Games of the Abstract: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996)

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Two Players

Originally for: Arcade

 

Whilst the Street Fighter franchise has had a strong lineage in Capcom's history as a games developer, there have been once or twice deviations from the template for characters from the franchise, and not just cameos. The crossovers, whilst in the fighting genre, between the likes of the Marvel comic franchises, games developer SNK and even Tatsunoko, the legendary animation studio, have been some I grow fonder of, despite being terrible at fighting games, because they allow some of the obscurest figures of everyone's history a chance to appear in the games. Even the infamous hiccup that was Street Fighter: The Movie (1995), the original arcade version by Incredible Technologies, stands out as very different not only from the home console versions by Capcom themselves, but also as a weird case of bringing in these Western developers, and chasing the digitized character bandwagon Mortal Kombat created, allowing singer/Neighbours soap opera alumni Kylie Minogue to stand toe-to-toe with the late actor Raul Julia in the least expected battle possible.

Note so far these are still fighting games, though we have had one or two deviations even outside of the fighting genre over the years like the RPG and card battle crossovers, like Namco x Capcom games, or a game like Cannon Spike (2000), a Psikyo developed Capcom game where they used Cammy from the franchise as a playable character in a three dimensional area shooter. We have yet to see Ryu play tennis or Zangief in a go kart, as even with Nintendo crossovers, Ryu is performing hadouken on a Pikachu in the Smash Brothers franchise. Puzzle Fighter, even in 2017 with a free-to-play mobile phone remake being released from Capcom Vancouver, is another exception, which crosses over into the Darkstalkers franchise, one tragically lost to never getting a modern day follow up, but was in full swing at this point, the pair of them being mashed together here to give us a puzzle game.

The character roster is eclectic, from only eight to say the least from just the main roster. There is a notable emphasis, which is cool with hindsight and very clearly done, on the female cast, which has five characters over the three males. Whether this was targeting a male audience or not as a game, or was as much focused on potential female arcade players back in its initial release, it is great either way, and it does suggest, even before we get to the "super deformed" chibi art style, how these Capcom had an incredible set of character designers for this era. It also really emphasises how, in general even if they did sexualise a few of these characters, female characters that you could also play, or stood out as side characters, or even antagonists, became something which you can applaud Capcom for as you can literally go through the rosters of their fighting games, and then other genres, from the nineties into the 2000s and find so many that stand out and/or became beloved as much as the male ones. From their costume designs to personalities which made them figures who gained fans, some of the strongest female characters in gaming, even if they were initially side characters or were occasionally made sexualised, came from Capcom and you can find enough to fill an entire crossover fighting game with just a female cast. It is actually disappointing that the discontinued 2017 Puzzle Fighter, with twenty three characters to choose from until the mobile game was taken from circulation, had only six women in the cast despite that fact. Even if the crossover fighting games usually had more men, you had a murder's row of distinct figures from the women let alone men or actual monsters to choose from over the decades, altogether just making Capcom bad asses in their artists and designers for making everyone, male or female or beast, stand out even in obscure games just from how they wore a coat let alone their characterisation.

Even the stoic male martial artist template created with Ryu, visually iconic, stands out far more than so many games trying to reach the success of Street Fighter II (1991), and forcing really bland male protagonists based on him on us the players. Ken, his player two from the games, is here too as the pair makes sense to include, but in terms of a game which is playing to cuteness and comedy, they come off as a chibi straight men in a more eclectic cast. A personal favourite from Darkstalkers, Felicia the catgirl, is here and whilst she was explicitly designed in the original game for some blatant sex appeal, with her fur hiding little, she is played here as a cute sentient cat girl with goofy mannerisms which is why I fell in love with the character. Likewise Morrigan from the same Darkstalkers franchise, a literal succubus and also deliberately provocative in her design, not only got to be the poster girl and protagonist for the final game, even if she is the only one of the franchise's cast seemingly referenced in the modern day, but she gets to be more goofier here. The pair really emphasised how strong the cast of the Darkstalkers franchise was, where the closest to a conventional martial artist also happened to be a werewolf, fitting as the third female member from the games was one introduced at this period in the first sequel, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge (1995), a Chinese "hopping corpse" (jiangshi) named Hsien-Ko who stood out as distinct even among one of the most distinct fighting game rosters for all the franchise.

Introduced in the spin-off franchise Street Fighter Alpha 2, in 1996, Sakura is a plucky underdog schoolgirl who admires Ryu and wants to be strong as him, fitting the game as a likable younger selectable character alongside Chun-Li, the first female character of the Street Fighter franchise, so obvious to include in this game as one of the most iconic characters to come from Capcom. There is a few secret characters and ones introduced in the console versions. For the arcade game, there is also Dan Hibiki of the first Street Fighter Alpha game as the instructor onscreen, before you put a coin into the original arcade machine, teaching the game mechanics. He is perfect for this comically minded game as he was literally Capcom taking the piss out of SNK, their biggest rival in 2D fighting games in this time period, a parody of their archetypical leads who was meant to be useless as a playable character. If you can play him even here, his gameplay is deliberately broken to make him useless still, but he managed to be a joke that got a fan base in the main fighting games, and people learning to humiliate opponents by beating them with Dan as he started to be modified to be a credible fighter without losing the gag. [Huge Spoiler] It is funny that Dan is set up as the final boss, only to follow a trademark from Street Fighter and other games from Capcom, the surpirse cameo of Akuma, the legendary and dangerous mirror to Ryu, who beats Dan up easily and challenges you instead. [Spoilers End]. Later console versions also included Hsien-Ko's twin sister, and a secret character you could unlock was an obscure character, but one loved enough to keep appearing in Capcom games, by the name of Princess Devilotte de Deathsatan IX. Gloriously named, she was from Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness (1995), a fighting arcade game which pilots in robots, and is clearly a tribute to the Doronbo Gang, the antagonists from Tatsunoko's Yatterman animated franchise, one which influenced so much Japanese popular culture in having a female villainess aided by two male lackeys, even the Pokémon anime series with Team Rocket, and would appear through their leader Doronjo in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.

