Thanks to Ratalaika Games for the review code

Title: Cyber Citizen Shockman 2: A New Menace
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $5.99
Release Date: 09/22/2023

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Story

In this sequel to the original Shockman, (and thus, meaning this game is our original Shockman from 92) you take control of the two heroes once gain as they must stop the Rhyo Empire from their conquest of earth!

As the duo tries to find their missing professor, a strange new pair of Shockmen emerge to stop them, and the story in general ramps up the intensity a bit, definitely not resembling the goofier tone from the first game much at all. A lot of moments are fairly cliche and predictable, but it still manages to be a somewhat decent plot that’ll stick in your head, mostly thanks to the music.

Presentation

Another Ratalaika Port, and thus another game ported in their wrapper. This time around the CRT filter has gotten a couple additions and presets, which helps to add even more tweaks for that nice looking option. There’s a good bit of scanned content, just like last time, and since this was the Shockman game the US originally got, the manual and key art for that release is included in the gallery as well as the Japanese assets, albeit with NEC related terms and trademarks heavily redacted. This was the only part of the entire package where the game crashed on me, and that was during me flipping through manual pages rather quickly, so maybe don’t get too excited while trying to read all of this material.

Likewise, you have different screen and scaling options to pick from, all of which look crisp and nice just like they usually do. The audio emulation is spot on, which is a good thing since Shockman 2 easily has one of the best HuCard OSTs on the entire system, and each song sounds just as superb in this port as it would on normal hardware.

Speaking of that OST, Shockman 2 in general has a great presentation, elevated way above the goofy looking original game, looking a lot more colorful and shaded with more detailed sprites and backgrounds, and going from a decent, short score from the first game to a beefier, lengthier soundtrack full of non-stop bangers. These songs are just outstanding and show Masaya at one of their highest points on the Turbo, and some of these tracks will get stuck in your head for weeks on end.

I’ve had the full OST as part of my regular driving rotation for over four years now, and I don’t think there’s a single track in this entire game I do not like in some capacity. The boss theme is full of energy, the character themes have the perfect amount of sorrow to them, and several stage themes are such great tunes that I argue that aspect more than makes up for some of the frustrations that come from actually playing the later levels, though more on that in a bit. Like with the first game’s port, the JP version has been fully translated into english from scratch, allowing you to compare this modern translation with the old, stilted NEC translation from 1992, which is also an awesome effort to see.

Gameplay

The first Shockman was a slow moving, but decently fun action platformer that had a co-op option, but was rather chaotic and a huge mess with you sharing the same life bar. Well, Shockman 2 changes genre a little bit to a Run and Gun platformer, akin to Megaman, and this also has co-op. The very first time I ever played Shockman 2, I went fully into this with Co-Op, and that lead to the funniest and most chaotic session of local co-op I have had in a long, long time, because yep, you share a life bar again, and the game is not balanced for multiplayer in the slightest. Hell, the faster pace of the game compared to the original makes that shared lifebar even more of a pain to keep track of, and you’ll die constantly trying to play the co-op mode fairly.

Still, for this port I decided to play through this fully solo before giving the local co-op another spin, and as a solo game, Shockman 2 is fairly competent and a lot more fun than the first game. You no longer have a world map to traverse between with branching paths, but rather it’s a stage by stage journey, with eight levels in all. Gone is the sword, replaced with a Mega Man style beam gun, with a charge shot that deals more damage. Also add in how your character is a lot faster and the hitboxes are far better from the nightmarish ones from the original, and you have a pretty decent formula, even if it does come off as a bit of an imitator.

Running and gunning does manage to be fun, but there still is poor variety when it comes to pickups. You occasionally run into a health drink, and can get lucky with a special item that allows you to rain down stars or summon beams (depending on the character in play) if you charge your beam long enough, but that’s about all enemies will leave behind. Even then, the super beam shot isn’t that useful, and I hardly found myself using it, so the scarce health refills were the drops I prayed for the most.

Luckily, the stages do change up quite a bit, as Shockman 2 adds in some side scrolling shooter stages, where your character will inexplicably transform into a plane and take to the skies. These levels are absolutely nowhere close to Masaya’s normal shmups in quality, but they’re a fine distraction. However, they’re the worst part of the game to play in co-op, as hitting anything will rapidly drain your lifebar, and when two players are zooming around to dodge moving walls and enemies, these stages became pure hell with a partner, and further reinforces that this game was not at all balanced for cooperative play.

Speaking of balance, while the rest of the solo experience did manage to be a fun ride, some levels get utterly ridiculous even by yourself; a few later levels contain multiple bosses one after the other, and the biggest sin this game commits is that while continues are infinite, you start from the beginning of the level, meaning that for the long stages with multiple bosses, you have to do all of that in one go. While in solo play these tough stages could be doable with practice without any of the cheats or QOL, since enemies do follow basic patterns, that also means these stages become next to impossible in multiplayer since if your partner gets hit too much, you both die, and in levels such as the final one this becomes infuriating.

Thankfully, as a bit of Ratalaika’s saving grace, there are a few cheats available to toggle on, just as in their port of the first game. You have infinite health, but also the ability to reduce the starting HP of bosses to 1, and the ability to use infinite super charge shots. While I really don’t recommend you mess with these in solo play unless the game is really stumping you, I find that the first two options make the co-op mode much, much more tolerable, since you no longer have the shared health aspect to worry about, and the bosses aren’t able to get in your way as much. Thus, it makes local co-op in Shockman 2 pretty darn fun, and elevates it to as much of a good time as the solo experience, with both players being able to enjoy the epic tunes and fun, melodramatic plot.

Conclusion

While Shockman 2 still has a lot of jank to it, the game does manage to improve over the original game in quite a few ways, leading to a more fun solo platformer with one of the best PC Engine soundtracks backing it. However, as a multiplayer experience, Shockman 2 is outright miserable, and a regression from the first game due to just how much faster everything is, along with those hellish shmup stages.

Still, I am very happy to say that Ratalaika has done a pretty stellar port job here, bringing over the game people in the West recognize while giving the JP original a much needed retranslation, continuing a path that will hopefully lead us to the next two games in the series being brought over with a similar translation. Their usual wrapper got some tweaks, and the typical rewind/save state features will help you through this charming, if rough adventure while not completely breaking the experience.

Most impressive of all however is the fact that the cheats, while a bit overkill in solo, actually do a pretty good job at making the multiplayer way more fun than it originally was. Granted, that doesn’t make up for the utter lack of co-op balancing, but at least it’ll ensure that you can tackle this with a local friend without smashing a controller, and was the best thing Ratalaika could have done in that aspect.

Really the fact the port is super polished, includes multiple variants, a cool gallery, and the typical QOL all for $6 makes this an utter steal, and the Shockman game I’d recommend picking up first, especially since it doesn’t really play like the others and manages to be a bit more newcomer friendly as a solo game. Even with the jank and frustration in parts, you’ll be rewarded with one memorable adventure and some awesome tunes, and I still can’t help but recommend it nevertheless. It may have a lot of rough edges, but Shockman 2 is a fun gem that I’m super excited to see get the treatment it deserved.

I give Cyber Citizen Shockman 2: A New Menace an 8 out of 10.