Poking fun at bad games is great and all, but it's so satisfying to play that rare gem, that one game that makes all the effort you exhausted to track it down worth it. I am happy to announce that this week's game fits that bill to the letter.

It took me a few weeks to wrap this guy up. My living arrangement isn't quite conducive to long stretches of quiet time during which I can gather my thoughts and get serious work done. That's why I've got to find another place to live. If anyone is renting out a room or if you know of a foreclosed house that I could squat in for a few months, I would love to hear about it.

But I digress. This was a lengthy title but was well worth it. Before I even jump into the review, I'm giving you guys the thumbs up to track it down and give it a go. This game's quality shouldn't be all that surprising. When your source is the venerable Zelda series, you have to really be gunning for bottom-of-the-barrel status to produce anything less than excellence.



OFFENDER: Alundra
DEVELOPED BY: Matrix Software
RELEASED ON: PS1, 1997
TASTES LIKE: The Legend of Zelda

Alundra was the first title developed by Matrix Software, a company composed of members that had worked on Landstalker for the Sega Genesis. I have not played that game, but from what little I've seen of it the art style is unmistakably similar. I wish I could say that if you enjoyed Landstalker then you will enjoy Alundra, but I honestly wouldn't know.

If you need other credentials, Matrix Software is also responsible for the 3D Final Fantasy remakes on the DS as well as that new Light Warriors game and the recently localized Nostalgia. Hopefully, that should give you enough of an idea of where these cats are coming from.

For the company's freshman effort, it crafted an action-adventure that shares more than a few elements with Nintendo's Zelda franchise. Now, this game was released a whole year before Ocarina of Time landed, so the innovations brought about by the latter were yet to be realized. In stark contrast, Alundra keeps to the overhead perspective that gamers had been familiar with up until then. This presents a remarkable divide in how the genre could be advanced. Alundra is like what Zelda would have been like if it had used the power of the then-current technology to expand upon the 2D template as opposed to embracing the third dimension.



As you may remember, the manual for A Link to the Past includes a long-ass back-story that reads like a history book. Likewise, the manual for Alundra is unnecessarily thick and contains its own game world primer. To be as brief as I can, you are Alundra, a member of the elvish Elna clan who possess the ability to explore the people's dreams. In Alundra's world, the King had decreed that all idols of deities be destroyed, yet praying to idols is the only way for the people to maintain their connection with the gods. Without divine blessing, the people lose zest for life and become plagued by health-affecting nightmares, so it is upon you, the Dreamwalker, to exorcise the demons from these troubled souls.

Essentially, the story is a critical condemnation of idol worship as well as religion in general. At times the message is subtle while at other times it's all up in your face. It definitely surprised me and I'm sure it would make some of you just a tad bit uncomfortable. But regardless....



HOW SHAMELESS IS IT?

Preachy messages aside, this game is phenomenal. It has an identity of its own yet borrows enough from Zelda to remind you of its roots. You can equip both a weapon and a subitem at once, ranging from swords with charge attacks to bows and from bombs to screen-blanketing magic spells. You collect Life Vessels to add HP to your stamina meter and cut down bushes and break into people's homes to acquire Gilder, the game's currency. There are pig-faced creatures reminiscent of Moblins, a fairy in a pond, and even a fortune teller.

Of course, all games have their share of problems, but the better a game is, the more apparent and unwelcome its issues wind up being. Therefore, before I really dive into the meat and potatoes of Alundra, I want to talk about how it displeased me. I figure I'd just get the bullshit out of the way so that we can enjoy ourselves without any heavy clouds hanging overhead.



Alundra's default moveset is identical to that of Link save for two additional techniques. There is a dash, similar in function to the Pegasus Boots, as well as a jump, similar in function to Roc's Feather. The former is a rarely needed except for a couple of puzzles while the latter is required for just about any situation. Jumping in Zelda is a simple affair -- hop a little pothole here, clear a gap there, always on level ground. In Alundra, you will be hopping like a spastic jackrabbit as you traverse the rockiest overworld in video game history.

It's insane just how far the developers shove the assumingly simple act of jumping down your throat. What's so nerve-wracking is that the overhead view makes judging elevation a trial-and-error exercise. I dare say it's worse than Scurge: Hive since your only concern there is whether or not you are able to judge distance properly. With this extra degree of frustration, compounded by the frequency jumping during puzzles and basic overworld traversal, I figure that you spend roughly a third of total playtime climbing back up layers of platforms because the cliff face that you thought was on your level was actually ten feet higher.



My next issue concerns the overworld map or, more specifically, the lack thereof. One of many faults in the original Zelda is the absence of an overworld map, but at least you have a position marker to give you a general idea of where you are. Alundra doesn't even offer that much, so you must rely on memorization or archaic note-taking to guide you. Granted, the world isn't all that massive, but still. Three buttons on the controller open up the inventory... you would figure at least one of them could have been used to open a God damn map screen.

Shockingly, there is an overworld map. When you visit the fortune teller in order to gain your bearings, she will identify your next target with a flashing marker on a map in her possession. If the developers went to all the trouble of actually programming that shit into the game, why couldn't they have given you access to it at any time? There is a physical map included in the game case, but everything other than the central village is blurred out as though someone has smeared Vaseline on the page. That's dickery at its finest.

No, dickery at its finest would be the lack of maps even in the dungeons! Dungeons are laid out in a linear fashion to compensate for a lack of guide, but you still need to travel off the beaten path to discover the more elusive treasure chests. Nevertheless, as the game progresses and the dungeons grow more labyrinthine, you really begin to curse the developers' apathy. How else are you going to know for certain if you have collected all the treasure in a particular level?



It's that last bit which leads me to the rancid walnut topping on this hot fudge ass-cream sundae. This game is rife with one-time item pickups. There are key story events after which areas of the world or certain dungeons are no longer accessible. If you don't remember to collect a zone's items in the allotted period then you are royally boned. In Zelda, if you pass over a bonus weapon or Heart Piece, there is nothing preventing you from returning at a later time and retrieving it. If you missed something in Alundra, fuck you. You should have bought the strategy guide, dumbass.

It's bad enough that you are given time-sensitive windows, but even worse is how missing one tiny thing initiates a chain reaction of absurdity. There is a particular item called the Secret Pass that I didn't learn about until consulting GameFAQs towards the end of my adventure. The Secret Pass grants you access to the casino under the bar into which I spent most the game trying to gain entry. At no point does an NPC tell you, "Hey, you can't come in without a pass!" No clue was given, so I was forever restricted from playing the casino games. As such, I couldn't earn a slew of Life Vessels. As such, I was never told the purpose of these bullshit Gilded Falcon statues I had wasted time collecting. As such, I couldn't trade those statues for even more Life Vessels and four very useful bonus weapons and accessories. All because I forgot to climb into some dude's chimney during the two times in the game when his fireplace wasn't running.

Motherfucker.



You know what though? Quibbles. As bothersome as these problems are, they do not mar what is on the whole a marvelous experience. Everything screams "polish" in Alundra. For example, take the sprites which are highly detailed and rival the best of the SNES era. Using the power of the PS1, there are a few extra graphical flourishes that highlight the attention to detail. Unfortunately, the overall aesthetic is hindered by some stiff animations and a rather dull, washed-out color palette, but again, quibbles.

Let's talk about the sweeping score. It's like a blend of Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu with a sprinkle of Chrono Trigger's Yasunori Mitsuda thrown in for good measure. I wouldn't say it's the kind of music you'd find yourself humming in the shower, but I do not deny its quality. Just check out the overworld theme and hear the influences yourself.

That's why I find it so curious that Working Designs, the US publisher, opted to write a new intro theme for the localization. As you can see below, we get disgusting butt rock that is at odds with every other composition in the game. Was this necessary? Chalk it up to the ol' American Xtreme marketing angle. Gnarly, bro.



