Weekly Kusoge on Hold this Week

Your weekly kusoge is on hold this week. I'm planning a special one for next week that is awesomely bad! Unfortunately homework and my job have to come first, but in the mean time enjoy this wacky picture of Cheetahmen. If you don't know what Cheetahmen is, look up the hated classic, Action 52 (it is rumored to have caused World War 2 and cancer.) Just don't blame me if your NES plugs itself into the wall and jumps in your bath water.

Kusoge of the Week: Skyscraper

Do you love the movie, Die Hard? Do you love the FPS genre? Do you have a Wii? If you answered yes to any these questions, then you could have a good time by hacking your Wii and throwing in Die Hard on DVD. If you want to subject yourself to torture, play Skyscraper instead.

Skyscraper started as PS2 game. It was known for being a bad game, but it didn't stop there. Someone at Midas decided to port this turd to Wii. The game was only released in Europe and Australia, somehow America got lucky this time. Skyscraper was released at a budget price of about 20 dollars. Of course, Wii owners don't have much choice in FPS games, so that price should sound nice....right? No...hell no! You are better off getting the N64 from the basement and playing Goldeneye, because the graphics in Skyscraper are about the same (and yes this game is recent.)

You play as this nerdy British guy ( he looks like the Angry Video Game Nerd) who has his office taken over by terrorists. The game glorifies the fact that there is 20 levels of actions waiting for you (hence the name Skyscraper, how clever...or not.) The "action" consist of fighting enemies with really bad AI that don't fight back is most situations and lame puzzles that a child could solve.

Your nerdy hero's real problems come from glitches. He will get stuck in the floor sometimes or just clip himself into a polygonal mess. Enemies will sometimes just pause and let you kill them, which is retarded but comical. The voice acting is also really awful.

The Wii is home to a lot of shovelware. This game is included in that notorious category but qualifies as kusoge because literally everything sucks: the graphics, voice acting, music, shooting, missions, and glitches galore. This is the type of game you break out to remind yourself why Call of Duty is so damn good. Skyscraper is pure shit that should be experienced with drinking buddies or at a party. Tell them it is Die Hard 5: Die Hardest...actually don't do that, Bruce Willis will fly there and personally kick your ass.

 "You're playing Skyscraper? Yippie ki yay motherfucker!"

Kusoge of the Week: Pepsiman

Apparently in Japan, if you get really thirsty, a magical dude called Pepsiman will appear. He will use his crazy powers to deliver Pepsi to you instantly. This is all bullshit of course, but Pepsiman was a great mascot in the 90s. He was the focal point of Japan's Pepsi campaigns. Pepsiman was so popular, he even got his own Playstation game.

The game starts with some fat American guy telling you about Pepsi. Since the game was only released in Japan, I guess this is their view of the typical Pepsi drinking foreigner; fat and retarded. After this pointless FMV, the game moves into another scene which involves someone explaining a problem to Pepsiman. Needless to say, all the problems revolve around a lack of Pepsi products.

From here an awesome theme song plays, which sings about Pepsiman. After the theme song you go in to the levels which are kinda strange. You move Pepsiman from right to left as he attempts to avoid random shit on his way to the goal. He can jump and slide under vehicles, which adds some variety to the gameplay. Also in certain levels he gets a skateboard. Pretty rad huh?

Pepsiman doesn't have music in the levels ( actually this is just in the ripped versions found online, emulators can't read it for some reason.) This is a shame because honestly his theme song is so badass if it played constantly no one would complain. The graphics are about average for a Playstation title with nothing really standing out aside from the weird 2-D people in 3-D levels. The visuals only real affect is making the player want to drink a case of Pepsi.

As far as advertisement games go, Pepsiman is definitely one of the best. It is a shame Pepsiman was never released in the US, but the game is far too weird for mass appeal. In Japan, the mascot was a huge hit. He went onto star in Fighting Vipers as a secret character. This cheat was removed from the US version and Pepsiman was not included in Fighting Vipers 2. I guess the decision makers were fans of Coca-Cola products.

Recommendation:
Pepsiman now rests in total obscurity. The game is pretty stupid, but somehow it is still incredibly fun. Pepsiman is pretty expensive in the second hand market, and a re-release will never happen. If you like weird games or Pepsi (fanatically) then track this game (or ISO) down, you won't be disappointed.

Kusoge of the Week: Time Cop

The Super Nintendo was home to many bad licensed games: Last Action Hero, Waynes World, The Wizard of OZ, and the list could go on and on. One game really stands out to me as the cream of the crap. Time Cop is based on the mid 90s Jean Claude Van Damme action movie of the same name that features time travel, martial arts, and plenty of bad acting.

 While the movie was certainly not the worst ever made, it didn't exactly impress anyone either. The game followed this example and took it even further by being a complete piece of shit. Time Cop took slight advantage of the SNES graphical prowess by making Mr. Van Damme a digitized version of himself with a two frame standing animation. The backgrounds and characters are all done in a similar fashion with awful looking results. The game tries to look like Mortal Kombat, but ends up looking very amateurish. It doesn't help that there is only about two enemy types per level.

