Cyber-Lip

In 1988 Konami released the now legendary Contra in arcades across the world. This innovative side-scrolling platformer basically began the "run-n-gun" genre that we know and recognize today. Prior to Contra, games in this genre were usually vertically scrolling affairs, like Capcom's Commando or SNK's own Ikari Warriors. While Contra saw much more success at home on the NES and Famicom, SNK took generous inspiration from Konami's arcade outing for their 10th Neo-Geo release, Cyber-Lip.

By the late 1980's SNK had become a little infamous for taking ideas established by other developers and injecting their own innovations on a proven formula. I'd never call SNK a copy-cat company, as they had many standout titles that were wholly unique (like Athena and Psyco Soldier), yet some of their games were a little too brazen in their inspiration - and that's where we find Cyber-Lip. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, as SNK had just launched their new Neo-Geo platform in arcades and they needed a smattering of games from various genres in order to pad out the library for arcade operators to put in their shiny, new multi-cart machines. 

In order to meet the demand of having a strong launch line up, both SNK and Alpha Denshi developed the majority of the launch-window Neo-Geo titles. I don't think any critic from yesterday or today would call any of these first 10 games on the hardware true masterpieces. Some are true classics, like Magician Lord, but are hardly masterpiece titles. Still, they each did a good job showcasing the 2D graphical capabilities of the hardware across a wide number of game types that proved to both arcade operators and gamers alike that the new Neo-Geo had the chops to create games for any taste. 

Cyber-Lip was met with some initial success in the arcade, with the US arcade industry publication RePlay stating it was the sixth most popular game in January 1991 and the top grossing arcade game in December of 1990. While there are no accounts of accurate AES sales data when the game launched in 1991 on the home version of the Neo-Geo, one could assume that over its first year on the market Cyber-Lip failed to bust open the sales charts enough to commission a follow-up or a home port to 16-bit home consoles. 

Critically, Cyber-Lip has never been well received by critics of yesterday and today due to it being such a blatant rip of Contra. The features and mechanics it's missing from the source material make Cyber-Lip feel worse than it actually is. Cyber-Lip isn't a bad game by any stretch, though, and can be quite fun. At the same time, like many games from this first year of Neo-Geo releases, it is missing the finesse and polish we would come to expect out of SNK throughout the rest of the 90's. While it wouldn't be fair to compare Cyber-Lip to the likes of Metal Slug, it is entirely fair to compare it to its chief inspiration, Contra, which is the base for this review.

The storyline is sparse here, and was quite dour for the time. Humanity was growing at a rapid pace, and by 2016 we had commissioned a space colony to help the growing population woes on earth. By 2019 androids had overtaken the colony, so humanity built a super-computer named Cyber-Lip to control the growing android population and ready them to be used to battle against a distant alien threat. Years pass and Cyber-Lip is reprogramed to turn the android population against humanity and help the incoming alien threat! Your job as elite, human-loving androids Rick or Brook is to infiltrate the station and put an end to Cyber-Lip and the android menace. 

If you have played Contra you know the general gameplan before you jump into Cyber-Lip. You control either Rick or Brook in single-player or co-op modes and run to the right while shooting evil androids and aliens along the way to the end game. Rick and Brook are quite nimble compared to other arcade action game heroes of the day, and control better than your characters in Contra. Movement is precise, jumps have the right amount of heft and height, and you never feel your character can't or won't do what you need them to do - that is until you try to jump on a platform above you. Even if your jump can clear some platforms, SNK included a mechanic borrowed from Sega's Shinobi where you need to hold up on the controller and then press the jump button to do a super jump onto a higher ledge. You can also press down and jump to hop down from a high ledge back to a lower platform. The rub here is that during these animations you have no invincibility frames, so you are wide open to attack with no way to defend yourself or shoot back. These slow transitions often result in unintentional deaths until you realize you don't even need to use this mechanic at all and you quickly forget about it. 

Unlike most other run-n-gun style games, you have very limited control over your weapon spread. You can shoot horizontally, but you can only shoot vertically up when standing in place. You also cannot shoot down from a standing or jumping position, only when hanging from a pole or the ceiling. If this were a run-n-gun style platformer like Mega Man, where the majority of enemies are on the same plane as you, it all wouldn't be so bad. In Cyber-Lip, though, enemies swarm all around you like in Contra. So, not being able to handle the hordes of enemies while staying on the move results in many deaths until you get used to the general patterns and layouts of the stages. For an arcade game made to make money, there are far too many control hurdles to overcome resulting in a frustrating experience that could easily make a player walk away from the machine after one credit rather than feeling they need to have "one more go" at the game and pop in another coin. 

Thankfully, you do have a bevy of weapon types to gather and you retain your weapon upgrades even after you lose a life. You can cycle through your collected weapons with the C button (button 3) at any time as well, which is a nice touch. Weapon types are comprised of a standard laser gun, scatter shot, grenade, flame-thrower, and rocket launcher. Each of these weapons types has limited ammo, but you can collect ammo drops or enter doors you come across every so often that will replenish your entire ammo stock. 

