Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective

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Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective
Yusuke: "This game is a disgrace to my show, so I'm going to shoot my Spirit Gun at this awful game."
Protagonist(s): Yusuke
Genre(s): Action
Rating(s): Teen
Platform(s): Game Boy Advance
Release Date: December 9, 2003
Developer(s): Sensory Sweep Studios
Screaming Games
Publisher(s): Atari
Country: United States
Japan
Series: Yu Yu Hakusho

Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective is a video game for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld console. Based on the manga and anime series Yu Yu Hakusho created by Yoshihiro Togashi, the plot follows the central character Yusuke Urameshi, a street-brawling, often truant teenager who dies trying to save a young boy's life. After meeting an incarnation of the Grim Reaper, Yusuke is given a second chance at life as a "Spirit Detective", a protector of the living world.

Plot

Yusuke Urameshi is 14 years old, and he is the toughest student at Sarayashiki Junior High School. He brawls with his friend/rival Kuwabara on a frequent basis. He is a stereotypical bad egg, with a bad attendance record and picks fights with other kids at school. In the manga, he is even revealed to be drinking, smoking and gambling.

While skipping school and being neglected by his mother, Yusuke wonders around the town. Yusuke comes across a toddler playing in the streets and scolds him for it. This upsets the child, so Yusuke entertains the toddler by making silly faces. The toddler disregards his advice and walks into the street again chasing his ball and, you guessed it, a car comes speeding down the street and Yusuke shoves him out of the way. Yusuke is struck by the car, and killed.

As a ghost, Yusuke is greeted by an atypical version of the Grim Reaper; a bubbly, cheerful young woman named Botan. She informs Yusuke that no one in Spirit World had expected him to die, risking his life to save the toddler. The boy would've survived the hit, Thus, Yusuke's interference was unnecessary and only resulted in the kid having a minor scratch. They have no place for him in the afterlife because of his abrupt death. The Spirit World is also amazed how Yusuke, known for his bad attitude, could save a boy, and for these reasons, he was given the chance to live again. Botan remarks that Yusuke can return to life, but he initially declines.

Yusuke's mind changes after he attends his wake, where people he knows pay their condolences to his mother. Atsuko (Yusuke's mother), is extremely distraught & borderline catatonic about losing her son. Keiko Yukimura (his classmate) sobs uncontrollably, yelling Yusuke's name. Kuwabara appears, angry and upset that Yusuke died before they could finish their battles. When two of Yusuke's teachers belittle him at the wake, Mr. Takenaka, the principal of the school, berates them for insulting him. He pays his respects to Atsuko and sobs at Yusuke's passing; only then, Atsuko reacts, collapsing in tears at the mention of Yusuke. Lastly, the toddler whom Yusuke saved and his mother show up, and when he asks if he can play again with Yusuke, his mother cries and hugs him. Understanding that he meant more to others than they let on, he decides to come back.

Yusuke is given an egg by Koenma, acting lord of Spirit World (in place of his father, who often left to work in other places), and is told that it will hatch a Spirit Beast, which will help him get back to life. However, he must be a genuinely good person. If he is evil, the beast will devour him. While Yusuke only accomplishes two good deeds in the anime, he does a lot more in the manga due to the timeline of events being more stretched out. This includes helping a boy named Shouta get over his dog's death, helping a girl who had died get over her obsession with a boy, (who didn't really care for her) so she can move on, and also being temporarily revived to keep his body fresh so it won't die out. The last deed involves not allowing Keiko to know about this, though Kuwabara encounters him and Yusuke explains to him what is happening before he returns to being a ghost.

Keiko, who had received dreams and messages from Yusuke's ghost telling her he would be returning to life, needed to take care of his body so that he would be able to return to it. However, a fire starts in Yusuke's home and his body runs the risk of being incinerated. Keiko runs into the fire to protect it, and is trapped in the fire. Yusuke gave up all the power gained from his good deeds after his death to have Koenma save her. Koenma used this to put out some of the flames and opened up a path for her to escape from the fire.

