Metal Fangs
77 days until the vernal equinox
SE-GA!
There's scant information on Metal Fangs out there.
No guides. A tweet from a few years back focusing on the aesthetics of obscure games. A page on Hardcore Gaming 101 that mostly focuses on the aesthetic with a cursory glance at the gameplay. There's a TCRF page but the only thing there is ©Yonezawa.
It started out as a Sega Megadrive (that’s Genesis to us Americans), someone wanted to make it a launch title for the upcoming Sega CD, presumably so it could have better audio and maybe even some FMV, but that never happened, and so it got released for the Megadrive but only in Japan.
Part of what drew me to this game is the aesthetic and I'm going to write the most in depth playthrough on this out there. Not that I'm saying a whole lot.
I also found the manual. For some bizarre reason, the text in the manual’s story is written out with superscript. Something something cybercity that resembled a ruin something something gloomy wind something air dyed the sun an eerie color something body modifications. Typical vaguely futuristic cyberpunk excuse plot.
I don’t have a problem with capchas that help create software that can read the text in an image as unicode because that has many tangible benefits, including the fact that I don’t have to type all that Japanese text into Google Translate and can just screenshot everything because the pdfs give it grief. I do, however, have a problem helping out with autonomous vehicles, because the San Francisco techno-utopians see all this safety as an overcorrection and the moment there’s a high profile robbery, all those safety regulations have to go and if you have a problem with city streets turning into Carmageddon or Death Race 2000, well, talk to someone who gives a damn.
This is your option menu.
The passwords are 27 characters long. Back in those days, your options were “store the info in a part of the RAM and keep it powered on via watch battery” and “password.”
The password stores everything. Team name, team colors, team members, what they’re equipped with, how much money they have, and then run through some sort of encryption, along with some random nonsense designed to keep the players from figuring out passwords (did I ever tell the story about how I defeated Stone Man, Star Man, or Gravity Man or some combination of the three and then reversed the colors and discovered a password that got me to Protoman’s Castle?). Cracking passwords is doable but this is an obscure game and I’m far too impatient and not nearly tech-savvy enough.
And all I did was enter my name. Thrillhouse!
You can also have the game pick a team name for you by leaving it blank. It gives you crap like droll.
That's not how you spell tail.
Red for shorts, purple for shirt, blue for hair.
Now you choose your team. They all have names too. And the manual gives a few of them a vague backstory and I mean vague.
Thomass, Burns, Jeffrey
Koh, Magic, Stephan
Thomass is a bloodthirsty killer who likes to pick fights.
Stephan was in a serious accident that caused a nerve disorder that makes him look like he’s always smiling. That sounds familiar somehow. I wonder if this accident they speak of was in a chemical plant.
Mark, R1, R3
David, R2, R4
Those are the traditional 1, 2, and 3.
Sandy, Harriet, Burt
Tracy, Carol, Deee
Deee is covered in machinery due to repeated industrial accidents.
The manual points out that Tracy really resembles Madonna. I wonder if her name is a homage to her role in Dick Tracy.
Boby, Jesus, Ron
Ice, R.J., Cale
R.J. just looks weird and nobody takes him seriously and he uses that to his advantage.
If you think the names would be a clue to these guys’ real life counterparts, you’d be wrong.
Endever, Charles, Yang
Omar, Booth, Keith
Endever likes to use missiles but tends to make mistakes.
Yang, on the other hand, is the intellectual. The manual even goes into first person.
The last two are Philip (top), and Speed (bottom)
Phillip is rumored to have hypnotic eyes.
I have here a list of their real life counterparts. See if you can match up the celebrity to the racer!
Johnny Rotten, Madonna, Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Angus Young, M.C. Hammer, Robert Smith, Blixa Bargeld, Morrissey, David Vanian
And these ones I'm not so sure about:
Vanilla Ice, Michael Diamond, Adam Yauch, Adam Horowitz, Annie Lennox, Elvis Costello, Will Smith or maybe Slick Rick, and the Chrises of Kriss-Kross.
Also Shannen Doherty, or more realistically, no.
The game predates Marilyn Manson's career.
All the characters have different stats but it's all in the equipment so it's all about aesthetic preferences. I have to play as Angus Young because he’s got the biggest balls of them all.
