Gaming Hell

This week's Arcade Archives release is... The Outfoxies (Namco, 1995)

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)

PSN

US
 

 

Switch

US

 

 

 

PSN

US
 

 

Switch 2

US
 

 

Xbox

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Bermuda Triangle (SNK, 1987)

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)
Both the Japanese and English ROMs are included, but if you're expecting World Wars, the heavily-modified alternate version of the game, then sorry, that's not here. No special Preference Settings, but you have a few control options- you can keep it semi-faithful to the Loop Lever control scheme of the arcade game by using one stick to move and the other to rotate your cannon, have one stick do both movement and aiming, or have rotation set to buttons for use on arcade stick controllers. Remember, this game is also on Digital Eclipse's SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, although not as part of the original lineup (you have to download an update for it).
 

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Bomb Bee (Namco, 1979)

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)

PSN

US
 

 

Switch
EU
US

 

 

 

PSN

 

Switch 2

EU

 

Xbox

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Tokyo Wars (Namco, 1996)


Both the English and Japanese ROMs are included. There's a minor edit, as the Red Cross has been removed from Shield items. No special Preference Settings this time, but the Arcade Archives 2 version has an extra mode- Split Screen. This simulates the link-up capabilities of the original cabinets, allowing for either two player or four player set-ups with their own section of the screen, and it even goes so far as to replicate the behaviour of the machines when idle- when only two players on a four player set-up have selected their stage, the other two cabinets show a panoramic view of the area, and if a player joins in too late to battle, they can just play their own game. Thanks to HokutoNoShock for the details on this (my PS5 is currently in the hands of Sony as it needs repairs!)

A mighty battle is erupting in Tokyo. At least two areas of the city have been evacuated as a full-scale war has broken out between two tank batallions, the Green and White forces. Whoever wins gets control over whatever's left of the city when they're done! Up to four players in local split-screen (originally two twin cabinets linked together, of course) can choose their allegiance and one of two arenas, the Bay Area and Downtown (plus a selection of music) to do battle with a simple control system- one pedal to move forward, one pedal to reverse, a control column to turn, pivot the tank's cannon and fire and a view change button in case you want to see from a more intense, first-person perspective. Each team of four tanks has a certain number of vehicles in reserve at the start of each match (19 in the Bay Area, 14 in Downtown) and from there, the battle breaks out- wipe out the enemy as fast as you can! Don't worry if your tank explodes, you'll just respawn in a reserve one as long as there's any left, plus any enemy tanks you destroy leave behind a health item . Do what you can to survive- roll over parked cars, blast through obstacles, take out the enemy forces in the time limit!

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Midnight Landing (Taito, 1987)


Both the Japanese and English ROMs are included. You can play with gyro controls (PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2) and the USB CyberStick (PS4, Switch w/convertor) and adjust the game's analogue settings to have a control experience closer to the arcade game.

One of the more imaginative ways to simulate a 3D environment with just 2D assets, Midnight Landing is a pretty serious flight sim that tasks you with landing this plane safely at the airport without crashing, overrunning the runway or straying too far off-course (Taito Airlines have a strict 'no go-arounds' policy apparently). You join the flight just as it begins to approach the runway with command over the control stick and throttle, so use them in tandem with the instruments displaying things like your pitch, height and speed to gauge the correct approach, with each successive round adding more powerful winds and altering things like distance to vary things up. Don't worry too much about getting it dead-on when it comes to landing, as long as you're on terra-firma, the auto-pilot will correct your angle most of the time so you can safely come to a stop, assuming you've got enough runway left!

Of course, the big thing here is that, as the title suggests, it's in the middle of the night... So no need to render any complex buildings or anything that requires fancy 3D, just let the lights guide your way! This is such a clever way of doing it (as pointed out by BadoorSNK on Bluesky, Atari's Night Driver did a similar thing) and, while I don't like to dwell on nostalgia too much, it does remind me of late-night / early-morning car rides when going on holiday, nothing guiding us but the dim lights on the road... Something a little cosy about that, I suppose. Not a game for everyone- it's pretty straight-laced as far as arcade flight games go aside from the friendly radio chatter you get, and Top Landing would have a lot more variety the next year- but it's novel, there's not many arcade games like it, and technically this is the first 3D Arcade Archives game from Taito. I wasn't really expecting it, so hopefully we can see Top Landing and other 3D games from them in the series in the future!

