The basic formula for cheesy 90’s cinema; if you didn’t see it in a matinee then you probably rented it from the local video store. Schlocky leftover clichés from the previous decade: firearms that sound like explosions, urban cowboy boots, duster jackets, and of course another film that warns you not to electrocute serial killers or else they’ll come back from the dead and keep killing.

Yes, just like House 3: the Horror Show, Shocker and Ghost in the Machine (1993), a homicidal maniac is resurrected into the world to reap havoc and kill, kill, kill.

The First Power is a 1990 American neo-noir horror film written and directed by Robert Resnikoff, and starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Tracy Griffith, Jeff Kober and Mykelti Williamson. The film received mostly negative reviews, but was a financial success just like a lot of horror movies of the era.

The film begins with LAPD on the manhunt for a serial killer (Jeff Kober). Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump, HEAT) and badass Filipino Detective (Lou Diamond Phillips) go to the borderline of law & order to catch the killer. After a near death confrontation with the “Pentagram killer” Lou Diamond Phillips character, Detective Russell Logan, manages to apprehend the killer with the help of an anonymous tip. But, that anonymous tip came with a price – “No death penalty”, a promise that Det. Logan breaks when the Pentagram Killer is sentenced in court. “Shaklack, klack” and the verdict is given. The killer enters the chamber and he is gassed to death in the presence of the arresting officers and officials. Tormented by a feverish nightmare of the killer breaking his restraints and stabbing him, Detective Logan awakens and is relieved that the nightmare is over. However, after a few more daymares he suspects something is wrong.

Tracking down his anonymous informant to a lavish house in the hills; home to a popular online psychic played by Tracy Griffith. How that works in 1990? I have no idea. Is she using search tools, such as ARCHIE, Gopher, or WAIS? I don’t know.  Her site looks like DOS. Regardless, another body is found. One of the officers involved in the arrest of the Pentagram killer is found murdered in one of the gang hideouts from Police Academy 2: the first assignment. Looks like another Pentagram murder or possibly a copycat.

When confronting Tracy Griffith about the copycat. She is angered by the Detectives ignorance and chastises him about breaking his promise.

What follows is an absurd, neo-noir horror thriller that is entertaining to say the most. On the surface, this very similar to the film Fallen starring Denzel Washington. The killer jumps from body to body and rooftop to street level, with the grace of Spider-Man in some parts.
Other parts are pretty cool: such as using the ceiling fan as a blender gimmick.

• “Psychic and a Cop walk into a bar… the partner died.”
• “Oh shit! It’s the flying bum. Cock Blocked by the homeless”.
• “Downtown LA was just as filthy as it is now.”
• Hocus Pocus and sexy nuns. It’s a film that will be forgotten but, not this day.

I present to you – THE FIRST POWER (1990). Stay safe. Stay sanctified. Get smart. Get lost and Get Free. The writings on the wall. Keep your finger on that REWIND button.

Movie Link – https://youtu.be/F3s0PlxWavE

What’ve you got to share and recommend to your fans and readers?

I went for an album that takes me back to a time I cherished as a kid in the eighties. It’s an album that influenced me a lot. It reminds me of my youth but It’s not something I grew up listening to. I am an Eighties kid but I didn’t fully experience the decade the same way some of my older peers in Valerie did. I was seven years old at the end of the decade, so I didn’t experience all that much from the Eighties, besides kids’ stuff like Chantal Goya (singer), Récré A2 (a Children’s TV program in the 70s and 80s) and Dorothée (French Children’s TV show presenter whose shows helped popularize Japanese Animation in France).

The album I picked is Neurovision by Telex. I discovered this album around the same time the Valerie Collective started, when David (aka College) was just launching his blog. At the time, the Internet wasn’t as developed as it is now. The first version of Valérie was like a moodboard where we’d post stuff we liked; stuff related to Italo Disco, film stills, photos and illustrations from the Eighties… I discovered Telex during one of my internet scavenger hunts through their song ‘Peanuts’.

They’re kind of a Belgian “Joke” band, a trio made up of Marc Moulin, Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers. Marc Moulin is very famous in Beligum, he’s a radio guy who later became a Jazzman who signed to Blue Note records. He’s also the guy who produced Lio’s first hit songs like ‘Banana Split’. They released this sophomore record in 1980, which is seen as some sort of “joke” project in which they were just messing around, although I don’t quite agree with this point of view. The album is definitely a joke with a heavy concentrate of Belgian absurdist humor. There’s a very creative aspect to it, where they’ll allow themselves to go down the wackiest routes whilst keeping the execution top-notch. Marc Moulin handles the arrangements and is an amazing pianist. Dan Lacksman handles the studio machinery and is a bloody amazing sound engineer. Michel Moers is a poet who doesn’t sing all that well but whose lyrics skillfully dance at the edge separating the absurd and the ridiculous. The album art is also fantastic and was done by an artist called Ever Meulen, who has an Eighties Clear Line style (see: Ligne Claire).

The album has this extremely tacky track called ‘Euro-vision’ that the group presented at the 1980 Eurovision contest. They entered the contest hoping to score no points but missed their goal because Portugal actually liked the song and awarded them ten points. Their performance was pure nonsense and they were really struggling to keep it together. It’s hard to be truly, completely ridiculous. They even took a photo at the end of their set with the flabbergasted audience. With that being said, the lyrics to the song weren’t all that dumb.

The album also has two tracks that I really love. There’s ‘My Time’, which is an Ann Steel cover song. It’s very Synthpop, the arrangements are great and Moers puts on a great performance. Then there’s ‘Plus de Distance’, which is a completely absurd, neo-romantic Synthpop track about airports. It’s one of my go-to songs. It’s tacky but cool. It’s so well done, that the tacky side doesn’t come off as ridiculous.

This is part of the reason why I wanted to bring up Telex. These guys were off the rails but put were doing it extremely well. They would leave the beaten tracks with their musical background and weren’t tied down by musical labels.

Their albums Wonderful World and Looney Tunes were somewhat foundational to the New Beat sound, this short-lasting Belgian music style that marked the clubs of the era. It’s a style somewhere between Hip-hop and early techno, hardcore and Gabber. Telex was somewhat swept up by the movement. By simply fooling around, they ended up innovating and laying the foundation for a number of music genres.

Legend has it that New Beat came from a mistake, that it came from a DJ accidentally spinning a 12” LP at 33Rpm. The movement only lasted a few years. Near the end, everyone was sampling one another. New Beat is basically the same sound sampled a thousand times over. It made no sense, but it didn’t matter.

How does this whacky sense of humor translate, forty years later?

That’s the thing. It’s hard to figure out which parts were tongue-in-cheek. It’s the same deal with Lio. ‘Banana Split’ works because it’s super catchy. For a song meant for radio airplay, it’s really well composed and put together. However, lyrics are pretty salacious, especially when you consider that it’s a 16-year-old singing them. It’s very borderline. It’s a joke, but it’s very well produced. That’s what Telex is.

It may be a joke, but it’s super well done and it’s got a lot of Synth sounds that you still hear nowadays in Synthwave and Synthpop. Even in modern productions like Cléa Vincent, you can hear Telex-like gimmicks such as Jazzy, Moog-esque touches and liquid, resonant sound textures.

There’s a tacky side to Synthwave that artists more or less own up to. We’re borrowing from the Eighties, one of the richest but also one of the worst musical eras, creativity-wise. One of our neighbours played some Jeanne Mas at a quarantine balcony party recently, for example. Her music is tacky, but her songs have some amazing synth sounds that everyone still uses in Synthwave: Fairlight, Jupiter…

Going back to the Valerie collective, do you remember what you were initially after when you started the blog?

I can’t speak for David, and he’s the one who launched the blog. For me, it was the Italian producers like Moroder that fascinated me. John Carpenter’s films came up a lot, too. I remember Valérie being heavily soundtrack-oriented. The goal was to dig up obscure, outdated and occasionally tacky stuff. I remember someone bringing up the credit sequence to Buckaroo Banzai, for example. It’s quite simply the worst movie scene of all time. It’s ridiculous, it’s extremely tacky, but the music is awesome!

Speaking of which, can you tell me a bit about the Hollywood films and series you grew up on?

