The analog stick it a great control device, you barely have to touch it to move your character back and forth. I will now explain the meaning behind the button pressure during play. You can punch and kick with the triangle button..how you say?..all by the amount of pressure you place on the button, if you tap the triangle button 3 times your fighter will do a 3 hit combo..now if you press and hold the triangle button your character will perform a kick. If you press down a little harder that a tap on the triangle button your character will do another move...and this applies to all of the other 4 button, so there is like 3 moves for each button. Takes awhile to get used to it.

The sound in the game rocks especially if you have a Dolby surround system. Every little sound is recorded from the raindrops on the roof while you are engaging in a fight to the bass sound of slamming someone into the ground..way cool, and the vibration on the controller get an A+ from me.

The options in the game comes from changing the game English with English subtitles, English without subtitles, English with Japanese subtitles {thats how the game is set when you first play} Japanese with English subtitles and Japanese with Japanese subtitles and so on. There is a section in the options where you can set the pressure on the buttons from high medium and low. I set this to low since I usually press hard anyway, this comes in handy so you can learn the pressuring of each button command. Unfortunately I did not see an option where you can adjust the level difficulty, but who cares about that right?

The modes of play come in 3 main parts The story mode in which you pick 1 of the 3 bouncers, the Vs mode in where you can play with 4 people if you have multitap. Also in the Vs mode comes with a team battle and a battle royal mode for pure mayhem. Then there is the survival mode in where you pick 1 of the 3 main characters, if you notice in the survival mode there is about 20 extra slots for secret characters..WOO HOO!!..so the replay value is high as you work towards the secret people. I want to unlock that badazz red head girl from the story mode with the double D's and the funny hairdo, shes hot ;) I have not played the survival mode much only enough to tell you about it.

The gameplay is great and you will have a blast playing it, especially with friends. Great beat'em up party game. When you are playing the story mode you get the option to switch characters before the fight..great for when you need your highest level guy, oh yeah you build up their strength, defense and power levels throughout the game and when you get high enough you get a ranking in which opens up an arsenal of moves for your character and you have to build up each move too, for example there's a powerslam move in which I have not opened up yet its like 3000 points and I believe when you get there it will be a special move you can pick and that will let you use the other button on the controller for your special moves. Throughout the game you will do more than just beat people up.. yes my fellow gamers there are mini games. Certain actions in the game require you to find things like keycards and so on. There are a lot of options ! in this part cause when you choose a character or switch to another character. You follow their story and their mini games..so a lot of replay value there. You just gotta get this game, each character has strengths and weaknesses to balance the game the 2 smaller ones have quick moves and are fast but they are not thats strong until you build them up, the big guy has a lot of power moves but is slow until you build him up.

On to the graphics of the game, before you pop in the CD make sure you have a nice box of Kleenex next to your side, the graphics will bring tears to your eyes, sniff ..(hold while I wipe my eyes please..sniff)...sigh.....ok I'm better now..while you are in the heat of battle there are no slowdowns at all and when you gang up on someone (I'm still trying to figure out how I did it) the camera will switch and do a matrix style cut scene with whatever move you did, way cool.

Well, I hope this gives you a better glimpse of whats to come, so I advise you all to go out and get this game when it comes out, or if you have an import ps2 then why are you reading this, go get the import and play the game in English. I will let you know more secrets as I find them, but usually some things are added and taken out when games go from Japan to the American console. FAREWELL fellow gamers and have a HAPPY 2001!!

Screenshots:

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