Run Saber (SNES)

 There's a few interesting things to point out about Run Saber before you even get to the game itself. For a start, it's a Japanese game that was only released in North America and Europe (which means there' no chance of ever being able to afford a copy). Furthermore, it was developed by Hori, the famous and popular makers of high quality controllers. It's the first of six games they put out, according to Moby Games, spread out over the course of the nineties. Finally, and this is a lot more subjective than the other points: it kind of looks and feels more like a Mega Drive game than a SNES one. The gritty OAV-like sci-fi setting full of weird monsters, when from SNES games, you expect more of a kid-friendly TV anime look and feel, don't you? Like I said, it is more subjective than the other points I raised.

 

What is the game, though? It's a platformer, in which you select either a male or female character (if there are any differences between the two, they're very minor. I think their attacks have slightly different hitboxes, but that's all), and you traverse a few linear stages killing monsters with energy swords, and there's several boss fights per stage, too, which is nice. You could, if you wanted, call Run Saber a Strider-like, with its superhumanly acrobatic protagonists and their quick-swinging energy blade attacks. But that would be a little simplistic and lazy.

 

Instead, you should call Run Saber a Strider-like because of the way its paced! You're constantly being usher forward into the next big weird setpiece, whether it's a bunch of spiky traps to maneuver around, a wall to climb while fighting off enemies, or one of the game's many boss fights. Just like Strider! I'm joking about the first comparision being lazy, of course: the characters do move and feel a lot like Strider Hiryu, and if someone from the development team came out and said it was originally intended to be a Strider sequel but a deal with Capcom fell through at the last minute, it wouldn't be a massive shock. You do have a couple of new moves, though: a jumping spin attack, a dive kick, and a non-offensive slide across the ground.

 

So with all that in mind, is it actually a good game, or is it just a Japanese Strider Returns? Luckily, it's good. On your first play, it'll feel slightly stiff and odd, and a little too difficult, but somehow that literally only applies to your first attempt at playing it. At least, that's how it went for me. My first attempt, I lost most of my lives over the course of the first stage and got a game over shortly into the second. But every attempt after that, I've easily been able to get well into the third, and sometimes fourth stage! (According to what I've read online, there are five of them).

 

The bosses are cool enough that they aren't a slog or a nuisance, either, instead being fun and quick enough to get through that you do feel like you're a powerful, heroic character charging through all these evil monsters. And they're pretty interesting too. There's a green mutant-man who bursts out of a metal canister, a demonic fighter jet that grows heads to attack you while you're standing on it mid-flight, a big red meditating demon in the background who detached his head to get you, a giant zombie woman (who was apparently designed as a giant living woman, but Nintendo of America thought that was the same as a positive depiction of domestic violence, presumably because there are worms in their brains). A varied bunch of monsters and freaks to fight, and like I said, the fights go by pretty quickly, which feels like a fairly unique trait in this kind of game.

 

Run Saber is a pretty good game, in a style that really stands out on the SNES. It's definitely worth playing. Even though it won't keep your attention for a long time, you probably will enjoy it while it does.

Sword of the Samurai (PS2)

 I only played the original Kengo once, long long ago, when me and some friends were just trying out a big stack of PS2 games we'd never played before. My memory of it is as a weird idiosyncratic swordfighting game that had a dedicated buttong for yelling at your opponent. The reason I bring Kengo up is that this is actually Kengo 2, mysteriously renamed by its western publisher. I recently tried it out on a whim, and got totally engrossed in what is not just a swordfighting game, but a game about being a swordfighter.

 

What does that mean? Well, the main mode in this game has you "making" (that is, picking a face and a body from a very small selection. In fact, there's only one female body!) a character and then making a debut on the local swordsmanship scene in a little village named Chiaraijima. You can take part in casual fights down at the riverbank, or you can go to one of the local dojos to learn the basics. The game's very idiosyncratic in how it plays, and if you go in trying to playing like Samurai Shodown or Last Blade, you'll get nowhere, so going and learning the basics is recommended. It's a much better way of getting in the tutorial than a lot of games, too, since you don't have to go straight there, and the lessons address one subject at a time, so inbetween you can go and test what you've learned at the riverbank.

 

Eventually, you'll get the opportunity to spar against other students at the dojo, and even challenging the students and masters of other dojos! All of the above are, of course, competitive bouts using wooden and bamboo swords. But there's a couple of other things to occupy your time in Chiaraijima. There are the secret nighttime fights that take place in an abndoned courtyard, and they use real swords. Also using real swords are the jobs you can go on, brokered by a local merchant. Real sword fights change the mechanics slightly. For a start, if you get cut, you start bleeding and losing health (I've even had a fight end with both participants bleeding to death at the same time!), and yes: lose a real swordfight and you die, and get sent back to the title screen. You can reload your save from there, but still. It's a lot more dramatic than taking a couple days' rest after losing a normal fight.

