Multiplayer-capable fighting games are rare on any console, let alone the Game Boy Advance. That's what makes Rave Master: Special Attack Force so unique, and also so tragic. Due to a serious flaw in the game's single-player component, the only way to squeeze your money's worth out of this 2D punchfest is to track down two or three other people with the game and play them in linked games.

Many aspects of the combat system are legitimately inspired. Each fight can involve a maximum of four characters (in teams or free-for-all), and most stages have multiple platforms and environmental hazards. The directional pad gives you precise control over actions, such as walking, running, crouching, and blocking, while the buttons let you do things like jump, activate power-ups, and perform weak and strong attacks.

The developer managed to integrate minigames into the combat system without hurting the game's overall pace or energy level. In fact, these minigames make each fight more interesting. One of these is a Konami-centric arrow-pushing game that occurs when you lock weapons with an opponent. Whoever keys out the corresponding pattern first will earn a power-up point, which can be used to briefly upgrade a character's defense, speed, or attack power. The other minigame is a rapid button-mashing task that is initiated by activating a character's special finishing move, called a rave finisher. If the instigator manages to press the buttons faster than his opponents, they'll all be laid to waste in a fiery outburst.

Another interesting facet of gameplay is the concept of rave stones, which is an idea that was taken from the TV show that the game is based on. In a nutshell, every character carries an enchanted object, known as a rave stone. Rave stones allow the characters to perform strong attacks, use power-ups, and activate their rave finishers. These special stones can be dislodged by hitting a fighter with a strong attack, a string of weak attacks, or by knocking them down. The stone will land somewhere nearby and can be picked up simply by walking through it. But until that time, the stone-challenged fighter will be limited to weak attacks only. This adds one more layer of strategy to an already intricate fighting system.

With four people linked up and going at it in the same room, this game is loads of fun. Each match is a flurry of special attacks and double-teams, interspersed with frequent interludes of arrow-matching and button-mashing. Over long play sessions, you'll discover that some attacks aren't worth using and that the game doesn't incorporate any combo attacks or juggles whatsoever. However, those flaws hardly take away from the white-knuckle excitement that the link mode offers.

By contrast, the single-player component isn't any fun at all, and it's all the CPU's fault. First off, it's cheap. The moment you press a button, your enemies can interrupt strong attacks and knock you out of the air instantly. The only way to inflict damage is to wait for your foe to miss an attack or jump toward you. Worse still, the CPU will do its best to keep you from winning, but won't actually try to beat you. It's programmed to fight to a stalemate! If you dole out enough damage so that the tension gauge is significantly biased in your favor, the CPU opponent will come at you with an aggressive flurry of attacks and stymie you until the tension gauge drops to a safe level. Conversely, if the CPU somehow manages to move the tension gauge in its favor, it might initiate its own rave finisher--which won't succeed because the CPU isn't programmed to win the button-mashing minigame. That brings both sides back to square one.

Let's say you choose to forgive the single-player component's shortcomings, or, better yet, you're picking up the game with the intention of linking up with your friends. You're in for a treat. The 2D graphics that make up the character sprites and backgrounds are colorful and detailed. Fans of the TV show will quickly recognize their favorite characters and their trademark attack moves. Each arena has its own unique layout of platforms and hazards, and many of them include some sort of animated environmental feature, such as rain, fog, or heat distortion. The two minigame-style attacks will cause the viewpoint to change to a close-up, which uses a combination of in-game graphics and hand-drawn artwork to show the involved fighters locked in an epic collision. Meanwhile, the audio, specifically the musical selections and voice clips that comprise the majority of it, actually do justice to what the GBA's speaker is capable of. Each arena has its own musical theme, complete with changing melodies and a distinctive assortment of beats and instruments, and every fighter has a different battle cry for each different attack.

In all, the game includes 14 playable characters and eight combat arenas. The five play modes include the typical assortment of options that you'd expect to find in a fighting game: story, ranking, free battle, training, and link play. In the story mode, each character has his or her own individual plot twists and endings.

Thanks to the heinous artificial intelligence, none of the single-player modes are worth diving into. What's the point? You'll just end up frustrated. The only way to enjoy Rave Master: Special Attack Force is to play in link mode against living human beings, which is a tall order considering that you'll need to get four GBA systems, four game cartridges, and all of the related people and cables together in one spot. If you can manage that though, by all means, check this game out.

