CIRCUS CHARLIE (ARCADE)

Clowns: greasepainted psychopaths, haunters of children, each and every one of them a deranged serial killer, possibly equipped with dark powers gained through a foul communion with one of the Elder Gods. Or maybe I'm being unduly harsh. There must be some nice clowns out there, a harlequin or two who doesn't want to strip the marrow from your bones, and in the interests of fairness I'm going to attempt to find one in Konami's 1984 arcade big-top-em-up Circus Charlie. Think of it as immersion therapy.

Yes, step right up and experience the thrills and excitement of the circus! See the pointless animal cruelty! Eat snack foods so unhealthy they can stop a man's heart from fifty yards away! Shriek in terror at the cavalcade of pale-faced sons of Satan who exist only to destroy hope and innocence wherever they find it! Okay, okay, that's enough about evil clowns for now, but here's one last piece of clown trivia before we get started. You know the "clown music," the tune that plays in your head when you think of clowns, dah dah dadadada dah dah daaah daah, that one? It's actual title is "Entry of the Gladiators". Imagine that tune being played before two men wage a bloody battle to the death for the pleasure of a ruthless emperor and his subjects. Funny how it has come to be associated with clowns.
Anyway, Circus Charlie is, unsurprisingly given it's got "circus" right there in the title, about various circus acts and the eponymous Charlie's attempts to perform them all.

There's Charlie now, flitting between the six events on offer. There are two versions of the arcade machine, one that allows you to select your event and one that makes you play through all six in sequence. This is the version that lets you choose, but I'm still going to play through them in the suggested order because I am a weak-willed fool who cannot break himself away from his deeply ingrained patterns of behaviour. Plus, the first event has a lion in it and I'm not prepared to wait a moment longer to see what that lion is up to.

Oh, it's a lion race, is it? Charlie has taken his seat upon the king of the jungle, desperately trying to bring it under control before it leaps into the crowd and eats a small child. It's okay, Charlie's got plenty of time before that happens - just look how far away the crowd are, right down the other end of this American Football field that the circus has pitched up on.

You're actually supposed to be reaching the other side of the course by making the lion jump through flaming hoops. It's very straightforward: you can move forward and even backwards with the stick, and you've got a button to jump. You can't go under the big hoops, or at least Charlie can't - the lion could probably make it through, but the bottom of the ring is at just the right height to smash into Charlie's jolly red nose and incinerate him.

"Oh NO!!" says the crowd. Even from that distance, they can make out Charlie's grisly fate, but none of Charlie's colleagues come to help. For them, it's just another vignette in the grotesque tapestry that is the circus.
Don't worry, though, Charlie has extra lives and the will to succeed, managing to leap over the pots of flaming oil scattered along his path and even claiming some extra cash by leaping through the smaller, higher hoops.

The whole thing is rather good fun. Charlie has full dominance over his lion, so your jumps are crisp and predictable. The hoops move towards you, which means you're not just moving forwards and tapping jump but trying to advance as quickly as possible - because more haste means more points, and the whole point of Circus Charlie is to score points - whilst also moving back and forth, waiting for hoops to get into an optimum jumping-through position.

Reach the goal and you're given points based on the time you took and how many hoops you jumped through, as well as being rewarded with something incredibly rare - a non-ironic use of the phrase "far out!"
Riding a lions through rings of fire has already secured Charlie a place as one of gaming's true tough guys. Master Chief may have fought all those aliens, but he was a super-soldier bred for war, not a barely-pubescent clown in baggy trousers. M. Bison may have mastered Psycho Power, but I douby he could tame a big cat given that he's forever having his clock cleaned by a karate hobo. Circus Charlie, then - a true titan of videogaming.
After the excitement of the first event, Charlie catches a break with the next one. It's all about monkeys!

Monkeys, and not falling from the high-wire and down to a grisy death in the centre ring. That's an important element too.
The goal of this event is to reach the other side of the tightrope without touching any monkeys. The apes, safe in the knowledge that they are the masters of this particular domain, charge towards Charlie with mischievous grins and a desire to see our hero plummet to his death. Luckily Charlie's no slouch on the high-wire either, and he can jump over the monkeys and land safely - an impressive feat for anyone and doubly so if each of their shoes are the size of a two-man kayak.

Sometime a purple monkey will appear. They can run faster that the other monkeys, possibly due to the same genetic abnormality that gave them purple fur. They even jump as you jump. No passive bystanders, these lavender apes: they're actively tying to get Charlie killed. Circus Charlie is set just after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it seems.
This is even more simple than the first stage. Just move to the right and jump over the monkeys. The faster you escape the Gauntlet of Monkey Death, the more points you get. You also get bonus points for hurdling multiple monkeys in one leap. It's enjoyable in a shallow way, but it does leave you wondering how this act came to be. Did the ringmaster think that people weren't going to be sufficiently excited by the sight of a clown on a tightrope and said to himself hey, let's spice things up with a swarm vicious chimps? Well, he was right. This is much more entertaining, and the addition of the monkeys gives the audience someone to root for.

