Toys for Bob(by)

Oh, that wacky Bobby Kotick. He's pulled Activision's internal development team Toys for Bob away from the Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot series and assigned them to Call of Duty, because heaven forbid there be the slightest bit of carefree whimsy in this industry that doesn't come directly from Nintendo. On the plus side, the ashtray-filching, subsidiary-shuttering CEO is getting his comeuppance in the form of a significant pay cut. On the down side... he can make all that back and more with bonuses. So much for karma. 

This situation irritates me, because Toys for Bob has been around for a long, long time, first creating the Archon series for the Commodore 64 as Free Fall Associates, and then moving on to the doomed 3DO, developing games like Star Control II and The Horde. For those who missed it, that was the wonderfully weird hybrid of hack and slash action and town building strategy which featured Kirk Cameron's declaration that he was "raised by a kind herd of wild cows." 

(Fun fact: I was one of the voice actors for the fan translation of Ys IV: Dawn of Ys, and my portrayal of the hapless villager turned spider Lemneth was heavily influenced by Cameron's performance as Chauncey. Lemneth was a weenie, Chauncey was a weenie... it just seemed to fit.)

I hadn't been paying too much attention to Toys for Bob's latest efforts, including the Skylanders series and the recent revival of Crash Bandicoot, but it nevertheless seems incongruent to put this team to work on the blood-soaked and seemingly endless Call of Duty series. It's like, exactly the opposite of what they've been making for the last twenty five years. 

Activision's used a hammer to fit a square peg into a round hole before, taking Vicarious Visions out of its natural element as a successful developer of handheld games to work on the PC and console title Diablo. It makes absolutely no sense, but then again, neither does paying Bobby Kotick kajillions to set fire to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Guitar Hero franchises. I wouldn't pay this guy minimum wage to sell Pro subscriptions and creepy latex figurines at GameStop, but what the hell do I know?

Latham's Lament

Time for a little good news/bad news. The bad news (since that's always requested first) is that Michael Latham, the creator of the short-lived Eternal Champions series for Sega game consoles, passed away on April 10th according to Sega Retro. Was Eternal Champions my favorite versus fighter? Not particularly... it didn't feel as well constructed as the Street Fighter games, and there was an emphasis on status effects and location dependent fatalities, features which were both pushed to irritating extremes in the 3DO release Way of the Warrior.

Still, Latham gets credit for making Eternal Champions and its Sega CD sequel one of the most ambitious Western-designed franchises in the early 1990s. Too many Sega Genesis games developed in America felt like they were just good enough to justify being released, whether they were original creations (Kid Chameleon, Greendog), based on television and film licenses (Batman Returns, TaleSpin), or just titles meant as an alternative to whatever Nintendo had released the month before (Art Alive, which forced you to draw with a joypad and should have been banned under the Geneva convention as an instrument of torture).

Eternal Champions had some of the same issues as these games, like grainy graphics and an underwhelming soundtrack provided by the GEMS sound driver, but one complaint you couldn't make is that it was designed out of grim obligation. It's clear from the detailed back stories of the cast alone (there was a hotline you could call to learn more about the fighters! Really!) that this project was important to Latham and his team. In fact, Eternal Champions was more important to Latham that it was to Sega, which cut the series loose out of concern that a Saturn version would distract players from Virtua Fighter. It certainly would have had the edge over that game in violence, if this footage of the Sega CD version is any indication.

It probably goes without saying that this video is pretty graphic. We're talking way over the top, disturbing even by today's standards, "Stop, stop! He's already dead!" graphic. Special thanks to Laser Time for the footage, and thanks to the late Michael Latham for being one of the rare Sega Genesis game designers on this side of the pond who actually seemed to give a damn about his work.

Okay, now onto the good news. If you were annoyed that Capcom didn't include one of your favorite arcade oldies (cough cough Black Tiger) in their recent collection for the Switch, they're selling a fourth game pack in the near future, and including suggestions from fans. Personally, I'd like to see the aforementioned Black Tiger, Pocket Fighter, one of the Darkstalkers games, and 3 Wonders... the last one is technically three games, but they're all very good and I'm very greedy, so I'm sticking with that selection. 

Games that probably won't make the cut include demanding titles like Power Stone which will be too difficult to port, licensed games like Marvel vs. Capcom and The Punisher, and games that fit both descriptions, like that wretched Spawn game for the Dreamcast. If you want Spawn, just play as him in Mortal Kombat 11... don't subject yourself to this little slice of hell on Earth.

One other thing. Capcom will sell an invincibility patch for the rest of the games in Capcom Arcade Stadium. I'm not convinced that this will make much of a difference in quarter inhalers like Final Fight and 1943, but Ghouls 'n Ghosts...? Fine, just take my damn money. Anything to kill Firebrand, that swarthy red gargoyle bastard.

