Criminally Overlooked Games 2 – Game Sack

(Game Sack Theme) (explosion booming) – Hello, and welcome to Game Sack.

Let's take a look at some more games that generally don't get a lotof attention or appreciation.

In fact, a lot of these games didn't get enjoyed by manypeople, even in their own time.

Let's start out with a gamethat usually goes for over $200, so get your wallets ready, or at least your SD card or emulator.

(sweet pulsating electronic music) How about Dragon Fighter on the NES, designed by Natsume andpublished by SOFEL in 1991? This game doesn't presentyou with any story or other nonsense like that.

You're taken straight to stage one, where you need to battle enemies with your rather short sword.

In addition to your sword, you can also hold down the attack button and release a charge shot.

As you kill enemies, youfill up the lower bar that lives in the topcorner of the screen.

Once this bar has enoughpower, it begins to flash.

Now you can do something special if you hold up and press jump.

Get this: You'll then turn into a dragon.

When this happens, thescreen scrolls automatically and you fire towards the right.

You can't turn around.

You'll remain a dragon untilthe power bar runs out, and you can't cancel it.

As you're playing, you'llcome across capsules that will change your color.

You have your choiceof green, red, or blue.

Depending on your color, your dragon will have adifferent attack power.

The green dragon fires a three-way shot.

The red dragon fires anice-type thing on the ground which kind of remindsme of one of the weapons from Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

I don't care for this one much.

The blue dragon is my favorite because he fires a homing shotwhich is extremely helpful.

The enemies will drop itemssometimes after you kill them.

These will usually refillyour life bar a bit.

Sometimes, they'll drop a ring which will kill all ofthe enemies on screen.

But usually when this happens, it's the last enemy to die, so there's nobody leftfor the ring to kill.

Oh well.

You start the game withrelatively little life.

But after you defeat eachboss, your life bar increases and your power shot becomes stronger.

The enemies are all designedto be extremely annoying.

Most of them come rightat you and they don't care if you're busy dealing with another enemy.

You'll eventually figureout how to handle them, but you certainly won't be getting through this game unscathed.

The enemies themselves couldprobably be more interesting.

In the first stage, they'rejust throwing snowballs at you.

If that's not enough, giant sentient snowflakes come down from the skyand try to touch you.

And trust me, they hurt.

The bosses are pretty cool.

However, their attack patterns are usually pretty easy to figure out.

And the blue dragonwill absolutely destroy most bosses with ease.

The game only gives you onelife with three continues and you start over from thevery beginning of the stage.

Honestly, it's probably a good thing, otherwise it'd be fairly easy to walk right through this one, especially if you have the blue dragon.

I was able to beat it, but it took me using up all my continues and then starting overfrom scratch four times.

By the way, in the final stage, you play as the gray dragon and it plays as a horizontal shooter.

It seems easy at first until you realize there's noway to refill your life here.

The graphics are good, but I wouldn't say they're among the best on the system.

I think the main character sprite could use a couple of more colors.

It looks like he's wearing a cap with a feather in it or something stupid.

But if you look closely, yousee he's wearing the skull of an evil creature thathe previously defeated.

If that part were colored white, it'd be easier to tell what it is.

The music is really good.

Again, not some of thebest on the console, but still some great stuff here.

(light video game music) The generic name was probablywhy this one was overlooked.

It doesn't stand out in a sea of similarly-titled games on the platform.

That, and it came outwhen the Super Nintendo was getting ready to launch.

It's definitely worth a play-through on your favorite console ordevice that plays NES games.

(light video game music) Did you ever play Two Crude Dudes, released by Data Easton the Genesis in 1992? I know it says 1991 on the title screen, but it actually didn't get distributed on home consoles until 1992.

This beat-em-up is a spiritualsuccessor to Bad Dudes.

Anyway, several nukes have gone off, destroying New York City.

And of course, that meansthe government needs you to fight off some street gangs.

So, how about it? Are you a crude enoughdude to save New York City? On the surface, it's a lot like Bad Dudes.

It plays on a 2D planeand you can attack, jump, and move between differentlevels on the screen.

But this game is far moreadvanced than bad dudes was with a lot more powerand skilled programming.

What does that mean? Well, basically, it meansyou can pick stuff up now.

You can pick up tons of different things and even throw them to causemassive damage to your enemies.

Hell, you can even pickup the enemies themselves.

