Alcahest is one of those games I used to play blind back in the day when emulation just became a more widespread thing. Thankfully the game is sufficiently linear for the most part that I got pretty far in without needing to understand Japanese. Hell, the music alone was enough to keep me hooked.
Maybe a small thing but it's good that you're showing the intros for these games. Being obscure games, those bits are probably the only backstory/ context your viewers are getting. I know for myself, I would be far less interested without them. Like the previous Sega video, this one was a good idea and fun to watch.
Some real gems in this batch! Don't know if anyone pointed it out, but _SOS_ is very reminiscent of _The Poseidon Adventure._ Great Gene Hackman movie from a long time ago (at least, I remember it being great, but the last time I saw it was also a long time ago). (edit: Looking this up on Wikipedia it -- _and its PC sequel!_ were indeed based on that movie and its source material. The fact that there are actually four playable characters, which the UI might not have made clear, makes it even more cool. It's janky, but what a cool experiment.)
I do have to say, the Go Go Ackman game definitely feels like it translates the general Toriyama vibe more accurately than any of the SNES Dragon Ball games.
Thanks for doing another great showcase of stuff I missed from back in the day! I have been trying to remember the name of Gunforce for decades! I played it in the arcade once or twice. It turns out some of the team that worked on that went on to make Metal Slug. You should definitely give King of Demons a real run. The story is 90s anime AF! Also you get cool monster forms by waiting for the gem to change color after beating a boss. Much love to the translation community for giving these games a chance to be seen by long time gamers who missed out on these!
Iria is based on live action movies by the creator and designer of Garo, where she could fight a lot better and would just spin-kick missiles all day. This also makes Bob the computer the predecessor to Garo's narrating demon skull sidekick.
@@Pro-Token420 The first movie, Zeiram, came out in 1991. The OAVs came out in 1994 which is why they're called Iria: Zeiram the Animation. Zeriam 2 came out like a month after the anime ended so was in production at the same time, and probably why Fujikuro shows up in both.
Yeah King of Demons is great. The game's mechanics can be frustratingly obtuse tho. Like it's really important to max out your devil form, because you become MUCH stronger and more agile. But it isn't explained at all
I see S.O.S., I'm like "get in". This game was very chilling for my junior self, in terms of not just playing it, but also watching the opening disaster unfold, and HUMAN really shows their strength in presenting photorealistic imagery on the SNES. They would use this to great effect in their magnum opus a year after. You may have heard of it. It's called Clock Tower.
SOS has such a weirdly dour tone for a video game of its era. I didn't really think about it as a kid, but watching him play it now as an adult, yeah, it's weird there's a Super Nintendo game with so much "realistic" death in it.
Here's how I imagine the genesis of SOS: Human developer n1: The Super Famicom has this new thing called mode 7, what do we do with it? Human developer n2: Have you seen that movie called The Poseidon Adventure? And so, SOS was born.
@Matt: Also, the “story of Skuljagger” is that it was marketed as including an EIGHTY PAGE INSTRUCTION BOOKLET including a full-ass (emphasis on “ass”) semi-illustrated adaptation of the game’s storyline. To my knowledge, no game before or since has included a full prose-based version of its own plot, which somehow only serves to make the actual play experience worse. So while it isn’t actually an adaptation of anything, someone was pretty damn convinced that they’d created a world worth building, apparently.
He started talking about how we thought the uncover the pictures game would be like Legend of the Mystical Ninja aka Goemon in Japan. But there were actually a TON of games in the Goemon series that were never released outside of Japan and many of them now have English patches nowadays. They are some great titles and it is by far my favorite series that never really got much attention or a chance to flourish in the western markets.
Other consoles and handhelds that could be featured in a video like this one... -TurboGrafx-16 -Game Boy/Color -Game Boy Advance -Sega CD -Game Gear -Atari Lynx -Virtual Boy (in that case, it would quite possibly be known as "I Played EVERY Virtual Boy Game Ever!" =P
He could also easily do a complication of 32X games since only 40 games were ever released for the thing. The Atari Jaguar as well, which only had 10 more games than the 32X.
I remember Skuljagger had an oddly large marketing push in its time. I kept seeing the villain's smiling mug in magazines. Also, Wolfchild is just silly since you basically turn into a psychic furry using the power of water wings. Which, you know... valid, but then you have the Sega CD cutscenes adding to the hilarity.
I recognized Skyblazer and Skuljagger because the Game Grumps played them years ago. Arin died right in the exact same spot Matt did in Skuljagger. Many times. He also had the same reaction to the rolling boss in Skyblazer.
I swear Matt plz dont ever think making content to relax, unwind and even sleep to is some kinda backhanded compliment, cause legit u are creating some comfy as hell memories for a whole army of ppl that grew up with ur content Think about it like bob ross but for homies in the 20s, u deserve all the flowers bro
I know the GameCube isn’t THAT old, but I would love to see one of these compilations for obscure GameCube games. For better or worse I grew up with that console and my parents used to throw loads of bargain-bin stuff my way to keep me occupied, so it’d be funny to see what would get featured in such a lineup 🤣
Iria was the FIRST adult oriented anime i ever saw. I would have been in fourth grade by 94 so my kid mind was absolutely blown away that animation could look like this and be for grownups and it absolutely shattered my illusions about cartoons being just for kids. I became very focused on seeking out anime afterwards and found fun movies like Armitage III as well as became hooked on anything television blocks like toonami would throw at me.
