About "Hard Head 2 PC Game"
Well, might as well start at the bottom of the barrel and work our way
up. Now, I'm not one to advocate the whole "best/worst [insert thing
here] ever" mentality, but if Hard Head 2 isn't the single worst
video game of all time, it's certainly close. It's up there with the
cream of the crap, rubbing shoulders with such greats as Pit-Fighter and
Ground Zero Texas. And believe me, that is one classy crowd to roll
with.
Obviously (thankfully, mercifully) I've never gone toe-to-toe with this game in an actual arcade, but it was brought to my attention via the Wikipedia page for the first game (don't ask me how I got there, you know how it is with Wikipedia; you start on Batman and end at Cow-Tipping) as it described the sequel as 'kitschy', 'quite embarrassing' and 'surely one of the most graphically bizarre video games ever.' With a sales pitch like that, how could I refuse? I'll play anything once. So I booted the game up in MAME, and...
Obviously (thankfully, mercifully) I've never gone toe-to-toe with this game in an actual arcade, but it was brought to my attention via the Wikipedia page for the first game (don't ask me how I got there, you know how it is with Wikipedia; you start on Batman and end at Cow-Tipping) as it described the sequel as 'kitschy', 'quite embarrassing' and 'surely one of the most graphically bizarre video games ever.' With a sales pitch like that, how could I refuse? I'll play anything once. So I booted the game up in MAME, and...
Half an hour later, I'm staring blankly at my laptop screen, wishing I could have my time and sanity returned to me.
I present to you, the reader, a full run-through of this 'game', wherein I'll try to explain the many crimes it committed against me.
Another change from the norm is that you can pick up three different weapons which seem to show up randomly. Sometimes the turtles with pots drop them, I don't know. I'm not playing this stupid game again just to 'get' the no-doubt intricate system that dictates which weapons will appear when, and with what frequency. I'm willing to jump through hoops like that for something like DoDonPachi or Bubble Bobble, but not for this. Err, where was I? Oh, right. The weapons. If you pick up a POW item (which looks suspiciously like the POW items from old Capcom games like 1943) when you've got a weapon, it'll temporarily make it stronger, and it'll usually change what it does, making it slightly more useful. Sometimes. In fact, you can upgrade each weapon several times- the Bugle, for instance, eventually launches out bouncing stars- but since you're not going to hold on to any weapon for long enough (dropping it resets it to zero, and the power-ups are on a timer) then you'll never see them, and neither did I. So, I'll only discuss the second power level.
Incidentally, in these screenshots, you can see the wings on our dude's back. They're an item too, but they're useless- you tap the jump button in mid-air to use them, but they don't seem to do much, really. Then again, this game as a whole doesn't do much, so why break with tradition? That's why I didn't give this item the dignity of its own section.
Anyway, this is a real weapon! The unknown protagonist swings it around his head, but curiously enough the chain simply disappears when you do this. It's actually got decent range, so you don't have to be right in the face of the enemy to have a chance of hitting them! The upgrade makes it stronger, with better range, and makes it a nice orange colour.
And this is how the game is played. 8 levels lie between you and the sweet taste of victory. Sure, there's a few slight problems exhibited by the game, and by 'slight' I mean 'holy hell how can this be', such as the fact that there's only 2 different music tracks that repeat incessantly until the end of each stage, the horribly slow scroling speed, the sheer ugliness of every single facet of the graphics, the sense of despair you'll feel when you've played this thing for more than 2 minutes, and yet more, but I'm sure all of these things will become obvious when we start the analysis.
Oh yes, you'd better believe it- this happens every single time you die.