I love a good beat-em-up. I know they get looked down upon these days, but few things relieve stress better than beating up busloads of thugs, mutants, mobsters, robots, ninjas, samurai, terrorists, dominatrices, zombies, hippies, republicans, and god knows what else. From Final Fight and Double Dragon to Streets of Rage and Sengoku, the beat-em-up genre has seen scores of great titles. One of the best and most unknown entries in the genre is this little known title from Neo-Geo developer Noise Factory. Taking control of one of 5 characters, you make your way through a post-apocalyptic world, battling demons and mutants. While it doesn’t do anything that hasn’t already been seen in the genre, it has some excellent graphics and a awesome soundtrack. While there is little chance of this game showing up on any home system anytime soon, this is definitely something you’ll want to pump quarters into if you come across it in the arcade.

Skies of Arcadia was one of the few RPGs on the Dreamcast. Although its plot about three youths teaming up to fight an evil empire was as old school as it gets, the game’s sky-pirate theme made the game unique. Players take the role of Vyse, a member of the blue rogues, a group of sky pirates. While searching for treasure alongside his best friend Aika, Vyse meets a mysterious woman with strange powers. From there, Vyse gets involved in the empire’s plot to take over the world by reviving ancient weapons. The battle system is turn-based, similar to other RPGs. Each character has a weapon with a crystal that can change color in order to battle against different enemies. The game also features ship battles, in which Vyse and his crew take to the skies to battle against giant monsters and enemy ships. You can select from different types of cannons and attacks as you try to sink your opponent. You’ll recruit a crew of pirates, each with their own special abilities. A big part of the game involves exploration, and you can gain fame and fortune by making discoveries. The graphics are bright and colorful, and the music is good as well. As you are battling bosses, the music actually changes on the fly depending on how you are doing in battle. A few years after the Dreamcast version was released, a Gamecube game was released, featuring shorter load times, less random encounters, more sidequests, and new boss battles. It goes without saying that it is backwardly compatible on the Wii, so this is definitely the version to go with. Skies of Arcadia may not reinvent the wheel, but it is a solid classic-style console RPG.

Earlier this week, I featured one of the more recent Syphon Filter entries. This week’s Lost Classic features an earlier entry in the series, Syphon Filter 3. SF3 was the last game in the series to be featured on the PS1, and it had to be delayed due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks (the original box art featured protagonists Gabe Logan and Lian Xing jumping from an exploding building). Thankfully it didn’t take too long for the game to be released, and players got another explosive chapter in the popular espionage saga.
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2000 was a good year for Squaresoft and its fans. Square released a parade of hits that year, from Vagrant Story to Chrono Cross, and this game was among them. The Front Mission series is a turn based strategy RPG featuring mechs, which has its roots on the Super Nintendo. However, this is the first time that the series has hit U.S. shores. Front Mission 3 contains 2 different storylines, chess-like gameplay, and deep mech customization. Fans of games such as Final Fantasy tactics and Advance wars will love this game’s strategy action, and robot lovers will get a kick out of the many ways they can outfit their mechs.
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Throughout its limited lifespan, the Dreamcast didn’t have too many RPGs that made it over to American shores. However, the few it did have were classics. Grandia II was definitely one of them, and even after the premature death of Sega’s system it lived on through PC and Playstation 2 ports (although those two were a bit rough around the edges with the PC version containing several bugs and glitches). While it’s your standard Japanese RPG for the most part, Grandia II’s story, gameplay, and monsters help set this game apart from its peers. While it’s no Final Fantasy 7, genre fans will want to add this game to their collection.
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Remember the old days of the FPS genre? You know, Doom, Wolfenstein 3-d, Duke Nukem and such. This was back when you developers didn’t have to reinvent the genre with some fancy graphics engine, Havok physics, or even complex AI. No sir, all you needed was a gun and a bunch of enemies to shoot. Rise of the Triad is a lesser known relic from that era. Created by a subsection of Apogee developers known as the Developers of Incredible power, Rise of the triad was another fun early FPS blast fest. It also added a few unique tricks of its own to make it all the more enjoyable. I’m shocked that no one developed a console version of this game as they did with Doom and Wolfenstein.
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The original Osman was a Turkish Sultan who established the Ottoman Empire and ruled it until his death in 1326. The Osman in this week’s Lost Classics is apparently the brother of Capcom’s Strider Hiryu who lives in a futuristic version of the middle east. He can crawl up walls, do flips, and dispatch enemies with the greatest of ease just like Capcom’s ninja. However, there is a good reason for this, as Osman was created by several former Capcom staffers, including Kouichi “Isuke” Yotsui, who also created Strider.
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For as long as anyone can remember, Konami was one of many companies who made video games exclusively for Nintendo systems thanks to the Big N’s heavy license restrictions. Thus, it came as a surprise when Konami finally began to develop games for other console manufacturers’ systems, most notably the Sega Genesis. Sega’s 16-bit had already seen Rocket Knight, along with console-exclusive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Castlevania games, so players hoped that it would be a matter of time until Konami graced the system with its flagship run-and-gun series, Contra. Sure enough, Konami delivered. Contra Hard Corps would be the first and last Contra game on the Sega Genesis. Although it wasn’t as memorable as Contra 3, it was good enough to stand among the past entries of the series. In fact, it would be the last good Contra game before the series slipped into a period of mediocrity.
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