The book was banned in Boston in 1962 due to obscenity (notably child murder and acts of pedophilia), making it among the last works to be banned in that city, but that decision was reversed in 1966 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. It was also banned in Los Angeles and several European publishers were harassed.

“The boy looks into Mugwump eyes blank as obsidian mirrors, pools of black blood, glory holes in a toilet wall closing on the Last Erection.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

The film like the book follows Bill Lee (alter-ego of William Burroughs) an urban exterminator evading authorities as he flees from authorities on his travels as he deals with a drug addiction and a talking typewriter. Bill is introduced to different characters on his travels and the film becomes more surreal and subversive as it marries events from the book with real life events from Burroughs’ own life. A film best served by its director and its ensemble cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Julian Sands, Ian Holm and Roy Scheider all delivering genuinely absurd and sleazoid characters.

Foul language, offensive behavior, violence, sadism and drug addiction (heroine, hashish, oxycodone) all displayed in their proper harsh lighting serving as instruments in a splatter-surrealistic and non-linear collage of vignettes and parallels between the real life author and William Lee the exterminator.

“Did I ever tell you about the man
who taught his asshole to talk?
His whole abdomen would move up and down,
you dig, farting out the words.
It was unlike anything I ever heard.
Bubbly, thick, stagnant sound.
A sound you could smell.
This man worked for the carnival,you dig?
And to start with it was
like a novelty ventriloquist act.
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

 

Let’s give Peter Weller his praise. He’s actually a much deeper actor than people give him credit for. For a better appreciation of this go and search for his interviews and commentary of any of film and you’ll understand a person that fleshes out characters and doesn’t just memorizes scripts. Here, Weller, gives a straight-faced portrayal of a detached man in a weird world while embodying the essence of Burroughs himself.

In his review for The Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote, “Cronenberg has done a remarkable thing. He hasn’t just created a mainstream Burroughs on something approximating Burroughs’s terms, he’s made a portrait of an American writer”. Jonathan Rosenbaum in his review for the Chicago Reader wrote, “David Cronenberg’s highly transgressive and subjective film adaptation of Naked Lunch … may well be the most troubling and ravishing head movie since Eraserhead. It is also fundamentally a film about writing – even the film about writing”.

Naked Lunch gets an approval from me. So, sit back, enjoy and always keep your finger on that REWIND button.

SamHaiNe’s “Natural City” is still available for digital purchase at SamHaiNe.bandcamp.com

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.

“Ugh, here he is on that Disney game BULLSHIT again.”

Well yeah, but listen… you don’t understand. Don’t worry, you will.

I have covered some Disney console titles before, both in video and article formats. Some of them are simply terrible; a few among them are cheery or entertaining, presenting a nice light-hearted break from the norm. One of them – the one I’m prepared to talk about today – is a bona fide semi-epic adventure. Hell, it’s more than that. It’s… well, let’s just get into it.

Released in all three regions (North America, Europe, and Japan) in December of ’91, QuackShot went by the title I Love Donald Duck: Georgia Ou no Hihou in Japanese. Developed and published by Sega exclusively for their own Genesis/Mega Drive console, the game was a continuation of the successful “Illusion series” of licensed Disney games by Sega. Unlike the other entries in that series, QuackShot has a decidedly “action-adventure” flavored theme and style. It’s also pretty damn clever for a 1991 Genesis-era platformer, and a ton of fun to play.

The plot finds Donald on the hunt for a legendary treasure, hinted at by a map that he finds while poking through Uncle Scrooge’s books. Our plucky duck is hounded by Disney’s classic core antagonistic asshole, Petey the god damned good for nothing jerk dog. The race for the loot takes Donald all over the world, from Duckburg to Transylvania to such exotic locales as the South Pole and a Viking ship somewhere in Northern Europe.

Jet-setting with the help of child labor. Classic Disney!

The coolest thing about QuackShot (at least to me, when I played it) is how non-linear it is for a game of its time. The places you explore with Donald usually consist of an above-ground area and an additional “dungeon” region. The catch is, sometimes you have to backtrack a little or get halfway only to find you need something elsewhere. Donald plants little flags when these kinds of things happen, serving as a checkpoint where he can call in a ride from Huey, Duey and Louie. Why the operation of a prop plane is entrusted to three children is beyond me, but we’ll hold onto that suspension of disbelief inherent to the fantastic and insane world of Disney.

Getting around and defending yourself are the two major challenges anywhere in QuackShot; In an interesting deviation from Disney’s usual kid-minded aversion to such things, Donald carries some kind of a gun. However, instead of blowing Petey’s brains out (and ruining THE MAGIC OF DISNEY), Donald fires plungers, popcorn, and bubbles out of his weapon. Once you get the red plungers, these stick to walls and can be used as springboards as well as stunning enemies. Popcorn effectively “kills” most things you shoot with it, fanning out not unlike Contra’s Spread gun. The bubbles – which require a bit of a mini-quest to obtain at first – have the useful function of blasting through certain static obstacles but also harm most enemies.

The coolest way Donald can tear ass is by picking up enough chili peppers to turn all the faces in his “temper” meter angry.

(insert death metal here)

Once this happens, he spends several seconds in what I like to call “ruthless bellowing invincible berserk murder mode.” He plunges forward without stopping, flailing his fists and bitching up a storm. You can still make him jump, thankfully, so his wrath can be visited on anyone in his reach until the anger wears off.

The primary foe Donald encounters time and time again while trotting the globe? Petey and his gang. These miserable pieces of shit lie in wait, toting their own mock firearms, waiting to cut the journey short so they can claim the loot for themselves. The fauna (and sometimes flora) of most locales are actively hostile, and each region usually has a “boss” enemy waiting to give you a hard time. Dracula (or at least his duck analog; Castlevania fans calm down) even makes an appearance!

Not to be confused with Duckula, who is also a straight baller.

The graphics are on par with other higher-caliber Genesis games, with the lush background art standing out in particular. The soundtrack is nothing short of fucking incredible, and I won’t keep talking, just have a listen. The real standouts: Duckburg and Transylvania.

Oh, man. I’m gonna have to give QuackShot a 9 out of 10. I had overlooked it for the most part when I was a kid, but it quickly became one of my favorite titles for the Genesis when I revisited it in this capacity. I highly recommend it if you’re down for a rollicking adventure with charm to spare.

Disney owns everything now. They own Darth Vader and Spider-Man. Disney is a monolith… an empire. We kneel at its majestic feet and howl that we are unworthy to bask in its glow. We fork over heaps and heaps of dough to soak generation after generation of our children in Disney’s particular flavor of saccharine, and that company has more money than some countries do. Disney has us on a leash.

And because we crave abuse, sweet sweet abuse, we love it.

It definitely spills over into the video game market. Of course it does! They have a whole department of people who examine and analyze all the other shit that kids and preteens are into, and they make sure they’ve got a finger in the pie. What started with the Nintendo Entertainment System continues with series like Kingdom Hearts. You’ve got Squaresoft writing games involving twiggy little blond anime kids saving the Magic Kingdom alongside Goofy. Sure, it sounds absurd… but the things is, most of the games are good.

