[SNES] Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Tokubetsu Hen - Cahos Rahne Veloza

Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Tokubetsu Hen


Alternate Title: Yuu Yuu Hakusho 3
Developer: Namcot (Namco) Yuu Yuu Hahusho Project Team
System Released: Nintendo Super NES
Date Published: December 22, 1994
Region: Japan
Genre: Non-traditional Fighting game

Box Art Front: Courtesy of GameFAQs


Box Art Back: Courtesy of GameFAQS


Main Title Screen:


The Low Down = 10/10:

"What the hell kind of game is this!?", is the first thing I've heard people say when they first lay their hands on Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Tokubetsu Hen or simply Yuu Yuu 3, as this is the third game in Namco's Yuu Yuu Hakusho game series for the SNES.

So what the hell kind of game is this, exactly?

To be honest, I find this hard to explain myself, & even GameFAQs has wrongly labeled this game as "Action -> Genaral", which is Entirely incorrect. To sum it up, this game is a non - traditional Fighting Game. Non traditional in the sense that, unlike the more familiar arcade style fighting games like Street Fighter or Tekken, where two combatants duke it out in a 2D (recently in 3D), fixed arenas where you can see them in full glory as you manoeuvre them to do various attack moves.

In Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Tokubetsu Hen, you control your character/s who is/are presented as a sort of "Animated portrait", to borrow the term used by the people who reviewed this game on GameFAQs, and all your actions, moves & attacks are done by showing your Character in various (limited) short Animated game clips & whenever an attack hits the opponent, it shows a clip where the enemy gets plastered by a white crash icon, as if you were reading a Comic Book.

Kurama attacking Hiei: Sequence 1, Kurama uses "Rose Petal Blades Attack"


Kurama attacking Hiei: Sequence 2, Rose Petal Blades Races across the Screen towards Hiei


Kurama attacking Hiei: Sequence 3, Hiei fails to avoid the attack & plasters him good!


A lot of people actually didn't like this game because of it's innovative twist on the fighting genre. But if only they knew that this form of gameplay is all to common in the Japanese games market. Yes, you read correctly, this style of gameplay where everything happens via picture presented scenarios is very much common in the Japanese games industry, mostly through the PC Format & mostly of a very non PG - 13 nature. The rest of the world is only oblivious because such games never left Japan's shores, or atleast they didn't before.

However, in the recent years such games as Apollo Justice & Another Code, have re-introduced the world to this style of gameplay & much to the mis-judgement of skeptical Western Game company Executives, such a genre actually received such a huge fan base. ;D

Gameplay = 10/10:

Okay, since the reviews on GameFAQs that I've read barely scratch the surface when it came to discribing this title's gameplay, I've decided to make this section of my review the bulkier part:

So First off, once you press start on the title Screen you are presented a new screen with two options:


I'm not a native speaker/reader of Japanese, but with the 15 years of me playing this game, I can precisely give you a run down as to what this & the following images are all about. After the title screen, pressing A Button selects an option & B Button cancels your selection. This first screen shows you the two options, Free play menu mode, the one on the left where you see a "girl" holding a Microphone, & the "options" menu mode, the one on the right, which is somewhat a picture of the schematics of a SNES Cartridge.

Choosing the "options" menu mode brings up this screen:


The first option (the one on the left), brings up the game Computer controller AI difficulty adjustment menu screen:


Class S is hard, Class A normal & Class B easy.

Now the one on the middle, brings up the Sound mode menu screen:

Here you can choose to either make the game's sound output to be either Mono or Sterio, play/listen to the game's limited & sucky music or play/listen to the game's Character Voices & sound effects.

Option three, you should just leave this one be, since this does little to the game's gameplay:

This menu labeled, Button Config, only switches the functions of the left & right D-Pad buttons to either left is punch attacks & right is guard against attack or vice versa, more on this later.

Now if you choose the Free Play mode, this screen will be presented to you:


The options, starting from the upper left, going clockwise are:

One on one Battle mode: Select any one of the game's 18 fighters & fight a one on one Battle with a friend on a second controller or fight the Computer.

What is it? Beat up a friend or beat up the Console, err Computer AI? ;D


Who's your Fighter? Choose from 18 Characters taken from the Anime! You can even choose to select one character to have as both combatant's character or play as dopplegangers.


Team Battle: Played either by two players fighting each other in teams, or one player's team versus the Computer AI's team. Each side chooses three fighters to fight in a team.

The object is to defeat the other player's characters in Elimination method, who ever has more characters still battle ready wins!

Survival mode: One player battles a slew of 20 random Enemies in the race to be the top Fighter!

20!? Wait I thought there are only 18 selectable fighters in the game!? True, but in this mode you get to battle characters who have an alternate form, such as Kurama & Toguro in both their forms.

Tournament mode: Player one &/or player two each select a fighter, then the Computer randomly selects several fighters to fight in a tournament. The only bad thing here is during bouts your fighter can't recover his/her Life bar which presents both a challenge & a problem.


If you choose the One on One Battle mode or the Team Battle mode, after selecting your Fighter/s, you then choose on which arena you will fight:

These are, clock wise from the upper left, the Forest, the Dark Tournament Arena, Limbo or a Pocket Dimension & the Dimension of the Spiritual beings, (research on the Anime's Back story to know what these Arenas are all about).

Now that the various options are dealt with, how DO you play this game?

Familiarising yourself on what's on screen.


As you can see, you have a life Bar which starts full shown as a full yellow bar, as you deal &/or receive damage, the bar becomes red, then Empties to a transparent nothing.

The Area marked "Battle messages" is where the Characters' Taunts, rants & technique names are written, but because they're written in Japanese, you actually can't enjoy the crap they say.

