100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #20 Crossed Swords

Developer: ADK
Publisher: SNK
MVS Release Date: 25/July/1991
AES Release Date: 1/October/1991
MEGASHOCK GIGAPOWER Video Review

Today on 100 Days of MEGASHOCK! we’ll be looking at Crossed Swords, a fantasy themed behind-the-back view beat em up. Released on July 25th, 1991 in Japanese arcades on MVS, this is ADK’s 4th game on the Neo Geo hardware.

the detail in this armory’s background is neat

Crossed Sword is what you get if you take Nintendo’s Punch-out!!, particularly the original arcade version, put wire-frame Little Mac in a suit of armor, and have it set in a medieval fantasy world, where you fight against monsters terrorizing the countryside with middle ages weaponry and magic.

good shop screen. The power of mist? hmm…

We’ve seen something similar to Crossed Swords on the Neo Geo already with The Super Spy. While Crossed Swords is not in first person, both games use an up-close detailed view that focuses on one-to-one combat, rather than fighting multiple enemies at the same time, as is often the case in your usual belt-scroller beat em up.

See that tower in the back? well in a few stages…

Crossed Swords closer simulates fencing, and that means there’s more of an emphasis on blocking, dodging, and counter-attacking than The Super Spy, or your standard beat em up. In that sense it’s even more like Punch-out!!

…you’ll reach it. I like it when games do this.

Control in the game goes as follows. “A” Button does a head-level slash. Down+”A” does a body-level stab. “B” does a magic spell. Holding Up lets you block high head-level attacks, while holding down blocks body-level attacks. Pressing A & B together does different types of special attacks that consume a small chunk of your health. Neutral “A & B” does a flurry attack which deals a lot of damage. Up with ”A & B” does a long range hadouken fireball move.Pressing “A & B” while getting hit, or while blocking an attack, or at any other time with Down + ”A & B” has you doing a burst move that pushes the opponent away to a further lane, giving you some space. Sure it costs a bit of health, but spending half a bar to get out of a combo that would take multiple chunks of your life bar is a good trade, rather than risk trying to block subsequent attacks.

whoa guys one at a time

And blocking forms a crucial part to playing Crossed Swords, especially later on. After a certain point, you start fighting enemies that almost always block your preemptive attack, so the strategy shifts to playing defensively, waiting for them to attack, then either blocking or side stepping and then counter attacking. Any blocked attack will almost always leave the other side open for a counter attack, so blocking yields a definitive punish, but it requires correctly reacting with a high or low block. Side stepping on the other hand, can make you avoid this 50/50 ordeal, but because of the small space, you might not have room to dodge away, and even if you do, you might not be able to sway back in time to punish their whiffed attack, and if your late your attack might then be blocked, and you’d eat a counter attack.

Joaquin Phoenix really acted his butt off as this boss.

In some cases you might need to both side step and block an attack to survive. For example, this bug monster in the screenshot below shoots a very fast stream of fire that’s quite hard to react to with the correct block. The stream lasts so long that you cannot completely avoid it with a side step as the firebug will track you, but what you can do is side step to give yourself time to see if the fire stream is aimed at the head or body level, and then you can block it correctly once the stream aligns with you. This was one of those moments when the game clicked with me and I started to appreciate it way more.

this dreaded firebug monster really…bugged me

Throughout the game you accumulate gold, which you can use to buy better weapons or life-replenishing meat from a merchant who appears in-between stages. I assume the better weapons deal more damage, but they also change up the magic which ranges from long range single-target fireballs, to a squigly magic attack that hurts nearby enemies, to an all-enemy hitting spells, to a lightning spell and others. The coolest one though is a spell that turns the enemy to a vulnerable scarecrow that you can dispatch in a single quick 4-hit combo. Sadly, this spell won’t work against some of the bigger bosses. But by far the most useful magic spell is the protective shield spell. It lets you block any attack, leaving the other side open for a guaranteed counter-attack, even on bosses. The spell lasts for a long time each use, and you get plenty of stocks to use it.

there’s some quasi-3D camera tricks here as your character moves towards that door.

Crossed Swords also has RPG-style “levels”. You get experience points from “Stage Points” and “Enemy Points” tallied at the end of the stage. Leveling up increases your total life gauge and I assume your attack damage. There’s also selectable routes that pop up throughout the game, adding variety to multiple playthroughs. Right here you can choose to either go to the starboard or port side of the ship, or at the beginning of the game you can choose one of 3 routes, or sometime later when you are tasked with storming a fortress, and you can choose to either take it head on, or infiltrate from the back side.

Still won’t forgive ADK for the frogs in Magician Lord

Then there’s the sword meter. This meter is linked with your damage output. The fuller it is, the more damage your attacks do. This meter starts out full, flashing when so, but it depletes whenever you do actions like holding the shield to block, or having your attack be blocked or evaded, or if you yourself get hit. The meter then recharges if you’re not doing any of these actions.

Sony E3 2006 reference

What this all intends is for you to regulate your actions and play in a more cautious manner in order to maximize your damage output. Holding the shield out all the time just to cover one body part from attacks is far from optimal play. You have to conserve and only hold your shield out when an attack is incoming. Slashing wildly won’t work in your favor either, even if those slashes could randomly hit weaker enemies. You have to be deliberate in your defense with shield usage, and in your offense if you want to survive later levels. and the damage difference between full meter and empty is vast. At full meter, the standard 4-hit combo takes a big chunk of health, while the same combo done when the meter is empty only does about as much as 1 hit when the meter was full. The sword meter is pretty much identical to how the sword meter works in Samurai Shodown V, and the intention is the same. It’s antithetical to how most fighting games and action games reward aggression and being active, and I think that’s pretty cool and unique.

“I always feel like somebody’s watching me
And I have no privacy (ooh ooh)”

All this meshes together to make a genuinely fun game. When I first played through Crossed Swords, I found that what started out as an enjoyable beat em up turned plodding, tedious and difficult later on, but once I understood the more nuanced mechanics, it got much better quickly. Learning the “signs and tells” of enemy attacks to react to with a block, or choosing to avoid the guessing game with a side step, using the “A and B” burst move after getting hit, or gambling more of your life by trying to block subsequent combo attacks for a more immediate punish, knowing when to use magic attacks and special “A+B” attacks, or saving them for later, and managing the sword meter, all of these help build an engaging combat system. It’s a system that allows for different levels of success after a fight, from barely surviving an encounter, to completely decimating the opponent. The former is exciting in a tense way, and the latter exhilarating in a triumphant way, and unlike The Super Spy, Crossed Swords feels much more deliberate in its design.

oh are you?

Aside from the Neo Geo CD, Crossed Swords never got ported to any system for some time. It wasn’t ported on contemporary 16-bit consoles like the SNES or SEGA Genesis, nor was it ported to the Saturn nor Playstation, and it didn’t appear on any of the various SNK or Neo Geo collections on PS2. The first port since the original was for the Japanese Virtual Console for the Wii in 2011, but it did recently got ported under the Hamster Arcade Archives series and is available on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

wait is that who I am? a Knight of Journey?

Crossed Swords did get a sequel in 1995 with Crossed Swords II, which was one of the very few Neo Geo CD-exclusive games. Crossed Swords II, however, did get ported unofficially to AES/MVS thanks to Neobitz. This unofficial port does seem to lack the CD soundtrack, which seems to have been replaced with music from the original cartridge game.

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #18 Burning Fight

Developer: SNK

Publisher: SNK

MVS Release Date: 20/May/1991

AES Release Date: 9/Sept/1991

Longplay Playthrough

The first game of this year’s oft delayed (yet again) 100 Days of MEGASHOCK! post is Burning Fight, the third traditional beat em up released on the Neo Geo MVS (not counting weird experimental beat em ups like The Super Spy). Burning Fight was released on May 20th, 1991, barely a year after the launch of the MVS in April 26, 1990. But despite being the third beat em up, Burning Fight is easily the one that offers the least within the MVS library so far, and is in all earnestness just unremarkable, aside from its almost blatant plagiarism of Capcom’s Final Fight.

Kind of appropriate that Burning Fight starts next to an arcade. Also that looks like a Beast Busters cabinet.

Not only arcade centers, but pachinko parlors too. This is certainly not New York.

The controls in Burning Fight work as such:

• A button Attacks
• B button jumps, wherein you can do jump attacks
• C button is a “Middle Attack” but it really is just a long range slower kick attack. Also useful if you have a weapon equipped but don’t want to use it and want to kick instead.
• Pressing AB does the “Hyper Attack”, a high damage attack that’s also a good “get off me” attack, but just like Final Fight (a phrase you’ll be hearing a lot) and other beat em ups, it consumes a bit of your health bar.
• You can grab people by approaching them. It’s supposedly useful to break enemy guard but it’s finicky and does little damage.

Like Final Fight, you have 3 hard boiled tough vigilantes to play as:

• Duke, the blonde dude who looks a lot like cody. His Hyper Attack is a Shoryuken
• Ryu, the Japanese dude who wears an orange jump suit just like Guy, and yes his Hyper Attack is a Tatsumaki/Tornado Kick.
• Billy, the “big guy” of the group who is surprisingly NOT that much like Haggar. His Hyper Attack is a very useful shoulder charge.

Burgers conspicuously left on the ground next to a sewer manhole. Yummy.

