King of the Monsters (Arcade, Neo Geo, SNES, Megadrive/Genesis) :
There's always room for some Kaiju-battling, and this fighting game from SNK gives you plenty of apartment-block sized baddies to bash! Originally released in the arcades in 1991, there's not really a whole lot to say about the gameplay of this title...it's exactly what you would expect! You fight either the computer or another player after choosing your character from the selection available, and battle it out until the other one's energy has dropped enough for you to finish them off!
I guess the way you have to pin them for three seconds, wrestling style, is a bit different from the usual Streetfighter-style of ending a match...and being able to pick up planes, cars, etc. that are passing by and fling them at your enemies is a little different, at least from most other beat-em-ups, but it's all pretty much par for the course with regards to other Kaiju battlers!
The arcade version is definitely the one with the most stuff to look at and interact with, and has an excitable guy who pipes up every now and again at the start of a match to shout about the giant beasties, but I found the Megadrive/Genesis game to be a bit speedier and slightly more fun as a brawler.
The Super NES version is probably the worst of the bunch, as it seems slower and clunkier. It's still okay, but you'd definitely be better off with one of the other versions if you're able to choose.
The Final verdict then, is that King of the Monsters is fine. But it's just fine. It's nothing special, but there's just enough fun involved for it to be worth a go if you fancy some beat-em-up action. Oh, and yes, when I was recording the video, I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to press to pin my opponent, but worked it out eventually! Hehe....
Ah yes, time to catch up with our little vampire chum Prince Dorobochan again now, or Spike McFang as he seems to be calling himself now one of his games has been translated to English....You'll remember I took a quick look at his previous game Makai Prince Dorobochan on the PC Engine recently...
That one was a platformer, but our pal Spike is set for bigger things this time round and is now starring in an action RPG! One that thankfully keeps the cute horror style and general weirdness...
We join Spike as he's about to start fight training on a far off island, unaware that back home trouble is brewing in a big way! The greedy zombie ruler, General Von Hesler has decided that his zombie island isn't big enough, and using his dark powers and army of undead he takes over the other two islands in Vladamasco and battles the two other leaders, Vampra and Dracuman.....
Dracuman happens to be the father of our hero, and Spike would have remained unaware of the situation were it not for Vampra's daughter, Camelia, who managed to escape to seek out McFang and get his help! After a quick bit of training, Spike rushes back home and gets down to sorting this whole mess out....
He has a few tricks up his sleeve to help him out with his quest....his basic form of defence being a spin attack that will smash his enemies when they approach, although you have to be careful not to spin him around too much or he gets dizzy and becomes uncontrollable. He can throw his hat at enemies too, and also use special magic cards which have different abilities...including restoring health, causing a swarm of bats to appear or freezing enemies in their tracks! These can be purchased in shops along with hat upgrades, or in other places in the game...
Rather bizarrely, tomatoes are your main source of health instead of blood in the game...which led me to assume that perhaps Spike was a vegetarian. However, apparently this was changed from collecting hearts in the Japanese version of the game? Maybe a vampire using hearts seemed too much for Nintendo, but it's a bit weird when you consider how many other games have you collecting heart pick ups....
The American release also saw a few other changes. The enemies have a higher defence & Spike doesn't regain his health after going up a level, both of which mean the game is harder in the US version.
The one-eyed mummy shopkeeper you can see in a screen above was originally a pretty blonde girl too, but again censors must have changed that for some weird reason....
I've only just started playing Twisted Tales, but already I'm loving the wacky style and all the encounters with the freaky characters. It's charming and filled with nice little touches....I love Spike's pet in the moat for instance, or being kicked by one of those Easter-Island-type butler things so I can break through a wall in the castle....
I look forward to playing through it properly once I can discipline myself to stick with one game long enough, but even with what I've played up until now I can heartily recommend it as a fun, funny, action-packed RPG for those with the time to spend playing it!
Please remember to go and check out the other groovy ghouls and boils that are taking part in the Countdown To Halloween, as they're posting lots of cool stuff on their blogs too!
