Metal & Lace: The Battle Of The Robo Babes

Year: 1993
Alternate Title: Ningyou (Japan)
Platform: PC
Publisher: Megatech
Genre: Girl fighting (18+)
Rating: *

A notorious adult oriented 2D fighting game that ultimately rewards the player with pictures of naked girls when they win. In a set-up similar to Bruce Lee's "Enter The Dragon", you travel to MeCha Island under the pretense of participating in a robo fighting competition, but your real purpose is to investigate what illegal activities the ruler of the island is up to. As luck would have it, all of the participants in the robo fighting competition are beautiful women who moonlight as exotic dancers. Uh-huh... Whenever you defeat one of your female opponents, you have the opportunity to see her in various states of undress, revealing more flesh as the battles get harder and more intense. The actual fighting is all performed with robo armor, so you can't even tell that the combatants are female. This is one of the many serious problems with the game. If you play a girl fighting game, you want to see girls fight - you don't want to see robots fight. Another serious problem with the game is that the actual fighting mechanics are extremely weak. The controls are sluggish and sloppy, the animation is crude, and the simplistic graphics only utilize either a 16 or 32 color palette. Also, as a fighting game, the gameplay is far too complex for its own good. Most people who play fighting games just want to fight (and most people who play this game just want to see naked anime babes). This game requires you to purchase robo armor, which needs to be maintained and constantly upgraded with the latest and greatest after-model modifications. You end up spending WAY more time tweaking your mechs than you do fighting, and managing your finances is a constant problem. Especially if you want to see the naked girls, which you have to pay admission to see. Ultimately the game fails on every level. As a fighting game, it's weak and too hard to play. As a strategy and resource management game, it's uninteresting since success really boils down to how well you perform in the ring. And as erotica, it's unsatisfying because you have to work way too hard to see something you could easily find in a magazine instead. Amazingly, this severely disappointing game spawned a sequel in Japan called "Ningyou 2", proving that there is an audience for this kind of entertainment.