The Tower of Retro-Babble: Midway

(image from Arcade Shop)

 
Hey, it's Bally-Midway! You know, the creators of Pac-Man.

(angry whispering) 

They're... not the creators of Pac-Man? Who is?

(more whispering)

Namco? Where does it say that on the machine?

...Er, anyway. Bally-Midway took all the credit for Namco's work in the United States, to the point where it made its own unauthorized sequels to Pac-Man and wove elements of Galaxian into its own Whitman's Sampler of a shooter, GORF. Eventually, Namco lost its patience with Midway's chronic misappropriation of their characters, and paired up with Atari to distribute its arcade games in the latter half of the 1980s.

The credits for Top Secret illustrates
just how possessive Midway was
of a game that wasn't even theirs.
(Like how Paramount made it nearly
impossible to get this screen cap.)

 

In all fairness, Midway is more than just the games they tried to filch from Namco! It's also the home of artist Brian Colin, who brought the feel of Sunday comics and MAD magazine to the digital world with games like Rampage and Xenophobe. It's also the early stomping grounds of Dave Nutting and his esteemed associates, Jamie Fenton, Bob Ogden, and Alan McNeil.

By the end of the 1980s, Bally would divest itself of Midway, and the company would eventually merge with rivals Williams and Atari Games to become... Midway again. Then it would go bankrupt, with Warner Bros sweeping up the pieces to form Warner Games.

Enough with the history lesson... onto the games! The output of Bally was familiar but competent in the early 1980s, with GORF, Wizard of Wor, and Tron being highlights. However, Midway got an in-house artist, and got a lot more creative and experimental with their game designs in the latter half of the decade. Not all of these daring new ideas stuck the landing- for all its innovation, Xenophobe is an uncomfortable game to actually play- but the occasional smash hit like Rampage proved that experimentation was the right direction for Midway.

Note that these aren't all the games released by Midway. A complete list would probably take a while to review!

Blueprint
Played: in MAME, but saw in a convenience store near Lansing

So about this game! A long, long time ago, I did a video review comparing Blueprint's various home conversions, but I erroneously stated that the game was born in Japan, by Jaleco. Not so! Jaleco distributed it in Japan, but the reality is that the game was designed by Ashby Computers, a little software business in England that would grow up to become... wait for it... Rare.

There's no better way to kill a rogue raisin than
a Rube Goldberg device that shoots basketballs
with all the precision of Shaq at the throw line.
Don't look for sense in this game, you won't
find it.

I was right about it being a weird game, though. As JJ, a man better dressed for Vaudeville than a video game, it's up to you to save your girlfriend from Ollie Ogre, drawn as a cartoon thug on the marquee but looking a lot more like a rampaging prune in the game. JJ can't go toe to toe with the ogre... raisin... thug... creature, so he does the next best thing, stealing parts from various houses to build the world's least efficient mech. This unwieldy contraption fires basketballs from the top of its funnel-shaped arm... nail Ollie with a ball and you're off to a new, rougher neighborhood.

Rare was going somewhere with this design, but it's a little too process-oriented and memorization-dependent for Blueprint to be an arcade classic. Bug-eyed monsters (this is a Rare game, after all) pop out from a hole, hoping to unravel your work, and potted plants rain down from the top of the screen, honing in on you with infuriating accuracy. Return to a house you've already visited and you'll find a bomb inside... quickly chuck it in the monster hole or you'll be blown to bits, with a taunting message from the designers to throw salt in the wound.

There's a lot of balls to juggle in Blueprint, and it's easy to lose track of which houses you've robbed in the chaos, resulting in wasted time and lost lives. It's surprisingly complicated and user-hostile for an arcade game, making it a hard sell next to more intuitive mazers like Pac-Man. Maybe Blueprint was more popular in its native Great Britain, where punishing, over-encumbered titles like this grew like weeds on the ZX Spectrum.

GORF
Played at: Cedar Park in Sandusky, Ohio. Booyah!

I quite distinctly remember playing this at Cedar Park. I also remember playing Space Panic, and not understanding or enjoying it. I was seven, cut me some slack!

Where was I? Oh yes, GORF. This game is a sampler plate of shooters you've already played before, or are a lot like games you've already played before. It's derivative to the point where you wonder why Namco or Taito didn't sue, but it's got something neither Galaxian nor Space Invaders had... menace. The Gorfian consciousness addresses you with rough synthesized voice, and he's rarely complimentary. Your shield crackles with volatile energy, and scorching explosions singe your ears as you pick off each Space Invader, or its almost legally distinct Gorfian counterpart. Playing this game feels like licking a 9-Volt battery... it's a prickly yet energizing electricity.

The arcade game had a lit panel on the
cabinet, with your rank highlighted.
It's not strictly necessary, but it's
a nice touch.

The five mini-games on offer are better than the average shooter of the time, with the flagship offering a memorable end to each loop. Dodge its fireballs, crack a hole through its shield, and sink a bullet into its nuclear heart to witness the best explosion you were likely to see in a 1981 video game. The gameplay is fine, but it's the raw, electric atmosphere of GORF that takes the experience over the top. When you clutch that flight stick tightly, as if it's the only thing between you and the vacuum of space, you'll get it. 

Journey
Played at: A bowling alley in Lake Odessa. Check out those swans!

Before Spice Girls... before Revolution X with Aerosmith... before Moonwalker with Michael Jackson... there was Journey. Here's an early example of a game whose sole reason for existence was to bank on the popularity of a trendy music act. This time, it's the 1982 line-up of the pop rock band Journey. And you can tell it's really them, because their digitized faces have been stapled onto cartoon bodies!

You can kind of tell it's them. Steve Smith looks more like Cheech Marin than anything, but it's early video game digitization. There's not even any color in these low-res photos... everyone looks like a grey smudge with five 'o clock shadows.

Go get 'em, Cheech!
I mean, Steve!

Where was I? The contrived plot has our five musicians trying to regain their instruments from crazed alien group-oids. (The designers didn't take this seriously. Who could?) Simple platforming challenges, like squeezing through rows of neon gates and bouncing on giant drums, stand between each member of Journey and his instrument of choice. Once the band member grabs it, he can fire bullets with the power of radio-friendly soft rock... which is handy, because everything on screen is now eager to kill him. Quick, back to the Scarab!

