28/11/2009

86. Shinobi


(Arcade/Various home, Sega, 1987)
So we're fifteen places into this project and already we have two games featuring ninjas (the list indicates others to come) Ninjas have inspired or featured heavily in many videogames, movies and cartoons. To a lot of kids, ninjas are the epitome of cool, what with their deadly martial arts, ability to vanish into the shadows and their bad-ass, eye-gouging weapons. Not having the access to nunchuka or shurikens as children, we just jumped out of trees and chucked rocks in each others faces, They were like nature's throwing stars.

Shinobi is a classic side scroller from Sega, playing similar to Namco's later Rolling Thunder. A young ninja, Joe Musashi, scrolls through a two level plain, rescuing ninja kids (not those crappy "3 ninja kids") from the evil ZEED group. ZEED are an organisation of questionable leadership, considering they consider child kidnap vital to their plans and arm their soldiers with boomerangs, Oh, and a helicopter can rise to a position of power.
Armed with unlimited shuriken, various close combat moves and some screen clearing ninja magic, Joe must find the kids on each round before confronting a Lieutenant of ZEED, ranging from a large, fireball throwing samurai to err...a big metal head in a wall. After five levels, Joe comes up against the feared boss of ZEED: The Masked Ninja. En route our hero can obtain pickups such as a Katana for those up close and personal encounters and a distinctly more Western weapon: a gun. The gun bothers me, its as if Sega felt their hero HAD to carry a gun or people wouldn't accept him. Richard Harrison doesn't need a gun, just a sword, a kid's camouflage tent for clothing and the most integral ninja item:
Shinobi was an arcade distributed widely, most everyone who played arcades in the late 80s/early 90s remembers it well. Still playable today, it remains a fast, reflex testing challenge with great music and a cool first-person bonus round.
I also find it damn hard, as the variety of enemies and their attacks really picks up by mission 3. This difficulty would be revisited in great pseudo-sequels Shadow Dancer and Revenge of Shinobi.
The legend of Joe Musashi will live forever, he was a true ninja warrior back before ninjas became synonymous with flipping out and wailing on guitars.
Shinobi is a absolute classic and stands proudly in the Sega arcade hall of fame alongside Outrun, Afterburner and many other games from a time when no company was more deserving of your 10p pieces.

27/11/2009

87. Spy Vs. Spy


(Various Home, First Star, 1984)
Spy vs Spy was MAD magazine's classic comic strip, detailing the war between two spies, identical in looks save for one decked out in white and the other in black. The nameless protagonists battled back and forth with various traps and tricks with great slapstick violence results.
The author, Antonio Prohias, was a Cuban citizen who fled at the dawn of the 60s to America mere weeks before Fidel Castro took control of the press. Prohias worked on a variety of comic strips until his death in 1998.

The Spy vs Spy video game was available on NES, Spectrum, Commodore, Gameboy, Master system, Amiga and many others. Essentially a two player game, each player controlled one of the spies in a split screen environment, The players would run around various sized office blocks and search furniture for a selection of spy related goodies and a briefcase, upon finding all the items, the player must then find the door to the runway to make his getaway by plane.
The violence came in a variety of booby traps players could arrange in order to slow down, or steal items from, the other player. These contraptions included bombs, springs, buckets of acid, guns wired to doors and more. Thus ensues a cat and mouse chase through the building, finding the items and incapacitating the opponent.

The game was very fun to play in two player, but fairly pointless alone. Sadly, time has not fared Spy vs Spy well. Today the game feels a bit hollow and although its always worth a run through with a friend for classic nostalgia LoLs, it doesn't hold attention the way it used to, one game is usually more than enough and anyone playing th egame for the first time may be left wondering what all the fuss was about.

