Astro Boy is a fine romp that makes up for somewhat lackluster levels with nice moves, challenge and on-screen activity.
Don't confuse this game with the Playstation 2 version of Astro Boy, which I've heard is about as good as feces. Astro Boy: The Omega Factor is a traditionally laid out side-scrolling action platform/shooting game, which means you navigate our hero through levels from left to right or right to left, battling minions with his fists or flying through the air shooting down hostiles until you encounter a big boss character. Treasure and Hitmaker (one of Sega's formerly-named AM Studios) have spruced this basic blueprint up with a few things: special moves, a combo system and a character-building system directly tied to meeting people throughout the various stages in the game.
The platforming gameplay in Astro Boy is mildly reminiscent of Viewtiful Joe's addictively fun gameplay, making Astro Boy a real treat to play as you try to find the most stylish and point-accumulating way to defeat enemies. Astro runs a bit, then the screen stops scrolling and a whole bunch of enemies jump on the screen. This makes it possible for you to concentrate on trying to string together hits. Each major level is broken up into anywhere between four and six mini-stages, and although you're only granted one life, your unlimited continues put you back at the beginning of the mini-stage, not the entire stage.
The flying shmup stages are reminiscent of your basic Gradius game or Gradius clone, without the powerups. You fly left to right (or right to left in one instance) as the screen scrolls for you. All your moves are available to you except for your punch, so with your finger laser (described below) as the basic means of attack, you're left almost combo-less during these stages.
Some boss stages are fought in action platform style, but others are fought in aerial combat. Formatted somewhat like a fighting game, Astro turns to face his opponent automatically no matter what direction he's flying in. Thus it's possible to fly backwards while firing forwards at the enemy, a very welcome mechanic.
Both the platforming stages and the shmup stages proved to be very fun to me simply due to the sheer amount of activity I had to pull off. However, many of the stages ended up being a straightforward horizontal setting with no frills - more like an excuse to fill the screen with enemies than actual well-designed levels. You won't find any cool things that Treasure has done in the past such as hanging off of rockets while attacking a ship or climbing a wall while trapped by the extended legs of an alien machine like in Contra III: The Alien Wars, or the chase scene in Radiant Silvergun where you've got to follow the ship that "switches lanes" in attempts to foil your aim. I'm all about games that are easy to pick up and learn, but I also appreciate being able to apply what I've learned in drastic situations created by vicious level design. Astro Boy's level design is less than vicious.
If you take such levels into consideration, a game without any special attacks or powerups would seem drab. Astro, thankfully, has some special moves to spice up controlling the little runt. For basic special moves, Astro can fire a horizontal laser shot from his finger. It travels through enemies and walls, so dispensing the laser on a row of enemies will affect the entire row regardless of whether or not the first enemy is destroyed after one hit. Astro can also perform a dashing move similar to the one found in Alien Soldier, a Japanese Sega Megadrive game, where Astro is invulnerable during the actual dash. He can perform this move in any of the eight core directions. This is not only important for getting Astro past some obstacles safely, but also to build up combos as well.
Astro also has three super moves. The first one is his arm cannon which is basically the same as his finger laser but on cocaine. It reaches all the way across the screen in a continuous beam and can be as vertically as large as Astro himself, resembling Ryu's Shinkuu-Hadoken beam super move. The second one is -- get this -- a butt cannon. (Ok, so maybe they're hip cannons.) They fire bullets that hit everything currently on the screen, doing less damage but having more range than the arm cannon. The third one is a Dash super, which lets Astro damage enemies as he dashes through them. All of these moves can be combined into combos as well as strengthened during character development, as explained later.
Ever the high-score oriented developer, Treasure has included combo multipliers in Astro Boy to encourage people to attack using combos rather than just hitting B randomly and fiercely. Astro's basic combo, when his fists come in contact with an enemy, is a simple four-hit punch combo that ends in a kick. The kick sends enemies flying, and while reeling from the kick these baddies can collide with other enemies on screen to cause them damage. But Astro can also append a finger laser attack after the kick, then one of his super movies, effectively giving you a six-hit combo. The score from each hit is multiplied by the number of your combo multiplier, of course, so higher combos exponentially net you higher points.
Using the dash is integral to getting higher level combos. Instead of completing a full four hitter, Astro can instead dash out to another nearby enemy and start the combo sequence over on that guy, but if you're fast enough the combo counter doesn't revert to zero. If you're good enough, you can get a little 3-punch-dash-3-punch-dash quasi-infinite combo going, then end it off with a bang using the arm cannon or some other super move to really finish the poor s.o.b's off in style.
So the story goes, Astro Boy is a robot that is capable of learning and feeling human emotions. He accomplishes this (as far as the game is concerned, at least) through his interactions with other people in the Astro Boy world. As you run through the worlds, you'll meet several characters from the anime. Some of them are right out in the open, and are unavoidable. Others are hidden behind breakable objects in the level, and it's up to you, experimentation, and dumb luck to find them. In order to truly finish the game (i.e. get the real ending) there are certain hidden characters that you absolutely must find. Some of them you've found, and you have to re-visit them and talk to them again. This dynamic added a little bit of sleuthing fun that grew on me despite being slightly annoying at first. However, getting the full ending and a fully fleshed out storyline isn't the only motivator for finding characters to talk to.
