Thank heavens for wierdo Japanese videogames, and as far as wierd Japanese games being released in the West go, there aren't many as odd as 2000's Incredible Crisis.



Essentially a collection of mini-games, Incredible Crisis tells the story of a families attempts to make it to their grandmother's birthday party without allowing her to realise they've forgotten, that doesn't sound particularly odd per-se, but when you factor in a giant boulder falling down an elevator shaft, forcing the player to keep hitting the hitting the emergency stop button so the father can attempt to get off the elevator before being crushed to death, the mother then later at the bank, making a withdrawal so she can buy groceries for the party later that day, the bank is robbed and the mother has to help out by playing an instrument to open the item they've stolen.

Each of the four key family members has to partake in various different games, which there are 24 of in total and many of them are entertaining, although some feel rather inaccurate, particularly the aforementioned musical number. Not only that but each of the games isn't really explained all too well and often requires the player to half-guess as to what they have to do. The game is presented in a typically wacky, 3D anime style and the family members anxiety and frustration is displayed particularly well by the facial animations, which are mildly humourous.

Really, Incredible Crisis would never have been remembered as a classic, even amongst those who enjoy such oddball niche titles, but that doesn't really matter, whats on offer is pretty entertaining and is definetly worth a play if you've becoming a little disenchanted with the current gaming spectrum.

With the recent closure of Bizarre creations, and recent opening of Lucid Games, it seemed fitting to visit one of their older games, now admittedly I've not gone too far back, but Fur Fighters remains one of their most overlooked games, possibly because it doesn't involve cars.



Fur Fighters puts you in control of a group of animal super spies who've had their children (or in the case of Tweak, his mother and siblings) taken by the evil General Viggo. It's a little cliche but it sets things up for what is actually an excellent game. Unsurprisingly for a Bizarre game the presentation is of a high standard, especially when compared to the clunky interfaces of No Cliche's Toy Commander. The Dreamcasts lack of two analogue sticks raises some difficulty with the controls, the face buttons act as the movement input whilst the single stick is for aiming and turning, it feels a little clunky, the system always did regardless of the game in my opinion, but it works nonetheless and is actually one of the finer tuned games to feature such a control system.

You begin the game by choosing a single character to start off as, but as the story progresses you need to use warp points to change character to be able to achieve certain tasks, Rico the Penguin, for example, is the only one who can go underwater, whilst Juliette the cat can climb walls (provided they have claw marks on them), it provides some challenge to the game preventing it from just being a run and gun shooter, although attention should be paid to the layout of each level due to their size and how easy it is to get lost, using each characters unique abilities in order to progress and find all of the Fur Fighters' babies (which can only be set free by the parent of the same species). The Weapons are mostly uninspired, but are still satisfying to play with, they're suprisingly well balanced too, which makes the multiplayer incredible fun to play, especially when you factor in the inventive thinking behind each of the multiplayer levels, and its the multiplayer that still stands up the strongest today.

When Fur Fighters was initially released, it received alot of praise from all who played it, and alot of that praise is still justified today, unfortunately it never really sold well, which seems to be pretty common when Bizarre creations deviate from their racing heritage (The Club and 007: Blood Stone are other examples of this), but anybody who still owns a Dreamcast really ought to give this a play, it truly deserves it.

I was going to cover Bizarre creations' Fur Fighters this week, but I was unable to give it the time it deserved due to decided to have a "quick blast" on this game. I'll try and get Fur Fighters done for next Sunday.



Anyway, yeah, its another racing game, this time its Re-Volt a game from summer 1999 that appeared on PlayStation, N64, PC and Dreamcast. I'm covering the Dreamcast version, which just happened to be the better release. If you're not aware of the game, and unfortunately it seems most aren't, Re-Volt is a Radio Controller Car racing game that blends in comfortably somewhere between Micro Machines and Super Mario Kart.

In the single player you take part in championships where you have to finish at least third in each race to progress to the next, races take place in worldly locations like out in the streets of an American suburb, the supermarket, museum or ornamental gardens and the racing can become pretty fast and hectic especially as the handling requires some getting used to. Each of the cars has different stats, some are heavy, some are fast etc and these directly effect more than the cars straightline performance. For example on the suburbs based circuit you'll be able to throw some of the cars over the kerbs, using them as shortcuts, others will take a more thoughtful approach where you really have to consider a racing line whilst others will need you to rely solely on intelligent use of power ups to gain an advantage meaning there's a car for every type of player even really early on.

