I’ve been meaning to check out this series of cult classics for a while. Let’s swing!

The Umihara Kawase series started on the SNES, and kept the same basic premise over three entries. In a surreal world of floating blocks covered in nostalgic Japanese iconography (vegetables, school supplies, vending machines, etc), the 19-year old Kawase—a traveling sushi chef, according to the localisation—uses a fishing lure on a bouncy line to hook and swing around, avoiding/capturing fish with legs. They’re puzzle-platformers with an emphasis on the physics of grappling, gravity, and elasticity.

The games have always been low-budget but full of charm and an odd atmosphere. On the SNES it was all pixel-based, with backgrounds made form digitised photos. Fidelity improved for the second entry on PSX, with 3D graphics for the play field but 2D sprites for the characters. This third entry, originally released on 3DS but enhanced for Vita then ported to PC, has a fully polygonal world but is still blocky and strange.

Another big factor in the reputation of the series is its tough-as-nails challenges. There’s many advanced tricks you can do with Kawase’s springy grapple, and as you explore the breadth of the game’s many rooms, they become more useful or even required. I never managed to ascend a vertical wall or do a rocket jump until this third instalment: they seem to have improved the controls here, making it much more accessible. Ledge grabs seem to have a bigger window as well, and in-game tutorials do a more thorough job explaining the mechanics.

That’s not all though. Sayonara completely rethinks the structure as well. Previously a run started at Field 0 or 1, and you would find the door to the next field (possibly accessing one of the many alternate branching paths through the web of levels) until you ran out of lives and started all over again. Now, there’s a menu screen between each level, there’s no lives, and completing a level permanently unlocks the next one. It’s so much more friendly, and on top of that there’s a time stop button for tricky mid-air manoeuvres, and alternate characters, some of them with a mid-stage checkpoint ability.

That’s not to say challenge has been removed. I certainly found it more doable but ran into roadblocks after clearing about two thirds of the fields, and had to give up before frustration ruined my positive feelings for the game. I had seen the credits three times by this point; the branches end with various boss fights, which are a bit more fleshed out in this instalment. On top of this, many levels have difficult-to-reach backpacks; previously extra life tokens, they’re now collectibles that unlock gallery items. And there’s a survival mode which mimics the structure of the previous two games.

Having now played all three of the games in the original style (the latest game, Fresh, is a more radical departure with an open world and RPG elements), this is the most accessible to newcomers, and recaptures the feel and mechanics of the previous games plus some expansions and quality of life features. And it’s on Steam for Windows! Playing the older games is helped by savestates under emulation, and the DS release has the first two classics with a suite of bonus stuff, but I’d recommend starting with this one.