In a way, Alundra is indeed an extreme game. Whereas the Zelda franchise aims to be as accessible as possible, Alundra is targeted squarely at those players who do three-heart, no-death runs for kicks and giggles. It's a title for the seasoned adventurer, one who is well-versed in the nuances and mechanics of the action-RPG genre. In-game text instructions for particular puzzles are unbelievably vague and many environmental obstacles demand an almost innate approach to circumventing them. Whether you consider that a plus or a minus depends entirely on your gaming history.



In regards to enemies, you'll find yourself near death more often than in any recent Zelda title. Foes, especially bosses, are extremely aggressive and can drain a sizeable fraction of your health in a single hit. With no shield available to you, encounters tend to reward first-movers more often than careful planners. For this reason, the game stocks health-restoration items in roughly two out of every three treasure chests. You will find so many herbs and tonics that the problem becomes having to leave some behind because there is no more room in your inventory. Even so, if you wish to see the reach the end without facing a game over, you will have to burn through those potions until your supply is exhausted, and there's still no guarantee that you will survive long enough to score your next fix.

That's not to say you aren't thrown a bone here and there. Unlike in Zelda, you have an unlimited supply of bombs and arrows. It feels great not having to micromanage your ammunition on top of health and magic. It's also nice that, aside from starting a new game or continuing one in progress, you never once see a loading screen. Loads between areas are so fast that it never becomes an issue. I wish more games from the PS1 era were as streamlined as this.



In an unusual twist on typical clone game expectations, there are a few elements in Alundra that predate their Zelda counterparts. For one, there is a volcano dungeon with a dragon guardian and what sounds like Muslim chanting in the background. Fire Temple, anyone? Second, one of Alundra's weapons is a metal flail that can be swung around the head, something that Nintendo just recently introduced in Twilight Princess. Coincidence, or was Eiji Aonuma inspired by a certain forgotten PlayStation classic?

If there is one area in which Alundra and Zelda do not compare, it is in their narratives. Even at its most dire, I wouldn't consider any Zelda game to be "dark." Alundra, on the other hand, goes to great lengths to drive the impact of the terrible evil that is sweeping the land. Even when the mood is light and jubilant, there is always this gnawing at the pit of your stomach, making you feel guilty for finding joy during a period of great suffering.



The game is effective at evoking those emotions because of its narrow focus on a single town. Everything begins and ends in Inoa, the village that took you in after you were found unconscious and shipwrecked. You meet every NPC, each with unique quirks and relationship ties. You live in the home of Jess, a blacksmith who lost his wife and child yet grows to love you as a son. All these characters put on a strong front, faithful that their gods will deliver them from the nightmares plaguing their slumber. With the aid of the dream researcher Septimus, you start entering people's dreams (trippy miniature dungeons with bosses and everything) and casting out the evil spirits.



The more you try to help, though, the more the villagers suffer. The dark force at work, Melzas, a centuries-old alien invader masquerading as a god, has tricked the people into worshipping him and restoring his power. When he notices you restoring the villagers' dreams, he crafts deadlier nightmares. Soon, people start to die. You are blamed for their deaths. Every time someone passes, a new tombstone appears in the cemetery, a painful reminder that perhaps your noble intentions are placing Inoa in greater jeopardy.



Each time someone dies, Jess becomes inspired to forge you a new tool. It's a chilling means of expanding your inventory. In Zelda, most of the major items are found in dungeons. In Alundra, each weapon represents a recently deceased soul. When you wake up in the morning and hear Jess hammering away in his smithy, rather than being excited, you feel dread as you wait for the other shoe to drop, to hear news that another one of your friends, the folk who have welcomed you with open arms, has died before his or her time.



It escalates. More people fall. Distrust is sewn. People's faith is challenged. Soon, you face a tragedy so great that you wonder if the pain you bear will ever leave. In your despair, you question if you are truly the person you thought you were. Perhaps the whispers were true. Perhaps you are the demon who has come to the village to shatter the last vestiges of hope that these unfortunate people clung on to.



Damn. Link never had to deal with this.

Your blood boils. Someone has to pay. These people must have their faith restored. They may hate you, but a true hero isn't in the business for the fame or the glory. That's who Alundra is.

Why the fuck aren't you playing this game right now?

THE FRESH PRINCE SCALE OF HEAVY "SAMPLING" IN ORDER TO... NAW! I AIN'T GONNA MESS WIT' WILL SMITH!:

Believe it or not, there was a time when Square made stuff other than Final Fantasy. Does anyone remember that stuff was? Of course not. No one cares. Its first games were about as impactful as a housefly suicide bombing a Mack truck.

The company dabbled in a little platforming here, a little scrolling shooter there. Did you know that Rad Racer is a Square-developed title? Oh, snap. Did I just blow your mind? Now that you think about it, doesn't Rad Racer remind you a bit of Out Run?

It would appear that Square drew "inspiration" from Sega on more than one occasion. Just some months before Rad Racer, Square released a game called 3-D WorldRunner that looked suspiciously like Space Harrier. When asked about the connection, game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi admitted to "liking Space Harrier" but insisted that his game was intended as a technical showcase rather than as a "tribute. "

I'll be the judge of that.



OFFENDER: 3-D WorldRunner
DEVELOPED BY: Square
RELEASED ON: NES, 1987
TASTES LIKE: Space Harrier

3-D WorldRunner, full title The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner, has the distinction of being the first Square-developed game to be released in the US. It was one of Hironobu Sakaguchi's first games while at Square. In addition to that, it was scored by Nobuo Uematsu. Before Final Fantasy, these yet-to-be giants were attached to some really, really forgettable projects.

The story is even more bare-bones than I've come to expect from NES-era narrative. Alien Serpentbeasts led by Grax have attacked Solar System #517 and it's up to you to stop him. How do you do it? By running. And running. And running some more. Sometimes jumping, but mostly just running. Shooting is optional.

Across eight worlds you are haulin' ass and jumping and running and jumping and sprinting and jumping. For a game that takes its cues from Space Harrier, there seems to be an abundance footwork. Keep reminding yourself as you are playing that this game was made by the team responsible for the most popular RPG franchise on the planet. Maybe you'll distract yourself just enough so that you don't notice your brain alchemizing itself into a big, steaming hunk of elephant turd.

But you can press the select button at any time and go into 3D mode! Oooooh! Stereoscopic 3D! What a treat! Now it's an elephant turd that can actually make your eyes bleed. Who needs 3D television when you've got flimsy cardboard glasses that can break apart after light water damage?



HOW SHAMELESS IS IT?

It happened. It finally happened. This was the game that sent me over the edge.

After pressing start, I just stared slack-jawed at the screen for a solid minute, trying to grasp what exactly it was that I was seeing. I cocked my head to one side and squinted my eyes, as if I was looking at a Magic Eye and the real game would reveal itself if I gazed through the image. I willed myself out of my vegetative state and tried to get on with what was quickly becoming a strange and upsetting evening.

You run! All you do is fucking run! You don't stop moving, you can only control your speed by pressing up or down. It's a rail shooter, but it's missing a key ingredient: Shooting! No, I'm sorry. There is laser blaster that you can acquire, if you are lucky, which can be used until you lose a life whereby it's greedily snatched away from you. Not that it makes sense to shoot at anything in this game as you have better luck jumping over baddies and hoping you land safely.



Look at how this fucker runs! It's like he's got full-blown IBS and is trying to get to the bathroom before he craps his space suit. That's the only way I can explain how awkwardly the WorldRunner moves. The controls are unbelievable sensitive. Anything other than the gentlest of love taps and you are zipping halfway across the screen. Why, in a game about running, in which the game forces you to run, in which the only thing you do is run, is the protagonist a tweaked-out meth head who can't maneuver without having a fucking spaz attack?

