XP Arcade: Spin Master

The Data East arcade platformer featuring a yo-yo, a captured girlfriend, and a treasure map.

This column is “XP Arcade,” in which I’ll focus on a game from the arcades, or one that is clearly inspired by arcade titles, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Data East knew their way around an arcade game, and while they have better known titles in their catalogue, Spin Master* is a real good example of that. It’s short and not overly challenging, but it’s also just a good bit of enjoyable chaos that’s fun to play again and again. Spin Master sees you play as Johnny — and his cowboy pal, Tom, if you have a second player for co-op — as they seek the map that leads to an ancient treasure, and attempt to save Johnny’s girlfriend from Dr. De Playne, who would also like to get his hands on that map. And yes, I am so sorry that you are going to hear, “de plane de plane!” for the rest of the day now. Don’t blame me, blame Data East and SNK. They even put the the good bad doctor on a plane for the first boss fight, in case you had somehow missed the reference.

Speaking of SNK, Spin Master is also Data East’s first Neo Geo title, and it released first in arcades for the Neo Geo Multi Video System (MVS) in 1993, then on the home console, the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES) the following year. If you’re familiar with Data East’s series, Joe & Mac, then you can picture what Spin Master is like. It’s part platformer, part beat ‘em up, part run-and-gun, depending on how you decide to approach it and what you happen to have equipped. Some attacks, like those of the yo-yo, aren’t shot based, and require you get a bit close to enemies to attack as if you had a sword or lance or whatever in your hand. Then you’ve got the icicle shots, or bombs, or shuriken, which can be thrown from a distance. You can also skip all of that for the most part and just bounce on the heads of enemies, though, even scoring more points for chaining together those hits than you would if you just defeated these foes with weapons. There’s plenty of variety here, but it also allows you multiple ways to escape a situation in which a ton of enemies show up on screen at once to overwhelm you. So long as you utilize your various options and stay flexible in how you approach enemies, you’ll be just fine.

In addition to the standard attacks of your various weapons, each also has a charge attack. While you yo-yo is usually just a straight (or diagonal) shot a short distance in front of you, charging it up by holding the attack button for a bit will grant you a much larger offensive, where you unleash a whirling yo-yo in a wide arc all around your body. The boxing glove that you shoot out as a projectile to push enemies back becomes a much larger glove. The bombs charge to become a big bomb, which means a bigger explosion. Ice goes from being a single direction shot into a four-way one. The missile attack becomes a triple missile attack. Your fire attack becomes a double flame. And, my personal favorite: charging up the shuriken creates a transparent body double who throws very real ninja stars along with you, doubling your attacks for a time. And since the ninja stars were already thrown in such a way that meant multiple hits on one target if they hit the right way, that’s a ton of damage in short order — perfect for boss encounters, especially since, unlike with the single-shot attacks of a few of these, you can keep going for a short time with this one.

That’s quite a bit of weapon variety, but don’t feel pressured to try them all as they pop up. Some are going to be work better in different situations than others, but, generally speaking, being proficient with one specific weapon is going to be what works best overall: everything happens so quickly, and the screen fills up with enemies so fast and so often, that having something in hand you know you can wreak havoc with effectively and efficiently will win the day. Some ninja stars and some trounced heads can clear a screen in a real hurry, but maybe you like that the boxing glove pushes foes back and gives you some space, so use that. I’m not the boss of you.

In addition to the standard attack and charge attack and bouncing on heads, you can also press down and the direction you’re facing along with the attack button to slide. You’ll trip up bigger foes, take out weaker ones, and clear some space around you, as well. It’s actually kind of amazing that you have so many different things you can be doing with just a few buttons, and in a game that’s not very difficult, but it’s also why Spin Master feels so good to play. You can be constantly moving, constantly attacking, and doing so with enough skill that you can get to the end of a stage without even taking damage. It’ll take a little practice, but it’s a goal you might feel like achieving just to know that you did, and because it should feel within reach.

Until that time — or even after — you still might find that things get too busy for you to be able to handle without taking damage. You can always use your bomb attack in those instances. Unless you’ve already used it all up, anyway — these are limited use, though, you can find recharges within each stage. Like with the charge attacks, each weapon has a bomb attack specific to it. An even bigger and more destructive yo-yo spin! An even bigger big bomb! Even more transparent body doubles throwing ninja stars! A straight-up blizzard! These are also worth saving to just spam the bosses with to get their health down a bit, as well, if you find you don’t need them to get by in the standard parts of the levels. There’s no huge point bonus for retaining bombs or anything, so use ‘em if you got ‘em.