As said before, Astro Boy is given the chance to build character with many of the characters he meets. Considering I was dealing with a Final Fantasy Tactics Advance addiction prior to starting Astro Boy, the urge to build up characters was still strong in my blood. After he meets someone, a screen pops up where you can allocate an attribute point to one of many categories: health, your laser, your punching power, and your butt-cannon, among other attributes. It won't make you into a walking, invincible tank -- you'll really need to be powered up to survive the game. Some characters you meet are only found by utilizing a leveled-up dash move, as you start out the game only being able to dash once in the air. In other instances you simply won't have enough life to withstand enemy fire unless you're really, really, really good.
To say that Treasure likes its fans to be skilled players would be an understatement. Astro Boy is not as hard as its more infamous efforts, but if you want to talk about an Astro Boy game catered to the wrong audience (the little kids who like cartoons and licensed games) then here it is. I'm not sure how many times I've had to choose "Continue" (of which there are unlimited) over the course of my gameplay, but I know it was quite a bit. Basic enemies can hit you very hard, sometimes taking up to a quarter of your life meter per hit -- on a fully powered up life bar, the damage is still more than enough to make you wince.
The flying shmup stages are no easier, pitting you in the familiar space-shooter environment of having to dodge many little enemies which shoot many little bullets followed by many big enemies that shoot out big lasers. Don't forget the chunks of debris and airborne mines that litter the skyways, either. With all of that onscreen stuff to worry about, you'll be thanking the game for giving you a lifebar instead of being subject to one-hit kills.
And then there are the huge bosses that all have some trick to them. Be they crazy attacks to dodge, specific weak spots that aren't immediately obvious, or different attack "phases", there's always something to think about and test your reflexes on with the bosses in this game. In all, while the less skilled might be able to understand how to play this just fine, I'd imagine they'd have fits trying to pass boards and score points (I know I did). Ninja Gaiden? No, but it ain't no Prince of Persia either.
Not set on just giving gamers good gameplay, Hitmaker and Treasure blessed Astro Boy with what is, in my opinion, nice colorful graphics. Rarely was I bug-eyed and wowed during the game, but everything was crisp, distinguishable, and colored with enough style to remain faithful to its comic-book roots. Colored hit bursts are delivered liberally whenever Astro makes combative contact with an enemy, and the game takes a stylish, darkened pause whenever Astro pulls out his arm cannon, butt cannon or super-dash move in what could be an ode to fighting game super moves.
Enemy variety is so-so, and in general they almost all have the same attack set. But the game makes up for it by throwing differently sized enemies of the same type at you. Enemies can come at you at either half your height, your size, double your size, or ones that take up nearly half of the GBA screen's real estate. It gets pretty messy and fun when three each of the same enemy sprite in three different sizes start to charge after you. It is during those instances perhaps that one might be wowed, with Treasure's trademark desire to take sprites and warp them every which way.
The bad news is that for some reason, there's a bunch of slowdown in some parts of the game. The situation I detailed above, with oodles of enemies coming after you, is one that I can understand. However, there are other instances where there are a mere two enemies on the screen, and combat slows to a crawl. It happens in the same places all the time, so at least you can expect when to have to deal with it. And honestly it's not incredibly annoying. It would have been, however, if it happened more often.
Aurally, Astro Boy is less remarkable than the visuals. But that doesn't mean "bad." I'm not familiar with the anime's music so perhaps I'm not a qualified judge. I will say that the sound quality of the music is good -- it doesn't descend to Gameboy style bleeps and bloops that games like Rayman and the Mega Man Battle Network series seem to be content with. There are plenty of Astro Boy's combat grunts and laser beam sounds to go around as far as sound effects go, but as I said, it's all just plain jane. Not like it really matters in the grand scheme of things.
And when all is said and done, the game is never really done. Astro Boy is kind enough to keep track of both your score and your time records so that you can go back and beat levels faster or accrue more points in a given board. But you won't even want to get to this point until you've fully completed the game, as alluded to in the Character Building section. With all the anime characters that you'll want to find hidden throughout the levels, both mandatory and optional, I'd bet that Astro Boy will keep you interested far past the initial hour or so it'll take to get to the credits the first time around. That's all I'm saying without truly spoiling what lies beneath the surface.
Bottom line, Astro Boy is a finely crafted action romp that makes up for its somewhat lackluster level design with its amusing moves, high level of challenge and sheer amount of activity on screen. The slowdown glitches and ho-hum audio really do very little, if at all, to detract from the combat. With a little bit more effort in the level design space, Astro Boy could possibly have been one of the top five GBA games I've ever played. But what we're given is still leagues beyond much else.