I think I had the same experience with Iria - iirc the OAV was one of the very few anime *anything* that must have been dubbed and shopped around back then, because if you could find a TV channel in America that aired anime you were likely to see it, along with stuff like Robot Carnival and Vampire Hunter D. Back in the 90s there was a channel that showed anime exclusively very late at night (like midnight to 2 AM) - it was either Cartoon Network or Sci-Fi. As a kid it was almost like catching some kind of pirate broadcast, where it was so unexpected and so unlike anything I’d seen that the memory just stuck with me.
I still have my cartridge of SOS from when I was 9! I'm glad more people will get to see one of my favorite games now, lol EDIT: Capris being a jerk has actual consequences in gameplay. Some passengers refuse to go with him because he's too rude, you can only rescue them with the other characters. And yes, one of the characters does start with a map. EDIT2: At 2:56:07, that's the lady that said she could give you a map before the ship capsized. After you "talk" to her body, you can press select to open a map. There should really be a notice about that when you do it
Skyblazer was made by Ukiyotei, the same team that developed Hook, you can see lot's of similarities between both games. They also made a very fun 2D platformer por the Playstation, Punky Skunk.
Also worth nothing that Harumi Fujita-legendary Capcom composer for Ghosts n’ Goblins, Strider, Final Fight and others-did the soundtrack for it, which explains a lot about how freakishly hard it goes.
Every kid of a certain era has a story about that one trash game that they blew a birthday or Christmas gift on, and mine is-and will always be-Skuljagger. Like, in a year with Mario Kart, Contra III and a few other absolutely nuclear SNES bangers, young Buckle opted to ask Santa for… the pirate game with the bubble gum. My family still flips me crap over it to this day. And I admit I was GIDDY when its title screen popped up, since it feels like it’s finally come full circle by being McMuscled.
Cacoma Knights is a variation on Qix, a game developed in the early 80's published by Taito. Taito made a few others like Super Qix and one with Sci-fi aesthetic whose name I don't remember. I'm a little surprised that Matt has never played one of these before.
I think of the games on this list, Sky Blazer was the only one I played. I'm surprised Matt hadn't heard of this one. It has a reputation as a bit of a cult favorite. Not Megaman X or anything, but only a step below, say, Illusion of Gaia. Maybe on par with Rocket Knight and the like?
Cacoma Knight was made by Datam Polystar, the same people who made so-so games like "Kendo Rage" and **sigh** "Musya". Datam Polystar was one of those overlooked companies in which some devs had their humble beginnings (some of them went on to work in the Disgaea games).
I was so hyped for Skuljagger back in the day, there was a phone number you could call and hear him insult you. The game was kinda stiff and odd but I still enjoyed it immensely. Shame nothing more came from it, it would have been a cool world to play in again
Alcahest looks pretty interesting. It reminds me of a little bit of a mix between Soul Blazer and Magic Sword. And Iria's sprite work looks absolutely stunning.
Fun fact, the sequel to Gunforce called Geostorm, was made the by the Metal Slug staff like other Irem games, Geostorm/Gunforce 2 is super similar to Metal Slug even having similar graphics and alot of the same explosions and sound effects Its way better than the first Gunforce, I recommend you play it if you ever do a video for arcade games!
These are great man, I've never heard of these. That picture-uncover game genre was kinda popular in the 80s and 90s. There's all sorts of version of it. I remember grabbing an arcade rom where you uncover half-naked anime girls, that was fun.
Qix clones. Very popular in adult games. I remember one EGM talked about once which has a strange "turning" mechanic where the sexy picture turns into some horror scene, like a picture of fucking Pinhead.
King of Demons (Majuuou) is like an SNES Altered Beast (Juuouki) sharing 2/3 of the Japanese title. You wise fwom youw gwave to go through a bunch of monster forms. You can also do jump kicks and eat other monsters. It's worth reading a guide just to know all your choices because the game is hard.
Sky Blazer is basically Sony Imagesoft reusing the work they did for the SNES version of Hook for a unique IP. Also, we rented Xardion when we were kids and I didn't understand how it worked at the time assuming it was a normal run-and-gun with straightforward levels like Contra 3 instead of a more adventure-style game with backtracking, so I always got stuck at the penultimate stage because I didn't know you were supposed to swap to a particular character to go through a barrier.
One of the tracks is like an 11 minute jazz odyssey, and in the game about 40 seconds of it gets used in a cut scene and then the game is like, "Next song! We got this one in the bag! Movin' on!" It is excellent though
I've really been enjoying these compilation videos of these little known games, some of which doesn't look bad at all...definitely games I would have rented from video stores back in the day
I simply adroe that Time Trax has the longest intro known to man telling you how perfect that main character is and then he get's beaten up by regular spiders.
