I figure I can make one more article from relatively short game. So, let’s take a look at Unique Development Studio’s Asterix - Mega Madness (2001) on Playstation 1.
The title screen is simplistic. It also serves as character select screen once I hit new game which is dubbed as Mega Madness! Send me straight to the mega madness! I don’t need practice because I’m experienced player. I played the game when I still had real PS 1. But that was -like- 24 years ago. I may be rusty for replay this game. But before we get into the game, I want to show you the unique language select screen…
The game default selection is on English. In other game, language selection only represented with flag and they call it a day. But for this game, the boar will show the selected country stereotype. For example: English boar will have tea time immediately after falling from above.
My personal character is Germanic boar who wear lederhosen, dancing a bit and shout “Yoleihuu!”.
Probably the most significant one is the Italian boar who acts as opera singer (Pigvarotti, if you will) and break your screen with his loud sing. The other one is Netherland boar that eats Tulip flower, Spanish boar that acts like bull complete with “Moo!” sound, lastly French boar eats fly like frog for some reason. These boars represent their country language is quite impressive although boars in Asterix comic don’t play important role, except as game animal or scrumptious looking food. But they’re fairly iconic. By the way, I’m very familiar with Asterix comic. I have several books of it inside cabinet in my house. If you are not familiar with the comic. I tell you the run-down of it: In 50 BC, Roman led by Julius Caesar conquer all Gallia (which is French in old time) except one village where Asterix dwells. This village refuses to be under Roman’s rule because those Gaul have magic potion which gives them super power. That’s why they keep resisting Roman’s occupation. The comics fill with names with pun (for example: Cacofonix the bard) and some parody from real life characters (for example: The Beatles is in the Asterix goes to Brittain episode). Also flying romans that getting uppercut by Asterix and his friends. Be warned that I like to talk wide and long about Asterix comic in this occasion.
Move on to the story of the game. As per usual, Unhygienix the fish peddler (on the left) starts a fight with Fulliautomatix the blacksmith. Presumably because of smelly fish that Unhygienix sold like usual.
Soon Vitalstatix the village chief stops the fight and announce who will be the best, the bravest and the strongest Gaul from a big contest. One of the games in the big contest is finding ingredients for the magic potion.
Everyone gathers around for the big contest, including Cacofonix the bard. He got blue eye from hammer thrown by Fulliautomatix, because he tries to sing. One noticeable note abot Cacofonix: you don’t want to hear him singing. Doomsday will surely happen if he, Takeshi Goda (A.K.A: Giant) from Doraemon, Squidward Tentacle, and Harmony Smurf form a band and perform a (catastrophic) music concert.
Anyway, those persons on the most front of the crowd are the only contestants. Not even Unhygienix and Fulliautomatix which is irony because their quarrel is the trigger behind the contest’s idea. So, the only playable characters are Asterix, Obelix, Mrs. Geriatrix and Cacofonix. Asterix and Obelix are the main antagonist in the comic so their inclusion is unquestionable. Cacofonix, sure. He’s the iconic joke character. However, Mrs. Geriatrix though. Why? Is it because they need to include 1 pretty female character in sport contest like Numan Athletic? I think Falbala is more iconic however she doesn’t stay long in village because she follows her boyfriend Checker in Lutetia (which is Paris in present). If you wonder how Mr. Geriatrix looks like: he’s the old man with walking stick in previous screenshot. You hear me well. That old guy is the husband of this “hot” housewife. He’s even the oldest man in the village, like he’s 90-ish years old. That’s probably the joke that the oldest man in the village has a wife that approximately thrice younger than he is. Just don’t imagine their marital “activity”. It’s most likely not fun to think about it.
So, what’s the contest all about. I have spoiled it a bit a mere moment ago. It’s sport events mini games! Though, Mega Madness probably has more sensible backstory than Numan Athletic which is superheroes participate in sport events for the sake of pure championship. Besides, I’m very familiar with Asterix comic. Anyway, the first event is shooting with ballista. I believe the closest thing to artillery that the Gauls have is Obelix throwing boulder or menhir. So, I don’t think they had ballista before this sport event.
