Fantastic Children (GBA)

 On paper, Fantastic Children should be worthless shovelware garbage. It is, after all, a licensed GBA platformer based on an anime. I can't tell you much about the anime other than that it's apparently about a group of immortal 12 year olds, and it was created by Takashi Nakamura, whos distinctive character design style you're sure to recognise if you've seen the movie Catnapped. It does have an official english release though, and I might just give it a watch someday, as if the game really gives me vibes of those classic kids adventure anime from the 80s and early 90s, like Giant Gorg, Mysterious Cities of Gold, and The Secret of Blue Water.

 

Right from the start, it's obvious that this game is possibly the best-looking game on the system, with lavish, detailed backgrounds, and really amazing animation on the main character's sprite. As he runs, jumps, climbs, falls, and so on, you can really feels the weight of his body and the force of his movements, and those are all things you do a lot of, since most of the game is made up of Prince of Persia-style precision platforming. It's so far beyond the usual garish colours and blobby pre-rendered sprite you see all too often on the GBA.  

 

Like I said, the game is mostly PoP-style platforming, as you clamber around, exploring various environments, like jungles, abandoned buildings, quiet little seaside towns, and so on. The quality of the animation makes this a totally joyful experience, even if he practice of holding the jump button to grab and keep ahold of ledges, then pressing up to climb onto them takes a little bit of getting used to at first. What's  really unique about this game is the rare occasions when you meet enemies (well, there are wild animals that can hurt you right from the start, but they're more like hazards than enemies), as this is the only platform game that I can think of that has turn-based combat!

 

The way it works is that you and your opponent each has a hand of five attacks. There are specials that each do specific things, but mostly, you'll be using punches, kicks, and chops, which have a rock-paper-scissors dynamic going on: punches beat kicks, kicks beat chops, and chops beat punches. You can switch between your attacks as much as you like in the few seconds before they meet in the middle, at which point one of you takes damage (or both if you each used the same attack). Used attacks are discarded, and if the fight's still ongoing after five turns, you each get your full hands back and carry on. 

 

You can change the attacks in your hand via the pause menu, and you get more choices, including things like attacks that hit twice when they win, as well as the aforementioned specials, by beating enemies and opening treasure boxes. Certain kinds of enemies have specific hands too, so if you know you're going into an area where the enemies prefer kicks, you might want to build a punch-based hand, for example. It's a system more interesting than exciting, but it does solve the problem of having enemies without them getting in the way of the sheer kinetic joy of the platforming.

 

I think that's all I really have to say about Fantastic Children. Of course, I very highly recommend that you go and play it as soon as possible, and don't worry about there being a language barrier, as while the story text is all in Japanese, all the menus and so on are in English. It should be counted alongside Ninja Cop, Gunstar Super Heroes, and all the other truly great GBA games that people still love to this day, it's honestly that good.

Pyramid Magic (Mega Drive)

 

 It's yet another puzzle platformer, even though every time I need to mention I'm not a fan of the genre. On the plus side, I have at least realsied that there are things to like bout them. For example, they definitely adhere to the idea of "purity" I've talked about in past reviews, as they're pretty much all made up of a small number of easily-identifiable parts that have a very specific purpose. 

 

This especially applies to Pyramid Magic, as it was a download title, and as you might imagine, a download title in 1991 really did have to be economical with the filesizes. So, every stage is made up of seven different kinds of thing (well, every stage I saw, at least): the blocks that make up the walls, floor, and ceiling, the blocks that you can pick up and move around, three kinds of boxes that have to be opened in order (the wooden box has the key for the red box, whih has the key for the green box,  which contains the magic... thing that banishes the ghost blocking the exit), and of course, the player character himself and the aforementioned exit-blocking ghost.

 

So obviously, the game centres around moving the stone blocks around so that you can get to the exit, making sure you open wach of the three boxes in order along the way. Your character is two blocks high, and can jump two blocks high. He can carry one block at a time, and can move and drop blocks in increments half a block wide. You can only crawl throgh one-block-high gaps if you walk into them while carrying a block, and if you fall off an edge while carrying a block, it'll crush you to death. There's your basic elements, nd of course, they're arranged in increasingly complex ways, and there's usually one specific solution to each stage you have to figure out.

 

Like I always say with these games, it's really not for me, but if you like them, maybe you'll like this one. However, due to the circumstances of this game's release, the presentation is significantly more spartan than you mighht be used to, but maybe the curiosity of those circumstances is compensation enough for you? And if you do play and enjoy Pyramid Magic, you'll also like Pyramid Magic II, which is essentially just more stages of the same game. Pyramid Magic III is a little different, adding a breakable urn to the mix, and I couldn't even figure out what the goal of the first stage in that one was.