 |
Review: Holosseum |
Thanks to the solid and un-hologramatic Anonymommy for this review.
In 1991, Sega released a Dragon‘s Lair knockoff called Time Traveler. Sega hyped Time Traveler as the future of video games, and to be honest, it looked pretty damn futuristic. The graphics (which consisted of live-action FMV clips) were reflected off a mirror inside the console and projected into an ostensibly three-dimensional playing field, creating an illusion that looked like a real hologram. The sight of the ghostly images moving around on a space-age tabletop reminds me of the scene in Star Wars where Chewbacca and the droids play a holographic chess game aboard the Millennium Falcon - it‘s neat!
Holosseum takes Time Traveler‘s visual gimmick and applies it to a fighting game. Again, the fake-out “hologram” effect is pretty cool, and makes this game [superficially] one-of-a-kind. But if you look past the smoke and mirrors and consider the graphics on their own, there‘s not much going on. The fights take place in an empty black void, so there‘s nothing to comment on except the fighters themselves, which are uninspired and poorly animated, not to mention few in number. The entire game is very minimal, as if the developers were being paid by the pixel.
The most unusual aspect of Holosseum‘s gameplay is that the fighters are grounded in place. You can enter a defensive posture, or inch forward a little bit, but it‘s impossible to switch sides or put any distance between you and your opponent. In theory, this emphasis on close-quarter fighting and quick knockdowns could work (play Karate Champ for a great game that treats fighting as a sport instead of an evolved beat-em-up), but Holosseum is too fast and flukey to be technical, so most matches degenerate into a 15-second spaz-fest.
Holosseum uses just two attack buttons, enigmatically labeled “Quick Tricks” and “Fierce Tricks.” Pressing any one attack button from any one position produces one of two attacks, seemingly at random. For example, Chen‘s crouching Fierce Trick is sometimes a foot sweep, and sometimes it‘s a crazy shoulder-butt. These nuances might have something to do with the relative offensive/defensive positions of the fighters, but it seems random enough to forbid any sort of strategy. I get the impression that the game was designed for a four- or six-button control scheme and then haphazardly trimmed down to two, perhaps to make it more conversion-friendly with extant Time Traveler machines.
Each fighter has three or four special moves. I mean “special” in the most generous sense; contrary to what Tekken would like us to believe, a crouching kick is NOT a special move, even if your character yells, “Leg Reaper!” when he does it. Dompayagen‘s High Speed Kick deserves special recognition for sheer conceptual idiocy: It‘s an old-fashioned “mash the attack button” move, but the joystick has to be neutral in order for it to work, so to use this move at all you have to forgo all other moving, blocking, or strategy in favor of mashing one button (which, by the way, is surprisingly effective). The rest of the moves are a standard (if lame and unresponsive) array of hard punches, flips, and head-butts.
Holosseum offers a whopping four characters to choose from, and two of them are guys in karate jumpsuits. The only fighter that shows some spark of originality is Jack Garrison, a shirtless thug who fights exclusively with his legs for no apparent reason. I might not have noticed his shtick, if he didn‘t celebrate each victory by exclaiming, “My arms were made for throwing knives!” And no, he does not have a knife-throwing attack of any sort.
The music is lively but forgettable, although I really dig the music on the Player Select screen. The real star of Holosseum‘s soundtrack is the announcer, a disembodied head that pops up between fights to spout profundities like, “It‘s always great to see guys in good shape!” If I were to evaluate his fruitiness on a scale of one to ten, “one” being the MK announcer and “ten” being the SFA3 announcer, Holosseum‘s ghostly jabberjaw would score a perfect ten.
With just four fighters and no boss, Holosseum is short and painful. In lieu of a boss, the game subjects you to an agonizing survival match in which you try to knock out ten opponents in a row. In the unlikely event that you win *SPOILER ALERT!!* the announcer tells you what a totally awesome fighter you are, and you get to feast your eyes on a picture of your character flexing and smiling.
Granted, Holosseum is an unplayable novelty that no one in their right mind would touch even if they hadn‘t read my damning review. The real purpose of this article is to shed some light on a little-played footnote in fighting game history. Holosseum lacked substance - hell, it even lacked style - but I admire it for its gaudy, enthusiastic showmanship.
Emulation Note: Holosseum is supported by Modeler.
