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Setting some options, flipping through the manual, and playing through--as the barbarian McGill--Hamster Corporation's PS4 emulation of an arcade fighting game by Allumer in Arcade Archives Blandia!
It's the sequel to "Gladiator," which was published by Taito--which did have high/middle/low weapon dueling bits, in between walking down halls batting down projectiles coming at you segments. Blandia cuts those out, so it's just a straight-up fighting game! A really really bad one! Horrible action, some awkward art, especially in later stages, cheesecake of the female characters with their armor knocked off, topless statues, etc.
The five-second music loops are AWFUL.
The intro implies the people scrying the fights are the gods who have "endowed" you with the power "to vanquish the mad gold king."
Allumer also made a PS1 fighting game, Magic Beast Warriors, which I own for some reason. It is bad--doesn't look like they'd learned much as far as good fighting game mechanics go in the three years since Blandia (1992 to 1995)--and I'm not going to play it. : P
My recording of the Japanese version of Gladiator, in the Japanese PS2 "Taito Memories II: 1st Volume ("Joukan")" is https://youtu.be/BIgL36fqCSo?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzP5ozemiLMWhixFuVea4304&t=3692
"Great Gurianos" was the name of the player character in Gladiator, says Wikipedia--and Gurianos is the default character in Blandia, still there with his weird blue metal armor that can still be knocked off piece by piece. Home computer ports of Gladiator were titled "Great Gurianos."
Some web sites call Allumer a "Taito subsidiary," but there's no indication of that on the Wikipedia page, and no mention of Taito in the game as far as I noticed. No mention of Ving, either, although that's who Wikipedia says published the game. BUT the back of the arcade flyer for Blandia https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/videogames/show/4993#gallery-2 has Taito contact information. I wonder if Taito pulled out and Allumer just went ahead and self-published it. Wikipedia says Hamster bought Allumer's IPs in February 2023 (Famitsu coverage: https://www-famitsu-com.translate.goog/news/202302/08291994.html?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp ). |
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