Background
Developer: Sigma Enterprises
Publisher: Sigma Enterprises (JP), Venture Line (NA)
Debut: Nov. 1982 (JP), Jan '83 (NA)
Platform: Arcade
Home Ports: N/A
Tacky
Ponpoko marks a
rare occurrence in these reviews. It's the first platformer I've played in the
genre's chronology that originated in arcades and never made its way to home
systems. If you want to play it from the comfort of your living room or desk, you
must download MAME or another arcade emulator (are there others? I honestly
have no idea).
It's also significant for me as the second video game
property to feature a tanuki, the first in my experience being Super Mario Bros. 3. My love for Japan's
raccoon-dog hybrid dates back to 1989 when my grandparents bought me SMB 3
for Christmas and I first witnessed Mario and Luigi donning a tanuki suit,
which let them fly--same as the leaf power-up--and transform into a stone
statue that rendered them invincible for a few seconds. You could also bop
baddies with your tail. That statue bit seems incongruous unless you understand
the lore of the bake-danuki, a breed of tanuki chronicled in Japanese folklore
and immortalized as stone statues found throughout Japan.
Another fun fact: Ponpoko
is an onomatopoeia for the sound a tanuki makes! What's not to love about
tanuki?!
Anyway. Ponpoko, named
after its titular tanuki player-character, isn't as multifaceted as Mario's
suit, but you still do all the things you'd expect a platformer to allow by
this stage of the genre's evolution. You run, you jump, and you climb ladders in
your quest to gather fruit sprinkled over platforms guarded by animals and
riddled with tacks and pits. Clear all fruit from the board, and you proceed to
the next stage.
You know the drill by now, but Ponpoko holds your interest through fast and responsive controls and
its functionality as a Trojan horse: Ponpoko
is a puzzle game disguised as a platformer. The animals patrolling each
platform do not respond to your actions. They move back and forth, leaving you
to figure out when and how to maneuver around them to grab fruit and continue
upward. You've also got two types of jumps at your disposal, a running leap that
carries you further but feels floatier than the faster but shorter stationary
jump, good for skipping over pits and tacks, and you must master these
intricacies to call on the right move at the right time.
A timer ticks down, and you need to pick up all that fruit
before it expires. You want to be cautious, but not slow, since getting stuck
behind a slow-moving enemy wastes precious seconds. The rate of enemy movement
never changes, so you must factor things such as whether to approach an animal
from behind or from its front, and its speed relative to yours. Finally, there
are pots that contain either bonus fruit or a snake that moves at an
excruciatingly slow pace, further holding you up if you get stuck behind it.
Ponpoko's
complexity lies in its combination of these variables: enemy placement and how
they move, the positions of fruit and traps, and deciding whether to break open
pots and risk a snake emerging or ignoring them. I cannot stress enough the
glacial pace at which these buggers slither around. It's the worst, but that's
intentional.
Unleashing a snake on a platform inhabited by a normal
enemy/animal forces you to rethink how you'll navigate their terrain given
their varying speeds, and you'll usually lose several seconds waiting for a
snake or regular animal or both to get the heck out of your way.
Playing Ponpoko is
fun, but the downside is the levels never change. Everything about the first
stage, for instance, remains static: the platforms, the positions of enemies
and traps and fruit and pots, where enemies move and how fast they move there. This
means a stage won't give you much trouble when you replay it, assuming you
remember the optimal route around animals. But enemies moving at the same rate means
there's really only one solution to a level.
Some areas are inaccessible until a bug moves beyond a
certain point, such as platforms with a piece of fruit on the far left and a
ladder leading to the next platform on the far right. Missing a step is like
missing the train or bus to work. The next ride is due in a few seconds, not
nearly enough time to do anything other than stand around and wait for it to
pull up.
Pots present an opportunity to cut down on each level's play
time. Remember, their contents never change. If the third pot on the left side
of the second platform on level 5 contains a piece of fruit, it will always
contain that piece of fruit. Since you're not dropping quarters into MAME, you
could crack open every pot your first time through to memorize their contents,
then only break open those that hold bonus fruit when you play. Or you could do
what I did and just ignore pots. You earn bonus points for clearing a board
quickly, so I concentrated on gathering fruit as fast as possible rather than
risk upsetting slithering serpents, or worse, getting stuck behind one in
traffic.
If this sounds like a major turnoff, it's not. Getting
better-navigating stages faster--is a key factor in platformer games. Ponpoko's audiovisuals are lackluster, especially
when compared to those of a certain 800-pound gorilla, but the responsiveness
of controls and the fun challenge of improving as I played kept me coming back
to this one more than any other game I've reviewed so far save for Donkey Kong.
And if I'm being honest, most of these primeval platformers
suffered from repetition. We're still a few years away from the Mario game that
cracked the genre wide open. Until then, Ponpoko
is worth a download and your time. Its rudimentary presentation belies intricate
controls and an addictive puzzle-oriented challenge that lays a foundation for
future puzzle-platformers like Prince of Persia.
Score
Graphics: 2/5. Rudimentary bordering on ugly, but
they get the job done.
Gameplay: 4/5. Repetitive at its core. But I have no
problem overlooking that each time I lay hands on the controls and beat my top
score.
Sound: 1/5. Hardly worth a mention.
Overall: 4/5. Ponpoko
is a gem buried deep in the primordial ooze of platformers. Its relative rarity
compared to the countless ports of games like Donkey Kong make it a novelty, but its (slightly more) complex
gameplay elevates it above most competitors of its era.
Ranking
This list is subjective, based on my experiences. I also can't promise I'll expand this ranking to include every platformer ever made. It may be simpler, and fairer, to rank platformers within the same "generation" of releases. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Without further ado, here are my rankings as of this entry. Click a game's title to read its review.
- 1. Donkey Kong
- 2. Ponpoko
- 3. Kangaroo
- 4. Jump Bug
- 5. Space Panic
- 6. Canyon Climber
- 7. Crazy Climbers*
*I thought I should explain why Crazy Climbers has occupied the last slot in my rankings since I debuted my little chart a few entries/chapters ago. Crazy Climbers is a fine game, but it's not really a platformer. I don't foresee it moving from this spot unless a terrible game comes along and gives it a boost.
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