Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007)

 

Director: Kōji Shiraishi

Screenplay: Kōji Shiraishi and Naoyuki Yokota

Cast: Eriko Sato as Kyōko Yamashita; Haruhiko Kato as Noboru Matsuzaki; Chiharu Kawai as Mayumi Sasaki; Rie Kuwana as Mika Sasaki; Sakina Kuwae as Natsuki Tamura; Yûto Kawase as Masatoshi Kita; Saaya Irie as Shiho Nakajima

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

An urban myth in real life, the slit-mouthed woman or the Kuchisake-onna is a figure of a woman with a mouth sliced open from ear to ear. She can be documented at least back into the Edo Period¹, but the version I was first aware of is the modern interpretation most will picture even if you do not know that name. That of the woman who cross paths with at night or by yourself, a medical mask concealing the Chelsea Smile, who asks you a question of whether she is still beautiful, and the punishment of slashing or killing someone even if you say yes. She has had a few films about her, one from 1996 (Kuchisake-onna), and hilariously Carved was beaten to the punch by erotic pinku cinema with Kannô byôtô: nureta akai kuchibiru (2005). Carved itself comes with the issue, however, that it is not really a Kuchisake-onna tale, among the many questions to prod the film by Kōji Shiraishi, a figure you may know for Sadako vs. Kayako (2016), the very campy Ring/Ju-On crossover film, for Noroi: The Curse (2005), or the infamous Grotesque (2009), a film from the "torture porn" era of films which is infamous as a rare film banned by the British Board of Film Classificators in the late 2000s into the modern day, which is a rare thing to transpire at all. 

 Welding scissors, the slit-mouthed woman here is targeting children in one community, leading to a school wisely having the kids leave class past noon with their teachers getting them to their parents safely. For one female teacher though, Kyōko Yamashita (Eriko Sato), she discovers that one student Mika is being emotionally and physically abused by her mother, something this new teacher is going to have to psychologically deal with, as her reaction leads to Mika being taken by the Kuchisake-onna and that Kyōko herself is a divorced mother who lost her child after hitting her. This is where an elephant in the room is there, the concept having uncomfortable gender politics as, rather than a Kuchisake-onna, this is a ghost of an abusive mother who possesses mothers to get her deeds done. This concept is appropriately creepy - a woman, all mothers here, can suddenly develop cold-like symptoms, then suddenly be changed into this figure, with the horror that, alongside being used as a puppet for the task, if anyone thinks they have killed the ghost, the body left is that of the poor unfortunate woman whose children now have no mother. It is a really ghoulish and disturbing concept, especially as anyone, including with their own child or another's, can suddenly turn without warning.

It is however an issue, due to how the story tells this, that this all comes within a world where all the depictions of abuse, including the man who claims to be the son of this ghost as an adult, are by women. It does come with a sense of following a theme, but that in itself raises concerns of what would be implied if you do not think critically of this point, especially as our female lead is one of those with this sin in her life. If it was not for this, it would be a fascinating premise, especially as this has the added horror that director Kōji Shiraishi has no qualms with children being killed or maimed in this story, which comes with a warning by adds an escalation.

The concern of what the message is followed by the fact that, truthfully, Carved was not grabbing me at all. The decision to turn the Kuchisake-onna into this figure, the script co-written by the director, makes no sense, and the film should have remained its own concept, as nothing about the urban legend really makes sense for what is perfect for its own fictional urban legend tale of a child catching boogieman.  The idea of this folklore legend targeting children makes sense even if the Kuchisake-onna was the point to have - one version of this legend, which likely helped its growth in the modern day, was of how at the end of 1978 in the town of Yaotsu in Gifu Prefecture, a rumour of a woman with the slit mouth being seen, by an old woman in a farming family, blew up from a local newspaper on the subject to various interpretations of the figure even nationwide². The concept even makes sense for an urban legend for young adults or adults to be wary of, as imagining in the nightlife of Japan, you could accidentally cross paths with something or something that is dangerous to you. Befitting my obsession, something about Japanese horror films I have brought up in reviews like as an obsession of mine, with how their public urban environments have an inherent atmosphere, this type of figure or an entirely original one targeting young children in a small town makes sense, and nothing in the premise in either case is bad.

What we get is pretty conventional here instead, not latching on the idea of an urban myth, and even if this had been a tale of a child catcher tale without its slit-mouthed selling point, it really lost me after a while. It becomes very convoluted, having to keep the tropes of the legend still canonical to this figure, but with little real need for them. Also, how for itself an obvious and interesting premise, that of the ghost of abuse, does feel a mess in logic too neither is helped by it revealing uncomfortable presumptions of what its message is in terms of motherhood. Knowing a lot of this is just meant to be violent entertainment that did not think this would be considered makes this worse, as even if Kōji Shiraishi came to this as a nasty horror film, as this could have danced a lot more carefully around this subject, and honestly just taken a few directions in opposite creative choices, either into the world of figures like Sadako the director would direct a film of, or something much more darker and uncomfortable. As it is, Carved really benefitted from none of its aspects in result.

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1) Legend of Kuchisake-onna, for The Business Standard.

2) Japanese Urban Legends from the “Slit-Mouthed Woman” to “Kisaragi Station”, with interview and text by Itakura Kimie and published for Nippon.com on December 27th 2019

Games of the Abstract: B. Rap Boys (1992)

Developer: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

Publisher: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

One to Three Players

Arcade

 

In 1989, Kaneko released a scrolling beat em up called DJ Boy, which tackled North American culture and hip hop. A company whose eccentricities come to me through the likes of their longest lasting franchise being Gal Panic, a Qix clone originally an erotic game for the arcade, Kaneko Co, Ltd. released titles in other genres for the arcade and for the home consoles, and DJ Boy would get a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis  conversion. B. Rap Boys, following up as a sequel, definitely feels of the time, a cheesy Japanese tap on rap in a scrolling beat-em-up where, stuck to one character depending which of the three player controls you take, three guys wish to become the best of the streets whilst rocking the best M.C. Hammer pants you could possess. The fact my character looked closer to being at a disco, yet in a game of the early nineties, did add an unintentional humour, but to the credit of Kaneko, this has its tongue in its cheek.

