That's UFO Mask Yakisoban: Kettler's Dark Conspiracy in English. I think. Perhaps it'll make more sense once we meet our hero, the fearless and lycra-clad Yakisoban!
Hailing from the Noodle Planet, Yakisoban is a steely-eyed hero with a heart full of valour and a packet of instant noodles on his head. Yakisoban is preparing to marry his sweetheart when tragedy strikes!
His fiancée is abducted by the evil Kettler! If you were wondering, Kettler is the one with the kettle on his head. He looks like the Mad Hatter, except more mad. Steaming mad, you could say. Yakisoban cannot let this injustice go unpunished, so he sets off for Earth to free his lady love and put paid to Kettler's malignant ambitions.
His spaceship / car is also a packet of noodles. It's powered by soy sauce, which helps to keep fuel costs down.Alright, so you might be a little confused about what's going on. "Surely," I hear you say, "they didn't set out to make an action-packed fighting game and decided that the best hero for the job would be a guy with the power of noodles?" And you'd be right, of course they didn't. That'd be silly. Yakisoban was actually spawned by the unfathomable forces of Japanese advertising.
He was created in the mid-Nineties to promote Nissin's UFO brand of instant noodles through tokusatsu-style antics, always foiling the diabolical Kettler with his noodle-themed powers. Imagine if the Power Rangers gained their powers by having scalding water poured into their helmets rather than something as boring as shouting the name of a dinosaur.
The game begins in an amusement park, a location that I assume Yakisoban chose on purpose as it's one of the few Earthbound environments where he's not going to stick out like a sore thumb. Sharp-suited goons appear to hassle you - I suppose they're Kettler's troops, but they could equally just be the park's security guards trying to evict you for dressing as an outside superhero. Try getting into Disney World dressed as Bugs Bunny, see how far you get. I managed to reach the Epcot Center before their tranquilizer darts took effect.
Yakisoban has a few tricks up his sleeve. Aside from the usual basic combo activated by pressing the punch button repeatedly and the ever-present jumping kick, double-tapping a direction will cause Yakisoban to roll around, away from danger or into the fray. Pressing attack while you're rolling results in a devastating flying-kick.
So devastating you can kick a man so hard in the throat that his eyes pop right out of his head. Kettler doesn't stand a chance!Unlike most beat-em-ups of this style Yakisoban doesn't have a special move, activated by pressing jump and attack, which clobbers the surrounding enemies at the expense of a portion of his own health bar.
Instead, holding the attack button down allows you to charge up Yakisoban's secret attack: the Sauce Beam. Releasing the button lets you fire a damaging spray of dark, salty justice ahead of you. Yup, you've got a pair of soy sauce guns. Powerful, invincible soy sauce cannons, even, blasting the enemies aside with their awesome power while also enhancing their flavour. Yakisoban even shouts "SAUCE BEAMU!" whenever you use them. It's pretty great.
Hopefully you'll have a good idea of Yakisoban's skills by now, because soon enough the first boss strides into view. Skates into view, rather. He slides around a lot; a difficult task, given that he's wearing iron clogs, but he pulls it off well. Oh, and his head is some sort of frying plate and he throws what looks like pancakes at you. You haven't lived until you've unleashed a flying kick that meets a deadly pancake in mid-air, nullifying the attack with your foot.The first boss isn't much of a challenge - simply avoid his attacks, whack him when he stands still and remember that he's invincible for a while once you've hurt him - and soon Yakisoban will be one stage closer to rescuing his fiancée.
Although not before you've taken care of the boss in a more permanent fashion by using Yakisoban's disturbing-looking noodley powers. I've spent a lot of time on the internet; I know what normally happens when anything tentacle-like ensnares someone in Japanese media. I think my sense of discomfort is justified.
Stage two takes place in a restaurant, and the absurdity of Yakisoban's appearance is made apparent by the expressions of the diners in the background. Just look at their faces: they're not used to having their lunches interrupted by a fight between a space-born noodle warrior and pie-throwing chefs with... kettles on their feet? That's a harsh punishment. Fail Kettler once, and you must have your feet permanently immersed in boiling water. Nobody fails Kettler a second time.
