Posted on January 30th, 2008 in Axel Night, Pretzel & Beer Gaming, Video Games by Axel Night
Once upon a time, there was a dude. This dude kicked much ass. Known only by his codename, Shatterhand, he taught us that no problem is too large to punch. A true hero of the NES era.
Shorter and sweeter become the P&BG reviews, because anything more is an insult to my ever-shrinking attention span. Shatterhand was a platforming-action NES game by Natsume. In Japan, it was called Tokyuu Shirei Solbrain, based off a "guy in a robot suit" series of the same name. In the US, we never got the show, so the game was given a whole different story and character.
Shatterhand is a testament to badassery. Armed with only his fists and his Terry Bogart look-alike facade, he wanders through the techno-punk world to face M. Bison’s long lost cousin and save the world from his cyborg army. Each enemy is punched, one after another, with equal bias. Wall in the way? Punch it down. Being shot at? Punch the bullets. He punches bullets. He is the true founder of the bad ass club. I take it back, Terry Bogart only wishes he had this man’s style.
If the going gets tough… well, you’re obviously not punching enough. But, since this game was made so hard only the fists of Shatterhand himself could beat it, the developers threw in a few helping hands. (Helping hands. Get it? Haha. *cough*) Picking up three alpha and/or beta symbols grants you a helper robot that hovers over you with a special weapon. The weapon is decided by what combination of letters you picked up. Which letter you get drops randomly, but you can always switch it to the other letter before picking it up, so you can decide which robot is worthy of gracing itself with Shatterhand’s divine presence. How do you change the letters, you ask? You obviously don’t understand the premise of this game yet. Be gone from my sight.
- Shatterhand’s fists can divide by zero.
…
What are you still doing here? That was the bullet comment. It means I’m done talking. Oh, I see. You want to cheat, and you’re not satisfied with what the various Internets have to offer. Very well, I understand you’re impatient and possibly intoxicated. Here’s one you’ll only get as an AbG exclusive (A quick Google search shows this may be questionably accurate, but I put the hackers effort into this one, so its exclusive, damnit). Break out the Game Genie for this one. It’s infinite life energy.
Infinite Life:
SXUATUSE
SXNOENSE
That’s all you’ll need to sweep through the game in no time. For an added bonus, pop in the code I mentioned in the Shadow of the Ninja review when prompted to Press Start at the title screen, and you’ll get a Boss Select screen to jump to all but the final boss, as well as a music test for the game’s above-average soundtrack.
- Yes, Axel can make his own NES game genie codes. He’s just that awesome(/nerdy).