Saturn releases, back when CD media was just getting its legs under it and there were as

many wide misses as genuine hits. But, as Jeanie from PA assured me, this one falls

into that "genuine hits" category. That is, if you don't mind the weird, bug-eyed wannabe-proto-Sting

visual style, or the fact that the vocal performance leaves Japanese interjections in the gameplay

action but dubs all the other audio into English, using a voice actress who makes our weird

little hero with the egregious haircut there sound EXACTLY like U-1 from Gitaroo-Man (and,

by extension, Musashi from said Samurai Legend). And that's a thing that usually stops me cold

in my tracks. I blame Jeanie.

So after going through the world's creation myth in the opening video (a kindness not

commonly offered to we gamers), we understand that bad haircut there is trying to save his

sister. Unfortunately, the path to said sister is laden with platforming and evil things

that happen to be formed from crystals: crystal goblins, crystal birds, crystal pig-bear-lookin'

things... and all you have are your bare, grotesquely-oversized hands. These are perfect

for either picking up and throwing mobs (potentially knocking out other foes coming up on your

six), or doing an axe-handle from the air. Either way, the emphasis is less on speed

and more on "how to do the most damage with a single attack." Or, of course, you could

just uproot a big freakin' tree and drop it on 'em. After the halfway point of the first

stage, you're assisted further by a bird, who can deliver a diving attack, fetch weird

eggplant-looking foodstuffs for restorative purposes, or provide context-sensitive support

like clearing out a swarm of bats or taking care of a certain boss' backup winged eyeballs.

These abilities expend energy from the bar down at the bottom of the screen, which charges

by one segment every time you defeat an enemy with that weird greenish glowing aura about

it.

There's a fairly steep learning curve when approaching the game, as the difficulty and

timing can be tough to get down, and there are plenty of strange wrinkles to the gameplay,

like this sea-creature-ride of peril. The most frustrating part is the physics, where

the momentum of dashing jump can be almost completely halted in midair simply by attacking.

It's a good thing your little bird friend there can bring you those eggplants, else

you'd be in dire pain from one side of the level to the other. But for its rather strange

mechanics, Astal sounds quite good (in both languages), the sprite art is very lush, as

are the backgrounds, and... well, the mechanics kinda grow on ya, if you're masochistic enough

to really try to figure them out. As an in-house Sega development, and one of the earliest

Saturn releases, Astal wanted to push this brand-new hardware, and... well, to those

who could dig the rather strange style, it presented a pretty sound argument. Problem

was, there just weren't that many such gamers in '95. Shame, really. This could've been

the game I go to whenever I hear that rather distinctive, kinda whiny voice, instead of

Gitaroo-Man.