With some indie throwbacks, it's obvious the developers had one specific franchise - maybe even one specific game within that franchise - in mind when crafting their homage. With others, it feels like the finished product is a Frankenstein of bits and pieces from a dozen different playthroughs from the developers' past, and their goal isn't so much to resurrect a single game than a whole era for gaming. Games like Undertale and Oniken don't so much call to mind a sole archaic forebear than they do the excitement of pouring over the reviews section of a Nintendo Power or downloading the inventive RPG Maker projects of your friends who all grew up with EarthBound and wondered why more RPGs didn't have the same imagination or subversive whimsy. Grapple Force Rena, for better or worse, feels like an amalgam of underappreciated 16-bit games - especially those for the Mega Drive - wrapped up in a semi-coherent package with just a few issues here and there.
The eponymous heroine Rena is a youth who styles herself as her peaceful village's hero and protector, helped in no small part by a pair of magical gauntlets she found while adventuring in the woods near her home. These gauntlets project a beam of light that attaches itself to walls, ceilings, objects, and enemies alike, allowing her to drag those items to her or, in the case of anything heavier, drag herself towards them as a means of traversal. A few platformers back then had grapple mechanics, but the game that most quickly came to mind - largely due to the game's attempts to replicate Sega Mega Drive's music chip and many of its sound effects - is Sega's own Ristar and his telescopic limbs. Equally, the game feels beholden to the elastic swinging aspirations of Umihara Kawase (recently given a new lease of life after it and its sequels were ported to Steam and elsewhere), to the inventive and occasionally bizarre level mission structure of Gunstar Heroes and Treasure's other output, and many aesthetic choices from Sonic the Hedgehog and other mascot platformers of that time. Sadly, the Mega Drive was also home to many of what I've heard reviewers (mostly Americans) pejoratively refer to as "Amiga platformers": those that tend to put style over substance with their muddled visuals and level design, creating obtuse, labyrinthine stages that regularly have you checking dead-ends and circling back on yourself in pursuit of whatever handful of targets you still need to hit to complete the stage. Some of Rena's more maze-like stages are certainly guilty of that.
Gotta love a gambling-themed zone. I wonder if levels like this contributed to the severe gambling issues plaguing video games today? No wait, I think that's just corporate greed.
A typical stage will present one of several goals: get to the end, find or destroy a certain number of items or enemies, complete a race or other timed challenge, or fight a boss. You are scored a letter grade based on four criteria: time taken, health retained, enemies defeated, and gems collected. The scores don't really matter too much, but that whole grading system was a cheap and cheerful way for older games to give players new objectives to pursue once they'd already completed the main story, and with only thirty stages Grapple Force Rena's score system embodies a similar role. To the game's credit, you could either go all in on hunting enemies and finding collectibles, eschewing any hope of a decent time or holding onto a deep reserve of health, and still emerge with a decent score; ditto for those who take the opposite route, completing a stage as quickly as possible by running and swinging past everything. The score system is also flexible, giving more or less value to any of the four scoring criteria depending on the stage: a race-like stage will emphasize time taken more than enemies defeated, for instance, and a boss fight will always negate points earned for enemies defeated and gems collected (since it typically has neither) for the sake of a double payout for time taken and health retained. For as much as I don't care for games that go the whole scoring route, letting you know in no uncertain terms how much you suck and quickly dispelling any élan you might be feeling for finally completing a nightmarish stage, I'll admit that Grapple Force Rena has given much thought to their own approach.
If you aren't too familiar with grapple platformers like Umihara Kawase, the game's on boarding process is relatively gentle and doesn't require much in the way of showy traversal and point-to-point grapples. That traversal is key to finding shortcuts and valuables, once you have a better handle on it, and also plays into the scoring system as a secondary means of longevity. For new players, though, there's usually a more traditional way to move through levels that won't require a whole lot of very timing-intensive hooking onto ceilings and wall panels as you whizz past. As well as her gauntlets, which are also her sole means of attacking enemies by grabbing and throwing them into walls and other enemies (and very reminiscent of Treasure once again, in particular Mischief Makers), Rena also has a wall jump which gets her through narrow vertical passageways quickly and in some levels can hitch a ride on fast-moving vehicles to reach the goal even faster. It has that Sonic dichotomy where the levels are simultaneously built for speeding through while also rewarding cautious exploration, but that aforementioned flexible scoring system makes either approach viable when left to the player's discretion.
A level in which I'm returning a bunch of 'bits' to a wagon near the start. They're all fairly high up in the stage and need to be grappled to bring down, so it's awkward whenever you fall too far. This is one of those confusing Amiga platformer stages I was talking about, btw.
Graphically and certainly musically, the game hearkens to the Mega Drive in much the same way its mechanics and attitude do, and care's been taken to make the game feel like the mid-tier 16-bit Sega platformer that never was. The game's sole group of collectibles are cassette tapes that add new tracks to the main menu's sound test, which given the quality of said soundtrack makes them a more compelling scavenger hunt target than concept art or tchotchkes with no purpose. (Alas, there doesn't seem to be a way to track where missing cassette tapes might be found from the stage overview, unless that's a post-game privilege.) The writing has that same kind of snappy back and forth you might expect from a mascot platformer from the era, though I will say I didn't anticipate the sudden narrative shift the game takes towards its two-thirds point; I stopped shortly after that to pen this review, but I am curious to see how the game wraps itself up after pulling the rug out from underneath the player.
Yet, for its many fine qualities, I'm finding Rena more annoying to play than it's sometimes worth. Occasionally it's the fault of the grapple mechanics: it's extremely tough to be accurate with the grapple beam, and the game does not provide any amount of "auto-aim" wriggle room when it comes to hooking onto nearby enemies or objects - you have to be pixel perfect when you launch that beam out. Sometimes it's the fault of how the game presents its challenges and then sabotages itself, say with a stage with a time-based element to its scoring that also has an RNG aspect that can ruin the chances of earning a decent time through pure bad luck (there's a whole gambling-themed tower with dice puzzles that work like this, which was the one part of this game that reminded me of Gunstar Heroes the most). Many enemies are deadly up close, which normally isn't an issue since the grapple beam has a long range to it, but there's many cases where a foe might be hiding behind a wall or outcropping before they hop into range. Your health bar isn't miniscule and you can regain HP by collecting the pink gems found everywhere so I can't say I've died too often, but I've taken damage many times where it felt like I had little chance of catching an enemy before it got too close, especially when you compound that issue with how inaccurate the grapple can be. The constant negative reinforcement of earning poor scores from not knowing the levels too well (how could I? They're all new to me) is also getting me down a little bit too, even for as inconsequential as all these Cs and Ds will probably end up being. I think the game attends well to the gaggle of players who grew up with the Mega Drive as their first system and still retain the most fondness for it as a result - after all, whatever games you played as a ten-year-old have a better chance of remaining firm favorites than anything new - but as a SNES kid I don't think its charms are quite as potent for me, and certainly don't outweigh the parts that are dragging the whole experience down.
Well, at least this game is brave enough to have a Black Knight 2000 parody. Rest of y'all are slacking.
Welcome to another episode of 64 in 64, which has been gradually moving away from its stated purpose of examining a group of Nintendo 64 games for the sake of determining their suitability for inclusion on the Nintendo Switch Online service's highest-paid tier, the Expansion Pak, and more towards an extended torture session spent with one of Nintendo's most divisive systems. Deep down, I always knew the random selection process would give me trouble, which is why I've always had it accompany a personal selection that - if not guaranteeing some level of enjoyment - at least should keep my soul alive. If you just wanted to scroll down to the half of this blog where I have a real bad time, though, I'm not going to blame you.
Not for the first time I've been considering what kind of ratio of classics, basically OK games, and absolute dreck the Nintendo 64 saw in its relatively short lifespan - a library of just under 400 games isn't as impressive as it sounds, especially since its predecessor had almost 2000 and its closest rival twice that number - and despite some poor fortune with these random picks I think the system on the whole is shaping up to have a better ratio than most. Consider the games filling up that list at the bottom: I spoke to a commenter about how many of them I'd still recommend to the players of today, and I'd cut it off around the mid-point probably where Shadowgate 64 is sitting. Add to that the many top-tier games I've excluded from this feature because they are already on the Switch Online service and you can't argue that the system didn't have its highlights. It's just... well, the way I've formatted this thing where both I and Nintendo are cherry-picking all the best games means I don't hold out a lot of hope the random picks will start improving any time soon. I'm still hoping it pulls out the occasional hidden gem all the same, though. Every platform has them, after all.
Talking of gems, these rules are pretty sweet. At least I think so. Here they are in full:
Each episode covers two games - one pre-selected by me, one selected by a random choosing widget - for exactly sixty-four minutes each, with four updates spaced sixteen minutes apart. The random pick pool includes everything that hasn't been covered yet, including all three N64 shogi games. I'll play inscrutable Japanese chess for this feature, don't test me.
Each entry is accompanied with an introduction, which are becoming unfeasibly long, as well as my thoughts on the game's worthiness for the Switch Online service and the likelihood of it making on there regardless of what I think. It's crazy, but I'm starting to think that Nintendo's not interested in my valuable opinions.
We don't include any games on here that have already joined the Nintendo Switch Online service unless I got to them before they were announced. In the last Direct, Nintendo laid out its plans for the next six months of N64 additions so I think I'm safe from any surprise announcements. That is how they get you, though.
Prior episode links can be found on the following table. If you want to see which specific games were covered when, feel free to peruse the Current Ranking list found at the bottom of this (and every) entry. (I've been contemplating cutting off the list at 40 or 50 and relegating everything after that to The Trash Zone, similar to what the crew did with the Tekken endings.)
History: Another expediency pick. Since Nintendo's gone all-in on farming games as per the most recent Direct, seemed like the ideal time to go back to the salad days of the world's most famous bucolic simulation franchise and see what its first 3D incarnation was like. Harvest Moon 64 is actually the third game in the series, following the original SNES game and the GB sequel. Or, from another perspective, it's the second game in the series (the Japanese name for this game is Bokujou Monogatari 2) and the GB game was merely a port of the SNES one. However, since we're here to pick vegetables, not nits, either interpretation is fine. I should also probably mention somewhere that this franchise got rebranded as Story of Seasons, so calling it Story of Seasons 64 wouldn't be incorrect either. It's a series I've never really dedicated a whole lot of time towards, despite liking the format in general, and given we're only covering it for an hour today this playthrough will be no exception.
While Natsume's name is closely associated with the Harvest Moon franchise (or Story of Seasons, I guess) they've only ever been the publishers and usually only for North America and sometimes Europe. The developers and Japanese publishers, Victor Interactive, were formerly known as Pack-In-Video until they were bought by and became an internal division of Victor Entertainment, a large multimedia company that also publishes music and anime. Long since defunct, Pack-In-Video/Victor Interactive were a versatile bunch that had been developing games for ten years by the time of their 1996 purchase by Victor, and put out many of their own titles along with ports of western games on both consoles and home computers of the '80s and '90s. For instance, they're behind almost every Japanese incarnation of venerable first-person RPG franchise Dungeon Master, even creating two unique sequels in Theron's Quest (which honestly felt more like a ROM hack of the original) and the series' sole fully-3D entry Dungeon Master Nexus for Saturn. Victor Interactive also put out two games from their Legend of the River King (Nushi Tsuri) franchise on Nintendo 64, so we may well see a future 64 in 64 wherein I unsuccessfully try to decipher an all-Japanese fishing RPG for an hour. Fun.
If anything, Natsume's history is even more awkward to parse: the company began as a developer and publisher of games, such as Pocky & Rocky and Wild Guns for SNES, and formed an American subsidiary that brought those games and others to countries outside of Japan. That subsidiary eventually split itself off as an independent entity, called Natsume Inc., while the original Natsume became Natsume-Atari after a merger with a company called Atari that is maybe not the one people are familiar with. The former group are the ones with an iron grip on the Harvest Moon name to the extent that they created their own "we have Harvest Moon at home" franchise that kept the Harvest Moon branding, prompting the new Bokujou Monogatari license holders Marvelous to switch to the Story of Seasons name for international publication instead. It's a big mess, and all for the sake of a modest and peaceful game series about growing crops, herding cows, and falling in love. (Natsume Inc. also put out two other Nintendo 64 games: ski/snowboard sim Big Mountain 2000 - also my former wrestling alias - and chibi fighter Flying Dragon, from Culture Brain's long-running Hiryu no Ken series.)
16 Minutes In
I can hear the indignation in his voice. Look, plants take a while to grow, all right? Do I need to explain what farming is?
I spent a little time perusing the tutorials - there weren't too many games in the '90s that had demonstration videos - before jumping into my new farm, Cool Ranch, with my dog Barkly (damn you six character limit). Turns out I got Kirby 64'd again: the game is strictly a 2D affair albeit with an isometric perspective that creates the vague illusion of 3D. The cycle's familiar: you use your farm tools to prepare the land for crops, and then plant seeds, grow them into veggies, and then sell those veggies for money. Consult this how-to guide for more details.
Unfortunately, as you see with this screenshot of the burly dude who pays me for all the crap I stick in the shipping box, I was unable to do any actual farming today as the sundries store was shut and I forgot that you buy seeds at the florist. I did, however, break some rocks apart and get a tour of the village and its commodities, so my first day was not a complete wash. In the next sixteen minutes I hope to actually do a farming, so please feel free to anticipate my report with bated breath.
32 Minutes In
I suspect this girl is one of the love interests. Maybe one of the harder ones to court if she's going to keep spouting ominous shit like this.
I am now growing turnips. I kinda messed up with the seed throwing stage of the farming process: I made the assumption that you plant in the square directly in front of you, much like you do when tilling or cutting or watering or hammering, but instead the guy just stands there and tosses seeds around him like he's making it rain at the aviary. Since I only managed to hit two squares with this $200 sack of seeds, and don't have enough money left to buy more, I've had to seek out other income-raising methods. A trip up the local mountain pass put me in touch with a fisherman who gave me one of his rods, but despite giving it a few shots I've yet to catch anything: either the timing is super precise or I'm missing something, like maybe bait. I've also been picking up wild plants while I'm up there - I've deposited them in the shipping container but have yet to meet up with the seller again to see if they're worth squat.
It occurs to me only now that this game perhaps doesn't move fast enough to show a whole lot of progress from an hour's digging and planting. I have figured out a couple of things though: your tools level up on their own, but only after a significant amount of work, and the two face buttons are dedicated to tools and items respectively, the latter including anything you can pick up. To put a found item in your inventory, you actually have to pick it up manually and then go to the inventory screen to set it in an open spot; otherwise, you'll just toss it back down again (and in many cases, destroy whatever it was). I want to visit the sundry store at some point to see what other tools I can get and use to raise funds, though there's no real rush until I get some walkin' around money.
48 Minutes In
It took all night, but my little seeds are all planted and watered. Soon, my pretties. Soon the harvest will arrive.
After finally catching a few fish and cashing in the whole two turnips I managed to grow, I picked up enough cash for two more seed bags: growing turnips and potatoes now. Since I'm ten days into spring already I should be good if I want to start growing cabbages, the most valuable but also longest of the crops to grow, but I have to be careful I don't let summer come around while they're still in the dirt because everything will immediately wilt and be useless. Man, I can relate. With eighteen lil' plant babies on the way the financial pressure's off a little, and now I can settle into this whole franchise's raison d'étre: finding a daily routine and never wavering, unless it's a festival day or I finally have enough cash for a new plaything. Speaking of which, I've still not been able to hit the sundries store: it's closed Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays and open at odd times on the other days. Maybe it's for the best I'm not tempted to splurge on anything other than seeds right now.
For as rudimentary as this game's been so far compared to its modern peers, the loop is still compelling enough. With more ideas of what I want to work towards, beyond upgrading my gear and eventually acquiring some animals, the daily grind of planting, watering, and harvesting crops with a little fishing on the side when the day's chores are done has a certain low-key appeal. The game has its mysteries too: the tree at the corner of my farm had a treasure map inside it, but I'll be darned if I know how to read it or who to give it to.
64 Minutes In
One little bit of awkwardness is that you can't walk over spaces once the plants start sprouting. That means I can't reach that one in the middle to water it. Won't be an issue once the watering can's been upgraded though.
Since all the fish are being uncooperative, I spent this last block exploring the perimeters of Flowerbud Village to see what else was here. What I found shocked and horrified me. Well, maybe not, but there was a tribe of Pig Latin-speaking Christmas Elves in the nearby caves and I've no idea what role they serve in the story, if any. After am-scraying from there before those things ate me, I poked around the usual haunts in a game like this: there's a library where you can't read anything; a village square which is only used for festival days; the rest of the mountain up until a broken bridge; a carpenter's hut where I am told I will be able to purchase "extensions" (presumably not hair) but not right now; a graveyard with weird onion-looking monuments; a bar that I never remember to check out when the sun goes down; and the local vendors of a bakery, the florist/seed place, a drug store, and the sundries shop. I finally managed to enter the last of those, but the only item they have for sale right now is a brush for horses and cows. Don't have either of those, nor the $600 they want for it. Again, a few mysteries here and there, but no time left to suss them out.
