Other Stuff Monthly #5!

One of the secret reasons I started this series of posts was as an excuse to occasionally buy interesting-looking toys from Japan, and this marks the first time I've bought toys specifically for the blog. The toys in question are a mid-2000s line called Keybots, which I guess never really took off, as there's pretty much no English information on them anywhere, and it doesn't seem to have ever had a TV anime or any videogames. (Though the subject of anime is one I'll get back to later!)

The line is made up of cute monster-like robots, which themselves are composed of an octagonal core with four slots, and various body parts that fit into those slots. The cores also have keyholes in the centre, and come with keys. Insert a key into the hole and turn it, and all the attached parts spring loose. Each core does come with its own colour-coded plastic key, and there's also a shiny key made of metal that fits in any of them.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any boxed examples, so there's no packaging scans this time, but I was able to get one complete keybot, a red-and-yellow dragon-looking guy, as well most of the parts for a blue-and-grey character, that seems to have dragon, elephant and demonic forms. All the slots and parts are compatible with each other, though, and there are even connector parts that allow the building of larger, multi-core creatures.

I'm not really a fan of the general aesthetic of the toys themselves, though I think they're aimed at a younger audience than the usual mecha stuff. There is, however, a lot of satisfaction in how they feel, especially the amount of resistance to turning the keys, and how all the parts pop off when you do. It might be worth having a couple around, just to idly fiddle with and keep your hands busy while you watch tv or whatever. It's also basically a building toy, and like most building toys, I expect you'd get a lot more out of it the more parts you have. I'd totally love a similar line that had designs that looked more like "proper" mecha, or maybe even used designs from actual anime.

And that handily fetches us back to the subject of anime! As I said,  I couldn't find evidence of any TV anime, which was a surprise for a kids toyline. But what I did find, along with a bunch of typical thirty second TV ads, was a five minute long CG animated short from 2006 entitled キーボッツII 希望の紋章. It's not listen on AniDB, MyAnimeList, or the Anime News Network encyclopedia, so I think I might be the first in the west to see it? Also there's "II" in the title, so presumably, there's at least one more of them out there somewhere.

Hangzo (Arcade)

Hangzo is yet another unreleased arcade game that only came to light thanks to MAME, though this time it's not by Taito. It might be by Hot-B or Data East, though no-one seems to be 100% sure. One thing that is for sure is that though Hangzo was inteded to be an arcade game, spiritually, it's a Mega Drive game to the core. Can you really say that game is spiritually something for sure? Yes, I just did.

The game's about three ninjas, who clearly went to the Joe Musashi school of ninjitsu, as they don't spend any time sneaking around assassinating people. Instead they go through cyberpunk cities noisily destroying loads of exploding robots, and also through biopunk laboratories destroying loads of exploding blobby monsters. They even have a limited-use screen-clearing magic bomb jutsu! It really is like a lost Shinobi game, specifically a lost entry into the Mega Drive's Super/Revenge of Shinobi series.

There are a couple of original elements, though, like the inclusion of seperate buttons for melee and projectile attacks, bearing in mind that Hangzo does predate Shinobi III/Super Shinobi 2, and even in that game, the six-button mode was hidden behind a cheat code. There's also a magic fire breathing lion that turns up in most of the stages for you to ride around on. But generally in terms of both theming and mechanics, this is essentially a professionally-made Shinobi fangame.

It's fairly easy too, and shouldn't take more than a few attempts to one-credit-clear. Though a big part of this is thanks to one stage, about midway through the game, inexplicably having a section where a whole bunch of extra lives and health powerups coming floating in from the side of the screen. But it's not too easy, though, not easy enough to be boring, at least.

I feel like the last few posts on this blog have been really negative, and though I want to turn that around with this post, I can't be 100% positive about Hangzo. Probably as a conseqeunce of being an unfinished, unreleased game, it is a little rough around the edges: the presentation is not exactly super-polished, and the hitboxes feel a little strange at times, for example. However, it's still a lot of fun, and I definitely recommend going and giving it a try. It's a shame it never actually got released, and I hope someday, whoever owns the rights to it gives it a little extra sheen and releases it officially somehow.