The outlier is Donovan, who time stamps the game to the history of Capcom, as in 1994, the first Darkstalkers did well enough to warrant its sequel Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge, which created new characters like Hsien-Ko who became beloved, but also attempted to creating a new protagonist named Donovan, pushed to become the figurehead of the franchise as a half- dhampir, a half human and half vampire who hunts the Darkstalkers. He does get a fascinating ending to that game, becoming corrupted as he continues his campaigns, and stands out with a distinct style, be it his sword or the psychic girl Anime who followed him, brought here and becoming another new character by herself in console versions of Puzzle Fighter. However, it is damning, unlike boss characters which were removed for Vampire Savior/Darkstalkers 3 (1997) for space for new characters, Donovan feels like he never appeared because no one wanted him. It is a cruelly funny punch line that, whilst nowadays only Morrigan gets to represent the franchise for Capcom for the most part, back here even when it came to a sequel to Puzzle Fighter back in the fighting genre, Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (1997), Donovan was not even allowed to get into the spin-off cure fighting game, told to leave and close the door behind him.

If the review is going to be short here, it is only because the actual puzzle game mechanics are based on rock solid foundations. You link same coloured gems, in clusters which form together with enough into giant gems, which need the use of a spark gem the same colour (or a rarer multicolour diamond) to clear away. Speed is of importance as, least for the CPU opponents, they will own you as you start to dump "garbage" onto the opponents' grid as you clear gems, timed to not be useable as regular gems which becomes dangerous as they start to climb in height up the grid. It is completely solid gameplay wise, and it is really pointless to extrapolate on a fun game which is this simple is premise. My biggest disappointment is that there is not as much around this gameplay in terms of individual endings. The style of the game is great - particularly the "chibi" character designs, based on an art style of deliberately distorting characters into smaller, squat versions none as a "super deformed" style which appears in manga and anime for the likes of comedic moments. It stands out here, and the entire presentation is bright and wonderful, making me wish there were more cut scenes and humour to what we got.

Barring an intermission and an end credits which adds more humour, this feels like a game which is still great, but could have been expanded further and further in a franchise of its own, something which happened to Taito when they took the Bubble Bobble franchise and made the spin-off Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move one in the puzzle genre, the latter becoming its own beloved concept which embraced its aesthetics and is as loved. Tellingly Capcom would instead make Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix, a return to the fighting game genre, but one which took this entire art style and gave you everything I wanted here in terms of the comedy and wackiness of the proceedings. What you got here in this puzzle game thankfully - with its ports in the day for the likes of the Sony Playstation to Sega Saturn, to a HD remix for the Playstation 3/Xbox 360 era which changes touches - was something Capcom should have still been proud of, and has been available still thankfully, as it is a lot of fun. I only wished we got a franchise from this that became the wackier Capcom crossover puzzle game to their awesome fighting games.

Games of the Abstract: Burning Rangers (1998)

Developer: Sonic Team

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Originally released for: Sega Saturn

 

One of the issues with games being preserved is significant gaps, if allowed to exist, mean entire pieces will be forgotten in the mainstream consciousness because they are not officially available to play. One perfect example of this is with Burning Rangers, now an extremely expensive game to try to own a physical Sega Saturn copy of, because it was one of the last releases for the Saturn in the West, with no way to officially play it on other consoles or PCs. This is in spite of the fact this was a big project from Sonic Team, the team behind Sonic the Hedgehog, and Yuji Naka, co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, in the production head role.

Named after the blue hedgehog, I am going to make the argument that Sonic Team clearly wanted to distance themselves from him in the Sega Saturn era. As much as Sonic is Sega mascot's and biggest bread winner barring the Yakuza series and a few others, he can be an albatross in terms of trying to create new games for him, which Sonic Team have and had a haphazard history with, and in that for a Sega fan like myself, sadly the company has drowned out interest in taking in so many other of their intellectual properties further in terms of franchises when only a few like Sonic get so much devotion. It is in mind that Sonic the Hedgehog was always an attempt to get a foothold over Nintendo and Mario in the Mega Drive/Genesis era, one which not only succeeded in getting their foothold in the West fully, but eventually became a huge figure loved beyond being an IP. For me, Sonic Team had other desires in the 32-bit era, and whilst they did help on some games, and should have probably helped a lot more on the 3D official Sonic game we never got for that system, I am glad for the games we got from Sonic Team on the Saturn. Even if I half suspect now having played Burning Rangers that they wanted to entirely separate themselves for the blue rodent who a smash hit designed for the West who became big, it was worth it.

It is weird we never got an official Sonic Saturn game, even if it had been terrible, but we did get two very unique games from Sonic Team. One of them has been preserved in Nights into Dreams (1996), a very unique title which clearly was a work of love they created a Nintendo Wii sequel for, and rereleased in a high definition upgrade. Burning Rangers sadly was not given this same treatment, which is tragic as it really is a little gem. It is a fire fighting game, which like Nights… and its unique combination of dream worlds and flying mechanics, means that Sonic Team were at least trying to move away from the mascot platforming of Sonic into two very unique games. Fire fighting has had a couple of games based on the theme – probably the other prominent one is Human Entertainment's The Firemen (1994) for the SNES, from the developer famous for working on the Fire Pro Wrestling franchise alongside very idiosyncratic titles and a Playstation One sequel to The Firemen. Burning Rangers does however have a futuristic slant on the proceedings, feeling like the cool nineties anime series we never got in existence, where fire fighters now do not need the cumbersome fire fighting uniforms, but sleek body suits with the ability to briefly fly and leap large spaces for their job. Instead of water too, or other extinguisher compounds like power for electronic equipment, they effectively use ray guns now. This is especially useful as fire itself has advanced in the future, per colour coding for severity, upgraded to even green flames which seemingly chase fire fighters.  

Structurally, this is a three dimensional game with one foot in what was becoming more dominant in the console era – the longer length games with saving functions, cut scenes and longer levels – but still an arcade game at heart, in that you have a clear route to take, with the virtue of a voice in your character’s ear to tell you where to go, encouraging you to get better when you replay the game. To finish levels quicker, find all the civilians you can rescue, not just those inherently saved in in-game graphic cut scenes, and make sure to get a higher grade. Your main attack, unless you charge it for a room clearing blast which sacrifices them, to literally avoid feeling a little too hot under the collar, are gems produced by the extinguished flames. Collecting these keep you a shield to protect yourself, in the same way having rings prevented Sonic from losing a life in one hit, and are also needed to spend to use the teleport to save civilians. A higher grade is given per level for as many civilians as you can find, as many gems as you can get and retain, and also for getting the levels of fire down to nearly zero percent, as per a meter, if not entirely at zero, alongside your efficiency at dealing with each stage’s boss.

