AVENGING SPIRIT

Ghosts: so often in the world of videogames, from Pac-Man to Luigi's Mansion, the restless spirits of the dead decide that rather than spending their eternal afterlife doing something useful like finally putting those shelves up in the bathroom, they're going to get their incorporeal asses right in the way and attempt to kill any videogame hero they come across. Not today, though. Oh no, for the dark powers of spiritual possession are finally being used by the forces of justice in Jaleco's 1991 arcade possess-em-up Avenging Spirit.

So, what's the story here? Our hero is enjoying a pleasant stroll with his orange-haired girlfriend, when two villains attack them.

Well, I'm sure the hero will be fine. We haven't even started the game yet.

Oh. Well, that could put a dampener on things. It turns out that your girlfriend's father is an expert on "ghost energy", whatever the hell that is, and they kidnapped his daughter so they could ransom her for his data on ghost energy.

"Ghost Energy" may sound like a clear, refreshing health drink from Japan, but it is in fact some kind of cosmic force that allows our hero to manifest as a goofy little ghost.

He looks pretty cheerful for someone who was just murdered whilst watching their girlfriend get abducted. Judging by his expression he's higher than a giraffe on stilts anyway, so now he can mellowly float his way to the start of the game.
This is where Avenging Spirit's gimmick of forcible phantasmic possession is explained to you. Four enemies are placed on the screen, and you can select one of them to control by moving your ghost over them and pressing attack. The ghost wriggles his way into the hosts body, taking control of them like some hideous ectoplasmic parasite and giving you full control over their actions.

The controls are, well, they're in that picture above. They're pretty basic: Avenging Spirit is, at its heart, a cutesy version of Contra with the added mechanic of undead parasitism. Jump around, shoot things, get to the end of the stage.
AS's more unique aspects are represent by the two health bars in the screenshot above. The bottom purple bar is the health of your current host body: when they get hit too much, their body gives out and our ghostly friend is forcibly ejected. This is where the top red bar comes into play, because that's your "Ghost Energy". It constantly depletes when you're in ghost form, so it's (usually) in your best interests to jump into an enemy as soon as possible. It also decreases a little when you get hit, and when your Ghost Energy runs out you, uh, die? Un-die? Perhaps when your Ghost Energy runs out your soul is completely erased from all planes of reality, as though you never existed. Cheerful!

I decided to start out as a ninja, (and why wouldn't you,) and you're instantly faced with an assortment of tommygun-wielding gangsters and anime-style heroines to defeat. Or, if you prefer, you can dodge as many enemies as possible, try and preserve your Ghost Energy and just head for the exit. That's a valid tactic, too... if you're a wuss. You're a ninja for chrissakes, get out there and ninj something!
The levels themselves as fairly large, with plenty of scope for up and down movement as well as the standard left-to-right, giving you more than one path to take in each stage. It's a good job you've got the vertical space, too, because this ninja jumps like someone riding a pogo stick into a minefield: straight up. The "feel" of their jumps is one of the differences between each of your potential flesh puppets, but more on that in a while. For now, just enjoy the ninja's face when he jumps:

"I have no idea what I'm doing," that expression seems to say, or possibly "did I remember to turn my ninja oven off?"
Personally, it was the graphics that caught my attention with this one: I'm just a sucker for the big, cartoony pixel style of the early '90s, I guess. What AS reminds me of most is Metal Slug, although obviously without quite the same level of beautiful, beautiful sprite work as MS. I mean, look at the guy in red at the bottom of this screenshot:

Now tell me he doesn't look like he belongs in a Metal Slug game. Also pictured: a giant GO! sign. That marks the end of the stage proper and the entrance to the boss' lair. Yes, Avenging Spirit has bosses, but sadly they aren't all that interesting.

First up, a robot snake in a trash compactor, which makes about as much sense as anything else in Avenging Spirit. He bears something of a resemblance to the giant snakes from Mega Man 3, as seen in Spark Man's stage. No, I'm kidding, they're in Snake Man's stage - he had the decency to pick a theme for his stage and stick with it. Not like Top Man, because what the hell does some futuristic garden have to do with spinning tops? Anyway, I digress. Defeat the boss, and you get a little bit of story and you move onto the next stage.

So, that's the gameplay: move through the stage, possess a bad guy, use your unearthly powers to make them kill their own comrades against their will in a prolonged orgy of mind-rape, defeat the boss and move on. Now, the interesting bit: there are a fair few types of bad guys to possess, so let's have a look at the various categories.

Ninjas

Really fearful looking ninjas, it has to be said. Perhaps ghosts are the mortal enemies of ninjas, as ghosts are the only things more stealthy and mysterious than they are. They don't want ghosts horning in on their territory: ghost ninjas would be far superior at ninja-ing, and due to not needing to buy food and clothes and things they could constantly underbid regular ninjas for valuable assassination contracts.
Ninjas are fairly common and come in two flavours: blue throws shurikens and red has a ball-and-chain to attack with. Both types jump around like a cat with a firework up its arse, and I think red ninja is probably the best "unit" in the game due to his power and speed.

