Games of the Abstract: Gals Panic (1990)

 

Developer: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

Publisher: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

One to Two Player

Arcade

 

Having played Gals Panic SS (1996), the Sega Saturn game, going back to the first of the Gals Panic franchise is interesting for many reasons. Whilst this, among others, did get western arcade releases, Gals Panic became for developer/publisher Kaneko its staple of what title to make a sequel for over a decade until their closure. For context, this originates from Qix (1981), from Japanese publisher/developer Taito's American division, a game where you draw and claim space on screen whilst avoiding hazards, which can also take a life if they touch the line behind you out of your safe zone. A sequel was published by Taito and developed by Kaneko called Super QIX (1987), but Kaneko would take the template and make the first Gals Panic game, with Taito publishing it too. To be blunt, Qix became a game type good to use for erotic videogames, not necessarily only for simplicity, but because you could uncover the screen and see images as a reward, which Kaneko began with this game. Unlike Gals Panic SS, which was cute, this is back when Gals Panic was an erotic arcade game played for digitized nudity, and even then, context makes it quaint with hindsight.

Gals Panic, as mentioned, was released outside Japan by Taito, and with my interest with Sega Saturn games, the link between this, Taito and that console are fascinating in seeing where this franchise changed over time. The original game, mind, is in a modern context tame. This is also a cultural difference as, between 1970 to 2015, you had in a popular British tabloid newspaper The Sun with their Page 3 Girls¹, which as a controversial part of British culture I did grow up with and was copied by other tabloids. The Page 3 had topless models, in newspapers which you could find in supermarkets and could be seen by kids, and Gals Panic, the original in this arcade game, is rewarding the equivalent in that. The politics behind the Page 3 were controversial, but for a game designed for adults, not for children, the game plays with what is very quaint in mind to this, that over over three stages with each model, a digitized representation of real women who are credited in the ending, you get them in their costume, in their underwear, and then a topless page three equivalent and nothing more explicit when you succeed.

It is something you can still accuse as scuzzy, but honestly only one model wearing a schoolgirl outside is questionable nowadays. (And that is in knowledge that, to not throw stones in glass houses at Japanese culture only, the British were as bad; even if the age of consent laws in Britain are at the age of sixteen, knowing how young the Page 3 girls could be for The Sun is just as uncomfortable.) Knowing as well far more sexually explicit, and openly pornographic games, are more readily available decades later, even if animation for the PC, has to be considered when looking at this first game. Instead, this comes off playful and also openly silly. This is a first for me in an arcade game, for example here, where you can get in the mid round random chance section, a roulette wheel where you can get less or more time per round among other pieces, where one of the options is an interval dance from two gnome creatures operating the randomiser. There is a cartoonish nature to the proceedings even in the playfulness of the music, which contrasts the appeal for nudity in the centre of the challenge. Even with this too, there are sight gags in the backgrounds of the images adding jokes to what is meant to be erotic. A gnome toy on a shelf participates in the striptease with a suggestive butt shot, and one model posing as a female office worker has a crude painting of a man, framed in the background, getting a nosebleed when you reach her third stage image, nosebleeds for the unaware a symbol (found in manga and anime too) for sexual arousal.

The gameplay is as much as Gal Panic SS was six years later, having to avoid the big boss and their minions to acquire the stage. You do not need a 100% success for the three stages, but also you do not have the bonus missiles Gal Panic SS used, which were incredibly useful to keep the enemies at bay, be it here a giant spider with an annoying slow down webbing, a Sun who flexes his muscles to scatter molten flame, and a pyramid spitting out shapes. The one mechanic this has the later game does not have, and became a pain at times as much as a new challenge, is a bar where you need to vary your coverage or not just go down with your cursor, to avoid going into the minuses. It proved more of an annoyance, entirely because I had yet to figure out the exact rules of the mechanics, but it is a significant factor as, if you go in the red, your model of choice turns into a gag character. Be it ninja, octopus, female crocodile or a hippo in a bikini, even if you still succeed on the stage, if it is still with this image on the screen, you get laughed at and have to restart the section. Staying in the blue, by acquiring power ups and getting higher in the blue, by acquiring snacks and power ups, and you can continue on in the stages. If you are able to, with these factors or getting the right (and braver) clearances of space, you can get to the top level, and are rewarded with a level clearance regardless of the amount of the image uncovered. It is a way to balance out the challenge, but it’s seemingly unpredictable nature is a curious thing. It is of reward if you do succeed, and the quaintness of the reward, titillation, is succeeded by the six levels with their three stages (and background gags) instead.

This version of Gals Panic evokes the South Korean arcade game Miss World '96 (1996), Comad Industry Co., Ltd.'s game far more explicit and adult in nature (depending on which version of the machine it was). That game clearly took its inspiration from here but with mind to the sequels which brought in real photographs, which says a lot about how globally Gals Panic did create a niche for this franchise, even if for one game to exist from South Korea as an imitator. That game had real (and more sexually explicit) nude photos of models, with far more jarring (and copyright breaking) failure state images if you fell in the red. Truly, as a game that came to me as originally as a strange game, this was the game to complicate one’s masturbatory fantasies by introducing knockoff images of Freddy Krueger and Pinhead into the proceedings. That joke may come off as crass, but with mind that Gals Panic 3 (1995) brought in live action, and is just as tonally jarring and scuzzy, unfortunately it is a title to evoke in tandem to how these Qix-like games changed into the nineties.

And it is less the morbid fascination with these being erotic games, but more how this both eventually got a more sanitised Sega Saturn release, the best in terms of game mechanics which seem fairer, and how this became an obsession with Kaneko. This was not their only franchise or only genre they worked in, but since they since they worked on Super Qix with Taito, from here they started with a game that would spawn multiple sequels and spin-offs, the first game in 1990 ending with a neon light rich city as you are thanked upon for playing the game. Notwithstanding cancelled titles in the franchise, their obsession with this game in itself is curious, and structurally, whilst a difficult games at time in terms of meanness, you can remove the lurid selling point and the gameplay does not change, something to attest to when eventually this did happen for their games. "Ephemeral" genres of games, which anyone can make and are usually forgotten, fascinate me, and this franchise is one, for obvious reasons, which could be dismissed as just junk for the first ones being pure titillation, but Kaneko were also a company who made beat-em-ups (B.Rap Boys  (1992)) and scrolling shooters (Cyvern: The Dragon Weapons (1998)), but came back to this repeatedly as the breadwinning franchise. The tangent to the live action photographs does not help these Qix clones, as Gals Panic 3 proved for me, but considering Kaneko even made a spin-off for the original Playstation One called Silhouette Stories (1998), which was also without the erotic elements but brought in visual novel content, and the company with this tried and tested formula were clearly obsessed with pushing the francise onwards, even to the point in bringing in anime aesthetics and character designs which would have required much more work and care for. As a result, looking at this game, which feels like care and fun was brought into it, this proves an interesting production to scrutanise, and all of this is in mind to my obsession with the Sega Saturn. With how this managed to end up from here to that console alone was enough to fascinating, but seeing the strange progression for a type of game that could be dismissed is interesting in just beating them.

 

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1) Page 3: The Sun calls time on topless models after 44 years, by Lisa O'Carroll, Mark Sweney and Roy Greenslade for The Guardian, published on January 20th 2015.