I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game. It's a visual masterpiece, with beautiful pixel art and colors, and extremely fluid animation. The story is also quite touching and kept me engaged the entire time. The gameplay is fluid and fun, and gets progressively more varied and interesting as your kit grows and more enemy types are introduced.

With that said, I do have a couple of gripes. The game can be a bit janky at times, just due to the nature of platforming and movement abilities, but it's not too much of an issue. I have more of an issue with the level design, as you will spend a good chunk of time in this game walking back and forth, and you don't walk very fast. Also, switching between colors isn't the most seamless transition, and the boss fights are kind of abrupt difficulty spikes. But, everything is manageable, and nothing dampened my experience enough to make me not like the game. I think it's definitely worth playing until the end.

Sights & Sounds
- The 80s are alive and well in Narita Boy. The music and visuals really hammer home that point
- The pixel art is gorgeous, particularly the backgrounds. The devastated sci-fi environments you traverse all feel distinct and storied, each with their own palette and fine details
- Unfortunately, there's a slightly annoying CRT filter over all that gorgeous artwork that plays into the 80s veneer while diminishing all the effort that clearly went into the art
- I really hope you like droning synth music, or else the soundtrack is going to wear on you. I found it appealing in that Stranger Things vein, but it may not appeal to all tastes. If you play to the end, at least, you get a fun J-Pop theme song to cap things off

Story & Vibes
- The story has a fairly interesting premise. The developer of a video game is attacked by the villain of his creation, causing him to lose his memories. It's up to the legendary Narita Boy to save the game world and restore his creator's memories
- As you play, you'll find shrines containing the memories of the creator, which will gradually explain the relationship between Narita Boy and the programmer who created him
- The narrative surrounding the in-game world isn't quite as interesting. You mostly just navigate from objective to objective as directed by the Motherboard. It's a little dull, but at least the gameplay is fun

Playability & Replayability
- Nariata Boy largely plays as a beat 'em up with puzzle platforming sections
- Despite starting the game with no combat capabilities at all, the combat soon becomes the focus of the gameplay and fortunately feels pretty good. The controls are tight, and your attacks feel weighty
- After getting the Technosword, you begin with a basic combo, charge attack, and "shotgun" attack that basically serves as a powerful horizontal ranged option
- You'll eventually get a jump attack and dive attack, but these are only helpful against certain mobs. Additionally, you'll find your basic combo, dodge, and jump can solve most combat
- Despite combat feeling good, you wind up fighting a lot of the same mobs over and over again. It can feel a little tedious at times. Luckily, you can get rechargable screen wipe attacks to speed things up, and boss fights inject some much needed variety. They're still button-mashy, but at least they require pattern memorization and careful dodging
- Platforming feels secondary to all the combat, and once you get used to the floaty jump, getting around isn't too hard. There's nothing that'll require more than a single attempt or two to get past
- The puzzles are also fairly simple. It boils down to symbol and color memorization

Overall Impressions & Performance
- The game comes so close to being good. The combat feels like it's so omnipresent simply to pad out the length of the game. Big waves of tanky enemies get boring after a bit. It took the shine off the otherwise fun combat. Similarly, the CRT monitor definitely detracted from the visuals. It would have made more sense if it disappeared when you were in the game world
- This was a really good Steam Deck title. It's well-suited for handheld play and ran very well

Final Verdict
- 7/10. In all, it's a good experience with some definite 80s style. It plays well and sounds good, but there are some annoying gameplay and visual aspects that diminish what could have been a better experience

Difficult: 3/10
Time to platinum: 10-15 hours
Platinum N°: 110

The game is a 2D action and platform game where we control Narita Boy, the hero who must save the Digital World from the evil Stallions and recover the memories of the Creator.

You must explore the Digital World finding upgrades, diskettes that serve as keys and fighting various types of enemies.

The pixel art and the music are wonderful, it even has a musical theme. The visuals with that style of monitor from the '80s are perfect and combined with the pixel art they are a visual delight.

The trophies are pretty straightforward and almost all of them come out as you progress through the story, but there are a couple that are missable and are related to unlocking a special memory of the Creator.

A game that i enjoyed so much and for lovers of indies and pixel art, i recommend that you do not let it pass (it's on sale on psn right now).

I really wanted to like this game. It's beautiful with a very cool faux retro tron presentation that looks SO cool.

Sadly I can't say the same about the rest of it. Despite the short runtime I felt ready to be done with this game fairly quickly. Every area/level boils down to you running around and talking to NPCs who spout a ton of nonsense to you before doing the same boring combat over and over. The combat feels weirdly stiff and your pool of abilities is small. You've basically seen it all fairly early on and there's no good hook to keep you interested.

The game suggests the world is open for exploration but this is definitely not a metroidvania. I got locked out of certain collectibles and the 'good' ending without realizing it because I had the wrong expectations about the game and couldn't return to previous zones.