At least this Roasted Pork is on a plate

So you pick a dude, and then you immediately get into the heat of things, walking in streets and beating thugs up. Burning Fight doesn’t even bother with a short intro to set up the story, or cutscenes in between levels, not that stuff like that was ever important but still, seems like an odd but ultimately inconsequential emission.

That’s a very nicely drawn BMW. Note the skidmarks.

 

Watch out for Dudes in Forklifts.

Although unlike Final Fight and other beat em ups, the streets and alleys you are wrecking in Burning Fight are clearly based in Japan. From pachinko parlors to conbinis to tiny bars located in  second story buildings accessible by elevators, the setting does feel different than Final Fight’s Metro City, or the cities in Streets Of Rage, most of which look like a cliche’d up crime ridden New York City.

In a (rare) effort to distinguish itself from Final Fight, Burning Fight has a stage ON TOP of a train…

….where this chopper will sometimes pass by to try to gun you down. It’s a neat little scene.

And this is more obvious because one of the few novel features of Burning Fight is that every once in a while, you can actually decide to enter one of these shops as they act as optional bonus stages, where you can go in and wreck more people and stuff to get bonus items, like food from questionable sources (trash cans, clothes rack, signboards), or to get money, or even jewelry that probably doesn’t belong to the player character (but lets assume they’re just planning to retrieve them as stolen goods).

A SUN MARKET “Conbini” (Convinience Store) that you can enter for a bonus stage. Also hi G-Mantle.

Inside the conbini, you of course have to wreck more shit, even that copy machine.

Still, despite it’s Japanese-location, Burning Fight takes you through the usual spots found in many beat em ups: From the main streets, to an underground shopping center, which leads to a ride on the metro commuter train (and by that I mean literally ON the train), which leads to a downtown segment that leads to a construction site (with an obligatory elevator section), then to a bunch of warehouses, and then finally on a boat.

It’s not a beat em up if it didn’t have an elevator stage. Nice music here though…

…and at the top, you’ll fight this boss. He jumps around and slashes with his sword. Also nice music here.

Mechanically, Burning Fight is fine. It’s not the best playing beat em up but it does the job. Throws are somewhat useless though, and barely do good damage. Even Billy, the big guy of the group, doesn’t get any better throws then the other characters. If you want someone with sick throws like Haggar, you won’t find them here. Jump attacks aren’t that great either. They don’t stay out for long, so trying to jump kick the motorcycle dudes is harder than it should be. You have weapon pick-ups, and they are as handy as you’d expect: Knives, guns, long sticks, and of course bottles. They do seem to be timer based, and your guy would dispose of them even if you didn’t use them, so just spam that knife you just got.

This Hulk-Hogan looking boss has quite an entrance

And that’s pretty much it . So the point of all of this is Burning Fight is a pretty average beat em up in all that entails. It’s not great. It’s not bad. It’s not terribly original, it has a few novel things. And it plays like every beat em up your ever played. Compared to the frantic Sengoku, or the somewhat bizarre Ninja Combat, Burning Fight is forgettable, and just doesn’t have enough to make it stand out of a crowd of hundreds of beat em ups released around this era on all platforms. At least it looks nice. SNK are certainly on their game with the spritework and background art.

The last stage is set on a boat owned by….

this dude here, the Final Boss named “Casterora”. And yes, his cane is a gun that shoots. 

This won’t be the first time SNK outright copies ideas from Capcom, but in the future, SNK will realize they need to do more than make shallow imitations of successful Capcom games. And that they need to make their games more distinct. The good news is SNK does.

Cameo Corner

Cameo Corner is the section where we look at cameos of characters from the game we just covered in other games. Of course sequels and crossovers don’t count because that is kinda obvious and doesn’t really count as a “cameo appearance” anyways.

Burning Fight never had a sequel, but Duke Edwards (I guess that’s his last name?) does make appearance in the future, mainly in various King Of Fighter games (which will be the case for A LOT of characters from random SNK-made Neo Geo titles). First, he appears in KOF 2000 as a “Another Striker”, which are characters that are not fully playable but can still be used as strikers. It’s one of the reasons why KOF2000 is such a fun KOF.

As a striker, Duke isn’t so useful. The big problem is that he is so slow. He takes ages after calling him out to reach the opponent and even then he also has to slowly charge for his attack, which is his Shoryuken “Hyper Attack”. Duke can work as a striker with some characters but KOF 2000 has other much more useful strikers. Duke also shows up in KOF 2002 and its remake, KOF 2002 Unlimited Match, in the background.

Here is Duke, next to King, who was not playable in KOF2002 for some reason. Also Heidern is on tv btw.

Here is Duke again, apparently manning the concession stand in the Neo Geo World theme park. Quite a career change from uh…cop? special criminal investigation force? roaming marauder? who knows.

Finally, Duke appears in KOF 94 Re-bout, the remake of KOF94 made for the 10th anniversary. The remake added quasi-redrawn sprites, but with an “HD” blurry filter that muddies things up and removes the crispiness of SNK’s original sprites. It also had not so great looking 3D backgrounds. KOF94 Re-bout ended up being a weird curiosity, and is probably not a coveted game that gets played often compared to the remakes of KOF98 and KOF2002, but I suppose it did begat those other two anyways, so maybe it should get some credit.

If you can sway your eyes from these not so good looking sprites, you can see a tiny Duke hanging out there on the right.

Sadly (or not), none of the other characters in Burning Fight get to reappear in future SNK games. Oh well.

Leaving the game on will display these sort of character info. Not much backstory beyond this.

This is the first boss. He strength is he rolls around. Not very formidable to be honest

Another bonus stage where you wreck shit that you probably shouldn’t as a man of the law.

This boss here, she runs around with a knife. She is a bit annoying but managable.

THIS DUDE HERE, ugh, is the worst. Even when you’re beating him up, he charges up red and does an invincible attack

Jump attacks are the ideal way to deal with these dudes on bikes. Also Neo Geo Corp?

Oh hey it’s boss #1 again. Still rolling again. Still pitiful again.

While this here is just recolored Hulk Hogan, note that his name is “Mad Dilly” which is a GREAT name

More shit to wrech, this time in a bar. Check out that 1930’s gangster

Continue screen is cute. If you don’t pay up, they GET CRUSHED.

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #17 Alpha Mission II/ASO II: Last Guardian

In this long-delayed edition of 100 Days of MEGASHOCK!, we’ll be looking at Alpha Mission 2 (known as ASO II: Last Guardian in Japan). Similar to Baseball Stars, Alpha Mission 2 is a Neo Geo sequel to an SNK title made prior to the Neo Geo’s debut. The original Alpha Mission was developed for arcades in 1985 and then ported to the famicom/NES. But unlike Baseball Stars, the Alpha Mission series never progressed past this second entry. Incidentally, skimming the Neo Geo release list shows that all subsequent SNK-developed games will be original Neo Geo stuff (although there will be plenty of callbacks and references to SNK’s pre-Neo Geo library of games).

Alpha Mission 2 is a vertical scrolling shooter, similar to Ghost Pilots, which we looked at in post #14. But where Ghost Pilots took a more grounded fake-historical approach, with planes being inspired by real-world World War 1 and 2 era planes, Alpha Mission takes a more scifi approach, so lots of flying in space, shooting robot aliens, and having boss fights with huge spaceship on different planets.

In Alpha Mission 2, you have 2 types of shots: Lasers that destroy flying targets, and air-to-surface missiles that destroy ground targets. It’s works a lot like Xevious, and you can assign lasers and missiles to shoot simultaneously with just the ‘A’ button, or have them separately assigned to ‘A’ and ‘B’ respectively. Unlike most shooters, There are no bombs that decimate enemies and clear-up bullets from the screen. Instead, you can select one of several types of “Armors” with the ‘C’ button, wherein the ship will temporarily transform into a much stronger one equipped with more powerful weapons and a better armor that can take multiple hits. This is the signature feature of the Alpha Mission series.

It’s generally a good idea to activate armor at boss fights, like so. Note the energy bar at the left, which now depletes with each hit.

However, you don’t come upon these Armor upgrades so easily. Alpha Mission 2 requires you to collect each armor piece by piece, and there are 11 armor types, such as HOME (as in homing), FIRE, SIDE, BUBBLE etc. In order to build-up one armor type you are required to collect 3 pieces of the same armor type CONSECUTIVELY. Collecting any other armor type would reset it, so then you have to start over again. However, you can simply buy complete armor sets at the end of each level, granted that you have enough ‘G’ currency for it.

This boss reminds me of the second boss of Ikaruga, which has a similar moving shaft thing that conceals a weakpoint while you keep getting shot at from the side.

And there are more items to collect in Alpha Mission 2. Collecting items like speed (with an ‘S’ item), or lasers (with ‘L’), or missile (with ‘M’) will upgrade that ship attribute. In addition, some levels have warp items that warp you a few screens ahead in a stage. Other items warp you BACK a few screens. Then there are items that power you down, either by depleting the Armor energy, or by decreasing your stock ship attributes.