Psssh... what am I saying? There's also jumping! Every five seconds you have to jump over a mile-wide canyon. You have to push up to speed up and then hold down the jump button to fly like Evel Knievel, but then the gap abruptly ends and you overshoot the ground and plunge right into the next hole. Why? Because you can't fucking see where you are going! You are expected to know not to hold down the jump button as long for this particular jump so that you may be prepared for the next jump, but then you think that next hap will be narrow as well so you release the jump button early and you plummet into the abyss. You are blind. It's blind jumping. Week-long, half-off special blind jumps! Get them while you are still sane!



There are items, but fat lot of fuck they do for you. There's these dinky stars you can collect for points, but points in this game are about as valuable as points in Whose Line Is It Anyway? There's the aforementioned laser that won't stop enemies from zipping in from the corners and tripping your shit. There's poison mushrooms, the dicks. And then there is invincibility. Good ol' invincibility. Lasts all of four seconds, literally. That gives you just enough time to do nothing.

How do you actually collect these items? Oh, here's the best part! You see those marble pillars on the horizon? Run into one. Smash your face right into the column. As your momentum drops to zilch and you reel back from the impact, an item will pop out, waiting you to reach out and grab it. It's like the game is trying to warn you. When your in-game avatar is giving himself multiple concussions on purpose, you should probably consider finding another activity.

I've yet to discuss how 3-D WorldRunner compares to Space Harrier. Rather than burning fuel in the skies, taking down alien scum with a sweet-ass jet pack and rifle, you are grounded and left to fend for yourself like an unwanted pet. You see the checkerboard ground pattern and you get the sense that this could be what Space Harrier is like if you had your jet pack license revoked for drunken flying. Ironic how the game where you actually use your feet is the one that makes you feel like a paraplegic.



Are you ready for the big kick to the bojangles? At the end of every world, you fight one of the eight Serpentbeasts that fly in and out of the foreground akin to the snake-like foes in Space Harrier. Only now... only now... are you given the ability to fly around and shoot lasers with reckless abandon. The WorldRunner was packing a ride this whole time and was holding out on us, the fucking hoarder.

This game is just annoying. The music is a cacophony of migraine-inducing torture. Was this Uematsu's chaotic period? Are you sure this is the same guy who is praised as one of the greatest if not the greatest game composers of all time? Did he have a seizure at the keyboard? What the hell is this? It's the same song in every level, too! Same song, all the time. My God. Over and over. There's no escaping it!

Everything stops you dead in your tracks. There are these Hamburger Helper motherfuckers who track your movements and push you back when you try to run around them. You can't shoot them either. Heaven help if you should be over a canyon when one of these a-holes appears to bitch smack you.

There was this one level where you have to cross this hundred-mile gap by bouncing on spring platforms, but they aren't in a straight line. No, they zigzag, so you have to hit them just right but you don't know if you can because you can't judge distance in this game. You can't line up properly with the springs because the D-pad sends you careening off into Michigan or some nonsense.

There is no variety at all. The only differences between levels are backgrounds and the concentration of bullshit per square foot. The bosses are all the same. The only difference from the first boss and later bosses is that the latter ones respawn several times before going down for good. Once you've played through one world, I suggest just putting down the controller and taking up knitting or something because you are done.

I couldn't take the monotony, so I decided to zoom to the last level with the help of Game Genie. Unfortunately, the best code only drops you off at World 7. That's just fucked up when not even Game Genie wants to give you a break. I tried to brute force my way through World 7 anyway, dying who knows how many times. Every time you die, you get sent to the start of a level. Die at a boss, you have to start from the beginning of the level prior to the boss. And if you get a game over? Back to the World 1, unless you hold down the A button while pressing start! That's the continue feature I read in the manual! If it is so necessary, why doesn't the game just let me... ya know... continue without having to do button combos? It makes no sense that continuing isn't a default option in a game like this, especially when the manual makes it clear that it is not some ultra-mysterious secret.



World 8 arrives and the game decided to throw a curveball in the 11th hour by giving me canyons that are too wide to jump across with no springs to aid me. I tried jumping at different angles before going back to the manual and learning that you can jump atop pillars. I didn't see any though, not unless you count those fire columns that kill you upon contact. Am I to jump on those? The columns of fire that I've spent the entire game avoiding? Columns of fire that any rational human would avoid like the plague? I tried several times to jump on them and... yep, burned myself. Eventually, I hit the tip of one ever so precisely and bounced to the next. I knew I was never going to repeat this feat when I inevitable had to repeat the mess, so I shut the game off and took a long, cold shower.

I cannot recommend this game at all. At all. How could anyone stand this? The worst part is that every impression I've read about the game online has been, on average, positive. What game were these guys playing? Is this some kind of mass hallucination? Did the Gooch hypnotize them with his unholy magic? It's the fucking glasses, I would stake my brother's life on it.

Positive reviews or not, no one cares about this slop anymore. Good. No one cares. I don't care. You don't care. The damn WorldRunner himself doesn't care. Go have a plate of nachos and let's leave this horrible episode behind us.



THE MADtv SCALE OF LIVE PROGRAMMING ON SATURDAY NIGHT:

The other week, someone asked if I really play through all the games for this feature. I'm like, fuckin' duh! Of course I do!

There are just some things you can't grasp unless you experience them firsthand. I could probably just watch YouTube clips or speed runs and be done with it, but then I wouldn't have the satisfaction of self-discovery. I like not knowing if this will be the week I finally kill myself because I can't stand this shit anymore. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised and put away the cyanide for another day. Who knows!

Most of these games I have never played before. I hunt them down, play them, and deliver my impressions. It's as much a mystery to me as it is to you. You get your jollies, I get mine, and everybody is relatively satisfied. Sounds like we've got a good thing going on.

So that begs the question: Is this week a shit sandwich, a slice of day-old pizza, or a Dairy Queen sundae? Let's discuss Scurge: Hive and find out together.



OFFENDER: Scurge: Hive
DEVELOPED BY: Orbital Media
RELEASED ON: GBA/DS, 2006
TASTES LIKE: Metroid

Orbital Media is (was?) a curious company. It opened up in 2003 and made a few games of above-average quality before vanishing into the ether. Much like a discount ninja. It didn't finish its ninjutsu training but took a few jobs in order to fund a weekend-long sushi binge. Yeah, I like to think that's exactly what happened.

One of its releases is Scurge: Hive, a Metroidvania that comes in two kickin' flavors, original GBA and extra-crispy DS. The only difference between the two is that the map is always visible on the DS's touch screen. I like knowing where I'm going without having to open the status menu every time I enter a new room, so the DS is my weapon of choice. The fact that the game is a Metroidvania doesn't land it in Copycat Central. Neither Metroid nor Castlevania hold a monopoly on non-linear platforming. No, what lands the game in hot water is how the story is note for note identical to Metroid Fusion.

Something goes awry within the planet "Inos" research station. A parasitic organism known as "Scurge" has spread throughout the lab and infected all captive specimens. The "Military" contacts renowned bounty hunter "Jenosa Arma" to investigate the lab and discover what happened to the staff. With a "bio-suit" that can resist the infection of the "Scurge" and a computer A.I. navigator named "Magellan" that highlights save rooms and new targets on the map, "Jenosa" is prepared for the worst.

Good gravy. Whenever I boot up the game, I always expect to see a disclaimer to reads, "The following is based on actual events. The names have been changed to protect the innocent." It's absolutely nuts. And the name "Jenosa Arma"? "Arma"? That's one fucking letter shift from "Aran"! These guys are phoning it in on a pair of soup cans tethered by a string! Should I have any hope for this game at all? At all?



