BATMAN RETURNS (SNES)

I have a lot in common with the hero of today's game, you know. We both tend to only go out at night, have wardrobes consisting entirely of black clothes, possess keen analytical minds and are forever being harassed by evil clowns. Sadly, while I languish alone and unloved, Batman is one of the most famous fictional people on the planet. It seems unfair at first, but then you have to think of the positives: I didn't see my parents killed in front of me, and I was never played by George Clooney in Batman & Robin. Small mercies, I guess. Anyway, today's game is Konami's 1993 I-Am-The-Night-em-up Batman Returns.

If you're reading this, the chances of you not knowing who Batman is are roughly zero percent and therefore I'll skip the introductions. Batman's probably more famous now than he's ever been, but he's been appearing in videogames of wildly-varying quality since the mid-eighties, so the chances are you've played a Batman title at some point.

Batman Returns is specifically based on the Tim Burton-directed movie of the same name. Not the one with the Joker, the other one. Michael Keaton plays Batman (superpowers: vast wealth, emotional trauma, good at fighting) as he battles against the Penguin (superpowers: caustic fish breath, nose biting) and Catwoman (superpowers: sex appeal, handy with a whip). Oh, and there's an evil businessman called Max Shreck (superpowers: being Christopher Walken) pulling the strings.

Not pictured: Christopher Walken. Disappointing, I know.
As this is a 16-bit game based on a comic book franchise, the Laws of Gaming dictate that it must be either an action platformer or a side-scrolling beat-em-up. So which did Konami decide would better suit their unique vision of a large man in tights punching people? Actually, they sort of went with both.

Batman Returns starts off as a standard Final Fight clone. Despite his mastery of hundreds of martial arts ranging from karate to full-contact pillow fighting, Batman comes equipped with the usual array of beat-em-up attacks. Pressing the attack button will execute a punch combo. You can perform jumping attacks, as well as grabbing enemies and either hitting them or throwing them into the scenery. Pressing attack and jump together will unleash the standard health-draining special attack - in this case, Batman twirls his cape around like a catwalk model, causing enemies to become so overwhelmed by his grace and panache that they take damage. Bafflingly, it also hurts Batman himself. He should have used his detective skills to detect himself a cape light enough to swing around without causing severe neck and shoulder damage.

Batman's also known for his gadgets, and while he neglected to bring his Clown-Repellant Bat-Spray he can at least throw batarangs at the bad guys, stunning them momentarily. There's also a grappling hook that lets you performs a swinging kick, but more on that later.

Once you've reached Batman's clown-punching quota, a skull-headed harlequin rides a motorcycle out of a giant Christmas present and suddenly you're playing a different game.
The gameplay is now restricted to a single plane, and pressing attack makes the Dark Knight throw a batarang. Yes, we've swapped genres and Batman Returns is now an action-platformer. If you've read VGJUNK before you'll probably know how much I love belt-scrolling beat-em-ups, so this sudden change of tack is rather aggravating. It's not just my preference for beat-em-ups, either: these rigidly two-dimensional sections simply aren't as much fun

Very festive, in a gothic sort of way, but less fun. For a soaring avenger of the night, Batman is slow and cumbersome - not really a problem in the brawling sections, but it rapidly becomes an issue here. Combine this with the large size of the sprites and it becomes far more difficult to avoid enemies and traps than it should be and you start wishing you were controlling someone more manoeuvrable, like Alfred or even the bloody Oracle.

A clown holds a woman at gunpoint, to the surprise of absolutely no-one. Between rampaging gangs of circus folk and weekly Joker attacks, the people of Gotham City must see clowns the same way we'd view an invading force of Nazi paedophiles.
This particular jester is the first boss, and if I hadn't figured out that you can block by holding the shoulder buttons he'd have been a much sterner test than he eventually turned out to be. I know it's pointless attempting to decipher the mysterious mind of an evil clown but I can't help but wonder what made him think that the best way - perhaps the only way - to defeat Batman was to curl into a ball and roll at him. I can see it now: the Riddler watching the fight unfold on the evening news and thinking "Fuck! Why didn't I think of that!?", Bane incorporating rhythmic gymnastic into his training regimen. Beautiful.

And that's the first stage over. Two gameplay styles, one more fun than the other due to Batman's inappropriately stodgy movements. Get used to it, because that's the pattern for (most of) the rest of the game.
Between stages, you do get some nice little cutscenes recounting the plot of the film, although I have to take issue with them describing Max Shreck as "the most powerful businessman in Gotham City". What's Bruce Wayne, chopped liver? I like Christopher Walken and all but he doesn't have a life-size Tyrannosaurus model in a cave under his house, and if that's not the best way to judge a man's power then I don't know what is.

