SILENT HILL MAGAZINE COVERS

For today's spookily-themed article, I thought I'd look at something related to the Silent Hill series, the videogame franchise that has given me more chills than any other. They used to be chills of fear, but in recent times they've been the kind of chills you get when you tell a friend they can bring someone to your party and they turn up with a guy who claims to be a tarot-reading homeopath who prefaces every statement he makes with "I'm not a racist, but..." Yes, it's been a long, slow decline for Silent Hill, but let's forget about that for today as we look at some magazine covers featuring Silent Hill games. As a more cerebral, subtle series than most of its peers, it'll be interesting to see how the games magazine of the late 90s and early 2000s - magazines that were for the most part the very opposite of cerebral and subtle - handled the Silent Hill games.

Official UK Playstation Magazine - Silent Hill

Okay, this one isn't bad - Dahlia's staring eyes provide a certain degree of mystery, at least. Who is this mad-eyed lady? What is she staring at? Would she be offended if you told her to go easy on the eye make-up next time? Who knows, it's all terribly mysterious.
The caption below refers to Silent Hill as "the thinking man's Resident Evil," because at the time of its release Silent Hill was incessantly compared to Capcom's zombie-slaying classic, although I resent the implication that Resident Evil wasn't also for the thinking man. I was constantly thinking while playing Resident Evil, thinking things like "did he really just say 'Jibble sandwich'" and "why can't anyone see that Wesker is clearly evil, what kind of cops are you?"
Also, as I mentioned a long time ago, Konami's official Silent Hill webpage at the time used a green-and-black colour scheme. Coincidence? Yes, probably, but I'm glad that the "unofficial and unlicensed book about The X-Files" aesthetic didn't stick to the Silent Hill series.

Official US Playstation Magazine - Silent Hill

It might just be me, but I'm getting a real Max Payne vibe from this depiction of Harry Mason. Still, it's a good cover - it doesn't make the game look too action-y even though it's showing a man with a gun fighting monsters. Looking at monsters, anyway. The monster is looking back. Their eyes meet, and for a moment they're both overcome with the pointlessness of their hatred. Can't we all just get along, monster and man alike? Then Harry breaks the monster's neck by whacking it with a steel pipe and normal service is resumed.
Again, a reference is made to Resident Evil. "More than just a Resident Evil clone," it says, which is true. Resident Evil didn't include any mad old women talking about gyromancy, the art of predicting the future by spinning around until you fall over. Silent Hill is a definite improvement on that front.

Expert Gamer - Silent Hill

Is that the same Harry from the previous cover? You know, I think it might be. I hope he didn't get typecast as "Harry Mason from Silent Hill," that would be a very difficult niche to break out of.
Here, Harry is surrounded by nurses. I think they're just regular nurses. They don't look especially demonic or anything. The one on the right is a little blotchy, I suppose, but that's hardly conclusive proof of monsterism. If it were, the Vatican's secret demon-fighting army would descend on the beaches of Britain on the first slightly sunny day of the year and destroy ninety percent of the people there. They might be monster nurses, but Silent Hill's monster nurses are marked by a large fleshy parasite thing sticking out of their backs and I don't see that on any of these women. "Harry" should be careful where he's swinging his chainsaw, I don't think "I thought they were monsters" will fall under self-defence in a court of law.

Dicas & Truques Para Playstation - Silent Hill

Looks like it's chilly in Silent Hill today. This is Cybil Bennett, who lies somewhere between "main character" and "minor character" in the Silent Hill cast, but she's a blonde woman so she appears on magazine covers with greater frequency than her role in the story might suggest. Here she is, looking all cool and badass with a smoking gun in her hand, which is very different to her usual Silent Hill look of crashing her motorcycle and getting infected with evil parasites.

Mega Fun - Silent Hill

Here's Cybil again, in happier times before she totalled her motorcycle. She's staring at the Soul Reaver art, perhaps doing some light ironic scoffing at the idea of the supernatural before she heads into the terrifying world of Silent Hill.
Two things leap out at me from this cover: one is that I want that Silent Hill "giant-poster" of Lisa, and the other is the strapline "Nightmare on Hillstreet," which promises a crossover universe where Freddy Krueger and the cast of Hill Street Blues find themselves trapped in Silent Hill, their only chance of survival being to combine their disparate talents for police works and slashing teens with their knife-fingers. They're the original odd couple!

