Feel weirdly conflicted on this, in that I don't really have any problems with it on any level but it just feels like it's missing something to really put it over the top for me. Aesthetically gorgeous and plays well enough but I just didnt really gel with is as I think I wanted to. From a casual play of a few bullet hell type shmups I think it might just be that I'm not as hot on them as more traditional ones. Will probably end up coming back to this as I play more to reassess this cuz at the moment I'm stumped.

I always felt a weird connection to the PAC LAND stage in smash 4. since the game dropped i remember endlessly people complaining about how shit the stage was for nebulous "gameplay reasons" when i played on it over and over just cuz i loved the vibes of it. the strange 2d/3d perspective, the ms paint looking line quality, the flat colors and lack of detail on anything, the fairy that looked like she belonged in a different game. had them bumpin ass namco tunez too, smoked the fuck out of the music in the rest of the game (99% of smash songs that arent just original rips are bad dont @ me). i think its fair to say that pac land's prolly my favorite stage in smash history, nothing really spoke to me as much as it did. no idea how i went so long without playing it since i fucked with everything it had going on already but here we finally are.

game fucks. love everything the game has going on visually. pac man's hat and long nose! the ghosts riding around on pogo sticks! the door to heaven! the victory screen of pac man having a nice chill on his porch! hes got a fuckin pac table!!! it all feels so warm, so happy, so pleasant, and it comes with one of my favorite of the ol' namco tunes. gameplay takes a bit to get used to, namely the strange jumping mechanics but once you get the hang of it its real sweet weaving between obstacles making a mad dash to the exit. basically everything i could ask for in an early 80s arcade title. dunno if i like it as much as my beloved mappy but def up there as far as namco goldies

played the tg16 version because it lets you control pac with a d pad instead of having walking buttons(?) like the arcade does. port's basically arcade perfect with a very good enhancement so i dont think i really missed much.

Wouldve powered through to the end out of stubbornness but on the sixth level I apparently died in a strange place and got a "Start Position Error" and the game froze. Incredible

Just dully one of the worst games I've ever played. Slow and plodding, obviously designed to munch your hard earned quarters, has ass platforming, and is just uninteresting in almost every way. The fourth level's neat tho, it's a lake of blood with no music and a constant churning sound effect that creates a cool atmosphere. Single slight brightspot. Also was funny how broken it is, outside of the aforementioned position error there were a number of times I clipped into a wall by just walking at it weird.

Political cartooning as a profession in America has never been more important than when it was in the late 1800s. In a time of high corruption and low literacy, funny pictures of famous people were easily the best way to convey to the masses that some guy was fucking over their lives. None were better or more essential at this than Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for the then-popular Harper’s Weekly. While Nast is also famous for various other works, such as creating our modern idea of Santa Claus and being really racist towards the Irish, he is perhaps best defined by his opposition to New York political baron Wiliam “Boss” Tweed. Head of the omnipresent organization known as Tammany Hall, Tweed used his vast wealth and connections to take over the entire NY State electorate, placing him and his cronies in complete power. Using his razor sharp wit and impressive artistry, Nast tore this crook a new asshole with his cartoons, showing the world through his pretty pictures that Tweed was a greedy, corrupt shyster. While hardly the only force in his downfall, it’s evident these depictions were a major force in the sudden collapse of Tammany Hall and the associated figures surrounding it. Political cartoons would likely never have such power again. Or they wouldn’t, until…


Kakuei Tanaka was, at one point, a very beloved politician. Entering office with the highest approval rating of any new PM in history, he accomplished much during his comparatively short time as country leader, chiefly among them a sweeping infrastructure revamp in poorer cities and eased relations between the nation and China [1]. However, due to a quick one-two punch of a declining economy following the 1973 Oil Crisis and a scandal where he was found to have a history of somewhat shady land claims, he retired in the waning days of 1974. These two transgressions would very soon be overtaken in popular consciousness by the discovery he had secretly taken bribes nearing $2,000,000 USD from Lockheed in exchange for purchase of 21 aircrafts. This revelation shocked the public, transforming Tanaka’s image to that of a greedy, corrupt shyster [2]. Rushing through some fairly dense political kerfuffles, Tanaka was arrested in ‘76 and formally found guilty in ‘83. And presumably, in or around 1985, some guy working for Coreland Technology (To later be known as Banpresto) was really fucking mad about it.

