Zartan
Vs. The Bandit Kings
By: Zartan 01/13/03
A little
foreword, as we do: If you're a member of the NES generation - scratch
that, my NES generation - you'll remember Koei, whether you remember
remembering them or not. My God in Heaven, that is a terrible fucking
sentence, and were it not for the shockingly low standards that I've worn
on my sleeve lo these many years, I might actually have to - gasp - go
back and rethink
this whole paragraph, if not the entire fucking "review." And, before
I go any further, I'd like to reaffirm the commitment of Zeroes Unlimited
and its subsidiaries to wholesome, family-safe entertainment. (Note: the
commitment will be repeatedly violated throughout the article. Bonus participation
points for submitting your own "violated like a blank" similes.)
An easy way to tell if you belong to my NES generation:
 Apparently, this kind of shit hap- pens all the time in modern Japan  You're the hero of the article! Choose from over one exciting ending! |
The year is 1988: One year before TECMO PRESENTS 1989 TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK TAK JUMP SLICE CRUMPLE "FATHER!!!" GIVE IT UP ONE TIME FOR THE NINJA GAIDEN THEME MUSIC SEVEN THOUSAND UNAVOIDABLE HITS BOUNCED REPEATEDLY INTO OPEN PITS NES ADVANTAGE-SHAPED DENT IN THE DRYWALL
Did you graduate fifth grade in 1988?
If the answer is yes, skip to the second paragraph following.
Oh no! You do not belong to my NES generation and are subsequently kidnapped by aliens, who feed you to a bear. Your mom sends you to bed without supper and the train robbers get away with the gold, plunging a fledgling nation, only just adjusting to its new role as a "world superpower," into economic chaos. The End
All right. Now we're all on the same page, and I can continue. The only
reason I remember that I graduated fifth grade in 1988 is because of that
blue "Dooley Class of 88" t-shirt I wore down to the last thread. Nothing
says "I am an amazing, diffident fashion plate" when you're eleven years
old like a chili bowl haircut and a t-shirt with the names of all your
classmates in six-point type. I have to join the four or five million
other voices on the Internet when I come right out and boldly say that
the mid to late 1980's were a pretty great time to grow up, apart from
that constant fear of nuclear annihilation and constant unsolved kidnappings
and razor blades in apples and the looming spectre of having to learn
- nay, one day use improper fractions. Every educator in the 1980's
was crazy for two specific things, as surely as if they'd been gassed:
filmstrips and standardized testing. I wasn't nuts about standardized
testing in and of itself, but my god, the paper stock they used smelled
good. Funnily enough, this was also during the slippery, shouty
birthing contractions of "political correctness," which meant a whole
new ball of wax for those unlucky souls who actually made their livings
writing standardized tests.
 Hi, I wrote your new skills assessment test!  But my first love is free verse.  USE MATH TO HELP US SOLVE THESE STORY PROBLEMS |
BOSS: Word
done come down the line, people. We're gonna need you to up the cultural
diversity in those second grade basic-skills tests.
HACK: Cultural diversity? I uh...
BOSS: There's a memo here but I really don't feel like reading it aloud
to you. (subtle hand gestures at janitor) Just, um, "reflect the," um,
something something, the world. In which we live.
HACK: But these are story problems.
BOSS: I knew I could count on you.
The result is that, this being Texas, said hacks all got together one night and dosed themselves to the gills on caffeine and channel-surfed the Spanish language channels on UHF television. The story problems and such weren't any more "culturally diverse" than I was used to - it's not as though I broke the seals on the tests and was suddenly seized with an unquenchable desire to learn calculus and read a biography of Cesar Chavez - they just replaced all the names with overwhelmingly Hispanic ones. Having the maturity of an, um, eleven-year-old, I did not find this enlightening. I found it hilarious.
Rosa
has 53 reams of typing paper. Each ream has... For crying out loud,
Rosa, what are they teaching you in the barrio? The fuck
you need that much paper for; are you building a clubhouse or some shit?
