Curiosities Vol. 2 - Mini Vaders and Dottori Kun

These two games are by different companies (Mini Vaders by Taito, and Dottori Kun by Sega), and are in different genres. They do have things in common, though: they share an incredibly minimalist aesthetic, with no colours, no sounds and very simple sprites, and though they look like they're early experiments into videogames from the 1970s, they were both actually made and released in the early 1990s.

The story behind this is that they're both games made as cheaply and simply as possible, with the purpose of being packaged with JAMMA arcade cabinets. There are two stories floating around the internet as to why these games exist: the first is they exist to ensure that the cabinets are functional, and the other is that there was a Japanese law at the time that required that all arcade cabinets be sold with games installed. I don't know which is true, but the legislation story seems the most plausible, since neither game appears to have any kind of test functions.

Mini Vaders is the best (or at least, the most interesting) of the two games, being a very simplified Space Invaders variant, with no score and no lives, but a somewhat unique design. Each stage consists of a formation of invaders that don't shoot at the player, but they do advance down the screen very quickly, and it's up to the player to shoot them before they do. It goes by the classic Space Invaders rule of allowing only one of the player's shots on-screen at a time, and due to the fast pace of the invaders, missing a single shot can mean death.

Dottori Kun is not so interesting. The game is a simple dot-collecting maze game, with the player controlling a V and avoiding a CPU-controlled X. When the screen is cleared of dots, it refills and the players score increases by one. The player can increase their speed by holding the fire button. That's it for Dottori Kun. I guess it doesn't really matter though, since neither game was made to actually be played by anyone.

Zangeki Warp Trial (PC)

So, I thought I'd try out something different with this post: rather than talking about a game that's already been overlooked, I'm going to talk about the demo for a game that isn't out yet, and of which my readers might not be aware.

So, some of you might be aware of the Japanese PC developers Astro Port, with their catalogue of shooting games, as well as the awesome Assault Suits-alike Gigantic Army. And I'm sure that most of you will know of the recent Comiket 87. Astro Port didn't release a new game at C87, but they did release this demo of their upcoming game.

It's a shooting game, and in keeping with Astro Port's other shooters, it's of an old-fashioned, pre-bullet hell design, ala Gradius, R-Type, Darius, and so on. It also has a really cool, fairly unique gimmick, though: as well as the fire button, there's also a warp button. When held, the warp button freezes time and gives the player a cursor to move around the screen. When the button's released, the player's ship warps to wherever the cursor was, hitting any enemies between the two locations with a slashing attack, and ignoring any walls or other obstacles in the way. There's also no power-ups in-game, but instead a more RPG-esque system of putting points into different stats, with more points being rewarded between stages.

I've played to a little over halfway through stage two, and not only do I love the gimmick itself, but the stage design perfectly compliments it. The first stage is an introduction to the use of the warp, while still managing to be a pretty robust challenge, while the second stage is totally merciless, expecting the player to have mastered warping around and all the little nuances of the game's controls.

I definitely recommend getting this demo (from here), and I look forward to the full game being released. The only issue I have is a very minor issue: It would be cool if there were some kind of points incentive for destroying or damaging enemies with the slash attack, rather than shooting them.