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Video Game / Frenzy! (1998)
aka: Frenzy

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You're gonna fly, Out of the Inferno, while facing a robotic santa, a sentient castle and a mechanical Rock Monster...

Frenzy! is a 1998 Shoot 'Em Up action game made for the first PlayStation.

Set in some unspecified time period presumed to be the 1930s, an evil dictator who calls himself Count Von Toten is secretly building an army to Take Over the World; with every other nation fighting in World War I and no-one available at hand to stop Von Toten, it's up to you and your trusty, weapons-loaded biplane to defeat the dictator. Nope, there really isn't much of a plot behind this one.

Despite the premise of being set in a war, Frenzy! is surprisingly cute and cuddly in the graphics department, with onscreen enemies resembling toys and most of the stages looking like playsets. The game also allows a greater degree of freedom than other airplane shooters of it's type, where you have the options of turning around and backtrack an area behind, or simply fly circles around enemy bases while taking potshots until you blew everything up. But don't let it's silly animations fool you - the game can get surprisingly Nintendo Hard at times.

Contains parallels to Boogie Wings, another cartoony, borderline-psychedelic aviation-based shooter game where you kicks ass in a biplane during a 1930s setting.

Unrelated to the movie.


Hop on your old-timey biplane, it's time to save the world!

  • Ace Pilot: You play as an elite pilot in control of a 1930s-style biplane, and uses it to lay waste on an invading army.
  • Bad Santa: The boss of "Winter Wonderland" is a giant clockwork santa mech who throws exploding presents at you as projectiles.
  • Big Fancy Castle: Subverted - after blowing up scores and scores of enemies, you fly into a clearing with a Disneyland-style fairytale castle in the middle of nowhere, and before you can ponder on it's randomness, the castle is then revealed to be mechanized and the stage's boss. It's spires can launch itself as missiles after you, for starters...
  • Black Site: Parodied, the first stage is called "Area 52". It's supposedly the "secret" entrance to Von Toten's lair.
  • Boss Bonanza:
    • "Splinter Wonderland" throws three bosses in a row within a short time; a giant Perverse Puppet, a spinning top, and a gigantic cuckoo clock whose cuckoos can fly and chase after you.
    • "Monster Ghoulies" has a gigantic vampire mecha, a Frankenstein's Monster robot (who gets featured in the loading screen) and a giant laughing skull as bosses in the same stage.
  • Boss Rush: "Return of the Magnificient Seven!", like the title states, where you re-fight the first seven bosses of the game, one at a time. Even the giant octopus mecha which you fought underwater previously while piloting a submarine is somehow capable of functioning on land. And at the end of the stage, you face Count Von Toten as the boss.
  • Boss Tease: The loading screen before the start of each stage features the stage's boss, that you'll be inevitably fighting should you make it to the end without dying.
  • Brain in a Jar: There's giant brains in building-sized, translucent jars, guarded by turrets and enemies, which you'll need to blow up to proceed.
  • Giant Squid: The underwater stage, "Scuba-Doo!" ends with a boss fight against Von Toten's giant octopus mecha guarding his base. As the battle goes on you blow up all it's tentacles, but even without limbs the octopus mech can continue attacking by lumbering towards you.
  • Mecha-Mooks: Von Toten's base have some occasional robots, the most common of the bunch looking like the Daleks.
  • Not Zilla: The first boss is a giant green reptilian kaiju, one who looks suspiciously like a plastic stuffed animal.
  • Password Save: After completing each level, you're rewarded with a password that allows you to skip to said level in future playthroughs.
  • Piranha Problem: Schools of giant piranha appears in the underwater levels, each of them larger than your submarine and trying to chomp you to pieces. They can be shot from a distance however.
  • Rock Monster: The boss of the volcano stage is a robotic version made by Von Toten. It's appropriately named "Rocky VII".
  • Sequential Boss: Count Von Toten, the game's Big Bad and Final Boss. Adfter fighting a Boss Rush of seven previous bosses, you take on his flying castle and prevent it from taking off by damaging it's wings while avoiding obstacles, before fighting the grounded structure. After you blow it up, Von Toten jettisons the structure on a weaponized escape pod, which you must battle all over again, and then face Von Toten as he hops on another larger plane. Take down his plane however and you beat the game.
  • Shout-Out: A bunch, all which borders on Anachronism Stew because of the game's setting in the 1930s, before any of the following pop-culture references even eixsted:
  • Spread Shot:
    • The second boss, a giant robot, can fire entire arcs of at least twenty projectiles via Eye Beams, and you'll need to dodge by flying in between gaps.
    • You can obtain this type of power-upgrade halfway through, which allows your plane to shoot in wide arcs at more enemies.
  • Stationary Boss: More than one of the bosses are built into the center of the stage, where your strafing move will work wonders for you:
    • The weaponized castle, being, well, a castle, is built in the ground. It can still spam projectile attacks on you however, including launcing it's spires as ranged missiles.
    • One of the bosses is a gigantic mobile turret who's fixed on the spot, but can rotate itself to attack you with its Wave-Motion Gun. You avoid damage by flying behind it.
  • Tin-Can Robot: The second boss, a building-sized mecha who looks like an old-timey children's toy. Beware of his Eye Beams who can Beam Spam all over the place!
  • Toy Time: "Splinter Wonderland" have it's stage design based on a child's playroom, with turrets resembling toy guns, bricks and clockwork trains serves as obstacles, and a giant Perverse Puppet as one of it's bosses.
  • Under the Sea: "Scuba-Doo!" is inexplicably set underwater, where you dive under the sea (with your biplane replaced by a mini-submarine) to destroy Von Toten's Underwater Base. The only difference is in aesthetics though - gameplay-wise everything else plays out the same.
  • The Von Trope Family: The Big Bad has a rather generic sounding name, "Von Toten". Who doesn't serve much of a purpose other that "it sounds villainous".
  • Weaponized Landmark:
    • Von Toten's army managed to turn a Disneyland-style castle into a mechanical boss.
    • They did the same to Stonehenge, where the stones starts walking all over the place and comically attempts leaping at you from below.

Alternative Title(s): Frenzy

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