Stage 4 has a cool background

And all these upgrades you gathered will disappear as soon as you die, which is one reason why I’m not totally into Alpha Mission 2. I think it’s somewhat of a rule in video games that if a game has so many upgrades, whether it’s a shooter or RPG or metroidvania or even career-mode in a racing game, then the initial stock attributes of the player ship/character/car are made so middling in order to allow some room to grow. Sometimes good game designers try to make that initial portion of the game feel great, or at least reduce that portion as much as possible so that you’re already getting a number of upgrades so early into the game. But Alpha Mission 2 does neither to alleviate that. I realize that Gradius and other shooters with upgrades mechanic do the same thing, but they’re more streamlined and focused. In Gradius for example, the energy-pellets can be accumulated to upgrade any stat of the ship, whether it’s speed or adding sideweapons or whatever. Fantasy Zone uses currency that you collect and then spend at shops floating around in any level. In TwinBee, shooting at clouds reveal these bells. And Shooting those bells makes them change color and thus which power-up you get. Alpha Mission 2 sorta takes all these upgrade-type ideas and smooshes them together without much rhyme or reason, without making them gel together. It’s like living in an economy that has 2 or more currencies for mutually exclusive goods and services. A more uniform upgrade method would have helped make Alpha Mission 2 a better game.

I mean it could be a symptom of me sucking at scrolling-shooters, but I think for the most part I’m playing the game trying to acquire power-up (or better yet, acquiring the RIGHT power-up items while actively trying to avoid others) more so than trying to play the level itself, because the stock-ship simply isn’t fun at all to play. It’s slow and weak. Fighting bosses with the stock-ship is an unfun chore that lasts way too long.

You can buy armor upgrades at the end of each level. I just can’t seem to get enough ‘Gs’ to get the good armor types.

Then there’s the issue with lasers and missiles. As I mentioned before, each of these weapons attack a certain type of target, and what gets killed by one usually doesn’t get damaged by the other. Lasers go faster and further, and they can be shot more frequently. So they’re the easier weapon to handle than the slower missiles, which require more deliberate placement. And that’s fine because for the most part, the more immediate threats come from flying targets as most of the grounded targets shoot slow projectiles that are easy to dodge, or they contain one of the various pick-ups to upgrade your ship.

But then you reach a boss. And many of the bosses can only be damaged by missiles (or at least have major parts/final forms that are only vulnerable to missiles) and it’s just an excruciating bore to fight, especially compounded with the resetting-upgrades issue. A big offender is the Boss of Area 5:-

The only way you can damage this boss is by missiles, which is fine…

…until it submerges part of itself. But then you say “look, parts of it are still in the open”. And you are correct. However…

It can submerge itself COMPLETELY. Becoming fully invulnerable. All I can do is wait till it emerges again. Ugh so infuriating.

That boss fight took around 5 minutes exclusively, which is pretty long for a shooter. I guess what I want to say is some of the boss fights in Alpha Mission 2 aren’t great.

Still, I feel like Alpha Mission 2’s problems aren’t necessarily the ideas it has. It’s just that they’re not balanced well. And for the most part, Alpha Mission 2 is a decent shooter with a ok graphics . It looks more like an enhanced 8-bit shooter than a true 16-bit shooter, with tiny ships and lots of tiny enemies and targets on screen. Only the bosses and some of the backgrounds in the game look large, with impressive animations. It more resembles the likes of Star Soldier or Zanac but if they got an enhanced 16-bit port. And considering that the first Alpha Mission was exactly that sort of mid-80s 8-bit shooter, it’s not surprising that its sequel maintains that look.

The whole of area 2 is a fight against this huge thing.

And Alpha Mission 2 still has its moments. I like how Stage 2 is all a fight against a massive multiscreen mothership, where you’re tasked to destroy different parts of it, and then to enter the ship itself during the second half of the stage to permanently destroy it from the inside. Stage 4 has some nice backgrounds. And I like the fight against the final huge-terminator-looking boss. Plus I think Armors are a pretty cool alternative to your regular shooter-bombs. And there’s plenty of Armor types that you’ll probably not be able to try them all in one or two playthroughs.

The final boss looks cool. Oddly enough it’s pretty easy compared to other bosses in the game.

It’s ironic to compare Alpha Mission 2 to Ghost Pilots. Ghost Pilots issues were that it was a very uninspired vertical shooter with not a lot of neat new ideas or features. But in being so, it also didn’t have anything objectionable. Alpha Mission 2 on the other hand incorporates a few novel ideas (some taken from other games, like Xevious as I mentioned). It has all these upgrades and features and shops and warps. But it does not balance them well. Half the time, you’re focused on which pick-ups you wanna get & which you wanna avoid. And then you die and end up fighting a boss who takes about 5 minutes to die strictly because you only have your puny stock missiles that barely chip away damage. With some balancing Alpha Mission 2 could have been great. Sadly, the series never got the chance to better itself with a 3rd installment. But it’s ok, there’s plenty of better shooters on the Neo Geo, which we’ll soon be looking into (that is, if I can put these posts out more frequently, haha).

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #16 Blue’s Journey/Raguy

On today’s long-delayed 100 Days Of MEGASHOCK! we’ll be looking at another ADK platformer, Blue’s Journey (or Raguy as it was called in Japan). Blue’s Journey is a cutsey colorful platformer that’s more in the vein of Alex Kidd or the early Wonder Boy games than a Super Mario Bros. You play as Blue, a tiny insect-man superhero (kind of like Kamen Rider). Blue must save the land of Raguy from an evil emperor who wants destroy it via pollution (this environmentally-conscious plot is a lot like Sonic, though this predates the first Sonic by a few months). Blue’s friend, Green (naturally), can join in the adventure if you play in 2-player co-op mode, which is not a common feature in platformers.

In Co-Op, one plays as Blue & the other is Green.

In Blue’s Journey, you attack using the A button. Your default weapon is a leaf which stuns enemies, allowing you to then pick them up and throw them at other enemies ala-Super Mario Bros 2. But more so, you can actually stun multiple enemies, run at them to stack them all up, and throw a huge wall made of poor creatures at your foes (which is pretty cool).

Stacking enemies never gets old.

Don’t fret! Blue’s not dead yet as he can still move about the mud by hoping on it.

More importantly, the main gimmick of Blue’s Journey is that you can shrink at will using the C button to access small hidden areas. Not only that, shrinking makes Blue run faster, making him jump further, and also allows Blue to jump onto and ride enemies without stunning them (since jumping on enemies when normal sized would stun them). So for example you could shrink, jump onto a flying enemy, ride them a bit and then jump to a high hidden area that would be normally inaccessible. The catch is that while shrunken down, you cannot attack, so you become much more vulnerable. Thus, it’s imperative for the player to learns when it’s best to shrink down and when to return to their normal size to fight off threats.

Places like these are only accessible when shrunken down

But there’s more than jumping around and smacking enemies in Blue’s Journey. Every now and then, a house will appear. Inside, you can talk to residents about different subjects (in goofy broken English): They may offer you items to buy. They may ask you some really weird questions, or even offer you to warp ahead a few levels into the game for a few flowers (which are the in-game currency you collect). You may even get a few sidequests. One example is  a guy who has lost his axe and needs it to cut down a tree, which opens up a secret area with some items (turns out the axe is just one screen over to the left). Another quest is there’s a princess who is frozen solid, and you need to have gotten the torch beforehand in order to thaw the ice to save her. And I believe she should give you some power-up but I’m not sure what exactly.

One of the first houses in the game…

Inside is this guy, will sell you boats made out of rather not so sturdy material.

You can also find shops that sell you stuff like speed-boosts and whatnot, nothing too useful as the leaf weapon you start with is pretty handy as is. Or you can pick up other weapons like bombs (quite handy against bosses), or boomerangs (which are near useless). You can also upgrade the weapon if you pick it up again, even the default leaf as the fully upgraded leaf is mighty strong.

Before fighting some of the bosses, they may ask some silly questions like this…

If you did answer “I’ll go home”, you get this fake ending. But then you come to your senses and get back to fighting the boss. Pretty funny.

A playthrough will take you across a total of 4 worlds, each with 3 levels and a 4th mini-level with a boss. After beating the first world, a map screen comes up and you can choose one of 2 worlds to go to next. And that happens again once you beat the next world, so there’s really a total of 6 worlds in the game, and you need at least 2 playthroughs to see them all.

Fire level…

…and a water level.

And the levels are your usual set found in other platformer. There’s a green forest levels, volcano levels, ice levels, toy levels, industrial machinery levels etc. They all do a good job of showing that Blue and his gang are all miniscule sized, as you see him run next to giant flowers or climb large lego blocks, or run on top of huge computer chips and such.

*insert some stupid web pun here that I can’t think of right now

Another platformer convention: Conveyer belts and saw blades.

I think Blue may just take things too literally. Or he’s secretly a coward.

Overall, I enjoyed Blue’s Journey. It’s a much more polished effort than Magician Lord, one that tried to be a little bit more inventive. It was also much easier than Magician Lord (no annoying frogs that take 8-hits). Plus I think not a lot of games do the whole shrinking mechanism, and this is somewhat thematically consistent in how tiny Blue and his friends seem to be in their world. Blue’s Journey also has some decent replay value, with all the optional worlds and the hidden areas that one may miss the first time, in addition to the odd things you’ll see if you answer the villager questions differently. It’s safe to say you won’t be seeing everything in Blue’s Journey on your first playthrough, or possibly second. Plus there’s a genuinely great sense of humor about the whole game, especially with the various dialogues you read. Also a really nice soundtrack too.

Believe it or not, this guy is the final boss. Not much too him, huh.

