HIDDEN GEMS

2015-12-07T20:30:00.003-05:00

Suguri

2015-12-06T19:31:00.002-05:00

Aaaaaaaand

We're back to doujin-games. Released at the "prestigious" Japanese nerd-collective, Comiket 69 in 2005, Suguri is a rather unique horizontal shooting-game, featuring clever mechanics that, while not genre-redefining, allow Suguri to stand on it's own as a solid, if not essential shooting experience.

Suguri (PC)
Developed & Published by: Orange-Juice
Localized by: Rockin' Android
Released on: Dec. 8, 2005 (JPN)/ Feb. 1, 2012 (US)
Starring a young woman with a lot of guns, intent on saving Earth from robots, or something, Suguri, like most shooters, focuses on dodging enemy fire. This is accomplished in a very unconventional manner, however, by means of air-dashing. The game features a dedicated dashing button, which not only grants you greater mobility around the screen, but also disables your hurtbox, making you invincible. While dashing you can fly directly through enemy bullets and lasers.

PROTIP - Lunge yourself directly at enemy-bullets to remain alive. It is unknown if this works in real-life

Dashing might seem overpowered, but keep in mind, it's limited to a gauge, creating an element of risk/reward - Say in a particular instance, you believe it may be possible to dodge attacks in the traditional manner, a save your meter for later, but you might choose to dash anyway, just to err on the side of caution. This is a fine example of some of the tactical depth Suguri brings to the table.

Most bosses are fellow anime-waifus, but some of them are Missile-Launching Gundams

Despite Suguri utilizing 8-way movement, dashing can be steered like a boat - with 360 degrees. You can cancel your first dash with a second one time change direction immediately, and this can be done indefinitely, until you run out of meter. Dashing has no recovery time, so you can dash directly into enemy-fire, and dash-cancel without getting hit. Keep in mind, it is possible to exhaust your meter while overlapping bullets, so watch out.

Suguri uses a bomb to defeat a sub-boss, before killing Saki with a flamethrower.

Having a core-mechanic that rapidly moves you around the screen in a shooter sounds like it would make shooting enemies difficult, but luckily the clever dogs at Orange-Juice thought things through, adding a lock-on system for hunting foes. The combination of air-dashing, and locking-on makes for a very unorthodox experience, resembling the FPS technique of "circle-strafing" moreso than a typical hori-shooter.

Every doujin shooter eventually just degrades into Touhou.

Suguri has a ridiculous amount of weapons (17 in all), unfortunatley, mosof them must be unlocked, just like in Einhander. Once you have met the conditions for unlocking a weapon - usually reaching a new stage, and/or getting an A-Rank - you can select it before you start a run, just like in Einhander. Unlike in Einhander, Suguri doesn't allow you to change weapons mid-stage via pick-ups, it does, however let you switch between stages. Other unlockables include a Boss-Rush mode, an even harder difficulty setting, and two animated cutscenes.

Enjoy the first stage of Suguri, played as poorly as possible, with a flamethrower.

Suguri was originally released in 2005, and would remain a Japanese-exclusive for seven years, until localization heroes, Rockin' Android translated the last revision of the game and released it for the western-market under the moniker SUGURI - Perfect Edition. It's also featured as part of The Suguri Collection, which includes the spin-off, (and Senko no Ronde clone) Acceleration of Suguri.

Special thanks to the weebs over at the SuguriWiki

Cubivore

2015-12-01T13:49:00.002-05:00

In the early years of the Nintendo 64, Nintendo had time and time again, touted their new Disk-Drive expansion as the second-coming of Christ himself. The 64DD, as it became known, featured a proprietary re-writable disk format that would allow for customization never before seen - in a Nintendo game, that is.

They promised Zelda 64, which would feature a fully interactive, and totally persistent world, where every minute change you make, be it cutting down trees, leaving footprints, or smashing pots, would be permanent. They promised several sequels to Mario Paint, each one focusing on different elements of design, and utilizing the re writable disk format to store mass-quantities of user-created content. They promised new games, not before possible (on a Nintendo console), including SimCity, and Doshin the Giant (which is sort of like SimCity).

Of course, the 64DD was delayed - repeatedly - ultimately launching nearly 3 years after it's initial projected release-date. Because it was pushed back so far, many of it's killer-apps were ported to the vanilla N64, instead. The combination of numerous delays, and a lack of any true attention grabbers (F-Zero Expansion Kit, aside) the 64DD was a catastrophic failure - it was discontinued quicker than the Dreamcast after seeing only nine games - half of which were expansion to base 64DD games. All of it's ongoing projects were either shifted to the N64, or the then impending GameCube, if not swiftly cancelled outright.

Animal Thugs, despite it's quirky and difficult-to-market nature, was fortunate enough to get resurrected on the GameCube, primed for a Japanese release.... where it bombed - hard.

Nintendo decided it was not worth localizing the game for the western market, after all, if a game is too strange for Japan, it certainly stood no chance in football-watchin', jerky-eatin', America. Atlus disagreed, and in 2002, they published Cubivore for the GameCube in the US... where it bombed.

Hard.

Cubivore (GameCube)
Developed by: Saru Brunei + Intelligent Systems
Published by: Nintendo / Atlus

Cubivore could arguably be considered a permutation of the beat-em-up - Combat involves lunging towards enemies, and biting them, using the patented Legend of Zelda lock-on mechanic - It's very basic, but it's quite serviceable. Enemies are color-coded and once you've weakened a foe enough, you can savagely tear off a "meat-flap" and devour it to restore life, and possibly evolve.

This evolution is the meat of this game (hurr hurr) - which, contrary to the game's subtitle, is non-Darwinian in nature. The game features an appendix of 150 possible transformations to fill out by eating enemy meat-flaps. If you eat the correct combination of enemy colors, you'll take on new, possibly more powerful physiology. There are also a variety of bugs that function more as permanent power-ups for certain stats than actually enemies.

This exactly what Charles Darwin had in mind.

At predetermined points in the game, you find a "mate", get eaten by said "mate", and die. Your characters' offspring then inherits all of your stats, and evolutions, carrying the mantle forward. This happens twice over the course of the game, and yes, in case you're wondering, this is a linear stage-based game, despite it's concept seemingly lending itself to something more sandbox-y. Curiously, Cubivore features a day-night cycle, which forces you to fall asleep automatically. It sounds irritating on paper, but it's rarely intrusive.

But I digress.

Cubivore boasts five different color-coded species of enemies to eat - Bluocytes, Purpial, Redapeds, Yellobrates, and, the games antagonists, the Greyodons. In order to progress you have to eat quite a significant amount of each race. This brings us to Cubivore's narrative, which follows Piggy (that's you) on his journey to drive the greyodons to extinction, in order to restore "wilderness" (color) to the world. Doing so is achieved by hunting, killing, evolving, and reproducing, until you become strong enough to take down the Killer Cubivore, leader of the Greyodons.

Promotional screenshots for Dynasty Warriors 9.

One of Cubivore's defining characteristics is it's surreal, faux-lo-fi artstyle - a major point of contention to many casual consumers at the time. Some found the game too abstract, and other-wordly to be palatable, others still, complained that it looked like a N64 game, which it indeed was. This, combined with it's unconventional subject-matter lead to the miserable sales that I had mentioned earlier, in both Japan and the US.

Cubivore - Georges Braque (1913)

As such, Cubivore is something of a valuable collectible these days - a loose disc in a generic jewel-case will run you a good $50, a mint+complete copy can fetch upwards and beyond $150!

Sadly, Nintendo has never ported this to modern-consoles through their Virtual Console service, and, more likely than not, never will.

Lament the majestic Cubivore, a beast all its own, too good for this ugly, grey world.

I was unable to capture screenshots on my own, so special thanks to -
MobyGame - ObsoleteGamer - EmuParadise

SegaSonic Popcorn Shop

2015-11-21T15:04:00.001-05:00

In today's installment of Hedgehogs Never Tell I'd like to do something completely different.

In 1993, as I've said, countless times, Sonic was the hypest shit. His shit-eating grin graced every imaginable product conceivable - transcending typical gaming merchandise, Sonic got his own Thanksgiving Day Parade float, was emblazoned on commercial jets, and had several concurrent television series. This, of course wasn't enough milk for Sega, who decided to throw their IP into the ring, and tackle the exciting, competitive world of....

Vending machines....

SegaSonic Popcorn Shop (Sega C2)
Developed by: AM1
Published by: SEGA

I can't stress enough, that this isn't really a game, per se - it's actually one of those automated vending machines, that prepares a foodstuff in real-time, as you wait - in this case, popcorn. The machine, however, features a display, showing Sonic characters performing menial-labor, it runs on Sega's C2 arcade board, and it's technically, sort of interactive, so.... good enough for me.

After years of fighting against industrialization, Sonic ironically opens a popcorn factory.

Popcorn Shop begins when you insert money into the machine (sounds like a game so far!) Sonic then asks you to choose from one of three ~~playable characters~~ popcorn seasonings -

Salted - Salted is a bit basic, but still a hearty treat. A true Classic

Butter - Butter, misleadingly, is doused in an artificial butter-flavored liquid. It's greasy and bad for your cardio-vascular system, so the perfect product to associate with an athletic character who runs.

Curry - Curry popcorn is popcorn covered in curry powder and oil. It is unknown whether Popcorn Shop's curry offering was sweet, mild or spicy.

The "gameplay" of SSPS consists of turning a crank to expedite Sonic and Tails' popcorn production. Well, Tails' popcorn production; Sonic merely stands there as you and Tails do all of the work proving that Sonic has no qualms with child-labor. SegaSonic Popcorn Sweatshop, am I right?

SegaSonic Popcorn Shop, conveniently located next to Coca-Cola Vending Machine, in scenic Seedy Alleyway.

Your input on the crank has some vague influence over the animation displayed during the course of the "play-session", as Dr. Robotnik impedes the duo's efforts. It goes without saying, that you can't influence the speed at which your cheap popcorn is microwaved (yes, microwaved).

And that's about it. It's a glorified popcorn machine, but still, an interesting novelty, and an exemplification of videogames' - and by extension, their characters' - influence on other elements of society, especially during the 90's.

On October 25, David Haywood announced that popular game-preservationists, ShouTime, in collaboration with the Dumping Union had acquired a PCB of Popcorn Shop - It will be supported by the latest MAME release, so next time you have a craving for low-grade microwave popcorn, you can boot up SSPS, for the full SegaSonic experience.

David Haywood has also released a video showcasing some of the animations displayed by the machine.

Special Thanks to Sonic Retro
and
David Haywood

Joy Mech Fight

2015-11-20T17:27:00.001-05:00

1993 was the golden-age a fighting games. Major classic franchises - Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, et al - had dug their tendrils into the minds and hearts of the masses. All the while, Sega was innovating in bold new ways, introducing both the genre and its dedicated fans to the third dimension, with their brand-new IP, Virtua Fighter.

But what about Sega's then rival in the home-market, Nintendo? Without the arcade presence they had in the early eighties, surely Nintendo could not compete with the likes of Capcom, SNK, Sega, and Namco, right?

Yes, you are right.

Joy Mech Fight (Famicom)
Developed & Published by: Nintendo
Released on: May 21, 1993

Joy Mech Fight is Nintendo's second attempt at a fighting-game, after 1983's universally-panned Urban Champ, and the first since the legendary Street Fighter II defined the genre, and changed videogames forever. Keeping this in mind, it's hard to really view JMF as anything more than a shallow - yet competent - novelty.

Yosi Mato mosh-pits tend to get pretty hardcore.

Released on the then decade old Famicom, amidst a veritable storm of bigger, better releases - not only in the arcades, obviously, but also competing consoles, and even their own SNES - JMF was more or less thrown into a wolves' den with a potato-peeler.

Being a Famicom game, JMF uses two buttons, one for punches, and the other for kicks. Command-normals play a huge role in JMF, perhaps as a concession to the less than adequate joypad, but there are many standard command-motions here as well - quarter-circles, half-circles, and charge-commands are all present. The game also features dizzies, and SNK-style throw commands
(f.+A or B)

Also noteworthy, is that JMF utilizes a "lives" system instead of having traditional rounds, a year before Darkstalkers - after an opponent's lifebar is drained, they lose one of their two hearts, and the victor regains a small amount of life. Lifebars are never fully restored.

Shockingly, the roster was the largest ever seen at the time, consisting of 36 robot-characters (though 8 of them are just EX versions of the starting roster) Unfortunately, most of these characters are locked from the get-go, requiring you to grind through 1P Mode, so have fun with that.

The starting roster of eight.

Something you might have noticed about the characters, is their limbless, Rayman-esque appearance - this was a deliberate design-decision on the developers part, since sliding several sprites around the screen, relative to one another, allowed for smoother animation, using not only less sprites overall, but smaller ones at that. This is how the clever devils at Nintendo squeezed 36 characters onto a 516kb Famicom cart, not to mention an engine that, frankly, was a bit much for the dusty old Famicom.

Honestly, there's not much else to say about Joy Mech Fight. It was a decent, if not overly-simplistic game, made for a console that was not only largely obsolete, but also far less than ideal to handle a game of this caliber. Because of it's unfortunate release date, and it's stalwart adherence to an ancient technology, it was long forgotten, by history.

Also, it was released for the Wii U in 2014.

NYXX

2014-05-29T22:09:00.001-04:00

Oh, hey, remember when I said I was going to be writing more?

Ahem.... Well, anyway, this past weekend an up-and-coming German shmup developer by the name of Infinite Vile released an independently published, dubiously titled manic-shooter, NYXX. How does one pronounce NYXX? Is it a word? Is it an acronym? After the bump, all these questions, and more...will be rendered irrelevant since NYXX is a damned good shooter.

NYXX (PC)
Developed & Published by: Infinite Vile
Released: May 24, 2014

NYXX attempts to recapture the simplicity of early Manic Vertical-Shooters, such as DonPachi, and Batsugun, so you won't be finding any scoring strategies involving: building meter by point blanking enemies, so you can cancel pink bullets with your yellow bullets, turning pink bullets into gold stars, or growing steel-orbs by chaining kills using your laser, to convert into steel-swords by using your hyper-mode, and firing your swords into bosses, and cancelling the bullets with your shield to turn into gold, and other madness requiring knowledge of the arcane, as found in Cave's more recent titles.

Finally! A shooter that won't require goat's blood to play for score!

Putting an emphasis on survival, your score constantly increases, so long as you're ship is ''alive'. 'All you have to worry about sustaining is a respectable number of consecutive hits, which translate into multipliers, which gives you a higher score the more consecutive kills you can earn. Enemies point value increases if you're at point-blank range as well. In short, it's Chaining 101. NYXX, plays, feels and even looks like a love-letter to Cave's early efforts, such as DonPachi, featuring a constant barrage of enemy gunfire and a simple, yet gratifying combo-based scoring-system, all set to a hype-as-hell Euro Drum and Bass soundtrack.

Also worth noting, the obligatory, No Bomb, No Miss bonuses are included in the results tally; the game also rewards bonus points for grazing, and features a dedicated ''focus'' button, enabling you to exploit this mechanic to it's fullest extent, a la Touhou, adding an element of risk/reward. These (obviously) contribute to perfecting your score runs.

It sounds like a nightclub. And presuming you do E, it looks like one too.

NYXX offers your choice from three different ship types: Spark (A), Boese (B), and Elysia (C).

Spark is about average in terms of speed, and strength of it's gunfire. However, it benefits from homing-fire, enabling you worry less about aiming, and more on zoning. However, the near-inability to choose a target to fire upon, means enemies are shot-down less efficiently than when using Elysia's massive tidal wave of neon-colored-napalm-death.

Boese is the slowest, but the most powerful, able to take out a significant number enemies in one hit. Unfortunately, it's rather narrow spread-of-fire, combined with it's slow movement speed make Boese more difficult to use.

Elysia is noticeably faster than the other two ships. It's spread also increases
considerably when powered-up. This is a go-to choice for learning the game, it's wide-spread and speed require less movement to be effective, allowing you to focus on herding and dodging.

More than meets the eye...

Each ship is lusciously designed, showing off meticulous details, such as visible rivet-lines in the metal-work, lights, and wing-flaps; great composition overall. This care extends to the stages as well, lending NYXX a professional appearance rarely seen in independent games (hell it's prettier than most beige AAA games). The bullets, explosions and other special-effects all have a nice "glow"to them, being bright and vivid enough to both look pretty, and stand out against the background.

