Game:

Protect Me Knight (2010)

Duration: 45:04

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27

Protect Me Knight! Defeat F$%kin' Goblins!

Funny story about this one; I recorded this MANY years ago with a group of friends just shooting the breeze but it never went public because there was a fatal flaw in the recording, and as I've been playing other games from this dev (more later) like "Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness", "Gotta Protectors: Amazon's Running Diet" and "Ouritsu Anapoko Gakuen" (a gem of a gem in desperate need of a localization and broader audience), I looked at my Xbox 360 with a hint of sadness. You see, I am still of the opinion, almost twenty years later, that the Xbox 360 is Microsoft's best console and it was doing a lot of great things at the time and it helped that the machine was a total beast when it hit the market. "Games with Gold" (free games to keep even if you didn't have a subscription), excellent versions of most games when compared to multi-platform releases, a foray into backwards compatibility (nothing grandiose like the PS3, but a step in the right direction), several worthwhile exclusives (still need ports of "Lost Odyssey" and "Blue Dragon", especially with Akira Toriyama's passing...), STRONG Japanese support compared to its predecessor, the list goes on.

That said, one of the coolest but unfortunate things Microsoft did with the system was create the "XBLIG" or "Xbox Live Indie Games" marketplace (formerly Xbox Live Community Games or XBLCG), an experimental foray into even lower-priced gaming accessible to those with even the littlest discretionary income and a gateway for many amateurs and veterans alike to create games with few restrictions other than price point and blatant disregards for the TOS (Terms of Service), which was preceded by Xbox Live Arcade in 2004 (which served as sort of the middleman between full-priced games and cheap as dirt Indie games). The only platform offering Indie games outright to such an extent at the time was, of course, PCs themselves (but many were found on Valve's rapidly-growing platform, Steam), and while many of them could be considered shovelware by today's standards, quite a few gems got released for it Internationally (but not Australia unfortunately, as the terms were too loosey-goosey for them). The service eventually ended in 2017, but not before an impressive number of games dropped, approximately 3,600 that are "currently" known (could be more).

If I was Microsoft, I would reeeally look into a modern-day equivalent as it fostered quite a bit of Indie talent, but enough about all that - let's talk business. "Protect Me Knight" is one of the best XBLIG to never get a large following due to just how niche it was... you couldn't even find it proper back in the day under its English title and had to look for it in Japanese! Released in 2010 by "Ancient Corp.", a studio founded by Yuzo Koshiro (YES, THE LEGENDARY MUSIC COMPOSER Yuzo Koshiro) and his mother (Tomo) and sister (Ayano) on April 1st, 1990 who are best known for work on "Sonic the Hedgehog", "Streets of Rage 2", "Beyond Oasis", "Shenmue" and their current games circa 2010. At this time, Ancient was part of the "digital renaissance" and put a lot of stock in the model of digital distribution to cut down on costs and foster lesser restrictions on how they operated. Makoto Wada (aka karu_gamo) handled approximately 90% of this game's development by himself and is a powerful force within Ancient currently as the chief designer and lead on most games. At its core, it's a 2D single-screen Musou-style beat-em-up where you defeat mobs of enemies, but it's got light elements of Tower Defense and Survival as well (the game was originally a "Zombie Survival" game early in development before shifting).

The player goes through each stage protecting the Princess who can be moved by the player while utilizing one of four classes: Fighter, Amazon, Ninja and Mage. Each character is distinct in their abilities (that can also be upgraded with "Love Points" which also create barricades for protection, catapults you can man, desperation attacks to clear crowds, and your endgame ranking) with the Amazon being the average character, the fighter being the strongman, the ninja being quick, and the mage specializing in crowd control. While the game is not very long (weighing in at 10 normal stages and a survival mode), it supports awesome co-op up to four players (locally), quirky Engrish and very tongue-in-cheek humor and themes, being a parody of the fantasy genre as well as old-school games. Combos can be formed amongst players by juggling and defeating enemies for increased Love Points. The music is by Yuzo Koshiro and is obviously awesome (with the title theme deliberately sampled and paying respects to his work on "Dragon Slayer IV") and the game has a surprising amount of sound effects too.

This is a video of the game in action. The game is currently lost to the sands of time... but not his next work, "Earthion" for the Gen / Mega Drive, so look out for it!