Tengai Makyō: Ziria (PC Engine)

Long time, no see! Fear not, I’m still alive. I’ve just been plowing my way through another lengthy title. This time, it’s Tengai Makyō: Ziria, occasionally known by the bizarre moniker Far East of Eden. Bizarre because I can’t begin to fathom what connection this 1989 fantasy RPG by developer Red Company and publisher Hudson Soft has to do with American novelist John Steinbeck’s 1952 masterpiece, East of Eden. That head-scratcher aside, I’d been waiting what feels like forever to dig into this one. You see, Tengai Makyō: Ziria holds the distinction of being the first RPG produced for the then cutting-edge CD-ROM format. Despite the obvious historical interest this instilled in me, though, the game itself was doomed to remain largely inaccessible to anyone untrained in the Japanese language for nearly 35 years. Enter the fine folks at LIPEMCO! Translations, who released their magnificent English fan translation this past December. Finally, I was able to immerse myself in the world of Tengai Makyō: Ziria and discover…a fairly rote Dragon Quest clone with some superb cut scenes.

I know, I know, That may come across as rather glib and dismissive of me. Rest assured, however, that I hardly consider a strong resemblance to one of my favorite series to be a net negative. Similar to EarthBound, which I covered last month, tried-and-true mechanics that will be second nature to anyone who’s booted up an ’80s console RPG in the past are used by the designers as a canvas upon which to paint their own vision. In this case, it’s a vision of a whimsical Edo period Japan as imagined by misinformed outsiders. The instruction manual comes with an elaborate behind-the-scenes backstory explaining how the game’s plot is based on a spectacularly misinformed treatise on the nation of “Jipang” by nineteenth century American scholar Paul Hieronymus Chada. There never was such a man, of course, so what Red Company’s done here is to employ essentially the same comedic framing device William Goldman did in The Princess Bride, with its fictitious original author, S. Morgenstern. Cute.

The adventure centers on the titular Ziria of the Toad Clan, a hot-blooded young warrior very loosely-based on the Japanese folkloric hero Jiraiya. We follow him as he undertakes an epic journey to unite with the two other champions destined to defend Jipang against the machinations of the Daimon Cult, a sinister cabal of foreigners seeking to awaken the evil slumbering deity Masakado and lay waste to the country.

The general flow of the quest is episodic, not unlike any given season of a shōnen anime. Ziria and company arrive at a new province, hear tell of a Daimon Cult lieutenant with formidable powers oppressing the populace, and go on a short fetch quest or two before overthrowing that area’s freaky Big Bad and moving on to the next. After a dozen of these little episodes have played out, the group has become seasoned fighters ready to take down the Biggest Bad and save the day…until next season, er, game that is. I have to assume this structure is intentional, since the art style and tone of the cut scenes wouldn’t be out of place in any number of contemporary television productions.

Those cut scenes really are where Tengai Makyō: Ziria shines its brightest. They’re well drawn, professionally voiced, frequently amusing, and would have been jaw-dropping for the average gamer in 1989. I find them endearing enough today, and don’t intend highlighting them as the game’s best feature to be any sort of backhanded compliment.

Beyond that, I found the overall experience quite average. You know the drill: Explore from an overhead view, zoom in for a first-person view on the basic menu-based “fight, magic, item, run” combat, manage your HP and MP, level up, interrogate townsfolk for clues, buy new equipment periodically, and so forth. There’s only one major exception to the standard formula, and it’s unfortunately a doozy. In most RPGs cast from this mold, one of your party members running out of health would necessitate a trip back to town to have him or her revived by a friendly NPC. Or perhaps you’d cast a spell or use an expendable item to accomplish the same result. Not so here. If any one of your three main player characters falls, it’s an instant game over and you’re docked half your money and sent back to the last place you saved. You’re provided no opportunity to continue on without them or revive them yourself. It’s pretty brutal and resulted in significantly more failed dungeon runs and boss battle defeats than I’m used to seeing. At least money is relatively easy to come by and you can safeguard your stash by depositing it at the bank before you set off. Still, it’s a real frustration trigger when one late healing spell seals your whole group’s fate.

