The Haunted Hoard: Decap Attack (Genesis/Mega Drive)

If there is one thing you can say about game developer Vic Tokai, it’s that they’re persistent. Beginning with Kid Kool on the NES, they’ve tried to make their approach to platform game mechanics work.  With features like a power-up that gives you a thrown projectile and a jump that buries enemies before it beats them, they gradually felt out what features worked for the concept and didn’t, with Psycho Fox for the Master System suffering mainly from the lingering screen crunch and instant death problems. It would be their third major attempt that finally seemed to have a handle on the concept they were going for, and that game is… Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken. When it came to localize the game for Western audiences though, this cute and colorful Japanese game got a makeover to embrace spooky Halloween imagery, and with a bit of tinkering to the mechanics like adding a life meter instead of relying on one-hit kills, Decap Attack might just be the best realization of the Vic Tokai platformer formula.

Perhaps it is because of the change of imagery from cutesy hero adventure to a game based around classic horror movie imagery, but Decap Attack is chock-full of spooky characters and environments that make it a perfect Halloween adventure. Decap Attack is the tale of Chuck D. Head, a mummy with eyes in its chest that was patched together from various body parts by a mad scientist named Frank N. Stein, the doctor even keeping his own Igor analogue on hand as an assistant. A monstrous ogre known as Max D. Cap split apart a continent that looks like the human skeleton thanks to the help of some of Frank N. Stein’s old creations. Chuck is chosen to set out to the seven parts of the continent that all have fun body part pun names like Abdomainland and Eyeland to reunite them, exploring locations which feature dreary backdrops and plenty of structures built from or adorned with bones while still having different world themes to set them apart such as areas focused on water, heat, ice, and caves. The enemies you encounter aren’t always on theme, partially because they were adapted from Magical Hat’s original cast, so while there are ghosts, skeletal fish, man-eating plants, werewolves, and some appropriately monstrous and weird boss designs, you’ll also encounter along your adventure little green men with arrow-firing hats, slip-sliding clowns in tuxedos, otters, and a mole boss who is wearing sunglasses. Everything is still a little unusual so they don’t feel out of place necessarily, meaning the horror-inspired coat of paint definitely works wonders for making areas feel distinct while still on theme.

Perhaps the main reason this is the best realization of Vic Tokai’s platform game approach has to do with Chuck D. Head. Chuck has a few ways to face enemies in his arsenal, and while you can jump on enemies to knock them out of the air or bury them in the ground, his main attack is launching his face forward from the break in his bandages, the attack having decent speed and distance. The skull power-up you find will give you something you can throw to harm enemies, the skull returning back after a slight delay so you don’t have to retrieve it, but even without the skull you can still handle enemies well enough with the face punch, just with a bit more risk involved. Where Vic Tokai failed before was making the protagonists incredibly easy to kill, single hits killing them and a hit with your throwing power-up only giving you a second hit before you lose a life. Chuck can still lose his skull if he’s hit while wielding it, but he has up to three hearts in his health meter to start and can upgrade it along the way, with each heart requiring two hits to remove. Health can be replenished by finding it in the level too, with a large pole being a way to easily replenish all you need if you can land on its top repeatedly. Perhaps one of the best additions though is this strange mid-air scramble Chuck can do. While he occasionally automatically does it at a platform edge to prevent you from falling off by accident in an annoying but negligible feature all four of the similar Vic Tokai platformers have, you can also repeatedly tap jump in the air to make him slowly descend, Chuck able to clear gaps or ease himself into a drop so he doesn’t accidentally hit a hazard or drop somewhere dangerous, although there aren’t many required blind advancements thanks to some smart level design.

