YMMV / Tattoo Assassins

• Anti-Climax Boss: The third boss, Prizm. Like all the bosses, he is artificially sped up, and does considerable damage when he hits. The problem? He only takes four hits to kill, since every attack does 25% damage to him. Considering how he fills most of the screen, it won't be hard to land those four hits, either.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Just about every "Fatality," especially the "I Wish I Was A...," "It's Burger Time," and "Happy Thanksgiving!" ones.
• Cult Classic: It does have a small but loyal fanbase.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Prizm to many for his cool concept and design. In fact, when slowbeef and Diabetus of Retsupurae MSTed the game, Prizm instantly became their favorite fighter.
• Game-Breaker: You can kick while blocking. You can kick...while blocking. Turtling doesn't even begin to cover it. Some reviewers will note that the most reliable way to finish the game is to jump kick and uppercut at every opportunity. Granted, this just might be due to the emulated versions being betas.
• Good Bad Bugs: The "Happy Thanksgiving" "Fatality", which instead of spawning one turkey that knocks down whatever it touches, due to a coding error it spawns infinite turkeys that infinitely juggle both players. The coder thought it was hilarious and made no attempt to fix it.
• Memetic Mutation: When this game is discussed, someone will likely mention that you literally couldn't pay people to play it (Not Hyperbole - the QA testers actually refused to keep playing it after a while).
• Mis-blamed:
  • Due to imperfect emulation and no way to independently verify what was broken in the original game. Some of the reviews make points that are only valid in early emulated versions of the ROM, which no longer exist in current versions of MAME. For example, many of them will point out a hideously loud screech in the jungle stage that repeats every five seconds, but the volume issue associated with it was an emulation bug that has long since been fixed. Going by just this video review of an actual cabinet, the MAME ROM is missing a lot of features that most people will never get to try.
  • Similarly, blaming Data East's pinball division for the flaws of Tattoo Assassin ignores the working conditions the team faced. According to insider accounts, the project was plagued with ever-changing requirements, underpowered hardware, trade show demos, 12-hour workdays, and a development schedule and budget that was less than half of the typical arcade game of the time. Anyone working under those conditions would be hard-pressed to produce a playable game, no matter what their programming background was.
• Narm:
  • Most of the characters' tattoos look like they were drawn by a six year old. Tak Hata is a particularly glaring case, since he is supposed to be a Yakuza, who are known for their elaborate tattoo designs.
  • Unlike the classic Mortal Kombat sprites who executed a Victory Pose once after winning a match, the Assassins repeat the action on a loop.
• Nightmare Fuel: One of the stages has some odd kind of canvas, poorly stretched into frames.... until you realise that it's actually skin, one of which seems to have been torn from A.C. Current! Which leads to Fridge Logic if he's fighting on that stage. Either that was taken from a poor sap who happed to have the exact same tattoo, or the artist just added it unthinkingly.
• Obvious Beta: The ROM circling the Internet. It looks pretty much done, with only some glitches and features missing.
• So Bad, It's Good: All of the fatalities are stupid, none of the fighters are truly threatening (besides maybe Deke Cay and Koldan), and honestly, the concept isn't even well thought out. It's as if the developers knew how bad it was and didn't hold back on the absurdity. The glitches in the game just add to the value. If someone is finished by getting set on fire and turned into a skeleton, the announcer casually says "Get up and fight!" in a faux-Scottish accent
• Special Effects Failure:
  • One of Karla's fatalities summons a zamboni to run down and tear apart the opponent. However, the zamboni always comes out on the left side, no matter where the opponent is. Since the player is on the left most of the time, this means the zamboni doesn't even touch the opponent, and the logo on it is backwards.
  • There's no rhyme or reason as to which sound effects play where. The DeLorean fatality, for example, plays voice samples instead of engine sounds, so with the looping it makes a "Get up and fight-Get up and fight-G-G-G-G-GET UP AND FIGHT!" sound instead of anything resembling a motor vehicle.
  • The artists decided to touch up some of the characters' eyes to make them more visible in-game. Since the characters are digitized actors and the eyes are drawn to look unrealistically large and cartoony, the result is very unsettling and creepy.
  • To say nothing of the shoddily drawn on, ahem, "Enhancements" given to some of the female characters. Karla in particular looks as if she's wearing a boob shaped breastplate in her profile artwork.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Karla is supposed to be a figure skater, so why is she wearing hockey pads?

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