2/5 ★ – RawMetal's review of Brave Firefighters.

System: Arcade Started: April 13, 2023 Ended: April 13, 2023 Free Play Arcade Session - April 13, 2023: 4/12 I always forgot about the title of this game, but I remember back when I was a kid, I played an Arcade game that dealt with putting out fires and it was a Sega game. I think this was at a local Chuck-E-Cheese or GameWorks, turns out the game I was thinking of was called Brave Firefighters. This is when Sega decided to make arcade games based around Civic duties. Other than Brave Firefighters, you got Jambo! Safari and Emergency Call Ambulance. I couldn’t beat Brave Firefighters obviously as a kid until now and this game was released just before the turn of the century. As a kid, I thought this was fun. However, playing it now as an adult, it's not exactly how I remembered it to be. As a Firefighting game, your objective is putting out fires in multiple Scenes (or levels) from different places as your main objective is to find and rescue the mayor and his family. Each moment of the game has you put out the fire in an On-rails fashion, but you have to do it really quickly to progress so you can earn a Time Bonus so that you can keep playing the game without popping in quarters into the game. As you put out the fire, there is a certain game mechanic that lets you twist the front section of the nozzle clockwise and the hose will create a spread shot effect that lets you put out the flames that are closest towards you more quickly. This game is heavily inspired by the movie, Backdraft. It was never mentioned, but you can tell that this Backdraft: The Game due to the soundtrack of Brave Firefighters closely resembles the Hans Zimmer score and there are moments in the game such as exploding rooms and collapsing floors. I can tell Sega wants to avoid the game being a copyright infringement, so they have to change the story to something basic. There is no Pyro Terrorist in the game, but the places you went to are made out of nitroglycerin and we don’t know how the fire got started. Somehow, the fire is alive for some odd reason as it has a health bar and they regenerate if you don’t put it out on time. On the bright side, I was impressed with its unique On-Rails light gun arcade feature of playing as a firefighter, its Fire Particle effects and the use of fire hose for a light gun makes it more aesthetic to its actual civic occupation. You cannot help it as a kid that you see through the flaws in the game. I would admit that I enjoyed this game, but I was around 6-8 at the time. As an adult, there are notable problems that I have in this game in which I give it a lower score. Based on some of the Arcade Cabinets I have researched on. I do not know if that you can take off the Fire Nozzle and freely use it but the Brave Firefighters cabinet that I used, the fire hose was completely bolted down and there have been troublesome screen collaborations with the Fire Nozzle and I had a difficult time putting out the fire which led to losing a lot of Time Bonuses. It was a very uncomfortable experience as well since I had to slouch over for the controls and after a good 40 minutes of finishing this game, my left thumb was completely numb from handling the controls. The NPCs and supporting characters can be silly. I mean, I can handle the bad voice acting since I am a fan of House of the Dead, but sometimes for this game, there are some laughable moments such as NPC’s repeating the same lines over and over again and that laughable shriek of terror when they are on fire. If I had a choice of playing this game or watching Backdraft, I prefer watching Backdraft. Brave Firefighters was a game that is aimed for a young audience and not for adults. If you have kids, nephews and nieces that are 5 years old and interested in old retro Arcade games, Brave Firefighters would be fun for them and it would be wise to not join in unless you want to have backpains and hand cramps playing it. I do recommend this game on emulator since I have seen YouTube videos of people playing this game on the Wii and that would be the best way to play this game. If you want to go experimental or look into the history of Sega Arcade games, Brave Firefighters would be one to check out but only for historical purposes.