Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle
- One-on-one fighting; intense action; weird enemies; awesome graphics bring the action to life
Product Description
Ranma and his member of the clergy Genma choose to go their martial arts exercises in a remote part of China. What they don’t know is that they’ve entered the “Training Ground of the Accursed Springs,” which consists of more than 100 springs, each with its own unique legend. The tale goes that anyone who cascade into one of the springs will be transformed into the beast that haunts the spring. Now it’s up to you to help Ranma and Genma get out of the area and in one piece. In this one-on-one fighter either alone or with a friend you’ll have to do battle against a wide variety of weird enemies. Can you help this innocent member of the clergy and son team escape and get home alive?
Buy Cheap Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle
Related posts:
This is a fun and entertaining game, i dont own the U.S version, i have the Jap. one. This is a tipical figting game, fighting wise reflect of it as a OLD SCHOOL DEAD OR ALIVE… no not becouse of the girls becouse there are alot of combos and THROWING invalved in this game. But if your looking for a 5 star Ranma 1/2 game look for IMPORT VERSION of: Ranma 1/2: The Red Cat Gang, its a really fun RPG, that uses a some what updated Final Fantasy engine (for gameplay) but graphicly looks like Chrono Trigger or Zelda” Link to Past!
Rating: 4 / 5
If you don’t like the show this will just be a stock fighter game, in person I reflect this game benefits from character development. This is the second best Ranma fighter game I reflect like many I would have rather seen it’s sequel come here but oh well. This game is based on the japanese series not the US so you will see some characters from later series in the USA episode list. Basically the excellent is the game has a slightly different fighting engine some will like it some will reflect it average, but if your a fan it’s must have anyway just don’t expect anything incredible.
Rating: 4 / 5
I found out about this game while watching the Ranma 1/2 season 1 video set. At the start of the video, they advertised Hard Battle for the Super Nintendo, and I about flipped. Sadly wherever I looked, I couldn’t find it. I chose to hit my last resort and order it from Amazon. Once I got this game, all other obligations went beyond Pluto. “Hey Adam! Don’t you have a film to make?”, say my friends. To heck with that…I got RANMA 1/2 :HARD BATTLE!!!
I popped this game into my Super Nintendo, and I was glowing like Corey Feldman at the Playboy mansion. The game itself is just a standard fighter game in the vein of Street Fighter 2, But just with Ranma characters. The game stays very right to the series in attitude,and in looks. I chose to break my review up into sections to fully examine it well:
Graphics: What can I say? This game looks splendid. Since there really isn’t much in this game outside of butt kicking, the designers were able to take more time to charming out the graphics. We get awesome small touches that impressed me. The wind blowing Akane’s hair as I layed a holy butt whipping into Shampoo on a railcar level, moving leaves, blinking lights, etc…These small effects just added charm to this game. The fact tht these small effects were place into it just show me that this scheme meant something to the designers. They wanted to make a fighting game that didn’t suck (Unlike some American game designers who just make the game to rake in cash and don’t care if it’s excellent or terrible.). So the graphics rock!
Tale: We in fact get separate tales for each character! I like that. You don’t get that in the Street Fighter 2 gameplay. So with Hard Battle we get some reason for the fighting. It gives the characters some depth in the game. We know what they want, and we know who stands in the way of that. With separate tales, we also get a lot of replay regard here. It’s fascinating to see just what makes the other characters that you choose want to fight each other.
Controls: Splendid controls are very vital to a fighting game. If your character doesn’t do what you order him/her to do, then it only leads to frustration and controller flinging. Thankfully, the controls on Hard Battle are very excellent. The characters are very open and the attacks can be executed very easily. This game even gives you the pleasure of choosing the buttons you want to use. If you don’t want X to be your attack, then change it to something more pleasurable.
Music: I like this music! It really fits right in with the anime. It’s really bouncy and light-hearted. It really sets the tone for the game. The music is changed from level to level, which gives it a lot of variety.
By and large: I can recommend this game to a person who just likes fighter sports meeting. Fans of Ranma will also get a kick out of it. Since this game is uncommon, Amazon is the best place to get it in my opinion. A very well done game. It’s just sad that the Ranma RPG sports meeting never got American issue…and for people that DO get this game, Akane is the best character to use.
