Streets of Rage, Golden Ax, Alien Storm... ¿What do those names sound like to you? Two decades ago, Sega was one of the most outspoken companies in creating good beat ‘em up, and the best proof is that most of them are still remembered and replayed by many of their fans today. Unfortunately, this is not the case in today's game, or at least not to the same extent as the ones I just named back there. Launched quite late in Mega Drive's life, so much so that the 32-bit generation had already started, Comix Zone tiptoed through an industry that was already thinking about jumping into three dimensions.
Before entering the subject I must admit that as a child I was not too involved in these games of "me against the neighborhood", especially since some of the most popular were limited to that idea and were not too surprising once you had a few at your back. Although always fun to catch some time and play doubles, over time I ended up focusing on other genres and I missed the opportunity to try some of them. But it was not what happened with Comix Zone.
It could be said that playably he did not invent anything, nor perhaps he did things better than most of his peers. A couple of buttons were enough to comfortably fight against the enemies that came our way, but although their control was comfortable and precise, the great claim to hook us to the game was its masterful staging: Comix Zone changed the typical streets full of crooks for the leaves of a comic that came to life and trapped its own cartoonist inside.
This particularity was far from being a simple narrative resource and completely conditioned the artistic direction, with a more than convincing aspect of handmade drawing and a multitude of small details that served to sell the idea that we were really involved in a paper comic . Both our protagonist and the enemies spoke by the elbows using the typical speech bubbles from the comics, and the latter were often drawn in front of our noses by the hand of the villain who had managed to get out and now wanted to finish us off.
Although the best part without a doubt was the segmentation by bullets. The levels were no longer a continuous scene in which the camera advanced or stopped if it wanted us to beat a number of opponents before continuing: they were now divided into a handful of squares well delimited by white margins. Following the natural reading order, we always started in the upper left corner and our objective was to progress downwards, to reach the lower right and thus be able to go to the next page.
This approach allowed to radically change the backgrounds of the stage every few meters, add ingenious dimensions to give a little more context, and even easily implement alternative paths. After defeating all the enemies or solving some very simple puzzle (activate levers, push boxes and little else), one or two large yellow arrows appeared on the margins of the bullet to indicate that we could jump to the next one there. Considering that all pages had a fork at some point, replay was mandatory if we wanted to see the entire comic.
Apart from this very original structure, Comix Zone also displayed other interesting ideas, such as the possibility of breaking some of the margins (although few) with fists or the use of the protagonist's pet rat to discover items hidden under the paper. These objects, of a single use except for the rat itself, could go from throwing knives to potions that regenerated our health, passing through the always dangerous dynamite. For the most part they were used to help us in combat, although in some cases they also provided us with an easier means of getting rid of obstacles without losing life (hitting closed iron doors, for example, hurt us).
Of course it is also true that even a good use of objects did not prevent the Comix Zone from being a blatantly difficult game. In addition to the absence of cooperative mode, which used to be one of the biggest draws of this class of titles, its excessive challenge could play against it. With no lives to use or checkpoints, emptying the life bar or falling off a cliff was like restarting the page from above. Although the battles individually were not too demanding except for one boss, it was difficult not to end up dying in the long run due to accumulation of damage. Situation made worse by discovering that starting a new page did not always mean automatically filling life.
But despite certain peaks of difficulty more typical of the 8-bit generation than the 16-generation, and a somewhat short duration, Comix Zone is still a highly recommended experience for fans of the genre looking for some style without it having to give up the substance. There is room for frustration, but also for a very personal design, a certain dose of sense of humor and some battles that as a rule allow themselves to be controlled by all the good that the beat ‘em up accustomed us to at that time.
So it seems to me a real shame that it did not enjoy enough popularity for Sega to dare to revisit the concept and expand it in subsequent installments. If this is the result they got from the first try on Mega Drive, one can't help but wonder what a Comix Zone 2 created for Saturn, Dreamcast or even some of today's platforms would have been like. But hey, it is of little use to regret that now. The important thing is that at least the original did come to fruition and all those who missed it at the time are still in time to discover it.