There are some caveats, and among these is a sense of repetition this suffers from, an issue with the beat-em-up genre which I have thankfully seen the best (or most memorable) avoid but this one struggles with. A two button combat system, it puts the game in the position that it does recycle enemies and feels like it needed a few more moments of spectacle within itself. The other issue comes with the awareness that the original Japanese version of DJ Boy has a deeply problematic female boss character named Big Mama, who looks like an African American minstrel stereotype who was changed for the Western releases, so Kaneko whilst not as severely here dropped the ball in a way that does have to be warned about. B. Rap Boys suffers from an enemy design or two, with its exaggerated and mostly squat cast, that skirt this same issue. Some are the enemies are harmlessly ridiculous in a  good way, such as buff flannel wearing brothers of Bob Ross, the American painter and TV host, but you also have black characters who do skirt uncomfortable stereotypes. One unfortunate example, an enemy who floats around on balloons in the air, is drawn in an uncomfortable design and throws exploding watermelons at players; everything in another design would be harmless, but the characters’ design does look grotesque, and the use of watermelons in minstrel stereotyping in North American culture does not help either, really egregious for a modern player.

It is a shame as, beyond this, this ridiculous world of party rap aesthetic is a really good aesthetic especially with the vibrancy of the game’s sprite art, all in its bizarre mishmash of hip hop with pro wrestling, strange choices like the Ross brothers and squat character designs like a toy line from the era. B. Rap Boys beyond its issues is a solid fighter too. You do feel it has to recycle sequences more than others I have played, but the fun is still to be had. It feels random, as we will get to the lions, but for a game about rap supremacy in fist fights, you fight personal fighting robots and the big bad, the final boss, is a pro wrestler within a wrestling ring, which belongs to stream of consciousness quirkiness. Yes, we got Def Jam Vendetta (2003) and Def Jam: Fight for NY (2004), a set of rap based pro wrestling and grappling games, but with the money left abandoned on the table to envision Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg in their own personal mech robots in an action game that never happened, this does belong to the Japanese arcade game type of pop culture delirium.

The cartoonish look it has, over the top as many levels begin with scrolling starts, where by bicycle or skateboard (depending on your character) you get to bash people with them, and that the enemies can even ride, does bring something cool to the table. There are cool touches throughout like this, of how bar counters and fences, in the middle or side of sections, can be slide/climbed over to the other side mid-fight, which is a distinct touch to the game in bringing environment to the genre, which you do not see a lot. Yes, you fight lions, specifically a female lion tamer, drawn more realistically as a statuesque beautiful blonde, and two big cats all together in a circus, which is an abrupt and memorable boss encounter for any of this genre, especially as the lions also are bosses as she is, making it a challenge. There is also the bull, not an enemy, but an abrupt hazard in a couple of sections who appears and charges through to the other side of the screen, including the scrolling bicycle/skateboard sections, taking even enemies let alone players out in its way, which is a fittingly strange and yet also memorable touch adding to the chaos.

The other great touch is the music. The game, as a Japanese property about hip hop which is cheesy and at times problematic, does deserve praise for progressiveness and a great score, for they brought on music from a band called 3 Stories High, from their only album Famous Last Words (1991). Consisting of three American members (DOC, D.O.G, and Peter Gun) and one Japanese member (DJ Koji), sadly their career did not include anything else¹, but in mind that my knowledge of rap music is very limited, it suits the tone perfectly. In its own way too, even in mind to the legitimately acclaimed and sometimes serious rap music from the USA from the period, it adds some seriousness despite its more light tone. It befits a game like this with the energy it sways with, a solid groove through the brawls onscreen, adding atmosphere to the cartoonish violence even when the robots come in. These are the touches which won me over, even if this qualifies as a b-tier member of this genre. Unfortunately, this was also another game which never got a home port and never has been released as a retro release.

Kaneko in general, beyond Gal Panic games, feel like a Japanese developer/publisher who, even if they released games in the West, feels of their own world. It is one with some questionable choices, such as a game called The Berlin Wall (1991), which looks likely to be as subtle with its take on the Soviet Iron Curtain as you could get, i.e. not in the slightest, whilst the Rap Boy games making questionable choices in depicting black characters is the one real concern for anyone wishing to play these games, as much as even releasing them in the modern day without warning. They did make tie in games for the official mascot for Frito-Lay's Cheetos brand snack, such as Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool (1992), the licensed food mascot game truly of the nineties and very unlikely to break through to the Western consciousness as Capcom did with their games. B. Rap Boys, whilst ignoring that the North Americans gave us American Ninja films, even has Japanese and Western versions, with more kabuki dancers and ninjas in the Japanese release as enemies, showing there was an eye to the West with a game like this. In 2004, Kaneko joined many Japanese companies in the changes to the video game industry with filing bankruptcy, before a civil lawsuit fully finished them off in 2006², a company which had a long legacy in the eighties arcade era, working with Taito too, and through multiple consoles into the nineties, with a lot of puzzle and mahjong games eventually but a lot of strange curiosities from their Japanese and American branches. These are not just those already talked of, but also Mortal Kombat rip offs with their own weirdness (Blood Warrior (1994)), a sequel to a sprite based game not with digitized real actors and a Kappa costume for added weirdness, to Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill (1993), an unreleased SNES platformer where Socks, the cat owned by then-president Bill Clinton, fights as bosses Richard Nixon and a zombified Ronald Regan being controlled by his wife Nancy Regan. For obvious reasons, Kaneko is ripe to be covered, whilst B. Rap Boys for its flaws is also a solid beat-em-up worthy to play, showing the skills of the staff at the company in terms of well made games too.  

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1) Hardcore Gaming 101's B. Rap Boys reviews, posted by Benjamin Alexander on August 28th 2018.

2) Page on Kaneko from Segaretro.com.

Games of the Abstract: Kowai Shashin - Shinrei Shashin Kitan (2002)

 

Developer: Media Entertainment

Publisher: Media Entertainment

One Player

Sony Playstation One

 

Many games were developed for the original Sony Playstation, one of the console's huge successes in combating veteran companies like Sony and Nintendo as a debut being the amount of developers and publishers they could sign to port games to the machine. As with any console, however, which is successful, you get many games, and there is an entire underbelly to a console like the PS1 just in titles which never left Japan, especially as in the modern day, Kowai Shashin eventually got an English translation.

