So at long last, I have gotten to a very big milestone in my rating and reviewing career. With this game, I have now (according to this website) officially ranked 1,001 individual video games, and I have reviewed over 300 of them. Of course, I don't think that I ever could've guessed that the 1,001st game I've ever ranked, would be an originally Japanese game that, prior to 2016; most people outside of Japan probably never heard of it. Although this game was originally developed to go along with the Game Boy Advance's launch year in 2001, it wasn't exported outside of Japan until the Wii U finally gave it an English localization service in 2016! Since I never owned a Wii U, I had to wait until the Nintendo Switch recently added a Game Boy Advance Virtual Console service, to see what this game was all about. In this game, you play as a male bird named Chururin. The story of the game is that 11 of his family members have wandered away to other lands. Controlling a helicopter, Chururin must navigate five stages of training, and eleven levels each with 3 stages worth of mazes, to find every single member of his family! For a video game that was made during the Game Boy Advance's launch year, this game has some of the prettiest graphics to ever grace a Game Boy Advance game. But I think the biggest reason as to WHY most people outside of Japan didn't get to experience the game until 2016, is that while the controls for the game are simple, the music and sound are pretty good, and the plot is straight forward; actually getting THROUGH the game is SUPER HARD!!!! In most of the stages, you have to navigate through the mazes, through corridors that are BARELY wide enough to accommodate the frame of your helicopter; let alone during all the FREQUENT times you have to make a sharp turn or avoid any obstacles in your path! You have to collect the hidden items in each stage (or a family member in every third stage), and you're expected to try to beat Instructor Hare's time in each stage! Even the EASY mode, where the helicopter's blades are smaller and can more easily navigate through each stage, the game STILL isn't that easy to beat! (I'm not sure if I EVER could've beaten it without the VERY important rewind feature of the Game Boy Advance Virtual Console service!) Worse, there are some stages in later levels that feel EASIER than stages in EARLIER levels; making the whole game an exercise in dealing with a game that can't make up it's mind on how difficult it wants to be! Still, if you want to experience a video game with very beautiful Game Boy Advance graphics; this is definitely one of the games you'll want to play! Just prepare to deal with a LOT of difficulty changes! Enough said, true believers!
Load Comments (0)