Game:

Beast Wrestler (1991)

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It stands to reason that one of the greatest power-couples in Japanese media would have their respective franchises vying for shelf space in every arena imaginable, but it's funny how compatible they were even before getting married in 1999. While Naoko Takeuchi (of Sailor Moon fame) released two serviceable games for the PC Engine CD in 1994, her future hubby, Yoshihiro Togashi (of "Yū Yū Hakusho" and "Hunter × Hunter" fame), beat her to the punch by about a year, releasing a YYH... first-person shooting game... in 1993??? Published by Banpresto as their first game for the system and developed by Arc System Works (supposedly, due to a few overlapping figures) and TNS in their early days, the game is fairly pretty by PCECD standards and also has a great soundtrack and the character's voices from the show. The game's concept is a little strange for a YYH game but also theoretically sound... but there is one MASSIVE problem that keeps the game away from greatness.

Believe it or not, the game shares close company with titles such as Nintendo's "Battle Clash" and "Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge" in terms of its approach with a smidge of "Deadly Moves" or "Beast Wrestler". The game takes place towards the end of the "Dark Tournament" saga and takes some liberties from the manga while also presenting some "what if" scenarios. The player can play with one of the five hero characters (Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, Hiei and Genkai) as they train against each other and a few of their reformed enemies / now rivals before taking on Team Toguro (minus Bui because... they didn't care). While this game could've made each character purely cosmetic swaps, they actually have different attacks and starting parameters that play heavily into the difficulty. Yusuke and Kurama are balanced (but Kurama has a larger area of effect, making him easier to use), Genkai is slightly above average (she's Yusuke's mentor after all), Hiei is fast but frail and Kuwabara is a little tankier but slow.

Their differences, again, factor into the difficulty and this can not be understated; even seemingly trivial discrepancies can spell the difference between success and disaster in this title and this would've been an excellent game if it wasn't near-impossible to beat without some form of manipulation. Each character has a regular attack, a charged attack and a special attack (which has limited uses) and the characters have VERY small hit areas that differ between opponents, hits often don't even register, and the opponents also have the NERVE to block or deflect attacks often on top of this. Combine that with a small targeting reticle that doesn't feel quite right regardless of who you're using and adversaries that move around EXTREMELY fast and sometimes leave the screen entirely and land cheap hits on you, and that your only means of defense is to shoot incoming projectiles (which are sometimes just flat-out impossible to dodge) and it's a recipe for disaster.

If the game actually supported some form of Light Gun or, hell, even the mouse accessory, the game would be slightly more bearable, but being restricted solely to the d-pad was not a good move on the part of the developers. With much practice, beating some of the opponents isn't TOO difficult, but some of them (like Hiei) purely come down to luck of the draw. When you defeat an opponent, you get the opportunity to allocate points towards developing your health, how quickly you can utilize your charge attack, or how many special stocks you can get, and I'd only worry about the health and special upgrades -- special attacks are decently strong and can't be blocked (although you can't hit in rapid succession, so it will still miss if fired immediately after landing a successful hit) and you'll need to make nearly every single one count to have a fighting chance. Characters with charged attacks or special attacks with a wider area of effect have a better chance of survival... it's as simple as that, so Yusuke's severe averageness is actually a deterrent to clearing the game.

You don't get too many chances by default to win either with only a few credits and you can only heal one time in the entire game (against 100% Toguro, and that's IF you manage to shoot Puu when it comes on screen). If the game had a lower difficulty or, at least, more difficulty options or configurations in general, this would be an unorthodox but good entry in the YYH video game series. Instead, it lacks the finesse or playability of the aforementioned games it draws parallels to (with the exception of Beast Wrestler... that game pretty much can't be salvaged) and can only be recommended to the most diehard, masochistic YYH or SHMUP fans. ASW and Banpresto have both done much better work.

This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.

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