Obscusion B-Side: Propeller Arena: Aviation Battle Championship: Possibly the Worst Case of Unfortunate Timing in Video Game History

While some people would prefer if their enjoyment of entertainment media wouldn't be affected by the outside world, especially since said media are sometimes a way for one to take their mind off of the real world, it's just something that can't be done at times. A perfect example would be when a game's release is affected by a real world tragedy of some sort, because maybe said game comes a little too close to said tragedy, though obviously it wasn't intentionally so. For example, the North American release of Resident Evil Survivor infamously not only saw a delayed release than it did in Japan & Europe (August 2000 vs. January & March 2000, respectively) but also had support for the GunCon light gun peripheral completely removed, despite it being the intended way to play the game. While never admitted officially, it's easy to guess that Capcom likely made the decision after the Columbine High School massacre that happened on April 20, 1999, and the idea of using a light gun for a game where you had full control of the character was maybe a little distasteful; Columbine was also why Sega never released the first-party Dreamcast light gun in North America. Another example was MotorStorm: Apocalypse, which was originally planned for release for March 16, 2011 in Europe & Australasia, followed by April 12 in North America, but after the "Great East Japan Earthquake", & the following tsunamis, happened on March 11 that year the game's release was delayed everywhere except for Australasia. After all, racing around devastated city environments seemed a tad callous after what happened in the Tohoku region of Japan.

However... at least those games still came out!

Likely the most infamous example of real world tragedy affecting the release of a video game would have to be Propeller Arena: Aviation Battle Championship for the Sega Dreamcast. Developed by the legendary Sega AM2, produced by the iconic Yu Suzuki, & directed by Makoto Osaki (who directed Daytona USA 2 & would later direct Virtua Fighter 5), Propeller Arena was often seen at the time as a sort of sister game to Wow Entertainment/Sega AM1's Alien Front Online, as both were games designed primarily around online play with what was then a brand new concept for consoles: Real-Time Voice Chat via the Dreamcast's plug-in microphone, which debuted with Seaman. But where Alien Front Online was a tank combat game that was an expanded port of an arcade game, & only featured online play & voice chat via modem, Propeller Arena was all about aerial dogfighting & included support for the Dreamcast's rarely-used Broadband Adapter, which would make it the first console game to feature real-time voice chat over broadband, over a year before Microsoft launched Xbox Live in November 2002. Propeller Arena was showcased at E3 2001 that May, followed by a short postponement that meant that it would see release about a month after Alien Front Online's August 7 release in North America. Still, the game's development was 100% complete & Propeller Arena was all set for release in North America first on Wednesday, September 19, 2001...

You all know what happened a week prior to release.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were hit by two hijacked airliners, while on that same day a third plane crashed into the Pentagon & a fourth plane was prevented from hitting the Capitol Building by the self-sacrifice of the passengers on board, resulting in the plane crashing in an empty field in Pennsylvania. Needless to say, the idea of a game that's all about dogfighting no longer looked like something that made sense to release just eight days later, especially when one of the stages was a cityscape littered with skyscrapers that planes could crash into (though, being an arcade-style game, the buildings were indestructible). While it would have made sense for Sega to simply delay the release of Propeller Arena, there was another problem: Sega had already announced its plans to discontinue the Dreamcast & switch over to being a third-party company back in January. Only 12 more games would see release on the Dreamcast in North America, post-9/11, before everything came to an end, with the final game (NHL 2K2) coming out on February 12, 2002. In short, there was simply no way for Sega to just delay Propeller Arena, since by the time it wouldn't have felt as insensitive (even if the cityscape stage was removed) the Dreamcast would have been long dead; Europe's final games for the system were later that April, but even that wouldn't have been enough time. Now, sure, Japan would continue to see official Dreamcast releases up through 2007, & Sega's own final Dreamcast game (Puyo Puyo Fever) would be in 2004, but Propeller Arena was a game designed specifically for non-Japanese audiences and online play (which, by 2004, only Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 still had servers up), so it's entirely possible that the game was simply never even intended for Japanese release, in general; also, there was some licensed music in the game, too.

