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At the same time, I was glad I was stopped every few seconds. I was frustrated by being stopped every few seconds. Every vocab word you ever learned in Computing 101 is here.īut every screen is screenshot-worthy. Twilight lens flare greets me at the Summit of the Perpetual Glitch. Red, yellow, and blue beams shoot out of the digital priests’ faces in the Techno-Algorithm Hall. I pass twitchy sheep grazing the Binary Pastures. Every pixelated screen is a glossary of computer programmer words. Only later does it cut you loose and let the gameplay do the talking.īut I’m quickly over Her Royal Verbosity as the digital decay of this CRT kingdom flip flops between chalky opacity and epileptic fits of flashing lights. Narita Boy introduces its world with stuttering steps. Narita Boy, however, is afraid you’ll miss all the neon signposts if you aren’t stopped in your tracks every few seconds to talk over your mission objectives again. A game like Hyper Light Drifter, to compare and contrast, is celebrated for its wordless world building. Everything is a capital-M Metaphor in Narita Boy. And yes, there’s a mother figure named Motherboard. That didn’t require a repeating 5,000-word monologue from you, Motherboard. For instance, I needed to collect 12 totems. If you go into Narita Boy expecting a top-to-bottom Metroidvania, you’re in for a surprise with how much lore you’ll be reading. Then the platforming and hacking and slashing and near-JRPG-amounts of dialogue either grew on me or the Stockholm Syndrome fully set in, and I ended up pushing hard towards the end game. For story, there is a father-son tale set inside a ham-fisted hall of memories and a lorebook that reads more like a glossary of computer terms. For action, it’s a hack n’ slasher that’s a little bit stingy with its slashing. He did it all, I have to mention, to a sick technowave soundtrack worth every dollar as a separate purchase.įor movement, Narita Boy is a side-scrolling platformer that wants you to hate its platforming. Behind aviator shades and a cop mustache, the Creator stayed up dark days and bright nights, pounding away at his keyboard, building the Digital Kingdom one red/yellow/blue beam of light at a time. Like in Ready Player One, there’s a Creator. And if Narita Boy had launched a few years earlier, he would’ve had a cameo in Ready Player One. Especially if those things are the ego-fueled equivalent of a 14-year-old living out a Tron-loving power fantasy. Another scene that sticks out in my mind was the statue of a pregnant computer program, it's huge belly surrounded by ceremonial candles-like something from the mind of David Cronenberg.Techno-swordsman. In one area, two priests suspended in mid-air have been hooked into a computer, electrical energy crackling as they convulse in the air. There's some back and forth between certain areas, but so much of the game has some incredibly striking scenes that it's a pleasure whenever you do have to double-back. Narita Boy's story is strictly linear, with marked goals to follow as you run around its pixel-perfect backdrop. One boss battle I had to dodge a giant mechanical carp in a Japanese bathhouse as I surfed on a giant floppy disk One boss battle I had to dodge a giant mechanical carp in a bathhouse as I surfed on a giant floppy disk-which was pretty fantastic. These dramatic encounters feel more about showing off the idea behind the creation rather than being actually difficult. Boss fights are more challenging, but not as much as I was expecting. The game brings technology and mythology together to create an interesting world.Įnemy attacks are clearly choreographed to the point where if you just remember which technique works for each enemy you'll breeze past with ease.
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There's a certain mysticism too, like how the high-priestess of the entire Kingdom is a supervisor program named Motherboard, how sentient programs called techno-fathers worship complex algorithms, how floppy disks act as keys to the holiest of temples, and how lines of code are treated as ancient scripture. It's the usual 'hero saving the world' narrative but with the twist of being inside a retro console from the '80s, and I think Narita Boy's execution of that idea is brilliant.Įvery scrap and segment of the gaming console has been assigned a specific role within this fantasy universe, and the world has enough lore that it could rival Game of Thrones. Traveling through each of the kingdom's three regions, you must defeat the evil servants of HIM, a dark program that wishes to see the Digital Kingdom fall. Playing as the titular pixel hero Narita Boy, you have been summoned to save the Digital Kingdom from crisis.