Join Jo on the world's weirdest summer vacation. Jo is into Kendo, Japanese fencing, so her parents sent her to Japan to study under Osaki sensei. Osaki is the greatest sword master of all time, but he looks like a green haired cyberpunk. Just to crank up the strangeness Osaki gives you a talisman that transforms you into a seventies super hero. You've never seen action this crazy or fun. Kendo Rage is the rage.
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“Sometimes a girl deserves a second chance.”
Let’s go back in time to the year 2017. I was getting into older games and I was already getting into stuff like Manga and Anime as I already would have finished the Sailor Moon Manga by that point. At this point I would be curious to find games starring female protagonists from the 8 bit and 16 bit generation. One game I’d find is a game called Kendo Rage and thought it would be fun like Valis I on the Genesis (which is what I called it at the time what a different era that feels). I played and at first it was fun but then I raged and gave up. When I first made ranking lists for games on systems I played, Kendo Rage was in last place on that list which admittedly baffled me. Was the game that bad? Well I had no reason to go back…until now. I felt like giving it a try again and this time it was with the Japanese version called Makeruna! Makendou (translated as Don't Give In! Magic Kendo).
The plot of this game is…it’s uhhhhh…well…I don’t really know because I still can’t read Japanese. So I’m gonna be lazy and just look at Wikipedia with now knowing the main character is named Mai Tsurugino and then we find our heroine being found by a Spirit Detective named Yusuk-I MEAN Doro yes his name is just Doro and asks the help of Mai to get rid of all the monsters in all 7 stages. That’s basically about it.
For the actual gameplay it’s an action side-scroller. Mai will go through seven different stages with bosses at the end of each of them. You can attack with the Y button in four different directions, jump with the B button, and do a Dash Attack with the A button. Pretty simple stuff. This even goes for the weapons which are dictated by the color orb you have. The blue one gives you a projectile, the red one having a longer horizontal hitbox but being a small hitbox, and the green one not having the longest hitbox but covering your full body more. You even have a bar that makes your moves stronger the longer it’s charged taking about 4 seconds to charge fully. By the middle of it the moves can have a secondary use like the red orb letting you shoot out fire! It should also be noted that yellow orbs will let you take a hit without getting hit. Getting orbs is done by a creature having them contained as they bounce on the screen, it’s as easy as waiting for the one you want as they go in a specific order every time and grabbing it. Grab yellow orbs if you don’t wanna change!
Stage design in Makendou is a weird one. It feels fairly linear but sometimes there’s branching paths to get you some items. You are timed in this game and you need to make it to the end fast enough for the good ending so you’ll need to carefully think while not wasting too much time. Sadly nothing is too interesting when it comes to layout outside of some exceptions like stage 5 where you’re fighting enemies while the thing you’re on moves on its own and then going down a hill really fast. Enemy placement however can be a bit annoying with how much they love to spam ones just appearing in front of you. The theming of these stages can help with things because I do like the creativity here as it felt fairly unique for an action game. Though we need to discuss one important thing and that’s the movement.
Let me talk about a game that I like to mention in terms of movement and that being Valis III for the PC Engine CD. That’s a game where you move at a moderate speed but you can slide to help with platforming, hitting enemies, and just using it to dodge as it makes you invincible when using it. While the three characters aren’t fast, it’s not too slow and the game is for the most part well designed with it in mind. Makendou doesn’t really do this that well. Let me start with one gripe, I don’t like the way Mai turns around as there’s this weird delay. Now I don’t think it actually can screw you over but just the way it looks when animating throws me off. Then we have a problem with her speed in general, you don’t have a run button to go faster, instead it’s kind of like Sonic where it’s momentum based. Sometimes it’s as easy as using slopes but it seems the more you go forward without stopping, the faster you go. That’s the issue though, the game isn’t designed around speed for the most part which is a shame. Mai doesn’t even have a special running attack. Now you may be asking “Arle! What about that Dash Attack?” well it is useful and powerful but it uses a lot of your HP which limits its usefulness. You could memorize the level design to find bowls of Rice to restore health and use some dashes before then to give it some use but you’ll need some memory of each stage to take advantage of it. Worse of all, the game removes items like this in the harder difficulties. Though it should be noted I only played on Normal difficulty. I should also briefly mention there are 1-ups and a clock to stop the time for the other items available.
