Weird-looking beat n' up that's colorful and a little bit on the easier side.
May be more fun with a friend, but the slowdowns (on the Saturn version at least) pulls the experience down a little bit.

Plenty of attacks that can be trigger with inputs like on Final Fight 3 of SoR4, so fans of the genre will feel at home.

Nothing too special to say about it, but it's ALMOST a hidden gem on the platform.

Game Review - by Gideon Zhi (founder of AGTP)

Nekketsu Oyako by TechnoSoft (or alternately Tecno Soft) – not to be confused with the other Nekketsu games, starring Kunio, by Technos – is a rather average Final Fight clone beatemup. You’ve got your three characters, the big buff slowpoke, the fast but weak girl, and the all around average guy, and they walk through a bunch of levels beating the puss out of stuff for some reason or another.

Graphically, the game is… well, sub-par for the Playstation, but considering that it was one of the first titles to grace the system (and considering that it was up against the likes of Funky Horror Band for Sega CD as a contender for “worst near-launch title graphics”) I’d say it did quite well. The sound is, as well, nothing to write home about. Neither is the gameplay. In fact, the whole thing just screams of average, and it would remain so if it took itself seriously. As it is, the amount of bizarre doesn’t quite reach the level of Gourmet Sentai Barayarou for the SNES, with its nose-rocket-propelled moai heads and dance button, but it comes sort of close, with half of the second level being inside a whale (which eats you at the end of the first.) Inside the whale you’ll find boxing octopi and blobs of water with “H2O” written on ‘em. Weird.

It deserves some playtime though, even if the lack of Kunio is a bit of a disappointment. Given the… closeness of the game title and company name, I think TechnoSoft was specifically aiming to confuse people into thinking that this was a Kunio game, but it’s not. Shame on you, TechnoSoft! That’s bad business that is!
(editor's note: as said by me in the one other review on Backloggd, this was a PS1 launch title, and I probably only played it because Gideon Zhi's review and it being one of the only translated PS1 games at the time sold me on playing it)

The Playstation is one of those consoles I never owned. Outside of Mega Man collections, I just never played them. It took till a couple of months ago to play one and that was Battle Arena Toshinden. If it goes well I'll try to play some PS1 games this year for fun and review them as I go. Let's begin with a launch title. It would have been Crime Crackers but there's still a language barrier. :<

So, this game. It was made by Technosoft. You probably know them for their cool Mega Drive games like Thunder Force 2-4, Elemental Master, and Herzog Zwei. I had some confidence this one would be really cool but I think I had too high of expectations.

This game is a beat em up where you can pick from three different characters. I picked Rio for my playthrough which is the girl character who uses a hammer. You have to go through 5 stages with up to 5 lives and a max of 5 continues per player. They surprisingly don't share between you and yes this game is co-op if you have a friend.

You got a decent variety of moves and weapons to pick up and use. I gotta say though idk if I just suck at using a controller or something but sometimes I just did the move I wasn't wanting to do and IDK how it kept happening. I think it has to do with how you're inputting with the d-pad but I wasn't a fan especially when I was trying to do throws. You can also do supers but despite being cool looking, they don't do much damage making the cutscene feel kind of obnoxious. I like some of the weapons you can pick up like this disc you can throw that comes back to you. You can even have a second life bar when getting health pick ups, though playing as the two minors make it so the beer item is not possible to use as it's for adult's only.

The enemy variety isn't too large but I guess it doesn't need to be when it's 5 stages but it could be a lot worse. Some of these enemies I swear are parodies of things but besides the Jason lookin enemy, I can't really say. Enemies aren't too annoying besides this girl in a yellow outfit that I can't stand.

But what I can't stand more are the bosses. They are very bad and I can't stand when beat em ups make them most of the time prioritize your moves. Better enjoy spamming moves the AI sucks at dealing with. Though to this game's credit, when you refight them in the last stage, two of them can be defeated quickly with stage hazards and it felt so satisfying. The final boss also is terrible and I hate him.

The game looks nice though I'm going to be honest, IDK how impressive this is for 32-bit. I'm not gonna say if this would easily work as a 16 bit game because again I'm not knowledgeable about it. I do like stuff like the cars in the first stage with the squash and stretch they do. I also like the echo you can hear of the voices when inside the whale. The environments overall look quite nice if a bit basic at times. The music didn't really catch my interest but maybe I need to give it a listen more.

Nekketsu Oyako really is a game that could be much better. It's not bad but it really needed some improvements. There is fun to be had here but I can't really say if it's anything special especially considering there were already better beat em ups by this point. The game would get later ported to the Saturn though idk if it's any better. Even if it's not the best game, I am excited now to try more games for the system. To end this off, if there is one thing I have to give this game credit, something that is truly incredible, it has no elevator section.