Feels like I left my protagonist in a decent spot, at least. I've plowed enough fields for about sixty crops should I ever have enough seeds to fill that space and I'm holding onto close to a grand in cash, giving me my choice of four new seed bags to sow. That cash came from the eight turnips I was able to reach - the potatoes that are taking a little longer to grow should net a lot more, as will the thirty-six hypothetical plants to follow. Besides that brush, though, I'm not sure what I'm saving up for as most of the other vendors don't have much to sell to me. It might be that the game has to enter summertime before new options open up, giving the player something of a gentle onboarding ramp if they're new to the franchise or the farm format (farmat?) in general. I will also say that Harvest Moon 64's days are aggressively short: once I was done watering the handful of crops I had, I barely spent any time fishing before it became dusk and then night. Since each season is a 31-day month in length, the turnaround is pretty quick: probably less than three hours before the colors start to change. Well, if I ever get a hankering to break ground on a new farm, I can always hit up Stardew Valley again. I'm sure there's been mods and free content updates out the wazoo since I last played it five years ago. Either that, or hold out for whatever crystal Final Fantasy nonsense can be found in Harvestella. Cactuses are the only thing I've ever been able to take care of, so maybe the same is true for Cactuars too?
How Well Has It Aged?: Fine. Graphically, the strange pre-rendered potato-people and the very basic textures don't look so hot, even compared to its more detailed SNES predecessor, but it still has that same compelling "one more day" gameplay loop and I found myself falling back into that chill daily groove pretty quick. A little more transparency early on with some concrete financial goals to chase, or even something like the community center collecting challenges in Stardew, would be a great carrot on the end of the proverbial stick. As it is, the only carrots you'll find here are the ones you grow yourself, and perhaps that freedom to pursue whatever goals you set yourself is reward enough. Either way, Harvest Moon has always had its distinctive little niche on any platform it's appeared on, and the Nintendo 64's no different. How many non-vehicle simulation games do you think that system even saw? (Speaking of, maybe I should do a genre breakdown for the N64 some day since I already bothered to make a master list of all its releases for this feature. If nothing else, it might confirm my suspicions that the library is almost entirely sports and racing games.)
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Moderate. On the one hand, this is an ongoing franchise with a lot of fans who would certainly be interested in trying out a much older, much more rudimentary version of these relaxing farming games, especially since that genre has exploded in popularity over the years with franchise spin-offs like Rune Factory, Indie homages like Stardew, adjacent social-sims like Animal Crossing, and some major upcoming headliners from the likes of Square Enix and Disney. Per contra, I imagine a lot of the old Harvest Moon games are caught up in some licensing legal spats between Marvelous and Natsume Inc., like the kid of a divorce around the holidays. If they can figure all that out by the time those farming games shown on the last Nintendo Direct are hitting the storefronts, it might make for a nice bit of synergy.
History: Read any history book, or watch any episode of Behind the Music, and you know the biggest falls tend to arrive after the highest peaks. The hubris that comes from being on top is often an instigating factor in following your worst impulses and embarking on an ill-advised project that ends with your star crashing down to Earth harder than Chicxulub. So it was for the Mortal Kombat series (if temporarily) after the exceptionally well-received Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which redressed the inexplicable absence of Scorpion from Penultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and added far more content besides that fans couldn't help but lap up. Heading into 1997 and faced with how to top their last fighter, Midway put out two titles that would begin the franchise's decade-long decline before it bounced back in 2008 with the crossover Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and more confidently with its 2011 successor Mortal Kombat (retroactively referred to by fans as Mortal Kombat 9). Those two games were Mortal Kombat 4, where the series lost some of its essence in its jump from digitized sprites to early polygons, and the genre-hopping spin-off Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. Generally reviled, the Sub-Zero spotlight game tried to translate the movement and combat of Mortal Kombat into a side-scrolling action-adventure/brawler model and it didn't turn out so well.
We've met the combination of Avalanche and Midway once before in Episode 5's coverage of Rampage 2: Universal Tour, but as a quick recap: Avalanche was founded by former Sculptured Software developers and found themselves working on the 16-bit console ports of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as their first assignment. That made them a natural choice for the N64 port of Mythologies, which was made in tandem with the PlayStation original developed internally by Midway. They've since been bought by Disney for their "toys to life" division, shut down when that enterprise didn't pan out, and then resurrected by their new owners Warner Bros. Interactive to work on that upcoming Harry Potter game no-one seems too psyched about. They have two other N64 games on the list that we may yet encounter: Off Road Challenge and Rugrats in Paris: The Movie. (No thanks.)
Midway Games were major players in the American arcade scene long before the sudden meteoric rise of Mortal Kombat. Breaking into that market like no other western-made fighter series had done before, it became a pillar of the company's irreverent, teen-friendly direction in the 1990s along with the hyperactive NBA Jam, the laid-back Cruis'n USA, or the action movie-spoofing Total Carnage. Midway eventually became too big to handle and filed for bankruptcy in 2009, with most of its properties purchased by Warner Bros. Interactive. Midway's former President and CEO, Matt Booty, has since gone on to become head of Xbox Game Studios and now overlooks most of the first-party development for that system. There are thirty-nine Midway games on the Nintendo 64, and this would be the third we've seen after Rampage 2: Universal Tour and San Francisco Rush 2049; given one in every ten N64 games came from Midway, we're more than likely to encounter them again.
I'll admit, when I saw this get spat out of the randomizer my face was temporarily drained of color. To say a chill ran up my spine might be a little too on the nose given the protagonist, but it's not far from the truth either. However, I've never actually taken the time to see how much of a frostbitten trainwreck this game truly is, so I'm going to take the following hour as an opportunity for a long-overdue learning exercise. Maybe in this modern era, where so many 2D platformers are insidiously difficult as a stylistic choice, it'll fare better? That's a thing with notoriously poor games that they only get better with age, right? Guess we're about to find out the freezing point of copium.
16 Minutes In
I don't play a lot of Mortal Kombat games, but I've always admired the variety in their character design.
Oh dear Raiden, it's worse than I could've possibly imagined. I'm not sure where to even begin. Let's go with the unfortunate but understandable decision to map all the punches and kicks to the C-buttons so that the primary face buttons are left for the incredibly important roles of "pick up item" (as opposed to, let's say, having Sub-Zero automatically pick up items) and "turn around". Turning around is vital as you'll have enemies flanking you when you least expect it, or at least I think that was the original intent behind the implementation of this mechanic because most of the time when I'm turning around it's because a flying kick went over the enemy's head and I'm stuck facing away from him like an idiot. What's worse is that Sub-Zero will sometimes (but not always) turn around to face an opponent on his own, so my pressing the turn around button pre-emptively just reorients Sub-Zero to leave his ass exposed. I see more turn arounds in an average encounter than in three whole renditions of Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. Describing the rest of the game's garbage will have to wait until the next update; I'll need to pace myself with this shit as I don't think I'll have a lot of actual forward progress to report on.
As far as said progress is going, Sub-Zero starts in a monastery attempting to outpace his rival Scorpion to some mystic scroll or other. In his way are a bunch of generic bald monks that melt into goo after dying (they're more acidic than ascetic) and many crusher traps that can potentially smush you dead from full health, but only if you're so far underneath; otherwise you'll get knocked back with a small amount of damage. The proximity trigger for these cylindrical Thwomp wannabes is extremely tight and kinda capricious on top of that, so I usually get caught by them. After dying, a lot, I've found the best course so far is to run past all the monks and take my time with the stompers in order to preserve what little health I have. Issue with this approach is that I think I only gain my abilities - Sub-Zero starts with none of his specials, because that's fun - by defeating enemies and building up an invisible XP bar. I've reached Scorpion at the base of the temple now, but I might burn a whole bunch of lives trying to defeat him: for one, I'm fairly certain my normal attacks do less to him than his normals do to me, which feels like breaking some cardinal fighter game rule regarding parity.
32 Minutes In
This font choice emphasizes the Ks in words, which I totally get is MK's thing, but it makes me wonder if they do the same thing while talking. Pes-KEE, mon-KUS.
Progress report: I spent almost this entire sixteen minutes trying to beat Scorpion. So let's tally up the factors working against me here: First, and perhaps most pertinent, is that I suck at Mortal Kombat. And that's with a decent controller and the wind at my back. Second, Scorpion's health bar was easily twice my own, despite this encounter being otherwise presented as a fair one-on-one fight typical of the series. Granted, this Scorpion isn't dead yet so he never uses his specials - no teleporting punches or chain hooks to worry about - but his AI's quite strong for this early stage of the game. One example of this in motion is that all the AI I fought have this anti-air where they leap directly up and knock me out of my jump, since apparently the straight up jump + attack is faster than the horizontal one so they don't even need to anticipate me too much. If I were to name the martial arts style that eventually won the fight, I would call it Crouching Coward, Hidden Patience Limit: by waiting for Scorpion to walk over and attack, I could quickly toss in some low punches and kicks before he'd closed the distance enough to hit me with something stronger like an uppercut or throw. After five minutes of chipping away at his health like I was carving an ice sculpture I could finally move on and... meet Quan Chi. Wow. What a reward.
I'm acclimating to the game, albeit very gradually. I think the XP thing probably factors into more than just unlocking new specials: it might also add to stats like total health and damage, which would explain why I was so underlevelled for Scorpion. I also found the menu screen, which tells you how much XP you need to reach the next level and the items you've found, but no rundown of your stats or anything useful like that. It's like the game begrudgingly added a level-up system because of the new format but does all it can to refuse to acknowledge it exists. All that nerd shit happening in the background? You don't need to dig deeper into any of that, just keep smacking these bald dudes on their heads.
48 Minutes In
You can't make that gap. You have to wait for a gust of wind to pick you up and carry you over. Super intuitive.
My situation has not improved. After a non-animated ten-minute cutscene where Quan Chi explained the plot to Sub-Zero like he was a child, we're sent to the destination written on that map scroll we found: a temple in the Himalayas that predates human civilization, dedicated to the four classic elements. Since Sub-Zero is already an expert at the element of cold (not one of the four, by the by, but I guess adjacent) he's deemed the ideal choice for this assignment. Assuming that the quadrant of the temple that focuses on wind would also be the hardest given the amount of open-air platforming involved, that's naturally the one we're sent to first. I've spent the remainder of this block falling to my death trying to leap between precarious platforms with Mortal Kombat controls. There's more of those bald monks here too, only now someone gave them all kali sticks. When do I get a weapon?
Since the Wind Temple has a lot of clouds in its background I've been trying my darnedest to look for a silver lining here. That's because I don't want the game's reputation to overwrite my subjective experience, but also because I've still got another sixteen minutes with it and I'd prefer to keep my sanity intact. The awkwardness inherent to this jerry-rigged format is making it an ordeal, but I've this weird soft spot for fighters that try to break out of their comfort zone a little. The run-based dungeons in the Tobal games, for instance. It's more that the execution is lacking in this game rather than the ideas, an overabundance of instant-death traps notwithstanding, so maybe if I press on there'll be more of its wild ambition on display even if I can't be optimistic that it'll improve.
64 Minutes In
A locked door is my only reward for traversing these awkward swinging platforms. Time to head back. Or head down, since that would be faster.
The Wind Temple opened up a little more in a way I wasn't expecting. It was still a mostly linear exercise in cask-strength anxiety platforming between platforms that, due to the Klonoa-esque 2.5D employed, are moving into the background and foreground where they temporarily become inaccessible: figuring out the timing to leap in the interval where they're "active" is a large part of this level, and why you might spend a significant amount of time enjoying gravity's gentle caress. The open part involves collecting the three symbols, each of which opens a barrier that blocks the rest of the level. At one point I hit a door with a symbol and not did understand how to proceed, until I walked back and fell into a pit that once had a rickety bridge over it that fell apart; the pit actually had solid ground beneath it, and next to that was a symbol I saw earlier when riding up an enormous tornado. Let me explain how that tornado works, by the way: you jump into it to ride it up, though if you slip out of it at any point you die, whether there's ground beneath you or not (the game has falling damage). It also doesn't load in until a few seconds after the game has, so if you leap right into it after respawning you'll just fall right through into the abyss below. Little touches like this are what endeared the game to its many zeroes of fans.
I'm not sad my time with the game is over. Let's make that clear. For as often as I hit a literal turning around button, I don't want to give the wrong impression that my opinion was shifting on the game as I got further into it, became more used to the controls, and started seeing more of its imagination at work. Even after adding air control and a mantling feature the jumping only ever felt adequate enough to leap over an opponent to punch him in the back and rarely up to the task of leaping across platforms or anything in the vein of the Prince of Persia experience it felt like it was aiming for. I'd speak more on the fighting but except for the part where it doles out the specials incrementally - and I'm fairly sure the monks don't give any XP if you dispatch them in more expedient ways, like knocking them into the abyss - it struck me as identical to standard Mortal Kombat; a fighting game buff might be able to speak more on its differences, if any. I know I could've filled this whole thing with jokes about wanting to perform a fatality on myself rather than keep playing, but with a failure this high-profile my designer instincts kicked in and I felt the need to narrow down the exact causes why it felt as bad to play as it did.
How Well Has It Aged?: Like a snowball in a microwave. However, most of its problems today were problems at the time also, including a disappointing amount of Quan Chi. Everything about it feels suboptimal, like one of those Chinese bootleg NES carts that puts Mario and Luigi into Street Fighter. Only, you know, the reverse of that. Best I can say is that the aesthetic was occasionally striking, in that way that Mortal Kombat can really make its levels feel like they're in another world. The entrance to the Wind Temple, for instance, has Sub-Zero standing next to a gate inside a cliff face where it's zoomed out to show how far up he's climbed: it's a neat visual that looks impressive and gives you a sense of the scale of this place and its remote setting. Did I mention that this game only has one bad guy sprite in it? Besides Scorpion? They couldn't even paint his outfit green to make it clear he was a wind monk.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Minimal. Getting license-holders Warner Bros. Interactive to do anything is like pulling teeth with how indifferent they've been to gaming in the past few years, and that's only going to become worse in the midst of this Zaslavpocalypse happening to all their digital media subsidiaries. Even if you were to get past all that, though, how would you go about convincing them to revive a game that has been an enduring embarrassment to the Mortal Kombat brand for years? Over any of its core entries? The only way Mythologies gets on there would be the result of a drunken Christmas party mishap at the main office, or maybe a Trojan horse meant to sabotage the Switch Online service from within once they're done sinking HBO Max. If Zaslav still needs to fill the world with despair before he can transubstantiate as Valsaz, the Demon Lord of Spiteful Cancellations, then maybe we can expect to see it on there soon.
The PC platform has had many advantages over its console brethren in times past, but none more so than providing the choice between standard controllers or a keyboard and mouse combination. Beyond that one expensive peripheral for Dreamcast or that expensive and ridiculous one for GameCube there's no real keyboard equivalent on consoles, which puts them behind the pack when it comes to the few genres that benefit greatly from a large set of keys over a smaller set of buttons. FPS games offer greater precision with a mouse, RPGs and simulation games benefit from an abundance of key bindings, and then you have perhaps one of the rarest genres of all - and one which wouldn't work at all without a keyboard - that is the typing game.
The dry Mavis Beacon-led instructional typing programmes of the early computing world were a way to help novice administrative professionals that would be tied to a keyboard for most of their careers, but video games soon found a way to combine their own mechanics with typing words really fast. I'm not sure if Sega's Typing of the Dead, a knowingly silly spin on their House of the Dead arcade light-gun shooter series, was necessarily the first but it's certainly the most notable from these early forays into typing-based gameplay. Epistory: Typing Chronicles is one of the precious few others to follow the same path, albeit with a little more sincerity. Its story presents a nameless girl riding a giant fox, travelling around a formless world made of papercraft that slowly assembles itself as the player accomplishes goals and, quite frequently, fights off bugs by typing in the words floating over their heads. Rather than an on-rails shooter like Typing of the Dead, however, Epistory is styled more like a Zelda game: you have an expansive overworld to explore with barriers that you need the right abilities to overcome, and sequential dungeons in which those abilities can be found. There's a game-wide score that doubles as an experience point bar: hitting milestones allows you to purchase new passive upgrades, like strengthening the elemental abilities you've found, making traversal faster by improving the fox's walking speed, or making combos easier to obtain by extending the time it takes for them to expire. These milestone targets also apply to special nodes scattered across the overworld, which will open up the way to new dungeons and occasionally optional fight arenas or treasure chests.
Being a Zelda-like game, Epistory is full of that franchise's typical dungeon puzzles. The room to the north, for instance, has one of those slidy ice floors where you keep going in one direction until you hit something. The room to the right requires the dungeon's new ability to get through.
The typical progression loop for the game has you exploring the overworld until you find the next dungeon, finding out much of that dungeon has been gated until you follow the linear path to the next ability unlock, and then completing the dungeon once it's been thoroughly explored to the player's satisfaction by fighting in one of the game's "nests": arena-like battles where enemies march towards you from all directions and you play tactical triage in picking off the enemies that present the greatest threat at that moment. Slow, trundling enemies with $20 vocabulary words can be ignored for a little while as you pick off the fast-moving mosquitoes with three-letter names, but you don't want to be spelling out half a scientific journal when those large guys finally get close. The abilities - styled after the four elements of fire, ice, wind, and lightning - are also helpful in specific contexts: fire, for instance, will break the enemy's current word and also burn through their next if they're the type to have several, while ice will stop an enemy dead in its tracks for a few seconds to give you some breathing room, either to finish them off or to focus on other foes closing the distance. However, one complication is that to switch elements mid-fight you have to type its name: "Fire", "Ice", "Spark", and "Wind" aren't long words but having to type them in conjunction with others can make switching frequently more trouble than it's worth. (Of course, once you start encountering enemies that are only weak to a specific element, it's a necessity to keep swapping around.) With eight dungeons - only the odd-numbered ones have abilities to learn, the others exist to increase your score for overworld targets - the game's a lean five or six hours or so, which is about perfect for the difficulty curve it offers. Those still looking for a challenge once the story is over can always try the Arena mode, which pits you against endless nest battles to test your skills.