The game, if you have heard about it, is known as being "cursed", and spoken as someone who is open minded to the occult, and is fascinated by the creepy pasta concept, I am however going to bring down the Monty Python giant foot and be a killjoy, as it is the least interesting aspect to Kowai Shashin. It is much more interesting as a Japanese horror game curiosity, especially when to my surprise, this was not from knee-deep into the console's glory years but released in 2002, where the Playstation 2 had been released in Japan in what is more of a fascinating curiosity in Japanese horror games, especially when to my surprise, thinking this is knee-deep in the console's golden era, it was instead released in 2002, where the Playstation 2 had been released in Japan in 2000 and thus a game like this exists on an original machine that, in its favour, lasted until 2006 but was not a priority.

The story is around the photos used in the game, real ones in one of the game's most curious touches, which was said to have been an ill-advised mistake from having actually used real ones and, deepening on the tale told, botching or compromising the spiritual barrier put in place so nothing bad happened¹. The concept of spirit photography, and the concept of ghosts haunting modern technology found in Japanese horror, is inherently fascinating for me, and yes, the concept of the haunted video game, a niche in itself, is curious to consider, if no way as interesting with this particular game. Maybe a tale around a game I can play undercuts the mystique, but even if the ghosts were real, they have left me be and will be treated with respect.

It begins with Media Entertainment, whose output is sadly maligned to Japan only, in mind that they surprised me with Kyuiin (1996), their scrolling shooter which not only won me. With one exception for the Sega Dreamcast, a pachinko game named Pachi-Slot Teiou: Dream Slot - Heiwa SP (2001), all their titles were PS1 exclusives, and in a better world, a brave publisher would have released these in the West. Good or bad, Ramen Hashi (1999), a life simulator of a ramen shop chef, or Yakiniku Bugyou (2001), their puzzle game surrounding being a barbecue chef trying to cook meat, even if I have deliberately picked on their food obsession, would fascinate many. Tragically they did not last long into the 2000s, and the urban tale is right that Kowai Shashin is their last game, but even if ghosts were involved too, that era was also one which claimed a lot of big Japanese developers and publishers famous in the West, so it was a turbulent time all round and ghosts may have to be blamed too for the likes of SNK going through bankruptcy among others. With a lot of their games in 2D, with Kowai Shashin a distinct exception, Media Entertainment really encompass that wonderful idea of the publisher/developer who were literally experimenting with fascinating concepts and making video gaming fun for those in Japan who got games like this.

To sum up the style of the game, you play Hiori, a young woman who has inherited through her family the ability to perform exorcisms on spirit photographs, devouring the souls of the vindictive ghosts from across Japan in button timed proto-QTAs (quick time events). The photos are real, the ghosts drawn but the photos including people's eyes obscured in black boxes, with real locations from a bowling alley to public buildings. It certainly stands out, an eeriness to feed many a tale that these photos contained images of real people who died. I have dismissed the creepypasta, but the images, even with the obvious Photoshop work, where faces and images have been added to them, do have a legitimate creepiness to them, even a reality, because of the obvious fakeness, alongside the fact that there is a time capsule nature to the images reconceptualised here. I have always found urban locations in Japan, and those in industrial land bordering the countryside, in their horror films and stories possess an atmosphere which adds so much, here seen again for me as you need to scan your psychic preceptor, a cursor, over the images to find the ghosts.

The game is curious, in that it's gameplay and style is fascinating, one that if it appeared on Steam would gain traction as a curious cult indie. Playing Hiori, eventually uncovering her family's demonic past, you scan each photo for ghosts with the cursor, going from blue to yellow to red, with mind that using the ability drains your life's candle (life bar) if you take too long. Once a ghost is caught, it is a two stage exorcism. First, you need to zap the ghost a few times, for early stages only left (square on the PS1 controller) and right (circle) to worry about, later including up (triangle) and down (cross). After that, you need to complete with button combinations for the second part, more needed as you go on to succeed without having to restart the two stages again if you screw up. The last are always the same button combinations, almost ritualistic befittingly for the game's premise, but slipping and finding yourself losing health trying to catch the ghost presents the one flaw with the game which stands out. It is repetitious and frustrating, and whilst the gameplay is fascinating and the game will be getting a good nod of respect to it in the end for this review, it does feel a game you can lose your temper with, a game which could have been fine tuned. It is telling that, when a fan translation came into existence, two alternative versions on opposite sides of the difficulty also came to be - one which jettisoned the gameplay, effectively turning this into a visual novel, and one which randomised the button combinations in the later section of the exorcism to add a greater challenge.

The game's repetition is its own worst enemy, a shame as this fascinates as a curiosity, a reminder of how fascinating the fifth into the sixth eras of game consoles, even in the games we were lucky enough to get in the West, could be so unique. With the best consoles, even if too many of the gems being too expensive second hand nowadays, a lot of others still, if flawed or "bad", are still available cheap especially for the Sony consoles, and with the obscure Japanese only titles, they are being found over time and being made available. The low budget production, in the end times for the Playstation One, is not a negative either, with only that the cut scenes are images with text only, matched by voice acting, the lead the only voice heard. It is an idiosyncratic game difficult to even classify in terms of genre, which is really compelling to think of.

Kowai Shashin has seven chapters altogether, and its short length is contrasted by its gameplay being focused around stress in completing the challenges. The story eventually leads to the equivalent of a final boss battle, [Major Spoiler] against an ancestor whose skills they decided to invest into devouring the souls of their own clan to become Godlike [Spoilers End]; to its credit, if abruptly introduced, a conclusion with bombast. The game does cement the tantalising nature of the Playstation, as talked of early in this review, of how to beat Nintendo and Sega in the fifth generaiton of consoles as outsiders, Sony were open in making the console enticing for developers to make games for it. In how Square jumped from Nintendo when they realised the Nintendo 64 sticking to the cartridge format would kibosh their ambitions for Final Fantasy VII (1997) but also in how the console let people, with ease, produce games for the console. It led to shovelware, but luckily, you find weird ethereal content like this still being tripped over decades later and being preserved outside official channels.

