I like the setting but even for 1986 this game a lil rough though. Hitboxes are roughly defined, Sayo-chan moves at a very laxidasical pace which makes avoiding things difficult (if the guys that cling to you and mess up your movement touch you, you're already dead). The game also likes to just absolutely throw shit at you from all directions at seemingly random and has plenty of classic "pay up sucker" difficulty spike arcadeisms to it as a whole. Definitely make sure to set the dip switches to the easy mode and/or use save states to make the game much more comfortable. Probably better to just give the SNES sequels/reboots/whatever a play instead of this, cuz unless you are historically curious to play this, its just a pretty standard difficult 80's arcade game painted with a nice youkai setting.

As one would expect from this era of shoot-’em-ups, or shmups as most people refer to them as, they mostly consist of one type of shmup: ones with a sci-fi theme, usually involving a space ship shooting whatever comes in your way in some kind of space setting. Of course, there have been slight alterations of this around this time, such as implementing pretty bizarre enemy and environment choices, which can be seen something in Gradius, or even having sub-genres of shmups like the cute-’em-up to change things up drastically, like with Fantasy Zone or TwinBee. However, they usually all still involve you controlling a space ship and shooting stuff, and while there are some that don’t have you controlling one, they usually still limit you to the plane that most of these games are stuck in. That is, until one game known as KiKi Kaikai came along to change that up, providing similar shmup gameplay while changing up the style drastically.

I hadn’t heard about this game until a couple of months ago, where I found out that it was the very first entry in the Pocky & Rocky series. I had dabbled in a couple of those games in the past, and I found them to be pretty enjoyable, so I decided that I would go ahead and take a look at the first game in the series to see how it holds up. After playing through most of it (more on that later), I found it to be enjoyable… but not much else. It is an alright game, and definitely unique for the genre at the time, but there are several aspects that hold it back from being all too good, as well as keeping me from finishing it.

The story is about saving a bunch of gods from a group of youkai, which is funny to me, thinking about this random girl being the only one that would be able to save the gods from their impending doom, the graphics are pretty good, not only holding up well in general, but also providing a unique environment and style for this type of game, which I will further discuss later on, the music is alright, but for most of the game, you will just be hearing the same two tracks over and over again, and they are good, but there is not that much variety to be found here, the control is decent, giving the player a lot of options for defending themselves against oncoming threats, although I wish I could have a faster movement speed, and the gameplay itself is simple, yet engaging with how it presents itself, but it doesn’t succeed in keeping your attention long enough to make you want to keep going.

The game is an alteration on your typical shmup, where you take control of Sayo-chan, who I will be referring to as Pocky for this entire series because shut up, you will travel through a set of very similar stages, defeat many, and I mean MANY, enemies that will come at you with several choices for attacks, getting powerups and different kinds of weapons along the way, and take on plenty of appropriately themed bosses that will put you to the test. This is all pretty familiar stuff, but this game does differ from other shmups and games in general in several ways. For one thing, rather then being on an auto-pilot like progression for the entire game, you are given full control of where you can go, moving around the whole environment in 8 different directions, which is nice, as you do get more control over where you go and shoot, but the game makes sure it doesn’t get too easy. Not to mention, instead of just having a projectile weapon, you also now have a close-range weapon that you can use to swipe away your foes, which doesn’t really seem that useful at first, but trust me, you will NEED this weapon for a lot of the challenges that you will face throughout the game.

Ignoring all of that though, the one main draw that makes this game much more interesting compared to other shmups at the time is the setting and charm of the game. The entire game takes place entirely in one huge Asian village, with plenty of set pieces, enemies, bosses, and even your main weapon are all themed around Japanese structures and mythology respectively, and it works very well in drawing the player in. Sure, it may not be as detailed or inviting as future games in the series, but for what we got here, it is very nice to see, taking on all of these different creatures that you may or may not know about, and learning a little more along the way. At least, for those who aren’t familiar with Japanese mythology anyway.

Now, with that being said, it isn’t all that great by any means, as there was a reason why I never ended up finishing it: arcade syndrome. I have made this a consistent point to bring up whenever I talk about arcade games on this website, primarily because it does become an issue when it is abused heavily, and for the case of this game, it certainly is abused heavily in several less then preferable areas. While the first few stages are fine enough, from Scene 3 onwards, the game CONSTANTLY throws enemies at you, with you constantly being surrounded, and you needing the instincts and reflexes of a god from Japanese culture to take them on. It may not sound that bad, but trust me, it was ABSOLUTE HELL getting through some of these stages. Eventually, I decided to stop playing though because of the boss for Scene 7, who was way too fast at points to where I couldn’t avoid them, and I could barely tell if I was doing any damage or not. At that point though, based on what I saw from a longplay, I had already seen pretty much all that the game has to offer, as there really isn’t much waiting afterwards. And trust me, there is no way that I am gonna replay through the game just to get through one more pointless stage.

Overall, despite the ball-crushing difficulty that plagues almost the entire game, it is a pretty unique take on the shmup genre, especially for the time it came out, and it is good to check out in case you need some time to kill, but not really anything that I would sit down and continue playing for a long time. I would recommend it for those who wanna see where Pocky & Rocky started, or for those who want a different type of shmup, but aside from that, there are plenty of better options out there. Although, there aren’t too many other games out there that let you slowly kill a blue fox demon, so it has that going for it, I guess.

Game #314