Undercover Cops Gaiden - Hakaishin Garumaa (Game Boy)

 It never really became a mainstream hit like Streets of Rage or Final Fight, but for a short time after its original arcade release and subsequent Super Famicom port, Undercover Cops had at least built up a sizable cult following in Japan. Which makes sense, it's a fun game, with great-looking, unique, and stylish graphics. Its popularity didn't last long enough for it to get a sequel unfortunately, but it did get this: a Game Boy exclusive spin-off that's a kind of board game/RPG thing.

 

So, you pick one of the characters from the original game (but let's be honest: everyone's going to pick Rosa. Can you even remember the names of the other two guys without looking them up?), and you traverse a board game world with branching paths and differently-coloured squares and a few special squares here and there. Movement takes place in the same manner that would be used in Sonic Shuffle years later: you have a hand of cards bearing different numbers. You pick a card, and then there's a roulette that can land on a number up to that of the card you picked, telling you how many spaces you'll move. White squares do nothing, grey squares give you a little money, and black squares result in a battle (or occasionally a whack-a-mole minigame).

 

The battles are turn-based, and a little more complex than you might expect from a 1993 Game Boy game. First, you and your opponent will pick a card, with the highest number determining who is the attacker for the current turn. If that's you, you pick a body part, then pick another card from your hand, and you might do some damage, or maybe nothing will happen. If you're the defender, you only have to pick the top or bottom half of your body to defend, and again, you pick another card. Then you might take damage or you might not. This carries on until someone runs out of hit points, which can take ages, since it seems to be completely randomly determined whether or not damage is dealt each turn. It doesn't take much strategy to ensure that you're almost always the attacker, at least. Especially as you level up, which puts higher-numbered cards in your deck.

 

There is a kind of mindless compulsion that can keep you playing this game. Like it's mostly luck-based, but there's also a lot of really nice pixel art in here, and there is even a plot running through the game. But that's all there is, and if you're going to play on real hardware, you won't have access to save states or a fast forward button, which will also really dampen the game's appeal. What really killed my enthusiasm for it, though is the fact that the branching paths don't lead to different routes or even alternate storylines. What they lead to is dead ends. You can't scroll ahead, so if you do end up going down the wrong path, you have no choice but to go back and then go down the right path. 

 

The problem here is that the process of moving is incredibly slow. As described above, you pick a card and then you spin the roulette and then you move. And then if you land on a grey square, you've got long seconds of reading the line of text telling you about the tiny amount of money you've picked up. And the black squares don't go away after you've landed on them, so the incredibly slow and random number generator-based battles are something you'll be enduring again and again. 

 

The pixel art in the battles and cutscenes is really nice, and near-miraculous when you consider this is only a couple of years into the lifespan of the original Game Boy. But unfortuantely, that's really all this game has going for it, and the mountains of tedious timewasting through which it puts the player is unforgivable. I'm glad it got a translation patch, because it was a game that had caught my attention and my cuiosity a long time ago. But I don't recommend actually playing it.

Hokuto no Ken 6 Gekitou Denshouken - Haou heno Michi (SNES)

 Though I think nowadays, when people think of Hokuto no Ken games on 8- and 16-bit consoles, they're more likely to think of the ones on Master System and Mega Drive, there was a series of them on Nintendo's consoles, too. And while the Nintendo games carried a sequel number across seven games (so yes, this is apparently a part of the same series of games as the Famicom beat em up Hokuto no Ken 2 that I reviewed long ago), they don't seem to have much else in common. Of course they started with beat em ups, then there were a few RPGs, and the final two, six and seven, were fighting games. 

 

Hokuto no Ken 6 represents an interesting and very narrow point in time in the genre's evolution, too. It's clear just by looking at it that the developers were familiar with Street Fighter II and its massive success (as I think everyone involved in videogames would have been at the time), and they were able to copy the general screen layout, and the large character sprites. But the mechanics and the feel of Street Fighter II were far beyond their capabilities at that time. The regular punches and kicks feel very stiff and clunky, and it's near-impossible to string multiple attacks together into anything feeling like a combo. Furthermore, instead of having motion-based special moves, the players have two meters beneath their health meter, and all specials are performed via the shoulder buttons, in conjunction with these meters.

 

The first meter, AP, works almost like the momentum meter in Idainaru Dragonball Densetsu: it goes up when you land hits, and it goes down when you take hits. When it's full, you can press the left shoulder button to perform a move so special, it's name will also appear onscreen if it lands. You'll recognise these as each character's signiature move from the comic/TV show. The other meter, TP, is less interesting: you hold the right shoulder button to fill it, and when it fills up, you can release to shoot a projectile attack. And that's pretty much the entirety of the game's special moves. (There are apparently even more powerful signatures if you manage to fill up the AP meter twice before using it, but I haven't been able to do that.)

 

The character line up is a little strange, too. There's Kenshiro and Rei, like you might expect, along with a bunch of villains from late in the series like Raoh, Souther, and so on. But what makes it weird is that there's a stage clearly meant to be Shin's throne room in Southern Cross, but instead of being occupied by Shin, it's the home stage for Heart! I guess he's kind of an iconic character, but he's also a comedy jobber who dies very early in the series! It's a shame I can't read the dialogue text that appears at the start of each story mode fight, as I'd love to know what happens in Heart's conversations with those god-like man-tyrants who make up most of the cast.

 

I actually did enjoy Hokuto no Ken 6. I can't recommend it, because it just doesn't really feel good to play. But somehow, I did get some joy from having these character awkwardly flail at each other. It's definitely helped by having such nicely drawn, detailed sprites, as well as other little details like Raoh being unable to crouch (because of course, the king of fists would never bend a knee). But it's very simplistic, very stiff, and it's on a console that has a ton of better fighting games (including several others that are based on anime and manga. Though Hokuto no Ken 7 isn't very good either, unfortunately). The best I can say is that it's a game that can be found very cheaply, and if you've got friends who can appreciate a good bad game, and who also love Hokuto no Ken, you might get a decent hour or so out of it.