PSM - Silent Hill

More Cybil, but this time Harry gets in on the fun too. My first thought was that everyone in this image needs to stop and swap their clothes for some a few sizes larger. Harry's gigantic arms are about to tear their way through his leather jacket, and Cybil's chest looks downright uncomfortable. Did she turn up on the first day of her new police job only for her Captain to say "sorry, we're all out of uniforms. You'll have to wear this Sexy Cop Halloween costume instead. Officer Smith will give you some talcum powder to help you get into the rubber trousers."? And as for Harry's Herculean physique, it would be inappropriate for the start of the game, sure, but by the time Silent Hill is over and Harry has smashed hundreds of monsters to death by swinging a fire axe into them? I can see him having gained a considerable amount of muscle mass.
Speaking of monsters, despite what the bottom-right of this cover may suggest you do not fight any demonic rats in Silent Hill. Why are you here, devil-rat? Did you finally get bored of appearing as a low-level enemy in every RPG ever and decided to try something new? Well, I'm sorry but Silent Hill has more than filled its quota of spooky animals. Maybe try those Resident Evil games everyone keeps banging on about, they'll make a zombie version of anything.

Next Level - Silent Hill

A before and after comparison for the world's most effective moisturising cream? No, it's just Dahlia and Cybil, and Cybil is down to her last nerve - she's trying to make an important phone call but Dahlia keeps shouting in her ear about the coming darkness and the rebirth of God and the importance of proper fire safety when trying to burn your daughter alive because if you're not careful the fire spreads and burns down you house and it's a real mess, let me tell you. Cybil doesn't need to hear all that, she's having a hard enough time at work already, what with them giving her a brass doorknob instead of a police badge and all.

Dicas & Truques Para Playstation - Silent Hill 2

Moving on to the sequel, and this cover does a great job of capturing the slightly gormless, not-quite-all-there nature of James, Silent Hill 2's protagonist. On this cover he definitely looks like the kind of man who'd receive a letter from his dead wife and think "okay, time for a rood trip!" rather than "what kind of sick joke is this?" As for his companion Maria, well, it was nice of the village blacksmith to forge her a breastplate that perfectly matches the contours of her bosom. And in such a fetching mulberry shade, too! Now that the work of making horseshoes and crafting hand tools has dried up, at least the blacksmith can still make a living selling armour to LARPers.

PSM2 - Silent Hill 2

Huh, that render of Dahlia really does get around. It's especially surprising here because she doesn't appear in Silent Hill 2. I suppose you could argue that the terrible consequences of her supernatural actions are draped over the town like a really spooky duvet in all the subsequent games, but I think that'd be stretching it.

PSM - Silent Hill 2

Ha ha ha, hoo boy, what can I say about this one? Artist Stephen Platt's style is fine for superhero comics, but it is not exactly a good fit for Silent Hill 2. James' occupation is given as "clerk" in the Silent Hill 2 manual, but on this evidence you'd have to assume "clerk" was short for "WWF wrestler with a clerk-themed gimmick circa 1992." Why do you even have a pistol, James? Just flex at the monsters, show 'em your real guns, and they'll be so overawed by your ruggedness that they'll stop trying to kill you. Okay, maybe not - I'm sure James is supposed to look cool and tough, but it's difficult to project that aura of manliness when the waistband of your jeans is hiked way up over your bellybutton. He must be projecting some kind of aura, though, because those monsters seem determined to rip his clothes off. He is to monsters as One Direction are to pre-teen girls. They're going to struggle to get his shirt off, mind you. If it wasn't for the slight folds around his chiselled, slab-like abdominals I'd assume his shirt was painted on rather than being made of fabric. Hey, James, did the vacuum sealing process you used to get that thing on hurt at all?
All in all, I think we can be glad that this muscular - so muscular it's making the veins in my neck hurt just looking at it - version of James didn't star in Silent Hill 2 itself. It would have made the game much less frightening if Pyramid Head had stalked James through the apartment complex only to get a good look at his gym-blasted body and say "whoa, bro, I'm sorry, I don't want no trouble" before backing away with his hands raised.

Playstation World - Silent Hill 3

By the time Silent Hill 3 came around, most game magazine covers were just a render from whatever game was being featured and some text, and Silent Hill 3's magazine covers were no different. In this instance Heather just seems a bit, I dunno, bored? She's looking askance at that headline and thinking to herself "are people really still comparing Silent Hill to Resident Evil?" It's better than a drawing of Heather that's built like the Incredible Hulk in a wig, I guess.

