Digital Down-Low for 05/28/2022: The Coen bros' classic, "No Madness for Old Marbles."

[Octopus Prime]

That's right, this week we spotlight only the vidiest of games.

Games like Touken Ranbu Warriors, which takes the Musou-em-up gameplay of every other Warriors game and attaches it to a franchise I had no idea existed until I started writing this very sentence. The first draft of this sentence involved me supposing that they just didn't make a franchise to attach this to, but I was mistaken, I'm not so proud as to admit I can be wrong sometimes.

Anyway, it's based on Touken Ranbu, as the title suggests, and that's apparently a "spirit of blades simulation game".

So now you know!

Use swords to chop up monsters, but in vast quantities, because that's how you Warriors, baby!

Next up is Ogre, which takes one of the least video kind of games ("board") and increases the video quotient to 100%! It's a digital adaptation of the Steve Jackson game that, if I'm interpretting the trailer correctly, is Advance Wars, if one of the armies was just one, super SUPER strong tank and the whole game was about trying to take that one particular sucker down. So if you're discouraged by Advance Wars' indefinite delay, and still want something that kind of looks like Advance Wars, if you squint and forgot what Advance Wars' aesthetics looks like, and also already finished with Wargroove or Tiny Metal, or you really like the aforesaid board game and want a digital version of that, here's Ogre in your eye!

Speaking of... umm... people management, Amazing Superhero Squad (which I am now realizing abbreviates to ASS, which I can only assume is intentional), is a Super Hero-em-up corporate sim where you have a whole team of avengers you have to manage the finances of. I only saw a couple episodes of The Boys, but... it looks like it's The Boys, except full focused on the company that runs superheroes, and with the sex and violence turned way down.

Now if you want to pretend you're dancing when you're sitting on your couch, playing a video game, AND ALSO yearn for more LGBQ+ content in your dancing video games, good news, because Pride Dance is out, just in time for the one month a year when every company adds a rainbow to their logos!

Well, except Skittles, that's in there year round.

Anyway, it's a dance game, and there's only one screenshot that isn't a menu so... I have no idea what to say here.

Next up is a genuinely unexpected revival of a property I genuinely forgot existed; Kao the Kangaroo which... I want to say was a contemporary of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. Geographically, if nothing else. It looks nicer than it could have back on the PS2, so it's clearly not just a remaster. Not sure if it's a remake or a whole new thing, but I'm sure someone knows!

Sure ain't me!

Anyway, it's a platformer, you're a kangaroo, and, like all kangaroos, that means you're one of the deadliest boxers to ever grace the world.

Jade Order is the game I'm most excited for this week, which isn't really saying a lot, to be honest, but the trailer made me say "Oh, that looks very similar to an existing game I like quite a lot", so it has splash-back affection. In this case, it looks like Lara Croft: Go (or Hitman Go/Deus Ex Go, if you prefer), right down to the mesoamerican flair. Just with pixels instead of polygons. Take a bird goddess out on a walk from one node to another and use lateral thinking and BRAIN SMARTS to chop the ever-cussin' mustard out of each of them without getting so chopped up yourself.

And finally a smattering of games for the lovers and readers in your life, as there's not one but FOUR visual novels all about ahhhromance. Well, a couple are about ahhhromance, some of them are about looking at bosoms and saying "Oh, neat!", and I suspect they're just barely edited pornography. Freezer Pops is one of the ones without bosoms, as everyone in it is a hunky dad! It is precisely as horny looking as the rest, just with hunky dad bods. Also up is Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers, where your heart must compete against other people eligible for smoochin' in the most romantic setting imaginable; an eSports competition! And finally we have Senren Banka and Sakura Succubus V, which are the two that I strongly suspect are just barely edited pornographic games and I'm just really mentioning them for completions sake.

And that's all for this week! Stay tuned for next week, which should be happening in 7 days or so!

 

[Peklo]

Not only is Touken Ranbu very real and very good, but also in possession of the best "Reception" tab on Wikipedia.

Touken Ranbu quickly became very popular in Japan, particularly with young women, and had over 1.5 million registered players by 2016. The game has been credited with accelerating the Japanese cultural trend of "katana women" (カタナ女子, katana joshi) – women who are interested in, and who pose with, historical Japanese swords. That trend had been started a few years previously with the Sengoku Basara video games, which made katana fans a distinct part of the Japanese subculture of female history aficionados (reki-jo). The popularity of Touken Ranbu was such that a Japanese women's interest magazine published an article about exercise routines based on sword fighting techniques from the game, and the 2015 Tokyo Wonder Festival's figure exhibition was reportedly "completely dominated by hot male swordsmen".

