Intro
Kamek kind of reminds me of Slugworth from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If you are one of the five people who didn’t read the book or watch one of the two movie adaptations, Slugworth was a candymaker who infiltrated Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory to learn how to make candy like Wonka, and then would make it himself and make a huge profit, initially forcing Willy Wonka to shut down his factory until he figured out how to stop people from stealing his recipies. Now I’m not accusing Kamek of code thievery or making people quit Mugen, but the idea is the same: most of his stuff is just taking what people like and putting it into a character, and the average person loves it. In Reiko Hikari’s case, you take Tetsu Yatogi’s playing style and system, stir in some Warusaki3-style groove select, and finally add in a bunch of references to flash cartoons and other Mugen characters so that you have a mass of Kakuge Yaro template character that tries to do too much and comes out significantly less fun than any of the components used.
History Lesson
Before I begin the review, I think it’s important to discuss why anyone gives a rat’s ass about Kakuge Yaro today, and for that, I believe it’s because of XCB’s Tetsu Yatogi. For better or for worse, Tetsu Yatogi can be seen as one of the icons of Mugen gaming. With a movelist based on the popular Shoto playing style seen in Ryu/Ken/Akuma, its unorthodox game of origin, and heavy, heavy aesthetic appeal, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Tetsu Yatogi is one of the most frequently used character in Mugen (Randomselect Admin Kung_Fu_Man even pointed out that the majority of the bandwidth consumed by Randomselect comes from Tetsu downloads).
Now, just as a little background, the game Kakuge Yaro, where Tetsu originated from, is a Japanese 2D customizable fighter that looks like this:
Looks pretty shitty, huh? The gameplay isn’t much better, either. However, where it thrives is its ability to customize all characters in the game, right down to the palettes. Traditionally, this game has been pretty hard to find, passed around only between friends. Then suddenly, in what seemed to almost happen simultaneously, everything changed. A popular emulation site released an ISO of the game for public distribution, and a translation patch was soon to follow. Eventually some members of the community would make and distribute a Kakuge Yaro Artmoney table that made ripping from the game much easier. And suddenly, there was what can be described as a “boom” in Kakuge Yaro characters. Kung_Fu_Man’s gimmicky Hashimoto Yamazaki (you can call his not-jumping “out of the box,” I call it a gimmick), Rikard’s KOF/MvC Hybrid Nanashi Kimura, Kamek’s Reiko Hikari, and kamekaze’s Trusdale Brothers all came out in a short time following the release. Aside from kamekaze’s characters (and to a lesser extent, Hashimoto), all of them used the same fighting system seen in Tetsu, as well as his accompanying system graphics. But none of them borrowed as much from Tetsu as Reiko Hikari.
NOW FOR THE ACTUAL REIKO REVIEW
Firing up Reiko, you don’t sense anything wrong in the first place. Some of the sprites look a little iffy (the game’s fault, although it might’ve been nice if Kamek straightened these up a little), and listening to the voice is comparable to sewing your ear to the carpet (If Reiko is an EXTREMELY JAPANESE person, why does she speak English? With voices from Disgaea no less???), but there’s nothing totally wrong here. Yet. However, all one has to do is play with Reiko for a bit to realize blantant clashing sprite styles, the result of them being from totally different sources. For example, compare the Strong version of “What’s That?” to the EX version!
The one on the left came from Kakuge Yaro, while the other is of Kamek’s invention. Whatever happened to uniformity?! Now let’s look at all the “jokes” Kamek has tried to implement into this character. These next three shots all come from her Hyper Incoming super.
Ripped from Homestar Runner, “YOUR HEAD ASPLODE.” Remember Homestar Runner? Yeah, that cartoon was funny… like 3 years ago.
A 1-Up mushroom! Get it?! Yeah me neither.
This was funny when Most_Mysterious had this pic for his Alex’s Super KO a few years ago, with said creator singing “I Feel Good” A capella. Today, with that same pic, and that same voice clip, it feels little more than an attempt at getting people to laugh.
