The Haunted Hoard: The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang (SNES)
Spike McFang is a young vampire with a boomerang hat, and while that hat definitely gives him a unique attacking method compared to other vampires, it also ends up making his action role-playing game a bit of a tedious affair. The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang wants to be a breezy action adventure at times, and at others, you have to come to a stop as the battle system it features is not a good fit for that design.
This uneven adventure takes place in the island chain known as Vladamasco where, despite the inhabitants being a range of monsters, they manage to live in peace thanks to the three rulers. Spike’s father Dracuman rules one island, his friend Camelia’s mother Vampra rules another, but the third island is ruled by General Von Hesler. While once peaceful as well, Von Hesler has unleashed his zombie army across the archipelago to seize control, much to the confusion of his son Rudy who believes there must be some other dark force at play. It ends up falling on the second generation of monsters to turn back Von Hesler’s bid for power, the young Spike McFang teaming up with Camelia and Rudy to defeat the General’s army, free the islands, and see if there is any truth behind the suspicion that Von Hesler isn’t truly the one behind this conquest.
The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang can feel like a game meant for fairly young players at parts, mainly in terms of its humor and simple characters. At times, it will have goofy fun with a situation, slapstick and strangeness sprinkled about in ways that are hard to predict. You’ll reach a dead end, take the only available corridor to you, and at the end a big guy will kick you so hard you smash through the opposite wall, making it no longer a dead end technically. You’ll find one of the main villains in disguise, leave, they’ll drop their disguise, but when you double back Spike doesn’t recognize them because he doesn’t know the enemy forces well enough to do so. Sometimes it can get a little obnoxious, at one point the three main characters bicker after Rudy was left behind and they end up repeating the same things far too much, but generally The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang takes place in a colorful and cute world with some upbeat adventuring music that almost sounds suitable for a circus at times. It’s a world with living garlic cloves as enemies and kooky versions of common horror staples like mummies and zombies, and most of this could have been charming if not for how the battle system was handled.
Most of The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang comprises of exploring dungeons and fighting whatever monsters are inside on your way to one of Von Hesler’s lieutenants. Spike McFang has two attacking methods from the very start, the most reliable being his spin that can hit enemies that are very close to him. If you spin too much you’ll get dizzy and be a sitting duck though, and there are many enemies who will take advantage of you getting in close so it’s often best used on foes you can predict. Instead, you’re meant to rely a fair bit on your boomerang hat, although it’s a pretty poor tool for the fights you find yourself in. To use it you have to hold down the attack button, Spike eventually lifting the hat overhead to show he’s ready to aim it. Then, you throw it, and despite the extra effort in doing this over the spin, it’s not often that much stronger. It can hit multiple times or make contact with additional foes, but enemies can be fairly mobile while your hat travels in a pretty plain path. You can eventually get hat upgrades, allowing it to zig-zag and even eventually home in on foes briefly before flying back to you, but these still don’t make the hat that powerful or entertaining to use, they just keep it from being outright frustrating as the foes get harder and faster.
The real problem with your attack methods though comes from the role-playing side of the game. Spike McFang can level up by defeating enemies in the real time battles, although it is often a slow process and one that does not fit the game’s progression curve well. If you reach the first boss only fighting every enemy in your way, the battle will end up incredibly slow and heavily tipped against you. Each level you earn in The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang will give you an additional health meter, the meter made up a few tomatoes each, but regular enemies can often clear out a meter or two with a single attack and bosses even more. Meanwhile, if you’re not the right level, you’ll be doing fractions of a tomato on their huge stack of health meters with your attacks. What’s more, The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang utilizes save points, meaning there are long stretches where you can fight your way through foes, die, and lose a good degree of growth because of it. This does, unfortunately, mean taking time to exit and reenter rooms solely to fight the same enemies repeatedly to try and earn experience. It is surprising how much better a battle can be when you are the expected strength level, some boss fights having over 10 minutes shaved off if you take that time to increase your level by 1 through mindless grinding.