Capcom yielded a bumper crop of NES titles for Disney during the middle and latter periods of the system’s lifespan. They developed many of the titles, and published a few as well, keeping their hand in the till as the house that Walt built wrote check after check. This resulted in a pretty high standard of quality; while LJN was pulling licensing deals out of a Powerball machine and releasing uninspired digital gruel, Capcom was taking the stairs instead of the elevator and making sure they looked you in the eye when they shook your hand. I’ve plucked a couple of games from this family for review in the past, but I figured it was time to immerse myself (and as a result, you) a little deeper.

The Little Mermaid

1991

The Little Mermaid was a pretty big fucking deal in the early 90s. Did you know that the early VHS release had a dick on the cover? It was hidden as one of the towers on the castle! As a grown man, that is the first thing I think of when the film is mentioned.

Let’s put it this way: if that’s NOT supposed to be a schlong, then Freud would have a field day with this artist.

Anyway… you know how Capcom do. They turned this bitch out. I mean, at least for a game based on Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The intro is long, covering a paraphrased and liberally switchboarded version of the movie’s plot. These narrative scenes are the game’s only real flaw; the characters all seem like doll-eyed mannequins in some calm but churning hell. The music, which is decent everywhere else in the game, is meandering and bland.

“Listen, I don’t know, I’m just a fucking crab, okay? I emcee for your dad, I pay my bills, and occasionally bet too much on the seahorses and end up in hock with the mob. How the hell am I supposed to know how to get you a pair of feet? Ursula’s as good a bet as any, honey. It’s that or stay down here as the sexiest little chicken of the sea. Carpe diem.”

The game itself is worth aggressively skipping the cut scenes for. Ariel swims through the familiar locales of the film, dealing with threats by trapping fish in bubbles to throw as weapons or picking up loose items. It’s similar to the Chip n’ Dale NES cart Capcom released the year previous, but Ariel is a good deal more versatile and also doesn’t run around bashing herself on the head like those little assholes do in their game. There’s an additional aspect where you collect pearls to up the power and range of your attacks, as well as some light puzzle solving. I hadn’t messed with this one much as a kid, but revisiting it was a fun experience.

I would describe the graphics as “slightly shittier than Mega Man.” There’s not a ton of definition in a lot of the sprites, but hey, they’re fish. The backgrounds look pretty good (especially on the ice level and the sunken ship) and things have a colorful but controlled tone to them. As I said before, the music during game play is pretty good, an upbeat and lighthearted soundtrack that I found very appropriate for imprisoning little fish inside bubbles and hurling them brutally at their kin. This isn’t a bad game, but it doesn’t quite reach “classic” status for me. I’d say that if you collect, and you see this for $15 or less, go for it. Don’t get nuts over it, though.

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom

1990

The first tidbit I have to offer you about this one is that Capcom did not release it domestically in Japan; Adventures in the Magic Kingdom was released only in Oceania, North America and Europe (France, UK and Scandinavia). Another one that flew under my radar as a kid, this game seemed powerfully stupid at first when I revisited it, but it grew on me as I ignored the premise and focused on the gameplay itself.

The game opens on a beautiful day in Disney’s fully fabricated reality: the Magic Kingdom. Mickey’s got a parade all planned, but his day’s about to hit a serious speed bump in the form of his dipshit friend Goofy the dog. Mickey had the bright idea to trust Goofy with the keys to the gate. Goofy left the golden key inside the castle… and also locked himself out of the castle in the process. I swear to God, Goofy, you’d lose your ass if it wasn’t attached to you.

That really narrows it down. Look at his face. He’s got that oblivious serenity that only a total nimrod can manage. The kind that just makes you angrier at his sub-animal stupidity. Goofy is one of the luckiest morons in the world, because he has no idea that he is a fucking moron. There’s a lesson in that somewhere, but it’s probably not worth meditating on.

Mickey, with the air of a celebrity who’s used to being obeyed, casually fobs this problem off on you. You’re some kid dressed like Curious George’s dad, running around completely unsupervised, acting as an unpaid intern for Mickey Mouse. The object of the game is to find all six of the silver keys in the different parts of the Kingdom where that hillbilly schmuck Goofy lost them. Maybe it’s time to find someone else to carry the key ring. Forgive me if I seem judgmental, but if someone’s actual fucking name is Goofy, maybe they should be limited to low-impact responsibilities.

The levels are based on Disney’s popular rides/attractions at their amusement parks, and a lot of the “characters” you have to deal with to find the keys are just Mickey and Goofy in costumes. This is some kind of spiritual torture, some means of annihilating the ego of a gamer to achieve anti-enlightenment. Space Mountain is pretty sick, involving some fast-paced piloting and shooting. The Old West one is absolute bullshit as you careen downhill in a runaway train while boulders ricochet across your path at random, but the Haunted Mansion one is probably my favorite.

Look at his face. He seriously looks like he’s worried about getting murdered.  Don’t worry, little gaucho boy… it isn’t the ghouls and Draculas you need to worry about at Disney World… it’s the alligators and the room-temperature food.

One thing Adventures in the Magic Kingdom deserves a lot of credit for is how it mixes up the gameplay style. You’re racing in cars and spaceships, walking around in overhead view to gather clues and info, then plowing through some formulaic platform action. As much as I jokingly make this game sound like a secondhand bag of farts, it’s really fun. The challenge level is certainly a tad more “Capcom Difficult” than The Little Mermaid, but things are still manageable if you have basic chops and quick thumbs. Things progress in a far more linear fashion than one may think, so the game’s only a time commitment if you go in totally blind. Don’t do that, though. Damn.

Click an Image to Enlarge.

The music’s a bit of a throwaway in places, but as with Little Mermaid above, the level themes are great. It turns out that the composer for Adventures in the Magic Kingdom was Yoko Shimomura, who would later go on to write the music for Kingdom Hearts. The graphics are… well, they’re fine. Another vividly colorful palette, a variety of lively sprites and some well-drawn (if uninspired) backgrounds. Most of what’s fun about Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is knowing you’re playing a couple games at once.

Darkwing Duck

1992

I always thought it was cool that Launchpad McQuack was able to find a client after DuckTales. He’s a good guy, he works hard, and even though he’s kind of a goof, he’s always there when you need him. You can’t ask for more than that in a private helicopter pilot.

The hero behind the hero.

I’ll come right out with it: I never gave two shits about Darkwing Duck as a kid. By 1992 I think I was more interested in the campy horror films I could get away with watching on rented VHS and making my first forays into the world of RPGs. This game got added to the stack because it’s one I hear mixed things about. I took Darkwing Duck for a spin, and I can sum up my impression of it pretty quickly: It’s Mega Man except you’re Darkwing Duck and you can hang on hooks and lanterns.

I’m not saying it’s bad. Relax. It’s actually better than the Mega Man games in terms of mechanics, as someone who loathes Mega Man‘s extremely limited control scheme. Darkwing Duck can actually crouch, and has a neat little trick where he can grab things hanging against the background to get across tricky areas. Seriously though… play this shit for about ten minutes and tell me it isn’t just Mega Man‘s format with a few extra dashes of flavor. You still only shoot straight in front of you, though. The dopes in Contra can aim in eight directions, and they die in one hit. Get it together, Rock. You have no excuse.

Click to Enlarge.

