Publisher: Victor Entertainment/ JVC Musical Industries
Developer: Victor Entertainment
Single Player
Sega Saturn
Sadly, one of the most expensive British releases for the Sega Saturn is one that I had fond memories of as a game demo, one which barely covers a curiosity that, with a few titles, never was ported to the United States. The full motion video pre-credits, animated, introduce the titular Keio as a young woman sent to retrieve a family heirloom back from thieving tanuki racoons, who in Japanese culture have a mythology of being sentient beings in their own world, one here the villain from a previous game stealing artefacts to help find treasure. That Keio wears, as her special costume, a Playboy bunny outfit is a bizarre, but Japan has had this as a motif in their pop culture beyond the Playboy license. The first level, found on as a demo and the same introduction here, is a simple but beautiful looking 2D platformer where you can acquire a giant comically big mallet and hit enemies in the woods. A character, a princess dubbed Himiko Yamatai, comes as a joke where as a potential boss fight does not go expectedly, where Keio in an in-game cut scene bop her robot once and cause it to collapse. The level and the demo ended with Keio in a hut which is knocked off down a giant hole.
Actually playing the game beyond this point, Keio Flying Squadron 2 gets weirder, one of the few obscure Japanese game that got a release in the West only for PAL European territories, with an English language track and translation as a result. It is not with a spoiler warning that, for the final level and boss, Keio is in a demon's stomach, digestive acid at the bottom, hitting its cut anthropomorphized heart as it spits out random words (English translated) of Japanese concepts like "karaoke" or "otaku" which you use as platforms to climb up to freedom. In fact, how you even get to this point is not as much a spoiler in this case but more part of the freewheeling, deeply eccentric work which, adding to the weirdness, is a sequel to a Mega CD game. The Mega-CD itself, whilst not the last add-on, was part of the period where Sega arguably started to stumble after the success of the Mega Drive/Genesis game console, an attempt to extend the life of that machine with CD based gamed with their own upgrade in visuals and style. Adding to the strange circumstances, to a game that is probably forgotten too, is that it was a scrolling shooter where Keio rode her cute dragon Spot. The sequel, twice, returns to its roots as a scrolling shooter, among its many curious tangents.
Most of the game is a platformer. Jumping on enemies' heads is standards here as well, unless it is a mole person to which in its score system (which will be explained later) you get points docked off. There are three weapons too, very useful as without them you die after one hit, making them a useful defence for one blow you can hastily pick up again if lost if you are quick; the mallet, an umbrella whose lighter attack is compensated by being possible to open and float on jumps with, and a bow with arrows. The world is strange and very Japanese, which seems distasteful to point out baring that, not hiding it, this is actually set in Edo Shogunate era of Japanese history (1865-1868) Japan, even having an animated segment later on, set at a martial arts tournament, where Keio is interviewed for television screens. Yes, there is a martial arts tournament later on, as a pair of boss levels, which was abruptly in how late it is in the game, and yet appropriate for a game which could go from scrolling shooter levels to one at a theme park jumping a rollercoaster car despite the setting among other scenes.
The game has challenges, but playing it there is more of a sense of it being more of a spectacle to enjoy whether on an Easy or Hard difficulty. The points system as well is a greater priority, for a game of very eclectic sequences and challenges, where if you lower the score down to negative points, you get advice of how to improve in the game in the special gallery, amusing and cute images the higher your score can reach. In its whimsical form, you get a surprising amount of diversity in the main game, all surrounding a slight and absurd tale of acquiring sacred orbs that can lead to a great treasure. Running through a trap ladened house of ninja raccoons (and finding myself thwarted for a brief period by the trick floor panels you fall a level down from). Having to throw a variety of objects, be they scenery at enemies, friendly kappa whose bald heads are spring pads to jump higher from, even giant mah-jong pieces to throw into a pair of hands to open a weight locked door. The rollercoaster ride, followed by a maze like jaunt underwater in an aquarium, thankfully without oxygen to worry about air bubbles as a shield, to even a jaunt into outer space.
The bosses as well, whilst simplistic, are just as odd. The finale of the two scrolling shooter levels, with hazards to dodge and power-ups for more fire power, concludes with a battle against an alien in outer space who abducts cows from the nearby Earth and flings their newly carved meat at you among its many attacks. A toxic waste dumping truck shaped like a bald feudal era court minister. The haunted house giant head boss that, after multiple forms and throwing coconut drinks at it, eventually turns into a digitised head of a real man and disappears in shame when defeated. And, particularly, that martial arts tournament, which brings back the princess, Princess Himiko, who is trying to acquire the McGuffins for her own heritage, but also gives you a random choice of the boss beforehand in the brackets. Either a bomber (dubbed in English as being flamboyant and explicitly gay), or a Christian priest as I got who, as a giant with blue skin, floats in the air, summons angelic cat creatures and who replicates his head after being hit, the copies usable weapons to fling back at him. I did mention Keio Flying Squadron 2 was a weird game?
Even in mind to its age, the game still looks sumptuous, with only a remaster (if possible) of the full motion video animated sequences and a gloss up really needed to make it shine. The quality of the animation itself alone, whilst occasional, is neither to be dismissed either, even if Saturn's aged ability to load it and picture quality is a good reminder, when they and other companies explored animated and "FMV" live action scenes, this was still new territory for videogames which is poignant at a time a lot of anime inspired titles and anime adaptations with animated sequences were being develops. In this case, like a lot of animation studios who worked in video games, Studio Pierrot was hired, veterans from their foundation in 1979 who have made incredible work (the film Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)), but also produced huge worldwide popular titles like the Naruto franchise.
The English dub is of its time; fitting the era, it is broad, and baring one horrendous use of a Jamaican accent, it is charming in its goofiness when anime and video game dubbing would change over the decades. Whilst it is limited, between sound bites in-game and as each chapter is charmingly split into episode previews, it does add a bit to the tone, such as the ninja raccoons in one level who shout how they have disgraced their masters. The Japanese dub version is full of prolific anime voice actors of this era, lead by the J-pop singer and actress Miho Kanno as Keio. No one in the English dub is prominent baring Roger L. Jackson, who does many voices. Mostly working in video games, he has worked in animated and films. The same year as this game was released, he also voiced Ghostface, the scary voice of the killer in the first Wes Craven Scream movie.
Not a long game, each level is however different from each other, five chapters each, so you got a great deal from this. Each stage provides a new challenge, and most importantly, all of them had fun or interesting aspects, even if the underwater level if frustrating at points. The plot is, to be blunt, tentative in how it is put together, but it will not dismiss a game where none of it feels unimaginative or generic at all. It is a delight to have all of them stand out, even the second to last, a simple platforming level, adding a unique mechanic of traps everywhere, even comedic ones which are still dangerous of tanuki waiting near bamboo cages with power ups under them, or noticing hamster wheels inexplicably powering moving platforms in a previous one much earlier, only to have that signpost having to occupy one yourself with the decency of the visuals to show how much you need to run to get everything working. It is a game where, not too long or short, it never has a dull level in the slightest.
Keio Flying Squadron 2's obscurity, and rarity, even its Japanese release looking a rarer title when Japanese Saturn games are far cheaper in certain titles, is a tragedy. Its creators Victor Entertainment, a subsidiary of the media corporation JVCKenwood Victor Entertainment, who have worked and distributed in a huge variety of mediums but stopped in video games in the early 2000s. Sadly, this interest production is forgotten; as of August 2021, the PAL release can cost over £200 pounds, and like many games of yore, it floats in the ether, which is tragic as it is a bundle of eccentric fun.
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