Baraduke (1985)

The mid 80s gaming world was one that was starved for inclusion. Most human protagonists of the era were young white males, even ones that were made in other countries. A game like Baraduke is interesting because it bucks the trend and makes the main character a woman, then ruins it by hiding her under body armor and not revealing her gender until the very end. Of course the character is called Kissy so maybe the twist should be pretty obvious. This plot point is similar to Metroid which was made a year later, but that’s really the only thing both games have in common. Metroid is more about exploration while Baraduke is pure action.

This is a game that I almost really like. I enjoy the setup. You are moving from room to room shooting specific monsters. The door opens when you defeat them all. The levels I have played through are all fairly small, so there is a lot going on in each one. This is actually the biggest problem with the game as a whole. It is almost all cheap hits. You only have two hit points to start out with, and there are unseen dangers everywhere. I usually get killed by an alien that I didn’t see or a bullet that was too big to dodge. It feels like dodging bullets is more an act of luck than anything else. Everything moves pretty slow, but the characters and projectiles take up so much space there is almost nowhere to hide. Not even the powerups are safe as about half of them have monsters that pop out and chase you. You should never have to run away from powerups. That’s just wrong.

(What Kissy is a woman? That was worth my whole roll of quarters!)

Still the game left an impression on me. It’s a good high score game because it doesn’t last too long and I always feel like I can do a little better. I just wish it was a little more fair. It’s less fun when I get killed by a deadly stalactite I can’t see. For my ranking it easily scoots into the third slot. It’s definitely more fun than Valkyrie and still a very playable game on Namco Museum Vol. 5. The Ironclad List of Correctness now looks like this:

1. Pac-Mania

2. Metro-Cross

3. Baraduke

4. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

Next time: I finish out Namco Museum Vol. 5 with a game you have maybe actually heard of.