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»Pocky & Rocky with Becky
"A poorly-made sequel? You bet!"
Pocky & Rocky. It’s one of those weird ass games I played
back when I was 7 or 8. See, back in those days, the closest thing to a
video game console I had was my Game Gear, so, for the most part, I had
to rely on my cousins’ NES, Genesis, and Super Nintendo for any console
gaming. So while most of the folks on this site were probably tackling Super Mario Bros. 3, Gunstar Heroes and Super Metroid, my gaming background was founded on such oddities as Ninja Gaiden II, Rocket Knight Adventures, and the aforementioned Pocky & Rocky,
as well as its sequel. Don’t take that as a sign of spite, though: they
were good games and I look back on them fondly even to this day. So
imagine my shock, surprise and anticipation when I heard that Pocky & Rocky, one of my all-time favorite obscure video games, was getting a sequel – and on the GBA, no less.
Now try to imagine the anguish, pain and disappointment I felt when I
started playing it. This game doesn’t live up to its SNES predecessors
in any way, shape or form. In fact, it’s completely off-target. In what
appears to be a massive downgrade that harkens all the way back to the
original arcade version of the games’ Japanese counterpart (the Kiki Kaikai [“Mysterious Ghost World”] series), P&RwB
is oversimplified, lacking most of the charm and fun seen in the games
that the title would imply had served as this game’s basis.
The game’s storyline is fairly simple, but I can’t really fault the
game for that. I mean, the plots in the earlier games weren’t exactly
stimulating or integral to the game in any pressing sense, either. Long
ago, there was an evil ghost, a Hydra, who did nasty things, until a
Goddess sealed him away. 100 years later, the seal breaks and the evil
ghost escapes, so it’s up to the Shinto priestesses Pocky [known across
the pond as Sayo-chan] and Becky [Miki-chan] and their raccoon demon
friend Rocky [Manuke] to save the day.
Yeah, as I said, the backstory’s nothing special, so I’ll just bore you
with some random trivia at this point. The “new” character, Becky,
actually made her debut in the Famicom entry in the Kiki Kaikai
series, and basically, she was then what she is now: a palette-swap of
Pocky. As for Rocky, he made his first appearance in that game…but only
as the final boss. In the first Pocky & Rocky is where he
makes his debut as a playable character. Not really that integral to
understanding the storyline, but I figured I’d toss that out, as a bit
of an explanation on Becky’s origins.
As for the gameplay, it’s kind of like Raiden
or some other shooter like that, only players are able to move
throughout the stage freely, as opposed to being stuck on a forced
path. Instead of firing bullets, the characters toss “magic cards”
[ofuda cards] – or leaves, in Rocky’s case – at their foes. They are
also issued a melee weapon: a “magic wand’ [oharai wand] – or, in
Rocky’s case, his tail – as well as a powerful “Crescendo” attack
(assigned to the shoulder triggers) which clears out all on-screen
enemies in a single shot, but has absolutely no effect on bosses. The
point of each stage – as was always the case – is to blast your way
through enemy ghosts, demons and various strange monsters from Japanese
folklore and defeat the boss at the end of each stage. There are also a
few power-ups, scrolls of different colors – red grants you fireballs
in place of your cards; blue extends your range; yellow speeds up your
attack; and purple, which allows you to use your character’s special
trait, which I’ll delve into later, a yellow orb (which grants the
player an extra Crescendo attack), and keys that apparently don’t
really do anything.
All-in-all, I can trace the game’s
decreased fun factor in three simple traits. I’ll start with the least
annoying: character interchangeability. Yep, simply put, there really
aren’t that much of a difference between the characters in terms of
control, although Rocky was slightly weaker than the other two
characters. The only visible difference between the three would be
their special abilities (which are only active when you collect the
purple talisman): Pocky throws exploding cards (which deal extra
damage); Becky throws multiple cards in differing directions, and Rocky
comes out on top, as the power-up gives his leaves the ability to home
in on enemies. Next up, we have the whole prospect of death, which is
different from – and undoubtedly far more annoying than – that in the
SNES games. Basically, in those two games, when Pocky/Rocky would die,
they’d just fall down and be revived in the same spot, ready to kick
some more demon ass. In P&RwB,
after their two units of life have been exhausted, they fall to the
ground in an unnecessarily long animation, and after a fade-to-black,
they end up in the same location or at least in close proximity to it.
It’s annoying and only makes the game slightly more difficult – you
have to start boss fights from the beginning with this system, whereas
in the other games, you could just continue them. Finally, we come to
what I consider to be the game’s greatest failing: the stages are TOO FRIGGIN’ SHORT. I mean, I’m not expecting the sprawling levels of the second P&R here, especially considering that this is a game for a portable, but stages should definitely last more than 3 or 4 screens!
The graphics aren’t exactly anything to write home about either, which
isn’t saying that they’re bad, really. They’re just bland, very, very
bland. The scenery’s okay, but I’m not really a fan of the sprites for
the major characters – the bosses and the protagonist characters, that
is. The older SNES P&R games had a super-deformed style for its protagonists that you’d expect to see in an old-school RPG. P&RwB,
on the other hand, has that weird pseudo-SD style, where the characters
have more normal proportions, but they’re still odd. While they’re
colored in a CG style, they also seem smaller – ratio-wise, that is.
Overall, it’s not very different from the type of graphics you’d expect
to see on a Japanese cell phone game, which is quite a disappointment.
Eh, there’s not really much to say about the game’s sound, mainly
because there really isn’t that much sound period. At least, that’s the
case for sound effects. As for the music, there are only a few tunes
that really stick out, and unfortunately, those are the title screen
and character select themes. Everything else just blends in, and
there’s nothing that really draws any attention.
P&RwB
doesn’t really offer much in terms of replay. I mean, there are three
characters, but they all play about the same, and offer similar
storylines and endings. There is Expert Mode, which is given to you via
a code after beating the game the first time, which offers harder
stages and more techniques and a power upgrade for the bosses, not to
mention different dialogue for them – apparently, they escaped again
after Pocky/Becky/Rocky caught them the first time. Needless to say, I
would’ve preferred a straight port of one of the two earlier games to
this. There’s no real need to pick it up. I’m just hoping either or -
hell, let’s shoot the moon – both of the SNES games somehow make it
onto the Wii’s Virtual Console, so I can play them again – well, play
them again legally at least.
Article by: Wolfdogg
Posted on: Oct. 20th, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Eh, it plays okay, but the aforementioned problems make this game less than enjoyable. |
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Graphics |
| The scenery is decent, but the character sprites are too small and are oddly scaled, shifting away from the super-deformity seen in the old SNES games. |
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Sound |
| The music’s kind of generic, and there aren’t many sound effects. |
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Replay Value |
| The only incentive here is the Expert Mode, and well, that’s just more of the same, really. |
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