Blood Brothers mixes the arcade and shooter genres, and somehow manages to maintain the feel of both. The heroes, one a cowboy, the other an indian, known as the Blood Bros. (lone ranger, anyone?). The goal is simple: eliminate all the bad guys. At the bottom of the screen is displayed a meter simply labelled "foe". This meter shows how many more bad guys are left in this level, though it unfortunately is merely a bar (simillar to a health meter), rather than a number. Your arsenal consists of two simple pistols with unlimited ammo, and 10 bombs. Along the way, you may obtain power-ups, in the form of better guns, and more bombs. With these upgraded guns, you can easily wipe out all of Big Bad John's goons, and destroy structures in the level much more quickly. The latter being far more useful than it may sound, as it eliminates points of attack by the enemy, and so makes it easier to shoot them all, and easier to dodge their fire. You are however, given a limited amount of use of the gun power ups, though I'm not sure if it's a certain amount of ammunition, or a certain amount of time. You likely won't stop firing long enough for it to make any difference whether it's ammo or time that dictates the weapons usage, as Blood Brothers keeps you on the offensive, firing your weapon with almost no time for any intermission. The bombs are useful for taking out bosses and some of the tougher foes, such as blimps and planes, as well as for taking out structures.

So what seperates Blood Bros. from the crowd? While it it has some surface simillarities to Lethal Enforcers, and the like, it requires a bit more focus and better reflexes, as you can actually see and control your character, which of course means you must not only shoot the bad guys, you must also evade their fire. This element alone greatly increases the game's fun factor. Controls are simple enough, and rather intuitive. You can run, fire, and roll, the latter being incredibly useful for dodging fire. And while it can take a moment to get used to controling both your character, and the crosshairs, it doesn't take too long to get the hang of it. Well, now that we've covered the basics, let's move on to the rating.

Graphics: 10/10
Incredible.
While they aren't flashy, they are solid for a game from 1990. The sprites are smooth, no pixellation, no jerky movements, it all flows very nicely. The particle effects are top notch for a game of it's time and platform. From the smoke and dust from collapsing buildings, to the explosions, they never dissappoint. They really are very nice. As for the colors, all I can say is wow. They always work together very nicely, but in some places they go from working well together, to downright beautiful. My personal favorite being level 5-1. Excellent choice of colors. The backgrounds are good, and well above par for this time frame. Incredible work overall in the graphics department. I have nothing negative to say here.

Sound: 6/10
Good.
The sound isn't bad at all, but it isn't all that special either. The background music is nice, but as far as I could tell amidst all of the shooting, there's only one music track. Lack of variety is really all that keeps this from being rated a seven. The sound effects aren't terrible, but they aren't very realistic. The sound of your gun firing is far too high pitched. Still, the overall sound experience likely won't be offensive to the ears, but it won't be appealing. The large variety of sound effects playing was what caused me to give it a six instead of a five. The medley of sounds (however unimpressive) was actually nice, and contributed to the overall experience of the game.

Depth: 4/10
Bad.
There isn't much depth to speak of here. It's just a shooting game where your goal is to kill all the bad guys. Simple and straight forward. It's simplicity can actually be appreciated, as it allows for some simple arcade/shooter fun. Just grab your virtual guns and go shoot 'em up. The only depth offered is the ability to earn power ups, and destroy buildings, fences, and whatever else may be in the way. You can get these power ups by shooting animals (and sometimes people) that scurry across the screen. And destroying buildings and other scenery is not only very useful, but it's also fun.

Addictiveness: 4/10
Poor.
While I might play this game again, it will be quite a while before I do so. It's a good game, but it doesn't really offer much of a reason to play it again, unless you just like challenging the high score. This shouldn't keep you from playing through it once though.

Story: 3/10
Bad.
The story here is ok, but there just isn't really much to it. You get no intro story at all, and no story scenes interjected in between stages. All you get is a few scenes accomponied by some text at the end of the game. This is an unfortunate detail, as it would have really boosted the overall game's fun factor greatly, had I known what was going on. Still, arcade games typically aren't very detailed by way of story, so compared to other Mame games, it would be about average.

Difficulty: 4/10
Fairly Easy.
Ther really isn't alot of challenge to be had here, but that isn't really such a bad thing. The only real challenges, once you figure out how to evade enemy fire, is the boss at the end of each stage. Especially the final three bosses, though oddly, the final boss ("Big Bad John") is considerably easier than the two before him. It's a feasible goal for a first time player to get through the game on anywhere between ten and fifteen credits. That said, it isn't so easy that you won't enjoy yourself, it just isn't difficult enough to frustrate you at all.

Overall: 5.4/10
Average.
Don't let the overall rating fool you, Blood Bros is a fun play. My personal rating is probably a 6, but this is about overall content, not preferrence, so a 5.4 is accurate.

Summary.
While it may not be the greatest game ever made, Blood Bros does it's job of entertaining, and even manages to stand out among the crowd of arcade shooters with innovative gameplay. If you enjoy this type of game, then Blood Bros is a must play indeed. I would recommend this to arcade/shooter fans, no doubt. It's a good game, that's worth your time. Blood Bros: Come hang out in the old west awhile, and see what gunfighter games were meant to be.