Ho boy, leading with a title that bad is definitely a gambit. Last week I created a list of Castlevania games that I have either played to completion or one day intend to. The idea was to follow that up with a blog about my experiences with Lords of Shadow, only... I kind of hated it? So that was an impediment. Rather than write an entire blog grousing about my myriad disappointments with that game (no kidding, I had a bullet point list prepared and everything) I'm mercifully sparing you all by changing tactics. Of course, not having a "game of the week" to center a blog around puts me in somewhat of a quandary.
I briefly entertained the notion of creating some huge multi-part Konami retrospective, but those fellahs have made an incredible number of games ever since their debut in the electronic entertainment market making Arcade shooters in the early 80s. Instead, in order to wash the taste of Lords of Shadow out of my mouth (that probably came out wrong), I'm going to cover five instances of Konami at its most Konami that aren't the usual Metal Gears or Castlevanias everyone already knows them for. That said, there's probably no surprises here for most gaming aficionados, but since I secretly suspect that almost everyone on this site was born in the 90s maybe I'll end up educating someone. So apologies for that. I know how you kids hate all the learnin'.
But man, I have to say that I still kinda like that in-depth Konami retrospective idea. If only half their back catalogue wasn't shoot-em-ups. I suck at those. Ah well, Hardcore Gaming 101 has me covered with rather comprehensive articles about Konami Shoot-Em-Ups, Beat-Em-Ups and Run-and-Guns (Konami's main export back in the 90s was evidently hyphens) that I'd recommend you all peruse at your reading pleasure. Heck, I'll extend that sentiment to the whole site.
Suikoden
Suikoden is a series close to my heart, even though I'm still not entirely copasetic on how to actually pronounce it. The series is adapted from Shui Hu Zhuan, a fourteenth century Chinese novel, though while that book has plenty of mystical heroes fighting evil it's really the central conceit of the 108 heroes chosen by the stars that the Suikoden games are interested in. Each game has you accruing an army of ragtag souls and populating a massive fortress with them, after evicting its less desirable former tenants. The diversity and endless customization options would already a big enough draw, but the game goes even further with its occasional tinkering with wargaming and the complex if somewhat formulaic political and strategic machinations of its chief characters. I'd be safe in saying that the only person who never has any idea what's going on is the hero himself, invariably turning him into an audience surrogate largely coasting on charisma.
Konami had tried RPGs before Suikoden, but they weren't able to really come up with anything that resonated with a wider audience. Too much of the NES and SNES eras were dominated by the likes of Enix's Dragon Quest or Square's Final Fantasy, while Konami was content to persist with their quirky shooters and addictive brawlers. Suikoden was an opportunity to use the potential of Sony's new disc-based system to create a novel take on a JRPG, filling it to the brim with all sorts of extra-curricular mayhem and carving themselves a critically-acclaimed niche in that market. If only the series had continued into this generation (I'm not sure Tierkreis necessarily counts).
Mystical Ninja/Goemon
With the possible exceptions of Twinbee, Vic Viper or that penguin from Parodius, Goemon is pretty much Konami's mascot, at least back in the 16-bit era. Based on legendary Japanese outlaw Goemon Ishikawa, the Goemon of Konami's long-running Mystical Ninja series is a courageous youth with a proclivity for pipe smoking, gambling, taking out yōkai and having a mane-like 'do that would elicit a "whoa, son" from any riddle master worth their salt. In riddles.
Though there are many Goemon games in their native Japan, Western territories barely received a handful. What we did get, though, wasn't insignificant. Goemon's first SNES adventure, more or less a remake of an earlier NES iteration with added features, presented the duo of Goemon and his Dom DeLouise-esque cohort Ebisumaru as off on another adventure, if perhaps making the mistake of egregiously renaming them Kid Ying and Dr Yang (I am fairly sure Ebisumaru is not a doctor, though I'm equally sure that he's attempted to convince people that he is). While the game was an inventive and reasonably fun to play mix of a side-scrolling depth-enhanced brawler like Double Dragon or Final Fight combined with a side-scrolling platformer of the like that were everywhere at the time, it's the incidental content that fans like myself fondly recall. Such as the odd competitive multiplayer mini-games in the anachronistic arcades, the inscrutable 3D maze games and the oddly addictive lottery. In a River City Ransom like twist, the game was unfairly difficult until players wised up and started spending what might have been utterly superfluous currency in any other game on defensive and healing items to carry them through the challenging "action stage" sequences.
However, if we're talking about the series' exceptionally odd sense of humor, you'd be better off looking at the first N64 entry for a clearer demonstration. The general plot is that a pair of European theatrical dandies are transforming traditional Japanese pagodas across the country into ornate chateaus, all the while hamming it up with ostentatious musical numbers. Goemon's having none of it, and after extricating his partner from what could only be interpreted as an elaborate sex crime, runs off to challenge these eccentric occidental interlopers. You'd be surprised how much concentrated crazy and dumb humor a N64 game can contain (this side of Conker's Bad Fur Day at least).