HOW SHAMELESS IS IT?

As you can see from the image and video above, the game plays a teensy bit differently than the Metroid series proper. Instead of a side-scrolling view, Scurge: Hive is played from an -- *drum roll* -- isometric perspective! Fantastic! Who doesn't love some solid isometric platforming? Think of all those classics like... ummm... lemme think... err... Sonic 3D Blast! And... ummm... fuck it.

Isometric platforming is total bullshit. What synapses of the brain must be burned out in order for such a mechanic to be considered appropriate? You have a cross pad with four cardinal directions, so let's make a game where you travel chiefly along diagonal paths. Playing an isometric platformer is a lot like looking at the world through the eye of a Cyclops. Depth perception? Who needs that? I'm almost certain you can make the jump to that suspended pillar on your first try or six.

The game is glitchy, too. Thankfully, the bugs rarely impede gameplay and mostly serve as minor aesthetic annoyances. When Jenosa or an enemy is obscured by an object, a dark silhouette appears to let you know where they are, but sometimes your figure will be shaded when there is nothing blocking your view. Some floor tiles behave like foreground tiles, so standing over them will cause you to vanish. Minor enemies may explode for no reason whatsoever. Hell, there was a curious incident during which I entered noclip mode and started floating over the environment like it was a place mat before passing off the map.



But to be completely honest, the game as a whole is not that bad. It's not whiz-bang amazing, but it's a step up from the utter dogshit I've subjected myself to lately.

Like Samus, Jenosa gains a versatile set of beams of her own, but they serve more specialized purposes than those from Metroid. Each weapon can be fired continuously by holding down the fire button until your charge meter depletes, after which you must wait for enough charge to rebuild. A rock-paper-scissors mechanic is at work whereby certain enemies are susceptible to a certain weapon. Biological creatures are burned by the combustion beam, robots are fried by the EMP beam, and energy-based foes are disintegrated by the dissipator beam. However, enemies can also be made more powerful when hit by the beam they are resilient against. When a room throws foes of all types at you, you'll need to cycle through the three main beams and avoid strengthening one type while attacking another.



As is typical in a Metroidvania, the attributes of all your acquired tools will help to access previously restricted zones. There are also other tools that can slow time, blow through hardened obstacles, and freeze nearby enemies for use as blocks to trigger pressure-sensitive buttons. Jenosa even has a grapple beam that can pull large objects and be used to slingshot across large gaps, a function which I must once again stress is made needlessly cumbersome by the stupid isometric nonsense. Be prepared to miss the landing by falling far to the left or right of the target over and over again.

Enemies will drop floating globs of bio-matter upon their defeat which can be absorbed in order to regain health much like the X parasites from Metroid Fusion. In addition, each glob builds up an experience meter that when leveled up will increase your max health and the recharge rate of your blaster. Amazingly, the game is paced in such a way that unless you are purposely avoiding whole hordes of enemies you will either be completely maxed out or close to it by the endgame. The experience system also eliminates the need for item fetch quests, so those of you who despise hunting down that next trinket to add another percentage point to your completion rate can rest soundly.

The constant threat throughout the game is not the enemies but the infection meter at the top of the screen. Jenosa's suit only slows the spread of the Scurge through her body, and once the meter hits 100% her health will begin to deplete rapidly. Save rooms double as decontamination stations; there is always one nearby. You shouldn't really feel the threat of total infection unless you are playing on one of the higher difficulty levels. Sometimes, you may feel bold enough to hold out on saving as long as possible and thus find that the infection has reached the critical stage, but even then you can absorb the bio-matter to regain enough health to last you until that next decontamination.



That's nice and all, but Scurge: Hive still fails in a few other areas. Without item pickups, there is no purpose for exploration. You enter a room, clear out some jokers, unlock a gate, and then move on. After you have completed a specific mission, that zone of the lab becomes inaccessible from the central hub. Rooms become nothing more than battle arenas as you face wave after wave of critters. The situation grows especially monotonous in the final stretch of the game when you traverse the tunnels of the planet's forest and more and more of the map keeps opening up with no end in sight. As such, the game doesn't invite a second or third playthrough.

On the plus side, the sprite work is amazing. Everything is so fluid and colorful! Jenosa's hair is especially ridiculous. Look at that ponytail! She puts Nariko from Heavenly Sword to shame! And the music! It's another solid effort by Jake Kaufman a.k.a. virt. You know, the guy who did the music for Shantae and Contra 4.

Then we've got bosses out the wazoo. These cats will murder you. I'm serious. Even if the rest of the game seems to drag on, these guys will slap you awake then ream you from behind.



So the game turned out all right in the end, surprisingly. It's tougher than any Metroid I've played, but then again it's not really like Metroid at all. Okay, sure, the backstory is a terrible copy-paste job and there actually is a Metroid-ish jellyfish creature that appears a few hours in which drains your health upon latching to your head. Aside from that, the game does its own thing. If you can get over the game's sour bits, you might find it worth your while.

It would seem that my profanity today has been pretty modest. I know you guys have expectations, so let me play catch up. *ahem* SHIT, FUCK, BALLSACK, FUCKIN' HORSESHIT ON A POGO STICK OF ASS, WHOREFACE, ASS-GRABBIN' DILLWEED TURD, COCK-STROKER, FUCK NUGGETS, TIT BASTARD, ASS MASTER, MOTHERFUCKIN' JEAN RENO!

Happy?

THE CORPORATE-SPONSORED SCALE OF THE MADE-FOR-TV BEATLES:

I am an unoriginal hack. What are you doing? Stop reading my slop! Don't you have any scruples?

I write a series of articles critiquing rip-offs of popular video games that is itself a rip-off of similar online works. Some would call that meta, but I would call it cheap and lazy. This whole mess started when I wanted to do my own version of "Games Time Forgot," but there are already about fifty bazillion clowns out there with startup blogs and YouTube accounts trying to increase the size of their e-peen by blathering on about obscure games that they only discovered on Wikipedia the week prior. Who needs another one of those?

Look at this shit! Look at my feeble attempts at conveying anger and frustration through coarse language and childish ranting. Who do I think I am? The Angry Video Game Nerd? What kind of delusional dillhole must I be to believe that? He's an Internet pioneer who became an overnight success by smashing the retro goggles of thousands of gaming geeks. He is consistently clever and funny, his Jersey accent only adding to his character's charm. I am just Tony the Schmuck, a whitewashed Puerto Rican kid who speaks no Spanish and can't even roll his 'R's. The only way I can thrive is off the backs of others!

It's thanks to your indifference towards basic standards of integrity that I can get away with such repulsive shenanigans. God have mercy on you should one day someone make the mistake of paying me for my services. You'll really be in deep doo-doo then.

Since no one is willing to stop me, I'm gonna talk about The Krion Conquest.



OFFENDER: The Krion Conquest
DEVELOPED BY: Vic Tokai
RELEASED ON: NES, 1991
TASTES LIKE: Mega Man

Vic Tokai is a company that knows a thing or two about capitalizing on what the kiddies are playing at a given time. It is chiefly a telecommunications company that couldn't help itself from trying its hand at game development once the Famicom came to town. Maybe it should have shown some restraint.

The Krion Conquest is the company's answer to that Man of Rock dude that shoots the things at the things and makes 'em dead. According to the game's intro, the Krion Empire descended upon the Earth in 1999. Conventional weaponry had no effect on the empire's robot forces and soon the entire planet was subjugated. However, the robots do in fact have a single weakness: MAGIC! It is for that reason that you, the witch Francesca, have been summoned to send those mechanical miscreants back to the depths of space! It's a shame that Lavos is scheduled to raze the planet any day now, but you gotta pick your battles.