The enemy sprite-work, on the other hand, clashes a bit with the design of the player-ships, and backgrounds; with their thick black outlines, the enemies have more of a ''comic book'' vibe than the gritty mid-90's sci-fi shooter feel the ships and stages evoke, but théy are expertly crafted nonetheless, And with all this viewed through a faux-scanline filter, NYXX offers an outstanding visual-package, that compliments it's top-shelf gameplay quite nicely.

Enemy Bullet-Patterns, and Chain-Combos demonstrated

But talk is cheap, and pictures don't do NYXX justice-

so here's a blind-run of Stage 1:

Support Infinity Vile and the Shooter scene by purchasing NYXX right now!!

God knows, this planet needs more shmups.

Why haven't you bought this yet?! It's, like, Five Bucks.

SYNSO & Squid Harder

2014-04-12T11:32:00.001-04:00

Before this blog went on two-year hiatus (sorry about that), I had discussed several shooting games, in rather explicit detail, noting every nuance of their scoring systems, and power-ups. I had also previously reviewed the then unknown predecessor to the PS4 indie darling, OctoDad. As we all know, both shmups and cephalopods alike are pivotal cornerstone gaming conventions. That's why, many years ago, a British programmer by the name of Robert "OddBob" Fearon beat Young Horses to the punch in regards to tentacled-protagonists, going even farther, and combing these classic themes into one, giving the world SYNSO...

SYNSO - Squid Harder (PC)
Developed & Published by: Bag Full of Wrong Videogames
Released: May 19, 2009 (?)

SYNSO is a trilogy, consisting of the original SYNSO, followed by the sequel, Squid Harder, and finally, an updated revision of the original, dubbed SYNSO:CE. Short for "Squid Yes! Not so Octopus", the SYNSO games belong to a sub-genre more commonly known as an arena-shooter, and less-commonly known as a "twin-stick shooter", a name that is unsuitable for the games, as they lack a second stick.

And there-in lies the brilliance of SYNSO's design, unlike many arena-shmups, which allow free directional aiming, SYNSO, the aptly named hero of SYNSO, can only fire in the direction of his movement. This is an excellent design choice, because it greatly emphasizes the importance of zoning and herding, and makes for a much more difficult (and therefore rewarding) experience.

The original SYNSO was a nine-minute endurance run; a gauntlet of robots, and chattering heads, and other weird shit, proudly presented with that faux-16-bit aesthetic that was all-the-rage in 2009. You are awarded bonuses based on the amount of time you are able to persistently exist (likely not long), and points are awarded for picking up randomly generated gems, as well as shooting down enemies, resulting in retina-detaching explosions of, light, color, sound, and most of all, UI, all the while strange robotic voices whisper cryptic criticisms of the gaming industry.

It's a weird fucking game.

SYNSO 1

Squid Harder does away with the gems, and replaces the nine-minute survival mode, with four unique stages, each featuring their own enemy wave-patterns, each lasting a set length of time, one, two, three, and four minutes, respectivley, adding up to a total of ten minutes you must learn to master. Stages can be conquered in any order, a la MegaMan, and each can be replayed as often as you wish.

To compensate for the more forgiving time-limit, Squid incorporates a new rank-system, which subtly affects gameplay, encouraging you to replay the game, conquering each stage in a different order.. Although the effects the rank have are not as tangible as in most shooters, each rank rewards you a clever title. DoDonPachi never did that, probably because the guys at CAVE are a bunch of "Pasty Crowners"

SYSNO : SQUID HARDER

And as you can tell, Squid Harder eschews it's predecessors presentation, for something a little more... neo-retro. The game's art-design brings to mind Atari, as if projected through a holographic display, an interesting look, no doubt.

Seizure Warning: If you suffer from epileptic symptoms, watch this anyway, because it's worth it.

SYNSO:SQUID HARDER & SYNSO:CE can be purchased here.

Sonic Xtreme

2012-05-27T15:14:00.002-04:00

Oh, I didn't see you come in there. Haha.

Welcome, once again, the Hedgehogs Never Tell, a series where I ramble on and on about Sonic games, and you feign interest. Now, picking up more or less exactly where we had left off in the last installment, would bring us to 1994. Ah, 1994, the year The Scream was stolen in Germany, and everyone wore flannel shirts, and although Bill Clinton was the president, Sonic the Hedgehog was king, as far as kids, and marketing analysts where concerned.

In addition to being the most relevant videogame series/character of the time, he also appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and boasted a soundtrack written by Michael Jackson himself. But this wasn't enough for Sonic, who drunk with fame, and surrounded by yes-men, co-launched not one, but two animated television series in September of '93. Why did they need to make two? I don't know. One was a syndicated weekday cartoon, that channeled Tex Avery's coke-fueled slapstick humor, and the other was exclusively broadcast on ABC, trying to paint the series as a much darker affair, despite still being about furries with shiny red kicks.

"Well, that's all fine and well", you must be thinking "But what has this to do with video-games?"
And I would respond with "Shut up. I'm getting there"

He'll never share his stories about Mars with us.

Compiled in November of 1993, Sonic-16 was a demo created at STI. It was based off of the Saturday morning cartoon series, as oppossed to Sonic proper. This led to some issues in getting it green-lit; the demo they had created reflected a stealth game, not a Sonic title. It was slow, and involved a lot of hiding, things that don't mesh well with the series signature gameplay. The title evolved over the next few months.

In the May of 1994, mere months before the release of Sonic & Knuckles, Sega Technical Institute's lead-designer, Michael Kosaka, was slated to present the idea the team had been thinking about since the previous year. He wanted STI to develop their new Sonic game, only this time, instead of basing it wholesale on the show, it would combine elements of the animated series' and the video-games' respective worlds. Instead of sneaking around an ominous city, Sonic would be running around abstract geometry, and jumping on stuff, while his less athletic friends from the animated series would be limited to supporting roles, interacting with Sonic through comm-radio calls.

Leonardo Da Vinci was also involved in development.

Chris Senn and his team finished their CGI proof-of-concept for Sonic Mars on May 17, 1994. The video featured Sonic in full 3D, slowly bumbling around a bland series of catwalks. Yuji Naka wasn't very impressed, but Sega of America had a good feeling about having a full 3D game. It was planned to be released on the 32X, a useless hunk of plastic that plugged into the top of your Sega Genesis, so you could play one of like, six games released.

For your viewing pleasure, here are two video mock-ups created by STI:

At first Sonic Mars, was slated to become lucky number seven, but, due to a number of occurrences, including, Mike Kosaka leaving STI, and the 32X's commercial failure resulted in this new Sonic's development to be carried over to the brand-new Sega Saturn, under the care of Chris Senn...

Sonic Xtreme (Sega Saturn)

Developed by: Sega Technical Institute

Cancelled

By the time the game had begun development on the Saturn, the new designer, Chris Senn, had done any and all traces of the cartoon. Sonic Xtreme was going to be pure Sonic, in full 3D, and it would set the bar for 3D platformers forever more. Xtreme was to have two distinctly different engines; the stages would use the primary engine, created by Senn and a fellow by the name of Olaf Alon, which was actually similar in many ways to the Saturn launch title, BUG, and a fully 3D "Boss Engine", featuring a camera that was always fixated on the boss.

The stage-engine rendered every character and item with tacky 3D sprites, a la Donkey Kong. The stages themselves were a series of narrow, catwalk like platforms, hanigng over an abyss and supposedly didn't feature a center of gravity, allowing Sonic to leisurely walk on walls, and other such nonesense. This allowed for additional terrain, and was a good use of limited space. The whole thing was also viewed through a fish-eye lens, which allowed the player to ~~see more of the stage at a time, as well as immerse themselves in Sonic's world~~ vomit.

The 3D engine was far more impressive, bearing quite a similarity, and supposedly based on the framework of Nights. What little is known about the regular engine, even less is known about the boss engine. We do know that it was in full 3D, and was a much better display of the Saturn's capabilities. Christina Coffin, the leader of the boss engine team, had in fact begun development on it during the conceptual period for Sonic Mars, making the boss engine not only a holdover from the 32X days, one of the first elements of Xtreme to actually receive proper development.

Chris Senn had begun development on a Mac, an eventually ported his work to a PC, an easy transition, and a reasonable compromise between a Mac and a Saturn. Senn and Olof's goal was to continue development for PC, and to eventually port it to a Saturn DevKit. Unfortunately, when running on a proper Saturn, the game was not nearly as reliable, running on what was essentially two year old technology, as oppossed to their state-of-the-art computers. Olaf Alon, in the meantime, was demoted, and his share of work was outsourced.

A tasteful allegory for this game's development. Don't worry, it gets much worse. But you already knew that.

Corporate politics started to play into matters, with the president of Sega, Hayao Nakayama visiting, expecting to see pure gold, instead saw a trashy half-assed game created by a third party company, POV. Senn, the leader of development, had not authorized that particular presentation, and in fact had one of much greater quality, one that might have done the game justice, and allowed them to stay the course. But Nakayama was less than unimpressed, and demanded that the game essentially get started from scratch, utilizing Coffin's Boss Engine for all gameplay. By the time Ofer Alon's arrived, the Execs were already gone. He never got the opportunity to show them this:

Xtreme's in-office name was now Project Condor. Coffin worked non-stop to make a full-game in less than nine months. In August, she came down with stress-induced pneumonia, and was advised by doctors to take an extended leave of absence. Being a rational human-being, Coffin resided from her duties, resulting in STI requesting a later deadline. Xtreme would not be able to compete with Super Mario 64 that Christmas. The game was officially postponed, but office rumors spread that the game was going to get canned.

This was apparently better.

And it did. The gap left in their Holiday line-up was replaced with an enhanced port of Sonic 3D Blast, and the remainder of Xtreme's budget was reallocated to advertise Nights. Down, but not out, Senn, having a perfectly functional game on his hands, that operated perfectly on PC, corresponded with Sega's PC division, in hopes of letting Xtreme live on in some form. They wouldn't bite, as they were too busy replacing the music in Sonic & Knuckles.

Look it's Sonic Xtreme! Not really.

Making a smart PR move, Sega scraped together the remnants of Xtreme, and created Sonic World, to act as the hub world for Sonic Jam, the first of many, many, many, many Sonic anthologies. Both the World component, as well as Jam as a whole were well received, and Sega was able to play-off the cancellation real cool. Because they began Sonic Adventure's development almost immediately.

Chris Senn loved this game, and he has been very close to the community in recent years, visiting forums, and candidly discussing his experience trying to make the game happen. He was even kind enough to leak a vast amount of development resources; textures, graphics, data, and in some cases, even complete stages, available through a viewer that compiled the stages in real-time, though there was no gameplay engine. Chris had even attempted, with the help of fans online, to recreate the game, and finally finish what he had started during the nineties, but he had to cancel it.

The development was a painful folly, and one that would probably etch itself into the memories of it's developers as the worst experience of their careers, but what about the fruits of their efforts? I've barely touched on gameplay earlier, so let's delve deeper:

GAMEPLAY

Sonic Xtreme's chief goal (aside from getting released) was to emphasize non-linear exploration, and although this has been a cornerstone of Sonic in every game since the very beginning, the addition of true 3D would allow for unprecedented freedom. Stages almost tube like, allowing Sonic to easily navigate walls and ceilings, with each offering more level terrain to navigate. My understanding is that the different "dimensions" (walls, ceiling, etc) would act as separate, inter-winding paths, similar yet different to the multiple paths of previous games.

Sonic is a closet Lionel Richie fan. Second time I've made that joke, I believe.

The game was slated to offer a host of playable characters, including Sonic stalwarts, Tails and Knuckles, as well as new character Tiara, each boasting a unique playstyle, a concept that would later find use in Adventure. As development carried on, Senn's idea for a roster was put on the backburner, so as to emphasize the basics first, adding additional characters later, if time would permit.

Sonic would also be capable of new attacks, some of which made into later installments, others were disregarded. He would be able to perform a jump-cancelling Power Ball" attack, that drops him onto enemies below, as well as some kind of Bounceing manuever to allow him to reach higher areas. These ideas were combined into one move in Sonic Adventure 2. Stranger techniques were planned though, including the abiility to throw rings (wut) and even manifest collected rings in the form of a shield, which could then use even more rings to perform a screen-clearing supermove.

Xtereme would feature at least five zones, each containing three acts. Jade Gully, Crystal Frost, Red Sands, and Death Egg, were all welll-along, and were featured in various promotional media, as well as internal presentations. Yeah, we know how that turned out. The former three were fully playable, and Death Egg had a sigificantly developed map, although it is unknown if it was playable. Senn had to compile mock-ups in a viewer to show us what it would look like.

Guess which one isn't real.

In addition to these core stages, there were dozens of small test levels created by Senn and Alon to test the game out. Some of the tests are what you'd expect, just some checkered patterns, and a few platforms to test specific gimmicks/mechanics, but others were quite robust; one of them, the green cave I've shown in a few of the screens farther above, was apparantly so intricate that Senn and Alon were considering expanding it into a full-fledged stage. There were also an Egyptian-themed test stage, and something that looks like a diner crossed with a sound-stage. These were likely going to be either be the basis for future stages, or turned into stages in their own right, if development had continued.

Chris Senn also designed over 50 new enemies for Sonic to kill. Some are permutations of classic Sonic enemies, others are completley new shit. Some enemies were completed, and implemented in the proto, some made it to the spriting phase, but fell short of making it into the game, and others yet only exist as rough concept art. You can view Retro's exhaustive gallery here

Oh, hello there.

Speaking of enemies, bosses were an important feature of Xtreme, which would bring back old characters from previous installments, such as Metal Sonic from CD, and Fang the Sniper, from idk, Game Gear, or some shit. Fang, a purple-weasel dressed like a cowboy, had an in-game model, and a basic arena, but he can only be observed in a few grainy promotional screenshots, which seem to show him just standing there, only occasionally acknowledging Sonic. It's my guess that he wasn't worked on much further. Metal Sonic, on the other hand was already complete. The only improvement necessary would be to improve his AI as development continued. Metal follows a basic rushdown pattern, and is apparently very aggressive. There were also robotic Insect, and strangely enough, Gorilla bosses, who never made it past conceptual stages.

The game reemerged in the September of 2005; a (presumably ex) Sega employee offered a disk containing the Senn/Alon engine, but demanding in excess of one-grand. The community pooled-together to afford this gaming relic, and a fellow who calls himself "Ratman221" stepped forward, and promised he'd take care of everything on the community's behalf. And he didn't, because as it turns out he was just putting on a ruse, so that his friend, a collector of rare prototypes could keep it in his personal collection. He promised he would document the game extensively, but that was in 2006. As of writing, it is six years later, and all he's provided were grainy screenshots, and some sparse, gameplay footage; things that we already had access to. This fellow will likely keep Xtreme to himself for a long time, unfortunately. So, to review, we don't have the Senn/Alon engine, or the POV rework of said engine, but somehow, we got Project Condor.

And yes, that little soap opera I mentioned did happen. WIth Ratman. You can't make this shit up.

Christina Coffin's Boss Engine - Project Condor:

There isn't much else left to say about Sonic Xtreme. Would it have been possible for this game to have saved the Sega Saturn? Unlikely, as by this point, Saturn was already two-years old, but then again it's been recently proven that late-adopters can indeed save something, long after crunch time. It will remain an unknown for the rest of time. It was successful in Japan though, and probably Brazil.

You too can play ~~Sonic Xtreme~~ Project Condor. You'll also need an emulator, I'd reccomend SSF.

Now, once you realize you can't figure out how to configure the emulator, just opt to read about it on Sonic Retro.
Don't worry, it's just the same information I've regurgitated here.

Then, you should check out Chris Senn's Sonic Xtreme Compendium,
which collects all of his work and ideas about where
Xtreme went, and where it should have gone.

All videos are property of their respective owners.

All second hand info courtesy of Sonic Retro.

Yeti Hunter

2012-05-16T20:56:00.002-04:00

Man has forever been haunted by the unknown; for as long as man could communicate, there have been legends and tales of horrible monsters that lurk in the shadows unknown waiting to strike. What do they want? Where did they come from? Who knows? Who cares? All that matters is that they are there, we don't know what they're up to, and we must destroy them, for some reason. This is Yeti Hunter.

Yeti Hunter (PC)
Developed & Published by: Vlambeer
Released: March 2012

The Himalayas are vast, foreboding region that spans the wilderness of Tibet and Nepal along the northernmost border of India. It's an area characterized by vast stretches of cold, frozen nothing; home to hundreds of mountains, many of which are among the world's tallest. And Yeti.