If there is one thing I want to address upfront right now, stage 3 is the worst part about the game. This was the level I remember quitting on back in the day and I can easily see why. It’s a slow water level where Mai not only walks slowly but moves in the water slowly even when not on the ground. There’s even currents trying to make it even slower so you wanted that 1-up? Now face the wrath of strong water current! If you thought that was all bad, you can’t even swim close to the ceiling or you’ll hit your head not letting you move up for a second. I get this is supposed to be comedic but could this just not be like a funny sound like in Vectorman? It’s like I’m playing Quest of Ki for the Famicom. I also never pointed out how the knockback when hit is insane at times and that’s because there’s like three or four different animations for getting hit. Can you tell they wanted this to be like an Anime? So, get past the annoying water and then we have the boss and oh boy those bosses, ugh.
The bosses in this game are a huge mixed bag. Let’s talk about the three fish in stage 3 that have way too much health that it goes on forever and with how tall Mai’s sprite is combined with the slow movement makes this boss a pain! Even then some bosses can be pretty simple and easy like the first two which makes the jump in health change all the more jarring. You can’t even blame me for not wanting to just spam my attack as even the speedrun recommends you do this. The fourth boss also sucks as it moves so fast that it’s hard to react well to it at first, thank god when you hit it, you can’t get hurt during his flashes. The sixth boss is pretty interesting as it reminds me of that one Ganondorf fight in Ocarina of Time and it’s actually the easiest fight in the game because of how simple the premise is. Just keep hitting her projectiles back and it's as easy as using Kendo to cut cake! Then you get hit with a bat to the head because now you have to do a boss rush for stage 7! Why make a cool final stage when you can fight everyone again! Guess what? They made the bosses harder too isn’t that just awesome? God why would they do this. The final boss isn’t all that special either and once he’s done you’ll get a good or bad ending depending on your time. Make sure you don't play on Easy if you want more after the ending. The credits also has this picture of Mai where her color palette changes into stuff that would make you think your copy is damaged because wow it looks weird. Wait, why was she even on a time limit again? If only I knew Japanese…
The game doesn’t really look all that impressive for a 1993 game. I guess the varied locations help the look of it but none of it really pops outside of some of the nice sprite art. It really feels like the team wanted Mai to look like she’s from an Anime even giving her some chibi looking sprites at times. The intro cutscene also looks neat but there isn’t much to it, same goes for the ending. They kind of slacked on it not gonna lie. It should be mentioned the US version Kendo Rage barely changed anything for the localization outside of a cigar censor in the intro. Kind of surprising considering the awful new cover it was given. The music is also something I can’t really remember at all. It’s not bad but none of it ever caught on in my mind which is a shame.
Redemption was something I hoped the game was going to achieve after the many years of hatred I had on the game. I can say that the game is just okay for what it is. It’s not like Psychic World where I found it to be good after trying again. It’s a shame because I want to like it but sadly not everything can fill me with joy like El Viento and Alisia Dragoon. That said however the series would get two more games with the sequel being a fighting game on SFC developed by Success and a PS1 version developed by Fill-in-Cafe. I’ll have to play those maybe next year. There was even an RPG on the PC-FX as the final game, was it any good? Honestly I know nothing about that system besides I wanna play the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna and Cutie Honey game on the system whenever I learn Japanese. You can do a whole lot worse than this game. I’m a little happy that in the end, I don’t hate it as much as I used to even with some of the frustrating issues it has. If they had tried another attempt, I could see it being good but sadly that never happened. I can’t recommend Makeruna! Makendou but it’s not as bad as I once thought it was, you can now rest awful past memories of this game.
