Game Gear - Incredible Hulk, The

Format
Game Gear
Publisher
US Gold
Developer
US Gold
Country of origin
UK
Genre
Scrolling Fighter

Incredible Hulk

By David Rasmussen
9th Mar 08

Well, after much time and reviewing it’s time to open up the newest in retro reviewing.
Our first batch of SEGA Game Gear reviews. Let’s get into it.

First off a shoutout to Doug from GameTZ (the site where I do all my game swapping), who traded me a SEGA Game Gear and 19 GAMES!! Thanks to you, Doug, we’ll have quite abit to review for sometime to come! Thanks!!

These days when you play MARVEL games you have a few outstanding titles out there worthy of praise (and recommendation). Both X-Men Legends games, MARVEL Ultimate Alliance, MARVEL Vs. Capcom’s titles, the first two movie based Spider-Man games, Incredible Hulk : Ultimate Destruction. Games that really show you MARVEL’s bright shiny video game potential.

Then you have the 90’s, and MARVEL’s dim dark video game past.
Sure, there are the occasional breakout game that deserves praise (and recommendation) even now, but for the most part MARVEL’s video game bullpen seemed to be filled with more Night of the MARVEL Zombie games than anything else.

Here’s one of the bad ones for your dissertation. Incredible Hulk.

Actually this game also seems to have bad timing.
Why? Maybe because there is actual movement to make a Hulk 2 movie.
Yes, apparently the powers that be are going back to the drawing board on this one and trying again (maybe this time they’ll take all their cues from Ultimate Destruction when making the video game tie in the Hulk 2... Or, come to think of it, maybe they’ll take their cues from Ultimate Destruction when making the Hulk 2 MOVIE)! So then, with that said, maybe it’s not the right time to bring up the worst time of the Hulk’s video game career past. At least the Hulk, unlike Iron Man, had a great solo game as well as… wait… he didn’t appear in Ultimate Alliance. My bad.

I don’t know what the story is, I just know that the game uses the same micro characters set in the same micro maze world where you have to traverse yet another rat in a maze environment to get from point A to B. Yes, classic Hulk villains show up to fight you, but with the limited environment of the game it’s just not all that exciting.

To the Hulk’s credit the game does have a few more moves for the Hulk (and Banner) than shown in Iron Man/XO, and once you ran out of gamma juice you turned back into Banner (which meant certain areas become accessible as they are only wide enough for someone of Banner’s size to traverse). However all in all the whole isn’t as good as it should have been.

Banner is practically defenseless with only a gun that shoots a few times before running on empty, the Hulk is powerful but sometimes I still don’t feel the real power of the Hulk in this game (unlike Ultimate Destruction where you really felt the Hulk’s power). The same recycled environments (and basic move from A to B premise) is old, and the game really doesn’t distinguish itself apart from other MARVEL games of similar genre except for the quirk difference between the Hulk/Banner (and the means to access areas unique to Banner with his size difference).

It’s just another 2 gamma bomb duds out of 5 for MARVEL’s bad history game memories. This, like so many other MARVEL games of the past, are things that MARVEL truly wish (to paraphrase the latest in a long line of game shows on TV born during the Writer’s strike) they could develop Amne$ia over concerning their existence.

-- David Rasmussen 9th Mar 08

Game Gear Incredible Hulk, The Images