The problem with White Lotus is that they don't ever really focus on the people having a nice time on their vacation at the resort.
So let's kick off with something that got a but buried in the smorgasbord of everything released last week, and given the really generic cover art they went with in order to advertise it, that's not entirely surprising; Everyboys Golf: Hot Shots! Which is the first new Hot Shots Golf in a good long while. Also they changed the title to the original Japanese title at some point. Also I think this is the first time the series has left Playstation? I'm less certain of that.
Anyway this here is a game about spoiling nice walks and all the golfers have a kind of Genericized Anime Look to them. Furthermore, Pac-Man is there.
Speaking of spoiling nice walks, we've got Call of the Sea, which is about a gal who went on a nice trip to find her missing husband who disappeared on an exploration expedition in the 1930s. And apparently wound up on a Cthulhu island full of weird mysteries that she's got to untangle in order to find a guy and resume being married to him. Kind of like MYST, but you get to smooch the guy in the book.
What I think I'm safe in assuming is a very different sort of video game is Baki Hanma: Blood Arena; an adaptation of the anime Baki. And, as is appropriate for an anime about horrifying muscle-golems shoving their fist-meat into one another, it's a Punch Out-em-up, with all that that entails. Just with the cartoonish likes of Glass Joe or Soda Popinski being replaced with indiscernible wads of incomprehensible muscle groups.
Swinging back around to the opposite side of the spectrum again, we have Inspector Waffles: Early Days, a point and clicky-style adventure-em-up that serves as a prequel to another jokey point and clicky adventure-em-up but using a different art style. While the first game looked to be a bit more in the vein of Monkey Island (but with a kitty cat detective instead of a pirate), this one appears to be more in the vein of the NES Who Framed Roger Rabbit game. Except if it was on the GBC. And also if Bob Hoskins was a kitty.
Gather clues and find the purr-petrators.
If nobody in the game uses that pun then what the hell are we even doing here?
Hellcard is a spinoff from the criminally overlooked and *really good* Book of Demons, which was itself just... straight up Diablo 1, except with papercraft visuals and as a deckbuilder. This time it instead appears to be something more like either Gauntlet or perhaps Vampire Survivors? The description in the eShop is kind of uninformative, but I really liked Book of Demons so I'll certainly give this a respectful nod.
And now we're on to the old stuff, and what retro release could *paw*sibly be more exciting than Bubsy? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING COULD, THAT'S WHAT. And because this is a known fact, that's why this week has Bubsy: The Purr-fect Collection, which is a pretty robust collection of Bubsy games that... appears to be made with a genuine reverence and respect for the series that pretty much exists as a punchline. It's a collection that includes the original Bubsy (on SNES, Genesis and Super Famicom ports), Bubsy 2 (SNES, Genesis and Gameboy), the rarely seen Jaguar exclusive Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales and the largely reviled Bubsy 3D on the PS1. It also has a bunch of interviews and scanned Bubsy historical documents and... honestly, it's kind of refreshing to see this much affection for Bubsy.
Weird but wonderful.
Speaking of unusual historical curios from the mid 90s, NSO updated again with the Nintendo 64 and it got Forsaken 64. Which was apparently a Descent-em-up with a space ship flying through maze like 3D dungeons full of killbots and the like. Which I was surprised to learn considering how the cover art that sold the game was "A lady with the logo tattooed on her cheek". Which I guess is the exact same bait-and-switch that Phalanx used, but we all loved it that time and history has forgotten Forsaken.
And finally we have an Egg Console release and, as usual, that means "RPG with lots of text and not English translation". In this case, that game is Crimson 2. Which appears to be a Dragon Quest-y type of deal, as was the style of the time.
OKAY, GO TO BED.
So let's kick off with something that got a but buried in the smorgasbord of everything released last week, and given the really generic cover art they went with in order to advertise it, that's not entirely surprising; Everyboys Golf: Hot Shots! Which is the first new Hot Shots Golf in a good long while. Also they changed the title to the original Japanese title at some point. Also I think this is the first time the series has left Playstation? I'm less certain of that.
Anyway this here is a game about spoiling nice walks and all the golfers have a kind of Genericized Anime Look to them. Furthermore, Pac-Man is there.
Speaking of spoiling nice walks, we've got Call of the Sea, which is about a gal who went on a nice trip to find her missing husband who disappeared on an exploration expedition in the 1930s. And apparently wound up on a Cthulhu island full of weird mysteries that she's got to untangle in order to find a guy and resume being married to him. Kind of like MYST, but you get to smooch the guy in the book.
What I think I'm safe in assuming is a very different sort of video game is Baki Hanma: Blood Arena; an adaptation of the anime Baki. And, as is appropriate for an anime about horrifying muscle-golems shoving their fist-meat into one another, it's a Punch Out-em-up, with all that that entails. Just with the cartoonish likes of Glass Joe or Soda Popinski being replaced with indiscernible wads of incomprehensible muscle groups.
Swinging back around to the opposite side of the spectrum again, we have Inspector Waffles: Early Days, a point and clicky-style adventure-em-up that serves as a prequel to another jokey point and clicky adventure-em-up but using a different art style. While the first game looked to be a bit more in the vein of Monkey Island (but with a kitty cat detective instead of a pirate), this one appears to be more in the vein of the NES Who Framed Roger Rabbit game. Except if it was on the GBC. And also if Bob Hoskins was a kitty.
Gather clues and find the purr-petrators.
If nobody in the game uses that pun then what the hell are we even doing here?
Hellcard is a spinoff from the criminally overlooked and *really good* Book of Demons, which was itself just... straight up Diablo 1, except with papercraft visuals and as a deckbuilder. This time it instead appears to be something more like either Gauntlet or perhaps Vampire Survivors? The description in the eShop is kind of uninformative, but I really liked Book of Demons so I'll certainly give this a respectful nod.
And now we're on to the old stuff, and what retro release could *paw*sibly be more exciting than Bubsy? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING COULD, THAT'S WHAT. And because this is a known fact, that's why this week has Bubsy: The Purr-fect Collection, which is a pretty robust collection of Bubsy games that... appears to be made with a genuine reverence and respect for the series that pretty much exists as a punchline. It's a collection that includes the original Bubsy (on SNES, Genesis and Super Famicom ports), Bubsy 2 (SNES, Genesis and Gameboy), the rarely seen Jaguar exclusive Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales and the largely reviled Bubsy 3D on the PS1. It also has a bunch of interviews and scanned Bubsy historical documents and... honestly, it's kind of refreshing to see this much affection for Bubsy.
Weird but wonderful.
Speaking of unusual historical curios from the mid 90s, NSO updated again with the Nintendo 64 and it got Forsaken 64. Which was apparently a Descent-em-up with a space ship flying through maze like 3D dungeons full of killbots and the like. Which I was surprised to learn considering how the cover art that sold the game was "A lady with the logo tattooed on her cheek". Which I guess is the exact same bait-and-switch that Phalanx used, but we all loved it that time and history has forgotten Forsaken.
And finally we have an Egg Console release and, as usual, that means "RPG with lots of text and not English translation". In this case, that game is Crimson 2. Which appears to be a Dragon Quest-y type of deal, as was the style of the time.
OKAY, GO TO BED.
so I'll just share Konami's 1981 billiards hit Video Hustler is this week's Arcade Archive.