The restaurant's actual chefs - the ones with un-boiled feet and trousers that are white and not boiling-plasma pink - seem much less surprised to see Yakisoban. Well, chefs are notoriously volatile. They must see this kind of thing all the time, although probably with less noodle-themed headgear. You'd think a hat of that size and shape would seriously hamper Yakisoban's movement and balance, but he bears his burden well.This is a good place to mention the graphics. They're hardly in the uppermost tier of the SNES' capabilities, but they do have a lot of charm. UFO Kamen Yakisoban is certainly a colourful game, colourful enough to make Konami's early-Nineties arcade titles look like Fallout 3, and there's generally quite a lot going on in the background, like that chef nonchalantly frying his food as a battle to decide the future of both Yakisoban's love-life and instant noodles everywhere rages through his kitchen.
And here's the boss, a fork demon made of forks. My knowledge of Japanese is hardly stellar, but I think he's called Mr. Fork. Go on, children: wave to the nice Mr. Fork, lest he spear you with his steely prongs and carry you away to his underground lair / cutlery drawer. He should team up with Gamera villain Guiron to form the ultimate table-top tag-team.Once again, he's not too difficult to beat as long as you remember that all the bosses in this game enjoy a period of invincibility after they've been damaged, and they like to use this time to fly into you as fast as possible.
This image brought to you by the Council for the Promotion of Chopstick Use.Next up is a construction site, and this is where some of the weirder enemies begin to appear. I mean, I can handle suited thugs and even the kettle-footed chefs were appropriate to the scenario, but what the hell are these little green things?
Not the one on the left: that's a tiny dragon in a china bowl, obviously. I mean those monocular green freaks on the right, the ones that look like the alien from The Thing found its way into a stationery cupboard. At first I thought they were walking portions of fries - because of the food theme, you see - but on closer inspection they're just too small and sharp for that. They must be either chopsticks or toothpicks...
...and these equally unsettling "ladies" are made of chopsticks, so I guess the little green fellas are toothpick holders. Back to those chopstick ladies, though: I think they're even creepier that the toothpick monsters. They look so cheerful, even when Yakisoban is kicking them in the face. Nothing should be that cheerful during a kick to the face, especially not if they have chopsticks for legs. Even that dog is spooked out by them. I can only assume that these wooden-legged abominations have been sent specifically to kill me, and they're formed from the combined anger and disgust of every waiter in every Chinese restaurant where I asked for a knife and fork.Luckily, Yakisoban has another crime-fighting tool in his soy-drenched arsenal that shouldn't be overlooked. If you can find one laying about the stage, you too can wield the awesome power of the Unicycle of Justice!
It's a unicycle that makes you invincible, allowing to hurt bad guys by riding into them. Absurdly dramatic music plays the entire time this is happening - for the opposite effect, you'd have to watch footage from the Somme Offensive with "Spanish Flea" playing over the top. This is obviously where the true power of Yakisoban's noodle-bowl hat is revealed, as its wide shape and perfectly-distributed weight help our hero to keep his balance.The unicycle won't last forever, (more's the pity,) and before long the stage's boss arrives to try his hand at defeating you.
His floating, disembodied hand at that! Once more, I'm left puzzled about what the hell it's supposed to be. Candy Floss? Pre-chewed bubblegum? Sentient strawberry milkshake? That last one sounds like a new Ben & Jerry's flavour - Sentient Strawberry with Reasonin' Raisins. But I digress. Lumpy here seems like more of a challenge than the previous bosses, but that might just be because the extremely unsubtle Nissin advertising that fills the center of the screen is slowly blinking, glowing, luring you in with promises of a delicious noodley warmth that the other brands just cannot match. That kind of thing will distract you from the globs that the boss is throwing at you, but with a bit of patience you'll get past his defences and land the mortal blow. But what's this?!
Yakisoban... defeated?
No, of course not. Nothing can stop the wheat flour-powered justice that courses through his veins and in an instant Yakisoban is transformed into Yakisoban Great! It's an almost entirely cosmetic change: his costume becomes more yellow, and his moves look different (although they're still the same basic attacks). For example, his post-roll flying kick is replaced with the functionally identically but strangely erotic "flying bodybuilder" pose that you can see in the picture above. It's a power that no man can resist - even that clown has surrendered himself to Yakisoban's savoury assault.
We're at another amusement park for stage four. This one has a ghost house, but such cheap tricks will not frighten a hardened intergalactic noodle warrior.
That might, though. It's certainly making me feel uneasy. The creepiest thing about the giant head with the tiny, ready-to-strangle hands is that it doesn't attack you. It just watches. Yakisoban punches his way through Kettler's troops as the sinister head looks on, and once you're out of the ghost house it's time for the boss battle.
