Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Blink and you'll miss it.

The Nintendo Wii was not a powerhouse compared to the bigger home consoles, but as sales figures have proven, the average consumer doesn't care about the raw numbers under the hood. They want a damn good time, and for many, that meant waggling a Wiimote controller.

You'd think that having players waggling a Wiimote in the same way as they'd waggle a sword would make for some great gameplay, but the developers behind Muramasa: The Demon Blade knew better than to churn out a crappy waggler. There are basically only two buttons in this game, and just look at what you can do with them.

Look. Up there.

There's a lot to look at.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai

We're going to need more dish soap.

Source // MobyGames

There have been some strange titles on this 1001 list, hasn't there? Titles that don't give anything away, titles that don't seem to make sense in English, and titles like The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.

I always mistook it for The Dead Dishwasher Samurai, which is also somewhat accurate to who the main character of this game is: A dishwasher who was dead but has come back to life with flashbacks of being a samurai. At least, I think that's right. There's a lot more going on than that.

To find out what's what, we'll just have to let the hacking and the slashing commence.

Castle Crashers

No, don't beat me up...

Hack & Slash. Beat 'em Up. Button mashing. There's pleasure in the simple things. Following an intricate story, solving a challenging puzzle, mastering complex mechanics... sometimes you're just not in the mood. You want to sit back and press an attack button over and over, watching the chaos unfold.

It can be too simple, though. You'd prefer it if your button mashing made you look cool, or if the context was humourous. It'd probably be much better with co-op partners, too, to really hammer home that old school feeling of fighting your buddies as much as you fight the baddies.

A game like that could take many forms, but chunky colourful visuals from the golden era of Flash gaming, from the folks at Newgrounds, no less, sure sounds like a damn good idea, and that pretty much leaves us with Castle Crashers.

Will the knights in shining armour please rise and promptly run out of the castle to hack and slash everything in sight? And try not to hit each other?

Odin Sphere

360 degrees! All the way around! What do you mean, 'depth'?

From one action RPG to another - but the similarities between Mass Effect and Odin Sphere pretty much end right there. This is not your typical action RPG, or it certainly isn't my typical idea of an action RPG. Two-dimensional side-scrolling artwork? Well, I mean, there's no reason it couldn't work, right?

I had no idea what Odin Sphere was when going into it, and after playing it for an hour and skimming the Wikipedia article, I still couldn't give you any hint as to what the story of this game is. It's a fantasy beat 'em up that dabbles in alchemy and fills its levels with colourful artwork.

If that poor description sounds interesting, then do read on.

God Hand

"You can wax on, wax off all you like. I'm still kicking your ass."

I've been playing an awful lot of Yakuza 0 recently, and no matter how many fights you get into, it's always fun to just destroy your opponents. You don't just knock them out, you squash their face into parked cars and smack them around the head with baseball bats. Every hit is felt and they all seem to hurt quite a bit.

Take out all the boring Yakuza plot and you'd have God Hand, a game all about destroying your opponents with equally satisfying and wince-inducing assaults from your fists and feet. The beat 'em up just got brutal...

The Warriors

Come out to play.

There's only one thing I know about The Warriors, and it's that quote. "Waaaarrriors. Come out to plaaaay-aaayyyy." I have literally no context for it, though. Not a clue. Something about gangs and that's about it. Will my lack of knowledge of the film impact my enjoyment of The Warriors, the video game adaptation, I guess you'd call it, released a quarter of a century after the film?

That's what we're here to find out, as we tear through New York City streets under the cover of darkness to wreak havoc and spray paint and kick the shit out of seemingly everyone. I don't really know what we're going to get up to, to be fair. Just a vibe I'm getting.

Viewtiful Joe

"Henshin-a-go-go, baby!"

Beat 'em ups come in all shapes and sizes, but generally speaking, they'll have you move from one side of the screen to the other, smacking anything the steps in your way. Back in the day, you were probably fighting on the streets, but as video games have aged and grown, so has the beat 'em up evolved into this and that, broadening its horizons, offering players varied experiences.

There are perhaps none so stylish as Viewtiful Joe, whose action hero star is so cinematic that the very notion of being on camera and showing off for the fans seems to be at the heart of the game.

Fifteen years ago, I couldn't tell you what kind of game it was at all. I only knew of this game as being cartoony. Looks like it's time for quiet on the set. Camera's ready?

Astro Boy: Omega Factor

Go, go, gadget arm cannon!

I'm not a fan of Astro Boy. I think that's an important point to make at the start of post about Astro Boy: Omega Factor, a beat 'em up for the Game Boy Advance starring, obviously, Astro Boy.