Playstation 2 Official Magazine Australia - Silent Hill 3

I mention this one because the blue bars at the top and bottom of the cover make it look like Heather is trapped between them. "Help, I'm trapped in an ugly magazine cover," you might imagine her saying if you're up too late writing stupid jokes about Silent Hill magazine covers.

PS World - Silent Hill 4: The Room

A Silent Hill 4 cover now, and that sure is a big picture of Eileen. Yep. Subtle foreshadowing by the magazine's designer of the room in the game that's filled by a giant, boggle-eyed Eileen head? Possibly, but I think it's more likely to be a warning. Look at Eileen, it says. Take in the features of a woman you will come to despise should you play Silent Hill 4, her very presence sapping your will to continue as you drag her slow ass through the same stages you've already seen while an invincible, gun-toting madman tries to kill you both. Yeah, Silent Hill 4 rather falls apart after the half-way point.
Actually, if you'll allow me a moment I'd like to share my theory about Silent Hill 4 with you: after playing it again semi-recently I realised that while it may appear to be a horror game on the surface, it's actually an absurdist comedy. There are so many moments where the only reasonable response is laughter that I'm convinced it was intentional. The game's hero, Henry, blandly asking a blood-drenched woman who is clearly on the edge of death whether she's okay. The nurse-monsters that burp when you hit them. Rubbery monkey-things that attack you with golf clubs. A man who finds an umbilical cord and holds onto it for decades. Oh, and my personal favourite, Henry looking at his shoes and saying "that's right, I got these shoes in Silent Hill" as though that makes the shoes, I dunno, evil or something? All the ghosts and human sacrifice are merely set dressing for some utterly surreal humour, like a Harry Hill stand-up routine mixed with Poltergeist.

Play - Silent Hill: Homecoming

"The nurse will see you now"? No she won't, she doesn't have any eyes. Boobs yes, eyes? Not so much. If you met her in a club she might say "hey, my eyes are up here... or are they?!"

GamePro - Silent Hill: Downpour

I was going to make a crack about how being forced at gunpoint is the only way you'd get me to play Silent Hill: Downpour again, but that's a bit harsh. It wasn't terrible, and it had a couple of nice ideas even if it didn't take them anywhere beyond "hey, we had a nice idea." Would I recommend playing it? No, not really, unless you're really desperate for a horror game and you don't mind fighting the same four or five extremely boring enemies over and over again. I forget how I described them on Twitter recently, but it was something along the lines of ugly woman, ugly man in jogging bottoms, larger ugly man in jogging bottoms, invisible woman and a thing that looks like the Newborn from Alien: Resurrection. Oh, and The Boogeyman - Downpour's very own knock-off imitation Pyramid Head, who was last seen as the murderous villain of the 1981 horror movie My Bloody Valentine.

Famitsu - Silent Hill

Finally for today, it's back to the original Silent Hill for this Famitsu cover by famous manga artist Susumu Matsushita which, erm, turns Harry into a dog. Okay, it's specifically Famitsu's mascot Necky, who is supposedly a fox. I really like this cover, though, with everyone looking shocked and horrified by what they see... hang on, if they're looking out of the cover then they're shocked and horrified by me. Ouch. That hurts, man.

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AMIGA TITLE SCREENS FEATURING LARGE SHIRTLESS MEN

The title of this article says it all, really. The Amiga is home to some of the finest pixel artwork ever seen in gaming. A lot of Amiga title screens feature large, shirtless men, often grimacing through exertion, rage or being too cold. Do these two facts ever overlap? Are there a great many extremely well-drawn depictions of glistening pectorals to be found in the Amiga library? I don't know, but by God I intend to find out. File this one under "investigative journalism," folks. I'll be sure to thank you all when I collect my Pulitzer.

Dogs of War, Elite, 1989

Beginning with a fairly average representation of the genre, the hero of Dogs of War is most definitely large and shirtless. The "oversized weapon as phallic symbolism" is an easy angle to take on this, especially when he's holding it at groin height, but he doesn't seem very happy with his, ahem, tool of carnage. That's the face of a man suffering from buyer's remorse, I reckon. He's wishing he hadn't traded his body armour and helmet for this wildly impractical minigun - a minigun which, if you take a closer look, appears to have either a smaller gun or a scope attached to the top. Neither of those things seem like they've be very useful. He'll be out of ammo in seconds, and then what has he got? A very large paperweight and acres of bare flesh that might as well have "mosquito buffet" painted across it.

