It's new to me: Rakugaki Showtime
Pencil sketches who can throw whatever, including each other, makes for a fun fighter that's better with friends and/or enemies.
This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
Ah, Treasure. One of the greats. Their games didn’t sell in the millions of copies, no, but they have oftentimes become sought-after rarities crying out for re-release later on, and not just due to that rarity. It’s because the games are often excellent, and experimental and boundary-pushing enough in their own day that they still feel exciting, challenging, and innovative today.
A few of their games are extremely rare, for one reason or another. The original Nintendo 64 release of Bangai-O — known as Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh in Japan, where it released in 1999 — supposedly only had 10,000 copies made in the first place, and since it’s a different game in a number of ways from the 2000 international release of Bangai-O on the Dreamcast, experiencing it is not as simple as playing that more widely available version instead. (And, really, the Dreamcast version came out on a platform with just over nine million in global sales before it stopped production — it’s not like there are an extraordinary number of copies of that iteration of the game floating around, either.)
None of their released titles are as rare as their lone original Playstation title, Rakugaki Showtime, however. (Yes, Silhouette Mirage released on the Playstation, but it was originally developed for the Sega Saturn.) And that’s because Treasure and the game’s publisher, Enix, had a falling out over which company owned the rights to the characters that were in the game, one that ended with lawsuits. It had only been released in Japan, and was pulled from store shelves there. While it would reemerge in 2008 on the Japanese version of the Playstation 3 digital store at the same time much of the rest of Treasure’s 90s output was getting a second life, that has meant little to the import and physical markets: a copy of Rakugaki Showtime on Ebay will run you, at minimum, around $220 as of this writing, and that’s with the game still being available to download digitally in Japan, or for those who outside of Japan who can access that shop with a Japanese Playstation Network account.
Admittedly, Rakugaki Showtime — which roughly translates to “Graffiti Showtime” or “Doodle Showtime,” depending on who you ask — isn’t one of Treasure’s premier efforts, but the fun thing about the quality of their three decades of output is that even much of the stuff that wasn’t their very best is still a good time. Rakugaki Showtime might be about as much fun as playing Super Smash Bros. all by yourself in its single-player mode — something you do in order to unlock characters and familiarize yourself with them and the controls — but in a group setting, it's pure chaos. The good kind.
And that’s because Rakugaki Showtime is an arena brawler that uses 2D characters in a 3D space, where the primary mechanic is grabbing and throwing. Treasure devotees will know that grabbing and throwing is a thing they loved to base a game’s mechanics around, regardless of the genre. The ability to grab and throw helped make Gunstar Heroes a run and gun like no other. Mischief Makers, a side-scrolling platformer, was built entirely around a grab mechanic, and there was just as much throwing as there was shake shaking. And then there is Rakugaki Showtime, which brings Treasure’s beloved gimmick to the arena.
There is kicking and punching in Rakugaki Showtime, but you’ll find yourself mostly using those melee strikes to knock a character off balance or delay them. The things you will spend most of your time doing are grabbing, throwing, and jumping, and even the jumping is done half the time in order to grab things you can throw. The other half of the time? Jumping out of the way of something that has been grabbed and thrown at you.
This is not a highly refined fighter full of last-second blocking or power meters or massive combos that requires an arcade stick. It is, as said, chaos. It’s very Power Stone meets Smash Bros., in some ways, with the 3D arenas of the former but the emphasis on items and trying to survive long enough to wipe the screen with a super-powered item of the latter. Certainly not tournament-quality Smash Bros., with its insistence that the game is indeed a Fighting Game, but hanging around with friends and laughing about how someone who was minding their business got exploded to kingdom come in a hilarious way Smash Bros.
