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PlayStation Basement #90 - Mighty Hits Special

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on May 16th, 2020.

Another week, another PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasize the review itself. Now, let’s go!

I’ve had a few Japanese PlayStation games that I’ve owned for a while without trying them. I decided to try one for today’s review - Mighty Hits Special. A light gun game developed and published by Altron in 1999 in both Japan (technically the full title for this version is Mighty Hits Special (Pop Collection 1280 Vol. 4)) and Europe, Mighty Hits Special is an enhanced version of the original Mighty Hits game from 1996 for Saturn and PlayStation. It takes after the Point Blank games by Namco. It might take after those games too much. We’ll get to that though.

The cover art on both regions is kind of generic. Despite this, I kind of like the bright design of the Japanese art. I’m not really sure what is pictured; I think it’s an image from one of the mini-games with a bunch of wizards flying through a city with the moon overhead. Regardless, it looks cool. The European art is a 3D render of a bullseye with some bullets flying through it. It has a Wild West theme, and I think it looks cheesy. It reminds me of some of those games you find at bars with pre-rendered graphics. Unfortunately, this isn’t exactly unlike the rest of the game.

That European art really looks like the in-game graphics. The different stages often utilize 3D models and 2D backgrounds. While the models are okay at best, the backgrounds are awful. Many are blurry or have noticeable lines indicating where an intended “invisible” background should be. Everything looks very cheap overall. The FMVs in the game don’t do any better with very odd character designs (wooden dolls or marionettes instead of Point Blank’s muppet characters), limited animation, and confusing interactions. Visually, Mighty Hits Special just doesn’t hit the mark.

Soundwise, the game is not great. The sound effects of shots being fired, little winning jingles, bouncing balls, and popping balloons are cartoony. I don’t really like many of these sounds. The musick is not great either, combining carnival tunage with country-western sounds and some pop-electronic-fusion stuff. Nothing here was particularly memorable to me, and I found it to be annoying or repetitive while I played the game. A lot of musick repeats, and none of it is particularly good. Basically the sounds continue the mediocre experience.

Gameplay is, of course, the real bullseye here. While Mighty Hits Special is able to aim better in this category, it’s still quite short of other experiences. The game is basically a direct copy of Point Blank. If you haven’t played those games, basically these are carnival shooting games where you have to accomplish different tasks for each stage. The tasks involve hitting certain targets, avoiding other targets, and not wasting ammunition (if it is not unlimited). This is still true here. Stages range from shooting a bunch of jumping fish, to destroying certain parts of a moving train while avoiding other parts, to ringing bells in the correct order to play a given song. These stages are all fine, but they lack the fun visual style and nice animations of Point Blank. I didn’t feel much playing these compared with the humor of Namco’s original games. I also had some issues with the GunCon controller. The gun seemed to fire overly fast. This was especially annoying when I accidentally skipped the instructions for certain stages. These instructions are more text-based than Point Blank’s, so this game is harder to understand at first glance if you are playing it in another language, as I am. Still, after one or two tries at a stage, it makes sense. Since I can’t find anyone else having GunCon trouble online, I think it might just be my gun or how my TV is currently set up (it’s kind of awkward for these types of games at the moment). I will say that the gun has worked totally fine in the past. I can’t confirm that anything is particularly off with the game itself in regards to controls, but that doesn’t change anything else in regards to my problems with it.

Mighty Hits Special was a game that I thought I would really like. After playing it, I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. Altron was not able to replicate the joy of Namco’s wonderful series. The cheap graphics, stiff animations, and annoying sound don’t make a great game. Now, on its own, Might Hits Special is okay. It could be fun with other players and interesting as a new experience. It’s just that there are much better games in this style.

Mighty Hits Special receives a Neutral.

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Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

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