Tag Archives: import

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.

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme (JP) — Issue 53

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Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion Extreme (JP)
Kon­a­mi, 2003

Gold­en Age of DDR

I’m not ashamed to say I have a favorite Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion mix. For any­one who knows me, they know it’s the Japan­ese home ver­sion of DDR Extreme. While it’s the mix I played the least in the arcades, by the time it came home and I got a copy of it, it quick­ly grabbed the top spot in my heart.

There is a gold­en age of DDR and Extreme is the pin­na­cle. Hit­ting the sweet spot as the last game of the gold­en age, JP Extreme is a sol­id home port with the nec­es­sary arcade songs and a fan­tas­tic mix of con­sole old and new songs. All the per­ti­nent Extreme songs are on the ros­ter: 1998, A, Across the Night­mare, DDR, Saku­ra, Para­noia Sur­vivor & Sur­vivor Max, The leg­end of Max and V. Unlike the Amer­i­can port of Extreme, it’s as if some­one played the arcade ver­sion and thought an accu­rate port was the right thing to do.

The home ver­sion plays exact­ly like the arcade ver­sion and, if you’re savvy enough, you can find a way to enable Mar­velous tim­ing, arcade tim­ing win­dows and the Boost and Wave mods found in the arcade ver­sion only. Gen­er­al­ly, the Japan­ese ver­sions of DDR are spot on, and this port — even with­out the addi­tions — is still faithful.

The home ver­sion fea­tures all the usu­al fea­tures that you’ve come to expect: Diet Mode, Edit Mode, Les­son Mode and Train­ing Mode. One of the best things about the mix, how­ev­er, comes in the options. If you have save data from Par­ty Col­lec­tion, you can unlock all the songs in Extreme, and if you need to, you can unlock all the songs in DDR Max and Max 2. That saves time and gets you to the meat and pota­toes of what you came here to do: play awe­some DDR songs.

And the ros­ter is awe­some. There is nary a repeat in sight that drags the mix down (ahem, we’re look­ing at you AM-3P and your var­i­ous remix­es). The qual­i­ty of songs is high, and a lot of the Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals added here are wel­come addi­tions and crossovers from Beat­ma­nia IIDX. Of note is Max.(period), which was new as of Extreme JP’s home release. Max.(period) is one of the new Boss Songs and is a great addi­tion. Boss Songs in this mix are indeed all the Boss Songs from the arcade ver­sion, which lends cred­i­bil­i­ty to the mix and its authenticity.

There isn’t much wrong with this mix. The unlock sys­tem, if you don’t have sup­port data from Par­ty Col­lec­tion, is kind of aggra­vat­ing but it’s not so ter­ri­ble that the mix isn’t worth your time. It’s time con­sum­ing but it only means play­ing more DDR.

If you’re going to play a home ver­sion and don’t have Step­ma­nia, take the time to import DDR Extreme JP. Extreme JP is the clos­est port of Extreme to the arcade short of Step­ma­nia and well worth the mon­ey to track down a copy, a PlaySta­tion 2 and swap discs.

A great ros­ter, sol­id mechan­ics and peak DDR in its gold­en age form makes it a must-buy if you’re at all into dance games and Bemani. DDR Extreme JP was a good final step in the series.

DDR Extreme JP ver­sus DDR Extreme NA

The DDR Extreme ver­sions released in Japan and Amer­i­ca are wild­ly dif­fer­ent. DDR Extreme JP is the clos­est port of the arcade ver­sion that you’re going to get unless you have Step­ma­nia and fine tune your instal­la­tion to match that arcade version. 
The Amer­i­can ver­sion, released in 2004, is not an accu­rate port. It fea­tures dif­fer­ent graph­ics that replace the well-known song wheel and Groove Radar fea­tured in DDR Max and Max 2 and a song ros­ter that did not resem­ble the arcade ver­sion with a lot of licensed songs and few Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals and Bemani crossovers that were intro­duced in the arcade ver­sion. Also, the com­bo and grad­ing sys­tems are dif­fer­ent: A com­bo break auto­mat­i­cal­ly results in a max A grade, Extra Stage requires clear­ing an 8‑footer on Heavy instead of AA grade on any song’s Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty, and Encore Extra Stage/One More Extra Stage was removed. 

