Madou King Granzort

~ GRANZORT ~

Hudson Soft

HuCard (SuperGrafx)

1990

Granzort is a little reminiscent of Blood Gear's sidescrolling segments, which isn't all that surprising considering that Red had a hand in both. That doesn't mean you should expect it to match BG as far as action and depth go, but it does boast a cool gameplay feature absent from its aRPG cousin: the availability of three playable characters, each with its own distinct techniques and weaponry, and each selectable on the fly.

There's the fearless RED robot, who fucks shit up with his earth-shaker ability and awesome energy-blade.

There's the slick GREEN robot, who utilizes his handy hover-skills to reach faraway platforms while slaying adversaries with a neat beam-bow.

And there's the rather wimpy BLUE robot, who wields a weak baton-like thing and cowers behind a defense barrier.

Switching at the right times will be necessary not only to destroy all of your enemies, of course, but also to make it through the vast, occasionally maze-like levels. Granzort isn't just about plodding along and smashing stuff. There's plenty of room for exploration here, and if you take the time to deviate from straight-ahead villain-crushing, you can find lots, and lots, and LOTS of extra lives.

Sadly, this brings us to a couple of gripes I imagine some people will have about the game. Aside from the occasional shield icon, there isn't really much to stumble upon while exploring except for the copious 1-ups. And once you collect dozens (literally) of those, the game might not feel very exciting or challenging. Boring background graphics in a number of stages won't help sustain interest.

Granzort gets off to a good start graphically with nice colors and parallax (though the bushes and ruins look paper-thin as they scroll by)...

...but later backdrops are drab. At least the action remains sweet.

Regardless of how they look, the levels are pretty fun to explore, though you can search high and low without finding anything besides unnecessary 1-ups.

A few good whacks to the head will take care of this guy in Stage 1...

...but he wisens up for the return bout.

The blue robot is, for the most part, a throwaway character, but his defense barrier is essential during certain boss fights.

Head shots are in order here.

The last beast isn't very mobile, but it creates other creatures who can cause a lot of trouble. Deal with them quickly if they're of the troublesome sort; but when a foe who doesn't do much materializes on the right side of the screen (like the red goober in the above shot), leave it alone and bust up the boss with ease.