Cho Aniki

Cho Aniki (超兄貴) is a Japanese video game series originally developed by Masaya and published by NCS Corp. The first game was released in 1992 for the PC Engine system. The game's sequels and spin-offs later appeared on the Super Famicom, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, WonderSwan, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable. Mainly consisting of side-scrolling shoot 'em ups in the vein of Gradius, the Cho Aniki series is best known for its homoerotic overtones, wacky humor and vivid, surreal imagery. Most of the games have never seen release outside Japan.

For various reasons, the popularity of the Cho Aniki games has endured since the series' debut. Highlights of the various games include in-game music, innovative control schemes or sheer kitsch value. In Japan, these games are examples of baka-ge, a type of kuso-ge. "Baka-ge" literally means "idiot game" while "kuso-ge" literally means "shitty game" or "shit game". Baka-ge's appeal lies in its campiness.

Occasionally, the title is transliterated as "Choaniki", "Chou Aniki", or (erroneously) "Cho Eniki".

The rights to the series are currently owned by Extreme Co., Ltd., which had obtained the rights of NCS Corp. and Masaya products and trademarks.

Cho Aniki
Cho Aniki is the first game in the Cho Aniki series.

Ai Cho Aniki
Ai Cho Aniki (愛・超兄貴) was the sequel to Cho Aniki developed by Masaya and also released for the Super CD-ROM². In this game, players control Samson and Adon directly. A key difference in the control scheme of Ai Cho Aniki is that instead of rapidly pressing buttons as a means of firing at enemies, players now had to input intricate button combinations, Street Fighter-style. By and large, Cho Aniki and Ai Cho Aniki play very similarly.

In this game, Bo Emperor Conshyasu (BoteiConshyasu, a pun of "body conscious") raise the Neo Builder Army to fight Idaten and Benten. However, the two fall in love and elope. This leaves Samson and Adon to fight the new threat, Su Emperor Roido (SuTeiLoido, a pun of "steroid"). This time Taku Iwasaki scored the soundtrack.

On release, Famicom Tsūshin scored the PC Engine version of the game a 24 out of 40, giving it a 7 out of 10 in their Reader Cross Review.

The game was released on Nintendo's Virtual Console service in 2007 in Japan.

Cho Aniki Bakuretsu Ranto-hen
Cho Aniki: Bakuretsu Ranto-hen (超兄貴 爆烈乱闘篇) A departure from the typical Cho Aniki formula has characters from previous games — heroes and villains alike — battling in one-on-one fights. Playable characters include the following. This game was the last of the series to be developed by Masaya. It was released in 1995.
 * Idaten, a warrior with long spiked hair who uses a variety of attacks with his body
 * Benten, who in this game is flanked by two cherubs who can transform into mini-hunks
 * Samson/Adon, attacks by gyrating and flatulating.
 * Sabu, a pagoda-shaped ship with an Elvis Presley-looking figurehead
 * Mami 19, a strange amalgam of a cute girl and a battleship transporting three naked, frolicking men
 * Adam, a naked man riding in half a moon. He is intended to resemble Adam from The Creation of Adam portion of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.
 * Botei, a berserker, likely to be Bo Emperor (Botei) Bill from the first series
 * Uminin, an odd latex creature that resembles a condom

Cho Aniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko
Cho Aniki - Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko (超兄貴 ～究極無敵銀河最強男～) was released for the PlayStation the same year as the previous two titles. This game features digitized sprites instead of the hand-drawn anime-style art from the other titles. It was released for the Sega Saturn three months later and the PlayStation Network in Japan in 2009. The subtitle of this game loosely translates to "The Ultimate, Most Strongest Man in the Milky Way" or "The Ultimate, Invincible, Most Galactically Powerful Man." The game is based on the engine of the first Cho Aniki. Idaten and Benten are again the main two characters. Koji Hayama returned to score a few songs for the soundtrack, along with Don McCow, Taku Iwasaki and Sanae Kasahara.

Newly formed publisher MonkeyPaw Games released this game on September 21, 2010 in North America and on October 5, 2011 in Europe on the PlayStation Network.

