Author Archives: GI - Brandon Beatty

X‑Men: Children of the Atom — Issue 55

Posted on by

X‑Men start the par­ty right with first Ver­sus entry

If you’re an old head video gamer like us here at Gam­ing Insur­rec­tion, you know that Cap­com and Mar­vel was THE pow­er­house cou­ple in video games dur­ing the 1990s. Start­ing in 1993 with The Pun­ish­er arcade game, Mar­vel and Cap­com estab­lished the foun­da­tion of the mod­ern com­ic book and ani­me fight­ing game scene. Dur­ing the ’90s I stum­bled across a game that helped build the path to Cap­com’s and Mar­vel’s glo­ry: X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom.

Based on the 1993 X‑Men Fatal Attrac­tions sto­ry­line, Mag­ne­to, with the help of the X‑Men’s most for­mi­da­ble foes, plans to launch an elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse on the Earth, caus­ing dis­rup­tion to its mag­net­ic fields, leav­ing human­i­ty in a Dark Age. With Earth­’s future in the bal­ance, the X‑Men must bat­tle once more.

COTA’s graph­ics are crisp and clear thanks to Cap­com’s CPS‑2 board, which is revered in devel­op­ing fight­ing games for arcade cab­i­nets. I felt with the CPS‑2 board, it was easy for me to know which char­ac­ter I was using and who was the oppo­nent. The back­grounds had plen­ty of col­or that was bal­anced instead of placed hap­haz­ard­ly, and sprites were nice­ly drawn and beau­ti­ful to look at. The music is excel­lent, fit­ting in with the clas­sic Cap­com aes­thet­ic and cre­at­ing a nice vibe for fighting. 

My dis­likes of COTA are few but can be frus­trat­ing. Cap­com, while known for hav­ing inno­v­a­tive fight­ing game con­trols, need­ed to refine COTA’s con­trol scheme. It’s hard to get invest­ed as a new­com­er. The auto­mat­ic block­ing, while seen as help­ful, can be dan­ger­ous and unhelp­ful to new­com­ers also. And, the biggest mys­tery I had was why Cap­com was aggres­sive­ly push­ing a Street Fight­er char­ac­ter into a X‑Men game, forc­ing me to believe Aku­ma is an offi­cial part of X‑Men lore? Cap­com could have let Aku­ma sit this one out, even if he had just been in Super Street Fight­er II Tur­bo. There were more Street Fight­er games com­ing, obviously.

X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom has con­tributed to the estab­lished part­ner­ship between com­pa­nies with leg­endary prop­er­ties beloved the world over. While the future of Mar­vel and Cap­com is uncer­tain, it’s safe to say that from this union, fight­ing game and com­ic book fans ate well in these ’90s fight­ing streets.

X‑Men vs. Street Fighter — Issue 55

Posted on by

X marks the spot with fan­tas­tic third entry in Ver­sus series

Are you ready, True Believ­ers? In keep­ing pace with this issue’s trib­ute to Mar­vel vs. Cap­com, I’m intro­duc­ing anoth­er game that helped make this series renowned by com­ic book afi­ciona­dos and fight­ing games fans alike. Yep, you bet your excel­sior prayers, this is X‑Men vs. Street Fighter.

X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er take place two years after the release of X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom and Mar­vel Super Heroes. The back­sto­ry is a leg­endary X‑Men vil­lain, Apoc­a­lypse, appears stat­ing that Earth­’s sur­vival depends on only the strongest being able to sur­vive. Lit­tle does Apoc­a­lypse know, M. Bison and Shadaloo as well as Mag­ne­to and the Broth­er­hood of Mutants have their own plans for Earth. The X‑Men along with var­i­ous Street Fight­ers hear this and now a bat­tle with high stakes for Earth begins with unlike­ly teams bat­tling against Apocalypse. 

The con­trols are the usu­al set up in any Cap­com fight­ing game, only this time you have con­trol of two char­ac­ters that can con­sist of any X‑Men or Street Fight­er char­ac­ter. I enjoyed the abil­i­ty to mix an X‑Men and a Street Fight­er char­ac­ter togeth­er as a team. X‑Men vs. SF also fea­tures the super jump and aer­i­al rave from COTA but intro­duces three fea­tures: the Hyper Com­bo Gauge, which allows for super moves; the Vari­able Com­bi­na­tion, which allows both char­ac­ters to exe­cute their Hyper Com­bos; and, the Vari­able Counter allows you to pull off an offen­sive attack from a defen­sive block sim­ply by tag­ging your off­screen part­ner. These new moves and fea­tures great­ly increase the playa­bil­i­ty from the pre­vi­ous games and make X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er a bet­ter play­ing game.


