Reviews of Super Bikkuri Man, Go! Go! Hitchhike, Rockman World 2 (Megaman 2) & Flappy Special.
My name is Ray Larabie, and I’m talking to you from Nagoya, Japan, where it’s hot and humid. You don’t even need to buy grapes here, you just… open up a box of raisins. Welcome to episode 18 of Game Boy Crammer. Today I’ll be reviewing Super Bikkuri Man (it’s a platformer centered around some stickers you put on your forehead). We’ve got a board game for kids about hitchhiking (kids gotta learn). And a sequel, Rockman World 2, also known as Mega Man 2. A platform puzzler called Flappy Special (which was also my nickname in high school). Let’s start the show.
Super Bikkuri Man Densetsu no Sekiban. A Japanese-only game that came out in late 1992 by Yutaka. Densetsu no Sekiban refers to, like, a sticker hero. Kind of a card sticker legend. Super Bikkuri Man was a snack you’d buy for 30 yen at a general store, and it was kind of like a peanut butter Kit Kat. And inside this package, you’d get a random little card, a sticker that you’d stick on your forehead, okay?
So you’d stick this thing on your head, and then, uh, there’s some kind of game. I don’t understand. I tried to ask around, but I don’t know anybody in the right age group that would remember this. This card game ended up as an anime series, and a bunch of video games. There was a- on Super Famicom, there was a fighting game based on this, and I believe it was a fighting game on the Super Famicom.
Super Bikkuri Man is a platform game. Um, you have a fairly large character. You can walk and jump, punch, and sometimes you can shoot and use a shield. The levels are fairly short. You walk from left to right, collecting power-ups, which give you health, or let you transform into a slightly better character.
And I mean slightly. The enemies are kind of random crap. Your character can crouch, you can jump, you can- To do the barrier move, you have to hold up and B, and then you’ve got kind of a shield thing, depending on what character you have. And then there’s one character that lets you float around, so you can fly over stuff.
Unlike most games, you hit select to pause, and you hit start to change your character, which, um, doesn’t make any sense, but it should be the other way around. Anyway, you hit select, and you can change which character you are. Many times I’ve accidentally changed characters because I wanted to pause the game.
Your basic character is- has a punch. There’s no shoot. The punch is kind of, hmm, I don’t know if you’ve ever played a game where you can hit the punch button really rapidly, and it’s just bap bap bap bap, but you can really punch fast. This is one of those games, so it doesn’t feel very much like punching, but it does help you kind of cheat a bit sometimes.
You can- if you need to defeat an enemy, you can just rapidly hit the button really fast. You can get a little more power out of it. When I say you can transform into different characters, you know, if you go up a level, you go to sort of the next character, you can shoot, but you can only shoot, you know, maybe a few centimeters in front of your character.
It gives you- basically gives you a slightly longer punch. You know, you can’t shoot right across the screen. It’s barely an upgrade. This is not a game where you die in one hit. You know, you do have a health meter, and you can power it up, but the power-ups are sometimes a little bit hidden, but you can- it’s not too hard to figure out.
There are level passwords. Like I said, there’s only five levels. You know, when you have a game that only has five levels, what do you do to make the game longer? You make it impossibly hard, and that’s what they’ve done here. The first level is a breeze. The first boss is, well, a little bit challenging, but not really.
It’s just a- it’s an elephant on a jetpack that bounces around the screen in a pattern. Then it gets crazy. It’s one of these games that you might see on the Angry Video Game Nerd, where everything is completely unfair. Um, one of the reasons I think they gave you a health bar in this game is because they designed it in a way where, many times, it’s impossible to get through something without just taking hits and walking through it.
Even on the third or fourth level, you’ve got enemies that are as difficult to defeat as a boss. So you’re just walking through this hallway, and this robot comes up, and you have to punch it, like, 60 times to kill it. It’s ridiculous, and the collisions are so unforgiving. You- I mean, you don’t even touch something.
It just comes near you, and it takes- you take damage. You never really know how close you can get to something. It’s just- it seems like the odds are always stacked against you. It feels really unpolished. Here’s a good way, if you’re a game designer, to stretch a level. I’m being sarcastic. If you go one of two ways in a level, is- is a stairway going up, a stairway going down.
