Metal & Lace
Since its release, it's been a focus of praise and disgust. Nearly banned in Canada and target of hate mail, it's ruffled quite a few feathers. Why? We have no idea. All we know is it's a great fighting game! And a top seller in a major retail chain store. Here's the lowdown. You're a young and restless soul in a politically correct society. The only place where you can bash a few heads without being scorned is MeCha Island. It's a magnet for gamblers, drinkers, gorgeous women and most importantly, fighters. But this ain't no barbaric glorified bar brawl; there are rules. First and foremost, you MUST buy special Robo Armor in order to compete. Besides, you'd be turned into road kill if you weren't adequately protected. Purchasing power-ups and other goodies also comes in handy when battling the Robo Babes, the resident fighters of MeCha. Defeat them and go on to challenge the Ultimate Champions. Are you good enough to beat them? Find out and see.
The original version of this game was published by Forest as Ningyou Tsukai, which translates best as Puppet Master. I have not played this game and can say absolutely nothing about it. So let me just quote what the now defunct Database of Fighting Games had to say about it:
It's basically a poorly done hentai fighting game. You purchase a battlemech suit, equip it with special items, and fight women. After beating a woman's mech suit to pulp, she removes some of her clothing for you. After you have beaten your opponents enough times, they 'bare all'. I was very disappointed with this game. For one thing, the control is terrible. The characters have blocky movement and cheap special attacks. The sound effects are limited to cheap clicks and clangs, but I did enjoy the music. In-between fights, you can converse with the patrons of a local bar and/or shop for parts. The characters in the bar and the parts stores are very animated and some are quite funny. The in-between part of the game is about the only part I liked, to tell you the truth. Maybe MegaTech should've just made this game an RPG…
For the action part the game used the obscure mode Eh, 640×200, the same resolution as CGA hi-res, but with 16 colors. This mode enjoyed some popularity in Japan and China in the late 80s, probably because it allowed easy compatibility of the graphics with CGA and Hercules as well as MSX. Here it was probably used because it was faster than VGA hi-res but still offered a fairly high resolution.
1996 Forest published a sequel to the game, Ningyou Tsukai 2. There does not seem to be a translation of this game, at least not an official one.
