Thursday, June 12, 2014

It's a cute Japanese puzzler for the GameBoy--so of course I bought a copy!

Those of you who read my last "Shall We Do It?" post may remember that I wrapped it up by chatting about a Japan-only, tile-matching puzzler for the GameBoy called Nontan to Issho: Kuru Kuru Puzzle.

As I suggested there, this Victor Interactive-published title is far from a long-lost treasure. It is cute, though, and it's also a puzzler, which should help explain why I recently hunted down the copy seen in the photos below.

Add in the fact that it's a cute puzzler for the GameBoy and, well, it almost would've been criminal had I not done so.


Anyway, the box art produced for this version of Nontan to Issho: Kuru Kuru Puzzle--another was released for the Super Famicom and was made by the Pokémon devs at Game Freak--is nice enough, if you ask me. 

The sticker remnants in the upper-left corner notwithstanding, of course. (Don't worry, I'm planning to bid them adieu by sending them on a blind date with a bit of Goo Gone soon.)


The cart label's cute, too, of course--although I kind of miss the grinning ant and slug that can be found on the box art. The titular Nontan (the cat) is still grinning like a fool, though, so if that's your thing you probably don't care that the ant and slug have gone AWOL.


As seems to be the case with the packaging produced for most Japanese GameBoy titles, the back of Nontan to Issho's box is pretty barren.

Oh, well, it's not like there's much that can be said about this Puyo Puyo-esque game anyway. "Flip and match cute tiles while controlling cute characters and listening to cute tunes!" Surely that's covered in the smidge of text seen in the photo above?

See also: 'Lucky Monkey? More like lucky me ...'

6 comments:

Justin Difazzio said...

Adorable box art. My gosh.

thegaygamer.com said...

Yeah, it's probably the main reason I picked it up. Well, that, and the in-game graphics are completely adorable, too. And I'm a total puzzler nut. OK, so there are many reasons :P


BTW, I just got a JP GB game yesterday (as in, it was finally delivered) that has box art that's 100 times cuter than what you see here, if you can believe. I'll publish a post about it soon!

Monster_Hunter2882 said...

After all this E3 stuff all over the internet it's nice to an see article about an older game.

thegaygamer.com said...

Thanks, Sam! I was worried no one would care about it, as most folks still seem obsessed with E3. (Which I can understand, really.) Of course, it's possible only you and Justin have cared, but still! Anyway, thanks for the comment :)

finchiekins said...

I only noticed that silly Nontan when i first looked yesterday, but now i see all the other cute animals! I especially like the frog and the bee.

thegaygamer.com said...

Oh, yeah, a bunch of the others are cute, too, if you ask me!