Sometimes, you encounter a game that's centred around a concept so obvious, you can't believe you've never encountered it elsewhere. Ultraman Powered (based on the Japan-US co-produced TV show that's also known as Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero) is a game that has two such concepts! And it's hidden away on a console nobody cares about!
The two concepts are kind of related, though, being both related to the fact that this is a fighting game that makes use of digitised sprites. Firstly, it's the first game I've seen that mixes them with live action FMV cutscenes, but the real shocker is that this is the only game I can think of that's based on a tokusatsu TV show or movie that uses digitised sprites! It's such a natural combination! Not to mention the glory days of the Mortal Kombat series coincided with the heyday of Power Rangers, VR Troopers, and all the other American "localised" versions of toku series.
So, is it any good? Eh, not particularly. To be more fair, it is fun to play, and there are positive aspects to it, like how the digitised look really does fit perfectly with the theme, but there's some real problems, too. In single player mode, you play as Ultraman, and you fight against various kaiju one after another, like you'd expect. You've got a couple of special moves that aren't particularly impressive or useful, and the controls are laid out very strangely: you've got light and heavy punches and kicks. The punches are assigned to the A and B buttons, while the kicks are assigned to C and the right shoulder button. This isn't an arcade port or anything, it's a 3DO exclusive! Why didn't they design the controls more logically based on the controller that they knew players would be using?
There's actually two modes for single players: visual and battle. The only differences between them are that visual mode has fairly long FMV cutscenes before each fight, while battle mode has "VTOL Shooting" sections before each fight. The sections play out like a very simplified version of Cobra Command/Thunder Storm FX. They're viewed through the windshield of a VTOL craft flying towards the next kaiju you're going to fight, and you move a crosshair around the screen to shoot at little targets that appear on them, slightly reducing their starting health during the fighting section. It's nothing spectacular, but it's fun little gimmick, and I can't imagine anyone ever picking visual mode over it more than once.
Ultraman Powered isn't a very good game, but it's not painful to play or anything, either. You'll probably get some mild amusement out of it for maybe thirty to sixty minutes? It is at least better than the 1991 Ultraman fighting game that appeared on the Mega Drive and SNES (and somehow also got a SNES-only sequel), though.
"Ultraman Powered isn't a very good game, but it's not painful to play or anything, either."
ReplyDeletelol. I was just thinking to myself, "Well, it sounds better than the SNES game, at least" and then two lines later you wrote that exact thought XD
This sounds pretty neat, actually. It's perfectly what I imagine the 3DO was built for too; a way to combine live-action FMV and digitized sprites with actual gameplay... that's like the 3DO dream. Glad it turned out better than a lot of other attempts at this kind of thing at the time, from the sounds of it.
Ultraman really has had a generally poor showing in video game form, eh? I wonder what the best Ultraman game really is? Is there one that transcends being merely, "Not the worst game you could be playing" and ends up ascending to the heights of being fairly okay overall? Maybe an obscure Japan-only PSX or PS2 title, I'd bet. I'm almost certain that Ultraman's most recent appearance, as a character for Override 2 Super Mech League, cannot be that great. The first Override was very disappointing as it was just a super brain-dead fighter that didn't understand so many fundamentals of fighting games (like making fighters feel differently to promote different playstyles)... but again, it's probably one of his stronger appearances by default :/