Super B-Daman Battle Phoenix 64 is an Action game, developed and published by Hudson, which was released in Japan in 1998.
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Continuing my journey through the weird and wild pile of N64 games I picked up earlier this month, I decided to give a go on this one I picked up fairly spur of the moment. I hadn't originally planned to get this, but it was so cheap that I figured heck, why not take a chance on a weird anime game. It's not like the N64 has terribly many of these, after all, and this one is even developed by HudsonSoft! It took me around 2-ish hours to beat the game and unlock all the characters on original hardware.
This game doesn't really have a story, as such. For those unaware, B-Daman is a Japanese toy series that's all about little toys that fire marbles at other little toys (basically). It dates back to the early 90's, but it's never managed to gain much traction outside of Japan. Your main goal here is to beat all three ranks of the JBA B-Daman tournament, and you have a roster of characters from the Super B-Daman manga series to play as to do it. They have some banter with each other between stages (like in a fighting game), but overall there's just really little story here in the first place. However, it's hard to call that much of a bad thing for what's basically a glorified mini-game collection, and it sets up what it needs to do just fine.
The actual gameplay is split across two main modes. On the battle mode, you have a 2 to 4 player mini-game that's something quite close to the block falling game from Kirby 64's multiplayer mode, where you move around a floating board packed with obstacles and try to bump each other off into oblivion. It's honestly really fun, and it definitely would've been the mode I played the most if I'd had this to play with friends as a kid.
On the other side of things, you've got the single player mode which is also effectively a dueling mode if you're playing with another player. These consist of 11 different one-on-one mini-games, and each tier of the three tournaments just consists of beating AI opponents (of increasing difficulty) in three, seven, or all eleven of them. Their quality is bit of a mixed bag, but they're overall quite solid, and most of them would feel right at home in something like Mario Party 3's duel mode mini-games. Against another player, they'd all be quite good fun, but against the AI, the biggest issue is that there are some games they're good at and some games they're awful at, and if you picked a character with bad stats in a particular field (as each one has their own stat pool) some games are really horribly difficult to clear with certain characters. This reviewer's humble recommendation is to pick someone with an even balance in everything so you won't get screwed over by a game you happen to have bad stats for, since the AI will never be playing games they don't have good stats for (as each AI character always plays a certain game when you face them).
The graphics are quite good and fun for what they are. They're very anime of the time, but they capture the style of the original art well. It has a very Mario Party vibe to it (though this game does actually predate that series by a little bit) from the mini-games to the music, and it's all around a really competently done thing.
Verdict: Hesitantly recommended. This is honestly a really hard one to recommend, but also a really easy one. If you have friends to play it with and have a menu guide, this can be a pretty fun time! It sucks that you've gotta get through a decent bit of the story mode to unlock a lot of the duel mini-games, but they're still plenty fun for what they are. The biggest sticking point is that there's so little content that you're far better off just playing one of the three Mario Party games on the system. What's here is generally good fun, but there's so little of it that you're probably going to be left wanting, and I imagine for virtually anyone reading this that the license attached to it isn't going to be much of a pull factor for you anyhow ^^;
This game doesn't really have a story, as such. For those unaware, B-Daman is a Japanese toy series that's all about little toys that fire marbles at other little toys (basically). It dates back to the early 90's, but it's never managed to gain much traction outside of Japan. Your main goal here is to beat all three ranks of the JBA B-Daman tournament, and you have a roster of characters from the Super B-Daman manga series to play as to do it. They have some banter with each other between stages (like in a fighting game), but overall there's just really little story here in the first place. However, it's hard to call that much of a bad thing for what's basically a glorified mini-game collection, and it sets up what it needs to do just fine.
The actual gameplay is split across two main modes. On the battle mode, you have a 2 to 4 player mini-game that's something quite close to the block falling game from Kirby 64's multiplayer mode, where you move around a floating board packed with obstacles and try to bump each other off into oblivion. It's honestly really fun, and it definitely would've been the mode I played the most if I'd had this to play with friends as a kid.
On the other side of things, you've got the single player mode which is also effectively a dueling mode if you're playing with another player. These consist of 11 different one-on-one mini-games, and each tier of the three tournaments just consists of beating AI opponents (of increasing difficulty) in three, seven, or all eleven of them. Their quality is bit of a mixed bag, but they're overall quite solid, and most of them would feel right at home in something like Mario Party 3's duel mode mini-games. Against another player, they'd all be quite good fun, but against the AI, the biggest issue is that there are some games they're good at and some games they're awful at, and if you picked a character with bad stats in a particular field (as each one has their own stat pool) some games are really horribly difficult to clear with certain characters. This reviewer's humble recommendation is to pick someone with an even balance in everything so you won't get screwed over by a game you happen to have bad stats for, since the AI will never be playing games they don't have good stats for (as each AI character always plays a certain game when you face them).
The graphics are quite good and fun for what they are. They're very anime of the time, but they capture the style of the original art well. It has a very Mario Party vibe to it (though this game does actually predate that series by a little bit) from the mini-games to the music, and it's all around a really competently done thing.
Verdict: Hesitantly recommended. This is honestly a really hard one to recommend, but also a really easy one. If you have friends to play it with and have a menu guide, this can be a pretty fun time! It sucks that you've gotta get through a decent bit of the story mode to unlock a lot of the duel mini-games, but they're still plenty fun for what they are. The biggest sticking point is that there's so little content that you're far better off just playing one of the three Mario Party games on the system. What's here is generally good fun, but there's so little of it that you're probably going to be left wanting, and I imagine for virtually anyone reading this that the license attached to it isn't going to be much of a pull factor for you anyhow ^^;