This is going to sound basic, but the first film that really left an impression on me was Back to the Future II. My friend has loads of VHS tapes, but he only had the second movie in his collection. I watched that film so many times. There was also Quantum Leap, this series by Donald P. Bellisario about this time traveller who needs to take people’s place in order to influence history and return to his era. The guy used all of these silly tricks to replace people and he had this hologram guiding him around that only he could see. Like everyone else, I was also into Star Wars, too. My dad used to watch Miami Vice a lot, which ended up leaving quite an impression on me, especially the flamingos, the parrots and the sailboard in the opening sequence. I came back to it pretty late and started watching it again around the time we started Valérie, which is when I realized how groundbreaking the writing and the music were for its time.

Could it be where the ‘neon’ aspect of Valerie came from?

Actually, we were never really into that aesthetic. Alex Burkart from The Zonders, who is our graphic designer, was probably more into that kind of thing. I think he might have gotten that reference through the world video games. We were more inspired by photos. Stuff like Venice Beach, Florida, architecture…

Lastly, have you got any news or projects to share with your fans and readers?

Lately, I’ve been using my time to finalize some unreleased club-oriented tracks that I’ve been playing at my last few shows. I also got some new hardware and exploring some more Ambient sounds. We recently did this show at La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris) with David (College) for the French premiere of Rise of the Synths. I had prepared a few soundtrack/ambient oriented pieces for the occasion with my new setup, and I’d like these tracks to have a life of their own. The reason why I felt like talking about Telex is also that I’m thinking about going down a more ‘simple’ route. I want to move away from the hassle of production and getting clean sounds and focus on the purely creative side of things. That’s where I’m at right now.

Thumbnail photo by @onedaystranger

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Anyway, I won’t put any of it in here, because I’m getting to my actual point: the video game industry has its own share of this lowest-common-denominator ramrod surrealism. Images clearly rendered under deadline while suffering from sleep deprivation, questionable pieces of illustration drawn by people who were likely being paid in subway tokens, and even some visual corruptions that will haunt the industry until its death some 5 billion years hence when we are cooked off of this rock by our sun’s death throes.

I will warn you – nay, I admonish thee, brave wanderer. To step forth may cost you your sanity, or worse. I Offer you a garden of unearthly artistic display… some truly ill shit in illustration form.

Tommy LaSorda Baseball

Sega, 1989

You know that it is daytime – the sun is high and bright, throwing all into stark contrast – but you do not know the day. The blurred lines of a baseball stadium form a primordial, half-shaped, Archean terrain in the background… and yet you cannot look at the background. You cannot look at anything but Tommy fucking LaSorda. OR IS IT?

His eyes, lazy and half-closed, fix on you and do not look away. His teeth, jutting from his mouth in an expression halfway between a smile and a predatory sneer, are perfect. Fuck, they are IMMACULATE, like something unused and unspoiled. Something there just for looks. Tommy’s skin bears a striking resemblance to silicon; like the “flesh” of the god-awful robots our postmodern pervert tinkers craft in the human image, Tommy’s flesh is new. You see now that he is not sweating… but you are sweating.

“Play a little catch?” he tips his head ever so slightly as his mouth releases the tinny sound of words. You cannot run. You feel pressure and then blackness engulfs you.

Why not just use a photo? It’s not like there’s any shortage of photographs wherein LaSorda is at least prominently featured, if not the subject of said photograph. I am chalking this one up as an act of psychological warfare, Sega.

Crack Down

also Sega, 1989

Two very greasy and ruddy men stand proudly before the Prince of Evil himself, Satan. They can barely keep it together… in fact, they’ve decided to just push it to the max. The Guy on the right is pooping; don’t say that he’s doing anything else, I won’t believe you. That man is filling his pants with hot sod while he empties his magazine and his under-slung grenade launcher at the same time. Dude on the left has better self-control when it comes to bathroom action, and has settled for filling the air with rounds from his M60. Satan has seen this shit before, and so has his buddy the mouth-breathing orangutan. Besides, just five minutes ago they polished off a fat bowl in the explosion-castle and it’s kicking in T-minus right fucking now.

What the fuck is even supposed to be in the ripoff Stormtrooper’s hands? What is he brandishing? A road flare? My point is that no one knows what they’re doing and clearly no one’s “cracking down” on jack shit.

Mega Man

Capcom, 1987

I wanted to take another look at this. I mean, how can’t we? Eyes red from crying all night, riding high on the power only a man with a gun can know (and also more cocaine than is reasonable), Rock searches the uptown terraces of Purple City for the bomber whose reign of terror has claimed so many lives.

“I’ll find you!” he howls, cranking his little-kid arms back in teeth-grinding rage. “Goddamn it, why can’t I PULL MY RIGHT LEG OVER BY MY LEFT!” No one hears Rock but the colossal palm trees and the God that made him a boy-sized android.

I fucking WISH Mega Man was like this. Like Blade Runner mixed with 10 to Midnight. Scare my shit right out. Show me what real life is like, for great justice.

This one’s bizarre and completely detached from its parent concept, but I love it and I will probably print it out into a 24×36 to put on the wall.

Third World War

Micronet, 1993

There are so many details about this that are haunting. I’m not even sure where to begin. Wait, yes I am. The first thing I reflexively hate about this is the unbridled look of smug elation on both mens’ unthinkable faces. I’m not trying to make a partisan political statement by declaring my hate for Bill Clinton; this image did the mental legwork for me and even if he spent 24 hours a day every day pouring trash bags full of money into orphanages it wouldn’t un-burn this into me. At least you can’t see the raw menace in Saddam’s eyes. Bill is rendered in such a way that, while this is unmistakably him, it is also clearly not him. It is a spirit from the netherworld given flesh, and it thinks this whole thing is funny.

They are both impossibly huge, looming over the cities of Earth as a… what looks like also Earth somehow keeps a tight orbit. Hussein and Wendigo-Bill are the means of Change, the Makers of the Way, everywhere and everywhen. They have made this moment as they want it to be, and you will envy the dead.

Custer’s Revenge

Mystique, 1982

It says “Swedish Erotica” on it but I refuse to accept that this could happen anywhere but America.

George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876), despite his justifiably controversial legacy, was a well-respected cavalry officer who played a pivotal role for the Union in the Civil War. He died at age 36 at the Battle of Little Bighorn – a violent death fit for a man who lived by the sword.

I’d like to be able to show him this shit right now.

Somewhere in the flats of the Vaporwave Desert, a vector-shaded Native American woman struggles against her bonds. It seems that someone has tied her to a gigantic can of spraypaint. Was it Custer?

It probably was. He clunks up in his oversized boots, like a son wearing his father’s shoes to be cute. Looking like some kind of plucked-chicken goblin, Custer makes sure to strike a pose that shows off how his butt is just two large potatoes flecked with beard stubble. DOES HE SHAVE HIS ASS? WHY?

Better wear your gloves, man. Wouldn’t want to touch anything with your hands. Just your… everything else.

Obviously we can get all social justice on this, and we’d be absolutely right to. Unfortunately, the harm’s already done, and I dragged this back out to re-live it. I can apologize, but will that mend what is riven? God no, and it’s compounded by the fact that Custer is TERRIFYING. Naked dress-up Chucky with a boner.

Okay, we’re done. I will review a nice cutesy Japanese game next month. We will recover. I’m sorry and I love you.

Hey, look, we found it!

I put this off until I was ready to be mad about video games on our website again. I suppose now’s a good enough time; I have a minor but very painful sinus infection, it’s making it hard to get good sleep, and the HV/AC ducts in my part of the house are completely out to lunch, leaving me congested, sleep-deprived, in pain, and boiling alive in what equates to a sauna full of antique electronics and D&D books.

Fuck it, let’s slap around Double Dragon 3. While we’re at it, let’s call up its cousin, Battletoads & Double Dragon: the Ultimate Team.

The first two Double Dragon installments, aside from the fact that the arcade versions are virtually alike minus window dressing, kick righteous ass. One of the true milestones in beat-em-up history, the original DD set the pace for a blossoming game-type that became one of video gaming’s staple arrangements – walk, beat the dribbling shit out of anyone who stops you walking, keep walking ,rinse, repeat. On a very much related note, I also have a soft spot in my heart for the ‘Toads, having poured hours and tears into the NES, Genesis, and arcade offerings bearing their name. It’s hard to imagine the Double Dragon franchise shitting the bed, and no one really wants to hate Battletoads. Right?

