Gaming Hell

This week's Arcade Archives release is...Roc'n Rope (Konami, 1983)The Roc... A gigantic bird of myth and legend. Marco Polo may have claimed to see the bird, but as a brave explorer, you're about to catch a ride with one, you've found the mountain it lives on! However, the path to the top is treacherous. Not only are there cliffs and platforms to navigate, but hostile creatures ready to stop your ascent. Brave explorers such as yourself are never without the right tools though, so you've got a flashlight to temporarily stun enemies and, more importantly, a rope you can shoot at an upwards angle. Get a solid shot that hits the bottom of a cliff or platform and you can shimmy your way across, but watch out- monsters can shake the rope to throw you off (stop moving to stay on the line) and even start climbing towards you with it! There can only be one rope on-screen at once, so if a monster's using one, shoot out another to get rid of 'em! Once you reach the Roc and take it for a ride, you'll move on to another mountain with new hazards. Waterfalls, moving platforms, rock-dropping birds... Only the hardiest of mountaineers will make it through all four mountains!

Designed by Tokuro Fujiwara before he'd leave Konami to join Capcom and, eventually, help create the Ghosts 'n Goblins series as well as Bionic Commando (the parallels between this and that game's bionic arm mechanics are pretty obvious) and, much later on, Tomba!, this is a great Donkey Kong-style single screen platformer with really interesting movement mechanics. Relying on the angled rope is tricky at first, but satisfying once you get a feel for it, especially once you learn how to avoid being shaken off the rope and using the flashlight to distract enemies mid-rope-climbing. The stages also have a nice bit of variety with some neat little setpieces like the waterfall and the giant rotating ferris wheel platforms. It's a tough game but an excellent example of this type of game, so it's highly recommended, and it's nice to see it show up here as it's been a while since it's been reissued! While not worked on by Fujiwara, Konami would use a similar rope mechanic in their Famicom Disk System release, Arumana no Kiseki, so it's not just Bionic Commando that took notes from this one.

At this point in time, Konami had a few basketball games under their belt- 1984's Super Basketball and 1988's Double Dribble- but they were pretty traditional aside from using a 'dribble' button to actually move with the ball. Punk Shot, though, is definitely more inspired by Midway's 1989 basket-brawl Arch Rivals (Punk Shot was a late 1990 release according to arcade-history, so this makes sense) with a focus on hazard-littered courts and player-on-player violence. It's mostly fine, I think I prefer Arch Rivals but this has its own charm with really great presentation and some funny touches like the crowd and the way you leap forward to suplex opponents. The main complaint I've got is that there's a few things that slow the game down, especially in the harbour court where a shipping crate can completely stop play until it's destroyed (as well as squashing the player, it traps the ball inside) which somewhat ruins the flow you might be in. Otherwise, this is a neat little variant on basketball, although everything I've said here only really applies to the Japanese version.

... That's because the International version might be one of the most over-the-top Konami 'adjustments' to an arcade game I've ever seen, even more extreme than XEXEX. The manual of this version fortunately goes over the differences in a lot of detail, but in a nutshell, the International version divides the game into quarters like traditional basketball, meaning one 'game' will go on for a lot longer... In theory. In practice, each human player now has a health meter that slowly drains as you play and also decreases when your opponent hits you or scores points, but can be very slightly refilled when you score points yourself. There is absolutely no way to play well enough to keep this ever-draining health topped up to last a quarter, let alone an entire match. Arcade sports games are a bit tricky to balance right- some games like Arch Rivals and Baseball Stars 2 just have a timer letting you buy money, but Punk Shot is especially mean about it because it pretends that you have a chance of playing a little longer, but you get so little health back from scoring that inevitably your meter will empty, and when that happens..



... Your player keels over and dies on the court (you can only see this if you're in a multiplayer game, though, otherwise the game abruptly stops to ask for more money). If you don't continue, you get taken off the screen on a stretcher and replaced with a CPU player.

Told you this was a rough court!

