Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu (Sega Gamegear)

Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu is a side-scrolling beat-em up game for the Sega Gamegear handheld, based on Yoshihiro Togashi’s classic shonen anime about spirit detective Yuusuke Urameshi and the colorful cast of demons, humans, and otherworldly beings that make up his list of friends and enemies.

Now, it’s all about context with retro games: it looks like crap now, but during the time when it was released, Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu was a good looking game that took advantage of the limited hardware that was available. Compared to other games released on the Sega Gamegear, Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu was colorful, well-animated, and had enough variety in the settings and enemies to keep you playing all the way to the end.

The mechanics for the game is simple. You choose one of the four main characters (either Yuusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, or Hiei) and have them travel from left to right of the screen, beating enemies along the way. Each of the characters have different attributes (speed, attack, etc.) rated from A to D, which affect how they handle. They also have unique mob-clearing special attacks, which come in the form of a cutscene.


You also have the freedom to choose the stages. As mentioned above, the stages are varied enough visually that you’ll be compelled to play all of them, but don’t expect much replay value especially since the choice of characters don’t affect anything. Additionally, the characters sort of serve as lives – if your current character dies, the next one takes over.

To break away the monotony of the stages, each of them has an end level boss that is fought differently. Instead of a sidescrolling beat ‘em up, the boss fights changes the game to a hybrid of third-person over the shoulder and on rails shooter, where you fight the boss monster face to face and attack using a crosshair that randomly changes position. You can also use the cutscene special attack in this mode in order to take chunks out of the bosses’ health.

There are technical flaws in Yu Yu Hakusho: Horobishi Mono no Gyakushu, but you have to understand the context, both in the era the game was released and the inherent technical limitations of the hardware it’s on. It’s flickery, and the audio is limited in scope – just like majority of gamegear games. However, one flaw that can be blamed squarely on the game is the sluggish controls. There are extremely playable games like Sonic the Hedgehog on the gamegear so YYH: HMNG’s floaty controls is inexcusable. It’s about the only thing wrong with the game.

At the end of the day, the game is recommended for people who are fans of the Yu Yu Hakusho franchise and people looking for more games on the Sega Gamegear. The poor handling drives the difficulty upwards unnecessarily, but once you get used to the laggy controls, you’ll enjoy everything else it has to offer.