Cho Aniki

"Do the Muscle"

Cho Aniki is a series of side-scrolling Shoot'Em Ups (mostly) made by Masaya and produced by NCS Corp (although there was a recent shift of designers). Gameplay is pretty conventional and a lot like Darius. Really, the series only has one claim to fame:

It is incredibly, incredibly Macho Camp.

Playing Cho Aniki is a journey through a long, bizarre psychosexual dream, featuring the main character Samson, a musclebound bodybuilder with a hole in his head that he shoots bullets out of, and such recurring characters as Adam, a giant naked man in a saucer that looks like a moon.

Most of the games have not been released outside of Japan, though a few of the games are now available through download services. Here is a full list of the games in the series:
 * Cho Aniki (1992, PC Engine Super CD; rereleased internationally on the Wii Virtual Console)
 * Ai Cho Aniki (1995, PC Engine Super CD)
 * Cho Aniki: Bakuretsu Ranto Hen (1995, Super Famicom; Fighting Game)
 * Cho Aniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko (1995, Playstation/Saturn)
 * Cho Aniki: Otoko no Tamafuda (2000, Wonderswan; Card Battle Game)
 * Cho Aniki: Seinaru Protein Densetsu (2003, Playstation 2)
 * Cho Aniki Zero (2009, PSP; available on PSN in the U.S.)

Still, for the love of God, read this and discover just how bizarre the whole thing is. You won't believe us if we just tell you. (Note, however, that there's a small error: what they call the first game is actually the second. The first featured similar imagery, but the leads were a more standard action-game hero type and his girlfriend - Samson and Adon were defecting aliens who became the leads in subsequent games.)


 * Excuse Plot: Generally has to do with protein powder, although in one game you're playing as a blob of unspecified protein... That Came Out Wrong.
 * Macho Camp
 * Mind Screw
 * The Smurfette Principle: Averted of all things–there are two female characters, although admittedly one is also a battleship carrying tiny naked men.
 * Testosterone Poisoning
 * Timed Mission: One of the earlier shmups had a longish time limit that lasted through every stage. If time ran out, it was game over.
 * Widget Series