Okay, next event. Trampolines! Yes, the events do seem to be getting less interesting as we progress. All you need to to is press right to bounce from one trampoline to the next. Sometimes the trampolines with have circus people between them, like firebreathers and these sword-jugglers who look furious about having their act downgraded from a main attraction to a bit-part in the antics of a tumbling fool. They get their revenge by throwing knives into Charlie's nethers as he jumps over them. The circus management tries to pass this off as part of the act, but we know the truth - and the truth is that if you cross a circus person, they will stab you.
So, the goal here is to time your bounces so you pass over / under the projectiles, but you can't hang about too long because after three bounces on one trampoline Charlie gains so much momentum that he smashes his head into the top of the tent.

An elephant looks on, silently judging the proceedings, the contempt obvious in his cold, black eyes. In fact, the elephant has always been there, watching Charlie's trials from the distance. It's kinda creeping me out.
This event, as you can probably guess, isn't much fun. It's okay, I suppose, just a little tedious - aside from avoiding the attacks of your fellow carnies, the only other thing to do his hold your nerve on the high bounces in the hopes of collecting some moneybags for extra points.

The next event is balls, and for that I should thank it for allowing me such an easy, if immature, joke. Big balls! Balls that must not be allowed to come into contact with one another, lest Charlie be violently cast to the ground, the laughter of the crowd ringing in his ears and bringing hot flashes of shame to his cheeks. Suck it up, Charlie, at least a fall from that height isn't fatal.

No, really, all you have to do is leap from ball to ball without falling. It's a little more involving that the trampolines because your jumps have to be more accurate, and it does at least feel like something a clown might reasonably be expected to do, but it's hard to think of anything interesting to say about it. Therefore, I shall just say "balls" again, because I have all the grace and maturity of a seven-year-old.

Alright, this is more like it! Charlie rides a horse towards some springy platforms. Some of the platforms are at head-height, so you have to jump off the horse and onto the platforms lest you take a springboard in the face. Don't worry about the horse leaving you behind - Charlie and his steed have developed an intimate psychic connection over the years, and your horse will always end up underneath you when it's time to land. If you're going to worry about anything, worry about the horse itself.

I think perhaps claiming it's a horse is too generous: at best it's two men in a horse costume, at worst a terrifying mockery of life formed from demonic marshmallows, maybe even the mount of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man himself. No, that's ridiculous. Stay-Puft rides a Harley.
This event's one of the better ones - it's still hardly complex, but it's got a nice pace to it and trying to time your jumps for multiple bounces on the same springboard (and therefore more points) gives you that bit extra to think about.

That said, my favourite part of the horse riding is that it's surprisingly difficult to make the final jump from horseback to the winner's podium, leaving you with a fairly high chance of sailing through the springboard section with ease, only to make a proper tit of yourself at (literally) the final hurdle. No wonder that elephant looks so morose.

This is the last event, and sadly it's also the least fun. Trapezing should not be attempted by clowns. They have special people to do the trapezing, oh, what are they called? Oh yeah, trapeze artists. People who aren't just good at swinging about on a narrow metal bar but who have elevated it to an art form. I don't know what poor Charlie did to piss off his bosses, but by making him swing from a trapeze they're certainly getting their revenge.

Swing back and forth, build up speed and jump from one trapeze to the next - that's the aim of this stage, and it sounds simple enough but that's before you take Charlie's lack of skill into consideration. All the other events have had very sharp, precise controls, but jumping from one trapeze to the next just doesn't feel right and it takes quite a lot of practise to get a handle on the required timing - not a good thing for an arcade title that has already made it clear that it wants you to hurry the hell up. Charlie doesn't so much jump as he does let go of the bar and drop like a goddamn rock, which feels extremely counter-intuitive, and while there are some trampolines at the bottom of the screen that will save you if you land on them, be prepared for a frustrating experience the first time you try it.

As ever, the elephant sees all. He sees the pain, the hurt, the cruelty, the "hilarious" oversized trousers. He sees everything and stores it away in the depths of his unknowable mind for all time, because an elephant never forgets. Never.
So yeah, the trapeze stage is more frustrating than fun, which is a disappointment because up to now Circus Charlie has been a pleasant if not stellar experience. Oh well, at least if you're playing the version of the game with selectable stages you can skip the trapeze... until you've cleared each of the other events six times, in which case you simple play the trapeze stage repeatedly. Or so I hear: I enjoyed Circus Charlie but I didn't stick with it for that long.

Once you reach the end of the trapeze stage, Charlie splits into countless identical clones. It's not much, but it's the closest you're getting to an ending so enjoy it while you can. Normally a clown that can rapidly multiply through cellular mitosis would be cause for a high-intensity firebombing of the area, but I'll give Charlie a break - he's kind of adorable, for a clown. Circus Charlie is pretty adorable all around, with cheerful, vibrant graphics with some charming animations, particular Charlie himself and the horse's goofy, help-my-legs-have-a-mind-of-their-own gallop.

That's about it for Circus Charlie. As I mentioned, you can replay the events again a few times, becoming more difficult with each iteration until you've completed them the maximum amount of times.

