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Review: Black Belt Challenge [GBA] |
Dutch game developers are very rare indeed. From the top of my mind I can mention only two: Davilex, which makes educational CD-ROMs and awful racing games, and Guerilla Games, which doesn’t make much at all but gets media attention for their so-called upcoming “Halo killer”, Killzone.
Surprisingly enough I found out just recently the latter company (when they were known as “Lost Boys”) produced a 2D fighting game! Wow! And it was called Fire Eaters: Zero Bandits! Holy shit! I immediately started looking for as much information on the game as I could find, but sources were scarce. This was because the project was apparently cancelled. Sadness! Then I found out the game had been renamed to “Black Belt Challenge”. Hooray! To make a long story short, I found and downloaded the ROM (just to see if it was good enough to buy, I swear!) and fired it up. Let’s get started!
As far as modes go, the game is fairly limited. First off, you have your basic Arcade Mode, Vs. Mode and Training Mode. Arcade mode puts you up against the eight characters initially available, then the mid-boss and then the final boss, after which you get to see your character’s ending. Vs. Mode and Training Mode are just that. Non-gameplay modes are Ranking, Specials and Options: Ranking is where you view uh… the rankings, in Specials you can view the Gallery, see what you’ve collected and read some basic data for the characters when you’ve unlocked it, and Options offers the standard fare of game settings, button configurations and a sound test. There are also two unlockable, more interesting game modes. The so-called Challenge Mode is unlocked after beating the game with one character. It’s basically like SFA3’s World Tour Mode or GGXX’s Mission Mode, where you try beating one or several characters under certain conditions. Some of the challenges are rather original, like surviving for a certain amount of time, or dodging fireballs while fighting someone, but especially the later missions are just “beat this many characters you jerk” or “beat this guy you fag” fights. In this mode you can also earn the cash to buy pictures in the Gallery. It’s all concept art, but it’s pretty cool, especially because you get to see what some of the characters could have looked like. There’s 30 missions in total, and they’re supposed to get gradually harder as you advance, but they don’t. Eh. Beating all 30 unlocks Survival Mode. This Survival Mode would theoretically be the hardest survival mode ever, because there’s no way to regain life at all, but the AI’s so stupid it’s not that difficult to beat. At first you can only try beating 10 consecutive opponents (which unlocks 2 characters, but more on that later), then 25, then 50 (which unlocks another character) and finally an infinite amount. All in all, a pretty decent selection of modes. There’s no Time Attack, but I never do those kind of modes anyway, so I certainly don’t miss it. Did I mention the Main Menu plays the classic “Super Mario shooting a fireball” sound effect when moving the cursor?
I have to say, graphically it’s certainly a lovely game. I’m also very fond of the backgrounds myself. Some of them are rather garish and loud, but they’re all well-drawn and -animated, interesting and full of life. Yuhko’s background looks like something straight out of the Monkey Island games (and that’s a good thing you dork). Also, with its super-deformed characters and exaggerated punches and kicks, it’s certainly reminiscent of a Neo Geo Pocket game, only here the characters have more than three colors! The character sprites are all great for a hand-held, but unfortunately they have one big, crippling flaw: their framerate sucks. Seriously, I’m talking 3-frame special moves here. I would have gladly sacrificed some of the background animations or even some complete backgrounds for some smoother animation to make the game more, you know, playable. I’d also just like to point out all of the character portraits and such are drawn “anime-ish”, even though it’s not a Japanese game. There’s even a couple of those little speech bubbles with sweat drops in them, and one of the characters pulls a ^_^ in her winpose. I’ll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions.
As far as sound goes, it’s a mixed bag. Each character has at least three voice samples, but you know something’s wrong when you think the voice acting’s sub-par when you can only hear a character yell something completely unintelligible. There’s also only about three moves in the game that are actually accompanied by a sound effect. The music is decent. Most of it is just generic techno-y stuff, but a couple of the tunes stand out, like Yuhko’s laid-back Caribbean sounding theme, or Balbora’s funky shmup-esque beat. My personal favorite of the lot is definately Owl’s theme, which sounds something like old-school Castlevania mixed with a cheesy horror flick. Special mentioning goes to the start of Rana’s theme. What’s that you’re asking? “What the hell is up with that”? It’ll all become clear when we get to her character description.
I’ve always been a huge fag for characters in fighting games. The first character I’ll usually pick whenever I get a new game is usually the most interesting, most unusual or just plain coolest looking cross-dressing homosexual. Or the chick with the biggest tits. The characters in this game are… interesting. Interesting enough for me to spend most of this review talking about each individual character. And that’s just what I’ll do, goshdarnit.
First off, we have what we could call the main character (solely because he has a projectile and looks generic) Drake. Drake is some kind of tank commander or something, because his stage and ending both feature tanks, and his special attacks have names like “Cannon Shell” and “Cannon Kick”. He looks like Joe Higashi in a blue jumpsuit. Meh. At least he kind of sounds like Vegeta.
There’s the obligatory “cute girl”, Yuhko, who moonlights as both the “pirate chick” and the character with only one eye. She fights using a hook on a chain, from which she can swing in mid-air like Lei Lei or Whip. And she might be Tron Bonne.
There’s Daryl/Dakota (his name sometimes shows up as Daryl, sometimes as Dakota). Daryl wears some sort of exo-skeleton that gives him the power of flight. He’s also top tier, and can essentially beat everything by using nothing but his two special attacks.
Ah, Owl. Owl sucks. He looks like a fat evil Jawa possessed by a big red Chain Chomp. His alternate design is way cooler.