Just click the pumpkin below to be taken to the hub, where you can access all of the Halloween horror from!
Initially, this SNES game looks to be doing everything right....there's a snazzy intro that has the proper Godzilla theme music, and a great sample of Godzilla's roar and the plot seems suitably crazy and monster filled to make for a decent conversion of the movies...
What a pity then, that the actual gameplay basically involves you trudging around a rather boring map, looking at a Godzilla that, whilst nicely realised, only does about two different things...smash buildings or get shot...Once you find the monster you have to face on that particular level, the gameplay changes and takes an even bigger turn for the worse...
Again, everything looks as it should and rather groovy, but the bizarre fighting system that the game uses means that for the most part you'll just be wildly mashing buttons, watching cutscenes of you or the monster bashing each other, then mashing more buttons with little to no effect....
Once you do beat a baddie, it's on to another trudge around another boring map....Not worth playing except for the novelty of being Godzilla for an evening I guess......
Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES, Megadrive/ Genesis) :
Or just plain Zombies in the UK.....this is a perfect game for Halloween! You fill the shoes of either Zeke or Julie as they take to the streets to battle all manner of horrors that for reasons unknown, have suddenly decided to launch an all-out attack on humanity! Using everything you can lay your hands on, you fight your way through waves of pretty much every classic movie monster (oh, and giant babies!) until a final confrontation with the evil Dr. Tongue who seems to be the mastermind behind this evil uprising....
The game is filled with references to classic B-movies, and if you know your stuff you'll know what weapons work best on what creatures...(Silver kitchenware against werewolves, Fire extinguishers against the Blob-type things, etc.)... Various potions can be used too, turning you into a monster that can break through walls or giving you invulnerability for a while. It's a huge load of fun, especially if you find someone else to play it with as one of you can sometimes get transformed into a zombie or a monster and lose all control as you chase down your buddy!
Weirdly, there a few differences between versions...the US version has no blood in it, and any red stuff has been turned to purple gloop! But, it does have chainsaw wielding lumberjacks which the PAL version deems too violent and replaces the chainsaws with axes (which are obviously, way less violent!?!?!?) Oh, and Americans seem to be fine with eating neighbours too! Anyway, go give it a try if you've yet to sample it's spooky superb-ness! And we'll try to forget about it's horrible sequel-that-wasn't-really-a-sequel, Ghoul Patrol....
In this game, we're off to help some poor chap rescue his girlie from the clutches of an evil Nosferatu (or vampire as they're more commonly known) who has snuck into their house one night looking for a snack, and carried her off to his castle so he can nibble on her later, or make her his bride.... or whatever it is this particular bloodsucker wants to do with her.....
The game starts off with a nice atmospheric intro, and then you find yourself plonked right in at the deep end and facing a Prince Of Persia meets Castlevania style journey through various monster infested, spiky trapped levels. The baddies you face are a varied bunch, ranging from bat-like vampire imps and melty-gloopy zombies to weird flying eyeballs, ghostly axes and ceiling lurking grabby things!
Thankfully, you seem to be quite capable of giving them a good bashing, and combat is quite satisfying, with punches, shoulder barges and kicks aplenty! You get some help from red crystals you pick up along the way too, which give you a little power-up for every three you can hold on to! They can be easily lost though, as if you run into a wall or get knocked down by a monster, you'll drop one of them and it'll vanish....
Other crystals can also be found lying around in boxes in rooms...these boost your health and as such are very much required. Be sure to check any boxes you find by pushing Up two or three times, as sometimes there's more than one crystal tucked away inside....
Every now and then, you'll face an end of level boss...and these are some odd chaps indeed! The end of the first level sees you tackling a hunchback who suddenly changes into a werewolf...pretty much the type of baddie you'd expect in a game like this really....but the end of Level 2 has you sizing up not one, but two Gorillas!! Any game that throws in random apes gets bonus points from me....but I wasn't expecting them!
