Kendo Rage (SNES)

Not the most impressive title screen but the music isn't bad.

Jo loves Kendo, so when she was sent to Japan on summer vacation she got herself accepted to Honest Osaki's Kendo School and Used Car Sales. He has found her a place to stay in a nice little mountain cabin only six hours from school, but in exchange he has a job for her to do: kill all the evildoers on her journey to school. Not sure why she needs to go to school if she's on a holiday but whatever.

It's dangerous to go alone though, so she must take this.

It's a powerful talisman indeed, apparently it once granted a great warrior the strength to defeat General Moto's legions in the battle of Detroit. It is said to make you invincible, more or less (it doesn't, you get a couple of hit points at best).

So, let's go to school.

OH SHIT IT'S A BEAR! It just jumped right out of the ground, no warning. I'm getting the feeling this might be a parody of something?

Seems like a regular hack 'em up platformer. I have three attacks available, regular slash, charged slash, and a dash attack that costs me HP. I'm impatient and I like to keep my health, so I'm going to stick with regular attacks mostly. Enemies seem to respawn if you backtrack, so... onwards!

Oh noes, a super deformed doppelgänger (hmm....). And it's blocking my bus stop! I need to catch that bus to get to the next level so I'm just going to have to kill her.


LATER


Finally we ride the bus to level two. Jo points out she's not dressed for snow, but then what IS she dressed for?

 AGH, fell for the same trick twice! Damn snowbears.

She really isn't dressed for this is she?

This is a slippery slidey ice world, and by some miracle, it's perhaps the first one I've come across since I started my Adventures (or I suck too much at games to reach them). By another miracle, it's not annoying. Apart from this tiny pit which is a pain to get out of if you fall in.

Where are all the bottomless pits anyway? I don't think I've come across one instakill death trap in the game so far. Please don't misconstrue this as a complaint.

Level three. I guess we're going underwater then. Fortunately Jo can hold her breath longer than Guybrush Threepwood. The whole game seems to be full of stupid jokes and light hearted humour and to be honest, it makes me smile. It's enough to keep me playing long after similar games had made me quit out of frustration.

Either that or it's just really easy.

Agh, it's a boss! Three bosses! Though there's one health bar on screen, they all actually have their own separate health. (If you're wondering, yeah the bus DOES come to pick us up at that bus stop down here).

Level four, go go go. I got catapulted up here from a construction site covered in landmines, this guy seems to be a kind of mid boss. 'Why did my creator design me to feel pain', is what he was probably thinking as I beat him to death with my stick.

I have to be extra careful going through the levels, making sure I don't lose lives, because I need a full set to burn through on these damn bosses. Fortunately a death doesn't put me back to the start of the fight or else I would find them absolutely impossible.

This guy swoops around and transforms into different forms, each one as annoying as the last.

 Level five. Riding the cable car and smacking the monkeys.

And now I'm on a train, remarkable. In this confined train I'm beset on all sides by enemies. Birds... monkeys... a ghost in a hat. You can power up your weapon with different effects, right now I'm using the green sword power. Not sure what it does, except make the attack look cooler, but that's enough for me.

Level six! The train stops at this station, where I'm attacked by a series of mid bosses. Like this Japanese Soccer Kid wannabe, who attacks me with footballs. I attack him with fully charged PSY power though, so I win.

Agh, this boss seems to be invulnerable, at least from close range. I was smacking the crap out of her to no effect, while she effortlessly burned through my entire set of lives.

I was so close to making it to school too. Not that I really wanted to go to school, now that I think about it.



You know, I think I liked this one. It's just so damn... likeable. It's got charm, humour, and I wasn't constantly being screwed over by blind jumps and bottomless pits. It just seems to be a nice short platformer. With some pain in the ass boss fights.