Battle Circuit

So today I had a massive 3 hour gap between my driving lessons so I went down to the arcade about 5 minutes from the school to play DDR.  To my dismay however, there were a couple of people already on it and with limited time before my next class I wasn't about to waste it waiting around for those guys to finish.  The place had the usual selection of rhythm and card games but nestled in the back of this place there was an older cabinet running a game called Battle Circuit. 

Now I've never heard of this thing before but Battle Circuit is a side scrolling beat em' up made by Capcom and released in 1997.  After having a quick glance at the wikipedia page to get that date it looks like the game could support 4 players but the cabinet I was playing on only had 2 sticks so that wasn't happening any time soon.

After you put in your money you get to pick 1 of 5 characters to play as.  These involve a strong guy, a tough guy, a speedy guy , "death blow" guy and one that I don't remember.  I went for the strong guy because I like to keep things as simple as possible.

From there is a pretty standard side scrolling beat em' up.  If you've ever played anything like Final Fight or Streets of Rage then you know what you're getting with this.  The screen fills up with dudes and you punch all the dudes until they fall down dead.  There was some kind of story going on about a disk or something but I was just skipping all of it so I don't have a fucking clue.

What I was kind of surprised with though was just how fair the game felt in comparison to a lot of other titles in the genre.  I'm more than willing to admit that I'm not exactly the best when it comes to games like this but it feels like in a lot of titles enemies, especially, bosses will have moves that come out of nowhere, are crazy hard to dodge and do tons of damage.  Also the further you get into these games the more getting hit feels like coin guzzling dogshit than actual challenge.  Battle Circuit however didn't really do this and there was only one instance where I thought I lost life because of the game cheating me.  It was a woman boss with big thighs who liked to kick things (not Chun-Li, called Barbara or something) who would break your combo to spinning bird kick you across the screen which felt a little shitty but, like I said, she was the only one with an attack like that.

The game also had this upgrade system where you could buy moves or improvements for your character by beating coins out of the enemies as you went.  The extra life however was like, 1000 coins and I was only getting like, 200 a level.  There's only 8 stages too so if you're buying extra health meter or the actual useful skills then you can kiss that extra life goodbye.  The only thing I really disliked about the game was that fact you only got 1 extra life but this was offset by the game only being 50 yen a play instead of the usual 100.  I think if I had to put 100 yen for every continue I probably would have quit after my first game over.

Anyway it's a pretty good game so if you can find a way to play it then you should absolutely give it a try.  I think if you live outside of Japan the chances of you finding a cabinet are pretty slim because even in Japan I've never seen this game before.  But you know, MAME is a thing.....

3 Genres That Need A Comeback

Gaming has changed over the years in both many good ways and a few bad ways.  One of the things that has changed a lot since the days of old are the kind of genres prevalent and the industry right now and this is kind of to be expected.  That said, there are a few genres that were popular back then that aren't so popular right now and I feel it's a bit of a shame.  So I'm going to talk about 3 genres of games that I feel need a little bit more love.  I'm sure no one will listen but I just want to talk fondly about some types of games that I love.

1.  Point n' Clicker

Out of the 3 I'm about to talk about, I feel that this one has died the saddest of deaths.  These games are awesome because they are challenging and a lot of them had pretty good stories to boot which made solving that puzzle running on moon logic all the more sweeter.  Games such as Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky and I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream are all spoken of fondly by fans but there hasn't really been any new games in the genre for a long time.  The closest we came in my recent memory was a PC game called Anna but that ran on so much moon logic that I kind of dampened the whole experience.

Unfortunately, these genre has kind of been ruined by people making games that LOOK like point and click games but actually aren't games at all.  Games such as Gone Home and The Stanley Parable are all talked about sort of in the same was as a point and click, except they have no game play to speak of and aren't really much more than that. 