Actually, I think was Bon Scott. Sue me. And then sue me for this: smoke bomb!
See if you can match up the characters with their real life counterpart.
This game wasn't translated into English. Good thing I'm armed with a mouse and Google Translate because I wouldn't get very far.
なにをしますか
(what will you do?)
コン デイシヨン
(con division) - what? Maybe condition.
パワーアップ
(power up)
レース
(race)
パスワード
(password)
This is what happens when you check コン デイシヨン.
エンシン
(enshin) - engine, I do presume.
装甲
(armor)
武装
(armament)
燃料
(fuel)
Fuel is used for fancy driving, that is to say, turbo, but not for regular driving. If you run out of fuel, you won't get stuck or anything.
なにを買いますか
(what will you buy?)
AI is described by the manual as “cornering your machine” which I assume means “driving around corners,” and it times your turbo usage and attacks enemies.
Valcan is a gun. Salvador is an orbital shield. Bombs lay down bombs behind you. Missiles home in on the enemy. I focus on missiles and valcans. Each car can have one weapon at a time.
The enemy teams are all described in the manual but it's not backstory, it's just a simple description of their behavior.
If you really must know, Ostomate is neither good nor bad and there's nothing to be worried about.
For all of their issues at being a search engine, Google Translate is actualy pretty damned good at its job.
You have a squad of racers and you can take control of them one at a time with the A button. Either you can earn points by lapping and playing it safe, or you can totally annihilate the opposing team.
Each lap gives you one point. Each surviving car gives you one point. If you destroy the other team, you get five points and the race ends. Overtaking a “defensive” car gives you one point. Something “rearmost attacking machine.” I’m making it sound more complicated than it is. Just bonk some heads.
The teams are divided into “offense” and “defense” which basically means one team starts out with three racers and the other starts out with four.
It kind of reminds me of Mega Race only without all the fmv.
I am winner. Ha ha ha.
ダブルアツプグ一ム
(double up gum) - it makes you smile
やめる
(stop)
ビツグ
(big)
スモール
(small)
You have to guess whether the card will be big or small. That's big or small compared to the number seven, not bigger or smaller. Aces are small.
The shown card is just “can you read?/translate the Japanese text?”
The rng for the card is when you pick one. The rng is not in your favor. If you’re playing on a real console, don’t push your luck. If you get it wrong, you win nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bupkis. Zero. If you’re playing on an emulator, just keep selecting the same thing until you win.
Seven itself counts as a draw. You don't get anything from doing so but you get to keep your money if you stop and you get to keep going if you don't.
おめでとうございます
(congratulations)
For some reason, the game won't let you draw every card it shows. Congratulations, now you are able to max out everything.
Scarface's members have "excellent combination play."
You can't see this in the screenshot but they're all the guys with numbers tattooed on their faces. I'm not sure if their starting stats affect the gameplay at all.
This is a salvator in action. You have to replenish your weaponry after every match. Fuel and armor get restored though.
Pellets is a "testament to the rise of female fangs. They have excellent driving techniques and seem to focus on how to drive as quickly and beautifully as possible rather than on physical attacks or weapon attacks."
Also Robert Smith is a member. So I'm going against myself here.
You can fall off the edge here.
Buccals are a well-balanced team. Buccal refers to the cheek, by the way.
Oh, shit, there’s new stuff. It’s very expensive so make sure to keep playing the bonus game.
Vostok is just like the Buccals. They're well-balanced.
Looks like they were jumping up and down on the keyboard when they named the engine parts.
Warriors are all about attacking, as their name may indicate.
Not that I'd know because I wiped them out way too quickly.
The red exudes elegance. They're really good. The manual says that the way to win is to take the lead and keep it. I say max out your stats and just fire missiles and valcans until they're defeated. There was a description of the Goron Races that said something similarly obvious.
Apparently someone thought Robert Smith was female.
Southpole is its own nation in the future.
Anyway, that’s it. It's actually pretty fun to play if a bit simplistic.
Still, I'm not going to play the game several more times so I can see the other characters' stats.
I have no idea who these people are.
burning question: Why are tech companies trying to reinvent the traffic jam anyway?
