Developer: Sega Publisher: Sega Released: August 14, 1989 Genre: Beat em up
The Sega Genesis launch featured great ports of Sega classics like Altered Beast, Golden Axe, and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. It even had original titles like Thunder Force II and Tommy Lasorda Baseball that were solid if not decent. But one title no one ever talks about is Last Battle. There is a good reason why. The Last Battle is a bad game any way you shake it and also one of the most frustrating titles of all time. With a few small changes it could have been good. Instead it has been lost to time and it deserves it.
Much like Black Belt on the Master System the Last Battle is a heavily edited Fist of the North Star title. Those familiar with the series will still recognize most of the iconic characters even though some have been recolored. Surprisingly the game covers the entirety of the manga, albeit in truncated form. You wouldn’t know this however as the localization is completely awful and makes no sense. But it is somewhat of a treat as the manga to this day is still not fully available in English.
At first glance the Last Battle looks like a Fist of the North Star fan’s dream. The sprites are massive for the time and wouldn’t look out of place in the arcade. The Mad Max setting is recreated perfectly and there are some locations from the manga and anime. It can be repetitive at times but the game still has a great deal of diversity in its setting. Last Battle was also one of the first times I saw parallax scrolling which was mind blowing and incredibly impressive. Despite their size and number the animation looks robotic. Overall though the game was still impressive for its time.
For as close as it stuck to the manga there is no gore in the US version of the game. Fist of the North Star is still to this day one of the goriest manga of all time, with people exploding into showers of blood and guts left and right. Here enemies simply fly off screen when hit which is lame. I realize the blood was excessive but that is kind of key to the series. Ironically some bosses still do swell up and explode; the game is inconsistent.
While it nails the look the Last Battle sadly doesn’t back it up with interesting gameplay. Aarzark only has a punch, kick, and jump kick as his means of attack. With the right timing you can knock away any projectile in your path. It’s a skill you will need to master quickly but I digress. These are your only options for the length of the entire game sadly. As you kill enemies a power gauge fills up and at set points Aarzark becomes powered up. Your shirt rips and you become stronger, with your basic attacks altered and actually being useful. The meter fills slowly and it won’t happen until close to the end of a chapter but is worth grinding for and almost mandatory.
Last Battle has four chapters, with each featuring numerous smaller levels. You can tackle each chapter in any order you want but the caveat is you need to manually walk through each level on the way to each destination. The stages vary; some are short side scrolling beat ‘em up stages while others are devoid of enemies. Coliseums are where boss battles generally occur. While it would be prudent to head straight to the chapter boss you usually can’t. More often you must visit a specific part of the map first to unlock a seal or such before you can do so. It is tedious and made even more so by the annoying maze levels.
While the Last Battle is competent as a brawler it is not as a platformer. The frequent maze levels expose the flaws in the controls. As you slowly trudge through these annoying levels you are beset by arrows, axes, and falling rocks that are hard to dodge. You awkwardly jump through pits and try to navigate your way to the objective, usually to rescue villagers or to unlock a seal. Unfortunately these are almost the only levels you can recover health in addition and are mandatory.
Yet in spite of the game’s flaws the biggest one is the fact that you have a single life with no continues, passwords or battery backup. This one decision ruins the game. The Last Battle is an incredibly difficult game and is very long. There are no power-ups, few ways to recover health and a mass of levels to go through. Boss battles can end in seconds and do so frequently. It is absolutely nuts that they expect you to go through this in one life. Add the spotty hit detection and you have a game that is aggravating. There is a cheat code to continue but no one knew it at the time. It does little to help as the game is a bunch of bad decisions that ultimately weight it down.
In Closing
The Last Battle is a bad game that could have been decent but is rightfully forgotten. There are no redeeming qualities here, just mounds of frustration. Between the manga and games Fist of the North Star could not catch a break in the US. It would be many years before the license would be done justice in the import only PlayStation fighting game in 2000 and this game certainly didn’t help. Pass.