I don’t know who any of the characters are except Darkwing Duck and Launchpad McQuack, but the graphics they’re drawn in are really well-done. One thing I’ll say for the Mega Man series is that it is visually appealing, and the same quality and style is present here. The music is addictively cool, a jazz-themed score with a ton of variety and finesse. The sound effects are worth mentioning; there is a slight but noticeable jump in quality, and if you need a ready example, just listen to Launchpad’s helicopter. That’s pretty damn slick for the NES.

Mickey Mousecapade

1987

Even the title screen is sparse and drab, like a tenement at the turn of the century. Mickey and Minnie wear forced smiles, choking back the leaden contempt they have come to feel for one another, themselves, and every living thing. There is no turning back now, no starting over, no exit from the whirlwind. This will end in tragedy, but it’s better than the shame of being alone.

Hudson Soft actually developed this one, but Capcom published it. It was released in Japan a year before the Western world got it, as Mickey Mouse: Fushigi no kuni no Daibouken (Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Wonderland). Before getting into the game itself, there’s one more bit of trivia to share: if you were to take the cartridge apart, you may notice a hidden Mickey Mouse symbol on the game’s circuit board.

DO IT, GO PRY YOUR COPY OPEN TO SEE IT IT’S TOTALLY WORTH IT

Petey the Dog is a huge creep and has kidnapped Alice (yes, from Alice in Wonderland). Mickey busts through the door of the Fun House like a train wreck on a mission to rescue her, and drags poor Minnie along on his quest. It’s pretty clear based on context clues that Minnie would rather be doing something else. Those context clues are her reluctance during the first intro animation (wherein Mickey barks her name like an abusive boyfriend to get her to comply) and the total lack of interest she seems to display in 1 player mode while following Mickey. The real goose turd is that if she doesn’t keep up, you can’t finish a level and you’ll have to backtrack to find her. The misogyny is painted thickly with a wide brush in Mickey Mousecapade, or at least I’m willing to read into what I saw and make a mountain out of a molehill.

“Don’t you make me wait on you, Minnie… and God help you if I ever see you talking to another man. Now come on, we’ve got to go rescue a young blonde.”

I’m very sad to report that this is not one of Hudson’s usual home runs. Even QC and oversight from Capcom failed to render Mickey Mousecapade more than barely playable. Progress is tedious right from the get-go as you navigate an impossibly huge fucking house with no real clue what your specific goal is. Mickey throws stars, and they travel through the game’s space way fucking slower than you’d imagine a star would move. You have to worry about two characters getting hurt while having only nominal and indirect control over one of them, and this gets old quick. Minnie will drown, get bitten by animals, chopped with swords, etc. as you duck and weave trying to put 10 pounds of mouse shit in a five pound bag.

Minnie plummets to her watery grave as her loving boyfriend turns callously away; Judging by the snake’s face, he’s having a better day than you. Click to Enlarge.

Graphically, the game’s on par with late 80s NES fare. The backgrounds are rich once you reach the flowery part of the forest before the castle, and some of the bosses are nicely detailed. Otherwise, it is adequate. I don’t think they put much time into the audio side of things, but it’s not offensively bad or a distraction or anything. It’s just not impressive. I just end up more focused on Mickey and Minnie’s apparent codependency and the severe peril to which it exposes them both. Mickey Mousecapade makes me think about things… about the nature of how we love each other, and how that can become poison to us. Run, Minnie. Get out while you can.

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2

1993

A few more lines on Dale’s face… the job and the trucker pills will do that. Chip lives cleaner, sure, but he holds on to a lot more from the streets when he clocks out. Takes the demons home with him. Men of honor live thankless lives that rob them of their very humanity… but it’s in their blood now. Once a cop, always a cop. Fighting a war you can’t win. It still bothers me that neither of them wears pants.

Everyone’s a little older, a little wiser, and yet these two gumshoes are still throwing themselves at danger like suicidal moths to an infernal flame. Chip and Dale both want to die; they crave the taste of ashes and dream often about the cold of the grave. One day. But not yet. Not until every pint-sized criminal has been driven off the streets in a great welter of blood and smoke.

Hence the NES sequel.

I wrote about the 1990 original earlier on in my tenure here at NRW; it’s an exercise in insanity that requires either a hint of masochism or some very sharp reflexes… and overall, I like it. It’s both good and bad that this is essentially the same game with different levels. There’s a bit more of a story, something about Fat Cat releasing evil spirits from an urn to rules the world, but all that does for me is produce comedy gold like the screenshots below:

As the thumb-sized duo tangle with the supernatural to put a stop to Fat Cat’s plans, you can still nail each other in the head with boxes and generally get in each other’s way, either deliberately or on accident. It’s the only thing not to like. The same frantic sense of action is present, along with a mind-boggling variety of enemies and a new set of clever challenges.

The graphics are improved somewhat, and this comes through especially well during the otherwise laughable cut scenes. That little extra touch more shading, more detail by a few pixels, makes quite a difference in the presentation. The soundtrack rivals that of the first game with its madcap vitality and hyperactive pace, and there seems to be a good deal of musical competency at work. Looking in at this game from the outside, they didn’t just remake Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers for the NES… they made a second one and may have accidentally even improved it.

AND THE WHEAT IS SEPARATED FROM THE CHAFF

Little Mermaid: 7/10 (Novel and engaging, visually appealing. On the good side of average.)

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom: 7/10 (It wouldn’t be so good in my eyes if it didn’t have the variety in it that makes it stay interesting.)

Darkwing Duck: 5/10 (You phoned it in, Capcom. Whatever. You can get away with shit like that sometimes. You’re Capcom.)

Mickey Mousecapade: 4/10 (It strikes me that game design decisions were made on short notice, with little foresight or perhaps even testing o results. It also strikes me that those involved may have just hated the project and wanted it to be terrible. Good job.)

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2: 8/10 (WELL SOME TIMES / SOME CRIMES / GO SLIPPIN THROUGH THE CRACKS / BUT THESE TWO / GUMSHOES / ARE PICKIN UP THE SLACK / THERE’S NO CASE TOO BIG / NO CASE TOO SMALL / WHEN YOU NEED HELP JUST CALL)

Good evening, boils and ghouls. I’ve got another crinkling creepfest for you as we tiptoe closer and closer toward that magical last day of October… Halloween. I hope you’ve all got some fun plans. I plan on going as a man who stands on his porch and yells at kids. I’m on a budget this year and already have all the stuff I need for the costume. I did bring some candy, though, so strap in for another Grab Bag.

I went deep diving through the ROM mausoleums and the silent catacombs stacked with floppy disks, hoping to pluck a few motes of dust worth examining. Horror is historically a hit-or-miss genre in video gaming, with the misses only diminishing significantly among computer titles and consoles of the Fifth Gen and newer. I remember playing the NES’s Friday the 13th and being very confused and disappointed, which ended up cosmically balancing out years later when I first played Silent Hill 2 at a friend’s house, in the dark, with a 5.1 Surround Sound system, while I was (in my feral youth) high as hell. It was awesome to be frightened by a game in the same way a good horror film can make you squirm or jump.

