Tag: streets of rage

Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle

NEO-GEO Nostalgia

I’m not lucky enough to have a NEO-GEO floating about in the rumpus room (obviously, I really wish I did), and until recently I don’t think I’d ever even seen one. I am interested in lesser-known video gaming lore, though, and have watched many a video and read many an article on SNK’s surprisingly flat box of wires and circuit boards. I’ve also played ports of the various Metal Slug, Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters games that have sprung up on other consoles throughout the years, so it’s not like I’m completely clueless about the world of Shin Nihon Kikaku, just mostly clueless.

Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle is a game that kept coming up in my research for articles and scripts I was writing. Most recently, it came up in my research for my as-yet unreleased Alien/Predator video game ranked list I put together for TripleJump. You see, a 2010, unlicensed mobile title called Predators: The Great Hunt swiped its backgrounds directly from SNK fighting games. I was first made aware of this when a contributor on tvtropes.org pointed out that the stage background from Krizalid’s arena from The King of Fighters ’99 was used, and this got me interested enough to do some sleuthing myself. Through a bit of reverse image searching I was able to identify a background from Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle and, once I’d recovered from my distress at the brazen plagiarism on display, was yet again reminded just how frickin’ awesome this NEO-GEO tag team fighter looked.

I adore the grimy city aesthetic. This stage reminds me of the scene in The Warriors where the gang are avoiding a bus filled with nut-jobs out for their blood.

Fast forward to the other day, and I’m needing to think of a game that was released on a non-Sega, Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft console (and wasn’t Metal Slug – long story) that I could nominate into the Video Game Hall of Fame, and I thought “maybe it’s time to see if that Kizuna Encounter thingy plays as good as it looks”. A bit of cheeky emulation later and I’m glad to report that it does indeed play wonderfully, and is an all-round tasty slice of fast-paced, one-on-one, weapons-based fighting action.

Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle is a sequel to another NEO-GEO fighter called Savage Reign, and lots of its controls and mechanics are lifted from Real Bout Fatal Fury. However, each combatant has their very own deadly weapon and the tag team mechanic is placed front and centre. It’s the tag team thing that really makes Kizuna Encounter stand out, as you’ll lose the bout if one of your characters goes down regardless of how much health your other character has left, and tags can only be made in a certain indicated section of the arena. This means that new tactics open up, like using quick tags to isolate your opponent, and dramatic struggles to get back to your tag partner become commonplace when things get dangerous. Combatants can regain some health while tagged out, too, so the game definitely encourages players to engage with the tag mechanic. I also like how your tag partner is visible in the background at all times, and will appear raring to go or sagging and depleted, depending on how much of a beating they’ve taken.

I love a pixel art night-time city-scape. I could look at it all day. All day!

I’m far from an authority when it comes to fighting games. I’m more interested in them for the cool characters they can offer and the spectacle they can present than I am for technical moves and combos. I button mash, I rarely block, and sometimes I even play them on easy mode. With all that out in the open so that you can take my opinion with the recommended amount of salt, I did really enjoy Kizuna Encounter. It was easy to pick up and within a few bouts I was able to unleash some pretty cool moves. There’s also plenty to master, and while I never got anywhere near anything resembling “mastery” during my time with the game, I definitely got better with a couple of roster members.

Speaking of the roster, it’s pretty bombastic. I had a lot of fun playing as Max Eagle, the big, axe-wielding American wrestler with a positive attitude, and some of the character designs are super-cool. Sho Hayate is the slick, hero type character, Gordon Bowman looks like an overweight M Bison cosplayer, and rollerblading clown-punk, Joker, could be a Streets of Rage mini-boss. There are even a pair of Mortal Kombat-style pallet-swapped ninja in Mezu and Gozu, the latter of which has some pretty nifty fire-based moves.

The two new characters that were added since the previous game are probably the highlights, though, as Rosa is an eye-catching and badass katana-wielder and staff-fighting police detective Kim Sue-il is the epitome of effortless suave. They both look great against the game’s stunning backdrops, and add to the overall vibe of urban cool.

The pallet-swapped ninja have water and fire attacks respectively. Reminds me of that other game. You know, Shinobi on the Game Gear.

Those stunning backgrounds were what brought me to the party, though, being a shallow, visual kind of fellow who likes looking at cool things. The pixel art on display is phenomenal, and every stage oozes that classic SNK artistry. Glittering skyscrapers viewed from below, sprawling cityscapes seen from above, run-down alleyways, cloudy docks, neon signs, grimy overpasses, and more all await those who are ready to brave the Battle of the Beast God Tournament, and every stage is fantastically atmospheric in its own way. This includes the final arena, a sinister shrine filled with eerie statues inhabited by the final boss, mysterious crow helmet-wearing bad guy, Jyazu. That’s the background that was nicked by the Predator game, by the way.

