BCV was released in 2000 in Japan, took 3 years to reach Europe and never quite made it over to North America. You guys missed out. I remember buying this new for less than most second-hand games based solely on how ridiculous the premise looked. It delivered everything I was looking for and more.

What would you expect from a fighting game involving construction vehicles? The digital equivalent of a child smashing toy trucks together. There is a guard button and the other three face buttons correspond to front, right and left facing attacks, but I’ll be damned if I could ever get them to respond correctly to my inputs. When you do successfully input an attack, the hit detection is all over the place.

What wouldn’t you expect from a fighting game involving construction vehicles? A kick-ass over the top story of revenge, corporate espionage, possible incest & male pregnancy and dogs driving told through awesome anime cut scenes. The irreverence in this writing deserves serious praise. The cutscenes are bizarre and amazing in equal measure, which makes slogging through the ‘smash into each other until one of you breaks’ gameplay tolerable. The abysmal English dub just makes them all the more enthralling. This anime craziness also makes an appearance during battles with each character having a bombastic special attack, although how to trigger them is anybody’s guess. One special attack of note is a herd of women being summoned to mow you down on their way to a shop sale. Japan.

Let’s look a little deeper into this story as it is clearly the star of the show. You’re Hayato Kongo “I like a quiet, loving, long-haired, well-proportioned woman more than three meals a day”. Your father has passed, but you don’t want to run the family’s failing construction business. Not until ‘Gramps’ smashes a crane into you at least. Your task: to gather a crew of construction workers by, you guessed it, smashing steamrollers and bulldozers into them and bring down the monopolizing Shurabe Corporation and its pointy headed boss Ume.

You meet Beth and have to battle his ex-boyfriend who may or may not have somehow got Beth pregnant. You meet Kyoko, the potential love interest who may or may not be your sister, Haichi who goes around battling construction companies and bet your whole crew on beating and Matsubayama complete with dog master Shishio. There’s kidnapping, betrayal and attempted murder still to come and all in the little over 2 hours of story-mode. Thankfully, all problems are solved by slowly smashing construction vehicles into each other. If only real life were so simple.

As a game, this is a really poor effort. As entertainment, consider me fully on board. This is a worthy addition to any European or Japanese PS2 collection. Where else do you get to fight as a dog driving a pink digger?