Legend of Dekoboko
Legend of Dekoboko (or Dekoboko Densetsu sometimes) is an overhead racing game for the PC Engine CD that aims very much to ape the likes of Micro Machines. I picked this one up in a pile the day I picked up my Duo-R, and at the time it fell to the wayside as Legend of Xanadu II really captured my attention at that moment. It took a few years for me to give this one an honest shake. With the promise of wild top-down racing with weapons and 5 player simultaneous play, it looked to have a lot of promise.
Well, as one might imagine, issues began to show their ugly faces pretty much right away. With 5 racers, there's no real good way to split up the screen, so everybody is stuck on one. This is where everything goes to shit. In order to accomodate all of those players, no one can really fall behind, and on large courses not unlike Micro Machines, this means if you start to fall off screen, you get boosted back into the field, which diminishes the advatage of obtaining any large disparity in skill. To make matters worse, in a foolish attempt to give distance the frontrunner, the lead cars end up at the very top of the screen, allowing for virtually no reaction time to what are obstacle-laden courses. Instead of frantic fun, you get abundant frustration.
That said, you do have a lot of fun tweaks reminiscent of RC Pro Am, where you can power uo between races and collect itens and weapons to take into the chaos. The computer-controlled cars tend to cluster, so it can be easy to get good use out of weapons. Realistically, though, the game is so disorganized due to its aforementioned design flaws that it just feels sloppy.
Graphically, it has an extremely simplistic look with mostly monochromatic cars and tiny sprites, and it reminds me of Micro Machines... too bad everyone is either bunched together at the top of the screen or incessantly bouncing up from the bottom.
As a multiplayer experience, Legend of Dekoboko works okay, but there are just a ton of better similar games out there. Moto Roader manages to do this formula well better on the Turbo, so this one is more of a curiosity than a secret masterpiece. I'll put up a picture in the morning. There's a power outage tonight that has me up, so I figured I may as well do something with my phone.
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