Madou King Granzort – Review

Introduction: Granzort is a side-scrolling 2D action game for the SuperGrafx. This is probably my favorite game among the 5 games exclusively playable on that ill-fated system. One of the cool and unique aspects of the game is its strange mix of futuristic, ancient and twisted biological elements.

You play a futuristic armored soldier (or maybe it's a robot) that can morph between 3 different guises each with its own color, weapon and special ability.

You start off on the surface of some planet from which you can see another planet much like Earth on the horizon. This is the first level, after which you descend deeper and deeper into underground caverns each with its own unique theme such as an ancient dungeon, a futuristic sewer and a wonderful ancient forest of giant trees with a mysterious sunset behind them (remember this is supposed to be underground!). You fight some standard robots as well as strange machine/animal hybrids along the way.

Graphics (9.5): The backgrounds are very well done. The secondary background scrolling is especially effective at creating the atmosphere of being inside a huge cavern. Otherwise, the other graphics in the game are decent with some really nice bosses but also some puny stupid ones. Overall the graphics are among the best of any HuCard game and show off some of the extra muscle of the SuperGrafx compared to the TurboGrafx, though not enough to be considered next-gen of course.

Music/Sound (8.5): The music in the game is also well done and on some levels it adds to the overall atmosphere, especially on levels 2-4. Since you'll be playing those levels for a long time, the music really gets into your head and I can still remember how the 3rd level music goes and the others would only require some memory jogging. Some of the sound effects are nice such as when you get a power-up or the ''popping'' quality of the explosions while other sounds clank and give a jarring effect.

Game play (9): The game play is similar to other games in this genre where the difficulty level is such that you have to learn your way around, when the enemies appear and how best to defeat them before you can progress to the next level. It reminds me of Legendary Axe in this way. Both are challenging without being fiendishly difficult and both are such that once you've mastered a level, you can proceed through it elegantly and smoothly. Indeed, to compare it to that game already alludes to praise. The level designers did a good job. One complaint is that the usefulness of the 3 different guises is unbalanced (the green guise dominates playing time while the blue is only used in a few crucial situations). Another is the last level which lacks the imagination of the previous ones. Also in keeping with the last level, defeating the last boss is a matter of luck as far as I can tell as there is a sort of roll of the dice element to it. Luckily, by this point in the game it is entirely possible to have acquired over 80 lives! so you can keep taking it to the him until he croaks. Those dozens of extra lives are sprinkled throughout the earlier levels and it's fun trying to find them all. Making up for the last boss (and some of the other lame bosses) is one middle level boss which actually requires a fair bit of finesse to defeat and for me is quite memorable for that reason.

Replay Value (9): Personally, I love to replay this game although usually not to finish it since the going gets quite tough after level 4 and the ending isn't much (forgivable since game sizes were limited back in the good ol' days). The reasons I like to replay it are just because it's fun and I love to see the background scrolling, listen to the cool music and because I can't get enough of that wonderful underground forest. If you finished Legendary Axe dozens of times like me, then I think you'll enjoy replaying this game also.

Summary and comparisons: Overall this is an excellent game, and I would say it is the must-have game for SuperGrafx owners (although since there are only 5 games, they're all must-haves!). It's not quite as good as Legendary Axe but it does enough things well to merit comparison. It's also natural to compare GranZort to Ghouls n' Ghosts, another excellent game and perhaps more consistently so, but Granzort wins points for being original and exclusive to the SuperGrafx, hence less people know about it, hence it requires more praise so people will take notice!

Thanks for reading my review.