Many scientist argue that the Yeti, like it's cousin, BigFoot, is just a bear, or an unidentified species of ape. But these people are wrong, they wave their Ph-D's in your face, as if those mean anything. You are a rugged Yeti Hunter, you don't eat, you don't sleep, and you're boxers are likely caked with feces.

Yeti Hunter.

Yeti's know what it's like to feel not-so-fresh.

Yeti Hunter is an FPS that makes use of sprites, not unlike those seen in Wolfenstein, Quake, Hexen, and other early FPSes. Similarities end there, though, Yeti's style makes it stand-out; every sprite is a single, solid color, and has been drawn in extremely low-resolution, giving the game a... strange atmosphere. Despite the apparent (though deliberate) crudeness, Vlambeer does a good job of evoking a sensation of isolation, both through the moody, atmospherice music by the artist Kozilek, and by the fact that you can't fucking find anything. This is what one would classify as an 'art game' which, have a pretty strong stigma of being pretentious working against them, but I'll discuss that in a moment.

Yeti features a real-time day/night cycle, real-time assuming you live on the planet Mercury.

In Yeti Hunter it goes without saying that you hunt Yeti. The game uses a standard WASD setup, WAS & D to walk, mouse to look, you can climb trees to give yourself a higher vantage point, simply and convienintly by walking into them, you can run with Shift, and squat down with Ctrl, which incidentally is also ho you climb back down to the surface. All fairly standard so far, where Yeti's commands get somewhat unique is the firing mechanics. The game features a scope, as is the vogue in FPS games these days, but you cannot free-fire at all. It's not a huge difference, but it's still an interesting footnote. You use a hunting rifle (appropriate, as you're hunting) which can only fire once before needing to be reloaded. This is not a face-paced game, in case you haven't figured out. Click the right mouse-button to aim, and left to fire. Instead of firing from the hip, left-clicking when 'un-scoped' will instead provide a savage hunting beat to inspire your inner-warrior to kill. Or something.

Yeti Hunter.

This blood is telling me which direction to go... I guess.

Now that you are familiar with the controls, it's time to hunt. Or watch

Yeti Hunter simply drops you into the vast wilderness of the Indian subcontinent, with no context or explanation. It's up to you to figure out everything for yourself, or in this case, let me figure it for you. If you're not observant, you may end up wandering around for what seems like forever, with nothing to show for your efforts. Lo, and behold, there was an unassuming splatter of blood right by your starting point, which you must follow to the next splatter of blood, and so on, as the trail to the Yeti gets hotter.

Or you could just wander around aimlessly until a Yeti shows up.

If there was no divider between this screenshots, would you be able to tell the difference?

Brace yourselves.

The following is actual footage from an expedition in Nepal.

Are you man enough to hunt Yeti? Then download Yeti Hunter here.

And check out Vlambeer's other games too.

Spoilers ahoy: Remember how I referred to this as an "art-game"? Well, there is a huge stigma against independently developed games,for many reasons which will be discussed in a post of their own.

Unfortunately, Yeti Hunter falls victim to many of the tropes that have caused these game to come under fire.

The entire point of Yeti is that there is no Yeti. It's a mirage; every time you shoot at it, it disappears without a trace, only to appear elsewhere later. The game is meant to be a reflection on urban legends, I suppose, but that is exactly why it is at odds with conventional game design; It literally lies to you. Yeti isn't even really a game, per-se, as it's goal is not obtainable at all. From a design standpoint, it is an atrocious piece of work; you are given no instructions, it doesn't explain what to do, or how to control your character explicitly, like many modern games do, nor does it subtly coerce you into figuring it out like in many older games (a much better approach, but still absent from Yeti)

Alas, these problems are the point of Yeti, these flaws are meant to excite your sense of unease, and make you feel nervous, and overly-cautious. But this is a major point of contention: should a game be allowed to abandon good design in the name art? After all, David Lynch's movies are objectively terrible: the cinematography is confusing, and everything is 'off' in some way, and yet they are highly regarded because they were done so deliberately, and meant to elicit a certain reaction from the viewer. Lynch misused standard practice in an ingenious and innovative way But is the same true of games? Is not the very art of videogames lie in the craftsmanship of it's gameplay? I'm going to withhold my opinion on this matter until a later date.

Yeti Hunter.

Lethal Application

2012-05-10T18:30:00.001-04:00

Lethal Application is a doujin-shooter, featuring a female protagonist, and a science-fiction setting. No, no, don't leave just yet. Lethal Application is actually very innovative in it's design, straying far away from standard SHMUP conventions. In it, your primary method of combat is also your chief form of mobility; they are one in the same, and offer different results depending on how you apply them, hence the game's clever title.

It's like Shakespeare. Nothing short of poetry in motion.

Lethal Application (PC)
Developed & Published by: 大雪戦 (that's Daisessen to you, baka-gaijin)
Released on: December 2004

LA begins simply enough, with a woman armed with a futuristic rifle landing in what appears to be a space station. The game at first appears to be a platformer/shooter, in the vein of Metroid, but you'll almost immediately realize how incredibly wrong your initial assumption was; upon firing your gun, you will be knocked-back quite a distance, and you'll soon realize that this is the game's core mechanic. By firing downwards, you can propel yourself upwards.

Rocket Jumping, just like in Quake, only not at all like that.

This is good and all, but the game becomes tricky when dealing with enemies, due to the gun's huge recoil; firing at enemies will often blow you straight down, or at least over to a less convenient vantage point. And this is where the game's challenge lies, in trying to multi-task shooting at enemies with preventing yourself from plummeting to your death. Oh, did I neglect to mention the Rising Floor of death?

There is a horizontal laser at the bottom of the screen that slowly, but surely scrolls upwards, spelling the end for you if you get too close... but not really. It actually only inflicts minor damage, and acts more as encouragement to keep a brisk pace, than a strict punishment for dangling around.

The game's enemies are nothing to write home about, however. Typical cannon-fodder. There's mounted guns, little men dressed like Orko from He-Man, and a variety of airborne attackers, including drones, and even other flying women. But you won't spend much time looking at them, as they'll be too busy getting blown apart by your psychotic gunmanship.

Pictured: The Rising Floor of Negligible Discipline

The most challenging aspect the game offers, is everyone's favorite: METER MANAGEMENT! Yes, your ammunition is limited, which means your mobility is too. The only way too acquire more ammo/fuel is to kill enemies (by firing your ammo at them) and reaping the rewards, creating a taxing egg/omlete scenario. Moving around too much, and firing recklessly are the keys to failure, so make every shot count, and rely more on coasting along using the game's low-gravity (because of outer space) rather than manually rocketing yourself forward.

Or just blow everything to shit. It really doesn't matter.

Of course, any self-respecting shmup will contain a bevy of power-ups, and Lethal Application is no slouch in that category. In addition to your basic fire, there are also B weapons, which I'm assuming stands for 'bomb'. These are dumb-fire missiles that rocket forward, and cause a great amount of damage to everything in the vicinity. These are fairly unsafe to use, though, as they must be manually aimed, and require you to face a direction other than "down", resulting in you losing your ground. Better than the missiles, are S, which is a sword-like weapon that attacks all around you. This is perfect when used while "flying" upwards; it allows you to attack enemies from all sides, and is also capable of destroying blocks of terrain quickly. There also exists T, which I'm guess probably stands for "trap". I don't know. Anyway, it's this blue force-field-like thing that hovers around a bit, and attacks anything that wanders near it.

B, S & T, respectively. Take note of the many explosions.

Oh, whats this? A gameplay video? No, don't struggle, you have no choice but to watch it!

You are strapped to a chair, and the game is set to Beethoven.

Daisessen rereleased Lethal Application as freeware in December 2009.

The link brings up a 404, so here it is on Mediafire.

Daisessen has alot of other, similar games, and even a follow-up to LA on their site, so drop by.

If I play a few more doujins, I will look like this.

Vidiot Game

2012-05-10T01:01:00.001-04:00

Howdy masochists! Rob Zilks here with another game that I'm sure most of you will either enjoy or lose your mind over

Vidiot Game (PC, Xbox 360 Arcade)
Developed & Published by: GZStorm
Released: April 2012

The game itself is a series of microgames (if you're not familiar with that term, think of the WarioWare titles). Don't try to search for a coherent plot, because then you'll be staring at the screen for hours.

You start off by making a character in various ways, ranging from an 8-bit RPG Character Sheet maker rip-off to seeing your fate in the stars. This only affects certain in-between-game scenes as well as the appearance of your character. You can be a Fungi, Vegetable, or Utensil. The Utensils have randomly generated "D" first names, the Vegetables have randomly generated long first names, and the Fungi have randomly generated three-letter names. You're also allowed to select a profession/class/job, cleverly named and created after various real world jobs. You are also allowed to pick an alignment (how your character would act if the game cared), set your wealth and skill levels, as well as give them the length of your nose, fingers, or tongue. This part does next to nothing in terms of the game other than decide how your character will look, what his name will be (if it's mentioned), and kill some time.

[Left:] A familiar setting to those of us who would play this [Right:] I wish I could play a Utensil Telemarketer in D&D

The microgames can range from something as commonplace as advancing to one end of an alleyway with an overabundance of potholes, spinning a wheel, and lottery ticket scratch-offs to something as insane and out there as fleeing a dog you did nothing to provoke, piloting a jet pack in cyber-space, or even skiing down a mountain to avoid either a firetruck or a crazy vortex.

[Left:] An old favorite of sorts [Right:] This is how you KNOW you've been doing shrooms

Sometimes instead of a microgame, you are greeted with the opportunity to make a decision between three choices. The situations can be anything from encountering a swarm of bees or even a cliff at the edge of the world (yes you can live on the edge). The decisions range from "neutral", "good", "bad", or sometimes "just plain stupid" will take the place of any decision.

[Left:] Why can't I challenge the Devil to a fiddle contest? [Right:] BEES! BEES EVERYWHERE!

If you make it through a certain number of microgames without dying, you are greeted with a victory screen that encourages you to start over. However, if you fail a microgame or make a bad decision, you are greeted by [depending on the game you fail or the decision] either a death screen or an "erased from existence" screen. Both give you the option to restart from the beginning or quit to the main menu, but the later screen will always restart you at the D&D-esque character creation screen (should you chose to restart).

Overall, the game is fantastic. It does exactly what it sets out to do, which is kill your time and get you hooked. As noted, it has a very WarioWare Inc.feel to it, and I would like to also note that the graphical style and overall bizarre feel to the game gives it a Toejam & Earl feel to it. Also the images below will show you the scenes in-between each microgame. It's a perfect display of the humor of the minds behind this game.

The levels of snark are almost parallel with Joss Whedon's writing. Snark has almost reached critical mass.

Well, there you have it. Actually, here you have it. Clicking there will bring you to GZStorm's main site for Vidiot Game, where you can download the game for PC, as well as the OST. There's also a link to where to buy the game for a buck for the Xbox 360 Arcade, but why pay for a game to play on a shameless stripped-down PC wannabe when you can play it for free on the superior, meant to be system. That's just my opinion, it may be wrong, it may be right, who knows. In the words of Nicholas Cage, "IT'S ALL ON YOU!"

This Precious Land

2012-05-08T22:59:00.000-04:00

(This will be a short article, as I'm currently writing two fairly large articles in the meantime. Stay tuned.)

Every now and again a game comes along and promises that you will waste hours of your life playing them and accomplish absolutely nothing. These types of games are generally known as 'Sandbox games", and are a good way to waste a rainy day, granted that you have the ability to waste vast thatches of time guilt-free. This Precious Land takes this idea, and adds a challenging twist, that requires you to earn the ability to place things on your plot of land. Go grab a coffee, and a clove cigarette, and join the revolution.

Let's just say that smoke isn't there because that girl is hot.

This Precious Land (PC)
Developed & Published by: Ishisoft
Released on: Apr, 22 2012

This Precious Land is a sandbox/construction/puzzle game about cultivating trees. The game takes place on a 6x6 grid, where you can place patches of dirt. Now, the most enjoyable part of this game is figuring it out yourself,, so if you want to get the full experience, I recommend you stop reading and play this immediately first. If you don't really care, or are having any trouble, than read ahead, cheater: Placing two patches of dirt adjacent to each other will create grass, placing dirt adjacent to grass, and another tile of dirt will grow a tile of small trees, combining multiple small tiles in addition to grass will create larger trees, and so forth.

Trees are actually prokaryotic, and reproduce this way in real life.

In order to create larger trees, you have to strategically place fresh dirt adjacent to certain tiles. Once placed, the new dirt will "absorb" adjacent tiles in order from smallest to large, following the hierarchy of

dirt > grass > three small pines > five arboreals > Big Fucking Oak. I'm not sure why the species change, and how five trees become one, but then again, I'm not a dendrologist. Creating bigger trees not only yields a larger tree, but frees up plots of land with which to make more trees You can only advance one step up, so in order to create a larger tree, you need to have a sequentially smaller tree adjacent to the spot you plan on putting your next tile. And grass. You always need grass. lol, that picture's resolution was 420x300.

"The trouble with the maples (And they're quite convinced they're right) They say the oaks are just too loftyAnd they grab up all the light!"

When you manage to cultivate a big tree, you will receive some kind of shiny currency which can be used to purchase pre-fab tiles at an extraordinarily high price. These extra tiles are sometimes necessary in order to maximize your land; sometimes you'll box yourself in, and the only way to not end up with useless dead-tiles, is to strategically drop some ready-made trees in there, and see what happens.

It is also possible, by right-clicking on a mdeium, or large tree, the cut it down, which yields lumber. As far as I could tell, the lumber doesn't serves any function, but cutting down medium-sized trees is a good way to clear up some land in case you've boxed yourself in, so to speak. If you are greedy, cutting down a large tree will yield you more currency, in addition to the scratch you received for creating it in the first place. Of course, this kind of corporate-thinking will leave a tree-stump, a permanent reminder of both how cold and heartless you are, as well as how ugly your land looks now.

DOWN WITH CORPORATE AMERICA!!

Once you're done maximizing your land, you can then purchase purely aesthetic tiles, such as ponds and stones, to give your garden that zen vibe, which is the presumably 'goal' of this 'game'; to create something that looks nice. There is no wrong way to build a garden, unless you deliberately try to make every tile barren, and even then, if you do it, you still technically accomplished your goal, so kudos.

One looks like vegetation the other looks like a Q*Bert board. I'll let you sort them out.

Come relieve some stress, and build magic trees by Downloading TPL from LudumDare.com

Then paint a wizard on your van.

Far out.

Sonic Crackers

2012-05-03T03:23:00.001-04:00

Welcome back to Hedgehogs Never Tell, a rosy, and informative retrospective on the Sonic the Hedgehog series, focusing on unreleased games, and content left on the cutting room floor. Today we'll be answering the question you never asked before, "What is Sonic Crackers?"

Skipping ahead a bit from where we left off, Sonic 3, just like it's predecessors, was the focal point of a media blitz. Even after the game was released, SEGA teased the public with hints that, unsurprisingly, a follow-up was due soon. However, SEGA had hinted that a fourth (actually fifth) installment might come before 1994 was through. This was unexpected, as each game in the series thus far had spent close to a year in the oven. In October of that year, everyone discovered that this much alluded-to game was in fact Sonic & Knuckles, a game stitched together from stages that couldn't be finished in time for Sonic 3. But what about this other mysterious game?

The titles "Sonic Honkies" was already taken by an R-Type clone starring Redd Fox.

Sonic Crackers (Sega Genesis)
Developed by: SEGA
Compiled on: Apr 1, 1994

Now the very first thing you may notice, is the date the ROM was dumped, in the bottom-right of the title screen (April1, 1994, in Japanese notation) happens to be April Fool's Day. This fact alone has lead to people believing the game was in fact not an official proto at all, but rather an elaborate hoax; a joke game created to stir up nonesense on the message-boards, and internet forums of the early to mid-2000's. This however, was disproven in 2008, when drx (remember him?) provided the community with a dozen (!) pre-release builds of Chaotix, a spin-off which was released the following year, in 1995. The builds form a nice timeline leading from Crackers all the way to the release of Chaotix, and the earlier Chaotix games were very clearly built on top of Crackers, due to there being remnants from Crackers in the later protos.

"I suggest a new strategy, let the Wookiee win." Incidentally, Knuckles is pictured upsetting a droid.

The game itself, bares quite a striking resemblance to Chaotix, even at such an early state; the game featured all of the core-elements than defined Chaotix, chiefly the strange leash-mechanic, which I'll discuss more fully in a bit. Crackers also sported similar superficial elements with Chaotix, such as it's abstract stage art, closer in style to CD, than the numbered games in the series.