Like I said, I’m no authority on fighting games, or on the NEO-GEO, or on SNK in general, but I do know what I like and I like Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle, and I wanted to write about it so that its wonderful pixel art could grace my humble web page. SNK really knew their stuff when it came to chucking pixels on a screen, eh?

Played Via Emulation.

Video Game Covers

Wanna Talk Box Art? I’ve Got You Covered

One of the many reasons I fear the day when digital distribution replaces the physical game entirely, is that we’ll lose the establishment that is video game box art. I’ve been thinking a lot about video game cover art lately, and have indeed been looking at a lot of video game cover art, too. I’m looking at the cover of Fantasy World Dizzy right now, in fact. This timeless piece of artwork shows an egg in boxing gloves, wearing a safari hat and holding a telescope, while dragons and dinosaurs loom threateningly in the background. It’s a completely normal cover for a completely normal game, and it’s just the tip of the box art iceberg. From Wipeout to Alan Wake to Gravity Rush to Double Dragon, there’s a huge variety of great cover art out there, and I’m going to put on my world-renowned art critic shoes and talk about some now.

I’m also going to highlight a few that I really dislike. Then I’ll probably get called out on it and feel bad about it, but that’s just the kind of thing that us world-renowned art critics have to deal with every day. Let’s just look at some covers, shall we?   

GOOD – Deus Ex

The box art of Deus Ex pleases me. There are a few aspects that come together to give an unmistakable dystopian, cyberpunk feel, but it’s that ambiguous beam of light that really peaks my interest. Has JC Denton been picked out by a spotlight? Or is he ascending into some higher state of cybernetically-enhanced existence? The grid and stream of numbers overlaying the sky could be a representation of the all-encompassing grasp of technology, or could hint that this whole world is a simulation. Either way, with its black helicopter, bleak cityscape, shades-at-night-time vibe, this box art has all the ingredients needed to get you into the conspiracy mindset. Corporate subterfuge, government cover-ups and dehumanising body modification are surely just around the corner.

GOOD – Sonic & Knuckles

Before Sonic’s video game world was filled with superfluous bats, cats, bees, and miscellaneous additional residuary hedgehogs, a new character was a big deal that people looked forward to. Tails’ introduction in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was a serious event, as was Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s unveiling of the mysterious, antagonistic echidna, Knuckles. When Sonic & Knuckles hit the shelves, and people knew that they were finally going to be able to play as the prickly, pink anti-hero, this minimal box art did all it needed to do. An elegant logo on a black background, depicting Sonic and his new frenemy. It’s simple, it’s pretty, and it works. This is graphic design, people. I’m surprised I never see it on hoodies.

BAD – Days Gone

Days Gone has a stupid box art. This thing was designed by a committee, or some kind of cover-designing computer program. The “cover-o-matic”, if you will. Someone typed “zombie horde, brooding protagonist, 42% Sons of Anarchy, 58% The Walking Dead” into the algorithm and this is what came out. No one noticed that the computer didn’t understand that the lead wouldn’t be sitting and brooding handsomely next to his bike while a horde of infected looms only a few metres away. It’s a dumb and meaningless cover that just ticks all the triple-A, cinematic, gritty Netflix series-inspired boxes of its era. Don’t blame the cover-o-matic, though. It just does what it’s told. 

BAD – Eternal Ring

Look, I don’t want to knock a developing artist, but I also think that a certain level of refinement should be required when producing the cover art for an officially-released video game. Eternal Ring is FromSoftware’s original ring-based action RPG that a lot of people don’t know about, and honestly, I don’t think I’d know anything about it either if its cover art hadn’t stuck with me for all the wrong reasons. There’s nothing wrong with the image choice of a guy contemplating a ring for a game that presumably features a ring that’s worth contemplating, but why the hell wasn’t I producing covers for worldwide video game releases in the year 2000? I possessed a similar level of anatomical drawing understanding, and I’m pretty sure I was better at hands. 

GOOD – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (NA Cover)

Historically, the Zelda franchise has gone for a prominent logo on a plain or minimal background for its box art, and I’ve seen folks online identifying these as both the best and worst things ever. I like them, but I like this one more. The logo is right there, looking lovely as ever, but it’s backed up by an image that embodies impending adventure. Link, wearing a brand new, blue tunic, stands on a rocky outcrop like someone’s expertly-painted Warhammer miniature, and a world of opportunity awaits before him. This cover represents an exciting new era for one of the world’s premier video game franchises, and invites you along for the ride.