Doors may only be opened with switches, some need key cards occasionally, and beyond the dangers of fire, as it always had since Prometheus scorned the gods to bring it to mortal man, the second stage onwards brings in robots, usually the security for the places hit by the disasters, which does emphasis the dangers of artificial intelligence when they confuse rescue services as hostile threats. Fittingly, there is no true antagonist(s) to the game, no evil cabal behind acts of pyromania, even by the end stages all feeling like the episodic stories in an anime series before a main narrative comes in. The story we get here is where, in a futuristic setting, the threats even if involving a giant monster fish to slay still are accidents and incidents as in real life, where there is less concern for a pyromaniac behind them but to just rescue people caught in the burning environments and try to prevent the fires spreading. The bosses add a three dimensional run-and-gun gameplay, using jumps and air dashes to avoid their attacks, but most of the game is trying to avoid being burnt in the fires, preventing them from getting too high in intensity, and completing the goals to get to the end of each stage.

The thing that needs to be addressed is the graphics. Burning Rangers is one of the last Western releases for a console which was always plagued with the issue of whether it could push polygonal graphics. It was a machine originally designed for sprites, and is acclaimed for its sprite games, but even in spite of the fact Burning Rangers was made on the cusp of the Sega Dreamcast’s Japanese launch on November 1998 in Japan, a console where this was not a problem, this game which came out in the same year still shows the virtues of when the Saturn could be used at its best. There are clear moments when Burning Rangers struggles to put its effects together, but I commend Sonic Team for a game which still looks good enough to show how the Sega Saturn could do polygonal games. The irony is that the game’s one problem is one which befalls games even on the Sony Playstation, which never had concerns about its graphical capabilities, that the camera is not perfect. This is still superior to games from the Saturn, the Playstation and Nintendo 64 which can be awful for their cameras in three dimensional games, in that even if you have moments of precarious platforming and the camera cannot be instantly placed behind the player where they are, they used the shoulder buttons on the Saturn controller to move the camera instantly to your left or right flank, allowing you to position it with ability to check what is ahead. There is also a button to allow you to control said camera more to focus on targets if need be. Having a voice in the ear to tell you if you are going the wrong way, a senior female member of the Burning Rangers named Chris Parton as your eyes, or a later voice who takes over due to plot events, really helps with this even if there were moments, usually the underwater scenes, which can lead to you getting lost. Alongside the fact the latter does not have oxygen depletion as a game function, thank lord, even when there is the issue that you can accidentally be blasted by fire without spotting it, I will forgive it when it is part of the game’s really interesting game mechanic for this.

That being how, even without the threat of a variety of different fire colours, their colours dictating how more blasts are needed to clear them, fires can explode from anywhere. Sound is important, to the point the game tells you to make sure you can clearly hear your sound system, because not only is Chris'  voice your guide, but you get a sound cue warning when fire is about to explode from under you or the wall. The button, down on the control pad, to do a back flip to avoid it may not always work than just use the air dash to escape, especially on the level in a space station when an outer wall breaks and threatens to suck you into the vastness blackness of the space outside, but the emphasis on keeping your ears and eyes alert for fire is actually a distinct mechanic I commend. There is even, if not exploited as much due to the game's short length, the real concept of the back draft, which is when you open a door in a burning building, and the suddenly combination of air into a room with combustible gases causes an explosion of fire which can harm the person who open the door. This desire to make a fire fighting game, even if exaggerated, which does show the peril of the job is admirable, when it comes to having to briefly carry a child on your back and avoid fire jets, and the basic game mechanics emphsing how the team behind this wished to make a game which was not the same as many where you killed anyone you met rather than rescued them. Yuji Naka is a controversial figure now he was arrested and jailed in 2023 for inside trading, and neither did it help that his game with his own studio Balan Wonderworld (2021), clearly a project of love about dreams like Nights..., of helping people and one which even has actual musical numbers, got tarred and feathered by the public beforehand, but he as a producer and creator is still important. A game like Burning Rangers has to be commended for trying something different, making it clearer they were not interested in just repeating the success of Sonic the Hedgehog again. The game's director Naoto Ohshima, who designed Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman from the Sonic franchise, would after 1998 move from Sonic Team and work under a variety of different companies, even if it did mean also working on Balan Wonderworld among other titles.

Even the production design is carefully put together as, for all my jokes about this being an anime, this has cut scenes, when not in-game graphics being used, outsourced to TMS Entertainment, a legendary animation studio behind the likes of Akira (1988) who were collaborating with Sega a lot at this time, including on animated work based on their properties like a 1995 animated series based on Virtua Fighter. Even the voice cast, for the original Japanese version, though the English one we had was not a slouch either, has prominent names, the most notable being Yūko Miyamura as the female lead Tillis, who already by this game had her iconic character of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) under her belt among other roles. It adds a lot to a game which, whilst a short arcade game at heart, was aiming to be a bigger title from a major arm of Sega. Story wise, you an either choose Tillis herself, or the male lead in Shou Amabane; Shou is your typical lead, whilst Tillis is the youngest member who we learn can communicate with dolphins in a sequence undoubtedly from Sega in its charming goofiness. Sadly we never got a sequel which let us play the other team members, unless you find the secret codes to do so, but at least they are prominent, even having the gruff veteran, in his mid-thirties, who is named Big Landman, which is hilarious he goes under Mr. Landman when greeted. Nonetheless, like the cut scenes, it adds to the game as much as the score by Naofumi Hataya, Fumie Kumatani and Masaru Setsumaru. It adds a lot as between some bombastic rock opera theatrics, they also indulge in dark ambient appropriate for the threat of the main game alongside jazz, which is unconventional if somehow right for the tone.

Stage one, of only five, sets this up at a science lab where after the introductory training piece you quickly learn the ropes. This is a game where, at your best, you will be able to dash through levels quickly, find all the civilians to rescue when you learn the stages, and take in that beating the game once includes an option for randomization in the stages, which adds a nice addition for replay value. Finding survivors, including more available when stages are replayed, leads to the sweet touch of having emails you can access in the main menu thanking you for rescuing them, alongside being the source for secret codes for extras when rescued. For the opening stage, it is pretty conventional and teaches you all the gameplay mechanics minus any robot enemies, with real emphasis throughout that this is the daily life of a fire fighter team even if from an awesome nineties anime series we never got. Based on the episodic stories before the major plot how this game is effectively structured as, the first stage scenario is merely caused by the ill-advised decision to cultivate a giant sentient plant which caused the disaster in the first place and is the boss to dispose of.

