Fausseté Amour (PC Engine)

Fausseté Amour translates to “False Love,” and what that has to do with anything going down in this sleazy little low-effort action-platformer from developer AIM and publisher Naxat Soft is anyone’s guess. Between its 1993 release date and focus on a half-naked girl slashing her way through a generic fantasy realm to face off against a hulking masked baddie, I have to assume that it represents a “me, too” reaction to Telenet Japan’s popular Valis series. Also like Valis, it uses the enhanced storage capacity of the PC Engine’s Super CD-ROM format to deliver a bevy of colorful, cheesecake-laden cut scenes. Its sole claim to fame, in fact, is the way it leverages these scenes to push the boundaries of good taste just that one extra bit further than its inspiration. Whereas the first Valis was content with giving heroine Yuko a suit of rather skimpy armor, Fausseté Amour ups the ante by shoving cartoon girl butts and crotches right up in the viewer’s face. It’s not subtle, although it does maintain the bare minimum of PG-13 grade coverage needed to avoid being branded a proper hentai game.

Our protagonist is the oddly-named Corque Lans, a spirited young woman whose sister, Meriya, has been kidnapped by a gang of Satanic cultists led by a figure called, get this, Goat Bone. Goat. Bone. If I eventually forget everything about Fausseté Amour, which seems likely, that name will be last to go. Anyway, Corque’s journey is comprised of seven side-scrolling action stages, all featuring an end boss encounter and most a mid-boss as well. All seven are relatively small by genre standards. This is balanced by a lack of checkpoints and Corque’s languid, Belmontesque walk speed.

Speaking of Castlevania, Corque’s weapon of choice is a sort of extendable chain spear that can lash out in any of five directions. In addition, it can be spun around in a 360-degree arc, albeit only when the wielder is jumping. This spinning jump slash can also be used to generate one of three magical projectile attacks, depending on what magic icon, if any, was collected most recently. Finally, the spear functions as a grapple for latching onto the undersides of platforms. Once attached in this way, Corque can execute a follow-up super jump that launches her high into the air and deals heavy contact damage in the manner of Samus Aran’s iconic Screw Attack.

If a mix of mechanics from Castlevania, Bionic Commando, and Metroid sounds promising to you, you’re not alone. It was that setup, and not ’90s anime thong lust, that initially drew me to this one. Unfortunately, stealing from the best is still no guarantee of success. Lackluster level and enemy design are what ultimately consigns Fausseté Amour to the Hell of Forgotten Games. These environments simply aren’t interesting to navigate, and the token resistance put up by their handful of listless inhabitants makes what would otherwise be a punishing Ghosts ‘n Goblins style two-hit death system feel positively generous. Worse, the spear grappling gimmick is badly underutilized. It’s not necessary at all until the final stretch, where some very basic vertical movement is abruptly demanded. What could have formed the cornerstone of a superior experience really amounts to nothing more than a trifle.

On the presentation side, there are a few nifty backgrounds that give the impression of considerable depth. The Japanese voice acting seems broadly competent, too. This is where my praise ends, though. Sprites tend to look alright when they’re not moving, but seeing them in motion reveals notably stiff animation cycles. The music and sound effects are a disappointing lot, especially the former. Songs are short, repetitive, and minimally developed. There are no strong melodies evident and the worst tracks suffer from an overreliance on obnoxious laugh and scream samples. Why, I couldn’t tell you. On top of all that, additional playtesting was clearly required. I fell down a pit while battling the third boss. Instead of dying as expected, this inexplicably triggered the next cut scene and I moved on to stage four as normal. At least I can now say I defeated a video game boss by falling in a hole.

I started out highlighting the obvious parallels between Fausseté Amour and the better-known Valis. In concluding, I sorely wish I could say that its uptick in fanservice wasn’t bundled with a marked downgrade to Valis’ already average gameplay. Frankly, I’d come to expect better than this from the Naxat brand. I suppose it is short and easy enough that serious PC Engine fanatics may find it worth booting up purely as a curiosity. I can’t recommend you goat bone your poor wallet by shelling out a hundred bucks or more for an original CD copy, however.

