Tag Archives: arcade

House of the Dead — Issue 54

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House of the Dead
Sega, 1998

Retro House of the Dead sets up shop for franchise

Ah, the progress that has been made. The on rails shoot­ers genre has made strides in the last 27 years. Mod­ern con­trols — includ­ing light guns avail­able for the home mar­ket — have made play­ing a lot more enjoy­able. And that has made the House of the Dead series — and espe­cial­ly the orig­i­nal game — a tad bit more tolerable.

House of the Dead starts off as most zom­bie hor­ror games of the day did: A mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal weirdo is mess­ing with bioter­ror­ism unnec­es­sar­i­ly and has cre­at­ed a mess. And by mess, I mean mutat­ed, trans­formed humans with a taste for flesh. That’s lit­er­al­ly the plot of the game. There’s some­thing about a fiancée that needs sav­ing and stop­ping this blight from spread­ing to the rest of human­i­ty, but that’s the basics. It’s ser­vice­able and real­ly does­n’t do much to affect the game­play. You’re killing zom­bies, boss zom­bies and most like­ly the end boss guy who cre­at­ed the prob­lem. Clean it up and go on in future sequels to take on an even larg­er threat in the bad guy’s boss because, of course, he has a boss.


Clean­ing up the prob­lem is the fun part here. The con­trols are your stan­dard light gun shoot­er but they’re fine. Aim­ing and shoot­ing was­n’t bad, though lin­ing up my shot some­times was not exact­ly sharp. There were a few times fight­ing some of the aer­i­al boss­es that the cur­sor just was­n’t keep­ing up so I took cheap hits. As an arcade old head, I know that’s the name of the game here: It’s designed to be a quar­ter-munch­er. But by the time I get home, there should be a bet­ter under­stand­ing that this isn’t going to fly. Thank­ful­ly, cheat codes exist so it’s not a prob­lem. But for arcade con­di­tions sake, this real­ly isn’t cool.

Because this is a 1998 prod­uct we’re talk­ing about, I’m also not expect­ing the graph­ics to look like much. And they don’t, beyond these zom­bies look­ing OK. Keep in mind that these graph­ics did­n’t real­ly improve until well beyond the sec­ond game/Typing of the Dead, so you’re going to be see­ing them for a long time. The music fares about the same, too. They are decent enough for the late ’90s, and they work well in the con­fines of House of the Dead.

House of the Dead has made many improve­ments in the near­ly 30 years since the orig­i­nal game. It did­n’t set the barn on fire then but it’s a nice rail shoot­er if you’re into zom­bie hor­ror and like what the series has to offer. Per­son­al­ly, I’m more apt to play Typ­ing of the Dead before House of the Dead, but that’s because I pre­fer to be a key­board sharp­shoot­er these days. House of the Dead­’s ret­i­cle is set in the mid­dle with the abil­i­ty to go higher.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves — Issue 53

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Garou: Mark of the Wolves
SNK Play­more, 1999

Leav­ing an indeli­ble mark

SNK is still around doing things in this mod­ern fight­ing game land­scape. Their lat­est release, Garou: City of the Wolves, is a cer­ti­fied banger and is get­ting a lot of play in the crit­ic sphere because the orig­i­nal is so beloved. And that’s one of the best things Mark of the Wolves man­aged to do: Leave a good lega­cy and stay rel­e­vant 25 years later.
Mark of the Wolves does a lot of things with the Fatal Fury name for the sake of progress. Tak­ing place 10 years after the death of crime lord Geese Howard dur­ing the King of Fight­ers Tour­na­ment as depict­ed in Real Bout Fatal Fury, Mark intro­duces a new cast with Ter­ry Bog­a­rd return­ing to the fray to lead the charge. Ter­ry takes the young Rock Howard, Geese’s scion, under his wing to fight for South Town and jus­tice in gen­er­al. But the specter of Geese haunts them. And there is a new vil­lain in the mix, Kain, to take Geese’s place and up the stakes. The plot is inter­est­ing and engag­ing. Get­ting used to a whole new cast minus Ter­ry takes a minute and learn­ing their back­ground and moti­va­tion is fun.

The char­ac­ter designs are cool, as they are in most SNK games. The sprites look great and are large and detailed. The back­grounds, while col­or­ful, aren’t near­ly as detailed, though there are a lot of ani­ma­tions going on that make them live­ly. Over­all, the look isn’t too dif­fer­ent than what you’d expect from an SNK arcade game, but the Dream­cast does give it a lit­tle boost. 

