Platformation Time Again #6: New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja PS4

HISTORY

Fiction has more or less cemented the general vision of the prehistoric past as “caveman and dinosaurs” for entertaiment media as a whole, despite the fact our unshaven ancestors did not live at the same times as the dinosaurs, there’s no hunting down brachiosauruses when the things had gone extinct 65 millions years ago, or writing middling yet kinda charming newspaper comic strips (the fabled “western 4-koma”) that can change that.

But it was not reality; it was the 90s.

Indiana Jones discovered ancient shit every so often, and Jurassic Park ignited the dino craze… no, the dino mania, got the fever for these ancient creatures sky high, and Data East, a company mostly dealing in pinball machines but also occasionally videogames, was more than happy to oblige and carpe the dino diem quick and hot, by releasing Joe & Mac: Tatakae Genshijin (the original japanese subtitle translating roughly “Caveman Fight”), better known worldwive as Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja or simply Caveman Ninja.

The “Ninja” in the title is there because the 80s craze with the japanese born assassins still made for attractive videogame marketing, as fun and crazy as it would have been to have a game subtitled “Caveman Ninja” to actually have caveman ninjas…it’s just marketing.

But boy it worked, as Joe & Mac proved to be a smash hit for Data East, a very big hit (so big you couldn’t avoid it going into arcades even in my country as well), so much that many ports followed for basically every system of the era, including the NES (which was quite old back then) and many home computers, not the usual for a Data East game, so much it cameoed in Tumblepop, had a spin-off in the vein of Tumblepop itself, Joe & Mac Returns and eventually spawned sequels.

For reasons i will explain later, this also – if indirectly – counts as a review of the original Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja game that released in arcades and today can be found as a Switch download, part of the Johnny Turbo branded series of releases…. Well, could.

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Ghost Pilots (Arcade Classics Archives Neo Geo) NSWITCHDDL [REVIEW] | My Very Own 194X

I love the Neo Geo, as in, i was a wee child that did always light up when the arcade cabinets started up with that logo and name, letting me know i was in for a good time.

I never owned a Neo Geo cabinet or one of their home consoles, so aside from the odd port on PS1 or PS2 collections, for me Neo Geo was something you went to the arcades, which already tells you how ancient (in prospective) i am, given how that market/scene ended up in the following decades.

That said, i’m glad i never encounted a Ghost Pilots machine, and to be honest i never even heard of this one until i found it and bought its Arcade Classics Archives release on the Nintendo eshop.

As to why, it’s because its one of those early releases for the Neo Geo based hardware that are better forgotten, left in their own little burrow in the ground, their own little cubicle in videogame history.

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Tank! Tank! Tank! WIIU [REVIEW] | The Tank Defence Force Deploys?

Nintendo ported the shit out of the Wii U library, reasonably so, hence there are very few exclusives that are “trapped” on the Switch precedessor… most are crap like Devil’s Third and Sonic Boom: Rise Of Lyric, Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, some sports-fitness games or party games, and somehow STILL the HD ports of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.

Tank Tank Tank is technically not an exclusive, since it’s a port of a 2009 arcade game published and developed by Namco Bandai internally (itself a spiritual successor on a previous arcade game by Namco, 1996’s Tokyo Wars, according to Wikipedia), rereleased in 2012 on Wii U, serving as launch title for the console in North America.

It was initally released digitally as a free to play thingie where you could play the single player campaign for free but had to buy the various multiplayer mode as DLC (which it eventually reverted to 1 year later) but it was also released physically as a complete package, which its the version i own and i’m basing the review on.

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Rabio Lepus/Rabbit Punch (Arcade Archives) NSWITCHDDL [REVIEW] | Cho Usagi

This year we won’t review crappy horror no-budget slockfests about killer rabbits, i’m quite fed up with killer easter bunnies and we can done those next year, anyway.

So we’re instead digging up a fairly obscure 2d spaceship shooter/side scrolling shoot ‘em up from the late 80s arcade resurgence, and as i guess it’s almost mandatory for forgotten games of this genre, its only home console port was on the PC Engine… in Japan, North America did get this released in arcades, localized as Rabbit Punch, but we Europeans never did in any shape, not until the recent Arcade Archives rerelease, in this case the Switch one (it’s also available on PS4).