It is a premise which could be expanded upon, which is Kowai Shashin's best virtue, the "crude" use of photographs, if still possible to use in the modern day, as potent considering the creepypasta legend based entirely on them nowadays. It is an eerie game if you can get past the moments of irritation trying to beat it, the photos doctored in ways which are obvious but also startling, like a pair of vending machines with, in the gap in-between, a multi-limbed monstrosity poking out. The ghosts are not cuddly either - foetus babies, burning men, piles of multi-being flesh - to add to the morbidness. The issues are just the need for improving the gameplay, the sort of thing, if this had not been Media Entertainment's last game, where this got a sequel, the Kowai Shashin II game we never got which would fix its frustrations and take its mechanics and flex them in little touches. If this had even gotten a Western release, now selling at a ridiculous second hand price as some games sadly do, this would have gotten a cult audience with ease just by itself. What we get instead in this timeline is just as interesting, more and more games like this being found in just the Japanese exclusive Playstation One games, so many enticing games yet to be translated and uncovered before you even consider other formats.

 

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1) The (Not So) True Story of a Haunted Game, written by Baxter's Mono Omoi for Medium and published on March 27th 2021.

Bad Taste (1987)

 

Director: Peter Jackson

Screenplay: Peter Jackson, Tony Hiles and Ken Hammon

Cast: Terry Potter as Ozzy / 3rd Class Alien; Pete O'Herne as Barry / 3rd Class Alien; Peter Jackson as Derek / Robert; Mike Minett as Frank / 3rd Class Alien; Craig Smith as Giles Copeland/ 3rd Class Alien; Ken Hammon as 3rd Class Alien; Costa Botes as 3rd Class Alien; Doug Wren as Lord Crumb; Dean Lawrie as Lord Crumb SPFX double / 3rd Class Alien; Peter Vere-Jones as Lord Crumb's voice

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I'll have his head Reg. I want to suck his brains out.

Spare a thought for the poor bastards who do not work with large, well established groups who deal with extraterrestrial activity like the Men in Black or those who work out of Area 51. Middle America, full of UFO sightings, may either have a police force who are not taught to deal with such cases, or a small group of amateur or professional (but unfunded) specialists but at least can have a Mulder and Scully, or similar FBI agents, at hand. In Bad Taste, marking his first work in a career which would wildly spin out into ambition and legacy, Peter Jackson shows us that all New Zealand has at hand, whilst capable, is The Astro Investigation and Defence Service, a New Zealand group, who even have to put up with a name so politically incorrect even in 1987 when written as an acronym, let alone the fact they have only four members. Dealing with malevolent aliens rampaging around their beautiful but quaint countryside, the sick humour of the name is something to take their minds off said nasties terrifying the sheep and making whole towns of people disappear, and it says a lot about Bad Taste the film, living up to that title, that the only negative aspect to that name is the aforementioned acronym, whilst everything else in this film, when Jackson was entirely outside the film industry, is tasteless but aged well.

Unfortunately, finding the entirety of the population of Kaihoro missing, The Astro Investigation and Defence Service have to deal with aliens who want to use human beings as the main food supply for an intergalactic fast food franchise. Never has the terms ‘Heavy Users’ and ‘Super Heavy Users’, from the Morgan Spurlock documentary Super Size Me (2004), been as macabre as when you link them to the activities of the aliens in Bad Taste.  This is also of a type of alien invasion story far removed from even The War of the Worlds, where even if the Tripods invaded in Surrey, H.G. Welles' original novel still had an apocalyptic nature, whilst Bad Taste's humour, one of its many virtues, is embracing New Zealand as a nation and a Commonwealth country in its more mundane aspects. Only now is it dated that Queen Elizabeth II's portrait is onscreen in one of the first shots, and there are both Dr. Who references and a liberal (and specific use) of the term "bastard" throughout. The innocuous nature of Peter Jackson’s first three films – this, Meet The Feebles (1989), and Brain Dead [Dead Alive] (1992) – is a huge factor in why they are as memorable among other factors.

It is also hilarious to see New Zealand, before it was put on the map by the Lord of the Rings adaptations Jackson helmed, as interpreted here. We can imagine a young Peter Jackson, in his yellow/red knitted scarf as Derek, not despondent about the possibility of Oakland being wiped out by the invading aliens, filming in these locations and getting an inkling that Hobbits would not look out of place there for a J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation. Usually in alien invasion films everyone looks the glamorized version of what a normal person is, the settings metropolises (New York, Los Angeles) or cleaned up versions of places, and never would it be conceived that one of the main heroes, with an uzi in hand to take out the mindless hordes, would step in a patch of cow dung and slip like in this film. Bad Taste still has a final chapter that is an extended gun battle, but because of its low budget, its setting, and its jokey and naive tone, such images are pulled up into being inherently silly as well as gripping.

That the film is as much a comedy as well as horror, keeping in the boom of ‘splatterstick’ and horror-comedies made in the 1980s, enforces this as it never takes itself seriously. Sight gags, jokes against places within New Zealand, and aliens giving the heroes the middle finger during combat all pile up together in their frivolousness to create something inanely charming. The first three films of Jackson’s, even in the perversity of Meet The Feebles, were able to take such juvenile humour and ideas, and makes them into imaginative, amusingly inane but compelling areas. Brain Dead [Dead Alive] would succeed the most, as its 1950s setting and the era’s stereotypical stiltedness already brought a sense of naivety and innocence to the characters and interactions that were invaded by the bloodiest and graphically imaginative gore scenes you could see. That they are New Zealand films, part of the British Commonwealth, does have a lot to say; connections with the British and our use of our own inanity within our most surreal and disgusting jokes is matched by the utter amusement of how Jackson runs with the connections with the British Royalty and our culture within his country, just by the amount of times the late Queen or (then) Prince Charles’ faces appear in such a gory film.

