#kaban chan chirari

[miloscat]

[Review] Kaban-chan Chirari (PC)

Ah, another Umihara Kawase fangame I didn’t know about! Sweet!

Much like Ganbare Natsuki-san, this is a Japanese doujin tribute to the UK series. Unfortunately it follows more traditional doujin distribution channels, via CD-ROM sales, so it’s a little harder to get ahold of. But it’s a very pleasing recreation of the UK formula. Oh, and since the creator is a fan, it also skins the game with characters from the Kemono Friends animal-girl media property. Why not??

It seems to follow in the footsteps of the Shun instalment specifically, with its art style of digitised photo backgrounds, 3D level geometry, and drawn character sprites. There are no enemies or moving platforms, but there is the occasional appearance of another Kemono Friend to interact with; for example, a jumping cat character you can grapple onto that will drag you along. The wire is long, and the controls feel very good; perhaps my skills have also improved after playing all the games, but I found getting around these levels to be within my ability... to a point.

The structure is that of the first two UK games: get through a stage by hooking and swinging from the abstract landscape, with different doors taking you on different routes. There’s a complex map I’m sure, but thankfully no lives system so you can keep on retrying. Normal doors (tyres in this case) are blue, alternate exits are red, so it’s easier to track your route. These routes always end with a final level where you’re required to get the extra collectible: some kind of creature from Kemono Friends instead of the backpack from UK.

What’s nice though is that levels are broken up into categories, which makes runs much more manageable (there’s also the stage replay function for any levels you’ve reached). There’s the tutorial set, normal, and difficult, then the 1.2 update added another “normal” set and a set to train you on advanced techniques. I played almost all the normal levels, but couldn’t clear even the first hard one to see any more.

Which is fine. These kinds of fangames tend to assume you’re familiar with their inspiration and build from there, but I was pleased that so much of the game was within my grasp since I could only ever do about half the levels in the classic games. And as with those games, the skill ceiling is high; the trailer itself should show you that flashy movement is very possible. Not for me though!

[miloscat]

2021 summary

What did I get up to during 2021? Let’s review.

I published a few comic scanlation projects with the aid of my translator Horseypope; the Umihara Kawase spinoff manga from the official guidebook, and Toshihiro Ono’s The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past gaiden one-shot Quark and the Fairy Queen. Both of these I imported the publications of and scanned myself, which is new for me. I also scanlated the Baraduke 2 promotional mini-manga with scans from my friend Gibbon, although the remarkable Kate Willaert has recently done her own excellent version of it.

I’ve continued publishing new pixel art projects on my DeviantArt while cross-posting them here. This year I made fewer artworks but they were much larger, with pixel cast portraits of (among others) the Umihara Kawase series, the X-Men cinematic universe, Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, and my largest ever piece: the expanded Donkey Kong & Friends, with 315 characters!

Podcast output was a little slow, with 3 episodes of the Arcade Era Power Hour with Gibbon, and 5 Eurovision commentaries. My streaming continued to be regular though, with lots of fun games played throughout the year. Game club spurred some mini-series: Tyrian led to an exploration of Compile’s shooters, I looked at some games tangentially related to Umihara Kawase, and the leaked Dinosaur Planet N64 ROM caused me to embark on an inflated months-long journey through Rare-related titles including fan games, Flash ephemera, and lots of fun obscure stuff. This included a complete 7-part playthrough of the excellent fan game Donkey Kong Country: The Trilogy, for which I also participated and won a contest to find a hidden secret! Towards the end of the year I also looked through the back catalogue of Ludosity and Daniel Remar, which was a lot of fun. You can see all the archived streams here.

I tried to tie streams in with my normal gaming choices too, which included Ludosity (hitting all the major points leading up to Slap City), Rare stuff (catching up on their Xbox output and indies inspired by the classics), and Umihara Kawase (the modern instalments and some fan games), but also X-Men movie games, the Castlevania Lords of Shadow subseries, and Metroid (Dread plus fan and inspired games). Somehow my serial playing of faux-retro games remained entirely off-stream. My PC helped with some of these, as well as regular online games with my brother, but otherwise my gaming was well spread among various platforms. I got new component output cables for Xbox and PS2 which look great, oh and a PS5 as well which I’ve mainly used to make playing PS4 games a bit better...!

Now for some awards. “Best fan game/romhack”: DKC The Trilogy, runners up Donkey Kong Land colour patch, Metroid Rogue Dawn, AM2R, Kaban-chan Chirari. The “making me wait” award: Pictlogica Final Fantasy, runner up Age of Calamity DLC. The “in retrospect actually didn’t mind too much having to play half the game again due to a permanent softlock” award: Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2. “Best crossover”: Slap City, runners up Complex Dream (the Chrono Cross event in Another Eden), Lego Dimensions which we continue to play sporadically. “Best original freeware”: Iji, runners up Ittle Dew 0, Ninja. “Least impressive remake”: Link’s Awakening HD, runner up Conker Live & Reloaded. “Best surprise sequel”: Metroid Dread, runners up New Pokemon Snap, Umihara Kawase Fresh, Axiom Verge 2.

Thanks for reading, and here’s to a pleasant and safe 2022 hopefully!