Game of the Day 3/24/2016: Black Tiger

[celerystalker]

Black Tiger... Black Tiger is probably my second favorite arcade game of all time, running neck and neck with Time Soldiers. Known as Black Dragon in Japan, it is the story of a brave warrior who must destroy a black dragon in order to save the kingdom. It is a fast, furious action platformer in the best of Capcom tradition, featuring legthly levels, myriad secrets, and enough Zenny to make Scrooge McDuck jealous.

Many people call Black Tiger the spiritual successor to Ghosts 'n Goblins before Ghouls 'n Ghosts arrived, and in many ways that is very true. The jump-turn-attack gameplay feels like an old glove, and the weapon system definitely feels like an evolution of the Ghosts 'n Goblins combat. Now you purchase weapons from shopkeepers in order to upgrade, and you now have a melee flail to accompany your throwing knives, with which you will pummel your enemies. When hit, you lose an armor level, eventually getting down to your loin cloth before dying. Sound familiar? If not, some red arremers will pop in to remind you.

You are afforded more hits in Black Tiger, and you'll likely need them. Enemies begin coming sparingly, but ramp up to the point where they are simply swarming you from all angles after a few levels. Getting poisoned will cause you to be unable to throw knives, brief confusion can reverse your control, and boulders fall at inopportune times to kill you in one hit if you're careless. Trap chests, fire-shooting walls, spike pits... Black Tiger wants you dead, and will throw the kitchen sink at you... but it's never so unfair as to demand memorization, as skill and reflexes can and will lead you to victory.

I have loved Black Tiger for years, but just today I finally got in my own actual pcb. I've played one credit, and beaten it once... but that's also after years of having played in arcades, then eventually getting to own it on Capcom Classics Vol.2 for PS2 and Xbox. I don't know if it still is, but Capcom was for years giving it away for FREE on PSN with their Capcom Classic Arcade Cabinet download, which was also free. I bought my X-arcade stick just to play Black Tiger before I got the board, because all of my muscle memory wants me using a proper joystick and jumping with my ring finger.

Played this one?

[Emperor Megas]

This is one of my all time favorite arcade games. It's probably in my top three. This game was pretty much the highlight of my youth the year it was released. I love literally everything about this game. The music, the controls, the enemies, the bosses, the upgradeable weapon system, the hidden items.

I have every area of this game burned into my subconscious to the point I could probably play it blindfolded. I still ritualistically tap the attack button the instant I touch every wisemen in the game so that it freezes on an attacking animation which looks like you're mugging them rather than saving them. I can still hear my best saying "gimmie ya money!" in my head every time I do. I especially love the frantic organ music in the white castle stage. It was like nothing I'd ever heard in a video game before it. It used to get me WAY more pumped than a video game probably should have. Hell, it still does today.

Man...I just freakin LOVE Black Tiger.

[celerystalker]

I'm with you all the way! I probably hadn't played Black Tiger for a good two years before finally getting the arcade board this week, but the game is just so burned into my mind and hands. I've played two credits in the two days since I got that PCB in, and I've beaten it both times... it's one of those games like Time Soldiers that I just always remember through and through.

What really made me laugh, though, is that I do the same thing... I jump toward the old men and hit attack just before landing so it looks like I'm about to kill them. It's one of those things, like when picking up an orb after a boss fight in Super Castlevania IV where I always try to touch it during an interesting frame of animation.

[Emperor Megas]

What really made me laugh, though, is that I do the same thing... I jump toward the old men and hit attack just before landing so it looks like I'm about to kill them. It's one of those things, like when picking up an orb after a boss fight in Super Castlevania IV where I always try to touch it during an interesting frame of animation.

Yeah, that's the only TRUE way to play it! Another thing about Black Tiger that I loved was the Conan'esque image of the hero when you defeat to game. Conan The Barbarian was always one of my favorite films (and still is), and the graphic at the end of Black Tiger was like a homage to pre-credit roll scene in the film.

[celerystalker]

Ha! Glad I snapped that last night after I played through.

[homerhomer]

This is one of my all time favorite arcade games. It's probably in my top three. This game was pretty much the highlight of my youth the year it was released. I love literally everything about this game. The music, the controls, the enemies, the bosses, the upgradeable weapon system, the hidden items.

I have every area of this game burned into my subconscious to the point I could probably play it blindfolded. I still ritualistically tap the attack button the instant I touch every wisemen in the game so that it freezes on an attacking animation which looks like you're mugging them rather than saving them. I can still hear my best saying "gimmie ya money!" in my head every time I do. I especially love the frantic organ music in the white castle stage. It was like nothing I'd ever heard in a video game before it. It used to get me WAY more pumped than a video game probably should have. Hell, it still does today.

Man...I just freakin LOVE Black Tiger.

There's a jump on level 7 or 8 that's near impossible.

[Emperor Megas]

There are two of them, actually. One of them, the first one, is on the forth stage, I believe. It's not fatal if you miss it, but I wasted countless lives running out if time after repeated misses before I understood that you had to maneuver the controller in a weird 'up and over' pattern at the arch of the jump. There's really no way to know this at first because there are only 2 jumps in the whole game that require it, and there's nothing on the arcade cabinet that explains the maneuver.

There was a time when I considered that first difficult jump the de facto end of the game, because I didn't think that I could ever get past it.

[celerystalker]

You know, the jumps aren't something I really struggled with. I just hold diagonally up and forward as I'm walking toward the gap and it's always worked. Where I used to get hit was running out of time in stage 3 dicking around finding secrets and fighting enemies... and I greatly prefer to have the best weapon by stage 5, because until recently, I didn't know you could duck and let the sword-wielding boss walk over you.

[Edmond Dantes]

Is it just me or does this game's aesthetics and controls somehow remind me of Batman on the NES?

[Dire 51]

I really wish I'd encountered Black Tiger in arcades back in the day. I didn't get to play it until CCCv2 came out, although I did know about it before then thanks to a trivia tip from a reader of my old G'NG website The Ghoul Realm - he'd spotted a resemblance between the Gargoyle in Black Tiger and the Red Arremer in G'NG.

Really fun game, though. Kinda wish the announced NES version had materialized.

[Emperor Megas]

You know, the jumps aren't something I really struggled with. I just hold diagonally up and forward as I'm walking toward the gap and it's always worked. Where I used to get hit was running out of time in stage 3 dicking around finding secrets and fighting enemies... and I greatly prefer to have the best weapon by stage 5, because until recently, I didn't know you could duck and let the sword-wielding boss walk over you.

How did you fight them before? They LITERALLY can't hit you unless you TRY to jump into them. You quite literally stand in one spot and spam the jump and attack buttons together until they die. If they walk toward you, just crouch and they pass right by and you do the same thing again when they stop.

[celerystalker]

How did you fight them before? They LITERALLY can't hit you unless you TRY to jump into them. You quite literally stand in one spot and spam the jump and attack buttons together until they die. If they walk toward you, just crouch and they pass right by and you do the same thing again when they stop.

I jumped and attacked until they did the attack where four fire pillars come out of the ground, at which time I jump back while attacking just before it hits me. I do this until I'm backed into the corner platform, where in I have armor, I just take a hit and jump through him and start over, or just jump and trade hits hoping to kill him before he gets me. Apparently in the japanese version, you can't duck under those guys. But, yeah, I never knew that trick until recently.