Give This Game a Shot: Nosferatu, Man

Nosferatu is a pretty crazy one. As soon as it boots up and you see this:

you could be forgiven for mistaking the game for a Vic Tokai-esque Castlevania clone. I mean good lord. Same font, same castle beneath a full moon, same bat cursor? These SETA fucks really couldn't come up with anything of their own to communicate "vampire"? And is "SETA" supposed to be a fake version of "SEGA"?

Hilariously, this isn't even the first Castlevania-riff which SETA piloted. They published 8 Eyes for the NES, known as perhaps the most blatant Castle-Clone this side of Vampire: Master of Darkness. At least Master of Darkness could excuse itself in that there were no other Castlevania alternatives on Game Gear.

Also worth a chuckle is that the original 1922 filmic classic Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, is thus titled because Murnau and Co. couldn't obtain the rights to the 1897 novel. Was SETA trying to call back to that? Reawaken the spirit of unlicensed vampire ripoffs?

Thankfully, Nosferatu's Castlevanialarities cease immediately after the title screen (barring that they're both gothic horror games). As soon as you hit start you'll watch a quick (admittedly Castlevanian) cut-scene and then see your character dumped into a locked prison cell. Classic puzzle setup. So you look in the mirror, see what you saw, take the saw, use it to cut off your own head, throw your head as hard as you can at the cell door

In short order, you'll discover that the game is... a cinematic platformer! With spookiness! And brawling! And a really fucking strict time limit. I've heard this game described (in a YouTube comment...) as a mix of Prince of Persia, Castlevania, and Streets of Rage. That's a boldly over-ambitious application of all three - really it's just an action game set across short, tightly-timed mazes that encourage an arcade-style mastery of the mechanics and environments for a fluid play-through. Each stage presents a number of routes, some heavier on obstacle course platforming, others on combat, and others on 'puzzles' (namely tricky jumps, movable blocks, and pressure switches), but the time limit succinctly communicates that there isn't enough time in a single run to investigate all of these available avenues. This isn't Castlevania or some bullshit. Despite that uh, title screen there.

Luckily you've got infinite lives to experiment with these paths, so you won't have to play the entire game over and over to master the later environments (a la Sonic). Once you've conquered a boss (every three stages), the timer resets and you keep that checkpoint for good, allowing you to take your time repeatedly dying and learning each area's nuances (though continuing will cost relatively insignificant upgrades). Still, it's a long enough game that unless you're using emulator save states, you'll have to get good to beat it in one sitting. That's the classic tradeoff for infinite continues - high difficulty and no saving. Fair enough as far as I'm concerned. Unless you're ready to sit down for three straight hours of continuous respawns, you probably won't see the credits until you've spent a lot of time refining your skills and learning the levels - and enemies.

Aside from the arcade-style challenge, those enemies are what really distinguish Nosferatu from the cinematic platforming field. If you've played Prince of Persia, Abe's Oddysee, or Another World, you know the platforming mechanics at play in Nosferatu. Not to say they're bad, just that they've been done before and were, even in 1994, a bit worn. Cine-plats typically separate out their combat (Persia) or omit it completely (Abe), so it's unusual to see it integrated as thoroughly as in Nosferatu. What typically draws attention here is the player character's "Streets of Rage-esque" moveset, but as that mostly boils down to button-mashing, it's really the presentation of the combat that shines through. A wide variety of enemies are used to block your path, to guard platforms, and to provide chase, and almost all of them can be either dodged or smacked down (TM). This really breaks up the monotony, not because there is platforming, then combat, then platforming, then combat (Prince of Persia already does that), but because there is a choice between fight or flight. Each enemy gives the player a chance to evaluate risk both in terms of time and life, and a chance to decide whether they have more faith in their combat or navigational skills.

There are some cool fighting-game style boss-battles to boot

If you like cinematic platformers like Prince of Persia or semi-open-ended platforming of the Sonic, Super Mario World, and Rondo of Blood variety, definitely give Nosferatu a shot. I don't think it's going to provide much of a combat/action fix, but if you like challenging maze exploration and are looking for a unique 2D platformer, you definitely can't go wrong here.

Give This Game a Shot: ActRaiser 2

In Give This Game a Shot, we give a fair shake to games that have been overlooked due to commercial failure, more popular siblings, or straight-up non-release.

Hey look, I finally gave this occasional feature a description. I've been all about features and descriptions these past one days. 

