The fact that The Firemen exists is a weird thing. An action game about battling rampaging fires, it shows developer Human Entertainment’s love of the seemingly never-ending onslaught of B-grade action movies that Hollywood farted out in the 80’s. Think Die Hard minus all the cowboy stuff (so not really Die Hard at all, I guess). What’s tragic is that this super American gem never made it State-side. It’s a product that on paper shouldn’t be half as great as it is, and on your SNES shouldn’t have really even ever come out.
Continue reading “The Firemen: Into the Fire”Category: Action
Asura’s Wrath: The New Anime
Asura’s Wrath contains one of the most brilliant player-directed narrative sequences in videogames; a fist fight. The two brawlers dance about the screen, one trying desperately to explain his actions to the other among a flurry of attacks. To evade them, the player must nail the timing for the increasingly frequent on-screen button prompts as any mistake is punished with a fist to the face, interrupting the dialogue and completely ending the conversation.
Soul Blazer: Blazin’ The Trail
The early-to-mid 90’s set the stage for one of the most beautiful production company and development studio relationships to exist in video games with the pairing of Japanese companies Quintet and Enix. While their first game, ActRaiser, a mesh between classic platforming and Sim City style urban planning, was an insanely fresh, original idea that would lead to their eventual ‘Quintology’ it wasn’t until the release of their next title that the duo would really show their true genius.
Zelda’s Missing Link
Early on in A Link Between Worlds, the travelling merchant Ravio takes up shop in your house, lines it with The Legend of Zelda’s classic complement of items and offers to rent Link each and every one. This event single-handedly eradicates the suffocatingly linear item-based progression that had reached its logical conclusion even before Twilight Princess put its staggering deficiencies on display. A Link Between Worlds is in many ways an alternate take on an old story, one that reveals its true ambitions at the beginning of the second act as Link squeezes through a tear in the fabric of Hyrule and discovers that every inch of the world and its seven palaces are accessible with the right tool in hand.
The Saint’s Flow: Purple Stuff
The Japanese ad for The Saint’s Flow Energy Drink shows Pierce, the hip and youthful face of the Third Street Saints brand division, being mercilessly beaten on a basketball court by armed punks. The situation looks bleak, until an anthropomorphized purple can of Saints Flow descends from heaven and gives him the strength to throw off his attackers, unleash a savage volley of fists, kicks and a clothesline before shooting a Ryu-style fireball from his hands and closing out the performance by atomic dunking a basketball that appeared out of nowhere to a shower of neon stars. The Third Streets Saint’s lifestyle has been canned and is ready to be swallowed.
A Super Mario World: Exploring Dinosaur Land Through Play
Super Mario World starts at Yoshi’s House and gives the pudgy Italian plumber the freedom to explore the overworld to the left or right. To the left is Yoshi’s Island 1, a bright and colorful place with tank top-wearing koopa’s, small purple dinosaurs and giant goddamn bullet bills. Beat it and the area around will come alive underfoot. The path dead ends at the Yellow Switch Palace sitting on top of a cliff and the large button that causes matching boxes to fill in throughout the world. With this one action, large scale change has swept across Dinosaur Land. It will never be the same.
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Mega Man Legends & The Future Archaeology
For a decade across the 8 and 16-bit generations, Mega Man had been an action-packed dynamo, but after some twenty odd games, his aging framework was in need of some vital upgrades. Powered by the PlayStation hardware, Yoshinori Kawano and his crew of robot masters successfully forged a new Blue Bomber, translating his action concepts onto a three-dimensional world.
The new 32 bit tech gave the series a chance to break away from the techno-future aesthetic found in both the Classic and X series with their cities dependent on robots for manual labor. Mega Man Legends is an adventure in a world covered in endless water where diggers explore the ruins of a lost civilization amongst the scattered land masses for Zenny and treasure.
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Blast Corps’ Controlled Demolition
For anyone who used to make believe with a box full of Tonka Trucks and action figures, Rare’s Blast Corps is a special kind of game, one that takes you back to the timeless parts of your childhood that don’t fade just because you’re now an adult. It allows you to relive the freedom that comes from the act of playing and the simple joys that come from pretending that you’re taking control of a roughneck crew out to save the world through demolition.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7: The Cinematic ‘Not Quite Action’, ‘Not Entirely RPG’ Action RPG
Final Fantasy 7 so thoroughly revolutionized JRPG’s that its legacy was long and wide reaching. From it’s move to polygonal graphics that allowed its characters a deeper range of expression to its dense and layered environments that didn’t rely on sticking the perspective in the ceiling of the world to look down on its inhabitants to its mind-blowing CG cutscenes, it tolds its story of good and evil with a memorable cast of characters with cinematic (though not always consistent) flair. So it’s fitting that as a pivotal entry in the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7’s timeline, Crisis Core is the snake’s jaws wrapped around the back of its own head, further realizing the cinematic ambitions of that important milestone.
Mega Man 9’s Speed Metal
Mega Man 9 fixed Mega Man by distilling the Blue Bomber’s staid gameplay to its essentials: moving and shooting. By striving to limit itself to the restrictions of twenty year old hardware, Inti Creates game highlights how bogged down with its own design the series core gameplay had become over its evolution. What they made is a long lost NES game.
The story immediately sets the tone in sprites full of personality. Having again been defeated by our blue hero, Dr. Wily swears off his evil ways. But its not long before the residents of Monsteropolis are in danger from a collection on renegade robots again. But its Wily that steps up to protect the city, claiming innocence and insisting the robots were created by the good-natured Dr. Light. To clear his name, Mega Man heads out.
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