This is a great way to knockoff a lotta their energy.

This game even has anexciting two-player mode for you and yoursecond-best friend to enjoy.

But watch out because you canpick each other up as well.

So, yeah, the gameplay is pretty basic.

Just keep killing theenemies and press on.

As you'd expect, you'llhave to kill a boss as well.

In fact, the mini-bosses and the boss are the only enemies with life bars.

It's kind of weird too because you'll fight regularenemies with no life bars and then later in that same stage, that same enemy is thereagain with a life bar.

I guess he's a mini-boss now.

Between the stages is a bonus round where you beat up a vending machine to restore your life with delicious cola.

This is proof that cola or soda or whatever you wanna call itqualifies as a health food.

I mean, if it's not, whythe hell does his life go up when I drink it? You just can't argue with facts.

There's an occasional vendingmachine during the stages, but it can be tough to drink anything because you're completelyvulnerable when you do.

There's not a huge varietyof enemies here, sadly.

But even so, it doesn'tfeel too repetitive.

The worst is when you arch your back and let these dogs chew onyour manly milk buttons.

Did you just say tits? It sucks because there'sreally nothing you can do.

You just kinda have tostand there and enjoy it.

This is based on the arcade game, which is sometimes known as Crude Buster or Two Crude outside of North America.

Sadly, the graphics took ahuge hit during the conversion, as, at this time, games with 8 MEGA POWER were as big as you'd get untilthe second half of the year when Street Fighter II cameto the Super NES with 16 megs.

I think this game would probably look two or three times asgood as it currently does if it were released two yearslater as a 16- or 20-meg game.

Stupid Data East.

At least the music convertedover from the arcade by Hitoshi Sakimoto sounds really beefy, though he really didn'thave a lot to work with when it came to the original melodies.

(cool music) Sadly, the sound effects and especially thevoices are pretty rough.

(groaning) Since this game came out when Street Fighter IImania was ramping up, it really didn't stand much of a chance, as this was an old-school, single-plane beat-em-up.

Magazines all but ignoredit and so did the public.

Still, this one is fun to play and you might be missing a good time if you neglect this game like you've been doingfor your entire life.

(beefy video game music) Do you absolutely love animals? I mean, do you just wannaprotect them with all your might, even while playing video games? Do you also hate having money? Well, hell with the mortgage; why not pick up this next game instead? (soft but hella sweet electronic music) Here's Growl on the Genesis from Taito and it was released in 1991.

Okay, hearing myself say that sentence, I just suddenly really wannapunch myself in the face.

Moving on, this is a beat-em-upwhere you're fighting evil poachers who have beenhunting animals to extinction; apparently, all animals, except for humans, since this game makes no distinction.

You can choose from fourdifferent playable characters with slightly different attributes.

The controls are fairly simple.

You have an attack button, a jump button, and a special button.

Your normal attack on itsown is fairly useless.

What you wanna do is lookfor a weapon to pick up.

Now, your attack issignificantly more effective and lots more fun to use.

There are different weapons you can get, from swords, poles, guns, bombs, and even a whip.

The whip is great becauseit can take care of enemies on both sides of you.

It also makes you feel like Indiana Jones, which I'm sure is no coincidence.

The bomb is pretty coolbecause when it goes off, it makes your enemy's bodyparts fly all over the place.

It's satisfying to use, for sure.

But be careful because theycan throw bombs at you as well.

If you don't have a weapon, then the jump-kick is by far the most effective meansof attacking enemies and also staying alive.

You'll often get surroundedby evil poachers, and this is where yourspecial button comes in handy.

You'll do some kind of spinny kick depending on your character and you'll be able toget out of that mess.

But, of course, it takes offsome life from your life bar.

You can also do thismove by pressing attack and jump simultaneously, so be careful.

This game actually puts a ton of enemies on screen simultaneously.

It's really easy to getcaught in the middle of them.

As you play, you'll come across evildoers who are holding animals captive.

Be sure to free the animals, as they may help attack the enemies.

I especially like it when you free these two elephants from the boat.

The little one comesand starts running over all of your enemies.

They immediately die horrible deaths by extreme dismemberment! Ow! That'll teach ya not to be evil! (grunting) I hope you're okaywith no longer being solid! (grunting) Yeah, righteousness always prevails! (grunting) Stupid human, animals rule! Another thing that I thinkis cool about this game is that, like the arcadeversion of Double Dragon, the entire game is onecontinuous scrolling play field with no break or screen changes.

