For a change of pace, I played this DS remix of a Taito arcade classic. The changes are a mixed bag to be sure, but it’s a cute little adventure with some fun ideas.

The New Zealand Story was a 1988 arcade game popular enough to be ported to most any platform you can name at the time. Tiki the kiwi (who looks nothing like an actual kiwi, by the way) traverses a series of mazey stages loosely inspired by real-life NZ locations to rescue his kiwi pals from a nasty Antarctic leopard seal. It’s a platformer, a shooter, a maze game; it combined these things into a pretty cohesive if brutally difficult experience. A big gimmick in this mix was the prevalence of vehicles: from simple balloons to other kinds of balloons, to mini spaceships, Tiki often needs to fly around. This gives the game a unique hook compared to similar titles.

The “Revolution“ series revitalised many of Taito’s old games for the DS, adding features to suit the DS’s capabilities. In this case, much is reused from the original game including level designs and bosses, although tweaked and updated. Aside from a significant graphical update, the additions include a more generous health system (thank you!), an expansion of Tiki’s abilities to make him more mobile and capable (some of which I didn’t discover until late in my play!), and intrusive touchscreen minigames (boo).

Lifting so much wholesale from the original game makes Revolution feel a bit archaic at times, but on the other hand you could say it’s a faithful recreation of a classic. Aside from the touchscreen nonsense… the game would definitely be better off without that, the way it’s implemented here. Either way, it’s very cute and enjoyable arcade goodness. Shout out to The Kiwi’s Tale by Stephen Knightly, Erik Hogan, et al, which is a tongue-in-cheek attempt to reboot the idea of the original game while making it more authentic to Aotearoa.