Too much cognitive dissonance at once makes youngsters reject and abuse
reality. I would much rather have seen Hispanic culture properly celebrated
in the revamped story problems, e.g. Mas Guapo is ambushed by a rudo.
If Dr. Diablo Jr. smashes an aluminum chair weighing 35 pounds over the
tecnico's head, in how many weeks will Mas Guapo challenge Dr. Diablo
Jr. to a hair vs. mask match?
Getting back to Koei: the first I ever heard of them was when they released a game called Nobunaga's Ambition for the NES. In this way, they were much like equally unloved NES developer Culture Brain ("I fucking dare you to name this company Culture Brain"). who tapped the lucrative "obscure and unpronounceable" market with their own game, The Magic of Scheherazade. The Magic of Scheherazade (I know, I know) is itself based on the well-known to somebody, surely 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights, which are themselves based on a pinball machine or something, so there you have it. Culture Brain went on to top even this stunning failure with their NES adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses, which was at once criticized for being "too linear" and "too complex" through snot-choked sobs insisting that this was nothing like Donkey Kong 3. I'll never forget the edition of Counselor's Corner that took seventeen pages to answer the question "How do I get back into the house after Molly's gone to bed?"
Ahh, Counselor's
Corner, Nintendo Power: god bless you, Gail Tilden, for combining the
ineffectual and the irresistable in a mail-order one-two punch to the
gimme cortex. At that point in time, Nintendo Power was a superfluous
stroke of genius. The typography and layout were fucking laughable, the
content apart from overt game assistance was the goofiest sort of self-indulgent
conceit (remember, this was before the World Wide Web) and every game,
no matter how appalling, got a journalistic handjob like unto the kind
you have to make an appointment for. But no matter: we already
had our machines, and we were well and truly hooked. You might as well
have published a magazine called "Heroin Monthly," pages and pages of
glossy photos of non-descript piles of brown powder. For that matter,
Nintendo Power could have simply published 96 pages of screen shots from
Raid on Bungeling Bay and we'd still cluster around the fucking thing
every chance we got. You kids don't know how good you've got it: you take
Hsu and Chan for granted, where we felt lucky for a full page of
fucking Howard and Nester. ("His name is short for NES-ter," Nintendo
Power's editorial staff once helpfully advised its readers. Thanks!)
But Nintendo
Power was the first place that I read about Nobunaga's Ambition, and,
true to form, those genius mercenaries made the Damned Thing look good.
At this point, I'd like to ask for a little more participation: if you've
already played a Koei NES game, move right ahead to the next paragraph.
Don't be embarrassed; for fuck's sake, I actually own physical
copies of two of them. I thought "I was always curious about these games"
and "they're only a buck apiece" and "I bet once I got into them, I'd
really dig it" and "even though it would take less time for me to download
the ROM than it would for this chinless GameStop mongoloid to count out
my change, there's still nothing like playing the games on your original
Control Deck," etc etc. You know the drill. If, on the other hand, you
haven't played a Koei NES game, go right ahead and do so. We'll
be here when you come back. You don't have to learn it or be any good
at it. Just load it up and fuck around a bit.
 Hi,
I can't get through the Fangbacks Building! |
 USE MATH TO HELP ME SOLVE THESE STORY PROBLEMS |
 Hi, we want fifty bucks for a used, half-broken NES Control Deck! |
 OUR BASE IS UNDER ATTACK |
Now try and tell me, all of you, that it didn't feel like the worst kind of fucking math homework. Not only were the people who developed Koei games back then absolutely retarded in love with obscure history, but they were fucking meticulous about it, as well. If those souls had been born in America at around the same time, you can bet your steel-capped boots that you'd have grown up playing games like "The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire" for your Intellivision. Either that, or you'd have grown up hearing over and over, at length, about how games like "The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire" were much better then modern video games on so-called next generation consoles like "Pinkerton Strikebreaker: Frantic Frantic Copper Mine Revolution 3rd Mix" or whatever. Even Nintendo Power couldn't make Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Blah Blah Ancient Chinese on the Carefully Considered Rampage look like anything other than excessively colorful math homework - which is, I'm sure, what ensured Koei's survival in those early years in this unforgiving Western Hemisphere.
