In last month's installment, we talked about Cosmic Carnage, a bad game with a really cool and interesting premise.  This month, we will dive into T-Mek which is the opposite, a pretty good game with a really generic and uninteresting premise.



We'll be talking about the 32X version but let's go back and look at the original for
reference.  T-Mek was a two-player sit down arcade game originally released in 1994.  GamePro gave the arcade game a perfect score.  The arcade version had a pretty impressive sound system.  Each player had several surround sound speakers and a subwoofer built into the seat.  The console version obviously doesn't have the same sound setup.  If you wanted to simulate the arcade sound setup at home, the closest you could get to it would be an Intensor chair.  I had one of these chairs years ago and they are pretty cool, though pretty expensive.

As I mentioned in the intro, the story of T-Mek is pretty generic.  A mysterious figure called Nazrac Shung wants to hold the planet in the clutch of his hand.  Yes, I know that is very bad writing, it's not me, it's in the game.  My favorite gem has to be this one:


The Mortal Kombatian structure of the game doesn't make much sense either, but we can look past that.  After all, it was an arcade game, meant to just sit down and play.  The story seems tacked on because it probably was.  Once you fire the single player game up, you choose a Mek and start at the bottom rung of the tournament at the Qualify Round.


Aside from the differences in weapon strength, shield strength, and speed, each mech has a different standard and special weapon.  I recommend trying each Mek out in a practice session to get used to their differences.  The rules in the arena are pretty simple: Destroy all other Meks unless you are playing in the two player cooperative mode.  In that case, kill all other Meks except for your partner.

The game controls very well.  The D-Pad moves your Mek in all directions and you also have a quick drift button to drift right and left, as well as a quick turn button.  After a few sessions, you'll be flying around the arena like a pro.  The 32X handles the game very well, I just wish that the game took up more of the screen.  It reminds me a bit of Sewer Shark where you are looking out of the cockpit, so the view of the gameplay area is about a third of the total screen size.  It would also be a little more bearable if the radar was a little but more useful.  I have a very hard time telling which spec is an enemy Mek, which is a shield recharge, which is a weapon recharge, etc.


The game doesn't go on until all of the Meks are destroyed, there is a set time limit.  Whoever has destroyed the most Meks in the time limit and died the least gets the most points and wins. No Economics class can prepare you for this!

At the end of the day, T-Mek is a very good port of a very good game.  The cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes add to the replay value, it just would have been nice to see some additional modes included.  Up to three of the original arcade machines can be connected for six player multiplayer......too bad we will never know what six 32X systems linked together would have looked like   

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