Happy! Happy!! Boarders in Hokkaido Rusutsu Resort (PS2)

 The first thing that stands out about Happy! Happy!! Boarders upon starting it is the way it sounds and looks: it's going to be a feast for those "Y2K Aesthetic" appreciators out there. Then, with the snowboarding game I've played most of being another PS2 game, Alpine Racer 3, it's striking how much slower and more realistic this game is. You have quite a lot of control of your boarder in this game, where they go, and you've also got to make them keep their balance. A big contrast to AR3, which is a very videogamey racing game, in which you mainly just have to go as fast as possible down linear tracks while avoiding obstacles. (It might get its own review here someday.)

 

So, this more of a sim-type game. Not just in the relatively more realistic snowboarding action, but also it's a tie-in to a real skiing/snowboarding resort in Hokkaido, and it's kind of a bit of a sim of being there, too. Well, a little bit. You access the menu for saving, changing your board, and some other things by returning to the hotel, at least. Also, the loading screens have some very nice, scenic photos of the real slopes, and there's also a gallery full of unlockable photos of the hotel's interior, for some reason. 

 

You start off with access to only one course, and a point quota. You get points by snowboarding, by doing tricks, by boarding between flags on the course, doing little speed challenges and for some reason, by stopping to talk to certain people who are loitering around on the course. Once you reach the points quota, you can go to the second course, which is a lot more interesting, since it's got a few branching points that kind of make it four courses in one, and you get a new points quota. For some reason, though, I didn't unlock a third course upon reaching this quota. And one of the big problems with playing and writing about obscure games is that there are no guides online to help you, so a little ulterior motive in writing this review is to ask the internet: anyone know what i'm doing wrong?

 

It really is a shame, because I was getting into the game before getting stuck like this: once you get the hang of the controls, it's a lot of fun going down the slopes, and as mentioned, it looks great too. They really did a good job of making this resort feel like a cool, fun, luxurious place to be! Plus, it seems to be almost entirely inhabited by attractive young people. Which makes sense, since from what little English writing there is about this game online, there's supposedly a romantic aspect to it, too, which I never picked up on at all! 

 

If you can read Japanese, I recommend giving this game a try! It's fun to play, and it really seems like it's got a lot going on to make it stand out in the genre. If you can't speak Japanese, I still recommend giving it a try, I've really enjoyed what I've been able to play of it, and maybe you'll be able to figure out how to get past the second course and make me look like Booboo the Fool. Who knows, maybe I'll figure it out myself? I can only hope.  

Taiketsu! Ultra Hero (GBA)

 Can you believe it's been over two years since I wrote about a tokusatsu tie-in game here? And even that's if you're liberal enough to count Power Rangers as tokusatsu. Don't worry, though: there's going to be more than one post on this subject this year, I'm pretty sure. This one is an Ultraman fighting game! There's been many of them, some notoriously awful, some sneakily having little cult followings. This one is closer to the first group, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's awful.

 

It's got a pretty big roster of characters, with a bunch of Ultramen selectable in "VS Mode", which is actually what you'd normally think of as arcade mode, and tournament mode, where you only fight against other Ultramen. There's also a Free Battle mode, in which you can select any of the monsters that you fight against in VS mode, including a screen-sized representation from one of the great old ones of the Cthulhu mythos, Ghatanothoa (or rather, "Ghatanothor", as the Ultra series officially spells it), who apparently appears as the final enemy in 1996-97's Ultraman Tiga (which I unfortunately haven't seen). More importantly, yes: you can play as Dino Tank in this game.

 

There's some things that are very strange about this game. Firstly, there's the balance. All of the monsters are massively more powerful than all of the Ultramen, in every mode. They do more damage with their attacks, they receive significantly less damage from attacks, and most of all, they can use their special infinitely. Ultramen have a power meter at the bottom of the screen, representing their Color Timer. It slowly goes down constantly, with special moves taking chunks out of it. There's even some "all or nothing" specials that can immediately win a fight if they hit, or lose it if they miss! So, this imbalance is clearly a deliberate choice to add tension, and stay close to the lore of the TV shows. It makes for a worse game, but a better adaptation. What a conundrum!

 

Another weird thing, that can't be so tidily excused, is the way special moves are performed. Instead of having move inputs like a normal fighting game, instead you hold a shoulder button and press a face button to perform specials. So every character has a maximum of four specials, and it's not really possible to make combos with any of them. While the face buttons are each assigned punch and kick, the shoulder buttons don't do anything when pressed on their own, so I wasn't even able to figure out this weird system on my own! Instead, I saw that there must be specials in the game when I saw CPU opponents performing them, and went looking online. Luckily, there is a guide on gameFAQs (written in 2004, a mere six months after the game's release!). It doesn't work well, it's not fun to do, and it's not very intuitive. 

 

There's good things about the game, too. Like how it looks: all the sprites are really well-drawn and animated. And while it's technically a bad game, there's still a little bit of entertainment to be had from having monster vs monster fights in free mode. And then learning that it's still hilariously poorly balanced, since any monster that has a projectile with full screen range can just spam it with impunity. If you fire up the ROM, I'm sure you'll be amused for like, half an hour or so. That's fine, right? I haven't been able to find a copy for sale, so I don't know what the prices are like for it, but whatever it costs when it does emerge: it's not worth it.