Gaming Hell

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Fighting Golf (SNK, 1988)

Four ROMs are included this time- Early and Later revisions of both the Japanese and English versions. The ones listed as Early are actually undumped for use in MAME at the moment, . The ROMs labelled Later are the ones that had Lee Trevino on the actual title screen (I think the earlier sets were also endorsed by Trevino but he wasn't in the game- there's a flyer for the non-Trevino version that has 'Endorsed by Lee Trevino!' on it but has shots from the earlier revisionm as Captain Clark is the player character there) so in case you were wondering, it wasn't just the NES port that had him. Anyway, there's quite a few differences between all four of these revisions that the manual goes into detail about (such as different bonuses for scoring par, birdie and eagle shots) although the most interesting is a difference between the Japanese and English versions- the English versions have a dip-switch setting for '3-Press Type' controls which alters the mechanics to be closer to other contemporary golf games, requiring three taps of the button (one to start the shot, one to decide power and one to decide ball curve) rather than the one press used otherwise. Bit of a strange one, that! One thing to note is to not get this game confused with Country Club which released in the same year and looks very similar but has a trackball control scheme, Fighting Golf is a different game!

Naturally, the Lee Trevino endorsement is removed from the later revisions for this rerelease, so he's absent from the title screen, but he's not completely gone- his character, Super Mex (a nickname for Trevino when he was golfing) is still in the game, but shows Mex as his name on the green instead of Trevino as it originally did.

This game is also one of those pre-Neo Geo SNK games that has no previous rerelease, as it's not in SNK Classics Vol. 0 or SNK 40th Anniversary Collection so there's no way to get this second-hand. You can always play the Trevino version in MAME though!

No, there's no fisticuffs involved in this one- SNK also released Fighting Soccer in the same year, so I guess they wanted an adjective for their sports games that invoked a hot-blooded, fighting vibe, and I mean, the word does the job. Regardless, this is a pretty solid arcade golf game- I'll be the first to admit I'm not an expert in the slightest (I like playing Neo Turf Masters, as everyone does, but I'm mostly good at just thwacking the ball as hard as possible) but this has a pretty interesting control scheme for the time. Unless you switch on 3-Press Type on the English versions, this only requires one button press to actually hit the ball, as the power meter at the bottom (which is the reverse of what you'd expect, with MAX to the left and MIN to the right- hit the button when the bar's blue for maximum power) is always moving so you just press the button once to fire away. Hooks and slices are handled by a separate meter using Up / Down, you can adjust your aim with Left / Right and change clubs with a second button, so you have all the usual amenities as well as a bird's eye view / behind-the-golfer view combo with a decent amount of detail for the time, so it does the job quite well. The included manual is also quite helpful for getting used to things and even lists all the distances for the different clubs which is a nice touch, as is the text descriptions for all the holes giving you friendly tips on how to approach it. Certainly an interesting bit of video game golf history that's quite fun to play, and some of the later holes of the single eighteen-hole course are a little twisted (like one where the fairway's between two giant lakes and one where you have to hit the ball across the sea to reach the green!) which is always a plus in a golf game.

 

 

... OK, now it's time for me to go off on one a little, because at least one tabloid video game news site decided to lead the headline for this one by calling it the inspiration for a very famous joke from The Simpsons. You've probably been thinking about it this entire time- Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. Appearing in the Season 7 episode Marge Be Not Proud as a most-undesirable game compared to BONESTORM that Bart really wants for Christmas, it's the basis for a rare over-the-credits joke showing (presumably) Bart playing the game, using the POWER DRIVE to send the ball into the parking lot. It's a great gag, a lot of it thanks to the bit-crushed, robotic delivery of Carvallo himself, who of course doesn't exist. But, well, Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf, Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge, they're pretty similar names, clearly someone on the writing staff was a fan of SNK sports games, right? The internet said it, so it must be true!
 

