Did you know that Sega developed exactly one game on the PS1? Interested? Well there’s a fan translation now available. The game is Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tamourine Da Pyon, and�wait, where are you going?

Listen, this is very good news if you already have the PS1 tambourine controller, but felt that the official game for it was too difficult to understand in its native Japanese. I’m not saying this is a likely scenario,?? but in the off chance that you fall into this category, then this is the moment you’ve been waiting for.

Published in 2002, Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tambourine Da Pyon is a rhythm game based on the Japanese idol group of the same name. I hadn’t heard of them because I wasn’t listening to Japanese idol groups in my high school years, but it seems they had a pretty sizeable marketing push between 2000-�4. This includes multiple games, many?????????????????????????? of them on the aging PS1. I assume this is because most children were still on the console.

The translation comes from prominent fan translators Hil??ltop, OldGameBox, and Cargodin. Hilltop describes it on their Patreon page as a “bonus English patch we made pretty quick while working on our bigger projects.�Despit??e this, it’s a very impressive effort with a lot of graphical text redone for anglophones.

The game itself, on the other hand�I have a fondness for rhythm games, but maybe not youth-focused Jpop. Also, I’m having troub?le internalizing the controls. It’s mostly designed for the aforementioned tambourine controller but can be played with a standard pad. However, its prompts aren’t very clear, however. Pink and blue orbs represent X and O button presses but don’t ask me which is which. I’ve already forgotten. Then you’re supposed to “Shake the Tambourine,�which on a controller seems to be using the directional buttons to follow a�thing while maybe pressing a button repeatedly.

I did really poorly in the 10-or-so minutes I played. The game actually referred to my performance as “Drunke?n.�It’s the morning, I’m just groggy, which, in my case, can easily be mistaken as inebriation.

The Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tamourine Da Pyon translation patch can be found here on Hilltop’s Patreon page.

The post There’s a Mini-Moni: Shakatto Tambourine Da Pyon fan translation if you felt like you were missing out appeared first on Destructoid.

Having a large library of game adaptations can be considered one of the biggest testaments to a franchise's success. In this regard, only a few can rival One Piece.

But surprisingly, for the flagship of the Shonen demographic, the games based on the series can vary from sleeping hits to entries even die-hard fans struggle to love. Here are all One Piece games, ranked.

All One Piece Games, Ranked From Worst to Best

To be fair in our rankings, we decided to only focus on games that made it to the West officially with an English localization. We also won't be including crossovers such as J-Stars Victory Vs+ and Jump Force.

24. One Piece Grand Cruise

• Available on: PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 (PlayStation VR)
• Released on: 2018

One Piece Grand Cruise is a VR title that allows you to interact with and assist the Straw Hats in two scenarios. But although both will involve battles, you won't be able to jump into the fray directly. Instead, you will be in charge of operating a canon to face either a Kraken or stop a Marine attack. A short experience that offers very little, Grand Cruise feels like a missed opportunity.

23. One Piece: Run, Chopper, Run!

• Released for mobile devices
• Released on: 2015

One Piece: Run, Chopper, Run! was a 2.5D endless running game that put fans in the role of everyone's favorite cotton candy-loving reindeer. The game also allowed players to equip multiple costumes. Once equipped, ea?ch costume offered a new ability to Chopper. Unfortunately, the game was not successful, and its service ended in ?2016.

22. One Piece Bon! Bon! Journey!!

• Released for mobile devices
• Released on: 2020

One Piece Bon! Bon! Journey!! was a puzzle gacha game. In it, players were tasked with assembling combinations of at least three matching bonbons within rows. Doing that would then allow your characters to perform attacks and damage enemies. The game was a success upon its release, but Bon! Bon! Journey!! was discontinued two years later.

21. One Piece: Grand Battle! (PS1)

• Available on: PlayStation 1
• Released on: 2001 (Japan) / 2003 (United Kingdom)

One Piece: Grand Battle! is a straightforward 2.5D fighting platformer with a roster featuring characters from the East Blue arc. As the first in the series, the game features impressive visuals for its time and follows the Super Smash Bros format. Nostalgia asi??de, the title did not age well and offers a pretty basic experi?ence by today's standards.

20. One Piece Unlimited Cruise SP / SP2

• Available on: Nintendo 3DS
• Released on: 2011 (SP) / 2012 (SP2)

One Piece Unlimited Cruise SP and SP2 are localizations released after the debut of SP's Japanese version. Each game features half of the title's story, as well as some exclusive features. Among them, we have the Marineford Episodes. The mode adapts the arc it's named after and brings many of its protagonists as playable characters. Unfortunately, that is overshadowed by how both SP and SP2 feature considerable downgrades when compared to the original Unlimited Cruise episodes.

19. One Piece: Thousand Storm

• Released for mobile devices
• Released on: 2016

A gacha action RPG, One Piece Treasure Cruise won the hearts of many through its simplistic gameplay and F2P-friendly approach. The latter is seen in how the game did not have a character-pulling system. Instead, players could pull for Cards, which could then be equipped to characters to provide buffs or skills. Treasure Cruise was discontinued in January 2024.

18. One Piece: Grand Battle!

• Platforms: PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube
• Released on: 2005 / Released in Japan as One Piece: Grand Battle! Rush

One Piece: Grand Battle! is the western version of One Piece: Grand Battle! Rush. Unlike the latter, however, the game only adapts the events up to the first portion of Alabasta. The title also shifts from the platform style present in previous entries in favor of an arena fighter approach. Grand Battle! was the first title in the series to debut i??n North America and features 16 playable characters.

17. One Piece Gigant Battle

• Available on: Nintendo DS
• Released on: 2010 (Japan) / 2011 (Europe)

One Piece Gigant Battle is a platform fighting game whose combat heavily resembles that of the Super Smash Bros series. The game also plays very similarly to Jump Super and Ultimate Stars. Here, you can take any characters from its roster of 20 to the field and join up to 4v4 battles. You can also use dozens of supports to get the upper hand. The title was the only game in the Gigant Battle series to be released outside of Japan.

16. One Piece: Romance Dawn

• Available on: Nintendo 3DS (also PSP in Japan)
• Released on: 2012 (PSP) / 2014 (3DS)

A turn-based RPG, One Pìece: Romance Dawn allows you to follow Luffy from the beginning of the OP story to the heartbreaking end of the Marineford Arc. The title features solid combat mechanics, but it's hurt by its map designs and lack of side content. Nonetheless, One Piece: Romance Dawn offers a unique experience sur??e to at least entert??ain fans.

15. One Piece: Pirates' Carnival

• Available on: PS2 and GameCube
• Released on: 2005 (Japan) / 2006 (United States)

Any successful manga/anime is guaranteed to receive a minigame-centric title at one point. In One Piece's case, that's Pirates' Carnival. The game allows up to 4 players to participate in 40+ minigames. All of which can be played either as standalone experiences or as part of its Board Game mode. A casual experience that follows the formula made famous by the Mario Party franchise, One Piece: Pirates' Carnival brings a niche but fun experience to all.

14. One Piece: Grand Adventure

• Available on: PS2 and GameCube
• Released on: 2006

A direct sequel to Grand Battle!, One Piece: Grand Adventure was released exclusively in North America and Europe. Apart from its versus mode, the game allows you to take part in mini-games and tournaments and dive into a story mode (known as Grand Adventure). Although the latter is geared toward younger audiences. Grand Adventure also d??ese??rves a special mention for featuring characters like Zeff within its 24-playable characters roster.

13. One Piece: Unlimited Adventure

• Available on: Nintendo Wii
• Released on: 2007 (Japan) / 2008 (North America)

An open-world action RPG featuring an original storyline and set after the events of Enies Lobby. One Piece: Unlimited Adventure follows the Star Hats after they come into contact with a glowing orb. The game brings a good degree of explor??ation to players. Being able to play as all Straw Hats is also a plus.

Apart from the above, Unlimited Adventure also relies heavily on crafting?? and building. Both of which would become stap?les for the series. For fans of fighting games, you can also take control of more than 40 characters in up to 7v7 versus battles here.

12. One Piece World Seeker

• Available on: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
• Release Year: 2019

One Piece: World Seeker is an action RPG that puts players in the control of Luffy after he finds himself in Jail Island. This time, the plot takes place after Dressrosa but before the Zou arc. Players can also play as Law, Sabo, and Zoro through Extra Episode D?LCs.

Like the Unlimited series, World Seeker allows you to fully explore its open world map and features a simple combat system. You can also use multiple traversal abilities to cover ground? fast and add more flair?? to exploration.

11. One Piece: Unlimited Cruise

• Available on: Nintendo Wii
• Release Year: 2008 (Japan) / 2009 (Europe)

The second game in the Unlimited series, One Piece: Unlimited Cruise, features a non-canon story that takes place after the Thriller Bark arc. The action RPG was released as two episodes and features many of the mechanics present in its predecessor. All while also benefiting from some quality-of-life upgrades. Like in Adventure, the game?? allows you to take part in an open-world singl?e-player mode, as well as face friends in Versus.

10. One Piece Bounty Rush

• Available on: Mobile devices
• Released on: 2018

One Piece Bounty Rush is a gacha real-time action game that overcame its troubled launch to become a fan favorite. The game features many modes, with its most well-known being its PVP 4v4. In it, you are tasked with capturing treasures on the battlefield and then guarding their areas from your opponents. A feat you can accomplish by performing explosive combos and characteristic attacks. Bounty Rush ?also boasts a roster of more than 250 characters going from East Blue to Egghead.

9. One Piece Pirate Warriors (PS3)

• Available on: PS3
• Release Year: 2012

Pirate Warriors is the title responsible for starting what many believe to be the greatest One Piece game series of all time. Developed by Omega Force, the game features the musou style made famous by the developer's Destiny Warriors franchise. On it, you can take a multitude of characters and battle against hordes of hundreds. This was a match made in heaven, as One Piece's larger-than-life attac?ks were a perfect fit for the genre.

Except for Skypea and Thriller Bark, players can experience all of the arcs up to Return to Sabaody in Pirate Warriors. Its small roster, however, might cause it to become repetitive relatively f??ast.

8. One Piece: Unlimited World Red

• Available on: 3DS, PS3, Vita, Nintendo Wii U, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PS5, PC
• Release Year: 2013

The latest game in the Unlimited series, One Piece: Unlimited World Red features huge visual upgrades when compared to previous titl?es. The game also features another original non-canonical story, this time situated between Punk Hazard and Dressrosa.

Overall, the core of the Unlimited experience remains almost the same here. Although Unlimited World Red shakes things up by focusing way more on combat. The latter of which is still as straightforward as it was in the Wii installments. The franchise's buildi??ng and crafting me?chanics are also taken to another level. Now, you can upgrade a whole town.

7. One Piece (GBA)

• Available on: Game Boy Advance
• Release Year: 2005

Sometimes less is more. An action platformer developed by Dimps and released exclusively in North America, One Piece allows players to follow through the events of the East Blue saga. Featuring a solid but simple beat 'em-up combat and well-made sprites, this game is a blast. Honestly, the only downsides here are its length and how you cannot bat?tle wi?th any Straw Hat apart from Luffy.

6. One Piece Pirate Warriors 2

• Available on: PS3 and PSVita
• Release Year: 2013

One Piece Pirate Warriors 2 further polishes the combat system featured in the original game while also increasing its roster to 37 characters. The former is not an understatement, as the game feels faster, more consistent, and way more responsive. The title also removed QTEs and the divisive platform sections players came to hate in Pirate Warriors. On the other hand, Pirate Warriors 2's most debat??able point lies in its main story, where you don't play through the series' arcs. Instead, the game features an alternative What If original scenario.

5. One Piece Treasure Cruise

• Available on: Mobile
• Release Year: 2014

One Piece Treasure Cruise is a gacha turn-based RPG that allows you to revisit the whole story of the franchise. The title also allows you to take more than 200 characters to the field in various modes. Mos?t of the?? characters must be pulled in true gacha fashion.

