Keio Yugekitai: Katsugekihen
Format: Sega Saturn (import)
Published by: Victor Interactive
Based on: Japanese fever dreams
Genre: 2D Platformer
Media: 1 CD
Date: May 13, 1996
Scrawny Bunny-girl Saves Japan!
It's generally acknowledged that the difference between console and PC games is the difference between Japan and America. Not that either category is supported by developers from only one country, but the best output for each category is generally a single nation's creative output. Deny it all you like, but the majority of western-designed console material is by Titus, THQ, Acclaim or Eidos, which speaks volumes in and of itself in favor of Japan being the dominant console superpower.
Not that it usually makes a difference; most American publishers these days are flogging their brains in an effort to cash in on that-there annie-may craze what the kids like, and most Japanese games tend toward a generic hybrid of western and eastern aesthetics, so it all sort of comes out looking the same. "Danger Girl" could be any poorly-designed Bandai game, and every Zelda installment could pass for a game based on the 80's Dungeons and Dragons cartoon if you squint (and pretend Epona bleats like Uni).
But occasionally, a group of designers will sit down and say, "OK. Let's create something that could only be indigenous to OUR nation." Perhaps the earliest recorded example of this was Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600. Sure, crude, sub-juvenile sleaze is a universal concept, as anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to witness Japanese-penned Pokémon hentai art can attest, but Mr. Custer is an American icon. A stupid, arrogant, murderous, racist icon to be sure, but that probably makes him all the better suited for the task.
Serving as the international counterpart to Colonel Custer's shameful revenge - the cute-as-heck superego to Custer's disgusting libido - we have Keio Yugekitai: Katusgekihen, a game similarly grounded in the 19th-century history of its parent nation, and one just as likely to make people say "What th...?" I should note, though, that Keio Yugekitai (despite having the initials "KY") contains 100% less sexual content than Custer's Revenge. Sorry to disappoint, if you're into that sort of thing. Actually, if you're into that sort of thing I know a tall building I'd like to push you off of.
There's no way anyone could ever mistake Keio for an American game. Although its cartoonish take on concepts like ninja and pagodas are reminiscent of some of the more energetic American stereotypes of the Far East, there's an undercurrent of surrealism and a depth of content that says, "Hey! This game could only be created by someone who grew up in a culture saturated with slightly less wacky versions of this imagery." Americans could get the ninja and maybe the bunny girl right, but only someone who was forced to sit quietly through countless tea ceremonies throughout his or her life could imagine a giant humanoid tank whose primary attack skill is to blast you with gallons of green tea.
Keio Yugekitai is a Saturn-based platformer and the sequel to an equally quirky shooter for the Sega CD called Keio Flying Squadron. Surprisingly enough, KFS was actually released in the US, and its poor performance here is presumably why the second game wasn't released stateside (because according to marketing logic, the fact that the game came out at the end of the lifespan of a horribly unpopular console add-on was less culpable for its performance than the fact that Americans didn't "get" it - after all, that would be admitting that marketers, rather than developers, were at fault, and of course that's impossible).
It's all rather sad, because KY is quite possibly the most impressive-looking 2D game I've ever seen. The character sprites are sort of cutesy and squashy, but the effects and tricks the visuals pull off are truly impressive. Some of the sprite effects could teach Castlevania: Symphony of the Night a few things (and they make you wonder why, exactly, the Saturn version of SotN was so craptastic). Each level gleefully demonstrates things that conventional wisdom claimed the Saturn could never do, like transparency. In fact, the developers seemed awfully proud of themselves, because they added a LOT of transparency to the game. While the unrelenting oriental style of this game might have scared away some of the less adventurous US gamers, you'd think this game would have been a wise release just because it shows off what the Saturn hardware can actually do. You'd think that, because you don't life your life by the same inverted logic used by Sega.
The Game
The story begins about 140 years ago in Japan, shortly after the events of Keio Flying Squadron. I think that's the case, anyway - the game is all in Japanese, so really I'm making this up. The only thing I can really understand is when Rami screams "KUSOOOOO!" (a Very Naughty Word™) as Dr. Pon drops a bomb on her family's house. Speaking of her family, I didn't realize until I looked at the instruction manual that the tall, starchy-looking fellow is actually Rami's grandmother. I guess that would probably explain why Rami herself isn't quite as shapely as your average bunny-girl.
The plot seems to revolve around 6 magical crystals which sort of look like little circus-style medicine balls; apparently Dr. Pon - a 3,000 year-old tanuki who flies around in Noah's Ark, hoping to usher an era of tanuki world domination - needs them to revive an Oni slumbering beneath Mt. Fuji. Rami is pulled into the plot by virtue of haplessly owning one of these crystals and begins chasing after some weird chick who breaks into her house to steal them. And of course by the aforementioned bombing of her homestead by Dr. Pon.