 

Now, in my misspent youth (and misspent adulthood, let's be real) I spent a lot of time watching The Simpsons. A lot of time. I'm one of those nerds that actually listened to the DVD commentaries fo episodes! Multiple times! So after thinking about it for a minute, I thought, "that can't be right", mostly because this episode aired December 1995, many years after the game would've been even remotely relevant and known to non-gamers, so I decided to have a look and see if there's any truth to this or just someone extrapolating a coincidence too far. First, a contemporary source- the 'episode capsule' from The Simpsons Archive for Marge Be Not Proud (last revised in 1997 so that's how far back we're going) mentions "a video [sic] "Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf" exists, similar to name of video game" which doesn't really say much but I guess they saw it as a coincidence. The DVD commentary for the episode, featuring executive producers and showrunners Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein, supervising director David Silverman, animation director Steve Moore and writer Mike Scully, is more enlightening though- I'm bad at identifying voices, but I'm pretty sure Bill Oakley says "I think we had asked [Lee Trevino] to do the show, but because we denigrate his game later, he didn't want to do it" with Weinstein (I think) adding "'cause he had this big game planned, I'm sure". Later on they mention that when Trevino turned the show down, he was off their list and they got a different famous golfer, Tom Kite, for a later episode in that season, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield (the one where he tells Homer to stay the hell out of his locker). Some great stories about Lawrence Tierney in that commentary by the way, worth a listen (you can easily find it online too).

So, it sounds like they didn't even know Trevino had a game and they wanted him to voice an intentionally lousy golf game as an extended gag throughout the episode, but since Trevino wouldn't do it, they lampooned him instead. More than likely a coincidence rather than intentionally being inspired by it, similar to the other game featured in this episode, Bonestorm, which you might assume was inspired by the arcade game BloodStorm but was probably just a parody of how ultra-violent video games were getting, unaware something very similar already existed. In the years since, people have just assumed this was the source of the joke, and, well, it probably wasn't. As the show itself taught us, sometimes you have to apply Occam's razor where the simplest answer is the correct one, so I dunno, maybe the reverse vampires told them to make the joke. Sorry, had to get that bee out of my bonnet!

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Xevious 3D/G (Namco, 1996)

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As far as I know, there was only ever one version of this game, so no extra ROMs or anything this time. Preference Settings allow you to switch player sides so solo players can use the red Solvalou (and Paul Phoenix with the right cheat), display the destruction rate, boss timer and Sol Tower counter in-game and use a rapid-fire function for the directional buttons to make the ultra-speedy Paul easier to control. And yes, I remember being told that Heihachi Mishima and Paul Phoenix were only in the Playstation version, but that's not true- they're both here! Hold down both buttons and either Left + 1P Start on the Player 1 side or Right + 2P Start on the Player 2 side as the game begins to play as Heihachi (P1, moves very slowly) or Paul (P2, moves way too fast). The manual also contains information on where to find the Special Flags and Sol Towers to help you get started in learning to play the game.

As this is a System 11 game, this is exclusive to Arcade Archives 2 platforms (meaning no PS4 or Switch 1 versions) and is twice the normal ACA price.

As ever, shmups are the weakness of Gaming Hell, but I did finally manage to 'get' Xevious a while back after learning the game to get the achievements in the Xbox Live Arcade version (the same week I'd finally watched the Di Gi Charat TV series, which shows anime increases your brain capacity) so I'll do my best with this. 3D/G turns Xevious into a vertizontal game (vertical scrolling, horizontal monitor with some light scrolling to the left and right) with a fresh 3D coat of paint, but unlike Solvalou from 1991, this isn't a first-person kind of affair, it's a traditional shmup that does a few cool camera tricks like moving behind the player ship at a few points for dramatic effect, one area having multiple routes that shift the camera around, not dramatically changing things up but adding a bit of visual flair.