It's now 2026, 25 years after 9/11 & the cancellation of Propeller Arena, which had long been leaked to the public online (multiple times over, including a build literally dated 9/11/2001) & even just earlier this year had its online functionality made operational for the first time ever by the fan community. While I can't really judge said online play functionality myself, as stuff like FlyCast & DCNet is admittedly beyond me, I can judge the rest of the game as it's been known (more or less) ever since the initial leaks, so let's see if the last-minute cancellation of Propeller Arena resulted in the loss of something special for the Dreamcast, or if it was for the best that it never actually came out.

While made for console, Propeller Arena is distinctly an arcade game at heart, and the name of the game here is dogfighting, as that's entire point of the game. At its most basic, this is a simple six-player dogfight, with the goal of either getting 10 points first or (at the very least) getting the most points by the end of the three-minute timer; both of these can be changed, but by default it's 10 points in three minutes. Line up your sights with an opponent in front of you, and once you're in range (i.e. within "500" of the game's undefined unit of distance) you can fire an infinite ammo machine gun with, and if you're the one responsible for delivering the killing blow you get a point, while said foe respawns in a few seconds later. As for the controls, they're also similarly simple, with the L & R triggers acting as a break & accelerator (you have a default speed you move at, but can speed up or slow down to a point), the analog stick controlling your flight (this is an arcade-style game, so no control over stuff like yaw or rolling), you can also select between three camera angles (third-person, first-person, & first-person with a cockpit) by pressing Up on the d-pad, & the A button fires your machine gun. If you fly upwards too much you'll stall, and you get out by going left & right on the analog stick repeatedly to fill a meter; meanwhile, if you reach the edge of a stage you're automatically turned down. On a basic level that's enough to come to immediate grips with Propeller Arena, but there are two more buttons to use during gameplay, namely Y & X; B is reserved solely for voice chat during online play.

The Y button relates to the power-ups you can find during a dogfight, usually found in specific areas in rings of five boxes with different colors. Red boxes contain secondary weapons, which are fired with Y & can come in the form of homing missiles (both a single giant one & a bunch of smaller, Itano Circus-like ones), a napalm bomb that can be dropped onto the field & creates a massive explosion that damages anyone who's in the blast, or a "Hot Potato" where players keep launching a timed explosive between each other until the timer runs out. Green boxes contain power ups that can either recover some health or "Power", which I'll get to in a moment, as well as temporary boosts, like stealth camouflage or infinite Power. Finally, yellow boxes contain temporary status effects you can inflict on your opponents, like freezing or reversing their controls. As for the X button, that plays into probably the most unique aspect of Propeller Arena, as a flight combat game: Stunts. While flying you can do a wide variety of inputs on the analog stick & press X, fighting game style, and these will allow you to perform stunts like barrel rolls, quick turns, side steps, loop-de-loops, etc.; you can also quick accelerate & quick brake by double-pulling R or L. The quick turns, in particular, are especially important as turning on your own can be a bit slow when in a pinch, so being able to quick 90° or even 180° turn to keep an enemy in your sights is imperative. Finally, when you're close enough to an opponent you're chasing after (usually somewhere between 100 & 200 units of distance) you can press X when prompted to enter an automatic chase sequence, which can allow for an easy kill (though an opponent can escape via a stunt of their own), and if you perform a loop on an enemy that's on your tail you then you'll automatically enter a chase, in turn. However, performing stuns uses up your Power gauge, seen to the left of your speed on the HUD, and while the meter does recharge on its own it's very slow, hence the Power recharge icon, so clever & well-timed usage can make the difference. Once you get to grips with special weapons & stunts, though, then you more or less know everything you need to know in order to play Propeller Arena. Again, this is an arcade-style game so it's all about the player being able to instantly pick up & play the moment a dogfight begins, though being able to know when to break away from the crowd to pick up bonus weapons, power ups, & status effects, as well as knowing what stunt to use at the right moment, will clearly give a player an advantage over others.

