Half-Minute Hero Review (PSP)

It sounds like the game would be really short no? 30 seconds and it’s win or lose. But Rising Star, Marvelous and XSeed have cleverly put in multiple levels each which you have only thirty seconds to solve. You are able to do things like rewind time so a level can take a couple minutes and there are loads of levels to play through.

First off, the cut scenes and visual, outside of actually playing the game, are some amazing anime-style graphcs. Then when you get into the game itself, you’re looking at an NES 8-bit era game. It made me chuckle because I was expecting something completely different. That’s not to say the graphics are bad, well, yes they are. But they work and they work extremely well. It’s almost as if this title was resurrected and instead of changing form just changed its clothes.

The humor in the game is reminiscent of the All Your Base Are Belong to Us of Zero Wing. Great sayings like "You got sexier at the Goddess Spa" will surely come into use in the near future across the Internet.

The game has several different games in it including an adventure game, RTS (like Rochambeau with units), scrolling shooter and more. They all intertwine and characters from one become the main character or show up in others. So far I have finished Princess and EvilLord and am partly through Hero. There are three games to unlock including Knight but I haven’t been able to unlock them yet. It’s a lot of game!

The sound in the game is also retro 8-bit era with some better quality music. The sounds of battle are exactly as you would expect from the look and atmosphere of the game. However, the music is epic. It changes as you play, has some full, rich sounds and really helps keep your attention on the game.

As you play through the Hero levels you’ll pick up loads of equipment that will help you overcome levels and there are things akin to side quests on some levels but with only 30-seconds at a time you need to keep an eye on the clock.

One of the drawbacks to the game is the lengthy dialog that accompanies every single level. You can skip over them fairly quickly but then at the end of each level you have to scroll through the game’s credits. Again, this can be sped up, but really, every level? Come on XSeed, that’s just excessive. 

Overall, Half Minue Hero will bring you hours of old-school game play in a great anime-inspired wrapper. I’ve been playing for almost 8 and a half hours. Considering each level is 30-90 seconds each, that’s a lot of levels (30 Princess, 30 EvilLord and maybe 50 Hero, plus the others yet to be unlocked). The price is only $22 (from $30) at Amazon , $20 at Ebgames.com and certainly seems like a good investment for those who long for the days of the NES and SNES.

The game is set to launch in Europe on February 12th.