Journey looks a lot like Tron, with the glowing circuitry replaced with a science-fiction theme loosely based on the band's album covers. It's not as good as Tron, feeling like a clumsy re-badge of a better idea, and that's pretty much what it was. Ralph Baer, the inventor of video games, also pioneered video game digitization, which Midway would use a decade later in Mortal Kombat. The original plan was to let players take snapshots of themselves (any part of themselves...) in place of initials for the high score screen. Since people were already using "ASS" for their initials, you can understand why Baer ultimately went with Journey as his Plan B. (Maybe it should have been his Plan Z! Maybe it was!)

Omega Race
Played: on the VIC-20, primarily

This was Midway's one and only vector based arcade game, designed to shake quarters out of Asteroids fans with a game that feels a little sleeker and a lot more threatening. You're not fighting mindless rocks in this combat simulation, but a caravan of circular droids. One droid takes a leadership role, while the rest follow behind it. Eventually, another member of the flock gains sentience (and rage), becoming increasingly aggressive and trigger-happy. Soon after that, it evolves to its deadliest form... a triangular paddleboat. (Look, they're vector graphics... don't expect ornate detail here.) This Delta Queen is merciless and mean, spraying gunfire everywhere while making a beeline for your ship. A death ship will be spawned at least once in every stage, and it's always a Maalox moment for the player. 

This isn't one of those floaty, "leave one end of the screen, come out the other end" kinds of space shooters like the relatively placid Asteroids. Omega Race exists on a rectangular track with the score and lives in the middle. Try to move outside the borders of the screen and you'll be bounced back by elastic lines. The ship in Omega Race also handles differently than the one in Asteroids... it's lighter, faster, wispier. A good tap of thrust fires your ship outward like an arrow, so you'll have to practice thrusting to take advantage of your ship's speed, while not careening into the droids or any of their droppings. What are these, vec-turds?

Always clean up after your combat droids!

Omega Race was given an exceptional conversion on the VIC-20 home computer, which captured the vector look of the arcade game perfectly along with the Omega Race logo and the storyline, explained in text during the attract mode. The less satisfactory ColecoVision port contains... none of these things, and it badly whiffs the Omega Race physics that the VIC-20 game nailed. Calling this Omega Race feels like calling store brand toaster pastries Pop-Tarts, but you can play it if you want. (I wouldn't. Just sayin'.)

Rabbit Punch
Played: In a Lansing dollar store 

Rabbit Punch was the debut of Japan's Video System, and an odd choice for localization from Nolan Bushnell's Bally-Sente. It feels out of place next to the likes of Snake Pit and Trivial Pursuit and Hat Trick, but bless Nolan and crew for taking a chance on it anyway.

Rabbit Punch is a horizontal shooter that's unmistakably Japanese, but feels very unique from similar games by Capcom, Konami, and Data East. There's a distinct vibe to Rabbit Punch... the visual style is at once metallic, cartoony, and grotesque. One minute you're gathering power-ups from cans of carrots, the next you're flying past Peter Weller in the middle of brain surgery, and the minute after that, you're battling a pride of robot cheetahs. This game goes places. Strange, slightly worrying places that makes you almost afraid to go down this rabbit hole, but you'll want to keep digging just to see what freaky Twilight Zone-meets-Ghibli imagery Video System will throw at you next.

This game is all over the place stylistically.
It's like that cartoon, Gumball.

The gameplay in Rabbit Punch ain't too shabby, either. Kind of punishing despite the cute rabbit heroes and the use of a hit point system, and feeling uncomfortably cramped at points, but not bad. The headlining feature is the titular rabbit punch... get close enough to an enemy and you'll smack it with an oversized fist, doing incredible damage and knocking it backward if it's not already been turned to space dust. Packs of homing missiles can be collected from carrot cans, which spread out to reach those pesky cannons tucked behind walls. 

Rabbit Punch holds together pretty well for Video System's first release, and suggests that the company has a bright future ahead of it as a designer of competent shoot 'em ups. (And that one really bad volleyball game, but the less said about that, the better.)

Rampage
Played at: A bowling alley near Stanton (no swans here! Or bowling alley, now!)

Okay, I'm told the bowling alley near Stanton is now an empty field. Nothin' but flowers. I miss the Dairy Queens and 7-11s. (Never really cared for the Honkey-Tonks, though.)

So I guess this will double as a memorial for the Double 6, or whatever it was called before it got bulldozed. The Double 6 was a bowling alley not far from our house, that was in better condition than many. They must have renovated it for the 1980s, because it's where our family would spend some quality time when we didn't want to drive all the way to Grand Ledge-sing for mini-golf, and neither the NES nor the Disney Afternoon were cutting it for fun.

It was the first bowling alley I went to with computers taking the place of manual scoring, and monitors that played those cheesy cut scenes from the stone age of CGI whenever you got a strike. It was also a fantastic source of arcade games, with a regularly refreshed variety of cabinets. One year, you might find Data East's Shoot-Out (with a "not for play outside Japan" warning before the title screen), and the next, it could be Shinobi.

Don't eat that toilet bowl!
Or do... you're going to have
to throw another quarter into
the machine soon enough anyway.

 

One year, it was Rampage. And Rampage was glorious, a three player celebration of cheesy monster movies from the 1950s. The game was in high resolution, with every pixel of that densely-packed screen used to its fullest by Brian Colin, Midway's in-house artist. At points, the game looks like a MAD magazine page come to life, with your movie monster sneering in disgust after swallowing a toilet, losing his balance atop a skyscraper, or being shrunk down to a normal (and very naked) human after you've run out of health.

As for the gameplay, you break things. You break everything. You demolish buildings by punching through every window, you punch manhole covers, throwing them high into the air, you punch trolley cars that let out a disapproving "ding!" with every hit, you punch neon signs that electrocute you. You'll even punch your friends because damn it, Matt, I wanted that turkey! Come on, you've got a lot more health than I do!

Few games are as jam-packed with personality as Rampage, and it's an absolutely terrific game for three players. However, after punching a dozen cities into rubble, you've seen as much of this game as you need to see. You definitely don't need to see all 255 stages in the heavily watered-down NES conversion. Don't make the same mistake I did!

