For June 2020, the retro games of the month shall be:
- Onimusha: Warlords – 2001 – action-adventure
- SNK Gals’ Fighters – 2000 – fighting
Onimusha: Warlords is the first in an action-adventure franchise set in Japan’s Sengoku era. You play as a samurai named Samanosuke, who needs to rescue Princess Yuki from monsters. The game plays as a 3D hack-and-slash with a katana, but with the added gimmick of a “demon gauntlet” that allows you to absorb the souls of defeated enemies. Red souls are used for weapon upgrades, blue souls recover MP (for special elemental abilities), and yellow souls recover health. At times you also play as Samanosuke’s ninja partner Kaede.
In 1997, Yoshiki Okamoto (influential for Capcom games such as Final Fight and Street Fighter II) pitched the idea of a Resident Evil game set in the Sengoku era, with the mansion from RE being a “ninja house” filled with traps. It eventually became a project for the original Playstation, but it was scrapped about halfway through when they decided to make the game for the new Playstation 2 instead. Like Resident Evil, Onimusha features fixed camera views for each location, tank controls (moving in a straight line, up = forward), solving puzzles, and plenty of monsters. However, Onimusha is generally not considered a survival horror because of its much greater focus on action combat.
Onimusha was a big success, becoming the Playstation 2’s first game to sell a million copies. It would go on to get three sequels on the system, as well as a fighting game spinoff (also on PS2) and a tactics RPG (for the Game Boy Advance). After 2006, it was pretty much radio silence for the franchise, until an HD re-release of the original game arrived in 2019 for all modern consoles (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Steam PC). It has been interesting to see a shift in the game’s critical reception over the two decades, so I’m curious to hear what people think for this one, and the topic of older games standing “the test of time.”
I will be playing this re-release on Switch. It is not a full-blown remake (like Capcom’s recent Resident Evil releases), but it does have an upgrade in graphical presentation and controls (giving the option to move about with the joystick like most modern 3D games). It is worth noting that there is another version of the original game that was released for the original Xbox, titled Genma Onimusha. That one has a variety of exclusive content, such as areas to explore, a boss, costumes, charged attacks, and green souls that grant temporary invincibility. Howlongtobeat dot com says it takes 4-5 hours to beat Onimusha: Warlords.
SNK Gals’ Fighters is a 1-on-1 fighting game released for the Neo Geo Pocket Color in 2000. For those unfamiliar, this was a 16-bit handheld gaming console that ran from 1999 to 2001, as a follow-up to the monochrome Neo Geo Pocket released in 1998. The Pocket Color was not a financial success, but it is fondly remembered both for its hardware (particularly for its “clicky” thumbstick) and its extensive library of fighting games (such as King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, The Last Blade, and SNK vs Capcom).
These fighting games look and play pretty similarly to each other, and that goes for SNK Gals’ Fighters as well. As the title implies, this game features a crossover cast of female characters from SNK’s various franchises (8 playable from the start, plus 2 more to unlock). Past this premise, perhaps what stands out the most in Gals’ Fighters is its lighthearted tone, giving each of the chibi characters a variety of creative and visually-amusing attacks. The presentation and story in general is reminiscent of wacky cartoons. Combos are simpler than in many other fighting games, and an item system offers some replayability. I’m pretty curious about this latter feature, which lets you unlock and equip items to fiddle with gameplay in various ways (fill up your special gauge faster, temporary invincibility, opponent starts with less health, etc).
This game was recently re-released on the Switch, which features some extra bells and whistles (customizable Neo Geo Pocket Color on-screen, rewind feature, head-to-head 2-player mode).
Please feel free to share your thoughts on either (or both) of these games as you play them over the course of June. If you finish, you can give a mini-review if you’d like. Let us know if you think these games stand the test of time!
I know I have the whole rest of the month but I’ve been working like crazy (I work in journalism and we’ve been going non-stop since the pandemic started) and I have a lot of other games I’m juggling so we’ll see if I have to start marathoning through the end to finish or not lol.
