Brian Jacks' Uchi Mata (C64)

 First, I'm going to credit Epsilon Eagle on Twitter for posting about this game and making me aware of it. It is another combat sports game, a genre I'm becoming more interested in as I discover more of them (on that subject, have you seen the trailer for the upcoming PC game Dojo Masters? It looks so cool!), and though it's a game that's been forgotten in the decades since, it also happens to be historically significant.

 

Before I get onto that, I'll give you some basic description. The sport in question is specifically judo, which means that there's no punching or kicking in this game, only throws, which is already pretty unusual. There is a move whereby you rudely shove your opponent to the floor, but performing it means you immediately lose the match via disqualification. Which makes you wonder why the developers even bothered to include it, it's obviously not something you'd ever do in a real tournament, is it? It's not like wrestling, where the referee might look away or be temporarily incapacitated to give you the opportunity for illegal moves. Also, Brian Jacks was a British olympic judo practitioner, and this game carries his endorsement. Which is nice.

 

Anyway, the thing that makes Uchi Mata noteworthy, interesting, and historically significant is its main mechanical gimmick: it was seemingly the first game to use command inputs for special moves, beating Street Fighter by a year! You approach your opponent, press the fire button to lock up, and when the time's right, hold the fire button, input a special motion (a quarter or half circle, for example), andthen release the button to do your move! The timing system also brings to mind the Fire Pro Wrestling games, though it's quite different, and a lot more mysterious and inscrutible.

 

When the two fighters are locked up, there will sometimes flash up a rectangle in one of the fighters' colours (red or white) at the top of the screen, near the clock. When your colour's up there, that's when you have the opportunity to land a move. The problem is that it's not really clear what causes the rectangles to appear or disappear. It seems vaguely related to who initiates the lock up, but if it continues past that point, its whims seem to be kind of random. It really puts a damper on how enjoyable the game can be, since it feels like your wins and losses are subject to the whims of this mysterious rectangle entity, and not so much on your own skills. Furthermore, going back to that disqualification thing, every match I've played has ended that way, either through my performing the move by accident, or through what I assume was a fit of rage on behalf of the CPU player.

 

All in all, Uchi Mata is a game that was clearly ahead of its time, and the developers really put some thought into how they could replicate a complicated fighting style on such primitive hardware with such limited control options. Unfortunately, they also saw fit to add in what is either a random element, or an element so mysterious that it might as well be random, and that really does ruin the game, to be honest. Give it a try out of historical curiosity, but don't expect it to be a game you'll come back to once that's been satisfied.

Demon Island Massacre (PC)

 Just by looking at the screenshots, you'll be able to figure out what drew me to this game: it looks amazing. Everyone loves it when sprite characters are put in a polygonal world, but it's a concept that's mostly absent from modern indie games, even now that games with a Playstation-inspired look are becoming ever more popular. The game itself is a nice little platformer, too, which is also a positive.

 

Though, "nice" isn't the best word to describe it for a few reasons. As the title suggests, it's about a massacre (perpetrated by you) on an island inhabited by demons. The demons themselves are all weird, mangled mockeries of humanity at best, plus they burst into big pixelly bloodsplatters on death, too. To add to the horror, there's at least one enemy that's a direct reference to Splatterhouse 2, one of the all-time most shamelessly gory games there's ever been. (The enemy in question is the partially-rotted zombie, who in both games crawls around as a legless torso after you hit him for the first time). 

 

As well as Splatterhouse, Castlevania is also a clear influence on the game, with some of the tracks sounding like (very good) cover versions with more of an asian horror flavour thn Castlevania's European gothic stylings. Plus, you get ammo for your special attacks by attacking lanterns that are floating in place in the stages. It does also have its own style, too, with a few different attack options. You have you standard attack combo, you can press up and attack for a shoryuken-style attack, press down and attack for a sliding kick, and press down and kick while in the air for a downwards attack that bounces you off of enemies really high.

 

So, the meat of the game is navigating the platform stages, figuring out the best way to get through each enemy encounter while taking as little damage as possible and also not falling to your death. Like you'd expect from a combat-focussed action platformer, I guess. You really do have to think about every encounter, and approach them cautiously, too, as the game is completely merciless. Death means getting sent back to the last checkpoint, which are few and far between, and you really can only take a few hits before that happens. On the plus side, there isn't really a time limit, and most enemy types don't become a threat until you get close to them, so you can stand still and appraise the situation at your leisure.

 

Demon Island Massacre is definitely not a game for the casual player, or for the crybaby. But it is aesthetically beautiful, and it's fun and rewarding if you're able to engage with it on the level it demands. If you're attracted by the way the game looks, and you think you can at least attempt to play it without writing it off as "too hard", then you should definitely give it a try. There's a free play-in-browser version on the game's itch.io page, as well as a pay-what-you-want download version, and it's defintely worth your time, at the very least.