 Hello, and welcome to one of my favorite kinds of videos I like to do on this channel. It's about finding good games in places you wouldn't expect, taking a look at any and all consoles or handhelds to see if I can find anything worth playing today, or at least something weird enough to show off. For example, in the past I've talked about games like Street Fighter II on TurboGraphic 16, which is surprisingly good, as well as diving through the rubble of consoles like Virtual Boy, the 3DO, and CDI to find games like Laser Lords or Return Fire, just to name a couple, as well as finding some interesting stuff on Game Gear or Neo Geo Pocket like Sylvan Tail. I also keep my ear to the ground for interesting stuff from the arcades, like in the last episode I mentioned a Laserdisc game called Firefox, and here's another one titled Interstellar Laser Fantasy. Yeah, that's a bit of a generic title, but believe it or not, this game was made for arcades back in 1983, and just like Firefox, this one combines background effects via Laserdisc with a traditional graphical overlay. There's not much to the gameplay here, it's a regular over-the-shoulder style shoot-em-up, but yeah, this one just looks really freaking cool, and if I had seen this in the arcades at the time I would have lost my mind, especially at this later level with the asteroids coming at you left and right. Like I said, this game is nothing new as far as the gameplay is concerned, but when it comes to the presentation, it's something much different than what we were used to seeing. Finding old handheld stuff is always a good time, especially for platforms that completely eluded me when I was a kid, like the Atari Lynx, so it's fun to find stuff like battle wheels. Yeah, this game looks pretty rough when it's played on an emulator, but damned if this game isn't fun. It's a first-person view where you drive around shooting missiles at enemies in a Mad Max-style setting, and not only do you take out other cars, but there's also random dudes showing up to try and stop you, but you don't even have to shoot these guys, you can just freaking run them over and they go flying like in a Road Rash game. It's freaking hilarious. There's all sorts of little touches in this game that help set it apart, like the damage to your windshield, and the fact that your car actually rattles and shakes around when you run something over. The sound design also adds a lot here. It's really simple, but really effective. Here's another Lynx exclusive, Electrocop, made by Epicx, the same folks behind games like Jumpman and A Possible Mission. And yeah, again, this game looks pretty rough when you're playing it on an emulator, but like battle wheels, this one is pretty dang impressive in scope for a handheld game made in 1989. It's a third-person shooter that has you exploring mazes and blasting enemies set to a time limit complete with traps, timing-based puzzles, weapon upgrades, and it even has a ridiculous story that takes place in the year 2069 where you have to rescue the president's daughter from the evil criminal brain. I guess maybe they're the second cousin to mother brain? But yeah, they crammed a lot into this one, including the music and sound department, which is top notch for a handheld. What the heck, let's stick with handhelds moving on to the Game Boy Color, which, believe it or not, received a port of Dragon's Lair in 2001. Wait, what? Yes, that's right. The Cinematronic arcade game from 1983 was still getting ports nearly 20 years later, this time on a handheld. And holy crap, this actually looks pretty good. The gameplay here is faithful to the original game, only the full-motion video scenes are redrawn to fit the parameters of the Game Boy Color, and the result here is a way better game than it has any right to be. The animation here is stunning, it's clear a lot of effort went into this one. But I'll admit, as a game, it's not the greatest, there's a ton of trial and error, and once you figure out the right sequences to get through everything, there's not a lot of replay value here. But as a pure exhibition of what the Game Boy Color was capable of, this is a really impressive title, and just on a personal note, if you happen to have an analogue pocket, this is a great example of a game that looks incredible on this screen. The original Game Boy has some surprising titles that hold up really well today, like in the last video of this series, I talked about James Bond 007, and here's another licensed game that has no business being any good, yet somehow it is, it's a game based on the movie Hudson Hawk. And, uh, yeah, that looks closer to Kid Chameleon than it does Bruce Willis, but the sprite animation here is really smooth. You have both a projectile and a melee attack, and there's a lot of interactivity within the levels themselves, where you have to move stuff around to reach certain areas. The film Hudson Hawk was a box office and critical bomb, but since then it's become a bit of a cult classic, and while the NES game sucks out loud, the Game Boy game is actually pretty decent. Here's an especially weird one that got a release on Sega Saturn and PC, but it was originally made for the 3DO back in 1994 called The Horde. It puts SimCity-style city-building in a real-time strategy format, so you're alternating between a build phase, so to speak, where you gather resources, build walls and set up traps and stuff, before you get invaded by enemies where the game moves to an action phase, which essentially is just a top-down beat-em-up. If you're familiar with this channel, you know I love super ambitious games like this that combine genres, and this one does a solid job of streamlining two completely different modes of gameplay. But, like I said, uh, this game is a bit strange, since you play as a character named Chauncey, who was raised by a herd of wild cows, and he's not coincidentally played in the full-motion video sequences by Kurt Cameron. Yeah, that's some pretty good casting there. But as far as the game itself, though, the Horde is pretty interesting and worth checking out. There's weird like that, and then there's mutant rampage body slam for the Philips CDi. Now, just describing this game in terms of how it plays, it's pretty normal. It's just a side-scrolling beat-em-up with three playable characters, you get a health meter with four lives to get through four long levels, but, uh, yeah. Yeah, you could say when it comes to the style and execution of this game, it's more 90s than a Phil-Planteer rookie card in A Trapper Keeper. You might recognize the animation style here, it's done by the same people that did the goofy animated cutscenes in the CDi Zelda games, except this game takes place in some futuristic post-apocalyptic game show where you get cutscenes like this. Ooh, naturals, left those mutin' your hip on these naturals. The free radicals are mutant whips, Elwool! Wait till the naturals face somebody tough! The thing is, though, as weird as this game appears, it's actually pretty good. In addition to the three playable characters, there's about a gazillion enemy types, a ton of bosses, and some really nice-looking settings, so it's clear that the folks that worked on this game put some elbow grease into it. I found myself playing through this one just to see what bizarre enemies would show up next. Yeah, this game isn't going to measure up to stuff like Streets of Rage or Turtles in Time, obviously, but Mutant Rampage Body Slam is an interesting curiosity, and it's one of the most intensely 90s games of the 90s, for better or for worse. Finally, here's an impressive title released for PC in 1997 called Claw, or Captain Claw, and it's a 2D action platformer made during a time when pretty much everyone at the time was done with those and jumping headfirst into 3D stuff, so games like this just kind of fell through the cracks. Sure enough, reviews at the time from magazines like PCGamer and PCPowerPlay wrote this game off, with the latter misguidedly comparing it to Mario 64 and Tomb Raider, saying, why wasn't this game a 3D platformer instead? Uh, probably because it's awesome the way that it is. Uh, seriously, the visuals, sprite work, and sound design here are absolute top notch, and yeah, there's nothing all that new or innovative here, but who cares? The controls feel great, the level design fits your character's capabilities well, and it's a tough challenge without coming across as cheap. This one was made by Monolith Productions, who later went on to make games like Fear, Shadow of Mordor, and Matrix Online, but before all that stuff, they made a surprisingly high quality 2D platformer during a time when hardly anyone was making those anymore. But hey, that's what's neat about retro gaming as a hobby, you get to find and play old stuff like this that otherwise would have just stayed forgotten, so you definitely want to check this one out. Alright, that's all for now. I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!