Part nostalgia-bomb, part note-taking and part FAQ, what started in GameTrailers as a video game blog is now on Blogger. This blog is a look back at video games, both popular and obscure, from the video game industry's infancy all the way to the previous console generation.
Yakisoban has tracked Kettler down to his hideout at the UTV studios...and the destined battle is about to begin!
Kettler knows you're getting close, and will stop at nothing to make sure you don't make it to the UTV studios...so all the normal enemies that you've faced throughout the game will all show up here! The chefs from the second stage, as well as the roller skating guys all make their re-appearance here in the first section. The clowns from the last stage show up in the third.
The first section takes place near the entrance, and the second and third sections take place inside the hallways leading to the studio.
When you beat the third section, Kettler (dressed as a human, albeit with blonde hair and a big nose) is in the studio trying to whip up anti-yakisoba sentiment. When he finds out Yakisoban is here, he springs into action and the studios go into a tizzy as soon as he transforms.
In the fourth section, you'll be in the TV studio, where mostly everyone has fled while a few other people have went into hiding in the studio. After fighting a few enemies, you'll finally face Kettler.
Attack Kettler with a standing combo before he can hit you with his giant fork. Once you hit him with a standing combo, start moving around the screen immediately, and keep your movements diagonally as much as possible. He'll counter with one of three attacks: a giant falling kettle that lands on your current location, the summoning of steam right out of the ground, and throwing Japanese bubble characters at you. The first one tracks your current location upon execution, and the second attack has multiple steam blasts that track where you are. The third one seems to be fixed, but he can shoot them higher or lower instead of just straight forward. All three can be dodged the same way, thankfully.
When you beat Kettler, you'll rescue the Princess of the noodle planet and finally marry! Congratulations!
How great is Yakisoban Great? Very great, actually!
Here, you'll be at a theme park.
Yakisoban Great not only has a different appearance, but he also has a slightly different moveset. While he doesn't learn any new moves, he performs them differently in his new form, and his standing combo and dash attack definitely have more range than before. He also has a second kick on the way down from his jump kick attack.
You also have two Sauce Beam guns at the start, but you'll still have to pick up an extra sauce gun to power them up further.
The theme park brings us a new enemy: clowns. These guys only have one close-range attack: the ability to have their noses explode on you. They turn into a kettle shape before they blow up...as if the kettles on their clown suits are indication enough!
The first and third sections take place outside, while the second takes place inside a ghost house. Compared to the outside areas, the mood of the music in the ghost house is the same but is slower and more somber.
The huge face that leers down at you in the ghost house is an image of the boss for this level. Thankfully, he doesn't attack you. You'll have to wait until the actual boss fight for that. It should also be noted that the yellow lanterns hanging from the ceiling can't attack you either, those it looks like they might.
The boss in the fourth section is a fake version of Yakisoban, and the word "Uso" on his head and costume is Japanese for the word "lie," as in "telling a lie." Since Kettler is ticked off with Yakisoban's efforts now, he sends a fake version of him complete with a mask in order to tarnish his image. (Sorry, no Usos reference here.) Whatever you do, don't line yourself up with him, especially from a distance. If he breaks into a run, let loose with a Sauce Beam attack, start punching or jump over immediately, as you won't be able to sidestep him immediately.
Business picks up as we head to a construction site and meet a couple of new enemies. This is where the game starts getting harder.
The third stage is in a construction site. It won't be long before you face a new enemy: green, one-eyed jars that shoot chopsticks at you from long range. They also have chopsticks for arms and legs, which also add to their odd appearance along with their stuck-out tongues.
There are also a lot of corgis in the second section. I assume the dogs here are corgis, though they could also be Shiba Inues.
The second section is in the sewers. Yet another new enemy: girls in kimonos with chopsticks for legs who will whack you with their swords...which are also made out of chopsticks. The game has officially gone weird.
The third section is more of the construction site, but it's night instead of early evening.
The Yakisoban doll gives you an extra life. Thankfully, you can also earn lives as you earn points throughout the game, but you probably figured that out by this point.
The fourth section takes place on a rooftop, complete with a neon Nissin sign in the background. Hey, they made the noodles advertised in this game, so it's obvious they'll be placing their logo somewhere.
The boss here is a pink blob that floats around. The red markings on its face looks strangely like steam coming out of a dish of noodles. You'll want to avoid the fist as it flies around, as well as the grey projectiles that it spits at you. Those grey fireballs seem to have some sort of homing capability, so stay far away from them whenever possible.
