Video Games That Maybe Only Exist In My Head, Part 1

hatoba tsugu fanart, 2019

Everybody rumored…nobody believed.

original resolution

my kinda game

1998 - mobile phone customers are surprised to find a game 'Black Gloves' preinstalled on their new phones. The gameplay is based on a long, skeletal arm finding its way to a sleeping victim. Multiple reports of phone owners being hauled from their beds spur an unusual mass recall

design document part 2

Happy Slapper ‘93 (Mighty Obnoxious Yellow)

I’d originally planned to do something entirely different for the next cut in my ongoing “music I make on advice from my therapist” series, but as is damn near always the case with me, plans change. The idea to do a speedy oldskool Rotterdam Techno track with some mighty slap bass came to mind as if from a dream at the start of the week, and several hours over the next few days were lost to making it a terrifying reality.

This track is another piece for one of my many, many, many Gonkaka projects; Relentless Riders. An arcade racing/driving game that, were it a real game, would be somewhat Ridge Racer inspired, but with several twists. For starters, there’s no actual opponent vehicles to race against, and the courses aren’t circular; the race is instead against the clock, and the courses are straight shots with a defined beginning and end (so it’s a bit like OutRun in that regard, too). Another major difference is that it has a defined narrative, which I’m going to try my hardest to sum up in brief:

Relentless Riders takes place thousands of years into the future, after a brutal war fought that raged for centuries has left the planet almost completely decimated and the human race in the hundreds. Said war was fought using machines that were able to alter the fabric of reality itself, with every creative and unspeakably cruel way that power could be used and abused explored by those that fought in the war- hence why the planet is in such bad shape. The survivors of the war congregated together and created a safe haven at the most remote point of the planet, vowing to create as utopian a society as possible within their means. As you can imagine, however, resources weren’t exactly in abundance to begin with, and in the years since the colony was established circumstances have only grown more dire. With little hope left, they turn to a legend stating that the original reality warping device- the most powerful of the machines and the one that served as the base for all the others- lays untouched, still operational, in it’s original location; a laboratory at the heart of the only part of the planet untouched by the war, known as “The Vanishing Point”. With this machine’s help, they could undo the damage wrought by millennia of fighting; they could renew the world entirely. Problem is, the Vanishing Point’s location is an incredible distance away- on the complete opposite end of the remaining landmass that the colony was built on. It’s a one way trip, and with no indication that legends are factual, it could all be for naught. Seeing no options left, four volunteers step forward to make the impossible journey- Ayako, Yoshie, Tomoko, and Mariko- working with the few mechanically and scientifically remaining individuals to construct supercars capable of withstanding the hostile world beyond their borders. Each of the drivers have their reasons for volunteering: Ayako, having only known cities made of steel and titanium and beginning to feel burdened by the scientific knowledge that has shaped her life, dreams of experiencing an unsoiled world full of flora and fauna; Yoshie, the sole remaining member of her family, seeks to escape to a happier world where the sorrow she’s known for entire life is a distant memory; Tomoko, a spiritual individual who no longer finds comfort in her belief system and unable to fully believe the legend is true, wants to experience one last burst of freedom and fun before the inevitable end; and Mariko, an eccentric individual who learned quick to use her bizarre nature to try and offer some brevity, knows the machine at the Vanishing Point contains information on the world of the past- including info on a chocolate bar she’s heard many tales of and is desperate to try. Their cars built and their affairs settled, the four drivers depart from the colony with nothing but a small selection of ‘classical music’ from many aeons ago blaring from their speakers, to boost their morale.

… That wasn’t very brief at all, was it?

As for the track itself; it couldn’t possibly be more inspired by Shinji Hosoe’s early work in the ridge racer games if I’d tried, though there’s a touch of the old masters of Rotterdam Techno- Holy Noise, Euromasters, King Dale etc.- in there as well. Whilst older Rotterdam Techno was fast pasted and had its fair share of heavy kicks and quirky samples, the early stages of the genre didn’t quite go to the same extremes as it would in the latter half of the 90s and beyond (this was an age before Speedcore and Extratone, after all). In terms of actual specific songs, this owes itself to Speedster, Speedster Overheat, and though it’s a newer track Rotten 7 [Remix] from the Ridge Racer series, all of which were composed by Hosoe. It’s mostly the former two, what with their Slap Bass Action™, but the bittersweet chords were drawn from the latter a little. The bittersweet angle was a detail I specifically wanted to include; to keep in tandem with the narrative of Relentless Riders, I want the music for the project to have a forlorn tone to it. Not to the point of being morose and miserable, mind, but just enough to tug at the heart strings a bit.

Oh, yeah; why’s it credited to “Mighty Obnoxious Yellow” and not “Gonkaka”? Another of the ideas for RR was to have the race BGMs be assigned to fake acts made up by Gonkaka (aliases for aliases; we’re through the looking glass), though M.O.Y. is actually the name of a project that Gonkaka’s bassist, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and their string player/head tech guy Denji Koshiro were in together before Gonkaka formed, wherein they blended electronica with their chosen instrument talents. Hence why the slap bass is off the chain here, and why the violin makes an appearance at a few points. The name and general idea are a reference to Oriental Magnetic Yellow, the name of a Yellow Magic Orchestra cover/parody band formed by Shinji Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Sano, Takayuki Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki that they worked on between soundtrack gigs. The title of the song is a two-pronged pun; “Happy Slapping” was the name of a 'fad’ from my secondary school days wherein you would suddenly slap someone, usually from behind, yell “HAPPY SLAP” as you did it, and some other dickhead would film the whole affair on their phone. And, as well established, the song’s got mad slap bass in it ayyy.

Why yes, I DO think through this shit so thoroughly for pretty much my sole enjoyment, how did you know?

As a fun bonus, I’ve included some early character design concepts for the four riders: these were drawn about three years ago, and desperately need updating, but hey ho!

Kazuo Umezu’s horror manga The Drifting Classroom may have reigned in the 70s, but it wasn’t until a decade later that game developers in Japan would begin to cash in on its popularity. The Famicom title, as seen above on a bootleg NES cart, sold millions, and was lauded for its 2D platforming depiction of the manga’s harrowing events in a slightly truncated form. In fact, the game was so popular that an official soundtrack was released, containing every piece of music from the title. Whether you’re familiar with the manga or not, you can surely find excitement in the tale of an elementary school zapped to an uncertain, desolate future, where adults resort to barbarism while the children devise a new world order.

redo of an earlier mock-up

2018