The gore is the most distinctive aspects of Bad Taste, but the virtue of it and Brain Dead is that they are more just decapitations and blood effects continually repeated, but delve into a Carnivalesque mentality where the rules of human anatomy are destroyed as much as the prosthetic effects. Case in point would be the predicament that main character Derek (Jackson in one of two roles) has when his skull is broken and he is in constant danger of his brains falling out. The anatomy of the grey matter is slightly suspect even for my lack of medical knowledge, but the complete lack of rules is what makes the gorier sequences stand out. And it is not just these scenes too as, despite the low budgeted nature of the film, shades of the camera techniques Jackson would have in his later career and the Lord of the Rings trilogy can be seen in these origins, the elaborate movements at certain moments striking considering how difficult or time consuming some might have been to pull off. The attempts to play with the form of cinema in one’s debut, made over four years¹, can be seen and are the best virtues of the film, the piecemeal nature of this production length found in how the film's editing has to coordinate around Jackson himself playing two characters, Derek clean shaven and as one of the aliens with a full beard, let alone the production having to work around how the creators were complete outsiders to their film industry originally making this. This is a work, in terms of micro-budget and no-budget genre cinema, of a high bar, just for having to work around something obvious which could have undercut the film in continuity. Jackson even has the pair fight on top of a cliff just to toy with this, whether out of practicability or to see if he and the rest of the film production team could pull it off, the mirrored doppelganger effect a memorable and applaudable attempt even if it is obvious how they set the individual shots together to make it work.

The film's premise beyond this is obvious in mind to its limitations in cast and resources - one poor sod out for donations wanders into the town now without a population but flesh eating aliens, and the leads have to rescue him and stop the attempt at human fast food business. However, whether it is that they used their limited resources to even have Jackson head butt a fake seagull in a shot, or that this film's crude premise has its satire, particularly when their leader is (for all his praises of them) treats the group as minimal wage employees who can be disposed off, the film has a lot of whit to it to admire. Some aspects are just deliciously weird, like wondering where and how they found the "Magical Mystery Car", a Converted Ford Anglia Van designed to have cardboard cut-outs of the Beatles, from their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band era, seemingly driving the vehicle, which both a) has the imagine of Paul McCartney (et all) in a cameo in a splatter scene, but is funnier now knowing Jackson directed the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021).

Peter Jackson with Bad Taste clearly wanted to push himself with this film, and like the most well regarded genre films, the limitations cannot undermine this fact, especially when he went on to make Meet The Feebles and the masterpiece Brain Dead, and successfully raised the bar and made better films. That his legacy went further from this to Oscar awards and ambitious films are a really curious page in history, as arguably even among legendary cult directors who went into the mainstream, Jackson is a candidate for one of the most successful micro-budget genre filmmakers from that era. This sort of filmmaking leads to great reward for the makers and the viewers, and after writing that at 26 years old or so when covering this film once before in an amateur review, I can still say long afterwards that Bad Taste has probably made double the reward for itself every time I view it.

 

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1) Bad Taste, "a perspective" by Tony Hiles, published for NZ on Screen on 04/09/2013.

Games of the Abstract: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1993)

 

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Three Players

Arcade

 

Among the many scrolling beat-em-ups of the late eighties and early nineties, naturally a few had licensed properties, which proves an issue with future licensing, but with the huge advantage before hindsight that many were by Japanese developers who really showed their A-game. Capcom are a great example as, even without their original licenses when allowed carte blanche to do whatever they want, like Battle Circuit (1997), they made beat-em-ups on very idiosyncratic choices, putting their mark on everything from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong's legendary novel-chronology of China's turbulent Three Kingdoms warring era of the past, to Dungeons and Dragons in terms of eclectic and acclaimed games in the genre. The following today however, from the world of Western television animation, is however not the 1991 Konami game based on The Simpsons, which is a weird license but based on a legendary franchise, but an intellectual property which was lost to time.

I remember the 1992 Cadillacs and Dinosaurs animated series, a Canadian-American production cancelled after only thirteen episodes. It is one of those childhood memories shrouded in time of vividly, being aware I saw a piece of it, but as someone entirely unable to remember seeing an entire episode, the same fate once of Ultraforce (1995), the tie-in for Malibu Comic's roster of superheroes which got a tie-in for the Sega CD in terms of beat-em-up videogames. Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, based on the comic book series Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz, had its animated series co-created with Schultz by Steven E. de Souza, screenwriter for Die Hard (1988) among other films, alongside being the director of the 1994 Street Fighter film with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia. As a tie-in arcade game to the animated series, this and the premise of Xenozoic Tales in general is a fascinating and cool one, in that this is a Mad Max post apocalypse, where roaming thugs dominate the world after civilisation has collapsed and the survivors have to pick themselves up. Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy however did not have to contend with a tyrannosaurus rex, as in a period just by the huge success of Jurassic Park (1993) in the cinemas, this apocalypse envisions that dinosaurs have returned from extinction and are now a part of the society to contend with.

The premise, Americana meets b-movie film, gets an applaudable level of aesthetic from Capcom here, an American comic book (and animated series) given love in look and style with pops out. It has even a little edge you would have not gotten in the series as, if you get TNT or a rocket launcher, you can cause enemies to explode into pieces including with their eyeballs flying out. The world's cartoon logic is found in that you have enough petrol to power Cadillac cars, fossil fuel aptly made from dinosaurs that have come back to life, but the dinosaurs in the game itself also play part of the three player game. Taking leads Jack Tenrec, female love interest Hannah Dundee, Mustapha Cairo and Mess O'Bradovich as playable characters, Mess not a main character but here to round up the numbers of the heavy, the enormous reptiles are as much the set dressing in the world mostly consisting of thugs being the real problem, aptly so, including one boss who aptly rides a motorbike for his fight. Dinosaurs still can be a hazard, and you can punch a pterodactyl, even if you do not maim them whatsoever, merely knock them out of their moment of rage, wandering off, if they are incensed or if you let a grunt hit them into a rage originally.

Sadly, you do not get to ride one, or have many set pieces involving, barring avoiding the feet of a giant one off the top of the screen for one section, but you do get in Level 3 to rampage through the desert in a Cadillac for its entire length, so you win in some way. Eventually as well, the game brings in body horror as your main antagonist, a mad scientist, is splicing humans with dinosaur DNA, leading to one boss battle where a parasite attaches itself to various grunts and morphs them into horrible monstrosities, ditching the bodies for a few times to the next. These can be hard, as expected for a beat-em-up alongside the final boss, but it adds a cool edge midway through a solid adventure before.

It looks gorgeous, which is not an understatement. Considering the high bar to these games from others developers, let alone Capcom themselves, the American pulp comic aesthetic here stands out, even as far as having the To Continue... screen cutting to a gun waiving thug who, if you put a new coin in, gets a fist to the face. Only the main cast themselves seem conventional to this idiosyncratic mix of Saturday morning cartoons, dinosaurs and Mad Max, and even that is in mind to the likely influence ye old pulp literature probably has on the source material, if you look at its square jawed male protagonist, a world with a surprising amount of watches to pocket for points from beaten grunts, alongside food like baked doughnuts for health being plentiful, thus proving too that culinary arts thankfully survived the apocalypse.

