- R2RKMF/single screen/other
- Rolling Thunder 2
- Psychic 5
- Cadash
Shmups - Phelios
- Master of Weapon
- Darius
- Darius II
- Facets
- Genres
- Difficulty
- 1-CC (the concept of)
Don't forget to spread the love, at any case.
RRR: Index of squibs
Devil World/Dark Adventure (Konami, 1987)
Plans from here to the end of April:
Don't forget to spread the love, at any case.
Don't forget to spread the love, at any case.
"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
Dark Adventure (US) is a shockingly blatant quarter-muncher, with that vampiric health drain. Even compared to fellow KUSA (
) infamies like Haunted Castle and its 2HKOs, it's appalling. I would be surprised to see a 1CC of it on defaults. (this chap cleared it on Easy - headphones warning - which sounds pretty impressive as-is)
...I almost wonder if DA is one of those games that canonically defaults to Easy, ala many famous Tecmo and SNK hits.
Would explain a lot. 
The less intriguingly unique, yet infinitely more playable JP/EU game retained a few stubborn RNGs I never reckoned, in my late 2023 play. (good god damn, the time went quickly) I could deal with the key placements - the run I uploaded got the absolute worst on Pacifica, I thought it looked rad. 
But those goddamn Cokes would leave me hanging sometimes. Offhand, feels like there's a minor chance of getting shafted outta the 1LC; though it'd take a presumably biblical drought of refined carbs to rob a skilled player of their whole credit. Baby steps, Konami! 
Not to over-indulge in my schoolboy funnin', but I cannot resist mentioning my minor episode Dark Adventure Is Still Pretty Punk, Steve! In which Big Internet™ relentlessly deleted my upload of KUSA's scandalous, customarily cosplay-tastic flyer! (foot of post) It seems they've since come to their senses, it being 1.5yrs since the last purging of this vintage Indy Jonez tribute. Or maybe Imgur has simply refined their No Boobs Robot's AI? Either way, this game clearly remained controversial some 35yrs post-release.
) infamies like Haunted Castle and its 2HKOs, it's appalling. I would be surprised to see a 1CC of it on defaults. (this chap cleared it on Easy - headphones warning - which sounds pretty impressive as-is)...I almost wonder if DA is one of those games that canonically defaults to Easy, ala many famous Tecmo and SNK hits.
Would explain a lot. Or "Normal," as Argus no Senshi, Ninja Ryukenden, and Gemini Wing's JP manuals call it (GW pictured)
But those goddamn Cokes would leave me hanging sometimes. Offhand, feels like there's a minor chance of getting shafted outta the 1LC; though it'd take a presumably biblical drought of refined carbs to rob a skilled player of their whole credit. Baby steps, Konami! Not to over-indulge in my schoolboy funnin', but I cannot resist mentioning my minor episode Dark Adventure Is Still Pretty Punk, Steve! In which Big Internet™ relentlessly deleted my upload of KUSA's scandalous, customarily cosplay-tastic flyer! (foot of post) It seems they've since come to their senses, it being 1.5yrs since the last purging of this vintage Indy Jonez tribute. Or maybe Imgur has simply refined their No Boobs Robot's AI? Either way, this game clearly remained controversial some 35yrs post-release.
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]
Devil World/Dark Adventure (Konami, 1987)+Rolling Thunder (Namco, 1986)+Carrier Airwing/US Navy (Capcom, 1990)+1943/1943
I am more or less sure that Konami christened their tradition of making almost impossible US versions with either Dark Adventure or some slightly earlier but rather obscure title (Rock'n Rage?) I am actually pretty sure that they started earlier but degenerated by this title or DA: I have these really faint memories of me trying one of their early 1980s games and finding minor but clear differences in difficulty between US and JP/EU versions. Perhaps their collaboration with Williams led them to the conclusion that they had to target the US market in...head-scratching manners, I guess.
Re: DA:
Colas should appear after 20k points and then every 60k points or so, but it seems that they will only appear on some Stages, and only if you hit the target score while playing the target Stage. I do not have explicit proof in the form of manuals or other documentation, but in the few replays I have seen in the game, players seem to time their score progression accordingly and get all the colas at the right spots (no "coke" for me - I attended arcades, and that word has developed horrible connotations in my head 
).
I suspect that the issue with the flyer is that it might be a rip-off of something. The Japanese one is a rip-off of Return of the Jedi, so I was wondering if imgur would block that one as well. AI should be trained to block anything showing full cleavages, so that flyer strikes me as...too prudish (?) to be an issue for those zealot AI's (oh, the absolutely venomous jokes I have been deleting while writing this post!). I can see the images from the old post, so I guess that they have become vaguely better at it. Maybe.
The true question is: why Zalroc, the second archaeologist character, looks like he's just returned from a Miami Vice marathon night? Ah, the 1980s.
Anyway, I am definitely not touching this game ever again, but I felt the "duty", for the lack of a less inappropriate word, to squib about it and cleanse my memories of all the negativity. Let us also check if the new approach to posts titles is more informative: weekly updates, all rolled up into one headline.
Re: DA:
Colas should appear after 20k points and then every 60k points or so, but it seems that they will only appear on some Stages, and only if you hit the target score while playing the target Stage. I do not have explicit proof in the form of manuals or other documentation, but in the few replays I have seen in the game, players seem to time their score progression accordingly and get all the colas at the right spots (no "coke" for me - I attended arcades, and that word has developed horrible connotations in my head
).I suspect that the issue with the flyer is that it might be a rip-off of something. The Japanese one is a rip-off of Return of the Jedi, so I was wondering if imgur would block that one as well. AI should be trained to block anything showing full cleavages, so that flyer strikes me as...too prudish (?) to be an issue for those zealot AI's (oh, the absolutely venomous jokes I have been deleting while writing this post!). I can see the images from the old post, so I guess that they have become vaguely better at it. Maybe.
The true question is: why Zalroc, the second archaeologist character, looks like he's just returned from a Miami Vice marathon night? Ah, the 1980s.
Anyway, I am definitely not touching this game ever again, but I felt the "duty", for the lack of a less inappropriate word, to squib about it and cleanse my memories of all the negativity. Let us also check if the new approach to posts titles is more informative: weekly updates, all rolled up into one headline.
"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 2 (Namco, 1990)
We now move to the discussion of Rolling Thunder as a follow-up to our discussion of Rolling Thunder in last week’s update. First, however, I must offer a bit of book-keeping. I will complete the seven squibs that I mentioned in last week’s update at a slower pace, as I will switch to two squibs per week from now to the end of this academic year (i.e. August 2025). Life happens, so this moderately slower pace is necessary. Again, however, I will also aim at posting theoretically-oriented squibs at the end of the four remaining months (May, June, July and August). Once I will clear the current batch of squibs, I will post which other games-based squibs I will post during this year and, probably, in the next academic year. Please do not expect a very precise schedule until I sort out what games I want to write about, though.
Some more introductory material, before we begin, can be useful. The game features an Mega Drive port that should have a lower difficulty level, two extra stages and cutscenes showing howLeila and Albatross have a friendship akin to Mr. Steed and Mrs. Peel from The Avengers. Modern ports appear in Arcade Archives and Namco Museum line-ups: they offer arcade-perfect renditions. There is an MD-exclusive sequel, Rolling Thunder 3, which should offer a side-story (“Gaiden”) game to the events in the second game. Rolling Thunder 2 originally was a J(a)P(an) only release, but there is also a near-identical US version. For this squib, however, grab your Martinis and be ready to swing wildly, since we begin:
Rolling Thunder 2 (Namco, 1990) is a direct sequel to Namco’s Rolling Thunder and thus an R2RKMF/tactical action shooting game. The game runs on Namco’s more powerful board System 2 and features rich scaling and rotating visual effects, coupled with luscious settings and a glorious OST. The game sees the return of codename “Leila” and codename “Albatross” in a late 1980s’ setting, with a resurgent Geldra trying again to conquer the world. The game also follows a formula close to the original Rolling Thunder with respect to game mechanics and Stage design. The game also offers a few tweaks and fewer quirks that make the experience perhaps less demanding, even if the last Stage is an absolute gaming tour de force. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game is a sometimes frustrating but often glorious experience, if only because clearing the final Stage requires superb skills.
Let us move the clock forward in the discussion of this series by analysing the game’s micro-context of release. By 1990, Namco released a notable series of game on their new System 2 hardware that offered gorgeous scaling and rotating effects. A few memorable titles include Phelios, Dragon Saber among “standard” shmups, Assault as a twin-stick variant of the genre. We can include Valkyrie no Densetsu and Märchen Maze as action games with original mechanics and female leads and as quite innovative approaches to this genre. Namco’s commitment to innovation found however a indirect challenge in Capcom’s Strider and its other action/platform games, plus Data East’s Sly Spy take on the tactical shooting micro-genre. “Action” in arcade games was rapidly evolving towards games offering many degrees of freedom to players, and the Rolling Thunder formula suddenly appeared rather outdated. In many aspects, Rolling Thunder 2 seems a direct answer to this challenge.
The game’s answer is perhaps not particularly elaborate, but we can fully address this matter once we outline the game’s plot and game/world setting. It is the year 199X and a mysterious organisation, armed with their own Shuttles is destroying key communication satellites (in perfect James Bond style, of course). Criminal organisation Geldra has resurfaced and their leader Gimdo has decided that conquering the world is a noble goal, after all. The world precipitates into chaos and the WCPO (World Criminal Police Organization) decides to send Leila and Albatross to investigate. The coolest couple of middle-aged agents thus begins their mission to bring peace and harmony again. Their dangerous mission brings them to first investigate an immense underground below Miami’s ocean floor, and then another immense underground base below Egypt’s pyramids. Once successful, Leila and Albatross fly Geldra’s shuttle to space and receive universal praise for their secret mission, apparently.
The plot thus pilfers ideas from various bits of the James Bond lore and presents Leila as the current protagonist (i.e. the 1P character). Albatross, instead, is the deuteragonist (i.e. the 2P character). The game mechanics, instead, remain very similar to the first title: I offer a compact but accurate synopsis to avoid that my readers will find the next few paragraphs tedious. The joysticks control Leila and Albatross’ movements in eight directions, and the B button controls jumps. Leila and Albatross can high jump (up+jump) and jump down (down+jump) as in the first title to change elevation/platforms. They can enter doors as they wish (up when occupying a door’s entrance). Normal jumps cover a slightly shorter distance and have a slightly shorter duration, and the two agents still cannot shoot while jumping. Be sure to time jumps precisely and “recalibrate” their distance, thus.
The A buttons control shots: Leila and Albatross start with 40 gun bullets and can stock up bullets by entering ammo rooms. The two agents can also get machinegun bullets in the opportune doors, and refills for both weapons usually involve lower amounts of bullets when compared to the first tile. Differently from the first game, bouncing into enemies will not entail a loss of H(it)(Point)s, which now appear as two dots below the number of lives in stock. Be sure, however, to “bump away” from enemies and into chasms or abysses. Players can get an extra life at 100k points, so they have one extend less to complete the game. Leila can carry extra bullets into new stages but, if they die or deplete their ammos, they restock 40 gun bullets at the beginning of a new stage. Bullets now travel faster, so be sure adjust to their speed.
The key game mechanic in Rolling Thunder, time and its lack thereof, plays a subtler role in this title. For the first “story” (i.e. the four Stages set in Miami’s ocean), Stages offer enough time for players to proceed at a moderate pace and avoid losing lives due to time out. For the second “story” (i.e. the four Egyptian Stages), players must proceed at a briskier pace, but also be very careful during Stage sections involving specific enemies. For instance, on Stage five players must halt and spend a few seconds killing enemies looking like giant humanoid hedgehogs, before proceeding. On Stage eight, players must indeed wait that some enemies exit the screen, before they can proceed. The game overall allows players to clear each Stage within the allotted time, unlike in some revisions of the first game. However, players must handle Stage progression very carefully, indeed.
Before we address this Facet of the game and how it ties to difficulty, we explore more the audio-visual Facets. Rolling Thunder 2 appears as a gorgeous game with a vast colour palette, gloriously detailed and creative settings, and 2.D effects that are as stunning as they are elegant. Stage four and Stage eight show offer these views of the underground bases’ core that evoke feelings of immense underground caves hosting full armies set to conquer the world, indeed. Leila and Albatross also look incredibly elegant, as they kill goons in stilettos (Leila) and a tie (Albatross) with panache. Stages five and six and their Egyptian theme may appear camp, by today’s standards, but they quickly lead to the much cooler underground base settings. Stage four ends in an underground submarine port from which Geldra’s leader Gimdo flees to Egypt; Stage eight’s final battle is next to Geldra’s shuttle.
A perhaps perplexing or at least peculiar aspect of the game is that the quality of the animation appears somehow inferior to the original game, possibly due to different factors. To the best of my understanding, all sprites in the game are slightly smaller in size with respect to their Rolling Thunder counterparts. Furthermore, the game’s hardware graphical specifications seem to cause a slight flickering effect. I am not an expert of these matters in the least, but the subjective impression is that enemies and bullets appear having fewer smooth animation frames than in the first title. Leila and Albatross, however, move quite smoothly. This impression may confuse players when Albatross and Leila bump into enemies or when several enemies appear at once: distinguishing characters moving “at different frame rates” may be confusing. Nevertheless, the game’s visuals are still impressive and vastly superior to most subsequent 2D arcade endeavours.
The OST is easily the strongest aesthetical Facet of the game. Rolling Thunder 2 is Ayako Saso’s maiden work as a videogame composer; possibly, one of her strongest oeuvres ever. The OST takes inspiration from big band Jazz and more modern funk-oriented action movie themes, with a bit of pure Jazz thrown in for good measure. Unlike Rolling Thunder’s darker recurring theme, Rolling Thunder 2 has multiple Stage-specific themes that also aptly match the Stage’s themes. Stage two’s Residence of Terrible has a flippant funky tone suggesting intrigue in Geldra’s mansion; Stage four’s Where is the Target? opens with a quick slap-bass funk and moves into James Bond-esque swing by the mis-section. Of course, Stage five’s A view of dynamism tries to capture the exotic feeling of adventuring in Egypt while killing Geldra goons and saving the world. The OST’s multiple sources of inspiration and genre blend seamlessly, aptly matching the visuals.
The strong pieces in an overall impressive OST however include the attract theme sequence and Stage eight’s final tryptic. The attract movie pilfers from Bond’s movies and offers an elegant “early synth-pop” piece providing an equally dramatic and epic overture to the game’s action. Stage eight, the final Stage, includes Running Decayed, The final command and Theme ftom Gimdo]. The first theme plays while Leila and Albatross cross the sewers’ opening section; the second theme, when they ascend to the shuttle launch pad. The third and final theme plays when the two protagonists should be on their last few bullets and must kill Gimdo, whence the perfectly chosen title. The three songs create a “slow and dramatic, fast and epic, frantic and tense” sequence of atmospheres that would possibly rival most action movies’ OSTs. Rolling Thunder 2 is, from an audio-visual perspective, a marvellously designed, intensely cinematographic though not perfect game.
The game’s incredibly sleek and technically advanced presentation does not however match the perhaps already if slightly outdated mechanics and game’s difficulty. As for the first title, three Facets act as sources of difficulty: Game mechanics, Stage design and layout, and the interaction between the two Facets as a third complex Facet. Again, I provide a concise but accurate overview of these Facets that partly presupposes knowledge of the corresponding discussion in Rolling Thunder’s squib. Again, I assume that these Facets motivate 20, 20 and 10 points respectively, for a total of 50 points. For the first Facet, players must learn how Leila and Albatross move, their exact length of their jumps, and the HPs of each of their enemies. Some enemies have 8 HPs and act as veritable “bullet sponges”; some jumps require pixel-perfect precision. For this facet, I thus propose 10/20 points of difficulty also in this sequel.
The second Facet attracts a relatively lower 10/20 points, when compared to Rolling Thunder’s 14/20 difficulty points for this Facet. The simple reason behind this choice is that the game has eight Stages (i.e. two “stories” or loops of four Stages each), but the final Stage has three distinct, very challenging parts. Thus, players must master the equivalent of 10 Stages’ worth of enemies’ placements, traps, and sneak attacks. The third Facet absorbs another 10 points out of 10 allotted (i.e. we have 10/10 points), even if the sub-Facets motivating this choice differently subtly from the first game. I concentrate on those that appear novel, and that play a role in Stage seven and eight. When players access these Stages, the time limits appear generous, but the bullet count can be misleading. Players must clear these Stages by not killing enemies with high HPs simply de-spawn from stages.
The details are as follows. On stage seven, players can only replenish twice, and they likely enter the Stage with low ammo supplies. By the end of this Stage, players likely need to restock 40 bullets before they begin Stage eight. On Stage eight, players must avoid killing enemies that have four HPs or higher: bullets will not suffice, otherwise. Players must thus develop a route that involves entering doors for protracted periods (hold up when inside a room), and let enemies exit the screen. Time appears abundant, but that is because players must take this option several times, or they will reach the final sequence and boss without bullets. If successful, anyway, players enter the final sequence with enough bullets and time to kill Gimdo and save the world. Expect to clear the Stage with less than five second and bullets, on the best run.
For this reason, I propose that the total difficulty of the game is 30/50 points: the game is a top-tier challenge for expert players, and a slightly easier game than Rolling Thunder. Notably, there are no considerable differences among versions, so players can 1-CC either one of them to achieve this goal. However, I believe that the last Stage involves a steep transition from 24/50 points to 30/50 points, as players progress through its three parts. Notably, players can decide which enemies not to kill, once they have strategies to de-spawn the enemies with the highest HPs. Whatever subtly different paths players devise, execution must be flawless and possibly follow the outstanding OST’s pace. If done properly, however, players can display guile (hide in the doors), flawless tactical choices (no wasted bullets) and get a final thrill. Again, pixel-perfect routes allow a heart-stopping buffer of a few seconds and bullets.
The picture emerging from our discussion is that Rolling Thunder 2 is a beautiful game with a superb design that however does not innovate much on its predecessor’s formula. Xenny, at this point, would be happy if I would move to the conclusions, of course. I must tell you, however, about my experiences with the game first, so that the poor xenomorph will be foaming at his/her/its/xen/whatever mouth and rid us from our pestering neighbours. It is 1996 and I am getting ready for my new journey. I have entered the national naval college, so I will complete my last two high school years while being in the Navy, technically. I am not sure on what to expect, but I know that “fun” like games and tabletop RPGs will disappear. Then again, as a minor I do not decide on these matters of my own life.
I have several occasions to visit my uncle’s arcade, which by this summer begins to be more of a graveyard of old cabs than a proper arcade. I also go with him to visit the EUR Luna Park in Rome, which has the largest arcade in Italy and possibly in Europe. The arcade is a hangar and a display for prospective buyers and operators: people can play games before they buy boards and cabs. In our visits before “prison”, as my uncle calls it, I have the chance to play this game, Elevator Action Returns and Raystorm. Over eight consecutive Sunday visits, I can manage to practice the game enough to reach once Stage six. This game might be six years old but it is beautiful and absurdly tough, for my current skills. Once in the college, Leila and Albatross disappear quickly from my memories.
In 2000, I am enjoying my MAME gap year with irresponsible abandon. I clear games as if the futile endeavour would give me back the years lost in the maelstrom of my Navy ordeal. I solve several grudges, as my squibs on Side Arms and Dinasty Wars explain. Rolling Thunder 2, however, represents an insurmountable obstacle: I have no idea on how to clear Stage eight, given that bullets end too early. I give up once I realise that I must make sense of my life and I must study. I give up again in 2004 (Konstanz), 2006 (Utrecht), 2012 (Stockholm) and even 2018 (Guangzhou), each pair of a year and a place in which I believe that I can 1-CC game. Sometimes it is patience, sometimes it is lack of good gaming form, sometimes it is just lack of time to practice.
