When I sat down to write my review of Booby Kids (a title you might recall from my Tokyo blog) I considered myself to be at a unique advantage. No one reading this will likely have ever played the game and no one whatsoever will have read another review on it, which allows me the ultimate say so. I’m not saying other reviews haven’t been written- maybe they have- I’m just saying there’s no way anyone will read them because in order to do so you’d have to type ‘Booby Kids’ into google and hit enter to find them. Go ahead, and be sure to say hi to the nice federal agents that come to pick you up on suspected child pornography charges for me. Rather than tempt fate (and the Patriot Act, for that matter), I’ll be laboring under the assumption that no one has ever played Booby Kids and I’m introducing it to you all for the first time.
The menu screen or, as the prosecution calls it, exhibit A.
Booby Kids is a game for the Famicom, the Japanese equivalent of the NES for you unlikely layperson readers. I had high hopes for this cartridge not only because of the title, but because of the cover art. Wow. The pic below is a tad grainy, so let me bring you up to speed. You’ve got a dinosaur, a tank, a UFO, a guy that works at a sushi bar, and the floating visage of feudal Japan chasing after some kid in a K-Mart knock off Ultraman costume. Before I put the cart in I had figured I’d be playing as the shrieking kid, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pulling for the dinosaur.
Better run fast, kid. It doesn’t look like they take kindly to anachronism.
Starting up a new game, the first thing I notice is that my in game character looks more like a toddler version of Mega Man than the cartridge art would have you believe. He kinda behaves like a toddler too, in that he doesn’t do what you tell him and walks as if he’s not yet discovered how to use his knees.
When it comes to Mega Man, accept no substitutes.
The second thing I notice is that Booby Kids sucks. You start off in the Mesozoic era avoiding dinosaurs and cavemen while trying to collect either coconuts or brown tomatoes (I think the artists deliberately left this up to interpretation) in order to unlock a door to the next time period. At least I guess that’s what happens when you collect them all, I have no way of knowing for sure as it is scientifically impossible to complete the first level. You see, the only defense your frightened Booby Kid has against ancient monsters is to dig a little hole in the ground. That’s it. Cavemen get trapped in the hole for a moment, then start to blink, then start to murder you again. Dinosaurs, on the other hand, could give a shit about your hole and attack you anyway. In the event your dig-a-hole attack fails, you can hit the B button a second time to beg for forgiveness.
That counter at the bottom right doesn’t tell you how many bombs you have, it tells you how many are available in the game. There are 0 bombs in the game. Feel free to dig as many holes as you’d like.
Yep, that’s your only attack. I think a guilt trip might be more effective. NOT PICTURED: Fun.
Sorry about that hole, please don’t eat me. Or, failing that, eat me very quickly. Maybe I can offer you a brown tomato?
What’s worse is that, once you’ve checked out the Game Over screen a couple times, you can sit at the menu screen and it’ll show you the other levels in demo mode. I think the developers got lazy and decided to only include one impossible level that they could put together before lunch, but in order to avoid accusations of making a shitty game, they put in some demos of levels they never actually built. This gambit has clearly failed as I’m calling their game shitty right now, but it did succeed in making me try to clear the Jurassic Park stage once more. The other levels are:
Samurai Land, or if you’re in Japan, outside.
A bank vault. I can tell by the dollar sign bags. Hope I didn’t blow your mind with my CSI skills.
Newsies? Soviet Russia? I really can’t tell.
The MechWarrior stage. I’m sure a well placed hole dug by a toddler in a Halloween costume helmet is gonna be super effective against robot missiles. Looks like Booby Kids has finally exhausted my suspension of disbelief.
I started this review bearing a heavy burden- to be perhaps the only person on the internet to review a game called Booby Kids as far as anyone not on a government watch list is concerned. I conclude the review with this- don’t ever play Booby Kids.
Oh, who could stay mad at you?