The lack of a release on consoles sucks, and the issue, like the really good Bucky O'Hare arcade game from Konami released in 1992, comes with that the intellectual property is obscure, making it a license you need to acquire to be able to release the game, but with the IP too obscure to sell, something to bear in mind in how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which has lasted with a nostalgic legacy and many versions over the decades, has had its games from Konami re-released in 2022 with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, let alone a new 2022 scrolling beat-em-up called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge from Tribute Games. I am still glad, in the past, Japanese developers like Capcom still got their hands on an IP like this, and were allowed this creativity, especially as they still retain the aesthetic and tonal values of the source, but were allowed their own flourishes. The game is still solid in terms of its gameplay, that in mind to the challenge to these games, this does feel like it was in the hands of developers who knew this genre like the back of their hand.

This disappointment, especially as this is a good game, comes more so knowing there was one console adaptation of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was a Sega CD game called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm (1994). This is a very different game, a Full Motion Video on-rails shooter by Rocket Science Games, a company founded in 1993 by Steve Blank and Peter Barrett who came in during the FMV craze under the belief, as many did then, that it would revolutionize the genre. Alongside the bizarre knowledge Elon Musk was once an employee¹, their biggest and most ambitious game was Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine (1994), another Sega CD game eventually released on MS-DOS PCs in 1995 which cost $3 million dollars to make and roped in Ned Beatty, character actor from films like Deliverance (1972)², a game which did not do well at all, and would be one of the only few before the company sank. That game, of interest for me as a morbid curiosity, is an FMV game where, just looking at clips of, involving a lot of FMV and the gameplay just of a Cadillac going forwards into the screen and firing at objects with a crosshair to clear the path, which in honesty is a step down in ambition if a comment that like kicking Rocket Science Games in the gonads when they were already on the floor from how the games did not sell well. It proves a delicious irony, that game for another day, another review to judge it fairly on its own terms, that whilst that was the console game made to sell, Capcom with true and tested arcade sprite work made this beat-em-up which, whilst not the best of beat-em-ups from that, fires the mind up in terms of the imagination onscreen. It is one of the many of this genre, a more well known title alongside obscurer ones like Guardians: Denjin Makai II (1995), which came at the time, never got home conversions and are lost beyond emulation, but should have rightly had their day in the sun decades on with their virtues.

 

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1) FLASHBACK: Before Twitter And Tesla, Elon Musk Made Video Games, written by Damien McFerran, and published for Time Extension on November 18th 2022.

2) Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, the Bad Game Hall of Fame retrospective by Cassidy, published by March 19th 2019, which is nice to include as a reference for this review as, if you want to see someone who has influenced these reviews and hopefully improved them tenfold, this full blown epic for one game, as detailed as you could get in its history including the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs connection, is as good as you can get. So good, I hesitate to cover any of the games with main articles on the site, as a fan, because I feel mine will never be as good or detailed as Cassidy's will be.

The Spider Labyrinth (1988)

 

Director: Gianfranco Giagni

Screenplay: Riccardo Aragno, Tonino Cervi, Cesare Frugoni and Gianfranco Manfredi

Cast: Roland Wybenga as Professor Alan Whitmore; Paola Rinaldi as Genevieve Weiss; Margareta von Krauss as Celia Roth; Claudia Muzii as Maria

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Ragtime jazz over the opening is different for an Italian genre film, but Spider Labyrinth is an unconventional film from the era. It is an elusive film, for me a Holy Grail of the golden era of Italian horror films, one which despite being made and release in the late eighties is not pure eighties cheese in the slightest. It gets strange, lurid and bloody, but this is not the era of Bruno Mattei or cheesy hair metal music, but something else. Its director Gianfranco Giagni is not even a cult genre film director from this era, but someone who made one horror film, this as his debut, and never returned to it, which makes this fascinating if one tragically without a follow through.

This is a slow burn, in which American professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is sent to Budapest, Hungary to help with a project in Budapest, Hungary. Suspicion is felt when he is meant to meet Professor Roth, about inscriptions from 3^rd Millennium B.C. being transcribed by professors like Roth across the world, only with Roth upon being met being paranoid and talking about the titular labyrinth trapping him in its web. The black orb thrown through his window, reoccurring elsewhere, raises further concerns, and eventually Professor Roth is found dead, hung off the ceiling banisters on spider webs, which sounds the alarm bells for Whitmore.

Slow burn is apt, Spider Labyrinth taking its glacial time with a seething sense of dread to everything. Warning ahead, this is a film where the point when it gets weird also happens to reveal the secrets that the narrative builds to, hence the warning for spoilers will have to be evoked, and for some, maybe just reading this passage or so will need to be enough. Those with the patience with its slowness will be rewarded by how unexpected the twists are with it's almost Cthulian perverseness, whilst those staying on should realize this takes its sweet evil time.

For those wishing to continue with the review, our lead is sunk among a community he is separate from, and even Roth’s female assistant is a temptation for Whitmore, living over the other side from where he is staying, able to see her every night naked and undressing through the open windows. There is a building mood contrasted by an ageless and distinct atmosphere, entirely because this was shot in Budapest itself. Italy could shot their genre films in interest locations, but there were some real curiosities at this time in the later era - there is an action film called Ten Zan: Ultimate Mission (1988), for example,  shot in North Korea of all places with Mark Gregory of 1990: Bronx Warriors (1982) fame as the lead – but my mind goes to Aenigma (1987), a really lurid Lucio Fulci film from this time, tonally alien, but sharing a DNA in how being shot in Belgrade, Serbia with its drastic change in architecture and environment really adding personality.

It is among the many factors which add to this, a Gothic mood of spiral staircases and halls of white linen there for a bloody murder to stain them in the first overt horror moment. The film does eventually have gore and sex, and but this within this dread inducing environment is the slowest of burns, turning into a phantasmagorical nightmare after its sweet time, including a lengthy scene of the lead driving around Budapest which will feel long. Drip feeding the tension as a drama, most of the film is not structured as a pulp horror film for the most part, more of a psychological one. The score even starts imitating Bernard Hermann, which as this film does have people being killed in lurid ways, does show the deliberateness of this film‘s tone.

