Video Game A Day - Narita Boy

Narita Boy

retro-themed platformer

2023-12-21

I've been thinking about putting things like video games and books on this site. I looked at my Steam library to see how many I could get onto a list and see there's about 360. That's about a game a day for a year, and it's almost a new year. So I figured I'd play and post a game a day for a year. This is the start of that.

I'd play these games about only an hour each day (not counting my "current" game I'm actually trying to play through). So I'll be able to say I actually played the games in my library, but certainly not completing them. Think of it as more breadth than depth of play.

I'm starting before the new year because there's also games on my Switch and other libraries I've gotten and haven't even tried playing, so that's a little more than a year's worth. Plus, this is the start of my holiday break.

Today's game is Narita Boy on the Switch. I picked it up for deep discount of like a couple bucks. Can't pass that up.

The game is very retro themed with pixel art and a cathode-ray tube (CRT) effect on the screen.

The pixel art and other effects are really just for the retro aesthetic. Games like this, if they were really pixelated like a real retro game, they'd be entirely pixelated with the same size pixels in the same places, because they're like that on the physical screen. But games just going for the aesthetic have pixels different sizes, move in more than just pixel locations, sometime resize and rotate, and have graphics that aren't pixelated at all.

Then there's the CRT effect (but then text that doesn't have that effect because it would be hard to read), and there were VCR elements like "PLAY" in the upper right of a menu, just kind of mashing anything together for a nostalgia grab.

It's not in this, but something else I've seen is pixel art with tracking lines like on a VCR. So I'm watching a video game that's been taped?

(Technically, all video games on a screen are pixel art.)

Right away, title screen comes up looking like Tron with some good synth soundtrack.

The game itself is a platformer. The story is a game creator had his corrupt computer program make him forget things? You're the titular hero inside the computer that has to restore his memories. You're in a techno-world with pixel-cyber graphics and other programs in the game are some kind of techno-priests which is interesting.

You have some typical objectives in these kinds of games where there's a certain number of things with a certain symetry. Three trichroma (they're probably three different colors), 12 totems to collect or put together, restore the creator's memories. Then you walkthrough the creator's memories and learn more of the story that way.

It's a pretty good platformer where you'll have to get good with moves like dodge. And you get powerups so probablby different attacks. And you'll have to learn patterns of the bad guys. You'll have to do some exploration, especially to find some extras that aren't necessary to finish the game. The game kind of reminds me of Hyperlight Drifter. The dodge is like the dash, pixelated with cyber colors, and a kind of exploration where it's not obvious that you can go some places.

Overall good, I'd probably want to play more.

But that's it for this Video Game A Day, because I started way late. I'll probably have other things like interesting web links or music I found that day on other posts.

Happy Solstice!