MASIYA/NCS

1995

The sequel to the first Cho Aniki (Super Big Brother) game, this is very Japanese in its bizarreness. It’s a shoot ‘em up, with the player taking the role of an almost nude muscle-man (Adon) or his brother (Samson) in a 2 player game. Their main weapon is a ball of energy that grows over a hole in their heads and shoots out towards any advancing enemies. Other, more powerful shots are achieved by a combination of back-forward-fire, down-up-fire etc on the pad - a control method that can be confusing at first, but once you get the knack of it you’ll be OK.

The levels vary from horizontal to vertical auto-scroll stages, and there is plenty of variety and no small amount of imaginative design gone into the twisted look of the game. It’s quite challenging at first, but gets easier the more you play, showing a decent learning curve - and overall it is great fun. It has some well drawn, often worrying, but very amusing character and enemy designs and enough variety in each level with some gorgeous parallax scrolling here and there. Bosses are very inventive and will have you laughing. Sonically, there are a few samples in game and a variety of mostly excellent music tracks that are well worth more than just a casual listen. If you like Japanese weirdness and want a challenging, but different kind of shooter then this is highly recommended.

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