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Review: Tongue of the Fat Man (PC) |
Today we’re fortunate to live in a world of fighting games actually worth playing. But this was not always the case. Sit back, my children, and let me tell you a story. A story that begins back in the early days of a mystical time called “1989″… [screen fades out in dream sequence / flashback style]
Street Fighter II had yet to make it’s impact on the gaming world, but fighting games still existed even before it’s influence became a permanent element in the genre. One of the latest games that was released with no influence from was a PC title called Tongue of the Fat Man. And the fact that it had no influence from Street Fighter II really showed. This poor miserable release wasn’t worthy of the disk space it occupied on the three 5.25″ disks it came shipped on. But as a tribute to the wonderful influence Capcom bestowed on the fighting genre with Street Fighter II, I decided to review this game as a look into how bad things could’ve continued to be without it. Here’s the rundown of the game (no pun intended).
The game takes place in the distant future. Some guy named “Mondo the Fat” (I’m not making this up) runs an intergalactic fighting championship every year. It sort of reminds me of what it might’ve looked like if they’d ever held a fighting tournament in one of the Star Wars movies. Not a bad concept to start with. But the game’s execution of it (again, no pun) left much to be desired. Tongue of the Fat Man may sound more fitting for the title of an 80’s porn movie than an 80’s fighting game, but it does share an amount of quality similar to what you’d expect from the former.
After the title screen, you’re greeted to the game with a surprisingly clear voice sample of “Mondo welcomes you to the fight palace!”. Surprising for it’s time since most games rarely used any voice sampling at all, and when they did they usually came out nearly indecipherable at best. But that’s the highlight of the game’s sound right then and there. There’s limited music in the game, and what is there is pretty horrible. The sound effects during the fights are pretty much limited to dull thuds of the fighters pounding each other, and they aren’t even impressive sounding as far as thuds go. The graphics were also equally disappointing. Even though the game made use of VGA 256 color graphics (state of the art at the time), it seemed like they weren’t using more than 16 colors. It tended to look very muddled, and was so bad at some times that you would have trouble distinguishing things from each other on the screen during a fight. On top of this, all of the artwork was terrible, and the animation inexplicably choppy and erratic. All in all it was an audio and visual mess, and clearly sub-par even for it’s time. But this isn’t the only thing wrong with the game. Not by a long shot. Next let’s talk about… [shudder] the gameplay.
First, you’d choose a character, initially from a choice of three. More characters are unlocked as you defeat them though, eventually giving you access to every type of alien species in the game. And that’s good, because you usually have to use the newest unlocked characters to make any further progress, because these guys are possibly some of the most unbalanced characters in any fighting game ever. The human for instance, who’s the first character, is completely worthless in every way. And then they get gradually stronger/cheaper as you go up the ladder. Some of the bizarre opponents you’d encounter included Rubic (you know the old Genesis game “Ballz”? Well think “Squarez”), Edwina (ever seen that episode of Futurama with the giant cave-women?), Puff Boy (Nintendo’s “Kirby” gone bad), and eventually the ring master himself, Mondo the Fat (if E.Honda mated with Jabba the Hut, you might get something ALMOST this frightening as the result). Before getting to battle it out with these assorted ruffians though, there’s this little monetary system set up to give you a pointless and frustrating little introduction to the even greater annoyances that are still yet to come. You start with a set amount of money, and can choose to bet on yourself or buy stuff with it. If you want to bet on yourself, you put down an amount to wager and then decide how long it will take you to win. Make it in that time and you get your winnings. Otherwise, you just wasted a whole bunch of cash (although you do always get a small victory purse just for winning in itself). Alternatively, you can buy some weapon-like inventory items that are supposed to help you out. Most of them tend to just be stupid and/or cheap though, and aren’t fun to use. And that’s assuming you can figure out what they’re even supposed to do at all.
The computer will of course always have it’s inventory slots full of them though, and abuse them against you excessively. It also costs you money when you lose, apparently to get healed up enough to be able to submit yourself to the abuse again. No money and it’s game over if you lose a match. You also only get three “lives”, and after losing a third time it doesn’t matter how much cash you have on hand - you’re finished. None of this is even remotely a good idea in the first place, but proves even worse than you’d imagine in practice. But sadly, this isn’t the worst part of the game either. No, there’s far more horrible frustration that awaits you in the ring.
Once you’ve begun the match, the computer will most often move in and start flailing around frantically, doing moves seemingly at random most of the time, and just pounding on you with one move repeatedly the rest. After a few seconds it will become blindingly clear there are no signs of intelligent life in space - at least not of the artifical kind. So let’s assume you make the foolish decision to try to fight back. The manual describes the arrow keys doing specific movements. Pressing them seems to result in randomness or indistinguishable actions on the part of your character. In an effort to block you logically press the movement keys that face away from your opponent. Your character ends up turning around, sitting on the floor, and having it’s head happily used as a punching bag by the computer. Turning to the manual again you realize the block functions involve holding down the “action key” and pressing certain movement buttons.
