Oraga Land Shusai - Best Farmer Shuukakusai (SNES)

 Looking at the character designs in this, I first assumed that it must be a tie-in to one of those family friendly anime that has thousands of episodes, and is of no interest to anyone outside Japan, but if it is, I've been able to find no evidence of it. There's a copyright for a company whose name I didn't recognise called Nitto on the title screen, so I looked them up, thinking it might be a food company, and the characters in the game might be its advertising mascots or something. But Nitto make things like LCD screens and surgical tape. 

 

Anyway, the game itself is listed in various places around the internet as a puzzle game. And at first glance, with the split screen and the grids full of brightly coloured fruits and vegetables it would appear to be a puzzle game. But in my opinion, the way it plays is closer to a sports game. The sport in question being high-speed competitive farming, in which the various characters are trying to harvest crops faster than their opponents.

 

How it works is that there are four kinds of vegetables, and you and your opponent are given identical quotas to grow and harvest a certain amount of each one in your field. Your field's got sixteen spaces in it, each able to grow one vegetable at a time (and after the first couple of stages, you'll be required to grow many more than sixteen vegetables to clear a stage). You walk along the edges of the field with left and right on the d-pad, and press up and down to aim at spaces on the field. You press one button to cycle through the four vegetables, another to throw seeds, and a third to run across the field with your hoe to harvest any fully-grown crops.

 

To make things more manic, various creatures (crows, caterpillars, monkeys, human children, and so on) will invade your field, and you've got ot shoo them away, either by running at them with your hoe, or by throwing stones at them with the same button you use to throw seeds. That button can also be used to throw what I assume must be fertiliser or something at already-planted seeds to make them grow faster. So the game boils down to planting seeds, encouraging them to grow, and also frantically fighting off the pests trying to eat your stuff, all while hoping you do it faster than your opponent. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be any way at all to affect your opponent's field, so it is completely a pure race to fulfil your quota in time, with no funny business at all. You could theoretically play this game competitively and fairly, if the desire hit you (and if you could find someone willing to be your opponent).

 

Oraga Land Shusai is an interesting game, and definitely a unique one. It's also something you can comfortably and idly play on a handheld while watching TV. It's nothing spectacular, though. If you're curious, give it a try, and if you're not, you won't be missing out on some great unsung classic. It's fine.