Every now and then a game comes along that is so bizarre it’s hard to put into words. Chulip is one of those games.
Chulip’s story goes like this. You and your poor father move into the slum that is Long Life Town. On the way there you have a dream where you meet the girl of your dreams and kiss her under a tree and live happily ever after. Once in Long Life Town, surprise, you see the exact girl from your dream, and then make it your mission in life, just as every normal boy does, to kiss her under the tree on the hill and live happily ever after. However, you can’t kiss her right away. Oh, no! You have to pucker up with everyone and everything in Long Life Town first! After all, what respectable young lady wants some inexperienced tongue down her throat? You will have to do tasks for people around Long Life Town first in order to kiss them, which increases your heart, brightens the other residents dismal lives, makes you more attractive to the girl, and betters your reputation in the town. The town’s folk are about as strange as the games scenario, and there are a plethora of them to lay your lips on both above and below ground. For instance there is Yodzilla, a blatant rip off of Godzilla, a ninja, Onion Lady, who is literally an onion, a giant bobble headed policeman, and more. You interact with them by initiating a conversation by hitting the X button. When this happens you will be treated to a string of gibberish pouring out of your speakers, which sounds like broken Japanese. The Square button brings up your inventory. The circle button cancels actions and allows you to run, and the Triangle button has you kiss people.
Graphically, Chulip is pretty ugly, and by no means anything special to look at. Even though it’s been out for a number of years in Japan, Chulip still looks like something you would see on the Playstation 1 as opposed to the Playstation 2. The artistic appearance and visual style of Chulip is definitely unique though, and more than makes up for the technical short comings of the graphics.
You can, and will, rummage through the trash for food and items in Chulip. You will see some of the other residents of Long Life Town doing this as well, so there is a little bit more to the game than just Kissing. While not a pleasant feature, it is an important one and really highlights how poor both you and the other residents of this town are, as well as show how hard the poor have it in real life. However, besides this you are basically just going to be going around and kissing people. The above ground residents all have certain conditions you must meet by performing tasks for them in order to kiss them. In order to find out what these conditions are you must talk to them. Unfortunately, your conversation will give you little to no direction for what you need to do in order to stick your tongue down their throat. Meanwhile, kissing the underground residents is accomplished by sneaking up on them and laying a smack on their lips at just the right time during the brief few moments of each day when they come to the surface. It should be noted that brief here means brief. Most underground residents are only on the surface for a few minutes, and of that time there is only an open window of a few seconds in which you can kiss them. If you aren’t quick enough and don’t time it just right then expect to be clobbered, because the underground folk are not the most friendly, and be handed the game over screen where Mr. Yamada, who is an angry walking telephone pole, will run up and kick you while you’re down. Once this has happened to you are few times, you will realize the only way to really nab the underground residents is to camp their pop up zone and try kissing them repeatedly until you get them and are seeing stars. This makes much of the game very boring, tedious, and monotonous, not to mention frustrating, and really subtracts from the fun. Fortunately, Natsume included a full blown walk through in the games manual to try and remedy this problem. The walk through takes much of the stress out of playing the game, but also shortens the game considerably as well, since you can easily beat Chulip in less than 12 hours if you follow it.
Overall, if you are the type of person who values the quirky and different, or are just looking for something totally bizarre, then look no further than Chulip. Also, if you are a collector, you should probably get your hands on Chulip ASAP, as it is a Gamestop/EB Games exclusive, meaning no one else will ever sell it. Natsume is also only doing one printing of this game, and they aren’t printing a lot of copies, so when they are gone they are gone, which makes Chulip true collectors material, and a bargain at only $19.95. If you don’t fall into either of the two categories of people just mentioned, then stay away from Chulip. Chulip is strange, very, very, very strange to say the least, and may be lethal to those not actively seeking its strangeness.