"No more," begs the lion. "No more..." The circus, everyone!
Am I cured of my fear of clowns? No, because I'm not actually scared of clowns. I just find them a little creepy is all - as I would find any man who prances around in front of children, slathered in make-up and dressed like an explosion in a pantomime's wardrobe department, to be a bit suspect.
Circus Charlie was fun, though. Limited, yes, but then again it was released in 1984 so you can't expect too much. It's cute, it's mostly simple and to-the-point, it's a good test of reflexes and it even has a few secret ways of racking up points: for instance, if you collect all the moneybags on a lion-riding stage, a bird will appear at the goal and spew coins all over you.

We call this manoeuvre the "Scrooge McDuck Golden Shower."
That's Circus Charlie, then: good clean fun, especially if you like games centered on amassing points or being stared at by a dead-eyed elephant.

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NINJA COMMANDO (ZX SPECTRUM)

Things that were big in the 1980s: Michael Jackson, Dynasty, shoulder pads... and ninjas. Ninjas were a genuine pop-culture craze, which still strikes me as an odd quirk of fate. Imagine if it had been, say, Aztec warriors who had sparked the world's imaginations during the era of Thatcher and Reagan instead of ninjas: Teenage Mutant Aztec Turtles would have been very different, for starters. Parents who complained about the violence in TMNT might have had a point if each episode ended with Michaelangelo tearing the still-beating heart from his enemy's chest as an offering to the gods.

But I digress. Here at VGJunk a pop culture craze can only mean one thing, and that's cash-in games - and boy were there a lot of those. There are around twenty games on the ZX Spectrum alone with "Ninja" in the title, and that doesn't even include ninja-based but not ninja-named games like Shinobi, ranging from (relatively) serious titles such as The Last Ninja to a slew of "wacky" games with no connection to ninjas beyond the name, like BMX Ninja, Ninja Hamster and Ninja Scooter Simulator. Yes, those are all real games.
With that in mind, I set myself the goal of finding the ZX Spectrum's most average ninja game. Something slap-bang in the middle, something pointless in its blandness and, as is usually the case with ninja games, something that has bugger all to do with ninjas. I think I might have found that game. It was released in 1989 by Zeppelin Games, and it's called Ninja Commando.

The loading screen is trying to trick me into thinking it's actually called NINIA OMMAND, but that's just typical shinobi trickery that can safely be ignored.
This is our ninja. The way he's gingerly holding his sword suggests that he's not entirely comfortable with the use of bladed weapons, but that's okay because we won't be using one in this game anyway. He also made his ninja hood by pulling a stocking over a motorcycle helmet. At least the loading screen is colourful, but if you're here because you were drawn, moth-like, to the neon hues of the ZX Spectrum then I suggest you turn back now because things are about to get drab.

Monochrome, even. Two fuzzy grey ninjas squat on a fuzzy grey background, unable to bring themselves to look at each other after a recent argument about which kinds of shuriken are the best.
I assume this dismal screen was purposefully designed this way to encourage the player to start the game as quickly as possible, so let's get on with it.

Of course, Ninja Commando is a side-scrolling platformer. I told you I was looking for the average. I'm also looking for the hero, because I seem to have mislaid him amongst the off-white mist that makes up the levels.

There he is, looking not at all like a ninja. He looks like a jogger with his hood up. Is this entire game a shocking case of mistaken identity, where one man out for an evening run is mistaken for a trained assassin? I don't want to start making wild claims about Zeppelin Games' intentions on this one but yes, that's exactly what's happening.

Your mission is to run from left to right, jumping over holes and avoiding enemies, until you reach the end of the stage. Ninja Commando keeps up its sterling work in the field of blandness by adopting this genre, but it shocked me by being far superior to many of its contemporaries when it comes to the controls. They're much better than many Spectrum games, and given the kind of jerky mess I was expecting from a budget-priced ZX game they damn near blew my mind. Your ninja moves smoothly and reacts with precision to your commands, although he doesn't have many skills to master - move left or right, jump and fire is all you have at your disposal. Still, it's nice that I can generally get my ninja to do what I want him to do with the minimum of fuss.

Being a ninja / unfortunate jogger, you have raised the anger of many men, all of whom have sworn a solemn oath to destroy you and all you hold dear. Their plan for achieving this goal is to mill about the levels, getting in your way. Here we can see a column of crash test dummies advancing upon our hero with murder on their minds. "Marching mannequins shouldn't be a problem for a ninja," I hear you cry, and you're right. Sadly our hero isn't much of a ninja because he forgot to bring a bloody weapon with him. You start Ninja Commando bare-handed, and being a videogame ninja touching your opponents causes you to die instantly. Do ninjas and commandos cancel each other out or something, as though a special forces soldier is the positron to the electron of the ninja? Commandos - tough guys. Ninjas - tough guys. Ninja Commandos? That scrawny kid at school who wore corrective shoes and smelled weird.

You aren't completely defenceless, however - it's just that our hero went to the same dojo as Super Mario. To kill an enemy, you must master the deadly martial art of jumping on their head. Yup, jump on their heads. To kill them. And you're a ninja. It's a good job I read the instructions before I started playing this. I don't think I would have figured that one out.
Once your enemies' weakness has been revealed to you, you can start smashing heads beneath your feet which will lead in turn to Ninja Commando's weapons system. You see, there are weapons in this game, it's just that our ninja pal left them all in his ninja bedside table or wherever it is that he stores his tools of death. Kill an enemy, and there's a chance that they'll drop a shuriken for you to collect.