Where did Francesca come from? Who is that mysterious stranger in the opening who broke Francesca's seal? Who is the leader of the Krions? Apart from the prologue text, there is no elaboration on anything whatsoever in-game or in the manual. It would be great to have a little context in a game about a witch battling the Robot Revolution. From what I hear, there are extra cutscenes in the Japanese version. Why the think tanks at Vic Tokai would remove crucial story bits during localization is the biggest mystery of all. Maybe they thought American children don't use their imaginations enough.



HOW SHAMELESS IS IT?

Did you read my overview of Power Blazer? You know how I said that game borrowed too many ideas from Mega Man? I've changed my mind. Power Blazer is not a Mega Man clone anymore. As long as The Krion Conquest exists on the same plane of reality, I cannot in good conscience criticize Power Blazer for its shortcomings.

This game is disgusting. I feel like punching a third-degree burn victim. What is this? I don't even. It's just... I can't... bleh. Blagablaga blah! Pfffffffffffffft! Wuguwuguwugu! Gaaaaaaah!

I... I... *sigh*... I'll break it down for ya. The main character Francesca is quite literally a sprite edit of Mega Man. The big googly eyes, the wide stride of their run animations, the way they lean forward to fire a shot, all of it is the same. They both have a charge shot. They both have the same health bar in the upper-left corner of the screen. Jesus Christ, they both die in an explosive pattern of pulsating lights! Francesca is Mega Man with a magic cane and cleavage!



You are greeted to new levels with flashing text warning you to "get ready." Oh, I'm ready alright. Ready to stuff my balls into a food processor! There really is no other way to describe the sensation of déjà vu in this game other than genital mutilation. It's like the Bizarro World of the Mega Man universe. I don't need to tell you that the enemies are cheap facsimiles of Dr. Wily's mechanical lackeys. I don't need to tell you that the bosses are revived jalopies from the rejected Robot Master scrap heap. Just look at the videos and images on this page and you'll know. You'll know.

Let me reiterate my stance on video game clones. If a game is fun and cohesive then it could be a game about old ladies blowing chimpanzees and I wouldn't be bothered in the slightest. But when a game cribs from a proven template and can't even get the simple things right, I'm gonna be pretty peeved. As such, it's the deviations from the Mega Man formula that really drive me batshit Looney Tunes.

You don't choose in which order you tackle levels. Instead, the game is a linear run through five stages of increasing blandness. It's hard to distinguish exactly what type of environments you are in because the same generic tile patterns are used for everything. Backgrounds are unexciting patchworks of cold steel plating and level design is the epitome of minimal work ethic. The worlds couldn't look more boring if they tried.

Unlike Mega Man, stages are broken up into three subsections and a boss room. There is no sign or landmark to mark the end of a section. You just jump into a hole and poof! Area complete! Death at any time will send you back to the beginning of that particular section. For some "particular" (read: "bullshit") reason, death during a boss battle will send you back to the beginning of the third section rather than to the start the battle. Your health doesn't refill between sections, so you are doubly screwed when you confront a boss with a single hit point left. And what's with the Wily logo rip-off in the boss chambers? Why is it the letter 'A' instead of 'K'? Does the name of the enemy leader begin with an 'A'? Explanations, people!



This game doesn't fuck around. There are no continues. If you exhaust your lives, it's back to the title screen. There is no password. Health pumpkins and 1-ups drop at a pathetically low rate. You muck up, your unborn grandchildren will feel it. Who I wouldn't kill for an E Tank system. You couldn't have copied that little feature, could you Victor? Can I call you, Victor? You're a jerk, Victor.

Francesca's skill set expands upon Mega Man's, but for every new trick in her bag, like ducking or shooting straight up, there is a wonderful new quirk along for the ride! Mega Man has three Mega Buster levels, a standard shot, a fully charged shot, and a medium-strength shot that is fired when you release the 'B' button before the charge is maxed out. In Francesca's case, instead of an intermediary shot she has nothing. If you release the button before the charge bar at the bottom of the screen gives the go-ahead, your charge drops back to zero and that's it. If you play Mega Man like I do then you like to keep your finger on that 'B' button at all times. In The Krion Conquest, if you are building up a charge when a helicopter fucker dive bombs you, your instinct will be to unload on his ass. If you aren't fully charged... ha ha, here's an eyeful of dick.

In a game where tight platforming jumps are required, it's crucial to be ably to defend yourself in mid-air. Better check your expectations at the door because The Krion Conquest is dancing to its own rhythm! In Mega Man, you can fire your weapon at any time during a jump. You can shoot during your ascent, at the apex, or during the fall. In The Krion Conquest, if you fire during the ascent, your jump arc abruptly ends and you plummet back to the ground. To put it another way, if you were to press the 'A' and 'B' buttons at the same time, you'd shoot but remain planted to the floor. Should you be jumping over a bed of spikes and a baddie zooms in from off-screen, impalement will be in your future whether you shoot the guy or not. Victor must have taxed the NES hardware so much for the game to be unable to recognize two inputs at once.



The last acquisition from Mega Man is a pause menu where you can choose an appropriate weapon from a list and thereby change the color of your outfit. Classy, Victor. There are only five weapons total but they are all available from the start and don't require ammo. You have fire magic that transforms you into a screen-clearing phoenix but drains a sizeable portion of your health, freeze magic with a predictable function, ball magic that launches a projectile that ricochets around the room, and shield magic that produces a stationary ethereal wall to protect against frontal attacks. Aside from the ball, all are about as useful as the Top Spin.

The final magic is your flying broomstick, the game's answer to the Rush Jet. Since it requires no ammo, the broom gets put to good use from the moment the game begins. While the Rush Jet is controlled by D-pad input, the broom's flight path is controlled by the direction in which Francesca fires her cane. That means you can only move from side to side and straight up. Want to dive to avoid an incoming attack? Not happening. Thinking of jumping over an attack that you can't dive under? The broom vanishes instantly if your feet disconnect from its handle. Comforting, isn't it? So glad that I get to use it all the time.



How could this game be so bad? It had everything it needed to succeed! All Victor had to do was copy a successful game and change a few art assets. The work was done for you, Victor! You had to literally think, "How can I make this game extra shitty?" That's the only way you could have let things get this out of hand. Can I even call it laziness? It requires hard work to produce something this terrible.

Or maybe it is laziness. Laziness distilled to its purest essence. Laziness that is so beautifully repulsive that the only way to fathom its existence is to believe that it was planned down to the last detail. How else could you explain the game's "thrilling" climax as seen below?



Yeah, I'm fucking done here.

THE PROFESSOR CHAOS SCALE OF "SIMPSONS DID IT":

When Super Smash Bros. landed in 1999, it turned the fighting genre on its head. By incorporating platforming elements and a greatly simplified fighting control scheme, Nintendo successfully introduced the party fighter. Now, it wasn't necessarily the first such title (it seems to have drawn heavy inspiration from the 1994 arcade game The Outfoxies), but you can't deny the impact it had on consumers as well as its influence on other developers.

Not to downplay the solid infrastructure that is responsible for the franchise's enduring success, but let's be real. People bought Smash Bros. because they wanted to kick the ever-loving Christ out of Pikachu. The game would have been nothing, nothing, without the legendary motley crew of Nintendo mascots, a fact that Sakurai understood when he pitched the original prototype. For a game of such scope, it's imperative for the cast to be both memorable and varied.

So what happens when someone creates a Smash Bros. wannabe but forgets to include characters that anyone gives a shit about? I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't have an example.



OFFENDER: Onimusha Blade Warriors
DEVELOPED BY: Capcom
RELEASED ON: PS2, 2004
TASTES LIKE: Super Smash Bros.

