Game Review: Cyber Citizen Shockman 2: A New Menace

By Al

Players: 1-2
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Cyber Citizen Shockman 2: A New Menace, is a new release of a TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine game that originally released in Japan in 1991, and 1992 in the US as simply Shockman. This over 30 year old action platformer was originally developed by Winds, and this new version is a Nintendo Switch exclusive that comes to us by way of publisher Shinyuden. Seeing as the TurboGrafx-16 wasn't exactly the most played console in the US, this is probably a title that few gamers are familiar with. Is this a gaming hidden gem? Or is it a game that is better left to the mists of time? Well, we're going to take a look at it and answer those questions!

This was such a cool opening... sorta...

She's not like other girls.

Shockman 2 (Its full title is too much of a mouthful!) takes place some time after the first Shockman game. Despite the name, there are two Shock....people, Tasuke and Kyapiko. Tasuke is now working at a restaurant, and Kyapiko is a student. They both want to go back to their normal human lives, but they apparently are still armed as the titular characters by their possible creator, The Professor. I say possible creator because I'm actually not sure what his role is in their current existence. Anyhow, this Professor promised to return them to their normal human forms, but has been giving them the runaround. Just as they are asking for the perhaps hundredth time, they are attacked by robots and witness a news report that states that the Ryo Empire has begun their invasion of Earth. The Professor is summarily kidnapped, and the rescue mission Shockman embarks on turns out to be a big trap. Here Shockman learns about two "Shade" Shockmans (Or is it Shockmen? The game is inconsistent with plurals.), whose sole reason for existence is to destroy their non-evil counterparts. This turns into a showdown between all the characters as you'd expect, and The Professor is still around to commit questionable (and downright confusing) actions at times. I actually wish there was more to the story to tell, but it's all rather thin and told through cutscenes that can be hard to read through since they scroll automatically at a fairly fast pace. This version of the game features two different English translations that have different names and story elements, so I'm sure I'll be shifting back and forth between them here and there. The story isn't exactly Shakespeare though, so we can probably ignore most of it and just focus on the gameplay. I guess I'll take my own advice and just go on with the rest of the review!

Pick either one since they're both the same.

This first boss was questionable.

Shockman 2 plays a lot like Mega Man 4; if the game was one linear set of levels, and there was no weapon stealing mechanic. Okay, it's basically nothing like Mega Man 4, but you can charge up your main gun in a similar fashion. Shockman 2 has two buttons, one for jumping and one for shooting. Unlike Mega Man, Shockman shoot while ducking as well as upwards. Your main attack is rather weak though, and the enemies always seem to take far more hits to take out than you'd think they should. You're given the choice of the aforementioned two ShockPeople, but they're pretty much exactly the same. They not only play identically, but they also have the same cutscenes and dialogue. The only difference is aesthetics, but there's some bits that make it feel like the second character was only an afterthought. For example, even if you beat the game solely as Kyapiko you'll be shown a cutscene that shows her at home and Tasuke making the final victory lap. I guess this isn't too surprising since the dual characters exist more for the multiplayer, but don't expect an X/Zero dynamic here.

This is an action platformer, so there's not a lot of surprises here as far as gameplay goes. Your goal is to reach the end of every stage, maybe take out a boss or two along the way, and eventually taking the fight to the Emperor of the Ryo Empire himself. Most enemies, and several bosses, seem resistant to your standard gun, so it's best to always have a charged shot ready to go. These charge shots are not only more powerful, but they also go through whatever enemy they hit and damage/kill others as they leave the screen. While most levels are the standard left-to-right action you'd expect, some levels move right-to-left, some autoscroll, and there are even three horizontal shooting stages that help break up the monotony a bit. You have a rather generous life bar, but if you find yourself low on life, you can sometimes come across enemies that drop a drink item that can refill it. If you die you can continue, and I don't think there's any limit in doing so. There are a few instant death spots, but most of the time you'll only take damage. Fall into lava? Just some damage. Crash into barricades that literally form an impenetrable wall around you? Just a bit of damage. Since this is a modern release of a classic game, you can also take advantage of save states and rewinds to keep you from ever having to see that dreaded Game Over screen.

Multiplayer is a thing!

The big bads unite!

Enemies come at you in various ways, but thankfully aren't infinitely spawning. There is knockback, but it's often more annoying than anything else as it rarely leads to instant death. Actually, there's knockback only some of the time, as you'll often take damage but be able to just keep moving along. This actually leads me to my biggest issue with the game: collision detection. Several times I'd think I was taking a hit from something, only to see myself come out unscathed right after. Other times I'd think that same thing happened, only this time I'd take damage, even though I was not knocked back at all from the attack. Further still I'd think that some attacks simply didn't knock you back since I'd experienced them hurting me but not moving me several times before,  only to get knocked back out of nowhere the next time I was hit by the same thing. This wildly inconsistent hit detection goes for your attacks too. Many times you'll be striking a boss and have no idea if you're actually hitting them if not for their health bar. There are even a few mid-stage bosses that don't use that bar where you're basically just guessing if you're doing any damage. Other times it'll look like my attacks aren't hitting, only for the enemy to die or the boss' health bar to deplete. It's kind of nice that the crap collision detection works both ways, but I'd much rather the game simply worked as you'd think it should. Add in the fact that most attacks don't have any sort of sound effect indicating that they've hit, and you have a recipe for frustration and confusion. I wouldn't say that this makes the game particularly hard, but it did make it feel extremely unpolished, and honestly just bad in general.