See? Once collected, you can throw shurikens with the fire button and revel in the one ninja-related aspect of the game. It doesn't stop there, though - once you've got the throwing stars, killing more enemies will cause one to eventually drop a bomb pick up. Collect the bombs and they replace your shurikens as your long-range murder option. Bomb enough enemies and you'll collect a flamethrower.

What, you don't think a flamethrower is a suitable weapon for a ninja? Well then you'll probably hate the last weapon, because it's just a gun.

Okay, maybe not just any gun, because most guns don't fire rounds that look like quivering strips of bacon, but a gun is a gun. Notice that the weapons get less ninja-y as they progress - I was hoping to collect a fifth power-up that'd put me in the cockpit of an F-15E Strike Eagle, but no such luck.
You lose your weapon when you die, (or finish the level,) which sounds harsh but isn't that much of a problem because using your weapons in Ninja Commando turns out to be a fairly pointless exercise.

For one thing, enemies just keep spawning, pouring out of the doorways that litter every level to create an endless stream of crash test dummies, generic men with guns or, in this case, goons whose bubble-shaped heads offer all manner of possible explanations. Are they astronauts, traditionally the fiercest rivals of the ninja clans? Men in hazmat suits? Extremely lost Olympic fencers? It's probably that last one - it's a little-known fact that the final step in the training of an Olympic fencer is that they must take the life of a ninja in order to prove their worth.
So, enemies constantly pour into the battle, making standing still and throwing shurikens at them rather redundant when the only reward is more pointless weaponry.

After a while spent playing Ninja Commando and struggling with the hordes of enemies, it became clear to me that I was playing the game all wrong. I began to think of it this way: Ninja Commando is actually a surprisingly accurate take on the activities of the real ninjas of feudal Japan. Our hero, having slipped into the enemy base to assassinate someone or poison a well or whatever he was paid to do, has been spotted. That's why there are so many enemies everywhere, and what would a ninja do when faced with these overwhelming odds? Run. Run as fast as he could to escape his pursuers and make it back safely to ninja territory (directions to Ninja Territory: go right).

Obviously I just pulled that story out of my arse, but running is definitely the way to go in Ninja Commando. This is because when the enemies first appear on screen, for a few seconds you cannot be harmed by them. If they're flashing when they walk out of their doorway, then you can walk right through them, and if you're quick enough you can get past them and on to the next area before they have a chance to attack. Speed is of the essence, and stopping to actually fight enemies is right off the menu. In fact, sometimes blindly charging forwards is the only reasonable way to progress.

Take the situation pictured above. Having dithered around for too long, our hero has allowed the gun-toting soldier on the platform above to become active, fatal to the touch and armed with one of those wobbly bacon launchers. From this position the Ninja Commando is, to be blunt, fucked. You can't attack while jumping, so even if he had a shuriken, he couldn't take the enemy out via that method. You can't hop over to the next platform, because the arc of your jump will carry you into the enemy and kill you. You could try jumping up to the gunman's platform, but that's a very difficult landing to make without touching him and dying, and even if you did manage it getting past him would still be a challenge because you can only jump straight up or at a set angle. The only other option for our ninja friend is to live out the remainder of his life on that one small platform, ekeing out a living by ploughing the seven square inches of arable land found upon it and building a simple dwelling out of his own clothes.
That's if you hesitated, of course. If you run for it, you can get past the man with the gun before he solidifies, a hearty "see you later, sucker!" on your lips as he struggles to materialise in time to shoot you in the back before you're gone, gone, gone.

In fact, if you're thinking of playing Ninja Commando, then I suggest you cheat to make it a more enjoyable experience all around. There's a POKE you can use to give yourself 255 lives. Use it, and play the game not as a platformer, but as an obstacle course. Run though the levels as quickly as you can, before the enemies can get their acts together. Ninja Commando is surprisingly generous with its in-stage checkpoints, and when combined with a huge amount of lives you'll find that dying is not the punishment it might otherwise feel like. Doing this transforms Ninja Commando from a frustrating, overly difficult and plodding exercise in tedium to a fast-paced test of reflexes and memory where the game's smooth controls and precise-but-not-pixel-perfect tests of jumping can really shine.

The transformation was pretty amazing, and I ended up enjoying Ninja Commando far more than I thought I would. I mean, my expectations were lowered because this is a Spectrum game, after all, but I had fun with it. It does have some flaws, of course: on the whole I actually really liked the monochrome graphics, which at least avoided the colour clashing so prevalent in Spectrum games and gave the game an unusual mood, but it does occasionally get difficult to see what the bloody hell is going on.

At least he's more camouflaged than most videogame ninjas.
There's also the fact that the levels are very samey, and once you've gotten past the first two you've pretty much seen everything that Ninja Commando has to offer. Plus, there are occasional appearances by what I have taken to calling the Bastard Potato.

That's the lumpy thing on the left with the wiggly laser coming out of it. The Bastard Potato is more an environmental hazard than an enemy - it's always active, and it does nothing but sit there, spewing lasers and being fatal to the touch, and it requires some extremely accurate jumping to get past. Of the 255 lives I gave myself, I think these things claimed about two hundred. Luckily they don't appear very often, but now I find myself eyeing the King Edwards in my kitchen with some suspicion.

