DONG DONG NEVER DIE
I hate to continuously update FAN with coverage of just one genre, but something came to my attention recently that really needed to examined.
This, as you can probably make out, is an Asian woman in some sort of maid outfit calling Optimus Prime to aid her in her battle against a short man in a schoolboy outfit. It’s not even some sort of weird representation of Optimus Prime; it’s actually Optimus Prime. He makes the Transformers noise and everything. Yes, this is a real game, and it’s called Dong Dong Never Die.
I have no idea what the titular phrase means, and research on this game is a little tough since everything is in Chinese, but from what I can make out, it’s a free PC fighting game made by (what I’m guessing is) a small group of friends in China. It features 24 playable characters, over 30 different stages, a vs. mode, online play, a full story, and stuff like this:
When he's not busy extolling the virtues of peace and harmony, Buddha likes to watch people beat the holy hell out of one another
In a throwback to some ‘90s fighting games, DDND uses digitized actors as fighters, and the result is as hilarious as it is surprising. I would have never guessed from looking at screenshots that this game is real, let alone plays a lot better than some of those games of yesteryear (I’m looking at you, Way of the Warrior). If you’ve played an SNK fighting game before, you’ll be able to pick this up right away. It has the standard four-button layout and rolling system in play, not to mention characters with the exact same moves as favorites such as Iori or SNK’s version of Akuma in SvC: Chaos. Funny thing about Akuma in this game: his moves are mapped to Mario. Like, Mario Brothers Mario.
"It's-a me, Mario! And I'm here to beat you to death with this cute little mushroom!"
The copyright-infringing fun doesn’t end there, as many of the stages have licenced music playing in the background. Who wouldn’t want to fight a guy with a bazooka to the Mission Impossible theme? The story is also from Terminator. I’m not even going to try to explain that one. I gave myself enough of a headache trying to finish this game so that I could give it a fair review. Somewhere in that haze, I encountered this:
I did end up finishing it after dying many times to a shirtless guy with red hair and green eyebrows shooting lighting at me. Then I saw a mushroom cloud and some credits. I think. I need to lay down now. Dong Dong Never Die gets 13 giraffes out of lighting bolt.
Robbie Mackenrodt (Rmack) is a freelance journalist, fighting game enthusiast, and test subject for various panic attack medications. His Twitter name is @r0bball, with a zero, because he still thinks he lives in the ’90s.