Zunzunkyou No Yabou - Arcade (1994 Sega)

The reason this arcade game made by Sega never made it to the US seem perfectly clear .

It's to open minded . It doesn't shun the likes of transvestites , ballet dancer and chinese as enemies and proudly presents the greatest misfits of their respective catgeories for the hero to shoot at .

The hero here being Buddha . And his weapon being Manjis . You know , that thing everyone mistakes for a swastika .

The game is divided into four main stages , of which you may select any at the start , each with several levels , and a fifth and final stage acessible after beating all of them .

Now where this game shines are the graphics .They certainly follow the quirky tone of the game quite well . Balding transvestites and misshapen gooey creatures all have sufficient detail and character and the bosses especialy look realy funky . Needless to say , fans of US comic books will be surprised when playing this game .

However.......the game itself is just cheap . For one , you can only shoot upwards even if you are facing sideways . This leap in logic may actualy cause you to lose a few lives at first . Even when you get past that fact , though , the enemies are just cheap all around . They move in large quantities and fire projectiles , while swaying and bouncing to all sides , making the act of shooting them and not dying a real pain . They sometimes drop powerups , like a double shot , which turns your stick carying peacefull Buddha into a War Buddha who can fire two shots at a time . Sadly you will most likely get killed right after getting it . Unless you use......

The bomb . You get two with each life . You can ocationaly pick an extra one dropped by an enemy . The problem is this is basicly the only way to avoid dying , so that you will actualy burn through the 6 bombs in each continue (3 lives) real quick .

All in all it makes the game a little too easy . But without it the game is frustratingly cheap in finding ways to kill you . It's a lose-lose situation .

Once you finish the fifth level boss the game pulls the ultimate dick move of arcade games . To get the proper ending you have to play through all the levels you've just passed again . And there is no distunguishable change , not even with the final boss . And then after you beat him you see the two playable characters (colour swaps of the same Buddha sprite) star at a sundown and then bow their heads to you .

Yeah , that was totaly worth the 17 quarters it took to beat twice .

So overall , I'd say this game is nice but stops short of being memorable with the forced replay and the dual cheapness , in being both too easy and too hard .

Rating : 8 out of 10 Missued Manjis .

LSD Dream Emulator

1998 was a long time ago wasn't it ? What do you people remember playing at that time ? Specificaly on the Playstation . I played platformers , other people played RPG's or puzzle games .

But in Japan , some kids got their hands on this baby .

And it's just what you think it is . And I know for a fact you have no idea what you're thinking . And you're stil right .

The game is basicly one huge trekk . Where you can't interact with anything .

Let me re-iterate that . In this game , you cannot interact with anything .

And it's awesome.

What you see above is from one of the several locations , called "Happy Land" by fans . It is here that you find one of the most pleasing sounding set of tiles in the whole game . You see , the game makes a sound of walking whenever you move .

Or rather the sound of dying goats in scottish moors on midnight ...... during an air raid . And as for the icy sufraces.....no coment .

There is a conection between each location , but you'll probably end up touching something that will warp you elsewhere , or the dream you are curently playing will end . Then said experience will find a place on the dream chart , which sometimes can trigger a series of 19 FMV videos , that you already probably saw throughout the game , to play nonstop before going back to the game .

Also , each wapring may end up completely screwing the textures , with grass and sand having Japanese writting all over them .

Finaly , there is the Gray man . Whenever you meet him and don't run away on time , you will lose the "flashback" option , aka the ability to see short moments from previous dreams and briefly interact within them .

As for the goal , there is none . After finishing the 365th dream , a short FMV called "ending" plays , showing the deformed mascot of the game twisting around and shapeshifitng before reseting the timer to "Day 001" .

Overall it is a nice game , but you probably should take time and explore it throughout several sessions over a longer period of time . Because even if you've seen someone's walkthrough of the game , there always may be something new that you may run into .


Rating : 7.5/10 hallucinations , due to the.....walking sounds .

Ninja Clowns - 1994 Arcade

The 80's and 90's have seen such a surge in wacky ninja abominations (turtle ninjas , rabbit ninjas, fat ninjas) that the name of todays game realy can't come as a surprise .

The game's plot is about some evil clown named Twisto turning every one in the city into "zombies" . So it's your task to go out and brutaly beat the shit out of them , until you defeat a gigantic clown spider , which explodes into popcorn , which somehow frees people from their hypnotic state .As you might have guessed , the game is weird . It seems to ignore the fact that even the Powerpuff Girls (before it began to suck) got , that is these "saved" people are probably gonna be beaten up to near death , but whatever .

But as for the weirdness , I don't want to spoil too much , but here's two of the bosses

And yeah , the man chicken attacks you by shiting eggs at you.........which is actualy kind of disturbing if you think about it . That's like a female supervillian attacking you by birthing fast flying fetuses in your general direction at 30 miles per hour .

You play as the clown ,obviously , though he realy has no ninja esque qualities or weapons to speak of . Just fyring pies at peoples' faces .


