Thanks to this forum and thread I’ve been made aware of the games from Vic Tokai. Last night I played about 4 games from their catalog (including more Socket).
Battle Mania Daiginjou has been brought to my attention several times, first in the context of Vic Tokai, then more recently in a Video Game Deep Cuts email newsletter that was curated by Brandon, which included an interview with the original developers. Finally the videogame music thread linked to the game, which I really liked, and that got me interested to check it out. Not only does my xbox have a rom, but it’s the english translation.
I really love this screen
Hard to describe my first impression of Battle Mania other than saying “holy shit” over and over again. The graphics and art are amazing. the music is amazing. I don’t consider myself an expert in the shmup genre but this combination of weapon powerups and levels full of surprises and minibosses is really engaging. I set it to “Easy” mode and could only make it to the 3rd level once. I like how it doesn’t burn continues unless you get to the 2nd stage. The enemy designs are all incredible and the fact that each stage has unique enemies that only show up for on particular part of one particular level is a lot to deal with.
The entire time I was playing it, I kept thinking “How have I never heard of this game before?” It was like after i discovered YMO and started listening to their entire discography. They seemed incredibly important and influential but after decades of listing to music I had only now just stumbled onto them. Part of me thinks that if this and Trouble Shooting were more popular it would have radically changed videogames in the US and our perception of what “retro” is.
I think next I’ll dig into Trouble Shooting, which is the US release of the game before Battle Mania.
Decap Attack is another game which got on my radar thanks to y’alls suggestions. This was the next game I dug into
A headless mummy as the main protagonist of a game is incredibly weird, I have to say. I recognize a lot of the same punching and throwing mechanics from the brief time I played Psycho Fox (it even has the same weird spring tower from Psycho Fox). I find the idea of picking up a skull and just throwing it at enemies to be pretty funny. The inventory screen is mapped to a face button, and it’s a little awkward to navigate, so for the first 15 or so minutes of playing I kept bringing up the inventory screen instead of jumping.
Levels were pretty hard to navigate, some of the platforms blend into the background a little too well and it takes some time to really notice which are ones you can jump on. I forgot when games were just super hard like this. I think I made it to the 3rd level before running out of continues. Not only that but level items and state is persistent across game lives, so I’d go over a collapsed bridge and couldn’t use that path anymore, or run out of health pickups.
Last game for the night was Clash at Demonhead. A game I picked because I recognize the name from the Scott Pilgrim movie, a fact that embarrasses me.
It’s a game where you run and gun and pick your path at the end of a level. On the one hand it’s fairly rudimentary (I guess after playing Mega Drive games most of the night it would feel that way) But it has some pretty charming writing. The dialog sections are kind of funny.
I may have to go back and replay it, because at this point in the day my brain was totally fried and navigating some platforms as well as a sprawling game world was kind of too much for my remaining 2 braincells. I think at once point I accidentally started a level, fell down a hole into an underground lake, and then drowned. That was unexpected. also the ghost of the protagonist leaving the body on death is a funny touch.
What was interesting is you can back out of levels to go to the overworld and pick a different path, which I found interesting. I did find this out because one enemy early in a level knocked me off screen and back into the overworld map, which is hilarious.
Google calls this a “Metroidvania” which is a name I associate with Steam Games and it feels like almost an insult at this point. I would like to dig into this more and possibly fight a boss. I’d also like to get into more Vic Tokai games and see how they stack up.