This Week In Retro: BloodStorm

November 1994: Buy me BloodStorm or go to hell!

by Diamond Feit
We've all heard the expression "life imitates art" but increasingly in the 21st century, this saying gets a lot less traction than a more eye-popping version, "The Simpsons predicted it." Turns out when an animated sitcom runs for over three-decades non-stop, poking fun at pop culture, politics, and even God himself, some of the jokes told along the way will come true.

As a viewer since the Tracy Ullman days, I failed to understand the humor in many early episodes on account of my youth; Sideshow Bob name-dropping Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag in "Krusty Gets Busted" meant nothing to me, but I'm certain it made my parents chuckle. Yet this divide only made the moments mocking stuff that I did recognize all the more hilarious.

Take the landmark episode "Moaning Lisa" which originally aired in February of 1990. While the main plot revolves around Lisa bonding with a elderly jazz musician, the B-plot sees Homer and Bart battling one another in Super Slugfest, a make-believe boxing video game that strongly resembles Nintendo's Punch-Out!!. However, The Simpsons' satire features graphic violence the likes of which no home console game would dare to display at that time.

Those of us who remember the early 90s know that as graphics improved and fighting games grabbed our generation's complete attention, on-screen deaths and decapitations trickled into arcades and even our living rooms. By 1992, one fighting game shaped its entire identity around its wanton bloodletting, offering players the chance to chop their opponents to pieces during each match. That game, Time Killers, never made headlines the way that Mortal Kombat did, but it did turn enough heads—or stomachs—to warrant a sequel in 1994. 30 years ago this month, Incredible Technologies brought us BloodStorm, a parody-defying arcade game that The Simpsons' writers would have dismissed as too much.

As sequels go, BloodStorm falls under the "spiritual" category, as no characters return from Time Killers. The time travel concept also gets cut in favor of a far-flung future setting where humanity has left all present-day nation states behind for tribal provinces. Before a player inserts a coin into BloodStorm, the attract mode shows the brutal assassination of Earth's emperor, stating that his death "brings chaos to a world already filled with tension and violence."

Said violence takes the form of a fighting tournament, naturally, one that pits representatives of each province against each other. Whereas Time Killers had different warriors wielding weapons that reflected their cultural and historical backgrounds—plus one alien just for fun—everyone in BloodStorm shows up to fight with a bespoke Gauntlet. Players can beat their opponents senseless with these bulky accessories, or throw them as a makeshift projectile.

Mortal Kombat allowed winners to execute their dazed, defeated opponents, but Time Killers made dismemberment a major gameplay feature. With every participant sporting sharp instruments of death, well-timed strikes could sever arms and even heads. BloodStorm expands upon that legacy with Sunder attacks that leave victims legless. Matches continue until one fighter loses all stamina, however, so a particularly ferocious round might crown a limbless winner à la the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Beyond this superficial sanguinary expansion, BloodStorm introduces new features that remain exceptional even today. In the solo arcade campaign, players gain new moves as they slay their computer opponents, kind of like Mega Man expands his arsenal after beating a boss. A rudimentary password system even enables players to save their progress and resume at a later date, although this only works on the specific machine where they begin their run and only if the operator leaves the power on.

Most fighting games had at least one hidden character by 1994, but BloodStorm makes the most of its roster with seven unique enemies lurking behind the curtain. The conditions to face these fighters run the gamut from simply completing one round without taking damage to elaborate setups such as knocking a stalactite into a pit mid-match and then jumping down to safety. Falling into said pit without proper preparation means instant death, regardless of your remaining health.

I wish I could label BloodStorm as a hidden gem, a niche title that failed to find an audience in the incredibly crowded fighting game landscape of the 90s. Yet even as an erstwhile fan of the flawed Time Killers, I simply cannot abide BloodStorm and its grim cynicism. First of all, lost in my above description of the game is its unrelenting ugliness. Every single character looks like a rejected Rob Liefeld sketch with impossible musculature, goofy outfits, and permanent sneers. The background art relies heavily on 3D renders that creates an uncanny air for every stage. With such freakish fighters and eerie landscapes, it's hard to believe BloodStorm takes place on our planet as opposed to Mojoworld.

Too many of the game's innovations undercut its own design. Previous weapons-based fighters such as Samurai Shodown had each participant's equipment reflect their personality. When one guy carries a sword and the other guy brings a Freddy Krueger glove, that communicates a lot to players about who these people are. Contrast that with BloodStorm's Gauntlets which vary in size and shape but don't actually offer any insight into their functions or users.

Inheriting new powers from downed opponents only adds to BloodStorm's blandness. Next to their appearance, the way that each character fights defines them in the eyes of the audience. Yet play a few rounds of BloodStorm and both sides will end up sharing a portion of the same moves. If everyone in Mortal Kombat could throw ice that freezes their opponent in place, why would anyone care about Sub-Zero?

My fondness for Time Killers had as much to do with the circumstances in which I first saw and played that game, but short of trapping me in a cave with no other options I can't envision a scenario where I might warm up to BloodStorm. Unlike Time Killers, BloodStorm never appeared on any home consoles and never got a sequel, spiritual or otherwise. Three decades from its launch, I can almost conceive of a hypothetical player who might champion its rough edges and splatter-for-splatter's-sake graphics. Yet amongst the few people online who discover or remember BloodStorm's existence, they tend to dismiss it as a flop.

Turning things back to The Simpsons, I'm not the only person who took one look at BloodStorm and pictured Bart or Milhouse running to the Noiseland Arcade to try it. In a 1994 blurb for Entertainment Weekly, critic Bob Strauss wrote "If The Simpsons ever did a parody of Mortal Kombat, the result might be BloodStorm, a brutal fighting game in which players cut each other’s arms off, launch cruise missiles at one another, and get impaled."

Sure enough, in a Christmas-themed episode one year later titled "Marge Be Not Proud," Bart gets caught shoplifting a copy of an ultra-violent video game called Bonestorm. Did the writers knowingly acknowledge a fighting game few people played, or did Incredible Technologies predict this future plot point? Either way, the company has found far greener pastures on virtual golf courses with its Golden Tee series of games; a thematic coincidence as Bart's concession prize in that episode is Lee Carvallo’s PUTTING CHALLENGE.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.