Cho Aniki: Otoko no Tamafuda
Cho Aniki: Otoko no Tamafuda (超兄貴 男の魂札) is a video game in the Cho Aniki series. This twist on the Cho Aniki universe pits the heroes of the previous games on a role-playing video game quest in which battles are fought with playing cards. According to an article on the game at the Hardcore Gaming 101 website, the title of the game is a pun. The title translates to "Man's Tamafuda," with tamafuda being a portmanteau of tamashii — Japanese for "soul" — and hanafuda — a Japanese card game. It is also likely that the pun extends to another meaning of tama, "balls".

The game was released for the portable Wonderswan system in 2000.

i (Ai) Chō Aniki: Gekiretsu Nawatobi-hen
i (Ai) Chō Aniki: Gekiretsu Nawatobi-hen (i（愛）・超兄貴『激烈縄跳び編』) is the first Cho Aniki game released for Japanese mobile phones. The lowercase i is a reference to the i-mode Japanese cellphone provider.

Cho Aniki: Seinaru Protein Densetsu
Cho Aniki: Seinaru Protein Densetsu (超兄貴～聖なるプロテイン伝説～). It was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2003. With Masaya now defunct, the game was co-developed by X-Nauts and Psikyo. This team also developed Sengoku Blade, and this game plays much like it as a result.

The plot of this game centers on the Holy Protein, a deity-like glob of what may be semen. Samson and Adon hover around the glob, absorbing enemy fire as they did in previous games. This game lacks characters from previous titles as playable, such as Benten, who only appears in some "stage complete" illustrations. Some of the enemies include a giant, cross-dressing man in an Alice in Wonderland costume and a Mona Lisa painting that fires lasers from its eyes.

Cho Aniki Zero
This is the first Cho Aniki title developed by extreme Co.,Ltd., who had obtained the rights of NCS Corp. and Masaya products.

Music
The first game was composed entirely by Koji Hayama, who states on his website that Cho Aniki is his favorite work to date. Numerous soundtracks from the various games have been released on CD, Maxi-Singles and even a live performance has been released on VHS. Later games in the series were composed by Taku Iwasaki, Isao Mizoguchi (under the alias Don McCow) and Sanae Kasahara.

Appearances in other games
Masaya also developed the Langrisser series, where Samson and company make a cameo. A hidden level takes the party to an area called the Muscle Shrine, where they must fight Samson. If victorious, the party can then use the Aniki summon, the most powerful in the game. The cameo exists in the Mega Drive, Super NES and PlayStation ports of the game.

The Capcom video game, God Hand, pokes fun of Samson and Adon as powerless yet flamboyant drag queens who are the first boss of the game.

Though technically not part of the series, the Sega Genesis shoot-em-up Wings of Wor (known as Gynoug in Japan and Europe) was also developed by Masaya and published by NCS, and features gameplay and surreal designs similar to the first Cho Aniki game.

The Japanese release of the Game Boy Advance game Gem Smashers replaces the three playable characters with three differently colored versions of the Uminin (the original light blue Uminin, and a pink and green Uminin as well)

Samson and Adon
These series mascots are the personification of phallic imagery. For example, they shoot white energy beams from the holes in their heads called the "Men's Beam," which is charged up with every firing by both of them rapidly pelvic thrusting into the air. The pair are never specified as lovers or even necessarily homosexuals in the earlier series. However, in "The legend of Holy Protein", both Samson and Adon's preference are spelt out as "men".

Cult popularity
Few outside Japan have played the Cho Aniki series, but many know of the game through articles written about it on such websites as I-Mockery, Seanbaby, and Something Awful. The series is often mentioned in lists of outrageous, peculiar or sexual video games.

Some time around 1999, gaming magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly ran a passing comment about how the US was thankfully spared this homoerotic shooter (Referring to Cho Aniki for PS1, although the comment was followed by "Not that there is nothing wrong with a homosexual shooter"). For the next few months EGM's letters to the editor were dominated by remarks lambasting the editors at EGM for making fun of the game, even after the editors repeatedly told their readership that the game was horrible.