Google “Vandyke”. Click on images. What do you get? Facial hair! Why UPL chose to name this game Vandyke is anyone’s guess, but it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. That kind of fits though, since Vandyke itself makes no sense. Fortunately, Hamster Corporation has decided to add Vandyke to their Arcade Archives series so that an entirely new generation of gamers can be as confused by it as they will be by looking at clips of Boogie Wings from Data East (trust me on this one).
In Vandyke, you play a barbarian attacking everything that moves. It’s a bit odd since the villages he’s traipsing through look more medieval than anything else and are full of cavemen for some reason, but whatever. Then things get stranger. Nearly naked guys rolling around in weird bondage cages, giant green elephants with genies coming out of their trunks, and so on. You know, the stuff of LSD trips.
As you the progress through the game’s 7 stages, things are squirrely all over the place. Oddly flamboyant Wolverine knockoffs, strange treasure chests filled with giant bug jack-in-the-boxes, swarms of grey slimes with eyes that shoot huge bullets, a horde of toads, and a parade of wacky bosses that will leave you scratching your head if you dare to let go of your controller.
That’s the other thing about Vandyke. It’s hard as hell! Even credit-feeding, it’s a struggle to complete the wildly unfair levels. You progress vertically through stages, much like Ikari Warriors or other vertically oriented run-n-gun games, but in addition to the enemies massing you constantly, they often take quite a few hits or even parry your attacks! This leads to a lot of frustrated button mashing and more than a few continues.
On top of that, the weapons and powerups in the game are more than a bit of a crapshoot. You start out with a sword, but can upgrade to a fairly effective flail, a weird bladed boomerang that looks like a reject from Krull, or infinite bombs which are way less fun than they sound. However, you can’t just pick a weapon. You open a chest and a randomizer picks one for you, often not the one that’s most useful in your situation and occasionally one that makes the levels harder. You can also pick up additional strength and life, and you’ll need it. Without a strength boost, some of the later enemies in the game make mincemeat out of you before you can say ‘Where’s my shirt?’
Anyway, it’s a pain to upgrade in Vandyke and a pain to pick weapons. Die and your weapons are gone but the strength remains until you continue. On top of that, levels are so challenging that even with continues, you’ll barely make it to the next section of a level before you have to feed in another credit, making progress a tedious grind through long sections of challenging gameplay to make it to a continue point that isn’t actually show on screen. You just kind of hope for the best and prepare to play through again anyway. Perhaps some hardcore gamers could memorize all the button presses, patterns, and enemies in Vandyke, but honestly, why bother? It’s certainly a spectacle, but not one worth committing huge time to.
Eventually you’ll grind your way to the end of the game, a giant turtle with weird dragon heads. Kill it and you win. No complex story, no real satisfaction either. You’re not playing for the gameplay though, Chances are you’re only here for the nostalgia or the history lesson that Vandyke provides, namely that not all classic games were good!
At least you’re getting something good in the visual department. The sprites in Vandyke are excellent and unique and the bosses are weird and wonderful. Sadly the game is so hard that you barely have time to look at most enemies before you’ve dispatched them, limiting the amount of enjoyment you can derive from the interesting character designs. The sound on the other hand is more than a bit weak, repetitive chiptunes that do nothing more than irritate for the most part. There’s a lot of grunting too for some reason. I guess some people like a good grunt.
Once you’ve managed to beat Vandyke (or even if you don’t), there are a couple of other modes available. One is a high score mode that allows you to shoot for the highest score you can get on one credit. The other is a caravan mode that gives you a five minute timer to max out your score. Woot. Unfortunately, as with all Arcade Archives releases, there’s not much more here though. Sure, you can adjust the difficulty and some settings, but there’s no rewind feature, no modern modes, no extras at all. This is a bare bones release, which isn’t a huge surprise for anyone that’s been following Arcade Archives releases, but at the same time, it’s a bit disappointing for a game as gruelling as Vandyke. You don’t even get a facial hair mode. Sniff.
You’re not paying a lot for Vandyke at a whopping $8, but honestly, you’re not getting a lot either. It’s a tough game with some clever sprites and some terrible collision detection. The controls are moderately responsive but the game simply isn’t all that much fun. If you’re a fan of obscure ‘90s arcade action games, you might enjoy Vandyke. Modern gamers will probably loathe it though, as the entire game design revolves around pumping more quarters into the machine to get further in the level, an unbalanced structure intended to vacuum quarters out of teen pockets in the early ‘90s. If that’s not your thing, best move along here.
This review was based on a digital copy of Vandyke provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Vandyke is also available digitally for Playstation 4. All screenshots are from actual gameplay.