SE-GA!
There's scant information on Metal Fangs out there.
No guides. A tweet from a few years back focusing on the aesthetics of obscure games. A page on Hardcore Gaming 101 that mostly focuses on the aesthetic with a cursory glance at the gameplay. There's a TCRF page but the only thing there is ©Yonezawa.
It started out as a Sega Megadrive (that’s Genesis to us Americans), someone wanted to make it a launch title for the upcoming Sega CD, presumably so it could have better audio and maybe even some FMV, but that never happened, and so it got released for the Megadrive but only in Japan.
Part of what drew me to this game is the aesthetic and I'm going to write the most in depth playthrough on this out there. Not that I'm saying a whole lot.
I also found the manual. For some bizarre reason, the text in the manual’s story is written out with superscript. Something something cybercity that resembled a ruin something something gloomy wind something air dyed the sun an eerie color something body modifications. Typical vaguely futuristic cyberpunk excuse plot.
I don’t have a problem with capchas that help create software that can read the text in an image as unicode because that has many tangible benefits, including the fact that I don’t have to type all that Japanese text into Google Translate and can just screenshot everything because the pdfs give it grief. I do, however, have a problem helping out with autonomous vehicles, because the San Francisco techno-utopians see all this safety as an overcorrection and the moment there’s a high profile robbery, all those safety regulations have to go and if you have a problem with city streets turning into Carmageddon or Death Race 2000, well, talk to someone who gives a damn.
This is your option menu.
The passwords are 27 characters long. Back in those days, your options were “store the info in a part of the RAM and keep it powered on via watch battery” and “password.”
The password stores everything. Team name, team colors, team members, what they’re equipped with, how much money they have, and then run through some sort of encryption, along with some random nonsense designed to keep the players from figuring out passwords (did I ever tell the story about how I defeated Stone Man, Star Man, or Gravity Man or some combination of the three and then reversed the colors and discovered a password that got me to Protoman’s Castle?). Cracking passwords is doable but this is an obscure game and I’m far too impatient and not nearly tech-savvy enough.
And all I did was enter my name. Thrillhouse!
You can also have the game pick a team name for you by leaving it blank. It gives you crap like droll.
That's not how you spell tail.
Red for shorts, purple for shirt, blue for hair.
Now you choose your team. They all have names too. And the manual gives a few of them a vague backstory and I mean vague.
Thomass, Burns, Jeffrey
Koh, Magic, Stephan
Thomass is a bloodthirsty killer who likes to pick fights.
Stephan was in a serious accident that caused a nerve disorder that makes him look like he’s always smiling. That sounds familiar somehow. I wonder if this accident they speak of was in a chemical plant.
Mark, R1, R3
David, R2, R4
Those are the traditional 1, 2, and 3.
Sandy, Harriet, Burt
Tracy, Carol, Deee
Deee is covered in machinery due to repeated industrial accidents.
The manual points out that Tracy really resembles Madonna. I wonder if her name is a homage to her role in Dick Tracy.
Boby, Jesus, Ron
Ice, R.J., Cale
R.J. just looks weird and nobody takes him seriously and he uses that to his advantage.
If you think the names would be a clue to these guys’ real life counterparts, you’d be wrong.
Endever, Charles, Yang
Omar, Booth, Keith
Endever likes to use missiles but tends to make mistakes.
Yang, on the other hand, is the intellectual. The manual even goes into first person.
The last two are Philip (top), and Speed (bottom)
Phillip is rumored to have hypnotic eyes.
I have here a list of their real life counterparts. See if you can match up the celebrity to the racer!
Johnny Rotten, Madonna, Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Angus Young, M.C. Hammer, Robert Smith, Blixa Bargeld, Morrissey, David Vanian
And these ones I'm not so sure about:
Vanilla Ice, Michael Diamond, Adam Yauch, Adam Horowitz, Annie Lennox, Elvis Costello, Will Smith or maybe Slick Rick, and the Chrises of Kriss-Kross.
Also Shannen Doherty, or more realistically, no.
The game predates Marilyn Manson's career.
All the characters have different stats but it's all in the equipment so it's all about aesthetic preferences. I have to play as Angus Young because he’s got the biggest balls of them all.
