Bravoman - Punch people in the face from 50 feet away!

As a weird guy, it's only natural for someone like me to be drawn to weird games. Games that are just so crazy, that it will make it a normal person's head hurt just trying to comprehend it all. So when it comes to games like Bravoman, I'm drawn to it like a fat kid on cake. Is this game truly amazing? Not entirely, no, but it trumps many with an absolutely amazing super hero. A hero who makes a shocking return in "Namco X Capcom" and yet hasn't made a single appearance since.

This game was originally released in Japanese arcades in 1988 by Namco. This game is simply too much awesome for America, but they made a Turbografix-16 port in 1990 to be released overseas with a simply amazing English translation. Bravoman is your traditional "tokusatsu"-styled hero among the same veins as the Power Rangers or Kamen Rider. The evil Dr. Bomb is making a horrible "end of the world"-type weapon, and it's up to insurance salesman-turned-superhero Bravoman to save the day! Now why is he called Bravoman? Because he always yells out "BRAVO!" when he attacks! Why does he say "BRAVO!"?  I have no idea.  His powers enable him to punch and kick things from across the screen with stretchable limbs, it's like an action title where you play as Street Fighter's Dhalsim, except you can't set things on fire.

As far as mechanics go, this game is very simple. You simply run to the right of the screen while punching whatever that might get in your way. The controls are a bit wonky for game made in this era, so you really need to learn the limit of your limits quickly if you want to survive later on. At the end of the level you'd run across your sidekick known as "Lottery Man" who is simply a robot with a unicycle, usually saying "Hey Bravoman, want to eat?" and throws a couple onigiri your way. If you're so inclined, you can be a complete dick and punch the living daylights out of Lottery Man much to his own annoyance. Do it enough and he'll just appear in the next stages only to taunt you, but eventually he'll forgive you because that's what bros do, they forgive one another.

Bravoman has a cute little theme that you hear in the first level and in jingle form at the end of each level. Other than that, the music isn't particularly noteworthy as I can't even force myself to remember any of the game's tunes. Graphics aren't much to look at either, but for a 1990 game it was pretty great especially since I was still play NES games during this time! At the very least, Bravoman has a great running animation, he truly looks like he's moving with a purpose.

It's not touched upon much in this blog entry, but this game is seriously bizarre. I'd love to talk all the weird stuff you'd find, but it would actually be a lot funnier if you ran into the hidden jokes by yourself (Try punching the telephone booth!). Your head would probably explode in confusion, or you might end up laughing your ass off like I did. As mentioned before, Bravoman teamed up with fellow obscure videogame heroine Wonder Momo in the game "Namco X Capcom" which was released only in Japan. With a much more updated art style, he still remains goofy-looking badass who can throw a mean punch. If you grew up on modern video games I really wouldn't recommend this title to you, it requires some precision and the gameplay hasn't particularly aged too well. But if you're aching for something truly different, then go ahead and try out Bravoman!

Power Quest - A.K.A "Spam AXE's low kick to win the game" game!

Fighting games on portable handhelds were something of an oddity back then. On the Gameboy, you only had 2 buttons and the D-pad to do all of your actions, and for most fighting games back then it simply wasn't enough. How can you keep a fighting game interesting if you could only use two buttons? It's a legitimate technological limitation, but Power Quest stood rose to the challenge, and gave us handheld fanatics a fighting game worth talking about today.

You can't hear it, but "1995" is playing right now.

Power Quest was released in the U.S in 1998 by Sunsoft for the Gameboy Color. Looking at the box art and super generic (but awesome sounding) title gives you the impression that this is an action game rather than something that belongs in the fighting genre. In fact, in Japan it went by the much more unique name "Gekitō Power Modeler" and it was published by Capcom! I decided to talk about this game today after talking about Gotcha Force as this game features a similar premise. The entire setting is that there's a new craze in town where every kid had miniature remote control robots that would battle with one another. As a kid in town, you win a contest for a free power model which you then use to fight your way to the top of social ladder and become world champion. Along the way, you take out a gang of cheating punks, put a misandrist girl in her place, and tragically part ways with a life-long friend. Not nearly as dramatic as I like to put it, but the game's story mode definitely tried to make things interesting for people who crave a single player experience.

