Something that I have said before, and will reiterate here, is that something I’ll always appreciate about the original Playstation is Sony’s laissez-faire policy in regards to allowing games to be published on their system. For the most part, anyway; Sony of America’s resistance to anything 2D was a bunch of bullshit that absolutely deprived people of some all-time classics. But Sony’s Japanese division did not give a fuck, they would let anything through. While this policy led to a lot of garbage being produced, it also allowed for developers to take chances on their work. Hell, it allowed developers to even enter the world of games to begin with; From Software could very well have remained a business software company if they weren’t able to get King’s Field onto a console. It allowed ArtDink to expand beyond railway simulations and niche computer games into more railway simulations and niche Playstation games. It gave us games like LSD The Dream Emulator, Paranoia Scape, and The Silver Case. I fully believe that all these weird, obscure experiments were just as important to the life of the Playstation as Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and so on.
One of these games is called Meta-Ph-List. Before I talk about the game, I feel like I need to talk about the developer. Meta-Ph-List was developed by a company known as A.D.M Co. If the MobyGames credits are to be believed (and I don’t see why they wouldn’t be), Meta-Ph-List is their one and only game. For most of the dev team, this title is their one and only experience in games. On the surface, it’s not a particularly unusual game. It’s a vertically scrolling space shooter, one of the most common gaming formats there is. But this is an obscure Japan-only Playstation game by a team that’s never made a game before or since, so there won’t be anything too “common” about it. Meta-Ph-List kicks off in a such a way that it immediately endeared itself to me. A minutes long, fully animated CG intro where a robot radio DJ (played by actual Japanese radio DJ Chris Peppler) reads off a top five list of hot new games released across the galaxy, Beard Landlord, The Highest Dreamer, and Parisian Mouse (developed by members of a rival game studio that were lured over with money and sex). Can’t forget about Dynamite Honey and Peach Boy 3, a game where, quote, “a woman with a hot bod and low self-esteem straps 500 dynamites to her body.” I need Dynamite Honey and Peach Boy 3 in my life. Dynamite Honey and Peach Boy 1 and 2 would also be nice. Of course, the number one hottest video game in the entire galaxy is Meta-Ph-List. The DJ also helpfully informs us that Meta-Ph-List is not a “Bang Bang,” but a “Think Think.” Despite being a game for the Thinking Man, I believe the developers should have had more confidence in themselves instead of comparing their game to Knuckles’ Chaotix. I should also point out that this intro has absolutely nothing to do with the game’s plot at all.
No, Meta-Ph-List is instead about a small group of fighter pilots dragged into an inter-planetary war over resources. After a series of battles, the pilots discover that the endless wars constantly being fought was all the work of an artificial intelligence that sending misinformation in order to create and inflame conflict among people. Luckily, that’s not anything we have to deal with here on Earth in our current day and age, right? So your goal is to take down enemy squadrons, and put an end to this AI. Probably. I think.
See, the thing about Meta-Ph-List is that it’s kind of a mess. It’s a mess that I love and think is great, but still a mess. The shooting itself is fairly basic, with its main gimmick being the ability to fire in 360 degrees using the shoulder buttons to aim. Otherwise, it’s pretty mundane: shoot enemies while flying forward, then fight a boss. Kind of.
Meta-Ph-List looks fairly normal on the surface. But sometimes, levels just end. They end randomly. You might be in a level for about 60 seconds before flying away, or you might actually fight a boss, then hang around fighting more enemies for a little while. All set to music that sounds like it would play in the background of an episode of Ultraman or the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Meta-Ph-List also features mild RPG mechanics, which means your weapons get stronger the more you use them. There are also some temporary power-ups to increase the size of your bullets and missiles. In addition, you have access to very powerful bombs. The most powerful screen-clearing bombs you’ll ever see in a shooter. This leads to a lot of times where you cannot see a fucking thing on screen because of all the projectiles you fire off.
I should point out that every time you use a bomb, that one whispering text-to-speech voice from Serial Experiments and No More Heroes says “Go To Hell” before letting loose. That’s pretty cool.
And you will be playing and replaying these levels a lot. This is because the “Think Think” portion of Meta-Ph-List is the Front Line meter. As you finish levels, and the more enemies you defeat in each run, the Front Line (representing your army’s forces) gets closer to 100%. Once it hits 100, the game is done. I got an ending, and a credit sequence, but I don’t think I actually finished Meta-Ph-List. The plot features surprisingly good English voice acting, but all of the between level text, as well as the ending text I got, was completely in Japanese. This is definitely one of those times where I really do need to learn this fucking language already, because for all I know, the in-game text has been giving me the most blatant GO HERE YOU STUPID FUCKER directions possible. On top of that, Meta-Ph-List is a two-disc game, but I still have yet to be able to access that second disc. I don’t know what disc 2 does, and seemingly nobody else does, either. Meta-Ph-List is another one of those games where trying to find any info other than a MobyGames profile proves to be useless. All I can find are longplays that get the same ending I did, AVGN clones doing a schtick about it being the worst game ever made, and an empty GameFAQs page. I’m still going to keep plugging away at this game to find the answers. This might actually be one of those times where I make a part two follow up post, assuming I figure things out. Already spent hours playing Meta-Ph-List, what’s a few more?
I mentioned a plot earlier. A plot that sounded like it had promise, and I probably haven’t seen the true conclusion to. The cutscenes for Meta-Ph-List are very stylish. Characters are presented as blue silhouettes, with that previously mentioned English voice acting delivered in a very casual, relaxed way. The acting, the lack of animation, the lack of any defining features of the characters comes across as very dreamlike. A fantastic way to save time and money on directing cutscenes without coming across as lazy or incompetent.
But yes, Meta-Ph-List is a shooter. It is a long, somewhat tedious shooter where you pick the same levels on a map over and over to make a number go up. Compared to any other shooter on the Playstation, a system home to games like Gradius Gaiden, it is absolutely lacking and not nearly as good. This does not matter. The chaotic nature of the Sony Playstation was the absolute final time a messy yet ambitious, bordering on surrealist game made by a team that vanished almost as soon as it appeared could get itself an official license for a console release. Storefronts and “Indie” showcases exist for games like this today, but good fucking luck trying to find them buried underneath multiple versions of Hitler Is My Futa Stepmommy. Meta-Ph-List represents not only the chaotic freedom granted to Playstation developers, but it also represents a bygone era that is sorely lacking in mainstream games (and independent games, lets be honest). A time of creative ambition. A time of having a dream that could often times be greater than your skills. A time when you didn’t have to be a firmly established trillion dollar corporation to make a game; a handful of people was all you needed. A time when you could afford to take a risk. A time when you could simply make a game, release it to a couple of stores somewhere in Akihabara, where someone was bound to buy it, set it on their shelf next to a copy of Dragon Quest VII, and it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Meta-Ph-List is the Playstation.
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