 

The jobs are slightly different still. There's a little bit of Bushido Blade here, as you have to fend of groups of enemies who attack a few at a time, but can be taken out themselves with one or two hits. The game also makes mention that if you guard too much in a real sword fight, the metal can get chipped and the sword can even break, leaving you defenceless, but I haven't seen that happen. I'm not sure what the point of taking these risks is, since there's no money in this game, but presumably, there are story events that can happen if you consistently do well enough in them. (For example, the merchant who gives you your jobs doesn't appear himself until you make a few consecutive wins at the riverbank).

 

To clarify some of the above: everything other than the fights and jobs is menu-based. Every day, you can choose to rest or do one of the above activities. Whatever you pick, it'll take up the whole day. Anything other than resting will usually increase all of your stats by some amount, and also decrease your stamina. Resting replenishes your stamina, and no matter how low it is, it'll usually be back to full after two days, and if you're impatient, you can still go out if it isn't full, you'll just have less health. I don't know if resting too many days in a row makes your skills atrophy and your stats decline, but that seems like it'd be logical. Finally, you learn new moves by getting hit by them!

 

Like I said, I've been engrossed in this game. Some people might find the structure repetitive, others might find the fighting clunky and weird, but I think if you're willing to give it a chance, this is a game that you can really get a lot out of. As simple as it is, there's lots of interesting little details to notice, too. For example, the guys you fight down at the riverbank are all just named "Swordsman", but as you keep going back, you'll come to recognise them on sight, and they use consistent fighting styles, so they're definitely the same guys who keep coming back, and not just random nobodies represented by the same models. If you're able to, I recommend at least giving this a try.

The King of Fighters - Battle de Paradise (Neo Geo Pocket Color)

 Something that not very many people remember is that there was a cross-system link cable between the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Dreamcast. This is one of the few games that uses that function! Obviously, I haven't got any way to try it myself, but a little bit of research online suggests that strikers levelled up in this game can be uploaded to the Dreamcast port of King of Fighters 99, where they'll have stronger attacks. The game itself is, in keeping with the Dreamcast theme, a King of Fighters-themed Sonic Shuffle-like (or I guess you could call it a Mario Party-like if you're boring).

 

You pick a character, and you play a board game, and some spaces on the board trigger minigames. Oddly, the characters you play as aren't King of Fighters characters, but a small collection of original teenagers. You do pick an actual KOF character as a striker to represent you in the minigames, though. Very strange setup. The aim of the game is to get stars, and there's one space on the entire board where you can buy them for twenty coins each. There are spaces on the board that increase or decrease your stock of coins when you land on them, and you can also win or lose them in minigames. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself, now.

 

To go back a little: after picking your character, striker, stage, and game length, you'll appear on the board. You take turns rolling the die, and occasionally choosing a direction to go in. Prety standard Sugoroku-type stuff. But there's a few special space types! Exclamation marks will trigger a weird little event where your striker will interact with some other KOF characters, and you might lose a turn, gain some coins, or some other thing along those lines might happen. The VS. spaces are the game's main draw, and they'll trigger as soon as you get to them, you don't need to actually land on them. Of course, they'll pull you and your opponent into a minigame.

 

There's a fair few minigames, and they all include references to the King of Fighters series, as well as other SNK games. Some of these references will just be cards with characters' faces on them, but others are more deep. My favourite is the one where you're given a clue, and have to pick the right character from a lineup of three. It actually requires some knowledge of these characters, their personalities and lore! That's so rare in a fighting game spinoff! Other standouts include a little dancing game starring Mai Shiranui, which seems impossible to win (there's even a FAQ written in 2001 that agrees!), a game that's like SEGA's ancient arcade game Head On, but it's about Sie Kensou eating meat buns, and a game where Chang and Choi have to choose the right doors on their escape bid from prison. 

 

After each game, whether you win or lose, you get a bunch of points, that gradually unlock stuff: new boards to play on, the ability to play the minigames from a menu, and most interestingly, a gallery of twenty pieces of pixel art with text attached. These can be ads for upcoming SNK games from around the same time, like King of Fighters 2000 or Cool Cool Toon, little design notes about this game or even classic SNK games, and more. It all really adds up to this game being a great little love letter and time capsule for SNK fans, especially now that there's a fan translation. 

 

And that really affects whether or not you'll want to play it. Like I said, my favourite of the minigames really relies on the player having knowledge of SNK lore, and a lot of the appeal elsewhere is in the references to other SNK games and their lore. So if you're a big SNK fan, you should definitely give it a try. One thing I can say in its favou is that it's a lot quicker and less painful to play as against a CPU opponent than other games in this genre. I'd love to play it against a human opponent someday, but I don't know how I'd ever be able to make that happen for a number of reasons (does anyone know anything about setting up multiplayer stuff on modern emulator handhelds? Is that possible?). I'll bookend the review by bringing up another feature I wasn't able to access via emulation: apparently, if you put the cartridge into a non-colour Neo Geo Pocket, there's a remake of SNK's 1979 arcade game Yosaku! Unfortunately, though, I couldn't force the emulator I was using to load the ROM in monochrome mode.