Akkanvader - 1995 - Taito

Clones are a tricky thing. If you simply take one well established idea, swap the color pallet and give it a slightly different name, everyone will call you out on it, if not outright sue your lazy ass. On the other hand, done right it can win over a lot of gaming fans with an insightful and creative slant on the well established norms.

Take Space Invaders, for a totally random example. Just about everyone with at least one functioning eyeball knows what it looks like and how it plays. Columns of blocky alien ships slowly crab-walk left and right, jumping down one row every time they reach the left or right edge of the screen. You control a ship on the bottom, and the object of the game is to clear the board of alien ships before they reach the bottom of the screen and nuke the world. Simple. Very simple. It's an easy concept to understand, and has an almost infinite range of possible enhancements. You know, like adding color and variety. Simple.

It's no surprise that there exactly 1,035,648,399 different clones of the original Space Invaders. Today, I'm taking a look at one of them, Taito's Akkanvader from 1995. It's colorful, cute, and best of all, fun!




Here's a look at the wide range of characters you have to pick from. Each character flies in a different ship, from the standard Invaders craft, to a dog in a trash can, to, well, a flying poo. Yep, those are poops on the right hand side. The character you choose has no bearing on the game, as each craft behaves in exactly the same way. Ultimately it just comes down to whether or not your want to be a flying space hero, dog, or pile of shit.



There are five main worlds, with several sub-stages in each main world. You'll fly through space stations, over a beach, over a giant ramen bowl, even through a haunted house. Each stage is practically vomiting colors out of the screen, from the colorful alien enemies, colorful backgrounds and colorful explosions and effects. Everything about Akkanvader is colorful as well as playfully animated, often making it quite difficult to tell just what the hell is going on. I'm not sure if this added level of difficulty is intentional or not, but it's ultimately a good thing, because Akkanvader is as easy as it is full of color.



Now that I've talked up the color angle, here's a look at the first stage. D'oh! Good ol' b&w retro goodness. If this doesn't immediately pull you in, then perhaps this isn't the game for you. In fact, Akkanvader really is a game just for those of us who have spent way too much time with the source material. To truly appreciate the game, a love of Space Invaders is a must.

Anyway, back to the stage. While the opening retro blast (right down to the awesome retro sounds!) is all well and good, these days we expect a little something more from our casual entertainment. So...



Hey look, color! You'll only get a few seconds to blast those cute little buggers before they quickly switch over to slightly more 3D and greatly more colorful little sprites with cute faces. So cute in fact that you'll be happy to shoot off those faces many, many times.



The aliens soon start to take on less traditional forms, like these large blobby guys that break up into smaller guys as you blast away at them.



One feature that Invaders didn't have was bosses. Akkanvader has a large boss at the end of each world. Here we see your basic robot boss, sending out his robot clone soldiers.

This is also a good time to mention that you have the ability to charge your laser by holding down the fire button. The only time this is of any use is when fighting the bosses. A few well aimed boosted shots and the boss will be doing the dance of death in no time.




There are plenty of off-beat baddies to blast to bits, like chickens, fish, octopi and ghosts. Some of them march left and right, some up and down, some in circles or in pyramid formation. There are also "bonus stages" where a few lines of aliens will shoot across the screen for your sharp-shooting pleasure. All of these variations touch on the original Invaders material, even if only in the most tenuous of ways.




Here we see another boss, this time a huge woman who seems to be wearing a red crab/bunny suit and large crab claws. Don't ask questions. It's all in a days work for our heroes.






This is the haunted house world. There are rows of coffins, plenty of mummified cat looking things and furniture that flings itself at you. That last image is of the boss, a sheet covered ghost who likes to keep his friends close at hand...when he's not tossing them at you, of course.




The final world pulls out all the stops, sending a withering array of aliens at you from throughout the entire game. My favorite bad guys are in this level, those little green guys. They are sent out en-mass to toss bombs at you. They have a cute bomb-tossing face, and an even cuter death animation. Nothing like getting a chuckle out of frying a few poor foot soldiers.



This is the final totally awesome boss. A giant Invader! He sends out equally giant spongy eye beams that you can deflect with a few shots, and a speedy zig-zag beam from his mouth. He also has a couple flailing arms and an array of beams that appear out of his body. He gradually walks toward the bottom of the screen before unleashing a barrage of attacks and moving back to the top. Again, a lot of dodging, boost shots and luck will get you past this guy in no time.





At the end you are rewarded with a bit of Enrgish and a couple happy heroes. And no chance to continue! Yeah, it's game over, no matter how well you played. Ah well, you'll want to jump back in right away regardless.

Akkanvader is a really fun, really mindless shooter. It's covered in frosting and candy sprinkles and will have you coming back for more, just like its great grandfather did way back when.

Here's a video of the first stage. I'll be adding more soon. Enjoy!

Blocken - 1994 - Kid/Visco

In these times of super-computer fueled video-gaming extravaganzas it's easy to forget that a game is supposed to be fun from time to time. Of course, everyone's definition for "fun" differs. Some people think it's fun to enter a living world where they can lose their real-world persona. Some want to gather with friends and share in the experience first-hand. Others might want to challenge their mind with riddles or unique interactive puzzles. Sometimes you just want to watch pretty colors float around and listen to chirpy sounds while you veg-out.