Well, actually, it doesfade out and back in when you go into this cave.

But it's still pretty cool tosee the majority of the game as one set piece; I like that.

The graphics are by no meanstaxing the Genesis in any way, but they're good enough.

Same goes for the music.

It's certainly not Streets of Rage, but it doesn't sound unpleasant.

I wish there were a greatervariety of music tracks though.

(decent video game music) This is a port of the arcadegame of the same name.

As you can see, it definitelylooks a lot better.

Here, up to four players canplay the game simultaneously.

But in the Genesis version, you can only enjoy up toone player simultaneously.

So, why is this one overlooked? Well, honestly, Taitonever put much effort into their Genesis games.

They used what felt like the most basic programming and graphic skills possible, so games from Taito didn'texactly make heads turn.

Oh wait, yeah, I almost forgot: Streets of Rage kinda took the genre to new heights on the systemright before this came out.

That's probably mainlythe reason, I think.

Oh, and like I mentioned, it's single-player only.

That's probably anotherreally good reason.

Still, it's worth trying out.

It'll make you feel goodbecause if you beat it, you'll have saved all of theanimals in the entire world.

(tank rumbling) (decent video game music) This is Sub Rebellion onthe PlayStation 2 from IREM, which was released in 2002.

In this one, you playas a single submarine which has the low-pressure burden of saving the entire world from evil.

This is funny because IREM also published In The Hunt in 1993, which featured a similar premise.

And everyone knows that thisgame was called In The Hunt because “The Hunt for Red October” was a very popular book and movie.

This is basically a spiritual followup which needs you to deal withlots and lots more buttons, which of course means it's way more fun.

Seriously though, gettingthe hang of the controls here is gonna take you a few minutes.

L1 and L2 control your forwardand backwards movements.

R1 and R2 control your ballast, which makes you rise or sink.

The circle button will let you surface and skim around in certain stages, attacking land- and air-based enemies.

The left stick controlsyour movement direction, while the right stick controls the camera.

The square button fires a rapidshot if you keep tapping it.

But if you hold it, you can lock on your missiles to a target.

Don't worry, you have anunlimited amount of missiles, which quite honestly surprises me because this game is tough.

You have to wait for thegauges on the left to refill before you can lock on again.

Each mission has afairly simple objective, usually destroying a certain amount of such-and-such an object.

Sometimes, there's a boss-style encounter.

(light video game music) Between missions, you can buysome really expensive stuff for your submarine, like the ability to lock on to more targets at once.

So, not only do you haveto save the entire world by yourself, they're chargingyou big bucks to do it too! Seriously though, onceyou get the hang of it, this game is really fun.

I think the biggest issueis that there are things above and below the waterattacking you at all times and it's tough to keep trackof where everything is, much less actually deal with it.

For example, you're above water trying to attack some surface cannons while some jerks youdon't even know are there are attacking you from below.

You'll quite often get hitby things you don't see.

Oh, and turning and movinghappens really, really slow.

Oh, and this is true by the way, did you know that at any given time there are more airplanes in the ocean than there are submarines in the sky? Huh, huh? (clearing throat) Yeah, moving on.

When you destroy certainthings like this helicopter that just sits thereand drops depth charges, it'll give you an item which provides some strengthback to your shield.

But it often won't be enough and you'll find yourselfrestarting the level.

Thankfully, there's unlimited continues, just as you'd expect from a PS2-era game that lets you save between levels.

The graphics are prettygood for the system.

And even though all the levelsare basically water levels, they do a good job of makingeach area look different.

I didn't care much forthe fifth mission though, as it's a cave maze andeverything looks the same and there's no map.

Oh, and sometimes you have toworry about your air supply, so that means there's a time limit, which of course onlyincreases the amount of fun.

The sound and especially the music are pretty good in most stages.

Not all stages have music though.

The aforementioned mission five just has creepy ambientsound and ping noises.

(submarine pinging) Like I said, this gamecan be pretty tough.

The missions aren't short.

And if you die fighting a boss, you have to start from thebeginning of that mission.

Still, I found myself playingthe missions I was dying on again and again, just to keep trying.

Even after I thought Iwas done with the game and I powered the system down, I'd come back later and try again, and that definitely sayssomething for this game.

As clunky as it is to play, it's quite unique anddefinitely interesting.