It is 2022 when I finally recover the video I posted at the beginning of the squib and I decide to prepare some save states, to practice each Stage. This time I have the patience, time and even the will to learn the final Stage properly. As I mention in this thread, I am on a recent “grudge quest” and by this time in life, I have decided that this game I will 1-CC, yes indeed. My attempts to do not go in vain: the thread gives my readers an overview of a long grudge going to rest, finally. Yet, I can safely say that in 1995, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2018 and in 2022, the game frustrates me to no end. Still, a victory is a victory, and some of my final victories even include performances improving on the reference video. Now, that feels satisfying indeed.
In conclusion, Rolling Thunder 2 is a tactical shooting action/R2RKMF game by Namco released in 1990 and still looking and sounding better than most “modern” 2D games. The game plays like an updated version of its predecessor Rolling Thunder, pitting again agents Leila and Albatross against world-conquering terrorist group Geldra. The game is notable for its high but not extreme difficulty, its superb OST and for the incredible coolness of the two protagonists. The game is also notable in having an incredibly challenging and yet highly flexible final Stage that brings the concept of “tactical shooting” to its most emphatic and elegant extremes. Players who want to challenge themselves in 1-CC’ing a remarkably difficult and yet superbly elegant game, and looking good while doing it, should have a crack at this game. Be sure, in case, to have some exquisite Martinis to celebrate the triumph with hubris and style.
(2811 words/5.12 pages; the usual disclaimers apply; I always believed that having someone as cool as Leila as the protagonist should be a mandatory first choice for any action game. I am pretty sure that I will write some more serious and elaborate squib or perhaps even “proper paper” on the topic, too. I never understood how Leila and Albatross can perform those high jumps so easily, though. I mean, just how strong a human should be, to jump more than two metres and perform a one-arm muscle-up at peak height? Anyway, the game’s OST is possibly my favourite R2RKMF soundtrack ever, especially when I drink Martinis during breezy summer nights. Of course, everybody agreed with me once I played the corresponding mixtape in my car’s stereo, many moons ago. Ah, the joys of being BA students and shameless geeks!).
Some more introductory material, before we begin, can be useful. The game features an Mega Drive port that should have a lower difficulty level, two extra stages and cutscenes showing howLeila and Albatross have a friendship akin to Mr. Steed and Mrs. Peel from The Avengers. Modern ports appear in Arcade Archives and Namco Museum line-ups: they offer arcade-perfect renditions. There is an MD-exclusive sequel, Rolling Thunder 3, which should offer a side-story (“Gaiden”) game to the events in the second game. Rolling Thunder 2 originally was a J(a)P(an) only release, but there is also a near-identical US version. For this squib, however, grab your Martinis and be ready to swing wildly, since we begin:
Rolling Thunder 2 (Namco, 1990) is a direct sequel to Namco’s Rolling Thunder and thus an R2RKMF/tactical action shooting game. The game runs on Namco’s more powerful board System 2 and features rich scaling and rotating visual effects, coupled with luscious settings and a glorious OST. The game sees the return of codename “Leila” and codename “Albatross” in a late 1980s’ setting, with a resurgent Geldra trying again to conquer the world. The game also follows a formula close to the original Rolling Thunder with respect to game mechanics and Stage design. The game also offers a few tweaks and fewer quirks that make the experience perhaps less demanding, even if the last Stage is an absolute gaming tour de force. My goal in this squib is to convince readers that the game is a sometimes frustrating but often glorious experience, if only because clearing the final Stage requires superb skills.
Let us move the clock forward in the discussion of this series by analysing the game’s micro-context of release. By 1990, Namco released a notable series of game on their new System 2 hardware that offered gorgeous scaling and rotating effects. A few memorable titles include Phelios, Dragon Saber among “standard” shmups, Assault as a twin-stick variant of the genre. We can include Valkyrie no Densetsu and Märchen Maze as action games with original mechanics and female leads and as quite innovative approaches to this genre. Namco’s commitment to innovation found however a indirect challenge in Capcom’s Strider and its other action/platform games, plus Data East’s Sly Spy take on the tactical shooting micro-genre. “Action” in arcade games was rapidly evolving towards games offering many degrees of freedom to players, and the Rolling Thunder formula suddenly appeared rather outdated. In many aspects, Rolling Thunder 2 seems a direct answer to this challenge.
The game’s answer is perhaps not particularly elaborate, but we can fully address this matter once we outline the game’s plot and game/world setting. It is the year 199X and a mysterious organisation, armed with their own Shuttles is destroying key communication satellites (in perfect James Bond style, of course). Criminal organisation Geldra has resurfaced and their leader Gimdo has decided that conquering the world is a noble goal, after all. The world precipitates into chaos and the WCPO (World Criminal Police Organization) decides to send Leila and Albatross to investigate. The coolest couple of middle-aged agents thus begins their mission to bring peace and harmony again. Their dangerous mission brings them to first investigate an immense underground below Miami’s ocean floor, and then another immense underground base below Egypt’s pyramids. Once successful, Leila and Albatross fly Geldra’s shuttle to space and receive universal praise for their secret mission, apparently.
The plot thus pilfers ideas from various bits of the James Bond lore and presents Leila as the current protagonist (i.e. the 1P character). Albatross, instead, is the deuteragonist (i.e. the 2P character). The game mechanics, instead, remain very similar to the first title: I offer a compact but accurate synopsis to avoid that my readers will find the next few paragraphs tedious. The joysticks control Leila and Albatross’ movements in eight directions, and the B button controls jumps. Leila and Albatross can high jump (up+jump) and jump down (down+jump) as in the first title to change elevation/platforms. They can enter doors as they wish (up when occupying a door’s entrance). Normal jumps cover a slightly shorter distance and have a slightly shorter duration, and the two agents still cannot shoot while jumping. Be sure to time jumps precisely and “recalibrate” their distance, thus.
The A buttons control shots: Leila and Albatross start with 40 gun bullets and can stock up bullets by entering ammo rooms. The two agents can also get machinegun bullets in the opportune doors, and refills for both weapons usually involve lower amounts of bullets when compared to the first tile. Differently from the first game, bouncing into enemies will not entail a loss of H(it)(Point)s, which now appear as two dots below the number of lives in stock. Be sure, however, to “bump away” from enemies and into chasms or abysses. Players can get an extra life at 100k points, so they have one extend less to complete the game. Leila can carry extra bullets into new stages but, if they die or deplete their ammos, they restock 40 gun bullets at the beginning of a new stage. Bullets now travel faster, so be sure adjust to their speed.
The key game mechanic in Rolling Thunder, time and its lack thereof, plays a subtler role in this title. For the first “story” (i.e. the four Stages set in Miami’s ocean), Stages offer enough time for players to proceed at a moderate pace and avoid losing lives due to time out. For the second “story” (i.e. the four Egyptian Stages), players must proceed at a briskier pace, but also be very careful during Stage sections involving specific enemies. For instance, on Stage five players must halt and spend a few seconds killing enemies looking like giant humanoid hedgehogs, before proceeding. On Stage eight, players must indeed wait that some enemies exit the screen, before they can proceed. The game overall allows players to clear each Stage within the allotted time, unlike in some revisions of the first game. However, players must handle Stage progression very carefully, indeed.
Before we address this Facet of the game and how it ties to difficulty, we explore more the audio-visual Facets. Rolling Thunder 2 appears as a gorgeous game with a vast colour palette, gloriously detailed and creative settings, and 2.D effects that are as stunning as they are elegant. Stage four and Stage eight show offer these views of the underground bases’ core that evoke feelings of immense underground caves hosting full armies set to conquer the world, indeed. Leila and Albatross also look incredibly elegant, as they kill goons in stilettos (Leila) and a tie (Albatross) with panache. Stages five and six and their Egyptian theme may appear camp, by today’s standards, but they quickly lead to the much cooler underground base settings. Stage four ends in an underground submarine port from which Geldra’s leader Gimdo flees to Egypt; Stage eight’s final battle is next to Geldra’s shuttle.
A perhaps perplexing or at least peculiar aspect of the game is that the quality of the animation appears somehow inferior to the original game, possibly due to different factors. To the best of my understanding, all sprites in the game are slightly smaller in size with respect to their Rolling Thunder counterparts. Furthermore, the game’s hardware graphical specifications seem to cause a slight flickering effect. I am not an expert of these matters in the least, but the subjective impression is that enemies and bullets appear having fewer smooth animation frames than in the first title. Leila and Albatross, however, move quite smoothly. This impression may confuse players when Albatross and Leila bump into enemies or when several enemies appear at once: distinguishing characters moving “at different frame rates” may be confusing. Nevertheless, the game’s visuals are still impressive and vastly superior to most subsequent 2D arcade endeavours.
The OST is easily the strongest aesthetical Facet of the game. Rolling Thunder 2 is Ayako Saso’s maiden work as a videogame composer; possibly, one of her strongest oeuvres ever. The OST takes inspiration from big band Jazz and more modern funk-oriented action movie themes, with a bit of pure Jazz thrown in for good measure. Unlike Rolling Thunder’s darker recurring theme, Rolling Thunder 2 has multiple Stage-specific themes that also aptly match the Stage’s themes. Stage two’s Residence of Terrible has a flippant funky tone suggesting intrigue in Geldra’s mansion; Stage four’s Where is the Target? opens with a quick slap-bass funk and moves into James Bond-esque swing by the mis-section. Of course, Stage five’s A view of dynamism tries to capture the exotic feeling of adventuring in Egypt while killing Geldra goons and saving the world. The OST’s multiple sources of inspiration and genre blend seamlessly, aptly matching the visuals.
The strong pieces in an overall impressive OST however include the attract theme sequence and Stage eight’s final tryptic. The attract movie pilfers from Bond’s movies and offers an elegant “early synth-pop” piece providing an equally dramatic and epic overture to the game’s action. Stage eight, the final Stage, includes Running Decayed, The final command and Theme ftom Gimdo]. The first theme plays while Leila and Albatross cross the sewers’ opening section; the second theme, when they ascend to the shuttle launch pad. The third and final theme plays when the two protagonists should be on their last few bullets and must kill Gimdo, whence the perfectly chosen title. The three songs create a “slow and dramatic, fast and epic, frantic and tense” sequence of atmospheres that would possibly rival most action movies’ OSTs. Rolling Thunder 2 is, from an audio-visual perspective, a marvellously designed, intensely cinematographic though not perfect game.
The game’s incredibly sleek and technically advanced presentation does not however match the perhaps already if slightly outdated mechanics and game’s difficulty. As for the first title, three Facets act as sources of difficulty: Game mechanics, Stage design and layout, and the interaction between the two Facets as a third complex Facet. Again, I provide a concise but accurate overview of these Facets that partly presupposes knowledge of the corresponding discussion in Rolling Thunder’s squib. Again, I assume that these Facets motivate 20, 20 and 10 points respectively, for a total of 50 points. For the first Facet, players must learn how Leila and Albatross move, their exact length of their jumps, and the HPs of each of their enemies. Some enemies have 8 HPs and act as veritable “bullet sponges”; some jumps require pixel-perfect precision. For this facet, I thus propose 10/20 points of difficulty also in this sequel.
The second Facet attracts a relatively lower 10/20 points, when compared to Rolling Thunder’s 14/20 difficulty points for this Facet. The simple reason behind this choice is that the game has eight Stages (i.e. two “stories” or loops of four Stages each), but the final Stage has three distinct, very challenging parts. Thus, players must master the equivalent of 10 Stages’ worth of enemies’ placements, traps, and sneak attacks. The third Facet absorbs another 10 points out of 10 allotted (i.e. we have 10/10 points), even if the sub-Facets motivating this choice differently subtly from the first game. I concentrate on those that appear novel, and that play a role in Stage seven and eight. When players access these Stages, the time limits appear generous, but the bullet count can be misleading. Players must clear these Stages by not killing enemies with high HPs simply de-spawn from stages.
The details are as follows. On stage seven, players can only replenish twice, and they likely enter the Stage with low ammo supplies. By the end of this Stage, players likely need to restock 40 bullets before they begin Stage eight. On Stage eight, players must avoid killing enemies that have four HPs or higher: bullets will not suffice, otherwise. Players must thus develop a route that involves entering doors for protracted periods (hold up when inside a room), and let enemies exit the screen. Time appears abundant, but that is because players must take this option several times, or they will reach the final sequence and boss without bullets. If successful, anyway, players enter the final sequence with enough bullets and time to kill Gimdo and save the world. Expect to clear the Stage with less than five second and bullets, on the best run.
For this reason, I propose that the total difficulty of the game is 30/50 points: the game is a top-tier challenge for expert players, and a slightly easier game than Rolling Thunder. Notably, there are no considerable differences among versions, so players can 1-CC either one of them to achieve this goal. However, I believe that the last Stage involves a steep transition from 24/50 points to 30/50 points, as players progress through its three parts. Notably, players can decide which enemies not to kill, once they have strategies to de-spawn the enemies with the highest HPs. Whatever subtly different paths players devise, execution must be flawless and possibly follow the outstanding OST’s pace. If done properly, however, players can display guile (hide in the doors), flawless tactical choices (no wasted bullets) and get a final thrill. Again, pixel-perfect routes allow a heart-stopping buffer of a few seconds and bullets.
The picture emerging from our discussion is that Rolling Thunder 2 is a beautiful game with a superb design that however does not innovate much on its predecessor’s formula. Xenny, at this point, would be happy if I would move to the conclusions, of course. I must tell you, however, about my experiences with the game first, so that the poor xenomorph will be foaming at his/her/its/xen/whatever mouth and rid us from our pestering neighbours. It is 1996 and I am getting ready for my new journey. I have entered the national naval college, so I will complete my last two high school years while being in the Navy, technically. I am not sure on what to expect, but I know that “fun” like games and tabletop RPGs will disappear. Then again, as a minor I do not decide on these matters of my own life.
I have several occasions to visit my uncle’s arcade, which by this summer begins to be more of a graveyard of old cabs than a proper arcade. I also go with him to visit the EUR Luna Park in Rome, which has the largest arcade in Italy and possibly in Europe. The arcade is a hangar and a display for prospective buyers and operators: people can play games before they buy boards and cabs. In our visits before “prison”, as my uncle calls it, I have the chance to play this game, Elevator Action Returns and Raystorm. Over eight consecutive Sunday visits, I can manage to practice the game enough to reach once Stage six. This game might be six years old but it is beautiful and absurdly tough, for my current skills. Once in the college, Leila and Albatross disappear quickly from my memories.
In 2000, I am enjoying my MAME gap year with irresponsible abandon. I clear games as if the futile endeavour would give me back the years lost in the maelstrom of my Navy ordeal. I solve several grudges, as my squibs on Side Arms and Dinasty Wars explain. Rolling Thunder 2, however, represents an insurmountable obstacle: I have no idea on how to clear Stage eight, given that bullets end too early. I give up once I realise that I must make sense of my life and I must study. I give up again in 2004 (Konstanz), 2006 (Utrecht), 2012 (Stockholm) and even 2018 (Guangzhou), each pair of a year and a place in which I believe that I can 1-CC game. Sometimes it is patience, sometimes it is lack of good gaming form, sometimes it is just lack of time to practice.
It is 2022 when I finally recover the video I posted at the beginning of the squib and I decide to prepare some save states, to practice each Stage. This time I have the patience, time and even the will to learn the final Stage properly. As I mention in this thread, I am on a recent “grudge quest” and by this time in life, I have decided that this game I will 1-CC, yes indeed. My attempts to do not go in vain: the thread gives my readers an overview of a long grudge going to rest, finally. Yet, I can safely say that in 1995, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2018 and in 2022, the game frustrates me to no end. Still, a victory is a victory, and some of my final victories even include performances improving on the reference video. Now, that feels satisfying indeed.
In conclusion, Rolling Thunder 2 is a tactical shooting action/R2RKMF game by Namco released in 1990 and still looking and sounding better than most “modern” 2D games. The game plays like an updated version of its predecessor Rolling Thunder, pitting again agents Leila and Albatross against world-conquering terrorist group Geldra. The game is notable for its high but not extreme difficulty, its superb OST and for the incredible coolness of the two protagonists. The game is also notable in having an incredibly challenging and yet highly flexible final Stage that brings the concept of “tactical shooting” to its most emphatic and elegant extremes. Players who want to challenge themselves in 1-CC’ing a remarkably difficult and yet superbly elegant game, and looking good while doing it, should have a crack at this game. Be sure, in case, to have some exquisite Martinis to celebrate the triumph with hubris and style.
(2811 words/5.12 pages; the usual disclaimers apply; I always believed that having someone as cool as Leila as the protagonist should be a mandatory first choice for any action game. I am pretty sure that I will write some more serious and elaborate squib or perhaps even “proper paper” on the topic, too. I never understood how Leila and Albatross can perform those high jumps so easily, though. I mean, just how strong a human should be, to jump more than two metres and perform a one-arm muscle-up at peak height? Anyway, the game’s OST is possibly my favourite R2RKMF soundtrack ever, especially when I drink Martinis during breezy summer nights. Of course, everybody agreed with me once I played the corresponding mixtape in my car’s stereo, many moons ago. Ah, the joys of being BA students and shameless geeks!).
"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).
Psychic 5 (Jaleco, 1987)
We begin the new week-end with a little gem of a game: Psychic 5. The game has received a relatively recent remake, Psychic 5 Eternal, which has not met a particular wide appreciation. For our purposes, however, this small and now “ancient” gem by NMK and Jaleco represents a veritable trip down nostalgia lane. The game was already retro-oriented when it came out, due to its strong “1970s Esper manga” style. Discussing it in 2025 makes me feel like I am going into an archaeological expedition, hunting relics of a recently obliterated civilization. The game obtained a certain degree of success back in 1987, with a Famicom/NES starting a short franchise. At any case, here we discuss the arcade original version that players can find on the Eternal port, luckily. Onwards we go, to the squib:
Psychic 5 (NMK/Jaleco, 1987) is a multi-directional (ro)TATE scrolling platform game from NMK with distribution by Jaleco. The game pits five Espers with different physical and ψ (psi) powers against The Evil Satan. The quintet must enter eight mansions in which the Satan dwells and has infested with hundreds of malignant Yōkai/Poltergeists. Armed with hammers and rods of mystical power, the five heroes are the only bastion of hope against the satanic and poltergeist-y infestation. Players thus must move through eight stages and carve their way to The Evil Satan’s room, hammering Satan’s stony butt into oblivion. The game is notable for offering a free-form/multi-directional approach to platforming action, tons of score mechanics and secrets, and tons of zany, shōwa-era humour. The goal of this squib is to convince my readers that they must try this game at least once, in their lives.
Trying to define a specific context for this game may be tricky, and the wiki entry covers the historical background regarding NMK in some detail. The specific socio-cultural Facet that I wish to discuss in this squib pertains to platform games from 1987, to offer my readers a “feeling” of the evolution of this genre. In 1987, Taito released Rastan/Rastan Saga I and Capcom released Black Tiger, Tiger Road and Bionic Commando. These games offered multi-directional approaches to action/platform games that capitalised on Namco’s original design insight from Dragon Buster and, to a lesser extent, Sega’s Teddy Boy Blues. Players can move freely in this game, as stages extend across different screens: insofar they meet the requirements to clear a stage, they can approach the game as they wish. Psychic 5 applies this simple concept in a direct but at times subtly nuanced and wacky manner, starting from the underlying plot.
Psychic 5 pits a team of five Espers, with a design straight out of a 1970s-style shōnen manga, against “The Evil Satan” and its henchwoman, the witch Zara. These two creatures of evil have been infesting various mansions in highly improbable locations and have brought all the mansions’ objects to life, exploiting their resentment against humans. Some undefined entity tells the five Espers to investigate eight such cases, and therefore defeat the diabolic duo for the last time. The five Espers thus start a gruesome battle that sees them whacking anthropomorphic objects that qualify as various types of poltergeist or yōkai or both, depending on which cultural references you prefer. Once the Espers win all eight battles and banish Zara and The Evil Satan, the credits over, suggesting that it was all some kind of zany movie. Psychic 5 thus has a vaguely meta-fictional and certainly surreal setting.