Crackers features very primordial versions of the mechanics that would later be refined in Chaotix. Chaotix was a three-button game, giving each button on the Genesis pad a unique function. Crackers features all of these same actions, but there all mapped to 'jump', resulting in a nearly unplayable game. Pressing A, B, or C will make Sonic jump, holding-down any one of the buttons will make Tails anchor himself, stopping you dead in your tracks. Furthermore, jumping while the two are next to each other will make one lift the other, making maneuvering in any meaningful way almost impossible.

Sonic defies physics in the most clunky and awkward way possible.

Many of the game's features are completely broken at this early point; Sonic & Tails can come to a complete stop, and even change direction while running up walls, or even on ceilings. They can take damage from spikes, and will lose a large amount of rings they never had. In fact the game dosen't even have rings, aside from the ones you inexplicably drop when hit. You can also see in some of the pics above, most prominently when going downhill, that Sonic & Tails' layered sprites (arms, Tails' tails) aren't correctly aligned and will frequently detach from their bodies. Don't worry, they have good insurance. These, however are expected from an engine still in progress, and it is still possible to navigate around if you get stuck by pausing the game; this will allow you to reposition your characters, a la Debug Mode. You can't write swear words with rings, though.

The games consists of either "4" or "a lot of stages", depending on whether or not you consider palette-swapped stages to be new.

Opening Stage & World 2

Get used to seeing this stage.

The first stage you'll encounter in Crackers is what is thought to be an early build of the final stage of Chaotix. This makes sense, as there are a lot of physical similarities between the two, specifically the tiered platforms, and half-loops, and also the general concept of the stages, being mechanical-looking towers with an emphasis on climbing vertically.

This(these) stage(s) are, as I had mentioned earlier are towers with a heavy emphasis on climbing upwards. It features quite a few gimmicks that would make it a blast to play, if only the engine weren't in ass-condition; there are half-loops that lead you to the next tier up, and catwalks that require you to 'slingshot' upwards by telling Tails to anchor himself, and pulling in the opposite direction. Again, this would be great, if only it weren't for the early engine. The stage(s) eventually got reworked into "Techno Tower", the final zone in Chaotix, so everything worked out, I suppose

This(these) stage(s) are the most complete, the first one having hazards, in the form of metal spikes, and each of them having an end goal. Either finishing the stage, or letting the timer reach 3 minutes will lead to the hub of "World 1", a useless overworld stage, of which there are two. It is currently unknown what the intention for the overworld stages was.

World 1 Stage:

"World 1" is the first stage you'll encounter after the opening stage, and, boy is it broken. At least the other stages are mostly complete, in regards to "collision" and "being solid ground". Here, you won't be so lucky; seemingly at random, certain platforms won't take hold of Sonic, and he'll simply fall through them. However, Tails, for some reason, is perfectly capable of walking atop nearly everything he should be able to, which will result in Tails yo-yo'ing Sonic over the abyss. There are also many collision errors (more like lack of collision altogether) in regards to loops, and such, not unlike in Sonic 2 Beta. For some bizarre reason, the collision is present when you enter the stage through the stage-select screen, as opposed to actually getting there the proper way

The stage itself is Carnival themed, featuring, the aforementioned loops and such. It also features intersecting downhill pathways, which you can crossover from one to the next by jumping. In fact despite it's tacky Carnie trappings, this stage is actually quite similar to Chemical Plant, from Sonic 2. The time limit here is strict, only giving you a single minute, before kicking your ass back to the hub-world.

Behold:

Overworld Stages

Crackers does not include light-cycles.

These stages, known as "Field" stages in Crackers terminology, are strange, mostly not-functioning overworlds. They are viewed from a top-down perspective, not unlike an RPG. You can walk around them freely, paying no heed to the very obvious gaps in the ground, which you can walk over like it ain't even a thing. You can't interact with any physical objects here, but you can wrap around the screen infinitley. It is unknown what these stages where meant to do, but likely acted as a preliminary version of the island that would later serve as Chaotix's hub. Notably, you can proceed forward from the overworld, but only by pressing 'A' while paused, which seems to be a debug command, as opposed to a legit method of transport.

Now I said today we would just discuss Sonic Crackers, but by extension, it's also worth noting that both Sonic & Tails are somewhat present in almost every proto of Chaotix, through indirect means; there are 1up graphics, directory data, Tails' palette and more. In fact, some of the Chaotix protos still address themselves as Crackers,. It's pretty obvious they were originally set to make the transition from Crackers to Chaotix.

I'm not going to go into explicit detail about the Chaotix protos, as they are so far ahead in production than Crackers, that they're barely the same game anymore. The protos are simply progressively more complete versions of Chaotix, whereas Crackers is... not. However, I will take this opportunity to discuss Crackers impact on the final retail version. Tangent Time!

ORIGINAL CHARACTER. DO NOT STEAL!

In Chaotix proper, there exists a character not normally accessible in-game. He is a palette-swap of Knuckles with another character, Mighty's moves. He is a white echidna, contracted down to 'Wechnia', althought his official name, at least according to the game data, is "**********". Perhaps he's foreign?

Wechnia, or ********** resides in the second character slot, right after Mighty the Armadillo (Chaotix's Sonic stand-in). The motions of Mighty's animation is almost exactly the same as Sonic's, and was likely that Mighty was in fact Sonic, before they decided to use mostly new characters, instead. After "Sonic's" slot, comes Wechnia, who in the very earliest Chaotix proto we have, is not white, but is rather colored using Tail's palette. And he could fly in the very same manner as Tails up until the fifth prototype.

Case closed. Tails getting cut caused the game's protocol to load Nonesense the Echidna.

Next up: Sonic Xtreme

All prototypes courtesy of the fine chaps at Sonic Retro.

All second hand information from:

SonicRetro

Minotaur in a China Shop

2012-05-01T01:12:00.000-04:00

Hello all. I am Rob "Robrony" Zilks, and this is my first article for hidden gems, and I will say, it was fairly interesting, a small in-browser game called "Minotaur in a China Shop".

Minotaur China Shop (PC)

Developed & Published by: Flashbang Studios

Released: Dec. 2008

The game, as you can probably tell, takes its name from the phrase "Bull in a China Shop". I'll get to that part of the game in a minute.

The game allows for an achievement system, but you need an account on the host site blurst.com, otherwise your achievements will be gone upon leaving the game, and you won't be able to post scores on the host site, as well as track others. However, it is not mandatory for playing the game.

The story goes like this: You control a Minotaur who opened a China Shop in an effort to fulfill a lifelong dream. One day he went nuts while perusing an already opened shop, and entered into a fit of rage, smashing nearly everything in it. He was taken to court where his claims of rage were dismissed and he was banished to the Labyrinth. Everyone who's studied Greek mythology may think they know where the story goes from here.

Definitely This

Of course, Minotaur sympathizers have lead to freeing him from his exile on good behavior. after serving half of his time. He recently acquired rage insurance for his own China Shop, and it's your job to help him run it...or ruin it...

After you're greeted with a much more interesting version of the story I detailed above, you're taken to a menu where you can spend money on adjusting our Minotaur's stats, using money you earn in game, as well as $25,000 to start with. You can also buy different attacks to use in game to destroy the shop. Once you are done, you click play and the world is yours.

I prefer D20 System for stats, but this works...oh hey, a Minotaur...

You control the Minotaur by using the arrow keys, and you navigate him around the China Shop to acquire different wares and deliver them to the customer in front of the desk. The wares they want are typically highlighted with a green Mega-Man warp effect (or that's what it looks like to me), as well as in a speech bubble. You can go about this either one of two ways. Do your job and deliver the customer their China wares within the time limit (displayed by hearts the speech bubble over their head), or let your Minotaur rage kick in and break as much as you can.

Be advised that breaking things will lose you money if you only break a few things, and in all cases will cause the customers to leave the shop, so if you are to break things, you gotta go big or go home. Eventually, you will start to collect insurance money as you break things, and you will enter Minotaur Rage, as well as a "Blaze of Glory" (trust me, it's quite apparent when this happens).

[Left:] RAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!! [Right:] Kill it with fire!

However, the security will enter and try to calm you down with what is assumed to be tranquilizing javelins (???). The day ends when you either satisfy all the customers that come in, make it through an entire day at the shop, or get tranq'd by security. This goes on for 5 days, with you gathering more stats and attacks each time.

The caption here would normally be "Victory and Defeat", but there is no defeat to be had.

The game's graphics are okay.

Are they really?

They're not Square Enix amazing, but what are you gonna expect from a free-to-play browser game? However, the graphics do seem a little out of place for the tone and nature of the game, but that adds to the whole "Surreal, what the $#@%" aspect of the game, which I find to be enjoyable.

The controls are rather odd. While they are easy to get to (you use the arrow keys to move, and the WASD+ keys for attacks), the movement keys are fairly choppy, giving the game a "Trip to the Store" vibe with its movement scheme. It also makes the Minotaur hard to control, for obvious reasons.

In order to play the game, you need to download some sort of "Unity Web Player" plug-in. I won't link to you where to find it, mainly because it will automatically prompt you to get it when you enter the page.

All in all, the game is fun when you have some time to kill, but I wouldn't dedicate weeks to this game for unlocking all the achievements or drawing fan art for it...not that I do that with any other games O_o;; But yeah, I'd recommend it.

Play it here, and make your dreams come true.

A MIND JOKE

2012-04-29T14:36:00.001-04:00

Several years ago, an Italian teenager discovered a strange game on a blank CD. The game was, unsettling, to say the least, in it's minimalist appearance, and seemingly pointless existence. The game consisted simply of a checkered maze, with nauseating 8-bit music. He knew not what to make of such a find, and immediately uploaded the game to show his friends

A MIND JOKE (PC)
Developed by: Barely Games(?)
Released in: 1997(?)

A Mind Joke. Just saying the title makes my stomach upset. A Mind Joke is a first-person puzzle(?) game in which you wander around a huge, disorienting maze, for reasons unknown. The game is faux-3D, not unlike Doom, utilized extreme squash-and-stretch techniques to create the illusion of 3D, using 2D assets. This, combined with the game's garish wall textures will result in any one playing the game experience feelings of vertigo, and dizziness. I can verify this from first-hand experience, gathering screens was an unpleasant experience.

Gameplay in A Mind Joke consists of running (walking?) around a giant-checkered maze, for no explicit reason. The lack of context, combined with the game's chilling, unworldly music creates a feeling of unease in the pit of your stomach. Spread seemingly randomly throughout the maze, are walls featuring red-painted letters. What are these for? The discoverer of the game found A, E, R and T, and eventually a door. At the door, he was asked to enter a word, but was unable to determine what he was supposed to make of the four-letters. I personally discovered an 'H" as well, but A Mind Joke researcher, and friend of the blog, known only by the name "Nate", which is his name, has informed us that there exists an A, B, R, T, two H's, and two E's. His theory regarding the anagram was 'Breathe', whcih has been verified. But he has since been having trouble locating the door again.

Does A Mind Joke contain the secret to what happened in the 7th season of Dallas? (spoiler: bad writing)

'Nate' is the mysterious founder of the RCPVGR, which is absolutely a real thing, and has likely done the most exhaustive research into A Mind Joke on the internet. He has further elaborated that the in-game architecture is not static; the maze seemingly changes as you progress, and further exploring the twists-and-turns will eventually bring you back to a different layout, which will confuse the spatial-reasoning of almost anyone. Except 'Nate', who has determined that the map overlaps itself, and likely loads in chunks, based on your position. One of 'Nate''s researchers has also made note that the game's data is much larger than it's filesize should allow. He has stated feelings of discomfort...

Gamma House rules! And then they are taken by the government.

This data explains the 'how' of the game's mechanics, but not the 'why'. Who would create such a thing? And for what purpose? The title screen indicates that AMJ was created by Barely Games, apparently in the late 90's. Who are Barely Games? Why did they create this seemingly innocuous game?

Theories range from the reasonable to the rampant, some believe it was a school-project, others believe it was commissioned by the CIA to study subjects mental-reasoning, which considering the game chaotic architecture, is plausible, but still unlikley. Others still, believe the game was created as bait to attract the attention of conspiracy nuts. But regardless of it's true origin, A Mind Joke is still unnerving to play. It's twisted combination of droning music, hypnotic visuals, disorienting map-tricks, and generally mysterious nature can't help but make a subject feel at least a little uncomfortable, if not out-right nauseous.

The 'Options' and 'Load Game' options don't function on the main menu, but people have managed to hack their way in. The normally inaccessible options menu contains dip-switches for the games' various subliminal affects. Still can't save, though.

So without further adieu, here is a video presentation,

discussing, and demonstrating our 'research' into A MIND JOKE:

Do you want to test your spatial-reasoning skills so the CIA can enroll you in a super soldier program?

A Mind Joke via MediaFire; Hard to track down via search engines.

Don't forget to read up on the origin story of A Mind Joke.

"NOT ON MY WATCH"

Alien Zombie MegaDeath

2012-04-26T15:44:00.001-04:00

Most videogame enthusiasts are at least aware of the character SonSon, from Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but unlike the rest of that game's roster, few are aware of the game from which she originated. That game was an arcade platformer/shooter, titled SonSon, based on Son Wukong of Chinese myth. The game was similar to most Horizontal shooters of the time, with the exception that you could only fire while perched on a set of tiered platforms. The game is super-obscure, but it hasn't been completely forgotten, especially not by the folks at PomPom Games.

In 2010, PomPom released Alien Zombie Megadeath, a spiritual-successor of sorts to SonSon on the PSN. It's very reminiscent of SonSon, only more refined, and featuring much more variety in terms of objectives, and general gameplay. It also has the truly terrible title of Alien Zombie Megadeath. Makes me think they trying too hard.

Seriously. They're trying too hard.. And if anyone knows about trying too hard, it's Dave Mustaine.

Alien Zombie Megadeath (PSP, PS3, PC, Steam)
Developed by: PomPom Games
Published by: Sony, Valve
Released On: Feb 18, 2010 (PSP) - Jun 20, 2011 (PS3) - Oct 18, 2011 (Steam)

Despite it's internet pandering, almost meme-ish name, AZMD is solid fun. You take on the role of an anonymous spaceman with a laser-gun (the best kind) and are dropped into a multi-tiered arena, consisting of several long, parallel platforms, which are host to ever-spawning hordes of the eponymous "Alien Zombies". The enemies main strength is their numbers, and they can easily overwhelm you if you don't play a good keepaway game. Fortunately, evasion is easy and convenient, you can hop from one tier to the next by pressing up or down, to move one tier over, in you desired direction. You in fact have two fire buttons, one for left, and one for right. There is also a grab button, that allows you to grab things (gasp) such as bombs, and Space Babies.

Left: Alien Zombies Megadying Right: Space Babies!

Gameplay consists of simply hopping from one tier to the next, shooting the various ''Alien Zombies'' you encounter into oblivion, while avoiding enemy swarms, and the occasional flaming enemy bullet launched your way. Your spaceman can sustain 3 strikes before he ''dies horribly'', as the game puts it. Stages don't scroll, as they did in SonSon, you are limited to a small arena, but that doesn't negate the challenge, at least not in the later stages. It's worth mentioning that this game has an excellent learning curve, easing you into the ~~art~~ science of megakilling Alien Zombies.

The game utilizes a chain-mechanic, by which a gauge fills for every enemy you megaslay. When the gauge is completely filled, you recieve a multiplier; The value of the chain is multiplied by how many gauges you've filled thus far. Making your enemies megadead will cause them to spill space crystals, which can be used to further increase you chain-gauge

"Two words combined that can't make sense" - Megadeth Lyrics, but also a description of their music.

The game consists of a rather vast variety of different gametypes, all revolving around the aforementioned basic gameplay, but with interesting twists:

Firefight - Basic gameplay that I've probably described three times by now. You hop around scaffolds and shoot things. Then they die -Sorry, MEGADIE. There is a set number of waves for each stage, which gets larger later in the game A vast majority of the game's stages consist of this.

Dodge & Weave -The first alternate gametype you encounter; it's the same as firefight, only you have to avoid scrolling electrical force-fields that hurt you on contact. At first they're no problem, but it eventually becomes quite a pain in the ass to avoid them.

Space Baby Rescue - This is the first mode where your main goal isn't to megakill everything; instead you need to escort the Space Babies to an escape pod. It's kind of an oddity that the space babies arrive in another ship of some sort, only to wander to a second one, the escape-pod. It is unknown why they couldn't stay in the first craft. PomPom didn't think things through, now did they?

