Pocky & Rocky with Becky (Game Boy Advance) review "Ah, yes. You were one of the players with nostalgia in your eyes as you picked up a copy of Pocky & Rocky With Becky. Memories of the older games gave you hope...strength. How much did you pay for it? 15-20$? And what did you trade it in for when you returned in later that day or the next? Huh? Why do I ask this? Because no reasonable person would have kept this horrid excuse for ''fun''! "

Ah, yes. You were one of the players with nostalgia in your eyes as you picked up a copy of Pocky & Rocky With Becky. Memories of the older games gave you hope...strength. How much did you pay for it? 15-20$? And what did you trade it in for when you returned in later that day or the next? Huh? Why do I ask this? Because no reasonable person would have kept this horrid excuse for ''fun''!

Starving animal goblins?! Shame, shame...

You recognize that something is wrong the moment right at the character select. The normally plump raccoon-like Rocky has been replaced by a nearly skinny teddy bear-like creature. ''It's just different artists,'' you tell yourself. But then the animals in the forest look no better. They are either very skinny or just plain ugly to look at. The enemies never invoke humor or fear at any given time.

And your weapons are...colored balls?

You then find your power-ups...Maybe, maybe not! The game randomly picks where when and what type of power-ups you receive. That super invincibility helm you found last game? Possibly here...can't tell. That life restore you were hoping for? Throw a penny in a fountain! ''So? Pocky and Rocky have decent health, right?'' Wrong. Instead, you stare in shock at the health bar that lets you take TWO hits period before their timely demises! Also, there are NO Life Bar increasers in the entire game. ''Well, that makes it more fun!'' No, Sherlock, that makes it tedious. And since health restore items are far and few between, it often means you'll be avoiding enemies rather than killing/expelling/exorcising/whatever them. ''But I have weapons!'' You call what you have weapons? Before, you could at least select your weapons by picking up the appropriate colored orbs. Now, you are stuck with one ''unique special power'' for each character. Pocky has a fireball blast, damaging but not nearly enough to make up for the lack of spread and most enemies die in one hit even without the fireballs. Rocky has homing shots which are useless, given the fact they are slower than the enemies and they don't track nearly as well as they should. Becky is given a three-way shot...and actually that does a DECENT job of protecting her(score one for the good guys)! And as for those Smart Bombs you saved for the boss...Oh, there's a boss now! You slam the button and nothing happens? So you hit it again in confusion. Still nothing, so what could be wrong? You check the manual and notice as it tells you that Bombs are not allowed to be used against bosses, where they would be more useful. So you are left with dodging your foes. Oops! Forgot that : 1) The slide button/function has been removed, 2) Pocky and Rocky no longer have their super defense moves(Pocky's wand spin and Rocky's statue transformation), and 3) Your characters move as if they had a dozen donuts and are now traversing a dense swamp.

Football union demons.

So you move and find what defenses the bad guys have : None what-so-ever. Few enemies even shoot back. They'd rather try to tackle and run over your character. They are obviously more than happy to die trying to smash you. The shots that are fired are even slower than you. This wouldn't be a problem if your character could actually RUN! So their option? Fill the screen with their hideously animated sprites. By level three, expect more than ten enemies on-screen at once. This is called ''a challenge''...which obviously can't be provided any other right, eh? Well, the bosses stop in once again to ruin that appealing idea. These nitwits begin summoning lesser demons for more dodging goodness, just when you thought there would be no more of these freaks in the level. Aren't you a lucky player?

Escape before it overwhelms you!

No matter how much you care about Pocky and Rocky, avoid this future scrap-heap item at all costs! The Game Boy Advance system has plenty of other games to choose from...choose them instead.

Community review by MercenaryCobra1 (July 11, 2007) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.