Wrath of the Black Manta is barely a video game, yet it somehow has a 3.0 average here on Backloggd Dot Com. This is surprising to me considering Black Manta is essentially Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, but feels about as good to play as that game if you were to control it with your feet.
Black Manta beats up gang members in a grimy, gritty, 8-bit portrait of 80s New York while rescuing kidnapped kids hidden in various rooms and hide outs. The levels are not designed in any way to be fun, interesting, or engaging. Just rooms upon rooms, duck in and check out what's inside then go to next room. Breaking up the "action" are Ninja Gaiden-esque cutscenes that look like barf, and at least one character portrait was copied wholesale from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. The in-game sprites don't fare much better, with Black Manta having a goofy-ass profile owed to the fact that his arms are just hands connected to biceps. I would have at least preferred more weird and downright ugly art if nobody was going to bother to put effort into this, but unfortunately the game mostly looks as drab and uninspired as its gameplay.
I'd be remiss in not mentioning that this game was changed considerably when brought over to the states. The original Ninja Cop features different bosses, an additional level, and a more anime/manga inspired aesthetic. It still looks bad, just for different reasons, though I've not played it so I couldn't really say if the gameplay is any better.
I was put up to playing this by a friend of a friend who found out about my bucket list of retro games, and I knew it was a joke request to begin with, but I'm very stupid and I played it anyway. I hope it was funny for them at least, because Black Manta is so bad that I don't even have anything funny to say about it, it just sucks.
Black Manta beats up gang members in a grimy, gritty, 8-bit portrait of 80s New York while rescuing kidnapped kids hidden in various rooms and hide outs. The levels are not designed in any way to be fun, interesting, or engaging. Just rooms upon rooms, duck in and check out what's inside then go to next room. Breaking up the "action" are Ninja Gaiden-esque cutscenes that look like barf, and at least one character portrait was copied wholesale from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. The in-game sprites don't fare much better, with Black Manta having a goofy-ass profile owed to the fact that his arms are just hands connected to biceps. I would have at least preferred more weird and downright ugly art if nobody was going to bother to put effort into this, but unfortunately the game mostly looks as drab and uninspired as its gameplay.
I'd be remiss in not mentioning that this game was changed considerably when brought over to the states. The original Ninja Cop features different bosses, an additional level, and a more anime/manga inspired aesthetic. It still looks bad, just for different reasons, though I've not played it so I couldn't really say if the gameplay is any better.
I was put up to playing this by a friend of a friend who found out about my bucket list of retro games, and I knew it was a joke request to begin with, but I'm very stupid and I played it anyway. I hope it was funny for them at least, because Black Manta is so bad that I don't even have anything funny to say about it, it just sucks.