Tengai Makyō: Ziria is a solid old school RPG with a charming presentation and 30+ hours of gameplay to grind your way through. It’s also fascinating from a gaming history perspective as the genre’s first flirtation with visual media. That said, I wouldn’t call it one of the best works of its kind, whether today or back in 1989. In addition to the overly punitive character death issue I just described, the cyclical nature of the story beats grows repetitive. The majority of the music is oddly weak, too. While the three orchestrated tracks by the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto are predictably excellent, the remainder of the soundtrack consists of short, tinny chiptunes that loop incessantly. Regardless, it sold well and spawned numerous sequels. I can’t wait to see where the saga goes next after this promising start. Not that I have a choice. If I’m lucky, maybe Tengai Makyō II will get translated before I hit retirement age.

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.

Bonk’s Revenge (TurboGrafx-16)

Critics and fans alike embraced the quirky Bonk’s Adventure when it hit the TurboGrafx-16 in 1990. NEC and Hudson Soft were obviously thrilled by the prospect of having their very own Mario style mascot character, since they promptly made the megacephalic cavekid’s debut outing a system pack-in and commissioned a sequel. Known as PC Gejin 2 in Japan and Bonk’s Revenge here in North America, that sequel is…well, it’s more Bonk’s Adventure, just polished up a bit. The developers at Red Company didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with this one. Fitting, I suppose, for a protagonist who may well predate said wheel.

The evil dinosaur overlord King Drool has returned, and this time he’s stolen half the moon to add to his monster kingdom. Naturally, it falls on our boy Bonk to set things right by headbanging his way through a grand total of 21 platforming stages divided up into seven rounds. Each round has its own overarching theme. Some play into the prehistoric vibe (volcano, jungle, snowy mountain) and others skew fanciful (pirate ship, Drool’s moon castle). What they all have in common are the surreal visuals, jaunty music, and general air of absurdity that are hallmarks of the series.

Bonk’s core platforming abilities (jumping, headbutting baddies, climbing cliffs, etc.) are largely holdovers from the first game. The only new move in his arsenal is headbutting walls to rebound off them and reach higher platforms. Think of it as Bonk’s take on the wall jump. In addition, the mid-air spin that previously enabled Bonk to bypass most threats by gliding over them has been altered to produce far less hang time. It remains useful, if nowhere near as easily abused.

Meat is once again the primary power-up for Bonk, temporarily boosting his speed and offense. Consuming another helping before the previous piece’s effect has expired will compound it, and nabbing the rare giant meat hunk will rocket Bonk to maximum strength on the spot. No matter what, however, the influence of meat is always measured in mere seconds. Longer-lasting enhancement is available in the form of the heart containers that lengthen Bonk’s health bar by one unit apiece. This increase lasts until you run out of lives and use one of your three continues. Do try to avoid doing that. Finally, there’s a rare flower item new to Bonk’s Revenge that allows our hero to slowly fly through the air. The flower will actually stick around until Bonk takes a hit, so it’s well worth playing as carefully as possible when you happen upon one.

Above all, the word that best describes Bonk’s Revenge is “refined.” It takes the basic blueprint set forth in Bonk’s Adventure and manages to fine tune nearly every last element thereof. Never radically, mind you, but always for the better. The graphical detail has been upped. The equally catchy soundtrack is longer. The toned-down spin forces the player to engage with the level design, as opposed to simply gliding over it. The boss rush leading up to the final battle in King Drool’s castle, a real chore in Bonk’s Adventure, is less punishing. I found the going a touch easier across the board, in fact, despite the switch to limited continues. They even found a better use for the smiley face icons Bonk collects in the hidden bonus areas. The more you’ve accumulated at the end of a round, the more health refills, extra lives, and other boons you’re showered with before moving on to the next.

This laundry list of thoughtful tweaks makes Bonk’s Revenge a significant improvement on its predecessor and a genuinely good time overall. That said, some of my biggest pet peeves from the original were left wholly untouched. I’m still not fond of the emphasis on timed power-ups, for example, or the way the lack of a run function limits the pace of the action. While neither game approaches perfection in my eyes, the nascent franchise was clearly on the right track. If you enjoyed Adventure, there’s no way you’ll regret pursuing Revenge.

