okay fuckers, tonight i'm going to be reviewing mighty gunvolt for the NINTENDO #DS console handheld system
this game is made by inticreates who made mega man zero and then languished in obscurity forever
mighty gunvolt is a little like megaman zero if you took out everything fun from it
don't blame me for the shit quality of these images by the way. these are taken from official press releases by the developers
so super duper gunvolt is a retro pixel platformer shooter. you can pick three fucks: gunvolt from gunvolt, a loli angel from unpopular rail shooter GAL*GUN, and mighty number 9 an original character appearing only in this game
all of the characters have different abilties but none of these abilities are fun. basically everyone has a basic projectile, a charged up attack and a movement option. gunvolt's projectile and charged attack do fuckloads of damage and he can double jump over all obstacles. mighty no 9 has a shitty bullet, a slide that you will forget you even have, and his charged attack is headbutting the enemies, killing himself and his franchise instantly. the angel girl shoots arrows and flies because of course she fucking does
these three memorable characters go through five exciting stages on their way to the end of the game. only five. a train, a school, a lab, a tower and the final boss fight which is its own stage. having five stages is extremely acceptable if your game was developed in 1985 by one person and every stage is good. unfortunately neither of those apply here.
the stages are based off of the characters' original games. so in the train stage from gunvolt you fight cool looking robots and at the end a fire wizard shows up and tries to turn into a gradius boss. in the school stage you must overcome japanese shoe lockers and extremely loud PA systems. this isn't a bad idea to base a game off of, but the developers forgot an important part of making video games: the hard parts.
i felt like there should be a picture here so check out mighty number 9's great character design. damn, i wish i could send him some money to kickstart his video game career
anyways i was talking about difficulty. there are many ways to make a game difficult: tricky movement sections, difficult enemies, a long gauntlet of challenges. megagun voltman has none of those things. there are no hard platforming sections in the entire game, and even if there was one gunvolt would be able to just jump over it. the enemies appear one at a time with no attempt to vary their patterns or placement, and die incredibly quickly to gunvolt's attacks. stages last about ninety seconds, not counting the boss fight.
pic related: it's a boss fight.
the bosses can be kind of hard, but not in a particularly fair way. all of them can fill the screen with projectiles which is really fucking annoying in a game where you can't dash or duck. that doesn't really matter though since gunvolt can damage race them all to death without too much effort. fuck anyone trying to finish this game as the other two losers though. you'd be turning a 15 minute game into an hour long living hell.
you may have noticed i haven't mentioned the story yet. that's partially because i usually skip all of the non-killing parts of video games, but also because the story is terrible in a VINE CRINGE COMPILATION 2016 kind of way. there's a threadbare plot, told entirely through ALL CAPS TEXT, about how the fuck angel has to team up with gunvolt to save american idol, but it's nearly impossible to give a shit. it's too bad graphical storytelling wasn't invented until after this game came out; some pictures to go along with the text might've helped.
speaking of text, this game is translated by 8-4 who are probably most famous for ace attorney. most people with taste would consider that a good thing, but i think this project was handled entirely by the dude who wrote a this is sparta meme into phoenix wright 3. all of the text is written in broken english riddled with spelling errors and nonsensical grammar. from the opening:
Spoiler:
anyways i got this for free and still feel like i overpaid for it. i award this game the lowest possible store: the mega man power washing van.