The game’s mechanics build on this surreal setting and premise in an equally groovy manner. Players control the five Espers (Naoto, Akita, Bunta, Makoto and Kenzo) via the joystick and can move them in eight directions. The B button control jumps, which increase in height and duration via prolonged pressure of the button. Makoto can reach the top side of the screen with one jump, and Akiko and Genzoh can hover while slowly descending for a few seconds. All Espers except Genzoh use a hammer to whack enemies into oblivion; Genzoh uses a gnarly walking rod. Players control hammer attacks with the A button, of course. These are close range weapons, with their range depending on the character’s “attack” attribute/Facet, and the power-up level reached in a stage. Characters hover when players hold the B button, but can also remain still by quickly “spamming” hammer attacks.
The five Espers have a simple mission: navigate the maze-like Stages, destroy/kill spawning poltergeist/youkai, and reach Satan’s room to destroy the bad guy to bit. Players can however break food containers or treasure chests that appear in each room, as they progress. Players may ignore all food/score items and power-ups along the way, but this is inconvenient. Players obtain a new power-up every seven food items they collect, including hammer/jump power multipliers, score multipliers, “EXTRA” letters awarding extra lives, and a few other items. Players start with only Naoto, the “young boy/shōnen” Esper, and Akiko, the “young girl/shōjo” Esper, at their disposal. Players must collect icons activating Bunta the “fat but strong” Esper, Makoto the “lanky and fast” Esper, and Genzoh the “old sage (and probably pervy)” Esper. Players can change Esper when their character enters phone booths and wait a few seconds to swap characters, probably via teleportation.
Players can certainly clear a stage without ever collecting items. To this end, players must find ways to overcome certain sections without using the section-specific characters and to destroy the Satan’s statues/avatara in a finite amount of time. Each stage starts with two minutes of stage time, but players can collect time items in treasure chests and obtain 30 extra seconds when passing though section gates. Luckily, players can clear even the most complex sections and passages by knocking down Zara, the witch who hovers around the screen in seemingly random movements. If players can hit Zara, the Esper will steal her broom, all enemies will freeze on screen, and the temporarily invincible Esper can move on the broom while hammering everything at maximum power level. The alternative is to collect all food and treasure items, activate all Espers, and in general engage with Stages’ enemies and opportunities successfully.
The game’s score mechanics and Stage design/layout interweave in rather complex manners; we however discuss these manners once we discuss difficulty. First, however, let us address the audio-visual Facets. The game has a strong anime/manga-inspired design typical of the late shōwa-era (i.e. late 1970s/early 1980s) period. The five Espers have highly stereotypical looks representing their powers: for instance, Bunta is the fat but strong guy. Poltergeist/Youkai enemies appear as objects with eyes and possibly mouths hinting at caricatural looks. Stages all feature relatively simple palettes and designs with intense, fluorescent-like colours. Stages settings include traditional Japanese rowhouses, abandoned factories and a classical haunted castle on a cliff as the final stage. Sprites are rather small but fluidly animated and with an obvious 1980s’ manga appeal. If Jaleco’s City Connection is possibly an early source of visual inspiration for the Synthwave aesthetics, Psychic 5 is an early apotheosis of this sensibility.
The OST by Shinichi Sakamoto combines this sensibility with an approach based on Leitmotifs. There are no Stage themes except for the recurring boss battle, an epic theme summoning a clash of wills and forces. Conversely, the Espers have each their own theme, which offers a J-pop take to their style and personality/characteristics. Naoto’s theme tries to be dramatic and underline the character’s “hero” persona. Akiko’s theme is a bubbly, catchy tune for girls; Bunta’s theme is a hard-rock anthem for the “strong man”. Sound effects have an unsurprising anime-like flavour: listen carefully to Zara’s falling effect and you might even recognise the original sample. The “continue screen” short theme is perhaps one of the coolest soundbites in an 1980s game, in its nearly indescribable quirky style vaguely resembling Yellow Magic Orchestra’s more obscure output . Overall, Psychic 5 embodies the 1970s/1980s “weird anime style” in videogames at its finest.
By this point of the squib, we are ready to tackle the complex topic of difficulty by discussing the Facets composing this difficulty. I believe that the basic Facets composing this game’s difficulty include the game mechanics, the Stages layout/design, and how these two Facets interact once players begin to play for score. Let us proceed in this order, thus. Game mechanics present a moderate challenge as far as players practice them with each of the various characters. Free-floating jumps may require some time for mastering, but follow intuitive mechanics. The ranges of the attacking weapons also require some practice, though intuitive. Players should then get a quick grasp of how to take down Zara and use the broom, when useful. Basic mechanics thus tend to be relatively immediate, especially if players have experienced variants of these mechanics in more modern games.
Stage design/layout is also a relatively simple Facet of the game. The first four stages work in such a way that players can move through easier sections and collect food items with little or no effort. In this way, players can activate extend letters with a relatively high frequence (one every seven items). Players must look up in the right corner of the screen and see which items are available in the rotating item inventory. Players obtain an extra life when they collect the five “EXTRA” letters. Be sure to open the treasure chests when the right letter appears, or when a desired power-up appears. Aside extends, food items trigger the other power ups: collecting them is always a good option, though they are never necessary to complete a stage. Ideally, players can obtain up to one extend per stage, so collecting food items is generally a wise choice.
From Stage one to Stage four, going through Stages and collecting items is a relatively straightforward task. Stages three and four have some sections in which players must destroy walls and platforms to reveal secret bonuses and items, but players can safely bypass these sections. For instance, the lower left section in Stage three has multiple destroyable walls and secret items, but players can quickly move through this section to avoid tight fights with the poltergeists/Youkai. From Stage five onwards, however, players must learn how to survive some key sections, usually by learning exactly how to jump over tricky obstacles or by collecting food items in mostly dangerous situations. From Stage five onwards, collecting items becomes increasingly challenging, and thus obtaining extra lives and powerful is more difficult: some jumps are also rather tricky. Mastering food/item collection and jumps in these Stages are thus surmountable obstacles towards the 1-CC.
If the first two Facets may appear rather standard in their nature, the third interactional Facet features a tricky set of properties, due to its connection to the scoring system. I will be astonishingly lazy and ask readers to go through this guide, if they wish to study all the subtleties of the scoring system. Here I briefly summarise the gist of this system for my lazier readers, instead. Some bonuses presuppose that players collect them without making mistakes across stages: some scoring strategies involve multi-stage planning and rather careful execution. For instance, collecting the five “secret bonus” items hinges on players meeting stage-specific conditions to reveal them. Unless players collect them in the right order, their value remains at the initial 10k points. Overall, most score-driven mechanics require players do plan approaches stages and sections so that they can meet the requirements to trigger secret/special but ultimately optional bonuses.
Overall, I suggest that the difficulty score for Psychic 5 works as follows. I propose that the three Facets receive 15, 15 and 20 points respectively (game mechanics, Stage design/layout, their interaction). Game mechanics receive 6/15 points, Stage layout/design 9/15 points, and their interaction 15/20 points. Please however consider that all score-driven mechanics are optional: the final score applies only if players wish to reach top-level scores. The game therefore reaches 15/50 points of difficulty for “simple” 1-CC’s, and 30/50 for score-driven 1-CC’s. Psychic 5 is thus a mid-tier challenge for intermediate players and can reach the level of top-tier challenge for expert players. This flexibility anticipated modern arcade games in their approach to difficulty and complexity, though platformers with highly complex score systems (e.g. Rainbow Islands) co-existed with this title. Players can thus gauge and decide on how to approach their 1-CC according to their own skills.
Now that we have discussed the Facet of difficulty, we can move to the concluding stanza involving my experiences. Xenny is having a few quiet ones with the lads from Xenny’s hive, so it is all good, folks. It is 1987 or perhaps 1988: my memories of meeting this game for the first time are so hazy, that they might be the result of some alien evil force manipulating my past remembrances. I am certain that I am at the big arcade with the many Sega and Taito cabs, and that Galivan is one game I have tried during this first visit to the arcade. By this rather vaguely remembered time in the past, my father still has not developed a grudge towards my uncle, in regards to its game policies. I do know that this arcade has cool games, though my uncle’s arcade is better.
I see this game in one corner of the arcade’s bigger, underground room that can only be described as the “dark pit” corner. The owners of this arcade do not seem exactly tech savvy, so they place all old cabs and unpopular games in one corner that reeks of mould, strange animals’ droppings, and substances that are probably best left undescribed. I remember that the first time I see this game is when some relatively tall and lanky older kid is easily completing the last few stages. The excitable kid that I am in 1987 is just mesmerised at seeing this display of bravura on a game that seems highly complicated and yet feverishly cool. I am growing up by also watching re-runs of Carletto/kabutsu-kun and new magical girl/idol sensation Creamy mami. This game looks like it allows players to control Japanese cartoon characters.
When the older kid completes the game, I clap in excitement and the kid just laughs, telling me that now I can try out the game. I am almost too nervous to insert the coin in the cab, and I need to sit on a stool to reach the controls. My father is nearby, but a few other players do raise their eyebrows. The kid gives me a brief explanation of how the game works, and starts guiding me during my first credit. Hammer the enemies, get the jumping timing right, learn to control hovering: all simple concepts on paper, but my kid version of the 1987 fails at them in some absurdly simple ways. After four credits of failed attempts, I give up in frustration. The older kid laughs hard, inserts a coin, and guides me through his play, which ends again in a victory again the “devil”.
Over the next few weeks, I meet the older kid a few times, and he is quite patient enough to explain me how to play the game a few dozen times. As a pupil I suck, since I keep doing basic mistakes like not holding the button when jumping, using the hammer too early or too late, and so on. This is why I prefer the shooting games: there are no jumps involved and victory arrives with the joystick and shooting buttons, mostly. Still, the older kid shows saint-like level of patience, which I repay in my own manner. Over the course of a few weeks or a few months, I manage to slowly progress towards the end of the fourth boss. I carefully avoid exploring levels, as any jump that involves a bit of coordination remains anathema to my skills. This game remains impenetrable, to my 1987 (1988? 1989?) self.
It is now 2000 and I am wandering in the labyrinthine meanders of my MAME gap year. I discover this game again once I go through Jaleco’s output that is currently in this emulator’s list. Psychic 5 is a faint memory that becomes a fiery passion: I develop the habit of playing this game with an intense fervour late at night. Some think that my “hardcore” “graveyard shift” past-times involve pornographic explorations: I am sure that this type of hardcore pastime is steamier and kinkier. Now that I am 20 and I can jump in videogames, the game becomes a pleasant challenge. Two weeks or so after clearing Side Arms, I also clear this game. I then repeat the feat again in different cities and years. With a bit of warm-up practice, I can now 1-CC this game and enter its absurdist and zany world at once and with delight.
Summing up: Psychic 5 is multi-directional TATE platform that combines a “recursively retro” design with simple but elegant platform mechanics and a brilliant score system. Players take up the mantle of five Espers straight out of a late 1970s manga and play a late 1980s game in which they must kill The Evil Satan and its minions. The game offers an interesting take also on the OST, as each character has its own theme song, and provides a smoothly increasing but not excessive difficulty level. Playing the game for score can however provide a more formidable challenge, as expert players need to flex their gaming muscles intensely to achieve the 1-CC and obtain top scores. Ultimately, Psychic 5 is a classic little gem of a game that every well-rounded player would like to have in their 1-CC portfolio. The adorable retro style should also attract players with a refined sense of humour, too.
(2818 words/7.1 pages, times new roman size 12, single space; the usual disclaimers apply; this game has possibly the coolest continue theme ever, don’t you think? The general feeling I always had and still have with Psychic 5 is that programmers were already chasing times and glories past of manga/anime worlds. I am lucky enough to have seen a few really “old school” anime (e.g.Kabutsu-kun), so whenever I played this game, I could really appreciate the rather peculiar visual design. Manga-style games in the 1980s were really the province of smaller companies; this was also a reason I liked Jaleco. I also admit that I liked Ginga Ninkyuden for the same reason, and let us not forget City Connection and Momoko 120%. OK, I know, this was an NMK game but my point is still valid, isn’t it?).
Psychic 5 (NMK/Jaleco, 1987) is a multi-directional (ro)TATE scrolling platform game from NMK with distribution by Jaleco. The game pits five Espers with different physical and ψ (psi) powers against The Evil Satan. The quintet must enter eight mansions in which the Satan dwells and has infested with hundreds of malignant Yōkai/Poltergeists. Armed with hammers and rods of mystical power, the five heroes are the only bastion of hope against the satanic and poltergeist-y infestation. Players thus must move through eight stages and carve their way to The Evil Satan’s room, hammering Satan’s stony butt into oblivion. The game is notable for offering a free-form/multi-directional approach to platforming action, tons of score mechanics and secrets, and tons of zany, shōwa-era humour. The goal of this squib is to convince my readers that they must try this game at least once, in their lives.
Trying to define a specific context for this game may be tricky, and the wiki entry covers the historical background regarding NMK in some detail. The specific socio-cultural Facet that I wish to discuss in this squib pertains to platform games from 1987, to offer my readers a “feeling” of the evolution of this genre. In 1987, Taito released Rastan/Rastan Saga I and Capcom released Black Tiger, Tiger Road and Bionic Commando. These games offered multi-directional approaches to action/platform games that capitalised on Namco’s original design insight from Dragon Buster and, to a lesser extent, Sega’s Teddy Boy Blues. Players can move freely in this game, as stages extend across different screens: insofar they meet the requirements to clear a stage, they can approach the game as they wish. Psychic 5 applies this simple concept in a direct but at times subtly nuanced and wacky manner, starting from the underlying plot.
Psychic 5 pits a team of five Espers, with a design straight out of a 1970s-style shōnen manga, against “The Evil Satan” and its henchwoman, the witch Zara. These two creatures of evil have been infesting various mansions in highly improbable locations and have brought all the mansions’ objects to life, exploiting their resentment against humans. Some undefined entity tells the five Espers to investigate eight such cases, and therefore defeat the diabolic duo for the last time. The five Espers thus start a gruesome battle that sees them whacking anthropomorphic objects that qualify as various types of poltergeist or yōkai or both, depending on which cultural references you prefer. Once the Espers win all eight battles and banish Zara and The Evil Satan, the credits over, suggesting that it was all some kind of zany movie. Psychic 5 thus has a vaguely meta-fictional and certainly surreal setting.
The game’s mechanics build on this surreal setting and premise in an equally groovy manner. Players control the five Espers (Naoto, Akita, Bunta, Makoto and Kenzo) via the joystick and can move them in eight directions. The B button control jumps, which increase in height and duration via prolonged pressure of the button. Makoto can reach the top side of the screen with one jump, and Akiko and Genzoh can hover while slowly descending for a few seconds. All Espers except Genzoh use a hammer to whack enemies into oblivion; Genzoh uses a gnarly walking rod. Players control hammer attacks with the A button, of course. These are close range weapons, with their range depending on the character’s “attack” attribute/Facet, and the power-up level reached in a stage. Characters hover when players hold the B button, but can also remain still by quickly “spamming” hammer attacks.
The five Espers have a simple mission: navigate the maze-like Stages, destroy/kill spawning poltergeist/youkai, and reach Satan’s room to destroy the bad guy to bit. Players can however break food containers or treasure chests that appear in each room, as they progress. Players may ignore all food/score items and power-ups along the way, but this is inconvenient. Players obtain a new power-up every seven food items they collect, including hammer/jump power multipliers, score multipliers, “EXTRA” letters awarding extra lives, and a few other items. Players start with only Naoto, the “young boy/shōnen” Esper, and Akiko, the “young girl/shōjo” Esper, at their disposal. Players must collect icons activating Bunta the “fat but strong” Esper, Makoto the “lanky and fast” Esper, and Genzoh the “old sage (and probably pervy)” Esper. Players can change Esper when their character enters phone booths and wait a few seconds to swap characters, probably via teleportation.
Players can certainly clear a stage without ever collecting items. To this end, players must find ways to overcome certain sections without using the section-specific characters and to destroy the Satan’s statues/avatara in a finite amount of time. Each stage starts with two minutes of stage time, but players can collect time items in treasure chests and obtain 30 extra seconds when passing though section gates. Luckily, players can clear even the most complex sections and passages by knocking down Zara, the witch who hovers around the screen in seemingly random movements. If players can hit Zara, the Esper will steal her broom, all enemies will freeze on screen, and the temporarily invincible Esper can move on the broom while hammering everything at maximum power level. The alternative is to collect all food and treasure items, activate all Espers, and in general engage with Stages’ enemies and opportunities successfully.
The game’s score mechanics and Stage design/layout interweave in rather complex manners; we however discuss these manners once we discuss difficulty. First, however, let us address the audio-visual Facets. The game has a strong anime/manga-inspired design typical of the late shōwa-era (i.e. late 1970s/early 1980s) period. The five Espers have highly stereotypical looks representing their powers: for instance, Bunta is the fat but strong guy. Poltergeist/Youkai enemies appear as objects with eyes and possibly mouths hinting at caricatural looks. Stages all feature relatively simple palettes and designs with intense, fluorescent-like colours. Stages settings include traditional Japanese rowhouses, abandoned factories and a classical haunted castle on a cliff as the final stage. Sprites are rather small but fluidly animated and with an obvious 1980s’ manga appeal. If Jaleco’s City Connection is possibly an early source of visual inspiration for the Synthwave aesthetics, Psychic 5 is an early apotheosis of this sensibility.
The OST by Shinichi Sakamoto combines this sensibility with an approach based on Leitmotifs. There are no Stage themes except for the recurring boss battle, an epic theme summoning a clash of wills and forces. Conversely, the Espers have each their own theme, which offers a J-pop take to their style and personality/characteristics. Naoto’s theme tries to be dramatic and underline the character’s “hero” persona. Akiko’s theme is a bubbly, catchy tune for girls; Bunta’s theme is a hard-rock anthem for the “strong man”. Sound effects have an unsurprising anime-like flavour: listen carefully to Zara’s falling effect and you might even recognise the original sample. The “continue screen” short theme is perhaps one of the coolest soundbites in an 1980s game, in its nearly indescribable quirky style vaguely resembling Yellow Magic Orchestra’s more obscure output . Overall, Psychic 5 embodies the 1970s/1980s “weird anime style” in videogames at its finest.
By this point of the squib, we are ready to tackle the complex topic of difficulty by discussing the Facets composing this difficulty. I believe that the basic Facets composing this game’s difficulty include the game mechanics, the Stages layout/design, and how these two Facets interact once players begin to play for score. Let us proceed in this order, thus. Game mechanics present a moderate challenge as far as players practice them with each of the various characters. Free-floating jumps may require some time for mastering, but follow intuitive mechanics. The ranges of the attacking weapons also require some practice, though intuitive. Players should then get a quick grasp of how to take down Zara and use the broom, when useful. Basic mechanics thus tend to be relatively immediate, especially if players have experienced variants of these mechanics in more modern games.
Stage design/layout is also a relatively simple Facet of the game. The first four stages work in such a way that players can move through easier sections and collect food items with little or no effort. In this way, players can activate extend letters with a relatively high frequence (one every seven items). Players must look up in the right corner of the screen and see which items are available in the rotating item inventory. Players obtain an extra life when they collect the five “EXTRA” letters. Be sure to open the treasure chests when the right letter appears, or when a desired power-up appears. Aside extends, food items trigger the other power ups: collecting them is always a good option, though they are never necessary to complete a stage. Ideally, players can obtain up to one extend per stage, so collecting food items is generally a wise choice.
