Enter Lou and Siva, the titular wanderers (or “roosters”, according to the original Engrish title), who want to defeat Gaia to save their friend who became a statue. The kingdom of Ashtar is under attack by the demon Gaia (a bizarre creature that looks like a globe with a face and clouds for arms), who stole its most important artifact, the Chariot of Light, and turned everyone into wooden statues. The first of the two related titles is a fantasy action platformer/run ‘n gun starring two elfin characters named Siva and Lou. Midnight Wanderers: Quest for the Chariot / Roosters: Chariot no Sagashite (ルースターズ～チャリオットを探して～ ) Don’t Pull is a “pure” arcade experience, where only the search for the best score matters, and as such it’s okay for it to be a mini-game of sorts inside an arcade title. There are 32 rounds in total and the first 16 are the “Beginner’s course”, but stages are chosen at random so it’s difficult to formulate a strategy to get far in the levels. The gameplay is simple but the enemies are stubborn and fast, even more so when they get angry after a while. There’s also lots of fruit and candy bonuses to gain extra lives and score, and completing stages in a short time also nets lots of bonus points Every two stages there are brief “intermission” animations, adding to the old-school experience.
One of the levels’ goal, besides crushing all the baddies, is to put together three heart blocks to gain lots of bonus points and render enemies harmless for a while. Other obstacles are boulders that roll around the external border of the levels. Don’t Pull is basically a colorful, plotless Pengo clone where the players can control two cute anthro animals named Don and Pull (see what they did there?) that can push blocks to squash two kinds of enemies that spawn from manholes: jumping jellies and bipedal fire-breathing dragons. Let’s start with this game, since it is unrelated to the others and there’s not much to say about it anyway. These “wonders” are called Midnight Wanderers, Chariot, and Don’t Pull the game was later ported in 1998 on PlayStation and Saturn, and then again in 2006 on the second volume of the Capcom Classics Collection. Curiously enough, the first two were also related, one being the direct sequel of the other, starring the same characters and having the same art style. It was a pretty good idea – arcade owners could get three games in the same cabinet, probably inspired by the versatility of SNK’s MVS system. In 1991, Capcom decided to release a very unusual coin-op consisting in three relatively short games of different genres: an action platformer, a shoot-em-up and a puzzle/maze game.
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