Turrican

~ TURRICAN ~

Accolade

HuCard

1991

This game seems so promising on paper. Its levels are huge, allowing for Metroid-like exploration; it features Contra-esque run-and-gun action; and it provides you with a decent assortment of weapons and attack-types, including a spread gun, a laser whip, and an alternate spinning-razor form. Unfortunately, the gameplay bypasses "challenging" and heads straight for "cheap," mucking up the chip's potential for greatness (and even goodness).

Fast, agile enemies zip around the screen; spreading bullets come from every which way; blind-leap spots make frequent unfair nuisances of themselves; and trash, boulders, lightning and lava-drops strike you from above.

Perhaps the most irritating aspect is that the game doesn't even make it obvious when you're taking damage; you must peek at your rapidly dwindling vitality gauge to measure the extent of the beating you're receiving (and during the split-second it takes your eyes to make that trip, you'll probably be obliterated). On top of all that, the areas themselves are ugly. And the designers stupidly decided to implement time limits, as they obviously wouldn't want you to take too long on the one part of the whole mess that's truly fun (exploring the levels and finding secret stuff). And man, there's a hell of a lot of secret stuff to find, especially early in the game, with copious "hidden goodie boxes" to uncover and 1-up icons strewn everywhere.

Heck, there are places where extra lives literally rain down upon you. On the one hand, it's cool that there are so many "sweet spots" to locate. On the other, it becomes glaringly obvious that the designers knew they were serving up a monster that would demolish players over and over again.

See, I could deliver the usual spiel about how you need to memorize the levels, come up with good strategies for the bosses, figure out how to best use your weapons, and have a decent amount of skill to begin with in order to do well in this game. And yeah, that stuff does apply if you hope to make it out of just the first set of stages alive. But even with all that in tow, the affair still boils down to a nasty battle of attrition. Collect dozens of extra men early on, and hope against hope when the challenges turn downright brutal.

That twist of brutality strikes when you hit stage 3-2, where emphasis is no longer on exploration for the fun and benefit of powering up, but on mere survival (and on finding some devilishly out-of-the-way exit spots). And whatever low level of enjoyability the game offered prior to the change in focus predictably plummets towards darker depths during the final stretch. They couldn't even be bothered to include music for the third world, while the fourth and final board forces you to endure a nightmarish strip of vertical platforming and some ridiculously boring ice-block busting.

Combine this crappy "climax" with a lame ending that's all too anxious to take you right back to the title screen, and you're left with criminally little reward for all the effort the mission demands.

Tatsujin

~ TATSUJIN ~

Toaplan / Taito

HuCard

1992

It's funny. Look at Tatsujin reviews on the web, and every bit of text basically boils down to "it's motherfuckin' HARD" and is accompanied by a screen cap showing the game's famous skull bomb. Of course, there is good reason for the ubiquity of these whiny complaints and skeletal blasts: Tatsujin, especially in its PCE incarnation, is indeed very difficult; and the only recourse for unskilled babies who hope to survive is bombing away.

But there will always be goofballs who like to puff themselves up and spit out the oft-heard, seldom true "I like a good challenge" line. Well, look: if you're thinking about obtaining Tatsujin for the sake of playing it and not just to add a somewhat rare and expensive HuCard to your collection, then be honest with yourself. If you're driven to hollering by Super Star Soldier's "intensity," or if you're pained by Nexzr's "rigorous" memorization requirements, then Tatsujin is out of your league. In fact, unless you're as tough and as good as the Duomazov brothers (which is highly unlikely, since the Duomazovs are stout crazy bearded men who honed their Turbo skills while serving long sentences in the Siberian stockades), then chances are you aren't hard enough to make it anywhere in this game, and you should remain within the safe confines of the Soldier/Gunhed quadrants.

It's not that Tatsujin will constantly wallop you. Segment-by-segment examination of the trek reveals many stretches that non-Duomazovs can make it through, provided that they remember to watch out for enemies who attack from behind (cheap bastards whom Tatsujin employs many of).

The main sources of trouble are the mini-boss bands. Not only do they send plenty of projectiles your way, but said projectiles hurtle across space at speeds that make them nearly unavoidable; and since there are typically four or five of these mid-stage demons to deal with at once, there isn't a whole lot of room for doing much evading anyway. The giant bosses present similar problems without the need to bring many friends along (but the assholes are often aided by small henchmen and cannons, anyway). Hope is not allowed here.

Still, live long enough to power up your weapons and you may actually begin to feel a little confident. The blue lightning gun, by far the coolest-looking of the three, produces a pyramid of obliteration when strengthened to its max, allowing for easy progress through strips populated by standard enemies. It proves inadequate against most of the dreaded mini-bosses, as it's rather weak and tends to lock in on fools you have no desire to target. But such battles are what the full-fire green energy weapon is for.