Right off the bat, the strengths and weaknesses of this novel format become apparent. Since the world has this very detailed 3D papercraft look (a comparison point would be something like the 3D platformer Tearaway, or the survival game Shelter), it's very attractive but also quite demanding on weaker systems. The lag introduced by these graphics and visual effects then leads to things like input delay and missed inputs, which as you might assume in a typing game is very no bueno. Aspects like how various objects like pots and rocks and weeds can be destroyed for some extra points is a cute idea that teaches the player to regularly tap the button that brings up the typing prompt - used to fight random enemies wandering around also - to destroy anything that looks suspicious, but the game's insistence on attaching thematically germane words to these objects does cause the game to have some ridiculous vocabulary quirks. Did you know there's at least fifty different words to describe a rock? The game will give you a crash course in esoteric geological jargon, whether you were looking for one or not.
What's strange is that the dictionary the game uses is fairly finite because I saw the same words pop up frequently, but it also has words like 'unciform' and 'lobectomy'. The weird words do make those enemies a little tougher to handle, I'll grant you.
Yet for all its faults, and more than a few bugs (the enemies are insects too, incidentally, but I'm mostly referring to how words will sometimes vanish from above their heads, making them impossible to defeat), I can't really rag on a game like Epistory too much. Partly because it's such a cool idea presented in a format that is far more palatable to my gaming tastes than a twitch arcade shooter, partly because it tells an emotional story with a twist coming a mile off that's still resonant in spite of its familiarity, and partly because I'm glad games this distinctive continue to pour out from the Indie space unprompted. Last year, Epistory's developers Fishing Cactus launched the game's spiritual successor Nanotale, which offers a similar combination of typing combat and action-adventure gameplay hooks, and are working on their next, Outshine, so I'm glad they've managed to carve out this niche for themselves. I might make sure I have a better rig by the time I try them out though: I'd rather place the blame entirely on my stubby, indextrous fingers for not spelling out "epididymis" in time rather than on this potato PC struggling to keep up.
Something I've learned about Nintendo over the years is that they've been masters of innovation since, well, the beginning. While we might occasionally despair about the eccentric way they approach online multiplayer or whatever combination of drugs and alcohol was behind the decision to name a console "the Wii U" there's no denying that they've shaken the pillars of this industry many times over in the past and present, surviving in the cutthroat business of console development for almost forty years (longer if you include their arcade cabinets and Game and Watch). Their most recent innovative strategy is perhaps the most astounding: inconveniencing the entire UK gaming audience by denying them today's Nintendo Direct because some rich lady who none of us have ever met happened to die from the tragic condition of "Being Old As Dirt". The way Nintendo's been going on you'd think HRH Queen Elizabeth II was Princess Peach's actual grandmother, and she needed to take five to mournfully bake some cakes or something.
I'm choosing to honor the Queen's memory by keeping on as I've always have: playing bad Nintendo 64 games. I know her Majesty was a big fan of both the N64 and this feature, in which I attempt to find the finest and best-preserved games in the system's library as a form of consumer-led research for the Nintendo Switch Online's premium "Expansion Pak" tier, so for her sake and ours let's crack on with another two of the system's... I won't say greatest, but I can confidently say that they are two games that were released for the console at some point in time.
Before then, though, we should go over those rules again:
A typical episode of 64 in 64 has me playing two games for exactly sixty-four minutes each. The first is one I've pre-selected from a short list of N64 games I've enjoyed in the past or those I'm curious to finally try out. The second is determined through pure chance, and given all the best games are presently on Switch Online the selections that soulless automaton makes are usually pretty grim. Never more so than today.
I'll spend four updates spaced sixteen minutes apart to discuss the playthrough as it happens, and then finish with my thoughts about its potential place in the Switch Online catalog: Should it be on there? And is it likely to ever be on there?
Since the declared goal of this feature is to help Nintendo find games for the Switch Online service, we're not touching the games that are already on there. That also includes any announced games too, with today's Direct adding several more: Mario Party, Mario Party 2, Mario Party 3, Pilotwings 64, 1080 Snowboarding, Pokémon Stadium, Excitebike 64, and Goldeneye 007. I'm excluding these on principle, and not purely because I wanted an excuse to remove all the Mario Parties from the random choice pool (I am bummed I missed my shot with Pilotwings 64 though).
Previous episodes can be found here, now in a snazzy new table format:
History: Far back through the mists of time, there was this one video game company that, unlike that same company today, actually made video games. Its name was Konami. Konami traditionally made bright and colorful games with cute aesthetics during the 8-bit and 16-bit era, with one notable exception: Castlevania. Unfortunately, Castlevania was one of those franchises that didn't really take to 3D like many of its NES peers did, and the first few experiments were rough enough that the powers that be ultimately decided to stick to 2D iterations for portable systems. None of those experiments were more accursed than the two Castlevania games released for the Nintendo 64, or so I was lead to believe. I mean, I can absolutely believe that claim for the first N64 Castlevania, which is why I've put its untested (by me, anyway) sequel in this spot instead. If we get another five seasons out of this format, maybe its predecessor will find its way on here too. Or, knowing my luck, it'll be a random pick much sooner than that.
This prequel, set eight years before the first N64 Castlevania, concerns a new protagonist and story: the werewolf Cornell, who finds himself battling his fellow werewolf rival Ortega and a clan of vampires hoping to resurrect their lord, Dracula, by sacrificing Cornell's sister Ada. Rather than a whole new version of the titular fortress, Legacy of Darkness reused a lot of the previous game's assets and enhanced them, improving and streamlining many game mechanics and UI elements. One of the few new mechanics includes Cornell's werewolf mode, which temporarily increases his damage output. Legacy of Darkness was one of the few games made by Konami's Kobe branch, KCEK, which in addition to the first N64 Castlevania also made another N64 game I'd like to cover on here eventually: the squiggly graffiti fighter Rakugakids.
This is one of the few Castlevania games I've never played, so I'm... in a trepidatious but hopeful mood. The N64 Castlevania games really did not set the world alight, and though I have a fondness for the two 3D games that followed on PlayStation 2 - Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness - even they had their problems, and that was after the many lessons learned from crafting the N64 duo. I'm not anticipating this to be good by any stretch, but maybe it'll be serviceable? Encouraging stuff, right?
16 Minutes In
Hitting C-Down to open a door after throwing all my knives at it. Also, how tall were these sailors?
Oh boy. I don't think I adequately prepared myself for how not-great this game was going to be. The game starts with five minutes of intros: we see Death and the Groovy Ghoulies sacrifice a blonde that isn't Ada, we have Cornell visiting his home village and seeing it on fire and filled with skeletons with Ada missing, we have an opening crawl that tells us what Cornell's whole deal is after he's already been introduced, and then we have Cornell slowly getting rowed over to a ghost ship in the middle of nowhere despite previously looking at an ominous castle in the distance. After that, the first level - Foggy Lake - begins and we start exploring said ghost ship for... something. I'm not sure what, yet.
The controls are non-ideal. Fighting and moving around work as you'd expect, but the camera controls are limited to using the R-button to re-center the focus. The L-button, meanwhile, has you transform into wolf mode which slowly burns through your supply of red crystals (the hearts equivalent) and it's easy to mistake the two collar buttons - I'm too used to the bumpers moving the camera left and right around your character in games like these. Collecting objects requires picking up the C-Down button as opposed to, say, just automatically picking them up when you walk over them; I'm also using a controller that doesn't like the C-buttons and tends to use C-Left and C-Right a lot instead, the latter activating the active subweapon which also uses up crystals fast. I don't think I've managed to hold onto any through all these repeated misclicks. The game lets you know what you're in for with a series of awkward jumping and climbing puzzles up the ghost ship's masts: to mantle something in this game you have to jump to it, hold the jump button to hang onto the edge, and then press up on the analog stick to pull yourself up without letting go of jump until you're safely on top. It's taken some getting used to, but at least this area is relatively chill with the respawning enemies (there's a few but they're slow as hell). I'm now poised to investigate the ship's interior, hoping I'm past the worst of the on boarding process.
32 Minutes In
The lock-on controls helpfully pointing out where this skeleton's dick used to be. Is that why he's so mad?
After reaching the interior of the ship, it was suddenly attacked by an enormous sea creature and began taking in water. Completing a relatively painless platforming sequence got me outside and close to terra firma, but before I could reach the gate that would lead towards the castle I was attacked by that same sea creature and the first boss of the game: an enormous sea serpent with two arms. I'll admit to crashing and burning on the first attempt as it took a while to figure out that, while blows to the body were registering, the damage wasn't so much and the goal was to actually aim for its head during the brief durations when it dips low enough to reach. Those moments usually come right after its attacks, such as a swipe with its claw that can pick you up for mild throwing damage or its geysers that can fling you in the air for slightly more damage. Much easier time on the second attempt, but then I tried going back to the save point prior to the fight out of habit and the camera dunked me into the lake instead for an instant game over. That meant redoing the fight again. Once inside the gate and onto the second level, Forest of Silence, I immediately met the second boss: the enormous skeleton that is something of a mascot for the N64 Castlevanias. That fight was a lot easier, but the skeleton just bailed after it took enough damage so I guess we'll be seeing it again (if only in the next game).
I'm still very not enjoying the way the game handles items. It's not so much that you have to hit a C-button every time you want to pick something up, and you always do since they're useful and there's no inventory limits to give you pause, but you also have to be right on top of the item in question for the pick-up command to register. This is sub-optimal when there are other enemies around and you want to quickly grab a sack of cash or something before its aggressive timer causes it to vanish into the ether. I've got the hang of everything else, at least.
48 Minutes In
Dracula always was subtle with his traps.
After completing the forest - who would've guessed that giant skeleton would show up again as the boss? - I managed to reach the castle and met my ol' buddy Ortega. Ortega had to spell it out to Cornell that he'd sold his soul to the darkness and kidnapped Ada himself, torching the village on the way out, because he was pissy about losing some contest or other. Cornell seemed kinda incredulous at this development, but Ortega looked evil as heck so I can buy that he's a villain. After that reacquaintance, the third level - Castle Wall - began with a jaunt up a spiral staircase full of traps. Have to admit I've been spending quite a bit of time here so far: most of the traps are the kind that dump you down a pit, which either kills me instantly or does enough falling damage that I can barely afford to make the same mistake twice.
I'm going to clear up some of my previous misconceptions about the controls. The first is the R-button camera movement: turns out it's a bit more context-sensitive than I realized, because when you have an enemy near you it'll just lock the camera onto it for as long as the button is held. This is very useful for boss fights as you might expect, and handy for the floating enemies that are hard to target. Cornell's basic attack, which uses the B-button, isn't too strong but does have a moderate range to it making it more useful than the melee attack (mapped to C-Left) and particularly in conjunction with the camera lock-on. The other thing I wanted to mention, in case I made the mantling seem perfectly sensible earlier, is that the direction you push to pull yourself up onto the platform is also context-sensitive, relative to the direction Cornell's facing. So if it's a side-scrolling section (these usually have fixed camera perspectives) and you're holding onto a platform on the left, you have to hold left instead of up to climb up. Ditto if you're holding onto the far side of the platform away from the camera - in that case, you hold down. Super intuitive stuff. (That said, I have come to appreciate how much brainpower from the devs working in this era was spent on figuring out how to make controlling a character work in a 3D context.)
64 Minutes In
I'm used to aggressively snarky game over screens, but Legacy of Darkness really woke up and chose violins.
Let's quickly summarize how this last block went. I eventually made my way up the staircase, hit a switch at the top that opened one of the two portcullises that lead to the path Ortega ran down after all his taunting, and made my way back down by falling through several broken floors despite having no clear idea what was beneath my feet (took damage a few times too). The second door at the start was suddenly now open, so I took it to find another spiral staircase full of enemies and traps (though less difficult overall) and reached the top to fight a boss based on those bone snakes that are in most Castlevania games. This let me hit the switch at the top, which required a special winch lever pick-up I'd found earlier tucked away in a broken pantry. "Aha," I thought to myself, pre-emptively, "looks like I'm done with this area." This second, now repaired switch just closed the first portcullis again. I ended the session low on health, back at the start with two closed portcullises, wondering if I missed anything. You know what I won't miss? Playing this game.
Nothing much more to add here about the mechanics, except that I was acquiring a number of items in my inventory. Most items in Legacy of Darkness are the instant usage kind: subweapons, for instance, just replace whatever was in that slot (I also noticed that picking up the same type made it stronger, like Ghouls 'N' Ghosts). Healing items like wall chickens sit in your inventory until you need them, which I appreciated but was sort of expected since this game was released after Symphony of the Night, and I'd also collected things like "Purifying" and "Moon Card". Never did bother to find out what they did, the incurious soul that I am, but I could've made these bosses easier to handle if I experimented with them a little.
How Well Has It Aged?: About as well as all those skeletons I kept exploding. Ambulatory, but that's about it. Konami would be the first to tell you that their N64 Castlevanias didn't cut the mustard - the Castlevania team judged both of them non-canonical, joining Castlevania Legends for Game Boy and Circle of the Moon for GBA - and it's made all the more painful by the fact that Symphony of the Night, developed around this same time for PlayStation and Saturn, ended up being so much better despite sticking to an older 2D pixel aesthetic. I say "despite," but I'm very much of the mindset that most of the era's best games were 2D affairs that didn't look like they'd been hit with the ugly cube stick. Legacy of Darkness may be better than the first, but I'd have to try playing that first game again to be sure; what I can say is that there's barely any appreciable difference.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Whenever I cover a Konami game I put the same boilerplate answer down here: probably not happening. No-one's entirely sure what Konami is thinking at any given moment, as many of their decisions seem anathema to successfully running a video game business. It could just be that they're looking to The Producers their way out of having to make games for ungrateful Kojima fanboys so they can focus entirely on pachinko and saunas. They have other, better N64 games to consider if anyone at Nintendo can get past the front desk for a meeting - the Goemons, for example - but the Castlevanias might make more sense purely from a brand recognition standpoint.
History: Jim Henson's Sesame Street is a long-running educational show with puppets - technically not Muppets - that aims to teach its young audience their numbers and letters, along with lessons about morality and social interaction that occur between a group of kid and adult residents that occupy the eponymous neighborhood. One character that rose to prominence in the 1980s was that of Elmo, a friendly little red monster who referred to himself in the third-person and quickly eclipsed the other characters in popularity excepting perhaps the adorable, all-consuming fiend that is Cookie Monster (and we can't make video games of him or Kirby will get jealous). Naturally, video games became a major component of Sesame Street's ability to engage with its viewers outside of television alone, and many have been made over the years all with a strong educational bent befitting the show.
Based in El Segundo, California, Realtime Associates began producing games for the Intellivision - the company was founded by ex-Mattel folks, the toy company that created the system - before branching out to the many consoles to follow in the wake of the huge success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. They chiefly worked on licensed games, and their Klasky-Csupo-ass logo became almost as ubiquitous to that market as LJN's foreboding rainbow. Of their few original games, there's one for N64 that we'll no doubt encounter eventually: Charlie Blast's Territory, a re-skin of Kemco's The Bombing Islands that took their hapless harlequin mascot Kid Clown and shoved him into a 3D approximation of the puzzle game Bombuzal. More terrifying than that though is the second Gex game, Gex: Enter the Gecko, which they also ported to N64. NewKidCo has a similar background: it was created to produce games based on kids' TV show licenses, mostly Sesame Street, Winnie the Pooh, and Tom and Jerry. (And also like seven games based on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, which has to be tempting fate given its game adaptation history.) We might (but hopefully won't) see them again as well: they also put out Tom and Jerry in Fists of Furry and Tigger's Honey Hunt on N64, as well as this title's sister game Sesame Street: Elmo's Letter Adventure.
I guess it was inevitable that I'd wind up with a game I have absolutely no business playing, developed as it was for the littlest babies that could hold a N64 controller without drooling on it. Part of me wishes I could've pulled a HBO Discovery here and just deleted the Sesame Streets from my library for no ethical reason, but unlike the people running that service I still have a soul that respects Henson's educational institution. It's tiny, but it's in there somewhere (that's what she sa- Wait, nope, can't make those jokes in a Sesame Street review). On the plus side, at least this is one 64 in 64 subject where making decent progress in an hour shouldn't be difficult. Fingers crossed that squeaky red scamp won't start dropping quadratics on your boy.
16 Minutes In
This stupid mini-game won't go past 9, so how are you supposed to reach the correct answer of 13? Someone should've tested this game better.
All right, let's get this out of the way. Mento has other things Mento needs to do today. Mento was unsurprised that the first person Elmo meets in his number adventure was The Count: he's probably wondering why he isn't the main character, but he doesn't seem bitter about it at least. Mostly just making puns on the word "Count" as per usual. Mento's first task was to run through The Count's garden maze, collecting every instance of the number 4: this included large models of the number (surely they should have eyes and stuff, right? How did Rare manage to out-Sesame Street Sesame Street?) as well as groups of four bats. After that, Mento did the same thing again in The Count's mansion. Mento considered the irony that Mento perhaps had a better time in this vampire mansion than Mento did in the Castlevania game, but then Mento maybe doesn't want to admit that out loud. Afterwards, Elmo joined Cookie Monster in "Cookie World": surfing down a river of chocolate (that looked like something else) and snowboarding down sugar mountain to collect instances of the number 8. Mento wonders how all the denizens of Cookie World avoid diabetes, but perhaps the evolutionary process fixed that for them.
Mento has to say that this game is not exactly challenging Mento's fine mental acuity so far, but is hopeful that the gameplay will eventually evolve and start throwing some curveballs. At least the controls couldn't be any easier: every single face button has Elmo reach out and grab whatever's in front of him, which allows him to pick up numbers and talk to NPCs alike. The start button is the only way to back out of the current adventure, but you better believe Mento hammered every confirmation button there was when Cookie Monster offered to take Elmo to his homeworld. How often does a scientific opportunity like that come along?