The graph­ics and pre­sen­ta­tion are like COTA and MSH, bear­ing strik­ing resem­blance in arcade qual­i­ty. I enjoyed the scenery and bright back­grounds that took out guess­work of my point char­ac­ter and the visu­al theme of each stage. The music is ener­getic and on point thanks to Cap­com’s sound team work­ing their awe­some wizardry. 

While it’s fun to play, I do have some gripes. While I enjoyed the over­all game­play, I did­n’t like the heavy reliance on touch-of-death com­bos and infin­ites. Also, while the music was enjoy­able, the reuse of Street Fight­er’s char­ac­ter themes was kind of bor­ing and lazy. Yes, I real­ize they want­ed to use some­thing that is eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able but some­times I think they rely on it too much and it’s obvi­ous here. My last gripe is Aku­ma. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hat­ing on the OG, but come on Cap­com, Aku­ma is pushed on every ear­ly Mar­vel Ver­sus game like he’s a main play­er in the MCU. That’s overkill and too much use of the Red Demon will force pay­ing clien­tele to think about spend­ing mon­ey on future games where he is run­ning amok. Mod­er­a­tion, Cap­com. Mod­er­a­tion, please.

X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er is enjoy­able and helped estab­lish the trend of com­ic books meet­ing fight­ing games. As Mar­vel and Cap­com were the pio­neers, oth­er com­ic book com­pa­nies and game devel­op­ers fol­lowed suit, mak­ing it nor­mal for the gam­ing indus­try. This is a good ori­gin sto­ry for the Ver­sus series.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula — Issue 54

Posted on by

Bram Stok­er’s Dracula
Psyg­no­sis, 1993

Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la shows fangs with lazy underbite

What do Drac­u­la, Sony and gam­ing con­soles have in com­mon? In 1993, Sony was one of the few multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies that had own­er­ship of well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dios. Sony owned Tri-Star Pic­tures, which released the 1992 film Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, based on the leg­endary hor­ror sto­ry. Sony, known as Sony Image­soft at the time, had a strict hold on their movie busi­ness, which allowed them to devel­op games based off their releas­es on the box office front. Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la is one of those exam­ples that snuck onto the SNES.

Based on the movie, you play as Jonathan Hark­er who must res­cue his fiancé Mina Mur­ray from Drac­u­la’s clutch­es. Good old Drac­u­la believes that Mina is a mod­ern rein­car­na­tion of his pre­vi­ous love Elis­a­be­ta who was dri­ven to sui­cide by Drac­u­la’s ene­mies while he fought against the Ottoman empire in 1462. Deter­mined to have Mina by any means nec­es­sary, Drac­u­la begins his bat­tle against Hark­er with VERY high stakes involved. The graph­ics of the game are stan­dard 16-bit, but Sony gets cred­it for pair­ing details for each lev­el with rec­og­niz­able scenes from the film. Although the graph­ics made the game pre­sen­ta­tion campy, I thought the graph­ics stayed on task and did a ser­vice­able job. 

Con­trols to get Hark­er around are the usu­al fare for side scrollers on the SNES. An ambi­tious but under­ex­plained mechan­ic is Hark­er’s abil­i­ty to use var­i­ous weapons that he can pick up along the way from Dr. Van Hels­ing, who shows up to help. The con­trols, while stan­dard, aren’t the best; they need some work. Pre­ci­sion jump­ing and slash­ing is hit or miss when I least need it to be. 

The game music is OK, but the prob­lem is it’s repet­i­tive. If Sony owns the stu­dio that released the movie and its music was per­fect, why not use that same sound team to work its mag­ic for the game? This is not an imme­di­ate rea­son to avoid play­ing it, but Sony Image­soft could have done more for the game, espe­cial­ly if it is based off a box office hit. My griev­ances for this game are small but even the small details in its devel­op­ment can deter­mine its suc­cess or fail­ure. Sony did not give prop­er sup­port in cru­cial areas of the game’s development. 

Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, despite lack of atten­tion to detail in some areas, is a good game that pays trib­ute to the orig­i­nal work. The con­trols could use some work, and the sound­track could be bet­ter, but the game works as a decent tie-in to the movie adap­ta­tion. It’s some­thing you may be able to sink your teeth into.