When you beat the boss, you'll take the noodle monster down. However, there is another cutscene which sadly isn't shown here: this pink blob manages to land a devastating blow to Yakisoban in desperation. Yakisoban is seemingly defeated, but in an instant Yakisoban powers up...becoming Yakisoban Great. Now with a new look and even more powerful attacks, Yakisoban is back in action!
We enter a family restaurant, but the people we're about to meet here make us feel anything but family. At least the music is good here.
The second stage is in Davy's restaurant. You'll face the usual suspects until you go inside for the second section...where you face chefs with pink pants and yellow kettles for feet who toss plates of instant noodles at you. Luckily, you can punch these projectiles out of existence with your fists. They'll stand there for a few seconds after they throw them, leaving them wide open for attack.
The third section is even deeper into the restaurant, and the fourth section takes place in the kitchen where the chefs are preparing the food.
Pick up food to replenish your health.
The boss is a demon made out of forks. Don't give him the opportunity to attack you. Instead, whack him with the soy sauce guns as he's walking around, and hit him with your standing combo if he gets close.
Since this playthrough cuts right to the beginning of the gameplay, I might as well explain what the heck is going on. Cue Wikipedia:
UFO Kamen Yakisoban was the main character, played by Michael Tomioka, in a series of TV commercials for "UFO" instant yakisoba noodles produced by Nissin Foods. A feature film was released in 1994 directly to VHS video, which also featured Dave Spector as Kettler.
The noodle superhero wants to marry the princess, but Kettler wants her for himself. The hero wears a bowl of UFO yakisoba on his head. There are five stages to overcome until the princess can be rescued.
Strangely, the cutscenes for the game are removed here. They mostly revolve around Kettler sending a boss after you that you'll end up facing at the end of the stage.
Kettler is a jerk. Not only is he against UFO Yakisoba, he's a kettle-cooked yakisoba extremist and has the gall to eat them with a fork instead of chopsticks.
That must also explain the UFO-mobile that he drives at the beginning before you can finally take the reins. Whoever made this clearly wanted this game to be accurate to the commercials.
The first stage takes place at what appears to be a shrine. Since the game came out in 1994 for Japan only and the game is a walking advertisement for instant yakisoba, expect references to noodles and yakisoba everywhere.
The ring in the lower-left with the star is your energy meter. If this thing turns completely red, you're dead. You'll lose one of the stars next to Yakisoban's name, which is immediately to the right, and you only start with three lives. Likewise, the ring on the lower-right with the skull is the energy meter for the enemy you're currently beating into a pulp.
The timer above the enemy energy meter with the kettle next to it is the amount of time you have left in that section. If it goes to zero, the kettle will start whistling and you're basically a dead man. You have barely enough time to make it through each section, and the only way to gain more time is to either die or head to the next section.
Aside from being able to punch people, you can also charge up a soy sauce gun attack. As you hold the attack button and charge it up, Yakisoban's outline will go from red to yellow to green, and the gauge next to your energy meter will fill up. Let it loose at green to shoot soy sauce at people and do maximum damage.
You jump with Y and B, and you attack with X and A. This will take a while to get used to.
You also have the ability to roll by double tapping in any direction. Not only does this let you do your dashing kick, but it also allows you to get away from enemies before you can get cornered.
The guys in the suits are the first enemies you'll see in the game as well as among the easiest, as they can only damage you in close. They will come in different colors (black, blue and red) but there doesn't seem to be that much of a difference to each color besides health and color variety.
You can find power-ups in destructible things, such as mailboxes, signs and trash-cans.
In the second section, you'll meet guys on roller skates with tea kettles for heads. They move around much faster than the guys in the suits. The aliens in the noodle bowls will roll into a ball, float in the air and then drop forward in an attempt to attack you. You can attack them to cancel the attack out.
The unicycle makes you invincible as long as the music for it plays, and once it stops, you've got a few more seconds left before you lose it and you become vulnerable to enemy attacks again.
If you find another soy sauce gun, pick it up. It doubles your firepower as you'll be shooting with a gun in each hand.
The third section takes place in front of a bunch of food stands. Unsurprisingly, one of them sells yakisoba.
The fourth section is the boss. It's some blue guy with a pair of scrapers in his hands and an tray on his head with an okonomiyaki on it (which looks a lot like a pancake with an egg on it.) He'll toss his food at you as an attack, but his main offense is trying to run into you, which will cause a lot of damage.
