Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon

"Glorious Gaming at it's Best"

Despite listing Sailor Moon as one of my favorite series of all time, for years I refused to purchase this game for two main reasons: For one thing, I already own most of the Super Famicom games and to be quite honest, they're not that good. The other reason being that there I hold a subconscious belief deep in my psyche that equates anything of or pertaining to Sega consoles as having “SegaFlu”, a term which can best be explained via use of the word “crap”. ‘SegaFlu” permeates throughout games designed for Sega consoles, categorized by any of the following symptoms: poor graphics, dull graphics, washed out color, poor picture quality, bad sound, unresponsive control, poor quality, poor design, poor programming, or any number of other signs of illness. The original Mortal Kombat actually offers the picturesque model of this so called gaming ‘disease', however many other games including Mutant League Football and Kid Chameleon also embody this as-of-yet undiagnosed disorder. Thus, the idea of paying for infection seemed a bit too much for me. As luck would have it though, a capricious whim came over me and I found myself digging out the old Mega Drive…

Sailor Moon has to be *the* best game released on the Mega Drive without a doubt. Sure my other favorites like the Sonic the Hedgehog series are also great games, but Sailor Moon just has something extra special that makes it break away from the pack. Either Bandai's programmers injected the code with some extra antioxidants or else forgot entirely which console they were dealing with, not a single trace of “SegaFlu” taints this game, a true accomplishment indeed. For starters, instead of finding some ill-conceived nonsense to open the game with, Sailor Moon begins with a quite impressive (though brief) series of anime “cut scenes”. These scenes alone left me bewildered for I previously believed the Mega Drive was unable to process such colorful, vivid, and detailed imagery. What more, if players let the title screen sit for a few seconds they will be treated to a series of additional cut scenes explaining the basic story of the game, images which are almost more unbelievable than the opening ones! These aren't some compressed bitmaps attempting to offer the user a mudded portrayal of the Sailor Moon world, but instead full sized images which look more like animation cells than 16-Bit graphics. Moving beyond these breathtaking stills (it's a true shame the game contains so few), the in-game graphics are nothing to complain about, either. Sailor Moon and her fellow soldiers, Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, are all depicted as full sized sprites that fill up a substantial portion of the screen to boot. They exist in world of an immense variety (city streets, elevators, dark caves, factories…even a candy world finds its way into the game!) and are pitted up against fiends of equal visual quality.

As critics and fans alike will openly admit, Sailor Moon (the game) doesn't bring anything innovative or even remotely creative to the genre which it belongs to: that of the beat-‘em-up. Despite the fact that all such games need is a few basic pre-requisites (enemies, breakables, and a special move or two), it is quite astounding to witness the vast majority that can not even get them right. Thus, although Sailor Moon hardly offers anything new to the player in terms of game play, at least it manages to do it right, and actually make the ‘boring repetitive monotony' associated with “Final Fight clones” fun for a change. Set during the series' first story arc, the game features a diverse menagerie of monsters-called Yoma in the Sailor Moon world-straight out of the anime which utilize everything from axes to blow-dryers as methods of attacking. As players progress through the games 5 levels (each with 2 stages a piece) the Yoma get even more bizarre and aggressive. Should your gaming prowess be up to par, waiting at the end of each level (sometimes each stage) is a powerful boss character, also taken from the series. These are not your normal enemies however, as they possess a diverse repertoire of projectile attacks, lightning kicks, and various other punishing tactics.

To repulse this menace, Bandai opted to give Sailor Moon and her cohorts an equally impressive assortment of powers with which they may subvert their foes. Programmed back when Mega Drive controllers only contained the first three letters of the alphabet, pressing the “A” button results in a physical attack, the “B” button a jump, and the “C” button a special attack. Whereas using the special attack will expend energy-regardless of if it comes into contact with anything or not-, players may also opt to hold down the “A” button for a charged attack that only requires a brief pause to initiate, but that is still more powerful than the standard melee assortment. Going a step farther however, each of the Sailor Soldiers, possesses their own unique abilities each as diverse as the young girls which use them. Sailor Moon normally attacks with punches, but a charge attack will yield a throw of her tiara and a special attack a swing of her magical moon wand. Sailor Venus opts to attacks with a love chain, but a charged attack will yield a crescent beam laser and a special attack involving the dominatrix like twirling of her weapon. (Sailor Moon fans take note: aside from the anachronistic use of Venus' love chain-even if it is just a mere weapon-all but Sailor Moon have only one special move at this point in the series and thus Bandai had to get a bit creative for their use of the “C” button). As if that would be enough, two of the Sailor Soldiers opt not to get their nails dirty and thus use other methods of attack: Venus, as mentioned earlier, with her chain, and Jupiter via a series of devastating kicks. The end result is a combat system that, while simple enough for the youthful audience to understand, still manages to cram a significant bit of depth to it. Throw in the helpful appearances of Tuxedo Kamen and the endless variety of life replenishing items into the mix and you have a game that is just plain charming.

If everything discussed so far is a feast for the eyes or juice for the brain, than the music can only be described as candy to the ears. Sailor Moon features quite possibly the quintessence of 16-Bit gaming musical perfection. There is not another game available on any “retro game” platform, be it Nintendo or otherwise, that features music as catchy and memorable as Sailor Moon, period. This is quite an accomplishment indeed considering that only two of the game's twenty-odd musical tracks come from the animated show which spawned it. From the opening foray into the Yoma filled streets of Tokyo to its bumper-to-bumper highways; from the depths of the Dark Kingdom to the serene altitude of the Silver Millennium, each stage has its own unique music, each one superior to the previous. In many ways Sailor Moon represents the epitome of sound design for the cartridge era which is a true miracle considering the nature of the Mega Drive and its less than “composed” sound capabilities. Whereas the game play may grow stale after some time, the music is what will keep players hooked to Sailor Moon and opting to play it over and over. Moreover, the game utilizes recordings of the actual voices from the anime itself, and thus when Sailor Moon announces her special attack, you're literally hearing *Sailor Moon* announce her special attack.

The sum total of all these impressive components is a game that is not only vastly superior to anything else existing on the Mega Drive, but that is also more entertaining than many products available for purchase on today's Playstations, Gamecubes, and Xboxes. Sailor Moon proves that not only can a ‘old school”, “childish”, “girly” 2-D game be fun, but that more importantly, a Mega Drive game can be fun. I don't know about you, but where I come from, it sure doesn't take someone from the moon to note a worthwhile purchase indeed.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/03, Updated 03/17/06