Retro Review - Night Slashers
What would be the result between a beat'em'up and a Resident Evil? It's certainly a rather strange combination, but if you analyze it, it's possible that the result is a really good product. And that's the result of the game I'm going to talk about next, this title knew how to join the frenzy of a beat'em'up with how bloody and grotesque can be a Resident Evil game with big hordes of zombies to defeat. But what at first seemed to be the typical and arguably used zombie invasion, the end result is a product that adds all kinds of grotesque and classic monsters such as vampires and werewolves, this game has everything that creatures of the underworld are concerned.
The truth is that until today I never paid attention to the plot of this videogame and as soon as we started playing we found ourselves punching, kicking and destroying zombies and any creature that attacks us, everything starts very chaotic and frantic and you really don't pay attention to the plot of Night Slashers (and it's not very important either). The first seconds of this title shows us a city attacked by all kind of creatures from hell itself, these creatures attack us automatically when they see us and we must defeat them in the most bloody and violent ways possible, because I have to say that Night Slashers is a title with a lot of graphic violence.
The truth is that the beginning of this videogame is totally surreal and saying that of a videogame where our enemies are zombies, werewolves, vampires and even mummies is already a lot to say, but for a game of this genre what matters the least is the story, nobody pays attention to the plot of a beat'em'up and especially to one like Night Slashers which is crazy from beginning to end. What we do know is that we will have the help of three brave heroes who will take charge of liberating the city from this chaos and terror.
Night Slashers is one of those few games that has aged spectacularly well, still maintaining its charisma and particular graphic style, with great color and detail in every place we look. This game is clearly inspired by the slashers movies of some years ago and that's why it's also the name of this game, all the aesthetics reminds to those kind of movies, and the way they adapted all this already classic and representative characteristic of this film genre is really good.
The design of the characters in general, both the main characters and our enemies, have an exceptional quality, really good designs and full details that make them stand out from other games in the same genre. Besides that the variety of the enemies is high and even though the designs don't go beyond being the classic zombies, werewolves or any other recognizable creature of the horror genre, their designs are very good and have a great degree of originality even though we have seen this kind of creatures infinite times in different products throughout the years. What stands out the most in this game in terms of graphics is the way we destroy our enemies and that's because Night Slashers is a really violent title and it's not afraid to show how we destroy the head of some zombies or dismember the arms of a werewolf, its violence is quite graphic and bloody.
Night Slashers doesn't have any melodies that are really memorable like other beat'em'up, but in itself their soundtrack is pretty good, in it we will find different music genres ranging from rock music for those moments when we are facing a horde of enemies and the music helps us to warm up to defeat them in the most violent and bloody way possible, but we will also find tunes that will remind us of games like Castlevania as they make use of organs and ambient sounds that somehow create an atmosphere of terror, suspense and gloom, typical of horror films.
Night Slashers is really a game with a quite high difficulty curve, normally the beat'em'up are not so difficult since one of the motivations with this type of games is to have fun defeating enemies along a series of scenarios, but instead, this title is much more difficult compared to others.
Throughout the scenarios the amount of enemies that appear on screen is greater than a normal beat'em'up, that's why we must always be alert to any enemy and not let them crowd too much in front of us, as that could be lethal and could be an imminent death. But as far as character management is concerned, it's pretty easy to learn, it's not going to take us any time to learn how to use our characters, and they're pretty well controlled, as they respond very well to what we want to do.
Usually Night Slashers is not far from the already known mechanics of the games of this genre: defeating enemies along many scenarios, getting different items that enemies drop when defeating them that will help us, like weapons of all kinds, even throwing weapons. The truth is that there is a great catalogue of weapons that we can use against our enemies.
And just like other beat'em'up, there could not be a lack of classic brave heroes who are going to be in charge of bringing peace and tranquility back to the place we are in, as I mentioned earlier this time they are three heroes and they are:
Jake: He's the typical balanced character, with features suitable for someone to play for the first time, his stats are meant to be the main character to complete the game. He has metal arms that he uses to crush enemies in the most violent ways possible, but he also has a gun to blow enemies to pieces.
Christopher: If we were to see this character in a Castlevania game it would go unnoticed and that's because his design is clearly inspired by this video game. This character is characterized by using his legs as deadly weapons (as well as Sanji from One Piece) with them he is able to literally crush heads, plus because they are quite long it keeps enemies at a distance, however, this character is not as strong, but he makes up for it with his speed.
Hong-Hua: You could not miss the girl in the group and another walking cliché, she, as well as in other beat'em'up is characterized by being extremely agile, attacks with great speed, but in terms of resistance is well below their peers.
Without any doubt Night Slashers is a jewel of videogames, which perhaps is a title that takes a lot of inspiration from other games of its own genre and that doesn't innovate in the playable and mechanical aspect, but in terms of its quality and graphic aspect it's really remarkable and outstanding, besides that it's one of the few games of that time that showed a level of violence rarely seen in the industry.
You cover a lot in this review (soundtrack, gameplay, difficulty, story) and it´s plenty of cool gifs. What was the original console to play this?.
When RadaQuest it´s ready It would be awesome to see a review from you. Keep the good work!
Initially it was for arcade (recreational) and it was like that for years until later it could be ported in emulators, like MAME
Nice, thank you!