However, Spy vs Spy was a faithful recreation of the comic book and at the time a fantastic two player game, the satisfaction of watching your opponent walk blindly into your traps before stealing his hard earned briefcase was huge and could lead to much smugness (and real life violence)

26/11/2009

88. Alien Vs Predator


(Arcade, Capcom, 1994)
Its ALIEN ok? not ALIENS.
Alien vs Predator is a franchise that has been visited many times by many media forms, its been a comic book, a series of horrible films and also a series of games ranging from truly dreadful to pretty darn good.

In question today is Capcoms side scrolling fighter/shooter from 1994, Up to three players pick from a choice of four characters: Two types of Predator, an Arnie-esque military man and a sexy as hell android girl (If she's an android does that make it Alien vs Predator vs Terminator?)

The players dash from left to right taking out scores of Xenomorphs, face huggers, dodgy secret military squads and various hybrids and new species of Alien. The enemies literally flood the screen making for the most crowded scrolling beat-em-up in a long time, fortunately, our heroes are blessed with various fighting maneuvers and also some form of firearm, from Linn's pistol to the Predator shoulder cannon.
There is real individuality in the characters, they all have their own special moves and attacks, varying degrees of firepower and ammo and the usual "Speed vs Power" balance.
AVP is a truly chaotic game, the general weakness of the enemies being balanced out by raw numbers as they pour into the screen from all directions, this makes for a frantic three player war, especially once weapon pickups such as rocket launchers and pulse rifles come into play.

Amazingly (or not) a quick look on Youtube reveals that people have discovered legitimate combos in the game, chaining together their strikes, gunshots and special attacks to create unstoppable sequences that rivals Capcoms one-on-one fighters.
I'm a huge scrolling fighter fan, as such Ive learnt sequences and tactics in various games, but never to the extent of this, it shows that theres even a logic to what some people might see as a classic button masher.

Capcoms AvP is one of the better games to take on the franchise and can be seen as a deep fighting mechanic or just a whole lot of apocalyptic fun.
When should you play this?"Anytime"

89. Rise Of The Robots


(Various Home, Mirage, 1994)
When I drew this game from the hat I considered not adding it as enough has been documented already that I cant possibly add to.
But I made a promise to myself to abide by my own rules, so here we are:
Rise of the robots was a one-on-one fighter which was released during the fighting game frenzy of the early 90's. It was designed for the Amiga then ported to a whole host of consoles. ROTR was hugely hyped in its development, with some incredible screenshots, magazine articles and TV appearences promising a visual masterpiece that would take both graphics and fighting games to a new level, almost to art form.

Rise of the robots is fucking rubbish.

Seriously, were you around at the time? do you remember the pages in magazines dedicated to the building of this game? You couldn't avoid that stupid Gorilla robot, he was EVERYWHERE.
Arguably the worst fighting game ever made, ROTR is dull as hell.
After much disk swapping to get through the extended intro, the player is finally greeted with a much needed option choice: Phew, thank God they didn't spend so much time on the graphics that they forgot the integral "SCREEN SHAKE~~~" option. I couldnt find the "Make Game Good" option.
The player controls Cyborg and makes his way through a series of fights against super intelligent machines that have revolted against their human masters. When I say "Super intelligence" I of course mean "The ability to sit in the corner and fail to block Cyborgs slow motion flying kicks"

Squaring off at the end against blatant T-1000 rip off "The Supervisor" Cyborg saves the world and robots, well, I don't know, I skipped the ending.
I don't want to be unprofessional and mock for the sake of cheap heat but this game gets me so mad, it has this pretension of being "a cut above" all other games but it fails hard in almost every department, even the graphics, good as they may have been for the time, look like crap on most of the ports and the 200 disc FMV scenes barely made it into the lesser powered versions, thus leaving the question why bother to port it at all?

The engine is shoddy, without the slightest attempt at encouraging any tactics or combos. The A.I is poor in a game where the whole plot is about A.I risen to genius levels, the characters are mainly boring in design, you can only be the Cyborg in one player and he barely has any defining features, he's just this really blue dude, they might has well have just made Horace the hero.
Finally, Brian May wrote a soundtrack, but most of his music didn't even make the game due to time constraints, Don't get me wrong, that's a plus point, but also another example of the game failing to deliver on its design plans.

