This After Burner Climax cabinet, died in a fire on Weston Super Mare’s Grand Pier, today.
While I can’t give much a toss about the pier (Mr B’s always had the better arcade), the fact that such a wonderful piece of arcade hardware died in the fire brings a tear to my eye.
I am truely sorry for their lots.
So here we are, another week, another XBLA Wednesday, and another Backbone game where they simultaneously rape Capcom’s back catalogue, my memories of old arcade games, and my MS points balance.
Joint Strike is yet another production where Backbone have made quite a lacklustre game, put a really nice front end on it, playtested it for a bit, said “It’ll do”, and called it done.
Aside from the fact that 1942 is actually more of a remake 19XX, (In a similar way as Commando 3 was more of a remake of Mercs than the original it references in the title), Lets look at it’s checklist of some of it’s crimes:
Worst of all, Despite what it says on the tin, 1942 Joint Strike feels utterly NOTHING like a Capcom game. It feels more like a “fan remake”.
These games are the videogame equivalent of J.K. Rowling getting someone to write some bad Harry Potter/Ron Weasley slash fiction, putting a nice shiny cover on it, and selling it as an offical story continuation.
Where’s the little things that scream Capcom at the top of their lungs? The meta-references from other games? The bonus cow? The bonus barrel? The little robot from Side Arms? Joint Strike sees a return of the Yashichi powerup, but in some incredibly badly drawn “stylised” way…
DON’T YOU REALISE THAT LITTLE ICON HAS BEEN IN MORE GAMES THAN YOU’VE HAD HOT DINNERS?
The really sad thing is that Backbone can do so much better. I’ve seen it. I’m sure a lot of you have… And that’s Bomberman Live. Why is there such a marked difference in the overall quality in these games? Were Hudsonsoft a little bit more hands on in the development of Bomberman? After all, these new Capcom XBLA games are the product of Capcom USA, and you know how much I completely distrust them.
Do yourself a favour. Save your Zenny.
RIP – Capcom’s Soul, 1984 – 2008
This is what the gamercard on the current 360 dashboard looks like. I’d like to direct your attention to the coloured banner behind the gamertag.
It tells you if your Xbox Live subscription is GOLD (paying for something other consoles are kind of getting for free), or SILVER (crippled to fuckery).
This is the NEW gamercard. Lets ignore the fact that MS have decided to completely do away with gamerpics and steal Nintendo’s “Mii” concept for a second here (after all, it was only inevitable that they’d do this eventually, between Mii and Home MS would have been left out).
I’d like to direct your attention to the…
Hold on a second, it’s gone!
How do you differentiate between Gold and Silver accounts now?
Wait a minute… That can’t be right…