Bomb Dump - Bomb Dump is similar to Space Baby Rescue, only instead of rescuing Space Babies by lugging them right to left, you have to defuse bombs by dropping them in some sort of defusing apparatus. The bombs have a timer, and are immobile, unlike the babies, so you have to carry them the whole way.

UFO - UFO is... different. groups of UFOs sly up and down along the sides of the stage, just out of reach. You have to shoot them down, a task that gets increasingly difficult as more and more obstacles get placed around in later stages.

Jet Pack - Jet Pack is a nice, relaxing gametype that gives you a jetpack, that you need to use to cross over an otherwise uncompromisable wall. You fly back and forth over the wall, megakilling all of the Alien Zombies on the stage. The Jet Pack has unlimited fuel, but you will lose it if you get hit by an Alien Zombie.

Decoy - Decoy, on the other hand is a hectic taste of space-hell. You are attacked by an overwhelming swarm of like, a thousand space bats, which can easily overcome you. The only way to save your ass is to activate a "Decoy Station", which will attract all of the enemies, because they apparently have poor eyesight. Once they're off your tail, you can murk on 'em.

And, don't worry, I'm not saying "mega" ever again.

Boss Battles -

You fight the same Boss several times. Guess you could say he's... Angry Again.... I'll stop.

Boss Battles are self-explanatory; you face a giant Alien Zombie, along with a posse' of normal enemies. The Boss will hover around the stage, shooting fireballs at you. Shooting the Boss enough will send it into an invincible cocoon-state. Shooting the cocoon will revert the Boss back to normal. Wash, rinse, repeat. Earning a mass quantity of medals will unlock Survival Boss Battles.

Each stage has four secondary objectives, such as ~~mega~~killing a certain, arbitrary number of enemies, or collecting a specific quantity of space crystals. Completing one of these goals will net you a medal, which in turn unlocks several Survival stages, which are variations of normal gametypes with unlimited enemies. These include Survival Fire Fight, Survival Bomb Drop & Survival Space Baby Rescue, the mode that rolls off the tongue, as well as the aforementioned Survival Boss Battles. These stages follow the rules of their respective namesakes, but they take on the form of endurance runs.

This is why I don't take the subway.

AZMD also boasts several classic, archetypical power-ups; the stuff you'd expect: There's the aptly named 3-Way Shot, which allows you to fire three shots at once, one forward, and two at 45 degrees, up and down. There's a Laser Shot which, obviously replaces your standard gun with a constant stream of energized light, and lastly, there's Missiles, which can be fired with reckless abandon, because they home in on enemies. These are great for dealing with mass-orgies of Space Bats.

What's that? You want to watch me flaunt my average gaming prowess in this game?

No?

Well fuck you:

Multiplayer - But wait, there's more! Although it lacks a proper co-operative mode, Alien Zombie Megadeath does offer a series of dedicated multiplayer stages that you and a friend can dominate. These stages are just more variations of the aforementioned Survival stages. Except you're playing with someone else. Just kill all of the enemies, and last as long as possible. You share a lifebar, though, so, if you die, you're letting the whole team down.

You can buy a copy of Alien Zombie Megadeath here at PomPom games' site.

Or you can get it on PS3. Or PSP. Or Steam.

Or I-phone.

Apple IIe version coming soon.

RokkoChan

2012-04-23T01:05:00.000-04:00

Hey out there gamers and game-ettes. I hope I classed up some of you tasteless hacks with my last MegaMan review. Much like Kevin Costner is type-cast as a bland, boring, slow line reading actor, I'm type cast as the token MegaMan guy, and you know what that means!

No! It's time for a MegaMan review, only this time, it's a MegaMan clone! And a damn good one! But no imitation can ever be as good as the original right? Well lets find out with this Rule 63 variant of our favorite blue bomber and jump right in with RokkoChan.

RokkoChan (Flash)
Developed & published by: King Soukutu
Released in: 2011

MegaMan is a game that defined a genre, if not invented it's own, The run
to the right and shoot crap genre. MegaMan's pacing is well executed, the controls are tight, and the game itself as a whole is well crafted in every aspect. The premise is simple, and the formula works. It works so well in fact that even after the success of the X series and subsequent spin-off series connected to the original, and the sequels for the SNES and Playstation; MegaMan 7 and 8 respectively, they even went back and continued making MegaMan games in the 8-bit format because Capcom loves to sell you a game you've already played. All Capcom jabs aside, MegaMan is just a game you can play and play and play and it will always be fun. That's probably why every Classic series game is the same game on the same engine with just a few tweaks here and there, retaining the same core gameplay.

This brings us to RokkoChan. Like many successful classic games, such as Mario and Sonic, MegaMan is prone to a few clones here and there.

No, he isn't having lots of anonymous sex with other game engines and devkits, he's just so awesome, that people wanna take their own crack at a MegaMan game. Women want him, and Men want to be him. At least figuratively. And the reason is as I stated above: The formula works. You don't have to be a genius game developer to know that if your game is similar MegaMan, it automatically has some internet street-cred. You run, you jump, and you shoot, and that's about all the game needs before you start droppin in enemies and pitfalls and start putting people to the test.

RokkoChan is a MegaMan clone almost in a literal sense. The story is pretty simple. A scientist creates a robot named RokkoChan, and conveniently at the time of her activation, another, more evil scientist comes on TV and threatens the world with his powerful robots.

RokkoChan, knowing that she has powerful abilities of her own, volunteers to head out and defeat the evil doctor and his six evil creations.

Aside from being female, this almost mirrors the origin story of MegaMan exactly.

Rock was a simple household robot and lab assistant to Dr. Light, whose robots were stolen and reprogrammed for evil. Rock volunteers to be upgraded into a Super Fighting Robot (admit it, you love saying that) and heads out to defeat his six stolen brothers and Dr. Wily to bring the world to everlasting peace.

Moving right along, let's start with first impressions. RokkoChan is a great game visually. All the graphics look true to the 8-bit generation they pay homage to, while also being extremely well crafted and animated. It makes me wonder why this same kind of animation couldnt be done on an NES back in the day, but if I had to guess, it had something to do with cartridge space. Luckily, this isnt a problem with the infinite power of the internet.
If you've played a MegaMan game before, you know exactly what to expect from RokkoChan. You hit start, go to a stage select screen, and there's even that awesome “she looks at who you're highlighting” thingy that I know you all loved to mess with and spaz on your controllers to make MegaMan freak out.

Before I go any further, I want to stress I have not beaten RokkoChan. This game is hard. Not impossible, but certainly difficult and requires a bit of skill (of which I have plenty, I swear!). Not to mention I had fallen victim to a terrible trend in today's gaming. After playing for a whole day and making a lot of progress on the game, I had closed the window for the night, expecting to return right where I picked up, seeing as this is a flash based game and most games nowadays have an auto-save feature. Not so in RokkoChan. Yes. That's right. This game is so legit, they forgo the auto-save and boot your ass back to 1987 and make you use a password. At the very least, you can screencap your passwords as I have below and save them instead of writing them out in little grids on notebook paper. GOD I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been. It's like MegaMan games are supposed to be frustratingly hard in EVERY aspect...

Dont get your hopes up, I only beat one boss and he's the wuss of the group in every MegaMan game

The controls in RokkoChan are pretty much EXACTLY like in classic MegaMan, the only difference in controls being that RokkoChan has a dash ability, just like in MegaMan X. This however is the only carry-over from the X series I know of in the game. According to Dr. Butler, the game also includes Ride Armors, but I have not come across those in any of the progress I have made in all 6 stages. The gameplay is crisp, smooth, refreshing, and low in carbs. It plays just like the MegaMan you grew up with (unless it was Battle Network, in which case, buy an NES) and the only differences in movement I can find, besides dashing, is that because the game is based in flash, RokkoChan has a much tighter hit box. For instance, in a classic MegaMan game, everything is run on “tiles” as a basis. MegaMan is one tile big. He can only jump on a tile if his tile completely clears the tile he's jumping on or against. In RokkoChan however, I've noticed a few tiny occasions where if you jump as a corner of a tile, you may sometimes push into or onto the corner of it, which in some cases has either saved or killed me. Honestly this happens so rarely it doesn't really effect gameplay, but for a MegaMan nut like me, I did notice it, and it's a subtle reminder that you are indeed playing a flash game, something you can easily forget while playing RokkoChan. (You know...aside from all the banner ads in your browser window selling you Asian hair care products...)

But onto the meat of things. RokkoChan's 6 bosses include, HockeyMan, ForestMan, RollingMan, LightningMan, VolcanoMan, and JetMan. Each one of these bosses is well designed and memorable and I'll cover each in length as we go on.

Starting off with HockeyMan, you'll find his stage has many of the paradigms of a MegaMan ice stage, specifically the endless amount of sliding you will be doing. However, Rokko's dash feature helps alleviate some of the tension in this because it instantly turns you around on the spot. Then again, jumping does too, but you'll quickly become attached to the dash more than anything.

And with the dash comes another nifty feature you will also become addicted to.

Right about here you would expect those fucking annoying invisible D'WOOOOOP blocks to appear. I know right about in this section is where they pop up in IceMan's stage. However, Rokko seems to have an advantage over Rock here. She can DASH JUMP RIGHT OVER THAT SHIT.

Thats right! It may take some getting used to if you've never played a X series game before, but Rokko can easily leap across certain gaps her male counterpart would often times have a hard time getting across. No more tip toe'ing to the edge and balancing on one pixel. Rokko can just dash jump right across! But that doesnt always mean it's the best thing to do. The game surprisingly provides a lot of areas where slow and steady are the preferred method of progressing, but who am I kidding? It feels so fucking good to just leap across those anoying gaps like it aint' no thang....

Another staple of RokkoChan are mini-bosses! The mini-bosses are well made, cleverly programmed, and are just a blast to fight. They aren't frustratingly hard like some of Vanilla MegaMan's mini-bosses were, and I feel they offer a nice break to the action for a small test of skill (usually involving timed jumps and shooting...wait...thats like the whole game...).

Did I mention, each one is very detailed? The amount of work put into these sprites is really impressive and it's hard to believe this is a fan game sometimes.

And what MegaMan game would be complete without jumping through boss doors? I dont want to play the game that disallows that....

Not quite as good, but also acceptable

Finally! Onto the boss! HockeyMan is pretty sweet, eh? He's got an ice-floor'd boss room, so you'll be doing a lot of slipping and sliding all over the place, while he glides effortlessly on his ice skates. His attacks are pretty standard fare. He creates an ice shield around his body and charges at you. When he hits the wall, the shield breaks and fires off ice shards in 8 directions. If he DOESNT create an ice shield and charges at you, he bounces off the wall and slides. This brings me to an interesting point. Being that this is a flash game, there are certain things it can do that an NES game cant. On an NES, physics had to be simulated. In flash, they can be programmed. As such, when he hits that wall and bounces off, he moves smoothly across the floor and bounces properly off the wall. That is, he isnt moving based on a pre-set pattern. How far he bounces is entirely determined by the physics. This brings me to his next attack, where he smacks hockey pucks at you. They too move just like real pucks and are effected by physics.

This is both a blessing and a curse. Well not really, but it's awesome to look at, but then it reminds you once again you aren't playing an NES game. My point being, if it weren't for these innovative little flash-only features, I would be totally sold I am playing a long lost MegaMan sequel....But on with the game!

Having covered most of the game's features in the first stage, the remaining stages will focus mostly on stage specific features.

JetMan is pretty cool and has a fun stage, though you'll quickly become tired of all the ups and downs in difficulty, and no that wasn't a flight pun. The stage itself is interesting and has plenty of neat set pieces such as fans that blow you in different directions on air currents, but some of the enemies can be pretty annoying.

One in particular is a little shit with a propeller for legs who flies up and down to match whatever your altitude is on screen. If you're on the floor, he will sit on the floor and shoot, and if you jump, his legs spin and he follows you. This wouldn't be a problem if maybe his shots didn't move so quickly across the screen, or if maybe he didn't take so many hits to go down. You come across several of these in the stage, but the main focus is platforming.

(If you see where those fans are blowing, and whats around, you know this next part is gunna suck.)

Ahhh fuck. This is one of those stages you grow to hate. It's fun, but mostly frustrating. This stage has plenty of conveyor belts, and lots of traps to keep you on your toes.

One of the more annoying sections of the stage has you jumping through electrical walls as seen in MegaMan 3. Unfortunately, there's not much ground to navigate on to find some good footing to jump through it. It's a tad difficult to get the timing down, but maybe that's just me.

So once you get through that, they toss another set of conveyor belts at you, which seems fine at first until they start dropping BOXES on your head. The boxes can be destroyed and it's pretty standard fare, but one clever thing I noted is that the boxes can actually stack on one another. As the boxes go down the conveyor belts, they drop to lower belts and now and then have other boxes land on them. On an NES they may have just clipped through one another. This poses a bit of a challenge because now the suckers are way too high for you to jump over so you gotta blast your way through, all while balancing on these moving, not very long, conveyor belts.

As if this stage didn't have enough gimmicks, it even comes with a blackout section,

a'la Spark Mandrill from MegaMan X1.

In this area, the screen goes black, except for you, and is only lit up by light bulbs on the ground which turn on when a certain enemy charges up and sends balls of lightning across the floor and over them. Otherwise, the path and pitfalls ahead are totally hidden. Proceed with caution! If you kill them prematurely, its *sunglasses*, Lights out for you...

GOD am I still doing this stage? It may as well be a Wily Fortress! While it is one of the more frustrating stages, it does have a lot of neat gimmicks to offer. One of which of course is the spinny-platform stepper of death, with an up and down spike trap for seasoning.

Yeeaaahh...you know exactly what this is...

Now, if you can believe it, I actually got to the boss door, and I was literally about to go in, until I discovered the Ice Shield I was using to protect myself from the enemies coming at me from the sides of the screen, can be shot off of you. I accidentally did this, lost the shield, and bumped into one of the fuckers and fell to my death....

Pics or it didn't happen

Next is VolcanoMan. I don't know why, but this sounds like it could be a bitchin pro-wrestler name.

AHHH MOTHER FUCKING DAMMIT HELL FUCK!!

FUCK!! I THOUGHT I WAS DONE WITH THESE!! I GOT THE DASH, I GOT THE JUMPING, WHY DO I MOTHER FUCKING- GRRRRUUUUUURRGGGHHHHG!!!

Okay, so I got passed the invisible blocks, and I'm greeted with lots and lots of fire. Makes sense considering this is a volcano themed stage. In this section, your patience is tested with lots of flames that shoot from these pipes.

Honestly they weren't all that hard and the damage they do isnt terrible. Apparently, there is a merciful God in 20xx. However he smites your ass because on the very next screen you do everyone's “favorite” kind of stage. A “Chase” stage, where one side of the screen constantly moves in one direction, and you have to escape it or face insta-pewpew. Luckily, Rokko is not only fast on her feet, but ladders too as you can pretty easily climb away from the lava. It's not advised to go TOO fast though because lurking on the next area to be scrolled, like a 4chan troll, is more of those fire headed biker-jouster guys like in the above screenshot, and not a whole lot of footing to catch yourself. Fall down and you're basically screwed since you don't have any robot dogs to launch springs from your backs to save you.

Up next is ForestMan. Since I just beat VolcanoMan (the second of the two bosses I beat, first being HockeyMan), I figured this guy was next in line to go. But if there's anything Captain Planet has taught us, it's that mother nature will whoop your ass and make you listen to a Ted Turner sponsored moral about recycling.

This stage also features a mini-boss though it's admittedly a little strange and definitely garnered a laugh from me with it's Team Rocket-esque charm.

Even Rokko has an implied facepalm here

This is apparently a two-headed dragon in the middle of a water-area at the start of the stage which lasts until about the middle. I find it impressive that they could work in such a different kind of setting into the game. For a short while I actually forgot this stage was forest based. The under water segment was well crafted enough to feel like a totally new stage, but the forest feel kicks right back in once you proceed to...

AWWWWW YEEAAAHHH

Fuck yes. Vine swinging. This was actually really cool. I reached a part of the stage with a gap that even Rokko's mighty dash jump couldn't reach, but then I saw a vine dangling. With a bit of common sense, I grabbed it like it was a ladder and wham! I started swinging! Simple left and right buttons control the swing, and you can build up moment enough to swing yourself and jump off the vine, keeping a tiny bit of your momentum as well. A little odd feeling for a MegaMan game where you could always control your trajectory mid-jump, but it isn't an unwelcome sensation as you start swinging from vine to vine to complete the stage like GutsMan of the Jungle.