Stage two is more of the same - clowns need hurting, and Batman is just the man for the job. Batman Returns fits nicely with my previously-discussed idea that the names of the enemies are what the player character names them when he lays eyes on them for the first time - Batman gives them all very utilitarian titles like "Thin Clown" and "Fat Clown". He's not the most imaginative crimefighter ever, but at least he's not calling them "Pretty Boy".

There's a short platforming section through a burning building, notably mostly because you need to use the grappling hook to swing over obstacles, and then it's back to the usual fighting for the boss. It's Karnov! Oh alright, it's actually just a generic strongman. A strongman that needs to start being honest about his weight and buying clothes in the appropriate size: that jacket has been pushed beyond breaking point. Karnov here is a much more enjoyable (and much easier) battle than the first boss, simply because you can move around with more freedom.
Right, time for stage three. What's next?

Goddamn furries!

There's a lift scene. Of course there is, there's always a lift scene. This one has clowns.

For the rest of the stage, Batman travels across some rooftops. This is his natural habitat, so he should be alright here. There are more clowns. This game is a coulrophobe's nightmare, although it should perhaps be studied as a way to help people overcome their fear of clowns. They're a lot less scary when you're Batman and you can kick them off tall buildings.

The boss of the stage is Catwoman, and she does double duty as both a part of the game's story and as the beat-em-up's almost mandatory dominatrix enemy. PVC-clad women with whips are second only to eighties street punks in the vast sea of beat-em-up enemies, although fat guys who roll around and breath fire aren't far behind.
The sexual tension between the Cat and the Bat that is so prevalent in the Batman comics and movies is completely done away with here, which is sort of a shame because I'd have like to have seen how Konami would have approached it. Maybe after every punch combo, they could both stop for a second and give each other a meaningful glance while an animated heart-sprite pulses above their heads. Or perhaps there could be a "sexual tension" meter that fills faster the closer you stand to Catwoman. Once it's full Batman becomes momentarily paralysed, because there's not much room inside the bat-suit's codpiece for unexpected mid-battle tumescence.

Stage four begins, and the first thing to notice is this rather lovely lighting effect. The character sprites get lighter and darker as they move in and out of the shafts of light pouring into the level, and it's such a well-handled and extremely Batman-y effect that I wish they'd used it more.
In fact, I'd say that the presentation is Batman Returns' strongest feature. The graphics are excellent, particularly Batman's sprite and the stage backgrounds - Konami managed to capture the atmosphere of the movie rather well. The muted colour palette, not normally something you'd associate with Konami, is very effective at making the stages feel like Gotham City.
Also of note is the music, which consists of expanded, SNES-ified versions of Danny Elfman's movie score. Here's a personal favourite from Stage 2-2:

Again, it does an excellent job of marrying the feel of the movie with the qualities of the SNES.

Catwoman returns for another boss battle, but we're fighting in the dark now - my Bat-Sonar should make this an easy fight. It's not like cats can see in the dark or anything.
The person tied up in the background is not, as I thought on first seeing her, some kind of terrifying Island of Dr. Moreau-style hybrid with the body of a woman and the head of lion. That's just what hair looked like in the early nineties. She's actually the Ice Princess, and if you've seen the film then you'll know things don't exactly end well for her.

At the end of the stage, Batman finally catches up to the Penguin. Driven mad by the pressure of her royal title, the Ice Princess has moved from her comfy chair to take up a precarious position on a snow-covered ledge. It's another 2D-style boss fight, and the Penguin has the advantage because he can use his umbrella to fly about the place like a deranged Mary Poppins. A fistful of batarangs makes the Penguin go down, in the least delightful way. Then the Ice Princess falls to her death, and Batman takes the blame. Whoops. Oh well, time to go and punch some more clowns, I guess.

Wait, what?

Yup, there's an OutRun-style driving section, although unlike Sega's classic arcade racer you can shoot what look like metal dog bowls from the front of your car. If Batman Returns is the Neapolitan ice cream of SNES games, then the driving stage is the vanilla bit. It's not bad, and the sprite scaling and parallax backgrounds look nice, but it feels a little clunky and tacked on.
The next stage is back to the standard punching antics, and there's not much to say about it, really. You're on top of a circus train for a while, and then you have to fight an Organ Grinder.