The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang (Super Nintendo)

Every game genre comes saddled with its own set of expectations. Foremost among them for roleplaying games is a decidedly epic scope. That’s why The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang is a title best prefaced with some major caveats. Doubly so since physical copies of it tend to be rather pricey these days.

This cheery overhead-view action RPG about a pint-sized tomato juice-powered vampire prince on a quest to foil the surprise invasion of his kingdom by one General Von Hesler is as short and basic as they come. If you happen to be in the mood for a carefree two to three hour romp with little in the way of depth or challenge to hold you up, it’ll do the job. If you’re looking to experience a grand saga deserving of mention in the same breath as Secret of Mana, Terranigma, or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past…do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.

TToSM originally debuted in Japan as Chō Makai Taisen! Dorabotchan (“Super Demon-world War! Little Dorabo”) in March of 1993, eventually making it over to North America in June of the following year. It’s a sequel to Makai Prince Dorabotchan, a Japanese PC Engine-exclusive platformer from 1990. Publisher Naxat soft was apparently pushing Dorabo/Spike as their primary mascot over this period, as he next showed up to play golf in 1994’s Super Naxat Open for the Super Famicom. Alas, he was put out to pasture (staked?) after that and hasn’t appeared in another game since.

That bittersweet slice of history aside, the wackiness of the setting and characters is easily the high point of Twisted Tales for me. From Spike’s Count Duckula-esque tomato fixation to the fact that his most common foes are spear-wielding ambulatory garlic cloves, there’s no shortage of slapstick charm baked into the premise. The Saturday morning cartoon caliber writing, skimpy as it is, was still capable of making me grin now and then, too. It’s all brought to life with vibrant graphics and a rousing score by Hisashi Matsushita, who put in similarly great work for Naxat on Coryoon: Child of Dragon, which I reviewed just earlier this month.

Sadly, the sense of general likability that infuses its presentation is where my own appreciation for Twisted Tales begins and ends. Diving into the gameplay proper leaves me with almost nothing to say. Spike has two main attacks used throughout: A short range cape spin that must be used sparingly, lest our hero become temporarily dizzy and vulnerable to counterattack, and a boomerang hat toss that takes a couple seconds to charge up. Oh, and he can jump, oddly enough, despite the game only including one brief, rudimentary platforming section.

There’s also a simple magic system included in the form of various single-use cards that Spike can deploy. These allow for such “tricks” as full-screen elemental attacks, temporary invincibility, and an easy means of balloon transport back to home base. The only essentials are probably the healing tomato juice cards, though, with the majority of the flashier offensive magic being no more effective than Spike’s standard hat toss at the end of the day.

Finally, Spike will eventually join forces with two NPCs companions. They’re not particularly powerful or aggressive, so don’t expect them to carry too much of the load for you in battle. They are at least immune to damage, however, so it’s not like you’ll ever have cause to regret bringing one along.

With that, I’ve essentially told everything you need to know to finish TToSM. The world design presents no complicating factors whatsoever. Spike’s environment is effectively divided up into five compact, completely linear levels (four, if you don’t count the tutorial area), and once you overcome the boss of each one, you’re ushered on to the next automatically. There’s no ability to backtrack later on, no finding your way, no keeping your eyes peeled for secrets, and no puzzles to solve. It’s virtually brain-dead, giving me the impression that it was likely intended to act as an introduction to the form for younger players. The aforementioned Coryoon is much the same. The difference is that Coryoon is a frantic arcade style shooter and enjoyable enough on that basis alone. It keeps you on your toes every second of the trip, even if you’re not struggling per se. The slower-paced Twisted Tales, on the other hand, gives you ample time to reflect on its lack of substance. You spend the majority of your play time mindlessly grinding experience for the next boss fight simply because there’s nothing else to do or see.

