NOCLIP Pocket E56 - Gorgon Conclusions - Killing Zone

Sensational 3-D Podcast! Hooooo boy, welcome back to the podcast. This week, as part of Fanbruary, we’re talking about Killing Zone, a PS1 fighting game starring some conspicuously public domain monsters. You might ask, is this game good? That’s a really fair question. No, it’s not great, for sure, but what it does provide is nostalgia (and at least one pretty cool idea, but I’ll get to that later). Sure, maybe your favorite games are actually good, but I bet all of you have at least one game that gives you that warm fuzzy feeling from remembering days in your childhood playing a game you got as a gift, from a bargain bin, or that you rented. This is that kind of a game: not one we’d recommend going back to if you haven’t played it, we’ve done that for you, but one that reminds you of the Glovers or Rascals of the world. As a bonus, the game also includes a CPU training mode called “Auto Mode” that is actually a cool idea, even if it fails in execution, so you’ll get a little regular game design talk out of this episode as well. See, we’ve kind of got a bit of everything in this one. We’re going to talk about fighting game mechanics and balance since I suppose we have to at least try, aesthetics and audio design done in a way only the PS1 era could have accomplished, and we attempt to decipher the one spoken line of dialogue and extrapolate that into a backstory for the game’s announcer. Thank you for joining us this week! While we don’t necessarily recommend seeking this one out, we do recommend listening because I think there is value in looking at things that don’t quite meet their goals. We talk a bit about the difference between games that seem like they had aspirations, obvious cash grabs, and those that are harder to figure out, and I think it’s actually a pretty useful discussion to have when talking about “bad” games. Plus if you don’t listen we won’t get that sweet content cash. Do you have a pet favorite weird game from a bygone era that you enjoyed as a child? Let us know down in the comments, or come talk about it over on Discord! We sourced every one of the games we’re playing this month from our suggestions channel over there, so do join if you would like to be a similarly bad influence to us in the future. Next time, we’re going to be checking out Square’s The Bouncer, a game that has mostly been forgotten to time, so do keep an eye out for that!