Developer(s) Treasure Co. LtdPublisher(s) JP ESP Software
NA D3 Publisher
Designer(s) Yoshiyuki Matsumoto
Genre(s) "Missile Action"
Mode(s) Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s) ESRB: Everyone 10+This is my review on the pretty new English release of Bangai-O Spirits, which is the sequel to Bangai-O which was released on Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast. Enjoy!Like it's prequel, Bangai-O Spirits is a action packed, side scroller shooting game, where you control a minirobot guy who can fly, but gravity is still around, although you can pretty much float if you just keep the right button pressed. There is also a nice line that slowly draws back to you, and after each level, a 3D animation is started. The game is extremely fun, and has a lot of levels surprisingly, for it's tiny 8MB ROM file. I can see why though, it uses pretty simple graphics and such, so it wouldn't need much space.The goal in these levels or stages in Bangai is to fly around and move and destroy targets or machines in the level, to complete it. The robot can use various weapons/tools to help himself beat the level faster, these weapons include swords and baseball bats for melee attacks, break shots to destroy enemy shots, napalm shots which explode on impact or collision and short lasers or beams which bounce or reflect off surfaces for a while, which do help a lot, which are called bounce shots, and there is also homing missiles/shots which seek and destroy targets (search and.. seek and destroy! - Metallica). There's also a awesome foursome attack you can do, which is particularly useful for large groups of targets or machines (remember, they do attack), and that is pressing and holding L/R, which allows you to shoot a whole heap of missiles with no aim, basically just to project you and make sure you don't get hit by any enemie's attacks. The longer you hold it, the more missiles you shoot, 100 missiles being the limit. You can't use this infinitely, you do have a limit. You can see the limit (3 etc.) in the blue bar under your orange health bar. The longer you hold it, the way it will decrease. In some cases, the more enemies there are, you can outgrow these limits. With B, independently pressing B autoaims at the nearest obstacle or enemy with your missile and shoots, although it shoots other things you don't want to hit, and pressing B while pressing on the DPad or Control Pad allows fixed shots, for needed angles. Remember, the buttons used for these are generally B/L/R/Y etc., A being for boosting, which makes the robot automatically boost and move towards the direction last faced. These buttons can be set to another weapon, so you can change it to your own style which suits you best.
In these levels, there are mostly obstacles, or things you can or have to destroy, in order to damage the targets or machines. With these obstacles, there is a lot of shots and lasers everywhere, making the game a lot more exciting, the more destruction, the better. Some obstacles will contain hidden help you items, such as Score items and whatnot. And some obstacles like walls that just protrude annoying sometimes come back, meaning you can't destroy them, they just keep repairing themselves. You usually need to boost to break obstacles, moving won't do anything, and targets and such don't move, so they can't destroy and get through the obstacles. There are of course some enemies that are not your proper targets, they will attack you, so this makes the game a lot harder. Targets will always be marked on the screen, so you know where they are. Some enemies as well will drop items which can help you out for an instance, like double regular shots for sometime etc.You have a Health bar, so you're not a macho macho man that can destroy everything without taking damage. There is also a Score meter, where it shows you your score in that level, as well as Time meter, which should be self-explanatory. On the top screen is a nice little help info dialogue screen, with a basic pixel map of the current level and the obstacles which it marks out, and the progress of targets (if they're destroyed or not).
The menu has some rooms/modes, such as Options for configuration stuff, sound load for sending and receiving sound paths, Edit mode on which you can make your own levels with your own obstacles and enemies/machines and targets, as well as set the level screen size, which is pretty much awesome. Freemode, on which you can do Singleplayer and Multiplayer and play maps and levels, and Tutorials, which have tutorials which teach you the basics of Bangai-O Spirit's gameplay.Graphics are quite basic, backgrounds are quite plain except for the drawing/cartoon graphic backgrounds, buttons and colour is quite plain, gameplay sprites are okay, pixel style, for that futuristic style look.Sound is.. hero style. Like music used in games with heros, has trumpets playing and whatnot. Sound effects are futuristic style.Also, if you go back through the Title screens, little gameplay demos will show.The lasting appeal is good, very fun to play over and over again, it's just one of those games where it's repetitiveness is fun for ages, like Space Invaders.
Awesome destruction shown here.Now for the marks.Presentation : 9/10 - Everything is presented clearly, you always know what to do, and you figure out how to play it quite easily, the in-game tutorials help you a lot too
Graphics: 6/10 - Graphics are basic, cartoon/anime backgrounds are nice though, sprites and such are usually pixel style, looks very good, explosions, shots and overall destruction in levels look very nice and explosiveSound: 7/10 - Sound is the usual music you would get in games such as Megaman, basically Hero games, so instruments like trumpets are used, I myself don't like this type, sound effects are futuristic, most of them anywayGameplay: 9.5/10 - Gameplay is very good, easy to use, very fun, has quite a few options to choose from when fighting in levels, basic repetitive simple type gameplay is always good
Lasting Appeal: 9.5/10 - This game is fun to play over and over again, barely never gets repetitive, it is like Space Invaders, repetitiveness gameplay just works in most casesTOTAL: 41/50 - All in all this game is very good, a recommended one by Anandjones, only 39 and over folks. The game is very well coded and made, graphics are a bit lacking, but the awesome gameplay makes you forget all about the Microsoft Paint style graphics. And it is only a small 8MB rom, so it shouldn't hurt to download this and put it on your flashcart.