This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on June 8th, 2019.
It is
Saturday, the day spoken of in the ancient legends (I think). As predicted by
these Saturday seers, PlayStation Basement, the official holiday of Saturdays,
brings you a review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation.
Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Let’s go!
One of the
first 3D fighting games for the original PlayStation was Battle Arena Toshinden, a weapons-based fighter with wild
characters, great musick, and awkward gameplay. I have some fond memories of
that game, though the gameplay does not hold up at all. The visual design will
always be great though, and the Game Boy version will also always be a great
game. Battle Arena Toshinden actually
had three main sequels, an updated Saturn port of the original game called Battle Arena Toshinden Remix, the
aforementioned Game Boy game, and a strange spinoff called Battle Arena Nitoshinden. We’ll be looking at Nitoshinden today.
Battle Arena Nitoshinden was only
released in Japan. It came out a few months before Battle Arena Toshinden 3 – September 1996. The game is part of a
small trend of chibi fighting games that swept the video game landscape for a
few years including games such as Virtua
Fighter Kids, Pocket Fighter, the
Game Boy’s Dead Heat Fighters series
(which includes the Toshinden Game
Boy game along with many SNK fighting games), and N64’s Flying Dragon (to a lesser extent). The game was almost released in
North America as Toshinden Kids, but
the Battle Arena Toshinden series had
started to wane in popularity with the third game receiving heavy modification
to its gameplay when it was released in the United States. How will Battle Arena Nitoshinden hold up?
Well,
straight off the bat, the cover art is just weird. It shows the game characters
horsing around in front of a school with speech bubbles and comedic designs.
The colors are all pastels. It’s not a particularly inviting cover in my
opinion: the character designs are amateurish, and the zany scene is chaotic
without tying the zaniness to the characters while still expecting the viewer
to know who these characters are. Unfortunately, this is a good indicator of
what’s to come.
Graphically,
Battle Arena Nitoshinden fails as
well. The characters and backgrounds lack details or textures. The characters
have awkward animations like the developers did not understand how to animate
their chibi designs. The developers tried for a cartoon look with the
combatants stretching and being knocked way up in the air after a few blows. It
just makes everything feel really out of control. This is compounded by the
elements in the backgrounds that literally bounce constantly. The arenas are
somewhat empty otherwise. It’s a big difference from the interesting designs of
the other Toshinden games.
The sound is
not great either. The sound effects are really loud, bright, and include many
bouncing sounds. It’s not fun to listen to all of these people yelling and
getting hit by rubber mallets. Musically, the game does not reach the heights
of the first two Toshinden
soundtracks which are some of my favorite game soundtracks ever. The music is
repetitive and takes a backseat to the wacky sound effects. It also doesn’t
have the drama or excitement of the earlier soundtracks, though I suppose
that’s appropriate given the theme of the game.
The thing
is, Battle Arena Nitoshinden is too
silly. While games such as Pocket Fighter were silly, they didn’t have bouncing
trees or goofy yells. That game still had great songs. Battle Arena Nitoshinden does have a cool opening cutscene, at
least, one that does a good job of being appropriately absurd. Live actors
dressed as the characters in a serious, gritty sequence are described with some
of the most ludicrous words imaginable. Main character Eiji is called the
“flying lunch boy”. Tragic but friendly dancer Ellis is labeled the “princess
of slight fever”. Whip-wielding femme fatale Sofia is called a “melt down
lover”. Some of the characters have a more serious slant.
Once the game starts up, it really does fall apart. Hitboxes are hard to understand, characters
have weird attacks, and the game feels off. There’s not really a combo system,
and the controls feel very limiting. Each face button performs a specific
attack with the shoulder buttons performing sidesteps, a special attack, and a
parry. There are no fireball motions or the like to perform normal special
moves in other fighters, and there is no crouching. Attacks can be canceled by
hitting the button numerous times; if you hit it too fast, you get no result at
all other than seeing the startup of the attack. There does not seem to be a
normal block button, only the timed parry. The AI is pretty bad, so a lot of
times it’s not even necessary; you can often spam attacks to a victory.
Battle Arena Nitoshinden doesn’t do
anything right other than the opening cutscene. The stilted and floaty
controls, the nauseating bouncing of background objects, the confusing attacks
and character animations, and the absurd-beyond-reason comedy make this game a
confusing experience that is hard to recommend to anyone.
Battle Arena Nitoshinden receives a Bad.
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