@“exodus”#p40753
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A newer game than most here but also one I have a feeling might be an all timer…
I'm waiting on that very IC Umihara Kawase rep (but also expecting to be surprised)
whoa, has umihara kawase not been played yet? hmmm
@“exodus”#p40785 I swear somewhere in my brainbox I‘ve seen a picture of Umihara Kawase deep on this forum, but there’s no way to know. I'm always ready to see another one, though
Let's do two at once just to be sure.
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I bought fresh used of course, since nicalis Is Bad. And I only have shun disc only :o
Anyway, folks can choose N (umihara kawase shun) or h (for fresh).
Yeeeeeeaaaah, double Kawase. I feel like Fresh is a new one for sure. I‘ll beat that game someday (with the easy-mode Cotton, because I’m not insane)
taking advantage of the H at the end of Fresh to take some pictures of some of the stuff from my desk at Bungie that's been sitting in boxes at my house for the last year and a half while working from home.
Here's a Japanese copy of Halo, and a still sealed shipping box for the big ol collector's edition thingy for Halo Reach just for fun.
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Coming up on the 11th anniversary of that street date!!
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I thought it might be fun to take the 一 from ヘイロー and run with it, so here's 一騎当千 eloquent fist, a generic yet anime beat em up in which the ladies clothes shred off as they take damage. It's obviously made for a gross audience and isn't that great, but I got it because it came out when there was a real drought of beat em ups. And it was bad! The end.
gonna have to start digging into my weird xbox 360 and wii collection
my parents didn‘t allow me to own M rated games until I was like 15, (I was allowed to play them at friend houses or if someone brought a game to my house though), and while my friends were playing their call of duty’s, bioshocks and assasins creeds, me and my brother used to buy a lot of 10 dlls or less used weird 360 games at gamestop because the popular stuff was all M rated. I remember this hulk game being quite fun, it plays a lot like the Hulk game that frank is always talking about.
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@“穴”#p40981 ahh yeah I think my dad bought this at some point. I recall being able to tear cars in half to make boxing gloves from the scrap metal, and being able to throw pedestrians cartoonishly far. I never played the ultimate destruction game people always talk about that turned into Prototype, but I remember this one being a pleasantly weird thing I messed around with one time.
@“andrewelmore”#p40984 frank talks about this one on the show from time to time, specifically referencing the car tearing in half and pedestrian throwing, if I recall! so you've remembered the right stuff
@“exodus”#p40987 I think the one frank talks about is The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (2005) and the one in the picture is The Incredible Hulk (2008) which is based on the movie. I haven't played Ultimate Destruction but from looking at youtube videos both games share a lot of mechanics and they are pretty similar even though they are from different developers
@“穴”#p40988 oops, I think you're right!
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I acquired this game a few years ago but never actually beat it despite hearing that it is one of the shorter jrpgs! When I did play it though, everything was so dark… should have made my TV brighter and played it on a crt instead. I remember the visuals and cutscenes were gorgeous and reminded me of FFVIII a lot! I always tell myself to just beat it over a Halloween weekend but I’ve never did! Might do it this Halloween.
@“X3N0Sbioz”#p40995 oh heck yeah, the spiritual predecessor to Shadow Hearts! so ridiculously expensive now unfortunately
I wanted to get this to M so that Chaz could talk about hakkaider but I don't have a game that starts with a and ends with m! Not that I can think of anyway.
So here's one that ends with R.
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My buddy motohiro kawashima did music for this!
And now I‘m cheating slightly by going twice, but the thread has been dormant so I’m ABUSING MOD POWER and presenting resident evil dead aim.
Okay chaz, your time to shine!
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@“exodus”#3 Thank you so nice! And, of course, now I am really tempted to merdepost on something completely unrelated like Madden 97 or Mr. Bones. But let’s free this writeup rotting in draft purgatory since early July…
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MECHANICAL VIOLATOR HAKAIDER
What a title. Perish the thought you’d mistake him with one of those _consensual_ protagonists. The full romanized title, as written on the spine, is MECHANICAL VIOLATOR HAKAIDER: THE LAST JUDGEMENT so you can follow with either R or T for the next game, whichever you prefer.
Mechanical Violator Hakaider (the literal translation of the Japanese title 人造人間ハカイダー gives a much tamer "_Android Hakaider_") is a 1995 feature film from Toei Studios featuring the titular Hakaider, an android assassin notorious among a certain generation of Japanese children for being the main rival and frequent frenemy of bicolor hero Kikaider in a popular _tokusatsu_ TV series of the 1970s, [Jinzō Ningen Kikaider.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLdRyELB9AY) Both characters are the brainchildren [size=10](this is a good pun if you know the series)[/size] of Ishinomori Shōtarō, the extremely influential creator of [Kamen Rider](https://www.twitter.com/RaihanH98/status/1430362261898481669) and the [Super Sentai](https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/power-rangers-battle-for-the-grid-switch/) series, among many other things.
The movie, if you can find it [size=10](hint: YOU can find it)[/size], is heavily inspired by Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which had released a few years prior. Ditching the unambiguously good guy Kikaider whom the intended audience had outgrown by then, we instead follow the adventures of the [much cooler and 'tuder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0KyZWDD5X4) anti-hero Hakaider who is found emprisoned inside a mediterranean mausoleum of sorts, far into Earth's post-apocalyptic future, by a bunch of hoodlums.
