The Tower of Retro-Babble: Data East

image from the Data East Fandom page

Data East. We’re not number one, and we don’t try harder.

Founded in 1976 by Tetsuo Fukuda, Data East started making video games three years later, and became famous for early hits like Burgertime and Bump ‘n Jump. Later games by Data East took the concepts first explored by other publishers and took them in (slightly) new directions. Super Mario Bros. became Karnov, Double Dragon became Bad Dudes, and Street Fighter II became Fighter’s History. By the 1990s, Data East developed a reputation as a B-lister, riding the coattails of more successful game developers. By the 2000s, Data East was driven into bankruptcy, rocked by a lawsuit from Capcom and socked by the rise of 3D gaming. Capcom, Konami, and Namco had all prepared themselves for the polygonal paradigm shift of the late 1990s. Data East? Not so much.

Some things worth mentioning before I move on to the game reviews. First, Data East’s president was the inspiration for Karnov, a flabby Russian fire breather who the design team would squeeze into many of the company’s arcade games. Second, Data East was the fertile ground that brought other publishers like TAD Corporation and Technos Japan to life. TAD didn’t stick around for long, sputtering out after its initial success with Cabal, but Technos had more luck, giving the world the Double Dragon series which would survive long after its 1996 bankruptcy.

Bad Dudes

“I’m bad!”

That’s very healthy! The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Like Altered Beast, Bad Dudes makes a strong first impression, but can’t hold that momentum for more than ten minutes. As one of the titular dudes- who are bad, in case you’ve forgotten- you’ll battle Dragon Ninjas across seven disconcertingly flat stages. Stages are typically split into two floors, with players leaping from the top to the bottom and back, but it feels superficial next to Double Dragon’s elevated side view.

Some of the ninja are kinky kunoichi in fishnet
stockings, just to see if you're still paying
attention after four or five stages.

Speaking of flat and superficial, the combat in Bad Dudes boils down to swatting away dozens of ninjas with punches and kicks. The ninjas fold in one hit, so there’s no combo potential, no throws, no pursuit moves, no nothin’ resembling a real fight. Even if one of these ninja nerds manages to hit you, they quickly sneak away, denying you a chance for revenge. The ninjas’ rice paper constitutions and their reluctance to commit to combat seriously makes you wonder how they managed to kidnap an American president. Yes, even one as famously frail as Ronald Reagan. He had bodyguards, you know!

Bad Dudes does have its moments. The graphics have the same gritty urban vibe as the artwork in Robocop, but with more variety… one stage sets you on the top of a moving semi-trailer, with ninjas crawling up the sides to engage you in unsatisfying combat. The first boss is Karnov, one of the earliest examples of a video game crossover. You can play with a friend, which is always a plus in a late 1980s arcade game. Past that, the Bad Dudes experience is pretty hollow next to the competition. No amount of wimpy Dragon Ninjas could ever beat a Double Dragon.

Bump 'n Jump

Now that’s driving excitement! Bump ‘n Jump is a top-down racing game where the goal isn’t to beat the other cars to the finish line, but beat them into scrap metal. You’ll do this by either forcing them off the road, or crushing them with a well-timed jump.

Trucks hauling dirt will unload
their cargo on you if you get too
close. In the NES version,
sometimes they've holding a 1UP,
but you won't know for sure
until they drop it. Pretty sneaky, sis! 

It’s not all fun and vehicular homicide, though! There are frequent gaps in the track, which you’ll have to vault over with the jump button. You can’t jump at lower speeds, and you can’t reach the higher ones with all those rival cars bumping into you. Pay close attention to the warning signs that blink at the top of the screen… that’s your cue to pull away from the pack and hit the jump button, sometimes hitting it again to launch yourself off islands set between the end of one road and the start of another.

It’s a little tricky to play, but oh so fun! Muscling cars off the road gave players the same visceral, violent thrill as the much later Burnout series, and each new stage brings with it a new season and even more hazardous roads. Bump ‘n Jump was a hit in arcades, nearly as popular as its Data East stable mate Burgertime, and quickly found its way to all the major consoles released before the crash. It even got an NES port, but like Gyruss, it’s really more of a next generation sequel, with all the usual Nintendo era tropes. It was a fun rental in the late 1980s… you could do a whole lot worse.

