and mostly plays like the first. In Panic mode, players start from the last place (“The Caribbean”) and “travel back to the first place (“Hong Kong”). There are no fixed enemy formations: each three seconds, balls and hexagons of different shapes enter the screen. Players must thus kill them as soon as possible, lest the screen become overflooded with enemies. Once players accumulate 70 levels worth of kills, the mode is over, and players win. A small help are “star” balloons/hexagons and clocks, which respectively destroy all enemies on screen or freeze them for up to seven seconds. Nevertheless, players must simply survive until no balloon/hexagon is on screen.
With this overview of the game mechanics aside, we can focus on the visual and aural Facets of the game. The game changes a bit in style from the first title: aside the two protagonists having an “early 1990s cool” design, the colour palette is less caramelised and coves more shades. Backgrounds include more detail and seem drawn/scanned at a higher resolution, and characters and critters have more fluid animations. A peculiarity is that sprites appear slightly bigger than in Pang!: players may thus feel that they need to be more careful when moving around. For the most part, however, Super Pang! also presents a cute world of killer balloons and hexagons coming in various shades, chubby crocodiles, birds and balloon-hunting kids. The design and the graphics may not be outstanding, but they are certainly pleasing to the eye and create a joyful atmosphere.
The OST, however, represents a Facet in which the game seems to falter especially when compared to the first title. Mitchell used the help of Alph Lyla member Hiromitsu Takaoka, thus receiving support from Capcom as in the case of Pang!. The OST often sounds inspired and sometimes even pleasant (e.g. Stages 32–35, set in the Grand Canyon), but a few aspects appear poorly produced. For instance, the theme for Java (Stages two to four) seems to play at a rather low volume and with instruments sometimes being indistinct one from the another. Sound effects are generally loud, particularly the crocodile explosions, so the OST sometimes is not very clearly audible. Overall, though, the OST is functional enough to the game, and the graphics appear colourful and well animated, so Super Pang! appears pleasant enough to the senses, though with a less distinctive style.
Let us now move to the complex topic of difficulty, then. A brief summary: for Pang!, I proposed that the three Facets of difficulty were game mechanics, Stage design/layout and Rank, given that it operates as a distinct enough mechanic. For Super Pang!, I propose the same three Facets. However, I also propose that the overall “Tour Mode” difficulty is lower and flattens at a 25–30/50. The game starts as a mid-tier challenge for expert players but become a top-tier challenge if players play for scores. It thus is five points easier than Pang!, but it is nevertheless a veritable tough challenge for any player who wishes to 1-CC the game. The reasons are several but, before I elaborate in some detail upon them, please keep in mind that I divide the 50 difficulty points as follows: 20 (game mechanics), 20 (stage layouts) and 10 (rank).
The first Facet, the game mechanics, does not offer a challenge as steep as in the first game. Players need to learn how the various weapons work but, given their higher offensive power and shooting frequency, the four possible weapons may require less practice to master. Critters are not a particular threat in this game, but the use of crocodiles as a weapon requires some practice. Thus, we can settle for a 5/20 points of difficulty: learning the game’s basic mechanics should be simple enough, but not so simple. The second Facet, the stages design, seems to attract the most difficulty points. The game has 40 stages: 13 for the “Asia” continent, 13 for the “Europe” continent, and 14 for the “Americas” continent. In my personal experience, the 14 “Americas” Stages are the closest to puzzle-like stages: players must develop a “solution” for the last ten stages, given their difficulty.
The Stages preceding the final block/continent, however, provide fewer steep challenges. Europe has five Stages that can be remarkably annoying: Stages 17, 18, 19, 21 and 25. Other Stages, however, do not require precise “solutions”. The Asia continent appears almost as a warm-up to the actual action, once players have a good grasp of the mechanics. The difficulty value for this second Facet is thus 15/20: the Stages are the main challenge in the game. Rank, then is the third Facet that attracts 5/10 points and motivates the basic 25/50 score. Players start collecting extends at higher score values in the game but can potentially score way more points. Conversely, however, if they carefully avoid scoring occasions, they can obtain extends a relatively slow pace, aside extends obtained as bonuses in key stages. Via this method, rank can go up in a slower and gentler manner than in Pang!.
If players however pursue higher scores, they must chain balls and hexagons with gusto and precision, and they must avoid dynamite power-ups while taking sandglass power-ups. They must also know the locations of secret bonuses and how to manipulate critters successfully. Players must have better grasp of the advanced game mechanics (i.e. overcome 10/20 difficulty points) for a total of 30/50 points. Readers may now wonder if the “Panic” mode offers a similar challenge, then. My answer is that players must still know the proper use of weapons (First Facet, 4 points), and handle the lighter rank increase, as the mode awards fewer points and extends (Third Facet, 2 points). However, they must learn how to handle the increasingly high number of balloons on screen, which becomes nightmarish after level/Stage 25 (Second Facet, 14 points). At 20/50 difficulty points, the “Panic mode” is a top-tier challenge for intermediate players.
We can sum up by asserting that Super Pang! is gentler second chapter in the series, though a still really difficult game overall. Xenny would honestly be happy to stop here, too, but I would like to add some personal experiences regarding the game. Those will be short, I guess, but it is worth discussing due to their “exotic” flavour. So, we are in early October 1990, and I have recently given up my attempt to clear Pang!. I have two good reasons for this forfeit. First, my uncle has bought a board of Super Pang!, which seems to offer a gentler approach to the concept. Second, “Denise” has lost her game companion “Barbara” to love, of all disgraces. The seemingly inseparable “girl gaming duo” have temporarily split ways and Denise wanders the arcade restlessly, in search of another gaming soulmate with which conquer games without remorse.
My uncle feels that Denise should either get a boyfriend, too, or get another gaming companion. Denise is a certain type of Mediterranean woman with a rather masculine but a remarkably well-built and voluptuous body. Never mind her looks: she is the eldest of five siblings in a trouble-ridden household, well-read, devoted to sports, and already does part-time accounting work for my uncle before closing time. At 17, she commands awe and a bit of fear from most men attending the arcade, never mind boys her age. My uncle proposes her to take me under her wing since he has just installed the Super Pang! board. Besides, he cannot stand anymore her perennial growling and grinding of teeth because she plays alone. Remember: my uncle always has these wildly flippant ways of displaying tough love to the people closest to him, and Denise keeps the accounting books in superb shape.
Denise’s tutelage for the first week consists of her snarling and growling at me when I make mistakes, and then talking of me in indirect form, as I were not present. “Kid, you have no sense of space and always steal all power-ups” seems a frequent complaint, and I admit that she is right about my flaws. After one week, I dare opening my mouth: the first week, I was simply too scared to speak out of line and end up in the garbage bin head-first, honestly. Denise remains frozen after I admit that I stole a power-up again and I apologise. It turns out that Barbara never ever apologised to her about anything, and certainly not about in-game mistakes. She becomes a shade lighter than purple, begins to stammer a few syllables, and just tells me to follow our usual strategy for Stage 18.
For the next two weeks or so, our conversations amount to laconic questions (e.g. “Stage 18. Remember?” “Yes”). My uncle asks me one or two times if I have made her fall in love with me, or I have discovered some horrible secret about her. Of course, he concludes that I know where “she has hidden the babies’ corpses”, as he cannot see any way that a 17 years-old perennially brooding girl can fancy a silly 11 years-old brat. The truth is simpler: Denise usually endures Barbara’s lashing out at her, and horrible human interactions at home. My timorous politeness has shocked her considerably: she does not know how to interact in a calm way with people. Once my uncle discovers this fact from her mouth, he just tells me to keep going with the politeness. She needs to develop manners, and her purple face and stammering amuses him.
For the next two months or so, we often practice together and follow dialogues that I remember with a tone of surrealism. Simply put, most of what I can recal is her stuttering when giving instructions, my answering politely, and her becoming purple and trying to be polite as well. By the third month, we can have relatively simple conversations but, most importantly, we are close to the clear in both the “Tour” and “Panic Mode”. We obtain both at some time in late February: Denise starts acting completely wild, jumping, and singing and bragging about it to random people in the arcade. Most people refrain from saying anything bad to a tall, masculine-looking girl with the body of a female rugby player (…with a large bosom, OK). By this time, I know that her life his dreadful enough: I would never dare criticising her for this lapse of light-heartedness.
After that day, Denise and I played some more games together, even if she also teamed with Barbara again, and then with her future husband. Yes, we had a few “arcade couples” at our place. It is however 2018 and I am in Guangzhou for work, as I mentioned in the squib dedicated to Pang!. I still have a few grudges to settle, after all these years of MAME phases, console-based 1-CC marathons, and other moments of “videogame remorse”. A few weeks after I 1-CC Pang! on a stormy night, I also 1-CC Super Pang! in “Tour Mode”, but in One Player mode. This time, I do think about Denise, and I hope that all is well with her family. But this victory had to be mine, by myself. All is good, and the third chapter is next; but that story will have to wait for another squib.
In conclusion, Super Pang! is a single-screen platform game with puzzle-like Stage design and quite a few connections to shmups. Two intrepid kids wearing cool sunglasses, varsity jerseys and baggy trousers early 1990s must save the world from the invasion of the killing balloons and assassin hexagons. In this fight for survival, the two kids must also face critters who turn out to be useful in death and eat a lot of bonus fruits and cake while they tour the world. The game is 40 stages and thus shorter and a bit easier than the first chapter, Pang!. Perhaps for this reason, the game provides a considerable challenge to players who want to 1-CC it, but also a less stressful and more accessible challenge. Difficult or not, the game can be great fun in the “Panic Mode” and should be a joy to play to any well-motivated player.
(3246 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Denise mentioned that she has fond memories of the games we played together, if only because people kept asking her if I was her little brother. The problem is that Denise looked a lot like Misuzu from the Neo Geo Super Dodge Ball game, and I looked a lot like a younger Daniel Radcliffe. Hey, people to these days call me “Harry P”. Her husband was a Lock player in a local rugby team (…check the image again), so you can guess that their children ended up being quite tall. Both parents despair that they buy Hamster ports but these children, now actually adults, do not play them. If I were them, I would use some special moves from the Dodgeball games to teach them better.)
Last edited by Randorama on Sat Mar 29, 2025 5:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Crime City (Taito, 1989)
Crime City is a game that I always adored due to the very rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia I usually wear when dealing with certain memories. Upon writing this squib, I realised that my fondness of the game is 80% about the specific and brief time window in which I experienced the game, and 20% love about an OST that has a memorable sound but may be quite obscure in origin. I admit hating the type of shows that the game seems to pay homage to, and I probably have seen main source of inspiration Miami Vice no more than twice. Still, the game was a brilliant if short flirt with a lot of different subjects that I never cultivated, as a I grew up. Enough with the convoluted reflections, and onwards we go:
Crime City (Taito, 1989) is an R2RKMF game that takes a tactical action approach to the genre. The game features Tony Gibson and Raymond Broady, two super-cops who must save their own city from a wave of crime and danger with a surprising mastermind behind it. The game offers interesting mechanics, an overall easy but entertaining challenge, a great OST and that cinematographic feeling typical of late 1980s Taito arcade games. Given its eccentric role in the overall Chase HQ franchise and its unapologetic pilfering from legendary TV series Miami Vice, this feeling should not come as a surprise. If Miami Vice was perhaps the realization of the concept ”MTV cops”, according to the rumours, then Crime City might be the ultimate “MTV action game” in style and spirit. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that this is an excellent reason to enjoy the game, indeed.
Let us situate the game in its own specific Zeitgeist, then. Taito released two driving games in the series before this title: Chase H.Q. and Special Criminal Investigation. Both games were driving titles in which Tony and Raymond had to bump criminals on the run into submission. A third title, Super Chase- Criminal Termination, appeared on Taito’s F 3 board in 1994 and followed this same approach. This third title marked Taito’s first attempt at creating a tactical action game that followed the footsteps of Namco’s Rolling Thunder, Data East’s Sly Spy or Capcom’s Bionic Commando. Taito had a strong pedigree with platformers, shmups and unique titles possibly involving dedicated cabs (e.g. Rainbow Islands, Darius, Sylvalion, and Night Striker). Their credentials in the more action-oriented style of game appeared however more uncertain, even if The Ninja Warriors and tie-in Rambo III were well-designed games.
Crime City offers proof that Taito programmers had a good grasp of tactical action’s style, if not necessarily its mechanics. Before I fully motivate this assertion, I would like to briefly sketch the game’s plot. Tony Gibson and Raymond Broady start by facing a sudden jail break with convicts swamping the commercial port and demanding immediate release (Stage one). After sedating this revolt, the duo must solve a bank robbery case by showing their acrobatic skills and bank infiltration abilities (Stage two). Raymond and Tony then solve a case of weapons smuggling (Stage three), before they must rescue the mayor of “Taito city” from a vicious kidnapper and criminal mastermind, his twin brother (Stages four to six). After solving this case, they can apparently enjoy a well-deserved rest and drive into the sunset, while the game/movie’s credits roll in the background.
The game has rather simple mechanics. The joystick controls movement in eight directions, the A button controls attacks, and the B button controls jumps. Raymond and Tony can move left and right, jump up, left and right and crouch. Raymond and Tony can also use a basic handgun (50 bullets), a three-way shotgun (20 bullets), an assault rifle (30 bullets), or an armour-piercing gun (20 bullets). A variant of the gun is the “free ammo” gun, which comes with an infinite supply of bullets but only appears twice in the game (end of Stages four, six). The two cops can also use a hand grenade upon collection (grab, throw, kill enemies) and wear a Kevlar vest giving them invincibility for approximately eight HPs or one minute, whichever limit the players reach first. Finally, the “clock” icon adds 20 seconds to the initial Stage time of 120 seconds.
Both cops can also perform the “rolling attack” (down, then down-left or down-right+B button repeatedly) or use high jumps (B button+up or up-right or up-left). After jumping, Raymond and Tony can also perform the roll attack while jumping (press B button repeatedly). If they hit an enemy, they will hit them for one H(it)P(point). Enemies with multiple HPs will have a few i-(invicibility) frames after a hit, but may get multiple HPs if players keep using the rolling attack. The two cops can also punch enemies when within an arm’s reach, and land one HP to any enemy, even when they can parry (martial arts masters) or have Kevlar vests. My choice of the moniker “super cop”, as readers can see, is not entirely inappropriate. Raymond and Tony can collect bonus items looking like drugs sachets (300 points when collected immediately), and get an extra life at 80k points.
Aside these basic mechanics, the game has a few interesting ideas that revolve around Stage design and difficulty. For this reason, I would prefer to talk about the audio-visual experience first. The game’s Miami Vice vibe is clear, given that Raymond and Tony are only vaguely masked proxies for the two Miami cops. “Taito city”, however, gives off a New York vibe of cooler climates and darker alleys that fits the crime-fighting tones well. Taito had already produced a few games featuring dirtier, US-looking rugged cities (most notably The Ninja Warriors and a Superman tie-in). The game combines this “westernised” look with a hard-boiled feeling straight of an early procedural police show. The result is great in its simplicity, since Stages involve basic designs of streets and alleys (Stages one, four, six), banks and their underground parking slots (Stage two, five), and seedy warehouses (Stage three).
Stages may not involve memorable locations in downtown Miami, but the OST is memorable for at least for two reasons. First, the choice of sampled electronic instruments, drum loops, jazzy up-tempo themes creates an OST that evokes the style of 1980s cop shows rather accurately. Add a few well-produced voice samples of dying criminals and our cops saying “No!” when killing hostages, and we have a killer recipe. Stage one’s theme, as far as I am concerned, is the best ”cop song” that has graced a videogame. Second, this appears to be a “missing work”, in the sense that even the recent reprint in Taito’s Digital Archives vol. 2 lacks any information regarding the actual composer. The game appears to be a mysterious production within Taito’s story, as it lacks ending credits and next to no information has surfaced on this matter. Audio-visually, though, it is top-notch 1980s aesthetics.
By this point, we are ready to discuss difficulty in a simple manner, even if we are going to use Facets as our standard theoretical tool. Difficulty in Crime City originates from two weak Facets: game mechanics and Stage design layout. We thus partition the 50 points into two halves of 25 points. Game mechanics are straightforward enough that players who master the use of the somersault/rolling variations should have completed “half” of their tasks towards a 1-CC. Stages two to six provide stage-specific challenges, design/layout-wise. Stage two’s first half requires that players learn when and out to jump from car to car; Stage three involves movement in tight spaces. Stages four (pincer attacks), five (strict time limit) six (leftwards final section) have their specific challenges to master. One game mechanic (i.e. 1/25 difficulty points) and five Stages (i.e. 5/25 points) total 6/50: a mid-tier game for beginner players.
The overall message stemming from our discussion so far seems clear: the game is simple but stylish. My experience about this game follows a similar trend, to the joy of Xenny. It is Spring 1990 and my uncle seems rather obsessed with Taito games. At some point, the arcade has at least a dozen games from this company, including dodgy games such as Plotting, Puzznic, Rastan Saga II and Violence Fight. The people playing Volfied seem to have discovered some esoteric stuff about its scoring system, too: their practice meetings have come with a whiff of “shady” aftershave, too. My uncle decides that we need some other Taito game next to the big cab with Rambo III, to attract the crowds on busy Saturdays. He mentions something about this embarrassing tv show he sees all the time set in Miami, and decides: Taito it will be!
I have no clue about what he has in mind until I enter the arcade and hear the first stage’s theme and feel enraptured. It is late April 2004 and I discover some not so legal rip of Taito “VGMs” online, and I record the song for a mixtape, ready to play in my car. My passengers during the first play ask from what lame-ass 1980s cop show the song comes from, and I tell them this story. It is 1990 and for the first eight weeks of spring I play Crime City on the big cab. I am certainly not the only one who can clear this game with a single credit, but on Saturday nights people find it entertaining to see an almost 10-years kid clearing a game on one credit. Kids are not supposed to attend arcades, let alone clear games.
People often ask if I like Miami Vice and I do not even know if it is the cheesy show that my father and uncle like. I do not watch much TV outside the rare SF show, anyway: games, swimming and books are better. Crime City is however cool and has this great soundtrack, even if I do not like the Stage four song. After a couple of months, I get bored with the game, but I keep eavesdropping the music whenever someone plays through the first stage. It is again 2004 and my friends are laughing their ass off after hearing to this story, because it is endearing and hilarious in equal measures. They ask for a copy of the mixtape, afterwards, and admit that there is some zaniness to the “Chinese techno from old videogames” that has its mysterious allure. Being a nerd/geek is still not cool, now.
It is 2012, then 2017, and then other years flipping through my memories like mixed-up book pages. I like to 1-CC the game from time to time; I love listening to Stage one’s theme if spring is near the angle, like today. We however do not dwell further on this topic; we conclude. Crime City is an action game of the broader R2RKMF variety that pits Raymond Broady and Tony Gibson, super cops in Taito city, against a vicious wave of crime. The game is notable for its gentle difficulty, its strong Miami Vice vibe, and its ultra-cool and mysterious OST that, to this day, appears still without a known composer. Players who want to experience an easier introduction to this 1980s arcade action should try to 1-CC the game. Do not forget to insert the initials after a credit: the high score screen is worth the game price alone
(1763 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I also admit that I never liked Chase H.Q. or any driving games, arcade or otherwise and in hybrid genres or otherwise. My father and uncle however had a religious respect towards Miami Vice and at some point they even started wearing t-shorts and jackets in improbable colours to mimic Don Johnson’s fashion crimes. Let us just say that 1980s or not, that kind of style did not sit well with the “local folk”, because Italians tend to be very opinionated on irrelevant matters such as fashion. At some point they stopped their geeky obsession with this horrible dressing pairing, and I felt that I could stop feeling embarrassed in having relatives violating “unwritten norms of society”. In retrospective, they were actually right: screw bigoted views, I am buying a jacket and some t-shirts in horrid colours once I upload this squib.)
Crime City (Taito, 1989) is an R2RKMF game that takes a tactical action approach to the genre. The game features Tony Gibson and Raymond Broady, two super-cops who must save their own city from a wave of crime and danger with a surprising mastermind behind it. The game offers interesting mechanics, an overall easy but entertaining challenge, a great OST and that cinematographic feeling typical of late 1980s Taito arcade games. Given its eccentric role in the overall Chase HQ franchise and its unapologetic pilfering from legendary TV series Miami Vice, this feeling should not come as a surprise. If Miami Vice was perhaps the realization of the concept ”MTV cops”, according to the rumours, then Crime City might be the ultimate “MTV action game” in style and spirit. My goal in this squib is to convince my readers that this is an excellent reason to enjoy the game, indeed.
Let us situate the game in its own specific Zeitgeist, then. Taito released two driving games in the series before this title: Chase H.Q. and Special Criminal Investigation. Both games were driving titles in which Tony and Raymond had to bump criminals on the run into submission. A third title, Super Chase- Criminal Termination, appeared on Taito’s F 3 board in 1994 and followed this same approach. This third title marked Taito’s first attempt at creating a tactical action game that followed the footsteps of Namco’s Rolling Thunder, Data East’s Sly Spy or Capcom’s Bionic Commando. Taito had a strong pedigree with platformers, shmups and unique titles possibly involving dedicated cabs (e.g. Rainbow Islands, Darius, Sylvalion, and Night Striker). Their credentials in the more action-oriented style of game appeared however more uncertain, even if The Ninja Warriors and tie-in Rambo III were well-designed games.
Crime City offers proof that Taito programmers had a good grasp of tactical action’s style, if not necessarily its mechanics. Before I fully motivate this assertion, I would like to briefly sketch the game’s plot. Tony Gibson and Raymond Broady start by facing a sudden jail break with convicts swamping the commercial port and demanding immediate release (Stage one). After sedating this revolt, the duo must solve a bank robbery case by showing their acrobatic skills and bank infiltration abilities (Stage two). Raymond and Tony then solve a case of weapons smuggling (Stage three), before they must rescue the mayor of “Taito city” from a vicious kidnapper and criminal mastermind, his twin brother (Stages four to six). After solving this case, they can apparently enjoy a well-deserved rest and drive into the sunset, while the game/movie’s credits roll in the background.
The game has rather simple mechanics. The joystick controls movement in eight directions, the A button controls attacks, and the B button controls jumps. Raymond and Tony can move left and right, jump up, left and right and crouch. Raymond and Tony can also use a basic handgun (50 bullets), a three-way shotgun (20 bullets), an assault rifle (30 bullets), or an armour-piercing gun (20 bullets). A variant of the gun is the “free ammo” gun, which comes with an infinite supply of bullets but only appears twice in the game (end of Stages four, six). The two cops can also use a hand grenade upon collection (grab, throw, kill enemies) and wear a Kevlar vest giving them invincibility for approximately eight HPs or one minute, whichever limit the players reach first. Finally, the “clock” icon adds 20 seconds to the initial Stage time of 120 seconds.
Both cops can also perform the “rolling attack” (down, then down-left or down-right+B button repeatedly) or use high jumps (B button+up or up-right or up-left). After jumping, Raymond and Tony can also perform the roll attack while jumping (press B button repeatedly). If they hit an enemy, they will hit them for one H(it)P(point). Enemies with multiple HPs will have a few i-(invicibility) frames after a hit, but may get multiple HPs if players keep using the rolling attack. The two cops can also punch enemies when within an arm’s reach, and land one HP to any enemy, even when they can parry (martial arts masters) or have Kevlar vests. My choice of the moniker “super cop”, as readers can see, is not entirely inappropriate. Raymond and Tony can collect bonus items looking like drugs sachets (300 points when collected immediately), and get an extra life at 80k points.
Aside these basic mechanics, the game has a few interesting ideas that revolve around Stage design and difficulty. For this reason, I would prefer to talk about the audio-visual experience first. The game’s Miami Vice vibe is clear, given that Raymond and Tony are only vaguely masked proxies for the two Miami cops. “Taito city”, however, gives off a New York vibe of cooler climates and darker alleys that fits the crime-fighting tones well. Taito had already produced a few games featuring dirtier, US-looking rugged cities (most notably The Ninja Warriors and a Superman tie-in). The game combines this “westernised” look with a hard-boiled feeling straight of an early procedural police show. The result is great in its simplicity, since Stages involve basic designs of streets and alleys (Stages one, four, six), banks and their underground parking slots (Stage two, five), and seedy warehouses (Stage three).
Stages may not involve memorable locations in downtown Miami, but the OST is memorable for at least for two reasons. First, the choice of sampled electronic instruments, drum loops, jazzy up-tempo themes creates an OST that evokes the style of 1980s cop shows rather accurately. Add a few well-produced voice samples of dying criminals and our cops saying “No!” when killing hostages, and we have a killer recipe. Stage one’s theme, as far as I am concerned, is the best ”cop song” that has graced a videogame. Second, this appears to be a “missing work”, in the sense that even the recent reprint in Taito’s Digital Archives vol. 2 lacks any information regarding the actual composer. The game appears to be a mysterious production within Taito’s story, as it lacks ending credits and next to no information has surfaced on this matter. Audio-visually, though, it is top-notch 1980s aesthetics.
By this point, we are ready to discuss difficulty in a simple manner, even if we are going to use Facets as our standard theoretical tool. Difficulty in Crime City originates from two weak Facets: game mechanics and Stage design layout. We thus partition the 50 points into two halves of 25 points. Game mechanics are straightforward enough that players who master the use of the somersault/rolling variations should have completed “half” of their tasks towards a 1-CC. Stages two to six provide stage-specific challenges, design/layout-wise. Stage two’s first half requires that players learn when and out to jump from car to car; Stage three involves movement in tight spaces. Stages four (pincer attacks), five (strict time limit) six (leftwards final section) have their specific challenges to master. One game mechanic (i.e. 1/25 difficulty points) and five Stages (i.e. 5/25 points) total 6/50: a mid-tier game for beginner players.
The overall message stemming from our discussion so far seems clear: the game is simple but stylish. My experience about this game follows a similar trend, to the joy of Xenny. It is Spring 1990 and my uncle seems rather obsessed with Taito games. At some point, the arcade has at least a dozen games from this company, including dodgy games such as Plotting, Puzznic, Rastan Saga II and Violence Fight. The people playing Volfied seem to have discovered some esoteric stuff about its scoring system, too: their practice meetings have come with a whiff of “shady” aftershave, too. My uncle decides that we need some other Taito game next to the big cab with Rambo III, to attract the crowds on busy Saturdays. He mentions something about this embarrassing tv show he sees all the time set in Miami, and decides: Taito it will be!
I have no clue about what he has in mind until I enter the arcade and hear the first stage’s theme and feel enraptured. It is late April 2004 and I discover some not so legal rip of Taito “VGMs” online, and I record the song for a mixtape, ready to play in my car. My passengers during the first play ask from what lame-ass 1980s cop show the song comes from, and I tell them this story. It is 1990 and for the first eight weeks of spring I play Crime City on the big cab. I am certainly not the only one who can clear this game with a single credit, but on Saturday nights people find it entertaining to see an almost 10-years kid clearing a game on one credit. Kids are not supposed to attend arcades, let alone clear games.
People often ask if I like Miami Vice and I do not even know if it is the cheesy show that my father and uncle like. I do not watch much TV outside the rare SF show, anyway: games, swimming and books are better. Crime City is however cool and has this great soundtrack, even if I do not like the Stage four song. After a couple of months, I get bored with the game, but I keep eavesdropping the music whenever someone plays through the first stage. It is again 2004 and my friends are laughing their ass off after hearing to this story, because it is endearing and hilarious in equal measures. They ask for a copy of the mixtape, afterwards, and admit that there is some zaniness to the “Chinese techno from old videogames” that has its mysterious allure. Being a nerd/geek is still not cool, now.
It is 2012, then 2017, and then other years flipping through my memories like mixed-up book pages. I like to 1-CC the game from time to time; I love listening to Stage one’s theme if spring is near the angle, like today. We however do not dwell further on this topic; we conclude. Crime City is an action game of the broader R2RKMF variety that pits Raymond Broady and Tony Gibson, super cops in Taito city, against a vicious wave of crime. The game is notable for its gentle difficulty, its strong Miami Vice vibe, and its ultra-cool and mysterious OST that, to this day, appears still without a known composer. Players who want to experience an easier introduction to this 1980s arcade action should try to 1-CC the game. Do not forget to insert the initials after a credit: the high score screen is worth the game price alone
(1763 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I also admit that I never liked Chase H.Q. or any driving games, arcade or otherwise and in hybrid genres or otherwise. My father and uncle however had a religious respect towards Miami Vice and at some point they even started wearing t-shorts and jackets in improbable colours to mimic Don Johnson’s fashion crimes. Let us just say that 1980s or not, that kind of style did not sit well with the “local folk”, because Italians tend to be very opinionated on irrelevant matters such as fashion. At some point they stopped their geeky obsession with this horrible dressing pairing, and I felt that I could stop feeling embarrassed in having relatives violating “unwritten norms of society”. In retrospective, they were actually right: screw bigoted views, I am buying a jacket and some t-shirts in horrid colours once I upload this squib.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Bionic Commando (Capcom, 1987)
We continue the long weekend with one game from Capcom’s first Annus Mirabilis, 1987, and a game spawning its own franchise: Bionic Commando. Readers can have an overview of the series here. My experiences focus on the arcade version of the game, as I never experienced the NES sequel, but I have played Capcom’s games loosely connected to this title with “Super Joe” Gibson. The game appears on PS2’s Capcom Collection and PS4/Steam/Switch/Xbox One Capcom Arcade Stadium. I do not have particularly rich memories of this game but I admit having a weak spot for the OST, as you are going to read. It is one of my favourite games to celebrate the arrival of spring along with Crime City. Unsurprisingly, we will discuss them both today. Without further squandering of time:
Bionic Commando/Top Secret (Capcom, 1987) is a R2RKMF game that mixes distinctive tactical action and platform mechanics with a quirky setting. Players must help Super Joe, the titular “bionic commando” with an extendable artificial arm, to foil the plans of an evil army involving World War III. They do so in five Stages (and two loops) in which Joe must infiltrate the enemies’ base and kill their long-bearded leader and general. The game is notable for not having a jump button typical of this genre: Joe moves around and changes platforms exclusively via his bionic arm. The game has spawned its own franchise and features a peculiar approach to the composition of the OST and offers a sometimes frustrating but overall intriguing 1-CC challenge. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game is a veritable classic, frustrating moments, and perplexing if cheap deaths notwithstanding.
