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A G-MODE recreation / reissue of old mobile phone games, this introduces "G-MODE Archives 03: Kururin Cafe". They've released quite a few reissues for the PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch and it's good to see them getting ported from old defunct hardware for posterity. Of course, most of them have not aged well and this is more for novelty than anything else, but it's a commendable project and I hope many more old mobile phone games can be salvaged such as the BREW service titles, J2ME releases and older Android / iOS titles. There are a few games I really WANT to play such as Climax's 2006 iteration of "Lady Stalker" ("Waltz of the Labyrinth", which has practically been forgotten) and many Western Java games on mobile, to name a few, but this is a good starting point. There have been projects for years now slowly integrating old mobile titles for use in emulators.

That said, while this is a great recreation of G-Mode's 2010 "EZ Appli" game, Kururin Cafe is a tough little puzzle gem. The concept of the game is simple and straightforward; you are Kururin, you run a cafe, and you have clients that want to be fed. Each client likes different things and you have to eliminate the different food items that they want from the field by matching three or more to fulfill their orders. The game was very popular upon release, gaining over 1 million downloads in just three months, but when the Great East Japan Earthquake hit, all the proceeds of the Android phone port were donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society to aid in disaster relief. When you look back at games like these, it's truly impressive how far mobile phone gaming has come in such a short time (but at least these titles weren't predatory like many of the phone games we have today).

G-Mode has done what they need to on their part with a few basic configuration elements, the ability to scale up to 1080p and the ability to turn graphics filters on or off (though the in-game filter here is pretty good without making things blurry or too pixilated). The same jerky, low framerate is also here (for better or worse) and the game has gamepad support which doesn't seem to suffer any issues in terms of lag or latency. Even with the game's low framerate, it's easy to control for the most part, but you can't control things with maximum efficiency like most games in the 30/60FPS range. Kururin doesn't care if her clients are human or not, so long as they have money and a desire to eat, she will gladly serve up fine dishes to send them running off happy and full. The basic rule of the game involves a 2x2 rotary square (or 3x3 on the hardest level) which can go clockwise or counter-clockwise to help arrange eliminations. There is no penalty for making an elimination for something your client doesn't want, but you do have a time limit, so be careful of the remaining time and remaining clients and don't get too swept up in chains or scoring.

On the subject of chains and scoring, KC is fairly robust in this category, which is likely a big part of why the game was successful (on top of the good music quality, neat voice samples and bright and bold graphics that are easy to digest). As eliminations are made, the player has a brief moment to set up their next chain and this can happen independently from the chains in progress. Flashing food stuffs will eliminate all the food of the same type from the field and you can also randomly earn special items after clearing a stage to make chaining easier, create more flashing goodies or even stop time briefly which will help on the more challenging stages. The variety of food items change as you go up the levels and the player can be faced with as many as eight different ones at once. The game rules and challenge also differ from the three locales: Cafe (Snacks, Easy) / Morning (Breakfast, Normal) / Bar (Evening, Food and Drinks, Hard).

The Main Mode (Kururin) has you facing a variety of obstacles while the Challenge Mode is a 2-minute score attack (with online rankings) and the Tokoton Mode is a sort of Endless Mode. Kururin Cafe is a solid single player experience. You can get this game at:

https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000029132.html

Enjoy.

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