"A Classic made bad."

Comix Zone on the Genesis was a great game. A wonderful game. A game that meant style.

So when I saw it on the GBA I was delighted. I started the game up and saw the nice added save feature. But as soon as I started playing I noticed the shrunken graphics. Even the title screen looked fuzzy. It all looked "J-Peged" and very unpleasent like it had been un-officially ported onto the GBA by some college student.

The music had also been slaughtered. The cool beats I knew so well have been change into strange washy melodies. A simular thing happened to R-Type III on the GBA - the SNES version had some great music while the GBA's tunes made your ears ache.

But I thought to myself - the graphics probably couldn't have been helped but there was no excuse for the music. As if the graphics wasn't shrunk we would have all the problems of Bubble Bobble on the small screen - not being able to see enemies and falling down un-seen pits. To keep the comic borders the same it would have to be shrunk to fit the GBA screen. But I wish they fixed up some of the shrunk graphics, everything looks blurry.

Anyway, our Hero falls from the sky to be greeted by the now blurry woman who said text which hurt my eyes as it was hard to read. All the once great comic speach bubbles had now become eye strains. They could have at least made the text readable. And where's all the "Come on" etc. sound effects? Oh well looks like they're gone too.

Jumping to the next frame to kick the crap out of that orange thing I noticed how a lot of frame of animation had been missed. The spiral kick in the air keeps the "swoosh" white thing untill you land - making it look awful (Much like the shotgun on Metal Slug X -PS1). The punching etc. also seemed slowed down. The punch sound effects thankfully sounded good. But not all of the sound effects do - some sound like it's under water and a lot of the cool sounds have been taken out completely.

After getting to the guy with hooks in his hands I turned it off and set my Genesis up - then i went back and made this review more negative seeing how much damage had been done to the game. This game reminds me of Metal Slug X on the PS1 - the animation had suffered but unlike Comix Zone Metal Slug X had kept it's game play. This game hasn't and it is a truely awful conversion. Get the PC version if at all possible or buy the Genesis version - which comes with a cool music CD!

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/06