Pages

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Transformed Teenage Lozenge Soldiers

Occasionally, while on YouTube, I end up watching footage from old video games or ones that weren’t ever released in the U.S. Occasionally, they make no sense.

Take this one, a Japan-only release for the Super Nintendo (and, by Super Nintendo, I mean its “over there” counterpart, the Super Famicom):



The plot, as I understand it: Five youths and a dog are walking to either a theme park called Jelly Land or the border between their home country and a neighboring nation called Jelly Land. At the front gate, some sort of demonic jester materializes and transforms them all — even the dog — into what looks to me like cough drops but which are probably the jellies mentioned in the title of the game, Jelly Boy 2. (I know, I know. We missed Jelly Boy 1. We’ll never grasp the context of what made this game great… and so memorable.) I’m not clear as to whether the youths and dog companion should have been surprised by this turn of events, as it may be what you get when you set foot in a place called Jelly Land. Also, the cough drops are color-coded based on what the characters were wearing when they underwent this transformation, so for our sake I suppose we should be glad that none of them wore similar outfits, as that would make differentiation difficult.

If it sounds like I’m mocking Jelly Boy 2, understand that it comes from a good place. I have nothing but respect for this brief foray into video games whose plots were drawn from real-life situations that kids should know about.

Bonus trivia: The title of this game is apparently sometimes transliterated as Jerry Boy.

No comments:

Post a Comment