While the visual and audio presentation is absolutely gorgeous, it does not make up for the ultimate video game problem: it's just boring to play.

Buen juego con una banda sonora increíble, muchos enemigo diferentes, buena animación en combates (aunque cuesta acostumbrarse a los saltos), y momentos bastante épicos dada la alta calidad visual que tiene todo el título. Ahora, el juego avisa que los epilépticos tengan cuidado y joder si deberían tenerlo. Hay luces estroboscópicas en muchas ocasiones que hasta a mi me han dado algún dolorcillo de cabeza. En las 6 h que dura aproximadamente introduce unos 60 millones de términos, arriba abajo, lo cual hace que muchas veces leas y no te estés enterando del todo a que coño se refieren. Quitando eso, no es un juego difícil, pues incluso si mueres te carga la partida con toda la vida al lado de donde has muerto. Eso si, el juego consiste en ir a un sitio y coger la llave A para abrir la puerta A y detrás está la llave B, para abrir la puerta B y así todo el rato. Le metes en medio colorines, enemigos, y ya estaría.

Ah, el final es bastante abierto, así que si eso te molesta pasa del título.

I happened to be lucky enough to find a physical Limited Run copy of Narita Boy at my local game store. Was it worth the $60 I paid for it? Sadly, no. BUT THAT BEING SAID…I still really enjoyed this game. When I wasn’t confused by its lackluster Metroidvania-like progression and infuriating combat system, I was awed by its insanely dope artstyle and animations, banger soundtrack, and lore that made me feel like a kid discovering an all-expansive world again. Studio Koba clearly put a lot of love into the Digital Kingdom of Narita Boy, so I hope if they get around to making a sequel, they can improve upon what they’ve made here and produce a kickass game. I truly believe that if they spruce up the combat and exploration, “Narita Boy 2” could become one of the indie greats. I almost feel bad for rating it as “low” as I did, but hey, 3 stars is above-average in my eyes.

Pros:

- I didn’t expect myself to get as immersed in the lore and world of Narita Boy as I did. The basic plot is that the Creator (a game developer) loses his memories to an evil sentient program in the game he designed, and you, as Narita Boy, must travel throughout the Digital Kingdom (the game world) to defeat the Stallions (hostile programs) and reassemble the Creator’s memories. The kicker here is that all of the NPCs that you meet in the Digital Kingdom are fully aware that they are in a simulated environment, and have taken to studying its source code in a techno-religious fashion. That’s just objectively awesome. Like, maybe I’m easily entertained, but like, c’mon.

- All the residents of the Digital Kingdom worship the ‘Trichroma’ and venerate the ‘Motherboard’ (who is your quest-giver by the way) and have little dialogue quirks like speaking in code (like, JavaScript type code) when they’re on the verge of death or referring to each other as ‘instances’. NPCs from different locations have different ways of looking at the source code and will mention areas that the player may or may not get to see. It really made me feel like this world was much larger than it actually is, in the same way that the book Ready Player One does. I ADORED it.

- The actual progression of the story is nice too. Most of it is your standard action hero journey stuff, but Narita Boy leans into it a lot so it never feels cheap. You also get to view the Creator’s memories that you find, and they tell an admittedly emotional story, though nothing super life-changing or anything. It definitely made me speculate a lot on his relation to his creation.

- The artstyle of this game is utterly fucking spectacular. It’s the artstyle of classic retro side scrollers, but what you saw in your imagination while you played them rather than what was actually on screen. It’s vibrant and has that hazy, dreamlike feel of CRT computer screens (with the rounded corners on the display to boot!). And the animation is just buttery smooth, it is genuinely so impressive.

- The clean style of the combat animations is probably one of the only good things I can say about that system. The attacks themselves look amazing; they have this weighty but smooth animation that works great with all the enemy death animations and makes you feel like you’re cutting through bamboo like a samurai. You’ve also got a shotgun that shoots laser beams and that’s just sick. Animation is what made the combat tolerable (see cons for everything else about the combat).

- And the soundtrack? Certified slapper. Salvinsky (the composer) walked into the studio and wrote nothing but Ws. Take chiptune EDM and vaporwave and put it in a blender, then add a bit of rock guitar, choral arrangements, and corny retro theme songs and you’ve got the Narita Boy soundtrack. I beg of you, PLEASE give this a listen. Stallion Threat, Techno-Sword, Narita Boy Theme, and Saving the World all go so hard.

- Now, because I really don’t like the combat of this game, I didn’t find many of the boss fights all that good. Some were just ‘fine’, and one I’ll mention in the cons section is soul-suckingly agonzing. But there were a few I actually really liked: Black Rainbow, Hex, White Noise, and the final boss fight were all very enjoyable, partly because the soundtracks of the same name were also great (listen to those too!). All the boss fights (and all the enemies for that matter) are also animated insanely well and that increases the fun as well. It’s no coincidence that these fights are also the fights where I felt like I had multiple options to approach them from.

