The Closeout Warrior

I’m not what you’d call a comic book fan by any stretch, so I don’t really know that much about the Punisher or Nick Fury, other than that they solve problems with large amounts of violence. Violence that seems like it would make a passable video game.

Like any good side-scrolling brawler, the story is largely irrelevant. This is a good thing because I don’t really remember what it even is. What I do remember is that you have to take the Punisher or Nick Fury (or both if you’re playing two-player mode) on a quest to kill a bunch of bad guys.

And boy, do you ever go around killing bad guys. You are constantly swarmed by throngs of identical enemies, most of whom are pretty weak. You use your fists, guns, grenades, and anything else you can get your hands on to end the lives of just about anything that moves. The game is a bit on the violent side.

This is the kind of game that you don’t have to think about too much to play. You just walk up, throw in a couple quarters, and blast away. As always, it’s more fun if you have another player to share in the mayhem, which I did every Saturday during the summer a bunch of years ago when this game was actually available in the wild where I live.

If you ever see it somewhere, you could throw a couple of credits into it, and I bet you wouldn’t feel too cheated by it.

I’ve never been a huge comic book fan, but I am familiar with some of the characters and situations. Captain America, soldier with a shield. Hawkeye, bow and arrow guy. Iron Man, rich guy with fighting armor. Vision, android. I learned all of that from the arcade game starring the four of them, Captain America and the Avengers.

So it seems that the dastardly Red Skull has used his mind control device and massive wealth to gather a team of supervillians. Goal? World domination, of course. So Cap and his buddies have to save the planet the only way they know how, by pummeling the villains senseless.

The game is pretty straightforward, run to the right, savagely destroying everything in your way. There are comic-style interstitials between the levels and what might possibly be the cheesiest voice acting ever recorded (I’m pretty sure there’s just one guy doing all the voices, and his range is… less than impressive). So it adds to the cheesy-appeal factor. Lots of characters across the Marvel universe make cameos to help out, so if you’re into that kind of thing, it might be kind of fun to try and spot them all. But I just play it because Captain America has a hard time saving the world without my help, and it’s nice to feel needed.

3 Wonders is a bit of an oddball arcade machine. It has three ‘games’ inside, the first two tell a story, and the third just doesn’t fit in at all. Don’t Pull is a lot like Pengo. There are several blocks that you can push (but not pull) and enemies that scurry around the playfield. The goal is to eliminate all of the baddies by either smashing them between two blocks or covering up their manhole covers so they can’t get into the stage.

This continues for something like one hundred levels with adorable cutscenes every so often. And even though it doesn’t fit into the theme of the other two games it shares the cabinet with, it’s still a fun diversion for a minute or two.

If you went into an arcade in the late 90s, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a T-Mek machine, though you may not have known what it was. The machine itself was pretty imposing, it was a large machine designed for four people (the version I played, at any rate). Each person got a self-contained cockpit, complete with screen, seat, two joysticks, and surround sound system. But for what?

T-Mek is a game about fighting tanks, and your station is supposed to simulate the interior of the tank. The controls are a bit tough to wrap your head around at first. Each of your sticks controls the treads on one side, so you push them both forward to move forward, both back to go backward, and one in each direction to turn. Use the triggers to fire your weak guns, left thumb to shield, and right thumb to fire your special weapon. It really becomes second nature after a while.

This is all nice and everything, but what do you do? Well, you and up to three of your friends jump into your tanks and then ride around an arena in an effort to blow each other up. Each time you do some damage, you get points. Get the most points at the end of the match, and you win!

Single player is about the same as multiplayer, except that you have to go up against progressively harder computer-controlled opponents in order to ascend the ladder and claim the title of ‘champion tank shooter-guy’. But, to be honest, I didn’t really invest much time into the single player mode. Multi-player was much more exciting. It was pretty exhilarating to go into an arcade on a Saturday night and string together a half-dozen or more victories in a row. Kind of makes me misty-eyed remembering what a good time can be had at a good arcade, and saddened that they’re becoming harder and harder to find anymore.

Sure, you’ve probably played Pac-Man likely have played Ms. Pac-Man, and possibly have played Jr. Pac-Man or one of the other myriad spinoff games from the series. But what about one of the most unlicensed games of them all, Hyper Pac Man?

This version is similar to its predecessors in that you have to eat all of the dots on the screen while avoiding the ghost-shaped monsters. Where it differs is that Pac Man has powerups scattered around the levels that help him along, shoes to run faster, shoes to jump, a helmet to take a hit, and a helmet that fires laser beams. Throw in destructible walls, secret passages, and boss fights every 10 stages and you have just about the weirdest Pac-inspired game you’re going to find.

The game ends after 30 levels and I was able to finish it with just under 10 credits my first time through, so it’s not a prohibitive time investment. I hear it’s also got a two-player mode, but I wasn’t talented enough to play both sides at once.

So, what do you do if you have the license to distribute Pac-Man, one of the most popular games of all time, but don’t have a sequel to throw to the masses that are waiting anxiously for the Next Big Thing? You make and distribute a totally unauthorized sequel, of course!

Jr. Pac-Man stays pretty close to the formula laid down by its predecessor: ghost-shaped monsters chase your little pac-person through a maze, said pac-person must eat everything in the maze except the ghost-shaped monsters. Pretty standard stuff as far as the pac-universe goes. Though there are a couple of significant differences.

The maze is about 2 regular screens wide and will scroll back and forth to show you the action. The obvious problems with this setup include: you can’t keep an eye on all four of the ghosts if they are off the screen and it’s tough to find that one dot that you missed in order to clear the stage.

The other main problem is the bouncing fruits, though they aren’t so much ‘fruits’ as they are ‘tricycles’, ‘kites’, and the like. But they do two notable things: when they pass over a dot, they make it slightly larger, and when they collide with a power-pill they self-destruct, taking out the power-pill as well. Since the pills are your only line of defense (other than your lightening quick reflexes and exceptional cunning, of course), this makes things slightly more difficult, but the real kick in the pants is the slightly-larger regular dots. They net you slightly more points when you eat them, but slow you down slightly (since they’re so big, I suppose) as you’re chewing through them. Throw in a cluster of slightly embiggened dots, reduced power-pills, and some relentless ghosties that you may or may not be able to see, and you have a game that becomes frustrating very quickly. I managed to see the first act, two stages in, and that’s about when my stamina ran out. Permanently.