Ranma 1/2: Chougi Ranbu Hen

"Was this Street Fighter clone worthy of the Ranma 1/2 name? Definitely not."

I've had Ranma 1/2: Super Battle for awhile now. I remember playing it for about 30 minutes when I got the game about 2 years ago. I took it out of my box of games yesterday and wondered why I haven't been playing a game bearing the name of such a cartoon classic.

After about an hour of bashing buttons, yelling at characters, getting annoyed by the music, and getting bored, I threw it back in the box.

Storyline: 7/10

It's really hard for a fighting game to have a story line. It's usually there is an evil demon and you want to kill him therefore you must beat all his lackies.

This game has a pretty original story line: You want Maneki Neko to grant you one wish. You want to be the first one to get there, but you need twelve ingredients. Surprisingly, in the places where you get the ingredients, someone is also going there. You, being the selfish one you are :-D, decide to fight them to get the ingredient.

Graphics: 4/10

A cheap rip-off of Street Fighter. The background is a basic picture (e.g. the Taj Mahal) with a miniscule amount of moving characters in the background. It would probably take a minute for a good artist to draw those backgrounds; no work at all.

The characters themselves are a good copy of the anime. They look pretty much the same, and I liked the cartoon, which makes these characters look good to me.

Controls: 1/10

The worst part of the game yet. If you used a hammer to hit the buttons, it still probably wouldn't respond. Sorry, just a little bit exaggerated there, but you know what I mean. It's as if the controls change every five seconds. You do an attack, then you try to do it again, and BOOM you're doing a regular punch or kick.

Sound: 3/10

While the occasional noise of any of the characters as they attack is humourous, the rest of the sound is bland, unsuitable and not memorable. I tried the game with the sound, then I tried it again without... bottom line, the game is better without the music.

Replayability: 2/10

Who wants to play a game that is tedious, repetitive and un-fun? It's good to play the game once, possibly twice, and if you stretch it a bit, even three times, on one player mode. But what comes after that? It's the same boring game that all other games have thought of already.

It is more fun to play with your friends in this game. (Notice how I say more fun and not very fun) It is amusing to see your friends get all frustrated with their buttons working as badly as yours. You could spend... maybe two hours playing this with your friends.

But then again, unless your friend is Ranma 1/2 crazy or anti-next-generation consoles, who wants to play this game when all those other, better games are lying in the box?

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/22/02, Updated 06/22/02