Due to this incident, with Koenma directly in contact with Yusuke's soul, Keiko kissing Yusuke to resurrect him he figured that the wave cycle of Yusuke's power is extremely long and has to meet the right time to be resurrected or he would have to wait for another fifty-two years (fifty years in the Japanese version and English manga) before the next chance and decided to let Yusuke return to life earlier even though the fire incident should have delayed the process since his power gained from good deeds were used up (In the manga, Yusuke had to go through one more good deed to be eligible for this by possessing an old acquaintance named Matsuo Suekichi to help him gain the confidence to achieve his dream of becoming a boxer).

The only way for Yusuke to be resurrected is by a kiss from someone who is very close to him until midnight. Yusuke could tell, by dream, to three people he knew in order to do this, but he only told Keiko and Kuwabara since his mother started drinking and would not go to bed. Kuwabara did not believe the dream, due to its homosexuality, and Keiko got delayed by her mother's illness. Botan possessed Keiko's mother to leave a message saying Yusuke was in a more dire state than she was. Keiko manages to kiss Yusuke in time, and Yusuke is returned to life.

After returning, Yusuke noticed that a group of kids from a rival school had kidnapped Kuwabara's pet cat, and that they were trying to make him do things that he would never do to save it, like stealing. Yusuke then found out that there was a demon inhabiting the body of the leader of the group and defeats him and saves the cat. Botan shows up and tells Yusuke that his experience with death allowed him to do these things. He is to become Earth's Spirit Detective, and protect the human race from demons by solving cases involved with the apparitions.

Yusuke engages in many difficult trials in his first assignments as Spirit Detective. The first is to recover three stolen artefacts from Spirit World. Koenma trains him by teaching him how to fire his spirit energy, energy possessed by humans and spirits, as a weapon. This technique is called the Spirit Gun, and becomes the signature attack of Yusuke. Yusuke attempts to combat these three thieves: Goki, who stole a soul-stealing article called the Orb of Baast; Kurama, who stole a mirror called the Forlorn Hope; and Hiei, who stole the Shadow Sword.

Yusuke was able to defeat Gouki the aid of Botan (anime only) and his Spirit Gun. Kurama willingly turns over the Forlorn Hope, as he only wanted to use its power to save his mother's life. Kurama intended to sacrifice his life for the mirror to save hers, but Yusuke selflessly asked the mirror to take his so Kurama can enjoy his mother's life. The mirror granted Kurama's wish, taking half of each of their life force, but killing neither, and Yusuke took the mirror. Yusuke and Botan then went to fight Hiei, who kidnapped Keiko and tried to turn her into a demon by slashing her with the stolen sword. While Botan staved off the transformation, Yusuke fought the extremely-fast demon, and managed to defeat him by reflecting his Spirit Gun off of the Forlorn Hope, intentionally missing Hiei to strike it and causing the arrogant demon to believe Yusuke missed. They found the antidote in the hilt of the sword to stop Keiko's transformation. After the ordeal, Yusuke turned over the three artefacts to Koenma.

Yusuke then was sent to the compound of Master Genkai, an aged, experienced fighter who was looking for a successor to her powerful Spirit Wave technique (Reikō Hadō Ken or Spirit Light Wave Fist in the original Japanese version). To decide her successor she decided to hold a tournament which Yusuke and Kuwabara enter. Botan warned Yusuke that a demon named Rando would probably try to inherit her technique and it was his job to stop him. Yusuke fought through her tournament and defeated Rando in the end, becoming her successor. For the next two weeks, Yusuke undergoes tough training with Genkai. As a result, his strength radically heightens, push him from a D-class to a C-class.

Yusuke was then sent to Maze Castle in Demon City to defeat the Four Saint Beasts and stop them from taking over the human race with demon parasites. Kuwabara decided to go with Yusuke, and Koenma sent Kurama and Hiei, who were on probation in the human world, to assist. Yusuke and the others fought their way to Suzaku, the leader of the group, and Yusuke managed to defeat him, but at the cost of his own life energy. Kuwabara saved him by transferring part of his own life energy.

