Podcast 133 – Act Fancer

Brilliant podcast again gents. Vic’s Llandudno experience took me back in a weirdly ‘awful but also nostalgic’ way to many Barry Island experiences with the Welsh side of my family. It sadly appears with Act Fancer you found a game so broken, it even withered poor Shaun’s endless positivity. I’m so used to him being able to find gems in even the most humongous stack of poop that it was almost heartbreaking to hear Shaun be like ‘I tried, I really did try, but I just couldn’t’ with this.

Oddly enough, I can only say this with support from one source, the venerable Hardcore Gaming 101, but this appears to be the third game in the ‘Ultra Real Darwin’ series from Data East. Even weirder, those two games are vertical shooters, not run-and-guns. Vertical shooters are normally my bread and butter but on that merit if I see a Darwin game heading towards me, I’m going to step on it. Before it gets to the children.

The reworked Mega Drive version of Atomic Runner is the bees knees, but yes sadly Data East’s graphical inventiveness has very rarely stacked up with the gameplay OR actual graphical quality of their games. The highlights of their games are the weird moments like Fighter’s History ‘Did you just set a ninja clown on fire?’ randomness. Like, it’s a terrible Street Fighter clone, but you can set a clown, who is a ninja, on fire. I feel like historically that should count for something.

I think that moment in Act-Fancer happened when halfway through level one I got attacked by a literal ball of knobs.

Onwards and extremely upwards to Mr Do, which until tonight I’d not had the pleasure of playing, but I already love.

*ahem* CAAAAARRRRNNNE…signing off.