The game's biggest differential, however, lies in its combo mechanic. When in battle, the mechanic will allow you to perform sequential attacks by tapping. You can also find a deep team-building system here. This can be seen in how players, more often than not, need to completely rework their teams?? based on the oppo??sition.

4. One Piece: Burning Blood

• Available on: PS5, PS4, PSVita, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
• Release Year: 2016

One Piece: Burning Blood is an arena fighter that allows you to take part in up to 3v3 battles. The game won the hearts of fans by featuring a straightforward but still entertaining combat system. Here, understanding how to efficiently counter your opponent will be key. Another huge highlight lies in its roster. The version released for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC offers 44 playable characters and 50 supports. That helps make up for the fact that Burning Blood features an extremely compact main story (coveri??ng on?ly the Marineford Arc).

3. One Piece Pirate Warriors 3

• Available on: PS3, PS4, PS5, PSVita, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
• Release Year: 2016

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 goes all out by featuring huge combat and graphical upgrades when compared to 2. Differently from the latter, however, the game's story mode covers the canon of the series until the Dressrosa Arc. As the arc was still ongoing when the game was released, PW3 features an original non-canonical ending f??or it??.

There are very few things not to love h??ere, as the added mechanics —such as the Kizuna Rush and Overdrive�made the game as fun as it can be. Its 46-character-long roster also helped.

2. One Piece Pirate Warriors 4

• Available on: PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
• Release Year: 2020

Although not featuring a massive jump when compared to 3, One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 builds upon it by offering a massive roster of more than 60 characters. You can find some wild names here, such as Big Mom, Kaido?, and Gear 5 Luffy —the latter available ??via a DLC. The game also made significant changes to combat. Among the tweaks, the biggest one lies in how players can now perform aerial combos.

Pirate Warriors 4 also features a bulky story mode. In it, you can go through the Alabasta, Enies Lobby, Marineford, New World, Whole Cake, and Wano arcs. Like PW3 with Dressrosa, the game features a unique non-canon s?tory for Wano.

1. One Piece: Odyssey

• Available on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
• Release Year: 2023

In One Piece: Odyssey, you follow the Straw Hats after they shipwreck on the island of Watford. The game brings players a true-to-form RPG experience that takes place between?? the Whole Cake and Wano arcs. Among its highlights, we have a huge amount of explorable areas and activities. That is then paired ??with a fine-tuned turn-based combat system. You can also control all the first nine Straw Hats while exploring and in battle.

Odyssey also set itself apart for the quality of its original storyline. The latter of which segments the title as the best One Piece game released in the West to date.

The post All One Piece Games Ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

Classic survival horror fans are rejoicing because Sony has sneakily announced that Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is hitting PS4 and PS5 a?s part of this month's PS Plu?s update.

Yesterday, Sony shared which games will be coming to its PlayStation Plus subscription service this month, including Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Dave the Diver, Construction Simulator, and The Crew 2. However, eagle-eyed fans spotted more games in the fine print, namely a PS1 survival horror classic: Alone in the Dark: the New Nightmare. I'm r??eally exci?ted about the prospect of playing the game on modern hardware and collecting new trophies for it.

Don't miss Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare in this month's PS Plus Premium catalog update

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare was initially released in 2001 for PS1 and (somehow) the Game Boy Color, then later to PC, Dreamcast, and a European-exclusive PS2 port. It's the fourth game in the series and the first reboot. In it, you take on the role of Edward Carnby, who is also a protagonist in the 2024 reboot, and follow his journey as he ??attempts to unravel the mystery that got his best friend and partner killed.

The critical reception?? to the game on release was fairly middling. However, many of the criticisms of the game relate to its various ports. While the game itself is said to fall short of what th??e series offered prior to its release, it still looks better than most of the games that came after it. But there's just something intangibly special about this era of PS1 horror that's so captivating.

There are two reasons you and all survival horror fans should be excited about this game: fixed camera angles and trophies. While not confirmed at the time of writing, Sony is slowly porting more and more PS1 games to PS4 and PS5 with full trophy support, and this is? a platinum I'm dying to a??dd to my collection.

Fixed camera angles in a survival horror became a rarity for many years, but they're gradually making a resurgence. While not the mainstream anymore by a klong way, they to pop up now and then in games such as upcoming retro horror game Crow Country and even in this year's Alone in the Dark, though the short period of time you have them in the latter ?is sorely underused.

As for why this game is hidden away in the fine print of this month's PS Plus update article, I'm clueless. The subscription is getting what looks like a great game, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, on day one, as well as Deliver us Mars. Not only that, but another PS1 classic, MediEvil is also hitting PS4 and PS5 this month. Yes we have the remake, but?? I love the knockout blast of nostalgia that comes with reliving the first games I remember loading up on a CRT in my living room.

The post PS1 classic Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is tucked away in this month’s PS Plus lineup appeared first on Destructoid.

The Earthworm Jim games were perhaps the earliest indication that I’d wind up in this career. They were the first time that I really became aware of the developers behind the games I played, and beyond that, I actually contacted one of them �via snail mail.

I was probably 7 at the time, and I wrote to Shiny Entertainment asking them if they were going to make an Earthworm Jim 2. Amazingly, they wrote back. Not just some pre-for?matted response, either. T??hey actually answered my questions. I wish I still had that letter.

After Earthworm Jim 2, Shiny adopted a no-sequel policy. Earthworm Jim 3D wasn’t developed by Shiny, and as an N64 owner, I wouldn’t play another game by the developer until 2003’s Enter the Matrix. At that point, Shiny had been? sold to Infogrames, and their last years of existence were sp?ent making licensed games.

But following the release of Earthworm Jim 2 and before Enter the Matrix, they created a small handful of games that still demonstrated the developer’s ingenuity. And they began with 1997’s MDK.

On a good day, 2.5 billion people will die

Before you ask, the meaning of MDK as an acronym isn’t really mentioned anywhere in the story or marketing. For a long time, it was believed to mean “Murder Death Kill,�but this wasn’t confirmed until creator Nick Bruty stepped in and confirmed it. However, according to Bruty, “It was a temp name that stuck although I didn't like the actual meaning so we came up with a bunch of other names to cover it up.�/p>

I can understand not really loving the name. The �0s saw a lot of games that glorified graphic violence, and the name “Murder Death Kill�kind of suggests ?it’s one of them. There’s violence, sure, but it’s not really graphic.

There isn’t much story told within MDK itself. Starting out, your only?? point of context is that a “Huge City Minecrawler�is headed toward Laguna Beach. You start the game free-falling towa??rd it, and then you’re blasting everything in sight.

The instruction manual is where it’s at, giving you a completely unhinged account of what’s going on. Dr. Fluke Hawkins gets mocked by the scientific community, so?? he kidnaps his janitor and goes into space to try and get proof that he’s not crazy. As it t?urns out, he is crazy, but rather than return to Earth, he decides to stay in space until he makes a real discovery. Eventually, Earth is invaded, and being in space at the time, Dr. Hawkins decides that he’s the planet’s only hope. So, he sends his janitor to clean up this mess.

Tourism is safe

You play as this janitor, Kurt Hectic. The good doctor has provided Kurt with the “Coil Suit,�which is a formfitting little number with a chaingun on one arm and a face-mounted sniper rifle. After the aforementioned free-fall onto the minecrawler, your job is to gun your way to the pilot’s seat and eliminate whoever’s dr??iving it, at which point you’ll be sucked back into space.

There are six levels, but the last level feels more like an epilogue to level five. Each one is a sprint through a variety of open environments that usually feature combat and a light puzzle. The puzzles range from simply destroying a lock with the “World’s Smallest Nuclear Explosion�to “where the ??hell am I supposed to go?�levels of obtuse. It’s not too difficult. Normally I was able to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go by shooting everything and, if that? didn’t work, jumping on everything.

You’re given a handful of secondary weapons along the way, either dev??ices or alternate ammunition for the sniper rifle.&??nbsp; The sniper rifle ammo sucks to cycle through. Usually, I just want to use the standard bullet, but if you picked up, say, a mortar round along the way, it gets loaded over top, and I end up just embarrassing myself.

While the majority of MDK is just running and gunning, it does mix things up with platforming and short vehicle sections. The runtime is pretty short at about 4 hours, but?? it at le??ast keeps things interesting the whole way through.

I feel top!

I first played MDK around my college years. At that point, the third and first-person shooter genres were deep in their brown realism phase. Playing this game w?as a welc?ome change from carrying two guns and gluing my back to cover.

Kurt’s chain gun is pretty weak, but it sprays at a ?ridiculously fast speed. He can run at about 60MPH, and the open environments were impressive during an era largely confined to corridors. More impressive was that, even though this was 1997, there wasn’t any fog occluding distant objects.

T??he trade-off is that the environments also aren’t very detailed, but that is hardly ever a problem. Usually, it only causes issues during platforming sections. However, this is exacerbated by the fact that Kurt is just a 2D sprite. He can ??actually cling to ledges and pull himself up, but figuring out where the ledge is in relation to Kurt can be difficult.

MDK was released during the early days of 3D acceleration on PC, which I now hate. I don’t hate the games, really, but I do hate how badly they tend to play on modern setups. Interplay did recently patch it to improve compatibility, but it still very reluctantly runs at 640x480 resolution. Proper mouse aiming needs to be configured in the game’s settings, and?? the menus don’t really function correctly. One time, I alt-tabbed, and when I went back in, my mouse aim was broken. It’s a game that badly needs a source port?? or remaster.

Face mounted hardware

MDK also contains a lot of Shiny’s original weirdness. There are cows, for example. It’s largely a mix of dark and absurd humor. Earthworm Jim even makes a cameo appearance as a power-up icon that causes a cow to land on e?n??emies.

There was a sequel appropriately named MDK 2, but it was handled by BioWare. It was generally well-received and well-loved, even getting an HD version in 2012. H??owever, it was a disappointment to me. The gameplay alternates between three characters: Dr. Hawkins, Kurt, and Max. Kurt?’s levels are rather similar to the first game, but Dr. Hawkin’s had more puzzle-oriented gameplay. I barely remember what Max played like. The biggest letdown for me was the fact that the humor leaned in more of a silly direction, losing its edge.

The original MDK is just dumb fun. But beyond that, it’s also an imaginative antithesis to the direction shooting games would take over the next decade. Even now, I can’t think of a game that comes close to MDK’s speedy, cathartic blasting mixed with a darkly surreal atmosphere. Shiny Entertainment’s games weren’t always the tightest, most polished experience on the market, but the world is poorer for the loss of that com??pany’s unique perspective. There hasn’t been anything quite like them since?.

For other retr?o titles you may have missed, click right here!

The post MDK shows us the damage a janitor can do appeared first on Destructoid.

[Update: The full song has been released! You can find it on YouTube as part of this G?ame Changer album playli?st, as well as via the embedded video below. The album can be found on iTunes and BandCamp. And you can find the full music video here.]

The Grammy award-winning The 8-Bit Big Band and Lawrence are releasing a new cover of the Marvel vs Capcom 2 song "I Wanna Take You for a Ride." It's been covered many times ?by the VGM community, but in this instance, new verses and a bridge accompany the admittedly repetitive tune.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 jam gets taken for a ride

Despite the original release from Marvel vs Capcom 2 repeating the same line over and over again, it's one with a special place in fan memories with a funky beat too delicious to ignore. Thankfully, The 8-Bit Big Ban??d and Lawrence bring their own vision to the bop with a full song based on t??he loop. This version adds new lyrics, verses, and a bridge next month on November 10.

The 45 seconds released on social media from The 8-Bit Big Band has an outstanding suite of brass instruments and thrilling vocals. Almost time for MAHVEL, baby.

Last year, the 8-Bit Big Band (and Button Basher) won a "Best Arrangement - Instrumental or A Capella" Grammy for its cover of "Meta Knight's Revenge" from Kirby Super Star. Since its release?? in 2021, the ??theme received over 1 million views on YouTube.

