Leger vs. Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (NES)

For me it is hard to imagine there was a time when Nintendo managed to make it feel like something worth waiting for, whatever they did concerning retro releases.

While there certainly is room to criticize Virtual Console, that particular moment when thursday turned friday and something new (but still old) appeared on the service always had me staying up late through most of the run of the service on the Wii.

A happening of sorts, especially when the Hanabi Festival arrived just to introduce previously Japan exclusive games to the western market.

Games such as, oh, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (just one of the best games in the series released on the PC-Engine CD) and the Treasure developed Sin and Punishment on the Nintendo 64.

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa may not have had the same kind of mythical aura surrounding itself, but as far as Konami go it is hard to say anything other than that it is the very definition of a hidden gem.

Released as early as 1988 on the Family Computer Disk System (and five years later lifted to cartridge, but still only available in Japan) it is a quite unique little platformer where the main gimmick is that enemies can be inflated with the help of a rattle and then be used as platforms.

Through seven colourful worlds, consisting of three stages each, the baby prince travels to free all the adults and babies which have been kidnapped by a demon.

Each world has a theme, may it be cakes and candy or the inside of a computer, which not only matters from a visual point of view. Rather, Konami have gone the Nintendo route by not only making each stage feel unique but by also introducing exclusive elements which rarely repeats themselves.

May it be inverting the gravity of a stage, make a section of a stage loop forever until a certain route is used or having Upa walk on yello which acts like trampoline.

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is mostly a from left to right affair but certain sections turn vertical, in a Kid Icarus kind of way letting Upa exit on one side of the screen just to enter from the other side. Also some stages takes place underwater, others have to be dug through.

Upa may extended his health from three hearts to five, pick up a temporary power up which makes him able to stand up on his two legs and run like hell while being invincible and sometimes use the environment to kill enemies.

The mechanic of inflating enemies is interesting, especially when the stages forces the player to make use of the mechanic to be able to progress. At first it seem rather clumsy, but with time it becomes second nature.

Inflated enemies can also be hit again so that they start to bounce around, hopefully in whatever direction you want them to go, dealing damage to whatever comes in their way.

This is how the bosses are dealt with. Pig like mini bosses on each regular stage and a bigger one at the end of each world.

To see all of this playfulness in such an early platformer is a delight.

While certain aspects of the presentation makes it obvious that it could have been better looking if made in the later days of the NES, it never ugly.

The design of the stages includes quite a few secrets to be found, making repeated playthroughs fun due to more reasons than the player getting to grips with the controls and game mechanics.

Thus turning what initially might seem like a quite difficult and slow journey into something to tackle like a skillfully mastered speedrun.

Head bobbingly and feet tappingly, aswell, thanks to the joyful and uplifting music which at times sound eerily much like tracks from other games without ever going into plagiarism.

Like the main overworld theme sounding like something out of Star Tropics or the underwater theme like the one in Super Mario Bros. Not to mention the ending theme that makes one feel like playing The Goonies 2.

But, yes.