Lara
Croft, Cate Archer, and other heroines in the video game world can trace
their estrogen-laden appetites for destruction back to a woman who was the
first to smash her way onto a scene that was dominated by men. She goes by
the name of Flashgal. Sega’s first female protagonist is no ‘girlie
fighter’ by any means. Whether she’s caving in skulls with her fist,
or literally cutting her opposition down at the knees, Flashgal is on a
mission to kick the asses of anybody standing in her way. Let us discuss
Flashgal’s own arcade game of the same name.Flashgal’s objective is to destroy a syndicate of vastly diverse baddies headed by a roly-poly leader that’s dressed like a television evangelist. There’s no story attached to the game, but many people can relate to wanting to savagely beat up those who impersonate televangelists, or those that really are televangelists. At this madman’s disposal are a great variety of thugs, creatures, and machines that Flashgal has to contend with. But they aren’t aware of Flashgal’s mastery of the straight jab, jumpkick, and katana blade. She’s ready for anything, and she’s got the techniques and skills to take on whatever comes her way.
Graphics
wise, the game is solid. In addition to the dark-haired star of the game,
the enemies come off as a very diverse group of characters with their own
distinctive details. Flashgal is given a snazzy red outfit that includes a
halter-top, thigh length tights, a headband, and a silver belt. Her red,
knee high boots complete the outfit. I’d just like to point out
Flashgal’s flare for fashion (try to say that 3x fast) goes wonderfully
with her ravenous intent on killing her opponents. The enemies include all
types of people, animals, machines, and mysterious creatures. With more
badly dressed thugs than you could count, the game’s antagonists also
include jet pack wearing rocketeers, portly angry women in tights, attack
dogs, ninjas, mechanized birds, napalm tossing monkeys, droids, Roman
giants, ostriches, and aircraft loaded with explosive armament. All these
are represented onscreen in a very accurate showing with credible attempts
at detail. The backgrounds in the game range from palm tree-lined streets
on the shoreside to martial arts dojos sitting next to bamboo thickets.
The stages aren’t anything to rave about, but they do provide the
atmosphere required to give the game more variety.From a sound point of view, the game is nothing more than a large collection of impacts, explosions, and various bleeps and bloops. All are placed well with their respective actions, such as punches, kicks, guns firing, bombs going off, and the violent, fiery combustion of some unlucky helicopter that dared to challenge Flashgal. Some of tunes are pretty good. The dojo stage features a selection of music injected with a nifty little dose Oriental flavor. When Flashgal hops on her motorcycle, a fast paced tune plays to compliment the ride as the screen quickly scrolls by. This category is more than adequate in my opinion.
Gameplay.
Ah yes, the gameplay. The game is a 2D side-scrolling beat’em up along
the lines of Kung-Fu Master, which was released one year earlier. Flashgal
must punch, kick, shoot, and slash her way through each stage… even as
it scrolls with no consideration to her position onscreen. This means no
matter which direction she faces, or no matter where she is onscreen, the
stage will scroll by. This means Flashgal can advance through the stage in
a crouched position. This has its disadvantages as well since thugs with
guns tend to ‘moonwalk’ as they fire at Flashgal. The action is
intense. There are many opponents onscreen that will attack from either
side. It takes some quick maneuvers to get out of a jam like that, but
it’s possible and can be pulled off fairly easily. Your enemies attack
in a variety of ways, so naturally, you get to have fun killing them in a
variety of ways. For a couple stages, Flashgal is armed with a katana that
she can use to slice her opponents. When a ninja tosses daggers at
Flashgal, she can deflect them with the katana blade and then proceed to
butcher the poor sap that tossed them. The most common mid bosses are the
chubby girls. These plump ladies are supremely pissed at Flashgal for
having a better body shape than they do. In groups of two or three, they
attack our heroine with powerful kicks, but thanks to their daily
consumption of eight steak and cheese hoagies, these fat girls tend to be
slow. For some reason that Sega only knows, Flashgal can kill a green
ostrich and be rewarded with a rapid firing gun! Now instead of punches
and kicks, she can simply blow away her adversaries. There’s nothing
more satisfying to Flashgal than gunning down thugs, dogs, obese women,
birds of all sizes, robots, African tribesmen, and Roman guards on
steroids. Not all of the action takes place on foot. As stated earlier,
Flashgal can hop on a motorcycle that has a vertical missile launcher
placed on its rear. With this bike, she can destroy all airborne threats
above her head like helicopters, mechanical seagulls, and the most
interesting of airborne threats… monkeys in tall palm trees. Other
vehicles that Flashgal uses against her foes include a helicopter (used in
the horizontal shooter segment of the game), and a water jet craft armed
just like the motorcycle. The incorporation of these useful vehicles in
conjunction with the on-foot scenes in the game adds so much to its
diversity.SCORE ROUND UP:
Graphics: I like the diversity and colors in this category. The different characters are in great numbers, and the detail put into some them are quite good. Stages are alright and add more variety.
Sound & Music: Ya hear that? That’s the sound of ass getting kicked in many ways. There’s also some nice tunes to be heard as well. Some very memorable.
Gameplay: It’s so much fun killing all these people and objects, especially when there’s more than one way to do it. Add to this a few vehicles that have feature segments on the game, and the gameplay goes up a notch.
Overall: Flashgal is a fun game, and still remains as one of my favorites from the 80’s era. Its main hero is in fact, a heroine, and the first of her kind. Thank you, Sega for a kick ass game!