Played in the movie by the late Vincent Schiavelli, the Organ Grinder is... oh, who am I kidding? All I care about here is that little monkey in the background. Hello, little monkey! As you can see, Batman has adopted a prone position to get closer to this magical dancing chimp. Even the Dark Knight can't resist the strange allure of a monkey in human clothes.

The final stage takes place in the Penguin's icy lair, and you're treated to another nice graphical effect in the form of a watchful penguin army that fires rockets at you. Those rockets don't discriminate between caped champions of the night and psychotic clowns, so you can use them to your advantage - but still take all the credit. Nothing's going to tarnish your superhero reputation faster than admiting that it wasn't actually you that took out that warehouse full of goon, it was a flock of missile-toting aquatic birds.

Deeper into the lair we go, and there's a giant rubber duck waiting for us. I'm not surprised. On the list of "weird shit Batman has fought", an oversized bath toy is quite some distance from the peak. I mean, Batman sometimes fights a woman who turns into a killer whale, so the Penguin really needs to step up his game if he wants to make Batman rethink his life choices.

After the duck, it's time for the Penguin! He's the final boss, and yet again it's another videogame where the final boss is Danny DeVito. For God's sake, how many times must I battle the star of such classic movies Junior and Twins at the end of a videogame? His near-omnipresence as the villain of almost every 16-bit videogame is beginning to get tiresome.

I'm kidding, of course. The only other games I can think of with Danny DeVito in are Chrono Trigger (where he famously played Ozzie) and possibly NBA Jam.
Once the Penguin is defeated, Gotham City is safe and its citizens can once again enjoy the foggy gloom and gothic ambience of this great city with fear of being attacked by a fat man with flippers for hands.

Batman Returns - a licensed tie-in game from the nineties that isn't complete dreck! As shocking as any of Batman's tales, but true. It's actually a pretty good game which sadly suffers from spreading itself too thin. The Final Fight-style stages are by far the best - they control well, Batman has a nice selection of moves and everything feels satisfyingly meaty - and if they'd stuck with them for the whole game, that would have been great.

While the "2D" stages aren't terrible, they're just not as much fun to play. Still, Batman Returns has a lot going for it: the graphics and music are great, and overall it certainly feels like a Batman game. All in all, I'd say you should give it a go, particularly if you're a Bat-fan. I certainly don't regret playing it.

And remember, a vote for Oswald Cobblepot is a vote for an oily fish in every pot and a giant rubber duck in every garage.

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ESCAPE KIDS (ARCADE)

Right then, time to once more dip my toe into the seemingly bottomless pool of obscure Konami arcade titles. Today's offering? The 1991 dash-em-up Escape Kids.

I guess that explains why so many of today's games are drab, brown affairs - Konami used up all the coloured pixels in the nineties. There's more neon here than a Bangkok red-light district, but I'm sure Escape Kids will be an altogether more wholesome prospect than the fleshpots of south-east Asia: after all, it's about the healthy fun of strenuous, gladiatorial exercise. Before I get to the actual gameplay I always like to introduce the main characters, and the stars of Escape Kids are as colourful as they come.

Literally colourful, I mean, not interesting or anything. Each character's bio just tells you what shade of fluorescent goop their clothes are coated in. Well, except for Ken Kosugi: his information is nothing short of an outright lie. Those clothes are pink, not red. You can say they're red all you like, son, but that won't change the fact that your outfit matches Barbie's dream car.
None of the characters are particularly exciting, and the fact that each of them is wearing an expression of concentrated smuggery so strong even Piers Morgan thinks they should dial it back a bit means I can't really like any of them. I'll be playing as Syd Jones, because he's the first on the list. Don't start thinking I like you, Syd.

The controls are simple - as the intro says, you use "Button A for RUN FASTER", a mechanic for sports games that had previously served Konami well in the Track & Field series, and you've got a second button to jump.

And you're off! As you can see from the screenshot, Escape Kids takes its cues from Super Sprint and other top-down racers, except with men in lycra bodysuits instead of cars. Probably the most unusual element of the gameplay is that you don't have to come first to win.

Instead, you just have to make sure you finish ahead of the mysterious black-clad champion. In the earlier races he might well finish third or fourth and you can bask in the glory of your second-place finish. Of course, as the game progresses the champion gets faster and faster, and after a short while he regards the other runners as little more than ambulatory spectators who offer no resistance in his quest for the gold. Only you can challenge him, and this gets very difficult when you realise he can run much faster than you with no real effort. Now, I don’t want to accuse Konami of racial insensitivity but really: the "black" character can run faster than everyone else? For shame.