Oh, and the message you receive for finishing the game is so spartan it feels almost sarcastic. "Well done," say the developers, while clapping slowly. Well, it's a ZX Spectrum game so I was expecting it. Who's the loser now, huh? Hang on, wait, it's still me.
I set out to find the most average ninja game that the Spectrum had to offer, but in the end I stumbled across something which, with a little cheating, managed to exceed my admittedly low expectations and keep me entertained for an hour or so. Would I recommend it to other people? No, of course not. I'm not that cruel. But if you do find yourself wanting to give Ninja Commando a try, I hope this article has helped you understand how to play it for maximum fun yield. And hey, unlike Ninja Gaiden there are no birds to make a mockery of your years of martial arts training and send you plummeting down chasms. It's just got those Bastard Potatoes instead.

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VIOLENT STORM (ARCADE)

When something is named after an extreme meteorological event, you know it means serious business - just think of the Hawker Hurricane, earthquake bombs or disco legends Earth, Wind and Fire. The same is true of today's game - Konami's 1993 arcade beat-em-up Violent Storm.

Yes, it's another side-scrolling brawler and yes, if you get right down to it, it's a familiar melange of the usual brawler clichés... but it's also somehow more than that, and well worth investigating.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Let's begin with the intro, shall we?

Three young friends gather around their sweet red sports car, waiting for their fourth friend to finish her grocery shopping because apparently Tesco managed to survive the cataclysmic nuclear war.

There she is now, her cheerful demeanour and flawless complexion leading all who meet her to wonder if this nuclear apocalypse was as bad as everyone makes out. Her name is Sheena, but she's not a punk rocker and neither is she in a goth gang. She's blonde and she appears in an arcade beat-em-up, and that can mean only one thing:

Immediate abduction by a criminal gang! That's the lesson here, ladies - if you dare to be attractive in the grim future beyond the fall of civilisation, you will immediately be kidnapped by a punk rock gremlin who looks like Blanka's black-sheep brother.
Well, that's everything set up nicely, then. Sheena needs to be rescued and oh hey, look, she just happens to be friends with three young chaps who are a dab hand at pummelling the everloving crap out of people. The villains of Violent Storm must have taken target acquisition lessons from the Mad Gear gang.

Here are the three men with Sheena's fate in their muscular hands. There's Wade, a denim aficionado with uncontrollable OCD issues related to combing his hair, Boris the strongman who manages to strike fear into his enemies despite his shorts-and-suspenders ensemble, and Kyle. Kyle's not as interesting as the other two. Even the spikes he's affixed to the shoulders of his puffy vest seem like an afterthought.
You won't be surprised to learn that these characters fall into the usual pattern of one balanced fighter, one who relies on raw strength and one who's a bit faster but not as strong. It's the unbreakable yin-yang system within the Tao of smacking punks, plus that third guy who's a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none.

Oh no, not the Stormmobile! Where are you going to find another one of those in the post-apocalyptic wasteland? You could have easily left the car and made your way around the gate but no, you just have to show off your flair for the dramatic.

Now the game proper can begin, and you know what? It's just as you'd expect it to be. Enemies appear on screen, and you hit them. Hit them more than once and you'll perform a combo, walk into them and you'll grab them in preparation for a throw, press jump and attack together and you'll spin around, hitting all the enemies next you you at the cost of some of your health bar. Yes, all the basics are here, but right from the start Violent Storm attempts to elevate itself above the average. For one thing, when you start the first stage your ears are greeted by this.

Cheesier than a stall at a French dairy market? Yes, but it's also fantastic. I know, I know, musical preference is deeply personal but come on, how perfect is this as the theme that accompanies a guy called Wade punching villains in the ruins of a train station? "Break out fighting," indeed. Also break out singing. That might just be me, though.

So, between the detailed, vibrant graphics and a soundtrack that has already won me over, Violent Storm is worthy of a playthrough just based on presentation alone, but happily the gameplay also steps up to the mark by giving you many more offensive options than the average brawler. As well as all the usual moves, you also have two separate dashing attacks, leg sweeps and uppercuts, multiple different throws, a back-attack executed by pressing away and attack that's great for dealing with enemies trying to creep up behind you, and best of all the ability to attack downed enemies. Look, I'm not too proud to kick a man while he's down, especially if said man was trying to fracture my skull with a steel pipe mere moments before.
Oh yeah, and you can pick up weapons, naturally. Weapons such as the iconic (and brutal) steel pipe and throwing knives, as well as potted plants to smash into people's heads.

Why yes, I did say "playtime's over." I'm a sad man who should really be allowed no contact with others.
So far, Violent Storm feels like an amalgamation of many brawlers from around the same time - it's got some of the punk-ish atmosphere (and kick-em-while-they're-down attacks) of Vendetta, the almost-pastel, huge-sprited graphical style of Monster Maulers and the expansive command list of Night Slashers - all of which have been fused together and sharpened to create a beat-em-up experience that's infused with a sense of raw fun.