Aside from the Options (Quick Warning: Choosing to "Invert Up & Down" actually removes the default inversion; totally not confusing), Propeller Arena features just four modes to choose from. Championship is the standard single-player mode where you compete in a series of multi-craft dogfights, with the goal being to finish in the Top 3 so that you can advance on to the next battle, though actually winning the championship & seeing the end credits requires you to finish in first, overall. Quick Battle is where one to four players can fight it out in a single round dogfight, and you have free selection of both craft & stage beforehand. Then there's Network, which until earlier this year was effectively useless but does exactly what it says on the tin. You can establish rooms where two to six players can gather together to engage in repeated dogfights, and this is the mode where you can set up the Broadband Adapter settings as need be (depending on how you connect today), though from what I understand voice chat & leaderboards still haven't been fully implemented. From what I remember hearing back in the day, Alien Front Online's voice chat was shockingly good & responsive for a game that only supported the modem, so I would have to imagine that Propeller Arena's voice chat would have been more of the same, if not even more responsive due to the inclusion of broadband support. Still, the simple fact that the Dreamcast community even managed to get Propeller Arena's online functionality up & running in the first place almost 25 years later, apparently due to it using a modified version of Outtrigger's network code, is miraculous in & of itself, so if they could also eventually figure out how to include voice chat & leaderboards, as originally intended, that'd just be icing on the cake.

Finally, there's one last mode, Training Arena, and this is effectively Propeller Arena's equivalent to Crazy Taxi's iconic Crazy Box. This mode is split up between three variants, each featuring eight challenges (one for each of the default planes), with Propeller Stunt being simply about performing a series of stunts in order, for points, within a time limit, though if you want to maximize your points you have to also fly through rings while also performing the stuns in time; you're given infinite Power for these, so stunt away. Propeller Challenge gives each plane its own unique challenge to complete, like shooting down missiles or a giant meteor before they hit the ground, collecting blue icons housed within boxes you need to shoot first (while dealing with things like constantly reversed controls or timed frozen controls), taking out multiple squadrons of foes within a time limit, or dropping napalm bombs to destroy bridges on a stage. Finally, Propeller Agility tasks players with completing a course of rings to fly through within an increasingly shorter time frame for each challenge, and missing a ring adds a second to your total time. While Propeller Stunt is pretty easy to get through, though it really shows just how many stunts there are in the game (i.e. a lot, including some exclusive to certain planes), & Propeller Challenge offers some really interesting scenarios, it's Propeller Agility that's easily the toughest of them all. There's a general increase in difficulty from Challenge 1 (which is always Eagle Jam) to Challenge 8 (which is always Pengo Jets), but it's these ring courses that really showcase the difference between each plane, in terms of controls, as Eagle Jam is the all-rounder, Muscle Bros. is slow but has the most health, Hex Candy is fast & twitchy, 8-bit Beat accelerates quickly but slows down the worst, etc.

But enough of what Propeller Arena offers in terms of modes & the like... is the game fun & should it have seen release, at some point or another? Simply put, the answer is YES, YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!!! As one would expect from Sega AM2, Propeller Arena is a blast to play, with simple but intuitive controls allowing even those who aren't big on flying games to instantly get used to, while also having that extra bit of depth to it with the stunts that allows a player to hone their skills & not simply rely on luck to win. Well, OK, playing the single player Championship mode can sometimes feel a little like luck, but at the same time the mode very much feels like how it would have been had it been an arcade game first; you even have a limited amount of credits (10) to complete a run. In a nice touch, though, you can actually alter Championship mode by simply beating it repeatedly, as by beating it with the same character/plane you unlock new ones, which also come with their own stages, so where the mode initially starts with only eight battles you'll eventually max out at ten, and the unlockable characters/planes will get added to the set of foes you'll take on across the entire playthrough, where they are always a tough challenge, from start to finish. Yeah, the fact that you need to beat Championship mode with the same character/plane repeatedly is a bit odd, especially since the title screen makes note at the top of which ones you've cleared the mode with, but at least there are unlockables, and by fully completing the Training Arena you'll be able to unlock a couple more. However, actually unlocking anything beyond the first character/plane (Shadow) is actually rather hard, because once Shadow gets added to Championship mode he's an absolute menace that will almost constantly rack kills up like no one's business, while also being nigh impossible to take down yourself. Combine that with a general AI that will not hesitate to crash into you (costing both of you points) or even purposefully crash into the environment at points, all to prevent you from scoring, as well as the AI having a knack to either constantly dog your tail or gather as far away from you as possible, and there can be a decent challenge, after the first go around.

