Ultraman Fighting Evolution (PS1) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
214A playthrough of Banpresto's 1998 license-based tokusatsu fighting game for the Sony Playstation, Ultraman Fighting Evolution (ウルトラマン ファイティングエボルーション).
Played through on the normal difficulty level as the original Ultraman. At 25:31, after the ending credit roll, I included all of the images (including unlockable ones) from the gallery. The photo quality is amazing, even for a PS1 game, on some of those!
Though Ultraman: Fighting Evolution is a Japanese Playstation exclusive, it's very import friendly: the Japanese-only messages are limited to just the gallery images and the sound test menu. The option menu and all in-game text is in English.
Ultraman is a massively famous hero of Japanese tokusatsu-era film and television. He has seen some limited exposure in the west, but it's safe to say that he's far more a cultural icon in his homeland than he is in the English-speaking world. If you haven't seen it, and if you can appreciate grown men in body suits fighting men in rubber monster and alien costumes, you might want to give it a try. Somehow Ultraman is still endlessly watchable, fifty years after the red-and-silver superhero's original introduction.
The game manages to capture the spirit of these productions well. Everything looks and sounds as cheesy as it ever did on TV (that Cesium-beam sound effect is a classic!), and the simple, vivid 60s style translates well to the 3D capabilities of the PS1. It looks a lot like Tekken with its flat floor/2D background stages and the fluidly animated characters. The inclusion of music, voice samples, and sound effects from the different series also helps to make it feel authentic. I don't know how, but I never tire of hearing Ultraman's constant wild screaming as he jumps and flails about in the general direction of his enemy.
The gameplay isn't quite as Tekken/Virtua Fighter as it might initially appear though. It's somewhat more like Battle Monsters on the Sega Saturn, or a smoother rendition of what we saw in Ultraman: Towards the Future on the SNES (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQvUy3GvWh0). The moves, and their animations, are hugely over-exaggerated and help carry the feeling of the show, but the general lack of a developed combo system and the length of time it takes to regain control after executing a move can be a bit annoying. The action also has the tendency to occasionally "hitch" and get stuck for a second or two (usually in fast screen zooms). Instances like that are rare, though, and nobody is going to play Ultraman as a replacement for Soul Blade or Tekken 3. They're likely to play it because it's just as endearingly hammy and excessive as the material on which it is based.
Some of these characters are hilarious! I was a big fan of some of the corny little flourishes, like spinning knobs and whatnot sticking out of monsters' heads.
And does the second intro make anyone else think that Ultraman might have a future career in professional volleyball?
If you are a fan of tokusatsu and kaiju movies and games, you'll love Ultraman Fighting Evolution. If you don't see the appeal, though, I doubt this game will convert you.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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