 Ssssssssssssss..... That's drunk. Last week I took a look at an insanely intense arcade game developed by Data East titled the Cliffhanger Edward Randy. So let's stay on that path and look at another crazy arcade game that never got any kind of home console port anywhere. This one developed by Namco back in 1994 titled The Out Foxies. Yeah that's kind of a weird title and as you can see it's a pretty weird game too. Right away you see the sprite scaling is absolutely nuts and the settings and environments are all over the place. You're on a train going 100 miles an hour, you're in a factory, you're on a ship rocking back and forth, you're in a cargo plane, you're in some kind of aquarium, you're in a circus? Seriously? If you can't see what's happening here through all the chaos, the Outfoxies is actually a one-on-one fighting game. Yeah, that's right. This is the first arena fighting game, long before stuff like Super Smash Bros. And you can use all sorts of stuff around you to try and take out your opponent. Everything from barrels, crates, and even altering your surroundings by blowing up the stage itself. My favorite part of this game is the aquarium stage here, which has this huge whale mounted from the ceiling. The mount actually blows up and the whale comes crashing down, impaling itself on a trident. And as it lands, it breaks apart these two aquariums that, of course, have huge sharks in them waiting to eat you. It is frickin' awesome and absolutely ridiculous in the best possible way. There are seven different hitmen or assassins that you can play as, but the story being that a mystery man named Mr. Acme has hired each of the seven to kill each other and to supposedly carry out some kind of nefarious plan, I guess. But who even cares? That's not why anyone would play this one. Your characters are John Smith, who's supposed to be the Bruce Willis Harrison Ford style everyman. There's Betty Doe, a hitwoman who looks like Laura Dern. Professor Qing, who's in a wheelchair with all sorts of special abilities, as well as being able to block bullets. Bernard White, the biggest character of the seven who has a metal prosthetic hand. There's Eve, a movie star who decided to, uh, fight people to the death instead, I guess. She has a pedaguana that helps her out and follows her everywhere. There's a chimpanzee named Dweeb dressed in a top hat and a tuxedo. Come on, you gotta love that. He's the fastest character with the largest jump range and is a really tough opponent. And finally, there's, um, two little kids named Danny and Demi. They're twins and, uh, yeah, I'm starting to see why this game was never released stateside, considering you're frickin' shooting and blowing up children. But hey, they're a really tough opponent in this game and they are ruthless. As you can see, this is a weapon-based fighting game and you're mostly using stuff like pistols, rocket launchers, grenades, and swords. And there's a whopping two buttons here, one to attack and one to jump, while holding up or down while pressing jump to allow you to climb up or down a platform. You can also double tap to run, but seriously, when it comes to the controls, that's it. And that's pretty weird for a fighting game, because it seems super limited on the surface, and there's not really a unique moveset for each character. But the thing is, the outfoxies isn't so much about learning the fighters as it is learning the stages. This game tasks you with coming up with ways you can trap and outsmart your opponent, or outfox them, get it? The environments themselves are alive, so to speak, and capable of reacting to the action as it happens. For example, on the boat, the waves will get so bad it'll occasionally submerge under water, so you gotta make sure you're inside before that happens. Or on the cargo plane, if you throw a grenade or shoot a missile, the plane will react to the explosion by nose diving. It is frickin' crazy. And don't get me started on the train, where you take major damage if you're standing outside as the train goes into a tunnel, ugh. There's the circus stage where you can get mauled by tigers. Now that's funny. And then there's my favorite, the aquarium, which I mentioned earlier, where all the water tanks break and flood the entire screen, and all of a sudden, before you know it, it's an underwater stage as you're trying to avoid sharks. Weapons are laying all around each stage, but the thing is, even with the flashing indicators, it can be tough to spot where they are while this boat is swaying back and forth, while your opponent is trying to blast you with missiles. The barrels and crates laying around may seem like an afterthought, but if you hit your opponent with one, they'll drop their weapon, so pick your spots wisely on when to use them. I know this goes without saying, because you can see for yourself, but I need to mention again just how frickin' crazy this game looks. It really messes with my head, because the sprite work shares similarities with what you'd see in a Super Nintendo game, plus some crazy Mode 7 effects, but yeah, there's no frickin' way this would ever work on a Super Nintendo in a million years. The sheer spectacle and carnage here wouldn't have worked on a home console until the Saturn or PlayStation at the earliest. So yeah, the Outfoxies is nuts. It's pretty dang hilarious how you can actually shoot your opponent point blank in the face with a rocket launcher, watch it explode, and your enemy just shakes it off and comes back at you. It's just so over-the-top ridiculous I can't help but laugh. The entire game is like that, it's just absurd from start to finish. To hell with your silly realism, who needs that? Sadly, this game was kind of ignored at the time it was released in 1994, because 3D fighting games like Tekken and Virtual Fighter were seen as the next big thing, so 2D games like this were seen as too little too late. Thankfully, we now live in a time where we can appreciate the insanity this game provides, and this is yet another game that you've gotta play any way you can. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.