MIGHTY ATOM - TETSUWAN ATOM
Game Cover
Game
鉄腕 アトム
©Konami 1988
Release: 1988-02-26 (¥5500)
Cartdridge RC827
Platform/Action game

Tetsuwan Atom is a side scrolling action game by Konami and based on the 1960s popular science fiction series by Osamu Tezuka. The story takes place in the future, at a time where humans and robots live together in harmony. The powerful robot-boy Atom (aka Astro Boy) lives with Professor Ochanomizu - the old scientist takes good care of the little robot, and helps him find crime and injustice. But, one day, burglars break into Professor Ochanomizu's lab and steal all of his money. It is now Atom's duty to recover the stolen loot. But the game is far from being a straight forward affair, and many levels require the player to fulfill given tasks, such as collecting special items, punching particular locations, or in some instances, to activate parts of a stage by performing unique tasks such as playing a song. Atom can run, jump and punch his enemies. He can also fly using his rocket boots, but the move is rather tricky to execute and the player has to quickly jump three times and then press Up to make the little robot fly for a short amount of time. Atom also uses uranium as his main source of energy. Uranium slowly decreases as the game progresses, or when Atom receives any kind of damage (some enemy weapons can kill Atom in one hit though), but Professor Ochanomizu can be called at any time during the game, and restore the depleting energy (by crouching and pressing the action button).
Related
Tetsuwan Atom (Sfc)
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Tetsuwan Atom / Astrop Boy / Mighty Atom Tetsuwan Atom (aka Astro Boy or Mighty Atom) was originally created in the 1950's by the prolific Osamu Tezuka. The successful series started as a comic strip and was turned into a black and white animated series in 1963. Interestingly, it was one of the first (if not the first) animated TV series produced in Japan, and undoubtedly served as a canon and influenced countless Japanese animated series that followed. The little robot-boy is definitely one of Japan's most recognizable characters and it has enjoyed numerous revivals since its debut. The Famicom game tested here was probably the first video game to be ever released for the Tetsuwan Atom franchise.

Tetsuwan Atom Konami Cards
Japanese Konami Card Japanese Konami Card Japanese Konami Card Japanese Konami Card
Japanese Konami Card Japanese Konami Card

Konami Cards Like several other early Konami games released in the 1980s/1990s, Tetsuwan Atom included a numbered collector card also known in Japan as コナミ キャラカード (aka 'Konami Chara Cards' or 'Konami Character Cards'). Each card featured an illustration or a snapshot from the game (picture on the right), and the back of each card showed a serial number as well as the game's title. They were randomly included with the games and Konami produced several variations of each card. That's it, each game included a card from a series related to the game, it is however not known how many different card variations were made for each game. Apparently six cards (on average) were produced for each game, except for Doremikko (1 card), Exciting Boxing (1 card) and Meikyujin Dababa (which, curiously, only seem to feature five cards). The list of Konami games to include such cards are believed to be : Ai Senshi Nicol (FDS), Dracula II Noroi no Fuin (FDS), Arumana no Kiseki (FDS), Contra (FC), Doremikko (FDS), Dragon Scroll (FC), Exciting Baseball (FDS), Exciting Basketball (FDS), Exciting Billard (FDS), Exciting Boxing (FDS), Exciting Soccer (FDS), Falsion (FDS), Getsu Fūma Den (FC), Majō Densetsu II Daimashikyō Galious(FC), Meikyū Jiin Dababa (FDS), Metal Gear (FC), Salamander (FC), Tetsuwan Atom (FC), Top Gun (FC) and Wai Wai World (FC).


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Japanese Guidebook
Japanese Guidebook
Japanese Guidebook
Japanese Guidebook


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Tetsuwan Atom manual
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Tetsuwan Atom starts out promising enough - the soundtrack is surprisingly faithful to the source material and the graphics are correct for an 8bit game. And then things quickly spiral down hill. Let's start by the most frustrating aspect of the game, shall we ? The rocket-pack. You have to jump three times in one direction and then press up to fly. This combination is utterly unnecessary and impossible to use. But the real tragedy of the game are the tasks to fulfill in later stages, which are totally random and annoying - like playing a song that some enemies whistle when they die, or punching a random statue to release a pink running rodent (and no, I'm not making this up). Finally, although you can touch enemies without much problem, their weapons kill you in one hit! All in all, Tetsuwan Atom feels like a charmless mess, and features weak platform action with tedious and random puzzle-y moments. I expected a lot better from Konami.




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