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My girlfriend disagrees with me on a lot of things. She's older than me, and a bit strange, I might add. One thing we do agree on is that it's fun to wear costumes. As soon as I can, I'm going to get her in a Sailomoon outfit. Why? Who could resist a woman wearing a short skirt and a big bow on her chest? That may be why the Japanese animated TV show Sailormoon (Sailor Moon in America) has gotten such a cult following here in America. Sure, there's tons of plot development and decent voice acting, but I think mainly people like it because those Sailor scouts are fine! In Japan there's a total of 10 scouts and they're all present in Sailormoon Super S, the Saturn fighting game from Angel.

First you get an awesome rendered intro while the cooler-than-cool theme song plays, sung in Japanese but the tune is familiar. The introduction to the 3DO version (also programmed by Angel) seemed more stylish because it mixed some hand-drawn art with the CG models, but this one is still pretty good. When you start a one-player game you also get an original animation (presented in nearly full-screen FMV) detailing the game's story. Basically everyone gangs up on Sailormoon, saying they need a new leader, probably because she's too ditzy (which I never had a problem with, but some people agree). Even Tuxedo Mask, her destined husband fails to support her, which I feel is a bit out of line, plotwise. The Japanese show has super-hokey music (besides the main theme) and it twangs away while all this is going on. You're treated to some amusing facial expressions and part of the transformation sequences before the scene ends.

Unfortunately after you watch all that you have to play the game, a sad thing indeed! This is a 2D fighter with poorly rendered characters and virtually no gameplay. Critics of computer-rendering will find the Sailorscouts actually do look sort of like "gumbies". Their legs are ridiculously long and don't have knees, so they just bend like rubber. The animation is alright, but they move so slowly and take so long to do their special moves that you won't even care how smooth it is. Most jumpkicks are particularly useless and hard to connect with. Strangely, they've added a block button which really takes away from the fun factor in any 2D fighting game. The moves aren't too hard to pull off (and you can choose instant specials like Toh Shin Den) but egad, they take forever and you'll probably get hit while doing one, especially super moves. The super move system is just ridiculous anyway. When you are almost defeated you can do a super move which will kill your opponent in one hit. It's actually easier just to get beaten up and finish them quickly than have a fight based on skills and timing! There is so little gameplay or fun to be found here, it's not even funny.

The backgrounds are nicely hand-drawn and match the style from the show, but they are virtually devoid of parallax or animation. This is strange because on the 3DO, a system with no hardware parallax, Angel was able to make a Sailormoon fighting game with 3 layers PLUS have Samurai-style zooming effects. The Saturn, a 2D powerhouse, produces a much less impressive game, and I have to blame the programmers. The game's music is way too serene and doesn't add anything to it. Voices are done by the real Japanese voice actors, but are pretty scratchy, something I rarely complain about.

SMSS does have a few things separating it from other animation-based fighters, but mostly the effort is wasted. It features the unique "Ability Customize System" which lets you adjust the attributes of your selected Sailor, but without Japanese knowledge you won't know what you're adjusting. There's a training mode, but with super-simplistic gameplay that's actually painful, you won't spend too much time in training. There are no real combos anyway, so I can't imagine why they added that option. In story mode, only the 6 main scouts can be selected, but at least they each have a short mid-game cinema to make it interesting. For an ending you just get a high-res pic while your scout speaks in Japanese, which is a letdown because of the high difficulty. It's much too high, in fact, for the younger audience this title is aimed at.

So why would you ever buy this game??? It does have a nice full-color image on the CD, there's that. However, Sailormoon fans like myself will want to stay away because it's so terrible your love of the show won't be able to make you like it. Only pick it up if you must have all SM goods. I know I usually go into more detail, but a game this bad doesn't warrant any further explanation. I bet you 3DO freaks like Dark Falcon never played that system's Sailormoon fighting game... It wasn't great, but a lot better than this. Even Way of the Warrior is better, so you know this is a poor, poor game. The programmers knew that in Japan the game would sell on license alone, so they didn't bother to make it enjoyable or likeable. Personally, I'd love the SM arcade game which had the scouts fighting bad guys instead of each other, and played like TMNT. Hopefully someday somebody'll do the show some justice on a home system, but that's unlikely. Until then at least me and my girlfriend can be having our own Sailormoon adventures... "Venus love and beauty shock!!!"