Oh wow, I didn’t know that! This somehow makes me want to play it more.
Ah, I was just looking at this one! Which led me to Riot City, because it was said to be a snooze-fest like Riot City, or something. Or maybe I have that backwards. Sharp-looking, though.
Golden Axe (PS3)
Why the heck isn’t there a PS4 port of Golden Axe? Stuck with this early blurry PS3 affair by Backbone (and you can’t resize the screen in good fixed increments, so I couldn’t quite get rid of the side border at 4:3…). Plays okay I suppose.
I like that, would love more arcade-style games to display your used lives or credits at the end (I think JP PS3 Metal Slug 3 does?).
Short game, doesn’t really leave me wanting more, either–like, doesn’t particularly make me want to play it again; feel like it’s already shown me everything it’s got. They were going for smooth graphics and animation I guess, and especially considering the early hardware, they nailed that–but maybe it resulted in rather tame movement.
But back in the day, for a while there this was all there was if Double Dragon wasn’t available. I probably burnt out on it early. ; ) Don’t know if I had played it for 25+ years!
Crime Fighters (Konami, 1989)
(PS4 Arcade Archives version)
Tortuously long beat-em-up whose horrendous hurt boxes make hitting anything a chore. Bosses on the other hand may deck you three or four more times as you struggle to your feet after an initial knock-down.
Skip the key the rotund real boss tosses out – get it and he machine-guns you for the “bad” ending, according to Wikipedia Crime Fighters - Wikipedia – and instead just beat his defenseless self to a pulp (the game also has you do this to near-dead enemies, who just bumble helplessly around you instead of attacking)
to get the sexist “good” ending,
followed by the bosses lining up on the high score screen
for a group rush at you in which you lose the rest of your quarters.
I played the 2P, International cabinet version, which apparently loops endlessly. The 4P cab versions, per Wikipedia, manage player health like Gauntlet. The 2P Japan version has a third button, Back-Kick, that lets you sucker-hit rank-and-file enemies a la Double Dragon’s elbow.
Gonna use this pickup line next time I’m at the club
ugh, I remember playing the 4 player cab. the constant ticking down health made it a horrendous credit feeding slog because there was literally no way to get through the game without continuing at least a couple times. or may times, left a real bad taste in my mouth
Yeah, was not tempted to try the 4 player cab version even in Arcade Archives; Gauntlet-style health management = no thank you! (I think I read there’s friendly fire, too. Or err maybe even parts where you have to beat on each other or something. That was probably on Wikipedia.)
This game would have cost me so much money to play through either way. Yeesh!
Other tortures:
I will play the most morally repugnant videogames that the industry can produce if they have inner city backgrounds that lively.
Hm, Crime Fighters might be kind of interesting to play for score (each KO = 1 pt, I think–same with Vendetta / Crime Fighters 2). The first stage and 1/3rd of Crime Fighters, at least–up until the first guy with a gun–are even rather decent, once you learn a few tricks, like walking behind the topless sign so it doesn’t cartoonishly squish you, and waiting for the first boss to start spinning his mace when far away, waiting–and not breaking your horizontal plane with him–until he stops, out of breath, punching him, backing off, and repeating. I guess we’ll see how I feel about it once I last long enough to reach the first gun guy. (This is the INT version; in the 2P JP version, I could blindside all the small fry with the additional Back-Kick button, and if I got the first pistol, run up the score real fast because in the JP version, the guns have unlimited ammo. … I really dislike Back-Kick though. But that WOULD be quite a variant for a score attack if the non-cheap version got old.)
Never actually tried playing a beat-em-up for score. Crime Fighters is horrible to credit feed through though. ; )
It does have decent music.
Arcade Archives Vendetta (PS4)
Vendetta, or Crime Fighters 2, goes to some pains to improve upon most of the weaker points of its prequel! There are four different playable characters, and it isn’t really hard to hit stuff now–except with Sledge’s ground attack, which was still really picky about exactly where I stood in relation to the downed opponent; couple that with them still having the ability to rise and attack immediately, without warning, and trying a ground attack can really get you busted up pretty bad. : P But you can actually hit multiple opponents on the ground at once–in the first game, you could never hit more than one opponent at a time, with any sort of attack!
On the other hand, enemies with guns will just shoot you as you lay on the ground. = ooo
And they can shoot as soon as they get up for quite the surprise! ; P
There’s tons of stuff to pick up and blow up! Enemies (especially the pyromaniac flashers) will blow each other up
or ram into each other; game gets wild.
Hitting baddies with a spiked bat splats them against the back wall, just like one of the toughs in the prequel was always doing to you.
An upward punch, “Power Blow,” replaces the prequel’s pretty much useless neutral jump on Punch+Kick…and I didn’t find a use for Power Blow, either, and promptly forgot all about it. : P It can knock regular enemies down, but its slow speed and mediocre horizontal range made it a bit of a pain. And you never really have enemies above you–a few times a guy will be standing on a raised platform, but you can just bash the platform’s legs to knock the whole thing down, which seems much more satisfying. So I’m not really sure what Power Blow is for, I suppose I should watch a high score run or something.
Oh! And Wikipedia says Vendetta (1991 video game) - Wikipedia “every time this special attack is performed, it takes away one bar of energy from the character”–but I tried it in all four versions (2P JP, 4P JP, 2P INT, 4P INT), and it didn’t see to drain my health, even when I hit people with it, in any version–so I’m not sure what Wikipedia’s on about. Maybe that was an earlier (or later?) ROM revision?