The sound­track is a lit­tle gener­ic, which is sur­pris­ing because I was expect­ing some nice tracks. I’m spoiled by the often-maligned SvC Chaos, which had a great sound­track despite the sur­round­ing mess, because it was released in the same era by SNK. How­ev­er, despite the gener­ic under­tones, the sound­track does­n’t deter the sur­round­ing over­all product.

And the sur­round­ing prod­uct, game­play-wise, is fine. New mechan­ics, like the Tac­ti­cal Offense Posi­tion and Just Defend, are wel­come new pieces in the series’ reper­toire. Just Defend, which is like Street Fight­er III’s par­ry mechan­ic, has hung around and made appear­ances in oth­er games such as Cap­com vs. SNK 2’s K‑Groove so I’d say it’s a good addi­tion 25 years lat­er. And with the new mechan­ics, the game plays well, too. If I could pick it up and play it with lit­tle expo­sure to SNK’s style of fight­ing and do well, it’s safe to say that Mark has a good feel. That feel is present in the var­ied modes, with Sur­vival as the most fun out of all offered.

Mark is a great fight­ing game and still holds up well. It has the attrac­tion of ear­ly 2000s fight­ing game finesse, and it serves as a good intro­duc­tion to the world of SNK if you’re not well-versed in the series. A well-round­ed fight­ing game with strong mechan­ics and good envi­ron­ment are the marks of a future legend.

Gunbird 2 — Issue 44

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This is good and clean bul­let hell fun

Bom­bas­tic bul­lets, bombs, and spe­cial attacks. You’re get­ting a taste of every­thing in the wild ver­ti­cal shoot­er Gun­bird 2 from shoot-’em-up prac­ti­tion­er Psikyo. Whether that taste is enough to whet your appetite for fur­ther shmup adven­tures is anoth­er sto­ry, one I believe is worth at least reading.

Gun­bird 2 is your aver­age ver­ti­cal shoot­er in that it sub­scribes to bul­let hell envi­ron­ments. There are sev­en char­ac­ters to choose from, each with their own moti­va­tions for cap­tur­ing three mys­ti­cal ele­ments and pre­sent­ing them to their god. All of them fly around var­i­ous stages in the Gun­bird world, blow­ing up ene­mies and tak­ing on the boss Shark and her cronies Blade and Gim­mick of the Queen Pirates. The sto­ry is sim­ple to get into and won’t take up too much of your time through sta­t­ic screens explain­ing the sit­u­a­tion at hand. 

It’s easy to under­stand the mechan­ics as well. Each char­ac­ter has five attacks: Pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, charge, melee, and super weapon. The pri­ma­ry weapon is either a con­cen­trat­ed or spread shot with all oth­er weapons spe­cif­ic to the char­ac­ter in ani­ma­tion. It’s fun to try all of the char­ac­ters to see how their weapons ani­mate and behave, and it’s impor­tant to as well, because there is strat­e­gy involved. Know­ing when to ini­ti­ate a super weapon is cru­cial for main­tain­ing com­bos and sav­ing your­self or your team­mate if you’re play­ing along­side some­one else. The attacks are all assigned to but­tons so you don’t have to do too much to move around and attack. It’s sim­plis­tic and yet chaot­ic at times, but it’s fun chaos.

The pre­sen­ta­tion is gor­geous while you’re dodg­ing ene­mies and get­ting shot from all direc­tions. The col­or palette is beau­ti­ful and the char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion shines. And, yes, even though Psikyo car­ried over Mor­ri­g­an’s dog-tired sprite from Dark­stalk­ers it still works here. You imme­di­ate­ly know who she is, and it does­n’t look to ter­ri­ble against the back­drops of bul­let hell. The oth­er char­ac­ters look good for late ’90s ani­ma­tion. While the ani­ma­tion is good, the sound­track is pass­ing, if not a bit late ’90s mediocre. It’s not ter­ri­ble, but it does­n’t stand­out. A sin­gle track caught our atten­tion, which is OK. Not all shoot-’em-ups get to be Gala­ga Arrange­ment or Gradius.

Over­all, Gun­bird 2 is a good ver­ti­cal shoot­er in a crowd­ed genre pop­u­lat­ed by heavy hit­ters. It shoots its way to the mid­dle of the pack, and while it won’t knock your socks off, it’s got replay val­ue and charm built into its laser.