BAD – Planescape: Torment

I love Planescape: Torment. I do. It’s got the greatest story ever told in gaming and I’ll die on that hill all day. Not many people experienced said yarn, however, and while its status as a cult classic PC RPG that sits in the shadow of the likes of Baldur’s Gate and Fallout 2 definitely had something to do with this, this super-weird front cover surely contributed to its obscurity. I mean, what were players supposed to expect when they laid eyes on it? It looks like an alien from a voodoo magic-inspired episode of some obscure, ’90s sci-fi, which I guess would have its charm if that’s the kind of vibe Planescape: Torment was going for, but it really isn’t. The ’90s sci-fi makeup job, the blue scaling, the picked-out gold on the dreadlock beads, it’s all so weird and off-putting. Great game, though. Honestly. 

GOOD – The NewZealand Story

My pick of the bunch when it comes to cutesy platformer box art is the adorable and mysterious The NewZealand Story. Let’s have a look at some of the characters arrayed on this cover, shall we? You’ve got Tiki the kiwi himself, looking adorably heroic in his trainers, then there’s a whole host of critters standing in opposition. There’s a thing in a floating UFO tank, there’s a kind of sinister-looking, fire-breathing tortoise, there’s a cat-like creature with bat wings, and there’s an absolutely beautiful little bat-mouse thing in the bottom corner, standing there looking like some kind of proto-Gengar. It’s a cuddly yet action-packed composition, and thankfully, that creepy, pink whale boss is nowhere to be seen. 

GOOD – Streets of Rage

I love a side-scrolling beat-’em-up, and the genre has provided some epic cover art over the years, from the various ports of 1986’s Renegade, right up to the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. The original Streets of Rage has to be the pinnacle, though. A perfect example of ’90s action movie-style, illustrated box art, this expertly-composed picture has it all. It’s not entirely representational of the game, though. I don’t know why Blaze and Axel have changed their outfits, and no bad guys carry Uzis, wear hockey masks, snipe from windows or emerge from beneath sewer covers (not until the second game, anyway), but who cares when the image is so awesome? I own a cushion with this artwork on it. No word of a lie. I’m leaning on it now, in fact.

BAD – The Last of Us Part II

Sony’s big exclusives really do run the gamut of cover quality. Horizon Zero Dawn is great, God of War is alright, Days Gone can get in the bin, and then you have this. “Close up of grumpy face”. I don’t know what else to say, really, it’s just another meaningless cover that ticks market research boxes but in an even less interesting way. I totally get it, The Last of Us Part II cover designer, your game is gritty and violent and harsh. It’s basically misery porn and I understand that some people like that, but I really don’t want “close up of grumpy face” on my gaming shelf. Take your blood-soaked, angry teenagers and ludonarrative dissonance elsewhere, please. Can I look at something else now? 

GOOD – Cisco Heat

Now, this is more like it! I used to pick up Commodore 64 magazines when I was younger, and I always loved seeing the cover art and advertisements for Cisco Heat in said periodicals. It embodies my childhood idea of what America was like; sun and skyscrapers and cool police chases. When I look at this image, I think of summer, I think of rolling my Micro Machines around my bedroom floor, I think of watching Police Academy on video. Look at that subtitle – “All American Police Car Race”. That’s the stuff that my young, Beverly Hills Cop-inspired dreams were made of. And yes, I do also like the photo of the cop leaning on the cop car arcade machine. Who wouldn’t like that? Criminals, that’s who. 

GOOD – Halo 3

You could say, if you were so inclined, that the Halo 3 cover represents everything that’s wrong with big budget game covers from its era and beyond. It’s just the main character kind of standing there with a gun, it’s got that whole orange and teal, generic movie poster thing going on, but none of that matters, this is a masterpiece. Every subtle nuance combines to form a piece of box art that’s so inspiring it should be made into a 100 foot stained glass window and installed into a magnificent cathedral so that the morning sun can shine through it, reminding us of the trials and sacrifices of our saviour, Master Chief. The light, the shadows, the perfectly-poised, pre-action pose. This cover isn’t just epic, it’s transcendent. It depicts the precise moment that the ultimate hero of mankind steps into the light, ready to save us all.

