Xenophobe - Arcade

The crazy split screen... It's only going to get worse.

I imagine a meeting at Midway's office.

"Yes, let's ride the success of Aliens (the film) the idea of huge monsters that kill humans very easily and very rapidly running around space stations and planets, nomming down people like candy and causing something to burst from their chests in that odd parody of pregnancy and birth that results in the vasectomy rate going up each time this film comes on for some reason. Let's take that idea, not buy the actual license (Because Konami has it anyway) and make a game that is basically a big send up of the original material."

Game over? I'm FREE! YES!!!

"However, lets royally fuck up the control system and make it as awkward as hell, unplayable by those casual gamers (you know the ones I mean, people that have never played before and expect arcade games to be intuitive and easy to use while real skill comes from experience) and overwhelm people with this abysmal mess and scare them off because we've already got their credits so what the hell do we care after that."

And they were applauded and given a raise and they made this game.

The controls... The horror... But all because of the controls.

I'm not being entirely fair though. So let me break this stuff down.

In what is supposed to be a 3-player game, Xenophobe can allow up to 3 players to play through the game at once. Each one can wander the space-station corridors, meet up and play together or go solo through the space station in search of the key components to beat the mission. Or play until time runs out and the place blows up. Your main mission being to kill every single alien in the space station before the self-destruct kicks in.

So I'm an alien, fighting other aliens, in a game titled "fear of aliens"...

That being said, the levels wrap around themselves so if you keep heading in one direction you'll end up back where you started, but the aliens can move around too. There's multiple weapons to find and keep for yourself in which you can use to kill the aliens from different guns like the laser, gas and lightning, as well as grenades but you're more likely to blow yourself up with those and the aliens tend to attack from most places. Creeping little critters that look like shelled face-huggers, mid aliens that crawl and pounce, big aliens that spit acid and use their mass to attack and other undesirables along the way.

Sadly, you never blow up on ship, you get teleported out. So you can suffer some more.

The biggest problem in the game is the completely unintuitive control system. You've an attack button, and two actions buttons. One used for getting up and jumping and interacting with the backgrounds, the other for crouching, throwing off enemies, picking up objects and throwing grenades. That's right, one button crouches, the other jumps. At times it's simply easier to just crouch, let the aliens come to you and blast as many as you can before the timer runs out in Xenophobe. Speaking of which, if you find switches and buttons, you can find out how many aliens are left and how much time is left before it all blows up. Usually around 100 or so are in most levels, more in the later ones but with the controls how they are, players aren't going to be keen to find out.

Forget the timer, where's the "Blow it the fuck up now!" button?

Add to this an ever diminishing health count and unfair attacks from monsters you simply cannot avoid and monsters that can shrug off damage JUST to hit you (seemingly, but almost always happens) and you end up with an largely unplayable mess that most players will blunder their way through until they get bored or their credit runs out of health. Usually the former. Steer clear of this chaotic mess of a game.

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs - Arcade

Not the most exciting start image, I know.

It's not the first amalgamation I'd consider if someone said "Put two things together and make a game with it from an original comic book" and while I might have chosen Dinosaurs, because they're dinosaurs after all, it's unlikely I'd have chosen Cadillacs. Likely I'd have opted for Dragons and Dungeons... no wait...

Odd when the language doesn't match the threat.

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs started originally as a comic book series in the late 80's, set in post-apocalyptic world where pollution and disasters ransacked the planet, people moved underground for centuries and when they came back to the surface, dinosaurs were around again. Our two main protagonists, Jack and Hannah, fix cars and science dinosaurs respectively while trying to survive in a world where driving down to the corner-shop is likely to get your head chomped by something large and scaly. (Not using a mom joke there...)

I get to punch out T-Rex looking things, awesome.

From this, in steps Capcom to publish Cadillacs and Dinosaurs as a brawl-em-up. Take your two main chars, add in a few extra minor chars, give them some pointless stats details and have them punch, kick and fight their way through multiple enemies, levels, bosses of both human and dinosaur in nature, and some enemies that are a little of both. The special skills are laughable at best, "Good Skill", "Items", "A move everyone else already has" and "Useless" are pretty much the spectrum on that one.

I don't get the appeal of driving a Caddy, but I do get the appeal of running mooks down.

In so far as a plot is concerned, our intrepid heroes embark on a journey to stop poachers from killing dinosaurs and selling the skins, get ambushed on the way home and find out it was a ploy by some nutcase in a lab coat who wishes to fuse humans and dinosaurs together through 'Science' and become the perfect being. Sadly this was doomed from the start as he never wished to become me, oh how fickle life is. Cue this as a reason to fight your way through multiple levels featuring bosses, returning bosses, dual bosses, transformation bosses, bosses that become standard enemies and effectively hitting all the usual feature one might find in the arcade gaming tropes section. Even the obligatory sewer level and elevator level turn up.

No, no mix tapes were dropped here, someone started this fire.

You're not alone in Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Of which the Caddy rarely turns up but thankfully the dinosaurs do) you've a wealth of weapons to help you ranging from pistols to shotguns, clubs, rifles, rocket launchers, grenades, dynamite and knives with the usual smattering of arcade brawling food items and points items to help push you up onto the bonus lives limits. Depending upon the machine you're playing on, you can have 2-3 players on screen at once trying to work out which dinosaurs are nice/nasty and which enemy is about to hit you before your mates screw it up and take you down by accident.