Bloodfest, Mellow Chips, 1995

This Sunday at the Recreation Grounds, it's Bloodfest! Try the blood sausages! Donate some O negative for an AB positive cause! Ride the inflatable corpuscles down the Blood Flume! Fun for the whole family, six pounds for adults, three pounds for children and free if you pay in blood, sweet, life-giving blood!
This fellow will sadly be unable to donate blood, as he has already lost too much for the technicians to extract any without him becoming dangerously woozy. I don't think a sugary biscuit will be enough to help him recover. Could some of these wounds have been prevented had Mr. Bloodfest - not to be confused with Captain Bloodfest, the loveable syringe-shaped mascot of the Bloodfest carnival - deigned to wear a shirt? Quite probably. They mostly look like scratches, I doubt he'd have felt a thing if he'd been wearing a thick coat. On the other hand, he would have been uncomfortably warm wearing much else, seeing as he's managed to convert his Uzis into flamethrowers.

Leatherneck, Microdeal, 1988

I think "No-Neck" would have been a more accurate title. Apparently "leatherneck" is a colloquial term for a marine, supposedly originating from the practise of wearing a leather collar to help maintain correct posture. This marine could probably just about get a leather strap under his chin, a shark's-tooth necklane or something, but there's no room there for a collar so it's a miracle that is posture isn't completely terrible.

Vaxine, The Assembly Line, 1990

A really crappy dreamcatcher? No, it's Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, only with four fewer limbs and his genitalia airbrushed into obscurity to protect the moral cleanliness of you, the viewer. He's also even more ripped than in the original drawing. Jumping-jacks are good for muscle definition, it seems. As for why this title screen shows him being dropped for a great height onto a mound of lime jelly, I have no explanation. Maybe that's just his thing.

TNT Wrestling, TNT, 1991

This wrestler is so buff he even has abs on the palm of his hand. A friendly pat on the back will make your ribcage shoot out of your chest, and a handshake from this guy? It's like grabbing Godzilla's vibrator. Probably just as oily, too - this slab of man-meat is practically glistening, as though one of the vampires from Twilight rejected a life of relentless brooding and learned how to perform the perfect suplex instead.

Top Wrestling, Genias, 1992

Sticking with wrestling, and here's a face not even a mother could love. That's because the owner of this face has eaten his mother alive in the hopes that doing so would grant him the trust and protection of the tortured spirits of the dead whose infernal shrieking blights his every moment. "If only they'd be quiet", he thinks, "all I need is one moment of silence, then I could think, find a way to escape this nightmare. I did everything they asked! I ate my poor, sweet mother alive, I dress in nothing but agonisingly tight striped underwear, I've even managed to create the most unflattering haircut since the French stopped using the guillotine and still they torment me!"

Conan the Cimmerian, Virgin, 1991

I think Conan gets a pass on the whole "bare-chested" thing, right? I mean, he's Conan. You will notice that "a nice cotton button-down from Marks and Spencer" is not included in his list of things that are best in life. He only wears those furry pants to muffle the sound of his giant steel balls clanking together, lest the noise betray his presence to his foes.

Rubicon, 21st Century Entertainment, 1992

Giant head or tiny torso? You decide! Aww, someone's a grumpy widdle sausage! Cheer up, Mr. Rubicon, I'm only teasing. I tell you what, to show you I'm sorry I'll buy you some of that bronzer you like. What's the shade called again? Grandad's Leather Armchair? I'll pick you up some more Hair Concrete while I'm out, too.

Jungle Boy, Byte Back, 1991

Jungle Boy? Are you sure? He's built like Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1989, I think we can bump him up to Jungle Man. Maybe it's his expression of childlike innocence as he swings from tree to tree that gives him a boyish air, but I'm sure he's old enough to be legally tried as an adult  That's important, because there's no combination of that home-made knife and that psychotic rictus grin that doesn't end with Jungle Boy trying to carve his name into an innocent person's lungs.

Gladiators, Smash 16, 1989

"We did the exact same move at the exact same time, how come I have a lacerated kidney and you're fine?"
"I dunno, I guess I just wanted it more?"
"I bet it's your beard. I knew I should have grown a beard! The gods will never grant their favour to a man who merely sports a Burt Reynolds."
"Maybe there's still time, you know, after..."
"After what, Steve? After our fight to the death, which I am already losing, just like I'm losing quite a lot of blood?
"Sorry."
"Oh good, well as long as you're sorry, that's alright."
"Hey, there's no need to be a dick about it, No-Beard."

