[footsteps, computer fans whirring]
-Christmaaas.
-So he’s just sitting there? -Christmas!
-You gave him the photos, right? -Christmas!
-You know what needs to be done. -Christmaass!
-What needs to be done will be done. [inane chuckling]
["Carols of the Bells" plays]
Greetings and it’s still December, so Christmas LGR continues!
This week we’ve got a slightly newer game than usual: Hyper Princess Pitch, released
in 2011 by Swedish game maker Daniel Remar under the moniker Remar Games.
And if the name Remar rings a bell for you then I would not be surprised, seeing as he’s
one of those “serial game devs” that’s constantly bouncing from one project to the next.
Whether it’s collaborating with folks at Ludosity on games like Ittle Dew, Slap City,
or personal favorite, Muri.
Or putting together his own games for game jams or just because,
like Iji, Princess Remedy, and Garden Gnome Carnage.
That last one is of particular interest, originally being released in 2007 as a downloadable game
for Windows, then becoming an online Flash game and making it onto the Xbox Live Indie
Games storefront for the Xbox 360 in 2010.
Garden Gnome Carnage itself was a potential topic this month, seeing as it’s a Christmas
game in its own right, where you play a bungee gnome hurling both bricks and himself at legions
of elves and Santas in an attempt to stop them from gathering presents.
And it introduced the character of Princess Pitch: a blond-haired lady of royalty in a pink gown.
She bears a passing resemblance to Princess Peach of course, but her voice has been pitched
higher by about 10%, hence: Princess Pitch.
In the 2010 version of Garden Gnome Carnage she pops up every so often to hand out deadly
explosives, and is even briefly playable in a platforming mini-game where you have to
guide her through rooms filled with gold and smashy ceiling things.
But as enjoyable as Garden Gnome Carnage is as a Flash game time-waster, it’s the spin-off
game, Hyper Princess Pitch, that thoroughly grabbed my attention.
[explosions, machine gun firing]
-Yeah! [preposterous explosion]
[Princess Pitch menu theme plays]
Now that is an intro!
One that harkens back to classic ‘90s action games, namely Midnight Synergy’s Operation:
Carnage for MS-DOS from 1996.
[BOOM, CLANG, EXPLOSIONS]
[EXCESSIVE BOOMING]
In fact, Mr. Remar himself described Hyper Princess Pitch as “a remake of Operation:
Carnage,” with all the “fast-paced arcade action, short completion time, high replay
value, and cheesy characters.”
Now, Operation: Carnage was itself a remake, or at least a loving tribute, to the Williams
arcade classic, Smash TV.
And seeing as that is one of my favorite twin-stick shooters, it should be clear why I was more
excited by Hyper Princess Pitch than its gnome-filled predecessor.
Enough with the preamble though, let’s get hyper!
After choosing a difficulty level from a selection of five, with an additional one hidden away,
Princess Pitch tells the full story so far.
With that deep lore taken care of, you’re dropped into a snowy scene without enemies
so you can come to terms with the controls.
Up, down, left, right, fire, and change weapons, that’s it.
Note that there are no controls for aiming, and after heading inside it becomes apparent
that in that respect this really is an Operation: Carnage remake.
There are four main stages to complete, with each one split up into a dozen or more rooms.
Upon entering, baddies start streaming in from just outside, sometimes one at a time,
sometimes in massive groups and clusters.
It’s your goal to shoot anything that moves, pick up bonus items for points, and grab as
many power-ups as you can.
Your basic attack consists of throwing bricks, a la Garden Gnome Carnage,
and fires rapidly with infinite ammo.
But you also have two weapons with depleting ammunition: an ice thrower that has a limited
range but destroys smaller projectiles, and a rainbow laser that’s slower to fire but
bounces off walls and packs more of a punch.
Weapons can all be temporarily upgraded by picking up lettered tokens, granting you fleeting
access to things like triple barreled firing, massively upgraded firepower,
shields that rotate around you and fire bricks, and hyper pickups
that can deal ridiculous damage in short bursts.
There’s also the Catstrike that calls in a carpet bomb attack across the middle of
the current room, and the Bowbomb that sets off a circular explosion of rainbow lasers
from the princess.
Once a room is clear of enemies, one or more exit doors will open up, providing access
to the next room where it begins all over again until you reach the end.
Despite appearances though, this is not a twin stick shooter like Smash TV.
Instead, again it’s just like Operation: Carnage, being one of those top-down shooters
where you move in eight directions, and once you start firing you’re locked onto that
direction until you let go of the trigger.
Many home versions of twin stick arcade games did this back in the day, since players often
only had a keyboard or a single joystick or gamepad.
But seeing as Princess Pitch came out in 2011, I assume this is a purposely-chosen limitation,
implemented in the name of faithfulness to the source material.
The developer could’ve easily allowed aiming using either the mouse or the second analog
stick on a controller, but nope!
This is an Operation: Carnage remake dang it,
so it’s gotta have 8-way aiming and locked strafing mechanics.