"Parts to include in beat-em-ups, #12 A boss rush of previous bosses: Check"

I can't say that I know of the source comics or the cartoon series (which may or may not have come out after the game anyway) but as a game, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs shows that the motion and controls are fluid and quite responsive. Running is done easily with a double tap in a direction, jumping and fighting is pulled off easily while the use of weapons and items comes fairly intuitively. There's little difference between the main characters in choice of skills and abilities, they all have combos, they call can run and jump and attack, they all have the "2 button" desperation attack that floors everything around themselves and costs a small amount of health in the process.

"Parts to include in beat-em-ups, #8 Elevator/Lift/Funicular sections: Check"

Graphically everything looks ok, though there's a little chuckle to oneself when you see the Twin Towers stood next to some new-age Mesopotamian Pyramid, maybe they rebuilt it. The levels don't seem to have the same attention to detail one might expect from Capcom and the detail on the standard enemies is somewhat lacking for quite a few of them, however the focus on the dinosaurs and dino-related creatures is sublime and there's a guilty pleasure in punching out a T-Rex type dinosaur while body slamming a boss into several standard enemies.

Thankfully, that IS his final form.

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs also delivers on the sounds, solid and loud explosions, synthed voices punctuating screams and shouts of triumph and jubilation as well as a rather overly enthusiastic "GO" sign that pops up when you need to progress to the right for more fighting. The music however doesn't seem to have been considered suitably for the project in that you can go from 20 seconds of intense rooftop fighting, to a jazzy number in a chaotic hallway before going back outside to a epic, adrenaline inducing rush of music before the boss turns up and it becomes a lower key tune that doesn't have the same rush. It gives the impression that whoever assigned the music didn't have the same ideas as the person that composed it.

STFU! I've got more credits!

Sadly for an arcade game, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs doesn't have much of a replay factor. Once you've beaten it you might give it another go and use another character but there's little deviation from the standard play here. Even before you've beaten it, chances are you've seen everything already and there's little reason to come back and go through it again. Which is a shame as it's quite the fun game to play.

Knights of the Round - Arcade

Sounds Arthurian, is actually boring.

There's not much to say about Knights of the Round in all fairness, as there's little in the game that makes it stand out. Perhaps I could go into detail about the setting of the game. Where in we see a pre-round table Arthur, fighting against local kings and established rulers to try and unite the country under one solidified rules, as according to Arthurian legend. (Where the hell the ancient Japanese warlord comes into this, I won't begin to guess). Taking the idea of Arthur, having reft the sword from the stone, moves on to make good the prophecy that he would one day become king. So we're not talking about Mordred or such.

Pick your poison.

Knights of the Round, wherein you choose your knight of legend (assuming your knight of legend is Arthur, Percival and Lancealot) and proceed to "civilise" the country by "selectively euthanising" opposing dignitaries. Though, on the surface, the game seems rather shallow and lacklustre, seemingly taking the idea that the combat needn't be complicated or awkward for someone to be able to play the game and enjoy it. However what initially comes across is a rather dull game with characters that bring little of value to the play style, the slow combat and the run-of-the-mill fighting system involving moving, hitting and jumping.

Jump attack, quite effective.

However, that's an initial perception. Knights of the Round actually has a little more depth than that, as it uses a secondary attack system depending upon which direction is pressed at the same time as an attack, allowing for air-moves, parrying and stronger attacks with slower start up times. There's an attempt here to further the bland "hammer the button until the enemies die or we run out of cash" approach but for the practicality behind it, you might as well just hammer that damn button instead.

Jump attack, good damage on bosses

The enemies and levels in Knights of the Round are rather similar across the game. Too steeped in the folklore and setting, the enemies are serfs, knights, other knights, more knights, some jesters and "magicians" and the bosses are usually MORE KNIGHTS or at least kings in armour. The one real deviation from all of this is the Automaton which just feels incredibly out of place despite being the solely amusing thing to turn up in the game and becomes a welcome battle rather than annoying like most of the others.

Jump attack, great for saving other knights

Knights of the Round hasn't got any real weapons to pick up. It does have food, chests (which can be bashed apart to get different rewards), instant level-ups, magical attacks and summons for horses. The levelling system improves your characters stats with each increase and at specifically significant levels, shows graphical enhancments of weapons and armour for your chosen characters. Though the actual levelling mechanic is a false economy because as you get stronger, so do the enemies you'll be facing and the bosses seem to increase at a suitable level along with yourself.

Jump attack, good for crowd control

The music within Knights of the Round is fairly standard and doesn't really push any boundaries, sound effects however have shown a larger variation with noises and sounds of enemies dying in multiple voices, rather than hearing the same noises over and over regardless of the differences in sizes of enemies. That said the clangs and ricochets of weapons on armour shows there's been some significant level of attention paid to detail for the sampling at least.

Jump attack, a good way to celebrate

The problem really with Knights of the Round is that it's been done, even by Capcom, earlier and better. As a result it leaves players with an odd feeling of playing something that should have come out 2-3 years earlier and doesn't seem to match up with other games that have been released at the same time.