Clueless Gaijin Gaming: Fighting Run

It's time to test our lack of Japanese again, as we take a look at Nichibutsu's Fighting Run, released for the PC Engine in 1991.  Nichibutsu is best known in the States for the 1980's arcade classic Crazy Climber, but the company published a number of videogames for home consoles back in the day.

The action concerns a futuristic race between two robots zooming along an obstacle-filled track.  Each player must move as quickly as possible, avoiding obstacles and/or doing damage to the other player -- victory can be had by fairly winning the race, or by destroying one's opponent.  The game plays a bit like a vertically-scrolling Road Rash, with the robots running alongside each other, throwing punches all the way to the finish line.

It's not a great game, or even a very good one, but it is a classical example of Japanese sci-fi action videogaming circa the early 1990's.  In brief review...

Cover art with giant robot mechs.  Check!

Dingy, post-apocalyptic title screen with sampled orchestra hits to jazz up the intro tune.  Check!

CG-rendered stills and misspelled English dressing up the RPG-like attribute setting prior to the race.  Check!

Countdown to the start of the race.  Check!

Fighting and explosions.  Check!

Game Over... or is it?  Check!

Fighting Run is such a simple and straightforward game there isn't really much more I can say about it.  The game can easily be played with minimal knowledge of Japanese, though a tolerance for frustrating and repetitive action is valuable.

The biggest problem with the game itself is that the track scrolls at a fixed rate --so the computer opponent, who can "see" the obstacles ahead, tends to hover around the top of the screen, staying well ahead of the player and guaranteeing victory.  Even with two human players, it's easy to move TOO fast for the screen, or to run into each other unintentionally, taking automatic damage in either case.  The available robots are also not well-balanced -- some can take or deal out a lot more abuse than others, making races inherently unfair.
 
But Fighting Run delivers what it promises -- a fighting run, or a running fight for that matter.  That's about all there is to it!

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I'm not recommending this game, really I'm not; but if you're curious or collecting, you may find it in stock for purchase here.

Video Podcast - The Aardvark Story

We look back at Aardvark Limited, one of the many early computer game companies of the late 1970's.

(The embedded video is an ad-supported version -- if you prefer, you can see the show ad-free  -- and still free of charge -- in the iTunes Podcast Directory or on YouTube.)

Adventure of the Week: Wishbringer (1985)

This week, we play through Infocom's Wishbringer, designed by "Professor" Brian Moriarty, later of Loom fame.  The game was billed as an "Interactive Fantasy for Beginners," but while it's more forgiving than many old-school adventure games, it's not exactly a pushover.

The story opens with a nice stage-setting, Walter Mitty-esque moment:

The game appears to be set in the Zork universe, as there are grues and Frobozz products about.  The game is meant to accommodate novice players, with leading prompts early on  (Okay, what do you want to do now?) and occasional suggestions about mapping and saving.  Some mistakes are merely inconvenient, but others are fatal; the game does provide alternative solutions to most puzzles, and fewer dead ends than most such games.  It also encourages retrying when the game ends unhappily.

I always encourage readers to try these games before reading further -- and if you're a would-be adventurer reading this post out of idle curiosity, Wishbringer is a good place to start.  The parser is solid and cooperative, the prose is very well-written, and the game isn't frustratingly difficult, though I've certainly played easier text adventures.

With that said, my observations follow, and for documentation's sake I reserve the right to give some things away that are more fun discovered on one's own.

******** HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! ********

Wishbringer continues Infocom's constructive approach to copy protection, with several clues based on items found in the original packaging.

Some storytelling concessions are necessary, given the game's target audience -- if the player tries to OPEN ENVELOPE too early, the game plainly responds with You're not supposed to open the mysterious envelope until the story tells you to do so.  YES or NO confirmations are usually required for irrevocable actions, which is a thoughtful design choice.

The game map is quite simple -- there are no mazes, though there are some navigational anomalies here and there.  It's important to map the trail up to the Magick Shoppe, as the return trip is shrouded in heavy fog and risky (though possible) to navigate safely.

One of the things I always liked about the Infocom games is that other characters have their own schedules to keep, and their actions aren't solely triggered by the player's activities.  Here, the gravedigger asks about the mysterious envelope, and has something interesting to say about it, but leaves in a few turns anyway if we don't show it to him; similarly, our boss Mr. Crisp throws us out of the post office if we stall too long at the game's outset.

The game features a couple of standard hungry-animal puzzles. Ms. Voss' nasty little poodle blocks the path but can be bribed with a bone... found in an open grave. No surprise there, but it's a nice little bit of macabre humor.  Also, the piranha in the Witchville fountain can be bribed with an earthworm.