Stage Two, probably a favorite even though swimming in maze-like tunnels in the game can get confusion, is the SeaWorld equivalent, if an underwater tourist site which forgot to tell anyone that they had a tour with children there unknown about, and had a giant monster fish which became the issue. The very cheesy and charming details very much of Sega come through here, including befriending a dolphin, if you play Tillis, who guides you along in a funny and sweet moment. Stage Three is definitely where this shows itself as a short game unfortunately releasing itself at a time when, with the Sony Playstation dominating the market, long campaigns in video games were becoming more prominent, as this is already escalating itself with an incident in outer space on a space station which marks close to the end of the story, something you would have to wait for in another game after a few more stages before. Thankfully, whilst a longer game could have been much more ambitious, we got here at least a hybrid of an arcade game which is designed with love and works, not pointlessly long either in this case as we are already dealing with zero gravity movement or the issue of how outer walls of the station collapse and leads to damage if you get nearly sucked through into the void. With huge spoilers ahead, another voice as mentioned is presented after this stage, that of a young woman preserved in stasis on a nearby satellite for a then-incurable disease. Unfortunately her father, when he built the satellite's artificial intelligence, did not code it to not try to collide directly into the Earth, causing unforeseen and apocalyptic damage, when it got the eventual memo a cure was found decades later.

How this leads on includes the one abrupt gameplay change, fun but feeling not as thought-out as the rest, of having to negotiate a space cruiser carefully past hazards to reach Stage Five and the final act, but after that everything is dandy. It leads to a surreal neatherrealm in the satellite with cautious platforming on thin platforms over void, leading you to fight a monster for a final boss before the happy ending. And after that, all that there is to say is the disappointment that this game never was followed upon or ever got a re-release. Nights into Dreams, as mentioned earlier, was clearly a game which was loved to the point it had a Japanese only Playstation 2 release in 2008, a sequel in Nights: Journey of Dreams (2007), and a 2012 high definition re-release. The character themselves also has made appearances in the likes of Sega crossover tennis and kart racing titles, so they have a legacy. Burning Rangers only real legacy is one or two references, such as a race track in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (2012) based on the game, but that is it. It is not great, and again ties into the issues of preserving the past, especially as the game in its original form on aging CDs costs more than rent for some houses nowadays, and is tragically also really good, a highlight of the console lost officially to the past as said past is not kept in the spot light.

Games of the Abstract: Bug Too! (1996)

 

Developer: Realtime Associates/SegaSoft

Publisher: Sega

One or Two Player

Originally for: Sega Saturn

 

Bug Too is a game I had always wanted to play, seeing a video demo on a Sega Flash Vol. Three disc, the demo discs which briefly existed for the British Official Sega Saturn magazine where this was just one of the videos, not one of the playable demos. Sadly, I did not get many of them, despite there being only seven demo discs¹. All those games, notwithstanding another demo disc I had, filtered into my adolescent brain games I have had an obsession to play even if sadly many are the more expensive titles for the Saturn for the original physical versions in Europe - Mr. Bones (1996), Enemy Zero (1996), Die Hard Arcade (1996) - a sacred list of titles I wished to play. As much as it comes with delight to finally play Bug Too!, as a title among that list, sadly I have to also mention that for a game which had plenty to love, you need to be patient with some cardinal sins of the platformer genre which did make it as agonising as a game I finally got to play and enjoy.

The original Bug (1995) is synonymous to the Saturn in the West as one of the first games ever released for the console, when released in the United States in May 11th 1995 and Europe on July 8th 1995, alongside the original Panzer Dragoon (1995) and Clockwork Knight (1994) as one of its most prominent titles which people may know of. Developed by Realtime Associates, who cut their teeth from 1986 into the sixteen bit era of games, the prequel was confirmed as being originally an official Sonic the Hedgehog project, as a jump into 3D, before it got kyboshed by Sega of Japan². So instead, alongside the messy history of Sonic the Hedgehog never getting a proper entry in the main franchise for that console, we got the titular Bug instead, an insect humanoid actor who, in the first game, is acting in a film we play as a game, rescuing his family from a Queen spider. Bug was a hard game, something to consider with this sequel, as alongside not having a save system in the conventional sense, my childhood memories vividly remember how its long sprawling levels, just in the first world, full of hazards and enemies meant I never got off that world unless I used a cheat code for level skipping. Even if both are technically 2D.5 platformers, with restricted routes to travel or move, that game and its sequel are games whose challenge or attempts to bring platforming to a polygonal world, with all the hiccups especially for Bug Too alongside its virtues.

Bug Too has as loose a plot as you could get, with just the context that with two new characters to choose from - our titular lead, who would get a "Best Buns" award for how much he twerks his posterior when allowed to get away with it, a lovable dog-maggot hybrid named Maggot, and one of a few questionable archetypes in this game, a Blaxploitation Disco-Stu bug humanoid named Superfly. They have been told by a film executive, rushing them over the worlds in his limo, to churn out films in a variety of genres which are our worlds, each with the level select now done by moving around a stage to access them in any route, which is distinct to say the least for this time. The first game was a an early era attempt at polygonal platforming if sticking in a 2D.5 form, that you worked on a restricted pathway even if the world is in three dimensional graphics. That meant restricting the paths ahead for you and, in mind to its pre-Sonic plan, having you wonder to and fro the screen, into the background and even upside down on sprawling surreal dream worlds of insects living on floating platforms. Bug Too is not different but does factor in a quirk which effects the gameplay as you have more freedom of movement; you still have limited paths, but alongside mazes to find all the bonuses, you have to factor in what place within a platform you are now stood on, even having to jump forwards towards the screen in multiple and dangerous platforming moments.

I have to credit Bug Too for personality. If you want pure surreal game world logic, this has this from the get-go with the horror themed world, Weevil Dead 2, of floating platforms with falling hedgerows, zombie weevils and ghosts. The Egyptian theme levels for world two, Lawrence of Arachnia, are kind of obvious, as is Antennae Day 4 for the sci-fi ones, but we get to a deeply dream-like circus world Flee Wee's Big Adventure, and for the requisite underwater section of a platformer, Swatterworld, which is, yes, a pin on Kevin Coaster's notorious film Waterworld (1995), but leads to background depicting islands of crystal and weird denizens like literal hammerhead sharks and accused sea monkeys.

