Forgotten Worlds (Arcade, 1988)

 

The very first game developed for Capcom's CPS-1 arcade hardware, making this an important historical footnote. This is what would happen if SCAT and Bad Dudes cross-pollinated. It's an arcade shooter very similar to SCAT (to the point that at first glance I nearly thought it was a prequel/sequel, or made by the same people) where you play as these two rad dudes as they fight their way through space to save Earth.

It also looks REALLY nice for 1988. Arcade games were punching on a whole different weight class in the late 80's. I'm not kidding, this looks insane visually. I thought it was from the mid-90's until I checked the year.

As usual, I had no idea what I was getting into with this one. Capcom's been doing a really good job resurrecting their old arcade games and preserving them with modern systems. Arcade games aren't something you'll just find in the wild, so they might be the most important games to make ports of for modern systems. Just to keep them from ceasing to exist entirely. I wish someone would port over the Aliens vs Predator arcade game where you can play as Arnold's character Dutch, as well as various Predators, while bashing your way through a horde of Xenos. It's so, so much better than the SNES beat 'em up. And basically nonexistent at this point in time.

Anyway, time for Capcom's first arcade game. It's called Forgotten Worlds but thanks to them it isn't a forgotten game.

Playing this on Capcom Arcade Stadium, which has an insane amount of games on it. There's also a Stadium 2 that isn't as good and has more of a "the leftovers" vibe, but it has some stuff worth having too.

Only issue is that you have to buy all the games piecemeal on Stadium. However they go on sale once in a while and it's pretty easy to find the price cut to $1/game (so around $30 to fill out each 'Stadium). As far as digital things go, it's an interesting approach and cost-effective for arcade game enthusiasts. I wish Konami would do something just like this.

We begin with Earth being attacked - not by aliens or machines, but by an army of dragons!

...this was 3 years after Super Mario Bros and 6 years after Pitfall for the Atari 2600.

Our heroes swing into action, armed only with laser rifles and jetpacks!

I'm gonna call them TURBO and MAGNUM.

"WE LOVE AMERICA!" says MAGNUM.

And it's...well, it's a shooter. You jetpack around the screen and blast waves of incoming foes as the game autoscrolls through the level. It's literally SCAT except much better-looking.

You get a pod that flies around with you and launches supplementary firepower. Enemies drop currency, and occasionally shops pop out of the floor.

"See anything you like?"

Yes, actually, I do.

Mainly these homing missiles! Special weapons don't change your normal laser gun (nothing really does, besides weapon boosters that power it up), instead what they do is...

...cause this pod to fire said special weapons. The pod can cover one direction while you fire in another, which is nice, and you can rotate your character to fire in any direction.

In any case, this bizarre internal organ is the first boss, and it shields itself with a debris field while I blast away.

Level 2 is full of Sahagin.

"Now we have jetpacks! Our time has come!" they hiss before being blasted out of the air by MAGNUM and TURBO.

Second boss is this dragon that appears to already be mortally wounded. Couldn't figure out how to damage it before time ran out and the game continued onward with no currency bonus. Turns out you have to blast the chest wound, but only at specific times. Well, so far the bosses are macabre.

Level 3 starts sending more robots to get our heroes, and the difficulty begins to pick up. Having a second player to double the firepower on-screen is advised to make the game a bit less chaotic.

"I said! Our time! Has com-GACK"

Third boss is the alien overlord who led the dragon attack. Here he is in effigy, being worshipped, before the scene pans up to show...

...the actual guy, hovering in the sky. He's like if Golbez inflated like Bowser at the end of Yoshi's Island, and attacks by punching with giant fists. The entire armor suit cracks and breaks apart as you blast the guy.

Starting in level 4, the game takes a sharp turn into having an ancient Egyptian theme, to the point that it might as well be a different game. The dragon menace must be over with, replaced with a new nightmare...

...native aboriginal folk with bows! My God!

Do you think we have enough enemies onscreen?

Boss is this Egyptian boatman / sun god. At this point I had to look the game up on Wikipedia and find out what's going on.

So it seems that the game takes place in the 2900s, where a future Earth gets attacked by a bunch of evil gods and their army of minions. The evil gods seem to run the spectrum of Earth gods. Also one of them is a giant internal organ for some reason.

...so basically the game doesn't really make any sense. Who cares though, it's so RAD.

The bosses in this game tend to only be weak to damage at specific intervals. This particular guy adds another layer to that by having a barrier in front of him that constantly regenerates, so you have to blast that and then hope that the shots that get through connect during the intervals where they do damage.

There are some new special attacks (for the pod) but it won't let me buy them for some reason. What's unfortunate is that I picked up a fairly limited bomb weapon for the pod early on and haven't been able to change it out ever since, either because I'm short on funds or it just doesn't let me. In other words, don't buy the fairly limited bomb weapon.

Next boss is this flying head. This is the first fight that really makes use of the rotation controls the game gives you, as you have to spin your character to fire at the boss as it flies around.

The original CPS-1 arcade machines had a joystick for movement and a dial-control for your character's rotation, so you could move your character around and change their firing direction at the same time easily enough.

Do enough damage to the flying head and he turns into this...orb-snake? It zips all over the screen and is the first fight that could really be considered tough, or as tough as a shooter with unlimited lives (as long as you have quarters) can be.

Next boss: A sarcophagus! This concludes the Egypt portion of the game.

Next up, we're in the Pleistocene. The last few levels are all ice age, and they're all more of the same.

Next boss, a freakishly old man. Not sure what god this is supposed to be. Every stage boss is apparently one of the "nine gods" that are attacking Earth.

Next boss, a crystalline menace. The fights have actually gotten less and less hectic as the game goes on. I guess they get all your quarters early and then let you cruise a bit.

I get the fully-powered beam, which turns my shots into rings. Unfortunately, I was stuck with a bad special weapon on my pod for like 80% of the game.

The ice age ends with a fight with two giants in front of the Tower of Babel. They just finished building the Great Pyramids and they don't need any of our shit!

The creators of this game definitely spent a lot of time studying mythology, and the game itself I'm not even sure what to make of. It seems like you're being transported to eras of the distant past (hence "Forgotten Worlds") but nope, it's all intended to be happening in 2900 AD I guess.

Final stage is a vertical-scroller with fairly generic gun emplacements as foes.

The final boss is this demon who would be right at home in the Ghouls n' Ghosts series. I like how his ship here contains advanced technology. Game combines mythology/demonic entities with tech. Sort of like a Prometheus situation where advanced entities that created us come back to wipe us out. Or maybe I'm thinking way too much into it.

His deadliest attack is this array of laser beams. However, a steady stream of rings does him in before long.

Our heroes emerge from the ice age (back in the present, I'm guessing), victorious, having stopped the alien menace and/or ancient Antediluvian people.

...I'm not sure what I just played. There are some weird games out there. This one was a good time, though.

Brought to you by Poo!

When it comes to Capcom's programmers, Poo is everywhere.

TURBO: "We're two dudes with attitude!"

MAGNUM: "Hell yeah!! We love America!!"

I believe this game got scaled-down ports on the Sega Genesis and Turbografx-16, but I recommend going straight to the arcade source via Capcom Arcade Stadium. This version blows away any graphically stripped-down console ports that followed.

When playing Forgotten Worlds in the 2020s, you don't settle for some console port, damn it!