GOOD – Secret of Mana

Hiro Isono was an incredible artist. His illustrations of otherworldly groves and mystical glades capture the complexity and detail of nature as well as its mysterious, sweeping majesty. When the lads at SquareSoft hit him up for a bit of cover art back in the early ’90s, it was an inspired move. After all, the driving force behind the lore of Secret of Mana is a giant, magical tree, and Isono is giant, magical trees. The result is a beautiful, somehow eerie, contemplative piece of art that details an event later in the game in a way that doesn’t spoil the story. It has the three leads, it has the roots of an enormous tree, it has some cool birds, and it’s so much more affecting than a picture of the protagonist posing with a sword (or an extreme close up of their grumpy face). The PS4 remake has more room on the cover to feature more of the illustration, so I should probably have displayed that one, but the SNES box presses all my nostalgia buttons. It’s my favourite box art, and I can’t see it being uprooted any time soon.

Vigilante – Retro Review

Green-Trousered Rogues

As a kid growing up in rural Somerset, I didn’t see much in the way of gang violence (although I’d argue that a group of shifty-looking cows can be just as intimidating as a gang of ruffians with flick-knives), and my only experience of that culture came through films and music videos. Loading up Double Dragon or Target Renegade on the C64 was my chance to live out that Los Locos scene in Short Circuit 2 or pretend I’m one of those cool and mean-looking dancers in Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video.

Upon closer inspection, Vigilante for the Master System seems to have taken its cues from more adult-targeted media like 1979 film The Warriors, what with the antagonist gang being called the Rogues and all. No sign of David Patrick Kelly though. In fact, all the bosses of Vigilante’s Rogues are the “large and in charge” types, rather than diminutive, trouble-making rat-bastards.

The boss of the first level. Is it Bruiser Brody or Brian Blessed?

To me, Vigilante was the herald of the next generation of side-scrolling fighting games. After sampling the likes of Renegade and Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja on the C64 and Amstrad CPC, Vigilante was my first taste of streets-based violence on a console, and mighty impressed I was too. Bright colours, neat backgrounds and cool animations greeted my eager, innocent eyes, but what would my contemporary opinion be of this near-forgotten 8-bit beat-’em-up?

Well, it ain’t no Streets of Rage, that’s for sure. Released on the Master System in 1989, Vigilante is a port of a 1988 arcade game by Irem, and is apparently a spiritual successor to the 1984 arcade game Kung-Fu Master. An unnamed city has been overrun by crooks, thugs and ne’er-do-wells, and Maria, the protagonist’s girlfriend, has been unceremoniously chucked into the back of a van. It’s time for the titular vigilante to clean up the streets. The levels consist of a single, linear run towards a boss waiting at the end of the road. Contrary to what you might expect from the genre and the screenshots, there is no vertical movement, with our vigilante friend limited to a single, horizontal plane. Enemies will attack from either side, and you have punches, kicks and jumps at your disposal to fend them off.

As such, Vigilante plays less like a traditional scrolling beat-’em-up and more like some kind of violent rhythm game. This is because much of the game comes down to the timing of your button presses, especially when it comes to one particularly annoying thug-type whose modus operandi is to repeatedly rush in and attempt to grapple you. Seriously, these guys are the worst. Every other enemy will approach from either side of the screen, hold off for a bit as they get close, and then attempt to catch you out with an attack. The aforementioned grapplers, identified by their white vests and green trousers, will rush in at full speed, single-mindedly intent on locking you in an energy-sapping hold. Your only defence is to batter them before they get to you, but they come in so quickly that the timing is extremely precise. It’s difficult enough when just these green-trousered hooligans are rushing you from either side, but pair them up with other crooks and things can get immensely frustrating.

Look at him, coming in from behind while you’re occupied with t-shirt and jeans guy.

If you can survive this glut of grapple-happy nutters you’ll reach the boss at the end of the level. These guys are intimidating, but will soon fall once you figure out which of your attacks they’re particularly vulnerable to. Be careful not to let the boss push you too far back through the level though, as once you’ve defeated the stage’s head honcho you still have to walk to the end, and if you’ve gone too far back you can expect to be set upon by thugs and green-trousered grapple guys again.

I played the Master System version of Double Dragon so that I could compare the two, and there’s so much more to that than there is to Vigilante. The stages are larger, with vertical movement, pits and multiple height levels to traverse, you have more moves at your disposal, and Double Dragon has that all-important two-player mode. Vigilante looks nicer though, its alleyways, scrapyards and city skylines artfully delivering that retro urban vibe. Vigilante’s nameless city is a pretty cool place to be, it’s just a shame that I have to spend my entire time there desperately fending off infuriating bastards in fetching aquamarine slacks.

Played on Master System/Emulator