"No Ri Ko" - Turbografx-16/PC Engine CD

Alright, here's the one that gets my blog put on some kind of list.

I'm not sure where to start with this so let's start here: Ogawa Noriko was the stage name of a J-Pop idol in the '80s, and actress up until recently as far as I understand. She debuted as a J-Pop artist in 1987, with a song called 'Namida wo Tabanete' (涙をたばねて, which I'll tentatively translate as 'Put Away Your Tears' or maybe 'Bundle Up Your Tears') included here for the curious (I actually kinda like it).

In 1988, I guess NEC was looking for someone to feature in one of the first CD games ever made (Fighting Street being the other) and with the help of developer Alfa System, this Noriko themed game was born. The two games released alongside the PC Engine CD peripheral.

Supposedly, the game features recordings of voice and video of Noriko herself, which also supposedly (according to the Japanese Wikipedia) makes her the first person in the entire world to ever have her speaking voice recorded for CD software.

I'm not exactly sure what this game entails, but I'm informed from the internet it's some kind of dating simulation, which is distressing because Ogawa Noriko was only 15 at the time the game was released... hence why I joked about getting on a list.

But I have a duty to fulfill so let's see what we have here:

Is this the fabled CD photograph quality?

----- Playthrough -----

Alright, so, No Ri Ko starts off with you heading into town and stopping at a Noriko concert that's going on, naturally. There's a huge line outside, and you have to decide whether seeing this girl sing '80s hits is really worth your time (naturally, you have no choice but to get in line-- the game just yells at you if you pick "wait outside").

That one guy in the very back is freaking me out a little.

Once inside, Noriko introduces herself and you're treated to a PC Engine CD concert in all its incredible glory. This basically consists of a CD quality recording of one of Noriko's songs, accompanied by a bunch of images of her singing flashing on screen in the most Powerpoint way ever:

This is actually everything I could have hoped for from this.

Luckily, while performing on stage with spotlights on her face, Noriko apparently singled you out of all the sweaty teenagers (hopefully) in collared shirts in the crowd as looking like kind of a neat guy. So she sends her agent to tell you as much and ask you to come take her out and play with her tomorrow (I guess date sounded like kind of a strong word).

Once the day arrives, you're out in the city and have a selection of places you can go. The first one I picked there was a clothes shop and Noriko tries on different clothes and you tell her whether or not it's good-- then she makes you buy it for her. Deciding this was getting too close to the line between creepy/funny, I picked one and moved on.

Though this entire screen helps inch it back towards funny.

Each place has something to do, the other two were eating and going dancing, which were accompanied by their own weird/amusing cutscenes, and yet another full-length Noriko song that forced me to stare at this picture for at least 3 minutes:

This is the most stationary dancing of all time.

Alas, once you complete three of the four available activities, it'll get late and you'll have to take Noriko home. It rains though, so she invites you in, gives you a towel to dry your wet face off with, and then makes you tea.

Immediately thereafter starts the funniest/strangest part of the 'game' where an intermission occurs and the game starts quizzing you on Noriko related facts-- like where she grew up, what her favorite kind of food is, and what her blood type is.

Wikipedia is really carrying the team on this one.

I don't really know what the point of this is because the game didn't tell me if I was right or say anything about my answers that I noticed, but it may serve as a lock to the next scene.

Once you're over that, Noriko asks if you want to see an album of photos of her as a child and then challenges you to a game of rock-paper-scissors-- which I guess seeing a bunch of baby photos of her is like... a reward for winning? I don't really know why, but nevertheless, you play, and if you win you get to see some family photos of her as a toddler.

Noriko: "HA! Gotcha, bitch!"

For some reason this was absolutely hilarious to me, I don't know why-- I suspect that I was slowly losing my mind while playing No Ri Ko, but the crown jewel in the entire experience is when at the end of the game, Noriko painfully says whatever name you typed in at the beginning of the game one painstaking syllable at a time.

"[RA... I... FU...]-kun."

I'm tempted to put something funny sounding into the name screen just to record her saying it but I don't know if the payoff is good enough. Just know the option is there for you to make a funny meme out of.

Anyway after that the game pretty much promptly ends and tosses you into a credits sequence, then it helpfully reminds you that:

In case you thought you were really there.

----- Impressions -----

How long did I play?

30 minutes.

How much did I beat?
I played one run through of the events and saw the credits.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

There's no reason to do these categories for this kind of game but why not.

All you do is pick stuff off of a menu so assuming you can read Japanese I think you'd have it under control.

Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel? Too difficult?

There's really no gameplay or difficulty.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

About 20 minutes. Maybe you could get another couple run throughs if you want to hear her say funny things at the end or see whatever that fourth option was.

Presentation: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

Well, the pictures of Noriko are pretty high quality and I guess that's the point.

The sound is strikingly clear-- the musical tracks are obviously CD quality, but even the voice acted bits are much higher-quality than I would expect from the '80s; it actually took me by surprise. The voice acting is certainly recorded with some kind of studio-mic with a high sample rate. Hearing CD quality audio from the PC Engine is startling.

Unfortunately I can't share the OST with you because it's not on Youtube, but it seems to mostly consist of 16-bit sounding remixes of Noriko's pop songs as far as I can tell, as well as a basic background track for most of the game which may also be a remix, I'm not sure.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

It's such a weird stupid thing that it makes me laugh so actually, yeah, a little bit.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

Hard no, unless you're a big Ogawa Noriko fan. But it did make me laugh a couple times.

If you do, name your character something funny and send me a clip of the end.

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