Double Dragon shit the bed the second it pulled the comforter up towards its neck, and while I don’t hate Battletoads, I do plan on trying, just for their part in this.

Double Dragon III/3: the Rosetta Stone (the Sacred Stones)

East Technology, 1990 (every version but the NES one) Technos Japan, 1991 (The NES one)

“Omae wa mou shindeiru.”
                                                                                       I couldn’t help my self. Look at him.

There are two distinct, separate third installments of Double Dragon III. The arcade game got released first, and it’s actually not dogshit-terrible, which is hilarious to me, considering how Technos didn’t actually make it.They contracted a smaller crew called East Technology to develop the third installment of one of their flagship franchises; the end result is weird as hell and fairly difficult but only slightly inferior to the first two games overall. This version of the game got ported to all the usual suspects in the early home computer lineup, as well as the Sega Genesis. This is how I encountered it. If you’re like me and the first thing you do after turning on the power is screw around in the options menu, you’ll notice something interesting about the Genesis port: You can swap around “starting men” and be some other characters from the “Extra Guys” aspect of the game. I particularly like to be the karate dudes with the 1950s duck-ass hairdos.

Always a lot going on. A lot to take in, and a lot                 to dish out, if you can manage it.

The story begins in the USA, after a quick audiovisual/text intro that tells you Billy and Jimmy are just home from training. They meet a really gross-looking but altruistic soothsayer named Hiruko. She feels like she just found the lock for a key she’s been carrying arpund, and tells them some sketchy shit about finding three Rosetta Stones and then heading to Egypt to fight “the strongest possible foe.” She keeps the same impassive grin on her face as she drops one last nugget – no one’s tried this and lived.

“Just run of the mill stuff, you know. Nothing worth I don’t know, opening you eyes the whole way or not smiling or something.”

So I guess we could call the Lee brothers either adrenaline junkies or oblivion-seeking masochists, because they don’t even wanna settle in and maybe nap off the jetlag before marching out into the streets to resume The Perpetual Fistfight With Destiny and find those fuckin’ stones.

The big positive for me was that I could play as more than one type of dude. I could be a fat Mandarin dude or a big human wall in a tank top. The big con is (and I can’t speak for the arcade one, only the Genesis one) how merciless and goddamned unforgiving the enemy hitboxes and AI are. Right out of the game, you get dogpiled and they run a train on you.

In that regard, and also for having a slightly lazier version of the same plot, the NES version is faithful to its forebear. This one was actually made by Technos, and it comes off as a much more difficult and annoying take on the prior NES installments. I have revisited it more than once, just to see if I was wrong about it being an exercise in futility for those who don’t obsessively play hard games out of a desire to “defeat” them. I’m not bad at video games overall, and there have been times in the NES DD3 that I’ve been unable to even leave the dojo (the first screen of the game) alive.

An iconic scene from the NES version. It’s the Joke Dojo, where you can straight up                                             die seconds into the game. I know it well.

What disappoints me about both is the prohibitive difficulty presented by heaps of enemies who operate with an aggressive swarm mentality. Not to mention, the further you go in the arcade game, the goofier it gets. Ah hell, I’ll spill it: you fight a mummy at the end.

Way to phone it in, East Technology.

Battletoads & Double Dragon: the Ultimate Team

Rare, 1993

Looks promising, right?

The NES version of Battletoads is a pretty stiff tincture to swallow, right? It can be done, but it’s an undertaking, and you’d better have your shit together. You’d better have your shit so well together that it looks like Ikea shit. The Genesis version is just a smoother, sharper take on the original (yes, the console games existed first, in a rare reversal of process) and I appreciate them leaving the meat of it unchanged. The arcade game is a visual masterpiece and, at least for me, way more approachable for a casual hour or two of play.

B&DD may seem on the surface to be a noble, even sublime endeavor; it combines two very hot franchises from that snapshot of gaming history, and on paper they go together like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and crying softly about the abundance of human cruelty in the world (or is that only me).

Well guess what:

Yeop.

I will say the strong points out loud, in a kind tone. First off, the music is solid, right on the level with what Rare had done with other Battletoads shit. Some of it (including the first level theme) is pretty easy-listening for a beat em up. It’s also clear that developing the arcade game gave Rare’s team a taste for visual finery; there’s a ton of detail and some of it (example: character and enemy bios) is intricate. It’s just a shit-show in terms of difficulty and the curve thereof, and it’s just these things mashed together. These two martial artists and these three TMNT pastiches. I won’t even say this one’s as hard as the NES Battletoads, but the enemy cheap-shot and box-in count is always tremendously high. The introductory little space suit people have a move set just about as good as yours, plus they don’t need to constantly guess a safe distance to punch you in the head from.

Okay RetroFiends, I’m done bitching. I’m going to go irrigate my poor sinuses, drink something hot, and settle in with some pseudoephedrine and a good book. I’m not going to drop number ratings on either of these games, both because I hate them like I do and because I know many others love them. I guess I’m not as salty about either one as I suggested up at the top of the article talking shit. I’m just tired, sick, and tired of being sick.

Stay Retro, and stay out of trouble. We’ll meet up again soon.

You really can’t go wrong with some Super Mario action. It’s been clear-as-a-bell true since the poor bastard first dug in his heels and made a giant ape his hammer-bitch. The plucky plumber and his perpetually overshadowed brother Luigi have since stood as the mascots – no, the AMBASSADORS – for Nintendo across the world. When the NES hit our shores in ’85 and we first took a crack at the original Super Mario Brothers, it’s been simpatico.

I can still remember getting my grey box for Christmas in 1990. My supplemental was a starter set of three games: Castlevania III, Contra, and that glorious smiling flying asshole on the cover of Super Mario Brothers 3. I was quickly convinced that SMB3 was the hard-wire shit, and it was.

But I had no idea what was coming. The NES had a big brother, and it had one barn-burner of a Mario game. To quote the late, great Captain Lou Albano: Often imitated, but never duplicated.

Super Mario World hit Western shores (no doubt blasting “Immigrant Song” on a boombox) in the late summer of ’91. I don’t need to sit here and run my trap about this being one of the best games of all time; 20,000,000+ copies sold can’t be wrong. When viewed within its place in time, SMW understandably changed everything, because it was Mario squared. In typical Nintendo R&D fashion, work began as soon as a previous project ended. Shigeru Miyamoto (the man we have to thank for all of this) had come up with the idea of setting a Mario game in a “dinosaur land” back during SMB3’s run, and had even conceptualized Yoshi by then. Though some difficulty was anticipated when it came to tackling a new platform, the team’s trepidation was balanced by the promise of far greater capability – the limits of the NES were a thing of the past, and it was time to make some art.

Yoshi, the original martyr-complex beta-male.

The story of SMW picks up right where the 3^rd NES game left off… or I suppose a little bit afterward. The brothers decide to treat Princess Toadstool to a nice vacation in… you guessed it… fucking Dinosaur Land. Why no, Mario, I don’t expect anything horrible or tragic to happen. Not here on this landmass full of monsters. Needless to say, Her Highness vanishes, and it turns out that 12 pack will have to wait. The boys have a princess to rescue… again. After looking around a little bit, Mario and Luigi find a huge fuckoff dinosaur egg, but thankfully its tenant is friendly. Out pops a goofy, soft-serve little dinosaur named Yoshi, and the first thing he does is complain that some of his kin have also been taken. AND GUESS WHO DID IT?

Turns out, not a single goddamn one of them learned their lesson.

You guessed right.