Let me preface the rest of this article by saying that I have nothing but love for the Onimusha franchise, one of my favorite new IPs in the past ten years. It's basically Resident Evil, right down to the pre-rendered environments and tank controls, only more action driven and set in feudal Japan. Totally amazing. Know what isn't amazing? The cast of characters.

For those unfamiliar with the Onimusha series, it is a reinterpretation of the events during the Warring States period, specifically Nobunaga Oda's conquest and later Hideyoshi Toyotomi's unification of Japan. As such, every pivotal character is either based on an actual period figure or is related to one. That's all well and good, but if I want a history lesson I'll take an East Asian studies class (which I did, come to think of it). Besides, we've been through this before. Give Nobunaga a break, guys! In the interest of ending incessant civil war, the man employed a number innovative battle tactics and economic policies for the good of the nation. How do we respect him? By demonizing him, literally! He expanded trade beyond China, fostered Western relations, and established a free market system that gave power to the individual. What a monster!

Across the entire franchise, the only character I have any interest in is the time-traveling Frenchman Jacques Blanc from Onimusha 3, but that's only because he's modeled after international badass Jean Reno. Is Jean Reno in Onimusha Blade Warriors? Of course not. Blade Warriors gathers characters from the first and second game and pits them against one another in a four-player free-for-all. Inafune and his Capcom posse must have thought their million-selling franchise was on the verge of total consumer disinterest after a scant two games to honestly believe that a party brawler was in any way a necessary venture.

I'm sorry, did I say four-player? Technically this game is four-player, but I only see two controller ports on the PS2. Do you know anyone with the multitap? No one bought the damn multitap. Part of that PlayStation experience, right Sony? Who needs friends anyway! You can watch DVDs now!

But that's another can of worms. For now, let's brawl.



HOW SHAMELESS IS IT?

Well, I can tell you that this game definitely does not play like Smash Bros.. If you are playing Blade Warriors fresh off of one of the previous titles in the franchise then you should feel quite familiar. The only significant change to the controls is the addition of a jump button not present in the series proper, but it's an ultimately useless addition since aerial combat is non-existent and environmental obstacles that require jumping appear infrequently. Battle arenas are split into multiple tiers that are visited by double tapping up or down, further highlighting the jump function's redundancy. Other than that, you have access to the same repertoire as before including the ability to absorb souls from downed enemies in order to regain health, obtain magic, or power up weapons.

The basics are near identical to mainline Onimusha; that would be totally fine if not for one important detail. The game plays like an action game when it should play like a fighting game. Could you imagine if there was Street Fighter spin-off that paid homage to Mega Man but no effort was made to adapt the controls to fit the parameters of Mega Man game design? It would be awkward at best and unplayable at worst. Though not unplayable, Blade Warriors doesn't have much in the way of a combo system (other than the 1-2-3 combo you perform by mashing the square button repeatedly) or variety in attack strategy (aside from attack, attack, attack, then pray you've broken the enemy's guard so that you can actually inflict some damage). The only technique that prevents the game from being completely shallow is the critical slash performed either by attacking the nanosecond an opponent's attack animation begins or by guarding an attack precisely as it comes swinging down and immediately following up with an attack. This is a Herculean feat to pull off in the main games, but in a fast-paced fighting game environment it's not even worth the sweat. Chances are you'll pull it off by complete accident, but the moment you become conscious of your actions you'll lose your momentum. What should be an advanced skill becomes a fucking roll of the dice.



Smash Bros. is famous for boiling all major actions to two buttons modified by simple tilts of the control stick. Blade Warriors on the other hand features a multitude of actions that just don't belong in a fighting game. You have a ready stance that locks on to nearby opponents, useful in a 3D world but pointless on a 2D plane where enemies can only ever be in front or behind you. You have a kick button that's meant to break enemy guards, but because combos don't exist you probably won't be able to attack before your opponent regains composure. There is the jump that I've already gone over. Finally, there is your basic attack button and the knowledge that every match will boil down to who can mash it the fastest. There are a number of modifications such as rising slashes and disarms but their level of usefulness varies wildly. In short, it's a fighting system that doesn't encourage high-level play.

Like Smash Bros., Blade Warriors features a single-player campaign that differs from the one-on-one tournament style of typical fighting games. Unlike Smash Bros., this mode perhaps has more merit than the multiplayer simply because the former somewhat convinces you that you are playing an actual Onimusha whereas the latter somewhat convinces you that you wasted your money on a half-assed slice of cow pie. You choose any of the available characters and play through a series of levels with specific goals such as clearing all enemies in a certain time limit or absorbing a certain number of souls. Every so many levels you will square off against a boss, some which are exclusive to the story mode and some which are available or can be unlocked for play.



Then there are the characters. Aside from the series heroes Samanosuke Akechi and Jubei Yagyu, you can take command of their second-string support crew or a number of demons. The games didn't have many characters to begin with so a lot of inclusions in the roster really scrape the bottom of the barrel. Like the random grunt soldier! Yeah, the model used for all the cannon-fodder NPCs! Or the fearsome Marcellus who may or may not look like a bitch! And finally, there is the all-important zombie, the very first enemy you encounter in the very first game! It's the goomba of the Onimusha world. No one wants to play as the fucking goomba. That's just sad. What's sadder is how the character selection screen is a direct rip-off of the "disembodied hand dragging and dropping tokens" gimmick from Smash Bros..

Of course, there are unlockable characters like Miyamoto Musashi and Big Bad Nobunaga himself. If you have Onimusha 3 save data on your memory card, you'll unlock one special character from that game. No, it's not Jean Reno. Fuckin' A. What a cock tease, Capcom, I don't even. Throw us a bone here. And they do! There are two extra-special bones that keep this game from being entirely nonessential. Enter MegaMan.EXE and Zero!



Yes! Inafune squeezed in these little guys hoping to drum interest for the Game Boy Advance Mega Man titles on the market as well as to attract fans of the Blue Bomber. More so than Solid Snake and Sonic's guest appearances in SSBB, Mega and Zero steal the show, run it to Mexico, and use the money they earned from hawking the thing to spend a night with a couple of Tijuana hookers. Once you've unlocked these guys there is no reason to play as anyone else. Don't believe me? Look up Onimusha Blade Warriors on YouTube and you'll find that literally 90% of all the videos feature one or both of these guys. That is the final word on whether the Onimusha cast has any appeal whatsoever.

Anyway, I'm jumping around here. Focus, focus, focus. Story mode. Right. So there are two types of story paths, one for heroes and another for villains. As the heroes, you face wave after wave of demon hordes before tangling with Nobunaga in his underworld lair. As the demons, you wage war against the human scum and ultimately confront the Onimusha team of Samanosuke and Jubei. Each character follows a different path with different challenges and different bosses with the final level always being the aforementioned confrontations. As I said before, the story mode plays just like the series proper minus the atmosphere and exploration. In other words, it's a grind. I won't lie. Onimusha games are grind-fests, especially once you've sufficiently powered up your character and just brute-force your way past squads of easily dissected meat.

You collect red souls and use them to raise your attack, defense, and magic stats between levels. Your beefed-up character can then be used in follow-up runs on higher difficulty levels should you choose to do so. You collect Victory souls which are used as currency in the shop to purchase healing medicine and such. As you complete challenges and beat individual stories, you gain new weapons and new story paths. You even have opportunities to visit the Phantom Zone, a sort of endurance test where you have to clear multiple floors of increasingly more difficult enemies with no chance to save in between with the payoff being the game's more powerful weapons and tools.



