Dead Pixel

Taking it to the Streets: a "Vigilante" Review

Vigilante was reviewed via SDL MAME in a Linux Yellow Dog environment installed on a PS3.

Vigilante was the lesser known sequel to Kung-Fu Master made by Irem in 1988 and later published by Data East in the U.S. Based on a similar premise to it’s predecessor the storyline follows a wannabe Jackie Chan who’s paraplegic girlfriend (named Madonna… seriously) is kidnapped by a gang of “skinheads”. Not happy with the theft of his handicapped pop diva girlfriend Jackee Chun proceeds to wreak havoc against the multi-cultural ethnic and racial blend of racist skinheads. It is never explained why your girlfriend is kidnapped and though a sexual intention could always be inferred she tends to spend most of the game alone and asleep or prone in the back of a child molester van, continually driven away by her enslavers as you approach. In all fairness it never mentions that she is a T12 paraplegic but it’s either that, or she’s narcoleptic because the woman seriously never stands up throughout any part of the game.

Though built off of the M75 Irem Motherboard the game shares no visual similarity with any other Irem titles from that time period (Ninja Spirit, Adventure Island, Hammerin Harry, etc). Instead the game boasts a unique look of soft and almost pastel figures with harsh black outlines. The end result looking more like a blurry cut and paste sticker book than that of a typical video game. This look is probably what made this game most memorable for me, since it stood out as an early release title for the Turbo Grafix16. It was one of those arcade games you saw featured in a magazine but never had a chance to play, so I was more than happy to finally play this thing.

Art direction wise, the game is a mixed bag of bizarre. Your main character is adorned in a classical Chinese kung-fu outfit yet the game takes place in what looks like a recession suffering urban slum. The city looks very similar to the crime ridden Detroit created in Robocop, complete with hole in the wall dive bars and hourly motels in the backdrop. The enemies seem aesthetically disconnected never really fitting the “skinhead” label given to them as a few of the gang members are actually black. Though I had a friend who was a Mexican skinhead this loose policy of admission is still hard to believe.

Game play wise the game is clearly developed from the DNA of Kung-Fu. You scroll through the Flint, Michigan like slums of the city in a 2D plane while the opposing mob of skinheads attack from either side. Utilizing punch and kick buttons (and an occasional lost nunchuku waiting precariously on the sidewalk) you attempt to stave off never ending waves of armed and unarmed opponents while progressing forward much like an upstream trout, who like you, is just trying to get laid (see the Madonna plot line).

Like any sequel, the game play gets an upgrade with some added changes that bring an unexpected random dynamic into the fold. The jump kick in Vigilante is a flying side kick which, when timed correctly, actually recoils you back and away from your opponent placing you back out of attack range. This may seem minimal at first but this advent alone allows for some interesting back and forth combos where you can recoil off of one opponent’s face and then bounce back to punch another one in the head. What this adds to the experience is a small element of unpredictability since the recoil timing is specific and not a sure thing to pull off. Comparative to Kung-Fu Master, this element breaks up the repetitious monotony of taking on waves of similar opponents. Combine this with “Continue anywhere” game system and you have a game that endures past nostalgia and for longer than Kung-Fu.

Though theres nothing new about fighting waves of gang members, the AI still operates in a seemingly bizarre manner. It seems that every member of the skinhead gang learned to fight from the same male rape handbook since most of them seem preoccupied with groping you to death. I don’t understand why my character’s health is being drained as he is being gingerly caressed from behind, but I guess one could assume that such a task would indeed be physically draining. * RIM SHOT * This move is essential for the AI since these gropers also tie you up so that you can get stabbed or shot by another nearby opponent.

Crowd management is the predominant game strategy employed here against these enemies. Additional strategy lies in knowing your reach distance and timing the appropriate attack for the corresponding opponent. Throughout the course of the game you devise optimal take down tactics for the various gun toting, knife wielding, bike riding, rape choking, opponents and utilize them at will. Boss encounters, which occur at the end of each Level (5 in total) require learning the optimal attack that risks the least amount of damage, and repetitiously executing it perfectly. Overall a repetitive and sometimes monotonous endeavor which is happily broken up by the various different opponents and unexpected timing errors from trickier moves like the jump kick and jump punch. What seems like an overly simple and boring experience on paper is actually quite compelling and enjoyable when all strategies of game play are in use.

The thing that makes this game ultimately enjoyable though is the continue system that it uses. Most games of this genre require you to start over at the beginning of the level when you continue, building a sense of anxiety and tension, that once broken by losing, makes you want to eat someone’s face off in sheer blood raging anger. Thankfully, that is not the case with this game. As long as you have another credit available you can continue at the exact point where you left off. Though this is typical of later 2.5D side scrolling brawlers (Double Dragon) it is great to play an old style single layer 2D brawler with this feature. For this reason alone, the game is accessible to play through without the commitment of mastery, making it a fun little retro jaunt for those that are interested. So grab a 6 pack and 15 minutes of spare time for an odd little quest against racist male rapists and save that crippled girl.