Even the stage one boss looks like a fun guy, what with his cheerful (if stitched-on) grin. If you want to be an end-of-stage boss in a beat-em-up you've got to have a gimmick, and in Dabel's case it's that he's so ugly he has to wear a bag on his head. Oh, and he's good at hitting people with his club. Just how ugly is Dabel? Well, you can find out by using repeated uppercuts to knock his bag off.

Pretty ugly, is the answer, although perhaps no worse than your average neo-Nazi thug. You can see guys who look like that sitting in dark corners of pubs up and down the country, but Dabel is obviously self-conscious about his appearance and has channelled his dark feelings into clonking people with a mace. I'd almost feel sorry for him if it wasn't me who was receiving the mace-clonkings.
A short fight later - Dabel seems particularly susceptible to grabs - and the first stage is over, and our heroes have a train to catch.

Just so you know, the guys with the chains are called Gigadeath, which is presumably also the name of their Megadeth tribute band. His hobbies also include spinning around a lot. The apocalypse truly gave license to mankind's darkest desires.
As I made my way along the train, kicking kung-fu fighters off the side and trying to avoid Gigadeath as he pirouetted giddily across the carriages, I settled into the flow of Violent Storm's gameplay and came to the conclusion that it's an enjoyable flow to be caught up in. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, your expanded moveset allows for fast-paced, free-flowing fights where your attacks just seem to click together nicely - for instance, your back-attack is fast and responsive, (unlike many beat-em-ups where it's difficult to pull it off correctly,) allowing you prevent yourself for becoming surrounded.

The other thing is the challenge posed by individual enemies. There's nothing that drags down a beat-em-up faster than swarms of enemies with grossly elongated health bars, especially if they're too stupid to put up much of a fight, leading you to spend the majority of each battle waiting for them to get up from your last combo so you can hit them again. No such problems in Violent Storm: the enemies hit hard, so you need to stay on your toes, but they also go down quickly and are replaced at breakneck speed. This keeps the gameplay fast and exciting while never making it too easy, and Violent Storm deserves to be commended for getting this balance just right.
It should also be commended for allowing you to pick up piglets that then turn into American footballs which can, in turn, be thrown at enemies. The look on the mother pig's face says she's seen it all before.

Here, the kidnapper goblin taunts the player from atop his personal locomotive before setting an evil ticket collector on you.

This madness is what videogames are all about. Even in the deepest depths of low-budget horror, I don't think there's ever been a movie about a hunchbacked conductor called Joe who serves as an enforcer for a post-apocalyptic crime syndicate by grabbing heroes with his oversized ticket punch. Of course, if that movie does exist then please send me a copy. I'm assuming it'd be called something like Lo-Kill-Motive. The tag line? "He'll punch your ticket - to Hell!"
With the advantage of the long reach offered by his weapon of choice, Joe can definitely put up a fight, but eventually repeated application of the Wade's flying kicks put paid to his evil ambitions / fare-collecting duties.

Stage three is set in the ruined city, and I've switched to Boris. I like Boris. He's got a wide range of bone-breaking throws, plus he can roll along the floor in a ball like Sonic the Hedgehog. The villains will never see that one coming.

The city is a cross between Las Vegas and a red-light district, starting out on the neon-lit streets before moving into a bar complete with a belly dancer who, to her credit, goes about her performance completely unfazed by the carnage unfolding in front of her. There's a cat up on stage, too. I don't think it's part of the act, but it is adorable.
All things considered, it seems like a pretty classy establishment, or it least it was until Boris used all the chairs to pummel the bad guys. I don't think the barkeeper minds, though. You know how usually bartenders in this situation are always saying things like "we don't want any trouble in here"? Not the owner of this fine establishment.

Oh no, he wants trouble. He lives for it. He got into the landlord business purely as a excuse to see bar-room brawls. They... excite him.
After battling through the bar and the kitchen beyond, our hero is distracted by watching the cat from earlier chase a mouse around in the background. Then a trap door opens, and you're literally dropped into a boss fight.

It's a no-holds-barred cage match against Drigger, a giant of a man who looks like he escaped from a parallel universe where Mike Haggar was raised by bears. Nice attention to detail on the under-arm hair, Konami.
I wasn't prepared for the raw power of Drigger, and honestly he bust me up pretty badly. He's fast for a big lad, and he seems to get faster the more damage you do him - plus Boris is a big target and easily grabbed, so Drigger can unleash his various wrestling moves. The crowd seems to enjoy it, at least. Sports entertainment lives on even after the fall of man.

Stage four and here comes Kyle, kicking his way through the ubiquitous industrial zone. What is the industry in question? The industry of pain. Also metallurgy and steelworking. All those steel pipes have to come from somewhere.
Kyle is a speedster of the three, although he's hardly an unstoppable streak of lightning even when compared to Boris - Boris, as previously mentioned, can roll along the floor like Sonic, which is a nippy way of getting around even if you're not the World's Fastest Hedgehog. Kyle does at least have a special technique whereby hammering the attack button will cause him to perform a Chun-Li-style Hundred Foot Kick attack.