In fact, when you are keeping up with the level curve, some of The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang’s bosses are good fights, with some clear thought put into recognizable patterns that give you the chance to strike with your slow hat throws. You can also manage difficulty a touch with the magic card system, the player able to gather cards they can activate in battle for various effects. The most useful no doubt will be mid-battle heals that can be purchased at any shop, but the other cards are acquired by paying ten coins for random rolls on what you get. You can get some strong attacking cards that way, things like bats that surround enemies, a fire attack, and even the ability to turn weaker enemies into harmless animals, although most cards that aren’t attacks are pretty bad binder filler. One that turns you invisible can maybe help you run through a room with baddies you don’t want to fight, but there’s a card that can boost Camelia or Rudy when they’re fighting alongside you. Unfortunately, while having allies in battle sounds helpful, they’re incredibly weak and hardly aggressive, it actually a surprise when they get in more than a single hit at a time and they often prefer standing close to you. They hardly even the playing field, and sadly, the same can likely be said of the magic cards. You’ll need money to buy them, and the only way to get coins is from enemies randomly dropping them. If you want to buy the hat upgrades, some healing cards to avoid dying often, and invest in the random card roulette, you will have to while away more time fighting enemies purely for their resource value rather than continuing on your adventure.
The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang ends up rough no matter how you choose to approach it then. If you press forward without taking the time to build up experience and coins, you’ll likely be whittled down by enemies who deal much more damage than you do and then get stonewalled by powerful tedious boss fights. If you do want the adventure to be smoother, you have to identify weak but valuable foes to repeatedly kill to build up resources, but this isn’t exactly interesting and they can still whittle you down by getting in their licks due to your imperfect attack methods. So many foes that try to rush you or hurl projectiles means standing still to charge the hat is a poor idea despite it technically being your strongest attack method, so even the grinding can be risky. Once you’re at the right level and packing some good cards and the strongest hat, finally The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang might be tolerable and even a bit fun at parts, and this may actually tie to a change made for the U.S. release that means foes take less damage from your attacks. A sloppy adjustment to add difficulty and lengthen the game possibly threw off the entire level curve, exposing problems that might have been easily overlooked if not for how they contribute to the slowness such changes lead to.
THE VERDICT: The RPG elements in The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang are a curse that completely drags down the rest of the experience. The cute world of friendly monsters, memorable music, and even some solid bosses are all let down by the fact you have to spend so much time grinding for experience and coins if you want to have a hope of keeping up with your enemies. Spike takes too much damage and deals damage too slowly if you aren’t investing considerable time just building up your strength through hollow fights against easier foes, and elements like the hat throw needing to be charged guarantee you need to invest in that extra power for survival. Ultimately, those few moments where you are tough enough to face foes on their level do not make up for tedium and frustration elsewhere.
And so, I give The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System…
A TERRIBLE rating. Without playing the Japanese version I can’t say if simply reversing the difficulty adjustment would clean this game up well enough, but there are some major alterations that would certainly help it out. With the way the game is structured now, the easiest would be just letting the hat be an instant throw option. It’s not so powerful that would trivialize the whole game, it would make grinding easier, and you’d still have use for your spin because of hat travel time or foes who are easier to hit by getting in close. The more drastic change that would improve it though would be stripping out the RPG elements altogether. They do not add the satisfaction of growth that usually comes with leveling up, and while in some games they can allow a player to overcome tougher parts by investing time in improving their character, here all they do is stymie your efforts to continue. You must come to a stop and spend ten to twenty minutes beating the same baddies over and over, hoping they’ll maybe drop coins or not hit you enough that you have to spend some of them on healing. You must find ways to stick to the level curve because there are simply not enough enemies or opportunities in the regular path to remain competitive with the tougher monsters or the bosses. Some bosses are so mobile or damaging you can’t even try to brute force them that well, especially since the hat requires you to stop and charge it so you’re vulnerable while the enemy can change their position to avoid the attack. The difficulty really does arise mostly from whether or not you put in time to be as powerful as you’re expected to be, but when you do finally get to a decent level of strength for the current area, you can find some decent battles. Areas like the ice palace are still annoying due to its slippery nature, but castles, caves, and deserts do start to show there were potentially good fights to be had, you just don’t care as much anymore since the game wore down your interest through repetitive busywork.
The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang isn’t that long of a game and only has a few major locations, but that perhaps makes its emphasis on grinding even worse. A good deal of your time will be spent with it rather than getting to enjoy those moments where your strength level is on par with what you’re facing. Perhaps making enemies deal less damage would be the key to improvement instead, but whatever the issue might be, it’s clear The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang leans far too much towards the necessity of leveling up to the point it almost takes up just as much time as seeing new things and fighting battles that aren’t just for coins and experience. While it looks like a light-hearted monster romp for kids, it will instead be a patience tester, most of its difficulty coming from the times you try to press ahead rather than investing time in boring build-up to keep pace with an out of control level curve.