"Pooyan" - NES/Famicom

Pooyan was released by Konami in 1982 for arcade. In our journey's timeline, it's now 1985, so it's been a little while, and it turns out that three years later was just the year that Hudson Soft decided was the time to bring Pooyan to the people at home.

There's honestly shamefully little I know to say about Pooyan in this intro. The game was apparently popular enough to warrant a whole host of ports to different systems throughout the years, as there are over 10 versions (!). A fun little factoid is that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker apparently contains a series of missions called "The Pooyan Missions," which feature music and sound effects from this game as Big Boss shoots down balloons carrying off soldiers.

The game was also designed by a fella named Tokuro Fujiwara, apparently sometimes credited as Professor F, which is awesome. He later joined Capcom and helped design some big games like Ghosts 'n' Goblins, and several of the Mega Man series. Unfortunately I have nearly no idea who at Hudson is responsible for this port so I guess we'll just have to play it and stop yapping:

The title-screen is surprisingly active and animated.

----- Playthrough -----

In the game, you play as a mama pig, who's off to save her children from being kidnapped by the big bad wolf ...vvvessss. There's a whole host of them and they're out to get your babies. Luckily, mama pig knows her way around a bow-and-arrow and not much else, so she has all the tools she needs to kill everyone who assaults her children.

You think I'm kidding but she's straight cold.

The wolves who want to eat her children mostly just have two simple strategies: they're either going to float down on balloons until they get to the bottom of a tree and then climb the ladder and eat mama's butt (whew) or they're gonna ride balloons up to the top of a cliff to push a boulder off on mama's head.

Mama wants to stop either of those things happening and to do it she's gonna shoot the balloons they're riding on, causing them to fall and bash their stupid wolf brains out on the ground 40 feet below. She also has to watch out since wolves will throw apples at her and bite at her from behind, causing her to fall off her elevator and crash to the ground as well.

That's gonna be one messy stretch of ground.

You're also given a fancy heavy arrow that the child pigs at the top of the cliff will ready up for you every few seconds to shoot off. It'll take down multiple targets without stopping, but arcs downwards heavily after being shot. Still, it's the only way to take out groups of three or more wolves pretty reliably.

I don't know what's around that arrow but I'm going to assume cooked wolf meat.

In each round, you'll go through a certain amount of wolves either going up or going down, and you'll have to shoot them all, nearly. You'll lose if more than 4 or 5 wolves get to their objective. In-between rounds you'll have a little bonus round where you'll shoot wolves with only the heavy arrow and unlimited ammo, or otherwise shoot some fruits that are dropped.

That's really it on this one. This is an arcade game so rather than longevity or a point, you're just playing for score and fun.

----- Impressions -----

How long did I play?

15 minutes.

How much did I beat?
3 (...?) rounds

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

Well, to be frank there's really not a lot here. You're just moving up and down with the d-pad and firing arrows with A or B, and some experimentation will show you that you need to shoot the balloons. I think you can get it.

Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel? Too difficult?

This game is actually really difficult. It's very unlikely that on levels where the wolves come down from the top, you'll survive for very long on any round after the first, without having wolves quickly take up all the spots on the right, chomping at you. You can keep playing while this is happening, you just have to be mindful of both the right and left sides of the screen from that point on.

Or you could just die. It's a very viable option.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

I'm not sure how long it takes the game to repeat, but my impression is that the game repeats after two rounds, after watching someone else play the game on Youtube. In that case, you'll probably see everything the game has to offer in about 15 minutes, but it gets much harder as it loops.

The depth of the game is shooting balloons.

Presentation: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The game actually looks and sounds pretty nice. There's a handful of music tracks here, and a lot of interesting sound effects such as wolves howling, and squeaky pop sounds when you shoot the balloons. It's pretty creative for an early Famicom game.

The graphics are fine. The characters are certainly defined and animated to the point one can tell what they are, and they have cute little sprites that stick out from the background. The background is just a solid dark blue, but the foreground is fairly detailed compared to some of what we've seen from other arcade ports. There is quite a bit of flickering, but I don't find that to be bothersome (it's kind of the Famicom aesthetic, really).

Personal Chord: 

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

I like the cute nature of the game and also the music and character they put into the various sprite animations in the game, but I don't feel particularly strongly about it otherwise.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

I'm gonna say no. Pooyan is a pretty solid arcade port and seems like a good 30 minutes of fun or so if you want to play it a couple times, but I don't think it really has a lot to offer to someone in the modern day anymore. It's just a simple curiosity.

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