GOTD 6/6/2016: Yo Bro (Turbografx)
Yo Bro on the Turbografx is a weird one to say the least. Distilled to its basic elements, it's Zombies Ate My Neighbors on a skateboard with Beach Boys licensing. You play as the Beach Boys' mascot, a bear called Little Bro, who must save the children of California from a near apocalypse of aliens, zombies, toxic waste, robots, tornado machines, man-eating plant, killer bees, and, um... bunnies. Oh, and a dog on some kind of scooter with a blade on it. I had no idea that California had all of this shit happening in the early '90s... can't we all just get along?
Like in LucasArts' classic, Yo Bro has a bunch of hapless kids wandering slowly about, getting mauled by whatever hazard rears is ugly (or cute and fuzzy) head, and your job is to rescue them while destroying a set number of enemy installations or creature. Bro, a bear on a skateboard with a backward hat and slingshot that would give Bart Simpson an erection, navigates mazes of buildings, fencing, beaches, and hedges to locate his problems and collect weapons that have been left lying about by some militant benefactor. Upon clearing each stage, bonuses are awarded for survivors, and the next hazard is revealed.
Those scattered weapons are pretty useful if you grab them, and they stay in your inventory to switch between until used up. They include slingshot upgrades like double power, rapid shot, and three-way, grenades of varying strength, rockets of dual, freeze, and homing varieties, and rayguns, and can make dealing with foes much easier. Grenades are the toughest to use, as their range changes depending on your speed, and since the field of play is pretty zoomed in, it isn't always easy to know what's coming. There is a Crazy Taxi-like directional arrow telling you where the nearest target is, but some sort of radar for finding kids and targets would have really been huge, as taking too long in a stage causes a steady rain of explosives until you beat it or die.
Death causes you to restart your current stage from scratch minus any ammo you've used up. Your basic slingshot does have infinite ammo at least, but it can get frustrating if you were doing well and got killed by falling in water or something, as you can usually withstand several hits, but one drop in the ocean and you're done. There are 30 total stages segmentedinto five per city, with bonus levels in between to collect extra points and power-ups. The game goes on a little long, and I'd equate it to playing something like Rampage, where there's not a ton of variety in what you see or do, but the core game is still pretty fun.
Graphically, Yo Bro uses only slightly more colors than an NES game, and probably could have been done handily on Master System. Still, what's there is so dumb and silly that it kind of works for such a ridiculous premise. The music, though... four chiptune renditions of Beach Boys songs like "Help Me Ronda" and "California Girls" are out of place for the storyline, but in some weird way add a layer of cheese that makes it funny but awful at the same time to hear. All together, Yo Bro is a stupid, fun, weird game, and is like finding out that Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Ghoul Patrol have an autistic cousin that's fun to hang out with.
Played it?
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Originally Posted by celerystalker
