Zatch Bell! Electric Arena might not be for everyone except for the fans of anime.
User Rating: 4 | Konjiki no Gash Bell!! Unare! Yuujou no Zakeru GBA
The story revolves around a genius child who finds a "child" to help him. This "child", Zatch Bell, has amazing powers. The boy uses this to his advantage for school, saving lives, and protecting people. Kiyo eventually finds out that his child friend is actually part of a Momodo race, and that whoever defeats all of the Momodo, becomes Momodo king. At first, it seems like a very mediocre fighter... And that is what it is. The entire point of the game is to knock out your opponent, but in a strange way. You see, you control a boy who controls another boy. Sounds confusing? It really isn't, but it'll annoy you. The main control is very similar to that of thousands of fighters. This is why you should completely avoid fighters as much as you can. Only in special cases are fighting games actually good. There are also occasional mini-games, like J'et aime Mobile, which is actually French for, I Love You Mobile. All you need to do is press A and B repeatedly to run away from a girl named Naomi. The mini-games are extremely simple and can be finished within seconds. There is also a Versus Mode where you can fight the CPU or your friends. You eventually unlock new characters, and different Momodo. A is Jump, B is attack, R is a Special Attack, and L is Tag. Directional Special Attack leads to different spells as seen in the series. You could go on this entire match without doing anything but B press right on the D-Pad, continuously press B, and occasionally press R. You'll win. Repeat this formula and you'll pass the game. As you can see, it gets very boring very fast! The backgrounds seem well detailed and pleasing to the eye. Most of the sprites look well edited and greatly resemble their original characters. The health bars look as if they were drawn in Paint. But, you won't really be paying much attention to the health bar, right? The cut scenes repeatedly use the same expressions, and it gets to you. You can also see white pixels around the cut scene expressions when the background is black. The music is pretty catchy, but you can't really judge, since there are only a few sounds. One is the battle music, another is victory music, another is the cut scene music, and one is this dark melody. The entire game is very simple, and will get repetitive for non-fans of the series. Even fans of the series may get bored of this game. The CPU gets harder in time, but the graduation between the hardness is too big. If you like the series Zatch Bell, you should give this a go. If not, ignore this game completely.
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