There's also a lot more contemporary shmup elements to bring the game into the '90s, like multiple weapons (you still have the classic Zapper for air targets and Blaster for ground targets but now they have auto-fire and you can both upgrade and change the Zapper with items, with a Raiden-style wide / laser / homing triad), boss battles with huge enemies, resuming from where you died / continued rather than using checkpoints, that sort of thing. There's still many other classic Xevious touches though, like the Sol Towers hidden throughout each area (including ones that only appear if you've destroyed all the others in a previous area) and the Nazca lines appearing later in the game. It doesn't quite hit the same as the original Xevious does, but the presentation is extremely cool with lots of sharp, flat polygons for the enemies which really suits them and a fantastic soundtrack that'll get stuck in your head. Of course, as with Tekken, we run into the issue of the Playstation home version having some cool extras- in this case, an arranged soundtrack and ports of Xevious, Super Xevious and Xevious Arrangement- that aren't in this arcade original, and this is more obvious for System 11 games as the Playstation versions are closer to the arcade games than in previous generations (although, as pointed out by someone much smarter than me, Xevious 3D/G has a lot of differences such as different CG sequences and flat-shaded backgrounds instead of gourard-shaded ones due to less RAM on the PS1). Still, this is Arcade Archives after all, so it'd be a bit silly to expect home console features here. Anyway, it's good to see Hamster doing more System 11 stuff, so we can look forward to more!
 

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Karnov (Data East, 1987)


Only the Japanese ROM is included here. The US ROM would've been at least funny to include because of its silly counterstop exploit (as well as the HUD being moved around, new time-up enemies being added and more enemies in general) but the Japanese ROM is the way to play the game at its best. No special Preference Settings either, but Karnov doesn't need them, he's strong enough.

KARNOV. Oh yes, that's a name you've heard before, surely. Who is he, though? The man sometimes called Jinborov Karnovski is a true mystery. Some say he's a fire-breathing Russian strongman looking to find the lost treasure of Babylon, piecing together the map to do it. The wildest rumours say he's an emissary of God, although whether he was sent down to save us from the Dark Emperor and his plague, or to save a small town in Cleamina from the wicked wizard Alakatay and atone for his sins, no-one can say. Others still say he's just a guy who loves fighting and organises the Great Grapple tournament in his spare time, and all this isn't even mentioning he's supposedly the father of a half-genie hero. The story keeps changing, but the one thing you can be sure of is he's out there, breathing plumes of fire at anyone foolish enough to stand in his way, and he'll use anything he can grab- wings, bombs, dozens upon dozens of ladders- to do what he's gotta do. The lands are full of the strangest creatures these days, but if there's anyone out there tough enough to beat 'em all up... It's KARNOV.

After nearly four years (!) of no Data East games on Arcade Archives (the last one was Trio the Punch in 2022), they're back and they're comin' out swinging! Well, not without someone else getting involved. Paon DP is the current owners of a few of the Data East games that G-Mode don't own, including the Vapor Trail trilogy, the Glory of Heracles series, Windjammers and two of their most famous games, Chelnov and Karnov. I'm not really sure how Paon can own the original Karnov game but G-Mode can still rerelease games like Fighter's History Dynamite and Bad Dudes that clearly have Karnov in them (and the Project EGG rerelease of Karnov makes no mention of G-Mode, only Paon) but I'm not really a law-talkin' kind of person, but in any case, they've come together to give Karnov the modern home console rerelease it's desperately needed. The rerelease that we've desperately needed, because we all know we need that Data East energy back in our lives.

Oh, better start talking about the game itself, I suppose. Taking the role of Karnov (who was first modelled after a fire-breathing strongman in a TV commercial and then later a boss at Data East, with said boss not being amused, I bet he really didn't appreciate all the future Karnov cameos!) as he defeats myriad monsters for a treasure map, I've always felt (probably incorrectly) that this is Data East's take on SNK's earlier Athena, in that they're action platformers with a focus on collecting items and equipment. While Athena's gear is mostly used automatically and focuses on giving her higher defense and attack attributes, Karnov has a whole inventory with items he can use any time he wants like ladders and bombs as well as items for specific areas like wings to fly, masks to uncover secret items and scuba gear to navigate swimming areas easier. It's a little awkward, mind you- this is a three-button, eight-way joystick game after all, so you select items by tapping left or right (a bit tricky when you're under attack, although you can move the cursor while crouching and you won't move) and using them with the third button- but this is a Data East game, and that feels like a very Data East-y kind of way to do things. Item management is a pretty important part of the game too- you can upgrade your standard shot to spew three flames at once, but using the flame breath (a limited number of powerful shots) or boomerang (extremely powerful but you have to catch it or you'll lose it) reduces your power back to zero (at least in the Japanese ROM) so you'd better be ready to go back to reduced power, plus ladders and speed-up shoes are the only way to access certain areas, so you've got to survey the area carefully, lest you be locked out of areas full of goodies!