Frankenstein: The Monster Returns — Issue 54

Posted on by

Franken­stein: The Mon­ster Returns
Tose, 1990

The Crea­ture bound to bet­ter fate with NES tome

Ah, Franken­stein. This leg­endary hor­ror mon­ster has come a long way from the time his sto­ry was writ­ten by Mary Shel­ley. One of the most pop­u­lar hor­ror mon­sters of all time, Franken­stein moved from mod­ern writ­ten adap­ta­tions to var­i­ous movies, a car­toon ver­sion for a break­fast cere­al and final­ly in video games such as Castl­e­va­nia. Dur­ing his video game tenure, Franken­stein has been the sub­ject of a Bandai game in which he is the main vil­lain, mak­ing a dig­i­tal name for him­self. Franken­stein: The Mon­ster Returns for the NES was his big break.


In Franken­stein: The Mon­ster Returns, in an unknown part of Europe the leg­endary mon­ster has been res­ur­rect­ed thanks to light­ing that struck his bat­tered tomb­stone in an ancient ceme­tery. Ful­ly restored, Franky and his band of min­ions attacked a near­by vil­lage, and he kid­naps Emi­ly, the daugh­ter of the vil­lage elder. With Emi­ly and all the land in great per­il, it is up to an unknown hero to answer the call to final­ly end Franky’s reign of ter­ror and make the land pros­per­ous again. 

The graph­ics of the game are typ­i­cal of com­mon 8‑bit action-adven­ture games. Although I’ll give Bandai cred­it for attempt­ing to match var­i­ous scenes to the orig­i­nal nov­el, cer­tain sec­tions made me think I was play­ing a jum­bled mix of Bat­man, the orig­i­nal TMNT, and Castl­e­va­nia. Con­trols are also like Castl­e­va­nia, which is wel­come famil­iar­i­ty. How­ev­er, this scheme can be prob­lem­at­ic because pre­ci­sion is not abun­dant here. You will miss plat­forms and it’s the fault of the con­trol design, not you. 

The music is appro­pri­ate­ly chill­ing and hor­ror themed. How­ev­er, some­times it tries to do too much. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this is a weak spot because the music will try its best to out­do Castl­e­va­nia, and it’s nowhere near that lev­el of audio masterpiece. 
Franken­stein: The Mon­ster Returns is a campy B‑movie game that gave an icon­ic mon­ster a chance to shine. Franken­stein would be sec­ond place to Castl­e­va­nia since no oth­er Uni­ver­sal mon­sters got their own game and man­aged to out­shine Castl­e­va­nia and Franken­stein. Franky’s mis­ad­ven­ture, while not quite as good as Castl­e­va­nia, is still able to scare up a good time.

Yakuza 6: Song of Life — Issue 53

Posted on by

Yakuza 6: Song of Life

Sega, 2016

Yakuza­’s swan song

Ah, Kiryu Kazu­ma. Sega’s leg­endary for­mer mob­ster turned hero is a liv­ing video game leg­end. Every time he defeats a heinous col­league from his past, he wants to go back to his hon­est life of tak­ing care of his fam­i­ly of orphans. Sad­ly, no mat­ter how much the Drag­on of Doji­ma desires peace, new ene­mies arise with grand delu­sions of pow­er to rule Japan in pub­lic and its under­world of crime. As always, Kiryu saves the day at sig­nif­i­cant risk to his phys­i­cal and men­tal health. This time, those threats hit home with even greater secrets and risks that could unleash pos­si­ble civ­il war in the crim­i­nal under­world (Again? Yes, again) in Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.

Tak­ing place after the events in Yakuza 5, Yakuza 6 has our hero doing three years in prison. Var­i­ous crime groups such as the Saio Tri­ad and the Jing­weon Mafia have tak­en advan­tage of the Tojo Clan’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. When Kiryu is released, he finds out that his ward Haru­ka Sawa­mu­ra, who was a ris­ing pop idol, sud­den­ly retired and moved to Onomichi city in Hiroshi­ma where she has an infant son, Haru­to. Kiryu then dis­cov­ers that Haru­ka is in a coma at a Kamuro­cho hos­pi­tal after a hit-and-run acci­dent. With these explo­sive ele­ments plus a mys­te­ri­ous secret in Onomichi that could cause a rag­ing gang war through the coun­try, Kiryu once again sets out to stop those who bring harm to his city and his family. 