- A minor praise here, but I liked the end credits sequence. The music was great and the art team made detailed pixel arts that (presumably) depict some of the developers and fans interacting with Narita Boy.

Cons:

- While I did praise the story, I will admit that a good portion of the lore is told to the player via large text boxes. There certainly is some environmental storytelling but it’s hard to discern with the pixel graphics at times. The dense dialogue in this game is made worse by the fact that most NPCs can only be spoken to once, meaning if you forgot what they said you’re out of luck. Naturally this can have dire consequences on your ability to progress.

- Exploration can also use some work. While I found a lot of the environments really aesthetically pleasing to walk through, Narita Boy is very linear and has a lot of areas that amount to little more than pretty loading screens while you walk to the next area. There is also no ability to backtrack into a House (kind of like levels) once you’ve left, meaning if you miss one of the four floppy disc collectibles to unlock a bonus Creator’s memory—oops, time to play the whole game again.

- Conceptually, I like that the game put you in a lot of situations where you would be wise to start picking up a pen and paper and writing down tips. I think it’s meant to invoke an era before online guides, where the rumors you heard on the playground at school meant getting an edge in your game. That’s being said, it just does not work here. Writing down codes for portals is fine I guess, but not having reference tools like an enemy bestiary or even a map is brutal. I constantly forgot the strategy to beat certain enemies and just had to rely on trial and error to defeat them, which with this game’s combat, made the experience a lot worse.

- Okay, I’m not going to hold back on the combat system. It is just not good. First, while all the abilities look really nice, a lot of them are really useless. The shoulder bash is just a dash with pitiful damage, and there’s no reason to use it over actually dashing and attacking. The downstab (a ground pound) is also basically useless and is more likely to get you killed since you lose all forward momentum when you do it.

- The summons and wildfires are a different breed of redundant. ONE summon is useful and a good game mechanic. THREE of them that ALL DO THE SAME THING just from different sides of the screen is pointless. There were exactly ZERO situations where the side of the screen the attack came from mattered.

- Wildfires (buffs that increase damage to enemies that match the wildfire color you have) are even more useless. Not only do they take time to activate (which can get you killed), but all three do the exact same thing. See an enemy with a yellow fire animation over their head, you use yellow wildfire. See one with blue fire? Blue wildfire. Red? You guessed it. This truthfully isn’t that bad until later in the game. This square-peg-square-hole-ass combat system gets even worse when there are multiple enemies with different wildfire types, and you need to dedicate a whole button press (that FREEZES YOU IN PLACE DAMMIT) to “un-wildfire”. Why you can’t just immediately switch from one type to the other is beyond me.

- What I’m about to say next might be a skill issue, but I’ll die on this hill. While enemies in this game get stronger, and encounters get longer, I never felt like I as a player got stronger. You never get a longer health bar, you never get a higher shotgun ammo capacity, and you never get more Trichroma energy (used for summons and health regen). Most of the abilities you get like the aforementioned shoulder bash, summons, downstab, and wildfire didn’t have much application in combat, save for the enemies where shoulder bashing their guard is literally the only way to defeat them.

- Mini-rant time but the train segment and the Glove bossfight can go to hell. That part of the game is so hard for absolutely no reason. Clown me all you want but that was just way too brutal. Like five different encounters before you got to an autosave point, meaning if you died you had to do it all again. That brute enemy with the big shield you can only bait into a vulnerable stance by dodging through him sent me back too many times. And the Glove is actually harder than the final boss. I’m really glad that the final boss fight was really enjoyable, because if the Glove was the final boss I would have rated this game even lower.

- One final thing about the combat: I think it would have been a better idea to allow players to use the D-pad (on console at least, I don’t know what PC controls are like) to control movement and combat. Directional controls aren’t as enjoyable using a stick since it's easier to mess them up.

- Okay, now I’m done with the combat. Sorry if that sounded a little toxic; I tried my best to stay objective while still being entertaining. One small nitpick left: I wish the button prompts were in pixel art style instead of being rendered as vector graphics. It would have fit the atmosphere better. Also, this isn’t really a con but when this game warns you about photosensitive epilepsy, heed its warning because DAMN there are a lot of flashing lights.

Objective rating: 3 stars
Subjective rating: 4 stars

I played this for ~90 minutes (past the second boss) before I just gave up. I could forgive the overly long and meaningless text info dumps, or the meaningless open areas where all you do is move to the next area, or the terrible level design which requires back tracking in a non for literally no describable reason, I could forgive all and push through to see what it was cooking if the combat wasn't so boring. I want to like it because the art and the music, and the atmosphere seems cool, but the combat man, it's just... it feels like a worse version of hollow knight. And not even like peak hollow knight but like early early game hollow knight.