Completely Awesome Side-scrolling Action!
User Rating: 9.5 | Astro Boy: Tetsuwan Atom - Atom Heart no Himitsu GBA
I don't know about you, but when the Nintendo 64 came out, I was pretty let down by a lot of the franchise titles that came out for it; the push to make EVERYTHING 3D was not without it's casualties. Although I personally enjoyed Mario's transition into the third dimension and was, in fact, completely blown away by the Ocarina of Time, I was sadly underwhelmed by the entries in the Castlevania and Megaman series. Something was lost in the translation, something nebulous, intangible. The games were no doubt designed and coded by intelligent, talented people with the best intentions in mind, but the end product fell apart somewhere. It wasn't even just that the games weren't cool looking, it was that they were totally lame to play while being stupid looking. At the time I simply got my side-scrolling 2D action elsewhere, as the Saturn and original Playstation, while not exactly rife with said content, where still viable platforms for hot dual-dimensional action (Castlevania Symphony of the Night... I'm looking at you). Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I attribute a goodly amount of my displeasure to what I have to come to know as 16-bit withdrawl. The simple fact of the matter is that the 16-bit generation of gaming consoles was where I cut my teeth as it were on what I would later realize to be the formative titles of my gaming youth. Sure, I -had- a Nintendo NES, but Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and Excitebike offered little more than repetitive exercises in pattern recognition and timing. For me videogames truly blossomed on the Super Nintendo and Genesis. All of sudden you had games, 2D side-scrolling action games and RPGs alike, whose complexity and quality appeared to have exponentially increased instantaneously. It was one thing to play Final Fantasy on the NES, but it was quite another to devote my entire summer to Final Fantasy III after it's release. Sure, I liked Metroid fine, but Super Metroid owned with a simple precision so finely honed that I feel, even today after the series' successful transition into 3D on the Gamecube, that Super Metroid remains the piece de resistance of the series. Along with Super Metroid the 2D side-scrolling action genre was further enhanced by fine titles such as Megaman 7 and Castlevania Dracula X. I played these games to death and came to pride myself on my prowess regarding these 16-bit platformers. My nostalgia was further amplified when my initial impressions of the 64-bit revolution went so awry (Goldeneye... standing in a corner... staring alternately at the floor and the sky... unable to maneuver my avatar... as my opponent and friend casually walks up behind and blows my brains out). As time went on I was able to assuage my desire for 2D fulfillment on other platforms and other titles, but it wasn't until the release of Astro Boy: Omega Factor that I was able to entirely elucidate my yearning. Quite simply the delivery of Astro Boy onto the Gameboy Advance handheld is like a gift from above. Mere minutes into playing the game felt the same rush, the same "feel" of the aforementioned classic games was attained. Astro Boy is quite possibly the best SNES game of all time. "You fool!" I hear some exclaim, "Astro Boy never came out on the SNES! It's GBA only!" Doi. I know that. All I'm saying is if it HAD been released for the SNES, or Genesis for that matter, we would today be heralding the game as an instant classic, mint copies of it would be selling for ninety bucks on eBay, and scenesters would wear ultra-hip retro ironic "Astro Boy: Omega Factor" t-shirts. Unfortunately the game has seen a marginalized audience in its release for a number of reasons; one, the GBA appears to be aligning itself as a Pokemon-only platform directing all of its R&D into determining new colors of cartridges to sell to 8 year olds, and two, in the wake of the current crop of graphically amazing and tactically complex games (Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden) the 2D side-scrolling action title has little voice. Which is a crying shame because Astro Boy simply screams quality. The telescoping graphics, distended but engaging storyline, and most importantly spot-on game play combine to form a lethal, heady dose and just so happen to make easily one of the best games, on any platform, released last year. If you are an owner of a Gameboy Advance and you have in any capacity enjoyed 2D side-scrolling action platforming games in the past I cannot recommend this title to you enough. You are doing yourself and your GBA a great disservice every moment you hesitate on acquiring this title.