32 Minutes In
Wave Race 64 is far from the best jetski game on the system, turns out.
Mento is noticing a fundamental flaw with this whole sixty-four minute format that arises when covering a game that barely has twenty minutes of content in total. After completing The Count's and Cookie Monster's challenges the only remaining Sesame Street resident to talk to was Ernie (but not Bert?). Ernie decides to take Elmo to the carnival where there are even more numbers to collect, followed by a ride on the bumper cars. However, a bug caused Ernie to crash the game after he told Elmo to go find his two balls. Mento thinks maybe the game stepped in to protect Elmo's then-puppeteer from another sexual impropriety lawsuit, but it turns out to be a known emulation problem with no other solution than to play the whole game on Easy mode, since that mode won't have you targeting anything other than the physical numbers. Mento's pride is basically non-existent at this point, so Mento started another session in a game made for Pre-K children on its easiest setting just to pad this out another half-hour at least.
Mento maybe didn't make it clear earlier but there is absolutely no challenge to be found in Elmo's Number Journey beyond basic arithmetic literacy. Areas like The Count's maze aren't actually mazes but linear routes where numbers sit on either side of the path, and you can only interact with the ones the host wants you to find. All six of the game's challenges are identical but for the NPC that gives it to you and the visual theme (spooky castle, equally spooky empty carnival, and the chocolate land from Super Mario World). Each set is followed by a bonus game seen in the screenshot above where you stick balls into a clown's mouth and hope it doesn't bite down too hard. Mento is now left to ponder how Mento's going to fill another two updates.
48 Minutes In
There's no guillotines or pitfalls in Countstlevania. Much better.
After completing all three challenges again on Easy mode, Mento reached the end of the game with a nice little fireworks display to celebrate this incredible feat (and what must be a 64 in 64 first). Soon as the credits were over, the game kicked Mento back to the very beginning, as if to suggest Mento's Sisyphean ordeal of getting them digits will never end. Mento thinks a circle of Hell probably resembles this, and not for the first time cursed The Count for evading Satan's grasp for so long. Mento also noticed during the staff roll that the game credits Elmo's voice actor as "Kevin Cash", which I think is either a wrestler or maybe the singer of Folsom Prison Blues but certainly not the puppeteer. Mento is very surprised that a game that plays like it was made over a weekend by unscrupulous license-peddlers could be so careless.
Mento doesn't think Mento will be able to stop talking in the third-person after this entry. Mento believes that this has become a pathological tic induced by the Pavlovian trauma of playing through the same basic math challenge multiple times in a row with absolutely no other modes in the game to distract him. Mento is trying not to think about how Mento has another sixteen minutes of this to go. Mento isn't certain why Mento does this to himself, but Mento sure has some theories.
64 Minutes In
This is what anxiety dreams tend to look like around tax season.
In this final block, Mento at last found something else to occupy Mento's time: the game's set of Retro Achievements. Mento stopped including these on 64 in 64 because many times the emulator did not support them or there weren't any attached to that particular game, but Mento is happy to report that there are some souls out there as twisted as Mento's own. In fact, these achievements have easily been the most entertaining part of playing this game: Mento's favorite is the Peace Walker no-kills/no-damage game completion achievement, which Mento was able to earn with some amount of effort, persistence, and lateral thinking.
Mento is happy to report that Mento's time with the game is over. Oddly, Mento's ability to do mental arithmetic has actually lessened as a result of playing this game, which doesn't actually teach children their sums but just what numbers look like. The same numbers that already appear at the bottom of the screen next to the progress tracker. Mento is curious what educational value a game like this could possibly have, but then Mento realized this wasn't Mento's problem any more. Mento is finally three. Uh, free. Oh god. What have you done, Elmo's Number Journey?
How Well Has It Aged?: Mento thinks... Mento... Men- Me- I think this game aged itself into obsolescence seconds after it was released. I'm not going to fault the game's visuals: the puppets we all know and love, or at least the only four to feature in the game, are lovingly rendered and the game areas were pleasant enough to stroll around even if they offered very little to look at besides numbers. It has voice samples and the original show's music, which is more than you could hope for from a budget N64 game's audio quality. I also appreciated that they bothered to render the numbers you were collecting too, even if all they did was sit there and not sing or dance or anything. The presentation overall would've been sharp enough at the time to fool kids into thinking they were playing an episode of the show. However, my opinion is that this game offers very little value as education or entertainment to its intended audience except perhaps to pacify them for five minutes while the parents get in a quick smoke break or something. My hopes are not high for Elmo's Letter Adventure.
Indie games have come to mean so many things to so many people. For some, they're tiny-sized, tiny-budget games that you play between the big ones as palate cleansers; for others, they're the vanguard of the industry's most imaginative thinkers, relegated to working in a smaller tier of development where risks and experiments are still allowed to occur; for others still, they're a veritable zombie apocalypse of all our favorite defunct genres brought back to life or, in the case of still-active genres like RPGs or platformers, vintage throwbacks to their halcyon days; however, for me the archetypal Indie experience will always be that upstart mix of emotional storytelling and intriguing mechanics belonging to the modest puzzle-platformer. When I play The Pedestrian from Skookum Arts, it also feels like I'm playing Braid, Limbo, Fez, Thomas Was Alone, The Swapper, or any number of games from this all-encompassing format I've covered in the past, and will no doubt cover again in the future. For the purposes of Indie Game of the Week, this is the equivalent of touching base with an old friend because it's been a while.
The Pedestrian has you play a dual role of a sign symbol - either a male or female shape - and an unseen manipulator helping said symbol reach a goal, whether that's simply reaching the next screen or collecting an item needed to complete an overarching puzzle elsewhere. The screens are all comprised of road signs: all in different shapes and colors, each filled with little platforming challenges and hazards. It's with that secondary role that the game starts to get mindfuck-y: the manipulator can take these individual signs and move them around into new positions, drawing connections between them in various arrangements to allow for different paths through the current level. There are, however, limitations to this pathfinding: if your character passes through one connection, it becomes "canon" in a manner of speaking; that is to say, if you then undo this connection once it has been solidified in this fashion, the level will completely reset including dropping the protagonist in their original position as well as any items they've found or used. Many puzzles then become a matter of figuring out how to connect paths in such a way that you won't then need to reverse it later along with your progress, or perhaps even find a way to exempt yourself from the reset process altogether. The game eases you into its challenges gradually, introducing you to the control scheme if not necessarily to the rules (those you have to intuit). The game's difficulty curve starts extremely easy and then sharply rises throughout its short duration, capping off with a couple of very meta final puzzles that make for the sort of end-game twist that's endemic to this cunning genre.
I... think this route should work? Seems pretty straightforward to me, at least.
The game's first impressions are striking, in part because the playable sign areas exist adjacent to a world close to our own. While not quite photorealistic, the "real world" backgrounds juxtaposed against the stylized and flat signs make for a strong contrast and when the game starts factoring in real-world obstacles on top of the ones presented within the "sign world", it makes for some remarkably layered puzzles. The game's soundtrack helps to settle the tone it's going for: with something like this you could play up a sci-fi or magical realism angle, but the bright and bouncy instrumental music immediately brings to mind something like a Pixar movie, or perhaps the lighter and more high-concept short that usually precedes same: that your quest through all these signs across a city and its underground is one of scrappy excitement and discovery. It's also hard to stay frustrated when a soundtrack like that is in the background, even on your fifth or six reconfiguration of the current screen's many signs to find its elusive correct route, which may be another factor behind the sunnier direction it took.
I found the game pretty charming overall, though there's a few glaring issues. The first is that it's an incredibly short game that runs out of steam quick, jumping to its big finale after about three or four hours. To its credit, it doesn't stop throwing new ideas at you the whole time, and probably figured it would be best to bow out with one last surprise rather than toss in ever more challenging arrangements of the mechanics it has already presented. After all, Indie games have the good grace to conclude when they feel the moment is right, rather than extend themselves unnecessarily to uphold some specious back-of-the-box promise of value. However, that can also mean that I was left wanting more and in particular more ways the 2D signs interact with the 3D world they inhabit in a similar fashion to other examples of this format like Sideway: New York or The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. I'm perhaps being unreasonable with this next point, but the game could've done with something akin to a back button or maybe a brief time-reverse feature: just something to fix an immediate mistake, like leaping into a fatal laser beam or sawblade, to prevent myself from having to recreate the last five-to-ten minutes of careful route planning. Most screens are these self-contained affairs that - separately - don't take that much time to solve, especially once you have the solution; there are still times where said solution is a multi-step process that can be hard to replicate on the fly without also having to start over mentally too. If I'm being honest though, half the occasions where I had to restart were because I missed an important stage much earlier in the process, and a short-duration time-reverse probably wouldn't have been sufficient to save my ass. It's always the nature of puzzle-platformers to get frustrated from repeated mistakes, much as it in adventure games when you're stymied by your lack of imagination (or an inability to find the obtuse logical wavelength the designers were working on, as the case may be).
The Pedestrian starts to get wild when you're required to hook up electronic cables to open the way forward. More concepts like this would've been cool.
This is all to say that the Pedestrian looks great, sounds great, has some creative ideas in a genre that one might believe had been thoroughly mined of any innovation long ago, and is perhaps just a little too short and occasionally a little too annoying with its longer puzzles. (Before anyone sounds off in the comments, making you play those parts over and over doesn't exactly fix the short duration problem.) If you're somehow not burned out on puzzle-platformers, or perhaps you weren't playing a whole lot of Indies when they ruled the roost in the early 2010s, it wouldn't be a bad recent choice for acquainting or reacquainting yourself with the questionable joys that can only come from staring at a screen layout for minutes in total confused panic.
It's back again and about time too, and this time I'm in the mood. The mood to review some more N64 games, that is. That's right, I'm going to be bringing back 64 in 64 for another couple of months at least, inspired by Giant Bomb's sudden interest in older Nintendo properties. (Man, I wish I was set up to do a GameCube version of this feature. When are those games coming to Switch Online?) Our goal as always is to see what other games from the Nintendo 64's eclectic catalogue, or eclectalogue, are best deserving of a revival on Nintendo's own Switch Online Expansion Pak subscription tier.
But yes, it has been a while. Since the end of April, in fact, when I had to free up some time for the rigours of May Madness/Maturity/Millennials/M-whatever-I-called-it-this-year and the summer anime hijinks that followed. For as much as this series challenges my patience with some exquisite trash, it's so far been an eye-opening exploration of what made the N64 a compelling (to observe, at least) mix of the highest highs and the lowest lows in a grunchy period for pop culture around Y2k that is really only now starting to look good in comparison because it didn't have any tin-pot dictators or plagues in it.
That's my excuse for why I can't stay away from 64 in 64 forever, a hundred badly-aged sports and racing games notwithstanding, and why I'm ready to jump right back in with our first game since the break. But first! We should probably clarify the rules again:
Each episode of 64 in 64 covers two N64 games taken from the system's entire library including all the JP exclusives. I know my watashis from my bokus, so I'm sure I'll muddle through. Probably. Rakukanteki janai.
The first episode is one pre-selected by yours truly, taken from a range of classics and some less-classic guilty pleasures. The second choice I leave entirely to an impartial random selection process that nonetheless seems to hold great animosity towards me. Some real I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream sass every time I hit that randomize button.
Each game will be played a total of sixty-four minutes; no more and no fewer. My impressions are jotted down in sixteen minute intervals, for a total of four impassioned defenses/cries for help. I'll also consider the likelihood of it joining the Nintendo Switch Online service's Expansion Pak tier, and whether or not it actually deserves to.
History: The seventh video game Rare released on the Nintendo 64, Donkey Kong 64 sees the English developers adapt the franchise that put them on so many radars - the Donkey Kong Country trilogy for the SNES - to a 3D environment, using their critically-acclaimed Banjo-Kazooie as a template for its traversal and combat mechanics and its reward-based progression format. Introducing a whole new set of protagonists to the growing Kong clan, Donkey Kong 64 divides its time between platforming challenges and mini-games and uses a circuitous, backtracking-heavy structure where its enormous stages have areas that can only be accessed by one or two Kongs at a time due to requiring specific skills to access. In essence, the game plays much more like a puzzle where figuring out who you need and where is as much a part of the objective as all the leaping and fighting; a design conceit that would be explored further in the even more abstruse Banjo-Kazooie follow-up, Banjo-Tooie.
The only thing to ever exasperate Hbomberguy more than Ben Shapiro's circular logic, Donkey Kong 64 is either held up as the zenith or condemned as the nadir of Rare's approach to 3D platformer design: that is, stacking every one of its levels with enough collectibles and other random junk to fill a whole season of Hoarders. DK64 in particular makes the Collyer brothers look like Marie Kondo. There have been infographic artists who worked with the brightest minds at NASA in an attempt to visualize just how much detritus there is to be found across Donkey Kong 64, beginning from the five hundred bananas lying around every stage - one centenary for each of the five protagonists - and moving on to the many golden bananas, banana coins, banana hammocks, banana fairies, banana grabbers, and banana medals that all provide some sort of benefit somehow and somewhere.
Needless to say, I adore this game for attending to the very small audience of obsessive-compulsive scroungers to which I belong. That affection is not universal, however, and you don't even need to leave this very site to watch a group of beleagured souls become thoroughly enervated by the game's collectathon grind in real-time. Will a single hour spent hoovering up yellow fruit be enough to exonerate it in the eyes of the Giant Bomb community? Nah, but I'll have fun and that's what matters.
16 Minutes In
I have a theory that all Rare's ancillary characters are like the utility dinosaurs in The Flintstones: limited career opportunities have forced them to take on demeaning jobs they hate. This guy is just a signpost, what else was he supposed to do? Take that Ocarina of Time gig and get bisected by Link every time he walked past?
All right, we're off. Skipping the DK rap. I only have sixty-four minutes with this game, I'm not going to burn two of them hearing about pineapple smells. However, I cannot skip the game's looooong intro as King K. Rool's mobile island fortress nears Kong Island, nor can I skip the tutorial mini-games that need to be completed before DK - the only playable character initially - can acquire the first upgrade in the game, required to get out into the open world hub. After that, I needed to visit the enormous lug K. Lumsy whose elated dancing at the prospect of being freed from his cage produces the tremors that open each new level. I barely took a step into the lobby for the first stage of the game, pictured above, when the first timer went off. Starting to think I might not make a whole lot of headway in an hour.
The tutorial did serve a purpose in getting me acclimated to the basic controls, including the always awkward 3D swimming, and the game's whole trick - as it is for most of the other Rare platformers - is that the other techniques are handed out as rewards for progress. This means the DK crew can have about twenty different abilities with their related button combinations and not necessarily lose the player in the weeds, since they're doled out (banana pun?) incrementally well after you've become acquainted with the powers already at your disposal. That said, DK64 does kind of overdo things by giving you five protagonists each with their own assortment of skills, but overdoing things is pretty much this game's whole modus operandi as we'll soon find out.
32 Minutes In
I always, always, always go the wrong way on this screen. Pressing right here will make the spotlight jump four positions to the left before settling on DK. I guess the idea is that you're moving the Kongs rather than the spotlight? Either way, it just makes a process you'll already have to repeat a hundred times even longer.
My goal for this time block was to save the second Kong family member and only other returning playable character: Diddy Kong. Rescuing the jetpacked wonder requires you first to visit Funky Kong, who has now abandoned his peaceful surfer lifestyle and now sells you guns and bombs to defend yourself with, a transformation that manages to presage post-9/11 America. Buying DK's Coconut Gun (it fires in spurts, did you know) allows him to hit coconut-emblazoned targets on walls as well as defeat enemies and pop banana balloons, the latter worth ten of the level's 100 banana total. Between those and the banana bunches, which are worth five apiece, the game keeps its amount of clutter down to... well, I won't say a minimum, but it's not filling every square inch of the geography at least. Poking around this level you're also introduced to Snide, who is attached to a set of blueprint collectibles (one for each Kong per level) that can be exchanged for golden bananas, the main progression currency. You're also told that you need those smaller bananas to feed the two guardians - a pig and a hippo - to open the way to the level's boss. Doing that nets you a key for K. Lumsy's cage, which in turn will open up a new level somewhere else. It's... a lot to take in all at once. I think I recall playing along with a notepad on my first playthrough, if only to track all the places and items I couldn't reach yet.
As if there needed to be a reminder how big these levels can get, each one has a teleport system that includes five pairs of pads that you can warp between. This cuts down on much of the running around, but it still means you have these huge areas you have to explore five times over to acquire everything. I'm torn between continuing to see how much progress I can make through Jungle Japes - probably not too much more, since the other three Kongs are trapped in separate levels - and bailing out to see more of the game. For now, I'm going to play as Diddy for a bit.
48 Minutes In
A side-view of Cranky's Lab, one of the numbered teleport pads (my N64's old so it didn't load in the number texture), and a beaver's whole ass. The rain effect here is kinda neat though, if a pointless embellishment.
My OCD assumed control once again and so I spent most of this sixteen minutes sweeping up what few items I could still get as Donkey Kong, including the potion power-up for this level which lets me access the Blast Barrel courses as well as my first banana medal, obtained by collecting 75 of the regular bananas across the level. I forget how many collectible types I've seen now and there's still more to find. After that, I jumped into Diddy's shoes and remembered that the coins I'd used to purchase Donkey Kong's gun and potion were yellow - like all coins, I stupidly figured - but for some reason these vendors only accept red coins from Diddy. That meant finding another six before I could kit him out with the same upgrades: his trademark twin peanut SMGs and a charge move used for hitting low wall switches.