The game's scoring mechanism provides useful feedback -- worthy actions earn points, significant or destructive errors knock the score down.  It's entirely possible to finish the game without earning all of the points -- the scoring mechanism favors practical solutions over the use of magic WISHes, encouraging replay and creativity.

The story is dramatic in the best Infocom tradition, with a central conceit reminiscent of It's A Wonderful Life and an emotionally satisfying ending.  And the game's ultimate nemesis is female, an unusual choice at the time.

The arcade on the Pleasure Wharf features a LEATHER GODDESSES OF PHOBOS! machine, a nod to a contemporary Infocom game.

There's a little seahorse found near the ocean that dies if we fail to THROW SEAHORSE INTO THE BAY to revive it.  The creature appears grateful for the rescue, but I never cashed in on any favor it may have owed me in return during my playthrough.

The story's major twist occurs after we meet the Magick Shoppe owner, and find we are no longer in Esteron, but in Witchville:

There's a time element to the story, measured in moves rather than real time -- the letter must be delivered by 5:00 PM, which is a challenge, and the remainder of the quest completed by 6:00 AM, which isn't so much.

The generally impenetrable forest can be entered once in the normal fashion, and returned to once via electronic magick (wasting the arcade token, however.)  Inside the forest, we find the familiar white Zork house.  But this is a different story, and after disgorging its leaflet, the classic mailbox acts like a happy kitten, following the player around and proving useful near the arcade.

The cemetery is a dangerous place after dark, as the creepy eldritch vapors carry the player into the air and empty his or her inventory, scattering the player's possessions around town.  It's an inconvenience at most, as the lost items can be found again with thorough searching, but new players will learn it's best to avoid the situation given the time constraint at hand.

Witchville's fascistic Boot Patrol is a funny and menacing force in the game -- magically animated boots make the rounds and should generally be avoided, though finding the back way into the jail cell to fetch the blanket isn't as easy as getting arrested once.

The titular Wishbringer stone can be used to make 7 different wishes, in conjunction with specific inventory items.  The manual details the 7 available wishes; most can only be used once, but it is possible to finish the game (maxing out the score) without using any of them.  I used the WISH FOR ADVICE spell to help me along in the game, and the WISH FOR DARKNESS to sneak into the movie theatre (as I missed finding the gold coin enabling legitimate entry.)  I also used the WISH FOR FORESIGHT, which hinted at the game's ultimate conclusion but was cleverly misleading, and I did a WISH FOR RAIN to solve another puzzle.

I stumbled upon an avenue for further exploration when SAVE GAME yielded You can't see any game here!, indicating that SAVE might be a verb for other purposes...

The game allows the player to DIG ... WITH HANDS, which was nice for me after recently playing a lot of games involving devilishly well-hidden shovels.

I did run into one parser challenge later in the game -- there are 13 paintings in the tower's Round Chamber, always a suspicious element in adventure games.  But I tried to MOVE PAINTINGS or TAKE PAINTINGS to no avail.  An Invisiclues hint finally led me to LOOK BEHIND A PAINTING, which worked.

I fell for the story's decoy ending, returning the wrong cat to the Magick Shoppe on my first attempt.  But a retry with further exploration led me to the proper conclusion.  It's an emotionally satisfying ending that I really don't want to spoil, so I'll draw the curtain over the particulars and end with my less-than-perfect finishing score:

I enjoyed playing Wishbringer -- it was not a big hit in its day, and wasn't included in the first Lost Treasures of Infocom collection, so I suspect the "beginners" label may have caused it to be overlooked.  But it's a well-told story in the classic Infocom tradition, and not quite as easy as I had expected.  Worth playing.

The LoadDown - 01/04/10

It's a new year, with new games on the download circuit.  I finally got around to playing through Shadow Complex and catching up on Tales of Monkey Island, and started Castlevania The Adventure Rebirth on WiiWare and Twisted Pixel's The Maw on XBLA.  Good games all.  Here's what's up to bat this week:

WiiWare -- 3 games this week.  Digital Leisure's Fast Draw Showdown brings another old American Laser Games full-motion video western title circa 1994 (a la Mad Dog McCree) to the Wii.  It's an unusual type of game to see in downloadable form.  We also have Pub Darts, using the Wii remote's motion controls to simulate a darts contest, and Heron: Steam Machine, a manufacturing action/puzzle game requiring players to manage a steam engine's pressure levels and keep it from exploding.

Virtual Console -- One game - Final Fight 3 for the SNES, finishing out Capcom's 16-bit scrolling beat-'em-up series in fine style.

