Car Battler Joe (an inspired localization of Gekitou! Car Battler GO!!) is the kind of game that makes me realize i hardly judge games on "is it good" or even "did i like it" anymore, instead settling on "does it make me want to post like a freak?".

it is a series of game mechanics and plot beats that exist alongside each other in a sort of way that implies that they could be synergistic enough to reward careful thinking, while also leaving enough points of weakness in both such that I can bend the bars of the cage of game design open, jamming my head through and shouting "give me more Marion CGs"

it's a kickstarter game nearly a decade before kickstarter, a collection of ideas that coalesce into enough of a game to be called Technically Complete, where picking at all the still-wet glue holding the game together, perversely, provides entertainment of its own

the very best that no one never was

it makes me attempt to peer in between the lines and gaze upon the gradient spanning between design and scrapped content. the fact that half the villages in the game only have one nondescript building doesn't smell like intended world design, even in a post-apocalyptic setting. but calling that "cut corners" feels like a disservice. these moments lie in more of a functional compromise, a note, written at 10 in the morning or 2 hours past midnight, to add content later when there's time, deferred later and later, until there was no time.

the plot of Car Battler Joe is full of these. the game radiates Kids Show so hard that the title theme made me legit think this was a license whose origin got painted over for America. you turn 16 (bit old for a kids show, fair), are given a robot companion and fun death car that would undoubtedly have its own build-your-own parts line at Toys R Us, and told to go find your Mysteriously Missing Dad, who coincidentally, is the champion of the Fun Death Car League.

despite being assigned a Fun Death Car battlers' rank and seeing a Fun Death Car League pokemon gym in every fully realized town, you hit the credits with exactly one Fun Kids' Tournament battle under your belt, the entire plot turning out to have been a weirdly drawn out "chase Team Rocket" plotline, where the boundaries between "chase those bad guys" and "chase THOSE bad guys" is blurred in the exact way that you can't tell if it's one plotline or three, with a deference to the "please have GameFAQs handy" style of storytelling where you resolve a minor beat with no thread towards the next, and have to walk around the entire world until you trigger the next beat.

edit: i forgot to name this section

ironically, the beat with an actual hook, suggesting "you need to find the one person that can do something about it", after having shown off a grizzled recluse hero an hour prior, is false hope, as this is the part of the game where in order to advance the plot you need to upgrade your mom's shop to level 7 (which lets it sprout wheels and a sick hot-rod look and drive around. your mom used to be a bit of a driver herself, you know) so that it can be mentioned off-hand in one unimportant line

of course, you haven't done this, because you checked gamefaqs and discovered that you maxed out your trunk capacity of your 4x4 (at FOUR) and don't need to upgrade mom's shop such that you go from 16 car slots to 32, since you haven't even built a second car yet, because you haven't even found enough parts out in the Mode 7 Wastelands to upgrade your current one, much less build a new one, to say nothing of how every weapon you've found has been less good than the rapid-fire laser you get 15 minutes in. also because it is just simply effort to haul 4 pieces of junk in your trunk back and forth between the shops and the various buildings you wish to upgrade

I should also note that in the Mode 7 Wastelands, you unlock special moves (for maneuverability and combat) and unique parts by exploring various different Mode 7 Wastelands between buildings, and this is really cool! the special moves (consuming a separate SP bar) provide texture to the gameplay and it makes exploring feel good, and also there's no real way to discover that you've been blocked off from a town all game because you didn't realize that the Jump special move is hidden in one path you already explored

the ideas game

and this is the spirit of Car Battler Joe. it's got systems and I don't need to care about them but I like looking at them! you can customize your car's parts and weapons to affect like 10 different stats, but also you never find parts (nor can you buy them a la typical RPG), nor is it easy to figure out if you want a TEngDT1 or a TEngNT1, and also this game has experience points and levelling up yourself (not your car) also grants you stats which are separate from the car? and weapons fire in some sort of funny priority order that basically made my dominant strategy "sit in one spot and spin around with a rapid-fire laser trained on my opponent, because they cannot handle this and will just drive in a circle around me".

the game simply operates on a Freak's Game beat where recovery items exist (in a pause menu inventory) but are separate from similarly-named recovery items on the field (which are instantly consumed), the "don't ask why we did it like this" ethos emanating straight from its menu design where No is nearly always the default choice (the failsafe option sure, but one that makes mashing through anything absolutely terrible). it's not even a Freak's Game!

freak's games you have to engage and accept their weird designs and learn to breathe their air; in Car Battler Joe I fully believe that you can do that if you wish, but you can also just merely gaze upon its list of thoughts that all begin in "wouldn't it be cool if..." and think. it's right! it would be cool!

marionposting

it would be cool if they brought back Marion, the overalls-wearing girl who represents what feels like the first arc of the game. as a Post-Apocalyptic Death Uber Driver, you deliver her safely to her family, only to find that Team Rocket (The First) has stolen her family's precious thing. after fetching it and getting a little bit of an ominous hint towards the next arc, you return it to her family in the dead of night, where Marion is dazzled by your courage and spiky hair, and inspired to set off on a Car Journey of her own.

she goes to tell her family and your robot pal is like "it'd be hard for us to say goodbye if we talk to her again. let's just ghost her" and then you just leave. this of course breaks Marion's heart, and she vows to one day become a strong Death Cab Cutie and meet you again.

anyway she and her family never show up again in the plot LMAO and you just find yourself picking at the freshly glued pieces of plot again. was she meant to come back later, but was scrapped with the rest of whatever Tourney Arc existed? was this entire goodbye always part of the script, or a hasty way to write her out? there is no truth out there. all I can do with this, like everything else in Car Battler Joe, is Post

the poster's creed

hammering on the unbalanced, disconnected, likely unfinished nature of CBJ may have fooled you into thinking I don't like it. but this too is just part of The Posting. I would certainly like the game more if everything came together in a harmonious way - but the lack of coherence doesn't mean it's bad. it just means it gives me Posts.

it makes me a little crazier. about CaRPGs. about post-apocalypic kids shows. about the extra touches that did get finished, like a hidden (and useless!) "secret base" masquerading as a job shop, or the in-battle "jrpg ally sacrifice" cutscenes. about overalls.