Hagane is a side-scrolling action game developed by CAProductions, who probably most notably also developed the Saturn mecha game Bulk Slash, and now primarily work on the Mario Party series. This lineage seems odd at first glance, but on reflection makes a lot of sense. Hagane is brimming with ideas. There are five stages. Each stage is broken into different sub-stages—1-1, 1-2, and so on, ending with a boss battle. And each of these brief sequences is typically a succinct exploration into a particular idea or mechanic—in the same spiritual sense as Mario Party minigames, but tied beautifully together in a side-scrolling action game package. Some of these ideas are based in the level itself, like autoscrolling horizontal or vertical platforming sections, or working your way through a labyrinth where doors warp you to surprising places, or bursting through a level by destroying walls, or exploring a cave system to find the boss, or the STG-like autoscrolling level where Hagane drives a floating bike (?) through the Mode 7-powered warbling environment of a crashing space ship; some of the levels force you to use a certain move that Hagane can do to move through the level efficiently. And Hagane can do a lot of moves.
At its core, Hagane is a Shinobi-style action game, but there's a surprising amount of depth to your movement and attack options. Hagane, like a Rolling Thunder character, can walk left and right and duck. He can jump and vertically down kick onto enemies heads like Mario, bouncing off them. He can ground slide like Mega Man, and there is a Mega Man 4 Square Machine-style boss that requires sliding. With the respective shoulder buttons, he can somersault left or right, which speeds up movement and can dodge attacks. Holding down the somersault button will have Hagane somersault a second and third time, going higher and changing colors each time, indicating that a different special move can be done—a forward sliding ground attack on the first somersault, an upwards flipping jump kick at the second, and an area of effect attack at the third. When the attack button is pressed during a jump to the left or right, Hagane will do a side kick. When the jump button is pressed again just under the apex of Hagane's jump, Hagane will roll forward horizontally; there is an autoscrolling level where you have to use this exactly. When you roll horizontally into a wall, Hagane will bounce off; by continuing to hold down the jump button he will ping pong back and forth between the walls, traveling upward. Hagane can hang onto ceilings and moving platforms by jumping from underneath them and pressing the up button at the bottom surface; there's a level entirely based around this mechanic, at least if you want to make it through without taking too much damage. And there's a special move Hagane can trigger at any time, if he has ammo for it, that does damage to all enemies on screen and makes Hagane briefly invincible.
Hagane has multiple weapons, but he can only equip one of them at a time; you have a button to cycle through these. Most of them use ammo that drop from enemies, but I rarely found that I was out of ammo for any particular weapon. There's the short range, fast katana, that will be your bread and butter; there are grenades that Hagane throws in a short arc; there are long range, fast kunai; then finally there's a slightly slower, slightly shorter range grappling hook, that Hagane can also throw at ceiling surfaces to pull himself towards them while jumping.
This tendency of multiple possibilities extend to certain enemies as well, like the floating house robots that can, and sometimes must be, used as platforms. Most bosses are puzzle bosses that require one or two of these mechanics, and using a certain weapon or two to capitalize on openings.
The sheer amount of things you can do, and the levels being typically so different from each other, reminds me a lot of another one of my favorite side-scrolling action games—Gunstar Heroes. And like with that game, it can feel like these developers only got to scratch at the surface of possibilities. A Hagane playthrough is only half an hour, but on the bright side, it never feels stale. The character and enemy art designs are all by the legendary tokusatsu film director Keita Amemiya, who is in his Zëiram era, which mixes traditional Japanese theatre images with nasty, quasi-biological robot designs. This works well for a video game because he likes sticking little spooky faces on everything—so you know where you need to hit them. Amemiya's involvement is what got me to play this game in the first place. I was really happy to find such a rich, cool action game.
At its core, Hagane is a Shinobi-style action game, but there's a surprising amount of depth to your movement and attack options. Hagane, like a Rolling Thunder character, can walk left and right and duck. He can jump and vertically down kick onto enemies heads like Mario, bouncing off them. He can ground slide like Mega Man, and there is a Mega Man 4 Square Machine-style boss that requires sliding. With the respective shoulder buttons, he can somersault left or right, which speeds up movement and can dodge attacks. Holding down the somersault button will have Hagane somersault a second and third time, going higher and changing colors each time, indicating that a different special move can be done—a forward sliding ground attack on the first somersault, an upwards flipping jump kick at the second, and an area of effect attack at the third. When the attack button is pressed during a jump to the left or right, Hagane will do a side kick. When the jump button is pressed again just under the apex of Hagane's jump, Hagane will roll forward horizontally; there is an autoscrolling level where you have to use this exactly. When you roll horizontally into a wall, Hagane will bounce off; by continuing to hold down the jump button he will ping pong back and forth between the walls, traveling upward. Hagane can hang onto ceilings and moving platforms by jumping from underneath them and pressing the up button at the bottom surface; there's a level entirely based around this mechanic, at least if you want to make it through without taking too much damage. And there's a special move Hagane can trigger at any time, if he has ammo for it, that does damage to all enemies on screen and makes Hagane briefly invincible.
Hagane has multiple weapons, but he can only equip one of them at a time; you have a button to cycle through these. Most of them use ammo that drop from enemies, but I rarely found that I was out of ammo for any particular weapon. There's the short range, fast katana, that will be your bread and butter; there are grenades that Hagane throws in a short arc; there are long range, fast kunai; then finally there's a slightly slower, slightly shorter range grappling hook, that Hagane can also throw at ceiling surfaces to pull himself towards them while jumping.
This tendency of multiple possibilities extend to certain enemies as well, like the floating house robots that can, and sometimes must be, used as platforms. Most bosses are puzzle bosses that require one or two of these mechanics, and using a certain weapon or two to capitalize on openings.
The sheer amount of things you can do, and the levels being typically so different from each other, reminds me a lot of another one of my favorite side-scrolling action games—Gunstar Heroes. And like with that game, it can feel like these developers only got to scratch at the surface of possibilities. A Hagane playthrough is only half an hour, but on the bright side, it never feels stale. The character and enemy art designs are all by the legendary tokusatsu film director Keita Amemiya, who is in his Zëiram era, which mixes traditional Japanese theatre images with nasty, quasi-biological robot designs. This works well for a video game because he likes sticking little spooky faces on everything—so you know where you need to hit them. Amemiya's involvement is what got me to play this game in the first place. I was really happy to find such a rich, cool action game.