Perhaps with this upcoming Marvel vs Capcom 2 cover, they'll?? get another Grammy. Nevertheless, The 8-Bit Big Band has an upcoming show? in New York on December 15. Its fourth album, "Game Changer," accompanies the Marvel jam on November 10.

The post The 8-Bit ??Big Band ??and Lawrence transform popular Marvel vs Capcom 2 song (Update) appeared first on Destructoid.

One of my methods of preliminary research for my kusoge column–my dumpster scouting, if you will–involves searching through old forum threads of people describing bad games they played. You kind of have to sift through the obvious mentions of Too Human and the philistines who say something like King’s Field, but sometimes I come across something I’ve never heard of, and I go into it largely si?ght-unseen.

A brief synopsis, the claim that it’s terrible, and bonus points if someone says “for some reason.�This can be, “The game is about X, for some reason.�Or, alternatively, “My friend and I couldn’t stop playing it, for some reason.�/p>

Mad Panic Coaster was one of those games. Developed by a company not known for game ?development, released only in Japan, about a concept that hasn’t had its time in the spo?tlight. It’s perfect.

And it also happens to b??e my favorite kind of kusoge (crap gam??e), the kind that I really get into.

[caption id="attachment_399670" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Victim of gravity

Mad Panic Coaster was released in 1997, exclusively in Japan, by a company called Hakuhodo. Normally, Hakuhodo is an advertising company, but they seem to have very briefly dabbled with game publishing. Aside from Mad Panic Coaster, they did 1999’s Himiko-Den Renge. However, they just published that one. Mad Panic Coaster doesn’t have a d?evelopment company listed, and most of the people involved aren’t really linked to any other company.

If it was developed in-house, it’s pretty strange subject matter to pick. Essentially, Mad Panic Coaster is a reverse of Roller Coaster Tycoon. Someone has designed a roller coaster for you to die on, and you’re probably going to. You should have waite??d until a safety rating was established before you got on the ride, but you didnâ€?™t.

The story told in the manual ??(with some great-looking art) tel??ls of a guy who wanted to create the world’s best roller coaster for his child. An accident leaves him horribly disfigured, and also his child grows up to be a disgusting rich person who is no longer interested in roller coasters.

That’s it. That’s what I got. I felt like I was missing a couple of pages, but they’re numbered and definitely all there. To fill in the blanks, I’m going to guess that the heroes, Bakuyan and Kyako, were kidnapped and are being used as surrogate-children-slash-crash-test-dummies. The pair is placed on some hellish murder coasters, and simply have to survive. Which would probably be easier if the cart ??was actually on a track.

[caption id="attachment_399671" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

White knuckles

Mad Panic Coaster kind of feels like a cross between F-Zero and a rail shooter. The whole thing ??moves at mach speed, and you’re constantly fighting to keep yourself from sliding off the edge of the track. Meanwhile, enemies and other hazards drop in ahead of you, and you need to either avoid them or blow them up.

It a great mix of amazing and disturbing. The game moves so quickly, and the hardware never slo?ws down. You can attack by throwing bombs and avoiding obstacles, but you have so little reaction time available that it’s difficult to hit anything. Bombs are thrown at three different distances, and gauging? distance in the short amount of time between the enemy appearing, a curve obscuring them, and your cart simply smashing into them is very difficult. Just staying on the track is a huge struggle at first.

When you start, the whole thing can feel impossible as you’re tossed around helplessly. Eventually, you might get the feel for it. However, the further I got into the game, the more I relied on just mashing the attack button to try and take out enemies. It’s so difficult to aim, but if an enemy drives into an explosion, they? die.

[caption id="attachment_399672" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The way the Gods of Momentum intended

It’s the aesthetic that really makes Mad Panic Coaster worth checking out today. B??oth the art and music team obviously had a real passion for the title. The whole thing kicks off with a monster-led concert. The characters are extremely expressive, and every level has a?n unnecessary number of unique enemies that you barely glimpse as you speed by.

While the environments are largely rendered with 3D polygons, the characters are all stylized 2D sprites. The hazy backgrounds and sporadic, nightmarish scenery really capture the feeling and spirit of a carnival ride, while the characters have an edgy, cartoonish style to them. It also looks distinctly PS1. I feel like, if a ?sequel was ever made, trying to upgrade the graphics to something cleaner, the whole game wouldn’t work quite as well. It needs that unpolished look.

The music is a thr??ashy punk sound, and whil??e it’s not typically the sort of sound I listen to, I can’t help but think it’s the most appropriate.

[caption id="attachment_399673" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Don't blink

I thought Mad Panic Coaster would be a pretty quick game to get through, but that’s definitely not the case. There are 15 individual tracks to make i?t through across 5 different zones. Each zone is capped off with a boss battle, which are kind of the low part to the entire game.

Largely the reason why I figured that it would be a very short experience is because Mad Panic Coaster feels like something that was meant for the arcade. Sort of similar to Incredible Crisis. Something about the short levels, the quick action, and the need to frequently retry the same sections repeatedly feels like it was meant to eat quarters. It would have been right at home in one of those full-body experience cabinets that you could sit in. Ma??ybe they could have even had you lean to control it. Unfortunately, it never made it off PS1.

If there’s one part of the whole experience that I ??don’t like, it’s the fact that you start off being towed up a hill, like you would on an actual roller coaster. It’s a good idea to give a sense of anticipation, but considering that death comes frequently in this game, you’ll probably be sick of seeing it after the third time. It’s completely unskippable.

The difficulty is also all over the place. Up and down. Like some sort of�amuseme??nt park ride. The place I got stuck for the longest was actually the first level in the second world. The track is icy and slippery, which proved to be extremely difficult to adju?st for. Every once in a while, I’d ace an entire track, while others I’d beat my head against. It can be harsh.

[caption id="attachment_399674" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

One hell of a ride

While Mad Panic Coaster is a somewhat clunky game because of its impossible demands for fast reactions, it’s hard to get past the team’s obvious affection for the project. If anyone in the company was predicting it would b?e an extremely obscure title that would never leave Japan, it definitely doesn’t show. The concept is beyond bizarre and extremely limited, but a lot of passion and effort was poured into making it unique.

It’s unfortu?nate that it has never made it off the PS1, or even out of Japan. For that matter, actually getting a physical copy is a rather expensive endeavor. Considering Hakuhodo isn’t really in the video game business anymore, I have to wonder how hard it would be for a developer to license it for a re-release. Would it be worth it? I just feel like it’s a tragedy that something so bizarre yet fascinating isn’t more accessible.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Mad Panic Coaster for P?S1 is a death trap worth strapping yourself into appeared first on Destructoid.

But who is the dreamer?

There is no shortage of games that claim Twin Peaks as a primary inspiration, but the legendary TV multimedia experience is yet to take the leap into a full game adaptation. And it's not out of a lack of interest in the medium from its creators. Twin Peaks writer and director David Lynch once started to work on a game that would continue the series called Woodcutters From Fiery Ships, and Mark Frost, Twin Peak's co-writer, met with the creators of Link's Awakening to give them a few ideas.

Then in 2019, both of them signed off on a Twin Peaks VR project, though it's more of a collection of interactive sets than a full game. Anything where you get to play as leads Dale Cooper or Laura Palm?er, interact with other characters from the show, and work to solve any of it's many mysteries, has yet to materialize in all the years since the show's debut in 1990.

The Blue Rose Team is looking to fix that problem with a short PS1-style demo game based on the franchise. Like the original Resident Evil, it uses fixed camera angles to establish the strong sense of place, and the occasional moment of disorientation, that is part and parcel of any true Twin Peaks experience. Playing it is less like a stressful, survival horror romp and more like a point-and-click adventure, which also makes a lot of sense. Though the show and corresponding movie had some action scenes, the heroes of Twin Peaks are more likely ??to solve their problems through deduction and communication than gunshots and stabbings.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhSUEChBu74

The aesthetics are also a perfect fit for the subject matter. Like with the City of Lost Children for the PS1, taking Lynch and Frost's uncanny reality to low-poly character models and stiff-but-fluid animations just makes sense. After all, this is a show where people regularly ??move a??nd speak backward and then reverse their actions. Being transformed into some simple geometric shapes before skating around a sheriff's offi??ce with tank controls is not the weirdest thing most of these folks have ever done.

After having played the demo, in all its FMV cut scene glory, I was immediately left wanting more, which is exactly what Twin Peaks is supposed to do to a person. Seeing as the two primary musical artists behind the show, and many of its beloved actors, died after Twin Peaks: The Return was released in 2017, continuing in live-action without them wouldn't really be Twin Peaks anymore.?? But in games, dreams can become reality, and people can live foreve?r.

Let's Rock.

The post Twin Peaks: Into The Night is a fan’s dream game appeared first on Destructoid.

I bought my Sega Saturn back when I was in college. Before that, I didn’t know a single person who had ever owned one. It had only been off the market for a decade, but games for it were tough to come by; still are. It sold nearly 10 million units. I have no hard numbers on this, but anecdotally, it seems to have barely made a ripple in Canada. Even knowing that the platform was mostly just popular in Japan, I would think I’d remember a section for Saturn games in Zellers.

Of the games I was able to sweep up in those early days, I mostly played Virtual On. However, a more absurd game got the second-most slice of my attention, and that was Street Fighter: The Movie. Or, as my roommates called it, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game. As it turns out, a sub-par port of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo plu??s a ridiculous �0s movie is ?the formula for magic. Embarrassing, nauseating magic.

[caption id="attachment_396632" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Educational television

If you didn’t see 1994’s live-action Street Fighter, I’m not sure I can make a recommendation. It’s a typica??l bad �0s adaptation of a video game, and sometimes?? it’s decent, sometimes it’s so bad it’s good, and then other times it’s just boring. For being based on a fighting game and including Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, you’d think it would at least have some great fighting sequences, but it seems almost afraid of putting fists in front of a camera.

On the other hand, Raul Julia as M. Bison is transcendentally fantastic. Sadly the actor’s last role, he brings incredible life to the character. It’s a dude who’s evil just for the sake of being evil, but Julia really makes it seem like a dude who loves evil. Absolutely fantastic. You could have just made a sitcom involving Raul Julia playing M. Bison in his ever?yday life, and I would have been glued.

Actually, there’s this scene where Chun Li is giving this big expositional monologue, and Julia completely steals the scene just by ta??king dismissive glances over at her while she talks. Incredible.

But even though it was already based on an extremely popular game, the licensing machine demanded that the movie have its own game. I mean, it probably helped that Street Fighter was one of the hottest licenses of the �0s, so putting it on anything was essentially printing Bison dollars. But, it didn’t just get one game; the console and arcade versions were completely different. The Saturn version of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, as noted earlier, is based entirely on Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

[caption id="attachment_396633" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Quick! Change the channel!

Essentially just being pasted over an already good game is a pretty safe bet, and sure enough, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game is not bad. It’s?? maybe only wor??th playing as a curiosity, but it’s nice that it’s also mostly enjoyable.

The big difference here is that all the characters have been replaced by digitized versions of their actors. Well, not all. Raul Julian and Jean-Claude are substituted with their stuntmen, unfortunately. Also, you can’t really tell if they’re the original actor because the graphics are so grainy. So, like, sure, I can believe that’s Ming-Na Wen as Chun-Li. I’ll take your word for it, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.

It also doesn’t have all the characters because someone at Capcom or Acclaim was a coward. T. Hawk and Dhalsim were both in the movie as characters with spoken dialogue, but no one was brave enough to give Dhalsim yoga-stretch powers or? make any human stan?d in T. Hawk’s idle pose.

In their place, we get Sawada, who had maybe three lines in the entire movie. Sawada is kind of like Fei Long, but is dissimilar enough to count as a new, exclusive character. Lucky you, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.

