Heavy Smash (Arcade)

Other than a few remaining outliers like the Everybody's Golf series, sports games that aren't staid, po-faced "simulations" starring real life players are a pretty rare thing nowadays, and sci-fi/fantasy-themed games about fictional sports even moreso. And that's a shame, because those games are usually pretty great, Heavy Smash included.

What it is is a lot like a simplified, horizontally-scrolling version of the Speedball, where armoured players carry the ball and try to throw it into the goals at either ends of the pitch. This being an arcade game rather than a computer game, Heavy Smash does everything in a much louder, more colourful and generally more flamboyant manner than the Speedball games, though. There's also the addition of a power bar, whose main function is to determine how powerful you shots at the enemy's goal are, with the most powerful being like special attacks from a shonen anime, and being able to blast the opponent's goalie into the goal along with the ball at close nough range. The controls are pretty simple, and perfectly suited to a Mega Drive port that never happened: you have three buttons, the middle one is jump, and the other two each have two different functions, depending on which team has the ball. One of them is for taking shots at the opponent's goal, or attempting to tackle a ball-holding member of the opponent's team, while the other either passes the ball to one of your teammates, or, when your power bar is full, shoots a projectile at your nearest opponent.

Interestingly, the game has two scores. There's the number of goals you've scored in the current match, of course, but there's also a regular old arcade game score, too. This latter score goes up when you score goals, tackle enemy players and pick up the ball, and there's also end of match bonuses for things like scoring hat tricks and so on. Another little quirk is that though the standard length of a match is ninety seconds, if you get six points ahead of your opponents, the match is called off and you're declared the winner outright, so it is theoretically possible to attempt a speedrun of this game. Less cool is the fact that if the scores are tied when time runs out, the game goes into sudden death, and if no-one scores before that time runs out, the CPU player wins.

All the teams except one are nationally themed, and true to form for a Japanese arcade game, there's plenty of stereotypes. The Japan team are samurai, the Italy team are gladiators, and so on. But there's also some non-stereotypical teams in there too: Spain are also represented by a team of samurai, and Brazil are represented by a team of guys with electric superpowers? Also, at first glance, Australia's team are the only women in the game, but when the usually-masked Japan team score a goal, the bare-faced portrait that comes up appears to be a short-haired woman, which is interesting, I guess?

In summary, Heavy Smash is a game that's a lot of fun to play, and it looks awesome, too. Plus, it's yet another game you can look at and ask "why did this never get a home port?" So go and do both those things!

Airship Q (PS Vita)

The first I heard of this game was that it was an import-only PS Vita game that had received an official translation, and instantly went and bought a copy, just because we really should reward the publishers who do good things like this, just as much as we should shun those who engage in unethical business practices like encouraging real money gambling and so on. (How topical! I feel lucky that none of the games embroiled in all this loot box controversy are even slightly appealing to me in the first place, though). Luckily, this all paid off, and Airship Q turned out to be a pretty good game!

As you look at the screenshots, I'm sure you'll be reminded heavily of Terraria, and there's no denying that that game must have been a big influence on this one. It's by no means a clone, though, as while Terraria might have an end goal, it's also a non-linear game that takes place in a large, procedurally generated open world, with a heavy emphasis on building bases and so on, Airship Q is a much more linear action RPG ala Zelda, that happens to take place in a world of mostly-destructible blocks, and in which you gather resources to make your tools and weapons.

In it, you play as a girl living in a world of floating islands who built a flying ship with her brother, only for her brother to be kidnapped by a witch, who also turned the two siblings into cats. Your aim (at the start of your adventure, at least) is to rescue your brother, beat up the witch and regain your human forms. In the course of this, you'll seek out statues that let you build more and more pieces of equipment, from stronger mining equipment to pieces of machinery that improve your airship. You'll also eventually find out some secrets behind the world when your true quest is revealed (though since this is a pretty recent game that's still available to buy brand new, I won't spoil things any further). There's even the possiblity of a cheeky bit of sequence-breaking, if you're smart!

It's a lot of fun to play. Dungeons largely involve digging around and building staircases to climb, while simultaneously fighting off hoards of monsters and seeking out the statues hidden within. Exploration has a totally different feel, as you fly around on your ship seeking out islands and dungeons, as well as occasionally fending off attacks from flying monsters,and even huge dragons and enemy ships (dragons are usually guarding some important treasure nearby, while enemy ships are usually great sources for resources like big cannons to steal and attach to your ship, and coal to power your machines). There's also cool little touches like how structures need to be built in certain ways, since unlike Minecraft, everything will collapse in short time if it's not built in a sufficiently sturdy manner (though that's fine if you're just building a temporary bridge or whatever).

Again, I don't want to spoil all the cool little moments and touches that this game holds, so I'll end this review here with a strong recommendation. Airship Q is a great game, and you can pick up a brand new physical copy for really cheap, too!