Comix Zone is an arcade-style Beat em’ up developed by the Sega Technical Institute (STI) in 1995, for the Sega Genesis (/Mega Drive). The game mixes the common punch/kick combinations you would find in games such as Street Fighter or Mortal Combat along with puzzle elements that require you to use your noodle to help you pull through a series of sticky situations.
Storyline: The game begins in what was present – day New York City in 1995, where a struggling comic book artist named Sketch Turner (laugh), is drawing up new ideas for his comic, when all of a sudden a loud bolt of lightning strikes his illustration from an adjacent storm cloud.
The lightning, for some reason, opens up a portal thingy, allowing Mortus, the villain, to escape! He then tells Sketch his plan to dominate the world (how original) starting with demolishing his creator! He then throws Sketch into the portal, sucking him into his own cartoon, where he meets up with Alyssa, a military commander, who assists Sketch with helpful advice as he ventures through his comic battling enemies he created.
Game Play: One of the coolest parts of the game is that it takes place in a comic book, therefore, you must defeat all of the enemies in one panel before passing on to the next one. Sometimes you are given a chose of which panel you go to next,
but no matter which path you decide to take, they all lead to the same exit. Every two pages is one level. The game consist of three levels [Night of the Mutants, Welcome to the Temple (possibly making a reference to that one Guns & Roses song: Welcome to the Jungle), and Cruse of the Lost Ships].
The overall Fighting style is simple but good nevertheless, you can jump, punch, kick, roll, ect. In addition to his awesome Kung-Fung move, Sketch can also carry up to three items in the windows above his heath bar.
In the game there are many items:
Iced Tea: restores a good portion of lost heath.
Dynamite: can be tossed a short distance destroy all enemies and objects standing in your way.
Grenade: not quite as powerful as the dynamite, but can be thrown much further.
Knife: if thrown in the right area of the comic, it can tear the paper revealing secret items and sometimes shortcuts.
Road kill: Sketches pet rat, can be use to crawl into small areas that Sketch can’t reach and can also rip paper like the knife, make sure he doesn’t take too many hits or else he’ll fall of screen.
Fist: allows Sketch to punch the ground while wearing a superhero costume destroying every enemy on screen.
?: mystery item, I don’t know, maybe it’s cookies.
Overall: Comix Zone is Awesome! 5/5