[caption id="attachment_396634" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

It was Tuesday

The big addition is a stor??y mode where you play as Guile (the all-American hero with a Belgian accent) as he tries to take down Shadaloo. There’s a branching route to the finish line, but you’re essentially just choosing who you’ll be fighting against next.

Let me make it clear, though: you can only play as Guile in this mode. This suited me fine in College when Guile was my main, but I’ve lost my touch when it comes to his fl??ash kicks and sonic booms. It’s a bit of a bummer that they?? didn’t write out narratives for each character, but I guess anyone who uses Guile as their main will be satisfied.

But seeing human actors trying their best to replicate the poses of the Street Fighter II characters is the real charm here. This isn’t like Mortal Kombat, where the chara?cters' moves are based more on okay poses for humans to take on. This create??s a ridiculous effect where two characters will interact in a way that looks like deep kissing or nipple tweaking.

It doesn’t help that the Saturn version of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game has a lot more ?slowdown than the arcade. You get a lot of time to really appr??eciate Zangief sticking his tongue down Deejay’s throat.

[caption id="attachment_396635" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Why do they still call me a warlord?

Every time I pick up Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, I’m surprised by how much I don’t hate it. I think that’s a testament to Street Fighter 2’s gameplay. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the characters and backgrounds are or if the music is so unspect?acular that it’s barely there. It al??l gets held up by one of the greatest fighting game systems created.

My roommates and I played a lot of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, right up until I found Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for PS2 and migrated our f?isticuffs to that. It’s a decent substitute, and the digitized actors lend an enterta?ining whiff of kusoge (crappy game) to the whole affair. I’m not saying it should be picked up by EVO, but�No, actually, that should happen. I would totally watch that.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game for Sega Saturn ?is worth every Bison dollar appeared first on Destructoid.

8BitDo has announced that they’ve finally gotten around to creating a wireless Bluetooth receiver for PS1 and PS2. The timing couldn’t be better since I jus??t bought a PSone the other week.

Previously, 8BitDo released wire?less adapters for SNES, NES, and Genesis consoles. These allow you to connect any 8BitDo controller, as well as many different modern ones, to a classic console. I personally have ones for my SNES and Genesis, which I use for my SF30 Pro and M30 controllers. My dog hates cords, for some reason, and won’t cross the living room if one is on the floor, so this sort of thing is just convenient for him.

8BitDo doesn’t currently have a controller that strictly emulates the look and feel of an original DualShock, but the Pro 2 controller comes pretty close. If that’s still too far off, you can connect a DualShock 4 or Dualsense. DualShock 4 sounds like the obvious choice for me, but they also list the Wii U Pro controller as compatible, which I’m a fan of. However, this also means I can use my arcade stick for some Bloody Roar.

Some people are wondering about how it will work with games that use the PS2’s pressure-sensitive buttons, but the press information I’ve read doesn’t really address this. My guess is that it won’t. This might cause some issues for some games like 2000’s The Bouncer. However, I u??sually forget this feature even exists until I run up agai??nst it.

Hopefully, now that the PS1?? is out of the way, 8BitDo will be quick to bring about adapters for the N64, Sega Saturn, and Turbografx-16.

It appears that the 8BitDo retro receiver for PS1 and PS2 is available right now from their website for $24.99 USD.

The post 8BitDo drops retro receiver for PS1 and PS2 appeared first on Destructoid.

I have to wonder if the fighting game boom of the �0s would have lasted longer if companies didn’t pump out sequels at such a dizzying pace. When you have Street Fighter Alpha 2 and X-Men vs. Street Fighter alongside Street Fighter III: New Generation and Street Fighter EX, what do you choose? These all came out in a roughly two-year span. The arcade mentality generally meant you dedicated yourself to a particular cabinet so you could dominate all competitors. A lot of people still weren’t willing to move away from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

Of course, I wasn’t part of that scene at the time, ?so I’m kind of just talking out of my ass here.

But with that mindset, Bloody Roar 2 arrived just over a year after the first game. This was not at all uncommon. In fact, if Hudson didn’t have a new version of Bloody Roar available so soon after the last game, they’d be left behind by the Tekkens and the Virtua Fighters they were in direct competition with.

I don’t have to worry about that now. I just discovered the Bloody Roar series for myself. So I got to move on to Bloody Roar 2 when I was ready for it.

[caption id="attachment_395081" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Fighting in flip-flops

Bloody Roar 2?? is largely a refinement of the first game. However, a lot of big changes were made. Only four of the eight playable characters from the original roster return (technically five if you count Bakuryu). Seven are added, but two have to be unlocked, which roughly brings the roster up to 11 fighters.

Once again, these fighters have their regular human flesh mode, but during the battle, they can build up a gauge that allows them to transform into a furry. While some of the more interesting transformations from the first game, like Mitsuko the Boar and Hans the genderfluid Fox were removed, we do get Busu?zima the Chameleon and Stun the “Insect.�You win some, you lose some.

The ones that do remain have had their movesets rejiggered. My main girl Alice lost easy access to her deadly spin?ning roundhouse, but she still has her Frankensteiner grab. Her roundhouse is now part of a combo (down-back+kick, back+kick) and isn’t quite as vicious. So, I instead made friends with her dropkick as a way of launch??ing foes across the arena.

Also, Alice is like, a nurse now. But she doesn’t dress in scrubs. She has on what is essentially a sexy nurse outf??it with thigh-high stockings and a skirt that is way too short to be throwing kicks in. I dunno, I’m not big on it. You can unlock a?? black alternate version that puts pants on the girl, but I still prefer her sportier look from the other games.

Return of the roundhouse

The general gameplay is the same. It’s an era-typical 3D fighting game, but the ring is boxed in with fencing. This is sort of like Sega’s Fighting Vipers. You can break the walls, but unlike the first Bloody Roar, which gave the option to have walls breakable just by knocking an opponent into them enough, they’re only breakable in Bloody Roar 2 when you finish off your opponent. Kind of ?a drag, actually.

However, they added the all-important block button. You can still do a “light guard�the same way as the first game by just not moving. However, heavy guard is now mapped to the R1 button. After playing so much of the original, it was heard to make my brain learn to use this in Bloody Roar 2.

Finally, Rave Mode has been replaced by a “Beast Drive�special attack. Each character has this super powerful move in beast mod??e. This expends beast mode immediately, which really sucks if you don’t manage to land the attack. However, it can also be a really flashy way to empty the rest of your bar if you’re about to get kicked back into human form.

[caption id="attachment_395083" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Furry rights

The biggest addition to the PS1 port is a story mode, but the narrative is, at least, very poorly told. The Tylon Corporation that made the zoanthropes was taken out in the first game. Now, there’s a Zoanthrope Liberation Front who claim to ??fight for furry rights, but are actually just following in the footsteps of Tylon.

However, each character’s story just has a lot of dialogue between fighters and serves as a really weak basis for them to fight. Alice’s story, for example, has her trying to help Yugo find Bakuryu, and then, for some reason, Gado decides she’d make a good leader and fights her. It?’s the kind of story that is just kind of unremarkable and dumb, which is typical for a fighting game of the era. However, trying to describe it in shorter terms makes me want to vomit.

Still, a story mode is a great addition to ad?d alongside the arcade, survival, and time attack. Fighting games are at their best when you have someone t?o compete with, but having ways for unlikeable people such as myself to get enjoyment is always appreciated.

[caption id="attachment_395084" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Come back when you're ready

Aside from some give-and-take and a lame narrative, I don’t have any significant complaints about Bloody Roar 2. I wish it didn’t take me so ??long to ??finally try this series out because it has really clicked with me.

While I liked the simplicity of the first game, Bloody Roar 2 feels much more solid. Landing a deadly combo feels a lot m??ore earned, and the strategy doesn’t lie solely on how well you manage your beast mode. I mean, choosing the right time to slip into your fursuit is still a big, big part of it, but it’s not quite as pronounced.

People have already been warning me that Bloody Roar 2 is where the series peaked. However, my local purveyor of retro games says it was Bloody Roar 3, while others have said Bloody Roar: Primal Fury. I haven’t heard anyone say Bloody Roar 4, so that’s worrisome. Unfortunately, I don’t have such easy access to any of the remaining titles in the series, so I’m going to have to take them as they come. Hopefully, Bloody Roar 2 is able to keep me satiated until then.

For other retro tit??les you may have missed, click right here!

The post Bloody Roar 2 for arcade ??and PS1 expands the fluffy? fighting appeared first on Destructoid.

I want to preface this Weekly Kusoge by saying that I absolutely love Tecmo’s Deception, but it is complete shit. I was inspired to try out the Deception series by community member Kerrik52. My only previous experience was watching a roommate try out 2005’s Trapt. However, upon looking at screenshots of Tecmo’s Deception, I fell in love.

Released in 1996, Tecmo’s Deception is just so PS1. While it established the foundation of the long-running series, it mostly failed spectacularly at everything it attempted. However, its King’s Field style first-person perspective and boxy, pixellated graphics just feel so cozy. A lot of what it failed to do? was dropped by subsequent games in the series, which?? almost makes me feel like I won’t like them as much.

I will co?ntinue to se??nd mixed signals throughout this article, I assure you.

[caption id="attachment_394483" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Invitation to kusoge

Tecmo’s Deception starts with you, a prince, getting your idyllic life fucked over by your hilariously evil?? brother. You were set to marr??y the love of your life and take the throne of the kingdom, but that dick got jealous and framed you for murder. Typical little sibling.

However, you’re saved from the gallows and whisked away to the Castle of the Damned, where, in return for your assistance in resurrecting Satan, you’re given the power to exact your revenge. As a player, you’re not really given much choice in the matter, so thankfully, it just feels so good to be evil. It helps that the people visiting your castle are hapless at best and giant walking cola-douches at worst. And they’re usually at their worst.

The story is probably one of the legitimately best-executed facets of Tecmo’s Deception. Like many games of its era, there isn’t a whole lot of depth to it, but the fact that you play as a fallen hero doing evil stuff is pretty tantalizing. Your charact?er isn’t really given any lines of their own, so their actions and reactions are largely up to your own imagination. For me, it was a lot like b??eing an evil homeowner and trying to keep everyone off my damned lawn. Homeownership is a great fantasy for my generation.

[caption id="attachment_394484" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Get off my lawn

You’re able to customize the Castle of the Damned at a great degree of depth. You can change the corridors and room placement as much as you want to make it feel more like home. You can, but there really isn’t much point in doing so.

Home customization is among the many, many undercooked features of Tecmo’s Deception. It sounds like a good idea on paper, and it still seems like a good idea when it’s presented to you. But then the gamep??lay gets applied to it, and you realize there’s no point.

You’re only ever invaded by a maximum of four intruders at a time. You deal with them by drawing them into traps that you set around the castle and activating them at the right time. However, I feel like the word “trap�implies a certain amount of automation, but there is none. Really, they’re spells that you set on the ground. You wait until someone steps on them, then manually activate them while the person is about five feet away. Satan sh??ould have just given you a powerful kick.

So, with the limited number of invaders and the fact that you have to be close enough to count an intruder’s nose hairs, you don’t really need a big castle. For most missions, I only used the room that intruders spawn in and the directly adjacent corridors. It actually would have been most efficient for me if I just shrank the overall footprint of the castle down as small as possible. The intruders aren’t after anything. You aren’t protecting something. They’ll just wander the cast??le until you choose to deal with them, so giving them less land to graze on would just expedite the process.

[caption id="attachment_394485" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Our house, our rules

Yet, you don’t really need to reach for any sort of exploit in Tecmo’s Deception. Everything is already extremely skewed in your favor from the beginning. It's unlikely you'll run out of gold or MP since it’s given to you so readily. You're eventually given the ability to upgrade y?our traps, and there’s no reason not to.