Burgertime

Hope you’re hungry! The burgers at this restaurant come extra-large… and covered with footprints. Uh, hope you’re more hungry than picky.

Burgertime is an incredibly creative platformer coming from Data East, a company that spent much of its later life “borrowing” ideas from other game companies. As chef Peter Pepper, you’ll make burgers by stepping on the ingredients. Completely flattening a bun, meat patty, or lettuce leaf forces it downward, until it all settles onto a plate at the bottom of the screen. Order up! Uh, ignore the scuff marks.

Peter Pepper is about to wind up
with egg on his face.

Sounds easy enough, right? Sure, until the Food Foes get involved. Animated hot dogs, pickles, and a fried egg chase after you, weaving up and down the ladders scattered throughout each level. Crushing a Food Foe with a burger ingredient earns you points… but luring them onto a bun as you’re flattening it is worth more points, with the added weight forcing it down two floors rather than one. As a last resort, Peter Pepper can throw pepper, stunning nearby Food Foes and seasoning his way out of a jam. However, pepper doesn’t grow on trees! Once you run out, you can only restock your supply with a bonus prize in the center of the screen.

(By the way, pepper grows on vines, in case you were curious. Because I was.)  

Data East hit the bullseye with Burgertime… it’s fun, challenging, and surprisingly original, making it the most popular game in the company’s early library. Mattel quickly swept in to buy the home rights, and released an excellent port of Burgertime for its Intellivision. That port would soon be followed up with conversions to the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, and even the NES. There were also sequels, but the only one that’s worth a second glance is Diner, originally designed for the Intellivision as a He-Man game. By the power of Greyskull, I have the pepper?

Darwin 4078

Data East was an early pioneer in the overhead shoot ‘em up genre, releasing Mission X and B-Wings before the tidal wave of Xevious clones hit Japan in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, they were never all that good at making these games, and Darwin 4078 is just further proof.

As the name suggests, the headlining feature of Darwin 4078 is that your ship evolves as you play. Grabbing icons that look like Ultraman changes it from the default design, Beas, to a range of more advanced fighters, all with strange but effective weapons. Shesuem lets out twin blasts of fire, Twipet unleashes swarms of white worms, and the grand prize Gyasharru chokes the playfield with laser rings.

If you think this background is
ugly NOW, just wait 'till you
see it scroll.

However, getting hit with a bullet regresses Darwin into the fittingly named Pister, a pathetic little runt of a ship that’s hopelessly outmatched by the armies of… whatever those things are supposed to be. Better grab another Ultraman quick! Otherwise, Darwin will be stuck in its larval form, and there’s nowhere to go from there but dead!

The game is a comedy of errors. It hurts to look at it directly, with gruesome backgrounds and enemy designs that are somehow less exciting than the bulbous chrome monstrosities of a UPL game. It’s also kind of cheap… Darwin is long enough that dodging bullets and the spastic enemies is harder than it needs to be, especially when they’re camouflaged against those eyesore backgrounds. Yet Data East persisted, making sequels to Darwin 4078 in the desperate hope that someone somewhere would want to play them.

That person only exists in theory. The reality is that with so many superior options available, gamers have long evolved beyond the need for this crap. Ain’t that a Pister?

Fighter’s History

Fighter’s History was just one of many versus fighting games in early 1990s arcades, but it’s the only one that got a lawsuit from Capcom. Why Capcom chose to single this game out for legal action is unclear. Fighter’s History is a pretty shameless knock-off, but it’s not any less shameless than World Heroes for the Neo-Geo. Beyond that, there’s nothing about Data East’s game that presented a serious threat to the income stream of Street Fighter II and its updates.

The teen judo artist is based on a real
martial artist, Ryoko Tani. And she's not
the only one! There's a similar character
in ADK's World Heroes II. 

Fighter’s History is the most “there” fighting game in fighting game history. It’s got the same three punch and three kick button layout as Street Fighter II, along with analogs of the Street Fighter cast. Chun Li gets replaced by opera singer Fei Lin, Zangief gets swapped out for Greek wrestler Marstorius, and Mizoguchi is a hot-blooded punk with the DNA of Ken and Ryu. None of the characters fight as well as their inspirations, with awkward joystick motions and odd attack trajectories, but they get the job done.

