Pasokon Retro is our regular look back at the early years of Japanese PC gaming, covering everything from specialty computers from the '80s to the halcyon days of Windows XP.
Before Japanese developer Treasure made shmup masterpieces like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, he perfected a different style of gameplay: the beat 'em up. Guardian Heroes is one of the best games the arcade genre has ever produced, with sections that fit into all of them Directions branch out and lead to several extremely different endings. When crackling spells fill the screen as an undead warrior rains down his skeletal fury on enemies streaming in from all sides, that's just the game's idea of an ordinary encounter. The kickflips, dodges, counters and multi-hit combos that unleashed all this chaos seem to have been inspired by a perfectly crafted one-on-one fighting game.
But they weren't. They were actually inspired by a little computer game called Mad Stalker.
This 1994 side-scrolling beat 'em up from Fill in Cafe, best known in English-speaking circles for… nothing really, and vaguely remembered in Japan for a series of schoolgirl-based fighting games remains is a strange beast. It harnesses the unmatched raw power of Sharp's X68000 PC, a home computer so powerful that it has more than a few near-perfect ports of '90s arcade games to defeat a single plane. Each area is completely flat. Each level is a single pixel thick.
It would be disappointing if it wasn't such a great idea. Sticking to just one “line of action” frees up and down directions on the keyboard (or a compatible joypad) from the usual tedious act of having to awkwardly walk up to Bad Guy A or slowly shuffle me down to Bad Guy B. Instead They had me jump, double jump, duck, and do all the exciting aerial kicks and sneaky low swings that go with those moves. And I can do them all just as quickly and fluidly as in any Street Fighter-like fighting game.
It's this keen focus on fighting that gives my pleasantly nimble 'Mech access to the moves that most other brawlers can only dream of. I have air throws here. Air throws. Is there anything more satisfying than sending a giant lump of angry metal crashing into the ground from 20 feet in the air?
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Normally the answer to that would be “no”. But this is Mad Stalker, a game that just needs to go one step further. At its simplest, there are two attack strengths – weak and strong – tied to two separate attack buttons. So far, so ordinary. But the great thing is that even in a game that takes up less storage space than a single modern screenshot, there are always two very different movements being performed: a quick elbow strike vs. a slow standing uppercut, for example.
Holding forward while pressing the same attack buttons changes not only the properties of a standing move, but also its animations: the quick elbow strike becomes a knife hand strike with greater range – and also a slightly longer recovery time. If I tap forward or down twice before attacking, my mech will perform one of two different types of rushing blade attacks, the length and strength of which depend on the strength of the attack. And if that wasn't enough, a Hadouken-style input causes my mech to pull out a giant weapon out of nowhere and fire a slow shot straight ahead. I have an answer for every situation, it's just up to me to learn how to use it properly.
And I have to do it quickly, because Mad Stalker is always looking for new ways to turn something I thought I knew into a harmful problem. That's why Mad Stalker introduces floating, electrified bullets into the mix, just as I'm starting to get overly confident with aerial attacks. The warring balls that control the top half of the screen force me to rethink my once-good strategy in an instant. A later boss can pull my 'Mech there and initiate a painful grab, encouraging me to either keep my distance or use quick, careful hit-and-run tactics. Airborne enemies might quickly dash into the unreachable background to reposition themselves rather than attempting to fly directly above them, causing me to rethink my usual response.
The good news is that I'm only ever sent two or three large enemies my way at a time, no matter how creatively they dart across the screen. The bad news is that I'm expected to take them all seriously. Any nameless 'Mech the same size as me has similar moves and probably a few unique ones. Boss fights are even more stressful. The AI is alert and aggressive, happy to wait for me to assert myself, arm stretched defensively in front of me as I anticipate an impending mid-height attack, only to respond instead with a low kick to the steel shins.
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I had no idea Mad Stalker was so detailed before I bought it Project EGG's online download store a few years ago. All I knew was that I liked the idea of hitting mechs in the face with another mech.
Luckily for me, Fill in Cafe were clearly fans of the same sort of thing and wanted to make sure the fights were as exciting for impressionable people like me as they were mechanically satisfying for more sophisticated tastes. Something that's incredibly important in mech games – and a detail that's often overlooked – is quickly developing a sense of scale. You can tell me I'm an 8-foot-tall bioengineered pilot sitting in a gigantic war machine, but it's hard to believe when everything else is the same size. Mad Stalker gets around this quite cleverly by setting the first stage in an ordinary city and going to the trouble of showing cars, streetlights and even people from the start. I don't have to look in the manual to know how big my mech is, because I can see tiny people running around below and (accidentally) exploding cars driving down the lamp-lit street. I don't need anyone to tell me I'm powerful because I simply blasted my way through a screen-high metal barrier and then challenged a samurai mech to a duel. And won.
And I don't have time to really notice that I'm fighting the same enemies I was fighting 10 minutes ago because the entire stage is literally on fire. And in the next part it's blazing ruins. And then I'm fighting on the roof of a flying warship among dirty orange clouds, while tiny Allied ships scurry around in the background, firing at enemy 'Mechs. The crazy stalker doesn't let himself outdo himself, let alone the others who beat him up. It's, well, crazy.
No, it's not that. Mad Stalker is something to be appreciated.