On the other hand, there’s very little reason to use most of the traps. At the start of the game, I experimented with confusion traps as a way of making it easier to kill or capture intruders, but I quickly realized that it didn’t really increase the chances of success much. Later in the game, I only used capture traps because they seemed most e??ffective, and I could use the captured pers?on as a building block for a monster.

Monsters are another great idea that was badly implemented. You collect the bodies of captured intruders and can turn them into various types of beasts who can collect experience and level up. You don’t get this ability until much later in the game, but it basically just removes the last threads of usefulness from the kill traps. With the traps, you have to lead someone into them and a??ctivate them at the right moment. Monsters you can just drop in whene?ver you want, as long as you have Block Orbs available.

[caption id="attachment_394486" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Monster problems

If you run out of Block Orbs, you can invite a merchant to your castle. Despite them being instantly aggressive once they see you, they’ll gladly open up shop if you walk up to them. You then have to kill them afterward, but somehow they’ve banked all your money. I guess if you could just buy whatever you want and then steal back your money, that would be going too far. As if Tecmo’s Deception is any ?stranger to pushing the margins of acceptable game design.

When you really get down to it, most of your time in Tecmo’s Deception will be spent grabbing the attention of an intruder and dodging their attacks as you lead them over a trap. Enemies don’t have any real willpower beyond walking directly toward you, so there’s very little str?ategy. Later games in the series would address this by having you create comb?inations of traps, but that is absolutely not the case here.

And then, just to cap everything off, I defeat??ed th??e last boss within seconds by placing a trap directly next to them. The trap activated immediately when the mission started for some reason. There was no showdown. It was just over. A brilliant way to end the game.

[caption id="attachment_394487" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

If you have to fail, fail spectacularly

Yet, for whatever reason, I loved the time I spent with Tecmo’s Deception. There’s an ea?rnest effort to innovate ben?eath all its failure and I find that really endearing. There was a lot of ambition driving it, and it feels like the team put their full effort into all these different features before eventually realizing that the pieces weren’t fitting together. But a product eventually has to ship, and everything was hastily crammed into a box and pushed out the door.

Or, a??t least, that’s how I interpret it. I haven’t been able to find any details on the development through interviews or elsewhere.

However, the thing with failed experiments is that very few are willing to try and replicate the experience. The Deception series would continue using the foundation of Tecmo’s Deception but would excise a lot of the parts that didn’t work and fine-tune the ones that did. In doing so, it lost a lot of what makes Tecmo’s Deception truly unique.

So, the moral of the story here is: if you want to truly stand out, fail like no one has ever failed before. Fail so spectacularly that your failure is indelibly burned into the memory of every human on the planet. Becaus??e, as anyone who calls themselves a pickup artist will tell you, pity is a type of love.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Tecmo’s Deception for PS1 is an unforgettable cluster of failures appeared first on Destructoid.

There haven’t been many fighting games that I’ve really connected with. I’m not a competitive person by nature, and it’s a genre that is built around competition. The two times I really got into fighting games were a rivalry with my brother-in-law around Street Fighter II and another with a college friend over Soul Calibur 3. I still play them with some regularity, but I just have a hard time falling into them and continuing after beating the arcade mode a couple of tim??es.

1997’s Bloody Roar was recommended to me a few times, but I only now got around to playing it. This is despite owning a copy of it, given to me by a friend who was cleaning out their b?asement. If I had known how firmly I would click with it, I would have definitely gotten around to it sooner.

[caption id="attachment_394235" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

A bloody good time

Bloody Roar was published by Hudson back in 1997 and developed by Raizing Co, a Japanese developer founded by former members of Toaplan. It was strangely released in North American arcades as Beastorizer, but on PS1 as its Japanese name of Bloody Roar.

It’s worth noting that in arcades, it was released using the hardware commonly (but not officially) known as the Sony ZN-1. Why is that important? Well, the Sony ZN-1 is essentially the arcade version of the PlayStation. I’m not quite familiar enough to be able to confirm that Hudson didn’t make any of thei??r own custom tweaks to the arcade hardware, but the PS1 port is, under mild scrutiny, ?pretty much exactly the same as the arcade version. It just has some home console tweaks, like a new cinematic intro that looks dopey in that very specific early-3D way.

Speaking of early-3D, Bloody Roar landed during the 3D fighting craze that followed in the wake of 1993’s Virtua Fighter. It’s very similar to other games of its particular sub-genre. It ?uses three buttons (five if you have sidestepping turned on), and each level is a square stage. However, you can only ring out opponents if wall-breaking is turned on. The walls can either be broken by finishers only or just by bashing your opponent into them enough times. It’s your choice.

However, I think the official rules lean?? toward finisher breaks only. If your strategy in other games leaned toward ring-outs, then you’ll have to come up with a new technique.

[caption id="attachment_394237" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Select your fursona

Oh, I haven’t even gotten to Bloody Roar’s main hook. Everyone’s a furry! All the fighters can transform into anthropomorphic animals, and that’s where the main strategy comes from. You have a gauge that fills as you attack and get attacked, and you choose when to transform into beast mod??e. Once you’re in your f??ursuit, your character is more powerful, heals some of the damage caused to them, and gets a whole new set of moves. It gives you a major advantage.

The strategy comes from when to use this ability. Once you’re in beast mode, your gauge becomes a bit like a second health bar. It depletes as you take damage, and once it’s empty, you’re transformed back into a boring fleshy human. There’s a risk and reward to u??sing it, and likewise, when your opponent unleashes their fur, then it’s time to get aggressive as you try to knock them out of it. There’s a cooldown period before they can transform again, so that might be a good chance to turn the tables.

It’s interesting because while the combat is simple and easy to learn, the strategy of transformation keeps things interesting. There are lots of co??mbos to learn, and the fighting is very impactful and flows well. For a game that only uses two buttons, with another being unlocked via t?ransformation, there’s a great deal of depth to be had.

[caption id="attachment_394241" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Go ask Alice

I wound up choosing Alice as my main. This ?is largely because she transforms into a bunny, an animal I have an affinity for. She clicked with me immediately, helped by the fact that she has a brutal spinning roundhouse kick and one of her grabs has her perform a Frankensteiner on her opponent.

Bloody Roar has a standard arcade mode, as well as versus and survival. It’s pretty standard for the time period. The story involves the Tyron Corporation, who created the “Zoanthropes�as weapons. They plan on brainwashing them, but a bunch of them break out, and that’s the cast of Bloody Roar. Like many fighting games of the era, the story doesn’t play into the game much. You get an end credit?? cutscene tha??t you may or may not understand based on whether or not you read up on the background.

Strangely, at its default difficulty, I found Bloody Roar to be kind of easy. Most fighting games start you off against an opponent that barely competes before building you up to a big cheap boss that can read your mind. However, your first fight in Bloody Roar isn’t a complete pushover, and the? last fights aren’t much harder. The boss isn’t?? entirely easy, but they aren’t cheap either.

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Follow the white rabbit

A lot of this kind of points to Bloody Roar being intended for competitive play. Unfortunately, it was before the tim??e when online competition was really a thing, so I’d have to rope someone in??to a rivalry. Maybe someday.

It’s unfortunate because I clicked with Bloody Roar in a way that’s rare for me with fighting games. I want to build my skill with it and get better, but without direct competition, it’s hard to find the motivation. At the very least I have the rest of the series to play through. I’ve already managed to grab a copy of 1998’s Bloody Roar 2. There are five games in total for the series, with it ending completely ?in 2003.

The company that owns the license, Hudson, went bust in 2012, with all assets being bought up by Konami. They’re not? the worst possible rights holders at the moment,?? but they certainly rank. I would be far beyond jazzed to see a compilation or new title in the series, especially one with online play. At the moment, you can at least grab the game using the PlayStation store on PS3 as part of the PSone classics lineup. That’s something.

For other retro titles you may have missed, cl??ick right here!

The post Bloody Roar is far overdue for a return appeared first on Destructoid.

Aren't you a little short for a Samurai?

My household had an N64 for the late �0s, so all of my PS1 experience was had on a close friend’s console. However, they weren’t as focused on video games as I was in my youth, so I mostly just got to play the really big titles. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Twisted Metal, and whatever could be found on demo discs.

I’ve been making up for lost time, recently. My PS1 collection has been growing, and I’ve been paying close attention to the titles that slipped between the cracks. 1998’s Brave Fencer Musashi is one such title. It was made during what was probably Squaresoft’s most inventive period. Between all the Final Fantasy’s, we got Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story. Nowadays, it feels like between each Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest entry, we get a?? bunch of spin-offs and remakes from those series.

Brave Fencer Musashi interested me because I knew next to?? nothing about it.

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Not my problem, pal

The introduction to Brave Fencer Musashi does a hilariously great job of setting things up. The Alucaneet Kingdom is under attack by the Thirstquencher Empire, so the princess of the kingdom summons Musashi to fix t??hings for them. He absolutely has no interest in doing this, everyone immediately?? makes fun of him for being a child, but he’s not allowed to go home until he solves their problems.

Screw setting up co??mpelling motivation for the protagonist. Musashi is on a quest because he’s obligated to be. Many times when an NPC asks him for help, he responds with some variation of, “Isn’t this something you should be doing yourself?�But because the villagers absolutely refuse to help themselves, Musashi has to do it for them.

This is a subtext that a lot of games just ignore, but it’s literally the driving narrative force behind Brave Fencer Musashi. Musashi is someone who?? is just trapped i?n a video game. The villagers all play their parts, but that act is entirely coming up with some dangerous task for the hero.

The whole “you’re a hero, don’t ask questions�schtick has worked for video games since time immemorial, but every so often, it’s nice to have a hero whose catchphrase is, “Not my problem, pal.�/p>

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Well, excuuuse me, Princess

While Squaresoft is largely known for its RPGs, Brave Fencer Musashi leans a little heavier into the nebulous action-adventure category. There are RPG stats and questing, but the focus isn’t on them. Instead, it plays closer to a Zelda game but with platforming elements. In some ways, its lighthearted and whimsical storytelling and tilted-angle platforming reminded me heavily of Super Mario RPG, but I was surprised to find almost no staff crosso??ver between the two games.

You spend a lot of your time at the castle or the neighboring Grillin Village. All the action areas branch off from the village. Most chapters of the game begin wi??th the village having a problem, and that points you in the direction of where you need to go next. It’s not foolproof, but usually, if you talk to the v??illagers, you’ll catch wind of a rumor.

Musashi’s goal is to collect five scrolls to power up his sword, Lumina. These scrolls (and the sword) are also what the ??Thirstquencher Empire is after, so they’ll be making a nuisance of themselves. It’s ??a pretty standard video game narrative, especially for the time.

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Delicious villagers

Anything generic about Brave Fencer Musashi’s plot is made up for by its whimsical quirkiness. There’s a day/night cycle that moves the townsfolk along their path, and as you quest, one of your goals is to save captured citizens from crystal-like “Bincho fields.�/p>

The fa??ct that you keep orbiting Grillin Village goes a long way towards making it feel like home. You learn people’s schedules over time and catch wind of how other townsfolk feel about them. There’s an unfortunate dearth of side activities to take on, but each chara??cter feels unique, and their interactions with Musashi are enjoyable.

There’s also an action figure?? collecting diversion that is completely there for its own sake. You can buy th??ese figurines of many of the characters and enemies you encounter, then take them back to your room and view them. However, they all come mint-on-card. Will you break open that blister pack? You fool! You’ve destroyed their resale value! All well. At least now you can play around with them.

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Harass the wildlife

The biggest issue I had with Brave Fencer Musashi is that it isn’t much fun to play. The platforming is underwhelming at best and finicky at worst. The combat isn’t great, either. It’s sort of gluey ??and lacks any real impact.

You have the ability to absorb abilities fr?om ?enemies, but aiming your fusion sword is just so crappy. Then, most of the abilities suck and are only useful in specific situations. Unless there was obviously something in the environment that I needed an ability to bypass, I’d often just forget that this ability even existed.

