What about Spikers Battle?

According to the official website for this game:

“4-player battle royale format! A hot battle awaits you!
　
This is the latest title in the “Spikeout” series, which was the first in the industry to offer 4-player cooperative play through 4-player communication. The game has been reborn as a battle royale style game with the same control system and worldview as the previous title!”

Spikers Battle is a spin-off that keeps most of the same gameplay basics but moves them to a fighting-style game where the last one standing wins, instead of a beat-em-up where you play co-op with others from start to end.

This spin-off is actually the less beloved one out of all the Spikeout-related games in Japan, something I had noticed between one time I asked in a Japanese Spikeout stream the order of games they liked (I think it went SPKFE > BS > Slash > Battle- forgot if DBO was mentioned too) and how that strategy guide I had been translating recently called it a “shitty game” that was bad that it didn’t even last enough time in most arcades for the boss character unlock conditions to be met.

But if you are curious about that, there’s this video where you can see a boss character being played. However, aside from this and few websites mentioning the command to choose the characters assuming that the unlock condition is fulfilled, there’s no data about these. Not even the actual specific amount of time that the cabinet needs to be running at to activate.

If you are going to ask how this one is regarded outside of Japan, then the question you should do yourself is instead “who has even heard of this one?”

You know, if Spikeout itself is already considered obscure and definitely was before Infinite Wealth released, then what is there left for this one?

Anyways…

The game could have garnered that reputation due to the way the changes were done:

Since it is now designed with versus multiplayer in mind rather than co-op, if you were playing with three other human players, the dynamic changes a fair bit with how you’re fighting players with your exact same controls.

You can stun someone with C3 but it can wear off very quickly if mashed by the other player, you can be interrupted during a grounded combo by a special attack, you can be subjected to the classic Spikeout combos by another player…and if the stars align in the worst way possible, you can even end up getting combo’d to death like a mook in Spikeout if two or three players all juggle you with attacks on a corner.

The catch is that if you are playing alone, you’re essentially fighting three players at the same time against you. Certain Spikeout strats no longer work reliably or at all if you thought they could be useful to beat this game, whether sometimes the enemy can interrupt you with a somersault if trying to hit them with the BBBBBB string, C3 doesn’t stun for long to keep one enemy on hold while you deal with the others, and because you can’t leave enemies stunned that long, setting up combos with walls or otherwise gets very unlikely halfway through the game as you’ll have to expect another enemy rushing in with a dash kick or even throwing a weapon at you.

Oh yeah, and now you have to watch for whether enemies hit you with weapons too.

Spikeout is a longer game overall, but this one can be more frustrating for unfamiliar players to even endure from start to end despite how its only 8 stages you have to complete not only due to all that, but because you have to win two rounds to proceed to the next stage.

In SpikeOut, the wall can be your own training (if you are trying to improve by not continuing after a death or playing with limited credits), your virtual pocket in Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, or maybe even just your time and patience as you could technically endure the entire game with theoretically infinite credits/free play enabled and continue as much as you want.

But here, until you’re able to beat two rounds of every 1v3 fight, you’re not going to continue to the next stage. So it could still take up to an hour if you start getting walled by the fifth or sixth stage where the enemies start getting really cheesy against you. Note that if you die twice in a match, you have to continue and try winning two rounds again, as while in matches with human players each one gets their win count, playing alone has all three computer players share the win points.

And going back to mentioning that possibility of getting juggled to death by other players…I learned that from FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE.

SPIKERS BATTLE WOMBO COMBO!!! (youtube.com)

References to other games?

The first stage, Diesel Town, is set in the basketball court of the aforementioned place seen in Spikeout, although it is possible for some beginner Spikeout players to never have seen this in-game if they only took the sewer route, and said court in Spikeout is much darker with rain and dim colors compared to here where its all bright SEGA blue skies.

In the 4th stage, there’s something written that says SLASHOUT, this being the other Spikeout spinoff released before it that only changed gameplay through the level system and mainly overhauled the presentation to have a fantasy setting.

The 6th Stage, Imperial Opera, is named after the final stage of Spikeout, and is actually set in the very arena that appears where you fight the final boss of the entire game in said stage: A floating glowing platform with the view of the theater below you.

While I can’t confirm whether Bullet or Champ are enemies seen in Spikeout, the other AI-exclusive characters definitely are: Rudolph is a Diesel Town mook, Shenlong is one of the bosses in Astro Mall, Kitty is one of the bosses in Ship Yard, Clay is one of the bosses in Imperial Opera, and while Mikhail does NOT appear, Raphael is basically an expy/counterpart of him in this game.

What about the presentation?

Even if you aren’t a fan of the gameplay choices or style, you have to give credit for the game keeping the expected flair of a SEGA arcade game from the time. My biggest highlight is Hidenori Shoji’s soundtrack: This composer is already a stacked one in past and future credits such as F-Zero GX and the Yakuza franchise [another carry-over from Spikeout’s roots], but his music here definitely gives it a much more of a proper fighting game vibe than some of the shorter loops for either frantic enemy encounters or just fitting with the place itself.

Diesel Town’s theme in particular was such a striking one for me that it had got me looking for OST rips of the game, and since there were none on Youtube [there’s one in khinsider now], I actually uploaded four or five of those years ago…and was supposed to upload more but I never got to do that for some reason.

Some of my other liked tracks are for East River and that city stage, though the latter marks the halfway point where enemies will start to get really grating with their team tactics against you.

It is cool to see the classic team with slightly higher resolution models and new portraits, after how they looked more blocky in the Model 3 board likely for the sake of performance with the amount of enemies there and the resolution, which also is why the portraits are so tiny in that game. Though being able to find your character’s back immediately will have you notice that Spike no longer carries his little son on his back.

Spikers Battle runs on the NAOMI so it does look cleaner in some ways between the higher resolution and the smaller fighting areas allowing for more detail, and while the enviroments are varied and cool, what you think about this is very likely going to depend on how much of a fan for SEGA stuff you are…although chances are that you definitely are up there if you’re even reading this in the first place.

What else?

Uhhh…I’ll let you know whenever I update this again, perhaps with screenshots and info of each thing in the game, but…that might or might not happen later.