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PlayStation Basement #18 - Incredible Crisis

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on December 29th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for formatting.


Greetings readers. This is the last PlayStation Basement for 2018. Since September and continuing for the foreseeable future I will continue reviewing an overlooked or odd game for the original PlayStation every Saturday. As always, I’ll be using a nine-point scale where 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.


Today’s game is Incredible Crisis by Polygon Magic, a developer that was mostly focused in the Japanese market but did create some games for North America including Vs. and Galerians. The game was published by Takuma Shoten in Japan on June 24th, 1999 and in North America by Titus Software in November of 2000. Incredible Crisis is about members of a family going home from each of their days out to celebrate the children’s grandmother’s birthday. Wacky hijinks commence for each of these people, and you have to sort it out with increasingly difficult minigames, several years before the more famous WarioWare, Inc: Mega Microgames! and Feel the Magic: XX/XY. It sure will be a wild ride.



The cover art for Incredible Crisis is a slick design showing the game’s logo, a head morphing into a volcano, front and center on the warning-inducing color of a yellow background. Other than the text and the different formatting between regions, the cover remains the same between Japan and North America. The European cover, on the other hand, is way different, depicting Taneo, the father, falling from the sky into the viewer, surrounded by the skyline of a city and the giant orb that has caused him such trouble. It’s very cute and comical, Taneo’s design being more stylized than the actual game, and it works well. Though all the covers are great, I think I like the European cover the best. It really resembles the feel and fun of the game.



Upon first playing Incredible Crisis, I was incredibly pleased by the graphics. The game has a ton of FMVs that are well-rendered in their cartoon style. The in-game graphics resemble Katamari Damacy, a PS2 game (of course there isn’t as much going on in each level as that game)! It’s all very stylized and playful in its animation, the graphics working well together with the atmosphere as a whole.



The sound contributes greatly to the same feel as well. The sound effects are all cartoonish as you might imagine, and the soundtrack was created by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. The only ska I have really listened to is Prince Buster, The Specials, and the few tracks in that style by The Clash. I can’t say I really like things like The Aquabats. Despite this, I found the music in Incredible Crisis to be charming, again resembling Katamari Damacy in its irreverent way. The spastic tracks drive the wild action forward in each stage, greatly increasing the tension and enjoyment.



Incredible Crisis is a very fun game to play, just as it is to watch and hear. The game is played in chapters, a few for each of the family members as they go through their own strange day. From shooting down missiles to mimicking a UFO’s message to deciphering a code or escaping the pit of an antlion, Taneo, Etsuko, Tsuyoshi, and Ririka must complete each of their chapters of several minigames, usually with a groan-inducing parody for a name, with a limited selection of lives before moving on to the next chapter and, eventually, the next family member. You can save between chapters and doing well in a chapter nets you extra lives to go forward with, so it is imperative to perform the tasks well. Many tasks involve pushing a button quickly during specific periods of time, though some require logic. The challenges mostly get more difficult as you progress, but I actually had the most trouble with the mother, Etsuko’s, minigames that occur about halfway through.



Incredible Crisis is a pretty short game that can be completed in a few hours. I had a lot of fun with it in those few hours with the challenging minigames, fast pace, and weird story. This is a really fun game that I’d recommend to anybody, especially those who like arcade games.

Incredible Crisis receives a Good (9).






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