The control is simple enough: D-pad or analog to aim the ballista. Square button to shoot. Cross button to reload or to be more precise refresh your ballista ammo back to 8. To win the course, you have to hit score higher than the other contestants which have been preset, within allotted time. Keep your eyes on the rival’s projectile that making loud shrilling sound and has white aura around. This projectile will hit you so you have to hit it before it hits you. If the incoming projectile is not in the current screen, there will be red arrow indicator on either left or right side of the screen. The incoming projectile aspect is probably familiar if you play lightgun game. To hit incoming projectile more accurately, you should aim slightly lower than your target because of projectile trajectory. Also note that aim control in vertical direction is inverted. So, if you want to aim higher, you press down on D-pad and vice versa.
To earn score you have to shoot everything. I mean literally everything: seagulls, roman soldiers, and projectiles that the other contestants shoot. The latest doesn’t give you much score if you shoot it but it saves you from being incapacitated for a while.
There are 2 kinds of Roman in this sport event: 1) The usual (yet not historically accurate) shielded turtle formation along with siege tower which appear on right side of the map. 2) Roman ships that appear on left side of the map. Definitely, they take wrong sea route on the wrong time too. It’s probably as worse as taking route with Scylla and Charybdis on it. As for the roman infantry and the siege tower, they’re completely idiotic. First, they should know about the infamous story of the indomitable Gaul’s village yet they try to attack the village. Second, don’t they have scout ahead to tell them the Gauls have stationed 4 siege ballista and it will be very unwise to go pass between them thus they become extra target for their sport event.
The sport event is pretty easy. Keep shooting and reloading, you will be in in #1 place with no problem. There’s top score for every sport event. If your score reaches more than 2,000 points, you will be surely in #1 on top score. Naturally, you get to put your initial name in the top score list. Everytime you highlight a letter, the announcer will shout your character name. For letter “A” the pronouncement is normal. But the octave getting lower as you highlight letter or symbol bellow “A” and lastly when you highlight ”Enter” symbol, it makes squeaking sound like someone just inhale helium gas for 15 minutes and then talk. This strangeness may catch you surprised or make you burst in laughter.
Next sport event is Recipe Run. We have to pick some ingredient for the magic potion, remember? This event probably the most important. Also, you see that fake tree? It’s roman soldier in disguise as dead tree. You will see him a lot in this course.
See? There’s one roman in disguise. You can beat him for extra score. However, I punch Mrs. Geriatrix instead because I can. In my defense, there’s no rule about not punching other contestants and Obelix punched me at the start of the game. So, it’s fair to punch each other here. You punch other contestants to make them stunned for awhile and drop ingredient that they collected and you can steal it! Do note that, each contestant has different ingredient list as you can see on the left side of the screen. If other contestants have ingredient in your list, there’s the transparent face picture on your ingredient list so you can search for them and steal the ingredient from them.
The minimap is very useful. Blinking dot is the ingredient that you need to collect. Blue arrow represents Asterix. Green arrow represents Obelix. Red arrow represents Mrs. Geriatrix. Purple arrow represents Cacofonix. At the center of the map is the cauldron of magic potion. I suggest you take the ingredient to the cauldron as fast as possible before other contestants steal it from you.
Thankfully, there’s aura around the ingredients that you need to collect so you can search them more easily. The leaf, herb, and flower usually spawn randomly around the part of forest. While lobster can only be found in this watery part and fish can only be found jumping on the river bridge. I like to point out the accuracy of ingredient from the comic. Lobster is not essential ingredient, Getafix put it into the brew only to make the magic potion tastes better. Fish is pretty essential. The most important ingredient for magic potion is…I’m not sure what it’s called. Through rough translation from Google, it’s called Mistletoe leaves. But unlike in this game where you can just pick it, in the comic the mistletoes leaves must be cut with golden sickle. What ingredient that’s not in the game is black gold (A.K.A oil) but later Getafix replace it with turnip juice and the magic potion taste better than using oil.