Cyber Cop, Impressions, 1991

Even the machines are, and I'm putting my full confidence in this pun, muscling in on the semi-naked action. Good work, pun, we nailed it. The Cyber Cop revels in his chiselled physique, posing in an overly-dramatic and frankly pretentious way. I think he's annoying me so much because he didn't have to work for it: he rolled off the production line with a body that would cause even the gods of Olympus to do an appreciative half-whistle. Cyber Cop will never know struggle of not pretending to be hosting a party so you have an excuse to order three large pizzas, nor will he ever have to lie to his doctor about how much exercise he does due to shame over his slothful nature. On the other hand, he can never experience love or happiness, so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

Carver, G&T Game Systems, 1991

I'm pretty sure Carver used to open for Motley Crue. Well, maybe not quite that high up the 80's rock food chain. They probably did some warm-up stuff for Ratt, at the very least. It's the bandanna that gives it away, and that logo - tell me it doesn't look like it was was designed - nay, destined - to be stencilled onto a bass drum?
Carver himself looks oddly slick, and for once I don't think it's down to baby oil or the combined sweat of all those he has wrestled with. He's very... plasticky. Then you look at his face, and it all becomes clear: Carver is wearing a fake inflatable muscle suit, and as he tries to make himself look big in order to intimidate his rivals, his expression shows he's very nervous that someone is going to see through his ruse and stab him. Then he'd never get the deposit back on his muscle suit, and also he'll be dead, which I'd describe as a lose-lose situation.

Torvak the Warrior, Core Design, 1990

Hey, Torvak, Tobias Funke called and he wants his cut-offs back. Torvak has gone for a Batman-esque "looming in the shadows" look, although his menace is rather undercut by my inability to see his torso as anything but a grumpy face.

See? Not so much a mighty Viking warrior as a dangerously 'roided-out Horace.

Pinkie, Millennium, 1995

He might not built like the result of a romantic encounter between a gorilla and Mount Everest, but Pinkie is one hundred percent shirtless. And bottomless. A weird, naked little gremlin with a head that peaks in a tightly-coiled turd. "Look at me," his leaping pose seems to cry, "I'm smooth all over!"
Let's get one thing straight, Pinkie: I don't like you. You look like you were created in some whimsical fairytale manner - a pencil eraser that wished super-hard to be a real boy, maybe - but you have a navel so you must be the offspring of a placental mammal. So what is it, Pinkie? Are you a man or a beast, and if the answer is man, won't you please develop a sense of shame about your rubbery body and cover yourself up?

Friday Night Pool, The One Amiga, 1995

Friday Night Pocket Pool, more like. I see you over there, sunglasses. Knock it off, this respectable gaming establishment and we're as opposed to that kind of behaviour as we are to following the rules of perspective.
You might be thinking "hey, VGJunk, you promised me shirtless men and that guy in the sunglasses is not completely barechested! You shall be hearing from my lawyers!" but c'mon, no jury in the land is going to agree that his tattered leather waistcoat functions as a shirt. It's some kind of negashirt, made of fabric and worn on the torso but somehow serving only to highlight the wearer's lack of decency and fashion sense, a kind of garment equivalent of the Streisand Effect.
Also, as someone who spent a fair amount of time in pool halls during his youth, I feel I should point out that they generally do not look like this. For one thing, these people are smiling. There is also no middle-aged man who has been hunched over the fruit machine for the last seven hours, and pool hall patrons do not tend to dress like they just watched The Terminator and decided it'd make a good basis for their future sartorial choices.

Over the Net, Genias, 1990

The fun of this one is imagining how you'd interpret those silhouettes in the background if you didn't know this was a beach volleyball game. Personally I'd go with "amateur one-man ballet adaptation of Schindler's List."

Axe of Rage, Palace Software, 1989

Axe of Rage, Expression of Mild Contempt. When you're out for lunch with a friend and they start taking things from your plate after they said they weren't hungry enough to order anything, this is the look you give them as you say "Really? You're going to just take my potato wedges?"

Brain Artifice, Sceptic Design, 1991

All these action games about barbarians and super-soldiers are logical candidates for the inclusion of a large, shirtless man, but I wasn't expecting to find any in the more cerebral puzzle genre so Brain Artifice's title screen came as something of a surprise. A welcome surprise, I have to say, because nothing excites the old synapses like trying to unravel the tangled web of circumstance that leads to grey-haired man and a vaguely "Arabian" warrior in a posing pouch playing a board game in a darkened room. If this is a game of strip draughts, then the warrior is clearly not doing very well.
I can only assume that what happened here is that the warrior challenged the old man to a battle to the death but neglected to specify the form this battle would take, leaving him red-faced when he arrived at the designated battleground in his y-fronts. That's why he looks so disgruntled about the whole affair.
As an added extra, the record lying on the floor is titled "Dirty Cash," so presumably the two combatants are listening to this as they play. Knowing this only enhances the vignette before us, and it was pretty bloody great to start with.