Lords of Thunder (TurboGrafx-16)

If you followed the gaming press in 1993, you were likely familiar with Lords of Thunder. Magazines staffers practically queued up around the block to heap praise on this most epic of fantasy shooters and its magnificent CD soundtrack. Although it looked like the real deal in print, the only thing I knew for sure was that I’d never get a chance to try it. Nobody in my circle had a TurboGrafx-16 console, never mind one with a CD-ROM drive. Hell, it was a crueler tease than those pricey Neo-Geo cartridges I was always reading about. At least they had arcade versions I could feasibly stumble across someday. Lords of Thunder might as well have required me to insert it into a unicorn.

Times have changed, of course, but even though I can now access the entire TurboGrafx library at will on my flash drive-equipped PC Engine, booting this one up for the first time still sent a chill down my spine. Imagine my delight as I discovered for myself how right-on the ancient magazine reviews were. Lords is every bit the mind-blowing heavy metal roller coaster ride I was promised all those years ago. Hallelujah!

Originally titled Winds of Thunder in Japan, this is theoretically a pseudo-sequel to the previous year’s Gate of Thunder. In reality, the two are about as different as a pair of generally excellent horizontal shooters produced for the same hardware at close to the same time can be. Whereas Gate adopts a standard sci-fi setting and familiar mechanics lifted from the Thunder Force series, Lords does its own thing and is ultimately much more memorable for it.

Most obvious is the shift to a high fantasy aesthetic. You control the mystical warrior Landis as he seeks to deliver the various lands of Mistral from the servants of the reawakened dark god, Zaggart. Mistral’s inhabitants seem to be Spanish speakers, as Landis’ quest takes him to volcanic Llamarada (“blaze”), wintery Helado (“frozen”), verdant Bosque (“forest”), and so on. Either that, or the developers just thought these names sounded exotic and assumed we wouldn’t notice. You decide.

On the gameplay front, Lords eschews Gate’s conventional linear progression in favor of a robust player-driven approach. For starters, you’re free to attempt the first six stages in the order you prefer before moving on to the seventh (and final) one. Once you’ve settled on a destination, you’re taken to another screen to select one of four elemental-themed armors for use in that area. The choice of armor dictates Landis’ primary shot type and secondary super bomb attack. For example, the water armor has the unique ability to generate wave-like projectiles both in front of and behind Landis, making it a ideal pick for beginners. Veterans may prefer the earth armor, which makes up for its weak forward shot with immensely damaging downward and upward blasts that can wipe out the toughest of targets in seconds.

Next, it’s off to the shop, where you can use the gems left behind by defeated enemies as currency to purchase health replenishment, weapon power-ups, bombs, shields, and extra lives. Gathering as many gems as possible and spending them wisely is vital. Landis is fairly resilient for a shooter protagonist. He has a health bar to prevent those dreaded one-hit deaths and he isn’t damaged by contact with innocuous surfaces. That said, it won’t be easy. You’re given a paltry four lives at the outset with which to clear seven stages. None of them have checkpoints and each is a veritable madhouse, with waves of attackers flooding the screen from all sides throughout. If that wasn’t daunting enough, Landis has an extremely short post-hit invincibility period and actually has to pay if he wants to recover lost health and weapon power between levels. In short, cash is your literal lifeblood here.

Once you finish shopping, you’re finally ready for battle. Don’t go thinking you’re done with the decisions yet, though. Lords of Thunder implements multiple risk/reward mechanics that keep combat tense and engaging from moment to moment. I’ve already mentioned one in passing: The gems. The need to accumulate money pushes you to destroy as many foes as possible, as opposed to simply avoiding any that aren’t directly obstructing you. Additionally, merely scoring the kill isn’t sufficient. You still need to fly over to where the vanquished enemy was in order to grab the floating gem before it scrolls off the screen, thereby diverting some of your finite attention away from the remaining swarm. You’re constantly having to reconcile long-term survivability (as represented by your bankroll) with the immediate dangers surrounding you.

Landis’ sword adds another compelling dynamic. This attack dishes out greater damage than the majority of his projectiles. The downside is that he has to be up close and personal with his opponent to use it. Thanks to the aforementioned lack of post-hit invincibility, all it takes is one tiny positioning error or point-blank reprisal to leave him in a world of hurt. Proper sword usage is a cornerstone of skilled play. Sloppy sword usage is a death sentence.

