A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But not that galaxy.

When I was much younger, before I really got into video games, I would race home from school to watch cartoons. One of my favorites was the first anime-style cartoon I had ever seen, Astro Boy. It had a robot that could fly with the aid of rocket boots, and who doesn't want to fly? The series has been resurrected with the release of the recent Astro Boy movie, and with any movie comes the inevitable video game accompaniment, Astro Boy: The Video Game.

The game tells the story of how Astro Boy learns that he is not a real boy. In a futuristic Pinocchio set-up, he finds he can communicate with the other robots in his hometown of Metro City, which comes as a shock. He is further discouraged when the man who invented him to replace his dead son, Dr. Tenma, doesn't want anything to do with him.

What's a robot boy to do?

Astro Boy is a typical 2D side scrolling platformer in the mold of Mega Man. The titular character must fight his way through hordes of robot enemies to reach his end goal. The levels consist of either punching or kicking the attacking robots, or using one of Astro Boy's impressive special abilities to destroy the oncoming mass of enemies. The controls are simple enough, with the controls buttons used to do the kicking, punching and jumping, whilst the D-pad controls the direction. The stylus is used to initiate one of Astro Boy's special skills, including using his Jet Boots, his Arm Cannon, his Machine Guns (which appear from his rear), a shield and even a health regenerator. Each of these special abilities requires a certain amount skill points, which are gathered from vanquished foes.

With a target market of young, inexperienced gamers who went to see the movie, you would imagine the game would have a gentle difficulty curve. Instead, this game will kick your ass. Even on the lower difficulty setting, an experienced gamer will find it very tough, largely because of the health meter. For some reason, it isn't reset after completing a level. When you inevitably die, you are sent back to the last checkpoint, but restart with only as much health as you had when you first passed the checkpoint. OK, so you can use the health regenerator ability that was mentioned earlier, but this uses up all your skill points. And new skill points are hard to get when you have only limited health to work with. The target market would struggle to get past the first few levels, let alone beat the game.

Look at him fly

Visually, the game has some good points. Astro Boy himself is quite small but is detailed enough to see his avatar and its nuances such as the machine gun ass. The marauding robots are varied enough to keep the game slightly interesting. The backgrounds, though, are a little plain and could have come straight from a Sega GameGear. Building tops and flying scenes are overused and are not nearly as detailed as the characters. The visuals during the cut-scenes are adequate, but the lack of any audio is disappointing. There are no voice-overs at all, and you must read through page after page of text. If the gameplay weren't so bad, I'd say the cut-scene dialogue were merely boring. But as it stands, the cut-scenes give some relief from the frustration. But it isn't just the audio in the cut-scenes that needs some work. The music is just terrible and the techno-style tune loops over and over again and soon becomes monotonous. The sound effects, although not bad, are dull and standard fare for a platformer.

Stick to the original cartoons

I feel sorry for the youngsters (and their parents) who go out and purchase games based on their latest favorite movie. Though generally made just to cash in on the popularity of the movie, most are playable by younger gamers who don't care about the nuances that make a great game. Unfortunately for Astro Boy fans, this game is horrible. The story follows the movie plot, but the difficulty of the game means that younger fans will never see the ending. The non-existent voice-overs during the story cut-scenes make it seem like the developers tried to cut a few corners to make sure the game was ready for release in line with the movie. In all, Astro Boy: The Video Game is another movie tie-in disappointment. You'd be better off just buying the original Astro Boy cartoons on DVD and indulging in nostalgia.