I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and beat Pulseman, and I can tell that proper design was floating around in the back of someone's head when this was being planned and programmed (but with only a few heads working on it, not all of that essential knowledge came in to play). Imagine, if you will, a Mega Man X game wherein you have access to a powerful buster shot and an out-of-control Falcon Armor hover, but only after running for a while or dashing by forward tap twice.
That is the essence of this game. When you build speed, you will build up an electric charge and have access to more than just a forward slash, a crouchkick, and an upward acrobatic-kick (which has a great number of invincibility frames, making the final boss a snap). If you attack, you get a distance-shot. If you press A, you get the all-powerful Volteccer, making you pinball around the level (but if you go too far without hitting a wall or obstacle, you'll lose steam and fall vulnerably).
Which is good, because you don't have a downward midair attack, an attack you'll wish you had the most. However, if it turns out there was no ground below you anyway, then your bacon is saved, because Volteccer automatically goes upward, and if you grab a Volt Power-Up, you have an unlimited charge until you exit that screen, so you can just keep using Volteccer and power up and out of everything. You have 2 real hits you can take, as indicated by your communicator in the top-left corner of the screen: Blue->HIT->Yellow->HIT->Red->LAST HIT->Lose a Life. You can recover energy by either collecting a Life Power-Up (recovers 1 hit) or 10 Sludge Balls (full health and a 1-Up). You get 5 Credits/continues.
Once you get the mechanics down, this game is quite fun. But there are 3 annoyances to the game:
1. Discerning. Early boss hitboxes are nigh indeterminable and there is no lifebar; it's trial-and-error until you can figure out how to hit them, and where you can hit them, and then vice versa (how and where they'll hit you or if you'll take collision damage). Thankfully the bosses are straight-forward, no specific weakpoints that you have to hit at a certain time or else they use a devastating counter-attack. Determining what is a platform and what is not can also be a bit tricky given the way-out colors and shapes.
2. Pacing. There are only 7 stages, so they are a bit long since the developers wanted to make sure the customer got their money's worth; it actually decreased the playability of the game. On top of that, there are instances in each level where zipping through is simply not possible, and you must crawl at a snail's pace to avoid open-bottom doom. And there are points-focused Bonus Stages at the end of each level to make your wait drag on even further.
3. Proportions. The best platformers have small(er) characters with a wider amount of stage space than what Pulseman offers. SMB, Gunstar Heroes, Mega Man: all of these have characters that measure up to maybe 1/6 or 1/8 of the screen's height. Pulseman takes up anywhere from 1/5 to 1/4 of an already-limited viewing range (typical Genesis platformer). For example, Stage 6 has a Mega Man-fan nightmare section where you must fall down through water (Pulseman can't do his special moves in the water, nor can he fall straight down from a jump) that is littered with spike balls and enemies below you that you cannot see in time to avoid; you must use a general sense of predicting stage design or memorize in order to survive.
There is no save feature; fortunately, the Wii creates save states when you quit the game through the Wii Menu rigmarole. Although the voices are in English, sadly, the game's text is not translated, but I hear there is an English patch for, eh, backup copies, so someone must have a script. Which leads me to a rave; the game doesn't even need instruction. It's so intuitive, I've picked up on a number of maneuvers already. And the difficulty? So far, it hasn't been too lenient or too demanding. In fact, if you land on spikes after exiting the Volteccer attack, you still have a second or so before getting hit. Pat that programmer on the back. Being a Sega Genesis game, though, it ramps up later. The first half of Stage 7 is a retro-arcade side-scroller, but once again, you're not given much time to react considering that you must have a slight running start to get a decent jump (by the way, the jump mechanics are very wonky).
Story, music, graphics: all above par compared to other Sega Genesis games. The story's shallow, but the irony keeps it intriguing. The music, as you might expect, has a techno feel to it, with a touch of ambiance. Actually, the graphics were extremely well-done; it's that sort of "Square(soft)[-Enix] pushing the hardware to its limits" quality. There is some slowdown, but only on the rare occasion that you break a lot of boxes. And as far as replay value, there might be some. The first few levels are down-and-dirty enough that you might get hooked back into the game.
For all that the game does wrong, it can be worked around with some patience, and it's nothing to platforming veterans. I attribute that to the number of people who made this game; you actually could count the different names, heck, the Special Thanks had about as many names as the rest of the development team. The Pulseman world is so specific and cheesy that it isn't that marketable as-is. But if they updated the concept and added 2P play, it could very well be the TMNT of the Anime world; the game has the same penchant for city backgrounds and "other worlds", not to mention the villains seem like they could crossover a bit. With so much room for improvement, a well-made sequel with at the very least some 2P co-op with the Bethany character would make this series a viable and fresh IP. So, to the game that made Game Freak recognizable long before Pokemon stormed the world:
Pulseman Final Review Score:
8.5/10