Damdam Stompland (Playstation)

Obviously, I can only speculate about this, but it seems very much like this game exists mainly because someone working for a small developer discovered how to make the Playstation do a thing, and they wanted to make a game to show off that thing. The thing in question being the real-time rendering of shadows, which are actually shaped by the models casting them, and which also change length and direction in reaction to the

light source.
The game itself is simple one of shadow tag, as seen in the excellent Urusei Yatsura movie Only You: the idea isn't to tag your opponent's body, but to stamp on their shadow. Do it three times before your opponent does, or before the time (the matches only last a single minute, which goes by very quickly) runs out to win.
You can't just walk on to the shadow to score a point, but must press X to do a stomping action. Circle jumps and square does some kind of sliding tackle type thing that doesn't seem to serve any purpose, other than moving straight ahead very quickly.
There are numerous characters and arenas (arenae?) in the game, though they aren't specific to each other. There aren't any boss characters as far as I can tell. Some of the characters are typical cartoony humans, along with a robot (who bears a striking resemblens to Goriki from Kia Asamiya's Steam Detectives), a

mushroom-man wearing wooden armour, and strangest of all, a severed fish head with human legs. And it really is a severed head, as the wound is visible from certain angles. There's also a nice bit of flavour in the game, with big colourful illustrations between stages and in endings, and the game over screen shows a picture of your defeated character looking depressed (or in the case of the fish head, eaten).
The arenas are all completely different, offering different ratios of safe area and Dead or Alive-esque danger zones. The safe areas also have different features in them, such as conveyor belts, moving obstacles or even just that fact that one stage's safe area is a tiny, low friction square in the centre of the map. Another hazard comes in the form of little sombrero-clad cactus-men, who will stomp on the shadows of the unwary.
I like this game more than I had expected to. It is a lot of fun to play, though I can imagine it might not have a

lot of long-term longevity, being based as it is on a single idea, and it did take me a few games to get used to playing it (though a good part of this was working out the controls, a task of which I have helpfully absolved you). There's also a definite low-budget feel to it, it really wouldn't be out of place in the Simple 1500 series (two notes here: firstly, long-time readers will surely know I would never regard this as a negative point, and secondly, if i remember rightly, there is actually a game of regular tag in the Simple 1500 series).

Demon Front (Arcade)

This game is by IGS, for their PGS arcade hardware, a company and a system both mostly known for their high-quality beat em ups, such as Oriental Legend and the Knights of Valour series. This isn't one of those, though: it's a huge Metal Slug rip-off.

Well, rip-off might be a bit harsh. Everything about the game is very high quality, and it does have a couple of new ideas. But the general feel of the game, as well as some of the weapons (the most blatant being the machine gun and shotgun) are exactly like the Metal Slug games. You go across slightly hilly horizontally scrolling stages, killing tons of one-hit enemies, occasionally stopping for a bigger set-piece type enemy, and there are even litle hidden paths and points items gained by shooting the right parts of the background, just like Metal Slug. One thing they were right to steal is the concept of having really nice 2D graphics. To be extra clear, the graphics themselves aren't stolen, but it's obvious the developers knew they couldn't compete with SNK unless their game looked just as good, and it definitely does. Well, a lot of people might prefer Metal Slug's "everything is dirty and slightly melted" style to Demon Front's "really really nice use of colours"

style, but either way, Demon Front looks great.
As for the original parts, the first is that each character has a little pet flying alongside them. Holding the fire button for a couple of seconds makes the pet do their attack, which is different for each pet, and pressing the third button turns the pet into a forcefield around the player which can take a few hits. It's obviously a lot safer using the pet as a shield than a weapon, and when playing, I've survived longer when using this tactic. Once the forcefield has taken its share of hits though, it disappears and won't reappear until you lose a life. Some brave players might want to try being a little more tactical, using the forcefield right up until the last hit, then turning it back into the

pet and using its powerful attack for a while.
There is also some kind of levelling up mechanic regarding the pet, and you get different kinds of experience from enemies depending on whether you shoot them, stab them or kill them with the pet's attack. The levelling doesn't really seem to have a huge effect on what happens either way, though.
All in all, Demon Front is a pretty great game, and is definitely worth playing, and even if it's not totally original, its general quality makes up for that.