Ranma 1/2: Chougi Ranbu Hen

"An above average fighter that's great fun for Ranma fans"

One of the good (or maybe bad, depending on how you look at it) things about the Ranma ½ fighters is that each games is different and stands on it's own merits instead of building and improving upon an engine established by its predecessors like Street Fighter or King of Fighters (not that that's bad either). Thus we have Ranma ½ Super Battle, the third Super Famicom fighting game. Although the game compares favorably with other fighters, it falls short of true greatness but is still fun for Ranma fans.

Comprising a cast of 12 (+1 hidden) familiar characters, most will be instantaneously recognizable to American Ranma fans. The only two that American fans probably don't know about are Herb and Mariko Konjo, which come much later in the manga series. The playable characters are Ranma Saotome (both male and female forms), Genma Saotome (panda form), Akane Tendo, Ryoga Hibiki, Mousse, Shampoo, Ukyo Kuonji, Kodachi Kuno, Tatewaki Kuno, Hinako Ninomiya, Mariko Konjo, and Herb (hidden). A good cast of popular characters, unlike King and Gosunkugi of Ranma ½ Hard Battle. All the characters attack as you would expect them to, with Kuno using his bokken and Akane attacking with her school bag and hammer (seemingly lifted from City Hunter's Kaori).

The standard options are here, story (1P), versus, tag match, and option modes. The option mode has the standard stuff, allowing to toggle difficulty, time limit, player color, stereo/mono, music test, and control changes. The story mode goes something like this, from what I've been told (and gathered for myself). The character you select gets a letter from a lucky cat and must gather ingredients to make a wish of theirs come true, and of course you have the standard goals: Ranma and Ryoga want to rid themselves of their curses, Shampoo wants to date Ranma, Mousse wants to date Shampoo, etc. Then you go on fighting random characters until the last boss, which is always Herb. Versus mode is pretty standard, allowing two players to choose different characters and backgrounds and fight. Tag match is a fun alternative, which allows each player to choose two characters and enter a ring to duke it out. After awhile, you can tag in your partner to continue while you take a short breather (similar to Capcom's Vs. series). As a side note, in the background you can see many other famous Ranma characters such as Happosai and Cologne (too bad they're not playable).

Graphics: 7/10
Decent is the word that comes to mind. The character select screen has all of the characters lined up and when a character is highlighter, the proceed to perform some of the moves from the game, which is a nice touch. The game itself isn't full screen, though the characters are decently sized. One has to wonder, with games like Donkey Kong Country on the system, why the game isn't full screen. In any case, the characters are neither too large or too small and are quite faithful to their manga counterparts (the artistic style does tend to favor the manga over the anime). The character animations are also adequate, if a little jerky at times. Still some moves are animated quite well, such as Mariko's cartwheel kick. The special moves, such as Ryoga's Shishihoukoudan aren't that spectacular, possibly due to the lack of animation and graphical embellishment. Those looking for stuff like Tekken's light sourced punches will be disappointed. One particular graphical blunder I found quite annoying were the character portraits during the versus and taunt screens before and after each battle. The portraits are very small (1/6 of the screen maybe) and the colors are washed out, making it look almost like a Genesis game. Luckily, this doesn't permeate into the fights. The backgrounds are wholly average. Instead of familiar Ranma ½ locations such as Jusenkyo and the Tendo dojo the backgrounds are of famous locations around the world. Though it fits the story of the game well enough, I must confess I find it odd to see the characters fighting in front of the Taj Mahal or the Parthenon. There are a few layers of parallax in the background, enough the keep the background from being static but nothing to write home about. The overall look of the game is slightly less exciting and bright than Ranma ½ Hard Battle.

Sound: 6/10
Again, nothing special here. None of the familiar tunes from the anime are here (though a few seem to be composed in the same vein). Music seems to fit the stages decently, though I am a bit perplexed by the Niagara Falls “western comedic” music. The sound effects of the impacts sound a bit soft and lacks the “thud” you would hear in other fighters. There are quite a few voices seemingly sampled from the anime cast, though they are a bit scratchy and unclear at times.

Gameplay: 7/10
The overall structure of the game tries more to be like Street Fighter than the others. You have both a weak and strong kick and punch, block by holding back, etc. It is also possible to do combos Street Fighter style by canceling into a special moves, but the amount of combos that can be done is much more limited. A typical one usually consists of a jumping in strong attack followed by canceling a weak attack into a special move, which isn't too hard but doesn't always connect. This is due to the fact that when two characters get near each other, the entire game slows down. Now, the game speed itself is not very fast, but when this extra slowdown occurs it becomes distracting to the gameplay. It was almost as if the developers of the game tried to emulate the Street Fighter series' “impact slowdown”, you know like when you are hit by a strong attack or a fireball the game slows down just a bit to give a feeling of impact. This slowness may turn off fighting game aficionados who prefer combat to be fast and furious. All special moves are executed with standard Street Fighter motions and no complaints there. The super move system is unique in that you must first execute a taunt with the L button. If the taunt is executed for a proper amount of time (without the character getting hit), then the character's life bar will flash and a super move can be executed. This system works fairly well and discourages turtling. However , the balance of the super moves leaves a bit to be desired. Some are executed Samurai Shodown style with a forward/backward then half circle press, while others can simply be executed with a simple double tape forward. If that weren't enough, some supers are much more effective than others. Take, for example, Genma's super move. With a simple double tap forward Genma rushes across the screen, slams the opponent twice, then tosses the opponent into the air and headbutts them, all of which is unblockable and does a huge amount of damage. Fortunately this is the most egregious case and most of the moves are fairly balanced.

Replayability/Lasting Appeal: 8/10
With 12 endings to see and plenty of characters to master as well as a versus and tag match mode, gamers should be kept busy for quite some time. The only thing is that some of the gameplay nuances described above may turn some gamers off after while. However, with no Japanese knowledge required to play, the game is well worth importing for Ranma fans and will give plenty of bang for your buck.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99