A-Z of MAME Hidden Gems - Y and Z are for...

After starting off way back in 2014 I recently discovered that I never finished my A-Z of MAME Hidden Gems - I only got as far as V... I was pretty annoyed with myself and resolved to knuckle down and get those last four letters squared away.

W and X were covered in the last post, which just leaves me with Y & Z...

If you'd have told me that Y would be by far the most difficult letter to find hidden gems for I wouldn't have believed you. Z I expected to be awkward by Y's just not a letter I'd think of in the same way... if I'd even considered it at all.

And yet, here I have just one game for 'Y', a game I'm listing under it's bootleg name that probably wouldn't have made it into the top ten choices for any other letter:


Yellow Cab

It's not that Yellow Cab (better known as Kamikaze Cabbie) is a bad game - it's from Data East after all and I'm pretty sure they don't know how to make bad games - it's just more 'interesting' than 'excellent'.

Played on a large overhead map the main goal of the game is to pick up a passenger in your cab and take them to another point on the map. From that you may infer that the game is a precursor to Crazy Taxi, but in fact it feels much more like the original Grand Theft Auto.

It's hectic fun and has some extra depth added by the presence of the police and the need to refuel regularly. Despite the my somewhat negative tone here it's well worth a play, but if I was to rank all the games I've covered over the course of this series it would definitely be nearer the bottom than the top.


And so, finally, after four years of intermittent blogging, playing, building, and configuring controls in the tab menu, I've reached the end. It's somehow fitting that this whole thing should finish with that most ubiquitous of hidden gem genres; the vertical shooter.


Zaviga

If you have read many of the other entries in this blog you'll know that I'm far from immune to the charms of a good gimmick.

Zaviga, (like Yellow Cab released in 1984 by Data East) is a vertical shooter whos gimmick is that it takes place both in the air as a jet fighter and on the ground as tank.
The game allows you to switch between the two at will and, from the little I've played, seems to scroll infidelity on a loop, with the enemies getting a little harder each time.

It's fair to say that, being quite an early game Zaviga isn't particularly blessed with complexities.

But complexities was never what this endeavour was about.

Hidden gems remain hidden because at first glance they may look simple, they may seem derivative or dated - but dig a little below the surface and you reveal a game that makes you happy, makes you nostalgic, or just makes you wish you hadn't overlooked it so many times before.

Zaviga captures all that brilliantly.

It may not be as gob-smacking as Boogie Wings, as surprising as Change Air Blade, or as awe-inspiring as Outfoxies... but it has charm in abundance. And really, at the end of the day, what more could you ask for than that?

A-Z of MAME Hidden gems - W and X are for...

So it's been a while...

One of the many things I enjoy about videogames is talking about them online and, unsurprisingly, the subject of MAME often comes up.

This happened recently when I pointed someone who was asking about lesser known arcade classics on the r/retrogaming sub-reddit to this very blog.

As part of the ensuing conversation they suggested I turn this weary old text dump into a nice new, easy to navigate database.Great idea, I thought, and immediately set to work...

A few days later I discovered that I never finished my A-Z of MAME Hidden Gems - I only got as far as V... I was pretty annoyed with myself and resolved to knuckle down and get those last four letters squared away - and that brings us to right now.

So first up, a fighter from the Capcom stable that has nonetheless remained somewhat hidden:
War-Zard

Okay so, full disclosure: Way (way) back when I was writing up the recommendations for 'R' I found this game under it's western title of 'Red Planet' - Knowing that the options for 'W' were likely to be very limited I tucked it away to unearth at the very moment.

It's worth the wait though!

War-Zard is primarily a fighter and, coming from this particular era of Capcom, you can be sure it has all the qualities you would expect.
The art is stunning, the character design is ingenious, and the special moves are very familiar.
With that said, the single player campaign of War-Zard goes far beyond that normally found in an arcade fighter.

Named 'Quest Mode' a lone player chooses one of the four main characters and proceeds to do battle against a wave of CPU controlled bosses.
Furthermore, items can be collected during fights that provide buffs and experience points are also gained that can be used to level up your chosen combatant.

It's pretty much the perfect fighter to play at home, at even includes a password system to pick up where you left off - which makes it all the stranger that this is the only CPS III game that Capcom made that never got ported to a home console or PC.


And if you think not getting a home release keeps a game under the radar, this next one never actually got a release in the arcades:
Wing Force

The story goes that this prototype game was lost forever until a PCB was found, bought for a considerable sum, and then (very generously) dumped to MAME so it could be enjoyed by all.
You can read all about it on this archived thread from the Shmups form: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=1155828#p1155828

It would have been a shame to lose Wing Force as it's a great little game. Very much in the Raiden mode it features wonderful animation and very smart craft design - with each power-up physically changing it's appearance.

Even without the intriguing back story this would still be well worth your time.

Onto to 'X', and more shooters, firstly:
X-Multiply

Being a horizontal shooter from Irem, X-Multiply is never going to avoid comparison to R-Type.
With a plot based on the cellular occupation of a woman by a microscopic alien force it would appear that the developers were keen to draw the line under their seminal genre example - but in truth niether this nor the organic style of the enemies and environments really manages to create any distance between the two games.

Luckily the ship design and unusual play style it generates more than make up for it.
Your craft has two tentacles that extend up and down from the hull, on the ends of which the weapons are mounted. These mechanical arms move fluidly around your ship as you manoeuvre through the levels and are impervious to enemy fire.

This makes for a great balance of offence and defence and you learn to shift seamlessly from positioning the arms for the best offensive alignment to ensuring they are a well place barrier between you and enemy fire.

Finally for today, a game that follows on the X-Multiply not just on this page, but in the evolution of weapon design.
Xexex

Despite coming from Konami Xexex actually looks and plays more like R-Type than X-Multiply ever did.
In a fair and just world a game that so blatantly steals all its best ideas from elsewhere wuldn't be any fun to play - luckily for us that isn't the case!

Xexex takes the tentacles from X-Multiply, adds a third arm, and then attaches the whole thing to a force orb.

Lets not pretend this is a life-altering innovation - but it offers just enough to make itself well worthy of inclusion here.

See you next time for 'Y' and 'Z'.