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RETROspectives: Cheetahmen II part 2
Last time we looked at the original Cheetahmen game which was part of Action 52, but we only explored the NES version. With that in mind let's take a brief (and I do mean that this time!) to the SEGA Genesis (American Mega Drive) to look at the Cheetahmen game on that version of Action 52...
The Genesis Action 52 has Cheetahmen placed at game number 13 and is vastly different from the one on the NES. In this game the goal is to collect the Cheetah Icons in each level to advance. The first stage is brutally difficult with trees in the foreground blocking your view, immensely slippery vines to climb and a horrendous level design. At one stage you have to pass a rhino man and climb up a vine, providing you can get on the vine you are then faced with two overlapping branches above you with a Cheetah Icon. There is a snake on each vine and there is no room to kill one of the snakes! To make things worse you can't even stop on the vine to plan your move as if you do a bat will fly onto the screen and kill you! It's one hit deaths in this game and if you die you lose your Cheetah Icons! To attack you have to stop moving and punch but pressing the attack button once throws about 2 or 3 punches! So when attacking an enemy you are left vunerable to attack! Very few people have seen past this stage.
Now we're finally caught up on our Cheetahmen history enough to take a look at Cheetahmen II. Cheetahmen II was an unreleased game and unfinished game but in 1996 1500 copies of the game were found in a warehouse and sold at auctions and the gaming worlds equivalent of the black market. These NES cartridges command huge prices at auctions of about $1300. The game was also encased in an Action 52 cartridge but with a Cheetahmen II sticker on the back! But let's get to the game...
Surely they would have fixed the problems that cursed the first Cheetahmen game on the NES, right? Believe it or not but they managed to make it a whole lot worse! It's a glitchy mess with random floor textures appearing in the sky and random sprites appearing for a brief moment in the background. You can't jump off of a height in this game. Take Super Mario Bros for example, when you jump on the floating blocks and jump off you are not effected but in Cheetahmen II you die regardless of how much health you have (yeah they have a health bar throughout the game), if Mario runs off of a floating block platform he's also fine as is your Cheetahman. Long story short if you find yourself on a raised platform run off of it. The enemies in this game are horribly placed, they are either on the ground and too small to be attacked or in the sky too high to be attacked! The jumping glitch is back and once again begins to work in level 2. However, it works well in level 2 as most enemies on that level are on the ground. Once again there are two level 3s! How did they make that mistake twice? And then you get to the worst part about the game...
Once you beat the second level 3 you face the level boss which is a green ape. If you die here you have to go back to the start of the game but that isn't the worst part. The worst part is beating the boss! If you beat the boss you expect to go to the next level, that's the mechanics of the game so far but beating this boss won't do anything. You'll be stuck in the boss fighting arena, there is no way out except for reseting the NES! Only once in a blue moon will a random glitch occur that let's you play the rest of the game! I know that it was unfinished but even so this game is an abomination! This is worse than the Action 52 version! To think they were actaully going to make action figures and comics based off of Cheetahmen! There's even a Kickstarter campaign for a remake of this game, giving your money to a puddle would be more worthwile!