There are two super attacks, and you have three of each when you start the game. The green one is a super aonori bomb (the seaweed flakes) that stuns all on-screen enemies, and can be performed by holding L while pressing an attack button. The yellow one is a super agedama bomb (a gluten nugget) that attacks them, and can be performed while holding R while attacking.
Hit this guy when he stands still, and don't let him run into you. Keep in mind that when you knock him down, he's invincible for a few seconds.
When you beat the first boss, you'll finish him off and it's on to Stage 2. At the end of every stage you'll get
At the end of the third section, after fighting a lot of aliens, you'll meet the final boss: Heavy Blast Man. This is basically Sonic Blast Man's evil twin, who has curved shoulder pads, darker armor, and the ability to fly with jet boosters located underneath said shoulder pads.
The only way to hit Heavy Blast Man when he's moving around is to use your special attack. Of course, you're definitely going to get hit afterwards, so you want to do this for the final shot as he's moving around if necessary.
Heavy Blast Man can do the uppercut projectiles at will. If you can walk past the projectiles and get close enough to either grab him or, better yet, put him in a punch combo, do it. You want to be able to do the most damage whenever you can.
Speaking of which, use your three super punches whenever you can. You regain them every time you lose a life, so use them as early as possible.
Every so often, Heavy Blast Man will fly into the air and eventually come back down. You'll want to stay on the move, and if he just so happens to land near you with landing on you, go in for the kill and try to land a full combo. Otherwise, just grab him and hit him from there.
Other times, Heavy Blast Man will activate his barrier if you're near him. He looks like he's about to fly upwards before he does this, and you don't want to be anywhere near him when he activates the barrier, as it will damage you.
Whenever you throw Heavy Blast Man, you won't be able to knock him down. You'll be able to damage him, but he will land on his feet and he'll get back on the warpath. Still, throwing him is worth it as you can still damage him with throws.
When you beat Heavy Blast Man, you've beaten the game! You did it! Enjoy the credits!
The fourth bonus stage allows you to punch out a giant crab. It's so big, you could easily sic a Megazord on it. Again, you have eight seconds per punch. As you strike at it, you'll take one claw off of its body and then the other, before ultimately punching the thing in the face.
You've redeemed yourself, Sonic Blast Man. For now.
Stage 5
If they're not punching at you from close range, the robots will shoot guns at the floor and hit you from a little over halfway across the screen. Most of them will transform into aliens when weakened, and can hit you with either a second head in its chest similar to the second mouth of the Xenomorph in the Alien series or a vicious bear hug (if they walk around), or with a powerful somersault (if they leap around). The big alien forms that leap around look different from the ones that don't, so you can tell what they're going to do.
At the end of the first section, you'll have a choice between two doors. They're both pretty much the same in terms of what's inside. Ditto for the end of the second section.
At this point in the game, we're fighting nothing but robots. You'd better be ready.
For the next bonus stage, Sonic Blast Man has to destroy a building before it comes down itself...and crushes who-knows-who or what below. I assume that, for his sake, everyone is evacuated from the building. It's a pretty big building.
After three punches, the building comes down without taking out several city blocks. Yay!
This time around, you only have eight seconds for each punch instead of nine. You'd better be faster with the rotation here.
Stage 4
This stage's music is why I love the bass patterns in the game.
You're fighting nothing but robots from this point on. For the ones here, you'd better be ready to move around. The robots with the "tail" that float around are much like the aliens with the tails from Stage 3, as they have that attack in which they leap at you and latch on, sucking your energy from you. also shoot missiles in the air. The missiles' positions are marked with lines indicating where they are with the word "Danger" above them, and you'd better be out of their way when they hit the floor and explode.
The robots that walk around with the gun for an arm will kick you to the floor, then rush up to you and shoot at the floor with their flamethrowers, burning you for additional damage. They can also toss grenades onto the floor from behind. Even though these grenades don't travel very far, they'll still spell danger if you're near them when they explode.
The flying robots can fire a machine gun similar to the commandos in Stage 2, and they'll also accelerate into you with their jet boosters. They'll also try to jump into the air and come back down on you much like the muscular aliens from Stage 3. If you get them in a grab combo, do not use the uppercut with the projectile (Up+Y). They will block it instantly.
You'll have an overhead hazard again. This time, it will be a set of lasers that move back and forth and stop every so often to fire lasers down at the floor. Sadly, these things don't hurt the enemies at all, but at least they have a linear pattern.
