Every year we like to recognize the best in gaming on Nintendo consoles.
VC - Non-Nintendo Console Game of the Year
Cho Aniki. The very name strikes fear into the hearts of girly-men everywhere. Originally a 1992 PC Engine release in Japan, Cho Aniki tells the story of an evil galactic emperor/bodybuilder who has decided to annex neighboring stars to establish protein factories for his ever-growing muscles. To the rescue come Idaten, a cape-wearing god, and Benten, a blue-haired goddess. Along with their cohorts Samson and Adon, they set out to free the universe of the tyrannical bodybuilder and his pumped-up invasion forces.
A straight-ahead shoot’em-up, Cho Aniki allows you to choose either Idaten or Benten as a character, acquiring Samson and Adon during gameplay as satellites (similar to the Options in R-Type). While all this is fairly typical stuff for the Shmup genre, Cho Aniki takes a massive detour in terms of its themes and presentation. For starters, Samson and Adon aren’t robots, weaponry, or majestic animals; they’re a couple of ripped-out bodybuilders in Speedos that shoot projectiles from their bald heads. Phallic imagery is everywhere, and after you die you’ll be treated to one of the funniest countdown screens you’ll ever see: a different Speedo-clad bodybuilder posing for each number from ten to one. The bosses are also randomly bizarre, with one even resembling a psychotic Thomas the Tank Engine.
Granted, Cho Aniki isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s far from it; collision detection is spotty, boss shot patterns are so simplistic that you can often sit in one spot and not get hit, and there are plenty of glitches that should have been caught by bug testers. But damned if Cho Aniki didn’t entertain us more than any other non-Nintendo Virtual Console game released in 2008, and that’s why we gave it our award for Best Virtual Console Game on a Non-Nintendo System. Now get out there and show them the power of your MAN-BEAM!
Runner-up:
Earthworm Jim