From Stage one to Stage four, going through Stages and collecting items is a relatively straightforward task. Stages three and four have some sections in which players must destroy walls and platforms to reveal secret bonuses and items, but players can safely bypass these sections. For instance, the lower left section in Stage three has multiple destroyable walls and secret items, but players can quickly move through this section to avoid tight fights with the poltergeists/Youkai. From Stage five onwards, however, players must learn how to survive some key sections, usually by learning exactly how to jump over tricky obstacles or by collecting food items in mostly dangerous situations. From Stage five onwards, collecting items becomes increasingly challenging, and thus obtaining extra lives and powerful is more difficult: some jumps are also rather tricky. Mastering food/item collection and jumps in these Stages are thus surmountable obstacles towards the 1-CC.
If the first two Facets may appear rather standard in their nature, the third interactional Facet features a tricky set of properties, due to its connection to the scoring system. I will be astonishingly lazy and ask readers to go through this guide, if they wish to study all the subtleties of the scoring system. Here I briefly summarise the gist of this system for my lazier readers, instead. Some bonuses presuppose that players collect them without making mistakes across stages: some scoring strategies involve multi-stage planning and rather careful execution. For instance, collecting the five “secret bonus” items hinges on players meeting stage-specific conditions to reveal them. Unless players collect them in the right order, their value remains at the initial 10k points. Overall, most score-driven mechanics require players do plan approaches stages and sections so that they can meet the requirements to trigger secret/special but ultimately optional bonuses.
Overall, I suggest that the difficulty score for Psychic 5 works as follows. I propose that the three Facets receive 15, 15 and 20 points respectively (game mechanics, Stage design/layout, their interaction). Game mechanics receive 6/15 points, Stage layout/design 9/15 points, and their interaction 15/20 points. Please however consider that all score-driven mechanics are optional: the final score applies only if players wish to reach top-level scores. The game therefore reaches 15/50 points of difficulty for “simple” 1-CC’s, and 30/50 for score-driven 1-CC’s. Psychic 5 is thus a mid-tier challenge for intermediate players and can reach the level of top-tier challenge for expert players. This flexibility anticipated modern arcade games in their approach to difficulty and complexity, though platformers with highly complex score systems (e.g. Rainbow Islands) co-existed with this title. Players can thus gauge and decide on how to approach their 1-CC according to their own skills.
Now that we have discussed the Facet of difficulty, we can move to the concluding stanza involving my experiences. Xenny is having a few quiet ones with the lads from Xenny’s hive, so it is all good, folks. It is 1987 or perhaps 1988: my memories of meeting this game for the first time are so hazy, that they might be the result of some alien evil force manipulating my past remembrances. I am certain that I am at the big arcade with the many Sega and Taito cabs, and that Galivan is one game I have tried during this first visit to the arcade. By this rather vaguely remembered time in the past, my father still has not developed a grudge towards my uncle, in regards to its game policies. I do know that this arcade has cool games, though my uncle’s arcade is better.
I see this game in one corner of the arcade’s bigger, underground room that can only be described as the “dark pit” corner. The owners of this arcade do not seem exactly tech savvy, so they place all old cabs and unpopular games in one corner that reeks of mould, strange animals’ droppings, and substances that are probably best left undescribed. I remember that the first time I see this game is when some relatively tall and lanky older kid is easily completing the last few stages. The excitable kid that I am in 1987 is just mesmerised at seeing this display of bravura on a game that seems highly complicated and yet feverishly cool. I am growing up by also watching re-runs of Carletto/kabutsu-kun and new magical girl/idol sensation Creamy mami. This game looks like it allows players to control Japanese cartoon characters.
When the older kid completes the game, I clap in excitement and the kid just laughs, telling me that now I can try out the game. I am almost too nervous to insert the coin in the cab, and I need to sit on a stool to reach the controls. My father is nearby, but a few other players do raise their eyebrows. The kid gives me a brief explanation of how the game works, and starts guiding me during my first credit. Hammer the enemies, get the jumping timing right, learn to control hovering: all simple concepts on paper, but my kid version of the 1987 fails at them in some absurdly simple ways. After four credits of failed attempts, I give up in frustration. The older kid laughs hard, inserts a coin, and guides me through his play, which ends again in a victory again the “devil”.
Over the next few weeks, I meet the older kid a few times, and he is quite patient enough to explain me how to play the game a few dozen times. As a pupil I suck, since I keep doing basic mistakes like not holding the button when jumping, using the hammer too early or too late, and so on. This is why I prefer the shooting games: there are no jumps involved and victory arrives with the joystick and shooting buttons, mostly. Still, the older kid shows saint-like level of patience, which I repay in my own manner. Over the course of a few weeks or a few months, I manage to slowly progress towards the end of the fourth boss. I carefully avoid exploring levels, as any jump that involves a bit of coordination remains anathema to my skills. This game remains impenetrable, to my 1987 (1988? 1989?) self.
It is now 2000 and I am wandering in the labyrinthine meanders of my MAME gap year. I discover this game again once I go through Jaleco’s output that is currently in this emulator’s list. Psychic 5 is a faint memory that becomes a fiery passion: I develop the habit of playing this game with an intense fervour late at night. Some think that my “hardcore” “graveyard shift” past-times involve pornographic explorations: I am sure that this type of hardcore pastime is steamier and kinkier. Now that I am 20 and I can jump in videogames, the game becomes a pleasant challenge. Two weeks or so after clearing Side Arms, I also clear this game. I then repeat the feat again in different cities and years. With a bit of warm-up practice, I can now 1-CC this game and enter its absurdist and zany world at once and with delight.
Summing up: Psychic 5 is multi-directional TATE platform that combines a “recursively retro” design with simple but elegant platform mechanics and a brilliant score system. Players take up the mantle of five Espers straight out of a late 1970s manga and play a late 1980s game in which they must kill The Evil Satan and its minions. The game offers an interesting take also on the OST, as each character has its own theme song, and provides a smoothly increasing but not excessive difficulty level. Playing the game for score can however provide a more formidable challenge, as expert players need to flex their gaming muscles intensely to achieve the 1-CC and obtain top scores. Ultimately, Psychic 5 is a classic little gem of a game that every well-rounded player would like to have in their 1-CC portfolio. The adorable retro style should also attract players with a refined sense of humour, too.
(2818 words/7.1 pages, times new roman size 12, single space; the usual disclaimers apply; this game has possibly the coolest continue theme ever, don’t you think? The general feeling I always had and still have with Psychic 5 is that programmers were already chasing times and glories past of manga/anime worlds. I am lucky enough to have seen a few really “old school” anime (e.g.Kabutsu-kun), so whenever I played this game, I could really appreciate the rather peculiar visual design. Manga-style games in the 1980s were really the province of smaller companies; this was also a reason I liked Jaleco. I also admit that I liked Ginga Ninkyuden for the same reason, and let us not forget City Connection and Momoko 120%. OK, I know, this was an NMK game but my point is still valid, isn’t it?).
Last edited by Randorama on Tue Apr 29, 2025 3:58 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).
Master of Weapon (Taito, 1989)
We continue with a squib focusing on one of Taito’s perhaps more obscure and maybe even maligned shmups: Master of Weapon. Some of my readers may know this game via its Taito Memories PS2 port or perhaps the PS4/Switch Arcade Archives port. A port to the MegaDrive also exists, though its quality is not so brilliant. The game is probably one of Taito’s lesser-known shmups, even if the developers who created the legendary Rayforce ultimately wanted to create a sequel to this title. Let us also consider that the game recycles game mechanics and fonts from Taito’sTokyo/Scramble Formation, and readers might understand its role within Taito’s legacy of shmups. Let us proceed with the squib:
Master of Weapon (Taito, 1989) is a lesser-known (ro)TATE shmup with a post-apocalyptic setting, interesting game and scoring mechanics, and a rather brooding OST. The game chronicles the adventures of “Yukiwo”, a young man who is escaping from prison after Japan becomes a brutal dictatorship, after a nuclear holocaust obliterates most of the planet. The game is notable for being difficult often in unbalanced or poorly designed manners, and for having a triggering narrative event on September, 11th, of year 199X. It also features an OST that veers into creepy tones by its ending themes, even if starts with an almost cheerful theme. Add some bosses looking like flying heads of Greek statues, and a recipe for a genuinely weird shmup is ready. The goal of this squib is to convince my readers that the game provides an interesting and educative shmup experience, if only because of its “unfair” difficulty.
For this title, it is useful to concentrate the discussion of the context of release to Taito’s final output of the 1980s, plus some connections to earlier releases. Namco’s Xevious in 1983, plus 1987’s Dragon Spirit and Nichibutsu’s Terra Cresta, among other shmups, proved that “dual plane” shmups were viable. That is, players appreciated shooting enemies on the plane of players’ ships and the background plane scrolling below the ship. Taito entered this micro-genre via their 1986’s Tokyo/Scramble Formation, and offered an interesting take on the genre. Taito’s main shmup release for 1989 was however Darius II, a game that would go on to become a legend of the genre together with rail shooter Night Striker. Taito also published Toaplan’s Zero Wing, Hellfire, and Twin Hawk solid if lesser celebrated titles from this company. Master of Weapon thus acted as the other Taito’s in-house shmup “intermediate level” production.
The game’s plot is perhaps notorious among the fans. In 199X, the 11th of September, a nuclear war explodes and destroys more than 90% of the planet. In a week, the world because a nightmarish radioactive hell. Somehow, Japan holds a semblance of stability as a ruthless dictatorship takes control and steers the country in the new wasteland. At the helm of this dictatorship, however, there is a half-organic, half cybernetic and spider-looking AI plotting to completely enslave survivors. Helping this AI are other AI’s appearing as giant marble busts of divinities from Greek mythology and acting as the military’s field generals. In 200X Yukiwo Ishikawa, a young boy, escapes from one prison and decides to battle against military forces, mutants, monsters, and the renegade AI’s. The world may end up in a final bang without the AI’s guidance, but Yukiwo prefers short-lived liberty to eternal slavery.
The game’s plot certainly melts together various sub-genres of S(cience)F(iction), like post-apocalyptic, dystopian and a dash of cyberpunk, too. At the Facet of game mechanics, the game also includes some peculiar game choices. Players control Yukiwo’s ship in eight directions via the joystick; The A button control the main shot, and the B button controls the secondary attack. Players can collect up to four “S(peed)” power ups and “F(ire)” power ups, increasing the fire power from one frontal stream to five wide-shot bullets. There are four secondary weapons: the default “P(iercing” missile, the “L(aser)” beam, the “W(ide)” energy shot and the “G(uided)” (homing) energy shot. All four weapons can hit land-based enemies appearing in the ship’s crosshairs, but also aerial enemies placed in the virtual line of fire. Secondary weapons have four power levels, restocking at maximum every two seconds, and with power level correlating to damage level and attacking range.
The game has thus rather simple “dual” plane mechanics that fuse two aspects from the virtual predecessor Tokyo. This because land attacks based on secondary weapons operate more as mixed type attacks. Players can however forsake charging and use the basic secondary attack, which is a stream of shots directly hitting land enemies in the crosshairs. Though weak, this attack has the advantage of automatically hitting only land enemies, so that players can instead use the aerial shot to destroy aerial enemies. Players can also collect a “H(ydrogen)” special bomb attack, which wipes out all enemies and bullets on screen when reaching the surface. Notably, players can destroy most of the scenery across Stages via the secondary attacks, and can hit bosses with both attack types. The game thus displays a certain flexibility to the dual plane mechanics that also anticipates its spiritual successor Rayforce.
The game’s mechanics have an immediacy that finds a match also in the aesthetic presentation. The game runs on Taito’s F1 board; Graphics feature a washed-up palette but big, mostly detailed sprites. Post-apocalyptic Tokyo and the surrounding regions come in hues of brown, green, lots of steel grey and other dark colours. Most enemies are retro-futuristic in design, echoing thus Tokyo’s design: Stage five is notable in including a huge bombardier as the main enemy flying in the background. Some enemies, however, are horribly mutated humans and other creatures, to remind players that they are fighting one week after a nuclear holocaust. Bosses, as we have foreshadowed, provide the most peculiar Facet in design. Players fight giant busts purportedly representing Greek gods (e.g. Zeus) that, once destroyed, reveal flying pulsating brains with cybernetic implants. The final boss, the renegade AI, looks like a giant Facehugger hiding in a pitch-black cave.
The bizarre combination of possibly metaphorically designed enemies (remember, Yukiwo is fighting against authoritarian AI’s) combines with a matching soundtrack. The OST is highly representative of Zuntata’s external collaborator(s) Pinch Punch and their style. The game opens with an Desertion for the short Stage one (“Act I”, in-game) creating a sense of urgency. Stage two’s Freedom offers a brighter theme that Stage three and four’s dramatic Distortion/Wipe Out. Stages five, six’s Cry and Implosion have a fast, oppressive tempo suggesting that Yukiwo’s battle may be doomed, after all. The rather dated 8-bit style sound effects also add to this atmosphere via its metallic sounds. Overall, Master of Weapon features a design that introduces players to a brooding world in which Yukiwo’s battle for freedom emerges as a lost cause. It thus anticipates the majestically dark atmospheres of Taito’s Metal Black and Rayforce, and Taito/UPL’s Acrobat Mission.
We are now ready to discuss the game difficulty that, in my opinion, stems from three Facets: the game mechanics, Stage design/layout, and rank. I propose to partition the 50 total points into 20, 20 and 10 points per Facet, respectively, and to start our discussion from the third Facet. The game has a simple form of “survival rank”: the longer players survive, the faster bullets become. Enemies do not seem to have more H(it)P(point)s as rank increases, but some enemies’ movement seems to increase with rank. If players reach Stage six on one life, bullets’ speed becomes a constant source of threat: dodging point-blanking enemies is next to impossible. The game mechanics provide a similarly simple set of challenges. Players must master the use of secondary weapons to kill enemies on both planes: using the basic secondary shot does not suffice to destroy all enemies in time.
Furthermore, players must master Yukiwo’s ship’s movement at maximal speed, as lower speeds render the ship a near-sitting target. When losing a life, players must learn to survive at least one minute before the game releases new F power-ups; multiple successive deaths are a serious risk, in this game. Stage design/layout, the second Facet, offers another considerable contribution to the overall difficulty. Stage one is a short preamble, but Stages two to six are relatively long Stages (around four minutes) with various mid-bosses and tricky sections. Boss fights can be relatively short (at most one minute) if players learn how to point-blank the bosses with primary and secondary weapons. In general, though, players must develop good strategies for each stage especially when sniping enemies appear, and must have a firm grasp of how to handle bosses. The final boss offers no challenge: the “Greek AI’s” are veritable bastards.
Overall, I would suggest that the first Facet motivates a 6/20 points of difficulty, as players need to master four secondary weapons, plus quirky main shot, and speed mechanics. Stage design/layout motivates a 10/20 points of difficulty, due to Stage one being an easy preamble. Rank offers a subtle contribution: if players learn to recover from deaths, rank is not a crucial source of difficulty. However, players will find Stage six treacherous once they learn to reach it on the first life, and with four lives in stock (extends are 500k and 1M points). The game thus reaches a minimal score of 17/50 difficulty points if players can handle multiple deaths across stages, but a maximal score of 22/50 points at maximal rank. Basic 1-CC’s are a challenge for top-tier intermediate players; 1-LC’s are the province of low-tier expert players, and rather frustrating experience.
Our progress in this squib has followed a steep pace, so Xenny would probably be delighted to move to the conclusions directly. Dear Xenny: I will be brief with my experiences, trust me. It is summer 1991, and it is quite hot. My uncle has added a few new games, even if by his own admission most of the games are old boards he was able to obtain at bargain price. One is this strange platform game from Toaplan with a strange name, Pipi and Bibis, pervy cutscenes like Kaneko’s Gals Panic and even stranger game mechanics. Pervy games are funny if already naïve: Teen kids can easily get their hands on full-blown porn easily, in Italy. I admit that in 1990, I play these two titles for their mechanics and skip the pervy parts: too “soft”. I also admit that both games generously kick my ass with gusto: too “hard”.
I try out Master of Weapon once I can summon the courage to play a shooter game outside Darius II. Soon in 2025 my readers will now that my 1989 and 1990 are years of shmup ordeal, due to this Taito classic. For now, and for this version of 1990, however, readers need to know that I feel wary of playing another Taito shooting game. I feel that this company has recently gone overboard in setting difficulty levels, even if I admit that Cadash feels like a walk in the park, now that I can finish it every day. Thus, I try a few credits of Master of Weapon and I confirm that my initial fears were right: this game feels irrationally hard, and has tons of traps and sneaky enemies. I also frown when I see the first “Greek” boss: the game’s creators watched too much Saint Seiya.
Somehow, though, I keep playing the game for the next two weeks or so and make the kind of steady progress that I do not expect from myself, with shooters. I slowly but inexorably reach a new Stage or “Act” after each week of dedicated play, and feel that my recent fish-based ordeal has given me better skills at the genre. It is 2005 and I am studying the notion of ”motor skill transfer” during my Master years in Utrecht University for the first time. In 1990, I have however simply an intuition that I am getting better in general, due to the sheer amount of practice in videogames. It is now the first week of August, and I can consistently reach Act V, Cry. I admit it: by this point, I hit a plateau and my holidays at the seaside hinder my progress, too.
In September I am back in my hometown and I resume my battle with this game. Reaching Stage five on one life is hard, and I feel that dying before that might even be better. I stubbornly insist on avoiding deaths at all costs, because I really do not understand how to recover from them. My “purist” attitude seems now a problem, as it takes me a month to reach Act VI, Implosion. The music on the final two stages is by now oppressive with its style, and the game seems interminable. By the end of September, though, I start regularly reaching “Zeus”, the final boss…and then one day I defeat it and reach the true final boss on my last life, and trigger a double knock-out. I die, but the ending credits start anyway. So, Yukiwo seems to win his battle anyway, for the first time.
I play the game for another month or so, collecting various clears on an irregular basis: the game can be maddening difficult, on some days. By this point it is cold and dark, and playing the final two Stages with that song in the background feels exasperating. One day I do finish the game on my first life and achieve a very satisfying run. I am somewhat happy to have helped Yukiwo in his battle, but I do not want to play this game ever again. My uncle, in his impeccably creepiest grin, tells me that Yukiwo will never survive that kind of radioactive world. He is going to end up like those creatures in Cronache del Dopobomba, a terrifying fumetto that my father forbids me from reading. I have not played this game “seriously” ever again, but I am happy that I have written this squib, dear Yukiwo.
Let us wrap up. Master of Weapon is a Taito TATE shmup released in 1989 that features a post-apocalyptic setting in which a young boy, Yukiwo, fights against an evil AI-driven dictatorship. The game features a dual plane game system in the line of Taito’s earlier release Tokyo but includes secondary weapons that can operate on both attack planes. The game is notable also for implementing other some 2.5D effects, huge sprites as Stage five/Act V’s flying carrier, and an OST that veers into paranoid territory by the game’s end. The game is notable for featuring a simple but challenging survival rank system, a moderately intense 1-CC challenge, and fast-paced if sometimes rather frustrating action. Players who wish to challenge themselves in 1-CC’ing a shmup that certainly has shortcomings in its mechanics but also provides a remarkably peculiar if brooding ambience can certainly enjoy Master of Weapon.
(2363 words or 5.9 pages, times new roman, size 12, single space; usual disclaimers apply; the game also has a prototype version simply called Yukiwo in MAME in which Yukiwo himself rides on some kind of flying bike. In the main game, trigger it with a dipswitch setting. I am not sure on how Yukiwo can survive the purported vastly irradiated and radioactive Tokyo of the game, however. I do remember other kids watching me playing this game and wondering how I could actually stand all the sniping cheap shots and the final two themes. One guy also conjectured that Cry/Implosion was the theme that drove programmers made and forced them to suicide. The final boss, according to him, was the revenant form of these programmers fused into a super-intelligent organism. Yes, as kids we had highly creative and impressionable imagination. We all agreed that the ending was really, really creepy: How can Yukiwo survive his newfound freedom?).
