Pu·Li·Ru·La (Arcade) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
309A playthrough of Taito's 1991 arcade beat 'em up, Pu-Li-Ru-La.
Played through as Zac on the machine's default difficulty setting.
Even when compared to other oddities in the brawler genre, like Ninja Baseball Batman or Battle Circuit, Pu-Li-Ru-La feels like something straight out of a fever dream.
Told by some of the most nonsensical attempts at English that I've seen in a game, Pu-Li-Ru-La starts off with time in Radishland coming to a standstill after a "bad man" appears and steals towns' time keys. As a result, "they received damage," and so some senile old fool, "impressed with a sense of danger," sends for two children, "[a]nd he entrusted them with his invented magic stick in order to defend their town."
Taito could always be counted on for their hilariously poor translation attempts, but this one really goes above and beyond.
The game itself is standard, simple beat 'em up. There are a couple of different moves that can be done with the magic stick in addition to a jump attack and a powerful magic attack. That's about it.
If you're big on chasing high scores, though, make sure to grab the freed animals as late as possible: the further they've run, the more points you'll get for collecting them!
The gameplay isn't the big draw for Pu-Li-Ru-La, though. This one's appeal lies in its ridiculous graphics and set-pieces. The quality of the art is incredible for 1991, but it goes to some very, very strange places later on in the game. Some of the more absurd enemies and images, like a woman's legs bursting through some doors on a high street, were removed from the English-language version, but you can still see them referenced during the ending. Kinda makes you wonder why they bothered taking them out of the proper gameplay if they were just going to show them later on, anyway.
Pu-Li-Ru-La is certainly a game worth experiencing. The game's personality and presentation are as bizarre as the gameplay is conventional, which is to say, a lot. It's one of the more memorable arcade games I've played.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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