Welcome back to the fourth installment in our ongoing feature, Yaroze a Day! In this series, we’re attempting to cover the complete catalogue of games compiled in the unofficial “Net Yaroze Collection 2014,” and giving each of them brief explorations and reviews. Each bi-weekly bi-monthly bi-annual occasional update provides seven titles for your viewing pleasure, and additionally attempts to discover any deeper stories behind the games and their respective developers.
Today’s return picks up where we last left off, as we continue to make our way through titles beginning with the letter ‘B,’ and brings us one of the most notable releases to hail from the European Yaroze community. While you certainly don’t have to have read through all the preceding articles and reviews in order to understand the games we’ll be covering today; we would at least recommend reading our primer on the subject of the Net Yaroze hardware and introduction to this series, which you can find here. With all that stated, please to enjoy this update’s assortment of oddities and obscurities!
SURPRISE! Here’s the first episode I helped write for one of my favorite YouTube channels (and inaugural “Cool Cats” inductees), Stop Skeletons From Fighting! I’ve been sitting on this secret for a hot minute now – something like the past couple of months – and I’m excited that I can finally reveal it to y’all.
Derek and Grace have always been cool as hell to me, and I’m pumped to be able to collaborate with them. SSFF’s appreciation for games that seek to overachieve – which try [and sometimes fail] to push the limits – aligns perfectly with my own. Their willingness to dive deep into all manner of obscurities and oddities has always made for fascinating viewing, and I’m psyched to be able to lend a hand to them.
“You can only fire when standing on solid ground.” Spelunker Japanese box art.
In the annals of kusogē history, perhaps no other console has played host to quite so many notorious games as Nintendo’s Family Computer. And within that catalogue of infamous cartridges, there is a trio which stands out — three titles tied together by shared theming and similarly punishing gameplay. These releases would include Sunsoft’s Atlantis no Nazo, Pony Canyon’s Super Pitfall, and the subject of today’s article; IREM’s Spelunker. Now, seeing as each game puts players in the boots of fortune-seeking adventurer types – exploring the likes of ancient ruins and lost caverns – I reckon there should really be some sort of nickname assigned to this wholy unofficial trilogy, right? A friend and peer in our field – Natalie of ‘Kusoge Theater’ – has referred to the set as the “Cave Dwellers” collection. A plenty memorable moniker, to be sure. But today, I’d like to pitch my own suggestion here for your approval: “The Treasure Hunters Trinity.” A little alliteration goes a long way, I say.
Regardless of what you want to call this selection of games (if you even see fit to connect them together in the first place), Spelunker is the release which set the boulder rolling. With its December 6th, 1985 release date, it predates both of its contemporaries by several months. Not only that, but the game upon which it is originally based – MicroGraphic Image’s Atari 8-bit version of Spelunker – was launched two years earlier in 1983. And while there’s a further point to be made that all three games in this trio likely owe their inspirations to the success of Brøderbund’s Lode Runner; it’s the Nintendo conversion of Spelunker that set a standard for “badness,” and which serves as the perfect point of entry for our fortune-seeking adventures on Famicom.
Like all great treasures and antiquities, there is a history to be explored here. We’ll be doing our due diligence in unearthing the details of the original Spelunker’s development, before establishing the link to its subsequent reimaginings in Japan. From there, we’ll dig deep into the depths of the infamous Famicom / NES cartridge, and see if there’s any gold to be mined from it. Finally, we’ll examine the impact Spelunker had on the market and industry, and the enduring cultural legacy it still manages to hold. But before embarking on this expedition, we should all do well to remember the adage that “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” and try our best to approach today’s finds with open minds. Bearing all that in mind, it’s high time we start spelunkin’.
“The Fate of the Planet Sephiroth is in Your Hands!!”
“The most beautiful and highly advanced planet in the galaxy, ‘Sephiroth.'” Japanese Mega Drive cover.
Scrolling shooters: The final frontier. This is the voyage of the starship ‘DR.’ Its single mission: To defeat the Guardia Army. To protect the planet Sephiroth in its hour of need. To stink up Sega’s Mega Drive like no shmup has stunk before!
XDR: X-Dazedly Ray’s reputation as a piece of 16-bit kusogē isn’t known to many outside of Japan (its sole territory of release). Hell, it’s almost barely recognized even in its native Nihon, where its claim to “fame” is in the fact that it was so beloathed by the few folk who played it as to earn it something like a permanent spot near the very bottom of Beep! MegaDrive magazine’s “Reader’s Race” charts — in competition with nearly the entirety of the rest of the country’s console library![1]** Even more obscure than the game itself is its one-time developer and publisher, UNIPACC; who would appear to fold almost immediately following the lukewarm reception to their debut title. Needless to say, the short-lived nature of XDR and its creators means that there isn’t all that much info to go around regarding the pair, especially on the English-speaking end of the web. Needless to say (again), that’s where the Bad Game Hall of Fame steps in.
