Despite the solid gold righteousness of Barack Obama’s inauguration, this day’s still a little sad. As Joe noted, Jaleco Holdings has sold off their game developer/publisher subsidiary Jaleco to Korean MMO house Game Yarou and taken their leave of gaming for good. Ducking out of the videogame business because of "increasing competition (…) in the videogame market" isn’t an especially surprising move for a c-list – close to d-list really – publisher, but it’s still disconcerting to see a member of the old vanguard get shut down. Joe’s timeline of Jaleco is pretty thorough, but I wanted to make special note of a few other games they brought to the world. Let’s be honest: no Jaleco game, whether it was one they just published or one they created, could be considered one of the all time greats. But many of them were a hell of a lot of fun, and others were just plain freaking weird. All four of the following are perfect Up All Night candidates: they may or may not play that well, but they are trashy as all hell. Here’s to you, Jaleco.
Tuff E Nuff – SNES
Like Totally Rad, Tuff E Nuff is notable for its totally sweet name alone, but it earns extra points for being a decent one on one fighter in an age lousy with Street Fighter II wannabes. Tuff E Nuff is unassuming at first, revealing its merits slowly. The quality music, the solid character design, and the game’s story mode – which actually includes some character and skill leveling – are all charmers.
It's story is suitably absurd and awesome.
Vampire Hunter D and Speed Racer - Playstation
Jaleco didn’t disappear entirely during the 32/64-bit console cycle. They just spent their time publishing games based on peculiar anime licenses. Most every other Japanese company was making PS1, Saturn, and N64 games based on internationally popular 90s anime like Cowboy Bebop and Gundam Wing. Jaleco, meanwhile, was making games out of properties decades past their prime. Vampire Hunter D, an action game in the Resident-Evil-tank-controls mode, and Speed Racer, a meat-and-potatoes racer based on the vintage cartoon, are both a bit crap. But they were still very playable back in 1999 and were, to the young anime nerd, mana from heaven when they came out in the US. VHD is actually still worth picking up if you have a soft spot for PS1 horror games.
Illbleed – Dreamcast
Carrier wasn’t Jaleco’s last hurrah in the States. That honor goes to Illbleed. Illbleed is loud, garish, ugly, and it controls like crap. It’s also hilarious, a gory, inappropriate mess, like the digital equivalent of a Troma movie. It’s technically a survival horror game, as you’re chief goal is to survive while the game tries to scare you, but it switches things up from the usual combat-plus-limited-resources model of the era. Illbleed is most often about identifying traps in the environment, utilizing different sense gauges (sight, hearing, smell, and “sixth sense”) to avoid them. It’s much better in theory than in execution, but still, A for effort.
Related links:
Mourning the End of Jaleco
Up All Night: Blackthorne
Up All Night: Bad Dudes
Up All Night: Nightmare Creatures
