In other words, this is the eleventh article wherein I will examine and interpret the bizarre illustrations used to sell video games in the 80s and 90s. Both Metallica and Harry Nilsson have screamed for you to jump in the fire, and now I’m screaming too.

Blaze Out

Data East/Konami, 1989

(early shovelware)

This is just egregious.

“You guys see that?” Rambo muttered bemusedly, staring into the distance. “Someone’s really about to buy this for their C64.”

Sgt. Elias was able to make eye contact for only a moment, clearly occupied with death throes that would never be explained beyond the narrative they’d been torn from in order to deposit his corpse here. The life faded from his eyes.

“THIS COURSE OF ACTION IS INADVISABLE,” said RoboCop, his voice’s metallic tone cutting clearly through the din of approaching horses. “THEY MUST BE UNDER THE MISTAKEN IMPRESSION THAT THIS IS SOMETHING OTHER THAN FRAGMENTED BULLSHIT THAT WILL TOTALLY DISAPPOINT THEM.”

Rambo sneered in numb disgust. “Get used to disappointment, RoboCop. Look where we are. Relegated to the bargain bin. Uncle Sam’s toy soldiers, forgotten and thrown away… at discount prices.”

Elias gurgled as he finally gave up the ghost. Strains of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” mingled with notes of Goldsmith and Poledouris. The posse on horseback continued to clamor forward, never truly gaining ground. John Rambo was right. This would never resolve itself. It did not exist.

Solstice: Quest for the Staff of Demnos

Acclaim, 1990

Here we have game art that ticks off two check boxes: First, unforgivable false hype (Solstice is a goddamn puzzle game). Second, art that is so representative of what its year of origin was about that it could be used as an example for academic purposes. This is so 1990 that I can smell the PVC and hairspray.

“BODY GLOVE SPONSORED ME! I EVEN BROUGHT MY BONG, SEE? COME ON, THE REST OF THIS SHIT IS DRY CLEAN ONLY! HOW DARE YOU CLAIM THAT I AM NOT TUBULAR ENOUGH TO ENTER THE FORTRESS OF GNARLINESS?” Neon Gandalf needs to chill out. All that Deca-Durabolin has really started to give him some un-radical roid rage, despite how ripped he is for a wizard. Imagine wearing a full purple cloak but not a shirt. He doesn’t have to imagine it. He’s living it, pal.

Neon Gandalf would actually be a pretty badass name for a stoner metal/80s New Wave revival mashup act that would doubtless fail to live up to my expectations.

immediately opens eBay in a new tab and searches “vintage keytar” and “wizard cape”

Adventure Island II

Now Production/Hudson Soft, 1991

I picked this one based entirely on the premise that a rhinoceros has T-Rex teeth on it. Master Higgins looks so scared! He’s so fucked up over it that he can’t even stay in one lane on his pterodactyl. Which by the way, seems to be the only creature not busy leering hatefully at either Higgins or the person viewing the image. At least this is fairly accurate to the content; this series of games is pretty unforgiving (but fun).

There’s all that photoshopped art on the internet with horses that have carnivore teeth. Why not a rhino? And yeah, give him Satan eyes, too. I not only can live with that, I endorse it.

Another BurgerTime Cover

Interceptor Software/Data East, 1982

Peter Pepper doesn’t give a fuck anymore. He’s been doing this for so long now that he’s just on auto pilot. The milkshake is a new thing; he knows it pisses them off, and he’s glad. This isn’t what he wanted his life to be like. He imagined his life as a restaurateur would be a very different thing by now, and he’s deeply resentful of this situation – no, this nightmare, but he’s just so jaded now that he’s consuming his own inventory and daring fate to consume him in turn.

Maybe it already has. From the look in his eyes, BurgerTime has eaten him, and he knows it. He just doesn’t feel the teeth yet. Perhaps the worst part is that he never will.

Damn good milkshake though.

Monster in my Pocket

Konami, 1992

If you needed one more reason not to wear blue jeans, here it is. Not only is it a questionable fashion choice for most men and very prone to fading, denim comes with the inherent risk that tiny skeletons, goblins, and werewolves could erupt from your ass violently and without warning. They don’t even look happy to be free. Look at that goblin’s face. You think he likes being trapped in your ass? You think he’s into that?

Skeleton Dude was into it, but we all know Skeleton Dude is into pretty much whatever. That guy doesn’t just live on the wild side, he is the wild side. It’s easy to cut loose when you have no skin.

I hope this latest misadventure into the box art vaults has left you more amused than injured… though I claim no liability for the latter, dear readers. Stay Retro!

Donkey Kong is credited as the first true “platformer,” and you bet your ass I double-checked in Google because you’d think some obscure forerunner of that game would hold the title, but no, it’s just plain old fuckin’ Donkey Kong. Running around like a ninny and performing very unsafe long jumps at great heights would go on to become the basis of countless titles, because it really was the best game in town.

Platform titles were so popular during the 80s and 90s, in fact, that almost every developer tried making one just to see if it would sell. Sometimes these games were predictably shitty, but once in a while there would be a diamond in the sand, waiting for us to discover it and rent it three consecutive times and then forget to return it for six months so that the video store just charges us for it and it’s ours now… despite that gold sticker the rental store put on it. Today I’ve picked out five from the NES game library for us to dissect. Let’s make the first incision…

Dragon Fighter

Natsume, 1990

Now, this is not called Dragon Fighter because you go out of your way to fight dragons, but neither is the title only a vague reference to the mythical beasts. When you’re not prancing around as a warrior with a fondness for ornate hats and what look like spandex onesies, you can dead ass transform into a fucking dragon and tear shit up just about as severely as you’d expect a dragon to tear shit up. All this awesome shit is limited (of course) by a gauge that fills up in human form and then ticks down while in epic-murder-monster-myth-mode.

The jump-and-slash formula is pretty well-represented here, at least when you’re not in dragon form; when you change shape the game takes on an R-Type/Gradius vibe as you begin to gently “rail” to the right and shoot down oncoming threats with your color-coded dragon breath. The compulsion exists to just hammer through the game haphazardly in dragon mode, but I found myself saving up my dragon-time for whatever waited at the end of each stage. Gameplay feels good either way.

Unashamed use of color and a ton of variety really help the graphics stand out; we’re not looking at anything groundbreaking for a 1990/91 release for the NES, but it’s a decent looking game. Dragon Fighter’s audio experience is acceptable, but nothing to write home about. Composer Kouichi Yamanishi keeps things basic with the music, but it’s far from boring or repetitive. My only hairs to split are that 1) the dragon form looks a bit gaudy all solid-color with such bright hues 2) is he dead serious with his unitard or whatever? Unitard + knee-high “fuck me” boots + long-billed feathered cap?

What does that equal? It equals 6 out of 10, because while it’s not necessarily a classic, Dragon Fighter has a neat gimmick and plays like more than minimal effort went into it.

Shatterhand

Jaleco/Natsume, 1991

Just the intro animation sells this one. Shatterhand is the heartwarming story of a man who lost both his arms, only to rise above adversity… by pummeling adversity into rubble with his new robot arms. You can even punch bullets! There are also different kinds of little helper-robots you can get, presumably when the automatons get a look at your chromed-out “guns” and recognize you as a fellow Skynet agent. No, wrong story. This one is mostly about you and your little hovering robot helpers beating the shit out of some cyber-soldiers to save the world and get revenge on them for taking your normal human meat-arms… but maybe you should be thanking them! After all, could you punch bullets before?

Let me answer that for you, nerd: no, you fucking couldn’t.