Roman soldier is barely dangerous. I mean look at that bloke over there. He flails his arm like stupid civilians in any lightgun shooter game. What makes me baffled is: if you punch away roman soldier (or his stupid dead tree disguise), he drops magic potion! Demoman_sf12_badmagic10.wav
However, you should watch out for the boars because they can stun you and make you drop ingredients that you collect, unlike those coward romans. You can try punch these wild hogs but keep in mind that your punch has fairly minuscule range.
When there’s first Gaul that gets all the ingredients into the cauldron, the game is over and that person will most likely become the winner. You get extra score from remaining time.
Next sport event is Food Feast. Although I’m not sure to call it sport event. I mean sure, it requires you to use the muscle of your mouth but it adds calorie and fat into your body which is unsport like. I recognize this picture. It’s taken from “Asterix in Belgium”. Dogmatix part is edited, I’m sure of it. There are sad and happy note in “Asterix in Belgium” comic. The sad note is René Gosciny passed away around the comic was being made. There’s heavy rain scene in the comic which symbolizes Albert Uderzo mourns the death of his working partner: René Gosciny. As for the happy note, there’s crossover cameo of Thompson and Thomson in that comic because Hergé the creator of Tintin comic is Belgian.
The Food Feast has rhythm element, kind of thing where you need to press d-pad button correctly to eat the food swiftly. But during the fast eating, you can’t defend against stealing enemy who is in the same table. In my case, Cacofonix is the guy who share the same table as me. As long as his mouth use to eat and not to sing, I’m fine. Of course, the "superstar" of the feast is the: roasted boar which yield 500 score points and it’s the biggest score you can get on a food. I remember the direction output for it: down, right, down, the. right.
Obelix tries to steal sweet roll from Mrs. Geriatrix. The thing about the steal is: you can only steal food on the second most front place of the rival’s and it will replace your most front food when successful. To maximize the score points, you should steal enemy’s food when your current food either doesn’t net lot of score or expired. You hear it right. There’s expired food in this feast which is very unacceptable but refrigerator is not invented yet. I think only rich roman people who have ice box. Where do they get the ice? Those rich peoples ask their slave to get ice from high mountain. Obelix is right. Those romans are crazy. Anyway, the game doesn’t tell you that there’s expired food. It’s marked with green unhealthy odor along with flies. You don’t get any score by eating it. That’s why I throw away this expired roasted boar.
Heavy_jeers05.wav. I didn’t expect to be beaten by Cacofonix in Food Feast! I swear I was so professional back in the day. I probably lose because they gave me lots of expired food or food that yields small score. The foods spawn randomly. I should steal Cacofonix food but I usually don’t want to resort to steal food. Foods that give big score. They're usually something meaty like roasted boar, sausage or pork chop. Fish only worth 75 score points because Unhygienix gives bad mark on food fish among the Gauls. As for food that gives small score. They're drinks, chicken drumstick, and desserts. Apple gives the least score: 50 points. Probably because they like doctor so they don't like apple that much. As the saying goes "An apple a day keeps doctor away"
Although I’m in 3rd position
on Food Feast, my total score is number 1 for current sport events. So, I
unlock the second day of the sport events! As you can see that the one of the
new sport events can be played in Team mode which is basically co-op game with
2nd player. Food feast can also be played in Team mode where you can steal your
teammate’s food to maximize score gathering or make it faster.
Because we ate all of the roasted boar. We need to hunt for more boars and Chief Vitalstatix make it one of the sport events for today. I don’t remember from which comic is this drawing but I remember the story of it. So Asterix and Obelix hunt boar as usual then they meet with these 2 boars. The gray boar has an idea to lead the protagonists into roman’s patrol and they immediately distracted by those poor romans. Not sure why they more prioritize those roman soldiers than the boars. Roman soldiers are not edible but the smart boar’s plan work as intended.
This sport course is kind of similar with Recipe Run but more emphasized on punching wild boars as many as you can within allotted time. My only tips: don’t stop moving and punch those wild boars! Some of them will run toward you instead of running away, so be careful. Dogmatix also in the forest and I just remember that I can punch him. But your score will be deduced by 50 points so don’t do that.
