ONM Remembered – #238
“Juie the bionic beast takes on Retsu, super ninja.”
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 69 (March 1998)
Dual Heroes! Yet another quirky and colourful N64 fighting game I’ve never touched in my life, have heard nothing but middling-to-poor reviews for it, but boy did all the magazines know how to make it look exciting!
Looking at the N64 Pro review from the last entry, this is almost a textbook example of how not to structure a review. It dedicates eight paragraphs in prominent boxes to the most basic of info: the story, the controls and the fact fights are fought best two-out-of-three (holy shit!!!). The actual review, if it deserves to be called that, is squeezed between colourful screenshots and some really sweet splash art. The caption says “This close up shot shows the poor graphics,” but I’m thinking, does it? The screenshot is too tiny to tell, and what I do see is miles better-looking than the first screenshots they ever showed of Mario Party, I can tell you that much.
The review sums up to “save your money”, but it only makes me wonder, why spend a two-page spread on a game that’s not worth your time, let alone 150 words of so-called insight? To its credit, the magazine would quickly learn its lesson and squeeze reviews of crap games to half a page or less, unless they could milk some humour out of it.