Ball Raider, Diamond Software, 1987

"And you're sure you want to call yourself 'Ball Raider'? It's just, with the muscles and the pink underwear, you know... No, no, it's fine. Yes, I'm sure your father and his father before him were proud Ball Raiders. It'll be fine, we'll just run the name up to corporate to make sure there aren't any, I dunno, websites or anything already using the Ball Raider name before we get the t-shirts made."

Street Hassle, World Software, 1994

Finally, I'll leave you with this masterpiece. There is little I can say about it, other than Andy Warhol and his grandparents are entering a world of hurt.

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ATTACK ANIMAL GAKUEN (FAMICOM)

If I could fly to the animals, shoot at the animals, launch hot plasma blasts at the animals - alternate lyrics that saw me forcibly removed from my junior school production of Doctor Doolittle, but also a decent summary of what's going on in today's game - Scitron's 1987 Famicom game Attack Animal Gakuen!

That's Attack Animal Academy, or Attack Animal Campus. Something along those lines, anyway, although the only piece of the game that's related to education is that the main character is a schoolgirl. Did I mention this game's from Japan? I'm also going to apologise in advance for the almost inevitable occasions when I write the game's title as Animal Attack Gakuen, a word order that makes so much more sense to my feeble brain that I keep using it by accident.
There are no scene-setting intro sequences here, just a rolling field of chequerboard grass, so let's jump right into the big question: what is Attack Animal Gakuen?

Attack Animal Gakuen is Space Harrier. There's no beating around the bush on this one. I'd say it's one of the most blatant rip-offs I've ever seen, but "rip-off" is being a bit too generous - it implies that there are at least some differences from the source material. "Clone" might be a more accurate description. Yeah, that sounds about right. Attack Animal Gakuen is a clone of Space Harrier that was hatched from the incubation pods a little too early and covers up its deformities by changing the enemies into cutesy animals and casting the player in the role of a flying adolescent.

This does mean that the gameplay in Attack Animal Gakuen will be easy to explain, because many of you will have played Space Harrier before. If not, your character - her name is Nokko, I believe - flies forwards, "into" the screen, while enemies and obstacles move towards you, all of it displayed using the pseudo-3D effect of sprite scaling. AAG actually goes one step further than this by offering an honest-to-god stereoscopic 3D mode that can be toggled on and off by pressing Select. Sadly I lack the necessary eyewear to give you a full report on how well this mode works, but I don't think I'm going out on too fragile a limb by saying it's probably pretty cool but a bit gimmicky. You know, like all 3D effects.
Shooting things is the other big component of the game, and Nokko has a big gun that rather annoyingly doesn't have an auto-fire mode, so you have to tap the fire button throughout the entire game. Whether Nokko is a flying girl who has a gun or is a normal girl desperately clinging onto a flying gun as it hurtles around the screen is never made clear, but the latter is the more entertaining option so I'm going with that.

As the title suggests, most of the enemies are animals. You can see some disinterested-looking kangaroos in the previous screenshot, while just above this paragraph there's the much more charming sight of a jetpack-equipped alligator wearing sunglasses and a leather swimming costume. No reason is given in-game for why all these animal are out to kill you, but in the alligators' case I think it's obvious: you can't dress a prehistoric killing machine like that and not expect dire consequences.

These Jizo statues aren't enemies, they're power-ups. That doesn't stop you from being able to destroy them, though. Don't do that. Each stage only give you one chance to collect some power-ups, and without them Nokko's gun borders on useless. In it's un-powered state it can only have two projectiles on screen at once and it doesn't even have the power to shoot down the trees that litter the first stage, which lead to a few inauspicious early deaths as I sent Nokko flying face first into a tree at one hundred miles an hour, naively thinking my plasma bolts would be able to dislodge a few shrubs.
I never really figured out how the power-ups work, either. Collecting them definitely increased the number and power of my projectiles, as well as making Nokko move around the screen faster, but the exact relationship between the statues I grabbed and the power I received remains a mystery to me.

