AMATEUR WARS: SPECIAL EDITION | ANDA | AOZORA | APEX |
THE APPOINTED STATION | ARENA | ARENA 1
Welcome all to the second installment in our new feature, “Yaroze a Day!” In this series, we’re attempting to cover the complete catalogue of games compiled in the unofficial “Net Yaroze Collection 2014,” and giving each of them brief explorations and reviews. I’m still aiming to keep this up on a weekly basis, with seven games being discussed per article — as if doing one for each day of the week, you dig? In this week’s update, we’ll still be working our way through more titles beginning with the letter “A,” seeing as we’re doing all this in alphanumerical order.
For those of you who haven’t already read our primer on the subject of the hardware and introduction to this series; you can find it here, and get better acquainted with the scope and goals of this feature. There’s also our debut edition of the feature to be read, wherein we cover our first set of seven games; for those of you who don’t wanna miss a single game. With all that out of the way, please to enjoy this week’s assortment of oddities and obscurities!
Amateur Wars S.E. is an entry in the time-tested genre of “two player top-down single-screen combat” titles; standing on the shoulders of giants such as Space Wars, Combat, and Action 52’s “Fire Breathers.” At the risk of sounding like I’m about to write this release off completely, this type of game has never done anything for me: Not even Taito’s Gun Fight, with its attempts to appeal directly to the cowboy center of my brain. Put simply, I just don’t find it particularly fun to chase an opponent around an empty room while mashing on a fire button. But hey, maybe that’s just me?
In either event: Amateur Wars represents one of the most basic interpretations of this gameplay concept, with two players controlling individual vehicles and attempting to deplete each other’s health bars. To this end, you can fire a steady stream of forward projectiles, while also attempting to steer out of the way of reciprocated fire. Controls include accelerating, reversing, and steering — with your speed having a bit of momentum applied to it, should you try to suddenly brake or take off from idle. About the most unique feature I can point to is some wonky collision detection should your vehicles happen to collide, where you might be briefly stuck in one another / able to score an easy win by crashing headfirst and firing enough undodgeable shots. Without anything in the form of obstacles or power-ups appearing in the arenas, this is your whole lot.
Again, I feel obligated to attach the major disclaimer to all of the above by saying that this game was [most likely] never released with any intent to profit off it, or presented to the Yaroze community by its author as anything other than a basic proof-of-concept. To judge it by the same standards as something like a retail-released game is as ignorant as it is pointless. And to give Nick Ferguson some well-due kudos here: The dude only went and archived everything surrounding his Net Yaroze excursions, and made them available through NetYaroze-Europe.com. From his circa 1999 profile page, you can gain some insight into the development of Amateur Wars and its subsequent special edition; as well as his follow-up game – Mud ‘n Blood – which we’ll be sure to cover in due time. I highly recommend checking some of his pages out if you’re looking for a window into the Yaroze community’s past, as well as some primo late 90s web design.
Playing Anda feels like unearthing the unreleased NES conversion of a further-forgotten vertical shooter arcade game from the mid-to-late 80s. For me specifically (considering my not exactly having the widest range of experience with bullet hells), it immediately hit up vibes similar to Xevious or 1942, maybe owing to the gratuitous bodies of water and eye-straining monochrome tiles you’ll be flying over? Anda might not be pushing the power of the PlayStation to its limits here, and your eyes may be due to tire in short time from looking at it, but there’s still an undeniable charm to the throwback near-strict 8-bit aesthetic here. Shame about the lack of music / sound effects, but it’s my guess that the game might take advantage of that additional 512K of allocated audio RAM in order to drive that full-speed, no-slowdown arcade gameplay. And much like the cabinet titles the game draws its design aspirations from, it’s all tougher than a two-dollar steak.
Anda allows you the most standard suite of vertical shooter attack power-ups (stock twin cannons, shotgun-esque spread, three-way shots, and something like a spiral firing pattern), but that’s about it as far as generosity goes. One hit takes you down, incoming enemy fire feels like an endless barrage, and end-of-level bosses pair with some patently unfair attack patterns in order to steal away your precious lives. I’m not too proud to admit I save-stated all my way through this game, and still struggled to solve the combat puzzles and bullet mazes necessary to survive. I can’t say I ever felt like I was banging my head against it in frustration, though: Makoto Okuzumi clearly understood the fundamentals of shmup design, and utilized that knowledge to create a game that’s as brutal as it is finely balanced — at least by my entirely amateur estimation.