But, truly, Propeller Arena was a game designed around multiplayer, and as you can see above the game does support four players locally, which is a massive improvement over Alien Front Online being only single-player locally. Had this game been released I could easily see it be looked back on today as a favorite of local parties, alongside the likes of Power Stone 2, Dead or Alive 2's tag battles, Sonic Shuffle, etc. Of course, the ideal scenario for this game would have been to play it online, and while I can't access the newly re-enabled online mode myself for this review what I can see by looking up early reports is that it works extremely well already. Alien Front Online had to restrict its voice chat to one person at a time due to it only supporting the dial-up modem, & since Propeller Arena had to support both the modem & the BBA I wouldn't be surprised if it was going to have a similar restriction, though that's simply speculation on my part. Still, just the simple fact that the game is back online (in some fashion) is astounding, and I really do hope those who are able to experience the game as it was really meant to be played are enjoying themselves.

In terms of the visuals Propeller Arena is an extremely solid looking game, with a great use of color that makes it extremely easy to see where anyone is on screen at any point, and a UI that's very easy to read at an instant, despite admittedly having a bunch of different meters, point counters, nameplates, & the like on screen all at once. The planes have a great variety of designs to them, and while you rarely see them in general the pilots themselves are also a diverse lot, with a character design style by Shoji Takeuchi (in what was technically his first game with Sega) that matches what Sega's various arcade games were kind of known for at the time, i.e. semi-realistic, but with just enough embellishments for some added flair. The stages themselves do admittedly differ in quality, with my personal favorites being Tower City (i.e. the stage that got the game cancelled after 9/11) & Old Castle (which has some neat destructibility to help sell the idea of a battle happening), though there is a simple effectiveness to stages like Sky High (an all-sky stage with no obstacles to avoid) & Volcano (which has lava spouting out occasionally). Still, there are neat little touches in other stages, like Airport having what's clearly a launch ramp that goes over the ocean to send planes into space (the game takes place in 2045), though the placement of the power ups can sometimes be a bit unwieldly, as some stages have them right against the ground, i.e. about as far away from the general combat as possible. However, it's very a much a game that looks like a Sega AM2 title of the era, and that's by no means a bad thing because Sega AM2 games had great visuals to them.

And then there's the music, and I think this is really why the game has never seen a proper release since, to some extent. While there are 12 rock-heavy tracks that were composed by Sega AM2's Sachio Ogawa & Tomoya Koga, some of which would later get remixed & used in Virtua Tennis 3 in 2006, the main attraction of Propeller Arena's score are the nine licensed songs, similar to how Crazy Taxi continues to be remembered for its usage of songs by acts like The Offspring & Bad Religion. In this case Sega of America Dreamcast/SOAD made a deal with Fat Wreck Chords, with the following acts & songs being featured: "Wake Up with a Smile" & "King Kong Song" by Consumed, "Bite the Hand That Feeds" & "Going Nowhere" by Zero Down, "Life Size Mirror" & "Lies Can't Pretend" by No Use For a Name, "My Life Inside Your Heart" & "The Art of Losing" by Rise Against,  & "Shaving Your Life" by Mad Caddies. There's also an unused third song from Zero Down hidden in the code ("Empty Promised Land"), while all of the menus use the start of "Bien Venido a Miami" by Old School 101 (via Victory Records), similar to how Crazy Taxi's home port menu uses the opening instrumental of "Americana" by The Offspring. Truly, the licensed music is what Propeller Arena was designed to be played with, as Championship mode plays those songs exclusively throughout the entire playthrough, and the surprising lack of loading between stages means that the music literally never stops playing, aside from a short transition period where the game's announcer (voice actor Greg Irwin, i.e. the legendary announcer from Street Fighter Alpha 3) actually states what the next song will be, by title.