On the other hand, sometimes it has amusing effects. Like, one of them just makes you stink and puts flies on your scr??een. That’s a good one.

Brave Fencer Musashi also flows like a river of butts. The hardest part of the game for me happens early on when you hav??e a limited amount of time to avoid a catastrophe. You do this with a mini-game that consists of hitting switches in the right order, pressing buttons at the correct time, and, ??worst of all, platforming with a fixed camera angle. The difficulty is all over the place. Certain segments drag or even repeat. It makes actually getting through the game rather unenjoyable.

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Should've hired a poet

Brave Fencer Musashi is one of those games that I kind of slogged through, finished, and then was left wondering why I enjoyed it so much. Then, as someone who will sometimes bashfully refer to themselves as a “critic,�it’s my job to figure out what I liked about it and then put it into words. That’s sort of difficult here. For one thing, I believe I like Brave Fencer Musashi so much just because of its general vibe, but that’s something else t??hat isn’t quantifiable.

Truly, Brave Fencer Musashi’s weaker points actu??ally play out in its favor. The fact that its pacing is practically broken and its story is so weirdly non-conformist makes the whole experience unpredictable. Power-ups are given sporadically, but you don’t know what yo??u’ll be getting or when. There are droughts with no changes to your powerset and others where they’re coming in fast. It’s worth it to keep playing because you never know what’s over that hill.

Any beyond that, it’s like home. Grillin Village is a bit like Kattlelox Island from Mega Man Legends. Over time, it kind of grows on you, and it’s a comfortable feeling. The characters may not am??ount to much in the time?? you spend with them, but they become familiar faces.

Brave Fencer Musashi is just a special sort of game that pops up every now and then. It’s like the Dark Cloud series or Deadly Premonition; there’s an earnest warmth underlying everything. Maybe the game itself wonâ€??™t rock your world, but you will remember it fondly. And I think beyond just being a fun diversion, that’s exactly what every game should strive for.

For other retro titles you may have missed, click right?? here!

The post Brav?e Fencer Musashi for PS1 is an unusual Squaresoft title that will stick with you appeared first on Destructoid.

HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

Woody Woodpecker is how the Gods of Animation punished humankind for creating anime. I will never understand the appeal of centering an entire property around a character deliberately created to be annoying. He’s like Bugs Bunny, except you never feel the need to root for him. No, he’s more like Batman’s Joker, but you ??replace all the charisma with just a second heaping of insane malice. I hate him so much.

So, I bought a game that headlines him. It’s 2000’s Woody Woodpecker Racing for PS1 and Windows. I bought this specifically so I could remind my brain that it’s trapped here in this hell with me. However, i?t kind ??of seems like the developers weren’t exactly fans either, since that blasted Woodpecker isn’t my biggest complaint with the game.

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HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

If you’re not familiar with Woody Woodpecker, I’ll try to explain him to you. He’s the most annoying creature on the planet. Most of his cartoons involve him pestering someone until they’re provoked to violence. I’m certain that one of his creators was roused at 5 a.m. by a woodpecker outside their window and just said, “I’m going to make this everyone’s problem.�/p>

If Wally Walrus was just trying to eat his breakfast at his favorite diner, Woody Woodpecker would come in, set the jukebox to play MMMBop indefinitely, then lock himself in the women’s bathroom. Wally would eventually get up and unplug the jukebox, but whenever he’d go and sit back down, Woody would just burst out and plug it back in, continuing the onslaught of Hanson. The Walrus would eventually get fed up, kick down the bathroom door, and get beaten up by some old woman and called a pervert before being thrown out of the diner. And, I don’t know, you’re supposed to root for Woody because he represents the insane lust for chaos that exists deep with??in our souls. Like, fuck that Walrus for wanting to enjoy breakfast at his favorite spot.

He’s just a massive dick. At least for Bugs Bunny cartoons, the people he’s harassing are worse than he is. Meanwhile, Woody Woodpecker’s catchphrase is just derisive laughter played to a melody more vexing than what could ever be conjured in the worst nightmares of the Hanson brothers. It was no doubt created so children would imitate it to annoy their p??arents and start fights on the schoolyard.

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HUHUHUHUHUHUHU!

Mercifully, you don’t need to be familiar with the Woody Woodpecker cartoons to understand what’s going on in Woody Woodpecker Racing. No, it’s the common story of a company being too lazy to figure out an inventive way for their property to fit into the medium of video games, so they have someone make Mario Kart, but replace the characters with their own.

That’s it. There’s a “Quest�mode, but it doesn’t have any cutscenes or storyline. You don’t even really have to hear that much of the Woodpecker’s piercing voice. I was concerned that this would have the audio design of an actual Mario Kart and the soundtrack would always be drowned out by a caco??phony of cartoonish screams, but that really doesn’t happen. You can select Chilly Willy and hear very little dialogue at all.

I’ve never been so relieved to be left with what is essentially just a generic karter. I mean, it’s really not that great, but it was bra?cing for? a painful woodpecker-centric experience. My expectations couldn’t possibly be much lower, so the pain I received instead is much more appreciated.

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HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

If there’s one place that Woody Woodpecker Racing tries to differentiate itself from its contemporaries, it’s in its range of vehicles. You have open-wheeled “Racers,�stock cars, monster ?trucks, and jalopies. They all control exactly the same, as far as I can tell. I guess the visual variety is appreciated.

There are 16 tracks that take?? you all over th??e world, and they’re�y’know, fine. They’re mostly just variations of circles, but again, let’s not diminish the importance of variation.

The weapons all suck. Most of them are just projectiles or mines. There’s a boost, of course. Then there’s a stopwatch that just slows down everyone else. That’s sort of like the lightning bolt from Mario Kart but lazier.

Of course, none of that matters because Woody Woodpecker Racing has some of the most heinous rubber-band?? AI I have ever encountered.

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HaHAhaHAhaHA HAA HAA!

If you’re not familiar, rubber-band AI is the mechanic wherein the people losing in a competition are given a slig?ht boost or other advantages that allow them to keep pace. The further someone falls behind, the more they are assisted by the system. It’s employed in sports games, but it’s extremely prevalent in racing games going all the way back to when they started. There are probably mo?re racers that employ rubber-band AI than ones that don’t. The trick is to sort of disguise it. Otherwise, it can feel unfair.

I can name some titles that benefitted from having rubber-band AI and others that suck because of it. Woody Woodpecker Racing sucks because of it.

It’s so bad that I felt most races are won due largely to luck rather than any sort of skill. The system is very focused in keeping racers in a pack so they can lay into each other, even though the combat sucks out loud. This means that someone is always on your ass, and you’re one slight miscalculation away from them gaining a lead. However, they don’t even rely on that. The pull of the rubber band means they can gain more speed than you, so your time in first place is always limited by how lon??g it takes them to catch up. It’s inevitable; you will be passed. ??And I can’t imagine a worse punishment for doing well.

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HUHUHUHUHUHUHU!

The worst part about all of this is that the save system failed me. I was working my way through quest mode but got frustrated by all the rubber-banding, so I saved and put it away ??for a while. When I came back, I found most of my progress was gone. I started from some track way earlier in the quest. So, I took my lumps and pushed through again before I was interrupted in the final race. I had made damned sure that saving was successful each time I did it throughout my progress. However, when I returned, I was back on that same damned track.

I know that the game did save, though. All the cha?racters I had unlocked along the way were available. However, it was still keen on starting me way back near the beginning of t?he entire game. If I had any intention on finishing the game entirely, it was gone right there.

The best thing I can say about Woody Woodpecker Racing is ??that you don’t have to deal with Woody much. There’s none of his antics. You don’t have to sit through any cutscenes where he cuts people’s brake lines and then plays the victim when they get perturbed about his attempted murder. He’s just there.

On the other hand, Woody Woodpecker Racing was part of a period of gaming that was absolutely turgid with kart racers. This one is pretty distantly behind Mario Kart 64, Diddy Adventure Racing, and Crash Team Racing. For that matter, even Mickey’s Speedway USA can barely see it in the rear-view mirror. And there, I just named four kart racers from the same period that are better than it, and didn’t even have to make any deep cuts. Plus, all those games I just named don’t involve any red-crested woodpeckers.

It’s certainly not the worst kart-racing game I’ve ever played, but this one is made worse by the woodpecke?r-shaped anchor it’s chained to.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Woody Woodpecker Racing for PS1 is an abomination fu??ll of speed holes appeared first on Destructoid.

We do a little bowling and we drink a little vino

This one is another recommendation from my local video game dispensary. They told me they thought I had asked them to keep an eye out for The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling on PS1 (also on PC). I did no such thing. I had never heard of this game since then. Howev?er, I can understand why you would want to exploit a boon, such as someone who intentionally buys bad games. You don't have to be dish??onest about it.

The Flintstone’s was something that was perpetually syndicated when I was a kid, so even though it was off the air for 20 years before I was born, I’m rather familiar with the source material. I also love bowling when I was growing up. It was the sport that took place in the closest proximity to a Metal Slug arcade cabinet. I also love games that I can wrap up in 20 minutes, so The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling really has a lot going for it out of the gate.

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New saucer-sled land speed record

The story sees the stars of the popular vitamin bottle really wanting to go bowling. However, Fred Flintstone’s boss demands he put in overtime in the quarry, which threatens their evening activities. I guess they didn’t have unions back in the Stone Age. Wait, yes they did. Unions were the butt of a joke once. I guess it’s not so funny when ??Fred is having his job threatened by his employer unless he does overtime.

Anyway, The Great Gazoo, the universe's most lovable genoc?idal maniac and one of the show’s worst ideas, shows up and decides he’s going to help out. He converts the quarry into a giant bowling course complete with bowling sleds, and sends Fred, his neighbor, his children, and his dog hurtling down it on a collision course with various trash. I'm not sure how much you know about bowling, but this i??s entirely not it. This is more like tobogganing down one of those hills with “No Sledding�signs everywhere.

I chose Fred as my bowling ball because Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, and Dino are all just variations of the worst things imaginable. Every utterance they?? make is like a hailstorm of glass raging in my ear canal??s. I also tried Barney once, and he controls like an oiled-up sea lion.

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Prolonged exposure

I may have hinted at this already, but The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling doesn’t really share anything in common with actual bowling aside from the pins. That’s? a shame because the early 3D era of video games definitely didn’t give ?us enough mediocre bowling titles.

Instead, Fred and everyone less tolerable get dropped into little sleds and are sent down twisting hills. You need to steer into pins and gems. There are also obstacles you need to avoid, but these just seem to slow you down. Let me be clear that there is no time limit to Bedrock Bowling, and I don’t think you get a bonus for doing a lane quickly, so I have no idea why getting slowed down would be considered a punishm?ent. Similarly, I also don’t know why there is a boost button. Wait, yes, I do. It’s so the pain will end quicker.

For that matter, there are also three “Dodos�on the t??rack. If you hit them all before getting to the finish line, the track gets extended, which is necessary to hit the t?hree-or-so more pins needed for a strike.

If you manage to hit all the Dodos in a group of lanes, you’ll get to visit a secret stage. There are three secret lanes in total, with the last one being a reward for turning every Dodo into road kill. Once again, The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling rewards you by giving you more game to ?play, which seems more like?? a loss here.

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Dum-dum

I’m a Canadian, so tobogganing is in my blood. However, I’m not sure you need to be a walking perversion of gravity to win at The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling. I can’t even say if losing is possible. From what I can tell, this is supposed to be a competitive sort of affair, which sounds like a good way to progress a relationship b??eyond simple friendship and into the realm of a mutual nap.

If you play it by yourself, you just get a tally of your score at the end. The Great Gazoo doesn’t call you a dum-dum if you do poorly. Or, perhaps I just didn’t do poorly enough to get cussed out by the spaceman.