Im done. It's just simply awful. But you knew that already, right?

90. Back To Skool


(Spectrum, David Reidy, 1985)
As of this writing, Activision's Call of Duty series has a stranglehold on the videogame charts, an unprecedented marketing campaign and previous (deserved) success have ensured a prosperous future for Bobby Kotik and friends.
Meanwhile, there have been no parties at many studios who didn't have the advertising, marketing, franchises or, at the very least, the money to blindly ram a game down the throats of consumers until they choked on it. Since 2008, developers have been closing their doors and turfing out a lot of talented people who had the goods, but didn't put enough "mainstream potential" into their games.
Now, maybe more than ever, the dollar is the single most important thing to videogame companies and, for the biggest ones at least, originality and integrity can stick it, brother.

Now lets harken back to a time where great games literally came out of "some guy's bedroom" where individuals would put the own ideas to the test, produce a product that captured what they believed a game should be, then, if given a break, would see a publisher pick up their program and market it to the public, without a Pepsi tie-in, or crappy-ass night vision goggles.

Skool Daze is one of the most punk rock games ever made, not Paramore "punk rock", Skool Daze is straight up Black Flag. The brainchild of David Reidy, it was a videogame based on the exploits of a cheeky kid called Eric who had to undergo a series of tasks in order to steal his bad school report, waiting in the headmasters safe. Whilst doing this, Eric had to continue to attend lessons and avoid trouble, receiving 10,000 lines would result in Eric's expulsion and the end of the game. It can be seen as an early example of today's popular "sandbox" games, Eric is free to go and do whatever he wants, at any time, but still has be present at certain events and activities (very similar in structure to Rockstar's awesome "Bully") the game features a cast of characters, mostly school stereotypes, who interact both with Eric and with each other. It was novel and unlike anything before it.

Back to Skool was essentially more of the same, however, it added much to the gameplay by including extra activities, a playing field, a girl's school, a bicycle, small animals and Hayley, a girlfriend for our catapult wielding hero.
It was by no means an easy task, managing time to perform tasks whilst not being late for lessons or being caught in private areas was difficult and some lateral thinking had to be done to obtain various clues and code numbers.
The game was basically a whole lot of fun to play, being at school myself at the time, it was a great tension buster (especially seeing as the game allowed you to rename all the characters, so kids up and down the country could localise the game to their own friends and teachers) Eric's Beano-esque antics were classic comic book trouble-making.

Your Sinclair rated Back to Skool 19th in its final "Top 100 Spectrum games of all time" issue. An original, fun and very playable game, made pretty much by one guy. No-one queued up at their local supermarket at 6a.m for it, you didn't get any steelbook edition, it didn't have motion sensor controls or even a soundtrack by the popular beat combos of 1985.

It was simply videogame making at its very best.

24/11/2009

91. Mystic Warriors


(Arcade, Konami, 1993)
Sunset Riders with ninjas.


I was really tempted to leave it at that, but you people who take the time to read my inane ramblings deserve better, so here's a little more:
Konami's Mystic Warriors is a side scrolling fighter/shooter for up to four budding ninjas. A member of a young squad of ninjas has been kidnapped by the evil SKULL corporation. Ninja is supreme and he double crossed it, Why did he do that?

So, having received the death message from the ninja empire, Our young heroes don the fruitiest ninja outfits they can find and hit the road. (Yuri forgets her trousers, thankfully)
It REALLY REALLY IS Sunset Riders with ninjas, it follows the same play, animation, art, control style and features girls throwing explosives, fat bad guys carrying pickups, campy speech, and a ski ride where horses used to be.

But Sunset Riders is fun to play and so is this, probably better as 2 player (4 player turns it into a bit of a button mash) its fast and action-packed, like all good arcades used to be. Its one real standout is that its features a plot twist a few levels in that was quite unexpected for its time. TEH SPOLIER BELOW~~

(Whichever ninja you are attempting to rescue sacrifices him/herself and dies to save the player, the rest of the game then plays out as a revenge mission.)