Let us first carve a concise context for this game, first. In 1987, Capcom was a still young but already successful arcade company that was shaping action and platform games via its releases. The company also distinguished itself for mixing still vaguely defined genres with elegance. Ghosts’n Goblins was an influential sensation, Section Z and Legendary Wings[/i] mixed action and shmup sections, and Black Tiger showcased the company’s approach to A(rcade)R(ole)P(laying)G(ame)s. The first game in which Super Joe appears, The Speed Rumbler, mixes elements from driving games, top-down free scrolling shmups, and action games. Bionic Commando represents the company’s attempt at creating a game that re-interpreted design ideas originating in platformers from the the 1980s’ first half, like Konami’s [url=htttps://konami.fandom.com/wiki/Roc%27n_Rope]Roc’n rope[/url] or Namco’s Mappy. Simply put, the game plays like a platform/action game, but SuperJoe cannot jump: players must use his bionic arm to navigate platforms and stages.
Before we dwell into a detailed analysis of the game’s mechanics, we can concisely discuss the game’s plot. The game is apparently set in an alternate version of history in which bionic technology and rudimental mechas and power loaders are common. In this world, a mysterious army is building a considerable arsenal and planning to declare war to the whole world. Case in point, they have a secret but apparently humongous base in which they have prepared massive rockets to unleash against the world’s nations. Super Joe must penetrate this base, enter the core operation centre in the base, and prevent that the evil army can launch the rocket(s) that will unleash hell on Earth. In the Famicom/NES sequel, Joe’s comrade Radd Spencer must also stop Hitler’s resurrection. The Hitler’s resurrection plot must have been too controversial for the arcade version: players must simply kick the evil army’s ass.
The game’s mechanics dovetail with this concept of Joe pursuing a stealth mission in an elegant manner. The joystick controls movement in eight directions, the A button controls shots, and the B button controls the bionic arm. Joe can move left or right, crouch and shoot with the A button. Joe starts with a normal rifle with limited range (white colour) but can switch to a green cannon with limitless range and slow shooting frequency. Alternatively, he can pick up a lavender shotgun with faster shooting frequency, or a red grenade thrower with short range and high destructive power. Joe can also grab a power-up doubling the speed of his bionic arm. The arm reaches the maximal length and retracts to rest mode in half of the time. Joe can also collect various bonuses (e.g. food, cigarettes, medals) ranging from 100 to 10k points.
The bionic arm works as follows. Joe can extend the arm at roughly half of a screen’s length, in any lateral or upward direction (left, up-left, up, up-right, right). If the arm connects to a platform, Joe can move up (press up or the B button) and climb onto the platform (press B). Joe can abort the ascending movement (push down) and can move via diagonal movements (e.g. up-right+B button). In this case, he will swing with a Tarzan-like motion before reaching the new platform. Pressing a down direction (down, down-left, down-right) results in Joe releasing the arm and falling in an inertial manner. If an enemy hits Joe’s bionic arm, Joe will also fall to the starting platform. Joe can also grab power-ups with the arm, as they appear on-screen as drop-zone objects floating down while attached to small parachutes.
The game’s mechanics thus appear deceptively simple: players must “just” learn how to use the bionic arm to navigate Stages. Before we discuss why this assumption is deceptive, however, we can offer a better overview of the game’s visual and aural presentations. All versions run on the simpler hardware that Capcom used before the advent of the CPS-1 and thus have good but not so fluid animation and a relatively narrow colour palette. The EU and US versions, entitled Bionic Commando, feature a more “westernised” version of Joe and the various enemies, whereas the J(a)P(an) version Top Secret introduce a different look for Joe and enemies’ faces alike. The US joe has smaller, green-looking eyes: the JP Joe has bigger black eyes and thicker, manga-style eyebrows. As a result, the cartoonish way in which most enemies move and attack appears more appropriate and offers a humorous style to the action.
Enemies sport an equally humorous design, as they mostly resemble nazi troops or officers with violet/lavender uniforms and weird weapons. Stages have interesting designs, too: Stage one takes place in the forest outside the main base, Stage two in the base’s outer defence perimeter. Stage three starts from the base’s sewers and goes through the “Mecha” garage. Stage four takes for the most part in what seems to be the control centre of the complex and gives the impression of being an immense underground complex. Stage five begins from the missile/nuke hangar and, once players destroy the main core powering the missile, ends in the den of the evil dictator. Visually, the stage design gives this strong impression that Joe is penetrating a vast underground and highly technological nation. Before Metal Slug and its legendary take on the irony of war, there was Bionic Commando and its silly-looking secret armies.
The OST deserves a special mention, too, because it is quite glorious and it involves a composition experiment. For this OST, then Alph Lyla members Harumi Fujita and my adored Tamayo Kawamoto collaborated on each piece. Harumi Fujita wrote the beginning part of each stage’s theme, and Tamayo Kawamoto completed the piece by offering a thematic counterpoint. The result is brilliant: Stage one’s theme has a cheerful adventurous tone, while Stage two’s theme offers a military march. Stage three and Stage four move onto spy theme territory, and Stage five’s is a dramatic, fast-paced theme for the final rush. Sound effects, due to the board’s hardware, sound simple but efficient. Overall, the audio-visual experience manages to offer a cinematographic but certainly humorous atmosphere that punctuates the action in a glorious manner, thanks also to the brilliant experimental approach to OST composition.
By this point, we are ready to discuss the game’s most delicate aspect or Facet: difficulty. You should know the term/concept well by now, so I assume that we can dive into the topic without remorse. I believe that this game follows the design philosophy of other Capcom games that we have discussed so far (e.g. Dynasty Wars and Tiger Road). Players must master two Facets before they can 1-CC the game: game mechanics and Stage design/layout. The game mechanics force the player to approach the game with a tactical mind. The bionic arm allows a considerable degree of freedom to the player, but it also forces players to use this freedom with great care. Players can use the arm to move upwards and sidewards with ease. However, players must always be aware of how enemies can snipe Joe once he ascends to the next platform.
A general rule of thumb is thus that Joe should ascend to a higher platform when enemies are not waiting for him, are at a safe distance, or are giving their back to Joe. Ascend, snipe any enemies before they can shoot back, and move again: if enemies shoot back, Joe cannot jump over the bullet. Joe cannot go to a lower platform unless he falls or he plays Tarzan with the bionic arm. Players should thus learn how to oscillate with the arm, and land in a safe spot as a result. Weapons have their own specific weaknesses and strengths, but players can just keep their basic rifle and should be safe through most of the game. Thus, if we partition the 50 points of difficulty in two even halves, the game mechanics Facet warrants 8/25 points. Players must master how the bionic arm works, to navigate stages successfully.
The stage design/layout provides a higher source of difficulty, in my view. Although players can follow their own personal paths to reach the end of a stage, it is generally wise to stick to a well-oiled plan. Stages can provide deadly traps at each platform that Joe can hop to, given how the bionic arm works and how enemies’ attacking patterns also work. Stage one is not intensely challenging, but players should nevertheless develop a good path to reach the end safely. From Stage two to Stage five, route planning becomes necessary and completing Stages becomes tricky. Each Stage has specific sub-sections that require their own tailored approach for survival. Stage two has the initial half and then the second half with the kamikaze soldiers. Stage three has a section with gremlins (!), then a tunnel bringing Joe to the mecha hangar, and the final stanza.
Stages four and five have three more or less distinct sub-sections that require very precise timing when players decide to ascend platforms. Again, though players can solve the puzzles that each section provides in different manners, the game offers little room for errors. A small timing mistake usually results in death, simply put. For this reason, I would suggest that this Facet provides 12/25 points of difficulty, for a total of 20/50 points. The game has a second loop in which enemies move faster, shoot more aggressively, and may have more H(it)P(oints) (robots, sergeants, officers). I would propose a 25/50 for a 2-All 1-CC, then. The game is thus a top-tier challenge for intermediate players and a “true” 1-CC a mid-tier challenge for expert players. With only two extends at 100k and 300k, players must have air-tight plans and smooth operator executions, as tactical action gaming demands.
Xenny is now wondering if we could be lucky enough to skip directly to the conclusions. Fear not, readers and xenomorphs: the yarn I am going to spin about this experience is moderately short. It is 1989 and one of my habits as a wee lad is to go around bars in my hometown, looking for games that my uncle does not have in his arcade, or that other arcades also lack. Most are old games or bona fide kusoge such as SunA’s Hard head or Rough Rangers. Sometimes I have spotted gems like Atari’s Indiana Jones and the temple of doom tie-in. I guess that every bar has either Bubble Bobble, to attract quick credits. This one bar near the elementary school I attend has Bionic Commando and Legendary Wings. A few times I visit the bar to enjoy the games’ OSTs and fail miserably at learning the games.
My first experience with this game thus lasts no more than ten credits over two weeks or so. In 1992, the bar with the gentleman bartender near my home has this game, along two old classics: Nichibutsu’s Galivan and Namco’s Metro Cross. I admit that I like Metro Cross for the concept and game system, Galivan for the fantastic OST, and Bionic Commando for the whole experience. I also admit that all three games kick my ass in novel and entertaining ways, at least for my father and a few other local customers. One of my father’s friends even tries to teach me the game, since he can easily complete both loops with a certain degree of panache. Frankly, at some point I entertain the idea of giving up on videogames and focus on more literal hobbies such as the newly discovered tabletop RPGs.
I discover again Bionic Commando in 2000, during my MAME gap year. I almost forgot about its existence, but not about the great OST. I am delighted to re-connect the faint memories I had of this game to actual game mechanics. I admit then that I spend quite a bit of time during the March and April of the gap year to finally learn how to play the game. I sit down, develop some decent paths to cross stages, practice a lot, fail miserably and repeatedly, and throw tantrum over tantrum. In 2000, I have little patience for tactical gaming: I want to get rid of grudges quickly. I finally have one smooth run in which I can 1-LC the game: no mistakes, no risks, just a perfect implementation of the plan. A few more 1-CC’s follow; over the years, I collect some more 1-All clears, for nostalgia’s sake.
Memories have not been too rich this time, so we can quickly move to the conclusions. Bionic Commando/Top Secret is a tactical action R2RKMF game with strong platform and puzzle aspects/Facets. The game pits Super Joe from Capcom’s earlier The Speed Rumbler against a dodgy army that wants to conquer or perhaps nuke the world, or maybe both. Joe infiltrates their secret but somehow immense underground base and manages to the save the day. The game distinguishes itself by having a “bionic arm” mechanics. Joe can move across platforms via an extendable arm that gives him higher upward mobility but may require careful planning of movements. Consequently, the game offers an entertaining if at times frustrating approach to platforming that requires tactical approaches to Stages. Players who want a different and intriguing action/platform challenge can find a solid challenge tinged with good, glorious doses of humorous militaristic design.
(2352 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I would say that this game has my “go-to” OST for rainy early spring days and those moments in which I feel the need to approach work matters with a “tactical mind”. No, I am not infiltrating huge underground bases to kill clones of Hitler, just in case. I do admit that I never developed a particular love for this game’s mechanics, but everything else I find it adorable. I would honestly be curious to know if the Metal Slug guys found any inspiration in this game, or if I am just drawing parallels between two games only sharing a common healthy dose of irony. By the way, I am pretty sure that I played the JP version back in the day: blue-eyed Joe surprised me, the first time I saw him via MAME. In the back of my head, all these darkly humorous takes on videogames all stem from game designers having read Japanese translations of Franco Bonvicini’s legendary Sturmtruppen. Be sure to read an English translation of them, if available).
Bionic Commando/Top Secret (Capcom, 1987) is a R2RKMF game that mixes distinctive tactical action and platform mechanics with a quirky setting. Players must help Super Joe, the titular “bionic commando” with an extendable artificial arm, to foil the plans of an evil army involving World War III. They do so in five Stages (and two loops) in which Joe must infiltrate the enemies’ base and kill their long-bearded leader and general. The game is notable for not having a jump button typical of this genre: Joe moves around and changes platforms exclusively via his bionic arm. The game has spawned its own franchise and features a peculiar approach to the composition of the OST and offers a sometimes frustrating but overall intriguing 1-CC challenge. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game is a veritable classic, frustrating moments, and perplexing if cheap deaths notwithstanding.
Let us first carve a concise context for this game, first. In 1987, Capcom was a still young but already successful arcade company that was shaping action and platform games via its releases. The company also distinguished itself for mixing still vaguely defined genres with elegance. Ghosts’n Goblins was an influential sensation, Section Z and Legendary Wings[/i] mixed action and shmup sections, and Black Tiger showcased the company’s approach to A(rcade)R(ole)P(laying)G(ame)s. The first game in which Super Joe appears, The Speed Rumbler, mixes elements from driving games, top-down free scrolling shmups, and action games. Bionic Commando represents the company’s attempt at creating a game that re-interpreted design ideas originating in platformers from the the 1980s’ first half, like Konami’s [url=htttps://konami.fandom.com/wiki/Roc%27n_Rope]Roc’n rope[/url] or Namco’s Mappy. Simply put, the game plays like a platform/action game, but SuperJoe cannot jump: players must use his bionic arm to navigate platforms and stages.
Before we dwell into a detailed analysis of the game’s mechanics, we can concisely discuss the game’s plot. The game is apparently set in an alternate version of history in which bionic technology and rudimental mechas and power loaders are common. In this world, a mysterious army is building a considerable arsenal and planning to declare war to the whole world. Case in point, they have a secret but apparently humongous base in which they have prepared massive rockets to unleash against the world’s nations. Super Joe must penetrate this base, enter the core operation centre in the base, and prevent that the evil army can launch the rocket(s) that will unleash hell on Earth. In the Famicom/NES sequel, Joe’s comrade Radd Spencer must also stop Hitler’s resurrection. The Hitler’s resurrection plot must have been too controversial for the arcade version: players must simply kick the evil army’s ass.
The game’s mechanics dovetail with this concept of Joe pursuing a stealth mission in an elegant manner. The joystick controls movement in eight directions, the A button controls shots, and the B button controls the bionic arm. Joe can move left or right, crouch and shoot with the A button. Joe starts with a normal rifle with limited range (white colour) but can switch to a green cannon with limitless range and slow shooting frequency. Alternatively, he can pick up a lavender shotgun with faster shooting frequency, or a red grenade thrower with short range and high destructive power. Joe can also grab a power-up doubling the speed of his bionic arm. The arm reaches the maximal length and retracts to rest mode in half of the time. Joe can also collect various bonuses (e.g. food, cigarettes, medals) ranging from 100 to 10k points.
The bionic arm works as follows. Joe can extend the arm at roughly half of a screen’s length, in any lateral or upward direction (left, up-left, up, up-right, right). If the arm connects to a platform, Joe can move up (press up or the B button) and climb onto the platform (press B). Joe can abort the ascending movement (push down) and can move via diagonal movements (e.g. up-right+B button). In this case, he will swing with a Tarzan-like motion before reaching the new platform. Pressing a down direction (down, down-left, down-right) results in Joe releasing the arm and falling in an inertial manner. If an enemy hits Joe’s bionic arm, Joe will also fall to the starting platform. Joe can also grab power-ups with the arm, as they appear on-screen as drop-zone objects floating down while attached to small parachutes.
The game’s mechanics thus appear deceptively simple: players must “just” learn how to use the bionic arm to navigate Stages. Before we discuss why this assumption is deceptive, however, we can offer a better overview of the game’s visual and aural presentations. All versions run on the simpler hardware that Capcom used before the advent of the CPS-1 and thus have good but not so fluid animation and a relatively narrow colour palette. The EU and US versions, entitled Bionic Commando, feature a more “westernised” version of Joe and the various enemies, whereas the J(a)P(an) version Top Secret introduce a different look for Joe and enemies’ faces alike. The US joe has smaller, green-looking eyes: the JP Joe has bigger black eyes and thicker, manga-style eyebrows. As a result, the cartoonish way in which most enemies move and attack appears more appropriate and offers a humorous style to the action.
Enemies sport an equally humorous design, as they mostly resemble nazi troops or officers with violet/lavender uniforms and weird weapons. Stages have interesting designs, too: Stage one takes place in the forest outside the main base, Stage two in the base’s outer defence perimeter. Stage three starts from the base’s sewers and goes through the “Mecha” garage. Stage four takes for the most part in what seems to be the control centre of the complex and gives the impression of being an immense underground complex. Stage five begins from the missile/nuke hangar and, once players destroy the main core powering the missile, ends in the den of the evil dictator. Visually, the stage design gives this strong impression that Joe is penetrating a vast underground and highly technological nation. Before Metal Slug and its legendary take on the irony of war, there was Bionic Commando and its silly-looking secret armies.
The OST deserves a special mention, too, because it is quite glorious and it involves a composition experiment. For this OST, then Alph Lyla members Harumi Fujita and my adored Tamayo Kawamoto collaborated on each piece. Harumi Fujita wrote the beginning part of each stage’s theme, and Tamayo Kawamoto completed the piece by offering a thematic counterpoint. The result is brilliant: Stage one’s theme has a cheerful adventurous tone, while Stage two’s theme offers a military march. Stage three and Stage four move onto spy theme territory, and Stage five’s is a dramatic, fast-paced theme for the final rush. Sound effects, due to the board’s hardware, sound simple but efficient. Overall, the audio-visual experience manages to offer a cinematographic but certainly humorous atmosphere that punctuates the action in a glorious manner, thanks also to the brilliant experimental approach to OST composition.
By this point, we are ready to discuss the game’s most delicate aspect or Facet: difficulty. You should know the term/concept well by now, so I assume that we can dive into the topic without remorse. I believe that this game follows the design philosophy of other Capcom games that we have discussed so far (e.g. Dynasty Wars and Tiger Road). Players must master two Facets before they can 1-CC the game: game mechanics and Stage design/layout. The game mechanics force the player to approach the game with a tactical mind. The bionic arm allows a considerable degree of freedom to the player, but it also forces players to use this freedom with great care. Players can use the arm to move upwards and sidewards with ease. However, players must always be aware of how enemies can snipe Joe once he ascends to the next platform.
A general rule of thumb is thus that Joe should ascend to a higher platform when enemies are not waiting for him, are at a safe distance, or are giving their back to Joe. Ascend, snipe any enemies before they can shoot back, and move again: if enemies shoot back, Joe cannot jump over the bullet. Joe cannot go to a lower platform unless he falls or he plays Tarzan with the bionic arm. Players should thus learn how to oscillate with the arm, and land in a safe spot as a result. Weapons have their own specific weaknesses and strengths, but players can just keep their basic rifle and should be safe through most of the game. Thus, if we partition the 50 points of difficulty in two even halves, the game mechanics Facet warrants 8/25 points. Players must master how the bionic arm works, to navigate stages successfully.
The stage design/layout provides a higher source of difficulty, in my view. Although players can follow their own personal paths to reach the end of a stage, it is generally wise to stick to a well-oiled plan. Stages can provide deadly traps at each platform that Joe can hop to, given how the bionic arm works and how enemies’ attacking patterns also work. Stage one is not intensely challenging, but players should nevertheless develop a good path to reach the end safely. From Stage two to Stage five, route planning becomes necessary and completing Stages becomes tricky. Each Stage has specific sub-sections that require their own tailored approach for survival. Stage two has the initial half and then the second half with the kamikaze soldiers. Stage three has a section with gremlins (!), then a tunnel bringing Joe to the mecha hangar, and the final stanza.
Stages four and five have three more or less distinct sub-sections that require very precise timing when players decide to ascend platforms. Again, though players can solve the puzzles that each section provides in different manners, the game offers little room for errors. A small timing mistake usually results in death, simply put. For this reason, I would suggest that this Facet provides 12/25 points of difficulty, for a total of 20/50 points. The game has a second loop in which enemies move faster, shoot more aggressively, and may have more H(it)P(oints) (robots, sergeants, officers). I would propose a 25/50 for a 2-All 1-CC, then. The game is thus a top-tier challenge for intermediate players and a “true” 1-CC a mid-tier challenge for expert players. With only two extends at 100k and 300k, players must have air-tight plans and smooth operator executions, as tactical action gaming demands.
Xenny is now wondering if we could be lucky enough to skip directly to the conclusions. Fear not, readers and xenomorphs: the yarn I am going to spin about this experience is moderately short. It is 1989 and one of my habits as a wee lad is to go around bars in my hometown, looking for games that my uncle does not have in his arcade, or that other arcades also lack. Most are old games or bona fide kusoge such as SunA’s Hard head or Rough Rangers. Sometimes I have spotted gems like Atari’s Indiana Jones and the temple of doom tie-in. I guess that every bar has either Bubble Bobble, to attract quick credits. This one bar near the elementary school I attend has Bionic Commando and Legendary Wings. A few times I visit the bar to enjoy the games’ OSTs and fail miserably at learning the games.
My first experience with this game thus lasts no more than ten credits over two weeks or so. In 1992, the bar with the gentleman bartender near my home has this game, along two old classics: Nichibutsu’s Galivan and Namco’s Metro Cross. I admit that I like Metro Cross for the concept and game system, Galivan for the fantastic OST, and Bionic Commando for the whole experience. I also admit that all three games kick my ass in novel and entertaining ways, at least for my father and a few other local customers. One of my father’s friends even tries to teach me the game, since he can easily complete both loops with a certain degree of panache. Frankly, at some point I entertain the idea of giving up on videogames and focus on more literal hobbies such as the newly discovered tabletop RPGs.
I discover again Bionic Commando in 2000, during my MAME gap year. I almost forgot about its existence, but not about the great OST. I am delighted to re-connect the faint memories I had of this game to actual game mechanics. I admit then that I spend quite a bit of time during the March and April of the gap year to finally learn how to play the game. I sit down, develop some decent paths to cross stages, practice a lot, fail miserably and repeatedly, and throw tantrum over tantrum. In 2000, I have little patience for tactical gaming: I want to get rid of grudges quickly. I finally have one smooth run in which I can 1-LC the game: no mistakes, no risks, just a perfect implementation of the plan. A few more 1-CC’s follow; over the years, I collect some more 1-All clears, for nostalgia’s sake.
Memories have not been too rich this time, so we can quickly move to the conclusions. Bionic Commando/Top Secret is a tactical action R2RKMF game with strong platform and puzzle aspects/Facets. The game pits Super Joe from Capcom’s earlier The Speed Rumbler against a dodgy army that wants to conquer or perhaps nuke the world, or maybe both. Joe infiltrates their secret but somehow immense underground base and manages to the save the day. The game distinguishes itself by having a “bionic arm” mechanics. Joe can move across platforms via an extendable arm that gives him higher upward mobility but may require careful planning of movements. Consequently, the game offers an entertaining if at times frustrating approach to platforming that requires tactical approaches to Stages. Players who want a different and intriguing action/platform challenge can find a solid challenge tinged with good, glorious doses of humorous militaristic design.
(2352 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I would say that this game has my “go-to” OST for rainy early spring days and those moments in which I feel the need to approach work matters with a “tactical mind”. No, I am not infiltrating huge underground bases to kill clones of Hitler, just in case. I do admit that I never developed a particular love for this game’s mechanics, but everything else I find it adorable. I would honestly be curious to know if the Metal Slug guys found any inspiration in this game, or if I am just drawing parallels between two games only sharing a common healthy dose of irony. By the way, I am pretty sure that I played the JP version back in the day: blue-eyed Joe surprised me, the first time I saw him via MAME. In the back of my head, all these darkly humorous takes on videogames all stem from game designers having read Japanese translations of Franco Bonvicini’s legendary Sturmtruppen. Be sure to read an English translation of them, if available).
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Dark Seal (Data East, 1990)
We continue the weekend with a strong commitment to DECO love, because the skies are overcast and it is still definitely cool around here. You may wonder why did we have Bionic Commando as our third entry, then. Well, the beginning of the week was almost a declaration of arrival for Spring, but the end of the week introduced new plans. March is what it is, so this week’s squibs may follow this month’s erratic nature. Dark Seal is possibly one of Data East’s least janky games, even if players may need some time before they can absorb the overly cautious attitude that the game requires. The game is also tough, full stop, so I wanted to conclude the action trilogy with a mean challenge for readers who want to pursue their next 1-CC. Assemble, oh heroes:
Dark Seal/Gamte of Doom (Data East, 1990) is a hybrid game mixing action R2RKMF ideas with an isometric view to several stages, and elements from A(rcade)R(ole)P(laying)G(ame)s. The game involves a Dark Fantasy setting, with a party of four heroes starting a quest to kick the ass of dark lord Volov. The game is notable also for transpiring inspiration from European game companies (e.g. Psygnosis and Team 17), plus a good dose of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons citations. The game possibly has the most annoying magic weapon/special attack ever seen in a game, as a veritable proof that Data East programmers were ultimately a bunch of weirdos. My goal in this squib is therefore to explain to my readers why the game represents a rough diamond in Data East’s already quixotic catalogue.
Offering a concise description of the game’s context may be a tall order: I will try to focus on what I perceive as the key elements. As we discussed via previous relevant squibs (e.g. Black Tiger, Battlantis), Heroic fantasy became a key source of influence in arcade games during the late 1980s. Data East programmers, in my understanding, had a particularly strong grasp of the topic, possibly due to their dabbling with all kind of weird ideas. Dark Seal exudes themes and concepts from AD&D early campaign settings such as Forgotten Realms (e.g. the monsters, the players’ classes) and Dragonlance (e.g. the dragon rider enemies). The many demons and undead seem grounded in the Ravenloft setting, also. Data East also possibly knew some Amiga fantasy-based games: homages to Psygnosis’s Shadow of the Beast series appear in-game. Game Workshop’s WarHammer Fantasy might have inspired the virulently gory and brooding atmosphere, too.
The story can be summarized as follows. The incredibly evil black knight and its master, Volov, want to conquer the peaceful kingdom of Etrulia. This duo seems to have conspired with quite the awesome evil army: demi-humans, demons, beholders, undead, and dozens of other troublemakers. The Etrulian king summons four heroes to go and kick Volov out of the way, thinking that the four heroes are the meanest bastards around but at least they are on the humans’ side. The king has the right intuition, because Freya the wizard, Kirikaze the ninja, Riger the bard and Carl the knight can crush monster skulls and slaughter demi-human interiors with ease. The fight for the survival of the kingdom starts, and we can be certain that by the end of the game, only one army will stand alive on the field. A bit over-dramatic, I know, but the game does have an apocalyptic vibe indeed.
The game’s mechanics require a bit of patience before players can fully grasp them, but they are for the most part immediate. The game offers an isometric perspective but stages can freely scroll in any direction: the game screen has HORI(zontal) orientation. Players can move in eight directions via the joystick, and determine the speed of scrolling via movement. The A button controls the character’s main attack, which has variable range and power according to the character’s weapon. The knight has a rotating morning star with high power but moderate range; the bard has a peak fork with long range, narrow attack width, and high power. The ninja shoots three-way weak shurikens with maximum range; the wizard shoots magic flames with moderate range, moderate attack width and moderate power. Power-ups increase attacking power and range and other stats, as we are going to discuss.
First, however, we must discuss the B button and how it controls the use of spells. Players can accumulate M(agic/Mana)P(oint)s by killing enemies. The MP bar on the left signals when players have enough power to launch a spell, regardless of their class (i.e. anyone can use spells). The precise spell that players can use appears on the “book of spells” in the lower-left (first player/1P) or lower-right corner (second player/2P). Spells can land various amounts of damage according to their type: the fire spell turns the characters in fire pillars showing fireballs following a parabolic trajectory, for instance. This spell deals considerable damage but consumes a lot of MPs, hence lasting a shorter time than other spells. Players can use spells as long as they kill enemies and have enough MPs, and can use spells during boss fights as well.