Unsuprisingly, the game absolutely sparks in multiplayer, 2 players can enter into the Championship mode together, where as four can either race or enter the battle arena. There's also a really user friendly track editor that can provide some really entertaining circuits to race on without any major planning involved.

For me, Re-Volt is one of the forgotten good games from the Dreamcast era, its by no means an excellent example of its genre, the tricky handling of some of the cars and tight elements to some of the circuits can put some people off for example, but its highly entertaining and has enough of that "one more go" factor in multiplayer to keep you plugging away unlocking cars and circuits.

Many many people know about Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid, alot of those are aware that that wasn't the first game in the series, and far too many people aren't even aware that the director has worked on projects outside of the batshit mental world he's created for the Snake family tree. This is mostly because the likes of Snatcher and Policenauts were never widely available outside of Japan, in fact Policenauts was only ever released there and has had to rely on a fan tranlation for people wanting to find out what that was all about. However, I'm not here to discuss Policenauts today, today is all about Snatcher.



This is probably where the "frustrated movie director" feel that seeps through Kojima's games truly began, if Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake were stealth titles with only a little plot, then Snatcher was hardly a videogame at all, not if you deem a game to require a sufficient amount of gameplay anyway. In fact the title is regarded as an "interactive novel" or more traditionally an Adventure game, particularly in the same vein as the old text adventures that were popular way back when. Snatcher is split into two distinct play styles, the first and most heavily used is a menu driven detective system that requires the player to explore their surroundings and interact with other people and objects via a choice of menu's that gradually expand as you investigate more. This is the meat of the game, and thankfully the interaction between the characters and the analysis of items provided by Metal Gear (your robotic companion) and Gillian are incredibly engaging and entertaining. The dialog is all wonderfully written which helps to create a rich, believable world that gradually manages to seperate itself from the obvious inspiration of Blade Runner into something that can stand up as its own product.

The second gameplay element is essentially a shooting gallery, Kojima doesn't use this often and its a little cumbersome using a directional pad but it works enough and adds tension to what could otherwise be described as a slow moving game with very little in the way of action sequences.

Snatcher doesn't pull any punches, murder, gore and sexual interactions are common themes throughout, as are paranoia and sceptiscm and it quite clearly wears Kojima's inspirations on its sleeve for all to see, or at least it does early on. It's aged suprisingly well, the voices and visuals are admittedly very limited, but that adds to the charm and enjoyment of the game, it doesn't try to be something it isn't and its all the better for it, and fans of the Metal Gear series will love all the little cameo appearances that are shared between the two worlds.

It's hard to imagine a world without Pokémon now, indeed the likes of Pikachu and his friends have become icons of the videogames industry and could probably even give Mario a run for his money in regards to brand notability.



The biggest criticism aimed at the Pokémon games is that they've remained the same throughout their 4 official updates with only the number of Pokémon to catch being changed and whilst this is undoubtably false, I really wanted to head back and play Pokémon Red and Blue (I sided with Red as its the cartridge I still have available, back in the day my Step-Brother has Blue).

The opening moments will be familiar with anybody, wake up in Pallet Town, go to Professor Oaks lab, he's not there, try to leave town and he stops you, go and choose your very first Pokémon, Squirtle! I choose you! What I love about these classic Gameboy games (including Links Awakening, Super Mario Land and Tetris) is that their visuals are simple, iconic and despite the limitations of the platform and its colour range, exceptionally clean. It's a testament to 2D visuals that even when stripped down to this incredibly basic pallet, they still look good, I'm not sure people will look back on some of the DS's line-up so fondly in the future, which, whilst it can display exceptional 2D imagery, lacks the charm that limiting the clarity and colour sets seems to bring to the table.

