Gunsmith Cats [Anime]

As anime became more and more popular in the West during the 90s, various companies went to great lengths working on bringing legions of shows to North America. By the end of that decade, those interested in the medium had an impressive selection of shows to choose from on DVD and VHS. Whether it was a full length series or a smaller, lesser known OVA, there was a lot to choose from.

One such example of this was Gunsmith Cats, a three episode OVA based on Kenichi Sonoda’s manga of the same name. The show focused on a pair of women, Rally and May, who ran a gun shop in Chicago while also doing jobs on the side as part-time bounty hunters. It was a straightforward premise but more than adequate as a backdrop for adventure on the mean streets of the Windy City.

In the OVA, Rally and May are trying to stop a gun smuggling syndicate with connections to former Soviet military personnel, and who have ties to ambitious politicians in the upper echelons of government. It’s certainly a very paint-by-numbers story so far as 90s crime dramas go. Thanks to fun characters and plenty of action sequences, the whole thing is an enjoyable ride.

At the center of things are Rally and May. The former is a gun expert with amazing aim and encyclopedic knowledge of firearms. She has a good head on her shoulders and is the more levelheaded of the pair. Meanwhile, there is May who knows a ton about explosive. One would think that with the volatile substances that she uses, May would exercise a liberal amount of caution while on the job. That isn’t the case, though, as she’s all too eager to blow things up, getting the two into trouble from time to time. They’re a quirky pair that keep things more on the lighthearted side, only getting serious when infiltrating a gang hideout or something like that.

The two are joined by a number of supporting characters like their friend Becky, who is also one of their main sources for information, as well as ATF agent Bill Collins who coerces Rally and May to help him with his investigation of the gun smuggling ring. There’s also the show’s main villain, Natasha Radinov.

We don’t spend a huge amount of time with these characters, so there isn’t really an opportunity for them to grow. Becky is just a sidekick who is sort of there helping out from time to time, while Radinov, albeit a badass, comes off as a one dimensional Russian villain. At least Bill does get fleshed out to some degree. He’s a bit of a loose cannon but after seeing how he operates for a while, it becomes obvious that he knows what he’s doing.

The show isn’t non-stop character development, though. Each episode ends with some sort of climactic action sequences, be it a gunfight, car chase, or something of that ilk. I’m particularly fond of the car chase in episode two, personally. There was a lot going on there with Rally chasing after Radinov while the two exchanged gunfire on the highway.  It was quite exciting to watch their cars swerving around as bullets whizzed by. There’s something about the art here as well, that reminded me of Auto Modelista for some reason despite the fact that the game came out a decade after this OVA.

With that, it’s worth noting that the art in Gunsmith Cats is very good. Given that it’s by Kenichi Sonoda, there’s a very distinctive style at play here. He was fairly popular in the 80s and 90s, so one could find his stuff pop up from time to time in anime, another good example being Gall Force in the mid-80s (a series I’m rather tempted to discuss some time in the future). There was a certain round, petite quality to many of his character designs, particularly women. It could get almost cutesy in a way that actually helped elevate comedic scenes. That isn’t to say that he did this across the board. Sonoda was plenty capable of making more traditional-looking characters as well, case in point being Bill Collins.

Given that this is a show based on the works of Sonoda, however, it does mean that there is a fair bit of fan service. Most of it comes from the fact that Rally and May seem to like walking around their house in their underwear, but at least it’s presented in a logical manner and doesn’t feel forced as a mechanism to make up for a dull story. Moreover, it could have been a lot worse, as the manga shows a ton more skin and can get pretty darn explicit at times. (There’s certainly a market for that sort of thing, but it’s not my cup of tea.)