Gangsters

Entry-level mafia goons who have moved away from illegal gambling and into the (I imagine far less lucrative) ghost-hunting business. Imagine Tony Soprano in an episode of Scooby Doo. They attack with pistols, and there are purple ones later on who have tommyguns.

Anime Girls

Acrobatic, miniskirted ladies who look like every anime heroine ever. As I'm sure you've already guessed, they're real quick and they can jump well. They attack with punches and kicks, and the purple-haired one can shoot crescents of energy (standard, not Ghost) out of her feet, but the best way to use them is to avoid the fighting and run the hell away.

Soldiers

Some big, burly fellows with headbands have taken refuge from the likes of Contra and pitched up in the cutesy world of Avenging Spirit. They didn't leave their murderin' ways behind them though, because they attack with either an uzi or hand grenades. All round, they're pretty handy and they look as though they're battle-hardened enough that an undead phantom invading their body won't really faze them - in fact, it'd probably be more traumatic for our ghostly friend as he becomes party to all the dark and terrible things they've done on the battlefield. That's what you get for creeping into other people's brains, you ghostly little twat.

Snow Women

You know what's better than bullets for killing your enemies? Snow! No, of course it isn't, although it's not far off. Madam Sasquatch here has the power to roll balls of snow across the screen, although sadly they don't get bigger the more they roll. However, they don't travel that fast and you can only have three on the screen at once. This can lead to the unfortunate situation of not being able to fire when you need to, leaving you to curse your decision to possess this old lady when there're guys with guns around.

Wizards

So, you spend years of your life learning the dark arts, gaining a mastery over the very elemental forces of nature itself, your body coursing with enough power to kill a man with a mere gesture... and then you go and ruin it all by wearing a pink robe with cat ears attached. It's like becoming the world boxing champ and nicknaming yourself "Powderpuff". Still, they are some pretty adorable wizards, especially their focused expressions when they're firing their magic. Because that's how they attack. With magic. Yup. The pink ones fire beam and the green ones a larger orb of death, and they're also quite good to use.

Elderly Baseball Players

Well, that about covers it. They baseball players, and they're elderly. What more do you need to know? That their moustaches flow mighitly, like the surging of some vast river? That they attack with baseball bats? Actually, the best thing about the baseball players is that they can reflect projectile by hitting them with the bat. It's just a shame they're so rare.

Vampires (in their underpants)

Also rare are these guys, my personal favourites. They look like regular vampires until they attack, at which point they whip open their cape to reveal their boxers. Oh, and some bats fly out and gnaw upon the faces of your enemies. It's all a bit Castlevania, truth be told, except I don't think Dracula ever fought the Belmonts dressed in his pants and a cape.

Fakirs

Mystic holy men who have developed the power of flight at the expense of their fashion sense. They're probably the least useful (and least interesting) enemy, because for some reason when you take control of them they forget how to fly. I guess that's the bit of knowledge that got pushed out of their head when our hero took up residence.

Hoppers

Well, that's what they are referred to as on the arcade flyer, anyway. They're almost exactly the same as the soldiers, except that they look like a cross between Lupin III and a Metal Slug character.

Holy Crap It's Dragons

Yep, dragons. Big ol' fire-breathing dragons. They got the job of guarding the kidnapped girl after mentioning their previous job, guarding a large pile of gold from would-be adventurers, during their interview with EvilCorp or whoever's behind all this. That's the kind of experience that money can't buy, and it's vital in the "protecting-strongholds-from-avenging-spirits" business. Plus they can breath fire, and they can take quite a lot of punishment.

And that's it for the possesable enemies (well, there's a robot too, but I forget to get a picture of him. He can fire missiles, but he's not very good). You choose your humanoid meat-vehicle and make your way through the game's six stages until you reach the end. The stages see you traveling through the city streets, through what might be either a construction site or a building made entirely of K'nex, across some rooftops, through the sewers and into the enemy fortress. It seems like a lot of sneaking around for an incorporeal being, but I guess he knows what he's doing.

The only major complication comes from collecting keys. You see, after the first stage you are told that the room holding your girlfriend is locked by three keys that you're going to need to find to free her. They're hidden about the levels, but they're pretty easy to find if you look around a little. The last key is on the final stage, and it makes you do a little puzzle (and I mean "puzzle" in the same way that writing your name or opening a can of Coke is a "puzzle") where you have to step on five blocks in sequence to spell a word, which opens a door so you can get the last key. The password your enemies chose? GHOST. GHOST!? That's hardly secure, is it? For a start, it's only five letters long, but that's not the point! Ghost? This whole thing has been about ghosts and their various energies, you could have at least picked the name of your pet dog or something. "We've got to keep these messages out of Nazi hands, so our clever chaps at Intelligence have come up with this code to make them unreadable. The keyword you will need to decipher them is BRITISHINTELLIGENCE. Carry on!"