Something I've come to respect while playing this game again is that you really have to build a mental map of where everything in a level is through thorough exploration because you'll probably need to come back to any given area with a specific Kong, possibly at a later part of the game when they have the necessary upgrade(s). Without an actual in-game map or much in the way of an UI giving you directions, you're left to rely on your spatial awareness and sense of direction to recall the path to any unobtained collectible. Obviously this is going to be nightmarish for many players, especially those spoiled by modern UI conveniences, so I don't see Donkey Kong 64 appreciating in value as the years go on. At least, not unless Nintendo and Rare decide to mod in a bunch of QoL stuff when it hits the Switch Online store, and I can't see either of them wanting to put in the effort for a 23-year-old game everyone denigrates. (Though speaking of mods, there is that one that lets you tag in different Kongs anywhere rather than at specific tag barrels. I didn't use it here for purity's sake, but I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo made use of it.)
64 Minutes In
Wouldn't be a Rare Donkey Kong game without minecarts. They could've certainly tried to make a game without them, and people would've been happy, but it was not to be. It's integral to the lore that a bunch of monkeys have a thriving mineral extraction industry.
Now, I realize this thrilling minecart challenge area for Diddy Kong looks like it might come from a stage separate from the outdoorsy first one, like maybe a place that's set underground and full of tunnels and called something like Subterranean Subterfuge, but no. We're still in Jungle Japes. I just... I... look. Look.
Look.
I don't see the need to apologize for being what I am. Which is overly anal about these damn collectathons. This level still had treasures on it I could reach, and so I was compelled - honor-bound, practically - to stick around until it was thoroughly exhausted of its shinies. I actually found all of DK's - there's five golden bananas per Kong, which are what you need to open the barriers to new levels - and completing this not-great minecart mini-game (which was like the trolley problem except all the people were coins to collect and yet it was somehow every bit as stressful) would've netted me Diddy Kong's third golden banana for the stage. However, the distraction was enough to keep me away from the stage's boss and the subsequent stages (and Kongs) to come, which would've been debatably more intriguing to read about, so... well, you can see a small handful of what other content is out there across Donkey Kong Island by watching Burgle My Bananas. Or, if you're not a fan of schadenfreude, just find some screenshots somewhere I guess. As always, we leave another 64 in 64 playthrough on a very enthusiastic note.
How Well Has It Aged?: Depends. As I said mid-playthrough there's a certain amount of backtracking, confusion about objectives, and an overwhelming amount of abilities/controls to learn and remember that didn't do the game any favors at launch and will be even less well-received today in an era where games are more accessible and straightforward than ever. At the same time, there's something rewarding about a game this expansive with this many collectibles to find and challenges to overcome: it's very much not a short game, and if you were going to go full 101% completionist maniac on this rough customer expect it to take you the wrong side of 50 hours. It's punishing in a way most tough platformers aren't: while the Super Meat Boy/Celeste masocores of the world throw all kinds of reflex- and timing-intensive ordeals at your feet, Donkey Kong 64's approach is much more geared towards testing your meticulous note-taking, your capacity to maintain mental maps, and, sure, let's also say your patience. (That mod I mentioned that lets you switch Kongs anywhere might actually be indispensable if you want to keep the busywork to a minimum.) It has its problems but it's also the N64 game with the most content for you to enjoy, save perhaps a big RPG like Ogre Battle 64: if nothing else, the value proposition alone is a potent selling point.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Very High. I've said this several times, perhaps with less conviction each iteration, but I'm sure Microsoft and Nintendo are still hammering out a plan to bring Rare's N64 library to Nintendo's online service; they probably just need to agree on a price. Now that Banjo-Kazooie is already available and GoldenEye 007 might be tied up in any number of movie licensing agreement issues and/or references to the presently-unpopular Russian military, Donkey Kong 64 and its kart-racer sibling Diddy Kong Racing make the most sense for Rare's next Switch Online debuts, given that both use characters based on a Nintendo franchise. More a case of "when" rather than "if".
History: A long time ago, a few years after the 3DO console had already come and gone and concurrently with their harrowing 500-part dramatic series on the misery and trauma perpetuated by war, otherwise known as the Army Men franchise, a little 3DO company called The 3DO Company put out a couple of semi-OK tank simulator action games on the N64. This... is the second one of those.
The 3DO company was a bold gambit by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins and a coalition of moneyed types looking to break into the burgeoning CD-ROM console market in the early '90s on their own terms, developing and distributing specifications for a CD-based system that other companies, like Panasonic, would pay them to use. After its 1993 debut, the 3DO was soon overwhelmed by the popularity of Sony's PlayStation (and Sega's Saturn to a lesser extent) and the company spent the next decade instead focusing on third-party game development until they eventually went kaput. There are many theories online as to what "3DO" actually stands for as an acronym: I can tell you after some research that the D stands for "Dimensional," as in three-dimensional, while the O stands for "Oh no, all our money is gone."
BattleTanx, though, might be one of the better-regarded franchises from their otherwise cursed second-life as software developers and publishers (personally, I'm indebted to them for putting out New World Computing's heavy-duty Might & Magic CRPGs from VI onwards). I had no idea what the BattleTanx games entailed, beyond that tanks would probably feature, but the plot of this series is absolute cuckoo nonsense seemingly aimed at pre-teen boys with "no girls allowed" signs on their treehouses. In the original BattleTanx, a virus is created and distributed that kills over 99% of all female humans - like an inverted Y: The Last Man - and the few women that remain are venerated as matriarchal "Queenlords." The protagonist's wife is one such survivor, and she's spirited away by the US Government one evening which forces the hero to give chase in a tank he found. This sequel, as you might expect from the name, expands beyond the continental United States to include the rest of the world (or mostly Europe).
16 Minutes In
A typical level. Can't quite make out that symbol on the back of the tank. It's either a dragon or the usual mudflap girl was hit pretty hard by the nuclear radiation.
Huh. This game might actually be kinda fun? Well, at least so far that's been the case. Unlike most tank simulators, the vehicles in this game move incredibly quickly and it's often a matter of being able to shoot accurately while both you and your target at moving at high velocity. You can plant yourself and aim properly - there's no reticle or anything, you'll just hit anything that's directly in front of you since the camera follows the cannon rather than the tank treads, so all that's needed is to point yourself the right direction - but that means getting hit by all manner of enemy vehicle and gun turrets while you line up a shot. You eventually start unlocking other tanks, which offer various ratios of maneuverability versus size versus firepower: I'm thinking about going for a smaller model just to make it easier to get around some of these tighter environments.
After a few easy introductory levels, I'm now in a zone where there are turret embankments everywhere and I'm having to carefully move around to avoid taking on too many at once. A pre-level tooltip gave me the advice of using the trains in this zone for cover, but I'm not entirely sure where I should be going even with the radar power-up (and it's kinda messed up you need to find that first before you have a concrete idea of where your objectives are). I suspect those first few stages gave me a slightly disingenuous impression of how I'm supposed to play this: it's going to need more tactical consideration and caution than I originally thought.
32 Minutes In
A post-mission screen, letting me know that I don't completely suck. The three tank icons indicate how many different tank models I have available: I've no idea if it's tied to score or story progress or what, but many others unlock throughout the game.
I eventually figured out where I was going wrong in the previous level: on the map there are white squares that represent prisoners I had to rescue, and they're all trapped in areas you cannot reach unless you start blowing up buildings (as opposed to the reinforced gates and such in-between, which was what I was trying to knock down). BattleTanx had an important lesson to teach here, since I was too slow to get it earlier: almost anything can be 'sploded, so if there's something's in the way just light that baby up and send it to Jesus. It's the post-apocalypse, so it's not like most of these high-rises have anyone living in them any more. The next level gave me my first power-up-specific objective: destroy brainwashing drive-in movie projectors. Since they're behind impenetrable walls, I had to find some grenade pick-ups and lob them over. The game has a huge assortment of these power-ups that I've mostly been ignoring, but along with the expected missiles and grenades and land mines there's turbo if you felt like the tanks weren't fast enough and weird shit like teleporters. I'm probably going to want to figure out what most of these do before the mission design insists on it. Anyway, as you can see above, the drive-in level was much easier than the previous.
The game doesn't do "lives" per se, but instead you have a finite supply of "tank bucks" that you spend every time you spawn or respawn into a zone. You can also reset all progress on the current zone if you've blown through too much of your funds through repeated mistakes and ambushes. By exploring the level thoroughly, or by completing your objectives quickly and with minimal losses, you can earn more tank bucks for the harder levels to come. Building an early buffer to keep myself rich in tanks seems like a wise move. Then again, I also don't want to keep repeating the same levels over and over by being too parsimonious for my own good.
48 Minutes In
Those bastards are keeping Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson under lock and key? Time to awaken my inner Guy Fawkes and take down some venerated government buildings.
Spent the last sixteen minutes blowing up the D.C. Mall and the White House, so this game definitely anticipates what its players want. I haven't really talked about the story much, so here goes: the protagonist Griffin and his wife Madison, after the latter was saved at the end of the first game, have since taken over San Francisco and turned it into the closest thing the post-apocalypse has to a sanctuary. They also had a kid, Brandon. All three family members have something called "The Edge": a latent psychic ability activated by the end of the world. Another Edge-user, the evil Queenlord Cassandra, wants to use Brandon as a guinea pig to become the most powerful Edgelord in the universe. We're now at the point of the plot where she's taken Brandon and, after I destroyed her American HQ at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (I guess no-one else was using it?), has am-scrayed back to her home base in Europe.
I also acquired her special Goliath tank and can use it to tear ass in the subsequent stages. The downside is that it costs far more tank bucks to deploy, so I have to be certain that I'm going to need that much firepower. The standard M1A1 has been serving me well so far, and the more dextrous Rattler is a good alternative in zones with a lot of narrow passages, but now that I have five different types unlocked I might want to start trying some of these others out.
64 Minutes In
Pretty ominous defensive line the enemy has set up at the end of Tower Bridge. Trouble is, you get the icons long before you can see any of them, so I've no idea how they're bunched up. Time for boring old caution again, I guess.
After another chunk of time spent destroying the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge in what I would call a therapeutic fugue state given the political scene around here of late, I've reached the end of my time with BattleTanx: Global Assault. These two stages weren't particularly more involved than the previous batch, except Parliament had a huge number of subterranean tunnels that took a while to navigate, since the tunnel interiors don't appear on the mini-map. In fact, your own icon vanishes from same while you're underground, so it's not like you have any idea where you're going. Conversely, Tower Bridge was as linear as they come: you just had to get to the other end in one piece, which wasn't easy with the number of battleships sniping you from the nearby Thames. Darn our formidable Navy.
I tried out the Goliath but there's too much merit with a balance of speed and power, given even the tankiest of tanks is going to run into mischief if it can't get around corners in time when multiple gun turrets are firing rockets at you. Went back to the M1A1 for Tower Bridge (which, ironically, would've been the type of straightforward stage perfect for the Goliath) and unlocked at least two more tanks after it was done, so clearly the game isn't lacking for variety in its weapons and vehicles to use, if not necessarily in its gameplay loop. Either way, I had an unexpectedly OK time just blowing up recognizable landmarks, so... thanks BattleTanx. Thanx.
How Well Has It Aged?: Moderate. Like, tanks are basically boxes on wheels already so the early N64 polygonal graphics aren't quite as much of a detriment here. The mission structure is super barebones but there's plenty to be said for simplicity: playing it gave me the same vibe as the Earth Defense Force series, albeit with fewer alien bug kaiju, and I think if we're stocking an online library of throwaway games most people will play for ten minutes before they get their fill then BattleTanx is up there with the best of them. I'd probably opt for Blast Corps over this if I was forced to choose a vehicular mayhem sim for the N64, but its modest charms and very late '90s comic book energy have their own nostalgic appeal.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Unlikely. After 3DO collapsed, its IPs scattered to the four winds and were swept up by an assortment of major and minor publishers. The more successful brands could still be tracked - Might & Magic, for instance, ended up with Ubisoft and has languished there ever since - but there's no telling who owns BattleTanx now unless they suddenly decide to port those games to Steam or something. Yet to happen, alas. I'm not sure its profile is sufficiently high for there to be enough folks angling for its return either. Never say never?
It's dawning on me that, for as expansive as my love of adventure games has become in the past decade, one of my favorite archetypes remains the detective format for the way the clue-finding and interrogation aspects of the job integrate so well into the pre-existing point-and-click template. Deductions require physical evidence and information to make, after all, and this genre can afford to pace itself to reveal as much or as little to the player as it deems necessary for the level of intrigue it wants to maintain. When I think about games like Ace Attorney or Danganronpa or Kathy Rain, where you repurpose everything you've found and learned as incontrovertible proof of guilt (or innocence) it's a satisfying way to reward the diligence, perception, and critical thinking skills this genre thrives on. Even if Inspector Waffles is a comical world of sapient cats and dogs that likes dropping animal puns like there's no tomorrow, it still understands the appeal of a crime procedural as you move ever closer to the culprit through your own wits and persistence.
Inspector Waffles has its titular tabby detective investigate the murder of Fluffy, the wealthy CEO of a cardboard box manufacturing company (the only toys cats care about), and discover a thread that leads all the way back to his imprisoned Moriarty of a nemesis, Snowball. Those are the broad strokes of the story, but in describing it in such simple terms precludes the number of diversions and leads that has him interrogating a series of sketchy and amusing characters, poking around crime scenes, and working with his colleagues at the police station like the overly eager sniffer patroldog Spotty and the portly, Wiggum-like Chief Patches.
Consoling Waffles at its lowest point at the local milk bar is this familiar-looking orange cat, who knows a thing or two about failure and humiliation.
The game's comedy is delivered in a deadpan fashion, where the copious amounts of goofs and references tend to wash over an otherwise played straight noirish story of revenge, regret, and murder. Overall the writing's fairly decent, between establishing the personalities of its large cast of characters and Waffles' own internal monologues, and like other games in this thematic genre the conversation system is one powered by gathering evidence beforehand: if you have the right clue or piece of evidence in your inventory, you can press the right person for the information you need to proceed with the case. Otherwise, that interrogation prompt remains in that character's dialogue menu until you have what you need to resolve it, making it obvious enough what you should be focusing on figuring out next. The world of Inspector Waffles starts relatively small, with locations entering and exiting the fast-travel menu when applicable, so it has that serendipitous quality common to compact Indie adventure games where a smaller number of options means less "stabbing in the dark" at progress flags is required.
Despite having some stylized art for its comic book-style cutscenes and title screen, most of the game uses a very lo-fi pixel look that affords the developers the chance to create detailed scenes, but the low pixel count also means that it's hard to make out what a lot of the things in those scenes actually are; generally speaking, if you can mouse over it to get its name, it's potentially important (and thus anything that doesn't have pop-up text can be considered dressing) but when the game decides to be cute and squeeze in references to other games in the background, like the nerdy knick-knacks on the shelf of police IT expert Pixel's office, it's almost impossible to tell what is being referenced. Art isn't everyone's strong point, and it's perhaps less vital in a narrative-heavy medium where the writing and puzzles take priority, but I don't think this abstract style does a details-oriented game like this many favors.
The art for these cutscenes, while not exceptional, does a much better job than the pixels in giving the setting a distinct noirish look, especially when it comes to distinguishing its feline cast. I can appreciate that pixels evoke that 'classic adventure gaming' feel, however.
To give the game a little more content there's a collectible card system where following trails of clues can sometimes result in a new rare card for the player's album: as this album was taken from one of the main suspects, it's hinted that filling it up before handing it back to its previous owner will unlock some additional narrative. Otherwise, it mostly exists as a way to sprinkle around some red herring threads that, instead of leading to the next story beat, simply lead to one of these tchotchkes: it's far from being unwelcome though, as it means you have multiple leads to occupy you if you're stuck on any one for the time being. The uncommon inclusion of a side-quest in an adventure game does give Inspector Waffles a bit more distinction, at the very least.
Inspector Waffles has some flaws but I think the meat of its noir tale is solid and hits the notes it means to. The particular way its puzzles are presented mitigates much of the frustration with this older genre, as you always at least have some idea what piece of information or evidence you need to progress if not where it might be found, and the way locations disappear when they're no longer needed or Waffles mentally conceives of a reason to not talk to someone when they no longer have relevance to the story means escaping that "hotspot redundancy" that can grind adventure games to a halt, where you keep interacting with items and people that no longer serve a purpose. The story, which uses the same balance of serious, dramatic moments in its core narrative and lots of silly levity in the periphery, reminds me of how the Yakuza games handles its storytelling too, which is obviously a positive as well. I think I'm close to the end after about four hours, so it's about the right size for a game of its type too; I could certainly see some further moderately-sized adventures in the pulpy universe of animal-people it's created. On the whole, it's for sure recommended if you like the type of adventure game that has you piece together cases one conspicuous pixel at a time. And also have a healthy tolerance for pet puns, because it'll drive you barking mad if you don't.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Post-Playthrough Edit: Not much to add except to say the game got extremely wholesome towards the end in a way I wasn't expecting. It almost made me forget that multiple animal-people had already died up to that point.
I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.