The game’s headlining gimmick is a weak point for every character. For instance, Mizoguchi wears a headband… repeatedly strike him in the head and it’ll be knocked off, leaving him dazed and wide open to attack. (Apparently it was a load-bearing headband.) Weak points do add strategic nuance, but it’s not enough of a factor in fights to make much of a difference.

Fighter’s History got a Neo-Geo sequel, Fighter’s History Dynamite, with two new characters, larger sprites, and enough improvements to the core gameplay to make it one of the better fighting games on a system overloaded with them. Data East also leaned into the silliness of the first game, giving the CD version a bombastic arranged soundtrack that assaults the player with boisterous horns. Fighter’s History Dynamite knows exactly what it is and doesn’t apologize for it, and you’ve got to give it credit for being so joyously, defiantly tacky.

Heavy Barrel

The most Data East thing you can do is take a smash hit arcade game, file off the serial number, inject your own creative juices, and throw in a twist to the gameplay to keep the lawyers at bay. (Or not… see also Fighter’s History.)

Heavy Barrel is Data East’s take on Ikari Warriors, a military-themed shooter which hit arcades like a hand grenade two years earlier. While the game is certainly inspired by Ikari Warriors, it’s also superior, with smoother gameplay, heavier firepower, and soldiers with slimmer shoulders. The stars of Ikari Warriors were wider than Buicks, but the heroes of Heavy Barrel are smaller and more nimble, making it easier to dodge bullets while aiming with the stubborn loop lever on the top of the joystick.

This waterfall is a really nice
set piece. Heavy Barrel could
have used more scenes like this,
and fewer fights inside
military warehouses.

The arsenal of weapons also does more to dazzle the player; more creative and “video gamey” than the merely functional firepower in Ikari Warriors. You want grenades? Okay, but have you considered this giant screen-clearing yo-yo instead? Or maybe these gas clouds which hover in place, killing soldiers faster than you can say “Raid” and burning through the metal plating of helicopters and tanks? It’s a guaranteed war crime in a can!

All these weapons of mass destruction are obtained from chests, unlocked with keys found on red soldiers. However, the grand prize is “Heavy Barrel,” which has to be assembled piece by piece. It takes a while to find all six pieces, but when you do, the odds violently tilt in your favor. The player who grabs the last piece of Heavy Barrel gets a weapon best described as shoulder mounted death. This all-consuming beam cannon only lasts for about thirty seconds, so savor the moment.

Heavy Barrel is pretty terrific, with a clean near-future aesthetic that brings to mind old episodes of GI Joe. It’s fun whether you’re alone or in a crowded arcade, rubbing shoulders with a friend and hoping you’re the one who finds the last piece of the coveted super weapon. If you’re not, just try to be happy for your buddy as he sprays hot death in all directions. It must be nice, killing soldiers that easily. I have to settle for a giant yo-yo.

Karate Champ

Karate Champ is one of the earliest fighting games, released at a time when technology could finally handle the large characters and deep gameplay demanded by the genre. It was also designed by a team within Data East that would go on to form Technos Japan. Technos would quickly develop a talent for bringing martial arts mayhem to the world of video games, but not quickly enough to make Karate Champ as enjoyable as its later hits.

The match of the millennium!
Brent Spiner vs. David Garrison!

Instead of a back-alley brawl, Karate Champ is a controlled and disciplined karate tournament. Two angular fighters, who look like Data from Star Trek or Marcy’s first husband from Married… with Children, trade blows in a best of three point contest. Quick jabs earn a half-point, while the more theatrical and difficult to land strikes get a whole point. Attacks are performed with a second joystick, giving the player fine control over where their fists and feet will land.

Reach three points before your opponent and the judge, who looks like the love child of Cheech and Chong, lets you proceed to the next stage. If you’re good enough, you might even get a chance to go toe to hoof with a raging bull, a cheeky reference to martial arts master Mas Oyama. If you’re not good enough- and you won’t be- you’ll be sent home in shame.