Not to mention that chunky pixel art aesthetic, a 4:3 aspect ratio in lieu of widescreen,
and a soundtrack made up entirely of tracker tunes.
I dig all of those choices by the way, but the music especially.
Hyper Princess Pitch includes an impressive allotment of C64-inspired tracks composed
by Niklas Ström, who releases music as Salkinitzor.
Despite that chiptune sound though, they’re all sample-based XM files made using Milkytracker,
and are thus playable in the mod player of your choosing.
[Princess Pitch menu music plays]
It's more than an intentionally retro presentation though,
Princess Pitch does not hold back on the on-screen action.
Unlike Operation: Carnage, here there are no mid-90s DOS PC restrictions, opening up
the floodgates for pixelized mayhem to flow more freely.
Mecha elves, deadly ornaments, toy trains, armored sleighs, four-legged walkers, plasma
turrets and more can all come together at once to completely ruin your run in no time.
None of them are particularly deadly on their own, but the sheer number of them bombarding
you, each with their own unique attacks?
Yeah, it’s gonna take a couple tries to make it to the end in one piece.
And that’s without the involvement of the dozen or so mini-bosses, many of which have
several times the hitpoints of the strongest normal adversary,
along with even more deadly attack patterns.
You can avoid a good number of these by simply skipping the rooms they live in, but you’ll
also be giving up thousands of points you’d earn for defeating them too,
so y’know, priorities.
No matter what though, there’s no skipping the end-stage bosses, of which there are four:
Ultra Sleigh, Atomic Elf, Steam Annihilator, and of course, Mecha Santa, the cyborg Saint
Nick that kicked off this whole ordeal in the first place.
And he is seemingly content to cycle a few clearly telegraphed attacks while shouting
references to Skies of Arcadia, Karate Kid, Gurren Lagann, and TMNT.
-Legendary Charge!
-Wax On, Wax Off!
-Giga Bomb Breaker!
-Cowabunga!
Once Santa’s sufficiently ‘sploded, a robotic arm reaches down offering the princess
a gift, seemingly making her second guess her actions
as she flies away on her rocket-propelled cat.
Naturally though, this feeling of regret is momentary, because that gift
[explosion, blink] ...was not a gift at all.
Looney Tunes-esque presents will not stand man, so the princess flies right on back to
piledrive Santa into oblivion once and for all.
[KABOOOM] -Awesome.
And with that, Christmas is saved!
By which I mean “ruined,” as intended.
Yeah I gotta say, I didn’t have nearly as much trouble taking out all the bosses as
I did surviving some of those overwhelming swarms of seasonal psychos earlier on.
Sure the bosses boast a whole lotta health, but their predictable patterns are a cinch
to deal with compared to rooms filled with
seemingly endless elves and razor blade tops flying all over the place.
Er, well, then you play on higher difficulties and never mind,
these bosses are ridiculous, forget what I said!
This crap is hard.
Not impossible, but hard enough to ensure your doom in a split second of transient inattention.
Thankfully, Princess Pitch still boasts a few additional moves to help level the playing field.
At any given time, you can press Up+Down+Left+Right to perform a piledriver when next to an enemy,
which takes them flying into the air and crashing down on their head in an explosion that’ll
damage anything nearby.
It also doubles as a counter-attack against projectiles, acting as your one and only defensive
move, however short-lived it may be.
These moves can be tricky to use effectively in the heat of battle, but there really is
nothing quite like a nicely-timed Christmas piledriver to lift the holiday spirits.
Then there’s the ability to summon Pitch’s mother, the Goddess of Explosions.
You can only do this once per playthrough, but she is fantastically deadly, taking out
every enemy on-screen or half of a boss’s health.
You can also smash those purple X’s on the ground to uncover more power-ups, or annihilate
skittish gift-wrapped presents to reveal even more goodies before they hop away.
And finally, there’s also a chance to gain some additional points and a different ending
by countering this boss’s giant rainbow attack.
This brings about a fifth stage, Stage X.
There’s no boss or miniboss here, but completing the area does unlock the Galactic Princess
Buster to use at the end of the game, something I won’t spoil here but suffice to say it
is as awesome as it sounds.
And that is Hyper Princess Pitch!
One of the more enjoyable Christmas games I’ve played since...
well since the last one I played, I guess.
Whatever, it’s good stuff and it caught me off-guard with how much I enjoyed getting
my butt handed to me, and replaying it until I got decent enough to unlock the next set
of moves, maps, and power-ups.
I admit I was initially turned off once I discovered it was a twin stick shooter without
the twin sticks, but props to Remar Games for putting things together with such skill
that it still exudes excellence despite the arbitrary limitation on controls.
If only all freeware Christmas games were this well done.
-Evil will never triumph!
[game over sound]
[Princess Pitch music plays]
Well, this month of Christmas LGR was shorter than I’d planned
but I hope that you enjoyed regardless!
There’s still one more video for 2019 if all goes well, so stay tuned for that if you so desire.
As always, thank you very much for watching, and Merry Christmas folks!