OurGamingReviews - Tom Cat Alley

Yes readers, today is a "yet another FMV game" (yaFMVg) review. Tomcat Alley merely the latest example of the affliction that nearly doomed my cherished Sega CD. Seriously, how can a peripheral gain traction in the market with a library full of yaFMVg. Look, three reviews into this "genre"{1} and we largely have the same complaints. The Sega CD platform, courtesy of the original Genesis color limitation of 64 onscreen colors, simply cannot pull off very convincing FMV video. If you redraw the assets into something the Sega CD can handle, "animated pixel art cutscenes"{2}, such as what Wolf Team did with Time Gal on the Sega CD or what Popful Mail, Lunar: The Silver Star, and Lunar: Eternal Blue did with their cinemas, you could have something special. If you think you are going to downscale regular video for the platform, well, spoiler alert, no, that technique of adding video to games, or making the whole freaking game into such a poor quality interactive movie, simply does not work.

Alas, the goal for most of these projects was to throw a bunch of low budget sets, actors, and scripts together and make live video into interactive games. Then again, low budget compared to a movie, as the budget for FMV titles were generally rumored to be in the million to few millions of dollars range. I am guessing Gunstar Heroes did not cost a million dollars to develop in the same time frame, but I lack any insider knowledge to speak definitively. To our yaFMVg of the hour, what can we expect with Tomcat Alley? Grainy graphics, limited, often frustrating gameplay, and bad acting. Yet, what did we actually receive? Perhaps a diamond in the rough?{3}

{1} Term used loosely as not every game is the same although most devolve into one of three categories:

Quicktime event extravaganza such as Time Gal or Dragon's Lair.
On rails shooter like Cadillacs and Dinosaurs or Tomcat Alley.
Whatever you the heck you might consider Nigh Trap and its kinfolk.

{2} I did not coin this ~~term~~ phrase admittedly, but I can thank Sam Derboo over at Hardcore Gaming 101 for bringing it to my attention.

{3} Narrator speaking, "Well, no, that was unlikely."

Full Screen!

Okay, let us begin with a semi-noteworthy positive Tomcat Alley brought to the Sega CD -- full screen full motion video! As many games on the system played video, or the pixel art facsimile of video, in a smaller resolution window than the actual game.{4} Not content to be a small, windowed, grainy FMV title, Tomcat Alley went all out with its full screen glory of grainy, low color, Cinepak delight. Well, this seems to be damning with ~~faint~~ no praise to speak of, but bear with me now. This is actually rather impressive if one became used to the tiny video areas given by games like Time Gal or Night Trap, the whole screen is taken up by the video, be it story sequences or what passes as gameplay sequences.

I know this whole review has been tongue in cheek, but check it out, this is rather impressive for a Sega system originally released in 1988 (in Japan), with an add-on originally released in 1991 (in Japan):

Yeah, grainy as ever, but that is full screen and I can more or less make out what is happening in the introduction.

Core was noteworthy for likewise being full screen with their cinemas, at least in some games. but I do not think those games used action full motion video, but some kind of pixel art video.

Story/Acting/Music/Ambience

As an interactive movie, let us address the story and acting for a wee bit before delving into the woefully underwhelming gameplay. The game starts up with a credit overlayed introduction with generically handsome, cool, pilot being dropped off by automobile in an out of the way, desert or scrub plain, type location. Setup is rather cool in a generic (sensing a trend?) action movie kind of way and the music is setting the right tone for such a story. Guy picks up random desert cat{5}, takes his bag, and strolls towards a rocky outcropping. Let us not be coy, handsome man in his tank top is of course seeking the entrance to his secret government HQ!

Apparently with the Cold War ending, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the new Russian federation is looking to sell off old military equipment to kickstart the economy. An ex officer of the Soviet Bloc, not taking kindly to loss of status and usurpation of his power, decides to skedaddle, absconding with MIG fighter jets, chemical weapons, and like minded pilots to rabble rouse. Honestly, the game was so bad, I could only repeatedly fail at stage one over and over again. Hard to tell how the storyline may progress from here. {6}

Note, you do not play the role of handsome leading man, instead, you are a young hotshot just joining the team. As such, your job is to serve as the secondary member of the F14 Tomcat crew. You are apparently a member of this hyper alert, meticulously trained, armed response team. A team that consists of at last one other F14 with pilot and radar intercept officer. Sometimes they radio you, sometimes the pilot talks to you, asking for new targets and such. The banter is fine, driving home the atmosphere of an elite team looking to kick ass and come home safe. Or something

{4} Even normal games on Sega systems, such as BattleCorps on Sega CD (fix graphics for mech console and small viewable window) and Doom on the 32X (letterbox playfield and the bottom of the screen had your status, weapons, and such) played in a windowed view. Seems to be a quick and dirty way to beef up performance.