Once you beat his scrawny butt, he starts begging for forgiveness…

…AND I ANSWERED “NO”. DIE!!!! MUHAHAHA!!!!!!!

And yet, I still slightly prefer Magician Lord over it. I think it’s because of the wilder soundtrack, tougher difficulty, the and the darker artstyle (and of course GAL AGIESE). Still, this is a great effort by ADK, certainly much better than Ninja Combat at least.

This kinda looks like a burger or a hotdog or a sandwich of some sort. Maybe I’m hungry.

Upgrading the leaf would make it shoot an even bigger gust of wind.

Most bosses have some amusing stuff to say, like this one.

Hidden areas like these are only accessible when small. They contain a lot of flowers usually.

When Blue is hiking steep cliffs, you can see he’s sweating a a bit, which is a nice little detail.

Legola…I mean “Starge Space 2”

Another neat little detail: Leaves float in water.

WEEEEEE!!!

This guy is pretty tough. Getting around the shield is a lot of trouble

The continue screen, if you were out of credits….

…you get this rather morose game over screen. Now that’s what I call an Inconvenient Truth.

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #15 King Of The Monsters

Japanese “Kaiju” Monster movies were big in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, and is in a resurgence of sorts with Pacific Rim and the new Godzilla. It started with the American King Kong movie all the way back in 1933, which sort of got Japanese adaptations with Wasei Kingu Kongu and King Kong Appears in Edo. But it was the first Godzilla movie that really kicked off the genre and established Godzilla as a global icon and a long running franchise (with Gamera being one of the bigger competitors). The first Godzilla (and Gamera) movie was a more serious affair. But they soon introduced a host of other monsters for Godzilla to fight against. And the series became campier and less serious, more a reason to watch men in elaborate monster suits wrestling each other and blowing up miniature buildings.

In the far far flung future of 1996…

 

SNK capitalized on the popularity of both Godzilla and pro wrestling with King Of The Monsters (King Of The Monsters, incidentally, being one nickname for Godzilla). It is basically a wrestling game but with giant monsters instead of wrestlers, and a whole city district instead of a ring. You pound on other monsters till their health is low enough for you to pin them down for a count of 3 (Why do monsters care if they were pinned down? Who is there counting to 3? No one knows). You can grapple and do a host of wrestling moves. You can even do an Irish whip and your opponent would run till the end of the “ring” and be whipped back, thanks to the bouncy electromagnetic force-field at the sides that act pretty much like the bouncy ropes of a wrestling ring.

Character select screen.

So who are the 6 monsters? They are:-

–          Geon, the Godzilla-looking dinosaur

–          Woo, the King Kong-like giant ape

–          Poison Ghost, a smog monster type

–          Beetle Mania, a giant beetle

–          Rocky, a monster composed of large rocks (naturally)

–          Finally, Astro Guy, a Ultraman-like giant superhero guy (though I’m not sure how much of a hero he really is)

I chose to play as Beetle Mania because Beetle Mania looks the least threatening out of all the monsters. And because it’s a funny reference.

That bridge is going down.

Once you start King Of The Monsters, you can choose either to play 1 player against the computer, 2 players versus mode, or 2 player co-op mode (fighting 2 other computer controlled monsters for exciting 2 vs 2 matches). A playthrough of the game will take you across 12 stages spread across Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kobe, and Okayama. In each stage, you’ll be fighting while getting bombarded by army Tanks and planes while also getting swarmed by tiny cars and trains. But you could pick any of these vehicles and use them as throwing weapons, which is very handy.

You can throw planes. But wow this city’s just wiped clean.

The combat in King Of The Monsters is fairly intricate. [A] punches, [B] kicks. Three hits of any would usually knockdown. Thus, it’s important to learn to run away when you need to with [C] or by double tapping  left or right (wherein you could run back and clobber them with a running attack). Or you could jump out of harm with [A]+[B] (the CPU always tends to jump out of 3 hit combos).  Holding [A]+[B] would charge up a long range projectile attack.

Gotta have big, beautiful Pagodas to destroy.

As a wrestling game, grappling forms an important part of the combat. Moving to the other monster initiates a grapple. And pressing either [A] or [B] with different directions does different character-specific wrestling moves (This FAQ lists all the command throws. Although some of the buttons are switched it seems). You can also do throw-reversals (though I’m not sure how). Doing the more damaging throws would yield a power-up item, and also a dizzied opponent open for more attacks (I usually go for a back throw in this case). Collecting the power-up item fills a bar that, once filled, will “upgrade” the player, giving them a new color, slightly faster movement,  and a bigger projectile attack.  Filling that bar again would unlock the final form. Again, they have an even slightly faster movement and an even bigger projectile attack. But most importantly, the final form unlocks a special throw, done with [A]+[B], that does a lot of damage.

Nice of the Ferris Wheel runners to keep the wheel running. Must be a great view of the match.

When your opponent is down, you can pin them with [A], pick them up for a throw with [B], or do a downed attack with [C]. But you can’t mine hits by constantly throwing them over and over as there’s a set amount of times you can pick an opponent up for a throw, or else they’d just stand up straight.

Fighting all summer and winter.

But of course, you don’t need to know any of these specific commands to get through King Of The Monster. I managed to mash my way through all 12 stages. I only learned about most of these mechanics after I beat the game & tried a bit of 2 player practice.

Seems like there’s something written on that building. “Neo Geo”? What’s a “Neo Geo”?

There are some issues with King Of The Monsters mechanics. When a player moves the character to contact the other monster for a grapple, the game randomly decides who should get the upper hand. The one with the upper-hand gets to throw, and the other character can only hope to be able to do a throw-reversal. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except that I don’t know how to do throw-reversals and seemingly, no one on the internet knows either. So when odds are against you, you just have to accept it and take the hit. This discourages from trying to grapple the other character since there’s an equal chance that you will get thrown. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Destraction?

There’s also the issue with lifebars. Usually with wrestling games, the lifebar serves as a measure of “how much button-mashing does a pinned player need to do to get out of a pin-down”. The less life they have, the more mashing they need to do, up to a certain limit where no conceivable level of mashing could save a player from a pin-down. Usually, that extent is reached when their lifebar is fully depleted or even a little bit beyond that . Some games have a hidden 20-or-so percent of life hidden beyond what’s displayed just to add a bit of exciting comebacks and suspense to the match. King Of The Monsters does have this “extra life” in, but it seems like there’s an extra %100, %200 of life after it’s depleted, maybe even more, especially in the later levels. This drags out matches for far too long. And with health being low, both players end up spending their time down on the ground for the latter part of a match. And you can be sure that the CPU will take every single chance it has to pin you down.

Some neat water effects here.

But all of this doesn’t deter from what is a really fun game with a novel idea, especially in coop or versus multiplayer. There’s inarguable appeal to playing as funny looking giant monsters body-slamming other funny looking monsters all while destroying tall buildings and getting bombarded by tiny fighter planes, all while a vaguely English-sounding guy narrates the scene and the hopelessness of it all. Yes, there were a few of “Kaiju” games before King Of The Monsters. But the few Godzilla games weren’t all that great. And I guess Midway’s Rampage has its fans. But Rampage was more “Monsters vs tiny people and buildings” rather than “Monster vs Monster” type of action. King Of The Monsters didn’t set any precedent. But still remains a fairly new idea that was well done.

More monster fighting. Kinda getting tired of these samey-looking screenshots.

The precedent that King Of The Monsters did set, however, was that it was the first of several Neo Geo games that got ported to the SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive. These ports were handled by Takara, who would also work on Game Boy ports of Neo Geo titles later in the ’90s. The ports took out 2 characters, probably for memory-saving reason.  The missing characters were Woo (The King Kong lookalike, probably because he was a King Kong-lookalike and Takara didn’t want to get sued by Universal, just like how Universal Sued Nintendo) and Poison Ghost (the smog-monster, because…look at it).

I almost forgot to put a picture with Rocky. So here’s Rocky.

SNK did make a sequel, King Of The Monsters 2: The Next Thing (No, not “The Next BIG Thing”. Just “The Next Thing”, which is true in a sense). The sequel expanded the game to be a beat em up, with plenty of boss fights that resemble the first game’s wrestling matches thrown in. It also dropped (actually, killed off if the into is to be believed) Beetle Mania, Rocky, and Poison Ghost (again), keeping only Geon and Astro Guy intact, while Woo was turned into a robot in the spirit of Mecha-Godzilla and Mecha King Ghidorah, becoming Cyber-Woo. Cyber-Woo did join Neo Geo Battle Coliseum as a playable character (though a much smaller version). And there is a stage in Neo Geo Battle Coliseum that is an ode to King of the Monsters, depicting Cyber-Woo fighting a skeletal version of Geon.

Editor’s Note: No Screen Gallery this time because honestly, there’s not much else new to be shown in the other screenshots. It’s just more monsters wrestling. Hope you don’t mind.

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #14 Sengoku

Sengoku is the second beat em up on the Neo Geo, after Ninja Combat. But unlike Ninja Combat (which was by ADK), Sengoku was internally developed by SNK. According to the intro, 400 years ago, a warlord was defeated by 2 samurais. But just before he died, he promised to return in 400 years to bring death and destruction to the land. And 400 years pass. And lo and behold, the warlord actually kept his promise, resurrecting, along with his magical floating mansion and massive undead army, to bring the apocalypse to modern times. Interesting tidbit: The intro is different between the MVS & AES versions of the game. The MVS intro, while more impressive looking, has a rather fast text scroll that is hard to read. The AES version slows down the text scroll. But the intro is just a series of static screens, which is less impressive. But back to the game itself.