Master of Weapon (Taito, 1989) is a lesser-known (ro)TATE shmup with a post-apocalyptic setting, interesting game and scoring mechanics, and a rather brooding OST. The game chronicles the adventures of “Yukiwo”, a young man who is escaping from prison after Japan becomes a brutal dictatorship, after a nuclear holocaust obliterates most of the planet. The game is notable for being difficult often in unbalanced or poorly designed manners, and for having a triggering narrative event on September, 11th, of year 199X. It also features an OST that veers into creepy tones by its ending themes, even if starts with an almost cheerful theme. Add some bosses looking like flying heads of Greek statues, and a recipe for a genuinely weird shmup is ready. The goal of this squib is to convince my readers that the game provides an interesting and educative shmup experience, if only because of its “unfair” difficulty.
For this title, it is useful to concentrate the discussion of the context of release to Taito’s final output of the 1980s, plus some connections to earlier releases. Namco’s Xevious in 1983, plus 1987’s Dragon Spirit and Nichibutsu’s Terra Cresta, among other shmups, proved that “dual plane” shmups were viable. That is, players appreciated shooting enemies on the plane of players’ ships and the background plane scrolling below the ship. Taito entered this micro-genre via their 1986’s Tokyo/Scramble Formation, and offered an interesting take on the genre. Taito’s main shmup release for 1989 was however Darius II, a game that would go on to become a legend of the genre together with rail shooter Night Striker. Taito also published Toaplan’s Zero Wing, Hellfire, and Twin Hawk solid if lesser celebrated titles from this company. Master of Weapon thus acted as the other Taito’s in-house shmup “intermediate level” production.
The game’s plot is perhaps notorious among the fans. In 199X, the 11th of September, a nuclear war explodes and destroys more than 90% of the planet. In a week, the world because a nightmarish radioactive hell. Somehow, Japan holds a semblance of stability as a ruthless dictatorship takes control and steers the country in the new wasteland. At the helm of this dictatorship, however, there is a half-organic, half cybernetic and spider-looking AI plotting to completely enslave survivors. Helping this AI are other AI’s appearing as giant marble busts of divinities from Greek mythology and acting as the military’s field generals. In 200X Yukiwo Ishikawa, a young boy, escapes from one prison and decides to battle against military forces, mutants, monsters, and the renegade AI’s. The world may end up in a final bang without the AI’s guidance, but Yukiwo prefers short-lived liberty to eternal slavery.
The game’s plot certainly melts together various sub-genres of S(cience)F(iction), like post-apocalyptic, dystopian and a dash of cyberpunk, too. At the Facet of game mechanics, the game also includes some peculiar game choices. Players control Yukiwo’s ship in eight directions via the joystick; The A button control the main shot, and the B button controls the secondary attack. Players can collect up to four “S(peed)” power ups and “F(ire)” power ups, increasing the fire power from one frontal stream to five wide-shot bullets. There are four secondary weapons: the default “P(iercing” missile, the “L(aser)” beam, the “W(ide)” energy shot and the “G(uided)” (homing) energy shot. All four weapons can hit land-based enemies appearing in the ship’s crosshairs, but also aerial enemies placed in the virtual line of fire. Secondary weapons have four power levels, restocking at maximum every two seconds, and with power level correlating to damage level and attacking range.
The game has thus rather simple “dual” plane mechanics that fuse two aspects from the virtual predecessor Tokyo. This because land attacks based on secondary weapons operate more as mixed type attacks. Players can however forsake charging and use the basic secondary attack, which is a stream of shots directly hitting land enemies in the crosshairs. Though weak, this attack has the advantage of automatically hitting only land enemies, so that players can instead use the aerial shot to destroy aerial enemies. Players can also collect a “H(ydrogen)” special bomb attack, which wipes out all enemies and bullets on screen when reaching the surface. Notably, players can destroy most of the scenery across Stages via the secondary attacks, and can hit bosses with both attack types. The game thus displays a certain flexibility to the dual plane mechanics that also anticipates its spiritual successor Rayforce.
The game’s mechanics have an immediacy that finds a match also in the aesthetic presentation. The game runs on Taito’s F1 board; Graphics feature a washed-up palette but big, mostly detailed sprites. Post-apocalyptic Tokyo and the surrounding regions come in hues of brown, green, lots of steel grey and other dark colours. Most enemies are retro-futuristic in design, echoing thus Tokyo’s design: Stage five is notable in including a huge bombardier as the main enemy flying in the background. Some enemies, however, are horribly mutated humans and other creatures, to remind players that they are fighting one week after a nuclear holocaust. Bosses, as we have foreshadowed, provide the most peculiar Facet in design. Players fight giant busts purportedly representing Greek gods (e.g. Zeus) that, once destroyed, reveal flying pulsating brains with cybernetic implants. The final boss, the renegade AI, looks like a giant Facehugger hiding in a pitch-black cave.
The bizarre combination of possibly metaphorically designed enemies (remember, Yukiwo is fighting against authoritarian AI’s) combines with a matching soundtrack. The OST is highly representative of Zuntata’s external collaborator(s) Pinch Punch and their style. The game opens with an Desertion for the short Stage one (“Act I”, in-game) creating a sense of urgency. Stage two’s Freedom offers a brighter theme that Stage three and four’s dramatic Distortion/Wipe Out. Stages five, six’s Cry and Implosion have a fast, oppressive tempo suggesting that Yukiwo’s battle may be doomed, after all. The rather dated 8-bit style sound effects also add to this atmosphere via its metallic sounds. Overall, Master of Weapon features a design that introduces players to a brooding world in which Yukiwo’s battle for freedom emerges as a lost cause. It thus anticipates the majestically dark atmospheres of Taito’s Metal Black and Rayforce, and Taito/UPL’s Acrobat Mission.
We are now ready to discuss the game difficulty that, in my opinion, stems from three Facets: the game mechanics, Stage design/layout, and rank. I propose to partition the 50 total points into 20, 20 and 10 points per Facet, respectively, and to start our discussion from the third Facet. The game has a simple form of “survival rank”: the longer players survive, the faster bullets become. Enemies do not seem to have more H(it)P(point)s as rank increases, but some enemies’ movement seems to increase with rank. If players reach Stage six on one life, bullets’ speed becomes a constant source of threat: dodging point-blanking enemies is next to impossible. The game mechanics provide a similarly simple set of challenges. Players must master the use of secondary weapons to kill enemies on both planes: using the basic secondary shot does not suffice to destroy all enemies in time.
Furthermore, players must master Yukiwo’s ship’s movement at maximal speed, as lower speeds render the ship a near-sitting target. When losing a life, players must learn to survive at least one minute before the game releases new F power-ups; multiple successive deaths are a serious risk, in this game. Stage design/layout, the second Facet, offers another considerable contribution to the overall difficulty. Stage one is a short preamble, but Stages two to six are relatively long Stages (around four minutes) with various mid-bosses and tricky sections. Boss fights can be relatively short (at most one minute) if players learn how to point-blank the bosses with primary and secondary weapons. In general, though, players must develop good strategies for each stage especially when sniping enemies appear, and must have a firm grasp of how to handle bosses. The final boss offers no challenge: the “Greek AI’s” are veritable bastards.
Overall, I would suggest that the first Facet motivates a 6/20 points of difficulty, as players need to master four secondary weapons, plus quirky main shot, and speed mechanics. Stage design/layout motivates a 10/20 points of difficulty, due to Stage one being an easy preamble. Rank offers a subtle contribution: if players learn to recover from deaths, rank is not a crucial source of difficulty. However, players will find Stage six treacherous once they learn to reach it on the first life, and with four lives in stock (extends are 500k and 1M points). The game thus reaches a minimal score of 17/50 difficulty points if players can handle multiple deaths across stages, but a maximal score of 22/50 points at maximal rank. Basic 1-CC’s are a challenge for top-tier intermediate players; 1-LC’s are the province of low-tier expert players, and rather frustrating experience.
Our progress in this squib has followed a steep pace, so Xenny would probably be delighted to move to the conclusions directly. Dear Xenny: I will be brief with my experiences, trust me. It is summer 1991, and it is quite hot. My uncle has added a few new games, even if by his own admission most of the games are old boards he was able to obtain at bargain price. One is this strange platform game from Toaplan with a strange name, Pipi and Bibis, pervy cutscenes like Kaneko’s Gals Panic and even stranger game mechanics. Pervy games are funny if already naïve: Teen kids can easily get their hands on full-blown porn easily, in Italy. I admit that in 1990, I play these two titles for their mechanics and skip the pervy parts: too “soft”. I also admit that both games generously kick my ass with gusto: too “hard”.
I try out Master of Weapon once I can summon the courage to play a shooter game outside Darius II. Soon in 2025 my readers will now that my 1989 and 1990 are years of shmup ordeal, due to this Taito classic. For now, and for this version of 1990, however, readers need to know that I feel wary of playing another Taito shooting game. I feel that this company has recently gone overboard in setting difficulty levels, even if I admit that Cadash feels like a walk in the park, now that I can finish it every day. Thus, I try a few credits of Master of Weapon and I confirm that my initial fears were right: this game feels irrationally hard, and has tons of traps and sneaky enemies. I also frown when I see the first “Greek” boss: the game’s creators watched too much Saint Seiya.
Somehow, though, I keep playing the game for the next two weeks or so and make the kind of steady progress that I do not expect from myself, with shooters. I slowly but inexorably reach a new Stage or “Act” after each week of dedicated play, and feel that my recent fish-based ordeal has given me better skills at the genre. It is 2005 and I am studying the notion of ”motor skill transfer” during my Master years in Utrecht University for the first time. In 1990, I have however simply an intuition that I am getting better in general, due to the sheer amount of practice in videogames. It is now the first week of August, and I can consistently reach Act V, Cry. I admit it: by this point, I hit a plateau and my holidays at the seaside hinder my progress, too.
In September I am back in my hometown and I resume my battle with this game. Reaching Stage five on one life is hard, and I feel that dying before that might even be better. I stubbornly insist on avoiding deaths at all costs, because I really do not understand how to recover from them. My “purist” attitude seems now a problem, as it takes me a month to reach Act VI, Implosion. The music on the final two stages is by now oppressive with its style, and the game seems interminable. By the end of September, though, I start regularly reaching “Zeus”, the final boss…and then one day I defeat it and reach the true final boss on my last life, and trigger a double knock-out. I die, but the ending credits start anyway. So, Yukiwo seems to win his battle anyway, for the first time.
I play the game for another month or so, collecting various clears on an irregular basis: the game can be maddening difficult, on some days. By this point it is cold and dark, and playing the final two Stages with that song in the background feels exasperating. One day I do finish the game on my first life and achieve a very satisfying run. I am somewhat happy to have helped Yukiwo in his battle, but I do not want to play this game ever again. My uncle, in his impeccably creepiest grin, tells me that Yukiwo will never survive that kind of radioactive world. He is going to end up like those creatures in Cronache del Dopobomba, a terrifying fumetto that my father forbids me from reading. I have not played this game “seriously” ever again, but I am happy that I have written this squib, dear Yukiwo.
Let us wrap up. Master of Weapon is a Taito TATE shmup released in 1989 that features a post-apocalyptic setting in which a young boy, Yukiwo, fights against an evil AI-driven dictatorship. The game features a dual plane game system in the line of Taito’s earlier release Tokyo but includes secondary weapons that can operate on both attack planes. The game is notable also for implementing other some 2.5D effects, huge sprites as Stage five/Act V’s flying carrier, and an OST that veers into paranoid territory by the game’s end. The game is notable for featuring a simple but challenging survival rank system, a moderately intense 1-CC challenge, and fast-paced if sometimes rather frustrating action. Players who wish to challenge themselves in 1-CC’ing a shmup that certainly has shortcomings in its mechanics but also provides a remarkably peculiar if brooding ambience can certainly enjoy Master of Weapon.
(2363 words or 5.9 pages, times new roman, size 12, single space; usual disclaimers apply; the game also has a prototype version simply called Yukiwo in MAME in which Yukiwo himself rides on some kind of flying bike. In the main game, trigger it with a dipswitch setting. I am not sure on how Yukiwo can survive the purported vastly irradiated and radioactive Tokyo of the game, however. I do remember other kids watching me playing this game and wondering how I could actually stand all the sniping cheap shots and the final two themes. One guy also conjectured that Cry/Implosion was the theme that drove programmers made and forced them to suicide. The final boss, according to him, was the revenant form of these programmers fused into a super-intelligent organism. Yes, as kids we had highly creative and impressionable imagination. We all agreed that the ending was really, really creepy: How can Yukiwo survive his newfound freedom?).
"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).
Cadash (Taito, 1989)
This week’s squib is dedicated to Cadash, one of Taito’s most interesting offers from the 1980s. The game was originally ported to several formats, after release: I refer my readers to the wiki reference for a full list. The Taito Memories PS2 port is a good rendition, and of course Hamster has re-released the game for PS4/Switch. In this squib I will follow an approach that comics scribe Kieron Gillen championed when he was a game journalist. I will thus present the squib as a “first journey” to the game world that Taito created for this game. Some of my readers may close the thread at the thought of reading sappy, navel-grazing “narrations” of gamers talking about themselves rather than of the game they purport to explore. Fear not: your humble scribe’s prose and game-exploring skills will guarantee an excellent final product, as always. Thus:
Cadash (Taito, 1989) is an A(rcade)R(ole)P(laying)G(ame) in which four adventurers must save princess Salassa from the kingdom of Deerzar from the clutches of Balrog, a powerful red dragon. The game is a platform/R2RKMF/action game with RPG elements, an expansive set of interconnected Stages (“continents”, in-game) and a great soundtrack. The game is notable for its highly flexible difficulty and the presence of a ninja character, a standard concession to Japanese tastes in otherwise Western Fantasy-themed RPGs. Since the game had plenty of dialogue and narration for a 1989 game, Taito released the game in a multi-lingual format. Players could thus play the title in arcades with the story unraveling in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Irrespective of the language, players could eventually save Deerzar and the princess, but certainly at a notable price. The goal of this squib is to introduce readers to this wonderful “game novel”, thus.
By this point in our journey among squibs, we have amply discussed the rise of Western-style Fantasy and ARPGs in our squibs. With titles like Sega/Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land or Namco’s Valkyrie no Densetsu arcade players became used to RPG-style narration emmeshed in tight action-style games. Several other games including shmups like Capcom’s Forgotten Worlds and ARPG Black Tiger further developed the concept of purchasing power-ups. Cadash, however, combined these mechanics with RPG elements such as levelling up, skill and “stat(istics)” values, and the introduction of spell inventories. Classic titles of this micro-genre that appeared in the 1990s probably took inspiration from Cadash. Examples include Capcom’s D&D: Tower of Doom and D&D: Shadow over Mystara but also IGS’ Knights of Valour series focusing on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga. Cadash thus seems a more influential game than it may appear at first glance.
The game’s plot and setting perhaps present a relatively complex setting and sophisticated approach to narration, for the time being. The game is set in world heavily reminiscent of standard Fantasy classics like The Lord of The Rings. After all, Balrog is the name of one of the many demonic-like creatures in this saga. As the attract mode shows, the story begins when Balrog (“Baarogue” in non-Japanese versions of the game), kidnaps princess Salassa and brings hers to castle Cadash. King Dilsarl of the kingdom of Dirzir summons four heroes to castle Deerzar, with the goal of saving princess Salassa. The king has a critical reason for doing so, aside from saving her beloved daughter. Balrog wishes to bind his blood with that of a human woman, so that him and the underground hordes at his command may walk again in the sunlight, free of fear of cruel humans.
The game’s narrative setting thus has in intriguing twist. The four heroes must slay Balrog and his army, but Balrog’s objective is break the human curse that banished non-humans to the underground lands. Only one side can ultimately emerge victorious, but players ultimately fight to avoid that past sins will punish their contemporary human civilization. Players must thus start their journey from the kingdom of Dirzir and complete five quests in the dungeons of four continents occupying the game’s world. Each dungeon and quest correspond to a game’s Stage. Players can only access Castle Cadash, Stage five, once they clear the quest on Stage four’s dungeon/continent. Notably, each Stage has a portal that connects a dungeon to another continent and dungeon in both directions. For instance, Stage one’s dungeon has a portal taking players to the second continent: players can go back and forth as they please.
The game thus offers players the chance to progress in a non-linear manner as far as they can eventually clear the game within the time limit. This can however occur if players complete quests/Stages in a linear order, a feat that involves the evolution (i.e. levelling up) of characters along this journey. Let us however proceed from the basic game mechanics or Facets to explain this evolution. Players can choose four characters: the warrior, the priestess, the ninja and the mage. Players control the four characters in eight directions via the joystick: characters can jump via the pressure of the B button, and can attack in any direction via command moves (A button+direction). For instance, the ninja can shoot shuriken downwards by jumping first (B button) and then directing the attack(s) (e.g. down+A button). The precise nature of the attacks varies from character to character, of course.
All characters level up by killing enemies and collecting the coin bags that they drop. Levelling up increase “STR(ength)” (i.e physical attacks power) DEX(erity) (i.e. speed and jumping range) and A(rmor)C(class) (i.e. resilience to damage). When players reach increasingly higher thresholds of (e)X(perience)P(oint)s, all these skills increase along with H(it)P(point)s. The mage and the priestess are spell-caster characters: if players push and hold the A button, a spell inventory icon appears next to the characters. Spells increase in number and power as characters level up, but they also increasing in the amount of M(agic)P(oint)s required to cast them. Players can hold the A button so that the inventory will automatically rotate among spells at disposal. By releasing the button, the character launches the spell currently under selection. The ninja and warrior are fighter-type characters, so they do not cast spells but can reach impressive physical skills by levelling up.
Players can then collect several special items by shooting/hitting secret spots or by visiting shops and buying these items. The most common items are the medical herb and antidote. Medical herbs let characters recover 10 HPs when their HPs go to zero; antidotes prevent poisoning attacks from delivering multiple damage over time. Players can then buy sand clocks to obtain one extra minute of time, a silver key to open some gates across Stages, and golden bell in some specific shops (e.g. the dwarves’ shop at the beginning of Stage three). The bell increases the maximum HP points by eight points, even if levelling up will also increase HPs; the maximum for all characters is set at 255 HPs, anyway. Players can only keep up to eight herbs and antidotes in their inventories, only need one silver key, and the sand clocks’ price increases after each purchase.
Players can also buy new and more powerful weapons and armour once they reach the weapons shops in each Stage, if they have enough money. Players may skip upgrades (e.g. avoid buying new weapons on Stage two), but their attacking power will obviously remain limited. Players can then visit “Inns”, i.e. shops that offer the character a chance to rest for the night and recover all HPs at once. Inn’s locations across continents/Stages are such that players may need to return to their previous steps if in need of healing. For instance, players may wish to recover all HPs before the final battle with Balrog in castle Cadash (Stage five). They thus need to exit the castle, and go back to the lost continent (i.e. Stage four). Here they must take a gate to Stage three (i.e. the gnomes’ forest), visit the Stage’s inn, and then return to face Balrog.
The game’s mechanics and levelling up system are thus relatively simple, while the ability to move across Stages/continents once they are accessible creates interesting game options. These Facets interact in interesting manners to shape the game’s difficulty, on which regional revisions also play an important role. First, however, let us discuss the game’s audio-visual Facets in some detail. The game runs on Taito’s ”Bonze Adventure” hardware, and features some intriguing visual effects, e.g. the wave-style fade-in effect for the title screen. The four characters, bosses and some enemies are also fluidly animated (e.g. the harpies, Balrog in his dragon form). However, many enemies and N(on)P(laying)C(haracter)s have few animation frames (e.g. giant spiders), thus giving animation an uneven quality. The game’s palette is also notable in mostly focusing on dark, virulent colours, to the effect that some enemies on Stages one and two may be hard to spot, at first glance.
