Junkman
Dec 13 2004, 01:40 PM
Game: South Park Arcade 1
Creator: Joe Dixon
Genre: Beat em' up
Description: Bullies and other unlikeable goons are ramping on the town. Help Cartman put an end to this mayhem using the most proper weapon... his fists!

Rating: 72%

Review: Ahh...nostalgia... that's probably the reason why I've been wanting to review this game, but this game is some good fun, yet. smile.gif The aim of this game is controlling Cartman into 8 bully-infested levels in order to wipe them out of existence. Before you do that though, you gotta decide the number of credits you'll want to play the whole game. Although I'm sure everybody will want 9 credits because they won't wanna lose, some brave men will want to start the ride with fewer credits (which means also a single life). I attempted the ride with a single life and it can be done, see if you can also manage it too smile.gif

Now, I'll finally get on with the game itself. Each of the 8 levels of the game will have Cartman pitted against gangs of these annoying bullies.Each time you finish every enemy on the screen, other enemies appear out from nowhere (I just never knew that was part of bully power, but the same apply to those stupid ghosts in Pac-Man when they get eaten anyway, so I'll shut up). Some swarms later, a boss appear. Try your best to kill it and you finally get to go on the next level.

Unfortunately, the game is marred down by a few glitches. Some enemies can't be killed without losing some health (even though it's nowhere as worse as Clean the Streets off South Park, made by a guy named Tripp, which had a bug-infestation problem) some bosses can still shoot at you when dying (ditto) but they rarely shoot more than once. These bugs are nothing much serious, however, as they don't spoil gameplay much.

Graphics, for the much part, look good. It was the standard fare for this time era I guess, but most of the graphics are okay. The sporting book level is kinda messy (a brown background with some weird TV sets) and for those little fellas still on antique-age machines, (P200 and such) the final level will be a nightmare for the poor ol' processor to run due to the gigantigousmal boss you face in it. With a 800mhz it ran without a sweat, and I assume that every system around 400-600mhz will run it fine too. The framerate won't be a problem for all other levels though, do not worry.

The sound department suffers a bit in SPA... the sound experience is rather limited in this game. Except some battle sounds, laser gun shootings, and Cartman's groanings and "kick ass!" one-liners. The soundtrack is pretty sparse (you only hear music in the title screen, the level completed screens, the final boss and the credits) and there's basically no in-game music. This gives the game a rather empty feel, which is kinda sad.

SP Arcade was the first, and fortunately wasn't the last game in the serie. Even though the gameplay wasn't much developed nor deep, this game was fun and pretty cool for the time it was made in. Although it doesn't stand up to the other games of the serie, fans of the long-lived South Park Arcade 3 will gladly grab it up and see what were Polygon's debuts in South Park Gaming. Get retro and chill out, man.