Two Crude Dudes!

So who will save this world from the mad man warlord in his floating, spinning magic mansion? Two dudes. Player one is a Mad Max or Kenshiro looking guy, complete with leather jacket and metal shoulder pads, but with a brighter attire to give him a bit of legitimacy/avoid lawsuits. Player two is a shirtless cowboy. The two of them will have to get to the mad man warlord by punching hundreds and hundreds of ghost ninjas, undead samurais, demons, Kappas, evil spirits, and a host of other mythical Japanese monsters under the warlord’s command.

Buildings crumpled, cities levels, but somehow this billboard is nigh intact.

Like other contemporary beat-em-ups/belt-scrollers/brawlers (pick your favorite term), you walk to the right and punch people, monsters, demons, and other such things. [A] button attacks, and [B] jumps. But the main gimmick of Sengoku is that, on your journey you will befriend three different “warrior spirits” who will help you out: A Wolf, a Ninja, and a Samurai. And you can “tag-in” any of these spirits with the [C] button. But each of the 3 spirits has their own 60-second timer that counts down when they’re “tagged in”. And once the timer reaches 0, they’re out, lost for good. And you can’t get them back (not even after dying. Death actually doesn’t take away your spirit friends if you have them along when you die). That is, unless you find another one of the lost spirits on your way, which is pretty rare. So it’s very important that you tag them out before they’re timer runs out to have them recharge their timer (although, if you’re like me, you’ll probably die & use all your lives pretty quickly before the timer runs out, wherein you’ll continue and then have all your spirits fully charged).

Here’s where you get the wolf. Which oddly has the same wolf-howl sound sample as Galford’s Poppy. Also look at that army!

Many of these battles won’t even be taking place in the earthly domain. See, every so often, your player gets transported instantly. Sometimes to the heavens, sometimes seemingly back in time, or just to the lower city levels, in the subways and severs. It’s a very abrupt, very interruptive sequence. And it’s Sengoku’s other big gimmick that’s also really weird. In fact, in stage 1, mere seconds after starting the game and walking for a few feet, you will suddenly be transported to the heavens to fight a horde of monsters. It’s a hectic kind of pace, ensuring that you’re not fighting in the same locale for too long. It’s an obvious gimmick to reduce the apparent tedium that a lot of beat em ups can have by “mixing it up”. And honestly it works, even if you are still fighting the same types of enemies wherever you are. And yet even within the same plane, Sengoku tries to mix it up by having the same enemies appear on screen in new ways. Sometimes, they just walk in from off-screen, or come by running from the background (with lots of sprite scaling. This IS an early-era Neo Geo game, so expect plenty of ridiculous sprite-scaling). Other times they appear as weird ghosts that transform into the usual set of enemies you fight. It doesn’t really have an effect on how you play the game, just a variety of fancy wrappers for the same types of sandwiches.

I kind of want to listen to Sewer Surfin all of a sudden.

But is the meat of Sengoku good (Apologies for the heavy handed metaphor)? Past all the gimmicky visual tricks & the fancy spirit-tagging mechanic, is the raw punching & kicking good?

Ninja is throwing shurikin, naturally

Well, not really. For one, regular dude moves quite slowly. But more importantly, there’s no “combo lock” like you have in Final Fight or other beat em ups. When an enemy is punched, they go into a “getting hit” animation frame & are pushed back a little. And during the “getting hit” frame, all subsequent attacks won’t register until the enemy is back into normal state. So it feels flimsy hitting attack 4 times & only having attacks #1 & #3 register as hits. This is unlike Final Fight, where once the first attack lands, the subsequent attacks initiate a combo that ends with a final attack that knocks down the enemy. Also, there aren’t a lot of moves you can do. There’re no throws, only 1 jump attack, and no running at all. Although you can break enemy sword with your bare hands but I’m not sure how to trigger this move. But it’s useful and looks pretty cool.

This midboss shoots tiny versions of itself out of that big sack. Weird.

The spirits you can tag with are also of mixed usefulness. The wolf is nearly useless, with very short range attacks. The Ninja is basically a faster version of regular dude (that’s because instead of walking, the Ninja does acrobatic ninja flips, as a Ninja should). The Samurai is the most effective of them all, as the samurai’s sword has great reach and does great damage.

Ninja is shooting this thing. Naturally???

But even if the wolf and the Ninja are not that much more useful than regular dude, it’s still a good idea to switch to them whenever you get a power-up. Defeating some enemies would yield different colored orbs. which give you power-ups, like giving regular dude a sword, or 2 swords, or 1 BIG sword, or can make him shoot stuff. But if one of the spirits gets a powerup (or powered up regular dude is switched up to any of these spirits), they will shoot a plethora of crazy looking projectiles too. So it’s a smart idea to change to one of the spirits when powered up (even the nearly useless wolf gets some much needed firepower).

SNK doing more of their usual referential stuff.

So despite not having a strong basis in terms of bare-handed combat, there’s quite a lot of switching between the 4 characters. And optimally, you won’t be using regular dude for long stretches if you’re playing well. And yet, thanks to some smart enemy designs, there are some instances where you’re better off using regular guy against some enemies. Sword wielding enemies can reflect projectiles, so if you were using a powered up spirit that’s shooting stuff, your attacks would be reflected back. Therefore it’s better in this case to switch back to regular dude to use his sword-breaking move (which would be much more useful if I knew how to do it). Or you can clash your sword with an enemy sword and presumably mash in order to win (unless it’s done like in the first Samurai Shodown, then you really shouldn’t bother with the wasted effort).

Final boss encounter is some crazy high-flying sword fight…

…and this is the warlord’s final form.

This dependency on tagging between characters while also managing each spirits “cool down” period, factoring in whether you have a power up or not, and who are the enemy-types you’re currently fighting, all of this does build a simple strategy element on top of an otherwise pretty simplistic brawling system, a system which I believe could not sustain a whole interesting game on itself. And the pretty-looking, very imaginative stages you go through, especially with the whole warping around thing, is a clever gimmick that nullifies the “brawler tedium” that happens in similar games. Add to that some really cool looking bosses (mostly the minibosses. The real bosses are somewhat less impressive oddly), and a very climactic final boss encounter, and Sengoku ends up being a very good, smartly designed brawler that does enough to differentiates itself from the competition. And it seems SNK did a good enough job with Sengoku to spawn 2 other sequels, Sengoku 2 in 1994, and a Noise Factory-made Sengoku3/Sengoku 2001 in, well, 2001.

Another strangely intact billboard. What kind of car is that?

You can do a nearly all screen lighting attack if you get a certain power up as the samurai.

First boss has you transported to fight in top if a herd of horses. Not sure how the physics of this works.

An example of swords clashing.

Just look at this!

Oh but it’s not red blood so kids can see this. It’s fine.

That’s the magical floating mansion that the final boss lives in. He sends enemies (like that guy over there) from there. Exuberant sprite scaling ensues

Yeah that thing will come out for you.

This boss comes by on his rather muscular horse before descending to fight you. Pretty cool.

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #13 Ghost Pilots

A new year is upon us, both in terms of Neo Geo releases and with 100 Days Of MEGASHOCK! itself (KOF III? What’s that? I don’t know. You must have had a fever dream or something). Ghost Pilots, our focus for today, is the first release of 1991 (MVS-wise). 1991 also marks the year the Neo Geo AES is released. So are starting strong in this brand new and important year?

Not really. But let’s not jump to conclusion.

That crashed plane in the background, how it clearly chopped down all those trees as it was skidding before it halted, is a neat touch.

Ghost Pilots is SNK’s first attempt at a vertical scrolling shooter (or flying shooter, or shooting game, or shoot-em-up, or shmup. Pick your favorite) on the Neo Geo. It goes without saying that scrolling shooters were very popular at arcades, with very deep roots in the history of the medium as a whole. It’s arguable that the genre traces back all the way past Space Invaders and into Spacewar in 1962, even if these older titles lacked “scrolling”. SNK themselves had several shooters released pre-1991, like Ozma Wars (SNK’s first game ever), Vanguard I & II, and Alpha Mission. Suffice to say; by the time Ghost Pilots was out, shooters were a well-worn genre, both within SNK’s catalog, and the industry in general. So it’ll take a lot for any shooter released to stand out from the competition.

A traveling train of tanks towed by a tributary-traversing-transport.

Ghost Pilots doesn’t stand out from the crowd. It’s a shooter in the same vein as Capcom’s 19XX series (or 194X series. It’s debatable). You pilot realistic-looking propeller sea planes, flying in a nondescript country, fighting against planes, tanks, ships, and other military combat vehicles, so nothing wacky like the Bydo or Aliens or magically flying people.

Ya know, hovercrafts are pretty vulnerable. All you have to do is shoot their skirt and then they sink. This one, however, wasn’t that easy.

At the start of the game, you can choose one of the 3 “stage” to play, though really they’re more like a string of stages. And only two of the 3 are unlocked at the start. You also choose one of 3 bomb types. And again, the 3^rd bomb type is inaccessible at times. And also changes based on whether you’re going into an air-to-air combat stage or an air-to-ground stage.

