Cannon Spike

For years now I have been listening to old school gamers whine and moan about the state of games today. There's not enough representation of what made games so good back in the days of Power Gloves and Super Scopes. With Cannon Spike Capcom has given us old school game play, yet brought the game into the 21st century.

Cannon Spike's instant hook is it's use of well known characters. Charlie and Cammy from the Street Fighter series, Mega Man, and even Sir Arthur from Ghouls 'N Ghosts are all ready to take on ten levels of fairly easy arcade action.

Each of the levels has a certain Capcom these to it. One level looks an awful lot like Resident Evil, while the devil dogs attack you. Another level is in the middle of downtown and looks like it was picked out of any number of famous Street Fighter locales.

The thing is that each level lasts about three minutes, and the game is extremely easy to play. But you know, that's half the joy of the game. There is a lot more replay packed into this game than you'd think, thanks in large part to the extremely deep control.

Each button on the pad is used for a different technique, and each character (there are seven in all) acts totally different. For the Final Fight fans you can punch and kick your way through the on coming forces. However, for the action fans each character is equipped with several different shooting weapons. There is a fast but weak attack, a powerful but slow attack, and a limited use special attack As I mentioned the different characters have different attacks, all which are clever to say the least. Charlie's shot is the Sonic Boom, while Arthur's attack is his spear.

The game is fast paced to say the least, and oddly enough (perhaps to but back on animation) each character is one some sort of skates (or scooter). But like I hinted before the levels are short, and the game seems even shorter.

At first I was disappointed at how quickly I beat the game. But upon going back and beating the game with everybody, I realized that the game is more like the old school arcade games than I originally thought. It's easy to sit down and bust through without breaking a sweat, but no matter how many times I beat it, I never got tired of it's charm.

The game was also released as a budget title, so picking the game up new for half price makes this deal even better. A game like Cannon Spike isn't deep, but that's exactly what it excels at. It's an old school guilty pleasure if there ever was one. If you've been complaining that they don't make games like they used to then you owe it to yourself to buy Cannon Spike.