A good way to describe this very rare arcade game is “He Man and the Masters of the Universe meets Street Fighter II.”
Red Earth is one of only a few Capcom fighting games from the 1990s that was never released on home consoles, so if you can find a working machine, you’re in for a real treat. The game is set in a mythical 1400s that looks more like He-Man’s Planet Eternia (in fact, everything about this game reminds me more of Masters of the Universe than Street Fighter II), and it has a single-player mode with two unique attributes: 1) you acquire attributes and more damaging weapons as you continue in the game, including things like immunity to poison attacks or a cooler sword, and 2) it has a single-player mode where you fight monsters instead of just other playable characters.
The signature character is Leo, a warrior-king who turns into a monster, like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and who longs to be human again. Personally, I think he is making a big thing out of nothing, since all the Disney fangirls I’ve met think the Beast was far more interesting looking before he turned human, and his restored human looks were something of a letdown.
The other characters include a ninja, a Chinese martial artist who might just be Chun-Li’s ancestor, and a cute girl-witch. As the appeal of the game is the single player (which may be why it was never a famous tournament fighter), it has Ninja Gaiden-esque cut scenes where each character experiences levels out of order and has a different story. Nowadays, a story mode is expected for fighters, but it was quite revolutionary then. If anything, the game suffered from being too ahead of its time.
“It’s funny,” I told Flewin. “We have an old Nintendo Game Boy floating around the house, and Tetris is the only game we own. My wife will sometimes dig it out to play on airplanes and long car rides. She’s weirdly good at it. She can get 500 or 600 lines, no problem.”
What Flewin said next I will never forget.
“Oh, my!”
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TL;DR on the article
The husband was writing an article on classic video game records, was surprised to find out that holding the Tetris record is a bit of a big deal, and mentions how good his wife is at it.
The guy he’s talking to mentions that the record is 327, way lower than his wifes usual scores of 500-600.
They travel to a tournament, and she goes to do her attempt. Just after she beats 327, and is climbing higher, a judge brings up to the husband that the specific version she’s playing actually has a different record of 545.
She overhears that she needs to beat 500-something, and keeps going, setting the record at 841.
