- 2001 A.D.
Up from the ashes of the battle of Ku-Ga, the dark forces of Ragnarok have waged a baffling comeback, and are flexing their evil muscles once again...
Wolf Fang (also known as Rohga: Armor Force) is a 1994 Mecha Game made by Data East, and a follow-up to their previous game, Vapor Trail.
Two years since the events of Trail, the Ragnarok corporation, though to be destroyed, makes a comeback with their new army of machines, and it's up to the Wolf Fang unit, which the player controls, to suppress Ragnarok's invasion.
What makes this game unique is the amount of default customizations available for their Mecha - prior to the beginning of the first stage, the player's robot is granted the choices of 4 different arm weapons, body styles and leg styles, allowing a combination of 64 robot types they can send out.
Suit up, it's time for Team Rohga to take on Ragnarok and their army!
- Attack Drone: The enemies in earlier stages are small, hovering probe robots, barely a quarter of your mech's size and dying in one hit.
- Base on Wheels: Mission 7 is set aboard one of these, and your Mech needs to perform a Battleship Raid to destroy it from the inside.
- The Four Gods: When using Construction Mode, it's possible to get a mecha that, at least in the Japanese versions (no specific names in non-Japanese releases besides the mecha type number), can be named for one of the Four Symbols. More specifically:
- Seiryuu/Qinglong (#62) is a combination of Electrigger/Stun Gun, Knuckle Shot, and 6-Wheeled.
- Suzaku/Zhuque (#39) is a combination of Flame Launcher, Pile Bunker, and 2-Hover.
- Byakko/Baihu (#06) is a combination of Homing Missiles, Iron Claw, and 2-Walker.
- Genbu/Xuanwu (#28) is a combination of Grenade Launcher, Knuckle Shot, and 4-Walker.
- Car Fu: Enemy trucks, tanks and armored vehicles will often perform some insane stunts trying to ram your mech over, or attempt catching up with you as their attack.
- Energy Weapon: Another available default weapon; if you chose to forgo bullets and select the laser, your Mech will fire energy blasts instead. Collect enough power-ups and you'll be able to execute a repetitive Beam Spam that can hit multiple targets.
- Grenade Launcher: A Type-D Upgrade, firing exploding projectiles into your enemies.
- Homing Projectile: A Type-A Upgrade, a weapon upgrade that fires homing missiles on enemies. It's even called H-Missile in game.
- Laser Sword:
- A Type-B upgrade, which releases an energy beam in a quick slashing motion.
- There's a ground-based robot enemy whose arm can produce a laser sword cutting in a wide arc, which deals greater damage than bullets.
- Lightning Gun:
- A Type-A upgrade which allows your mech to discharge electricity with every shot fired.
- Gorgon, the boss from the mines and Goliath, the Final Boss have one of these built in, which they'll use to fire arcs of electrical bolts at you.
- Mecha-Mooks: Every onscreen enemy are robotic, one way or another, none of them seem to have pilots.
- Palette Swap: ...yeah.
- Several of your robotic enemies uses the same sprite, recoloured. For instance, the robot that wields the energy blade comes firstly in green, but later as blue, red, brown...
- Attack Unit Prototype, which you fought at the end of stage 4 gets recycled into a blue version called Gorgon. And later a purple one, Gargantua, before finally turning up purple as Gigantes, and gold as Goliath, the Final Boss. It retains its abilities to fire a series of missiles from it's back each time while adding additional weapons grafted to the same sprite.
- Pile Bunker: A Type-D upgrade, giving you a thick metal spike thrusting forward to skewer your enemies.
- Sea Mine: One level takes place underwater, and you'll frequently run into naval mines (the spiky, black, urchin-like variety) that you must blow up to proceed.
- Smart Bomb: The "Charge" Meter, when full, can be activated to discharge an energy sphere around your mecha that takes up a big chunk of the screen, destroying every obstacle around you within a fairly huge radius. But that drains your Meter and you'll need to recharge it by collecting power and killing more enemies.
- Spread Shot: Your mecha gains the ability to fire in spreads of three each shot, right off the start. Obtaining more upgrades will make the spread wider with more bullets, or with each shot thicker and larger.
- Transforming Mecha: Your mech can transform into multiple forms to match the terrain it's moving on, either a humanoid form with jet thruster wings, or as a wheeled mecha with a giant turret. Collecting different upgrades and power-ups allows your weapon to transform, too.
- Underwater Boss Battle: "Stingray", one of the bosses, is a submarine fought in an underwater stage. It even has a long, extendable robotic barbed tail like the animal it's named after, for attacking your mech from behind.
- Zerg Rush: The basic strategy of enemy robots, where they'll just try to wear you down with numbers.
- Thanks to the brave actions of Team Rohga, the enemy's flagshop "Ragnarok-02 was destroyed."
2001 AD:
The Armies of Ragnarok were finally conquered. The fmaes of war are dying down.
Suit Up! Team Rohga...
Seek out your Glory...
Seek out your Victory!