Explicitly political video games are nothing special nowadays[3]. From your Cannon Fodders to your Call of Dutys, your Postals to your Papers Pleases, the ever present specter of “real world commentary” has loomed large over our shared passtime for decades, and it all started here, with 1985’s I’m Sorry, a game where a former prime minister beats the shit out of the population while robbing them blind. All of this context was imperative to fully understand the layers here. Imagine playing this without me informing you that the name of the game is actually a double entendre, a play on how the Prime Minister is oft referred to in Japanese as the Naikaku sōri daijin. Where would you be then?

Anyway, with that all out of the way, we can now appreciate the game for what it is: A fun arcade maze game! It’s hardly reinventing the wheel out here, being a simple affair where you steal gold and punch people, but it’s all very snappy and well presented. Your punch feels nice and strong, killing whoever stands in your way, be it nameless goons, Japanese celebrities zero American people would recognize, or international pop sensations Michael Jackson and Madonna. No obfuscation, it’s literally just MJ and Madonna, apparently enemies of the Japanese Liberal Democratic party. Alternately, you can bound over most everything with the spryness of a spring hare, old man’s got hops! Game gets harder as it goes on, obviously, hiding your precious gold in boxes you need to smash, and placing more and more that weigh your pockets down, forcing you to take more and more trips to your stash spot to offload ‘em. Fun loop, if a bit hard to get good at. Looks and sounds real nice too, hell of a lot more appealing than something like Flicky which ran on basically the same hardware. In brief, it's a fun, charming arcade experience wrapped in an incredibly strange political context. Context no American would be likely to get, despite the game getting an apparently English localization[4]. Goofy!

Kakuei Tanaka would live another 8 years before eventually biting the dust in 1993. To my knowledge, he never played this game, but I wonder if he ever knew of it. The cabinet apparently did decently well for a time in Japan, so it seems likely to me a child of an aide of his or someone similar had to have told him about it. I bet he felt the same way Boss Tweed felt when he first saw Nast’s caricatures of him, that knowledge that your time in the spotlight as a major political player was all but over. Those programmers down at Coreland sure killed his prospects, huh? [5] Just goes to show you the power of political art in this day and age.


__________
[1] Chiefly from a limited American view, I have no idea if this was what was on the Japanese public’s mind while he was in office.
[2] A half truth. Tanaka was still quite popular in the electorate, with his supporters viewing this scandal as a false flag from the US to weaken Japanese spirit. This continuing power struggle would be a major factor in the general election of 1976, known as the Lockheed Election. There’s a lot more surrounding context to those but I’m not going into them here for brevity (Read: I don’t want to do more research for this).
[3] As if to say all art isn’t inherently political????
[4] Using apparent here as despite there being a known English ROM of the game, there appears to be zero evidence anyone has ever seen an English cabinet, or even board of the game outside of people claiming they own one.
[5] Tanaka would continue to serve as a member of the National Diet for 5 more years following the release of I’m Sorry.

Perhaps unintentionally one of the most entertaining things I've played in a long while. The belly laugh I got out of starting the game up, hearing one second of the music and then immediately getting blasted to shit in dead silence was incredible. Near equal one in the last level where you instantly get shot by an apparent scrotum gun. Incredible comedic timing all through. Even beyond that, this is a pretty wild and varied collection of some fine arcade action. Definitely the most captivating of the bizarro 80s arcade oddities I've played.

Somehow managed to accidentally grab the version without the voice acting, so I was unfortunately deprived of hearing the funny ape noises :( Still had funky town tho ftw

Slightly torn on this. Aesthetically? One of the best things ive ever played. A+ in every regard. Some of the greatest funny lookin guys in vidja history in particular. Perfect in every way. Constantly surprised with how much cool shit it does.

Story wise? I dunno. I think it's pretty blatant that there's no real grand overarching theme or much of a consistent narrative, just a collection of fun little vignettes, and I think I'm okay with that. I would've liked if there was more of a method to it's madness, but just being along for the ride is enough when it's this constantly captivating. Nary a dull moment. Reminded me a lot of The Silver Case as a whole, with it's often loose story being told thru a series of questionably connected chapters (tho TSC does it a lot better in a macro sense), the very strong and striking sense of visual storytelling, and how chapter 2 is easily the worst part.

Speaking of chapter 2 the death grips stuff is bad and feels bizarrely out of step with the rest of the game. I wouldve not had a problem with it if it was just stefan being a character in narrative for no real reason like MJ is, but it double / triples down on it and its very, for lack of a better word, cringe. i wouldve tolerated it if this was made in like 2015 or something but near current year is too late to be talking about being noided n shit. easy lowpoint of the game