It's a Breakout clone for the Game Boy. It's pretty no frills - just piloting a paddle, hitting a ball into some blocks, and racking up a high score. You have some speed control by holding A or B, but there are no power ups or other player mechanics. The variety instead comes from the 24 main stages and 8 bonus stages. Every group of three main stages shares a layout across three variants (standard, moving blocks, and slowly descending), mixing things up in an otherwise short game. It's not fully enough to not feel a bit repetitive, though, a feeling heightened by those moments of your ball not being able to hit that one last block! Worth a try if you happen to come across it, and I'm sure this is more impressive as a launch Game Boy title, but there are better versions of this concept out there nowadays.

Perhaps the most notable thing about this one is the fact that it's technically a Mario game! Mario pilots the paddle, one of the stages arranges the blocks in the shape of Mario's head, and all of the bonus stages are based on Super Mario Bros. characters. It's a neat addition to an otherwise simplistic title.

Playing this game feels like choking on sprite. I love it.

Also on a serious note I think a game with nothing but Mario in a submarine/plane/etc levels would actually be kinda sick? Like I'd play that for sure those levels are the best part of this game.

played on NSO Gameboy (I own the physical game but playing on switch is just easier boohoo)

akira ueda is a guy with quite a resume. at square he would do background/map design for secret of mana and super mario rpg, then at love-de-lic in the same capacity on moon (contact gets understandably compared to earthbound/mother alot but this is perhaps the most relevant 4th wall breaking rpg to talk about with respect to it) and ufo: a day in the life, and then grasshopper manufacture in varied roles on games like flower sun and rain, the shining soul series, no more heroes 2, michigan report from hell, and this. his mixing of charming, plasticky 3d renders and richly detailed 2d art all baked by sunlight for his backgrounds is his distinctive touch, easy to spot in most of these games.

he directed both shining souls and michigan before it, but contact is without a doubt more representative of a total style he has developed. it injects "retro" pixel art into his own more "photoreal" style in a way that mustve been incredibly fresh for 2006 and still looks really slick. the battle system is essentially automatic turn-based like in mmos, with player positioning, item use, and deploying of special skills being the only real tactics on your part. levelling up happens not through winning battles or quests by itself but by simply practicing; use blades to raise your blade stat, cook alot to raise cooking, just run around and your running stat increases, etc. its also full of quirks like a digestion system, in which you cant eat too much food items at once until a set time passes for food items to digest.

the game itself is.... unfortunately kind of a mess with all these elements in it? a bunch of nice ideas that dont add up to much. i dont mind the auto battling itself but you wind up only ever caring about a few stats most of the time and ignoring the majority of the rest, making it feel one note and not encouraging much experimentation. digestion is bypassed almost entirely by buying or cooking potions (which you will rely on a LOT of for bosses and late game areas). side quests are also kinda boring, and areas only allowing one quest at a time made them too annoying to deal with after a certain point (on this note, once you get the core at ft eagle do NOT talk to the guy and girl that appear at the campfire near the start until youre sure theres nothing left in the area to do). id be ok with a lot of this if the story was compelling but it wasnt really...things feel too disconnected and i left it not really understanding the urgency of much of what happens.

i dont think i liked it but it is interesting in certain ways. the music is the best part i think, very underrated work from masafumi takada & jun fukuda and maybe my favorite from the former outside of his suda collabs--if only the battle/sneaking/running away music didnt constantly interrupt the area music. if nothing else contact is intriguing enough that i badly want to try sakura note, the last and only game ueda directed after leaving grasshopper. especially since nobuo uematsu and kazushige nojima were involved too!! but idk if it will ever be translated : (

One of those weird hidden gems we stumble by accident.

Once again i come back to this game, i never finished it but i'm writting this review just in case i finally do after so many attempts, so i'll just edit it in the future.

Contact is certainly one of a kind, this game leaks originality and passion, the atmosphere is great, the setting is comfy yet so strange , the music is just beautiful and set's the mood perfectly. This game presents itself quite well, it's just aestheticaly pleasing and really set's itself apart from pretty much anything that has ever came out before, even from the franchise it obviously draws inspiration from which is the Mother/Earthbound series.
Aside from all the positive aspects from this game there's always an elephant in the room when we talk about experimental video games, which is the gameplay. Contact's battle system can be very clunky at times, you basically wait for the main protagonist to hit the enemy, which leads to confusion since action RPG's usually are more fast-paced experiences. The battles can be also very though, even more with the diggestion gimmick, the character heals by eating but he has a limit of how much he can eat for a period of time (besides it's not that easy to farm heal items). The level up system is also a bit unusual, your stats level up as you use them, so attack levels up as you manage to strike enemies in battle, and vitality goes up as you take enemy attacks and so on, i'm not a fan of this since it's basically what FF2 does and can be very annnoying when grinding and also very broken in long terms.

To sum it up, Contact is one hell of a unique experience held back by it's gameplay's flaws, not really huge flaws but little ones that keep stacking up until the problem get's big enough to make most of those who play it end up dropping the game. But being honest, it's one of those things that require patience to get used to, because once you get used to it the game get's much smoother. Keep in mind that this game is hard and sometimes just not fair, so if you're really having trouble just use save states and grind a bit. Enjoy.