Golden Axe — Issue 44

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A gold­en era of gaming

I know I’ve cov­ered a lot of Sega games, but I’m a big fan. I par­tial­ly owned a NES, a Mas­ter Sys­tem and a Gen­e­sis, and while I did not have a lot of games for those sys­tems, I enjoyed the games that I had for them, espe­cial­ly the Gen­e­sis. One of those games has an arcade back­ground shared with Gaunt­let with ele­ments of the Dun­geons and Drag­ons table­top games. If you old­er read­ers know what I’m talk­ing about, respect. For you younger read­ers, lis­ten and learn of the tale of Gold­en Axe.

Inspired also by the Conan the Bar­bar­ian movie series of the 1980s, Gold­en Axe gives you a choice of three war­riors: Ax Bat­tler, who wields a broadsword; Gilius Thun­der­head, a dwarf war­rior with a bat­tle ax; and, an Ama­zon­ian war­rior, Tyris Flare, whose weapon of choice is a longsword. These war­riors were brought togeth­er by twist of fate thanks to an evil enti­ty known as Death Adder, who has cap­tured the king­dom of Yuria along with its king and his daugh­ter. The three heroes have also lost loved ones at Death Adder’s hands and set off on their quest to destroy Death Adder and restore hope and peace to Yuria. 

Game­play is sim­ple with each char­ac­ter have the basic attack, jump and spe­cial attacks you find in reg­u­lar side-scroller games. The one major advan­tage that Ax, Gilius, and Tyris have is their unique abil­i­ty to cast mag­ic spells that does seri­ous dam­age to all ene­mies on screen. How­ev­er, this spe­cial attack comes with two caveats: mag­ic ener­gy has a high cost and pro­tect­ing your nec­es­sary mag­ic potions from thiev­ing elves is a chore. Now, this is the part where you ask, “what’s the pay­off with the char­ac­ter’s mag­ic attacks?” Good ques­tion! Tyris wields fire mag­ic, Ax’s spe­cial­ty is earth spells and my favorite char­ac­ter, Gilius, lit­er­al­ly brings the thun­der with light­ing spells. It’s easy to under­stand the mechan­ics and use every­thing in the heat of battle. 

If there was one neg­a­tive thing that I found about Gold­en Axe, it’s that it’s too short on game­play. The first stage is set on a giant sea tur­tle that moves across the sea in the sec­ond stage. You move to a sleep­ing giant eagle in the third stage and are trans­port­ed to the fourth and final stage by said eagle. That’s entire­ly too short of an adven­ture. Eas­i­ly there could have been a few more stages to flesh out the story.

The music has a strong com­bi­na­tion of hero­ic and fairy­tale beats that are not too shab­by but is a per­fect fit for the game. The replay val­ue is pret­ty good for a 16-bit game that has a short lev­el of game­play. Over­all, this is a valiant effort by Sega to be cre­ative with a game that has poten­tial sad­ly but lacks creativity.

While it can be fun to play, the game need­ed some pol­ish and a lit­tle bit more finesse to real­ly shine. You’ll pull some hair at the length and some ele­ments, but over­all, it’s a decent hack ‘n slash. Just exer­cise calm and steadi­ness in this promis­ing yet cru­el venture.