Can I recommend The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang? Sure, under a couple very specific circumstances. If you want to introduce a young child to the action RPG sub-genre, it seems to be tailor-made for that. Alternatively, if you’re a veteran player craving ultra-light RPG mechanics and don’t have the time or energy for anything remotely involved, it can serve as an excuse to kick back and veg out for a couple hours with some affable weirdos. No shame in that. We’ve all been there.

Coryoon: Child of Dragon (PC Engine)

Naxat Soft’s 1991 “cute-’em-up” Coryoon: Child of Dragon has numerous parallels with Quest’s Magical Chase, another noteworthy PC Engine shooter released that same year. I already covered Magical Chase back in 2019, but suffice it to say that both games were clearly meant to function as lightweight, accessible introductions to the genre for younger gamers. Warm storybook fantasy aesthetics and relaxed difficulty are the order of the day.

On top of that, the passage of time has given rise to a rather less praiseworthy similarity: Outrageous secondary market pricing. A physical copy of Coryoon will run you $400 U.S. and up as of this writing. That’s nothing compared to the $4,000 – $15,000 a North American copy of Magical Chase commands, but it’s enough to make Coryoon one of the top five priciest Japanese exclusives for the platform.

So while I can’t recommend you go out and drop three or four figures on it, I can say right up front that Coryoon is well worth playing. If you’ve experienced the likes of Nexzr or the Crush video pinball titles, you already know that Naxat had a knack for addictive action. This tale of a loyal doe-eyed dragon (the titular Coryoon) on an eight stage quest to break the curse that’s transformed his friend the princess into a little girl is no exception. It’s a brisk, engaging ride while it lasts, even if it obviously wasn’t made with pro players in mind.

With its horizontal scrolling, you might expect this one to follow in the footsteps of Gradius and R-Type; relatively slow-paced with a heavy emphasis on precision movement through complex environments. Not so! The gameplay here has the fast, free feel of Blazing Lazers and other Compile style vertical shooters. That means no pesky terrain to block your path, no one-hit deaths, and an endless supply of flashy power-ups, extra lives, and…fruit.

Yes, fruit. Mountains of it. Perhaps our pal Coryoon is related to the dragons from Bubble Bobble, because everything he shoot downs leaves behind some sort of tasty treat. These are your primary source of points and they’re subject to gravity, so always do your best to snatch them up before they plummet off the screen. Between the bad guys, the sometimes busy backgrounds, your own projectiles, and all that fruit, the screen space can get pretty chaotic. It’s fortunate that your special weapons act as ablative armor, because you’re bound to overlook at least a few bullets in the midst of combat.

As for those special weapons, they’re a fairly typical assortment. You can choose between a powerful short-range flame jet, a laser-like blue blast, and a lightning spread shot that sacrifices strength for wider coverage. These can be upgraded twice, increasing their damage and area of effect each time. If you’re not a fan of your current shot type, just wait a second. Coryoon has a habit of throwing pickups at you non-stop. Your dragon also has a charge attack that slowly builds up whenever you’re not firing and comes in handy for dishing out big chunks of hurt to bosses. Finally, you have a solid selection of support items, including fairies and mini-dragons that stick close and provide some extra firepower (ala Gradius options), a fruit-attracting magnet, and a single-use screen-wide bomb.

That’s Coryoon in a nutshell, really. There’s much to love in its tried-and-tested mechanics, tight controls, appealing visuals (love that parallax scrolling!), and catchy soundtrack. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that several members of the team behind it went to work on the critically acclaimed Air Zonk the following year. The only potential sticking point is its incredibly forgiving approach to challenge. Extends are doled out like candy throughout, to the extent that I was able to complete my very first playthrough without a single game over. Additional difficulty modes are available, though the game is still not particularly fierce on the higher setting. On the whole, however, if you’re in the mood for a cheery, low stress shooter with personality to spare, this is the 16-bit fruit salad for you.

