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Pretty much everybody knows what Sailor Moon is by now. 200 episodes + movies have been made, plus all the manga, games, and countless merchandise. Needless to say, this has resulted in one massive fanbase worldwide. DiC brought over 75 episodes into the English market and ruined the translations with some bad voice acting, editing out stuff, and other atrocities. Now, I must confess i'm not into this series like so many people are, but I enjoy it (to an extent). There have been several games based on Sailor Moon, including more arcade style beat 'em ups in similar vein to the one i'm reviewing, fighting games, and an RPG.

This is a Banpresto arcade game, and actually it has a charm to it that makes it stand out a bit. It opens with Tuxedo Kamen (Chiba Mamoru) flying onto the screen and throwing his face mask at the screen. Afterwards it shows all the Sailors come on the screen (good art by the way) and then the game begins. You select which of the five Sailors you want to play as (Usagi, Ami, Rei, Minako, and Makoto... no Chibi-usa! yesssssssssssssssssss!!!! ). Er, anyways, the game starts you off on the streets with you taking out familiar foes from the first season, only they're mostly in the form of enemies which repeat endlessly and change color, as expected from a game like this (think Streets of Rage 2 but shorter in length). You can walk, run, jump, run-jump, and there's a good variety of different attacks per girl. There's the standard chain attack combos that automatically string together, you can grab the enemies and either do a repeated grab-attack or throw them, dash attacks, special attacks which take some of your life bar away (press attack + jump button), and a ton of jumping attacks (running jump attack, straight-up and forward jump attacks, jump + hold down and attack, running jump attack, etc.) so there's a good amount of stuff you can do. Then there's the attacks you can only do by using blue crystals which you collect whenever you defeat a certain enemy. Listen to this; whenever you use one of these attacks, whichever sailor scout you are using comes up on the screen full-size and animates as good as the anime itself. Each amount of crystals you accumulate per girl will result in a different animated attack (you can store anywhere from one to five per girl). If you have all five crystals and you perform the attack, the girls come up on the screen and run through the entire animated sequence of the attacks they did in the anime itself! Very cool. So there's 25 specially animated attacks in the game, and it's worth it to play through just to check them all out.

However, the fun will soon come to a gripping halt. The game is an especially well done beat 'em up, sure, with fancy cinematics such as Tuxedo Kamen's appearances during some boss fights and such. But if you simply look at the content that is actually there, you find that it is very repetitious. You cannot even pick up weapons and use them; a beat 'em up staple. Also, I wish that instead of repeating a boss they added another different fight. Jadeite would've been acceptable; instead, he's reduced to a small part in a cinema... When you go up against some of these bosses, be prepared to die a lot. This game is a quarter eater!

Anyways, the music is pretty nice with some catchy stuff, mainly the first stage song, but some songs are just annoying. The sound effects and voices are well done though. I was expecting more, given the fact that the series is known for its excellent compositions (some of which sounds like it came right out of the 70's). If you can, I suggest you pick up the ten-disc Sailor Moon Memorial Music Box set from Anime Castle or someplace else that has it.

Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon is a good addition to an overpopulated genre, but there aren't enough redeeming qualities to make up for its repetitiveness. Still, if you're ever in the mood for a good beat 'em up (and you happen to like Sailor Moon), check this game out.

- Michael