The reason this arcade game made by Sega never made it to the US seem perfectly clear .
It's to open minded . It doesn't shun the likes of transvestites , ballet dancer and chinese as enemies and proudly presents the greatest misfits of their respective catgeories for the hero to shoot at .
The hero here being Buddha . And his weapon being Manjis . You know , that thing everyone mistakes for a swastika .
The game is divided into four main stages , of which you may select any at the start , each with several levels , and a fifth and final stage acessible after beating all of them .
Now where this game shines are the graphics .They certainly follow the quirky tone of the game quite well . Balding transvestites and misshapen gooey creatures all have sufficient detail and character and the bosses especialy look realy funky . Needless to say , fans of US comic books will be surprised when playing this game .
However.......the game itself is just cheap . For one , you can only shoot upwards even if you are facing sideways . This leap in logic may actualy cause you to lose a few lives at first . Even when you get past that fact , though , the enemies are just cheap all around . They move in large quantities and fire projectiles , while swaying and bouncing to all sides , making the act of shooting them and not dying a real pain . They sometimes drop powerups , like a double shot , which turns your stick carying peacefull Buddha into a War Buddha who can fire two shots at a time . Sadly you will most likely get killed right after getting it . Unless you use......
The bomb . You get two with each life . You can ocationaly pick an extra one dropped by an enemy . The problem is this is basicly the only way to avoid dying , so that you will actualy burn through the 6 bombs in each continue (3 lives) real quick .
All in all it makes the game a little too easy . But without it the game is frustratingly cheap in finding ways to kill you . It's a lose-lose situation .
Once you finish the fifth level boss the game pulls the ultimate dick move of arcade games . To get the proper ending you have to play through all the levels you've just passed again . And there is no distunguishable change , not even with the final boss . And then after you beat him you see the two playable characters (colour swaps of the same Buddha sprite) star at a sundown and then bow their heads to you .
Yeah , that was totaly worth the 17 quarters it took to beat twice .
So overall , I'd say this game is nice but stops short of being memorable with the forced replay and the dual cheapness , in being both too easy and too hard .
Rating : 8 out of 10 Missued Manjis .
