It’s a lot of things at once, and there’s always the concern that this top heavy atmosphere is going to topple over at any second. A style-heavy combat-slinging platformer drowning in 80’s kitsch and Tron-tinted neon that asks you to battle through the personified innards of a prototypic console in order to unlock the stolen memories of its creator. I’m not photosensitive and I still got fed up with jolts of light blasting my eyeballs every few seconds, so one can imagine what this can happen to more sensitive people.Narita Boy is one hell of a trip.

If you’re photosensitive, either turn your TV’s brightness down or avoid this game completely. It’s way too bright and far too abrasive. The problem lies in the game constantly blasting strobing lights at you. But the game is a freaking eyesore, like very few I have ever seen. It’s really well designed, with immaculate sprite work and animations, and truly creative backgrounds. However, there’s the issue with the visuals…ĭon’t get me wrong, Narita Boy‘s graphics are actually… excellent. I have little to complain about the sound design as a whole. Its sound effects are also loud and goofy, just like they should be. It’s exactly what you should expect from a game about being inside a virtual gaming world in the 80’s: loud and abrasive synthwave with electronic bass lines that make your room walls shake like an earthquake. First of all, the soundtrack is damn amazing.

Narita Boy’s plot is comprised of pure, unadulterated, utterly incomprehensible technobabble.īeing so inspired by all the cheesiness of the 80’s, one can only imagine that Narita Boy nailed its visuals and sound design, but only one and a half of these statements are correct. The game also lacks a map feature and forces you to backtrack throughout levels way too often.

However, when there’s platforming involved, things become infuriating. That’s not really an issue during combat, as mashing the Square button like a lunatic will still be the solution to 99.99% of encounters. Sadly, despite featuring a great combat system, Narita Boy‘s controls are a bit confusing and feature a noticeable amount of input lag. That doesn’t mean the gameplay is flawless. You’ll crave for enemies to show up because it feels great just to tear them apart. Narita Boy nails the metroidvania progression system like few games do. You’ll constantly pick up new moves to increase your arsenal and it feels great. You can charge your sword attack in order to blast anyone near you with a home run bash and you can also use a limited supply of shots inside your blade, transforming it into a shotgun. Your sword packs one hell of a punch, transforming all kinds of enemies into piles of data. This the most anime Narita Boy ever gets, and it’s glorious. After a brief introductory section in which you’re unable to defend yourself against HIM’s minions, you’ll eventually grab the legendary Techno Sword and proceed to mow down everything in sight. Story-wise, Narita Boy isn’t very brilliant, but you can pretty much ignore it and enjoy the game for what it truly is: a super stylish metroidvania packed with tons of audiovisual elements taken straight from every single 80’s cliché you can imagine. You’ll also be greeted to a nonsensical amount of technobabble and invented terms that are here to basically make things even more incomprehensible than they already are. He is trying to save the land from the clutches of HIM (not related to the Finnish band) and restore the memories of the game’s creator, who takes the mantle of a god-like figure within the setting in a similar way to James Halliday in Ready Player One. Narita Boy‘s somewhat convoluted story revolves around the titular hero fighting through hordes of enemies inside a Digital Kingdom within an old-school computer game. Get ready for some seizures during this section.

Narita boy attack button