Approximate Release Date: October 19, 1991
Genre: Fighting
Developer: Bandai
Publisher: Bandai
Ultraman: Towards the Future is the Super Nintendo’s first unredeemingly bad game.
Does Ultraman even have a following in the United States? I assumed this game was brought to the US to take advantage of the nascent Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers craze, but this game predates that phenomena by almost two years.
Ultraman: Towards the Future at least has some interesting ideas. The game is a one-on-one fighting game where the player, as Ultraman, has three minutes to defeat a monster. However, it’s not enough to merely deplete the monster’s health; you must use your strongest special attack to deal the killing blow. Otherwise, the monster’s health slowly regenerates.
Unfortunately, controlling Ultraman is unpleasant, to say the least. He’s slow, which makes actually hitting monsters way more difficult than it should. The controls are unresponsive. I found most success by pulling a Final Fight and just jump kicking the monsters over and over. Speaking of, jump is assigned to the X button. Wrap your mind around that one. And the reliance on the level 4 special attack to end the battles means you won’t use your special attacks at all. Why do anything which will prolong your suffering? And it takes forever to fill.
Whatever you do, don’t play Ultraman: Towards the Future. For every good idea it has, there are a dozen terrible ones. Avoid.
Tomorrow: Did you think SimCity needed more platforming? If so, you’re in luck with ActRaiser!