Like in Recipe Run, you can find magic potion power up. I don’t think this magic potion is the main thing because Obelix can drink it without any problem. In the comic, Obelix will turn into stone if he drinks the magic potion and later become small kid. Obelix drowned into cauldron of magic potion back when he was baby which gives him permanent effect of magic potion. This is why Getafix forbid Obelix to drink the magic potion. Anyway, this magic potion which I assume supplement ones and not the main one, come into 2 canteen color: red and blue. Red potion gives you invincibility so you can punch anyone without worry being hit yourself. Blue potion gives you increased movement speed so you can outrun those boars more easily. Or you get hit by them faster.
Next event is shield chase. Chief Vitalstatix wants to get new shield bearer because the previous ones on strike for no real reason. Apparently, the new shield bearer is selected with racing.
I don’t sugarcoat this. This event is probably the first one that is not walk in the park. You have to pay attention really close for this one. It’s racing game and you have to compete to be in first position, sure. However, there’s unusual yet logical twist. Everytime you take turn, your passenger will suffer centrifugal force so you have to balance them by tapping either square or circle button. If the passenger out of balance, you will lose unnecessary time and speed.
The red potion is very useful here because it gives your passenger invincibility to imbalance temporarily. Sure, blue potion which increase your speed is, naturally important in racing game. However, your passenger will be more likely to fall off when you move in faster speed. Still, red potion is the most important power up for this sport event. To get more extra score, you can grab some money bag during the course. Also, I notice that one of frightened chicken drop an egg that you can grab for extra score.
Surprisingly, I did very well even though I didn’t play this game for ages. My tips: you can preemptively press the balance button before turn and you can press it more frequently if you are in the turn. Press circle button when you turn left and vice versa. You have to be ready to jump obstacle logs and wild boars (that presumably the relative of those boars you hunted in previous sport event). Pick shortcut route whenever you can. But most importantly, pick the red potion at all cost!
Next sport event is camp crashing. I remember this one. It’s fun. You can see Cacofonix have destroyed this roman camp which is ironic because he’s one of the most pacifist character in the comic, besides Getafix. Or maybe he destroyed the camp not with senseless pugilism like the barbaric Gauls, but with his singing. He’s (awful) bard afterall.
I like that roman soldier doesn’t notice Asterix and even more stand out Vitalstatix along with his shield bearers. He keeps patrolling the gate left and right. He has poor sight of enemy in any stealth games.
Much like Shoot & Score, you have to surpass preset scores to win this sport event. As mentioned by the tutorial, you can pick anything as weapon to inflict more damage. Like this spear that I grabbed from that stupid guard in previous moment. The gameplay pretty much beat em up but the main objective is to destroy everything in this encampment: box, camp, and chest. Beating up romans just for extra score. If you destroy camp, it leaves a stick (which was presumably pillar support of the camp) that you can use as weapon.
The legionaries are pretty much weak coward that you can punch them away in an instant. But some of the romans do fight back. Like the tower behind Asterix. It throws barrel at our hero and it works quite well. Sometime, I wonder how these indomitable Gauls fare against archer because I barely see that happen in the comic. But this barrel-throwing tower can put up a fight against our Gaul hero, but only slightly as the thrown barrel only make him stunned temporarily and waste the precious time slightly. Then there’s this roman sergeant who’s brave enough to take up gladius and fight back. Probably sergeant rank wasn’t in Roman soldier rank at that time. The rank should be called Decanus, I think?
Between each segment of camp there’s inner gate that’s guarded by legionnaire that -once again- throw barrel at you from height. Obi Wan Kenobi being in high ground makes more sense if he has barrels to throw at Anakin like this roman soldier or Donkey Kong. Asterix can’t deal with this enemy directly. However, once he breaks the gate he can break these support pillars. Once he destroys them all, the platform crumbles along with the barrel-throwing git.
And you can use him as armored flesh club to beat his Centurion. The Centurion is tougher than the Decanus. “Hit and run” tactic should do the trick against him. For some reason these 2 chests can’t be destroyed. They can only be open with keys that the Centurion held. Do note that: opening chests also add tally in the destruction ratio on top left corner. So, you must break/open all the chest to win the event. Like in Recipe Run, the minimap is pretty useful. It marks enemies, destroyable object, and weapon items (including this roman git).
We move on to 3rd day of the competition. Obelix brought back a siege catapult from daily boar hunt. Vitalstatix have an idea to utilize it for the competition. Fulliautomatix and Unhygienix gladly do some test run on the siege machine. I like they cast aside their dispute to deal with bigger threat: singing Cacofonix.
They use catapult right at the beginning of the day! They use it for Catapult Chase. I don’t know why the game keep using “Chase” word when “Race” is more accurate term. I remember this Catapult Race and it’s a hard one. If you think the shield race is difficult, catapult race is even more difficult and aggravating. We shall see why.
Right of the bat, Obelix takes the lead! But I will try to outrun him after I shoot Cacofonix. Here’s how this race works: There are random objects on the ground of the course, that you can pick up. For example: stone, barrel, hay bale, and even broken part of catapult. Once you pick it up, you can either use it to load your catapult and later shoot it by pressing square button twice, or throw it backward to attack other racer in the back by pressing cross button. Once you load it to catapult, you can’t use throw it backward. But you can have 1 object on the catapult and another on your hand either for reserve ammo or dealing other racers on your trail. The backward throw doesn’t have much range whereas catapult shoot has more significant range.
Mrs. Geriatrix just shot me from the back now she’s 2nd place. I think she still angry at me when I punched her in forest way back then. In the end, I can only get into 2nd place with Obelix being in 1st place. I can barely see him except at the start and at finish line. This is so unfair. When you hit other racers with projectile not only you can keep them away or steal their position but also you break their catapult. The catapult can take 3 damage instances. The worst state like my catapult right now but I still can keep going although harder than when my catapult still healthy. When the catapult has been hit 2 times, it loses its wheels which make it move slower. When the catapult has been hit 2 times, it loses its capability to shoot.
To repair your catapult, you have to drive it pass the repair sheds in 2 location within the race course.
Next sport event is helmet hoarding which Obelix like to do in the comic. He like to collect enemy’s helmets as trophy and/or KO count. This sport event is pretty much like modified version of Camp Crashing except you can’t destroy any camp and you have to collect enemy’s helmet this time. You can only bring 5 helmets at most before drop them into pile of helmet near chief Vitalstatix on front entrance. You can punch this pan to bait legionnaire for lunch time. I will serve them hard food…Gaul’s Knuckle Sandwich!
Why the heck Barbe Rouge is here? Probably he and Baba work in roman camp as part-time worker to buy new ship that Asterix and Obelix keep sinking or the Redbeard himself sink his own ship to avoid the bruises and injuries. Now that he fights on land, he grows gut a little and start fighting back Asterix. He behaves like the Centurion or Decanus that’s all there is to him.
I like to walk around this camp for a bit. Apparently, there’s a legionnaire that’s sensible enough to run away although he forgets to open the lock first.
Spy_jeers02.wav. I only get the second place although I didn’t miss any of helmet. Turns out, I mustn’t put the last helmet immediately. I have to break all the boxes and barrels first before turn in the last helmet. Also grab all the money bag. There’s bonus score from remaining timer but it’s not as big as score from breaking all boxes and barrels. Kind of weird that: the game doesn’t want you to be focus on main objective (collecting all the helmets) and encourage you to do all the side objectives.
Next sport event is Rowing Race and...shoot! I barely able to recall what’s this sport event is all about. My memory just goes blank when I demand it to remember this one. All I can say is: it’s about race with rowing boat.
See? I’m right. When you pick speed up potion, your character will row the boat very quickly and make noise like outboard motor.
I begin to remember what’s this sport event is all about. For the first half, you row until you meet floating barrels and you have to pick one of them. For the last half, you row to finish line with the barrel on your boat. Any damage will knock the barrel and you have to repick it. I was on first position and Cacofonix passes me immediately. It’s because of stupid shark, I drop the barrel and finish in second place. The shark doesn’t even try to bite me or anything. They just swim around and my barrel get knocked away as my boat touches their fin! The row boat race is also the difficult ones because how easy you drop the barrel. There are so many hazards that can knock your barrel away: shark, seagull, roman ship’s bombardment, and even your competitor who try to smack you with spinning oar. I know that cross button allows you to block but I notice that it only useful against other racer’s attack. Not sure it will work against seagull or the bombardment.