The areas in Decap Attack are often large but filled well, making good use of both vertical and horizontal design. While most stages are just about finding the end, you’ll often having a winding path to get there, and if the level is open enough, sometimes you can even scramble in the air to bypass certain areas. The parts you do pass through manage to put up a good fight, enemies packed in but not overwhelming the player with their numbers, even the hazards placed to be surmountable with good jumping or smart navigation. Some levels will definitely favor vertical climbs, long horizontal stretches, or a mix of the two where you need to explore a large area, and what makes these more interesting than just long stretches of land with enemies on them is the amount of goodies littered about. By breaking open statues, the player can find all sorts of helpful things like the skull power-up, extra lives, and a selection of potions that can be accessed from the pause menu. The potions range in usefulness, some of the weaker ones being temporary speed increases or a briefly enhanced long range punch, but ones like the the potion that will clear regular enemies from the screen or launch a powerful yellow orb at bosses are worth whipping out now and again, provided you’ve found them of course. While only a few items absolutely must be found in these statues to complete certain stages, the extra goodies you can uncover definitely justify the effort in tracking them down, with the only other way to earn lives and potions being a post-level minigame that already requires you finding things inside the statues to play.

The consistently changing level design comes with a few stages that play very differently as well, these being chase stages where an enemy from the left is trying to attack you as you run right, the screen moving at a set pace. It’s a small break from the norm and not too common, but much like levels that take place primarily underwater or involve more maze-like configurations, they shake up the design well without straying too far from the fun of reflex platforming and exploration. A player focused on progress will still face plenty of challenging situations and enemy arrangements to make the path forward enjoyable, but if you take the time to look around for statues, you’ll better your chances of making it to the end of the game with more ways to earn lives and gain an edge in boss battles. The bosses are probably the weakest part of the game though, with some like the yeti boss having odd conditions for taking damage and some like the final boss requiring you to get in incredibly close if you don’t have your skull with you. The skull can conversely make some of them too easy and non-interactive, but being able to hold onto it through a stage makes the easy boss fights the reward for careful play, especially since the skull usually just has one spawn point near the start of a stage. You can carry the skull between levels though, but you also don’t get healed after a level, a potential problem alleviated by decent distribution on health pick-ups and chances for extra lives.

THE VERDICT: Decap Attack delivers on platform action fun with an appealing horror skin. The head-hurling mummy is a surprisingly good fit for the large levels, his mid-air scramble and health meter allowing the levels to be more dangerous on top of having an interesting range of design from incredibly tall shafts, straightforward long stretches, and interweaving interior layouts. Potions and other power-ups like the incredibly versatile skull encourage the player to look around for the many statues they could be hiding in, the area design really getting to shine as players find profitable routes through the stages. A few odd areas of difficulty-balancing notwithstanding, Decap Attack does justice to the Vic Tokai platform game formula and carves out a fun identity with its spooky aesthetic.

And so, I give Decap Attack for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…

A GREAT rating. A platform game can be good by making a forward path to the goal challenging, but Decap Attack not only does that, but it messes with the design of the path, the player encountering levels that require climbing to great heights, finding the right path out of a few options, or surviving enemy-packed gauntlets, all while offering the option to explore alcoves for goodies along the way. While swimming levels and autoscrollers are some of the more typical types of level variation, just having so many levels where the focus is on moving around diverse yet robust designs that reward a thorough player without hurting a speedy one too much makes Decap Attack’s approach to progression quite entertaining. With the power-ups and scramble jump option to boot, the game can put enemies in strategic spots to keep the players on their toes without feeling cheap. A few potions could be made more interesting, the weaker options perhaps being bettered by increasing their duration, but having the option to alter the situation with a simple press of the pause button can make certain situations more interesting or help players push past something they’re struggling with.

Funnily enough, I played Decap Attack before ever touching Vic Tokai’s earlier platformers like Psycho Fox, so rather than Decap Attack simply seeming amazing by comparison, I had formed my opinion on it being Great before ever seeing the steps it took Vic Tokai to get to this stage. The DNA is evident for Decap Attack as early as Kid Kool, but it was by structuring levels well, providing proper rewards for exploring, and getting a few small difficulty reworks on its way to the United States that Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken became this excellent realization of Vic Tokai’s platform game approach.