Skyblazer is a good one i never finished. Its developer, Ukiyotei, also made a game based on Hook which has like the exact same artstyle and general feel as Skyblazer. I also thought that both were Capcom games for the longest time, which makes sense because they really strongly resemble their mid-ninetees SNES output and the studio was largely staffed by ex-Capcom employees.
Fun detail in King of Demons; when your fairy-wife died she stayed dead, even on continues. If I recall correctly that's "a thing" in this game. Also Iria was pretty wild. Seemed pretty advanced for a SNES game.
Skyblazer is a great game! I remember stumbling across it in 99 thanks to my dyslexia (I was looking for Soulblazer 😅 ) It's pretty challenging though, but great music, fun gameplay and a rare Southeastern Asia vibe. Definitely worth a playthrough.
It's always great to see some lesser known games brought to light like this. You never know what kind of forgotten gems you might find, and even the worst of the worst deserve to at least be remembered. I would love to see more of these, at least for PS1 and NES, both of which have vast, varied, and sometimes really weird game libraries.
The fun thing about being Australian during the 80s and 90s is that we always got a mishmash of euro, japanese and us games. For the longest time I had no idea why some sega games said "Megadrive" and others said "Genesis" when most of the time they both worked _(With the exception of EA sports games for some reason)_ so I am honestly surprised I never came across Sky Blazer. I wish I could go back in time and play it as a kid haha I would have loved it.
You have to play more King of Demons. I have no clue how I ended up playing it, but I did. It's amazing. And you *have* to play as all three forms if you want to get the best form at the end. A full play through is and absolute must!!!
As someone who grew up with the third Ackman game, if you give the series another shot go play that one. Ackman 3 has larger and more vertical stages, fun and creative boss battles, and later on you get a second playable character. It's definitely worth your time, but the last stage can get frustratingly difficult. Just be aware that it has gay jokes with one of the main antagonists. They're very tame though. Also you skipped the sniper boss because by picking the option that says Tenshi is annoying, Ackman takes his sweet time to arrive and the sniper leaves because Tenshi couldn't pay him to stay any longer. Cacoma Knight reminds me of my first phone, a light blue Sony Ericsson that was very square. It came with a few games, one of them called Erix with that exact kind of gameplay. It was much more simple with no graphics, only a white background and black dots and lines, but it was super fun for young me and got Nintendo Hard in the later levels. I wonder if there's still a way to play those games, they were surprisingly competent for a 2003~ phone and the fact that they were free to download from Sony Ericsson's site, a godsend for the poor child I was.
Alcahest, Demon Zenki and Iria caught my eye, but all of them look super clean. Would love to see more of these in the future, especially for the Game Boys (classic, Color and Advance - anything works) or the N64!
Really excited to see Majyuo King of Demons pop up, that game is a hidden gem. Sad we didn't get to experience the reaction of FEASTING ON THE FAIRIES CORPSES TO RESTORE HP though
The slow text speed makes sense for the Japanese text where one character contains more information, especially with the kanji where the whole word can be one character.
Man...I haven't thought about Iria in a _long_ time. I didn't care for the live action film (which I believe actually came first), but I watched the animated movie so many times that I could recite the dialogue line by line. I had a VHS recording that including Iria, Green Legend Ran, and Armitage III that I wore out from watching so often. It was yet another of those OVAs/films that I discovered via the Sci-Fi Channel's anime blocks (although I don't remember if I first saw it on "Saturday Anime" or the "week of anime" block that they did in during summer in the 90s).
They made an Iria game!?!? I loved Iria: Zeiram the Animation back when I was in college. I don't know how well it holds up after all this time, I hope it does. There was also a live actin movie that had some near practical monster effects in it, though it was a bit goofier than the anime.
There's this, and a PS1 fighter based off the live-action, called Zeiram Zone. Hyper Iria's super cool. I have Zeiram Zone, but need a system to play it. :(
I think SNESDrunk made videos about most of these games, I remember seeing Skyblazer, Hyper Iria and Majyuou there. Anyway, love these videos, they're great to find about interesting games, keep making them!
Wild to see Skyblazer and Xardion again! I can recommend trying to forge through Skyblazer - it gets ever more interesting as you rack up more powers. (You can switch between them with the shoulder buttons.) I can't recommend Xardion, but I don't think you'd take that recommendation anyway...
Always fun watching people jump into these old games blind. 😌 btw, HALKEN is simply _short for_ HAL Laboratory (HAL Kenkyuujyo) the name never actually changed. 🤓👌 God dammit, I almost choked on my popcorn when you started to really lean into the Walken thing. 😵 21:12 Huh, Cocoma Knight seems like a game in the style of Qix. (Or _Gals Panic_ for that matter. 😏) Point of intetest: "wagamama" literally means "self-indulgence". 1:08:30 I've wanted to see it basically since it came out and still have somehow managed to never see Iria: Zeiram... 😓
The thing I remember most about S.O.S is that if the time limit runs out while you're still conscious on the ship as opposed to you being knocked out with only five minutes left, you get to play for another few minutes or so as water slowly floods the ship. It's an incredibly morbid moment for a SNES game as unless you're literally right next to the end of the game, you can't do much but simply wait to drown and die. For some reason, all these "playing games I've never heard of videos" most interest me when we get to the game over sequences, because nothing is as interesting as "what weird ways could they say YOU'RE DEAD".