Flee Wee's Big Adventure and the last world Cicada Night Fever deserve their own paragraphs alongside praise of the aesthetics of the game in general, as sadly I am going to have to be brutal about issues with the game which do undercut the game after Weevil Dead 2 world up to Swatterworld. The first is an uncomfortable amount that has aged badly. The sight of snakes dressed and sounding like stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorists with guns and rocket launchers, having wandered out of True Lies (1994) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the Egyptian levels are a reminder of how many stereotypes were found in not just videogames, but pop culture from this era, and you can add others like the "fey" martial arts mummy, one of two from this world's bosses, that have not aged well. The two levels I singled out will get their praises, but the wackiness that has been introduced with voiced enemies within the middle of the game only managed to be once and a while; Antennae Day has a gleefully subversive choice to have planet/octopus aliens floating in space who look like the Sega Saturn symbol and shout "Sega!" in the trademark of their advertisements.

The other issue with Bug Too is that, for all the levels for their hardness that are still fun, there is much that is unforgivable. You will get fun levels in this game throughout, but alongside the fact the game seems to have struggled in development, due to the fact you have up to five levels for Lawrence of Arachnia but only two and a boss by the last levels of the entire game, suggesting material had to be scrapped, there is a lot of excruciating examples of platforming you need to get through. Among them are two levels which deserve gaming hell for their sins. Part of this is one of the design changes from the previous game, which comes into play in the choice that this is still a 2D.5 platformer, but you can move above in certain spaces and platforms so you can move about on them, allowing for a greater semblance of freedom in movement even on limited spaced platforms. It just becomes an unnecessary niggle to complicate more precarious platforming, especially as you will have some insanely difficult platforming including jumping in and out of the screen, which unfortunately leads also to some leaps of faith to platforms off-screen. There are also platforms, despite barriers on them to restrict falling off them, where you can accidentally overshoot and jump even past their invisible walls to oblivion if you cannot exploit them. The decision to also turn levels into more overt mazes to find all the collectable gems, extra lives and bonus levels leads to levels which cannot be defended. Antennae Day Stage 1 is dreadful, for this maze-like structure where you can find yourself lost and returning to the beginning; the actual goal is found on a lengthy passage of invisible platforms over nothing, and only seen when stepped on or, with the spitting power up as a projectile, using the later to find the gaps rather than just used on enemies. Swatterworld Stage 1 is just as confusing as a maze above and underwater involving back tracking over elevators and spinning platforms, with more awkward platforming in three dimensional spaces to climb onto them, to find switches, even preventing you from using one elevator to the final steps until you have wandered off and returned back.

This is such a shame as there is delirious and proudly surreal fun here too, these platformers feeding the mind of my younger self with moments even if hard and imperfect mechanics that fed my imagination. This is something I can defend in spite of the middle worlds being some of the most awkward I have come across, even making the difficulty curves of Konami's Castlevania games more appreciated with them giving you some fairness to their restrictions. The composer Greg Turner is a huge virtue here for starters in terms of good parts of the game, having worked on the original Bug of before. Whether it is the haunted house funk of the Weevil Dead to the clown music of Flee Wee's Big Adventure, he got the memo even for the level select stage music to stand out. The aesthetic style in general to Bug Too is one of its strongest points alongside moments of bizarre humour which do work, such as a random alien drinking coffee who is an inadvertent obstacle when dealing with the Antennae Day boss, wandering the walkways between spikes and the actual boss trying to blast you. You have, in a 2D.5 world when not meddled with, such wonderfully out there aspects with the platforming like a giant spiral which pulls you into the screen, or all the upside down and on the side platforms where even reversing the controls feels less cruel but apt for these parts. Even when not perfect, when this game emphasises mechanics of the past, like the fondly missed mushrooms you bounced off from the prequel, of the level specific ones, like riding giant gun welding enemies to shoot the others in proto-cover based shooting, you do see the game at its best before you get to the two worlds I loved the most.

Flee Wee's Big Adventure is a surreal circus, with tiny clown cars with a full size clown inside them to worry about, lion bugs, dangerous bouncing balls, and a joke which would have went over children’s heads, a one moment scene involving voluptuous Medusa women in cages whose kisses cause damage but also reverse your controls, requiring you to take a literal cold shower midway through the section if you wish to get rid of this effect. Cicada Night Fever is just mad, and in the best of ways, as whilst the end boss is made harder by the bad choice of some freedom in space, the game actually ends on a high note with two fun and idiosyncratic levels with a challenging end boss. Between the Cheshire cats, returning frogs from the first game with fly squatter tongues, and one joke involving a Beatles Yellow Submarine tribute, with Liverpudlian accents, which did make me chuckle, and this shows how imaginative and good Bug Too can be. You just look at the backgrounds – including the giant drinking birds toys in the distance among multiple giant toadstools the size of mountains – to see how deliciously bizarre platformers could be in the best of ways in this last world. The final boss, an Alice in Wonderland tribute with a giant smoking caterpillar, even has you also avoiding giant pieces of popcorn falling from the sky alongside the caterpillar's smoke rings just because.

It is a shame that the game has some unforgivable moments I have to bring up, as alongside not having a proper save function like the original game, there are a long of mechanics and questionable choices which you will struggle with that undercut the great moments. It's now dated style is also chic in its unrealistic take on platforming, wandering upwards and upside down, and does also show the Saturn’s curious polygonal graphics, whilst a pig for some to develop with, could conjure imaginative visuals like this has. It is a shame that I have to say, however, that the middle of Bug Too could sadly cause some to give up on the game, which is tragic. This was also the last of the franchise too in general. Realtime Associates, who developed both games, briefly continued into the sixth generation of gaming consoles, but moved away in favour of "serious games" which use gaming mechanics for added benefits. I cannot help but praise them, for one primary example of this, for Re-Mission (2006) and its 2013 sequel, a game specifically designed for young cancer patients with HopeLab Foundation to use third person shooting game mechanics to help guide them through how their cancer treatments worked as well as the emotional benefits of playing such a game in general. Segasoft, who were brought in for Bug Too, sadly was taken away from gaming publication and development in 2000 with layoffs, changed as an arm of Sega in North America to focus on the Heat.net online gaming service at the time³. This is a shame as they were the ones we have to thank for publishing some really idiosyncratic Saturn games like Three Dirty Dwarves (1996). Bug found himself, after the end credits here where he talks directly to us of how multi faceted an actor he is, lost in the attic of time alongside Clockwork Knight’s Pepperouchau and characters from other games from this era, with the exception of the protagonist of Nights Into Dreams (1996) confided into oblivion. The Sega Saturn, with its odd history of being a console more popular in Japan, and absolutely forgetting to release a canonical Sonic the Hedgehog entry, decided in general to ignore most of the intellectual properties from the Mega Drive/Genesis in general, with characters from this time seen as misfits lost to time, many of which were sadly penalised like this to be abandoned.  

