The N64 isn't exactly over populated with fighting games so any that appear are more than welcome sadly most that have appeared on the N64 have been pretty poor, however luckily rakuga kids isn't one of them.

Basically the gist of the story is that there is a gang of kids called the Tinkles who find some magic crayons in a cave and when they use them, their drawings come to life. However Val the school bully also gets hold of the crayons and creates his own character that causes havoc around the town. So the tinkles decide to use their drawings to stop val's character. Hehe its hardly gonna win a oscar but it's not too bad.

The first thing you will notice when you play is that the graphics look very unique, all the characters are very well animated & look like they have been drawn using crayons. The stage backgrounds are also well drawn and fit the game well.

The sound is pretty good and the voices fit the characters well, Mamezo is my fave character as some of the one liners he comes out with are funny. The background music is also good its a mixture of bright & cheery songs.

There are 7 characters to choose from (plus 2 secret) each character has his or her own set of crazy special moves plus 3 special magic attacks. Most of the moves are pulled off by using the standard street fighter set of joypad moves. The N64 pad isn't especially designed for fighters but all the characters are easy to control using the N64 pad.

This game also has magic bars like super street fighter, as you fight your magic bar will slowly fill up, when the bar is full (you can have a max of 3 bars) you can pull off a special magical attack. These moves are some of the most impressive in the entire game. One of my favourites is when Val's character Mamezo draws a phone box then proceeds to order a pizza which turns up on the back of a delivery bike driven by a dog which then proceeds to run over the other player.

There are the usual 1 player story modes and 2 player VS modes plus the obligatory practice mode. But also in the game is a really cool training mode, In training mode you select a character and then fight against different characters. As you play the game learns your fighting style then you can save the character you have trained and let it fight in the 1 player story mode without you controlling it so if you want to win it will depend on how well you have trained it.

To sum it up its a really nice quirky fighter with lots of combos & special moves to practice with. I'm not really a fighting game fan but this is one fighting game that I fully recommend to anyone. Like with most N64 games these days this one is pretty hard to find as I think it was only released in Europe & Japan.

Reviewed by Importaku


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