Toki (NES) Playthrough
223A playthrough of Taito's 1991 platformer for the NES, Toki.
One day, Toki, a meathead in a loincloth, and his girlfriend Miho are taking a leisurely stroll through the jungle when an evil wizard suddenly appears before them. The wizard casts a spell that changes Toki into a monkey, summons an invisible giant to kidnap Miho, and promptly makes his escape. A jungle spirit takes pity on Toki and decides to help him out by granting him the ability to spit fireballs, and thus armed, Toki sets off toward the wizard's golden palace on a quest to save his woman.
The Tarzan setup is as hokey and as silly as you'd expect from an 80s arcade game, and it suits the game's tongue-in-cheek sense of humor perfectly. Toki hops, bops, and shoots his way through five stages, smacking down waves of bugs, birds, prehistoric monstrosities, as well as a slew of thoroughly bizarre boss creatures.
Toki is fairly weak in his starting state, but he is a force to be reckoned with a few upgrades. A pair of sneakers give him the ability to jump half the height of the screen, a football helmet renders him temporarily impervious to damage, and his fireballs can be upgraded to a bola-like double shot, a three-way spread shot, or a short-range flamethrower.
The NES version isn't as striking to look at as Tad's 1988 arcade game, but the overall quality of the adaptation is superb. The level design, the selection of enemies, and the controls have all been faithfully reproduced on the NES, and the presentation, though heavily downgraded, captures the spirit of the original. The graphics are still bright and colorful, and the music is still good enough to get your foot tapping.
(The lack of a chiptune cover of Baltimora's Tarzan Boy seems like a huge missed opportunity, though!)
Any impact Toki might've had on the NES was blunted by its late 1991 release date. The SNES had just been released, and the straightforward gameplay of 80s arcade platformers was beginning to fall out of fashion. That being said, Toki wouldn't have disappointed anyone who'd been hoping for a light-hearted, challenging, and fun action game.
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