Captain America And The Avengers

In 1991, if you actively discussed anything to do with comics obsessively to people who didn't care, you would be at the receiving end of a Vibarnium shield. Nowadays however, people get that reference and Thor is now considered an acceptable role model for young children. (Especially young children who aren't aware they are frost giants) So perhaps it's fitting that I pander to an audience obsessed with a film about fighting aliens that have weak motives for invading earth.

Captain America and the Avengers came from a time when comic book plots didn't have to be grounded in some semblance of reality, where Hawkeye thought purple and blue were acceptable costume colours, where Nick Fury was white; where the destroyer armour hosted his own chat show. (discussions with destroyer) It's a game that doesn't try to win over the unconverted by offering hilarious quips from iron man, or jokes about Captain America not knowing about modern things. Which is just as well as the translation efforts courtesy of Data East prove that even the symbol of American justice (racism) cannot escape misguided dialogue translation. "It is you who is not escaping" says whirlwind after being ambushed by a group of heroes who have no intention of escaping...thank you Japan!

Avengers is your typical arcade scrolling beat em up, by which I mean after the initial euphoria of beating up the same non-marvel endorsed robot enemy for 20 minutes; you soon become aware that there isn't much else. The four avengers (Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron Man and the Vision) all play exactly the same. The only difference of course being that everyone wants to play as shiny Iron Man while Hawkeye is often neglected on account of archery not being a super power.

It's clear that Data East couldn't afford to splash out on many of the Marvel A-listers for this game so boss battles are fought against the likes of obscure favourites "The living laser", "Ultron" and "Klaw". Classic Marvel villains that laugh maniacally for extended periods of time and make puns out of their names. "You wont live against the living laser!", "It's time to face the long arm of the Klaw!", "You thought you could beat Ultron, you are Ult-Wrong!" and so on...luckily the red skull appears to remind you that Marvel is not all Klaw and Laser, but this is by the end of the game so no amount of Nazi/Communist sympathisers can save you from the boredom you've already experienced.

Captain America and the Avengers reminds us that adaptions of comic book franchises into any other medium don't always end well. The enjoyment of this game is very much short lived with most of the entertainment coming from poor translations and the occasional sound bytes courtesy of the Super Nintendo hardware. People who complete the game will be disappointed at the absence of an end of credit teaser, but given this was made in 1991, nobody cared who Thanos was anyway...SPOILER!

Alien Vs Predator

Despite being responsible for many of the events within the film series, the human race seems very keen to omit themselves from every instance involving aliens and/or predators. Why is it that the first film wasn’t titled Alien vs. Humans considering that’s all it was, its only salvation is the bizarre “Batman VS Predator” comic which saw Alfred the butler save the day by shooting a Predator in the face with an antique elephant gun. Like Cadillac’s and Dinosaurs there is a choice of four characters two human and two predators, staunch xenophobes might enjoy not picking the Predator foreigners because they go around killing our jobs and being employed in our women. Speaking of women, there is a woman character…that’s that taboo deftly handled. AVP (Andrew Viper Beam) gets more hectic than the previous two titles, by the final stage you have to wonder how anyone completed this in the arcades. The simple answer is they didn’t, they went home after spending hard earned savings to face a family grown apart by an easily solved beat em’ up addiction. The only consolation is that some bozo had left 20p in the machine so the first credit only cost 30p…but from then on it was all downhill. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Alien Vs Predator is quite good.

The Punisher

Fans may be familiar with the Marvel comic’s series of the same name, a series which is yet to appear on any of the Capcom VS games despite Frank Castle’s potential for many infuriating projectile attacks. When playing this with friends, the second player has the unfortunate fate of controlling pre black Nick Fury. While filmgoers may have an image of the S.H.I.E.L.D captain as the smooth talking mother who enjoys acronyms of defensive items, the 90’s saw Mr. Nicholas as a middle aged heavy smoker sporting a memorable beige top and matching boots….very autumn! The punisher is definitely the one of the better beat em ups owing to the surprisingly violent nature of the game, it also features a number of drug references that went over my head as a child and came swooping back to scar my mind years later…a mental boomerang if you will. To see the potential damage such a concept can cause, just look at the Australians.