There are only 6 playable characters that you get to choose from in this game. MAX is great for his punching power, GONG is the brutal-but-slow power house, LON is the Chinese martial artist, AXE is an alien-type who is also known as one of the cheapest characters in the game, SPEED is your speedy quick girl who specializes in kicks, and BOROT is just laughably useless as he only has one punch and can't block or jump. The names aren't the most creative, but they're just remote control models and don't really have personalities of their own. In the story mode, you buy parts to upgrade the attack power of your model and help enable it to pull off super combos. There's a surprisingly amount of variety in the moves for only two buttons, you'll find the fighting system to be very fun with it if you can find a friend who also has the cartridge, but that was impossible for me as a kid back then. The story mode has some cheap A.I but if you stick with Axe and use his low sliding kick, you'll be breezing right through it. AXE would probably be banned from tournaments because he is totally broken.

AXE's low kick is devastating.

Graphics are nicely animated for a Gameboy color game, which is great because each character has a surprising amount of moves they can use. AXE has a particularly notable victory animation where he lashes out his alien tongue which is pretty cool. Most of the story is carried out by goofy looking portraits of the kids and various adults you run across during the events of the game. A lot of them look like borderline Asian stereotypes, which I find a bit surprising as this game was made in Japan. They changed Louis's sprite to look more "American" in the international version, but he still looks like a jackass in both, so nothing to rage about here. The music is actually pretty great though, filled with many upbeat chip-tunes. The best song, according to many, happens to be "1995". Why the song is called "1995" is anyone's guess, but it's a great thing that they let you listen to the game's tunes at anytime via the sound test!

I never met a single human being who has played this game, as a I kid I would ask everyone if they had this, and they would assume I'm talking about something else like Quest 64. I know I'm not the only one who enjoyed this game though, as someone even went through the trouble of ripping the game's soundtrack which is a very noble endeavor indeed!  Even if you factor in the fact that AXE is overpowered, this game is still a lot of fun and it's one of the better fighting games you can find on the Gameboy Color.  Be sure to check out the video as "1995" plays right through it!

Gotcha Force - Wage battles for the sake of humanity in a child's sandbox!

I remember being very excited for this game when I first read about it in a magazine. It sounded like it had everything I could want in a game, from team-based multi-player to free form combat. And then the game came out and every critic hated on it, and like a sucker, I believed them. Years later when the gamecube was on it's last legs, I happen to run across this game at the gamestop for a used price that was unusually high. As it turns out, this game is something of a collectable, so I snatched it up just for shelving purposes. What surprised me was that I ended up having more fun than the critics would expect me to have! This is a crazy awesome game here people, it's a victim of a conspiracy!

Multi-player is a blast

Gotcha Force was released in 2003 for the Nintendo Gamecube by Capcom. It's about these toy-sized aliens called "Gotcha Borgs" who from the sky and are out to conquer Earth. Going by the name of "Death Force", it also seems like every normal weapon is useless against their tiny onslaught. So what can defeat the Death Force? Other Gotcha Borgs! Enter: Gotchaborg G-Red and his annoying child partner Kou. Seems like friendly gotcha borgs only team up with kids and not tactical-minded adults, and thus the fate of the earth is left in their incapable hands.  It's not the best story ever written, but kids would really get into it since apparently they are the only ones capable of saving our world from a tiny-sized threat.  Seriously, if it wasn't for G-Red specifically saying "Only Gotcha borgs can defeat gotcha borgs", I'd just run them over with a car and save the entire world.

Seriously though, this game has an arcade-style experience. IF you ever played Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs Zeon, you got the same exact battle system here. In fact, Gotcha Borgs is what started it all! You set up a team of gotcha borgs to fight the opposing team, when a borg is defeated their life points are deducted from the team's lifebar. Deplete the opponent's lifebar completely and you win, it's all very simple. What makes this fun however, is the sheer variety of borgs you can use! There are over 200 of the little guys and you'd be collecting and trading them like you would pokemon! And those 200 borgs are split up into 20 different classes, offering you plenty of strategic options to create the best team for your needs. Each borg has their own cool style varying from vampire swordsmen to pop idols. You have borgs for strictly offensive roles, and borgs who administer first-aid. It seems like this was a game MADE for online play, which it sorely lacks.