Spells offer interesting attacking alternatives and can have various uses. One spell that does not have this attacking function is the “?” spell. When players use this spell, they either turn into treasure chests dispensing power-ups, or into giant swine oinking around and being open to any attack, being defenceless. Players can try their luck if they are struggling and have low H(it)P(oint)s, but should avoid using this spell otherwise. The chances to turn into swine become high, if players’ status is good. Players start with three hearts (i.e. six H(it)P(oint)s) and two stock lives, with hits from enemies either landing half heart/one HP or one heart/two HPs. Players can recover energy via magic pillars and potions: when a magic pillar appears, touch it twice. Characters go back to three hearts after clearing a stage, or preserve any higher value of hearts.
In perfect fantasy tabletop RPG style, the game has treasure boxes and other magic tools as power-ups supporting players in their quest. The bronze gloves increase attacking power; the boots, speed. The armour halves damage from hits; the necklace increases protection from magic attacks. The ring increases the MPs gained by killing each enemy; the scarab blocks poisoning attacks. All power-ups deplete their energy via their sustained use. For instance, the iron glove disappears after players press the A button 300 times or so, or after 180 seconds if players do not reach the limit. Players thus must use magic power-ups wisely, even if time limits constrain their use anyway. Players start with two lives and three hearts, and can get an extra life on stage 5-2; each life has a maximum of six hearts/12 HPs. Falling from precipices results into instant death, when this is a possibility.
Before we expand our discussion of mechanics, stage layout and thus difficulty, we should touch upon the game’s audio-visual presentation. Dark Seal is a game that does not hide its strong Dark Fantasy undertones and reverberates early Berkerk tones in an aggressive manner. The game runs on earlier Data East hardware, so animations and colour palette have still a late 1980s’ vibe. The game’s strong point is design, something that might appear almost stunning for a Data East game. Stages one to five are set in an old castle infested by monsters, a frozen castle, a mountain pass, the entrance to the demon world and the dark knight’s castle. Each stage features narrow corridors, dark colors even in daylight settings, and then hell-fire landscapes during the last two stages. The game gives a clear, strong impression that the kingdom of Etrulia is encroached by darkness and demons.
The enemies and boss provide a strong argument for this proposition. There are several varieties of armored goblins, undead of various types and strengths (skeletons, revenants), demons, minotaurs and giant slimes. Harpies and cocktatrices infest the skies, and buildings have dozens of dangerous traps. Players must face an impressive variety of enemies with a clear AD&D provenance, but with that typical arcade lethal behaviour that turns each encounter into a potentially lethal fight. Bosses and mid-bosses are perhaps the strongest aspect of the game: the sprites are big, better animated than the minion enemies, and offer interesting takes on classical RPG monsters. For instance, Stage three’s boss is a massive Beholder with dozens of eyes protruding from tentacles and a giant central eye shooting three lightnings. The game paints a dark, foreboding, and epic world in brutal but brilliantly precise strokes.
The OST is also good in its immersive power. The songs combine a certain sound typical of horror movies and bands specialized in the genre (e.g. Goblin) with brooding fantasy music. Stage one’s theme opens with a synthesized klavier theme; Stage one and three’s bosses involve frenetic fanfares based on tense drum rolls; Stage two and four have slow, brooding synth-based pieces. Although the themes sound a bit repetitive after a few runs, they construe a brooding musical counterpoint to the darkness of the visual side. Side effects are perhaps the weakest part. Expect a lot of stock sounds from various Data East productions, cheesy voice samples for the human characters, and the usual monster screams that DECO recycled in Tumble Pop and a few other titles. Overall, though, the game looks and sounds passionately dark and brooding, and aptly creates the idea of a brutal fight against “the darkness”.
Let us now move to the topic of difficulty, with a reminder that our discussion centres on the notion of Facet as a conceptual tool and term. I propose that the three Facets forming difficulty in this game are the advanced game mechanics, the Stage layout/design and rank as a weak third Facet. I believe that the Stage design Facet has the most prominent role, whereas game mechanics and rank provide weaker contributions. I thus partition points as follows: 30 points for the Stage design Facet, 10 for the advance game mechanics, 10 for the rank. Let me start from the third facet, thus. Rank lowers upon characters’ death, as it is based upon survival time. Rank becomes noticeable from Stage three, as aerial enemies become more aggressive and faster, and seems to max out on Stage five, as all enemies are more aggressive, faster and with more HPs.
Although annoying, players can learn how to handle maxed out rank with enough practice; suiciding is generally not a useful rank management solution. I would thus assign 3/10 difficulty points to this Facet. Basic game mechanics, as my discussion suggests, are easy to handle. Players must however learn to use magic power-ups with wisdom: for instance, by not shooting without hitting enemies, as the iron glove has limited MPs and duration. Players must also understand where and when to use magic spells, and learn to resist to the “charm” of the treasure box (i.e. “?”) spell. Do not be greedy, as the game may turn characters into swine even in situations in which this means certain death; the game is relatively generous with power-ups, anyway. I would thus assign 4/10 difficulty points to this first Facet, since players must develop a firm grasp on how to use attack resources wisely.
The second Facet, Stages and their design/layout, demands more attention from players. Two Facets play a role within this Facet: enemy placement and attacks, and Stage design proper. Players must learn not to progress recklessly, as several enemies have ample attack ranges exacerbated by the isometric view and stages layouts. Players must thus develop a firm grasp on how to handle attacks from aerial enemies, slimes, undead creatures (revenants and skeletons) and mechanic traps. A simple method is to progress slowly, stop often (time limits are generous) and kill enemies at a distance. Knowing how to side-step projectile attacks is also important, since players may often need to dodge these attacks in rather tight spaces. The game abounds with lethal enemies; be sure to have a winning strategy against each type, and advance and bait enemies as to kill them one at a time.
Stages’ specific layouts/maps and bosses provide the bulk of the difficulty in the game, at least until players master them. Each Stage has a first stanza, a mid-boss fight, a second stanza and then a guardian boss fight. Stage one is relatively simple, but players may need to absorb the isometric perspective. The first boss fight involves a dragon diving from above and players moving on a narrow rampart in a diagonal direction; dodging attacks may not be intuitive, at first. Stages two to five involve narrow passages, dangerous precipices (Stage three, five) and tons of enemies in key spots. All bosses require risky killing techniques and the mastery of the “critical hit” i.e. a hit landing critical and much higher damage in a weak spot. Otherwise, hits land low HPs losses and bosses may take forever to die, if players survive the fight.
From Stage four’s onwards, the game simply becomes considerably though, as players must move and dodge projectiles within narrow passages in all normal stages. Bosses become unpleasant: the gigantic red dragon on Stage four likes to create pincer attacks via fireball spells and fire-breath attacks. The huge lich form that the dark knight takes as a mid-boss in Stage five has tons of hit points; the dark knight as a final boss has four attacking phases, each of increasingly frustrating difficulty. Progress in the game could thus be rather slow for players, as they need to master each Stage, section, and boss fight. For this reason, I propose a 21/30 difficulty points for this Facet, and a total of 28/50 points for the game. Dark Seal is a challenge for top-tier expert players pursuing a 1-CC: it is a game requiring air-tight plans for each Stage and boss.
Before we move to the discussion of my experiences with the game, let me tie Xenny to the desk so that he cannot avoid my sugary sweet prose about old arcade shenanigans. Oh, wait a second: this one tale is one of determination, grit, and afternoons spent seething due to the game’s difficulty. On we go, then. It is late August 1990 and the summer is still hot, even if dusks in the mountains have that cooler breeze and earlier appearance that signal the impending arrival of bronze-tinged autumn. I will attend junior high school soon and I am wondering if school will be as absurdly boring as always. My uncle is getting ready to capitalise onto people’s return to school, work, and the usual hum-drum by preparing a new roster of games on quarter-munching duty. People play carelessly, my uncle muses, so credits are bound to last two minutes.
On a tepid Monday, he looks at me with a smirk and mentions that he has bought a new DECO game that I will like it. The game is entitled Dark Seal and has this grim aura about it that reminds me of Taito’s Cadash. Uncle sold the board once I was the last one to play it daily, each run a “clearing game”. I will spin that yarn soon: now, however, I must focus on our Data East’s topic of the squib. The game has this fancy perspective in diagonal, and seems to attract quite a few people who talk about those role-playing stuff. In 1990, I have no idea on why individuals can enjoy this kind of embarrassing pastime. In 1996, before I enter the naval college in Venice, I have six years of experience in the hobby: my 1990 self would never believe it, I guess.
It is now 1990, anyway, so I try a few credits of Dark Seal and I briefly conclude that this game is hard. Never mind the strange perspective; I feel like each enemy requires a credit of practice, before I figure out how to kill them. I can reach the first boss after a week or so of practice, but I feel like it has way too much energy: I have no idea on what the game creators were thinking. After ten days or so, however, the game has a regular crowd of players who exchange strategies and ideas. Some of them find it interesting that the eccentric-looking, taciturn nephew of the owner is simultaneously playing this game and Super Pang!. Ten years-old kids should not be in arcades, let alone try to learn tough games. I do not feel the urge to mention my past 1-CC’s (e.g. Thundercade).
By mid-September or so, this vociferous and rather unpleasant crowd becomes a group of individuals with a lot of quirks but a relatively positive attitude. First-year university students from various natural sciences disciplines who play roleplaying games seem to be an interesting club of weirdos, in my view. They like to share tips with me, make remarks about this fictional genre that I do not yet understand, and give suggestions when I play. By the end of September, I can reach Stage three regularly and some of these guys can reach the final Stage with ease. Progress is sometimes slow, but it is steady for everyone: one couple always plays together, kisses during cutscenes, and regularly completes the game with the bard (her) and the wizard (him). Other players reach the same result by the end of October, as their regular practice is highly methodical.
I reach the final stage as well, while these new nice girls and guys can complete the game regularly. As one would expect from university students, they believe in rigorous practice in videogames and study; other Facets (pardon, aspects) of life, I do not know. Autumn is now cold and perennially overcast, and the game’s grimness begins to match the season. It is by the end of November that I can clear the game with the bard first, and then with the wizard. Everybody is surprised because, according to stereotypes, kids cannot clear games. I am not sure if stereotypes have anything to do with science and these guys study physics, biology, chemistry. Still, by this point they ask me if I would be interested in “experiencing more fantasy adventures”, and then ask my father if I could join an RPG/anime/manga/comics/nerd stuff club in my hometown.
I am deliciously evil, so you will read that story when we will move again to the 1990s and squibs about those years. Now, and before Xenny exacts revenge, I conclude the squib. Dark Seal is an isomorphic hybrid between R2RKMF and freely scrolling shmups, plus some ARPG elements. Players must save the kingdom of Etrulia from the demonic forces stemming from the eponymous “dark seal” by choosing one of four characters: bard, ninja, knight, or wizard. Players must then clear five stages of considerable difficulty by killing all kinds of AD&D-esque enemies (e.g. dragons, demons, and beholders). The game is thus notable for its well-executed dark atmosphere, steep but balanced difficulty, and surprisingly well-balanced gameplay: it is a Data East game, after all. Players who can arm themselves with considerable patience can thus aim for a difficult but highly satisfying 1-CC and save the king of Etrulia, happily thereafter.
(3107 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I thought of adapting this game into a tabletop RPG campaign several times but I never had the right chance to do so. In my earlier pseudo-squib on Gaiapolis I mentioned, however briefly, that I developed this “vice” as an RPG dungeon master/referee. One day I will tell you the full story by connecting it with my experiences regarding fantasy arcade games. In the next few weeks we will visit Cadash’s world and, during the “second season” of the RRR’s index of squibs, we will discuss quite a few more fantasy games. For now, though, I have outlined some contours of my dabbling with RPGs; the rest will come in time.)
Dark Seal/Gamte of Doom (Data East, 1990) is a hybrid game mixing action R2RKMF ideas with an isometric view to several stages, and elements from A(rcade)R(ole)P(laying)G(ame)s. The game involves a Dark Fantasy setting, with a party of four heroes starting a quest to kick the ass of dark lord Volov. The game is notable also for transpiring inspiration from European game companies (e.g. Psygnosis and Team 17), plus a good dose of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons citations. The game possibly has the most annoying magic weapon/special attack ever seen in a game, as a veritable proof that Data East programmers were ultimately a bunch of weirdos. My goal in this squib is therefore to explain to my readers why the game represents a rough diamond in Data East’s already quixotic catalogue.
Offering a concise description of the game’s context may be a tall order: I will try to focus on what I perceive as the key elements. As we discussed via previous relevant squibs (e.g. Black Tiger, Battlantis), Heroic fantasy became a key source of influence in arcade games during the late 1980s. Data East programmers, in my understanding, had a particularly strong grasp of the topic, possibly due to their dabbling with all kind of weird ideas. Dark Seal exudes themes and concepts from AD&D early campaign settings such as Forgotten Realms (e.g. the monsters, the players’ classes) and Dragonlance (e.g. the dragon rider enemies). The many demons and undead seem grounded in the Ravenloft setting, also. Data East also possibly knew some Amiga fantasy-based games: homages to Psygnosis’s Shadow of the Beast series appear in-game. Game Workshop’s WarHammer Fantasy might have inspired the virulently gory and brooding atmosphere, too.
The story can be summarized as follows. The incredibly evil black knight and its master, Volov, want to conquer the peaceful kingdom of Etrulia. This duo seems to have conspired with quite the awesome evil army: demi-humans, demons, beholders, undead, and dozens of other troublemakers. The Etrulian king summons four heroes to go and kick Volov out of the way, thinking that the four heroes are the meanest bastards around but at least they are on the humans’ side. The king has the right intuition, because Freya the wizard, Kirikaze the ninja, Riger the bard and Carl the knight can crush monster skulls and slaughter demi-human interiors with ease. The fight for the survival of the kingdom starts, and we can be certain that by the end of the game, only one army will stand alive on the field. A bit over-dramatic, I know, but the game does have an apocalyptic vibe indeed.
The game’s mechanics require a bit of patience before players can fully grasp them, but they are for the most part immediate. The game offers an isometric perspective but stages can freely scroll in any direction: the game screen has HORI(zontal) orientation. Players can move in eight directions via the joystick, and determine the speed of scrolling via movement. The A button controls the character’s main attack, which has variable range and power according to the character’s weapon. The knight has a rotating morning star with high power but moderate range; the bard has a peak fork with long range, narrow attack width, and high power. The ninja shoots three-way weak shurikens with maximum range; the wizard shoots magic flames with moderate range, moderate attack width and moderate power. Power-ups increase attacking power and range and other stats, as we are going to discuss.
First, however, we must discuss the B button and how it controls the use of spells. Players can accumulate M(agic/Mana)P(oint)s by killing enemies. The MP bar on the left signals when players have enough power to launch a spell, regardless of their class (i.e. anyone can use spells). The precise spell that players can use appears on the “book of spells” in the lower-left (first player/1P) or lower-right corner (second player/2P). Spells can land various amounts of damage according to their type: the fire spell turns the characters in fire pillars showing fireballs following a parabolic trajectory, for instance. This spell deals considerable damage but consumes a lot of MPs, hence lasting a shorter time than other spells. Players can use spells as long as they kill enemies and have enough MPs, and can use spells during boss fights as well.
Spells offer interesting attacking alternatives and can have various uses. One spell that does not have this attacking function is the “?” spell. When players use this spell, they either turn into treasure chests dispensing power-ups, or into giant swine oinking around and being open to any attack, being defenceless. Players can try their luck if they are struggling and have low H(it)P(oint)s, but should avoid using this spell otherwise. The chances to turn into swine become high, if players’ status is good. Players start with three hearts (i.e. six H(it)P(oint)s) and two stock lives, with hits from enemies either landing half heart/one HP or one heart/two HPs. Players can recover energy via magic pillars and potions: when a magic pillar appears, touch it twice. Characters go back to three hearts after clearing a stage, or preserve any higher value of hearts.
In perfect fantasy tabletop RPG style, the game has treasure boxes and other magic tools as power-ups supporting players in their quest. The bronze gloves increase attacking power; the boots, speed. The armour halves damage from hits; the necklace increases protection from magic attacks. The ring increases the MPs gained by killing each enemy; the scarab blocks poisoning attacks. All power-ups deplete their energy via their sustained use. For instance, the iron glove disappears after players press the A button 300 times or so, or after 180 seconds if players do not reach the limit. Players thus must use magic power-ups wisely, even if time limits constrain their use anyway. Players start with two lives and three hearts, and can get an extra life on stage 5-2; each life has a maximum of six hearts/12 HPs. Falling from precipices results into instant death, when this is a possibility.
Before we expand our discussion of mechanics, stage layout and thus difficulty, we should touch upon the game’s audio-visual presentation. Dark Seal is a game that does not hide its strong Dark Fantasy undertones and reverberates early Berkerk tones in an aggressive manner. The game runs on earlier Data East hardware, so animations and colour palette have still a late 1980s’ vibe. The game’s strong point is design, something that might appear almost stunning for a Data East game. Stages one to five are set in an old castle infested by monsters, a frozen castle, a mountain pass, the entrance to the demon world and the dark knight’s castle. Each stage features narrow corridors, dark colors even in daylight settings, and then hell-fire landscapes during the last two stages. The game gives a clear, strong impression that the kingdom of Etrulia is encroached by darkness and demons.
The enemies and boss provide a strong argument for this proposition. There are several varieties of armored goblins, undead of various types and strengths (skeletons, revenants), demons, minotaurs and giant slimes. Harpies and cocktatrices infest the skies, and buildings have dozens of dangerous traps. Players must face an impressive variety of enemies with a clear AD&D provenance, but with that typical arcade lethal behaviour that turns each encounter into a potentially lethal fight. Bosses and mid-bosses are perhaps the strongest aspect of the game: the sprites are big, better animated than the minion enemies, and offer interesting takes on classical RPG monsters. For instance, Stage three’s boss is a massive Beholder with dozens of eyes protruding from tentacles and a giant central eye shooting three lightnings. The game paints a dark, foreboding, and epic world in brutal but brilliantly precise strokes.
The OST is also good in its immersive power. The songs combine a certain sound typical of horror movies and bands specialized in the genre (e.g. Goblin) with brooding fantasy music. Stage one’s theme opens with a synthesized klavier theme; Stage one and three’s bosses involve frenetic fanfares based on tense drum rolls; Stage two and four have slow, brooding synth-based pieces. Although the themes sound a bit repetitive after a few runs, they construe a brooding musical counterpoint to the darkness of the visual side. Side effects are perhaps the weakest part. Expect a lot of stock sounds from various Data East productions, cheesy voice samples for the human characters, and the usual monster screams that DECO recycled in Tumble Pop and a few other titles. Overall, though, the game looks and sounds passionately dark and brooding, and aptly creates the idea of a brutal fight against “the darkness”.
Let us now move to the topic of difficulty, with a reminder that our discussion centres on the notion of Facet as a conceptual tool and term. I propose that the three Facets forming difficulty in this game are the advanced game mechanics, the Stage layout/design and rank as a weak third Facet. I believe that the Stage design Facet has the most prominent role, whereas game mechanics and rank provide weaker contributions. I thus partition points as follows: 30 points for the Stage design Facet, 10 for the advance game mechanics, 10 for the rank. Let me start from the third facet, thus. Rank lowers upon characters’ death, as it is based upon survival time. Rank becomes noticeable from Stage three, as aerial enemies become more aggressive and faster, and seems to max out on Stage five, as all enemies are more aggressive, faster and with more HPs.
Although annoying, players can learn how to handle maxed out rank with enough practice; suiciding is generally not a useful rank management solution. I would thus assign 3/10 difficulty points to this Facet. Basic game mechanics, as my discussion suggests, are easy to handle. Players must however learn to use magic power-ups with wisdom: for instance, by not shooting without hitting enemies, as the iron glove has limited MPs and duration. Players must also understand where and when to use magic spells, and learn to resist to the “charm” of the treasure box (i.e. “?”) spell. Do not be greedy, as the game may turn characters into swine even in situations in which this means certain death; the game is relatively generous with power-ups, anyway. I would thus assign 4/10 difficulty points to this first Facet, since players must develop a firm grasp on how to use attack resources wisely.
The second Facet, Stages and their design/layout, demands more attention from players. Two Facets play a role within this Facet: enemy placement and attacks, and Stage design proper. Players must learn not to progress recklessly, as several enemies have ample attack ranges exacerbated by the isometric view and stages layouts. Players must thus develop a firm grasp on how to handle attacks from aerial enemies, slimes, undead creatures (revenants and skeletons) and mechanic traps. A simple method is to progress slowly, stop often (time limits are generous) and kill enemies at a distance. Knowing how to side-step projectile attacks is also important, since players may often need to dodge these attacks in rather tight spaces. The game abounds with lethal enemies; be sure to have a winning strategy against each type, and advance and bait enemies as to kill them one at a time.
Stages’ specific layouts/maps and bosses provide the bulk of the difficulty in the game, at least until players master them. Each Stage has a first stanza, a mid-boss fight, a second stanza and then a guardian boss fight. Stage one is relatively simple, but players may need to absorb the isometric perspective. The first boss fight involves a dragon diving from above and players moving on a narrow rampart in a diagonal direction; dodging attacks may not be intuitive, at first. Stages two to five involve narrow passages, dangerous precipices (Stage three, five) and tons of enemies in key spots. All bosses require risky killing techniques and the mastery of the “critical hit” i.e. a hit landing critical and much higher damage in a weak spot. Otherwise, hits land low HPs losses and bosses may take forever to die, if players survive the fight.
From Stage four’s onwards, the game simply becomes considerably though, as players must move and dodge projectiles within narrow passages in all normal stages. Bosses become unpleasant: the gigantic red dragon on Stage four likes to create pincer attacks via fireball spells and fire-breath attacks. The huge lich form that the dark knight takes as a mid-boss in Stage five has tons of hit points; the dark knight as a final boss has four attacking phases, each of increasingly frustrating difficulty. Progress in the game could thus be rather slow for players, as they need to master each Stage, section, and boss fight. For this reason, I propose a 21/30 difficulty points for this Facet, and a total of 28/50 points for the game. Dark Seal is a challenge for top-tier expert players pursuing a 1-CC: it is a game requiring air-tight plans for each Stage and boss.
Before we move to the discussion of my experiences with the game, let me tie Xenny to the desk so that he cannot avoid my sugary sweet prose about old arcade shenanigans. Oh, wait a second: this one tale is one of determination, grit, and afternoons spent seething due to the game’s difficulty. On we go, then. It is late August 1990 and the summer is still hot, even if dusks in the mountains have that cooler breeze and earlier appearance that signal the impending arrival of bronze-tinged autumn. I will attend junior high school soon and I am wondering if school will be as absurdly boring as always. My uncle is getting ready to capitalise onto people’s return to school, work, and the usual hum-drum by preparing a new roster of games on quarter-munching duty. People play carelessly, my uncle muses, so credits are bound to last two minutes.
On a tepid Monday, he looks at me with a smirk and mentions that he has bought a new DECO game that I will like it. The game is entitled Dark Seal and has this grim aura about it that reminds me of Taito’s Cadash. Uncle sold the board once I was the last one to play it daily, each run a “clearing game”. I will spin that yarn soon: now, however, I must focus on our Data East’s topic of the squib. The game has this fancy perspective in diagonal, and seems to attract quite a few people who talk about those role-playing stuff. In 1990, I have no idea on why individuals can enjoy this kind of embarrassing pastime. In 1996, before I enter the naval college in Venice, I have six years of experience in the hobby: my 1990 self would never believe it, I guess.
It is now 1990, anyway, so I try a few credits of Dark Seal and I briefly conclude that this game is hard. Never mind the strange perspective; I feel like each enemy requires a credit of practice, before I figure out how to kill them. I can reach the first boss after a week or so of practice, but I feel like it has way too much energy: I have no idea on what the game creators were thinking. After ten days or so, however, the game has a regular crowd of players who exchange strategies and ideas. Some of them find it interesting that the eccentric-looking, taciturn nephew of the owner is simultaneously playing this game and Super Pang!. Ten years-old kids should not be in arcades, let alone try to learn tough games. I do not feel the urge to mention my past 1-CC’s (e.g. Thundercade).
By mid-September or so, this vociferous and rather unpleasant crowd becomes a group of individuals with a lot of quirks but a relatively positive attitude. First-year university students from various natural sciences disciplines who play roleplaying games seem to be an interesting club of weirdos, in my view. They like to share tips with me, make remarks about this fictional genre that I do not yet understand, and give suggestions when I play. By the end of September, I can reach Stage three regularly and some of these guys can reach the final Stage with ease. Progress is sometimes slow, but it is steady for everyone: one couple always plays together, kisses during cutscenes, and regularly completes the game with the bard (her) and the wizard (him). Other players reach the same result by the end of October, as their regular practice is highly methodical.
I reach the final stage as well, while these new nice girls and guys can complete the game regularly. As one would expect from university students, they believe in rigorous practice in videogames and study; other Facets (pardon, aspects) of life, I do not know. Autumn is now cold and perennially overcast, and the game’s grimness begins to match the season. It is by the end of November that I can clear the game with the bard first, and then with the wizard. Everybody is surprised because, according to stereotypes, kids cannot clear games. I am not sure if stereotypes have anything to do with science and these guys study physics, biology, chemistry. Still, by this point they ask me if I would be interested in “experiencing more fantasy adventures”, and then ask my father if I could join an RPG/anime/manga/comics/nerd stuff club in my hometown.
I am deliciously evil, so you will read that story when we will move again to the 1990s and squibs about those years. Now, and before Xenny exacts revenge, I conclude the squib. Dark Seal is an isomorphic hybrid between R2RKMF and freely scrolling shmups, plus some ARPG elements. Players must save the kingdom of Etrulia from the demonic forces stemming from the eponymous “dark seal” by choosing one of four characters: bard, ninja, knight, or wizard. Players must then clear five stages of considerable difficulty by killing all kinds of AD&D-esque enemies (e.g. dragons, demons, and beholders). The game is thus notable for its well-executed dark atmosphere, steep but balanced difficulty, and surprisingly well-balanced gameplay: it is a Data East game, after all. Players who can arm themselves with considerable patience can thus aim for a difficult but highly satisfying 1-CC and save the king of Etrulia, happily thereafter.
(3107 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I admit that I thought of adapting this game into a tabletop RPG campaign several times but I never had the right chance to do so. In my earlier pseudo-squib on Gaiapolis I mentioned, however briefly, that I developed this “vice” as an RPG dungeon master/referee. One day I will tell you the full story by connecting it with my experiences regarding fantasy arcade games. In the next few weeks we will visit Cadash’s world and, during the “second season” of the RRR’s index of squibs, we will discuss quite a few more fantasy games. For now, though, I have outlined some contours of my dabbling with RPGs; the rest will come in time.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Re: RRR: Index of squibs
Had never really considered, the significance of Super Dodge Ball and Double Dragon sharing 1987. With Kunio never returning to straight-up asskicking, in the arcades; instead channelling his youthful anger to the field of sport. His beater-stocked FC/GB/SFC canon is a different story, of course; even if the portable chapter got rebadged as a Double Dragon episode, overseas. Bloody Billy and Jimmy-come-latelies!
Of course, even his sole AC beater turn was Japan-exclusive. I wonder how much of Renegade's Warriors makeover was commercial, versus censoring NKK's nasty if mostly non-fatal schoolboy violence. I heard Konami's Mikey was bowdlerised not for the West, but its native Japan; its titular delinquent an annoying twat needing his face smashed into the ground repeatedly, Combatribes-style.
Nothing like stalwart Kunio, who never served a knuckle sammich to anyone not begging for it with both hands and a bib, a rokudenashi of the strictly folk-valoric type.
Splendidly evocative yet hardcore-specification writing as always.
Of course, even his sole AC beater turn was Japan-exclusive. I wonder how much of Renegade's Warriors makeover was commercial, versus censoring NKK's nasty if mostly non-fatal schoolboy violence. I heard Konami's Mikey was bowdlerised not for the West, but its native Japan; its titular delinquent an annoying twat needing his face smashed into the ground repeatedly, Combatribes-style.
Nothing like stalwart Kunio, who never served a knuckle sammich to anyone not begging for it with both hands and a bib, a rokudenashi of the strictly folk-valoric type.Splendidly evocative yet hardcore-specification writing as always.
Last edited by BIL on Sun Apr 06, 2025 7:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
光あふれる 未来もとめて, whoa~oh ♫
[THE MIRAGE OF MIND] Metal Black ST [THE JUSTICE MASSACRE] Gun.Smoke ST [STAB & STOMP]
Dark Seal (Data East, 1990) (because BIL and I love DECO, what else?)
Thanks for the endorsement, shishio; we both know that it is the power of Data East's wackiness that keeps the quality of these squibs considerably above the bar 
Re: censorship. I suspect that somebody bothered to study the topic in a more scholarly way as I remember seeing journal articles or book chapters on this topic, within the field of game studies. It would however take me quite a bit of time to recover the relevant references.
What I do remember reading, though, is that most companies would basically handle violence and problematic topics "on the sly", since in the 1980s there were not specific policies about videogames' content. Basically, programmers did what they want and if their games attracted the ire of JP/US/EU committees/parents and teachers' associations/etc., they would comply with any requests that would permit the companies to sell the games anyway. If there were no such requests, it was business as usual. Just to make one case: in Momoko 120% can enjoy the main character's panties any time they press the jump button, and there are a few other characters showing not-so-adult characters in underwear (e.g. Jaleco's Psychic 5, a few others I am forgetting).