You follow the stairway going up, you go through all kinds of danger, you get to a doorway at the top, and you end up back at the start of the level again. So, it’s trial and error. Sometimes you’re just gonna loop around. And I had one point where I was just- I mean, I never finished the game. I got to stage four, and I just got into an endless loop.
I went into a door, and came out another door, and I kept going through the same hallway over and over and over, being careful not to lose my health, and eventually, you know, entropy wore me out. A war of attrition. Oh, I went through the same hallway so many times, beating up the same stupid robot.
I don’t know how many there were. Just the design is so bad. It’s hard to tell what you’re supposed to kill. There’s one enemy, it’s sort of a goofy little muppet. You beat it up, it ends up as a smaller, faster muppet, and then you beat it up again, it ends up as this little thing on the floor that you can’t kill, and you have to- that ends up harming you a lot.
You have to kind of run out of the way, and then run into another enemy that you don’t have enough time to kill before this thing attacks your feet. You may as well just jump over the first one and forget it, or just walk through and take one hit. There’s so many situations in this game where it’s advantageous just to walk right through something and take the hit.
I would say the only people who should get this game are people who make a living doing hilarious, angry game reviews, because there’s no other reason to get this game. Um, unless you want to have every Game Boy cartridge, there’s- this- this should be one of the last ones you get. Luckily, it was only three bucks, so I won’t- I won’t- not out that much.
If you are looking for it, look for DMG-CYJ, and you will find it. But now I’m really interested in trying one of those Bikkuri Man Snakes. I wonder if they’re still around. Go, go, Hitchhike! This game was released by J-Wing slash Ocarina System in 1998, only in Japan. It’s a board game. I- I don’t think a lot of kids were happy with go, go, Hitchhike.
I- At first I thought, maybe it’s a language barrier thing? No. I played this thing a lot. This thing is just terrible. It’s like a, mmm… It’s like a Snakes and Ladders kind of board game. I guess, like, um, Life or Sorry? I don’t know. You- You’re supposed to go from Athens to London, and you have a year to do it.
Uh, what’s the skill here? You roll a roulette wheel. So basically, you’re rolling the dice. Oh, you failed to hitchhike, or you roll the dice, and yay, you hitchhiked, and you go ahead on the board a little bit. Very little. I don’t think there’s any skill involved. Like, I tried playing this, and it just seems to be a random kind of board game.
It’s really not much of a game. So even if you can read the Japanese, uh, I don’t think you’re gonna have a great time playing this. I can’t imagine even kids having much of a fun time with it. You really are just rolling the dice and going around a board. There doesn’t seem to be any minigames or anything like that.
You’ve got this deadline. I mean, you’ve got a time limit. You have to finish the game. So you could play just fine and then just sort of run out based on not having rolled the roulette wheel enough. So if you do buy this game, you’ll have to replace the battery. If you’re a real completist and you want to collect every Game Boy game, go ahead and get it.
Otherwise, there’s no reason to get Go Go Hitchhike. If you are looking for it, DMJ-AJHJ-JPN is what you want to search for, and you can find it. No thanks. Next to a big review. Rockman World 2 by Capcom, also known as Mega Man 2. This was released at the end of 1991 in Japan and early 1992 in Europe and the US.
Mega Man is a platform game. For more information, go back to my previous review of Rockman World. As its name suggests, the second Mega Man game to come out for the Game Boy. This is not a port of Mega Man 2 for the NES. It’s a different game, but it’s got a few bosses from Mega Man 2 and some from Mega Man 3.
This is the first Mega Man game in the Game Boy where you can have the slide, and it’s actually used a lot in the levels to get to areas that you couldn’t normally get to. And this is the first one where you get your little dog. The dog’s name is Rush. When you beat some of the bosses, you get to use Rush as a weapon.
You just select it on your weapon screen. You can call him to help you do various things. Another big improvement in this game is the save game. This game does not have a battery, but it has password saves. But in the original game, if you remember, you could only save for the first four bosses, and then there was another level where you had to fight four more bosses, but you couldn’t save there.