The plot is fairly simple and starts off the “ol’ fashioned” (as in “putting cats in bags and throwing them in the river to drown” ye old fashioned) royal kidnapping by a mechanical army of space aliens that come down to the peaceful planet of Bunnyland, taking awat the rabbit themed king (he has a rabbit onesie), the princess and her sister (which are just Playboy bunny girls… to commit to the theme, yes), so it’s up to the rabbit shaped mecha unit to save the monarchy.

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Zombie Virus PS2 [REVIEW] | Ambulance VS Zombies

Yeah, October is far, far away, but extreme times call for extreme measures, and even more extreme unaccounted issues call for improvisation, so we’re unearth a real piece of shit game from the bargain bin dimension of the PS2, with this rewrite for Zombie Virus..

The generic title does bely a more interesting idea that the original title, The Zombie VS The Ambulance, which might give away to more expert gamers that, yes, this is more trash coming from D3 Publisher budget line of releases, the Simple 2000 Series for the PS2, developed by an obscure studio, Vingt-Et-Un Systems, that mainly did work on these budget Simple Series title…. and to my total surprise is far from defunct, as in the last decade has worked for Capcom titles such as the RE 3 Remake, Ghost N Goblins Resurrection, and the Capcom Arcade Stadium collections.

Not to be confused with another budget title from the very same collection/line, Zombie Attack, which is an action game by Tamsoft, so eventually i’ll have to feature it here in some way.

This one is about the age old tale of zombies and their natural enemy, a sentient ambulance, or so i would say, but the game actually has a plot, because there has to be, not that it amounts to much and it’s hard to care about it since it’s a budget release through and through, with dialogues after important story beats but no voice acting, and most of the story told by silent walls of text.

Again, the usual fare for a budget release of this era sporting the various labels D3 published these things outside of Japan (as in, mostly in European territories), pretty much to be expected.

In short, everything was fine and dandy in the utopia known as Sunlight City, until an eartquake happened, literal dark clouds start spreading about, and presto, not even 1 minute into the intro cutscene and a good 90 % of people turned into zombies.

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[EXPRESSO] Metal Slug Awakening iOS/PC | Heavy Gaching Gun

Finally someone decided to show its face globally, with a Metal Slug game that’s actually a run-n-gun shooter and not some tower defense or strategy-lite card thingie, Metal Slug Awakening (previously announced as Metal Slug Code J and available for years in SEA markets), aka the closest thing to a new, proper mainline Metal Slug title we’re gonna get with the new SNK.

In an unsurprising yet fitting fashion, it’s very similar to Contra Returns – also on mobile smartphones – not too surprising since it’s from the same developer, Timi (which also worked on Mega Man Dive X), it has an original storyline about a pharaoh and 4 gems, nothing worth committing to memory, as is the kinda rubbish and arguably random english voice acting.

I think they did a decent job at translating the art style to 3D models, though the new character designs really reek of “chinese gacha shit”, they do.

That aside, gameplay is traditional Metal Slug, with actually quite decent touch controls and some controller support (more for the Steam version), some concessions to modernity and a LOT of concessions to mobile gacha freemium design, from exps books and materials for upgrades, multiple tiers of rarity for everything, mini and normal bosses being more spongy so to incentivate using a weapon/character that inflicts more damage or status effects to certain types of enemies.

It’s not bad and the levels are new, but both level designs and foes dip heavily in nostalgia, so expected to see A LOT of old faces from the series’ long history.

Shame the F2P bullshit add various layers of faux complexity to deal with, and can make the difficulty fluctuate heavily.

It’s worth a try, but you actually wanted a proper Metal Slug 8, this ain’t, nor was ever gonna be.

[EXPRESSO] Earth Defense Force 6 PS4 | Back To The Futures

Earth Defense Force 6 is finally here, with the infinite struggle for every new entry to upstage the previous game, and somehow it still managed to up the ante following Earth Defense Force 5, where you try to arrest and then kill God.

Admittely, it does this by relying on EDF 5 not only for continuing its batshit insane story and somehow making thing crazier via time travel…. which is a baked-in story excuse for reusing a lot of assets from EDF 5, while graphics remain identical to make even more insane amounts of enemies come at you, regardless if it tanks the framerate (it often does) by how ludicrously huge the hordes can be, in order to increase the overall challenge.

Gameplay offers some incremental QoL features that improve the experience, and they did address some issues, like better controls, there are some new locations, a good amount of new enemies and a better distribution of those… even though it’s almost made moot by the usual asset recycle and the campaign being the biggest yet, with nearly 150 missions in the base game alone; it’s still a budget game, despite D3/Namco Bandai selling it at 60 bucks, or 90 for the deluxe edition that includes Hololive EN decoy launcher weapons (which have better graphics than anything else in the game XD).

