It’s almost as if Narita Boy can’t decide what it wants to be. While riding a somewhat similar beat, Narita Boy never quite reaches the same heights as it only ever flirts with great ideas and spreads them thinly across the Digital Kingdom. In Guacamelee, combat stays consistently enjoyable, upgrades are always inventive, and most importantly, essential to both the combat system and stage design. The more I thought about it, the more Narita Boy reminded me of an unseasoned Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition in how it shares similar tropes with the Mexican Metroidvania. Instead, combat results in little more than learning the basic enemy pattern and mashing out the button longer than feeling comfortable until the threat eventually goes away. Unfortunately, the way enemies stubbornly stand their ground while absorbing a beating when they should be getting launched, bounced around and air-juggled cuts the mechanics short from feeling fantastic.
Moves can be so easily chained together in a way that, in theory, should provide a satisfying flow to swordplay. The Techno-Sword can be charged for an almighty swing, doubled up as a shotgun and even inserted into Narita Boy’s chest seppuku-style to let off a devastating cannon blast. Dashing, shoulder-barging and the fluidity of sword strikes at various angles set up the flow of combat nicely, as does the huge variety of enemies constantly introduced. Yet, while a world like this needs little words to express its wondrous ambience and interesting style, the congested narrative and messy pacing can often suffocate the balance of the gameplay.Īt its strongest, Narita Boy is essentially a hack ‘n’ slash game where throughout the adventure our hero adopts a solid move list of attacks.
On the surface, Narita Boy certainly has all the groundwork for being a memorable experience. The memorable soundtrack is equally impressive, with synth sounds burned into my brain to the point where I would wake up for days on end humming the incredibly catchy theme song. Character designs and the quirky animations to accompany them brings the world to life with NPCs raving to techno music and robots dreaming of electric sheep. The results are spellbinding as the red, blue and yellow colours representing the Trichroma clearly sets out a solid impression. With this new weapon in hand, Narita Boy must seek to unlock the lost memories of the Creator, and rid a viral army known as the Stallions led by the dark forces of “Him” before it’s too late.Įvery pixel within every frame of animation in Narita Boy has been painstakingly hand-drawn across a whopping 20,000 sprites.
Greeted into this strange land as Narita Boy, he is informed by the Motherboard of his destiny to wield the legendary Techno-Sword fueled by the powerful analogue colours of the Trichroma energy source.
Narita boy song code#
We start our story with an adolescent gamer dragged from the safe confines of his bedroom, straight into the binary code of the Digital Kingdom. Barcelonian developer Studio Koba certainly did, for they have combined such influences with a strong dose of Ready Player One and The Matrix in Narita Boy, their techno-age pixelated action-platforming adventure. Let’s face it, we’ve all had that childhood dream of being stuck inside a video game world, especially if you happen to grow up with the likes of TRON, ReBoot and Captain N: The Game Master.
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