Supreme Warrior Ying Heung (Mega CD)

I've long theorised that the thing that killed the Mega CD was western publishers and their obsession with FMV, since the PC Engine CD, which had almost no support in the west, and had no FMV games, was a pretty big success (in Japan, at least), just by having lots of good games. Until now, though, I hadn't actually played any of the western "interactive movie" style FMV games, only the likes of Road Avenger and Strahl: the "laserdisc arcade" school of FMV games that were made up of long strings of QTEs and cool-looking 80s animation. Those games are pretty fun, if very limited.

Supreme Warrior Ying Heung is the first interactive movie I've played, and using the word "played" is an act of generosity it doesn't deserve. The story sees an evil warlord attacking a small town in sixteenth century China, demanding half of a magic mask from the local martial arts master. If he gets the mask, he'll be all-powerful and go on to rule the world. Unfortunately, the master is too old to fight the warlord, and his best student is injured. So it falls to you, a collection of disembodied limbs attatched to a movie camera to save the day.

There's some good things about this game, that I should mention before I continue with its burial, so here they are: the production values are surprisingly good, in a mid-90s American TV show kind of way, and the video quality is a lot better than most live action Mega CD games. That's about it, though. The big problem is that the developers have tried to make something a bit more sophisticated than the typical QTE festival, and it just doesn't work. This is a problem shared by one of the aforementioned laserdisc arcade games, Cobra Command (aka Thunderstorm FX), which added a fiddly, semi-functional crosshair shooting element to proceedings. Supreme Warrior manages to be go even further with the complexity, and while Cobra Command was pretty difficult to play, this game is practically impossible.

The actual game part of Supreme Warrior has you fighting the warlord's three henchmen, then, if you somehow manage to beat them, the man himself. The fights are completely live action and first person, with the henchmen punching and kicking in the direction of the camera, while you're expected to punch, kick, and block in accordance with the little prompts that appear at the edges of the screen. The problem is that the prompts sometimes don't appear, and sometimes hitting the right direction and button doesn't do anything. I made a few attempts at fighting each henchman, and I never landed more than two hits on any of them. It just doesn't work on any level: it's no fun to play, the basic mechanics don't work, and your hands and feet flying in from the edge of the screen look stupid every time.

I wish I could say it was a shame that this game turned out how it did, and that the concept had so much potential, but I can't see how else they would have done it. I guess they could have made it a simple QTE game like the arcade games that had been originally released almost a decade earlier, or they could have used the movie segments as mere cutscenes to a more traditional action game, maybe with Mortal Kombat-style digitised sprites. But neither of those solutions really offers the kind of interactive movie innovation towards which Digital Pictures strove. Since no-one else has managed to make a good game from the concept in the decades since, maybe it's just not possible?

Boukyaku no Senritsu (Game Boy Advance)

I don't know what made this game's title stand out to me while I was perusing a list of GBA games, but it did, and I'm glad I decided to investigate for myself then and there instead of going online and looking it up first. Because what this game is is a pretty fun Kiki Kaikai-alike, and what GameFAQs inexplicably lists it as is an adventure game. If i'd have seen that listing before playing, I would have just assumed it was completely unplayable without Japanese literacy and ignored it. So the moral is not to trust crowd-sourced info when it comes to lesser-known games, I guess?

So yeah, Boukyaku no Senritsu (also known as The Melody of Oblivion) is a top-down shooting game based on a 2004 anime I've never seen,, and in it, you pick from one of three characters and go trough five stages fighting against strange monsters, like robot cows, monkeys and babies, a bull/buss hybrid thing, and so on. Once per stage there's also a non-shooting section where you're riding on a jetbike and you just have to avoid stuff until it's over. I was pleasantly surprised in a number of wats playing this game, too: not only is it a really fun game to play, but it also has an amazing soundtrack, reminiscent of PC98 shooting games. The GBA doesn't have a great reputation regarding music, but it is possible to eke a good soundtrack from it.

With two exceptions, the presentation is a good job all-round, in fact. The first exception is that the sprites are in that ugly, blobby pre-rendered that was popular for some reason in the GBA's heyday (though the backgrounds are still nice enough). The other is that a few times per stage, and between the stages, there's lengthy dialogue scenes that you can't just skip in one go with the start button or anything: you have to sit there hammering the A button until the characters stop their yammering and let you go back to shooting stuff. There is one really nice bit of aesthetic flourish that almost makes up for those things, in that when you use your bomb attack, you get a few seconds of full screen animation that not only looks great, but is also pretty impressive for a GBA game. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any others that do that. And again, the music really is great.

There's not much more to be said about this game, to be honest: it's another, heretofore unsung high quality action game that manages to be worthwhile on a system that already has a generous supply of better-known high quality action games. It's a little easy, since I got to the final boss on my first attempt on default settings, but there are higher difficulties, including one that has to be unlocked by completing with every character. It's also pretty cheap to get a legit copy of, which is probably thanks to its relatively unknown status. I recommend it! One final word: apologies for this shorter-than-usual, slightly thrown-together post, but a combination of being busy with some other writing, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night getting released last week, and some bad mental health days have all hit at once, taking away the time and energy I need to research a few posts in advance like usual.