Mystic Warriors isn't bad, its enjoyable, colourful and has cool music (plus one of the best "inserted coin" sounds ever: "NINJAHHH!!") but its only really nostalgia that's holding this game for me.

It's Sunset Riders with ninjas.

92. Saints Row 2


(PS3/360/PC, Volition, 2008)
Crime sims have been in abundance since GTA3 took the world by storm way back in 2001. Cemented by the insane success of GTA: Vice City, it was confirmed that anti-social drive and murder sims were the way to go, apparently FOREVER, as they still hit the shelves to this day, driving the tabloids mad and turning our children (who shouldn't be playing them) insane, but that's not our fault. Its those evil developers. Bastards.

Anywhoo, GTA clones suck, True Crime, 25 To Life etc are terrible carbon copies, usually lacking the style and dark humour of Rockstar's games and carrying a zip gun to GTA's grenade mounted M-60. THQ's Saints Row suffered the same problem.
Saints Row 2 however, is GLORIOUS. Taking the crime sim template (Vehicles, wanted rating, shopping, hyper violence, mission selection etc) SR2 ramps it up in the story department, providing a cast of brilliant characters with some of the best voice acting in game history.
Where SR2 really stands apart though, is in the customisation. You build your perp (or perpette) from scratch, building figure, colours, voice and even walk and idle animations. Theres a whole host of stores selling wide varieties of clothing and accessories so you truly get to build the character the way you want and can then customise your cars, hangouts and fellow gang members to follow a certain "style". For example, all your gang members dress 80's style and ride bikes, or all wear suits and drive limousines. This truly sets up the feeling of "your" gang, as it were.

The soundtrack is varied, with your usual blend of hiphop, bad metal and reggae but with an awesome classical radio station. There's nothing like driving full speed into an all out block war whilst playing Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" at full volume. The visuals are generally as to be expected from this type of game, the cut scene animation is great though, body language and facial expression come through really well.

There isn't enough room to do this game justice (maybe one day Ill give it its own seperate write up) SR2 has a great, over-the-top story about warring factions that isn't too "Gangsta, Yo" and goes almost the opposite way from the GTA series by being so ridiculous with the events that take place, it also has some really mean spirited scenes, but with this type of game it kinda comes with the territory. This is sociopathic carnage taken to an almost scientific level, there's even a "spray the family picnic with shit" side mission, which truly let me fulfil my lifelong hopes and dreams.

The long awaited GTAIV divided its audience, with some claiming it was too realistic and had characters that were beyond reprehension, others going as far to claim Rockstar had lost their edge. I wouldn't know about that, but, in my opinion, Saints Row is no longer a pretender to the current GTA universe, its now a legitimate threat.

Visit the city of Stilwater soon. You won't ever wanna leave, you might not get the choice.

23/11/2009

93. Splatterhouse


(Arcade/Various Home, Namco, 1988)
Most anybody with an interest in games knows something of this series, whether the original, the Sega re-incarnations, the cutesy NES version or the still to this day unreleased remake. The hockey/skull masked Rick is already a part of videogame lore, not bad for a copycat hero of an ultra gory game originally made for obscure consoles that no-one owned.

Let's get it out the way, Splatterhouse isn't a very good game, EASY, FANBOYS!
Yes, It is basic, controls badly and has some painfully unfair boss fights, but that doesn't mean its without its charm. Rick, possessed by the TERROR MASK~ scrolls from left to right in a quest to rescue his girlfriend Jennifer from a mansion from hell. Dropping a whole host of ghosts and goblins (ahem) either with his limbs or a variety of garden implements he can collect along the way, Rick makes his way through the grounds and the various levels of the mansion itself.

The game is damn violent, the original uncensored version has a lot of goo and gore and features various items of questionable taste such as inverted crucifixes, puking corpses and a giant womb corridor, amongst other LoLs.