As brilliant as the core action undoubtedly is, it would be a sin to cover Lords of Thunder without giving its graphics and, especially, its music their due. Strong art design, highly detailed pixel work, and striking use of the system’s famously broad color palette earn it a place among the best-looking TurboGrafx releases overall. Locations are visually distinct and there’s a decent variety of enemy types present.

While the graphics are admirable, the score by composer Satoshi Miyashita of the independent game music firm T’s Music is legitimately legendary. It’s pure power metal from start to finish and was virtually unprecedented in the context of video games circa 1993. Oh, we’d heard plenty of metal-inspired chiptunes and MIDI numbers in the likes of MUSHA and Doom. Lords was different, however, owing to the Red Book audio capability of the CD-ROM format itself. If these tracks had lyrics, they could have been something you took home from the record store rather than the electronics aisle. There’s some serious shredding going on here. One piece in particular, the Dezant theme, reminded me of Rainbow’s “Gates of Babylon.” If I’m comparing something favorably to freakin’ Dio era Rainbow, Dear Reader, you can be sure I mean business.

Lest this glowing adulation right on the heels of my love letter to Chrono Trigger last week leave you with the impression I’m going soft, I’ll go ahead and point out that Lords of Thunder isn’t quite perfect. Its biggest missed opportunity by far is the poor armor balancing. The earth and water armors are overwhelmingly powerful once mastered. Fire is adequate. Usable, certainly. By contrast, there’s no use bothering with wind unless you’re actively looking to play with a handicap. It offers no advantages in terms of damage output or area of effect and may as well not be included at all in its current form. I was also slightly disappointed by Landis’ inability to swap armors mid-stage. The potential to change out your main weapon via a pickup would have added yet another welcome tactical facet.

Having now done my due critical duty, it should be clear that any gripes I can muster pale before the glorious white-knuckle frenzy that is Lords of Thunder. This is an absolute must-play for any classic shooter fan. Soaring through the air unleashing waves of elemental death on the demon hoards as a screaming guitar solos your eardrums raw…and it’s somehow even more fun than it sounds!

The Legendary Axe II (TurboGrafx-16)

Almost three years ago now, I looked at The Legendary Axe, a highly regarded 1989 launch title for the North American TurboGrafx-16. In that review, I made only the briefest mention of its “very different sequel,” 1990’s The Legendary Axe II. Why the wait to cover said sequel? Because while it’s not terrible by any means, Legendary Axe II is a prime example of how a few seemingly minor aesthetic and mechanical tweaks can result in a significantly less appealing package.

Legendary Axe II is known as Ankoku Densetsu (“Dark Legend”) in Japan, and boy, did its makers take that name to heart. Gone are the bright colors and upbeat tunes of the previous game’s Tarzan-inspired world. In their place is the grim fantasy styling of the Ancient Kingdom, which resembles nothing less than Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age by way of H. R. Giger. The Conan influence extends to the look of our new hero, Prince Sirius, whose long black hair and ripped physique are unmistakably homage. Sirius is on a seven stage quest to regain the throne from his brother, Zach, who usurped it with the aid of the demonic King Drodam. I wish him luck. Could you imagine having to bend your knee to a monarch named Zach of all things? The indignity!

Apart from the changes in setting and art direction, Legendary Axe II dispenses with the weapon power gauge that governed the flow of combat in the original. You no longer need to judge when it’s better to attack with a flurry of fast, weak swings versus going on the defensive for a bit as you wait for a single mighty blow to charge up. The designers attempted to compensate for this loss of tactical depth by including multiple weapons accessed via in-level pickups. The starting sword is relatively balanced. The chain sickle offers improved reach at the cost of lower damage. The punishing axe hits like a truck, but requires you to get up close and personal with your target. And yes, you read that right: The axe isn’t the default weapon in this Legendary Axe game. Go figure.

In addition, there are pickups that restore lost health, extend the health bar, boost the strength of your weapon, and grant extra lives. When the going gets tough, you can also press the Select button to deploy one of your limited stock of “magic bombs” that damage every enemy on the screen. Beware of foes that attempt to use the very same bombs against you, though! Your last offensive option is jumping on the opposition’s heads à la Super Mario. A strange maneuver indeed in a weapon-based action-platformer like this, but I’ll take what I can get.