{5} Allusions to the Tomcat F14? I have no idea.

{6} Does it really matter? Probably not.

Gameplay

Imagine the exciting action of a game like Afterburner. You know, arcade style, colorful graphics, pumping music, and dog fighting thrills in an F14 fighter plane. Then take away the thrills, the colorful graphics, and the pumping music and you are left with a confusing, tedious, mess of a game. Instead of an exciting behind the back view, you have a cockpit view of the "action". Which is suitable enough, alas most of the graphics in the early going are grey/blue, nondescript clouds, tiny specks of enemy fighters in the distance, and a cross hair. There is a simple HUD you can toggle on and off with the C button. As the enemy combatants flitter about as gnats on the screen, you will see video clips intersperse as the action changes. Pressing A will fire a missile. Pressing B will allow you to select an option on the HUD:

Radio your wingman.
Target a location.
Change weapons.
Switch between "air to air" or "air to ground" weapons (you have two of each type of weapon and a finite supply of either).
Take recon images.
Throw out flare or chaff.

The NPCs will banter with you and make requests. Handsome pilot man will tell you to fire at the targets or to identify next target. Your fellow F14 pilots will make requests as well. New FMV scenes intersperse as you choose actions, but I could never get the hang of it and tired quickly after seeing the same game over screen time and time again. Perhaps if any of the tasks were enjoyable, I would have felt compelled to play on and master a mission or two, but really it is all quite monotonous. Pilot barks a command, you either press A to attempt firing a missile at your target or you select an option in the HUD and press B. Cinemas play corresponding to your success or failure and you move on to the next faux interaction.

Frankly, the inability to actually pilot your plane means you are just moving a cursor around a screen and tapping a button. Even worse, I had turned off the HUD as my first action upon starting the game and could not even figure out how to radio my wingman! Which makes everyone on your team livid with a flurry of increasingly exasperated requests made until your pilot aborts the mission. Game over! Next I had to figure out how to signal our next destination or once again, game over! Okay, now I know how to use the radio and select a destination/target. When one of the targets got close, I even managed to shoot one down, only to be destroyed by one of the other Migs. Game over!

Okay, not terribly exiting and this is the gist of pretty much the entire game as far as watching playthough videos of later levels have informed me, as I gave up completing the first level after a dozen attempts. Update 2020.02.12: I got to the end of mission 1! I am truly done with this game now that I have "mastered" the first level. Not even kidding, I deleted the game from the RetroGameStation, an inglorious ending for sure.

HUD Layout for "controlling" the game. Simple but effective. Pulled from instruction manual.

Get used to seeing this screen.

Cinema of the "action".

More gameplay capture from the attract screen.

Intro credits.

Gameplay capture from the attract screen.

Hey, actual gameplay here, I shot down 1 of 3 bogies on the first stage.

TL;DR

Lambast me if you wish, as my lack of FMV shooter skills led me to a complete inability to get far in the game. Additionally, I freely admit to not having much interest in this type of game from the outset, but I was immensely curious as to what fullscreen FMV would look like on the Sega CD. Turns out, pretty much the same dreck as every other FMV game on the platform. However, if you like this style of gameplay, I found the atmosphere convincing, and dying over and over again on the first level was more enjoyable than you might think. If you can dial into the cadence and sit back for a hour or two, you could master this game and maybe even have some fun doing it.

If Sewer Shark, Loadstar, or similar games are of interest, this one has them beat on interface. A simple HUD overlayed on the full screen FMV actually looks pretty good in comparison to the usual letterbox interface where the non viewing area takes up most of the screen. Additionally, if you are a fan of games like Five Nights at Freddy's, wait, put down the pitchforks, hear (metaphorically listening of course) me out first. If you like the modern day point and clicky game like Five Nights at Freddy's, this game is a little more action oriented perhaps, but these older FMV games are certainly spiritual ancestors. Yeah, I could make an argument Night Trap or Double Switch might be even more similar given the look here, there, and everywhere camera game design, but the point and click nature of Tomcat Alley is just a sped up single screen version of it.

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