Continuing along with my anime game reviews, today I'm talking about Go Go Ackman for Super Famicom. This series was never popular in the West, and I only know about it because of this game. Though Ackman looks like Trunks from Dragon Ball, Ackman is actually a demon who harvests souls for the devil. This game is about his battles with Tenshi, an angelic rival. It was developed and published by Banpresto in 1994.
The cover art is pretty cool. That Akira Toriyama artwork is appealing. The characters are in a funny pose, though they're just on a white background. The bold, red text helps the cover standout.
The graphics in the game look a lot like Toriyama's art. Considering that his art had been in games for many years at this point, perhaps that isn't so amazing, but, seriously, the characters look really nice. Everything animates well, and characters have funny facial expressions. It's bordering on Aladdin (for Sega Genesis) quality. The backgrounds even have parallax scrolling, and there is a nice variety of backgrounds too, the sights changing up with each level. It all looks very good.
Go Go Ackman doesn't sound as good as it looks. The sound is a little more average. Sound effects are bright and cartoony, and musick is above average. Some of the musick is pretty good and similar to Mega Man; other stuff is pretty standard. The designers got a nice rock sound from the SNES' sound chip, something that you don't always see on this console.
Gameplay in Go Go Ackman is, again, like Mega Man but only slightly. There are some big differences. Mostly, the controls are overall similar: it's a side-scrolling action-platformer with your basic running and jumping, though there are also a few auto-scrolling levels. Ackman can punch and kick, but he cannot jump on enemies like Mario. At first, you might feel inclined to ump on an enemies head, but it takes away a chunk of life. Thankfully, it's relatively easy to find more.
Ackman can get weapons that let him shoot (gun and boomerang) or give him a bit more reach for melee attacks (sword). The weapons do a bunch more damage than an unarmed attack. Ackman also has bombs that will hit all the enemies on the screen. You only start with a few, but more can be found. Bosses appear at the end of each section of short stages. The bosses include ghosts, dragons, and goofy Martians. They're all in that classic Toriyama art style.
While I was playing this game, I came across an issue - it seemed like there were so many blind jumps. After playing more and going through the levels more carefully, I discovered that many of these jumps were visible if I took a different, usually lower, path. Basically, Go Go Ackman has some memorization for its players, and that's not a big deal. The game gives you infinite continues, though you do need to complete an entire level with the few lives you get. It's still pretty easy; I completed the game in about two hours.
Go Go Ackman is a fun action-platformer that I think anybody could enjoy. The goofy storyline of playing as a ridiculous demon could ruffle some feathers perhaps, but it is all a comedy. I chuckled a few times while reading a translation of the text in the game. I'm not surprised that Go Go Ackman never left Japan, but we can always bring it over here without doing any actual demon summoning.
Go Go Ackman receives a Good.
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