I imagine this game gotnext to no marketing and that's why a lot ofpeople don't know about it.

If only it had the word'Hunt' somewhere in the title, it could've been a resounding success.

(kickass video game music) So, by watching this episode, you've learned about the existence of a few overlooked games.

In fact, you may think youknow about the existence of every single game ever made.

Nope.

How could you? I still got two games left to show you.

(soft ambient music) (orchestral game music) This one is Genji: Dawn of theSamurai for the PlayStation 2 and it was released by Sony themselves.

This game takes place in feudal-ish Japan.

It was suggested to me byNorm the Gaming Historian and I didn't even knowabout it until he told me.

Thanks, Norman! The story is full of lots of silly words that would probably offend some of you if I tried to pronounce them, so let's just go with this basic summary.

You're a dude from a clanwho is trying to defeat the big evil empire clan.

You find out that you happento be the son of the dude who led the good guy clan and that makes you able tocarry these orb stone thingies.

But the evil empire clan has some of these orbstone thingies as well, and that's what makes 'em powerful.

Now you're on a mission torestore justice and peace to the troubled land of Japan.

It plays like a mix of Onimusha, the PS2 version of Shinobi, and maybe a dash of Devil May Cry.

You have two swords and you hack and slashyour way through enemies with a normal and special attack, each assigned to their own buttons.

The combat feels really good.

The orb stone thingies grantyou a special battle power by pressing the L1 button.

When you do this, time slows down and you need to wait for theicon of the square button to appear right next to you.

When it does, press it andyou'll do a fancy counterattack that causes, you guessedit, massive damage.

If you mess up, you'll snap out of it and have to fight the enemiesnormally like a schlub.

It's usually good for disposing of groups more rapidly than just fighting normally.

Timing is absolutely critical if you try to do this during boss fights, but, wow, can you defeat themfast if you're good at this.

Good luck, because you'lldefinitely need it.

You also gain experience to level up, as well as money asyou fight your enemies.

The money can be spent in thestore to buy better stuff, and fortunately theselection isn't overwhelming or ridiculously expensive.

Eventually, another dudewill join your clan, but he's big and slow, andhe's also really strong.

You can choose which person to play as depending on who you feel isbest for the mission at hand.

In some missions, you'llautomatically switch back and forth between the characters as youprogress through the level.

The good news is that youboth level up together and carry the same itemsas each other at all times.

More good news is that both characters are really fun to use and control.

The big guy has more life, so I often enjoy using him.

But when I switch over to the little guy, he feels just so nimble and quick.

Sometimes you might need to grind a bit in order to raise yourlevel before a boss fight.

But as I've said many times before, that's not usuallysomething that bothers me.

Like Resident Evil and Onimusha, each area is its own thing and when you go to the next screen, suddenly you're at adifferent camera angle, which can sometimes beconfusing, at least briefly.

No tank controls here, but the directional stickwill take a second or two to switch over when thescreens change sometimes.

Fortunately, this never affects battles because scenes don't switchwhen you're fighting.

The bosses can be pretty tough, but I kept trying and trying because I knew I could beat them.

And I always did, eventually.

The graphics are great for the system, all things considered.

The colors and detail are both very lush, with day and nighttime scenes.

Sadly, the game is restrictedto an interlaced picture and a 4:3 aspect ratio, but at least it all movesat 60 fields per second.

It can slow down and dropresolution from time to time during intense scenes like boss fights.

The music is very Japanese andit absolutely fits the game, but, come on, let's get real: You're not gonna be huntingdown this soundtrack.

(soft flute music) The sound is presented in Pro Logic II, but there's a Dolby Digital mode where the pre-rendered cut scenes play with some cool 5.

1 surround sound.

(reverent orchestral music) I think the main reasonthis one gets overlooked is that although it'sbased on feudal Japan, there are no giant enemy crabs.

Oh well, check it out anyway because this one is actually really fun.

I'm definitely glad I did.

A sequel exists on the PlayStation 3 and I hope to check that out someday soon.

(video game sound effects) (Peter Gunn game music) A lot of people know about Spy Hunter from Sunsoft on the NES.

I actually rememberpeople making a big hoopla over this game back in the day, though, to me, it wasalways average at best.

It was originally aBally/Midway arcade game and Sunsoft did a decent port, I suppose.

I remember people making a really big deal about the Peter Gunn theme, like it was an amazingthing to be in a video game.