There is then the whole issue of the beat'em up genre, which seems to revolve around people beating up other people until they...flash and disappear, duh. A part of me thinks that a lot of arcade gaming design and its brutality would have triggered veritable witch hunts if the so-called Silent Majority would have been even remotely aware of the existence of arcades, in the first place. True, kids were not supposed to enter arcades according to the laws of most countries, but there were always loopholes to avoid the problem, as I mention in the squibs, and then ports of arcade games would often create this problem in a different form.
I suspect that if I would explore the topic more, there could be enough material for a book or three. Nevertheless, I suggested the moniker "1980s were chaos" for this batch of squibs also because tons of games from that era were veritable hotpots of wildly different concepts, often originating in downright dodgy sub-cultures. These days bancho manga and Heroic fantasy might be mainstream, but in the past, they were really low-brow, working class/marginalised poor forms of entertainment.
I acknowledge that this is an element missing from my squibs: the sheer roughness of arcades and the human flora peppering them at the time (e.g. junkies, Metal Fans, Techno Fans, biker gangs, general thugs, country bumpkins trying to pick up fights, undercover cops, game boards distributors who somehow never had EU boards to sell, sukeban-style women like Denise or my aunt, weathered 40-year old professionals who could 1-CC just about anything while chain-smoking, and even *gasp* engineering students playing RPGs, plus other types of absolute riff-raff). But hey, I am an unreliable narrator, and so I may simply decide not to dwell too much on these..."socio-anthropological Facets"
Re: censorship. I suspect that somebody bothered to study the topic in a more scholarly way as I remember seeing journal articles or book chapters on this topic, within the field of game studies. It would however take me quite a bit of time to recover the relevant references.
What I do remember reading, though, is that most companies would basically handle violence and problematic topics "on the sly", since in the 1980s there were not specific policies about videogames' content. Basically, programmers did what they want and if their games attracted the ire of JP/US/EU committees/parents and teachers' associations/etc., they would comply with any requests that would permit the companies to sell the games anyway. If there were no such requests, it was business as usual. Just to make one case: in Momoko 120% can enjoy the main character's panties any time they press the jump button, and there are a few other characters showing not-so-adult characters in underwear (e.g. Jaleco's Psychic 5, a few others I am forgetting).
There is then the whole issue of the beat'em up genre, which seems to revolve around people beating up other people until they...flash and disappear, duh. A part of me thinks that a lot of arcade gaming design and its brutality would have triggered veritable witch hunts if the so-called Silent Majority would have been even remotely aware of the existence of arcades, in the first place. True, kids were not supposed to enter arcades according to the laws of most countries, but there were always loopholes to avoid the problem, as I mention in the squibs, and then ports of arcade games would often create this problem in a different form.
I suspect that if I would explore the topic more, there could be enough material for a book or three. Nevertheless, I suggested the moniker "1980s were chaos" for this batch of squibs also because tons of games from that era were veritable hotpots of wildly different concepts, often originating in downright dodgy sub-cultures. These days bancho manga and Heroic fantasy might be mainstream, but in the past, they were really low-brow, working class/marginalised poor forms of entertainment.
I acknowledge that this is an element missing from my squibs: the sheer roughness of arcades and the human flora peppering them at the time (e.g. junkies, Metal Fans, Techno Fans, biker gangs, general thugs, country bumpkins trying to pick up fights, undercover cops, game boards distributors who somehow never had EU boards to sell, sukeban-style women like Denise or my aunt, weathered 40-year old professionals who could 1-CC just about anything while chain-smoking, and even *gasp* engineering students playing RPGs, plus other types of absolute riff-raff). But hey, I am an unreliable narrator, and so I may simply decide not to dwell too much on these..."socio-anthropological Facets"
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Forgotten Worlds (Capcom, 1988)
Let us go back to shmups by discussing Forgotten/Lost Worlds a great shmup by Capcom that somehow faded into obscurity over time. Some of my readers may know the two characters because Capcom inserted them in other games (e.g. “2P” in Final Fight, “1P” in Marvel vs. Capcom 2). However, aside a review on this website from many moons ago, it seems that there has never been much discussion of this title on this forum. Hopefully, this squib will tempt you in trying out the game at least once. I base my review on the arcade “newer world revision”, but the game has several versions. Please keep in mind that the game had tons of ports back in the day, and you can also find it on PS4/Steam/Switch/Xbox One via the Capcom Arcade Stadium collection. Please check the introduction below for further links/references. Enough dilly-dallying folks, we begin:
Forgotten/Lost Worlds (Capcom, 1988) is an HORI(zontal) shmup with a rotating joystick and one of Capcom’s first games on their CPS-1 board. The game combines a Dying Earth Science Fantasy setting with more Heroic Fantasy themes strongly reminiscent of Michael Moorcock oeuvre. In the 29th century, a galactic conqueror has reduced Earth to dust; the last survivors send a biologically enhanced flying hero to defeat this god-like being and save the planet. The game is notable in featuring rotating joystick controls, one of the earliest human player characters in the genre, and highly detailed, multi-screen boss battles. If players can set aside some game mechanics bringing the game closer to ”Euro shmups”, they can certainly enjoy this intriguing and somewhat unique shmup. My goal in this squib is to argue why this is the case, and why my dear readers should try the game at least once.
We have discussed the micro-context of rotary games in the Time Soldiers. Furthermore, if we go back to Last Duel’s squib, we have a good context for Capcom’s 1988 releases. For this squib, we combine the two contexts into a larger backdrop to the game’s release. By 1988, Capcom had a more powerful hardware in the form of the CPS-1 and had a certain relevance in the market via its earlier successful titles. In 1988, designer Tokuro Fujiwara and his team released the legendary Ghouls’n Ghosts, so Capcom had a successful hit further cementing their reputation. Forgotten Worlds acted as the third unofficial chapter in the “jetpack trilogy” after Section Z and Side Arms. It also acted as an attempt to carve part of the HORI market against Taito’s Darius and Irem’s R-Type. Yoshiki Okamoto, father of Street Fighter II, decided to compete with a shmup with an epic style.
This epic style emerges via the game’s story and setting. The game takes place in the 29th century, when the galactic conqueror “Bios” decides to lay waste to Earth and its inhabitants. He succeeds in this goal via the help of the Bios armies, who are so powerful as to appear as “gods” to human survivors. The survivors hide for a long time, in a desperate attempt to regroup. After decades of secrecy, two unknown soldiers with psychokinetic powers and immense martial skills, “P(layer)1” and “P(layer)2” start their liberation war from these gods and their majesty Bios. The game thus incorporates fictional that span from sources as different as the epic Gilgamesh as Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cycle and Roger Zelezny’s Lord of Light. If players 1-CC the game, they can literally free humankind from the tyranny of “the gods”, though if these are extremely powerful aliens.
With this epic story and context in place, we can concentrate on the explication of the game mechanics. Players control P1 and P2 via the joystick: the characters can move in eight directions, while flying in an upright position. The A button controls the main shot, which can further find the support of secondary attacks; the game implements a relatively fast auto-fire rate. There is no default B button, but players can add a second button to simulate a slightly faster auto-fire rate. Differently from other rotary games, Forgotten Worlds the A button also acts as a “roll switch” button controlling the angle at which 1P and 2P can shoot. With 16 fixed positions at 22.5° of distance each, players can thus move and shoot in any direction. Though technically a rotary shmup, Forgotten Worlds does not actually use a proper rotary joystick.
Players can also release a desperation bomb if they press the A button, but sacrifice part of their energy. Forgotten Worlds thus follows 1943 in including some typical Euro Shmup mechanics, one of them being an energy bar. A second mechanic close to this maligned sub-genre is the use of a weapons shop. 1P and 2P can collect Capcom’s famed Zenny coins when killing enemies. Once per stage, they can visit a shop in which the mysterious “Sylphie” is ready to sell them more powerful weapons, extra energy, armour, or game hints. Weapons follow a levelling up scheme: once players buy a weapon of a given level (e.g. level 2 machinegun), the next level becomes available. Thus, the game also includes A(rcade)RPG mechanics in how characters can increase their power. To pursue this objective, players must however kill as many enemies as possible, to collect their zenny coins.
1P and 2P can thus buy increasingly powerful primary weapons, but can also buy secondary weapons in the form of “satellite modules”. These are small pods following the two characters along the screen and releasing secondary attacks of various types and power. Pods can absorb basic bullets, so players can also use them to cancel these attacks from screen. If players shoot and rotate their angle, satellite modules will rotate accordingly and re-orient their attacks. If players do not shoot while changing angle, the satellite modules can change position around 1P and 2P instead. Players can also point-blank enemies with the satellite modules, since these secondary weapons are invincible. In so doing, they can further increase fire-rate and cancel bullets. This R-type-style technique is generally risky, but can land devastating damage against larger enemies and bosses that use partial shields (e.g. Stage five’s boss).
The game has a few more mechanics that complete the picture. Pressing the A button repeatedly can then release a bomb-like attack (i.e. the “mega crush”), but this results in a loss of the character’s energy. When players start a co-op play, they can also trigger the “Aura spark”, i.e. a flow of energy that strengthens the characters’ attack while releasing sparks (of course). The extra energy power-up increases the number of H(it)P(oint)s permanently; the first aid kits refills the HP bar, which automatically refills after clearing each stage. The shop appears after 90 seconds or so into the stage, and seems to re-appear every 30 seconds or so, until players reach the boss. Boss fights can be long and players can time them out, but receive no bonus points or zenny coins afterwards. Overall, Forgotten Worlds is mostly a HORI shmup with rotary mechanics, but also offers ARPG-oriented components.
The game is notable in its presentation, both from a visual and musical perspective. Visually, the game is notable in having gorgeously detailed graphics and huge sprites, along a unique visual identity for its game. This is not surprising if we consider that this is the maiden design work of Akira Yasuda or “Akiman”. Musically, it presents a particularly original musical composition by none other than Tamayo Kawamoto, still a member of Capcom’s Alph Lyla by this year. Let us proceed in order, however. Forgotten Worlds features a fairly rich colour palette with fluidly animated characters, from the most basic lizardmen zakos on Stage one to the lethal drones in the final Stage nine. There is a certain prevalence of dark colours, copper, and crimson shades, given the darker tinge of fantasy underpinning the world setting. Nevertheless, the game looks highly detailed and quite well-animated, for its year of release.
The creation of the world setting is the strong part of the game’s visual identity. Stages one to three take place in “Dust City world”, a highly technological city lying in ruins during the game’s period. Stages four to Six take place in “pyramid world”, which recreates the underworld of ancient Egypt gods. Stages seven to Nine take place in “sky world”, a virtual heaven/hell with a new tower of babel as the base for Bios and his armies. Characters tend to be small and large enemies may be big. Bosses are massive; for instance, “War God” on Stage three occupies the equivalent of five screens, while players fly upward to kill him. Each Stage has tons of intricate background details and highly distinctive enemies, such as the various Chinese mythic creatures on Stage seven. The game is richly designed and highly evocative via its exquisite graphics, simply put.
The OST complements this visual design in a remarkably fitting manner. Tamayo created a complex sound tapestry that echoes the one she composed for Ghouls’n Ghosts. To the best of my understanding, Tamayo used synthesizers to recreate the sounds and tones of klaviers and church-style organs and attempted to re-create a baroque classical music sound for Stages one-three. As a result, these Stages resemble the musical scores of fantasy movies of the era, such as Ridley Scott’s Legend. On Stages four-six, Tamayo instead attempted to recreate the beats of ethnic music from the middle East, given that the Stages take place in mythical Egyptian underworld. The OST then moves into almost gothic territory during Stages seven-nine, since 1P and 2P must enter Bios’ heaven/hell and kill the most powerful of the “gods”. Organ-based brooding themes feature prominently, and the music takes dramatic pace and undertones.
The OST may not be to everyone taste’s due to its immersive stylistic choices and blend of genres, but it combines with Stage design in an elaborate manner. Each theme matches the Stage’s specific world settings, with changes in tempo and rhythm matching the action smoothly. For instance, the entrance of Stage three’s boss comes with a sudden piano passage alerting the players to the god’s ominous arrival. One could thus argue that the OST provides a well-executed movie-like score to the epic action of the game. Sound effects are also impressive, since the game features several voice samples during cutscenes, more refined sound effects for explosions and weapons, and a more accurate use of the stereo capabilities of the CPS-1. Overall, Forgotten Worlds is a superbly designed game that still looks and sounds impressive after all these years and presents the in-game action in an exquisite manner.
By this point of the squib, we can move my discussion of the game’s difficulty, using the hopefully well-establish term and concept of Facet. I believe that Forgotten Worlds offers three Facets as types of difficulty to players: game mechanics, Stage design/layout, and the interaction of the two as a weak third Facet. With early Capcom games, this interaction appears as the exception rather than the rule, as I mentioned in previous squibs (e.g. Black Tiger, Tiger Road). I thus suggest that the first two Facets attract 20 and 25 points out of the total 50 points, and the interactional Facet attracts the remaining 5. I anticipate matters a bit and suggest that the final score is 22/50 points: Forgotten Worlds is a low-tier shmup for expert players, and a rewarding “rotary experience”. The reasons why I propose these three Facets are as follows, proceeding via proposed order of Facets.
For the First facet, players must master the rotary mechanics in a manner that differs from other games in the genre. After all, other titles combined axial and polar movement in the joystick, not the attack button. Players need to kill as many enemies as possible and collect their zenny coins to upgrade as soon as possible; attacking power matters, in this game. Learning how to use satellite modules is tricky though not as hard as using pods in R-Type games. At least in my experience, players may leave them in any position and exploit their attacking power with ease. Bullet-cancelling and power-blanking enemies, especially bosses, requires quite a bit of practice. The surge and spark attacks are not crucial but can help players in tenser situations. Overall, however, the game mechanics do not attract more than 5/20 points of difficulty: practice a bit, and the mechanics will become intuitive.
For the second Facet, players must learn the Stage layouts, the potential traps and secret items, e.g. extra HPs appearing when 1P/2P shoot the hiding spots. Enemies appear from different directions, since 1P and 2P can quickly rotate and shoot them down with their usually powerful weapons. Stages four to six have branching paths in their second parts, probably a nod to Darius. Players must choose which path they prefer and learn how to handle their specific difficulties. Stages seven to nine have enemies with high HPs or sections with dozens of minor enemies: players need to develop strategies to handle these onslaughts without losing too many HPs (or none). Bosses, except for Stage one’s ”Paramecium”, are not difficult to handle, but each of them requires specific speed-kill techniques. The final Boss Bios, for instance, can die quickly if players point-blank its weak spot when the boss exposes it.
I thus suggest that each boss a motivates one point of difficulty, and that Stages four to nine justify one point each due to their specific design. At 14/25, this facet offers the main source of difficulty in the game. The third, weak Facet is the interaction of the first two Facets. Two sub-Facets fall within this domain: sections with non-horizontal scrolling (Stage three, Third Boss, Stage five, Stages six and nine), and the positioning of modules. First, when the game scrolls upwards (Stages three, six and nine) players must be careful above enemies suddenly appearing from above and from the sides. Knowledge of enemies’ position and use of point-blanking techniques is fundamental, indeed. Second, moving the module around 1P/2P to handle stage-specific passages is always useful: modules are weapons and shields at once. At 2/5 difficulty points, this Facet represents a small but important source of difficulty.
We thus have reached our total of 22/50 points and motivated our evaluation. Xenny is now suggesting that we wrap up and move to the conclusions, but personally I would prefer to interweave this evaluation with my own experiences of the game. The f#$%ing xenomorph can always find a new place to rent, if in disagreement. Anyway: it is 1990 and I am going to the local bar more often, also because the gentleman owner seems to have a good taste for games and pinballs. In October 1990, this good taste takes the form of a Forgotten Worlds board and a few other titles I simply cannot recall, at this moment of writing. I promise that, when I will re-write all the squibs, I will try to make sense of my memories about games and the places and times in which I played them. For now, bear with me, please.
This game charms me in a few minutes or so, since it seems to have everything I may possibly ask for, in a game. It has a variant of the rotary mechanics from Time Soldiers, a wildly expansive setting with a cheesy mix of fantasy and SF, and music from this brilliant Capcom musician. I see from other people’s credits that it pilfers ideas from other shooting games and even has a weapons shop, as in Black Tiger and Wonder Boy in Monster Land. It is already cold, snowy, and dark, and the game seems perfect for this bout of early Winter. Furthermore, some of the locals seem to already have a deep grasp of the game and they are quite willing to explain me how to play it. As a kid, I do not think that I could ask for a more ideal setting for playing a new game.
For the next three months, I must admit, the game teaches me a lesson in humility. My progress is astonishingly slow, and for the first three weeks I am not even sure that I understand the mechanics. Using the attack button to rotate the character confuses me to no end. I played Time Soldiers, SNK’s Guevara and Ikari III, and tried out Data East’s Heavy Barrel, so my brain needs to adapt to the idea that the right hand now controls rotations. Until the end of January, then, I struggle to understand how to handle positioning of the module and then spend a lot of time mastering Stage three’s War God boss. Slow progress continues until the end of March, when I reach Stage six for the first time and the gentleman owner swaps the game with some other title I forgot about (maybe, a forgettable title like Seibu’s Raiden).
Fast forward to 2000, my MAME gap year. It is late October, and I am slowly recovering from my awful first year of BA. I study, train, and play games, and perform these activities by pursuing goals with a survivalist attuited. I only remember that I re-discover this game on a late, cold October night. This time around, I am committing myself to playing one or two games per night, with the goal of completing grudges that are often a decade old. I have a good grasp of the game’s mechanics and stages, and I only know how to use this game’s rotary controls. From late November to Christmas, I clear the game daily. It is Christmas of 2005, 2006, 2012, and of other subsequent years. If the weather is cold and dark and cozy, I always happily re-visit this game, though the 1-CC may just be a chimera.
These memories seem quite fragmentary: let us have concise conclusions, to balance matters out. Forgotten Worlds is a HORI shmup with ARPG and “Euro Shmup” elements, plus a variant of the rotary joystick mechanic. Players take the role of 1P & 2P, two rugged soldiers who must slay the divine armies of Bios, a mysterious and immensely powerful alien invader. The game features nine Stages of brilliantly designed action by Okamoto, a cool and exotic OST by Tamayo Kawamoto, and the maiden art and design by Akiman. The game is also a quite solid challenge for any players who wish to test their HORI skills with a shmup including quite a few contaminations from other genres. Forgotten Worlds thus acts as a veritable time capsule charting the beginnings of Capcom and its perhaps most famous designers. 1-CC or occasional credit, be sure to try it out.
(3087 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I swear that in my head this game is the “Christmas shmup”, if only because I 1-CC’ed quite a few times during this period of the year, across the decades. I also admit that as an inveterate atheist, appreciator of the finer aspects/Facets of Michael Moorcock’s prose and denigrator of superstitions, I like the whole “god-slaying” theme. I also suspect that Bios is Capcom’s homage to a wide spectrum of manga characters, but I am not really sure which ones are the clearest influences.)
Forgotten/Lost Worlds (Capcom, 1988) is an HORI(zontal) shmup with a rotating joystick and one of Capcom’s first games on their CPS-1 board. The game combines a Dying Earth Science Fantasy setting with more Heroic Fantasy themes strongly reminiscent of Michael Moorcock oeuvre. In the 29th century, a galactic conqueror has reduced Earth to dust; the last survivors send a biologically enhanced flying hero to defeat this god-like being and save the planet. The game is notable in featuring rotating joystick controls, one of the earliest human player characters in the genre, and highly detailed, multi-screen boss battles. If players can set aside some game mechanics bringing the game closer to ”Euro shmups”, they can certainly enjoy this intriguing and somewhat unique shmup. My goal in this squib is to argue why this is the case, and why my dear readers should try the game at least once.
We have discussed the micro-context of rotary games in the Time Soldiers. Furthermore, if we go back to Last Duel’s squib, we have a good context for Capcom’s 1988 releases. For this squib, we combine the two contexts into a larger backdrop to the game’s release. By 1988, Capcom had a more powerful hardware in the form of the CPS-1 and had a certain relevance in the market via its earlier successful titles. In 1988, designer Tokuro Fujiwara and his team released the legendary Ghouls’n Ghosts, so Capcom had a successful hit further cementing their reputation. Forgotten Worlds acted as the third unofficial chapter in the “jetpack trilogy” after Section Z and Side Arms. It also acted as an attempt to carve part of the HORI market against Taito’s Darius and Irem’s R-Type. Yoshiki Okamoto, father of Street Fighter II, decided to compete with a shmup with an epic style.
This epic style emerges via the game’s story and setting. The game takes place in the 29th century, when the galactic conqueror “Bios” decides to lay waste to Earth and its inhabitants. He succeeds in this goal via the help of the Bios armies, who are so powerful as to appear as “gods” to human survivors. The survivors hide for a long time, in a desperate attempt to regroup. After decades of secrecy, two unknown soldiers with psychokinetic powers and immense martial skills, “P(layer)1” and “P(layer)2” start their liberation war from these gods and their majesty Bios. The game thus incorporates fictional that span from sources as different as the epic Gilgamesh as Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cycle and Roger Zelezny’s Lord of Light. If players 1-CC the game, they can literally free humankind from the tyranny of “the gods”, though if these are extremely powerful aliens.
With this epic story and context in place, we can concentrate on the explication of the game mechanics. Players control P1 and P2 via the joystick: the characters can move in eight directions, while flying in an upright position. The A button controls the main shot, which can further find the support of secondary attacks; the game implements a relatively fast auto-fire rate. There is no default B button, but players can add a second button to simulate a slightly faster auto-fire rate. Differently from other rotary games, Forgotten Worlds the A button also acts as a “roll switch” button controlling the angle at which 1P and 2P can shoot. With 16 fixed positions at 22.5° of distance each, players can thus move and shoot in any direction. Though technically a rotary shmup, Forgotten Worlds does not actually use a proper rotary joystick.
Players can also release a desperation bomb if they press the A button, but sacrifice part of their energy. Forgotten Worlds thus follows 1943 in including some typical Euro Shmup mechanics, one of them being an energy bar. A second mechanic close to this maligned sub-genre is the use of a weapons shop. 1P and 2P can collect Capcom’s famed Zenny coins when killing enemies. Once per stage, they can visit a shop in which the mysterious “Sylphie” is ready to sell them more powerful weapons, extra energy, armour, or game hints. Weapons follow a levelling up scheme: once players buy a weapon of a given level (e.g. level 2 machinegun), the next level becomes available. Thus, the game also includes A(rcade)RPG mechanics in how characters can increase their power. To pursue this objective, players must however kill as many enemies as possible, to collect their zenny coins.
1P and 2P can thus buy increasingly powerful primary weapons, but can also buy secondary weapons in the form of “satellite modules”. These are small pods following the two characters along the screen and releasing secondary attacks of various types and power. Pods can absorb basic bullets, so players can also use them to cancel these attacks from screen. If players shoot and rotate their angle, satellite modules will rotate accordingly and re-orient their attacks. If players do not shoot while changing angle, the satellite modules can change position around 1P and 2P instead. Players can also point-blank enemies with the satellite modules, since these secondary weapons are invincible. In so doing, they can further increase fire-rate and cancel bullets. This R-type-style technique is generally risky, but can land devastating damage against larger enemies and bosses that use partial shields (e.g. Stage five’s boss).
The game has a few more mechanics that complete the picture. Pressing the A button repeatedly can then release a bomb-like attack (i.e. the “mega crush”), but this results in a loss of the character’s energy. When players start a co-op play, they can also trigger the “Aura spark”, i.e. a flow of energy that strengthens the characters’ attack while releasing sparks (of course). The extra energy power-up increases the number of H(it)P(oint)s permanently; the first aid kits refills the HP bar, which automatically refills after clearing each stage. The shop appears after 90 seconds or so into the stage, and seems to re-appear every 30 seconds or so, until players reach the boss. Boss fights can be long and players can time them out, but receive no bonus points or zenny coins afterwards. Overall, Forgotten Worlds is mostly a HORI shmup with rotary mechanics, but also offers ARPG-oriented components.
The game is notable in its presentation, both from a visual and musical perspective. Visually, the game is notable in having gorgeously detailed graphics and huge sprites, along a unique visual identity for its game. This is not surprising if we consider that this is the maiden design work of Akira Yasuda or “Akiman”. Musically, it presents a particularly original musical composition by none other than Tamayo Kawamoto, still a member of Capcom’s Alph Lyla by this year. Let us proceed in order, however. Forgotten Worlds features a fairly rich colour palette with fluidly animated characters, from the most basic lizardmen zakos on Stage one to the lethal drones in the final Stage nine. There is a certain prevalence of dark colours, copper, and crimson shades, given the darker tinge of fantasy underpinning the world setting. Nevertheless, the game looks highly detailed and quite well-animated, for its year of release.
The creation of the world setting is the strong part of the game’s visual identity. Stages one to three take place in “Dust City world”, a highly technological city lying in ruins during the game’s period. Stages four to Six take place in “pyramid world”, which recreates the underworld of ancient Egypt gods. Stages seven to Nine take place in “sky world”, a virtual heaven/hell with a new tower of babel as the base for Bios and his armies. Characters tend to be small and large enemies may be big. Bosses are massive; for instance, “War God” on Stage three occupies the equivalent of five screens, while players fly upward to kill him. Each Stage has tons of intricate background details and highly distinctive enemies, such as the various Chinese mythic creatures on Stage seven. The game is richly designed and highly evocative via its exquisite graphics, simply put.
The OST complements this visual design in a remarkably fitting manner. Tamayo created a complex sound tapestry that echoes the one she composed for Ghouls’n Ghosts. To the best of my understanding, Tamayo used synthesizers to recreate the sounds and tones of klaviers and church-style organs and attempted to re-create a baroque classical music sound for Stages one-three. As a result, these Stages resemble the musical scores of fantasy movies of the era, such as Ridley Scott’s Legend. On Stages four-six, Tamayo instead attempted to recreate the beats of ethnic music from the middle East, given that the Stages take place in mythical Egyptian underworld. The OST then moves into almost gothic territory during Stages seven-nine, since 1P and 2P must enter Bios’ heaven/hell and kill the most powerful of the “gods”. Organ-based brooding themes feature prominently, and the music takes dramatic pace and undertones.
The OST may not be to everyone taste’s due to its immersive stylistic choices and blend of genres, but it combines with Stage design in an elaborate manner. Each theme matches the Stage’s specific world settings, with changes in tempo and rhythm matching the action smoothly. For instance, the entrance of Stage three’s boss comes with a sudden piano passage alerting the players to the god’s ominous arrival. One could thus argue that the OST provides a well-executed movie-like score to the epic action of the game. Sound effects are also impressive, since the game features several voice samples during cutscenes, more refined sound effects for explosions and weapons, and a more accurate use of the stereo capabilities of the CPS-1. Overall, Forgotten Worlds is a superbly designed game that still looks and sounds impressive after all these years and presents the in-game action in an exquisite manner.
By this point of the squib, we can move my discussion of the game’s difficulty, using the hopefully well-establish term and concept of Facet. I believe that Forgotten Worlds offers three Facets as types of difficulty to players: game mechanics, Stage design/layout, and the interaction of the two as a weak third Facet. With early Capcom games, this interaction appears as the exception rather than the rule, as I mentioned in previous squibs (e.g. Black Tiger, Tiger Road). I thus suggest that the first two Facets attract 20 and 25 points out of the total 50 points, and the interactional Facet attracts the remaining 5. I anticipate matters a bit and suggest that the final score is 22/50 points: Forgotten Worlds is a low-tier shmup for expert players, and a rewarding “rotary experience”. The reasons why I propose these three Facets are as follows, proceeding via proposed order of Facets.
For the First facet, players must master the rotary mechanics in a manner that differs from other games in the genre. After all, other titles combined axial and polar movement in the joystick, not the attack button. Players need to kill as many enemies as possible and collect their zenny coins to upgrade as soon as possible; attacking power matters, in this game. Learning how to use satellite modules is tricky though not as hard as using pods in R-Type games. At least in my experience, players may leave them in any position and exploit their attacking power with ease. Bullet-cancelling and power-blanking enemies, especially bosses, requires quite a bit of practice. The surge and spark attacks are not crucial but can help players in tenser situations. Overall, however, the game mechanics do not attract more than 5/20 points of difficulty: practice a bit, and the mechanics will become intuitive.
For the second Facet, players must learn the Stage layouts, the potential traps and secret items, e.g. extra HPs appearing when 1P/2P shoot the hiding spots. Enemies appear from different directions, since 1P and 2P can quickly rotate and shoot them down with their usually powerful weapons. Stages four to six have branching paths in their second parts, probably a nod to Darius. Players must choose which path they prefer and learn how to handle their specific difficulties. Stages seven to nine have enemies with high HPs or sections with dozens of minor enemies: players need to develop strategies to handle these onslaughts without losing too many HPs (or none). Bosses, except for Stage one’s ”Paramecium”, are not difficult to handle, but each of them requires specific speed-kill techniques. The final Boss Bios, for instance, can die quickly if players point-blank its weak spot when the boss exposes it.
