During the mid-90s, Sting was tasked with creating two games for two big media companies. In 1994's The Jetsons: Invasion of the Planet Pirates, the fate of the Solar System is in the hands of George, who must stop Zora and her SPREE minions from stealing all of the natural resources. The Jetson Patriarch uses a Pneumo Osmatic Precipitator to defeat enemies, climb walls, and do whatever else a futuristic super vacuum would do. Zora's resemblance to Skata-Hara implies that someone at Hanna Barbera wanted to bring a character from the original TV show back for a video game appearance. Skata-Hara has a villainous organization of her own called SNEEK. It's not exactly subtle. The plan probably fell apart after someone realized that Nintendo wouldn't allow a SNES game to reference an episode of The Jetsons titled Space Bong. I have several questions, but none of them are worth answering.
A year later, Kadokawa Shoten commissioned a game from Sting that would use Planet Pirates as its base. Yōkai Buster: Ruka no Daibōken follows the misadventures of Ruka, a literal 1,000-year-old demon-girl living in a post-apocalyptic world. At the time, Ruka was Marukatsu Super Famicom's newest mascot, so giving her a game made sense. While out for a walk in the ruined city, Ruka spots a (evil?) guy, throws a watermelon at him, and immediately falls in love. Somehow this segues into several stages of hop 'n suck action. Oddly convenient how the heroine has a friendly Oni head who functions like a Pneumo Osmatic Precipitator. Maybe this was all explained in the magazine. Besides new graphics and music, Sting improved the level-design, tweaked some sections to be fairer towards players, and added a tutorial & minigame. However, a falling out between president Haruki Kadokawa and his brother Tsuguhiko - as well as Haruki getting arrested for drug-trafficking - spelled the end for Marukatsu Super Famicom and Ruka.
...Anyway, I've decided to focus my review on Yōkai Buster since it (sort-of) fits the 2026 Special's requirements and is just a better game all-around. Starting with the basics, Ruka can jump, command her decapitated Oni buddy to suck, and run. One aspect of the controls that'll likely go underappreciated is the A button. It functions as if the player had pressed both jump & suck buttons. It sounds superfluous but is actually quite amazing for wall-climbing. Also, yes, it's possible to stick to not just walls, but ceilings too. The tutorial covers all this and more, so give it a spin before starting the adventure. One other trick that you might want to practice is the ceiling-jump. Leaping across a ceiling is tricky, but it can lead to extra rewards. Oh, and runners might want to be careful, or else Ruka will slam into a wall and spend the next few seconds a little dazed.
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| The "vehicle section" is a totally optional minigame. Thank fuck. |
Yōkai take on various forms and are generally dealt with via a faceful of melon or getting sucked in and spat out. It's not always simple, since some might have a projectile or unique trick for punishing players who stick to the usual methods of attack. For instance, some gremlins in Stage 2 hang from the ceiling and chuck projectiles. If you try to hoover the fiend towards you, then what'll happen is the object they just threw is going to be hidden by their body. It's a sneaky trick! The following stage features baddies that'll bat your spittle back at you. Segmented foes gladly give up half of themselves so the other half can land a hit. Further complicating Ruka's life is the ease in which baddies respawn. Step offscreen for a millimeter, come back, and what you thought was destroyed has come back. You can take advantage of this to farm power-ups, so it's not all bad. Although, having these respawns occur in platforming-heavy areas isn't good either.
As far as mechanics-driven platformers go, this one is surprisingly light on the puzzles. The switches that Ruka flips are often done without the aid of Oni-head. There isn't a single segment where the duo latches onto a moving platform in order to cross a chasm. Most stages are just a menagerie of obstacles. Some gaps are jumped over while others are fallen into. Put both of them side-by-side, and you're bound to notice the crueler aspects of Planet Pirates' were toned-down. One section in stage 2 was a vertical shaft that operated by Castlevania rules, meaning as Ruka climbed, everything below her became a bottom-less pit. Cutting that out was a wise decision. Stage 3 had a crushing wall that George could only survive by flipping switches. While this trap is in both games, Ruka doesn't have to be as quick or efficient to survive it.
Even without the moment-to-moment problems to solve, stages remain semi-interesting thanks to the gimmicks they employ. In stage 5, Ruka contends with a series of traps and one of the rare mini-bosses: a pair of Daruma that must be spat into an electrical field. Next is the water & ice stage, so expect to deal with the combined forces of slippery floors and swimming controls (neither of which are that problematic). Occasional leftovers from Planet Pirates do crop up in the strangest places though. There are some doors that blow Ruka out into space if she's near them when they open. I figured something that out-of-place was suspicious, but I still have to wonder why Sting didn't create mystical doors that sucked the unwary into the death dimension instead. These and other issues can be attributed to a work-for-hire developer cutting corners, and I'm not mad at that.
Ruka's world is filled with a surprising number if instant-death opportunities. I guess the rule is that if something is big enough to eat her, then she shouldn't go anywhere near it. This is exemplified as early as the first boss. Get too close, and he'll toss the millennia-old teenager out like yesterday's garbage. Try to avoid crushing pistons, purple water, and naked chicks hiding in giant clams. It's not always easy, but accumulating a large number of lives isn't hard. Yōkai Buster is a 16-bit platformer after all.
I probably should've expected that the final boss is way tougher than everything else in the game. The checkpoints are generous, which is nice to see in a multi-phase finale, but it's really easy to just mess up and die horribly. There are crushing-wall segments, and you're only allowed a sliver of leeway. They're not like... creative or anything. The first is just a matter of not goofing the first couple inputs and then mashing A to scale the wall quickly. The second has one wall that's far taller than the rest, and it might as well have a big "This is where you'll die." sign. The last phase is rife with "fun" attacks like insta-lightning. At least each phase isn't especially durable. 3 to 5 hits are enough to take out each. Still, the frequent deaths really pad things out, creating a frustration that inevitably smothers the otherwise de- just alright game.
Yōkai Buster is fine when it isn't trying to do something. Moving from one end of the screen to the other, hawking monsters into walls, and jumping on a platform or three? That all works, but not to the point where I actually wanted to be tested. Some of the mechanics, like Ruka's slow walking speed while Oni is holding an object, are a bad fit for intense situations. This doesn't matter because almost every fight ends with a single suck & spit. The occasional iffy jump didn't bother me because pits are uncommon and spike beds might as well not exist. It wasn't until I reached to the final boss, with its multiple phases and crushing walls, that I had to ask the game what I was getting in return for my efforts. The answer was silence (obviously), but I'm assuming that if it could, it would've told me about every spare life I was gifted, as if that's supposed to make a difference. Ultimately, this is a tie-in game that accomplished the bare minimum. The best words I can use to describe it are "eh" and "hm".
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| Hard mode starts off with an enemy just inches away from Ruka. C'mon Sting, you're better than this. |
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