Super Smash TV

As we all know 1999 was a year of contemplation for all of us, not two years before had the Queen of our Hearts been so cruelly snatched away from this mortal coil due to a calamitous mix up involving English Royalty and a Lewis Carroll creation of the same name. Still, the public found solidarity in such a premature death by viewing copious amounts of it via a worldwide broadcast. Rou La Femme elaborates in that way he does (with words)

In the year 1999 the main form of entertainment will be a game show where a man in red trousers shoots wave after wave of cyborgs in order to win a toaster. Of course the premise of Super Smash TV seems laughable now; traditional game shows became extinct around 1992 and were replaced by a Geordie man attempting to psychologically torment a group of prisoners into killing/having sex with each other. It amuses the Geordie man to know that everyone wants one of these things to happen but if it ever did it would never be shown on television. With this in mind was Smash TV really that wrong in its bleak predictions? Well yes obviously it was as the technology required to graft a man with learning difficulties to a tank does not yet exist. Does this mean that Smash TV was a bad game? Let’s find out together dear reader. (It was a good game)

In reality Smash TV would have made a poor premise for a TV show, watching two contestants blast away at wave after wave of enemies might have been entertaining for a while but audiences would soon get bored. Thankfully your average games player is slightly less discerning and can derive hours of fun from standing next to a doorway firing wildly at enemies resembling the robots from batteries not included. The first few rooms might encourage the player to assume Smash TV is a mindless blaster, where all you need do is stand in a corner and hold down B until anything that moves is reduced to rubble. It soon becomes apparent that Smash TV is all about making use of available space and carving yourself out a small section of screen that isn’t covered by enemies. This does become a slightly easier prospect in two player mode but then you have to compete with your fellow contestant for a decent share of luxury luggage sets and VCR’s. Really it shouldn’t make much of a difference as to who gets all the prizes but at the end of each level when the values are added up you don’t want to be the one looking dejected as your opponents prize levels reach up to the stratosphere and don’t forget that in the end the winner has the right to say “Imagine if all these prizes were real!”. You wouldn’t want to imagine that your friend had twenty toasters and you only had five, how could you ever look your poor wife in the eye? The children want their toast and you are having to make it in batches, what kind of man are you? Not a man at all ….BUT A MOUSE.

Of course this is all fantasy; the game was so hard that neither red nor blue man would ever make it past the second level. That wife would have no toaster at all and would be grieving for her husband who had died of being run over by a giant face. Sadly the SNES version of Smash TV only provided a finite amount of continues meaning the third and fourth levels would remain a mystery until I bought Midway Arcade treasures and played it through to the end. Needless to say the final half of the game was so hectic that I have not managed to retain any memories of it aside from the fact that the game show host was the final boss.

I have managed to get this far without actually mentioning the host of Smash TV, unfortunately convention dictates that I must now repeat all of his catchphrases and then describe how he would occasionally pop up flanked by transsexuals and wiggle his eyes.

The gameshow host was well random and funny lol I well remember him doing good phrases, I like to think about what he said and done a lol. Also the women in it looked like transsexuals. i.e. they were actually men.

“These prizes are numerous and the amounts of currency are steep. I am in favour of this.”

“I would make a financial transaction where I would exchange that item for a dollar.”

“Utter Problems!”


In my humble opinion the game show host was overrated, he had a stupid face and he had copied all his moves from the far superior Mutoid Man. Now there was a boss to ironically make a fuss about. Let us explore further the legend of Mutoid Man.

Mutoid Man is a large bald man with a tank where his legs should be; he wears a fetching green outfit and is definitely educationally subnormal. His ability to speak is limited to guttural noises such as “Weerghhh” and occasionally saying “No way” but he hasn’t let that stop him get to the top of the pile. How many men do you know that are composed of a metal skellington on some tank legs which is actually covering your own head on the same tank legs? Not many but its certainly comes as a surprise! Not only does Mutoid Man have two helpers on his tank legs who fire cannons at you, but he will swipe you with his meaty fists and fire beams of electric at you from his pig like eyes. He also likes to laugh at people who try to shoot him with the basic gun as it merely ricochets from his powerful frame. The only real way to do any damage to Mutoid Man is using the Whiny grenade launcher to smash grenades onto his face, but even then you run the risk of him absent mindedly running you over. The only thing we can question about Mutoid man is how come he doesn’t get more of a starring role? Instead of the game show host popping up to make quips it should be Mutoid Man shouting No Way and then accidentally crushing one of the transsexuals. He didn’t mean to do it but the police would never believe you. Mutoid Man could never survive in prison, people would be constantly trying to make him say ‘No Way’. Far better take him somewhere peaceful and do him in with the whiny grenade launcher. Personally I would have framed Scar Face for the deed, but no one thinks like that in a crisis.

It is for this reason that I give Super Smash TV one Robotron clone out of it would be better if it featured Eddie the common truck driver from the Weakest Link Game.

