📖 Background Link to heading
Armed was a cancelled game for the Sega Saturn developed by Point-of-View and published by Interplay. Point-of-View was also the developer of terrible fighting game Criticom, also for the Saturn. The game made one appearance at E3 1996 and then disappeared until 2017, when a prototype was dumped online1.
Yeah, this is like a better Lester the Unlikely.
– Brossentia
🎮 Controls Link to heading
- D-pad: Move + Aim
- A: Shoot
- B: Use/Interact
- C: Jump
- X: Swap item
- Y:
- Z: Run (Can also be performed with a double-tap on the D-pad)
- L/R: Menu? And map view
🏁 Goal Link to heading
Get to the end of each stage. Most progression wins. Passwords allowed.
Details
Link to heading
Level 1 Link to heading
Standard keycard-and-door gameplay. Not too compelling, but not too hard either. If you activate the leftmost elevator before opening all the doors, you’ll probably be crushed.
Level 2 Link to heading
Once past the orange door, you’re over a lava pit with moving platforms.
- Head left across the pit to the ladder. Climb up use the monkey bars to reach the white button. This activates the risers.
- Get the yellow keycard across the left pit.
- Open the yellow door above the ladder and drop down to the right.
- Climb up the short ladder and press the white button. Use the bars to get to the blue keycard.
- Open the blue door to get the green keycard.
- Past the green door
Level 3: Link to heading
Players will need to travel across the top of the level to the right side, where they will find the crowbar and dynamite. The dynamite blows up walls. You can use it near the level entrance to clear out a wall which lets you grab the missile. Use that to blow up the wall on the ground floor. The crowbars are used to open the arrow-up panels.
Level 4: The Subway Link to heading
Collect tickets to open doors and use the hammer to break the glass on the emergency brake in each car. You can open ceiling ladders with your gun.
Level 5: Monkey World Link to heading
This level features ladder blocks that create a ladder when shot. There’s a hidden passageway that contains the yellow keydoor and blue collar key. What looks like a second red key door is actually activated by a gold collar key. Don’t even bother fighting the boss head-on, just cheese it with the ladder.
Level 6: Clown Land????? Link to heading
This one is a maze of vertical platforms where you have to collect all the tokens to unlock a platform. The clowns and rats fire plasma bolts at you that hit whether you’re standing or crouching. A good strat is to fire, then roll away and repeat. The clowns can also be blitzed down by standing directly under them. They’ll pull out their guns and fire repeatedly without walking, but their hitboxes will sit past your head.
Level 7: Sewers Link to heading
This is a door maze, in a sewer, with blind jumps. The robo-spiders don’t help, but at least they only hurt you when they’re attacking.
📝 Notes Link to heading
Here is a list of dumb ways to die:
- Falling from too high
- Getting crushed
- Letting go of a tall ladder, which will not let you re-climb
- Falling into a pit of lava because of a blind jump
- Getting shot from offscreen.
In level 3, you can blow up the Hollywoodland sign for no reason
🖊 Summary Link to heading
Ultimately, Armed isn’t the worst game ever made. It’s hardly the worst game on the Sega Saturn, or even from this particular developer. They made Criticom, for goodness’ sake. What is holding back this game is really polished, fluid controls and interesting level objectives. The music needs mixing and the graphics aren’t the best, but they aren’t inherently bad either. If this had come out, it would have been a decent game with sort of kludgy controls.
This has been super nice to chill and play.
– Also Brossentia