While the basic concept of SMW is a snug fit with its predecessor,s there’s so much more going on that the comparison must end there. Koopas and Goombas make up a thin sliver of the pie chart when it comes to enemies; you’ll be harangued by dinosaurs, the coolest moles ever, Bullet Bills the size of a goddamn house, lava monsters (my favorite), and huge terrible assholes in ill-fitting football pads. THOSE GUYS. In a shining early example of clever AI and design, Chargin’ Chuck is… well, he’s inventive when it comes to assaulting you at every turn. Mario can spin jump in addition to his normal move set, which is helpful when you need to, oh say, bounce off giant saw blades or body-drill your way through some blocks. Sometimes Yoshi (or one of his color-themed cousins) will show up to give you a hand. Yoshi is pretty useful for two things: eating shit that’s about two hand spans in front of him and taking the fall like a dope when you need some extra air time on a jump. A lot of the same power ups are around, but this time instead of a raccoon suit or any of that shit you just get the sickest cape this side of James Brown’s id. Not only can you get it to behave similarly to the raccoon leaf in SMB3, you can even parachute-glide insane distances with it. Mario and Luigi Die Hard their way through forests, seas, caves, ghost houses (yes, entire houses full of ghosts) and castles to put the hot stop on all of King Koopa’s brats… all the time knowing that Big K is waiting.

SMW has a save function, which is entirely necessary because this game isn’t just some mindless platform jumper. There are some steep challenges, including but not limited to:

• saws everywhere
• entire rooms literally flooded with ghosts who mock the very life in your veins
• an ample amount of secret shit, namely some Star Road levels that get Evel-Kneivel-on-meth intense
• tons of thwomps; is he reproducing, I swear, how do they even have sex
• pissed off triceratops that are apparently named Reznor (BOW DOWN BEFORE THE ONE YOU SERVE)
• I hope you like those jet-black invincible munchy-plants because it turns out they’re like kudzu here
• entire sections of the game world without terra firma, offering you only the aimlessly drifting platforms you’ve come to dread
• the ceiling just falling, not centered on you but you know, fucking everywhere

Obviously the graphics kick the shit out of anything on the NES, with a comparatively rich color depth and other luscious details like parallaxing skies and pleasingly detailed animation. The sound stays neck in neck with the visuals; SMW’s soundtrack is one of those OSTs that I can listen to the “extended” versions of on YouTube and never get tired of. There’s a ton of character in the music, most notably (to me) the underground BGM and the “athletic” music.

Two other aspects of SMW that it should be praised for are its replay value and its overall charm. 8-bit graphics only showed us in so much detail; it turns out that those Italian boys have a lot of character, and so do their friends and foes. The appeal was (and is) universal.

I rate Super Mario World an 8/10. It’s one of the cornerstones of retro gaming, a pivotal point of acceleration for one of the world’s most recognizable and well-loved cultural icons.

Thanks for reading! Stay Retro!

I’m also going to try out a new rating system, a little more in-depth than my usual screed of just rating a game using one lazy star-rating. I will rate individual aspects on their own, and then use these to evaluate the overall picture of the game.

Phantom Fighter

Marionette/Ponycanyon (FCI)

1988 (1990 US)

When I say that they should have just called this game Straight-Up Just Kicking Ghosts in the Fucking Face, I don’t mean to cheapen or degrade it. The activity mentioned in my suggested title is what you end up spending 90% of your time doing, but it actually totally rules. Various reviews before mine have consistently given Phantom Fighter slightly above-average ratings overall, and I’d have to concur with the prevailing opinion here.

This is the game in one image. It’s not even a bad game, though! It’s just… I mean, this is it. This is what you came to town for. You’re doing this. A lot of this.

Apparently based off a 1985 film called Reigen Dōshi in Japan and Mr. Vampire in English, Phantom Fighter places you in the role of a kung fu master who has the special gift of placing his foot right into ghosts and making their trick asses regret being ghosts in the first place. Several villages nearby have been having problems with “kyonshi” (which I think is just a Japanese-ized rendition of the Chinese word “jiangshi,” a type of undead creature commonly described as a hopping vampire) and have petitioned you for help. Since you are a man of virtue and can kick the unliving shit out of undead monsters, the adventure begins.

I gradually cleared out the first village and people kept giving me scrolls. I wasn’t entirely sure what they were for until later I used several of them to learn things called “High Jump” and “Wolf Move.” Apparently, you expand your repertoire of sick techniques by studying with a master, and the scrolls are currency. I also had to collect some “jades” that unlock a seal so I could kick something else’s ass (a boss ghost who left Alucard-style movement trails behind him).

He thinks he’s got tricks. His actual trick is hitting really fucking hard despite moving in slow motion. 

There’s not a ton of variance in the enemy except for how powerful they are, but fighting the kyonshi is fun once you get the timing and spacing down. It’s nice that the items and upgrades don’t overwhelm the game, but I wish things progressed faster on that end… the sprawl seems a little unrewarding, especially early on when you could struggle a bit.

Gameplay 7/10 (it’s fun to beat the shit out of Wuxia vampires)

Audio 8/10 (pretty good OST, especially the combat music)

Graphics 6/10 (good for NES type stuff)

Theme 8/10 (I’m a sucker for the M.A./horror blend)

Big Picture: 7/10 (A bit underrated!)

The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants

Imagineering/Arc Developments/Acclaim

1991

This is a polarizing title in the NES library. A lot of players love it because it’s 1) the first Simpsons video game 2) brutally “challenging.” Another camp despises it because it’s 1) banked completely on its licensing 2) fucking stupid hard, not to mention boring.

I played it for about 20 minutes and fell into the second category.

Bart has all the maneuverability of an overripe fruit someone dropped on a hot day. He lopes and bumbles through a perpetually overactive environment as he tries to turn purple objects red. Purple objects are apparently one crucial ingredient necessary for the space mutants (the only well-rendered things in the game) need for some kind of devastating weapon.

Well-drawn, but yeah, they’re doing this. I mean, I know The Simpsons is goofy and silly. But this is the nadir, I think.

You can get on a skateboard, which helps you get hurt more and faster. You also pick up various implements that I guess are supposed to help you, but really don’t unless they are oriented toward a specific puzzle solution. Toy stores and tool stores sell them to you, and you buy them using mystery money that just tumbles out of random shit. You’re able to stand on things that make no sense and can’t stand on surfaces that make perfect sense. This game is an affront to the platform genre, AND I HOPE YOU LIKE THE SIMPSONS THEME BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT PLAYS OVER AND OVER AND OVER, AN 8 BIT VERSION OF THE SIMPSONS THEME.

I’m standing on a non-surface, the point where a surface terminates and becomes a nearly sheer vertical edge. Non-Euclidean geometry? Demoniac defiance of physics? Both equally likely.

I am unashamed to admit that I did not finish the first level. I’m sure if I asked the Pope he’d give me an indulgence on that one. No sane or virtuous human being would willingly smash themselves into this hellmouth more than once.

Gameplay 2/10 (Bart needs to go see a middle ear doctor or be evaluated for head trauma)

Audio 1/10 (fuck you)

Graphics 5/10 (it has moments, and I can’t fault it on authenticity either)

Theme 4/10 (eh, I think they just knew we’d buy a Simpsons game)

Big Picture: 2/10 (Skip it. If you’re into it, we’ll have to agree to disagree, and also agree that I worry about your well-being.)

Holy Diver

Irem Corp.

1989

Let me jump right on the tiger, to quote the Man Himself… the Wikipedia article claims there is no relationship between this game and the Ronnie James Dio album.

Nah, bruh… I’m sorry… that’s motherfucking DIO.

Here’s my interpretation of this awesome (and sadly non-export) platform game: You play as Ronnie James Dio, champion of humanity and righteous heavy metal. You murder every evil thing you find with outrageous magic and basically nothing can stop you. That’s all the story I need, man. I am an unironic and unashamed fan of all things Dio. Plug me in. It’s time to rock.

“Between the velvet lies / there’s a truth that’s hard as steel / the vision never dies / life’s a neverending wheel”

This game is actually pretty good. It’s a solid blaster-platformer, with a reasonable difficulty curve and a good sense of accomplishment. As you utterly destroy more and more of the wicked demonic creatures, you find power-ups and new spells that make you even more undeniably rad. I was throwing several different kinds of magic into the face of evil and changing forms by the time I needed to stop and write this article.

A lot of the imagery makes it completely clear that this game is directly inspired by Dio and Dio-era Sabbath. I mean, stylized crosses with skulls that look like they could come right off of an early-80s Sabbath album cover? Come on. In other ways, the game reminds me visually of another Japanese game, Getsu Fuuma Den, except more crisp and polished. If I could say anything negative about this game, it’s that I wish it had a little more variety and depth when it came to the magic and power Dio could wield against the forces of evil. He is, after all, master of the fucking moon. The audio is also a bit below standard for a game where you play as Dio.

