Sequelitis hit hard with the releases of Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Red Alert 3, Mario Kart Wii, and Resistance 2 infecting our consoles, while new licenses like Dead Space and Little Big Planet shook up old concepts in new ways. But with all this great press for these deserving games, I grew into wondering about all the games that failed in the past perhaps because they could not stand up to the other releases at the time.
And so I present to you an occasional feature I like to call "Bad Timing":
Pandemonium! by Toys for Bob
Platforms: PSX, PC, Saturn, N-Gage
Instead of this you were probably playing: NiGHTS into Dreams...
Released only months after Sega's much fan-licked NiGHTS into Dreams..., Pandemonium! also featured a jester and a young girl questing ever rightward while collecting trinkets and other junk that never really mattered. But instead of flying through sparkly hoops in people's dull ass dreams, you were trying to free your town from the belly of a monster you and your pal summoned in the first place.
The graphics are pretty simple even for an original Playstation game/port, but it's the action, environments, and cinematography that sell it. As you run about crushing crystal spiders and firing pink fireballs like a rejected Street Fighter character (though Capcom is not known for being picky about character concepts), you're treated to vivid, imaginative environments and a camera that arcs and dances about to find you most epic angles to view them from.
The story is adequately ridiculous for a game starring a jester-wizard and ends on the same "failed wish" theme common to tasteless jokes regarding feminine hygiene products. But, it was just successful enough to garner a sequel that was also vehemently ignored. If you miss platformers, games that actually require hand-eye coordination, and/or plot-lines without marines in any form, then Pandemonium! may be worth checking out.
You can play it yourself by downloading the demo here. Have fun.
-Unfather
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