The Anime Super Remix: Kyojin no Hoshi (PS2)

In case you don't know, Kyojin no Hoshi is a baseball anime that aired all the way back in 1968, and it's one of those old anime that was massively influential on all that came after it. Unfortunately, I don't know much of the exact details, because only the first episode has ever been translated into English. I do know that it was to first appearance of that BDSM-looking "training suit" that you see in a bunch of anime, including an early episode of Pokemon, where some guy puts one on his Sandshrew.

Anyway, this game came out in 2002, alongside another "Anime Super Remix" game, based on the 1980 boxing anime Ashita no Joe 2, and it, as far as I can tell, tells the story of the anime through a mixture of video clips (which are amazingly high quality, considering the age of the source material), still images with captions, and minigames re-enacting certain iconic scenes.

The minigames are all very difficult, and completely unforgiving, even on the easiest difficulty. Well, the three of them I was able to play were, anyway. You only start with two minigames unlocked, and by playing them, you can earn points, which allow you to unlock more minigames, as well as more story scenes. However, to actually get the minigames, you'll have to grind no matter how well you play. Each minigame costs nine hundred points to unlock, and successfully completing a minigame on its hardest difficulty will get you between 150 and 200 points each time. So you'll have to complete 4 successful runs on hard to get the next game at the very least.

And I'm not exageratting when I describe the difficulty of these games. They basically boil down to different configurations of press a button once or twice with perfect timing, and pressing a button as many times as possible in a very short amount of time. The timing-based tasks aren't so bad once you get into a bit of a rhythm with them, which is possible even through emulation. The button-tapping tasks, however seem to vary, seemingly at random, between "pretty difficult" and "literally impossible, even Meijin Takahashi can't press a button this fast". I know these olden days sports anime were all about tragedy and despair, but to complete these absurdly hard tasks, with the only reward being a fraction of the way towards getting the next one is a bit dispiriting.

Though retelling the story of an old, reknowned TV series through a series of minigames recreating specific scenes is an interesting one, the actual execution here is so bad, and so antithetical to having a good time, I can't recommend this game at all.