The game begins in a forest where the basic play mechanics are introduced: Rami follows in the footsteps of countless plumbers before her and runs, jumps on the heads of foes, and collects golden objects (in this case, kawaii li'l bunny heads ^______^) to gather extra lives. I'm not exactly certain how many bunny heads are required for an extra life; possibly 100, but ALL onscreen data is depicted in traditional Japanese numbering, and I get lost after 3. The halfway point of each level is marked by a snoozing Spot, Rami's pet dragon who flew her about in KFS. Spot is called Pochi in Japanese, but since Pochi and Spot are pretty much the same sort of name in each language, I'm going to be one of those super-non-hardcore un-otaku cultural imperialists and just call him "Spot." Expect to see angry editorials about this review soon on a USENET newsgroup near you! Spot serves a dual purpose in this game: he marks halfway goals, and he flies Rami through shooter levels, which are upgraded takes on the gameplay in the original Keio game. The shmup levels are super cracktastic; the first one involves a navy of pigs, and the second one somehow takes place in outer space and pits you against rocket-powered phone booths, magma-spewing volcanos straight out of Gradius, and Laika the Russian space dog (only a century too early).
The game's second level takes place in a mine where, for some reason, a paper umbrella will protect Rami from 2-ton falling boulders. From there it shifts to a train ride through a village of cuddly li'l mice, onto Dr. Pon's airship, through the obligatory roller coaster stage (think minecart level. You know, that annoying, boring, tired 2D gaming cliché? Yeah, that one), and so forth. There are a few novelty levels as well, such as a pleasant stroll through lovely springtime Sakura blossoms interrupted only by a crowd of viciously angry tanuki who will trample Rami if she slows down, and a fighting game tournament. Sort of.
The real shining glory of this game, in a style reminiscent of Treasure, are the bosses. Admittedly, the bosses are fewer and further between than in most Treasure games, but they're all memorable. Usually in the same sense that the nightmares you experience after eating half of a garlic-and-anchovy pizza at midnight are memorable. (Note: I'm hardcore! I used a reference to Treasure! If GameFan were still around they'd hire me! I rule!)
Level 1-4: Sumo Wrestler. Rami interrupts a sumo match by knocking one of the contestants out of the ring, enraging the other wrestler. The enormous sportsman launches an offensive against the diminutive rabbit chick by spinning across the mat... which occasionally makes him dizzy, causing him to pause to upchuck. Mmmm... rice.
Level 2-2: The Drums. Beat the bejeebers out of some giant drums to acquire one of the dragonball-looking things. Actually, I'm not really sure if this should be considered a boss. Eh. The stage ends with Rami captured by a giant crab robot, which would make a logical boss... except you never actually fight it. That's what you get for expecting logic in this game.
Level 2-4: Tea Tank. A giant anthropomorphic tank piloted by Dr. Pon. It tries to run down Rami, then floods the area with gallons of o-cha in hopes of causing her to be washed into a wall of spikes. For no clearly explained reason other than "It's a platform game," the tank can be destroyed by whacking it in the head.
Level 3-3: Kabuki Mask of Fear! A haunted kabuki theatre mask comes to life and chases Rami about. This is actually sort of reminscent of those masks in Super Mario Bros. 2 (the US version, not the crappy SMB2 from Japan) which chase you around when you grab a key. Except bigger, and more dangerous, and capable of being destroyed. So I guess that's a bad comparison. When defeated, there turns out to be a digitized photo of a Japanese man inside.
Level 4-3: Space Pagoda. Battle a flying pagoda by defeating the chickens which pop out of it. No, I don't get it either.
Level 5-1: Sexy Alien. The space level concludes with a rip-snorter of a fight against an alien menace. Said alien menace is almost, but no quite, as pathetic as the fact that I wrote "rip-snorter" without a trace of self-conscious irony. Actually, this fight (like the rest of the level) appears to be taken from a Konami shmup and presented through a haze of drugs and alcohol - the alien grabs a cow with a giant descending claw (giving a twisted new meaning to "UFO Catcher") and then blasts you with hunks of freshly-processed meat. As you damage the enemy, its rather shapely legs pop out the bottom of the ship, which is wrong on more levels than I care to describe.
Level 6-2: Red Falcon Big Oni. Continuing to borrow from Konami games, here you fight through the guts of the awakened Oni, avoiding the nasty gastric juices as they rise. Luckily, Rami is saved from Death By Pepsin by the Oni itself - as you fight the apparition of its heart, the words it utters transforms into little platforms to jump onto.
Of course, there's plenty more of this sort of "what the--?" happening here, but this article has gone on long enough and I doubt anyone is still reading. I'd recommend everyone play this game, except that hardly anyone still has a Saturn these days, fewer gamers are still interested in quaint 2D platformers, and even fewer people are stupid enough to pay the stiff expenses of importing this exercise in madness. And anyway, I'm probably one of the few people fruity enough to give a game like this five frogs. Actually I'm the only person fruity enough to rate game in terms of frog heads in the first place, so don't take my word for anything at all.
