Yuu Yuu Hakusho Dai 4 Tama Makai Touitsu (Game Boy)

 Fighting games on the originl Gamel Boy are an interesting concept, I think. Logically, you'd think they'd all be abject failures, being maybe the most complex videogame genre of the early nineties, on probably the weakest mainstream host hardware of the time. But there's actually some good stuff on there, especially the various ports published by Takara (mostly of SNK games, though the Game Boy has the odd distinction of being the only system where Toshinden is better than Samurai Shodown).

 

This is the fourth and final Game Boy fighting game based on the iconic early nineties shonen anime Yuu Yuu Hakusho, and it has a slightly different feel to it to the fighters ported from the arcade. The big difference can be seen at the bottom of the screen: the meters. Of course, there's the health meter, that works exactly as you'd expect. Beneath that there's the special meter, which limits your use of special moves. And right at the bottom, there's the super meter. This one works a little differently, and a little like the momentum meter in Idainaru Dragonball Densetsu. The orb moves along it, and when it's all the way to one side, that fighter can use their super. 

 

These differences aren't really positive ones though, unfortunately. The special meter is a terrible idea, as it discourages use of specials, and experimentation with specials to figure out the best way to play as each character. I guess it was implemented to avoid situations where one player might repeatedly use a certain special over and over, but there are much better ways of preventing this, preferably ways for the defending player to work their way out of the situation. The super meter might be a better idea in theory, but in practice, it just doesn't work. I played around twenty to thirty fights for this review, and I think I saw it go all the way to one player's side maybe three times? Essentially, both meters serve to make the fights less exciting, not more.

 

There are a few other interesting things to note about the game, though. Like how it gets over some of the limitations of the host hardware by having certain larger special moves alternate each frame between the sprite of the character performing the move and the sprite of the move's effects. It's a nice way of having bigger effects for move, but at the same time, it does make it impossible to take good-looking screenshots of those moves. Another thing is that as well as the normal fighting modes, in which there are nine characters (plus a secret tenth one), there's also an extra mode that sees super deformed versions of four non-combatant characters from the source material take part in silly fights where they attempt to bonk each other on the head with various objects. Oddly, this mode is significantly more difficult than the main mode, and I haven't been able to win a single fight.

 

This is a pretty hard game to recommend. If you're playing via emulation and you just want to play a Yuu Yuu Hakusho fighting game, there's no reason not to go for the legendary Treasure-developed Makai Toitsusen on Mega Drive. On the other hand, if you're putting together a collection of anime-licensed Game Boy games (or of Game Boy fighting games, for that matter), loose cartridges of this one are available dirt cheap, and it's completely language independent.