When it comes to retro games shameless clones are kind of my jam. I’ve always been fascinated with copycats that try to emulate a game that was popular at the time. Attack Animal Gakuen is one of these such titles. It’s clearly a Space Harrier clone which is not a bad thing at all because I’m a long time fan. It was released for the Nintendo Famicom (that’s the NES to you and I) in Japan and never left the island nation. I got my hands on a copy and now I can clearly see why; it’s a weird one.
Attack Animal Gakuen is a 3D behind the back shooter wherein you can move in all directions (except forward or backwards of course). In this case you play as a flying school girl who, for reasons beyond me, can shoot oval fire balls for no good reason. Her goal is to fight her way through six stages so that she can rescue her friend from the clutches of an army of animals. I’m mostly piecing all of this together because there’s no dialogue or story scroll. You’re greeted with a title screen, and a five second ending. That’s it.
So how does the gameplay stack up here? Not very well unfortunately. Attack Animal Gakuen is a lazy copycat from a group of developers who my guess is weren’t very inspired. Yes, this plays like Space Harrier but it doesn’t have nearly the same level of creativity put into it. I’m willing to give the school girl protagonist a pass (It’s Japan after all) but why the animal theme? Perhaps there should have been some sort of zany explanation. As is there are just a bunch of flying animals trying to destroy you. It doesn’t feel like a lot of thought was put into it. It’s zany, but not necessarily in a good way.
Each of the six stages has a different theme. The first is a grassland steppe area which is fine, and there’s all the usual such as a desert, water, and fire stage. The scenery is okay, and the change in graphics gives you a good sense of progress. What I don’t like is the fact that there are a very limited number of different enemies, and they repeat no matter what stage you’re on. Each level introduces new animals that fit the theme of said area, but following their introduction they appear so often they wear out their welcome. The jumping kangaroos in particular seem to be just about everywhere. Other enemies include things like armadillos, tortoises, mice, crows, squids, spiders, etc. For some reason you also face off against things like skeletons, acorn looking things, and land mines. Did they really run out of animals here? I might be nitpicking but it’s pretty random.
The boss characters are, you guessed it, animals too. Attack Animal Gakuen peaks with the first of these end-level baddies. It’s a koala bear with a handgun. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. The rest are less hilarious and include a monkey, lizard, turtle, spider and snakes. The means by which you defeat the boss characters is different than in most similar games. Rather than shooting them directly your goal is to defeat the other enemies that are flying around them. This is easier said than done thanks to rapid movement and crazy movement patterns. That’s not to mention the fact that the boss is firing projectiles at you the entire time.
Attack Animal Gakuen is actually a pretty difficult game. You start with only two lives and lose one anytime you’re hit by an enemy or projectile. In the early sections of the game your foes move slow enough and are pretty easy to dodge, but later on it seems like pure luck sometimes that you aren’t hit. It can also be tough to judge just where your projectile will go because there are no cross hairs. The shadows cast by your character and the enemies helps, but it’s still far from scientific. On top of enemies you have other hazards to deal with as well. These depend entirely on the theme of the stage. In the first area you’re dealing with simple trees, but in others these are replaced with rock pillars, seaweed, and more. Hitting one of these won’t take a life but it’ll slow you down and make you an easy target for the enemies.
This game suffers from the same issues when it comes to graphics that most similar titles from this era do. The Famicom just wasn’t powerful enough to scroll forward and backward through environments smoothly. Animal Attack Gakuen features some very choppy stages with enemies that warp around rather than moving fluidly. This makes the game more difficult than it would otherwise be because judging distances and your line of fire are nearly impossible. The game isn’t unplayable by any means, but Animal Attack Gakuen was clearly too ambitious for the hardware. Designs for the enemy animals range from plain to just plain weird. You have things like the kangaroo that are overly cartoony, and then just a few levels later you encounter realistic sea anenomies. There’s also the one eyed shark (at least I think that’s what it’s supposed to be). I’m really not a fan of the graphics or even the art style. The colorful backgrounds are the highlight here and have some nicely drawn features. The soundtrack is also very plain and I can’t think of a single track I liked.
While there are some good Space Harrier clones on the market this isn’t one of them. Attack Animal Gakuen is a very odd game. It feels like the developers lacked passion and vision with this game and brainstormed making a simple clone instead of a project all its own. This game feels unfocused and a little sloppy to be honest. It’s a bunch of random concepts that don’t make sense, and it’s also not very fun to play. There was some promise here, but the developers squandered it. They had the entire animal kingdom to work with and all they could come up with were skeletons and spiders? Come on.