Wikipedia also says the JP version has “dry humping” that was censored out of the INT versions, so I played through the 2P JP version–and my Sledge did NOT get dry-humped! Maybe it’s uh subtle? Guess I’ll just play the INT version (2P for less INSERT CREDIT flashing than 4P) next time. : P
Durn dogs! No dry-humping, and they aren’t as fast as in the prequel but now they take three rather than one hit to KO, and they don’t jump to punchable height as much, so they just kept grabbing my pant-leg repeatedly, grrr. Come to think of it though I’m not sure I tried just kicking them, that might’ve been the thing to do.
The boss rush at the end is no longer optional, but only a few attack you at a time, rather than eight. : P
Also the bosses are in general way less cheap; actually in this boss rush the enemy who gave me the worst time was just a regular martial arts dude; in the prequel those guys were nearly impossible to knock down, but for most of this one they were push-overs–but in the boss fight, he’d spring over the bigger, more predictable bosses, kick me in the head or whatever, and jump back behind the bosses before I could get him! Ooohh!
Oh and the game loops, at a higher difficulty–indefinitely, according to Wikipedia.
Arcade Archives 64th. Street (PS4)
Original published by Jaleco, 1991
Some delightfully quirky jank and really nice punching, throwing, and smashing guys into the background in Jaleco’s 1991 quasi-USA-1930s gangster beat-em-up, despite a somewhat slow movement speed, but the bosses become the just-gonna-hit-u-a-lot type, although maybe that’s to offset the l/r+buttons special move you could spam to break the rest of the game if only the input timing wasn’t quite so fiddly. Came to the US PSN store, even though the story is in Japanese, and Wikipedia lists only a Japanese arcade release.
And according to Wikipedia, developed by C.P. Brain, whose name you can see on crates and a background or two.
It’s too bad about the bosses and awkward special spam because there’s lots of fun stuff to see, like
I don’t know if 64th Street had a US release (it probably did, the flyer is in Japanese and English and lists both Western Jaleco subsidiaries) but it has a world ROM in MAME and you can see the beautiful story in English
the secret to 64th Street is never ever let the bosses do anything, just stand over them and throw meaties and God have mercy on you if they get to do anything
it also bears mentioning that it has the best transitional screen in games
Apparently it had multiple releases, in Japan and internationally. The encryption wasn’t cracked for emulation until 2016, and only on two versions. More at the bottom of this article: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/zero-team/
I saw that you mentioned “Also home to the best stage transitions in a game” in your original post on 64th. Street, but I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Mostly there’s just a blue horizontal “beam me up” type animation screen shown for a second, then you’re in a new location.
SIR/MADAM YOU ARE FOGETTING THE JINGLE DURING THAT TRANSITIONAL
Ah. Yeah it’s not bad for its four notes or so. In the later stages that doesn’t happen, the stage music just plays through it.
zero team has, in the time since that olde poste, received an arcade archives release
I wonder if that world ROM is an unreleased version. Definitely not included in Arcade Archives, which I would think would have included it, as they often do include multiple release versions and regional versions. Looking at that flyer, https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=1875&image=1 , it is listed listed as a Japan region flyer, mixing English and Japanese is typical for Japanese arcade flyers, and the inclusion of Western subsidiaries looks like their standard company boilerplate.
(Regarding that over the top sound effect in the flyer, which doesn’t appear in the 64th. Street game itself, there was a similar one that WAS in Taito’s more-of-a-fighting-game-but-still-isometric Violence Fight, released two years earlier:
And in the sequel, Violence Fight II / Solitary Fighter, out in 1991, same year as 64th. Street:
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khNjT3VJkEI&t=430s ))
Arcade Archives Zero Team (PS4)
Original by Seibu Kaihatsu, 1993
The characters are kinda tiny but there’s loads of delicious pixel art detail
in this well-paced beat-em-up. Seems a little overly complicated mechanically at first but in practice doing the throws and “Super Move” and other multi-input commands is reasonably intuitive.
Some quirky enemy characters, like the bird-man boss
and the guys with gigantic jaws
help keep things interesting; ooh and the twin samurai bosses whose giant spears you can pick up and use to impale them–heck you can even throw their helmets at them!
Tons of stuff to pick up and throw, for that matter–your characters pick objects up automatically!–and the bad guys do it as well, leading to lots of hilarious friendly fire carnage. Oh and the RPG vs RPG battles!
Tons of treasure items popping out of things to pick up for points, too.
The bosses mostly aren’t TOO frustrating; I’d even say the end-boss is rather fun, even though he attacks up, down, and diagonally!!
At the end you get your cumulative score, including an end bonus for deaths and wounds (I had too many of both–24 and 176–so I got zero for those ; ).
I’m not too keen on the other three playable characters (regular beat 'em up hero guy, blond hero in ninja suit guy,
girl with embarrassing slaps in embarrassing thong)
so I’m thinking for playing this again I can work on improving my play-through score with Big-O!
His slow speed makes it challenging to avoid getting surrounded, so I have to be more heads-up there and get better at the various techniques you can use–like his lighting-fast back-elbow if you quickly reverse direction during a combo–to outmaneuver the fast opponents!
Oh and I should probably play the “Early Version” instead of the “Later Version”, since in “Early” the “Thunder Strike” special move (press both buttons together) uses less of your character’s health; I only need it as a last-resort AOE knock-down to get out of being surrounded,
so it doesn’t matter too much that it would also be doing less damage to the enemies.
Other stuff:
don;t be knocking my girl spin she has the best moves of the lot
Her jump flip throw is cool, but I’m not a fan of her wimpy-looking default slap.