Donkey Kong Jr. — 3Q2015 issue

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Like father, like son

I don’t believe there is any­one who reads GI who doesn’t know that I don’t care for Don­key Kong. By now, it should be painful­ly obvi­ous that I don’t care for the simian’s retro exploits or his more recent out­ings, either. It’s not that I don’t respect what the great ape has done for gam­ing; it’s more that I feel he gets cred­it for mediocre-to-hor­ri­ble games. Don­key Kong Jr. falls on the low­er end of the spectrum.
Much the same tripe as the orig­i­nal, you’re tasked with sav­ing some­one by mov­ing across hell and high water. But wait, this time it’s dif­fer­ent! No, you aren’t sav­ing Pauline this time around; no, you’re Don­key Kong Jr., the scion of Kong­dom sav­ing your incor­ri­gi­ble father from the clutch­es of evil human Mario. The fact that anoth­er ape has to save his parental fig­ure from Mario in a com­plete role rever­sal begs sev­er­al ques­tions: Where was Junior when his father was kid­nap­ping inno­cent maid­ens and run­ning ram­pant? Why would Mario even both­er to kid­nap the great ape in the first place? Sure, there’s the motive of revenge, but you’re nev­er going to get your ques­tion answered, try as you might. You just have to accept that DK needs sav­ing and it’s up to you, his reli­able off­spring, to do the job.
Hop­ing that your adven­ture in sav­ing your father is worth it, the game tasks you in uti­liz­ing a jump­ing and climb­ing mechan­ic that may or may not work, depend­ing on where you are height wise. Any fall more than a few pix­els high will kill you, which makes about as much sense as the kid­nap­ping caper you seem to be embroiled in. Who­ev­er had the bright idea to make jump­ing a chore and maneu­ver­ing your ape around impos­si­ble obvi­ous­ly didn’t get that this was a bad design deci­sion imme­di­ate­ly. See­ing as though they are the only skills your ape has, it would have been a lit­tle bit wis­er to make those work well.
Instead, you’ll watch Junior repeat­ed­ly get eat­en alive by croc­o­diles (we’re not sure why a plumber would employ these dan­ger­ous live crea­tures to kill an ape), nailed by ran­dom falling objects and fall to his obvi­ous and hor­rif­ic death, all because he’s under­de­vel­oped at jump­ing and climbing.
And while you’re wit­ness­ing this obvi­ous act of poach­ing, it’d be wise to use some head­phones. The music, much like the orig­i­nal game, isn’t the great­est and it will get monot­o­nous imme­di­ate­ly. Don­key Kong Coun­try this isn’t.
Your best bet is to try the game just for the nos­tal­gic fac­tor in see­ing a pret­ty rare char­ac­ter; Junior was last seen, by my count, in Super Mario Kart for the SNES. He isn’t putting in too many oth­er appear­ances and maybe, just maybe, it was this trip out of the jun­gle that con­vinced him to let his father do all of the adven­tur­ing in the fam­i­ly. This bar­rel isn’t full of laughs or a blast.

Midway Arcade Treasures 2 — 1Q2015 issue

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A most­ly for­get­table trea­sure trove

We’re going to use the term trea­sure trove loose­ly when I refer to Mid­way Arcade Trea­sures 2. Sure, there are some dia­monds in the mine that was once Mid­way and its arcade hits. But some­times, as demon­strat­ed ably in this pack­age, Mid­way dug just a lit­tle too deep to find things that I would­n’t trade for a seashell and some glass beads.

Mid­way Arcade Trea­sures 2 fol­lows in the vein of the pre­vi­ous title, min­ing for hits out of the ver­i­ta­ble Taj Mahal that is Mid­way’s cat­a­log of arcade favorites. The sec­ond go-round imme­di­ate­ly catch­es the eye — and wal­let — for ver­sions of Mor­tal Kom­bat II and Mor­tal Kom­bat 3, arguably the cen­ter­piece in the entire show. Fol­low­ing up those pieces are less­er hits such as Pri­mal Rage, APB and Ram­page World Tour. The entire com­pi­la­tion is made up of 20 titles, which is a bar­gain for the amount of games you’re get­ting. Whether you want to play all 20 titles or not is the ques­tion and it’s eas­i­ly answered quick­ly: No.

A few of the titles includ­ed imme­di­ate­ly dredge up hor­ri­ble mem­o­ries. These drecks of mod­ern gam­ing soci­ety have been res­ur­rect­ed, and I’m not exact­ly sure for whose ben­e­fit. Hard Dri­vin’, men­tioned and dis­sect­ed in GI’s hor­ri­ble games pod­cast of yes­ter­year, is the worst offend­er of the bunch. I have no earth­ly idea who thought this was an arcade clas­sic and why it need­ed to be thrust upon the mass­es again. It was a hor­ri­ble game to begin with and deserves no fur­ther dis­cus­sion or inclu­sion to rean­i­mate it from the depths of hell where it belongs (Edi­tor’s Note: Fun fac­toid — Hard Dri­vin’ pro­vid­ed the basis for GI’s Tor­ture of the Quar­ter col­umn). N.A.R.C. also war­rants a men­tion as a title to avoid, as well as Pri­mal Rage. Let’s face it, Pri­mal Rage was tout­ed as com­pe­ti­tion for the likes of Mor­tal Kom­bat, Street Fight­er and Killer Instinct back in the day, but no one with any sense ever took it seri­ous­ly. The game does­n’t inspire any new feel­ings of doing so after 20 years.