The levels vary from "okay that could have happened in the movie" to "did the design team see the wrong movie?" One level takes place underwater and the boss is a giant octopus. I am pretty sure Van Damme never kickboxed a squid in any film, otherwise he would have won the Oscar for "Most Rad Thing Ever."

 The music is hilarious. Just check out the first stage where the song is an eight second techno loop with a guy constantly saying FBI in a robot voice. The sound effects are also pretty funny. One exception is the game over screen where this goofy scientist laughs at you mockingly. Not only that but the screen as Game Over in two different fonts. It's as if the game is making fun of you for even trying to play it.

The enemy AI in Time Cop is pretty weak in the first stage but it suddenly ramps up to unbelievably cheap levels in the third stage. I never made it past this stage, but I am pretty certain the game never improves. Time Cop really fails in every department, yet it is so bad that it is hilarious. The music is so lame that it stirs a chuckle in me. The first level is so overly long and maze like that it makes me curious what the hell the developers were thinking, but there is one highlight every enemy in this stage is weak to Van Damme's ultimate Time Cop tactic, a crouching leg kick. Wait what...a crouching kick?

There was a Sega CD port planned but it was canceled. There is a beta floating around out there of it, but from what I have seen it seems to have just added a jet pack for no reason. The Japanese cared so little for the Super Famicom version that they didn't even bother to redesign the ugly American box art.
 
Recommendation: 
If you feel like indulging in some bad Van Damme gaming and don't want to play Street Fighter: The Movie Game, check out this old kusoge. I would suggest drinking heavily before playing!

Kusoge: Crap Games

Kuso-ge is a Japanese term for shitty games. These games usually gain some type of cult following due to the nature of awfulness involved in attempting to play it. Some games even increase in value like Death Crimson on Saturn due to this phenomena. The categories of awfulness are as follows:

• Extreme Difficulty: The game is really frustrating and hard...like "throw the controller through the window" hard. The game is by nature, designed to be brutal and unforgiving in all aspects. An example would be Takeshi's Challenge (Takeshi no Chousenjou) for the Famicom. This game can be seen as one of the most famous Kusoge due to it's affiliation with Japanese actor Beat Takeshi (of Battle Royale fame), a man who hates gaming. In his hatred he seemingly designed the hardest/shittiest game ever on purpose. The game requires such feats as: Singing karaoke for one hour straight, playing a flying game where you can only control a plane with the down button, and a patience stage consisting of not touching the controller for hours before proceeding to the last stage. If you want to see one man's effort to beat it and the hilarity that ensues, Google the first episode of Game Center CX.

• Broken with Glitches and Bugs: Some games are not thoroughly tested before they are launched. In good cases we get patches these days to update the game and fix bugs, however in most cases the buyer is simply screwed, left with a broken game (say hello to Capcom vs. SNK Cardfighters on DS for me.) One of the worst examples of this is Big Rigs. Big Rigs was a truck racing game released for PC around '03. The game is so broken, you literally cannot race, as the rival truck never moves. The racing map has no barriers, so you can feel free to drive into infinity. The game is beyond broken, it is simply unplayable. It is so horrid, that the game's creator had an offer for people who bought the game to send in their copy with proof of purchase to receive a different game entirely. Beware of Big Rigs.
• Too Weird: Some games are odd like Katamari Damacy or Gitaroo Man. Others are not just odd, they are borderline insane and make you wonder who gave the greenlight for the project to begin with. A prime example is the Cho Aniki series. The translation is something like Super Big Brother (although I think the name should be Naked Muscle Men the Erotic Ride.) It primarily deals with half naked musclemen flying around fighting ships shaped like naked men with robot penis weapons. No, I am not making that up. In fact Aksys is bringing the newest game to the States soon. If this type of game interest you, checkout Muscle March on Wii, it is also super gay!
• Too Stupid: This is a pretty obscure category, but I can think of at least one that fits. Trio the Punch is an arcade game (and also a PS2 game) featuring three guys that walk around fighting stuff. This isn't too different from alot of games right? Well this one also has no story, bosses that appear at the beginning of levels for no reason, and one stage where you play as a sheep , once again for no reason. The enemies are weird, and the game is pretty much as nonsensical as it gets. Not a bad game to download for MAME if you are curious about kuso-ge.

I got started on this idea, because it seems Deadly Premonition has gotten a bad reputation after release. It is not kusoge, as it does not fall into one of the categories above. The game simply is an odd budget release. In America, we do not share the same love for bad games as our Japanese counterparts (the Angry VideoGame Nerd sure as hell doesn't.) I think it is cool to like a bad game or two. Heck I loved the original TMNT on NES, and it is freakin' awful. Anyway, that is my rant for today. If you are interested in some American kuso-ge check out this buried turd:

Fun Fact: This little winner was so terrible, it caused the game market crash of the early 80's!