| paleface [sys=GBA; cat=Platformer; reg=JPN] |
| | | This here's a platformer so cute, so crass, so inventive, that even old platformer-dissin' me has been charmed all to pieces.
Almost all the text is in hiragana so I can't really tell what's going on, but my best interpretation of the little intro scene is that someone has stolen the cow's lips and you've got to go get them back. So you, a little egg-shaped hatchling fellow, set off from the farm on your quest, taking with you only your prehensile, telescoping, projectile lips, your ability to turn into a rolling ball of death, your shockingly deep-voiced battle cry that reveals hidden vegetables, cakes, and other powerups lurking invisibly nearby, and a nasty case of gas.
Yep, the poor lil' fella strains out a big green cloud from behind when left to his own idle devices. Ew! So keep him active, travelling around a world map like Super Mario 3, then hopping and swinging Bionic Commando-style around the cute little pastoral platform worlds with his super lips. His lips come in handy for converting the enemy too: one long-range smackeroo and that bitter enemy turns into a friendly bystander for a few seconds. Found a girl hatchling? Well, plant a big wet one on her and if she likes you she'll throw you some healthy carrots... or if she *really* likes you, she'll gyrate around a bit and then squirt out a little baby hachie, which you collect for a 1UP. Rock.
Of course it isn't all fun, sex and bovine lip-collecting for little Hachiemon. Nossir, he's got various egg-shaped hatchling baddies to deal with, and they do nasty things like breath fire or explode at inconvenient times. Fortunately Hachie can take three hits per life (and there are three save slots too, so you can share the cart with your loved ones). At the end of a level you get a little hiragana slot-machine mini-game, I won once and got some vegetable credits (100 veggies = 1 extra life). And then there are the bottomless pits to swing over, the mountains of little blocks to break through, and of course rather large and comical boss hachies to deal with.
The simple and buoyant music coupled with an agonizingly cute super-duper-egg-deformed art style and quirky, sometimes risque character interactions, thrown together in challenging and varied side-scrolling worlds, makes for one heck of a platform game that harks back to some old classics while at the same time establishing a bold new identity for itself. So grab the extra-heavy Chapstick, some cake, and a little Beano, and settle down for a swinging good time with Hachiemon and his lipless friends. |
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| | | References added: 92, 193
"Hachiemon, Ore no Ryouri and Gacharocku all have a blue-haired, childishly drawn older woman."
Rumor has it that Hachiemon can transform into various other forms. I haven't seen that yet, but I'm not all that far along. Well actually I *have* seen him transform, or get transformed, into a fireball-spitting red hatchie and a green blobby thing while talking to a woman who looks almost exactly like that blue-haired woman in Ore no Ryouri (entry 193) and Gacharoku (entry 92), but that was just during a cutscene, I haven't been able to play that way yet. |
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