 I guess a light gun that wasn't completely fucking unwieldy would have offended Jesus, or something. |
See, back
in ninth grade, I had a friend named Miles. (You students of human culture
already know where this is going, but please, do not reveal the Surprise
Shock Ending to your Friends and Family!) And Miles, in true Borgesian
form, proved another human dichotomy: there are losers who sit alone by
choice, and there are losers who seek out the losers who sit alone by
choice. I was the former, he was the latter. Having nothing better to
do, we talked etc, and one night I went over to his place to hang out.
Hanging out as a freshman in high school is weird: you feel older,
and somehow more austere with the way you pass the time, but you're still
at the mercy of your parents. Anyway, his parents were nuts. Um, two words,
folks: Amway salesmen. Two more words, because it's bonus night: Overprotective
As Fuck. That's three words and I'm drunk and you're reading this for
free, so it's "win-win." Miles had an NES and, unbelievably, a Super Nintendo.
So, at this point, I have to admit: the stage is set for a tolerable evening.
Until I check out his collection of games, which is such an aberration
that even now, I have to wonder at the mindsets and the histories behind
such a uniquely bizarre and unsatisfying selection. The Super Nintendo
had one game, and that was the "game" that came with the Super Scope Six.
But I wasn't allowed to touch the Super Scope Six - moving on...
we came to the NES games, which consisted of every Codemasters game available
at the time and, inexplicably, Nightshade. You remember Codemasters. Oh
yes you do.
 JOIN US DOWN THE PUB WE CALL IT 'FOOTBALL' EH WOT |
Codemasters made all those weird games for the NES you couldn't play without plugging in a Game Genie or some arcane gigantic piece of Lovecraftian technology; their motto was "Absolutely Brilliant!" for some reason and their output was uniformly shitty except for Micro Machines. Micro Machines was so popular that it spawned something like ten million remakes and ports and adaptations. Right as you read this, nanomachines are absorbing and rebuilding every atom in the universe into a giant computer that plays only Tetris, Micro Machines, and that game where you're a snake that slides around eating shit and growing longer, only the snake has Mega Man's head and is pre-loaded with "Humanity's Popular Memes, Vol. 1-25," including such classics as "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "54-40 or Fight" right up to modern nightmares as "Where's The Beef?" and "Someone Set Up Us The Bomb." This sort of revelation would cause widespread apocalyptic panic / terror sex were it not for the fact that this site will only be read by twelve people, all previously discredited males.
My point is that people like Miles' parents were the sort that kept Koei alive, back in the day, and we should be grateful. Koei went on to make Saiyuki for the Playstation (and any game about the Journey to the West is worth the price of admission, even if it is the eventual heat death of the Universe) and Dynasty Warriors 2 and 3 for the Playstation 2.
So anyway - and trust me, we're getting to the Bandit Kings right now - I was bored one night, and pawing through my collection of NES roms, which was the result of one drunken, determined evening during which I blindly leeched the entire contents of Eight Bits of Joy. So I loaded up Nesticle and flipped through my directory, looking for something that would distract me for a little while. "Wow!" I said, "Bandit Kings!" I was referring to banditkings.zip, and I was thinking of a glorious and violent reign as some guy who stole from the rich and gave to himself, accompanied by the sort of mayhem and hijinks you'd expect from a Bandit King. You never hear the word "bandit" any more; everyone is either a robber or a terrorist or an illegitimate father, all of which are, I'm sure, rewarding, but lacking in the glamour of the word "bandit." So anyway, I loaded up the rom and oh no!
