Vigilante

~ VIGILANTE ~

Irem / NEC

HuCard

1989

I acquired Vigilante back when it was first released, and it has sucked ass from the very beginning. Taking its cue from ancient Kung Fu, it offers straightforward punch-and-kick action that calls for little thought, skill, or finesse. Stand in one spot and hold down a button with the corresponding turbo switch cranked up, and watch as your foes mindlessly stumble into beatings. Take a few steps forward and perform the same routine to deal with the next batch of assailants. Occasionally, you'll come into possession of nunchucks that'll essentially grant you invincibility until you encounter particular bosses.

The bosses are hardly difficult to beat, but they're stout, thickset fellows who don't go down easily. Get in a few jabs, take a couple of steps back in anticipation of a counterattack, and then move in once again. It's a tedious, unchallenging exercise, the thought of which won't encourage you to pound your way through the dull-in-their-own-right levels.

Your enemies look every bit the part of dopes, while the backdrops are drab for the most part.

A number of the game's tunes have stuck with me, and sometimes I'm silly enough to think it would be cool to revisit them, but the sad reality is that most of 'em sound terrible; and once the possibility of a pleasant aural reunion goes down the tubes, it's a given that the experience on the whole will suck.

At least your quest won't take you very far, so you'll endure minimal pain before reaching the amazing "WAY TO GO DUDE" ending screen. But when a game I've owned since '89 can barely make me wax nostalgic at all, well, the game really can't be worth a damn.

Little time is wasted before Vigilante lets you know just how goofy it really is.

It's turbo-switch-treated Kung Fu: clobber your witless enemies until you reach a boss.

The third level actually looks pretty nice, and it features a sequence that sees bikers attempt to run you down--the one stretch where the game deviates from its vanilla walk-halt-hit routine.

I get a kick out of how silly these oafish twins look as they go about their various attack motions.

There are references to other Irem products to be spotted in the final stage's backdrop--nice touches in what's generally a lousy and uninteresting game.

Veigues Tactical Gladiator

~ VEIGUES TACTICAL GLADIATOR ~

Victor Musical Industries / Game Arts / NEC

HuCard

1990

Back when I was in junior high, I had a friend with whom I would frequently get together and play this sidescrolling punch-and-blast game. We seemed to be the only people in the world who liked it. Magazines ripped on it, and our other friends made fun of us for playing a game in which the bosses actually run away after certain amounts of time. As the years went by, I came to look back on it as a mediocre product that I liked for my own idiosyncratic reasons, so I wasn't expecting much when I got around to revisiting it. As it turns out, I underestimated the title. Veigues tends to plummet in my esteem when I spend some time away from it and then impresses me more than ever when eventually given the chance.

The graphics stand out at once: the game boasts lots of colors, lots of parallax, and lots of large sprites. The music is also appealing, reminiscent of R-Type's during its melodic bits but rocking at certain points to a greater degree than any R-T tune.

The typical knock on the title is that it's a decent effort superficially but a sloppy dud when it comes to gameplay. I assert that taking a couple of sessions to get accustomed to piloting the initially clunky mecha would be worthwhile, as there's a lot to like about the play system. Veigues comes equipped with chest-mounted artillery and a mighty arm cannon, and it can pummel its foes with a devastating punch-attack. While the tactical gladiator seems graceless at first, it can pull off a rather slick "turn-around" technique that enables it to dodge enemy fire. Should Veigues fail to evade enough of that fire, parts of its body will be blown apart as defeat draws near. Points are awarded for kills and are used during strategic post-stage distribution sessions to strengthen the mecha's weaponry and armor. Make good use of those points, utilize your radar, and figure out the best weapons to use and spots to occupy for each leg of the adventure, and the gameplay will actually start to feel smooth.

Put in enough practice and you'll eventually get to enjoy a really cool ending, certainly one of the coolest HuCard finales I've witnessed (don't stop watching when the credits start rolling...). Heck, there's even a "fake ending" cinema before Veigues takes off for the final mission. I can't think of many other instances where developers put so much effort into cinematics for a chip game--or into presenting a truly unique experience augmented by extremely impressive aesthetic elements.

Veigues deserves praise for a great many things. I can only recommend that people stick with it beyond initial sessions that are sure to be rough; I think they might end up pleasantly surprised.

Golden Axe

~ GOLDEN AXE ~

Reno / Telenet / Sega

CD-ROM

1990

Reviewers on the web love to weave tales of the horrors brought upon them by PCE Golden Axe, but I'd never put much stock in their words. With the similarly maligned PCE Altered Beast, I'd already seen how a good port can come under fire simply due to a level of difficulty that proves too daunting for crybaby game raters. And I'd never thought much of this brawler to begin with (I chucked my Genesis GA cart ages ago), so I wasn't concerned about a "masterpiece" being insulted or desecrated. When my trustworthy brother Alexei confirmed my suspicions that the game isn't quite the disaster that so many net scribes make it out to be, I went ahead and obtained the CD with great haste and confidence.

Now, Alexei had given me fair warning that the scrolling and animation are revoltingly awful and the colors, drab and boring. I cannot contradict the former: choppiness abounds here. I can't dispute the latter, either, but being a fan of darker material in general, I was just fine with the preponderance of dull browns and grays. Don't get me wrong; I'm quite certain that this "style" of presentation came about due to a lack of effort on the part of the designers as opposed to a conscious attempt to craft a darker GA. It just so happens that the end result works well for me.

No such qualifiers are necessary for my enjoyment of the game's musical tracks (which are quite upbeat and exciting) and numerous cinemas (heavy snake usage generally rules, after all).