But at the core it’s EDF, mainline EDF, with all its issues, but still incredibly fun, arguably the best it ever has been, thanks to more enemy types, more flexible customization for the builds, new absurd weapons, and some welcome QoL features, like subtitles for the hilarious campy dialogue.

Not too many, as it’s a formula that ironically would fall apart if you try to “fix it”, and honestly there is still nothing quite it.

THE EDF DEPLOYS!!

Earth Defense Force AKA Monster Attack PS2 [REVIEW] | Thus The EDF Fought

As we wait for the western release date of EDF 6 (which came out in Japan last August), let’s go all the way back to the beginning, with the original Earth Defense Force on PS2.

Unlike EDF 2 which got an enhanced port on PS Vita, the original Earth Defense Force still remains a PS2 only game, one that americans didn’t get, as the first EDF was only localized in PAL territories as Monster Attack and distributed by Agetec in… lets say limited numbers, since today finding an original copy can be fairly pricey, if you find a PAL copy to begin with, instead of the many cheaper japanese PS2 copies floating around the net.

I did manage to get a used PAL copy under 30 bucks, but one could suggest it’s better to just emulate the thing, if you’re really curious to see how EDF started as a fan of the series, otherwise there’s really no point to simply recommend you play EDF 4.1 or 5 nowadays.

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Popeye PSN [REVIEW] | …. For An Asset Burger Today

Catching up on last year’s output of radioactive trash videogame releases, i saw this on sale for 2 bucks on PSN, so i bought it, downloaded it on my PS4 (game is also available on Switch, digital only as well), and in a matter of minutes i wondered if this wasn’t somehow one of those asset flips that somehow isn’t (or wasn’t) on Steam but managed to land digitally on other platforms.

And yes, i was correct, it’s not on Steam, most likely a calculated move as it would have been singled out immediatly and bombarded with negative reviews, for Steam’s userbase had many experiences with awful cobbled together rushjobs by hacks that smosh pre-made Unity assets together with minimal extra work, even more as this is a licensed game.

One that was released without nary a beep, so that already clues you in that they wanted to release a stinker and hope nobody noticed that they wanted 15 bucks for this turd by Sabec Limited, better known for having the gall to sell Calculator (and many overly simple games and stuff like Pet Rock) on Switch, as in literally a calculator app that they sell for 10 bucks.

Given how surprisingly important is Popeye as a franchise for videogames, aside from wondering how the hell Sabec Limited was able to license the almost centenary comic strip series from King Features Syndicate, it’s kinda fitting that this 2021 release pretty much boils down to a remake of the 1982 arcade game (also simply called “Popeye”), the one that inspired Nintendo to make the original arcade Donkey Kong.

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[EXPRESSO] Burning Fight (Arcade Classic Archives Neo Geo) NSWITCH DDL | Streets Of Mid

I’m a simple man, i see some Arcade Classics Archives games on sale on the Switch eShop, i usually buy them, especially if it’s early Neo Geo beat em up i’ve never even seen mentioned before.

With 3 bucks less to my wallet, i realized why exactly.

I mean, it was the age of the beat em up, and while it’s not often fair to just call them knock-offs…. Burning Fight really can’t be called anything else than a “knock-off” of Final Fight, Streets Of Rage, heck even Double Dragon, and one that embodies the definition of “one of those”, since it’s so predictable and derivative to have even the special health-draining moves feel like “legally distinct” imitations of Capcom’s other big series about punching people.

The only distinctive feature is that you can enter some of the shops/facilities and smash some furniture to find health and point pickups, but even these diversions last 4 seconds tops, though there’s some attempts at doing something new with some stages where you move on a conveyer belt while thugs throw explosive at you from the background, but it’s very small stuff.

This is as straightforward, simple and generic as a beat ‘em up could be in that era.

Originality aside, the problem with Burning Fight is that it’s indeed a cheap, brazen and almost sub-par knock off, not unplayable or anything, but the kind it inevitably just makes you wish you were playing the older titles on SNES and Genesis it’s clearly aping, since they’re better in every regard.

So ironically the only way i can justify bothering with this one it’s if you’re a beat em up buff that has already played all the popular ones and are searching for a fix, something that “will do”, and not really anything else.