The game’s visual prowess however emerges in its visual world building. Though simple in their design, each Stage/continent and dungeon also provide powerfully evocative themes. For instance, Stage four, the “lost continent”, offers a dungeon with undead creatures, fire elementals and powerful monsters as the main theme. The walls forming the Stage’s structures consist of human skeletons appearing in a morbid yellow evoking exsiccated, mummified bones. Stage three’s dungeon is in the netherworld of a forest, and its bright emerald green vines may appear as pulsating worms, at times. The human kingdoms on Stage one and two and the fairies’ forest have however an idyllic atmosphere that might bring players to stop in these places for a few moments. The world of Cadash is a simple and yet well-defined, intensely immersive world for which players can develop an attachment: saving this world from Balrog may thus become a personal quest.
The OST by the Pinch Punch’s collective, Zuntata’s erstwhile external collaborators, provides a formidable complement to this evocative portrayal. The gentle fantasy-esque theme Door between ordinary and Disordinary accompanies characters during non-fighting scenes. However, once characters enter dungeons, themes switch to notes of increasing intensity that create brooding, harrowing atmospheres aptly matching the increasingly horrific nature of dungeons. Stage three’s theme, Suck the lifeblood to live, is a timely reminder that players are traversing a dungeon full of carnivorous creatures. Stage four’s Chortle with Insanity is a fast-paced theme accompanying players through Taito’s vision of hell. Once the game is over, players can enjoy one of the most beautiful, melancholic, bittersweet Ending songs that ever graced an arcade game. Be sure to shed tears of happiness, after hearing it the first time. Finally, sound effects are loud, bombastic, and somewhat hilarious in style: luckily, they become “background nnoise” quickly.
The intense and sometimes grandguignole-esque aesthetics find a thematic counterpoint in the game subtly defined and highly flexible difficulty. I propose that Cadash has three Facets defining its difficulty: game mechanics; Stage design/layout, and especially their semi-linear structure; and game’s revisions. I assign 10, 20 and 20 maximal points to each respective Facet, out of a total of 50 points, and discuss these Facets in this order. Game mechanics are rather straightforward. Players must learn how to attack in multiple directions, and may learn to use the spells’ inventories for spell-caster characters. Medical herbs allow players to side-step some difficulties. When characters lose their final hit points and use medical herbs, they have generous i(nvicibility)-frames. During the activation of i-frames, characters can literally move through any enemy, and thus clear some passages without fighting. This technique is risky: after using eight herbs, characters will die rather than be invincible.
Game mechanics do not however provide further challenges, so they motivate a 3/10 assignment value. Stage design/layout offers a perhaps more nuanced challenge. As an action/platform game, Cadash does not provide particularly steep challenges. If players learn how to handle each dungeon and its boss, 1-CC’ing the game is a feasible goal, especially since the game is generous with HPs. The game’s narrative structure poses an interesting challenge in how players can access Stages. Ideally, players can clear each Stage and specific sub-quest (e.g. save the mermaid girl on Stage two) and then progress to the next Stage in a linear manner. However, players may return to previously cleared Stages/continents to acquire items, as our discussion of Inns has suggested. Players can also repeat parts of a dungeon to increase character’s XPs and statistics, since enemies will respawn once players enter a section a second time, time limit permitting.
Players can thus develop various strategies and paths to 1-CC the game, possibly aiming at reaching the final fight with Balrog with characters in their most powerful form. The only requirement is that players gauge their paths and purchase of extra time to avoid timing out: if this happens, characters will quickly lose HPs and die out miserably. I thus suggest that the second Facet motivates a 7/20 difficulty points value assignment. It is the third Facet, the game’s different revisions and how they affect the overall game engine, that motivates a more detailed discussion of the game’s difficulty. The game’s non-Japanese revisions include low thresholds for characters’ levelling up and generous increases for characters’ stats, including HPs. In these revisions, the ninja is already a near-unbeatable character by level 12 (out of 16), and can beat Balrog easily due to its high AC and STR levels.
If players thus focus on these revisions and use the ninja, difficulty stops at a total of 10/50 points: the game is a top-tier game for beginner players, and an easy 1-CC. The warrior’s lack of long-range attacks and the priestess’ initial physical weakness make the game slightly more difficult, even if the priestess’ higher range spells are formidable. Players who want a higher challenge can thus 1-CC the game first with the priestess and then with the warrior. For me, they raise the difficulty to 13/50 and 15/50 points, respectively, turning the game to a mid-tier challenge for intermediate players. The mage offers a considerably higher challenge, as players must use spell almost all the time: the mage never levels up enough to have any relevant physical skills and attacks. I propose a 20/50 value assignment for difficulty, as perhaps top-tier intermediate players may welcome this challenge.
The Japanese version offers a considerably more difficulty challenge. Players can only carry four magical herbs and antidotes, so they must learn how to clear passages that are trivial via the “i-frames trick”. The cost of using inns is considerably higher, coin drops are less generous, and levelling up increases statistics at a slower pace. In other words, players must develop a firmer grasp of the game’s Stages and avoid wasting “time and money” when proceeding. I would therefore add five points for this revision, increasing totals to 15/50 (ninja), 18/50 and 20/50 points (priestess, warrior), and 25/50 points (mage). The Japanese version of Cadash is a mid-tier game for intermediate to expert players, and more in general acts an “extra” revision providing a more intense challenge. Players who feel that they have squeezed the other versions to their natural limits can move to this version, thus.
Let us now conclude with a final journey to the kingdom of Dirzir and its world via my experiences. Xenny is, once more, busy with xis (His? Her? Xer? Xits?) family/hive, so we are free to get away with the sappy equivalent of narrative blue murder. It is the end of August 1989 and I am trying to clear Darius II, finally. The game has begun to annoy me, especially because of its irrationally difficult last Stages. There are other games that occupy my attention from this part of summer to Christmas time, including Robocop, Rabio Lepus and Tiger Road at the bar in my grandparents’ village. I try out Cadash almost by mistake, in the sense that at this time in my life I have little interest in this strange platform game with magic. My uncle invites me to play one credit, smirking, and see if I can enjoy it.
I am quite surprised, at the beginning, to see that the game is in Italian: I follow the idea that Japanese games arrive to Italy in their English language versions. I do remember seeing some old unused cabs from a company called “Zaccaria”, with game instructions in Italian; I have hazy memories of my natural parents playing one such game. By now, 1989, these are already memories forgotten to the mists of my childhood, however. Now I am focusing on choosing a nice nickname for my character: the game starts with this choice. I want to write “FAU”, my current initials, and I think for a moment to switch to “ACV”, my original initials. I end up tapping “OKF” (OK, F), because I could not insert the “U” on time. Ah, “OKF” becomes my “arcade nick”, from this moment of time onwards.
My first few credits are quite encouraging. I lose my first credit to the blob-like thing at the end of the first dungeon, but I can beat the thing already by the second credit. Most importantly, though, by the fifth credit I start memorising the game’s plot and dialogues and repeat them in my head, as I always do for stories I love. After a few days of playing the game every day, I can consistently reach Stage three and slowly but surely learn its various paths and secrets. My uncle, by this point, develops the habit of making fun of my initial reticence in playing the game: during each credit, he pops up and asks if I still dislike the game. Bah, old folks. Nevertheless, I must admit that I am slowly becoming partial to this fantastic story and its world. Dirzir is a nice place that I like to visit daily.
Within two weeks or so I start reaching the “lost continent” and, to be honest, feel somewhat disturbed by its design. Walls made of skeletons, a creepy song playing in the background, difficult passages and enemies delivering tons of damage…it takes me three weeks, to overcome this obstacle. Figuring out what to do to reach castle Cadash, another week. The final Stage continues the oppressive atmosphere and style, and is quite the challenge for my kid self of 1989. I do think of giving up from time to time, but leaving princess Salassa to her own destiny feels horrible. Besides, I see other people clearing the game with a certain ease, including a group of people who always play as a quartet. I need to learn the final passages of the castle with my trustworthy ninja character, and reach the final “Baarogue” guy with one resurrection elixir.
After another two weeks or so, I can clear the game on a cold autumn Sunday afternoon. I admit that the first time my hands are shaking, because I can deliver the final hit at 20 energy points from certain death. The final dragon form misses the killing hit, and I land the final two fireballs. I win. I am almost in trance when I watch the final credits and princess Salassa saying: “Thanks for all the help, OKF!” My pleasure, princess. And then, for one week, I pause. By early November I start playing with the warrior, and then the priestess, and then the mage: I clear the game daily, by this point. For the next few months, until early June or so, I always visit Dirzir each day I go to the arcade. I know all its secret passages and I can reach the maximum experience level, easily.
Over the months, what keeps making me return to Dirzir is the place and the atmosphere: a peaceful world threatened by arrogant monsters, and four adventurers saving this poor world. By early June, my uncle sells the board without telling me: I cry and leave the arcade, when I discover this fact. One of the first games I clear again during my gap year is indeed Cadash: I cry tears of joy, after playing it for the first time. I buy the Taito Memories port in 2005, while I am in Utrecht for my Master degree, and spend quite a bit of time 1-CC’ing the Japanese harder version. It deeply moves me that I can revisit this place in a new, more challenging manner. Over the decades, Dirzir becomes a veritable locus amoenus and a sanctuary that I visit in “times of need”: home away from home, if fictional.
Let us conclude, before we end up stuck in Dirzir’s timeless beauty. Cadash is an ARPG/R2RKMF/action-platform game in which four fantasy characters must save the world from a ruthless demon/dragon-like entity, Balrog. The game features a greatly detailed story for the time and hardware constraints, fun platforming parts, interesting secrets, and a semi-linear approach to Stage progression. The game also offers different levels of difficulty via its revisions and characters. Players who want a quick and easy 1-CC can play with the ninja any non-Japanese version, while players who want a considerable challenge can see if they can clear the Japanese version with the mage. The game also offers a superb ending theme and, its simple and maybe antiquated arcade format, a truly immersive RPG experience. Dirzir and its world are pulsating, moving places: be sure to visit them as often as possible.
(3412 words, or 8.6 pages in times new roman, size 12, single space; the usual disclaimers apply; the Japanese version has a few interesting easter eggs involving the programmers, as this page discusses. Unbelievably, I never tried to adapt this game into a tabletop RPG campaign, though I would not be able to say why I never thought about trying at least once. I admit that I cannot stand The Lord of the Rings and any of its derivatives, but I never had any problems ignoring the many references to Tolkien’s books in Cadash. I must also admit that I had a few nightmares when I saw Stage four’s dungeon for the first time. The concept of a vast underground dungeon made of tens of thousands of human skeletons freaked me out, back in the day. Finally, has anyone had at least a short crush on Salassa as the princess in distress who becomes a strong queen? Ah, young folks…).
Cadash (Taito, 1989) is an A(rcade)R(ole)P(laying)G(ame) in which four adventurers must save princess Salassa from the kingdom of Deerzar from the clutches of Balrog, a powerful red dragon. The game is a platform/R2RKMF/action game with RPG elements, an expansive set of interconnected Stages (“continents”, in-game) and a great soundtrack. The game is notable for its highly flexible difficulty and the presence of a ninja character, a standard concession to Japanese tastes in otherwise Western Fantasy-themed RPGs. Since the game had plenty of dialogue and narration for a 1989 game, Taito released the game in a multi-lingual format. Players could thus play the title in arcades with the story unraveling in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Irrespective of the language, players could eventually save Deerzar and the princess, but certainly at a notable price. The goal of this squib is to introduce readers to this wonderful “game novel”, thus.
By this point in our journey among squibs, we have amply discussed the rise of Western-style Fantasy and ARPGs in our squibs. With titles like Sega/Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land or Namco’s Valkyrie no Densetsu arcade players became used to RPG-style narration emmeshed in tight action-style games. Several other games including shmups like Capcom’s Forgotten Worlds and ARPG Black Tiger further developed the concept of purchasing power-ups. Cadash, however, combined these mechanics with RPG elements such as levelling up, skill and “stat(istics)” values, and the introduction of spell inventories. Classic titles of this micro-genre that appeared in the 1990s probably took inspiration from Cadash. Examples include Capcom’s D&D: Tower of Doom and D&D: Shadow over Mystara but also IGS’ Knights of Valour series focusing on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga. Cadash thus seems a more influential game than it may appear at first glance.
The game’s plot and setting perhaps present a relatively complex setting and sophisticated approach to narration, for the time being. The game is set in world heavily reminiscent of standard Fantasy classics like The Lord of The Rings. After all, Balrog is the name of one of the many demonic-like creatures in this saga. As the attract mode shows, the story begins when Balrog (“Baarogue” in non-Japanese versions of the game), kidnaps princess Salassa and brings hers to castle Cadash. King Dilsarl of the kingdom of Dirzir summons four heroes to castle Deerzar, with the goal of saving princess Salassa. The king has a critical reason for doing so, aside from saving her beloved daughter. Balrog wishes to bind his blood with that of a human woman, so that him and the underground hordes at his command may walk again in the sunlight, free of fear of cruel humans.
The game’s narrative setting thus has in intriguing twist. The four heroes must slay Balrog and his army, but Balrog’s objective is break the human curse that banished non-humans to the underground lands. Only one side can ultimately emerge victorious, but players ultimately fight to avoid that past sins will punish their contemporary human civilization. Players must thus start their journey from the kingdom of Dirzir and complete five quests in the dungeons of four continents occupying the game’s world. Each dungeon and quest correspond to a game’s Stage. Players can only access Castle Cadash, Stage five, once they clear the quest on Stage four’s dungeon/continent. Notably, each Stage has a portal that connects a dungeon to another continent and dungeon in both directions. For instance, Stage one’s dungeon has a portal taking players to the second continent: players can go back and forth as they please.
The game thus offers players the chance to progress in a non-linear manner as far as they can eventually clear the game within the time limit. This can however occur if players complete quests/Stages in a linear order, a feat that involves the evolution (i.e. levelling up) of characters along this journey. Let us however proceed from the basic game mechanics or Facets to explain this evolution. Players can choose four characters: the warrior, the priestess, the ninja and the mage. Players control the four characters in eight directions via the joystick: characters can jump via the pressure of the B button, and can attack in any direction via command moves (A button+direction). For instance, the ninja can shoot shuriken downwards by jumping first (B button) and then directing the attack(s) (e.g. down+A button). The precise nature of the attacks varies from character to character, of course.
All characters level up by killing enemies and collecting the coin bags that they drop. Levelling up increase “STR(ength)” (i.e physical attacks power) DEX(erity) (i.e. speed and jumping range) and A(rmor)C(class) (i.e. resilience to damage). When players reach increasingly higher thresholds of (e)X(perience)P(oint)s, all these skills increase along with H(it)P(point)s. The mage and the priestess are spell-caster characters: if players push and hold the A button, a spell inventory icon appears next to the characters. Spells increase in number and power as characters level up, but they also increasing in the amount of M(agic)P(oint)s required to cast them. Players can hold the A button so that the inventory will automatically rotate among spells at disposal. By releasing the button, the character launches the spell currently under selection. The ninja and warrior are fighter-type characters, so they do not cast spells but can reach impressive physical skills by levelling up.
Players can then collect several special items by shooting/hitting secret spots or by visiting shops and buying these items. The most common items are the medical herb and antidote. Medical herbs let characters recover 10 HPs when their HPs go to zero; antidotes prevent poisoning attacks from delivering multiple damage over time. Players can then buy sand clocks to obtain one extra minute of time, a silver key to open some gates across Stages, and golden bell in some specific shops (e.g. the dwarves’ shop at the beginning of Stage three). The bell increases the maximum HP points by eight points, even if levelling up will also increase HPs; the maximum for all characters is set at 255 HPs, anyway. Players can only keep up to eight herbs and antidotes in their inventories, only need one silver key, and the sand clocks’ price increases after each purchase.
Players can also buy new and more powerful weapons and armour once they reach the weapons shops in each Stage, if they have enough money. Players may skip upgrades (e.g. avoid buying new weapons on Stage two), but their attacking power will obviously remain limited. Players can then visit “Inns”, i.e. shops that offer the character a chance to rest for the night and recover all HPs at once. Inn’s locations across continents/Stages are such that players may need to return to their previous steps if in need of healing. For instance, players may wish to recover all HPs before the final battle with Balrog in castle Cadash (Stage five). They thus need to exit the castle, and go back to the lost continent (i.e. Stage four). Here they must take a gate to Stage three (i.e. the gnomes’ forest), visit the Stage’s inn, and then return to face Balrog.
The game’s mechanics and levelling up system are thus relatively simple, while the ability to move across Stages/continents once they are accessible creates interesting game options. These Facets interact in interesting manners to shape the game’s difficulty, on which regional revisions also play an important role. First, however, let us discuss the game’s audio-visual Facets in some detail. The game runs on Taito’s ”Bonze Adventure” hardware, and features some intriguing visual effects, e.g. the wave-style fade-in effect for the title screen. The four characters, bosses and some enemies are also fluidly animated (e.g. the harpies, Balrog in his dragon form). However, many enemies and N(on)P(laying)C(haracter)s have few animation frames (e.g. giant spiders), thus giving animation an uneven quality. The game’s palette is also notable in mostly focusing on dark, virulent colours, to the effect that some enemies on Stages one and two may be hard to spot, at first glance.
The game’s visual prowess however emerges in its visual world building. Though simple in their design, each Stage/continent and dungeon also provide powerfully evocative themes. For instance, Stage four, the “lost continent”, offers a dungeon with undead creatures, fire elementals and powerful monsters as the main theme. The walls forming the Stage’s structures consist of human skeletons appearing in a morbid yellow evoking exsiccated, mummified bones. Stage three’s dungeon is in the netherworld of a forest, and its bright emerald green vines may appear as pulsating worms, at times. The human kingdoms on Stage one and two and the fairies’ forest have however an idyllic atmosphere that might bring players to stop in these places for a few moments. The world of Cadash is a simple and yet well-defined, intensely immersive world for which players can develop an attachment: saving this world from Balrog may thus become a personal quest.
The OST by the Pinch Punch’s collective, Zuntata’s erstwhile external collaborators, provides a formidable complement to this evocative portrayal. The gentle fantasy-esque theme Door between ordinary and Disordinary accompanies characters during non-fighting scenes. However, once characters enter dungeons, themes switch to notes of increasing intensity that create brooding, harrowing atmospheres aptly matching the increasingly horrific nature of dungeons. Stage three’s theme, Suck the lifeblood to live, is a timely reminder that players are traversing a dungeon full of carnivorous creatures. Stage four’s Chortle with Insanity is a fast-paced theme accompanying players through Taito’s vision of hell. Once the game is over, players can enjoy one of the most beautiful, melancholic, bittersweet Ending songs that ever graced an arcade game. Be sure to shed tears of happiness, after hearing it the first time. Finally, sound effects are loud, bombastic, and somewhat hilarious in style: luckily, they become “background nnoise” quickly.
The intense and sometimes grandguignole-esque aesthetics find a thematic counterpoint in the game subtly defined and highly flexible difficulty. I propose that Cadash has three Facets defining its difficulty: game mechanics; Stage design/layout, and especially their semi-linear structure; and game’s revisions. I assign 10, 20 and 20 maximal points to each respective Facet, out of a total of 50 points, and discuss these Facets in this order. Game mechanics are rather straightforward. Players must learn how to attack in multiple directions, and may learn to use the spells’ inventories for spell-caster characters. Medical herbs allow players to side-step some difficulties. When characters lose their final hit points and use medical herbs, they have generous i(nvicibility)-frames. During the activation of i-frames, characters can literally move through any enemy, and thus clear some passages without fighting. This technique is risky: after using eight herbs, characters will die rather than be invincible.