Of course, no fighting game would be complete without a cheap-ass final boss, so I'm happy to announce that Nobunaga keeps that tradition alive. His lair is filled with poison pools that drain your health and flame-spewing devil heads that force you to keep moving, none of which do any damage to him. He has perfect defense, perfect offense, and the support rifle-toting flunkies that appear to piss in your Cheerios. Your best bet is to absorb magic orbs and unleash them in his face, but you have to be standing right on top of treasure chests when you open them because the big bastard can steal that shit from across the room with unbelievably unfair Magneto powers, thus granting him magic attacks that are twice as damaging and three times as effective as your own. You will die so many times against this joker even if the rest of the campaign was a cakewalk to you, but thankfully after death you return to the weapon upgrade screen and use any red souls in your possession before the rematch.

Speaking of death, the way game deaths are handled is a bit of a peeve. You are given no option to restart a match immediately and must always visit the weapon screen. That's already a minor nuisance, but when you figure that it takes ten seconds to load the menu and ten more seconds to load a level, compounded by the number of times Nobunaga fucks your shit, that's a good portion of potential playtime wasted fuming at blank loading screens.



I realize I've wasted most of your time rambling about stuff you don't care about. What about the multiplayer? This is where the connection to Smash Bros. becomes apparent. You can play free-for-alls or with color-coded teams in matches with adjustable time, stock, and item drop rate parameters. The big kicker is the item selection that has been expanded from what was available in story mode. In single-player, you have souls, kunais and shurikens, and health and magic restoration medallions, but multiplayer drops a few curious additions like a fan... a giant hammer... a magic wand... a beam sword... a homerun bat... good Lord, they literally call it the "Homerun Bat" in-game!

If you so choose, you can play as the upgraded characters from story mode, but unless you put in the effort to play through the game with all the characters and unlock all their best weapons then you will be splitting the roster into "new hotness" and "old and busted" camps. Not that it matters because by far the biggest cop out is how every character plays the same. Exactly the same. People complained when there were three Star Fox reps in Brawl, but Blade Warriors really goes the distance! Sure, some may be faster than others or have a more powerful magic attack, but no one has any unique signature moves. The only characters that have any legitimately unique moves are Mega and Zero with their blasters, the only non-item projectile attacks in the entire game (as if you needed another reason to not pick anyone else).

The arenas feature highly detailed environments that often work against players. Whenever the camera zooms out, characters begin to blend in with the background. When you've got characters wearing intricate armor patterns painted in a washed-out color scheme, you need something like the Smash Bros. player arrow above their heads or a glow or something. Another downside to all that detail is that sometimes it's hard to tell where you can pass from one tier to the next. Sometimes you may think you can scale a wall but are unable to do so whether because the game doesn't allow it or because you are a few inches away from the appropriate shifting point. The "up" button is also a secondary jump button, so if you don't move to the next tier you'll just be hopping down like a fucking retarded kangaroo while whatever it is you were trying to get away from smacks you right in the God damn teeth.



I took the game to a party this weekend to gauge how it would be received in the appropriate environment. When starting up, the first question I was asked was, "Is Jean Reno in there?" No. Jean Reno isn't there. It's the crime of the century, I know. When I got a match underway, I had my ass handed to me immediately. I, the one with the experience, the one who played through the single-player mode several times and conquered the Phantom Realm, was bested by those damnable critical attacks. What is the point of developing skill when this is what the game boils down to? I quickly switched to the strategy I used to finally take down Nobunaga, one which involves shifting tiers and waiting for opponents to follow. Whenever you move to a new tier, there is a window during which your character is wide open, so it's never a good idea to shift right to where your enemy is standing. It's also a cheap way to win any match.

Another juicy tidbit is that when you lose a life, you respawn in the same spot where you died. You have less of an invincibility window than in Smash Bros., so the invitation to capitalize on easy spawn camping is too tasty to pass up. By this time, we had had enough. We put the controllers down and walked away. No gameplay depth? A roster of who-gives-a-fucks with identical movesets? No Jean Reno? How did this game ever think it could touch the magic that is Smash Bros.?



This game left me with a sour taste for the whole Onimusha franchise. The single-player mode was everything I enjoyed about the main games, only cut up and processed into something that was merely adequate. And when that adequate single-player mode is more enjoyable than what is supposed to be title's main draw, the multiplayer, then you can understand my indigestion. This game needed to be more of a rip-off of than it was. That's the worst part! I really wanted this game to play like Smash Bros..

Why did I spend so much time playing this game? It was such a time sink! I should have realized after the second day that it wasn't going to drastically change and turn into a shining paragon of genre excellence. But I kept at it for two weeks, for what? What was I waiting for?



What was I waiting for.



What.



Oh my.

THE DEEP IMPACT SCALE OF ARMAGEDDON... OR IS IT THE ARMAGEDDON SCALE OF DEEP IMPACT? I HAVE NO CLUE:

I don't know why people liked the NES so much. Okay, I lie. I know perfectly well why people liked the NES so much, but just bear with me on this one.

If you give someone born in the past ten to fifteen years an NES and a stack of your favorite games from that era, I highly doubt they'd leave with a favorable impression or at least one that in any way matches your own. It's not so much because of the dated graphics and audio but because of the backwater mechanical conventions that plagued just about every title. Even the best of the best featured concepts that we'd find dated by today's standards, so naturally the less savory or well-known games would be triply so.

I'm talking really bone-headed decisions here, like limiting players to a single life or manufacturing no-escape situations whereby players would be forced to take leaps of faith in the hope that their actions will eventually yield positive results. Basically, I'm talking about games in which difficulty arises not from a particular challenging but balanced set of obstacles but from good ol' fashioned, grade A, high quality, no-preservatives-added bullshit.

Guess which side of the track 8 Eyes falls on.



OFFENDER: 8 Eyes
DEVELOPED BY: Thinking Rabbit
RELEASED ON: NES, 1990
TASTES LIKE: Castlevania

Allow me to read you the game's thrilling backstory straight from the manual:

"After hundreds of years of chaos, mankind has finally emerged from the ruins of nuclear war. This world of the distant future has once again flourished under the guidance of the Great King, who harnessed the power of the 8 Eyes to rebuild the planet."

Hold it.

The team at Thinking Rabbit did something that, to use the proper industry verbiage, is known as "making shit up as you go along." None of this is mentioned in-game. By all appearances, the game takes place during the 19th century. We are supposed to believe that the nuclear fallout has eradicated all evidence of technological progress made just prior to the war. There are no remnants of that age. What we find are animated skeletons and vicious man-eating bats that we are told are mutants born of the nuclear waste that once covered the land.

Really? Is it that much of a stretch to say that these monsters were given life through black magic? Magic is present throughout the game. Does it really need justification? Are children's minds incapable of accepting the fantastic as is? Or is it because no one reads manuals anyway that the writers decide to have a little fun?

It reminds me of the manual for the NES port of Metal Gear. Remember that shit? The Outer Heaven takeover was orchestrated by Muammar Gaddafi... I'm sorry, Vermon CaTaffy, a shepard-turned-dicator who grew up with 27 sisters. Since the revelation of Big Boss as the true mastermind came towards the end of the game, I could probably buy this story as the original mission briefing meant to mislead Solid Snake. However, this CaTaffy is mentioned once again in the manual for the US-developed pseudo-sequel Snake's Revenge as if no one was paying attention.

The guys who were paid to come up with this slop must have been the star pupils in their creative writing classes... in the second grade, but I digress.

Back to the story, the King's eight Dukes want to rule the world as thus steal the 8 Eyes for their own nefarious purposes. You are Orin the Falconer, charged with retrieving the 8 Eyes from the Dukes' manors in such post-apocalyptic locales as Spain, Egypt, and India. Funny, you wouldn't think that the remnants of a civilization lost to the ages would not only remember and maintain the geographic divisions of pre-war nations but also the architecture of those countries' respective cultures circa 1890. Odd how that works out.



