When the world is facing a crisis, who should we call? Superman? No. The Mario Brothers? Nope. Let's call three girls. And I'm not talking about Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup. Battle Zeque Den is a japanese-only game released for SNES in 1994. It's a beat'em up with some 2D platform elements. Our protagonists will fight with their fists, kicks, and magical powers.
We have three characters: Rufu, a red-haired girl with fire powers, Kairu, a martial artist who have ice powers, and Hamusu, who... Well, uses a pair of boxing gloves.
Let's begin with the gameplay:
Like I said, Battle Zeque Den is a side-scroller beat'em up. You have a linear 2D path with some platforms, and a lot (and I mean A LOT) of enemies to take care of. During my gameplay, I choose Rufu, so I'll talk based on her gameplay. She's cool.
You can walk, jump, defend, and attack. You have your traditional punch, kick, grabs, throws, and also some special moves. Rufu can use a spinning uppercut by pressing down and up+punch. Yes, you can input commands for special attacks. Plus you have a special attack by pressing B+Y, where she sends an energy copy of herself upwards. It consumes health, though. You can also level up after defeating certain ammounts of enemies. When that happens, your health bar will be upgraded.
But what I found really cool is that by pressing X you can activate a special ability for your character, by consuming a magic gauge. This gauge starts with 2 spheres, but it can evolve until you have 6 of them, adding new powers. When playing as Rufu, at the first level, she activates explosive attacks. If you punch, kick, or throw your enemy, they will be set on fire, causing more damage. At maximum Level, Rufu will jump and shoot a lot of fireballs at the ground, causing a big explosion on the screen, damaging all enemies. You can say she's a very explosive girl, hahaha... Hmm... I mean...
Well, unfortunately, I didn't enjoyed the special attacks to it's fulliest. Because it was very, very rare to find itens that fill your magic gauge. The only ways to fill it are itens dropped by enemies (I only found a couple of them), Itens that level up your magic bar (I think there's two or three of them in the whole game) and getting a game over. Yeah, I only used that amazing fireball attack around 5 times in the one hour and a half of gameplay. It doesn't help that I only got access to it at the middle of the game.
The game has a total of six stages, some of them are divided in two or three segments, If you game over, you got limited continues, and will be thrown back at the beggining of the segment you failed.
I played on Normal difficulty, and some bosses were quite challenging, as well as some enemies later into the game. The story is told by cutscenes when the characters meet some certain enemies. Sadly, it's only in japanese, so I couldn't understand what was going on, since I don't know that language. But yeah, you will fight monsters, enemy warriors and even magical beings.
The graphics are very good, it reminds me of some old-school animes. There are some cool visual effects, like flames, heat waves, water, and other small things that makes the visuals good even by today. Soundtrack... To be honest, I don't remember a lot of musics, I think they're not very memorable at all. There's some voice acting for attacks and screams from the characters.
Well, this is a cool game, and I wish more people would talk about it. I finished it for the first time today, and I enjoyed it.
If you guys like that review, I'll do more about other obscure games.
Battle Zeque Den (1994) - Super Nintendo
Good: Cool characters, good gameplay, nice visuals, difficulty is balanced.
Bad: Special powers itens very limited, FPS drops at some intense moments (At least on emulator).
Final Rating: 8.0 (Great)