Sure beats all this other licensed Musou claptrap floating about!

 

[ArugulaZ]

Were we supposed to talk about the Marble Madness sequel here? Because I'm not seeing it anywhere else, and the title of this thread confuses me.

Anyway, that long rumored Marble Madness sequel is on the internet now, playable in MAME and everything. Here's a one credit clear from a player with nerves of steelies. (See, because those are the annoying ball bearing enemies that love to knock you off the board. Eh, never mind.)

 

[Octopus Prime]

You know I was going to mention that, seeing as how I titles the thread about it, but I plum forgot. But that’s okay because there was also a bunch of other utterly baffling releases this week. And everyone one of them was a retro rerelease and if you told me you predicted any of them I’d call you a charlatan.

Well, except for Pac Man Museum Plus, since that was announced a while ago, and just wasn’t mentioned in the Coming Soon tab. C’est La vie. What we have here is a veritable smorg of the adventures of that wonderful man named Pac. Just not that one that Namco doesn’t own the rights to anymore. We’ve got Pac-Man, Super Pac Man, Pac & Pal, Pac Land, Pac Mania, Pac Attack, Pac Man Arrangement, Pac Man CE, Pac Man Battle Royale, Pac Man 256, Pac and Roll, Pac-in-Time and Pac Moto. It’s hard to say what the most bewildering thing in that list is. I want to say Pac in Time, myself. That was a euro platformer with Pac-Man slapped into it, afterall.

Regardless, a decadent amount of Pac

Next up is the much more surprising release; the stealth drop of another Neo Geo Pocket game; SNKs effort to look at Pokémon and say “well how hard could it be to do that?” And so; Biomotor Unitron was born unto us! Which has a title that you have to admit, was carefully chosen to appeal to all the Octos of the world. Unfortunately, that part didn't work great as I didn't ever play the game. But now I can! I don't believe it's quite as highly regarded a series, seeing as how one begat one of the most financially successful franchises in history, and one... got a sequel that never left Japan, but HEY... worth seeing!

Next up is this months updates to the Switch Online service; one of which actually came out a couple of weeks ago but, again, I forgot; and that was Kirby and the Crystal Shards! The N64 one! I don't think I played this one before, but seeing as how it's Kirby, I suspect you eat at least one God, and spit it back out, and then go have a cake-induced nap. Also up, on the NES is Pinball, which... you know... was a Black Box era Pinball game so it's fun, but kind of slight compared to most other pinball games released since. Sure was fun in a pirate multi-cart, though. I think this is the last Black Box game left that doesn't have any kind of licensing baggage attached to it. On the SNES we have two other games that, as befits the entire S/NES flix line-up, I only ever saw available for rent at a gas station, and I only ever picked up if every other game I wanted to try was out (in this case, I never got down that low in the queue); I Can't Believe-It's-Not Final Fight brawler; Rival Turf, and the secret Joe & Mac sequel, Congos Caper (which is structured more like a Mario World type of affair than the more arcadey Joe and Mac).

And finally, this weeks arcade game is Flippull, which I didn't know had an arcade port. Or that is existed outside of the Gameboy. Apparently the series is more popular in every other region or at least got more ports than the one associated with the console least conducive to a color matching puzzle game.

Now shaddup and go to bed!

 

[ArugulaZ]

I regret to inform you that Pac-Man Museum Plus is not all that and a bag of chips. It's more "a little of that and a discarded bag with some stale crumbs inside." The interface is a little weird, tied as it is to a fictional arcade, and depending on who you talk to, control is either a little gummy (me) or unforgivably full of lag (everyone else). There are already three ways to play Pac-Man Championship Edition on the Xbox One so it's not a huge deal for us, but if you've got a PS4 or a Switch, it's going to be a bit more of a problem for you. Also, Pac-in-Time is exactly as crummy as advertised; a platformer with slippery controls, confusing rules (eat an energizer and all ghosts become vulnerable, but all OTHER creatures remain just as deadly), and a grappling hook play mechanic that somehow worsens the game rather than improves it.

Also... ALSO, face buttons aren't mapped the way you would expect them to be, and the X button is permanently assigned to menu options, a functionality that was never meant for face buttons. Why not one of the shoulder buttons? Why not one of the tiny little option buttons on the front of the controller? Why confuse and annoy the player with a set up like this?

Swing and a miss, I'd say. I didn't like Pac-Man Museum Non-Plussed for the Xbox 360 either, but after all these years, there was no reason for Namco to Bandai this up so badly.