Every Wednesday, we highlight rarely-remembered but interesting games for our “Games Time Forgot” series.
As much as most current gamers seem to adore the quirky games from Japan that seldom grace foreign shores, the public at large still don’t seem to fall in love with their charms. If a game is inherently wacky and largely influenced by Japanese culture, it is more often than not a financial failure once localized to be sold to crowds such as the Americans. The average person’s tolerance for wackiness in videogames has slowly gotten better over the years, but even games like the belovedKatamari Damacyseries are not nearly as widespread as they ought to be due to a lack of complete openness to the weird and foreign from many English speaking people.
Panic!, a game for the Sega CD that is known asSwitchin its native land, is one of these types of games. Even today, it is still far too quirky for its own good, mostly due to the fact that everything from the Japanese version remained intact in the English version. The game involves sitting through many bizarre cutscenes that feature things like the Mona Lisa turning into a wolfman and a robotic female pig that shoots missiles out of her teats.
This game was released in 1994, a time where the Western localization process still largely involved the process of changing the art and sprites to make them look less Asian. Needless to say, not many Westerners “got” whatPanic!had to offer them, making it a fairly obscure title to this day.
Like I said, it’s a very simple game.
Why you’re probably not playing it:The game is perhaps a littletoosimple. Its minimalistic gameplay makes it questionable as to whether or not this game can really be considered a game at all. It is mostly comprised of watching what happens after you choose a button, which is fun in its own right, but can be considered pretty dull by someone looking for an experience where they can be more involved in what happens to their character.