SNES fans are born with a full working knowledge of Enix/Quintet classic ActRaiser, but for those still catching on, it's a weird combination of platformer, simulation game, and top-down shooter. The player starts in control of a "sky city" floating over a giant continent peppered with Tiny Towns (TM). Zooming in on one of these city-states switches the player to control of an angel equipped with 4-way bow. The angel is tasked with combating respawning foes while directing the progress of the city's technological and geographic growth. When the player has ushered the budding society into prosperity, he will be asked to (literally) conquer its demons, shifting the game to a standard '90s platformer. Contrived as it may be, I love ActRaiser; it has that special Quintet touch - the beautiful music, the haunting atmosphere, the grace switching between micro- and macro-stories, the abundance of Mode 7. The premise of playing as a heavenly entity freeing the world from demonic bondage is carried over to the second game, but the only gameplay mechanic that remains is the over-world map.

Observe ActRaiser's world map, sim/shooter, and platforming modes of gameplay

I'm tempted at this point to go on a long tangent about Quintet and their six SNES games. Temptation averted!

ActRaiser 2 is often dismissed for eliminating the god-sim elements that made the original stand out against the sea of platformers drowning the SNES. On paper, it sounds like a disappointing betrayal. In practice, ActRaiser 2 is as unique a game as its precursor, though for reasons less immediately obvious. Where ActRaiser relied on novelty to distinguish itself, 2 reaches for thematic depth and dense gameplay. It isn't a game about developing civilization and cultivating faith; rather it addresses the vices of society (in the form of the seven deadly sins) and the plights of developing cultures. The game spans multiple continents, from which the variously characterized people beseech God to rescue them from their downfall.

ActRaiser 2 eliminates the sim, skipping straight from world map to completely redesigned action stages

The Master (aka God aka the player) travels the over-world in his floating castle (Heaven) and descends upon troubled cities to hear of their suffering. The citizens will point to the most immediate threat to their happiness, which will lead to a preliminary action stage. After the people are thus liberated, they will plead the Master to destroy the manifested source of their oppression. For instance, when the Master visits Leon, he learns that its people are being heavily taxed, with offenders thrown into a cavernous jail. The Master sets out to free the prisoners, then returns to the city to find the townsfolk still suffering under the crushing taxation. He climbs to the golden palace east of the city and topples the mad king, who has been transfigured into a dragon by the demon Greed. In luxurious Temponia, the Master discovers that the demon Gluttony has consumed all the food and the people are dying of starvation and infighting. A trip to the nearby desert of Modero reveals that the souls of the deceased are being accumulated into a Legion-like beast with innumerable mouths. The Master frees these souls and then tracks the food-stealing ants to their nest, where he must defeat Gluttony's ant-queen to save the Temponians.

Note that the names of characters and locations directly reference their role in the story (some more obviously than others - "Modero", the desert where the souls of gluttons are punished, is clearly derived from "moderation", but you might have to look up "Leon"). I like this straight-up allegorical approach to storytelling. If anything, it's something we don't often see. I can't imagine anyone being bothered by the Christian mythological baseline any more than they are by the rampant use of Greek and Norse mythology in other fantasy games - this isn't Bible Adventures Jr. The art has a creepy Baroque/Divine Comedy feel; the monsters are exaggeratedly hideous, yet extravagant, bedecked in detailed appendages and clothing. The image of the Master draws from the opposite end of the artistic spectrum: his anatomically correct, chiseled and mostly naked figure calls to mind Greco-Roman Classicism and its ideals for man. This David-like appearance emphasizes the champion's role in ridding humanity of its imperfections. Better yet, the Master's earthly form is actually an awakened statue; we see at the beginning of each stage his stoic, solemn perfection even amidst the surrounding chaos.

If you don't think ol' Angry Cloud with Death would fit in on  your local medieval tapestry, you've been looking at different local medieval tapestries than I have.

Artistically and thematically the game is a step up from ActRaiser (and just about any other SNES game), but that's not the reason it remains largely unrevered by retro gamers. That would be a terrible reason to be unrevered. No, it's the platforming itself that draws such grief. ActRaiser's Master was the most basic possible platforming protag: he could duck, attack, and jump. 2 goes in the complete opposite direction - this Master is one of the most complex 16-bit characters this side of Cybernator. He can duck, jump, double jump, float, glide, and dive, and perform a unique sword AND magic attack in any of those states. The main complaint leveled at this complexity is that the character is unwieldy, as an unchecked double-jump quickly becomes a glide which causes a long skid on landing. This 'flaw' is simply an unwillingness of players to learn the controls - the level design knows how advantageous, and simultaneously dangerous, the glide can be, and will fuck players for trying to abuse it (a simple tap of the jump button cancels a glide). If an intro level like Industren isn't good enough to teach the cancel move (with its high, small platforms), maybe the player would be better pleased with Bubsy.

