SNES game review 92: Nolan Ryans Baseball

Well I know that the last game I reviewed for the SNES was a baseball game and that hitting one again so quickly might seem a little stale but if you just play along here I have my reasons.

The game I am looking at now is Nolan Ryan's Baseball known in Japan as Super Stadium.  Now this game only came out for the American/Canadian market and Japan. The American version is obviously endorsed by the baseball player Nolan Ryan, who I know absolutely nothing about and who I have to add has no real bearing on this game at all. It has no licensing from any Major League Baseball team or Association which means that Nolan Ryan is the only real name you see here. The thing is though once you actually start the game the players can best be described as sort of little cutesy anime type characters so it really doesn’t matter in the slightest, this is something I will come back to though.

The game was made by a company called Affect which you most likely won’t have heard about before largely because they tended to primarily make games for the Japanese market which were released through various different publishers. This was one of their first games apparently with them producing games from 1990 to 2008 at which point they transitioned in to producing web based applications. Romstar Inc. published the game in America they were a video game distribution company based in Torrance, California that started operating in 1984.  Interestingly they were the original American distributors for SNK games (before SNK of America was founded in 1987). They bit the dust in 1992 though with various key members of staff going on to form mobile phone based games companies.

So what brought me to this game now, well the first thing is that it came out the same year as Cal Ripken Jr Baseball so it’s not like one was later in the systems lifespan and had the advantage of improved techniques, both of these games came out at relatively the same time and yet they tackle things in a slightly different way with Cal Ripken trying its best to look as realistic as it can and this game going for a more cartoon based feeling.

Nolan Ryan's Baseball is fairly straightforward to play. When you are the pitcher, you press a button to pitch the ball, the direction you press will affect the type of throw push down to make it go faster, up to make it go slower, and left or right to make it veer to either side. Bating is very simple in that you press a button to swing but its timing that is the key. It is still not easy to hit the ball but it is a heck of a lot better than in the last title I played. The game also seems to run a lot faster with the average game taking half the time, not only does this make it faster to get through games but it makes it more exciting making it more likely that you will play for longer. Unless you’re a baseball game pro you are still likely to lose the majority of the time but they will be much narrower more realistic loses and as such it won’t feel like getting better is an imposable journey. I also found fielding much easier, in this case I even caught the odd batter out which made me feel a lot better.

One almost off topic question that runs through my mind is how much did Nolan Ryan get paid for this, I know a lot of sports games will have the name of some player or manager stapled on to them in the hopes that it is a road to profit but beyond his face on the cart box and start up screen he simply has sod all to do with it at all, making me prefer the Japanese title super stadium. The teams make me laugh as they simply have letter names the first team I picked was called T team and had players such as CHAD, HERB, RON and OLAF set to play but I could swap them for benched players with names like CHUK,KIRK and DOC.

I really like the cutesy graphical style the game has,the more I play it the more it grows on me and added to it is some music which although not amazing is cheery and whimsical, I think it puts you in the right mood especially when you have the nice digital speech that comes with it starting by announcing ‘’lets play ball’’ and then going on to tell you when there had been a strike or when someone is safe.

Ok so I can gave Cal Ripkin Jr Baseball as semi recommendation. Saying that when it was played with a friend it could be good and giving it a 6 out of 10, now I don’t feel like this game is the best thing ever but I have to admit I found it just that bit more fun, it was quicker and I liked its style, it was equally as fun to play in multi-player but was a fair bit better as a one player game. Still I feel like there must be better out there, so all of this considered I give Nolan Ryan's Baseball a 7 out of 10 and at the moment I would call it the one to get.

Ok so if you’re desperate to own this game how much are you looking at paying for it? Well first things first it didn’t get an English release so you need to be looking at well either an American or Japanese import, meaning you will either need a foreign machine , a modified SNES or an adaptor. Bearing that in mind how much should an NTSC cart cost you? Well I couldn’t find any copies for sale over here as far as American carts went but you could buy a loose cart and pay for it to be posted here for about £10, I however did find a Japanese copy online for about £4 selling in this country and being a sports game I don’t think the language barrier would be too much of an issue.
Ok for now that’s it with the baseball titles, but I will come back to them as I am sure I own at least another two.