Stage select screen. Top one is quite ominous.

Bomb select screen. Right-one is a napalm-type for ground stages…

…and a mine-looking one, dropped by friendly planes, for air-stages.

Bomb#1 on the left is a standard a big bomb. Bomb#2 in the middle is a smaller bomb you can sort of push around post-explosion. It has some interesting uses. But with Bomb#3 on the right, if it’s a ground stage, it becomes a big napalm bomb that pretty much works like bomb#1. If it’s an aerial combat stage, bomb#3 becomes, well, not a bomb at all, at least not one that your plane drops. Rather, pressing the bomb button will call up 2 friendly planes to drop bombs near you. It has a huge area of affect, bigger than all the other bomb types, but it takes a while to activate. This can be a problem since, like many other shooters, bombs can suck up enemy bullets. And having a slow-activating bomb is less useful as a defensive measure.

But really, I shouldn’t have been so detailed in describing the minutia of Ghost Pilot’s mechanics. The problem with the game is that it’s just unremarkably run-of-the-mill. Standard looking levels, standard powerups, enemy patterns, backgrounds. It’s nothing special (but I do like the ridiculously large planes & tanks you fight as bosses). Sure, most of the Neo Geo releases by then can be considered derivative too. But they were always supported by great art direction & soundtrack (like Magician Lord) or a unique take on the genre (like Puzzled/Joy Joy Kids), or a weird, unconventional story (like Cyber-Lip). Ghost Pilots has none of these. It doesn’t even have Michael Beard doing the voice acting, or any voice acting.

This screen has some nice detail. This is during the final stage.

It’s also just not that fun to play. I’m no shmup-expert, but Ghost Pilots feels like SNK dropped a plane from an older shmup into a more intense, modern one (well modern by 1991 standard). The plane feels big, with a big hitbox that is almost as big as the sprite itself. And the guns have a pretty low rate of fire. You can, however, boost your shot power by collecting powerups that make you shoot more and more bullets. And you do become very powerful when fully powered up. But it’s still a very plain type of powerup. And it’s a very plain experience throughout the rest of the game, with not many highlights or lowlights. At least I do like how stage progression in the game is almost continuous. At the end of each stage, the plane lands at a different “rest stop”. And then you continue on from that rest stop at the start of the next stage. It’s a neat touch. But there’re not a lot of those in Ghost Pilots.

The final boss is a crazy multi-screen big tank that spans…

…not just 2 screen…

…but 3 or possibly 4 screens. Big thing.

Overall, Ghost Pilots could have been an average but interesting game. But it’s just plain average.

Something tells me this person is a bad guy.

I don’t really get the tactical advantage of sewing two separate planes wing-to-wing, rather then keeping them seperate. But I’m not a military airplane engineer of any sorts so what do I know.

Biggest threat here? That homing blue plane on the left. You’ll grow to hate these very quickly. very very quickly.

Plenty of big-tanks bosses in this game.

One of several rest-stops at the end of each stage.

A train of tanks on a train trudging…eh I give up.

Oh an active volcano!

Tom Cruise? But you don’t look like the blonde guy at the intro or the bomb-select screen.

A toast to Tom Cruise. Who I guess singlehandedly won the war.

We’ve seen plenty of “PRODUCER E.KAWASAKI” and we’ll be seeing him plenty more with future Neo Geo games…

…and more of “PAPAYA” too.

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #12 League Bowling

SNK keeps the ball rolling (heh) with more sports games. This time SNK adapts the sport of bowling with League Bowling. Bowling may not be the most kinetic or athletic kind of sport but it can make for a fun simple video game.

In League Bowling, you can play solo or against up to 3 other players in 3 different modes. Regulation is your standard Bowling 10-frame game. Flash adds additional points to your score on strike or on spare based on a moving flashing cursor. And Strike 90 is the same as Regulation except that a Strike will add 90 points to the next two shots, a spare would add 60 to the next shot. And getting anywhere between 7 to 10 pins will earn you 30 points.

Just look at that expression. And the excited audience. Who knew bowling could be so intense.

Before you get on the lane and start your set, you first choose whether to play left-handed or right-handed. Then you choose the weight of the bowling ball. I couldn’t clearly discern the differences between different ball weights. I think heavier balls are harder to center and tend to veer more. But they obviously pack a bigger punch.

Flash mode replaces the “reaction cam” with a score board. Top line is the added score on strike. Bottom is for spare.

Once you’re on the lane, you choose the spin angle of the ball, then the power. You can also move the bowler whilst all that choosing is happening right until you throw the ball at the last moment. I found that to be very helpful since I can readjust the bowler’s position to account for spin variations. For example, if I wanted to bowl a straight ball but the spin meter veered a bit left, then I have a second or so before the bowler throws the ball to adjust the bowler to the right and let the ball hit dead center, salvaging the throw. This doesn’t make sense in terms of how real bowling works but it does make for an interesting comeback mechanic.

DARN IT!

The game itself is a fine recreation of bowling. The pins fall in a predictable pattern. But recreating the same throw requires very strict timing. Making a strike is easy but striking over and over consecutively is hard. So I suppose SNK succeeded in recreating the simple but much nuanced sports of bowling (this conclusion coming from a man whose only concern with any bowling alley is “what arcade games do they have?”).

But that’s really not the main appeal of League Bowling to me. Instead, it’s the lavish presentation that’s most interesting about League Bowling. Bowling is obviously not the most visually interesting of sports. But SNK managed to make it exciting to watch. The audience is cheering for you. Your bowler is a big, smoothly animated sprite. And when he’s doing the backswing, the ball sprite zooms in an exaggerated fashion, taking advantage of the Neo Geo’s scaling capabilities. While the ball is rolling its way to the pins, your bowler gradually opens his mouth in suspense and anticipation. And depending on whether it’s a strike, a spare, or a miss, you get to see a bunch of different funny animations. It’s like watching a cartoon short (a shame that Flash mode replaces the funny reaction top screen with the flash score). It really gives League Bowling so much character in addition to the solid bowling game basis.

As the great Ricky Bobby once said: If you ain’t first, you’re last.

And that’s pretty much it for League Bowling. Well mostly. There’re a few little interesting tidbits that I couldn’t form into separate comprehensible paragraphs or combine into a singular cohesive paragraph. So I’m doing it in lazy lists. I heard that that’s how the internet works these days. So here are 7 interesting tidbits about League Bowling that you may or may not know:

1- The red bowling ball mascot looks a lot like 7UP’s Cool Spot but with different shades:

No sightings or mentions of Fido Dido in League Bowling as of yet.

 Cool spot would eventually get his/her/its own game.

2- Michael Beard returns as the announcer: Still great as ever.

3- Nadia from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is in the audience cheering for you:

It seems some in SNK are fans of her. The show would have been airing during League Bowling’s release and probably during development too.

4- It has self-promoting trucker hats:

When playing 4 players. You get 4 different colored sprite-copies of the standard bowler guy. But even so, the player on the right gets a trucker hat with SNK written on it (Oddly it disappears in the “choose left/right hand + choose ball weight” screen and at the result screen). This could be the start of SNK’s infatuation with self promoting trucker hats.

5- Note the “KING OF LANES” sign on the floor:

I guess SNK loved naming things KING OF THIS and KING OF THAT.

6- 8 player League Bowling on four linked Neo Geos is pretty rad.

Just look at this magnificent creation. So cool.

7- League Bowling was ported to Newgrounds in 2002: Wikipedia says it’s by Newgrounds’ founder Tom Fulp. But the League Bowling Newgrounds page credits “CarrotClock” as the author who may or may not be Tom Fulp. For a 2002 flash game, it looks pretty authentic. But the ball-sprite is different. It’s bigger and moves way slower even at full power. And there’re some newgrounds logos plastered at the result screen. Also the pin physics kind of suck. You’ll get the weirdest splits. And striking is harder than it should be. So I didn’t like it.

The Beer Frame animation is pretty sweet.

:D

Turquoise is a neat color honestly.

Polishing the bowling ball or chewing gum are some of the many idle animations.

200 added points for a Spare.

Look at that sprite scaling!

The into is pretty funny!

Funny intro part 2

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #11 Puzzled / Joy Joy Kid

Puzzle games were big in arcades. And being the arcade system that it is, the NEO GEO was host to many puzzle games. Puzzled (or the honestly more colorful Japanese name, Joy Joy Kid) is the NEO GEO’s first puzzle game. And unsurprisingly, SNK’s first attempt is to make a Tetris clone. Tetris was originally made in 1984, but by 1990 it was ported to several consoles, arcades, Western and Japanese computers, and the Game Boy. It was huge. So it’s obvious that SNK wanted to get in on the Tetris craze with Joy Joy Kid.

What’s the story of Joy Joy Kid? Well for one, I’m surprised that you are curious about the story of a puzzle game. But there is one. The opening (which only appears in the AES version) tells of two warring villages, a male-only village against a female-only village. The war took the lives of many, leaving only children and the elderly. So the sun god built walls surrounding each village to stop the fighting, and a tower (that looks a lot like the Tower Of Babel) where he and several other gods resided in. Being the sun god, he also blocked out the sun from the villages as punishment. So each of the villages sent out a messenger in a balloon to the tower to go and appease the gods, RAD from the male village in a zeppelin (with a face on it!), and AM from the female village in a regular hot air balloon.