The end result is a very rock-heavy, punk-style soundtrack playing over intense dogfights, all while a memorable announcer is chiming in with both warnings & disses towards the player, and the licensed music supplied by Fat Wreck Chords really do complete the package, similar to how Crazy Taxi just doesn't feel right without The Offspring. I mean, Sega literally had Greg Irwin cite the songs by name, like he's a DJ, so that's how intrinsic they are to the game.

What likely would have been the final cover art
for the game, had it seen release on September 19, 2001.

While games getting cancelled during development isn't anything new or uncommon, they are primarily cancelled before they could truly be considered anything close to "finished". In the rare instances where a (more or less) 100% completed game is indeed cancelled it's either a port or localization of some sort (so the original game still saw proper release), and if it's truly an original title then they actually do tend to see release at some point in the future, with that being the case more often today via the modern retro gaming market. However, Propeller Arena: Aviation Battle Championship is truly an exception to all of that, as while the game was indeed pretty much completed (so much so that its online play was eventually made accessible for people to use!) the timing of its release was quite possibly one of the most unfortunate in the entire history of video games, due to the tragedy of 9/11. However, unlike some fellow completed-yet-cancelled games that eventually saw official release (The Red Star, P-47 II MD, Star Fox 2, Rodea the Sky Soldier for Wii, 40 Winks for N64, etc.), Sega has yet to officially release Propeller Arena in any form, even 25 years after the events of September 11, 2001. I'm sure a major factor is probably just down to pure apathy, though I imagine there'd also be the licensed music to deal with, as the game was very much designed around the songs by Consumed, Zero Down, No Use For a Name, Rise Against, & Mad Caddies (not to mention Old School 101 being used a little, as well), though by this point both Zero Down & No Use have long since disbanded, after each band suffered the death of a respective member in 2002 & 2012. Sure, Sega could simply remove the licensed music (& remove Greg Irwin's referencing of them during gameplay), but they were very much at the core of the game itself. It's why later re-releases of Crazy Taxi were always seen as "lesser" due to the removal of its licensed music, and why the newest game currently in development was revealed with The Offspring playing in the background.

And it's a shame that Sega has never bothered to properly release Propeller Arena, as the game that was finished (& eventually leaked online) is simply outstanding. The dogfighting action is easy to pick up & play, while the stunt system allows for extra depth that rewards practice & learning, but without being able to abuse it via the Power gauge. Sega had always been a company that, sometimes to its own detriment, was well ahead of the industry with some of the ideas it tried out, and the same is true with Propeller Arena, as had it seen release it would have been the first console game to offer voice chat over broadband, same as Alien Front Online had done over modem, and it would have been over a year before the launch of Xbox Live. In fact, Propeller Arena would have been the perfect kind of game to release on Xbox 360 (& PS3) via Xbox Live Arcade during the late 00s or early 2010s, as the arcade-style gameplay would have been a perfect match for the kinds of games that were truly doing their best via XBLA, not to mention that online voice chat had truly become a hot thing during that period (for better or worse), and I think enough time had passed by then that people wouldn't have continued to associate the Tower City stage with 9/11. Meanwhile, finally releasing the game today would result in arguably a much smaller impact, though I'm sure people would still appreciate it, since the novelty of a game like this designed around online play has mostly worn off.

Regardless, though, Sega really should dust off Propeller Arena, ink new deals for the licensed music, & finally give the game the release that was (understandably) taken away from it back in September of 2001. It's truly a game that, I feel, could have been considered a legit classic today, and it more than deserves a chance for more people to be able to experience it.

Game © Sega-AM2/Sega, 2001