Genre: Fighting
Publisher: Bandai Interactive
Developer: Eighting
Release Date: October 11, 2005

In an age where anime is the new Saturday morning cartoon, we've come to expect a new video game to accompany each series. There have been a plethora of Dragonball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokémon titles so naturally, Bandai is proud to bring us Zatch Bell! Mamodo Battles, the fighting game based on the Zatch Bell series.

The Zatch Bell series is basically an excuse to have Pokémon-like battles with doll-looking beings. It is about a massive tournament that takes place on Earth every 1,000 years. During each tournament, 100 mamodo come to Earth and battle for the king's throne in the mamodo world. The only problem is they need a human to read their spells for them. Of course, they don't really explain why. Can the mamodo not read? Is it against the rules for them to read their own spells? Nevertheless, each mamodo must find a human partner to read his/her spell book.

The main menu screen presents you with a color wheel of options. You can go straight into Story Mode or try your hand at Time Attack. When you first start out in Story Mode, you have three different characters' stories from which to choose. While each character generally fights the same opponents, the story tries to follow something characteristic of that mamodo team. For example, Kiyo is trying to help Zatch recover his memory and become a "kind king." While they're doing their thing, Tia and Megumi just want to record their new hit single. It seems you might understand the characters' stories more if you actually followed the anime series. Nevertheless, for each mamodo you defeat in Story Mode, you earn a certain number of points that can be used in the Develop and Bonus Modes.

In Time Attack, you simply go through and beat each mamodo in the fastest time possible, which, unfortunately, this isn't a difficult task. Because of the button-mashing aspect of the game, all you need to do essentially is constantly press B until you win. Boring, yes, but it earns you more points, doesn't it?

Now what are these points for exactly? In Develop Mode, you can use those points to increase a character's strength, magic, or health. Unfortunately, you can't use your upgraded mamodos in Story Mode, but you can implement them in Time Attack and multiplayer. Then there's Bonus Mode, where you basically use your points to buy cards from the Zatch Bell CCG. Thankfully, buying these cards isn't a total waste of time, since collecting all of a certain card type will earn you new characters.

Collecting these cards and developing your characters will definitely keep you coming back to get all your mamodos' skills maxed out. Those aren't the only features that add to the replay value, though. Throughout the game, you'll unlock more characters' Story Modes and new mamodos to use in multiplayer. If you have a few friends to play against, you'll be able to pump a lot of good gameplay out of Zatch Bell.

Mamodo Battles is quite simple in its controls. Pressing B does the physical attacks such as punching, and, with some characters, slapping, while A does special attacks, which range from laser beams to power orbs. Although the special attacks use up some of your special meter, you can build up the magic gauge by merely beating your opponent with physical attacks. Once your special meter is fully powered up, you can press L to use the ultimate attack. For example, Zatch releases an enormous golden dragon that destroys the opposition, but if your opponent uses his ultimate attack at the same, you must duel it out with a button-mashing frenzy. Basically, whoever can spastically press A the most wins. There are also defensive techniques like guarding and countering that are used with X and Y respectively.

Do those controls seem similar to anyone? They play like a really dumbed-down version of the Dragonball Z: Budokai controls, and that is where this game's problem lies. Zatch Bell is a fun game, but after a while, you just wish you were playing a more complex fighting game. As long as we're comparing, it also seems the counter-move isn't as responsive as it is in Budokai. Granted, they are not the same game, but Bandai had to draw Mamodo Battles from somewhere.

Additionally, the visual style appears to be taken straight from Budokai, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. The style perfectly emulates the feel of the cartoon, and it captures the exaggerated expressions of the characters just right during battle. Also, in the cut scenes, hilarious figures with exaggerated faces do the dialogue as they slide across the screen like paper doll cut-outs.

I was also happy to see that the theme from the show was included in the game. It was always disappointing to play a Pokémon game and not hear the theme from the show – not even in midi form. To make it even better, the original voice actors were included. This is great, because personally, I love to play as Folgore just so I can hear his amusing French accent. I don't think I could ever get tired of hearing him talk about the ladies.

While Zatch Bell! Mamodo Battles may be a lot of fun, especially for any Zatch Bell fan, it fails to be more than a button-masher. Other anime fighters like Budokai do a much better job of creating a deep fighting system worthy of hours of multiplayer battles (although they are still not up to par with other 3D fighters, such as Tekken and Soul Calibur). Mamodo Battles has a lot of replay value with all of the unlockables and multiple story lines, but ultimately, it is lacking in complexity of gameplay.

Score: 6.5/10