March 10, 2015
This is Bravoman for the Turbo Grafx. I was very lucky to find this the other day at a small market stall I’d been meaning to go to for a while, it was hidden away on the bottom shelf behind the counter. Neither I nor the person who worked there had any idea what it was so I took a chance and bought it… I don’t know what to think of it.
I did some reading up and found out its based on an arcade game which was made by Namco in 1988. Two years later it came out on the PC Engine and Turbo Grafx under the name Bravoman. It reminds me slightly of something like Dynamite headdy and rayman, but a lot more clunky and basic than both of those games. More to my surprise was that he has made somewhat of a comeback recently with a new webcomic and even a cartoon! He was also included in the new Namco X Capcom fighting game and a remix of the music from Stage 1 was included in Super Smash Bros for WiiU!
You play as Bravoman who can extend his arms and… head to attack enemies and destroy obstacles. the controls are pretty basic with only jump and attack avaliable. There are a few powerups which are given to you after collecting a certain amount of lucky icons, once you’ve filed up a set of icons, the most strange creature comes out fo the sky and drops a power up… Seriously I have no idea at all what its supposed to be! The power-ups range from basic health and invincibility and stronger attacks.
The game mostly plays out as a kind of 2D platformer mixed with a beat’em’up, at the end of each stage is a boss fight in which you fight a wide variety of enemies such as a butterfly with a shield, a crazy chinese woman dressed in pink who throws spears and a dragon with two heads underwater.
Talking of underwater, sometimes the levels turn into shoot-em-up sections where you are transformed into a submarine and the game changes to play out as a vertical scrolling shooter, which is a lot of fun and definitely breaks up the monotony of the standard levels. Its not enough to stop the game from going stale pretty fast though as theres not much variety and the game goes on forever with 22 levels!
Overall its definitely worth a play simply to experience the strangeness of it all, and laugh at the hilariously bad dialogue and voice acting. Enjoy the video and thanks for reading / watching as always! 🙂