Theres some good, spooky sounds and an awesomely satisfying "Thwock!" that accompanies a solid chop with whatever rusty death dealer Rick has his hands on.
There is a long legacy that goes along with Splatterhouse, including various remakes and sequels on a variety of formats, worthy of note are the Sega Genesis "Splatterhouse 3" and the bizarre, cuddly "Splatterhouse: Wan Paku Graffiti" on the NES:

A play of the original game will show that Splatterhouse is hard, borderline unfair and suffers horrible control response issues, however it is still somehow playable and has earned a place in videogame history for its early approach to game gore and its iconic lead character. Maybe it would be better for that legacy if the long delayed, development hell remake never came out.

Visit this great fansite http://splatterhouse.kontek.net/ for more Splatterhouse fun.

94. Syphon Filter 2


(Playstation, Eidetic, 2000)
In the wake of the legendary Metal Gear Solid, a whole host of games hit the market copying its blend of action, stealth and political cover up. It seemed that if your game didn't have thermal goggles, then it wasn't worth wee. Many companies, to this day, still churn out games aping (and usually failing) to recreate Snake's gravelly voiced adventures.

Syphon Filter was a Playstation exclusive title, following the adventures of CDBC agent Gabe Logan as he attempted to uncover the facts behind the viral weapon of the title.
Our post however, is about the game's sequel. Picking up immediately where the original left off, Gabe and his partner Lian Xing must run and gun their way through a series of levels and a labyrinthine plot in order to prevent the weapon from falling into the wrong hands.

Playing similar to a third person Goldeneye 007, the player controls Gabe and Lian alternately as they investigate globe trotting locations such as mountain tops, military bases, a Russian night club and the slums and sewers of New York whilst the plot follows all the usual "Trust no one" "I'm not doing anything until you tell me whats REALLY going on" cliches. Jack Bauer not included.

Whilst the game has ugly graphics and sometimes unintentionally funny animation (Gabe still runs like he's crapped his cargo pants) Syphon Filter 2 is an excellent double disc adventure, with an intelligent plot, a solid challenge and characters who are more vulnerable and flawed than those of the Metal Gear series, thus making them easier to care for.

In my opinion, Syphon Filter 2 represents the peak of the series, whilst it isn't nearly as polished or expensive looking as Hideo Kojima's baby, it still remains a frantic, fantastic challenge and cements Gabe and Lian's place alongside the Solid Snakes and Sam Fishers of the world.

20/11/2009

95. Um Jammer Lammy


(Playstation, NaNaOn-Sha, 1999)
An early Playstation game that took a lotta love from me and my friends was Parrapa the rapper, A game where amusing songs and wacky art combined to create a fun variation on the "Simon" style of games. Released late in the PlayStation's life and often overlooked, spin off Um Jammer Lammy follows the same principles and style but turns the storyline and songs up to eleven (Its one louder, innit)

Lammy, the surprisingly hot 2d anime lamb guitarist for band Milkcan is a shy, quiet girl whose personality only comes out through her music. Late for an important gig, Lammy encounters a series of increasingly bizarre incidents which require her to use the power of RAWK!!! on various items she substitutes for her guitar, such as a fire hose, a chainsaw and a baby, Listen to the sustain.

The story is appropriately mad, featuring a hospital with hundreds of births taking place at once. a crashing aeroplane, a burning pizza restaurant and a trip to Hell and back (literally, but not for U.S gamers*) this was back when a comedy/rock combo didn't HAVE to include Jack Black tiredly going "YEEAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!"
Finally arriving at the gig, Milkcan put on a concert to an audience including all the cast and a cameo from Parappa himself.

A whole host of unlockable modes include 2 player battle, freestyle mode, hip hop remixes as Parappa and a great Parappa/Lammy co-op mode. Lammy can also unlock various effects for her guitar. The music is great, with each song representing a different style of guitar rock, the characters and background re-acting to how well, or badly, youre playing.
The game has that Paper Mario style "flat" artwork and features likable characters and nicely written cut scenes. The only gripe, as with Parappa, is getting a "cool" rating appears to consist of button mashing, as opposed to actually putting together a good sound.