It’s the sign of the southern cross / Fade away, fade away / Break the crystal ball / Fade away, fade away / I can’t accept it anymore

And you are playing as Dio. We’re not gonna screw around on that point. That is exactly what is up in this game.

Gameplay 7/10 (it’s not absolutely perfect but it’s a lot of fun)

Audio 5/10 (sadly, this part does not rock like Dio, but I can live with it, it’s not awful)

Graphics 8/10 (heavy metal!!!)

Theme 10/10 (RONNIE JAMES DIO IS DESTROYING DEMONS WITH WIZARD POWERS.)

Big Picture: 8/10 (I want to send away for a FC cart of this, shadowbox-frame it, and put it on my wall. It is a fucking cool piece of retro VG history.)

Thanks for reading, and I’ll fill another suspicious paper bag with games real soon!

“You are the strongest chain / and you’re not just some reflection / so never hide again”

The 1990 film Total Recall is typical of that era’s box office hits in several ways: lots and lots of dollars were poured into it; it featured guns, tits, and gross stuff prominently; Ronny Cox played a bad guy we were ready to hate; and the protagonist was played by none other than the beloved Arnold himself. Based off a Philip K. Dick story, the plot centers around a man in 2084 who discovers his memories may be fake, and that his strange dreams my be his real memories. He quickly finds out that certain parties have a strong vested interest in him staying oblivious… permanently, if need be.

A lot of reviewers out there like to squat down over the NES adaptation of Total Recall and push as hard as they can. I try not to cave in to destructive impulses, and I also try to maintain an independent view on a lot of these titles… but they’re somewhat justified in this case. Interplay… well, Interplay made a video game. They produced a piece of programming that we can loosely label as a video game, and Acclaim released it. We’ll examine things from there and see where we end up.

The game starts rather abruptly, as you find yourself on the city streets with people immediately shooting at you from moving cars. As you tun forward, you’ve got men popping up out of trash cans to shoot at you and little men who look like someone glued a crepe beard on a child pulling you into rat-infested alleyways. It’s all very cartoonish. To be fair, I don’t feel terribly immersed in the Total Recall vibe. Because there isn’t one.

This is some Tom & Jerry shit right here. 

Remember in the movie when Quaid’s fellow construction workers attack him and he just fucking DESTROYS them with these out-of-nowhere Spetznatz combat skills? Well, good news: in the NES game, his punch carries the force of a wet paper bag. You eventually make it past more Looney Tunes shit and into your apartment, where Sharon Stone also takes fifty punches/bullets to lay out. THE PLOT THICKENS…

Quaid looks understandably incredulous. It may be because someone who looks like him is asking him to wrap a towel around his head. It may also be some fourth-wall shit. “Are you seeing this?”

There are attempts throughout to signal really hard that his game is based off the movie, but they all come off as really heavy-handed, especially since the bulk of the game is utter nonsense. The labyrinthine cement factory contains nearly invulnerable 3 foot tall hobos and disappointing platformer tropes, and the awful music restarts on every new screen. Things get a little cooler on Mars, where you get a little Micro Machines style car stage mixed in, but even that’s unwieldy and seems like just another afterthought.

WHEEEEEE!!!

The controls, coupled with Quaid’s Barney Rubble clumsiness, are just plain sub-par. Considering you are constantly in imminent danger requiring quick action to avoid, you’d better just be ready to take punishment. You certainly won’t be dodging a great deal of it. Apparently in 2084 they have also rendered even the shittiest excuses for humanity into berserk fighting machines who feel no pain, because you have to punch the shit out of even child-sized foes to get them to relent. Even sinking bullet after bullet into your fake wife’s gut after she drops her gun doesn’t seem to faze her overmuch.

I like how the couch and chair just look like they were one piece of something and then they were cut like a birthday cake.

The sound and music will drive you crazy unless you’re good at just zoning that kind of thing out. The soundtrack goes right along with the action: some kind of cartoon they show in Hell. The graphics I can’t rag on too bad; they sort of have that drab-yet-fruity thing going on that you see in a lot of Sunsoft games, maybe not as detailed. The sprites are garbage, but that almost seems to fit. I can’t take this game seriously, so why should Interplay have?

Okay, this was kind of cool. They did this right. One out of ten ain’t bad… nah, except it is.

I don’t know a lot of the history about this game’s development, but it seems like it was rushed and poorly planned. For an adaptation from another medium, it is utter crap, and even on its own, Total Recall isn’t a very good game. It’s kind of funny to look at, but playing it is tedious and you’ll want to stop almost immediately unless you’re the kind of person who likes putting out cigars on your own face while watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. I give this one 4/10, and I’m being generous because I got a laugh out of it.

Play Retro – Stay Retro

It’s time for us to cross the streams, true believers.

There’s a lot of talk about comics here on NRW, and rightly so. Joey has his own awesome strand of articles wherein he sheds light on the old and exposes us to the retro-new, and we love it, because Joey is to the medium of comics what I am to sitting on my ass in front of a CRT monitor with a controller in my hand: he’s a passionate expert on the subject. It’s worth diving into; when done well, the comic book or graphic novel is an art form capable of deftly transporting the reader to new worlds – some like our own, and some realities away from it.

What can’t be overlooked is how the comic book multiverse has been thrust into the colored-light beams and binary rows of the VG grinder time and time again in the plodding quest to juice franchises for more revenue. Here’s the dolorous stroke, folks: We’re going to take a look at how they’ve done this with one of Marvel’s undisputed icons, their bread-and-butter household name… Spider-Man. Peter Parker, the world’s most beloved wise-cracking web slinger, has been dipped in silicon and code frequently throughout video gaming’s history, with results that I will be kind and describe as “varied.”

I mean, he’s an icon. Some comics fans think he’s a pussy. Honestly, I do too. I’m more of a Punisher guy. No one can deny, however, that Peter Parker is one of the most luminous stars in comic book history. (Artwork by Michael Golden)

Everyone’s pretty familiar with Spidey’s origins and powers. He got bit by a radioactive spider, got some powers, lost his uncle to crime, and got serious about cleaning up the Big Apple (and sometimes beyond). The wall-crawler has made tons of friends and enemies since his appearance in the 60s, from goblins to murderous hunters to symbiotic aliens that abandoned him and sought out his unstable and disgruntled colleagues for revenge (Venom is the man!) Pete’s powers, coupled with his nifty web-shooting devices, make for the possibility of great dynamic gameplay if translated creatively into digital form. Right?

Ah, shit, kids… let’s just do this. I’m not gonna look at every game, but we’ll examine the prominent titles that most of us may have seen or played.

Spider-Man (1982)

Platform: Atari 2600

Culprits: Parker Brothers/Atari

Eh. It’s not great, but everything looked like this in 1982. At least we can tell which one’s Spider-Man.

You’ll probably expect me to be cruel here, because I do lean on the side of bastardry when it comes to the 2600. I mean… eh. Let’s stay in context… this isn’t bad for a 2600 game. Considering the limits of the system graphics- and sound-wise, you get a good representation of the key elements. Gameplay consists of getting up on top of the building and kicking Green Goblin’s ass, which to be fair, ate up a lot of Peter’s logged superhero hours in the 70s/80s either together or as separate activities. Using your web shooters is a little tedious, but once you’ve got the hang of how to do it in a rhythm and pull yourself up, it’s pretty fun. I suppose my only knock on this one is that it’s not enough to do. But then, not every 2600 game can be Burgertime and crush your soul with raw chaos.

The Amazing Spider-Man (1990)

Platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, PC Compatibles

Culprits: Oxford Digital/Paragon Software

Let me start off with something nice before I put my hands under the table and fucking lift. The Amiga has always stood out for its time as a system capable of audiovisual richness, and this game really turns her out. The ST and PC versions are decent in that regard too, although the audio quality varies.

“Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!”  I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

Now, let’s talk about HOW they chose to turn her out. The controls are pretty fucking far from intuitive; while I expect translating Spider-Man’s iconic means of locomotion to be a challenge for a game developer, this shit is just abyss you’ll keep falling into until you start being meticulously careful… which isn’t prudent in 90% of the situations you’ll be navigating. Move fast? Move really carefully? The answer to both is usually no. Again, I can’t knock the graphics, but there’s something inherently wrong about this image, seen during the intro. Something that reminds me of “non-Euclidean shapes,” “lightless gulfs across time and space,” and “red-haired woman being forcibly abducted by a fishbowl-headed mannequin.” Poor Mary Jane.

somebodys_fetish.jpg

Almost as bizarre is the choice to represent your life bar as a picture of Spider-Man that turns skeletal from the feet upward as you move closer to death.

He looks a little embarrassed. I don’t blame him.

Last gripe: the game is, at least to me, unreasonably goddamn long considering the tedium it is to play. You can watch a longplay here, and be sure to listen to the entire intro music, or at least sit through it for as long as you can before reaching for that little red track-bar to skip through it and save your sanity.

Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six (1992)

Platforms: NES, Game Gear, Master System

Culprits: LJN (OF COURSE), Flying Edge, Bits Studios

This game is mercifully short, but still feels like being hurled into a black hole and somehow kept alive to slowly lose one’s mind via time dilation. Spider-Man, despite being fully human height, has the same general proportions as Wee Man from Jackass. His ability to leap through the air is admirable, and the controls aren’t too bad… until you try to do any of the shit Spider-Man is known for doing in terms of movement. The graphics are candy-colored palettes of pure hell wherein men are depicted universally as shoeless mongoloids and no light seems to penetrate anything (despite the garish coloration of everything).

It’s like Willy Wonka took a massive shit all over everything, and really wasn’t feeling well when he did. I bumble forth, capable of great feats of agility but barely able to keep my goose neck from dropping my pumpkin head onto my barrel chest. As Spider-Man, I am the monster, and I belong here.

A small handful of farty, tooty pieces of music cycle as you penetrate deeper into the Sinister Six’s criminal kingdom, presenting a strange yet totally-LJN mix of jazzy swing and “I ate so many tabs I can’t even tell what genre this is.” The drums punch at the listener’s mind, almost as if they are intended to pummel you into accepting the rest of this musical affront as tolerable. It’s like a rave in a Civil War graveyard, and someone invited Dizzy Gillespie. Actually, fuck that… that’d rule. This doesn’t.

Again, I can’t flush this game completely; it’s a decent effort overall, but LJN had a tendency (with a scant few exceptions) to attach its name to something and then pile drive it into the floor until no amount of reconstructive surgery could fix it.

Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage (1994)

Platforms: Genesis. SNES

Culprits: LJN, Acclaim, Software Creations

We’re ending on a positive note. We have to. We owe it to ourselves.

I really liked the Maximum Carnage story arc in the comics. It’s held high by some and shit on by others, but there’s something about a villain so terrifying that two bitter enemies (not to mention a wild cross section of Marvel’s 90s line-up) combined forces to defeat him as he rampaged across New York with his own wrecking crew. I love big events, and I LOVE villains. And Carnage… well, he’s one burning hell of a villain.

Really, if anyone deserves this shit, it’s JJ. 

This effort did decent justice to the source material. I’ll keep this simple and just tick off some pros and cons.

PROS

-Venom is a playable character

-Morbius shows up, along with Deathlok, Black Cat, Iron Fist, and a few other underrated Marvel good guys

-it’s a beat-em-up, and not a bad one, either

-comic book style cut scenes, and they’re not done poorly

–pretty damn good music

-LJN didn’t set this one on fire and stand back playing pocket pool while it burned to slag

Really cool audio-visual presentation all around. It keeps true to the comic feel without burning that candle at both ends with a welding torch.

CONS

-The music did not sound as good in the Genesis version

-This game is also long; why the hell does Spider-Man mean “long fucking game” almost uniformly to game designers

-It’s incredibly unfair to put bad-ass characters like Black Cat, Iron Fist and Morbius in here and not have them as full-on playables

-I feel like a lot of the villains get undersold in terms of their powers and badass-ness

-Still, to make an understatement, a bit fucking cumbersome to do the web slinging thing, although it must be acknowledged that it’s better in this than in any predecessor

Overall, Maximum Carnage is fun as hell. I owned the Genesis cart as a kid and got a lot of replay value out of it. It’s a net win due to presentation and the choice of formatting it as a beat-em-up, which makes it approachable on a level far beyond its ancestors in Spidey’s video game library.

That brings us to 1994, folks, so I guess I’ll put the brakes on it here. Thanks for reading, and before I go, I suppose I owe you some number ratings on these hunks of pop media history.

Atari 2600: 6/10

Amiga: 5/10

NES: 3/10

Genesis/SNES: 7/10

See you at the end of the month, RetroFans! Excelsior!!!

For the hundredth time, I’ll repeat myself: I am deeply, deeply into the fantasy shit. In particular, I am really into anything that even remotely emulates Dungeons & Dragons. There’s just something about a band of adventurers descending into caverns, ruins, and other dangerous places to hunt for loot or die trying… it’s the stuff legends are made of. Well, legends or bloodbaths, I guess. Either way… *puts on dumb helmet and picks up ridiculously huge axe* count my ass IN.

I mean, how the fuck does this not scream “awesome?” (This is the box art by the way, by Boris Vallejo, one of the inheritors of Frazetta’s legacy.)

in 1990, the whole concept was still pretty hot in popular culture, at least hot enough to try and sell some NES cartridges. Interplay strapped on its gear and lit its torch to bring us Swords and Serpents, a game that takes the general premise of D&D (as well as some of its terminology) and crunches it down ever-so-gently so it can be presented in an 8 bit format. There’s a lot to like about this game, but there’s plenty I wish were different as well. It’s a visually beautiful and carefully authentic dungeon-crawl that stays very true to formula, but it’s still got some holes in it.

NOTE: I would like to stress that this game bears no relation to the identically titled Intellivision game, and at no time am I talking about that game. In fact, I have had almost no exposure to the Intellivision, except I know a He-Man game came out for it and I’m forever pissed that Mattel was so exclusive with its licensing back then. But that’s an axe we can grind some other day…

The game starts up and you’re presented with the choice to make your own group of heroes or use the default one. Do what you will, but the default one’s really not bad and choosing it saves you a little time diddling around. You’ll want the same basic setup anyway: two characters who can beat the shit out of monsters by way of weapons (warrior and thief, really just two different styles of murder), and two magic-using people (who can both do some hurting and some healing). Minor details don’t factor in. Besides, you’re probably just going to see them all die.

AKA: Who you tryin’ to send to the grave today?

Let’s talk about that… palette swaps and all, Swords and Serpents has a surprising array of monsters who are more than happy to mechanically separate you like they worked at the Tyson plant and you were chicken meant for dog food. Skeletons, spiders the size of tanks, wandering asshole wizards… I’ve provided as much of a visual bestiary as I felt I could without just making this article one big gallery of scary shit. The lavish and horrid detail in which some of these creatures are rendered not only impresses me (since 8 bit graphics do tend to constrain more than release an artist’s details) but also provides a bit of a visceral shock when some of them crop up.

As you can see, plenty of these screenshots show (by way of the convenient bar graphs representing the party’s life/magic meters) my bold adventurers getting their asses handed to them by undead, mutant bats, trolls with switchblades, and whatever the hell that ghastly sneering thing is on the bottom middle.

However, the first thing you encounter is an old lunatic with pretty useless information.

“Adventure, or, you know, getting your buttholes destroyed by trolls… destiny is a tricky thing. Now get in there, and best of luck to you!”

Once he leaves you alone, you’re free to wander and find your way into certain goddamn death. I found that biding my time and carefully picking battles weighed in my group’s favor (and fleeing like a fucking coward when outmatched) was a capital strategy early on. I was actually able to get fairly far in the game on my first go, and not just because I’m so intimately familiar with dungeon-crawling that it hurts. You also want to keep everyone as healthy as you can with your magicians’ healing spells, because… well, there’s something in RPGs called action-economy, and you don’t want to be wasting time DURING a fight casting a spell you could have cast BEFORE it… but you’ll still have to do that plenty anyway. Division of labor is the rule of the day… have your whackers whack and your healers heal. To reiterate… YOU MAY STILL JUST GET WIPED. The dungeon, she does not forgive, nor is her kiss a gentle one.

The axe man is so pretty… so, so pretty… but don’t be fooled.