Japan actually got toys based on the game.

The voice acting is hilariously bad. It's almost like English-as-a-second-language bad. As you wage war in the battlefield (read: your little sister's room), you end up hearing a lot of chatter coming from the kids, so while it is irritating to some, you might actually find yourself engrossed in the action as you hear the kid cry when a borg is lost, and cheer for victory when the battle is going your way. Graphics are what you'd expect for a 2003 gamecube game, plenty of bright colors to appeal to kiddies though. Sorry FPS fans, no signs of brown or bloom here.

I think this game is great, but it's just short of being absolutely perfect. If online multiplayer was as strong back then as it is now, we'd have a seriously real game on our hands. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't even enjoy online multiplayer that much. It has all the strategic elements that you'd expect from such a game, over 200 playable characters, and chaotic gameplay to keep you interested, it just lacks that extra special seasoning that would have made this game truly delicious. Kiddy game this is not, people. Check it out.

Gitaroo Man - Go from beta as **** to an actual GUITAR HERO!

When people think of Music video games, usually the first thing that comes into their minds is either "Guitar Hero" or "Rockband". Of course, that's not really the case for a guy like me, I only think of the true guitar hero: Gitaroo Man. For anyone who played this game, they will agree that it's an overlooked instant-classic with an amazing original soundtrack, unique personality, and a heart-warming story that will still move you to this very day.

Released in the U.S by Koei in 2002, this game has quite a devoted following. It tells the story of a kid named "U-1", a dorky kid who has incredibly low self-esteem and confidence issues. He has his eye on a girl named Pico but ends up being cock-blocked every time by the popular rich kid Kazuya who is not only rich and popular, but a gifted skateboarder and straight A student as well. U-1 just can't compete with that! His only friend in the world is a talking dog named Puma who teaches him to play guitar by strumming on a tennis racket. It turns out though, that Puma was really prepping him for combat training as a little devil named Panpeus appears in his room demanding the gitaroo that U-1 had no idea that he owns. Puma then transforms in a robot and throws a futuristic looking guitar at U-1 which transforms him into Gitaroo Man who immediately engages Panpeus in an amazing battle of dueling instruments to the death! Turns out that Panpeus is just an angent of an evil emperor who goes by the name of Zoey who is out to capture all 8 gitaroos and rule the universe with it, so it's up to U-1 and Puma to gather all the gitaroos, free his people, and defeat Zoey once and for all. It's all a crazy plot, but it definitely adds a lot of color to this game.

Unlike Guitar Hero or Rockband, this game does not use a plastic guitar controller. It's style of gameplay is completely different as you rely mainly on positioning of your control stick and well-timed button presses as the game tells you what to do. Each song in this game is a battle between Gitaroo and a evil Gravillian agent that starts with a "charge" phase where Gitaroo Man must play to the best of his ability to obtain the optimal amount of health for the fight. The "Attack" phase has Gitaroo Man on the offensive dealing damage to his opponent. The "Guard" phase puts Gitaroo Man on the defensive where he must dodge all incoming instrumental attacks and any missed step will result in damage. If Gitaroo Man survives the duration of the song, he goes into the "End" phase which is a rather lengthy guitar solo that will defeat his opponent for victory. And with each victory you give a Japanese woman an orgasm as she says "You wiiiiin!" in the most inappropriately sexy way possible.

So, let's talk about the music itself. Simply put: I think it's one of the greatest video game soundtracks out there. There's something to like for everyone here. You fight a synth-board-using flying robot in a J-Pop song, you fight a trumpet playing guy in a bee-suit in a funky jazz song, you serenade a girl with an acoustic guitar, you fight skeletons with Spanish guitar, a shark with turn-table pectorals in reggae, and almost anything a guitar is used in is well represented in this game. The graphics might not suit everyone, but there is plenty going on in the background but you can't pay attention to ANY of it unless you want to lose.