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


Both the Japanese and US ROMs are available (differences include the order of levels, pentagrams being removed from the US version and default number of continues until you're locked out), but there's no unique Preference Settings this time, only ones already available via dip-switches.

In the year 777X, a sacred island known as BATTLANTIS found itself under attack from the forces of evil, unrelenting in their march to conquer the land. However, the young King Cripeuss III refused to yield. Armed with a crossbow and his courage, he took to the many castle walls across Battlantis and defended them from the advancing enemy hordes who marched left to right then down a row in tight formation, with only the parapets as temporary defenses. Demons and monsters would attack the castle and even climb its walls to kill the king, but he saw to them with crossbow skills, as well as the special items some enemies would drop that granted him powers such as faster movement, side shots and even invisibility. Even gigantic boss monsters would challenge the king, but they stood no chance. As for how the legend ends, well, that's for you to find out, isn't it?

Oh boy, Battlantis. This was actually one of the launch titles for the Microsoft Game Room and it's, well, late '80s Space Invaders. Not entirely out of character for Konami, as in this era they were doing updated takes on early arcade games like Head-On with Fast Lane and Pengo with Kitten Kaboodle, so why not try a medieval Space Invaders-alike? This is not one of my favourites unfortunately, this game is probably a bit too difficult for its own good. The main issue is that once an enemy reaches your area, they'll climb the castle wall and then run into you, which is certain death unless you have invisibility or the side-shot, which are both time-limited items that you're not guaranteed to get. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for enemies that aren't part of the formation you're currently fighting constantly running in from off-screen to climb your wall! The second stage of the game even has flying enemies that make a beeline for you unless you shoot them down in the right order, and what the legends of King Cripeuss III don't tell you is that he's slow as all hell, making this a frustrating endeavour. I think there's a decent Space Invaders-like game hiding here, but it's hidden under layers of somewhat muddy presentation and brutal, somewhat unfair difficulty. I've tried to get into this one a few times and I just bounce off it, but hey, maybe the idea appeals to you, I'm just sorry I can't be more enthusiastic about this one!
 

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Dacholer (Nichibutsu, 1983)

PSN
EU
US

Switch
EU
US

No Arcade Archives 2 version for this, so it's just on PS4 and Switch. Both the earlier ostrich version (Dacholer) and the later human version (Kick Boy) with several gameplay changes (in particular, Dacholer will kill you if you run into a ball you just kicked that still has momentum, whereas Kick Boy will instead kick the ball again, and both have unique bonus stages). No Preference Settings either, but this does fix a huge oversight present in MAME for years, where the game's default lives setting was 1 instead of the correct 3, so you can play on the default settings for more than a minute now! Oddly, this uses the old ACA UI- I can only speculate, but maybe this is a holdover from before the ACA2 UI change that they've been holding onto for a rainy day? Who knows.

Finally, it is time for OSTRICH GAMING. Nichibutsu is back on the menu with the bizarre Dacholer, alongside the later Kick Boy retooling. This is a weird top-down maze-chase of sorts, but without the maze- as the heroic ostrich DACHOLER (I'm assuming), you have to kick the turtles that turn into what look like footballs when you get close to them to take out the other animals that want you dead, including giant mice, rabbits and gorillas, while grabbing worms and other delicious food for extra points along the way. If you're quick, you can get rid of the animals before they spawn from their fried-egg hatching spots (well, they look like fried eggs to me) at the start of a scene! Be careful though, the kappa (referred to on the flyer as the WATER SPIRIT) will kill you if you try to cross the bridge when they're jumping across, and moles will dig killer holes you'll have to avoid. Survive all four scenes and you get a bonus round where you can pick up loads of fried eggs (although in Kick Boy, you just kick balls into goals)! Arcade games are weird!!