It's mostly his look. A robot kid with far more weaponry hidden in his limbs than any robot should have, kid or not. It's unsettling and unappealing.

But maybe I can see past that with a well-developed video game on what appears to be the console of the moment. It's a beat 'em up. I can beat things up. Let's beat things up!

Wario World

Have a rotten day!

I write this with quite possibly the worst cold I've had this year. I groan when I talk, my nose is stuffed, I'm wearing a neck warmer indoors. It's October, sure. Winter is fast approaching. The days are growing darker, life is gloomier, and I'm feeling it - and it's not fun.

What I need is a game to surprise me, and get me so engrossed in what it has to offer that I forget about the real world for a little while. I need a damn good time to cheer me up before I head in for an early night, and roast on the electric blanket.

Can Nintendo's grumpiest of characters, Wario, offer that to me in his first outing, Wario World? Can a platformer beat 'em up grab my attention and turn my day around? I sure hope so...

Guardian Heroes

"Does he obey our commands? This is gonna be fun!"

Source // NeoGAF

Do you like side-scrolling beat 'em ups? Do you like role-playing games? Do the stories you enact simply have to include branching paths and multiple endings? Do you only have a Sega Saturn with which to experience all these things, and must have them all appear in one game? Then it looks like Guardian Heroes is for you and your weirdly specific preferences.

Four young warriors have stumbled across an epic sword, and then the troubles really start, as they find themselves brought into a battle between spirits of the Earth and the Sky. And I thought it was just a button masher.

Final Fight

Oh! My car.

Source // Wikipedia

I must admit to going completely blank when it came to remembering what Final Fight was. I knew I'd heard of it before, I didn't think I'd ever played it, and I knew it was significant. Somehow. Just don't know how, or why, or what it was - until I started playing, that is, and remembering all that.

Jessica, the daughter Metro City mayor, Mike Haggar, has been kidnapped by the Mad Gear gang. The only way to get her back is to do what they say... unless you happen to be a former professional wrestler whose kidnapped daughter is dating a martial arts master skilled with knives, who also happens to be friends with a master ninja. I think your chances may be pretty good in this scenario...

So the question is simple: Will we save Jessica or will the streets be home to our Final Fight?

See what I did there? Damn right, you did.

NARC

Spread 'em?

Source // Arcade Museum

The drug war in America can be absolutely fascinating to find out about. That's not to say I welcome it, just that the wealth of stories that come out of it can fill all kinds of media, and who doesn't love a good bit of media?

I'm not concerned about all media in this blog, though, just video games, and in the late 1980s, the war on drugs was tackled by the arcade game NARC. I don't think I've ever heard of it, so it'll be an eye-opener.

Splatterhouse

The horrifying theme of this review may be inappropriate for young children... and cowards.

I'm generally not one for horror games, but Splatterhouse is about as horrific as... blimey... it's so not horrific that I can't even come up with a good analogy. Ah, there we go - it's as scary as not being able to come up with a decent introductory paragraph.

Oohohohoooohoh, spoooohohookey...

Splatterhouse is a sidescrolling beat 'em up that chose to go down the 'have fun' route, in terms of design, rather than the 'scare the player shitless' one, and I'm looking forward to finally playing it - I'd heard about it here and there, but don't really know why.

Will we be able to navigate the hideously scary hallways and corridors inside the Splatterhouse? Let's jump scare our way into the rest of the article.

Double Dragon

Double. The Fuck. Dragon, pussy.

Source // Wikipedia

Like many a kid in the 90s I had a good few games for my Game Boy to keep me entertained. One of those games was Battletoads & Double Dragon, and I was useless at it. I bring this up because outside of pop culture references it's the closest I've even been to playing Double Dragon.

Don't be alarmed, I know what a beat 'em up is. I've played a few of them (that one mode in that one Tekken game counts, right?) but haven't gotten around to Double Dragon, to my knowledge at least. Now's the time, and bar everyone looking a little bit tall and/or top heavy, it is pretty much exactly how I picture it in my head.

Kung-Fu Master

Come to the Devil's Temple at once.

Back in the day, I was a pretty big Jackie Chan fan. I'm still a fan, I just no longer have a goal of owning all of his Hong Kong Legends DVDs. Silly goal come to think of it, because I don't think that label has the entire Jackie Chan filmography...

Anyway, the point is, I never got Wheels on Meals on DVD, let alone knew there was a tie in game produced for the arcades that was known worldwide as Kung-Fu Master. The link between the game and film is tenuous at best, both staring a Thomas and a Sylvia, but in different guises. Here, Sylvia has been kidnapped, and her boyfriend Thomas must become a master of kung-fu in order to win her back, battling through the Devil's Temple against increasingly deadly foes.

I've no idea what that involves.