This Master is a tank - his lethargic pace is necessary to keep the player focused on eliminating enemies rather than evading them. He makes up for this lack of mobility with new offensive and defensive skills - his shield is impervious to almost any projectile when standing still or ducking, his sword can be swung high, low, or in between, and from the air he can perform powerful plunging and diving attacks. The previous  Master (ActRaiser) had a few screen-clearing magic spells (only one of which could be brought into each stage), but this one has six specialized moves, each deployed by charging/releasing a basic sword attack. The spell unleashed is determined by the Master's movement state: if he's standing still, he unleashes a forward flamethrower; if he's diving, he transforms into a fiery pheonix; if he's aiming upward, he lobs a tripartite grenade, so on. Magic points come sparingly, but a careful player should have at least five or six saved up for each boss battle, giving plenty of room for magical improvisation.

Even if the winged Master is more than a match for the platforming, the armies of demons guarding almost every inch of real estate provide the real challenge. Few rooms are clear of enemies, and those that are will make the player wary of trickery, as pits alone are not enough to stop this God. Standard enemies are largely level-specific and single-purpose (archers or bouncers or flying sentinels), ranging from tiny to half-screen-tall (some bosses are in fact as tall as the screen), kept fresh through their presentation environment. The level Stormrook, for instance, introduces a scutum-toting axe-tossing knight impervious to frontal assault. The player first encounters him is in a high-ceilinged hall, where a double-jump and glide attack will suffice to strike him from behind. The knight next appears atop a staircase, where the Master can stay low to avoid his attacks, but can't get over him. Here the player learns that a correctly timed upward or jumping attack can hit the knight while his shield is down. Later still, the player faces off against him in a flat corridor, which will probably be the first time they notice that he has high and low axe throws, and that they can use their own shield to get close, then duck-attack when he throws high. This type of stage-variance is what keeps players coming up with new strategies to approach the same basic-patterned enemies, and forms the substance of most modern 3D action games.

This idea certainly wasn't invented here, and goes back at least as far as Super Mario Bros., which pulled similar tricks by putting Hammer Bros. on flat ground, stairs, and elevated platforms. What ActRaiser 2 does well is combine it with a complex avatar who has multiple avenues of resolution to each conflict, with varying degrees of functionality and challenge to execution. Knowing how to survive isn't the same as surviving, and player state is determined on a continuous spectrum (life bar), reflecting their ongoing performance. Perfect execution can allow room for later mistakes, and early mistakes can be redeemed by later skill.

What ActRaiser 2 doesn't do well is balance difficulty. If the game had eschewed a rigid lives system (three deaths and you're back to the map screen), it could've paralleled Demon's Crest in terms of rewarding challenge. As is, it's, well, really fucking hard to beat. There are plenty of checkpoints throughout the levels, but strangely, NOT before bosses (with one or two exceptions). The pre-boss checkpoint is key to  accessibility in punishing games like this (see Mega Man), because it allows the player to get at least one clean, full-health run at their foe (assuming they have a spare life). Take away that checkpoint, and the entire space between the final checkpoint and the finish line becomes PART of the boss fight. This makes no sense and is extremely frustrating. A smart player will stockpile magic to use against these big bads, but that's far from a guaranteed win - lose a few lives, and you have to start the entire gauntlet from scratch. The relaxed stage-order (a slight variation on MM7: there are six 'starter' stages which can be played in any order, the completion of each unlocking a unique followup, i.e. you can play 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, etc. in any order, but you have to beat 1-1 to get to 1-2, 3-1 to get to 3-2, and so forth) alleviates this somewhat, but not enough to ensure that a casual player will see the ending. This is one of very few games where I endorse the usage of save states (I used them only to provide pre-boss checkpoints, which, with the existing infinite continues/passwords, made the game completely manageable).

And hey, unless you've got the original cartridge, there's no way to play that WON'T allow you to use save states. I highly recommend it - beyond a gorgeous audio/visual journey and engaging narrative, ActRaiser 2 provides a unique action-heavy precursor to latter-day swords and sorcery action.

Cybernator: A 2D realism... game

Another main thing that is oh so fucked up in oh so many games of the '80s and '90s is that the player is made of glass, i.e., touching ANYTHING kills them. This is the most frustrating and almost game-ruining aspect of Contra. The screen is so littered with deadly hazards that the player feels trapped and the course excessively linear (why does bumping into an enemy soldier kill me, but not him? Maybe Bill should've put on a shirt, since his adversaries are apparently sporting lazer-armor). Compare this to Metal Slug or Shock Troopers, wherein only bullets (or tanks/planes) are dangerous, and the player has bucketfuls more freedom. 