This is usually how to attack as well, by the way. Except for one attack function that’s done with one of the diagonals and no action button. Now you’re starting to get a headache as big as the one your character just received. It lists forward and the action button as the “special move” command though, which sounds pretty simple, so you decide to give it a try.
Your character starts rapidly attacking in a senseless yet stupid manner, over and over as long as the buttons are held. The computer backs off for a moment, and you finally gain some small sense of control over the match.
Then the computer uses one of it’s inventory items, tossing a puddle of slime under your feet which makes you fall helplessly to the floor. You press the up key frantically trying to get to your feet, resulting in your character comically falling again and again as the computer suspensefully moves in. You check the manual and notice you have a backflip command. It might work, but it involves using the action key, where as getting requires the up command without it. This will take all your skill. As you press up, you quickly switch to the action key plus the diagonal command for the flip.
Success, your character starts to flip out of the slime to safety! And then… with the computer now being close enough to hit you, it promptly knocks you back down into the ooze with one swift attack.
After paying the money needed to revive yourself, you’re onto your second life. You decide it’s time to play dirty yourself this time. Most of the store items seem to suggest no apparent function by their appearance, but you place faith in the idea they may help you somehow. You buy a bundle of them, careful to save enough money for revival. Now you enter the ring for a rematch, prepared with your own arsenal of gadgets hopefully cheap enough to match the computer’s disturbingly fiendish tactics. The computer closes in with it’s usual flailing tactics. A quick glance at the manual and you should be throwing all kinds of whoop ass his way with your new arsenal, you figure. You then discover that throwing items requires holding the middle movement key and pressing diagonals. A few tries results in the usual random movements, according to the game’s usual tendency to only respond to one keypress at a time. Not knowing which item is triggered by which diagonal is a fleeting concern, as the computer closes in quickly, sure to give you a beating in moments if left uninhibited. But at last one of your commands finally responds! A small disk-like item disappears from your inventory and flies accross the screen, delivering less than 10% damage and failing to even slow the computer down in the process. After a desperate battle of in-close flailing, you’re promptly delivered to the “cost of revival” screen once again.
Since this is your last chance, you figure you’d better play things safe.
After looking over the manual again you memorize the amazingly unintuitive blocking commands. This time you figure you’ll just block everything and throw out the occasionaly “special move” command to hopefully drain your opponent’s life down little by little. You enter the ring, glancing at the bewildering instructions on the method of blocking one more time, with a strange feeling like you’re eating your last meal before execution. After struggling with the controls your character seems to go into a blocking-type position of some sort. “Yes, now let’s see that cheap-ass computer flail me to death!”, you triumphantly think. After which, the computer walks over and promptly tosses you to the ground. After much key flailing you somehow manage to get up and stay up in time before the computer stomps you to death on the floor. Glancing at the instruction book, you try using the throw command yourself in return. It’s a diagonal movement, of course. Pressing the key rapidly, your character finally responds by standing with it’s arms reaching out. Failing to grasp the computer, your character is now left totally open, eliminating what little chance you might have liked to think you had of winning. The computer quickly goes into it’s all too familiar flailing sequence of random attacks, finishing your battered fighter off in an indistinguishable flurry of absurdity. With your three lives extinquished, Mondo comments on what a lame fighter you are as you’re kicked back to the fighter select screen. You exit the game and comment on what a lame piece of software this is as you toss it into the garbage can.
To be a little supportive though, the game did have some good ideas for it’s time. I believe it was the first to feature an alien fighting tournament, for instance. The characters weren’t really as cool or imaginative as they could have been, but the general concept itself was pretty neat. And at least there were a lot of potentially playable characters - about 10 in all, which was probably a record at this point. Having a pretty wide variety of actions and attacks was a good idea too, but ultimately just made things worse due to the game’s other limiting factors. The awful control was clearly the game’s most prominent downfall, and effectively killed any potential it could have had to be fun. But compared to other games of it’s time it was still only slightly below average, hence the overall rating I’m giving it of 40%. Rating it by today’s standards would just be too cruel, and I’d have to reduce every number rating by at least 20%.
It was one of the last of a soon to be extinct breed of fighting games that existed before the term was even recognized as a genre. This may have been what passed as entertainment in Mondo’s world, but luckily we of today’s world are much more fortunate. For the coming of the second Street Fighter tournament soon left this legacy of bewildering and unusable control methods behind forever. Let us take a moment of silence to show our gratitude for Capcom’s contribution in taking fighting games to the level they really should have started at in the first place. On second thought, maybe booting up The World Warrior in Callus would be a more appropriate tribute. “Round One, Fight!”
- SAL