Now, I remember the shield bash. It’s also the hard one but fun. Also, this is the only sport event which character you pick matters.
The role of the shield bearer and the passenger has been reversed! Now the nameless character that’s passenger in Shield Chase event has become my shield bearer. Although become the one on the top of the shield is riskier than in the race because this event is basically fighting game among the shield passenger. According to the comic, this duel is how Gaul chieftains settle their dispute and the winner can have the loser’s village. There’s hale bay you can pick on each corner to throw it to your opponent just like in the comic.
This sport event implements Play-off system between the 4 contestants which excludes Fulliautomatix and Unhygienix as they’re on the back watching the fight. Once again, their exclusion is baffling and unacceptable. There are buttons to punch, kick, block, and jump which are self-explanatory. Punch is fast but weakest. Kick is slightly stronger but slower. There’s a function called tag move which I remember use it a lot even back in the day. It’s kind of hard to explain tag move with words. It starts with your character and their shield bearer crouch and then unleash headbutt kind of move like in this screenshot. It’s slowly telegraphed but it has longer reach and attack power. You have to time it perfectly to utilize it well.
I was so close to become first place champion and once again Cacofonix come out in first place! This time this is entirely my fault. I shouldn’t camp in the corner and wait for the hale bay. Turtling the corner is bad although it rewards you with hale bay to throw at your opponent. Because your character keeps automatically pick the hale bay whenever it spawns which makes them defenseless against enemy’s attack. You should keep some good amount of distance from the corner to prevent that to happen.
You can’t move on to next day unless you’re in number 1 in total score of a day. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be number 1 winner in every event. I must replay this day’s sport events. Shouldn’t take long.
I see speedup magic potion over there. So, turn out there are some power up potions in this course. It seems they don’t respawn when they have been picked up. That’s explain why Obelix always in the lead because he keeps chugging those powerup potions and doesn’t let us have some so we don’t have slight of chance to catch up with him. So, to win this race: you have to be in first position from the beginning and get all those potions so your rivals don’t stand a chance to outrun. The powerup potion should respawn to make the race fairer and more interesting. Perhaps it’s a flaw when design this mini game rather than intentionally designed.
Look at that Cacofonix does Tatsumaki Senpukyaku like Ryu or Ken from Street Fighter. Anyway, about the difference between the contestants which is most apparent in this sport event. I talked about the special move by pressing triangle button. See 3 magic potions below health bar? They’re sort like super meter/gauge in fighting game. You have to fill 3 of them before your character can do the super meter. Hitting enemy with any mean will fill the potion meter to 1. However, getting hit will empty the potion meter! So, you have to hit enemy cleanly without getting hit yourself. I think the tag move/heavy headbutt attack works well to fill the potion meter because of its long reach and there’s slight knockback effect upon successful hit. No idea, if blocking attack can make your potion meter empty or not.
Each character has different special move. 1) Asterix will jump into opponent and return to his shield’s position by flying with his winged helmet like in the screenshot. The jumping attack is fast and pretty accurate however his flight is slow and makes him defenseless for quite some time. 2) Obelix probably has the most cumbersome and slow special attack. It’s his signature belly strike. It’s slow and has very short range. Maybe it deals the most damage than other special attack? Making it the heaviest special attack. 3) Cacofonix’s special attack is he throws ugly music note as projectile attack. He’s probably the best fighter because he has the projectile attack. Or at least Shoto-clone fighter. 4) Mrs. Geriatrix’s special attack is she open a sack and perfume gas comes out from it. It doesn’t deal damage and slower than Cacofonix’s projectile. But if opponent get hit by it, they become unable to attack temporarily although move and jump still doable.
Finally, we can move on to the final day! It starts with Dogmatix burying lots of bone and also 3 keys to the storehouse! With the storehouse remain locked, we can’t have the usual banquet under moonlight. Meanwhile there’s Roman fleet approaching Gaul village from the sea. Probably they want to revenge their sunken comrade that I destroy in ballista sport event.
