PlayStation Basement #71 - Cyber Sled

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on January 4th, 2020.

The future is here once again! Welcome to PlayStation Basement, a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go!

Happy New Year! It’s 2020, a new decade and the true world of tomorrow! Many worlds of fiction take place in this landmark year from the sci-fi films of Real Steel and Reign of Fire to video games such as 7^th Dragon 2020 and Perfect Dark Zero to the legendary cyberpunk tabletop RPG, Cyberpunk 2020. What will actually happen to our world this year? We can only act, react, think, and feel as time goes on. I hope that everyone can work together to create a better future than the futures of many of these dystopias.

Since we’re in the future again, I’ll be reviewing futuristic games this month starting off with Namco’s Cyber Sled, an early arcade port to the PS1. Cyber Sled hit Japanese arcades in September of 1993 with scorching 3D arena vehicle battles that came to North America and Europe in the following months. Cyber Sled slid over to the PlayStation console in 1995 in all of the mentioned regions in January, October, and November respectively.

The cover art for Cyber Sled is quite varied between regions. While Japan and Europe got the expected Japanese cyberpunk designs with two vehicles engaged in combat, the latter as a darker version of the former, North America got a very weird face in a state of panic. Namco actually created one of these face illustrations for each of their longbox-era releases on PS1, though the other releases all used the face as the manual’s reversible back cover. These faces are all goofy, but Cyber Sled’s might be the strangest. The image is blue, green, and purple and features a pilot wearing a strange helmet and a cybernetic monocle. It’s really not an appealing cover for a game about futuristic tank fights. I’m not surprised that this game has very little traction with such cover art.

Graphically, Cyber Sled is clearly an early PlayStation game, but it’s not bad looking. The game uses a behind-the-back or first-person camera to show the player’s tank, the arena, and the opponent. The tanks are chunky, mecha-influenced designs with spikey angles in bright colors. The tanks are animated nicely for the parts that do move in some way. There’s no slowdown here at all, and the game moves quickly. The vehicles actually have two different graphical options; you can set the game to use the original, flat-shaded arcade graphics or a new, textured version. I really like all of the details of the textured version, such as the various insignias and stickers on the tanks, but the original arcade-graphics provide a classic Tron look to the game. Pilots are displayed when applicable in a similar neon style except in 2D. They heavily remind me of the pilots from F-Zero with their superheroic proportions and costumes. The arenas have some nice variations in designs and colors, and they really look the part. There are also some short cutscenes before each match showing the new opponent zooming around and destroying some targets. I should mention that the missiles, machine gun, and electrical sparks look cheesy, especially the explosions. If we want to get really technical, the game could use some additional lighting effects, even simulated, and the pixel art is kind of low-resolution. Overall though, while Cyber Sled isn’t the highest of graphical achievements on PlayStation, it looks pretty good for an early release.

The sound in Cyber Sled is pretty decent as well. The electronic jazz fusion musick is excellent; the sound effects are underwhelming but fine. Bullets are snappy, but explosions and voices sound muffled and lack the punch one would expect. The announcer to the matches sounds enthusiastic but gives an odd cadence to the names that he reads. His vocals to announce the start of the match and things are a bit overboard. The computer vocals that alert to weapon pickups and the like sound pretty good but are hard to hear with all of the shooting going on. The sound design isn’t the end of the world here, even with the flaws. The musick makes up for a lot of the sound effects.

Cyber Sled is a simple game for such a battle between complex futuristic weapons. The gameplay resembles a 3D version of Battle City. You control one of eleven tanks to fight in matches against computer-controlled opponents or human players. Your tank controls well; you glide with the directional buttons, rotate with the shoulder buttons, and fire missiles and machine guns with two of the face buttons. The goal is to navigate one of eight arenas, collect missiles, attack the opponent, and don’t get hit. Whichever vehicle is reduced to zero armor first is the loser.

That’s basically the whole game. There’s an arcade mode to fight your way to the top with no continues and a versus mode. The game isn’t the easiest game ever, but it’s very short. Thankfully it’s fun to pick-up-and-play, and you can always try again with a new character. Cyber Sled is an arcade game in your house like many kids always wanted back in the 80s and 90s. I suppose this isn’t true now in the future with few new arcade games being released, but Cyber Sled is the kind of future I dreamed about when I was little.

Cyber Sled receives a Good.

Follow EfreetEater on Facebook