Oh boy I love games where you have to hit the boss an arbitrary number of times with zero indication that you're hurting them. It really feels like you're just really using your time wisely.
A little sad that Matt didn't do more of Xardion, but I guess after that many hours of obscure games his batteries were running low. Xardion is one of my favorite early era SNES games. What you didn't get to see is that your robots level up and get stronger, Arms is just a weak starter boss, and there's a bunch of cool stuff later as the game progresses. Including the titular Xardion robot, who is definitely very cool once you get it and get a few levels.
Ever summer we get the blooming of the traffic cones on the 20, 40, 15 and 13. I love how they set up the closed lanes, AND THEN GO ON CONSTRUCTION HOLIDAY.
That set up for budget Time Cop aka Time Trax…. Mick MattMuscles is always worth watching, but to have that gem drop towards the end is just golden! Truly though, thank you for all that you do Matt 😸
Glad to see skyblazer on this list. Maybe try twisted tales of spike mcfang. It's not a totally obscure snes game but still not a whole lot of people talk about it. It needs more love
S.o.s. is an extremely cool game thats fun and exciting.... For the first ten minutes. Then you realize you have no idea what you're doing or where you're going and its no longer fun. I've tried to play it probably ten times across my lifetime and have never made it very far at all
Ah, Cacoma Knight, a game I learned about from its developer overlap with Datam Polystar's other game Kendo Rage / Makeruna Makendo (including the character designer ANO Shimizu). It's a game in the vein of Qix... on a related note, there's a Qix clone series called "Gals Panic"...
SOS is actually The Poseidon Adventure, the game is set on September 13, 1921, and the players must escape the sinking ship Lady Crithania, which is hit by a gigantic wave and capsizes off the coast of Humbleton, England.
You should check out the game that is essentially Metal Slug's prototype, down to style, feel and even sounds, Geostorm, known as Gunforce 2 out of Japan Yes, the sequel to the awful Gunforce improved that much
Want EVEN MORE? I recently played 25 weird PlayStation games I've never heard of! - th-cam.com/video/PbHo-xhquxE/w-d-xo.html
Alcahest is one of those games I used to play blind back in the day when emulation just became a more widespread thing. Thankfully the game is sufficiently linear for the most part that I got pretty far in without needing to understand Japanese. Hell, the music alone was enough to keep me hooked.
😅
Happy to see Iria spotlighted here. That OVA and it’s movies were awesome.
I remember Iria being awesome, but I was like... Ten when I saw it? Time for a rewatch!
Maybe a small thing but it's good that you're showing the intros for these games. Being obscure games, those bits are probably the only backstory/ context your viewers are getting. I know for myself, I would be far less interested without them. Like the previous Sega video, this one was a good idea and fun to watch.
Some real gems in this batch! Don't know if anyone pointed it out, but _SOS_ is very reminiscent of _The Poseidon Adventure._ Great Gene Hackman movie from a long time ago (at least, I remember it being great, but the last time I saw it was also a long time ago).
(edit: Looking this up on Wikipedia it -- _and its PC sequel!_ were indeed based on that movie and its source material. The fact that there are actually four playable characters, which the UI might not have made clear, makes it even more cool. It's janky, but what a cool experiment.)
"Mission Failure. You were never born"
I see this as an absolute win
I do have to say, the Go Go Ackman game definitely feels like it translates the general Toriyama vibe more accurately than any of the SNES Dragon Ball games.
Devil Trunks ☆
Thanks for doing another great showcase of stuff I missed from back in the day! I have been trying to remember the name of Gunforce for decades! I played it in the arcade once or twice. It turns out some of the team that worked on that went on to make Metal Slug.
You should definitely give King of Demons a real run. The story is 90s anime AF! Also you get cool monster forms by waiting for the gem to change color after beating a boss.
Much love to the translation community for giving these games a chance to be seen by long time gamers who missed out on these!
I don't know why, but I KNEW Sky Blazer was going to be in this video as soon as I saw the title. Definitely an underrated, oft forgotten gem.
Honestly, a full Alcahest playthrough would be great to see. Not enough people know how good of a game Alcahest is.
Communication? Communication? Communication?
This was a great watch. Please keep these coming!
Iria is based on live action movies by the creator and designer of Garo, where she could fight a lot better and would just spin-kick missiles all day. This also makes Bob the computer the predecessor to Garo's narrating demon skull sidekick.
@@Pro-Token420 The first movie, Zeiram, came out in 1991. The OAVs came out in 1994 which is why they're called Iria: Zeiram the Animation. Zeriam 2 came out like a month after the anime ended so was in production at the same time, and probably why Fujikuro shows up in both.