Shatterhand is a blast to play, but I could do without the elaborate pickup system. And don’t tell me I’m simple. I know I am. And that’s how you should keep your pickups in games like this. Don’t have me playing punch-Tetris on the fly trying to pick a Greek letter. It’s a cool way to have all the types of helper robots, but come on. You could have just had them, without all the fiddlin’ and diddlin’. Otherwise the game plays well and has a respectable challenge to it. The graphical style sits somewhere between the rich detail of a Sunsoft game and the effective simplicity of something like Contra. Composers Iku Mizutani and Hiroyuki Iwatsuki deliver a soundtrack every bit as hard-hitting as the game’s protagonist.

Shatterhand would be an 8 if not for the weird powerup system and the eventual repetitive nature of the gameplay. Instead it’s a solid 7 out of 10. I know a bunch of you think this game’s a total classic, and you’re not wrong, but maybe I give things lower ratings than they deserve because I suck at video games, okay?

Kick Master

KID, 1992

And so we go from arms to legs with Kick Master, one of the better-loved platformers of the late NES era, and for very good reason. Along with its fantasy theme, we see yet another decent melding of the action game essentials with some basic RPG elements (leveling up, etc.) as a continuation of a trend established in Legend of Zelda, Crystalis, etc. In Kick Master, your life has been royally fucked up by a powerful witch named Belzed, who has killed the king and queen and kidnapped the princess (natch). Your dumbass brother somehow gets killed by a skeleton (a circus-peanut-tier monster) even though your brother is wearing armor and wielding a sword when this happens. His dying words are so patently absurd that you are agape in shock:

The thing is, you do kind of have “great kicking skills.” You’ve got magic, too… but the kicking. The kicking is what’s great. Stay focused on that.

The graphics for Kick Master are superb for their time, with early examples of parallax scrolling visible and some dynamic (if laughably poorly written) cut scenes. You fly around the screen in a well-animated fury, raining hell (and feet) down upon your foes across eight stages filled with lush backgrounds. For all your kickmastery and wizarding bullshit, the controls aren’t cumbersome, either. I wish I could praise the sound, but it’s not great. In fact, the boss at the end of the swamps makes a horrible noise that sounds like a high-gain modem dial-up sound being recorded through too mics that are way too close together. Yo, why did you choose to put that sound in any game? It made me think my ROM was fucking up… no, it’s just Kick Master.

7 out of 10 for Kick Master. Terrible sound, mitigated by a fun and innovative RPG hybrid play style.

Bucky O’Hare

Konami, 1992

This intellectual property, which followed among others in the wake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is actually criminally undervalued. I remember the cartoon (and its theme song) to be well-written as if someone still loved what they had created… or at least had money to spend on it for a while.

The NES game is no exception, positively gleaming with Konami quality throughout. With a splash of color true to the source material, the game spans four worlds rendered in vivid, exaggerated terms. Not only does Bucky O’Hare look like a Konami Game, it sounds like one too; Tomoko Sumiyama’s soundtrack milks every bit of that distinctive Konami soundset we all know and love, producing laudable results worthy of any flagship title. Gameplay is a masterpiece, though many find Bucky O’Hare to be a bit difficult (including little old me). Characters can be played as they are rescued, and there are reasons to play each one, not unlike how certain parts of the Mega Man games are best done in sequence…

A firm 8 out of 10 despite it being so fucking hard I can barely finish the first level.

The Krion Conquest

Vic Tokai, 1990

Do you like Mega Man? Good, because you’re playing a reskinned Mega Man. Robots are still trying to take over the world, but these robots are from space and they’re vulnerable to magic, motherfucker. Krion Conquest is another one of those games that had a plot when it got on the airport in Japan but must have left it under the seat of the plane. The long and short of it: you’re a witch “from a place full of demons” and you’re the only one who can hurt all the robots.

Leave it to a knockoff to improve on the formula of what it rips off. You can aim upward and crouch in this game, two things that Mega Man, a futuristic android hero, simply cannot manage to do. So as strange as this may sound, I find Krion Conquest slightly more playable than any of the first three Mega Man games, just due to the added versatility of being able to look upward and point my wand-thingy up there too. Seriously, of all the things a state-of-the-art futuristic cyber-champion CAN’T do, it’s crane his neck and lift an arm above his head? There are men in their nineties who have Mega Man outclassed.

The graphics and sound are all over the place. Some of it is, well, just Mega Man sprites used as a tracing stencil. I won’t even itemize all of what’s ripped directly off; even the “GET READY” at each stage’s beginning and the life bar/weapons menu are barely given a new coat of paint. Most of the enemies look like if you paid the folks at LJN to redraw Mega Man baddies, but after buying those LJN folks a few shots of liquid hillbilly brain damage juice. The Krion Conquest has two composers, and two heads are… about the same as one in this case. Most of the music, regardless of its other points of quality, comes off as repetitive.

Krion Conquest can have 5 points out of 10 for at least cheating well. It’s a bag of blatant borrowing, but it’s at least playable.

We’ll be seeing more of each other later in the merry month of May, RetroFans! Best Believe!

I’m not ashamed or embarrassed at all to admit that I even get a little teary-eyed at the right piece of VG music if I’m in the right frame of mind. What does shame me is that I’ve spent so little time talking about that here – the music itself. I’ve chosen a few pieces of music to talk about, and I’ll provide a link for readers to listen along with me. I bet some of you know these soundtracks by heart the same way I do though… you can probably call them up in your mind just like I can.

Everyone’s looking for ways to cope right now, and music is fantastic tool for that. Let’s immerse ourselves in it today like a nice hot bath. Let’s listen. Everyone’s been going through some rough shit lately, and we’re not going to talk about that at all, because everyone’s sick of it. We’re going to forget the lousy news and the stress and uncertainty of it all, and we’re going to pursue some self-care together. Let’s listen to some video game music.

Crash Man Stage Music

Mega Man II

Capcom, 1988

Composer: Takashi Tateishi

Ooh there’s energy in this one. Like… I love funk. I love jazz. Those types of music pick me up and keep me smiling and snapping my fingers when things get rough or I get discouraged. I think Jazz is medicine. And this piece is funky. Like you want to move. And in Crash Man’s stage, you certainly can’t sit still. The octave-walk on the bass line, the smooth but busy lead riffs… that’s fucking jazz fusion. And it bops. It makes you bop with it.

I have also found a sick remix of this using the MD/Genesis sound set… it is cherry. Turn the key in this motherfucker and drive.

Main Theme

Space Harrier

Sega, 1985

Composers: Yuzo Koshiro, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Mark Cooksey

For an action-oriented ride like Space Harrier, this is such hopeful and upbeat music. The lovely harmonies and steady 80s rock beat lend this track a sense of forward movement, which is entirely appropriate and forms a huge part of the game’s charm game for me. You can tell that while there are aliens and obstacles to be blasted in the Fantasy Zone, Sega’s composers wanted you to remember: life can be fun. You’re playing a video game. Escape. “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone! Get ready!”

Thunder Landing (Stage 1 Theme)

Super Contra

Konami, 1988

Composer: Motoaki Furukawa (Club Kukeiha)

The music you put in the first stage/area/level of your video game can have a huge impact on how memorable it is. I always loved this one because it sets the tone for the entire game right out of the starting gate; You get that nice intro riff as your drop out of the helicopter, and that weighty orchestra hit comes back to… well, hit you.

Side note: I’ve probably gushed over this before, but Konami has always placed a high value on their music and the composers they use. I like to think it’s part of why they’re still in the ring after all these years. The Contra series is no exception.

Toxic Dump (Parts 1 and 2)

The Ooze

Sega, 1995

Composer: Howard Drossin

Yo, let me start by saying I love this fucking game. You get to play as an amorphous blob of green mutant ooze. It’s incredibly innovative and fun, and it has a killer soundtrack to boot. This is another good example of “make the level 1 music pop so they take notice.” I could listen to it on loop for a while.

