Yamucha in Densetsu

Super Saiyan Densetsu to be exact. (Yeah, I don’t play around with that Super Saiya-jin stuff, but I do use SSj. Sue me.) Known to most of us as the Japanese only, highly emulated SNES game, Legend of the Super Saiyan; The card based RPG that covers the Saiyan and Namek story arcs and is basically two NES games meshed together and updated.

Now, I really love this game. I’ve a big passion for it so, hey, why not take a look at one of my favourite characters in one of my favourite old-school games.

All right, so. Yamucha first appears in the game in a cut-scene. He’s sparring with Tenshinhan as part of Kami’s training to prepare for the Saiyans. So, like, that’s cool and all but, hey, let’s skip ahead and actually play as him!

Ok, so, I just decided to cheat him in rather than play long enough to recruit him. Anyway, in Legend of the Super Saiyan there is a very strict tier system to the point of total restrictiveness. Basically, the characters are ranked thus.

1. Son Goku
2. Piccolo
3. Son Gohan
4. Kuririn
5. Tenshinhan
6. Yamucha
7. Chaozu

Vegeta can go fuck off because he’s more of a ‘Guest’ character and an utter cunt anyway.

So, basically, most everyone levels up together and the characters who tend to vanish a lot (Goku and Piccolo) get lots of easy Kaio levelling so this ranking is pretty much always adhered to. At the same level, this how the characters roughly rank in accordance to each other using Battle Power, the game’s only visible stat besides Level, HP and MP KI. At level 48, Yamucha will have a BP of 930,000. Actually, Goku never conforms to the BP scale but you barely use him and when you do, he always has something cheap to rank him first (Kaio-ken in the Vegeta fight and Super Saiyan status in the Freeza battle).

To be honest, Yamucha is probably worse than Chaozu, everything considered. Yamucha’s got decent speed, continuing that “ganon” (Game Canon. I made that one up myself. Good, huh?) trend of Yamucha being the speedster but he only has two special attacks and they’re not that great. Chaozu’s specials are more powerful even if he does get beat up easily (continuing another ganon thread; Chaozu basically being a mage).

Still, fuck facts. Yamucha’s our boy and, besides, he can still kick ass. Look at his Sokidan (Spirit Bomb in the translation patch I’m using. Boo-urns.)!

It’s pretty good. It can even hit twice, because, you know, it’s the Sokidan, it bounces around like that. He also has the Kamehameha which is, like, meh. You know what it looks like; Long blue beam. Oh, and no Roga Fufu Ken, thank goodness.

I think Yamucha is strong enough to actually hurt Form 4 Freeza if he survives that long and you have him maxed, or near it, although he certainly won’t be doing the loin’s share of damage, that’s for sure.

So that’s Yamucha in Legend of the Super Saiyan. I’d like to write more about the game itself but, hey, that’s not the point of this blog. Maybe I’ll cover him in one of the other handful of games he’s appeared in in the future.