Remember when I said all the bosses were well made? Well RollingMan is the derp of the bunch. He's got an odd design, but it all makes sense when you finally fight him. Unfortunately I dont have a screencap of it since that was on my first playthrough and I didnt save my password.

What I do have though is trippy level flipping!

One of the cool features of RollingMan's stage is the awesome level flipping platforms that turn the whole stage around (or is it merely you that turns?) and forces you to tackle areas you've just traversed from a whole new point of view, literally. It isn't as confusing as it seems, but man let me tell you. Some of the enemies in this stage can go die in a pixelated fire. Claw thingies that grab your ass, UFOs that shoot Magnet Missile-esque lasers at you. Shit gets bananas.

BONUS: By the way, if you've looked at these screenshots and seen the controls, I'm sure you can figure out what does what. I mean the game tells you anyways and there's even a language chooser. However, one button they dont tell you about is the escape key which is explained only in Japanese. Now, I don't speak Japanese, but I'll save you the trouble of finding out the hard way. Shift if pause, and it most definitely isnt the Escape key. That my friends, is the SELF DESTRUCT BUTTON. In one fine play through I tried to pause the game to look over my screencaps, and I tapped escape, and instantly pew-pew'd all over my screen. I suppose it's handy to have a kill-button, but wouldn't it be easier to just make that the “I give up, take me to the stage select screen” button?

I swear my finger slipped and I hit the kill button right when I was about to make that jump.

Over all, RokkoChan is an expertly crafted, well animated game with faithful MegaMan gameplay and a few twists of it's own. Did I happen to mention the soundtrack? Oh yeah. This game has a bangin' soundtrack. It fits right in with tunes like MetalMan, FlashMan, SparkMan, SnakeMan, and reminds me a lot of the tracks from MegaMan 9 and 10 specifically. This game really is the long lost sequel to MegaMan you never heard of. As a die hard MegaMan fan who heavily scrutinizes fan additions and stupid fan fics and other crappy third party MegaMan content, I give this game my stamp of approval. It makes me think that maybe MegaMan isnt the only Super Fighting Robot out there trying to save the world. He's just the one that set the trend for the rest to follow.

(See? It's fun saying Super Fighting Robot isnt it? Go on and sing it. You know you want to...)

Primary

2012-04-19T22:17:00.000-04:00

As a PBR swilling indie gamer, I have a soft spot for underground platformers you've probably never heard of. They tend to be reminiscent of Mario before it was cool, or perhaps after it became ironic.

As such, I always like to check out the latest plaformer guns before they become cool. One such game might be a little too top 40 for me, since it has over 850,000 hits on Newgrounds which makes it too passe'. However, since I know many of you are sheeple who are too conformist to know about this game, so I decided to review it anyway.

Eh, it stopped being cool when it got popular.

Primary (Flash)
Developed by: JackSmack & FrozenFire
Released on: Feb 17, 2010

In this game you are playing as Roy, a super soldier in the land of the HUEman, who has the task of climbing up to the top of Prizim tower to close a portal that is allowing horrible inky goop monsters into his world who are reeking havoc. Some of them you simply don't want to touch, or they will kill you. Some of them throw out slime balls that kill you, and also if you touch them they kill you. Then there's also a slime on some of the walls and floors that kill you if you touch it. This clearly represents the futility of life.

Those inky bits with tentacles? They're called Vortexes

This obviously is supposed to mirror the real world, where Walmart and pop music do the same to everyone else. You get three different forms, red, yellow, and blue, with their own abilities. For starters, there are platforms you can only step on if your the same color. So you can't stand on a blue platform if your yellow, to explain it to those Katy Perry loving sheeple. Blue makes ice blocks that can hold down buttons and give you a surface to jump off of. The buttons most often hold open doors, as anyone who has played any platformer would assume. The blocks break after 10 seconds or if you make a new ice block, so you have to be clever about it, something that might frustrate the ignorant mind of a typical FPS player.

Then there's Yellow. Yellow has the ability to turn invisible. When your invisible, you can pass through lasers . Also, you can't move. Most of the lasers are surrounded my oil slicks or are on conveyer belts so you just hold still until your through and then turn visible again before you run into danger. Also, all the save platforms are yellow, so only yellow can save in the middle of a level.

Behold the power of lethargy!

Lastly, there's red. Red has the ability to fight certain monsters by shooting a fire ball at it. Note that you can't fight vortexes or the slime on the floors and walls. After the monsters are killed they burst into a series of colored bubbles that raise your score. This is probably the most simplistic power. However, this is the most fun character for those of you used to Mario, so you'll probably like it best.

So uncultured and loutish

The game also features a series of other small puzzles, that might be annoying to those not used to thinking, such as having the floating platforms change color, requiring you to change color mid jump. The game also allows you to slide down and grasp the side of a wall in order to check for, and avoid, obstacles. There are also puzzle doors later in the game that only open when the switches are turned a certain way.

This clearly represents something but I don't know what yet....

In order to get from level to level, you have to get from elevator to elevator. Each level you complete opens up another floor, which seems like an eccentric and arbitrary floor plan, suggesting this building was an office for an alternative, artsy business. That would also explain the odd arrangement of the floors.

The game mechanics are pretty simple. You move with WASD, press R to open doors and change switches, Space to make ice blocks or shoot fire, and S to get in and out of invisible alternative super ninja mode. I don't know why the yellow power is activated using a different key, probably because yellow is the most alt. You can jump higher by jumping off walls, and, like in Megaman X, you can cling to walls to check for hidden traps and enemies by pressing W.

So, simply put, this alternative, indie platformer is the perfect alternative to popular commercial games, so you can show your friends how cool and hip you are. But that doesn't matter because I still played it before you, so I'm still more alt. I would suggest, since the primary colors are so mainstream, the sequels should include more alternative colors like cyan or magenta, but then sequels are so top 40.

If you too, want to play this game, you can see it here.

Or here if Newgrounds is too mainstream go here.

Zaga-33

2012-04-16T23:33:00.000-04:00

Roguelikes are a bit of a double-edged sword in the gaming world. On one-hand, since they are easy to create, there exists a large number of would-be devs churning out Roguelike after Roguelike, so there is no short supply of available games. On the other hand, this huge amount of content is staggering, and might intimidate a new player, which is to say nothing of the genre itself. Roguelikes, are by definition, daunting and involved; their complexity lies in micro-managment. It's a wide, varied genre, so what you're micro-managing will vary, be it supplies, food, or even just yourself, but it's still micro-management nonetheless. This level of unnecessary tinkering is but a part of the game's appeal to enthusiasts, but is also the chief reason many are repelled altogether.

This is where the so called 'Coffee-Break' games come into play. Originally used the describe Doom: The Roguelike, a worthwhile RL that I've covered previously, the term has been adopted by the Roguelike community as a looseley-defined subgenre, describing any and all casual RLs that focus more on action, and less on resource-management. Zaga-33 takes the idea of a casual-Roguelike to it's logical extreme, creating an almost arcade-like experience.

Note: Does not actually take place in space

Zaga-33 (PC, Mac, iPhone)
Developed & Published by: Michael Brough
Released on: April 12, 2012

Zaga-33 distills the very essence of what makes a Roguelike enjoyable, and discards the elements that would scare away any of the softer-cored takers. There is no eating, no forging, no nonesense. In a way, Zaga, almost isn't a Roguelike at all, but rather more of an arcade puzzle-game.

Zaga's gameplay, at face value, is typical RL; You control the valiant @, who moves a space at a time, all of your enemies shuffle around randomly, combat consists of violent humping, etc. Where Zaga differs, and vastly, I may add, is the way it treats inventory; items picked up, are essentially power-ups, allowing you to perform various devastating, and more importantly, safe, attacks.

@ can destory enemies and blocks alike with his bombs.

Randomness is the key to any Roguelike, and Zaga offers that; you begin in an algorithmically generated room when you begin, with one of several weapons randomly given to you from the get-go. You travel through 25 equally random rooms, where you'll encounter several different enemy-types, as well as nearly a dozen different weapons.

Each playthrough begins with you not knowing what each weapon is. As you use each weapon, the next time you pick one of the same kind (or immediately, if you have more in your inventory already) you will be told what it is. And you can't cheat by remembering the sprites for each weapon from a previous playthrough; the sprites for the weapons are also randomized for each playthrough. though they will stay consistant for the duration of that particular session. The only way to figure out what does what is to just use it, always unsure of the result. In a way, every run in Zaga-33 is blind.

@ unleashes earthquakes and quad-directional lasers. @ is much more badass than most roguelike adventurers.

I've beaten around the bush a bit, but the weapons are the star of the show here. I've shown so far, the Bomb, which destroys surrounding terrain, in addition to just enemies, the Earthquake, which shuffles things around randomly, and the Laser, which fires insta-kill beams in cardinal directions from @'s position. There is also Repel, which knocks every enemy on-screen to the furthest possible corner, to give you a fighting chance, Nuke which reduces every enemy to 1 H P, Freeze, which traps every enemy in solid blocks of solid ice, so you can hump them until they shatter, and Heal, which heals you.

This naturally, is the part where I demonstrate the game in motion.

On the left is a complete playthrough by a competent player. On the right is me, objectively inferior:

Got some coffee?

Good. Now get Zaga-33 at Michael Brough's blog, MIGHTY VISION.

Utte Yosili

2012-04-12T22:30:00.000-04:00

Cats frequently chew on cardboard boxes, and in retaliation, the boxes make it as hard as possible to allow the cat to climb inside of them. As a result, the relationship between cats and cardboard boxes is strained at best. However, when the earth is under attack by space marshmallows, terrorist cats, and Yeti, even the most bitter enemies must pull together and defend the world from... Weird shit.

In his own way he is perhaps, the most dangerous cat who ever lived!

Utte Yosili (PC)
Developed & Published by: Kanagawa Denshigijutsu Kenkyuusho 神奈川電子技術研究所
Released in: 2003

Utte Yosili is a rather unique horizontal shooter, and not just because you're character is a cat who pilots a cardboard box. You begin the game piloting a cardboard box with a minigun turret. The gun weights the box down, so you slowly sink as you fly, requiring you to reposition yourself. The weight of the heavy gun also gives the ship a great amount of inertia, so stopping while moving will result in some 'sliding'. The ships fire is strong, but can only fire forward.

Breaking all conventions, The Cat can dismount from his vehicle, and fly around. When not using his box, the cat has a smaller hitbox, and sacrifices bullet-strength for the unique ability to fire in any given direction. The cat is also faster, and easier to control, with the ability to stop more precisely than the box.

SUCK IT DOWN! SUCK IT DOOOOOOOOWWWNNN!

You're only given a single life, and no continues, but the ability to mount and dismount your box at will lends itself to a unique metagame; both The Cat and the box have their own lifebars, which are mutually exclusive. You'll die if one of them is drained, but you can easily ditch the box if it's about to blow, and likewise you can seek refuge in the box if The Cat is injured. Wisely managing both of your meters is the key to surviving the onslaught of murderous space marshmallows. Both bars get maxed out at the beginning of each stage, so don't shy away from brute force.

The games enemies are a... colorful bunch. They range from the aforementioned space marshmallows, terrorist cats who fire heat-seeking rockets with reckless abandon, a giant dog, Yeti, a very resilient space marshmallow, and... these guys.

Negative Man's extended family join the ranks of Yeti and Meow-Qaeda

Utte is what's known to the shooter community as a 'Euro-Shmup', a sub-genre that is usually regarded as sloppy, and imperfect. Utte is no exception, because there are times in-which it simply isn't possibly to avoid taking a hit. You have two rather extensive lifebars, but this leniency is offset by the fact that enemy fire knocks you back; it's totally possible, especially later on, to simply get pinned in a corner, and shot to shit. The hitstun on the bullets ispretty severe, but I'm willing to overlook this gaping flaw, as it requires you to keep on your toes, and adds to the games difficulty, as well as forcing you to play smart.

I'd recommend Utte Yosili as a fun coffee break game, an amusing, novel diversion to kill time with, and nothing else. It's certainly not a serious game, both in it's humor, and the bitter fact that there's no community behind it at all. Playing this game won't offer you anything other than a good time, but that's plenty, I suppose..

Ahahah. You thought I was gonna let you get away without watching a subpar gameplay video?

Think again:

Utte Yosili beckons. Answer the call, and take down Meow-Qaeda!

Special thanks to DoujinStyle for the find.

Indistinguishable from a Leone film.

Sonic 2 Beta

2012-04-09T23:26:00.000-04:00

During the late eighties, and early nineties it was difficult for any consumer-level hardware to really dig themselves a competitive niche in the videogame market, at least this was the case in North America, and Japan. The reason for this was the borderline monopoly that Nintendo had going; 1 in 5 homes in America had a Nintendo Entertainment System. This firm market-share, was established with the help of a Robot - packaged in to trick people into thinking it was a toy, rather than a videogame console - atop piles of dead-Atari clones. The Nintendo had a lot of things going for it, and was a major breath of fresh-air for both the consumer, and an industry that was literally on it's knees.

Well, not literally. It's an abstract noun.

In 1989, arcade stalwart, Service Games, better known by their contraction, SEGA, introduced a powerful new piece of tech, that promised that with it's BLAST-PROCESSING it could do what NINTENDON'T. Haha, get it? They used their name as a slam against them! It's even more hilarious, because nothing stated in those ads really meant anything; Blast Processing, muh like Grade A Beef, is a meaningless buzz-word. McDonald's uses Grad A beef, and their 'food' still tastes like Blast-Processing.

At this point it's possible that you're wondering what all of these corporate politics have to do with Sonic the Hedgehog. If you are wondering that, it's possible that you're twelve-years-old, and don't realize that corporate politics have everything to do with Sonic. The Genesis spent two lucrative years chugging along on nothing but better graphics, and made-up jargon used to describe said graphics. But their golden goose was about to stop processing blast...

"Riding a dinosaur" is a metaphor for "My chief rival's stock is going to plummet"

In 1991 Nintendo was about to release the Super Nintendo, which didn't need to promise anything other than, "Mario game at launch" and "We're Nintendo"; instant money. Sega quickly regrouped, figuring that 16-BIT SPORTS ACTION wouldn't save their careers from Mario, who now rides mounted atop a lustful, sexy dinosaur. The only way to beat Nintendo was at their own game, and began planning for a new game, featuring an endearing, loveable mascot - no gay dinosaurs necessary. The artists at Sega slaved over their easels, providing different potential trademarks, including a dog, an armadillo, and Teddy Roosevelt. Most of these characters were used in later games, but the artist named Naoto Ōshima would get the honor of having his character become a pop-culture icon, having drawn a blue-furred porcupine that would evolve into Sonic, the Hedgehog we all know and tolerate.

It's worth noting that SEGA for some reason, or another believed that having Michael Jackson as a long-term business partner wasn't enough to outsell the SNES.

Pictured: Michael Jackson doing what Nintendon't.

Damn it, SEGA.

Sonic 1 was a huge success, dinosaurs notwithstanding, and with Yen-signs in their eyes, the Sega execs started making bizarre, seemingly-bad decisions that would pay off big time in the end (unlike nowadays, where they only make bizarre, actually-bad decisions). The first game's follow-up would consist of two near-identical versions; one for the Genesis, and the other for their then-up-coming optical-disc add-on, the Sega CD. Despite the plans to make them identical, they were to be developed concurrently by two distinctly different teams, with distinctly different pedigrees, in two distinctly different regions of the world.

Sonic CD would be spearheaded by Naoto Ōshima, the father of Sonic, whereas Yuji Naka, tired of Sega of Japan's shenanigans, left Sonic Team, and was transferred to America, to overlook Sega Technical Institute's production of Sonic 2. It was at this time that the one game became two., and this is where we discover the joy of prototypes...

Unreleased Games & Content from the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

This is the first in a series where we discuss the potential Sonic games that never saw the light of day, as well as those that only did so in a drastically altered form. Now, before we begin, I'd like to establish that in the late nineties, when the internet was first discovered by cavemen such as myself, I was enamored by the great breadth of ugly, tacky websites containing every animated gif known to man. I was also a huge Sonic-fag at the time, so naturally, my interests intersected, upon my discovery of Sonic Fan-Sites. I'd spend summer afternoons just sucking down anything related to Sonic; my friends didn't really get it, but you know what? Fuck them. I was just glad to be able to reminiscence about things that happened four-years earlier, the true definition of nostalgia, if there ever was one. I watched the cartoon I had watched when I was younger, then I watched the cartoon I hadn't, then I watched the Canadian series that was actually still running at the time, and no, I didn't watch that for very long.