With the inclu­sion of hideous titles, there will be some con­trol issues. The good news is that most titles play like they did when first released. The bad news is that some “improve­ments” have done just the oppo­site of their inten­tion. Let’s take, for exam­ple, Mor­tal Kom­bat II. Because of “new-and-improved” con­trol map­ping, it is impos­si­ble to fight hid­den char­ac­ter Smoke in all ver­sions except the PC ver­sion, and it takes a patch to fix that. That drags the over­all expe­ri­ence down con­sid­er­ably. Con­tin­u­ing with the Mor­tal Kom­bat exam­ple, Mor­tal Kom­bat 3 runs just like the arcade. Except, the arcade ver­sion of MK 3 was ter­ri­ble, with a lot of bugs and glitch­es that neces­si­tat­ed the much-bet­ter Ulti­mate MK3. It’s a mixed bag: On the one hand you’re get­ting improved con­trols and mod­ern advance­ments, but on the oth­er hand, these changes aren’t exact­ly welcome.
What is wel­come, how­ev­er, is the inclu­sion of the behind-the-scenes mate­r­i­al. Doc­u­men­taries and mak­ing-of mate­ri­als are includ­ed as bonus fea­tures for a few games, most notably Mor­tal Kom­bat II and Mor­tal Kom­bat 3. If you were an MK fanat­ic, these are inter­est­ing looks at the fran­chise at the height of its ini­tial pop­u­lar­i­ty. If you’re won­der­ing what the hype was about, it’s a great look at the ori­gin of the series and where ideas and mythol­o­gy were cre­at­ed. The bonus mate­ri­als for all games includ­ed are worth buy­ing if you’re into the arcade scene and its history.

Whether you deem this col­lec­tion worth your time depends on how ded­i­cat­ed you are to the preser­va­tion of the U.S. arcade scene. If you’re a purist and you care about obscure games such as Wiz­ard of Wor and Xybots, by all means go out and search for the trea­sure. Oth­er­wise, let this boo­by-trapped box stay hidden.

NBA Jam — 3Q2014 issue

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Pho­to cour­tesy of Gamefaqs.com

The old king of the court

NBA Jam was — and still is — an expe­ri­ence. No, that’s not some pre­pos­ter­ous fluff dreamed up by an Nation­al Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion maven like yours tru­ly. It was tru­ly an expe­ri­ence because if you were around at the time that Jam hit the streets, you’d remem­ber the sheer amount of hype that sur­round­ed the arcade release. You’d also remem­ber the hype that came home with it. Was it jus­ti­fied hype? Yes and no.

You see, Jam rep­re­sent­ed the start of the exag­ger­at­ed sports game era, the type of game where the play­er ani­ma­tions were over the top and the action just as extreme. Throw in a pletho­ra of secrets — like play­ing as Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton — and the hype went into over­drive. The game isn’t bad and it most­ly lived up to its billing. The sim­ple set­up of two-on-two bas­ket­ball and fast-break bas­ket­ball helped cer­tain­ly, and the ani­ma­tion isn’t bad at all. The play­er inter­ac­tion is where it most­ly suc­ceeds, actu­al­ly. At the time,

Pho­to cour­tesy of NIntendolife.com

there was no oth­er place to get the kind of play that Jam offers: Crazy dunks, the abil­i­ty to be on fire from great shoot­ing and street ball-type rules. It’s that offer­ing that made it a phe­nom­e­nal success.

Jam does­n’t stum­ble in its race to be an in-your-face baller expe­ri­ence. That street ball play­er inter­ac­tion means you don’t have to learn much about the game to suc­ceed and play well. The con­trol is sim­ple yet has a lay­er of depth that means any­one can do well at any skill lev­el. The atmos­phere could be a lit­tle bet­ter with a bet­ter sound­track, but what will make you take notice is the announc­er. If there’s any­thing you will remem­ber about the game, it’s Tim Kitzrow shout­ing to the top of his lungs that a man is “on fire” or “BOOMSHAKALAKA.”

The graph­ics, like the sound­track, are noth­ing to get excit­ed about. There’s a sta­t­ic crowd except for the court­side folk, and then there’s the play­ers. Jam pop­u­lar­ized the over-exag­ger­at­ed look for play­ers, and it cer­tain­ly had its uses. It’s not out of place for Jam, and it brings a cer­tain atmos­phere to the action that Jam ben­e­fits from.

If there’s ever a rea­son to play NBA Jam, find it in the car­toon­ish action, sound and look. That’s where the fun is, and the main rea­sons why the game suc­ceed­ed in liv­ing up to the hype (most­ly) that broke back­boards in the old­en days of 1993.