King of Demons is great, like if Altered Beast was crossed with Devilman and actually good. Hard as nails though.
Yeah King of Demons is great. The game's mechanics can be frustratingly obtuse tho. Like it's really important to max out your devil form, because you become MUCH stronger and more agile. But it isn't explained at all
I see S.O.S., I'm like "get in". This game was very chilling for my junior self, in terms of not just playing it, but also watching the opening disaster unfold, and HUMAN really shows their strength in presenting photorealistic imagery on the SNES. They would use this to great effect in their magnum opus a year after.
You may have heard of it. It's called Clock Tower.
Clock Tower is the closest thing to a Dario Argento video game that we are gonna to get
SOS has such a weirdly dour tone for a video game of its era. I didn't really think about it as a kid, but watching him play it now as an adult, yeah, it's weird there's a Super Nintendo game with so much "realistic" death in it.
Everyone knows Humans magnum opus was The Firemen.
Here's how I imagine the genesis of SOS:
Human developer n1: The Super Famicom has this new thing called mode 7, what do we do with it?
Human developer n2: Have you seen that movie called The Poseidon Adventure?
And so, SOS was born.
@Matt: Also, the “story of Skuljagger” is that it was marketed as including an EIGHTY PAGE INSTRUCTION BOOKLET including a full-ass (emphasis on “ass”) semi-illustrated adaptation of the game’s storyline.
To my knowledge, no game before or since has included a full prose-based version of its own plot, which somehow only serves to make the actual play experience worse.
So while it isn’t actually an adaptation of anything, someone was pretty damn convinced that they’d created a world worth building, apparently.
it’s a good day when matt plays a bunch of old games
These compilations are super fun to watch, thanks for your hard work! :D
He started talking about how we thought the uncover the pictures game would be like Legend of the Mystical Ninja aka Goemon in Japan. But there were actually a TON of games in the Goemon series that were never released outside of Japan and many of them now have English patches nowadays. They are some great titles and it is by far my favorite series that never really got much attention or a chance to flourish in the western markets.
@@ArcRay20yyg😮y
Other consoles and handhelds that could be featured in a video like this one...
-TurboGrafx-16
-Game Boy/Color
-Game Boy Advance
-Sega CD
-Game Gear
-Atari Lynx
-Virtual Boy (in that case, it would quite possibly be known as "I Played EVERY Virtual Boy Game Ever!" =P
He could also easily do a complication of 32X games since only 40 games were ever released for the thing. The Atari Jaguar as well, which only had 10 more games than the 32X.
I remember Skuljagger had an oddly large marketing push in its time. I kept seeing the villain's smiling mug in magazines. Also, Wolfchild is just silly since you basically turn into a psychic furry using the power of water wings. Which, you know... valid, but then you have the Sega CD cutscenes adding to the hilarity.
An anime version of Qix is not something I was expecting, going to have to check Cacoma Knights out
I recognized Skyblazer and Skuljagger because the Game Grumps played them years ago. Arin died right in the exact same spot Matt did in Skuljagger. Many times. He also had the same reaction to the rolling boss in Skyblazer.
I swear Matt plz dont ever think making content to relax, unwind and even sleep to is some kinda backhanded compliment, cause legit u are creating some comfy as hell memories for a whole army of ppl that grew up with ur content
Think about it like bob ross but for homies in the 20s, u deserve all the flowers bro
I know the GameCube isn’t THAT old, but I would love to see one of these compilations for obscure GameCube games. For better or worse I grew up with that console and my parents used to throw loads of bargain-bin stuff my way to keep me occupied, so it’d be funny to see what would get featured in such a lineup 🤣
Hyper Iria is an adaptation of an OVA. Which in turn was a prequel to the amazing live action film Zeiram.
Iria was the FIRST adult oriented anime i ever saw. I would have been in fourth grade by 94 so my kid mind was absolutely blown away that animation could look like this and be for grownups and it absolutely shattered my illusions about cartoons being just for kids. I became very focused on seeking out anime afterwards and found fun movies like Armitage III as well as became hooked on anything television blocks like toonami would throw at me.
Oh wow Armitage III 😮
@@moroseloki1912 completely overshadowed by the superior Ghost in the Shell released around the same time, but as a teen it was incredible to me.
I think I had the same experience with Iria - iirc the OAV was one of the very few anime *anything* that must have been dubbed and shopped around back then, because if you could find a TV channel in America that aired anime you were likely to see it, along with stuff like Robot Carnival and Vampire Hunter D.
Back in the 90s there was a channel that showed anime exclusively very late at night (like midnight to 2 AM) - it was either Cartoon Network or Sci-Fi. As a kid it was almost like catching some kind of pirate broadcast, where it was so unexpected and so unlike anything I’d seen that the memory just stuck with me.
I still have my cartridge of SOS from when I was 9! I'm glad more people will get to see one of my favorite games now, lol
EDIT: Capris being a jerk has actual consequences in gameplay. Some passengers refuse to go with him because he's too rude, you can only rescue them with the other characters. And yes, one of the characters does start with a map.
