First impressions: Castle Crashers

I know that I've been neglecting my blogs lately. It's mostly due to my continuing search for employment, but it's partly due to my new-found calling in life. That calling is Castle Crashers for the Xbox 360 Live Arcade.

Castle Crashers is a four-player simultaneous side-scrolling beat-'em-up in the tradition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the arcade game) brought to us by the gods at Behemoth, who also gave us the fantastic (yet too difficult) Alien Hominid some years ago.

History time:

Little Mikey got his first glimpse of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game at the Warren Mall's arcade, Aladdin's Castle, waaaay back in 1989, we he and his friend Kelly would frequent it on those winter Friday nights after school. With the addition of two other people, we were able to play through an adventure of epic proportions. The action was frantic, the enemies were many, and the sights and sounds were spectacular for that time. It was more than that to me, though - something about being able to play a game with the help of three of my best friends just clicked, and this game had none of the frustrating backtracking of Gauntlet, Midway's pioneering and flawed aging arcade sword fest. I was ecstatic when I found out Nintendo was releasing a four player adapter (the NES Satellite) soon afterwards - could it be that I could take this experience home with me?

Alas, the answer was a resounding Episode 3-style NOOOOOOOO!

Because this wouldn't be my blog if I actually praised something, and because I have nothing bad (at all) to say about Castle Crashers, I'm going to take you on a look at the many disappointments I've had with the beat-'em-up genre on home systems throughout the years, so that maybe when I show you how deceitful and poorly executed some of this stuff is, my new favorite game will seem better by comparison (everything they get right, it gets right, everything they get wrong, it gets right). I'm only listing games that I've played, so if there is one out there that meets my high standards, let me know.

(An aside: I'm only putting Gauntlet Legends on the list because it lacks the depth of a conventional dungeon crawler, making it closer to a beat-'em-up than an action RPG, though it is not as good as any other example of either)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game (NES): I know that the NES was an aging machine even back when I first got one in 1988. I know that it was foolish of me to expect an arcade-exact translation of anything on that system. When Ultra Games released this port of my favorite arcade game I was skeptical. It looked about average for an NES game, but that doesn't mean that it looked any good at all. They really pushed the hardware to get the size of characters out of it that they did, but that means very little when you've cut two players out of the equation and had to take most of the enemies out just to fit it on a tiny NES cart. Even more annoying is that they only gave the player limited continues, making the game much harder than it had to be. At least it came with a coupon for a Pizza Hut pizza; that's something, I guess.

Battletoads (NES): This is by and large one of the most blatant TMNT ripoffs you'll ever see. The graphics are quite good in an 8-bit way, so what makes it worse is that having two players makes the game more difficult; not from the perspective that there are more enemies, but because every gameplay mechanic one could think of that makes multi-player co-op not fun is here: Two players instead of four, attacks hurt each other, when one person dies both have to restart a level, there are a limited number of continues, falling off of a cliff results in insta-death etc.

Final Fight (SNES): This game was released just after the SNES came out, and suffered the same problem all of the early SNES Capcom games did: the two-player arcade games were truncated to a single player (Magic Sword, U.N. Squadron, etc.). This version cut out one of the three selectable characters (Guy), replaced the women with androgynous men, and was essentially a major disappointment all around.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (SNES): When the Super Nintendo was released, it only had two controller ports and it took a third party company to make a four-player adapter for the unit. That game was (you guessed it!) Super Bomberman. TMNT4 was released well before this, and couldn't take advantage of it. This one is noteworthy because it is actually better than the arcade game - maybe it doesn't look as nice, but there are enough extras that it doesn't need to. The two-player mode is nearly perfect, with just the right level of difficulty so that eventually the player and a friend can get through it on hard mode and feel like they accomplished something. It still needs four players though.

Streets of Rage, Streets of Rage 2, Streets of Rage 3 (Sega Genesis): These are all A+ Final Fight knockoffs, and nothing more. Given the Genesis' purported "Blast Processing" I fail to see why they couldn't have included a four-player mode, other than the fact that "Blast Processing" is a total crock.

Final Fight CD (Sega CD): By and large the best version of Final Fight I have ever played, even better than the arcade version; it's the music... I still wish that they could have re-mixed it for more players, though.

