No One Can Stop the Matiz (series)

The No One Can Stop the Matiz series is a series of 3D shooters developed by Rhode. The games are tongue-in-cheek parody fantasies, which many plot elements that do not make any sense (antagonists that have no reason to hate the hero, the void and the fact that the protagonist is a car that became alive for no apparent reason.)

No One Can Stop the Matiz
No One Can Stop the Matiz (known as You Can't Stop the Matiz in Asian regions) is a video game developed in 1989 by Rhode. It was rereleased in No One Can Stop the Matiz: Road Stop, and also remade for a collection called No One Can Stop the Matiz Duology.

It was acclaimed for combining psuedo-3D racing games and shoot em'up games, which is something that was never done before. It is also notorious for it's difficulty and longevity, with it being considered one of the hardest games ever made.

Gameplay
The game uses a psuedo-3D perspective, and is quite similar to most psuedo-3D NES games in this predicament. However, there are no opponents, and rather, the player must avoid traps like spike strips while avoiding enemies like the Bellets. The game is quite slow-paced, but the player can pick up items like a turbocharger to increase the speed of the game greatly. Once in a while, the player can spot a hole, in which if they fall, they can either encounter a sewer or a tunnel, with a random item or invincibility respectively.

The player uses the directional buttons to accelerate and steer the Matiz and A to shoot. The B button will lift the car off the ground, allowing the player to fly, however, the player keeps the momentum from the ground and cannot brake or accelerate since up and down move the car up or down in fly mode respectively.

Every four stages, a memory minigame is played, where the player find a Matiz Sport through a 3x3 grid.

In the cartridge versions, one can press select to get a password. In the FDS version, pressing select mutes the music.

Synopsis
In the setting of a city, a driver drives his Matiz to a gas station, and goes inside the gas station. However, the Matiz goes away on their own adventure. Getting out of country, the Matiz finds a beautiful fantasy world occupied by animals called Bellets, which try to destroy the Matiz, thinking that it's an intruder and a threat. By the end, the Matiz gets back at the gas station, revealing that the driver had a rough time on the bathroom, hence why he didn't realize the Matiz was missing.

Legacy
No One Can Stop the Matiz was followed by a sequel for the NES in 1995 entitled ''No One Can Stop the Matiz 2. ''In addition, the Matiz became the mascot of Rhode in 1989, but was short-lived, as it was replaced next year. The characters from the game and it's sequel made over 10 appearances in other Rhode games, including being one of the protagonists in Symposium, a game about all Rhode characters living in one universe.

There were also two direct-to-video anime movies released to promote the game, and were quite well-recieved. It also got a TV show in 2018, which was criticized for changing the personalities of the main characters.

In 2005, a group started a marathon game of the original game and it's sequel called No One Can Stop the Matiz for Charity, with all of the proceeds going to charity. It raised $31,404 by the end of the event, with donations even done by developers of the game and Ronin Deon himself.

Reception
No One Can Stop the Matiz had recieved sales of 610,800 by 1995, before the release of it's sequel.

No One Can Stop the Matiz received generally favourable reviews. Most of it's criticisms were to it's difficulty, with one critic stating that "after the very first levels, this game is insanely difficult. The worst thing is that the game does not have checkpoints, so every time you die, you go back to the beginning of the stage. However, the game allows the player to hold the A button to automatically shoot continously, so that is a plus."

No One Can Stop the Matiz 2
No One Can Stop the Matiz 2 (known as You Can't Stop the Matiz 2 in Asian regions) is a video game developed in 1995 by Rhode. It is a sequel to the 1989 video game No One Can Stop the Matiz. It was rereleased in No One Can Stop the Matiz: Road Stop, and also remade for a collection called No One Can Stop the Matiz Duology.

It has been acclaimed as one of the best NES games, mostly for it's few but good cutscenes (possible due to the game's huge 512K cartridge,) and also for the use of special sound chips (VRC7) games inside the cartridge for enhanced music.

Gameplay
The game significantly expanded over it's predecessor: the game now has a save feature, allowing the player to return at any point to continue the game. The game also has more than twice the levels (55 over 23) and introduces the void: a place with all levels from the previous game, but in a barren wasteland. The player must collect Daewoo stickers by defeating bosses in order to make the void as bright as the outside world. The game also has two endings, instead of one like in the first game.

The game introduces a new character: Gemini, who is a Bellet who actually likes the Matiz. He can help the Matiz by helping them defeat enemies, however, he is quite weak and thus the player should depend on him for defeating enemies. The game also has two sets of items, doubling the amount to 32 items, where the player can navigate the item inventory in the pause menu and use the A button to switch between individual items and Select to swap the set of items entirely.

The game now has a checkpoint and live system with infinite continues. The player must beat the game without using any continue in order to get the good ending.

The game also has three minigames: one where you must control your power while trying to hit the Matiz Sport, one where you must tap the A button to increase your speed to do a stunt correctly and one where you must combine paint as soon as possible to paint three Matiz cars. The minigames now have prizes when done extra well: an extra 1-hit shield, extra points and a bodykit for the Matiz respectively. The minigames still reward the player with points if they did not fail. The player can press B to unequip the bodykit in the pause menu whenever they want.

The game is overall easier than the first game, and also more fair. Graphically, it is a significant improvement over the first game, using two tilesets for more complex psuedo-3D and raster intrerrupts for changing the shadow's color to a darker shade of the ground color (instead of always being red.)