Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer [ARCADE, 1995]: Arcade Run with Karin Son [Difficulty 4]
4Played and enhanced on the Final Burn NEO emulator.
Another game on my personal nostalgia tripping, and again, another game that I've never played before today, but at least have heard about in passing. Gowcaizer is basically an old school SNK fighting game with a super hero-esque theme to it, with the cast shouting out to many hero types in regards to Asian 70s-80s media as well as at least one from the west. The game stands out for it's artstyle and character designs for the time (I know the artist worked on the Battle Arena Toshinden series, which is one that's very dear to my childhood and partly inspired aspects of my own fiction series). Beyond that however, the game, while fun, is pretty by the books: pick a hero/heroine, defeat the other heroes/heroine (+ your mirror if applicable), take out the two bosses [after spending a million credits], see your ending, roll credits. As per usual with SNK oldies, it's a 4 button fighter, and outside of your standard throws and special moves, everyone has one desperation super that you can do only when your life bar is low and flashing (again, similar to Toshinden).
The one main gimmick the game has however is that every character you defeat will give you the option to let you use one of their special moves for your playthrough (one at a time, but you can swap during continues), basically adding some Mega Man aspects to the game [note that your mirror self will instead give you a powered up version of a move you already have]. And depending on your style you'll be needing any advantage possible once you get started, because for the most part the AI in this game is challenging at best and downright ball busting at worst. The two bosses especially are indeed prime quarter muncher tier, right up there with the early KOFs & Mortal Kombats, and this rings double for the final boss, Ohga. Similar to Athena's nightmare in beating KOF'95 on her own here some years ago, the spread in which it took for me to finally get a win off this asshole is to be seen to be believed. Dude indeed earned his place on the TV Tropes "SNK Boss" page [93 GODDAMN CONTINUES, SON]. Ironically, I still had fun, despite my Karin getting destroyed throughout most of it. Considering this was my first time playing this at all, that's certainly something.
Note: Kind of funny to know that the plot of this 1995 game was to take place in 2017... and here I am posting this in 2024 (with, of course, none of this crazy stuff happening in my time).
Note 2: ...also good lord was the translation of this game POOR, lmao.
Timestamps [the casts are identified by [alias]/[real name] below]:
0:00 Boot-up & Comany Logos
0:15 Game Intro & Title Screen
1:01 How to play
1:14 Character Select
1:35 Stage 1: Kyosuke Shigure
4:29 Stage 2: Fudohmaru/Ranpou Fudoh (spelled Fudomaru in the English ver)
7:46 Stage 3: Hellstinger/Kash Gyustan (Stinger on the lifebar)
12:28 Intermission 1
12:48 Stage 4: Sheng-Long/Gouichirou Kaiza (spelled Shenlong in English)
14:49 Stage 5: Marion
18:26 Stage 6: Brider/Ikki Tachibana
34:46 Stage 7: Shaia Hishizaki
27:46 Intermission 2
38:06 Stage 8: Karin Son/Sun Hualing [Mirror Match]
43:46 Stage 9: Captain Atlantis/Randy Riggs (just Captain on the lifebar)
57:47 Stage 10: Gowcaizer/Isato Kaiza [yes, voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama. YES, THE OoT LINK/SOULCALIBUR SIEGFRIED GUY. YES, HE GETS AROUND.]
1:02:30 Intermission 3 [Platonic Twins Interlude]
1:02:39 Stage 11: The Platonic Twins [SUB/SNK-BOSS]
1:29:13 Intermission 4 [Ohga Interlude]
1:29:27 Stage 12: Master Ohga/Shizuru Ozaki [FINAL/SNK BOSS: SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THIS GUY IS AN ASSHOLE.]
3:45:34 Karin's Ending
3:46:16 Staff Roll