Several months have passed since the last time I played a game of the classic 1vs1 fighting genre, the last game of this style was The Last Blade, which to date is one of my favorites, especially for its aesthetics, since being a game under the SNK label, it's not surprising that this title had a totally spectacular graphic aspect, character design and settings. So after so many months I wanted to play another game of this genre and while I was searching, I found one which visually called my attention, due to its very bright color palette and anime aesthetics. This game in spite of not being developed by SNK, was released for the NEO-GEO arcades, so in some way it has the seal of quality of SNK.
Today's Retro Review is about: Waku Waku 7.
We have to be honest, the story in a fighting game is quite irrelevant in 99% of the cases, maybe in the games where the story really matters is Mortal Kombat and Tekken, but the rest of the other titles are quite expendable, however, the story of Waku Waku 7 turns out to be a little more interesting compared to other games of the same genre, although I think not many people pay attention to this aspect, because everyone wants to go and fight from the beginning to the end. Waku Waku 7 presents us with 7 spheres with great magical power, which are scattered around the world, these spheres, when all come together, will give their bearer an immeasurable power. These 7 spheres were found by the 7 characters of this game, obtaining each one of them a sphere, so now they must fight so that only one of them can obtain and reunite them all. In an argument that clearly parodies/homages Dragon Ball, besides its characters pay tribute or in the same way, they parody characters from the anime and other fighting games. A simple and direct story to justify the fights that are going to happen in this game.
The graphic aspect was what caught my attention for this game, since at first I thought it was a game of the adventure genre or an RPG due to its very bright color palette and bright colors, and I think there are very few games of the fighting genre that have this style. It even looks like a children's game, but I don't say this to take away the merits in its graphic aspect, it's quite the opposite, since I like very much how this game looks, besides having an anime style that is very well achieved.
The characters have very good designs, original and varied, their sprites are great so they look with enough definition and detail, besides presenting a set of movements quite varied and fluid, something that is very necessary in a fighting game. Waku Waku 7 is a game that also handles a certain level of humor and this can be seen in the form of interaction of the characters, movements and animations that can be made in the fights or in certain moments of the story that add value to the graphic aspect.
The scenarios also maintain the level with respect to the characters, since they present extremely incredible and well-drawn levels of detail. There is a lot of detail in each scenario (in some more than others) but in general terms, I don't remember seeing a scenario that I didn't like because it was too simple or too flat, since the background of these scenarios has a certain depth and also presents animations and light effects that make them look pretty good on screen. With a very anime style and highly brilliant coloring and with striking color tones, Waku Waku 7 is one of the unique fighting games in its genre due to its graphic aspect. Which due to this aspect I place it in second position of my personal top, (that little by little, since I am not a person who plays a lot of fighting genre titles), of favorite fighting games.
The sound section of this game is another wonder, the tunes of this game fit very well with all the theme and style anime that overflows in every pixel of this title. There is a list of quite varied melodies in this game, different musical genres and even some songs sung. The sound effects sound blunt, just the right thing for a fighting game. In addition, I think that the voices of the characters is the other of the best parts of this game, because besides forming much more the personality and charisma of each character, the voice performance, fits very well with the design and what you want to convey the characters in certain situations of the game.
Video Author
Waku Waku 7 is a 1vs1 fighting game like any other, with the most simple and intuitive mechanics of the games of this genre, so even for a person like me, who is not an expert in the games of this style, it was quite easy for me to learn to control certain characters. Since as usual, each of the characters that Waku Waku 7 has at our disposal have their own fighting styles, combos and statistics, so we can choose the character that best suits our skills or demands, however, something that I didn't like so much about this game is that it has very few playable characters, since we mainly have the top 7, but then we have two final bosses, of which we will integrate into our list of playable characters, having a total of 9 fighters, although I would have liked them to add more characters to the list.
As I mentioned before, Waku Waku 7 has 7 main characters, each of which presents a very different type of fight from each other, as well as its own story within the game. And they are:
- Rai
- Arina
- Marurun
- Polizank-Z
- Dandy-J
- Tesse
- Slash
And once we have defeated all the other characters, we will have to face two bosses.
- Bonus-Kun: It's a living punching bag that, as a curiosity, can perform the same attacks as Ken, from the Street Fighter saga. Without a doubt, it's a rather strange but funny parody.
- Fernandez: This would be the main one and the last one final boss, which is released once we've gathered the 7 spheres and which we must defeat in order to use the power of the spheres.
Waku Waku 7 is undoubtedly a quite original fighting game like few others in terms of graphics, with a very anime visual style and a very bright and striking color palette, besides having a repertoire of characters with quite good and comical designs, as it is a game that handles a certain level of comedy, making it one of my favorite fighting games, and I know that I still have many games of this genre to try, but for now I place Waku Waku 7 in the top 2 of my list of fighting games.