There were fangames, fan-videos and all sorts of seemingly endless knowledge about every possible facet of the franchise; one thing that always kept my interest were the in-depth write-ups about the content cut from games, as well as games that weren't released altogether. It was amazing to someone my age to think about how things like this get made; enemies, graphics, in some cases even entire stages, or modes get taken out, never to be seen again. These games were like something out of an alternate universe, or something, where everything is almost the same, just slightly different, though Sonic 2 Beta, in any of it's forms, is a little more than just slighty different. Let's start where it all began...

Despite being a sequel, Sonic 2 is much more important to fans, if for no reason other that the great wealth of discarded content it once had. The differences between the in-development edition of Sonic 2, the Beta if you will, and the retail edition are far greater than the difference between most games, and their respective prototypes. It is pretty much general consensus, that the reason for the great amount of abandoned material is due to the very nature of the game: It's the sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog, one of the best-sellers of 1991. Mad money was invested in this game, and tensions were high for STI to pop this one out quickly, leading them to cut several entire stages, though it's likely that many of the cut stages had never had any progress yet anyway. Even though it was outsourced to a foreign land, Sonic 2 was under the guiding hands of hedgehog-visionary, Yuji Naka. It was SEGA's meal-ticket, and as just like Sonic the Hedgehog before it, Sonic 2 was the center of a media blizzard; only this time much of the content shown to the public would soon disappear forever...

The above are blind runs by professional, competitive gamers, Melissa Joan Hart and some other girl. As you can see, this is a very early protoype, judging by the air-date of this TV show, as well as by your eyes. In fact, in the right-hand video, the player hits an enemy while rolling, and still gets injured. This game, known as the Nick Arcade Prototype - what with it being a prototype showcased on Nick Arcade - is full of bugs, which you can tell right from the get-go. You can also hear the placeholder music, which is in fact taken directly from the preceding installment. Many of the animations are different as well, but I'll touch on that later.

Sega of America sent all sorts of promotional material to the various videogame and electronics publications of the time, many of these promo-goods portrayed situations that don't occur in the game proper. Pictured below, are the eponymous, Wood Zone, Hidden Palace, and Dust Hill, respectively as seen in various gaming magazines:

SONIC UND TAILS LIEBE WURST SCHOKOLADE-BUNDT UND WIETBIER!

Sonic 2 Beta (Simon Wai Beta)

Sonic 2 Beta [Simon Wai Beta] (Sega Genesis)
Developed by: Sonic Team & Sega Technical Institute
Stolen by: Pirates

In 1992, amidst their marketing frenzy, Yuji and pals attended a toy-fair in Manhattan, to show off their new game. Unfortunately, somebody had taken the opportunity to snatch a prototype right from under Naka's nose. This thief, having inadvertently inspired a whole new generation to steal videogames, wised-up, and went on the DL for quite some time, having just stolen the most important videogame in the world at the time.

Years passed, Yuji Naka watched his beautiful series crumble, the internet rose in popularity, Sega left the hardware business. The world changed. No-one remembered the stolen demo. That is until one day, a dandy fellow by the name of Simon Wai, while in the middle of stealing other games from a Chinese website, happened upon an uploaded ROM of Sonic 2 beta; likely uploaded by black-market software pirates who knew not the value of what they had. After changing his underwear, Simon Wai dedicated a website to researching the ROM, and in the process, created a community.

Since then several more betas of Sonic 2 have shown up, including the the Nick Arcade Prototype, and several betas released after Simon Wai's allowing us to fill the gaps of this game's production. The Beta's have been documented in great detail; some changes are apparent on a blind-run, others require seasoned hackers to crack the game's hex open. People have literally spent years playing these games, and trying to understand what Mr. Naka really had in mind, only for many of the more interesting ideas to be debunked by mundane, practical explanations years later. Such is life.

There is a massive amount of little changes, but for right now we will focus on the biggest changes.

Remember, all crazy fan-speculation will be written in delicious salmon!

Wood Zone:

We're going to take the high-road in regards to the name "Wood Zone".

Mmm-hmmm... Nothing quite like the smell of pine in the morning. Actually no, I hate pine. It makes me want to vomit. Act 1 of Wood Zone consists of two HUGE trees, with a tunnel and several balconies connecting them.. And that's it. This stage has barely even been started, although, it's still more complete than certain zones, which don't have any assets at all:

The Wood Zone has it's own unique tileset, it's neither a placeholder, nor has it ever been used in the retail version, or any actual game for that matter. For what it is, Wood Zone's art is actually pretty decent looking. The stage doesn't have unique music, however; it uses Metropolis Zone's tunes, which lends to some crazy, yet plausible fan ramblings.

Remember when I said that both Sonic CD and 2 were to be one in the same? Well, any fan can tell you that Sonic CD's main gimmick was it's time-travel mechanic, by which you travel to past and future iterations of the same stage you're in. Now if Sonic 2 and Sonic CD started out as the same game, and Sonic CD is about time-travel, then that means...

Yes, now we're getting somewhere.

The argument is that Wood Zone is a primitive version of Metropolis Zone. This is lent credit, not only by the fact that they share theme-music, but by the similar nature of the two stages in general; despite what little of Wood Zone we've seen, it does bear a passing resemblance to a factory, or at least a primordial one. It even has tunnels, similar to the Space-Age Vacuum Tubes seen in other, mechanical-themed stages, as well as your local bank.

That said, why aren't there other past/present/future versions of other stages? Well, according to Yuji Naka, who in a retrospective said -"Due to problems with the story, Act 3 was going to be a different Zone that would only appear once, but since it was cut, we still wanted to have something after Act 2. So that's why there are three acts in this one. We had already finished the map, and it would have been a shame to waste it, so this is what we went with." - Is it possibly that due to the Genesis' limitations, in comparison to the Sega CD, that time-travel would only occur when the game deemed so, as opposed to it being a common, player-activated event? Was Metropolis Act 3 really Wood Zone? That would explain why Wood Zone only has one functioning act, now wouldn't it?

Right? Right?...

Casino Night Zone:

Are you getting tired of Blast Processing jokes? Maybe you can take a break, go have a coffee?

Casino Night Zone made the final cut into Sonic 2. But not this version. This version is a literal mess; the basic layout is similar overall, but many tiles aren't lined-up, the conveyor belts don't convey, and there are no objects placed yet, so you can't even go through loops. The entire tileset has this garish pink color scheme, and Act 2 doesn't even have a proper background; it's simply the pinball-board tiled in the back, it doesn't make any sense.

According to Sonic Retro, Beta CNZ's object-directory contains a lost enemy character who appears in neither the prototypes, or the final cut, and can't be accessed, even in debug mode, which it's worth noting, is the only way to navigate the Casino's... 'terrain'.

Debug mode is in fact a staple of the early series, having been in all four core Genesis titles, which includes Sonic 2, and by extension, 2 beta. Debug mode is a mode generally used to conveniently test a programs' features, in Sonic's case, the gimmicks, items and objects of various stages. The developers left it in the game, accessible via a short button-command, so that we, the consumers, could write profanities out of rings. Many of Beta's stages are so incomplete, that Debug is the only way to fully explore them, or at all, for that matter.

This stage was totally renovated before Sonic 2's release, because...

Well... look at this mess:

Genocide City Zone:

If you want a picture of Genocide City Zone, imagine a boot stamping on a human face... forever.

- George Orwell, discussing furries (and Blast Processing)

Genocide City? Even early on, they were trying to make people angry, eh?

Genocide City is an apt name, as Sonic and Tails simply fall to their deaths over and over, as if it was some kind of metaphor. Maybe they'll throw a hammer through a projector screen. idk. Luckily, the hip-cats-with-too-much-time-on-their-hands over at Retro have discovered that Genocide City is in fact not empty; It contains a few tiles from Emerald Hill, of all places, above the top of the screen, just out of reach. The page also elaborates on the non-zone, with the artist assigned to this stage stating that Metropolis: Act 3 was in fact Genocide City, and not Wood Zone, as I had said previously. That in mind, I'm going to willfully choose to ignore these facts, and pretend that the factory in Sonic 2 used to be made of trees.

Hidden Palace Zone:

Gee, doesn't this look familiar?

Hidden Palace was like the conductor on Sonic 2's hype-train. This stage was plastered all over all of the game's advertising, and was shown-off by the dev-team at every opportunity, as if it were the very centerpiece of the title, ironic, given it's name.

Hidden Palace is an ancient-looking cave, filled with robot-dinosaurs, and other weird shit, such as a 1-up for Tails.It functions as a normal extra-life, but it has his face on it regardless of who you're using. The Master Emerald is also located in Hidden Palace!

Tails was originally intended to serve the role of Sonic's rival, rather than sidekick. His role in 2 would be the role that was eventually given to the character Knuckles in Sonic 3. That explains the existance of the Master Emerald in Hidden Palace, you see all the ideas scrapped from Sonic 2 were reused in the sequels! Sonic & Knuckles idea of playing through the game twice, as two opposing characters, was originally thought of for Sonic 2, but in order to relieve the hassle of testing two distinct characters, they simply controlled both simultaneously. this explains why Tails had no AI in the early builds; in Beta, Tails was simply controlled via button-commands, and moved exactly as Sonic did to a tee, whereas in the proper game, he followed Sonic more independently, and was capable of finding his own way to a degree.

The reason that such a seemingly-important feature was added in so much later is because it wasn't needed, because Sonic and Tails weren't allies, and would never be together as a team in practice anyway. At first. Then somebody on the dev team dug the Batman-vibe, and decided to make Sonic and Tails a duo, and scrapped their flimsy 'rivalry' narrative, and replaced it with something more generic...

Exactly. Except that the lead artist explicitly stated that the giant emerald wasn't the Master Emerald, an element that likely wasn't even thought of at that point. Instead, it was simply the breakable 'cork' to the tube, not unlike the hatch-like objects in Chemical Plant, or the rocks on Hill Top. The reason for the now iconic Tails Box is even more mundane; Since Sonic 2 is built directly off of Sonic 1, the graphic for Tails' extra-lives were occupying the location reserved for Sonic's in the first game. They didn't redirect the items to the proper graphics, and thus we have Sonic collecting lives for the wrong character.

It's also been stated off-hand that Tails was intended to be a sidekick from inception, which would make much more sense than him being a rival; He's doesn't look very threatening, unlike Knuckles, who is red.

Getting back to actual facts, however: Yuji Naka has more recently elaborated on the Hidden Palace, saying that after collecting the seven Chaos Emeralds, the player would be taken to Hidden Palace, where they would be able to transform into Super Sonic. The stage was a pretty huge deal, having been the focal-point of the advertising campaign. Hidden Palace exists on far more production copies of Sonic 2 than any other deleted stage, indicating that it was a last-minute decision to ditch the Palace. In fact, the zone still exists in the retail-edition of the game, but it's graphics are missing, resulting in a garbled mess. The collision data and object-placement are mostly gone, so you need to play through in debug.

This elevator ran on Blast-Processing

They really wanted to get it in there, but likely couldn't due to technical difficulties; it's assumed that it involved one of the stage's gimmicks, a service-elevator that wrapped around the screen vertically. Doing this screen-wrapping in conjunction with having water at the bottom of the stage provided too many technical challenges for the programmers to sort out, and they simply ran out of time.

Hidden Palace was farther along than the other missing zones, and even had it's own set of unique enemies, a red dinosaur-robot, pictured here, as well as on the bottom-left corner of every page on this blog, and a bat, similar to the bats from other Sonic games.

Lament the Hidden Palace Zone.

Other Shit about Wai's Beta:

There's various little differences you may have picked up on while watching those videos. First and foremost, all of Sonic's running animation is different; the animation on his start-up is actually better than in the final game, featuring very detailed, and intricate animation. It's possible they replaced this animation cycle with something more concise in order to save space. When Sonic tops-out, he has this Chuck Jones-esque swirl around his legs. Sonic also uses a few old animations from Sonic 1, most notably his back-and-forth 'wobble' when standing very close to a ledge.

I've noted earlier that Tails' doesn't follow Sonic, so much as mimic him exactly. He has no AI, and is more akin to simply have a second Player 1 on screen than Tails proper. He can be killed, and more frustratingly, will lose you rings when struck by enemies. He is also missing many animations; he walks into objects, instead of pushing them, and his 'flying' animations are just his death-sprite. Presumably the sprites had been drawn at this point, but weren't yet implemented.

Also missing, is the 1-up fanfare, upon gathering 100 rings. When getting an extra-life from a box, the jingle will play like normal, but when you collect 100 rings - as seen in both the above and below videos - it instead plays the music from the final stage, making every zone unnecessarily ominous.

Nick Arcade Prototype:

Philip Moore was actually slated to be a boss, but Melissa Joan Hart couldn't get enough rings to reach him.

Sonic 2 Beta [Nick Arcade Prototye] (Sega Genesis)
Developed by: Sonic Team & Sega Technical Institute
Resurfaced: November 7, 2006

In November 2006, Sonic Retro contributor, drx rallied the community to donate money so he could purchase a Sega Genesis cart, supposedly containing a beta version of Sonic 2. Imagine the surprise when it was discovered that this beta was in fact the very same version that Melissa Joan Hart couldn't get 25 rings in; it was the Nick Arcade Prototype. This version is even earlier in production than the copy Simon Wai had found; It seems more like a heavily modified Sonic 1 than anything else, even featuring the first game's level select screen, as well as a now-mostly-broken Green Hill Zone.

Tails dies during the physical-challenge, regretting not just sharing his cocaine with Marc Summers.

Chemical Plant and Hidden Palace are present, but they are labelled 'Marble Garden' and 'Spring Yard Zone' due to using Sonic 1's select screen. Chemical Plant sports an entirely different layout, and features a predominantly pink background. There exists three acts, but they are all the same, with the second two using Green Hill's data for ring placement. Hidden Palace is present, mostly in full. It seems by this point, most of the progress to be made on Hidden Palace already was, and it would remain that way until it was removed. Acts 2 & 3 have the same layout, but it lacks any enemies. These Acts flood at points, unlike the Wai version, where the water was stationary. 2P can control the flow of water, recalling Tails' career as a hydro-engineer.

Pink is an omnipresent theme in this particular build.

Emerald Hill is present, placed under 'Starlight Zone', explaining the music playing when Melissa Joan Hart played through. And "Scrap Brain" was replaced with Hill Top, of all things; despite using the same tiles as the first stage, Hill Top was in fact there since the beginning, and not a last second-filler, as some people had proposed. The lava doesn't function yet at this point, and though the gondolas do work, they don't detach when they reach the end of the rope. In the picture below, you can see one of Nick Arcade's more irritating features; when Sonic hits a solid object, instead of coming to a stop, and allowing you to jump over it, he gets knocked on his ass. It's terribly frustrating, and will often send you careening into foes.

Explain this, Clarissa:

This mysterious graphic was found in the ROM.
Could it be a map to Nickelodeon Studios in Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida?

Betas 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8

Beta 4 & 5, respectively

Found after drx's discovery of the Nick Arcade version, these five rom images help fill in the gaps in STI's production of the the game; slowly, but surely, each consecutive version gets closer and closer to the version that went gold. Beta 4, the first one we have since the Simon Wai Beta, doesn't have Genocide City, or Wood Zone, and they are never seen from that point on. Beta 4 also marks the beginning of the removal of Hidden Palace; it's graphics are missing, but much of it's object, enemy and collision data still remains. And the spike glitch is finally gone. Beta 5 introduces the title screen that would be used in the final version of Sonic 2, and new stages are present. Betas 6, 7 and 8 are near complete, only sporting a few bugs, instances of misplaced music, or other small oversights that were worked out in the following weeks, impending the release of Sonic 2.

That concludes our first installment of Hedgehog's Never Tell, a rertospective on Sonic the Hedgehog's production that sports a creepy title with sexual/romantic undertones.

This series will continue until we either run out of unreleased Sonic games to talk about,

or somebody recieves a cease & desist.

Next up: Sonic Crackers: Are they making fun of white people?

All prototypes courtesy of the fine chaps at Sonic Retro.

All second hand information from:

GameSpy: Sega's Yuji Naka Talks!

SonicRetro

Space Funeral

2012-04-04T23:10:00.000-04:00

Of all the RPG Maker titles that I have had the pleasure of playing, Space Funeral definitely sticks out as the oddest. It's similar to Mother in that they both parody the genre, but Space Funeral definitely takes the weirdness factor up a notch. The aesthetics and dialogue are definitely unique and come together to give the game a quirky charm. The music ranges from Noise Rock, to Electronic, to...I don't really know and the sprites have a disturbing, yet narm-y appeal to them.