What a surprise. It doesn't fucking work. I'm going to insert a little something we in "the business" call "an aside" here (ever daintily in my uniquely condescending manner [uniquely, that is, if you've never ever read another self-styled internet humor website] sidestepping the fact that this article from paragraph two on has been one long, bloated, increasingly intolerable "aside") to throw in a Request: if you know how to make Bandit Kings run in Nesticle, I don't fucking care. I have not a doubt in my mind that someone out there does - there are people, I've gradually learned, who take this whole emulation thing entirely more seriously than I. For my money they fall into two camps: the "in a good way" camp, who provide me with years and years' worth of free entertainment by dumping ROMs, writing emulators, and then asking me to click on porn banners in exchange for said software, and the "in a bad way" camp, which is pretty much anyone who's ever bothered posting anything to an emulation-related message board. These people are the ones who piss and scream about "ROM beggars" and feel like big shots for knowing what a "mapper" is. These people are the ones who know the name of the poor schmuck who played the live-action Luigi in the Super Mario Bros. Super Show! (was there an official exclamation mark in the title, or am I just inferring it from Captain Lou Albano's enthusiasm? - must remember to forget this matter immediately) but have never actually, you know, played all the way through any of the damn games. These people are the ones who would actually take the time to e-mail a stranger to say YOU LAMER OF COURSE NESTICLE ROOLS SET VERTICLE PARSING TO OFF AND LEFTWISE VHZ ROTARY GIRDER TO INBOUND (FAG)
So please, just don't, all right?
I fired
up my trusty (by "trusty" I mean "the reason I can't have nice things")
dial-up connection and decided to see if there was an new version or patch
or whatever available from the Dipshit Kings of Ancient China themselves,
Bloodlust Software. You see, even though I spent between late 1998 through
early 2001 locked into what is scientifically known as a bender (note
to self: keep reusing the bait-and-switch terminology jokes; you are on
fire) (further note to self: in the NBA Jam or Galaxie 500 sense,
not the scientific sense), I have a vague memory of a big to-do being
made about Bloodlust Software, makers of a handful of very good emulators
and sweet fuck-all else worth your time or interest, making some sort
of "triumphant comeback" that caused something of a minor orgasmic shudder
throughout the more exciteable emulation news posters (read: all of them).
I guess the assumption was that they'd, you know, keep improving upon
the emulators they'd made and perhaps have a stab at making new ones.
Instead, if memory serves, their "triumphant comeback" evokes no mental
picture so much as a mentally retarded child trying to bite its own fart
bubbles in the bathtub: they splurted out the Internet's five millionth
faggoty Pong knockoff LOOK IT HAS BLOOD RARRRRRRRR WE ARE FOREVER ELEVEN
YEARS OLD and faded into obscurity. NO WAIT COME BACK YOU CAN STILL BUY
THAT ONE FINAL FIGHT KNOCKOFF!!!! RARRRRRRR
 YES! WE HAVE FLASH |
Thanks but
no thanks, fuckhead. I continued to stomp through memory (this all happened
in a matter of seconds, mind you - I'm taking dramatic license to pad
this fucker out and to keep from having to actually discuss "Bandit Kings
of Ancient China," because that means I will have to actually, you know,
play it. For more than five minutes, I mean) until it occurred
to me that they were being hosted at that Zophar place. So I type in bloodlust.zophar.com
and huh? It's Glenn A. Porzig's MEGABABES, which is to say what the
fuck is going on here? Now, it's well known that whenever anything
includes the name of its creator / major financial backer in the title,
it is immediately quality. Barry Gordy's The Last Dragon springs immediately
to mind; how many can you think of? Play along at home??? YES!
My lightning-quick mind jumped into action and coughed up another half-baked
hypothesis: Glenn A. Porzig must be the name of the guy behind Bloodlust
Software, and they have simply moved ahead two, maybe three years in terms
of emotional maturity and are now making games about - note the fine distinction
here - women beating big stupid shiny wobbly red globules out of
each other. This hypothesis is immediately discarded. I hit up the Google
and lo and behold, for want of a .net the fleet was lost. Long story short:
blah blah Flash intro blah blah Troma blah blah not updated since fucking
1998. Hooray. Daddy needs a new emulator.
 YES! WE HAVE FLASH |
About time, really, and while you're at it pick up one that runs in a fucking window. See, somewhere in there I caught the Instant Messenging fever; it's a low-grade, manageable fever, but nevertheless, there's something to be said for riveting, intensely personal exchanges like these:
You can
easily see why I wouldn't want to miss a single exciting moment, so I
developed a strategy of - oh, you stupid man - assuming anyone
that messaged me was actually interested in carrying on a conversation,
and as such giving the message window the better part of my attention.