But its not just visually that old titles such as Pokémon stand up still today. The music to Pokémon has become more complicated and more like "real" music as the series has progressed thanks to better Audio chips embedded into each handheld device, but the battle music to Pokémon Red & Blue is probably the most memorable and that could be down to its simplicity and the feeling of Electronica it pumps out at the player, the pace and pitch is absolutely perfect for each and every battle and the beeping noise that develops when your Pokémon's health is at critical fits in perfectly with the background music adding a sense of emergency. This would mean nothing if Pokémon wasn't fun to play, and even now its still incredibly addictive, with the need to find and catch each and every Pokémon feeding into the gamers obsession to explore every nook and cranny and find every item in any game, although this can be taken to extremes as we saw with many of the platformers on the N64, you could say Pokémon were the 1990's equivalent of Achievement Points, in a sort of round-about way. This is all tied up with an excellent, if incredibly simple (at first) battle system. In reality, anybody able to handle a Gameboy could pick up Pokémon and instantly begin battling and levelling up their creatures, but there are subtleties to be taken advantage of, sometimes just relentlessly hitting your enemy won't pay off and a more tactical approach such as weakening their attack or defense or even confusing them is required, but being limited to four moves for each Pokémon means tweaking and perfecting your squad (especially when it comes to battling your friends) can become an artform in itself.

The series may not appear to have evovled very much, but evolution isn't sudden, its a slow process and Nintendo have tried to tackle and improve as and when the series has called for it, but its very hard to drastically change something when you got it pretty much spot on the first time and Pokémon Red and Blue is the perfect example of how to make a heavily number crunching genre like the JRPG accessible and entertaining for everybody regardless of age or experience.

Part of what keeps me going with this whole Retro Review thing is being reminded of past memories involving videogame and just like the Toy Story films, Toy Commander fills me with incredible nostalgia from different era's of my life.



The obvious part is its place in my gaming past, a time when I was getting drunk at a friends house and playing 4 player games, having a laugh and taking 30 minutes to walk the 7 minutes or so journey back to my house, trying to sneak back in quietly (I didn't have a curfew, but didn't want to wake everybody up as I'd be in trouble obviously) and generally leading a fun, care free teenage existence.

Other memories are sparked by the games styling and theme which is very similar to Toy Story, here its all about the toys and the world we place upon them and whilst Toy Story gave those toys actual life, here its still within the realms of imagination in regards to what we used to do as kids. In this respect Toy Commander is absolutely excellent, the combination of toy planes, cars and boats with other things such as building blocks, scalextric track and make-shift "pencil missiles" gives the player a nostalgia kick that otherwise they'd find embarassing.

The problem here is the presentation of the game is very childish, which is to be expected, but the difficulty level and indeed its learning curve favours more experienced gamers and even then its not exactly friendly. The control's feel overly twitchy, even by Dreamcast analogue standards, which makes proceedings even more difficult especially when you take to the skies. Likewise the visual appearance of the game is very rugged, which is obviously to be expected of a launch Dreamcast game, but it lacks a certain "Retro 3D" charm emitted by something like last weeks review of Metal Gear Solid (which may have worked out due to the limitations of the platform it was on) and the lack of shading makes the world far too bright, colourful and breaks that sort of imaginary immersion feeling that the mix of real world and toy world achieved by Pixar's movies does so well with.

That said, when the gameplay clicks into place, and especially in multiplayer split-screen, Toy Commander is still good fun for a few hours, it was never ever a must-play title and was often just as frustrating as it was entertaining, especially when you missed a pick up by a fraction and allowed your enemy/best friend (same thing, surely?) to get it or hit the edge of an obstacle and bounce wildly off course, but its suprising just how well the game has aged compared to the rest of the Dreamcast launch line-up.

IT says alot about a particular franchise that its fans can overlook the fact each instalment has become more and more ridiculous and ever more "padded out" with overly long and complicated cut-scenes, but when you look back to that instalment that set it all off, its easy to forgive those little nicks that may otherwise impact on a brilliant experience.