The factory stage, then. You know what to expect - pipes, oil drums, girders, environmental hazards such as rivers of molten metal and hydraulic presses that'll crush anyone who walks underneath them into a fine paste (you can see that has happened to one of the enemies in the screenshot above). Are factories in Japan notoriously dangerous? Is it a cultural thing, that it's taken as fact that every manufacturing plant is designed not so much for the efficient production of materials but the agonising, needless death of anyone who works in them? I only ask because these death-factories appear a lot in videogames and they all follow the same basic outline: the utter lack of separation between where the work is done and where the workers might stand so as to avoid a hot steel shower.

"Molten metal? Sure, just pour it anywhere, someone'll clean it up later."
Once again Violent Storm must be praised for taking a common element of the beat-em-up genre and implementing it in an enjoyable way. Far too often in games like this, areas with environmental hazards are a real pain in the arse - they're difficult to avoid, because it's too hard to judge what areas the crushing machine / random jets of steam / haphazard liquid metal distribution are actually going to affect, plus your character is often cumbersome enough that getting out of the way is a real task. That's not the case here - danger zones are clearly marked, with obvious troughs and plates of the floor showing you precisely where not to stand, but the flow of enemies and spacing of the traps still providing plenty of challenge. Konami really knew what they were doing with this one.
What with all the dangerous background elements to help me out, it didn't take long to reach the boss.

Now you're loading with power! This is Doyle and yeah, the first thing you're going to notice is that he can pilot that loader, he has a Class Two rating, he wants that bitch to get away from her, etc, etc. Then you look past his Aliens-inspired machinery and he becomes ever more baffling. Why is he just in his underpants? Wouldn't that chafe? How can his back support all that weight? And why, why does he have a metal beak and goggles, which when combined with his regulation street-gang mohawk makes him look like an insane cybernetic fusion of man and chicken? You're a mystery and an engima, Doyle.
Fighting him isn't quite so confusing. He can extend his arms, so try and stay close and don't jump towards him because he'll just grab you out of the air. After he's taken some damage he'll begin flying around the place, but that proves to be his undoing as the power loader wasn't meant for flight and swift kick in the mechanical beak will see him plummet into the molten steel below. No emotional thumbs-up as a farewell, just a terrible death through incineration. I kinda feel like he deserved it.

Welcome to the greenhouse, we've got guys with chains - stage five meanders through a park, then through the hothouses, all of which are packed with enemies. I go to the botanical gardens near my house fairly often, and I know how hot it is in the tropical greenhouses. Just imagine hundreds of large, sweaty men fighting and grappling in there. Imagine what that would smell like.

It's one of the shorter stages, and soon you'll meet the boss. He starts off pretending to be a statue, but Mr. Julius here cannot let a single person past without revealing to them the raw glory of his physical form, and so he challenges you to a fist-fight. He likes to flex, and say things like "beauty is power!"

Yeah, that GIF just about sums him up. Actually, that's another thing I like about Violent Storm: if you're killed and the Continue screen appears, each enemy has a different animation mocking your meagre efforts. Gigadeath does some headbanging, the guys with the steel pipes do a kabuki dance, and Mr. Julius... well, you can see what Mr. Julius does.
For all his muscle, he's a bit of a pushover, really. Much easier than the fight against Doyle. That's what you get for valuing the limited meatworks of the human form rather than embracing technology and having robot arms.

Yo ho ho, we're down by the docks for the penultimate stage. Look at that brilliant blue sky, the azure ocean, the wheeling seabirds - if it wasn't for the wrecked battleship, I would once again be forced to wonder just how cataclysmic this cataclysm was. You shouldn't look at a post-apocalyptic scene and think "hey, that looks like a nice place for a holiday."
The backgrounds, though - Violent Storm has some great backgrounds. They're varied, they're colourful, they take the familiar beat-em-up locations and give them a fresh appeal and they're absolutely packed with little details that are easy to miss in the heat of battle.

For instance, the harbour stage has this salty seadog, pensively staring out across the ocean waves and doing nothing but adding yet more atmosphere to the world of Violent Storm. Touches like this are everywhere in this game, from the rats that scurry around stage three's kitchen, to the tramps who watch you fight through the train to the poor kung fu master on this stage who can't handle sea travel and leans over the side of the boat looking very unwell indeed. They're only small things, but the fact that there are so many of them really gives Violent Storm a sense of quality, a feeling that the people who made this game were having a blast.

Sledge is the boss, and how can you describe a man like Sledge? As a superhero who specialises in wok-based combat, that's how, He's the Batman from a universe where Bruce Wayne fell into a cave full of Chinese cookware. The character design meetings for this game must have been a laugh riot.
Sledge is well defended by his woks, and he's not afraid to use them to attack, either: his favoured moves are dashing around the screen or teleporting into the air and launching a diving kick and, sadly, don't include knocking you up a quick batch of mu shu pork. The best plan is to not get too greedy when you're hurting him, get a quick shot in before moving away and avoiding his retaliatory wok strikes. Once Sledge is down, you can proceed to the final stage.

As is the custom, the final stage takes place in the villain's mansion headquarters. That's handy for me, because when I was studying for my Masters in Belt-Scrolling Beat-Em-Up Studies I specialized in the combat applications of priceless vases and other works of art. Speaking of art, another nice background touch is that paintings of all the game's bosses hang on the walls: you can see Joe up there in the middle. My favourite is definitely Doyle's portrait, though.

