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Review: Waku Waku 7 |
“Fierce animal! Don’t kidnap girls anymore!”
Starting up my version of Sunsoft’s Neo-Geo fighter, Waku Waku 7, brings up a warning; “Animated Violence - Mild. Contains scenes of violence involving cartoon-like characters in a fantasy setting.”
This however, does little to prepare you for scenes of elven swordsman fighting robot maids, while a giant purple…thing with a tiny schoolgirl on its back battles against a dog-driven robot, or a giant black ball with eyes, who enjoys swallowing you whole, then farting you out at extreme velocities. This game is….different, to say the least.
The story is simple. When the seven “Waku Waku” balls are reunited, the reuniter will be granted a wish, *cough* Dragonball *cough* Owning one of the balls fills the owner with a desire to collect the other 6, and it is this seven ‘people’ that make up the WW7 combatants. Yeah. And this crack is just sooooo sweet, it’s like the angels made it just for me.
This is not your regular fighter. The characters are: two schoolkids (one boy, one girl), a elven swordsman, a short guy and a dog who drive a robot tank (?), a little girl on a big purple rabbit thing, (??) a robotic housemaid complete with extending brooms, vacuums and frying pans (???), and a muscular guy with a whip, who fights accompanied by a cat and a young girl. The final boss is called, I kid you not, Fernandez, and he appears as a giant black ball (we’re talking 60% of the screen here) with a huge mouth, bug eyes and little bat wings. What?
Fortunately, WW7’s surreal content isn’t it’s only strength. It’s incredibly solid, fast, furious and fun.
Taking the 2-punch, 2-kick layout from the KOF games, but with far looser controls, WW7 comes across as a psychotic fairy cousin of the VS. series. Combos shoot up into their 20s, huge explosions and beams of light fly around the place, big sprites collide and I’m very impressed.
All of the sprites are beautifully animated, and the incidental animations, along with win and start-up poses are silky smooth.
The view zooms in and out, but it’s really extreme, with the characters going from normal size, to about 2cm high. It’s also worth mentioning the attacks that blast the other player across the screen, smack into the invisible “wall” at either end of the arena. This can be reversed, and you can bounce off the wall, back into your opponent. By removing the “recovery” time, where, in a normal fighter, you had a few seconds to recover while the other character fell, landed and got up again, you can see how WW7 is faster and more frenetic than usual.
You can also use “get-up attacks” - holding UP on the pad when knocked over will result on your character getting to their feet with an attack, a la Tekken or VF. I found using these against the CPU a bit annoying, as it could knock me out of my get-up attack, and knock me down again. The swine. You can also pounce on a downed opponent.
Another problem I have, although it could just be me - there doesn’t see to be any two-in-ones, or move cancelling of any kind. From my experience, it’s just impossible to combo off of normal attacks. Bear in mind it took me a while to realise the King of Fighters series had combos in it too, but there seems to be a barrier stopping the normals chaining into the specials/supers. *Shrug*
The emphasis definitely seems to be on monstrous pyrotechnics than on close up, precise martial arts. There are two types of super move. The regular one, which most characters have at least two of, and are activated with the usual QCF, QCF motions and do moderate damage. There are also unblockable “HaraHara” moves. These are easily activated (a universal D,D+2P motion) and incredibly damaging. However, setting one off causes a siren to go off, big warning signs to appear on screen, and your character to pause for 5 seconds while they charge up, so you’re pretty vulnerable. It’s terrifying when the alarm goes off, and you realise you’ve only got a few seconds to get over there and whack the other guy before you’re toast - and hilarious if you’re the one doing it.
You can also “ES” your moves - like SF3:21/3S - activating a move with two buttons will do a powered-up, increased priority, higher hitting version of the attack, at the cost of a small amount of super meter.
Bear in mind, your super bar charges incredibly quickly and can even be set to “autocharge”, plus, after a few fights, the meter is able to go up to level seven - so you’re rarely lacking an oppurtunity to use it for one thing or another.
It has to be said there are only seven characters to pick from, not a great deal, true. Though there are two more secret ones, the end boss…and Bonus Kun. Ah yes. Let me tell you about Bonus Kun. After the 3rd fight, providing you haven’t lost any rounds, there’s a short cutscene, where something falls out of the sky. It appears the progammers are some sort of genius satirists…because Bonus Kun is a white flexible block of…something, with a fierce face and a red headband. His moves, (get this) are a fireball, a rising attack, and a spinning kick thing. Oh ho ho ho. My aching sides. Still, it’s a nice touch, and sort of amusing the first time round.
The end boss is a cheap bastard too. Naturally.
In all, if you’re after a small, silly fighter that plays at extreme speeds, and has lots of flashing lights, energy bursts and explosions, and features a ridiculous cast of characters - you’re home!
Oh, and make sure you listen to the music on the character select screen. It’s brilliant!
