April 10th, 2007 | Feature
The Game Center CX Episode Guide
The front-to-back tribute to the Japanese TV show that flies in the face of Nintendo's epilepsy warnings.

 

Game Center CX Season 2 – Back to Contents
#8
「プリンス オブ ペルシャ」をコンティニュー
"Prince of Persia" Continues

Chousen

After a recap of the last episode, we’re brought back to the conference room just as Arino prepares "Vol. 3" of his Prince of Persia attack. AD Sasano steps in and asks Arino how far he got last night. Arino says level 29. Sasano’s confused, but Arino really means he got to level 29 in Dragon Quest VIII. Wahey!

As for the Prince, Arino resumes the game at level 14. He finds a potion that he presumes restores health, but when he drinks it, the entire screen turns upside down! Arino has no idea what to do except turn himself upside down. However, that’s only comfortable for so long. Sasano steps back in and offers to turn the TV itself over. they lay the screen on its back and Arino tries playing while leaning over so he can see the set.

Unfortunately the controls are also reversed, so Arino turns the controller upside down. Eventually he dies, so he can start over in the right-side-up world. And after all that, he clears the level in seven minutes. In level 15, Jafar takes out the bridge, forcing Arino to backtrack. When he does, he’s faced with that ghostly clone again, and this time he has to fight it! He kills it, but it also kills him at the same time. Confused, he checks to see what the manual says. All he had to do was sheath his sword in the middle of the fight, and the ghost will return to the prince’s body.

But the bridge is still out… or is it? Arino tries to climb down below, but discovers there’s an invisible bridge! He creeps along it and exits the level, but with a time of almost 23 minutes. He decides to press on. Level 16’s boss is a caped knight that Arino fells in one try — five minutes, four seconds if you’re counting. Level 17 is trickier, as Arino must crawl under a swinging pole. And at the end is another boss, Ashura, who doesn’t use a sword, but leaps around and drops skulls on the prince’s head. Needless to say, the first try doesn’t go well, but Arino lucks out the second time.

Level 18 isn’t quite as lucky, though. Arino gets caught in a spiral of death, and it seems hopeless until Sasano finally enters and asks to give it a shot. He gets past Arino’s tough spot in one try, making Arino look more than a bit shamed. Arino reaches the end of the level and has to face another knight. But in the midst of the swordfight, Arino performs a reversal and sends the knight into the corner, which makes him "bounce" off the edge of the screen, letting Arino consistently strike him without fail and killing him within seconds. No one’s amazed more at the technique than Arino. Unfortunately level 18 ends in 22 minutes. Arino’s pushed forward despite a handful of double-digit clear times, so can he make it through the next two levels in time?

At the end of level 19, Arino must fight a succession of previous bosses. He manages to use the reversal technique on all of them, making quick work of everybody. But by the time he starts fighting the knight again, the 60-second timer starts ticking down. He beats the knight, but the prince falls down a trap door, and Arino dies on the way out. Not that it would have mattered either way.

Arino retries the level multiple times, but his past continues to haunt him; he simply doesn’t have enough time. He goes for another try and manages to get a good enough time, but dies in the same stupid way as the first. He mixed up the button — the staff just groans at him. Eventually, after 40 more minutes, he gets it down and clears the level in five minutes. But once he gets to level 20, he only has four minutes to finish.

The final battle begins! Jafar is certainly trickier than the other bosses, using magic projectiles and teleportation to throw Arino off. And yet, just as he gets the bad guy’s life down to one point, he regenerates and engages in a swordfight. The match is no longer even, but Arino tries his reversal technique. Unfortunately he dies in the middle of it all.

He goes through a handful more tries. The attempts keep racking up: 17, 21… on the 22nd try, he comes dangerously close to winning, but Jafar sneaks in a killing blow. Attempt 26 seems even more decisive. Just as Arino gets close enough to corner him, a touching flashback is shown of Arino’s resistance to give up. We switch back, and Arino lands the killing blow just as the four-minute warning appears!

Arino sits back for the ending. As Bon Jovi’s "Never Say Goodbye" plays, a montage of the entire challenge is shown. Three days and 23 hours later, the book is closed on Prince of Persia.

TamaGe

Mother Farm
In the first TamaGe segment, Arino heads to Mother Farm, a fairground in Futtsu with a variety of attractions, including, of course, an arcade. Arino tries looking for the game room on the huge map, but decides to walk the grounds instead.

He starts off by milking a cow and giving the nearby kids some pointers at it, then moving on to the "tripping cars," a variation of bumper cars. He and Sasano hop in and bump up against each other a few times. Arino then tries out the carnival games, but can’t throw worth a damn. He then goes to play in the "Ice World" attraction, borrowing a pair of glasses and frosting them up. But soon enough he finds the arcade and gets down to business.

The first video game he tries is Sega’s Title Fight, a boxing game that uses two hand levers as the gloves. Sasano joins in and hammers Arino twice. Soon after, Arino finds the Donkey Kong machine mentioned in the viewer’s letter, but it looks rather strange. That’s because it’s Crazy Kong, the infamous DK bootleg by the mysterious Kyohei. Arino tries it for a few minutes, but it’s just not the same. The segment ends with Arino on horseback.


G-Front
In part 2, Arino’s in Akihabara to visit G-Front, a game shop that deals exclusively in arcade game boards. Unfortunately some of their selection is quite expensive — Solomon’s Key runs almost 70,000 yen, and they sell a pristine Gradius kit for almost $3,000. Arino also learns about Capcom’s CPS2 system and its interchangeable boards, and even gets in a game of Astro Fighter (list price: 155,400 yen) and his favorite: Ghosts ‘N Goblins.


Game Collections: Sunsoft


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