I’ve always had a morbid fascination with the work of Pony
Canyon, the Japanese music label that took a brief detour into video game
publishing. With the aid of shady programming
teams like Atelier Double, Marionette, and the dreaded Micronics, Pony Canyon
was responsible for some of the most heinous NES titles to bear Nintendo’s seal
of approval. Who could forget the stiff
sports spectacle that was Winter Games?
Or Super Pitfall, the wrongheaded sequel that made its ancient 2600
predecessor look state of the art? Or
Hydlide, the tedious, massively ugly adventure game that was instantly
antiquated by The Legend of Zelda… yet was released three years later in the
United States?
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| Dripping blood in an NES game? Well, that's a plus. I guess. |
I know I can’t! Those
wretched games were etched into my brain like a dirty word on the top of a middle
school desk, and Dr. Chaos made the deepest, most jagged cut. The game was released in response to the
growing popularity of the action-adventure genre first made popular by Metroid,
and was most similar to Konami’s The Goonies II, down to the close-quarters
combat and the rather irritating first-person scenes separating one area from the next. However, while The Goonies II leaned toward
the comical, with its characters and setting lifted from the quirky Warner
Bros. movie, Dr. Chaos took a darker turn, set in a creepy mansion teeming
with man’s greatest crimes against God and nature.
(I mean, aside from other Pony Canyon games.)
You are Michael Chaos, and your mission is to tear your
scientist sibling Ginn from the madness he’s created. Your only weapon when you step through the
front door of this house of horrors is a dagger. It’s better than the crappy
rocks you were given to fight serial killer Jason Vorhees in Friday the 13th,
but after getting nipped by the mice skittering around the floor for the
millionth time, you’ll wish Michael had the foresight to bring along a nice
shoulder-mounted bazooka or that awesome spread gun from Contra. (Let’s face it, what game WOULDN’T be better
with one of those?)
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| Look out, it's the reanimated corpse of Thurston Howell! And he's got zom-boobs! |
Alas, he’ll have to find his weapons of mass destruction in
the first-person scenes, triggered by walking through one of the mansion’s many
doors. In keeping with NES tradition,
the 3D in these scenes is awful, with plainly adorned rooms and movement restricted
to ninety degree turns. However, they’re
the only place you’ll find the pistols, machine guns, and grenades you’ll need
to have a shot at survival. They’re also
the gateway to the zones; long, linear gauntlets with lots of freaky monsters
in the middle and an especially dangerous (if especially dumb) boss at the end.
Completing a zone gives you a piece of the game’s ultimate
weapon, a wave cannon which you’ll use to put an end to the puzzling final
boss. Actually, all of them are pretty
damned strange… you’ll tangle with everything from a stampeding pillbug to a
ghost with a weight problem, keeping one hand on the controller while using the
other to scratch your head in bewilderment.
However, Canbarrion is the star attraction in this freak show; a bobble-headed
lion with a flaming mane. Sadly, for all
his potential as a savage death-dealer, he doesn’t really do anything. No, Canbarrion is
quite content to perch on his ledge, belching fireballs and disappointing
players who expected the game to reward them after sitting through three hours
of its often frustrating and unwaveringly creepy crap.
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| The least threatening lion since those guys who sang "When the Children Cry." |
So the game is a pass for NES fans, and I probably could
have saved both of us a lot of time if I had put that in the first paragraph. However, there’s something strangely
compelling about Dr. Chaos, in spite of its flat, repetitive backgrounds, the Gordian-knotted
pathways to each zone, and the shrill eleventh note you’ll dread hearing each
time you open a door back to the interior of the mansion. For all its flaws, the game seems like a more
streamlined package than The Goonies II, which was stuffed with nearly twenty items and even more labyrinthine
levels. (Sometimes less is more,
especially when there’s less to confuse you.)
Also, for those of you into that kind of thing, it’s one of the few NES
titles that’s genuinely scary, with character designs straight out of your
nightmares and nasty surprises hidden in some of those 3D rooms. You’ll open a cabinet expecting to find a
health potion inside, only to have a horrifying imp jump into your now-wet lap.
I guess Dr. Chaos was good for something after all, even if
it was just a diuretic.