Unfortunately, I haven't managed to see any more bosses yet. The game is pretty hard right from the start, but Level 3 sees a massive ramp up in the difficulty by adding lots and lots of spikes....spikes in the ceiling, in the floor, in the walls....spikes bloody everywhere! The controls don't help you much either, as there are one or two odd button combinations required to get our hero to do what you want him too, although if you play the game enough you do get slightly more used to them...But yeah, after hours of play I still haven't managed to make it to Level 4 yet...
Overall then, it's a nicely presented and atmospheric platformer, slightly ruined by some dodgy controls and by being a bit too difficult for it's own good! Still, it's well worth a go or two, especially if you're a fan of Prince Of Persia, Flashback or other similar titles!
Whilst reading a Super Nintendo magazine ( probably Super Play ) in the nineties, I saw a review of a game that looked like it would totally be my cup of tea! It featured a weird looking little chap who fired darts from his hair at all manner of freaky ghosties & beasties! Tagging along with him was a little eyeball with a body, which reminded me of a character I had created in my own rubbishy comic strips called Eye-vor!
I really wanted to play that game, but not having the cash for a pricey Japanese import, it wasn't until years later that I red-discovered it through emulation of the game on ZSNES. You can read what I though about if further down this page, but a few years later I discovered there was another game on PS1, and this led me to research exactly who this dart-haired character was and whether there were any more games based around him....
Kitarō started life as a Kamishibai story from 1933, told by various storytellers who travelled around on bikes from village to village, entertaining the locals with their tales. One such Kamishibai artist was as interesting as the old stories he drew and told...
Shigeru Mizuki had fought in Papua New Guinea during WWII. Having seen his friends die from various wounds and diseases, he himself contracted malaria...all of which obviously affected him greatly. And then during one allied air raid, he was caught in an explosion that blew off his left arm.
Being left-handed, Shigeru had to relearn to draw and write with his right hand. After spending time as a prisoner of war, he returned to an occupied Japan, hoping to go back to New Guinea where he had been befriended by the locals, but was prevented from doing so mainly due to his injuries and also the fact that his brother had been convicted as a war criminal for killing prisoners. Aster working as a movie theatre operator for a while, he decided to revisit the Kitarō Kamashibai stories as a manga series...
Hakabi Kitarō ( Graveyard Kitarō) was created in 1959 and ran for a few years as a rental manga, but it was considered a wee bit too freaky for children, and so Shigeru lightened the tone and eventually in 1967 it became GeGeGe no Kitarō ( Spooky Kitarō ).
Kitarō himself is a small boy who was born in a graveyard, and apart from his father, the aforementioned eyeball-with-a-body, is the last living member of the Ghost Tribe. His hair-covered eye is in fact missing, and as stated earlier he has the ability to shoot darts from his hair. His main ambition it seems, is to fight for peace between the humans and the Yōkai demons. Proving popular in Japan, the manga series has been adapted over the years into various anime cartoons, a live action movie, video games and even has a street in Japan filled with Shigeru's characters! 2008 saw the latest game and anime series, so as you can see it's still going strong...
But it's the games we're mostly interested in today, so lets have a look and see how they've turned out! I'm not sure if any of these received a proper Western release, so import or emulation is the only way you'll be able to try these out....
GeGeGe No Kitarō - Youkai Dai Makyou (NES) :
This game actually did make it to the west, although it was a bit butchered, re-skinned and renamed as Ninja Kid. The original though is definitely a Gegege game, with our hero Kitarō shooting his darts at evil yōkai in a horizontal scrolling platformer.
Occasionally, you'll find yourself controlling Kitarō in the skies too, but mostly you'll be on the ground collecting pickups and racking up the points by blasting the baddies back to oblivion. There's a decent range of weirdos to kill, with some familiar faces popping up from the manga, and various other influences (see the mini-Frankenstein monster above..)
You access the different levels from an over-world map, and this appears to have different randomly chosen layouts to help keep things fresh when you start a new game, which is a nice little feature! I always like a little random factor!
