Narita Boy

I can't say anything about this game becouse i can't see it. That happen when artist don't restrain himself with special effects. For sake of your health, stay away from Narita Boy!

The core of the game is decent but there various aspects of it that make this a hard sell. The bulk of the plot is communicated to you though overly pretentious dialog, most likely a fatal mistake trying to become like the equally pretentious game SuperBrothers EP. Most players will not bother to read and people with a software engineering background sadly will not understand it either. Combat is actually interesting but as the game drags on it becomes boring and tedious with weird game design where healing is underpowered, jumping does not feel right and i-frames for the dodge is questionable. Visually this is another pixel game where they the developers went waaaaaay overboard with the post-processing making this game an absolute eye strain.

Played through it on steam and grabbed it free on gog not too long ago. Fantastic game with amazing music. Tried with the filter off at first but with it on the game really drew me into its world. Combat is just difficult enough to be very engaging, but not too frustrating. It was my surprise game of the year.

It was a giveaway. I beat the game in 11 hours. The graphics and the music are very good! The default controls with gamepad too. However I didn't enjoy the classic depressing history, also, I didn't enjoy some parts of the game (there is a boss which difficulty peak is insane! I spend almost 2 hours trying to beat him).

Narita Boy is outside my typical area of enjoyment in games. I've played a lot of sidescrollers over the years, starting out with DOS-era titles like Jazz Jackrabbit and Alien Carnage, but I've never been able to enjoy them quite as much as semi- or full-3D games, especially FPSes, like Doom and Quake. But since I got it on giveaway and it came recommended by a friend, I gave it a shot. What I got was a surprisingly poignant story and what felt like an original take on the now well-trodden genres of 80s synthwave aesthetic and cyberspace isekai. Mechanically speaking, I can't say much for Narita Boy. As mentioned in other reviews, its controls are awkward and apparently un-remappable (I didn't actually think to try) and the I-frames on the dodge are, at best, unpredictable. But the game is short and briskly-paced, and ends well before these shortcomings have time to truly entrench themselves. The boss fights are for the most part forgiving, and in truth I had more issue with the shield-carrying normal enemies then any boss save that of the red code kingdom. Some people also found the heavy, blurry post-processing effects to be an issue. I myself played part of the game while wearing sunglasses, which, in retrospect, feels quite appropriate to the subject matter. What it does have is excellent atmosphere, pixel animations and soundtrack. In as far as action side-scrollers go, I would recommend Narita Boy before many other similar titles, despite its flaws. There is a spirit in its code I've not seen elsewhere- and I don't just mean the big bad sorcerer.