14. Menace Beach
Instructions
Before they went all biblical and force-fed a bunch of Christian ideological
games to the unsaved masses, Color Dreams created a number of mindless
and violent video games like Challenge of the Dragon, Operation
Secret Storm, and Secret Scout. I mention these three in particular
because they share a common gameplay element with our next Maxi 15
game, Menace Beach. That shared element is hit detection about
as accurate as a drunken Irishman fighting in a bar over a half-drinken
Guinness. You've all heard the slogan, "If it ain't broke, don't
fix it." What Color Dreams failed to realize is their gameplay system
never worked properly, ever. So if you've played any of the titles above,
I'm sure you'll happen to agree with me that punches and hits went right
through characters without inflicting any damage (magic!).
Menace Beach has you, a young Alfalfa on a skateboard, spinning and attacking all over town to find your sassy girlfriend Bunny who has been kidnapped by Demon Dan. Along the way through the 12 levels of action you'll tackle a number of strange foes, some including Elvis impersonators, ninjas, monkeys, clowns, and fat sumo wrestlers.
The most infamous thing to come out of this game has to be the cutscenes of your tied-up girlfriend. After the successful completion of each level, a portion of her outfit would mysteriously disappear until she was left stripped down to only her bra and panties. If you think about it long and hard enough you will come to realize that this signifies the first apparent rape innuendo seen on the Nintendo. Sure it's a lot less obvious than, say, Custer's Revenge was on the Atari, but you can't seem to shrug off the thought of it nonetheless. It's interesting to note that after the Color Dreams group converted their company image to becoming Wisdom Tree, makers of Christian games, Menace Beach the game was made into Sunday Funday. The controversial cutscenes were removed and changed to a conservatively dressed woman with a bouffon urging you to hurry for Sunday school and avoid plumbers who might slow you down from attending worship on the Sabbath. If you ask me, the alleged rape of the girl is less offensive of the two versions.
Egged on by their immense guilt felt of stripping down Bunny to her undies, Color Dreams (turned Wisdom Tree) gave up to the Reedeemer a freakish ant-looking woman of which not a one sexual thought will ever come from eyeing her "Golden Girls" hairdo and long dress that covers down to her knees. Masturbation is the evil of Demon Dan! Only sexual repression is Godly!
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