TBT Review: All Kamen Rider RiderGeneration 2 DS

This week we travel all the way back to the year 2012. The sequel to the popular Kamen Rider All RiderGeneration game released on the Nintendo DS the year before. This side scrolling adventure features just every Kamen Rider up through Kamen Rider Fourze.  But is this Japanese import a game you should track down and add to your collection? Grab your controller and hit “Start” to find out!

All Kamen Rider RiderGeneration 2
System: Nintendo DS, Playstation Portable
Developer: Bandai

Introduction
As stated before the jump, All Kamen Rider 2 is a side scrolling adventure game featuring just about every Kamen Rider up until Fourze (with a secret special Rider unlocked through password). Want to play as Kamen Rider Faiz? How about Kamen Rider Agito? W, SkyRider, ZO, or even the first Kamen Rider Ichigō? Well you can! All Kamen Rider 2 allows you to play as your favorite Kamen Riders throughout the 40+ year franchise. Use your favorite Rider’s special moves and finishing moves to beat classic villains from the show.

GamePlay
The Action is the classic left to right side scrolling action. Once you have selected your two Kamen Riders, you begin the level beating up basic cannon fodder baddies, working your way towards a mini-boss at the end. As mentioned you start by selecting two Riders, but you only control the first Rider selected (if there is a way to switch between the two, I have yet to find it). While you don’t control the second Rider, his/her AI does a good job at attacking enemies, and if both Riders are compatible (for example Kamen Rider 1 & Kamen Rider 2) they can use their finishing move together. And speaking of finishing moves, once your meter is filled each rider has a fully sprite animated finishing move (usually turning into their final form if they have one) which is pretty awesome and never gets old to watch. Riders such as Fourze, OOO, W, and to a lesser extent Decade can switch to other forms during gameplay as well.  Other Riders will have special moves, such as the “Clock Up” with Riders from Kabuto.

All Kamen Rider 2 can also be played with a friend DS to DS (the game does not support WiFi).  I don’t know how well this mode works, as I don’t have any friends close to me that also own the game to try it.  But based on screenshots, I assume that you both pick a rider and go through the levels together.

Graphics
As you can see from the screenshots and video below, this game is a sprite lovers dream.  All the characters are bright and colorful and the backgrounds don’t lack that much detail either.  Although, let’s be honest…with the amount of fighting you’ll be doing, you won’t have that much time to really stare at the background environment. Each Rider’s sprite is well made and you won’t have any trouble figuring out which Rider is which.

Game Modes
Story Mode-
Now I’m don’t know Japanese, so I’m not entirely sure of the plot, but you start with Kamen Rider Fourze and Kamen Rider Meteorand your mission is to defeat the bad guys, while unlocking other Kamen Riders (and their special moves) along the way.

Options-
Change various options of the game from background music, sound effects, and speech.

Password-
Don’t want to unlock your favorite Rider in the story mode? Use a password to unlock them.

Conclusion
Confession time. I don’t own, nor have I played, the first game in this series.  But after playing this, now I REALLY want to.  All Kamen Rider 2 scratched every itch that the fighting games on the PS2 didn’t.  First: it features just about every popular Kamen Rider up to Fourze.  Second: you don’t have to don’t have to wait until the end of the fight to unleash your finishing Rider Kick, you can do it at any time (as long as your meter is full, which is easy to do). And third: with 42 levels (over 6 stages), each level has 4 levels of difficulty, and 10 bonus levels, this game has a metric TON of replay ability.
I seriously cannot recommend this game highly enough to add to your collection.  AND because the Nintendo DS can play games that are not region locked, this means you can play this Japanese import without any hardware modification at all.  Seriously, if you’re a Kamen Rider fan and you have a Nintendo DS, you owe it to yourself to track down a copy and add it to your collection.