Ah yes, Vermeer's "Robot Power Loader Chicken Man in a Field of Roses." Soon to be released in cinemas as a follow-up to The Girl with a Pearl Earring, or at least it would be if there was any justice in the world.
There's not much new in the final stage, it's just a full-on rumble against a small army of enemies to test the limits of your combat prowess. My combat prowess mostly revolves around throwing goons into their fellow bad guys. Fight fire with fire and street punks with street punks, that's what I always say.

The end approaches as we make our way through the mansion's basement. There's a Scramble cabinet down here! Also a prison cell full of women. That's much less wholesome than Scramble. Not that our heroes are showing much wholesomeness, given that they walk straight past the imprisoned women without so much as a sideways glance. These guys really want to get Sheena back. Maybe she's got their house keys in her handbag or something.

Finally, justice (that's us) has caught up with the abduction gremlin. His name is Red Freddy, and I'm guessing that his lust for evil stems from the trauma of being kicked out of ballet school because this guy sure loves to pirouette. He's got a dashing punch and he can attack with his hair, but those are mere side salads next to the main course that is his terrifying orgy of spinning around. Those claws give him a long reach, and he hits hard, but that's to be expected. He is the leader or this gang, after all.

Except Red Freddy isn't the leader, and once you've beaten the twirling little freak you'll be introduced to the true mastermind... actually, what's a better word than "mastermind"? That implies he had some sort of scheme beyond "I'm going to kidnap that woman." Ringleader, maybe? Whatever his title, his name is Geld and he's a scrawny young thing who sits on his throne and says, in a squeaky, pre-pubescent voice "can't you knock before you enter?" That got a good laugh out of me, especially since I announced my presence by kicking Red Freddy's corpse right next to Geld's throne.
If you're thinking "surely this game isn't going to end with the heroes beating the crap out of a young child" then congratulations, you are correct.

You'll be fighting a giant Frankenstein thing instead! Yes, Geld transforms, to the surprise of no-one, although I did think that blowing the roof off his own house just to accommodate the final battle was a bit excessive. You're not that big, pal.
So, Geld. He's got magical powers! Beyond the whole child-to-muscle-golem transformation thing, I mean. He can spit acid, and launch fireballs along the ground, as well as becoming painful to the touch. Oh and he can punch and kick and all that malarkey. Geld didn't get to where he is today by shirking the hard, physical work, oh no.
As final boss fights go, I have to say that Geld's a good one. He's got plenty of powerful moves, over-powerful even, but at the same time he never seems clairvoyant or impregnable - he'll leave himself open sometimes, and with enough practise you could almost get this to be a fair fight. I say almost, because his "turn invincible and hurt you if you touch him" move is a bloody nightmare to avoid.

In true heroic fashion I eventually managed to punch Geld off his own roof and to what I assume was his horrible death. There's certainly no need to check his body, confirm the kill, you know? Let's all breathe a sigh of relief and hope that Geld didn't have a flying spell in his magical bag of tricks.

Sheena is saved, and boy is she glad to see you. Hugs all around!

Unless you're playing a two-player game, in which case Sheena is only interested in whichever of the heroes managed to land the final blow on Geld. She must have watched the fight intently, concentration etched upon her brow as she looked for that finishing blow, ready to accept the judgment of fate in deciding which on these men she'd be going home with. Wade got it, in the end. Boris looks on, slack-jawed in amazement, shocked that Sheena didn't even acknowledge him after he has risked his life to save her from Geld's Frankensteiny clutches. Seriously, she doesn't even so much as look at him. That's cold.

This is the reason that Violent Storm has three characters - two to do the fighting and one to bring the car around. Good work, Konami. Also, it's a nice touch that the car's front end is still smashed from driving through the gate to stage one. Little details, you see?
That's Violent Storm, and I think it's pretty obvious that I loved it. Here is a game unrestrained in style but sharp on gameplay, with a sense of humour as well as simple-yet-varied combat mechanics, and the whole thing tied together by some excellent presentation. The graphics are fantastic, big and detailed with some great enemy designs and countless flourishes amongst the environments, and the soundtrack could not fit the action better. Even the small amount of voice acting in the game hits just the right note.
It's gameplay that is king, of course, and Violent Storm doesn't disappoint on that front either. Combat is fast, fluid and fair, your chosen hero easily darting between opponents thanks to the intuitive and responsive controls. Add in the wider-than-usual variety of attacks and the smooth difficulty curve and Violent Storm has carved itself a place in my heart, right amongst my other favourite beat-em-ups and all the congealed cholesterol.

I'm genuinely having a hard time thinking of something bad to say about this game. It's too short, maybe? It doesn't quite topple Night Slashers from the top of my personal tree of beat-em-ups that no one's ever heard of, but that's purely because Night Slashers' horror theme and soundtrack work for me on a slightly deeper level - Violent Storm's place at the top beat-em-up table is assured, and if you want to piledrive a fat man called Lollypop, smash a Scramble cabinet with your bare hands or ponder to yourself no, really, why did Doyle have a robot beak, then I can't recommend Violent Storm enough.

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