The Peace Keepers (SNES): Here's where the real bullshit starts. The back of the box clearly states four players with the SNES Multitap, and there are four players - in Arena mode, four players can fight each other. This pisses me off because it doesn't indicate that in any way shape or form that it is just the Arena mode - I was finally hoping for a true four-player beat-'em- up at home, and instead I get a mediocre two-player one. They knew that's what I wanted, and they just spat in my face. Otherwise it's a pretty standard game with a few innovations, like multiple pathways through the game, unlockable characters that you can change the color palette of, and more references to Arnold Schwartezneggar movies than should be allowed. Aside from two missing players, bland artwork, repetitive enemies, and limited continues keep this from being a memorable experience.

Captain America and The Avengers (SNES): This is a port of one of the most hilarious badly translated arcade games to date. Too limited continues, two players, too bad.

Captain Commando (SNES): The arcade game had some originality to it: giant robots that you could ride, enemies that you could slice in half. Yeah. The censored SNES version takes all of that out, then takes away two of the four players... again.

Batman Returns (SNES): Proof that even the best production values can't make up for the fact that it's a one-player game.

Batman Forever (SNES): Proof positive that Acclaim has something terribly wrong with them.

Three Dirty Dwarves (Saturn): Wow! Segasoft actually got something right! This game has three characters, and three players can play! There is an annoying "one hit and you're down" rule, but the players are only defeated if all three dwarves go down at the same time, which isn't often if they play cooperatively. Not quite perfect, but still very good.

Guardian Heroes (Saturn): I am among the proud few gamers that own a Sega Saturn and this game. To experience the pinnacle of two-player co-op beat-'em-ups, this is the game that must be played. It has multiple paths, changeable stats, dozens of special attacks per character, scaling (depending on how far apart players are from each other), a huge variety of enemies (and once they've been beaten the players can play as them in the arena mode), a story where the players save a kingdom and go on to beat up heaven and hell, everything! Everything that is, EXCEPT FOUR PLAYERS. The back of the box (again) claims up to six can play, but this is only in its Arena mode, which is fun for awhile, but having just two other players to kick the crap out of the computer would have been more fun. Why do they have to torture me with these bullshit arena modes? WHY?!!

Gauntlet Legends (Dreamcast): All right, four players! Too bad the gameplay is about as deep as an inverted milk saucer. The game can be played with one hand. Yep, every character will attack enemies just by running into them. Prepare to spend countless hours running around empty levels trying to find that one missed switch so that the exit can be found. Sometimes, my friends and I have contests to see who can stay awake the longest while playing this game.

Dynamite Cop (Dreamcast): This game runs at sixty frames-per-second, there are four controller ports, and three characters to choose from, so why is it that this is only a two-player game? And why is it over so quickly?

Zombie Revenge (Dreamcast): Everything I hate about Dynamite Cop revisited, plus the hilariously broken and stupid script from House of the Dead with appropriately cheesy voice acting.

Jedi Power Battles (Dreamcast): As much as I can't stand the prequel episodes of Star Wars, this would be a contender for my favorite beat-'em-up of all time, but for a few fatal flaws: Bottomless pits kill instead of just taking a little health (and there are far too damn many of them), not enough continues, two players share continues, some of the environments have hidden holes that will kill the player if they're off-screen for too long. Otherwise my usual four-player complaint remains.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The New Animated Series (Xbox): The first one (again) only supports two players for no perceivable reason other then this was released on the PS2, and we couldn't make a decent product and scale it back for the PS2, no! We have to make a shitty product that will run on the PS2 and make all of those who have superior hardware suffer. The sequel fixed this problem, but I'm having trouble finding people interested enough to play it.

(Nintendo 64): What? There isn't even one beat-'em-up for this system? What the hell?

(Gamecube): Does Viewtiful Joe count? It's pretty close... but it's only one player, and only ever has been one player, so I feel that qualifies it as a platformer. So the Gamecube doesn't have any beat-'em-ups either. Stupid Nintendo! (Okay, so Zelda Four Swords should count, but I don't have four Game Boy Advances or friends willing to play it). (Note to fan boys: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is drawn out, boring, and no one should have to play it - just like all of Square's games.)

That's my list. I've waited nearly twenty of your Earth-years to play a four-player co-op beat-'em-up game with character development and multiple paths from the comfort of my living room. It's not just that Castle Crashers is an affordable, funny, game that has far exceeded my expectations, but also because all of these other games have made me that much hungrier for the experience.