Sailormoon. Sailormars. Sailorchibimoon. Sailormercury. And yes, praise be to the god of childishness, Sailoruranus.
Ahh!
Some times when I put a disk into my 3DO, I know pretty much immediately whether its going to be up-to scratch or not. And don't start to whitter on about judging books by covers, if you think that, you should be watching Richard and Judy on ITV and leaving me alone.
Instinct. I've got my 3DO eye-in. I can spot a good or bad 3DO game at 1,000 yards.
...and this is good. Very very good actually.
Pretty Soldier - Sailormoon S, to give it its full title, is a Japanese only 2D fighting game by Bandai.
The introduction has a combination of Anime Sailormoon characters and 3D rendered Sailormoon characters, supported by some J-Pop. (Japanese Pop music) A guilty pleasure of mine is listening to some ultra tacky J-Pop. It's happy beats and it's crooning female singers - singing god only knows (and the Japanese) what they are saying but it always sounds cheerful and happy to me, and I like it. That's the only reason I'm mentioning it.
The presentation overall is good and there is an excellent sense of quality. Nice touches like a library mode which features a biopsy of the characters and the opportunity to play the game music.
The in game graphics starting with character animation is pretty good too. The characters are well defined, move well, with plenty of frames of animation and thanks to the power of Google, I can confirm they look just like the girls in the TV series.
The in game backdrops to the fight are well implemented and like SF2 and SS they are animated and depending on how close the two characters fighting are the screen zooms and stretches in an attempt to give you the best view. There also seems to be a wide screen option.
With 9 Sailor girls to choose from, each with their own special moves there is plenty to enjoy.
The fighting is balanced, and from the characters I played and fought against, none of them seemed to have an adverse advantage. Although Sailorjupiters' electric-charged attacks wore me down a little. The computer controlled opponents can seem a little vengeful if they start to lose but nothing that can't be over come, and the game will have you eventually punching the air and mouthing the word 'Yes!' in no-time at all.
The characters moves are the usual punch and kick. The shoulder buttons varying the strength, speed and in some cases also the reach.
Most moves can be countered. For example fireballs take time to be generated and if you're close enough you can hit the opponent before they have time to let one off. The same goes for other moves too. Such as jumping, spinning kicks, etc. Although the game doesn't recognise this and there is no reward for countering moves. No reward other than you don't get hit.
There is a power-bar that automatically fills up and once full offers the opportunity for a super-powerful attack.
Many of the special moves have something of the Street Fighter II about them. Rolling your thumb around the 3DO controller certainly has a familiar feel and a familiar onscreen response. The main character, Sailormoon, has a fireball attack that is identical in execution to Ryu's in Street Fighter for example. It's not a bad thing - especially when the instructions are in Japanese.
Talking of the controller. Before I started this game up I plugged in the Capcom controller from Street Fighter II but it had to come out. The biggest shock of this game is that it plays better using the standard 3DO controller. Those of you familiar with the standard 3DO controller may want to sit down, have a rest and perhaps a nice cup of tea.
Finally - some nice touches are unlimited continues, the icon of your character next to your power bars changes depending on how you are doing and some of the spoken Japanese is so simple even I can understand it. ITAI! (Ouch!) Gunballemas (Good luck!) and so on.
Overall this is actually very good. It plays well and is fun. Admittedly it is a bit old school but for 1995 what do you expect?
It proves that games like Shadow war is succession and Way of the warrior had no excuse - fighting games are about timing, balance and reward both visually and audiably. Sailmoon hits all these buttons square on. (Even using the 3DO Dpad!)
The only minor point is character engagement. And perhaps it is because I have never seen the show and perhaps because all the characters are female, I did feel a little ambivalent towards my avatar. The game-play does make up for this however.
All-in-all Sailormoon can hold her own against Capcoms Ryu and Ken, and SNKs Haohmaru and Wan-Fu as one of the best games on the 3DO platform.
Quite hard to get hold of too in 3DO rarity stakes!
3DO Kid.
Plays better with the standard 3DO gamepad?! How is this possible?
I never did pick up Capcom's 6-button 3DO pad. (Best thing I ever had to use for fighters was an InterAct 4-buttoner with turbo and slow-mo.) And because nobody asked nor cares, I'll go on record as saying my favorite 3DO controller has got to be the Logitech "batwing" design.