This encounter allows Hakaider to free himself[size=12] (and kill the hoodlums in the process[size=10] (unclear on the _mechanical violating_ situation)[/size])[/size], ride on his indestructible chopper bike, rejoin the babylonish metropolis of JESUS TOWN and kick some metallic ass to recover his memory and maybe find out who left him to rot in that mausoleum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcIfV7yIH1A
The rest of the plot revolves around a pious and authoritative local government intent on keeping law and order via subjugation and lobotomy, their philosophical and very literal clash with The Resistance, and the asocial Hakaider belatedly taking the side of chaos, free will and black leather pants. I wonder which side Insert Credit is gonna root for! In the climatic scene, Hakaider gets to fight an angelic Android superwarrior named Michael as they shred a white chapel to reveal the blood red bowel-looking pipes and cables that keep the monstruous city running. It’s all very subtle. The story is pretty much Kamen Rider meets Terminator 2 meets Shin Megami Tensei, but this exciting description obviously oversells the movie. It's just alright, but clearly made with care.
The director of this feature film is another pretty notorious guy, Amemiya Keita, who had sparse experience and formal education with movie making. A man of many talents, Amemiya is mainly known as the character designer and "world builder" for series such as Kamen Rider Black, GARO, Winspector, Iria and more. He was a very influential character designer of the late Seventies and Eighties, and can be considered the key figure in making the *tokusatsu* genre grittier and edgier. I think a good parallel for the superhero comics fans reading this is how Frank Miller's Batman significantly altered the character's persona and universe among both the average reader and following artists.
Amemiya has also been involved in a few video games. For instance, you might recognize his art direction on the terrific [Hagane for the Super Famicom.](http://www.videogameden.com/sfc.htm?hag) He also guest-designed a bunch of demons for Shin Megami Tensei IV (with varying degress of success) and most recently was involved [in one of the Final Fantasy XIV expansions,](https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/002578.html) in a typical YoshiP move. Etc.
Some of you may have guessed it by now, but Amemiya Keita was also the art director, CG movie director and scenarist of Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari, one of his most personal works. [I mentioned back then](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/610-last-letter-game-games-in-your-collection/1083) that Saturn fans mistakenly expected a hardcore RPG from Enix. What I deviously omitted to say is that Amemiya fans expected something even darker from the perceived Edgy Dudebro in charge of the game's setting and characters. That’s not at all what a creative talent like Amemiya had in mind. He wanted to change groove and tell a nice story for children, with just the right amount of instinctive darkness that gave the game an undertone of dread and mystery. Just another reason Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari did not find its audience back then.
There is no such misunderstanding to be found in the Hakaider movie. It’s a pretty dark and violent story. On top of directing the movie, Amemiya was responsible for most of the armor designs and costume designs in the movie, and they are excellent.
It just so happens that Sega co-produced the Hakaider movie, getting the rights for a video game adaptation in the process. This was the same era when Sega was spending beans into stuff like Blue Seed, Evangelion, or Revolutionary Girl Utena to build a lineup of popular cross-media IPs that could make use of the Saturn’s CD-ROM. One of the producers of the movie is Nakayama Haruki, the CEO’s son, who would end up founding his own company Marvelous a few years later.
The game adaptation of Hakaider released in December 1996 on the Saturn, with the story and characters once again handled by Amemiya. He has therefore been involved in two consecutive yet unrelated Christmas period projects on the SegaSaturn (Hakaider in 1996 then Nanatsu Kaze in 1997), strangely enough.
Actual development was handled by Japan Media Programming, a frequent collaborator of Sega’s Consumer Software division for this caliber of titles on the SegaSaturn. I am not sure whether the game’s design was a creative decision by JMP, or rather a top down request from Sega to promote their Virtua Gun, but they ended up creating a lightgun shooting game set in the messianic boilerpunk future of the movie.
https://youtu.be/DMQSXXxIJF8
Unlike most games in the genre, Hakaider does not come from the arcades and can therefore get a bit creative. There is a strong focus on the story and characters, and even some light "dungeon RPG"-style exploration and dialogue choices which you select with the _Virtua Gun_ (or the _Shuttle Mouse_ which is also fully compatibe). The soundtrack also makes some interesting choices, to say the least: [this is not your average menu BGM.](https://youtu.be/PeLwI5QgqMg)
The game's scenario is not an adaptation but rather a direct sequel to the movie, set a decade later, with a bunch of new antagonists. You would almost wonder if this wasn't originally a story that Amemiya had planned for a movie sequel. Interestingly, the game features way more callbacks and cameos from the original Jinzō Ningen Kikaider series than the movie, so it must have been quite a kick for long time fans of the IP. Not sure what the "Last Judgement" of the subtitle refers to in the story specifically, besides the biblical reference and a wish to hammer home the Terminator 2 influence until the nail hit the neighbor’s brick.
I would not call Mechanical Violator Hakaider: The Last Judgment a “hidden gem” by any means but this licensed game is a bit underrated, if you ask me! It’s in the same school as contemporaries like Horned Owl and Elemental Gearbolt on the PlayStation next door, figuring out ways to refresh the Light Gun experience beyond its carnival roots.
I brought Hakaider with me when I was housesitting for my mom. I had to be there for two weeks so I brought a small CRT, my saturn, my light gun (surprisingly!) and a bunch of games, and Hakaider was one of them. I don‘t think it’s particularly underrated actually, and aside from the wild cutscenes I was pretty disappointed with it. The light narrative stuff is cool, but otherwise it‘s incredibly visually unambitious. I think that even for a young team a light gun game is a great place to cut your teeth on 3D, since the camera is very predictable, and nothing was attempted there. Nothing was attempted in the pseudo 3D department either, and each environment is simply panned across. They just didn’t seem to try very hard to make the game look like anything. Sure, they zoomed in on a bunch of the enemy sprites, but the extra chunky pixel bad guys kinda helps sell the lack of effort more than anything else. I think I was expecting something like Beast Busters but got something more like Lethal Enforcers but with lower enemy variety (and no friendlies to skip shooting, unless I'm remembering wrong).
That's my 6 year old review from staying at my mom's house!