Nexzr (PC Engine)

Simplicity can be a beautiful thing. Take Nexzr here. This 1992 Japan-exclusive vertical shooter certainly apes the style of fellow PC Engine greats like Blazing Lazers and the Star Soldier trilogy. What it doesn’t bother with are any of those games’ gimmicks. No upgradeable weapons that double as armor, no customizable power-up schemes, no adjustable speed settings for your ship, not even a stock of super bombs for emergencies. Nexzr embraces a pure, downright austere minimalism. You get a single fire button, and you won’t be letting your thumb off it if you know what’s good for you.

This old school approach extends to the difficulty. Whereas most shooters of the era that were built from the ground up for home consoles opted to tone the quarter munching viciousness down a notch, Nexzr doesn’t hesitate to kill you early and often. There are no in-place respawns, either. I sure hope you don’t mind being knocked back to a checkpoint and having to cover the same ground again, minus your accumulated power-ups! So despite looking the part of a successor to the laid-back Blazing Lazers, Nexzr hews closer to the Gradius school of meticulous trial-and-error. Playing reactively and hoping to scrape by on your first try simply isn’t going to suffice here. You’re actually expected to learn these stages in order to ensure that your ship is sitting in the right place when specific enemy formations show up. You are at least allowed unlimited continues, the developers’ sole concession to mercy.

I wanted to make it clear up-front exactly what type of game Nexzr is (and isn’t), because I genuinely believe it to be a fantastic piece of work. Which makes sense, considering that it was developed by Kaneko/Inter State, the crew that brought us the superb Star Parodier and Super Star Solder. The key is knowing what you’re getting into beforehand. I’ll admit to judging a book by its cover and diving into Nexzr anticipating a more forgiving “fast and loose” experience. Once I overcame my initial visceral distaste for the checkpoint system, though, it dawned on me how Nexzr is just as finely crafted as it is demanding, if not more so.

In the exotic year of 2012, a mysterious armada attacks Earth with overwhelming force. The Space Federation military is decimated and subsequently disbands. Only a sliver of hope remains in the form of an underground Rebellion working on a secret weapon to liberate humanity: The Slasher. Three years later, this cutting edge fighter craft is finally ready to strike back. Right about now, you’re probably thinking that there’s nothing fresh or interesting in this setup so far. Agreed. Fortunately, Nexzr goes the extra mile by adding some human faces to this stock abstract conflict. The opening cinematic has Space Federation pilot Randy watching in horror as his friend and fellow pilot Shirdi is vaporized by a mysterious red mecha during the doomed battle for Earth. Thus, as Randy later sets off in the Slasher, he’s not just out to do his duty and save the planet. It’s personal.

Slight as this tale is, you have to bear in mind how few vintage shoot-’em-ups attempted any sort of characterization or story arc, even in cases where the increased data capacity of CD-ROMs allowed plenty of room for it. Having the final battle be a mano-a-mano showdown between Randy and the man who killed his friend may not rise to the level of great drama, but if there was ever an arena where basic, functional drama had the power to impress, this is it.

In terms of gameplay, Nexzr is a prime example of what happens when a skilled developer prioritizes depth over breadth, fine-tuning a fundamentally simple concept to an uncommon degree. It’s compact, offering six stages and about as many power-ups for the Slasher. Every area presents a new type of challenge, however, and no tool in your arsenal feels underpowered or redundant. A few of your supplementary weapons are pretty wicked, in fact. I’m looking at you, homing lasers and autonomous drones. Love you guys.

Nexzr’s enemy design is a major highlight. You never seem to stop running across new and surprising threats, all of which will likely hand you your ass on first meeting. Personally, I don’t always notice how much other shooters tend to rehash the same small cast of minor baddies over the course of their runtimes. It’s one of those little things that’s easy to take for granted, I guess. Playing through something like Nexzr really makes it obvious. On top of that, the bosses are among the most satisfying I’ve had the pleasure to encounter. They’re frequently massive, showcasing impressive mechanical detail, and they usually have multiple forms and novel shot patterns that make confronting them quite the entertaining proposition.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t direct you score chasers out there to Summer Carnival ’93: Nexzr Special, a revised release of the game that axes the opening and closing cutscenes in favor of a unique standalone level where you try to see how many points you can rack up within a time limit. As the name indicates, it was created to allow Japanese players to practice for publisher Naxat Soft’s 1993 Summer Carnival gaming competition. Summer Carnival was basically the RC Cola version of Hudson Soft’s better known All-Japan Caravan Festival.

