This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on October 13th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for formatting, spelling, and one or two words were changed to spruce up the writing.
Welcome to the PlayStation Basement, once again! I’m here reviewing obscure, weird, and unknown games for the original PlayStation every Saturday. My reviews use a nine-point rating system: 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.
Since it’s getting close to Halloween, I’m starting on some spooky games here in the PlayStation Basement. The PlayStation had quite a famous lineup of horror games with Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Clock Tower, Parasite Eve, and more, but some still remain hidden in the darkness. Today, I’m reviewing Oh! Bakyuuun or Ghoul Panic, as it was called in Europe. Oh! Bakyuuun was originally released to the arcades in 1999, but it came to the PlayStation in April 2000 for both Japan and Europe. It was released by Namco and is a spin-off from the earlier Point Blank games of comedic, shooting gallery, light-gun games. This one is about an evil but cute witch named Witchina who has turned a town into cats. Our heroes, Lisa and Kevin, also turned to cats, must defeat her and end the wicked spell by entering a haunted mansion.
I love the cover art for Oh! Bakyuuun. The Japanese one wins out with its well-rendered image of the two heroes wielding their GunCons on a pink background with ghosts flitting about. The cover has embossing on the outlines of the ghosts, giving both a neat visual effect and a textural one. The European art has some nice colors swirling around with multi-colored ghosts flying out of the vortex, giving a psychedelic effect. Both of these are a good indicator of what the game is about.
The in-game graphics are great as well. Unlike Point Blank, Oh! Bakyuuun uses 3D graphics in bright, neon colors. The targets are clear, the backgrounds are creative, and the effects all look pretty cool. The bosses especially look pretty neat, and the dungeon-crawling haunted house mode looks great too as you explore the mansion. Well done!
The sounds of Oh! Bakyuuun continue the trend of excellence. The sound effects are all there, with blasting guns, squeaking doors, chittering ghosts, and a laugh track that plays when you fail! I enjoyed the music too, especially the haunted house theme, a funk, jazz-fusion track that sounds a little bit like it could be a lost Castlevania tune but totally original.
If you have played Point Blank, you know what the gameplay of Oh! Bakyuuun is like. There are a few different modes here, but they all have the same core gameplay of meeting a goal within a time limit by blasting some number of objects and avoiding shooting bombs or innocents. If you hit the wrong thing, you lose a heart. If you run out of hearts, you must continue, setting you back in some small way. Some of the levels are quite devious with limited ammo, darkening screens, or requiring extremely fast shooting. There are even some bosses to defeat that attack back!
Now on to the different modes of play. There is the original arcade mode with three difficulties. In this mode, you select a stage and go for it, potentially competing with another player for points. The difficulties determine the number of stages you must complete and the difficulty of the challenges. There’s a practice mode to test your skill in the different levels, a survival mode to see how many stages you can do with so many lives, and a party mode for up to eight players. The biggest thing to do is the dungeon-crawler haunted house mode where you move in a first-person dungeon and try to collect all of the keys to escape the mansion and defeat the bosses. In this one, running out of hearts causes you to go back to the beginning, but it’s just a minor setback.
Oh! Bakyuuun is an excellent game, especially for multiplayer. It’s not very difficult to understand with little to no knowledge of Japanese. I avoided getting the PAL version, because I wasn’t sure how a PAL light-gun game would play on an NTSC TV (I assumed it would be pretty bad). It’s not an expensive game, though I recommend getting a GunCon or two to use with the game. You can also play with a PS1 mouse or controller.
Oh! Bakyuuun receives a rating of Good (9).
Welcome to the PlayStation Basement, once again! I’m here reviewing obscure, weird, and unknown games for the original PlayStation every Saturday. My reviews use a nine-point rating system: 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.
Since it’s getting close to Halloween, I’m starting on some spooky games here in the PlayStation Basement. The PlayStation had quite a famous lineup of horror games with Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Clock Tower, Parasite Eve, and more, but some still remain hidden in the darkness. Today, I’m reviewing Oh! Bakyuuun or Ghoul Panic, as it was called in Europe. Oh! Bakyuuun was originally released to the arcades in 1999, but it came to the PlayStation in April 2000 for both Japan and Europe. It was released by Namco and is a spin-off from the earlier Point Blank games of comedic, shooting gallery, light-gun games. This one is about an evil but cute witch named Witchina who has turned a town into cats. Our heroes, Lisa and Kevin, also turned to cats, must defeat her and end the wicked spell by entering a haunted mansion.
I love the cover art for Oh! Bakyuuun. The Japanese one wins out with its well-rendered image of the two heroes wielding their GunCons on a pink background with ghosts flitting about. The cover has embossing on the outlines of the ghosts, giving both a neat visual effect and a textural one. The European art has some nice colors swirling around with multi-colored ghosts flying out of the vortex, giving a psychedelic effect. Both of these are a good indicator of what the game is about.
The in-game graphics are great as well. Unlike Point Blank, Oh! Bakyuuun uses 3D graphics in bright, neon colors. The targets are clear, the backgrounds are creative, and the effects all look pretty cool. The bosses especially look pretty neat, and the dungeon-crawling haunted house mode looks great too as you explore the mansion. Well done!
The sounds of Oh! Bakyuuun continue the trend of excellence. The sound effects are all there, with blasting guns, squeaking doors, chittering ghosts, and a laugh track that plays when you fail! I enjoyed the music too, especially the haunted house theme, a funk, jazz-fusion track that sounds a little bit like it could be a lost Castlevania tune but totally original.
If you have played Point Blank, you know what the gameplay of Oh! Bakyuuun is like. There are a few different modes here, but they all have the same core gameplay of meeting a goal within a time limit by blasting some number of objects and avoiding shooting bombs or innocents. If you hit the wrong thing, you lose a heart. If you run out of hearts, you must continue, setting you back in some small way. Some of the levels are quite devious with limited ammo, darkening screens, or requiring extremely fast shooting. There are even some bosses to defeat that attack back!
Now on to the different modes of play. There is the original arcade mode with three difficulties. In this mode, you select a stage and go for it, potentially competing with another player for points. The difficulties determine the number of stages you must complete and the difficulty of the challenges. There’s a practice mode to test your skill in the different levels, a survival mode to see how many stages you can do with so many lives, and a party mode for up to eight players. The biggest thing to do is the dungeon-crawler haunted house mode where you move in a first-person dungeon and try to collect all of the keys to escape the mansion and defeat the bosses. In this one, running out of hearts causes you to go back to the beginning, but it’s just a minor setback.
Oh! Bakyuuun is an excellent game, especially for multiplayer. It’s not very difficult to understand with little to no knowledge of Japanese. I avoided getting the PAL version, because I wasn’t sure how a PAL light-gun game would play on an NTSC TV (I assumed it would be pretty bad). It’s not an expensive game, though I recommend getting a GunCon or two to use with the game. You can also play with a PS1 mouse or controller.
Oh! Bakyuuun receives a rating of Good (9).
Comments
Post a Comment