I’m strutting once again down the dangerous streets of dream projects as I reflect on another Capcom classic. This game from my early days in the industry. A game that came out as my engagement with gaming was waning, just moments before I would jump into it fully and feet-first–a place I remain to this very day. Pull on your boots, strap on your helmet, and get ready for your close-up because I’m gonna talk about the iconic adventures of media-obsessed super fanboy Viewtiful Joe.
Announced as part of the “Capcom Five,” alongside games like Resident Evil 4 and Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe was part of a plan by Capcom to boost the sales of Nintendo’s struggling GameCube. (I wouldn’t come to the game until it was ported to the PlayStation 2, despite owning a GameCube first, so I suppose I was part of the problem.) While the GameCube forever remained in the shadow of Sony’s titan, the game itself was well-received.
A love letter to Japanese culture, Viewtiful Joe leans hard into that country’s unique fandom. The game centers on Joe, a teenage otaku infatuated with sentai superheroes. While catching a movie with his girlfriend Silvia, Joe helplessly watches as the main villain reaches out of the screen and kidnaps his date. Following her into Movieland, Joe sets out to take down the shadowy organization knowns as Jadow and save his girlfriend. Able to adopt the alter ego of the titular hero, Joe gains VFX Powers that allow him to perform camera tricks. By slowing time, speeding himself up, and even zooming in on himself, Joe can stun enemies, unleash devastating attacks, and solve puzzles. If his VFX juice is allowed to fully drain, the Viewtiful persona will disappear, leaving Joe to fight in his civvies until his powers replenish. The VFX Powers are fun and add a thick layer of theme and aesthetic every time they’re deployed. Viewtiful Joe is a masterclass on incorporating your game’s Big Idea into the mechanics and the contextual wrapper alike.
Just as Joe looks like he burst from the screen of your favorite shonen series, Joe’s enemies follow suit with many looking like they raided Kamen Rider’s wardrobe on their way to fight the Power Rangers. From the knee-knocking Blankies to the football helmet-wearing boxers with spiked gloves for hands to butt-kicking ballerinas, Joe will face a variety of mooks that require you to utilize the VFX Powers to take the down.
The team responsible for Viewtiful Joe later became Clover Studio who would create a direct sequel, Viewtiful Joe 2 (which added Silvia as a playable character), the platformer fighter-esque Red Hot Rumble, and the portable beat-em-up Double Trouble for the Nintendo DS. The studio would also develop beloved fan favorites Ōkami and God Hand before being shuttered. All of this was done within the span of less than three years. Key people from Clover would then found studios that became the perhaps-even-more-legendary PlatinumGames who would give us MadWorld, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Nier: Automata, and the spiritual successor to our main attraction, The Wonderful 101. The game was also adapted as an anime series. Joe himself appears in a handful of vs. Capcom fighting games and the mobile fighter Combo Crew.
Maybe it’s the fact they remind me of the hours I spent in department store lobbies dropping quarters as I waited for my parents to finish shopping, but I have mad love for sidescrolling beat-em-ups. From the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade cabinet to 2022’s Splinter’s Revenge, from River City Ransom to River City Girls, from Children of the Atom to Mother Russia Bleeds, beat-em-ups have survived every console generation, gaming fad, and paradigm shift and are still today giving life to original worlds and an array of external IPs from Power Rangers to Toxic Crusaders. So Viewtiful Joe was an easy pickup for me. While the PlayStation 2 would become one of my favorite consoles of all time, I was late to buy into that generation. So when I picked up a used PlayStation 2 in late 2005, I had a lot of catching up to do. The visuals, the attitude, the fun-looking gameplay put Viewtiful Joe near the top of the list.
With super saturated four-color art, striking cel-shading, and camera effects and accents galore, Viewtiful Joe was truly stunning for its time. The gameplay was tight, the VFX Powers were novel and useful, and the game’s attitude dripped from the screen. The life of the game series was short but magnificent and we haven’t seen anything like it since. And I think the gaming landscape is poorer for that fact.
I’ve pitched a good number of beat-em-ups over the years but, while some have gotten a lot of important people excited at the prospect, none have come to fruition. Such is the curse of creative industries. You gotta fire a hundred shots for every one you land.
A beat-em-up is tough but fair. It’s easy to get hit if you don’t act and react properly but solid hit execution is reward. Like a fighting game, it’s all about the moves you choose when you choose them. The burden of the developer is to make each action fun–even the standard punch the player will hit a thousand times in a level. Like a hero shooter, you need to a compelling basic set of actions, mid-tier specials to build toward, and an ult for long-term payoff. You need to clearly message
As I said above, beat-em-ups remain super popular to this day. Freed from the need to suck out as much money from players as quickly as possible, the genre is bringing in a lot of fun, new ideas while keeping the core front and center.
With a spiritual successor to the original studio being announced and the game’s director being clear about his desire to do so, maybe Viewtiful Joe will live again someday. Chances are near zero I’ll ever get to take a crack at it but I’m going to hold onto the hope of doing making a top-tier beat-em-up before some supervillain drags me away to the great Movieland in the sky.