To be fair, this is an organization that decided the best way of inputting said password would be a series of metal blocks protruding from the wall that require a grown man's weight on top of them to activate, so they're obviously not the sharpest group of minds in the world. What's wrong with a keypad, too gauche for you? Also, YOU'RE A GHOST. Just float through the fucking door! Aaaanyway, rescuing or not rescuing your girlfriend not only determines which ending you get, but also gives you a gameplay advantage if you perform your boyfriendly duty and get her out of her cell.

Yep, I possessed her good. She doesn't seem scared by the sudden appearance of the ghost of her dead boyfriend, more sort of angry. Still, he did just possess her. That's got to put a strain on any relationship.
Your reward for saving the girl is that you get to use her to fight the final boss, which is handy because she's much more powerful than every enemy you can pilot. She's got some kind of bracelet that fires laser, which rather begs the question "why the hell were you just sitting there in your cell instead of lasering yourself the fuck outta there?"

Here is the final boss. He looks like Archangel from Airwolf and he's riding around in a flying penguiny-ducky-lobstery thing. Considering he's the leader of a brutal evil organization that had no qualms about kidnapping and imprisoning a girl, murdering her boyfriend and holding her for ransom, he looks pretty goddamn goofy. That's okay though - I like goofy, especially when it comes in the form of an eyepatch-wearing, pompadour-sporting old man flying around in a vehicle that would look more appropriate floating in the lake of an amusement park.
Considering the standards set by most final bosses in arcade games, it's not a tough fight (especially if you're controlling the girlfriend) and soon you have emerged victorious.

If you got the good ending, the girlfriend is freed and our hero gets to enjoy the world one last time by hijacking the senses of his lady love. Then his ghost energy runs out and he fades away, content at a job well done. If you didn't manage to get the girl out and left her to rot in her cell...

The ghost, still looking baked as all hell but more sad-looking, hopes that the girl managed to escape. This doesn't seem very likely, because the enemy base is shown to have exploded, presumably vaporising the girl. Oh dear. Well, at least you stopped the evil villain from completing his plan to use Ghost Energy in some ill-defined but no doubt evil way. That's something, right? Right?

I gotta say, Avenging Spirit is really rather good. Personally, I've always found that Jaleco's games occupied a position where they were generally quite good but never really had that extra oomph that'd push them up to being real classics. While Avenging Spirit might not be in this very top class, it's definitely one of Jaleco's best and is something of a lost gem. The graphics are lovely, full of character and well animated, the music is really good (if occasionally repetitive) and the gameplay is really good fun. The possession gimmick lifts it out of standard action platformer territory, it controls well and it's not so difficult it becomes tedious, so all in all I've got no hesitation in recommending it if you fancy a quick blast of arcade fun. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to start studying for my PhD in Ghost Energy.

TED & IRWIN - GHOST

Yes, I made another video with the intention of raising a chuckle from you all. It might be the last, too, unless I get some proper video editing equipment - all in all though, I'm not sure it'd be worth it. Still, it might make you laugh... unless you're scared of ghooosssstssss!

Well, there you go. After that, you might be interested in this. 18th place, but not nul points. Goodnight!

10 GREAT F-ZERO REMIXES / COVERS

Another year and another E3 with no mention of a new F-Zero game. This saddens me, because I love F-Zero­ and all it stands for: the pure speed, the insane universe where a reanimated skeleton can race against a hyper-intelligent monkey, and most of all the music. The soundtrack to the original F-Zero is one of my very favourites that the SNES has to offer, which is high praise indeed consider it has competition from things like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI and Zombies ate my Neighbours. The N64 sequel F-Zero X kept the level of musical excellence high with probably the console's best soundtrack, and although F-Zero GX may have been a slight let-down in the audio stakes, F-Zero remains one of the very best series for hard-rockin', full-on musical madness. Still, there's always room for improvement, right?

nijeil - Fire Field

First up, nijeil's remix of the theme from F-Zero's final track takes everything F-Zero­'s music is known for and ramps it up to its logical conclusion: roaring guitars, searing synth lines and a real feeling of urgency. This is what should be playing during every single motorsport event. It could even make Formula One interesting! Okay, maybe not.

S.S.H. - Big Blue

"Saitama's Ultimate Weapon" tends to give me what I want from videogame remixes; loud, fast metal versions of classic videogame tunes. What baffles me is how "Big Blue" manages to simultaneously be more energetic than a puppy with lasers for blood and so damn relaxing.