Yes folks, I'm talking Metal Gear Solid, what gave it away? The cut-scenes? Thought so. Heading back to 1998 there was very little that could even touch Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid, and I'd wager a bet thats there's very little that could touch it even now. Detractors will no doubt point to the fact that you spend as much time watching cut-scenes and listening to codec conversations as you do actually playing the game, but in reality you can throw back that when Kojima does let you play there's some absolutely stellar moments that drop by the bucket load throughout. Not only do you get to play an action game with absolutely stellar pacing and tension, getting the mix between quiet stealth and blasting action absolutely right, but you feel like you are acting out the movie. The game saves its best "ACtion Movie" moments for the player to live out rather than sticking them in a cut-scene like pretty much every other game out there. I mean, who can forget abseiling down the side of a building whilst the games main villain sits in a Hind D gunship trying to take you out, or indeed the playful moments where you trick a guard using a bottle of ketchup. Not only that but Kojima uses his skill as a director to play with the gamer, breaking the fourth wall in an intelligent fashion thats never really been replicated, not even in later Metal Gear releases. Stand-out fourth wall moments include pretty much the entire Psycho Mantis fight and sticking the frequency to contact Meryl via Codec on the back of the games box.

Of course, this is all excellent stuff that keeps you wanting to play, but the game wouldn't be half of what it was if it weren't for the amazing characters, voice work and music, all of which were at a standard higher than anything else at the time and are still impressive even today, Metal Gear Solid still stands the test of time in all but its visuals, even the gameplay controls feel mostly modern, even if they are overly reliant on d-pad control (there is the option of using the analogue sticks but they feel a little inaccurate compared to the old digital input).

It's not often that a game from the PlayStation era stands up as well as this, but even back then Metal Gear Solid felt incredibly different to everything around it, the Final Fantasy's are still playable today, but that somehow feels like its in spite of their age rather than such a thing being a credit to the vision, development and hard work put into the game by its creators. If you're a modern fan of Metal Gear Solid you're doing yourself a disservice by ignoring this absolute gem of a game, its a wee-bit rough around the edges, but then that should come as no suprise and it really has paved the way for the things we take for granted in modern day videogames, both good and bad.

Seeing as yesterday was Halloween I decided to spend the week building up to it playing something appropriate for the time of year. I was considering Dead Space, particularly as I loved it first time round the the sequel is due out in January, but then I thought I'd give Retro Review readers some new content by taking on a game that I wasn't a fan of back in the day and seeing if my opinions have changed with time.



Now before I go ahead, I'll state that I've been playing the PSN release of Resident Evil: Directors Cut via my PSP. Obviously playing it on a smaller screen makes the quality of the graphics (which have evidently aged) a little less shocking. They're obviously still very square/polygon block like, and the animation leaves alot to be desired but then what would you expect with a 14 year old game. It was never the games visual appearance that ever really bothered me, although even by the time Resident Evil 2 came around two years later. I've always been obsessed with games being playable and always felt that Resident Evil just wasn't all that approachable, its control system was far too clunky to make it enjoyable (I felt the same about the Tomb Raider games, although this was much more of a problem for Core's titles) and certainly wasn't a fan of resource management.

Tastes change though, and it was this and the sheer love that the title receives that led me to giving it yet another go. And in all honesty I'm glad I did.

I've already covered the fact that in reality its a little rough around the edges graphically, but then every single PlayStation era game is looking a little dated nowdays, especially the 3D stuff and there's very few 3D games that have as iconic an appearance as something like the Mario, Zelda and Sonic from the 16-bit era. Still, on the PSP's screen its not as blocky as you'd expect and everything is crisp and clear enough not to impact on the game. The now infamous animation and voice acting is a little jarring after all the years we've now been spoilt by developers and publishers trying to make such things bareable at the very least, but it provides some smile inducing and absolutely corny moments that add to the whole B-Movie feel of the game. The whole turning on the spot thing is always something thats amused me, and I still find it kind of frustrating when things get a little heated but it really does add to the whole "survival" atmosphere of the game, as does the draconian feeling that the lack of ammunition and ink ribbons (for saving, just in case someone out there doesn't know anything about Resident Evil) enforces upon you and whilst it was something I disliked back in 1996 and all the way through to Resident Evil 4 its not that big an issue for me anymore and feels really old school in a world where I'm beginning to feel I'm treated like a moron by the relentless Auto Save.

I mentioned the atmosphere, and there's certainly a sense of it, mostly due to the lack of resources. If I'm being honest I never really found Resident Evil scary, its shocks made me jump a little back in the day but nothing beyond a short "what the!?", Silent Hill on the other hand was a completely different kettle of fish and I may tackle that one for the next Retro Review just to compare directly because the shocks here feel even more antiquated than the graphics and voice acting, and sometimes its hard to believe that this really was cutting edge and so heavily loved 14 years ago.