It is also at this time, a spoiler for the film has to appear again for a final time. I advise, even if the film is difficult to see, if you wish to not spoil the excitement of what happens, try to track it down with utmost recommendation from this review. It is a film which takes patience but gets very interesting, which is not even necessarily the right word to explain what happens. Those who do not mind can read on…

…the stop motion spider appears, and a film I already admired gets even more interesting as it begins to reward this patience. The horror becomes that of the “Weavers” cult being studied, which is unfortunately still existing and dangerous, and whilst it takes to develop from a mystery to this revelation, once spider people and its weirdly Lovecraftian ending transpires, it escalates. It is less cosmic tentacles, but a baby spider God with suddenly prominent practical effects and people being possessed by spiders, this jump it has been built to neither out of place nor compromised. The Spider Labyrinth goes from the same ill ease The House of Laughing Windows (1976) from Pupi Avati had, a considerable piece of praise for the film in terms of comparison, as that giallo thriller was legendary for its slow burn mood, to a level of weirdness appropriate for the late eighties Italian genre films which yet feels more disturbing for the buildup. Whether the film can work once you know the twist or not becomes subdued, thankfully, by how much mood this has and adds so much to the final production.

There is instead a further disappointment that Gianfranco Giagni went into documentaries and television work for the rest of his career, as he has a strong eye for gothic dread here just in one film. The screenwriters deserve as much praise for this film's twisted leaps in logic, with one Cesare Frugoni prolific in the likes of Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978), all of them alongside others in the film's production coming together well here. There is only the unwanted sting in wondering, with how the Italian genre film industry was to dissipate in the mid-nineties, what would have happened if Giagni had more investment to have more genre films in his career alongside what he had. The fact The Spider Labyrinth is not an easily available film is a question in itself, but this alternative world to consider is tragic too, alongside imagining everyone else outside of the director's chair, in terms of what they managed here, if horror was still a credible genre to continue into even by the Millennium.

Games of the Abstract: Bot Vice (2016)

 

Developer: DYA Games

Publisher: DYA Games

One Player

Windows / Nintendo Switch

 

There are many retro influenced games for the Valve Steam era, "throwbacks" in modern gaming which is a cool thing, in how when once sprite animation was being dismissed with the rise of polygonal graphics in the mid-nineties, the form of games beforehand have had their revenge in the independent game developers. Truthfully however, I have also not necessarily been in the mood for them either, and a lot of this is not even their fault, more the unfortunate fact many old games, actual sprite games, are never re-released and are lost in a wave of games which nod to these missing titles. Whether they are good or not depend per game, and alongside appreciating their nostalgic aesthetics, Bot Vice, which can be linked back to shoot em up games like Cabal (1988), is a good one. A game acquired out of a whim during a sale, it won me over for its mix of a d distinct retro style and its gameplay, more so in mind to its tiny team of creators.

DYA Games, created by two brothers Alberto and Daniel Vílchez Carpio, are a tiny self funded developer influenced by pixel aesthetics, and Bot Vice was their second game published, which is a dodge 'n' gun game in premise, as you are stuck unable to move more than left to right on the screen, the enemies taking up the rest of the screen in the background, with only cover you can duck behind. Set within a futuristic city, former female police officer Erin Saver, who lost an arm in her last case, a raid gone wrong, is interrupted in her video game by a terrorist operation that has hijacked a tower, demanding everyone follow their instructions to avoid it blowing up. Having been provided a robotic arm to compensate for her injury, Erin becomes a sole gun woman against this, in a conspiracy involving animal humanoid robots, a gang called the Wildbots behind her police partner's death and the loss of her arm in the raid, and a potential android uprising. She is a one woman army, using improvised (and destroyable) barriers as the sole allies to protect her, avoiding being shot through by all the enemies as you shoot all of them instead. Your options also include the optional side roll, a true ally, significant as with only four hearts in a stage, you need to avoid a horde each stage including level specific bosses, the roll able to dodge all projectiles and hazards if hit right like ducking for cover. A little golden robot, when appearing and shot, provides lives and weapons - machine guns, spread guns and grenade launchers among the options - and you have a lock on mechanic to focus on specific mooks, rather than other games in this style where you could also control the target of the gun. You even have a melee attack for those too close and able to knock out some incoming ammo from the air.

Beyond this, one just has to survive the screen covering bullets. There is a plot, a conspiracy as talked of earlier, clearly indebted to the likes of the Mega Man franchise in enemy designs. Rushing through the hordes after you - from giant wasps whose laid eggs lead to smaller ones, to shield carrying snake men and flaming eagles - they force you on your toes in what is a very simplistic gameplay style which works fully. The sprite effects in a modern game shine as well, especially in mind how such a small number of people were behind this, so small the Steam release ends with an ask for good reviews to help promote DYA Games. Even the voice cast is just two people, one as the female lead, Elissa Park, one man in Omri Rose playing everyone else. That charm is to be found everywhere through this, and whilst there is an occasional ironic moment, usually comments grunts utter to one of the bosses referencing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the game even becomes more serious in drama, including a post credit epilogue imagining a sequel.

It offers the addictiveness to these classic games as timeless. Especially as between the main campaign, with achievements and full rankings to win, and a bonus series of harder levels, Bot Vice does have a lot to it. The energy to the production, full of vibrancy, is something I admire greatly, and coming from someone who laments the how many games are still not ported still, it is however a nice rebuttal to previous thoughts of mine that, with the retro throwback games, you do get games who take the best mind-view of the past games and make their own games. Considering this was the second game from DYA Games, Alberto and Daniel Vílchez Carpio really did well for themselves, continuing on their own path to the likes of Viviette (2018) and Evil Tonight (2021), horror games (the former adventure and the later action) in this pixel art aesthetic. After playing Bot Vice, I have come to these developers with great interest in their entire catalogue.