Hyborian League Football: a "Pigskin 621 A.D." Review (PS3 Linux/MAME)

Pigskin 621 A.D. was reviewed via SDL MAME in a Linux Yellow Dog environment installed on a PS3.

Apparently, in the Dark Ages, acts of regional conquest were occasionally determined by proxy games of football. That, or everybody has taken a break between all of the raping, pillaging, and raping to throw a Rugby game together. Pick one, as either is an apt introduction to Midway’s Pigskin 621 A.D.

Built around the same arcade board (MCR-68K) used for Arch Rivals, Pigskin 621 A.D. was released in 1990 as an obvious attempt to capitalize on the success of its basketball predecessor. Featuring the graphic and conceptual designs of Brian Colin, the game carries his style and sensibility, which has become a prototypical example of classical raster arcade art design. His pseudo Mike Crumb-ish caricatures throughout Rampage, Xenophobe, Arch Rivals, and Blasted are still present here. However Pigskin adds to it, sporting a stylised Asterix representation of the Dark Age and Nordic cultures.

Each caricature is unique: cartoonishly rendered as grizzled burly knights, Trojans, and Vikings, all with a bad case of chicken legs or below the waist Marfan Syndrome. The art design between the two opposing factions is intentional and clear, with the Blue Team consisting of European knights and Viking characters defending a castle, while the Red Team is a motley (albeit racially diverse) invading force composed of a Trojan, a Muslim guy in a turban, a Loki horned geriatric, a black homeless man, and a Mongolian. Brian Colin’s artful cutaway vignettes of back alley bribes, locker room executions and players receiving surreptitious hints from a hunchback all flesh out and help realize the dark age backdrop of the game.

In the spirit of full disclosure, let’s get the following out of the way: this game does not play like an American football game. There are no plays, no downs, no field goal kicks, no real passing system, no audibles, no jukes, no jives, and no diving tackles. That’s fine, though, American football sucks anyways.

Ah, “football”: a game of punitive inches and feet where a pre-emptive offside conjures childlike finger pointing by the opposing team; a game where once great moves like the forearm tackle have gone the way of the Mastodon and Trilobite. Have you seen how many flags referees carry? All that game is about is penalties now. Rule upon rule designed to create an idealized play style, but instead becoming increasingly esoteric pieces of an overly intellectualized meta-game where no one breaks a bone or even has the common decency to slip into a coma. Zzzzzzzzz.

Pigskin 621 A.D. plays a lot like Rugby, but without all the homosexual man hugging bits. Not that hugging bits of a homosexual man is a bad thing- you gotta have some way to pass the weekends- but it’s just not present in this game. What we do get is a frenzied scramble of grizzled Dark Age vagrants who punch, tackle, and murder their way across obstacle decorated battlefields in an arbitrary attempt to get a football into the opposing team’s end zone. Perhaps conceptually it’s taking the analogy of football and global conquest to its ridiculous point of convergence? Perhaps not.

There are no downs: all contested conflicts end in a fumble, resulting in a game experience that looks a lot like a college football game. Passes and laterals are executed by a single button press, which flings the ball to the next adjacent player in the direction you are facing. Holding the pass button longer before releasing it scrolls through various receivers, creating the potential for a much longer pass to teammates who are further down field. Blocking and pass interference are performed by the tried and tested method of punching the shit out of everybody. Again, holding the punch button down cocks the player’s arm back in preparation for the punch, with longer hold times resulting in a hay maker which knocks and spins the opponent, taking them longer to recover and get back into the game.

In the absence of plays, formations are available. Specifically, there are three formation types, which are rotated by, of all things, the formation button. The formations have offensive/defensive counterparts, although each counterpart isn’t necessarily a counter measure to its respective formation. They are “Block/Get Ball”, “Scatter/Man to Man”, and “Bad Attitude/Bad Attitude”. This might be more accurately called “Run In Front Of Me/ Dogpile”,  “Clusterfuck”/“Chase Clusterfuckers”, and “Get In a Line”. Strategically, these formations can be used in a  “Rock, Paper, Scissors” fashion counteracting the opposing teams strategy. Ultimately, it is a basic but effective pool of strategic formations designed to allow the player to focus more on the ass kicking and less on the strategy.

