OUR RATING: 6.4 GOOD About our ratings

TANGIBLES: Gameplay: 7 Visuals: 6 Audio: 5 Value: 5 Quality: 8

Why you should buy it: Not Available Why you should rent it: Not Available

UNIQUE RATING: 6.4 SUGGESTION: N/A

Naruto is the latest anime craze to hit the United States.  Created by Shonen Jump of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Shaman King fame, Naruto is one of the highest rated programs on the Cartoon Network.  Like a handful of action-packed animated TV shows, it didn’t take long for Naruto to have a video game license.  With that said, Naruto: Ninja Council is a beat-em-up showcase that is fun to play, but ends up being too short for anybody’s tastes.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Naruto TV show, it follows young Naruto and his pals as he ventures out to become the greatest ninja ever.  The show is extremely popular because of its fast paced action-packed scenes and crude humor, but when you consider the fact that the show has little boys beating up on great ninja masters—the show becomes a little too unconventional. 

The story in Ninja Council doesn’t really take any themes from the TV show, other than the fact that Naruto is still cocky as ever as he tries to win a contest and eventually become the best ninja ever.  You don’t have to use Naruto though; you also have access to Sasuke, Naruto’s confident rival.  Under the guidance of Kakashi, your master, you must travel as Naruto or Sasuki through unique lands filled with evil ninjas as you venture your way through the final dojo where you take on the master.

As stated earlier, Naruto: Ninja Council is your standard 2D beat-em-up.  Basic controls include jumping with the A button and launching close-range melee strikes by tapping the B button.  In addition to these, you can use projectile weapons such as the shuriken by tapping the right shoulder button, but you’re better fighting hand-to-hand because the weapons are fairly weak.  The enemies you run into are shallow and easy to kill, but again—they’re ninjas, so don’t expect them to be standing still while you’re kicking their butts.  At the end of every level is a boss.  They aren’t extreme giants though; they’re just other ninjas with special Jutsu abilities.  For the most part, all of them except the last one are pretty easy to kill as long as you find out the best way to kill them quickly enough.  Some bosses can be defeated in about ten seconds, just by rushing into them and rapidly attacking.  Others take a little more time, and may actually require you to use your special abilities.

Your special abilities are called Jutsu, which you can activate at anytime by holding the B button.  While the button is held, a meter will fill, and it’ll stop as soon as you release the button.  If you release the button while the meter is red, your character will mess up his Jutsu attack—and it’ll end up with awkward results. (We messed up a Jutsu using Naruto, and he ended up farting.)  However, if you release your hold while the meter is white, you’ll unleash the attack without fail.  You have three levels of Jutsu available, and the power of your Jutsu depends on how long you keep the button held.  When you actually unleash a Jutsu successfully, everything will freeze and a pretty cool animation will show up—then you’ll eventually cause massive damage or kill whomever it is you’re fighting. 

When you aren’t fighting, the game essentially becomes a standard platformer with all kinds of puzzles to solve.  To solve these puzzles, you have to pick up scrolls to enable an elemental attack such as fire, water, wind, earth, and so forth.  So if you ever discover a place you can’t get into because a small tree blocks the way, you can use the fire scroll attack to burn the tree, so you can get access in the area.  Is fire blocking your way?  Spray some water.  Are rocks in your way?  Quake your way through.  In addition to getting through various obstacles with your magic, you can also use them as attacks, and they’re much more useful than your standard shuriken.

The environments in the game are very much bland, and they really aren’t a sight for sore eyes.  On the other hand, the sprites are big and pretty well done, and the actual drawings look like some vintage Shonen Jump manga, which should be a plus for fans looking for that kind of thing with the game’s visuals.  The main problem with the visuals is that we encountered a problem after allowing one of the bosses to perform a Jutsu attack, and it ruined the balance of pixilation on the character sprites—making everything moving look all distorted.  It was all fixed as soon as we turned the GBA on and off, but that’s something that should’ve been dealt with before it got published. 

As for how the game sounds, it doesn’t sound like the developers put a lot of work into it either.  The music sounds like one big, horrible MIDI file taken from the days of the NES, and it doesn’t sound nice at all—despite the anime having some okay tunes.  The voices are good to hear, but the music is just hard to get over.

In the end, you'd be best served playing this game if you were a fan of the show, but the game is pretty solid even if you aren't.  The platforming elements and easy-to-learn combay in this 2D beat-em-up are indeed welcoming and make the game fun to play.  That doesn't go without saying the game has its problems with the graphics, sound, and its overall length, and they do bring the game's value down down tremendously.  The game can be beaten in one sitting if you're that kind of player, but is that enough to warrant a purchase at full price?  Not really, but it surely is worth playing.