Ram into things to your heart's desire! Also, this box-art is weird/terrible

As one may or may not have guessed, Cybernator belongs to the latter category, in which enemies need to attack you to be dangerous. Seems like the game would be totally fucked were this not the case, considering the molasses-y rate of movement discussed yesterday. This allows cleaner offensive prioritization - since foes are not immediate deathtraps, the player can ignore the weaker and slower ones while focusing on the most dangerous. It gives personality to the enemies - a cannon emplacement doesn't function at all similarly to an aggressive mech. As a matter of fact, the ability to 'defeat' cannons simply by getting so close that you're inside of their area-of-attack is so realistic that it makes you shake your head that other games don't do the same. It gives a sense of real space without resorting to 3D gameplay. Further contributing to the sense of location is that enemies do not respawn (except in places where logically there would be multiple waves).

You know, I think that may be my big problem with Contra and similar shmups (R-Type, Gradius). Not specifically that touching enemies is damaging, or that they respawn, but that there is no sense of a realistic space. It just fails to make sense on such a basic level that I can't immerse myself in the world. I can't connect to the avatar (as much as I should be able to connect to a sentient space-ship or submarine) because the world is brimming with nonsensical rules. The more rules you need, the less natural the experience becomes, and the less natural the experience, the more time I spend thinking about the meta-game - dealing with the limitations of the rule-set rather than the opposition to the goals as defined inside the game. There are players that thrive on this (see just about any speed-runner or high-scorer), but it's the exact opposite of what I want from an engaging experience. I want to interact with the world from inside the world, to, heh, beat the enemy at their own game.

Back on topic, Cybernator's stages feel genuinely mission driven. The plot, asinine though it may be, sets us up to expect a military campaign. The first stage sees the player infiltrate an enemy colony, a mission corroborated in the stage design by broad spaces and patterned defenses. The subsequent flight through an asteroid field is accordingly frantic, blasting off at exponentially greater speed, then slowing back down as the objective shifts to a search for an enemy weapon among the "roids" (seriously, that's the word the game uses). Though progress during this mission remains linearly left-to-right, the environment stretches for multiple screens vertically, giving the player a sense of exploration. The inertially-driven zero-gravity navigation lends the appropriate tension to this search, as the player never knows whether they'll careen into a friendly power-up or a nest of turrets. Even the boundaries of the screen add to the realism, as they subtly suggest (or at least comply with) the limited visibility created by the splay of asteroids. The boss eventually bursts forth from the surface of one such body, terminating the search in a pitched showdown. 

Yes, let's!

From there we take to another infiltration, this time through the claustrophobic corridors of a space-battleship (I think? story not real clear on that one), followed by a meteoric decent to Earth, a land-battle against wave after wave of tanks and bombers, and much, much more. Much, much, much, much, much more. But you should play the game instead of listening to my description. The point is that the goal of each mission is reinforced by the gameplay - you don't get to the end and say "oh, right, I was rescuing a princess all along". You're reminded at each turn that your immediate actions are part of the overall strategy, instilling each move with purpose. And you can even fail the mission while still moving past the level!

Between its limiting controls (the robot feels like a robot), cogent interactivity (absence of excessive meta-rules), and synergistic level design (objectives and stages harmonize), Cybernator begs to be classified as realism. Uh oh. We're on thin ice here. As usual, the culture of gaming has already stolen and misunderstood this term, trying to purpose it equivalently to film and literature. "Realistic" has come to mean "looks real" (Modern Warfare), or "has a lot of characters that do their own thing" (Skyrim). Get me any mainstream gaming journalist in here and they'll assure us that "realism" wasn't invented til somewhere around the turn of the millennium, and certainly not until 3D became the norm. While I won't make any attempt to deny that 3D and world-building can be major factors in realism, what makes games unique is their interactivity, so the key element to examine is the reality of this interactivity. Not how real does it look, but how real does it feel. Not whether this world feels inhabited, but whether the player feels like they are inhabiting it.

Demon's Crest: Play this now (also fuck Capcom)

Seriously Capcom, fuck you. Why do you so frivolously mishandle all your best series? You put out Gargoyle's Quest as your VERY FIRST game on 3DS's Game Boy Virtual Console, but leave Gargoyle's Quest II (NES) and Demon's Crest (SNES) to languish in your archives for the 7+ years of the Wii VC's lifespan? I don't get the whole deal with not releasing games on VC - seems like it would be almost pure profit; then again, what do I know? Somewhere between "a little" and "basically everything". Depends on the day of the week. 

