Black Jack: Hi no Tori Hen

Overview

Black Jack: Hi no Tori Hen is a game developed and published by Sega for the Nintendo DS that is based on the surgical antics of Osamu Tezuka's manga antihero Black Jack. As Black Jack, players must save patients who are in various dire medical straits through the power of his unsurpassed surgical skills, represented in the gameplay as Elite Beat Agents-like timed markers. Although the story centers predominantly around Black Jack, characters from various other Tezuka series make cameo appearances, including the Black Jack-lookalike Midnight the taxi driver and Tezuka himself as a doctor.

Gameplay

When the player isn't viewing the cutscenes that set up the basic story premise for the surgical procedure to be performed in each chapter, the actual gameplay commences in a largely Elite Beat Agents-esque manner. As such, a timer in the upper-left corner of the screen counts signals when waves of markers are going to come. Once the markers appear on the screen, the player has a limited period of time to hit them, lest Black Jack makes a mistake in that part of the procedure. However, unlike Elite Beat Agents, markers cannot be simply tapped most of the time in order to win. Specific motions must be made based on the equipment that Black Jack utilizes for each phase of surgery, rendered conveniently in the form of arrows whose directions the player must trace. These can include shapes such as straight lines, circles, dots, and squiggly lines. All of this takes place while the story unfolds in real time on manga panels that occupy both screens on the DS. Additionally, though, another phase of gameplay can show up that is tailored to the specific patient that Black Jack is currently performing surgery on, such as tracing lines on a patient's face to do plastic surgery.