Purge the level, Kid! 4/4

Here’s Space Griffon VF-9. It was what the locals call an RPG for the PlayStation back in the late 90’s. You had your character, Kid, and you took him through a spooky robot shooter/adventure on the moon. I know, it sounds awesome, right?

So back a few winters a friend of mine and I decided that we needed to get snowed in somewhere, not go to work, and play Space Griffon and WipeoutXL. As with the best of all well laid out plans we didn’t factor in the lack of money or food, so we went to his uncle’s house to take advantage of his out-of-the-state-ness. I know, you’re wondering how we could drive from house to house if it was snowy enough to keep us from work. I can’t give you an answer except that Toyata Tercels from 1980 were great at getting around in the snow, just not to your job.

Anywho, the game was an early PlayStation game complete with the odd long box the CD ROMS came in back then. Vaguely 3-D, it asked you to navigate the labyrinthine hallways of the moon base and kill the aliens. I was amazed that a moon base for people was built with 50 foot ceilings and thus not a problem for your transforming robot to navigate, but then what do I know about designing moon bases?

There was a story; I have long since forgotten most of it. I do remember that your buddies would sometimes show up as possessed aliens, though. One particular favorite of mine involved a teammate called “Rozzin” or something. I bet I got that wrong, but I don’t care enough to look it up.

Rozzin shows up – with clear signs of zombification and tentacles – and Kid is completely unaware that his friend never had tentacles before.

“Rozzin, what did you find?”

“Moooaawwwwrrrrrgh!”

“Rozzin, have you seen anything out of the ordinary?”

“Moooaawwwwrrrrrgh!”

Shakespeare it was not.

The game wasn’t all bad, I mean you got a little shooter action, your robot had 3 modes (2 good ones) and there was a story. Mind you the story was mostly this: Strange stuff happens, the team splits up, and you are left by yourself. Stuff happens.

Almost without fail, once you find ‘stuff’ you are told over the radio by your jerk boss to “purge the level, Kid!” Great. Make the new guy, who you have left COMPLETELY alone, kill all the monsters. Never mind that there are 3 other teammates to help, they are busy making out somewhere or getting tentacles added to their faces and can’t help you. You are on your own.

Did I mention that the robots had finite amounts of ammunition? Oh yeah. Even your lasers had capacitors or something. Hell, your ARMOR would wear off after enough combat. This led to an unfortunate end for us as we had just enough resources left for the final boss to take him ALMOST all the way down before having to resort to ramming our robot into it in the hopes that we might take him with us. It was not to be.

Heartbroken, we ditched the game somehow. Returned it or traded it, I don’t remember. Years later we picked it up for less than $5 and eagerly popped it into the PS2 to relive some of the level purging glory.

Somehow the game had lost its luster. It was like watching the old live action Spider-Man again. When you were a kid it was fantastic! Now it looks really awful. It was the same feeling for us.

I wonder what would have happened had we hung onto that game…