The highlight here though for shmup enthusiasts may well be Anda’s option for simultaneous two-player gameplay; with second players controlling a complimentary orange-brownish ship, and contributing additional firepower in the service of attempting to clear this hellish gauntlet. If you play through the game in single-player as I did, you’ll probably notice that attack power-ups are delivered in pairs, despite not leveling or upgrading as you continue down a particular tree. In hindsight, that’s clearly intended as a design choice with two players in mind; so you can both grab your own individual spread-fire power-ups, and fill the entire screen with a hail of bullets as must clearly be intended. All in all: Anda makes for a totally serviceable shmup in this week’s article — and unfortunately, one that will be completely and entirely overshadowed in just a few minutes time.
Aozora serves as a rather unassuming introduction to the works of David Johnston — who, before we are finished with this series, will provide to us one of the most creative and compelling platformers in the Yaroze library. But we’re gonna have to make it well into the latter alphabet before we can cover that particular title. In the meanwhile; Aozora on its own proves a decently scenic (if not largely indistinguishable) exploration of a block-based 3D environment, with little else to do other than to walk and jump while navigating its grassy crags.
The highlight of the whole experience comes when you reach a certain point on your initially linear path, and the camera is briefly taken away from you in to provide a flyover of a larger section of the level for you to explore. It’s nice to see the use of distance shading again here in order to discreetly hide and reveal faraway terrain, even if it’s not entirely “seamless” given the per-tile calculations and obvious distinctions between adjacent pieces of the grid. But honestly, I kinda find it more charming than what could’ve been done with any smoother or complex calculation? For what precious little glimpses we get into the world David Johnston may have intended to craft here, it’s all rendered lovingly enough; to where I’d honestly be a bit sad to see it “improve” too much, if you can understand my odd sentiment.
All in all, Aozora is one title I’d have loved to have seen be further developed; perhaps into some sort of 3D platformer or action-adventure type thing? At the very least, David Johnston will have further chances to impress us, and a continued history in the industry to follow his Net Yaroze excursions. All things in due time.
Meet Tom Madams. Tom has a thing for titling games with the first letter “A.” As such, we’ll be playing two more games of his before the end of this very update (as well as one more later down the line, breaking from form to begin with a “G”). This first entry, Apex, serves as the skeleton for what could’ve potentially been a fast-paced 3D hovercar racing title. In time, we’ll see what a more fully-realized take on this formula can out looking like; but for now, this is what we’ve got to work with.
… Alright, that last line actually sounds a bit meaner than I intended it to. Again, we’re looking at a “proof of concept” build here for a game that could’ve been; but due to reasons we may never know, unfortunately never was. Debugging values near the top-left corner indicate your current speed, as you zoom down a narrow track in a flame-decal high-performance race car / ship / vehicle thing. Bumping the walls on trying to take turns has the unfortunate habit of stopping you dead in your tracks on occasion, rather than bouncing you back onto the straits as might feel more fluid or forgiving. Glimpses at floating buildings and architecture in the background as you speed on by hint at ambitions for futuristic theming, and liven up your otherwise sparse surroundings.
It’s hard to say how functional this specific track might’ve been with more than one racer on the road (as it stands; Apex is an entirely solo, self-timed racing endeavor), given just how narrowly it all funnels. But based on the potential for momentum and the tight control provided in what’s available here, there’s definitely a potential demonstrated for what could’ve been a frantic racing title. Quick note though, should you want to check Anda out for yourself: It’s one of a scant few titles in the Net Yaroze catalogue which requires the use of a Dual Analog / DualShock controller — meaning the stock pair of digital-only controllers that came with the Yaroze would be incompatible.
The Appointed Station served as one of the more-commonly screenshotted / video clipped titles in demonstrating the potential of the Net Yaroze, and for pretty obvious reason: It’s an impressive bit of eye candy, innit? Seeing this game in motion with the full range of particle effects and moving background elements on parade, it presents itself with all the poise of a fully-polished PlayStation title (aside from a briefly-appearing line of text reading “THIS IS ONLY A TEST”). The fact that it also demonstrates one of the earliest community efforts in general – with its 1996 date of posting – goes to show just how high the bar was being set from the beginning. But perhaps the more important question remains: How does it actually play?
Syuntarou Yoshikawa’s game challenges players to hit ever-increasing score thresholds within 20 second intervals in order to continue play — effectively requiring a risky approach wherein you must be constantly negotiating your way between incoming bullets, in order to line up shots on enemies who are only on-screen for fleeting moments in time. Needless to say, the patterns only continue to grow more complicated and hectic, while the screen gets busier and busier between all the projectile / explosion effects going off at once. At the very least, enemy bullets are clearly labeled with the word “CHECK” in red text floating adjacent to them, so they aren’t lost quite as easily in the shuffle. All in all, I found The Appointed Station equal parts challenging and satisfying to play, and was only left wishing there were more of it [or that I was better at it].