Dial C for Complete

So, that spinner I was complaining about earlier? Yeah, you can say I made some progress on that.

It turns out that the problem I was having with the background art is that the library's copier was very specific about which files and hardware it would accept. It wouldn't recognize the Verbatim flash drive I purchased from an estate sale for five bucks, and it wouldn't accept the PNG files on the Lexar SD card I used as a second option. The picky bastard was finally placated when I converted the file to JPG... it's an old graphics format and it's generally not as crisp and colorful as PNG, but yanno, any port in a storm.

With the artwork finally printed, I could move on to assembling the spinner. Here's a quick peek inside...

The GRS spinner on its own doesn't have support for all the buttons I wanted to use, so I took a USB controller, stripped it down to its printed circuit board, and soldered the L and R triggers to a couple arcade-style buttons I had tucked away in a junk drawer. The spinner and controller were then plugged into a USB hub, and its cable was led out of a hole in the back of the enclosure I used to house my homemade peripheral. Some hot glue and zip ties kept everything in place.

So far, I'm fairly satisfied with what I've built. I really should put some weights on the bottom half of the enclosure to give it a more solid feel, and the spinner dial is too large to comfortably play Arkanoid and other brick breakers, but this crazy controller works a treat for Victory, Omega Race, and Star Trek. Here are my latest scores in the latter two games...

Okay, I'm not breaking any world records here, but cracking six figures in Star Trek nevertheless felt like one hell of an accomplishment. Also, I beat a droid force in Omega Race! Do you know how hard it is to get that five thousand point bonus? Even the VIC-20 version makes you sweat for it, and the arcade game has more onscreen activity and smarter enemies.

By the way, just in case you were about to ask, I still suck at Major Havoc. Look, the spinner makes games more comfortable to play, but it's not a miracle worker.

The Thrill of Gaplus and the Agony of Defeat

This spinner, man... I'm pretty sure this blasted thing is going to kill me. I had plans to put it in a slick case with custom artwork sealed behind a polycarbonate sheet, but even after meticulous measuring, the artwork doesn't print out at the right size. I've got access to a high quality printer and glossy photo paper at the local library, but the copier won't recognize any of my flash drives, and the print software on their computer doesn't want to play nice, insisting on either stretching the image or shrinking it to fit to the page. You don't have to shrink anything, dammit, the image already fits on the page! 

Why are you testing me like this? Am I really going to have to take this file down to AlphaGraphics or the UPS Store to get it properly printed? Haven't I spent enough money on this already? Between the spinner itself and the case and the clear plastic and the drill bits needed to bore holes IN the clear plastic, it's at least been a hundred dollars. All I want is a spinner that doesn't look like the state costume Homer made for Lisa's school play! Is that too much to ask!?

image from Frinkiac

Adding to my level of grump is the realization that I'm probably not going to be given access to the latest iteration of the forum I've been visiting for over ten years. I gave myself some time to cool off after getting into a fight with another member, but they switched to different software in the interim, and attempts to sign up for the new forum have been fruitless. The admins haven't straight up told me that I'm not welcome there, but perhaps I need to buy a ticket for the clue train and just accept that my (talking) time there is over.

Yes, that's one of my comics. Yes, I'm
still a furry. Shut up.

So no, this hasn't been a great couple of weeks for me. At least I can take some solace in the NES port of Gaplus, included in Namco Museum Archives Volume 2. Sandwiched between Falcom's inscrutable Legacy of the Wizard and the dreadfully dull rogue-lite Dragon Buster II is a conversion of the third entry in the Galaxian series, which is not only faithful to the little-seen arcade game but may actually be more fun to play. The arcade version of Gaplus killed players in a hurry by showering them with falling bombs and the shrapnel from exploding diamonds, but these weapons of mass destruction drop more slowly in the NES port, in an attempt to both reduce the difficulty and compensate for the game's vertically challenged playfield. The end result is a game that will still kick your butt, but at least lets you stick around for a few stages before it tears your heart out and serves it to you in a greasy paper bag.

At the End of Your Rope: Libble Rabble

I've been digging deep into the library of shows on Paramount Plus, and found a shining gem buried under the detritus of MTV reality shows and ill-advised reboots of classic action series. (Since when does MacGyver work extensively with a team of hackers and mercenaries? Wasn't he kind of a wandering lone wolf in the original series?) 