Let’s go back in time to the year 2017. I was getting into older games and I was already getting into stuff like Manga and Anime as I already would have finished the Sailor Moon Manga by that point. At this point I would be curious to find games starring female protagonists from the 8 bit and 16 bit generation. One game I’d find is a game called Kendo Rage and thought it would be fun like Valis I on the Genesis (which is what I called it at the time what a different era that feels). I played and at first it was fun but then I raged and gave up. When I first made ranking lists for games on systems I played, Kendo Rage was in last place on that list which admittedly baffled me. Was the game that bad? Well I had no reason to go back…until now. I felt like giving it a try again and this time it was with the Japanese version called Makeruna! Makendou (translated as Don't Give In! Magic Kendo).
The plot of this game is…it’s uhhhhh…well…I don’t really know because I still can’t read Japanese. So I’m gonna be lazy and just look at Wikipedia with now knowing the main character is named Mai Tsurugino and then we find our heroine being found by a Spirit Detective named Yusuk-I MEAN Doro yes his name is just Doro and asks the help of Mai to get rid of all the monsters in all 7 stages. That’s basically about it.
For the actual gameplay it’s an action side-scroller. Mai will go through seven different stages with bosses at the end of each of them. You can attack with the Y button in four different directions, jump with the B button, and do a Dash Attack with the A button. Pretty simple stuff. This even goes for the weapons which are dictated by the color orb you have. The blue one gives you a projectile, the red one having a longer horizontal hitbox but being a small hitbox, and the green one not having the longest hitbox but covering your full body more. You even have a bar that makes your moves stronger the longer it’s charged taking about 4 seconds to charge fully. By the middle of it the moves can have a secondary use like the red orb letting you shoot out fire! It should also be noted that yellow orbs will let you take a hit without getting hit. Getting orbs is done by a creature having them contained as they bounce on the screen, it’s as easy as waiting for the one you want as they go in a specific order every time and grabbing it. Grab yellow orbs if you don’t wanna change!
Stage design in Makendou is a weird one. It feels fairly linear but sometimes there’s branching paths to get you some items. You are timed in this game and you need to make it to the end fast enough for the good ending so you’ll need to carefully think while not wasting too much time. Sadly nothing is too interesting when it comes to layout outside of some exceptions like stage 5 where you’re fighting enemies while the thing you’re on moves on its own and then going down a hill really fast. Enemy placement however can be a bit annoying with how much they love to spam ones just appearing in front of you. The theming of these stages can help with things because I do like the creativity here as it felt fairly unique for an action game. Though we need to discuss one important thing and that’s the movement.
Let me talk about a game that I like to mention in terms of movement and that being Valis III for the PC Engine CD. That’s a game where you move at a moderate speed but you can slide to help with platforming, hitting enemies, and just using it to dodge as it makes you invincible when using it. While the three characters aren’t fast, it’s not too slow and the game is for the most part well designed with it in mind. Makendou doesn’t really do this that well. Let me start with one gripe, I don’t like the way Mai turns around as there’s this weird delay. Now I don’t think it actually can screw you over but just the way it looks when animating throws me off. Then we have a problem with her speed in general, you don’t have a run button to go faster, instead it’s kind of like Sonic where it’s momentum based. Sometimes it’s as easy as using slopes but it seems the more you go forward without stopping, the faster you go. That’s the issue though, the game isn’t designed around speed for the most part which is a shame. Mai doesn’t even have a special running attack. Now you may be asking “Arle! What about that Dash Attack?” well it is useful and powerful but it uses a lot of your HP which limits its usefulness. You could memorize the level design to find bowls of Rice to restore health and use some dashes before then to give it some use but you’ll need some memory of each stage to take advantage of it. Worse of all, the game removes items like this in the harder difficulties. Though it should be noted I only played on Normal difficulty. I should also briefly mention there are 1-ups and a clock to stop the time for the other items available.
