Naxat Super Pinball: Jaki Hakai

"Pinball...Tengu?"

Jaki Hakai is the third and final game in Naxat's well-respected Crash/Crush video pinball series (unless you count the horrid American-made spinoff Dragon's Revenge). It provides you with another large pinball board and a new slew of bonus games. Naxat was not able to deliver the same finely tuned and in-depth experience that Devil Crash carried with it, but they did make another memorable game of pinball for the Super Famicom. As it was never released outside of Japan, not many Westerners have ever heard about it. Well, I'm here to change that.

As you start up the game, you're greeted by a large blue wall of laughing faces, which zooms out in a good display of Mode 7. Once the logo and a large demonic face descend, a garbled digitized voice exclaims "BLAH...BLAH" and you know you're in for a treat.

What will be immediately apparent to you is the new graphical theme of the game. Alien Crash built itself out of pulsating walls of Gigeresque biomechanical organisms and Devil Crash transported you within the gates of Hell, but Jaki Hakai is styled around the ghosts, goblins, and aesthetics of ancient Japan. Your ball launches out of a plunger resembling a clawed ninja weapon, wayward kappas patrol the lower level, and the top area with its pagodas is dominated by some sort of robed Japanese demon.

As you know, this is a video pinball game. However, like with all the Crash/Crush games, the developers don't try to simulate the feel of a real pinball table, which has never worked well. Rather, they take the design mechanics of pinball and adapt them into something only a video game can do. You'll never feel like you're banging on an old machine in the corner of a dim arcade, but it's all for the best. The ball physics are as top-notch and realistic as ever.

The pinball board itself is of a rather unconventional and somewhat haphazard design. The middle section is rather sparse, and contains irregularly placed flippers. The bottom contains a large grinning demon face, which can transport you to a bonus stage if you whack the bouncing slime above it enough. It also has several kinds of enemies which wander about, ready to be whacked into oblivion. The top area has several large pink goblins and a portal to all the bonus stages (just like in Devil Crash), guarded by that robed devil. The board has a few more cheap drops than it should, and it's not always your fault if you lose a ball. There are far less special features and bonuses than on Devil Crash's richly detailed board, which is a dissapointment. The tilt function is back, but you can't get a Tilt anymore and it's as useless as ever. A glitch allows the ball to sometimes travel right through your flippers, but this can work in your favor.

The bonus stages are where the game really shines and gets to innovate with the pinball mechanics again. Every one is a stunning display of 16-bit graphics: a fire stage wrapped in flaming dragons, cast in bright reds and whites; a stage set in a thundercloud with a well-rendered thunder god warping about, and a mysterious stone temple. There are a couple uninteresting ones, but they are few. Gameplay-wise, they aren't quite as fun. The battle with the thunder god is painfully easy and his attack patterns are limited, and you'll get plenty of cheap deaths in another stage with lots of pipes for the ball to travel in. The best new bonus stage is, by far, one set in a grassy field that sees you taking out a lot of little bugs Space Invaders-style. Adding to the experience is a placid digitized Buddha face in the background that gradually grows more and more menacing as the bugs get thicker. Like in the other games, clearing a bonus stage will turn your ball blue for a while, which gives you double points. While not quite the masterful minigames seen in Devil Crash, Jaki Hakai's bonus stages still provide a good diversion from the monotony of the main board.

Sound-wise, this is an interesting beast. The main theme is a long, rocking tune that will take quite some time for you to get bored with. The bonus stage music, which mostly consists of 5-second loops, is not as impressive. The sound effects have plenty of the pops, bumps and beeps you'd expect from a pinball game, and a pleasantly annoying demonic giggle follows every one of your deaths.

The goal of the game, as before, is to destroy the board by maxing out the score meter. Luckily, passwords are back, so you don't have to do it in one go. Disappointingly, there is no final boss this time around, only an ending cutscene with a bit of Japanese text. (I'd like a translation of it.)

There are two 2-player modes this time around: one where you take turns as usual, and a "Versus" mode that I haven't tried yet. However, this game is best enjoyed in single-player and then you should compare your score to others, if you can actually find someone else who's played this.

I'd like to say that you should buy this game, but it's quite rare and good luck getting a Super Famicom to play it on. If you have to, try it out in ZSNES. But play the superior Devil Crash first, so you have a point of reference.

Even if you don't think you like pinball games, give the series a chance. I didn't like pinball and sucked at it at first, but after a few hours of this game (and the others) I was trapping, switching, and reflex-mashing like a pinball wizard.

This would be an excellent choice to bring over on the Virtual Console, doing so would put the entire Crash/Crush series on the Wii. But thanks to Nintendo's stubbornness about region locking, you would need a Japanese Wii account. Ah well.

7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/07