Lets face it sports are absolutely rubbish and useless. That’s why football players are always gang raping people out of boredom. Cricket has serious lag problems, Tennis features some of the worst voice acting I have ever heard, the draw distance on weightlifting is atrocious and (get ready for the joke) certain characters in gymnastics are hugely UNBALANCED!!!!!
Despite all this, local sports and leisure complex the Metrodome stands as a pinnacle of human endeavour (in Barnsley). As expected all the sports stuff in there - football courts, boxing castles etc are rubbish but the Metrodome also has several high points such as a wicked wave machine, a sort of anti gravity water slide, the Rigby Suite Carvery and best of all proper arcade machines. Arcade machines with joysticks and buttons that don’t cost £2 a go or require you to make use of a plastic guitar/gun/dance podium/horse. Although they did for a while have the wonderfully dangerous version of Super Hang On where the main challenge is not falling of a steam powered bike. Games were rotated on a fairly regular basis and included favourites such as The Punisher, The Avengers and the slightly disappointing Raiden II. (Disappointing as it didn’t feature a man in a cat basket hat flying across the screen shouting “Aramawoggi”) Burning brighter than all these though was a hidden classic, the undeservedly forgotten Metamorphic Force.
Like all arcade games in the early 90’s Metamorphic force was a scrolling beat em’up, however it had an amazing twist in that it also ripped off the ‘turning into animals’ mechanic of Altered Beast. The trick being that Altered Beast was essentially and unplayable mess with funny voice acting and confusing sexual undertones whereas Metamoprhic Force was not only brilliant fats paced and colourful but featured sprites the size of a babies head. What I gleaned of the plot from the arcade attract screen was that some huge ethereal woman in a toga had chucked four guys with animal transformation powers down onto the world in order to do in a load of bipedal animals. I would guess that these animal men were the bad guys as they were mostly baddie animals i.e Frogs/Lizards/Goats they also employed baddie weaponry such as Tridents, Curvy Swords, axes and shields with pictures of skellingtons on them.
You had a choice of four men with which to force these animals into extinction.
They were –
Ivan
A huge moustachioed Russian guy who fought with a log and appeared to have based his fighting style on the bit in chucklevison where old chuckle would swing round with a beam and smack younger chuckle in the face. “Oh dear Oh Dear brother Barry, looks like another trip to the hospital. What do you tell the doctors?” “I walked into a door brother Paul, I’m sorry for being so clumsy” “That’s right brother Barry because you don’t want to split up the family do you? What would mother think!?” Upon collecting a golden statue more than slightly reminiscent of an Oscar Ivan would transform into a bear man and the phrase “BEAST” would emanate from the Arcade machine at ear destroying volume. Needless to say as an impressionable youth I had hours of fun yelling “BEAST!” at people and then cursing my inability to assume an animal form and fight back as they kicked me in the shins.
Max
A mysterious character that turned into a black panther and campaigned for racial equality in extreme ways. No one ever picked him due to Panthers being such a rubbish animal, but I believe his fighting method was “bear knuckles” a wise choice against a heavily armed chameleon.
Ban
Ban, Ban, Ban is a kung fu man. He is also the most boring and generic character – reminding everyone of Axel from Streets of Rage or Cody from Final Fight. Upon attainting beast status he turns into an Ox – the dullest of all animals. In my eyes he should have been ban(ned) from the game.
Claude
Calude is an effeminate French swordfighter and also the best character in the game, if not the best character in any game. He noodles around the battlefield in jodhpurs and a frilly shirt showing off his long blonde hair and occasionally stabbing a toad in a loin cloth. Upon achieving the coveted beast form Claude would become a metrosexual wolf with impeccable finger nails. The best thing about Claude though was that if you left his standing still for a bit his idle animation consisted of him flicking and fluffing up his perfect hair. I still hope to one day see Claude become the spokesman/wolf for herbal essences.
Special mention also has to go to the bonus item drop character who looked like one of those sinister Mickey Mouse toys they have in foreign grabber machines. Mostly under names such as “Michael the Disney style rodent friend” or “Uncle Walt’s Lunar Rat”. This mouseman would scurry along the screen with a swag bag of bonus statues which he would be forced to drop when you gave him the beating he so richly deserved. At first you feel a bit sorry for poor messenger mouseman as he has been cursed to be bottom of the animal/man hybrid foodchain. However he just keeps coming back with more statues so we can only conclude that he was a rich pervert who didn’t mind losing a few of his gold statues so long as you would hurt him like the bitch he was.
Overall this game featured graphics, sounds, music, an impossible goat boss at the end of the first level who rather prophetically stated “You will never beat me”, and an impossibly cool French Werewolf. Therefore I would give it Claude Greengrass out of Jean Claude Van Damme.
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