Natsuki Crisis Battle (SNES)

 One of the most interesting things about the SNES back when I was first getting into emulation at the turn of the century (via the oddly xmas-themed DreamSNES emulator on Dreamcast) was that it had a ton of licensed anime tie-ins. I was just starting to really get into anime, thanks in no small part to other features of the Dreamcast, and having access to lots of games based on the likes of Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing and other 90s TV classics was great. But so entrentched was the SNES' status as the anime console of the early 90s, that it got games based on OAVs barely anyone's ever even heard of, let alone seen.

 

Natsuki Crisis Battle is one such game, based on the OAV and manga Natsuki Crisis. The manga has never had any kind of English release, though the OAV at least got fansubbed in 2007. Anyway, it's about a schoolgirl who's good at karate, and ends up fighting people who are good at other martial arts. And so, as was the fashion at the time, this is a fighting game. There's a story mode where you can only play as Natsuki herself, plus a versus mode where you can choose your character, opponent, and stage for a single fight. Finally, there's the odd Hyaku mode, where you pick one of the characters, and fight off against (presumably) a hundred nameless opponents who gradually get stronger, all on a single health bar.

 

Conspicuous by its absence, then, is a proper arcade-style mode, where you can pick any of the characters and fight all the others in turn, maybe with a character-specific ending to look forward to. While the modes that are present do offer a good few hours of fun (especially if you can get someone to play versus mode with you), this omission does hurt the game a lot, I feel. There's a lot working in the game's favour too, though: the realatively lo-fi feel of the fights is a nice change of pace, the small-but-detailed sprites look great(Rina, the wrestling character, has some really great-looking specials, in particular), as do the back grounds, and in the biggest surprise of all for a little-known licensed tie-in, it's a game that has a few ideas ahead of its time!

 

First, it's the earliest fighting game of which I'm aware that has character with more than one costume. Not just different colour palletes, Natsuki and Rina have entirely different outfits in story mode than they do in all the other modes, meaning they essentially had to have been drawn and animated twice. Furthermore, there's forwards and backwards dashing! This had already been done (and better) in Asuka 120% Burning Festival a year prior, but I think this is the first I've seen it done in a console game. And on top of that, it does it in an interesting, idiosyncratic way: the shoulder buttons make you dash in their respective directions, and when you deash towards your opponent, it comes with a built-in attack, with a different attack happening if you hold up on the d-pad while doing it!

 

Natsuki Crisis Battle isn't a timeless classic, and it's not the best SNES anime fighting game, either (since that's obviously the unassailable Gundam Wing Endless Duel). But it is a very interesting and charming game, and I think those things are at least as important as being good. Maybe more, even. It's definitely worth an hour or two of your time, at least.