Whichever version you play, Nexzr is a brilliantly understated gem of a shooting game. One of the very finest out of the PCE’s 100+ specimens, in fact. With lush graphics, an epic synth rock score, spot-on control, ingenious enemy and stage design, and a relatable protagonist of all things, my only regret is that it’s too tough for me to enjoy casually. I definitely need to be willing to buckle down and bring my A-game if I want to stand a chance of avenging poor Shirdi. Oh, well. I suppose I have plenty of Compile games to choose from if I want to relax and blow up aliens.

Seirei Senshi Spriggan (PC Engine)

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a spaceship was stirring, ’cause I blew them all up.

Okay, so I’m no poet. That’s not going to stop me from savoring one of my cherished holiday traditions: Compilemas! This is when I get to give myself the present of a “new” title from my favorite developer of 8 and 16-bit shooting games, Compile.

This year, I’ve chosen Seirei Senshi Spriggan (“Elemental Warrior Spriggan”), a 1991 Japan-exclusive release for the PC Engine CD-ROM. Fans of the better known Genesis classic MUSHA will be right at home here, since Spriggan is effectively a follow-up. In fact, it’s the second in a loose trilogy that kicked off in 1990 with MUSHA and concluded with 1992’s Robo Aleste for the Sega CD. All three feature similar vertical scrolling gameplay in which the player controls a flying humanoid robot styled after a suit of samurai armor. Those common elements aside, each entry has its own way of handling weapons and other power-ups, not to mention its own distinct setting and characters.

In contrast to the far future sci-fi of MUSHA, Spriggan takes place in a medieval fantasy world of magic and monsters. Its two stars, Jega (male) and Rikart (female), pilot their Elemental Armor on a mission to defend their peaceful home nation of Sisfel from the Buraizubara Empire and its power-mad king. That’s about all I can tell you about the story, unfortunately, as the voiced cutscenes are all in Japanese. I have the distinct impression I’m not missing much, however. “Heroes good, villains bad” looks to be the gist of it.

With six stages in the main campaign plus an additional standalone one reserved for the game’s high-score challenge (aka Caravan) mode, Spriggan is of fairly average length. A full playthough will take you roughly forty minutes, assuming you don’t game over along the way. That’s slightly longer than MUSHA, yet far short of hour-long Compile marathons like Blazing Lazers and Space Megaforce.

A majority of the levels here are creative and wonderful to behold. The opening area in particular, a crystal city in the clouds, creates a stunning first impression that instantly sets the high fantasy Spriggan apart from its peers. This pattern continues as you scale rushing waterfalls, brave an organic cavern teeming with all manner of giant vermin, and assault an enemy castle protruding from an active lava flow. These concepts are splendid and the pixel art does them full justice. This may be the overall best looking shooter I’ve seen to date on the system. Pity the finale has you venturing to outer space, where you blast through a painfully generic starfield and space station that could have been transposed directly from Super Star Soldier. I’m reminded of my last year’s Christmas present, Gun-Nac, another otherwise excellent Compile shoot-’em-up that chucked its strong art design out the window at the last minute to no apparent benefit. Bah, humbug!

Of course, a quality set of stages is still nothing without a cool arsenal to light them up with. This is where Spriggan really comes into its own and becomes the stuff of legend. True to its name, your Elemental Armor harnesses the power of the four classical elements: Air, earth, fire, and water, represented by green, yellow, red, and blue orbs, respectively. Levels are positively packed with these orbs, meaning that your puny default pea shooter will almost never see sustained use. In general, green produces wide energy waves, yellow grants a spread shot, red means fireballs, and blue creates a revolving shield around your craft that can block enemy projectiles. You can carry up to three orbs at a time. The more you have on you, the stronger their cumulative effect.