The most significant way you can score additional points is by figuring out how to chain jumping attacks together. The first enemy is worth 100 points, same as one you’ve shot with whatever projectile, but the next is worth 200, and so on, until suddenly you’ve got some significant four-digit figures popping up on the screen. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys an online leaderboard, then mastering clearing out rooms with as many jump attacks as possible is how you’ll climb up said board. The points simply aren’t there for shooting everything you see, but there are some times where it’s going to be unavoidable if you want to retain your health long enough to score more points in the future. And this system also makes it so you’ve got a more casual method of playing Spin Master, and more of an expert-level approach to challenge yourself.

You can be hit three times before losing a life, and eating fruit you find in the levels does refill a single health bar. You’re not so lucky in the boss fights, which lock you into a single screen without items to collect, just whatever the big bad is and whatever additional enemies they throw at you, if it’s a fight like that. But again, that’s what saving those bombs can help you out with.

Animations, as you’d expect from a Data East game at this point in their existence, are both entertaining and Big. Amidst all the chaos, it’s easy to tell which enemy has already been taken care of and which one is still a threat — the one you’ve smacked around is wide-eyed and possibly cartoonishly flying backwards and away from you, while those still yet to be defeated are looking at you like they can’t wait to crush the life out of you. Big grins, big weapons, big explosions, big everything. It’s all part of the game’s goofball charm, and it works.

Stages in Spin Master tend to be short, but in the way a punk song is. There’s a lot going on in there if you slow it all down, so it doesn’t necessarily feel short even if the time it takes to get from start to finish is short on a clock. There are five stages total, each with multiple parts, usually a couple of “scenes” to complete and then a boss fight. When you complete the game, you end up having to pick one of three locations where you think the map is saying the treasure is located. It might not be the treasure — you might end up opening up a treasure chest that explodes in your face and leaves you covered in ash, or whoop there’s a monster inside of this thing, because again, cartoonish presentation — but this doesn’t impact the ending of the game at all. You just get a “happy” ending screen or one you can laugh at, and the result is random.

Spin Master was known as “Miracle Adventure” in Japan — sometimes you have to hand it to the localization teams of even the early 90s, Spin Master is a better name as far as being eye-catching. “Miracle Adventure” does fit the actual game better — you don’t have to use the yo-yo, by any means, and might not unless you’ve got a real affinity for it or die often, resetting your weapon — but it does make you go, “hey, what’s a spin master do, anyway?” Turns out, it’s a guy with a yo-yo whose girlfriend was kidnapped, who is about to travel the world to get her back and maybe find a comically large pile of treasure that couldn’t possible have fit in that one chest along the way.

The endgame treasure *does* exist, though, and there’s your proof.

Data East wouldn’t create a sequel to Spin Master, but the designs for Johnny and Tom exist in another game: the Sega Genesis title, Dashin’ Desperadoes. Also released in 1993, the pair are named Will and Rick there, competing for the affections of Jenny, and doing so via platforming races. If you play the game single-player, then you play as Will while Rick races you, and he kidnaps Jenny, Donkey Kong-style, before an end-world boss fight. In competitive two-player, however, it’s more of a straight race to win a kiss from Jenny by impressing her via winning races, rather than a series of felonies by Rick.

While Spin Master being a Neo Geo title made it a rarity just by virtue of its home platform, that’s changed in the present. You can pick it up through Hamster’s Arcade Archives series, specifically, the Neo Geo subseries, for all of $8. Compare that to the $692 it currently runs for as a loose sale on the secondary market — over $1,000 if you want it in a box with a manual — where it’s sold all of once per year, and hey, the Arcade Archives edition sells itself. It includes the Japanese and North American versions of the Neo Geo MVS release, as well as the standard high-standards high-score mode and a caravan mode of Arcade Archives’ releases. We should be glad that this one ended up in the hands of G-Mode, as well after the rights to Data East’s games were split up post-closure: it’s the reason that it’s still available on the Playstation 4/5 and Switch, whereas the Johnny Turbo’s Arcade re-releases of Data East games have been delisted. While they weren’t the finest ports out there, they did exist, which gave them a leg up on the now nonexistent ports of all of those titles.

There are better platformer arcade games out there, but Spin Master is a fun diversion as a single-player experience, and a wonderful little co-op bit of chaos, given how much is going on all at once on the screen when you’ve got double the projectiles and head bounces going on. Give it a spin — ha ha, get it — sometime, if you’re looking for some inexpensive couch co-op that’ll be easy enough to pick up and play.

*While the game is alternatingly referred to as “Spin Master” and “Spinmaster” depending on where you look — even the game’s logo is styled as the latter — its official re-release through Arcade Archives labels it as “Spin Master,” so that’s what’s been settled on here.

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