The game itself is a little long , and the Big Top stage ,which you think would be the crowning moment of a game about clowns , just recycles the one midget clown enemy (in several colours and flavours !),and enemies like Elvis fighting with a harmonika and the fat lady , all premiering in earlier levels . The boss itself is also the most boring , just some sort of rogue mystic in a turban attacking you with exploding bunnies......yet somehow he's stil boring .

Rating for the game is : 4 out of 5 cherry pies .

Gourmet Sentai Bara Yarou - Super Famicom 1995 (Winds/Virgin Interactive)

This is an odd turn on the conventional beat em up . In the futuristic year of......the 21st century , after World War III , a city , named (a bit optimisticaly) Zeus Heaven Magic City is under attack of the villanous organisation Bath.......whose goal is to.........well.......do stuff .


BAD STUFF !!!






So the wise elders of Zeus devise a plan : create a trio of human robot (cyborg anyone ?) abominations , send them out alone while being ridiculously outnumbered , and hope for the best .

The three characters you fight for is Madame , Tres Bien and the default beat em up character , Bonjour ,a Haggar-esque oaf . They don't seem to vary in strength all that much , aside from one crucial little aspect that we'll talk about later .


The game right away puts you up against an array of bizzare enemies . Floating robot heads , a living pocketknife punk who dies by attacking you ,some random thug guy , scantily clad ladies with metalic claws , a small guy with a box for a head and a light bulb that you'll be sorry you killed , walking landmimes , and then there's....Oh Damn .


No , that realy is his name . A walking mentaly handicaped person who makes curent Ariel Sharon seem like Raffael Nadal in comparison , he has no attacks , walks around so slowly that he has no actual character animation and.....drools . The only thing he can do to you is exploding when he dies . Oh and he also yells "Die" every time you hit them .


Now the bosses are a fairly bizzare lot , stemming from a woman's face in a giant jar on mechanic legs , to a flying man wasp that injects you with it's.....thingy and the apropriately named Gun Jerk , the top hat wearing , shirt not wearing magician who has a tie that can punch you and who can turn you into one of the enemies for a short while . Which is not so bad.....unless you become Oh Damn . Damn .


During this battle you might have thought it was kind of sad for how short a period you actualy get to stay transformed . Well guess what , there is a cheat which allows you to play through the game as one of these enemies all the time . However they have one major limitation : they cannot pick up ingredients .


This is that one major difference between this game and most (read : ALL) beat em ups . Your health does not get replendished after each level . Normaly this would be the cause of rage of many a gaming nerd out there , and surely justified . But when you defeat an enemy , they drop an ingredient . Picking it up will add it to your inventory and after the end of each stage you get to face

a character who looks like he wandered off from Toriko .

Anyways chose two incredients and the cheff will mix then up into a full fledged meal in a matter of seconds (read : two) . You then proceed to eat your designed dish (made harder to fine tune without being able to read Japanese) . The resulted HP bonus can range from + 50 to - 999 .

Yeah......

The one major setback of this game is the final boss .

This little fucker has the annoying tendency to turn into a blue robot that can suck you into him , turn into a singing bird cage and proceed to do a pile on with you as the one who is being piled , with him as the one who is on .

There is a special move to avoid getting sucked in , but I usualy just go to as far away from his as possible then jump into his head . That doesn't hurt you and knocks you back , temporarily avoiding his suction . Simply repeat the process until he stops .

The other major setback of this boss is the form where he becomes a mini rolling ball of fire that's too low to actualy kick before it fires up while speeding towards you . I had to literaly let myself get killed and switch to Madame , given her jump kick actual reaches much lower .

Stil I at least got to see her spin around and expose her almost naked ass in the end credits.....an act she can do even regularly in the game , as part of a series of poses that each main character does . These literaly have no use other then just looking pretty (well in Madame's case anyway) .

In conclusion , the game is hard , yet is certainly inovative and fresh and it's stock of weirdness is enough to ensure you will not get bored halfway through , like in other beat em ups .

As such I rate this game with 4 out of 5 French Greetings .

Trio the Punch - Never Forget me (Data East , Arcade , 1990)

Trio the Punch is the product of Data East's warped sense of genious . Take a fighting game , strip it of all plot , throw in the most bizarre settings and enemies and you have yourself a cult classic "hit" .

Well , almost .

The main problem with TTP is that it is just too long . And were it simply because it is overflowing with surreal weirdness , I would gladly savour the experience . However.......

Your main three characters . This is one of the rare examples I have experienced where in game graphics are actualy better looking then the character artwork on the selection/title screen . The Ninja is the only with a range attack , the other rely on shorter range attack (the barbarian uses a grill torch , while the gangster/a only uses his fists) . The game consists of many short rounds where mostly in order to fight a boss you need to colect a certain number of yellow hearts (which flash the words "help" when they apear , for.....some reason) . In some levels , you have no hearts to colect , but simply have to walk a bit towards the boss .

