Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle

I remember this game from way back in the day. Growing up, a friend of mine introduced me to Ranma 1/2. It was one of the first anime shows that I had seen. He and his brothers had Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle on SNES. I could vaguely remember playing this title, so I decided that today I would take a step back in time and pop this title in.

Needless to say the game was an interesting way to kill 20 minutes. That's right, I managed to get through the entire game, twice, in 20 minutes. Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle is a 2D fighting game so there isn't much to follow in the way of story. Basically you just select a character and wait for each fight to load. The button combinations are not intricate so there isn't a great deal of time spent trying to pull off any special movies. In fact, there are 4 buttons in the whole game, jump, weak attack, strong attack, and block.

Graphically the game is nothing too memorable, even for SNES. The sound was even worse. Some of the female characters had male voices after the fight ended when they do their little victory cry. The only thing that really kept my attention while playing this game was the fact that it was Ranma. It is a shame that such great series as this one were not released on the next gen consoles. There is another Ranma fighter in 3D on PSX that I will review at a later date.

My end assessment on this game is that it is a good way to kill some time if you are bored, but nothing that will require a large time investment. For those whole like unlockables, there is a secret character, Pantyhose, that you can acquire upon beating the game on any difficulty with any character.