Playing Through My Evercade Collection Part 9: Piko Interactive Collection 1

Another of the random unlicensed untranslated titles Piko have acquired over the years and honestly this one actually is pretty darn good. Its a pretty basic but fun arcade style beat-em-up that tries its best to ape the sort of stuff Capcom was putting out and it does a decent job at it.

While the controls at first are a bit awkward thanks to some rather stiff animations getting in the way of readability, once you get used to it, you'll be blasting through enemies with ease.

Theres thankfully a decent variety of enemies and some rather fun moments to be had thanks to the array of screen-smashing magic items you can use at any time. Gives a real Golden-Axe magic feeling and that feels good.

I will note the game is a little on the easier side than most beat-em-ups, mostly thanks to the game defaulting to easy difficulty but also because the A.I. is a little on the dumb side. For once this may actually be in this game's benefit as it means the feeling of 'Arcade Cheap Deaths' dont occur quite as much.

So yeah. Very happily surprised with this one. Finally some good eating.

Sticks out for an unlicensed Genesis game, if just for how much effort was put into it. Even though it has that bootleggish graphical flair, it's not a bad-looking game at all. Music's pretty good too - for some reason, most MD bootlegs use the sound driver from High Seas Havoc. It sound sgood here for the most part.

Gameplay is the main crutch, as is the usual case with bootlegs: Your movelist is dry, with only a simple combo, a dash and a jump attack. The only real strategy is trying to herd enemies into a group and then slowly B-pummel them, neither combo-finishing nor letting their stun frames wear off long enough. I swear there's also a heavy swing attack, 'cause sometimes you'll hit an enemy and they'll fly off screen and instantly die. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn't figure out what triggers it. And like Golden Axe, there's elemental magic to use as a screen-clearing bomb - which also look visually really good, btw. Enemy variety is kind of cool but also kind of annoying, and by the halfway point there's no easy way to strategize against heavier waves of enemies. It becomes a blunt force experience.

I dropped out halfway through the fifth stage, the game had been running for a full hour and still had about a half-hour more to go. Even with the other little grievances, the game is just too long for a beat-em-up. Overall it's not a categorically recommendable game, but an interesting curiosity either way. Don't buy it tho; it's not worth 10 dollars as-is and I can't encourage giving your money to Piko Interactive.

I tried to play this one to see how it qualifies as an aftermarket release for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Well it isn't worth it. It has some pleasant music, but the stages are too bland, there are many annoying enemies, making the game too difficult and boring.
The playable characters are different from one another, but it makes two of them basically unplayable. The hit detection is very strange, making we question everytime if we are going to hit the enemies or not, mainly because of the very short distance our weapons reach, while the enemies have many long distance attacks.
It's sad, though, because the game has some good ideas, but they were badly implemented.
Pros: The soundtrack is good; it had some cool Chinese aesthetics
Cons: The difficulty, the hit detection, the boring stages, the amount of enemies, the annoying enemy attacks.