Bingo the pink robot is awesome, because he’s pink and a robot. He can spit fire from his nozzle and saves cities in his spare time. He’s also the only character powerful enough to defeat the mighty Mr. Tok, but more on him later.
Violet’s pretty cool. She’s a bit like that southern chick from Power Stone combined with Tabasa, but not quite. Her suitcase has a question mark on it and she might be a spy.
At first I thought Balbora was another robot, but in his ending he saves his people (OMG SPOILER) and smokes a pipe. Do robots usually smoke pipe (or save civilizations)? He’s not nearly as cool as Bingo.
Have you seen Jin-Roh? If so, you can see which design Stahlfeder was inspired by. If not, go watch it, it’s great.
Nova’s supposed to be the intimidating boss character, but she fails. Cunt. Unlock her by beating her, which is easy.
I’ve saved the most remarkable character of the standard cast for last. Ladies and gentlemenDorks, may I introduce you to Rana, the first Dutch fighting game character ever. She’s basically the sole reason I was even interested in this game at all. She’s so hilariously blatant it’s almost not funny anymore. She’s dressed in the traditional clothing of Dutch females, including the Giant Fucking Clogs©. She summons a giant tulip for her crouching Hard Punch [insert c.Fierce joke]. She throws with cheeses, tulips, windmills and tiny cows. Her stage is, of course, filled with windmills and horizon. And she has a British accent for some reason. Damn.
There are also three “joke” characters, which are unlocked by beating certain stages of Survival Mode (see above). None of these characters have any special attacks and they’re even more poorly animated than the rest of the cast. The first one, a cat in a sweater called Cat Fighter (the cat, not the sweater) is my least favorite of the three, and I’ll now shut up about him. The second one is a drumstick with a mustache that goes by the name of Mr. Pollo. He can’t crouch and has only two regular attacks, but he’s tiny and delicious. The third one is my personal favorite: Mr. Tok. Mr. Tok is cool. Mr. Tok is great. Mr. Tok is awesome. Mr. Tok is a poorly drawn chicken with a violin. Best damn character in the game. His name means “Mr. Cluck” in Dutch. Did I mention he’s great? Yeah.
There’s also a story in there somewhere about a book that grants the person who holds it a wish or something. At least each character, even the joke characters, has an ending. Most of them are actually pretty funny, but they’re all very short. On a side note, Mr. Pollo and Mr. Tok’s endings have been accidentally switched around, which is very sloppy.
So now we come to the most important factor, the gameplay. Unfortunately, this is where the game falls apart. Quite frankly, it pretty much sucks. I talked about the characters’ lack of frames before, but they also have a very low amount of moves. Each character has four standard moves (Punch, Kick, Hard Punch, Hard Kick) and the crouching and airborne variants of those, and a couple of characters have dashes in which they can usually use some sort of dashing attack. There are no command moves at all, and move properties hardly seem to differentiate. I couldn’t find out how to throw either. The average number of special moves each character has is 2 (two), and all of them are performed with forward/backward + P + K, or in rare cases, forward/backward + HP + HK. There are no Super Moves of any sort either. Instead, the game has this gimmick called the “Zero Combo” system. It works like this: both characters have a meter at the bottom of the screen, which fills up as you attack the opponent or block, and automatically drains over time. It doesn’t fill up with just meter though, no, a random letter (A, B, L or R) will appear for each section of the meter that is filled. If you press down + HP + HK at anytime during the match, you will throw an uppercut which - if it connects - knocks your opponent quite literally to heaven. You’ll fly/jump after him/her, and you’ll have to press the buttons corresponding with the letters in your meter in the correct order to perform an inescapable combo. This sounds lame, and it is. To successfully perform the entire string you’ll need to remember a sequence of eight buttons while still keeping your eyes on the opponent, and you need to check how full it is to see how damaging the combo will be. I never ever use this feature. The CPU rarely performs it, but when it does, it always pulls it off perfectly of course. Physics are also really whack. Every special attack (every single one) sends the opponent bouncing into the wall, after which you can juggle them, often with the exact same attack. Daryl can juggle characters all day long with his two “Jet Strikes” this way. The characters also all feel kind of floaty and sluggish. Hit detection is really weird, with attacks sometimes going straight through someone because he/she moved an inch. Also, when two characters jump at each other and one punches the other, the other guy doesn’t even get knocked away. Instead, both characters fall to the ground like a brick, giving the other guy ample time to actually hit you back. That’s a BIG nono. Sometimes attack sequences registering as combo’s (Punchpunchpunchpunchpunch…) can actually be easily jumped away from, but the AI is usually too stupid to do it. All in all, it’s not very fun to play, with very little options, no room for strategy, very similar characters when it comes to playing styles and tons of “wtf gay”. Combined with the colorful graphics and cute characters, it’s almost as if they had little kids in mind when making this game. In fact… I think I’ve just been reviewing the equivalent to My First Fighting Game. Oh my god.
I wanted to love this game. I really did. In a day and age where only SNK, Capcom and Sammy/Arc Systems even give a rat’s ass about 2D fighting games, it’s always nice to see another company giving it a shot. Especially for the Gameboy Advance, which is seriously lacking in good fighting games, especially original ones. Not to mention this is a company from my own home country here. I would love to be able to yell “ha, we can make good fighting games too, fuckers” at random Japanese (and to a lesser extent, American and British) people. In the end it didn’t turn out that way. Maybe the good people of Guerilla will read this review and decide to pick up their old Black Belt Challenge license (if they even still have it) and make a good game out of it. Ah well, a man can always dream. Lol emo patriots hooo.
