It’s no secret that I adore light gun games. As soon as you pick up the gun you’re on an adrenaline pumping ride where zombies, dinosaurs or aliens pop up on the screen. While they’re a nice diversion, light gun games haven’t evolved much beyond taking cover via a pedal in Time Crisis or motion sensors in Police 911. Essentially, the genre has been fixed as an electronic shooting gallery.
2 Spicy is different. Instead of pitting you against a flood of flesh eating zombies you have a single target to hunt down with the light gun. Both players are placed on a horizontal plane with plenty of cover points. In the subway stage you can hide behind concrete columns. On the rooftops of Hong Kong neon letters act as reload points. However, you don’t just pop out from the side to shoot. You actively run left or right by stomping on the two buttons on the floor.
While you run to the opposite side of the screen the view angle changes and sometimes space opens up to shoot the other player. If you can’t find any space you can “crush” the other player by shooting through their cover. Once they are exposed you can hold the gun in position to zoom in and get a clear headshot. Each bullet takes off a little life, but headshots can be lethal if you play as a character with a powerful gun.
If you’re on the receiving end of gun fire you can run away or tap on either of the move buttons twice to do a fancy jump. Jumping makes you harder to lock on to, but your character gets stunned for a second when s/he lands.
Playing against the AI is OK, but versus play is what 2 Spicy is about. Arcades typically have two 2 Spicy machines linked together so you can challenge a “rival”. Whoever gets three kills out of the five matches keeps playing. The other player has to shell out an extra hundred yen, but as a consolation prize they can try out a different character.