Satan's Hollow
Played at: A laundromat in Coldwater

Years before Mortal Kombat, Midway got the nipples of parents groups in a twist with Satan's Hollow. Past the use of Lucifer and his minions as enemies, and some slightly foreboding backgrounds (on a scale of 0 to Heironymus Bosch, they rank a generous 3), there's nothing scandalous about this fixed-screen shooter. Take Galaxian and Phoenix, smoosh 'em together, then give the player some extra busywork by letting him build a bridge to a second screen, and that's your game. Also, as expected from the title, there's Satan himself. He belches streams of fire down upon the player... better be quick with that shield button!

Satan's fire vomit is deadly.
(Sounds like a hot sauce
I had once.)

Satan's Hollow doesn't compare to the timeless cosmic ballet that is Galaga (anyone wanna switch seats?), but it's a workable shooter when taken on its own terms. A generous shield protects you from the thick swarms of gargoyles and their hail of brimstone, and cannons can be added to your ship by killing a lesser demon lurking on the second screen, but there's not much else going on in the gameplay department. Well, there is that occasional aggravating demon who will try to swipe a life from your stock... it feels cheap, and if you get it back, there's no benefit to your current ship, like in Galaga. You just prevent the flocks of demons from destroying your ship before you even get a chance to use it. Dirty pool, Midway. Annoy the parents groups all you want, but now you're getting on my nerves, and I'm the one playing this!

Apropos of nothing in particular, there's a recent port of Satan's Hollow for the ColecoVision, that performs remarkably well in spite of the significant hardware gap between Coleco's console and the MCR-II that powers the coin-op. Here's a link to the game in action, courtesy of the always jubilant Willie from ArcadeUSA.

Space Zap 
Played at: A bowling alley in Vestaburg

It's more of a reflex test than a video game, but Space Zap will keep you busy for the five minutes you'll want to play it. You control the defense cannon of a station set deep in space. Enemies arrive to rain fireballs down upon the station, and they're easy enough to dispatch at first... just point the cannon in one of four directions and blast away. However, just as you're lulled into a false sense of security, the attack intensifies, with ships appearing, firing, and vanishing in the blink of an eye. Then a satellite joins the fray, madly swirling around the station until you catch it with a laser blast... or it crashes into the station, causing a messy pixelated explosion. Sure, it looks like someone made it with the spray tool in Microsoft Paint, but cut the designers a little slack! This is a game from 1980, after all!

Space Zap isn't much for looks. There's not much of anything here, really, but it's an example of how to make an effective game with as little game as possible. It's a short thrill, but a thrill's a thrill.

Tapper
Played at: Uh...?

At the peak of early video game mania, even bars and taverns wanted a piece of the action, asking Midway to make an arcade game about serving beer so they could put it in an establishment serving beer, to encourage people to drink more beer. Maybe even BUDWEISER beer!

So Midway gave us Tapper, starring a bartender who serves mugs of beer the only way a video game character could... rapid-fire, to a thick crowd of rowdy customers. If a customer reaches you before they get their beer, you lose a life. If you serve a beer and there's no customer to catch it, the mug shatters, and you lose a life. If you're lucky, a customer may leave a tip, which you can grab from the counter... if you have a spare moment, and you rarely will. Such is the life of a video game bartender... you're five times faster than a real bartender, but also under five times the stress.

So, a cowboy, a punk rocker, and a football fan
walk into a bar...

Tapper isn't a deep game. You're racing up and down, slinging suds across four counters to wet the whistles of your throng of customers. Tips trigger a sideshow that catches the attention of your beer-swilling clientele, giving you a chance to catch your breath. However, it's more efficient to leave the tips on the table and just get your customers out the door. A distracted customer can't catch any mugs you send their way, and it's all too easy to throw them one by mistake.

Every two stages, you're given a shell game played with shaken up cans of beer, and a new set of customers, ranging from sports fans to aliens. (All life forms are united in their love of alcohol, apparently.) Tapper is presented in a high resolution with detailed cartoon graphics, and it's a big part of the game's charm. Things just feel more lively when your character cowers in fear of an unseen boss after a beer mug shatters, or when he's dragged over a table and thrown out the front door by an unsatisfied customer.

A later iPhone remake leaned hard on those cartoon hijinx, with artwork supplied by animation legend Don Bluth. Tapper also got a sequel of sorts in Timber, with two players chopping down trees as lumberjacks. It doesn't get the acclaim that Tapper does, due in part to the video game crash but also because deforestation doesn't have the same addictive quality as serving (or drinking!) beer. You could tip trees on your brother to irritate him... there's that. That's always a plus.

Trog
Played: MAME, but seen in a Battle Creek Meijer

Midway had a good thing going with Pac-Man, but after one too many creative liberties with the license, Namco took its munchy yellow ball and stormed home. Suddenly, Midway was without its star player, and found itself in dire need of a replacement. What to do, what to do?

Midway's solution was to take the core gameplay of Pac-Man and infuse it with stop-motion graphics and the hip, playful attitude of the early 1990s. The end result is Trog. While it's not the classic Pac-Man was (and feels out of step with the gaming trends of 1991), it's a fairly diverting mazer with more than its share of goofy Western charm. If you've ever done the Bartman, you'll want to play Trog.

I bet this guy would get along really
well with Toejam and/or Earl.

Trog casts you as one of four dinosaur buddies- or all four buddies at once if you've got three friends!- gobbling eggs while avoiding the game's pot-bellied Cyclopean cavemen. Trogs can be batted away with punches, but your tiny dinosaur arms demand exact precision, and if two Trogs corner you, you're dead meat no matter how ferociously you fight back.

Occasionally, power-ups will randomly appear in the island maze, with a lucky horseshoe granting you temporary invulnerability and an ice cube that freezes the cavemen in place. The grand prize is the pineapple, which bulks out your mild-mannered dino, letting you chomp all the nearby Trogs as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Munching blue ghosts in Pac-Man was satisfying, but it's doubly so in Trog, with your T-Rex taking big, bass-filled bites that shake the screen. Yeah! Who's on the top of the food chain NOW?

The pineapple is your golden ticket
to T-Rex-ville. Population: All you
can eat!

It's a little sluggish and random compared to Pac-Man, but Trog's laid back pace is more accommodating to casual players, and the double-helping of animation makes it worth the quarter for arcade veterans. When Trogs eat you, they literally eat you, pulling out a fork and chewing thoughtfully as they strip the meat from your Claymation bones. Step in a tar pit and your dino struggles briefly, only to wave "bye-bye" as he gets pulled into the muck. Finish a stage and a super-sized version of your dinosaur buddy pumps his fists in triumph. It's fun enough to play, but Trog is a delight to watch. 

