This is a game I read about in Nintendo Power yeaaars ago that at the time was only available in Japanese and the author writing about it hoped would eventually get an English release in some form. Well, it never did, and now that the Wii Shop Channel is gone forever, you technically can't even buy this game anymore (although from what I understand, emulated solutions are possible through some means). A Super Mario Bros. parody made by Sega, it was something really weird and neat-looking to me, and I finally jumped on it when I bought a ton of stuff on the Wii Shop Channel before it went away a couple years ago. I can certainly see why it never got an English release, but I still had fun in the hour it took me to beat it on stream earlier today.

Pole's Big Adventure is the story about the titular character going through six worlds to save his lady love Sharon from the evil bull-like antagonist who has kidnapped her. In five of the six worlds, Sharon is just some poorly disguised enemy character instead of the real thing, and you must go to yet another location to save her. It's all very tongue-in-cheek parody of Mario Brothers mechanically, but stylistically it's also a very loving parody of Famicom games in general.

Mechanically, it's a very standard 2D platformer somewhat reminiscent of Super Mario Bros., but not by much. You can jump, sure, but you don't get any kind of health powerups, and you don't jump on enemies, you shoot them with your shotgun XD. The main gimmick of the game is that it's presented somewhat like a Japanese variety show. Lots of silly, parodical things will happen to Pole and he'll loudly complain about them in a heavy Osaka accent, and the words he's saying appear on the screen in big blocky letters (just like on a variety show). It adds a fun layer on top of the parody already there, and a lot of those jokes (or "neta") are hidden quite well. The game even has a gallery where you can view neta you've found, and it even has a counter in the lower right to count the total you've found in the game. The game even has a world select feature, so going through the game to try and catch all the neta is absolutely the intended gameplay loop if you're gonna spend more time with this game than the hour or so it takes to beat it the first time (as it's not a terribly hard game).

Presentation-wise, it's quite a nice-looking game. The graphics are bright, colorful, and Famicom-y. The animations are a little too smooth to be the real thing, but out of all of the retro-style platformers in last decade and a bit, this one is definitely more on the end of looking like an actual Famicom game. The music is also really nice too. There aren't many tracks, but what's here is pretty boppin'.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Given that to play it now you'd NEED to get it for free, the original 1000-ish yen price tag doesn't really factor in here. The bigger hesitation I have is that you don't NEED to know Japanese to play through the game, but Pole's quips are really one of the main reasons you're showing up. If you can't understand those, you can still appreciate the visual jokes (some of which are even graphical glitches like an old Famicom game would have), but the rest of the humor will remain quite inaccessible. If you're fine with missing that or you can understand the Japanese, then this is a game that may be short, but it's definitely sweet as well.

Weird Wiiware game I stumble across by accident.

It's a side scroll game with shooting mechanics. It's also like, a parody game somehow. I don't understand Japanese neither what is funny to them, but that's the main focus here. Find as many gags as possible, some were funny though.

The gags will result in something you won't expect, some caught me off guard.

It's pretty short and full of randomness you can't but want to know what the next big crazy thing would be.