Digital Down-Low for 06/11/21: Just a Video Game? Get out of here.

[Octopus Prime]

This is your last chance to get rid of the stock of 2020 video games before the new 2021 models roll out!

This weeks pickin's are pretty slim, all told, but the most thicc and nasty of them is certainly Ninja Gaiden Collection; a collection of the entire Ninja Gaiden trilogy. But... erm... the ones from Team Ninja, with the Dead or Alive cameos, not the NES games (I think they're on NESflix, though). But it's also more specifically a compilation of the RE-releases of those games. Furthermore, some of the content from those re-releases have been excised, such as the online multiplayer and some of the optional challenge missions.

BUT, you can play Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and Razors Edge in Traditional Chinese! So it's not all a loss!

Next is Alchemist Adventure, which I thought came out a while ago, but maybe not. Or maybe it was delayed at the last minute. In this'un, we've got a Zeld-em-up starring a SCIENCE MOM tasked with using chemistry to save her family after it was stolen by MONSTERS! Well... chemsitry and, like, swords and stuff.

There's monsters to chop up after all.

And finally, we have Inexistence: Rebirth, which is a troid-em-up. One "inspired by" and "worthy of" the 16-bit classics. That's what the eShop tells me and I'm certainly not going to call them liars!

 

[Torzelbaum]

thicc

Dead or Alive cameos

Hmmm...

Zeld-em-up

Or is this more of a Diablike?

Also, it has a demo on Steam. And a free prologue (which is not as highly rated as the actual game). But the game is still in early access?

 

[Octopus Prime]

HEY OOPS, it turns out I forgot the biggest name release this week. Pobodys Nerfect.

And surely, if you've ever thought that a video game pisn't nerfect, you probably also thought you could do better. And you WOULD do better! I believe in you! To that end, why not pick up Game Builder Garage? A video game about making your own fl*ppin' video games, using intuitive video game... stuff. Stuff like what happens you you press a button.

You press enough buttons and a video game happens.

Just like how The Pros do it!

Also up is Wavebreak, which I believe was a SNEAK RELEASE just ahead of E3 (or else it wasn't and I... ignored it), and appears to be much like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, except instead of professional skate boy, Mr. Hawk, you've got a bunch of varmints on jet-skis.

Furthermore, instead of the Late 90s/early 2000s, it's set in Miami Vice times.

One of the bullet points says "an episodic stoyline involving guns, kickflips and bloodmoney"

Also, it's got a Weezer-based gameplay mode. Like Weezer the band.

So... umm... I was something of a fool to not be more invested in this.

Next up is NOTES, the notebook simulator. For a scant ten Canadian Dollars, you TOO can have what the eShop describes as "A simple and useful (it works perfectly) notation book for you, gamer or not gamer, to take notes in an easy and quick way!

You can have right now a wonderful too to note down anything you need on your everyday life!"

At last!

And backing up the rear is this weeks arcade game; Pirate Pete! Which I infer to be something in the Donkey Kong vein, where each stage is a single screen obstacle course with the goal of saving Some Lady from Cannibal Pirates! Which I strongly suspect was a hasty edit to cover up some pretty dire racism.

 

[WildcatJF]

I'm off work!! I can talk about Pirate Pete!!

Jungle Hunt, Taito's stab at the action platformer in the wake of Pitfall, began life as Jungle King and was a blatant Tarzan ripoff:



Pretty easy to see why Taito didn’t stick with this original version for too long, as it rides the line for IP infringement very closely with Tarzan. It even has a blatant sound bite likely from the old serials! As not-Tarzan, you have to go through four different stages to rescue your girlfriend from a hostile tribe of ...apparent cannibals. Yikes.

The flyer depicts said woman suspended from a tree, not too distant from how the game depicts her in the final area:


She is unnamed in the arcade version, but was given the name Penelope in the Atari ports. Tragically, the native populations of Africa are horrendously depicted with racist imagery. Marketing materials played up the sex appeal of the damsel:



A disappointing but unsurprising practice that continued to dominate the advertising materials of countless arcade machines for the rest of the decade. The game received a few different reskins to avoid being sued by the Burroughs estate shortly after release. The most prominent was Jungle Hunt.



Here the Tarzan clone was replaced with an explorer, but little else visually was changed. The end goal is still to rescue your girlfriend for a celebratory kiss.

The last conversion was Pirate Pete, which was more drastic. Many of the jungle elements were changed to be more nautical to match the piracy motif, including the final sequence to rescue the player’s girlfriend:



...which is what you get through Arcade Archives!

I should write a more elaborate piece on this someday haha. This is from my article on Early Women in Games with some tweaks.

 

[jpfriction]

Huh, I think I’ve seen the original jungle king at a couple of arcades but never either of those reskins.

 

[ArugulaZ]

Jungle King was released as Jungle Hunt on the Atari 2600 and other home consoles. The whole Pirate Pete thing is (relatively) new to me, though.