Episode 71
Timecode: 3:39: An FMV scene from the Japanese version Shin Shinobi Den (Sega Saturn). This was another side-scrolling Shinobi game, but with live-action FMV scenes and digitized graphics. Both were criticized, especially the former for being, surprise surprise, cheesy. It is hard to tell how cheesy the dialog is in the original Japanese, but the cheap effects make up for it, and with a bit of Genre Savvy, the plot is easy to decipher. Joe's girl has been kidnapped by bad ninjas! Is he a bad enough good ninja to rescue the girl?
Retsupurae did a riff on the game.
7:33: Another animated clip from Pretty Fighter X (multiplatform). This time, it features a cute waitress saving her restaurant from a big, bad guy with a gun in a ridiculous green mask. The final blow is dealt when she kicks him through a window. Although it will cost the restaurant money to repair it, that is a fair tradeoff for not dying.
10:04: Today on Kusoge Corner, there is BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles
(PS 2), from the same people that gave you Tail of the Sun (PS 1). It is a fighting game with construction vehicles. The crazy comes in with the utterly surreal finishing moves and anime-styled reaction cuts from the drivers, because construction vehicle battles are Serious Business.
14:11: The Real Fist Fighter (PS 2), a boxing budget game from D3. Some of the characters look oddly proportioned, like their heads are too big for their bodies. The lighting is actually kind of nice and the resolution is pretty high for a PS 2 game, let alone a budget release, however.
19:36: A mysterious game called Hungry Ghosts (PS 2). It is a horror-themed first-person dungeon crawling game, with some gruesome enemies and visuals. Weapons include spears and crossbows.
Episode 72
4:46: The intro to Chobits (PS 2), based on the classic Clamp manga about Hideki, a down-on-his-luck student who discovers an adorable Persocom (personal computers in the form of cute girls and boys) in the trash named Chi. Completely devoid of a Persocom of his own, he takes Chi in, only to discover that she is radically different from other Persocoms. Serialized in a manga magazine for young men, Clamp demonstrated their flexibility with Chobits, which did not shy away from the inherent awkwardness of its premise, yet nonetheless stayed fairly tasteful. The art was great, too; subtle, but more realistic than their other manga.
Presumably, the game takes its intro from the anime adaptation.
7:32: Super Robot Wars 3 (PS 1), a game featuring robots, characters, and monsters from various Japanese live-action shows. The game introduces these characters by taking images directly from the shows, but does so in a heavily formatted fashion, making them look rather cheap.
9:13: Metal Wolf Rev (PS 2), a game from Princess Soft. I have no idea what it's about, but the intro has a lot of nice art. Not to be confused with Metal Wolf Chaos.
15:31: A snippet from the broadcast ad for Ill Bleed (Sega Dreamcast, 2001), a bizarre horror game from the creators of another weird Dreamcast game called Blue Stinger. The ad's narrator encourages you to “Get disgusted! Get pissed off!”, and boasts that “Every turn... leads to terror. You'll see dead people. They'll see you. Maximum pulse!” Guess who narrated the ad? John St. John, the voice of Duke Nukem.
15:39: A Japanese ad for God Hand (PS 2, 2006). It features a buff, shirtless dude whose head is a fist and can only say, “God”. What does this fist-faced hero do? Picks up a chick that was being loud on her phone and spanks her. A tiny crowd of people applauds him for it. Apparently, she was being annoying. The nerve! I never!
Episode 73
General: Clips from an adorable, Super-Deformed rock-paper-scissors segment of a Patlabor PSP game.
I watched the first two Patlabor movies, and I gotta say, they weren't exactly thrilling. The second one was a bit better with more action. Maybe I was too young to properly enjoy them at the time.
Some Patlabor trivia: Christophe Gans, the director of Silent Hill, wanted to do a live-action adaptation of the original manga. Apparently, it got caught in the same kind of Development Hell that most of his projects get caught up in. Sad. Also, Viz only translated a few volumes of the manga, leaving the story incomplete. Some North American manga publishers pulled that garbage all the time with less successful series, leaving whoever did like the series out in the cold, and making them look like they had Attention Deficit Creator Disorder. Viz was always one of the worst offenders.
0:04: More anime with the opening for the game based on Fafner In The Azure Dead Aggressor (Play Station Portable, 2005), a giant robot anime with character designs by Hideshi Hino of Mobile Suit Gundam Seed, Scryed, and Only Six Faces fame. I recall Fafner being criticized as a generic robot anime series, but the theme song for the opening is nothing short of incredible.
I liked Scryed when it aired on Adult Swim. It was an underrated series. Also, it was done before Hino got pigeonholed into the same few character designs post-SEED.
7:30: Nintendo used to get pretty creative with some of their broadcast advertisements. Take this Japanese ad for The Legend Of Zelda A Link To The Past. It is a hip-hop dance number led by a skinny girl dressed as Link as a tripped-out Zelda dances in a cage. Link gets to do his 360-degree sword-spinning move. Porcine villain Ganon makes an appearance at the end. Cheesy, but kind of amazing.
