Keith Courage in Alpha Zones

Keith Courage doesn't really exist in Japan, he is just known as some scrubby anime character and then they made a game based off him for the PC Engine. When the PCE was released out here as the "Turbo-Grafx 16", NEC decided to bring that anime scrub game out here packed with the Turbo Grafx and turned this character into a REAL hero - Keith Courage! Now this anime character is All-American and whoops the Japanese's versions ass just because of this!

Yeah, poor Keith Courage is dumped on a lot by many people, but I still think Keith rocks and the game rocks!

The game comes with a comic that explains the story. It seems that monsters are destroying Earth and a scientist invented a robot suit to try and stop them. This man had a son, his name was "Keith Courage", and this man would try to take out the monsters with his own hands - his own "robotical" hands that is! Unfourtantley, Keith's father gets shot in the butt by this awesome monster with a gun for a head and Keith's dad dies. Years go by and Keith is now a real man and takes the robot suit into his own hands to fight off these demons! With the power of the Alpha sword, Keith can conquer anything!

Game play in Keith Courage is creative, if you ask me. In one whole level there are two parts; one town part and one dungeon/zone part. You first start out in a town which allows you to enter shops to buy stuff like weapons or bombs and you control Keith in these parts. Beware that there are still enemies that reek in the towns so Keith must fight them off without his robo-suit. In the "Alpha Zones", Keith is magically transported into his robot and he kicks some ass robot style with cool laZer swords! The controls feel really stick in towns, but it's improved in the Alpha Zones. Keith Courage is almost like a platform RPG, except maybe not nearly as awesome.

Music in Keith Courage is! ... not so smooth. Nothing too entertaining and it re-uses the same songs a lot. There are like two different songs for the towns and two different songs for the Alpha zones and it's pretty much the only music you listen to in the game. For a game that has laser swords, a person like me would expect some cool laser sounds like "ZARK!" or "blezoop!", but unfourtantley we get NOTHING like that in Keith Courage.

This ends the Keith Courage in Alpha Zones review. I know it sounds like the game really sucks, but I think still think it's awesome and it can rival a game like Super Mario Bros. 3! Come on, did Mario 3 have big robots and laser swords? I don't think so!

- Keranu, August 12th, 2004