Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1995

1995. The peak of Mortal Kombat mania.  Last year may not have had a Mortal Kombat game in arcades, but those home versions of the games were selling like hotcakes and the franchise was getting merchandised to hell and back.  There was the movie, which is widely regarded as one of the best video game to movie adaptations to this day, there was the promotional VHS of the movie and there was the live tour.

Mortal Kombat got so much attention that other companies were trying to get in on the digitized actors and violence, usually to poor results.

Oh yeah, Namco is in this.  They released games mostly in Japan and not in America so they got left in the dust, although Tekken was shaping up to be their heaviest hitter in arcades.  1995 was also the debut of the first Time Crisis, but I have never in my life seen that game.  I've only ever played the sequels.  Here in this competition, popularity, public recognition and hype means nothing.  All that matters is who made the best games.  The current score has Midway in the lead, 7 to 5.  Namco isn’t far behind and still has a few years left to take the lead.

Devil May Cry 5 Review

After Capcom released Ninja Theory’s Devil May Cry reboot, I don’t think anyone was expecting a sequel to Devil May Cry 4.  I think Ninja Theory’s game gets way too much flak because of its title, but regardless of the merits of the game itself, fans wanted a Devil May Cry 5.  However, in the intervening years Capcom came out with Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, which became a monster hit despite no advertising or promotion whatsoever, and then later followed it up with Sengoku Basara 4 in Japan.  Over the years Sengoku Basara 4 built itself up as the most hyped English version of a game in the history of the human race to the point that everyone forgot about wanting a Devil May Cry game.  Something very strange happened though.  Instead of releasing Sengoku Basara 4 in English and bringing about world peace and a panacea for all diseases, Capcom not only made Devil May Cry 5, but fully dubbed it and released it in English.

I am at least a moderate fan of the Devil May Cry franchise.  Devil May Cry 3 is one of my favorite action games of all time and of course you know Devil May Cry 4 is good because it has the same producer as Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes.

That said, it’s curious that instead of translating and dubbing a fully released, content-rich game being exalted as one of the masterpieces of the gaming world that everyone and their dog wants, just like they had already done for the previous game in its franchise, Capcom instead made a new game from scratch with an English version.  That would have to mean that Devil May Cry 5 is practically godlike and I had to take a look to see for myself if it truly lives up to that hype.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1994

1994 was a slow year for our two competitors, for arcades at least.  Midway was busy with the home ports of Mortal Kombat 2 and as usual Namco was not releasing games in English because… Because.  Both companies did put out at least one game each in 1994 though.  On Midway's side is a tried and true rail shooter that sticks to a lot of its companies established conventions and a stop motion fighting game.  On Namco's side is the beginning of one of the biggest names in fighting games.  It’s a one-on-one.  We shall see which game carries their company to victory.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1992 & 1993

It’s 1992.  Last year Street Fighter 2 kicked off fighting games in a big way and every company was jumping in on the new competitive martial arts gameplay, Namco and Midway included.  At least, Midway did in America.  It’s even slimmer pickings for Namco arcade games than last time.  Their 2D fighter Knuckle Heads didn’t come out in English, just like the majority of their games around this time.  There was the first Ridge Racer that came out…

However, I’ve never seen a cabinet for the original Ridge Racer in my life.

I could only get my hands on one Namco game and it’s from 1993 so you know what that means: another 2 year judgment time span.  They’d better hope Midway drops the ball again, but considering what I know is ahead, I don’t think they are going to.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1990 & 1991

We’re back from my Sengoku Basara detour and our contest picks up in 1990 and 1991.  Since I can’t get any Namco games from 1990, this is a judgement for a 2-year time span, where most of Midway’s games are from 1990 and Namco’s games are in 1991.  Once again, Namco’s failure to release arcade games in English has them going in with a very low ammo count.  Technically one of their games for this year, Tank Force, didn’t even initially come out in English at all, but since they would otherwise only have one game for entry, I need to throw them a bone.  Maybe it will be the game that comes in clutch.

Extra History: The Sengoku Basara Way: Part 3

With Nobunaga dead, the last 2 parts of the Extra History videos cover Hideyoshi, his death and the battle of Sekigahara.  This post is going to be shorter than the other ones because, well, the videos go into a lot of backgrounds that Sengoku Basara chooses to push to the wayside for the sake of an exciting action story, but there is still a fair bit to note.

 

Extra History: The Sengoku Basara Way: Part 2

I've held off on discussing Nobunaga's Sengoku Basara design.  Everyone knows it.  He's portrayed as an evil overlord with a spiky and intimidating outfit with a blood red cape and he laughs at the carnage and atrocities he commits.  Up to this point in the Extra History videos though, Nobunaga has just been a very tactical and pragmatic warlord, not a lot worse than the others.  It's starting around here where we start to see where his reputation comes from.