Nineteen silent minutes later, however, I might start to doubt myself:
maybe
Never again,
I resolved, would my love of human interaction and my love of actually
using my computer to play a fucking game once in a while be incompatible.
So I heard this NESten's pretty good. And we're off.
 The tradition... |
 ...and splendor of ancient China live on! |
 Hi, I can't read or write SUCKY SUCKY FIVE DOLLAR  Gnarly! |
Koei
presents? What? Oh no, it's Bandit Kings of Ancient China, which
means that I don't give a flying fuck. I lose. Immediately gears begin
turning in my head - how could this this game be better? What was I hoping
for? It hits me, all at once, like a wet sack of shame stuffed into an
old sweatsock: they could have, no, should have been BMX Bandit
Kings of Ancient China. Picture it with me, won't you? Fat Chinese guys,
each one named after one or several hilariously inanimate objects, plowing
across the countryside. Shooting arrows into things - many, many, many
arrows, enough arrows, even, to make a Frank Miller splash page look like
the very picture of minimalistic restraint - and shoving ill-gotten meat
buns, lovingly rendered by the poor widdle NES to resemble nothing so
much as tulip bulbs, one after another into their relentless fat gobs
until they pass out, slicked with their own weirdly-scented ancient Chinese
sweat, from sheer excitement and morbid obesity... and all this (can you
see it with me now?) on totally rad BMX bikes. THIS SUMMER, EVEN
THE BUMPIEST DIRT TRACKS IN ALL OF ANCIENT CHINA AREN'T SAFE, etc etc.
Folks, it could have been nothing short of pure magic. The somber reds
and golds of the Imperial Palace (capitalization assumed, here - you know,
whatever the fuck they called that big opulent joint where the bigwigs
hung out and thousands of heavily armed and armored little Chinamen stood
motionless in big proto-parking lots for days on end and you could get
killed for laughing at the wrong joke; those masterpieces of architecture
and aesthetic design that have pretty much served as a blueprint writ
large for every Chinese restaurant with an all-day $5.99 buffet) combined
with the radical, tubular fluorescent pinks and greens so beloved
by BMX culture probably would have rocked your cultural sensibilities
so hard that something something wooooooo totally extreme juice box snowboarding
guitar lick jump-cutting camera fuckery OH NO WATER ON THE LENS and thirty
seconds later we're done and you're thirsty. I would have provided you
with a lovingly rendered "artist's conception" done in the only graphics
tool anyone really needs, Paint Shop Pro 4 (I am on day 1174 of my thirty-day
evaluation period!) but a freak accident has only recently and tragically
rendered me terribly lazy.
 Don't let this cool dragon trick you into thinking you give a shit about Chinese history. |
So I finally
decide to play the game - I'm given four scenarios and five, uh, Good
Fellows to choose from. The manual, which I found online after a single
Google search and whose credibility is thereby completely fucking bulletproof,
really and truly refers to them as "Good Fellows". The scenarios, I guess
revolve around critical points in history from back when the bandit kings
were, you know, roaming around committing acts of banditry in a regal
manner. "Hear ye, hear ye, the royal proclamation is rapes all 'round!"
Now that I think about it, I do hate Renaissance Festivals and
the people whose lives seem to revolve around them - why not, next year,
attend your local Renaissance Festival as a BANDIT KING OF ANCIENT
CHINA? For extra authenticity, be sure to make up your own Bandit King
name that mixes Chinese-style delicacy (e.g. "Heavenly King", which sounds
like a particularly expensive mattress) with bandit-style machismo (e.g.
"Tattooed Priest") and twenty-first century postmodern sensibility (e.g.