DSiWare -- 3 games this week.  Trajectile is a puzzle/target-shooting game; Animal Puzzle Game challenging players to lead animals safely to the barn; and Hell's Kitchen Vs. challenges two players to compete head-to-head in a cooking time management contest, with ratings provided by the inimitable Gordon Ramsay.

XBLA -- There were no new XBLA releases last week, leaving room in the schedule for the modern classic Gears of War to make its debut on Microsoft's Games on Demand service.

PSN -- Nothing new for the PS3 last week.

Texting The SEGA Way!

Back in 1994, Sega made an attempt to get into the PDA and communications business with something called the IR 7000.  I've never seen one of these in real life, but Sega was still in the hardware business at the time, and game to trying its hand at a different variety of personal technology.


The ad below does a pretty good job of showing what the IR 7000 is and a little bit of what it can do.  If it were an Apple product, with a suitable ad campaign, all might have been right with the world.  After all, you could use it in class to communicate with your friends, and keep your addresses and phone numbers and calendars current.  Modern cell phones can do all of this and more, but in 1994 it wasn't a bad feature set. 

But this was mid-90's Sega, and in keeping with the company's carefully-honed image, all advertising had to be as in-your-face as possible.  This presented the copywriters with a bit of a quandary when promoting a product presumably aimed at privacy, security and discretion, but they had to come up with something.

Thus, we are informed that WHISPERING IS FOR GUTLESS WEASELS:

Weasels also being, presumably, disorganized.  Disorganized losers.

Our Games Are Decent!

Some of the slang in the overflowing 80's lexicon entered usage at large.  The last word in Avalon Hill's list here, though, did not manage to usurp the original definition:

It somehow seems fitting that the word has retained its original meaning, unperturbed by the Eighties.

It's proper.  Appropriate.  Morally and aesthetically pleasing.

You know, decent.

Oddities: InterSEXion

Happy New Year!  I don't have any New Year's Day-themed games to talk about, so I'm going to talk about partying in a more general sense.

WARNING:  This post contains potentially salacious accounts of human behavior.  Be prepared for shock and/or disappointment!

In the 1970's, there was a trend towards "adult" party games of the non-electronic variety, generally involving a gameboard, "suggestion" cards, and copious amounts of alcohol.  Games like Sip'n'Strip were designed to encourage middle-class suburbanites to shed their inhibitions, their clothing, and much of their dignity for the sake of being perceived as hip and with-it by their equally nervous and closeted neighbors.

I don't know how often these games were actually played, as opposed to being purchased and mentioned once or twice in hopes that the rest of the party would respond with unbridled enthusiasm, instead of embarrassed looks and hasty departures.  But the computer game industry made a few attempts to adapt the genre to new technology.

One such game was InterSEXion, which shamelessly rips off Monopoly, sending player tokens around the board to buy property, pay rent (or "work it off" in this case), and engage in various intimate encounters when landing on the same square.  The version I sort-of-played for this post was a preliminary version circulated on dial-up BBS systems for beta testing in 1987, prior to a planned retail version; I don't know whether that packaged release ever came out.

This is, literally, a really old f#*@ing game:

The game is rendered in DOS-era text mode -- the Greek male and female symbols are available as tokens, from the IBM PC's extended ASCII character set, but most of the other token options are cryptic at best.  The game keeps track of each player's gender, and in a very forward-looking design decision, allows players to indicate their sexual orientations and preferences.  The game also allows players to set the rating level, keeping the suggested activities within everyone's comfort zone.

The design fails in some key areas, however.  There's not a good balance between income and expenditure, and automatic chance-card transactions can push the player's balance into negative numbers, causing the game to drag to a halt as everyone gets stuck in the game's equivalent of Jail, "Menopause," hoping to earn money for the game's unnamed equivalent of bail, a medical improbability as far as I am aware.

One of the more printable early suggestions is:

Have your partner massage your left foot for a minute.

Here's one that's slightly racier:

The game does give players the chance to "chicken out" of unwanted interactions, but players have to earn those chances to defer.  That is, if they are playing with evil sex monsters from outer space.  Normal human beings are more willing to let others avoid truly uncomfortable situations.  And so the game continues:

The biggest problem is that the game's author seems to see sexual activity in two phases with a major gap between them.  The game starts with relatively innocent foreplay, consisting of plenty of foot massages, kisses and back rubs, and then cuts straight to the naked stuff, most of which is X-rated.  It was apparently too complicated to keep track of everyone's clothing state, so while there are some clothing-related events, the game eventually just directs everyone to get undressed.

I imagine most people stop playing at this point, or shortly thereafter, either because it's time to put the silly game away and get down to business, or because the game starts being a little disturbing.  In my test run, this next suggestion came up rather too quickly for anyone's comfort level:

So, uh, how about some cake and ice cream?