Vandal Hearts
Vandal Hearts is another one of these games that Konami presumably got to developing once they had seen other developers see some measure of success from their tactical RPGs (specifically Intelligent Systems' Fire Emblem and Square's Tactics Ogre, though I won't discount even earlier examples like SSI's Gold Box). Vandal Hearts doesn't quite take the high road of idiosyncratic creativity that Suikoden and Mystical Ninja might be known for, as their most striking addition to the genre appears to be arterial blood sprays. It certainly does a fine job punctuating the death of an opponent (or ally) to see a colossal stream of blood fly out of them before they bow out. Vandal Hearts' visual influence clearly lies with the older Samurai movies, the ones which also more or less dealt exclusively in sudden carotid severances.
What I appreciate most about Vandal Hearts, in relation to its peers with their roots in fodder-heavy wargaming, is that every member of your party is a permanent story character that will never die unless the narrative explicitly calls for it. No restarting a map once you've lost a character (unless it's the protagonist or a VIP guest) and no worrying if there's a better fighter of that type just over the horizon, putting any work you've invested in this currently available also-ran utterly moot. Nope, each member gets introduced and integrated into the party just like in any JRPG and the player can put them to use in battles or let them just bite it as desired. They'll still come back to deliver their lines in the interstital cutscenes, though presumably after receiving a blood transfusion or ten.
On the other hand, Fire Emblem has a posse around these parts, so I ought to be careful what I say about it. Wouldn't want to wake up next to the severed head of a Pegasus Knight for not playing ball with those lunatics.
Experimental NES Period
Konami, like many of Japan's largest and most venerable game developers, began life in the arcades. They would also find time to develop some home computer games for Japan's cottage industry of little-known (outside Japan) systems like the MSX, MSX2, PC88, PC98 and Sharp X1. When the Famicom hit in the mid 80s with its implicit promise of combining the action of the arcades with the calculated timesinks of the home computers, Konami - like many other arcade developers - wasn't sure what to make of it. They tried a few ports of their more famous arcade games and computer games, but like many of the early adopters they would have to experiment a little in finding a niche that would fit Nintendo's game-changer.
I'm getting rather abstruse with this little history lesson, but the point is that Konami spent a good deal of the NES's early years trying out all sorts of things. It's fair to say they would find success in the first Castlevania and Metal Gear games (though the latter really earned its stripes on the MSX), but what's admirable was the very notion that they would spend so long endeavoring to find something original that might work, if only in a "this thing is going to sell like hotcakes, so we need to come up with something to cash in. How about a game starring sentient cartoon hotcakes?" cold business sense. I'm sure this is why people look forward to new console generations; while we always enjoy seeing all our old favorites with big graphical and technological upgrades, it's that opportunity for developers to try out new ideas with what's now possible that gets gamers salivating.
This experimental period resulted in just weird as shit (to use an overly technical term) games like The Goonies II, Getsu Fuuma Den, Hi no Tori, Arumana no Kiseki, Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa, Esper Dream, Wai Wai World and plenty of others. If you've unaware of these games, most (but not all) have been thoroughly played by Game Center CX's Shinya Arino, which is a TV show I would seriously recommend looking up if you've never heard of it. A team from the Something Awful forums is busy translating the episodes into English for the internet's pleasure as this blog goes to post. I'd also recommend the Chrontendo blog, which is as educational as all fuck (again, using some of that technical vernacular).
The Arcade Brawlers
So, I've already linked you fine peeps to HG101's feature on the Konami beat-em-ups that all but conquered the arcades of the early 90s, just before Fighter games really took off in a really big way. There were more than a few and I'd wager most of us have only played a handful. I'd go so far to suggest it was probably this very handful, in fact: The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men.
The reason I chose these three was because these were the games I would invariably make a beeline towards whenever I was fortunate enough to find myself in an arcade, which wasn't often. Through the puce-green-tinted frames of modern cynicism, I now realise these games were specifically designed to suck the coinage from my trousers, a sensation I was probably too young to appreciate at the time. I mean, fiscally speaking. Dude, gross. Point is, I lived and dined on fifty pence coins back then and it was no small matter to feed them into a machine that was just going to kill me again ninety seconds later. But there's something about those three games in particular that had me sticking around until I was broke. Everyone has arcade stories, most of which are more interesting than mine, but if Konami made any kind of impression on the younger me it was through their merciless licensed beat-em-ups, as colorful and sugary as any sweet. Which had to suffice since it wasn't like I could still afford the real McCoy.
This is the point where I'd post the comic, but this PC is currently dying and refuses to do anything as RAM-intensive as search images or play a video (which makes the internet really fun right now). The comic will be up eventually.
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