You’re able to go into characters’ inventories and access their spellbooks fairly easily, and the menus aren’t clumsy or counter-intuitive like can happen so often in this genre of video games. The only thing that bothers me from an aesthetic standpoint is that there is no “you.” That is to say, the adventuring party is not represented at all, really; Swords and Serpents shows you only the first-person and top-down representations of the space you’re invading… and anything that’s trying to murder you.

Flight. Listed below and very separately, so you know it’s for running away like a bitch.

The end goal is to make it down to the titular Serpent, who is every bit as doleful and horrible as some of the other monsters. He is also capable of constantly, FREQUENTLY attacking without much delay or space between, so you’d better have a plan going in and be buff enough to handle this shit. I never made it anywhere near this far but the playthrough I saw showed me the default strategy: dump everything destructive you have on the Serpent while doing your damnedest to keep everyone not-dead.

I mean for starters, he’s not thrilled you just invited yourself in. Can you tell by his horrible fucking face and soul-destroying gaze?

The music is pretty kickin’. It’s nothing worth gushing over for too long, but the tunes do get stuck in your head. It’s good RPG music. It fits really well and is probably the best part next to the grotesquely awesome monster graphics.

I’m going to be cruel on Swords and Serpents and give it 6/10. It’s visually impressive where Interplay chose to pour that magic into it, but it lacks depth in terms of immersion and really can get tedious after too long. It’s a game you definitely can’t play for long spans, but it’s fun if you frequently save and take breaks. It’s a worthwhile entry into the NES’s RPG library, and worth a look if you’ve never played.

That’s all for this one, folks. See you at the end of the month for more!

In cultural terms, and in the narrower scope of console gaming, the early 1990s represented both change and stagnation. We can’t fault the entirety of this era, nor can we fully embrace it… the 1990s are what I often see as the awkward “teen years” of contemporary pop culture. There was an open, airy sense of freedom, but since different aspects of our world move at such varying paces, a great deal of ideas fell onto the scene half-baked or far too early… either “ahead of their time” or just “unbelievably fucking stupid.”

In this Grab Bag, I’m examining three of the console/arcade titles from this wild and woolly era, the soft-lens period of new Coke, MC Hammer, and the undaunted pursuit of something – anything – consumers would buy.

“I saw a Kabuki Quantum Fighter drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s… and his hair was perfect.”

Kabuki: Quantum Fighter

HAL/Human Entertainment, 1990

I’m about to tear this shit up, so if you’re one of the surprising number of people who like it, I apologize in advance if you find my opinion objectionable.

The premise is ridiculous, but that’s not even the bad part. You play as a 25-year-old colonel (yeah, you really moved and shook your way through the ranks I guess) who has uploaded his mind into a defense computer to defeat a malevolent program intent on destroying it. Apparently, computer code (in its pseudo-magical 1990s form) is able to sense your ancestry and bloodline, so the colonel spawns inside the system as a kabuki actor.

“Just add what you think looks like computery stuff. Just… I don’t know, just type some shit. Slap the keyboard around. They’ll all be admiring his bangs anyway.”

Let’s leave that aspect of the game alone… it’ll be fine over there, and I don’t think it’ll hurt anybody. Odd premises are nothing new to Japanese-developed games. In fact, we’ve come to love them. I know I do.

What’s horrible are the controls and gameplay elements. My main gripe about this piece of shit is how they decided to combine awkward movement-based challenges with incredibly annoying enemy behavior. The game’s not hard in a way I can respect… it’s hard in a way that possibly communicates spite towards the consumer. Do you like jumping puzzles? You know, the kind that either require you to start all over from the beginning or just gravely injure you? You’ll encounter those regularly in Kabuki: Quantum Fighter, and lots of them will involve a brand of bullshit jungle gym that requires laser-precise control manipulation to do right. This would be fine if the overall controls weren’t staggering-drunk clumsy. I guess I should add that your crouching attack, which you’ll find yourself instinctively wanting to use, is about as useful as Air Duster to a man drowning in a river. Its reach is nil, its delay is ridiculous, and you WILL be hit by what you’re trying to hit. That will be the end result. Get used to that.

Did you like the monkey bars when you were a kid? Do you also like doing things over and over because you screwed up the D-Pad timing by like 1 millisecond? Have I got the game for you. Buckle up, pardner.

I’m done being Mr. Shits about Kabuki: Quantum Fighter. Other than what I mention above, the game isn’t that bad. The graphics are really stylish and the audio is equally well-crafted. In the main, I’d say try this one out if you like hurting yourself but your insurance has stopped covering the incidents where you shake hands with red-hot curling irons.

If it weren’t for all the colorful visuals, this game would actually be grim as fuck. I guess they thought they were doing us a favor.

Phantasm/Avenging Spirit

C.P. Brain/Jaleco, 1991

Okay, here’s another bizarre premise, but it starts off with an all-too-familiar twist. You play as a young man whose girlfriend was kidnapped during… your murder. Fortunately, her dad “researches ghost energy,” so he’s given you a chance to rescue her and stop the mysterious criminal group who have taken her. You can do this by possessing the bodies of the living and using their abilities to fight your way to the hideout.

“This is my ghost smock, so I don’t get ghost-shit all over me. Don’t touch me.”

I’ll admit that I started off with a dubious feeling about this one, but damned if it isn’t easily one of the most underrated titles of the era. This is essentially an action platformer where you can pluck your character from among the array of enemies at will. You can play as gunmen, super-girls, floating mystics, and even dragon-men.

Avenging Spirit (called Phantasm in Japan, not to be confused with the cult horror film with the flying murder balls) packs a considerable challenge, but for once the gamer is given some genuinely formidable tools to tackle it with. There are areas in some stages where you need to be able to do a certain thing to bypass an obstacle or defeat a boss, and all you need to do is watch what your foes are doing… and borrow their bodies.

A dragon-man is you. If you want it to be.

The American and Japanese Game Boy box art. Needless to say, BIG difference in tone. They know how to sell to their audience.

Avenging Spirit is ahead of the curve with its multiple endings as well; there’s three keys in the game, and if you find all three, you can rescue the girl to get the good ending. If not, you have to fight the syndicate kingpin yourself and she dies when the hideout explodes. Why don’t you just get the good ending, huh, Boo Berry?

The game was originally developed and released for the arcade, but a Game Boy version was released as well, and it holds up like a champ as far as GB ports go. Very little is lost except the obvious hit to graphical depth.

Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun

Westwood Studios/SSI, 1992

Yeah. I snuck some D&D in here. You know I get away with that as often as possible.

Here’s the reason this is a notable game: 1992 was during the onset of TSR’s steep decline (TSR being the company that originally owned/published D&D products). In the mid 1990s, Random House and Wizards of the Coast (the current owners of the franchise) would both pick the hobby apart and raise it from near death, but 1992 was smack in the middle of a slew of intra-company problems for TSR that don’t fit into the scope of this article. Nonetheless, here we see one of the most playable attempts at translating D&D to an early-gen console. Perhaps it was SSI working alongside Westwood Studios (who had also churned out a pretty decent Nightmare on Elm Street game for computers) instead of on its own that made the difference. SSI had always met a certain standard of overall quality, but they had struggled before with porting their games from DOS, etc. to things like the NES. Perhaps it was because the Genesis kicks so much ass? That’s up for debate, and forgive me if I don’t dive into that blood-pool today.

In the old school rules set, “elf,” “halfling,” etc. were their own character classes. As in, you weren’t an elf wizard, you were just an elf, and it was assumed that all elves were this weird hybrid of fighter and wizard. Halflings were just mostly useless. Not much has changed.

Warriors of the Eternal Sun is set in the Hollow World D&D setting, part of the “original” D&D setting known as Mystara. The game’s mechanic works closely off of the D&D “BECMI” pen-and-paper rule set, from combat to spells to exploring the wilderness. It’s not unusual for RPGs of this style to come off as dry or unapproachable, but the game handles well and is surprisingly accessible. Menus are easily navigable, fighting the monsters is exciting (although it is still frustrating when you party-wipe against lizard people or a dragon), and the graphics far outweigh previous attempts at this formula by the parties involved. Sound and music are very good too, but nothing in that department is truly out-of-this-world.

Lady, I couldn’t agree more.

