I'm going to come right and confess that I really don't know too much about Astro Boy, who is the protagonist of this game. I know he's one of the oldest and most popular anime characters in Japan, but aside from the fact that he was supposed to be a little boy and went around in shorts and no shirt, I really didn't have the foggiest notion of what the kid did.
Anyway, I guess as a partnership with Osamu Tezuka, Sega managed to license Astro Boy as well as the upcoming Blood Will Tell. Since this guy's pretty highly revered and Sega managed to pull Treasure into the creation of the game, that makes means there's a TON of star power packed into a little cartridge. At $30 I figured I could at least give it a whirl and tell the world if it's worth all the fuss.
Plot
You're Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom in Japan) a robot created by Dr. Boynton to fill the void that was left when his son Toby, perished in some tragic way. However, soon after his creation, Boynton realized that he would never be human like his son, and cast him off to an android battling carnival. Another doctor, Dr. Elefun found him at the carnival and decided to take him under his wing.
While Astro Boy lacks the ability to become a full human he does have a heart and lots of lines of code in his system that are dedicated to helping him feel a sense of justice. As such, he uses his 100,000 horsepower strength to defend the weak from all enemies, be they robotic, human, or alien.
The adventure in the game starts with Astro learning how to use his power and getting an explanation of his Omega Heart, and immediately having to save the lab assistant. After that, a whirlwind of assignments and battle face our scantily clad hero, who boldly confronts it all.
Gameplay
The directional pad moves Astro, and a double tap will make him dash. A jumps, and can be used to fire the jets multiple times if you've got high enough stats. B punches, while holding a direction and B shoots off Astro Boy's laser. L will shoot off Astro Boy's Ass Machine Gun, and R will unload his beam cannon. A and B together will execute Astro's EX Dash. All Astro's big attacks will draw a level of his super gauge, but since he gains that super power back for shooting the enemies with said super power, it's not like you're going to be conserving your super moves.
After finding a character who forms part of Astro's Omega Heart (I guess his interactions with people become coded into his thought processes and he gains personal definition of nebulous concepts such as evil, tenderness, justice, etc.) Astro will gain the ability to power up one of his stats; this is how he "levels" up.
The controls are fairly responsive, and making Astro invincible during his dash was a nice touch. All in all, this game "feels" pretty good to play, and everything starts coming to you pretty naturally after the first couple levels. Some levels will turn into flying stages that turn into a hybrid of Gradius (even with the Moai heads returning to action) and that old Avengers game where you'd be flying around and shooting with your fist extended.
Each stage is broken into sub-levels with the requisite boss fights. While some reviewers fell no remorse at calling these full levels, I think we're beyond the point in gaming where we call a minute and a half of gameplay a level. The game breaks them into 8 stages, and as far as I'm concerned that's how many there are in the game, not counting the special areas. While you do have to run through the first 7 stages a second time to unlock the 8th stage, out of the box, to the average gamer, that's what it's going to be...7 stages of gameplay, and 8 if the player wants to run through it twice.
Graphics
Aside from the really big versions of the enemies, the game looks pretty nice for a GBA game. The characters all look like they have a similar style to the was they were presented in Ozuka's anime, so if you like Astro Boy, you're going to be pretty giddy over this game's visuals. Visually speaking, the enemies could use just a bit more variety, but I don't know whether the developers were restricted to just going with baddies and minions from the series.
Audio
The audio's pretty decent. The music rapidly changes during story segments and levels to reflect the different ambiance, something a lot of GBA games don't bother to do. You either generally get one song for story, and one for battle stages, and sometimes in dramatic story segments, they mix it up and play the battle music during the story segment. This is not so in Astro Boy; the level I most recently played had 4 different sound changes on the way to the beginning of the level. If there's anything that kills GBA sound for me faster, it is repetitiveness, and thankfully, Astro Boy doesn't employ too much of it.
Gripes
The game definitely feels like it's trying to be artificially lengthened. Certain screens will just have different color enemies drop onto the player without the player advancing anywhere. After reading some other reviews that compared the Japanese version and the US version, it's easy to see why. There were some complaints about the game being too easy, and the lack of enemies in the game. Well, they're all over this version. When they're tired of sending normal sized guys after you they'll increase them to 300% of their size, or reduce them to 50% of their size and attack you that way. While the audio isn't redundant, the enemies are.
Aside from that, while the game isn't jaw-droppingly cool...it's more than enough to keep you playing.
Overall
I wholeheartedly recommend picking this up at $20, but at $30, it's a bit harder to justify. There's a lot of repetition in the levels, and the fact that Astro Boy's weaponry is for all intents and purposes unlimited, the game is a bit on the easy side. I guess this is supposed to make the gamer feel like going through it all a second time to unlock everything. Astro Boy is a solid, solid effort, and probably the best platformer on the GBA. If you're looking for a good platformer to take with you on the go, or you've just got a special place in your heart for robots kids who don't wear shirts, go ahead and pick this game up.