Now here’s where things get interesting! You’re free to mix and match the four colors any way you please. This results in all sorts of wild elemental combinations, most of which are flashy and devastating in the extreme. My go-to setups include blue/red (a flaming shield with a forward spread shot) and blue/green (massive slow-moving energy waves that ravage a huge portion of the battlefield as they travel). Do yourself a favor and avoid the blue/green/yellow homing attack, though. It’s far too weak to keep pace with the enemy formations flooding the screen.

Weapons in Spriggan are both completely overpowered and completely fun as hell. I honestly can’t name another shooter where I spend so much of the runtime feeling like some vengeful deity, ruthlessly smiting everything in my path. Even if I happen to mess up and die, fresh orbs are so frequent that I can usually get back up to full steam in mere seconds. Oh, and did I mention that you can sacrifice an orb at any time, in which case it functions as a typical screen-nuking super bomb? Yes, not only is your main gun uncommonly strong, you can also toss out a steady stream of bombs with reckless abandon. It’s enough to make the energy shield pickup, something that would be a priceless lifeline in most other game of this kind, seem trivial. I feel bad for these bad guys!

Spriggan’s union of godlike firepower and unlimited continues can make for a rather easy ride. Veterans will have no trouble blazing through it on the Normal or Hard settings. Definitely dial it up to Super Hard or the aptly named Unbelievable if you want any real chance of getting your ass handed to you. While some would single this out as a fault, I’m inclined to see it as a strength. Compile shooters on their default difficulty are the best way I know to ease new players into the genre. On top of that, they’re ideal for experienced ones to kick back and relax with on those occasions when a serious challenge feels too much like work.

If there’s one aspect of Spriggan I’d change, it’s the music. Not that it’s poor per se. It’s the same flavor of lightweight synthesizer-driven pop rock common to a lot of early CD games and that’s fine. Problem is, I can’t help comparing it to the blistering speed metal masterpiece that is Toshiaki Sakoda’s MUSHA soundtrack. Next to that, it’s just feeble. It’s a shame Compile missed their opportunity to continue mining that same rich metal vein, with real guitars and drums picking up where the Genesis sound chip left off.

Unadventurous tunes notwithstanding, Seirei Senshi Spriggan is a must-play. It’s well-paced, controls perfectly, and ranks among the most visually appealing of all PC Engine releases. Best of all, its spectacular mix-and-match power-up scheme makes for an unparalleled rush. If the main thing you want out of a shooter is to be an unstoppable force with all the powers of the elements at your beck and call, you simply cannot do better.

Until next year, shooting game fans, Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good fight!

Air Zonk (TurboGrafx-16)

It’s been a while since I checked with my favorite follicly challenged cave boy, Bonk. I’m also overdue for my classic shooter fix. Air Zonk to the rescue! This 1992 release (also known as the downright unpronounceable “PC Denjin Punkic Cyborg!/PC Denjin／Completion○／Clear×” in Japan) is Red Company and Hudson Soft’s attempt to reimagine their successful mascot platformers as a side-scrolling “cute-’em-up.” Whereas Bonk strolled around his prehistoric world demolishing dinosaurs with his massive cranium, his futuristic counterpart Zonk is a cyborg who flies around shooting them.

Zonk’s most important upgrade wasn’t his rocket thrusters or bombs, but his cocky Sonicesque swagger. He was famously part of a last-ditch effort by NEC and Hudson Soft (under the joint Turbo Technologies banner) to rescue their struggling TurboGrafx-16 in North America, where the Genesis and Super Nintendo were eating its lunch. He became the sass-infused mascot for the then new TurboDuo revision of the console. Realistically speaking, no amount of radical ’90s ‘tude was going to undo years of major missteps in a cutthroat market. This shouldn’t be viewed as a strike against Air Zonk, however, which is one of the most enjoyable and technically impressive shooters on the system.

The story supplied in the manual is serviceable. Perennial series antagonist King Drool is out to conquer the world with his robot army. The only thing standing in his way? “Cool, sunglass-wearing warriors lead (sic) by Zonk.” I’m not sure if this is supposed to be the original King Drool, still alive somehow in the far future, or one of his descendants. I guess it doesn’t matter much either way. The important thing is that Zonk and company have five very long, very strange stages of slapstick aerial combat ahead of them.