It's a fairly tough game, given that Karnov can only take one hit, is a bit slow (although you can use temporary speed-up shoes) and has to rely on checkpoints, but I'm a big fan of this one. Once you get your head around using items, there's a lot to like- a stern challenge, multiple routes in scenes with hidden bonus items to find and use, the item system being something quite different from the norm and having some clever ideas (bombs can be used to destroy walls or create a bridge from a tree, wings can be used to take shortcuts, etc.) and the presentation is, of course, pure Data East. Traipsing the land with his confident strut, Karnov is constantly hassled by completely bizarre enemies like the gold men that form out of nothing and menace him with their hands on their hips until they explode into energy, rock monsters with their arms folder laughing at our hero before hurling whopping great rocks, a chariot being dragged by green lions, a gigantic t-rex... There's no real theme or reason to any of it, but that's why I imagine a lot of people remember Karnov if they ever played it because, well, it's Karnov and it makes an impression. It's one of the most Data East-y games to ever Data East its way into an arcade, and absolutely deserves a spot in the Arcade Archives.

Not to get too ahead of myself, but hopefully this leads to more Data East reissues on ACA, as most modern rereleases of a lot of those games are pretty lousy (looking at you, Johnny Turbo's Arcade). Games like Wizard Fire, Night Slashers and Heavy Barrel definitely deserve better, and having these games on ACA would be a delight. If not the wider Data East library then I imagine the Paon-owned games are definitely on the table, which means Chelnov and the Vapor Trail games, so here's hoping. Long live he legacy of Karnov! No, that's not a typo.

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Satan of Saturn (SNK, 1981)

No Switch 2 version for this one again (seems to be a pattern with SNK games) but it's on everything else in ACA and ACA2 formats. Only the Japanese ROM is included (there was an international Taito release retitled Zarzon but that's not included here) and there's no special Preference Settings either. The game has been edited a bit too- the 'GO TO THE SATURN' sequence originally had the Star Wars theme and pretty intense colour flashing, but the theme has been changed to no longer be infringing and the flashing has been toned down, with dimmer colours and slower colour-cycling.

This is one of the few pre-Neo Geo SNK games with no other rerelease, as it's not on SNK Arcade Classics 0 or SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, meaning there's no way to get a second-hand physical copy, sorry.

Oh this is a tough one! Satan of Saturn is a gallery shooter with the usual space theme, but there's two distinct parts of each pattern- the first part set on Earth where you deal with saucers and rockets, and a Saturn section where you take the fight to SATAN (which, as it turns out, is a bunch of space insects). They actually have different mechanics between them- the Earth scenes have a laser beam floor beneath you that you can activate when enemies get behind you to wipe 'em out (and if they get too close to the bottom-centre they can actually take out one of your spare ships!) although there is a cool-down on it, and the Saturn scenes don't have that but have more erratic-moving enemies you have to take out before you can start back from the Earth scene. This is a game that's kind-of new to me as while I've heard the name before (it's hard to forget a name like SATAN OF SATURN) I've never really put any time into it, and... This game's really hard!! What makes it especially tough is it seems you can't shoot down enemy shots, as while sometimes they'll disappear when you shoot the alien that fired it, they mostly just block your shots entirely, and enemies also always fire when you first move directly below them. There's a little cool-down on when they can fire again, but this makes them real difficult to shoot and not get killed! You sort-of get the hang of it eventually, relying on quick movement to get out the way, but it's quite difficult, so if you've mastered other gallery shooters, maybe this one's for you. I think I prefer Sasuke vs. Commander (that one's a TOSE joint, of course) but this one's pretty neat otherwise.