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

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Both the Japanese and International ROMs are included, with different factory settings for the time limit. Preference Settings allow players to adjust game speed.

"... Which, if true, means doom for us all. In local news, the legendary cat burglar known only as '305' has pulled off another one of their daring heists, this time stealing an unknown amount of money from a corrupt casino just outside the city limits. As we understand it, they're making a break for it right now in their customised jalopy. Reports from previous heists indicate this is no ordinary car, with a mounted gun that some also claim can be upgraded with cannon fire, the ability to jump complete with wings for extra height and even wilder, gigantic sawblades mounted to the front to rip through oncoming traffic. Outlandish as it seems, this bandits making a break for it, with the police and local legitimate businessmen in hot pursuit. Whether they can make it out in time is anyone's guess, but maybe some of you at home are rooting for this plucky would-be Robin Hood! Coming up next on 573 News, we interview Ninja from USA Racheal on what it's like being a kunoichi in the modern day, stay tuned!"

(Yes, you are a criminal in this game, don't listen to the flyer!)

Oh hell yes, this is a real favourite of mine- I first played it on the infamous Microsoft Game Room where the sound emulation was terrible, but this finally has a good home emulation now! At first glance, City Bomber looks like it should be something like Spy Hunter, and there's certainly similarities, but it plays quite a bit differently. Instead of lasting as long as you can on a limited number of lives, you actually have no life limit, but instead have a strict time limit to deal with. Make it to the gate at the end of each stage before time's up! At first, your car's a little slow and only has a weak shot to defend itself with as well as a jump for avoiding things, but destroying coloured cars gives you power-ups to improve your shot, jump and speed (plus time-limited sawblades for maximum damage) and destroying any car will, at the end of a stage, give you extra time for the next level. You might think a driving game would be trickty to play with a joystick, but it works pretty well- hold Up to accelerate and then let go to maintain that speed (this is useful for making sharp turns) or hold Down to slow down, which is important for not falling off the road in later stages. It's extremely fast-paced and challenging, and while there's definitely a lot of memorisation involved (mostly where environmental hazards are like trees and lava pools), it's an absolute blast to play and has some really great presentation, using a lot of scaling to really sell the action like when you shoot down helicopters from above and the bouncing power-ups! I must admit, the game gets really difficult once you reach Stage 4, but runs are so quick that you'll be compelled to have just one more try... Perfect to play on Switch with a Flip Grip to see how far you can get!

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Metamorphic Force (Konami, 1993)

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The Japanese, World and US versions are all included, and the manual lists most of the differences between all three (although they manage to forget that the World and US versions' health number will tick down slowly, Gauntlet-style). Button Settings allow you to assign macros for both jumping attacks (for short and long jumps). Preference Settings allow you to 'adjust game speed'.

There's a lot of fans of this game, and it's easy to see why. The mechanics feel a hell of a lot tighter than other Konami brawlers (X-Men especially) and while there's no weapons to pick up, you are the weapon and it feels super-satisfying to lay into goons in your were-form. The pace is pretty frantic too and there's bits of variety like the bonus stages peppered throughout, and it doesn't feel like it overstays its welcome The presentation is also top of the range, with a vivid colour palette, transparency effects all over the place (including some that didn't work in MAME now fully working here), gnarly creature designs and that phenomenal soundtrack (with the Stage 1 theme, The Ruins of Bakyaros, being a perfect song to kick the game off). It's so well-presented that I can almost guarantee that whenever this game comes up, someone will either mention they could imagine this being a Saturday morning cartoon from the era or express surprise that it wasn't. This is the game's first and only home port, and while it's been a long time coming, it's worth it, and hopefully this introduces this one to a wider audience, it's great! Just do yourself a favour and play the Japanese version included here- you'll miss out on some minor expository text, but all the speech samples (yes, this has speech, it's a Konami brawler of course it does) are still in English and you don't have to deal with a health meter that ticks down constantly and reduced health pickups (that last one is apparently a US-exclusive 'feature').