Ganbare Neo Poke Kun review by Sweater Fish

I'm not sure what it was exactly that made me want Ganbare Neo Poke-kun in the first place. The pictures on SNK of Japan's site looked good and I've been known to enjoy a virtual pet simulator or two in my day. What really sold me though, I guess, was that it looked wierd.

It is wierd. Definitely one of the wierdest games I've ever played...it's just...wierd.

Basically, the game can be broken into two sections: the virtual pet simulator and the mini-games. Your goal in the virtual pet sim part is to make the main character, Neo Poke-kun, happy; doing so unlocks mini-games in the second section.

It took me a few days to figure out that the virtual pet sim part is not really a virtual pet sim, at least not like any that I've played. You don't feed Poke-kun; you don't teach, reward or discipline him (though dropping blunt objects on his head can be enjoyable); if he has to go to the bathroom all you can do is watch his agony and pray that he finds the bathroom door. In short, you don't care for Poke-kun in any sense and Poke-kun, for his part, never even acknowledges your existence. Your interaction with him is basically limited to triggering various sight gags in his room which affect his demeanor in one way or another; either making him sad, or angry, or confusing him, or making him happy. Really, since the sight gags are randomized, the virtual pet sim has more in common with a casino/gambling simulator than other virtual pets like Seaman or the Chaos from Sonic Adventure.

By pressing the 'A' button when you're in Poke-kun's room you trigger a "front door" sight gag. Someone or something will ring the doorbell and burst onto the screen; perhaps a sexual deviant will entertain Poke-kun by jumping rope with his nose hairs or maybe a "typical" American with a big, goofy smile on his face will grab our little friend in all his most privtest regions. That's where the gambling comes in, pressing the 'A' button is like pulling the arm of a slot machine and Poke-kun's happiness is like the money you win or lose. And you want to make Poke-kun happy because that's the only way to unlock the mini-games

As much fun as watching a dog poop its doggie-suit is, it's the mini-games that make Ganbare Neo Poke-kun such a great game. There's thirty games total, each one a parody of one game or another from somewhere in the history of video games. Everything is represented from the Pong-clones of the late '70s through platformers and fighters to dating sims and rhythm games. Xevious is reduced to feeding a giant Poke-kun baby, Star Wars Arcade becomes a frenzied escape from tail-wagging doggies, and Street Fighter is stripped of everything but jump kicks (was there ever aything else?). They're just hilarious.

As if that weren't enough, the games are superbly playable, if they didn't have time limits or or if they had more than a handful of levels, most of them would have been considered great games on their own 15 or 20 years ago.

  • Graphics, Poke-kun: A-
    Everything is very clean, clear and detailed, but a few more frames of animation would have been nice.
  • Graphics, Mini-games: A
    Not always great, but then they're no supposed to be; each mini-game re-creates the graphical style of a certain time...and well.

  • Sound, Neo Poke-kun: C+
    Nothing terribly annoying, but certainly not impressive either. Your basic tones and statics and very minimalist music.
  • Sound, Mini-games: A
    Like the graphics, the audio is just like what you would have heard in the original games, from beeps and boops to songs and affects that are a lot better than what you get in the Poke-kun part of the game.

  • Replay, Neo Poke-kun: B+
    Definitely keeps you coming back until you've opened all the mini-games, but even after that you'll find yourself visiting now and then and you'll still see new animations every once in while.
  • Replay, Mini-games: A-
    Like all classics, it's always fun to go back and play them again. If the games didn't have the time limits or if they had infinite random levels, they'd be perfect.

  • Overall: A
    If you love classic pre-crash and 8-bit video games (like me), then you have to have this game. If you dig unusual "humor" and general craziness (again, like me), it's a must buy. If you like both, this game might just change the way you look at the world.