(Peter Gunn game music) But the game that peoplerarely every mention is Super Spy Hunter, alsoby Sunsoft for the NES, released in 1991.

This was an original Sunsoftgame called Battle Formula and it was renamed Super SpyHunter for Western markets, though it's definitely obvious that they had Spy Hunter in mind as they were developing Battle Formula.

Anyway, this game takesplace in the future, so you know it's good.

Like the original game, you can control your speed by pressing up and down.

There are red and bluetrucks that will appear, cycling letters that you can destroy.

These are your power-upsand special weapons.

You can get things like an oilslick to leave in your wake, which is very Spy Hunter-like.

There's even a bomb that will not only damage everything onscreen but also your eyeballs.

You fire with the B buttonand you have cannons which you can rotate to your side and behind you with button A, unless you have a specialweapon ready to use.

After you get a few power-ups, these can aim automaticallyat the closest enemy, which is extremely helpful.

It still feels like yourfirepower is pretty weak though and it takes a while toget fully powered up.

The stages are really nice and varied.

In the first stage alone, you're driving on a highway, speeding through the water, and even across the tops of 18-wheelers.

The second stage hasyou going through sand, which can push you in thedirection that it's moving.

I don't know how a patch of sand can just move in a particulardirection on its own, but keep in mind that thisgame takes place in the future, where sand has evolved to be sentient.

It's also coarse and irritatingand it just gets everywhere, and it wants to kill you specifically.

The enemies themselvesaren't really special and don't even seem likethey're from the future at all.

Most of the bosses are definitelyfrom the future though, as I haven't seen anything like this while exploring the worldhere in the present.

I mean, have you? Unlike the original game, you don't die in one hit.

You start with a tiny life bar which lets you take four hits.

Thankfully, this can begreatly expanded upon.

Unfortunately, if youdie, your life bar resets to only having four hit points.

And this game sure makes a spectacle of how much you suck when you die.

(video game sound effects) Wow.

Your weapons are alsodowngraded after dying, but not all the way.

This makes fighting thebosses a tough ordeal when you first get to them and you don't know their patterns yet.

Eventually, you'll die so muchthat you barely have any life and only spit-wads beingfired from your gun.

Believe it or not, they canstill be defeated this way if you're really good.

This game has unlimited continues and you'll start over fromthe beginning of the level, so be sure to power yourself back up before you get to the boss.

Some stages, like level threehere, feel insanely long.

I think that you might needto take the road splits in the proper order though.

For example, on level two, if you keep staying left, nothing happens at all.

Once you go right, then theenemies start appearing again.

The graphics are supergood for a game like this.

It even has some fake rotation effects done with line-scrollingin some areas of the road.

It's fairly convincing andquite impressive for the NES.

This could probably be in a 'Pushing Hardware Limits' episode, so don't get mad at me if thisappears again in the future, but only if I'm ableto get further by then and show some of the other effects.

And since this is a proper Sunsoft game, it has incredible sound and music.

(pumpin' video game music) Sunsoft lost their way inthe middle of the 16-bit era when they farmed their gamesout to Western developers.

But when this one came out, they still had what it took.

This game is tough and itwill require some investment in the form of time and skill to complete.

Since the 16-bit platformswere the talk of the town back when this was released, it's not surprising that itdidn't get much attention.

This game is leagues betterthan the first Spy Hunter, so be sure to check it out.

(Peter Gunn-ish video game music) And there you go, some more games that just don't get enough appreciation.

A lot of you did suggest games, but some of those I am totally happy with them continuing tobe overlooked forever because, yeesh.

But please keep suggesting games because there are a lot oftruly good ones out there.

And if you have anysuggestions, let me know.

In the meantime, thank youfor watching Game Sack.

(Game Sack Credits Theme) (slow quirky music) Do you enjoy playing videogames for hours on end? But it doesn't take longbefore you have numb thumb! (screaming) Well, why not try the Gamer Glove?! (rock music) It's lightly cushionedto protect your thumbs so you can get furtherin your favorite games! Yeah, 10 points! Play for hours or even dayson end with the Gamer Glove! All right, a new high score! It's the edge that you need! And the cool thing is itdoesn't just work with Sega.

I can get a hundredpoints on Nintendo too! If you're not using the Gamer Glove, you're not truly playing– Yeah! (clearing throat) If you're not using the Gamer Glove, you're not truly playing video games!.