Also unusual is the credit system. You might expect to put your coin in, get a credit and race until you lose, but instead the game gives you a supply of in-game money that can be increased by adding further (real) cash. This money can be spent on upgrading your runner before each race by increasing your three statistics, the properties of which are outlined in the intro.

The last two sound absolutely filthy, especially "tough for bumping". The effects of these stats are fairly obvious - cornering, recovery speed and unbargeability - but you'll notice that there's no way to increase your top speed. For that, you'll need to spend your money on a fourth option: super jumps.

Normal running is all well and good, but the only way to succeed in Escape Kids is to slip the surly bonds of Earth and hurl your body around like a cat with a firework up its arse. The super jump certainly lives up to its name and after the first few races using it becomes mandatory because you simply cannot run fast enough to win. What this boils down to is that (even more so than most arcade games) winning becomes a matter of how much actual money you're willing to feed to the Escape Kids machine. If you're some sort of mentally-impaired billionaire, you could simply buy ninety-nine Super Jumps at the start of each race and shoot around the course like a cheetah on a hoverboard. I got to about race 35 before a combination of boredom and thumb fatigue made me stop playing, and by that point near-constant abuse of the super jump was the only way to win.

Did I mention that if you do win a race, your opponents are flushed down a gigantic toilet, presumably to their watery deaths? Because that's what happens. A scathing commentary on the tendency of modern societies to discard any athlete who isn't a "winner", or simply someone at Konami deciding it'd be really funny to watch the losers get flushed down the bog? I couldn't possibly say. If you lose, though...

... you get to see what is probably my favourite thing about the game. The champion rises high above the clouds on his porcelain chariot and washes away the snivelling dregs that formed his laughable "competition". He's even got cackling digital laughter, and it makes sense that he'd be happy. He knows he's always going to win, in the end. The other racers don't stand a chance - as far as I can tell, your reward for wining races is simply more races, a never-ending cycle of meaningless, super-jump-filled circuits that will only cease when you finally give in and let the black champion win. The roaring swirl of the toilet bowl seemed almost peaceful, in the end.

There is one brief reward for running faster than the other guys, actually. If you manage to finish first in three races, you receive the honour of being able to participate in a short bicycle-riding section. The aim is to collect coins, giving you more cash to upgrade your stats, but in reality it's simply a welcome break from hammering the RUN FASTER button. It's not quite enough time to allow all feeling to come back into your thumbs, (not after thirty goddamn races, at least,) but it's better than nothing.

And then it's back to the racing. Always, there is more racing. In fact, I must take issue with the title of this game. Two points: they aren't Kids - or at least I hope they aren't otherwise this game is even more barbaric than I first though - and they sure as hell don't Escape from anywhere.

Yet more racing, running ever onward toward an unattainable goal, your life a pointless maelstrom of muddied legs and blistered feet.
Okay, okay, so I'm exaggerating. Escape Kids really isn't a bad little game: the gameplay itself is quite good fun, (if only for a short while,) and it'd probably be even more enjoyable with two or more players. The graphics are nice and bright, with Konami's ultra-saturated cartoon look very much in evidence. There's that evil toilet-flushing scene. As for the music, it's hard to say - nothing in the game takes longer than thirty seconds to do, so by the time a music track is starting to get interesting it's been replaced by the next one.

Escape Kids' major failing is that there's no real meat to it. Races are short, repetitive and there's little room for tactics. The amount of enjoyment you get out of if will depend in large part on how much you can resist filling your in-game bank account with cash and spending it all in the in-game equivalent of steroids.

There might be an ending to Escape Kids, but someone with more patience and fitter thumbs than I will have to be the one to discover it. Escape Kids is another entry in the vast list of obscure Konami arcade titles that did the world a favour by staying obscure: much like Fast Lane it isn't a terrible game by any means, but merely a fleeting distraction along the path to greater glories.

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FINAL FIGHT: A TRIBUTE TO THE MAD GEAR TROOPS

Final Fight - the very name conjures images of a mayor ensuring re-election through vigilantism, ninjas and street brawlers fighting side-by-side, slabs of roast meat found in oil drums, meat presumably left there by the same health-dispensing deity that hides pot roasts in the walls of Castlevania.