It's an awkward game for sure- there's no maze but your ostrich definitely moves on a 'grid' plus there's no diagonal movement which can make manoeuvering around enemies and hitting the ball difficult, and you have to be very careful where you kick the ball, as if it rebounds off something or another ball, it will come back to kill you. Still, it's weirdly charming, and once you get used to the controls you can sort-of get into it, and I can't say no to a game where you play as a silly ostrich. Now, the other revision, Kick Boy, is certainly a bit more forgiving, in that kicked footballs no longer kill you and the kappa's replaced with a non-lethal ship, but the way the football bounces around all over the place once you walk into it is a bit much and, well, you're not an ostrich. Still, you can pick either version here, which is a nice inclusion, so you can decide which is better!

In any case, the most important thing about Dacholer is this flyer, taken from The Arcade Flyer Archive:

 

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Scrambled Egg (Technōs, 1983)


Only the Japanese ROM is included here- there was a localised Western release by Universal, Eggs, with completely different character designs, that isn't available here. No extra options either, sorry!

Jaleco and SNK are one thing- their last ACA releases prior to this month were in 2021- but Technōs is going all the way back, their last ACA release was Double Dragon II: The Revenge in 2016. Almost a decade ago! I was definitely not expecting them to ever return to ACA as they recently put out their own half-arcade game collection, Super Technōs World: River City & Technōs Arcade Classics, but this game isn't included on there, so while I wouldn't expect any of the games on there to show up on ACA, maybe we'll get a Mysterious Stones or a Minky Monkey out of this. What older company will come back next, I wonder?

Anyway, as for Scrambled Egg itself, this game is weird, I'd sort-of never heard of it before! By that I mean I was only familiar with the Datel bootleg ROCK DUCK which has incorrect colours but I mean, you can see the duck thrusting its crotch constantly, right? Anyway, this is a maze chase game with less of the emphasis on the 'maze' part, where as the hero, BOSS (some kind of strange robot thingy) you have to free all the chicks from the eggs by kicking them. Kicking an egg scoots it across in the direction you kicked it, and if it hits another egg, it'll send that one flying in the same direction, until an egg hits a wall, and the whole thing happens again in reverse until they're back in position, but with each egg a little closer to cracking open. Once the chicks are out, kick 'em off the screen to get them out of danger! Poor BOSS gets pestered by two enemy types, the Sukiyaki Bros. who can undo the damage you've done to the eggs or turn freed chicks blue to make them worth less points, and the Tuna Head who usually circles the edge of the screen but comes in from time to time to chase you. You can fire off your eyes (!) against the Sukiyaki Bros. to stun them, but that won't work against Tuna Head, so you need to kick an egg and hit them with it to take them out temporarily. You'll even find a red helper chick to swat away bad guys that can turn into a hen that helps crack the eggs too. Just be careful, if you get sandwiched between moving eggs, you're poached. Save all the chicks and move on to the next board!

I won't lie, on my first few credits I didn't get anywhere with this game and was ready to write it off, but I decided to persist and it does take a little getting used to, but it's pretty fun! The movement in particular is a little strange, it works on a grid system but since there's more open spaces than something like Pac-Man, it can be hard to see where one tile stops and another starts at times, so I found myself not quite moving where i wanted to. I haven't gotten much better at it, but you sort-of adjust to it in time. The main habit you have to stop yourself from indulging in is hanging around on the outer edges of the maze- Tuna Head will spend most of its time circling it, and you can't attack it from there. Instead, you're better off sticking inside the maze, taking potshots at Tuna Head when the opportunity presents itself and dealing with the Sukiyaki Bros. using your eyes while using chain reactions to work on as many eggs as you can at once. The egg patterns eventually become more complex and more Sukiyaki Bros. show up, so it starts challenging and only gets more so as you get through the boards. It'll take a few credits for you to start to 'get' it, but I think this is a neat little game! A few gameplay elements would show up in another Technōs game a year later, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John's Adventure although that game's a lot more elabarote with way more going on, but I suppose it shows just how quickly arcade games were advancing at that time, eh~