It’s time to explore the land of… Japan-exclusive video games!
On my last trip to Japan, I picked up some 3DS games relatively cheaply at the glorious and proliferous second-hand chain Book-Off, hoping one day to get the opportunity to play them (since Nintendo pulled yet another boneheaded blunder by enforcing region-locking on that system). That day has come as I’ve borrowed the Japanese 3DS of my sister-in-law; now all I have to contend with is the language barrier.
Gon is a manga series by Masashi Tanaka about the wild and wacky adventures of a small but indomitable (and anachronistic) dinosaur, with a focus on his encounters with various realistically-depicted fauna. These tales are told completely silently, without even sound effects, so they’re very accessible. Tanaka’s work depicts action scenes and the animals’ feelings effectively with lots of detail and shading, but also a cartoony sense of fun. But anyway! I know Gon from his guest appearance in Tekken 3, and I tried out his SNES game on stream a while back. When I learned that one of my favourite developers Inti Creates worked on this I had to try it.
Turns out this is one of the classic cash-grab licensed games that talented game devs put out to pay the bills in between passion projects. It reminded me of their Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 3DS game in that respect, which has interesting ideas but is not really up to the gold standard of some of their other 2D action games. It may be aimed at a younger audience yes, but it still feels a bit off a lot of the time.
As in the SNES game, Gon is depicted as an invincible powerhouse who doesn’t hesitate to pick a fight with any animal that crosses his path. The central mechanic is chomping and consuming food, two separate actions. Yes, there’s a munch button and a swallow button. Nests let you sleep and power up your abilities, such as increasing Gon’s mouth capacity or swallowing speed. I’m not making this up. Getting hit will make you drop your current mouthful, and after three hits you lose your current upgrades, which will frustratingly reduce you to a base state until you find another nest and slowly paw through the upgrade menu again.
As you go you learn some new moves that will let you find secrets in earlier levels, which have a checklist for eating all food types or spotting hidden animals (which unlocks viewable dioramas). I liked the latter aspect, just like the manga which introduces you to different animals from around the world. The big difference is that the animals here talk! It’s a bizarre deviation from the source material, which changes the tone of this game to something more mainstream as you have tutorial squirrels, and meet the boss animal characters before kicking their butts… in a combat/food-eating contest essentially.
Having the whole game revolve around food is an interesting twist that suits the character and gives the game a USP edge. Of course, the game has other tricks up its sleeve: 3DS gyroscope features! Often during a level you will have to stop, hit R to go into a viewing mode, and move your system all around to then interact with something via headbutt or similar; this system is also used for logging the animal species you encounter. It’s not a terrible idea in principle but usually boils down to making what could have been a simple button press more tedious, but much worse is the minigame stage where you ride an albatross through a 3D flight arena using only gyro motion. Thankfully, failing it instantly will still allow progress.
So, it’s a passable 2.5D platformer with some new ideas. The structure and progression is slightly non-linear with some side secrets and potential backtracking between levels, but not in a particularly satisfying way. Also, it should be noted that the game has stereoscopic 3D support but of course enforced gyro use will always break the illusion, even playing on a New 3DS (which I was not!). Gon himself is well-represented and cute as always, especially juxtaposed against real-life animals as in the manga. And just in case you ever play this game and don’t read Japanese: in the desert stage, aim for the mirage with two big trees to progress. You’re welcome!