Keio K.O.
It's not too hard to see why Keio Yugekitai didn't make it to America (never mind that it was translated for Europe, so all that needed to be done was to stuff the translated text and dialogue back into the NTSC version). The game embodied the very concept of "Japanese" at a time when Sega of America was terrified of releasing anything less red-blooded than "Jim Bob's Racing, Huntin' and Red Meat-Eatin' Adventure" for fear that it might alienate American gamers, who god knows are incapable of enjoying anything not wrapped in a shiny red, white and blue package. The play mechanics - bouncing on Kappa heads, fighting vomiting sumo wrestlers, chasing a deranged tanuki, wearing a bunny suit for no good reason - probably sent SoA's marketing people (if they can indeed be described as "people") into spasms of terror.
But since there's a vague vestige of journalistic fervor in my soul, I decided to do some investigative snooping on this one. Well, OK, actually I just posted a message to Working Designs president Victor Ireland at the company's online forum. I'm lazy. But it seemed like a good match, eh? A quirky, beautiful 2D platformer back in the heyday o' Saturn, combined with WD's ability to infuse any action game with self-esteeming-annihilating challenge and crack-addled dialogue? I think so, anyway, so I asked if WD ever considered bringing the game to the US. Ireland's answer: "It was considered, but the Saturn's downward spiral had begun around that time, so we passed." So close, so far away. Go burn another effigy of Tom Kalinske and his slug-witted marketing team ("daaah, let's sabotage the Saturn at launch!") tonight.
Bizarre Fever Dreams
So you say that as an American (or whatever English-literate nationality you possess which allows you to read this) you're frightened by these scary bouncy green guys and the big frickin' cat statues? You say that this game leaves you clutching your bed sheets at night when you wake up in a cold sweat because of its scary foreign-ness? To you I offer this important advice: get out more often. Also, read this collection of explanations about idiomatic Japanese things.
Tanuki: A raccoon-like critter indigenous to Japan, these pop up in various stories and chunks o' folklore. Most Americans probably know of them as "tanooki" thanks to Super Mario Bros. 3, which granted Mario the ability to transform into a tanuki statue. But the true shining moment of glory for the tanuki species was Hayao Miyazaki's movie "Tanuki War Pon Poko." Like most Ghibli flicks, Pon Poko had a heavily pro-nature theme as it examined the hardships of a tanuki village threatened by human urban expansion. Pon Poko also featured a song in which a chorus of children sang about the magical powers of "tanuki private parts," at which point the male tanuki used their genitals for various bizarre purposes. I am happy to report that despite the prominence of tanuki in this game, this particular aspect of the mythos was left out of Keio Yugekitai.
Maneki-Neko: A large statue of a cat with one paw upraised. These are usually placed outside on at the entrance of shops as a symbol of good fortune. In Keio Yugekitai, they're generally used to smash enemies to a pulp... good luck for Rami, not-so-good luck for the bad guys.
Bunny-girl: You know, kinda like Playboy bunnies - cute girls in skin-tight unitards and bunny ears. Except Rami doesn't quite have the usual Playboy measurements. Actually she looks like a gawky 10-year-old, but if I'm not mistaken, the Japanese manual says she's 14 (and, presumably, is in the 8th grade, like every other female anime protagonist). Interestingly, she was listed as 20 years old in the US version of KFS. Guess someone got uncomfortable at the notion of an underaged bunny-girl.
Kappa: A green, vampiric water-sprite with a bald head, made famous for us American yokels as the "imp" from Final Fantasy III. VI. Whatever.
Oni: A japanese devil/ogre hybrid. It doesn't really conform to western concepts of ogre and devil, which is why it's called an "oni" rather than an "ogre" or "devil," see.
Keio: A brief period of Japanese history beginning around 1865 and bridging the Edo and Meiji periods, shortly after Matthew Perry's "black fleet" of American steamer ships forcefully reopened Japan's insular culture to international affairs. Keio Yugekitai takes place during this era but in fact the historical context has nothing to do with the gameplay. It does mean that about 50% of the game is utterly anachronistic in nature, though, which brings us to the next section.
Anachrono Trigger
Keio Yugekitai seems to take perverse pride in utterly disregarding the fact that it's set in a specific time period. All in the name of satire, I suppose. The most egregious of these goofs is definitely the presence of little Soviet-launched satellites reading CCCP, to which are chained little Russian space dogs. After all, the Soviet Union didn't come around for the better part of a century, and Laika the space puppy was even later. Well, OK, the Japanese-soldier-as-bunny-girl is pretty glaring as well. Aw, shucks. Just think of this stuff like you do the clock from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," except sexier.