Final Fight defined a genre and gave us many memorable characters, but today I've decided to ignore the glitz and glamour of Haggar and co and focus on one of Final Fight's more overlooked elements: the hordes of generic street punks that make up the Mad Gear gang. Not everyone can be a Damnd or an Edi E., you know. Some people just don't have the same genetic abnormalities that make them eight-foot-tall hillocks of pure muscle. Some people are just normal-sized guys who have put aside their feelings of inferiority, pulled on their leather jackets and dedicated themselves to the life of a Mad Gear footsoldier. This is their tribute.

Every legend must start somewhere, and Final Fight begins with poor old Bred getting beaten to a pulp. Why is he called Bred? Perhaps the character designer, presumably Akiman in this case, had just finished a nice baguette. The more likely explanation is that it's a mistranslation of "Bret".
Bred's no match for Haggar, Cody and Guy, and the heroes of Metro City quickly dispatch him while laughing at the pathetic length of his health bar. Not to worry, Bred will be back. He can't quit, his seven street-punk children are counting on him to provide for them. At least now he can sell his story about how he was the first victim of an elected city official's rampage of vengeance. The tabloids'll eat that stuff up.

Poor Dug doesn't get it so easy. No-one wants to hear about Haggar's second victim. It's a bad case of Buzz Aldrin syndrome, and Dug wears his sunglasses hide the redness of his weeping eyes. If only you'd stood closer to the start of the stage, Dug - that fame could have been yours.

Jake doesn't give a shit about fame. He's got a sweet sleeveless jacket, and his beard is just starting to grow out how he likes it. Jake is content.

J is bad, and his lemon-yellow vest will make sure you don't forget it. Or perhaps his vest, with its crudely-drawn radiation symbol and stark negativity, is actually a charmingly ineloquent anti-nuclear sentiment. J is strongly opposed to the construction of nuclear reactors, believing instead that more effort should be made to develop sustainable energy sources.
J also deserves plaudits for wearing the single most Eighties-street-punky outfit in the history of videogaming, a magical ensemble topped off with the wildly-spiked hairdo of a serial plugsocket licker.

Some people would have you believe that Two.P is named for and based upon the second player's character in Capcom's shooter Forgotten Worlds. This may be true for his appearance, but Two.P is actually a nickname bestowed by his fellow gang members after they discovered him performing disturbing sexual activities whilst wearing a homemade chainmail bikini fashioned from two pence coins. His fellow gang members were not surprised: after all, this is a man whose public attire consists of a bright orange vest with a snake-and-dagger motif and trousers made of bin liners. He was never going to spend his evening in a cardigan, now was he?

Holly Wood: sounds like a porn star, but is actually Mad Gear's expert knifeman. He likes knives very much, to the point where his obsession with them has become disturbing. In Holly's defence, this point is reached much more easily with knives than it is with, say, ceramic owls.
The hat-like object on his head is actually an upturned terracotta flowerpot lined with tin foil, his only defence against the powerful mind-control rays transmitted by the Blank Men from their omnipresent "security" cameras.

Once again, think this is a T / D transliteration error, and El Gado should actually be called El Gato. This makes sense, because "El Gato" is Spanish for "The Cat" - a suitable name for this guy and his sharp, athletic skills. According to Google Translate, "El Gado" means pollock. A pollock is a kind of fish, often used as a substitute for cod. I don't see how that ties into El Gado's personality unless, like Two.P, it's a nickname given to him for some sexual perversion. Involving fish.

With the appearance of Axl, we're moving into the higher ranks of the Mad Gear gang. He's learned how to block, and he's proven his worth enough times to be allowed a leather jacket with honest-to-god sleeves. Sleeves! They're, like, the street-gang equivalent of the Victoria Cross. He's also named after Guns 'n' Roses frontman Axl Rose, which seems a little harsh on Final Fight's Axl - from what I can tell he's a much nicer guy than his rock star namesake.

Completing the Guns 'n' Roses tribute, here's Axl's headswapped compatriot Slash. I'm assuming he's named after the GnR guitarist, although Axl and Slash are both in the top percentile of the "Names Suitable for 80's Gang Members" chart anyway.
He doesn't really look like Slash, though. More like a steroid-infused Tom Jones, I'd say. What's new, pussycat? Why it's these rippling, chemically-obtained pectoral muscles, thanks for asking.

