The KO #40 - Shin Gouketsuji Ichizoku: Bonnou Kaihou : P (PS2)
6Gouketsuji Ichizoku is known in the West, I guess, as "Power Instinct"; this Japan-only PS2 version is a tweaked up version of the NeoGeo outing, Matrimelee.
It's a fighting game series that prides itself on weirdness and, I think, music. The weirdness is cute--two old lady characters who throw dentures, for instance--but gets to be a bit much when it's just adding obnoxious honking sound effects to menu functions. : P
The music aspect is more compelling. Many stages have songs with vocals; my favorite is the night club stage, where a couple sing a duet on the club's small stage in the background (5:20).
Aside from singing, too many of the other stages are just boring, or repetitive: at least half of the stages seem to be variations of a concert in a stadium.
The gameplay is mostly King of Fighters, plus a burst your character does when they accumulate a super charge--which gets a little annoying. The sprite work is very reminiscent of Sengoku 3 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Ow35cjnWk ), also by Noise Factory; it's not bad, but I find the characters a little lacking in appeal, somehow. The character artwork in the menus, on the other hand, is fantastic. The difficulty is a little on the easy side, although I didn't try the very highest settings.
A lot of the characters are yelly kids, plus maybe some emos and grans and so forth; I tried to avoid them and just pick some of the characters who looked more like regular fighting game characters (back in the day when I first got this game, the wacky characters held a little more appeal for me : P):
0:03 - Intro video
0:53 - Reiji
16:22 - Reiji runs into Bobby, the weird MMA mid(?)-boss
19:40 - the "Card Collection" mode where you buy cards with points earned in Arcade mode progress. In Button settings there are buttons mapped to choosing and using cards, but I couldn't figure out how to get that working.
20:40 - Keith
24:17 - Chinnen
32:55 - Angela
40:10 - White
51:00 - Buntaro (way less cool than he looked in the menu : P)
54:11 - Clara (via Random select--this was a mistake : PP)
Recorded w/ PS2 to Framemeister to Elgato HD60.