Super Mario Maker Review

OK so this makes a bit of a change of pace me reviewing a brand new game, just before its official release in this case. It is unlikely to be the first review for Super Mario Maker that anyone reads as there have already been at least a good fifty reviews done by various official video game critics but still I thought I would like to try my own hand at it. Now its sort of important to say that this will be somewhat of a preliminary review. I have been informed by a friend that Super Mario Maker has been made in such a way that the tools unlock slowly over a period of time, I have read up on this and not only is it apparently true but supposedly you can cheat this by messing with the system clock. (Those who have been following all of the news announcements and watching the trailers as they have been released will probably have already caught wind of this as it has been shown in the official Super Mario Maker Overview trailer, I must have missed this one).

Even though I want to review this game I also want to enjoy it in as natural a way as possible without cheating the system. I want to try and enjoy it in the way Nintendo intended. To do this I will play within the rules and not mess with any settings or try to cheat my way to content it does not want to let me have yet. I will however make sure to make a post called Super Mario Maker revisited to follow up on my experiences. I will pin a score to the end of this review but I might even revisit that figure as I will be guessing on some things like how long I feel it will last me before I tire of creating levels etcetera.

Anyone who has been keeping up with my attempt to review 150 SNES games will have seen that I have already reviewed both Super Mario World and Super Mario All-stars and talked about them and their effect on my life and will know that I am a big fan of the Mario games in general. I have played pretty much every 2D Mario platformer there has been, so the chance to build my own and to download and play levels built by others is of course very exciting, however I am not excited enough to think that this concept is a totally new one.

There have of course been homebrew Mario games for years completely full of no officially designed some of these have turned up as roms online which could be downloaded and played on an emulator others have been put on to cartridge and sold as games often to the uniformed who don't know the proper names or titles of Mario's various adventures, some even on dodgy multi game carts. Beyond this there have been various tools to help you rip apart older Mario games and piece them back together in your own way, there are entire blogs, forums and groups devoted to the subject. Did you know for example that there is a full unofficial sequel to New Super Mario Bros on the Wii, which was built over 3 years by a team of Nintendo fans. It is called Newer Super Mario Bros and is playable on a homebrew-enabled Wii. I won’t provide links to anything like this as a quick google search will easily let you find this kind of thing.

As far as official products go there has never been anything like this featuring Mario before but there have been other platform games such as Little Big Planet which have toyed heavily with the idea of letting you create your own game worlds. Although I am happy to have Mario Maker sat here in front of me right now, even more so because it is before its official release I am still surprised that it has taken Nintendo so long to release an official level creation tool set like this, you would think that the moment someone had brought it to their attention that people were messing around making homebrew games based on altering Mario levels from existing titles they would have begun thinking how they could control it and profit from it. Reggie from Nintendo America praised Little Big Planet, so Nintendo on at least some level were fully aware of it even if they would like to try and claim they never noticed all the homebrew and dodgy cartridges. The release of Mario Maker does leave you wondering though if Nintendo will become more focused on clamping down on and people who host or produce unofficial games or level editing tools.

Ok so I am not mentioning homebrew games and tools and Little Big Planet as a way to attack Super Mario Maker just saying that I approached this title knowing these things existed, so I am not about to go overboard on praise for the fact that I can design my own levels like it’s a brand new revelation that no one has ever come up with before. Ok so as I undue the plastic and get ready to insert the game into my Wii U there is one thing I want to say. I might own a large set of Amiibo but I only own 3 which are open, a Smash Brothers Mario Amiibo, a Link Amiibo and a Mario Collection Yoshi Amiibo I have customised (painted to be a Pink Yoshi) these will be the only 3 Amiibo's I will be using in relation  to this title. Why? Well for one I don’t really wish to open the others at least at present and also because I feel I would like to best replicate the experience of the average user. Sure there are some people out there like me who might have a whole bunch of Amiibo's but I think most less diehard fans will simply have one or two of their most beloved characters.