"juggalo1982@yahoo.com") and run around screaming it at the top of your
lungs. Don't forget to blow hundreds of dollars on shit you later realize
you wouldn't be caught dead in - it's all part of the experience!
I'm immediately fascinated by this "Welcome Rain" character; apparently,
being named like a My Little Pony was no bar to advancement and prestige
in ancient China. He killed his wife ("against his wishes," the game assures
us) and then went on to get captured as a result of writing a damn song.
Yeah, I remember that song: "Where Welcome Rain is Hiding Out From the
Bandit Kings, With Detailed Directions". A real fucking toe-tapper. The
closest I ever got to writing "a revolutionary song that led to my capture"
was a little, shameful piece of Mavis Beacon erotic fan fiction I wrote
back in my BBS days. Much like the rest of the Bastard Sons, I'll beat
off to anything, and this red-hot little snippet is surely no exception:
 DAD HAD A FAD SALAD |
Sure, Mavis Beacon taught typing, but one summer, she taught me a whole lot more. She strode confidently down the steps of the blurry, vaguely official-looking building in which she did important things with the typing. Mavis sidled up to me, and by way of introduction breathed hotly into my ear: "How'd you like to put your fingers on my home row keys, big boy?" Stunned by her forwardness, I gaped, speechless; she took my wrists in her hands. "ADD A BAD LAD to this SAD LASS' ASS," she hissed...
For shame. I think that one cost me my Trade Wars account.
 I'm HUNGRY |
Next up on
the agenda - the selection of my Good Fellow. This ought to be pretty
easy, and in any fucking normal game,
it would be - pick the, uh, Good Fellow that plays to your strengths as
a gamer / strategist / bandit / disappointed ten-year-old on Christmas
morning. Koei, wisely, dispensed with any degree of considered opinion
in the character selection process and made the whole thing more like
a "Which Bandit King of Ancient China Are YOU????" test you might find
in some half-assed LiveJournal entry. It's all PBS miniseries here; we
have five sepia-toned Glamour Shots to choose from. Although I was tempted
by "Tattooed Priest" - that's the enthusiastic-looking bald fellow on
the far left, and my temptation stemmed mostly from my idea that he'd
be likely to suck the bone marrow right out of his living, breathing,
wounded fallen enemies and call it a religious act. For the record, Captain
Stereotype there with the meat bun on his head is named "River Dragon".
Get with the times, fucko - that's way too literal to be any good. I went
with "Nine Dragons", in spite of his Keanu Reeves: The Fat Elvis Years
appearance, because his name is a plural, and that takes some goddamned
balls. Getting the subject-verb agreement when discussing the good Mr.
Dragons would drive a ninth-grader to suicide. (Which is to say it's impressive
and confusing, if not especially difficult. Gee, teenagers sure kill themselves
an awful lot! It's OK; I don't know / care about any of them. OH BOO HOO,
THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT UNDERSTAND ME ARE AVRIL LAVIGNE AND THE GUY WITH
THE GUNS FROM X-FORCE. Let them eat Drano.)
 USE MATH TO HELP ME SOLVE THESE STORY PROBLEMS  Koei, priding itself on authenticity, makes the interface as nonsensical as the Chinese language itself.  "Eagle in Clouds? ME PLAY-UM BIG HEAP BANDIT KINGS |
So, the next
thing you know - and holy shit, that Nine Dragons sure does do look a
lot pudgier in color; perhaps he has a notebook full of Secret Feelings
he's just dying to share with someone - I am deciding on his attributes
through a highly scientific and historically accurate method those in
the know call "Please press the A button". Specifically, you want to do
this when the number looks like it's a big one - I guess. Nine Dragons'
"Integrity", "Mercy", and "Courage" have already been decided for me.
