Zero Wing - Arcade

Someone set us up the bomb!

All your base are belong to us, Gentlemen make your time and a whole host of other such bad translations are what plagued the Megadrive/genesis version of this game, but now we have just the arcade version which features solely the gameplay and no shoehorned plots and cut scenes that the console version has.

In AD 2101, War was beginning

With that, what we have is a solid, if a little long, scrolling spaceship shooter. Bright and colourful graphics adorn the gameplay while you're zipping through space collecting powerups, speedups and massive bombs while negating around weapons, enemies, projectiles and some VERY large bosses.

CATS: How are you gentlemen!!!

For plot, there's little to realise in Zerowing beyond you leaving an exploding space station and... That's it, you're off! Into the large black abyss that is "The Space" and you're flying from left to right and taking on all comers in a massive battle royal of you vs. everyone else. On your way you have the lovely little ability to shoot and use a sort of tractor beam that lets you capture small and medium sized enemies and then launch them at others or use them as a shield.

Operator: We get signal

Zerowing's powerups come in several flavours of primary light colours, red for spread shooting, blue for lasers and green for homing shots. Get enough of the same colour and you'll power up through levels of 3 shot, to 5 shot and then 7 shot (except for lasers, they just get fatter) while your 2 pods will also stop most attacks and even destroy smaller enemies for you. You can be seriously kitted out in a short amount of time.

You are on the way to destruction!

Which you'll need for Zerowing as the levels can be extensively long and it's not until you destroy the 2nd boss-looking monster that you're actually told it's the next level. Bosses are not introduced with any fanfare, the music doesn't change, they just turn up and you're fighting them while usually the normal enemies are still trying to swarm you. It's almost as if someone added bosses and then forgot to recognise them as bosses.

Take off every 'ZIG'

The controls in Zerowing are fairly responsive though you do have that issue of trying to control a spacecraft that's going too fast if you're not careful in picking up those bonus items. However, there's the issue also of the dying and being grossly underpowered as a result of not having the firepower needed to take on the onslaught of multiple weapons from a myriad of opponents.

CATS: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

The music for Zerowing is a little simplistic and repeats throughout each level but has the good sense and grace to change with the levels. Sadly some of those levels are EXTREMELY long, take up 2-3 bosses before being defeated or can be won out within a single simple boss. There's an inconsistent pattern about the design and it shows.

Captain: ... For great justice

There's flaws in the game, there's great aspects too with the level design and the fairly constant difficulty curve that's in place. There's plenty of challenge and given the age of the game, quite an extensive set of levels and gameplay on offer for the studious and hardworking gamer. Certainly worth a play just to see some of the bigger bosses and inventive designs for them.

Captain America and the Avengers (Arcade)

Who and who?

As far as the realisation of comic books into video games goes, there's far worse ones than this. Captain American and the Avengers is a healthy mix of the more colourful ear of comic books before they become darker and more gritty and suffered a series of ongoing reboots. So expect the bright colourful spandex, the ink-draining colour schemes as if bubblejet printers had carte blanche to print EVERYTHING possible and some of the fruitiest plots and excuses one could imagine.

With enough credits, yes I can.

In this particular game, Red Skull, the nemesis of Captain America, is going to put a laser on the moon so he can blast the Earth for what can only be for "Shits and giggles" as it's established in the intro that he has PILES of gold (no, seriously, he's shown standing next to more gold than one could carry and it's as tall as he is) and offering it to various villains on condition they become brain washed to fight the Avengers, so he can build this laser.

Where's the fairy come from? What do you mean 'which one?'?

I don't think I'm supposed to bash apart the plot holes in this plan, or maybe in the 80's and early 90's this was considered to be award winning comic book villain plan material... But this is what captain American and the Avengers have gone for. I also just realised this is one LONG title and won't really fit into the website but oh well.

...Translatorman was fired after this incident

So cue our four intrepid heroes, Captain America being one, Android (Who? Enlighten me please), Iron Man (pre Robert Downey Jr) and Hawkeye before he traded spandex for black leather and an attitude problem. All of which will run the gauntlet of levels offered by the game and punch out anything dressed worse than they are. But this isn't a fashion critique (I do that on weekends) but a game assessment and as such, it seems to fit in rather well with the Saturday Morning Cartoon Club approach to comics and video games. Bad guy does bad stuff, go kick arse off.

Starting to lose track of what's going on here

Each character in Captain America and the Avengers has a reasonable arsenal of attacks, ranging from standard melee, long range beams and shield throws, jumping attacks, a shield/barrier if one holds the attack down to reduce damage and can also pick up and hurl cola cans, spanners and enemies before hurling them into the stratosphere, or another enemy. Using your jump button and attack button, you can quickly exhaust all the moves within the first few seconds of the game and learn most of the more effective attacks. Each character utilising their trademarks within their moves, so Hawkeye shoots arrows, Iron Man has his repulsor beams, Captain America has his shield and Android pulls out a mobile phone... Or shoots lasers or something.

Ah the old "WABOOM" a perfect reason not to use good sound sampling

The levels within Captain America and the Avengers run from being the usual walking, scrolling brawling variety to the flying and shooting variance every few levels or so. Allow for an air battle, undersea battle and space battle and for a welcome change in gameplay every so often to keep things interesting, while running battles tend to be the type that is, 'walk forwards, fight some dudes, walk forwards, fight more dudes, fight mid-boss, walk forwards, scene change, fight more dudes, fight boss' and while it's fairly formulaic there's something about the delivery here that makes the game somewhat of a chore to play through.