To cor­rect the mis­steps of Extreme NA, Extreme 2 was released in 2005 for the PlaySta­tion 2 with a slight­ly more accu­rate song ros­ter to match the arcade ver­sion of Extreme.

Naruto Clash of Ninja 2 — 3Q2020 issue

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Retro Naru­to revis­its Chunin Exams arc

When it comes to the Naru­to video game fran­chise, com­pli­cat­ed con­cepts have nev­er been part of the equa­tion. There’s noth­ing remote­ly hard about any of the games under the ban­ner and almost all are known for their pick up and play abil­i­ty. So, it stands to rea­son that the Naru­to: Clash of Nin­ja series is easy to start and get into it, and that rea­son­ing is cor­rect. Clash of Nin­ja 2 con­tin­ues the acces­si­bil­i­ty that the series is known for.

Naru­to is a great long-run­ning starter series if you’re just get­ting into ani­me. The basic premise of the ani­me is the basis of Clash of Nin­ja as well: A strong-willed boy from a world of nin­jas strives to be the best he can be and one day become the leader of his vil­lage. Because of a dev­as­tat­ing attack on his vil­lage the night he was born, Naru­to is orphaned and ostra­cized by his fel­low vil­lagers while host­ing a crea­ture known as the Nine-tailed Fox. He grad­u­ates from his village’s acad­e­my and is placed on a team fea­tur­ing his crush Saku­ra and his rival Sasuke while learn­ing team­work and the ways of nin­jut­su. Clash of Nin­ja 2 fol­lows the first half of the series, with Naru­to work­ing with his team­mates through the Chunin (first lev­el) exams that the nin­ja acad­e­my grad­u­ates face.

Clash of Nin­ja 2 does an admirable telling the begin­ning part of the sto­ry of Naru­to, sto­ry-wise. Because the begin­ning of Naru­to is sim­ple to under­stand and fol­low, the punch of char­ac­ters and addi­tions aren’t over­whelm­ing, and it’s easy to keep up with the action and char­ac­ter moti­va­tion. Every­one is rec­og­niz­able from the ani­me and it’s easy enough to actu­al­ly fol­low the sto­ry and learn more about the ani­me with­out the filler that the series is known for.

Graph­i­cal­ly, Clash of Nin­ja looks just like the ani­me, which is a bonus in its favor. The game is gor­geous and bright, and it accom­plish­es the goal of mak­ing you feel like you’re play­ing the ani­me instead of a game. Like­wise, the music and voice act­ing are great and feel and sound like they were pulled direct­ly from the anime’s soundtrack.

Mov­ing around with­in Clash of Nin­ja 2 is a sol­id expe­ri­ence. It’s easy to pull off moves and com­bos, and coun­ters are easy to under­stand and get the hang of with a lit­tle prac­tice. My only prob­lem is that every­one seems to play the same way, so there’s not much vari­ety in the movesets. The char­ac­ter you choose is mere­ly cos­met­ic with the movesets and mechan­ics not chang­ing from char­ac­ter to char­ac­ter. Oth­er than that, the abil­i­ty to jump right in and get to work is a wel­come and refresh­ing change of pace in a cat­e­go­ry of gam­ing known for its some­times-chal­leng­ing mechanics.

Even though there have been more games released in the Clash of Nin­ja series and oth­er Naru­to fight­ing games added to its lengthy reper­toire, Clash of Nin­ja 2 is just where you need to start if you’re want­i­ng to get into fight­ing games and have a love for ani­me or Naru­to. With a wealth of modes, great visu­als and facil­i­tat­ed abil­i­ty to ease into game­play, this is one well-regard­ed ninja.