The con­trol in pre­vi­ous Yakuza games that won me over remains and is improved thanks to the rebuilt Drag­on game engine. When not in fight­ing mode, Kamuro­cho has been giv­en a refreshed, crisp view. I appre­ci­ate the detail in Kiryu’s fight­ing scenes; he can use weapons to do mas­sive dam­age and look nice while doing so. Anoth­er new fea­ture is item stor­age. While stats must be increased to be able to car­ry more items, Kiryu can now use his smart­phone to hold var­i­ous food and health items and lev­el up when­ev­er he gains expe­ri­ence points. I espe­cial­ly liked the idea that Kiryu can obtain cer­tain drinks from vend­ing machines, includ­ing beer, which will increase his fight­ing pow­er. I also love the clan bat­tles fea­ture where Kiryu can form a group to take down var­i­ous char­ac­ters in a time lim­it and win cash and expe­ri­ence for his fight­ers. And I also enjoyed the Club Sega sec­tion where I could play arcade games like Hang-On and Vir­tua Fighter.

The music is excel­lent and var­ied, mak­ing me feel that I’m watch­ing a Yakuza movie than play­ing the game. If the game’s excel­lent detail to vital areas of game­play was not enough to sell me on it, I was stoked to find that Kazuchi­ka Oku­da of New Japan Pro Wrestling and acclaimed actor/comedian Beat Takashi made appear­ance as main vil­lains in the game.

How­ev­er, as much as I love the game, there are some neg­a­tives in Yakuza 6 that did­n’t make me stop play­ing entire­ly but gave me some pause. Dur­ing the fight­ing scenes where Kiryu gets ahold of an ene­my’s weapon, he dis­patch­es them in true Yakuza fash­ion, vio­lent and, at times, gory and dis­turb­ing. It was a bit much for me and seemed kind of unnecessary.

Anoth­er thing that both­ers me is the ram­pant and obvi­ous Sony prod­uct place­ment. It takes away from the game a lit­tle bit because it’s dis­tract­ing and is also unnec­es­sary. I know I’m play­ing the game with a Sony prod­uct; I don’t need it shoved in my face con­stant­ly that this was orig­i­nal­ly a Sony exclu­sive game.

Final­ly, there is a side quest that Kiryu can’t turn down. It’s not real­ly a side quest but the game tries to present it as though it is. That’s annoy­ing. If you want me to do the quest, just mark it as manda­to­ry and move on.

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is a mag­num opus to Kiryu Kazu­ma, but it also marks an evo­lu­tion point for the series. Although Kiryu is no longer the pri­ma­ry pro­tag­o­nist, he has been in new Yakuza games such as Like a Drag­on. For now, Kiryu and com­pa­ny can take a well-deserved break with this chap­ter in the life of the Drag­on of Dojima.

Dynamite Headdy — Issue 51

Posted on by

A slight headache

Dyna­mite Head­dy is a jum­bled mess of hit or miss eclec­tic ideas

In the 16-bit era, the Gen­e­sis was the first shot fired in a decade’s war against Nin­ten­do for the atten­tion of teenage gamers and the cold hard cash of gamers’ par­ents. While Sega had Son­ic as a mas­cot to counter Nin­ten­do’s Mario, there were many unique char­ac­ters Sega had in their sta­ble ready to bat­tle with Nin­ten­do if Son­ic need­ed to take a break. One of those char­ac­ters was mem­o­rable for chang­ing the plat­form genre. His name was Head­dy, and his debut game Dyna­mite Head­dy was his big break.

Dyna­mite Head­dy tells the sto­ry of Head­dy, a star pup­pet in the Trea­sure The­atre Show. Head­dy’s loved by every­one except his rival, Trou­ble Bru­in, who believes he should get top billing. In addi­tion to reduc­ing Head­dy’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, Trou­ble is a hench bearcat for the evil Dark Demon whose goal is world dom­i­na­tion by con­vert­ing oth­er pup­pets to his grow­ing army of mind­less min­ions. With inno­cent pup­pets and the future of the the­atre in jeop­ardy, it’s up to Head­dy to stop Dark Demon and Trou­ble’s nefar­i­ous plans. 

I’ll admit the graph­ics are like a chil­dren’s pup­pet show but they are pre­sent­ed in a way that’s col­or­ful and engag­ing. Trea­sure did an excel­lent job with the pre­sen­ta­tion, keep­ing the sto­ry of the game sim­ple. I did, how­ev­er, dis­like how Trea­sure played with pro­mot­ing the game and placed ads for their oth­er prod­ucts front and cen­ter as I played through the first stage. It was super tacky and did­n’t real­ly help the game in any way.
The con­trols are slight­ly sim­ple thanks to the options screen allow­ing you to con­fig­ure a con­trol scheme. How­ev­er, the con­stant switch­ing heads and keep­ing up with what but­ton does what invoked anger with­in me many times. In the­o­ry it looks sim­ple, but the exe­cu­tion is off. It’s a lot to remem­ber once you get going and drags down the platforming.


