Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Sunsoft’s admirable but misguided effort to adapt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast into two games for two different audiences didn’t pan out well when it came to Belle’s Quest. While that was a directionless attempt to cater to young girls, the other title they made seemed to be playing it safe, Roar of the Beast nominally made for young boys but using the same action platformer design common to licensed video games of the era.  Belle’s Quest was a failed experiment, but Roar of the Beast should at least have a chance of being decent considering it was going down a well-traveled road when it came to its design… and yet, it appears neither of Sunsoft’s efforts on the Sega Genesis quite hit their mark.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast tells the tale of the animated film from the perspective of the prince cursed to be a beast, although there is definitely some embellishment to give him a bit more to do before his fateful encounter with the kind and intelligent village girl Belle. The game begins with his enchanted castle attacked by random animals from the woods, but after the Beast does meet the Beauty, things begin to follow the film more closely until the climax where The Beast must face off with angry villagers and their leader, Belle’s unwanted huntsman suitor Gaston. Using pretty much the same cutscene style as Belle’s Quest, Roar of the Beast features some faithful reproductions of still images from the movie for use in its storytelling although it doesn’t really do a good job summarizing the film’s events. It certainly expects familiarity with the film, but it was likely the story scenes were kept lean as Sunsoft apparently identifies an interest in stories as a girls-only trait.

An action heavy focus was meant to be what made Roar of the Beast a better fit for boys, but the action is very stilted and not at all exciting. The Beast’s attacking options are an odd mix, his standing swipe necessary for most action due to its basic design but there is an option to hold down the attack button longer to deal greater damage. However, if you decide to have the Beast crawl on all fours despite it never being all that necessary or helpful, his attack changes to a short range bite that isn’t very useful. A standard jump is meant for the basic moments of platforming required, but you can do an aerial attack that is very strange in its appearance. It looks like a natural follow-up to a jump, the Beast diving a little with his hands pointed downward as he heads towards the ground, but it is indeed the jump attack despite seeming to have issues with hit detection due to the strange posing. It is useful despite its issues, unlike the roar whose limited uses feel unnecessary on top of its niche effect. You can use a roar to freeze enemies on screen for a bit, but most foes in the game appear and attack so quickly that it’s not likely you’ll be able to execute it in time to prevent the damage, and if you do, you had the time to kill them or avoid them easily.

The enemy design in Roar of the Beast is definitely it’s biggest problem, especially when it’s coupled with the incredibly straightforward level designs. The game’s normal levels are mostly forward marches where you only need to jump or wait a second to get around tiny hazards like fire and icicles, the only real break to these long hallway like designs being a few elevation shifts that don’t really ask much from the player. These stages are designed almost exclusively around the idea that the challenge will come from animals appearing from either side of the screen to bother you. Rats run across the floor, ravens dive in from above, bears strut towards you, snakes spit poison from afar, and wolves try to leap onto you, most of them coming in quick and striking quick to try and whittle down your mildly generous health. They are pretty much the same repeated reflex check cropping up over and over until you finished walking from left to right, these levels less about interesting action and more about being quick on the draw to avoid being pestered by the constantly incoming animals.

Luckily, Roar of the Beast’s short length means it doesn’t stick to one level design ethos for too long, although the only other decently sized stage is a vertical climb up the castle where fireballs and falling arrows take the place of creatures as the frequently appearing annoyances, and with the threat of falling far down the castle and having to repeat some of the climb if you get knocked off, they can be much more annoying, especially since you can’t just attack them all. There are a few minigames that break up the levels, such as a stained glass jigsaw puzzle you don’t actually have to complete in the allotted time, a game where you collect falling rose petals with no goal beyond getting the most points and getting some free healing, and a brief platforming stage that involves grabbing treasure in a hallway with two floors, but none of these last long enough to really make an impression with their simple designs.

On the flip side of minigames too simple to leave a mark are boss fights so simple they make the one remaining area with some potential for exciting action a waste of time. Whether it be the odd smiling bear in the castle, the wolf in the woods, or Gaston himself, every boss follows a fairly tame pattern of moving around a bit before leaving themselves open to an attack, then repeating the process without really focusing on where you might be at the time. The bear shifts back and forth and swipes at the air, the wolf moves between two perches with unfaltering consistency, and Gaston seems more preoccupied with hopping between castle awnings than actually trying to strike you. Once you quite easily find the right spots to stand, you can defeat them all with little struggle, a large boar the only one that slightly breaks away from this basic and boring design because it has the clear goal of knocking the rose the Beast’s curse is tied to off the table, meaning there’s an instant death looming if the fight drags on a little too long. Spacing your swipes on the pig can be a touch difficult due to an unclear hitbox, but a few strong punches while the boss mindlessly executes its patterns is enough to make quick work of any of these fights.

Funnily enough, this awful fight design is reused for a portion where you fight a group of villagers instead, the Beast needing to repel two waves of them as they appear from the left and right side of a large room in the castle. These villagers are impervious to attacks, simply getting knocked back when hit, but the Beast’s servants who have been cursed to be household objects stand at the sides of the room ready to kick them out whenever you knock an enemy into them. This is different conceptually than just wearing down a boss’s health, but fighting them is still the same in that it’s about repetition more than strategy or reflex. They only behave in one easily exploitable way, positioning being the only advantage you need as you wait for them to get where they need to be, hit them, and repeat until the fight is complete. It’s just as mindless as the boss fights, meaning that in a game meant to be action-focused, all the action ends up being dry and repetitive thanks to no enemy having an interesting enough design to truly challenge your capabilities.

THE VERDICT: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast completely fails to provide any exciting action for its intended young male audience. Besides the Beast’s moves already being pretty poor tools for combat, the foes he faces are either constantly appearing animal nuisances or brain dead bosses who have no recourse for you easily exploiting their rigid patterns. The breaks from these weak action segments are minigames that barely lost long enough to even leave an impression, meaning that most of Roar of the Beast is a short and bland sequence of facing enemies who never put up an interesting fight.

And so, I give Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast for Genesis/Mega Drive…

A TERRIBLE rating. Pretty much just as bad as Belle’s Quest but in it’s own way, Sunsoft somehow messed up what felt like a very safe bet. Even with developer Software Creations having experience with action platformers prior to Roar of the Beast, the design feels amateurish and without strong direction. Bosses are laughable in how poorly they react to the player’s presence while regular enemies just constantly fly in from all angles to be a hassle instead of a legitimate challenge to overcome. Too much of Roar of the Beast is about just swiping at an enemy in range or waiting to hit something when it’s in the right spot, and the weak minigames tossed between instances of this do nothing to distract from a game that feels empty despite the screen often having multiple enemies moving across it. The enemies aren’t level hazards that work with the stage design, they just appear to make the lifeless left to right progression have something for the player to interact with, and even when it changes to a vertical climb, the challenge is hoping you aren’t jumping when the enemies swoop in so that you don’t have to make up for the progress you’ll lose on being hit. It’s not too hard to finish the game since there is so little going on in it, but it feels hollow because the game makes little effort to provide challenges that are greater than just reacting to the bat just flew in from offscreen.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast didn’t just play it safe with standard platform game design, but the state of it makes it seem like that wasn’t even an option. Whether it was splitting attention between it and Belle’s Quest or some idea that young boys would prefer this over something more typical, Roar of the Beast seems to provide action only in the literal sense. You’ll need to swipe at a lot of angry animals to win, but the fighting rarely goes beyond smacking something in your way, and with little else to truly distract from shallow enemy interaction, Roar of the Beast lacks even the smallest shred of complexity that could have made the action actually entertaining.