On the whole, the Gunsmith Cats OVA makes for an entertaining little action-y crime story. It gives us a glimpse into Rally and May’s world without being overwhelming. It’s able to tell its tale without feeling rushed, or leaving things out due to time constraints. These days, there are a lot of anime based on manga that run for a single season introducing viewers to its world, but end on a cliffhanger expecting people to just pick up the manga after. It feels incomplete and a little sleazy simply functioning as a tool to sell books in the end. They’d do well to follow Gunsmith Cats example, making a short, contained OVA story. It would still peak a lot of people’s curiosity while at the same time having its story come to a satisfying conclusion.

[Note: I do the Twitter thing, so if for some odd reason you want to read much shorter ramblings of mine, follow me there!]

Capcom’s D&D Beat ‘Em Ups

During high school, there were a couple of genres that I liked to spend a lot of time with: RPGs and beat ‘em ups. They’re certainly on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what they have players doing. One tends to be of a slower pace, building up character stats, and having a good think about how to defeat particularly tough enemies, all while exploring a big, mysterious world. The other is all about running around punching hordes of enemies in the face, often in co-op mode so friends can come and help.

I spent much of the early 90s gorging myself on the likes of Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior (it was still called that in the West at the time), Phantasy Star, Golden Axe, Final Fight, Streets of Rage and a host of others. There were good times to be had in all of them, but they were distinctly different experiences that very rarely crossed paths. Then something unexpected happened. Capcom released The Tower of Doom in arcades.

The first time I saw this, my jaw dropped for so many different reasons. For one, it was a new Capcom beat ‘em up, which was always a cause for celebration, as they were one of the kings of the genre during the height of its popularity. This is the company that brought us games like Final Fight, Captain Commando, and Knights of the Round. They had developed a reputation among arcade-goers for being pretty darn good at making these sort of games.

Second, the game had the Dungeons and Dragons license, which opened the door to a number of possibilities. Most obviously, there was the attempt to implement some degree of RPG elements. Capcom did give this a try a couple of years earlier with King of Dragons and arguably to a lesser extent on Knights of the Round, although these were a rudimentary first kick of the can at meshing the two genres together. Characters leveled up and got new equipment as players got further into the games. It wasn’t huge, but did give a basic sense of progress and character growth.

Tower of Doom built upon this, continuing with characters gaining levels while dressing the experiences in all of the livery one would expect from a game dawning the D&D mantle. The most notable feature was a basic inventory system. In other beat ‘em ups, players could temporarily arm their characters with knives, pipes, and the like when they stumbled upon them after breaking open a crate or disarming an enemy. However, the weapon had to be used right away and would be lost after a time.

In Tower of Doom, weapons could still be found in treasure chests or whatever but they would then be placed in the character’s inventory. This allowed players to save what they found for later to use in clutch situations. There were also quite a few different goodies that could be set aside including daggers, bottles of burning oil, arrows, war hammers, and a variety of different magical rings.

Characters only had six inventory slots, though, so they did have to make choices as to what they wanted to carry with them. It wasn’t possible to horde everything that they stumbled across. This was done by item type, however, so item stacking was possible. It was just a question of whether it was more beneficial to continue on with six daggers or a ring of magic missile, for example. Given that all of the game’s characters were armed with swords, maces, and the like, these items were limited to projectile weapons, as it would have been silly to give a dwarf a plank with a nail it it when he already had a perfectly good axe.

It may not sound like much, but having an inventory system like this could have a palpable impact on how one approached the game, especially with three or four people playing. With that many people working together, it was possible for someone to pretty much tank enemies as, say, a warrior or dwarf while someone else played the elf, hung back, and hurled projectiles at the mob of baddies that was distracted. Of course, this all hinged on people working together, which in turn meant dragging one’s friends with them to the arcade to play this way. The alternative was playing with strangers and having that one jerk priest that took all of the gold and items for himself, then complained that no one was shooting arrows at a boss. You took them all, you twit. 😡

Greedy priests aside, multiplayer was one of the best things about Tower of Doom. The game supported up to four players at once and, coincidentally enough, featured four different characters to play as. There was a dwarf, a priest, a warrior, and an elf. They didn’t have names, but filled the main archetypal roles in an RPG. The characters look quite nice with a noticeable anime-like flair to them. I’ve always been fond of the elf in no small part thanks to her resemblance to Deedlit from Record of Lodoss War.