This fight pits you against the evil Yakisoban imposter, erm, Fake Yakisoban. You can't see this on that screenshot, but he has the word USO on his chest instead of UFO, "uso" being the Japanese for "lie". It's not really a costume I can see fooling many people, but the laws governing Japanese superheroes states that they must always fight their evil doppelganger at some point. In this case, I really like the way they're fighting on the amusement park stage in front of a crowd who presumably think this is all part of the entertainment. Or maybe they know that Yakisoban is a space warrior, but they figure that they've already paid for their ticket so they might as well get their money's worth. Either way, I can see Yakisoban receiving a very lucrative offer from the park's owners in the near future. Five shows a day at 10, 12, 2, 4 and 6, his own private trailer and all the condiments he can carry - an offer that would tempt even the staunchest of superheroes!USO Kamen might have similar moves to our hero, but he doesn't know how to use them as effectively. He also lacks access to Yakisoban's two ultra-top-secret, limited-use attacks. Holding the R button and pressing attack activates the Agedama Bomber, a powerful technique that hits all enemies on the screen in an explosion of crispy-fried batter bits. Doing the same with the L button produces the devastating Aonori Flash, paralysing the enemies with a sprinkling of seaweed powder. Yakisoban was denied entry to the Justice League due to the inordinate amount of time that the other heroes spent vacuuming up after him.
With the fake Yakisoban defeated, the final stage awaits. Our hero assaults the studios of UTV, where Kettler is participating in a TV broadcast. He's probably complaining about how dangerous theme parks have become these days.
It's not a long stage, and now that you've gotten used to Yakisoban's moves it shouldn't be much of a problem for you. This gives me a chance to talk about one of my favourite aspects of the game: the music. UFO Kamen Yakisoban is, as you can probably tell, a pastiche of the Japanese tokusatsu entertainment genre. That's the one where superheroic warriors in skintight costumes battle against guys in rubber monster suits - series such as Ultraman and Kamen Rider. UKY does a great job of sending up these hyper-dramatic sagas, and the best and most accurate way it does this is through the music. Here's stage five's theme:
Back to our story already in progress! Having smelled the aroma of impending savoury justice, Kettler ditches his disguise and reverts to his kettle-behatted form. I think the newsreader's shocked expression is down more to the gold lapels and bow tie of Kettler's outfit than the revelation of his evilness.
Once again, I love the background here, particularly the guy in the top-right who is so scared his arms have become perfect right-angles but not so scared that he decided to leave or anything.Kettler is hardly the most imposing villain, but his goofy appearance conceals a surprisingly tricky opponent. When he's not stabbing you with his giant fork, he can attack from range by shouting at you. Terribly rude, yes, but undeniably effective, and it can be tough to land a hit. It may be difficult but if you persevere, and if the Gods of Convenience Food are smiling upon you, then Kettler's dark conspiracy can be foiled. Well, squirting soy sauce into someone's eyes is bound to incapacitate them for a while. Then you can finish them off with the deadly noodle attack!
Kettler is defeated, Yakisoban is reunited with his lady love and they travel back to Noodle Planet for their wedding and subsequent buffet. And that's it, UFO Kamen Yakisoban is complete!This is not a game that's going to deeply rock your world or open up a brave new horizon in the field of side-scrolling beat-em-ups. It couldn't be called a bad game, because everything about it works pretty well. The graphics are detailed, colourful and fun and the music is perfect for the mood. Yakisoban has a decent variety of moves, he controls well enough and (the occasional issue with hit detection aside) the game plays smoothly. It has its problems, of course: the main one is that it's just too short. There are only five stages, and not particularly long ones at that, and there's no real replayability value.
Personally, though? I love it. I can see why some people wouldn't - in the end, it's nothing more than a slightly above-average belt-scrolling fighter - but something about its over-the-top nature just strikes the right chord with me and I find myself grinning through every playthrough and humming along to the music long after I've put the pad down. It's just good, clean, fun. The most impressive thing is that despite it being one long advert, it never feels cynical. There's none of the forced "attitude" that was foisted upon many advertising mascots in the Nineties, there's no tacked-on and completely insincere environmental message like in Mick & Mack: Global Gladiators: it just took the dopey subject matter and ran with it, and for this I salute it.One last thing: here's a Japanese TV commercial for the game. The noodle attack looks just as creepy in real life.