I thus suggest that each boss a motivates one point of difficulty, and that Stages four to nine justify one point each due to their specific design. At 14/25, this facet offers the main source of difficulty in the game. The third, weak Facet is the interaction of the first two Facets. Two sub-Facets fall within this domain: sections with non-horizontal scrolling (Stage three, Third Boss, Stage five, Stages six and nine), and the positioning of modules. First, when the game scrolls upwards (Stages three, six and nine) players must be careful above enemies suddenly appearing from above and from the sides. Knowledge of enemies’ position and use of point-blanking techniques is fundamental, indeed. Second, moving the module around 1P/2P to handle stage-specific passages is always useful: modules are weapons and shields at once. At 2/5 difficulty points, this Facet represents a small but important source of difficulty.
We thus have reached our total of 22/50 points and motivated our evaluation. Xenny is now suggesting that we wrap up and move to the conclusions, but personally I would prefer to interweave this evaluation with my own experiences of the game. The f#$%ing xenomorph can always find a new place to rent, if in disagreement. Anyway: it is 1990 and I am going to the local bar more often, also because the gentleman owner seems to have a good taste for games and pinballs. In October 1990, this good taste takes the form of a Forgotten Worlds board and a few other titles I simply cannot recall, at this moment of writing. I promise that, when I will re-write all the squibs, I will try to make sense of my memories about games and the places and times in which I played them. For now, bear with me, please.
This game charms me in a few minutes or so, since it seems to have everything I may possibly ask for, in a game. It has a variant of the rotary mechanics from Time Soldiers, a wildly expansive setting with a cheesy mix of fantasy and SF, and music from this brilliant Capcom musician. I see from other people’s credits that it pilfers ideas from other shooting games and even has a weapons shop, as in Black Tiger and Wonder Boy in Monster Land. It is already cold, snowy, and dark, and the game seems perfect for this bout of early Winter. Furthermore, some of the locals seem to already have a deep grasp of the game and they are quite willing to explain me how to play it. As a kid, I do not think that I could ask for a more ideal setting for playing a new game.
For the next three months, I must admit, the game teaches me a lesson in humility. My progress is astonishingly slow, and for the first three weeks I am not even sure that I understand the mechanics. Using the attack button to rotate the character confuses me to no end. I played Time Soldiers, SNK’s Guevara and Ikari III, and tried out Data East’s Heavy Barrel, so my brain needs to adapt to the idea that the right hand now controls rotations. Until the end of January, then, I struggle to understand how to handle positioning of the module and then spend a lot of time mastering Stage three’s War God boss. Slow progress continues until the end of March, when I reach Stage six for the first time and the gentleman owner swaps the game with some other title I forgot about (maybe, a forgettable title like Seibu’s Raiden).
Fast forward to 2000, my MAME gap year. It is late October, and I am slowly recovering from my awful first year of BA. I study, train, and play games, and perform these activities by pursuing goals with a survivalist attuited. I only remember that I re-discover this game on a late, cold October night. This time around, I am committing myself to playing one or two games per night, with the goal of completing grudges that are often a decade old. I have a good grasp of the game’s mechanics and stages, and I only know how to use this game’s rotary controls. From late November to Christmas, I clear the game daily. It is Christmas of 2005, 2006, 2012, and of other subsequent years. If the weather is cold and dark and cozy, I always happily re-visit this game, though the 1-CC may just be a chimera.
These memories seem quite fragmentary: let us have concise conclusions, to balance matters out. Forgotten Worlds is a HORI shmup with ARPG and “Euro Shmup” elements, plus a variant of the rotary joystick mechanic. Players take the role of 1P & 2P, two rugged soldiers who must slay the divine armies of Bios, a mysterious and immensely powerful alien invader. The game features nine Stages of brilliantly designed action by Okamoto, a cool and exotic OST by Tamayo Kawamoto, and the maiden art and design by Akiman. The game is also a quite solid challenge for any players who wish to test their HORI skills with a shmup including quite a few contaminations from other genres. Forgotten Worlds thus acts as a veritable time capsule charting the beginnings of Capcom and its perhaps most famous designers. 1-CC or occasional credit, be sure to try it out.
(3087 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I swear that in my head this game is the “Christmas shmup”, if only because I 1-CC’ed quite a few times during this period of the year, across the decades. I also admit that as an inveterate atheist, appreciator of the finer aspects/Facets of Michael Moorcock’s prose and denigrator of superstitions, I like the whole “god-slaying” theme. I also suspect that Bios is Capcom’s homage to a wide spectrum of manga characters, but I am not really sure which ones are the clearest influences.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
1943: The Battle of Midway (Capcom, 1987) & 1943: Midway Kaisen (Capcom, 1988)
I am going to discuss Capcom’s 1943: The battle of Midway in this squib, along with its relatively obscure but certainly cool variant 1943: Kaisen. In case you wonder, Kai(sen) is the Japanese name for the hyphen, and refers to the fact that the game is an “extra/remixed version”. I will discuss 1943 following my usual structure for squibs, and then add further commentary to explain how Kai differs from the first title. 1943 has several revisions and even bootlegs differing in difficulty tweaks (e.g. how hard the last boss is), and offers ports on several consoles. Kai, on the other hand, was a J(a)P(an)-only games that seems to appear only in Capcom Arcade Stadium. The S(hmup)T(reatise)s for these games are here. We add further details once we start with the squib:
1943: The Battle of Midway (Capcom, 1987) is a (Ro)TATE shmup in which the US forces battle against the Japanese navy during 1943’s “Battle of the Midway islands”. The game features some key mechanics from Euro shmups, a relatively gradual difficulty curve that explodes during the final boss battle, and a curious “extra” version: 1943: Midway Kaisen (Capcom, 1988). Capcom indeed had an annus mirabilis in 1987, since they released this game and other gems that we have already discussed in this thread (e.g. Bionic Commando). 1943 marked their attempt at creating a great sequel to Shinji’s Okamoto’s classic 1942. The game’s legacy has continued with several titles like 1941: Counter attack , 1944: The Loop Master and 19XX: The war against destiny, Furthermore, Psikyo’s Strikers series act as spiritual siblings. The goal of this squib is to convince my readers to revisit these two almost forgotten shmup gems.
For this shmup, I would like to define a context of release that concentrates on Capcom’s annus mirabilis. In 1987, Capcom was probably the metaphorical equivalent of an exploding volcano, judging from the sheer number of classic games they released. This was the year of Street Fighter, the game laying the foundations for the revolution of the arcade games system. This year also saw the release of Bionic Commando, Black Tiger, Tiger Road and the certainly lesser known Avenger. The legendary Ghouls’n Ghosts and the classy Last Duel and Forgotten Worlds would grace arcades in 1988, along with Kai. Bigger and smaller arcade companies were also on fire in those years, and trying to summarise the Zeitgeist would not be feasible. My previous squibs attempt to introduce pieces of the puzzle, however, so my readers should have started developing a feeling of those concepts flowing through arcades, worldwide.
Romantic depictions of history maybe belong to the passages in which I rant about my experiences, agreed. Let me thus introduce the plot of the game, progressing towards the experiences one step at a time. The game pits two unnamed pilots from the US forces during the Battle of Midway islands. In this battle, the US naval forces turned the tide of the World War II theatre in the Pacific. The battle started via the almost accidental discovery of the Japanese Imperial Navy heading towards this archipelago. The US forces were able to prepare a quick strike against the then more powerful and well-organised Japanese navy and, among other results, sunk the legendary battleship Yamato. The game does not follow the historical events closely: the two unnamed pilots obliterate the key battleship in the fleet one by one, sinking the Yamato during the final battle on Stage 16 (10, in Kai).
Historical inaccuracies increase in 1943: Kai, which swaps the P-38 lightning of the first game with a biplane and has laser weapons as possible options. This weapon and the other weapons form the core mechanics of both games, as we discuss next. Both games use the joystick to control movement in eight directions, the A button to control shots, and the B button for special attacks. The basic attack is a puny dual shot that requires tapping, whereas special attacks vary depending on which part of a Stage players are fighting. In aerial first halves on all Stages, players can use lightning attack hitting all enemies and clearing all bullets on screen as a special attack. In maritime second halves, players can use a tsunami-like wave. Both special attacks freeze enemies on their spots for roughly 1.5 seconds, so players can also move and blast them while they are defenceless.
Both games have a Euro-shmup feature: planes have a H(it)P(oint)s/fuel bar that slowly depletes as time passes, and when planes take hits. Planes get a full refill after players successfully destroy a boss (80% destruction rate or higher), when they collect a “Pow” icon (8 HPs) or a Yashichi icon (full refill). HPs increase up to 128 as the game progresses and players approach the final Stage 16 (10, for Kai). The weapon system in both games rotate around changing icons and fixed icons. Fixed icons activate the type of attack associated to the icon (e.g. four-way shot), some extra energy, or points bonuses. The changing icons work in a manner like the Side Arms system. Icons start from the “pow” power-up and flip through various extra attacks until players collect one item. Each weapon icon adds 20 seconds of attack power, and the upper time limit is 80 seconds.
In 1943, players can choose among four attacks: four-way shot, shotgun, rocket (i.e. piercing missile-like shot) and missile (i.e. dual, automatic missiles). The fifth power-up activates two helpers that join the planes’ side but explode after three hits. In 1943, the shotgun attack is as useless as its counterpart in Side Arms, whereas the other attacks have their strengths and weaknesses (e.g. missile and rocket activate autofire). In Kai, the shotgun is more powerful and acts as a bullet-cancelling weapon: it cancels enemies’ bullets when hitting them. This game also switches the rocket attack with a double laser beam attack with piercing power. Each power-up awards 64 seconds of activation, against a limit of 64 points. In 1943 players must constantly juggle power-ups and refill their weapon time, 20 seconds per power-up; in Kai, there is less pressure to constantly refill weapon time.
The games also have the “rolling loop manoeuvre” from 1942, the first title in the series. When players press A+B, the planes will do a vertical loop and temporarily become invincible from bullets, as they fly at a higher quote. Players start with 2 rolling manoeuvres, and increase to three and then to four as they progress into the game. Again, players can also use B attacks to cancel bullets, but each use consumes 8 HPs; use manoeuvres and special attacks with wisdom. In both games, players can input some “special codes” at the beginning of a stage to start with a free full amount of an extra weapon. The codes are in the ST, in case readers want to use them. The games also have several secret items that players can reveal by shooting their hiding spots in each stage. The guide also explains where and how to find them.
My discussion of the game mechanics might have led readers in perhaps inferencing that Kai is an easier revision/extra version of the game. This is indeed correct, but it is also an aspect or Facet that we discuss once we have addressed the aspect/Facet of the games’ audio-visual presentation. [1]943[/i] and Kai run on pre-CPS-1 hardware, so they feature more limit colour palettes and animation frames. Stages have simple designs: most Stages have first halves presenting aerial battles in the clouds, and then maritime battles at sea level. The white of the clouds, the blue of the sea and the grey/orange shades of ships and planes’ steel form the entirety of the games’ backgrounds. Kai is however notable in having a three Stages set at dusk. Thus, these Stages offer a garish tone of orange covering clouds and seas to simulate the dying sun’s rays.
A visually satisfying aspect of the game is that this simple design has an elegant choice underpinning it. Since the pilots’ mission is that sink the Japanese navy’s key ships, each Stage simulates a “surprise strike” mission. Players thus spend 80 seconds or so in a Stage’s first part set in the ships’ aerial perimeter of defence. Planes move to sea quote, and players spend another 80 seconds to destroy a target ship’s convoy, and then the ship itself. After each Stage, planes receive a full refill (on an air-carrier) and a brief regarding the next mission. Nevertheless, visual presentation is certainly solid but heavily focused on creating an atmosphere of terse “war in the skies and on the seas”. Kai perhaps offers a richer colour palette and some historical licenses via the laser weapons, but both games focus on offering graphics functional to the at times frantic action.
The audio Facet involves one point of divergence. In 1943, players listen to four dramatic themes during the aerial battles and three themes during the maritime battles. There are no themes except for the aerial-only Stages (three, nine, 14), which have their own boss theme. Overall, the OST by Alph Lyla’s relatively obscure member Yamaga Kumi is quite solid in its attempt to create a “war movie” feeling. Sound effects have a quirky 8-bit sonority, as one would expect for a game running on this hardware. However, most sound effects (e.g. explosions) appear recycled from Capcom’s early games, thus giving a certain sensation of Deja-vu to players well-versed in this company’s game. Overall, though, 1943 has a solid audio-visual presentation that presents the action in a simple and functional manner. Though hardly memorable, the game looks and sounds crisp and well-designed.
Kai, on the other hand, involves a collaboration among (but not only) Harumi Fujita, Ayako Mori and Tamayo Kawamoto, among other Capcom musicians. As the story goes, Capcom’s supervisors initially rejected Ayako Mori’s first version of the OST. However, the Alph Lyla crew joined forces to produce a brilliant “late night Jazz” OST, and in so doing they met the incoming deadline. Players may perhaps develop a lingering feeling that Jazz in the style of Steely Dan’s more nocturnally oriented pieces may not be appropriate to shmups action. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, Kai offers a distinct tonal shift from the more militaristically-oriented 1943. This game offers a distinct audio-visual identity that is certainly functional to the action, but adds a certain “cool” factor also involving the use of biplanes as vehicles of choice. Both games look and sound crisp and well-designed; Kai, a bit jazzy.
Let us now move to the topic of difficulty, which we also discuss via the standard tool/term of Facet. In line with other Capcom titles, e.g. Black Tiger and Tiger Road, 1943 and Kai include game mechanics and Stage design/layout as key Facets. In my view, no other Facet plays a relevant role, in either game. We can thus divide the 50 total points along these two Facets. The central differences between these two games and their resulting difficulties involve the distribution of difficulty points. In 1943, players must master four mechanics: the use and refilling of weapons, the refilling of energy levels, the use of special (i.e. B button) attacks, and rolling loops. Players must always have an eye on how many seconds they have before their weapon expires, how much energy is in stock, how to use special attacks and how to use defensive rolls.
In Kai, weapons always give a maximum of 64 seconds and energy refills are more frequent. Having a good grasp of special attacks and defences in certainly useful but not ultimately necessary. Thus, this first Facet attracts 4/25 points in 1943 and 3/25 points in Kai. Stage layouts are the main source of difficulty in both games, but in different measures and forms. In 1943, Players can overcome stages with a good grasp of the mechanics and good dodging skills until they clear Stage nine, the second stage only involving aerial battles. From Stage 10 to 15, players should learn the specific types of enemy formations appearing during the aerial battles, and how to handle bosses during the maritime battles. Stage 16 offers a dramatic bump in difficulty: players must master the first half of the aerial battle, recover a full stock of energy, and then master the second part.
Once players can enter the final maritime battle with a full stock of energy, they must memorise a safe path to cross the first and second line of defence for the Yamato. Wise timing but also careful of special attacks becomes indispensable, since they drain energy. The Yamato offers another dramatic bump in difficulty, since players must memorise a safe sequence for its front section, one for its central section, and one for its final section. Wise use of the rolling loop can make or break a run: by the final section, planes should have little energy left and have a safe route to clear the final enemies. This facet attracts 18/25 difficulty points, for a total of 22/50 difficulty points. The game offers a low-tier challenge for expert players, but it involves a sharp increase of eight points during the final, nerve-racking stage and boss battle.
In Kai, Stages tend to be fairly easier, with the game ending after Stage ten. Players need to develop a good knowledge Stages six to ten, with the last tenth Stage requiring intensive focus for each half, plus the Yamato battle. At 7/25 points, however, the Stages in this game provide a definitely less stressful and more manageable challenge than in 1943. The total I propose for this game is in fact 10/50, i.e. a top-tier challenge for beginner players. Furthermore, players who choose to abuse the bullet-cancelling shotgun weapons should be able to 1-CC the game in an almost trivial manner (i.e. the difficulty goes down to 5/50). Playing for score both games requires finding the secret items in each stage and battle: the STs contain more details, but here I simply propose that the difficulties increase to 26/50 points for 1943 and 14/50 (or 9/50) points for Kai.
The slight increase in tier should not act as a deterrent for players who wish to 1-CC the two titles: Kai has more scoring tricks and it is an easy title, once mastered. 1943 requires a lot of patience because the final Stage acts almost as a whole challenge onto itself. Both games can be mastered, as I am going to explain via my personal experiences with these two games. Once I tie Xenny to a chair, I think. On we go, with the experiences. It is 1987 and I have started going to the arcade with my new father. Getting used to a new family for a second-grade child is certainly not easy, especially if the new parents are awkward and taciturn. My new older sisters are generally nice but they tend to be focused on their studies and secondary activities, like sports and music lessons.
My new father is however an avid player of videogames like my late father, and his brother is the owner of an “arcade”, or sala giochi (‘games room’, literally) in Italian. I do not remember much also from this early period of my life except that it is more or less October, and before I fully discover arcade gaming via Black Tiger and Thundercade. I start visiting the arcade with my new father and have weird talks with my new uncle. The uncle is one of those weird guys who never make it clear if they are joking or not, and his nice words and compliments always sound like insults at the same time. He however always offers me a few more credits adding to those that my father gives me, which is nice. Still, I must play on a budget and learn to play games well.
I do not remember much about this period of my life, even if I remember that Wonder Boy in Monster Land is a game that I cannot figure out, and there are other games that I find interesting but too difficult. I do remember that my father really likes this game, 1943, because he says that it is based on historical events. He says that the game is difficult, so I try the game a few times while sitting on a stool: the cab is too tall for me. My father is vaguely bemused in seeing that I can reach the end of Stage one: a kid on a stool is not supposed to be this good, at videogames. So, he decides that we can play together in this manner: I follow his movements and instructions, and keep my plane behind his plane while we play.
I do not remember much about the next few months except that we seem to reach Stage nine or so. At some point my uncle removes the game because we are more or less the only people playing it with some dedication; everybody else is focused on newer games. From that point onwards, I have fond memories of the game but the memories fade, as years progress and I grow up. It is now 2000 and it is my MAME gap year; I re-discover this game and my hazy memories of me playing this shortly after being adopted resurface. The memories are not pleasant, but the game seems cooler than what I remembered. I start playing it again and making good progress with ease; at some point, I convince myself that the 1-CC should be easy. After four months of attempts at destroying the Yamato, I resign in frustration.
It is also 2000 and during my MAME gap year I discover by chance Kai, this weird JP-only game that looks like an extra version of 1943. I am a bit perplexed at the idea of a biplane in a WWII setting: maybe Capcom wanted to compete with Toaplan’s Flying Shark. I try the game and quickly discover that the shotgun attack can cancel bullets. It seems that the game becomes splendidly easy by abusing this weapon; indeed, in no more than 20 credits I obtain the clear and decide that it also counts for 1943. Over the years, I casually play the game from time to time; it is easy and has this great jazzy music, which sounds rather familiar in style. I periodically feel that I could try to clear 1943, too, but each attempt drives me livid with frustration: the Yamato final boss is too though.
It is 2019 and I am going through a period of serious grudges with arcade games. I am working in Guangzhou, a city where the summers are long, horrendously humid and hot. After much mulling and pondering, I decide that I must solve my grudge with this game. I prepare save states for the final game and practice until I have a decent survival route, and then I start playing the game every single day. Sooner or later, the Yamato will go down: it is me or her. The Yamato goes down, in September 2018 or so. I actually 1-CC the game a few more times, since I decide to 1-CC each version currently in MAME. It is a nerve-wracking experience: I must avoid getting hit in the last few seconds, at all costs. But this one grudge goes down in flames; after 32 years, I win my “Midway battle”.
I do not want to wax more lyrical than this: sappiness has reached extreme levels, I know. So, in conclusion: 1943: The battle of Midway and 1943: Midway Kaisen are two shmups from Capcom, released in 1987 and 1988. The first game attempts to reconstruct the historical battle via 16 Stages of aerial and maritime battles, and a remarkably though final clash with the Japanese flagship Yamato. The second game offers an alternate/extra take to this title by having only ten Stages, a different power-up and weapon systems, and a groovy jazzy OST. While the first title is notorious for the overall high difficulty and sudden sharp increase of difficulty in the last Stage, the second game is an easy 1-CC for any beginner player. Both games are nevertheless solid games, even if players need to enjoy their Euro shmup-like mechanics and perhaps quirky mechanics.
(3254 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I absolutely swear, 1-CC’ing 1943 by myself was the closest experience to “videogame torture that I had in my gaming years. I believe that the game is not bad, but I simply wish that somebody would have tested the final boss before release. Kai, on the other hand, is one of adorably cool and easy shmups that I like to 1-CC when I want an easy challenge and I want to listen to the OST. Tamayo Kawamoto’s theme is sophisticated and jazzy enough that some of my friends listening to my mixtapes even asked if it was some imitator of Donald Fagen’s early efforts, circa The Nightfly. Be sure not to be a smarty pants and 1-CC them both, anyway.)
1943: The Battle of Midway (Capcom, 1987) is a (Ro)TATE shmup in which the US forces battle against the Japanese navy during 1943’s “Battle of the Midway islands”. The game features some key mechanics from Euro shmups, a relatively gradual difficulty curve that explodes during the final boss battle, and a curious “extra” version: 1943: Midway Kaisen (Capcom, 1988). Capcom indeed had an annus mirabilis in 1987, since they released this game and other gems that we have already discussed in this thread (e.g. Bionic Commando). 1943 marked their attempt at creating a great sequel to Shinji’s Okamoto’s classic 1942. The game’s legacy has continued with several titles like 1941: Counter attack , 1944: The Loop Master and 19XX: The war against destiny, Furthermore, Psikyo’s Strikers series act as spiritual siblings. The goal of this squib is to convince my readers to revisit these two almost forgotten shmup gems.
For this shmup, I would like to define a context of release that concentrates on Capcom’s annus mirabilis. In 1987, Capcom was probably the metaphorical equivalent of an exploding volcano, judging from the sheer number of classic games they released. This was the year of Street Fighter, the game laying the foundations for the revolution of the arcade games system. This year also saw the release of Bionic Commando, Black Tiger, Tiger Road and the certainly lesser known Avenger. The legendary Ghouls’n Ghosts and the classy Last Duel and Forgotten Worlds would grace arcades in 1988, along with Kai. Bigger and smaller arcade companies were also on fire in those years, and trying to summarise the Zeitgeist would not be feasible. My previous squibs attempt to introduce pieces of the puzzle, however, so my readers should have started developing a feeling of those concepts flowing through arcades, worldwide.
Romantic depictions of history maybe belong to the passages in which I rant about my experiences, agreed. Let me thus introduce the plot of the game, progressing towards the experiences one step at a time. The game pits two unnamed pilots from the US forces during the Battle of Midway islands. In this battle, the US naval forces turned the tide of the World War II theatre in the Pacific. The battle started via the almost accidental discovery of the Japanese Imperial Navy heading towards this archipelago. The US forces were able to prepare a quick strike against the then more powerful and well-organised Japanese navy and, among other results, sunk the legendary battleship Yamato. The game does not follow the historical events closely: the two unnamed pilots obliterate the key battleship in the fleet one by one, sinking the Yamato during the final battle on Stage 16 (10, in Kai).
Historical inaccuracies increase in 1943: Kai, which swaps the P-38 lightning of the first game with a biplane and has laser weapons as possible options. This weapon and the other weapons form the core mechanics of both games, as we discuss next. Both games use the joystick to control movement in eight directions, the A button to control shots, and the B button for special attacks. The basic attack is a puny dual shot that requires tapping, whereas special attacks vary depending on which part of a Stage players are fighting. In aerial first halves on all Stages, players can use lightning attack hitting all enemies and clearing all bullets on screen as a special attack. In maritime second halves, players can use a tsunami-like wave. Both special attacks freeze enemies on their spots for roughly 1.5 seconds, so players can also move and blast them while they are defenceless.
Both games have a Euro-shmup feature: planes have a H(it)P(oint)s/fuel bar that slowly depletes as time passes, and when planes take hits. Planes get a full refill after players successfully destroy a boss (80% destruction rate or higher), when they collect a “Pow” icon (8 HPs) or a Yashichi icon (full refill). HPs increase up to 128 as the game progresses and players approach the final Stage 16 (10, for Kai). The weapon system in both games rotate around changing icons and fixed icons. Fixed icons activate the type of attack associated to the icon (e.g. four-way shot), some extra energy, or points bonuses. The changing icons work in a manner like the Side Arms system. Icons start from the “pow” power-up and flip through various extra attacks until players collect one item. Each weapon icon adds 20 seconds of attack power, and the upper time limit is 80 seconds.
In 1943, players can choose among four attacks: four-way shot, shotgun, rocket (i.e. piercing missile-like shot) and missile (i.e. dual, automatic missiles). The fifth power-up activates two helpers that join the planes’ side but explode after three hits. In 1943, the shotgun attack is as useless as its counterpart in Side Arms, whereas the other attacks have their strengths and weaknesses (e.g. missile and rocket activate autofire). In Kai, the shotgun is more powerful and acts as a bullet-cancelling weapon: it cancels enemies’ bullets when hitting them. This game also switches the rocket attack with a double laser beam attack with piercing power. Each power-up awards 64 seconds of activation, against a limit of 64 points. In 1943 players must constantly juggle power-ups and refill their weapon time, 20 seconds per power-up; in Kai, there is less pressure to constantly refill weapon time.
The games also have the “rolling loop manoeuvre” from 1942, the first title in the series. When players press A+B, the planes will do a vertical loop and temporarily become invincible from bullets, as they fly at a higher quote. Players start with 2 rolling manoeuvres, and increase to three and then to four as they progress into the game. Again, players can also use B attacks to cancel bullets, but each use consumes 8 HPs; use manoeuvres and special attacks with wisdom. In both games, players can input some “special codes” at the beginning of a stage to start with a free full amount of an extra weapon. The codes are in the ST, in case readers want to use them. The games also have several secret items that players can reveal by shooting their hiding spots in each stage. The guide also explains where and how to find them.
My discussion of the game mechanics might have led readers in perhaps inferencing that Kai is an easier revision/extra version of the game. This is indeed correct, but it is also an aspect or Facet that we discuss once we have addressed the aspect/Facet of the games’ audio-visual presentation. [1]943[/i] and Kai run on pre-CPS-1 hardware, so they feature more limit colour palettes and animation frames. Stages have simple designs: most Stages have first halves presenting aerial battles in the clouds, and then maritime battles at sea level. The white of the clouds, the blue of the sea and the grey/orange shades of ships and planes’ steel form the entirety of the games’ backgrounds. Kai is however notable in having a three Stages set at dusk. Thus, these Stages offer a garish tone of orange covering clouds and seas to simulate the dying sun’s rays.
A visually satisfying aspect of the game is that this simple design has an elegant choice underpinning it. Since the pilots’ mission is that sink the Japanese navy’s key ships, each Stage simulates a “surprise strike” mission. Players thus spend 80 seconds or so in a Stage’s first part set in the ships’ aerial perimeter of defence. Planes move to sea quote, and players spend another 80 seconds to destroy a target ship’s convoy, and then the ship itself. After each Stage, planes receive a full refill (on an air-carrier) and a brief regarding the next mission. Nevertheless, visual presentation is certainly solid but heavily focused on creating an atmosphere of terse “war in the skies and on the seas”. Kai perhaps offers a richer colour palette and some historical licenses via the laser weapons, but both games focus on offering graphics functional to the at times frantic action.
The audio Facet involves one point of divergence. In 1943, players listen to four dramatic themes during the aerial battles and three themes during the maritime battles. There are no themes except for the aerial-only Stages (three, nine, 14), which have their own boss theme. Overall, the OST by Alph Lyla’s relatively obscure member Yamaga Kumi is quite solid in its attempt to create a “war movie” feeling. Sound effects have a quirky 8-bit sonority, as one would expect for a game running on this hardware. However, most sound effects (e.g. explosions) appear recycled from Capcom’s early games, thus giving a certain sensation of Deja-vu to players well-versed in this company’s game. Overall, though, 1943 has a solid audio-visual presentation that presents the action in a simple and functional manner. Though hardly memorable, the game looks and sounds crisp and well-designed.
Kai, on the other hand, involves a collaboration among (but not only) Harumi Fujita, Ayako Mori and Tamayo Kawamoto, among other Capcom musicians. As the story goes, Capcom’s supervisors initially rejected Ayako Mori’s first version of the OST. However, the Alph Lyla crew joined forces to produce a brilliant “late night Jazz” OST, and in so doing they met the incoming deadline. Players may perhaps develop a lingering feeling that Jazz in the style of Steely Dan’s more nocturnally oriented pieces may not be appropriate to shmups action. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, Kai offers a distinct tonal shift from the more militaristically-oriented 1943. This game offers a distinct audio-visual identity that is certainly functional to the action, but adds a certain “cool” factor also involving the use of biplanes as vehicles of choice. Both games look and sound crisp and well-designed; Kai, a bit jazzy.
