Reviewed by Craxton (craxton@erols.com)

Publisher: Sonya / Hobibox Europe U.S. Distributor: JAST USA Cost: $24.95 US Graphics: Good Music/Sound: Two-thirds servicable, One-third horrible NPCs: Thin Writing: Good. Plot: Not much... Interface: Good. Sex: Wanting. Kinkyness: Implied gangrape, sex with assistance from older sisters, rape by blob-creature, rape by cyborg, sex with humanoid plant life, implied impregnation (I think.)

It looks like there's an interesting story behind the making of Viper M1. I have a strong feeling someone said: "We have a demo for a game that we've cancelled, a lot of work gone into something we can't release. Hmmm... Okay, we'll take another old demo, touch it up a bit, write one completely new story, and package the three of them together as an anthology."

Okay, maybe not. But the point is: what we've got here seems to be a trio of demos for cancelled H-AVG projects, masquerading as a three-story anthology.

First up, we have "My Mothers", the alleged centerpiece of Viper M1 (art from MM is printed on the cover, the CD itself, the install screen, and so on). You control a young girl who dons a power suit straight out of Project A-ko to battle a supervillainous corporate empire that intends to make slaves out of all the hot men in town. This involves wandering around two laugable attempts at mazes and beating up supervillainous people by using the "Punch" or "Kick" commands until the "Deathblow" option appears.

As a critic, one of my pet peeves is when a good concept is wasted, so it is both baffling and infuriating that absolutely *nothing* is done with this concept. This has all the tools necessary to make a killer game. The graphics are clean and smooth, in light, appealing colors, almost pastal in fact, with sharp blues and purples. The game contains animated scenes that flow with a smoothness rivaling C's Ware's Lucid Motion. We have some charming characters like the mad scientist who designed the suit. And there are two features you don't find often in AVG: a map where you move a sprite around the city (instead of the usual GO TO command), and a combat system which, though abbreviated, could have been quite good if better developed. And MM proceeds to do absolutely nothing with any of it. And when I say absolutely nothing, I mean *absolutely* *nothing* *at* *all*. The story is over as soon as it begins, the few plot branches all lead either to instant death or a longer route to the next area, the mazes are simply A-B paths with some turns and forking paths that rejoin further on, and the combat system, as I said, is simply hitting "Punch" or "Kick" until the "Deathblow" option appears. Hell, there's barely even any sex, and this is supposed to be Hentai, fer chrissake! What we get is some very brief animated muff-diving, and a picture of our heroine post-gangrape that is only visible when you lose combat in certain circumstances. That's *it*, nothing else. This isn't a game. It's probably fairly interesting on a technical level, but that doesn't make up for the complete lack of anything resembling appealing gameplay, and what the hell is a story without sex doing in a supposed Hentai anthology? And for that matter, why has Sogna made the least interesting story of these three the centerpiece of the anthology? The mind boggles.

The second story, "The Mayworks", is a bit better, but not much. A different young girl, this one a bespectacled schoolgirl named Maki, is caught between two feuding aliens vying to be the first to bed a human, thus proving their superiority. Like MM, the art is lightly toned, the heroine sufficiently cute, and the animations smooth, making the visuals on a whole fairly appealing. The same cannot be said for the story, which is over and done as soon as we've gotten to know the characters. But Mayworks at least makes an attempt at being a game- after setting up the basic premise, the player is dropped onto a city map, implemented with the same system as Mothers, but slightly more intricate. Instead of a single exit with no obstacles, you must avoid invisible dead ends where one of the aliens appear in front of Maki and rapes her (offscreen), on the way to one of four exits. Three of those exits lead to onscreen, but rather tame, rapes, and the fourth has Maki triumphing through a hilarious plot device that I won't mention here. These options can be modified by decision points that occur before the maze, but not by much.

Honestly, I don't quite know what to make of this. There's actual hentai, at least, which lifts it a step above Mothers, but again, the potential of the idea goes untapped. Both story and characters are not only paper thin, but completely nonexistant. We learn nothing about Maki other then that she's a high school student, and nothing about our aliens other then that they intend to prove their superiority to one another by beating each other to Maki. If this is supposed to be straightforward hentai, why is the sex so tame, and only along the losing paths? If it's supposed to be a story, why is there no development? If it's supposed to be a big joke, well, the punchline *is* funny, true. But funny enough to justify the lack of anything of note here? Sorry, no. In the end Mayworks just doesn't have a point, and isn't very satisfying either as a game or as hentai.

Which brings us to "Green Boy." For what it's worth, this is the high point of Viper M1. You take the perspective of Natane, who, with her sisters Kazumi and Namiki, are running the family's flower shop while the parents are on vacation. A creepy guy dressed in a bizarre outfit (one of Viper M1's best characters) comes to the door one day with a gift: a strange seed that, it turns out, grows into a man, whom the sisters then use as a living, breathing sex toy. This game is more or less a pure CYOA: though some blocks of dialogue are duplicated from one game to another, the various plot branches each lead to different outcomes. Most of the paths provide subtle hints as to what's going on, but only the true ending explains everything. The game is very short, so with a few saves you can easily get everything Green Boy has to offer in a single night's play.

The main reason Green Boy is the best story of the bunch is because it's the most complete. It's not quite as detailed, plotwise, as it could have been, but it works quite well at it's present length. It also easily provides the most sex of the three, with each of several branches resulting in different scenes. Although the sexual action is vanilla throughout, (unless you count some slightly incestuous threesomes) there's a good deal of variety in tone and execution. Another plus- the branching makes sense. Paths aren't just arbitrary, like they are in Mayworks. There's always a reason why the first half produces the second half that it does. For example, if you choose to take responsibility for the shop while your sisters run errands, you wind up in possession of the plant, otherwise one of your sisters winds up with it, because you weren't there when the creepy guy showed up.

That said, Green Boy is hardly perfect. It's too short, for one, in a bit too much of a hurry to get to the good part. Also, Kazumi and Namiki are cardboard characters, with absolutely no personality whatsoever. And Natane is *way* too innocent to be believable. In high school, but she still can't explain how babies are made? Puh-lease. And the willingness with which all three sisters immediately jump in the sack with the plant strains credibility a bit too much. Graphics are also a stumbling point. The animations occasionally look blocky. The stills are better, but a few, such as the shot (displayed on the Main Menu) of Natane admiring the young, budding plant, are just dreadful. And the music is, quite frankly, hideous, an injury to the eardrums. Despite these flaws, however, Green Boy is unique amongst these vignettes in that I actually enjoyed it, wheras the other two just left me wondering, incredulously, "That's it?" Had it been about twice as long with better presentation, I'd recommend Viper M1 just for this story.

Actually, each of these stories could have been a full game in it's own right, and an interesting one too. Mothers especially deserved to have a bit more effort pur into it. It has a good story, it's just that it feels overwhelmingly like a demo, as do all three stories. In the end, my verdict on Viper M1 is disappointment. For all the intriguing concepts, what we get is just a shadow of their true potential, and one can't help but feel a bit sad these vignettes never saw the light of day as full-fledged games of their own.

Conclusion: A lot of potential, but it's tragically squandered.