I'm sick as hell today, but nothing stops Octurbo dammit. Thankfully I won't need much of my faculties to comment on today's game, though they certainly would've been useful to have while playing it. I hesitate to make another Volgarr comparison so soon after the last one (and I've yet to play it anyway, so there's a certain degree of "what the hell am I even talking about?" when bringing it up), but it's clear its format was based on more than just Rastan and Ghouls n' Ghosts - those games were popular enough at the time to see a lot of contemporary imitators, let alone homages like Volgarr decades later.
Legend of Hero Tonma is a brutally tough action platformer: the action part comes from the fact that you shoot a lot of things, sort of like that Genji Tsuushin Agedama we checked out a few months ago. It also looks to have been graphically inspired by Wonder Boy, since our hero can't be any older than eight. That little guy is just so darn cherubic, it's actually a little distressing to watch him die so many times. So let's just add Limbo to the big pile of games this reminds me of, why don't we?
You Know What We're Gonna Do? Tonma Party! Tonma! Tonma! Tonma!
Welcome to Legend of Hero Tonma! That's a great title screen, I'll give it that much.Everyone was super fond of this type of map screen back then, weren't they? I do like these though, as they give you some sort of idea distance-wise of how far you've come.Here's our chubby hero Tonma. Look at that little guy. I can't say I'm particularly intimidated, but maybe it'll be a different case for the hordes of skeletal horrors that await?"Maybe if I don't say anything, they'll just walk on by." I'm going to get killed so many times, aren't I? (That was a rhetorical question, but the answer's still "yes".)Tonma attacks with his magic, or innate qi, or something. He shoots magical flying bullets everywhere. It's the old shoot 'em up paradox where in order to make the game easier on yourself, you have to master it and stay alive long enough to pick up enough power-ups that you're shooting death blossoms and nukes everywhere you go.I love these little jiang shi guys. This game is incongruously cute for how challenging it is.After a few upgrades, I'm now spitting a wave weapon (the yellow fireballs) with extra homing missiles (the red fireballs). I barely have to lift a finger to murder everything now. Did I say this game was tough? Pfah, I say.Well this is ominous. Did I reach the Tomb of Giants?Oh fuck, I did. Here's the first boss, which I've cleverly dubbed "Giant Skeleton". Guy just swings his sword around and fires the occasional homing fireball. The challenge is just trying to keep out of his reach, since he moves so slowly and telegraphs everything that it's really your own dumb fault if he manages to catch you. He caught me. A lot.The other problem is that he takes a lot of punishment. Considering I had the ordinance of two and a half Vic Vipers coming into this fight, it stands to reason that the bosses take more than a few shots before they go down. No "three hits and you're out" Mario logic here.I don't know who is saying this. The end boss? Tonma's mom? I'm guessing whoever it is is a time traveler, because that is some crazy verb tense disagreement. These bazooka-sporting samurai seem to be equally put out by that bad Engrish, as they introduce the second stage with a barrage of shells. This stage is goddamn hellish because there's no way of seeing what's above your head before you jump up. I might've been killed by the skull dude, the bazooka samurai, those rolling barrels or some sort of sudden aneurysm; it's all kind of academic at this point. All I can hope is that the cape I left behind blinds this guy long enough for him to stumble off the cliff. Vengeance must be mine! No matter how petty and inconsequential!Once again, I've managed to stay alive long enough despite the vast number of dangerous objects dropping on my chubby little noggin, and now I'm dropping bombs and have this forcefield dealie. This is a really strange game.This boss fight begins with a bunch of ominous looking mystical energy falling into this evil-looking tree. I think you know what's coming next.That's right, a segmented Chinese dragon right out of Syvalion. Wearing our Ghosts and Goblins inspiration on our sleeves, are we Tonma?Despite the fact that he speeds up his erratic movements whenever he gets hit (and you have to hit these guys a lot, don't forget), I didn't have any trouble whatsoever with this guy. Figures I'd die over and over to the rigor mortis-inflicted corpse yet kill a dragon in one try.Anyway, the game just keeps going on like this so I'm cutting it off here. I feel like this crepuscular gradient fill could've been better though. Shadow of the Beast this ain't.
Legend of Hero Tonma is actually pretty good, were one to compare it to games like Ghouls n' Ghosts and the like. Tonma himself can only take a single hit before vaporizing (which, for me, once again calls into question his 'hero' status), so it's once again another case of a game rewarding patience and cautious progress over jumping right into precarious scenarios like Mario or Sonic and getting your dimpled ass handed to you over and over. Of course, once you have enough shmup power-ups to level shit before it even appears on the screen you're pretty much golden from then on out, barring an unpreparable vertical section or two.
Of course, it's nothing to write home about graphically or musically, so maybe it doesn't deserve to be placed in the pantheon of greats. S'okay though. Yeah, I know, super committal appraisal but hey, I'm sick. What do you want from me? Phlegm? Because I got that coming out of my [edited by moderator for being too gross].