Nonetheless, I digress: There were some good eggs before things moved to CD formats and low-poly gore. Several personal computers of the late 80s and 1990s were making leaps and bounds in graphical and audio capabilities, two picturesque examples being the Amiga series and the lovely Japanese-domestic X68000. It is my educated professional opinion (something I could not say in real life without laughing) that the NES was ill-suited for the horror genre with exceedingly few exceptions. Inf act, none come to mind. To support this statement, I’d like to point out that a solid majority of the attempts made at NES horror titles were left in the hands of LJN – the canned-tomato shitbird degenerate gambler among NES development teams. Which leads me to my first game (yes, we’re gonna rag on LJN again, we will never stop)…

Beetlejuice

LJN, 1991

System: NES

Unfortunately, it is not, in any appreciable way, showtime.

I’ll start off with a frank statement, an observation that strikes home like the spanking of a truly furious parent: LJN is responsible for an entire dynasty of early-gen licensed titles whose strongest tie to their source material is the use of said franchise’s trade dress. Their games are like warm, dented tins of ass left in the summer sun as a booby trap; I’d go so far as to say that giving one of LJN’s video games to someone as a gift qualifies under international law as an act of war.

The woeful truth is that, despite being significantly less terrible than LJN’s earlier shit-gobbling train wrecks for the little gray box, Beetlejuice is still this kind of game, in a nutshell – a loosely coherent and surprisingly desolate adaptation of a film that really didn’t have the potential for a good video game in it. The film was released in 1988, but was apparently scooped up in one dangling, errant arm three years later for this purpose. Go figure.

I love the film, is the really crushing part. The dark and irreverent humor, the excellent FX and soundtrack, an all-star cast (including a great role for the late Glenn Shadix, who I sincerely wish had lived longer and done more)… Hey, you remember the part where Beetlejuice leaps around the sheer ravines and cliffs surrounding the Maitlands’ home and stomps on giant bugs repeatedly?

Ladies and gentlemen… this… is Beetlejuice. Unforgivable.

Yeah, I don’t either, but that’s a big part of the video game.

I’ll cede a few bright spots for Beetlejuice’s NES incarnation, though:

1. It has a fun little powerup system that revolves around how your power is to scare the shit out of people, and you can buy uses of these abilities that are kept in a sort of inventory. The one early in the game lets you slough off your flesh and become a skeleton.

2. The game has both side-scrolling and top-down action, similar to the far superior game Super C.

3. While nothing in the implied sequence of events seems to make any sense when compared to the film’s story, The exposition and cut scenes and other fluff at least attempts to suggest that things are going the same way. You are also obviously supposed to be in the same places from the film, however cartoonish and exaggerated they may seem.

Otho gets all Squirrel Nut Zipper on your ass while you look on in dismay… just a skeleton standing fully erect on a high, narrow shelf. I like how EVERY surface looks like it’s covered in fire-orange shag carpet.

This game gets 4/10 from me. It’s really not up to what Beetlejuice deserves (if you’d try to capture the film’s flavor in an 8-bit game in the first place – a dubious choice), but it’s more of a solid attempt than you’d expect out of NES-era LJN. It doesn’t make me less mad at them for Uncanny X-Men, Back to the Future, Wolverine, or that Spider-Man NES game that they should have all gone to prison for… but it did surprise me that it was actually kinda sorta playable. Oh, here’s the soundtrack if you want it… it’s not really good or bad, but the loops are kind of short so it doesn’t make for great active listening.

Fright Night (Microdeal, 1988)

System: Amiga

I had taken a few glimpses at this one, but knew I’d want to save talking about it until October.

ＡＭＩＧＡ ＨＡＵＮＴＳ ＭＹ ＤＲＥＡＭＳ

On the one hand, Amiga machines had relatively rich graphics and sound compared to their well-known rivals in the PC market; on the other, I literally never knew one fucking person who owned an Amiga rig until I was in college and met a dude who collected vintage computers. Much like we saw in the X68000 article, a good portion of developers for the Amiga were small-scale or in-house programmers. However, Microdeal was kind of a big deal back in the 1980s-era computer scene. They had earned their stripes writing an impressive library of software for the Tandy CoCo and the British-domestic Dragon 32. As the eternal boxing match went from 8 to 16 bits, Microdeal divided its efforts between adapting its old games for the newer sets and throwing some new stuff out. The latter was a bit more profitable for them, but to make a long story short, they cashed in their chips in the 90s.

But before nailing the coffin shut, they did produce a really interesting game based off the kick-ass 1985 film Fright Night. In a rare (but not unique) twist, you play not as the unlikely hero Charlie Brewster, but as the suave yet monstrous Jerry Dandridge. Jerry prowls his home nightly, killing two birds with one stone as he cleans his domain of pesky vampire-hunters… getting himself a nice multi-course supper in the process. Another example of a 3-year delay on cashing in, this game is a far better product than Beetlejuice for the NES in so many ways that we won’t even get into it.

YOU’RE SO COOL, BREWSTER! Sorry. I’ll see myself out.

I will start with the negative, since it’s really not that overwhelming. The big issue I had with it is that the entire game takes place in Dandridge’s home, and the elements of play really don’t change. Your goals, environment, abilities, and even your victims remain static… it seems almost as if the Fright Night universe gets stuck in some bullshit Dr. Who style time bubble as you kill the same 3-4 people over and over again while prowling the same set of rooms. The monotony is occasionally broken by Dandridge’s unsafe working conditions; there are hands in the floor, and sometimes a tit-ghost will cross paths with you while you’re on the hunt. Occupational hazards of being an undead sex machine, I guess. Despite all, the game is still fun… at least while its shelf life holds up before you get bored of the limited breadth of experience.

Jerry looks embarrassed, but not repentant. Listen dude, maybe if you stopped murdering women and drinking their blood in your house, you wouldn’t have to deal with Jolly Green Tragedies floating around in your hallway.

The graphics are mind-blowing when compared with similar systems of the time period. Jerry’s house is richly appointed and rendered in great detail. I especially dig the wall portraits; Jerry shows pride in his heritage by littering his walls with framed pics of his fellow nightmare creatures. The characters are also well-drawn and their animated reactions to the snarling vampire’s entrance make for some pretty good shit. The game, not unlike the film, has a sense of humor about itself. While the soundtrack can best (and most politely) described as minimalist, the digitized sound contrasts it as another redeeming quality.

I’ll throw Fright Night for the Amiga 6/10. It’s well-produced, bears lush detail, and only falters slightly due to its narrow gameplay style.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Advanced Communication Co./Bandai, 1988)

System: NES

Sometimes, within the first five minutes of playing a game, you can tell that the men and women responsible for the actual product had far less enthusiasm than the marketing/licensing people who sent out the memo.

“Just… okay, look, Ron. We need to have a goddamn title screen. Trust me, I want done with this as much as you do. You know what’d work? Some heinously curled lettering and… a green monster hand. Just like in the book!”

Let’s talk about the red flags clearly visible in this spiritually numbing jug of cold piss they tried to pass off as a game. Is it based on the 1886 literary horror classic? Uh… it has the same titular character(s). Otherwise, it’s not a story or game… it’s some kind of artistic statement centered around obliterating the dignity and willpower of the hapless player who fumbles into it.

