Huh? You’ve never heard of Sega’s Spikeout before? That’s okay. The original Spikeout was one of the best beat-em-ups of all time – and just about nobody in North America ever got to play it. Spikeout combined the visceral rage of old-school beat-em-ups like Final Fight with insane 3D graphics, huge battle arenas, and enormous side-mounted “HEAD WAVE” speakers that sent a thumping techno soundtrack into the player’s brain. Unfortunately, the arcade hardware cost about as much as a new Buick, and that was just for one unit – Spikeout was best played with four machines networked together. Add to this the fact that an adept player could play for upwards of a half hour on a single credit, and you get a recipe for financial unfeasibility.



But Spikeout is still big in Japan as a “cult” game, and something prompted Sega to dust it off and give it the Xbox Live treatment. The game combines the original Spikeout and its sequel Spikeout Final Edition into a very lackluster single-player “Story” mode, and a ridiculously enjoyable multiplayer Xbox Live co-op romp.

Ten years have passed since Team Spike, the heroes of the original Spikeout, put an end to the evil Michael (oddly pronounced Mish-ell) and proved that spunky teenagers from the hood can always defeat a ten-foot pile of Eurotrash with a samurai sword. You play Spike Junior, a character who appeared in the original game as a little kid who rode in his dad’s baby carrier and mirrored his fighting moves during the game (I swear I’m not making this up). Spike is now fifteen, and the evil Team Inferno has come back as…wait for it…Team Neo-Inferno. Spike counters by gathering three of his buddies and forming Team Neo-Spike, ready to fight for justice, love, and courteously dropped power-ups (which now come in the form of first-aid kits, and not turkey dinners).

And so you’re off, fighting with fists, feet, and uprooted mailboxes across eight levels of unadulterated carnage. Enter a new area, beat up goons, beat the stuffing out of the boss, find the exit, and repeat. It’s simple, but stupidly entertaining. You will find no jumping puzzles, keys to collect, or any other extraneous gameplay debris that gets in the way of unbridled beatdowns; if you need to get through a door to progress, just waste the boss and then smash the damn thing open with your fists. Though the game may seem linear, such is not the case – there are quite a few “secret doors” that can be broken post-boss battle that will lead you down a completely different track.



Controls are extremely tight. There’s an attack button, a “charge” button that allows you to whip out a massive attack mid-combo, a jump button that’s hardly used, and a strafing button that lets you stay locked on in one direction.

Combos and air juggles are criminally fun, especially when you have friends helping you out. In several later levels, elevation changes take a large role in gameplay, and you'll find yourself fighting for position (it's harder for enemies to attack if you're located below them on stairs or a ramp). One slick addition is how the boundaries that keep everyone from falling off edges automatically disappear when an enemy is KO’d, allowing you to keep up your combo and juggle the foe off a cliff and into oblivion. There’s also a three-story opera house level that has you dashing up and down stairways, monkey-flipping fools over marble balconies, and knocking over expensive furniture (and using them as weapons, of course).

Graphically, the game is adequate. The character models are a little chunky and the areas won’t win any awards for high-polygon modeling, but the game runs at 60fps, throws a ton of enemies on-screen at once, and the textures are crisp. The voice acting smells of cheese, but to be honest, it's a fine, aged Gouda; the pumped-up announcer provides you with ultimately unnecessary information ("How to see the map! Start! Gate! Player! BOSS!"), or points out the blatantly obvious ("Here comes the BOSS!").

Played online, via system link, or through split-screen, this game is a blast. Four-player co-op mode is as good as it gets, with voice communication adding to the fun (you can also enter certain commands to make your character apologize or say “thanks” in his own voice). Bodies fly, weapons are chucked every which way, and you’ll probably even get knocked over once or twice accidentally by your buddies. Lag was handled nearly seamlessly in my games, with little to no “warping” or invisible hits. It’s too bad the limited print run of this game dooms the online community, as it’s very difficult to find an English-speaking game online. If you play during peak Japanese times, however, you’ll find dozens of games available…in a language you probably don’t understand.



Goodies to keep you playing include over fifty unlockable characters and bosses, which include the original Team Spike and a character who looks like the Grim Reaper, sickle included. You can unlock these in both single-player and online, though the requirements to do so online are mysterious at best. Pity the new outfits aren’t as cool as the arcade original’s; the sultry Linda looks like Christina Aguilera and Spike resembles Busta Rhymes.

If there’s a downside to the game, it’s the awful single-player mode. Despite added cutscenes that explain the eggshell of a story, this mode is dastardly hard to the point where it simply isn’t fun; Spikeout is all about teaming up with your buddies to take on insurmountable odds, and doing it all solo whiffs of masochism. You get one life, and that’s it; if you keep dying, the game offers to switch to “Easy Mode,” which will probably decrease the number of smashed controllers.



If you’ve beaten Streets of Rage twenty times and need a modern-day equivalent, look no further, because this is an amazingly fun multiplayer game that brings back that old-school feeling with 3D class. But whatever you do, don’t fly solo — these streets are only going to be cleaned up with a handful of friends in tow. And at only thirty bucks, it leaves plenty of cash left over for a pair of brass knuckles and a health-replenishing turkey dinner. The only problem is finding it in the USA – only 3,000 copies have been made and 2,999 of them are on Ebay. I have the other copy, and you can’t have it.