This whole pandemic thing is a bummer and all, but the good news is that being stuck in my house has led me to discover all sorts of new trash to indulge in. I learned that there are a ton of classic MS-DOS games available to play in-browser over on archive.org – some emulations are better than others, which is something I learned pretty fast after being unable to get past the start menus for a few games. It’s cool, though…JENNY’S GOT ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD OVER HERE! Which is why, in my infinite boredom, I was able to track down an emulation that not only worked perfectly but also matched my garbage sensibilities – Cobra Mission: Panic In Cobra City.
Old school anime nerds might recognize this one – it’s known for being the first eroge (a.k.a., erotic game) to get an English North American release. Keep in mind, though, that just because something is the first doesn’t make it, you know, any good. In fact, this entire game is a complete fucking mess. A charming mess, but a mess nonetheless.
The version I played is actually a port of a 1991 Japanese game. Originally, you play as Satoru and his side-kick, a blue-haired girl named Midori. Of course, all that is TOO FOREIGN for us dummy Americans, so when the company Megatech Software released their port in 1992, they made the stars JR Knight and his (now brunette) sidekick Faythe Watson. The game begins with JR heroically, um, peeping on nude models at the beach and then getting jumped by Cobra City gangsters.
Your mission as JR, the number one P.I. in Florida, is to track down Faythe’s friend, Donna. You trek through the wicked Cobra City fighting gang members, picking up chicks, and uncovering three different human trafficking rings. Naturally, JR has the ability to fuck every human trafficking victim he saves because sex with a sleazy P.I. is obviously the first thing on the top of every freed victim’s list.
Weirdly, the NA release completely changes the combat of the original game. The JPN version has a standard turn-based system, but Megatech again decided that function was TOO FOREIGN and replaced it with a bizarre point-and-click combat function. To attack, you need to drag your mouse to whatever body part is your enemy’s weakness and wait for the bar on the side of the screen to max out. Since the turn-based bit was canned, the combat is super easy – you can spam a ton of items in your inventory like firecrackers and poison darts and be on your way. It’s not a good system, like at all, and since random encounters are SUPER common, and it gets real tedious, real fast. The enemies are amusing, though, and the visual of you casually thwacking a big titty aerobics girl over the head with a metallic bat or shooting an army woman in her giant boobies with a Magnum is ridiculous enough to (slightly) redeem it.
When you’re not beating the shit out of people, you’re usually running around doing fetch quests. NPCs will give you goods and tell you to “delivery it ASAP.” These quests are…all annoying, like most fetch quests are, but they’re even WORSE when you realize the map you’re provided is absolute shit. It doesn’t mark any important story locations, stores, or the bars, so you’re stuck squinting and trying to figure out which pixelated lump of colors is the building you’re looking for. For some reason, you can never seem to progress without walking back and forth to the bars in each level. The customers have to literally tell you what you need to do before you can move on, even when the objective is super obvious.
The NA version does add a fun side quest involving, um, stealing underwear and panties. There’s a photo junkie in town who will give you some sweet MS-DOS porn for every bit of lingerie you steal from people’s homes. It’s…stupid, but you KNOW I hustled to get every shitty EGA nudie picture.
The most important feature of this game, of course, is THE FUCKIN’. This is the good stuff, folks. And by good stuff, I mean the hot garbage stuff. There is NOTHING sexy about any of these scenes – it’s all unintentionally hilarious thanks to the horrendous translations. There are two different types of sex encounters here. First, there are the prostitutes. For these, you don’t have to do anything except pay and watch the scenes unfold. The only way you can approach these girls is if you figure out how to get Faythe to leave you. Such a great friend you are – you just dump a woman in this extremely dangerous town so that you can FUCK instead of investigate the missing persons case she brought you. JR says some…wild shit to these women and weirdly brings up belly button play more than once.
The other sex scenes are with the victims you save. They’ll give you their phone number, and you’ll have to go to Faythe’s house to use her phone and organize a hook-up. Again – REALLY PROFESSIONAL STUFF THAT’S TOTALLY APPROPRIATE DURING YOUR MISSING PERSONS INVESTIGATION. After you call the girls, they’ll meet you at a motel. Here you can engage in point-and-click sexventures.
Hover over whatever body part you think they want pleasured and choose from hand, mouth, vibrator, rotary vibrator, and candle. You get the candle while investigating an S&M club, but it’s useless because if you try to use the candle on ANY of the girls, they will immediately kick you out of their room. The rotary vibrator is also useless, because it functions exactly the same way as the regular vibrator. In order to pleasure your lovers, you have to figure out exactly what action they want…but they will not tell you what that is and the game gives you no hints, so you LITERALLY just have to cycle through and hope that they want their knee caressed. If you guess incorrectly too many times or repeat too many moves, they’ll tell JR he doesn’t know how to pleasure a woman and kick him out. Hilariously, if you fail, you can immediately call them again and restart, and JR will apologize…while making the girl pay the motel fee so he can try to fuck them better. If you succeed, JR unlocks the action “READY TO GO!!!” and an icon of his “manly hood” will appear. Click on her coochie, and a final round of horrendous dialogue will scroll through while crackly shitty audio of moaning plays.
This game…is not good. Still, it had a bit of a cult following since it was the first of its kind and according to this 1993 advertisement it was originally selling for a whopping $79.95 – and that’s in ’93 money! You can play it yourself legally and free over at this link. It’s not exactly a masterpiece when it comes to gameplay or story, but come on…don’t you wanna see what kind of porn schlubs were spending $79.95 on?
Jenn Coulter is a woman of refined taste. Follow her on Twitter and check out her amazing blog on all things Anime!
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