Tron
Played at: Among other places, a Tucson laundromat

Like GORF and Journey, Tron is a variety pack of games, this time loosely based on scenes from the Disney film that sparked the imaginations of millions of budding nerds. Defend yourself against patrolling tanks! Fight through swarms of bugs guarding the stage exit! Infiltrate the Master Control Program by chipping through its firewalls with your trusty data frisbee! Trap your opponents in walls of light, set in the wake of the Syd Mead-iest motorcycle in virtual existence!

Plick through the rainbow
walls of the Master
Control Program, one
of four mini-games in
Tron.

As games go, Tron is better than average... a little awkward thanks to its use of a flight stick for movement and a dial for aiming, but perfectly playable. However, as merchandise for the film, it's spectacular. Few film-licensed video games capture the spirit of the movie as well as the Tron arcade game. Onscreen objects pulse with energy, Wendy Carlos' electronica soundtrack is paired with angry hums, unnerving thumps, and violent digital outbursts, and the tension is kept high with tough opponents and tight time limits. When you play Tron, you too will feel like you're trapped in a computer, and you too will feel like death is always three steps behind you. The Dude does not envy you. He was trapped in a computer once, and it was a pretty bad scene.

Here's a game that
knows its audience!

Tron was followed up with Discs of Tron, which captured the feel of the disc duels near the start of the film. Perspective is used to brilliant effect, to both distance the two players and strengthen the feel of being trapped in a digital world... stark, barren, and most of all, dangerous. Watch your step on those silvery platforms... it's a long way down into oblivion!

Wizard of Wor 
Played at: A roller rink in Crystal

Even in the early days, there was a vibe to Midway's arcade games. They were meaner, colder, and more threatening than the kind of game you'd get from a Japanese company, like Namco or Nintendo. 

That may have something to do with the Astrocade-based hardware Midway used in the early 1980s, with its harsh blues, reds, yellows, and statics (yes, static is a color now. Ask the Astrocade!) set against a black void. More likely, that sense of desperation came from the creatives at Midway, who wanted to impart that hopeless mood into their software. There's no question you're going to die when you play an early Midway game. The question is, how long can you stay alive under the mounting pressure?

And that's Wizard of Wor. You're trapped in the Wizard's dungeon, crawling with all kinds of hideous monsters. Bipedal wolf-kangaroos! Six-legged hogs with antennae! Something that looks like a scrunched-up T-rex! And a humanoid wasp, who flits through the maze looking for Worriors to sting. You can fight back with a laser rifle, but something, somewhere is going to kill you. The worst part is, because monsters disappear if they're not in your field of view, you may not even see it coming.

In Wizard of Wor, you're hunter and hunted all
at once. Check the radar... the monsters
like to hide in the corners!

That fear of the unknown causes tension. Tension that forces you to frequently check the radar for monsters you can't see in the maze. Tension that only grows when the monsters get faster, and the other player decides you're an easy 2000 points, and the robotic voice of the Wizard taunts you, and holy shit he's in the maze right now get him get him get him annnnnd he just got away. Finally nailing the Wizard is pure satisfaction... even the game can't seem to believe you did it, strobing colors and letting out quivering digital moans as if it was on the verge of a meltdown.

Wizard of Wor is an awesome game with awesome concepts, that unfortunately doesn't remain awesome when the Burwors, Garwors, Starwors, and Worwors get too fast to manage. You will definitely die. But you'll have fun fighting for survival, in those early stages where survival was possible.

The Tower of Retro-Babble: Nichibutsu

Soar, Mighty Orbots! And take off in
an extremely exciting action sequence!

Back in 1985, giant robots were all the rage. Voltron! Robotech! Transformers! Mighty Orbots! As an eleven year old boy who fixated on pop culture with the intensity of a laser beam, I loved 'em all... and even tolerated Go-Bots, if nothing else was on.

You could find giant robots (and even better, giant robots that combine into even giant-er robots!) everywhere on television, but when it came to video games, especially just after the crash, there was just one place to get your fix...

Nichibutsu! Also known as Nihon Bussan,
and currently festering inside the stomach
of Hamster. Funny... in nature, it's typically
the other way around...

Nihon Bussan had two early arcade hits with Crazy Climber and Moon Cresta, but took a hard swerve into contemporary Japanese pop culture under the creative leadership of Shigeki Fujiwara. Nichibutsu games were often inspired by Japanese action shows, in the same way a high schooler's cheesy fan art was "inspired" by Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon. 

"Space Sheriff Sharivan? No, our game is called Cosmo Police GALivan! UFO Robo Grendizer? No no, our game is UFO Robo Dangar! It's an easy mistake we hope players will make, so we can make money from those hot television shows without actually paying for their licenses."

Eleven year old me didn't give a damn about Nichibutsu's dangerous dance with Japanese copyright laws. He just wanted cool-looking ships that combine into bigger, more powerful ships, and Nichibutsu was the first company to consistently bring that experience into the arcade space. The only thing better than giant robots that combine is combining giant robots with video games.

Formation Armed F
Played: in MAME

Every classic shoot 'em up has a black sheep in its family. For Gradius, it's Xexex; for R-Type, it's R-Type Leo; and for Terra Cresta, it's Formation Armed F. Designed by artist and future Ghibli employee Takanori Tanaka, Formation Armed F makes visuals its highest priority. Admittedly, the artwork is better than what you'll find in the average Nichibutsu game... each stage is memorably themed, from the creepy, crawly Insect Stage littered with brightly colored exoskeletons, to the giant carcasses of the Bone Stage, with moldy lumps of flesh still clinging to the remains. It doesn't have the impact of R-Type's chrome-plated Gigerian nightmares, but the backgrounds are impressively detailed for 1988.

Armed and middling.

Does it play as well as a true Terra Cresta game, though? Not really. The vertical aspect ratio doesn't pair well with those pretty foreground objects, leaving the action feeling congested. And while there's a formation button (it is in the name after all... twice if you count the F!), there's no fleet of ships to re-arrange... instead, it shifts the position of your two escort ships, the "armers." Armers can block shots, and when extended, can actually poke through the foreground, letting you blast enemies behind it. Power-ups change the size and angle of your shots, but that's as deep and strategic as Formation Armed F gets.

