Legend of Success Joe Longplay (Neo Geo) [QHD]
Game Info
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Developer: Wave Corp
Publisher: SNK
Year of Release: 1991
Game Review & Impressions
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Fighting games, particularly those involving boxing matches, aren't exactly renowned for their storytelling. Most examples use some kind of MacGuffin as the basis for knocking out a bunch of bad dudes, but look below the surface and you'll discover there's more to Legend of Success Joe than meets the eye.
The curious art style is what drew me to this game initially, but it wasn't until after I did some research that I discovered the game is based on Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow's Joe), a Japanese manga which ran between 1968 and 1973. It's also not the first game to be based on the comic, with at least a couple of entries predating this.
The story arc involves Joe Yabuki, a young drifter who, after finding himself incarcerated for fraud, trains to become a boxer while serving time in a juvenile detention centre. The full plot is too involved to cover here, but events in the game tie in quite closely to events in the comic, including the climactic fight against reigning bantam weight world champion, José Mendoza.
Each chapter is divided into two fight sequences. The first of each focuses on Joe's life outside the ring, getting into scuffles with rivals, gang members and other unsavoury characters where Queensbury rules don't apply. Defeating these adversaries unlocks the next formal boxing match, with Joe putting up his dukes against a trained opponent.
The fighting mechanics and general play style is similar in style to Taito's Final Blow. Various punches can be thrown through a combination of directional input and button presses, including jabs, body blows, uppercuts and crosses. You'll also need to guard against incoming punches, and timing your defence and eventual counterattacks play out rather like Punch-Out. Knocking your opponent out will result in a cool action replay sequence, with the knockout blown up on the giant display screen behind the ring.
Having played through the game, it's not really the most thrilling of fighting games. The treacle-like speed at which Joe and opponents shuffle toward each other kills the pace somewhat, and I think it would have been far more satisfying if you could chain combinations together, rather than the staccato combat we have here.
In the game's favour, the street and ring-level fighting, mixed with story elements isn't something I've seen before in an arcade game, and the graphical style is certainly unique. Nods to the actual manga are a neat touch, particularly the way Mendoza's hair turns white toward the end of his fight with Joe. I'd initially dismissed this as a glitch, but having read up on the series in more detail, the fight with Joe in the actual comic is supposedly so draining that Mendoza appears to age by several decades by the battle's end.
For those unfamiliar with the manga original, Legend of Success Joe is really an average fighting game with what appears to be smattering of story elements that don't make a whole lot of sense. Fortunately, being able to conduct some research into the game's origins online means that, should you decide to play it for yourself, you can appreciate some of the subtler details that would otherwise be lost on a Western audience.
Chapters
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00:00 Attract mode
01:00 Stage 1
02:20 Stage 2
03:43 Stage 3
05:16 Stage 4
06:41 Stage 5
07:54 Stage 6
09:27 Stage 7
10:40 Stage 8
12:35 Stage 9
14:00 Stage 10
15:19 Ending
#retrogaming #neogeo #longplay
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