- "Prepare to bow down before the multiverse's mightiest man-boobs in a game that, almost certainly, actually exists."PC Gamer's Crapshoot on Tongue of the Fatman
Episode 24 seems determined to collect as many of the world's weirdest, most rejected fighting games ever. Such as...
Timecode - 2:42: Oh, man, Blood Storm! The old fighter from Strata, who tried to corner the market on Mortal Kombat ripoffs, much to their eventual, ironic demise. I've never played Blood Storm, but the game stands out to me because a certain game magazine had a big feature on it once.
The footage itself just shows some of the character bio screens and snippets from random, gory fights. And what of those characters?
- Hellhound, the "fiercest fighter in the Scorch Army" who "enjoys making war along the borders of the ice providence and does his best to disrupt any attempts at peace between the ice and fire people". What an asshat.
- Freon, the "noble ruler of the coldblooded-" (yet noble?) "-people of the northern province". He and Hellhound are probably the game's attempt to rip off Scorpion and Sub-Zero's fire/ice rivalry dynamic.
- Tremor, who has "lived for eons due to his ability to tap into the elemental forces of the earth from his mountain providence". A really big guy who sure doesn't look as old as he is.
- Talon, a cyborg tyrant who rules... Cyberia (wasn't that the name of a totally unrelated game?) with a literally iron fist. He is "the most hated leader of the provinces" because he wants to turn all "bios" into his cyborg slaves.
- Mirage, the militant ruler of the desert region of Obsel. In that lovely place, men are considered inferior to women and are kept alive solely for pleasure and food. Damn!
- Razor, the "enigmatic leader of the Ebony Coast" who had a "troubled romance" with Tempest, the daughter of the emperor whose murder kicked off the contest to determine the new ruler in the first place. She wound up taking his limb, which was later replaced "against his will with Cyberian technology".
3:15: Something so random, so obscure, that for years, I thought that it may have been something that the show itself made up as a prank. It's... Bokosuka
, an old NES strategy game that has a very distinct Game Over screen. Your noble party of medieval warriors is chased offscreen by a weird little gremlin king, with the phrase, "WOW! YOU LOSE!" hangs overhead. Hrm.
6:42: Do not adjust your set! Yes, it is a hideous, fat manbeast that is apparently stroking his chest-cheeks to Arabian music, but it's not a hoax! It is an actual game called... Tongue of the Fatman. I was surprised to learn that it was real, too. A very primitive fighting game, on top of that.
This game was released to different names on different systems, like Mondu's Palace for the Commodore 64 and the super-generic Slaughter Sport for the Genesis.
8:46: Oh, boy. It's the intro to the arcade fighter Power Instinct 2. It shows a young girl undergo a magical girl-esque transformation into an older girl with rollerblades and a very fanservicey outfit.
Then, an actual fight! Between barely-clothed wild child Kinta Kokujin and a ninja guy. But this is no ordinary wild child, for Kinta really needs a good pair of underwear. For one frame of his animation where he's thrown into the air, we can see his nethers. It's like something out of the early chapters of Dragon Ball where naked people were funny!
9:37: The intro of the Korean version of City Of Heroes (or Hero, as it's known there). What's interesting about this intro is that it puts two hot Asian heroes in the spotlight, while the Captain America Expy is temporarily bound to a supernatural force. In the end, though, the Expy is the one that brings a stop to infighting between the rival heroes.
14:18: Ugh. I know it's wrong to hate a game without playing it, but can I please get a "Free Pass to Hate" card for the ill-advised, In Name Only NARC game for the PS 2 and Xbox? The prerendered cutscenes have cartoonishly bad character models, and the game actually features a scene where one of the player characters (voiced by poor, poor Michael Madson) actually says, "You have the right to remain stoned!" to his badge in the middle of a deep cover operation where he's high as a kite.
This episode ends with Bokosuka's winning screen, which is basically the Game Over in reverse. The hero chases monsters offscreen with "WOW! YOU WIN!" hanging over them. At least they didn't say, "YOU'RE WINNER"!