So you had to basically beat the second set of four bosses all in one shot, and the final boss level. In this one, you can save your game through all eight bosses. In some Mega Man games, you have a choice of eight bosses at the beginning. Well, this one, you still have four, you beat those four, and then there’s another four, you beat those, and then you have access to the final level.
The graphics are about the same as the first game. I don’t see any major improvements there. I don’t mention the music in my reviews that much. Unless it’s really great or really distracting, it’s not worth mentioning. I thought I’d mention it because, you know, if you have played the NES version, this one is very disappointing.
A lot of the classic Mega Man music is not there, and it sounds pretty binky. What really stands out about this game, compared to all the other Mega Man games, is the difficulty level. This one is pretty easy. It’s pretty quick to blast through. At first look, it feels really hard. Like, if you try some of these levels, and I assumed it was very hard when I first tried it.
I never read up on it, and I just picked it up and played it, and I thought, wow, this is pretty hard. It’s not. You just have to start the Metal Man level first. The Metal Man level will give you access to, like, a saw blade weapon, and it’s very powerful, and it’ll let you blast through all the other levels.
Not everything, but that’s the key. Really, if you start the other levels first, it seems like… Even the Wood Man level at the beginning is brutal, but then when you get the saw weapon, it’s easy to breeze right through it. The saw weapon is pretty powerful, and you can shoot in different directions.
A lot of enemies that are really frustrating with the regular arm cannon, you can just kind of hit them before they even get close to you with the saw weapon. Some of the levels seem even too short, like on the Wood Man level. By that time, you probably have your submarine. You see your dog turns into a submarine.
Then you can just kind of sail under most of the level, and then pop out the other side and fight the boss. Basically, take your regular arm cannon and point-blank the boss, and if you have enough health, you’ll be fine. I really think that if you find regular Mega Man games to be too frustrating and too difficult, this might be a good one to start with.
If you tend to give up on them, this is one you can get through. And plus, you can save at each stage, all your weapons and everything, so… I find the biggest peril in this game is your weapon’s energy. Even your regular arm cannon can run out of energy in this one, unlike the first game. You really need to manage it, because it’s very easy.
I played through a couple of times. The first few times, I got pretty far in and didn’t have a lot of energy for my weapons. Once all your weapons are low, it’s kind of hard to get them all backed up. I don’t want to give you too much detail about fighting the bosses, because sometimes it’s kind of too easy.
But I will tell you, in the final boss fight, regular arm cannon. Okay, here’s all the stuff you’re going to get. You get something called AR, this air shooter. It shoots like these little tornadoes upwards. It’s really good for hitting stuff above. You get something called the Clash Bomb, CL. This is kind of like a sticky bomb.
It sticks on the wall and then explodes after a certain length of time. Hard Knuckle is like a really, really slow shot, but a really strong punch, so you can kill a lot of enemies in one shot. Leaf Shield is really good, actually. It’s WD from Woodman. So when you beat him, you get this, like, a bunch of leaves that rotate around you and protect you.
Once you start moving, the leaves fire off in that direction, doing a lot of damage to anything in this path. MG is a Magnet Missile. On certain enemies, it will attract them. Your standard cannon, the Mega Buster, you don’t have a charge shot like in some of the other guns, so you still don’t have a thing where you hold it down and charge it up and shoot.
No, Metal Blade, that’s the good one. That’s why you want to do the Metal Man level first. And it doesn’t run out that quickly. You can get a lot of shots off compared to some of the other weapons. The Needle Cannon just seems a lot like the Hard Knuckle weapon, but if you hold your button down, it shoots a whole bunch of them.
It’s like they just spray right out. Really handy for bosses and stuff like that. It doesn’t work on all the bosses, but when it does, it’s really great. You can just kind of paralyze them with it. SG is the Sakugan. It is a pogo stick, and you can jump on enemies to attack them. I’ve never used it once, but it looks kind of cool.
Top Spin spins your character around like a top, so it’s like a defensive weapon. If things walk into you, it knocks them out. It’s kind of a timing thing. You let things attack you and just hit it the last second before they get you. And then you have Rush, your handy little dog. He has a whole bunch of stuff.
