Run 'n' Gun Games #10

Psycho-Nics Oscar (1987)
By: Data East Genre: Run 'n' Gun Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 93,900
Also Available For: Nothing

I'll be the first one to admit that my coverage of the Commodore 64 has been pretty woeful here. The reasons why could be the subject for another post, but I have been meaning to review Turrican here for a long time. I decided to finally do so recently, only to find it was apparently 'inspired' by an earlier game, and an arcade game no less. Accordingly, my OCD will not allow me to review Turrican first, so here is a look at the curiously-named Psycho-Nics Oscar, released in 1987 by Data East. This puts it in their RoboCop/Dragon Ninja phase which was, in my opinion, their best period as an arcade developer. It doesn't seem to have much in the way of a backstory though. As far as I can tell, the player takes on the role of Oscar, but I'm not sure if he/it is a robot or a guy controlling a mecha. Hmm, anyway, whatever Oscar is, your simple-yet-difficult job is to liberate Ordio City. I am again unsure if this is a city on a future Earth or if it's on an alien planet, but who needs an excuse to neutralise alien (probably) filth?

We will assume for review purposes that Oscar is a clanker since the start screen on each stage tells you how many Oscars you have left, and it's rarely too many. His quest, despite being labelled a run 'n' gunner in all the places I've seen it mentioned, actually takes the form of a side-scrolling platform-shooter (if you ask me) and gives you eight stages to clamber through shooting stuff. To that end, Oscar can walk and jump around modestly, and is equipped with a pretty cool-looking laser gun thingy. It has a short range though (about a quarter the width of the screen), so luckily it can be upgraded. The game uses a Gradius-style power-up system, as you can see from the selector thing at the bottom of the screenshots here. Jump increases the height of Oscar's jump, Grenade and Missile equip him accordingly (in addition to his gun), with the former being lobbed a short distance and the latter travelling along the floor, even up vertical bits. The PCU power-up is a bit weird as it gives you three options, two of which are grenades and missiles, while the third is an orbiting drone thing.

The fifth option is the one most will aim for right away, however - Gun. Your sidearm can be powered-up twice and turns your clanker into a formidable attacker, especially if combined with other power-ups. In addition, cycling right through the power-up options changes Gun to Armor, which allows you to take more hits, and cycling through twice reveals a Quick rapid fire option. The selector for the power-up bar is advanced by grabbing 'N' icons which many downed enemies leave behind. They are surprisingly plentiful, actually, but this at least means the game isn't impossible when you lose a life and all your power-ups in the process. Luckily, it's not a 'one hit death' game either. Oscar has three energy blobs which aren't replenished after a stage, but they can be topped-up by collecting 'E' capsules, and the energy-meter has five spaces which is handy. Other pick-ups you can find include 'K' (collect twenty of these for an extra life), 'B' for bonus points, or 'T' for extra time (for yes, sadly there is a time limit involved). There is also a '-T' icon for some reason, which decreases your time. Thanks for that.

In the finest spirit of run 'n' gunner games, the enemies are numerous; pretty much endless as far as I can tell, if you stand around, so it's a good idea to keep moving and keep shooting, especially since there is not only a time limit but also an objective, as vague as it may be. The enemies mostly consist of what appear to be robotic soldiers much like Oscar. There are many normal ones as well as some special examples such as ones carrying big shields, and there are also flying attackers, some of which will keep coming until you take out their launch bay thing. Different types of enemies have varying armaments and attack patterns and some are larger. There are some pretty mean battle droids, in fact, even as standard enemies, and there are obviously ever larger bosses guarding each stage's exit. It's pretty standard stuff for the most part but first impressions of the game are good. Oscar looks pretty cool, his lasery gun is pretty cool, and the shooty action is good fun, but it does get rather tough rather quickly.

The main reason for this, I think, is simply the number of enemies and their projectiles. The more you dawdle, the more of them there are, but if you instead run and leap across the landscapes as quick as possible, as was intended, the more likely you are to accidentally run or jump into one of the stupid automatons. Either way, it's not uncommon to lose all your energy to a single enemy. Once you've played it a few times though, you'll know to unleash all of Oscar's fury on tougher enemies the instant they clank onto the screen, and it's not a super unfair game in this scenario. Plus, I am aware that it's an arcade game anyway, and the difficulty may have been toned down a bit for home conversions (if it had received any, which it didn't for some reason - I'd have thought something like the MSX or X68000 would get a version). It's not a particularly long game either, so I guess it has to be at least fairly tough going. Those talented fellows on YouTube (see below) can get through it in 20-25 minutes.

I suppose all this is pretty typical of run 'n' gun games, especially ones in arcades, but I'm still not sure it is one - some of the later stages are more like a maze game than a run 'n' gunner, but whatever the genre(s), it's pretty good. It's not the best game of its time from an audio/visual standpoint though. The music is decent enough but the first seven stages only have two tunes between them (or three if you count the boss music) while the graphics include some great sprites but less-inspiring stage graphics and backgrounds for the most part. The design of the stages is better though, and despite some slightly clunky controls, as well as the aforementioned difficulty and sometimes-dull graphics, I still rather enjoyed playing this one. Oscar is a pretty cool character to play as, the power-up system is satisfying and fair, and it's just plain good fun blasting the varied enemy clankers coming at you from all sides. I'm not sure how similar Turrican ended up being, and I doubt I'd ever be skilled enough to play all the way through it, but it's worth repeated (albeit brief) plays if you ask me.

RKS Score: 7/10

Gameplay Video: here's a video of the whole game being played by one of the talented fellows at World of Longplays (check out their great channel here). Oh, and don't watch if you want to avoid spoilers!