Small Games Vol. 8!

 This post represents the last vestiges of my fifth laptop, the worst laptop I ever owned, which could barely run anything, and which is the reason why there haven't been any arcade, PS2, Saturn, etc. games featured on here in a long time. Because the two games I'm writing about today were among the few it could actually run without any problems! They're also linked to each other by being deliberate throwbacks to games of the 1980s.

 

Anyway, the first of the two is Cinnabar Kamen, a tokusatsu-themed single plane beat em up that has you in the role of the eponymous masked hero, walking from right to left, punching and kicking monsters, until you get to a boss, who you proceed to fight. There's not much more to it than that, really. It doesn't bring much to the genre, feeling like a romhack of the oldest of the old, Spartan X/Kung Fu, that doesn't even feel as good to play. It's definitely worlds away from the quality of the excellent Fire Dragon Fist Master Xiaomei. Cinnabar Kamen was a huge disappointment, and the one positive thing I can think to say about it is that the sunset in the background is nice and colourful. Not worth the hundred yen asking price.

 

Next up is a game that oozes authenticity, with the only crack in its eighties facade being the option for online co-op on the title screen. Were it not for this one giveaway, you could easily think that Virus Crashers was a ROM from the early days of the Famicom running in an emulator, rather than a brand new PC game released in the twenty-first century (I'm not sure exactly when, though, since the title screen has two copyright dates: 2006 and 2013)! As for the game itself, it can simply (and accurately) be described as "Bubble Bobble, but you can fly", as it sees you tackle single-screen stages full of enemies by trapping them in bubbles, then popping them to get point-scoring fruit. You even get higher-scoring fruit and power-ups for popping multiple enemies at once! Also, you can fly by holding the jump button. Though that is slightly more difficult than it sounds, as theres a lot of momentum/inertia at play, so it's not as simple as just going where you like on the screen and popping enemies at your leisure. The only thing missing (at least as far as I can tell) is Bubble Bobble's plethora of esoteric Druaga-esque secrets. Unless they are in there and I just haven't found any of them, in which case: good job to the devs for hiding them so well, I guess!

 

So, that's two games, both will run on practically any PC, though only one of the two is really worth bothering with. I know this post is short, but the next one's going to be longer, and maybe even a little bit seedier, so please look forward to that!