Virtually Overlooked: Kabuki Quantum Fighter
Welcome to our weekly feature, Virtually Overlooked, wherein we talk about games that aren't on the Virtual Console yet, but should be. Call it a retro-speculative.
HAL America's Kabuki Quantum Fighter has been featured on Virtually Overlooked once before, as a game that has a similar title to Phantom Fighter. But it's too weird to let pass with just a superficial mention.
It's hard to imagine a game so enthusiastically nonsensical being overlooked, but the very lack of this game on the Virtual Console is evidence that such a situation has taken place. We must rectify this! For the honor of Japanese theater, and the fictional fighting styles associated with it for some reason!
When we first got the idea to write a VO column about Kabuki Quantum Fighter from reader Zack W., we had a little chuckle at the thought of writing about a young Satoru Iwata toiling away at this game, getting fatter as the release date approached. We would have a great time talking about how a guy who programmed a game about attacking robot ninjas with your hair was now in charge of the policies for all of Nintendo. It would have been such a great historical note.
You know, if it had been true. While Iwata did work at HAL Laboratories, this game was only published by HAL, specifically the American branch. The actual game was developed by Human Entertainment. Ah! Human Entertainment! Another avenue for possible historical significance!
Human Entertainment hired a young undertaker named Gouichi Suda as a designer; after the company went out of business, he started his own studio called Grasshopper Manufacture and started making bizarre, artsy adventure games about assassins. Wouldn't it be interesting if Suda 51 got his start on this game, we thought? But no, actual history robs us of a cool story once again. Suda didn't start at Human until the development of Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Final Bout, which came out in 1993 for the Super Famicom.
Thus, we are at an impasse. Surely there's nothing interesting about a NES game that stars a soldier who enters a Tron-like computer world and becomes a Kabuki actor who throws microchips like darts and whips his hair around as a melee weapon. Oh, wait.
That's right, Kabuki Quantum Fighter is about Scott O'Conner, a soldier who enters a computer in order to defend against attacks on the "Main Defense Computer." Because some of his Japanese ancestors worked as Kabuki actors, Scott manifests as a genetic memory of their former profession. He then immediately gets the idea that his long hair would make an excellent weapon.
The game itself is entirely solid, if not as interesting as its premise (what could be?) Your character moves very much like Ryu in Ninja Gaiden in terms of jumping ability and movement speed, with an enhanced ability to hang onto and jump from certain elements in the stage. He has his choice of melee (hair) or projectile (chip) weapons, and, like Mega Man, each boss encounter adds a new weapon to Scott's arsenal.
Like Ninja Gaiden, Kabuki Quantum Fighter received a massive promotional push from Nintendo Power (in some issue or another), which probably accounted for any copies it sold. Even without the involvement of print media, we could see some curious Wii gamers dropping $5 for a game about whipping robots with your flame-red mane. They'd end up with a pretty good game as a reward, although one that doesn't seem to involve the two famous game designers we kinda thought it might involve.
