A licensed anime game that isn't crap!
Developer: Hitmaker\Treasure
Publisher: SEGA
Multi-Link: No
GC Link: No
Save: 3 files, back-up battery
Genre: Scrolling Shooter\Beat em Up
Astroboy is actually quite important; he is the brain creation of Japanese artist Osamu Tezuka; the man who is the grandfather of manga and anime. Astroboy is a potbellied idealistic robot boy who is a far cry from today’s hip hop samurai, but nonetheless he is the original anime hero. Now SEGA Hitmaker studios and Treasure game development have come together to create a rare gem…a game that is based on an anime and bizarrely…is actually quite good.
Astroboy is basically a scrolling beat em up\shooter hybrid, so if games like Metal Slug or Streets of Rage appeal to your sensibilities then this game really is for you, but even if those aren’t you cup of tea you might still want to check one of the GBAs finer titles on offer.
The game is fairly story driven which is surprising for the type of game it is, the story is actually quite good and although it takes a while to get going it is certainly worth bearing with it…it loosely centres around robot and man kind and all the questions that come up, are robots are equal? Do they have a soul etc? Factor in some time-travel and having to revisit areas in a desperate bid to change destiny and you have a rather enthralling (if not particularly well written) story. It’s rare enough that a decent licensed game comes out, it’s even rarer that one makes such effective use of it’s heritage…if you’ve seen the anime then the story will most likely seem uneventful to you, but for those who haven’t (ie virtually everyone) you going to enjoy it-but don’t be fooled into thinking that Omega factor is a manga thrown up on your GBA screen.
The game a very solid and challenging game and one of those games which will keep you stuck to your little screen for a while. You play as Astro and have to avert a human\robot crises, in order to do this you must batter your way through progressively tougher (and larger) opponents using kicks and punches (via the B button) to batter the opponent as well as your laser attack (B+Up) and dashing side to side (double tap the directional pad) and racking up enough points to unleash special attacks (L, R and A+B buttons). None of this is that great in and of itself, but Astroboy excels in execution…it takes the simple concept and adds a lot of depth to it, for example some enemies can’t be knocked over with combos. Once you do this you come up against one of the games screen filling (and I literally mean you have like 6 pixels to move around in) and maniacal bosses. Add into this mix the fact that Astro can find people in the environment, once he finds these people he can power himself up and get more health, stronger attacks and the ability to use more and more consecutive dash attacks (which turns out to be very helpful as you are invincible whilst dashing). The game has a really nice story twist half-way through that requires you to play through the game again in certain segments but at a higher difficulty, recycling old levels like this could be construed as cheap but it is done tastefully here and does enough for you to test out your new skills on old enemies without making it seem too easy. The difficulty in Astroboy in general is actually on the hard side (easy mode is applicable for the faint of heart) so completing the game itself is no mean feat. The game doesn’t just stick to levels that take place on the ground though; there are also a host of stages that take place in side scrolling flying sections which are pretty much on par with any other part of the game, the only key difference here being that long range combat is the main thing…in fact these sections are probably a highlight (other than the bosses) as they are reminiscent of games like Gradius.
The game play and story work really well to compliment each other, but that is not to say the sound isn’t a part of this game. The sound effects in the game are actually surprisingly meaty and clear (even without headphones, but I urge to play this game with them), and the music consists of some serious bits of music and more upbeat tunes which would sound perfectly in place amongst some of the games from the megadrive days (Sonic for example). There is even a cheeky musical reference to Gunstar Heroes towards the end of the game.
Visually the game doesn’t fare as well as you might want…lets start with the good stuff first. The picture is very solid and the small characters are well animated, the special effects in the game are numerous (one boss fight is done to the backdrop of a hellish sky, complete with heat haze), the explosion effects are especially nice. The drawbacks are that many of the larger enemies are clearly smaller enemies that have been stretched, giving them a pixellated appearance; the developers could have spent some time simply making bigger enemies rather than stretching the existing ones. The other problem is the game is a victim to slowdown, slowdown is quite frequent in this game (you’ll probably experience it when taking on many foes with one of your super attacks), fortunately it is not something that you can’t learn to work around…in fact it can be helpful in helping you dodge fire, but it still could have been worked out (Gunstar Super Heroes shows it’s possible). Other than that the only complaint about the game I could possibly have is that it is hard, this is clearly a design choice, and it does give a good challenge. That said though it can seem counter intuitively hard at times; you can’t dash to the edge of the screen and get behind an enemy, your dash stops short of the end of the screen, and in many instances you have enemies fire at you from either side of the screen so you can’t dash to one side for safety (jumping and then dashing diagonally down to one side of the screen works quite well), but these kinks in the system like many of Omega Factors other problems can be worked around and in the end are forgivable giving the otherwise outstanding nature of the game. The game is about the right length at around 10hrs long, and about 2-4 hours on replay, given the genre of the game that is a lot of game, even if some of it is repeated.
This is the definitive Astroboy experience (the PS2 game is crap) and is a neat game in itself. Normally I’d refrain from calling a game a must-have, but there aren’t exactly loads of triple AAA titles on the GBA as it is, so you can’t really afford to be picky.