I suppose that’s sort of what bowling actually is. It’s a game of physical solitaire that we usually play in proximity to other people to make it more interesting. Nobody interacts aside from hoots and butt-pats when a strike is landed. There’s an overall cap on how well you can do, so playing by yourself is only beneficial in improving your consistency and technique. In a way, that’s what The Flintstones Bedrock Bowling is doing for you, only you’d hav?e a much tougher time finding anyone to play with you.

Actually, I never checked. ?Can you add an AI player?

No, you can’t. Nevermind.

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Cooked turkey

I said this earlier, but a complete playthrough of The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling takes about 20 minutes ?for an entire playthrough. That’s probably a good thing, because it doesn’t even really earn that runtime. It?? also could have been longer. There is at least a good variety to the tracks, with one of them even letting you jump inside of a movie. So, they could have gotten more mileage out of repeating themes, but let’s pretend I didn’t say that.

At my very most generous, I’d say that The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling is at least not offensively bad. Unless you really like The Flintstones. Or bowling. Or just fun in general. Um, okay, that wasn’t very generous. Let’s try: it took me less time to play The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling than it did to scream out all the lasting trauma that ?it inflicted on me. I think that’s the best ?I can do.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post The Flintstones: Bedrock ?Bowling for PS1 falls short of being a gay old time appeared first on Destructoid.

I know butt-fu

If you want to see what procrastination looks like, put 1998's Fighter Maker in front of me. If you ever noticed me miss a week with these Kusoge articles, it’s probably because I planned to cover Fighter Maker that?? wee??k and just couldn’t bring myself to play it. Never has a bad game asked me for so much commitment.

Blame The Industry’s Chris Moyse. It was his suggestion. Considering he’s the leading expert on all things fists, I trust him when he tells me a fighting game is going to be bad. And Fighter Maker is�Well, maybe not bad, but i?t’s extremely misguided.

Fighter Maker is part of the ASCII Entertainment “Maker�series. That kind of makes it sound like it covered a lot of genres, but really it was just rail shooter, fighting game, and RPG. The RPG Maker games had the most longevity, and we even got a bunch of them over here in the West. I even tinkered with RPG Maker 2000 on PC back in the day. It’s just funny that the fighting genre seems much simpler on the surface but is infinitely more diff??icult to do well.

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Fist injection

I had big plans for Fighter Maker, and the moment I saw the creatio?n system, I threw them all away. First of all, you can’t edit the look of the combatants. Secondly, my hopes for a butt-centric arsenal of attacks were dashed the mo??ment I found out how much effort it takes to create a single move.

Backing up for a moment here, Fighter Maker is sort of a Virtua Fighter setup. It’s 3D, and you can move in and out of the background. It’s not a terrible-looking game. It also subscribes to Virtua Fighter’s more minimalistic control method. There are three attack buttons for high, mid, and low. That’s one more attack button than in Virtua Fighter. The??se?? can be partnered with the block button for grabs and fancier attacks.

If you just choose a fighter and try out the combat system, it’s a little shallow but not terrible. I’ve intentionally played enough bad fighting games to really appreciate when one isn’t horrifically b??ad. There’s a supreme?? dearth of personality, to say the least, but that’s where you come in.

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The under you wear

The editing tools of Fighter Maker also fall into the category of “not bad.�However, note that this isn’t like the RPG Maker games, where you can go ha?m with the tools and come away with a to??p-to-bottom product that could be sold as a standalone. There’s a lot you can do here, but they’re very limited.

As I mentioned before, you can’t customize a fighter’s appearance. There’s a buffet of fight-people to choose from, but there’s no option to tweak the color of their costumes or the size of their nipples. This made me realize that there were other games on the N64 and PS1 that allowed you to make your own fighter. Does this mean that WWF: No Mercy is the best Fighter Maker of that era? Yes! By some metrics!

I think a more appropriate term for Fighter Maker would be “fighter animator,�as that’s essentially what this is. Everything your battle-person does can be defined by you in fine detail. ?Want their punch to be more of an open-hand slap? Totally possible. And I mean that, because there aren’t really any limits to what can be accomplished in the editor.

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Sharing your butt-battler

It’s actually pretty intim??idating. As I said, I had ambitions for a butt-centric fighting style, but I dialed it back for a few reasons. The biggest one?? is that I don’t see the point. Regardless of how much time I spend perfecting my fighter, they’re still going to be dropped into a middling fighter and then go nowhere else.

I have difficulty imagining the climate that would make Fighter Maker’s tools worthwhile. Maybe you’re someone who has a tight-knit group of friends who would spend a bunch of effort on a battle-artist and then bring their memory cards together for a tournament. That would be pretty cool. Today, this would be something that you’d upload to the internet like you would with custom wrestle-folks in WWE 2K23, but that wasn’t really an option for the PS1. So, you would need this very specific social group to make t?he hours you’d spend fine-tuning a creation pay off.

I don’t have that social group. I don’t really have A social group. So, I didn’t create a posterior pugilist. Instead, I created one (badly) bespoke victory animation and changed the block animation so my character just leaves t??hemselves wide open. Then I edited the capoeira preset so my character’s arms just stay glued to their side.

It was honestly hilarious. My character, Captain Ketsu, would just kind of dance around while holding onto their butt. It looked like they were desperately trying to prevent a sudden and unwanted bowel torrent from erupting while also pa??rticipating in a fight. I have to say that even though I put in the bare minimum of effort, I’m still quite proud of my accomplishment.

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How much is weirdness worth?

That’s sort of another strength of Fighter Maker. It doesn’t put any barriers?? in front of expressing your weirdness. Well, I suppose aside from giving you any control over the visuals. You also can’t super-power your brawl-buddy. You aren’t able to pump up their spirit so they can throw f??ireballs. You’re very much stuck to just playing by some poorly defined rules.

And that’s what it all comes down to. How much is your weirdness worth? Do you actually want to spend your time tweaking the position of someone’s ankle and fine-t??uning their frames of animation? I can’t answer that for you. For me, I’d rather just cr??eate another wrestler for my fictional promotion.

I suppose enough people were into Fighter Maker that it got a sequel. Fighter Maker 2 was released on PS2 in 2002, and it allegedly allows you to change the look of your fight-guy. I’ve actually seen it in the bin at my local kusoge dispensary, but I haven’t yet picked it up. ?Maybe I will, just for fun. I doubt I’ll actually put the effort into making a butt-boxer, but maybe I’ll spend the fifteen minutes required to desecrate the esteemed art of capoeira.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

The post Fighter Maker for PS1 lets you be your weird self appeared first on Destructoid.

Perrrrfect

I don’t really watch video game shows or streamers. If you want the snarky response, I’d say that I prefer to pl??ay games rat?her than watch them, but that’s not really true. I don’t watch much of anything, regardless of it's TV or movies. I’m too busy playing video games.

There’s one exception to this, and that’s GameCenter CX, a Japanese video game show that started in 2003 and still runs today. Something of a precursor to the various skits and shows today, it involves a comedian named Shinya Arino as he tackles a wide variety of retro games. The joy comes from the dramatic focus on his struggles. He has his successes, but even after two decades of hosting the show, he’s really not that gre?at.

I love it because it’s a great way to discover games from Japan. Beyond that is the usual parasocial reasons. I sometimes like playing the games “alongside�Arino, experiencing them as he does. One of the more recent examples is a Playstation game called I.Q.: Intelligent Qube. It’s a game I did experience in my youth, but it was such a perfect fit for the show’s dra??matic embellishments that I felt compelled to play it again.

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Forbidden qubes

I didn’t own a PlayStation when I was younger. Most of my experience with it comes from playing on a friend’s. He had a demo disc, which I.Q.: Intelligent Qube was demonstrated on. I didn’t really get it back then. Having it flanked by games like Crash Bandicoot and Parappa the Rapper was pretty distracting.

Intelligent Qube is a puzzle game that drops you on the field. Imagine playing Tetris while trying not to get crushed by the tetrominoes. You’re placed on a grid-like runway, and a horde of qubes try to run you down. You need to drop bomb tiles to clear them to get through. The strategy g??oes deeper than just survival, however. Ideally, you clear as many blocks as you can while avoiding the black “forbidden qubes.�Allowing too many good qubes to fall off the edge or destroying a forbidden qube will slice a row of blocks off the runway, giving you less room to maneuver. There are also green qubes that will clear out a 3x3 row and can be detonated separately from your normal bomb block.

That’s the whole of it, but in practice, it’s?? a lot more hectic than it sounds. There are a lot of tense moments when you’re running out of room, and a lot of thought is needed to clear the sets of blocks as efficiently and safely as possible.

[caption id="attachment_360109" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Undiagnosed stupidity

Intelligent Qube is?? a play ??on the concept of Intelligence Quotient, which is a measurement of how superior or inferior someone should feel in comparison to others. From a psychological standpoint, I can see the reasoning for having a metric for measuring intelligence, but I’ve never had someone tell me about their I.Q. without it being an insufferable way of explaining why they’re insufferable. I don’t need something like that to feel superior to everyone else. I do perfectly well with my undiagnosed stupidity.

Thankfully, you don’t need to be smart to play Intelligent Qube. While it may bake your noodle at times, it actually leans heavier on the typical video game tenants of pattern recognition, situational awareness, and reaction speed. There’s no need to do any math or articulate good. Thank goodness. You can get by on your beefy thumbs and ability to concentrate for short periods at?? a time.

[caption id="attachment_360110" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Worship me

Arino wasn’t very good at it. While he’s had a lot of success with puzzle games in the past, it took him 15 hours, and 30 minutes to clear Intelligent Qube on the easiest difficulty. That was part of my reason for playing it??. It didn’t look that difficult to me. Surely I could complete it on medium (difficulty level 3).

I did. I’m just great, I guess. Worship me.

Intelligent Qube feels great. Not only did I get to feel superior to Arino for completing it with less difficulty, it feels like it’s designed ??to make you feel like the smartest person in the room. ??If you manage to clear every block without destroying a forbidden qube, a voice cuts in to declare, “perrrrfect!�I need to hear that more often.

Not only that, but did you know I have an I.Q. of 205!? Shocking, I know. It might also p?ossibly ??be 15, but let’s ignore all the less positive outcomes.

One of the major differences between Arino’s level-1 difficulty and my big-brained level-3 is that easier difficulty levels place an arrow above your bombs that can be seen through the blocks. On harder difficulties, you have to mentally remember where your bombs are to detonate them safely. It makes a huge difference and adds an entire level of challenge. Intelligent Qube defaults to level-1, so maybe keep that in mind.

[caption id="attachment_360111" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Puzzle-buchou

Intelligent Qube also features a bizarrely amazing soundtrack that makes your blockbusting feel like the most crucial job in the world. Most of it sounds like John Williams wrote the? score for the loss of his virginity. I don’t know what the stakes are in this frantic game of block detonation, but I can tell you that I’m a hero for avoiding those forbidden qubes. The soundtrack makes that clear.

A sequel called I.Q. Final would be released in Japan and Europe, and two more would be exclusive to Japan. I’m not sure how you can expand on Intelligent Qube’s mechanics, but I’m defin??itely interested in f??inding out.

I actually really enjoyed Intelligent Qube as a grown-up who’s already played Parappa the Rapper and Crash Bandicoot. It captivates the mind like a Rubix Cube rigged to explode. The abstract, early-3D graph??????????????????????????ics, and reverberating sound effects lock you in a trance as you eliminate the vile hexahedrons. It’s fortunate that it’s one of the few PS1 games made readily available by Sony on their digital platforms. Maybe try it out and immediately feel better about yourself. Or substantially worse. The same sort of effects that knowing your ?actual Intelligence Quotient can have.

For other retro titles you may have misse?d, click right here!

The post I.Q.: Intelligent Qube is the perrrrfect way to feel bad about y??ourself appeared first on Destructoid.

Cblogs of 12/10 to 12/16/2022

-Darrenhupke announces the availability of his book detai??ling Capcom's entire PS1 library of games.