Part of the way through the level, you'll take a ride on another lift. Once you finish off all the enemies there and get off, you'll notice some robots in the background. Some of them will activate and fight you, but they're all of the gun-armed, two-legged variety. They also have numbers above their holding units, too, so here's the ones that come out to crush you: 02, 04, 05 and 08.
The boss here is a giant robot. To beat it, get close and punch at it until you grab it. From there, do the wind-up punch that knocks the enemy backwards (Forward+Y), then diagonally sidestep out of the way so it doesn't fly into you. When it walks back out from the other side, repeat. This robot will also shoot at you with the missiles and the machine gun, but as long as you're quick and you don't grab it (which leads to the robot smacking you in the chest), you should be good.
The human enemies finally stop showing up and start getting replaced, first with some strange aliens.
The next bonus stage involves saving a baby from rolling into the path of a tractor-trailer that won't be able to stop in time...by punching the front of the truck and destroying the inner workings inside the hood until the thing is completely ruined and inoperable. What in the world does Sonic Blast Man have against truckers and train conductors? It's even worse when all the mom cares about is that her baby is safe. What about the trucker, dammit? I swear, there are evil intentions behind that corny smile on Sonic Blast Man, and if this is the end result of having a man with punches more powerful than that of an atomic bomb, then humanity's sliding completely downhill.
Stage 3
This time around, you'll be in the sewers while fighting off some sort of strange, see-through humanoid creatures that look like they could have been made out of Jell-O. Or acid. Or water and food coloring. I dunno.
The first type you'll meet are the normal-sized, muscular variety. These guys will attack you with a double axe handle if you let them, yet the main attack to watch out for involves them sinking down to the floor and traveling towards you as a mess of bubbles that shoot out an electrical current around them. If they touch you in this form, you're going to take damage, so back away until they return to their humanoid form. If you're far enough away from them, they'll throw a piece of their own body forward, hoping to hit you.
You'll then meet two other forms. The first of these is the less muscular but slightly taller variety, which has the ability to jump into the air and land on top of you. They can extend their arm for a close-range scratch attack and can also squeeze you with a bear hug attack, so be careful. The other one is a ghostly wraith with a thin tail at the bottom instead of legs. Get this one before it gets you, because it will lunge at you and wrap around you, sucking your energy dry. If that happens, mash the Control Pad and the buttons to break free as quickly as possible.
The boss here seems to be the queen of this alien sewer colony. There are only two ways to damage it: jump kicking it or throwing the aliens at it. Throwing the aliens is quicker at the beginning, but you'll eventually be doing some jump kicks eventually. Whatever the case may be, fight efficiently, and remember that the queen can't damage you.
After checking out a bonus stage, we get to look at a factory and beat up more people.
After every stage (except for the last), there is a bonus stage, where you can play one of the five stages from the original arcade game. Since you can't replicate the action by punching your system (or TV) in the face as hard as humanly possible, Taito makes up for it by having you rotate the Control Pad and having a moving glove indicate where your first is going to go.
This makes the bonus game harder even on the easiest game, as rotating the Control Pad as much as possible to fill up the bar is the hardest thing in the world to do. The fact that you have to do this three times means that your hand will be tired by the time you reach the third attempt. Unless you have one of those fighting sticks with the arcade-style joystick, you are effed.
One of the worst things about the bonus stage is the power bar itself. If you're able to fill it up fast enough, it is possible to overfill it and empty it, powering your punch down and robbing you out of much-needed points and extra lives.
You get three chances with ten seconds each at going for the most powerful (and accurate) punch. The three chances are added up, and your grand power total indicates how many points you're going to get at the end. If your total is high, you're going to get a lot of points...about 500,000 to be exact. That's a really good total to shoot for, as it makes netting extra lives through your score a lot easier.
It appears that you get an extra life every 200,000 points. This makes doing well on the bonus stages vital to having enough lives to beat the game. You have only three continues, but it's possible to burn through all of them.
For the first game, you'll be fighting off a thug. He just stands there as you power-up your punch. You'd think he'd be smart enough to at least get away, but no. He just stands there. As you keep punching him more, the swelling on his cheeck just increases. After three punches, he slowly falls to the ground and Sonic Blast Man saves the woman the thug was mugging.
Stage 2
Environmental hazards make an appearance here! Watch out for the jets of fire shooting out of some of the pipes above you. As long as you keep an eye on those pipes, the flames shouldn't be a problem. They'll hit you if you're on the ground or in the air.
