Well, we have a special treat for this installment of Demo Demo Panic. Long-time readers may recall a time that I dedicated a month or so to indie games, and within that month, I made contact and became friends with the head of Serious*Impact Works, who made a bunch of Sonic and King of Fighters fan games back in the day and was planning to start doing some original game work soon after.

Well, he’s been doing just that ever since, and the demo for their first original title is live now. Well, it was on Valentine’s Day, but I’ve been trying to fix my stupid PC gamepad since my first run through. There has been an earlier demo build, but we like to pretend it doesn’t exist now. Especially since all the original data was lost to a PC crash and lo, did their little pet project rise from the ashes and was restarted from the ground up with bigger, juicier sprites and a new engine. So, without further ado, I give you Banzai Pecan-Chan: The First Strikes.

Uh, what? You don’t do all the reviewing around here. You’re supposed to be playing through [REDACTED] to prep for your next episode.

I think I have this one covered. I’m not going to go saying this is the greatest game ever made just to make my friend happy. I have a little bit of integrity. Besides, it’s a game about hitting. You’re pro-hitting, right? You can stick around and wat-

O… kay then. Have fun with the [REDACTED] in [HUMOROUSLY CENSORED TO AVOID SPOILERS] then.

Banzai Pecan-chan is a side scrolling beat-em-up that takes a lot of cues in play from  2D fighting, without the super-complex control motions, anyway. A gamepad is strongly recommended, though, since there are going to be a lot of enemies on screen and you need to be pretty quick with your fingers on a keyboard to handle them. Hell, I still had trouble dodging when my virus scanner decided to run its daily run in the middle of a session and slowed everything down to frame by frame. It’s a bit like a simplified version of GodHand- slapstick, unforgiving, but not impossible. The effort behind this build of BPCC really shows, particularly in the “feel” of the hits and the incorporation of aerial combos, wire juggles, and quick recovery moves. The spriting was done at a much higher resolution as well, making it look a bit more in line with a Guilty Gear rather than a 16-bit brawler. There’s even some voice work thrown in here and there.

Plot-wise, we’re looking at a scenario along the lines of Sailor Moon by way of Fist of the North Star. Pecan must save her boyfriend from Koopa with boobs the Sexilicious Seven using her powers of vaguely defined but divinely granted ass-kickery. Along the way, she’s going to trade blows with succubi, evil twins, and hordes of bunny girls. You’ll get gameplay hints from her government-issued Magic Girl Best Friend Flan on the Game Over screen, which you’ll probably see a lot of if you’re anything like me.

Really, the only issues I’ve got with this particular demo are with the difficulty, but I can’t decide if that’s more me or the game. I was having to make do with the keyboard, which didn’t help matters. The stun-gun move the grunts use seems a tad powerful for something bottom-rung enemies should be toting around, but then again on the other hand, yes, a stun-gun hurts. I hit something of a brick wall in level 1-2 involving 4 of the bunny girls at once alongside a miniboss I’ve affectionately dubbed Tallbitch. She shrugs off damage (but does flinch after a few blows) and deals a powerful punch that bounces you off the wall for a wire combo by the mooks. The AI isn’t super aggressive, so I doubt you’re going to fall into an infinity loop or something, but there is a recovery move for when you hit the ground or wall if you have the timing. Overall, Pecan-Chan is a really polished game for what a handful of people put together for kicks, and even though I basically suck, I enjoyed it. I look forward to the final release, whenever it comes.

Get the demo here.