U.N. Squadron

If this game is anything to go by, then the U.N. are in dire straits. Amidst the glut of countries under its protection, they are unable to squander no more than three planes in the fight against terrorism. Perhaps the game is trying to depict a time when peace prevails; the armaments of the world have been dismantled as they are no longer needed. Well I’m fairly sure I mentioned that issue of a terrorist threat, so unless these planes have the combined power of the X-Jet, Stealth and Jefferson Airplane; then it’s a sad day for the United Nations.

Luckily this is the case; these planes were built on rock and roll and nothings going to stop them now. The entire back catalogue of known Jefferson Airplane songs aside, it’s just a shame the pilots aren’t quite as aptly designed as their flying counterparts. I must warn gamers that this is based upon Area 88, an anime featuring a high amount of intense shouting and 37 areas too many. (Feel free to make your own jokes involving basic subtraction at home!) The characters are as follows:

Shin Kazama: You’d be forgiven for thinking this old chap was indeed related to a certain Tekken family. You might also be forgiven for thinking this old chap is an old girl. Readers might notice I’ve avoided the obligatory observation that Shin might be emo, so allow me to rectify that now. *Joke about cutting oneself here* I’m not sure what the military standard is in Japan when it comes to hair length, but all I know is the first casualty of war is conditioner.

Greg Gates: Yet another highlight of Japan’s collective knowledge of Europe, in a desperate attempt to think of an even vaguely Western name, they have opted for something a director falling from grace might coin to avoid being detected moonlighting in porno’s. (Purely on the basis that Greg Gates it sounds like “Masturbates”) Greg used to earn his living helping hostages all over Europe, so naturally a man who has to conduct himself with the utmost ethics and civil decency is the best man for a job that involves killing faceless terrorists indiscriminately.

Micky Simon: See above regarding knowledge of Western names (Could rhyme with “Sticky Hymen” perhaps?) Courtesy of his Naval background, blonde pompadour and what appears to be the playboy bunny emblazoned on his helmet. He epitomizes all that is right with sexual equality in that most discriminatory of skies. I can hardly blame the East for portraying Mickey in such a way, Top Gun has pretty much set back any heterosexual’s joining the air force for a good 30 years.

In my Gunbird review I explained how the shmup is a contributing factor to arthritis, eye strain and the murder of loved ones...only in fewer words. Well with Auntie Mabel buried I feel I am ready to face society as well as another shmup. U.N. Squadton takes a radical approach by offering a horizontal scrolling screen instead of a vertical one. While it’s been done in many games previously, it doesn’t seem to be the popular choice among this genre, the horizontal method is like Music B on Tetris, its hard hitting lyrics and acoustic harmonies are often overlooked in favour of the manufactured pop superstar that is Music A. I fail to mention music C on purpose as ever since that drug scandal, it singles barely even reach top 40.

U.N. Squadron’s health bar system is unique, or at least it was at the time. Now it’s pretty much the standard within every gritty first person shooter to date. You lose a bit of health, flash for a bit, and all of a sudden your good to go. Luckily you are not subjected to heavy breathing and smears of blood haphazardly slashdotted around the screen like so much wasted jam. (I’m fairly certain ‘Slashdotted’ isn’t a word) The system definitely makes the game easier, which is no bad thing considering lives are limited, which is true of this world as well as you only have 1. Unless of course you go by Buddhist ideology, in that case it’s about 7.

For a world embroiled under severe threat, those stingy bastards at the U.N. find no shame in charging you top whack for missiles used in the line of duty. Being given a free plane at the beginning of the game is just about the only generosity you can expect, but it feels more like one of those dodgy ‘pay nothing for 3 years’ sofa deals. Your basic shots are for free, but power up weapons such as napalm, surface to air missiles and cluster shots will set you back a country’s worth of post-battle reparations. Now it can be argued that these weapons are optional, it is up to the player whether or not they buy them. It is also up the player whether or not they want to get killed by terrorist machinations who shrug off standard weaponry like a fat man against a pea shooter, or if they want to invest their hard earned ‘killing money’ instead on things that will leave memories of the horrific violence for years to come. (I went with the latter, I’m currently facing eviction and my plane has been repossessed).

I trust people to make their own judgement of this game, because once again I have been steadfast unsuccessful in doing an actual review. If I can be accused of anything, it’s enjoying shmups a bit too much, such love is considered the norm in Japan, but over in the England it’s frowned upon more than bestiality. U.N. Squadron has a lot of unique ideas for the genre, and its not overly difficult like oh so many of its brethren. It’s also not too hard to come by these days and it’s definitely one of the better anime based games out there, even if they did remove all mention of it being one.( I wonder if theirs a Tetris music D out there?)