CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS (1993 ARCADE) ACCESSIBILITY REVIEW:

CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS (1993 ARCADE) ACCESSIBILITY REVIEW:

MESS O.: “HEY CREEP! GET AWAY FROM THAT DINO!”

VICE T.: “GET LOST OR LOSE TEETH! YOUR CARCASS WILL FATTEN UP THIS 

ROCK HOPPER BEFORE I SKIN IT!”

- Stage 1 Boss “Vice T.” Dialogue 

    Today, I played the most 90s thing I have ever seen. Why haven’t I ever seen this before!? Listen to this:  It’s a Final Fight ripoff based on a comic that became a Saturday morning cartoon. That is gnarly, dude! It’s about guys from an apocalyptic 2153 fighting dinosaur hunters the best way possible. By beating them up! And sometimes even their dinosaurs, because those are obviously bad dinos. The ones you are saving are good. Since 90s nostalgia is cool, and it’s the most recent thing I’ve played, I thought I’d share some of my experiences with this radical game.

Apparently, the game supports up to four players: Jack, (Your Cody Clone!) Hannah, (Obligatory female in orange suit.) Mustapha,( Tough Black Guy!) and Mess O., (Your Haggar Clone!) Now, it’s pretty much your standard beat-‘em-up sidescroller with scifi tough guys, fat guys, and people with whips (And dinos, of course!) to beat up as you find food and power-ups in conveniently-placed oil drums and containers. But, it’s main gimmick seems to be that this game has more guns than The Punisher arcade game. There are a lot. All over the place.

Unlike most beat-em-ups, you see, it uses an ammo system. Most beat-em-ups have you throw away your gun after a few uses, like a ranged weapon with 3 uses. (The Punisher, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, etc.) Not in this game! You can pick up ammo, and blast punks with your shotguns, or triceratopses with your uzis, ‘til you can’t reload. This is the first beat-em-up I’ve seen with such a reload system, and it is awesome.

By the way, on the flipside of awesome cheese, all 90s arcade beat-em-ups had frighteningly cheesy and potentially traumatic game over screens to get you to fork over another quarter. In this one, Vice T. shoots you in the face when the counter reaches 0, and says “ EAT LEAD -- BABY!” Terrifying cheesiness. But, in this emulation, simply pressing a button inserts a coin, thank goodness. So we can be spared the potential trauma of hearing: “EAT LEAD -- BABY!” in our nightmares!

I love the cheesiness. I love that the mission doesn’t make sense. Save good dinos, kill bad ones. Sure! And I love that everything is solved with a one-liner and a punch. I even love the bad dialogue. (Jack’s victory phrase is “You can’t touch this!”) Anyway, I did have a couple accessibility issues. Since this was an emulation, I couldn’t figure out how to do special attacks. I pressed all the buttons. But, since there was no instructions on how the emulation translates arcade buttons, I still haven’t figured it all out, but have done most the guesswork myself. Thankfully, beat-em-ups  are pretty straightforward and accessible. Just punch and move forward.

Before anyone asks…I haven’t read the comics, or seen the cartoon (Yet!) But, I thought the game was mind-blowingly RADICAL. If you want to revisit the 90s, or just have fun beating up bad guys with the power of one-liners and 90s catchphrases, this game is for you. Guns and dinosaurs! What more do you want? Check it out!

FINAL GRADE: A

ACCESSIBILITY GRADE: A-  (Straight-forward beat-em-up with minimal tricky controls. Punch and move forward if all else fails.)

FORGIVENESS FACTOR: A+ (Unlimited continues if you‘re playing an emulation!)

CONTROLS: A (Pretty straightforward for a beat-em-up. But, some guesswork. Figure out how to punch, and you‘re good to beat up punks and evil dinos! Rock on!)

X-Men: Children of The Atom Review

X-Men: Children Of The Atom Review 

My favorite types of videogames are beat-em-ups and fighting games. Very disability friendly. There are no complex puzzles (aside from maybe Special Moves.) to solve. You just jump right into the game and start being awesome. My favorite types of these games are often X-Men games. While browsing the Internet recently, I  came across a list of the so-called top 10 X-men games. I won’t do that, since I can’t really think of 10 good X-Men games that weren’t crossovers with Capcom. In my mind, there are only two real contenders for good X-Men games. X-men Arcade and X-men: Children of The Atom.
 
X-Men: Children of the Atom was so good with character animation that they used the same sprites for games as recently as Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I already reviewed X-men Arcade, so now I’ll review X-men: Children of The Atom. Now, the game has like 10 characters. And for some reason, one of them is Ice Man. Ice Man wasn’t even in the 90s cartoon that much. At least, not regularly. The game also used the original voice actors from the 90s cartoon, which is cool.

    As per usual, the game is obsessed with combos, and you can do super jumps, and meter-dependent “X-Moves” similar to Marvel vs. Capcom’s super moves. On my Dingoo system, these attacks are triggered by pressing L+R at the same time. No doubt in the arcades it was HP+HK. Other things I like about this game are that you can knock people to different parts of certain stages, which later X-men fighting games would follow. I love Ice Man’s cheesy lines like, “When I say chill out, I mean it!” and the fact the Colossus’s stage is besieged by sentinels. Spiral’s stage spirals downward! Little details like that are fun to me.
 
 The game has two boss characters and unique endings for each character. One boss is Juggernaut. Magneto is the other one. (Both would show up later as playable characters in Marvel Super Heroes!) I do know that Ice Man, in his ending, stands around on a beach making ice sculptures to impress babes. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Rogue wasn’t added until X-men vs. Street Fighter! Wasn’t this based on the cartoon?

    Anyway, with it’s attention to details, cartoon sources, modern combo chains, and two-button super moves, this might be my favorite X-men fighting game! In my mind, there can’t be a top 10 because the rest of the games just aren’t that good, and/or are way to easy to get stuck in. Children of The Atom basically invented the modern fighting game before Killer Instinct or any of the Marvel-Capcom fighters.

And yes, I know Ice Man’s moves are cheap, but “cheap” is also accessible. The modern button-mashing in fighting games has it’s genesis in a game based on the Fatal Attractions comic storyline. If they had gone one step further, and added fatalities, Magneto might’ve been able to rip out Wolverine’s metal spine! Truly, this game was ahead of it’s time.
   
 What do you think? Did I miss any good X-men fighting games/crossovers? What other games are there? Let me know. Comment away! Until next time…I think next week I should have some new comics to review. Mostly DC! Although I’m a Marvel guy! Stay tuned!

                                                                        Arcade Art

                                                                Spiral vs. Psylocke!                                                          

                                                                   Cyclops's X-Move!
                                                   

                                              With Colossus's stage, you end up on a boat!