One is the Rush Coil, RC. Jump on his back, he pops you up in the air. RJ is the Rush Jet. You hop on him, and you can fly around. Really handy for getting those hard-to-reach power-ups. Rush Marine. Don’t forget to use this. When you see water, often you can kind of bypass parts of the level or access things you can’t normally access.
There’s one part of the game where you’re totally stuck if you don’t use your Rush Marine. It shoots, too. You can pick up energy tanks in this game. You can get four of them. This really helps you with the later levels. You know, if you don’t waste them, you save them up. In the final level, if you have a couple of these, you’ll have no problem with the final boss.
You’ll probably have no problem with the final boss anyway. Keep those extra energy tanks around. So that’s Rockman World 2. It’s not the best Rockman, but it’s easy. And even if you’re an experienced player, maybe it’d be good to play if you have a fever or, you know, an upset stomach or something. You’re just not playing in top form.
You can kind of kick back, mellow out, play some Rockman World 2. To find this thing, search for dmg-w2j, the Japanese version, or dmg-w2, or every other version. Let’s do a big review. Flappy Special. It’s not just a game. It’s also my nickname in high school. Now, this game came out in 1990. It was by Evictor Interactive Software.
So it’s an early, early Game Boy game. It came out only in Japan. It’s got 160 levels of single-screen puzzle. It’s a puzzle platformer. You’re this little guy walking around pushing rocks, and you have to push a rock, basically, onto a little flashing platform. But what makes this hard is there’s gravity, so you have to drop the rock.
You can’t just push it where you want. The levels are set up so there’s gaps in stupid places that drive you crazy. You can’t pull the rock. If you get it in a corner, you can’t get it out of a corner. So you’re always thinking about how to get stuff out of corners. You can crush rocks, which sometimes will cause the level to be unable to be completed.
And there’s stupid little enemies walking around trying to kill you. You take these little mushrooms that make them sleep. So you grab these mushrooms that you can throw and control. Get them to hit these guys and make them sleep for a little while. So one thing that’s useful is you can use it to stop stones from falling, or you can crush them with the stones.
All kinds of stuff you can do. Sometimes you just want to get rid of these guys because they’re in the way. Sometimes you can actually use them to solve some of these puzzles. And the puzzles get to be very hard. You definitely get your money’s worth. There’s 160 levels in this game. You’ve got unlimited continues, so you can just blast to anything you want.
Every level has a four-character password. So you’re writing down short passwords and you’re not. You can skip exactly to the level you want. So it’s got a lot of replay value. I mean, 160 levels can last you a long time. Apparently this thing is out on Wii Virtual Console, maybe the NES version of it.
I’m not sure. But it’s come out on a lot of different systems. It’s come out on the Sharp X1, PC-6001, the PC-8001, the PC-88001, Fujitsu FM7, Famicom, MSX, and Wii. So this thing’s out on a lot of systems. For some reason, it’s not well known outside of Japan. It’s too bad because I really enjoy it.
I mean, I saw it and I thought, I never heard of Flappy. It’s definitely one I want to keep and go back to once in a while and play a couple of levels. But some of them are very difficult. The enemies, you’ve got this unicorn. There’s like a little crab. Oh, and one very important thing for finishing a lot of these puzzles is you can kind of push the blocks half a step.
So let’s say you drop a block down. You drop a block on top of it. You kind of push it off so it’s kind of half hanging off the edge. Well, a lot of the puzzles need to be solved with stuff like this. A lot of times it looks like it’s impossible to solve a puzzle, but then you just need to kind of push half a unit with these stones.
And you can kind of make a bridge that way. You can take a gap that’s two, drop a stone down in the middle of it, and then you can push a rock right across it. But the corners are the most annoying thing. When you get a stone in the corner, there’s no way to get out of there. And the other thing you got to worry about is sometimes the enemies can get in the way.
Like sometimes they, especially the destination, sometimes there’ll be an enemy there and you can’t actually push the stone onto it. You can’t push a stone onto an enemy. You have to drop it on an enemy. You know, you think, oh, this guy’s not a problem. I’ll just ignore him. And then at the end of the level, he prevents you from finishing the level.
Where have you been all my life, Mr. Flappy? That’s what you should be asking yourself. Go get Flappy.