Like most arcade action games of the day, you begin your adventure with three lives per credit and one-hit kills. To help you out, you can collect Core Bots that hover around your body to protect you from oncoming fire, like a shield. You can collect up to three of these bots, but you lose them if you lose a life. Continues are instant, so there are no checkpoints. After you lose a life, you ride back in on a little jet bike thing that lasts about 10 seconds or so. During this time, you are completely invincible. You can choose to jump off the jet bike at anytime, immediately activating your hit-box, so stay on this thing for the duration the game allows as you can often zip past troublesome areas this way. 

Along your journey you will enter six zones each with their own boss. Stage layouts are fine, but nothing you haven't seen before. Although, the level layouts again remind me more of Shinobi than Contra which ends up making the mechanics feel a bit out of touch with the level design. It's almost as if halfway through production the game went from being a Shinobi clone to a Contra clone. The level designs aren't bad, they just aren't memorable. After you complete each stage, you enter an elevator where you can choose to go up or down. If you make the wrong choice, you are sent down to an auto-scrolling sewer level where you ride some sort of walking platform robot thing over the water while being bombarded with some of the most annoying enemies in the game that, again, swarm around you with no good way to take them out without getting hit. Thankfully these sewer levels are pretty short, but since the elevator choices are randomized every time you play, you'll spend more time in the sewer levels than you'd like which kills the pacing entirely. 

The difficulty level is hard, but not insurmountable. Cyber-Lip as a whole is much more forgiving than Alpha's side-scrolling games on the Neo in these early days. While many enemies and swarms are randomized, a 1cc run in Cyber-Lip isn't an impossible task. Still, the amount of chances for deaths that are not your fault are high due to the general pattern-less nature of enemy progression and spawn points. Even if you dial down the difficulty, you are still presented with a very tough challenge; so, play where you feel most comfortable given your own skill and tolerance for good but slightly janky games. 

Graphically, Cyber-Lip is a visual tour-de-force for 1990. It provides lush visuals with more animation and color than many other games of the era. Backgrounds are interesting and varied science fiction tropes with small details and nods to SNK and the Neo-Geo all over the place. Character and enemy sprites are all adequately detailed and have quite a bit of animation. Boss sprite work is wonderfully detailed, but the designs tend to borrow a little too heavily from Contra and a few other action games. Admittedly, the game does look a bit dated, but it's in that good, nostalgic kind of way. What the game lacks in modern graphical flair, it makes up for it by throwing around a lot of well animated, big sprites with no slowdown - something the Neo-Geo is particularly good at. I'd venture to say that Cyber-Lip and Magician Lord were the two standout graphical show-pieces for the Neo-Geo during its first year.

Sound is generally good with fun music that fits the game and stage design well. It's nothing to write home about, but the music works. There are tons and tons of voice samples, though - which was typical of these early Neo-Geo games. Rick and Brook have something to say for just about every situation and shout out "I'm a gonner!" when they lose a life. All the voices are quite fun, and while I'd rather there be more animation or enemy variety instead of the voice overs on the cut-scenes, it did impress gamers and critics at the time as many games just didn't have the memory footprint to include such abundance in voice overs. I'd go as far to say that like Blue's Journey, another early Neo release, the sound design of Cyber-Lip is one of the standout features of the game. 

Overall, Cyber-Lip is a fun game that I think is a bit underappreciated due to its heavy influence by games that are objectively better. As I mentioned in the introduction, Cyber-Lip so often feels like Contra that the omission of many mechanics from that game make this one feel more like a barrel of missed opportunities and less like intentional artistic differences that fit the gameplay. Still, there is a lot of fun to be had here and I consider Cyber-Lip to be the standout side-scrolling action game on the Neo in these early days - even standing above the beautiful but woefully uneven Magician Lord.

Cyber-Lip is one the very early Neo games that continues to rise in value, so for a complete AES copy you can expect to pay upwards of $300 for a Japanese or US version. There are actually two Japanese variants, the original cardboard box release and a second print run that uses the more sturdy vinyl case. Although, they both carry a similar value in the 2022 retro game market. The MVS arcade cart, on the other hand, isn't much cheaper these days. The eventual port to the Neo CD in 1994 came with a few extras, like an extended intro and higher bit-rate voice overs. Despite Neo CD games being generally much less than the AES counterparts, Cyber-Lip is one of the more expensive Neo CD games to source in the US or Japan and commands a value above $150. Before you spend your hard-earned money on any of the three Neo-Geo versions, I recommend picking up the modern Arcade Archives release for $8 bucks to give it a shot to see if you want it in your physical Neo-Geo collection. 

Despite having a 14 year life-span, the Neo-Geo has very little variety in its games due to the overreliance on 2D fighters. While there are some real bangers on the hardware that aren't fighters, most of those games are entirely too expensive for the average retro gamer to ever dream about owning. Cyber-Lip fills a niche gap in many AES gamers' libraries due to it being a more affordable run-n-gun action game that is generally easy to come by. It's hardly the best game on the Neo, but despite its flaws is one of the stronger games in the original launch line up and a good recommendation for people just getting into the AES who want some varety in their library.