After defeating said boss , you play a mini game called lottery , which may increase your life , power up your main weapon (ganster man gets upgraded from fists to a garbage can for example) , sub weapon (a more powefull attack you may use only once per level) or.....power them down . This is sort of nice for the first few minutes , but after doing it more then twenty times , it wears on your nerves .

Speaking of which , the enemies : they range from Karnov (star of the NES/Arcade title of the same name , courtesy of Data East of course) , to zombies , thugs and the like . The first boss you face is a giant statue of Karnov carried ny mini Karnovs that shoots fire out of it's toe .

This seems like a promising start but it's just sprinkles on a giant banana shake gone bad two weeks ago . Nobody wants to down the whole thing , but that is what you have to do here .

In this case it is basicly fighting random bland enemies as stage bosses numerous times . Oh sure , you fight a disembodied hand , foot , some.....bizzare looking ghosts , your chinese master Mr. Chin ,and a ....pink sheep but this variety does not stay throughout the game . Particularly the last section of the game . The feudal Japan stage was prety repetitive , with it's three colour swaped ninjas , acting even as bosses , but that has nothing on the future/space ship setting . The whole section basicly has you fighting one enemy type . Blobs . Green , blue , red and yellow blobs . Sure the yellow ones turn into clay lizard men for a while after being hit , and the red ones have float tanks and take a crapload of time to actualy kill , but they are stil blobs . The blue slimes you start off against in RPG titles . The only other enemy is a robot as a boss , but he is prety boring to look at .

The last stage also becomes increasingly frstrating and tedious . The necessary amount of hearts to summon the boss is very hard to even colect before the 30 second timer shows up , meaning you have half a minute to defeat a boss who hasn't even showed up yet ! And when you do get him to show up and beat him , the robot turns into his second form.....a blob (sigh......) with a new health bar and you are basicly screwed .

This goes on for several stages , and does not improve at all . The entiere futuristic section should have been cut , and it would certainly not have made the game feel any shorter at it's 30 plus levels .

As for the last level and ending.....well I say the decision is up to you whether it is worth the trouble or not .

Trio the Punch recieves 3 out of 5 wife beaters , because the early stages of the game actualy do merrit replaying .

Ai Cho Aniki/Super Big Brother of Love - Masaya/NCS 1995 (PC Engine CD)

Ai Cho Aniki is one of those games that apeared in the 90's , stired up some wind and gave birth to a mostly dying franchise that never achieved the same pinacle as it did with this installment  , at least that is what most people will tell you .

The game itself is so far the only one to fully feature the brothers Samson and Adon , featured on the cover above , as the main heroes . Sure in the PSP version they're there , but as options , like they were in the first game (Cho Aniki) and in prety much any other , except the Wonderswan RPG (which I can't play given it's entierly in Japanese) . Ironic , seeing that these two are prety much the first thing anyone thinks of when the franchise comes up .

For those not fully aware of the nature of this game , a quick wrap up :

The game is a flying horizontal (for the most part) shooter , with a thong wearing man flying through space , killing giant faces and thong wearing snowmen , set to the tunes of classical opera and gregorian choir .

The story is , you have to fight the Neo body building empire . You travel along the four stages , each with three areas , ranging from town streets , space , and forest . The locales may seem a little uninspired like this , but it's what populates these screens that gets your atention . Yes , those two gigantic  , hugging men are enemies in the game .

The game is legendary for alot of imagery that is considered homoerotic . Well , that is sort of true . But certainly that is not the only quirk in the game . It ranges from gigantic stick monsters , to evil snowmen , flying faces of all possible shapes and

This guy . He showed up in the first game too , and is in fact a playable character in the aforementioned Wonderswan RPG title . He even apears in Gynoug , another bizzare , quirky game by the same designer .

It's stil kind of hard arguing against the "gay game" rumours with images like these though :

Stil , the game is prety fun , though criminaly short and I managed to beat it without cheating on my second playthrough . If I only found out how to do that damn men's beam .......

Controls are simple . Attack button fires homing shots , back , forward and shooting fires deadly starts , and you can keep the attack button pressed for continous star sprinkling , but you have to continue moving . There is also the flex attack , which is not that powerfull and I have no idea how to do , and the giant "Men's beam" shot out of your head (that's what the hole is for) , which is extremely powerfull , but no place on the net specifies just how to do it . Your other button allows you to ballet across the screen , avoiding all enemies and projectiles , except for the final boss . However , you can't just skiddle your way through this game on high heels , because you're on a timer , and the bosses recquire quick defeat .

The game itself has no lives system , so you can die as many times as you want as long as you finish the given stage on time . Run out of time once though , even on the last level , and it's all the way back to the begining .

Finaly , the music is just awesome and the tracks themselves are varied and are rumoured to have actualy outsold the game at one point .

Playing this game is almost a must , as it is a near life changing experience .

If I have to rate it , I'd say 4.5/5 Farrokh Bulsaras .