Developer: Wolf Team Publisher: Wolf Team Release: 03/30/93 Genre: Beat em up
Annet Futatabi is a game I longed for after seeing it in a random issue of EGM. The idea of two separate video game characters starring in one game together seemed really cool even if one of the heroes was that lame ass Earnest Evans. It also helped that I had also just played El Viento, the second in this loose trilogy of games. The long years of anticipation made the game out to be greater than it actually is. Ultimately Annet Futatabi is disappointing not because it is inherently bad but because it had so much promise.
Surprisingly this is not an action platformer like the games that came before it. Instead Annet Futatabi is a side scrolling beat em up like Streets of Rage or Golden Axe. I can sort of understand: Earnest Evans was a dreadful game. I do not blame anyone for wanting to distance themselves from that train wreck. However El Viento is excellent and they could build off that to make a truly spectacular game. What is here is decent but the game could have and should have been better.
The comparison to the two previously mentioned games is pretty apt. Annet moves with a level of grace that would not become prominent in the genre until Streets of Rage 3 as she is pretty fast and can dash in any direction. Rather than her boomerang she now has a flashy sword. Unfortunately there are no other weapons or items to pick up aside from health. Not that they would be necessary. You have a large arsenal of fighting moves to pummel enemies as well as various forms of magic.
The magic system is a bit similar to Golden Axe. Here you have a magic meter that slowly builds automatically. With each level it reaches a new spell among five or six becomes available. I like it more than simply beating up elves (regardless of how much personality they added to the game) as it is more efficient and allows more frequent use. However it completely breaks the game in the process.
Since you can spam magic as much as you want once the meter is full there is no need to bother wailing on the standard enemies when a spell will kill them in in one hit. With no clock ticking down you can just as easily hang back and let the meter fill, unleash a spell, rinse and repeat. It is an especially effective tactic because most enemies are not the least bit aggressive. It is so bad that you have to practically bait them into attacking you. Otherwise they are content hanging at the edge of the screen. Even outside spamming magic the game is incredibly easy with life restoring food dropped after every group of enemies.
The one exception to this would be the bosses. Here Annet Futatabi unfortunately skews close to typical beat em up conventions.The end level bosses are towering masses of muscle that can take a third of your life in a single hit. These are the only instances where magic is unavailable and death kicks you back to the start of the level. It feels cheap to cruise to the end of a given stage only to have the boss annihilate you with a few good kicks and repeat it all over again. It is almost as if someone realized they screwed up the game’s balance and overcompensated for it.
I have been pretty harsh on Annet Futatabi but that is due to disappointment than dislike. Where Earnest Evans had few redeeming qualities El Viento more than makes up for it. But all of that good design was tossed aside in favor of a generic brawler. This is tuned more like an arcade game which means despite how simple it is there are still plenty of cheap moments such as enemies repeatedly attacking you if you’ve been knocked down. The stages are short which cuts down the repetition of restarting levels but fighting the same brain dead enemies again might sap your will to continue. And what is up with no 2-player coop? Earnest features prominently throughout the game but is not playable. With a friend the game might have been more bearable.
You will probably tolerate the staid gameplay because the presentation is great. Not so much the in game graphics which are adequate. The elaborate cutscenes steal the show as they are frequent and run pretty long. The plot details Annet’s further adventures after her rescue by Earnest Evans. The two run afoul of a cult who want her pendant for world domination and now they must stop it. The cinemas are well animated and fully voiced and despite the language barrier it is not very hard to grasp the jist of the story. Add to that a fantastic soundtrack and more than likely you will soldier on just to see what happens next.
In Closing
That’s not enough for me to give Annet Futatabi a solid recommendation however. While this is not a bad game overall it is disappointing. I would say it is only worth purchasing if you can find it cheap and are prepared for some less than stellar design choices. This should have been a better game.
