Esoteric Retrospective: Cyber Core

TITLE: Cyber Core

RELEASE: 1990

CONSOLE: TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine

The TurboGrafx-16 didn't have half the library it's Japanese counterpart the PC-Engine had, thanks in Large part to Nintendo's borderline-monopolistic exclusivity practices. That said, we still managed to see some prime Shoot 'em Ups make their way across the Pacific, such as Blazing Lazers, R-Type, Air Zonk, Aero Blasters; the list goes on and on. One title that always stuck out to me, but usually falls under the radar of most jaded SHUMPS fans, is Cyber Core.

The fate of the world depends upon the mysterious entity 'Chimera.' The United Force has elected the enforcer Rad Ralph. Now, on with the mission!” When I was 7, I was completely taken by this intro. Why does Rad Ralph's face now resemble a smashed raspberry? Who did this to him? Am I trying to simultaneously save humanity and avenge myself? Have I become the ship I'm flying around in? Though it doesn't make much more sense, the missing line of dialog from the Japanese intro helps shed some light on Rad Ralph's situation: “A.D. 2269: The Earth was occupied by unknown being, 'Hyper Insect.'” So there you go, you're an average joe (with an idiotic monicker), who must save humanity from “Hyper Insect.” If you have the manual for this game it expands on that to tell you how you've merged with "Chimera," upon discovering Earth's fate at the hands of Hyper Insect preceding your return from Deep Space. I suppose I could have guessed that from the charming metamorphosis animation, but again, I was 7. It's not exactly Frank Herbert caliber canon we're dealing with here, but since when have you played a shooter for the epic story?

Cyber Core is, a standard top-down SHUMPS game with a story clumsily wedged in to give us an excuse to annihilate giant bugs (as if I needed an excuse). The more unique aspects of the game come to light when you start playing. For starters, the playing field, like Dragon Spirit before it, is split between ground and Air combat. Skyward enemies fall to your standard button II attack, while you must bomb ground-dwelling enemies with button I. This typically degrades into cranking both Turbo switches up and just holding down both buttons, but that can also interfere with certain upgrades, so you do still have to think somewhat. Along with ground and air enemies being split up, the field is actually somewhat wider then it initially appears. You can move over to the left and right sides of the screen to either grab enemies as they appear, or knock out extra baddies to push your score higher. What I admire most about this game is the power-up structure. Your ship which sort of resembles a winged insect at start can metamorphose between 4 alternate types: Beetle, Swallowtail, Mantis, and Hornet. To change your fighter to these types, you must collect the appropriate “radioactive eggs,” which fall out of another bug's ass when you shoot at it and are color-coded to your insect type. Each class has 3 stages of metamorphosis that can be achieved, giving you up to 3 shield batteries and increased attack power. What's great about this system is that the overall look and size of your fighter changes along with your attack. Along with having extra bombs and a deadly, screen-filling main weapon, your ship (and by association, your hitbox), becomes 3 times bigger than when you started! It's now far easier to get cornered by enemy fire, and far more difficult to avoid mid-air collisions. For some, this was a downer because increasing your power to the max was no longer equivalent to enabling “cake-walk mode,” but for me, it added some much needed challenge to a game that could be somewhat predictable from repeating patterns.

Though it's no Ikaruga as far as difficulty goes, Cyber Core is still frantic enough to keep even the most hardcore shooter aficionados on their toes. I have yet to beat this gem, but I have made it to the nightmarish final stage. Compounding the difficulty are the ground-based bosses that can only be hit with your bomb attack. It makes you think differently while playing the game, and, though it's a refreshing change of pace, it can still be difficult to get into the rhythm before you find yourself back in your “Precambrian Cyber Core” state, which is fancy talk for “Weak-Ass Default” state. Though it doesn't hand your ass to you like a modern-day “bullet hell” shooter would, prepare to be challenged nonetheless.

Does this game hold up today? The short answer is yes. Even though I may be looking at it through glasses rose-tinted by 20-years of nostalgia, it's one of the few games I always come back to in my collection and still have a hard time putting down. If you've got a PC-Engine or TurboGrafx-16 and haven't played Cyber Core, you owe it to yourself to try it out. Copies can typically be found on ebay for around $20. Or you can try picking it up at eStarland.

Some Retrospective: Air Zonk

Bad dudes in shades? Just another one of the countless things ripped off by Will Smith.

Just a quick blurb to assure you all that I'm just busy and not dead. I thought I'd take a moment to remember one of Red Company's greatest games. Air Zonk is the one title besides Bomberman '93, that I always find myself coming back to on the TurboGrafx-16. I'm not certain how many times I've beaten it, but I thought I'd take a second to share my feelings with everyone out there.


Air Zonk is a shoot em up from 1992 from the famed developers of Gate of Thunder, and Lords of Thunder. Oddly enough, it actually fits into the Bonk's Adventure canon, as the main antagonist is King Drool, and Zonk is either a Cyborg Bonk, or sent into the future by Bonk to fight Drool's descendants. Zonk was primarily created to "out-attitude" Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, and took over as mascot for the Turbo-Grafx 16 in North America. A Horizontal shooter, the difficulty isn't really on par with R-type, and other games of its ilk, but the gameplay far exceeds them as far as I'm concerned. 

It just doesn't get much better than this...

