Mutation Nation (1992)

 

Developer: SNK

Publisher: SNK

One to Two Players

Originally released on the Neo Geo MVS

Among beat-em-ups, this SNK entry definitely does not reinvent the wheel in terms of the gameplay. What it does thankfully have is an exceptional sense of personality to compensate for how later games in the next few years after this evolved the genre, a body horror dystopian sci-fi brawler which manages to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon that has gone incredible wrong or been partially produced with a Troma film from New Jersey as inspiration. Set in 20XX, you play one of two stereotypical male leads, but with the context that, with a mad scientist creating a mutant army in a slum area of a major metropolis, and thus wrecking havoc on the rest of it outwards, your enemies are a menagerie of idiosyncratic figures. This is pretty standard for the genre, with just an attack button and a jump, which may seem dismissive as a comment but is contextually in mind that, as you get into this genre in the years around and after, up to the likes of Battle Circuit (1997) from Capcom and Guardians: Denjin Makai II (1995) by Winkysoft, you had games going further than even having a block button to combos, move sets with button combinations, and the ability to unlock new abilities per level. Mutation Nation is a game which, if it had any of these, by reliving the difficulty in lack of options, would actually gain virtue in that the challenge would be finding ways around the challenge rather than working with the limitations in controls, the hordes of strange denizens created by the mad doctor a menace for different reason than merely having a punch and kick.

Nonetheless, unless you intend to experiment, the old adage "if it isn’t broke don't fix it" is apt here, with one key difference being Mutation Nation's one gimmick where, alongside power-ups that can vary this and do not deplete the health bar, holding the attack down and charging it allows you to use a super, which can vary per the aforementioned pick-ups and adds a nice risk in using them. "Repetition" is neither a negative comment here too as , like the light gun game, there is no need to really reinvent unless you have something distinct, and this after the initial grunts immediately gives way to their mutated brethren, and what imaginative designs they have before the bosses arrive. Insectoid heads, almost android figures, flower women almost Poison Ivy like, and the absolutely strange lizard creatures with vaguely human forms and rocking denim jeans clinging to ceilings and walls as much as being very low targets on the floor to deal with. They all belong to a vibrant looking game from the 16-bit era of video games, where even if you have unfortunately let yourself be sandwiched between a group of these creatures, or take advantage of manoeuvring around the locations as in this genre in general, you can appreciate this post-apocalypse urban wasteland in its gritty look, the kind of game if not released for SNK’s own machines would have made sense as having a Mega Drive/Genesis conversion. Adding to the grotesquery, in the best of ways, is that most of these enemies barring the robotic ones will explode in pulsating chunks of goo when defeated, not as violent as the original Japanese version of Data East’s Night Slashers (1993), but evoking that idea if Lloyd Kaufman’s Toxic Avenger franchise and Screaming Mad George were combined into a PG-13 horror sci-fi martial arts game.

The bosses emphasis the tone, figures who you wish to have figures of, if just me, as obscure video game plastic statuettes to put on a shelf. It is simple as much, wanting to see creativity in my video games artistically, for just the fact they are quite bizarre, like the sole female boss who, between her jutting dancing with use of her arms, also spits mutant wasps from her stomach through a Cronenbergian orifice, or a pair of psychics in dapper suits whose heads has distorted from the growth of their brains beneath like mutant broccoli. This becomes what Mutation Nation’s best virtue as a beat-em-up becomes, this personality which can make it stand out as a gem from the era. What it does have in terms of restrictions, when the genre was going to develop far more game mechanics on the simple to grasp game play style quite soon, it compensates for with this style, sadly one which did not really get to be seen as much as hoped as this is one of the obscurer SNK games until the modern day on multiple consoles and even mobile phones. This was released for the Neo Geo MVS, which allowed gamers to bring arcade perfect games to the home in console form if it was with the caveat that it was incredibly expensive as a console, because of the cost of buying actual arcade hardware and software. The game neither got a sequel, becoming a one-off, a shame as if this had gotten a Metal Slug-like longevity, we could have seen this overcome the flaws this has and take the advantages that make this worth playing further.