The music in the game is OK, hav­ing its ener­getic and for­bear­ing doom moments but it’s gener­ic enough to get by. I did feel though, some­times with Dyna­mite Head­dy, that the com­posers were pres­sured to out­do Super Mario World to see which game could have the cutest game music instead of keep­ing focus on how the music could be paired prop­er­ly with each stage. 

One of the more non­sen­si­cal and cringe-wor­thy moments that stuck out to me was nam­ing each stage after well-known movies and pop cul­ture series. Toyz in the Hood, Stair Wars, Far Trek and Ter­mi­nate Her Too were named after the movies Boyz in the Hood, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Ter­mi­na­tor 2. Don’t get me wrong, I under­stood that Trea­sure was try­ing to seize the moment but should have found oth­er ways to accom­plish the task because it came off as goofy and grat­ing, not cute.

Dyna­mite Head­dy is an inter­est­ing and high­ly orig­i­nal game that takes chances and some­times suc­ceeds and some­times falls flat. The orig­i­nal­i­ty was obvi­ous­ly a sell­ing point because Dyna­mite Head­dy’s lega­cy endures on main con­soles and Steam. There are some neat con­cepts here, but some­times it needs to get out of its own head.

Chakan: The Forever Man — Issue 51

Posted on by

A for­ev­er mediocre mess

Mix of RPG and mag­ic can’t save Chakan from ter­ri­ble fate

As Sega and Nin­ten­do fought for more ter­ri­to­ry in the final arc of the 16-bit era, Sega tried to stick with new orig­i­nal prop­er­ties in unre­al­ized gen­res. I recent­ly was rein­tro­duced to Chakan: The For­ev­er Man, a game with a cool orig­i­nal theme that did­n’t grow to the poten­tial that devel­op­er Extend­ed Play Pro­duc­tions envi­sioned. I would even dare say that with its dark theme, it could have been the Gen­e­sis’ answer to Castl­e­va­nia, which lat­er appeared on Gen­e­sis. How­ev­er, dark and spooky does­n’t equal great.

Based on Robert Kraus’ com­ic book series, Chakan is what hap­pens when the super­nat­ur­al meets a leg­endary swords­man. You take on the role of Chakan, a leg­endary swords­man with blade and spell skills who boasts he can defeat Death with­out any prob­lems. As a result, Death chal­lenges Chakan to a duel to the death stat­ing if Chakan wins, death will grant him eter­nal life. The bat­tle end­ed with Chakan vic­to­ri­ous and Death, keep­ing his promise with a sin­is­ter twist: While Chakan won eter­nal life, he is now tasked with elim­i­nat­ing all evils of the under­world. With the heavy bur­den of ever­last­ing life upon him, Chakan must embark on a right­eous requiem to earn eter­nal rest. 


The graph­ics in Chakan are the usu­al fan­fare for 16-bit sys­tems. The theme of super­nat­ur­al bat­tle would be a mean­ing­ful change for a Gen­e­sis game that could have been expand­ed on, but the graph­ics placed the game at an unfair dis­ad­van­tage because they are so bland and bor­ing. Despite the hand­i­cap placed on the graph­ics, the music sticks to the game’s theme of fight­ing demons and per­fect­ly pairs the music to each stage.

Con­trol­ling Chakan is easy but can be cus­tomized. Chakan has a spe­cial spin attack like Son­ic the Hedge­hog and can use fire and oth­er ele­men­tal attacks using alche­my potions. My prob­lem with the con­trols is obvi­ous­ly imme­di­ate­ly: the Gen­e­sis con­troller has too many func­tions. Every­thing from move­ment to weapons and alche­my is time-con­sum­ing and a test of my patience.

While it’s a neat con­cept game, Chakan isn’t great at all. The many prob­lems real­ly start with the lack of hind­sight to hire Kraus to con­sult on game devel­op­ment. This would have allowed more insight into the char­ac­ter. It’s also frus­trat­ing that Chakan’s time lim­it pre­vent­ed me from locat­ing his spe­cial weapons. Also, the var­i­ous sym­bols rep­re­sent­ing alche­my were con­fus­ing. Try­ing to deter­mine which sym­bol matched the ele­ment Chakan would need to fight mul­ti­ple ene­mies was a chore. 