Yes, them. Air Zonk’s most interesting gameplay feature is easily its friend system. Destroyed enemies will leave behind smiley face icons. Collect enough of these and a big smiley will appear that summons one of Zonk’s buddies to fly alongside him and provide some extra firepower. If you can manage to collect a second big smiley in that same level, Zonk and his pal will merge together into a hybrid form with a unique attack and gain temporary invincibility. Ten different friend characters effectively means ten additional special weapons above and beyond the eight Zonk can equip by himself. Truly a staggering arsenal by genre standards. You get to decide at the beginning of each playthrough whether to let the game choose your friend character for each round or if you’d prefer to do it yourself. You can even opt to go solo, in which case Zonk will employ automated helper drones instead.

Between all these offensive tools and each stage containing multiple discrete segments and bosses, there’s more to Air Zonk’s gameplay than you might expect. Better still, it’s all exquisitely presented. Its soundtrack is a contender for the best to ever grace a HuCard format game, so much so that it arguably beats out the CD music in its own sequel, Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly-Paradise. These tunes are upbeat, driving, and as densely packed with memorable hooks as any of their era. The visuals are no slouch, either. Artwork is crisp, bold, and makes striking use of the TG-16’s vibrant color palette. It also needs to be seen in motion to be fully appreciated. Many of the backgrounds showcase multi-layered parallax scrolling, despite the fact that it isn’t a built-in feature of the hardware and no doubt required much hard work on the programming side to implement this well.

I could praise Air Zonk’s audiovisual excellence all day. I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t also make some effort to convey how bloody weird it is, though. While it’s bright colors and cartoon style do recall cutesy shooters like Fantasy Zone and TwinBee, the game’s whole aesthetic really skews more bizarre with a side of the grotesque than it does conventionally sweet and adorable. Take one enemy you encounter early on in level five. It appears to be a hovering elephant skeleton with glowing red eyes. In a moderately eccentric game, that would be odd enough. Not here. The artists went ahead and added some sort of deformed green head with bulging bloodshot eyes to the top of the skeleton. Still not satisfied, they gave that head a tumor-like cluster of tinier heads sprouting from it! I had to pause and stare at this thing for a good minute or so the first time I encountered it, wondering what the hell I was supposed to be looking at. That’s just one example of the insanity on display, too. Zonk fought alongside a sentient baseball, got transformed into a milk squirting man-cow creature, and more. Hell, the Japanese version has him producing exploding turds (each wearing its own pair of matching Zonk shades!) by holding the fire down button long enough. Alas, these are replaced by bombs overseas.

So far, what I’ve been describing is a 16-bit shooter fan’s dream come true. Wildly varied action? Spectacular graphics and sound? A sense of humor that’s unhinged in the best possible way? Sign me up for all that! Sadly, Air Zonk does stumble in one important area: Difficulty balancing. Relatively chill for the majority of its run time, its fifth and final stage is a real bastard, with five waves of regular enemies broken up by no less than nine boss fights. Nine! Getting blindsided with this near R-Type degree of brutality is off-putting for sure. I certainly wouldn’t dispute that a game’s final level should be its toughest, but making it far and away tougher than the rest of the lot combined is pushing the principle entirely too far. A more reasonable idea would have been to break this marathon finale up into two separate stages with a checkpoint in-between. Thank heavens for unlimited continues, eh?

Unfortunate as it is, Air Zonk’s last minute Jekyll and Hyde turn wasn’t enough to put me off it altogether. It still earns a hearty recommendation on the strength of its unbridled creativity, technical prowess, and bounty of meaningful play options. My only true regret is that we never got the Bonk/Zonk crossover we deserve. Imagine these two joining forces across time, with Bonk handling the platforming duties and Zonk the shoot-’em-up mayhem. It’s only the most obvious collaboration since chocolate and peanut butter.