Narita Boy is a gripping pixel trip with a wacky story and action-packed battles, which you can even try out for free on Steam.
For me it was love at first sight: Narita Boy appealed to me right from the first pictures with its brightly coloured look, even though I was so sure that pixel optics in an indie game couldn’t sweep me off my feet for a long time.
But the first trailers also fuelled my excitement for the game, and at the moment there is hardly a better time to plunge into the 80s adventure. Narita Boy is currently 50 per cent off on Steam and there’s even a demo. So you don’t have to be afraid of making a bad purchase, but you can convince yourself that the pixel trip is an audiovisual treat.
Save the world – with the techno sword!
Even the subheading is a good foretaste of how wacky things get in Narita Boy. The story has a serious, very emotional background. The programmer Lionel Pearl Nakamura uses the game to come to terms with his childhood, which is told very quietly but all the more poignantly.
Away from this personal component, the plot could also have resulted from a fever dream of the Tron creators. As a player of a video game, you are drawn – after the obligatory admonition from your mother, of course – into the bowels of a computer.
There, within the first few minutes of the game, a programme called “Motherboard” tells you what it’s all about: defeating the antagonist “HIM” and his hordes of malware. And that in the shape of a pixel knight with a techno sword! That plays out as wacky as it reads.
I’ll keep quiet about the rest of the plot at this point. It doesn’t reach narrative heights, but it leads you through the adventure in an entertaining way. There’s also a lot to smile about: intermediate bosses have names like “Lord_VHS” and at the latest when you enter places like the “Cavern of Amniotic Water”, you know that you’ve bought a special game.
Like Hollow Knight from the 80’s
The comparison with Hollow Knight is obvious in some places – after all, both games are very good Metroidvanias. While you shouldn’t expect Narita Boy to offer such extensive possibilities to improve your character and adapt it to your play style as Hollow Knight (or Ori and the Will of the Wisps) thanks to the talismans.
Of course, you can also expect a few strengthening upgrades in the course of the story in Narita Boy. On your way through the digital kingdom, you explore numerous locations, make your way through the enemy minions and gradually get closer to the final confrontation.
Similar to Hollow Knight, however, you are unfortunately sometimes left alone by the game, especially with regard to the frequent backtracking. This can sometimes try your patience in the search for the right path. Then you wander around and have to motivate yourself to get back on track.
And then, of course, there are the battles, where the similarities between the two games popped into my head the most: They play out quickly and demand good reactions from you if you don’t want to bite the dust instantly. The good news at this point: Narita Boy is by no means as difficult as Hollow Knight and other genre representatives.
Bright colours and a nasty earworm
Acoustically, your adventure is accompanied by a techno soundtrack whose purposefully used melodies will haunt you until you fall asleep, perfectly accompanying the gameplay and the retro look at every second. The same applies here as already with the pixel optics: actually not my taste at all, but I celebrate the result.
I hardly need to say anything more about the presentation at this point. The pictures already make it clear what you can expect. Bright colours dominate, effects flash everywhere and a CRT filter superimposed on the image gives you the pleasant feeling of having travelled back in time to the pioneering days of video games.
