Confusion abounds with this. This is not the same Shockman that was originally released for the TurboGrafx-16 in 1991, which was a localization of the Japanese Shubibinman 2. This, Cyber Citizen Shockman, is a new 2023 translation of the original Shubibinman game from 1989; and frankly, that’s the most special thing about it.
Here, the map’s overworld offers a choice of multiple paths, each leading to a very short platforming stage littered with enemies and traps to jump over and avoid. Each has a boss ranging from good-looking mecha-style things or well-rendered monsters, requiring little other than quick spamming early on and a more coherent strategy later, depending on your health. Visiting the map screen offers brief dialogue exchanges and the option to heal yourself or purchase weapon upgrades with gold acquired during the stage. Deaths will slightly penalize your gold reward, but the hostages you rescue with each boss defeat also offer transient bonuses, health boosts, and sometimes become permanent map items, like the dedicated healing nurse. Increasing weapon power is your modus operandi, eventually acquiring the chargeable Shockbeam, an addition that makes things much more enjoyable and changes your approach to enemy negotiations.
The problem is that the game is hampered by the most infuriatingly slow controls. Your character’s initial walking speed is slow as treacle and not much better at a full trot. Shockman is also accused of one of the worst crimes 2D games can commit: inertia. This causes you to drag a good few steps in each direction as you mash the D-pad trying to correct your position. The game’s incredibly short stages are clearly designed around this control scheme, though it seems like a lazier method of artificially extending the length of the campaign – and that’s in addition to a lot of structural recycling by the time you get to the end.
To its credit, there are some interesting design features, with a choice of male and female characters (who play identically) and a two-player mode at the same time. Shop searching and upgrading are worthy goals to work towards, but it’s ultimately so hampered by its labor-intensive movement and infuriating jump mechanics that it’s hard to recommend. It looks and sounds good for an early PC Engine title and is sweet enough, but there are three more entries in the series that keep getting better.
As with other retro revisions of the Ratalaika game, the presentation is rudimentary, but it comes with a fairly comprehensive set of options for adjusting the image, screen curvature, scan line density and gamma, all of which can be changed a lot. The fast-forward and rewind functions make things a little more bearable, and the gallery is always a nice diversion if you want to check out clean scans of the details in the manual, as well as the original case and media.
Overall, though, while it can be fun if you really dig in and try to learn Shockman with full conviction, it remains the weakest of its series, has aged quite badly, and will really only appeal to die-hard retro enthusiasts who want you own a piece of gaming history in a modern format.
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