I almost want to call this shit thrash-funk. Funk-thrash. You sort it out. You tell me. I just dig it. It’s dirty but frenetic. If Quentin Tarantino directed an Oscar the Grouch segment for Sesame Street this music might work well for it.

But that should never, ever happen. Or should it?

Evergreen (Ending Theme)

Castlevania 3/Akumajou Densetsu

Konami, 1989

Composers: Yoshinori Sasaki, Jun Funahashi, Yukie Morimoto

This one’s just a little piece of beauty to help close out an incredible masterpiece of a game. CV3 is one of the finest in the series (at least in my opinion), with the JP version utilizing that delicious VRC6 cartridge expansion to enrich and deepen the music’s body. To some people (who suck), it’s just some low-bit “strings” layered over each other. To me, this track speaks of comfort. The relief and peace of a job well done. Fuck you, Dracula. Get a hobby. Stop bothering us.

But then, if he ever did, we’d run out of Castlevania juice. I need that shit. I’m thirsty. (the third season of the show is so good!)

All right RetroFans… I’ll be back with more goodness later on. Stay safe and sane, and most importantly, Stay Retro!

1943

Capcom, 1988

Lately I’ve been taking time to really read up (and watch countless fantastic documentaries) on the world wars. The air and sea duel between US and Imperial Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War remains one of the most gripping, dramatic conflicts of the 20^th Century. It continues to stir the human spirit and the imagination of gamers in various forms, but when I was a young’un, 1943 was what got my pulse pounding.

Let me take a moment and assure our readers of something important: I am talking about a video game by Capcom, and will offer no intentional slant either way on a conflict fought long ago by men who have now mostly passed on. All opinions expressed are pertinent to the 1988 NES port of an arcade game, not WWII itself.

With that covered, Capcom made one hell of a riveting action shooter out of this piece of history. The titanic conflict is taken from history to hyperbole, presented in a suitably intense form, and yet it still ends up an easily enjoyable breakneck plane shooter. Your brave little plane starts off as the factory-direct model, but there is some decent opportunity to enhance it along your way, as well as lovely power-ups to wield against your foes in the air and at sea. Levels are divided into high-altitude approaches and the death-defying attacks launched on carriers and other ships. The pacing and nature of the action can give you the feeling of a bona fide flying ace, but be careful… 1943 is war. As you fight through swarms of enemy fighters and outward defenses, you must take great care to keep yourself sharp for the “boss” fights against gigantic destroyers, screen-spanning super planes, and everything the Imperial Navy has to throw at you.

The hottest dog of the hot-doggers, you take on the Imperial Navy all on your lonesome. The grit was never grittier on the 8-bit screen.

The graphics are adequate, with some nice color and detail on the big stuff, which gives the epic feel an extra dose of flavor. The music has its good moments, but none of it sucks; this is after all a Capcom title. SFX takes no backseat either, all of it being at least on par with if not exceeding its contemporaries in the genre. All in all, it is a fine port of a very fun arcade game that I fondly keep in my rotation when I open the emulator and strap on my flight harness.

1943 gets an easy 7 out of 10 for me. It’s an easily approachable but healthy challenge for fans of the shmup genre, with plenty of its own twists and goodies to keep you interested.

Crystalis

SNK, 1990

Not too long after early RPG titles for the NES began enjoying notable success, the idea of combining RPG elements with real-time action game play was tossed about by various developers with varying degrees of success. Crystalis (called God Slayer: Haruka Tenkū no Sonata in Japan) is a title that sometimes gets overlooked. Modern and past reviewers have had mixed feelings about this one, but I feel that Crystalis is one of the more entertaining and effectively-framed RPG style stories that hit the NES.

It’s a game with a relatively detailed plot, so I will avoid revealing too much in case you’ve not played and decide to give it a try. The important part of the beginning story is that you awaken from cryo-sleep years after a nuclear conflict that greatly changed your world. As things progress, you find that you may in fact be the one meant to save this new and dark place you wake up to.

Both your allies in the world’s remaining civilizations and your enemies throughout the spaces between are varied and interesting; your quest will carry you far and wide as you take back the world from the evil empire that has risen in the wake of the nuke war, requiring not only brawn but combat skill as you master your sword and magic. There are also some Zelda-esque puzzles along the way, though none of them are so convoluted that a thinking player will find them insoluble. You gain levels and improve in prowess as the plot unfolds around you, but your efficiency in doing so is mostly dictated by good ol’ fashioned thumb-dancing.

Sure, you do a shit-ton of stabbing during your adventure. But Hell, that’s an action RPG staple!

The graphical presentation is more than appropriate, with familiar tropes and new surprises alike. It’s nothing to rant and rave about, but it’s a satisfying spread. Other reviewers have faulted the game for certain challenges being just “button-mashers,” but I disagree; careful and clever play will not only bear you out of trouble, but prove more efficient in slaying your foes. The music is pretty good, but it suffers in places like underground “dungeon areas” from a bit of repetitiveness. Sound effects come out on a similar plane, being decent but nothing to write home about. In my view, the play itself saves Crystalis from being mediocre or plain. The story (again, trying to avoid too much exposition here) is also an engaging and suitably “RPG-like” tale laced with mysticism and heroism, not to mention some great villains.

Crystalis pulls down a 6 out of 10 from me. I like to play it as an action-adventure game, its depth is reasonable without being too elaborate, and its overall presentation is satisfying if not truly stellar. It’s worth a look for anyone who enjoys the hybrid of action and role-playing.

TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project

Konami, 1992

Here’s the one I shit on, folks. Not even because it’s that terrible… it’s just kind of a letdown. To address the elephant in the room, it’s essentially just more of what we saw in the NES version of the TMNT arcade port. It’s more than playable, but it’s just a reuse of something they did only a couple of years before, Very little effort to add much new dynamism or excitement… I mean, they didn’t release the actual Super Mario part 2 here until All-Stars, for this exact marketing reason. “Will they swallow the same pill twice?”

The answer is yes. We did.

WAIT, THOUGH. Maybe I’m not being entirely fair. In the vein of some other beat ’em ups, this third TMNT NES game allows you to choose whether or not “friendly fire” is a factor in 2-player action. It also allows you to change your chosen turtle in between horrible deaths, and for a second player to join in the game in medias res during a 1-player session. Essentially, it’s an opportunity to make the game more similar to the arcade experience in certain ways.

You tell me, folks. After all, you’re as opinionated as I am. Aren’t you?

I maintain that the formula changed very little and that you’re mostly just getting more levels to play in the style of TMNT II, but is that necessarily a horrible thing? At least the premise is exciting: Shredder has turned all of Manhattan into a floating fortress under his control, and the Fab Four must end their vacation early to return home and put a stop to their arch-villain’s plans once more.

The graphics really seem to have taken a hit, as far as I’m concerned. Things look just a little more goofy, but it’s still enough to get the job done. Just barely. The music… well, it’s Konami. Their taste in (and impressive variety of) BGM composition almost never fails, and this is no exception. It’s good, rollicking, authentic shell-kicking music. Otherwise the presentation isn’t too far from the previous installment in the series, and they even made a pass at a decent intro sequence for TMNT 3.

I’ll soften up and drop TMNT 3 a 6 out of 10. It’s comparable to its predecessor, with some neat little options added in, and if you’re after more of the same, you won’t be disappointed. Besides, even though I’m the final authority (sarcasm) on video games excellence, this ain’t all about me.

NRW Gaming 2019 – STAY RETRO

Keep your eyes peeled in March for another three-parter. Stay Retro!

Back in the castle again, for probably the best game in the series to date.

I’m fucking JAZZED to be talking about CastleVania: Symphony of the Night. It is my favorite game (besides Mr. Driller) for the original PlayStation, and it is widely regarded as one of the best video games ever. It took the story of the CastleVania series and threw us a few curve balls with it; the result is a work of art that had a profound effect on action-adventure gaming as a product and as a style.

