Shatterhand (1991)

Beat in slow motion mode. I did the stages blue 1st, saving the 2 red ones for last. I tried several robot combos and found the bouncy ball one the best because I could bounce off walls and the floor to get good range and angles. The laser was 2nd with a decent down diagonal shot, and boomerang 3rd. The others sucked with very limited range and I never tried flamethrower or mine. This game reminded me a lot of Power Blade only punching stuff and using the letter boxes to make combos for each bot. Alpha beta beta was the only one I needed to remember for bouncy and I even got the special suit twice during the last level, including going into the final boss. There were attack up, healing and extra life platforms that required money to activate. The stages had strong Mega Man vibes with a mix of combat and platforming, gimmicks unique to each stage (conveyors, ice, gravity swap, water etc), enemies that did not respawn and obvious boss rooms with challenging bosses. They moved around a lot and randomly chose from a few different moves making the fights engaging. Overall I did not find it quite as good as the 2 Power Blades, with more linear stage design, melee focus, few pickups and the somewhat awkward method of getting the bots and armor. Still very good fun game though.

7.8/10

Quite cool looking and sounding and not too difficult to pick up the controls and make your punches connect or dodge enemy fire. I really do like the setting look and aesthetic it looks like it's some out of control post apocalyptic tokyo vibe too it. Enemies are quite varied in how they attack and are to be dealt with, they alos look pretty snazzy, lots of soldiers with guns and looks like this good be an unlicensed G.I. Joe game even.

the mix of punching and having 'option' orbs to assist you with shooting works really well and to the players benefit. Plus, the player can collect 3 new runes in whatever custom order you like to get a different style of Option-Orb Attack. This unique upgrade system is both easy to learn and functional in the way it works, you can always get the weapon you want!

Known in US as Shatterhand, this 6 level Mega Man like platform shooting game was striped down of whatever Super Sentai roots it has. I very much enjoyed it with a translation patch!

1. Great controls, power ups, boss fights, opening and ending animations
2. The ability to choose your stages like Mega Man
3. The ability to HOLD on to railings/fences WHILE attacking
4. No cheap or bullshit enemies
5. Better than Batman and Ninja Gaiden YES I SAID IT!

What a hidden gem. No one told me about this game in the early 90s I guess everyone had moved on to the SNES. But this is a MUST PLAY!

9.5/10

Since I jumped a little on the NES nostalgia train because my brother was looking at old Famicom games, this is the one he was looking for in particular. It's a fantastic NES game (honestly, the only reason I'm not giving it 5 stars is because this is the American port, and it's lame that they took the cool Tokusatsu element out of the game, as a Kamen Rider fan, it disappoints me not to see more Tokusatsu in America).

The Japanese version is called Tokkyuu Shirei Solbrain and is part of the Metal Heroes franchise of henshin hero shows (like Power Rangers in America). For those of you who are really into retro games, this a great, old-school sidescrolling platformer/beat 'em up with a neat system of crafting floating robots to help you fight with multiple different abilties depending on the 3 symbol combo you build up.