For the fifth game in the Power Instinct series, Noise Factory used the fast paced engine they developed for Rage of the Dragons and brought the series kicking and screaming onto SNK hardware. Matrimelee is in direct competition with Waku Waku 7 for the title of "Weirdest Neo Geo Fighter."
Matrimelee
Genre: Fighting Players: 2 Size: 646 Megs Released on: MVS, AES, Playstation 2
Brief Description:
Matrimelee, the fifth game in the Power Instinct series, brings back the series' trademark wacky humor while elevating the gameplay to new heights. A year after the events of Power Instinct 2, the king of Certain Country wants to find a worthy successor for the throne. He wants the ideal husband for his little daughter (or a beautiful and strong woman for his older son) so he holds a fighting tournament where the prize is the hand of the princess and the throne succession.
As a PI fan, I may be slightly biased by saying that this is definitely one of the Neo Geo's best. It's such a huge improvement over its predecessors,
however, I did miss the transformation feature.
To me, its damn good, other than the inclusion of RotD characters in it, its one of the good NG games out there, except that Sissy is cheap sometimes, SNK Boss Syndrome does it again.
I think everyone needs to at least try Matrimelee. It's so odd, and it does so many unique things that everybody should experience it. A good example of the game's uniqueness is the soundtrack. How many other fighters can claim to have this many vocal songs in them? Even more impressive is the fact that it's able to do that on a cartridge based system. Plus, often times the music syncs up to the background, which is just ingenious. In fact, the karaoke bar stage is one of my favorite stages in any fighter. SNK later did the same thing with Rose playing the piano in the background during the fight with Adelheid in KOF'03.
Geese, you may already know about this, but if you miss the transformation feature you could try out Shin Gouketsuji Ichizoku: Bonnou Kaihou (or Power Instinct: Liberation of Lusts). It's basically an update of Matrimelee. They added the transformation feature as well as Angela and Kinta, and there's a new storyline but other than that it's got the same characters, stages, and gameplay of Matrimelee. It's on PS2, but only in Japan of course.
Matrimelee is a great game, I love it very much...I even bought a new copy of this game. It's a typical Power Instinct game, except for the said transformations (I don't really miss them in this game though). Most of the characters have great designs, only a few have a bit standard/ weak design. The graphics are very good, but I do think that the game would be a bit better if they had a bit more variation in stages, a bit too many stages are a variation of the arena design, I especially love the Chinnen stage. The music...well, it's brilliant...so extremely funny and it's great that most songs fit in with the stages and indeed have great timing with stage actions...pure brilliance. Shame though that the sound quality isn't that high, bit it doesn't really bother me that much.
Yes, Matrimelee is a fantastic game, but I recommend playing the Japanese version only because the Euro/ USA version has different and extremely boring/ generic music...I even had problems with failing music when playing the Euro version.
Oh yeah, Sissy isn't that difficult if you figure out what her routines are...her AI is cheap, but also full of exploitable routines, which makes her relatively easy to beat.
I really like Matrimelee too. What makes it stand out is the presentation with all the perfomers in the back ground, and like Cthulhu says the music is amazing. It plays really well too. Great game! Sissy is a bit annoying at the end though, i agree with that
Its a decent game no doubt but like Waku Waku 7 its not really my cup of tea as comedy fighters have never really appealed to me. Same can be said for the Darkstalkers games which I do slightly enjoy but the whole over the top stuff ect puts me off a little. Still Matrimelee is a good fighter and worth trying for any fighter fan although it is a very expensive game to buy.
WOW! IT'S NICE TO SEE...
so much love for this game on the whole. I really thought it would have fallen into many a persons 'too obscure' category, but glad to see that isn't the case.
It's great, great game with a nice diverse cast of characters and styles, moves etc. arguably, Super Clara would have been a nice inclusion somehow.
The inclusion of the ROTD characters is a real nice touch too, although, I'd argue, I'd rather they would have JUST included Billy & Jimmy instead of the chosen 4. It just would have been much cooler overall imo.
Also, as Cthulhu has stated, Sissy is a cinch ONCE you master each workaround per charcater. For me, Chinnen is by far the easiest character to beat her with - using his mock 'Hien Shippu Kyaku' to repeatedly beat her into he ground
A brilliant fighter by the well-known creators of Sengoku 3. What's more to say? Yeah, the terrific soundtrack (with "Let's go! Onmyoji" leading the way), crazy PI /RoD characters and a fast-paced, fun gameplay.
Just as you guys mentioned, the only flaw is the variation of background stages, the Arena gets a bit annoying after a while. I wonder if this is related to the game making the most of the cart's memory (so it was only possible to make several versions of the very same stage).
However, nonetheless a "Pretty damned good" fighter with a story about an annoying little brat in a pope get-up...
Love this game. I'm honestly not as into the other PI games as I am this one though. I thought the inclusion of the ROTD characters was a neat idea and I'm glad this got a ps2 port. It's a shame ROTD never did.
Wow hey Raiken good to see you posting again dude!
I absolutely friggin love this game, as I'm sure you can see from the review I did! It's not overly complicated but it plays brilliantly, has a good combo system and the sense of humour throughout the game is fantastic. As people have stated already the soundtrack is pure unadulterated brilliance, so much so I actually own the OST CD, which isn't something I can say for many games. I did actually buy a brand new copy of this on the MVS for a lot of cash, although after playing it to death I did sell it on for around the same amount... even if I hadn't for me personally it would have been worth the cash.
One regret I have is that when we updated the site a few years back, I never got the Matrimelee combo guide back online. I am thinking that this needs to be remedied as I am sure I still have all the files for it. For those that haven't seen it, it was a combo guide for all characters that had screenshots and more... any interest in it being re-instated?
Wow, see the attached file... I do indeed still have it!!! Do you remember us working on this Raiken? It wouldn't be too hard for me to get this back online if anyone wants it, would be well worth it especially as it's currently GotW!
There is also a section that lists Sissy's weaknesses when fighting the CPU, she's actually pretty easy. I have beaten her on level 8, so if I can do it anyone can!
edit: I am part of the way into re-instating the guide, it's actually online already but I won't publish it until all the pages are formatted correctly as they are still formatted for the old version of NGFL... won't take long though. Hope you guys find it useful!
I'm definitely interested in that guide, Kaz! I've been playing the game a lot to better my score for the HSC and I'm really growing to love it even more.
NEOGEO is a registered trademark of SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION.
All intellectual property rights related to NEOGEO products and others belong to SNK PLAYMORE CORPORATION.
Non SNK software titles belong to their respective authors.
This website is tested with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Best Viewed at 1024x768 or higher. Although it is tested with Firefox and IE, it should work with other browsers without problems - please contact me if you notice any issues!