Delight in.
Rating: 4 / 5
I remember renting this game from our local video rental store when I was 13. I had never seen a release episode of the Ranma anime or read any of the manga, and this was also in 1993, still a couple of years before the success of Pokemon brought on the contemporary wave of anime fandom. But I did delight in Japanese animation, even though my only real exposure to it had been the kiddie shows on Nickelodeon in the early ’90s, and so when I heard that a fighting game based on a Japanese animated series would be coming to the United States INTACT (unlike the first Ranma game for the SNES, which was bowdlerized into the unfortunate Street Combat), I knew I had to try it. Therefore, my first exposure to the characters made by Rumiko Takahashi.
Looking back now, it seems really surprising that this game would be released in America at all being that anime was not really yet a mass-media phenomenon here and that most Americans who weren’t anime (or “Japanimation” as it was more commonly called then) otaku had probably never heard of Ranma. I’m not sure who they thought was going to buy it outside of the anime otaku community. But I loved every minute of this game.
The game play was fun, and although the graphics might seem primitive today, they were probably more than decent in 1992-93. The colors are bright and vibrant (a huge improvement over the debacle that was Street Combat), and most of the special moves are honestly simple to do. But what I liked most about Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle was the sheer wackiness of it all. Without even knowing any of the characters’ backstories, I found the character designs and especially the dialogue between and after the fights absolutely hilarious. While it certainly does help to have at least a passing familiarity with Ranma 1/2, its characters and storyline in order to get the most out of the game, you won’t be completely lost if you don’t, and this game in fact made me want to find out more.
How could the game have been better? I like one other reviewer’s suggestion to add some kind of water element in regard to character transformations… that would give the game a certain level of volatility and add to the wackiness of it all, though it might also prove frustrating for beginners. Also, now that I am more familiar with the Ranma anime and manga, I can see how this game doesn’t really capture the total essence of Ranma 1/2 – martial arts is only part of the mix, and I would have preferred an RPG, but sadly none of the Ranma RPGs are available commercially in the States. Still, this a fun game to let a small loose with and a splendid alternative to other fighting sports meeting which take themselves so deadly seriously. And we Ranma fans are also very fortunate that this game made it to America at all!
Rating: 4 / 5
If you liked fighting sports meeting back in their heyday, such as “Street Fighter” or the subsequent “Street Fighter II” or any of the “Samurai Sho*Down” sports meeting, this might just be something you’d want to look into.
…IF you are a “Ranma 1/2″ fan, that is.
I don’t believe that it’s entirely accessible to people who don’t follow the series (but could possibly have the effect of getting someone who hasn’t read the manga interested in it!). Someone commented on liking the choice between fighting as male or female Ranma, but in person, I would have really gotten more of a kick out of the game if you only had the option of playing Ranma and you had the option of knocking him into ponds or throwing him against barrels or buckets full of water and having him change right in front of you. And I also have no thought why on earth they found it prudent to include Gosunkugi and the Gambling King as possible opponents instead of either of the Kunos. Wouldn’t the Kuno kids be a bit more authentic? Gosunkugi certainly can’t fight worth a damn in the series, and the Gambling King isn’t exactly known for that type of thing either; he’s excellent at cheating small kids out of their cash, not hand-to-hand combat.
Though it’s still a pretty fun game. It’s certainly challenging; each character has their own specific opponent who gives them more of a run for their cash than the rest. They seem to be based off of real character relationships, as well: for example, I found that playing as Akane would produce the result of Shampoo being the toughest opponent to deal with. When playing as Ryouga, Ranma seemed the greatest challenge. When playing as male Ranma, I found (heh heh) that Akane was the most hard to defeat. I could be imagining these subtle individual character skill levels, of course, but … nah.
It’s worth a look, anyway. It would have been much more fun had it been longer, but I’m willing to overlook that just to be able to have a bonafide “Ranma 1/2″ game amongst my pool. Quite a charming title!
Rating: 3 / 5