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Astro Boy for the GBA and my Gamer Roots

May 17, 2009 on 5:52 pm | In Games |

Let me start by saying that I have always liked videogames. Ever since I had my first console, an Atari 2600 (really dated myself there), and going through the NES, SNES, Gameboy, Gameboy Advanced, Gamecube and DS, I’ve always played videogames. Lately, however, because of work and the university, I don’t really have time to sit down and spend the amount of time required to play and finish a game. This past week, however, an “old-school” game got me hooked again. Since this game is now a bit old now and not that well-known, I decided to write a mini-review.

Since I am currently on the road for a month or so, I started looking for a game for the Nintendo DS with which to kill some time. I didn’t really want an RPG, since I still don’t have time to invest(waste?) in a long game, so I would probably never finish it. Some time ago I played New Super Mario Bros., so I started looking for a platformer or something along that vein. Given its good ratings and who developed it, I ended up picking up Astroboy: The Omega Factor for the GBA from a bargain bin, thinking that even if I didn’t like it, ~$10 for a couple of hours of entertainment wasn’t that bad. Was it any good? Let’s just say I just started playing the game a third time, now on hard difficulty:

This has to be one of the most addictive games games I’ve played in a long time. I love a good shoot’em up (the Gradius/R-Type-kind, not First Person Shooters), and this game combines shooter mechanics with beat’em up gameplay, plus a little bit of strategy (figuring out the best order for leveling up Astroboy’s different skills) and adventure (backtracking to get clues and talking to characters to open new stages and advance the plot). It is also I think the first game that makes you go through the game again in order to win it, AND you do so happily because of the story and how the game changes to take into account the reasons why you’re going through it again (unlike The Legend of Zelda’s Second Quest or Ghouls’n Ghosts, to cite two well-known examples). And, for us completionists, there’s a bunch of hidden characters you need to find to get all possible upgrades (great for my OCD). And the game is fairly short – takes just a few hours to beat it.

Now, on this third run (or fifth, depending if how you count :D), I have to admit that on hard difficulty, this game really is frackin’ hard. Still, I think I’ll probably end up beating it, even if it takes me a couple of weeks of playing the same level over and over. After all, this comes from someone stubborn enough to beat Ikaruga (on normal difficulty, though) without throwing the Gamecube controller at the TV. Yes, I guess I’m a masochist at times.

Next up I’ll probably pick up another Treasure GBA Game, Gunstar Super Heroes.