Developer: Bits Laboratory Publisher: NEC Release: 1990 Genre: Action
This one. I always knew there was something off about Veigues: Tactical Gladiators. The back of the box is a flawed method of determining a game’s quality. I bought The Uncanny X-Men on my 9th birthday and will have to live with that shame for the rest of my life. But sometimes it works. On paper Veigues: Tactical Gladiators looks like a winner. It promises a mechanized march of destruction through enemy territory. In practice, it is a stiff side-scrolling shooter where your hulking war machine has more in common with a refrigerator on legs than a nimble Gundam. Even my kid brain could tell it had issues just off its screenshots. My intuition was correct as this is a terrible game with few redeeming qualities. You never hear about this one with good reason.
Earth is under siege by alien forces, and the only hope lies in the Veigues unit — a bipedal combat mech armed to the teeth. No complex anime drama here, just “bad guys invade, you blow them up.” The opening text scrolls try to lend a cinematic flair, but you’re mostly just here for the robot carnage.
Before Game Arts made a name for themselves with RPGs like Lunar or Grandia, they dipped their toes in many genres like shooters, side-scrolling action, and even sports. That Veigues: Tactical Gladiators is so bad is a bit shocking as they had some experience in this genre with Thexder. I can see how they wanted to go bigger but man oh man this is not it. Veigues was originally a PC-88 release and they could have used the time to improve but sadly this is a straight port. They would redeem themselves with the Gun Griffon series but this remains a stain on their legacy.
Veigues is an auto scrolling action game with more in common with shooters although you control a mech. Your robot has three weapons: a short range punch from the left hand and a long range laser gun from your right. The laser is straightforward; to attack enemies on the ground or in the air you use your chest mounted machine gun which can be manually aimed. You cannot fly but can hover for a bit, with the vernier meter determining the length of time. The most crucial is your shield meter. Your shields are pretty resilient but most importantly regenerate quickly over time. This is key as the game would be impossible otherwise.
You do not find weapon in the levels. Instead you earn points based on performance at the end of each level to upgrade certain aspects of the mech. You can upgrade your body to add the machine gun, increase the power of your weapons and even increase the time you can hover. As you put points in to your arms the weapons will change in appearance and become more powerful. You will probably invest most of your points in to additional shield levels as they quickly become mandatory to survive.
Veigues Tactical Gladiator is slow. Not in a methodical way but a sluggish lumbering mess. The game feels like there is input delay with every action. Even worse the controls are awkward and just plain stupid. Both buttons control your arms while you press Up to jump and hover. It does not always work correctly as sometimes you will hop or even double jump when you want to float. To change direction you press down which never feels right. The worst is the machine gun. To use this you press both buttons together while slowly aiming at your target(s). This is completely antithetical to the game’s attempted fast paced design and one of the core reasons why it fails so badly.
Veigues Tactical Gladiator wants to be a fast paced mech action game like Metal Storm. Abandon your dreams of darting across the battlefield as in Assault Suit Leynos, however. The game is relentless with its enemies as there is rarely a moment you are not under siege. Ideally you can use the mechanics to deal with this chaos, dashing through bullets while returning fire and such. But the controls are not up to the task and it always feels awkward.
Massive sprites with so little screen real estate are not conducive to the action the game attempts. You present a large target that is helpless to avoid most damage. There are no invincibility frames meaning your shield drops like a rock. In addition when down to its last level body parts can destroy, leaving you defenseless. As such the game is very difficult and downright unfair. It ramps up quickly with the last few levels being a nightmare. Your shield upgrades are temporary, meaning you must purchase them again after every level. There is fun in being able to create a good loadout that helps but that is rare. With better controls and pacing in the action this could have been decent. It would still have issues but at least be playable. But as it is this one is not worth your time.
Veigues: Tactical Gladiators is not challenging so much as it is cheap. Because of your size you are a large target and it is near impossible to avoid damage at every turn. The game has a regenerating shield mechanic for a reason. But even with that it is dismaying to end up riddled with bullets as smaller enemies nip at your heels while you slowly aim your dumb ass machine gun, all the while airborne enemies pelt you with reckless abandon. Because of your slow movement, dodging enemy fire feels impossible even if you memorize the attack patterns beforehand. This is no more evident during boss battles. Some bosses take up half the screen and attack in ways you cannot avoid. The game feels more like a chaos management sim than an action title. Unlimited continues mean you can brute-force your way through; the problem is will you want to?
About the only aspect of Veigues: Tactical Gladiators I can commend is its presentation. Visually, Veigues is a showcase for the Turbo Grafx-16. Like China Warrior the sprites are massive and detailed. Unlike that game however Veigues has a reason for its robotic animation. The game throws around a lot of sprites with now slowdown, the explosions are chunky, and the enemy variety is pretty large, from aerial drones to alien walkers. What is most impressive are the backgrounds. Parallax scrolling was not common on the platform so to see two or three layers present in such an early title is shocking. Hell even the soundtrack is decent. It is too bad they did not lavish a fraction of the time on the gameplay as they did the game’s production values.
In Closing
Veigues: Tactical Gladiators is not widely remembered for a reason, even among hardcore TurboGrafx fans. The game is simply not good. I can see what they were going for but they miss the mark badly. This is very much a product of its time — a stepping stone for Game Arts as they moved on to better titles like Alisia Dragoon and the Lunar series. There is nothing to see here, just stiff robot antics that are best laughed at than experiencing.
