Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Manual Stimulation: Guru Logi Champ (GBA)

In the review I published earlier today of Compile's Guru Logi Champ, a wacky little puzzler released (in Japan only) for the GameBoy Advance in 2001, I described the game as both fun and silly. Unfortunately, its rather long-winded instruction manual is neither of those things.

Actually, I take that back. A select few of its 38 (yes, you read that correctly) pages are well worth shining a spotlight on--such as the manual's front and back covers that can be seen below:


After that, though, you have to flip all the way through to the manual's 30th page to see anything that could even remotely be described as fun or silly.

So, what appears on the 30th page (below)? As far as I can tell, Guru Logi Champ's "good guys." They also appear on the 31st page, by the way.


The characters on the pages below, on the other hand, are the game's troublemakers. Unfortunately, I have yet to come across the green duck-like thing with horns, wings and spiky red underwear.


The following pages don't deal with the game itself, as I'm sure you can see. Instead, they seem to promote a number of Puyo Puyo-branded food products. I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone could tell me what they are.


So, there you have it. I know, this edition of "Manual Stimulation" wasn't as effervescent as the previous two, but I just had to show off the few fun pages that appear in this quirky import's manual.

See also: Previous 'Manual Stimulation' posts

8 comments:

Viewtiful_Justin said...

And the rest? Is it all text? Is it that involved of a game that it needs 30 pages?

Bryan Ochalla said...

For the most part, Justin, the rest of the pages are text and screenshots :| There is one other illustration in there that's possibly worth highlighting, but it's surrounded by so much text that I didn't think it was worth included here.

As for what all of the text is for: I'm guessing it explains the rules of the game, although I honestly don't see why it would take so many words.

Viewtiful_Justin said...

Oh...yeah. I forgot it was all in Japanese. Durr.

Bryan Ochalla said...

Ah, it's OK. It's too bad it's not in English, though, since I really would like to know why the writers of the manual had to use so many words to explain the game!

Paul Darbyshire said...

Wow, the art for this game looks amazing, I'm not surprised you were drawn to it.

If only western releases could be eye catching like this eh...

Is the game itself hard/expensive to come by?

Bryan Ochalla said...

Yeah, both the promotional art and in-game art for this game is great, pablo0151 (I'm going to call you Pablo from now on, OK?).

As for the game being expensive/hard to come by: I haven't looked for it in some time, admittedly, but when I *was* searching for a copy of it, it was both of those things, unfortunately.

If you're willing to pay for it, you could always contact the folks at either gameofjapan.com or genkivideogames.com and see if they'd be willing to hunt down a copy for you.

I've had both of them do that for me in the past (when I absolutely couldn't find a game anywhere else) and I was happy with the result.

Paul Darbyshire said...

My name's actually Paul to be honest...Pablo's just a nickname I go by online!!

I've used Genki in the past happily so I'm going to give them a shout when I've got the money.

That's one dangerous site though, sometimes I think I should skip the mortgage payments and indulge in Japanese rarities instead.

Bryan Ochalla said...

Ah, OK -- I'll call you Paul from now on, if you don't mind :)

Yeah, Genki's definitely a good importer. I actually think I got this game from them, although they actually had it it stock at the time (I didn't have to ask them to find it).

As for it being a dangerous site: Yes! And so is Game of Japan. And eBay! It's a good thing my husband handles the bills -- otherwise I might go a bit wild :P