Yusuke teams up with Kuwabara (and Botan in the anime) to rescue a beautiful ice apparition named Yukina, to whom Kuwabara becomes smitten. However, Yukina is actually Hiei's twin sister, a fact that Kuwabara and even Yukina herself is unaware of. Yusuke fights all the way to the Toguro brothers. Yusuke and Kuwabara defeat them with awesome teamwork and rescue the maiden, but it turns out that the Toguros threw the fight on purpose. The Younger Toguro brother coerces Yusuke to join the Dark Tournament (Ankoku Būtsukai or Black Martial Arts Tournament in the original Japanese) and defeat him in a real fight.

Why It's Devil Spirits

  1. Very awful graphics for the system. The graphics look like they were made by a kindergarten or a toddler and it makes that game look like it was made for the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis.
  2. Bad character models. All of the characters lack faces, and are very thin, most notably Yusuke. And all of the characters look more like Barbie dolls or action figures than the actual characters from the show.
  3. Despite it being based off the story from the anime and manga, it was made worse due to several elements being changed and the game isn't voiced, see (WIS#17 for more details).
  4. Boring gameplay.
  5. The game is very easy with the exception of the Younger Toguro boss battle.
  6. The menu screens look very bland and unoriginal to look at.
  7. The game is very short. You can beat it in less than 3 hours.
  8. Awful difficulty spikes. One notable example is the Younger Toguro boss fight being very hard while the next boss, Rando and Suzaku is fairly easy. To make things worse, you even fight Toguro twice, the only difference is that you now play as Kuwabara instead of Yusuke and that Toguro moves much faster and deals more damage.
  9. Saving your stats makes you quit the game and lose all your progress in the level except your stats.
  10. Awful sound effects. All of the male characters have the same "Ugh" voice when they die or get hit. Same thing goes for the female characters but with a higher pitched "Ugh" voice. The voices also don't fit most of the characters as well. Most notable examples are Kurama, Kuwabara and Genkai. The enemies and bosses are not even voiced as well. Some enemies are excusable like the bugs and zombies, but bosses like Hiei, Suzaku and Toguro are not.
  11. Due to the systems limitations, the combat is really bad, and you can't really pull off combos.
  12. Clumsy controls due to the GBA only having a d-pad.
  13. Leveling up your character can take a long time as you need to collect orbs that come out of enemies when defeated, and not all enemies drop orbs once defeated.
  14. Hiei sucks in the game. All his special moves are teleportation moves, and they don't do much damage. They could have at least given him the Dragon of the Darkness Flame as his ultimate move.
  15. Bad hit detection.
  16. Laughable animations.
  17. It is unfaithful to the source material it's based on, resulting in a confusing story despite it being based off the anime and manga. One example is you can play as Hiei and Kurama during the entirety of the Rescue Yukina mission when in the anime, they didn't even take part in the mission until the very end. Rando and Suzaku clones also appear, even though the clones didn't appear in the anime and manga. Another example are the character stats, where for some reason, Kuwabara is the strongest character even though he is constantly shown to be the weakest out of the four main characters in thr anime and manga.
  18. Combat is very repetitive.
  19. Very awful level design. Most notable level is the main city, which is huge and very maze-like. And despite you having a compass, levels can be extremely confusing to navigate due to them being rather large.
  20. You have to do tons of grinding in the game in order to defeat most of the bosses.
  21. The final battle is just a rematch against both Rando and Suzaku, something that didn't happen in the anime.
  22. Barely any replay value. If you load up your save file after you beat the game, all you can do is just replay the final boss.
  23. Despite the bonus round having Genkai enter the Dark Tournament, some characters don't show up like Jin, Touya, Chu, Bakken, Rinku, Shishiwakamaru, Ichigaki, Suzuki and Karasu. However, this can be excusable as this game takes place before the Dark Tournament and they probably wanted to make the Dark Tournament into a boss battle mode.
  24. Only 7 playable characters, not to mention, 2 of them (Keiko and Botan) are playable for a short period of time in the story and one of them (Genkai) is only playable in the extra Dark Tournament.
  25. The game has no continues. If you die, you go all the way back to the beginning of the level.
  26. The soundtrack is terrible, heck it doesn't have Smile Bomb, the theme song from the show. Even the first Game Boy Yu Yu Hakusho game had Smile Bomb, and that game came out 10 years before this game. Not to mention, all the songs loop and get annoying real fast.
  27. In 2005, it was bundled with Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu, which is known as one of the worst Dragon Ball Z video games of all time.
  28. Unsatisfying ending. All you get is a screen showing team Urameshi and the words "Mission Complete"
  29. This game was so bad that even people in Japan hated it, and they even called the side mode from the 4th Yu Yu Hakusho Gameboy game better than this.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. Stays faithful to the source material, one example being 3 mini games during the Genkai Tournament like in the show.
  2. The writing is OK.
  3. A decent selection of playable characters even if some of them are only playable for a limited amount of time.
  4. There are some fun moments, like the Byakko boss fight. Also during the Genkai Tournament, there is a boss (Kazemaru) where you have to manipulate his throwing stars to defeat him, as you can't punch or use special attacks during the fight.
  5. An extra boss rush mode where you can play as Genkai and fight every boss you previously fought in the game.
  6. The sequel, Tournament Tactics was a huge improvement, having better gameplay, sound, presentation, graphics and a longer story.
  7. It can be considered as "so bad, it's good" due to the laughable animations, weird soundtrack and bad graphics".
  8. Fans of the anime might like it.
  9. The dialogue is alright. The dialogue can also be pretty funny at times, as it is copied from the anime.
  10. The character stat pictures look cool.
  11. This was the first YuYu Hakusho game released in North America, as all the other games were only released in Japan.
  12. The graphics, while ugly and awful looking now, were pretty impressive at the time for a GBA game.
  13. At least in the bundle pack, this game is better than Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu.
  14. The game does control better when using a thumbstick attachment for the original Game Boy Advance.
  15. While the game is rather unfaithful to the series, there are some moments in the game that are faithful to the anime, like the minigames during the Genkai Training arc, Using Hiei to find a switch to free Yusuke, Kurama and Kuwabara from the Gate of Betrayal and using Kuwabara to talk to Keiko to help her save Yusuke's body.
  16. Some of the music is alright like the main menu song.