Karate Champ is a tough game, and an awkward one to play. Combinations of the two joysticks trigger your character’s attacks. There’s a lot of them to remember, and nothing comes as easily as it does in Konami’s more spritely Yie-Ar Kung Fu. It does let you challenge a friend, a feature Yie-Ar Kung Fu doesn’t offer, but you and your buddy will just be stumbling blindly through each match, kicking at thin air and cheering when somebody finally lands a blow. It might actually be easier to learn karate than play Karate Champ.

Technos had to start somewhere. You’ll just be glad fighting games didn’t end here.

Karnov

Russian circus attraction Karnov must atone for his past sins by finding a hidden treasure, but it’s the player who gets punished in this brutal side-scrolling platformer. Karnov is a bit like Super Mario Bros., if Super Mario Bros. felt kind of janky and looked kind of disturbing and offered too many power ups. Instead of mushrooms and fire flowers, comrade Karnov gets a ladder for those hard-to-reach K marks, wings for when the ladders aren’t high enough, speed shoes, bombs for blasting holes through barriers, a mask for spotting hidden pathways, scuba gear for fast travelling through lakes, and fire orbs to boost Karnov’s natural talent for spitting fire. (Whew.)

It's like Data East played Ghosts 'n Goblins,
then said, "Hold my vodka, comrade." 

You could argue that more power ups mean more variety, and more access to the hidden nooks and crannies that were so fun to find in Super Mario Bros. At the same time, there’s something to be said for the streamlined design of Super Mario Bros., which does nearly as much with its small handful of power ups as Karnov does with its mountain of them. Beyond that, a fully powered up Mario is sturdier than Karnov, who falls to one hit no matter how much stuff he had tucked into his pocket at the time. (The NES version threw players a bone by letting Karnov get hit twice, and it’s a hugely necessary addition to a game this tough.)

At least Karnov is weird. Not the friendly Alice in Wonderland kind of weird, like Super Mario Bros., but unnervingly strange, with creatures from Mesopotamian mythology all hoping to sink their jaws into our husky hero. Is that an army of skeletons astride skeleton ostriches? Why is that vaguely humanoid trout trying to kill me with a water jug? Does anyone feed those winged gremlins? Maybe that mud man should throw one of his molasses cookies at them instead of me. Karnov’s set for food… he’s using the last notch in his Borscht belt.

When several programmers at Data East left to form TAD Corporation, they took the core play mechanics of Karnov and refined them, creating Toki. Power-ups are restricted to a reasonable number and the level design is tighter, making for a more approachable experience. It’s still plenty weird, but it’s more of a “ten year old boy’s gross sense of humor and fascination with the monkey house at the zoo” weird, rather than an “Iranian history professor’s worst nightmare” weird.

Lock ‘n Chase

Maze games were all the rage in the early 1980s, and some brought new ideas to the table that floated them to the top of the ocean of Pac-Man knock-offs. Witness Pepper II, which had your angelic/demonic hero dodging eyeballs and claiming territory on four connected stages. There’s also Eyes, which is like Pac-Man if everybody had guns. Yep, I’m sold already! And we can’t forget about Dig Dug and Mr. Do!, which let you dig the mazes yourself.

And then there’s Lock ‘n Chase.

"N'ahh! How's it feel to be locked
up, coppers? It's not fun, see?"

Lock ‘n Chase finds ways to distinguish itself from Pac-Man, but they’re frustrating ways that leave the player feeling helpless. You’re a gentleman thief, and it’s up to you to void a vault of valuables while dodging four colorful cops. Wait, those eyes and foreheads look familiar… aren’t those really just the monsters from Pac-Man with police caps?

Oh, they’re “legally distinct” from the monsters in Pac-Man? I wouldn’t count on that excuse holding up for more than a decade tops.

Your gentleman thief would never do something as uncouth as swallowing his enemies, so instead he sets doors at intersections, hoping to confound the totally-not-ghost-monster cops. Sometimes it works! Sometimes he’ll even catch a cop between two doors for bonus points! However, setting doors requires advance planning, and because of unclear trigger points, you’re just as likely to catch yourself inside a door as the Keystone Copyright Violators close in on you. There’s no way to stop the cops cold like in Pac-Man… a bonus prize in the center of the screen will freeze them, but just long enough for them to wince in frustration and hit Roscoe P. Coltrane with their hats. If they’ve already surrounded you, you’re going to Sing Sing the minute they continue their pursuit. Sorry, but crime doesn’t pay! Or entertain!