The Property
A staple of any early anime fan's VHS collection, Bubblegum Crisis helped codify an image of anime being this cool and occasionally violent underground sci-fi amusement park for teens and adults that greatly contrasted from the mostly kid-friendly animation being produced for western audiences (ironically, often by Japanese animation studios working on contract). Its broad appeal world-wide can be partly contributed to its familiar story structure and themes for sci-fi genre fans of the late '80s: the OVAs liberally borrow from near-future dystopian sci-fi like Blade Runner and Terminator for its premise of an all-female mercenary force called Knight Sabers, empowered by cutting-edge exosuits, who protect a 2033 Mega Tokyo by hunting down rogue "Boomers": androids frequently posing as humans that, in the wrong hands, can become effective assassins and heavies due to their superhuman strength, hidden weaponry, and total lack of empathy. Man, if you were to tell me Boomers were responsible for the world's dismal state in ten years' time I don't think I would be at all skeptical.
Even the name Bubblegum Crisis is evocative: said by its creator Toshimichi Suzuki to be a metaphor for how its setting's fragile peace is about to burst, like bubblegum, due to rampant technological advancement it instead brings to mind the colorful confectionary that matches the bright hues of the Knight Saber suits, juxtaposed against the anime's darker themes, bursts of violence, and mostly nighttime setting. (Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but as an action sci-fi show aimed at young men (shounen) with an all-female cast, it sure does conceive a lot of scenarios where they're nude or close to it. Not going to say that didn't also contribute to its appeal.)
Bubblegum Crisis was written by Toshimichi Suzuki, created by his animation studio Artmic in conjunction with AIC (Anime International Company), and produced by Youmex, a Toshiba EMI subsidiary. The character designs came courtesy of a young Kenichi Sonoda, the self-professed gun-nut that would find solo success with Gunsmith Cats, while the exosuits and other mechanical designs were the product of an equally young Masami Oubari, who'd go on to direct the Fatal Fury and Battle Arena Toshinden anime among others (he also directed two episodes of Bubblegum Crisis). Artmic made a handful of other OVAs prior to their dissolution in 1997 including possible future Game OVA candidate Detonator Orgun and the notorious five-part series Genocyber, which almost needs to be seen to be believed (but, uh, not if you're the squeamish type).
However, what we're actually focusing on today is the short-lived sequel series to Bubblegum Crisis: Bubblegum Crash. As a direct continution that ties up some of the loose threads of the original run you can't really watch Crash without seeing Crisis first, so while the bulk of the following anime and game reviews will be focused on Crash I'll be sprinkling in bits of Crisis lore where appropriate.
Major Characters:
Priscilla "Priss" Asagiri: Moody and hotheaded, Priss is a loner who tends to act recklessly. When not on a mission she performs as the lead vocalist for the rock band "Priss and the Replicants" (yeah, yeah, we get it). Her VA, a real-life singer, is frequently performing songs in the backgrounds of montages and other major scenes. As a Knight Saber, Priss is the team muscle and vanguard that uses a railgun and laser rifle at range and "knuckle bombers" (explosive knuckle dusters, essentially) for close-quarters fighting.
Sylia Stingray: A genius scientist and tactician, Sylia acts as the Knight Sabers' leader and was the one to create all the armored suits the Sabers wear. She's a business tycoon outside of her mercenary work, the profits from her many enterprises helping to subsidize the expensive gear of the Knight Sabers along with their mission payouts. Her father was a major researcher for massive tech conglomerate Genom - the man responsible for the Boomer androids - until he was assassinated by the upper management, and part of Sylia's motivation for creating the Sabers was to fight against their ruthless corruption. Her Knight Saber suit is geared for flight, and she uses her aerial manueverability to control the battlefield and direct the others.
Linna Yamazaki: The "normal" one of the group, who was recruited to the Knight Sabers due to her exemplary physical skills from her background as an aerobics instructor and professional dancer. Despite being relatively more down-to-earth than the rest of the team, she's obsessed with earning money and willing to take on any mission if it pays well enough. As a Knight Saber, she tends to approach enemies with hand-to-hand weapons like laser ribbons and knuckle bombers, using her speed and agility to close the distance unscathed.
Nene Romanova: The bubbly and ditzy Nene is the youngest member of the team. Her day job involves being a member of the AD Police, a special division of the metropolitan cops set up to handle Boomer-related crimes: she's effectively the Sabers' mole on the inside of the city's elite law enforcement branch. A talented hacker, she's called upon whenever a situation calls for electronic warfare or data recovery. As a Knight Saber, she mostly serves as a distraction, maintaining distance to use remote hacking on her robotic foes.
Mackie Stingray: Sylia's younger brother and an inveterate horndog. He acts as support for the Knight Sabers, working on mission control at Knight Saber HQ or driving the truck that carries their gear and motorcycles. He's also capable of fighting in his own armored suit in an emergency.
Leon McNichol: A loose cannon detective in the AD Police as well as a womanizer, he has a love/hate relationship with the obstinate Priss due to being a fan of her music. Despite his jackassery, he can be a valuable ally to the Knight Sabers albeit often unknowingly.
Daley Wong: Leon's partner in the AD Police. Competent and personable, Daley's a rare case in early anime of a heroic openly gay male character. In Bubblegum Crisis he has an easygoing working relationship with Leon, flirting with him out of jest, though that aspect of their friendship is played down in Bubblegum Crash.
Fargo: An underworld informant that works with Sylia, often being the one to surreptitiously arrange new missions for the Knight Sabers. A running joke is that he keeps setting up meetings in date spots, like a Ferris wheel or drive-in movie theater, assuring Sylia that they make for less conspicuous rendezvous.
The Anime
Bubblegum Crash was written by a returning Toshimichi Suzuki, created by Artmic only this time with Artland as their collaborators, and released in three OVA episodes across the second half of 1991 starting just a few months after the eighth and final Bubblegum Crisis OVA. As with Crisis, it was curtailed early in its run due to various legal troubles behind the scenes between Artmic and their original production partners Youmex.
Bubblegum Crash is set several months after the end of Bubblegum Crisis, in the year 2034, and sees the former Knight Sabers having all but disbanded and gone their separate ways (besides Nene) with the lack of business. However, a new Boomer threat rears its ugly mechanical head and the Sabers are once again called back into action.
(I've summarized the events of the eight episodes of Bubblegum Crisis at the bottom of the blog, but as they're not wholly essential to following Crash I'll be spoiler-blocking them.)
Episode 1: "Illegal Army"
Already, this show is jumping on board the then-burgeoning CGI train with a 3D model of Mega Tokyo. It looks expensive, because they spend a few seconds looking around it while a voiceover re-introduces the near-future world of Bubblegum Crash and its reliance on Boomers: androids built to take on the majority of dangerous and difficult physical labor, as well as perilous space exploration. (C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, etc.) It also reiterates that, for the most part, people are happy with Boomers (unlike the Boomers of today) due to their utility and the way they make life easier for the younger generations (also unlike the Boomers of today). It's only when those Boomers go berserk, or are being controlled by a villainous sort, that they become a nightmarish menace. It doesn't help that Boomer endoskeletons are very not human once the outer layer of flesh has come off: many even have sharp animal-like teeth that aren't apparent in their human form. It's not apparent why this is, but it sure is grotesquely flashy when they burst from their human shells and grow a foot taller.
The episode then moves to a bank robbery performed by a group wearing armored suits: at this point it's impossible to tell if they're humans in exosuits or automated Boomers. They slip the AD Police by crashing their getaway vehicle and flying away with a chopper built to accommodate their suits, making it clear they have some serious support on their side. We're also shown that in the time since Bubblegum Crisis, cheaper model Boomers - which are more humanoid except for their metallic skin, rather than those that switch from near-human to monster forms - are now everywhere in Mega Tokyo; a faulty one serves Leon a cup of coffee powder as he complains about the risk-averse new ADP chief.
Our four heroines. Clockwise from top left: Nene, Sylia, Priss, and Linna.The new AD Police chief. Anally retentive, overly cautious, and ultimately ineffectual. Certainly resembles a particular POTUS from 1991, huh?
Ten minutes in, the show suddenly remembers it's supposed to be about the Knight Sabers, so we get caught up with what the four gals have been up to: Priss Asagiri is still focusing on going pro with her music (she has a new huskier VA now by the way, since the previous had also quit to focus on her music); Linna Yamazaki has switched careers from physical fitness to being a stockbroker, befitting her avaricious streak; Sylia disappeared after her businesses were relocated by city zoning; Team Mascot Mackie is studying abroad in Germany; and Nene is still with the AD Police and is the only one longing for the Knight Sabers to return, though they've mostly given up the exosuit vigilantism - she suggests chasing the bank robbers, but Priss and Linna don't see the point without a payout. Right on cue, the villains hit a second bank. Working with Leon, Nene digs up info on these armored thieves: they belong to a PMC of globe-trotting mercenaries called the Illegal Army who were supposedly wiped out on their last mission in the Philippines, including the death of their C.O. Colonel Landa. The next scene shows Landa is alive and well: he now has Boomer parts integrated into his body and is working for some shadowy associate to steal top-secret AI tech kept in these banks, using the gold bullion thefts as a smokescreen.
Sylia surreptitiously communicates with Nene through an arcade game that she wants to talk to the whole team in her hotel room. Dreading an official break-up of the Knight Sabers, Nene freaks out but is quickly assured by Sylia that their work will continue, especially now that the most recent suit upgrades are finished. Their next mission of course involves the bank robbers, and Sylia fills in some gaps in an expository scene: the villains are looking for four pieces of AI tech that will only work when all pieces are combined, and have two of them already due to the robberies. Sylia has already set up traps for the remaining two pieces, though given the mercenaries immediately steal another one without issue it's not clear what these failsafes are. As if to honor the old status quo, Priss and Linna immediately quit their jobs: Priss growing ever more agitated by her scummy manager for trying to turn her into an idol act covering songs that aren't hers, and Linna for losing a pile of money on one of the bank companies that was hit by the robbers. At the 33-minute mark of the first of these OVAs, the Knight Sabers finally get into their suits and prepare to fight the mercenaries head on as they close in on the final piece of AI tech. Cornering the mercs in a trap after planting some fake information, the Sabers quickly dispatch all the mercenaries except for Landa, who proves to be more formidable. Taken down by a surprise attack by Sylia, Landa intends to self-destruct with a bomb powerful enough to destroy half of Mega Tokyo but Nene and Priss work together to find the self-destruct mechanism and, well, destruct it. The day is saved, but the question remains: who hired Landa and his goons, and for what ultimate goal?
One of the few new characters added to Bubblegum Crash is this news announcer dude, a not-so-subtle nod to cyberpunk icon Max Headroom. He even does the jittery head movements.Yeah, I wasn't kidding about this show's issue with the male gaze. Unless, of course, there's something about saunas that makes them perfect for dropping exposition. At least this sauna comes equipped with monitors, which I'm sure won't make sense if I think about it too much.
This episode mostly serves to reintroduce the elements of the show, from the politics surrounding Boomer integration into Mega Tokyo society to the personalities and combat prowess of the Knight Sabers (I'm glad they finally gave Nene more firepower at last; it was getting comical how every enemy they fought was too much for her to handle). Colonel Landa feels like he was lifted right out of the Universal Soldier movies (were it not for the fact that the first of those came out the following year): he's shown to be a hardass and ruthless, but he paused on killing Leon because he resembled a soldier he fought alongside with which we're shown in a sudden flashback. He might have made for a more compelling foil, exploring how can effectively be half-human and half-Boomer, if he hadn't croaked. Otherwise, this is a pretty standard onboarding type of episode that spends most of its time setting up a big antagonist later on than telling a complete self-contained story of its own.
Episode 2 "Geo Climbers"
The episode starts with two protégés of Dr. Stingray (Sylia's father) discussing Genom's newest invention, Adama: a second-generation Boomer (so a Gen Xer?) close to realizing Stingray's dream of a world where Boomers and humans could be friends on equal footing. Yuri, the more obviously evil looking of the two, has his colleague Haynes and his research team executed by a Boomer firing squad so he can take Adama for himself. The Knight Sabers are enjoying a break in Geo City, a new up-market urban development created beneath Mega Tokyo, and encounter Yuri on his way to a meeting with military heads to show off a powerful crab-like Boomer he's been working on. It goes berserk almost immediately and tries to attack Yuri and his guests, forcing an emergency shutdown: we then understand why Yuri has a dire need for a more advanced AI like Adama for it to be effective. In a briefing, Sylia explains that Adama - officially blamed for the murder of Haynes - was built to be a pacifist that would react negatively to any commands to hurt others, and that it's more likely his supposed self-emancipation was set up by a third party who wanted the tech for themselves. Since we literally already saw that happen, I'm not sure how revelatory this scene is supposed to be, though it does suggest that Adama's sapience might be behind its rebellious behavior.
Because of the short series run, the Knight Sabers never had the chance to fight their greatest nemesis: The Cyber Funker. Adama's a childlike robot with a precocious attitude. I want to believe his clothes were designed to be an Urkel parody. Especially since Urkel had a robot clone in that show, if memory serves.
Adama quickly escapes from Dr. Yuri's lab after Yuri has a mysterious phone call with his benefactor, the same voice instructing Col. Landa, and the experimental Boomer wanders into the seedier parts of Mega Tokyo looking for a subway to Geo City. Sold to a fence by some unscrupulous bystanders, he escapes again and finds Priss patrolling the sewers looking for him. Of course, Priss doesn't immediately recognize the timid Adama, reasoning that she's looking for a more imposing Boomer model. She realizes who he is just as Yuri's Boomer goons find them, leading to a chase. Adamant about getting on the subway to Geo City, Adama leads Priss out of the sewers and onto a train, narrowly escaping from Yuri's Boomers. However, one manages to get on-board: before she can overpower Priss, Adama manages to hack her mind and change her into an ally. Adama and Priss discuss the latter's hatred of Boomers as they move through Geo City but are ambushed by more Combat Boomers and Adama is captured. A gunfight breaks out and Adama once again saves Priss with a timely distraction, allowing her to destroy the last of the Boomers. The episode really does spend half an hour on this cat and mouse BS, but it does give Priss and Adama opportunities to bond as they prove their value to each other.
It turns out Adama's goal was to reach the supercomputer for his lab so he can provide video proof of Yuri's murder of Haynes, taken from the lab's cameras. Yuri then tries to kill Priss with his crab-bot with one last gambit to take back Adama's priceless AI. Nene and Linna arrive to fight it off as Priss and Adama escape. However, it gives chase and Priss is forced to recover her armor from Sylia's aerial transport and finally destroy it. Sylia, meanwhile, goes to arrest Dr. Yuri but is forced to execute him when he pulls a gun on her: she is then taunted by the benefactor remotely, who witnessed the whole affair and has since downloaded all the data he needs on reproducing Adama's AI. Sadly, Adama himself took too much damage from the fight and passes away (or his memory is deleted, or whatever the robot version of death is); he makes Priss swear to prevent his AI to be used for destruction.
I feel like this lady Boomer and her bandana has to be based on some movie character, but I've no idea who. It's a striking character design regardless, which seems counter-intuitive for what is supposed to be an inconspicuous murder-robot.Yuri's Crab-Bot. Also, Nene's exosuited ass too I guess.
Seems like every sci-fi show has to have that one episode where the main character with the biggest grudge against the show's frequent antagonists is shown another side of them that changes their perspective a little. The Enemy Mine plot, as it were. Adama was a cute little guy who broke the fourth-wall occasionally, and I feel just a tad manipulated when he bites it during the finale. Felt cheap and predictable, though at least allowed for some character growth from Priss. Of course, it's essentially rehashing the same relationship she had with another sympathetic Boomer character, the "sexaroid" (sigh) Sylvie from Episode 5 of Bubblegum Crisis, which likewise ended in tragedy and caused Priss to reflect on her robo-prejudice. At least the crab robot was kinda cool?
Episode 3 "Melt Down"
Shit is rapidly hitting the fan as Boomers all over Mega Tokyo start going berserk, operating under new programming that has them rebelling against their human owners. Most of them are minor incidents involving construction and service models, though at some point three military Boomers awake from cold storage and decide to raid the AD Police building. The Knight Sabers theorize that the culprit is the same behind the previous two episodes, and we have our first appearance of Mackie in the Crash timeline as he calls in with some data on stopping the AI from a colleague of his and Sylia's father. He also asks that Sylia joins him in Germany once the current crisis is over so they can work together on advancing their father's Boomer research, which would once again mean a temporary cessation of Knight Saber activity.
Coming full circle with the faulty waitress Boomer from the beginning of the run, depicted here just before she pours hot coffee down her boss's throat. Kinda brutal, honestly. Then again, given the name of the place (as seen here reversed on the glass door), he should be thankful that it's only coffee...I'd read that the show was influenced by, among others, the 1983 fantasy movie Krull which was one of my favorites growing up. I made a weird squeaky noise when this familiar beast appeared on the side of a building.
Arriving to help the AD Police stop the assault on their building, the Knight Sabers handily deal with the military Boomers as Leon in his armored suit deals with the other rogue Boomers making their way to the armory. However, this assault was purely a distraction for the AD Police and Knight Sabers both: a large Boomer is heading for the city's central data-bank, which controls the flow of information throughout Mega Tokyo, and with it an army of reprogrammed Boomers of all shapes and sizes. They merge to form a truly monstrous Boomer parasite that latches itself onto the data-bank and starts spreading outwards. However, even that is just another distraction: the true goal of the culprit is to take a massive subterranean drilling machine to the city's heart, the nuclear fusion reactor.
Despite the power plant director's promise that the multiple barriers surrounding the facility makes it invulnerable to harm, the drill machine - which Leon's partner Daley calls "Brumm Bar," somehow with a straight face - easily breaks through the first wall. The Knight Sabers arrive, and discover that the plot was cooked up by none other than Largo: the exceptionally powerful Boomer that was the closest thing to a series villain Bubblegum Crisis has (confirmed to be the new form of expired Genom executive Brian J. Mason). Three Largos then attack the Knight Sabers as the drill machine continues on, turning into monstrous new Boomer prototypes. Sylia breaks off from the trio to find the true Largo, leaving the other three to fight these terrors. Unfortunately, the Sabers are no match for Largo's prototypes, each designed based on the combat data taken from the Knight Sabers' previous battles. Priss in particular ends up in a bad way, pierced multiple times by projectile shards of metal.