This vegging-out style of play is most often referred to as "casual-gaming." Most cell-phone type games fall into this category, as well as your factory installed solitaires and Minesweepers. These are games you can pick up, play for a few minutes, then put back down without worrying about saving your place or forming an attachment to it's characters (if any.) Modern casual-games have a more robust structure than early games like "Tetris" or "Breakout". Sure, they are still quick to play, but they are often surprisingly deep at the same time. Better graphics can give simple game-play a simple story and a few simple characters. Sure, you won't give a damn about those tiny depthless people, but a little gloss and shine can make a rather bland "Space Invaders" clone into a fresh new experience.

Sometimes simply mashing two good ideas together is enough to bring the fun back to otherwise tired modes of play. Take the block breaking action of "Breakout," add the vertical down-scroll of "Tetris," some head-to-head action and sprinkle it with lots of pink and blue glitter and a mind-blowingly stereotypical anime-school-girl and you have "Blocken."



Why will you play this until your rods and cones are blunt and useless? Continue on to find out!



As expected, there is very little story to be found in "Blocken." It would seem that an evil sorceress has made off with some sort of magic jewel that our heroine wants back. And...that's it. This can be neatly summed up in a few quick screens:



Bad-girl makes off with the jewel in her vanity-powered super tank. Along for the ride is Mr. Purple Pirate-Bird. More on both of them later.



Good-girl thinks she can catch up to the tank on foot. Maybe they need to do a better job on the physics classes in Japan?



Good-girl is chased away by a psychedelic rainbow-ball that eventually turns into the games logo. Wait, what?



There are four difficulty settings to choose, from "I'm just waiting for the coffee maker to warm up" to "That one guy that died from playing video-games for days without moving" to "Utada Hikaru." (Just Google her name along with "Tetris") Even after several attempts I couldn't get very far in the third tier, but that doesn't mean I won't give it another shot. Damn you obaba!



The game attempts to form a plot by sending you around to different places on a world-map. Really this is just a device to gradually raise the difficulty and throw increasingly weird characters at you. The configuration of the blocks on each board also change up with each character. While the boards never reach the creative heights of some of the more traditional block-breakers, they are still fun to play though and present enough difficulty to keep you going for just one more round.



Here's the basic play-field. It's your standard block-breaking set-up. Most blocks take only one hit to break while others may take two or more. There is a row of bumpers at the bottom that will return your ball once before breaking, while at the same time sending the bricks down one space. There are also special star blocks that release orbs that you can collect. You can then use these collected orbs to send a blast of blocks over to your opponent with the hopes of ruining their day. The best way to totally piss on their parade is to store up eight orbs, which releases a massive volley of bricks as well as both turning your paddle into a flaming horror and your ball into an invincible killing machine that can cut through bricks like warm butter.

There are two ways to win:



The most obvious way is to clobber your opponent with a barrage of maxed out power-ups. This results in a crushing-press win for max humiliation!



Then there is the clear-win where you manage to clear your side of the board before your opponent can send a new volley of bricks your way. You'll also have to keep the ball in play without it touching the bumpers on the bottom thereby sending more bricks scrolling down. If you can manage this you've earned your bragging rights and can feel free to make as many references to your ass and your opponents face as you wish.



Once you make it past the gauntlet of cotton-candy hairdos and testosterone-poisoned muscle-men you'll reach the second set of levels. These seem to be set just a hop skip and a jump away from your hometown. Over the river and through the skull shaped mountain caves to some crazy chick's Barbie Dream Castle of Doom we go. And lo! Who is on yonder welcome mat but none other than Mr. Purple Pirate Bird from our motivational opening film. It's not clear in that pic but he's sporting a dashing black eye-patch, just in case you were wondering why the hell I keep calling him a pirate. He could also be spewing a hail of "Yar!" and "Shiver me spindly little birdy legs!" and "Raise the suet feeder and cast off for the Johnson's bath on the way back!" but since I can't read Japanese I guess we'll never really know for sure.

Would a bird-pirate have a little chirpy man on his shoulder?



Here's a look at one of the tougher guys from level two. I assume all four of those large objects hold an extra boss to fight for each level of difficulty. I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. Some sort of Navy-themed robot with a boat-style life-preserver and a large red phallus hanging between his legs? I mean, that's what it looks like to me, 'sall I'm sayin'.

Seeing as how I'm a wuss when it comes to the higher levels of "Blocken" I can't say much else about the other bosses. I'm sure they are all totally awesome and a million times more crazy than the last. Like some sort of baby with a spider body and a huge penis, or maybe a block of tofu with a huge penis. I mean, the sky's the limit, with a huge penis!



The ending for the first-level game is pretty disappointing. The crazy-girl with the surprisingly large boobs gets away with the jewel, while the Pirate Bird totally gives you the "I'm gonna get me some tonight!" look. This is probably the "bad" ending.




The second-level ending is much happier. Sailor-chan totally pwns the crazy tank-girl and gets all up onz, pushin' that phat rock all up in her grill. The next shot shows another stone on a chess board in some distant land. Well, I'm guessing that's what's happening. At this point no one really cares anyway. It's probably the equivalent of "Sorry Sailor-chan, but the real jewel is in another castle." Bastards!

Despite the super-thin attempts at a plot, "Blocken" is very fun to play. The controls are very smooth and the pace is set just right to lull one into a false sense of security just before a rain of terror begins to fall. Each round moves by quickly. You only get one life per-game, but being able to continue at the same place makes playing through to the end quick and enjoyable. There isn't much in terms of strategy other than "don't miss the ball" and "catch all the power-ups." You're not going to play "Blocken" because you're looking for a soul wrenching odyssey of the heart and mind, you're going to play "Blocken," again and again, because it is fun.

There's not much to say about the sound, but what there is you can check out in
this 545k MP3 of "Blocken" sounds.