Brought to you by the letter 'C'
By Werewolf2000AD

Well, I said I'd post this up even though no-one asked for it, and I always make good on my threats, I'm afraid. Some commentary on the other 505 Gamestreet imports of D3 Publisher's Simple2000 games, besides Zombie Zone, that I've managed to get my hands on so far. (Played but not mentioned here: Shogun's Blade and Yakuza Fury, which are nothing special, and Zombie Attack, which I just received on Monday, and which is quite fun, even if it is actually about Chinese hopping vampires and not proper zombies like the box pretends it is).

Pink Pong

A ping pong game that sees you competing against 13 women in a contest where, funnily enough, the winner gets to keep the losers clothing. The various costumes you can unlock this way, when combined with the other items and accessories you can obtain, make choosing and outfitting your opponent into a game of Mix and Match the Japanese Fetish: "Let’s see... Green haired android! with cat ears! dressed like a schoolgirl!" Best part of the game: the unexpected cut-scene where the building you’re playing in collapses.

Party Girls

Christ. This is what you go to a label like 505 Gamestreet for: An insight into a part of Japanese gaming that sanity and quality control standards usually prevent most of us from seeing. If I tell you that the only actual option on the ‘options’ screen, aside from volume, is to adjust the level of breast jiggle, you have some idea of what we’re dealing with here. Based on what Clive James and Chris Tarrant have taught you about Japanese television, imagine a game show based around girls in bikinis falling into a swimming pool a lot. Whatever you just imagined, Party Girls is the interactive equivalent. Various virtual bints compete in generally water-based mini-games that vary from stuff that would probably pass muster in a Mario Party game, to erm, well, the likes of a game called "Rub! Rub! Rub!" in which you waggle the left analogue stick up and down to make your chosen girl rub the base of a thermometer in order to raise the mercury to the top and, just in case you missed the symbolism at all, fire off a rocket. And then you get a replay of the whole thing. Really. On top of all this, your reward for winning: As the credits roll, your chosen female, microphone in hand, bops back and forth whilst singing her own personal J-pop theme song. Must-see stuff.

Fighting Angels

Somebody at D3 appears to have seen Rumble Roses and thought "I can do that." Well, they can’t. A sub-standard win-by-repeating-one-move beat-‘em-up involving, yes, scantily clad women. In Japanese, this was entitled "The Catfight", and that pretty much sums up the combat here: In comparison to the head-thumping and bone-twisting in the likes of Rumble Roses, the moves have a distinct handbags-at-ten-paces scratch-your-eyes-out girly-thin-wrists feel. On the other hand, the weapons that the crowd occasionally throws into the ring are absurdly over-the-top: Progressing from a metal folding chair via a bat with huge nails hammered into it to a samurai sword and an assault rifle: The fact that there is no blood or damage modelling whatsoever just makes this look even more ridiculous. Lastly, this game receives it’s 12+ rating for not only violence and scantily-clad women but a) being the only game I’ve ever seen to be labelled with PEGI’s ‘discrimination’ warning icon (the game’s sole American character is mocked for not speaking Japanese very well) and b) a single and surprisingly unexpected use of the word ‘tits’.

Ultimate Casino

Well, Ultimate Card Games, really. Fifteen different card games to play against different female croupiers for whom you can, yes, buy various outfits with your winnings. Wouldn’t rate a mention here except for the fact that two of the croupiers are called, um, ‘Sylvia Saint’ and ‘Sarah Hamilton’. I mean, they're just taking the piss now.

Deep Water

Waterworld: The Video Game! Well, sort of. As a sea-farer on post-environmental-disaster future Earth, you sail from harbour to harbour across the almost totally submerged globe, searching for giant sea-monsters whilst earning money to upgrade your boat by fighting off sharks, mer-people and um, wind-surfing ghost pirates. This one isn’t too bad; Whilst the travelling from place to place to get missions can get a bit tedious, as in most games of this type, there’s some nice fun to be had machine-gunning sharks and shooting giant angler fish in the face with a facking great harpoon.

Street Boyz

It’s The Bouncer without the budget, with a dash of River City Ransom. Attempts to translate the 2d scrolling beat-‘em-up form to 3d have all been rubbish so far, and this is no exception - It doesn’t help that the camera is godawful and the controls sometimes reverse themselves for NO REASON AT ALL during lock-on. On the plus side, rather than the usual clichéd American urban gang twaddle, it’s stylised near-future Japanese urban gang twaddle, so at least you get to fight alongside a girl armed with a yo-yo, a guy in a sailor suit who hits people with a pair of wooden shoes and a guy who’s apparently saving up for a sex change, and I’m not sure if that’s a mistranslation or not. Also, it’s the only game you’ll ever play where the end of level bosses occasionally break off from fighting to play stare-eyes with you. No, really.

Demolition Girl

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. The concept is great: A monster movie homage with a supermodel possessed by an alien growing to 50 feet high and menacing Japan. The presentation and the soundtrack are both great, capturing the retro 50s B-flick vibe. The missions are amusing and varied set pieces where you pilot various vehicles against the towering bikini-clad behemoth and her alien captors. The problems are the game engine, which suffers some appalling slowdown, and the controls, which have to be some of the most clunky, counter-intuitively laid out rubbish I’ve ever played. There’s still fun to be had if you can grit your teeth through the worst part (flying the world’s most stop-start fighter jet), but this should have been a mini classic and it isn’t. If it’s sci-fi B-movie action you’re after, I suggest instead you hunt down a copy of...

Monster Attack

This isn’t part of the Gamestreet range, but a D3 Publisher title that was imported prior to this by Agetec during their brief European operation. I’m including it here anyway because it’s close enough for jazz and because somebody should tell you about this game. I’m still annoyed no one told me about it earlier than they did. The game casts you as a member of the Earth Defence Force – Apparently the *only* member, as you keep getting sent out entirely on your own to fight off invading aliens and their vast army of giant mutated ants. This is one man against the horde videogame carnage as it should be, blasting your way through ever more ludicrous swarms of ants, alien saucers, huge four-legged striders that would make Gordon Freeman shit himself, several Godzilla look-alikes, ridiculously large queen ants and a fuck-off-enormous mothership unleashing ID4 style city-devastating blasts. The environments are destructible to a degree that would shame plenty of full price games: A shot from a missile launcher will cause skyscrapers and office buildings to crumble in a wonderfully cardboard monster movie set type way. It only runs in 50Hz with the usual big PAL borders, and there are occasional frame-rate problems when a lot of things are exploding, but you’ll be enjoying yourself too much to really care, because a lot of things will be exploding. There are twenty-five varied missions, with five difficulty levels from Easy to the ludicrous Inferno, where ants shrug off rocket launchers at point blank range. Like Demolition Girl, the presentation and music are just right, and anyone who wants to know the joy of blowing giant ants apart with a shotgun should seek this out as soon as possible, or import – if you can - a copy of the sequel, which offers you the opportunity to destroy Big Ben and pretend you were aiming at the aliens.

April 2006

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