A weird one-room arcade game made by Sega that I've briefly played before but explored more in depth only now. It feels a bit ahead of its time for 1984! It's a bit strange to play an arcade game that focuses on combat between the player and one large enemy without any small "popcorn" type enemies around.

In this game you'll use your cape (or whatever they're called) to trick the bull into doing spins around you for points, in order to weaken its... stamina... (?) enough that you can stab it in the back and murder it. If you stab it after doing a good spin your murder score will be multiplied.

Other interesting things can happen -- sometimes the bull will glance you and send your sword flying across the arena and you'll have to pick it up. Sometimes the "dead" bull will jump back up for a final frenzied round, doing circles and charging more aggressively. Sometimes another bull will enter the ring simultaneously and charge around, bouncing off the walls trying to distract or gore you while you're still fighting the main bull.

There's a lot of interesting variation here, and this game is honestly fun to play around with. My best score after about 10 attempts was still barely better than the default high-score though so I wonder what I couldn't figure out...

4 - Great: A solid, fun game with standout features

Reviewed on Jan 11, 2022


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