Ok so as I have mentioned you start out with a limited tool set, but even now just looking at the one row of bits and pieces I have I feel confident that I can create something of worth, yeah I would like more things to mess around with but I guess I can see how this has that sort of Animal crossing come back and play every day vibe to it. Thank goodness I know that there is more or I would be seriously shaking my head right now. This is where the real selling point of the game comes in, the Wii U pad is perfect for this, it feels like it was made to drag and drop the level pieces, it’s so user friendly that I can’t come up with any complaints here.

OK so I just got my notification that the next set of tools will be available to me tomorrow. I could be a little pissed at this but I guess I can see what they are sort of getting at doing it in this way. Not only does it mean that users are unlikely to be overwhelmed by the limitless options on offer it also forces you to be a little creative and think about new and interesting ways of using the same old pieces. Most people wouldn't be able to sit and play this for hour after hour on an average day, but at the same time they could pop on for half an hour every other day and build something and take note of what new bits and pieces they have been awarded. Part of me likes the way they have handled this but then there is another part of me that wants to scream ''typical bloody Nintendo, telling me what I will enjoy when and how.''

One thing that I find an absolute crying shame is that Mario Maker only allows you to make single levels. If you had some huge desire to piece together your own Mario game by making level after level and then linking them together then I am afraid this game simply is not going to help you and if your desire to do that is strong enough then you are going to find yourself looking at ways to hack older game ROM files on your PC or using some 3rd party most likely legally grey creation tools again on your PC. This is a shame as I can’t really see why this couldn't have been somehow catered for.

So creating is only half the game in Super Mario Maker, there is also the playing aspect of it, but you can’t make whole games only individual worlds you might be saying, well when it comes to playing the levels Mario Maker has its own way around this. Essentially in the playing mode Mario Maker will download a bunch of custom levels and push them together giving you the challenge of completing the set. Now one important thing to realise is that in order for a level to be uploaded the person who had made it (or at least someone in there house holding the game pad) has to have completed it, so don't worry about being met with impossible levels, although you might find yourself coming face to face with a frustrating balls to the wall level that on first glance seems impossible. Once you have finished the level you will either move on to the next one, quit or leave a comment about the level before continuing. While I would much prefer to be able to download a bunch of levels created by one person and tied together as there idea of a continuing Mario story I have to admit this pick a mix style of gameplay can be fun. Ultimately though this side of the game is only as good or bad as the people who own the game, create levels and upload them. One minute you can be met with a level which is as dull as dish water and as easy to complete as holding down one button and the following moment you can be met with either a complex level full of wonderful ideas or a complete bastard which will have you pulling your hair out in utter frustration.

Rating this title is a little hard as how good it is kind of depends on how you approach it and what you were expecting to get out of it in the first place. So on the one hand you have this awesome level making creativity fun kit, but then on the other hand you don’t have a game maker. You can get people to experience your idea of an awesome level or your idea of a challenge but you can’t get them to experience your idea of the perfect Mario game. You can play awesome levels put together by people who have put so much effort in to every inch of a level that it is on par with the best levels made by professional designers but then the next moment you can be met with a level which seems to have been made by a sadist with no desire other than to cause the highest number of people possible to tear their own hair out and to cut their eyeballs out of there skull. The game is undeniably fun which scores it major brownie points but then it also disappoints. On balance I would give this game 8 out of 10. I will return to this review again in a few days and offer further comments and discuss how my opinion has changed if it has but this is where I stand right now at this point in time. My recommendations? Obviously you will have read this review if you have gotten to this point and you will know how this sounds to you, if it excites you then buy it, if you find yourself moaning and winging about what the title doesn't offer then either don’t buy it or wait and see if either you can pick up a deal or if any changes or updates are made in the future which make this product seem any sweeter to you.

Saints Row 4 Re-Elected: My completed Game of the month.

So I am here again talking about the games I have completed in the month just passed (August) in this case I have completed 1 game a game I had already finished before but I also completed 3 pieces of downloadable content for it, two were DLC add ons and the third was a stand alone add on which doesn't require the actual game to run. This month I completed Saints Row 4 (Re-Elected) on the PS4 including the add on's How the Saints Saved Christmas, Enter the Dominatrix, and Gat out of Hell. In order to do this I will be following a similar format to last time I will be to some degree doing a review of the content but I will aslo be talking about issues such as  how long I have been playing them for, how hard or easy they were to complete and if I think I will ever go back to them again.

As I already mentioned I had already finished Saints Row 4 before I even purchased the PS4 copy. I had finished the game back on my Xbox 360 and I had enjoyed it a lot at the time. So why did I buy it again? Well for a start I thought about simply investing in the add on content but when I looked at how much How the Saints Saved Christmas, Enter the Dominatrix, and Gat out of Hell would have cost me on the 360 and then looked at buying the game again for the PS4 or Xbox one the price was effectively the same, In the end I opted for the PS4 Version because I found a website selling new sealed copies for £15 which was a good £5 cheaper than I could find an Xbox One copy. Something I feel it is important to note here is that for anyone thinking of picking this game up I really must emphasise that you should buy it new. Gat out of hell does not come on the disc Gat out of hell comes as a code printed on a flyer inside the box, this is a one time code so if you buy saints Row 4 second hand on the PS4 your not going to get Gat out of hell, well unless someone has been very silly not claimed it and not taken the code out of the box when trading it in (and I would guess the same is true on the Xbox One).

I will be treading over some of the same ground as I did in my games I think get to much hate Saints Row thread but bear with me. Saints Row the original was just another crime based sandbox game, its only redeaming quality being the time of its release and the fact it was released on a platform that had not yet at that point been saturated with games of that style. If Saints Row 2 had come out and been more of the same then I strongly believe that it would have fell flat on its arse. Saints row 2 and 3 could be described at times as gloriously stupid, they were so over the top that they were beyond parody they were parodies of the entire sandbox crime based video game genre and in that way they could either be enjoyable as humorous games cracking fun at other games or as sandbox crime games of there own. Again though I think if Saints Row 4 had been just more of the same the joke and the gameplay would have become old and stale. So what did they decide to do? They decided that they would spoof a slightly different type of game, they would spoof the super power based open world games like Prototype and InFamous. The parody factor doesnt end here though, they manage to put in some things which are clearly aimed at taking the mickey out of Mass Effect while also hitting you with a barrage of nostalgia brining in songs you wouldn't expect, referencing various films and shows, if you were a child of the 1980's there will be times when something in this game is used in a way which just makes you stop and smile happy that a piece of your childhood has been weaved into the insanity.

The game starts with you playing the part of the Boss, the same character from the earlier entries in the series but this time you are the president of the United States of America. This is when an Alien overlord and his troops decide to attack and enslave humanity, blowing things up and kidnapping people locking them up in a matrix style simulated world. From this point its your job to fight back. You do this mostly from inside the simulation by completing various tasks ranging from hacking to killing your enemies to committing insurance fraud by throwing your body in front of various moving vehicles and then there are races using your super speed and gliding abilities and you even take part in a crazy violent game show. You also have to take care of business in the real world as well as a few different simulations which I wont spoil for you.

You get to make your own version of the President, male or female, fat or thin you design the character and it makes you feel connected, it helps draw you into the game. There are so many different types of weapon and super powers in the game that you can really play the way you want, do you want to freeze people and then shoot them in to pieces with pistols you've got it or if you'd rather run super fast headlong into people and punch and wrestle them then your covered. 

So what about the DLC, well I could have written individual reviews for these but when there included in the package this didn't feel right. I am not trying to review the game I am trying to review the entire package here so now I will talk about each piece a little.

How the saints saved Christmas is the shortest piece of DLC and was the one I enjoyed the least. The story is not to bad, its basically a video game parody of all of those sort of Christmas specials in which a character learns about the joys of Christmas., It also has a robotic evil Santa a bit like Futurama and its all as wacky and crazy as you'd expect. In honesty though there is only about an hours worth of gameplay here. Enter the Dominatrix is not much longer to be honest but it has a very tongue in cheek forth wall breaking way of taking the piss out of itself which I found very enjoyable, still on its own it wouldn't be enough to recommend someone spending much.

That leaves Gat out of Hell. Now I have an issue with Gat out of hell in that I personally find it less fun to be given a character to play as than I do to create my own character but that aside I actually enjoyed this a lot. You get the feeling that in a way the game is a video game and a joke. I mean lets look at the usual sequel path for horror/B movies usually you will have a few films and then you look at sending your hero or villain in to space, this has happened to Jason from Friday the 13th, it has happened to the Leprechaun from the Leprechaun films but you always have the feeling that when it reaches this point they are really kind of scraping the barrel and just don't want to give up on there cash cow. Well Saints Row went to space in Saints Row 4 (As well as going in to virtual reality and through virtual reality programmes playing with time travel/the past a little) so that kind of raised the question where next? Well where do other products such as horror movies tend to venture? Yep Hell. So here we have what basically is Saints Row goes to hell but rather than trying to predictably drag a whole game out of the idea and have it outstay its welcome instead they decided to make it in to a fun bit of DLC. 

In some ways Gat out of Hell is very much a re-skin of Saint Row 4 but then again for its price I wont hold that against it too much. You have lots of different weapons here with my favourite part being 7 guns based on the 7 deadly sins, you also have what at first seems strange Disney style musical theatre like songs. These are a precious treat though my fiancée is a big fan of musicals and Disney films and even she thought that even while being twisted they were delightful and funny. I see this as a good piece of DLC which has a little fun with its audience without outstaying its welcome. If they had tried to stretch this game out in to a full price full length retail product I think it would have been a huge mistake and we all know that plenty of studios would have done this only caring about its potential to make as much cash as possible with as little effort as possible.

I started both Saints Row 4 and Gat out of hell side by side. I finished Gat out of Hell within a week of buying it but enjoyed it greatly. At first I didn't know how much of Saints Row 4 I was going to play. I did consider just getting to the point it would let me sample the DLC and then stopping, but in the process of doing this I started to enjoy it so much that I couldn't help but play it again. The truth is even since finishing everything this package has to offer I have found myself dipping in to it now and then just to try and beat a score or to collect something I have missed. I think this speaks pretty strongly about both the game and Gat out of Hell.

Conclusion

At first Re-Elected doesn't really seem to look or feel very different but there are some upgrades done to improve this from the last generation versions, things that you wont really notice in screenshots. These are subtle things for one the draw distance is improved and things look a little smoother when in motion in general, this version is also free of the slow down that you sometimes got when firing off a lot of super powers with a lot of characters on the screen. So I feel that enough has been done that I have to say that even though this version might be a remake it is defiantly the definitive version of the game. That being said if you played this game on a PS3 or an Xbox 360 and for whatever reason it wasn't for you then your still not going to like it it is the same zany super powered game it was in the first place. The same can be said about the DLC if you didn't enjoy the original your unlikly to enjoy any of these, however for the person who enjoyed either the Original Saints Row 4 or one of its prequels and who wants a good value for money package I don't think you can go far wrong here. The current price for this on Amazon is now £15 for either the PS4 or Xbox One and I think you could do a lot worse than giving this game a try.

I would give this package overall an 8 out of 10. Its not a game that's going to change the world or make you reassess your life but if you want a good laugh and to let loose and be a little crazy while enjoying reworked blasts of nostalgia then this is for you.

Games I think get too much hate. 2: Saints Row in general.

I am always one to praise the Saints Row games and to get excited when a new one is released but on most occasions and in most groups I tend to be the only one. I hear people mention the fact that the first saints row was nothing more than a Grand Theft Auto clone and that every Saints Row ever since has just got more and more ridiculous, but this is the very reason I like them. I guess this means in defending Saints Row I will have to talk about GTA quiet a bit but I just want to get things straight I enjoy a lot of the GTA games just not all of them.

Sure the first was just a GTA clone but when the Xbox 360 was out and incredibly popular and Rockstar seemed to be dragging there feet when came to getting a GTA game out on a new system and capitalising on the 360's position. With this in mind can you really blame someone else for seeing that gap in the market and trying to profit off it? I enjoyed the original for what it was but I never viewed it as a classic, I viewed it as a smart business move but also recognised that if they didn't do something to capitalise on this then the game would drop into obscurity the minute a real GTA game was launched.

I had spent many hours messing around on GTA, GTA 2, GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas I loved the games but I appreciated them the most when they didnt take themselves too seriously. When GTA 4 came out it was this grey and brown game, with cars which from my perspective felt almost too realistic in the way they handled, you were constantly getting phone calls from people who you were compelled to spend time it felt to dull too drawn out and too much like real life. This seriousness was a Million miles away from Vice City and its bright lights, 80's music balls to the wall fun.

In Saints Row 2 you get to make your own character, you customize how they look physically and then latter on you get to buy them all manner of clothing, I prefer this to the character of Niko Bellic from GTA 4. Add on to this that GTA 4 stars with meeting your cousin Roman the guy who can charitably be described as the biggest drain of fun in the game, and less charitably described as a moaning bumbling arsewipe who will dog you via your in game mobile until you want to batter yourself to death with your own controller. In Saints Row 2 you start off with an awesome jail break. Yes you can say GTA 4 takes time to get going, it tries to build characters but I will take the explosive fun instead thank you. Its not that I am unsophisticated and cant appreciate a drawn out gripping story, I recently read and enjoyed To Kill a Mocking Bird however a story about gangsters fucking each other up doesn't really need to try and be a literal classic in game form. The first five Grand Theft Auto games were pretty much the video game equivalent of a pulp fiction novel and it didnt do them any harm.

Saints Row 2 was ridiculous but it was fun, the characters in it where over the top and the game could best be described as bat shit crazy. This for me was the game where the Saints Row Series got into its stride where it began to make characters you would care about, they can best be described as a collection of crazy misfits, the psychopath Johnny Gat who thinks he can solve everything by shooting someone in the face, and Pierce the fast talking con-man entrepreneur for example. The great thing about the game as a series though is that someone who is a minor villain or a relatively unimportant character in one game can return in a latter game with a bigger more fleshed out role. When you look at Saints Row 4 in particular there doesn't seem to be a single character from the previous games who has been forgotten more or less everyone at the very least gets talked about.

Grand Theft Auto 5 has actually addressed a lot of my issues with GTA 4 and is a much stronger game than its predecessor in my opinion but its still pretty much a game that stand alone. Every game in the saints row Series fits together, its like enjoying a long running Television series you love, you will play your way through the games and the DLC  and get to see what the characters have been up to. Even though they are humours games some of the characters do go through a lot of development from game to game and this makes you feel connected to them more than you might realise.

The Saints Row games seem to be made with a mantra of ''concentrate on what would be fun and fit the story, the characters and the game around this fun''. Yes they can be over the top, rude, crude and tacky but they are fundamentally silly and fun. You will find yourself doing crazy missions like spraying shit all over rich peoples homes to lower there houses worth, committing insurance fraud by throwing your seemingly indestructible body in to the way of passing cars in order to scam them out of insurance money, If you start from the beginning and go through the games you will find yourself fighting gangsters, wrestlers, zombies, aliens, gimps, leather wearing dominants and even hell-spawns it wont always make sense but it will always be fun.

SNES Game Review 85 Ranma 1/2

OK so I will apologise in advance, as is often my style this review will be a mix of review, video game history lesson and my memories. So video games have also been a big part of my life, they were when I was a child and they are now but they are not the only thing I am into.  When I was about 4 my Dad started buying these video cassettes of Japanese cartoons for me. He knew that I was crazy in to Transformers so he went to try and find me other things like them what he found me was Grandizer,Guyking, StarAvengers and Danguard Ace. I watched these cartoons and loved them to this day I still do so when I was older and everyone started to get into Manga Home Videos like Dominion Tank police and such I was in my element. We all got into anime films and series and one of the ones I found and particularly enjoyed was Ranma ½.  So when I came across a pal cart with Ranma ½ wrote on it on a flea market I was incredibly excited. I never expected to see a game based on one of the anime I had been watching, I had never seen the game on the shelves in any store, never heard anyone talk about it so it came as a huge shock. I paid for it straight away without trying to ask if they would take less or without working out how I would get through the rest of the week if I spent all of my pocket money in one go. The answer was very simple I needed this game and if I needed any more money for anything else then I’d have to pocket my school dinner money, go without eating at school and tell my parents I had, yes I did this quiet often.

It would be an understatement if I said that when I got home I excitedly popped the game into my Super Nintendo, and played it for a bit. The market I used to get some of my games from was held on a Thursday night, it started at 6pm and I literally ran home and put the game in my SNES and played it none stop until my parents came in my room and told me to turn the damn machine off and get some sleep as it was a school night, this was around 11.30. I guess this statement in and of itself makes it sound like the game is something great and well it kind of is and it kind of is not. The game is just a standard fighter game in some ways it is sort of just another Street Fighter 2 clone but this time one with Ranma characters. I suppose what you think of this game depends on your tolerance for street fighter clones and also your attitude to Ranma and its characters.

I was shocked that there was a Ranma game on the SNES but the truth is in Japan there were actually 5. The first was a game called Ranma ½: Neighborhood Combat, the game we got was actually a direct sequel to this game. So Did America get the first one? Yes and No Combat Chapter was altered by Irem, it had all of the Ranma characters stripped out of it, the graphics and audio altered and became a game called Street Combat. Now I don’t own Street Combat so I won’t be reviewing it I have however played it and it is dire. To the best of my knowledge it never came to Europe. Japan also got a sequel to the game I am reviewing the Sequel was called Ranma ½: Super-Skill Wild Dance Chapter, this was actually supposed to be released in the USA and possibly Europe afterwards under the title of   Ranma ½ Anything Goes Martial Arts, however the company that owned the rights for it went bust leading to its cancellation. So all we ever really got was part 2 of a 3 part fighting franchise (Japan also got a Ranma RPG and a Ranma Puzzle game).

OK well back to the game. This game looks great. The characters are all brilliant sprites who are instantly recognisable and look just like they do in the anime. It goes deeper then this though the graphics are full of brilliant little touches, you can see the wind blowing in the one of the female characters hair, you can also see leaves moving, light blinking all of which adds so wonderfully to the atmosphere.  The music really fits in well with the game and its graphics, it also I believe really in the correct style for the anime this is based on. The music is really bouncy and up tempo. It really sets the tone for what is a humorous fun game. Every level has its own song adding to the variety. On top of this there are the sound effects. Just like you would expect all of the actions such as punches and kicks are met with the sort of sounds you would expect and on top of this most specials are  accompanied  by what sounds like a  Japanese voice actor screaming the attack name in pretty broken English, which I actually considering the origin of the source material love.

As for the game itself well you get a choice of characters, sure there is not loads of them but they all do tend to feel unique, there are 10 characters to start with and 2 boss characters one of which is unlockable. Each character has their own reason for fighting which will be explained with text and pictures after you pick them. I think this is great as even if you haven’t watched or read any Ranma it helps draw you in and make you feel a connection to the characters, you want to play your way through the fights to see what happens to them, to see if they get a happy ending or not. This actually gives you a reason to try and get better with the characters that you are not that keen on and so adds to the replay value.

The default controls are a little strange, especially given the fact that there is a jump button instead of just pressing up, this can be changed in the options but if you want to change it then you will need to do so every time you put the game on. The characters are very responsive and the attacks are easy enough to do. The attacks are a little limited in comparison to something like Street fighter 2 as you basically only have a strong attack and weak attack button. Like mortal kombat blocking is assigned to a button as opposed to just pressing back. This does make this a somewhat simple fighter but the game does benefit from the way it sticks so well to its license and makes the most of it. It’s a fun game which although it is not going to change the world is worthwhile if you like fighters or if you like Ranma. This is a game on its own account not some awful street fighter 2 clone.

I am really struggling to give this game a score, it has its strengths and its weaknesses to the point that it has made me bump out my first quarter score so here it goes 6.75, it is a fun game, it’s not a bad fighter but it’s not brilliant, if you want a fighter which is not a Street Fighter, a Mortal Kombat or a Killer instinct you could do a lot worse than this. So if you do want this, well the best way I have seen to get it would be from ebay, the copies I have seen selling in England have been most often ridiculously expensive for what it is but if you look at pal copes from other European countries you can get it for about £15 including delivery. I guess if it’s worth it or not comes down to how much you like fighters and if you’re looking for a new one you don’t have.