Of course, even if you're skilled and fortunate enough to build up a weapon to its optimal capabilities, odds are still slim that you'll be able to maintain that level of firepower for long. Sure, after a long while, you'll develop a feel for the stages, and you'll be able to remember which weapon to use at which point, and you'll know exactly when to expect cheap ass-rammers to sneak up on your tail. You'll realize that defeating the mini-lords and end-bosses comes down to doing as much damage as you can before they launch their assaults, and then baiting them into blowing their entire bullet load at one spot of the screen that you'll quickly vacate. But you're going to have to maintain that level of unwavering concentration, and maintain that perfect timing, as the game comes at you with cheap enemies and fast-moving bullet storms over and over and over again. And if you stumble for just one instant, say farewell to your built-up speed and mighty armament.

The safe, economical thing to do if you're considering a high-cost purchase of PCE Tatsujin is to acquire and play the much cheaper Genesis rendition, Truxton, before making a decision. Sure, the PCE version is better, with nicer-sounding music and a larger playfield to work with. But Truxton presents a package similar enough to give you a good idea of whether or not you'll enjoy its HuCard counterpart. It's significantly easier, too, so if it happens to kick your ass, do yourself a favor, save some money and avoid a great deal of pain: stay away from the rough side of town and don't buy Tatsujin.

You'll be cruising along and think to yourself, "What's that guy talking about? This isn't hard!"

Seconds later, the mini-bosses will crush you.

Sure, you can try the ol' skull bomb baby method of damaging them... and watch in horror as they sidestep the attack. These guys really don't fuck around.

Neither do their larger end-of-level allies.

The game has a few tricks up its sleeve aside from enemies moving in from behind. If you destroy these "bulbs," you'd better be ready to dodge the super-fast spread bullets that are released.

Memorize the locations of the cheap tricks and traps, and you'll be able to breeze through the boss-free segments with full-power lightning...

...but the emerald energy weapon represents your best chance of rockin' the tough guys.

Lightning works quite well against the last boss, however, as it allows you to home in on his weak spot while maintaining your distance.

Champion Wrestler

Taito - 1990 - Japan

HuCard

Whenever possible I try to avoid reviewing games I haven't fully completed, but I'll make exceptions in certain cases. Today's exception is Champion Wrestler from Taito.

CW is a port of an arcade game of the same name, one that I had never heard of prior to acquiring the game for my Duo. To be honest, the details surrounding how I actually got this game are foggy. It's certainly not something I sought out on purpose; I'm pretty sure this was one of those "good buddy freebies" your chums like to throw in when you're buying a bunch of other shit off them. You know the type. More often than not, these freebies are worthless, awful games that you'll never play (hence the reason they were given away for free in the first place). Unfortunately, Champion Wrestler is no exception.

Wrestler plays out like any WWE match would-- hit your opponent over the head with chairs, perform ridiculous acrobatics in hopes a stray limb might incur damage on your enemy, etc. The problem with Wrestler is that the control scheme fucking BLOWS. I mean, it's horrible. Atrocious. I cannot really convey in writing how terrible the "concept" behind CW's controls is. It would probably be more accurate to say that Wrestler just doesn't have a control scheme. CW takes button mashing to a new extreme. Because that's all you can do, and hope that you are fruitful in whittling away your enemy's health before yours diminishes. You have a "power" graph at the top of the screen that increases as you rapidly waggle your joystick from left to right, all the while attempting to position yourself (still waggling) so that you can inflict damage on the opposition. If somehow you manage to maneuver into a spot where damage might be an option, it then is your job to start mashing the I and II buttons and hope you pull something off. So you can see the problem here-- there are no cool button combo "moves" to memorize, no strategy in defeating your nemesis, essentially no amount of "skill" is going to benefit you in this game. I don't know about you, but I find this simply unacceptable.

From the title screen, you can select a game mode-- 1P vs CPU, 1P vs 2P, and a couple other modes. Having been outsmarted in my attempts to sucker a friend to play this still-moist-and-steaming pile with me, I resigned to go it solo in the 1P vs CPU mode.  You have a choice of 8 different characters to play with, including Taito's own "M. Rastan" from the Rastan Saga series. I suppose it doesn't really matter WHO you pick, but I seemed to have the most luck with "B. Machine". 

When a game fails so utterly and completely in the gameplay department, it doesn't really matter how good the aesthetics or any other aspect of the game are. That's a sad truth, because visually the game actually doesn't look half bad. In true Taito form, graphics utilize lots of colors and it's clear not much had to be sacrificed in the arcade to console porting process. I didn't encounter a whole lot of variety in the arena in my handful of runs with CW, but that's not completely unexpected. Music is adequate, if not somewhat good. Again-- what a shame.

At the end of the day, I have to wonder how much Champion Wrestler retailed for when it was new. And I also have to wonder how many kids went out and paid full sticker price for it, and what their reactions were upon getting home and powering it up for the first time. Shit, I got it for FREE and I feel like I got ripped off.

CAL III

~ CAL III ~

Birdy Soft / NEC Avenue

Super CD-ROM

1994

Unlike CAL II, this game isn't littered with potential Game Over choices. In fact, I got only one Game Over, which happened very late in the game when I was answering a Sphinx's questions. There may be others (the battle with a goofy Hydra being one potential spot of doom), but I've never encountered them.

