"A quick review for a quick game."

Let me start by saying this; Cheetahmen II is one of the worst games ever made. From the perspective of an unwitting individual buying it for $20 off ebay then playing it it's a travesty that will most likely end with them sitting at the end of level four (labeled level three) staring blankly at the screen, feeling quite violated. If you already know it's a bad game, and I use the term "bad" loosely, then you can get some enjoyment out of its failure. Now for a little backstory. Long ago there was a game called Action 52 released for the NES and Sega Genesis. The NES version is unplayable, but that's for another review. The Genesis version was playable on a basic level, and the trademark game on that compilation was Cheetahmen, a short action game with a dubious storyline and painful gameplay. The Action corporation in their infinite wisdom made a sequel to this horrible game, and released it on the NES for god only knows why. Using recycled sprites, music, levels, and even game cartridges they made Cheetahmen II, then stuffed 1,500 of the things in a warehouse for several years.

Gameplay:
Each of the Cheetahmen handles differently, much like the Ebola virus eats your body differently than an auto-immune disease. First off, the first level in the game seems to be partially incomplete...well, MORE incomplete than the rest of the game. The control is somehow worse, the enemies have no AI, and the sound is different. The first two levels you play as Apollo, the crossbow toting cheetahman. He can only shoot at chest level, making combat a nightmare and the first two levels a living hell. Following Apollo is Hercules, which thanks to improper programming, allows him to walk on the air which can actually be smoother than his standard animations. The third cheetahman isn't playable without hacking the ROM file, but for the sake of completion I'll mention him. Aries is the mace rogue of the group, he looks like he's dancing when he fights, and actually fights on the same recycled levels Hercules fought in during their first adventure. His action is by far the worst of the three, which after you play Apollo will make an impression on you.

Story:
Interpretation of the storyline by me: The evil Doctor Morbis killed a mother cheetah and stole her three cubs for his experiments. After running the poor things through his machine-o-evil out popped the Cheetahmen, the first of a race he called the "sub-humans". Though they were created to serve him, they managed to break free of his control and escaped to the city. Now Morbis has created an army of lackluster sub-humans to find and kill the Cheetahmen, including one not so lack-luster, the (man) ape (man). Cygore, his brother-in-law with a prosthetic arm, decided to help out too for some reason and now the two of them are out to kill the three Cheetahmen.

The storyline as they intended: The Cheetamens are the greatest superheros ever made made by the super evil Dr Mo.rbis they fight for good. You must help the Cheetahmen fight the sub-humans, inculding the newest strongest sub-human yet, ape man! Don't let the man ape destroy the cheetahmen! Now Cygore will fight you to!

Sound/Graphics:
About that of an Atari 2600 in both cases. No really, it's that bad. Not much can be said for it, other than it's the WORST graphics I've ever seen in a NES game. The sound consists of MIDI noises I used to make on my Commodore 64 and the same recycled music from the first game over and over and OVER.

Playtime/replayability

Getting to Level 4 shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes if that. Replay? Only for showcasing just how bad the game truly is.

In closing I want to say that in all my years as a gamer I have never seen a game this bad. Everything it attempts it fails miserably at. Anything it does do was done better by TMNT long before...actually the only thing it does is fail and that WAS done better and more gracefully by the TMNT games. This game summarizes the problems that occur when creativity is replaced with plagiarized concepts and hard work is forced to take a back seat to time tables and the developers own greed.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 05/18/07