Since this is a retro game from the early '90s I bet you'd assume that it's far harder than it has any right to be. This can be the case in some sections, but I was pleased to find the game fairly easy overall. I don't want to make it sound like it's a cake walk, but I eventually got used to the game just because everything happens in a set order. This means that you can avoid most things on future playthroughs by way of simple memorization. That said, I was surprised that the very first enemies in the game very nearly kill you. I have no idea if there is a way to take on the construction robots that interrupt the intro cutscene without taking damage, but if there is it wasn't something that I ever figured out. Then the first stage's boss is one of the few that you have to fight in an area that is not only scrolling, but also has instant death pits. I wouldn't call the first level hard by any means, but it is strange that the game seems to have off-loaded a lot of its beginner's trap nonsense here. Of course you have the already discussed save states and rewind, but I should also mention that you also have cheats that you can turn on and off via the in-game menu. These can make bosses weaker, Shockman stronger, and also refill your life bar with a button press. I'd be lying if I said I didn't use these from time to time, but you can ignore these altogether if that's how you want to play. I did find it rather cool that you can turn these on and off at will, meaning that you can use them just to pass a brief hard section before going back to playing the game as intended.

Why does there always have to be a Sewer Level?

Some elevator action,

If a single player action platformer isn't your cup of tea, there are some elements that make Shockman 2 unique. First off there's the three shooter levels. These actually are pretty different from each other too as they have different locations for the levels themselves. One is in the sea, one is in the sky, and the last one is in space. These aren't the best shooter levels I ever played, but they were fun for what they were. There's also a multiplayer mode which actually surprised me because both players play simultaneously. I was expecting a multiplayer mode similar to the original Super Mario Bros. game where each character takes on the levels one at a time. Here both players are able to attack and make their way through the levels together, but they share a single life bar. While it is possible to pull off a special team move, and you can also cover more ground with two people taking out enemies instead of one, that single life bar means that this mode is quite a bit more difficulty than playing solo. I did play the entire game through with a friend, but we were only able to get through many of the tougher sections by using the in-game cheat system. Also, while I'm on the topic of multiple playthroughs, this version of Shockman 2 has three versions of the game. The original TurboGrafx-16 US release, the even more original Japanese release, and a new version that features a redone translation. The new 2023 version is probably the one that's best to play, but it's fun seeing the old localization oddities present in the OG US version.

I don't know what's happening here either...

This was an odd boss, one of the hardest.

I went back and forth many times thinking about what I'd say about the graphics, and I'm still not sure how I feel about them. Some of the monster designs are good, and I actually really like the designs of all the main characters. Then I noticed that the Shockman Shades are the same sprites of the main characters, without even having something as simple as a palette swap to tell them apart, and I started to look more closely at everything else. It honestly feels like several different people worked on the designs here, and that none of them ever checked in with each other. Some bosses and enemies are generic machines, some look like they're straight out of an H.R. Giger artbook, some look like gory mounds of flesh and wires, and others look like they were lifted from a Mega Man game, cheerful happy robot face and all. Add to this the fact that everything outside of the brief intro looks fairly uninspired, and you'll probably start to see what I mean. Also, and I guess this is just a quirk of whatever form of emulation they're using, there are several graphical glitches that seem unique to all three versions of the game. None of them are too distracting, but I'm sure that the Switch should be more than capable of running these games without the glitches. I don't want to make it sound like this is an ugly game, but it's definitely aged rather poorly, and probably wasn't too awe inspiring even in its original release. About the only good thing I can say is that the included bonus art, menu screens, and manuals look pretty cool. Also, I think the sprite animation is a bit more interesting than the sprites themselves. You truly get that 80s/early 90s anime feel here. Too bad this didn't come out a few years later to take advantage of early CD technology.

It's the big bad himself!

Some of the bosses are very easy.

Shockman 2 starts with a really cool intro, full of upbeat music that then switches to what I can only assume is the Shockman theme after you take out the first few enemies. The logo is shown, Shockman strikes a pose, and it almost feels like an anime opening. Then it just cuts off randomly. It does this in all the versions of the game, and it really struck me as odd. It was almost like they didn't know what to do with that scene, so they just killed it. That was my first experience with the game's music, and it pretty much would never get better after that. There's so much missed potential here, as just about every song that I found myself liking would have some part of it that made me immediately rethink my taste in music. Add in the fact that some of the tracks are just downright bad, such as the Sewer Level theme, and I was ready to just say that the music here is generally not good. The boss themes bring things up a bit, and the ending theme made me forget most of the negatives, but most of the music came off as generic at best, and poorly written at worst.