Yeah, one of the obstacles in Dr. Jekyll’s path to wedded bliss is a fat woman in a Franciscan robe who sings at you, and the music notes hurt you. How tongue-in-cheek, how avante-garde, how… revolutionary, to depict a classic piece of early horror literature in the style of Tom & Jerry.

First off, take a look at those graphics. You know what they remind me of, in their style (read: lack thereof)? Those rinky-dink unlicensed Bible-themed and Chinese pirate-published carts that are still mentioned readily by NES fans as possible proof that cutthroat capitalism can put people who are competent at programming into a sweatshop-style environment. Just like Bible Buffet and Grand Dad, this game palpably reeks of the woe inherent in its origin. I bet if you pressed one ear to the cart like a conch shell, you could hear the baleful moaning and the rattling chains. Let’s have it writ plain: IT’S VERY CLEAR THAT THIS NES GAME WAS NOT CRAFTED BY MINDS ONE COULD DESCRIBE AS HAPPY.

The developers did have a pretty innovative idea for continuing the saga of two men in one man: You play as Jekyll, who is on his way to his wedding, on foot. The problem with this plan is that apparently every single man and beast along his route sees Henry Jekyll as a mortal foe who must be viciously murdered at all costs. Every injury not only reduces your vitality but also increases your “Anger Meter.” You know what, if I couldn’t even walk to the church in my hometown without being bitten/shit on/disintegrated by casually-dropped spherical black cartoon bombs… I’d be pissed to. I’d have a “meter.”

If your Anger fills to 100%, you transform into the Incre…. I mean, Mr. Hyde. Inexplicably, this also turns day to night instantly and transmutes your mundane earthly assailants into supernatural monsters, too. You know what you have to do to escape this shadowy realm and turn back into poor Dr. Jekyll?

YOU HAVE TO BRUTALLY KILL EVERY LIVING THING YOU SEE.

Yeah, that’s Hyde on the right-hand side of this dime-store Ninja Gaiden shit. I don’t know what that other thing is. Some kind of ninja fairy with an apocalyptic trumpet. DON’T EVER DO THIS AGAIN BANDAI DO YOU HEAR ME

Doing so reduces your Anger… and when it’s empty, you’re Henry again, and you can keep walking to your wedding, as well as increasingly absurd situations wherein your death or loss of self become constant risks.

This all sounds cool on the surface (despite being more of a Bruce Banner meets Jules Verne thing than any kind of faithful follow-up to the original tale). When you actually PLAY this shit, the cool factor nose-dives and crashes into your soul. I’ve already mentioned that the boxy, sloppy, unimaginative visuals hang heavy. The sound throws a curveball at you by somehow being expertly done and simultaneously being the single most ghastly sensory offense present during play. When the dogs bark, they don’t sound like dogs; the digitized snippet sounds distinctly like a very large man yelling “BIP” at you in the same tone of voice you’d use to caution a child not to touch the stove. There is a bird in the graveyard who constantly strafes back and forth over you, peppering you with what appear to be pre-coiled mounds of brown, non-bird shit. Every time it pulls the trigger on its abomination of an anus, the sound effect sounds like someone petulantly shouting “NOOOOO” through a maxed-out auto-wah pedal off some shoegaze guitarist’s setup. Jekyll & Hyde made me profoundly grateful that NES games do not convey olfactory, tactile, or gustatory stimuli. Who even knows what you’d feel, smell, and taste when you pressed Start on this abusively foul program.

And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. Revelation 19:17-18 That’s definitely just generic cartoon dookie. I never thought cartoon poop would be a sign of the End Times. C’est la vie.

Here’s my parting shot: if I were Jekyll in this game, I’d be postponing the wedding and re-planning it somewhere I didn’t have to play The Running Man to just arrive. It seems like an awfully long distance to walk, with or without the poop-birds, bip-dogs, and dapper bowler-wearing arsonists.

Jekyll & Hyde gets 2/10. This game was like non-consensual hardcore S&M with me as the bottom. The only difference was, instead of getting my balls crushed or my nipples obliterated, this game went straight for my spirit and wrenched me into a state of ego death. And real talk: just the sound the turd pelican makes has me convinced that dead people can see ME while I play it. Bandai, how can you normally be so decent and crisp and clean, then offhandedly hurl a hex like this on the world? What would Kamen Rider think?

Via con diablos, Fright Fans. One more gruesome article coming up before All Hallow’s Eve… Have fun and check your apples for razors.

Funk.

It means all kinds of things. Let’s look at the two most binding definitions of the word:

This iconic game has plenty of jams and plenty of implied bad smells… and a lot of everything else, too. ToeJam & Earl is a piece Mega Drive/Genesis bedrock, not to mention a game that stood unique among contemporaries with its gameplay style and innovative combination of concepts. Further boosted by its incredible soundtrack, the game is part of any core collection for the console.

Work began on TJ&E in 1989, when two Electronic Arts developers – Mark Voorsanger and Greg Johnson – set out on their own to develop a game that combined the real-time action of a console title with the elements of a roguelike.

What’s a roguelike, you ask? Well, it’s kind of like an RPG… except you’ll almost certainly die, the world you’re in is randomly generated, and everything is turn-by-turn instead of real-time. That is, you control the pace of the game completely, and in between actions, it remains frozen in time. The term comes from the original game of this kind, Rogue, which is a rather bland-looking (by modern standards) text and ASCII based game for early computers. There are newer reworkings with graphical tiles and enhanced interfaces, but the idea remains largely the same. Voorsanger and Johnson took this idea to Sega, and Sega liked it so much that they asked to publish it exclusively for the Genesis.

TJ&E can be played by one or two people, controlling the titular characters: ToeJam (a little red guy whose entire “head” is represented by two long stalks ending in huge eyes) and Earl (a tubby orange alien wearing some stylish shorts and classic wraparound shades). Their totally righteous but comically designed rapmaster spaceship has crashed, and they need to find all of its component parts to repair it and continue on their way through the cosmos.

The greatest part of this vehicle’s design is its total and brazen ignorance of the fact that sound does not carry across the vacuum of outer space. It also looks like something Jacques Cousteau would draw on a napkin while high as fuck.

Players guide the duo across a plethora of floating space-islands in ¾ perspective, avoiding constant peril and totally lame hassles all the while. If ToeJam and Earl end up separated, the screen simply splits along the middle, tracking their separate wanderings. The universe through which this search-and-retrieve mission is conducted can be randomly generated at the time of play, or a fixed-in-place set of levels that are the same each time you play the game.

ToeJam hard at work, while Earl… well, Earl just kind of stands there. Good job, Earl.

Besides your ship’s missing parts (which are represented VERY abstractly), you’ll find all kinds of funky shit on the ground and wandering around this bizarre floating maze. One of the primary elements of play is the scattering of pickups represented by garishly wrapped presents all over the place. Mimicking another element of most roguelikes, these presents all do different things (most good, some bad), and once you open a present of a certain type (using the menu you access with the B button), you’ve identified all future instances of its kind that you find. Until then, they are mysteries. One present even randomizes (and thus negates all your identification of) all presents. What a pain in the ass.

