 Me…. That's drunk? JJ Squawkers sounds like it would be a family restaurant chain in suburban Florida, but it's actually an arcade platformer made by Athena, a developer that mostly stuck with home console games like StrikeGunner STG and Superbowling, just to name a couple of their efforts for Super Nintendo. Their most ambitious title was probably Desemon, a Super Famicom game that never left Japan. It's a shoot-em-up with an editor built in so you can practically make your own game, which is pretty dang cool. So Athena proved they were definitely capable of making some interesting stuff. But when it came to arcade games, Athena wasn't very involved outside of a couple Mahjong games and this weird ass game. I know I've talked about this before, but I gotta mention it again, I'm fascinated by arcade platformers, because it's like that's the one genre where home consoles were every bit as good as the arcade, if not better. With all the other choices out there, why would I play a game like JJ Squawkers, especially with this title screen? I mean, this seriously looks downright homebrewish, if that makes sense. No offense to any homebrew creators out there. So why is this worth playing? Well, the game answers that right away with a very simple answer, because this game is really freaking weird. I mean, intensely strange. Right away you get this guy dressed in, what is that, like a koala costume or something? What is he doing? Ah, stop that! And that's what you get throughout this first level in particular, just one bizarre image after another and you just toss an unlimited number of tomatoes at everything. I mean, geez, this bird's wing must be so ripped that even Dusty Baker would have no chance of ruining it. What makes this game really fun is that it's two-player co-op, so another bird can join you and make this game absolute chaos to play. The only real issue here is that your attack itself is kinda wonky. I mean, that's gonna be the case anytime you're dealing with a projectile attack that arcs like this. At least you can point your d-pad or joystick up so you can attack that way as well, but otherwise it can be tough to hit precise targets when you need to. One token gives you two hits and two lives. This first level has you getting attacked by ferrets wearing shoes, weasels wearing bandanas, and this flower thing that looks like it was pulled straight out of a nightmare-inducing 1930s cartoon. All while the background behind you slowly turns from day to night and a nice touch, eventually you defeat this flower thing and it explodes? Hey, it works for me. Then you got slugs, rabbits, and banana peels that, believe it or not, you actually want to slip on because it's how you get to these lower levels so you can find upgrades. That's kinda cool. Also cool is this boss fight because its health is represented in the night background turning back into day. Now that is something I've never seen before, it's really cool. The second level is, uh, not at all like the first level. In fact, it's kinda strangely calm, especially the music. Don't get me wrong, it's still hard as hell. In fact, this entire game is ridiculously difficult. This level has more of an emphasis on platforming, which can be frustrating because enemies come from everywhere, but thankfully the game is a little more forgiving when it comes to checkpoints and giving out power-ups for your projectile. There's at least five different forms it can take, including increasing in size from tomatoes to pumpkins, to this spread attack, to these gear things that run across the ground, to this screw attack. Haha, get it? Haha. Anyway, you get to these platforms with faces and arms like they were drawn in MS Paint and they get angry and lift you up to the next part of the level. This weird enough for you, folks? I mean, just listen to how strange this game sounds. The third level starts and this is where the game gets really hard. Seriously, I can't even tell what I'm supposed to kill and what's just in the background. The fourth level has you fighting the Tristar logo in outer space and then the fifth level is just one long boss gauntlet before you get to the final boss, which is this abomination. Yep, this game has only four levels, topped with a boss run, but holy crap, it makes up for the lack of length by being NES levels of hard. Of course, the inherent issue with this is that these days, you can just press the five key on your keyboard and give yourself as many tokens as you want. But even if you do that, this game will still take forever to be. Without doing that? Uh, yeah. Frickin' luck getting through even the first level. If you're wondering if there's any sort of story that explains all this craziness, you're in luck. The demo helpfully tells us that someone is kidnapped again, something terrible happened to the peaceful village Pistachioville. Villagers disappeared one by one and the others gradually became cold-hearted and violent. It seems as if they were hypnotized under someone's spell. Yeah, the spell of Ingrish. So yeah, JJ Squawkers is like if you took Adventures of Batman and Robin for Sega Genesis and gave it the Perodius treatment. This game is well-made and it's a pretty good playthrough, but my God is it hard. Yeah, it's two-player co-op, which helps somewhat, but like I said, once you get to the third level, everything becomes so frickin' crazy I can't even see straight. JJ Squawkers did not get ported anywhere, so this is yet another arcade game you gotta play any way you can. Alright, I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great best of your day.