A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of spending some time (and more than a few quarters) at the giant arcade in the Cedar Point Amusement park. There were many games I got to try out for the first time, and one of those was the subject of today's Co-Op Classics, Target: Terror. I'll admit to you right off the bat that it's very debatable whether T:T counts as a trueclassic in anyone's eyes, but it is certainly... memorable.
There's an old Saturday Night Live skit, from back in the day when the show was actually funny (hey, it's an editorial, I can say things like that). I'm not sure exactly who was in it, these many years later, but I recall Tom Hanks was the host, and it was in the Phil Hartman/Kevin Nealon era. The skit begins in a family kitchen, when someone drinks milk from the carton, and it's spoiled, gone all chunky and gross. After one person spits it out, the milk is shared by everyone, passing it around until everyone has tried a curdled, nasty sample. "You won't believe how bad this is!" says one of these unfortunates. It's a great skit, funny to this day, and it points out one fundamental quirk that people have.
Sometimes, something can be so bad, it's good.
Looking for other instances where this is true? How about the immense popularity of low budget sci-fi movies like Mega Python vs. Gatoroid or Mega Shark vs. Crocasaurus. These "films" have horrible effects, atrocious acting, and yet they are successful enough to keep the filmmakers in business. It's fun to watch movies like these, and other miserable Z-grade films like Plan 9 From Outer Space so we can make jokes about them, or just laugh at the outright absurdities. Mystery Science Theater 3000 took this concept and ran with it for many seasons.
I submit to you today that Target: Terror is the video game equivalent of Mega Pirahna or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is so down-right horrible that it turns around like a boomerang and becomes enormously entertaining. It is a lightgun shooter so bland and uninspired that it elevates itself to notoriety, purely on the merits of its hum drum mediocrity. It is a compelling study in "blah", a masterpiece of "meh", and it is a game you will never forget playing.
First let's consider the title. Target: Terror. You have to admire the sheer blandness of it. Imagine how long it must have taken the "creative" team to arrive at this nomenclature. I suspect they just talked to a programmer for a few minutes, found two words from this chat that started with the same letter (since alliteration is a serious literary technique, don't you know), and put them together while washing their hands in the bathroom before lunch. "Well, it's a gun game, so there will be targets to shoot, and the bad guys are terrorists... so, yeah. Target: Terror sounds good. Care to trade your Hot Pocket for my tuna fish sandwich?"
Now, I do make an assumption in that previous paragraph: that this jewel of a game had actual programmers. This may or may not be the case, but I'm fairly certain that there was one group missing from the Target: Terror team, and that would be the artists and animators. Check out the screenshots to see what I mean. The actual backgrounds look like something a middle school kid could throw together in Powerpoint without much trouble. I think I saw better graphics behind the weather man on the 10 o'clock news in 1985. And who needs animations, really, when you can just use digital pictures as the sprites, and call it good? "Hey, check out our life-like motion captured graphics!" Too bad they are animated worse than the fake ape in Donkey Kong Country, circa 1994.
Let's get one thing straight regarding these "actors" who played the terrorists. They aren't really actors, or at least, they shouldn't be. It appears that they grabbed Bob from accounting, gave him some knockoff Oakley's and a black skullcap, and told him to act like the big purple guy from McDonaldland. They must have scoured the office cubicles looking for a woman who was attractive enough to represent a "bad girl" in a short black skirt. She must have been a favorite, because she shows up roughly every five seconds. Almost as much as "Dude in Tan Khakis, Blue Shirt, and Black Vest With Sunglasses" and the totally different person, "Dude in Tan Khakis, Blue Shirt, and Black Vest With Scary Terrorist Hood".
You might imagine that the bland title, Colorforms-like graphics, and (speaking generously) affordable "actors" would make for an interesting enough story, but it gets better. In 2008, Target: Terror was ported to everyone's favorite lightgun game paradise, the Wii. Konami soiled their pedigree for sure when they decided to inflict this on poor casual Wii players everywhere. And to think that they had the audacity to sell it for $40, due to the added value of a few lousy minigames that could be unlocked. Considering you could get 80 credits of the real arcade game for that price, and at least get to shoot a cool gun instead of a plain ol' Wiimote, that seems like a pretty bad deal. It even earned the "Worst Wii Visuals" award in 2009 from IGN, and that is really saying something.
What more could be said about Target: Terror? Much more, surely, but I have to emphasize one thing. It's a very fun game. More precisely, it's a horrible game with all sorts of bad things stuffed inside, and, perversely, this makes it a memorable and hilarious experience. If you see the arcade version in a mall or store somewhere, pop in a few quarters. Add it to your game rental queue, or look for it in your local Redbox. It's a game you really should play at least once in your life. Trust me: it's so bad, it's good.