Despite Pac-Man being right there, Lock ‘n Chase was popular enough to get some home ports, with the Intellivision version and a Game Boy sequel being standouts. There was also an Atari 2600 version, but don’t do that to yourself.

Midnight Resistance

The sequel to Heavy Barrel ditches its top-down gameplay for side-scrolling action more in line with Konami’s Contra series. You and your kid brother must free your family from the clutches of a villainous drug dealer named King Crimson. Yes, like the band. He even looks like the goofy face on the cover of their debut album, and you’ll be seeing a lot of it if you can make it to the final battle.

Power to the people! But not loop levers,
the people don't want those.

Anyway! Midnight Resistance uses a loop lever for aiming, which worked well enough for the previous game but isn’t a great fit for this game’s new perspective and faster pace. While Contra let you blast aliens from all angles as quickly as you can tilt the joystick, Midnight Resistance forces you to wrench a dial in place as drug-crazed super soldiers charge toward you. Blast it all, you made me drop my keys! I hope there’s Fentanyl in your next dose of Ketracel White…

Like Heavy Barrel, weapons are earned with keys held by red soldiers, but unlike Heavy Barrel, you won’t be able to use them right away. There’s a storage locker after each stage with items held behind glass. Some items, like the ammo refill, only cost a couple of keys, but the really good stuff, like the always handy spread shot, may cost three or even four. This delayed gratification is a weird design choice that gets even weirder when the final storage locker is filled with members of your kidnapped family. “You’re safe now, Tommy. Thanks for this nifty flamethrower, by the way!”

It’s no patch on Contra, feeling a bit stiffer and a fair bit more contrived. However, Midnight Resistance scratched an itch for Sega Genesis owners in the system’s unsteady early years. You lose the second player in the Genesis port, but the gameplay improves without the accursed loop lever, and the music carries a lot more impact thanks to an arranged soundtrack by Hitoshi Sakimoto. The game’s high points, especially the lengthy battle with a phalanx of stunt planes, taste so much sweeter with a scoop of Basiscape on top.

Night Slashers
(from previous blog entry The East We Could Do)

Data East hit its creative peak with Night Slashers, a side-scrolling beat 'em up that replaces the usual sleazy thugs with decayed zombies and movie monsters. As either a Chinese martial artist, a brawny cyborg, or the hip descendant of the Van Helsing bloodline, it's up to you to send these wayward souls back to their graves. Punches and kicks are usually enough to get the job done, but you can also hammer the undead into the ground with an overhead smash, or resort to a stylish, screen clearing super move. It drains your energy, sure, but it's almost always worth the sacrifice.

There's so much attention to detail in Night Slashers that it almost borders on swagger. Zombies swing their shoulders wildly as they lurch toward you, hoping to sink their teeth into your flesh. Vampire hunter Christopher ends his combos with the flash of an enchanted jewel that liquifies any nearby undead creatures. Land a fatal blow on a boss and the flesh cascades from their bones, leaving a hollow skeleton behind. The monsters are brilliantly designed, with a puppeteer and his shambling blue sidekick being a highlight. Throw in responsive control and you've got a top-shelf product, easily on the level of Capcom's own beat 'em ups. Games like this will make you wish Data East had stuck around long enough for an encore.

Nitro Ball
(from previous blog entry The East We Could Do)

"Hey boss, you know Smash TV? The game that's pretty hot over in America? We should make something like that."
"That's a pretty good idea. We can't JUST make a clone, though... not after that whole Fighter's History mess. What are you going to do to make it distinct?"
"Well, I... uh... people like pinball too, right? So we'll put in some bumpers, maybe a few of those little spinning card things..."
"You just pulled that out of your ass, didn't you."
"Please don't fire me."