Chakan: The For­ev­er Man is sad­ly a game with a great con­cept that was decades ahead of its time. While I give Extend­ed Play Pro­duc­tions cred­it for try­ing to intro­duce a dif­fer­ent con­cept, the pres­sure to help Sega defeat their com­peti­tor blind­ed Chakan’s poten­tial. More time should have been used toward the game’s devel­op­ment and intro­duc­tion of Chakan as an anti-hero. Kraus will con­tin­ue Chakan’s quest for a peace­ful death but, for now, he deserves a well-earned rest.

Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master — Issue 50

Posted on by

Shi­no­bi III a fine sendoff

I recent­ly delved into a game star­ring one of the GOATS in video game his­to­ry, Joe Musashi, with Shad­ow Dancer: The Secret of Shi­no­bi. Sega’s own mas­ter nin­ja is one of video game’s great­est pro­tag­o­nists who has earned his bones fight­ing crime and the low-lev­el hench­men belong to his great­est ene­my, the Neo Zeed orga­ni­za­tion. I will give Neo Zeed cred­it: Every time Joe beats the liv­ing day­lights out of them, they always come back want­i­ng all the nin­ja smoke and hands that they can eat, repeat­ing defeat after defeat. The noto­ri­ous crime syn­di­cate has returned with a strong sec­ond wind and a sin­is­ter plan to obtain their great revenge in Shi­no­bi III: Return of the Nin­ja Master.

After his lat­est bat­tle against the nefar­i­ous cult known as Union Lizard, Musashi aka “the Shad­ow Mas­ter” returned to Japan to recov­er and sharp­en his supe­ri­or tech­niques. While our hero trains in the moun­tains to acquire new skills, Neo Zeed has near­ly recov­ered near its pre­vi­ous lev­el. They’ve obtained more nefar­i­ous war­riors who are moti­vat­ed by penal­ty of death via the most bru­tal lead­ers of the group or rich­es and pow­er beyond com­pre­hen­sion via vic­to­ry over Musashi. With the world in per­il once more, our hero­ic nin­ja heads out to fight Neo Zeed hop­ing that this lat­est encounter will be the last with this crim­i­nal can­cer that threat­ens the world’s peace.


The graph­ics in Shi­no­bi III fol­low the pre­vi­ous design of oth­er games in the series. They have a bal­ance of nat­ur­al, rugged ter­rain with ele­ments of cur­rent indus­tri­al set­tings and futur­is­tic con­cepts in some stages. Bat­tles hap­pen in var­i­ous forests and caves through­out Japan in fight­ing with var­i­ous nin­jas and mer­ce­nar­ies to reach the lev­el boss. These stage range from dim-light­ed caves to open fields, a secret weapon fac­to­ry, a secret bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry, a lab devel­op­ing Gun­dam-type mecha with a trap-laden canyon lead­ing to a mas­sive air fortress (a first for a Shi­no­bi game). My only prob­lem is that while Sega was going for a fresh take on stage design, they used the same tem­plate with the excep­tion to the biol­o­gy lab and passed it off as arcade quality. 

The con­trols are sim­ple to use, but you will need to take time to mas­ter Joe’s new skills such as the Death Kick and Nin­ja Death Strike, which allows you to strike an ene­my out of range and deliv­er a fin­ish­ing blow with a sword. Though Joe has a myr­i­ad of oth­er attacks, they are all easy to use in the heat of bat­tle. Shi­no­bi, as a series, shows seri­ous growth in the con­trols as an action-adven­ture title. 

As much as I love the game, I have some dis­likes as well. Sega went with new­com­er com­posers Hiro­fu­mi Murasa­ki, Mori­hiko Akiya­ma and Masayu­ki Nagao to han­dle the game’s music. While accept­able, Yuzo Koshi­ro should have been used since he has the most expe­ri­ence devel­op­ing music that’s wor­thy of the Shi­no­bi name. The music was chop­py in some areas but still suit­able for the game. Anoth­er prob­lem I have is the sup­ply of shuriken that you must con­serve. By pay­ing so much atten­tion to main­tain­ing your sup­ply, you might miss oth­er cru­cial ele­ments and expose your­self to ene­mies unnec­es­sar­i­ly. Joe should have end­less shuriken to fight evil.

