Most of the time when I bring up Rakugaki Showtime to people, they think it's this game, or that RS is an N64 game. Both games are very obscure, extremely stylish doodle games that came out around the same time and use like every old cartoon sound effect. This is RakugaKids though!

This game is very interesting. Of course there's the fact that it even exists at all. It's a very bizarre concept-- A 2D cartoon fighting game for the N64, a platform that didn't really do many fighting games outside of a few. It's also a game they ran out of time on. There's 2 characters they didn't get to finish, and some ideas were ostensibly left a bit half-baked. The final game did come out great though.

It's not a very hardcore game, but it does feel like an Actual Fighting Game in every measure. Characters tend to have a chain system like in the Marvel vs Capcom games, but where characters are able to end their chains vary just as much. Cat Kit can chain together basically whatever he wants, and can link a heavy into a light. Marsa can only chain 2 normals max, and just light into light or light into medium. RakugaKids has 3 punch buttons, and 3 kick buttons. You can do some really difficult links, most links from a heavy tend to be 1 framers. And there's some really funny, classic old game stuff. Like Mamezo's bowling infinite or Darkness' unblockables. There's actually quite a bit to unpack here mechanics wise. But it's also a very approachable, modest game.

It doesn't have superjumps like Marvel does. The main combo structure is a ground chain into launcher, then followed with a jump-- into one air normal, double jump canceled into a air throw. Combos aren't very long aside from the infinites. But characters deal a considerable amount of damage on hits. The hitbox design in this game is also very classical. A lot of normals are meant mainly to be thrown out in neutral rather than combo fodder like MVC.

Of course the main thing to talk about here is how this game looks. This game's visuals are beautiful and impressive. All projectiles in this game cause heavy slowdown and it's kind of obvious why extra elements would do that when looking at how characters animate. Every character has a million things going on in their secondary action. From Astronots floating just off the ground cuz he's a zero gravity Spaceman, bumping up and down- to Mamezo's dastardly finger wiggling. There's also a line boil here. With everything together, characters look like they're animated at 60FPS. It's a game I'd never grow tired of looking at. The voices are very funny too, and have amazing one liners.

So, I mentioned that bit about Rakugaki Showtime because I made that mistake a very long time ago too. Except, in reverse. I knew about RS before this game, but this game was on certain ROM sites a lot earlier than RS was. So this is the game I played first heh. It ended up being just as cool!