Attack Animal Gakuen didn't just copy the core elements of Space Harrier's gameplay, either. Many of the enemy movement patterns will feel familiar if you've ever played Sega's game, and then there's this. A trio of tougher-than-usual enemies (that look like rejected Pokemon designs) who fly around in a triangle taking pot-shots at you. This same enemy pattern appear in the first stage of, you guessed it, Space Harrier, although in that game their toughness is because the can only be damaged when their invulnerable outer shells open up. In AAG you just have to shoot them a bunch more than any other enemy.

Any other enemy besides the end-of-stage boss, that is, and here he is now. It's a tommy gun-wielding koala gangster! I think it's supposed to be a gangster, anyway. I'll concede that its collar makes it look a bit like a priest, but come on, a gun-toting marsupial clergyman? That's just silly. No, I'm stick with gangster. I've already come up with a "Don Koaleone" pun, and there's no way I'm letting that one go to waste.
The koala kingpin spends the entire battle firing at you, so Nokko has to be constantly moving around the screen because to stay still means getting hit and getting hit once means death, and there are no continues neither. You could simply keep travelling around the screen in a circle to avoid the koala's gunfire if it weren't for the shield of smaller enemies that constantly spin around him, sometimes moving into the foreground so that you crash into them, and you end up needing a certain amount of luck to triumph. If you manage to destroy a few of the minions early on as you flap around the screen in a panic, then you'll probably be okay as long as you remember to never stay still. The koala isn't the greatest marksman in the world, but he is relentless.

If you hit the koala enough times, the C4 he apparently had stuffed into his pouch explodes and Nokko can move on to stage two, a desert area populated by cacti in pork pie hats. Well, if you're going to be out in the sun for an extended period of time you should always wear a hat.
From here on out, the stages of AAG follow the pattern laid out by the first: Nokko flies or runs forwards, enemies attack, there's a boss at the end, I die yet more embarrassing death by swooping into stationary objects. I didn't expect anything else, and while AAG might not be original it's at least a competent Space Harrier knock-off. The controls are slick, the pace is brisk and there are skeletons in sunglasses.

It's funny, you see, because they're wearing shades but they don't have any eyes to protect! Ha ha, their eyeballs have long since been pecked away by vultures as their bones bleached under the relentless desert sun. Cause of death? Their tiny vestigial pelvises could no longer support the weight of their upper bodies.

The cause of my death continued to be cacti even once I'd learned to fly over them, because later in the stage they launch themselves into the air in an attempt to catch Nokko in their prickly embrace. I definitely preferred the skeletons.

Stage two's boss is... something. Something with clear lizard-like attributes but a very odd body shape, like a gecko that's swallowed a bowling pin and is relishing the culinary challenge, if its unsettling smirk is anything to go by.
The boss fires at you constantly and is surrounded by a spinning shield of minor enemies. If this sounds a lot like the tactics of the previous boss, that because they're exactly the same. Curiously, the lizard seemed easier to beat, either because the skeletons are bigger targets and therefore easier to hit, or because it fires less frequently. Whatever the quirks of this boss, I'm glad of the practise. It'll come in handy when I face every other boss in the game, all of which follow the same battle plan.

Stage three is the obligatory fire zone, and to cope with the searing heat Nokko has taken her skirt off. That's just good common sense, really. Every time I'm about to enter a volcanic caldera I always whip off my trousers for that added layer of protection.
I'm not sure what these animals are supposed to be, mind you. Are Space Hoppers based on a real animal?

Here's Nokko getting killed by some crows. A murder of crows, if you will. Seeing Nokko die is something I experienced a lot, because Attack Animal Gakuen is a very tough game. Enemies move quickly, often appearing without warning from the edges of the screen, and while it's generally easy to gauge the "depth" of an enemy's on-screen position is can be hard to tell if they're on the same plane as you without looking at their shadows. A bigger problem is that it's quite hard to actually shoot things in this game. Nokko seems to have quite a narrow area of attack, and it can get frustrating trying to figure out where she's aiming, especially when you can only fire a couple of shots at a time. In practise I ended up avoiding most of the enemies until they either got bored and flew off screen or I ran past them. These crows? You can call me Noah, because I only got two of them.

Another boss that follows the already well familiar pattern, stage three's guardian is another indecipherable lump of mildly menacing pixels. He's got an almost Russian feel to him. I think it's his shirt. The most notable thing about him is that his left hand constantly jerks back and forth in a vaguely masturbatory gesture. I think it's part of his plan to distract you from the crows. Well, it worked. They killed me a bunch of times.