You’re not alone on this bizarre chunk of earth, either; an astonishing variety of weirdos roam the environment, some wishing you more harm than others. One of my favorites is the hula dancer. She often shows up around more harmful guys like the little red devils, and drawing too near her results in ToeJam or Earl compulsively mimicking her dance (and allowing the other nasties to get the jump on you). There’s little in the way of offensive tools in the game, forcing players to adopt a careful and thoughtful approach to moving through the world. Some beings will be found asleep, and holding down A allows you to creep by them slowly but quietly. Some also behave in certain predictable ways, allowing you to pay attention and use that to your advantage. Telephones reveal parts of the map (accessible by pressing C), and elevators move you up to the next board. Usually, a hint will appear to tell you that a ship part is on the level you’re entering… so scour the whole thing!

ToeJam & Earl features a lot of color and wackiness in it graphics, strongly tied to its overall early-nineties vibe. Its amazing soundtrack, composed by John Baker, comes on even stronger with the 90s power, with a R&B funk style inspired by musicians like Herbie Hancock and thick with bass and flex. The music is another example of a soundtrack really turning that YM2612 all the way out, and I rank it among the finest in the Genesis game library.

Initially, ToeJam & Earl sold poorly, but it built a cult following and also rode on the coat-tails of Sonic the Hedgehog during the Christmas of 1991. It spawned two sequels, and a Kickstarter for a new game successfully reached its funding goal in 2015.

I give ToeJam & Earl 8 out of 10. It’s a pretty fun game, if not a little meandering and open-ended sometimes… but it was definitely a unique spin on console gaming with its combination of source ideas. And man… that SOUNDTRACK.

See you in September! Get your asses back to school (or just get ready for autumn if you’re a grown-ass adult) and STAY RETRO!

Beat em ups.

I’ve said so much already. What more can I add? The style was super hot in the 16-bit era, and still weaves its way in and out of the limelight from time to time. The formula is classic, even timeless, to speak boldly… one or two protagonists (maybe more, if hardware permits), punching and kicking their way through hordes of baddies, occasionally facing down a lieutenant or three on their way to the Big Bad Guy(s). The format allows game designers to go way out into left field for enemy and level design, and that’s unfailingly where developers were at in the early and mid 90s.

Crude Buster, alternately titled Two Crude Dudes, fits that bill precisely; it is wild, colorful, and just-beyond-real. Released for arcades by Data East in 1991, the game is hailed by many as a classic entry into the beat em up family, and the game did so well in arcades that it was released in 1992 for the Mega Drive/Genesis. Players control one of two hulking mercenaries hired on by the government to take back a ruined New York from a group called “Big Valley,” who (literally) nuked the city and claimed the rubble as their own.

Now, I don’t know if “Big Valley” is one of those “lost in translation” things, but it isn’t a very heavy-sounding name for a terrorist organization full of tattooed punks and mutant bio-monsters. They make up for it in action, though. Your unreasonably buff nuclear warrior is first assailed by shirtless frisbee aficionados and what look like mustachioed elf men; things soon turn a bit more dire as you face the first boss – a brute rivaling you in swoleness, in face paint and KISS shoes, wielding snakes.

He wants to rock and roll all night, and murder everyday.

As you progress through the nuclear ruins of NYC, shit only gets more serious. The most annoying enemies early-on are the little hunchbacks who latch onto you and sap your vitality as they gnaw on you. However, it gets far worse as weirder and weirder mutants come crawling out of the rubble to make your Brian Bosworth-looking ass wish you never shook hands on that government contract.

Thankfully, your crude dudes are pretty monstrous themselves. They can easily lift set-pieces as big as junked cars, as well as most enemies they can grab. These make great projectiles to supplement your determined (if not terribly graceful) punching and kicking. If you get low on health, look for soda machines. JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE, drinking some fizzy water loaded with coloring and corn syrup will save the day. These also usually show up in little vignettes between levels; the arcade version just puppets you through, while the Genesis port makes you whack the cans out of the machine yourself.

Just guzzle it down, big guy. Make all the pain go away.

The graphics in the arcade version really don’t suffer much in the crunching-down for the 16-bit Genesis port. They are on par for their time; things are a riot of color, and there’s a comic book level of detail to everything (not to mention the cool visual popup sound FX a la 1960s Batman). The sound is where some effort clearly went in; the arcade version features a lot of digitized FX and some good music. The Genesis port actually has better music with a more fitting pace to it, but it loses a lot of the digitized stuff out of sheer space efficiency.

All things considered, I’d give Crude Buster an 8/10. It’s challenging, fun, colorful, and definitely deserves mention in any conversation about the beat em up format in video gaming. Crude Buster is different enough to interest you, but it’s still a red-blooded beat em up hit through and through.

See you in August, you big goofs!

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”

This one is about computers. As much as console gaming forms the crux of what I discuss here at NRWG, it is occasionally my duty to draw attention to that parallel road, that meandering yet meaningful story of mankind’s attempt to entertain itself with computers before they were all plugged into phone lines. (Hell, many of them were before it was even a thing.)

So you remember back in the 80s when you thought your MS-DOS shit or your Amstrad CPC was cool? Do you remember the days before Japan started dropping unfathomable machines on the West one after another? Back before the Internet forcibly occluded every dark corner of electronics culture in stark detail, there was a time when Japan kept the best shit for themselves. And I can’t blame them when I look at some of it. We wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it. Like apes confronted by Arthur C Clarke’s monolith, we would have felt so many emotions that we were reduced to hooting until dusk at the x68000.

My favorite touch is the little pole accessory for the mouse cord. That is very Japanese to me. I don’t even know why.

Sharp released the first model in 1987, naming the machine after its 10MHz CPU. It boasted one whole megabyte of ram, which today is about enough juggling space for one small photograph. ( I realize RAM and disk space are two different things, I’m trying to be illustrative here.) Despite IBM-style PCs in the West having moved on to the concept of built-in hard drives, the x68000 had no such bulk; it had its own OS that bore astounding similarity to MS-DOS but pulled all extra data from floppy.

We’re not here to get soggy over this thing’s data capabilities. When it comes to graphics and sound, the only things the Western world has that came close were the Amiga and the Atari ST… and neither could hold a shaky, barely-lit candle to this heartbreaker. During a time when a lot of people were gradually making the stroll from boxy candy-colored shit to VGA graphics, the standard color palette on the Sharp x68000 was 65,535 colors in a maximum resolution of 1,024×1,024. By comparison, VGA’s 1987 vintage can output 256 colors at a resolution of 320×200. Better get your bifocals out. Needless to say, this graphical depth demanded audio of comparable richness.

I mean, think about it – this machine hit its peak in the early 90s. This shit was like staring God in the face. Except maybe not as awkward.

Regular readers (if I have any; I certainly hope so, or I’m still in that coma and this isn’t even happening) are already aware of my desire to basically fucking marry the Yamaha YM2612 – the exquisite little weaponized synth chip that makes all our favorite Genesis soundtracks go boom-boom. The Sharp x68000 uses a slightly more grown-up, sophisticated cousin of the YM2612. The YM2151 boasts eight channels to the 2612’s six, and to put it in plain terms, the end result sounds far “cleaner” and also offers more potential detail. In other words, the music output on even the off-the-shelf model is delicious. I am terrible for saying this, but aside from the minimal loss of “ass-end” I seem to hear on x68000 soundtracks, I may actually like this chip better. Two key examples of its power to deliver are the x68000 retooling of Akumajō Dracula and the port of Thunder Force II. It even makes River City Ransom sound gnarlier!