I never watched Legends of the Hidden Temple when it first aired in 1993, but I'm watching it now, and can totally understand why it was so popular. Combine the physical challenges of Double Dare with the ambiance of an Indiana Jones movie, then add just a touch of PBS-quality educational value, and you get a game show that's briskly paced and consistently entertaining. It's not always fair, as other blogs have already pointed out, but watching a well prepared contestant work his way through the temple and escape with the treasure of the week firmly tucked under his arm is a genuine, fist-pumping thrill. You will never be happier for a kid in a baggy orange tracksuit clutching a second-rate prop.

Legends of the Hidden Temple isn't directly related to video games, as the somewhat embarrassing Nick Arcade was. However, the producers did want to capture some of the excitement of a video game in the show, even granting contestants "pendants of life" that serve as 1UPs if they're caught by the Mayan temple guards, so I think I'm justified in covering it here. Besides, it's just plain better than Nick Arcade was. Watch the two shows back to back and tell me I'm wrong.

Plus you get this chatty Mayan statue with
glowing red eyes, which beats a stupid noseless
kid in a board game any day of the week.
(image from Reddit)

What doesn't make sense as a video game, but somehow ended up as one anyway, is Libble Rabble, which I've been frequently playing on my Legends Gamer Pro. (I finally got the system running CoinOpsX after hours of blood, sweat, and tears, and ultimately the realization that I was skipping over a step in the online tutorials. Uh, whoops.) 

Even with Pac-Man's Toru Iwatani as its lead designer, Libble Rabble is one of the few Namco games that Midway wouldn't bring to the United States with its brand slapped all over it. It's not hard to understand why... not only is it running on a 16-bit processor that must have been hella expensive back in 1983, it's abstract and cutesy; a digital take on the pegboards your grandmother might have used to make string art back in the 1970s.

Sure, this string art is pretty. But it doesn't
exactly scream "best selling video game,"
does it?
(image from Amazon)

Beyond that, it's a twin stick video game that isn't as immediately intuitive as most titles in that genre. With Robotron: 2084 or Smash TV, you move the hero with one joystick and fire at enemies with the other, easy peasy. Libble Rabble makes you play as two arrows facing in opposite directions, with a string tied around them. Wrap the string around the pegs onscreen, then either touch the arrows together or make them both touch an edge of the screen, and they capture whatever's inside the loop, be it mushrooms or brightly colored wizards or hidden treasure chests. It's hard to get a handle on this method of attack, and it gets doubly awkward when you forget which joystick controls which arrow, and when the screen gets jam-packed with monsters. Your early games won't last long. Your later games will last longer, but you'll wonder why your score has barely cracked five figures by the eighth stage.

"Me want Honey Comb! And also to
know what the hell me is doing!"
(image from Hatch Studios)

It turns out that there's a lot of hidden secrets in Libble Rabble which you'll have to exploit to crank up your point total. You could just pull the string around the whole playfield and bring a quick end to the stage, but you'll have to be much more precise with your loops to first reveal the treasure chests and unlock their contents. When furry monsters who look like the short-lived Honeycomb mascot spill out of the chest, you'll need to scramble to corral them all with your string and capture them. There are also seeds scattered around the screen, but don't grab them with your string just yet! Instead, let them blossom into flowers, which eventually spawn fruits. Draw a loop around these purple fruit things and you'll fill up a bar on the edges of the screen, which when topped off freezes the action and offers you a shot at a huge point bonus.

You're probably looking at this image
and going, "Huh?" It takes a while for
the game to click, but it's worth the
time and effort.
(image by Internet Archive)

Libble Rabble isn't easy for the average player to comprehend, much less describe to others. Reviewers struggling for a comparison usually head straight to Qix, but Qix is cold, stark, mathematical, and frightening in its urgency. You move exclusively in cardinal directions, and you have to keep moving, or you'll die from a collision with roving sparks or a swirling cluster of lines. Libble Rabble is gentler, messier, and more experimental... a high school art project brought to life with the magic of electronics. The colors are brighter, the enemies are less aggressive, and the player is given plenty of freedom in how they build their loops. Unlike Qix, the shapes you build aren't permanent, so feel free to drag your string wherever you please without being trapped by your own creations. 

Further turning down the heat is the soundtrack, which is altogether pleasant and occasionally impressive. Beat a few bonus stages and Libble Rabble pulls a rendition of the classic Wedding March out of nowhere that's so good, you might consider actually using it at your own wedding. Well, if you were really that nerdy. And your fiancé was really that tolerant.

It's not hard to understand why Libble Rabble was forsaken by Midway, and why Namco wouldn't take a chance on an American release of the Super NES port ten years later. However, it's worth untangling this Gordian knot of a game, if just to admire how completely different it is from the hundreds of dot-munchers and alien-blasters that were popular in the early 1980s.