Peewee, Michiko Hill - Big Blue

From the official F-Zero Arrange Album, this track is the complete opposite of the S.S.H. version. It's got saxophones! And piano! Yes, it's the jazz version... and it's brilliant. I can still (just about) remember finding an MP3 of this in the very earliest days of my internet-going youth and it opening my eyes (ears?) to the world of videogame music remixes. So I thank you, F-Zero Arrange Album: without you I may have a lot more hard-drive space but a lot fewer happy musical memories.

Nintendo - The Long Distance of Murder Guitar Arrange

"What's that? You want me to re-do the already-incredible F-Zero X soundtrack with real instruments and guitar shredding and all kinds of wonderful, wonderful things that'll make people wish they were piloting a super-sonic jet racer through the very heart of the fucking sun itself!? Yeah sure, I can do that."

Bluetrancefer - Port Town (Metroid Remix)

A fantastic melding of two Nintendo franchises as Bluetrancefer takes the Port Town theme and re-imagines it as part of the soundtrack to a lost Metroid Prime game. Ambient, chilled and spot on in its evocation of both F-Zero and Metroid.

JigginJonT - Silent Progression (Silence)

It's not all wailing guitars in F-Zero land, you know - here's a beautiful piece of improvised solo piano work from OCRemixer JigginJonT. You might think piano solos are not compatible with F-Zero's music, but you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. That's right, I'm threatening you.

SonicTheJackrabbit - Mute City (Sega Genesis Cover)

It's F-Zero! For the Megadrive! It's great, and because it's in a Megadrive style it automatically sounds like a theme from a side-scrolling shooter, like all fast-paced Megadrive music does.

Magical Trick Society - White Land

More of an electro feel from this one, although there are still guitars in evidence, and the whole thing pumps along as mightily as any good F-Zero­ remix should.

Entertainment System - Mute City, Big Blue, Port Town

VGM covers band Entertainment System put some straight-up rocking into this medley of delights, guaranteed to get your head banging. I mean, unless you're a cold-hearted gargoyle or something.

Nintendo - Rainbow Road

And to finish, not a remix of an F-Zero track but an F-Zero X remix of another Nintendo track. You see, the lucky owners of the 64DD could get an expansion pack for F-Zero X that included, amongst other things, this remix of Mario Kart 64's "Rainbow Road" music. A nice crossover between the Big N's two racing franchises, and its triumphant yet somehow melancholic sounds seem like a fitting way to end this list of remixes.
The final word? Oi, Nintendo! F-Zero: WiiU. Make it happen, people.

Previous remix compliations:
Megaman!
Castlevania!
Final Fantasy!

SONIC BLAST MAN (SNES)

Disclaimer: Sonic Blast Man does not use sonic power to blast things. I know, I know, it's disappointing. Here you are, expecting a hero who uses the raw power of sound itself to defeat his enemies, but what you get instead is a man who punches things. He punches things really hard, if that's any consolation to you. The name Hard Punch Man was probably shouted down at the developer's meeting for being somewhat literal. Anyway, here's the titular Sonic Blast Man in Taito's side-scrolling megaton-punch-em-up Sonic Blast Man.

First, a trip back in time to Sonic Blast Man's origins. The series began in 1990 as a novelty arcade machine, which was in essence a test-your-strength punchbag game with a screen.

There were five stages presenting different dangerous scenarios which could only be defused with a good solid punching. You punched the bag as hard as you could, and if you weren't a noodle-armed schoolboy like me you'd defeat whatever foe you were up against. I remember SBM cabinets being fairly common around the various seaside arcades at the time; you couldn't stand near an arcade for more than five minutes without seeing someone attempt to improve their score by hitting the pad with a roundhouse kick/baseball bat/Ford Escort. Yes, as would seem obvious to anyone that's ever been near to an arcade, people would hit the pad with things other than the gloves. Gasp! In fact, the machine was eventually recalled in the US because people kept hurting themselves, usually when trying to impress a girl after a few too many Bacardi Breezers.

Still, it was successful enough for Taito to consider a home console port. Obviously, the "punching things really hard" mechanic couldn't be replicated on the SNES. Instead they decided to take Sonic Blast Man out of his natural element, and in 1994 they shoehorned him into a side-scrolling beat-em-up, where he could put his fists of justice to good use.

The intro depicts a no-doubt mild-mannered young man transforming into Sonic Blast Man, who quite frankly is one of the stupidest-looking superheroes ever created. I'm fairly certain that the intent was to parody American comic book heroes, but the point was never really reinforced and you're left trying to straight-facedly control a hero who looks like he made his costume by coating himself in glue and rolling in the bins outside an electronics store.

His first act as hero is to save a woman who is tied to some train tracks, a large engine barreling toward her. When that's the level of imagination put into the opening scenes of a game, you'd be forgiven for getting a little disheartened, but I'll try and keep an open mind; I'm sure the madness level can only increase. Anyway, SBM saves the day the only way he knows how: by punching the train, destroying it and saving the maiden.