Actually, I think was Bon Scott. Sue me. And then sue me for this: smoke bomb!
See if you can match up the characters with their real life counterpart.
This game wasn't translated into English. Good thing I'm armed with a mouse and Google Translate because I wouldn't get very far.
なにをしますか
(what will you do?)
コン デイシヨン
(con division) - what? Maybe condition.
パワーアップ
(power up)
レース
(race)
パスワード
(password)
This is what happens when you check コン デイシヨン.
エンシン
(enshin) - engine, I do presume.
装甲
(armor)
武装
(armament)
燃料
(fuel)
Fuel is used for fancy driving, that is to say, turbo, but not for regular driving. If you run out of fuel, you won't get stuck or anything.
なにを買いますか
(what will you buy?)
AI is described by the manual as “cornering your machine” which I assume means “driving around corners,” and it times your turbo usage and attacks enemies.
Valcan is a gun. Salvador is an orbital shield. Bombs lay down bombs behind you. Missiles home in on the enemy. I focus on missiles and valcans. Each car can have one weapon at a time.
The enemy teams are all described in the manual but it's not backstory, it's just a simple description of their behavior.
If you really must know, Ostomate is neither good nor bad and there's nothing to be worried about.
For all of their issues at being a search engine, Google Translate is actualy pretty damned good at its job.
You have a squad of racers and you can take control of them one at a time with the A button. Either you can earn points by lapping and playing it safe, or you can totally annihilate the opposing team.
Each lap gives you one point. Each surviving car gives you one point. If you destroy the other team, you get five points and the race ends. Overtaking a “defensive” car gives you one point. Something “rearmost attacking machine.” I’m making it sound more complicated than it is. Just bonk some heads.
The teams are divided into “offense” and “defense” which basically means one team starts out with three racers and the other starts out with four.
It kind of reminds me of Mega Race only without all the fmv.
I am winner. Ha ha ha.
ダブルアツプグ一ム
(double up gum) - it makes you smile
やめる
(stop)
ビツグ
(big)
スモール
(small)
You have to guess whether the card will be big or small. That's big or small compared to the number seven, not bigger or smaller. Aces are small.
The shown card is just “can you read?/translate the Japanese text?”
The rng for the card is when you pick one. The rng is not in your favor. If you’re playing on a real console, don’t push your luck. If you get it wrong, you win nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bupkis. Zero. If you’re playing on an emulator, just keep selecting the same thing until you win.
Seven itself counts as a draw. You don't get anything from doing so but you get to keep your money if you stop and you get to keep going if you don't.
おめでとうございます
(congratulations)
For some reason, the game won't let you draw every card it shows. Congratulations, now you are able to max out everything.
Scarface's members have "excellent combination play."
You can't see this in the screenshot but they're all the guys with numbers tattooed on their faces. I'm not sure if their starting stats affect the gameplay at all.
This is a salvator in action. You have to replenish your weaponry after every match. Fuel and armor get restored though.
Pellets is a "testament to the rise of female fangs. They have excellent driving techniques and seem to focus on how to drive as quickly and beautifully as possible rather than on physical attacks or weapon attacks."
Also Robert Smith is a member. So I'm going against myself here.
You can fall off the edge here.
Buccals are a well-balanced team. Buccal refers to the cheek, by the way.
Oh, shit, there’s new stuff. It’s very expensive so make sure to keep playing the bonus game.
Vostok is just like the Buccals. They're well-balanced.
Looks like they were jumping up and down on the keyboard when they named the engine parts.
Warriors are all about attacking, as their name may indicate.
Not that I'd know because I wiped them out way too quickly.
The red exudes elegance. They're really good. The manual says that the way to win is to take the lead and keep it. I say max out your stats and just fire missiles and valcans until they're defeated. There was a description of the Goron Races that said something similarly obvious.
Apparently someone thought Robert Smith was female.
Southpole is its own nation in the future.
Anyway, that’s it. It's actually pretty fun to play if a bit simplistic.
Still, I'm not going to play the game several more times so I can see the other characters' stats.
I have no idea who these people are.
burning question: Why are tech companies trying to reinvent the traffic jam anyway?