REVIEW: Beast Fighter
Game Title: Beast Fighter
Genre: Action
System: Mega Duck (MD021)
Developer: Sachen
Release date: 1993
Genre: Action
System: Mega Duck (MD021)
Developer: Sachen
Release date: 1993
The arcade classic Rampage was never the most complex title in terms of gameplay, yet there was a simple pleasure in giving the player control of a giant monster and letting him wreck havoc on puny humans and their pip-squeak military.
Beast Fighter isn’t a Rampage clone, but its relatively simple gameplay and extreme brevity do aim for the same level of fun through mindless destruction. The game is a simplistic, fixed plane, 2d scrolling affair for the majority of its extremely brief four stages. After a humorous ‘Engrish’ opening monologue explaining how giant ‘worriers’ emerged from asteroids and are now fighting all over the Earth, you are given the choice of five of the aforementioned monsters and tasked with trudging from left to right, smashing planes out of the sky, kicking apart tanks and collecting dropped power-ups as you work your way to the end of the stage. At this point you face one of the characters you didn’t select in a rather dull bout of ‘who can kick the other guy the most first’.
While each monster does behave differently and come with a (fairly useless) special move (activated by pressing A and B and charged up throughout the level by collecting dropped power pods) there is little variety as you plod through generic representations of China, ‘Igypt’, America (check out the Nike product placement!) and Iceland (who the developers appear to have confused with the North Pole).
You have three continues, which should ensure that the game is at least beatable, although with a sprite as large as the one you control there is no feasible way to avoid collecting damage. It’s simply a case of hurt the enemy more than they hurt you. Each character does have their own ending which is a nice touch and the closing credits are actually some of the most amusing you’ll see on the system, with details of the developers personal lives being laid bare to the successful player.
While the graphics are fairly bog-standard the game does make a good stab at music (the Iceland theme is particularly strong) and it’s one of the rare Mega Duck games where you won’t become bored of the tune looping every ten seconds. The sound effects are also meaty enough to warrant the destruction your monster is causing although the lack of sound effects boss fights doesn’t help with hit detection.
Beast Fighter is unspectacular although entertaining enough in short bursts and like a lot of low budget monster movies tries to do the best it can with its rather silly premise. If you go into it taking it for what it is and not expecting a Primal Rage or heaven forbid a Streets of Rage then it’s possible to have some silly destructive fun with it.
Score: 6/10
Beast Fighter isn’t a Rampage clone, but its relatively simple gameplay and extreme brevity do aim for the same level of fun through mindless destruction. The game is a simplistic, fixed plane, 2d scrolling affair for the majority of its extremely brief four stages. After a humorous ‘Engrish’ opening monologue explaining how giant ‘worriers’ emerged from asteroids and are now fighting all over the Earth, you are given the choice of five of the aforementioned monsters and tasked with trudging from left to right, smashing planes out of the sky, kicking apart tanks and collecting dropped power-ups as you work your way to the end of the stage. At this point you face one of the characters you didn’t select in a rather dull bout of ‘who can kick the other guy the most first’.
While each monster does behave differently and come with a (fairly useless) special move (activated by pressing A and B and charged up throughout the level by collecting dropped power pods) there is little variety as you plod through generic representations of China, ‘Igypt’, America (check out the Nike product placement!) and Iceland (who the developers appear to have confused with the North Pole).
You have three continues, which should ensure that the game is at least beatable, although with a sprite as large as the one you control there is no feasible way to avoid collecting damage. It’s simply a case of hurt the enemy more than they hurt you. Each character does have their own ending which is a nice touch and the closing credits are actually some of the most amusing you’ll see on the system, with details of the developers personal lives being laid bare to the successful player.
While the graphics are fairly bog-standard the game does make a good stab at music (the Iceland theme is particularly strong) and it’s one of the rare Mega Duck games where you won’t become bored of the tune looping every ten seconds. The sound effects are also meaty enough to warrant the destruction your monster is causing although the lack of sound effects boss fights doesn’t help with hit detection.
Beast Fighter is unspectacular although entertaining enough in short bursts and like a lot of low budget monster movies tries to do the best it can with its rather silly premise. If you go into it taking it for what it is and not expecting a Primal Rage or heaven forbid a Streets of Rage then it’s possible to have some silly destructive fun with it.
Score: 6/10