Let us now move to the topic of difficulty, which we also discuss via the standard tool/term of Facet. In line with other Capcom titles, e.g. Black Tiger and Tiger Road, 1943 and Kai include game mechanics and Stage design/layout as key Facets. In my view, no other Facet plays a relevant role, in either game. We can thus divide the 50 total points along these two Facets. The central differences between these two games and their resulting difficulties involve the distribution of difficulty points. In 1943, players must master four mechanics: the use and refilling of weapons, the refilling of energy levels, the use of special (i.e. B button) attacks, and rolling loops. Players must always have an eye on how many seconds they have before their weapon expires, how much energy is in stock, how to use special attacks and how to use defensive rolls.
In Kai, weapons always give a maximum of 64 seconds and energy refills are more frequent. Having a good grasp of special attacks and defences in certainly useful but not ultimately necessary. Thus, this first Facet attracts 4/25 points in 1943 and 3/25 points in Kai. Stage layouts are the main source of difficulty in both games, but in different measures and forms. In 1943, Players can overcome stages with a good grasp of the mechanics and good dodging skills until they clear Stage nine, the second stage only involving aerial battles. From Stage 10 to 15, players should learn the specific types of enemy formations appearing during the aerial battles, and how to handle bosses during the maritime battles. Stage 16 offers a dramatic bump in difficulty: players must master the first half of the aerial battle, recover a full stock of energy, and then master the second part.
Once players can enter the final maritime battle with a full stock of energy, they must memorise a safe path to cross the first and second line of defence for the Yamato. Wise timing but also careful of special attacks becomes indispensable, since they drain energy. The Yamato offers another dramatic bump in difficulty, since players must memorise a safe sequence for its front section, one for its central section, and one for its final section. Wise use of the rolling loop can make or break a run: by the final section, planes should have little energy left and have a safe route to clear the final enemies. This facet attracts 18/25 difficulty points, for a total of 22/50 difficulty points. The game offers a low-tier challenge for expert players, but it involves a sharp increase of eight points during the final, nerve-racking stage and boss battle.
In Kai, Stages tend to be fairly easier, with the game ending after Stage ten. Players need to develop a good knowledge Stages six to ten, with the last tenth Stage requiring intensive focus for each half, plus the Yamato battle. At 7/25 points, however, the Stages in this game provide a definitely less stressful and more manageable challenge than in 1943. The total I propose for this game is in fact 10/50, i.e. a top-tier challenge for beginner players. Furthermore, players who choose to abuse the bullet-cancelling shotgun weapons should be able to 1-CC the game in an almost trivial manner (i.e. the difficulty goes down to 5/50). Playing for score both games requires finding the secret items in each stage and battle: the STs contain more details, but here I simply propose that the difficulties increase to 26/50 points for 1943 and 14/50 (or 9/50) points for Kai.
The slight increase in tier should not act as a deterrent for players who wish to 1-CC the two titles: Kai has more scoring tricks and it is an easy title, once mastered. 1943 requires a lot of patience because the final Stage acts almost as a whole challenge onto itself. Both games can be mastered, as I am going to explain via my personal experiences with these two games. Once I tie Xenny to a chair, I think. On we go, with the experiences. It is 1987 and I have started going to the arcade with my new father. Getting used to a new family for a second-grade child is certainly not easy, especially if the new parents are awkward and taciturn. My new older sisters are generally nice but they tend to be focused on their studies and secondary activities, like sports and music lessons.
My new father is however an avid player of videogames like my late father, and his brother is the owner of an “arcade”, or sala giochi (‘games room’, literally) in Italian. I do not remember much also from this early period of my life except that it is more or less October, and before I fully discover arcade gaming via Black Tiger and Thundercade. I start visiting the arcade with my new father and have weird talks with my new uncle. The uncle is one of those weird guys who never make it clear if they are joking or not, and his nice words and compliments always sound like insults at the same time. He however always offers me a few more credits adding to those that my father gives me, which is nice. Still, I must play on a budget and learn to play games well.
I do not remember much about this period of my life, even if I remember that Wonder Boy in Monster Land is a game that I cannot figure out, and there are other games that I find interesting but too difficult. I do remember that my father really likes this game, 1943, because he says that it is based on historical events. He says that the game is difficult, so I try the game a few times while sitting on a stool: the cab is too tall for me. My father is vaguely bemused in seeing that I can reach the end of Stage one: a kid on a stool is not supposed to be this good, at videogames. So, he decides that we can play together in this manner: I follow his movements and instructions, and keep my plane behind his plane while we play.
I do not remember much about the next few months except that we seem to reach Stage nine or so. At some point my uncle removes the game because we are more or less the only people playing it with some dedication; everybody else is focused on newer games. From that point onwards, I have fond memories of the game but the memories fade, as years progress and I grow up. It is now 2000 and it is my MAME gap year; I re-discover this game and my hazy memories of me playing this shortly after being adopted resurface. The memories are not pleasant, but the game seems cooler than what I remembered. I start playing it again and making good progress with ease; at some point, I convince myself that the 1-CC should be easy. After four months of attempts at destroying the Yamato, I resign in frustration.
It is also 2000 and during my MAME gap year I discover by chance Kai, this weird JP-only game that looks like an extra version of 1943. I am a bit perplexed at the idea of a biplane in a WWII setting: maybe Capcom wanted to compete with Toaplan’s Flying Shark. I try the game and quickly discover that the shotgun attack can cancel bullets. It seems that the game becomes splendidly easy by abusing this weapon; indeed, in no more than 20 credits I obtain the clear and decide that it also counts for 1943. Over the years, I casually play the game from time to time; it is easy and has this great jazzy music, which sounds rather familiar in style. I periodically feel that I could try to clear 1943, too, but each attempt drives me livid with frustration: the Yamato final boss is too though.
It is 2019 and I am going through a period of serious grudges with arcade games. I am working in Guangzhou, a city where the summers are long, horrendously humid and hot. After much mulling and pondering, I decide that I must solve my grudge with this game. I prepare save states for the final game and practice until I have a decent survival route, and then I start playing the game every single day. Sooner or later, the Yamato will go down: it is me or her. The Yamato goes down, in September 2018 or so. I actually 1-CC the game a few more times, since I decide to 1-CC each version currently in MAME. It is a nerve-wracking experience: I must avoid getting hit in the last few seconds, at all costs. But this one grudge goes down in flames; after 32 years, I win my “Midway battle”.
I do not want to wax more lyrical than this: sappiness has reached extreme levels, I know. So, in conclusion: 1943: The battle of Midway and 1943: Midway Kaisen are two shmups from Capcom, released in 1987 and 1988. The first game attempts to reconstruct the historical battle via 16 Stages of aerial and maritime battles, and a remarkably though final clash with the Japanese flagship Yamato. The second game offers an alternate/extra take to this title by having only ten Stages, a different power-up and weapon systems, and a groovy jazzy OST. While the first title is notorious for the overall high difficulty and sudden sharp increase of difficulty in the last Stage, the second game is an easy 1-CC for any beginner player. Both games are nevertheless solid games, even if players need to enjoy their Euro shmup-like mechanics and perhaps quirky mechanics.
(3254 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I absolutely swear, 1-CC’ing 1943 by myself was the closest experience to “videogame torture that I had in my gaming years. I believe that the game is not bad, but I simply wish that somebody would have tested the final boss before release. Kai, on the other hand, is one of adorably cool and easy shmups that I like to 1-CC when I want an easy challenge and I want to listen to the OST. Tamayo Kawamoto’s theme is sophisticated and jazzy enough that some of my friends listening to my mixtapes even asked if it was some imitator of Donald Fagen’s early efforts, circa The Nightfly. Be sure not to be a smarty pants and 1-CC them both, anyway.)
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Apr 13, 2025 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Carrier Airwing/U.S. Navy (Capcom, 1990)
In this squib we discuss Carrier Airwing/U.S. Navy, one of Capcom’s less popular shmups that had quite the wide distribution, back in the day. The game tends to be quite denigrated around these parts because most people seem to adore Area 88, the manga tie-in that introduced the basic template for the game. I never played Area 88 because I did not have a SNES/Super Famicom and I never had the chance to play it during the short time that the gentleman bartender had it in one of his cabs. I however played Carrier Airwing to death, as it was one of those few shmups that I could 1-CC regularly and brag about it with local arcade goers. If you want to try the game out, Capcom Arcade Stadium is your best bet for a flawless port. The various versions seem to change only in cosmetic details, in case you wonder. Time to save the world, then:
Carrier Airwing/U.S. Navy (Capcom, 1990) is an HORI(zontal) shmup that pits the U.S. Navy forces against the terrorist threat known as “Rabu”, on orders of the U(nited)N(ations). Players can choose among three planes (F-14 Tomcat, A-10 Intruder , and F-18 Hornet) and their pilots, and take off to obliterate Rabu’s armies around the globe. The game features ten Stages of moderate length, a definitely “Euro Shmup” set of game mechanics, and relatively realistic graphics for the time. The game is also one of Capcom’s easiest shmups, even if the final Stage and boss provide a considerable stamina challenge before they meet their maker. Players who want to add a relatively easy 1-CC to their arcade portfolio may thus find a viable challenge in this game. My goal in this squib is to convince you that this game offers a decent challenge despite its shortcomings involving game design and length.
The context in which this game saw its release is perhaps a bit peculiar. Capcom was releasing brilliant titles and more obscure games during the late 1980s. 1990 saw the release of this title, Nemo, and Mega Twins as obscure but quite solid titles from this company. Shmups and R2RKMF fans may remember Mercs from this year, and perhaps 1941: Counter Attack. Nevertheless, Capcom was still capitalising on the immense success of Final Fight and was about to release the epochal Street Fighter 2 in a year’s time. In 1990, Capcom also lost Harumi Fujita, Ayako Mori and Tamayo Kawamoto to other companies (e.g. Taito's Zuntata for Tamayo) and to free-lancing endeavours. SNK also launched the Neo Geo, laying the ground for a decades long-friendly rivalry. Nevertheless, the company was establishing itself as a powerful vector of innovation within the arcade market.
The plot of the game varies between J(a)P(an) and US/EU(rope) versions. In the 1990s, the end of cold war has signalled a new era of peace, but also the rise of new threats to this novel geopolitical scenario. In the JP version, nation X decides to attack nation J in the Far East, with “Rabu” being the mysterious weapons supplier supporting nation X in this act of war. The U.S. navy has the mission to stop this aggression and sends the nuclear aircraft carrier “Carl Vinson” to single-handedly manage this mission. In the EU/US version, “Rabu” becomes a Middle East nation who raises to power via a massive arsenal and threatens world peace, gassing Tokyo as a proof of their power. In this version, the US sends one carrier and its pilot on behalf of the UN. Carrier Airwing thus has this “popcorn flick” type of plot, as a background.
The game mechanics are simple. The joystick controls movement in eight directions; the A button controls main shots, and the B button controls secondary shots. The A button is semi-automatic: players can hold the button to start a quick, fast stream of bullets lasting one second or so. If players periodically tap the button, they can obtain the equivalent of a low-frequency auto-fire stream. The game has two game mechanics typical of Euro shumps: a H(it)P(oint)s/fual bar and a shop-like way to buy upgrades. The fuel/HP bar depletes as stage time progresses or when planes take a hit, but energy power-ups can replenish up to half bar. After each successfully completed Stage, planes get a full energy refill and can then buy upgrades for the next mission. If players do not want upgrades, they can simply skip them and move onto the next mission.
The purchase of upgrades has however also a few interesting uses, game-wise. Money for upgrades comes from the numbers of enemies shot down, and from secondary weapons and energy still in stock at the end of a Stage. Players can thus buy one or two supplies of stage-specific secondary attacks (e.g. rockets on Stage two), extra fuel (25% or 50% more HPs), or even energy shields (tree or five extra HPs). If players buy weapons, fuel and shield before a Stage but complete the Stage without incurring in hits or using the weapons, they will get more conspicuous end-of-Stage bonuses. Perfect kill rates (i.e. 100% of enemies shot down) will also correspond to extra bonus points and money. Differently from other Capcom games and in line with the more realistic setting, the in-game currency are dollars, of course. Players can thus “buy stuff” but avoid using it for score purposes.
The final game mechanic that we discuss has an A(rcade)RPG flavours and originates in Area 88, too. Players must collect power-up icons to increase their shooting power that switch among three attack types. The yellow colour is for the machine gun attack, the blue is for the rocket attack, and the green is for the Vulcan attack. Collect 40 power-ups to max out the weapons’ destructive power at level 6, or the final Stage might become rather hard to handle. Planes have their specialised attacks: machinegun for the Tomcat, rocket for the Hornet, Vulcan for the Intruder. Players can switch to the non-specialised attacks, but these attacks will be 20% less powerful, so using a plane’s specialised option is always the ideal choice. Note thus that the Vulcan-Intruder pair correspond to the “slow, powerful” choice; the machinegun-Tomcat, to the ‘fast, weak’ choice; the rocket-Hornet, to the ‘medium’ choice.
Before we address difficulty and its Facets, we concisely discuss the game’s visual presentation and aural output. Area 88 had manga-esque graphics for the pilots and the cutscenes, but stages mostly featured a realistic approach to vehicles and background. Carrier Airwing has more detailed and realistic designs, since it aims to offer a more cinematographic feeling of “1990s post-cold War action”. The fact that the admiral briefing pilot during cutscenes looks like a bald version of Sean Connery might help in summoning this vibe. The ten Stages offer a globe-trotting appeal with a dash of space exploration. Stage two is set in a badly damaged Tokyo, Stage six in Antarctica, and Stage ten involves the destruction of Rabu’s sub-orbital station and shuttle. With a rich palette, bright colours and crip design, Carrier Airwing sports lovely graphics, a cool outlook, and accurate designs of actual vehicles.
The OST represents perhaps a weak Facet of the game. Manami Matsumae was one of Alph Lyla’s members who also left Capcom in the early 1990s. She worked on Dynasty Wars and a few other games, but her initial works offer this weaker sound often focusing on somewhat bland melodies, plus peculiar choices for the rhythmic sections. The OST for Carrier Wing features a perhaps quirky choice of sampled instruments and themes that I can only describe as “Hollywood action blockbuster” music. Precisely due to this choice of genre, thus, the OST should fade in the background after a few plays, and let players focus on the action. Sound effects also feel bland, as they include average-quality samples of jet engines, explosions, and a few other genre-specific effects. Overall, the game looks good and sounds OK: an acceptable combination.
Since we now have the notion/term of Facet as part of our conversation and we have discussed audio-visual matters, we can concentrate on difficulty. As far as I am concerned, difficulty in this game neatly splits into game mechanics as a first facet and Stage design/layout as the second facet. Carrier Airwing thus presents a 25/25 difficulty ratio out of a total of 50 points, as in the case of other Capcom titles that we discussed so far (e.g. Dynasty Wars, Tiger Road). Game mechanics in this game are simple: learn to use the semi-automatic tapping technique and, in certain Stages, learn to “shoot to the left side”. On Stages three, nine and 10, some sections scroll to the left and have the planes moving according to this scrolling direction. Secondary weapons may require some practice for their proper use, but players can just buy them for points.
The second Facet, Stage design/layout, involves the necessity of learning how to handle specific passages during Stages, and how to handle certain bosses. Rather than dwelling on Specific details, I would suggest that players should practice Stages three to ten and master their in-stage bottlenecks. For instance, Stage four has several narrow passages in which planes can receive accidental damage while manoeuvring inside narrow tunnels. Stage ten is not particularly difficult, but players will reach the true final boss, a lethal satellite armed with laser beams, when their energy is almost depleted. One or two hits may suffice to destroy the planes, in the last moments of this battle. Ultimately, though, 2/25 difficulty points for the game mechanics Facet and 8/25 points for the Stage mechanics/layout Facet seem appropriate. At 10/50 points, Carrier Airwing is a top-tier challenge for beginner players.
Let us now focus on my experiences, then. Please do not worry: Xenny is still tied to a chair, and I have neutralised his extremely acid drool with extremely basic snot (poor Xenny!). It is April 1991, and my uncle seems confident that this year business will be good. He is aware that a certain Street Fighter II has had an apocalyptic impact to the arcade scene in Japan. He has order four boards and plans to be the first one to have the game in town. His plans will not completely realise according to his own zany script, but in from now to September 1991, the revolution is about to come to our small Italian town and its arcades and bars, too. For those of us who do not believe too much into the revolution, though, my uncle has also prepared other plans for enjoyment.
I only remember playing Acrobat Mission during this period: my memories from past “lives” can only emerge slowly. But now in 1991, I do remember that my uncle has prepared a cab with this title for me and the few other shooting enthusiasts. As soon as I arrive at the arcade on the first day that the game is up, he grabs me and tells me to play the game. Free credits “on the house”, too, as he seems anxious about some aspects of the game that do not convince him. I admit that I find the game easy, after the first few credits, and that I can reach Stage four within a few days of attempts. I get stuck on this Stage for two weeks or so, since the Stage is a bottleneck: little extra energy, and a lot of tight manoeuvring reminiscent of the dreadful R-Type from Irem.
Once I figure out how to clear this Stage, my progress is slow but steady. My uncle seems relieved because the game seems to attract a lot of casual gamers who however end their credits between Stage two and Stage four’s bosses. Bottlenecks serve their purpose, apparently. By the end of May or so, I start reaching the final Stage 10 with a certain regularity. I may be a kid who does not like Hollywood action movies, but the idea of a battle to “save the world” in the stratosphere is cool. The reverse scrolling parts mimicking Darius II make me reminisce about this absurdly tough game, however. The year I spent clearing it was a humbling experience: luckily, this game has only a few passages in this mode. Carrier Airwing feels like a game providing solace for those who experienced past pain at the hands of HORI shooters, honestly.
The first clear arrives on an early June day, when people who want to play Street Fighter II are swamping the arcade. I do play the game when I can, but I feel like it has attracted legions of cretins who simply like the ideas of throwing punches and special attacks. I am not sure that these people do really like videogames, honestly. My Carrier Airwing runs attract a few people, though: I can clear the game regularly with all three planes, and I even help some other players in mastering the “final boss Satellite” battle. Summer flows away happily: I am just a kid. It is then summer 2000, 2004, and summer of many other years. I am always happy to have a quick 1-CC of this game, and feel that I can keep a modicum of shmupping skills in stock, though the Hollywood vibe still feels flippant.
Let us conclude, before we fade into nostalgia. Carrier Airwing is a HORI shmup by Capcom released in 1990 in which forces from the US Navy must defeat evil doers from “Rabu”. The game features several game mechanics typical of Euro shmups but overall, ten Stages of moderate length, and an evenly paced progression toward a top-tier challenge for beginner players. Players can also upgrade their weapons following a system reminiscent of A(rcade)RPGs, and in general enjoy a pleasant detour from the more challenging early titles in the HORI shmups genre. Players who wish to explore some of the lesser-known parts of Capcom’s history and want to enjoy an easy 1-CC should find Carrier Airwing a pleasant experience. Fans of more realistic shmups set in the modern era can also enjoy the game’s design and perhaps interesting suggestive geo-politic scenario. Do play it: it is a good game.
(2200 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I still remember that this is one of those few games on which I would see people playing surprisingly well, and even 1-CC it on the odd occasion. My experience with shmups as a kid could be summarised in this way. A few enlightened beings from the older, meaner generations could 1-CC some titles, and often clear one or more loops on Toaplan games. Everybody else would instead whine and complain that the genre was too hard, ugly, unfair, or whatever else. I agree with whoever wrote that “shmups have not been popular since 1983”, honestly. The shmups difficulty wiki proposes a slightly higher score, in case you wonder, but they also offer a lower score with auto-fire on.
Carrier Airwing/U.S. Navy (Capcom, 1990) is an HORI(zontal) shmup that pits the U.S. Navy forces against the terrorist threat known as “Rabu”, on orders of the U(nited)N(ations). Players can choose among three planes (F-14 Tomcat, A-10 Intruder , and F-18 Hornet) and their pilots, and take off to obliterate Rabu’s armies around the globe. The game features ten Stages of moderate length, a definitely “Euro Shmup” set of game mechanics, and relatively realistic graphics for the time. The game is also one of Capcom’s easiest shmups, even if the final Stage and boss provide a considerable stamina challenge before they meet their maker. Players who want to add a relatively easy 1-CC to their arcade portfolio may thus find a viable challenge in this game. My goal in this squib is to convince you that this game offers a decent challenge despite its shortcomings involving game design and length.
The context in which this game saw its release is perhaps a bit peculiar. Capcom was releasing brilliant titles and more obscure games during the late 1980s. 1990 saw the release of this title, Nemo, and Mega Twins as obscure but quite solid titles from this company. Shmups and R2RKMF fans may remember Mercs from this year, and perhaps 1941: Counter Attack. Nevertheless, Capcom was still capitalising on the immense success of Final Fight and was about to release the epochal Street Fighter 2 in a year’s time. In 1990, Capcom also lost Harumi Fujita, Ayako Mori and Tamayo Kawamoto to other companies (e.g. Taito's Zuntata for Tamayo) and to free-lancing endeavours. SNK also launched the Neo Geo, laying the ground for a decades long-friendly rivalry. Nevertheless, the company was establishing itself as a powerful vector of innovation within the arcade market.
The plot of the game varies between J(a)P(an) and US/EU(rope) versions. In the 1990s, the end of cold war has signalled a new era of peace, but also the rise of new threats to this novel geopolitical scenario. In the JP version, nation X decides to attack nation J in the Far East, with “Rabu” being the mysterious weapons supplier supporting nation X in this act of war. The U.S. navy has the mission to stop this aggression and sends the nuclear aircraft carrier “Carl Vinson” to single-handedly manage this mission. In the EU/US version, “Rabu” becomes a Middle East nation who raises to power via a massive arsenal and threatens world peace, gassing Tokyo as a proof of their power. In this version, the US sends one carrier and its pilot on behalf of the UN. Carrier Airwing thus has this “popcorn flick” type of plot, as a background.
The game mechanics are simple. The joystick controls movement in eight directions; the A button controls main shots, and the B button controls secondary shots. The A button is semi-automatic: players can hold the button to start a quick, fast stream of bullets lasting one second or so. If players periodically tap the button, they can obtain the equivalent of a low-frequency auto-fire stream. The game has two game mechanics typical of Euro shumps: a H(it)P(oint)s/fual bar and a shop-like way to buy upgrades. The fuel/HP bar depletes as stage time progresses or when planes take a hit, but energy power-ups can replenish up to half bar. After each successfully completed Stage, planes get a full energy refill and can then buy upgrades for the next mission. If players do not want upgrades, they can simply skip them and move onto the next mission.
The purchase of upgrades has however also a few interesting uses, game-wise. Money for upgrades comes from the numbers of enemies shot down, and from secondary weapons and energy still in stock at the end of a Stage. Players can thus buy one or two supplies of stage-specific secondary attacks (e.g. rockets on Stage two), extra fuel (25% or 50% more HPs), or even energy shields (tree or five extra HPs). If players buy weapons, fuel and shield before a Stage but complete the Stage without incurring in hits or using the weapons, they will get more conspicuous end-of-Stage bonuses. Perfect kill rates (i.e. 100% of enemies shot down) will also correspond to extra bonus points and money. Differently from other Capcom games and in line with the more realistic setting, the in-game currency are dollars, of course. Players can thus “buy stuff” but avoid using it for score purposes.
The final game mechanic that we discuss has an A(rcade)RPG flavours and originates in Area 88, too. Players must collect power-up icons to increase their shooting power that switch among three attack types. The yellow colour is for the machine gun attack, the blue is for the rocket attack, and the green is for the Vulcan attack. Collect 40 power-ups to max out the weapons’ destructive power at level 6, or the final Stage might become rather hard to handle. Planes have their specialised attacks: machinegun for the Tomcat, rocket for the Hornet, Vulcan for the Intruder. Players can switch to the non-specialised attacks, but these attacks will be 20% less powerful, so using a plane’s specialised option is always the ideal choice. Note thus that the Vulcan-Intruder pair correspond to the “slow, powerful” choice; the machinegun-Tomcat, to the ‘fast, weak’ choice; the rocket-Hornet, to the ‘medium’ choice.
Before we address difficulty and its Facets, we concisely discuss the game’s visual presentation and aural output. Area 88 had manga-esque graphics for the pilots and the cutscenes, but stages mostly featured a realistic approach to vehicles and background. Carrier Airwing has more detailed and realistic designs, since it aims to offer a more cinematographic feeling of “1990s post-cold War action”. The fact that the admiral briefing pilot during cutscenes looks like a bald version of Sean Connery might help in summoning this vibe. The ten Stages offer a globe-trotting appeal with a dash of space exploration. Stage two is set in a badly damaged Tokyo, Stage six in Antarctica, and Stage ten involves the destruction of Rabu’s sub-orbital station and shuttle. With a rich palette, bright colours and crip design, Carrier Airwing sports lovely graphics, a cool outlook, and accurate designs of actual vehicles.
The OST represents perhaps a weak Facet of the game. Manami Matsumae was one of Alph Lyla’s members who also left Capcom in the early 1990s. She worked on Dynasty Wars and a few other games, but her initial works offer this weaker sound often focusing on somewhat bland melodies, plus peculiar choices for the rhythmic sections. The OST for Carrier Wing features a perhaps quirky choice of sampled instruments and themes that I can only describe as “Hollywood action blockbuster” music. Precisely due to this choice of genre, thus, the OST should fade in the background after a few plays, and let players focus on the action. Sound effects also feel bland, as they include average-quality samples of jet engines, explosions, and a few other genre-specific effects. Overall, the game looks good and sounds OK: an acceptable combination.
Since we now have the notion/term of Facet as part of our conversation and we have discussed audio-visual matters, we can concentrate on difficulty. As far as I am concerned, difficulty in this game neatly splits into game mechanics as a first facet and Stage design/layout as the second facet. Carrier Airwing thus presents a 25/25 difficulty ratio out of a total of 50 points, as in the case of other Capcom titles that we discussed so far (e.g. Dynasty Wars, Tiger Road). Game mechanics in this game are simple: learn to use the semi-automatic tapping technique and, in certain Stages, learn to “shoot to the left side”. On Stages three, nine and 10, some sections scroll to the left and have the planes moving according to this scrolling direction. Secondary weapons may require some practice for their proper use, but players can just buy them for points.
The second Facet, Stage design/layout, involves the necessity of learning how to handle specific passages during Stages, and how to handle certain bosses. Rather than dwelling on Specific details, I would suggest that players should practice Stages three to ten and master their in-stage bottlenecks. For instance, Stage four has several narrow passages in which planes can receive accidental damage while manoeuvring inside narrow tunnels. Stage ten is not particularly difficult, but players will reach the true final boss, a lethal satellite armed with laser beams, when their energy is almost depleted. One or two hits may suffice to destroy the planes, in the last moments of this battle. Ultimately, though, 2/25 difficulty points for the game mechanics Facet and 8/25 points for the Stage mechanics/layout Facet seem appropriate. At 10/50 points, Carrier Airwing is a top-tier challenge for beginner players.
Let us now focus on my experiences, then. Please do not worry: Xenny is still tied to a chair, and I have neutralised his extremely acid drool with extremely basic snot (poor Xenny!). It is April 1991, and my uncle seems confident that this year business will be good. He is aware that a certain Street Fighter II has had an apocalyptic impact to the arcade scene in Japan. He has order four boards and plans to be the first one to have the game in town. His plans will not completely realise according to his own zany script, but in from now to September 1991, the revolution is about to come to our small Italian town and its arcades and bars, too. For those of us who do not believe too much into the revolution, though, my uncle has also prepared other plans for enjoyment.
I only remember playing Acrobat Mission during this period: my memories from past “lives” can only emerge slowly. But now in 1991, I do remember that my uncle has prepared a cab with this title for me and the few other shooting enthusiasts. As soon as I arrive at the arcade on the first day that the game is up, he grabs me and tells me to play the game. Free credits “on the house”, too, as he seems anxious about some aspects of the game that do not convince him. I admit that I find the game easy, after the first few credits, and that I can reach Stage four within a few days of attempts. I get stuck on this Stage for two weeks or so, since the Stage is a bottleneck: little extra energy, and a lot of tight manoeuvring reminiscent of the dreadful R-Type from Irem.
Once I figure out how to clear this Stage, my progress is slow but steady. My uncle seems relieved because the game seems to attract a lot of casual gamers who however end their credits between Stage two and Stage four’s bosses. Bottlenecks serve their purpose, apparently. By the end of May or so, I start reaching the final Stage 10 with a certain regularity. I may be a kid who does not like Hollywood action movies, but the idea of a battle to “save the world” in the stratosphere is cool. The reverse scrolling parts mimicking Darius II make me reminisce about this absurdly tough game, however. The year I spent clearing it was a humbling experience: luckily, this game has only a few passages in this mode. Carrier Airwing feels like a game providing solace for those who experienced past pain at the hands of HORI shooters, honestly.