Game mechanics do not however provide further challenges, so they motivate a 3/10 assignment value. Stage design/layout offers a perhaps more nuanced challenge. As an action/platform game, Cadash does not provide particularly steep challenges. If players learn how to handle each dungeon and its boss, 1-CC’ing the game is a feasible goal, especially since the game is generous with HPs. The game’s narrative structure poses an interesting challenge in how players can access Stages. Ideally, players can clear each Stage and specific sub-quest (e.g. save the mermaid girl on Stage two) and then progress to the next Stage in a linear manner. However, players may return to previously cleared Stages/continents to acquire items, as our discussion of Inns has suggested. Players can also repeat parts of a dungeon to increase character’s XPs and statistics, since enemies will respawn once players enter a section a second time, time limit permitting.
Players can thus develop various strategies and paths to 1-CC the game, possibly aiming at reaching the final fight with Balrog with characters in their most powerful form. The only requirement is that players gauge their paths and purchase of extra time to avoid timing out: if this happens, characters will quickly lose HPs and die out miserably. I thus suggest that the second Facet motivates a 7/20 difficulty points value assignment. It is the third Facet, the game’s different revisions and how they affect the overall game engine, that motivates a more detailed discussion of the game’s difficulty. The game’s non-Japanese revisions include low thresholds for characters’ levelling up and generous increases for characters’ stats, including HPs. In these revisions, the ninja is already a near-unbeatable character by level 12 (out of 16), and can beat Balrog easily due to its high AC and STR levels.
If players thus focus on these revisions and use the ninja, difficulty stops at a total of 10/50 points: the game is a top-tier game for beginner players, and an easy 1-CC. The warrior’s lack of long-range attacks and the priestess’ initial physical weakness make the game slightly more difficult, even if the priestess’ higher range spells are formidable. Players who want a higher challenge can thus 1-CC the game first with the priestess and then with the warrior. For me, they raise the difficulty to 13/50 and 15/50 points, respectively, turning the game to a mid-tier challenge for intermediate players. The mage offers a considerably higher challenge, as players must use spell almost all the time: the mage never levels up enough to have any relevant physical skills and attacks. I propose a 20/50 value assignment for difficulty, as perhaps top-tier intermediate players may welcome this challenge.
The Japanese version offers a considerably more difficulty challenge. Players can only carry four magical herbs and antidotes, so they must learn how to clear passages that are trivial via the “i-frames trick”. The cost of using inns is considerably higher, coin drops are less generous, and levelling up increases statistics at a slower pace. In other words, players must develop a firmer grasp of the game’s Stages and avoid wasting “time and money” when proceeding. I would therefore add five points for this revision, increasing totals to 15/50 (ninja), 18/50 and 20/50 points (priestess, warrior), and 25/50 points (mage). The Japanese version of Cadash is a mid-tier game for intermediate to expert players, and more in general acts an “extra” revision providing a more intense challenge. Players who feel that they have squeezed the other versions to their natural limits can move to this version, thus.
Let us now conclude with a final journey to the kingdom of Dirzir and its world via my experiences. Xenny is, once more, busy with xis (His? Her? Xer? Xits?) family/hive, so we are free to get away with the sappy equivalent of narrative blue murder. It is the end of August 1989 and I am trying to clear Darius II, finally. The game has begun to annoy me, especially because of its irrationally difficult last Stages. There are other games that occupy my attention from this part of summer to Christmas time, including Robocop, Rabio Lepus and Tiger Road at the bar in my grandparents’ village. I try out Cadash almost by mistake, in the sense that at this time in my life I have little interest in this strange platform game with magic. My uncle invites me to play one credit, smirking, and see if I can enjoy it.
I am quite surprised, at the beginning, to see that the game is in Italian: I follow the idea that Japanese games arrive to Italy in their English language versions. I do remember seeing some old unused cabs from a company called “Zaccaria”, with game instructions in Italian; I have hazy memories of my natural parents playing one such game. By now, 1989, these are already memories forgotten to the mists of my childhood, however. Now I am focusing on choosing a nice nickname for my character: the game starts with this choice. I want to write “FAU”, my current initials, and I think for a moment to switch to “ACV”, my original initials. I end up tapping “OKF” (OK, F), because I could not insert the “U” on time. Ah, “OKF” becomes my “arcade nick”, from this moment of time onwards.
My first few credits are quite encouraging. I lose my first credit to the blob-like thing at the end of the first dungeon, but I can beat the thing already by the second credit. Most importantly, though, by the fifth credit I start memorising the game’s plot and dialogues and repeat them in my head, as I always do for stories I love. After a few days of playing the game every day, I can consistently reach Stage three and slowly but surely learn its various paths and secrets. My uncle, by this point, develops the habit of making fun of my initial reticence in playing the game: during each credit, he pops up and asks if I still dislike the game. Bah, old folks. Nevertheless, I must admit that I am slowly becoming partial to this fantastic story and its world. Dirzir is a nice place that I like to visit daily.
Within two weeks or so I start reaching the “lost continent” and, to be honest, feel somewhat disturbed by its design. Walls made of skeletons, a creepy song playing in the background, difficult passages and enemies delivering tons of damage…it takes me three weeks, to overcome this obstacle. Figuring out what to do to reach castle Cadash, another week. The final Stage continues the oppressive atmosphere and style, and is quite the challenge for my kid self of 1989. I do think of giving up from time to time, but leaving princess Salassa to her own destiny feels horrible. Besides, I see other people clearing the game with a certain ease, including a group of people who always play as a quartet. I need to learn the final passages of the castle with my trustworthy ninja character, and reach the final “Baarogue” guy with one resurrection elixir.
After another two weeks or so, I can clear the game on a cold autumn Sunday afternoon. I admit that the first time my hands are shaking, because I can deliver the final hit at 20 energy points from certain death. The final dragon form misses the killing hit, and I land the final two fireballs. I win. I am almost in trance when I watch the final credits and princess Salassa saying: “Thanks for all the help, OKF!” My pleasure, princess. And then, for one week, I pause. By early November I start playing with the warrior, and then the priestess, and then the mage: I clear the game daily, by this point. For the next few months, until early June or so, I always visit Dirzir each day I go to the arcade. I know all its secret passages and I can reach the maximum experience level, easily.
Over the months, what keeps making me return to Dirzir is the place and the atmosphere: a peaceful world threatened by arrogant monsters, and four adventurers saving this poor world. By early June, my uncle sells the board without telling me: I cry and leave the arcade, when I discover this fact. One of the first games I clear again during my gap year is indeed Cadash: I cry tears of joy, after playing it for the first time. I buy the Taito Memories port in 2005, while I am in Utrecht for my Master degree, and spend quite a bit of time 1-CC’ing the Japanese harder version. It deeply moves me that I can revisit this place in a new, more challenging manner. Over the decades, Dirzir becomes a veritable locus amoenus and a sanctuary that I visit in “times of need”: home away from home, if fictional.
Let us conclude, before we end up stuck in Dirzir’s timeless beauty. Cadash is an ARPG/R2RKMF/action-platform game in which four fantasy characters must save the world from a ruthless demon/dragon-like entity, Balrog. The game features a greatly detailed story for the time and hardware constraints, fun platforming parts, interesting secrets, and a semi-linear approach to Stage progression. The game also offers different levels of difficulty via its revisions and characters. Players who want a quick and easy 1-CC can play with the ninja any non-Japanese version, while players who want a considerable challenge can see if they can clear the Japanese version with the mage. The game also offers a superb ending theme and, its simple and maybe antiquated arcade format, a truly immersive RPG experience. Dirzir and its world are pulsating, moving places: be sure to visit them as often as possible.
(3412 words, or 8.6 pages in times new roman, size 12, single space; the usual disclaimers apply; the Japanese version has a few interesting easter eggs involving the programmers, as this page discusses. Unbelievably, I never tried to adapt this game into a tabletop RPG campaign, though I would not be able to say why I never thought about trying at least once. I admit that I cannot stand The Lord of the Rings and any of its derivatives, but I never had any problems ignoring the many references to Tolkien’s books in Cadash. I must also admit that I had a few nightmares when I saw Stage four’s dungeon for the first time. The concept of a vast underground dungeon made of tens of thousands of human skeletons freaked me out, back in the day. Finally, has anyone had at least a short crush on Salassa as the princess in distress who becomes a strong queen? Ah, young folks…).
"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).
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Re: RRR: Index of squibs
Particularly enjoyed beginning my week with this one, Rando-dono.
I feel like the (few) times I have come across this one online, it's been used as a bit of a whipping post for the whole "all arcade games were purely devised as quarter munchers hurr durr" revisionism that is... a lot, if not absolutely prevalent nor ubiquitous.
So to see this piece not even touch on those aspects, yet thoroughly dissect every other aspect of it; and to have come from such a position of obvious personal affection; AND to accompany BIL's poignant assessment of it as not an action title but as an exercise in meticulous efficiency... well, fuck - it just convinced me to give it a stab next time Hamhams puts it up for sale.
Spoiler
Yeah nah, it's Golden Week, so it still counts as "beginning the week"
So to see this piece not even touch on those aspects, yet thoroughly dissect every other aspect of it; and to have come from such a position of obvious personal affection; AND to accompany BIL's poignant assessment of it as not an action title but as an exercise in meticulous efficiency... well, fuck - it just convinced me to give it a stab next time Hamhams puts it up for sale.
Cadash (Taito, 1989). NEXT: Death Brade (Data East, 1991)
Thanks DW-dono.
Re: the perennial quarter-muncher topic.
My simple position on this topic is that players have agency, can develop skills and game make inferences regarding how to solve game situations. A game can be as much as a "quarter muncher" as programmers make it to be, but anyone who has brains can figure out a way how to reduce the quarter-munching to N=1 (i.e. insert coin, start, 1-CC the game, next). I do not doubt that we could write whole books of sociology, anthropology, cognitive psychology (...and so on) on why there is a certain strain of revisionism spread across the intarwebs.
Ultimately, though, I write about my own experiences with games from various personal points of view or Facets of life.
As an adult who does research for a living (in a university, I would add), I sit down and analyse games as "systems" with interacting components, and with which I have had various types of interaction. I do start from a vantage point: I always write about games I 1-CC'ed, so my understanding of these systems is usually good & robust, although not necessarily "top-tier", as in e.g. the case of people who can get top scores. I also start from another vantage point: I write research papers for a living, so offering an analysis of a system is something that by now comes to me in a relatively spontaneous manner. I do follow a template, and I will write a squib explaining the core underpinnings of this template. For now, though, I believe that I can simply clarify an obvious point: I try to explain what the building blocks of each game as a system are, and then I try to reconstruct the game by integrating these pieces into the more or less coherent whole we experience, when we play the games. It is not so different from what I do for a living, so I simply exploit a work skill in my spare time.
When I try to reconstruct my memories of the child, teen, young adult who played these games, I try to add a touch of more subjective experience so that readers can get a feeling of how one can reach this degree of knowledge, often via stubborn practice and a good amount of time. In the cute little stories, I try to recall what I was thinking when I was playing these games when I was a kid, what was motivating me to play titles that were at times immensely challenging, what motivation I received in pursuing these trivial goals from my acquaintances, and so on.
I try to intersperse nice vignettes and a certain type of "slice of life" narration with my actual memories of playing the games, also because they can offer insights on what it means to actually learn a game. At some later stage, I believe that my thoughts on these topics will be much more well-defined and perhaps even publishable, but for now I am simply pursuing an exercise in "thinking aloud" and trying to put in order all of these learning experiences that I accumulated over the decades. I am aware that game communities may prefer to debate different topics for whatever reasons individuals want to entertain, but for now such topics are immaterial to what I am trying to pursue via these squibs.
This is not a particularly coherent post, I know, but I still need a template for my more theoretical-oriented squibs. Anyway, the topic of this squib reveals immediate plans. Be sure to have some free time, for the week-end
Re: the perennial quarter-muncher topic.
My simple position on this topic is that players have agency, can develop skills and game make inferences regarding how to solve game situations. A game can be as much as a "quarter muncher" as programmers make it to be, but anyone who has brains can figure out a way how to reduce the quarter-munching to N=1 (i.e. insert coin, start, 1-CC the game, next). I do not doubt that we could write whole books of sociology, anthropology, cognitive psychology (...and so on) on why there is a certain strain of revisionism spread across the intarwebs.
Ultimately, though, I write about my own experiences with games from various personal points of view or Facets of life.
As an adult who does research for a living (in a university, I would add), I sit down and analyse games as "systems" with interacting components, and with which I have had various types of interaction. I do start from a vantage point: I always write about games I 1-CC'ed, so my understanding of these systems is usually good & robust, although not necessarily "top-tier", as in e.g. the case of people who can get top scores. I also start from another vantage point: I write research papers for a living, so offering an analysis of a system is something that by now comes to me in a relatively spontaneous manner. I do follow a template, and I will write a squib explaining the core underpinnings of this template. For now, though, I believe that I can simply clarify an obvious point: I try to explain what the building blocks of each game as a system are, and then I try to reconstruct the game by integrating these pieces into the more or less coherent whole we experience, when we play the games. It is not so different from what I do for a living, so I simply exploit a work skill in my spare time.
When I try to reconstruct my memories of the child, teen, young adult who played these games, I try to add a touch of more subjective experience so that readers can get a feeling of how one can reach this degree of knowledge, often via stubborn practice and a good amount of time. In the cute little stories, I try to recall what I was thinking when I was playing these games when I was a kid, what was motivating me to play titles that were at times immensely challenging, what motivation I received in pursuing these trivial goals from my acquaintances, and so on.
I try to intersperse nice vignettes and a certain type of "slice of life" narration with my actual memories of playing the games, also because they can offer insights on what it means to actually learn a game. At some later stage, I believe that my thoughts on these topics will be much more well-defined and perhaps even publishable, but for now I am simply pursuing an exercise in "thinking aloud" and trying to put in order all of these learning experiences that I accumulated over the decades. I am aware that game communities may prefer to debate different topics for whatever reasons individuals want to entertain, but for now such topics are immaterial to what I am trying to pursue via these squibs.
This is not a particularly coherent post, I know, but I still need a template for my more theoretical-oriented squibs. Anyway, the topic of this squib reveals immediate plans. Be sure to have some free time, for the week-end
"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).
Mutant Fighter/Death Brade (Data East, 1991)
Time for a change of pace: this week we temporarily move to the 1990s, the decade of well-cut genres, complex game engines and well-established game tropes. I admit that this is my idea of procrastination. I planned on writing quite a few squibs about the 1990s by the next year and to complete this year with a focus on the 1980s. To avoid getting stuck in my writing goals, I decided to “waste time” by completing a goal farther in time. It could be worse, and I could really procrastinate instead of squibbing, so I believe that I can justify myself in pursuing this approach. A better layout for plans involving squibs will appear in time, anyway.
I am in the mood for some Data East, so my readers are also going to read about Mutant Fighter/Death Brade, this week. The game has several revisions differing in rather small details (e.g. type of wrestling moves for some characters) and ports for the Super Famicom/SNES, X68k and FM towns. You can read more about this topic from the wiki link below. The gloriously dramatic premise of the game and the powerful OST are keeping me company in a tricky part of my life, once more. And thus:
Mutant Fighter/Death Brade (Data East, 1991) is a wrestling/fighting game set in an Heroic Fantasy world. Players choose one of eight characters who must wrestle their way to the final battle. If victorious, they can access the key of the kingdom hosting the tournament, hence acting as kings for a whole year, once the tournament runs again. The game offers a side perspective, gorgeous if a bit rough graphics, and a dramatic, epic OST that features the trademark Data East synthesizers and sound effects. The game also possibly introduces the first attempt of a Desperation Move as an attack option, voice acting for each selectable character. It also provides an hilarious homage to The Exorcist and Mesopotamian mythology in the form of the demon Pazuzu. The goal of this squib is to convince readers that, “quirks” notwithstanding, the game is a glorious variant of late 1980s/early 1990s wrestling games.
The context in which the game appears may not be obvious, at first glance of the year of release. 1991 was the year of Capcom’s Street Fighter II, so the presence of other fighting games on the market might have appeared irrelevant to most players. However, during the 1980s, a few wrestling games appeared in arcade that tried to offer the feeling of Japanese and/or American wrestling in some early form. Technōs released Mat Mania in 1985, as a rudimentary though interesting game focusing on JWA-style characters. Konami and Taito offered their attempts in 1988 and 1989 with The Main Event and Champion Wrestler, respectively. Technōs released two titles on a WWFlicense, WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestlefest; SNK released the two King of the Monsters titles. Wrestling was an interesting micro-genre in sports/arcade games; fantasy was also a trendy videogame setting, in this period (cf. the Cadash squib).
Data East thus released this title along with a few other forays into the genre (e.g. Dark Seal and Dark Seal II, the obscure Hippodrome, Dragon Gun). The game’s premise should be rooted in some obscure fantasy short story of which I forgot the origins, so I will not mention it. The premise is also simple: every year, an unnamed fantasy kingdom decides who will be the king by hosting a fighting tournament in which any creature can join. Fights are without any limitations: magicians can weave spells, non-human creatures like hydras, dragons and demons can participate, and only the strongest fighter may triumph. Under these conditions, players can choose one of eight fighters and 1-CC the game if they can defeat other six fighters, a doppelganger creature, a demon and an archimage. The game thus provides a standard tournament plot, though coated in rich Heroic Fantasy setting.
The game’s mechanics are also simple. Players control characters via the joystick, moving them along the rings in eight directions. The A button controls punches, and the B button controls kicks. Players can perform three-hit combos by tapping either button repeatedly, and can also parry receiving hits (press and hold A+B buttons). Characters can then grab adversaries once the sprites collide and tap either button to start a wrestling challenge. If players can press the button enough times during a key time window, their character wins the challenge. It thus performs a wrestling move based on the button plus the input direction (e.g. A+down, B+up-right). If the CPU wins the challenge, the character will instead be on the receiving end. Characters rise from the floor faster if players press buttons and wiggle the joystick; pressing either A or B next to a knocked down opponent results in a floor strike.
The game’s central innovation consists in the “super throw”. Characters accumulate energy for this move every time they perform a wrestling move, hit an adversary with a strike, or receive damage. Receiving damage increases energy at double the speed: the super-move acts as a devastating defensive move to perform to reverse fortunes in a match. Characters can knock down adversaries via wrestling moves but also by landing the third of any punch- or kick-based combo, and can use environmental hazards to add damage (e.g. the lateral spikes on Stages five, eight). Players must carefully choose characters (Warrior/Michael, Amazoness/Cindy, “Hercules”/Pon, Minotaur/Shankar, Werewolf/Boggy, Beast/Flea, Golem/Bodga, Dragon/Joseph) and wrestling moves: the CPU decides the victor of a challenge depending on character and input move. Players can also tap twice in a direction to make their characters run and possibly perform charge/jumping moves that usually knock down adversaries.
As we now have a compact grasp of the game’s mechanics, we can move to a discussion of its aesthetic presentation. Mutant Fighter/Death Brade is one of Data East’s early games released on their erstwhile new hardware (read here). Graphics are highly detailed and sprites are big and colourful, even if animation frames might have been richer. Some characters (e.g. Golem/Bogda, Doppelganger/Behoroi and Dragon/Joseph) do have an aura of choppiness about their movements. Backgrounds are however impressive, and summon the atmosphere of a rich if decadent fantasy kingdom. Stage four takes place on a floating ring: the background image scrolling in the background seems reminiscent of the Seven bridges of Köningsberg classical graph problem. The use of super-throws allows players to glimpse into the aerial parts of each arena, often rendered via complex graphic effects (e.g. parallax on Stage nine, the archimage/Ginga’s pocket dimension). The game looks brutally beautiful.
