The Outfoxies

The Outfoxies (アウトフォクシーズ, Autofokkushīzu) is a fighting arcade game which was released by Namco in 1994; it ran on Namco NB-2 hardware and features several professional hitmen secretly set against each other by a held-in-common client, "Mr. Acme". Acme and his wife had hired each of them to assassinate a wealthy art collector, then arranged for them to kill each other to ultimately avoid having to pay their fee - and it is an early example of arena fighting game which predates the straight-to-console Super Smash Bros. and Jump Super Stars series.

Characters

• John Smith (ジョン・スミス, Jon Sumisu): An average man who is willing to do anything for money, no matter how simple (such as babysitting) or how risky (such as instigating a revolution); he is thirty-eight years old (which means that he was born in 1956), is five feet and eleven inches tall and weighs 177 pounds. He will fight the other characters at a skyscraper where he will have set a bomb.
• Dweeb (ドゥイーブ, Doību): A chimpanzee who is the only assassin in the game who works for bananas, and is also the son of a famous chimpanzee known as "Mr. Happy" (who has no connections to the Mr. Men series); he is ten years old (which means he was born in 1984), is two feet and five inches tall and weighs 62 pounds. He fights upon a military plane where he plans to steal munitions.
• Betty Doe (ベッティ・ドー, Bettī Dō): An entrepreneur who desperately needs a source of financial capital for her business ventures (which include contract killing); she is thirty-three years old (meaning she was born in 1961), is five feet and two inches tall, and weighs 95 pounds. She fights the others at an aquarium where there are lethal sea animals - and she has also set a bomb there.
• Bernard White (バーナード・ホワイト, Bānādo Howaito): A bio-engineer who lost his hand after an experiment went wrong; as a result, he had it replaced with a prosthetic steel hand. He is thirty-six years old (which means he was born in 1958), is seven feet and one inch tall, and weighs 298 pounds - and he fights upon a train (with a steam locomotive, not a diesel) traveling the Rocky Mountains.
• Professor Ching (プロフェッサ・チン, Purofessā Chin): A genius scientist who, despite being paraplegic, fights with a self-designed wheelchair along with his talents in martial arts; he is eighty-two years old (which means he was born in 1912), is 5'2" out of his wheelchair, and weighs 100 pounds out of his wheelchair (and 550 pounds in it). He fights at a lab where he is constructing weapons.
• Danny and Demi (ダニー＆デミ兄妹, Danī to Demi Kyōdai): A pair of former Siamese twins who were separated following a near-fatal accident, and despite being separated the two have a lethal mentality; they are eleven years old (meaning they were born in 1983), are 4'3" and 4'4" tall respectively, and weigh 77 and 78 pounds respectively. They fight upon a cruise ship which is heading for Europe.
• Eve (イヴ, Ibu): A former movie actress, who has turned to thievery in order to support her extravagant lifestyle; she is twenty-nine years old (meaning she was born in 1965), is five feet and five inches tall and weighs 111 pounds. She also has a pet iguana which aids her in her thefts (but unlike the other characters, has no name), and fights at a circus where she would make her appearance.

Gameplay

The game has the player thrown into a particular hitman's home turf, and they must use every weapon imaginable as well as anything they can find in the environment (including the environment itself), to try to kill their opponent; the weapons can be typical like a rocket launcher or machine gun, or absurd like a clown cannon or a bowl of hot soup. Despite dealing with a competition about murder, the game has a levity to it in all aspects - and the levels are also an important part of this game, as they are varied, and in many cases, will begin to collapse as time goes on. This means that if the player cannot kill his or her opponent in a certain amount of time, the level will literally start crumbling around him or her; the levels take place in various interactive locations, including in a skyscraper, on a munitions aeroplane, in an aquarium, on a moving steam train, in a secret laboratory, on a moving cruise liner, and even in a circus.

Soundtrack

Victor Entertainment released a limited-edition soundtrack album for the game (The Outfoxies: Namco Game Sound Express Vol.20 - VICL-15042) on June 21, 1995.^[2]

Cover for The Outfoxies soundtrack album (1995).

References

External links

• The Outfoxies at the Killer List of Videogames
• The Outfoxies at the Arcade History database