In the world of 3D fighters where mediocrity has become the norm and exceptional remains the exception, it takes a special fighter to stand out amongst the crowd. Does Kensei: Sacred Fist have what it takes to take on the likes of Tekken 3 and Dead or Alive? Konami would like to think so. Drawing upon the elements that made those games so successful, Kensei: Sacred Fist is a fully polygonal 3D brawler with 360 degrees of movement. The control scheme is composed of your basic punch, kick, and block configuration, but, taking a small cue from DOA, Kensei also features a "catch" button. However, instead of reversing your opponent's attack (as in DOA), the catch button makes grappling your foe much easier.

Another thing that Kensei features is 22 characters to choose from, although only nine are available from the start. The secret characters become accessible after you've beaten the game with the default characters, adding considerable replay incentive. Moreover, the usual assortment of play modes awaits your selection: normal, vs., time attack, survival, training, and watch modes. On a side note, the game is Dual Shock compatible, so if you've got one, you'll be able to feel the hits.

Unfortunately, the game moves slowly, especially when you're used to the quick response times and speedy gameplay of games like Bloody Roar. Plus, the number of moves available is also fairly limited, and they seem to be uncomfortably familiar to other fighting games' signature moves. Furthermore, the characters themselves seem kind of cookie-cutter, with uninspired character designs and names like Heinz (ketchup?) and Douglas. However, the secret characters add some flair once discovered. In its favor, graphically, the game has a crisp, clean appearance with no apparent polygon tearing, while everything looks solid and moves at a smooth, better-than-30fps frame rate. The biggest problem, regretfully, is the sluggish response time. It seems that after you've entered the first couple of button commands you rarely have any input whatsoever. Hey, this is a fighting game; it needs tight, responsive controls!

When you consider this game's incredible generic-ness, you'd think at least the gameplay would be up to par, but it isn't. Far from it. When companies like Namco and Capcom are continuously adding new ingredients to the brew, you'd think Konami could do a little better than simply playing catch-up. Sadly, that's all it's achieved here. Kensei: Sacred Fist is little more than a bland footnote in fighting game history. Barely worth a rental.

In a world occupied by two kinds of 2D fighters (Capcom's and everyone else's), you have to be cut from a different kind of cloth in order to survive in this hostile environment. In development for almost three years, Guilty Gear is just that - a 2D fighter with enough originality and flavor to earn its own place in this once-dominant genre. Let's explore.

In Guilty Gear you take control of one of ten characters, which are available from the outset. These fighters are a mix of the usual Ken/Ryu/Zangief ilk, with a little Samurai Shodown thrown in for good measure. The difference here is that these characters are designed with a flair not usually seen in a "serious" fighter. Character artwork is fantastic and lends the game an incredibly manga feel without being too derivative. As with Samurai Shodown, most characters utilize a weapon of some sort, ranging from the usual Excalibur-type sword, to some futuristic-looking blades, to a sickle and chain. Some characters, however, fight with only their fists and/or hair. It's this sort of diversity that keeps Guilty Gear fresh and not too confined to one particular premise.

Gameplay is confined to the usual fireball motions, double air jumps, super moves (called chaos moves), and counters. The difference in Guilty Gear, as opposed to something like, say, King of Fighters, is that the GG fighters move with an ease that rivals even Capcom's elite, and in some cases, even surpasses them. It's surprisingly agile for a PlayStation fighter, and you'll find the control impeccable. In addition, you won't be hampered by choppy animation; instead, each character has a wealth of moves and supers, each rendered in stunning detail, which complements the pinpoint control. In fact, the PlayStation handles so many frames of animation, with very little slowdown (except when doing screen-filling chaos moves), you'll wonder how Arc Systems fit it all in the meager amount of RAM available - transparencies, multiple blue shadows, fast and fluid animation at little cost to the gameplay. The only noticeable defects in the presentation are a fairly high amount of pixelation in the super moves and very little background animation. Even so, you'd be hard-pressed to even notice, since everything moves so fast and furiously.

Sound-wise, heavy metal style is the order of the day - a choice that is a nice contrast to the techno-heavy soundtracks of games like Tekken 3 and the nondescript music that litters most of Capcom's fighters. It certainly adds an aggressive edge to the proceedings. Sound effects are extremely well done. On a good sound system, your house will quake each time a hit lands or two swords meet. The soundtrack and the crunchy sound effects combine to create a truly awesome sound experience. Thankfully, Atlus hasn't messed around with the voices as it had been contemplating. Everything has basically remained intact from the original Japanese version.