EDIT2: At 2:56:07, that's the lady that said she could give you a map before the ship capsized. After you "talk" to her body, you can press select to open a map. There should really be a notice about that when you do it
Skyblazer was made by Ukiyotei, the same team that developed Hook, you can see lot's of similarities between both games. They also made a very fun 2D platformer por the Playstation, Punky Skunk.
Also worth nothing that Harumi Fujita-legendary Capcom composer for Ghosts n’ Goblins, Strider, Final Fight and others-did the soundtrack for it, which explains a lot about how freakishly hard it goes.
Iria was pretty solid as far as anime. A little high sci-fi concept and was very nice looking. Thanks Mat!
Every kid of a certain era has a story about that one trash game that they blew a birthday or Christmas gift on, and mine is-and will always be-Skuljagger.
Like, in a year with Mario Kart, Contra III and a few other absolutely nuclear SNES bangers, young Buckle opted to ask Santa for… the pirate game with the bubble gum.
My family still flips me crap over it to this day. And I admit I was GIDDY when its title screen popped up, since it feels like it’s finally come full circle by being McMuscled.
Having Matt going blind to a game like Cacoma Knights was super fun, we need more obscure/never localised games videos ✌🏼
Cacoma Knights is a variation on Qix, a game developed in the early 80's published by Taito.
Taito made a few others like Super Qix and one with Sci-fi aesthetic whose name I don't remember.
I'm a little surprised that Matt has never played one of these before.
@@blambarthese are the kind of arcade games notorious for showing naked ladies when you complete the screen.
I think of the games on this list, Sky Blazer was the only one I played. I'm surprised Matt hadn't heard of this one. It has a reputation as a bit of a cult favorite. Not Megaman X or anything, but only a step below, say, Illusion of Gaia. Maybe on par with Rocket Knight and the like?
Cacoma Knight was made by Datam Polystar, the same people who made so-so games like "Kendo Rage" and **sigh** "Musya". Datam Polystar was one of those overlooked companies in which some devs had their humble beginnings (some of them went on to work in the Disgaea games).
Might need a full King of Demons playthrough my guy
I was so hyped for Skuljagger back in the day, there was a phone number you could call and hear him insult you. The game was kinda stiff and odd but I still enjoyed it immensely. Shame nothing more came from it, it would have been a cool world to play in again
Alcahest looks pretty interesting. It reminds me of a little bit of a mix between Soul Blazer and Magic Sword. And Iria's sprite work looks absolutely stunning.
I can't believe Matt never played a game like Cacoma Knight. There is quite a bunch of games made of this genre. Modern ones even.
I was surprised by that too. thought for sure he'd have seen Qix in an arcade or something at some point
I've never seen anyone not know what a Qix type game is before. It's super weird.
Was gonna comment this but you beat me to it. Matt was (is?) a big arcade guy, surprised he wasn't familair with Qix
Time Trax is based on a television series, the last one produced by Lorimar Productions.
And the TV series was a lot better than the game.
Fun fact, the sequel to Gunforce called Geostorm, was made the by the Metal Slug staff like other Irem games, Geostorm/Gunforce 2 is super similar to Metal Slug even having similar graphics and alot of the same explosions and sound effects
Its way better than the first Gunforce, I recommend you play it if you ever do a video for arcade games!
These are great man, I've never heard of these. That picture-uncover game genre was kinda popular in the 80s and 90s. There's all sorts of version of it. I remember grabbing an arcade rom where you uncover half-naked anime girls, that was fun.
Qix clones. Very popular in adult games. I remember one EGM talked about once which has a strange "turning" mechanic where the sexy picture turns into some horror scene, like a picture of fucking Pinhead.
King of Demons (Majuuou) is like an SNES Altered Beast (Juuouki) sharing 2/3 of the Japanese title. You wise fwom youw gwave to go through a bunch of monster forms. You can also do jump kicks and eat other monsters. It's worth reading a guide just to know all your choices because the game is hard.
When I was a kid, my cousin and I spent a whole Saturday beating Skyblazer. So much fun!
I'd really like to see more King of Demons. Wanna know how wild it gets.
Sky Blazer is basically Sony Imagesoft reusing the work they did for the SNES version of Hook for a unique IP.
Also, we rented Xardion when we were kids and I didn't understand how it worked at the time assuming it was a normal run-and-gun with straightforward levels like Contra 3 instead of a more adventure-style game with backtracking, so I always got stuck at the penultimate stage because I didn't know you were supposed to swap to a particular character to go through a barrier.
Cocoma Knights is a family friendly take on "those" kinds of arcade games.
Time Trax soundtrack in the Genesis version is top tier. Tim Follin goodness
One of the tracks is like an 11 minute jazz odyssey, and in the game about 40 seconds of it gets used in a cut scene and then the game is like, "Next song! We got this one in the bag! Movin' on!" It is excellent though
I've really been enjoying these compilation videos of these little known games, some of which doesn't look bad at all...definitely games I would have rented from video stores back in the day
I simply adroe that Time Trax has the longest intro known to man telling you how perfect that main character is and then he get's beaten up by regular spiders.
