Bokushou Yoshimoto Shingeki - This is a short and easy platformer. It's a Hudson game, and was their second TG16 attempt at a platformer starring a real comedian, after the successful 1987 title JJ & Jeff (Kato-chan & Ken-chan). However, that's a much better game than this one is, despite releasing seven years earlier than this 1994 effort, and being on a HuCard instead of a Super CD as well. This game is really, really easy; that its its main flaw. There's just almost nothing here! The game makes somewhat weak use of the Super CD format, too. This feels like a HuCard game with some CD audio and voice acting at times. The game is Hudson's last platformer for the system, and it might be their worst. It certainly is the easiest; I beat the game the first time I played it without getting a game over, and the game has no difficulty level options either. There are only six or seven levels, with minigames at the end of each one, and that's it. The game is broken into levels, each themed differently -- so there's a wild west level, etc. Each level is a separate stage show by the comedian protagonist, essentially. There are some bits of voice acting here and there, in Japanese of course; I imagine this game would be better if you know the language, because at least the humor would all make sense. I often get the sense that this game is more about the comedy than it is gameplay, though there's not a LOT of comedy either -- just short bits before levels, and during them on occasion. The humor that I could understand is mostly pretty dumb stuff too, which doesn't help. After each level, there's a minigame. These minigames substitute for boss fights. In one, you play rock-paper-scissors, and the winner then throws food at the other players' face. That's the level of the comedy here. That would be okay if the game was challenging and fun like JJ & Jeff is, though; that game's loaded with really stupid humor, but it makes up for it with tough classic platforming gameplay. In this game though, the minigames are often amusing, but the levels are so insubstantial that the game feels lacking. Only the last level presented any challenge at all, and even that wasn't hard! It's kind of sad when even a quiz/platforming minigame is easy for someone who can't read Japanese to beat on their first try... just get to the top first, and it doesn't matter how many times you choose the wrong answer! And getting to the top first is easy, even though this is one of the last challenges in the game. Oh, and as for the graphics, it looks okay, but not really any better than Hudson games from four years earlier. While everyone else showed graphical improvement in their platformers over the early '90s, Hudson was pretty much stuck in neutral up until at least '95. Too bad. There's very little parallax in this game, relatively few enemies most of the time which are almost no threat to you, and not much that really explains why this is a Super CD either. I do like the few places where you have multiple routes, and the stage going down a river looks kind of nice, but still, this game could, and should, look and play a lot better than it does. This game is Hudson's only Turbo CD-exclusive platformer that isn't an action-RPG, and it's thoroughly mediocre at best missed opportunity.
So yeah, this is a somewhat disappointing game. I went in with low expectations, and the game was about as subpar as I expected. Too bad. If you want a much better sidescrolling game published by Hudson in 1994, get anything else they released that year -- the Westone action-RPG Blood Gear for Turbo CD is pretty good, for example. They had good platformers on Nintendo p[latforms that year, too -- Adventure Island IV (Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima IV) for NES, Super Bonk for the SNES, Bonk's Revenge for Game Boy are all from '94; those games are where their main platforming focus went that year, clearly.
