16-Bitgium

Tempo

Far less appreciated is Red Company’s obscure contribution to the 32X: a disco-themed platformer by the name of Tempo. Released in early 1995, the game released just as Bonk was starting to wind down, but before Sakura Taisen saw its debut. So when understood like that, it’s easy to see why the game might have been overlooked: it debuted on a failing system and into a genre that was already heavily saturated. Ironically, though, that’s precisely what makes the game so memorable in the first place. Not only did Tempo show what the 32X could do in the right hands, but it also tried to expand on what mascot platformers were capable of.

A new personal piece! Sort of an ode to my gaming habits as a teenager. My room looked nothing like this, but the spirit is there. The game is RayForce (aka Layer Section aka Gunlock aka Galactic Attack), still one of my favorites. It had an option to display the game horizontally so you could flip your TV on its side; something I never bothered to do. If you don’t care about your data, I uploaded a larger, 60fps version of this to my portfolio site. 

One Piece Mansion

After the PlayStation 2 reached the world in 2000, the library of the original PlayStation began to fill with shovelware, but also some quirky Japanese niche titles with less development costs that wouldn’t fare well on Sony’s newest system. One Piece Mansion falls into the latter category. Unrelated to the best-selling manga about pirates, One Piece Mansion puts you in the shoes (even though he doesn’t really wear shoes) of a child landlord named Polpo. In the story mode, his little sister is kidnapped by a rival mansion owner named Chocola. Polpo must go through seven missions in order to get his little sister back. It’s a short story mode, but it does a good job of teaching the player how to play the game. Strangely enough, this game was directed by Hideaki Itsuno, who is best known for directing and planning various Capcom fighting games, as well as the majority of the Devil May Cry series. But with One Piece Mansion Itsuno shows that his directing skills can be applied to an entirely different genre.

Today’s flea market purchases:

Master system: Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP 2 Mega CD: Eye of the Beholder, Ecco the Dolphin, Road Avenger PS1: Tekken 1, Tomb Raider Chronicles Xbox 360: Capcom Digital collection