That King of Demons gives me Monster Party vibes. Like the kid grew up an exchanged his bat for a gun. Looks fun.
10:52 I've never heard you SO irish! I'm beaming :D
Skyblazer is a good one i never finished. Its developer, Ukiyotei, also made a game based on Hook which has like the exact same artstyle and general feel as Skyblazer. I also thought that both were Capcom games for the longest time, which makes sense because they really strongly resemble their mid-ninetees SNES output and the studio was largely staffed by ex-Capcom employees.
Fun detail in King of Demons; when your fairy-wife died she stayed dead, even on continues. If I recall correctly that's "a thing" in this game.
Also Iria was pretty wild. Seemed pretty advanced for a SNES game.
Skyblazer is a great game! I remember stumbling across it in 99 thanks to my dyslexia (I was looking for Soulblazer 😅 )
It's pretty challenging though, but great music, fun gameplay and a rare Southeastern Asia vibe. Definitely worth a playthrough.
It's always great to see some lesser known games brought to light like this. You never know what kind of forgotten gems you might find, and even the worst of the worst deserve to at least be remembered. I would love to see more of these, at least for PS1 and NES, both of which have vast, varied, and sometimes really weird game libraries.
"Mission Failed: You were never born" is easily a top 10 game over quote.
Missed opportunity to use the Jurassic Park clip of the raptor saying 'Alan'.
Awww yeah, Skyblazer! Rented that in the 90s and loved it. The music was filled with bangers!
Yeah Alcahest being Square & HAL was just great and deserves more recognition.
The fun thing about being Australian during the 80s and 90s is that we always got a mishmash of euro, japanese and us games.
For the longest time I had no idea why some sega games said "Megadrive" and others said "Genesis" when most of the time they both worked _(With the exception of EA sports games for some reason)_ so I am honestly surprised I never came across Sky Blazer. I wish I could go back in time and play it as a kid haha I would have loved it.
Yoo, didn't know the Iria OVAs had a game! I had the biggest crush on her when I was younger ^^
You have to play more King of Demons. I have no clue how I ended up playing it, but I did. It's amazing. And you *have* to play as all three forms if you want to get the best form at the end. A full play through is and absolute must!!!
As someone who grew up with the third Ackman game, if you give the series another shot go play that one. Ackman 3 has larger and more vertical stages, fun and creative boss battles, and later on you get a second playable character. It's definitely worth your time, but the last stage can get frustratingly difficult. Just be aware that it has gay jokes with one of the main antagonists. They're very tame though. Also you skipped the sniper boss because by picking the option that says Tenshi is annoying, Ackman takes his sweet time to arrive and the sniper leaves because Tenshi couldn't pay him to stay any longer.
Cacoma Knight reminds me of my first phone, a light blue Sony Ericsson that was very square. It came with a few games, one of them called Erix with that exact kind of gameplay. It was much more simple with no graphics, only a white background and black dots and lines, but it was super fun for young me and got Nintendo Hard in the later levels. I wonder if there's still a way to play those games, they were surprisingly competent for a 2003~ phone and the fact that they were free to download from Sony Ericsson's site, a godsend for the poor child I was.
Alcahest, Demon Zenki and Iria caught my eye, but all of them look super clean.
Would love to see more of these in the future, especially for the Game Boys (classic, Color and Advance - anything works) or the N64!
Demon Zenki have another game on SNES with some unique gameplay fight against some bosses. Something like action cinematic action battle
Really excited to see Majyuo King of Demons pop up, that game is a hidden gem. Sad we didn't get to experience the reaction of FEASTING ON THE FAIRIES CORPSES TO RESTORE HP though
Toriyama loves putting his characters in cars that are too small for them
The slow text speed makes sense for the Japanese text where one character contains more information, especially with the kanji where the whole word can be one character.
And you can definitely tell that some of these games used kanji from the massive font.
Matt needs to see the Iria anime. Its perfectly weird for his tastes.
I personally NEED more of King of Demons. It is unbelievably intriguing.
Man...I haven't thought about Iria in a _long_ time. I didn't care for the live action film (which I believe actually came first), but I watched the animated movie so many times that I could recite the dialogue line by line. I had a VHS recording that including Iria, Green Legend Ran, and Armitage III that I wore out from watching so often.
It was yet another of those OVAs/films that I discovered via the Sci-Fi Channel's anime blocks (although I don't remember if I first saw it on "Saturday Anime" or the "week of anime" block that they did in during summer in the 90s).
They made an Iria game!?!? I loved Iria: Zeiram the Animation back when I was in college. I don't know how well it holds up after all this time, I hope it does. There was also a live actin movie that had some near practical monster effects in it, though it was a bit goofier than the anime.
There's this, and a PS1 fighter based off the live-action, called Zeiram Zone.