But even if you find the soundtrack and interludes as appealing as I do, and even if you are as accepting of the game's visuals as I am, the gameplay could still prove to be a deal breaker. PCE Golden Axe is tough and, at times, very cheap. Some situations that should result in routine henchmen slaughter end up with your character receiving an unfairly dealt beating. It's far too easy for groups of villains to surround and batter the hero, a flaw that might've been remedied with an option for two-person play. Unfortunately, no such option is to be found here, which is bad news indeed when you're dealing with the troublesome bosses.

Of course, there are ways to strike back with cheap tactics of your own. Even the nefarious giant armored knights and Death Adder himself can be taken out via simple move repetition.

For some, the tight situations and close calls to be experienced in this version of Golden Axe will add a sense of excitement to what has always been, in truth, a fairly mundane brawler. Others will view the game as an ugly race against the enemies to see who can "out-cheap" whom. I belong to the former group; and honestly, even if the only worthwhile aspects of the project had ended up being the music and cinemas, I wouldn't have minded paying a modest ten or fifteen bucks for them alone. But I come away from this rendition of GA with the realization that by removing or diminishing elements of an adventure that isn't special in the first place, companies run the risk of putting out a product that is truly horrible.

SideArms Special

~ SIDEARMS SPECIAL ~

NEC Avenue / Capcom

CD-ROM

1989

Although I like the HuCard version of SideArms well enough, I was in no rush to acquire Special. I was pretty sure the red book audio would prove to be well produced, but the chip's tunes are better than adequate as they are, and I didn't count on the new "Before Christ" mode (which adds elements to and alters aspects of the game as it was presented on card) offering much more than appeal as a novelty. Well, the CD soundtrack is indeed fine--no surprises there. The BC game, on the other hand, actually did astonish me by markedly outdoing the "Standard" mode (which emulates the chip version) in most respects.

BC's visuals are a treat for people like me who find the graphics in HuCard SideArms to be simplistic and washed out. Everything here seems a bit bigger, a little more detailed, and much brighter.

Weapon switching in BC occurs the old-fashioned way--automatically upon the nabbing of an icon. No longer must you pause the action to make a change in arms. Even better, BC starts you back at a checkpoint each time an enemy takes you out. This may seem like an odd thing to praise, as instant respawning is generally preferable to being sent back a ways, but lives tend to run out quickly in Standard due to enemies that unfairly park themselves right where your character reappears after death. BC eliminates the problem and hosts fewer "cheap parts" in general. Snake-like enemies, infamous for their relentlessness in chip-based SA, are present in BC but not nearly as nasty.

The most significant alteration to the old formula comes in the form of a recast boss crew. While Standard makes you face the same few big guys over and over again, BC presents you with a fresh opponent at the conclusion of every stage. I wish these new fellows were capable of performing more than one type of attack each, but some of them do require a bit of strategizing and even chicanery on your part, not to mention efficient use of your new charge-laser cannon.

Now, there are some things about BC that I don't particularly like. It does allow you to acquire option pods, but the alpha craft that one could merge with in the original is no longer present. The drone-augmented form was the most distinct element of the game on chip and seems like it should be regarded as an essential part of the whole SideArms experience. Also, for some reason, the game powers you down completely at the beginning of each level (save for Round 10, the final battle). This seems completely unnecessary and quite stupid to me.

Those are minor concerns, though, considering all that BC does right. SideArms fans simply must try it, and even those who don't enjoy the chip game might find a lot to like in it.

SideArms

~ SIDEARMS ~

Radiance Software / Capcom

HuCard

1989

SideArms didn't make a good first impression on me. I was immediately put off by its drab visuals and impractical weapon-selection scheme (you must pause the action to choose a new gun to wield). Those issues certainly didn't dissolve when I finally bothered to delve deep into the game, but I discovered that it's actually a good, tough, fast-paced shooter in spite of them, a product far superior to the more widely lauded and fundamentally similar Spriggan mark2.

While its music is nice and its adversarial forces never let up, SideArms' trademark element is its alpha drone, a craft that connects to your power-armored warrior to produce a veritable machine of obliteration. As you soar about in combined form, your standard blasts will be accompanied by devastating eight-way spread shots. However, the added girth of the drone will make you twice as vulnerable to enemy fire.

Equip the shotgun and you won't feel so susceptible to attack, as its bullets can annihilate enemy-fired projectiles. It's by far the most useful of the five obtainable weapons, though the laser cannon can down most varieties of oncoming craft with just a single shot.

By offering a plethora of offensive options and sending out foemen in droves, SideArms redeemed itself with me after its inauspicious start. Still, there are a number of things I don't particularly like about it:

It's kind of ugly. The background colors look washed out, and there isn't a single impressive enemy to do battle with. The graphical shortcomings don't bug me much these days because I'm so focused on the action when I play, but they put me off back when I first tried the chip.

The bosses are pretty weak, and you're forced to face some of them numerous times. This particular ship definitely wears out its welcome by the end and is a pushover once you figure out which gun to use against it.

This wheel thing, too, is guilty of making gratuitous repeat appearances, and you can crush its dual-laser-firing form just by employing a simple trick (notice where the player is positioned in the screen cap).

It's cool that you can stock a number of different weapons, but having to pause the game to switch between them can be a real pain in the neck.

I usually don't support the employment of checkpoints, but this is one game that really needs them. As it is, after you die, you reappear at the spot of destruction with only a very brief period of invulnerability; and as your foes tend to swarm, it's easy to lose lots of lives in mere seconds. The fast, relentless, snake-like enemies are extremely dangerous in this regard. The solution, of course, is to practice to the point where you simply don't die, but the learning process can be more arduous and discouraging than it really needed to be because of the frequent occurrences of successive quick deaths.

The game maintains the long-standing TurboChip shooter tradition of horrible "endings."