Crazy Climber 2
Played: in MAME

Crazy Climber gets a 16-bit glow up in this Japanese sequel, one of many Crazy Climber sequels that never reached these shores. (There's at least two on the Playstation alone, not including Nichibutsu Arcade Classics.) Looking at this particular game with its subdued earth tones and parallax scrolling makes you think this is how Crazy Climber might have looked on the Sega Genesis.

"Playfully sleazy" is the prevailing mood
throughout Crazy Climber 2.

Whether you're down with the new look or not, it's a massive improvement over the 1980 original. Nichibutsu has dedicated sprite artists now! GOOD artists! And hardware that can do that artwork justice! While it's a much prettier game than the original, the gameplay is roughly the same, with the player rhythmically shifting two joysticks to mimic climbing with two hands. Some of the stage gimmicks are the same, like the giant gorilla and escape helicopter, while others are new, like the racy billboard that kicks you off the building if you're careless. However, they all have a naughty urban edge that fits the New York setting and the attitude of the late 1980s.

In short, Crazy Climber 2 is a fitting if not exceptional follow-up to an arcade classic. It may not be the best version of Crazy Climber, but you could chalk that up to sheer volume. 

Dangar UFO Robo
Played: In some woodsy convenience store, somewhere in Michigan

Dang is right! A year after Terra Cresta, Nichibutsu took the next logical step with its follow-up. Now, instead of five ships that turn into a phoenix, you're playing as three ships that transform into a robot! A robot that shoots its own fists at the bad guys! And the robot can turn into a flying saucer! Okay, that is ten thousand percent awesome. Where can I buy the toy?

Second verse, same as the first!

As for the game, well, it's more Terra Cresta. There are differences, mostly in the trajectory of your shots... Dangar concentrates his firepower directly ahead of him, while Terra Cresta's Wing Galibur spreads its bullets across the screen in its most powerful forms. There are also gateways to pocket dimensions, leading to some creepy background scenery and a boss that makes Mandora from Terra Cresta look like a six-armed wuss.

The biggest problem with Dangar UFO Robo is that it's too much like Terra Cresta, without the novelty that game enjoyed in 1985. It's still good in all the ways Terra Cresta was good, but the experience is no longer fresh. It's Terra Cresta leftovers.

Moon Cresta
Played: in MAME

"You can get a lot of fun and thrill" from Moon Cresta, alleges Nichibutsu. Funny, I just noticed a lot of frustration and annoyance. This is your boilerplate fixed screen shooter, with several features that seem like they could add to the experience, but only add to the player's mounting aggravation. Take the lives system (please). You're given three separate ships, which can be stacked on top of each other for a boost of firepower. However, when a ship is destroyed, you're not getting it back... and the wider two ships have the combined annoyance of a larger hit box and gaps between the lasers you could drive a Space Winnebago through.

Hard to believe this fathered
the exceptional Terra Cresta.
I demand a paternity test!

By the time you're down to your third, absolutely enormous ship, you'll be easy pickins for the Cold Eyes and "atomic piles" that effortlessly dodge your shots, then swerve into your space barge with their constant infernal looping. Yeah, something's an atomic pile here, and it ain't those missiles near the end of the game. Moon Cresta was followed up with Moon Quasar, as minimal an upgrade to the original as one could make without simply writing the new title over the marquee with a Sharpie. Your first ship fires faster (making the other two ships even more useless by comparison) and you can refuel with a mothership which looks like it has a goiter problem. This doesn't add a thing to the game, and is certainly not an improvement I would have suggested.

Moon Shuttle
Played: in MAME

Turn Moon Cresta sideways, then add some asteroid belts, and you've got Moon Shuttle, one of Nichibutsu's earliest (and if we can be honest here, most creatively barren) releases. The first half of the game has you blasting a field of lazily drifting meteors, squeezing through the gaps you've made with your laser, and the second half is spent blasting enemies with swirling patterns that should be familiar to anyone who's already played Moon Cresta.

Laser erosion is a slow and steady process...

There's nothing overly offensive about the gameplay of Moon Shuttle... it just feels like a "been there, done that" kind of shooter, at a time when players had access to the superlative Galaga, and Sega's own strong entry into the fixed shooter genre, Astro Blaster. Who needs Moon Shuttle when those games are just a few cabinets away? Hell, who needs Moon Cresta when you've got Galaga or Astro Blaster nearby?

Ninja Emaki 
Played: on that Namco Museum cabinet

Ninja Emaki takes the top-down, Japanese-flavored run 'n gun action of Sega's Ninja Princess, and cranks it up about a hundred decibels. Your hero lays down intense crossbow fire from the moment the action begins... just hold down the fire button and you'll unleash a stream of bolts in whatever direction you're facing. However, pick up a scroll and you'll gain access to eight new weapons, from tornadoes to spinning shuriken to waves of water. These super weapons don't last long, so charge deep into enemy territory while you've got them... and grab that new scroll the moment it appears!

A Dragonball cloud! It's
the only way to fly in
ancient Japan!

This is one of those games that takes you by surprise while you're poking through MAME for random entertainment. It's not just that Ninja Emaki is obscure... it's also pretty darned good. How did this miss the NES? How did this miss me the last time I was in an arcade? The gameplay's both intense and varied, with your ninja fighting on land, air, and sea, the graphics shine with iridescent colors, and the music captures that feudal Japanese feel while adding an appealing digital edge. Honestly, I don't care what Ninja Emaki is or where it came from... just give me more of it! (Change the DIP switch settings from five continues to ninety-nine, and you can have as much Ninja Emaki as you want. Look Nichibutsu, I'll tell YOU when I'm done playing this.)

Terra Cresta
Played at: The Malt Shop in Mount Pleasant

Xevious was a huge hit in Japan, and one of the first vertical shooters. Given its pedigree and the fact that it was designed by Namco at the peak of its game-making powers, you'd think I'd like the game more than I do. It's fine, but I just don't get all that excited about shattering flocks of dinner plates and dropping bombs on chrome-plated pyramids.

Double your pleasure! And
QUINTUPLE your pleasure,
if you last long enough to
get all the ships.

Now Terra Cresta, on the other hand, that speaks to me. At first blush, it's very similar to Xevious, but the differences become clear when your teeny little space ship docks with a slightly larger one, boosting its firepower. Wait, my ship is a Transformer?! And there are more ships to find? How many space ships can I tack onto my Winger? Four? And I can split them apart with a touch of a button? And if I can get all four ships at once, they briefly transform into a flaming phoenix that destroys everything it touches? And you can blow up dinosaurs? 

Look... it's 1985, I'm eleven, and I never miss an episode of Voltron, even the crappy ones with the vehicles. I was already onboard with Terra Cresta the moment you told me there were playable Transformers. Blowing up dinosaurs is just gravy. (I'm also cool with bubble-blowing dinosaurs, because I'm flexible like that.)

Terra Cresta is a fine game on a fundamental level... it doesn't do anything worse than Xevious, although the enemies who delight in reversing course and flying straight up your butthole get annoying in a hurry. (Oh, there's that Moon Cresta DNA.) However, it's the combining ships play mechanic that puts this game way over the top. Terra Cresta has a more rewarding and versatile weapon system than most other mid-80s shooters... a fully assembled Wing Galibur is death on two wings, in contrast to the piddling firepower in Tecmo's Star Force.

And! And! Terra Cresta lets you play as a Transformer. In case you've forgotten.

Rug Rats
Played at: The Castle Pizzaria in Lakeview

Not to be confused with the brats from the Nickelodeon cartoon, Rug Rats is a cartoon carpet caper starring you as a vacuum cleaner, and animated dust bunnies as the villains. It's a lot like Dig Dug, with the dirt replaced by a dirty kitchen floor. There are hapless hairballs that mindlessly wander back and forth, like Pookas, and more aggressive dirt devils that try to harpoon you with a spring-loaded spear. Like the fire-breathing Fygars, you'll want to take them by surprise, first stunning them with a blast of air before sweeping them up. If you're feeling saucy, use the carpets that serve as Rug Rats' rocks. Walk over them and they'll roll up, squishing any Baddons, Bilbolas, and Bigimbas they roll over.

The crown is the tasty thing in the middle
of this maze game, temporarily freezing
all onscreen enemies.

Rug Rats isn't just Dig Dug with a housekeeping theme, though! Well, it's MOSTLY that, with day-glo colors and the most aggressively irritating opening theme this side of Make Trax. Would somebody take Hell's squeaky toy away from Fido, please? There are also three valuables hidden in the debris... suck 'em up and a crown appears. Grab that and all onscreen clutter monsters are frozen in place, vulnerable to your touch. (You may have already gathered that this game isn't a wellspring of fresh new ideas.)

There's two other things worth mentioning about Rug Rats. First, it was designed by Jordan, as was most of Nichibutsu's work prior to the company's totally justifiable obsession with giant robots. Jordan spent the latter half of the 1980s making muddy military shooters for Seta, including Caliber .50, Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe's Brother, and my guilty pleasure Meta Fox, the white trashiest shooter ever made in Japan. Listen to that boss music and tell me I'm wrong!

Second, this is one of the games I actually played in an arcade... specifically, the Castle Pizzaria in central Michigan. Back in the 1980s, the economy of small towns was healthy enough that you could build a pizza restaurant that resembles a British castle, line the walls with arcade games, and keep that business going for several years. These days, the building is now owned by Main Street Pizza, a provincial restaurant chain. Admittedly, the pizza is pretty good (it had better be when there's literally nothing else to do in the restaurant...), but I miss the Castle Pizzaria's joyously tacky hometown ambiance.

The Tower of Retro-Babble: Tecmo

Teh-ka-kan! Teh-teh-teh-teh-teh-ka-kan!

Tecmo: Now with more ninjas! And boobs! And ninja boobs!

Tehkan is dead. Long live the Tecmo. 
(It's Koei-Tecmo now? In that case, long live the boredom.)

(The Legend of) Baluba-Louk
Played: On MAME, sorry!

Like Falcon's Dorodon, The Legend of Baluba-Louk is a new game built on old hardware. Unlike Dorodon or Tehkan's own Pleiades, Baluba-Louk is a largely successful game design that distinguishes itself from Bomb Jack, even though the two games were built on the same foundation.

I have no flippin' idea what these
things are supposed to be. They
look like a dragon had sex
with a Dalek.

You're a tomb raider (not the one with triangular boobs), and it's up to you to grab all the treasures in each horizontally scrolling underground crypt. Beware, though! There are six crypt guards, all deadly to the touch. Crypt guards can't be killed directly, but the title character can light bombs that detonate when a guard steps on them, temporarily leaving the colorful chess piece stunned. Treasure chests contain better weapons, but first, you'll have to crack them open by hitting the floor beneath them with your head.

Is Baluba-Louk as good as Bomb Jack? Not really. The lead character is a lot less mobile, and the cramped caverns leave you feeling helpless unless you're constantly setting traps for your pursuers. Still, it's a strong first effort from Able, a small game company that would eventually go on to make the completely bonkers platformer J.J. Squawkers. Imagine what would happen if Heckyl and Jeckyl took LSD and watched too much anime, and you'll know what to expect.

Bomb Jack
Played: In an emulator designed exclusively to play Bomb Jack

Either you "get" Bomb Jack, or you don't. Internet satirist Sean "Seanbaby" Reilly didn't get it, dismissing the NES semi-sequel Mighty Bomb Jack as one of the worst games on the system. However, players who can adapt to the game's complex jumping mechanics quickly discover the game's hidden brilliance. That includes indie designer Anna Anthropy, who made it the focal point of her masocore action game Mighty Jill Off, and the entire country of Great Britain. The Brits were crazy for Bomb Jack, releasing the game for every game system and home computer that could handle it. (And the ZX Spectrum.) Heck, there was even a Thundercats game in Britain which was a reskinned Bomb Jack sequel!

Stages in Bomb Jack are usually
accompanied by a picturesque
landmark... which typically gets
butchered in the home versions.

The object of this platformer is to defuse all the bombs in each stage. You may have noticed that there are no ladders in Bomb Jack... that's because you won't need them. The lead character can leap the entire height of the screen, or stop his ascent halfway through with a tap of the jump button, or gently float down to earth with rapid taps of jump. 

If you can't get the hang of jumping in Bomb Jack, you'll quickly fall prey to the chrome-plated robots roaming each stage. However, once you master the jumping mechanics, you'll soar through the sky, land cleanly on platforms, and snatch up the more valuable lit bombs like a pro. You may not even need the "P" coin that turns all the robots into coins... but since it's already there, you might as well grab it and clean house!

