I’ve talked about a fair bit of games that would have been
forgotten (or at the very least not as popular) if not attached to the name of
a famous movie or TV show (the NES Batman comes to mind). I’m also certain that
there are several almost forgotten TV shows that can be remembered due to a
great video game. Today, I have a video game based on a TV show and the
popularity of neither helped the other. Was the subject just to obscure for
some people, or was the game just not noteworthy? Let’s find out as we review
Mummies Alive, originally for the Arcade, but I’ll be playing it on the Wii
Virtual Console.
As most of you probably DON’T know, Mummies Alive was a TV
show by DIC in which a boy named Presley finds out that he is the incarnated
spirit of a pharaoh. He has 4 guardian mummies that guard him from danger, the
biggest danger being the main antagonist of the series Scarab, an ancient
Sorcerer who wishes to use the pharaoh spirit to, you guess it, take over the
world *of course*. When things got rough, the Mummies could power up with their
catch phrase *with the strength of Ra!*. It was kind of like a mix between
Batman and the Power Rangers, but lamer than that mix sounds.
The story in the video game is probably deeper than the show
deserves really. There are 4 stages and all 4 are their own little “episode”
(like Batman the Brave and the Bold, but not as repetitious). I expected to
just chase Scarab who kidnapped Presley for the whole game, but that’s only the
last level. Before him, you’ll have to stop Nuhn and his water minions from
taking over the city, calm down Geb’s temper tantrum before he levels everything
around and prevent Set and Anubis from their chaotic plan before you get to the
last level. The stories aren’t much, mostly just “something bad will happen,
punch this guy to stop it”, but it reflects the show well enough and like I
said, it’s nice that the effort was put into 4 episodes.
The game play itself is nothing too new or exciting for the
most parts, but it has some small nice touches. For example, like with SNES
Power Rangers game, the Mummies transform part ways in the level. Not something
that wasn’t already done by this point and doesn’t even effect the game play,
but the cut scene is still cool enough I had to mention it. As a whole, the
game play seems pretty simple; move, jump and hit. You can also hold the attack
button down to do a projectile attack (and you can even move around SLOWLY while
it’s charging in this game) and pressing the jump and attack buttons at the
same time does one of those health draining super moves. You can pull off slide
attacks, grabs, air attacks, spin moves and pretty much any directional attack
you can think of, nice to see a game not limit itself to only attacking
directly in front. You can also apparently do team attacks like in the arcade
Simpsons game, but I haven’t had the chance to play this game two players to
try them out.
Honestly though, having a second person might make this
experience worse, as it is really easy.
While arcade beat ‘em ups were known to be quarter suckers, and even
some home ports were amazingly hard (like the SNES Final Fight), I beat this
game using a minimum of continues the first time. Maybe this is why the game
never saw much success, as people were not even close to filling it with
quarters. Still, the hit detection is pretty solid and the button response is
great. And sections where you just take down crumbling Shabti after Shabti do
have a very satisfying feeling to it.
While Mummies Alive was developed and produced by Bandai,
the same people that made a couple of the Super Famicom Sailor Moon games, it’s
clear that this game would never be as popular. While the two games have
similar feels to them (though Mummies also feels a little “heavier” in movement
despite the free directional attacks), Sailor Moon has such a strong backing
that, even though the games were Japan only, Mummies Alive would never come
close to it. The music is pretty good, and while the SFX does sometimes sound
stock, the good ones are really good. The Graphics could use a little work (for
example the mummy form look way too puny compared to the warrior mummy forms,
even though it’s the same people just wearing armor) but since you’ll be
fighting Shabti for the most of the game and they look perfect for the world
and play style, I can’t complain too much. On the video game side of things,
beat ‘em up fanatics might want to play this once just to say they played it.
But if you’re one of those people like me who actually remembers Mummies Alive,
than you can take this as your little reward for getting the reference. I give
Mummies Alive on the Wii Virtual Console April Fools levels out of 10.
*Beat, followed, by party streamer.*
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