Length-wise you can beat this game in 2 hours, maybe less, but that's only if you're REALLY good. You're going to end up repeating songs over and over because the later stages get really crazy. And even if you do manage to clear it, there's "Master's Play" which makes all the songs even harder and mixes up the songs a bit! Originally, this game was pretty rare because of it's limited print, but it got a reprint in 2006 due to the crazy fan-following it got. So this game should be pretty easy to find if you know where to look. I got the game before the reprint, showed all my friends the game and they went crazy for it. One of them even went as far to spent over twice as much as I did just to get his own copy of the game and he still think it was worth it (and it is.). The game was even re-released on PSP as "Gitaroo Man Lives!" featuring a co-op mode and 2 new songs!  If you want a truly unique music game and you're sick of Guitar Hero then you need to check this out.

King of Demons - What are you willing to sacrifice to save those that you love?

You have to love the times that we live in today. Normally, an obscure game from Japan would only stay in Japan and we would never know about it. But with the era of fan-released English patches, we get to experience a whole new world of games we never got a chance to experience before! This happens to be one such game, it's easy to guess why this game never got released in the states, we weren't so open to demonic subject matter back then, or at least for Nintendo of America.

This isn't even the first boss.

King of Demons, known as "MajyuuOu" in Japan, is an action-platformer by KSS released in 1995. What makes this game worth talking about is it's premise. A guy named Bayer sacrificed the wife and daughter of a man named Abel in order to revive the King of Demons and be granted tremendous power. Abel doesn't look upon family abduction too kindly and sets out to rescue them before he's notified in the beginning that his wife is already dead but his daughter is still alive. With the spirit of his wife taking the form of a guardian pixie, Abel sets out to rescue his daughter.

Armed with only a handgun, Abel can handle himself against the demons of hell pretty well. His pixie wife can attack demons while you focus on those in front of you, and if you happen to fall in battle, she will sacrifice herself just so you can keep going. Now that's true love right there, but now you're without a pixie so the game gets harder! After a boss fight the game will present you with an interesting situation: Do you want more power? The boss will drop a mysterious orb, if you grab it, you'll be transformed into a demon and your attack options improve considerably with each orb you gather. But you'll be sacrificing your humanity for this power and you can never go back. Of course the game gets more awesome when you accept the demons power to save your daughter, and your choice will ultimately change what ending you get. The obvious answer might not always be the one that leads to the best ending ending however, so be sure to choose wisely.

Being a demon does have it's perks.

If you look at the game's atmosphere, you'll might find it really creepy. It's not entirely terrifying like something out Silent Hill, but the mood is definitely there. You're facing horrible abominations, and the idea that you must become an abomination yourself just to even the playing field is a bit unsettling especially when you check out the "good" ending. The music is actually a bit on the catchy side, I quite enjoy it especially during sub-boss fights. The stage map has the most disturbing tune, however, it just reminds you that you're going deeper and deeper into hell.

This game is pretty fun, I'm glad I got a chance to play it. Also, unlike most of the games I recommend to you guys, the game is actually pretty forgiving in terms of difficulty. It was actually pretty hard finding info about this game, so I'm not quite sure about the game's popularity in Japan. Still, if you got an emulator on hand, be sure to try it out.  It's not too hard to find if you know where to look!  See you guys tomorrow.

Kamen Rider - Murderer, GeckoGelas

So I guess it's Kamen Rider Thursday! That means we talk about Kamen Rider today! Ready for some more awesome tokusatsu action? I know I am! This is episode 12, and it's honestly not the best episode of Kamen Rider out there. As you might know, the actor for Takeshi Hongo/Kamen Rider has suffered a debilitating motorcycle injury and the makers of the show tried to make the show go on without him by using recycled footage, and a suit actor for the super hero scenes. It's not so noticeable in the past two episodes but in this episode it's REALLY BAD.

GeckoGelas about to shoot down an Airplane.