HERE’S A TANK LORRY! WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY GAMMA CRUSH etc etc. Also nice white edges on the UFO. This is one of Reiko’s ultimates, btw.
The mark of my dignity shall scar thy DNA. Oh geez.
If you haven’t come to the same conclusion I have so far, there is little sprite consistency anywhere, all covered up by really old attempts at humor. The end result just looks and feels really weird.
Gameplay
I apologize for the amount of graphics in the first part, so all other shots will be in links from now on.
First of all, let’s talk about the groove select. Kamek decided it was a cool idea to give Reiko selectable grooves. Five grooves, to be exact. However, careful playthrough reveals that pretty much the only noteworthy grooves here are C-Groove (the original format), and K-Groove (which makes it play in pseudo MvC style, like Kamek’s Sailor Jupiter, which I thought was decent). Both A-Groove and D-Groove are basically C-Groove in spirit, but A-Groove simply adds attack power as far as I can tell, and D removes parry and replaces it with more defensive maneuvers. X-Groove is pretty much useless, as it’s exactly like C-Groove (apparently, there were plans for it, but I’m not going to discuss this information here). While many people will say “It worked with Wausaki3, it works here,” this is probably because they haven’t played the other grooves and noticed how similar they all are, with only simple changes to attack parameters.
But with that out of the way, let’s move on to how Tetsu… errr, Reiko plays. Well actually, that’s a good point right there. Reiko has a fireball, a whirlwind kick, and a SHORYUKEN. Now I’ll be fair, the fireball doesn’t behave like Tetsu’s (it bounces on the ground)… until you play in the Sakura palette, which makes Reiko play exactly like Tetsu in terms of all three of those attacks, right down to the fireball sprites!
As far as the non-shoto inspired attacks go… damn, this character is really projectile heavy. Whether they sprout up from the ground like “What’s This,” or fall from the sky like “Incoming,” you have lots of distance projectile attacks. The only attack that’s not a projectile or based on Tetsu (I consider Dive Bomber to be like Tetsu’s diving kick special, or possibly like an attack seen in the unleaked version of Blaque) is Baserunner slide, which is actually pretty much the only instance of fresh, original idea in this character
Regarding supers, aside from the damage they deal, what really irks me is the commands. For two of the attacks, you have the directional command F, D, F, D. What the hell? There’s all sorts of good super commands that exist that are not being used here (HCB, F+Attack comes to mind), so what’s with this weird one?
Well I have really nothing else to say about gameplay. It’s just that it tries really hard to be Tetsu and then attempts to branch off into other ideas, but ultimately falters in presentation. If you want me to comment on the system, (and I know I’m going to get a lot of fire from Eli friends and fanboys here, but that’s okay because Eli partially agrees with me) it basically boils down to a lightshow with really stupid chainability. In the end, the strategy aspect goes right out the window, unless the strategy you’re focusing on is to get as many hits as you can. It’s not as free-styled as Melty Blood, but it can get out of hand.
OH WAIT I DO HAVE MORE. If you downloaded the Dark Reiko patch, which comes with two alternate Reiko’s, well, you get to see even more crappy attempts at humor. Dark Reiko has Proton Cannons and Shun Goku Satsu (wow what original jokes), and Really Dark Reiko is basically an answer to PotS’ Rare Akuma, made to be really cheap and nigh unbeatable. Honestly…
Conclusion
What’s a good way to end this review? Reiko is basically Kamek’s attempt at ripping people off in an attempt to make other people like his characters. It would be nice if Kamek actually played some more fighting games, learned about their styles, and ultimately tried to branch out on his own and make a unique character, but that doesn’t look like something he’s going to do.
Tally
Aesthetics: 7/10
Controls: 4/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Final Score: 5.6666666…/10
Final Thoughts
SUGOI
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