It's nice not having to endure the frustration of replaying segments just to reach a decisive question again, but now there's even less reason to pay attention to what's actually going on. But then, there just isn't much going on in this game anyway.

It's more of an "adventure" this time: rather than simply walking a path and meeting up with girls in ridiculous situations, you tour a variety of places and, well, just keep on picking from the available choices. There's seldom any reason for caution when making your selections since the chances of reaching a Game Over are so low. You'll run into a variety of characters, from scheming deities to Alice (in Wonderland), but very little happens aside from long stretches of talking, most of which take place as you look at boring, redundant desert backdrops.

Sometimes something funny happens, but usually I found myself struggling just to stay awake. CAL III is incredibly short and quite uneventful, and it doesn't present much "erotic" stuff at all, if that's what you'd be expecting from it.

Urusei Yatsura: Stay with You

~ URUSEI YATSURA ~

Hudson Soft

CD-ROM

1990

So here we've got a high school lecher, along with a green-haired alien girl who wants his stick. Annoyed by the lad's wandering eye, the extraterrestrial "cutie" occasionally gives him a huge electrical shock in a futile effort to keep him in line. And off they go on an adventure that takes them from familiar school hallways to the frozen far reaches of outer space. Wonderful.

When I play an anime-based digital comic and I'm not familiar with the source material, it's nice if the game at least looks good and moves along at a reasonably quick pace to gain and maintain my attention. Even Nadia was able to achieve the elusive level of so-so-ness by delivering in these respects, but Uruseu Yatsura couldn't match the feat--at least not for a good long while. I was discouraged to find that its art isn't very good and takes up but a small part of the screen, and single poor-looking slides often hang around for way too long as characters chat.

The funny parts aren't funny, the spooky parts aren't spooky, and the characters aren't appealing with the possible exception of... a lemming.

Not satisfied with paining players through its slow, boring plot progression and bad looks, UY also "features" a dumb tile-sliding puzzle game, and you can indeed end up with Game Overs (although the ones I experienced were very easy to get around). And then there's the somewhat disturbing shower scene. (Let's just say it ain't exactly Cadet Babbette hiding in there.)

But UY suddenly rises from the doldrums with an entertaining burst at the end of its second "Act," and proceeds at an above-mediocre level for the rest of the story. Act 3 places you in a hall of doors that lead to jungles, deserts, war zones... and bunnies at tea. You'll need to save your friends by finding your way across the desert, discovering passwords that grant access to prison cells, playing little lever puzzle games, and making doorknobs out of gems. And during the brief fourth Act, you'll run into a number of weird characters, including a boxing cyclops whom you must engage in menu-driven fisticuffs. There's even some nice art at the end.

UY turns things around during its second half by presenting puzzles and tasks that call for more interaction than the standard dull button clicks early in the game. It still shouldn't shoot up to the top of anyone's "digital comics to get" list, but it's not one to cross off either.

Denno Tenshi: Digital Angel

~ DIGITAL ANGEL ~

Tokumashoten Intermedia Inc. / News Inc.

Super CD-ROM

1994

So this guy is out one day and finds a floppy disk. He takes it home, loads it up on his computer, and watches in amazement as a girl pops out of his monitor. Then some giant mecha land outside his house; female pilots hop out and join the other girl inside, as the first girl can control the mighty pink mecha. They hang around for a while, lounging, talking, bathing (but not doing anything particularly naughty). Then some mean girls show up in their own giant mecha, along with a mean "copy" of the first girl. A big showdown takes place, the copy is eliminated, the mean girls move in with the rest of the bunch, and they all decide to play janken.

That's a good chunk of the odd Digital Angel story. It's a digital comic if you haven't guessed, with the primary menu commands (Talk, Watch, Think, etc.) listed in English. The most appealing element is the art: the visuals aren't typical old anime comic fare; the game has a distinctive appearance, and I found myself looking forward to each new scene. The music is also really cool (for a while, at least).

Odd plot + anime girls + English menu + distinctive art + good music usually equals a worthwhile game, but this one is actually a bit borderline. The story really loses steam during the second half. There are various Game Over and premature End screens, and while the Game Overs can usually be evaded easily, the only way to get the "true" ending is to master a "Slot Game," which can be very annoying and frustrating (and the true ending sucks anyway). I played the game a number of times and changed up my choices enough so that I believe I've seen pretty much every scene there is, but the art and audio lost some of their allure during this wearisome process, and there were a number of instances where I found myself wanting to play Sotsugyou Shashin instead.

Digital Angel is by no means a poor product, but with the nice ingredients it had going for it, it should've made a better impression on me than it did. I really enjoyed my initial experience with the first half of the story, but the aforementioned problems ultimately dragged the game down a digital comic tier or two.

So you get awesome mecha designs...

...and awesome chick designs. Good combo, eh?

Unfortunately, there's too little cool stuff...

...and too much domestic stuff (especially later in the game).

You'll need to master the slot game to get a "good" ending. Good luck with that.