 Sssss… Let's drunk. Even as late as 1999, people were still churning out beat'em ups. Here we've got Gaia Crusaders, a very solid, yet paint-by-numbers beat'em up made by Noise Factory in 1999. Right at first glance, I thought this was an SNK game that fell through the cracks, and as it turns out, Noise Factory collaborated with SNK quite a bit in the early 2000s, working on titles like Rage of the Dragons and Sengoku 3. odd is that by 99, demand for beat'em ups was way, way down. Yet here we are with a solidly well made beat'em up, hey I'll take it. You get one button to jump, one to punch, one to kick, and one to use a special orb that enemies drop. You can also dash by hitting forward twice toward an enemy, and it's real easy to juggle enemies as well once you get them in the air, just keep flipping between punches and kicks. Or you can just press punch kick and jump all at the same time to do a huge special attack. One token gives you three lives to get through seven levels, you continue right where you died, with the option of switching to another character. So in other words, this game is extremely forgiving for an arcade game. The power-ups you can collect even hang around for something like 10 or 15 seconds just to make sure you get a chance to pick them up. That's not to say there isn't some classic arcade cheapness here though. Like when you get to these three skeletons in level two, you can't even get close to these things without taking damage, so you have to use up all your special ability orb things. There's also blind traps you can unwittingly wander into before the screen even has a chance to scroll. There's five playable characters to start with. Here we've got Cody from Final F- I mean Terry Boga, I mean Jimmy. And then there's Cohen, a priestess who's fast, strong, and packs a wallop but takes a ton of damage. What's she got there? A burrito? There's the wizard Kofu. He's pretty slow, but his magic and defense are both his strengths. There's Fred who's really fast and is capable of landing some fun combos. Finally, there's the robot who's easily the worst character. It has the best defense but barely does any damage with its attacks. The really cool twist in Gaia Crusaders is that the further you progress, you can unlock two more playable characters you come across. Two bosses you fought earlier, one has a ton of strength, and the other has powerful magic. So that's really cool. Although, uh, the sword seems to be a bit redundant there. Dude, your arms are already swords. If I could describe this game in one word, it would be crisp. The hit detection is exactly as it should be. The controls are optimized and simple, the graphics are extremely clean looking, especially some of the enemy sprites you come across that really look awesome, and all the settings throughout the game look fantastic. Like the second level here where you're inside whatever this is. The special moves also look really cool. It's clear the folks that worked on this game really gave a crap about the finished product. There's also neat little touches here and there like these little gremlin dudes huddled around a campfire with a busted up Statue of Liberty in the background, and you have some spectacular sights here like this boss fight. Damn, that just looks cool as hell. As you can see, this game is up to two player co-op, but there is friendly fire here, and you cannot turn it off, so that kind of sucks. To be fair, you have to be right on top of your partner to do damage, so it's definitely not a deal breaker or anything. There's also a story here with some real quality English. Well, not so much English as it is a bunch of words just thrown in a blender. 20XX Peaceful Earth Conquered by Evil Satan, Air of Lost Kingdom, All Nature, Evilized by Dark Power, what as opposed to Good Satan? I love the word Evilized, it sounds like a song title I would have come up with for my crappy metal band at junior high. The point is, the world is ending, you gotta save it by collecting the Seven Tears of Gaia. Let's fight for your destiny. Okay, let's. So yeah, Gaia Crusaders is a good time, especially for a two player beat-em-up. The game cuts a really quick pace and never wears out its welcome. It's not gonna measure up to stuff like Final Fight or the Streets of Rage series, or other arcade classics like Alien vs. Predator or X-Men, but this is still a well-made game that's got plenty of beat-em-up ridiculousness. We've all gotten accustomed to over the years, like these ash trays that hold brains or the incredible Hulk inexplicably showing up. Plus, you gotta love any game that gives a woman of smaller stature like this huge ass sword that's bigger than she is and she's able to wield it effortlessly with one hand. That's the best. Gaia Crusaders never got an official home port anywhere, so this is another game you gotta play anyway you can. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.