Um Jammer Lammy is unfairly forgotten, I prefer it to Parappa, though I'm not taking anything away from the hip-hop hero's legacy. These early rhythm action games have an uncyncial, upbeat innocence and feel good factor that's far departed from Activision's "We'Ve G0t KurT CObaIN IN oUR GaMEZ LOL!! BuY MoRR SONgz!"
Sadly, Lammy ultimately reminds me of games that are made out of love, not greed.

*(The U.S version replaced the hell level with a tropical island.)

A musical interlude.

96. The Lost World: Jurassic Park


(Arcade, Sega, 1997)
There were a host of shoddy games based on Spielberg's Jurassic Park Juggernaut that rampaged through toy stores in the mid 90's, Sega's on rails shooter however, was not one of them.
In fact, it was one of the most atmospheric arcades ever made. Housed in a sit-it cabinet styled like a jeep from the resort, Lost world saw one or two players gun their way through Site B after chaos has ensued and dinos of all shapes and sizes were on the rampage.

The game boasted the Model 3 board and huge polygons displayed on a large screen inside the cabinet for a genuinely panic inducing experience. Sound blasted through loud bass speakers, bringing every roar, growl and scream direct to your ear drums.

Moving at a very fast pace with raptors seemingly leaping from nowhere, it tested the mettle and skills of even the very best lightgun aficionados, with only five shots per reload, speed and accuracy were absolutely essentials. Pickups could be found in crates or received from staff rescued from sticky situations, these included new weapons, laser dot sites and health bonuses. Multiple pathways would open as a result of suceeding/failing certain tasks and epic boss battles took places against some of the biggest monsters in the park.
A clever strategy was in play whereby shooting certain pack leaders would distract other dinosaurs momentarily, or cause some to run off, meaning there was even a science about the game to be learnt.

For those who don't care for such intracacies though, The lost world can simply be summed up and fast, loud, scary and lots of fun.
Emulation of this game isn't really a viable option, so should you see a machine hiding amongst today's generic crap at your local arcade, bang a couple of credits in. Bring earplugs.

19/11/2009

97. Way Of The Warrior


(3DO, Naughty Dog, 1994)
Early to mid 90s, excitement on the horizon, video games are hitting a new wave of CD technology, not only that, but fighters are back! and they're more violent than ever before! Death moves and digitised graphics! MOORRTALLL KOMBAAATTT!

Holy crap....

Riding the wave of MK's success, Universal and Naughty Dog unleashed this TRAVESTY of a game onto Panasonic's fledgling 3DO console. Whilst I have no problems with games that blatantly copy other games, I have a real problem with BAD games.
WOTW is a bad game.
A cool intro has a talking skull tell of a book containing eternity's fighting knowledge (The book incidentally is a rip off of Evil Dead's Necronomicon) The winner of an upcoming tournament will fill in the book's last page and tip the scales for good or evil.

Nine fighters battle out across bizarre, multi level backgrounds in a glitchy, button-mash fest in an effort to face a dragon at the top of a temple or something.
The characters are unlikeable, unoriginal, badly digitised and beyond controllable. (Urban legend has it that Naughty dog friends and families play the roster)
The engine is unreliable, unbalanced and confusing, with unusable jumping attacks and piss-poor special moves. Now add to that the fact you have to play this on a 3DO controller, arguably one of the worst gamepads ever designed and its not looking good for 3DO's exclusive fighter.

Featuring a few decent White Zombie songs doesnt cut it when all your voice overs sound like the same two guys putting on their best racist Australian/British/Deep South/Chinese etc accents. Commentary (presumably from the talking skull) hits you repeatedly with lines like "Ooh that's gotta hurt!" and "That's all folks!" When a fight to the death ends with sleigh bells whilst your score tots up, something's wrong.

