Pulseman

About Pulseman

Pulseman (1994) is Game Freak's Mega Drive platformer starring a half-human, half-digital hero who channels electricity to fight the Galaxy Gang led by his corrupted father.

Pulseman in Depth

In the 21st century, scientist Doc Yoshiyama creates the world's most advanced artificial intelligence, a thinking, feeling girl called C-Life. Falling in love with her, he digitises himself into his computer to be with her, and their union produces Pulseman, a boy who is half human and half C-Life. Unlike other C-Life, Pulseman can survive outside the computer, and he can channel electricity through his body, as a weapon and as a means of rapid travel through his Volteccer ability.

Living inside the computer twists Yoshiyama's mind and body, and he re-emerges as the evil Doc Waruyama. Using a system called EUREKA that lets C-Life beings manifest in the human world, he founds the Galaxy Gang and unleashes a wave of cyber-terrorism, and Pulseman must fight his own father and break up the gang. Released in Japan on 22 July 1994, it was ranked eighth in popularity by Micom BASIC Magazine that October. When it came to the Wii Virtual Console it received generally favourable reviews, averaging 80 per cent on GameRankings.

Making Pulseman

Game Freak developed it and Sega published it for the Mega Drive in Japan in 1994, with Ken Sugimori directing and much of the team, including Satoshi Tajiri, Atsuko Nishida and Junichi Masuda, going on to the Pokémon series. North America received it only through the Sega Channel in 1995. Japanese readers of Mega Drive Fan and Sega Saturn Magazine rated it moderately well. It was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in Japan in 2007 and in North America and Europe in 2009, and later on the Nintendo Classics service.