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1) Sadly I did not get all thirty seven magazines, nor kept the ones I had, so I also missed out on the first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998), the Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams (1996) disc nor another for Swagman (1997).

2) Bug! (Revisited) | Reviewing Every U.S. Saturn Game, Episode 7 of 246 of the YouTube series PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Saturn Game. Released on May 20th 2023, it includes an archive interview with David Warhol, founder of Realtime Associates, where this information is revealed.

3) SegaSoft Shake-Up, written by Curt Feldman and published for Gamespot.com on April 28th 2000.

Abby (1974)

Director: William Girdler

Screenplay: G. Cornell Layne

Cast: William Marshall as Bishop Garret Williams, Terry Carter as Reverend Emmett Williams, Austin Stoker as Detective Cass Potter, Carol Speed as Abby Williams, Juanita Moore as Miranda "Momma" Potter, Charles Kissinger as Dr. Hennings, Elliott Moffitt as Russell Lang, Nathan Cook as Tafa Hassan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

We have William Marshall of Blacula (1972) in a lead role here, so we are good from the get-go, an actor who I wished could have had the huger filmography, one to match Christopher Lee's, as they both have the commanding voices, the gravitas and the sense no matter how ridiculous the film around them is, as with Abby here, they stood proudly within them. When I saw a retrospective screening of Blacula, as much as it was the cape that made him alluring, a younger woman in the patrons afterwards admitted to a male friend she found Marshall irresistible, one of those overheard anecdotes that make one glad to go to the cinema. Shame this is a role for him in a film viewed through an old sock depending on the version you can find, as this is a mostly all-black cast reinterpretation of The Exorcist (1973) which was sued off the screens. Warner Brothers may have forgotten to retract the suit, hence why it is difficult to see, alongside actually film prints. It's director William Girdler had no shame in following trends, with his most known film Grizzly (1976) if Jaws was replaced with a bear on land, but in the world of far more blatant Exorcist copies, especially the likes of the Turkish film Şeytan (1974), it feels cruel this idiosyncratic take, shot on barely a budget, was the one that got blocked from released, preserved through bootlegs or theatrical screenings of old prints.

Girdler himself is a distinct figure in American independent cinema, tragically dying in a helicopter accident whilst scouting for locations for a film. He was at only the age of thirty in 1978 when this happened, but he managed from 1972 to 1978 to make nine films. He is a regional filmmaker/producer who shot in various states - Abby shot in Louisville, Kentucky - and alongside how impressive that run is, to image what he could have do when the shot-to-video eighties era came in would have been tantalising in mind to a film like Abby, made in mind to a huge hit undeniably but having its own energetic spin to the material.  

Abby itself, alongside being a riff on the Exorcist, was also riding the wave Blacula was part of when "Blaxploitation" cinema grew in the early seventies, making films about predominantly black casts, and started touching into horror. I credit Girdler, a white filmmaker, just entirely devote himself even if in mind to the market to a mostly all-black cast driven film here, even if you do have to accept that the film might be seen as crass in its premise. I am not the right person to speak of whether the film can be defendable or not, but I could have seen something far more problematic in this premise, rather than what is over-the-top and not subtle in the slightest. Our Father Merrin stand-in, William Marshall, whilst doing humanity work in Nigeria goes on to research a site of Eshu, a trickster deity from the Yoruba religion, originating from south-western Nigeria. This is the one thing really that has not aged well, as you have an actual worshipped God of the past turned into an ancient evil that possesses his daughter-in-law Abby (Carol Speed), a young churchgoing woman with a priest husband who takes on the Regan place but somewhat differently. The deity is turned into a libidinous sex demon, which is broadly painting a figure of ancient worship as you could get and would be frowned on in the modern day, which is ironic because you could have even in a pulp film with this one's tone explored this idea of repressed sexuality and Christian faith much more.

It ultimately becomes an issue in that the film really has less interest in this figure of Eshu than to have the idea of a figure who will cause Abby to fall into being a figure who literally loves someone to death, literally steaming the car up to the point it erupts in smoke and burns up the person she was necking inside. It is more of an issue of you have the calm and saintly Abby contrasted by a demonic figure that is lascivious and has a demonic male voice which is broad in his comments. What really neutralising this, and makes the film more ridiculous than anything, is how absurd this goes. There is some unintentional humour, the demon coming up with memorable one liners, Abby tormenting an old woman to the point of a heart attack by slapping her around, or her offering sexual advice as a marriage advisor by offering to sleep with the husband. What is potentially problematic is crushed in its own alien take on The Exorcist, becoming its own take where there is no knock off Tubular Bells, but funk and monotone drones instead.

It is still, undeniable, with an eye on a huge hit, but this strips out most of the iconic aspects of The Exorcist, such as there being no Father Karras and his crisis of faith. It is as much budgetary reasons clearly we do not get some of the more elaborate scenes recreated, though we get someone floating by the end. It nonetheless is fun to witness, working with the bare essentials to its own quirks, such as the exorcism itself taking place in a nightclub and involves one destroyed disco ball. For a film in the context it was made in too, all the potential issues I have described do not thankfully have anything to them in regards to demeaning its cast, all barring one detective and minor figures an all-black cast, working actors who if you dig into their careers have films and television work which stick out. Our titular lead Carol Speed's career was sadly mostly within the seventies only, with films like The Mack (1973), but it took me by surprise to realise that, playing her mother, is Juanita Moore, famous especially for her key part in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959), an incredible film, whilst you have Austin Stoker from Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) too among others.

