#oneaday, Day 205: Protect Me, Knight!!

As I’ve said before, the Xbox Indie Games Marketplace is a veritable treasure trove of golden doubloons mixed in with stinky, festering turds of considerable awfulness. Tonight I’d like to share with you another one of these golden nuggets of goodness.

It’s called Protect Me, Knight but in the Marketplace it’s listed under its Japanese name which I don’t know how to type owing to its excessive use of kanji. Kanji? Whatever they are. Yes, it’s a Japanese game—those of you who have explored the Indie Marketplace will be aware that the Japanese titles on there often have some of the best production values and gameplay. Even if said production values and gameplay are perpetually stuck about fifteen years in the past.

Take Protect Me, Knight, for example. This is a game so committed to its retro presentation that upon loading it, the graphics sometimes corrupt and you have to blow on the cartridge by pressing A. This is a joke which is funny the first time but which can mercifully be skipped after this point.

Once you’re into the game proper, you’re shown a screen with a princess in a castle imploring the player to “HELP ME MY HERO” and “KILL !@#?ING GOBLINS”. Leaving the game in its attract mode summons up some of the finest Engrish you will ever see. I won’t spoil it for you here. But it’s absolutely legendary. In fact, it’s such a wonderful example of Engrish that it’s almost impossible to believe that it wasn’t done deliberately.

Anyway, the game is a 4-player co-operative game where players can pick one of four characters—Fighter, Ninja, Amazon or Mage—to play as in order to protect the princess from the hordes of “!@#?ING GOBLINS” who want to re-kidnap her. This is achieved on a NES-style static screen. Players run around frantically beating the crap out of all and sundry by hammering the A button or pressing B to use each character’s unique skill. Players can also build barricades around the princess and even push her out of harm’s way. Scoring hot combos causes the princess to throw “LOVE POINT” at you, which doubles as currency and experience points. Between levels, “LOVE POINT” can be spent on powering up characters, or during levels they can be spent to build or upgrade barricades.

It becomes very hectic very quickly. And with multiple players, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It’s an incredibly simple game—and pretty short, too—but it is unashamedly fun. And the Engrish continues throughout the game. The skill descriptions for each new level are hilarious. For example, the fighter’s top skill (a spinning melee attack) is described as “MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE TORNADE!” (with previous levels being “TORNADE!”, “MORE TORNADE!”, “MORE MORE MORE TORNADE!” and… you get the idea.)

It’s a stupid yet fun game in an unashamedly retro style, yet it’s unmistakably a next-gen take on a retro title. There’s no way a NES would be able to handle the hundreds of sprites on screen that this game throws at you without breaking a sweat.

It would make a great XBLA title with online play and leaderboards. Sadly, its immense Japaneseness is sure to see it eternally relegated to the backwater of the Xbox Marketplace that is XBIG. Still, I’ve done my little bit to raise exposure to it now. So gather three friends together, fire up this game for a very reasonable 240 points and Have A Fun!!