Yes, Nitro Ball is the union of two play styles that no sane person would ever consider bringing together. It's got the rapid-fire shooting action and the game show atmosphere of Smash TV, complete with an overly enthusiastic host and big prizes that pop out the thugs you've gunned down. However, instead of being reduced to a fine red mist, the goons you've blasted curl up into a ball and bounce around the playfield. For the most points, you'll want to lead their corpses into bumpers, drop targets, and holes that award a jackpot bonus. At best it's a fun added challenge and at worst it's a distraction, but it nevertheless serves the purpose of making Nitro Ball more than just a copy of Smash TV.

What's surprising is that Nitro Ball captures the sensory overload of a game show better than Midway's game. You're bombarded with loud colors, flashing lights, and urgent music, and the gift boxes from Smash TV have been replaced with sports cars, mansions, and glittering gold watches. The stages feel a little too confined in spots and the lack of twin sticks for firing is an inconvenience, but where presentation is concerned, Nitro Ball makes the game that inspired it look like an old episode of Jeopardy.

Robocop

When viewed strictly as a video game, Robocop is nothing special, and not up to the standards of Namco’s Rolling Thunder or Sega’s Shinobi. You walk slooooowly through the grimy streets of Detroit, punching thugs up close and picking them off from a distance with your gun… when your hero decides to start using it. You had a motorcycle rolling straight at you a minute before… now you pull your firearm out of your thigh?

Heh. Neither here nor there, pal.

Here’s the thing, though. Robocop isn’t just a video game… it’s a Robocop game. The film does a lot of heavy lifting for the game, but at the same time, the game does a magnificent job of capturing the atmosphere of the movie that inspired it. Messages sweep across the screen in a jagged green font, Peter Weller growls his catchphrases at key moments, and each level has the same clash of shiny high-tech weaponry and low-to-the-floor living conditions as the film. Data East understood the assignment, aced the final, and went for extra credit just to be sure.

Robocop is one of those rare games based on a film that absolutely needs the film to work, but is so in sync with it that it feels like a logical and necessary extension. A movie as action-packed and violent as Robocop needed a video game, and it deserved one as good as this.

Sly Spy

Sly Spy is everything you could possibly want from a James Bond 007 game but the actual license. The hero looks like lesser Bond Timothy Dalton in press materials, and you’re given the option to pick a three-digit code name before the game starts. By the time you’re finished, you start to imagine Data East’s president strapped to a table with a laser pointed at his crotch. Hey, I wouldn’t put it past MGM’s current owner and real-life James Bond villain Jeff Bezos. “I don’t expect you to talk, Mr. Fukuda. I expect you to obey copyright law!”

Here's a clear tribute to Thunderball. Or
maybe Never Say Never Again? Apropos of
nothing in particular, I always thought that
Sean Connery sounded like a typical
Scottish drunk, while Patrick Stewart
(RIP) sounded like the same guy the
next morning, in the throes of a hangover.
"Shut up, Wesley, and get me my aspirin!"

Anyway! Sly Spy is a side-scrolling action game, feeling like a hybrid of Bad Dudes and Namco’s Rolling Thunder. Unlike Rolling Thunder’s spindly star Albatross, your spy can soak up a fair amount of damage from enemy agents, and can even assemble a “Golden Gun” from pieces strewn through each stage. It’s really just the Heavy Barrel from Heavy Barrel, but it’s still a death-dealing super weapon, and it’s as welcome in Sly Spy as it is in any of Data East’s other games. (It sure would have been helpful in Burgertime. Would you like a free hot dog shake with your order?)

What’s also welcome is the amount of variety in Sly Spy. Your spy jumps out of airplanes, dives through shark-infested waters, drives a custom motorcycle down a city highway, and infiltrates cruise ships, all to the tune of an exciting soundtrack you swear you’ve heard somewhere before… probably in some spy movie starring Sean Connery. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, there’s no game company more sincere than Data East.

Did I say sincere? I meant shameless.

Tumblepop

Tumblepop takes Taito’s Bubble Bobble and gives it a twist straight out of Ghostbusters. As one of two spectral exterminators, you’ll travel around the world, sucking up the native pests with a vacuum cleaner. Unlike Ghostbusters, your captive prey doesn’t stay captured forever. Release the vacuum button and you’ll fire the monster outward like a cannonball, bowling over his buddies, earning you big points, and revealing hidden bonuses. Don’t release the button, and the monster will eventually burst out of your vacuum bag, costing you a life.