The first clear arrives on an early June day, when people who want to play Street Fighter II are swamping the arcade. I do play the game when I can, but I feel like it has attracted legions of cretins who simply like the ideas of throwing punches and special attacks. I am not sure that these people do really like videogames, honestly. My Carrier Airwing runs attract a few people, though: I can clear the game regularly with all three planes, and I even help some other players in mastering the “final boss Satellite” battle. Summer flows away happily: I am just a kid. It is then summer 2000, 2004, and summer of many other years. I am always happy to have a quick 1-CC of this game, and feel that I can keep a modicum of shmupping skills in stock, though the Hollywood vibe still feels flippant.
Let us conclude, before we fade into nostalgia. Carrier Airwing is a HORI shmup by Capcom released in 1990 in which forces from the US Navy must defeat evil doers from “Rabu”. The game features several game mechanics typical of Euro shmups but overall, ten Stages of moderate length, and an evenly paced progression toward a top-tier challenge for beginner players. Players can also upgrade their weapons following a system reminiscent of A(rcade)RPGs, and in general enjoy a pleasant detour from the more challenging early titles in the HORI shmups genre. Players who wish to explore some of the lesser-known parts of Capcom’s history and want to enjoy an easy 1-CC should find Carrier Airwing a pleasant experience. Fans of more realistic shmups set in the modern era can also enjoy the game’s design and perhaps interesting suggestive geo-politic scenario. Do play it: it is a good game.
(2200 words; the usual disclaimers apply; I still remember that this is one of those few games on which I would see people playing surprisingly well, and even 1-CC it on the odd occasion. My experience with shmups as a kid could be summarised in this way. A few enlightened beings from the older, meaner generations could 1-CC some titles, and often clear one or more loops on Toaplan games. Everybody else would instead whine and complain that the genre was too hard, ugly, unfair, or whatever else. I agree with whoever wrote that “shmups have not been popular since 1983”, honestly. The shmups difficulty wiki proposes a slightly higher score, in case you wonder, but they also offer a lower score with auto-fire on.
Last edited by Randorama on Thu Apr 24, 2025 2:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Rolling Thunder (Namco, 1986)
We move to one early game that has been haunting my squibs in one way or another: Rolling Thunder. I use the verb “haunt(ing)” because I have mentioned its elliptical presence in my uncle’s arcade, but the experiences I have formed with this game is quite more convoluted than I thought. This has become clear once I could finally figure out all the fragmentary memories I have of myself playing this game, however. The game has several revisions, but their differences are critical enough that we discuss them in the squib in some detail. Ports abound, but you can get this game in arcade-like form on PS1 (e.g. the Namco Museum Encore collection), in the Hamster archives version). Without further ado:
Rolling Thunder (Namco, 1986) is one of earliest examples of R2RKMF and tactical shooting games in arcade history. The game pits secret agent, code name “Albatross”, against Maboo and its secret cabal Geldra, a mysterious and powerful organisation that has penetrated New York’s upper echelons of society and plans. Maboo plans to use this influence to take control of the US core seats of power and then, possibly move to conquer the world or something. Albatross must penetrate Geldra’s underground facilities (also apparently immense, but this was one year before Bionic Commando) and rescue a colleague, code name “Leila”. Lame “princess-saving” tropes aside, the game features one of the earliest and strictest formulations of the genre: stages are long, time limits short, fire-power is scarce and enemies are ruthless. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game is superb and irrationally designed, in equal measures.
Outlining a context and zeitgeist for this game is not easy, at least within the space of a single paragraph. A brief outline of Namco’s heavyweight role in the arcade market can be useful, to understand the game. Namco’s early successes Pac-Man, Galaga and Xevious do not need introductions on this forum. Namco also produced lesser known but brilliant titles such as Phozon, Mappy and Metro-Cross, in the years 1984-1985. These were respectively a puzzle-like “molecule composition” game, a limited puzzle/platform game with cats and mice, and an action/platform of a man running for his life in a dystopian future. The Tower of Druaga, class of 1984, was one of the earliest dungeon crawlers ever and was the first game with an OST, thanks to legendary composer Junko Ozawa. In the next few years, Assault, Dragon Spirit and Metal Hawk would also appear. In short, Namco created highly original games.
Rolling Thunder represents this highly creative drive in an eccentric though certainly well-defined manner. The game is set in the 1960s and offers strong vibes of spy stories and movies, with a certain degree of surrealism and French noir atmospheres. Take the Sean Connery’s James Bond movies, add strong doses of Michael Caine’s 1960s classics (e.g. The Hipcress File) and a dash of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. The plot features Maboo, a mysterious man with a greenish complexion, bald head and pointed ears who lures the rich and powerful of New York into its cult-like society. Agent “Albatross” must infiltrate Maboo’s secret base to dismantle this organisation and save agent “Leila”. He fights against humanoid clones with KKK-like hoods, giant bats, and yellow goblins. After reaching the fake control centre (i.e. clearing the first loop/”story”), Albatross goes deeper into the base and fights Maboo himself (i.e. clears the second loop/”story”).
The game mechanics are relatively simple. The joystick controls Albatross in eight directions; the A button controls shots, and the B button control jumps. Albatross can move left and right, jump left and right, and perform a special type of “ascending jump”. When players push B+up, Albatross will perform a superbly high jump while keeping the left or right arm fully raised. If Albatross has a platform above him, then he will either grab the handrail (if present) and do a side jump, or he will simply ascend to the platform. Albatross can perform a high jump at any moment, but will (slowly) fall back to his position if there are no upper platforms. Players can push left or right while Albatross descends, so that Albatross will do a slight movement in the direction of choice. While jumping normally, Albatross moves in one direction only when players hold the direction.
The weapons represent the key tactical aspect of the game. Albatross starts with a handgun and 50 bullets. He can enter doors that have a “gun” or “machinegun” sign on them; players must push the up direction when Albatross is to their side. The character will briefly enter the door, stock between 20 and 100 extra gun or handgun bullets, and then exit the door after half a second or so. Albatross can also enter other doors at any time, and remain inside a putative room for as long as players keep pushing the up direction. Enemies may however wait Albatross outside so that they can hit as soon as he respawns. Albatross has eight H(it)P(points), but loses four HPs after a collision, and eight HPs if hit by a weapon. Albatross starts with 2 lives, extends at 100k and 300k, and gets all HPs back after each stage.
Another key or Facet of game mechanics connects to Stages layout and difficulty: time. Before we discuss this complex in detail, let us first address the audio-visual presentation of the game. For its time, Rolling Thunder looks cool and inspired. Albatross wears a groovy turtleneck sweater that screams 1960s, and Maboo wears this cultish-looking, ridiculously long robe. Geldra’s technology looks antiquated, and the various underground levels mix bizarre settings (e.g. passages over lava ponds) and Matsumoto-esque transistor-full rooms. The colour palette is dark and intense, animations are generally rather fluid, and enemy design is remarkably eccentric. Expect to fight humanoid clones dressed like KKK Klansmen, giant bats, yellow goblins, panthers, and humanoid fire elementals. Quite frankly, the Rover from The Prisoner would have been a beautiful cameo and an appropriate appropriation from a clear source of inspiration for the game. The game looks psychedelic, bizarre, and even a bit creepy.
The OST represents another aesthetical strong point. The game has one theme for Stages one, two and five plus their loop counterparts, and a second theme for Stages three, four and their loop counterparts. The final clash with Maboo provides the third theme; there are also cool short snippets for the high score table and the “game over” screen. Rolling Thunder signals a dramatic jump in quality for an 1986 game. These themes build on more complex synthetiser sounds that musical heroine Junko Ozawa exploited to create royally masterful examples of Bond-esque music. Both themes start with the same fast, dramatic jazzy opening of roughly 20 seconds and create a theme of danger and suspense. The first theme, however, switches to a fast-paced Bebop motif evoking action sequences and frantic action. The second theme mutates into a slow, nocturnal Samba-esque motif aptly accompanying the darker, creepier Stages of the game.
Both themes thus evoke a strong feeling of being part a perhaps more refined type of action/spy thriller movie. The choice of genres of inspiration seems not casual, for they also aim to create an indelible feeling of a game recreating “’60s style spy stories”. Albatross thus finds himself crossing underground dungeons and lava rivers while a dark, slow-paced samba plays in the background. He also finds himself racing against the clock to clear a level while the synthetised trumpets launch a high-pitched short solo, with synthetised bongos to join in immediately after. The simple but gloriously Bond-esque themes also receive a contour of high-quality sound effects. The crouching and crawling yellow goblins make rancorous shrieks when they jump and when they die; panthers instead growl during both actions. Add a weird but evocative sound effect when Albatross loses a life, to obtain a brilliant mix of music and effects.
The game thus looks and appears ahead of its time and certainly unique and stylish. It is on the Facet of difficulty that the game metamorphoses from unique to notorious, indeed. Difficulty in the game stems from three Facets: game mechanics, Stages design/layout, and the convoluted interaction between these two Facets. Balance is not even, as this interactional Facet attracts a weaker 10 points to the 20 of the first two Facets, out of a total of 50 points. Let us proceed in order, though. Game mechanics in Rolling Thunder require tight mastery, to achieve any results. Players must know how fast bullets travel, how many bullets each enemy requires before to die, when and how to use doors to avoid enemies and to refill bullets. Albatross cannot shoot during jumps but can dodge bullets by jumping. Each jump requires careful timing and planning before execution, indeed.
The game mechanics thus attract 10/20 difficulty points. The Stage layouts attract another 14/20 points, for a remarkably simple reason. The game has two loops and a true final boss, a gaming innovation originating in Capcom’s Ghosts’n Goblins. Clearing the first five stages moves Albatross to the deeper part of the dungeon, featuring harder versions of these stages. The first five stages require precise planning for three reasons: first, the time limit is low, and even on Stage one enemies can require precious seconds to kill. Second, Albatross should not shoot more bullets than necessary, since there is a limit to ammos for both gun and machinegun. Third, the enemy sequence is mostly rigid: specific types of enemies appear at specific points. Expect, however, small amounts of random enemies from random types randomly popping up from doors, especially if Albatross is too slow in clearing a passage.
Stages in the second loop are harder, of course. Stages eight, nine and ten are long enough to require specific strategies for the first stanzas and then the second stanzas of each stage. Furthermore, Stage ten has a final section leading to the fight with Maboo, which offers a third stanza to this Stage Certainly, having precise routes for each Stage, much like having tested solutions for Stages in puzzle games, can vastly help players. However, players with sharp wits and a deep grasp of the game’s mechanics can always improvise alternative solutions to any tight situation in a stage. The game has a strict pace, but it is surprisingly flexible. However, it is at the interactional Facet of mechanics interacting with Stages that this flexibility mixes with a degree of quirkiness that will probably exasperate most players. Allow me to carefully explain this subtler Facet of the game, then.
First, the game gives strict time limits based on the game’s revisions: 180 seconds for the “Old” (J(a)P(an)) revision, 150 for the new revision(s), and 120 for a bootleg version. Every choice that players make must result in either going forward or at least killing enemies. Stages eight and ten seem to force players into time-out on new and bootleg versions; advance at a brisk pace. Second, some enemies attack as soon as they spot albatross, but may stop attacking if Albatross performs a random vertical jump; alternatively, they may stop hiding move to Albatross’ plane. Learn when to use this apparently meaningless action to “distract” enemies from attacking, or luring them into certain death. Third, there are tons of spots in which enemies may suddenly appear and bump into Albatross to damage or even kill him. Learn enemy placement for these “apparitions”.
Fourth, Albatross can stock up ammos and carry them over to the next stage (e.g. start Stage two with 100 gun bullets). If he dies, however, he starts again at 50 gun bullets, restocking at 50 bullets again after clearing a Stage. Albatross always stop when shooting, but can move immediately after shooting even multiple bullets with the machinegun. In some sections, Albatross must shoot a stream of bullets, move forward, and kill enemies suddenly spawning on screen with this technique. Finally, each enemy type has specific weak spots and attacking routines (e.g. yellow goblins). Be sure to kill enemies exploiting their weak spots and routines. There are a few more quirks, but I believe that the point should be clear. This third Facet attracts 10/10 points. Rolling Thunder demands that players master all these quirks to 1-CC the game, possibly without foaming too much at the mouth while playing.
The grand total for this game is thus 33/50 points for the “old” revision. I would increase it to 35/50 points and 37/50 points for the “new” and “bootleg” revisions, furthermore. The game is a low- to top-tier challenge for master players and, as our discussion indirectly suggests, it presents some specific learning bottlenecks of supreme if context-specific difficulty. If players do not master all the game’s specific quirks, there is no real chance that they can 1-CC the game. For instance, Stage eight is impossible to complete on one life in the “new” and “bootleg” versions. Players must restart midway and clear the second half of the stage with few bullets. The final passage involves shooting a stream of bullets to kill an elemental and jumping forwards without hesitation; without sufficient bullets, this passage is impossible. The game’s notoriousness seems to stem from suffocating approach to difficulty, indeed.
We can move the part that also offers a bit of mystery, if only because my memories of my gaming experiences regarding this game tend to be as mysterious as the game’s setting. It is late August 1990 and have been playing arcade games at my uncle’s arcade and at other places (arcades, bars) for a while. I have cleared a few easier titles with a single credit. So, am quite cocky as a kid frequenting arcades where I am not allowed to enter, at least according to the local law. By this point in time, my uncle has converted the upper East side of the top floor into a “100 lire” retro-gaming room. He has a dozen or so of old, early 1980s cabs in which he periodically inserts older boards that he still has not managed to sell to collectors or bars, one of them being Rolling Thunder.
Whenever I enter this room, I get the impression that people use to play games that they found too hard when they first came out (e.g. Side Arms). For me, it is already a museum of past arcade glories: games that I could not play when they came out, because I was not even going to school. I try Rolling Thunder out of a whim, since this game seems to have actively scare away potential customers. I have noticed that a few people look at the attract screen, mumble something, and move away from the cab with vaguely worried expressions. My first credit is a borderline traumatic experience: enemies seem too fast, I finish bullets too quickly, I have no idea that I can do high jumps, and thus no idea on how to use them. I suddenly understand well why people avoid the game; still, the music is glorious.
Over the next four weeks I manage to slowly crawl to the end of Stage two. I feel that every single encounter with an enemy in the game is usually lethal, so I must learn Stages one death at a time. I do not even know why this game attracts me: it looks creepy, even if the music simply hypnotises me. By the end of October, I can reach Stage three. By Christmas time or so, I reach the final fifth Stage, at least according to some people who see me playing the game and want to reach out. Again, a kid playing games well and furthermore playing this game well does look like a peculiar sight, and likely a borderline legal one. Hey, I am not alone, officially: my uncle and/or my father and/or my older sisters and/or Denise are always around. Borderline, yes, but legally playing games.
By the first days of 1991, I clear Stage five and discover that the game starts again, but it is more difficult, way more difficult. Simply put, I give up and decide that I am happy with the result. I do not want to learn a game that does not have a limit to levels. It is now October 2002, and I am going strong with my BA studies. I have started playing games on consoles (Saturn, PS1), because by this point in time arcade ports are generally excellent, and not every game is in MAME. I re-discover Rolling Thunder in MAME, but I also read about the Namco Museum Encore port of the game being a version with more time and slightly less difficult Stages. I decide to buy it, since my few runs via MAME just leave foaming at my mouth most of the time, indeed.
I spend a considerable time re-learning the game during the 2002-2003 winter, and using internet videos to figure out how to clear this game. For three weeks or so, I have no idea on how to overcome the final part in of Stage eight. Somebody gives me a MAME replay and I curse the programmers for their absurdly rigid and non-intuitive design choice. However, by this point it is a matter of practice and time: I will win this battle. It is one of the last days of February 2003, when I finally kill Maboo for the first time and explode in joy. I run outside, in my grandparents’ garden, and start jumping on the fresh snow while only wearing socks at my feet. The sense of elation at clearing this game is so strong that bodily sensations become secondary, frankly. I finally 1-CC this bloody game.
It is November 2006 and I am getting ready to move to Australia for my PhD. By this point, I have watched The Prisoner and the game’s other sources of inspiration in their original language. For some mysterious reason, I feel the compulsion to play the “new” revision of the game and 1-CC it, too. It is a tense journey that sees me 1-CC the game a few times, always on my last life and with seconds to spare. Nevertheless, I do feel like I have conquered the game in all its Facets, honestly. At some undefined point in time, I discover that there is a “bootleg” version in MAME. I play it a few times and think that it would be nice to 1-CC this beast that only gives players 120 seconds. I discard these thoughts quickly: I have won over the official versions, so my grudge is over.
In conclusion, and with Xenny still mumbling that he will exact cruel revenge against my abuse: Rolling Thunder is a tactical shooting game by Namco, released in 1986. Perhaps the first and hardest example of this micro-genre, Rolling Thunder pits agent Albatross against the mysterious Geldra organization and its eldritch leader Maboo. The game is notable for having a fantastic OST courtesy of videogame legend Junko Ozawa, smooth animations and “1960s mystery/spy” setting. The game is also notorious for being a remarkably difficult challenge, given that many of its design aspects require tight mastery especially in their most counter-intuitive aspects/Facets. Nevertheless, players who are willing to accept this challenge may find themselves mastering this challenge and enjoy clearing ten difficult Stages by meeting impeccable requirements with panache. Rolling Thunder is ultimately an acquired taste, but for those who can develop this taste, it is a deliciously sweet type of poison.
(3191. words; the usual disclaimers apply; Legendary JapJac adored this game, and hopefully still does. Durandal of shmups’ fame wrote a lengthy rant about how a pioneering title should have avoided design pitfalls that became well understood in the subsequent years. I admit that I wrote about the game, at some point, but I will not link you to material that I now disown in embarrassment, sorry. I suspect that I could find more dedicated pages praising and vilifying the game in equal measures. From the squib, you may guess that I have a liminal attitude to the game, but I must admit that almost all Namco games that I played over the decades have driven me nuts. OK, not the Tekken series or Mr. Driller’s iterations, but Namco simply designed hard games, full stop. Be ready to read more about this topic next week, as we dive into the second chapter, Rolling Thunder 2.)
Rolling Thunder (Namco, 1986) is one of earliest examples of R2RKMF and tactical shooting games in arcade history. The game pits secret agent, code name “Albatross”, against Maboo and its secret cabal Geldra, a mysterious and powerful organisation that has penetrated New York’s upper echelons of society and plans. Maboo plans to use this influence to take control of the US core seats of power and then, possibly move to conquer the world or something. Albatross must penetrate Geldra’s underground facilities (also apparently immense, but this was one year before Bionic Commando) and rescue a colleague, code name “Leila”. Lame “princess-saving” tropes aside, the game features one of the earliest and strictest formulations of the genre: stages are long, time limits short, fire-power is scarce and enemies are ruthless. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game is superb and irrationally designed, in equal measures.
Outlining a context and zeitgeist for this game is not easy, at least within the space of a single paragraph. A brief outline of Namco’s heavyweight role in the arcade market can be useful, to understand the game. Namco’s early successes Pac-Man, Galaga and Xevious do not need introductions on this forum. Namco also produced lesser known but brilliant titles such as Phozon, Mappy and Metro-Cross, in the years 1984-1985. These were respectively a puzzle-like “molecule composition” game, a limited puzzle/platform game with cats and mice, and an action/platform of a man running for his life in a dystopian future. The Tower of Druaga, class of 1984, was one of the earliest dungeon crawlers ever and was the first game with an OST, thanks to legendary composer Junko Ozawa. In the next few years, Assault, Dragon Spirit and Metal Hawk would also appear. In short, Namco created highly original games.
Rolling Thunder represents this highly creative drive in an eccentric though certainly well-defined manner. The game is set in the 1960s and offers strong vibes of spy stories and movies, with a certain degree of surrealism and French noir atmospheres. Take the Sean Connery’s James Bond movies, add strong doses of Michael Caine’s 1960s classics (e.g. The Hipcress File) and a dash of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. The plot features Maboo, a mysterious man with a greenish complexion, bald head and pointed ears who lures the rich and powerful of New York into its cult-like society. Agent “Albatross” must infiltrate Maboo’s secret base to dismantle this organisation and save agent “Leila”. He fights against humanoid clones with KKK-like hoods, giant bats, and yellow goblins. After reaching the fake control centre (i.e. clearing the first loop/”story”), Albatross goes deeper into the base and fights Maboo himself (i.e. clears the second loop/”story”).
The game mechanics are relatively simple. The joystick controls Albatross in eight directions; the A button controls shots, and the B button control jumps. Albatross can move left and right, jump left and right, and perform a special type of “ascending jump”. When players push B+up, Albatross will perform a superbly high jump while keeping the left or right arm fully raised. If Albatross has a platform above him, then he will either grab the handrail (if present) and do a side jump, or he will simply ascend to the platform. Albatross can perform a high jump at any moment, but will (slowly) fall back to his position if there are no upper platforms. Players can push left or right while Albatross descends, so that Albatross will do a slight movement in the direction of choice. While jumping normally, Albatross moves in one direction only when players hold the direction.
The weapons represent the key tactical aspect of the game. Albatross starts with a handgun and 50 bullets. He can enter doors that have a “gun” or “machinegun” sign on them; players must push the up direction when Albatross is to their side. The character will briefly enter the door, stock between 20 and 100 extra gun or handgun bullets, and then exit the door after half a second or so. Albatross can also enter other doors at any time, and remain inside a putative room for as long as players keep pushing the up direction. Enemies may however wait Albatross outside so that they can hit as soon as he respawns. Albatross has eight H(it)P(points), but loses four HPs after a collision, and eight HPs if hit by a weapon. Albatross starts with 2 lives, extends at 100k and 300k, and gets all HPs back after each stage.
Another key or Facet of game mechanics connects to Stages layout and difficulty: time. Before we discuss this complex in detail, let us first address the audio-visual presentation of the game. For its time, Rolling Thunder looks cool and inspired. Albatross wears a groovy turtleneck sweater that screams 1960s, and Maboo wears this cultish-looking, ridiculously long robe. Geldra’s technology looks antiquated, and the various underground levels mix bizarre settings (e.g. passages over lava ponds) and Matsumoto-esque transistor-full rooms. The colour palette is dark and intense, animations are generally rather fluid, and enemy design is remarkably eccentric. Expect to fight humanoid clones dressed like KKK Klansmen, giant bats, yellow goblins, panthers, and humanoid fire elementals. Quite frankly, the Rover from The Prisoner would have been a beautiful cameo and an appropriate appropriation from a clear source of inspiration for the game. The game looks psychedelic, bizarre, and even a bit creepy.
The OST represents another aesthetical strong point. The game has one theme for Stages one, two and five plus their loop counterparts, and a second theme for Stages three, four and their loop counterparts. The final clash with Maboo provides the third theme; there are also cool short snippets for the high score table and the “game over” screen. Rolling Thunder signals a dramatic jump in quality for an 1986 game. These themes build on more complex synthetiser sounds that musical heroine Junko Ozawa exploited to create royally masterful examples of Bond-esque music. Both themes start with the same fast, dramatic jazzy opening of roughly 20 seconds and create a theme of danger and suspense. The first theme, however, switches to a fast-paced Bebop motif evoking action sequences and frantic action. The second theme mutates into a slow, nocturnal Samba-esque motif aptly accompanying the darker, creepier Stages of the game.
Both themes thus evoke a strong feeling of being part a perhaps more refined type of action/spy thriller movie. The choice of genres of inspiration seems not casual, for they also aim to create an indelible feeling of a game recreating “’60s style spy stories”. Albatross thus finds himself crossing underground dungeons and lava rivers while a dark, slow-paced samba plays in the background. He also finds himself racing against the clock to clear a level while the synthetised trumpets launch a high-pitched short solo, with synthetised bongos to join in immediately after. The simple but gloriously Bond-esque themes also receive a contour of high-quality sound effects. The crouching and crawling yellow goblins make rancorous shrieks when they jump and when they die; panthers instead growl during both actions. Add a weird but evocative sound effect when Albatross loses a life, to obtain a brilliant mix of music and effects.
The game thus looks and appears ahead of its time and certainly unique and stylish. It is on the Facet of difficulty that the game metamorphoses from unique to notorious, indeed. Difficulty in the game stems from three Facets: game mechanics, Stages design/layout, and the convoluted interaction between these two Facets. Balance is not even, as this interactional Facet attracts a weaker 10 points to the 20 of the first two Facets, out of a total of 50 points. Let us proceed in order, though. Game mechanics in Rolling Thunder require tight mastery, to achieve any results. Players must know how fast bullets travel, how many bullets each enemy requires before to die, when and how to use doors to avoid enemies and to refill bullets. Albatross cannot shoot during jumps but can dodge bullets by jumping. Each jump requires careful timing and planning before execution, indeed.
The game mechanics thus attract 10/20 difficulty points. The Stage layouts attract another 14/20 points, for a remarkably simple reason. The game has two loops and a true final boss, a gaming innovation originating in Capcom’s Ghosts’n Goblins. Clearing the first five stages moves Albatross to the deeper part of the dungeon, featuring harder versions of these stages. The first five stages require precise planning for three reasons: first, the time limit is low, and even on Stage one enemies can require precious seconds to kill. Second, Albatross should not shoot more bullets than necessary, since there is a limit to ammos for both gun and machinegun. Third, the enemy sequence is mostly rigid: specific types of enemies appear at specific points. Expect, however, small amounts of random enemies from random types randomly popping up from doors, especially if Albatross is too slow in clearing a passage.
Stages in the second loop are harder, of course. Stages eight, nine and ten are long enough to require specific strategies for the first stanzas and then the second stanzas of each stage. Furthermore, Stage ten has a final section leading to the fight with Maboo, which offers a third stanza to this Stage Certainly, having precise routes for each Stage, much like having tested solutions for Stages in puzzle games, can vastly help players. However, players with sharp wits and a deep grasp of the game’s mechanics can always improvise alternative solutions to any tight situation in a stage. The game has a strict pace, but it is surprisingly flexible. However, it is at the interactional Facet of mechanics interacting with Stages that this flexibility mixes with a degree of quirkiness that will probably exasperate most players. Allow me to carefully explain this subtler Facet of the game, then.
First, the game gives strict time limits based on the game’s revisions: 180 seconds for the “Old” (J(a)P(an)) revision, 150 for the new revision(s), and 120 for a bootleg version. Every choice that players make must result in either going forward or at least killing enemies. Stages eight and ten seem to force players into time-out on new and bootleg versions; advance at a brisk pace. Second, some enemies attack as soon as they spot albatross, but may stop attacking if Albatross performs a random vertical jump; alternatively, they may stop hiding move to Albatross’ plane. Learn when to use this apparently meaningless action to “distract” enemies from attacking, or luring them into certain death. Third, there are tons of spots in which enemies may suddenly appear and bump into Albatross to damage or even kill him. Learn enemy placement for these “apparitions”.
Fourth, Albatross can stock up ammos and carry them over to the next stage (e.g. start Stage two with 100 gun bullets). If he dies, however, he starts again at 50 gun bullets, restocking at 50 bullets again after clearing a Stage. Albatross always stop when shooting, but can move immediately after shooting even multiple bullets with the machinegun. In some sections, Albatross must shoot a stream of bullets, move forward, and kill enemies suddenly spawning on screen with this technique. Finally, each enemy type has specific weak spots and attacking routines (e.g. yellow goblins). Be sure to kill enemies exploiting their weak spots and routines. There are a few more quirks, but I believe that the point should be clear. This third Facet attracts 10/10 points. Rolling Thunder demands that players master all these quirks to 1-CC the game, possibly without foaming too much at the mouth while playing.
The grand total for this game is thus 33/50 points for the “old” revision. I would increase it to 35/50 points and 37/50 points for the “new” and “bootleg” revisions, furthermore. The game is a low- to top-tier challenge for master players and, as our discussion indirectly suggests, it presents some specific learning bottlenecks of supreme if context-specific difficulty. If players do not master all the game’s specific quirks, there is no real chance that they can 1-CC the game. For instance, Stage eight is impossible to complete on one life in the “new” and “bootleg” versions. Players must restart midway and clear the second half of the stage with few bullets. The final passage involves shooting a stream of bullets to kill an elemental and jumping forwards without hesitation; without sufficient bullets, this passage is impossible. The game’s notoriousness seems to stem from suffocating approach to difficulty, indeed.
We can move the part that also offers a bit of mystery, if only because my memories of my gaming experiences regarding this game tend to be as mysterious as the game’s setting. It is late August 1990 and have been playing arcade games at my uncle’s arcade and at other places (arcades, bars) for a while. I have cleared a few easier titles with a single credit. So, am quite cocky as a kid frequenting arcades where I am not allowed to enter, at least according to the local law. By this point in time, my uncle has converted the upper East side of the top floor into a “100 lire” retro-gaming room. He has a dozen or so of old, early 1980s cabs in which he periodically inserts older boards that he still has not managed to sell to collectors or bars, one of them being Rolling Thunder.
