User Rating: 8.8 | Kinnikuman Nisei: Shinsedai Choujin vs Densetsu Choujin GC
Grab your pink little plastic wrasslin men and get ready to rumble and tumble with Ultimate Muscle-Legends vs. New Generation. Let me get a couple useless tidbits out first. This game is based on Fox's Saturday morning cartoon lineup, and has some familiar faces of the ole school American M.U.S.C.L.E figures you may have tried to use as an eraser at one point or another in your sad childhood. Safe to say, I'm not real knowledgeable on what’s going on in the whole Ultimate Muscle cartoon, but I can tell you true believers that this game is a BLAST with a couple of buds (or enemies) and some hard liquor (if your of the legal age of course boys and girls.) Right off the bat you know your smelling quality when your dealing with wrestling games developed by the good folks at Aki, the same busy bee's who brought WWF: No Mercy to the short lived Nintendo 64. They have been very creative in the offbeat wrestling game department lately, bringing to you Def Jam: Vendetta not long ago, what is considered by some confused inner circles to be "the best wrestler on the PS2". All right; the nitty gritty of it all. Sure, it looks great but how does it smell when you open it up? And what about that gameplay? I like it, although the general consensus is that it's an arcade fighter, not your typical AKi wrestling simulation. The fighting is fast and the Game A.I. doesn't like losing. Although it looks like a happy and crazy cartoon, the difficulty is enough to send any little kid away in tears. I feel that this welcomed challenge help keeps the player interested, because the control is simple and stays consistent between the various characters. Virtual Fighter it's not, but this game was never intended to be. You have single buttons that perform different action depending on the situation. For an example, your attack button also becomes the counter to grapples when pressed in the appropriate situation. The Game Play is extremely fast and designed for those who are proud members of the Attention Deficit Disorder Association. There are many play modes to satisfy your sick, demented tastes; from 4-player rumble to co-op tag team and good ole reliable one on one brawling action. There is a character editor that has enough options to entice you to actually make one of your own. There is no form of tap out or pin tactic, just beat your opponent down till the health meter reads empty in the street fighter fashion. I was worried that this might hurt what I though might be a needed aspect of a wrestling oriented game, but this was all tossed out the 4rth story window like your Grandma when I spent a bit of time with this title. Everything in this game is over the top with style from the character design to the bright cel-shaded technique that was employed by Aki to really emphasize your beating the kittens out of your fellow Muscle Men. There are very entertaining Dragon Ball Z like cut scenes that occur when your special power meter is full and you actually pull off the special finishing move, all of which are done very well. As you may have read for other sources, there is a character clipping issue that occurs here and there, but nothing that’ll make your sister cry. This game has a very gorgeous visual style to it, and Aki deserves a pat on the back for creating a non conventional fighting game that not only looks great, but is a lot of fun to play as well. Sound- As stated in Alex Navarro's GameSpot review, it must be said that Aki spent the extra bucks to employ the voice actors from the USA version of the Ultimate Muscle show for their appropriate characters. The dialogue is in tune with the whole experience the game provides, an up your nose attitude with style, showmanship and over the top arcade fighting action. This really points to the fact that your Benjamin’s are paying for quality, and not what could have been an easy paycheck for Aki and publisher Bandai.