In closing, I realize this article doesn’t even begin to cover everything from the early 90s that deserves to be covered, and I may in fact revisit this in a future Grab Bag or other article. Until then, pop in that New Kids on the Block CD and make sure you put your shoulder pads in.

FINAL VERDICT:

KABUKI: QUANTUM FIGHTER – 5/10

AVENGING SPIRIT – 8/10

D&D: WARRIORS OF THE ETERNAL SUN – 7/10

Naxat Soft (which eventually became known as Kaga Create before becoming defunct in 2015) was a big swingin’ tent pole in the late 1980s in Japan. During this time, they would earn a reputation for producing some insane titles, many of which were made for Hudson’s PC Engine. Many of you will remember my rant earlier this year about how cool that console was… the one we came to know as the Turbo Grafx 16. You may even remember my prominent mention of a pair of completely bonkers pinball sims…

The first to hit shelves was Alien Crush, Developed by Naxat and Compile in 1988 and released for the PC Engine. The game is fairly simple and straightforward; you’re playing pinball. The interesting twist is that you’re playing pinball inside some kind of bio-mechanical alien amalgam, simultaneously trying to defeat it. The main pinball area is divided into two screens, and when your ball goes from one to another the screen will go blank for a moment. This can be disorienting, but I quickly got used to it. There are also a handful of bonus screens, which you access by getting your ball to land certain places. You can “beat” Alien Crush, but it takes a while… longer than I have patience for. It’s still a lot of fun to just play it like a regular pinball game though, and see how high you can get your score.

A couple of the bonus stages seem more “Spooky cartoon haunted house” themed, but what the hell. We’re playin’ pinball here, not putting on a Hollywood production.

Two years later, Naxat followed up with Devil Crash (Devil’s Crush outside of Japan) for the same system. This pinball epic was themed much differently, and is often considered the more memorable because of it; Devil’s Crush features prominent and unabashed occult/horror imagery. To phrase that differently, Devil’s Crush is metal as hell. A few improvements were made to the concept visually and play-wise, most notably that the main play area’s three divisions scroll as one image when your ball moves through them. There are also many more things to do; plenty of little monster men to smash, just as many (if not more) bonus screens to find, and a woman’s face that gradually wakes up and turns into a horrid reptilian monster as you drop into certain point-spots.

Oh shit, here we go!!!

The picture of elegance, charm, and sophistication.

As evidenced by any screenshot or gameplay video you watch, these games have amazing graphics for the time. The music for both is astounding, and has in fact been reproduced in non-VG format. I particularly like the track “Lunar Eclipse” from Alien Crush, as well as its main title theme, and I consider Devil’s Crush‘s main table theme to be the best music out of the two games.

Devil Crash was released for the Mega Drive and Genesis; its title in America was changed to Dragon’s Fury, since our Protestant sensibilities have for so long found horrible fire-breathing dragons far more tolerable than old Scratch. A sequel to that game, Dragon’s Revenge, was produced for the MD/Genesis in 1993, but went largely ignored for no good reason. It is a passable game, but a far cry from these originals.

“Yeah, the American MD/Genesis port? I don’t care. Farm it out to those guys who used to be Atari before Atari shit the bed with the lights on…. WHAT? They’re calling it Dragon’s Fury? Hahahaha, those Americans are vanilla as hell. The check cleared though, right?”

I gladly grant both of these titles a 9 out of 10. Visual/virtual pinball is something you see weave its way in and out of popularity through the time period, with games like Crue Ball and even Sonic Spinball; I feel that the Crush Pinball pair of titles loom over all as the sometimes unsung rulers of the roost.

Keep your eyes peeled for shrieks & creaks & some other spooky shit (all retro VG related, of course) as we wrap up September and get into September’s cooler cousin, October!!!

BONUS: If you read this far, here’s a treat! Here’s me rocking at Alien Crush and here’s me sucking ass at Devil Crash.

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As a kid, I faded in and out of the comic book thing. Storylines changed rapidly, and it always seemed like they were in the middle of one when I’d jump back in. I always liked the characters, however, especially the really colorful (and powerful) entities in Marvel’s “cosmic” setting. One of the titles I often checked in with was Fantastic Four, and they were always out in space dealing with malevolent living planets or matter-consuming mega-giants bent on subjugating Earth. The FF had some allies out there too, and one of the more interesting ones to me was Norrin Radd, the Silver Surfer.

Silver Surfer had his own comic book, but would show up elsewhere pretty regularly. He became the herald of Galactus to save his lover’s life when his world was claimed by Galactus, then turned on the planet-gobbling demigod when the crosshairs were set on Earth. Obviously there’s tons more that could be said, but I’m not an expert. I know he holds the Power Cosmic, which makes him sort of like a shiny version of DC’s Superman with a cool surfboard. He’s a cosmic badass, is the point, and he belongs out there in space where things get heavy constantly.

I mean, who the hell wants to work for this guy? Flies up on his Rascal scooter with planet all over his face and yells at you to fly through the broken ferris wheel over and over. this is not what I signed up for, Galactus.

Silver Surfer got his own NES game in 1990, and it’s a divisive subject among retro gaming fans. Some of them think it does the character no justice, not to even mention its incredible difficulty. There are many who do like it, including myself, but even I won’t say it’s a classic. What I will say is that it has its merits.

“OKAY, WE’RE DONE SCREWING AROUND OUT HERE, GO GET THAT DEVICE FOR ME. I COULD PROBABLY DO IT MYSELF AS ONE OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE’S MOST POTENT BEINGS, BUT YOU… YOU DO IT.”

The game plays like a shoot-em-up more than anything else. In fact, that’s pretty much what it is, alternating from side-scrolling to top-down depending on the stage you’re in but maintaining the same formula regardless. The story is pretty stock and simple: you, the Surfer, have been summoned by Galactus to retrieve some kind of Cosmic Device to combat the intrusion of the Magick Realm upon reality. Of course, the device is in pieces, each one held by a different villain somewhere in space. You get to choose which order you do the levels in, kind of like Mega Man. Finishing each stage involves avoiding some pretty heinous obstacles while shooting enemies with silver pellets. You can collect little spheres that act as an extra shooter for you, so you’re firing two or three pellets at once. You can also get extra bombs, which are helpful since they clear the screen. Anyone familiar with the shmup genre will tell you that clearing the screen is helpful, since a common tactic for ramping up difficulty is to cram it full of things trying to kill you all at once. And trust me, there’s plenty of that going on. For a guy with the Power Cosmic, Silver Surfer sure has a lot of cosmic things willing and able to murder him at a moment’s notice in this game.

From the gruesome to the weird, mundane or cosmic, you can’t say the game doesn’t at least LOOK cool.

I’ll be honest, the only boss character I recognize in the regular stages is Mephisto, because he’s basically Marvel Comics’ Satan. I never heard of the other ones before, but they check out. The boss of the Magik Realm is pretty clearly Mr. Sinister, a villain who apparently later downgraded to picking on the X-Men. None of the bosses are terribly hard, but getting to them is. In typical shoot-em-up fashion, you often find your attention divided evenly between clearing a path with your weapons and avoiding frequent pile-ups that can lead to instant death. There’s a lot of narrow dodging, and having those extra sphere-things to provide you a wider swathe is crucial to survival. Dying once means you have to build your arsenal back up from scratch, and it can be frustrating.

So frustrating, in fact, that this is the “you lost a life” screen. It’s just him crying. 100% appropriate.

The graphics are pretty good, and in fact there’s a lot of background visuals that are praiseworthy in their detail and effect. The music, though, is what this game is held high for (when it’s held high at all). Composed by Tim and Geoff Follin, the score is a thrilling combination of breakneck prog-rock goodness and flowing melody. In an era when Konami and Sunsoft were using proprietary cartridge-mounted add-ons to augment the NES’s sound suite, this soundtrack gets tons of bump and spank out of what’s already there. I highly encourage you to take a listen!

I’m going to rate this game differently than others; I’m giving Silver Surfer as a whole 6/10, but its music gets a 10/10. The game itself is a decent addition to the shooter genre that I feel gets a bum rap, but I will admit that it’s a tad on the ridiculous side. What really saves it is the soundtrack, which is mind-blowing.

See you at the end of the month, folks!

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