The Knockdown & Critical Gauges are two blue bars that gets depleted &/or refilled each time you get hit or successfully hit the enemy. You don't actually die when you get knocked out, but you can be at the mercy of an attack you can't block. Also if you or the opponent is knocked down, you or he/she can use power up techniques that can give you/him/her an upper advantage.

Commands active turn Gauges - These red gauges act like the Active turn Gauges in some RPGs where once full will give you the turn to do an action such as an attack. But unlike RPG ATB guages that fill up over time, you yourself fill these up by holding down or charging any of the four D-Pad ^ > v < buttons.

Up is the "Power up" button, once filled up you can press any of A, B & Y to perform a power up skill, which differ depending on the Character you've selected. Basically, these consist of things like powering up an attack technique, becoming quicker, turning the ATB gauge blue & filling it up faster, turning into a character's powered up alternate form & more. X is the jump option which will make your Character jump up into the Air to avoid an attack, this is both risky & beneficial, risky because if caught by an attack will cause a knock down & beneficial as some Characters have attacks that are best used Aerially.

Left & Right as I said you can assign what functions these two buttons have, but initially right is a normal punch attack that doesn't use Spiritual Energy, more on this later. The other as I said is a guarding stance.

Down, charging down & pressing any of A, B, Y or X will activate the Characters' special attack techniques, that cost Spiritual Energy points. A being the cheapest weakest & X being the most costly & lethal.



Risky Move Warning lights - These two oblong lights tell you if you're likely to get knocked down. Initially these flash blue, meaning nothing to worry about. If it turns red (see image) it means you either did a risky move (jumping is the most risky move), or you're Knockdown & Critical guages are too low, thus warning of a possible knockdown. If it flashes yellow, the one having it will have an upper edge in the battle.

A, B, Y & X Command Option Availability - These four coloured lights correspond to the four action buttons on your controller, if all of these lights are on, that means you have enough Spiritual Energy to use the actions each button has to offer, if any or all of them don't light up it means you don't have enough points to use them.

Command points Gauges - These two bars consisting of individual point bars tell you how much Spiritual Energy you have left, white means the amount you still have & the violet marks are the points you've used up.

Energy Pool - After each combatant has performed an action this red orb thingy gives out a few Spiritual Energy points to fill up your Commands point gauge.

Though not on the images I have presented, sometimes an icon appears between the Knockdown & Critical Gauge & the Command points Gauge, which is a coloured Kanji icon. That is a power up icon, once it appears on your side of the field press X without charging to use it. It can either recharge your Knockdown & Critical Gauge, your Life Bar or give you lots of Spiritual Point refills, depending on the Kanji Character or Colour.

So now that you know what those things on the screen are it's time to explain how the game is played. Actually it's so simple, even a kindergartener can figure it out:

1. You and your opponent race against each other by charging the ATB gauges using any of the Up, down, left &/or right command options.
2. The first to fill up their gauge can press any of the A, B, Y & X Buttons to do an action
3. The one who depletes his opponent's life bar first wins! Hoorah!! ;D

Simple as that, this game can be tough, even on the easy setting, because it all boils down to the individual fighters, some of them are strong against one character, but a total wimp for another. And ofcourse, it depends on how good of a player you are.

Graphics = 10/10:

This game features some of the best visuals ever on a SNES Title, & all this before the age of cell shaded game graphics! And it didn't even use a special graphics chip to achieve such brilliant imagery.

Feel the Fiery wrath..


Of my Black Flame...


DRAAAGOONNN!!


RRRRAAAAAYYYYYYY!!! GUUUUUNNNN!


Audio = 7/10:

The only major flaw of this game is the Audio department, the background music is hip to listen to, AT FIRST, but after several listenings it gets really really old.

And because of the SNES' hardware limitations, the Characters' voices tend to be garbled at times, like you can understand what they're saying anyway. ;D

But still, the voice acting job was excellent, because actual voice actors of the Anime were the ones who did the game's voice library.

Lasting Appeal = 8/10:

Bottom line, if you're a fan of the Anime & Manga, then give this game a shot, I know the gameplay mechanics is weird, but trust me, this one's one great game!

If you're up for something new, then go and play this game, especially if you're getting bored of the Old-School Fighting games.

Summary:

The Low Down = 10/10
Gameplay = 10/10
Graphics = 10/10
Audio = 7/10
Lasting Appeal = 8/10
Final verdict = 45/50

--- Cahos Rahne Veloza

 

Good review, Cahos.

 

I was waiting to post until you finally posted the rest of your review. Nice review CRV.

 

Thanks guys, I know it had some bad mis spellings but I've fixed them already.

Next month I'll be doing a review of "Madou Monogatari - Big Kindergarten Kids", if you think Pikachu & its cuteness was sickening, wait until you see this game! ;D

 

This game sounds like rock paper scissors if I'm correct....

 

Umm.. kinda I think

But try to think of it as a cross between An Anime, an RPG & a Fighting game then you're there.

 

That was one BIG OWNING REVIEW!

 

Whoa, nicely done Cahos. I've always been a big fan of the series, from the time it was on adult swim, to now, its truly one of the best

 

So, any of you already tried playing this game? And if so, did you enjoy it as much as I still do?

 

lots of screenies that I didn't understand what was going on.
very creative to use your own screenshots using an emulator.

very nice.

 

I know, I know necroposting rules have changed in the recent days, but I needed to post several Youtube videos I found about this game. Hopefully these will give you a clearer picture of this game's gameplay elements:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRcTzYJgd7Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxnjxZfyGfo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me42JLBd-yY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QSYB2dc5j0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wc9BBd523Y

 

Wow the review for tokubetsu hen was really sweet^.^It's good to know there people still playing this game!it's awesome somehow it's reminds me pokemon

 

I don't get why this game reminds you of Pokemon