I was gonna do this write-up stuff in something like chronological order, but you know what? Chronology can bite me.
Fausseté Amour
Dev/Pub: Naxat | System: PC Engine Duo | Date: 1993
Fausseté Amour is one of those games I longed to play for years, because it was supposedly a crazy, hardcore, candy-colored take on Bionic Commando. So I finally gave in and bought it a few months ago and…well. I think Kurt’s write-up pretty much says it all: Fausseté Amour is a fairly mediocre game about lady butts. Oh, and it also involves grappling, sometimes, as an afterthought.
The game’s heroine, whose name I didn’t bother to remember, is more Arthur than Radd — she wears a suit of pink armor that explodes and leaves her in her underwear at the slightest contact with a bad guy. Turnabout’s fair play, right? But when boxer-clad Arthur died, he collapsed into a pile of bones. When chicky here croaks, she ends up in a naked heap on the floor. And all the bosses she fights have large naked breasts, which is never particularly titillating since the bosses are giant, muscular, furry monsters. Uh, yeah.
This is one of those missed opportunities — underwear girl has a grappling hook, but the game doesn’t really do anything interesting with it. Controls are stiff and mechanical, and you can’t really chain together grapples and swings to do any sort of advanced platforming. But I guess that was intentional. I think the designers intended Fausseté Amour to be played to lose, so you can enjoy a three-second glimpse of a dead woman’s five-pixel tush. Naxat’s still around, apparently, since their name appears as the publisher on occasional Virtual Console releases…but I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing this one during an import week.
so you don’t like it and you’re selling your games. want to sell it? ^_^;;
i have a weird desire to buy it and have almost done so several times. i think i will soon because it’s one of the few games i still want to buy.
Sorry, it’s been liquidated! But it’s worth getting, just to come to terms with the fact that it really isn’t all that great, and you can probably sell it off again for what you paid for it.
Yep, and at least it’s a little less spendy than Sylphia.
I know it’s not a side-scrolling game, but the Worms series (I remember it especially from Worms 2) could have a good amount of this kind of rope play. Just set the game options to infinite ninja ropes with multiple shots per turn and you can grapple and swing around the stage to your heart’s delight. Since Worms necessarily had to have a pretty tight, if 2D and cartoony, physics engine, the roping always felt very natural in the game world as well.
So, I guess there’s no chance of seeing Rockin’ Kats for NES during this Swinging game series of articles, seeing as I’m one of the only 5 people who played it, huh?
ASandoval, I remember Rockin’ Kats having ads on the back cover of EGM for a month or two. “Hell no am I playing a game called Rockin’ Kats,” everyone thought.
Yeah, I missed out on Rockin’ Cats, but I deeply respect it for having the Japanese title “N.Y. Nyankees.” That’s legitimately awesome, guys.
You know, I don’t even remember how I ended up with a copy of that game. I never got into Bionic Commando due to the whole “no jumping” thing, but Kats let me jump, grab and throw items and bounce off of walls and floors as well as swing around, so it’s got a closer place in my heart than most people.
I can’t wait for some second-tier news site to turn “but I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing this one during an import week” to “Parish says there’s a chance import game Fausseté Amour will be hitting Virtual Console.”
Say, wasn´t there a PS2 3d game with quite a focus on the grappling hook mechanics…?
About Retronauts:
Bionic Commando (arcade version) was designed by Tokuro Fujiwara.
Isuke (Strider creator) real name is Ryota Itoh.
I remember Rockin’ Kats. That game was the SHIT. There were so many fun things you could do with that boxing glove.