In terms of whether the film is actually "good" in terms of portrayals of these characters, rather than avoiding problematic stereotypes, one has to be blunt. It is in mind to whether you find Abby's foul mouthed, sex obsessed demon form against the saintly Christian archetype she begins as problematic or just ridiculous. It is, at its heart, openly cashing in on The Exorcist, and with the choice to spin it the way the film did, everything feels ridiculous instead. Everything feels unintentional in its mistakes than deliberately problematic stereotypes. It even attempts to bring in aspects of the Yoruba religion which, whilst not dealt with well, least gives us one good moment, with William Marshall mocking the demon, in a variety of languages between them, for pretending to be the real Eshu, and even moving into using non-Christian African religious rites to perform the exorcism. It is the scene that stands out as distinct even if one also wishes for a film which elaborated on this sequence more than here. If anything, it just makes me appreciate William Marshall more, who actually was not a fan of the film he was making¹, but still committed a powerhouse performance. I wish he was as well known as other cult horror actors as, with one of the better scenes in what is a silly film made on a very low budget in that example, the comparison to Christopher Lee is perfect. He was someone who could have been incredible in so many films if he had the wider length of filmography as the later did. As with the rest of the cast, and Girdler himself as producer-director, I wish this had not been stuck in this lawsuit situation, as alongside the pointlessness of this when most of these films are clearly not like the big hit, which feels like a power game in committing to the lawsuit, Abby within the light of day cannot be taken seriously. It becomes instead a fascinating item from the past with figures involved within it who shine in spite of criticisms of the film itself.

 

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1) Abby (1974): A Unique Blaxploitation Horror or Nothing More Than an Exorcist Rip-Off?, written by Neil Gray for Horror Obsessive and published 29th September 2022.

Macabre (1980)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Screenplay: Pupi Avati, Roberto Gandus, Lamberto Bava and Antonio Avati

Cast: Bernice Stegers as Jane Baker, Stanko Molnar as Robert Duval, Veronica Zinny as Lucy Baker, Roberto Posse as Fred Kellerman, Ferdinando Orlandi as Mr. Wells, Fernando Pannullo as Leslie Baker, Elisa Kadigia Bove as Mrs. Duval

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Set in the USA, specifically New Orleans with Southern accents in the dub, Macabre was the debut film for Lamberto Bava, son of the legendary Mario Bava, and it is less a horror film in conventions but a really twisted horror melodrama. The set up is a film in itself but sets up a more morbid narrative: a wife named Jane Baker (Bernice Stegers) is having an adulterous affair behind her husband's back with a man named Fred (Roberto Posse), creating suspicion in the eldest daughter Lucy (Veronica Zinny) to the point the later, in an act of psychosis, drowns her younger brother in the bathtub out of revenge for the betrayal. The drive back, panicked by the horror of losing her own son, leads Jane and Fred to crash the car, Fred losing his head in the collision with a wall.

A year later, the parents have divorced, and Jane has had mental health therapy, but this perverse melodrama with sultry jazz on the score by Ubaldo Continiello will see the repercussions of this incident for Mrs. Baker. Another figure of importance is Robert (Stanko Molnar), a blind instrument repair man who, in the prologue when his mother was still alive, let a room in the top floor for Jane and Fred for their affair, letting her take the room again by herself separated from her husband. Slow paced, I mentioned this was less a horror film in the traditional sense, and in a gruesome turn in the plot, befits its name a macabre drama in presentation. Late seventies chic of over textured and saturated coloured wallpaper and decor overwhelm the main setting, Robert's home, be it the marble wall bathroom with pure white sink to yellowish gold on everything from clothes to wall decor. Because of this, there is a sick lavishness to a sick story of love as Jane has not forgotten Fred, and someone comes to her room at night as Robert is still able to hear from the floor below.

Robert is our sympathetic figure, sweet and attractive with bold blue eyes, but they are unable to see a thing, Robert not playing a bad stereotype either of a blind man, caught blissfully unaware of Mrs. Baker ritualizing her beloved Fred, with even a portable shrine to him carried with her when she takes the room to stay in. Robert will learn the horrible truth, and even before then he is stuck knowing she pleasures herself at night seemingly on the top floor whilst he pangs in unrequited love. The story is made more complicated by Lucy herself, playing another obsessive in wanting her parents to reunite even if it means tormenting her own mother, like Lucy adding a photo of the late younger brother for her mother to find in her rented room. Wanting said parents back, in the same way Jane wants Fred back, makes up the key theme of the film, of two generations of people clinging to their past in unhealthy, destructive ways, making the film compelling as the equivalent of a radio drama extended into a ninety minute film. As I get older, this is the tone I prefer for a lot of horror, unless they can be great or fun exceptions, much more interesting to see this type of story you could tell in a thirty minute tale with audio only have its form expanded into this intriguing movie.

It admittedly has a plot twist you would have not gotten away with on an old radio show like Beyond Midnight or Inner Sanctum Mysteries. The twisted aspect is what Mrs. Baker keeps in the top of the refrigerator in the room, [Huge Spoiler] which turns out to be an act of necrophilia with Fred's head where the frozen peas should be stored. It is gross but the idea of a love so strong it turns into this obsession to even preserve what remains of him, as a talisman even if involving their actual remains, is compelling. More so as the story is actually based on a real story of a woman who kept her lover's head in a refrigerator too, Bava given a newspaper clipping of the incident by Pupi Avati, the filmmaker who also co-writer with his brother Antonio Avati¹. [Spoilers End] Even if the twist will be obvious if you have sussed up on your plot tropes, and have a sick imagination, the story is macabre literally for this sickly obsession with love in a lurid depiction.

It is helped by the lead Bernice Stegers, a British actress who was spotted through Federico Fellini's City of Women (1980)¹, made around the same time, giving a committed role as a woman lost in her own insanity. Her career is in small roles between film and television, but she would also reappear in Xtro (1982), a film which somehow managed to outdo this Italian film in terms of bizarre imagery. The perversity of the story is enough even with an even more absurd and supernatural end scene for an added jolt, because of its growing tension of everything starts to collapse. Even mother and daughter will be at war with each other in a gristly conclusion. Lamberto Bava's films after, to be honest, are not subtle in the slightest, his most iconic Demons (1985) as over-the-top as you can get, and whilst Macabre fits the director's career in the final act, when everything goes to Hell, the slow burn nature of this particular tale stands out with great reward.