And there's Karnov again!

In that fine Data East tradition, Tumblepop isn’t even vaguely original, and it’s not as good as the best games in its well-worn genre. You’ll have more fun with Snow Bros, but Tumblepop is at least as good as Nightmare in the Dark on the Neo-Geo, or Bubble Bobble’s awkward middle children Rainbow Islands and Parasol Stars. It’s explosively colorful, makes even better use of its globetrotting theme than Street Fighter II, and is worryingly addictive, even when you’re pretty sure you shouldn’t have died from the monster you were starting to vacuum. Screw it… I’m dropping in another quarter anyway. I’m having too much fun to stop!

The bottom line is that Tumblepop is a strong entry in the Bubble Bobble genre, and well worth your time. Data East should have quit while they were ahead, though… Diet Go! Go!, Funky Jet, and Joe and Mac Returns are so similar to Tumblepop that it feels like Data East was making and re-making the same game, with increasingly diminishing returns. Joe and Mac Returns is literally prehistoric Tumblepop. Who asked for this?

Back from Extinction

Here's my latest project! It's Digital Dinosaurs, a book on the history and inner workings of 20th century game consoles and handhelds. Not every system is featured in this meaty tome (sorry, Gamate. Also, deeply sorry about your name. Must have been tough for you in handheld high school), but with forty favorites spanning nearly thirty years, there's a whole lot of fun reading in store for video game fanatics.

(Warning: may contain bias. Definitely contains bias.) 

It's free on Itch.IO 'till the end of the month, so pick up your favorite archaeology shovel and dig in! 

By the way, here's a fun little bonus from the book. Each system gets its own image that best describes the overall experience. For instance, the Genesis gets a picture of HAG president Denita Stokes getting insulted by Sonic the Hedgehog, while the Sega Master System gets Alex Kidd... standing in the far distance with a vacant expression as Sonic the superstar gets his butt kissed by his agent. Here's what I gave the Atari Jaguar...

If they sent him to Abu Dhabi, they'd
send him right back, postage due.

 

One image that didn't make the cut was this cute drawing of a SpongeBob-ified Ed Smith celebrating the arrival of his new home computer...

The short-lived era of the burnished 1980s were a gas, weren't they? That was the period between 1980 and 1983 when the 1980s still felt a lot like the 1970s, with slightly more conservative fashion and hair styles. The white people in their leisure suits looked like lit cigarettes, and black people traded their afros for the ooey-gooey not-so-goodness of jheri curls. Bars were dark, arcades were dimly lit, and everything just looked dingy and dirty, as if coated with a thin layer of cigarette ash. 

I'm weirdly nostalgic for this, and I can't even describe why. I barely remember it! It seems like it would have been a fun time for adults, at least.

This wistful look back at the filthy underside of the 1980s and a handful of hand-drawn drawings were brought to you by human engineering! Human engineering: when you care enough to do the damned work yourself. 

People forget that letting AI do all the work for you will slowly drain you of the ability to do it yourself. This becomes rather inconvenient when the price of AI services suddenly explodes after everyone's forgotten how to create. Ask an African mother how well it worked out for her after Nestle's free baby formula dried them out, leaving them at the company's (negligible) mercy. Funny... that formula was free last month, but now it's half my husband's paycheck.

I mention this because Epic Games, the Shasta to Steam's Coca-Cola, is starting a contest to determine who can "make" the best video game with AI. "Making" a game by having a computer do it for you is rather like dropping a quarter into a gumball machine and declaring yourself Willy Wonka, but okay? 

Perhaps the entries will be judged by computers, too. You know, like in that episode of Star Trek, where computers decide who wins battles in outer space, and who becomes the casualties. Get in the airlock, crewmen... the computer demands your sacrifice! It's for the sake of the algorithm!

Since human participation is strictly optional in the Epic Megaslop contest, I'll be opting out. Hell, I haven't even been cashing in on Epic's free bribe-games of the week lately. However, I will cheerfully give Epic and its disreputable CEO this rude drawing as a consolation prize. Enjoy! I made it myself!

Really, you can make things yourself! More people should try that.