Japan’s decision to only market this marvel domestically kept the x68000 a near-secret in the 80s and 90s, but the sheer volume and variety of titles released for it makes the secret all the more unbelievable. You would think more buzz would have been generated – even now, in 2017, when everyone has seen everything and it’s been made into twelve shitty memes, I look at the screenshots and the videos with a certain awe. I humbly present some highlights of what I have found in my plodding research.

Akumajō Dracula

Konami, 1993

It’s a remake of the original, but it’s arcade-quality. (in fact, the x68000 was the test system for the Capcom CPS system for many years.) I digress – the difficulty level is increased just enough to re-engage, the music is remarkable, and I especially love that Stage Clear theme. “Epic” applies here.

Dead of the Brain

FairyTale, 1992

1) this owns 2) ew though

It’s all in Japanese, but I get the general idea. It seems to be a really cool spin on Re-Animator by way of Return of the Living Dead… definitely inspired by both. The music’s not as mind-blowing here, but the graphics are really turned-out. It’s hard to do effective horror stuff in a game medium, especially the earlier you go in the timeline, but Dead of the Brain really impresses me by melding cartoony with frightening.

Dracula Hakushaku

FairyTale, 1992

I’m sorry, these just fascinate me. I’m noticing a dual theme with these graphical-text adventures: prominent tits and horrible things happening or being found.Still, really detailed illustration, great color choice to make for a dark theme.

A Preponderance of NSFW shit

Big Surprise, 1987-1993

It looks almost like cross-stitch. It is an open and kitchen-ready mockery of itself.

Just in case you wanted to jack off to this, well hey, at least it’s better than the same image would be rendered on a VGA machine. Don’t think too hard about what you’re doing, bucko. I guess people made do back then. Some of it’s awfully MSPaint, though.

Heart of Saphilamun

Annandule Project, 1991

I found very little background info on this one, in either language. It was apparently a hit, but in a flash-in-the-pan sort of way. Something about the screenshots and video intro I’ve found really unsettles me. Maybe it’s the brief, silent sequence depicting a nude woman literally fucking falling apart against a black background. Maybe it’s the horrifying winged snake thing. Maybe it’s the fact that I even asked on forums and couldn’t get a synopsis… it’s apparently loosely based on Lovecraft. I’ll buy that.

All of this has enraptured me with this mysterious device. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing this glimpse into the grey shadows with me; I live for this kind of shit, and it’s part of why I love to write these articles. I get to pluck artifacts from the dusty ground of the wasteland, wipe them off, and decide they need talking about. Cheers.

See you in July, stay retro!

The beat ’em up was (and to some extent, still is) an extremely popular game format. The concept may sound repetitive on its nose – that is to say, you mostly just walk forward and beat the shit out of people – but it’s been done in so many ways, with so many embellishments and extra touches, that it hardly gets old if you’re a fan. Like a lot of us, I was primarily exposed to this genre through either arcade ports or original titles for the Mega Drive/Genesis. Now, as I’ve discussed in some previous articles, we definitely didn’t get the bulk of Japan’s weird stuff then, but we did get some gnarly-ass console games… one of them being Mystical Fighter.

This weird but fantastic entry into the Genesis beat ’em up library was called Demon King Renjishi in Japan, hitting shelves in October of ’91. Very soon after, it was released for American audiences as Mystical Fighter. Its developer, KID Corporation (defunct as of 2006), is also known for developing Burai Fighter and Low G Man. Taito published the game, lending its name to the wide distribution and classy packaging.

Aforementioned classy packaging. JP (left) and USA (Right). Click to enlarge.

The plot of Mystical Fighter is based loosely on Japanese myth, and I do mean loosely. An evil “Lord Kabuki” is all set to conquer the kingdom after kicking the asses of White Lion (not the band) and Red Lion (I also promise this has nothing to do with Voltron). A mystical seal on Mt. Fuji is broken, setting the two warriors loose again to take a second shot at stopping Lord Kabuki… and the players control one or both of them as they try. The US manual’s translated version of the plot is below:

The first thing one notices as the game kicks off is that, while a little stereotyped-sounding, the music is awesome. It’s got a serious beat, and it’s not just some innocuous background loop. The ol’ YM1612 is put to beautiful use, something which this Segaphile will finally admit does not always happen. The graphics are also very fitting for the theme, evoking the dark and ephemeral world you’re supposed to be traveling through to stop the evil lord. The contrast your two characters – who look pretty damn kabuki themselves – also plays a well-conceived role in establishing the tone. It’s suitably heroic, even if understated. Normally I save an appraisal of these elements for closer to the end of a game article, but I wanted to put them right out front because I find them particularly impressive in Mystical Fighter.

This isn’t to say that the action is lacking. This game has every bit of the jaw-breaking, shit-kicking intensity that Streets of Rage or Golden Axe have. I’m sure there are folks who would disagree with me, but just look at the moves you can do! I’m not knocking Streets of Rage, but Axel cannot grab someone by their lapels and full-on hurl them entirely across the screen in a horizontal line. Mystical Fighter is its own animal, and it’s one with a mean temper. The sound effects that go along with your crazy leaps and attacks only add to the feeling of overall mayhem.

One guy goes flying in a laser-straight line toward the edge of the screen while another prepares to taste my creepy white foot. Once you get used to the controls, it’s like playing as a brutal circus acrobat or blood-crazy gymnast. 

There is a mechanic similar to that in Golden Axe, however, where you pick up scrolls (as opposed to potions) to save up for devastating magical spells. The more you pack up, the better the effect. You get to use those moves on an army of sumo guys, ogres, undead samurai, ninjas, and some bosses that are literally out of this world. The enemies may look like fat guys in bathrobes and clones of E. Honda, but don’t be fooled… everyone and everything you encounter is dangerous enough to take seriously.

I did find that some of the boss fights are pretty easy though, once you figure out the fairly predictable patterns. The big dog (lion? I don’t know) thing at the end of one of the first levels stands out as a good example of this. Just punch it in the face and get out of the way. Keep doing that and you’re golden.

He looks way scarier than he is, which isn’t very.

My attention span is admittedly horrid, so I haven’t beaten this game, but I do plan to revisit it. I give Mystical Fighter 8/10; it’s better (in my opinion) than other reviewers give it credit for, it’s got its own incredible flavor to it, and it promises high-flying fun.

Thanks, folks! See you again in mid-June! Stay Retro!

The arcade… dark, weird lighting. Gnarly carpeting. An omnipresent riot of sound and color as you walked in and wrapped yourself in the electronic arms of sweet, sweet diversion. For many of us RetroFans, it’s a golden, soft-glow set of memories we keep well-polished and stored within our minds’ more secure vaults. Some of us were around in the late 70s and early 80s, when titles like Space Invaders and Donkey Kong were waving the banner of arcade gaming’s golden age. More of us remember the era when arcades saw some shrinkage; my own formative exposure to the format was in the smaller realms tucked into the side areas of bowling alleys and the nooks of theme restaurants. The early 90s saw the Neo Geo and a host of other innovative releases, breathing some life into the old arcade room… but nonetheless, the sad truth is that the phenomenon has continued to deflate over time (except in Japan, where it’s kept vigorously alive).

