Farewell rohos for this Famicom Friday
One of the masterpieces of the NES library is a game called Little Samson. Although this is a pretty solid game, it requires highest value for an official NES game (yes, Stadium Events more expensive, but it’s just another title screen for Meet the world-class race track). It is developed by Takeru and if you are not familiar with the name, that is because North America only has one of their games, and it is Little Samson. So that’s not very helpful.
They made another game for the Famicom, and that is Cocoron. Let me show you its pedigree: Cocoron Designed by Akira Kitamura. Have you heard of him? He has created Mega Man. He is the designer of Mega Man and Mega Man 2. Excited yet? It is possible to cool those jets.
Mega Manthis doesn’t, but it will definitely try. Cocoron definitely an action platformer, but its focus is more on synthesis. You start by creating a character by choosing the head, body, and projectile. Depending on what you put together, you’ll get something with completely different firepower, jump altitude, and speed. While you start out with this character, as you progress you begin to build an array of monstrous monsters to choose from.
But that’s not all! Level progression, like Mega Man, you just need to choose where you want to go next. However, the stage you are presenting is a combination of the stage you are currently in and the stage you have selected with a boss at the end of that stage. The stages change depending on the sequence you choose, so technically there are plenty of unique places to visit.
Unfortunately that’s the main problem you’ll run into. Because all the stages are sewn together, their design will have a happy ending. Each segment has its own set of obstacles, but nothing is as exciting as what you find, like, Mega Man. Even in different environments, some parts seem a bit similar.
There’s a big finale after you defeat the main bosses and rescue the princess, again, like Mega Man. The big difference is that you are tasked with reclaiming all the heroes you built that have been captured. It attacks when needed and is a good change of tempo.
There are also a lot of options for your character, but some options like the hull don’t make much sense to me. Yes, it can make some segments of a level easier, but it seems more practical to create a general use character that is suitable for most situations. You can have an inventory of characters, but each character level up individually, so it makes more sense to just use one or two. You can only pick a new one at the beginning of each level, so you can’t swap to the most optimal one for each obstacle.
Unfortunately because the platform is as tight as you would expect from the creator Mega Man. Graphics are also very expressive and detailed. For example, the character standing on a slope, will change posture to match the slope. It’s like making Cocoron feel ultra-tech first; one of those games was trying to see how much it could squeeze out of Nintendo’s 8-bit power but forgot to put its chip where it should count.
That does not mean Cocoron unhappy; it’s just a bunch of wasted potential. Diversity is such a squandered focus because the design isn’t necessary for sufficient use. The result is a game that doesn’t even provide a compelling argument against Mega Man’s imitator like Bucky O’Hare.
Cocoron still worth a try, but more as curio or tech demo. You won’t find anything quite like it on Famicom. It’s more of a “can we do it” kind of game than a “whether it’s fun” approach.
There is a large amount of Japanese text, but you can mostly ignore it. It’s most helpful if you know the language when building your character because that’s the only way to know what ballistics you’re carrying. However, for the monolinguals among us, there is a fan translation.
Speaking of languages, there is a strange question with Cocoron: I can’t figure out how to add a tent mark or a maru mark when typing a name. To explain briefly, these marks change the consonant sounds in Japanese syllables. Without them, I couldn’t spell, for example, robo. It can only be spelled roho. It’s a strange oversight when the dialogue takes these cues. Maybe I’m just missing something, but I don’t know where you hide a function on the Famicom controller. Second player controller microphone?
Check out the Famicom last Friday right here.
Zoey Handley
Zoey is a gamer. She has played video games her whole life and is a lover of both new and classic games. She loves digging in the dirt and picking out games that are perfectly fine if you clean them up a bit.
