We live in an age where the subject of Evolution brings about heated debate.  There are those who believe it to be the true orgin of man while others believe it to be part of an anti-religious conspiracy.  Few forms of entertainment would dare touch upon subject matter this sensitive.  In 1993 however, Enix (long before merging with Square) would release a game that would not only take on this subject matter, but also made it fun by incorporating it into the gameplay.

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Before Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront, Republic Commando, heck, even X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, there was the Super Star Wars trilogy. Solid 2-d platforming action similar to Super Castlevania, multiple playable characters, a near-perfect recreation of the film’s original score, and mode 7 vehicle sequences helped to bring the original trilogy to gaming consoles in a way that couldn’t be matched to this day. The difficulty was high, but it was on a Ninja Gaiden level where your pitfalls would only make you want to try that much harder to get through the games. Yeah, we rave about how good Lego Star Wars, but this is the best interpretation of the original trilogy that doesn’t involve kid’s toys or advanced gaming technologies.

Without a doubt, we associate Acclaim with some of the worst games ever made. However, they’ve also had the longest run with the WWF licence. Up until the late 90s though, wrestling titles were only limited to a niche audience. All that changed with WWF Warzone. This title laid the foundation for wrestling games today as we know them. It included solid presentation, color commentary, and the one thing that’s pretty much a requirement in today’s wrestling games: create-a-wrestler. With this feature, it was possible to put yourself in the game, bring in a wrestler that was left out the cast, or even recreate a character from another wrestling organization. However, there were two major issues players had with the game, namely the small and out-of-date roster and lack of match types.  In an attempt to address these issues, (and perhaps spurred on by THQ’s WCW/NWO Revenge released later that year) Acclaim went back to work on WWF Attitude, which stands as one of the finest early wrestling games made at the time.
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First of all, pay no attention to the low scores given by other media outlets. This game is the best game to make use of the Spawn license (besides his appearance in the Xbox version of SoulCalibur 2). Surprisingly, it was a third-person shooter made by Capcom. The gameplay is a fusion of Quake 3: Arena and Powerstone. Players select from 37 characters (most of which are unlockable and 12 being available at the start), each with their own array of weapons and powers, and blast their way through several stages in either arcade or story modes. You can also play the standard multiplayer modes for up to 4 players in stages with variable environmental settings. The character selection included nearly everyone from the Spawn mythos, even Cagliostro, Sam, Twitch, and a few alternate versions of Spawn himself. It’s a shame that the game engine was used in only one other game, Heavy Metal Geomatrix. It would have interesting to see more shooters by Capcom done in this style.

I know you all know about Final Fight, Captain Commando, and maybe even Alien vs Predator, but whatchu know about King of Dragons, The Punisher or even the two Dungeons and Dragons games? Sit back and let me tell you of the secret history of one of the masters of the brawler.

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Before creating the Playstation, Sony was a 3rd party developer known as Sony Imagesoft. The company’s primary purpose was to develop games for the 16 and cd-based systems of the time. Besides a bunch of crappy licenced games, they put out a few gems, one of them is thie little-known SNES title Skyblazer. It took bits and pieces of other games such as Castlevania, Zelda, and Mega Man and combined them with a Southern Asian-inspired atmosphere to create an identity all on it’s own. While you play as the typical hero in the typical “save the princess” story, the gameplay differences make up for what the plot lacks in originality tenfold. You move on an overworld map, which soon gives you choices in which way to go next. As you progress through the game, you’ll gain new abilities, almost like an RPG. Mode 7 flight stages and some cool boss battles also help break up the action. With Sony Imagesoft being absorbed into 989 studios, there is zero chance of it coming to virtual console, so be prepared to spend some bucks on Ebay hunting this down.

In 1993, Taito published a Neverland-developed RPG known as Lufia and the Fortress of Doom. It told the story of a group of heroes and their battle against a group of demon-gods known as the Sinistrals. The game was noted as being an RPG game for beginners. While It wasn’t a terrible game by any means of the imagination, it didn’t do a whole lot to set itself apart from other RPGS of that period. In an era that would soon include Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy 6/3, Secret of Mana, and other heavyweights, this would quickly caused it to be overlooked. However, one good thing it did, was to open with a playable flashback sequence depicting the defeat of the Sinistrals 100 years earlier. In fact if you just bought the game brand new, it would start as soon as the game loaded up, and the title screen would show up after this sequence. In 1996, near the end of the SNES life cycle, Natsume would publish a sequel that would show the events leading up to that point.

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Like I promised, I’m giving you two of each of my articles this week. I’ll add $20 Game of the Week later this weekend, but for now, enjoy these two Lost Classics. One of which is a perfect example of licencing gone wrong while the other is one of the most underrated fighting games of the 16-bit era.
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