Like parries in Street Fighter III or the jumble of action buttons in Stargate, Bomb Jack's pixel-precise jumping takes a lot of practice. It's a skill worth learning, because the better you get at it, the more rewarding Bomb Jack becomes.

Guzzler
Played in: A pizza shop in Central Michigan

It's easy to dismiss this as another hackneyed Pac-Man clone... lord knows I did. However, there's layers to the seemingly derivative gameplay of Guzzler. You're an animated water bubble (or is that thing an ice cube?), and you've got to quench the four fires burning onscreen. Fire fiends emerge from the flames and chase you around, but you can use blasts of water to put them out. Guzzler can only hold three blasts, with each blast having less range than the previous one, but stepping on puddles refills his supply. The genre-mandated bonus prize in the center of the screen freezes all fire fiends in place, making them easy targets for your ocean spray.

Squirt your thirst!

There's a weird alcoholic theme running throughout Guzzler... the bonus prizes in the center of the screen are martinis and bottles of whiskey, and a giant version of your character appears in the cut scenes to rescue you from fire fiends, only to be frozen in his tracks by a bottle of booze. "Bourbon! The brownest of the brown liquors! What's that? You want me to drink you? But I'm in the middle of saving my little buddy! Hold on, I need to call my sponsor. Whaddaya MEAN David Crosby is dead?!"

Er, where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Guzzler. There have been better maze games, but also worse ones, and at least this one's fairly original. I could see this being repurposed on home consoles as a Kool-Aid Man game... just replace the alcohol with sugar and flavor pouches, and Guzzler with a big red smiling jug. It'd be more fun than the Kool-Aid Man games we actually got for the 2600 and Intellivision, that's for sure.

Ninja Gaiden
Played in: Practically everywhere, but in particular, the Malt Shop in Mt. Pleasant

I know how it looks on the marquee, but it's Ninja Guy-den, not "Ninja the Gay-den." Also, while most people prefer Ninja Gaiden on the NES, I'm partial to the arcade original, with its sword-swiping, neck-throwing, car-dodging, popcorn stand-smashing action. It's a belt-scroller that earns its keep by being more nimble than Double Dragon, more exotic than Renegade, and more violent than the two combined. 

When you begin, your hero stands defiantly on the front of a boat under the Brooklyn bridge, with the caption "Ninja in USA." And that's it, that's the game. You're fighting masked thugs in a slum littered with signs and oil barrels, swinging on lamp posts to vault yourself over busy highways, and battling claw-wielding acrobats in Atlantic City. Your ninja can fling foes across the screen with a tricky but oh-so-satisfying leaping neck throw, which leads to the game's other headlining feature. 

Smash boom bang! Pretty much everything
breaks in Ninja Gaiden, whether it's oil
barrels or Coca-Cola signs, and if you
try to tell me that's not cool,
you are totally lying.

Practically everything in Ninja Gaiden breaks when you toss an enemy into it, which not only awards you bonus items, but looks and sounds impossibly cool. Even if you don't get that health restoring pill or the pair of swords that lets you easily cleave a path through the armies of log-wielding thugs, it's always, always worth breaking something just to hear the satisfying shatter of glass and gawk at the extensive property damage.

It's not as cinematic as the NES Ninja Gaidens (although not without cinematic ambitions... check out that continue screen with the buzzsaw bearing down on your ninja!), and not as deep as Double Dragon, but arcade Ninja Gaiden is visceral in a way no other beat 'em up had been up to that point. That matters, especially in an arcade setting where first impressions are everything.

Pinball Action
Played in: A convenience store a small Illinois town

This game happened just before Tehkan's transformation into Tecmo, and it's a promising look at the company's future. The classic Tecmo font used in Solomon's Key makes its debut here, and the graphics are blazingly colorful, with a flame-headed woman decorating the pinball table. (Is that Cher? It sure looks like Cher. I'm saying it's Cher.)

Do you believe in life after pinball?

The table is small and compact, without a scrolling playfield, but keep in mind that this was early video pinball. Compared to Atari's own game titled Video Pinball, this is a quantum leap forward... and unlike Namco's GeeBee, this actually feels like pinball, not Breakout with bumpers. The ball behaves as if it's governed by the forces of gravity, and there are plenty of targets to hit, forcing the player to aim each shot carefully to score point bonuses and advance to a hidden second table.

It's not Devil's Crush, widely recognized as the best video pinball game ever made, but keep in mind that this was 1985. In those early days, Pinball Action, as cramped and full of Cher as it is, was as good as video pinball could get. It's loud, with a menacing hum in the background, it's explosively colorful, and the ball feels appropriately weighty. You couldn't ask for more from an electronic pinball game of its early vintage.

Pleiad(e)s
Played: On MAME

There has never been a game as unforgettably forgettable as Pleiades. It's like Tehkan was sitting next to Taito in video game class, and asked if it could copy its Phoenix homework. "Sure," Taito replied coolly. "But change things around a little so it's not obvious to the teacher. Take out the handy shield, turn the demon vultures into generic-looking monsters, put in some tap-dancing aliens, and make the cool fight with the alien queen kind of sucky."

And boy, did they! Pleiades looks, sounds, and feels like Phoenix, but everything Phoenix does, Pleiades does worse. The enemies are dumber, the graphics are shabbier, and the sound effects range from "grating" to "the robot devil's barbed wire harp." It's one of the most contrived single screen shooters of its generation, a shambling wooden duplicate hoping that if he wishes really, really hard, he too will become a real boy game some day. Keep wishing, Pleiades... it ain't gonna happen.

Great Value Phoenix.

GORF got a lot of grief for being a greatest hits collection of other early shooters, but its mini-games, derivative though they may be, were based on effective and time-tested designs. They work well on their own, and work well as components of a larger game. Pleiades tries to color outside the lines of Phoenix with new ideas, but they're all bad ones. Even returning to base after a successful run feels like an attempt to shoehorn thrusting mechanics into a game that shouldn't have them.

As you continue to play and not enjoy Pleiades, you can't help but ask yourself... why does this even exist? Don't ask Tekhan; they don't know either.