Here’s how fights play out: between one and four players (you needed a multitap for your Playstation to get four-player action before, but hey, we live in the future now) pick their characters, which all look like colored pencil sketch cutouts, and then they look around the arena to see what there is to be thrown around. Sometimes you can throw huge, slow-moving missiles that cause mini nuclear explosions. Sometimes there are bombs that cause black holes to appear, which lets you then throw other stuff at the trapped characters within. Sometimes other characters can be tossed, if you can get close enough to grab them without being interrupted by a swift blow to the face. Sometimes… well, sometimes you don’t know what you grabbed, but you know it’s grabbable, and that’s enough.
The most powerful item is actually a yellow smiley face, which is used again and again by whomever can get to it first. While it starts happy and yellow, it slowly gets sadder and then angrier as it’s thrown, until it’s red and fuming. The next throw will cause it to flash a shining white, and if used here, it’s an ultimate attack that freezes up the screen and can’t be avoided like missiles and such. Characters have their own special attacks, and they’re a great way to eliminate multiple foes at once, if you catch them both injured and clustered together.
You can either target a specific character by facing them — the camera moves around the arena using the L and R buttons, allowing you to reorient your 2D character in a 3D space — or throw toward an area and let the area of effect of it all take hold. There are yellow lit areas in the floor/ground of each arena, on its outskirts, and these can be targeted for these AOE attacks. In addition, you can alter the speed of a throw by pressing a direction toward a foe or away from them, hurling it quickly to increase the chances of a direct hit, or slowly for what will be a more damaging blast should it find its target.
Jumping is a vital component, too, for dodging and for maneuvering around the arena. Your first jump is standard, but a second jump will launch you in the direction of nearby objects: this is how you climb to a higher spot or item within the arenas. You don’t run that fast on the ground, so figuring out how to use this double jump to launch yourself across the stage and out of harm’s way, or toward something you can cause further destruction with, is vital. Jumping is not the only way to avoid attacks, but it is the easiest. More effective, though, if you can master it, is straight-up catching what is thrown at you, and then throwing it back. A colored pencil sketch of a Tetsuhiko Kikuchi character catching an ICBM in order to throw it back from whence it came is as enjoyable as it sounds, but also tougher to time than simply jumping out of harm’s way.
Items are continually dropped into the battles, by a hand equipped with a colored pencil, so the chaos never stops, even if there is the occasional moment to catch your breath as the screen repopulates with potential weapons. This hand, which has “God-Hand” written on its underside as seen in the game’s intro video, is actually what drew the game’s fighters in order to combat the forces of Big Daddy. Sketches though they may be, they are very obviously the work of Kikuchi (who is often credited as HAN in Treasure games), and are distinctive enough for you to know is who while fighting. There are 17 characters for you to unlock in total, and each time you complete a single-player run of the game with a different character, a new one will become available to you. It will take you 30 minutes or so to complete a clean loop, maybe less if you’re very skilled or get lucky with your throws, so there is plenty to do in that regard. As said, though, it’s playing with friends where the real fun is.
Rakugaki Showtime still is not easy to get your hands on, since it’s only been re-released on the Japanese Playstation Network for the Playstation 3 and Playstation Portable. This makes playing with those friends difficult, but it can be done, and for just $6 instead of well over $200 for a physical edition. This is also still the easiest way to get the game and its concepts by legal means, as well: Treasure took the idea behind Rakugaki Showtime and utilized it for a licensed Tiny Toons fighter on the Playstation 2 and GameCube, titled Tiny Toon Adventures: Defenders of the Universe, but that never actually released despite being pretty far along in the process. It featured much of the original Tiny Toons cast and had Treasure at the helm, so, even though it was being published by Conspiracy Entertainment, a company that was not exactly known for quality, there could have been something here.
Defenders of the Universe eventually leaked online seven years after its cancellation, and it’s pretty easy to see how it was built off of the Rakugaki Showtime idea Treasure still had the rights to, even if the game itself was Enix’s.
The game is certainly playable, but you needed a burned DVD copy and a modded Playstation 2 to play that, or an emulator in order to do so. Or you could just watch some YouTube videos, like the one above, or find Rakugaki Showtime instead.
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