Whenever I enter this room, I get the impression that people use to play games that they found too hard when they first came out (e.g. Side Arms). For me, it is already a museum of past arcade glories: games that I could not play when they came out, because I was not even going to school. I try Rolling Thunder out of a whim, since this game seems to have actively scare away potential customers. I have noticed that a few people look at the attract screen, mumble something, and move away from the cab with vaguely worried expressions. My first credit is a borderline traumatic experience: enemies seem too fast, I finish bullets too quickly, I have no idea that I can do high jumps, and thus no idea on how to use them. I suddenly understand well why people avoid the game; still, the music is glorious.
Over the next four weeks I manage to slowly crawl to the end of Stage two. I feel that every single encounter with an enemy in the game is usually lethal, so I must learn Stages one death at a time. I do not even know why this game attracts me: it looks creepy, even if the music simply hypnotises me. By the end of October, I can reach Stage three. By Christmas time or so, I reach the final fifth Stage, at least according to some people who see me playing the game and want to reach out. Again, a kid playing games well and furthermore playing this game well does look like a peculiar sight, and likely a borderline legal one. Hey, I am not alone, officially: my uncle and/or my father and/or my older sisters and/or Denise are always around. Borderline, yes, but legally playing games.
By the first days of 1991, I clear Stage five and discover that the game starts again, but it is more difficult, way more difficult. Simply put, I give up and decide that I am happy with the result. I do not want to learn a game that does not have a limit to levels. It is now October 2002, and I am going strong with my BA studies. I have started playing games on consoles (Saturn, PS1), because by this point in time arcade ports are generally excellent, and not every game is in MAME. I re-discover Rolling Thunder in MAME, but I also read about the Namco Museum Encore port of the game being a version with more time and slightly less difficult Stages. I decide to buy it, since my few runs via MAME just leave foaming at my mouth most of the time, indeed.
I spend a considerable time re-learning the game during the 2002-2003 winter, and using internet videos to figure out how to clear this game. For three weeks or so, I have no idea on how to overcome the final part in of Stage eight. Somebody gives me a MAME replay and I curse the programmers for their absurdly rigid and non-intuitive design choice. However, by this point it is a matter of practice and time: I will win this battle. It is one of the last days of February 2003, when I finally kill Maboo for the first time and explode in joy. I run outside, in my grandparents’ garden, and start jumping on the fresh snow while only wearing socks at my feet. The sense of elation at clearing this game is so strong that bodily sensations become secondary, frankly. I finally 1-CC this bloody game.
It is November 2006 and I am getting ready to move to Australia for my PhD. By this point, I have watched The Prisoner and the game’s other sources of inspiration in their original language. For some mysterious reason, I feel the compulsion to play the “new” revision of the game and 1-CC it, too. It is a tense journey that sees me 1-CC the game a few times, always on my last life and with seconds to spare. Nevertheless, I do feel like I have conquered the game in all its Facets, honestly. At some undefined point in time, I discover that there is a “bootleg” version in MAME. I play it a few times and think that it would be nice to 1-CC this beast that only gives players 120 seconds. I discard these thoughts quickly: I have won over the official versions, so my grudge is over.
In conclusion, and with Xenny still mumbling that he will exact cruel revenge against my abuse: Rolling Thunder is a tactical shooting game by Namco, released in 1986. Perhaps the first and hardest example of this micro-genre, Rolling Thunder pits agent Albatross against the mysterious Geldra organization and its eldritch leader Maboo. The game is notable for having a fantastic OST courtesy of videogame legend Junko Ozawa, smooth animations and “1960s mystery/spy” setting. The game is also notorious for being a remarkably difficult challenge, given that many of its design aspects require tight mastery especially in their most counter-intuitive aspects/Facets. Nevertheless, players who are willing to accept this challenge may find themselves mastering this challenge and enjoy clearing ten difficult Stages by meeting impeccable requirements with panache. Rolling Thunder is ultimately an acquired taste, but for those who can develop this taste, it is a deliciously sweet type of poison.
(3191. words; the usual disclaimers apply; Legendary JapJac adored this game, and hopefully still does. Durandal of shmups’ fame wrote a lengthy rant about how a pioneering title should have avoided design pitfalls that became well understood in the subsequent years. I admit that I wrote about the game, at some point, but I will not link you to material that I now disown in embarrassment, sorry. I suspect that I could find more dedicated pages praising and vilifying the game in equal measures. From the squib, you may guess that I have a liminal attitude to the game, but I must admit that almost all Namco games that I played over the decades have driven me nuts. OK, not the Tekken series or Mr. Driller’s iterations, but Namco simply designed hard games, full stop. Be ready to read more about this topic next week, as we dive into the second chapter, Rolling Thunder 2.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
Devil World/Dark Adventure (Konami, 1987)
We discuss Konami’s Devil World/Dark Adventure in this squib, even if I promised that I was never going to touch this game again, in my previous thread on this title. I would quote Henry Rollins’ liar in my defence, but I suspect that it would have the opposite effect. The game has its merits, but I frankly believe that it is also one of jankiest’s Konami productions of the second half of the 1980s. I am focusing on the EU(rope)/J(a)P(an) versions, because the US version is a stand-alone, and probably earlier version of the game. In this version, stage progression is non-linear and players must figure out the right path to the final stage. They can also collect power-ups directly, collect multiple keys, and clear very different stages and challenges. The port readers wish to play is the Hamster Archives one, of course. On we go:
Devil World/Dark Adventure (Konami, 1987) is action game with top-down orientation but several R2RKMF mechanics, and a dash of A(rcade)RPG concepts.
This game also has aspects of the “dungeon crawler” genre since it pilfers ideas from Atari’s Gauntlet and mixes them with the aforementioned multi-genre mechanics. The setting also anticipates the isekai craze that has submerged anime and manga in the last few years. The game is notorious for having quite a bit of janky mechanics and a pseudo-randomised approach to Stage difficulty that can potentially drive players insane. It also pilfers characters the Indiana Jones, though it possibly offers Labryna as one of the first female leads (i.e. 1P characters) in multi-choice games. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game can be a quite satisfying challenge to overcome for the 1-CC, and a superb exercise to develop saint-like levels of patience.
I believe that faithful readers of these squibs may know, by now, that 1987 was a key year for the advent of Fantasy in its various declinations as a genre for arcade games. The squibs on Capcom’s Forgotten Worlds, Data East’s Dark Seal and Konami’s Battlantis provide some key pieces to this puzzle. For Dark Adventure, two aspects or Facets of the context play a key role in understanding this game’s creative genesis. First, Atari’s Gauntlet was a popular fantasy game and one of earliest Dungeon crawler games, even though Namco entered the genre via their Dragon Buster and The Tower of Druaga. Second, Konami had already several collaborations with “Western” distributors (e.g. Williams for Juno First and Gyruss), and their games often had a “Western”-influenced appeal and design styles. Devil World clearly aimed at entering this specific slice of the market, even if Konami’s attempt followed a curious progression.
Before we explain this Facet of the game, we outline the plot and frame how it meshes with the game design. The game opens with some unspecified event in which an Indy look-alike adventurer opens some mysterious ark-like artifact at what seems to be a press conference. Eldritch ghosts and spirits emerge, and the Indy character (Dr. Condor, the 2P character), the journalist who was interviewing (Labryna, the 1P character) magically move into another world. This world turns out to be a world full of minotaurs, bats, giant carnivore plants and other creatures that want to kill the pair at all costs. It is indeed a “devil world”, with complimentary demon king as the final boss. The game thus combines the Fantasy sub-genre of the “another/parallel world” stories (e.g. Robert Howard’s Almuric, among many narratives) with a unique take on the Gauntlet action/dungeon crawler sub-genre.
We can appreciate the unique approach to these genres by discussing the game’s mechanics. Players move Labryna and Condor (and Zalroc, the 3P player in Dark Adventure) via the joystick in eight directions. The game features a top-down but horizontally oriented screen, like Dark Seal; Stages involve free scrolling in various directions, as players need to collect key(s) and reach the exit to the subsequent stage(s). We continue with a clarification: the US version, Dark Adventure, seems to be the first version of the game. In this version, players start from a “root” initial Stage, “Mercedia”, and can progress according to a multiple path structure. Each Stage leads to multiple other Stages, but only one of these exists brings characters closer to the final Stage. In the EU/JP version Devil World, players always need to find one key and head to the exit: the multi-linear Stage structure is absent.
The B button in Devil World control character’s attacks, and the C button controls jumps. The game thus is closer to action/R2RKMF games in having characters that can shoot and jump over obstacles and sometimes platforms. Dark Adventure lacks an A button because players can collect weapons (e.g. dynamite, sword(s), bow(s)) by collecting the specific icons across stages. Instead, Devil World follows Gradius-style power-up system. Characters collect shining orbs appearing on-stage and can select extra power-ups once they have enough orbs. For instance, characters can select the speed-up option once they collect one orb; they can instead collect two orbs and select the dynamite secondary attack. Further power-ups include different primary weapons (e.g. laser, bazooka), and a shield to reduce the effect of enemies’ attacks. Players maintain extra speed, shield, and dynamite as a secondary attack until they lose a life, but can change weapons once they have enough orbs.
The game follows Gauntlet in forcing players to race against time. Labryna and Condor have a life bar and two lives in stock, with no extends. The energy bar goes down as time ticks, with speed being based on the number of lives in stock. Energy goes down fast during the first life, and relatively slow during the last life. Labryna and Condor can get extra energy by collecting cola cans, which appear after 20k points and every 50k points or so, if players reach these scores on Stages awarding the cans (e.g. Stage one, “Mercedia”, Stage ten, “Metropolis”). Players must thus race against time but also synchronise their scores with Stages, to avoid dying from plain energy loss. Stages vary considerably in size and settings, but players can press the start button at any time to check the location of the key to the next Stage.
Before we discuss further the Facets forming Stage design/layout and how they shape difficulty, we spend a few words on the audio-visual Facets of the game. The game runs on earlier Konami hardware that had reasonable limitations for its time. The 19 stages have precise design motifs: the first four Stages is set in the world’s altiplanos and features mostly luscious green, stone grey, and brown enemies. Subsequent Stages take place in the Vulcanic regions of the world, with dark crimson mountains and bright yellow lava lakes, and brightly coloured but also dangerous dungeons. Briefly, the game includes exotic and dangerous-looking settings for Stages, but tends to have a limited palette. Labryna and Condor’s animations are also choppy, and so are animations for all enemies. The game has quite an evocative atmosphere, but displays certain specific graphical limitations that may leave players perplexed.
The OST is possibly the weakest Facet of the game. Early Stages and Stage nine, “Metropolis”, feature a vaguely fantasy-sounding theme that may indeed the sensation that Labryna and Condor are crossing a devil world. Most subsequent Stages, however, forsake music and only have ambient-based noise. One example is Stage seven, “Kalamazoo”, which only includes the noise of the grumbling volcano periodically erupting and covering the Stage with dangerous lava blocks. The game also includes a boss battle theme for the only boss recurring in the game, the two-headed dragon (Stages five, nine, 13 and 17). Add a dramatic theme for the final Stage 19, but no other relevant themes for any of the other Stages. Differently from most other Konami games, Devil World seems to offer an overall bland audio-visual experience, and forsake their usual highly energetic brand if videogame music.
By this point, we can move to the delicate topic of difficulty, using our increasingly established and universal concept/term “Facet”. I believe that the game’s difficulty originates in two strongly relevant Facets, advanced game mechanics (15/50 points), Stage design/layout (30/50 points), and Rank as a weakly relevant Facet (5/50 points). Let thus proceed by discussing these Facets in this order, but also by offering a disclaimer: I am focusing on the Devil World revision, by this point onwards. Game mechanics appear intuitively simple, especially if players have a minimal knowledge of the Gradius power-up system. Nevertheless, players must learn how to properly use jumps, since each pixel-imperfect jump can potentially kill Labryna and Condor. Players must then master how to use the dynamite secondary weapon. Dynamite sticks fall slowly, so Labryna and Condor can shoot, move in one direction, and use dynamite sticks to kill enemies following their trail.
Players must also learn to manipulate shooting speed. The game has a limit on the number of objects on screen. So, tapping furiously or using auto-fire when the screen is full of enemies may result in Labryna and Condor not shooting at all, as in Taito’s Dead Connection’s case. Players must then learn which weapon suits best their approach to Stages, though this Facet is perhaps not so difficult to master. At any case, I propose to assign a 6/15 points of difficulty to this Facet. Stages design/layout plays a pivotal role in the game for two reasons. First, the location of keys across Stages is randomised: players can check this location as soon as a Stage starts (press the Start button) and head to this location. Second, Stages may involve tricky jumps or massive hordes of enemies, but always unfold as races against stime.
Regarding the first sub-Facet, let us simply say that the difficulty of the Stage hinges heavily on this randomisation process. Let us just say that Stage eight, “Pacifica”, may involve a location for the key that can quickly terminate otherwise splendidly executed runs. Regarding the second sub-Facet, Devil World’s similarities with Gauntlet play a key role. Enemies always pop-up from box-like objects that act as “generators” of new creatures. Players must destroy them as soon as possible to avoid that enemy numbers swamp the screen and, in the case of minotaurs, overload the object limit by throwing axes against Labryna and Condor. Players must thus keep enemies’ number as low as possible while also rushing through Stages, possibly by abusing dynamite and power-up weapons. Do remember: cola cans only appear on some stages, so synchronising “cola extends” with Stages is a key skill for survival.
I propose a total of 15/30 points for this Facet: once players can handle all variations of all Stages, they may easily handle the game. A final step should involve the mastering of the third Facet, rank. The game has survival time rank: the longer Labryna and Condor survive, the more aggressive enemies become. In practice, the recurring Dragon boss and Stage nine/”Metropolis” are the only passages in which rank may be a nuisance. If players die on “Metropolis”, it becomes (relatively) easy to recover a good power level, and rank becomes quite manageable. I suggest 2/5 difficulty points for this Facet, and a total of 23/50 difficulty points for the whole game. Devil World is a low-tier game for expert players who have considerable amounts of patience and who can easily handle runs in which the game opts for key locations that are difficult to handle.
Xenny is feeling rather uneasy by this point, since he knows that we are heading towards the part of the squib he (she/xen, whatever pronoun we need for xenomorphs). I promise that I will be brief and vague, dear readers. It is a story of irritation and frustration, after all, and of 1-CC’s conquered via the “Power of Anger”, to quote Salamander’s legendary theme. I have vague memories of playing this game in the arcade. I do remember that my uncle had the cab in his arcade and that my attempts at playing the game would usually end by Stage two, “Matigu”. The year was 1988 or so, and the cab is in the West side of the lower floor, near my uncle’s desk. I am curious about the game but, quite frankly, my attempts at understanding it are humbling; other adult players seem to have mastered it easily, though.
My uncle leaves the cab for a relatively long period. It seems that it works well as a trap for people to put coins, have a few minutes of confusion about the game and its mechanics, and leave frustrated. I play it a few times over the 1988-1989, and then I simply forget about its existence. From this moment onwards, I am more preoccupied with other games. It is now 2000, and I am clearing several games thanks to MAME. My approach to this game can be summarised as follows: I try out the game a few times, get quite frustrated by the mechanics and the Stage design, and give up clearing it for a long period. My MAME phases multiply over time: 2003–2004, 2006, 2012–2013, and then 2018, the Guangzhou period in which I finally decide that it is high time to 1-CC this lump of game jankness.
My plan is simple. I prepare save states for each Stage, practice Stages by following videos of 1-CC’s online, and then reset every time I get a bollocks location for the key. The game is short: starting a new credit rather than fumbling the current run can help physical and mental health. At some point, I am confident enough that I can 1-CC or even 1-LC the game on a good run, and possibly via the intervention of some superior lord of misrule. The previous post I wrote about this ordeal contains more information, but now and in hindsight I can confirm that playing the game has been satisfying. It is embarrassing to admit it, but there is a perverse satisfaction in reaching goals that may involve impressive amounts of frustration. Elation, however it is obtained, is a sweet emotional nectar: Devil World’s 1-CC is strong proof, for me.
Let us conclude, then. Devil World is an action/R2RKMF game with dungeon crawler/ARPG undertones in which protagonists Ralyn and Condor must travel back to their/our world from titular “Devil World”. The game comes in two variants, US and EU/JP, with the former having multiple path Stage structure latter having a streamlined Stage progression system. The versions differ considerably in their power-up systems but not in their basic mechanics, and in either case involve a slowly decreasing energy bar. The EU/JP version can act as a “playable revision” of the US version, even if it involves several Facets that may drive players nuts if they wish to 1-CC the game. At the same time, the game is atmospheric enough and intriguing enough that a 1-CC may feel like a remarkably hard-won victory. Players who want to test their skills and saint-like patience can thus find an excellent ordeal to overcome.
(2357 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Xenny complained that I was seething and drooling too much, and the neighbour from the lower floor now wants me to pay for the floor and roof. Apparently, the game also made me particularly acid saliva; I wrote this whole squib while just feeling immensely acrimonious towards the game. Now, this does not mean that you should not play the game; on the contrary. Becoming an adult also entails learning to overcome exasperating and futile challenges, and Devil World is an astounding boot camp for anyone who wants to master this skill. Or maybe I am really a bastard and I want to lure you into suffering like I did, when I played this game. Or maybe not or…Ah, enough, to the next squib.)
Devil World/Dark Adventure (Konami, 1987) is action game with top-down orientation but several R2RKMF mechanics, and a dash of A(rcade)RPG concepts.
This game also has aspects of the “dungeon crawler” genre since it pilfers ideas from Atari’s Gauntlet and mixes them with the aforementioned multi-genre mechanics. The setting also anticipates the isekai craze that has submerged anime and manga in the last few years. The game is notorious for having quite a bit of janky mechanics and a pseudo-randomised approach to Stage difficulty that can potentially drive players insane. It also pilfers characters the Indiana Jones, though it possibly offers Labryna as one of the first female leads (i.e. 1P characters) in multi-choice games. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game can be a quite satisfying challenge to overcome for the 1-CC, and a superb exercise to develop saint-like levels of patience.
I believe that faithful readers of these squibs may know, by now, that 1987 was a key year for the advent of Fantasy in its various declinations as a genre for arcade games. The squibs on Capcom’s Forgotten Worlds, Data East’s Dark Seal and Konami’s Battlantis provide some key pieces to this puzzle. For Dark Adventure, two aspects or Facets of the context play a key role in understanding this game’s creative genesis. First, Atari’s Gauntlet was a popular fantasy game and one of earliest Dungeon crawler games, even though Namco entered the genre via their Dragon Buster and The Tower of Druaga. Second, Konami had already several collaborations with “Western” distributors (e.g. Williams for Juno First and Gyruss), and their games often had a “Western”-influenced appeal and design styles. Devil World clearly aimed at entering this specific slice of the market, even if Konami’s attempt followed a curious progression.
Before we explain this Facet of the game, we outline the plot and frame how it meshes with the game design. The game opens with some unspecified event in which an Indy look-alike adventurer opens some mysterious ark-like artifact at what seems to be a press conference. Eldritch ghosts and spirits emerge, and the Indy character (Dr. Condor, the 2P character), the journalist who was interviewing (Labryna, the 1P character) magically move into another world. This world turns out to be a world full of minotaurs, bats, giant carnivore plants and other creatures that want to kill the pair at all costs. It is indeed a “devil world”, with complimentary demon king as the final boss. The game thus combines the Fantasy sub-genre of the “another/parallel world” stories (e.g. Robert Howard’s Almuric, among many narratives) with a unique take on the Gauntlet action/dungeon crawler sub-genre.
We can appreciate the unique approach to these genres by discussing the game’s mechanics. Players move Labryna and Condor (and Zalroc, the 3P player in Dark Adventure) via the joystick in eight directions. The game features a top-down but horizontally oriented screen, like Dark Seal; Stages involve free scrolling in various directions, as players need to collect key(s) and reach the exit to the subsequent stage(s). We continue with a clarification: the US version, Dark Adventure, seems to be the first version of the game. In this version, players start from a “root” initial Stage, “Mercedia”, and can progress according to a multiple path structure. Each Stage leads to multiple other Stages, but only one of these exists brings characters closer to the final Stage. In the EU/JP version Devil World, players always need to find one key and head to the exit: the multi-linear Stage structure is absent.
The B button in Devil World control character’s attacks, and the C button controls jumps. The game thus is closer to action/R2RKMF games in having characters that can shoot and jump over obstacles and sometimes platforms. Dark Adventure lacks an A button because players can collect weapons (e.g. dynamite, sword(s), bow(s)) by collecting the specific icons across stages. Instead, Devil World follows Gradius-style power-up system. Characters collect shining orbs appearing on-stage and can select extra power-ups once they have enough orbs. For instance, characters can select the speed-up option once they collect one orb; they can instead collect two orbs and select the dynamite secondary attack. Further power-ups include different primary weapons (e.g. laser, bazooka), and a shield to reduce the effect of enemies’ attacks. Players maintain extra speed, shield, and dynamite as a secondary attack until they lose a life, but can change weapons once they have enough orbs.
The game follows Gauntlet in forcing players to race against time. Labryna and Condor have a life bar and two lives in stock, with no extends. The energy bar goes down as time ticks, with speed being based on the number of lives in stock. Energy goes down fast during the first life, and relatively slow during the last life. Labryna and Condor can get extra energy by collecting cola cans, which appear after 20k points and every 50k points or so, if players reach these scores on Stages awarding the cans (e.g. Stage one, “Mercedia”, Stage ten, “Metropolis”). Players must thus race against time but also synchronise their scores with Stages, to avoid dying from plain energy loss. Stages vary considerably in size and settings, but players can press the start button at any time to check the location of the key to the next Stage.
Before we discuss further the Facets forming Stage design/layout and how they shape difficulty, we spend a few words on the audio-visual Facets of the game. The game runs on earlier Konami hardware that had reasonable limitations for its time. The 19 stages have precise design motifs: the first four Stages is set in the world’s altiplanos and features mostly luscious green, stone grey, and brown enemies. Subsequent Stages take place in the Vulcanic regions of the world, with dark crimson mountains and bright yellow lava lakes, and brightly coloured but also dangerous dungeons. Briefly, the game includes exotic and dangerous-looking settings for Stages, but tends to have a limited palette. Labryna and Condor’s animations are also choppy, and so are animations for all enemies. The game has quite an evocative atmosphere, but displays certain specific graphical limitations that may leave players perplexed.
The OST is possibly the weakest Facet of the game. Early Stages and Stage nine, “Metropolis”, feature a vaguely fantasy-sounding theme that may indeed the sensation that Labryna and Condor are crossing a devil world. Most subsequent Stages, however, forsake music and only have ambient-based noise. One example is Stage seven, “Kalamazoo”, which only includes the noise of the grumbling volcano periodically erupting and covering the Stage with dangerous lava blocks. The game also includes a boss battle theme for the only boss recurring in the game, the two-headed dragon (Stages five, nine, 13 and 17). Add a dramatic theme for the final Stage 19, but no other relevant themes for any of the other Stages. Differently from most other Konami games, Devil World seems to offer an overall bland audio-visual experience, and forsake their usual highly energetic brand if videogame music.
By this point, we can move to the delicate topic of difficulty, using our increasingly established and universal concept/term “Facet”. I believe that the game’s difficulty originates in two strongly relevant Facets, advanced game mechanics (15/50 points), Stage design/layout (30/50 points), and Rank as a weakly relevant Facet (5/50 points). Let thus proceed by discussing these Facets in this order, but also by offering a disclaimer: I am focusing on the Devil World revision, by this point onwards. Game mechanics appear intuitively simple, especially if players have a minimal knowledge of the Gradius power-up system. Nevertheless, players must learn how to properly use jumps, since each pixel-imperfect jump can potentially kill Labryna and Condor. Players must then master how to use the dynamite secondary weapon. Dynamite sticks fall slowly, so Labryna and Condor can shoot, move in one direction, and use dynamite sticks to kill enemies following their trail.
Players must also learn to manipulate shooting speed. The game has a limit on the number of objects on screen. So, tapping furiously or using auto-fire when the screen is full of enemies may result in Labryna and Condor not shooting at all, as in Taito’s Dead Connection’s case. Players must then learn which weapon suits best their approach to Stages, though this Facet is perhaps not so difficult to master. At any case, I propose to assign a 6/15 points of difficulty to this Facet. Stages design/layout plays a pivotal role in the game for two reasons. First, the location of keys across Stages is randomised: players can check this location as soon as a Stage starts (press the Start button) and head to this location. Second, Stages may involve tricky jumps or massive hordes of enemies, but always unfold as races against stime.
Regarding the first sub-Facet, let us simply say that the difficulty of the Stage hinges heavily on this randomisation process. Let us just say that Stage eight, “Pacifica”, may involve a location for the key that can quickly terminate otherwise splendidly executed runs. Regarding the second sub-Facet, Devil World’s similarities with Gauntlet play a key role. Enemies always pop-up from box-like objects that act as “generators” of new creatures. Players must destroy them as soon as possible to avoid that enemy numbers swamp the screen and, in the case of minotaurs, overload the object limit by throwing axes against Labryna and Condor. Players must thus keep enemies’ number as low as possible while also rushing through Stages, possibly by abusing dynamite and power-up weapons. Do remember: cola cans only appear on some stages, so synchronising “cola extends” with Stages is a key skill for survival.
I propose a total of 15/30 points for this Facet: once players can handle all variations of all Stages, they may easily handle the game. A final step should involve the mastering of the third Facet, rank. The game has survival time rank: the longer Labryna and Condor survive, the more aggressive enemies become. In practice, the recurring Dragon boss and Stage nine/”Metropolis” are the only passages in which rank may be a nuisance. If players die on “Metropolis”, it becomes (relatively) easy to recover a good power level, and rank becomes quite manageable. I suggest 2/5 difficulty points for this Facet, and a total of 23/50 difficulty points for the whole game. Devil World is a low-tier game for expert players who have considerable amounts of patience and who can easily handle runs in which the game opts for key locations that are difficult to handle.
Xenny is feeling rather uneasy by this point, since he knows that we are heading towards the part of the squib he (she/xen, whatever pronoun we need for xenomorphs). I promise that I will be brief and vague, dear readers. It is a story of irritation and frustration, after all, and of 1-CC’s conquered via the “Power of Anger”, to quote Salamander’s legendary theme. I have vague memories of playing this game in the arcade. I do remember that my uncle had the cab in his arcade and that my attempts at playing the game would usually end by Stage two, “Matigu”. The year was 1988 or so, and the cab is in the West side of the lower floor, near my uncle’s desk. I am curious about the game but, quite frankly, my attempts at understanding it are humbling; other adult players seem to have mastered it easily, though.
My uncle leaves the cab for a relatively long period. It seems that it works well as a trap for people to put coins, have a few minutes of confusion about the game and its mechanics, and leave frustrated. I play it a few times over the 1988-1989, and then I simply forget about its existence. From this moment onwards, I am more preoccupied with other games. It is now 2000, and I am clearing several games thanks to MAME. My approach to this game can be summarised as follows: I try out the game a few times, get quite frustrated by the mechanics and the Stage design, and give up clearing it for a long period. My MAME phases multiply over time: 2003–2004, 2006, 2012–2013, and then 2018, the Guangzhou period in which I finally decide that it is high time to 1-CC this lump of game jankness.
My plan is simple. I prepare save states for each Stage, practice Stages by following videos of 1-CC’s online, and then reset every time I get a bollocks location for the key. The game is short: starting a new credit rather than fumbling the current run can help physical and mental health. At some point, I am confident enough that I can 1-CC or even 1-LC the game on a good run, and possibly via the intervention of some superior lord of misrule. The previous post I wrote about this ordeal contains more information, but now and in hindsight I can confirm that playing the game has been satisfying. It is embarrassing to admit it, but there is a perverse satisfaction in reaching goals that may involve impressive amounts of frustration. Elation, however it is obtained, is a sweet emotional nectar: Devil World’s 1-CC is strong proof, for me.
Let us conclude, then. Devil World is an action/R2RKMF game with dungeon crawler/ARPG undertones in which protagonists Ralyn and Condor must travel back to their/our world from titular “Devil World”. The game comes in two variants, US and EU/JP, with the former having multiple path Stage structure latter having a streamlined Stage progression system. The versions differ considerably in their power-up systems but not in their basic mechanics, and in either case involve a slowly decreasing energy bar. The EU/JP version can act as a “playable revision” of the US version, even if it involves several Facets that may drive players nuts if they wish to 1-CC the game. At the same time, the game is atmospheric enough and intriguing enough that a 1-CC may feel like a remarkably hard-won victory. Players who want to test their skills and saint-like patience can thus find an excellent ordeal to overcome.
(2357 words; the usual disclaimers apply; Xenny complained that I was seething and drooling too much, and the neighbour from the lower floor now wants me to pay for the floor and roof. Apparently, the game also made me particularly acid saliva; I wrote this whole squib while just feeling immensely acrimonious towards the game. Now, this does not mean that you should not play the game; on the contrary. Becoming an adult also entails learning to overcome exasperating and futile challenges, and Devil World is an astounding boot camp for anyone who wants to master this skill. Or maybe I am really a bastard and I want to lure you into suffering like I did, when I played this game. Or maybe not or…Ah, enough, to the next squib.)
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).