The pain means you’re alive

Uh, so, hey. Comix Zone is really, really hard, right? I’m not just imagining it? Because damn. One life? No continues? Man, that’s totally…

You said it, Sketch Turner!

16 thoughts on “The pain means you’re alive”

  1. I like to think of it more as a puzzle game where you get to punch people than an action game.

  2. makes me apprecate I still can’t find a Wii.
    I used to love seeing the Jim Lee cover of Comix Zone, and that game was innovate with it’s style more then recent cell shaded games.

  3. I hated that game, but mostly because I only ever played it on my grandma’s computer and had to use the keyboard to play.

  4. If you make it past the first boss, Mortus will take pity on you and give you a continue — you’ll know it when Sketch says “Is this the end?” if he dies.

    P.S. PROTIP: Take good care of Roadkill, and he’ll take good care of you. Especially against Mongoria.

    I love this game so much.

  5. Good to know. I keep dying at that pit with the flying… thing hovering over it. Jumps that land just short, or better yet, stupidly uppercutting the flying… thing only to discover there’s a slight forward motion with the uppercut that drops me into the pit. It’s crazy hard, but I can’t believe how clever the presentation is. Good music, too. It’ll definitely be getting an official 1UP recommendation.

  6. I concur with the “It’s really a puzzle guy where you can punch guys some of the time” description.

    I used to not be able to do very well when playing it in my really young childhood days, but replaying it as an adult, I realized that for a lot of fights in the game, having the right item (especially the rat) or understanding how they want you to manipulate the enviroment will work much better than just mashing the punch button. And yeah, you get one extra continue later.

  7. You know what’s kept me away from this game for all this time? My deep shame that I used to really like that style that was going on in comics in the early nineties. I’m afraid I might get sucked back in and start buying Shadowhawk or Spawn or soemthing.

    I’m not going back! You’ll never take me alive, Rob Liefield!

  9. Not only 1 life, but your health drains from regular attacks! No, not special moves i.e. many a beat ’em up like Final Fight and Streets of Rage. No, just standard attacks.

    “All I can say about Comix Zone is thank god for emulator save states.”

    I’ve been playing it on the Sega Genesis Collection, but yeah–same dealy.

    I feel sorry for anyone whose only way of playing it is on Virtual Console. Interrupt save alone won’t really suffice.

  10. I vividly remember this game being not fun, just frustrating and repetitive. Such a pity, because the style was really unique and pretty groundbreaking for its time. Maybe someday we’ll see a sequel called “WebComix Zone”, where you fight back and forth across web pages, ripping off the banner ads to reveal the html code beneath it. Hey, that’d actually be pretty cool… and horribly nerdy.

  12. No you’re right, Comix Zone is horribly hard and made of 99% rote memorisation and trial-and-error. If you don’t choose the right item/route/move for the situation expect to die. Stuff like wasting a chunk of health punching through a door because there’s no indication to shoulder-charge it instead really spoils the experience. I got to Issue 3 by myself but beat it with an infinite health code because I couldn’t be bothered making it that far only to die randomly and have to play the whole thing again.

  13. “Comix Zone is really, really hard, right? I’m not just imagining it? Because damn. One life? No continues?”

    Yeah, but there are only, like, six levels.

  14. comix zone was pretty much the first videogame i ever owned, it came with my family’s first computer. i’m not in any way good at games, but i completed it easily enough using a keyboard.

    to be fair, all i can remember of the game now is strigil the assassin.

    PACK IT IN! GIVE ME THE RESPECT I DESERVE!

  15. Easily one of the most soul-crushingly difficult and yet eye-poppingly original games ever made.

    I would say I’d like to see a sequel but I’m afraid they’d do to Sketch what they did to Sonic, and nobody deserves that.

  16. I always thought that Viewtiful Joe served perfectly well as a spiritual sequel, aside from the part where it’s a completely different entertainment medium being homaged and the games aren’t by the same company at all.
    But still, fourth-wall-breaking beat-em-up puzzle action! It works!

    Or is that the third wall? They don’t know they’re in a video game at all.

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