The OST is also brutally beautiful, even if it features just a few themes. Data East’s Gamadelic stalwart Hiroaki Yoshida and then greenhorn Akira Takemoto produced a mix of jazzy/smooth synth pieces with almost baroque fantasy-flavoured sounds. Stages one, two and three feature Flash Song, a synth-pop piece with an epic undertone that highlights the dramatic nature of the fight. Stages four, five and six include Dance in the Ring, a piece combining moody sophisti-pop sounds with a jazzy refrain. Stage seven’s Fight against self might be a song straight out of a horror movie, like the much faster-paced, almost jungle-like Trascendence Desperate Struggle on Stage eight. Notably, each character has a distinct voice actor offering grunts, super-throw comments and winning statements (e.g. Dragon/Joseph’s “I am the victor, now!”). The game thus offers a superb aural experience an intense visual rendition of a fantasy world whose foundations rest on constant fighting.
Let us now turn to a discussion of the difficulty. The game revolves around game mechanics, Stage layout/design, and the game external set-up, i.e. whether players use auto-fire or not. Stage layouts/arenas offer a minimal form of difficulty by offering environmental hazards, e.g. pistons throwing fighters in the air on Stage three. Once players quickly learn how to manage these hazards, arenas play a marginal role in fights. Game mechanics also require some practice: players must learn how to use 3-hit combos to cause knock down, and which wrestling moves work best again each enemy. Learning characters’ weak points should also offer a minimal challenge. For instance, Golem/Bodga is a slow but devastating character. Players must always use wrestling moves if they use Golem/Bodga as their character, and must always keep a distance if facing it as an adversary. Boss characters (Hydra/Charlie, Demon/Pazuzu, Doppelganger/Behoroi, Archimage/Cronus) require their specific strategies.
The game-external factors play a prominent role, and may lead some players to disregard the game and its design due to a perceived unfairness or lack of balance, I believe. Allow me to explain: if players activate auto-fire on the attack buttons, the use of wrestling moves becomes more immediate. At 8hz auto-fire frequency or higher, there is not risk that missing the right “tapping window” results in the loss of a wrestling challenge. With auto-fire, players must tap fast and get the timing right, as it is the case in all wrestling arcade games. Furthermore, tapping windows restrict in number of frames up to Stage eight, the fight against Pazuzu, and become moderately easier against Ginga, the archimage. The game can thus become tricky to handle without the use of auto-fire, or a superb tapping technique; players may only use 3-hit combos, on Stages seven and eight.
I thus propose that Stage layout/design motivates a 1/5 difficulty value assignment, game mechanics a 6/15 value assignment, and external factors a 14/30 assignment. The grand total is 21/50 difficulty points, or just 7/50 points if players use auto-fire. Mutant Fighter/Death Brade is a low-tier game for expert players who forgo the use of auto-fire, but a mid-high tier game for beginner players who use this game-external option. Interestingly, all selectable characters differ considerably in their abilities (e.g. Amazoness/Cindy and Golem/Bogda are opposites). However, fights tend to be rather balanced: players must ultimately choose wrestling moves wisely and tap fast. The game thus also works well as a “vs. wrestling” type of game. Players who wish to pursue a 1-CC, however, must keep in mind that the game shares the same design quirk present in approximately all games in this genre (e.g. SNK’s King of the Monsters duology, for sure).
Let us wrap this squib with Xenny’s favourite part: my experiences with the game (whoops! Xenny, you cheeky ol’ bugger! Do not hiss at me, the queen of your hive loves these bits!). It is late October 1991 and I am a successful junior high school student who also has been playing tabletop RPGs for a while. When playing Data East’s Dark Seal the year before, I have become acquainted with a group of university students who promote a “cultural club” involving all kinds of extremely nerdy past-times. One can spend evenings playing RPGs like TSR’s D&D, Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020 and Chaosium’s Call of Chtulhu, among others. The club also has a considerable library of comics, manga, Bandes Dessinées and possibly thousands of Fantasy and Science Fiction books. My father pays my fee and his, but he plays 20th century War games like Advanced Squad Leader (ok, and Warhammer 40k).
I also attend regularly my uncle’s arcade, even if I am not really into the Street Fighter II craze. My father keeps me on a precise budget for gaming practice, so playing a vs. game, and blowing my allowance in a few minutes is not a wise option. My 2025 self thinks that my 1991 self is growing in a sort of “hyper-nerd/geek bubble” that would perhaps be the envy of most first world kids in the 2020s. My 1991 self is unaware of this blissful pond of luck, even if he is happy that “free time” involves intellectually challenging hobbies. My uncle thinks that I am growing a bit soft, and tells me that he has two new games from the “working class hero” company: Mutant Fighter/Death Brade and Robocop II. TumblePop, Capcom’s King of the Dragons and my geek friend are going to enter my life soon, too.
During October 1991, I spend plenty of time playing these two titles. Robocop 2 is an easy title and capitulates easily: I can clear it with ease, and even learn how to clear it with one life. Mutant Fighter/Death Brade remains a mystery to me, however. I understand that it works like other wrestling games, so tapping fast is a necessary skill. Nevertheless, I keep getting the impression that from Stage five or six onwards, I must develop unnatural tapping speed to perform wrestling moves. I renounce getting a carpal tunnel syndrome and learn how to use 3-hit combos and floor hits, even if this strategy forces me to fight against the clock, too. Unless I use the Golem guy, this approach is too slow to avoid timing out. Still, the game’s music and atmosphere are absolutely mesmerising: I wish that I could play an RPG campaign like this game.
By November I prefer to visit other fantasy worlds, as you can read from my TumblePop squib. Nevertheless, the soundtrack echoes in my head every time I come back from the club and walk through the dark, narrow, and snow-ridden alleys of my medieval hometown. By January, though, I renounce to clearing this game with one credit. It is only in 2013 or 2014 that I “re-discover” the game on MAME, in a period in which I have basically renounced to playing games for the 1-CC. By chance, I figure out that I can use auto-fire to turn the game in an affordable 1-CC challenge, thus laying a 23-years old grudge to rest. Over the years, whenever I feel that a formidable challenges looms ahead, I launch the game and land a quick 1-CC, if only to immerse myself in the game’s eerie and moody OST.
In conclusion, Mutant Fighter/Death Brade is a wrestling/fighting game with a Heroic Fantasy setting and quite dark undertones. The game features beautiful and evocative aesthetics though some choppily animated characters, and a gloriously dramatic OST with cheeky voice acting and sound effects. As it seems to be the case with most arcade wrestling games, the game’s difficulty heavily hinges on how players approach tapping to win wrestling challenges. Players can thus resort to the use of auto-fire if they want to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome and stress induced by a remarkably quirky genre-specific game mechanic. This strategy may not work for those obsessed on playing games on default settings, of course, but moral conundrums on auto-fire fall beyond the scope of our squibs. Quirks notwithstanding, the game is one of many Data East’s many titles offering a glorious if perhaps flawed arcade experience.
(2234 words, or 5.6 pages, times new roman size 12, single space; the usual disclaimers apply; a Dungeon Master that acted as my impromptu mentor in the 1991-1993 period observed that this game would have translated into a rather poor RPG campaign. Most Fantasy RPGs of the time, among other aspects/Facets, usually had remarkably poor rules for hand-to-hand combat. A possibility is that in most Fantasy books/stories, protagonists mostly swing awesome swords or cast incredible spells, or even both, except for Robert Howard’s Conan and some other protagonists. At any case, I always felt that the whole plot was a metaphor that Data East proposed to lampoon modern politics: “fight for the sceptre so the masses rejoice; however, the viziers will rule the country in the shadows!”. Please insert here your exceedingly venomous comment, as a coda.)
I am in the mood for some Data East, so my readers are also going to read about Mutant Fighter/Death Brade, this week. The game has several revisions differing in rather small details (e.g. type of wrestling moves for some characters) and ports for the Super Famicom/SNES, X68k and FM towns. You can read more about this topic from the wiki link below. The gloriously dramatic premise of the game and the powerful OST are keeping me company in a tricky part of my life, once more. And thus:
Mutant Fighter/Death Brade (Data East, 1991) is a wrestling/fighting game set in an Heroic Fantasy world. Players choose one of eight characters who must wrestle their way to the final battle. If victorious, they can access the key of the kingdom hosting the tournament, hence acting as kings for a whole year, once the tournament runs again. The game offers a side perspective, gorgeous if a bit rough graphics, and a dramatic, epic OST that features the trademark Data East synthesizers and sound effects. The game also possibly introduces the first attempt of a Desperation Move as an attack option, voice acting for each selectable character. It also provides an hilarious homage to The Exorcist and Mesopotamian mythology in the form of the demon Pazuzu. The goal of this squib is to convince readers that, “quirks” notwithstanding, the game is a glorious variant of late 1980s/early 1990s wrestling games.
The context in which the game appears may not be obvious, at first glance of the year of release. 1991 was the year of Capcom’s Street Fighter II, so the presence of other fighting games on the market might have appeared irrelevant to most players. However, during the 1980s, a few wrestling games appeared in arcade that tried to offer the feeling of Japanese and/or American wrestling in some early form. Technōs released Mat Mania in 1985, as a rudimentary though interesting game focusing on JWA-style characters. Konami and Taito offered their attempts in 1988 and 1989 with The Main Event and Champion Wrestler, respectively. Technōs released two titles on a WWFlicense, WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestlefest; SNK released the two King of the Monsters titles. Wrestling was an interesting micro-genre in sports/arcade games; fantasy was also a trendy videogame setting, in this period (cf. the Cadash squib).
Data East thus released this title along with a few other forays into the genre (e.g. Dark Seal and Dark Seal II, the obscure Hippodrome, Dragon Gun). The game’s premise should be rooted in some obscure fantasy short story of which I forgot the origins, so I will not mention it. The premise is also simple: every year, an unnamed fantasy kingdom decides who will be the king by hosting a fighting tournament in which any creature can join. Fights are without any limitations: magicians can weave spells, non-human creatures like hydras, dragons and demons can participate, and only the strongest fighter may triumph. Under these conditions, players can choose one of eight fighters and 1-CC the game if they can defeat other six fighters, a doppelganger creature, a demon and an archimage. The game thus provides a standard tournament plot, though coated in rich Heroic Fantasy setting.
The game’s mechanics are also simple. Players control characters via the joystick, moving them along the rings in eight directions. The A button controls punches, and the B button controls kicks. Players can perform three-hit combos by tapping either button repeatedly, and can also parry receiving hits (press and hold A+B buttons). Characters can then grab adversaries once the sprites collide and tap either button to start a wrestling challenge. If players can press the button enough times during a key time window, their character wins the challenge. It thus performs a wrestling move based on the button plus the input direction (e.g. A+down, B+up-right). If the CPU wins the challenge, the character will instead be on the receiving end. Characters rise from the floor faster if players press buttons and wiggle the joystick; pressing either A or B next to a knocked down opponent results in a floor strike.
The game’s central innovation consists in the “super throw”. Characters accumulate energy for this move every time they perform a wrestling move, hit an adversary with a strike, or receive damage. Receiving damage increases energy at double the speed: the super-move acts as a devastating defensive move to perform to reverse fortunes in a match. Characters can knock down adversaries via wrestling moves but also by landing the third of any punch- or kick-based combo, and can use environmental hazards to add damage (e.g. the lateral spikes on Stages five, eight). Players must carefully choose characters (Warrior/Michael, Amazoness/Cindy, “Hercules”/Pon, Minotaur/Shankar, Werewolf/Boggy, Beast/Flea, Golem/Bodga, Dragon/Joseph) and wrestling moves: the CPU decides the victor of a challenge depending on character and input move. Players can also tap twice in a direction to make their characters run and possibly perform charge/jumping moves that usually knock down adversaries.
As we now have a compact grasp of the game’s mechanics, we can move to a discussion of its aesthetic presentation. Mutant Fighter/Death Brade is one of Data East’s early games released on their erstwhile new hardware (read here). Graphics are highly detailed and sprites are big and colourful, even if animation frames might have been richer. Some characters (e.g. Golem/Bogda, Doppelganger/Behoroi and Dragon/Joseph) do have an aura of choppiness about their movements. Backgrounds are however impressive, and summon the atmosphere of a rich if decadent fantasy kingdom. Stage four takes place on a floating ring: the background image scrolling in the background seems reminiscent of the Seven bridges of Köningsberg classical graph problem. The use of super-throws allows players to glimpse into the aerial parts of each arena, often rendered via complex graphic effects (e.g. parallax on Stage nine, the archimage/Ginga’s pocket dimension). The game looks brutally beautiful.
The OST is also brutally beautiful, even if it features just a few themes. Data East’s Gamadelic stalwart Hiroaki Yoshida and then greenhorn Akira Takemoto produced a mix of jazzy/smooth synth pieces with almost baroque fantasy-flavoured sounds. Stages one, two and three feature Flash Song, a synth-pop piece with an epic undertone that highlights the dramatic nature of the fight. Stages four, five and six include Dance in the Ring, a piece combining moody sophisti-pop sounds with a jazzy refrain. Stage seven’s Fight against self might be a song straight out of a horror movie, like the much faster-paced, almost jungle-like Trascendence Desperate Struggle on Stage eight. Notably, each character has a distinct voice actor offering grunts, super-throw comments and winning statements (e.g. Dragon/Joseph’s “I am the victor, now!”). The game thus offers a superb aural experience an intense visual rendition of a fantasy world whose foundations rest on constant fighting.
Let us now turn to a discussion of the difficulty. The game revolves around game mechanics, Stage layout/design, and the game external set-up, i.e. whether players use auto-fire or not. Stage layouts/arenas offer a minimal form of difficulty by offering environmental hazards, e.g. pistons throwing fighters in the air on Stage three. Once players quickly learn how to manage these hazards, arenas play a marginal role in fights. Game mechanics also require some practice: players must learn how to use 3-hit combos to cause knock down, and which wrestling moves work best again each enemy. Learning characters’ weak points should also offer a minimal challenge. For instance, Golem/Bodga is a slow but devastating character. Players must always use wrestling moves if they use Golem/Bodga as their character, and must always keep a distance if facing it as an adversary. Boss characters (Hydra/Charlie, Demon/Pazuzu, Doppelganger/Behoroi, Archimage/Cronus) require their specific strategies.
The game-external factors play a prominent role, and may lead some players to disregard the game and its design due to a perceived unfairness or lack of balance, I believe. Allow me to explain: if players activate auto-fire on the attack buttons, the use of wrestling moves becomes more immediate. At 8hz auto-fire frequency or higher, there is not risk that missing the right “tapping window” results in the loss of a wrestling challenge. With auto-fire, players must tap fast and get the timing right, as it is the case in all wrestling arcade games. Furthermore, tapping windows restrict in number of frames up to Stage eight, the fight against Pazuzu, and become moderately easier against Ginga, the archimage. The game can thus become tricky to handle without the use of auto-fire, or a superb tapping technique; players may only use 3-hit combos, on Stages seven and eight.
I thus propose that Stage layout/design motivates a 1/5 difficulty value assignment, game mechanics a 6/15 value assignment, and external factors a 14/30 assignment. The grand total is 21/50 difficulty points, or just 7/50 points if players use auto-fire. Mutant Fighter/Death Brade is a low-tier game for expert players who forgo the use of auto-fire, but a mid-high tier game for beginner players who use this game-external option. Interestingly, all selectable characters differ considerably in their abilities (e.g. Amazoness/Cindy and Golem/Bogda are opposites). However, fights tend to be rather balanced: players must ultimately choose wrestling moves wisely and tap fast. The game thus also works well as a “vs. wrestling” type of game. Players who wish to pursue a 1-CC, however, must keep in mind that the game shares the same design quirk present in approximately all games in this genre (e.g. SNK’s King of the Monsters duology, for sure).
Let us wrap this squib with Xenny’s favourite part: my experiences with the game (whoops! Xenny, you cheeky ol’ bugger! Do not hiss at me, the queen of your hive loves these bits!). It is late October 1991 and I am a successful junior high school student who also has been playing tabletop RPGs for a while. When playing Data East’s Dark Seal the year before, I have become acquainted with a group of university students who promote a “cultural club” involving all kinds of extremely nerdy past-times. One can spend evenings playing RPGs like TSR’s D&D, Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020 and Chaosium’s Call of Chtulhu, among others. The club also has a considerable library of comics, manga, Bandes Dessinées and possibly thousands of Fantasy and Science Fiction books. My father pays my fee and his, but he plays 20th century War games like Advanced Squad Leader (ok, and Warhammer 40k).
I also attend regularly my uncle’s arcade, even if I am not really into the Street Fighter II craze. My father keeps me on a precise budget for gaming practice, so playing a vs. game, and blowing my allowance in a few minutes is not a wise option. My 2025 self thinks that my 1991 self is growing in a sort of “hyper-nerd/geek bubble” that would perhaps be the envy of most first world kids in the 2020s. My 1991 self is unaware of this blissful pond of luck, even if he is happy that “free time” involves intellectually challenging hobbies. My uncle thinks that I am growing a bit soft, and tells me that he has two new games from the “working class hero” company: Mutant Fighter/Death Brade and Robocop II. TumblePop, Capcom’s King of the Dragons and my geek friend are going to enter my life soon, too.
During October 1991, I spend plenty of time playing these two titles. Robocop 2 is an easy title and capitulates easily: I can clear it with ease, and even learn how to clear it with one life. Mutant Fighter/Death Brade remains a mystery to me, however. I understand that it works like other wrestling games, so tapping fast is a necessary skill. Nevertheless, I keep getting the impression that from Stage five or six onwards, I must develop unnatural tapping speed to perform wrestling moves. I renounce getting a carpal tunnel syndrome and learn how to use 3-hit combos and floor hits, even if this strategy forces me to fight against the clock, too. Unless I use the Golem guy, this approach is too slow to avoid timing out. Still, the game’s music and atmosphere are absolutely mesmerising: I wish that I could play an RPG campaign like this game.
By November I prefer to visit other fantasy worlds, as you can read from my TumblePop squib. Nevertheless, the soundtrack echoes in my head every time I come back from the club and walk through the dark, narrow, and snow-ridden alleys of my medieval hometown. By January, though, I renounce to clearing this game with one credit. It is only in 2013 or 2014 that I “re-discover” the game on MAME, in a period in which I have basically renounced to playing games for the 1-CC. By chance, I figure out that I can use auto-fire to turn the game in an affordable 1-CC challenge, thus laying a 23-years old grudge to rest. Over the years, whenever I feel that a formidable challenges looms ahead, I launch the game and land a quick 1-CC, if only to immerse myself in the game’s eerie and moody OST.
In conclusion, Mutant Fighter/Death Brade is a wrestling/fighting game with a Heroic Fantasy setting and quite dark undertones. The game features beautiful and evocative aesthetics though some choppily animated characters, and a gloriously dramatic OST with cheeky voice acting and sound effects. As it seems to be the case with most arcade wrestling games, the game’s difficulty heavily hinges on how players approach tapping to win wrestling challenges. Players can thus resort to the use of auto-fire if they want to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome and stress induced by a remarkably quirky genre-specific game mechanic. This strategy may not work for those obsessed on playing games on default settings, of course, but moral conundrums on auto-fire fall beyond the scope of our squibs. Quirks notwithstanding, the game is one of many Data East’s many titles offering a glorious if perhaps flawed arcade experience.
(2234 words, or 5.6 pages, times new roman size 12, single space; the usual disclaimers apply; a Dungeon Master that acted as my impromptu mentor in the 1991-1993 period observed that this game would have translated into a rather poor RPG campaign. Most Fantasy RPGs of the time, among other aspects/Facets, usually had remarkably poor rules for hand-to-hand combat. A possibility is that in most Fantasy books/stories, protagonists mostly swing awesome swords or cast incredible spells, or even both, except for Robert Howard’s Conan and some other protagonists. At any case, I always felt that the whole plot was a metaphor that Data East proposed to lampoon modern politics: “fight for the sceptre so the masses rejoice; however, the viziers will rule the country in the shadows!”. Please insert here your exceedingly venomous comment, as a coda.)
"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).