Games of the Abstract: Guardians - Denjin Makai II (1995)

 

Developer: Winkysoft

Publisher: Banpresto

One to Two Players

Arcade

 

Surfacing as another arcade game tragically never ported to consoles, Denjin Makai II should be preserved beyond M.A.M.E., as not only is this one of the most deliciously bizarre scrolling beat-em-ups to appear, but also happens to be one of the best in terms of its gameplay inclusions, something even as simple as having an extra button offering a breath of fresh air to a genre which, for an outside, could be seen as repetitious. The game developer with the cutest name ever, Winkysoft, sadly had to file for bankruptcy in 2015¹, and most will likely know them for their importance for the Super Robot Wars franchise, which they developed the first game of for the Game Boy on April 20th 1991. A huge franchise in terms of anime fans, and one that finally got Western releases with the likes Super Robot Wars 30 (2021) despite all the copyright to deal with, there is a version of the series with original characters but it is the main franchise which entices, sanctioned and official crossover fan fiction where every anime series or film with giant robots are put into a series of strategy turn based games, where you can team up and pilot these famous giant robots and ships. Not only big ones like Gundam but cult hits known even to the mainstream like Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), it is a franchise, finally available in the West with all the licensing haggling to deal with, that Winkysoft were part of from the beginning even if other developers would be brought in for later titles.

They worked on other projects, and in the world of scrolling beat-em-ups, they threw their hat in with Denjin Makai (1994), which would get a conversion for the Super Famicon (Japanese SNES) as Ghost Chaser Densei. This is about the sequel though, which like many in videogames sadly got maligned. The plot is admittedly a vague cartoon, of a futuristic world where, following on from the first game, you control from a surprisingly large team of characters a figure to protect the world from evil doers. The personality does shine through just from the eight playable characters, which itself is a huge roster of figures to come in with for this genre. It is a good sign when even the typical generic male hero stands out as he was a villain from the first game. There is a pink dressed ninja named Girulian, a suave card welding magician, and Kurokishi, the stereotypical sexy female character with blonde hair and a revealing costume, but even these characters as the most generic figures of the roster are still standing out in the costume and design departments, alongside being good in game, such as Kurokishi having a freeze gun. More eccentricity starts to appear as the roster continues, from Tulks, from the first game, and more buff more naked then before, as your brawler, to P. Belva, a giant robot also from the first game. It is the last two, overtly out-there, who stand out, only challenged by the likes of Capcom with Battle Circuit (1996), part of a taste for strange sci-fi super cops/bounty hunters on alien world stories in video games.

Originally a hulking alien form in the first game, only to have been revealed to be in a “cocoon” form, Zeldia here, with the redesign, is both an example of drastic alien metabolism but also thankfully replaced in that role by Skullbyule, taking her place as the slow hulking monster on the side of good who still has the advantage of crowd control moves involving fire and, with everyone having a button for projectile/gun moves, firing alien flies from his arms at people. Zeldia herself, now a blue haired bird woman, becomes the best character, an incredible character design you could have seen in Capcom’s Darkstalker series. Alongside wishing a crossover brought her back, she is also the best character to see how distinct and cool the game mechanics are. As with the first game, you have a variety of special moves, more practical with a three button fighting system, and details like the ability to roll/flip up and down the fighting areas that are possible. With Zeldia for example, as a being able to fly, you can with a combination of the three buttons have her float to safety briefly, to committing to dive attacks.  

One additional button ups the choices, especially as the eight leads to choose from is an insanely deep roster for a beat-em-up, eight idiosyncratic figures which vary between optic eye lazers (like Cyclops from the X-Men comics) to grappling. Various move types come in, all before you have to factor in the one aspect meant to keep you from spamming powers without being too mean. In other games, there usually is a crowd control move from a limited number that takes a chunk of your health, and whilst there is one per character here, it does not take away health. Instead, alongside being part of an entire arsenal of moves to work with, there is instead of a chargeable power bar which, if you exhaust, can “Overcharge” but forces one to lose health to in powering it. Once you can try to play the game fully – i.e. not the infinite continues but actual strategy with less credits being used – this adds a challenge alongside the larger move set, which is really to the game’s virtue without feeling like it is unfairly putting a disadvantage on the player meant to spend more coins on the original arcade machine.

Denjin Makai II also happens to be bonkers too, and it is greater for this. Set in a futuristic world where an evil private army is storming the world, the tone is all over the place, between a brawl in Chinatown to a final boss whose aesthetic is riffing both on Swiss artist H.R. Giger but also body horror. But it does all make sense together in its own logic, especially as the aesthetic is luscious and brings a logic to the game even if still a curious mixture of tones. The villains, even the traditional grunts, got the message to be as idiosyncratic as the leads, and even the more conventional grunts have personalities, be it accidentally catching a group trying to create a playing card pyramid to the first stage’s boss, an ultra buff muscle woman who can grow further muscle mass, inhumanely proportioned, and can twist and extend her limbs in a combination of Dhalsim, the Indian character from Street Fighter II, and Stretch Armstrong, the American toy line where the titular figure was a doll made from rubber material you could stretch without breaking. Normal enemies can include monstrously cute purple crocodile creatures to monkey men with bound arms, and as mentioned, the sight gags and cues involving even the regular grunts can be vivid, such as a brawl in a model village for one of the levels where, when destroying one of them, you find a male and female grunt caught in the midst of some nookie.

Barring the first and last level, you have two choices per stage to go through, which leaves a lot of reply value, especially as you have so much personality in gameplay flourishes and background touches. A seemingly generic woodland level becomes interesting when you have to dodge trees being felled, or that the highway level ends with a tribute to Pablo Picasso in the statues present in the background detail. The same bosses are encountered in either option, but it allows for some change of pace, such as choosing the alternative to the highway level for the second stage, which leads to the awesome boss battle, against a samurai who duplicates himself with illusions and turns into a log as a defense tactic, on a virtual reality film set, cutting between horror in a graveyard, sci-fi and a cowboy western. This stage, and the highway stage you could have chosen instead, even has a bonus shooting gallery within them, never seen again but great in either version as a change of pace. The less said about the squid to, found in one stage and able to be broken free, only to appear in another to actually wave at the player, shows the level of detail and the strange sense of humour Winkysoft proudly embraced here.

The little touches like this, to details which are more grounded in reality, like the amount of graffiti in the subway level background, means a lot for adding to a genre which could be seen as repetitive, both in making the gameplay as fleshed out as it is, and in how vivid the world is onscreen. Only the music is not as distinct as the visuals and gameplay, and that is not to discredit the work either, merely it is the one normal thing in a game which is proudly eccentric and as diverse as it is onscreen, the kind of game where one of the collectables for points is even a cute kitten in a basket, which continually meows only a player collects them. The game, alongside the details talked of above, is a high bar in terms of beat-em-ups for me, even as a fan of these in all stripes in the genre blown away by the improvements on the genre and all the playfulness onscreen. Again, a reoccurring cruel joke, this was another which has been lost in limbo, which is more of a cruel fate as, controversially, for the ones known and held in high regards, like Konami's The Simpsons (1991), this surpasses a game like that even if both deserve their fans and to be available, just in terms of how much was added to the genre in touches here and in its personality. Everyone can enjoy whichever beat-em-up out of all of them, and one only wishes they were all actually available, but I would just want them to play Denjin Makai II and see what this brings to the table.

 

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1) CONFIRMED: Game Developer Winkysoft Files for Bankruptcy, written by Paul Chapman for Crunchyroll and published on December 1st 2015.