A friend of mine introduced me to the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels
four or five years ago, way before anyone had ever really heard of them,
and certainly before there was talk of a major motion picture
adaptation. I mention this fact not for any sort of indier-than-thou
street cred but rather to make it clear that when I read the first
volume, I had no idea what to expect. I certainly didn't expect
a comic that didn't just drop liberal, casual references to cult
classic Nintendo 8-bit games but actually made them integral to its
story. But there it was: A comic tale of love and relationships whose
narrative owed as much to River City Ransom as to Marvel Romance.
Now that the comic is being made into a movie, it's fitting and
appropriate that the resulting videogame tie-in also draws obvious
inspiration from River City Ransom as well. Honestly, anything else would have been missing the point. But
this? This seems like an absolutely perfect way to bring the comic to
life.
Scott Pilgrim is a pretty straightforward brawler, supporting up to four
players at once. Somewhat disappointingly, the game offers local
multiplayer only. Still, it's a shining example of a long-disappeared
genre resuscitated with style. Scott and his friends (Ramona Flowers,
Kim Pine, and Steven Stills) fight their way through settings drawn from
the books to take on the bosses in sequence. In River City style, each
defeated enemy explodes into coins, which can be used in shops located
around the stages to buy health-restoring items. There's even a hidden
shop in one level in which Scott's cool gay roommate Wallace sells
pricey special moves to add to your characters' repertoire, such as
"Speedy the Porcupine." There's also a video shop where the only
available item is Scott's late fees, which cost about 20 times as much
cash as you're likely to have in the first level -- which, combined with
the fact that the level select screen is a Super Mario Bros. 3 -inspired
overworld map, suggest a slight element of non-linearity, or at least
the ability to replay stages.
Fanservice oozes through every crack in this game -- service for fans of
the book and classic brawlers alike. The visuals are gorgeously
animated retro-styled bitmaps, crammed with color and pixel artist Paul
Robertson's distinctive rounded-yet-sexy flair. Each character plays
slightly differently, Ramona being the slowest of the bunch thanks to
her preference for wielding a massive hammer in battle. Even without
purchasing new techs from Wallace, characters improve their repertoire
as they advance: You earn new techniques and skills on the go, just like
the NES version of Double Dragon .
There's also a King of
Fighters -inspired "striker" ability that lets you call a helper
character for a brief assist, and playing coop lets players perform a
sort of triage on downed allies.
The levels and enemies themselves, so far as I've seen, are heavily
inspired by the graphic novels. The first stage features Scott and crew
fighting through a Toronto residential neighborhood and through highway
underpasses on their way to a club. Occasionally doors open along the
way to let everyone hop into Ramona's subspace highways, depicted here
as a slightly glitched-out homage to Super Mario Kart 's
Rainbow Road whose only population consists of flocks of flying piggy
banks which can be smashed for cash. The level culminates in a showdown
with evil ex one, Matthew Patel, whose mystical powers aren't any
particular threat on their own... though they become much deadlier once
he summons a team of demon hipster chicks who circle him and protect him
from attacks. Once the quartet of girls is defeated, Patel goes on the
offense, with a pair of demon hipsters materializing at either side of
the screen to lob fireballs into the fray.
A later stage takes place entirely inside a nightclub as the crew makes
their way through crowds to perform in the battle of the bands against
The Clash at Demonhead. That level culminates in a two-part battle:
First, the crew faces off against Demonhead's lead singer Envy Adams and
cybernetic drummer Lynn Guycot in a tag-team fight. Envy favors simple,
powerful, high-priority attacks, while Lynn teleports around the stage
and flings her bionic arm across the screen when lined up horizontally
with a hero. Once they're down, bassist Todd Ingram jumps in and
challenges the players to a bass battle, which ends in the heroes
rushing to escape his wall of sound by dashing forward and smashing
through a series of doors. The fight culminates in an alley brawl, with
Todd using his vegan superpowers to counter attacks with burst of
electricity. Periodically he does a Tetsuo, transforming into a
biological abomination that hit hard but leaves him winded (and causes
the Vegan Police to arrive and briefly depower him).
In other words, it's clearly a work of love
for fans of Scott Pilgrim. But what sets it above other recent brawlers
is the attention to detail; the graphic style is less simplistic than it
looks, and each stage is crammed with activity. The battle of bands
level is full of interactive scenery, allowing players to utilize
practically everything they see as weapons, be it a broom or a beer
bottle. You can kick beer taps, swing boxes, even wield enemies (or
allies) as weapons. It's a crisp-looking, no-nonsense tribute to bygone
days and a popular game-nerd-oriented comic series all at once, and
despite the lack of online support it should be a hit among fans of
old-school brawlers. And fans of Scott Pilgrim, of course, although one
suspects the Venn diagram of those groups shows a lot of overlap....
Originally published on 1UP.com
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