Rygar
Played in: A movie theater in Charlotte MI

Back in the 1980s, arcade games and home ports of those games were two very different things. Dedicated arcade hardware was at the peak of audiovisual technology, and home consoles like the NES couldn't hope to accurately reproduce that experience. At the same time, arcade games were designed for quick play... the player drops in their coin, oohs and aahs at the spectacle of a looming sunset in the background, gets wiped out after a couple stages, and leaves, only to have another player repeat the process. 

The classic burning sunset, present in
both the arcade and NES versions
of Rygar. By the way, your weapon
is the Diskarmor, a bladed frisbee
on a metal string. It's a video game,
just go with it.

With an NES game, you're going to be stuck with it for a while, at least for the duration of the rental. Straight arcade ports weren't going to hold the player's attention for long, and they certainly weren't going to look as nice as the original, so the designers had to embellish the designs. Stages were broadened, play mechanics were added, resource management became a factor, and items were used as keys to gain access to new areas. 

This was intensely aggravating for arcade maniacs like myself. However, looking back, these rewrites were not only necessary for a different audience of gamers, but often resulted in better, more complete experiences. Rygar is one game that's definitely better on the NES, but that's not to say the arcade version of Rygar is bad. It's just dumb, even by the standards of an arcade game. Levels are typically one long horizontal stretch of land, with fire worms bursting from the ground and other creatures pouring from the sides of the screen. Don't stop to think! Just keep racing to the right, batting away foes with your Diskarmor as they approach. It's intense and bracing, but also light on meaningful content. By the time your lifeless hero is dragged to the afterlife by a creepy ghost, you're also ready to go to a better place. (Specifically, your friend's house, playing the NES version of Rygar.)

Silk Worm
Played in: The Castle Pizzaria in Lakeview MI

That logo, she blow up real good, mon ami!

On its face, Silk Worm seems like an ordinary military shooter, but the secret to the game's success is its dual pronged gameplay. One player takes to the skies in a helicopter, while the other drives a Jeep through enemy territory. Your choice of vehicle greatly alters the way the game plays... the chopper feels a lot like Scramble, with a cannon firing forward and bombs dropping down, while the Jeep is more like Moon Patrol, with jumping and a machine gun that can fire from any angle. It's two, two, two games in one!

The Jeep's limited mobility makes it the less desired of the two play styles, but playing with a friend is your best option, giving you both land and air supremacy. Even when you're playing alone, there's enough action and compelling twists in Silk Worm to keep you hooked. Panels on the ground can be destroyed, releasing clouds of stars. Fly or drive into the stars for temporary invincibility, or fire at them to clear the screen of minor enemies. 

Silk Worm's dual faceted gameplay
lets you attack from the sky as a chopper,
or on the ground as a Jeep. Yeah,
I'd choose the helicopter, too.

Nobody's going to be impressed by this game's humble display of firepower... Silk Worm is as far removed from "bullet hell" as a shooter can get. However, it's got an appealing military aesthetic that's equal parts G.I. Joe and Airwolf, and although the gameplay isn't deep, the action is intense enough to keep you glued to your joystick for a few stages.

Silk Worm is one of those games that's vastly more popular in Great Britain than other territories, and that love is not misplaced!

Solomon's Key
Played: On the NES. This kind of missed me in arcades... 

I imagine a conversation like this happened at Tecmo headquarters in 1986...

"So I was thinking... Super Mario Bros. has been really popular for Nintendo. What if we made our own version of Super Mario Bros. for nerds?" 
"Super Mario Bros. IS for nerds."
"No, I mean smart nerds."
"Oh."

It's an important distinction! After all, Super Mario Bros. and Solomon's Key have the same fundamental gameplay. You run around each stage, smashing blocks with your head, revealing hidden prizes, and torching enemies with fireballs. 

However, while Super Mario Bros. is a breezy side-scrolling adventure that doesn't require much mental strain, Solomon's Key is a series of single screen "escape rooms," and careful decisions and strategy are required to first reach the key, then the door it unlocks. Fireballs are a limited resource, and unlike Mario with his massive Koopa-crushing butt, the wizard Dana is too spindly to stomp monsters. However, he can conjure blocks with his magic wand, building steps to higher platforms and blocking the paths of roving sparks, fireball-spewing gargoyles, and other creatures from medieval fantasy.

Things get complicated quickly in
Solomon's Key. This is actually one
of the earlier stages!

Re-contextualizing Super Mario Bros. as a puzzle game was a pretty smart move by Tecmo's designers. Solomon's Key is brainier than your average side-scrolling platformer, but with the varied gameplay and sense of discovery missing from an ordinary block stacker like Tetris. Solomon's Key is one of Tecmo's most enduring franchises, with sequels, spin-offs, and even a marketing tie-in with Zipang, a television drama set in ancient Japan. It's a really adaptable game concept, and a really fun game, whether you're playing it in arcades, or on the NES with a slight ding to the graphics. 

Star Force
Played in: A convenience store just outside Vestaburg

Xevious was both a pioneer in the top-down shooter genre, and its undisputed leader in the early 1980s. Countless other game companies tried to challenge Xevious for that honor with their own vertical shmups... SNK with HAL 21 and Alpha Mission, Konami with Mega Zone, Capcom with Vulgus, and Nichibutsu with Terra Cresta. Some of these would-be Xevious killers were better than others, but perhaps the most enduring of the lot was Tecmo's Star Force.

This strikes me as odd, because there's nothing remarkable about Star Force. It's as generic as a shooter can get, even when it was released in the far-flung year of 1984. The enemy patterns are predictable, power-ups are limited to an escort ship that gives you turbo fire, bullet-sponging panels provide little incentive to shoot them, and even the boss is a letdown, a metal square with a Greek letter painted on the top.

Star Force! The drrrrry shooter!

For whatever reason, the game was big in Japan, spawning sequels and a just barely legally distinct spin-off in Hudson Soft's Star Soldier. (Apparently you can never have too much mindless panel blasting.) At least Star Soldier gilds this limp lilly a little with heartier power ups and the not especially useful or welcome ability to fly under the background. Star Force is just... there. It feels more like a proof of concept than a fully realized game with its own artistic direction and innovative ideas. Star Force is the kind of game you might find at the bottom of a cereal box, and next to more accomplished contemporaries like Xevious, or the morphin-omenal Terra Cresta released just one year later, it just doesn't cut it.

And speaking of cuts!
Come on, you know you wanted to see this.