This raises a few issues. The obvious one is hey, Sonic Blast Man, the driver of that train had a life and a family and hopes and dreams, you fucking dick. Even if it wasn't a passenger train, our hero still made the judgement that the life of the beautiful woman was worth more than the train driver's. Secondly, the woman doesn't appear to be tied to the tracks, which makes you wonder why she didn't just wriggle out of the way. Thirdly, when our "hero" hits the train he apparently does so with a force of 100 megatons. Just to put that into perspective, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki had a yield of around 21 kilotons. The largest nuclear device ever detonated, the Russian "Tsar Bomba", was about 50 megatons. So, Sonic Blast Man puts you in control of a selfish, sociopathic weirdo with twice the destructive power of mankind's most devastating weapon. What could possibly go wrong?

The first stage, then. SBM is tasked with protecting the city, although judging by the state of it there's probably not much point. Your opponents? Street punks, of course. It's always street punks. They appear in so many videogames, they've established themselves as somewhere between dragons and failed super-soldier experiments in the villain hierarchy. Still, they do alright for themselves, seeing as they can stand up to punches with the power of an atomic explosion and all.

Fighting-wise, for a game about punching SBM seems oddly reliant on grabs. You've got a basic jab combo, and once you've hit an enemy with a few of those, SBM grabs them. From there, you can choose one of several moves to perform on them by pressing a direction on the d-pad. You can uppercup them, which also fires a shockwave forwards, or you throw them behind you, or you can finish them off with a giant swinging punch. You can also grab enemies simply by walking into them, and then you can shake them like an abusive parent with a crying baby, or simply throw them aside. Most of the skill in SBM comes from knowing which throw to use in a given situation, like throwing bad guys at other bad guys who are sneaking up behind you. SBM also has a limited supply of screen-clearing "Dynamite Punches", which seems like a step down from the 100 megaton range to me, but what do I know? I don't punch people for a living.

After fighting your way through the very Final Fight-looking first stage, you'll reach the boss. He's a punk, but, you know, bigger. That's how you become the leader of a street gang: sheer physical size. You fight him on a swinging (back-and-forth, not groovy 1960's London) girder with a Mode 7 background, which is a nice touch. As an opponent, he's far, far tougher than the preceding stage. I put this down to the fact you can't use jumping kicks on him, because he just slaps you out of the air. Not being able to use jumping attacks against a side-scrolling fighter's boss? That's blasphemy, the natural order has been upset. Not that SBM's kicks are that much use, because every time you use one he flounces across the whole screen like he's auditioning for a role in Glee and usually ends up missing his target. So, I had to stick to punching him, which went well. Time for the next stage... but wait! What's this?

Is that a giant crab? Because it sure as fuck looks like a giant crab. I'll deal with you later, my brachyuran friend. First, I'll take on Zeed from Fist of the North Star.

Oh wait, it's not Zeed, it's some other punk. You see, inbetween stages you get a chance to play the original arcade version of Sonic Blast Man. Well, sort of; you don't have to punch your SNES as hard as you can or anything. Instead, you have to furiously rotate the d-pad to build up power and then press a button when the marker is over your target. The more damage you've done to your hand by twirling the d-pad like a loon, the harder you punch your target. Your reward? Points. Whaddya mean, "just points"? In my day, points were all we had, and we hoarded them as jealously as that weird kid at school did with his Pokemon cards.

Stage two is set in a factory. Again, it's a lot like Final Fight, only this time it's the industrial stage. What does this factory make? Well, judging by the vast swarms of them that populate the level, it makes kung fu masters. Between them and the machine-gun-toting soldiers, it's a tough slog through the (fairly lengthy) stage. And then you reach a lift. A lift you have to wait on while enemies pour in. Well, of course you fucking well do. You didn't think you'd gotten away from lifts full of kung fu masters, did you? You fool! As long as there are videogames, there will be lifts full of enemies. Hell, long after the fall of mankind in the future robot wars there'll still be lifts filled with the bleached bones of kung fu masters, slowly moving up and down amongst the ruined cities.

And there are two bosses. They're the standard pair of claw-wielding ninjas. These ninja clans really need to diversify, because I'm sure claws aren't exactly at the (if you'll pardon the pun) cutting edge of assassination technology. Even worse, these ninjas are wearing sunglasses indoors, so there's a precisely 0% chance that they aren't a pair of insufferable douchebags.

Today's inter-stage punchbag is a lorry that's hurtling toward a baby that's been carelessly deposited in the middle of the road. Rather than chastising the parent for her subpar childcare skills, SBM deals with the problem the only way he knows how: by killing the innocent driver of a large vehicle. Of course, SBM had plenty of time to just move the baby out of the way, but no: he couldn't help himself, and he beat the shit out of that truck. You've got problems, SBM, deep psychological problems.