-Virtua Kazuma wonders if Virtua Quest was Sega's answer to Kingdom Hearts.

-MSonicfan rants about Sonic and the sheer nu??mber of Badnicks he has to deal with.

-TheBlondeBass updates everyone on the progress of his game, Mirama, in this dev blog.

-PhilsPhindings discusses the similarities between the soundtrack of Final Fantasy IX and traditional Irish Music.

-Beatlemaniaxx goes over everything they read? or watched this ??year.

-ChronoLynxx opens this week's? TGIF forum for random community discussion.

Thanks for the blogs this week, folks! And thanks to Lord Spencer for the recap. If you wanna join in on the HOT TAKE party, then head on over to the Cblogs section right now. Spill your thou?ghts on all matters gaming, and you will find yourself recapped on this here front page next week. In addition, we've been informed that there are some issues with the blog editor currently. We will try and get this looked into.

The post Cblog Recaps: Which is your fa?vorite Capcom franchise? appeared first on Destructoid.

Rock & Roll is the devil’s music

Sony’s inaugural console had a pretty deep library, so it’s no wonder the list of standout titles is so long. However, the PS1 is also well-trodden territory now. Also, I don’t really like Metal Gear Solid, and I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about how Metal Gear Solid wouldn’t be on my top 10 list of games. Plus, you probably already know what you think about Metal Gear Solid.

So rather than being insincere, I’m just going to talk about 10 games you should play on your PS1 if you haven’t already. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but let’s start with these and then you can get back to?? me.

Um Jammer Lammy

Parappa the Rapper is a staple of the PS1 library. When I think of its most prominent titles, it sticks out. But the PS2’s 2001 title, Parappa the Rapper 2, wasn’t the follow-up, it was actually Um Jammer Lammy. I??ns??tead of following the lyric spewing dog(?), you play as Lammy, the riff-rocking lamb.

It’s quirkier than the or??iginal, and while there’s nothing quite as good as Cheep Cheap’s rap, the soundtrack is overall a bit better. The ??only problem is that the North American version changed the part where Lammy is sent to Hell. Rock & Roll is the devil’s music, after all.

Rogue Trip Vacation 2012

After a confusing series of contracts and acquisitions, Singletrac, the original creators of Twisted Metal were unceremoniously ripped away from the series following Twisted Metal 2. They went to make a range of games before they were closed down. One of these was a similar vehicular combat game titled Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.

While the premise still involves cars flinging missiles at each other, it also includes a monetary system that allows you to trade cash earned from shuttling around tourists for upgrades. Was it better than Twisted Metal 2? No. Vigilante 8? Not really. But is it a better option than Twisted Metal 3? Most definitely.

Parasite Eve

This one is a bit more high-profile, but I feel like a lot of people still missed it. It’s a Squaresoft title, but while they would normally lean into fantasy, Parasite Eve is more contemporary. It’s still an RPG, but while it uses an active-time system, it allows you to move in realtime. It’s also stylish as hell, full of melty people and flesh monsters. It goes in a few batshit directions when it comes to narrative, but works as a disaster plot. I just wish it would have cooled it with all the talk about mitochondria. It gets a little Kojima-esque with its ex??position at ??times, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

Road Rash

I really don’t know why EA chose to just call this one Road Rash, as it’s not a remake of the original, and it came out on the 3DO before Road Rash 3 hit the Genesis. Regardless, it’s probably one of the best titles in the series if you don’t find Road Rash 64 side-splittingly hilarious. While the gameplay follows the same formu?la, it plays a bit smoother on 32-bit consoles, and I feel that’s sort of key. It also ha?d some really tacky cutscenes, which is a good taste of how tasteless that era of gaming was.

Army Men Air Attack 2

I talk about the Army Men series often, and whenever I do, someone usually says, “Oh yeah, I liked the helicopter one.�There wasn’t a single helicopter one. If you only count original titles and exclude some markedly different ports, there were three of them: Air Tactics, Air Attack, and most importantly, Air Attack 2. Yes, a lot of people talk about Air Attack and don’t even realize there wa?s a direct sequel.

There was, and there’s nothing wrong with it. The plot is extremely goofy, but the gameplay is the same action-heavy helicopter action lifted from the Strike series (Desert Strike, Jungle Strike, etc.). If ??you li??ked “the helicopter one�you should probably play this one.

Moon

Okay, so we didn’t exactly get Moon over here in North America until 2020, but it’s one of the first examples of Love-de-Lic’s formula of helping people for the good feels. It’s technically a parody of the typical RPG, containing no real combat and the simple goal of spreading altruism about. While Love-de-Lic would only release three games before disbanding, the feel-good formula would be carried on by its star players in games like Chibi-Robo and Chulip.

Medal of Honor Underground

If there’s one area that the N64 trounced the PS1, it was in first-person shooters. While Goldeneye 007 and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter haven’t aged the greatest, what did the Playstation have? Not none, but while I can list off quite a few decent N64 games in the genre, with the PS1 it’s a bit more difficult without adding the caveat “I guess.�Medal of Honor, however, is easy to appreciate sinc?e it helped launch the WWII shooter sub-category that dominated the shooter space after.

Medal of Honor: Underground is?? one you might have missed, however. A big score for me was its female protagonist, Manon Baptiste, but it also added enemy tanks and friendly soldiers to the mix. It ??isn’t necessarily better than the original, but it is more of the same that you might not have already experienced.

Vagrant Story

Another one of Squaresoft’s often-overlooked PS1 titles, Vagrant Story is a ridiculously deep RPG with a number of intricate systems all mashed together. It’s something that shouldn’t work, almost doesn’t, but somehow does. It actually won a bunch of awards from various publications, but unfortunately released alongside games like Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross. Because of that, Vagrant Story is unfortunately left out of many discussion?s of Squaresoft’s glory days. We’re long overdue for a remaster.

King’s Field

In the wake of Dark Souls�success, the often-overlooked King’s Field series has been re-examined. The localized King’s Field for PS1 is technically the Japanese King’s Field 2. It’s a shame we never got the first one, but the second title presents the same dungeon-crawling goodness. Although it was the inspiration for FromSoftware’s later hit, Demon’s Souls, you shouldn’t go in expecting the same experience. Dark and murky, sure. Sometime??s cryptic, yeah. However, it shares more with early PC dungeon crawlers than it does with later FromSoftware titles.

Tail Concerto

The progenitor to the “Little Tail Bronx�series by Cyberconnect, Tail Concerto technically shares the same floating universe as Solatorobo: Hunter the Red and Fuga: Melodies of Steel. Each game is a little labor of love which makes it all the more confusing that you can only really download Fuga these days. The second-hand market has Tail Concerto, in particular, pegged at a ridiculous price.

Is it worth it? I’d probably argue that no game is worth as much as a North American copy of Tail Concerto, but? it’s still one you should check out if you can. Bright, charming graphics, a simple but unique narrative, and inventive gameplay that harkens back to a simpler time. It’s just unfortunate that it’s so short.

The post Try these 10 PS1 games – a few of the best Playstation 1 games of all time appeared first on Destructoid.

Not as tantalizing as IHOP: Road Trip

I’ve been to Hooters at some point during my teen years. I can tell you that all the hormones in the world would not take away from how awkward I felt. I’d say it was mutual shame, like getting your genitals waxed, but I don’t know who would take that job not feeling comfortable with the implications. So, the shame was all me. It’s like going to a strip club; ?I understand the purpose, but I’m still afraid to make eye contact. At the very least, I respect a place that moves ogling out of parks and beaches and into a consensual environment, but I have damage in the ogling center of my brain.

Believe it or not, Hooters actually had a video game. Sort of like how McDonald’s had McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure, except instead of mascots, there are tits. Also, like the games McDonald’s licensed, there isn’t any food. Not like the core attraction at Hooters is the food �let’s not kid ourselves �but you may wonder what they could possibly translate into a game. I’ve got a lot of ideas, but the one they went with is driving. Hooters: Road Trip ?has you journey across the USA to various restaurant locations.

Tacky, yet unplayable

I thoroughly love a road trip game. Even the worst can get my attention through concept alone. I’d be lying if I said that’s what attracted me to Hooters: Road Trip. It’s not the promise of tight, white t-shirts straining at the seams, either. It’s because it’s bad, obviously. Though, I can’t imagine anyon??e having such passion for the subject matter that they’d pour their talent int??o the final product. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the license came up as an afterthought and they slapped it on some prototype the lead developer was mucking around with.

Actually, I might not be all that far off. The programmer is listed in the credits as just “Miracle Designs,â€?like no one on the team wanted to be associated with it. Miracle Designs would go on to release a slew of animal mascot cart racers on PS1, such as ATV Racer and XS Airboat Racing. I’ve never played any of them, so I’m not going to comment on them, it’s just shocking to me that you’d name a cartoonish game about animals driving vehicles as something unimaginative as ATV Racer. They were released around 2003 and 2004, late into the PS2’s lifespan, so I doubt anyone was betting ?on their success.

Hooters: Road Trip was released in 2002, two years after the launch of the PS2. It’s not that decent games didn’t come out after the launch of the PlayStation 2, but the launch of a new console is like the expiry date on a carton of milk. It’s not yet guaranteed to be bad, but the further past that date you go, the more likely you are? to get a mouthful of rancid curds.

How ya doin', sugah?

As mentioned earlier, the game is set up as a road trip across the USA to a number of different Hooters locations. I say “road trip�because that’s what Hooters: Road Trip implies, but really it’s a race, which raises all kinds of questions. In a lot of ways, it’s reminiscent of Cruis’n USA. I’m not really a fan of Cruis’n USA to begin with, but it at least had redeeming values. Hooters: Road Trip does not.

Well, I suppose there’s one. After every race, you’re welcomed to the location by a waitress, presumably from that area’s branch. That’s nice and all, but it’s low-quality, PS-era, compre??ssed video. It’s easy to see tits in way higher quality these days. On the other hand, it must have been cool for these waitresses to be featured in?? a video game. That’s assuming they’re actually just waitresses and not models posing as them. That would be sort of dumb. I can’t find anywhere that they’re credited, so it’s hard to confirm. I can definitely tell you they aren't actors, that's for certain.

I'm just hoping that the Jacksonville lady is doing well. Like, maybe she's moved on to be a dentist ??or something cool.

It's not the journey, it's the destination

And then you get down to playing the game, and that’s where things go horrifically awry. You can go back to picturing Cruis’n USA, but then add the vision of playing it on an old Blockbuster kiosk where the N64 joystick has gone limp from overuse. It controls like it’s upset with you. Like it’s so tired off you telling it what to do that it’s going to be a di??ck about it.

To be more specific, cars oversteer like Hooters: Road Trip is trying to simulate what it’s like to drive shortly after an alcohol bender and a day of riding on the Gravitron. I honestly am struggling to think of a single driving game that controls worse. It’s common for some games to deliberately hamper you car’s controls, and they don’t go nearly as hard as Hooters: Road Trip.

Maybe it’s lucky that the tracks are all variations of straight lines. The level design is like an early raster racer; just a bunch of gentle curves that never loop around on themselves. In a sense, it’s a rather realistic interpretation of driving the country’s highways. Or it would be if the highways were so narrow they could barely accommodate two cars. For some reason, my brain brings to mind Mickey’s Speedway USA and saying, “wouldn’t it be so much cooler if the tracks were more like this?�Yes, it would, brain, but here we are, traveling from Fort L??auderdale to Jacksonville again and again.

The road less traveled

If we’re being fair to the developers, Hooters: Road Trip was supposedly released at a bargain price of $9.99. That makes it somewhat similar to Burger King’s endeavors on Xbox: Sneak King, Pocket Bike Racer, and Big Bumpin�/i>. But those games wer??e passable distractions, and this doesn’t even reach that lofty claim. I’d make a comparison to the food at an actual Hooters restaurant, but once again, that would be suggesting it's mediocre, and we’re well short of that.