The occasional boss pops up every now and then too, like this giant eye below, which will take a few extra hits to defeat. It's all pretty straight-forward, typical platforming stuff. Unfortunately it's also very tricky for the most part, and you'll quickly lose your paltry three lives as you're bombarded by enemies from every side.
Some levels are easier than others though, and the random map helps you to see a bit more than you would otherwise, so it's not completely devoid of fun. It's just a fairly average, tricky little platformer that's only really worth playing to see Kitarō's first foray into video games!
GeGeGe no Kitarō 2 (NES) :
His second NES adventure takes the form of an RPG, this time only released in Japan. Luckily someone has gone to the trouble of translating it into English, and so with a little searching online you can find a translation patch and fire it up on an emulator.
Again, unfortunately this is really damn tricky. Even with the translation, it has the same problems as a lot of early RPGs in that it doesn't give you much of a clue as to where you're supposed to go or what you're supposed to do.
On top of that, you seem to start the game extremely under-powered, and it won't take many hits from the enemies until you kick the bucket and end up transported back to your house. It's a shame, as it would be nice to get a bit further and experience what the game has to offer. There'd be plenty of fun to be had in a decent RPG based on Gegege Kitarō, but this one is just too annoying to stick with for long...
GeGeGe no Kitarō: Fukkatsu! Tenma Daiou (SNES) :
And so we come to the game that started me along this crazy path to Yōkai land! And yet again it's the trickiness that lets it down. What would otherwise be an enjoyable shooty platformer is again hampered by not being able to get very far before running out of energy and having to restart the level.
The enemies always seem to be just out of reach, and when you get a bit closer so you can hit them with your own projectiles, that's exactly when they start hitting you and rapidly eating away at your health.
Despite this, the enemies are varied and weird enough to warrant a bit of your time exploring the levels, and once you've worked out some of their patterns you do seem to be able to get a little further into the game.
And of course, it's all in Japanese so you won't really have any idea what's going on plot wise. So what we're left with is another disappointingly difficult but somewhat charming adventure, that's fun to try and get to grips with but ultimately a bit frustrating. A bit of a pattern forming here....
One other thing I discovered just as I was about to stop playing the game was that by choosing the second option on the title screen, you appear to start a 2-player game with this little Yōkai demon chap below as the second character. Not having anyone handy to play as the second player, I've no idea if this would make it any easier, but it might be worth giving it a go if you have someone willing to help you out!
GeGeGe no Kitarō: Noroi noNikutu Katachi Tachi (PS1) :
Things get a bit spookier and even more confusing with the PS1's first GeGeGe game. Again it's all in Japanese, so the plot is a bit tricky to decipher, but it would seem that after pressing start on the first menu option you take control of a schoolgirl, and view the game in first person from her viewpoint. Here's my experiences with trying to comprehend what's going on...
Starting off in a classroom and fumbling around trying to work out what buttons did what, I managed to find my way out in to a corridor, where someone starts talking to me in Japanese. As they move forward it becomes apparent that they are in fact some sort of brain-suckin' zombie fiend!
After succumbing to a hideous end in my first attempt at escaping this undead annoyance, on my second try I ran back into the classroom and discovered I could hide in one of the lockers, in a Clock Tower style fashion! The zombie entered the classroom and had a quick nosy around for me, but being a bit dense, couldn't work out where I was...
After the zombie left the room, I clambered back out of the locker and went back into the corridor where I found a key marked 1A. Checking the doors by pressing the circle button. I found room 1A, but couldn't see anywhere to use the key inside. So out I went again wandering around the school, trying to find out what the hell I was supposed to be doing. The only thing I could find was lots of locked doors and a crow on a desk in one of the rooms...
Checking on Youtube to see if that held any secrets, I could only find one video of the game. It did show me that other areas could be accessed by clicking different options on the start screen, so I chose the second banner and went back into whatever game 2 had in store.
