This week's game is Taiketsu Rumiizu, a Bomberman-like on the 3DO (and PS1) that has you opening floodgates to wash opponents away. It's chaotic and takes effort to get used to, but its weird, very of its era charm may capture your heart:
As you'd expect from the 3DO (and PS1), this is one fascinating game! A Bomberman-like isn't the most outlandish idea by any means, but the way things are handled here make it feel unique. Instead of placing bombs, you have to take the time to turn valves and open floodgates to potentially defeat your opponents. It's a more hands-off approach that can make this game hard to learn at first, especially with how unpredictable the water can be at times (the power-ups aren't exactly intuitive, either). I had a hard time getting used to how this game wants you to play, but once you do figure it out, it does actually work. By making it so every attack has the potential to linger on the screen for several seconds, Taiketsu creates an environment of constant chaos reminiscent of maze games that's probably very fun with four people. There is a single player mode with boss fights, but there's no real ending aside from credits and a "Congratulations" screen, so the juice probably isn't worth the squeeze of having to try bosses multiple times and replay rounds in the process.
Whether you can get multiple people together or not to play this, it's the kind of thing that's just inherently fun to mess around with nowadays. If we're being real, I think we all love exploring the 3DO and PS1 for games nobody's heard of, and this is exactly the kind of pleasant surprise we like to find. It's not a great game, but it is an interesting one with a genuine sense of style (check out that claymation intro!) that I think a lot of people around these parts would enjoy messing around with, even if just for a few minutes. You just don't get 'em looking like this anymore, and that alone gives Taiketsu Rumiizu some value.