Oh good, the next stage is set underwater. Crows can't swim, right? Excellent. There are plenty of jellyfish around, but they pose nothing like the same threat as the flap dopily through the sea. I like that Nokko swims through this stage as opposed to flying. It's a nice little touch. I'd accuse the developers of trying to shoehorn in some fanservice, what with Nokko losing her skirt and now being in a swimsuit, but as she's only about ten pixels wide I don't think it makes much difference if she's dressed in a skimpy bikini or full plate armour. Also, "fan"service would imply that Nakko had fans to, erm, service.

Also in this stage: squid that are packed with smaller squid, and they explode when you shoot them, sending the smaller squid flying towards your face like my dream seafood buffet.

Finally, a boss I can understand: a turtle! It is a turtle, right? Yeah, it must be. Maybe a tortoise. A massive tortoise with a frog's head. Look, it's definitely some kind of large, shelled reptile with a head that may or may not have once belonged to a frog or toad, and no matter how many sea urchins it surrounds itself with it will inevitably fall under Nokko's deadly and seemingly waterproof weaponry.

Stage five is the Dark Area, a sombre plain packed with spooky trees that wear an apologetic expression. They're not proud about what they do, but they've got to make a living somehow.
Also, Nokko is dressed as an air hostess now for some reason. Actually, the reason is fairly obvious: her usual black-and-white outfit would be difficult to see against this background.

The Dark Area features enemies that are traditionally horror themed, like the spooky trees, snakes and bats. These bats are not very spooky. Honestly, I'm not even sure they're bats, they could easily be owls wearing unconvincing Halloween costumes. A lot of the animals in Attack Animal Gakuen suffer from this condition of not looking quite right, as though the whole game is being orchestrated by a Dr. Moreau who doesn't have the confidence to go all-out with his blasphemous gene-splicing experiments and instead just makes minor, goofy changes.

That is very obviously a spider, mind you. A particularly aggravating enemy, the spider fall from the top of the screen at great speed and without any warning, so if you happen to be standing in the spot where they're going to land then congratulations, you get to lose a life without having a chance to react or fight back. Always a fun scenario, that one. No, wait, not "fun", I meant "extremely frustrating".

The boss is a larger spider. He's wearing sunglasses. There's a lot of that in this game, although I didn't expect to see it in a place specifically called the Dark Area. Maybe the spider is blind. I have nothing more interesting to add on the the subject of this boss battle, because it's the same as all the others.

The last level is the Sky Area, where Nokko is harassed by sticks of chalk and some angry but ultimately ineffectual walking rocks. Attack Animal Gakuen is by now so firmly entrenched in the same rut of gameplay that it's liable to cut itself in half, but it's been a fun little adventure even despite the grinding difficulty.

It's a bit disappointing that there are no new enemies to fight in the Sky Area, though. No, I don't count the sticks of chalk. They're school supplies, not villains.

Then I reached the final boss, and all those times that I pondered what animal an enemy was supposed to be seem insignificant next to the unfathomable blob that serves as your final opponent. Is it a two-headed lizard that's recently been involved in a road traffic accident? A weird, oversized amoeba? A terrifying fusion of snake and boomerang? Oh man, that would be horrible, imagine trying to catch a snakearang when it came flying back at you.
I shot at the boss for a while, attempting to decipher exactly what the hell it is, but before I could come to a conclusion - I was leaning towards "kid's drawing of a forgotten He-Man villain" - the boss exploded and that was that.

It seems that Nokko went through all this trouble to rescue her friend. Well, it's more interesting than the usual hero-rescues-princess ending, I'll give it that. Of course, Nokko's friend is clearly lying in the first area of the game, so I wasted all that time travelling through the other stages when my goal was right there in stage one all along.

"Happy End," says the game, as Nokko repeatedly fires her gun at the player. Thanks, Nokko. I'm starting to worry about you, and your newly-rescued "friend" doesn't look very comfortable with the situation either. Luckily I won't have to deal with you any more, because Attack Animal Gakuen is over and I never have to see Nokko's face, or the single pixel the developers used to depict her underwear, ever again. The one-pixel panty shot, folks - you thought making a game where you can see up a schoolgirl's skirt was the saddest thing, but no, doing so in way that it's completely abstracted by technological limitations is somehow even sadder.
The game itself isn't bad, though. If you've played Space Harrier to death but you still want more, or you're a fan of really hard Famicom games, then Attack Animal Gakuen is a relatively jolly experience with plenty of zip. If you play it, maybe you'll succeed where I failed - in figuring out what the final boss is supposed to be.

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