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Cyber Cycles (Namco, 1995)
 

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Of course, as with Aqua Jet, some of the appeal is lost in the translation to a home console. This was, after all, a big cabinet with a faux-motorcycle you'd lean left and right on to turn with the accelerator and brake on the handlebars. However, as with all of Namco's 3D games of this time, there's this definite 'OK, one more try' feel to this, especially since it's pretty difficult to place first. I had to have more than a few attempts to get the hang of it, and I still haven't placed first in Green Hill but managed to eke out a victory in Neo Yokohama after a lot of practice, and it doesn't feel frustrating, it's got a good sense of speed and the default control settings actually feel pretty good. Having an easy way of playing this at home without having to have a long, protracted fight with MAME's analogue controls is very convenient, and lets you appreciate all the work that went into this one, with the cityscape of Neo Yokohama looking especially impressive. The selectable soundtrack isn't an all-timer quite like Ridge Racer, but I especially like Bahama by Nobuyoshi Sano and wind ride kids by Shinji Hosoe. The narrator is also someone Namco and Capcom fans might recognise, it sounds like it's Scott McCulloch of Time Crisis and Resident Evil fame, interjecting here and there with comments like "Make your move!" and "You're really showing your stuff!" which is a nice touch. The cleanest, sharpest polygon presentation that Namco's System 22 can offer completes the package, and I'm really glad this one finally has a home port! One added benefit here is that you can really see the evolution of Namco's arcade racing games as more and more of them show up in Arcade Archives, a lot of them didn't have home ports until now so it's a part of their history that, unless you're an arcade rat, can be easily forgotten, so I'm looking forward to more (Dirt Dash is next, right?)

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Armadillo Racing (Namco, 1997)


Both the English and Japanese ROMs are included, with the main difference aside from the text being that the English one defaults to four coins (!) to start a game. ACA2 versions also allow for local split-screen for up to four players. No special Preference Settings this time, but as this was a trackball game, you can use any USB mouse or USB trackball that uses a mouse protocol (as explained by GSK). One example is the ELECOM HUGE Trackball Mouse that Hamster use in their streams, but if you know of any other extra controllers that work with Arcade Archives games, please help me out on my ACA spreadsheet!

ARMADILLOS. They're racing. That's the gist of it, really. This is another Super System 22 game that's quite the oddball, utilising a whopping massive trackball on the original cabinet where you race armadillos on one of two courses- the Sprint Course that's mostly a standard track with the odd tree branch to avoid, and the Obstacle Course that's full of dangers like wild animals, lakes to fall into and a ramp to score a sick jump off of (and even a shortcut, as you can see in this video from ohfivepro). Your armadillo has a heart meter (!) that builds up as you maintain speed and don't trip up on anything, and keeping it going for long enough has them roll into a ball (as armadillos are wont to do) to keep their momentum going, but they'll break out of it if they stumble on something, so be careful out there. You've got just two laps on each track to beat the rival armadillos, and getting first place lets you play a few frames of bowling (with your armadillo, of course) and then that's your lot.

Now, on the one hand this is a game that really feels like it needs a proper trackball to experience properly. Playing with an analogue stick ensures greater control and maximum speed at all times but it does feel like it takes away a bit of the appeal, and a USB mouse isn't really up to the task as unless you dial the sensitivity down a lot, steering becomes a lot more difficult and you really have to keep moving it frantically to get some speed out of it. On the other hand, this is a game that oozes charm- the graphics are bright and colourful, the sound design is excellent with different cartoon-esque noises for running depending on whether you're in a ball or not, there's lots of lovely little touches like the armadillos sweating when not at top speed, the monkeys helping with things like the high score table and entering your name (you pick out a letter and they just whack it with a stick!) and the cartoonish designs of the animals are all just wonderful. I get the feeling this one won't be for everyone, and it doesn't help that I don't have a proper compatible trackball to test this one with (although honestly I'm considering one now to better simulate the experience of a real cabinet) but I'm glad there's an easily-available home version for an arcade game I certainly never saw back when it was new, and it's so charming and lovingly-presented that it's hard not to like it!