Elsewhere, to go along with the horrible collision detection, a lot of actions just had no sound effects attached to them. As a matter of fact I was making a joke to a friend who I was playing the multiplayer with that we could make a drinking game out of how many hits or enemy attacks had no sound at all. Then we realized we'd be dead drunk before we even hit the first side-scrolling shooter stage, so we decided against it. Noting the lack of sound effects is kind of becoming my calling card in reviews, but even one not so aware of such things would find it hard to miss how much of Shockman 2 is just oddly silent. Well, silent beyond the fairly mid music, but you know what I mean. Lastly, the game credits people for portraying Tasuke and Kyapiko (or Arnold and Sonya in the original English version), and this made me think that I had somehow missed some voiced dialogue. Since I noticed this on my first playthrough, I paid more attention to it on my next three, but never noticed anything even resembling a voice. I'm still not sure what this credit is for, but I'm confident in saying that there's no voice acting here. Not that I'd think it would be any better than what we got elsewhere in the sound department.

Tell me this doesn't look like Mega Man.

Those shoulder pads look like Robocop.

Controls are also a mixed bag, but for somewhat different reasons than everything else I talked about already. They're honestly not that bad, I kept wanting for the characters to have better jumps, or even a slide, but there was nothing at all unresponsive about the controls. I even kind of liked how tight everything was since it allowed me to plow through the game if the collision detection RNG gods were in my favor. I guess this comes from the simplistic two-button set-up, but I'm not going to complain about it. I did find myself wanting for a turbo button, but I realized that you could map one to any button you wanted in the options menu. I only noticed this when I was changing the game modes to try out the other versions, and I couldn't help but wonder why it wasn't on by default. Other than that everything works splendidly. I did find myself wishing that the system menu could've been assigned a dedicated button since most of the controller went unused, but this is also a small nitpick. Basically the controls fared better than most else in the game, though the bar has been lowered quite a bit at this point.

There's a decent amount of replayability here if you want to try out all the different game versions, maybe play with a cheat or two turned on, or even try your hand at the multiplayer, but it's all still the same core, relatively short, experience. You can beat the entire game in under an hour, and there's really no reason to go back to it beyond what I've already mentioned. The bonus materials are interesting though, and provide a nice diversion, but I'd be lying if I said I see myself picking this one up regularly in the future. Its one saving grace comes by way of its price. At just $5.99, this feels like the perfect casual buy for those looking to try out a game that most probably have never played before, despite it having a US release decades ago. If you can pick it up on sale, all the better, but I will admit that this game is a great value when you look at what you get.

Some cool bonus features.

Let's take the fight to the Emperor!

I have strong mixed feeling on Shockman 2. It's really not a good game, but it's also not a bad one. It has an anime art style, has an interesting pedigree that will probably make retro gamers curious, and is definitely a definitive version of the game if that's what you're looking for. Do I think it's worth picking up though? Well, that's a loaded question... This is the kind of game that reminds everyone that not every old game is a classic waiting to be uncovered. Some are forgotten for a reason. That said, if you're a fan of the TurboGrafx-16, anime-styled action games, or perhaps classic Mega Man in general, this one is probably worth picking up for the low price alone. If you're a casual gamer, even one that's usually intro retro classics, you might want to give pause before picking this one up, or maybe consider skipping it altogether. I will say though, playing it does make me wonder what the other games in the series are like, and I wonder if we'll ever see real closure to this series one day. Stranger things have happened...

Check Out Cyber Citizen Shockman 2: A New Menace on The Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cyber-citizen-shockman-2-a-new-menace-switch/

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Story: B
Gameplay: C
Graphics: C
Music/Sound: C
Value: B+

Overall: C

Pros:
+ The definitive version of a long-forgotten TurboGrafx-16 game that runs very well on the Nintendo Switch.
+ Contains both the US and Japanese versions of the game, and even a modern retranslation, all in one package.
+ The opening scene, ending, and character animations make this feel like a lost 80s/early 90s anime in video game form.
+ There's some cool art, manuals, and other extras included for both versions of the game.
+ Lots of customization options, including cheats, make this one very accessible for gamers of all skill levels.

+/- Was anyone truly clamoring for the Shockman series to return?

Cons:
- Hit detection is all over the place, and sometimes you'll be taking damage from attacks that your character doesn't seem to react to.
- The music is very hit and miss, and the game seems to be missing countless sound effects which make the game feel rather hollow sound design-wise.
- Character and enemy designs are all over the place and run the gamut from grotesque cyber aliens, to sprites that feel lifted from Mega Man.
- While the shooter levels offer a cool break from the gameplay, they also feel born of the game's overall disjointed nature.
- The story feels barely there in all the versions, and this could've been the game's saving grace.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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This was the last game in the series unfortunately...

#Shockman2