Hyper Iria's super cool. I have Zeiram Zone, but need a system to play it. :(
I remember watching Iria: The Zeriram Animation on Sci-Fi one lucky Saturday morning. I had no idea there was a game based on it, though
I have never been able to beat the spider in king of demons never knew that roll existed. Thanks matt
The way you sang Creed was like you've never actually heard the song, and I couldn't be more jealous
I did not. Expect. A Walken narration. From. An opening. To an rpg.
Apparently Alcahest was made by HAL Labs and Satoru Iwata was the producer? The game looks super badass...why did we never get it?
I think SNESDrunk made videos about most of these games, I remember seeing Skyblazer, Hyper Iria and Majyuou there. Anyway, love these videos, they're great to find about interesting games, keep making them!
SNESdrunk did do a video on Skyblazer, back in 2014. So it might not hold up, but he did cover it!
Wild to see Skyblazer and Xardion again! I can recommend trying to forge through Skyblazer - it gets ever more interesting as you rack up more powers. (You can switch between them with the shoulder buttons.)
I can't recommend Xardion, but I don't think you'd take that recommendation anyway...
A lot of really interesting games I've definitely never seen before. S.O.S. seems really ambitious.
Always fun watching people jump into these old games blind. 😌 btw, HALKEN is simply _short for_ HAL Laboratory (HAL Kenkyuujyo) the name never actually changed. 🤓👌
God dammit, I almost choked on my popcorn when you started to really lean into the Walken thing. 😵
21:12 Huh, Cocoma Knight seems like a game in the style of Qix. (Or _Gals Panic_ for that matter. 😏) Point of intetest: "wagamama" literally means "self-indulgence".
1:08:30 I've wanted to see it basically since it came out and still have somehow managed to never see Iria: Zeiram... 😓
You had me at Raptor: Call of the Shadow. I loved that game. I bought it on Stream for $14 and the Shmup Tyrain 2000 is free on GOG
The thing I remember most about S.O.S is that if the time limit runs out while you're still conscious on the ship as opposed to you being knocked out with only five minutes left, you get to play for another few minutes or so as water slowly floods the ship. It's an incredibly morbid moment for a SNES game as unless you're literally right next to the end of the game, you can't do much but simply wait to drown and die. For some reason, all these "playing games I've never heard of videos" most interest me when we get to the game over sequences, because nothing is as interesting as "what weird ways could they say YOU'RE DEAD".
It's a shame Dominion Tank Police never got a game. I loved the Iria OVA myself
Oh boy I love games where you have to hit the boss an arbitrary number of times with zero indication that you're hurting them. It really feels like you're just really using your time wisely.
Wolf Child looks like if someone made an 80's metal album into a videogame.
Not sure why Square did so little with Alcahest. Its just as good as any of their other snes releases. Sony made skyblazer.
A little sad that Matt didn't do more of Xardion, but I guess after that many hours of obscure games his batteries were running low. Xardion is one of my favorite early era SNES games. What you didn't get to see is that your robots level up and get stronger, Arms is just a weak starter boss, and there's a bunch of cool stuff later as the game progresses. Including the titular Xardion robot, who is definitely very cool once you get it and get a few levels.
Ever summer we get the blooming of the traffic cones on the 20, 40, 15 and 13. I love how they set up the closed lanes, AND THEN GO ON CONSTRUCTION HOLIDAY.
Toujours un plaisir de te watcher mon chum, lache pas la belle job!
Merci!
I have never before actually watched a 4 hour TH-cam video, until today. Totally worth seeing all these new (to me) games!
That set up for budget Time Cop aka Time Trax…. Mick MattMuscles is always worth watching, but to have that gem drop towards the end is just golden! Truly though, thank you for all that you do Matt 😸
Only two on the list I recognise is Skuljagger and Sky Blazer. So this should be a fun binge 😊
Would love watching you and Liam play some of these games trough!
Glad to see skyblazer on this list. Maybe try twisted tales of spike mcfang. It's not a totally obscure snes game but still not a whole lot of people talk about it. It needs more love
S.o.s. is an extremely cool game thats fun and exciting.... For the first ten minutes. Then you realize you have no idea what you're doing or where you're going and its no longer fun. I've tried to play it probably ten times across my lifetime and have never made it very far at all
I knew I've seen Cacoma Knight in Bizyland before, I saw ProtonJon play it once before on stream. It's basically a Qix clone.
Incantation seems like it would be a great game if it fixed that camera whiplash.
Ah, Cacoma Knight, a game I learned about from its developer overlap with Datam Polystar's other game Kendo Rage / Makeruna Makendo (including the character designer ANO Shimizu). It's a game in the vein of Qix... on a related note, there's a Qix clone series called "Gals Panic"...
2:02:33
OMG, Origin used this exact FMV for hyperspace transitions in Wing Commander: Privateer. This plays when you jump from system to system.
SOS is actually The Poseidon Adventure, the game is set on September 13, 1921, and the players must escape the sinking ship Lady Crithania, which is hit by a gigantic wave and capsizes off the coast of Humbleton, England.
You should check out the game that is essentially Metal Slug's prototype, down to style, feel and even sounds, Geostorm, known as Gunforce 2 out of Japan
Yes, the sequel to the awful Gunforce improved that much