If you’ve ever wondered how I pick what games I’m going to cover, it’s not really much of a process. In the case of Rock’n Rage, I saw the scan of a flyer advertising it. I recognized the unique Konami font, and I wondered how a 1986 arcade game with a music motif would play.

As it turns out, it plays like any old game. It’s a bit like Gauntlet. It’s not anything special.

JUST INFATUATION

Sorry, that’s basically the whole review, but I’ll get a bit more descriptive. Rock’n Rage was released in Japan as Koi no Hot Rock, which translates to Hot Rock Infatuation or something similar. It’s essentially a Rock and Roll-themed, top-down, um, shoot-’em-up maybe. Let’s just go with “action game.”

It opens with a big, live rock show. Suddenly, a giant hand appears from a cloud and grabs the only woman on stage. I’m not sure if she’s the lead singer, because two people have mics. Like, she might just be a session musician who joined to do backing vocals for the tour. Regardless, she’s a damsel in distress now because that’s all women are good for.

The guitarist and other mic person both exclaim, “Oh! Sheena!” and then jump into the cloud in pursuit. “Where’s Sheena?” they ask as the level begins. It’s ancient Egypt, which is a pretty bogus place for musicians to be. Literally, you’re here to answer their question about the location of Sheena. I guess the disembodied hand is dragging her through time because you jump to different periods to find her. I don’t have any other insights into the time-traveling hand. Interestingly, Rock’n Rage was roughly three years before Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which also centered around time-traveling musicians.

CELEBRITY BLINDNESS

Player one takes the reigns of the guitarist, while player two has the singer. Hardcore Gaming 101 has more insight into them, saying that the guitarist appears to be a facsimile of John Oates (from Hall and Oates) while the vocalist resembles Rick Derringer. I’ll take their word for it since my brain isn’t really well-honed in recognizing celebrities. The duo attack with their instruments, smacking their foes with guitar and mic stand. There are notes that you pick up that allow you to fire projectiles in different configurations.

It’s fine, I guess. The levels have a lot of pointless areas to meander through as you look for the exit, but I got a decent feel for them before long. The enemies are predictable and a bit boring, and the bosses are… fine. Hit detection is… okay.

The music is interesting, as it’s almost entirely adaptations of popular songs. I would have assumed they were rip-offs because that’s just how video games rolled in those days, but the same Hardcore Gaming 101 article suggests that they were probably licensed. They didn’t strike me as particularly good adaptations. To me, they sounded like early Windows shovelware. So, like everything else, the music is unspectacular.

OH! SHEENA!

What grinds my gears is the fact that there’s no continuing. Even if you stuff the machine full of quarters, you start over every time both players die. Single-player? You’re out of luck. Your musician dies in a single hit, and the screen can get pretty busy with projectiles. It doesn’t really feel unfair very often (until the last boss, naturally), but it is hard to maintain forward momentum without faltering. 

I could only make it to the second stage. Afterward, I leaned pretty hard on save states to get me through to the end.

It was maybe worth it. As bland as it can be, the levels offer some variety. Beyond Egypt, there’s medieval England, France, Rome, and modern-day USA (it might be Japan in, er, Japan). They changes are not just visual, either, they often have small twists in their design that make them distinct. Some are more labyrinthine, and others are fairly linear. They offer new enemy types rather frequently that are exclusive to that time period. It sucks that you have to adapt to them immediately or suffer lighter pockets, but at least it’s not the same thing for the full runtime.

Weirdly, each time period seems to have an era-appropriate celebrity. Like, Napoleon in France. When you touch them, they give you a force field skill, but since you typically get it when you’re going into a boss battle, it’s not very useful.

Speaking of weird inclusions, there are big crystal balls scattered about, and when you touch them, an image of Sheena appears. It doesn’t really seem to do anything. I thought she might point the way to the exit, but that doesn’t seem like the case.

ROCK ENRAGE

The bosses are okay, but they don’t seem very polished. The hit detection is questionable with them, but there are no repeats across the five stages. The worst is the last boss called “Monster Kids” for some reason. He’s clearly there to make sure you don’t see the ending.

Surprisingly, it has never been ported, which is probably due entirely to the music. It’s probably a bad idea to re-license songs just to re-release a middling arcade game. I’m sure the soundtrack could be redone with original songs, but that’s a cost of its own. Still, it would have been neat to have a Famicom or PC-Engine port. It would be a good fit for the Super CD-ROM². Ah, well.

To its credit, Rock’n Rage has a visual quality to it where, if I saw it in an arcade, I’d probably try it out. Musicians fighting mummies isn’t something you see often, so it begs deeper investigation. But after you sit down with it, it turns out to be rather bland. Not horrible, but the lack of continues means that you’re more likely to feel the “rage” while wishing it was more “rock’n.”

5/10

This review was conducted using MAME and a ROM of the game. I double-dare Konami to re-release it officially.