One of Largo's three Super Boomers, and the one that engaged Nene. Can't have too many laser eyes.I don't think the show adequately explained why Largo became this weird goo mummy. It's not like nanomachines ever came up as a plot point. I guess if you get called 'corporate slime' enough times it sticks...?
What follows between Sylia and Largo can only be described as a... psychic battle? As Largo's tendrils entrap Sylia in a dream world as he drones on about humanity destroying the planet Earth even though the Boomers could save it if they were the ones in charge, as they'd be able to weather any climate change. The embattled Knight Sabers eventually get the upper hand on their opponents but get snatched up by the same psychic tendrils: their calls reach Sylia through the dreamscape (seriously, what's going on?) and it's enough to shake her out of her nude reverie (any excuse...), allowing her to completely destroy what's left of Largo's current bio-mechanical form. His grasp on the others weakened, each Knight Saber eliminates their respective foes and the drill machine grinds to a halt mere feet away from the power plant core. The episode - and the series - ends with Sylia boarding a plane to Germany to join Mackie with new resolve to make her father's dream happen, while the other Knight Sabers badger a grateful Leon and Daley for a free meal.
I can appreciate that the creators of the show probably felt pressured to wrap up the series only three episodes into this new arc, given the ultimatums they were facing: had it continued on, they could've added more episodes before this finale to build up Largo's new powers and see various stages of his plan put into action. Like, maybe an episode that explains where the hell this enormous driller comes from. The part where he takes the Adama AI to create what is basically a diversion away from a suicidal plan to wipe out Mega Tokyo for the sake of a Boomer-controlled future is ridiculous plotting in retrospect. In any case, how would destroying Mega Tokyo necessarily help this plan of his to take over the world? Anyway, it's probably best not to overthink all that, or the part where his gloopy ass was able to psychically take over the Knight Sabers briefly.
A closer look at the Knight Sabers. L-R that's Linna, Sylia, Nene, and Priss suited up.
Of course, this wasn't truly the end of the Knight Sabers. A reboot was made in 1998 called Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 that ran for twenty-six episodes, giving the serialization and developing character arcs of the four Knight Sabers a lot more room to breathe. The characters were all visually redesigned too, with Sylia undergoing the most drastic changes. Despite being set in a later year, the show reset the continuity rather than resuming from Crash, establishing new roles and motivations for the cast. In addition to that reboot, there were two spin-offs that focused on the AD Police: the first was a three episode OVA series made during Bubblegum Crisis's run and was set several years before the Knight Sabers appeared, following Leon's early days as part of AD Police and their struggles dealing with tougher rogue Boomers, while the latter premiered just as Tokyo 2040 ended and consisted of twelve episodes following a whole new set of characters. Finally, there's Parasite Dolls from 2003 - the most recent Bubblegum Crisis spin-off - that follows another branch of the AD Police as they combat Boomers and dig deeper into Genom's secrets. It's apparently much darker and more brutal.
I'm not sure I'll be watching any of the above any time soon, but I am glad that this property finally got a full season after all the troubles these early OVA episodes went through to get made and it sounds like plenty of other creators were inspired to explore the same setting. Turns out killer robots posing as humans are kinda fun to write stories about, who knew? Besides Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Hideo Kojima, and god knows how many others?
All that's left is to talk about the one Bubblegum Crash game I was able to find:
The Game(s)
The only branded Bubblegum Crash game is unexpectedly from the adventure genre: one I haven't been able to show off yet, for obvious language barrier reasons. However, it did receive a fan translation that I'll be using to make progress. It came out exclusively on the Japanese PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) on December 6th 1991, a few weeks before the final episode of the OVA was released. Naxat were the ones to publish this game: they primarily worked on the PC Engine, but also put out games on many other systems too. They're best known, in my view at least, for creating the character of Dorabocchan, also known as Spike McFang. The developer, Spiel, is a company with a few sporadic releases up until the late '00s; according to GDRI, they did most of their work in the eroge domain. Surprisingly for both its system and its developer, this game is very PG-rated.
As a Japanese-style adventure game, it's a largely story-driven affair that requires the player to interrogate the right people and interact with the right objects to move the story forward, which will happen mostly on its own once the right flags are met. If you've played an Ace Attorney or perhaps one of the Hotel Dusk or Danganronpa games, it has a similar structure where it'll suddenly lurch forward into Cutscene City once you've completed your investigation into any given area. (I am also aware that there's a PC-98 adventure game called Crime Wave that uses the Knight Sabers, if not the Bubblegum Crisis/Crash name, but that's a little beyond my abilities to cover here. For one, it doesn't have a fan translation I can use.)
The game does have a few other surprises in store, though I can't say they ultimately improve the experience. Best that I just show you:
Both the creators of the show and the publishers get credit here. The cityscape at night is a nice touch, though it doesn't make this text any easier to read.The Illegal Army hit the first bank, Groly (it's supposed to be Glory) Bank. Here they are making a Groly Hole with their rifles.Nene, keeping up with the latest news as always. She's the protagonist for most of the game, as the closest thing to an investigator on the team. Daley and Leon here, looking pretty much the same as they do in the show. I realize now I forgot to take screenshots of either of them. The game has an odd selection of verbs to use - the group of icons on the right - as you have both a 'talk' and 'listen' prompt. You have to figure out which one moves the conversation forward, and it's not always the one you expect.Now on an investigation at Groly Bank, Nene takes one look at the trash bins here and refuses to go near them again. She's a pro, everyone.The aforementioned Groly Hole. Not only is that blue thing an important clue, but you have to use the Move command to shift a plate off that green object on the left. The green object here in the middle is apparently nothing but trash though. Highly selective evidence taking is all part of the AD Police's protocol (by the way, Nene's day job is actually as a traffic director, not a detective).Flashing your badge at NPCs can sometimes unlock the way forward. Other times they just call the cops out for being useless. Relatable!The map system has this annoying quirk where all the game's locations are available from the outset. There's at least twenty places I can go, half of which never factor into the story at all. In most cases, Nene will say something like 'I don't need to be here' and that's your cue to leave, but it's still a hassle finding the next thread.Ah, a Xander Cage fan I see.I'll save some of the middle steps here. Nene asks some black market types about the robot parts she found at the bank, giving us this lead into battle suits.They're NATO battle suits, turns out, and Nene has the bright notion that she's going to hack into their database from the AD Police supercomputer. Incidentally, this is a really irksome device to get working: first you have to MOVE the power switch on the left, then USE your badge on the screen so it can read it like a QR code, and then MOVE the keyboard at the bottom to access the system. You can't USE hotspots: that button is purely for inventory-based interactions. The game has some interface issues, is what I'm saying.This dork with the skin condition is a local ne'er-do-well hacker that Nene apparently needs to hire if she's going to get anywhere. I guess all her hacking ability from the show went out the window at some point. I'm also loving how she keeps yelling shit like this out loud.To win the hacker over to my side and get the classified data I need, I have to buy him one of the newest systems. Why do these all sound so familiar...? And why don't they have an AM-Downs Party yet? Or a Pear ][c?As I'm faffing around, the mercs hit another bank. At least the bank manager is keeping a stiff upper lip.Turns out the mercs are also hitting bank safes, since they have AI tech inside that when combined could... wait, you know all this already, don't you? From reading the episode synopses above? Why don't I skip ahead a bit.Oh wow, the developers really did watch the show then.We eventually meet with the other Knight Sabers. It's pretty much the same scene from the show, only we're in Linna's apartment instead of a restaurant.Anyway, we now get to be Linna for like five minutes. She's able to get into the Stock Market and get some tips on why Zone's stock price has suddenly risen. They're developing new AI tech, donchaknow.Somehow, Nene convinces Priss to drop everything and come to the Zone lab to check it out. We're now Priss for a little bit.But first! We get this little scene with Leon and Colonel Landa. Did someone say 'fighting mini-game'?That's right, the game has a turn-based combat mode where you trade blows using these menus. There's no appreciable difference between these two options incidentally. Leon gets his ass kicked either way in this unwinnable fight. As a game designer and also a monster, I always find it best to teach players new systems by giving them a challenge they cannot possibly overcome, leaving them wondering if they did something wrong.Players reeling from the first battle, not realizing this would be one of those adventure games with obnoxious action sequences, are immediately thrust into another one as they chase down one of Landa's goons as Priss on her motorbike. It's a simple enough game: just avoid the missiles by veering left and right.I say simple but I guess my reflexes ain't shit these days.For no particular benefit, the mini-game has you randomly select turns on the freeway with a 50/50 chance of losing your target. Fortunately, you can just take the same junction again.The next mini-game almost defies belief. You have to help Priss to catch up with the armored suit by swapping the tiles of this roadmap to lead her directly into it. It's Pipe Dream, everyone, only the characters wander around of their own accord instead of following the path. It's 180 seconds of completely arbitrary fun. Posted without comment.After a little more investigating, we finally meet up with Sylia and it's off to the big finale at Stephan Lab, the fake AI location Sylia set up in the episode.Did you guess the final part of the game would be an enormous dungeon-crawl with zero RPG elements, zero auto-mapping, but absolutely tons of random encounters nonetheless? Congrats, you're as much of a psychopath as the developers.The encounters play out just like the Leon battle from before, but you have the advantage of swapping out your character at any time. However, if just one Knight Saber dies, it's an instant game over and you're put back at the start of this very long dungeon-crawl sequence.As well as the armored suits, you also have to fight random Boomers wandering around the corridors. These guys are a little easier to deal with at least.Rooms contain one of three things: a switch to open all the rooms on the current floor, which you obviously need to find first; an elevator switch to allow travel between floors; or absolutely nothing, like this room and 99% of the others.Eventually, you'll reach Landa and have to fight him in a climactic battle. The trick is to bring out Nene first so she can use her scanner, which reduces enemy accuracy and increases your own attack power. Then you can just whale on everything with your combined might, as long as you don't let one get too hurt.With Landa defeated, the Knight... Cabers? Fabers? leave their signature behind to let the AD Police know that they'll forever be too sucky at their jobs.Narrator: There was no next game.
Does it do right by the anime? I'd say so, for the most part anyway. The benefit of the adventure game genre, like RPGs, is that you can squeeze in a lot of text and character moments that helped define the show's personality. It's not just focusing on the Knight Sabers in action, like a shooter or brawler would, but exhibits the way the team interacts with one another outside the suits as they go about gathering information or, in Priss's case, rushing in and picking fights she probably can't win. However, the parts of the game that aren't adventure puzzles really aren't all that great: they feel like the half-assed action mini-games you saw in something like Full Throttle or early LucasFilm joints like the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade tie-in (which I love, but I'll say the mini-games aren't part of the reason why). It's also incredibly short, way too annoying towards the end with that labyrinth, and only covers the events of the first episode instead of all three or, better yet, a whole new story pulled from whatever notes the showrunners had in mind for episodes they would've made had the show been allowed to keep going. Ultimately, like most video game tie-ins, it meets a baseline level of fanservice instead of something cool and distinctive worth celebrating on its own merits. And will someone teach Nene how to use a damn computer? She's meant to be an expert hacker, sheesh.
Addendum
Wasn't sure where to stick these, but here are my rundowns for the eight Bubblegum Crisis episodes. Consider this bonus content?
Episode 1 "Tinsel City": After helping to stop a runaway Boomer, the Knight Sabers are called in by the USSD (a government military branch) to find and rescue a technician, Frederick, and his younger sister Cynthia. They are thought to be abducted by rogue Boomers. Priss runs afoul of the group after asking around the seedier parts of downtown, and is taken by them to an unpopulated harbor region in development called Aqua City. She learns that Frederick is working with the group of Boomers, and they prepare to eliminate her for her snooping until the rest of the team shows up after getting clued in to a Boomer sighting near Aqua City from the AD Police radio chatter. The group defeats the Boomers, but Frederick turns out to be a significantly more powerful variant capable of technopathy: merging with Aqua City's electronics and infrastructure, he transforms to a gargantuan size until he is destroyed by Priss from within. A satellite weapon bombardment annihilates what's left of Frederick and most of Aqua City, possibly including Cynthia (another experimental Boomer). Review: See, the problem here is you went full Akira on your first episode, leaving little room for future episodes to go. (Just to clarify something here: the Akira movie came out in 1988, but the manga had been around longer.)
Episode 2 "Born to Kill": In the aftermath of the previous episode, the Knight Sabers are curious about the two new types of Boomer they encountered: Cynthia, whose remains were recovered from the wreckage, was constructed to be a conduit for the orbital satellite weapons helping to direct their shots. Meanwhile, Genom and the higher-ups at AD Police work to cover up the incident at Aqua City. One complication for Genom is Irene, the fiancée of a dead Genom researcher and Linna's friend, who demands answers from Genom executive Brian J. Mason, owner of the whitest name in any anime. For Irene's trouble, she is stalked and killed by one of the female Boomers that Mason uses as his bodyguards, her body thrown at a pursuing Linna and Priss as a warning. As they have already been hired to look into what happened to Cynthia's remains, Linna and the other Knight Sabers decide to dig deeper into this conspiracy by gearing up and assaulting a disused Genom laboratory that mysteriously sprang back into action shortly after the Aqua City explosion. After engaging and eliminating all the female Boomers and an advanced, red "Super Boomer," the facility is destroyed along with what's left of Cynthia. Given the human cost tied to the tech, Linna is for once fine about losing out on the payment. Review: Kinda heartbreaking what happened to Irene, despite never having met her before. I briefly wondered if she wasn't named for the Ninja Gaiden heroine, who also has a bad habit of getting kidnapped and dying, though that's probably a stretch. Anyway, if you've read this far you know Mason's one to watch.
Episode 3 "Blow Up": Some time later, a combat Boomer runs amok downtown and all the Knight Sabers are inconvenienced in some way - Priss gets a ticket for speeding to the scene, one of Sylia's stores is torn up by collateral damage, Linna's car finally gives up the ghost, and Nene is reprimanded for letting a dangerous driver (Priss) go through a safety checkpoint. The culprit is once again Brian J. Mason, and after he tears down Priss's apartment building and kills her friend, a single mother, in the process, Priss gears up for a revenge mission. The other Knight Sabers refuse to let her go alone, figuring Mason's too dangerous to let run rampant, and so they all head to Genom HQ to take him in. While fighting a few more combat Boomers and Mason himself in an armored suit, he catches a glimpse of Sylia's face after overpowering her - confirming what he expected about these vigilantes - and Sylia is forced to kill him, avenging her father in the process. The team leaves as Leon and the AD Police show up. Review: I did say Mason was one to watch, but they sure did despatch him in a hurry. I did love that the Sabers' main motivation here was getting pissy enough about various setbacks that they assaulted the biggest building in Mega Tokyo and murder its most devious executive. How many more female friends of the team do we need to fridge, incidentally?
Episode 4 "Revenge Road": Revenge Road concerns a man named JB Gibson whose vehicle was attacked by a motorbike gang while driving down the highway. He took some injuries, but his girlfriend Chloe was so traumatized she went into catatonic shock from the event. Gibson has since dedicated himself to vengeance on all the city's motorbike gangs by tricking out his vintage "Griffon" speedster with various high-tech upgrades and weapons, including ex-military neural link tech. After knocking Priss off the road after she gets caught up in one of these attacks, she investigates this road vigilante and determines that he has a connection with Raven's garage, where her bike is maintenanced and where Mackey apprentices to its curmudgeonly owner, Doc. Eluding the cops as they raid their apartment, Gibson and Chloe escape in the Griffon in a high-speed chase that becomes more dangerous when the car's AI tech rebels against its driver and injures his eyes. The Sabers narrowly rescue Gibson and a now-lucid and panicking Chloe just before the sentient car hits a police roadblock and is eventually destroyed by gunfire trying to drive away. Review: We actually have a SFC game with a very similar plot as this on the wiki: Gekitotsu Dangan Jidousha Kessen: Battle Mobile. I figured the game was doing a Mad Max riff (which the show is definitely doing, given the dude's name) but maybe the devs drew their inspiration from this episode instead. Anyway, the show didn't kill off the ancillary female character this time, though they left their fates uncertain beyond "they both went to jail" which, given the wife was catatonic almost the whole time, seems entirely unfair. I think you'll find it was his murder car, not hers.
Episode 5 "Moonlight Rambler": The episode starts with a group of women escaping what is shown to be a space station, with only two making it onto a shuttle down to Earth. Shortly after, the police are baffled by a series of "vampire killings": various female victims drained of their blood by an unknown assailant that strikes at night. In a complete coincidence, Priss has befriended another female biker, Sylvie, who has recently moved to town. Sylvie is both one of the women from the prologue as well as the vampire the police are looking for: she's actually a rare type of Boomer, a model discontinued due to their regularly-required blood transfusions and a quirk of their programming that lets them interface with the D-D, a superweapon mech. Cornered by some government Boomers and Leon in an AD Police armored suit, Sylvie is knocked unconscious which causes the D-D's AI to take over. After a tough fight with the Knight Sabers, Priss is forced to kill her new friend to prevent the D-D from self-destructing with a neutron bomb. Review: The show really got close to the yuri line with Priss and Sylvie's immediately intense friendship, and Priss seemed pretty distraught at the episode's conclusion (as we'll see in the next one). I guess the showrunners didn't want to suggest anything too explicit given they had a Moonlighting-style will-they/won't-they thing going on between Priss and Leon. At least the show is earning its police procedural bona fides with all these dead women.