This time I appear to be Kitarō himself, and after leaving a small cabin I'm in the middle of a large wood! After heading through a maze of trees I discovered this set of three statues that appears to have some sort of food sitting on it. I pick this up...
After wandering around for a bit more, I discover a tree house that some old big-nosed, big-mouthed resides in. Unfortunately I can't show you a picture of this as I don't have any way of capturing the screens (the others come from that Youtube video) so you'll just have to take my word that she's there! After ranting at me in Japanese for a while, she eventually shuts up and by clicking on various items it would seem that it's a shop she runs. Having no idea what to say or do, I leave and wander around for a bit more, getting hopelessly lost and going round in circles! Time for the 3rd choice on the menu!
Selecting the third option on the menu screen takes us into another area where again we seem to be someone else, waking up as Kitarō and his father leer over us. In the intro that just occurred there was a spooky doll, so maybe that's something to do with something....
Nope, it appears that there's quite a few of these dolls around and none of them seem to do anything. In the room with the one above, I found some spooky old pictures on the wall and clicking on them starts Kitarō's dad talking about something, but I've no idea what.
I find another rrom with a phone in that seems to be some sort of save point, then head back to where I started. Upon re-entering the first room Kitarō's father starts talking again, but then I can't work out what to do next at all..
So there you have it! An interesting but completely incomprehensible wander through the game! If anybody else decides to play this and can get any further and drop me some clues in the comments, please do so! It does seem like it would be a great little game if I could only work out what the hell was going on! Still, it was fun trying to work everything out, and it probably seems a bit spookier because I was absolutely clueless!
GeGeGe no Kitarō: KiKi Ippatsu! Youkai Rettou (GBA) :
Ah! Now this is the one I got a bit further with! It's another platformer, this time on Gameboy Advance, and despite being in Japanese yet again, it does have the occasional handy button-prompts posted on boards around the levels, so you can learn at least some of the moves!
It starts with the origin of both Kitarō and his father! Apparently a blood bank worker visits some Yokai who are after some blood for different means than we humans would use it... But after his mother and father die before he is born, the blood bank worker buries the mother. Something weird then happens ( as if it wasn't weird enough already) and Kitarō's father's eye pops out of his decomposing body and somehow retains his memories! Then it grows a body and hops outside to rescue Kitarō, who has just been born in his mother's grave!
After controlling Daddy Eyeball for this sequence, we appear on a map screen and after a bit of button fiddling manage to get into one of the levels.
It's standard platforming action yet again, but t's done rather wonderfully, with nice graphics and some slick controls. It's also a lot less difficult than previous entries in the series and it's a lot easier to progress.
In fact the most trouble I had was navigating the menus and actually getting Kitarō to land on the first level on the map screen! But yeah, a nice little platformer, and probably the most instantly accessible game in this post.
Of course it is still in Japanese, and so you still won't have much idea of what's going on. but it's definitely the easiest one to get to grips with and so it's the one I recommend playing if you're not likely to be a Kitarō fan and just want a new platform game to mess around with for a while!
GeGeGe no Kitarō: Gyakushuu! Youkai Daichisen (PS1) :
The last game I'm looking at isn't the last GeGeGe no Kitarō game. There are others on PS2 and other machines. But it's the last one I can actually play, not owning machines capable of playing the remaining few. And it's yet another rather difficult platformer, taking it's style from the SNES and Gameboy Advance titles.
You should know what to expect by now. It's enjoyable but once more the fact it's in Japanesemakes it difficult to know what options to choose, and the difficulty makes it more annoying than it probably should be. But it's still worth picking up if you're a fan, or want to experience something a bit different on your Playstation. You even get a nice version of Kitarō's theme song to sing along to!
So I hope I've interested you in Kitarō at least a little by checking out these games. Even if you think you'll just find them too frustrating, or you don't like importing or emulating games, you can always check out the manga or anime series! But for now, we'll leave Kitarō in peace and let him get back to what will probably be a rather busy next few days battling demons!