SOTN (as I’ll refer to it within this article) started its life as a game for the Sega 32X. Early in its development, it was picked up whole-cloth, moved to the “Holy Shit it’s the PlayStation” department of Konami R&D, and converted to high-test. The developers in charge of the project, Hagihara and Igarashi, Were involved with the franchise’s previous game, Dracula X/Rondo of Blood, and wanted to continue that storyline while adding some non-linear elements inspired by the critical reception of Simon’s Quest. The story picks up… well, one of the cool part is, you have to finish the final boss fight from Dracula X before you can even play SOTN. This you do as Richter Belmont, that game’s protagonist and probably the most badass Belmont in the family line. (You can also play as him in SOTN by entering his name as yours in in a game file.) After that, we fade in on Alucard, Dracula’s half-vampire son whose previous appearance was 8 years earlier in CastleVania III: Dracula’s Curse, anime-dashing towards his father’s decrepit castle, decked out in his finest gear. You smash around a little while looking for Daddy, instead encounter your dad’s homie Death, and (almost to draw attention to this game’s sick RPG-style inventory system) get all your cool shit ganked. The game proper-begins here, where you start exploring the castle in earnest, looking for weapons etc. to replace those you lost and trying to get your bearings. Before long you’re exploring the whole castle (including a separate version of it, connected to the first via teleport, that is entirely upside-down) and finding all kinds of cool shit to help you put down Dracula and his undying army of servants. Elaborate doors mark off areas where “boss fights” await you, and places to save your game and rest up are scatted throughout as well in the form of dark rooms containing coffins.

I hope you brought an economy size box of Band-Aids, Al.

Of course there are tons of gnarly monsters between you and, well, everything. Lavishly rendered versions of the standard CastleVania stock, as well as some out-there foes like living swords and man eating plants, will gladly help you lose some weight in hit points. A lot of them also have a chance to drop sweet goodies for you, from one-use items to fancy weapons and armor. You’ll also want to do a blood-bucket worth of killing anyway, just to level up. Yes, in another well-converted RPG mechanic, Alucard becomes more skilled and powerful as he clocks hours murdering his father’s crew ad infinitum. You not only get all kinds of weapons and armor as you scrounge around, but you can learn some of Dracula’s vampire tricks (mostly shape-changing), magical spells, and more. Alucard also has access to the same set of sub-weapons a Belmont normally does, except the boomerang seems conspicuously absent. Small potatoes. Who cares. This game is awesome.

Welcome to Shuffle-opolis.

The graphics for SOTN are absolutely delicious, most especially the background art for the castle’s various areas. The PlayStation allowed for then-unprecedented amounts of visual detail, and parallaxing background layers add to the depth of it all. All sprites are given rich animation and some of the bigger ones bear as much detail as the background art. And the sound? Well, here. Listen to the OST. You’ll want to keep doing it. I am right now. Michiru Yamane’s work on this game’s soundtrack belongs on a high pillar, easily some of the finest music in a Konami game ever. There is no shyness in terms of style-blending or variety, and it comes off like smooth vanilla. Not to mention, it is 100% CastleVania.

SOTN is another one of those games I’d be slandering if I didn’t give it a 9/10. Hell, it’s a game I’m struggling not to slap a 10 on. It’s simply a classic, like peanut butter & jelly or the baked potato. It needs no doctoring around with or serious weighing in the balance; it’s fucking gold the way it is and it helped to spawn a slew of games that mimic its layout and play style. There’s a reason for that: it’s a legendary game. If you own a PS1 and do not own this game for it, stop fucking around. Why do you have a PS1 Then?

good night, folks! Stay Retro!!!

Konami, one of the monolithic names in Japan’s gaming industry, has had its hand in the game since 1978 (not its founding, but when it produced its first coin-op game). The company has a string of successful franchises, both past and present, including the iconic Castlevania and Metal Gear series retro gamers have known and loved from the beginning. While many of us (myself included) got our first taste of Konami via the NES, it was arcade coin-op titles that laid the steady foundation for the company’s rise to prominence. Thanks to both MAME and the new life given to retro-style arcades in recent times, I’ve had a chance to fiddle with several of these killer titles, and I’ve chosen three to talk about in my usual long-winded fashion. Let’s waste no further time with my jabber-jawing. Let’s take a look.

Battlantis (1987)

Two things immediately stood out to me when I played Battlantis: the first one was how it blends sci fi with an “ancient world” motif. Your warrior uses his laser weapon and various other goodies to defend the parapets of a stone fortress from grenade-wielding goblins and horrible monsters. He’s even got a gnarly little Rocketeer-looking helmet. The second thing I noticed was the incredible graphical quality visible in nearly everything onscreen. There are huge boss monsters who are depicted in gruesome detail, perhaps the most self-evident display of Battlantis’s visual show. The final boss is reminiscent of ones we’d see in some Contra series installments, and there’s even one that kind of looks like the Rancor from Return of the Jedi…

The music isn’t bad either, but it’s hardly outstanding. I found the game challenging, but even when I got my space gladiator ass kicked, I wanted another go. Battlantis feels like a very “big” game despite the fact that your motion is limited. It’s an ancestor of “tower defense” with a lot going on, offering both exciting gameplay and a visual feast.

Aliens (1990)

I actually just recently re-watched the first through third movies in this series, and Aliens is still my favorite of the three. I understand even more as an adult how utterly horrifying the alien queen is, all spiderlike and ruthless, churning out a swarm of her acid-blooded spawn deep within the conquered mining colony. I’m better able to appreciate just how good of a cast the film had, which turned out to be a key ingredient for a non-shitty sequel. I also remembered that Burke (Paul Reiser) reminds me of an ex-boss of mine, which adds an extra layer of catharsis for me when he’s rent asunder by a shrieking jet-black monster.

If you think about it, Konami making an arcade adaptation of Aliens was pretty natch. I mean, you can even see similarities between the face-huggers in this game and the little pink scramblers in the last stage of Contra. It sure seems like I’m tying everything back into Contra today, but I swear it’s not calculated. Besides, I’m fairly sure I could do an article just on how many games have borrowed visual inspiration from the Alien series…

Don’t worry. I may sometimes seem like I’m using this as an echo chamber, but I do actually respect you. I won’t write a whole article about that.

Okay, okay. This game is a pretty high-impact side-scrolling run & gun. Ripley, who apparently got a bleach job for the arcade game, skips a ton of what actually happens in the movie and just plows in solo to purge the colony of xenomorphs by traversing it end to end and WRECKING EVERYTHING IN SIGHT. You’re inching through vent shafts, strolling through the breeding grounds themselves, and even going toe-to-toe with the Grand Bitch herself using the powerlifter. The graphics are very good, with lots of SNES-style sprite scaling and lots of detail in the backgrounds. The obligatory diversification of enemies from film canon is fun, and doesn’t make the game seem too goofy. Really, the sound effects stood out to me as the coolest part; the quality of the aliens’ death rattles helps to keep a little edge of creepiness in the game.

Monster Maulers/Kyukyoku Sentai Dadandarn (1993)

This game is fucking unbelievable, and I’m legitimately sad that it didn’t become the next Street Fighter II in 1993. To give the simple description of Monster Maulers, you play as one of three superheroes and beat the shit out of really bizarre monsters in confrontations similar to your typical fighting game. These horrors are roaming the Earth thanks to a sinister organization known as the Happy Droppers. First you thrash the monsters, then you take the Droppers out back and teach ’em how to sing soprano.

