Trip World (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
154A playthrough of Sunsoft's 1993 platformer for the Nintendo Game Boy, Trip World.
Trip World is among the lesser known games published by Sunsoft in the early 1990s. It bears some superficially striking similarities to the company's phenomenal NES game, Mr. Gimmick!, and much like Mr. Gimmick!, Trip World was only released in Europe and Japan.
In Trip World, you play as Yakopu, a shape-shifting bunny.... thing in search of some super powerful flower that can save the world. Make of that whatever you will.
The first time you play the game, the graphics and sound quality will instantly draw your attention. I don't believe I've ever seen another Game Boy game impress with an animated intro like this one before. It's one of those 16-bit style, parallax-loaded scrolling scenes of character close-ups attacking each other, and not entirely unlike a good many arcade fighting game intros. It's extremely well animated, fast moving, dramatic, and the music is amazing.
Thankfully, the rest of the game's presentation holds up to the intro - I don't think there are many original Game Boy games that can live up to this level of detail and polish. Everything feels alive in this game - there are so many incidental animations (many of which are only ever used once) that you probably will only see half of them during any given playthrough. There are some really impressive warping and scaling effects in play, as well, making the whole thing feel more like a monochromatic late-gen NES game than a (relatively) early Game Boy release. The music is up there with everything else Sunsoft did - there are only so many adjectives that can be used before you just have to say, "awesome".
The game play is pretty solid as well - Yakopu can change into a few different animals with abilities to match, and even though most of these don't serve any particularly notable purposes save for variety, they can be fun to play around and experiment with. The level designs flow well, and the game often surprises with secret branching paths, friendly "enemies" (the one that traps you in his attempts to cuddle until you kick him is one of my favorites!), and its outright cutesyness.
It would be a bonafide classic if it hadn't been hobbled by two significant issues: it's way too short, and it's absurdly easy. As amazing as it looks, sounds, and feels in action, there's very little content here. I don't know if that was a sacrifice made because of memory constraints (this sprite work HAD to have consumed a significant portion of the cart's ROM), limited time, or something else, but a full-priced game that could be finished in 15-20 minutes would have been pushing things a bit by 1992. Since it's quite likely that you'll beat it the first time you sit down to play, the game doesn't really offer a ton of value - especially given that its pretty uncommon and pricey to buy. If you want to buy it, do yourself a favor: pass on the $300-$400 cart, and buy the $20 repro instead.
I'm all for ending a game before it outstays its welcome, but everything else about Trip World was so beautifully crafted that I couldn't help but feel like the rug was pulled out from under me, and just as I was really getting into it. It's an amazing experience, and one that ends before it ever really gets to take off.
Oh, and for SNK fans, Yakupo was used as a boss in Sunsoft's 1995 Neo Geo game Galaxy Fight. If he looks familiar to you, that's probably why.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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