Today, we’ll be staring straight into those dazedly rays in order to report on the brief history of the team behind the release, to review the contents of the cartridge, and ultimately see if we can’t figure out what UNIPACC’s plans for the future might’ve been. Along the way, we’ll reveal several of the staff responsible for the game’s development, determine if XDR truly deserves its lowly reputation, and – perhaps most importantly – explain what the hell an “X-Dazedly Ray” is even supposed to be. The story of Ray Starbreaker and his ‘Operation X’ will finally be told!
** These results as per the final issue of Beep! MegaDrive’s publication run. For reference: XDR would rank as the Mega Drive’s third place lowest-rated title (positioned #477 out of 479 / scoring 3.0269 out of 10); just above Double Dragon II: The Revenge (#478 / 3.0214), and Sword of Sodan (#479 / 2.8954).
EDITOR’S NOTE: Howdy there, Cassidy here! Today’s article comes to us courtesy of a guest contributor, Defenestration! With her having offered to help pen this article for us, I was happy to accept said offer, and put up coverage on the website for a game I might well not have gotten around to otherwise. Spyro’s inaugural sixth-gen excursion is certainly a troubled piece of work, and I’m glad to have had the help in figuring out the factors that made it so.
In addition to contributing some of my own insights to this article: It also fell on me to provide all the accompanying gameplay clips, which I was able to compile after streaming my own playthrough of the game live on our Twitch channel. You can watch the three-part archive of said playthrough on our YouTube channel, if you happen to be interested in hearing my further personal thoughts on this particular 3D platformer: [Ep. 1 | Ep. 2 | Ep. 3]
“I heard a Riptoc talking about sausages!” Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly North American GameCube cover.
Let’s travel back to 1998: We stand on the verge of a new era, with all the change and advances the passage of time brings. In the world of video games, the ‘90s fad for introducing cartoonish mascot platformers was well upon us; with a trail of failed endeavors and characters having missed their marks, all for one reason or another. Where onlooker developers had seen the success of Sonic the Hedgehog in ‘93 and Crash Bandicoot in ‘96, they wanted desperately to have a piece of that pie — even if only just the crumbs. Furthermore, with the advent of 3D games, there was an added pressure to always be chasing the latest tech and genre trends. So was the state of the industry that inspired the likes of Spyro the Dragon; developed by relative newcomer Insomniac Games, and published by Universal Interactive. And where other mascot platformers flopped, Spyro would soar to reach his most popular contemporaries.
The original Spyro trilogy on Sony’s PlayStation was something of a technical marvel: On hardware where most games were subject to seemingly arbitrary render distance – past which things simply weren’t there – Spyro’s world presented technical trickery allowing players to peer deep into that distance — using a tool known as ‘Level of Detail’ to great effect. Aside from inspired design and programming, Spyro was simply an appealing character, who toured fantastical locations and jaw jacked with a whole cast of anthropomorphic pals — all set to solid soundtrack courtesy of former Police drummer Stewart Copeland, and featuring talented voice actors the likes of which included Carlos Alazraqui and Tom Kenny (two actors who would take to portraying Spyro). All three titles in this original trilogy would ultimately be labelled as ‘Greatest Hits,’ denoting their status as top-selling software. Surely, Spyro could only continue on his ascent toward video game stardom.
The year is now 2002. The new millennium is finally upon us, and brings with it a new generation of console hardware. Publisher Universal plans to carry their profitable purple dragon’s momentum with a new mainline installment intended for the leading platforms — boasting bigger worlds, more seamless models, and new powers for the daring young dragon. Enter Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. And on the day of its eagerly awaited release, players could only be left largely aghast by the downgrades on display: Presented with sparsely-populated and over-large levels, wildly fluctuating framerate, and a litany of bugs so severe that you might inadvertently meet the game’s final boss – the only boss, at that – within a minute of starting a new save file. With Spyro’s wings having been so suddenly and noticeably clipped between installments, critics and consumers were left asking “What the hell happened?”
Short answer? The game was unreasonably rushed to pass, with a significant amount of planned content and much-needed polish left undone and / or scrapped entirely. The long answer, though, requires that we go back to those earlier games, and trace the flight path that brought us to this disastrous crash. The tale told will be a cautionary one, and contend as to why torturous publisher interference is generally poor practice. But readers be warned: “We enter the dragonfly alone, we leave the dragonfly alone.” Ancient dragon proverb, probably.
The Bad Game Hall of Fame is dedicated to giving bad games the due process they deserve. Through examining their history, reviewing their contents, and measuring their impact, we hope to bring about a better understanding of these oft-dismissed releases.
Along the way, we'd like to give readers a better understanding of how the games industry operates, and the pressure put on game developers to deliver these products in [often] short order.
Yaroze a Day #04
SSFF: Surprise 3D in GBA Games | Punching Weight
Spelunker (NES)
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