I consider myself lucky to have been an awe-struck young man in my pre-pubescent years when the early 90s brought us a small revival of the arcade. My venues were still within the greater confines of bowling alleys and Chuck E Cheeses, but the games we were playing in those places made it feel like its own circus… its own arena. Everyone can think of a couple off the top of their heads, and while I’ve already had the honor of discussing the gems like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II, I hope a few of you will recall the games I’ll highlight in this article. Many are both bizarre and wonderful, like our first childhood crush or that recurring dream we had about MC Hammer growing to Godzilla size and destroying our hometown with his brutal dance moves (was that just me?), but it didn’t stop us from throwing quarters or tokens in to give them a shot.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Developer: Midway

Released: October 31, 1991

Everyone just about lost their shit when the Terminator sequel came out. At least that’s what I remember. It had a good-guy Terminator, an even worse bad guy Terminator, and more catastrophic violence than a train wreck giving birth to a nuclear detonation with no epidural. Even though it was way rated R, we all did what we had to do to see it, and whoa… it was nuts. It even sort of made Guns n Roses cool (who am I kidding, a lot of us misguidedly loved them anyway). On Halloween of ’91, we got to live the whole thing out in one of the better shooter-style arcade games of its time. The demo sequence claimed that the game was also rated R, for Righteous. No shit.

No need to label what specific type of weapons are in the crates. You’ll find out when you blast them open with all your gunpower. The enemy T-800 has gone so far as to ignore the hated humans behind it to focus on you, who are known as Machine Judas. SkyNet wept.

T2‘s difficulty was harsh, but it was still a blast to see how long you could last on the battlefields of 2029 against your loyalist robot kin and the massive death machines they served. Some of us even got really sharp and made it back to John Connor’s 1995… but I never did. Not even with 2 players. No matter what, the game’s graphics were super-crisp and it had a ton of really fun digitized voice clips in it. I for one couldn’t help but get into it.

Captain America and the Avengers

Developers: Data East, Realtime Associates

Released: 1991

This is one I dutifully played the absolute shit out of. I was huge into superheroes as a kid, both Marvel and DC (but a little more Marvel, and I’ve never been able to fully articulate why), and I was thrilled to see The Avengers when it first arrived at the smoky bowling alley my family frequented. They wanted to bowl? That’s fine, suckers are born every minute. I wanted to stop the fucking Red Skull.

Vision and Hawkeye stand fascinated as Mandarin shows them his special squat thrusts for keeping his glutes “mandariffic.” Captain America, always the histrionic one, shows off his vertical leap. Iron Man stares at nothing, thinking about his offshore accounts.

While the ports of the game got mixed reception, the arcade version itself is often praised as a classic beat ’em up. I liked it because four of us disinterested junior bowlers could play at a time, and I could play as Vision, whom I found fascinating as a superhero. The team plows through an army of generic robots and lesser villains to chase after the Red Skull, even making a foray into space and some other bizarre places in the Marvel Universe. Each character has melee and ranged options, and you can even hoist a motherfucker and throw him into another motherfucker. That was my go-to move. The graphics were great, fitting the comic book source material wonderfully; the sound and music was almost honest-to-god inspiring. “AMERICA STILL NEEDS YOUR HELP!” Well shit, I’d better pop some more tokens in.

WWF WrestleFest

Developer: Technos Japan

Released: 1991

“Jesus, dude, shut up about all these goddamned wrestling games!” No, though, because this one is incredible. You don’t even have to be a wrestling fan to get into it. Technos had released WWF Superstars in ’89, which did pretty well, and they took everything they learned from that in ’91 and produced an incredible mat-fighting arcade game.

Ultimate Warrior adds “slapped half-dead by a fat guy” to his resume, while Hogan and half of each featured tag team use Mr Perfect as a boat to cross an imaginary Potomac. Hogan, of course, is Washington!

The legendary Road Warriors/Legion of Doom are the “boss” characters in this one, replacing Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase in Superstars. You can team up with a friend or go it alone in various match types, but it was easily the most fun to try for the tag team titles against Hawk and Animal (who were fucking impossible to beat unless you had a grocery bag full of change). Team-up moves, berserk tag-ins, and digitized announcing from Mike McGuirk and Gene Okerlund make this a bona fide classical-era WWF product. The graphics are a little goofy, but they’re good for the format; the action doesn’t suffer. While the actual “Sport” may be choreographed or pre-determined, WWF WrestleFest isn’t short on real entertainment.

Lethal Enforcers

Developer: Konami

Released: October 8th, 1992

This time period was also all about controversy. Lethal Enforcers didn’t become quite as notorious as games like Doom or Mortal Kombat, but it did cause quite a stir upon its release. Konami’s action-cop shooter game had photo-realistic graphics (for its time) and was somewhat intense. It didn’t matter to the self-appointed moral crusaders of the era if you were the good guy or not; they were pissed that you were shooting at an animation of an actor dressed as a stereotypical goon.

Aside form all that, the game is immersive and pulse pounding. Split second decisions must be made as you confront thugs with hostages, fleeing civilians, and lightning fast criminals. You can easily lose the game, in fact, if you’re not precisely accurate in order to avoid harming the innocent. There’s chase scenes, power-ups that give you guns the police definitely shouldn’t have, and even “training stages” that lighten things up while still maintaining the theme. Aside from the great visuals, the music kicks ass and Lethal Enforcers is another game that heavily incorporates digitized samples. I liked this one enough to get the Genesis version a couple years later, and it was pretty faithful to the source.

Virtua Fighter

Developer: Sega (Sega AM2)

Released: October 1993

You were wondering why I was studiously avoiding fighting games in this particular article… I was saving this one for last. With the dawn of Virtua Fighter, the whole playing field of the genre was changed. Virtua Fighter wasn’t just showing us 3D polygon-based graphics, which we still considered pretty far-out and futuristic; the revolutionary fighter was making an earnest (and effective) attempt at fluid realism in its characters’ moves and techniques.

The “Model 1” hardware rig used for the game was jointly developed by Sega and Lockheed Martin. Yes, Lockheed fucking Martin the aerospace firm. The people who have a knee-deep resume of building cutting edge military technology. This hardware not only handles the revolutionary 3D rendering, but also allows for stunningly realistic movement and nearly true-to-life physics. The game’s plot was minimal and loosely resembled those of its ancestors, but literally no one cared. The game has spawned a thriving franchise that has continued to break ground in its genre. I remember seeing this shit and thinking to myself, “it’s pretty cool to live in the future.”

Towards the middle of the decade, the phenomenon of the arcade took a sullen plunge once more, though it’s remained alive through the 00’s and 10’s (or at least its heart beats). Our friends in the far East keep things going, and there’s of course been a small resurgence here as the retro gaming movement has gotten wind under its wings.

Between the years that the market drank Atari, and the years of the rise of the sons of Sony… there was an age undreamed of.

Thank you for reading! See you in June! Stay Retro!

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