So, first thing in order is searching for the key as sport event called Hide & Seek. I remember this one is pretty tricky.
I dig the holes at Obelix’s workplace where he sculpts his finest menhirs. Kind of irony that he doesn’t search in his workplace first. Here how this works. You have to search for the keys from all this numerous digging spots which are indicated by shovel icon. They also on the minimap as blinking spot. You dig the spot by pressing circle button many many times. The hit detection for starting the dig is kind of iffy. However, once you start digging, you can’t do anything else except finishing the dig. Other competitor can smack your back of the head with shovel while you digging. So be careful.
I was quite lucky to find the first key within relatively short time. But having the key doesn’t make you winner yet. You have to return it to the chieftain Vitalstatix for 300 score points. Competitors can or rather want to steal the key from whoever found it. Once again, be careful! Digging bone out will give you 50 score points as consolation prize.
Then I knock Obelix in the backside with shovel. Consider it punishment because his pet dog start this problem.
Although Cacofonix handed over the last key to Vitalstatix, I come up as the first winner! It’s kind of hard to explain how to win this game event. Mainly, you want to find the key and give it to Vitalstatix ASAP. Even at least only 1 out of 3 keys. If other competitors found the key, you should try to steal it by bashing their head naturally. Second, don’t hesitate to break barrel for powerup potions and money bag. Getting money bag is faster than unearth a bone. I think the scoring mechanism is like Helmet Hoarding event where breaking barrels is quite essential to get higher score but in this case the game’s “pace” is not determined solely by you. There are 3 other competitors that determined to do the main objective and end the game as fast as possible. So, my tips is balance between breaking the barrels and getting (and/or stealing) keys.
Next sport event is Galley Smash. The control scheme is similar to the rowboat race with addition cross button activate the nitro boost. It can only be activated when the nitro meter is filled at least on the red line. The nitro meter fills gradually. The objective of this sport event is to destroy ships using your boat (which has been armed with battering head on the front) as many as you can until all of the contestant complete the destruction ratio. You have to destroy not only Roman ship but also pirate ship. I get to destroy Barbe Rouge’s ship like in the comic. How lovely. Speaking of the pirates, they’re actually parody of characters in Belgian comic Barbe Rouge the red beard. It tells the story of Spanish that turn into pirate not because motivated by greed but rather because government doesn’t acknowledge his title of nobility thus, he seeks revenge to them. Barbe Rouge is rather kind pirate as he doesn’t attack harmless civilian. He even adopts Eryk who was the survivor of village that his pirate crew attack, as his son. He also rescues Baba from slavery and make him the his crew mate. Ok. There’s one time he shoots down a night patrol because he alarms town where Barbe Rouge’s pirates attack. Anyway, the sport event is pretty easy. Much easier than the boat race.
Next one is Obstacle Course. To be honest, this also the one that I can’t remember for some reason. According to control scheme, the sport event involves roman. That much I can tell.
Ok, now I remember. It’s like the opposite of Shield Race but with you as the passenger and you don’t have to worry about balance. Instead, you have to be precise with navigating the obstacle. You jump to get pass middle obstacle. You whip the roman carrier to make him jump pass the log obstacle. To reach item in very high position, both you and the roman carrier need to jump. You can try to hit other racer with stick by pressing square button. If you can hit them successfully, you can make them fall and they lose their speed and time. This sport event is quite clever. Also, you get to punish these bastard soldiers. They have to taste Their own imperialism’s medicine. All those invading other country and slavery they commit. They deserve it. Slavery on yourself doesn’t feel good, huh? Sorry! Can't hear you over the sound of whipping and your own pained scream
As for the last sport event “Shoot to survive”. It’s basically the ballista sport event. The very first one, remember? But with minor modification. First, you have unlimited barrel as your ammo and you don’t have to reload every now and then. Second, you have limit which you can take hit. It’s maximum 3 and there’s no healing item or anything like that. Third, other ballistae will be more aggressive on hitting you. Or so I feel. Also, the seagulls are replaced with crows. Or maybe they’re just same seagulls but looks dark due to evening sunlight. If that’s the case, then I blame myself for being bird racist. Besides hitting everything to get more score like in first ballista sport event, you get 1 point score for every 1 second passes. The last sport event is kind of disappointing to me because it’s so anticlimactic. However, this course is pretty hard so don’t let your guard down.