Beyond it's beautiful color palette, complex parallax scrolling, and the insane amount of sprites on screen at any given time, Air Zonk can best be described as "whimsical." Even hardcore shooter fans admit that the cartoony chaos has a charm all its own. Gamplay wise, Air Zonk is packed with powerups. Though powerful in their own rite, your weaponry feels downright cheap at times when charging up the alternate-fire mode and filling the screen with shards of hot death flying everywhere. The only thing that may deter you from getting crazy with the big guns is periodic slowdown. Sometimes the Turbo just can't handle the sheer amount of crap onscreen and slows up a little bit. That aside, this is still a crowning technical achievement for the system, and well worth playing if you haven't.


Along with the impressively huge selection of weapons peppered throughout each stage, you can also charge button I to spit out a huge, sunglasses-wearing bomb that fills the screen with destruction and kills everything. It seems that not even your console is safe as this attack almost always causes the game to hiccup, but kudos to Red for not cutting back on the devastation! You also have rocket shoes that either activate automatically when someone gets too close from behind, or that you can fire by hitting select. There's an assortment of buddies you can choose from as well, who appear and fuse with Zonk once you receive two giant smilies to create even more attacks! Have you ever encountered so many different ways to kill things in a game?


I could go on and on about the bosses that fill up the screen, insane powerups and beautiful levels which aren't just rehashes and palette-swaps, but this is already running longer than I'd like. Suffice it to say, you should drop what you're doing and either find an original copy at a place like eStarland, or download it on the Wii Virtual Console.


Summing it up
+ Beautiful graphics that seem to go beyond the TurboGrafx-16's native capabilities
+ Fast action that keeps you on your toes despite how much firepower you're boasting
+ Incredible music
+ Weapons, weapons, and more weapons
+ Rocket shoes!
+ Massive bosses that fill the screen
+/- Though incredible to execute, some of the attacks are so devastating that it almost 
      feels like cheating to use them
- Random slow down
+ They had me at "Lightning bolt mohawk"

A Spectacle of Modern Commerce

Ok, so I was distraught at the thought of not bringing my Genesis 1 with a Powerbase converter to play me some Phantasy Star and report back; but let me explain. I knew there was only one TV here and I didn't want to monopolize it. I know, I'm a real sweetheart. That said, my thirst for classic gaming has not gone unquenched! First on our agenda was a trip to The Mall of America in Minnesota!

Bask in its materialistic glory.

For those of you who either don't live in the mid-north of the United States, or are simply out of the know (seriously, I grew up in Colorado and had heard of this place!); The Mall of America is a mighty monument to capitalism and consumerism. Located in Minnesota, it is the second largest shopping mall in the United States in terms of usable retail space. The only thing surprising about the mall is that there isn't a mammoth bronze statue of Sam Walton out front with a plaque bearing PT Barnum’s famous, “There's one born every minute”, quote and greeting consumers with a knowing grin out in the parking lot (that distinction goes to Kingfisher Oklahoma).

We were figuring out a plan of attack on the mall. I was driving when Stacy asked what I wanted to see in there while she was glancing over the directory in the backseat. I said “nothing” as I guessed there would probably be two Game Stops and nothing else. It was a good guess in that I was right, but an easy one... Why wouldn't there be two Game Stops in the second biggest mall in the country... There's two Game Stops down the street I live off of... Fuck I hate Game Stop. 

I meandered about the second biggest Mall in the country and had lunch at A&W. On the menu for me was loaded French fries and deep-fried cheese curds (a local delicacy). Yeah, one of those would have been fine by itself, but together I swear they aged me about five years. I still get a sick feeling looking at the image below.

Looking back, this was a terrible decision.

After punishing my colon for no good reason, I continued perusing the vast consumer wasteland. Then, far off on the horizon; I beheld a store that did not appear on any directory, yet there it was before me. My eyes widened and I let out a stifled "woot" under my breath as I saw first hand...

Words cannot express... *sniff

This place is probably the coolest store I've ever been to in a mall since Funco Land vanished, and definitely only one of two kiosks I've every actually bought anything from (man that other kiosk woman was pushy). The only irritating thing about it was that Game Stop gets two full storefronts, and in the same mall this place is relegated to a crumby kiosk by some shitty comedy club. Is there no justice? Still, despite being in a crappy location on Level 3 (of 4!), they did have an incredible selection of... Well everything!

The guy behind the counter opened this up for me and it even smelled new.

They had games for the Neo Geo, Turbo Grafx 16, Genesis, Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast, 32X, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Cube, N64, X-Box, X-Box 360, Wii, DS, Virtual Boy, Atari 2600, and a bunch of Playstation crap and used DVDs. Really, the best selection I've seen outside of eStarland in Virginia. My mother in law had given me a $25 Visa gift card just the day before, and though I knew it went against my quest, I could not not support this store and the awesome business they run. I ended up buying two Cryo-developed games for the Sega CD: Dune and MegaRace.

Coincidentally the music for both games was composed by the talented Stéphan Picq.

Call it a moment of weakness if you like, but I defy any one of you in the presence of such a thing to deny its siren call. Besides, I didn’t actually spend any of my money on these two. There’s some more images if you click the link below. You'll get the full effect and perhaps you too will succumb to her wild charms.

Flickr Album: Hi-Score Video Games