Kinnikuman Nisei - Shinsedai Choujin vs. Densetsu Choujin (Gamecube)

 So, this game did get a western release, under the title Ultimate Muscle: Legends Vs. New Generation. I played the Japanese version instead, though, since I read somewhere that the western publishers removed the character creation mode. Now I'm not so sure whether that's true or not, but really it doesn't matter much either way, since the character creation mode isn't very good.

 

I had high hopes for it, since a character creation mode in such a cartoony-looking game seemed like it could be really interesting. Unfortunately, you just select a head, torso, arms, and legs from a pretty small selection, and they're all obviously meant to be matched together in sets, and mixing them up really does look like you just mixed up parts from different characters. Also, you can't use them in the game's main single player mode, only in one-off fights.

 

It's a simple wrestling game based on the anime Kinnikuman Nisei/Ultimate Muscle, obviously, and it really is very simple: there are no pinfalls or submissions, you're just trying to get your opponent's health to zero in every match. Furthermore, the game is mostly controlled using just the analogue stick for movement, and three buttons: strike, grapple, and jump. Each character has a short string of strike attacks, a couple of wrestling moves done with the grapple button, as well as a mid-air strike and grapple each. There's also a super meter, and by holding the left trigger, you can expend one segment of meter to perform a more powerful strike, two segments for a more powerful grapple, or all three to perform a big super move, which is like its own little cutscene where you do some big crazy impossible wrestling move on your opponent.

 

There's a ton of characters and stuff to unlock (including a gallery of photos of over four hundred keshigomu figures!), but the preblem is that all the characters feel the same when you play as them, and they only have very few moves, and it's pretty boring seeing the same couple of moves over and over during each match. Take into account that a single-player playthrough comprises five consecutive matches, and it's even worse. 

 

As it is, the game attempts to occupy a space between fighting games and wrestling games, but while each genre has its own complexities, this game kind of eschews both, leaving you with a great-looking, but repetitive and over-simple game. I can't even really recommend it for multiplayer, since the main skill you need is the ability to press the attack button before your opponent does. It's a shame, since it mostly feels okay to play and it has a lot of charm, but it's just so completely unexciting that it's not worth bothering with.

Nekoba Rock n Roll (PC)

 Nekoba, in case you're wondering, is short for "Neko Bazooka", and in this game you play as a badly-drawn cat with a bazooka, shooting various weird things in at least three kinds of stages (I haven't completed the game yet, maybe more appear later?). There's platform stages, driving stages, and helicopter stages.

 

The platform stages are the most numerous, and they take place in closed-off areas where you have to kill all the bosses that appear within the time limit (and obviously, without getting killed yourself). The driving stages see you stand on the back of a pickup truck shooting a cop cars and busses until a boss appears for you to kill, and the helicopter stages are short, but somewhat traditional horizontally-scrolling shooting stages.

 

This is a game that really feels like what I think of regarding the term "indie": it seems to have been made by one person, who clearly had ideas about the game they wanted to make, and let nothing stand in their way. The art is wildly inconsistent, with high detailed artwork of anime girls talking to crudely-drawn blobs in the cutscenes, and all the enemies in the stages are a seemingly random assortment of more crudely-drawn animals, parodies of existing characters (including the very brave inclusion of what appears to just be a distorted low resolution piece of official mickey mouse art), and just strange monster things. All this, and a lot of the music is actually vocal songs!

 

Is it actually fun to play, though? Yes! It's definitely not a tightly-crafted experience, but each stage is only a couple of minutes long, and they're some incredibly frantic minutes with enemies and bullets all over the place. The difficulty is just right, too, as it never feels like a tedious cakewalk, or a punishing slog. Likewise, the enemies all take just enough punishment to make them satisfying kills without feeling like damage sponges. Come to think of it, maybe this is a tightly-crafted experience, merely disguised as a demented piece of outsider art?

 

Anyway, Nekoba Rock n Roll is interesting, fun, unique and also very very cheap. So you should probably go and buy it!