Reception

The game received "unfavorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, with a very low score of 33/100. One universal complaint about the game was the very repetitive and thus unenjoyable nature of the gameplay. Adam Tierney of IGN lambasted the combat with enemy AI, the required use of the compass in the maze-like levels, and the discouragement of exploration. Eduardo Zacarias of GameZone found that the battles become "more of a nuisance rather than an entertaining challenge"; he did credit the developer's attempt at variety with the unique objectives in each stage. Nintendo World Report writer Michael Cole chose Spirit Detective among the worst games he has played, noting poor collision detection, significant lag when using special attacks, and virtually no challenge in its battles or collection missions. Cole was satisfied with the integration of episode plot devices into the levels and the inclusion of minigames.

Most critics disapproved of the graphics in Spirit Detective, while opinions about other aspects of the presentation have been largely mixed. Tierney called the backgrounds "dull" and "bland", the looping music "weak", and static menus "bland", but did take pleasure in the pre-rendered models and the clever text used in the storyline adaptation. Contrarily, Cole thought the plot "flows like a low-budget clip show", requiring the player to be familiar with the anime and allegedly neither introducing characters and situations in a proper fashion nor including all portions of the story arc. Like Tierney, Zacarias was unmoved by the graphics and accompanying music, but was impressed by the fighting animation and sound effects. Cole described the use of official in-game artwork as a plus, but remarked the audio as "horrible".

Despite the game's poor critical reception, Atari's North American division reported satisfying financial results for its third quarter of 2003, naming Spirit Detective as one of the contributing titles. Sensory Sweep Studios and Screaming Games collaborated once more for the release of Yu Yu Hakusho: Tournament Tactics for the GBA in 2004.

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