HOW SHAMELESS IS IT?

The architecture is familiar in more ways than one. The sprite work mimics that of the Castlevania series quite closely. From the bricks on the floor, walls, and steps to the gothic backgrounds and supernatural spectres, you may often mistake your surroundings for the eerie halls of Dracula's stronghold. The sprite for Orin even looks like Simon Belmont in his Simon's Quest apparel.

Whereas Simon wields a whip of considerable range, Orin flicks a toothpick that is supposed to be a short sword. It's always a treat to play a game in which closing in for attack almost always ensures that you will take damage thanks to enemy "death touch." To escape injury, you have to do this dance in which you slide up to a baddie after its attack cycle is complete, stab once, then run away and hope that you haven't run away to the point where approaching it for a follow-up assault will land you just outside of that safety window. You may think ducking will help you, but every attack, including projectiles that ought to pass just over your head, will damage you.



Like Simon, Orin has a selection of sub-weapons that consume item power. In Castlevania item power is restored by collecting hearts, while in 8 Eyes it's restored by collecting crosses. The manual even refers to them as "crosses" which is odd considering Nintendo's policy at the time to censor religious iconography. Anyway, these crosses power weapons such as the Molotov Cocktail (essentially Holy Water that could barely light a match), the boomerang, and the gun. Ooh, is this proof of an advanced era of weaponry? Please. It looks like a modern handgun in the manual but more like a percussion pistol in the game.

Unlike Simon, Orin has a travel companion, the falcon Cutrus. Cutrus can be released at any time and commanded to dive bomb enemies at your behest. When unleashed, it flies back and forth from one side of the screen to the other, so should you miss an attack opportunity you either have to wait for it to do its rounds or recall it and send it back out. Cutrus also has its own health bar for added inconvenience. I don't know why you should be forced to monitor its vitals since it isn't likely that the bird will fall in battle. In my entire playthrough, Cutrus only died once and I couldn't have been more relieved.



But you are forced to use it. Certain enemies are only harmed by its talons, which confused me the first time I encountered one. Aside from attacking, it can pick up items that escape your reach. Like in Castlevania, certain bricks can be broken, unveiling power-ups, but many such bricks are lodged deep within walls and out of range of your sword (and really, what isn't in this game?). Who should save the day then but Cutrus and its ability to phase through solid objects. Ultimately, the falcon is an unnecessary concern in the single-player adventure. However, there is a co-op mode in which player two gains full control over the bird's flight and attack, but who really wants to play as the stupid bird?

Seven castles are laid out on a stage select screen while the final one is only opened once the others have been conquered. Now... get this... according to the manual, defeating a boss gives you a new sword which is only effective against one other boss, sorta like Mega Man. However, the swords bestow no new power nor do they make normal enemies any easier to defeat. A new sword automatically replaces your old one, so unless you hit the castles in the correct order you will be in big trouble. All the problems you have fighting low-level grunts with a short-ass sword and a dumbass parakeet are magnified ten-fold during boss encounters. The best part is that death sends you reeling back to the stage select screen. Ha ha.



But wait! The manual gives you a hint! "The sword you start with is weak and only good for a country near France." That can apply to either Spain or Germany. I chose Germany. It was a 50-50 chance and I made the wrong choice. I kept getting my ass handed to me, forcing me to plod through the castle repeatedly... and Orin plods, that's another carryover from Castlevania. I would always reach the boss chamber with a sliver of health left, allowing me no opportunity to brute force my way through the German bastard's spinning shurikens of doom. After one too many failures, I turned to the ever helpful GameFAQs and learned that, oh, I should have gone to Spain first. How stupid of me. Tee hee.

The levels themselves are straightforward A-to-B affairs with the exception of Germany and Africa. Those two are mazes of the Super Mario Bros. variety. Know what I'm talking about? Unless you travel through the correct doors, up and down the correct sets of stairs, and into the correct pits, all in the correct sequence, you will just loop and loop until you give up from exhaustion. What clues are you given? Why, none at all. You have to jump in the first pit, go down the stairs that takes you back to the same room, jump into the pit in that room to take you the same room again, then jump into that same pit once again in order to advance to the next room, but at some point you will return to that first room and think that you have screwed up some order when in fact you are on the right path and fuck up the whole thing andhavetostartalloveragainandyoufeellikeatooland...

Password time.

I whisked myself to the last level, the House of Ruth, which does the boss rematch thing that everyone loves so much. You are given full health and item power after every match, a necessity considering that the precious level order you guessed through constant trial and error (or discovered via walkthrough) in order to use the appropriate sword against the appropriate Duke means nothing when every boss from here on in has no weakness. And yes, dying at any point in this gauntlet will send you back to the beginning. Then, like a cherry on top of a bullshit à la mode, you discover you can avoid the final boss's attacks by ducking whereas there is not a single other enemy in this game, boss or otherwise, against which this strategy is effective. Wundervoll.



The game doesn't quite end once Ruth has been defeated. You received one of the 8 Eyes from each Duke and now must place them on pedestals in the correct order and the game will not end unless you do so. You can either guess the correct order (there are only 40,320 possible combinations!), or you could have found the hidden clue scrolls in each of the previous levels. Oh? Didn't you remember to collect them? I hope you did, because you can't return to conquered stages. Oopsie.

What awaits you once you set the 8 Eyes in the right slots? A SECOND QUEST! Yippee! Faster enemies! Yahoo! Hell no! I punched in the password to take me right to the pedestal room of the second quest and set down the 8 Eyes in the same order (it never changes, thank God), and I was rewarded with... a third quest. Holy shit. You serious? Password. Pedestals. Ordered sequence. Final final message:

"VERY IMPRESSIVE! I truly thought that no mere mortal would ever be reading the statement here, at the end of the third quest of 8 Eyes. You have reached the end of this game. I give my deepest congratulations to one who has beaten one of the most challenging games seen on the home video screen. Thank you, and look for more extremely challenging games from your favorite game masters TAXAN!!!"

Oh, I love these fourth-wall shenanigans. These guys at Taxan, who by the way was the US publisher and is therefore taking credit for a game it did not make, have the gall to call this one of the most challenging games of all time and to wear that fact like a fucking badge of honor. No, I do NOT look forward to anything else you guys will spew out. Why on God's green Earth would you think anyone would favor you over other far more talented companies? Do you get your rocks off on this brand of doucebaggery?

This is not a fun game. Could you tell that? Nothing about this is worth your time. At first I thought it would share more than a passing similarity to Castlevania, but after ten seconds of play it became apparent that this was something far more sinister than your average clone. How could anyone stomach playing these levels over and over after the umpteenth death animation? In what way does this game hint at any smidgen of fun? My God, not even the demo play makes this look exciting! You wait a few seconds on the title screen for the video to run and... Orin just stands there! Yes, the fucker just stands there! How exciting! It's a game where you stand still! Make him jump or crouch or do the moonwalk or something!



How am I supposed to believe that the world is in danger when after you defeat the bosses you sit down with them for tea? TEA TIME!? Yes! You beat a boss and get treated to a cut scene with Orin and the Duke you supposedly murdered, the Duke who holds 1/8 of the balance of Earth, sitting down at a dining table as a fucking skeleton butler serves you drinks on saucer plates. The same thing happens after you beat Ruth, too. Is there some unspoken code of honor at work here? Am I supposed to be threatened by these clowns? Besides, do you think that after the Bullshit 500 I had to run just to get here that tea and fucking crumpets is going to make everything all better?

That Nintendo Seal of Quality can bite my ass.

THE JAWSOME SCALE OF THOSE OTHER ADOLESCENT MUTANTS: