Hakaiou: King of Crusher (PS1) Translated Playthrough - NintendoComplete
282A English-subtitled playthrough of FAB Communications' 1998 Japan-only action game for the Sony PlayStation, Hakaiou: King of Crusher (破壊王: King of Crusher).
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
The title is pretty hilariously redundant. "破壊王" literally translates as "Destruction King," leading me to think that "King of Crusher" was somebody's attempt to translate the title into English. I have no idea why you'd reuse the title of the game as the subtitle, but the comedic mistranslation is an amusing indication of what lies ahead. I personally translated all the Japanese into English and subtitled it, so now you can get some true insight into this glimpse of the haunted salaryman psyche, or whatever.
The premise here is pretty ridiculous. Shortly after his son is born, a salaryman is sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast before work. A fly buzzes around and lands on him, infuriating him to quite an unreasonable degree: he swats at it and misses, knocking his coffee cup to to the floor. As he turns purple with rage, the fly whispers to him: destroy everything. The demands of everyday life, the frustrations, the put upons: all of these things that drag you down should be destroyed if you ever want your life to be yours.
Our salaryman takes this advice to heart, and the game begins. He rises from the table, and as his wife grabs the baby from the crib and flees, he begins to destroy the house. There are two meters at the bottom of the screen: the yellow represents your life, and the red bar represents how much you have to destroy to complete the area. You run up to everything in sight kicking, head-butting, and punching it into oblivion. The crib, the table, doors, TVs, nothing is safe.
Once the house has been thoroughly destroyed, the fly uses your success to goad you to continue on, and so you head to the local school where you work. Because of the psychotic episode you experienced earlier, you are late, summarily fired, encouraged, and once again burst into a bezerker rage tearing up the school offices.
That's the game in a nutshell, but it really does ramp up the craziness as it goes on. As his rage grows, the salaryman begins to gain more strength- so much more that it consumes his body and starts to transform him. Somewhat like Altered Beast, he "evolves" into forms of ever-increasing size and fierceness, which in turn allow him to take on even larger targets.
While he starts out with easy targets (his family, his office), he will eventually take on convenience stores, military installations, a power plant, a dam, Tokyo Tower, and even New York (and yes, since this game is from 1998, you can indeed destroy the twin towers). The last boss has to be seen to be believed - it's utterly insane.
There are two different endings, both of which are shown at the end of the video. The bad ending is first, followed by the good one.
All of this havoc is wrought as you become a horned werewolf-looking demon, a dinosaur, and even a Godzilla-clone complete with an ultimate winged-firebreathing form. Of course, as your "assets" grow, so does the opposition. You begin by fending off policemen, but by the end, you have bombers, helicopters, and anti-air batteries launching everything they have at you. It gets pretty hectic and difficult.
The graphics are surprisingly decent and smooth for how much is constantly blowing up, but the camera is constantly in your way. I am a fan of how his feet kick up above his waist as he runs - that's quality animation there. The sound is ... well, I'm not sure how to qualify it. The salaryman's grunts are pretty funny, and the music is the exact opposite of appropriate for the action. I like it that way. The controls are pretty poor - it's difficult to turn, the collision detection is off, and there's a pretty bad delay when you press a button.
It's plain to see why it's considered "kusoge," but this is one of those titles that you wouldn't want any other way. King of Crusher is a prime example of a game that's "so bad it's good." I'd highly recommend it - it's completely playable without knowing Japanese, and is well worth experiencing for yourself. I totally love it, warts and all.
___
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
Visit for the latest updates!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NintendoComplete/540091756006560
https://twitter.com/nes_complete