Presumably to discourage identification with Satan, Firebrand the Red Devil is green in the US box art for his debut starring role. Then again, he's green in the game too, but so was every Game Boy hero.

Despite the fact that it's virtually unavailable commercially, you know and I know that you can find a way to play Demon's Crest, and it's high time you went and did so. In fact, make it the next game on your toplay list, if you can even in the tiniest way appreciate a 2D platformer. I think we all have room in our hearts for that. 

Even among those aware of its existence, Demon's Crest has a tendency to spook players with threats of insurmountable difficulty. I've even seen FAQs and video walkthroughs mention that the game is "near impossible". This is "near 100% made-up". Complete myth. It is indeed "near impossible" in the same sense that it's nearly impossible to tie your shoes, or nearly impossible to eat a bowl of cereal. To succeed, all you need to do is try. The only excuse not to finish Demon's Crest is that you were like, I don't know, hit by a car while sitting in front of your TV. And I live on the ninth floor, so that hardly ever happens. The two traditional means of rendering a game "unbeatable" are limited tries (Super Mario Bros.) and obscure puzzles (Castlevania II). Crest has infinite continues (there is no lives-system at all - when you die you can respawn at the last checkpoint or return to the overworld) and little in the way of puzzles - certainly not anything as difficult as the widely played Super Metroid. The legendability of its difficulty is simply a misunderstanding of dumbschoolers (?) expecting Mega Man boss battles, or onlookers associating the game with its MUCH harder GnG cousins (Ghosts'n Goblins, not Greg 'n' Greg [this blog hahahaha! Ahahahahahsaahahahafdshsafdha!]).

The first two Firebrand games (Garg Quest I and II) play like a top-down RPG with random battles and one-time dungeons, with platforming taking the place of turn-based battles and dungeon-crawling. Demon's Crest, the third, uses a Mode 7 free-roaming overworld reminiscent of ActRaiser II (another criminally overlooked game) or Final Fantasy VI (once you get the spaceship). You can safely fly around this map until you choose to land on one of the clearly marked stages or shops. Landing will take you into one of the handful of branching 2D side-scrolling stages, each of which is littered with hidden items and alternate routes. Each major path will lead you to a boss conflict (that's right - some stages have as many as four! different boss fights), each boss will leave behind a power-up, and each power-up will expand your abilities in a manner similar to Mega Man X. These new abilities will make available new routes, so on so forth, you get the idea. There's a wealth of such optional content - a player going straight from point A to B without exploring or replaying stages will experience less than half of what the game has to offer. Thanks to gradually unlocking stages (two at a time) and clear visual presentation, you'll always know where to look for places to use your new skills. This isn't Super Metroid where you have to go to every single room in the game and use a Power Bomb - it lends itself to a rather succinct linear playing order like Mega Man.

Beyond its Goldilocks scale, where Demon's Crest truly excels as an adventure platformer is in providing rewards for exploration. Let's look at the standard examples for a sec. In Super Metroid, getting an optional item usually means you can open up another identical cave area to get another item to open up another identical cave area. The new tools are fun in and of themselves and offer new means of transportation (lazer feet, grapple) or combat (charge beam, ice beam), functioning to modify your repeated traversal of the same basic world. The real goal of the game - the entire notion of progress - comes from upgrading your capabilities. Metroidvanias like Symphony of the Night take a radically different approach, in which new talents serve almost solely to open new doors, sort of just splaying a normal linear level path across an interconnected world. 

Demon's Crest takes a little bit from each of these approaches. In the larger world, new abilities do work like Metroidvania-style keys, unlocking entire new stages that could have just been presented linearly, if not for the challenge of discovering them. Since, unlike in Symphony, exploration is totally optional, these hidden routes are far more rewarding - secret levels are fucking exciting! As a matter of fact, the experience becomes full-blown Super Mario World. But then you're also powering up in a non-trivial way. This ain't no pansy-ass Alucard sliding kick. Firebrand gets a number of different attacks and transformations that completely alter his movement mechanics. And, you guessed it! The hidden areas emphasize the abilities it takes to unlock them. You don't get the full impact of Water Firebrand until you uncover the underwater cave substage that plays like Ecco the Dolphin. By exploiting your growing skill-set on the main path, you'll arrive in areas that offer unique stage design (and, as aforementioned, boss battles) that the game world otherwise totally lacks!