I can’t get over how completely insane this shit is. I’m like, moderately skilled at fighting games (at best), and usually don’t play them for long spans of time, but I can’t cool it with Monster Maulers at all. All three characters have lunatic moves worthy of a superhero, including atomic fireballs and pro wrestling moves. I have body-slammed a centaur. I’ve punched a demon in the face repeatedly. I have hurled white-hot balls of plasma at a giant living Moai head until it tapped out in submission. At the end, you brawl with a robot gorilla and fistfight a tank.

I have nothing negative to say about Monster Maulers except that I’m pissed I never encountered it earlier in my life. I’d have probably shit my pants. Part of me is sure Konami limited its distribution in order to soften the titanic blow of its very presence. The music is CD quality, and I’m pretty sure I even heard singing. Don’t even get me started on the graphics. When you make a game that centers around superheroes inflicting career-ending injuries upon massive supernatural monsters, you have to make it look good.

They did. I am out of words for this.

Battlantis – 7/10 (It was cool to find this. It reminded me of modern tower-defense games, which causes me to see it as their ancestor.)

Aliens – 7/10 (overall it’s nothing legendary or unique, but it’s very good for a licensed game and also a good choice of play-format for the source material.)

Monster Maulers – 9/10 (I wanted to give it a 10/10, but I have to maintain what little inner discipline I have. Monster Maulers is… monstrous.)

In the world of fiction, sometimes the curtain parts to reveal a true conflict. The petty squabbles and sex-drenched tousles so popular with the masses are forced to make way for a truly apocalyptic clashing of forces. The few must take up arms against the many, and great weapons must be brought to bear. The literary cleverness and lace-doily detective bullshit fall into the flaming mouth of Hell and all that remains is the one crossing of swords that has echoed (and will echo) through eternity: humanity vs. anti-humanity. If you wish to leave moral relativism on the curb next to the garbage where it belongs, let’s call it what it is… good vs. evil.

Hence the significance of the Contra series.

Super Contra picks up the guitar where its prequel left it upon the stage, reaches back toward the amp and turns the bitch up to 11. The story continues like so many in classic gaming do: The big evil bad guy (in this case, the nebulous alien force referred to as Red Falcon) has reclaimed a piece of Earth to stage an invasion. This time, it’s not just some piece of God-forsaken jungle. It’s a whole military base, including the personnel. Of course, Earth’s leaders shit their pants and call up the two hardasses who put a stop to the first fiasco: Bill Rizer and Lance Bean.

Lance Bean. Now there’s a name you’d better wear like a bad motherfucker if you intend to be taken seriously, ever. And he does.

Konami released Super Contra in 1988 for the arcade and the NES (titling it Super C for American audiences), also dropping versions for Amiga and DOS. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be looking mainly at the arcade and NES versions.

If you’ve played the original Contra, you’ll find minimal surprises in terms of gameplay when you first leap off the helicopter in Super C. The same basic ideas apply: you’re blasting and trying not to get blasted in turn, while scooping up better weaponry along the way. The action is a bit more intense, and the stakes are every bit as high. Playing with a buddy ups your survival chances, as you’ll definitely want someone watching the rear.

I suppose I was bullshitting you a little bit… Super Contra has some top-down stages that are a little different from the chase-view “base” levels present in its predecessor. Threats come from everywhere, 360 full degrees of danger pressing in… but the added perk of these levels is the presence of “Shells” (read: screen-clearing bombs) that come in handy in a tight spot. They’re sparse, though, so use them wisely.

Graphically, both versions of the game are simply doing more with the same toolset than their predecessors did. This is most evident with some of the boss designs; where you faced down a lot of giant-robot-looking shit in Contra, you’ll be seeing a lot of gnarly bio-monster art here, and it’s stunningly well-done. It’s even a little frightening. The soundtrack shines, and is probably the strongest point for me personally. Konami rarely failed to deliver in this department (which I suppose still rings mostly true today), and Super Contra is no exception. No one likes a lame first level music track, and that’s not a problem anyone has to worry about here.

Super Contra is a sequel where sticking close to the original format was the best possible idea, and it comes off extremely well. It’s every bit as pulse-pounding and intense as its predecessor, if not more so. I give it 8/10.

This Grab Bag is devoted to that idea. I’ve snagged three titles that, well-known or not, embody the absurdity so often encountered in classic (and, let’s be fair, modern) gaming.

Jail Break

Konami, 1986

Arcade

The basic plot of this one is that a small army of criminals have escaped from the jail/prison/whatever, and it’s up to one cop to stop their wave of violence. They’ve taken a bunch of hostages and inexplicably not just scattered across the country, working cohesively for reasons only guessed at. It’s your job to bring them all back in, dead or alive.

My best guess is that this is meant as an existential question.

As if to stress that last part, gameplay consists primarily of running forward, wildly firing your gun. Once in a while, a hostage will appear and call out to you in fairly clear digitized speech. Don’t fucking kill them. Kill the 1,000 identical shirtless dudes in striped pants trying to kill you. They all have iron balls on chains attached to their legs, but somehow are about as mobile as you. This is it. This is Jail Break.

Why, hello there, citizen.

Ridiculous Shit:

• You can get a bazooka and other weapons, you know, like cops constantly have somehow.
• Sometimes when you shoot a barrel, Batman pops out of it, and he’s got no shirt on.
• The female hostage with a baby yells “help, I’m over here” when it’s pretty obvious where she is… running straight towards you through a hail of gunfire.
• If you kill a bad guy who’s firing at you from a window, he momentarily turns into a nude woman.
• On the last level, the gate of the prison says “WELLCOME” above it in blood.
• Just like Circus Charlie, this shit continues forever. The Replay Burners video of it is over 5 hours long.

Toilet Kids

Bits Laboratory, 1992

PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16

A pale horse if there ever was one.

Although I’m not particularly religious, I am often heard to quote the Book of John, Chapter 11, Verse 35. This game is one of those entries in our hobby’s history that spills the verse from my mouth like a font of woe.

A positively nightmare-driven spread from the game’s manual. This came from the mind of someone who belongs in a special cage. A rubberized one.

I’m unclear on the story being told here, except that it is disgusting and probably illegal. Some kid goes and sits on the toilet, presumably in the middle of the night (guessing by the darkness) and gets… whisked to a magical world of shit and piss. The entire thing is presented as a vertical overhead shoot-em-up that borders on spiritual devastation, at least for me. If you earnestly like this game, that’s your business, but I also hate you in a raw and instinctive way I can’t overcome. I’m sorry.

Ridiculous Shit:

• You are riding a flying Japanese-style commode through a mystical land of scatological references.
• Human butts on creatures that are universally far from human
• disembodied, uncircumcised dicks that fly forward, rotate toward you, and spray in offensive formation
• hippos that barf literal shit at you
• Almost every enemy is a butt, has a butt it shouldn’t, uses its butt to hurt you, or just hurls these perfectly round bullets of excreta (either actual literal dookie balls or mysteriously round orbs of piss) toward you like a scat-obsessed Galaga bad guy
• who did this
• why
• WHY

MC Kids

Virgin Games, 1991

NES

I’m not ragging on this one because it’s a licensed McDonald’s game. That’s fine. I understand the desire of businesses to market themselves however they deem effective. My feelings on it, for the purpose of this article, are largely irrelevant.

I want to do all of these things. This makes total sense. I am motivated. Let’s go.

This game is also pretty clearly an attempt to clone Super Mario Bros. 3’s gameplay from the ground up, and it’s not terrible in that respect… it’s just not a great imitation.

1. Who is this 2. What does he hope to achieve here 3. Why am I playing this

I don’t know… there’s just something surreal about this one, and it’s hard to put my finger on. It’s a combination of the above two mentioned elements, and a few others: maybe it’s the sometimes out-of-place enemies, the weird leering presence of Ronald everywhere, or even the harrowing journey through what looks like a “blood world” later on to reach Hamburglar’s hideout. Why would they put a kid through this?

