Today we are again going with a beat'em up and that is that in the industry you can find hundreds of games of this genre and although most of them are not so good and are quite generic, both in the playable aspect and in the graphic aspect, you can always find one that can surprise you. And that game that surprised me is the one I'll talk about next, which maybe in terms of plot is not innovative, but in terms of its graphic aspect it's quite outstanding.
Today's Retro Review is about: Battle Circuit.
As every good beat'em up we are again faced with a fairly simple argument, but, as I have said many times (and I will probably repeat it in some other reviews), the argument in this kind of games has never necessarily been important.
Anyway, in Battle Circuit we are many years in the future, in a future where space travel is something quite common, so we are in a year of high technological level and quickly know the protagonists, they are a rather strange and very colorful group of bounty hunters, they have the mission to recover a device that is in the hands of the typical villain of this type of games. This device has a program that has the power to control computer systems, so as good heroes and bounty hunters, our 5 protagonists are going to be ready to defeat all the henchmen of this villain and recover that device.
Battle Circuit is an extremely colorful game, its color palette is quite striking and not only in its characters, also the stage has a characteristic tone quite striking, but thanks to the excellent designs of the characters and the environment as such make a good visual combination.
Due to this type of tonality, Battle Circuit has certain aspects of comic or some cartoon, but also has many characteristics of Japanese anime. Actually this title is a quite strange mix of different genres and this can be seen not only in its graphic aspect or artistic style, but also in its playable mechanics, but I will talk about that later. The main characters have really good designs, they are the ones that logically stand out over the other designs and sprites, but even so the enemies and final bosses also have excellent designs and the variety of enemies we'll see is quite high, the truth is that this is one of the best beat'em up designs I know.
Its animations are fluid and very varied, and have a series of attack movements quite colorful that together with the effects such as explosions, shots or any attack that we make or perform our enemy makes it visually a feast of colors.
The scenarios are mostly quite good, are quite varied, having a lot of scenarios throughout this adventure, with good details both in the foreground, as in the background of the stage, as in many of them there are animations and although they are quite simple in most cases, add a level of visual depth quite good.
The Battle Circuit soundtrack is everything you'd expect from a game set many years in the future, and the developers of this game believed that in the future you'd hear a lot of electronic music and music made entirely by synthesizers, because in essence that's what we're going to find in this title. Although maybe in some years this kind of music will be back in fashion, but anyway, I must say that I really like this kind of music, I even have a Youtube playlist with music like this and in Battle Circuit it fits really well. The sound effects are good, they are not spectacular but they fulfill their main purpose.
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Battle Circuit as all beat'em up we must go through a lot of stages and go defeating every enemy that faces us, this we already know, this is a basic rule of the games of this genre and that worked for some time, since beat'em up was one of the most popular genres of video games, especially at the time when there were still arcade machines, which are now a memory of a golden age of video games and thanks to emulators today we can play those titles of yesteryear.
We can play with up to 4 friends at the same time, so the fun will never be lacking, although we can also play with a single character. But as I mentioned before, Battle Circuit is not only a rather strange but successful mix of graphic aspects and artistic styles, since in the playable aspect it also joins some other genres. Battle Circuit is not only a conventional beat'em up where we will be defeating enemies through the stages, but also throughout our adventure we will find platform sections, in which we must go up to reach a certain objective or defeat an enemy, also some minigames in the style of a shoot'em up, that is to say a game mode where we must go shooting the enemies.
As it is classic in a beat'em up we will have several characters to choose from, having this game 5 characters, quite strange, extravagant and with totally different skills from each other, they are:
Cyber Blue: This character has the ability to control electricity and a certain kind of energy.
Captain Silver: He has the ability to use ice, he can use ice as a weapon and he also has some elasticity.
Yellow Iris: She is the furry character of the team, she is a "tiger woman" and her skills are based on physical attacks. She is quite agile and fast.
Pink Ostrich: They're two characters, a girl called Pola on top of an ostrich (Pink Ostrich), yes, actually this is a rather strange combination, but this way of having two characters in one reminds me of Goah who had Gilius on his back, from the game Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder. Anyway, the skills of these two are based on attacks made from the air, plus it's the character that can reach higher altitude.
Alien Green: And finally we have the weirdest character I've seen in a beat'em up, because it's a plant of alien origin, it's a character whose attacks are purely physical and brutal.
Battle Circuit is a game that surprised me quite a bit because of its mix of different artistic styles and playable mechanics. Without a doubt, Capcom, the developer of this game, put a lot of effort into its creation and it's one of those games that little has been heard of, despite being a real gem.