For all this talk of navigation, you may be surprised to learn that the focal point of the gameplay is the bosses. Are the bosses? Ugh, there's just no way to make that sound right. You'll spend a substantial portion of your playtime in these conflicts, and they're likely what'll stick with you after you put down the game. It's not quite Alien Soldier, but a kindred spirit nonetheless. You won't die many times in the levels proper, certainly not after a playthrough or two has taught you their ins and outs. The challenge lies in the lengthy but fair boss fights which require space management (zoning), timing, and aggression. See, I actually like bosses with deep health reserves, because it means you can't get lucky and, as Golem would say, "cheese it". These ain't yer pappy's nonsensical reflex-driven Mega Man battles; they're methodical and rewarding of strategy. This is reinforced by the almost universal pre-boss checkpoints which allow you to infinitely retry each battle. Lesser games mask poorly designed boss fights by throwing you back to the beginning of the stage when you lose - Demon's Crest is confident enough in their challenge that it puts you right back in the thick of it. 

Oh, right, and they're huge and awesome-looking.

Play Demon's Crest. Even if it doesn't impression you as strongly as it has me, it'll at least provide new perspective on those classics you do love.

I think my new e-handle is gonna be fingernail_of_the_spectre. That is a very real item from GarQ (pronounce: "gark"). Someone's been messin' on Wikipedia! Look out for me on such sites as Internet.com and TheInternet.com.

Try this game: Cottoning to Cotton

You're forgiven if you've never heard of Cotton. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Go now in love and peace to serve the SNES. Amen.

Does the word "cotton" meaning "to come to like" come from a mispronunciation of "caught on"? Perhaps with some kind of Boston accent? Seems wildly unlikely. Etymologists, write in.

Seriously, Ad Caption Guy???

Cotton is a pretty tiny series of shoot-'em-ups (shmups) spanning from the early '90s to about '03. The chronology is so convoluted that I'm just going to refer you to Hardcore Gaming 101, though suffice to say that there are only two primary series entries: Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams and Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams, both of which debuted in arcades and were subsequently ported/arranged*/spun-off onto every major Japanese console of the time. Only a single - hilariously chosen - release ever made it to the West: the Turbo-CD port of the first arcade game. The series graced every console from the Famicom (NES) to the Dreamcast, yet the publishers chose the Turbo-CD version to bring to North America? Did you know that less than three (3!) Turbo-CD units were owned by live humans in its active lifespan? Did you know that if there were as many humans as there are molecules in the universe, and were the Turbo-CD's sales numbers adjusted proportionally, it still would have moved less units than the N64 did with Earth's existent population of ~6 billion? Did you know that science considers it a statistical impossibility to own a Turbo-CD? 

Let me give you a quick sense of Cotton's raison d'raisin before I send you off to your local ROM conservatory to legally enjoy the most fulfilling of life's pleasures, trying out new games. The name itself, Cotton, refers to a lil' witch gal who serves as the series' recurring protagonist, perennially accompanied by one of anime's other great tropes: a completely inappropriately clothed buxom fairy. This bipolar protagonistic pairing sets the scene for a veritable Lethal Weapon of tales, though Cotton ought to be exclaiming "I'm too young for this shit!" in place of Danny Glover's filmic line. Generally the series is undeservedly lumped into that deservedly unpopular subgenre, the cute-'em-up**, but aside from Cotton herself, the game's fantasy setting is relatively dark and serious. Check out these screenshots and videos if you don't believe me.

I've experimented with everything in the series short of Dreamcast's Rainbow Cotton and found that you can basically get the full experience through just three games, which I'll describe in detail... after these messages!

A screen from the surprisingly dark arcade original

Maerchen Adventure Cotton 100% (Super Famicom):

For those just being introduced to the shmup, a fast-paced and accessible experience

Though the sprites have strangely become cutesy, this is otherwise what Cotton is all about. A bare-bones level up / down system, one-hit deaths, bouncy power-ups a la Twinbee, and frequent boss battles. The pared down mechanics and forgiving balance make 100% a great place to start for anyone new to the genre. It's not too tough, keeps the scenery changing, and provides a pretty comprehensible scoring mechanic that is instructively tied to power-ups. If Gradius and R-Type scared the shit out of you and Fantasy Zone was a yawn, don't give up on the genre yet - MAC100% may be just the game you're looking for. And PLEASE do me a favor and appreciate the laziest title screen music ever.

