 Sssssss. S'trunk. I love finding out about arcade games that I never knew existed. It seriously seems like there's just hundreds of these games, just floating around waiting to be found. The latest arcade game that hooked me is Hook. Uh, huh, huh. Uh, this game was made for the arcades in 1992 by Irem, who you might recognize as the purveyors of the R-type series, but Hook is a traditional beat'em-up and a pretty dang good one too. This is one of four games that were based on the Steven Spielberg Hook movie from 1991, although that looks more like John Michael Higgins than Robin Williams. But in addition to the arcade, there were platformers made for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. There was a point-and-click adventure game for PC, but this game is my choice for the best of the four. It doesn't follow the movie exactly, but who cares? You still get five playable characters, Peter Pan, Rufio, Pockets, Ace, and Thudbutt. One token gets you a health meter with two lives to get through six long levels, and there's only two buttons here. One jumps, and the other attacks, press both at the same time to do a stronger attack that knocks down anyone nearby, but in typical arcade fashion, it uses up a lot of health. This seems like a simple button masher, but there's some nuance here. Your basic attack is similar to how Final Fight works, where once you land a punch, just keep pounding the button, and you'll automatically hit a sequence. But the finishing move depends on the timing in which you hit that last punch. For example, Peter Pan will either do an extra sword thrust, or if you time it right, you'll do some sort of spinning attack thing. So yeah, it's a clever way to keep the player from just pounding the button the entire time. In addition to that, every character gets two different special moves you can tap forward and hit attack, or you can just press both buttons at the same time right before you hit the ground after jumping. Again, timing is the biggest factor here, and it's the same control scheme for each character, so it's kind of fun to go back and see which character does what. You can also kick the crap out of enemies when they're down, just like a Konami beat em up like X-Men or Metamorphic Force, and that's always fun. Although you can't really abuse that, since certain characters can counter your attacks down there. I can't say I've ever seen a beat em up do that before. One thing I've learned to appreciate about arcade beat em ups is how they're structured. They need to be able to grab you immediately so you keep pumping in quarters. Hook in particular has a fantastic first level that does a great job showing off what makes this game different, and that's using your surroundings to get rid of enemies. There's lots of stuff throughout every stage you can interact with, and I really appreciate stuff like this, because let's face it, there were approximately 80 gazillion beat em ups at the time this game was released. I mean, why should I pick to play Hook instead of, say, Ninja Turtles or X-Men or the Simpsons, Aurelian vs Predator or whatever, on and on. But Hook wastes no time, like right away, here you can drop a freaking anchor on a group of enemies. There's a boiling pot of soup you can chuck at people and then throw the fire it was sitting on. Later on there's catapults armed with alligator eggs? Okay. There's spears you can chuck, bombs that randomly go off, lots of other stuff you can pick up, and it's all well done. Of course, another obvious thing that makes Hook stand out among other beat em ups is that it's four player compatible, so this game can get really chaotic, and really, you're gonna need the extra help because this game has your classic arcade cheapness coming out the wazoo. There's lots of ridiculous boss fights where the hit detection suddenly becomes a little shoddy, and you fight the same bosses over and over, which gets pretty old. Whoa, I'm seeing double! Four Captain Hooks! It's easy to breeze through the first couple levels, but man, you'd better hope you've got the timing down on those special moves by then, or you're screwed. So yeah, just a quick video here on another arcade game I never actually saw in the wild, and this is a pretty fun one, not just because it supports up to four players, but because you get to mess with your surroundings and come up with fun ways to destroy people. Plus a nice bonus here is that you get to hear some interesting arrangements of the music from the movie, which is kinda neat. This arcade game never received any kind of home port or re-release, so this is another game you've gotta play any way you can. Alright, I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!