Dance Apocalyptic (Karnov, Kick Master, Kickle Cubicle)

It had to happen sometime. We've finally hit a game that's just baffling. Curiously enough, its hero is one of the enemy. Jinborov Karnovski, or Karnov as he has been dubbed, is a rotund firebreather of Soviet descent. This was 1987. The Cold War was on its way out, but the dance apocalyptic was still ongoing. Children of the age of armageddon were invited to witness the adventures of a Soviet hero in Karnov. What they got was baffling. This is a decent video game, don't get me wrong. Just a baffling one. I only took a few screenshots, but everything about this game is a visual mishmash. A fat Soviet man shooting... things at other... things. This is, of course, a limitation of the 8-bit platform. These things are supposed to be demons and goblins and tricksters, but when you contain them within microchips and plastic in 1987, they become a bit of a mess. I'd almost call this some sort of propaganda towards the Soviet Union, but this was made by a Japanese company. Supposedly things made sense in Japan... but remember, it didn't exist in 1987. All the doomsday children had was their burly man shooting things and turning blue when something touched him. Karnov is really really odd, but part of the times. Let's see if four years can change anything.

Kick Master, then, exists in a time when there's not much left to prove. Late 1991, early 1992. The shadow of Communism has fallen. The world escaped its oblivion, but the cost of averting the narrative collapse was... well, in this case, the fall of the NES. The world had gone Super and wasn't about to look back for quite some time. We've seen many beautiful things in this time period, but the double-edged pendulum always swings. One galaxy's hidden gem is another's piece of shovelware. Kick Master is a hidden gem, but look at how it courts with death. Skeletons dance across the screen, brandishing blades. The Cauldron Borne, ever marching, long-decayed remnants of a life now stolen. Unlike the champion, our master of kicking is still an apprentice. He has a lot to prove, and he will level up as the journey progresses. He needs no steel, for his feet are focused weapons in their own right. He does not kick with his legs. He kicks with his heart, and that makes Kick Master superb. A game worth playing. A game that should be played. Valyan apprentice, I will see your journey through to its conclusion... but now I must kick with my mind.

Kickle Cubicle brings reality crashing back to me. 2014 brought it with an apocalypse for the island of Newfoundland. Not by armageddon's flame, but by the lack of flame. Witness the alchemic concoction that led to our Trenzalore by ice. High demand for electricity. Extremely cold temperatures. Rolling blackouts, followed by unplanned fires and explosions. An entire island lost in the dark, lost in the cold. Lost. Kickle Cubicle comes to mock it with its dissonance. Everything about this game is adorable. The slimes, the player character. Your mission is to rescue a frozen fantasy kingdom. By kicking ice blocks and collecting bags. The thing sucked me in, I will admit... but the dissonance remains. Is this how the world ends for Newfoundland, the island of my birth? The land freezing over before cute slimes run rampant? Is this how the Soviets imagined nuclear winter? I can't compare to the frigid cold of their wastes... but I can say that it's pretty damn cold here.

Good time to curl up and beat Kick Master.