Magical Night Dreams: Cotton 2 (Arcade):

For longtime shmup fans looking for a new experience, this is the Mischief Makers of the genre

Cotton 2 is kinda silly for a few reasons - it's definitely one of those games that you may not 'get' after dicking around for ten minutes, then you'll go to Youtube to check out a walkthrough and say, "OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH". Now that you can skip that step, we can talk about how the entire game revolves around grabbing enemies and tossing them out to ricochet off each other around the planet. In fact, the need to keep alive your makeshift projectiles (by shooting them, re-grabbing them, or making sure they keep hitting enemies) calls to mind pinball - turn the game on its side and turn off the scrolling, and you'd be damn close. It's a neat twist, if not necessarily brilliant, and I certainly can't think of another game that plays the same.

Panorama Cotton (Mega Drive):

For, well, anyone with even the slightest appetite for oldies. If you've enjoyed a single 16-bit game since 1994, you owe it to yourself to track this down

Here's the game that gives the whole series a reason to exist, and as the king of irony (Jeff Daniels) would have it, it's the most unique in terms of gameplay.  Panorama Cotton belongs to the tragically small genre of 3D rail-shmups (Star Fox, Space Harrier, and the present day Kid Icarus: Uprising and Sin & Punishment). Fans will get a kick out of seeing all the ideas of the series adapted into this presentation - this is still very much Cotton. Newcomers won't care about that, but have to be impressed by the extent to which the game pushes not just the Genesis, but 2D sprite games altogether. Beautiful aesthetics are about seeing a vision and pushing it through with utter disregard for technical limitation; while Panorama's choppy framerate and jaggies might turn off a blind snob, it's hard not to be blown away when the game takes you swooping over a cliff and down through a waterfall, or up into the skies above the clouds. This is the antithesis of Star Fox, and everything classics are made of. A complete fuck you to what "can" be accomplished.

So go play a Cotton game. Not because you're guaranteed to like it, but because I'm sure at least one of them is like nothing you've played before.

*arrange: a term relating almost exclusively to shmups, an arrange is like a remix of a song - same core elements with a new twist, be it new controls, score mechanics, or power-ups. Think Super Street Fighter II.

**cute-em-up: a shoot-em-up with "cutesy" style graphics and a comic tone, usually with very simple mechanics, large sprites, a slow pace, etc. See: Parodius.

Give this game a shot, revisited: Comix Zone

I've picked up Comix Zone once or twice in the past, only to be frustrated by its lame difficulty so quickly that I tossed it aside before moving past the first level. Who hasn't? Giving the game another shot, I was surprised to find it's actually spectacularly ahead of its time, as possibly the most cinematic, narrative-driven 20th century sidescroller I've ever played. Not what you were expecting to hear, was it? That's because this forward-thinking architecture is a bit muffled by the in-your-face brawling challenge and idiosyncratic art-style. The game is usually brushed away as a small footnote in the Genesis library, notable only for its immediately effectual presentation. Play a little longer, and you'll find an experience far more unique, one that utilizes its comic book inspiration for more than just pretty graphics.

Comix Zone may very well have been made by people who had never played a video game before, or were at least extremely new to the medium. There are dozens of weird decisions that go so thoroughly and unintuitively against convention that the designers must have been either completely unaware of these conventions, or looking to boldly set them alight. I lean toward the former because their sights don't seem set on a particular target, rather they haphazardly reinvent left and right. Death resets the entire game! Punching things drains your life! Fighting game controls except with a jump button! It's like they played Mortal Kombat once and then assumed all other games were based on that. It's kinda weird and amateurish, but not in a bad way. Not in a remarkable way, either. In those days, plenty of games popped up with this kind of "I can make a video game too!" feel. Play the other Strider II sometime, or anything developed by Culture Brain.

If you get caught up in this, and you will - momentarily - you're likely to quickly pass on Comix Zone as a game with a gimmick and nothing more. That'd be a shame, because a little more time reveals that the comic book theme of the game is much more than a gimmick. Games often mimic film in an attempt to add narrative depth, adopting the trends and proven success of an older and more artistically acclaimed medium. I'll discuss elsewhere why I think this is often a mistake, and that "cinematic" should be a dirty word in the gaming community, but we can at least acknowledge that it's business as usual. Is it any more a gimmick for Comix Zone to borrow the presentation of comics than for Ninja Gaiden to use cinematic cut-scenes to tell its story? Only when you take into consideration the fringe presence of comics in the scholarly and popular artistic communities.

The narrative structure of comics turns out to lend itself surprisingly well to video games. This is an episodic structure, a presentation of sequential static scenes with discrete leaps in time and place linking them together. A structure which can be whittled down to only moments of action without sacrificing fluidity. This works perfectly for a game, which wants to take you to as many places as possible in as short a time as it can, without ever taking the control away from the player. It also needs to keep in each place for long enough for action and exposition to occur, rather than a film which will continuously move.

