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My Hero review

Game: My Hero
Platform: Sega Master System
Genre: Fighting Action (Brawler)
Developer: SEGA
AKA: Seishun Scandal (JP)

Staff review by Marc Golding

April 11, 2012

An outstanding port based on the arcade smash hit!

Yes, I'm lying. But not about the game being a port--believe it or not, there was an arcade version to this simplistic side-scrolling jump kick-fest. Interesting how they shrunk the coin-op down to the Sega Card (yes, this is one of those). So expect very simple graphics and sound, but some charming, challenging bits. My Hero provided a lighthearted distraction in the arcade, and things aren't any different at home.

As the Sega Master System was the very first console that I purchased myself, and My Hero was the first game (other than Hang On) that I played on my shiny new, unwieldy piece of black plastic, some amount of nostalgic attraction was present in my revisiting the game.

It didn't disappear right away, but I wondered how I was able to play the game through so many times when I was younger. I suppose a gamer will do many strange things when his options are severely limited, as they were in this instance.

You play the role of The Hero, but you look like Edward Carnby, specifically from Alone in the Dark 2, right down to the blue leisure suit and pitiful death sequences. You are the strapping, golden-domed captain of the football team, enjoying a sunset with your prudish girlfriend on the beach, besotting her with your romanticism and a bottle of Alize.

Elsewhere, a troubled youth still finds himself unable to meet girls at all despite his stylish mohawk. So he gives himself the fitting handle, Mohikan, finds and knocks out our hero with a single punch, taking the fair-haired damsel under his arm (back in high school Mohikan was voted Most Likely to Kidnap Someone Else's Girlfriend, so this should come as no surprise to our hero).

It shouldn't come as a surprise to the player either; we all know there are only two martial arts game stories: Either your sensei is killed or your girl gets nabbed, and this being the light and bright game that it is, we have to deal with the latter scenario.

We can stand and punch, or duck and sweep kick with one button. But it's the other button that we will be hammering the vast majority of the time. See, this button performs the jump kick, something you'll be doing constantly to take out enemies and avoid hazards.

Jail breakers in striped prison garb are on the loose, as are knife tossing, vertically challenged rejects from River City Ransom. Huge purple barbs will bounce toward you, and bombs will arc and drop in your midst. You will navigate your way past moving, dancing flames, acid-spitting frog things, charging pigs, and thugs riding charging pigs.

Some thugs will drop frying pans on your head from open windows in the city. Cute little reddish brown pups will take you out unless you low kick them into the stratosphere. This is no exaggeration: strangely enough, after hitting enemies, they fly off toward the corners of the screen in dynamic fashion.

Anyway, after a 'level' of jump kicking the crap out of every living thing, and jump kicking over everything else, you'll make it through the city, past the city outskirts and arrive back at the beach. Despite his incredible strength (he was able to bicep curl your lady), Mohikan isn't very bright. He's still at the scene of the crime.

Here's your chance. Have at the fiend! In a nice Street Fighter-like head-to-head, defeat your nemesis in front of the still setting sun and you and your girl will be reunited. For all of a few moments. Then Mohikan gets up, punches you out again, and the chase is back on.

There are only about four levels in total, and they are just variations of the same city and city outskirts 'sets.' As a result, the programmers decided to have the game just speed up and go on and on, probably indefinitely. In the past I delved deeply into My Hero, and found that I was able to record an impressive score and 'finish my objective' countless times.

Now that I have many more appealing options (as do you, hopefully), I might happily beat the Mohawked one once or twice before powering down the Master System and moving onto something a little more involved, which is almost anything else.

More Reviews by Marc Golding
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