Summer's can be lost to addictive games, especially on handhelds. Many gamers will have stories of being in hotel rooms or caravan's hiding away from the sun so they can still see what they're doing whilst feeding addictions to Pokemon or Tetris. Advance Wars is another that can easily fit into that catergory, suddenly gamers were happier to spend their holidays developing strategies to overcome the Blue Moon army in the Gameboy Advance's Advance Wars.



I think its safe to say that turn-based strategy has never been so accessible and addictive as in Advance Wars. Visually its very very Nintendo. Unoffensive, cute and colourful, but beneath all of that there is an incredible amount of depth that could easily seem daunting if any other developer had of handled the game. Indeed they haven't and Intelligent Systems somehow managed to weight the game properly to make it accessible to all, the tutorials are just the right length with the right amount of interaction for the player and direction from the game that it doesn't really become tedious unless for some odd reason you restart the game from the very beginning.

The campaign's difficulty curve is expertly handled too, and is probably the best example of how to increase the difficulty of such a game throughout the entire series (for what its worth I think Advance Wars 2 was a little too difficult fairly early on). Battles travel at a managable and entertaining pace, with the opposition AI moving their units quickly enough that you're never really waiting too long and there's enough missions to keep somebody focused on just playing single player busy for a fair while. However the game comes into life when you link up Gameboy Advances for two player battles with a wealth of unit options available to make each and every battle on whatever map you choose incredibly tense and entertaining.

It'll come as no suprise that its still incredibly entertaining today, it doesn't seem to have aged at all, infact I'd go so far as to say that with each instalment Intelligent Systems have possibly made things a little more complicated to the detriment of the gameplay and that this original release is the finest instalment in the series. If you can get a couple of GBA's, a couple of copies of the game, a link cable and some major shade from what remaining sun we'll have this September, there's nothing better than sitting in the garden with a bit of Advance Wars and a couple of beers taking on your mates' army.

It's sometimes suprising to look back at how popular a series used to be when in a more modern age it meets with little fanfare or hype upon a new instalment being released. The Ridge Racer series is just one of those series, and when the fanbase was at its highest Namco decided to take on the career (and simulation) focused Gran Turismo by applying a career mode to its more balls to the wall style racing game.



And for what its worth, it all worked out. Ridge Racer Type 4 was one of the finest racing games on the console, it was also amongst my favourites. The game featured around 600 cars (although only around 40 different variants), 2 fictional manufacturers and 4 fictional racing teams based upon different videogames from Namco's gaming history. The career was a pretty simple affair. A series of 8 races on different courses split into different difficulties. As the difficulty level was risen, the circuits became twistier, the distance between cars longer and the overall speed of the game much faster. Although that was the only way in which the game became difficult, the opponent cars never had the AI to be able to race you, so it was mostly down to just how fast you could drive which ever cars you were unlocking and racing in. As your season long career progressed with a specific team a story panned out revolving around that teams boss, winning the final race provided a news report that filled in the conclusion of the story.

At the time, no one had really done anything like this in regards to a career mode, and whilst it was hardly different in reality to any other racing games career mode it gave you a feeling of being part of a team rather than just racing in a vehicle featuring an pretty (or sometimes not, obviously) livery. The actual driving was typical Ridge Racer, accelerate until the last possible moment before sending the car into a drift around the corner and despite the fact there was now no countdown, arcade game style clock, due to the lack of competetiveness in the AI controlled cars you are still effectively racing against the clock.

Graphically at the time it was this or Polyphony's racer. Nothing else came close, the cars were shiny, the city scapes were stunning and everything looked stunning, I've always held that this game was better looking overall than Gran Turismo. In comparison the graphics were less blocky and the game had so much more style and was infinetely less sterile than its more "realistic" competitor. Obviously now it looks dated, but its still a nice looking game with cool stylistic choices like the red streams that come off the rear lights of your car on the night circuits and the touches of lense glare on others. I also think that now, thanks to the more "arcade" styling of Ridge Racer Type 4's handling, it holds up to modern standards of gameplay than pretty much every other racing game on the PlayStation and only really has something like SEGA Rally that holds up better overall as a videogame nowdays.