Guilty Gear Petit 2
When it comes to selection of genres, Bandai's WonderSwan seems to be pretty limited, since most of the portable's games are either side-scrollers or RPGs. Apparently, Bandai seemed to notice this and decided to enlist Sammy's new bombshell into its library of titles. As it would turn out though, this game would turn out to be similar to some of the fighters from SNK's Neo Geo Pocket systems, both in visual and gameplay terms.
As for the storyline of this game, it's to Guilty Gear X what King of Fighters R-2 was to King of Fighting '98. Basically, in the 22nd Century, mankind succeeded in harnessing the power of magic, which provided for a limitless source of natural energy and eventually, a new breed of amazingly powerful biological weapons was developed. This was the birth of the "Gears." One day, a rebel gear, who went by the name "Justice" and declared himself capable of independent thought, rose up, and enlisted an army of other Gears to declare war on the human race. In retaliation, humankind formed the Sacred Order of Holy Knights and declared a Holy War against the Gear rebellion and eventually, Justice was defeated and banished to an impenetrable dimensional prison. Five years later, Justice returned but was defeated in an international fighting tournament which was organized in order to find new members suitable for inclusion in the Sacred Order of Holy Knights. Less than a year later, information about a new Gear with a will of its own, and a bounty was placed on the new Gear, at the lofty sum of 500,000 World Dollars. In other words, this game uses another variant of a tournament-themed fighting game.
The graphics look fantastic. The characters look similar to those from the various Neo Geo Pocket fighters, only with a better range of colors. Everyone is well detailed, and keep true to the original designs from this game's originated title. The backgrounds are also well done, and the menu screens and character profiles look good as well.
The sound quality, on the other hand, is a completely different story. The sound effects in Guilty Gear Petit 2 are somewhat decent, because the slashes actually sound somewhat like slashes from most arcade fighting games. However, the ranges of sound effects are very low. The music, on the other hand, seems to be attempting to emulate the tunes from the original game, but don't quite pull it off. Basically, everything sounds a bit screechy and garbled, which makes it hard to enjoy (or even bear). You may just want to play with it muted-that's what I did.
The controls are great. The control style is similar to that of most Neo Geo Pocket fighters, in the sense that you use the "A" and "B" buttons for attacks, and the "X" D-Pad to move your character. The gameplay style is similar to most Capcom and SNK fighters, in the simplest terms, such as the fact that there are "special moves" and "super combos" (known as "Deadly Moves" in this game). Actually, it's kind of a combination between the Samurai Shodown!, King of Fighters and Street Fighter series.
As for import value, folks, I hate to say it, but there really isn't much. It's a decent game for those collecting/playing WonderSwan, but you can find portable Guilty Gear games elsewhere at better prices. At this point you're better off buying Guilty Gear game on the PSP or any other portable game system.