The downside to this great fighting game (especially when you consider how long Arc's been working on it) is the lack of options. OK, there's a training mode and an options screen, which lets you mess with things like match time, but there's little else. You can't set the number of rounds or adjust the difficulty, things that seem peculiar by their exclusion. Another problem with Guilty Gear, and it's not the only one, er, guilty of it, is the extremely cheap bosses. Anyone who's played a Fatal Fury or X-Men: Children of the Atom knows about cheap bosses. Same thing applies here. Fortunately, you can continue as much as you'd like and switch characters after each defeat, so you can find someone who'll get you past the last boss. Unfortunately, once you unlock the secret characters, you can only use them in vs. mode, which is a bummer since Baiken is such a cool boss. It's always better when you can use them in one-player mode.

To summarize the Guilty Gear experience is to look to the best parts of other four-star fighting games. Fast, furious action, with truly awesome characters and moves worthy of the Darkstalkers series, Guilty Gear is one of the few non-Capcom or SNK 2D fighters to make any sort of impact on the genre. If you like 2D fighters with a little flair, GG comes highly recommended. With its excellent gameplay, surprisingly good graphics, secret characters, and kick-ass aural experience, Guilty Gear (minus some spit and polish) is as good as it gets.

Six months after the original game hit the GameCube in the US, D3 and Tomy have cranked out Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2, and the experience is so similar that it barely feels like a different game. More of the same might sound good to fans of the first Clash of Ninja, but the new additions are insignificant and do little to address the game's lean feature set or lack of depth.

Clash of Ninja 2 assumes that you will already be familiar with the whimsical and ninja-filled world of Naruto, and the story mode makes little mention of Naruto's origin as a wicked nine-tailed fox demon. Instead, the streamlined story mode focuses on the events after Naruto and friends have graduated from the ninja academy, with their confrontation with Haku and Zabuza on the bridge and the trials of the Chunin Exam serving as a couple of the highlights. It's a longer story mode than what Clash of Ninja offered, and it also lets you play as characters other than Naruto, which is refreshing, but it's basically a string of fights with some still character shots and enthusiastic TV-anime-grade voice acting between fights to help move the story along. Still, it's probably where you'll spend a lot of your time, as the game doesn't have a whole lot else to offer. If you're on your own, you can play against the computer in standard one-off, survival, and time attack matches. There's also a training mode where you can beat up on a submissive sparring partner, but it focuses almost exclusively on executing combos and gives you little instruction on evading attacks or triggering special moves. Playing through the various single-player modes will earn you cash that you can spend at an in-game shop, which mostly stocks special scrolls that will increase the potency of your attacks and hobble your opponents. It's a decent, minor addition, but it's got an annoying quirk where you're automatically dumped back to the main menu after buying a single item, which makes multiple purchases a chore.

You can play against a friend, and new to Clash of Ninja 2 is the introduction of four-way fighting, which comes up a few times during the story mode. You can also get into a four-way brawl with computer-controlled opponents, live opponents, or a combination of the two in the multiplayer mode, where you can choose whether it's two-on-two, three-on-one, or a frenzied free-for-all. Taking on multiple enemies at once makes the game seem more like a beat-'em-up than a straight-up fighting game, and it definitely makes the game more hectic. It also muddles the action, as the controls aren't ideal for four-way fighting. They haven't been changed at all since Clash of Ninja, so the feature ends up feeling tacked on.

Basic attacks can be performed easily with the A and B buttons, and you're all but guaranteed some kind of multihit combo if you randomly tap on these buttons repeatedly. Blocking occurs automatically, so long as your character is not in motion. You can use the Y button to throw opponents, and the X button activates your character's unique special attack. Most of the characters have a unique feel to them, but the fundamental combat is so simple that you don't really need to alter your technique, which makes the expanded roster of Clash of Ninja 2 seem somewhat irrelevant. The action is flashy, with lots of ninja smoke, aerial attacks, flying shuriken, and absurd, over-the-top special moves, and the cel-shaded character models look solid and are animated with an appropriately exaggerated flair. However, the arenas are uniformly small and a bit sterile, and the number of moves each character has is so limited that it's not very satisfying to play. Some high-energy Japanese-themed background music helps give the action some urgency, but the game is also plagued by obnoxiously repetitive character-specific sound bites. Additionally, there are some clunky aspects left over from Clash of Ninja, most notably the frustratingly slow turnaround time for characters when they end up facing away from their opponents.

Clash of Ninja 2 is slightly more fleshed out than its predecessor, but the few updates and changes do little to negate the sensation of sameness that the game exudes. The eight returning characters have received no enhancements, and most of the arenas you'll fight in were featured in the first game. It ultimately makes this technically superior sequel harder to recommend than the original, especially when you consider the close proximity of the two releases.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Review

The versus series has always been about pure 2D insanity. Capcom's long-running line pits Street Fighter characters against all manner of fighters, including Marvel comic-book characters and other Capcom characters. But the over-the-top nature of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 makes the other versus games look subdued by comparison.