With that, I become the winner of Mega Madness Tournament! Heavy_award02.wav
Leaving, destroyed Roman tower, ballista, and siege catapult. The Gauls have the usual banquet under the moonlight. All goes well until Cacofonix decides to play some horrible tune. Bit of violent happens…
...and Cacofonix put in his usual place: tied on the tree. In the comic, he gets hung up on the branch and sometime he just simply tied near the tree not necessarily tied on the tree. So that’s it then? All it takes to settle dispute between Unhygienix and Fulliautomatix is: Asterix and co. break some sweats in 4 days of sport event? Even then Fulliautomatix hit Unhygienix’s head with his blacksmith hammer once in a while during the banquet. No specific ending for each character. This ending is all you got. Although to be fair, the “night banquet under moonlight” is mandatory tradition in the comic. Though, there’s one occasion where our Gaul friends have banquet on Cleopatra’s ship at noon.
Unique Development Studio’s Asterix Mega Madness (2001) is pretty neat mini games collection and it’s pretty short too. It takes 2 hours for me to finish all of sport event days and I have to replay 3rd day which doesn’t take long. All of the mini games are interesting although the last one is just ballista sport event again but with arcade game’s pace. The hardest mini game probably the Catapult Race due to limited power up so the first runner can snowballing their momentum. However I like the concept of this race which is close to mascot racer which is big trend on its time. But with elaborated "load/shoot" mechanism from the catapult. I reckon the boat race also arduous one because you have to keep the barrel before crossing the finish line and there are so many hazards that can throw away your barrel. Thankfully, if there are any other contestant who drop their barrel, you can pick their and treated as yours. My favorite goes to Food Feast or Recipe Run. I like to point out in Hide and Seek mini game, I think you can see accurate layout of Gaul village. The village gate certainly in south part of the village because north of the village is sea. So Obelix menhir sculpting place is in north part of the village. I like how well complex designed the shield duel. It’s close to competitive fighting game. Each character has their own super move. The Camp Crashing and Helmet Hoarding are quite close to beat em up game in top-down perspective. Besides punching, you can pick up and throw away roman soldier with cross button but you can’t do that with Centurion, Decanus or the pirates. None of this mini game has “brutal mashing button” mechanism like in any other sport games. So, you don’t have to chip your hand’s integrity to win this game. If you feel like you don’t like the default control, you can change the control scheme before play the mini game. Personally, I’m fine with the default control and doesn’t feel like to change it. The powerup potions are useful and their effect can be transitioned to any of these sport events except Food Feast and Ballista sport. Red potion for temporary invincibility. Blue potion for speed up. There's some randomness in the game. For example: scores you have to beat to become first place in some sport event, ingredient list, The key's location in Hide & Seek sport event, and projectile in ballista sport event. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t have much replayability value. Maybe you can try to hit high score. However, once you get little bit more than 2,000 score points, you get to 1st on high score table and there’s not much you can do other than beating your previous score. Maybe. The soundtracks are good. Even, I have them on my music playlist. Probably the Catapult Race’s OST is the least good. Perhaps because the music portrays how tedious and unfair the race is. The sound effect is standard good and uses lots of stock screams.
Asterix Mega Madness (2001) is pretty neat for sport mini-games compilation. At least more tolerable than Crash Bash which I also like but it feels overly long for its own good. This game feels like comfort game to me. Back in the day I occasionally played this game in the middle JRPG playthrough to ease me up from the intensity of RPG game. There’s also PC version if you don’t want to play PS 1 version for some reason. I won’t judge you for that as long as you give this game a try. It’s wacky Armorica sport game. Or Gaul-ympic, if you will.
Update on my situation: I don't get the job. So expect regular schedule. I think?