Shi­no­bi III: Return of the Nin­ja Mas­ter is a 16-bit swan song for nin­ja leg­end Joe Musashi. Although Sega has con­tin­ued the har­row­ing adven­tures of Joe and his descen­dants through games on numer­ous next-gen­er­a­tion con­soles, the Nin­ja Mas­ter is expect­ed to return some­time this year in var­i­ous projects. Though he’s not around promi­nent­ly right now, do not count on him stay­ing van­ished for long.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge — Issue 50

Posted on by

Nin­ja Gaiden 3 fin­ish­es comeback

Mod­ern­ized tril­o­gy finale falls short of masterpiece

I would be fool­ish to not acknowl­edge one of the most leg­endary nin­jas in video game his­to­ry. Ever since the appear­ance of the “Tec­mo Presents 1989” screen herald­ing the Nin­ja Gaiden series, Ryu Hayabusa has tak­en up his fam­i­ly’s leg­endary Drag­on Sword against many demon­ic foes and their lack­eys who desire Earth to fall under their rule. Through many 8- and 16-bit adven­tures, Ryu has con­quered many foes that were not just fuel that cre­ates night­mares but those who were sci-fi adja­cent with foes who were half-demon and half-tech. Ryu took a hia­tus and even­tu­al­ly returned to his role as a nin­ja guardian defend­ing his home vil­lage (and the world) through new adven­tures on next gen­er­a­tion con­soles. I was able to expe­ri­ence Mr. Hayabusa’s lat­est feat in Nin­ja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.

In Razor’s Edge, Ryu, now the head leader of Hayabusa vil­lage, is called upon by the Japan­ese Self-Defense Forces to deal with a ter­ror­ist group known as the Legion of Alche­my whose leader has a deep grudge against the beloved drag­on nin­ja. When the LOA launch­es a bru­tal assault on the British prime min­is­ter’s home, Ryu responds and destroys the LOA’s foot sol­diers but arrives too late to save the prime min­is­ter and is attacked by the Regent of the Mask. The Regent of the Mask places a curse called the Grip of Mur­der on Ryu’s right arm, which absorbs the souls of Ryu’s ene­mies and takes the Drag­on Sword into his arm. To make things worse, the Regent makes a threat to world lead­ers to either sur­ren­der in sev­en days or be destroyed. With time of the utmost essence, Ryu along with long­time ally Ayane and JSDF agent Mizu­ki McCloud must stop the LOA to pre­vent fur­ther glob­al chaos.


Razor’s Edge’s graph­ics are like cur­rent hack-and-slash games on the mar­ket but also have sub­stance. Team Nin­ja devel­oped each stage with care and kept ele­ments that make Nin­ja Gaiden a fan favorite. Start­ing in Lon­don the roads are instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as are the back­drop of Big Ben and the Knight bus­es instead of a copy and paste insert­ed stage. The cut scenes, stage start, and recap areas are beau­ti­ful­ly done and add pol­ish to all char­ac­ters with­out going too far to explain who’s good and evil. A small gripe about the pre­sen­ta­tion and graph­ics is that the stage start/recap areas were too sim­i­lar to the Met­al Gear and Tom Clan­cy series where it’s a bit too dra­mat­ic in some areas and they don’t allow the awe­some graph­ics to set the tone. 

The con­trols to guide our hero are sim­ple but need prac­tice in some areas that require park­our-type jumps to get to oth­er parts of some stages. In some parts of the game where Ayane is called upon, she is a lit­tle more flex­i­ble than Ryu, but that does­n’t make the con­trols more dif­fi­cult. I did have a few issues with con­trols regard­ing bat­tles with boss­es that require more focus to strike var­i­ous spots. Also, when Ryu is required to use his kunai to climb, tim­ing to focus on climb­ing is need­ed while var­i­ous ene­mies fierce­ly attempt to elim­i­nate you. It taxed my patience and was kind of tedious. 

The music is paired per­fect­ly with each stage and has a bal­ance from slow-ris­ing to ener­getic when fac­ing off with var­i­ous ene­mies. The LOA muse­um is my favorite stage; while bat­tling through the stage, ene­mies, includ­ing attack dogs, pop out to attack you with fierce music. When defeat­ed, the music goes back to a light rock style. The game music is excel­lent all-around, and the voice act­ing is per­fect with Troy Bak­er as Ryu and Ali Hillis as Mizu­ki. The cast includes well-known voice actors such as Yuri Lowen­thal, Stephanie Sheh, Jan­ice Kawaye and Michael McConnohie. 

While I enjoyed Razor’s Edge, I do have a few dis­likes. First, its tar­get­ing sys­tem for Ryu when he uses his nin­po has hit and miss accu­ra­cy, tak­ing out some ene­mies while miss­ing oth­ers. My oth­er prob­lem is that while the game has var­i­ous dub and sub­ti­tles includ­ed, the Eng­lish sub­ti­tles were not timed well with its audio, which made the sto­ry dif­fi­cult to fol­low in some cut scenes. Notic­ing that, It was­n’t a deal­break­er, but it was disappointing.

