The Wild East – Joy Mech Fight

in #gaming7 years ago (edited)

joymechfightlogo.png

Two words: 1993 & Famicom. And that's why anyone outside Japan who didn't import never played or even heard of this game.

The fighting genre was at its peak at the time, what with Street Fighter still being a massive success with its many variations of a sequel. And when it came to home consoles, they were ported with care...unless you still had an NES. The NES didn't have many fighting games, if at all. The most notable ones were Urban Champion and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters. But this game has a few notable feats that would have made people impressed...or not, everything was about graphics at the time...and still now unfortunately.

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0001.png

Joy Mech Fight (ジョイメカファイト Joi Meka Faito), developed and published by Nintendo, it was released in 1993 in Japan only. Actually, the game wasn't technically conceived by Nintendo themselves, but two programmers, Koichi Hayashida and Koichiro Eto, who met at the Nintendo Dentsu Game Seminar in 1992. The game impressed Nintendo so they hired them and the game they made (originally titled Battle Battle League (バトルバトルリーグ)) was released a year later.

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0002.png

Dr. Little Emon and Dr. Ivan Walnuts worked together in harmony creating robots. One day, Dr. Walnuts turns rouge (for some reason), steals most of the robots and plans on taking over the world with them. Dr. Emon takes an owarai robot named Sukapon and reprograms it into a fighter. Oh, by the way, an Owarai is a Japanese comedian. Anyway, it's up to Sukapon to fight the seven robots and reprogram them back to being good and becoming allies, before battling two more set of robots before battling the final robot.

Hmm, two doctors, one turns evil, takes a bunch of robots to use for world domination, the good doctor takes a robot not usually suited to fighting and makes it a fighter for the greater good and it has to defeat a bunch of robots. Now what does that remind me of? Nah, this concept is totally original.

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0011.png

The game is a fighter, you start off with Sukapon throughout the game, and as you defeat robots in the Story Mode, you can play as that robot in the multiplayer modes. And how many can you play as? 36! F*** ME THAT'S A LOT OF FIGHTERS! In fact, that surpasses even Street Fighter and many other fighting games for its time until The King of Fighters '98. But for the Famicom, that's a huge feat...until you realise that most of the characters are palette swaps of previous fighters with the same move set as the ones before...there goes Nintendo, you lying, cheating c...

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0023.png

If you've played Street Fighter II, then you'll know how the basics of a fighting game works, though each fighter will have a different moves and attacks. You can go left, right, up on the directional pad lets you jump and up-left and up-right will let you jump sideways, press the directional opposite the fighter to block attacks and press down to crouch. The A button is your punch and the B button is the kick. As I stated before, each character will have their own unique move set. For those who are really nervous about learning moves, then the game will give you a tutorial for each fighter, so you can learn each move set (there are four special attacks for each fighter by the way), and a great treat for beginners of the genre and not bad for those who want to master the game.

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0005.png

As I stated also, you can unlock the fighters by beating them in the story mode. And what's even better is that the game has a back-up battery, so the game will automatically save your progress, meaning that you can unlock the robots without having to do it all over again.

Now before I talk about the gameplay, I have to talk about the graphics. The level design is vibrant and nice, it's 1993 so it has to look good at this point. But the elephant in the room are the characters themselves. You see, each fighter is made up of multiple sprites to make the illusion that there is one character. This method was used in Castlevania: Bloodlines and Gunstar Heroes and it's very impressive for an 8-bit game to do the same and gameplay never had any slowdown as a result.

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0035.png

As for the gameplay, it's fun, fast and fluid, nearly everything I want from a fighting game and it can stand up to even the 16-bit fighters, it's for the people who haven't jumped to newer consoles at the time. The controls are simple, but do a great job for an 8-bit fighting game and I think the mechanics have aged...pretty well, I wouldn't say excellently but it's a game I could definitely play again.

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0040.png

The multiple sprite method can confuse some people...I don't know, I could see my fighter fine throughout its move set, I'm guessing people would probably get used to it. But as you fight on, the enemy fighters get tougher and will pull some bulls*** from nowhere, and they can damage you so hard. And that's why the best strategy is to play as a fighter with a move that can be kind of difficult for the opponent to dodge if used right and SPAM, SPAM, SPAM! I don't care if it's cheating, it's in the game.

Joy Mech Fight (Japan)0086.png

Overall, Joy Mech Fight is a very impressive fighter and more impressive in terms of graphical capabilities for the Famicom. Its simplicity welcomes players of all skills, which is pretty much Nintendo's philosophy...nowadays. I recommend this game, though you can only get it either by getting a physical copy (in terms of prices, isn't too bad) or emulation. The game has seen a re-release on Wii U/3DS Virtual Console...in Japan only.

Why hasn't this gotten a western release? Well I just explained it at the beginning. I know people will appreciate this game if they appreciate gameplay over graphics. Heck, I'm surprised Sukapon didn't become a Super Smash Bros. fighter. I've reviewed many Wild East games and I've finally come across a game that really should be played by more people. Maybe with the success of Earthbound Beginnings, I'm sure Nintendo will try and translate Famicom games for the western audience...then again, this is Nintendo, nearly everything they do is unpredictable.

You can get it on the Famicom and Wii U/3DS Virtual Console.

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