Yeah.
That totally just said "Hebereke's delicious puzzle."
Sunsoft's stable of slightly-off cute things have for us today a board-game style puzzle
compilation, full of... pain.
Let's admit it.
It's about pain.
The pain of waking up on a monday Morning and stumbling into the office, after barely
being able to order my morning chai in intelligible sentences, only to be immediately put to work
doing crosswords in Japanese.
Fortunately, most of the clues are other Sunsoft games, so I was able to put my knowledge of
Alien Syndrome and Ripple Island to use.
I blame Felicity in Worcestershire.
She's obviously behind this plot.
Seriously, who could spot the differences between these pictures on a MONDAY?
I ask you!
In case you're not watching this on a Monday, or some other time when you can, y'know, commiserate
with my plight, lemme lay it out for you.
The moderately absurd cast of Hebereke have taken to this Game-of-Life-style board, to
spin a spinner and travel around, doing a puzzle each time they're brought to a stop.
There are four main styles of brainteasers presented: Spot-the-difference challenges,
crosswords, picture reassembly puzzles, and "find this guy in a crowded area."
That's it.
That's pretty much all you get to go on.
And there's a huge gulf between the difficulties of these things - the crosswords tend to be
a bit on the kanji-intensive side, and the difference-spotting is bleeding miserable
on an upscaled television, while there's no excuse whatsoever, WHATSOEVER for ever failing
the other two games.
Seriously.
Thus, the game becomes less about "Solve the puzzles" and more about "Avoid the ridiculous
ones."
Yeah, good luck with that.
There's a single-player mode that takes place over three maps, and a "Party Mode" designed
for two to five players - yes, five, gotta love those multitaps - which takes place over
the same three maps.
Hey, don't fix what ain't broken, right?
Well.
Don't fix what works to a moderate degree, but still leaves one wanting.
Ultimately, the massive gulf between the "easy games" and the "hard games" makes this whole
package kinda frustrating.
There's really nothing really notable to it: the sound isn't anything to write home about,
the largely static bitmaps that you have to pour over to find some thread out of place
are kinda grainy... it's like Sunsoft realized that they had a real hit in the original Hebereke
AKA Eufouria and then just left it in the open air to shrivel and die.
Granted, this is the same group of people who gave us Mystery of Atlantis, Ikki, and
any number of other soul-crushing aberrations, so I'm not quite sure I'd put it past 'em.
Were I in a situation where I absolutely needed a strange, very Japanese Super Famicom party
game to amuse a group of people... well, I would seriously reconsider my choices in life.
Pull out Itadaki Street, pull out any of those weird-as-hell life simulator games...
Or Bomberman!
Everyone plays Bomberman.
But just remember Hebereke as an awesome platformer, and not for this.
Hebereke's quote unquote delicious puzzles left kind of a bad taste in my mouth; maybe
they just needed some more salt.
Or bacon.
Everything's better with bacon.