Stage three: the sewers, and you're tasked to "Exterminate the hideous thing that has risen from the sewage". I'll let you make your own jokes about human effluent and "floaters" and such. It certainly cements SBM's place in the superhero pecking order. You wouldn't get Superman down here.
While initially wary about another boring stage, I was pleasantly surprised by the fairly cool enemies who live down here. They're some kind of race of gelatinous amoeba-men, which is definitely the kind of biological freak-show I can get behind. They've got stretchy limbs, and some of them like to cling on to you and drain your health. Well, they're probably starved of affection down there in the sewers. They're also slightly transparent, which is a nice graphical touch and really sells them as being gloopy sewage monsters. It feels a little strange throwing them around, though; they look like they should be floaty and light, like fighting a carrier bag, but they get bashed around as though they're pretty solid.

The boss is definitely solid, though. He's a skeletal alien thing with a gigantic arse, which is presumably where he creates the enemies that fill the stage. Assuming this beast is the hideous thing that rose from the sewage, SBM moves in for a good punching. However, there's a problem: it's really bloody hard to hit this thing. It never seems to be quite on the same plane as you, so you're constantly throwing punches that just graze its hideous skull-like face. That just serves to piss it off, so you want to avoid this. Luckily, SBM doesn't suffer a complete mental breakdown when he realises there's something in this universe that he can't punch - he just switches to throwing things around. The way to beat this boss is to stun one of the standard enemies that spawn during the fight and then grab it and spin it around like you've entered some kind of inter-species hammer throw event, hitting the boss with his own minions. I was reminded of the stage in Turtles in Time where you have to throw the Foot Soldiers into the screen, except not as good. So, I went to play Turtles in Time for a bit. Then I came back and realised I had to finish SBM. It was... disheartening, to say the least.

Today's bonus punching target: a building. It's full of terrorists or something.

Derr hurr, I punch building good!

The next stage is another factory, but instead of kung fu masters, it produces robots. Your mission is to defeat the mad scientist, although I wonder just how insane he is: these robots certainly seem to have been built by someone in full control of their faculties. One day, I'd like to fight a mad scientist who tries to defeat me by rolling around in his own filth and warning me about secret government satellites.
I must admit, I really like the robot designs in this stage. Even the backgrounds seem like a step up, with some nice mechanical designs. However, in terms of gameplay it's the same as all the other stages, with even more lifts. Oh well, time for the boss.

It's ED-209! He's branched out from waiting for waiting for people to comply and gone into the business of forcing them to comply by destroying all of humanity. Although, if he's the boss, does that mean he's also the mad scientist? Fair play to him if he is - putting your brain in a giant mechanical battlesuit is an excellent use of mad science.

And now it's time for a crab battle! Okay, so it's not much of a battle; said crab just sits there as I subject my controller to the kind of pressures normally reserved for astronauts in giant centrifuges. And then, get this - I punched the crab! Ha ha, magical. Truly inspired. It turns out that it's actually a giant mechanical crab, which I guess means it's technically a large vehicle. We all know how SBM feels about large vehicles.

With the crab sufficiently punched, it's time for the final stage. It's set aboard a space station, not that that makes any kind of difference. There's only one type of enemy to fight, but at least it's an interesting one: they start off as normal space-suit wearing goons like on the right of the picture above, but after a few hits they mutate into the gruesome hybrids on the left. Oh, and they come in different colors, like a bag of terrifying mutant Skittles.

Then there's the boss. The last boss, in fact, and he's SBM's evil clone Heavy Blast Man. Considering he's the final boss, Heavy Blast Man doesn't really have any clear motives. "What? I dunno, send the giant crab out or something. The claw ninjas? Yeah, send them out too. I dunno, it just seems like a good idea?"
Actually, I propose an alternate hypothesis. You know Bizarro from the Superman comics, and how he's always setting up dangerous situations that he can save people from in order to prove his superheroic worth? Well, SBM is Bizarro, forever leaving babies in front of trucks so he can save the day. Heavy Blast Man is, in fact, the true hero. He has finally arrived aboard this space station to put an end to SBM's insane rampage, but unluckily for Heavy Blast Man, (and the world in general,) I kicked his ass.

Once his alternate-reality brother is dead, the space station explodes and SBM finds himself floating in the inky cosmic vastness, staring at a space shuttle. He seems pretty calm about the whole situation; he probably figures he can just punch his way back to Earth. Or maybe his mind is set on more distant planets, whole worlds filled with civilisations that have never know the punch of a man with a flowing yellow scarf and a tiny satellite dish on his forehead.
Then there's the credits, where you get a roll-call of all the enemies in the game and... that's it, really. Nothing grand or exciting, just a thank you for playing.