Episode starts off with a pair of scientist having perfected a dangerous weapon that suspiciously looks like a flashlight with red tinted glass. This heat ray can turn any living being into a skeleton in a few seconds. Due to the potency of this new weapon, the head scientist has a morality crisis and deems the world is not ready for such a device because if it were to fall into the wrong hands, well, let's just hope it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. So the weapon is destroyed, but the assistant successfully convinces him to keep the plans somewhere safe. Little did the head scientist know, his assistant was an undercover agent for SHOCKER! The great leader of shocker rewards the spy by transforming him into the cyborg monster GeckoGelas who has the power to scale walls and trap people in cocoons!

In Japan, everyone has paper bones.

Shocker's goal this time is to steal the plans by taking the scientist's sister hostage and then force him to build a better heat gun that can take out air planes! Trolling the skies in the worst way possible, that's Shocker for you. Again, due to the actors injury, most of the episode had to be carried out by the supporting cast, mainly Ruriko in this case. She does most of the investigative work in tracking down the scientist who is currently being forced to develop a super weapon. And when things just got a little bit too dangerous with GeckoGelas suddenly appearing, Kamen Rider would just appear out of nowhere to bust some heads in.

The episode wasn't that bad, but it still wasn't as great as the GebaCondor episode. We got roughly 5 minutes worth of Kamen Rider fighting and the rest was all investigative filler. Of course, things are going to get better because I hear episode 13 has a pretty special surprise! Of course, if you ever decide that you want to check out Kamen Rider then please check out KITsubs. They release a new episode every week and are doing everything they can to bring this unknown classic to the masses.

Burning Force - Dat Hover bike! Dat Ass!

Most of my childhood is a blur but the games I played back then I remember clear as a bell.  How I even acquired most of the games I owned back then still eludes me to this day.  Of course the obvious answer is that my parents bought the game for me, but I wonder what went through my mind when I got this game.  Now that I'm man, I completely understand now: it's for dat ass.  Ha!  Just kidding.  What we really got here is a solid arcade/genesis action title.

Namco's Burning Force for the Sega Genesis was released in 1990, but was originally released for Japanese arcades in 1989. We never got the game in American arcades so we have to make due with the genesis version, which actually fixes the game's difficulty a bit by allowing you to take multiple hits! The game is still hard but not nearly as hard as say....Pick Axe Pete.

Day 3 was kind of trippy.

You play as a cadet named Hiromi Tengenji who aspires to be a space pilot. You guide her on a 5 day training mission fighting a whole bunch of robotic enemies. If you ever played Sega's "Space Harrier" then you get the right idea. Each training day is broken up into 4 parts. The first 2 parts take place in the morning and afternoon as you ride a hover bike dodging bullets and enemies coming at you from all directions and you're only limited to moving to the left or right so you're not very maneuverable. The boss of the day takes place during the evening and your hover bike is upgraded to a full-blown fighter space ship that enables you to move up-and-down as well as side-to-side. Which makes this whole game kind of weird because that makes the boss fights EASIER than the stages leading up to it! Of course this game is hard enough to make you thankful for the extra advantage given with spaceship flight.

This OST album art isn't suggestive at all.

Of course, as the Japanese game poster might imply, you do spend a good amount of time staring at the behind of Hiromi, too bad it's only 16-bit and very far away! Plenty of other games have much better fan-service so there's no point in talking about it really, but hey it did make you read this blog post! Admit it! Graphics aside, the game is backed up with a fitting soundtrack. Each day has it's own backdrop and song with the 3rd day standing out as you race across what seems to be a giant chess board. The game actually had a soundtrack released for it under the name of "Namco Game Sound Express Vol. 2" which features remastered versions of the songs in the game. It sounds very early 90s, so check it out!

Overall though, there's nothing too terribly special about this game. I enjoy the fact that it reminds me of both F-Zero and Space Harrier, and the gameplay is fast paced if not difficult. I spent a ton of time with this game as a kid, probably more than my other genesis games at the time, it was tough but it was also fair in that you get continues to keep going, so this game is VERY beatable. What's interesting though is that somebody actually remembers forgotten videogame heroine Hiromi Tengenji and put her in the Namco X Capcom game released for the PS2 in Japan back in 2005 with a remixed theme song to boot! I'm glad, because I felt the entire character was wasted potential when they did nothing with her after this game. Oh well, check out the footage: