Metamorphic Force - Arcade (1993)
Characters
After picking your character(s), your journey begins. You fight your way through an army of furries (and scaleys) with your meager human character. Inevitably, though, you will find a power up item that allows you to transform into your anthro form, at which point your characters abilities will become greatly enhanced. This form will be sustained until you've incurred a certain amount of damage in beast form, and then you'll be returned to human form. The game is somewhat cheap in this sense in that your health is constantly dropping, so even if you don't get hit, you're still suffering damage. Rather humorously, when you're approaching death, there's a small blinking message that pops up saying "Dead Soon!"
The game's fighting engine is pretty smooth for a beat'em up of its day. Unlike many Konami beat'em ups, there's a very clear combo system at work. Attacks in a combo always link together. The cool thing is, after knocking an enemy down, you can step over to their body and start stomping/pounding them while they're down. In multiplayer especially, it's really fun and funny just to gang-stomp the everloving snot out of a boss, Goodfellas style.
Aside from being fun, Metamorphic Force looks pretty. The game runs on the "Mystic Warriors" hardware. The animation is very smooth and the visual style looks hand-drawn. The music, though not particularly standout, consists of some pretty high quality rocking pieces. Also, strewn about the game are some hilariously bad voice acting segments.
The biggest problem with Metamorphic Force is easily its length. There's only 5 stages, and one of those stages is merely a marathon of recycled bosses. It's a shame really. Where many stale beat'em ups seem to last forever, Metamorphic Force's fast pace and fun fighting system really would've lent itself to being a bit longer. But overall, the game is pretty damn good as far as beat'em ups go.
Like other Konami beat-em-ups, this came in both two player and four player cabinets. The Japanese version uses energy bars while the other versions use numeric counters like Crime Fighters.
Metamorphic Force
Metamorphic Force
Metamorphic Force
Metamorphic Force
Metamorphic Force
Metamorphic Force
Gaiapolis - Koganedaka no Ken - Arcade / Famicom (Pirate) (1993)
From the outset, you can select from 3 different characters.
Characters
On top of the three characters, there's also an assortment of eggs that appear throughout the stages which, when touched by the player, hatch into a creature that will assist you. These include a fire-breathing dragon and a small goblin with a hammer.
Once you select your character, you set out on your quest. Aside from the odd perspective and dialogue-driven cutscenes, events pretty much carry out in standard beat'em up fashion, with your character(s) progressing through stages and engaging in battles with predetermined sets of enemies. The RPG elements are, for the most part, negligible. There is an experience system, as well as treasure chests filled with equippable items, but since the enemies you're fighting are all in designated positions and you're unable to backtrack to grind, your experience level at any given moment is also predetermined.
In an attempt to make Gaiapolis feel more like an RPG, Konami made the game pretty damn epic for a beat'em up. While by no means of adequate length to be considered a true RPG (and certainly not long enough to warrant the password feature that allows you to continue), Gaiapolis is amongst the longest beat'em ups out there.
The fighting itself is actually exceedingly simplistic. You can hack away at enemies, but the swings aren't exactly smooth like in Konami's other beat-em-ups. If you manage to land a few blows in succession, you'll pull off a few finisher moves. But other than the ability to block, that's about the extent of your moves - you can't even jump. It's not bad compared to typical 16-bit action-RPGs, but it doesn't quite cut muster compared to other arcade beat-em-ups. There are Golden Axe-style magic spells that show up every once in awhile, to clear the screen when you're overwhelmed.
Above all else, however, it's Gaiapolis's visual and aural presentation that stands out. The game is very, very pretty with wonderfully detailed graphics, well-animated sprites and some pretty marvelous screen effects, such as the 3-dimensional effect when dropping down to lower platforms during one of the later stages. Most impressive are the bosses, whom are particularly large, well animated, and usually have grotesque metamorphoses at various stages in their fights. Parts of the game look a bit like Konami's Twinbee games, mostly because the character designer, SHUZILOW-HA, is the same. On top of that the game also has a pretty impressive orchestral soundtrack. While the melodies themselves might not be terribly noteworthy, the quality certainly is.
Gaiapolis was never officially ported, but the Taiwanese pirate group Sachen made their own version years later. Although most pirate games tend to be awful, this one is actually relatively decent. The graphics are fairly average, and the music is terrible, but the speed and action is surprisingly close to the arcade game, even featuring the experience system and two player simultaneous play. The helpers character are gone, and you can no longer walk while blocking, but the magic spells are still here. The characters have been redesigned and renamed - the Fairy is now Amy, the Dragon is Lin, and the Prince is now Ken. The levels are only loosely based on their arcade counterparts, like the developers had played Gaiapolis in the arcade several years before and was trying to reconstruct it from memory. The cutscenes, too, look similar, even though the writing - completely in English - is different. It's obviously not up to the quality of Konami's own NES ports, but it's acceptable considering its origins.
After 1993 Konami mostly gave up on the beat-em-up genre, producing a grand total of zero games for the rest of the decade. Their revival of TMNT in 2003 is at least something, but those games have arguably not been up to par. As nice as it would be to have something else akin to their older titles, you've gotta keep in mind that Konami's real strength was in arcade beat-em-ups. So with the death of the American arcades, maybe it's just not meant to be.
Gaiapolis
Gaiapolis
Gaiapolis
Gaiapolis
Gaiapolis (Famicom)
Comparison Screenshots
Metamorphic Force
Metamorphic Force
Metamorphic Force
Admist the slew of licensed games published by Konami, there were a few interesting original IPs. In 1993, Konami produced Metamorphic Force, your standard everyday beat'em up which was noteworthy for starring a foursome of buff humans who could change to anthromorphic characters. In other words, it's very much conceptually a ripoff of Sega's Altered Beast.
Claude
A French fencer who emphasizes speed. He turns into a werewolf.
Max
Your average American badass with a mullet. He's the most balanced in terms of speed/strength. Turns into a werepanther.
Ivan
A burly Russian guy who transforms into a bear. The big, slow, strong guy of the bunch.
Ban
A Judo master who transforms into a bull. A nice compromise between speed and strength, being not quite as strong but also not quite as slow as Ivan.
Gaiapolis
Gaiapolis
Gaiapolis
In the same year that Metamorphic Force hit arcades, Konami further distanced themselves from the traditional beat'em up fare with Gaiapolis, a game that attempted to fuse all the mindless fun of a beat'em up with the depth of an overhead action RPG, using a vertically oriented monitor typically reserved for shooters. The result is a somewhat awkward though still quite enjoyable effort to fuse two genres with very little in common and putting them in a quite pretty package.
Dragon
The Dragon is stronger, slower version of the Prince, and an overall badass.
Fairy
The Fairy has a notable emphasis on attack speed at the cost of attack power. The benefit of this is that she can stop her attacks to avoid an enemy onslaught, whilst the Prince or the Dragon might be still caught in their attack animations before they can retreat.
Prince
The Prince is your average hero. Well balanced between attack speed and strength. Looks and sounds pretty goofy though.