These statistics give me a moment's pause. "That's weird," I think to
myself. "I bet I could write a couple of sentences or maybe even a whole
fucking paragraph about just how weird." Specifically, what sort
of game is this? I thought his mercy or lack thereof were a wholly-owned
subsidiary of me, Player One, good ol' 1P himself - I don't want any fucking
back-sass when I tell Nine to spare the life of some Glorious Revolutionary
Songster because I, God's Favorite Commander Moonmist 1-UP Eighty-Six
Dinosaurs, like the cut of his jib, and then he's all I disobey, due
to my carefully researched MERCY stat and I'm all "this sucks" and
go back to playing "Road Fighter" on one of those weird Asian pirate 76-in-1
ROMs and then I realize I'll have to start the whole fucking thing over
again and anyway, shouldn't his ridiculous autonomous INTEGRITY has put
the proverbial kibosh on me not deleting his and many, many other ROMs
within 24 hours of my having downloaded them?
Okay, see,
and I am immediately confused. Next thing I know, the game says "Brother
Black Whirlwind your orders" in that distinctive Koei font that, all kidding
aside, I'm actually quite fond of. But but but I'm not Black Whirlwind
- I didn't even know that they had whirlwinds in China! just lovingly
depicting tidal waves and shit, right? - I'm Nine Dragons, or the voice
of his conscience, or perhaps a partisan observer? And there's this black
and white train wreck next to "Ruler - Double Clubs" and at this point
I say, fuck it, I'm going to pretend all that's on purpose because I am
not downloading another goddamned NES emulator and you'd better goddamned
believe I'm the ruler of Double Clubs, unless I'm ruled by
them in which case uhhhhh meat bun. Two screens into the menu I realize,
yeah, this emulation is more or less cripplingly fucked. God's Favorite
Commander Moonmist 1-UP Eighty-Six Dinosaurs is undaunted; I try to get
Black Whirlwind to recruit a Hero (this capitalization is all from the
primary source, kids) named Pursuing God (which satisfies my requirements:
all members of my Totally Radical Army of BMX Bandit Kings must be (a)
ancient (b) Chinese and (c) able to comfortably share their names with
goth-kid Geocities websites) whose profession is listed as the dashingly
heroic and blood-soaked "Innkeeper". He tells me that he's "just not interested"
and hey, there's your turn over, Black Whirlwind, and thanks for playing
BANDIT KINGS OF ANCIENT CHINA! Shit.
 Whatever being on all fours and looking surprised signifies, Unlucky Archer is only fair-to-middling.  Game Over, SUCKER! Winners don't use drugs |
But surely it's not over yet! The struggle against, um, well - I never really established what the fucking deal with this game actually was. There was a song, and some bandit kings, and China, and I guess I'd stupidly assumed that everything would be revealed as the game marched on. The game did not, in fact, "march on" - it got to be "Iron Staff's turn in Exile" which is apparently Koei-speak for "Welcome to the Needlessly Complex 'Game Over' Screen". The game froze, or just sat there, or whatever. If keeping that sneaky singin' Welcome Rain in jail was my mission then let's call this a job well done and wash our fucking hands of it - when I last checked (that was Black Whirlwind's turn, remember) his occupation was still PRISONER. In your face, dude. Why did Rolling Thunder cross the road? BECAUSE IT WASN'T FUCKING BROKEN MATH HOMEWORK.
"But Zartan! You didn't actually review the game!" For fuck's sake, people, I hinted that it wasn't as good as Rolling Thunder. It's called a "spectrum"; look into it. You want me to draw you a map or a big fat fucking series of arbitrary tenths of a "point"? Look, I'm sure that it's actually quite good and engaging if you're (a) into this sort of thing and (b) you can get it to work. Hell, the Home of the Underdogs rated it as one of their "Top Dogs," though I'm a little concerned that the "Top Dog" rating isn't just Secret Shorthand for "this screen is not one of our eighteen thousand pop-up ads". Besides, no one reads these fucking things actually looking for an honest, balanced "review". HMMMM, PERHAPS THIS REVIEW WILL LET ME KNOW IF I SHOULD SPEND MY HARD-EARNED $0.00 DOWNLOADING A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD GAME. If this game is your sort of thing, you've already played it or something similar. And that's me, DONE.
