Konjiki no Gash Bell!! Yuujou no Dengeki Dream Tag Tournament (GBA)

 This is a fighting game based on an anime and manga series that was renamed Zatch Bell in English-speaking areas, for obvious reasons. I don't know anything about that series, and this game is all in Japanese, so I can't tell you much about the plot. Another bit of bad news is that despite the words "Tag Tournament", this game doesn't actually have tag battles. It's more of a Rival Schools-type situation, where you play as one character, and have another who acts as a striker.

 

Also similar to Rival Schools' sequel Project Justice is that there are seperate single player modes for following the story, where you can only pick from pre-determined teams, and a more freeform mode where there's no story, but you can pick any two characters you like. The roster is a pretty interesting bunch, too: there's a few characters that appear to be little kids, a couple of oddly-dressed adults, and there's a pair of quadrapedal animals in the form of a spikey, aggressive goat and a spikey, aggressive horse. There's also a few characters I fought against, but never figured out how to unlock, who mostly looked like bizarre superhero and villain-type characters.

 

One thing that's very obvious from playing the game is that it's firmly aimed at the kids watching the show, and not at fighting game fans. Not only are the opponents in both single player modes very easy to beat, but the controls are pretty different to what you might expect. There's a jump button and only one attack button, and specials are activated by pressing up or down and attack together. Specials and summoning your striker are done using the shoulder buttons. As for the difficulty, I'm not even particularly good at fighting games, but while playing through both single player modes a few times each, I've only lost one round, and no matches.

 

Still, it is a fun game to play, and it looks great, easily one of the best-looking games on the system. It might also be a fun way to introduce your less-skilled friends to fighting games, assuming you can figure out a way to play it against another person in 2022 (I haven't looked into this, but I assume someones made this very easy via emulation at some point. Actually, can this be done with Game Boy/Color/Advance games via emulation on 3DS? That'd be nice.)

 

So yeah, it looks nice, and it's a moderately fun game, but it's way too easy. Also, being a fighting game on GBA, it has cast over it the massive shadow of the miraculous port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 that's also on the same system, and I don't think it's interesting enough to step out from that shadow.