Obviously, "Trial Edition" means that this is only a demo. But it's a demo of a game that never got released! And that game would have been based on Tekkouki Mikazuki, Keita Amemiya's excellent big-budget giant robot miniseries that aired in 2000! You play as Kazeo, the young boy protagonist of the series, and in tuen, he controls the giant robot Mikazuki to fight off the melon kaiju from the first episode, Suika Idom.
To clarify on that explanation, you play as Kazeo, running around on the ground. At the start of the stage, Suika Idom shows up and starts stomping around and destroying buildings. For about a minute, you've got to run around trying not to get stepped on, until some gold text appears on the screen, heralding Mikazuki's arrival. When it shows up, you can press select to alternate between controlling Kazeo and controlling Mikazuki. However, whichever of the two you're controlling, Kazeo is still "you" in the game's world, and you see what Mikazuki is doing from his perspective, wherever you left him on the ground.
It's a pretty interesting way of getting across the fact that this is a fight between giantsized combatants, and really, you shouldn't have expected anything less, since this game is by Sandlot, the masters of making games about really big things, as seen in their most famous games, the Earth Defence Force series, and a previous Lunatic Obscurity subject, Chou Shoujuu Mecha MG. It's a shame this game never fully came into fruition, as the monster design in the show is incredible (but again, Keita Amemiya is one of the greatest tokusatsu monster designers of all time), and it might have been cool to have stages where you played as Akane piloting the Gekkouki series of robots.
Though this specific game came out, Sandlot went on to make a bunch of other games, and two of their other PS2 titles in particular build on the concepts put forth in this demo: Gigantic Drive and Tetsujin 28 Go. So I guess I should really seek them both out and give them a try, right? It's very difficult to get ahold of this demo through legitimate means nowadays, but I'm sure that if it appeals to you, you'll figure something out. And if you do, you'll have a fun five or so minutes before it's over, so why not?
Oh cool; RAD Robot Alchemic Drive gameplay! Or Gigantic Drive, whatever. I remember being so fascinated by that but never playing it for that long when I had it.
ReplyDeleteIt's still such a cool idea. There really needs to be more creative kaiju monster action in gaming; I know the original Kickstarter pitch version of what became Override Mecha City Brawl was supposed to be a co-op multiplayer "Voltron simulator" before they just gave up and tried to clone War of the Monsters badly. I know there's a pretty sweet indie game called Omegalodon that let one player control the monster and everyone else control the army vehicles trying to stop him. Stuff like all of these are such good ideas, I wish they'd get folded into Earth Defense Force campaigns or multiplayer modes at least.
i actually only heard of override a few days ago when i was searching to see if there were any modern ultraman games (other than city shrouded in shadow, which i really wish had an english release)!
Deletehave you played the ps4 godzilla game? unfortunately, the only way to get it now is paying a ludicrous amount of money to ebay sellers, but it is an excellent game that really makes you feel like a huge destructive force :D