If the game is intentionally tongue in cheek in style, that's fair enough, but it also sucks hard to play, which kills any and all attempts at "comedy" it may have been going for. Bar the intro and the admittedly cool lava pit fatality, WOTW is simply one of the worst fighters to come into existence and a good example of all that was wrong with that "difficult early CD console" period; Graphics and sound that were only passable even at the time and zero gameplay.

98. Grumpy Gumphrey Supersleuth


(Spectrum, Gremlin, 1985)
Ive worked in Retail long enough to know two things:
1.The customer is rarely right
2.Thieves will still ANYTHING, regardless of its value.
Problem one is caused by humans being humans and is best dealt with by going blank and playing Poison songs in your head whilst they rant about their "rights" which they "know" or something. Problem 2 is where Grumpy Gumphrey: SUPERSLEUTH! comes in.

Grumpy Gumphrey is a disgruntled (by name) store detective (not strictly a "sleuth") The game required you to get Grumpy through a days work, performing various tasks for your boss and customers, ranging from cleaning bugs from the cafe and finding a lost baby to more reasonable requests like getting your boss drinks and erm.. shooting ducks in the washing machine department.

The game is colourful and fast paced, once Grumpy picks up the scooter he barrels around with a total disregard for customer safety. This alone makes him a hero to me.
Failure to perform tasks within time limits and customer complaints result in a written warning, five of these letters sees Grumpy out on his ass (What kind of company allows FIVE written warnings in the space of a single day?)

I never finished this game, the time limits were tight and it had an awful inventory system, there were frustrating elements such as a customer who ran around causing you to drop items and light switches that blacked out most of the screen. The game required you to visit the boss's office several times, an act that itself could cause you to receive a warning anyway, cheers.
A chart in the office shows sales at an all time low and the boss has a loaded gun on the desk next to him. A scene that hopefully didnt recreate itself in Gremlins head office circa 2003.

Grumpy Gumphrey Supersleuth had bright graphics, a novel idea and an interesting execution, it was also frustrating and often resulted in you trying to gun down the customers. In that regard, It was a perfect recreation of my retail experiences.

18/11/2009

99. Under Fire


(Arcade, Taito, 1993)
Over this blog you will soon come to realise that I have a passion for "taking the streets back" games, where no good punks finally come up against a force that's decided its time to clean up. Many arcade games in the early 90s had this theme, but Oh boy, Taitos Under Fire was on a par with William's NARC in its portrayal of "zero tolerance"

Hot on the heels of the success of Konami's Lethal Enforcers, Under Fire was a lightgun game following the same principals; On-rails shooter, digitised graphics, badguys in sunglasses, car chase level etc. Under Fire however, was pure MAYHEM.
The player was a member of the "Special Police" and armed with an Mp5 style gun, mowed down hordes of repetitive members of a gang that the intro tells us "They(sic) called Hoppers." Gang members ranged from Sid Vicious style punks and little black dress chicks to some fat dude in a suit. Innocents charged across the screen screaming "Don't shoot!" whilst cars exploded, windows and doors shattered and running battles went from fighting a biker gang driving INSIDE a supermarket to a bullet fest in a fairground complete with rollercoaster ride. SOLD.
Pickups included shotgun blasts and rapid fire magazines. Players gunned through to a confrontation with the gangs boss in a skyscraper penthouse.

I remember completing this game on holiday once with an audience gathering, right on the final boss I ran out of credits and some kid I didnt even know gave me 50p just so we could all watch the conclusion. True story.

The graphics were blocky and the sound was insanely repetitive (despite some groovy jazz tunes) all the bad guys scream "YAAAAHH!!" and bizarrely, "WHADDYA THINK OF THAT?" as they pop up. Under Fire lacks the polish and slickness of Lethal Enforcers, but, as a total "crime doesn't pay" trigger massacre, they simply don't come more violently manaiacal than this.