Extra History: The Sengoku Basara Way: Part 1

We aren't done with Sengoku Basara yet.  In the first part of my Sengoku Basara retrospective I directed people to a series of videos from Extra Creditz, specifically their Extra History sub-series.  This 6-part series of short videos does a good job of detailing all the most important moments of the Sengoku period while making them fun and expressive through the use of artwork.  Even more fun an expressive is one of my favorite franchises, Sengoku Basara.

 

It's always funny to me when I learn something about history and think back to how the madcap action of Sengoku Basara interpreted that, especially with Sanada Yukimura Den steering closer to real history.  As such I thought it would be fun to go over some real history and how that was interpreted into what we see in the games.  The Sengoku era of Japan is already pretty crazy, as the videos show, so watching it become more crazy is pretty entertaining.

Sengoku Basara Retrospective: Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den

I originally ended my Sengoku Basara retrospective at Sengoku Basara 4 because the main series and all the English media was already covered and the last game, Sanada Yukimura Den, is story-focused when fan translations are already incomplete and sparse for Sengoku Basara 4, which is still more than Sanada Yukimura Den got.  Since then I discovered a miracle.  An app for the iphone that, in a way, breaks through Capcom’s attempt to stop American players from enjoying Sengoku Basara 4: the translate app.

With the translate app, players can take pictures of the screen as the dialogue appears and form halfway comprehensible translation of all the text.  It doesn’t make the Japanese voice acting any better, but with the help of the translation app I can finally understand and somewhat enjoy the stories of Sengoku Basara 4, which, it turns out, are wonderful.  Sengoku Basara 4’s stories have something for everyone.  It has stories that are funny, sad, cute, awesome and everything in between.  It’s a pain to have to take constant pictures of the screen as the dialogue goes along and it doesn’t alleviate the depression of Capcom’s vicious betrayal, but it does make it partially possible to play the game to the potential it was made to be played.

It also means that Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den is on the table.  Now that I can understand this more story-centric game, I can give my thoughts on it proper.

TV Edits of the Viewtiful Joe Anime: Episode 19

In this episode, Joe helps a young girl reunite with her mother while inspiring a team of little league baseball players led by Mona Marshall to not give up, all the while Gran Bruce concocts a plan to defeat Joe by cutting him off from cheeseburgers.

 

This episode is probably taking beats from a sports movie (pick one), but the movie it seems to take place in is Friday the 13th.  Yes, really.  I'll get to that.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1989

How did it come to this, Namco?  An entire year and nothing to show for it in English.  Namco officially has nothing for me.  They made arcade games, but not for America.  Valkyrie Densetsu looks like fun, but we didn’t get to play it.  Finest Hour looks like potential game of the year material and so does Burning Force, but the most we got of the latter was the inferior Genesis port.  The only game they might’ve had an entry with is Dangerous Seed, but it’s never seen a re-release and I’ve never been to any arcade that has it.  In fact, going to local arcades to play more games is to Namco’s detriment because there are far more Midway games at them than Namco ones.

That’s why I’ll be fudging the rules just a bit and giving them the only game of this year I was able to play: Rompers.  Similarly to Tower of Druaga, the game got English re-releases later with a full translation.  Since it technically never came to American arcades, like Tower of Druaga, any victory the game might give them will be a soft one.  That is, if there’s a tie, it will not win.  I’m not expecting another Splatterhouse miracle this time.  Maybe this will be a lesson in the importance of English releases.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1988

As I pointed out in the previous post, Namco has a lot riding on just one game for 1988.  It’s not that they didn’t make a lot of arcade games that year or that they weren’t even making good ones.  I mean they had an even better arcade board for even better games.  It’s just that almost none of their games came out in American arcades.  They made games that appear to be strong contenders like Ordyne, Marchen Maze and Phelios, but none of that was for America.  From what I can tell the only games from this year that came out in English are Splatterhouse and Metal Hawk, but since Metal Hawk heavily relied on a fancy motion simulator machine it means it never got re-released for new consoles with standard controllers.  None of my local places have a Metal Hawk machine either so Namco is placing all their bets on Splatterhouse.  It had better be the game of the year if they want to win.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1987

So far Namco has been losing pretty badly and they needed to step it up to keep up with Midway’s constant technological innovations.  Good thing then that in 1987 they did just that.  I’m not sure exactly what kind of arcade hardware Midway was using, but 1987 marked the debut of the Namco System 1, an upgraded arcade machine capable of better sound and graphics, not unlike what the CPS-1 was for Capcom.  Midway’s arcade offering so far have left me in awe with their presentation, but new dedicated hardware might be the boost Namco needs to start racking up more wins.  Let’s see if they can get out of their losing streak.