Games of the Abstract: Panic Park (1997)

 

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco

One or Two Player

Arcade

 

Something a little obscure and rare here today, though Namco are an established name. Their arcade division, especially when titles were converted to the original Playstation onwards, helped them stand out, but the arcade games show the company trying to experiments. Something like the Time Crisis games, one of their most well known arcade franchises, did something as simple as have a duck function which moved over to the console ports, that for on-rail light gun games, they had players be able to take cover behind barriers, which with a time limit to clear paths that did force you to make yourself vulnerable to shot. That game, even as later on as Time Crisis 4 (2006), found an innovation in just adding a foot pedal for this duck mechanic. Some of their more unconventional work sadly never moved to consoles, with the issue of how to transfer them over for retro collections when they were made to exploit the arcade as a place for large cabinets which could have specialist gimmicks. Lucky & Wild (1993), developed by Yutaka Kounoe, was a fascinating combination of a light gun game and a driving game, inspired by American buddy cop movies of the eighties, which was designed for two players in co-operation, one driving and/or holding a gun, the other taking a gun or both firearms.

Panic Park could have been transferred to a console, if a very slight game which would have needed an expansion even back for the PSX era. The game's simplicity is however matched by its unique gimmick, distinct for the arcades but being simpler than even a foot pedal. For one or two players, Red or Blue, you have, barring a start button that can also be used for jump in a mini-game or two, is two handles on a horizontal slot that is moulded rigid, only able to be moved from left to right only in a curving movement on a sliding fixed frame. Two players, the second stick is built in the same horizontal slot, and naturally, this is designed to have players literally jostling, clashing the handles physically as well as the characters onscreen. Panic Park as a mini-game challenge is set at a theme park designed by two psychotic robo-scientists, one blue and one red. Like an even more dangerous version of Takeshi's Castle (1986-1990), the show starring actor/director/comedian Takeshi Kitano that, translated and successful in the west in broadcasts in the 2000s, was already with games for real life participants that already looked painful when failed on.

This is more deadly just for the fact that, whoever loses or fails, they are dropped down into a pit, and soon after with their freshly cleaned skull spat out afterwards. As a result, Panic Park the game has a twisted sense of humour to contrast its whimsical tone. To survive, Panic Park gives you a selection of randomised games to complete in one or two player. The last game chosen is the most important because if you win, least in one player, you get the prize regardless of your success or failure in the two of three games single player chooses, the congratulation screen better than being dropped into a pit. Alongside the fact that, were it not for an invisible block, preventing smashing each others' figures and knuckles into each other, Panic Park exists to be experienced fully as a very short but fun arcade game. This is sadly a game, in its original version, more difficult to preserve, but as someone lucky enough to play the game as intended at my nearest arcade, the fun is found in using this very simple controller which has a surprising amount of nuance to use as mostly as jostling between players. Particularly with some of the mini-games, like having to run into the distance whilst avoiding cactus, or jostling for coins whilst avoiding moles/trees/penguins, the fighting among each player is encouraged.

Point Blank, the Namco light gun game mentioned, is apt to compare to as this has a cool wacky tone, alongside it also being a mini-game compilation.  The difficulty can be altered - in the prologue, you can collect the same number of coins before you enter the titular park, which I suspect having tried not collecting them alters the difficulty, as does the difficulty level being affected by how well or bad you are doing. The humour is also there, especially in surprises, in how very simple challenges are chaotic, prone (if done in real life) to have likely killed or maimed someone who attempted them, or are just silly. One involving baby chicks, Chick Panic, is a great example where the joke is not spoilt by the punch line revelled; it suggests having to collect cute yellow chicks, not a twist on a mini-game, set in a valley, of dodging bulls if replaced by giant rampaging chicks in nappies heading for you.

There are so many games, if you play over and over, so you cannot catch all twenty five unless you constantly played the cabinet. The last challenge is always a certain set. The difficulty at its highest includes, in outer space on a tower just above the Earth, trying to stay on a giant tower, bumped by shuttles and satellites as it loses space, forcing you like many of the games to figure out how to carefully move your sole controller, more deceptive to move then you would presume in response. Quick reflexes are also needed, be it going through doors of burning walls, or with one of the final challenges, a drop from a height that, thankfully, has a crash mat at the goal at the bottom, but is populated on the descent by electric barriers and, even if you dodge them, the sick humour of your character bouncing off inert pegs like a ragdoll. One challenge just fires you out of a giant cannon at a quick speed, trying to dodge pillars, another avoiding giant mallets trying to crush you.

Panic Park is fun. Even if you had lost a huge virtue of the arcade cabinet, one simple mechanical touch, this premise could have followed on into the console world in an extended form, more so as, to adapt this, Sony for the original Playstation would introduce the Dual Shock controller in 1997, presenting gamers with two directional sticks as the likes of the Nintendo 64 had an analogue stick inherently built into their console, creating blisters on children's hands for the likes of the mini-game franchise Mario Party.  Especially as this became a time, where console video gaming was slowly dominating over the arcades, where multiplayer games and multiplayer options, in peripherals or the Nintendo 64 having four controller ports built into the system, a game like Panic Park if fleshed out could have worked in the home.

Even in one player mode, this was a nice and snappy coin-op whose wacky amusement park of doom setting perfectly set-up the tone of the games I had to try. Its obscurity is a shame, as a game from Namco, like the Pac-Man franchise, which was not a pop cultural phenomenon, nor like Time Crisis which got sequels and console ports. One arcade cabinet, which is entirely in Japanese, managed to find its way to where I was able to play it, and means I played this as intended then emulation. Preserving these machines as they are, when so many exist, is an issue, a tragedy when Panic Park, as a short jaunt, really gains a lot as an idiosyncratic title, from its jaunty score to how, yes, it contrasts the whimsical tone with its gleefully violent sense of humour. Even that I had not even explored its greater idiosyncrasies - such as "Panic King", an expert mode where you can rank highest scores on each mini-game - does not detract from how, in the little time I had with the game, Panic Park was rewarding.