This week's Arcade Archives release is... BLANDIA (Allumer, 1992)
Switch
EU version not up on web browser store yet
US
Although only one version is included, all the text is in English. This version has been slightly edited- the visible nipples on the statues seen on the title screen have been removed.
Gildus, the Mad Gold King, has been terrorising the land, demanding every town and village give all their gold to him, lest they taste his magical wrath. The Gods of this world, however, elect six champions from six towns, to fight amongst themselves to see who among them is strong enough to defeat Gildus and his cronies in one-on-one combat. The stage is set for the clash of spells and steel!
... Oh I don't even know where to start with this. If you've ever heard of Blandia, then you probably already know what's coming, but this is a deeply janky fighting game. I mean, can you blame it? It came out in 1992, and for fighting games hopping onto the Street Fighter II bandwagon, that's early! Not only that, it's a weapons-based fighting game in a time before Samurai Shodown, before Soul Blade and even before Martial Champion which had weapon-stealing! It makes a little more sense when you realise where this game came from- Allumer's previous works include Gladiator and Great Swordsman for Taito, combat-oriented games with a low, middle and high attack system alongside a armour mechanic, and Blandia moulds these ideas to fit the buregeoning fighting game genre, as was the style at the time.
The execution is... Rough. Inputs are bizarre and a lot stricter than you'd think, with special moves not coming out if you do, say, a half-circle motion for a quarter-circle attack or charge something for too long, and some require holding buttons down and releasing which just never come out when you want them to. The armour mechanic is cute but it also prevents you from doing a lot of damage so matches go on for a while! The visuals are alright- nice big sprites and all, and some of the designs like Jurane and McGill are pretty good- but the music is a series of very short sample lloops that will eventually drive you nuts. Speaking from personal experience, I played a few sets of this with a friend once- we called that session 'The Worst Arcade on Earth' as we played Violence Fight and Alien Challenge alongside Blandia and Blandia was definitely the least fun game we played that night... And yet there's something very charming about it. It's trying its absolute best given where the genre was at the time, and that's why ever since Hamster announced they had the Allumer catalogue, I've been waiting for this one. Blandia is a deeply busted game and I respect it.
Also it's responsible for one of the funniest game crashes of all time, courtesy of Lord BBH's MAME Roulette- this one gets loud!
And if you'd like to see a little high-level (?) Blandia play, it's playable in Fightcade 2 so some tournaments have been hosted!
