A bizarre mish-mash of top
down racer and shoot'emup starring a futuristic flying
car, but no Michael J Fox, Capcom's Last Duel is one of
the company's oddest arcade creations.
"This is the story about
twin planets, Mu and Bacula, far away from our own
galaxy.."
 Last Duel is a
strange but quite playable shoot'emup-cum-racing
cocktail where you're given the keys to a nifty
car/bike/plane transforming contraption which looks
like its somehow escaped from kids TV cartoon
M.A.S.K. in order to star in a Capcom
arcade game. In the spirit of many an 80's arcade
title there's also a 'hot chick' to rescue should you
make it to the end (you did remember to bring all
your your pocket money didn't you?) which is nice.
Think she's a princess or something so you'll be in
with the bling if you make it. Yeah you'll be broke
and your parents will probably give you a swift clip
round the ear for wasting your youth but saving the
galaxy is important stuff. And she's got hardly any
clothes on..
Last Duel contains six vertically scrolling
stages and alternates with each stage between two
different game styles. The first stage has you
motoring through a track-like course Spy
Hunter-style (actually it's more like Data
East's Burnin Rubber to be more
specific if you take the ability to jump
into account). The screen scrolls at a
semi-controllable speed which can be increased or
decreased by pushing/pulling the joystick
respecively. Extra weapons can be collected in the
normal shooter fashion and it's just a question of
blasting your way through the gauntlet of enemy cars
and gun turrets until you reach the level boss. Later
levels have gaps in the track that can only be
traversed by 'jumping' over them (represented with
the oft-used 80's graphical trick of making your car
sprite twice as big as it was on the ground). All
good clean arcade fun. A minor annoyance though is
the fact that if you don't keep up with the scrolling
you can 'collide' with the bottom of the screen and
blow up, even if you are only pootling along at about
15mph. These futuristic flying cars might look pretty
but they're not all that durable.
Every
other stage your car cannily transforms into a
spaceship and you take to the air in a series of
bio-organic levels very reminiscent in appearance to
Nichibutsu's Armed Formation F. The graphics
are actually very nicely done, with some atmospheric
and often luridly coloured parallax scrolling
backgrounds which fade gently in and out behind your
ship. The visual style is interesting with a certain
familiar Capcom-ness mixed with what feels like a
possible Toaplan influence to the
overall graphic design. It's fairly unique among
Capcom's arcade releases in this respect.
Handily
in 'flying mode' your ship has a 'rolling'
capability which gives you a fiery Terra Cresta-like transformation to shield
you from the enemy onslaught. In simultaneous two
players mode it's actually possible to control both
the plane and car iterations of the craft at the
same time on the 'track' stages and to unleash a team
'surface attack' when both of you
are in plane mode. Cheekily though the designers
deliberately made the game harder when two players
are onscreen throwing a higher number of enemy
formations your way.
The stage-two miniboss doesn't
hang around but just
sails on past your ship spitting a few bullets. Wuss.
Above: The stage two boss is a
bit rubbish frankly,
looking like a Ghouls'n'Ghosts
reject and
assaulting you with fireballs nicked from Street
Fighter
Below: Weird alien terrain - all very Outzone.
Stage three is very pretty indeed. These green blobs
stick to your ship and slow it down unless you can
knock them off on a bit of the background. Clever.
Level five's slippy-slidey ice world is the habitat
for this tank-boss which disengorges smaller
tanks at you.
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Just
you, a car, and an open road.
And lots of stuff trying to kill you.
At the end of the first stage course
you'll fight
these wormie things in bunkers.
And here's yet more wormie things
zipping in and out
of their bio-organic lairs R-Type style on
the first 'flying' level.
Last
Duel isn't one of Capcom's best arcade
shooters but it has a certain charm which was enough
to tempt me to pick up the PCB a few years back.
Cheap too, only about 25 quid. Nowadays you can play
it on Capcom Collection Volume 2 on
the Playstation 2, although unfortunately the package
has no 'Tate' option to rotate your telly
and play it in true vertical mode.
Still, it's an underrated and enjoyable blast, with
the car'em-up sections adding something fairly unique
to the standard shooter flying bits and making up an
enjoyable little old-school arcade action package. With or without
the semi-nuddy ladies. MikeB
Around half-way through the game,
just in case you're starting to
lose interest or thinking of putting your cash in Nemesis instead,
the male teen demographic is targetted mercilessly as
above.
Skeli-dino boss - some nice
animation here.
Going all 'fiery pheonix' with the 'rolling' shield
option.
Final Boss - all pink and squidgy like
an enormous lobster.
Not quite done yet though so cook him a bit more
with your laser weapons at around gas mark 2500.
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