Funnily enough, this actually reminds me a lot of a much saner, darker, 1-on-1 version of their absolutely off-the-wall beat-em-up, Trio The Punch. Gameplay is as simple (exchanges magic attacks for different attack angles), music and sound effects are very similar, and the enemies are almost as strange.
For what it is, it really isn't that bad, although calling it 'great' would be terribly false. The opponents are hard as hell, which only gets harder as it goes on, but that's a challenge for you. Of course, there have been times where I just got plain frustrated and wished it was more like TTP so I could have my character scream BAAGH and do a full-screen attack by having his head grow gigantic so I didn't have to deal with being overwhelmed. Then again, I do massively suck at this game.
Another similarity to TTP: there's only one track that plays during battles. I think the game has about only 3 real tracks in it. Regardless, the theme when you go shopping for weapons is totally dope.
The game does have voice acting in it...and it's extremely repetitive. The same 'blagh!' noises happen every single time you hit the opponent, although it is kind of hilarious with certain enemies.
Graphics-wise, it does it's job pretty damn well, I must say. Everything has this dreary, medieval feel to it, and the stages feel the same way. I'm even going to include the enemies' portraits because some of them are just so goddamn ugly I couldn't leave them out. Which, again, is kind of appropriate considering most of the cast are hideous monsters. And I loves me some freakish, hideous monsters!
Well, onto actually playing it.
THEY MUST ALSO LOOK LIKE A BARBARIAN VERSION OF ROGER FROM DYNA GEAR TO WIN.
The game's enemy order goes like this: beat the first 3 available, it gives you 3 more, then unlocks the sub-boss, which leads you to the final boss. Let's meet 'em shall we?
Doesn't stop me from getting my ass kicked, but we aren't asking for miracles here.
Upon defeating her, she goes insane and spams her pain noise over and over again, eventually crumbling into dust.
Which prompts our hero to let out a really dorky sounding HAAAA in victory as he goes into the shop.
I'll be honest, I go to shop only to see if I have enough gold to buy this weapon, the Halberd, as it has the longest range out of all of them. So far I'm screwed. And yes, you might notice I'm playing the Japanese version here. Kind of weird how everything else is in plain English, isn't it? Off to the next fellow.
Gran here looks awfully happy to see us. I can see why too.
He is able to lazily fling projectiles out of his stomach, which are already pretty annoying to avoid. He can also fly but that's pretty easy to counter.
Feels like I'm swatting the freakiest-looking housefly ever, to be honest.
With him absolutely destroyed, we move on to the next guy.
Looking like he couldn't care less he's fighting in the Hippodrome, Norfolk is notable in that he's the first guy to give me a severe ass-whooping, but there's one drawback to his strategy of 'block like a bitch and then be completely relentless':
His shield apparently can only take so many hits, so moving in on him after this is really the only thing you can do.
His death animation isn't as creative as the first two. The game is pretty inconsistent with enemies either being disintegrated or just having a heart attack and passing out.
This guy is my favorite design out of all of them, even though his portrait makes it look like he's seriously ill from some sort of disease. We seriously do need more half-man half-scorpion people in fighting games. About 'GUM' being in the weapons?
Well, let's just say I was frozen during the time I had my sword out. He ran into it repeatedly, which damaged him each time.
Try not to be such a fucking dumbass next time, Daldnoa.
Next up we have Solomon the wizard, who looks like an angry beast in his portrait even though he's just some asshole wizard. Emphasis on being an asshole. I finally bought my halberd too, but I shouldn't have even bothered.
This guy has about a million goddamn attacks, 2 or 3 of them being seemingly unblockable. He also never shuts the hell up ever, yelling LIIIIIGHTNING and FIRRRRE BAAAAAWWLL and other overdramatic things.
This is absolutely ridiculous. I'm pretty sure this guy is the first fighting game character who completely bombards his opponent with a gigantic array of projectiles. With his constant talking and his intolerable use of close range fighting, I'm pretty sure Solomon could fit right the fuck in as a character in Marvel vs Capcom 3.
I finally beat him, and he just drops dead. That isn't satisfying at all. I want this motherfucker to die Hokuto no Ken style and see his muscles forcibly eject his own goddamn skeleton out of his back.
There's a reason I mentioned HNK there. You'll see in a short bit. Right now we have to deal with this jerkass.
I love his death animation though. Like somebody out of Reikai Doushi, his head just pops right off no matter where you deal the final blow. With him headless, we move on to the sub-boss(es).
I thought these two looked awfully familiar when I first saw them, then it hit me.
These two are none other than Sha and Zhan, two very minor henchman from the land of Asura in Hokuto no Ken 2. Right down to the weapons and back braid. I suppose this is just typical from Data East who based quite a bit of characters heavily on manga characters (most notably Makoto Mizoguchi from the Fighter's History series being Momotaro Tsurugi from Sakigake Otokojuku). Ironically, Charry and Steeve are much more effective than the original duo (who died in like a minute), probably because I'm not playing as Kenshiro.
These two tricksters here have a wide array of ways to kill you, including a really fast rushdown, a circus-like attack in which they jump off of each others shoulders, and the attack in the inset shot where they hold you and do about 10 points of damage each time. Thank god they didn't figure out this is the best time to have the other guy attack him, or I'd die even FASTER.
These guys also can block anywhere and have it confirm defense, as opposed to me who can't block low at all. Argh.
Well they're dead. Now onto the final boss, who is...
...goddammit.
Uighur apparently also has entered the Hippodrome. Although to Pon's credit, he doesn't have a whip, rather a spiked ball who renders this fight pretty much impossible. He also doesn't have the badass vocal stylings of Daisuke Gouri, he just sorta makes this loud belching noise whenever you damage him. Oh wait, he's got something else.
A devastating shoulder attack, which Uighur also has.
To come completely clean: I was not going to tolerate losing a million times to a giant viking with a ball that hit everywhere AND the Mouko Hakyou Do, so I just cheated to skip to the credits.
The credits congratulate you for winning as it shows all the corpses of your enemies (or mostly just them in shame) as it reveals more about the 'story'.
Funny thing, that. They weren't lying. They made a sequel to this game for the SNES known as Death Brade (yes, it's called that). I dunno why they said 'wait until you see NEXT year's opponents', because the game's enemies are really lame. Maybe they said that to set me up for disappointment.
Oddly enough, too, one of the game's enemies, a cluster of snakes, is named 'Charry'. I guess he didn't want to be an assassin from Asura anymore.
They also list voice credits, and this name looked awfully familiar.
After a quick Google search, not only has he been a very important figure in Data East's life, he is also the one mostly responsible for Tattoo Assassins's creation, apparently. I have him to thank for a lot of things, apparently. Possibly for Solomon's stupid-ass attack declarations, but they don't specify who voices who.
So that's Hippodrome, the Fighting Fantasy. It's worth playing through at least once, but I dunno why you'd play it again unless you're writing a lame review about it. Nevertheless, it's a very intriguing entry in the Data East selection which spanned out more than several years, so at any rate it's interesting to at least see.
I love Hippodrome!
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