This is supposed to be a factor, but it's impossible to figure out what they make. It's even more confusing that most of the enemies you fight are martial artists. The tall guys (some with berets, some without) are easy to take care of, even though they have a standing combo as well as a ranged attack where they throw hand grenades at you which explode after a few seconds.
The women, however, are the worst as they can somersault and hit you when you don't expect them to. All you have to do is just give them the first possible chance and they will quickly rear back and lean forward with that double palm strike. Holding onto an enemy? You're gonna get smacked. Right in front of them when they land on the ground after a somersault? You're gonna get smacked. Walk right up to them with your slow self like you're at Central Park? You're gonna get smacked. (The women were changed to men in the American/European version, once again due to censorship from Nintendo. Strangely, they're still wearing women's martial arts robes due to Taito doing the bare minimum to achieve compliance with Nintendo of America censorship demands, and it looks slightly awkward.)
If you can get the women in a punching combo, do not do the punch that sends them flying backwards, as they will instantly block it. Use the uppercut with the projectile or the monkey flip throw instead.
Since it shows up here, I might as well mention (and complain about) the special attack. Pressing Y and B causes Sonic Blast Man to perform a rising spinning double lariat, much like Zangief from the Street Fighter series. When Sonic Blast Man lands back on the ground, he'll be dizzy and will kneel there stunned for a couple of seconds, and he will do this regardless of whether you hit anyone with it or not. Of all the special attacks I've seen in beat-em-ups, this is the absolute worst simply because of the stun period. Am I playing as a superhero or some run-of-the-mill sack of crap John Q. Public with a clock and a portable black-and-white TV monitor on his chest? I'm confused here.
About halfway through the stage, you'll meet another new enemy: the machine gun commandos. These guys will either shoot directly at you, throw grenades or aim at the ground and shoot at your feet if you're close enough.
You'll then come across a lift that takes you upward. You'll be fighting a lot of enemies before it reaches the top.
When you die, the enemies get knocked back as soon as Sonic Blast Man lands on the ground, much like in Streets of Rage.
The boss here is a pair of guys with sunglasses and claws, and they remind me very much of Zamza and the other clawed guys from Streets of Rage 2. Aside from the claw swipes and the jumping around, they also have that slide attack much like Zamza did. Jump kicks do the trick somewhat, but see if you put one of them into a combo and use a grab attack that hits both guys.
Definitely showing the intro here, since the LP doesn't begin with it. This is the intro for the English version. It should be noted that "Take that!" was added during the translation and localization process, as was the rest of the sampled speech that makes up Sonic Blast Man's dialogue.
Why couldn't the woman roll out of the way? It's not like the ropes were tied to the tracks? And did Sonic Blast Man really have to punch the train all the way back until it got crushed like a can off-screen and ultimately destroyed? Super powers aside, I think Sonic Blast Man is an absolute jerk.
Yes, the game came over to the West. So why am I showing the Super Famicom version? Because censorship issues and the fact that I love how I somehow found a SFC version playthrough out of dumb luck. That's why.
Believe it or not, the original arcade version was actually a game where you put on a pair of gloves connected to the machine and punched at the target as you could, and the screen showed a couple of scenarios such as punching out a giant monster crab or stopping a meteorite in space...all with your own two fists. The arcade version serves as the basis for the mini-games between stages.
The game was eventually recalled in the States because players would injure their hands trying to get the best possible scores, and because Taito never put so much as a warning sticker telling people of the risk of injury on the machine. (I'm guessing they underestimated the stupidity of man.) There was an arcade sequel to this version of Sonic Blast Man, but it only showed up in Japan, probably because of what happened in America.
Stage 1
The game begins downtown in some unnamed city, where Sonic Blast Man has to defeat the bad guys (or in the English version's case, the "villians").
The first thing you're going to notice as soon as the game starts is that Sonic Blast Man is one of the slowest characters in a beat-'em-up ever. Even Adam Hunter from Streets of Rage (or better yet, Max Thunder from SOR2) moves faster than Sonic Blast Man. Only one playable character, and we get this slowpoke? C'mon, Taito.
The only time you'll fight bad guys is when the screen stops as you're moving to the right. Since there's almost no hazards between enemy fight points save for certain parts of the game, you can just jump to the right until the screen stops and you can fight enemies. Jumping to the side is strange, as you cannot control what direction you're traveling in mid-jump and it covers a lot of the screen in seconds. That's nice, but I'm just trying to avoid an enemy, not teleport myself across the screen. That's pretty contradictory, in a way. In the air, he's almost Samus Aran from the Metroid series. On the ground, he moves around as slowly as some guy with debilitating athlete's foot.
