Game:

Rhyme Rider Kerorican (2000)

Duration: 3:29

16,371 views

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Original Air Date: June 30th, 2009

This is likely one of the strangest games you'll find for WonderSwan, which is unsurprising considering the same developers made one of the strangest Playstation games ever. NanaOn-Sha, creators of Parappa the Rapper, Um Jammer Lammy and Vib Ribbon (which was never released in the U.S., but in Europe and Japan), go on to make a game very much like VR, but for the WonderSwan Color, which is certainly ambitious to say the least.

Could the WonderSwan handle such an undertaking? Well, this game proves that it can be done, though the execution needs work. This game almost pushes the WonderSwan in some areas and pushes the unit in other areas too much. The game has the strangest characters that are in some sort of pre-rendered kinda graphics style, with music that tries to be so great even with some vocals (in English, not Japanese mind you) but is restricted to the capabilities of the WonderSwan (which creates a lot of hard-to-listen-to tracks). The end result is a strange looking, strange sounding game brimming with potential and Jazzy coolness. The real ticker is the gameplay.

In Rhyme Rider Kerorican, you play as a female astronaut donning a frog suit as she walks through outer space and generates a melody as she travels and avoids things. If they trimmed down the visuals somewhat and added clarity to the audio (though I can understand the spoken words fine, clarity would be nice), they could have added more to the game. As far as sheer size, this is not the largest WSC game, so they could have added a few minor touches that would have greatly improved the overall experience.

The gameplay is very frustrating for things that could have been avoided. The idea is that you move across a level while avoiding a somewhat random assortment of obstacles which require different button presses to evade. There is no flash or anything to help you get the timing and no differentiation in the button commands (the action looks the same every time, so you'll be annoyed without a guide). Also, the timing must be nearly precise and since the obstacles are random, you can't necessarily use the ryhthm as a guide all the time. It creates a truly frustrating experience and the game is similar to VR, though VR was more forgiving.

Still, with much practice and patience, the game is strangely appealing. Survivng in and of itself is fairly easy, since you just jump to grab candy and replenish your health, but the fun is in getting through the whole level in one piece so you can feel the ryhthm and not jack up your tune. When you get hit, you get knocked a few steps back and the music rewinds to help you get a feel for the retry. The game only has about four levels and there could have possibly been a couple more of those too. Love the Michael Jackson wail... Enjoy.

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