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Hyper Crash (Konami, 1987)

 

 

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Tekken (Namco, 1994)

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As pointed out by EONOSTRO on the LordBBH Discord server, System 11 games will be ACA2 only, meaning no PS4 or Switch 1 releases, but Hamster will continue releasing other games on the older systems for as long as possible.

Only the Japanese ROM is included but Original Mode also gets an extra game mode, Practice, where you can fight against a dummy opponent that stands still and, more importantly, gets back up quickly (if you've ever tried to practice the original Tekken, you'll know the mild inconvenience of having to make your training partner stand up over and over. There's no other special Preference Settings, but this version does address a strange omission from an earlier rerelease- PS2 Tekken 5's Arcade History version of Tekken removed some names from the credits, specifically Seiichi Ishii (Director & Main Designer) of Virtua Fighter fame, Masamichi Abe (Coordinator) and Kunihiko Nakata (Character Design). These have not been edited for the ACA version, so they're all back in.

The King of Iron First Tournament. Funded by the Mishima Zaibatsu, this martial arts tournament promised the victor the glory of being known as the Iron Fist across the globe and a ludicrous cash prize. Of all the competitors in the world, eight have made it to the final- Kazuya Mishima, estranged son of the Zaibatsu's head; Paul Phoenix, the self-proclaimed strongest man in the universe; King, a mysterious luchador in a jaguar mask; Nina Williams, an Irish assassin; Jack, a Russian automaton running on plutonium; Marshall Law, master of high kicks sometimes called the Dragon; Michelle Chang, a Native American wielder of the Chinese fighting arts; and Yoshimitsu, a Manji clan swordsman. What are their reasons for participating in the tournament? Is it for the glory, the money, or somthing more personal? Get ready for the next battle!

A new type of hardware debuts on Arcade Archives, and it's one people have been waiting for. Tekken is the first ACA release running on Namco System 11, which famously ran on a vaiant of Playstation hardware. While this meant that the games didn't look quite as cutting-edge as contemporaries on Sega's Model 2 or Namco's own System 22, it meant that Namco could sell these games to smaller arcade locations and, more importantly, ensure a expedient and accurate home port to the Playstation. Everyone wins! 

In the case of the first Tekken, it established a few of the series' basics- the four-button, one-for-each-limb setup, using combinations of buttons and directions for moves, Paul's hair- but there's also a lot of elements not here just yet that'd be introduced in the sequels such as 10-hit combos, reversals and 3D movement. It's also a bit busted in some aspects, like King's Down-Forward + LP stunning the opponent for 93 frames (!) when blocked and damage being all over the place (hey, it was the '90s, the time for big damage) and, of course, this original arcade version is missing extras from the PS1 home port (did you know the sub-bosses and Heihachi weren't playable in the arcade version? You do now) which is something that's a problem for arcade games around this time. Try not to be too upset about it missing stuff from the home port, this is Arcade Archives after all. Still, establishing the basics for a fighting game series that's still going today is impressive even if it's mostly the control scheme, and it certainly has its own charm with its chunky polygons and excellent music and, considering it was initially designed as an experiment in making moving polygonal people, it does the job pretty well. The Caravan Mode in this one is also pretty novel, having you win as many rounds as you can before time runs out, with matches set to five rounds to stretch it out! I imagine most people will be more interested in the second game in the series on the same hardware, but Tekken as the first System 11 games on ACA is a fitting choice- it couldn't be anything else, really!

Again, EONOSTRO on the LordBBH Discord pointed out that there is a little upgrade here- the first ACA release only had the International ROM, but now the Japanese ROM is included too. As a nice bonus, the first ACA release has also been updated to add this ROM, so even if you don't want to upgrade, you can get that extra version! Isn't that nice. This is also the game's debut on Xbox One and Play Anywhere. I still don't know what Play Anywhere really is. 

 

This week's Arcade Archives release is... The Hustler (Konami, 1987), also known as Rack'Em Up.

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)

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