Bravoman

~ BRAVOMAN ~

Namco / NEC

HuCard

1990

Upon giving Bravoman a few quick tries years ago, I decided that it was a goofy-but-enjoyable romp undeserving of its bad reputation. Having actually experienced the adventure in full at this point, I now know better, and I wonder what the hell I was thinking in the first place. This is awful stuff.

Most of the enjoyment to be had here comes from beating up on Bravo's allies and reading the resulting talk-bubble bits:

And then there are the bosses' scary threats:

The one technical merit the game has going for it is parallax scrolling. Sadly, the same few backgrounds are employed ad nauseam as you "stretch fight" your way through a ridiculously high number of stages. The enemy sprites are dirty, ugly, and oddly diminutive. Bravoman comes off as one stinker of a "superhero" as he bullies around tiny tanks, dwarfish ninjas, and other such munchkins who stand barely one-half his height.

Not content with mere multi-scrolling backgrounds as their trump card, the Bravoman design team tried to go the extra mile by tossing sidescrolling shooter levels into the mix. Unfortunately, Bravo's hitbox is huge, the controls feel clunky, and all of the strips look the same.

In fact, repetition is what ultimately deals the deathblow to Bravoman. It may seem like an acceptable game early on because of the amusing cheesiness and the parallax-graced backdrops, but eventually the experience becomes sickening as one continually comes across redundant background visuals and enemy sprites and endures the hero's infamous, irrepressible shouts of "Bravo!" And as all of that recycling occurs, the bosses become more aggressive and the stages themselves become more maze like and restrictive, making the inadequacy of the controls not only evident but unforgivable.