![]() RELATED: Retro Arcade-Inspired Game Arcade Paradise Announced With a game-within-a-game overarching story, a random teen gets pulled into a digital world and is tasked with defeating a great evil. Though unique in its own way, the story of Narita Boy will strike a familiar chord. Its inspirations are immediately apparent as well, drawing from titles such as TRON, Ready Player One, and others. ![]() ![]() And while Narita Boy can’t swim, he can surf across water on a giant 3.5-inch floppy disk.Developed by Studio Koba and published by Team17, Narita Boy is a love letter to the aesthetics and visuals of the 1980s. Narita Boy also varies its gameplay to great effect at one point, you must transform into a digital stag to traverse a forest and at another you ride across a desert on a robotic horse, which you can merge with to morph into a boss-like form. Blind button-bashing is never enough you must work out the correct tactical approach, particularly when faced with a range of different enemies. You quickly discover – especially when taking on the more heavily armoured bosses – that it’s often essential to take a predominantly defensive approach, avoiding incoming attacks and picking the right moments to unleash your own attacks. In place of health power-ups, you’re given four bars which fill up as you inflict damage on Stallions (each bar refills one chunk of your health meter). In addition, each Trichroma colour has a superhero-like ‘Dude’, who will hover and send down powerful attacks against all enemies on screen and can only be summoned if certain conditions are met. The Stallions are sometimes suffused with one of the Trichroma’s three colours, and if you also channel that colour, you inflict more damage on them – although they also damage you morey. Gameplay initially involves a combination of platforming, symbol-matching puzzles, and exploration in classic Metroidvania fashion this yields various keys to access new areas but you also soon acquire the satisfyingly powerful Techno-sword and can start taking on the Stallions, who come in a number of often boss-sized forms.Īs you progress on your quest, you amass a large library of new moves, such as a charged laser style blast, a shield bash, a down stomp, and an uppercut slash that also lets you jump higher than normal. Your first moments in the Digital Kingdom involve a certain amount of scene-setting, as the priest-like characters you encounter explain that you must find and liberate the (currently dormant) Creator’s lost memories so that you and he can finally defeat HIM. Narita Boy is the only individual who can wield the legendary Techno-sword, which harnesses the power of the red, yellow, and blue Trichroma.įrom the off, as Narita Boy, you feel like a superhero: the denizens of the Digital Kingdom have been waiting for you to show up to liberate them from the havoc caused by the Stallions, HIM’s agents who have been laying waste to their world. Once in the game world, you are the eponymous Narita Boy, essentially an 8-bit superhero (the game jokes about how he is composed of ‘less than 20 pixels’). It’s a simple ruse which could easily have been overdone but isn’t and will induce a warm glow in anyone who recalls the days before screens were universally flat. But on top of that, developer Studio Koba has added a filter effect that slightly distorts the edges of the screen and adds fake vertical hold artefacts, creating the impression that you’re playing it on an old cathode ray television. ![]() Take its graphics, for example: they are a loving tribute to games from the 8-bit era, complete with rampant pixelation and flashes of lurid primary-colour palettes. Narita Boy may have been created by a tiny team, but that team knows the importance of attention to detail. It has an indefinable, endearing spark which elevates it way above the indie-landfill that often characterises such games and manages to be both compellingly addictive and surprisingly thought-provoking. But Narita Boy is worthy of your attention. The latest indie game from Team17 is one of the best Metroidvanias of recent years and a thrilling homage to 8-bit gaming.Ī consciously retro Metroidvania style game created by a tiny, debutant indie studio in Barcelona may not sound like the most essential of purchases, at least on paper. Narita Boy – retro graphics have never seemed so stylish (pic: Team17)
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