Arcade Archives Typhoon Gal

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Alternating (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Typhoon Gal is a Fighting Game that plays a bit like a Pro Wrestling game, released in 1985 in Japanese arcades. This modern release sees the game coming to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2021.

Typhoon Gal has players moving around a mat in all directions as they take on multiple combatants in a row in various dojos. The game has a “grab” and “throw” button, each used in combination with different directional inputs for different moves, with “grab” attacks being a misnomer as they tend to be strikes like punches and kicks, and these are used to weaken opponents before finishing them off with a “grab” move.

This is kinda’ a confusing control setup, but even once you get the hang of it, it doesn’t work consistently. The “throw” button also confusingly has your player jumping with the same inputs, and not every directional input seems to be registered properly. Add to this an extreme difficulty spike whenever you face off against the leader of a dojo, and this becomes a very difficult game to get into.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

Overall, I think Typhoon Gal is an interesting early attempt at representing strategic martial arts combat in a videogame, but the controls just aren’t up to the task, and the huge difficulty spikes make things even worse. The result is a game I cannot recommend.

tl;dr – Typhoon Gal is a Fighting Game with elements of Pro Wrestling games, and while there are some interesting gameplay mechanics at work here, the controls are far too unreliable, and the huge difficulty spike when you face off against the head of a dojo is far too steep. All this makes for a game I simply cannot recommend.

Grade: D+

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