I'm in two minds about Sonic Blast Man. On one hand, I love side-scrolling beat-em-ups. I like fighting gelatinous, neon-hued sewer monsters. I like punching a giant robot crab with a fist like the wrath of God, and the day I stop liking that will be the day I end it all. SBM offers these things, and I appreciate them, but it never quite makes it to that higher level occupied by the likes of Final Fight. The graphics are decent enough, I guess, and they seem to get better (or at least more interesting) as the game goes on. The music is nothing special, apart from the second stage theme which I rather enjoyed:

But worst of all is our hero himself. He plods around the screen so slowly that simply getting near enough to the enemy to hit them seems like a chore, and his penchant for falling over at the slightest hostile contact quickly become grating. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that overall, SBM has enough decent ideas and nice touches to mean that playing through it didn't feel like a complete waste of time. So, give it a go if you're a fan of scrolling fighters - just make sure you don't get carried away and take a swing at a nearby train/lorry/ocean liner.

UGOKU E VER. 2.0: ARYOL

There are certain things that, as a rule, you don't expect to have compelling storylines. Porn. Michael Bay movies. SNES games about doing jigsaws. Well, you can scratch that last one, because Altron's 1994 SNES picture-puzzle-em-up Ugoku E Ver. 2.0: Aryol features just that, along with more jigsaw action than the day room of an old folk's home. Okay, maybe not that much; they hardcore love jigsaws in those places. But yes, a videogame about jigsaws can tell a better story than Michael Bay. I'm sure you're all shocked.

A while ago, I wrote about Atlus' jigsaw title Pieces, and I made several comments along the lines of how doing jigsaws is a pastime of comparable dullness to sorting a bag of sugar by grain size, or even (God forbid) watching golf. However, the magical power of videogames can make almost anything fun. I'll happily spend time playing digital recreations of activities I wouldn't go anywhere near in the real world, like the aforementioned golf, or training small animals to fight for financial gain, or even doing jigsaws. That's because videogames can do things with these tedious pursuits that can't be done in the real world, such as forming a touching story of love between two fugitives around completing a series of jigsaw puzzles. You don't get that kind of inventiveness in a Michael Bay movie, now do you?! Okay, I'm going to shut up about Michael Bay now.

Right then. Aryol is the story of a small, featureless man in a green coat and hat and his aeronautically-obsessed girlfriend who dresses as a gendarme. The story his narrated between stages by our green-clad friend: normally this would just mean a wall of incomprehensible (to me, at least) Japanese text, but Aryol rather generously lets you change to language to English in the options, allowing me to learn all about how Girlfriend (neither of our heroes is ever given a real name) is obsessed with becoming a pilot. After years of being passed over for piloting jobs due to her gender, (and possibly the fact that she looks like a French policeman,) she decides the only way she'll be able to realise her dream is to rob a bank and start her own airline. Reasonable enough: after all, that's how Richard Branson got started.

This is the first puzzle. Green performs his pre-heist stretches while Girlfriend looks on blankly. Literally blankly, as she doesn't appear to have a face. That's got to be an advantage if you're a wanted criminal, you could just draw another face onto your freakishly smooth head for an instant disguise.
You're given a few seconds to look at the picture and then bam!

The picture explodes, and you're left to put the pieces back together. The cursor is a tiny version of our green-clad narrator, and you can use him to pick up tiles, rotate them, flip them and drop them into place. Get them in the right place and there's a satisfying "k'chunk" sound effect to let you know you're spot on. Complete the puzzle and your SNES explodes, killing you in a hail of molten plastic and shards of circuitboard. No, of course not, you get a bit more story and then it's on to the next stage.
But wait! This isn't your namby-pamby schoolgirl knitting club jigsaw puzzle: no sir, this is the top of the line, the super-deluxe, the very pinnacle of mankind's advanced jigsaw technology! These jigsaws... they move!

Yes, you have to piece together a little animated scene. Green's very happy to be there, it seems. I must admit, that seems like a good recreation of the kind of smile you'd find on a man wearing a wizard's hat and toying with a stick of dynamite.
Obviously, the animated puzzles make things a little more difficult: unless you like to drop acid before you sit down with a jigsaw, you've probably won't be used to the the pictures moving around. Occasionally Aryol throws a puzzle at you that takes the animation aspect and uses it to slap you in the metaphorical balls. For instance, there's a stage where the puzzle depicts a lighthouse. The lighthouse can shine it's beam all around, like a good lighthouse should; out to sea, along the dangerous, rocky coastline, and right into my eyes.

That view, the one that looks like a close-up of Big Bird's ballsack, is the one you get for roughly 50% of the lighthouse puzzle. Luckily the game doesn't pull this kind of bullshit very often and it's nice to see that kind of restraint from a developer: they could easily have made every puzzle like this, all the way up to the final stage which consists of a blank white screen where the word "JIGSAW" occasionally flashes up for four milliseconds like some Orwellian propaganda message.
So, Aryol rumbles on. Green and Girlfriend rob the bank and transfer the cash into a more manageable format by using it to buy a jewel-encrusted crown. That seems like a bad investment; I bet crowns depreciate more quickly than sports cars. Nobody wants a second-hand crown. Well, the heirs to various thrones do, I guess.