Note that none of these techniques are unavailable to film, as in fact it and comics are already excruciatingly close art-forms, presenting a union of imagery and language. The emphasis, however, is different. For a game of the 2D era like Comix Zone, comics offer a more natural influence. A smaller field of view must be crammed with more details because the viewpoint will always be static, changes in location need to be discontinuous because walking is boring, and action and exposition need to be able to be set aside for one another, rather than passing by so quickly that the player loses track.

The end result is that every situation in Comix Zone is narrative-driven. Every panel of the game's stage structure needs to justify its existence and needs to be different from those before and after it. This divides the gameplay into micro-stages that only last thirty seconds or a minute, and imbues each with only a small chunk of narrative, rather than relying on a five-minute cutscene to explain the subsequent thirty-minute level. The story is developed throughout the whole of the game, and while gameplay still relies on a repeated fighting mechanic, each fight is the result of some new plot development and is given a reason to exist. This is wildly ahead of its time in 1995 when the age of Streets of Rage beat-em-ups was just coming to a close, where you accepted that sometimes a bad guy actually did just have a literal army of thugs to stall you.

It's certainly heavier on action than any genuine comic book or film could be while still carrying a story, but what is important is that the action is tied to the narrative. That means the game is actually watchable, not just playable (hence the longplay above! Check it out, because I assure you, you won't make it to the end otherwise, not without a lot of dedication). Games don't have to tell stories, but those that do should look to an example like Comix Zone as a means of accomplishing it without abandoning the tenets of the medium.

Hagane Revisited - Give this game a shot

Now that's a spicy ninja! Sometimes I kinda wanna die.

Let's play a quiz. Think of the first 2D ninja game that comes in your head. 123go. Use a pencil to fill the name into this blank _________. Now go buy a new monitor. Back? I bet the guy at the monitor exchange store said something along the lines of "hey guy, how come you scratched 'Ninja Gaiden' onto the screen? Sure it's a good game, but it's not THAT good." Or maybe he said "'Shinobi'? That sounds familiar. Some old video game, right?" If he said "What's a Strider?", what kind of twisted sicko are you? Go see a doctor, now. And if it was anything about Legend of the Mystical Ninja, well funnyman with a chip on your shoulder, how did you write a name that long without realizing what a mistake you were making?

Ah, comedy. Sometimes is brings us laughs, sometimes it ruins our internet blog articles. Same with Hagane, a mostly forgotten SNES sidescroller from Hudson Soft (if there's one thing Hudson knew by 1994, it's that they weren't gonna make a dime releasing games on their own console, the TG-16). Hagane's not half bad though. As a matter of fact, were it a bit more original I'd say it deserved to be listed with the rest of those games up there. Hagane combines the fast-paced action of Ninja Gaiden with the tactical enemies of Shinobi and the weapon variety of Irem's Ninja Spirit. It's gonna keep you holding right most of the time and demand a bit of memorization to keep moving, but it's nowhere near as unforgiving as Gaiden and more rewarding of strategic play.

One of my favorite things about Hagane is that once killed, enemies stay dead. That comes with a twist: unless you're a real speed demon, you can't just run past these guys and forget about them - they'll come after you with a vengeance. Not exactly an act of genius AI, but it makes each enemy a real threat. You'll regret not killing them.

Notice that sword swipe pattern on the left? Look familiar?

One of my least favorite things about Hagane, to keep with the 3rd-grade-book-report writing level I've established for this blog, is that it throws in a dash of platforming when you're least expecting it. I can't say how frequent this becomes because, truth time, I haven't finished it, but it only showed up once or twice in the first few levels. Hagane himself just isn't as agile as Ryu, even if he is more violent. He feels at home when on solid ground.

So, go try the game. This ain't no review site, make yer own damn decisions. I like it a lot and will be making an effort to finish it - a task kept feasible (even without save states) by infinite continues. I assure you that you can find it at your local online video game dispensary, at a price so low it MUST be illegal.

Here's a little bonus info for coming this far: Hagane was developed by Red Company (later Red Entertainment). You might not know these guys; the biggest splash they can claim is the Bonk series. They've been around for fucking ever though - since '85 and still going, putting out the occasional RPG you won't have heard of, such as the PSX's Thousand Arms and DS's Nostalgia. I know them from the greatest shmup of all time, Turbo CD's Lords of Thunder, and its predecessor, Gates of Thunderforce III. Check those out too - they're even on Virtual Console!