Games of the Abstract: Boogie Wings (1992)

 

Developer: Data East

Publisher: Data East

One or Two Players

Arcade

 

Data East is becoming a developer/publisher I am growing fonder of, though sadly a game like Boogie Wings is among the list of M.A.M.E. arcade titles that are not financially available to purchase and appreciate. Only M.A.M.E. itself has preserved this, a way to preserve and play arcade games that, whilst bordering on a grey area, exists for this issue that a lot of arcade history is not preserved or readily available commercially to appreciate. Boogie Wings never got a console port over the decades, and it is tragically the kind of machine likely to be lost, more so as this is a little gem bringing some playful and very creative touches to the horizontal scrolling shooter. This would be a game I happily paid money to its rights owner to own and play official, as it stands out as a game bringing so much personality to the table. Beyond the desire there to preserve all video games, this one can be argued to be superior to scrolling shooters which are more readily available.

A period pulp pastiche, your dashing male hero has to take on a mad scientist and his technologically advanced army in a bi-plane, but this takes a very idiosyncratic position with the game type including the fact there is run n gun elements to the proceedings. Set in the early 20th century in North America, the aesthetic from a Japanese game is bang on the money, including a fight effectively on Coney Island, as you and the hero have the choice after the first level, barring the final stage, of choosing which of the five stages you do first and subsequently. That is not really idiosyncratic to this game, a touch other arcade games of multiple genres have welcomed, but for a horizontal shooter, immediately once you get into the air, you notice your trusted (and replenishable) red bi-plane has quirks, or both of them if two player is activated and a blue bi-plane is there as backup. One such detail is the fact that you cannot shoot automatically in an endless stream, but that it eventually stops the bullets and needs to the pressed for short bursts, contrasted by the ability to increase a gauge and set off an electric attack, screen filling, if with caution in use. Even more idiosyncratic is the hook swinging off the back, which has its own physics as you move. Each level (or life) has a bomb attached to this hook which, as with any object, can be dropped with a button or you can just swing the hook into an enemy. Far more interest comes when the hook, sans bomb, can pick up enemy vehicles, enemies in general, more bombs or certain environmental objects to either swing or drop at the other opponents. Other planes, snowmen, bystanders who can survive drops without harm, even a dinosaur skull or two are among the items you can smack into others with the hook swings.

If you are shot down, you still have the chance to continue, left as the lead himself (unless still in the air and thus with a flying bicycle) running around shooting people, even able to make Mario jealous as even jumping on a tank has a jumping squash ability as dangerous as picking up giant bombs and objects instantly, throwing them at people. He is however vulnerable to one shot though, which is why thankfully you have a wide array of vehicles you can pilot if stuck in this state. Tanks, robots, pogo sticks, even elephants in what feels like a proto-Metal Slug vehicle selection in even how the firing mechanics, which is directional to your movement, feels absolutely a predecessor to that legendary SNK franchise. Boogie Wings, once you get past the first level, opens up to become more memorable once you reach the five selectable levels, among are some of the best of this genre and others in how they stand out. Aesthetically, the game is incredible, with even bystanders in the background, from people to dogs minding their own business, adding humour and flavor to the proceedings among the chaos, whilst the levels themselves have their own creativity.

Kong Island is a representation of Coney Island where, from the middle of a street parade to an amusement park, you are fighting around a loose and rolling Ferris wheel, and then dealing with a memorable boss of a Frankenstein robot with ghouls and chuckable coffins. One level is a museum, where the dinosaur skulls come in, a fun level where destroying history eventually leading to a literal Trojan Horse as a boss with flamethrower capacity. Even a more innocuous level, in a Detroit motorcar plant, has its own personality, including an obstacle course of multiple routes in and out such a factory. This level potentially has a licensing issue for the game all these years too: named “Detroit Rock City”, it is clearly named by a member of the Data East team or few who are fans of KISS, the cult rock band, and the score for this level even pastiches that song’s riff in the opening bars before it goes into its own rhythm, multiple times in the level.

There are two levels by themselves which count among two of the best levels you could ever encounter too. One of them involves having to be on foot, storming a flying cargo plane, which is an incredible extended set piece in terms of gameplay and the technological creativity to pull off, including the set piece involving turbulence which forces one to float-and-gun mid air between floating cargo crates, piloting a floating robot or even an elephant in the chaos is you pull yourself towards one. The other is just a great Christmas level, beautiful looking as a seasonal level, grappling Christmas banners and street ornaments, cutting through tall buildings and underground, even avoiding one building collapsing downwards into the caverns, before you encounter as a boss a giant evil Santa robot.

Even with the final level, more an obstacle course through clockwork you have to shoot through, this presents a fun twist needing spoiler warning…you can listen to the villain's justification for his plans for creating a robot army, and you can choose to either fight him, which means fighting a H.G. Welles’ like Time Machine with him and his lackeys, or decide to side with him, which replays a previous level or two before you become friends. That is a fun touch to a game oozing with style. It’s sense of humour even comes in with a reference to a character named Santos from Date East’s Trio the Punch (1990),  represented by a statue you find multiple times and, yes, can hook and swing at enemies, which is hilarious in that Trio the Punch is probably, behind the unreleased Tattoo Assassins (1994) from their pinball division, the strangest game they ever released and clearly one even back here they found pride in, the closest to a stream of consciousness and full blown surrealism as a scrolling beat-em-up. Sadly the obscurity of Boogie Wings, trapped in a phantom zone like countless arcade games from this era, is horrible, but the legacy of M.A.M.E. and word of mouth made Boogie Wings stand out. If any amateur review can help get more interest in Boogie Wings, I will be glad to publish this as this is a game that deserves preservation as a gem from this era and format.

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Addendum (01-01-2022): There is an official release for Boogie Wings in the West, but unfortunately, it is an expensive format and with the game still unavailable on home consoles or computers officially. AtGames, a North American company founded in 2001, have been releasing full arcade cabinets or mini arcade consoles that include games from a variety of different licensors, one of which is Data East with Boogie Wings among the titles included. An example, the AtGames Legends Gamer Mini Arcade Console, is linked to for an example of one of these, but these are (like the Arcade1Up cabinets) an expensive luxury, and that is even considering the one I referenced is a cheaper model. AtGames is not a company with the goal of selling these titles separately, and I would not expect this demand from a company who specialise in big luxury entertainment machines you can buy for your home, but a license for the games separately to be created with its own terms for home systems. An actual console release of Boogie Wings, outside these luxury cabinets for hardcore arcade fans or actual arcades, is still not available and something that needs to be changed, but thankfully, this at least means Boogie Wings is not a "lost" title, merely one in dire need of a proper home console release.