As you can probably imagine with a game about jigsaws, the gameplay doesn't really change much. Outside the basic placing of pieces in their correct positions, the only other complication is the inclusion of duplicate pieces. There are a couple in every puzzle: a pair of identical pieces, one of which has been designated "correct" and the other, um, "not correct". If you put the "wrong" piece in the spot where its angelic, blameless "good" counterpart should go, it explodes and pushes the surrounding pieces out of the way. This can be extremely frustrating, especially if you put one down in the middle of an otherwise-completed section. The most irritating thing about it is that there's no way to tell the two pieces apart, and it just comes down to a fifty-fifty guess.

Fortunately, that frustration is balanced somewhat by the "lucky" tiles. Also indistinguishable from a normal tile, when placed in the correct position they automatically fill in the gaps around them. Of course, this means it's down to chance how useful they are: get one as your final piece and you're going to feel a bit cheated, but put one down in the centre of an empty board and you'll feel as though Lady Luck herself is giving you a crafty hand shandy.

Having snuck onto the giant aircraft "Aryol" to evade the police, our heroes learn that a radical group has planted a bomb on the plane. Gasp! So, they jump out of the plane, which seems sensible enough. They try and warn the police but they're laughed at, possibly because Girlfriend has no face and Green is dressed as a tiny magician. So, they decide the only course of action is to get back onto the Aryol and take care of the bomb themselves.

Exciting, isn't it? Things start getting a bit trickier in the jigsaw department as the size of the tiles gets smaller and smaller. It was only at this late stage of the game that I realised that you can press the red dot at the top of the frame a few times per stage, and doing so lets you see the whole picture for a few seconds. It's extremely useful, but it came a little too late for me as I'd already paid a court sketch artist a bloody fortune to draw make an inaccurate pastel rendering of the complete picture the first time it appeared.

After various trials and tribulations, (including an encounter with a dragon,) Green and Girlfriend manage to get back onto the Aryol and shoot up the terrorists. Well, Girlfriend does: she's fearless bordering on psychotic, and I'd quite happily sit through a series of her adventures, kicking ass and stealing planes while Green hides and plays with his explosives. Overall, the story almost has the feel of a Studio Ghibli film, pitched somewhere between Porco Rosso and The Castle of Cagliostro, and I mean it when I say it's a great addition to the game and by far Aryol's best feature.

Of course the story must come to an end, and after twenty-five or so stages, the final stretch begins. Green's attempts to disarm the bomb come a bit unstuck when he makes a mistake and releases the detonation switch. The switch needs to be constantly held down; if it's let go, the bomb explodes. This is where the story takes a twist, because there are several endings that you can achieve. I'm not sure how you trigger them; I'd assume it's based on how quickly you finish the puzzles (or possibly just the final puzzle). I got the best ending, where Girlfriend ties the switch down with her bootlace, and she and Green escape with their crown.

Maybe I'm just a soppy old bastard, but I found it surprisingly touching. The other endings get gradually worse for our heroes: they leave the crown behind to hold the switch and get away with nothing, or they hold the switch down themselves, saving the passenger's lives but getting arrested in the process, or the plane explodes and everyone dies. I'm glad I didn't get that last one; I'm a delicate flower and I'm not sure I could have taken it.


If you get the good ending, Girlfriend uses the money from the crown to start her own airline, and everybody's happy. You might have noticed that there's some Russian written on the plane above. I think (with my non-existent Russian skills) that it says "ДРАКОН", which means dragon. There seems to be a bit of Russian theme to Aryol, actually. Omsk is mentioned, and there's some Russian on the title screen. The bottom word is (I think) "ДРАКОН" again, and the other two are possibly "ОРЁЛ" and "ЛЕГЕНДАРИ", which mean "Eagle" and "Legendary". In fact, the Russian for Eagle is "oryol", so I guess "Aryol" is one short step away. So, Girlfriend is a bank-robbing, plane-stealing badass Russian gendarme.

I've gotta say, it's difficult to recommend Ugoku E Ver. 2.0: Aryol as a gameplay experience. I mean, it's just jigsaws and nothing else. The graphics are average, the music is average and once you've seen all the puzzles you've seen everything (at least the alternate endings go some way to providing a little replayability). That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, though, even if I did get all the enjoyment from the story. Perhaps it's because I've spent so much time writing about games with stories that are rarely more complex than "rescue girl X from villain Y", but whatever the reason it's something I'm glad I've experienced, you know? So, give it a go if you can - it doesn't take long. Or alternatively you can read the whole story here. Just don't let jigsaws creep into your real life; it's a dangerous slope that can only end in alienation, misery and an eventual murder spree.