Koryu no Mimi (SNES)

 

 This game's based on a manga, which I haven't read, but a quick bit of searching online reveals that it's apparently about a guy who's heir to both his family's fortune and the family magical earring, which gives "easy access to wealth and women". In game, though, it mainly seems to allow him to go super saiyan, as when your power meter fills up, you press the R button to make him touch his ear, regenerating some health, temporarily increasing his attack and defence, and summoning magic effects to help fight the enemy.

But I've jumped the gun a bit, there. I should describe what the game actually is. It's a single-plane beat em up, that will, at first, seem like it's impossibly difficult. But this is down to two factors. First, the game has a surprisingly extensive movelist, and you're expected to make use of it, paying special consideration to figuring out the best ways to juggle enemies in any given circumstance. THere's even more moves that can only be performed when you're holding certain melee weapons! Plus there's guns sometimes! The second thing to take into account is more concise: the first boss, for some reason, is a slightly anomalous difficulty spike, and you'll have a much easier time once you've gotten past her.

 

There's a few more points of interest, too. Though it's a single plane beat em up, there are times where multiple enemies will be standing slightly higher or lower on the screen as if it were a belt scroller. This is a purely visual flair: you still intereact with them as if they're on the same plane, but it does solve the problem in single plane games whereby it can be difficult to show multiple enemies without them looking like they're all standing in a queue waiting to get hit. Also, this is the second SNES game based on a manga license with a stage where you fight enemies in a passenger train, after GS Mikami: Joreishi wa Nice Body. (Outside of the SNES, it's also the third game that I've covered on this blog with such a stage, after Kishin Douji Zenki FX - Vajura Fight on PCFX and the much more recent Cosmowarrior Zero on Playstation).

 

Single plane beat em ups are, I feel, a generally underrated genre with a lot of potential, that a lot of people unfairly write off as being an inherently worse or "more primitive" version of belt scroller-style beast em ups. Koryu no Mimi is a game that proves that there were developers seeking out the limits of complexity in the genre as far back as the mid-nineties. I think the creativity on display makes it worth playing on its own. Luckily, it is also pretty fun on its own merits, too.