It's kind of sad that the most excited anyone has been for anything in this genre is a remake of Grim Fandango.  That game is awesome but the levels of hype people have for a remake they have played a long time ago in a genre that doesn't lend itself well to re playability, speaks volumes.

2.  Side Scrolling Beat-em-up

Often mistakenly called fighting games by a few people, Beat-Em-Ups were super popular back in the day.  They were perfect for arcades and the home console ports of these games were perfect for when you had a couple of friends over and just wanted to beat the shit out of lots of dudes.

This genre didn't really die as much as it just faded out of the mainstream and replaced with bombastic combat games like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry.  The hack n slash's of the now are awesome, no doubt, but I miss the simplicity of something like Final Fight or Streets of Rage and just being able to kick back and not worry about crazy combo chains or anything like that.

There have been some attempts to keep it alive with that Scott Pilgrim game and Double Dragon Neon but these are so few and far between it's not enough to satisfy and quite frankly they don't quite stack up to the classics.

3. The Dungeon Crawler

This is another genre that isn't completely dead but is so niche that I haven't found a single other person who I can talk with at length about games in the genre.  I feel like this genre has been pushed aside in favor of a myriad of rouge like games which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I wish the classic dungeon crawl would get more love.

Back in the day, if you wanted to make any kind of progress in these games then you had to get some graph paper and get your cartographer skills on.  I can imagine people wouldn't like this because they don't want to have to play a video game with a pen and paper on hand, but for me this was part of the appeal.  It's like you're ACTUALLY on the adventure, making your own maps and making your own notes in order to survive the hardships of the dungeon.  If you get lost or forget key locations that's because YOU weren't thorough enough as an adventurer and you only really have yourself to blame.  The other thing I find appealing about these games is that they are usually fucking rock solid hard and I'm attracted to stupidly high challenge like moth to a flame.

Recent titles have included things like Etrian Odyssey, Shin Megami Tensei 4 and Legend of Grimrock but these only really serve to keep the genre afloat except the new school stuff doesn't really have the same kind of appeal as the old school.  A lot of these games have either simplified or automatic mapping and they just aren't as hard as the old stuff.  The ONLY game that gave me what I really wanted was The Dark Spire on DS but that was only 1 game released fucking ages ago, which is a damn shame.

I need these genre to bust my balls a little more, you know?

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Anyway that's all for now, three genres that I feel need a little more love.  Maybe I'm being unreasonable or weird or whatever but that's just how I feel.  Not that modern main stream genres are bad or anything like that but some of the littler guys would get a little more love.

Tokyo Jungle pre-buy impressions

You may be thinking right now "why the fuck is this guy writing an article about a game he barely knows anything about" and that's a fair point, why the fuck am I doing that?  Well let me tell you why!  This game has far too interesting a concept for me to not at least comment on right now.  More people need to know about this game just for the idea alone.

So the plot of this game seems fairly straight forward, and without playing it I have no idea how this comes across as a story or how it works in the game, but whatever, here we go.  To put it simply, all of mankind has fucked off and all the animals have swarmed into Tokyo and now have to fend for themselves in the new environment.  That's it, or at least that's all I can acquire from the trailers and the wikipedia page.  In terms of plot, the other thing I can gather is that there is some kind of super dog wearing priest robes or whatever, and he's hot shit for some reason.  Game looks weird as fuck but good lord does it look fun.

Gameplay wise, it appears to be a beat 'em up, platformer and mating simulator all rolled into one package.  I don't think you play as one animal only for the duration of the game, so when you're playing a lion or something your kicking the shit out of things and when your a deer your platforming on things.  Then when you play a panda, from what I can gather then objective seems to be to just fuck everything.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be picking this up soon and writing something a bit more in depth about the whole thing.  I'll link the trailer down below so you can check it out here.  If you live in Japan or have easy access to imports and can handle Japanese, give it a go.  There is a English version on the horizon but the wiki page isn't showing any dates for it, so you're gonna have to break out those Kanji dictionaries for this one.