The Re:Retro Top 100 Games Of All Time, No. 68: Crazy Name, Crazy Game

Here’s where we discuss Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure, known outside Japan as Decap Attack.

Decap Attack is a fun little side-scroller from the days of 16-bit, with lots of goofy humour to it. So far, so so-so - but it’s the strange evolution of this strange little gem that’s earned it a spot on the list.

Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure was originally a game based on a cartoon on Japanese TV, called Magical Hat or Super Hat Magic Fun or Extra Happy Fun Magic Non-Sequitur Product Name Stereotype or something along those lines. it was about a cute little fellow with a turban and massive pants, which he used for floating, much as MC Hammer could use his giant pants to float from gig to gig while on tour, saving on air fares as he went. Presumably he used the turban for hurling purposes.

Unfortunately, the rights to this whimsical piece of entertainment couldn’t be obtained outside Japan, so Sega retooled the whole thing as the story of headless mummy Chuck D. Head and his battles against the evil Max D. Cap. The middle initial D obviously tested very high that week. It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened, or the last, and it probably wouldn’t have gotten onto my radar if Decap Attack hadn’t been transformed into a regular feature in the UK’s Sonic The Comic, written by Nigel Kitching. Japanese cartoon to UK comic strip, through the magical portal of videogame rights… what a tangled web we weave. But if I can digress a little further…

Sonic The Comic is probably most notable for honing the career of one Mark Millar, recently seen putting his scottish stamp on the Marvel Universe as a whole and turning it into a far more ‘realistic’ place, both in terms of increased grimness, grit and politicisation and also in terms of internal coherence. Rather than all the Marvel Superheroes concentrated totally in New York and running around destroying buildings willy-nilly, they’re now heavily regulated, with a team of heroes assigned to every state of the union, as well as various government-run training programs, black ops units and of course outlaws who refuse to toe the line. And the X-Men, who are too complicated for the US Government to bother with and thus get a free pardon. What does all this rigmarole achieve for Marvel’s various franchises? Well, replace ’states of the union’ with ’servers’ and… voila.

From Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure to an upcoming superhero MMORPG universe in which you can play Spider-Man without getting sued in less than six degrees of separation. It’s the magic of videogames, kids!