The only foible here is that the game play can get too fast paced to focus on strategy and the myopic camera perspective doesn’t help either. You really never see the layout of your team across the whole field, so you easily become detached from any idea of tactics. Team mate awareness is more of an abstract concept, a recollection of “Oh, that one guy ran off screen so he’s probably still over there.” This tends to be the case anyway; since obstacles are non-existent when off screen. This is a small mercy, since blindly navigating a hazard strewn field off screen would be like trying to piss in a paper cup with the lights off.

The key to victory is taking advantage of the weapon system. Littered about the battlefield amongst the skulls, pits, moats, hedges, pillars, and other obstructions are various weapons. These include nooses, scythes, torches, maces, hatchets, and spears, each with their own murder animation. You don’t necessarily wield these weapons in the sense of Golden Axe hacking and slashing: instead these weapons are concealed on your body and come into use during a dogpile. A dogpile occurs when the ball handler and an opposing player collide into one another. Much like the board game Risk, the victory of a dogpile is determined by variables such as which team has more players in the pile and who has a weapon. Two players with weapons in the dogpile negate each other, resulting in a non-fatality. Should the opposition be caught off guard and unarmed, they face murder by hanging, decapitation, spearing, backstabbing, or good old-fashioned immolation. Making a successful solo rush into the other team’s end zone really requires a knowledge and use of weapon locations and chaining pickups with kills to escape each progressive dogpile.

Against the AI, the game isn’t that difficult, though it does offer the selection of two difficulty levels. The learning curve takes about two full games before you understand the flow and begin to use the formations effectively. The one great thing about the game design is the handicap that goes into effect if one team is about to trounce the other. If you’re beating the ass sauce out of other team, the game adds an extra troll player to the opposing team. The trolls are faster and stronger, and if you keep pummelling the other team, despite this advantage, the game adds another troll to their faction. If the victim of your relentless footballing is the Computer AI, then the game’s handicap system goes even further, providing you with the option of selecting “Troll Bowl”. Troll Bowl is you against an entire team of power-enhanced trolls. It’s an entirely refreshing, creative, and transparent way of dynamically ramping the difficulty when even today, lazier game designers opt to invisibly cheese the enemies’ stats (*cough* fuck you Motorstorm).

Ultimately, I could not recommend this game more. Many older games really require a level of nostalgic indulgence, asking you to forgive dated conventions while you draw from your childhood to fill in the gaps. This is not the case with Pigskin. The game play experience still holds up over time, despite the lack of depth and absence of polygons. The game offers enough novelty to be original and unique, while the aesthetic flare adds a sense of style that is comparable to modern retro-pixel graphic art design. Not intended to be a Tecmo Bowl or a John Elway, this game really did pave the path for future fantasy football themed games (Alien League, Cyber Ball, etc.), showing that there was an audience looking for sports games set in bizarre and exaggerated circumstances.

Editorial changes and contributions made by Gigantor (thanx for cleaning up the mess J)

Kevlar isn't knife proof

SNK’s The Super Spy (1990)

Being a foot soldier sucks. Imagine putting that much effort into your job. You went out of your way get custom fitted so your green ninja outfit would fit snug like a condom. You get your own kevlar vest. You even went out of your way to find matching knuckle studded fingerless gloves so your outfit would look “together”.

And for what? So you can just jump out and get stabbed? There goes that shining moment.

Bored At Work: Sissy Fight

what seems like a simple peer to peer online stratgey game of schoolyard tattling quickly manifests into a complex meditation in game theory; in Sissy Fight.

i always come back to this game cause it’s so addictive 

Diabeetus A-Go-Go

Konami’s Rollergames (1991)

…and the bearded man with breasts, the dwarf, the skateboarding chearleader, and the sheriff all root him on.

BonerWorld

I just saw Westworld today, for the first time. Definitely a film whose topicality was well ahead of it’s time. Though I can’t help but to think that their notion of the customer’s experience is a bit idealistic if not naive.

Here you have a place filled with robotic life-like people designed and programmed to fit your choosen theme (a western). In this world you can kill, fight, or sleep with any character without any real consequences. The idea that two men would spend thousands of dollars to be there and just play cards while drinking whiskey waiting for dynamic scenarios to present themselves, probably wouldn’t happen.

Like a bizarre lucid dream, I imagine that once someone got over the sex with a robot thing, that’s pretty much all they would be doing in WestWorld. The entire experience would probably devolve into a Sergio Leoni interpretation of a Marquis de Sade book. The dirt streets and wooded walkways would be strewn with tumbleweeds, glass, fake blood, sodomized circuitry, and dismembered robo parts.

Another bad date

Midway’s Arch Rivals (1989)

I also have a weird fixation with the imaginary back stories behind the background art in videogames. In this picture from Arch Rivals, she looks overdressed and pissed off… clearly the date isn’t going well. Her boyrfriend glances over to see if she is still pissed off that they didn’t go to Delmonico’s Lobster House… she is.