Blood World. Easily recognizable as part of canonical McDonalds imagery.

Ridiculous Shit:

• You’re sort of solving a problem out of your pay grade; if Ronald and the crew can’t get Hamburglar’s raging addiction under control or at least stage an intervention, what the fuck are you supposed to do
• Sometimes it’s kind of like the enemies/hazards were tossed in as an afterthought; in fact, despite them, the game still comes across as Mario 3 Lite
• Hamburglar lives separate from the other McDonalds characters by way of what closely resembles a hellish world of blood

I can’t denounce these games fully, for to do so would be to exclude them from the spectacle that draws each of us in and hooks us. Part of the video gamer lives for action, but another part suckles at the teat of the bizarre and somehow draws nourishment. We dine on this fare, and we are (despite all notions of rational thought or common sense) thankful for the bounty of providence. In closing, may the world of video games never stop offering us the occasional absurdity. It would perhaps detract from the creativity inherent in the market, and result in a loss of vitality for video games. That’s scarier to think about than an entire game about McDonald’s or poop.

It’s time to round out September with some more unbelievably lush and unforgettable art from our favorite classic games. I chose a few more, and I’ve even got some videos this time, because I got all nerd-excited over some of the choices. I also made an earnest effort to find out as much as possible about the individual artists who created these visual masterpieces… that information is oddly difficult to find – or maybe I’m just dumb as hell and don’t know where to look. If you see one I credit incorrectly or that doesn’t have an artist credit, and you’ve got that information, PLEASE TELL ME! Without any further unnecessarily wordy prefacing bullshit, let’s get right to it! Feast your eyes!!!

Salamander/Lifeforce (Konami)

Year: 1986

Artist: Uncertain, my guess is either Kenji Shimoide or Naoke Satō

The cover of the official OST, perhaps the least intruded-upon version of the base image. Back in early days, at the rental store… this snake scared me so stupid I HAD to try Lifeforce. Just to see if I could teach that snake a lesson.

You are looking into the face of galactic evil. Are you even remotely ready for this shit? Do you even know what “ready for this shit” means?

I don’t think you do, ese. I think you’re gonna get schooled into little fragments.

This one always entranced me as a kid. I originally saw it on the US NES cover, and later on in life I was awed at the detail lost in shrinking it from the original arcade flyer. I know it’s just a space snake, but it’s a fucking scary space snake, man. That perfectly coiled length behind it, framed by the yawning star-speckled nothingness of outer space.

I hope you said your space prayers, kiddo.

Space Harrier (Sega)

Year: 1985

Artist: Sega doesn’t even denote who did what in their game credits, everyone just gets lumped in as “STAFF”

I managed to find this one without the retail trim, so you could soak in the moment of visceral chaos. There’s so much going on… there is a gigantic floating brain back there. It’s got a city on top of it. Yeah, everything’s normal here.

There is a lot going on here, and you’d benefit from a close look. Soaring through planetary atmospheres destroying shit with a gun as big as you are? AMAZING career path. Let him show you.

Our dude is so unspeakably cool that he is point-blank nuking the ouroboros dragon thing without even folding p his shades and putting them somewhere safe. He knows the space babes are watching, and Space Harrier never disappoints. The stone heads just sort of toodle by; it seems like they’re either used to this shit by now or just so sullen and insular that they dare Space Harrier to destroy them.

My favorite touch is the light panic on Space Cyclops Elephant’s face. He is not even sure how he’s getting by in this ecosystem, but he sure as hell didn’t sign up for this. He’s got kids.

OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK KEEP UP CARL OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK 

Meanwhile, a gleaming futuristic metropolis stands majestic against the sublime sunset in the background.

The space babes are definitely there.

DOOM (id Software)

Year: 1993

Artist: Gregor Punchatz

“I don’t need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.” -Emil Cioran

I had to come here. Had to tread the blood-red sands of Hell once more. A UAC space marine’s job is never done. It’s a good thing someone tossed med-kits and boxes of bullets all over the place.

This one image defines my late childhood/early adolescence, at least in part. I still have the 11×17 poster that I framed and hung in my room as a preteen. I just don’t keep it hung up anymore because wherever you put that thing, it sucks the eye away from everything else near it.

Here we see a man who’s pretty certain he’s about to die. He’s bleeding, the sneering legions of Hell are grasping at hims limbs, and you can see the stark animal fear building on his face beneath the visor of his helmet. He drops one, maybe two, but like a pissed-off Satanic swarm of fire ants, the demons simply pile on. His buddy’s running up, shouting that he’ll help cover a retreat. Our man doesn’t even have the breath to say what he’s thinking: you’d better turn right back around, private, or this is gonna be you about twelve seconds after I hit the ground.

That’s the thing that really nailed me to the genre and the aesthetic of games like DOOM when I was younger. I was nihilistic, full of existential terror, and coming to terms with my own mortality at an age when I should have been basking in the bucolic sunshine of oblivion. Doom grabbed me because it was not only action packed and no-holds-barred, but because it really did have this nuance of hopelessness to it. The imagery, the implied storyline, and even certain pieces of music from the game are enough to invoke images of humanity’s twilight. This cover art is no exception. We have stumbled upon a fictional future man about to die, just like billions have before him… except he’s fighting demons and it fucking rules.

Anything Yoshitaka Amano Has Done for the Final Fantasy Series (Squaresoft)

Year: So many, and it’s awesome

Artist: Yoshitaka “World-Crafting Visual Arts Deity” Amano

I’m not one of those people who gushes over shit just because it’s Japanese. Don’t get me wrong; I deeply appreciate what Japanese creators and innovators have contributed to video games throughout the history of the industry. I just tend to sift through my consumption of anything a bit more than it seems… some people do. I’m not judging them. Anyway, I WILL gush over this, because every piece of this man’s art is like Hellenic Greece and ancient Rome collided with the hyperbolic world of JRPGs and created an alternate reality where literally everyone was a god.

Left: The crew from FFII, the Japanese II that was so hard they second-guessed releasing it Stateside but relented eventually; and on the right we have FFIV’s Twin Pimp Squad, Cecil and Kain.

I have a confession to make: the latest Final Fantasy game in the series that I’ve played is IX. I just couldn’t stay interested, plus I stopped doing the console thing around the time the Dreamcast went the way of the dodo. My two favorites, both of which mark me as a minority among FF fans, are I and IV. They are the two that I grew up chewing through, that helped shape my sensibilities about RPGs. I also enjoyed VI very much because it had an even richer story than IV had, and once I got to play them in an intelligible format I fell in love with II and III.

Left: the gang from III, all grown up and jobbed out. Right: Some fabulously crazy shit from VI.

Seeing Amano render those characters in such a graceful, hyper-human style takes me back every time. There’s something deeply Classical as well as something very Art Noveau about everything he illustrates, and it depicts these characters as both visually striking and starkly human.

Splatterhouse 2 (Namco)

Year: 1992

Artist: Probably one of the following – A. Chan, Gyoee~! Miyachan, or Taiji Nagayama (again, they just pile names together in these things)

I just realized while preparing to publish: the fucking octopus has eyebrows. Click for larger version.

I finished with this one because October’s right around the corner. Horror in classic video games is one of my favorite topics to swim around in. Usually the end result of such efforts ends up either painfully cool (but not scary) or laughably shitty. The Splatterhouse series (at least, the original three) are painfully cool. This cover is so 1990s cool I can’t even look at it without muttering “yeah dude” under my breath reflexively.

He is battling the SHIT out of a massive purple mutant and an absolutely FURIOUS land octopus with what appears to be an oversized slot machine lever. You can tell he’s been busy, because that knob is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, an army of the living dead shuffles forth under the guidance of the shittiest little Eddie Haskell ghost I’ve ever seen. One look at Rick’s face tells you all you need to know: he’s HAD IT, and every single thing he can physically reach tonight is going to die.

