Biomechanical Toy on Arcade offered spicy chimichangas disguised as bananas with some ice cream on Top!
I’d recommend listening to this music while reading.
STORY (7/10)
- Storytelling was basic yet somehow delivered an amazing plot within a magical toy world. From retrieving the Magic Pendulum to encountering all sorts of unique corrupted toys.
- Its presentation while short, did have cool scrolling pictures with dangerous flashing lights!
- You played as Inguz, a Punk who had to defeat the evil Scrubby and save the kingdom from his evil corruption.
- The pacing itself was pleasant, between 40m to an hour of pure gameplay madness!
GAMEPLAY (10/10)
- Starting with controls, which were basic yet so fun to execute. You could jump either on trampolines, enemy heads or simple traversal, duck to avoid enemy projectiles and attack with your gun in a 360 direction, even during jumps!
- On top of that, you could use a special attack while obliterating the entire screen with a phoenix bird, collect bomb power ups which cleared all enemies, and even different ammo types.
- The ammo itself was super cool, as you could have more than one magazine and upon its depletion, Inguz had to manually reload the weapon, interrupting your combat flow.
- You could also collect health items, extra lives upon completing challenges and even side characters that helped you through the journey.
- The checkpoint mechanic was a surprise, as I didn’t expect such a cool design for a 1995 game when most arcades spawned you right where you died.
- Enemy variety was simply outstanding, with so many variations between them. From flying dragons, dinosaurs, traps, turrets, plants, toys and many more. Bosses too, with impressive attack patterns!
- Platforming was magnificent as well, mostly because the game was filled with all sorts of traps, falling platforms and hidden goodies!
- Traversal was seamless with so much fun on screen. All that amplified by the balanced difficulty which delivered an outstanding flow!
AUDIO (9/10)
- Sound design had an awesome mono output which combine all audio effects with the music quite well. For 1995 though, stereo was mandatory!
- The music itself was so good, with many soundtracks having outstanding beats!
- The same could be said about sound effects, which had amazing punchy vibes!
VISUALS (9/10)
- Fidelity was wild chimichangas, as I’ve never seen so many details on an arcade screen. From particle effects to extensive explosions, beautiful art direction, fluid animations and bright colours!
- The character models were amazing too. From Inguz himself to outstanding enemy encounters and even side characters!
- Even though all of the above was peak cinema, the performance did suffer from tremendous slowdowns and frame drops. Understandable though, such visual details were way too much even for Arcade machines!
WORLD DESIGN (10/10)
- Level design had an amazing progression with outstanding designs. From the Toyland to the Wild West, Chess Kingdom, Train, Prehistoric world and finally reaching Scrubby’s Lair.
- I was so impressed by the asset use, as through the whole journey the game seemed unique from start to finish!
- The atmosphere was magnificent too, amplified by the cracked visuals, chilling music and gorgeous landscapes!
- World destruction delivered in its own way. With many explosions, destructions and overall mayhem!
TL;DR -> An outstanding journey through the Toy Kingdom. It delivered on everything, including its simplistic story. From the cracked visuals to the awesome music, magnificent world design and perfect gameplay. A (9.0) game, masterpiece in my toy book. Would absolutely replay the game again, just so I can jump on some balloons and destroy more evil goons!
u/White_FIame — 22 hours ago