 SEGA DRUNK Here's a really strange and hilarious game for the Mega Drive that never left Japan. It's called Renta Hero, released in September 1991 and developed by Sega AM2, the same dev team responsible for arcade classics like Afterburner, Outruns, Space Harrier, and Virtual Racing. Renta Hero, however, is much, much different. It's a goofy, top-down adventure game that uses the same engine as, sort of, Vermillion. So, if you've played that game, then you should be familiar with the structure and the gameplay here. But the tone of this game is as different as it gets for the time, and I should mention quickly that you'll need an English patch to play this one, and there's a link in the description where you can find that. So, the way this game starts has your character at a party with friends and family. You just moved into town, so this is kind of a get-to-know-you-get-together. You run out of food, so your mom has you call to order delivery, but instead of food, they bring you a suit that turns you into a superhero. Meanwhile, dad got wasted and dressed up in a Godzilla costume, and he wants to fight you. Yeah, typical Tuesday night. And, of course, you accept, and... Okay, that's pretty dang funny. That really sets the tone for the entire game. It's a funny and self-aware game with lots of slapstick humor, both in the dialogue and in scenes like that. You meet all sorts of weirdos throughout this playthrough, like this guy here who makes a book float around the room. Okay, what the hell was that? There's also tons of tongue-in-cheek references to Sega throughout this game. Whoa, 16 bits of power! Genesis does, man! There's even an arcade you can visit that plays little snippets of music from games like Outrun and Power Drift. Since your character is now a superhero somehow, you decide, hey, what the heck, let's go do some superhero things. You start out doing very basic and easy stuff like delivering letters, but eventually you work your way up to thwarting robberies and Yakuza scans. You check for new missions over the internet, and yeah, this dude has a PC and the internet in 1991. I guess there was a superhero Usenet group or something. You chat online with someone from a company called SECA, or SEKA, as opposed to Sega, who gives you missions that you go out and do for money. You look for clues for how to complete some of these missions by talking to townspeople, and this is one of those games where you have to talk to everyone and do every little thing the game tells you to do, like even right at the beginning of the game, when you're told to call a restaurant to order food, the game doesn't do it for you, you actually have to go stand by the phone. Stuff like this can make this playthrough kind of tedious, but the sense of humor demonstrated throughout the script makes it worthwhile. Some typical adventure game stuff is here as well, like eventually you use the money you earn to upgrade your weapons and armor, but there's no experience points here, just money. You also have to manage your suit's energy meter, since it's draining automatically as you wear it while walking around. You do have the option of taking it off to preserve energy, but you get sucked into random battles here, and if you get stuck in combat without your suit, then you're as good as dead. Not only that, you have to pay a rental fee to keep the suit, otherwise the SECA will take it back. The combat transitions from this overworld here to a side-scrolling beat-em-up, similar to a game like Dragon View, but this is probably the most polarizing part of this game. The combat is not great, it's very limited, and the hit detection can be wonky. You can punch, jump kick, or use a special attack that you can purchase, but the latter drains your battery, so it's usually not worth it. The combat just feels unpolished. Again, it uses the same engine as Sort of Vermillion, so it has the same issues that that game has. Some bosses in this game can kill you in a matter of seconds. It can be pretty ridiculous, and when you die, you restart from your hometown's hospital, with half your money gone. At least there's eventually a battery save here that allows you to save at any point during the game. Rent-A-Hero did get remade 10 years later in 2001, called Rent-A-Hero No. 1 for the Dreamcast, and it's pretty much the same game with the same missions, only with an over-the-shoulder third-person viewpoint. This one also stayed in Japan, but there was an Xbox version in English that was almost finished in 2003, but it was never released. You can find that game online with some digging, and it's a much more polished game as you might expect. The combat is actually pretty good, and the game maintains its style of humor throughout. But yeah, as far as the original Mega Drive game goes, it's an uneven experience. The story is what carries the game, as I found myself playing through missions just to see what would happen next, and the game does a good job of keeping you on your toes. The story eventually takes a surprisingly serious turn toward the end, which is pretty cool. It just sucks that, while there's not a lot of combat here, what's here is really clunky. If you're a very patient person, this game can be a good experience, but if you're not, then you're not gonna like this one. Despite how frustrating this game can get, I still liked it if only because it's so thematically different from anything else from the same timeframe. All right, I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.