What’s even more amazing than this is the little intro movie from the game. We’re treated to parallaxing horizons, an almost legitimately moving vision of Jennifer begging to be rescued and then PLUMMETING back into the gullet-anus of some unthinkable creature, and some really driving music that consider the best track out all three OSTs. Look on.

All right, RetroFiends. Put on your hockey masks and go get your pillow cases. I will see you in October!

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!

Since the very dawn of video gaming, ever since the first of countless alien invasions and nameless ninja clan insurgencies, gamers and developers have all agreed on one thing: peace is nice, but it’s incredibly boring. A common theme has emerged throughout electronic gaming, one of conflict and mayhem, where the stakes are never low and neither is the adrenaline level. We crave games of war, and damn it all, the developers and publishers have always been right there with us on the front lines.

This trend, when examined, waxes and wanes; an observer of the timeline can see it ebb and flow from simple sword-fighting between two nameless knights to full-scale nuclear war (and the theoretical after-effects). The mid to late 1980s seemed to hit a particular stride, when Cold War phantoms mixed with constantly more badass-looking real life military hardware to spawn a long list of not only films but video games (sometimes directly inspired by said films). War, we knew, was hell… and as this era burned bright red in celluloid and pixel-screen, we strode happily forward to swim in hellish waters. The devil himself was happy to take our hand, and to point out the price… 25 cents for a dip, $40 per cartridge to buy our own backyard pool.

This trio of games is not meant to be a best- or worst-of list, nor a definitive one. These three titles simply stick out most readily in my mind as examples of the over-the-top gloss we often give military strife through the lens of entertainment. And yeah… they’re pretty awesome.

Jackal/Top Gunner

Konami, 1986

I said this wasn’t a best-of list, but this definitely has to be one of my favorites. Jackal is called Tokushu Butai Jakkaru (“Special Forces Jackal”) in Japan, and was marketed in some regions as Top Gunner. In Jackal you play the role of a Special Forces unit tasked with the noble mission of rescuing POWs behind enemy lines. This kind of work is extremely hazardous, so it’s a good thing the brass gave you jeeps that maneuver like gazelles and are as bloodthirsty as you are.

Red beret, devastatingly precise mustache… Easy to tell who drives the jeep… who’s in charge. There’s a cooler in the back. Help yourself to a martini or some Dom Perignon. This will all be over soon, soldier.

Up to 2 players can play, and that’s the better way to go about it since you WILL be mobbed constantly by both infantry and enemy vehicles. The cool thing about most soldiers on foot is that you can just run them over in cold blood, mangling them under your jeep’s blood-soaked wheels as you laugh. The bad news is that they are rarely alone; not only do soldiers pack weapons that can destroy your jeep in one hit, so do the tanks, gun emplacements, bombers, and jeeps similar to yours that tend to accompany them. That’s why you also have a machine gun and a seemingly limitless supply of explosives.

Your POWs are in little buildings, and you open those buildings safely by blasting the shit out of them. Most of them just file out and climb into your seemingly bottomless jeep, but the guys kept alone in their own little sheds upgrade your blammo-factor from grenades to rockets that upgrade each time you rescue another such prisoner.

The arcade original, not unlike that of Contra, is non-stop, with very little in the way of transitions between areas of strife. Not so for the NES port and some other versions; in those, you even get cool little cutscenes illustrating what a rad time you’re having cutting a swathe of carnage through the enemy. Every version has bosses, though, and they’re no joke… from mammoth war machines to walls of launchers and even hostile rows of statues, each set will turn your life into an exercise in move-or-die.

Guerilla War

SNK, 1987

A big part of what makes this one stand out is its original choice of subject matter, which was hastily and clumsily scrubbed for Western release: in Guerilla War, the two players are supposed to be Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, overthrowing the Batista regime. In fact, the game was called Guevara in Japan. Both the titling and dialogue were quickly altered for release in the USA, in hopes of rendering the entire thing generic… I’d say they did nine tenths of a job.

I CAN STILL KINDA TELL THOUGH, CAN’T YOU? I GUESS IT’S JUST INTUITION.

But whatever. This isn’t an opinion piece or a history lesson. Anyone can agree it’s a ballsy move to make a game about that kind of heated subject, and anyone who’s played Guerilla War can agree it’s a pretty balls-to-the-wall run and gun game that is at least worthy of having such a past attached to it.

The only tactical concern of yours besides not dying when you dismount a quick boat to singlehandedly topple the entire enemy force is not to kill hostages accidentally. This is hard, not only because your enemies are all over the place and it’s hard to tell what’s going on, but because it’s tempting to just fire wantonly into cross-traffic and hurl grenades in front of you to clear a path through the chaos of battle. While this is a viable tactic about 2/3 of the time, it gets risky when there are bound and gagged men from your side nearby. Let’s be realistic: some will die. Rescue the ones that don’t.

In the grand tradition of war-themed video games, this one has no shortage of over-the-top enemy shit. You want to fight a train? Well, get ready to fight a fucking train, Che. All by yourself.

Strider Hiryu

Capcom, 1989

Many of us have played the NES title Strider, and most of us know it’s a far cry from the source material. Strider Hiryu, released originally as an arcade title and gradually ported to tons of systems besides the NES, is based off a 1988 Kadokawa Shoten manga of the same name. Hiryu (which means Flying Dragon) is also the protagonist’s name. Here’s what makes it a war game: Hiryu is an assassin sent to kill the overlord of a Communist dystopia in the year 2048. This game was a taste of sci-fi blended into the familiar orgy of violence, and while the overtones may have been lost on a lot of casual players, they still set an interesting example of theoretical futurism carried across different media. While the Red Menace of Soviet Russia ended up reaching a far different fate in real life, the 2048 of this timeline is still a hell of a place to be a super-assassin.

Yep *hitches thumbs through belt-loops* that there looks purdy Soviet to me, soldier. You know what to do.

As Hiryu, you get not only a plasma-generating sword and the acrobatic skills of a jacked-up gibbon, but you can also call upon three different “option” robots to help you unleash a whirlwind of murder on the Motherland. You also get a grappling hook, which seems superfluous after mentioning the other shit, but it comes in handy. All this gear is good, because your target, the Grandmaster, has spared nothing in defending himself. Be ready for robot gorillas (far larger, of course, than organic ones), elaborate laser traps, and more troops than you can shake a plasma sword at.

Robo-Ivan just got knocked the fuck apart by a sword made out of what’s inside the Sun. Robo-Sergei back there is having one of those moments where you wonder what your robo-life would have been if you’d just stayed in robo-art college and studied robo-cubism instead of joining the People’s Droid Army.

I’m kidding. Shake it at all of them. Leave none alive.

FINAL VERDICT:

Jackal – 7/10

Guerilla War – 7/10

Strider Hiryu – 8/10

One of Jackal’s aforementioned cinematics. See you mid-April for more red-blooded gunpowder action!

There are certain films that hold a nearly universal sway over 80s kids (and even some 90s kids) as pseudo-magical in their charm and nostalgic value. The 1985 film The Goonies stands upright upon the high peaks of this spiritual realm, having captured multiple generations’ hearts through the magic of VHS/DVD media and network syndication. It’s one of those hands-down classics that you’ll watch again when you find it during channel-scrolling, even if you’ve seen it hundreds of times. I wasn’t old enough when it originally debuted to really grasp it at all, but watching it now still reminds me of viewing it on crisp VHS and feeling those first tightening strings in my heart: not only for Kerri Green, but also for adventure. There’s been a constant pinwheel of bullshit and speculation online for years about possible sequels, remakes, etc. but two things have always been surprisingly low-key concerning the Goonies intellectual property… merch and new media.

