Original Release: Bandai, 2002, WonderSwan
The Kinnikuman NES game gets a seeming direct sequel many years later on Bandai’s short-lived portable
Kinnikuman 2nd Generation (Wonderswan, Bandai, 2002)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
For some reason, it seems Bandai set out to make this intentionally like the chintzy NES game (which came out about 15 years prior to this). Fundamentally the same sloppy and limited gameplay, just with a couple of new tweaks and somewhat improved graphics and sound.
As of this writing it remains untranslated, but you can only play as the main guy Kinnikuman (or whatever his name is) in the single-player mode and run through a gauntlet of about 10 other characters with extremely spartan story screens after certain matches. There also seems to be some tag tournament mode and a link multiplayer, which allow you to pick more freely from the character roster, but a lot of the main menu actually just appears to be gameplay settings.
Anyway, once in-game there’s little functional difference between characters and you can just spam jump kicks and suplexes to terrorize the enemy most of the time. Don’t feel bad about being cheap though, as the game’s limited design doesn’t really allow for anything else to be effective. The game engine has added three special moves for each character, which you catch the little power-ups thrown in by random monkey to activate, and in all cases these seem to be activated by mashing both buttons at once to make your duder glow then mashing them again near the enemy. I didn’t field-test them with all the characters, but at least for single player mode they’re probably unnecessary anyway.
The main gameplay mode offers no real challenge until towards the end, when a corny robo M. Bison and a ninja show up and start just twitching around superfast while getting special moves that take off like 3/4 of your health instantly and also refilling theirs.
This is kind of a baffling release from a major publisher, it looks and plays more like a fan-made Flash remake of the original NES game. Really gives the impression that Bandai did not really take the Wonderswan seriously and just considered it a place to dump slop.
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