Sunday vs. Magazine: Shuuketsu! Choujou Daikessen

Japan releases about 60,000 anime/manga fighting games a year. A majority of them do not even warrant a look. However, since Sunday x Magazine (aka Sunday VS Magazine) was a 50-year anniversary crossover of two prominent manga publishing venues, I thought I'd give it a try.

Truth be told, with very few exceptions, I haven't the foggiest idea who most of the characters in this game are. However, that doesn't take away any of the characters' appeal. Their personalities are conveyed well through pre-fight cinematics and their special moves.

Graphics are decent for a PSP game, especially given that it takes the route that most 2D fighters do these days and uses 3D graphics on a 2D plane. The stage backgrounds are especially phenomenal.

Sadly, the game falters in a very important area: gameplay. All of the characters are slow, and the button setup is pretty lame. Square is your basic attack, which actually is the least clunky attack. Combos can be set up with this attack, as can low attacks.

Triangle and Circle are your character's special attacks. These moves are always reasonably powerful, but their speed, priority, and accuracy are all B.S. Pressing the two buttons together creates a third special move. None of these moves can be modified by position, i.e. whilst ducking or in the air. Super Moves, performed by holding R and pressing either of these buttons, follow these same rules.

Sunday x Magazine has sort of a "striker" system, but it's laughable. Instead of a character actually appearing to perform an attack, their portrait simply flashes on the screen and the attack appears. While this gets the job done, it doesn't necessarily count as a striker, and takes away some of the uniqueness of the game.

The game's single player modes are actually somewhat decent, and make up for the lousy controls. Arcade mode is standard but fun, allowing a player to fight a number of opponents, and at the end, a random character in which to unlock. There's also a "Quest" beat-'em-up type mode, that is less fun but still serviceable. Once all of the characters are unlocked in the game, or a player makes it to the end of Quest Mode, he or she will face a character that is undoubtedly the most generic character ever - a boss actually named Boss. Obviously George of the Jungle is in charge of naming things over there, or maybe, since this is a Konami production, it was instead Hideo Kojima. Either way, it's lame.

Sunday x Magazine definitely is not the worst anime/manga fighting game, and if you're more familiar with the characters, you'll probably enjoy this a little more. But for the rest of us, it's not really worth importing.