Video System's bizarre 1991 action game Spinal Breakers has been revealed as the next title coming to Arcade Archives.
The two-player gallery shooter will be coming PS4 and Nintendo Switch tomorrow (June 12th), and will cost $7.99 across both platforms. This will mark the first time the game has ever been released on home consoles.
The story of Spinal Breakers is rather ridiculous and muddled, feeling like a mishmash of a bunch of different ideas. It essentially sees players taking control of the ridiculously named Captain Waffle who must travel back in time to destroy a group of artificial lifeforms known as Hildroids. Once created as a worker force, these lifeforms have since revolted against their creators and have become intent on altering world history, sending forces back to the key moments in human civilisation.
As a result, it's falls to players to track them across several locations across time, such as Europe, China, Russia, Rome, Egypt, Japan, and America, eliminating them with an arsenal of weapons that includes pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles. Depending on well you perform, there are three different endings to discover, with two of these showing what might happen if you are unsuccessful.
One thing we should point out is that in the original arcade game, it appears that the first level took place in a concentration camp based on Auschwitz, complete with an iron gate bearing the infamous Nazi slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ('Work sets you free'). This seems to have now been changed in this new release, with the gate being absent in the video published below: