Wednesday 7 March 2012

Gekitotsu Dangan Jidousha Kessen: Battle Mobile (SNES)

This is a strange game. It has the exact same plot as the awesome laserdisc arcade game Road Avenger/Road Blaster FX (Your wife was killed on your wedding day by a gang of Mad Max knock-offs, and you seek revenge in a modified, armoured sports car). It looks like (and is structured like) a shooting game, but you do very little shooting in it. The only shooting you do is firing surface-to-air missiles at helicopters. most of your enemies are motorbikes, cars and other land vehicles, and these guys you dispatch by ramming, either hitting them enough times to make them explode, or more satisfyingly, making them crash into scenery.
You can't just drive into them normally and expect to do damage, though. By pressing the B button and a direction, you charge in that direction with speed and force, in a manner not entirely dissimilar to Ecco the Dolphin's method of attack.
Your health bar constantly (but slowly) depletes, but luckily, health power-ups float down the screen fairly often and you have a limited-use force field (which is also very useful for fighting bosses), so unless you take a lot of hits, you shouldn't need to worry about it.
The stages range from post-apocalyptic-looking desert roads to motorways suspended high above futuristic cities and even a nice drive on a beach. They all look great, and the music is also excellent. In fact, the music and graphics are so good, you'd think this game was on the Mega Drive, rather than the SNES*!
The game is pretty great all-round, in fact. It's neither too hard nor too easy, it's a lot of fun to play and there's not really much else like it.
This is where I normally might say "the only problem is..", but in this case, there isn't any real problems with the game! It's great! Play it!


*Just kidding, SNES fans! Or am I...?

4 comments:

  1. I've been playing this and I'm trying to beat it on hard, as it is said on some places that doing so changes the ending. Really, this game is an half hour of greatness. It just feels really good to play it. Thanks for the post!

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  2. Turns out that it is only easy mode that ends before the final boss. What hard mode does is unlock ????? mode if you reset after the credits.
    ????? mode makes you die in one hit. By cheating, I looked at its ending and it still is the same, except...
    ...
    Some random old woman appears running after the car.

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    Replies
    1. that's bizarre! i wonder if it's just a joke or something? we'll probably never know...
      thanks for telling me about this, though!

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    2. It's certainly some dumb joke to get people annoyed if they do somehow survive the levels with 1HP.

      Like how Takeshi's Challenge ends with the author wondering how people can take such a terrible game seriously.

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