Capcom has shaken things up a bit with Marvel vs. Capcom 2. For starters, the six-button, three-strength system that has served all of the Street Fighter games for the last decade has been replaced with four buttons, with two punches and two kicks. The buttons that used to serve as fierce punch and roundhouse kicks are now used to call in your offscreen characters for helper attacks, which leads us to the other major change in MVC2 - you now select three characters instead of two. Also, your super combos can be linked together. If you pick the right three characters and link your supers together just right, you can get combos that range in the hundreds of hits. Beyond that, it's roughly the same collection of fighters from the first Marvel vs. Capcom with a few new characters, such as Cable, Jill Valentine, and Amingo thrown in, and some old characters, like Iceman, brought back from previous Marvel-licensed fighters. The gameplay is still very similar to that of the previous Marvel vs. Capcom, with a focus on screen-filling fireballs and ridiculous button-tapping air combos. Like its predecessor, it isn't the most balanced game in the world, but that doesn't keep it from being a great deal of fun.

To go with the updated gameplay, the graphical style of the game has been similarly updated. While the characters are still made up of 2D sprites, the backgrounds are pretty amazing 3D scenes, full of movement and vibrant color. The only real problem with the graphics is only noticeable if you're using a nice TV with an S-Video connection. The cleaner your connection, the more you'll notice how pasted-on the sprites look on the 3D backgrounds, and the characters are a little on the blocky and pixelated side, as well. Again, this isn't really detectable on most normal TV connections, so if your A/V equipment isn't terribly nice, it won't be a problem at all, except for the last form of the final boss, who looks blocky on just about any TV set.

The soundtrack is also worth mentioning. While the sound effects are of the same great quality that you've come to expect from Capcom's fighters, the music is anything but what you'd expect from a fighting game. While previous games have been accompanied by the typical style of rock and techno that make up most game soundtracks, MVC2 features a strange sort of jazzy lounge music. You'll either love it because it's so hilariously out of place or be annoyed to death by its happy, upbeat rhythms.

The Japanese version of MVC2 had an online feature, which let you battle against other players over a specialized network, and you could also hook up your VMU to the arcade version of the game. These options were used to earn points that could be used to unlock characters, stages, and new costume colors. Both of those options were removed from the US version of the game, and now there is only one type of point, and you earn points simply by playing the game in either arcade or versus mode. Aside from unlocking characters with points, you can also trade points with other players by hooking two VMUs together.

Fans of the off-kilter action found in the previous versus games will surely be pleased with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, as it represents the first major set of changes the series has ever seen. It's just a shame that the network battle from the Japanese version couldn't have been carried over to the US release, as online play would have really added a lot to the game's appeal.

Marvel Super Heroes Review

Marvel Super Heroes is a Street Fighter Alpha-style fighting game that features characters from the classic Marvel Comics lineup. Four characters (Psylocke, Wolverine, Juggernaut, and Magneto) return from Capcom's previous comic-based fighter, X-Men: Children of the Atom. New characters include Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, and more. It was an exciting arcade game, but the Saturn version falls a little flat by comparison.

The game differs from the pack via its inclusion of gems that litter the landscape. You can pick up the gems and use them on command, resulting in brief power-ups to the character's speed, power, life, etc. Other than that, it's just basic Street Fighter action, complete with fireballs, dragon punches, and the like. The arcade version was a great game and differed enough from the Street Fighter and X-Men games to be entertaining. The Saturn version has virtually the same gameplay.

Graphically, MSH looks all right. The characters and backgrounds are large and colorful. But the game also produces an awful lot of slowdown, even when using the Saturn's RAM cart, which adds in additional frames of animation via its increased storage capacity. Yes, you read that right, the Japanese RAM cart is compatible with the US version of MSH. The slowdown is even more apparent when picking larger characters such as Juggernaut and Blackheart. The music in MSH is fairly good, but the sound is really annoying: The speech is pretty garbled and the sound effects are very metallic sounding.

MSH Saturn is tolerable, but it lost the arcade game's soul in the translation. The constant loading and slowdown don't help much, either. While I found the arcade game a blast, this version just seemed dull and boring. Whether this can be attributed to the translation itself or the fact that several, mostly better, Capcom fighters have been released in arcades since Marvel, I don't know. Rent it first and see if it's your thing.