The Outfoxies

The Outfoxies is a 1994 arcade game by Namco that depicted several professional hitmen secretly set against each other by a held-in-common client "Mr. Acme". Acme and his wife had hired each of them to assassinate a wealthy art collector, then arranged for them to kill each other to ultimately avoid having to pay their fee.

Overview
The game is like a cross between shoot 'em up and a typical fighting game. It featured stages that zoom in and out depending on how close the two combatants are much like Samurai Showdown, but on a much larger scale given the immense size of some of the levels.

Characters
The characters are eclectic: a chimpanzee in a tuxedo, a scientist that rides in a robotic wheelchair, male and female twins, a punk acrobat, and a man with metal hands as well as far more normal entries like a woman in a suit dress and a man with a leather jacket make up the cast. Each character has different attributes.

Gameplay
The gameplay has you thrown into a particular hitman's home turf and you must use every weapon imaginable as well as anything you can find in the environment (including the environment itself) to try to kill your competitor. Weapons can be typical like a rocket launcher or machine gun or absurd like a clown cannon or a bowl of hot soup. Despite dealing with a competition about murder, the game has a levity to it in all aspects.

The levels are also a star part of this game as they are varied and, in many cases, will begin to collapse as time goes on. This means that if the player doesn't kill his competition in a set amount of time the level will literally start crumbling around you. The levels take place in various interactive locations, involving inside a plane, a moving train, an office building or even at the circus.

It is widely believed that the gameplay was the inspiration for the Super Smash Bros. series due to the similar gameplay. The gameplay was an inspiration for the offline multiplayer for the Wii version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, according to developer Red Fly Studio.