Nin­ja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge breathes new life and new adven­tures into a leg­endary nin­ja in video games. Ryu Hayabusa is a prime exam­ple of being able to teach an old dog a few new tricks and they suc­ceed. The third game in the remake series puts the Hayabusa name back at the edge of greatness.

Knockout Kings 2000 — Issue 48

Posted on by

Not tech­ni­cal­ly a knockout
Knock­out Kings packs a punch for PSOne

Ah, Elec­tron­ic Arts aka Crunch Time World Head­quar­ters, how gamers love thee (sar­casm insert­ed). Begin­ning in 1995, there was­n’t a sports game, col­le­giate or pro­fes­sion­al, that was not giv­en EA’s sports label “the game amongst sports games.” When you saw offi­cial­ly licensed sport game com­mer­cials in the late ’90s to ear­ly 2000s, nine times out of 10 they would be from EA Sports. I have played some titles in EA’s Mad­den series but my main expe­ri­ence with EA Sports came dur­ing my junior year in col­lege when I played an EA game that fea­tured the best of pro­fes­sion­al box­ing to deter­mine who was tru­ly the undis­put­ed best amongst them. Knock­out Kings 2000 stepped into the ring and put on a show.

In Knock­out Kings 2000, you get to play as one of 25 leg­endary pro­fes­sion­al box­ers such as Mar­velous Mar­vin Hagler, “Smokin” Joe Fra­zier, Son­ny Lis­ton, and my favorite, the “Great­est of all Time” Muham­mad Ali. In addi­tion to these clas­sic box­ers, you can cre­ate your own box­er like I did with box­ers named “Bus­ta­jawzs” or “Crush­er Bear”. Depend­ing on which option you choose, you’ll be fight­ing at well-known sport venues such as Cae­sar’s Palace and Great West­ern Col­i­se­um in either the Cham­pi­onship, Slugfest or Train­ing modes. 

Despite EA’s attempt to faith­ful­ly ren­der each pro­fes­sion­al box­er’s and venue, the graph­ics are of PSOne qual­i­ty. It can be dif­fi­cult to see box­ers unless you have excel­lent mas­tery over the game’s cam­era sys­tem, which brings out the scenes in bet­ter quality. 


The con­trols in Knock­out Kings 2000 are sim­ple and do not require com­pli­cat­ed move­ments unlike oth­er fight­ing games. The super punch is very easy to per­form, which is a bless­ing since I’m a but­ton mash­er at heart. I can say with con­fi­dence that after a few bouts, I became a new world heavy­weight cham­pi­on going straight to train­ing to main­tain my com­pet­i­tive edge. 

EA did excel­lent in the music depart­ment with each mode hav­ing a unique theme for train­ing and var­i­ous music styles for the Cham­pi­onship and Slugfest modes. I espe­cial­ly like the ’50s-like gui­tar entrance theme and a hip-hop hor­ror mix that brought fear to my oppo­nents’ hearts when I used my “Crush­er Bear” char­ac­ter. The sound was top qual­i­ty, and EA gave upcom­ing artists such as Androyd, Alien Fash­ion Show and my per­son­al favorite rap­per, O, a place to shine. O pro­vid­ed the main theme “In the Game” as well as a music video with cameos by Hagler, Roy Jones Jr., and Floyd May­weath­er Jr., which was a nice touch.

I like a lot about Knock­out Kings 2000 but there are some prob­lems. The cam­era needs adjust­ment so the fight­ers can be seen prop­er­ly but even worse the mod­el­ing of each fight­er looks like EA rushed its pro­gram­mers. The fight­ers are unrec­og­niz­able, which is dis­ap­point­ing. Anoth­er issue that I had was in the train­ing ses­sion where I want­ed to learn com­bo tech­niques. The train­ing want­ed to rush my learn­ing, result­ing in lit­tle train­ing val­ue for my box­er. My final prob­lem was announc­ing calls. While I appre­ci­ate that respect­ed box­ing com­men­ta­tors Al Albert and Sean O’Grady called the action, their tim­ing was off some­times on mak­ing cru­cial com­men­tary, or they were not made at all. 
Knock­out Kings 2000 is a great sports game for the PSOne. While EA is known for cash grabs, and low-qual­i­ty work on their games, I believe that they found the mag­ic for­mu­la for suc­cess with this.