On one hand, I can applaud the teams at Atlus and Red Company for daring to try something fresh here rather than merely rehashing what Aicom did with the first Legendary Axe. Unfortunately, the majority of their final design is mediocre at best. The dim and frequently under-detailed backgrounds of Sirius’ kingdom literally pale next to Gogan’s lush jungle stomping grounds. Worse, the presence of multiple weapons doesn’t come close to making up for the loss of the power gauge. Regardless of which one you’re wielding, dispatching baddies large and small is mainly a matter of simple button mashing. This gets old well before you reach the finale in Zach’s oddly high-tech stronghold. Oh, and I wasn’t a fan of the more vertically oriented stages, either. They have a bad habit of sending fast-moving enemies swooping at you from off-screen, resulting in loads of knockback and repeated platforming segments.

All that said, Legendary Axe II isn’t a disaster. Some of the bosses look pretty cool. The creepy possessed doll that spawns decoys of itself comes to mind, as does the massive King Drodam himself. The true star of the show, however, is Hiro Suzuki’s intense, brooding score; an exceptionally atmospheric set of chiptunes that really deserved to be showcased in a much better game. Drab and shallow as it is, this one still rates as a mostly adequate arcade style hack-and-slasher. Just don’t expect it hold a candle to the best the genre had to offer at the time, including its own predecessor.

Gate of Thunder (TurboGrafx-16)

Having recently experienced an excellent action-platformer (Castlevania: Rondo of Blood) and an iconic RPG (Ys Book I & II), I’m understandably eager to continue my exploration of the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM library. Given the system’s reputation as a shooter fan’s paradise, 1992’s Gate of Thunder seems like a natural choice. It was, after all, a pack-in title for the deluxe TurboDuo version of the hardware here in North America, sharing a disc with Bonk’s Adventure, Bonk’s Revenge, and Bomberman. If that’s not the best selection of software ever bundled with a game console, I couldn’t tell you what is. It was certainly a long-delayed step in the right direction. Sure, the TurboDuo was far too late and too pricey to salvage the TurboGrafx brand in this part of the world, but at least anyone who did buy in at that point got more to show for it than a measly copy of Keith Courage in Alpha Zones.

Gate of Thunder comes to us from developer Red Company, makers of the beloved Bonk series of mascot platformers and its spin-off, Air Zonk, which I consider to be one of the finest horizontal shooters available for the TurboGrafx. In other words, I had every reason to look forward to this one, and I’m pleased to report that Gate did not disappoint. It delivers just about everything you could want in a 16-bit shoot-’em-up: Blistering action, powerful weapons, intimidating bosses, exotic backdrops, flashy pyrotechnics, and a driving soundtrack. It’s also a shameless copycat so desperate to associate itself with Technosoft’s Thunder Force III that Red couldn’t be bothered to leave “Thunder” out of the title. Bit of a bad look there.

You play as space cop Hawk, captain of the Hunting Dog space fighter, out to defend planet Aries from the private armada of interstellar crime boss General Don Jingi. It’s hinted in the cutscenes that Hawk might have some sort of personal vendetta against the baddies, since he’s prone to brooding over a locket containing a picture of his (dead?) family. I’m sure the nameless locket-toting hero of Konami’s Axelay can relate. Hawk is aided throughout his seven stage crusade by his partner, Esty, who periodically swoops down in her own Wild Cat ship to dispense power-ups. This is strictly a one-player game, so you never get to control Esty directly. I guess it’s still nice that they put some thought into to where all these helpful icons actually come from. Most other games don’t bother.

Like its Technosoft namesake, Gate of Thunder is a fast-paced affair. This is no cautious checkpoint shooter in the R-Type mold. Aggression is your best friend here, a fact emphasized by your ability to respawn in place after a death and continue the fight uninterrupted. The overall flow of the action is exhilarating and seems to effortlessly straddle that thin line separating challenge and frustration.