The guy who played Sloth is deceased; would they CGI in another Sloth or write him out of the sequel? Neither option sounds appealing; half of the appeal of a sequel would be seeing how that dude turned out after years of having to shit his pants in a chair and watch reruns of old mob movies.

There have been video games, however. The first was released by Datasoft the same year as the film, for the C64, Atari 800, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC. This limited its audience to people who owned a personal computer in 1985, and so it’s not often mentioned in lucid detail. It was okay, but like most early computer games, there wasn’t a ton to write home about in the end. In ’86, Konami put out a Goonies game for its domestic market, but it could be glimpsed Stateside if you happened to run into a PlayChoice 10 arcade system at the right time. It was a ghost of things to come, but an entertaining ghost at that: you controlled Mikey as he traversed six linear (but sometimes complex) stages, rescuing a Goonie and unlocking a series of doors to move on each time. The game featured other things we’d see again more prominently, such as slingshots, certain visual themes, and even music that would sound familiar later.

Everything about this image makes me concerned for the child’s welfare, but I’m sure anyone without suspension of disbelief would feel the same about the film.

Then we got our “sequel.” It’s a game I have mixed feelings about, and I’m very sure I’m not alone.

Cardinal rule of retro gaming: if the company releasing the game is Japanese, the Japanese promotional material for the game will always be extremely badass. No exception here. If it weren’t for a fairly faithful representation of Anne Ramsey’s (Ma Fratelli) face, I’d wonder if this was some kind of MI: 6 crytozoology hunt, complete with a race against time versus the Compound Bow Mafia. Frankly, way cooler than Goonies II.

Goonies II looks a lot like Konami’s first swing at the franchise, but it’s got a lot more detail. First off, “linear” factors nowhere into any appraisal of this game’s layout. You’re not going in a single straight line unless you fall into a crevasse. There will be backtracking, there will be wandering, and there will likely be some dying. See, you have to rescue your six fellow Goonies again… they’re just not arranged for you in a stack like the first game. You not only have to find them within a staggeringly vast area, but they are hidden… in a series of doors and hallways you navigate from a first-person perspective and investigate using tools. This time Mikey plays both action hero and super sleuth. According to the closest thing to official lore I could find, this kid is 13 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and suffers from asthma. It’s a damn good thing he’s a fireplug. And that he has his lethal… yo-yo.

Fleeing from beach ball-sized spiders and a man with a gun. Kind of like most kids would do. Note that I have already been wounded, despite my caution.

Thankfully, you’re not expected to do this empty-handed, in the dark. Both in the corridors and in the game’s more dangerous 2D environment, it’s possible to find all kinds of useful tools. In fact, the sheer number of items you claim near the end of the process is enough to weigh down a full-grown adult. Some items can only be acquired through elder abuse, and I wish I were just making a tasteless joke. Sometimes you have to “interact” with people you find in the strange first-person rooms, not only for self-evident tips but also to get things like radios and candles. The classic example is how you have to strike an old man sitting on a mat five times with your fist to get the candle. It’s like Simon’s Quest meets the scene in True Romance where Christian Slater leaves Patricia Arquette alone to go get hamburgers, but with the visual gruesomeness dialed back. I just feel… unwholesome about it, I guess. It’s a puzzle of violence.

Apparently what I do is get all Sonny Corleone on adult strangers to see what’s in their pockets NOW HOLD STILL YOU KNOW I HAVE TO CHECK

You also discover, through the fundamentally useful but often cumbersome map you’re given, that the game world has two “sides…” a front and a back. While this complicates things overall, it at least gives you more visual data to keep certain areas separated in your head. Learning how to find your way through Goonies II takes a while, but it’s not impossible.

I do not think you are carrying the six other kids. I’m not sure where they go once you set them free. Knowing the rest of this game, probably Hades or Valhalla. This is what existence is, Mikey. Existence is struggle. If you’re not fighting, you are dead.

Konami has a thing for combining stupidly mean enemies with player knockback physics that make you want to steroid-ragequit, and nothing’s any different in that regard here. You are constantly and aggressively assaulted not only by snakes and spiders, but by full-grown men with weapons, scorpions bigger than you are, skeletons (some of them have wings), armored knights, and flying metal skulls that steal your boomerang. Shit will fly at you while you’re trying to carefully negotiate jumping hazards, move on slippery ice, or swim underwater. When you die (and you will), you’re presented with Ma Fratelli’s winsome image as she gives you the option to continue or not (but not before taunting you).

Imagine the movie character saying this, out loud, to a barely-conscious young Sean Astin.

If you decline, you’re given a password to resume the quest later, and if you have the balls to continue, you’re just dropped near where you croaked with none of your extra health full and a little less of your use-based equipment like bombs. Oh yeah… you get bombs! Definitely something I’d trust a 13 year old with… spherical black cartoon bombs.

Okay… Knights and skeletons in the log cabin. Gill Man’s shocking generosity. Trio del Godzilla in Lavaland. Finish it off with some Silence of the Lambs shit and you’ve got Goonies II.

So, let’s say you make all this happen. Let’s say you tough it out, rescue all your friends, and head toward the endgame. Well, the endgame involves rescuing Annie the Mermaid. You know, the lovable and memorable mermaid that was… not in the Goonies movie at all. As you unclasp the padlock holding her in her watery prison, she unclasps her hands (revealing her featureless void of a torso) and professes her love for a 13 year old child. Then we’re treated to a stunning cinematic which, while I’m actually being sarcastic, is more than we get from most 1987 NES games.

“Yup, ya got me… I’ll just get in the back here… all by myself… at least in prison I can grab a shave…”

The graphics are 1987 NES graphics, which are really neither good nor bad; there’s nothing I can say either way about them except that you can usually tell what everything is. That’s all I usually ask for in an 8 bit title. The sound is the same quality wise, but I must concede that the soundtrack is pretty sick. We not only get a rendition of the Cyndi Lauper song used in the movie and its promotion, we also get some well-written original tracks of the quality expected from Konami and their composers. The only tracks I find grating are the underwater and ice areas… it’s not even that they’re bad, it just that the loops are really short. Everything else is nice and busy without seeming cluttered, and there’s good subtlety to the use of 8 channels, something you didn’t always hear on earlier NES games.

Goonies II really is a mixed bag of pros and cons. I’ll list these off below instead of dumping them into a trash bag of a paragraph.

PROS

• The rudiments of the gameplay itself draw you in and keep you interested

• very recognizable as a part of the intellectual property, in certain ways that really count

• once you grasp the layers to the challenge before you, it can be very entertaining

• fucking fantastic soundtrack (at least from a composition standpoint)

• it’s kind of like a Metroidvania before we were familiar with the concept of Metroidvanias

CONS

• let’s be honest, there are a lot of moments where you just have to soak the fuck out of some damage, and early on, that’s pretty rough

• a level of complexity to the problem solving process in some of the first-person areas that just ends up tedious

• the classic platformer tactic of “let’s make it stupid hard to jump in this one spot” is used a bit too frequently, compounded by the fact that Mikey jumps like he’s never sure where he wants to land, on the moving platform or in the magical realm of shattered femurs

• this may make me sound like a pussy but some of the later enemies have the resilience of a T-800 and are much more agile; weapon damage does not scale to meet them

• there is only a mermaid in this fucking game because they needed one more thing for you to do

What saves this one from teetering on the brink of its own chasm is the nostalgic value, buffered considerably by the admitted pleasure I found in re-approaching it as an adult. I think Konami overestimated our attention spans and patience back in ’87, but Goonies II actually fits pretty well as a game for the present tastes. I recommend it to predominantly “modern” gamers who want to taste some retro, as well as people who just got pissed off at it as kids but have focused their chi a little more strongly as adults. I give Goonies II a 7 out of 10.

Oh… good. Well, bye.