~ ANE-SAN ~
NEC Avenue
Super CD-ROM
1995
People love to rag on Riot Zone, which is actually a perfectly playable brawler, yet they often let this complete piece of trash off with mid-range grades. Well, all the "flaws" that some folks hate RZ for are present (to more frightful extremes) here. The
Ane-san uglies can perform even fewer moves than RZ's heroes, and their game is even easier than RZ: pick a spot to stand in, crank up turbo on the attack trigger, and watch the mindless goons march into your rapid-fire knuckle barrage like moths to a flame. And while RZ
takes lumps for enemy repetition, the lack of variation here is so severe that it's ludicrous. You encounter the same three or four boring battlers over and over again.
The standard enemy sprites look terrible; and while the bosses fare better appearance-wise than their minions, they're pathetic in combat, almost always succumbing to routine combos in mere seconds.
The background graphics are very drab (much, much worse than Riot Zone's), while the music is quite crazy--not in a cool way like, say, Faussete Amour's, but in a repetitive, ultra-irritating way. And none of this awfulness is negated by the occasional
opportunities you're given to buy stupid things and play ridiculous bonus games.
I guess some people are willing to let a bad game off the hook as long as it does something unusual thematically. In this case, the "intriguing" element is the cast of ugly biker chicks. If you would like to acquire a decent brawler and you're not
deliberately searching for atypical material, pick up Riot Zone. It's much, much better than this piece of shit.