The Hunting Dog’s default attack is a simple straight-firing blue laser. Collecting those color-coded power-up orbs I mentioned grants access to two additional primary weapons: Green waves that fan out to deal slightly less damage over a wider area and the red earthquake, which deals immense damage to targets situated above and below you. Your ability to toggle between these three shots at any time forms the basis for much of the game’s strategy beyond the usual bullet dodging and enemy pattern memorization common to virtually all shooters. In general, the laser is best against most bosses, waves are for swarms of weak foes, and the earthquake makes short work of those pesky ceiling and floor targets.

Grabbing a second power-up corresponding to a particular weapon will upgrade it to a more powerful form. After that, every subsequent icon of that color will instead cause a huge energy wave to sweep across the screen in classic super bomb style. You do need to exercise some caution, however, as a death will strip you of your currently equipped weapon, with the exception of the laser, which can only be downgraded.

Rounding out your arsenal are an incredibly important shield that allows you to withstand three extra hits, a secondary homing missile weapon, and a pair of Gradius-inspired “option” satellites that flank your ship and mirror your primary shot. You’re able to manually pivot your options around to fire behind you when necessary, although rear assaults aren’t terribly common.

The blazing speed of the gameplay is complimented by Nick Wood’s relentless score. One could argue that the Red Book audio is the only thing here that truly required the CD medium. That’d be missing the mark in terms of criticism, though, as this sort of early ’90s instrumental hard rock is simply ideal to wreck aliens to.

There’s no mistake about it—from its visual design to its controls and weapon system, Gate of Thunder really is just Thunder Force III with real wailing guitars replacing the synthesized ones. If you were somehow able to swap entire levels around between the two games, I reckon the effect would be seamless enough that a player unfamiliar with the originals wouldn’t be able to spot the difference. That said, I’m not complaining! Ripping off an all-time great pretty much perfectly is a win in my book. In the context of a genre as traditionally no-nonsense and gameplay-driven as the auto-scrolling shooter, imitation can indeed be the sincerest form of flattery. Love Thunder Force III? Well, here come Red Company and Hudson Soft to essentially double its length while introducing no real flaws of note. I’ll take it, thanks.

If you must insist on something with more in the way of creative vision, you could skip over Gate in favor of its fantasy-themed pseudo-sequel, Lords of Thunder. Me, I’m not so hung up on innovation that I can’t recognize the entertainment potential in accurately recreating a masterpiece, even one that isn’t technically your own.

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.

Bonk’s Adventure (TurboGrafx-16)

Bang your head!

By the tail end of the ’80s, console gaming was all about the mascots. Super Mario games were the single richest goldmine the industry had stumbled on to date, with three of the top five best-selling games of the decade being Mario titles. Hell, if you remove Duck Hunt from consideration on the basis that it owes the majority of its popularity to having been bundled with the first Super Mario Bros., fully 80% of that top five list is taken up by Nintendo’s mustachioed Mickey Mouse of gaming. Hudson Soft and NEC, Nintendo’s biggest rivals in the Japanese market, wanted in. Their search for a profitably appealing face for their PC Engine system eventually led to them partnering with developers Red Company and Atlus to release the first PC Genjin game in 1989.

The name they picked for their new big-headed caveman character was actually quite clever. “Genjin” means something along the lines of “primitive man” and the “PC” supposedly stood for his fictitious species name: “Pithecanthropus Computerus.” It’s mostly meant to serve as a not-so-subtle plug for the console itself, of course, but I still appreciate the effort. Here in North America, where the PC Engine is called the TurboGrafx-16, all this wordplay would have been lost in translation, so we instead know the character as Bonk and his debut outing as Bonk’s Adventure.

Why a caveman? Beats me, but while it may seem like a strange choice in isolation, the gaming scene was actually teeming with troglodytes around this time. In addition to the many licensed Flintstones games, we had Joe & Mac, Chuck Rock, Big Nose the Caveman, Congo’s Caper, Caveman Games, Prehistorik, Adventures of Dino Riki, Toki, and more. Next time you think of a stereotypical old school video game hero, remember that club-swinging dudes draped in animal skins were almost as common as ninja and Rambo clones. It was just one of those things.