While the game’s roster of characters was fairly large and varied, their moveset wasn’t, unfortunately. There were dash attacks to be dished out and another move that required incredibly precise timing to execute. After that, players were limited to marching around the screen, bonking baddies over the head in the traditional manner. Having that fancy inventory system helped to distract from this, but given that other games in the genre were already experimenting with implementing all sorts of fancy moves (especially in the wake of Street Fighter II), this particular void was hard to completely overlook.

One other RPG element to make its way into Tower of Doom was its surprisingly fleshed out story and how players could impact it. Usually beat ‘em ups just told players to stop some rival street gang, save the president, or something equally banal, but here was a game that sent players on quite the grand adventure. About the only other game in the genre that I can think of off the top of my head which attempted anything remotely similar was Konami’s Gaiapolis. Even then, good luck finding an arcade that had the machine. If someone wanted a beat ‘em up with anything even remotely approaching robust narrative, Tower of Doom was the way to go.

Making its story all the more interesting, and adding an element of replay value at the same time, was that at the end of each level players were presented with a choice as to what they should do next. It wasn’t a huge choice, being limited to two options, but it was more than most other games offered outside of one racing Ferraris across America or waging intergalactic war against vast armadas of mechanical sea life. Even if players beat Tower of Doom, they could still come back to the game and try going down a different path for their next play through.

Tower of Doom did so well that it got a sequel a few years later, Shadows of Mystara, and it improved upon every aspect of the first game.

There were two new characters added to the roster, bringing the total to six. First there was a thief. She was very fast, but couldn’t wear armor or use a shield, making her quite squishy. She could, however, pick enemies’ pockets, which was kinda neat. The other new addition was a mage. He was squishy too, but lugged around a bunch of snazzy magical items, allowing him to pew-pew from a safe distance for a while.

A lot of other stuff that made the previous game great were back in Mystara, such as branching progression paths, amazing graphics, the selection of D&D monsters to fight and so forth. One area that got a big improvement, though, was characters’ movesets. Each of them had more attacks up their sleeve now. There were special moves that depleted one’s health bar, another attack that was performed the same as if you were doing a fireball in Street Fighter II (no health consumed here), and one more that was done by pressing down, then up, followed by the A button (again without consuming health). With this, players had a ton of attacks at their disposal, really elevating the combat in Mystara compared to what we saw in Tower of Doom.

Eventually, both games even got ported to the Sega Saturn. Unfortunately, it was only released in Japan. So, anyone who really wanted to play either of those had to import them. As the years passed, the games’ price climbed and climbed making it prohibitively expensive for a lot of folks to get. A couple of years ago, though, Capcom inexplicably re-released both of them digitally for consoles and PC putting smiles on many people’s faces.

That’s how I play the games now, having grabbed them off Steam (as you can probably guess by the screenshots). They’ve been modernized somewhat with a few graphic filters to choose from that impact the look of the game while playing, a nice online multiplayer mode (unfortunately it’s a bit hit or miss trying finding randoms to play with), and a bunch of achievements to strive for if you’re so inclined.

Those are all nice little additions, but ultimately I’m just happy to playing these games again. Capcom was one of the greats when it comes to the arcade beat ‘em up. Their games handled well, looked great, and gobbled up more quarters than I’d care to admit. As far as their pantheon of titles in the genre go, Tower of Doom and Shadows of Mystara are two of my favorites, and games I’ll happily revisit for years to come.

[Note: Shmuplations.com has translated a bunch of old interviews with the developers of these games. They have some really interesting nuggets in them and are well worth a read. If you’re interested, you can check them out here, here, and here.]

[Another Note: I do the Twitter thing, so if for some odd reason you want to read much shorter ramblings of mine, follow me there!]