Unfortunately – by all currently available accounts – this is the only games software offering made available by Mr. Yoshikawa on the Net Yaroze. There’s also nothing to prove or indicate that they pursued a further career in the industry, despite the attention that The Appointed Station received between demo disc publishers and SCEI. A true shame, too, as the potential demonstrated here could’ve well spelled continued success in the business. Whatever Syuntarou Yoshikawa may be up to now; I wish them all the best at it, and appreciate their seemingly sole contribution to the Net Yaroze.
We’ve got ourselves a pair of back-to-back bangers here, I tell you what! Arena is an isometric mech-combat game, wherein you control an AT-ST-esque bipedal combat machine across four selectable stages; aiming to kill every baddie on the map, while working to conserve your health and your pittance of screen-clearing bombs. Camera rotation on Circle and Square (with R1 and L1 as designated fire buttons) give you better angles on some stylized stage designs, complete with solid use of differently-tinted tiles in order to provide some much-needed distinctions between rooms. A generous auto-aim allows for easy enemy targeting from afar, but an overheating mechanic ensures you can’t just fire at will to pre-emptively deal with incoming forces. Enemy-dropped power-ups and refills serve to help you at along the way, but deliberate level design conspires to ensure that your sorry mech is just scraping by at all times.
What I’m trying to say is, Arena is another one of those tightly-crafted Net Yaroze titles that feels like it could’ve been the prototype for a fully-realized retail game, and that I’d have loved to have seen what such a finished product might’ve looked like. Honestly, most of the crafted assets here feel of sufficiently-professional grade, and the foundation of gameplay as it currently stands might well be enough to carry an entire campaign worth of additional levels. Toss in something like a split-screen multiplayer mode on top, and you’d have had the makings of a satisfyingly straightforward little mech title. To highlight just the one low point that comes to mind: A stage which seems to take place outdoors deals in some unclear level geometry and messy collision, and represents the weakest of the four current level offerings. Between Arena and Apex, I get the impression that Tom wasn’t entirely confident in playing with wider / more open space just yet. But as his eventual career trajectory would have it; he’d soon be soaring towards galaxies far, far away.
With Arena being picked up for demo disc distribution, Tom Madams had clearly registered as a blip on Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s radar. By 2001, he found himself employed as a programmer for Team SOHO – a subsidiary of SCEE – and rose the ranks to attain a senior position by 2008. At this point, he made a move to LucasArts, where he served as ‘Senior Core Engineer’ on both Star Wars: The Force Unleashed titles, as well as the man behind ‘Central Technology’ for a smaller-scale offering titled Lucidity. Currently, he finds himself serving as a ‘Senior Software Engineer’ within no less than Google; so needless to say, he’s done pretty darn decently for himself in the decades since posting “the embarrassing fruits of [his] labours” to the Net Yaroze community.[1] I reckon you can afford to take a little more pride in your humble beginnings, my dude.
… Now, “Arena 1,” on the other hand? Well, I’m not entirely sure what to do with this one, to be honest. Is the redundant title meant to imply this is either the follow-up or predecessor to what eventually became the mech game Arena, or is it a separate endeavor entirely? As it turns out, we’ve got ourselves a time trial racing game here, which in my mind would put it closer in line with Apex before it (top-down perspective notwithstanding). It also suffers from what I presume to be an odd emulation error, wherein a pretty egregious ghosting effect can end up obscuring much of the screen almost right out the gate — which can at least be cleared away with some strategic button mashing (don’t ask me which button is the one to actually clean it up). Past that, it’s honestly still a pretty middling racer, with a track design featuring yet more of Tom’s beloved tight corridors.
There are a few jumps that are required to be made, wherein you hit ramps with enough speed to clear some gaps; but the control is so particular here that you’ll likely want to come to a complete stop well ahead of these approaches, and make sure you’re lined up as precisely as possible before daring to get any air. At the very least, colored lighting effects are quite nice shining against an otherwise single-texture-tile grid terrain, and give what would be an otherwise drab game at least a hint of visual flair. I’d love to know where exactly in the timeline Arena 1 slots between Apex and the other Arena — not even mentioning the final Yaroze game we’ll be seeing from Tom later! I can tell you to look forward to that little anomaly, I tell you what.
“It’s unlikely that anything like the Yaroze will be seen again.”[2]
That’ll do it for another edition of our continuing Net Yaroze adventures! This time next week, we’ll finally be clearing out the last of the archived games beginning with the letter “A,” and moving into the well-populated list of “B” releases. Stay tuned, so on, and so forth!
Thanks for covering my 20+ year old game – it made my day! For the record, both Amateur Wars and Mud n Blood (don’t get your hopes up) were heavily based on the source code from James Rutherford’s vastly superior Snowball Fight. Also for the record, I’d like to thank the Net Yaroze community for their support and inspiration leading to my 20+ year career in games!