As expected, Bonk’s Adventure is a side-view platformer in the Mario mold. They’re not subtle about it, either: Bonk is out to rescue a princess named Za from the hulking reptilian monarch, King Drool. At least the princess here is some kind of plesiosaur-like dragon creature and not a buxom blond lady. I guess I can award partial credit for that. The game consists of five rounds and each round is further sub-divided into anywhere between one and seven distinct levels, making for a grand total of 22 stages. While the majority of these only require Bonk to survive a gauntlet of enemies and environmental hazards in order to reach the exit, each full round concludes with a memorable battle against a large boss character.

Fittingly, Bonk’s major contribution to the platforming genre is the way he uses his oversized Charlie Brown noggin to smash through every obstacle in his path. Simply jumping onto enemies like Mario does will only result in Bonk himself taking damage. The preferred method is to either jump up into foes from below, nail them with a standing head butt when grounded, or press the attack button in mid-air to perform a headlong diving attack. The dive attack is my favorite of the three because each successful hit will automatically propel Bonk back up into the air, allowing accurate players to chain together a series of consecutive strikes without needing to touch ground in-between. It’s very satisfying and makes many of the boss encounters much easier. Beyond just bashing hostile critters, Bonk can also use his freak dome to aid in stage traversal. He scales walls by using his huge teeth of all things, which makes mine hurt just thinking about it. Additionally, tapping the attack button repeatedly while airborne will make Bonk spin, slowing his descent and effectively allowing him to glide right over long stretches of hostile territory. This last ability is just as useful as it sounds, possibly too much so. The option to skip huge sections of many levels in this way can really hobble the game’s challenge if you let it, similar to the cape power-up from Super Mario World.

Speaking of power-ups, the offerings here are pretty slim, which is one of the game’s few significant missteps. Bonk can find fruit and hearts to restore lost health, but meat is the only item that really changes up the gameplay. Chowing down on a hunk of tasty meat will boost the power of Bonk’s dive attack, allowing it to stun any nearby enemies when his head impacts the ground. Eating a second piece (or a single giant piece) will render Bonk invincible and able to charge straight through the opposition. The bad news here is that all abilities derived from meat consumption are temporary. There are no persistent power-ups present in the game other than the occasional health bar extension. This feels like a missed opportunity to me. Gaining new abilities in a game like this feels rewarding and the player’s innate desire to hold onto them for as long as possible encourages skillful play in a very elegant, natural way.

My final gripe with Bonk’s Adventure involves the lack of a run feature. With the way efficient movement in so many post-Super Mario platformers is predicated on managing your character’s momentum from moment to moment, this is the sort of thing that you don’t really appreciate until it’s gone. Here, the fact that Bonk is limited to a leisurely walk when traveling along the ground only serves as more incentive to abuse the glide ability in hopes of reaching the level exit just a little more quickly. I eventually got used to the fact that I couldn’t run, but it never stopped feeling like I should be able to.

Although its sequels would provide much in the way of expansion and fine-tuning, Bonk’s Adventure is still an excellent platformer in its own right. The action is as fun as it is unique and the TG-16’s famously colorful graphics allowed the artists to bring their hyperactive cartoon take on prehistory to life in grand style. The level design both rewards player curiosity with its abundance of hidden bonus rooms and makes use of some truly unique settings and scenarios. Midway through the first round, for example, Bonk gets swallowed by a humongous dinosaur and has to navigate its innards by swimming through the beast’s stomach bile and avoiding its surly (but oddly cute) intestinal parasites. Can’t say I’ve seen that one before. At the same time, the game is also a case study in how to handle a mascot launch right. Bonk himself is as likable as his creators were banking on. It should come as no surprise that he would go on to star in multiple direct Bonk’s Adventure follow-ups and a shooter spin-off series (Air Zonk) on the TurboGrafx as well as cross over to the NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, and Amiga.

Unfortunately, Hudson Soft is no more and NEC has long since exited the gaming sphere. This leaves Bonk in limbo. He hasn’t starred in a new game since 1995, unless you count the horrid looking 2006 mobile phone release Bonk’s Return, which, frankly, you shouldn’t. It remains to be seen if Konami (who owns the rights to the Hudson back catalog at the time of this writing) will ever see fit to resurrect everyone’s favorite headbanging hominid hero.

Here’s hoping you really can’t keep a good (cave)man down.