Yes, where inded IS Sting these days?

Combos against enemies within Captain American and the Avengers, are difficult at best. The standard enemies tend to be able to interrupt your moves with their and your health will steadily dwindle down from your starting 100 points to zero very quickly unless you slap in a few credits or you play keep-away by jumping and hitting from a distance (avoid being Hawkeye and Captain America for this...) though this doesn't really lend into the idea of being gung-ho heroes and the best cure for villainy is a punch to the face.

Please let it be over soon...

All things said, the gameplay is quite fluid, the graphics a little on the simple and small side for what other games are offering but this gives the wonderful trade-off of allowing more on screen to happen at once and with that, feels like a lot of action is happening, which also leads to some fights being nothing short of overwhelming and the arcade becoming nothing more than a pocket vacuum sucking up your credits. It's ok, but there's a lot better out there doing a lot greater things.

Armored Warriors - Arcade

4 way mecha melee chaos coming up.

Capcom has shown time and time again that they're more than capable of creating some very influential games, particularly in the brawler genre of gaming. Regarding Armored Warriors, it seems Capcom may and may not have topped their own lofty achievements of Final Fight.

From the off, it's chaotic and action-packed with an overblown scale

Armored Warriors takes the giant mech approach to brawling. You're a captain/pilot of a giant mech of your choosing from one of four setups. Each setup has its own advantages and disadvantages including different combat and weaponry while focusing on melee combat, strength, speed and stamina, (all of this will make sense shortly) and all have the standard, Attack, Jump and Support Weapon functions to be used within game. Like a lot of other brawlers you can also run, run and attack, switch attack by pressing forwards THEN attack quickly for an alternative attack, leaping running attacks and so on and so forth which is something Capcom seemed to bring to the table during the mid 90s with a lot of its games.

The obligatory bonus levels

However, the novelty of the approach of this game is that certain enemies are equipped differently than your mech is, which means you can break them apart and steal their components. Aside from the core body part, you can replace your legs, your weapon and your support weapon from any dropped component, resulting in a veritably high combination of results and customisation for your mechs. Multiple different arms carry weapons including fists, drills, laser swords, claws, lightning rods and so on. Tracks and treads for the mechs range from standard legs to tank treads, hover boosters, spider legs while support weapons are the largest in variation including machinegun types, bombs, rockets, missiles, flame throwers and more. There's something for everyone but if you die, you drop the lot and have to reacquire it. Annoying but that's the price of upgrading to awesome.

And of course, the bosses are even bigger.

Despite the concept and the possibilities, there's still the core of the game of Armored Warriors in that it's a brawler game, where you and several friends (possibly, if you have those) can march through nine missions of mech-blowing-up-ness (it's a word now) which range from walk right and blow up stuff, run right and blow up stuff, blow up stuff quickly before you die and blow up stuff THEN move right and blow up more stuff.

Some times MUCH bigger

Armored Warriors does have some context to the situation and certainly a lot more than Final Fight did with its constant walking and fighting. In this game however, there's regular points where plot is revealed, discussions are made between key characters regarding the wars between two worlds and progression is shown on a map of both planets as to which side is conquering the other fastest. While it can add to the sense of the game and enhance it as an experience, it'll like be ignored in favour of players wanting to get back to the action of blowing up mechs.

Customisation and powerups a plenty here

That said, the game is nothing short of bright and colourful and by comparison to the appalling idea of today's games decisions to brown-out almost everything to be gritty and realistic, this comes across as a light hearted comic book when put next to games of this day. Some may dislike that but I say it adds to the appeal and atmosphere of the game, it's not overly serious and doesn't take itself to be that when 50ft tall mechs are slamming each other around and firing more rockets than could possibly fit on screen rather than in the mech itself. It's bright and bold and it shouldn't be any other way for this game. The mechs themselves are well designed and follow on from the anime-esque style they take the origins from, bosses and bigger constructs look stunning and it's evident there's a lot of focus and attention on everything from the smallest mechs up to the final boss.

And of course, the compulsory, repeating boss fight

The audio, there isn't much there that sings out within the music as anything particularly memorable but there is an attempt to do synthesised voices and have a sort of commentary running with every item you pick up to replace parts on your mech, while also the characters shout, scream and yell when doing special moves or getting killed. But all of this is overshadowed by the explosions and metallic clangs and clashes of skyscraper sized robots duking it out, it adds to the feel of the game and is highly entertaining but it does mask the other sounds that one might want to hear, leaving them a little redundant in that regard.

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYY

As a game, Armored Warriors does have a lot of replay factor. There's different ways occasionally to beat specific levels, there's the huge combinations of weapons and items to pick up and use and you can almost guarantee that it'll take a few play-throughs before you start to get repeated sets of weaponry. But then there's also the option to try something different and see whether it's more or less effective than the previous setup for the upcoming boss you know you'll have to fight. Trial and improvement it may be but learning and using all of the attacks and power moves accompanying those items will leave you always questioning if the next upgrade is better.

It's a good game, but gets a little overcrowded at times and for those that explore the mechanics behind the engine of the game, a deep brawling system with lots of potential.