 Hello and welcome to part 5 of this series where I talk about arcade games that never received any kind of port on the Super Nintendo. Now whether or not these games actually could have realistically received any kind of port, well let's just brush that minor little detail aside, I'm just using this as an excuse to talk about some arcade games that some of us may have missed out on, so you can check them out on the MAME emulator or wherever they may be available nowadays. I've already covered a ton of stuff in the first four videos ranging from X-Men to G.I. Joe to Ghostbusters to Jurassic Park. But I have not yet covered the two Dungeons & Dragons games made by Capcom, the first being Dungeons & Dragons Tower of Doom made in 1993, and the later sequel Dungeons & Dragons Shadow Over Mistara which came three years later. Starting with Tower of Doom, on the surface this one looks like about a gazillion other beat-em-ups, namely stuff like King of Dragons or Knights of the Round, but there is a shocking amount of depth beneath the surface here. There's four different classes you can choose from, Fighter, Elf, Cleric and Dwarf, each of course with their own strengths and weaknesses, but what's really cool here is that you come across tons of different branching paths where you have a decision to make. Do you head to the mountains or go into town? Do you recruit help or do you go it alone? It is really cool and gives the beat em up genre a huge breath of fresh air and a ton of replay value. Not only that but the combat here is also really well done with a myriad of different attacks you can deploy and you have to be smart about what kind of attack you're using and when, because the enemy design here is some of the best ever made in a beat em up. This is not your typical button masher and if you treat this game that way you will suffer. You gotta time your attacks appropriately, block when necessary and use your limited special items and magic at the right times. In addition to that there's a leveling system here, there's shops where you can upgrade your weapons and armor, as well as buy items that can help you out and it's four player compatible. The sequel Shadow Over Mistara is as perfect a sequel as you can get because it doesn't try and reinvent the wheel, it's just more of what made the first game so good. There's two more classes, each character has more attacks and if you play with a second player you can both be the same class if you'd like. There's even branching paths that are only available when playing as certain classes giving this one even more replay value than the first game. Yeah a lot of the sprites were reused from the first game but so what? Both of these games are triumphs of game design, I mean they're beat em ups with real honest to goodness replay value, how rare is that? Throw in a fun and accessible combat system and near flawless of difficulty balancing and you've got two of the very best arcade games ever made. And for what it's worth both of these games do a great job representing their source material as well. A collection of these two games was released for Sega Saturn titled Dungeons and Dragons Collection and in 2013 these games were repackaged under the title Dungeons and Dragons Chronicles of Mistara for digital download on the Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows. Next we have Lucky and Wild, a great example of how insane and ridiculous arcade games could get throughout the 90s. It's a first-person driving game made for two players where only one of you drives but you can both shoot anything that moves and you evidently play as the Hemsworth brothers? Huh, you chased down criminals with some quality voice acting here. The carnage and chaos here is so over the top I can help it laugh. You can play this game single player but it's more fun to be able to shout at a second player about their terrible driving or their awful aim. You drive through cityscapes, tunnels, you got bad guys chucking barrels at you, there's a freaking monster truck? What? What I particularly enjoy about this one is the difficulty progression. By the time you get to level five in the desert you're away from all the city barriers and the game really opens up and the enemies get a lot tougher. Oh and they call in air support too. Lucky and Wild is the best possible kind of absurd. Here's kind of a weird one. Demon Front is a game made strictly for arcades in Taiwan in 2002? Yeah, they were still cranking out metal slug clones for arcades this century but Demon Front has a lot of great ideas it brings to the formula. There's four characters to choose from and each has a little companion that follows you around and helps you out and holding the shoot button charges them up for a special attack. They can also act as a shield which is handy, especially in games like this. There's a leveling system here, there's a stage select screen to start the game which is kind of unusual for an arcade game and there's also a weapon combination system. I can't quite figure it out but it makes stuff go boom faster so I like it. So yeah if you want more metal slug check this one out. Let's get even weirder with Biomechanical Toy, another run-and-gun style game where you play as a dude that looks like the kid from Kid Chameleon all grown up. And what is with this sound design? Okay that's kind of annoying but besides that this is an interesting one just for the backgrounds and enemy design there's quite a bit of platforming required here and it's done reasonably well but yeah let's not kid ourselves the real reason to play this one is just to see what crazy ass design is coming next. You're fighting chess pieces, you're shooting dinosaurs, ghouls, this thing looks like it was pulled straight from plants versus zombies. There's a lot going on here and it's worth seeing for yourself. Next we have Sly Spy a game that immediately begins with you jumping out of a plane and shooting random bad guys as you plummet to the earth. This one's a bit older as you can see, it's a data east game from 1989 but it's still a solid action platformer that offers a ton of gameplay variety. You're jumping out of planes, you're riding a motorcycle, you're shooting tigers, you're scuba diving and gunning down sharks underwater and everything is held together by a spy story that's like a dollar store version of James Bond. It's not the best game on this list but it's a great example of classic video game ridiculousness. Avenging Spirit is an interesting and inventive action platformer, the story is that you're killed by some thugs before you're revived as a ghost by this crazy scientist. You start each level with a choice of a few different forms you can possess but throughout the game you can leave your body and possess any enemy you can find. The thing is, you've got kind of a makeshift time limit represented by the energy bar up top and it runs automatically anytime you're not in a body of some kind. So it's kind of like Kirby in a way, only the game punishes you if you don't keep a form. This is a really solid game and it later got a version released for Gameboy that I did a video on several years back. Both the Gameboy game and the original arcade game are well worth checking out. Alright, enough of all this weirdness and platforming stuff. How about a game where you just run to the right and slice up randos with your sword? Sengoku 2 fits that build but this is more than just a run-in-the-mill hack and slash. Yeah, there's only one playable character but you can transform into three different forms as you play. A ninja who throws a projectile, a warrior who wields a staff or a wolf who's a wolf. You can also find horses you can mount giving this one kind of a Knights of the Round or Warriors of Fate kind of vibe. What's interesting is that the enemy patterns almost have a shoot-em-up quality to them, the way they run out and try and surround you. It kind of reminds me of something you'd see in R-type or Gradius or something. Anyway, this is another solid game with a great feel to it that's worth checking out. Finally, here's Funky Jet, a single-screen platformer where you're wearing a jet pack and wielding boxing gloves to take out enemies as quickly as possible. Yeah, this is one of those go-for-the-high-score kind of games. Not everyone digs those, but what I enjoy about this one is the two-player mode since you have to race each other to beat the crap out of as many enemies as you can. Another way this one stands out is in the boss fights. If you're into clear everything on the screen-type games like Bubble Bobble or Snow Brothers, then you would dig Funky Jet. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.