Episode 6 "Red Eyes": Concludes the events of episode five, following Sylvie's companion Anri (another rare Boomer) and her new benefactor Largo, the latter also a Boomer with the powerful ability to link to satellite weapons directly. Largo has convinced Anri that the Knight Sabers are at fault for killing Sylvie and uses her to obtain vital information from within Genom for his own ends. At the same time, Largo sets up some new Boomer units to pose as the Knight Sabers, first having them steal some combat Boomers and later robbing a bank to thoroughly trash their reputation. All the Knight Sabers mobilize to fight the doppelgangers, except for Priss; torn up by guilt over Sylvie's death, she has quit the organization. Largo succeeds in reaching the main office of Genom with an ultimatum, asking for a piece of experimental interface technology that would give him control of weapon systems and make him unstoppable: Genom's CEO Quincy tricks him by having him meet a double of his, temporarily foiling his plans for world domination. Largo is then met by Priss, who is almost killed by a brainwashed Anri until Priss's regret about Sylvie reaches her and she sacrifices herself to save Priss from Largo. Priss is almost defeated by Largo and the tough Boomers he had imitating the Sabers, but finds an unexpected suit power-up from Sylia and saves the day. Largo is finally defeated by the combined efforts of the Sabers; it's implied at the end of the episode that it was Brian J. Mason's consciousness downloaded into a new Boomer body, using the tech he stole from Sylia's father to engineer a perfect robot form for himself. Review: Definitely the most eventful episode yet and the only one that felt like a two-parter. Largo's Boomer form was almost like a DBZ villain: you know the more human your inhuman antagonist looks, the more powerful he's become. Again, if you read the Crush rundowns first you know he'll be back soon enough.
Episode 7 "Double Vision": The penultimate episode picks up on a thread from near the start of the run. Reiko, best known as global singing sensation Vision, comes to Tokyo for a rare live concert tour. However, her actual goal is to assassinate the leader of Genom, Quincy, to avenge her murdered sister. That sister being Irene, who was killed by a female Boomer in the second episode to cover up a Genom conspiracy. Using a state-of-the-art spider robot, she lures Quincy to a location of his choice by abducting the visiting American scientist McLaren, who was instrumental in the production of a secret new Genom Boomer. That Boomer is then unleashed on Reiko and her crew, who are helped with the Knight Sabers who show up after learning about Reiko's true identity (Linna had already guessed who she was, being close to Irene, but she was kidnapped by Reiko's crew before she could get the word out to the others). Leon and the AD Police show up in the aftermath of the battle, unexpectedly arresting McLaren for his role in illegal research, rather than his kidnappers Reiko and her team. After talking to Linna about Irene's wishes, Reiko decides to abandon her quest for vengeance and resume her singing career. Review: I think I read somewhere that the showrunners were dangling Reiko around as a potential replacement for Priss, given they're the same character with slightly differing backgrounds, possibly because Priss's VA was making noises like she wanted out to focus on her music career. She got the last laugh of course, since there's only one more episode of Crisis left to go. Sadly, Reiko didn't sing a cover of Foreigner's Double Vision, despite the title.
Episode 8 "Scoop Chase": A cuter, more straightforward episode than previous ones, making it an odd choice for a finale though it's not like the original showrunners had a choice given the show's fraught production history. Focusing on Nene, the least respected of the team, the episode creates a small amount of peril by introducing Lisa, the American teenaged niece of the AD Police chief and a budding photojournalist, who is eager to make a name for herself by unveiling the identities of the enigmatic Knight Sabers while she's in town on a visit. A chance photo taken while the Sabers were fighting reveals the face of one of them - Nene, who Lisa knows from being embedded with AD Police - and Lisa is fascinated to learn more about them and why they do what they do. Suddenly, a megalomaniacal Genom suit decides to test the Knight Sabers by letting loose some advanced Boomers on AD Police HQ, with Lisa and Nene still trapped inside. The Sabers eventually defeat the Boomers due to some new upgrades, and Nene is forced to take on the Boomer that has taken over the building's main computer in a hacking battle before the whole building explodes. Seeing her brave resolve up close, Lisa decides to let Nene and the other Knight Sabers remain anonymous heroes. Review: A nice little showcase episode for Nene, following Linna's "Born to Kill" and Priss's "Moonlight Rambler," though perhaps it's too little too late for the pint-sized girl cop seeing as Bubblegum Crisis would end here, at least temporarily. I'm just glad they upgraded her Knight Saber suit to be half-decent in a fight, finally.
That's going to do it for this episode of Game OVA along with the feature itself. I might revisit it at some distant point in the future, though probably sooner than 2033, but I need to switch gears to something a little less text-intensive for the sake of my health and yours. Be sure to click that link to the first Game OVA episode (I'll put it here too) where I've added links to all six of these anime-fied beauties, in case you wanted to run the series or something.
Until next time, I'll be seeing you space cowboys...
Mixing things up a little this week by extending this feature beyond a single title, instead looking at the three games from small Indie developer Siactro that are currently available to buy on Steam and Itch (I was fortunate enough to grab all three in the semi-recent Ukraine Aid Itch bundle). All retro throwbacks, though to the comparatively less-explored late-'90s/32-bit era, we have Macbat 64, Toree 3D, and Toree 2. None of these games are particularly substantial in size - hence why I'm covering all three in one blog - but are at least adept at invoking the aesthetic and gameplay of their chosen source material. I'm always a sucker for any game that can teleport me back to those halcyon days of polygonal graphics, back when your imagination had to do quite a lot of the heavy lifting, and a keen appreciation of the excitement and experimentation that surrounded the tech.
We'll start with the earliest of the three: Macbat 64, first released in 2017. It's immediately evident where the inspiration for Macbat 64 comes from as various characters - distinguished from random background objects by a pair of cartoonish eyes that reliably represent some degree of sapience - fill a bright and colorful world of collectible tchotchkes, traversable platforms, and simple environmental puzzles. All it lacks is a sarcastic bird in your backpack, insulting everyone on your behalf. Due to limitations, the game is scaled-down to hitting a few notable beats with its diorama-like levels in lieu of offering massive worlds to explore, significant challenges, or even enemies to fight; rather, each of its levels is presented as a puzzle wherein you have to complete a series of objectives or find certain items that eventually lead to one of the six keys that open the way to the "Watery Factory," the world's only fresh water supply, to resolve whatever blockage is causing a worldwide draught. Each of these levels has a familiar theme or is otherwise riffing on specific games - there's a haunted house with keys to find, a Banjo-Kazooie beach with treasure chests scattered throughout, and a Donkey Kong 64 jungle featuring the only NPC with VA dialogue (Grant Kirkhope himself, dropping by to voice an ape) - and they draw from a wide range of N64 highlights, including a kart racer course.
This course does the whole 'locked on a 2D plane' bit. Guess you gotta fit in some Kirby 64 and Mischief Makers somewhere if you're doing a N64 homage.
To reiterate, none of these worlds are super elaborate in their construction or via the obstacles and challenges placed in your path, but they do offer a small variety of objectives to accomplish. There's also some post-game bonus levels that the developer tinkered around with before choosing to keep out the core product, a couple of which are actually kinda terrifying - I'm not sure if the dev is involved with the Dread X crowd, but survival horror wasn't something you saw on N64 outside of that one Resident Evil 2 port and maybe tangential cases like Doom 64 or Castlevania - and another that gives you a power-up that lets you break the boundaries of the other levels and go exploring in the dead zone, for those budding designers and engineers curious enough about how the sausage is made that they're willing to break the game's immersion to go "noclipping" around the geometry.
In some ways, Macbat 64's almost exhibition-like approach to reenacting the highs of Rare's 3D platformer era recalls that Bubsy 3D art installation parody, or the equally bizarre Sonic Dreams Collection, only played straight with the material: there's a few in-jokes and references dropped here and there, but for the most part you're playing through a recognizable spin on certain N64 games that have been greatly pared down to resemble a breezy and brief exploration game with a few mini-games. As a two-hour long nostalgia rush bought for pennies (or for free in my case) it's cute and disarming, while still a far cry from other, more substantial Indie attempts at 3D collectathon platformers like A Hat in Time or Yooka-Laylee (both also released in 2017).
On the other hand, Toree 3D and Toree 2 (both released in 2021) feel like more complete game experiences but are also, conversely, a little less compelling due to their laser focus. Featuring a cute chick (the bird kind) with shades, the goal of every one of its levels is to dash to the end of a linear platforming course while grabbing star collectibles, avoiding enemies and hazards, and running and jumping through zippers. With each finished level, your completion time and number of collectibles are logged - either of which will eventually unlock a new character to use - and you become one step closer to unlocking the final level. The first eight levels are all available to play from the outset, though it's usually best to go through them in the order presented: there's a steady ramp up in difficulty, as the game goes from simple obstacle courses to jumping between moving trucks or negotiating narrow icy pathways. Both Toree games play identically: the sequel feels like expanded content if anything, albeit with a handful of small improvements. (For instance, dying in Toree 2 will reset you to the last checkpoint while also resetting the timer to whatever it was when you activated said checkpoint; with this feature, you can keep trying to complete the same stretch of the course as close to perfect as possible before hitting the next one.)
The aesthetic of the Toree games is definitely closer to the overstimulating day-glo arcade-y sensibility that was very prominent on the Sega Dreamcast, and to a lesser extent the Sony PlayStation, than the whimsical UK-borne N64 Rare games. The time trials and grading score system are akin to something like NiGHTs into Dreams or maybe a DDR, while the BGM sounds like it was pulled out of a Sonic Adventure sequel that never was. (Incidentally, the era-imitating soundtracks to all three games are highlights and worth seeking out. I enjoyed this Sonic R-ass peppy R&B ballad from Toree 2 in particular.) Like Macbat 64, there's also a certain sinister horror element lying just beneath the otherwise cute visuals. Neither of the Toree games will take more than a hour tops unless you're the type to keep improving your course times to sneak ever closer to the elusive A-ranks, which is about the perfect length for the type of game experience it offers.
One of the two lava levels from Toree 2. This place is fond of the crumbling platforms, so you can't really dither.
These three games do a fine job crystallizing the essence of what the gaming scene was like at the turn of the millennium by nailing the look and feel, if not really aiming to be worthy challengers to the gaming paragons from that time. It seems like the developer is passionate about revisiting what made gaming of the late '90s so memorable - much like Wadjet Eye does for the point-and-click adventures from that decade - and is improving their craft with each new project, so I wish them well that they'll pull out a genuine contender for the Rare 3D platformer and/or Sega arcade platformer at some future point in their career. In the meantime, there's always a niche for these cheap and cheerful curiosities capable of eliciting a few smiles and fondly recalled memories.
I've developed a strong aversion over the years to run-based games, or the Rogue-esques as I believe they're called, half because they're too inconsiderate of one's time due to the regular progression-wipes that is part and parcel of their genetic make-up, and half because any one person's proc-gen experience is far too subjective to be of much value in the context of a review. That isn't to say there aren't good run-based games coming out all the time: one such example that I was curious about is Motion Twin's Dead Cells, which took the run-based dynamic to a 2D action explormer with a strong loot RPG aspect. Back during E3 2019, I espied a game that seemed to offer the Dead Cells experience absent the unsatisfying proc-gen level design and constant restarts: that game being this week's Indie Game of the Week, Big Blue Bubble Inc.'s Foregone.
Foregone's similarities to Dead Cells are many in number, but most of them are superficial. That includes the usage of a graphical art style that utilizes pre-rendered 3D models reworked into sprites to produce a very smooth, almost rotoscoped animated look. It also retains the Diablo-style color-coded loot system, and a general high alacrity as you maneuver around and overpower opponents with a combination of jumps, rolls, and attacks with both melee and ranged weapons - a dextrous necessity to compensate for your relatively fragile health and defense stats. Weapon types also play a large role, considering the variance in not just their damage output and speed but in the way those weapons feel to use. Sometimes the difference between two weapon types is more nuanced than it seems: for instance, some weapons have combo chains where the last hit is considerably more deadly than the rest, so a player that opts for quick hits rather than full combos as they bounce around to keep out of harm's way might find them underwhelming.
Everything moves as fast as you do, especially bosses, so it's the type of game that's very reflexes-intensive. Satisfying when you can match its pace, though, and abilities like healing and shield buffs can help mitigate the damage somewhat.
Regrettably, though the developers have full reign over the level design without the proc-gen aspect inherent to the run-based format, Foregone's areas still end up feeling overly linear and basic: there's almost no deviation in the path except for secret areas - even the branches tend to lead to a series of switches, all of which need to be hit before you can proceed, so it's not like the order really matters - and every map is simply a gauntlet of enemies from Point A to Point B. The loot system can be a little strange also, as high rarity items not only carry more intrinsic buffs but also have higher upgrade caps at the blacksmith vendor: with that in mind, there's never any point hanging onto gear that is anything less than the highest rarity. Given that you still find plenty of high-rarity loot (rendering that term as erroneous as ever) and you barely earn anything from salvaging (the game's term for hocking vendor trash) I've taken to simply abandoning most item drops. The level design is slightly better in the game's "missions": self-contained smaller dungeon instances in which you're required to complete an objective in a brief amount of time, earning time bonuses as you proceed. This might include taking down every enemy while reaching the end, or jumping and dodging through a series of hazards like spikes, electrical barriers, and venom pools. Each successful mission gives you a reward of some decent gear and a chance to visit the "Warsmith": a vendor that can re-roll any bonus attached to a piece of equipment once for free, and subsequent re-rolls for a cost in upgrade points.
If the game fails to be a compelling explormer or a compelling loot RPG, it makes up a lot of that ground with its highly fluid combat and the modern Doom-like way that melee attacks fuel your ranged attacks and skills so you can keep a good flow going through alternation. Every melee hit replenishes one bullet, and ranged combat tends to be effective against enemies that are harder to hit - the guns all auto-aim at the nearest enemy, since you've little time to manually aim - so running up to a ground foe, getting in a few hits, dodge-rolling past him to avoid his retaliation, taking out an incoming bat enemy with a single shot, and then re-applying the pressure to your original target until they're down is one example of how you can use the variance of your skills to control groups of enemies. Most opponents are stun-locked by melee attacks, preventing them from pulling off their own attacks, so it's often a case of rushing in and keeping them occupied before they can strike back. Personally, I've really grown accustomed to my shotgun, which has allowed me to alternate highly-damaging close-range melee with equally damaging close-range gunplay. As for melee, right now I have a pair of gunchuks - that is to say, nunchuks with guns attached to them, which I'm 99% certain was a ProZD skit - with an innate chance to proc an explosive knockback effect. The base damage values of weapons increases throughout the game so it is worth replacing whatever you have with newer models just to maintain parity with enemy health, but it's the type of game - like a Souls - where it can be hard to let a preferred, well-practiced weapon go, especially when it has all the bonuses you want.
Most secrets look like this: a tiny gap that's large enough to Mega Man slide through. Others might include traversal upgrades you can't get until later, so either remember where they are or just move through these areas again even faster in the late-game. The rewards are usually worth it, but so is your free time, you know?
I'd say I'm past the halfway point of the game and still unsure how I feel about Foregone; hence my leaving this review to almost the last possible moment on a Friday evening. On a purely visceral level the combination of fast attack and evasion abilities along with the usual charms of a constant loot cycle is a compelling package, as you're quickly making up plans of action that will minimize incurring damage while taking down enemies at a pace of your own choosing. However, so much of the game is either super barren and uninteresting - moving through any area without enemies, excepting the few times where it makes some engaging obstacle courses out of hazards - or feels undercooked, like the limited upgrade paths, the smattering of mostly inconsequential traversal upgrades, or the incredibly brief and fractured snippets of plot. I've also had this strange feeling while I've been playing in longer stretches; like the screen is just a little jittery when it scrolls, so I get these odd headaches where it starts to become hard to focus. It might just mean that it's due time to get my eyes tested again, but it's as if there's something that's not quite as buttery smooth about the way the game moves as a whole unlike the very buttery smooth animations of its characters. Last, and worst, is that the PS4 version of the game suffers from some extremely long load times: these are particularly obnoxious during the game's timed challenges, as I'm so often distracted by Twitter or something while waiting for the area to load in that I find myself already a few seconds deep into the challenge by the time I've checked back. I can't really blame the game for my ADD, though it's still odd to see a 2D pixel game take so long to handle area transitions when it's almost instantaneous in many of the huge-budget 3D games I've played lately.
As it stands, I do have to praise Foregone for the one aspect it gets very right over the many less significant ones (I'm a big lore fan, but it's not always strictly necessary for an action game like this) it falters on. Your own ratios in that regard may differ of course, but if you're looking for a very arcade-y feeling action-RPG platformer that's all about the moment-to-moment gameplay with some really thrilling boss fights and time-trial horde battles I don't think it'll disappoint too much. Conversely, anyone looking for something deeper like the full Souls experience, or a game akin to an Igavania explormer with all its layers, will probably find many aspects of Foregone lacking.
Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)
P. S. Since a comprehensive review for a game like this should include seeing the gameplay in motion, I'll leave you with this boss fight footage (let me know in the comments if this kind of thing is something you'd like me to include in the future for certain games, specifically the Souls-y ones):
![To win the hacker over to my side and get the classified data I need, I have to buy him one of the newest systems. Why do these all sound so familiar...? And why don't they have an AM-Downs Party yet? Or a Pear ][c?](https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/2/23093/3403868-bubblegumcraash%2827%29.png)
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