 

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1) Taken from Macabre and the Golden Age of Italian Exploitation (2009), directed by Elijah Drenner.

The Voice of the Moon (1990)

Director: Federico Fellini

Screenplay: Federico Fellini

Based on the novel Il poema dei lunatici (The Lunatics' Poem) by Ermanno Cavazzoni

Cast: Roberto Benigni as Ivo Salvini, Paolo Villaggio as Gonnella, Nadia Ottaviani as Aldina, Marisa Tomasi as Marisa, Angelo Orlando as Nestore, Susy Blady as Susy

An Abstract Candidate

 

It seems my whole life is just this night.

Federico Fellini's last film, premiered outside the Cannes Film Festival competition in 1990, was tragically dismissed. It never got distribution in the UK until Arrow Video made it their task to release it in the late 2010s finally.

It begins introducing us to Roberto Benigni's Ivo Salvini, released from a mental hospital, starting from one night going on a journey through vignettes. Whilst it begins with a sense of humour, Ivo accidentally wandering into a nephew letting people pay to see his aunt undress, The Voice of the Moon feel streaked in melancholia of a different time. Based freely on a novel by Ermanno Cavazzoni, where Cavazzoni was taking his influence from the writings of real mental health patients, this film comes with the knowledge Benigni's character is a Holy Fool, with a fixation on wells which may pose a danger to him as others watch over him in fear of this, and with all the voices in his head. All we see is entirely subjective from his perspective. He is an outsider who will be ignored, and whilst his journey is brimming in life and vivescent, he is cast off in society alongside others. The first person he encounters demonstrates this: a musician living in a graveyard who found a man randomly eating everything in his kitchen, following by more appearing in his room when he rehearsed forbidden cords.

Ivo is blissful even when thinking of those he knew of who have died, but the world continues around him regardless of his presence, the modern changes to Italy visible in the background as tourists have collected together around the streets in the day, TV aerials are on all the roofs, and washing machines and refrigerators of pure manufactured white are especially everywhere. Against this, the film feels melancholic and eerie, even when Ivo is speaking tenderly of life, realities bleeding into each other especially when it comes to memories of his grandmother, Roberto Benigni playing the role whilst meant to be a child and a young actress is cast as the grandmother.  

The tentative plot is his love for a woman named Aldina (Nadia Ottaviani), as pale with blonde hair as the Moon she will be positioned as later on, trying to return a shoe back to her after an ill advised incident her sister helped with, clutching onto throughout without any true insidious (or unintentionally insidious) aspect to his love for her, almost childlike instead as a crush. The closest thing to another prominent figure, among those displaced like he and seen throughout in reoccurring roles, is a prefect named Gonnella (Paolo Villaggio), shown initially fearing his neighbours will infect him with their old age as an older man himself, made to retire due to his mental health and believe everyone is a spy out to get him, even thinking his own son is a fake pretending to be a son. There is still a light humour, and it is still bawdy, one of the stories is that of the wife whose libido is so strong it lead to an amicable divorce from her husband, who adored the hairdresser's manicurist but could not keep up with someone so passionate the sofa starts steaming up with their embrace and hurdles on literal train lines in one of their many frequent love making rituals. Honestly, where the film was probably dismissed is how gentle it is, following characters and scenarios Ivo encounters without a sense of plot driven melodrama. Considering early in his career Fellini jettisoned plot driven stories for this template which help bring his acclaim, such as with the likes of Amarcord (1973), it does raise the sense Fellini sadly was out of time for cinema in 1990 then the film being flawed in pace or meaning.

The film looks beautiful, Fellini's trademark a baroque maximalism where depicting entire aspects of Italian culture, even its ancient past, were depicted with every detail and every extra having interest to examining them. This was all with a dream logic that explored the "texture" of his worlds whether the internal subconscious of a lead, the environment itself, or both, the gnoccata festival is a good example here. Without the loaded satire of Roma (1972) of the fashion show of priest uniforms covered in neon or riding bicycles on a catwalk, it is still over-the-top in taking the real tradition of a festival based on the food item gnocca, with a crowned gnocca Queen and even mascot costumes of gnocca royalty, done in this case as a loving nod to tradition whilst having a sense of humour.

The film does dangerously get close to Fellini looking at the modern day dismissively whilst lamenting the past, which is righteous when mocking the obsession with fancy new electronic appliances, but with music would veer into closed mindedness of an old man. Thankfully, the sequence when this comes in clearly embraced the spectacle and feels less dismissive, more the lament of everyone charging ahead in the new world without pause for the past from the perspective of those lost from before. That is the discotheque sequence, an awesome scene for Fellini's swansong, of a giant warehouse with towering reflective panelled walls that move on rails, and crowds decked in late eighties fashion. The biggest surprise, which clearly was not a musical licensing issue at all when the film was instead "lost" to lack of interest, is how he managed to get Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel, off the Bad (1987) album, a huge album and one of its singles which also happens to work perfectly for the sequence itself. The scene, where Gonnella laments the music lost in the past, thankfully does not quash the beauty of this moment, actually evoking what David Lynch does in a set piece for Wild at Heart (1990). The irony is not last as, at that Cannes Film Festival where Fellini's film was dismissed it was Lynch, who admired the filmmaker and would even befriend him, who won their most important award the Palme D'Or for that year with Wild At Heart. Both films have scenes juxtaposing wildly alien fans of a different genre of music, in Lynch's a heavy metal concept, suddenly stop and become an audience for an entirely different reality, time stopping for everything as these youths circle around a beautiful slow dance with an older woman who loved Gonnella despite he being so gone in his conspiracy theories, getting to rekindle that love over a classical piece.

And thankfully, Fellini ends his last film, before his 1993 passing, with the satirical touch he streaked his career with, as whilst politics do not necessarily appear in his films, he did prod follies in humanity continually. Two brothers, set up early on wanting to accomplish this, end up literally capturing the Moon herself at one point, and as crowds gather, priests and politicians intermingle on TV, and it is a world changing event of spiritual profoundness. What happens is that this monumental event is to be ruined by bickering, the Moon getting abuse hurled at it for no reason, and a gun being fired spoiling a profound moment. Fellini still loves humanity but gets a humour in humans being distracted by their own pettiness, rather than enjoy the things in life Ivo as many characters before him had throughout the director's other films, a fitting end to a magnificent career.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Eerie/Whimsical

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low