Space Funeral (PC)

Developed & Published by: catmitts

Released on: August 26, 2010

In this game you play as Phillip, an eternally sad man who wears pajamas and apparently sleeps in a coffin. One day your parents decide it is best for you to leave the house, and without further explanation our hero sets off on his epic quest (it is never explained why you have to leave it's just supposed to be...I guess.) The Wizard of Scum Village (the starting village) then promptly instructs you to go to the BLOOD CAVERN and talk to Wizard Grom. Along the way you'll meet LEG HORSE (a.k.a sidekick of the year) who accompanies-err commands you to follow him.

He must be shopping at K-Mart.

Combat in this game is very basic and is reminiscent of Dragon Quest, although the game isn't very heavy on grinding. Battles are turn-based with a timer system a la Final Fantasy IV and experience is given in large amounts so levelling is fairly quick. You're able to control both Phillip and LEG HORSE in combat, although they handle quite similarly with neither character really differing from the other stats-wise. You're also able to use items that heal you, cure ailments, etc. Overall it's a simple and effective battle system that doesn't do anything new per se, but you'll hardly notice seeing as you'll face such classic enemies as "The 20th Century Boy" and "Thug King."

Gameplay outside of combat is like any other RPG...except um weirder. While Phillip controls like a typical RPG protagonist, the world he travels through is anything but typical. You'll encounter Thugs, Lions, Lucy from The Peanuts, and Dracula himself. The game has a random and dark aesthetic that really makes it stand out from most other, it honestly make this game worth checking out alone. The dialogue should also be mentioned as it's quite humorous, non-sequitur, and sometimes witty. Some lines actually had me laughing to myself while other lines in the game had me puzzled. Overall I'd say that this is the game's main draw.

An appropriate reaction.

Now don't let Space Funeral's simple gameplay deter you from playing it, it definitely has a charm of it's own that makes it worth playing. It's definitely as surreal as Yume Nikki and will leave you with more questions than answers after beating it. It's definitely a short game that you can beat in one sitting and best of all it's completely free! Give this game a play and you'll understand just how odd a video game can possibly be.

Expect a full game walkthrough soon!

Enture the strange here, with your own copy of Space Funeral.

Space Dynagon

2012-03-31T01:32:00.000-04:00

So, in 1992, there was a charmingly bizarre shmup released for the Super Nintendo, titled Pocky & Rocky (奇々怪界～謎の黒マント). P&R was a scrolling shooter, that's main draw was that your character was a person, instead of an aircraft; keep in mind this is during the early Nineties, years before Touhou made lolis and cuddly-things the norm. Furthermore, your character wasn't airborne, and could move around much more freely than in a more standard shooter, though you were still only making your way down long, single-screen-sized corridors. Now at this point, you're probably wondering why I'm going on about P&R; it was made by Natsume, a rather reputable company, and it was met with pretty handsome success. Surely it doesn't fit the criteria for a write-up here? Well, you'd be right, except I'm not talking about Pocky & Rocky, instead, I'm talking about a doujinshi that took what Pocky & Rocky had to offer, and ran far, far away with it.

Wat?

Space Dynagon (りーふせいじん☆あたっく) is a game about a 'feudal' Japanese priestess who makes her way through the invading alien infantry, killing Space Onion after Space Onion. Yeah, it's that kind of game.

I can't even think of a witty caption.

Space Dynagon takes the idea of ground-based shooting from Pocky, and combines that with many elements from Zelda, of all things. You are no longer gunning through long, linear levels, but now are free to explore the open, almost maze-like stages that Dyanagon consists of. Each stage is puzzle like, requiring you to flip switches, and perform other tasks in order to advance.

Your enemies are all 'Leaf People', Onion-like... things that are distinguished by their various head-wear.
There are some that fly, some that wear top hat, a few have afros, there's even an American Leaf Person, who is angrier than the rest; likely he is a Patriots fan.

Here's a mere sample of the many weirdos you'll meet in Space Dynagon:

They have several Kings. Space Onion government seems like it would be very confusing.

You can see, the Leaf People come in two colors, red and green, with several variations, of each; there are also Pumpkin-men, who sport similar permutations. Normally I'd go into detail about the various strengths, weaknesses and abilities of each enemy-class, but the problem is, that each enemy goes down so quick, that with few exceptions, you'll barely notice the difference between enemy-types, other than their affinity for flamboyant head-wear. There is an in-game glossary, which is written in Katakana, and is of no-use to me what-so-ever.

"Pffft. Can't read it? What are you, a Baka Gaijin?"

-Somebody on 4chan

The Leafs are pretty nuanced in their special-abilities most of them are pretty alike, with only marginal differences; remember, regardless of class, Red Leafs are always faster, and Pumpkins act the same way, but are slightly smaller targets. You may or may not notice their specialties as you effortlessly mow down wave after wave of them: The guys who can fly, are obviously capable of flying, the 'Seeders', as they're called throw seeds the explode on impact with you. The 'Oshare Leafs', with the dandy top hats, are suicide bombers, that send a series of explosions along the ground, whereas the cats with the Afros simply go all out, and explode in one large, centralized area. Some enemies, specifically the Royal and AMERIKAN Leafs have lifebars and act as sub-sub-bosses; Royal Leafs are weaker than AMERIKAN Leafs, but they make up for it with their ability to plant even more Leafs. Fucking Leafs. The guys with Magic Panties on their heads act as support Leafs, and cast spells that repair the pot-planters that the Leafs grow from. Then there's the most irritating fuckers of all, the 'Metal Leafs', they are the guys adorned with samurai helmets, and they are immune to bullets. That's right. A shmup with an enemy-class that is immune to fucking bullets. Classy. The only way to deal with these guys is to bury them alive, which brings me to mechanics...

Space Dynagon, as I said much earlier, takes the Pocky's gameplay all the way into adventure-game territory, making it something akin to a cross between Zelda, Gauntlet and a shmup, with some arena-shmup, and even a bit of roguelike thrown in. It's a culmination, is what I'm trying to say.

After clearing out this house, feel free to rub the defeat in, by watching their TV.

The game consists of shooting legions after legions of Leafs - and yes, Leafs, it's a proper noun, deal with it - while solving brief puzzles, and finding switches, or navigating mazes. This game is completely free-roaming, not-unlike Zelda, and you have free-reign to do whatever you feel is necessary to prepare for the next wave, by which I mean grind for power-ups. You are timed, though the time-limit is extremely generous, and almost malleable, in fact; when time runs out, the game doesn't automatically, instead you are bombarded with suicide-bombing Leafs who will try to kill you. It's entirely possible to not only outrun these nuisances, but even finish the stage long after you've timed out.

Bullets are fired in a spread pattern, similar to Touhou, though their range is very limited, forcing you to walk over, and Robotron the shit out of everybody. Your starting spread is determined by the difficulty your playing through, but can be quickly beefed-up by means of easily obtained Shot-Items. You always walk forward, a la' Zelda, so there is a shift-key for strafing that allows you to continuously facing on direction while firing. Pretty much everyone who isn't a boss, or American goes down like a bitch; except for Metal Leafs.

This is where you're Shinto-shovelling comes in handy; you can dig a hole, and wait for stupid enemies to fall in amongst the shuffling-madness; once they re stuck in the hole, return to the hole, and press 'dig' again, to bury them. When you walk over a buried Leaf, they will unleash a massive explosion, and any Leaf caught in the explosion will explode as well, cause a chain-reaction of combusting Space Onions. Leafs that have exploded inexplicably leave behind various pieces of sushi for no discernible reason, which is apparently a secondary goal of the game, according to the stats screen. idk.

Girugamesh.

As you've probably already concluded by now, the Leafs are grown in those giant planters, not unlike the doors from Gauntlet, that spawn ghosts and orcs, only in this instance, they are used to grown Space Onions. Destroying the planters, obviously inhibits their ability to grow more Leaf people, though not for long; the Leafs are determined to invade Japan, and aren't going to let $8 worth of broken ceramics, and a trip to Lowe's stop them. Planters respawn quick, and immediately start harvesting new foes, so be vigilant. Try to break the planters before the screen gets flooded and you die.

It smells like Otakon in here!

The game features a variety of items and pickups that have various effects on gameplay:

The Banana Diet even existed during the Feudal Era.

MoonPhase Orbs - Increase your total remaining time by about a minute or so each.
Bananas - Restore your life.
Red Potions - Increase the power of your bullets
Green Potions - Increase the capacity of your lifebar.
Yellow Potions - Increase your defense (by reducing damage taken)
Blue Potions - Increased the spread of your fire.
Gems- Are shiny.

There are also 32 hidden items to unlock. As far as I know, they don't do anything, outside of 100% completion. The game also has Sushi that you can find amongst the fallout of explosions. The greatest power-up of all, however is the Coiled-Turd that grants you invincibility-

Wat?

So, to put things in perspective, Space Dynagon, is game where you kill Space Onions who wear novelty hats by shooting Shinto Prayer slips at them, and when you put animal feces on your head, you can tackle them, and they explode violently, leaving nothing but raw-fish hors d''oeuvres in their wake.

Also, one of them is a traitor:

"The wholesale slaughter of my kin? Haha! It ain't even a thing!"

Here's the second stage of Space Dynagon in full, for your viewing en bafflement:

Octodad

2012-03-27T11:33:00.001-04:00

Face it, kids, everyone has to do chores, you're not special. In fact, you're privileged that you even have a skeletal system with which to do chores in the first place. The same can't be said of Octodad, the star of Octodad, who haphazardly flings his limbs around in a vain effort, trying to perform simple tasks we all take for granted. Lament the unfortunate Octodad.


Octodad breaches the fourth-wall to clumsily shake-hands with various KFC employees.

Octodad (PC)

Developed & Published by: The DePaul Gaming Experience

Released on: November 1, 2010

Octodad is a ragdoll physics-based puzzle game, where Octodad must complete everyday chores, despite his anatomy not being very well suited for such. You use the mouse to painstakingly move each of Octodad's legs forward to walk, and have to navigate his arm directly into items in order to pick them up. The game's mechanics as a whole are incredibly baroque, but that's the point. Octodad is an octopus, and he doesn't have any bones. Doing anything and everything with Octodad takes a huge amount of effort.

Needless to say, Octodad doesn't have much chinaware.

The game is controlled via a strange reverse WASD configuration, where the mouse moves Octodad's various limbs, and W A S & D control the camera. The spacebar acts as a shift-key, allowing you to alternate between using Octodad's arms and legs. When in 'Arm-mode', you move Octodad's arms in and out horizontally (X & Y planes), and holding down the right mouse-button will allow you to move up, down and vertically (X & Z planes). It's actually quite simple, but it is really difficult to do anything in an efficient manner; simple tasks such as cleaning out the fridge, digging through a toys-chest, or even scoring a soccer goal - once - seem to take five minutes due to Octodad's tenuous grasp of the concept of 'movement'. Although scoring a soccer goal in under five minutes is actually 85 minutes faster than it takes professionals. Good job Octodad. Not really.

Cephalopods are better soccer players than actual soccer players.

In case you haven't noticed, Octodad is a secret octupus. Although his family loves him, they are extremely racist against octopi, and the game will end if you act out of character too much, by means of dropping things on the floor, stumbling on everything or doing anything in general, really. The game features a 'Suspicion Bar' that slowly fills as he behaves... well, like an octupus. Octodad takes some getting used to, and you will likely fail a few times at first. And then this guy will come and cook you:

WATASHI WA OCTODAD DESU!

The goal of the game is to complete Octodad's various household chores, in order to recover things his (step?)-children have playfully hidden and use them to build a decoy Octodad, so that he can skip dinner and finish working on his anniversary gift in the secret underground lair that most suburban homes boast.

Goonies homages do a wonder for property values. I'm thinking of adding a few galleons myself.

However, Octodad's soon finds his humble efforts foiled by his mortal enemy, the Sushi Chef. The Sushi Chef, for whatever reason wants to prepare Octodad for lunch; he must have OCD, since he won't settle for any octupus, and is determined to get Octodad in particular. Consider the household chores a tutorial of sorts for the Sushi Chef's gauntlet. Which include lasers, step-ladders, and more lasers.


As if the lasers weren't enough, ladders? LADDERS!?

I've mentioned the controls earlier, and there actually remind a great deal of G arry's Mod, a game used in Medieval France to kill the brain cells of political dissenters. They both use ragdoll physics, and feature a lot of awkward flailing around. The game's controls are intentionally obtuse, resulting in a lot of ...erm, 'slapstick' gameplay:

You too can experience the frustration of

superior mouse-controlled tactile gameplay at Octodadgame.com

And don't forget to get hype for Octodad 2 : Dadliest Catch, coming out at some point in 2013.

Octupus-themed alternative rock is one of my favorite sub-genres:

Nitronic Rush

2012-03-25T14:41:00.000-04:00

SUP NERDS! what if a game existed were you drove a car in an AMAZING Tron themed city. Sounds crazy right well we're not even done yet the car can BEND gravity to its will! oh yeah did I mention the car has... wings! Well that's what you are getting when you download Nitronic Rush which is completely free.

Unless your too chicken to play a real mans game!

NITRONIC RUSH (PC)
Developed & Published by: The students at DigiPen
Released on: November 11, 2011

So this games calls it self a "experimental survival driving game." , This surprisingly works amazingly well together. The goal of the game is to reach the end of every level seems simple right? The car it self has many abilities at its disposal such as jumping, flying, and boosting, if using the boost or wings to long your vehicle will begin to overheat which can be reduced by pulling those awesome level 3 hyper combos (as seen here). The game has an amazing soundtrack which I personally enjoyed, the game even says upon starting that it would be enjoyed with the in game audio and a controller (but we're on the pc and we aint no try hard CoD player). This games graphics, physics, and architecture were all built from the ground up which is told to you with a little statement before the game start which is a nice touch and proves they took there time and gave there all when making this game. Its no Fire-Pro Wrestling (The best video game series in the past 100 years) but it gets its job done

The games graphics are FUCKING BEAUTIFUL for a free game, I must say. It does it's job of immersing you into the game, when paired with its music. It's no post-hardcore music that real men listen to, and their robot that brings you beer from the fridge, and almost naked women - but yeah, not every game can be as awesome as the pinnacle of all games, WRESTLING!. The physics are crazy, which makes the game that much fun, when you barreling down the road at 150+ mph than going off a jump, and you miss it!! That will lead to some hilarious moments!

TAP THE ROCKIES!!

Nitronic Rush comes with a plethora of features to keep one entertained for hours. These modes are story mode, and arcade mode which opens up even more mode (which include Story ,HARDCORE , Challenge, Stunt, Old, and community-made levels). There are also achievements to be unlocked to if your into that sort of thing which do not reward you with anything tangible, but still let you exercise your supremacy!

I than attempted to try the hardcore and stunt mode to prove that I'm better at being a nerd than you are, which is just another great-thing I excel at! In HXC modes, a large number of things that can kill you. Emphasis on you. Nothin' can bring me down.

"When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you"

I now have a treat for you all. This is me owning it up on the hardcore levels, this is not for the weak of heart and I dare ANY of you to beat my record! If any of you and i mean ANY of you NERDS! Even come close to beating my time this will become your fate! I gotta BRB, cause my keyboard is catching fire from all the HOT-ASS game-playin' I've been doing. Watch this video while I find my fire extinguisher.

Ahh man, that fire was burning through my living room, but I was all like 'No way, No one beats the Mastodon!" and I whooped it's-

Oh right.

Nitronic Rush has also received the gamers choice award at this years (2012) Indie game challenge. Pssssh that crappy Ass Effect 3 couldn't even win this and NR doesn't even have an ending! All you "MLG" geeks should put this on your pro-circuit instead of that Pokemans game (what are you 12?!). The next step from this company should obviously be to be bought out by ACTIVISON so they can put the abysmal World of Dorkcraft to rest finally. Its a small feat compared to the dozen of trophies and signed sports memorabilia i have in my mancave but impressive nontheless.

I recommend you all give Nitronic Rush a try seeing as it's and is a fairly quick download, down load here at http://nitronic-rush.com/download-game/

If you don't try this game out ill be forced to use Egyptian hypnosis on you fools

and trust me you don't want that.

Now you dont mind me there a gallon of muscle milk with my name on it. Also i bet Team Nitronics mancave if full of half naked women, stripper poles, a hot tub of beer, and the man of all men The macho man Randy Savage and Slash jamming out 24/7 well maybe not Slash probably All that remains or that hardcore group Brokencyde. So Team Nitronic you ever want to chill ill bring the bud lime. LATER NERDS!