Hangzo (Arcade)

Hangzo is yet another unreleased arcade game that only came to light thanks to MAME, though this time it's not by Taito. It might be by Hot-B or Data East, though no-one seems to be 100% sure. One thing that is for sure is that though Hangzo was inteded to be an arcade game, spiritually, it's a Mega Drive game to the core. Can you really say that game is spiritually something for sure? Yes, I just did.

The game's about three ninjas, who clearly went to the Joe Musashi school of ninjitsu, as they don't spend any time sneaking around assassinating people. Instead they go through cyberpunk cities noisily destroying loads of exploding robots, and also through biopunk laboratories destroying loads of exploding blobby monsters. They even have a limited-use screen-clearing magic bomb jutsu! It really is like a lost Shinobi game, specifically a lost entry into the Mega Drive's Super/Revenge of Shinobi series.

There are a couple of original elements, though, like the inclusion of seperate buttons for melee and projectile attacks, bearing in mind that Hangzo does predate Shinobi III/Super Shinobi 2, and even in that game, the six-button mode was hidden behind a cheat code. There's also a magic fire breathing lion that turns up in most of the stages for you to ride around on. But generally in terms of both theming and mechanics, this is essentially a professionally-made Shinobi fangame.

It's fairly easy too, and shouldn't take more than a few attempts to one-credit-clear. Though a big part of this is thanks to one stage, about midway through the game, inexplicably having a section where a whole bunch of extra lives and health powerups coming floating in from the side of the screen. But it's not too easy, though, not easy enough to be boring, at least.

I feel like the last few posts on this blog have been really negative, and though I want to turn that around with this post, I can't be 100% positive about Hangzo. Probably as a conseqeunce of being an unfinished, unreleased game, it is a little rough around the edges: the presentation is not exactly super-polished, and the hitboxes feel a little strange at times, for example. However, it's still a lot of fun, and I definitely recommend going and giving it a try. It's a shame it never actually got released, and I hope someday, whoever owns the rights to it gives it a little extra sheen and releases it officially somehow.