If there is one thing I want to address upfront right now, stage 3 is the worst part about the game. This was the level I remember quitting on back in the day and I can easily see why. It’s a slow water level where Mai not only walks slowly but moves in the water slowly even when not on the ground. There’s even currents trying to make it even slower so you wanted that 1-up? Now face the wrath of strong water current! If you thought that was all bad, you can’t even swim close to the ceiling or you’ll hit your head not letting you move up for a second. I get this is supposed to be comedic but could this just not be like a funny sound like in Vectorman? It’s like I’m playing Quest of Ki for the Famicom. I also never pointed out how the knockback when hit is insane at times and that’s because there’s like three or four different animations for getting hit. Can you tell they wanted this to be like an Anime? So, get past the annoying water and then we have the boss and oh boy those bosses, ugh.
The bosses in this game are a huge mixed bag. Let’s talk about the three fish in stage 3 that have way too much health that it goes on forever and with how tall Mai’s sprite is combined with the slow movement makes this boss a pain! Even then some bosses can be pretty simple and easy like the first two which makes the jump in health change all the more jarring. You can’t even blame me for not wanting to just spam my attack as even the speedrun recommends you do this. The fourth boss also sucks as it moves so fast that it’s hard to react well to it at first, thank god when you hit it, you can’t get hurt during his flashes. The sixth boss is pretty interesting as it reminds me of that one Ganondorf fight in Ocarina of Time and it’s actually the easiest fight in the game because of how simple the premise is. Just keep hitting her projectiles back and it's as easy as using Kendo to cut cake! Then you get hit with a bat to the head because now you have to do a boss rush for stage 7! Why make a cool final stage when you can fight everyone again! Guess what? They made the bosses harder too isn’t that just awesome? God why would they do this. The final boss isn’t all that special either and once he’s done you’ll get a good or bad ending depending on your time. Make sure you don't play on Easy if you want more after the ending. The credits also has this picture of Mai where her color palette changes into stuff that would make you think your copy is damaged because wow it looks weird. Wait, why was she even on a time limit again? If only I knew Japanese…
The game doesn’t really look all that impressive for a 1993 game. I guess the varied locations help the look of it but none of it really pops outside of some of the nice sprite art. It really feels like the team wanted Mai to look like she’s from an Anime even giving her some chibi looking sprites at times. The intro cutscene also looks neat but there isn’t much to it, same goes for the ending. They kind of slacked on it not gonna lie. It should be mentioned the US version Kendo Rage barely changed anything for the localization outside of a cigar censor in the intro. Kind of surprising considering the awful new cover it was given. The music is also something I can’t really remember at all. It’s not bad but none of it ever caught on in my mind which is a shame.
Redemption was something I hoped the game was going to achieve after the many years of hatred I had on the game. I can say that the game is just okay for what it is. It’s not like Psychic World where I found it to be good after trying again. It’s a shame because I want to like it but sadly not everything can fill me with joy like El Viento and Alisia Dragoon. That said however the series would get two more games with the sequel being a fighting game on SFC developed by Success and a PS1 version developed by Fill-in-Cafe. I’ll have to play those maybe next year. There was even an RPG on the PC-FX as the final game, was it any good? Honestly I know nothing about that system besides I wanna play the Galaxy Fraulein Yuna and Cutie Honey game on the system whenever I learn Japanese. You can do a whole lot worse than this game. I’m a little happy that in the end, I don’t hate it as much as I used to even with some of the frustrating issues it has. If they had tried another attempt, I could see it being good but sadly that never happened. I can’t recommend Makeruna! Makendou but it’s not as bad as I once thought it was, you can now rest awful past memories of this game.
Very okay action platformer. I love the visuals, music is solid. I've played much better ones, but you can do a lot worse than this especially on SNES.
A super cute Valis-like with great colors and odd expansive levels with interesting verticality. Seems to be a focus on clear time; main issue is frantic and unbalanced enemy placement, but still fun to play.
I adore mid games that look like anime
Doctor using the Cute And Quirky ice cream to hide the valis pill
Gameplay itself is pretty plain and inoffensive, game is mostly carried by very cutesy art and its stupid ass humor. Would probably like this a ton as a kid.