Developed by Spanish developer Gaelco (not to be confused with Jaleco), Big Karnak is an arcade game reminiscent of early Capcom hack and slashers such as Trojan and Ghouls & Ghosts, but it takes place in an Egyptian setting. You play as an Egyptian warrior whose lady love has been kidnapped by the god Osiris. You (and a friend if playing co-op) set out to rescue her throughout 4 stages. In each level, you gain a new weapon. This game didn’t have much to separate it from other platformers of the day, but the action took place on 2 planes of movement which you can switch between at certain times to avoid certain hazards. There are bosses which require some strategy to defeat. There isn’t a whole lot to this game, and although it pales in comparison to later games of its type, Big Karnak is a solid early 90s coin-op title. It could have taken off even further if the game received an SNES or Genesis home port with extra features, characters, or extra stages. The host company is still around, but I doubt you’ll be seeing this title pop up again anywhere soon , so if you happen across this cabinet, pop in a few quarters. It’ll be well worth it.

While it’s incredibly cheesy by today’s standards, Kingpin: Life of Crime blew the doors open for mature content in games. While Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil were quite graphic, Kingpin’s content went way beyond simply ripping out spines and blowing apart zombie brains. The sex, profanity, and drugs went a long way towards proving that video games weren’t just for kids anymore. What made this game even more daring was that it had been released just after the Columbine massacre, immediately attracting a lot of controversy. The game’s developer Xatrix went on the defensive, including a warning that the game wasn’t for kids as well as a low-violence install option. Thankfully, beneath the R-rated content, there is a very good game that manages to retain some of its shine even today. While it can most certainly be considered a spiritual successor to the modern Grand Theft Auto games, it also contains several elements from a few other genres, making this difficult to pigeonhole into one category.

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Many people know Capcom from their fighting games, most recently, Street Fighter IV. Many others like their classic action games such as Devil May Cry, Mega Man, Bionic Commando, or the soon to be released Resident Evil 5. Older gamers even recall their multitude of beat-em-ups, based on everything from Dungeons and Dragons to the Punisher. However, they aren’t too bad at making role playing games either, as these two Super Nintendo games show. While they stick to the genre’s conventions for the most part, these two games contain some innovative quirks that help the series establish its own identity alongside the Final Fantasies and the Dragon Quests.

Note: None of these guys are anywhere near as cock diesel in the game as they are depicted on the cover. Well, maybe the horse-armadillo guy.
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This past week was my birthday. To celebrate, I have a double dose of my usual columns this week. This first part is an appendix to last week’s Street Fighter special, featuring 3 Capcom fighting games while the second part, due later this week, will deal with some RPGs. Once again, it’s my [belated] birthday, yet you get the gift. Click onward!
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Welcome back to part 2 of our Street Fighter special. In the last part, we looked over some of the franchise’s more infamous parts. In this one, we look at Street Fighter EX, which was a highly controversial entry in the series, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and as an added bonus, we’ll take a look at a little known Dreamcast/Arcade title featuring characters from the franchise.
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This week sees the release of the highly anticipated Street Fighter 4. To celebrate, Powet presents a special 2-part $20 Game of the Week/Lost Classics/Maximum Letdown Special on some of the highs and the lows of the franchise. This is part one, in which we will feature the original Street Fighter (as an example of why you can’t go home again) and the two games based on a certain movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme which just so happens to have a name and cast of characters similar to Street Fighter. This weekend we’ll take a look at Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix along with one of the more under appreciated bright spots of the franchise.
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You’ve got to hand it to Koei. What Capcom does with fighting and beat-em-ups, Rockstar does with crime and controversy, and what Blizzard does with strategy, they do with education, particularly China’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Japan’s Age of Warring States eras. Weather you’re hammering out the fine points of diplomacy and foreign policy in Romance of the Three Kingdoms or simply chopping up thousands of enemy soldiers in Samurai Warriors and Bladestorm, Koei makes educational games that are so fun that you forget that you are supposed to be learning something. The original Dynasty Warriors was especially unique. It was like any other weapon’s based fighting game, except that it’s based on an actual historical event, China’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms. After a rebellion brings about the end of China’s Han dynasty, China splits off into three kingdoms: Shu, Wu, and Wei. Each kingdom has its own selection of generals, and all three are vying for complete control of China.

Dynasty Warriors contains 17 characters, each with their own weapon and fighting style. Many familiar faces from the era are present, such as Zhao Yun, Guan Yu, Cao Cao, and Lu Bu. The combat system is fairly deep, with strikes, parries, and counters. The graphics are on par with Tekken 2, and the endings include nice CG cinematics. However, it was doomed to get lost in the shuffle amongst other 3d fighters of the period. Perhaps it was because of this reason that Koei decided to switch the game to the semi-strategic hack-n-slash fest that we know today. Still, it would be nice to see another historical one-on-one fighter from the company. At the very least we can count on the fact that one day this will show up at the Playstation Network store.

Man, Square sure diversified after leaving Nintendo….oh wait, I said that last week didn’t I? Anyway, this fighting game (and collaboration with Namco and Dreamfactory) was as far away from the company’s RPG roots as it gets. It was also a departure from other fighting games around the time as well. Characters are allowed full 3-d movement, and don’t even have to face each other, not unlike Capcom’s Power Stone. The arenas contained interactive elements such as destructible crates that can be used as weapons. However the arenas are a bit on the small side, and the camera doesn’t track as well as it should sometimes. Even so, it’s still a fresh and fast-paced approach to the fighting game genre. The story (as with a good majority of other fighters) is that some mysterious conglomerate is holding a fighting tournament, and fighters from all around the world arrive to compete. Okay, so the story isn’t that original, but the characters are. On the surface, they look like your usual Tekken/Virtua Fighter archetypes, but their physical features and backstories make them something else. For instance, Ken ‘Godhand’ Mishima may look like your average fighting game main character, but he was a former assassin whose arm was replaced with a canon. Lee Shuwen may look like your typical old man kung-fu master, but he is suffering from a reverse aging disease. Not only do you get to play as these guys, several characters from a little known game called Final Fantasy 7 are also among the cast! Why would you want to play as any of the original yahoos, when you can play as Sephiroth?

Beside the main game, there are several minigames that can be played as well. There is a racing game and a board game, but the one you will be spending the most time with is the dungeon mode. Here, you take control of an archelogist as they explore a seemingly endless dungeon. Not unlike Diablo 2, you go through the dungeon building stats and gaining items and weapons to help you on your journey. The dungeons are even randomly generated, making the experience different each time.

Ehrgeiz may not have been be Street Fighter, but it introduced several unique concepts that were further refined in other games. The original disc has gone out of print, and was never re-released as part of SOny’s ‘Greatest Hits’ line. Thankfully, Japanese PS3 owners can purchase it at the PSN store, so hopefully this game will be available in the US PSN store as well. Gamers deserve a second chance to experience this classic, if for no other reason than the fact that gamers can control Sephiroth and his planet-destroying awesomeness.