AKA Tweedledum, Tweedledee and Tweedledork. The Mad Gear gang foregoes medicals when recruiting members, I guess. I wonder if they ever feel insecure standing alongside bronzed Adonises like Slash, or if any body issues they may have are assuaged by ramming their heads as hard as they can into people's midriffs. No wonder they're all bald: given the amount of headbutting to the torso they do, getting their hair caught in their opponent's belts and button must be a regular and painful occurrence. Easier to shave it all off.
In G. Oriber's case, I'm led to wonder once again if there's been some mistransliteration in his name. The standard Japanese L / R mixup, combined with the similarity between the sound of B and V, could mean his real name is G. Oliver. Who is G. Oliver? I have no idea. I hope he's a fat, bald man, otherwise this is going to seem like a rather offensive tribute.

Simons is a goddamn enigma. At first glance, he's a generic punk with raised fists and a point to prove, but look a little deeper. He's wearing a gold suit. I don't care what organisation you're in, you can only get away with wearing a gold suit (and sunglasses) if you've really made your mark as someone not to be trifled with. Unless you're a stage magician, of course.
But what about his name? Given the game's use of musical monikers, if I had to guess I'd say Simons is named after eel-tongued makeup aficionado and Kiss frontman Gene Simmons.

Say hello to gaming's most famous transsexual, unless you count Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2. Poison's confused gender status is fairly common knowledge, but here's a quick rundown: originally designed by Capcom art legend Akiman as a bona fide female, she was made into a transvestite for the American version of Final Fight because Capcom were worried that releasing a game where you could punch women would get them sued by feminist groups. This characterisation stuck, and Capcom's (or at least Street Fighter head honcho Yoshinori Ono's) official line is that in America Poison is a post-op transsexual, while in Japan "she simply tucks her business away to look female".
In an attempt to assuage people's guilt for hitting a woman, Capcom inadvertently caused a section of gamers to ask some probing questions about their own... leanings, and Poison went on to become something of a fan favourite. She's had quite the career, graduating from a standard gang member, to cameo appearances in titles such as Street Fighter III, and even reaching the heady heights of becoming a playable character in Street Fighter X Tekken. Well, technically she's been playable before, in 1999's Final Fight Revenge, but we try not to talk about that.

She's named after glam-rock wusses Poison, by the way. Actually, if Bred was indeed supposed to be called Bret, it might be a reference to Poison singer Bret Michaels...no, surely not. Two Poison references in one game? No-one like Poison that much. The members of Poison don't even like Poison that much.

Oh, Roxy. Poor, poor Roxy. Poison's double went back to being a woman, and as a result no-one gives two shits about her. Apparently, she's been characterised as being jealous of Poison for looking better in women's clothes than she does. Yawn. Oh, and she's named after Roxy Music. Again, I don't care. No-one does. In any other game, a flame-haired street-fighter in hotpants and and a skimpy top with handcuffs hanging from her hip would be the object of much (disturbing and creepy) fan attention, but it's almost as if she's... missing something.

It could be worse for Roxy: she could be Sid and Billy, the forgotten men, the unloved, the pixelly representation of Nintendo's unbending censorship policies. These two barely-distinguishable punks, presumably named after Sid Vicious and Billy Idol and not two random blokes from a working men's club, are what replaced Poison and Roxy in the SNES port of Final Fight. Claiming that those women totally had man-junk tucked into their cutoff jeans didn't wash with the Big N, so in came Sid and Billy to the utter contempt of fans of the arcade version. They could have at least given them something to wear that wasn't a crop-top.

And finally, the big man himself, Hugo Andore. Well, the whole Andore family, to be precise. No musician or band was up to the task of representing this gigantic slab of body-slamming man-muscle, so they based him on pro-wrestling's most accurately-named superstar: André the Giant. Like Poison, (who became his manager,) Hugo Andore has appeared in several of Capcom's later fighting games, most notably Street Fighter III and the upcoming Street Fighter X Tekken.
Of course, Capcom had to take some liberties with André the Giant's likeness to create Andore. I don't think André ever wore neon-pink leopardprint, for a start. Then again, he was in the WWF. He also didn't have an extended family of identical siblings(?) who were only distinguishable by the colour of their clothes, which is a shame because that would have made for some very interesting Wrestlemania events.

The footsoldiers of the Mad Gear gang, then. Raise a salute to their tireless efforts to piss off a former wrestling champion, a knife-wielding delinquent and a master of ninjutsu. They're not too clever, they're not very good at fighting and some of them have gender issues more complicated than a season of 24, but they try their best, bless them.
Let's finish where we began - with the universe taking a dump on poor ol' Bred.

We'll just have to hope his insurance covers him for fire, flood and acts of Mayoral Vengeance.

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