Joy Joy Kid uses the same mechanics as Tetris. You have the same seven shapes (or Tetrominos). And you try to rotate the falling blocks to form lines and clear them. The twist is that the objective here is totally different. Here the game is level based, and in each level you try to save your character’s balloon that’s trapped by a different pattern of blocks. And you pass the level by clearing the blocks blocking the balloon from floating up. The levels, composed of 6 stages, each with 10 floors, totaling to 60 levels, get more difficult by adding new elements, like gold blocks that need to be lined 3 times in order to break, or wooden blocks that never break, or mines or electric fields that can stun your balloon, impairing it from movement for a few seconds, or regenerating blocks. In addition, you have a special bar that gets filled the more lines you clear, and when it’s filled halfway, you can unleash an explosion with the B button that can clear out or damage blocks surrounding the balloon. Filling the bar completely will allow you to create a bigger explosion.

SHORTY?! Wow! what an a-hole.

And this all adds up to a pretty fun game. It does change they way you play Tetris since you are only concerned about clearing a specific set of blocks. But that doesn’t make it easy, oh no. Joy Joy Kid is very hard. Extremely hard. I only managed to reach the 7th level (with 53 left to go) and could not get past it. So I cheated and used the infinite bomb cheat to progress through the game.

So Dreamcasty

Each of the 6 floors of the tower has its own background art and its own charmingly FM-synthy music. Some backgrounds have sort of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, which while not directly related to the Tower of Babel, does fit in the whole “ancient human culture” idea in Joy Joy Kid. Between each floor, you meet these funny looking gods who talk to you and give you the key to the next floor. A couple of them won’t give you the key and instead force you to play this simple platforming bonus game. Though even you fail these they still give you the key anyway.

I heart this level.

Once you beat all 10 stages of all 6 floors, you meet the sun god at the top of the tower, the one you’ve been looking for this whole journey, the deity who you seek forgiveness for all the atrocities created by the war. Finally after so many hours of playing it’s all over and you get to enjoy the ending, right? Well… (scroll to 1:54:00)

That’s right. Joy Joy Kid pulls a complete Ghost ’n Goblins, asking you to go through all of the game again, all 60 levels again using the other character (now with weirdly ominous music). Actually, these are new, different levels so you can’t repeat what you did the first time through. So really Joy Joy Kid has 120 levels (and to imagine I only managed to get %5.83 through). You also meet a different set of wacky looking gods between each floor, and another couple who have you do the platforming bonus game.

Pictured: the “last” stage…before starting the second playthrough.

Once you reach the sun god with the other character, the game is truly finished. The sun god advises the merging of both villages, combining the male and female population, and thus bringing peace to the land. With the purpose of the tower fulfilled, it rockets into the air where it floats for all to witness as a memorial for the darker times of human history and as a reminder to uphold the ideals of compassion and understanding between all humans and I’m reading way into this.

Note the 4 complete but uncleared lines. This glitch happens with the red regenerating blocks.  Don’t think you can remove the blocks (besides bombing them).

There is, however, a way to finish the game in one playthrough. And that it to play it with a friend in 2P. Sadly, two-player mode seems like a big missed opportunity for such a competitive genre like puzzle games, primarily because SNK did nothing with it (a puzzling decision if I must say). Each player plays on their own screen,  working on their own levels. And that’s it. There’s absolutely no “interactivity” between players. You can’t throw junk blocks or get power-ups or send power-downs or anything. Nothing that one player would do would ever have any effect on the other. You can’t even have a simple “who clears the level first” race. That’s because whenever a challenger joins a player who’s a few levels in, they don’t start at the level the first player’s in. Instead, they start at the very first level of the first floor. The only semblance of competition you could do is if 2 players decide to start the game together at the same time and race towards beating the game first, a race which might take 1, maybe 2 hours to finish. At least it’s somewhat of a cooperative experience. And the whole “2 groups of people working together towards a common goal” does fit the spirit of the story conveyed in Joy Joy Kid. It would be hypocritical  if the whole way through, both players are competing, throwing all sorts of junk to each other, hampering  each others progress, then at the end the sun god commends both players for being totally best friends and all. So I’ll give SNK some credit for totally committing to the game’s story.

Wise words.

Joy Joy Kid never got a sequel sadly, not on NEO GEO nor the Neo Geo Pocket (which would have been great). I don’t know whether it was successful enough to warrant a sequel or not, but even if it was I suspect that the Tetris licensing issue might have played a big factor. This release does not mention anything about licensing Tetris or Bullet-Proof Software (Henk Rogers’s company that had the exclusive license for Tetris on arcades, home consoles, and portables). SNK doing a sequel without getting the Tetris license again might have gotten them into some legal trouble. And I don’t know if it would have been worth the trouble to license Tetris for a sequel or not. Although, Joy Joy Kid did get released on Neo Geo CD in 1994, on Mobile phones in Japan in 2008, on the Wii’s Virtual Console in Japan-only in 2011, and most recently on the Neo Geo X in 2012. I suppose Joy Joy Kid would not work as a game on its own today, but I feel like the game design itself would make for a great “extra” mode as one of the dozen or so modes in any of the new Tetris releases.

So as to not end this on a sad note, Joy Joy Kid did have some sort of legacy to it. Ai from Neo Geo Battle Coliseum has a few special moves that cutely references Joy Joy Kid. She can summon a falling Tetrominos (or several together as a Super move). She can also ride AM’s balloon (“Joy Joy Balloon” as she calls it) and fly around. She can even do the energy bomb when on the balloon. It’s a cute and clever nod to Joy Joy Kid. So at least it’s fondly remembered in a way.

I just wish it wasn’t so damn hard.

Quite Metal Geary

These mines could stun your balloon. But you can’t control the balloon directly so good luck.

Some pretty cool silhouettes when you use a bomb.

And this one.

What happens when you use infinite bombs too much. Yikes!

Layout of the tower.

This is one of those platforming bonus game sections.

Another bonus game, mandated by god of ex-planet Pluto. Poor guy.

100 Days of MEGASHOCK! #9 The Super Spy

If there’s one game so far that exemplifies what I hoped to get from doing 100 Days Of MEGASHOCK, it’s The Super Spy. Across the whole Neo Geo library of games, there are games I love, games I don’t like, and then games I’m not sure what to think of because I haven’t given them their due. I might have never played them or might have just tried them out quickly, with not enough time spent on them to form a solid opinion. The Super Spy was one such game. From afar, I thought it looked like an interesting experiment that probably played awkwardly and was another case of “style over substance”. But after playing it for this post, my impression of it greatly changed to the better.

It’s not a beat ’em up without a “GO! ->” sign. Sadly, it never appears again after this.

So far, all the games released on the Neo Geo were of already defined genres at the time. Action-platformers, sports games, racing games, side-scrolling beat ‘em ups, and mahjong games. NAM-1975 was a bit unique, but there was already a precedent with Kabal.

Little details like that flying drool are quite impressive.

The Super Spy, however, is very different and new compared to other games released at the time, even across other consoles and arcade systems. It’s a first person shooter/brawler at a time when first person exploration was mostly relegated to turn-based dungeon crawling RPGs or maze sections in some adventure games, before Wolfenstein 3D changed all that in 1992 to introduce seamless smooth first person movement to the masses. The Super Spy is in no way a precursor to the rise of first person shooters, as it plays radically differently than your standard FPS, but it’s interesting that it at least can be described as first person shooter in the literal sense.

The Mac-10 machine gun you get from hostages is pretty badass.

Unlike other first person games, movement is restricted in The Super Spy. You can only strafe left or right without turning. And you can occasionally walk forward or backwards when there’s a hallway going into the screen. It is awkward feeling. And it is kind of funny to imagine this super spy who can clear buildings full of multi-colored ninjas, but can only shuffle to the side and sometimes walks backwards in hallways. But at least the game is designed around that constraint.

CIA actually. But I’m not supposed to say that. So now I have to KILL YOU! nah just kidding.

So what’s does the manual say about the story? Well, you are 28 year old super spy CIA Agent Roy Heart. You are tasked with stopping the terrorist group “Zolge King” who have already initiated their attack by blowing up an underground industrial area, killing thousands. Now they have taken over the Tadoya building, the headquarters of the major car manufacturer, and plan to blow that up too. Only you can stop them, so you immediately take a taxi to the Tadoya building and end this madness.

Ouch! The way the sprites are drawn to perspective when getting hit almost make me wince in pain.

Naturally as a Karate Master, you can punch & kick with A & B buttons respectively. The C button changes weapons, with a knife and a gun (which does a lot of damage but has very limited ammo) in addition to your trusty fisticuffs. The controls are actually quite intricate. You can duck by pressing down to avoid attacks, slip under cameras, or even avoid gunshots. But don’t duck for too long or enemies might re-attack and hit you while ducking. Pressing A+B makes you block, though it’s useless since it’s hard to time correctly, doesn’t block all attacks, and even if you do succeed it only just halves the damage taken. Stick with ducking. Pressing A with up+left or up+right on the stick lets you do a right hook that immediately knocks an enemy down. And it works against everyone, even bosses, a very useful attack. Sometimes pressing B would randomly trigger a grab against weaker enemies. But I couldn’t decipher how to do it intentionally. It’s not too useful anyway but it does look cool.

Hook punches are great.