Fighting enemies is pretty interesting. You can grab enemies and perform one of two moves: shaking them before throwing them in the opposite direction, or hitting them with a multi-jab combo. You can also punch enemies in the face a couple of times instead of grabbing them, and when you do that, that's when the real fun begins. After a couple of punches, you'll grab your opponent and have even more options than before. Y does the multi-jab and Back+Y does the shake and throw, but Up+Y does an uppercut that knocks your opponent into the air while shooting a projectile forward that attacks any other enemies around your target. Forward+Y shoots your target forward with a mighty punch and mows down enemies in his path, while Down+Y lets you voraciously throw an enemy backwards and hit someone unsuspecting enough to be near the target when it drops down.
When you do enough damage to your enemies, they will eventually be kneeling down after they getting up and will be stunned. When that happens, you can walk up to them, grab them, and put them in a throw where you swing them around a little bit before tossing them in the direction you were facing, knocking other enemies around you back in the meantime.
Fighting enemies is done decently, but trying not to take damage from them feels...weird. It's like an exercise in "What did I do to deserve this bullshit? Oh, wait. That." Every time you get attacked, it's always at the most convenient time and you can't help but think you just walked into a knife stab or a open-handed palm slap to the chest. It doesn't help that you can get hit again a couple of seconds after the first time and still feel like you somehow walked into it, regardless of whether it was intentional or not. The only way to minimize damage is to fight efficiently, and you'll have to be able to make decisions on the fly as to which throw you should use when and what strategy to use to take out all the bad guys.
Hitting two enemies at the same time is rather interesting. There are three ways to have your standing combo broken: get whacked, miss a punch or fight two opponents at once. You can alternate between sides and punch two guys at once just by using the Control Pad with the Y button as you punch repeatedly, but if they're both overlapping with each other, you can just press Y indefinitely and keep punching both of them until you're able to automatically grab one of the guys, which usually happens after you finish one of them off (or get extremely lucky). Useful strategies if you're in a situation that let's you take advantage of them.
Enemies here include punks with knives, fat guys that will hit you with either a palm shove or a belly flop and girls who will back up and jump kick forwards once they line themselves up with you. The girls were replaced with African-American guys that just hop around as they move. Like the girls, they stop moving before the forward jump kick.
Sometimes enemies will drop items at random in between barrels and crates that also carry items inside. Picking these up takes a little bet of getting used to, but not much. You have to press Down and Y to pick up items. Even worse, when an item shows up, you have to pick it up as quickly as possible or else it will disappear after several seconds. Why would they have made this any more inconvenient than just the whole Down+Y thing that I've never been a big fan of?
Items are random. You may get apples, cookies and chickens that restore your health (apples and cookies are partial, chickens are full). You may also get Sonic Blast Man helmets that act as 1-Ups, or blue punch gloves that act as super attacks (or "Bomb Punches" as the game calls them).
At certain points in the game, Sonic Blast Man will automatically move to the right and go further into the level automatically. You won't have control over him again until he stops moving.
The first boss is a bigger thug than the ones you've recently seen. He'll jump up and hit you out of the air if you jump, so jump kicks are automatically out. You'll have to be able to throw enemies into him or somehow manage to get him next to you without getting clobbered in the side of the face and punching him until you can put him in a combo. Avoiding his punch is harder than it should be, as it has more range than it appears to have and knocks you down instantly. If he's close enough to you when and if he knocks you down, he'll pick you up and throw you for even more damage. You'll have to play keepaway, avoid using jump kicks, and use the range of your punches to get the jump on the guy, since you'll eventually run out of flunkies to throw at him and fight him indirectly with.
You may have to use a Bomb Punch to attack everything on screen if you're low on health. To do that, press L or R and Sonic Blast Man while flash white. While he's flashing, press Y and he'll use the Bomb Punch. The screen freezes and enemies stop moving as he does it, but it's a bit on the slow side. C'mon, just punch the screen already. (I can understand how long the Super attacks from Streets of Rage, but it was actually pretty cool and I didn't mind waiting.) Now, keep in mind that the reason it seems slow is that you're probably playing the version that came out in America/Europe and had the Anglicized dialogue. He just says take that and you're waiting an extra second for him to punch the ground. In the Super Famicom version, he stops speaking just before he punches the ground, so the wait isn't that bad.
