Annet Futatabi

"El Viento becomes Golden Axe"

Fans of the development house known as Wolfteam will know who Annet is. Actually, chances are, they know what this game is and what it's about. Genesis action game fans will be familiar with Annet from El Viento, however, and that's probably what they'll expect if they are lucky enough to get their hands on this game.

AF starts about two or three years after the ending of El Viento. Annet and Earnest (he's her adoptive father, not her boyfriend - no matter how much she wishes!) travel to Europe for some reason. But, what's this? The local palace guards start attacking Annet, bent on obtaining her magical pendant for some odd reason. Why do they want it? Play through AF to find out!

AF, unfortunatelly, is nothing like El Viento. It shares much more with the Sega arcade classic Golden Axe, actually. AF has Annet in a beat'em up that features a few moves and some magic spells to cast. She's armed with her ''Sword of Light,'' not her trademark boomerangs. She can slash, jump kick, and do all of the standard early (Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Final Fight) beat'em up moves. The magic attacks are fairly un-original. Fry your foes with the fire-breath of a dragon. Seen it millions of times, but you won't be see it in AF. For some reason, there's no fire, just dragon head. Odd, eh?

Oddly enough, the magic attacks don't seem to work too well on the bosses. Why? No idea, really. Seems to be a funny bug or an odd choice of the game's designers. Also, the way your magic is refreshed as time goes on makes it too easy to just sit and wait for it to fill, continue onward, fry opponents, and then repeat. It's a boring and easy way to get through AF. Unfortunately, it works all too well.

The gameplay could be a lot better if it weren't for one really glaring problem myself and others had a beef with. Whenever you get knocked down, it will take Annet a few moments to get back up on her feet, ready for action. This gives the enemy just enough time to launch another attack. This means that if you get knocked down, chances are pretty good that you might get hit again. Repeat the cycle until you lose a life. Of course, this doesn't always happen, but it sure happens more than enough. The recovery time should've been improved.

Also, there's an odd problem concerning the goals you need to accomplish to progress through levels. Namely, you must defeat all of the enemies on-screen and off to move further in the level. Frequently, enemies will take a good moment or two to come into vision so you can beat them to death.

The cinemas in the game look very nice, and help advance the Annet (and Earnest) storyline for fans of the Wolfteam games. They'll probably also keep most gamers playing, even if they aren't compelled to continue for gameplay reasons alone. The music is also pretty decent.

The game suffers from some slowdown when more than three enemies are on-screen. Luckily, there's never more than four present at any given time. There's also the occassional flicker. Hunh?!? Where'd Annet's chest go? I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW!!!

Overall, the effort needed to obtain this game rules out it's worth for most of us gamers. However, if you're a fan of the El Viento/Earnest Evans series of games, and want to experience another adventure in the series, this is your only ticket, bub. Get it if you can...

Note: Annet Again is almost entirely in English. Only the voices in the animations and the ending credits are in Japanese. It must be played on either a Japanese-compatible Sega CD system or through an emulator. You cannot convert it using a country conversion program. Trust me, I tried...

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/02, Updated 11/01/02