The Super Spy’s level design is a bit open-ended for an arcade game. It does not have distinct stages. Well, that’s not exactly true. There’re technically 2 stages, one at the underground industrial area, and then the Tadoya building. But since the underground area stage is quite shorter, with fewer bosses, the stage feels rather more like the prologue to the Tadoya Building’s main feature presentation. And the game is about 1 and a half to 2 hours long. And you actually can get lost going around in circles sometimes.

The knife is your best friend, in good times and bad.

In each of the two stages, you start at the ground floor and work your way up or down the building, clearing halls filled with all types of thugs (green ninjas, blue ninjas, gold ninjas, white ninjas, ninjas with machine guns, guys who throw nets at you, guys who stab you with a screw driver, and many more). You search rooms to find hostages (who might heal you or give you a hint or a machine gun or a new knife or just spout some nonsense about the terrorist attack) or items (like a map) or even bosses. And you ride lots and lots of single destination elevators. In many cases, elevators are locked and require a key or keycard (usually held by a boss).

The Midgame cutscene. I missed the “D” in “AND” when screenshotting this. Sorry.

At first I just “didn’t get how to play the game right”. Since the guns have limited ammo, and since the knife degrades when used (by rusting, weirdly), I initially stuck with using punches. The problem with punching is that you can’t “combo” on an enemy in any dependent way. No matter how fast you mash A or how well timed your punches are, the enemy always gets ample time to retaliate while you’re attacking. Imagine in Streets Of Rage or Final Fight if, while piling attacks on a measly stage-1 thug, the thug suddenly punches back because your attacks are slow to come out or don’t deliver a long enough hit-stun to  the enemy. Having encounters be a haphazard mess of random punches given and punches taken (like a game of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots) is what The Super Spy first felt like. The combat was unpredictable, and therefore cannot be strategized. Which meant it wasn’t fun besides the novelty factor of first person punching and getting punched.

Duck to avoid gunfire.

That is, until I watched this 1-credit clear video by LordBBH (who also wrote this expansive, comprehensive, super-detailed piece on The Super Spy that’s definitely better than the one you’re reading right now). The correct way to play The Super Spy is to stick with the knife no matter what, rusty or not. The knife, when brand new, deals greater damage than a punch. But even when it’s fully degraded, the damage is only reduced to be about equal to that of a punch. More importantly, the knife attack comes out faster than a punch and delivers enough hitstun to the enemy to allow you time to combo another knife attack, if timed well. I don’t know if this aspect was intended by SNK or not, but I guess you can call it a mishap that MAKES the game, rather than breaks it. Using the knife does not make the game easy or simple, and you still need to use all of your evasive tools like ducking or dodging. Even if you are timing your attacks well, enemies could move off angle and out of the knife’s hitbox. In addition, the 3^rd consecutive knife stab always knocks the enemy away to the wall, so you have move around to reengage with that same enemy or in many times engage with another enemy standing on the side and try to get the upper hand again. So you still need to learn how to defend yourself to avoid attacks to then counterattack. With this revelation, the game becomes much more fun & intense than before. It almost becomes like a beat ’em up made out of mini Punch-Out!! style matches. It’s quite exciting to slash a purple ninja 3 times, knock him away dead, align yourself with a differently colored ninja, duck under his kick, and then stab him till he’s dead too.

Stabbing with a screwdriver?! What a jerk.

That’s not to say The Super Spy doesn’t have any problems. For one, it throws way too many guys at you, barely giving you time to breathe. Once you clear a group, you only have a few seconds to move before the game spawns more. And it doesn’t matter how far you were able to move. The enemy spawn rate is purely time-based, unlike other standard beat ’em ups where enemies spawn based on how far you’ve moved and scrolled the screen (wherein not moving after clearing a screen would usually prompt a “GO! ->” sign to push you to move on. No such thing here). Clearing a floor can become quite the slog going thru tens and tens of thugs.

OW! YOU POKED MY EYES!

This confounds another problem with the game you encounter frequently. Often, you’ll find locked elevators that require keys, preventing you from progressing. These keys are found in one of dozen or so rooms within a floor being held by a boss. Sometimes, you have access to a different unlocked elevator that goes to another floor, so in some cases, you have to search around two floors going in room after room, beating up ninja after ninja for however long until you find the damn key. And these floors can get a bit labyrinthine; with branching hallways and off-view hallways that are not obvious to spot (they can only be spotted when the down-arrow indicator flashes on the top-right of the screen) that can only be access by backing into them. Granted, you can usually find a map in one of these rooms showing you where you need to go. But it still is a bit of tedious slog.

Ninjas on a smoke break.

It also doesn’t help that the scenery doesn’t change a lot. You spend about %90 of the time in hallways filled with doors, going from elevator to elevator. Sometimes there’s a plant or a soda vending machine or an exploding barrel. Sometimes there’s a glass window showing blue skies or looking onto another door-filled hallway on the other side. Probably the most interesting scene is the entrance lobby of the Tadoya building, with several Tadoya car models placed in front of the reception. But then, it’s all just hallways, doors, and elevators, with little variety.

Tadoya Building entrance. I lied, the “GO->” sign appears one last time here.

The ideas presented in The Super Spy are very cool. But SNK almost hit it out of the park with the execution. Once you learn about using the knife, the game certainly becomes much more fun to play. The music is great too. But having so many enemies thrown at you at a constant pace makes it tedious after a while. The Super Spy is still a fun game even with all these problems. So I recommend it.

Sadly, The Super Spy never got a sequel. And thus never got another chance to refine its mechanics and design, which I think has a lot of potential. Some of its ideas appeared in other Neo Geo games. ADK’s Crossed Sword is a sword-based fantasy twist on The Super Spy, though it’s technically more from an over the shoulders third person view than a first person view, but it plays very similarly to The Super Spy. Crossed Swords then received a Japan-only Neo Geo CD-only sequel, Crossed Swords II.

Interesting tidbit: That poster is of G-Mantle, SNK’s secret mascot who appeared in several games, but this was his (or her) first.

Shortly after The Super Spy was released, id Software released Wolfenstein 3D. It standardized the first person shooter and cemented it as one of the most popular genres for PC and eventually consoles. But of course, the genre focuses more on shooting guns than melee attacks, unlike The Super Spy. First person “brawlers” were few and far between. The few I can recall with an aspect of first person brawling are Namco’s Breakdown on the original Xbox, the Zeno Clash games, the Condemned games, the Riddick games, and Mirror’s Edge. And while it’s not in first person view, God Hand’s close camera (which emphasizes 1 vs. 1 combat), in addition to God Hand’s emphasis on evasion by ducking and swaying left or right, makes it feel sort of similar to a first person “brawler” in my opinion. Or this could just be a flimsy excuse for me to mention God Hand since that game is pretty awesome.

This is certainly not the most optimistic of endings.

Oh and veteran Baseball Stars Professional & NAM-1975 voice actor Michael Beard is back. He just says “The Super Spy” at the intro. He might be voicing some of the enemies too.

BONUS ROUND: Is Geese Howard in The Super Spy?

Well, yes. There is A person named Geese in this game, though it’s not the most obvious one.

According to the manual, this is Geese:

Taken From: http://bbh.marpirc.net/superspy/manual03.jpg

In the game, Geese looks like this:

Guy’s batshit crazy.

He’s a boss you fight. After defeating him, he reveals that he has strapped bombs onto himself, and then:

Again, gif stolen from LordBBH’s post: http://bbh.marpirc.net/superspy/index3.html

Strangely, you don’t even get scratched despite being with him inside a rather tiny room.

Then there’s King the final boss. He looks a lot like geese but with gray hair instead of blonde.

I should have taken another screenshot. Gun placement is obscuring. Sorry.

Oh wait, that’s just the 2^nd boss, who’s an impostor pretending to be King by wearing a gray wig to conceal his…blonde hair!

Then there’s the real King, sitting on a desk on the top floor of a building with his feet on the table as a final boss should do.

DOGS OF THE AMS!

Which is exactly what Geese does in the intro to Fatal Fury 3:

Utter badassery.

King also spouts some nonsense after he’s been beaten.

At least he doesn’t fall off a building. Over and over and over and over.

So which one of these 3 is Geese Howard? The man who shares his name? The man who looks closest to Geese? Or the man who acts just like Geese? Who knows. It’s a mystery for the ages.

Now, a gallery of getting hit with stuff, first, a pipe…

Then a net…

Someone’s balding head…

A Ninja’s shoe…

A knife…

And hands strangling you…

You can break pipes by knocking people at it. Neat detail.

Though I have no idea what what oozes out of them.

A map found in one of the rooms. It can get pretty complex.

She’s a female boss. So that means PANTY SHOT OF COURSE!

Is…is the computer speaking to me?

Well, Delta Force don’t do disguises. So no.

Um, I guess I was wrong!

DOGS OF THE AM oh sorry. Joke’s been used.

Neo Geo CD Cover is pretty rad. But the AES cover looks like it’s a Godfrey Ho movie.

Oh no I’m poisoned what am I gonna oh I’m ok now.

Wise words.

Wiser words.

Is he treating me or am I treating him?

Some new scenery.

Now decorated with dead ninjas.

This boss is pretty tough. Oh and it’s G-Mantle again.

Watch out for cameras. When detected, even MORE thugs come out than the tons the game already throws at you.