Manual Stimulation BONUS: Hello Kitty World sticker sheet

I'm a sucker for games, especially old Japanese games, that come packed with sticker sheets.

Sadly, I don't own too many of these treasured goods. In fact, I can only think of four examples at the moment: Detana!! TwinBee, Loopop Cube: Lup Salad, PoPoLoCrois Monogatari, and Rhythm Tengoku.

Four examples other than the one I'm discussing and highlighting in this very post, I mean.

Funnily enough, I didn't even realize I owned this sticker sheet until I pulled my copy of the 1992 Famicom game out of the closet to scan its instruction manual.

To my utter surprise, stuck inside the pages of the Hello Kitty World manual were the stickers you see here.

Truth be told, I'm a bit miffed this precious sticker sheet focuses entirely on Hello Kitty, aka Kitty White.

Granted, she's the star of the show--er, game--and this sheet only contains eight stickers, five of which are pretty darn small, so the lack of any Mimmy or Tippy stickers makes some sense.

Something that makes a lot less sense: none of these stickers directly refer to Hello Kitty World. (Erm, except the one at the top.) It's almost like Character Soft, the publisher of this Balloon Kid knockoff, just took a few existing Hello Kitty illustrations and slapped them onto the sheet you're ogling now.

All that said, I'd rather get a sticker sheet than not get one, so please don't take what I've written so far to be serious complaints.

See also: scans of the Detana!! TwinBee, Loopop Cube: Lup Salad, and Rhythm Tengoku sticker sheets

Manual Stimulation: Hello Kitty World (Famicom)

I've been a huge fan of Hello Kitty World ever since I first became aware of it well over a decade ago.

This isn't because I adore Hello Kitty, mind you. Although I think she's cute enough, I'm hardly obsessed with her or anything of the sort.



I am slightly obsessed with the Character Soft-published Famicom game that stars Kitty-chan (as well as her sister, Mimmy), however; or at least I've been obsessed with it at various points in the last 10 or so years.

The reason: it's basically a re-skin of one of my all-time favorite GameBoy games, Balloon Kid.



OK, so this Japan-only release from 1992 is more than just Balloon Kid with Alice's sprite swapped out for one that resembles the iconic Sanrio character. It's not a whole lot more than that, though.

For example, the playfield in Hello Kitty World is, or appears to be, much larger than the one in Balloon Kid. Also, the former seems a tad slower than the latter, though that, too, may just be an illusion.



Sadly, I can't tell you how Hello Kitty World's story, which is shared with readers of the game's instruction manual via the pages that precede this sentence, differs from that of Balloon Kid, or even if the two differ at all.



Speaking of the Hello Kitty World's manual, the spreads above and below explain this game's controls, start screen, and more.



And the next two pages of this instruction booklet discuss Hello Kitty World's dearth of collectible items.



I believe the following spread further educates players about how Hello Kitty World works, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

10 unfinished games I want to return to in 2020

Although I've gotten better in recent years at not only playing, but finishing, the games I buy, a few still fall through the cracks. By which I mean I walk away from some titles before I reach their end credits.

I'm OK with that now and then. For example, I failed to beat both Penny-Punching Princess and Umihara Kawase Fresh! in 2019, but I have no interest in returning to either of them.

I also failed to beat Dandy Dungeon, Dragon Quest XI S, and World of Final Fantasy Maxima after starting them last year, but I desperately want to rectify matters in 2020.

Here's why, plus similar info on seven other unfinished games I hope to get back to and wrap up between now and the end of December.

Contact for the Nintendo DS

Contact (DS)--I explored a good chunk of this Grasshopper Manufacture-made game back in 2015. Sadly, I don't remember much about my previous Contact experience other than I mostly liked it. Mostly. (If memory serves, a difficulty spike, or at least a tougher-than-usual boss, irritated me rather severely near the end of my 11-hour playthrough.) That's enough for me to want to give it a second chance, though--especially since I do remember loving its looks.

Dandy Dungeon (Switch)--While coming up with the list of titles that serve as the backbone of this post, it struck me that I rarely walk away from games because I hate them. In most cases, I leave them behind when I go on vacation, when I become obsessed with a book, or when work briefly takes over my life. That first reason is what caused me to drop Dandy Dungeon after putting more than 20 hours into it last year. I've been struggling to go back to it ever since, and I'm honestly not sure why. The only answer I can come up with is that maybe I got all I wanted or needed from the game in the time I spent with it in 2019. Hopefully that's not the case, but I'll find out one way or the other should I manage to boot up my save file again in the next few months.

Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers for the Nintendo 3DS

Dillon’s Dead-Heat Breakers (3DS)--I devoted a good seven or so hours to this bizarre Dillon's Rolling Western follow-up in late 2018, and though I enjoyed what I encountered then, I only played the game for another hour in 2019. Typically, I don't recall why I walked away from it at that point, but I'm pretty sure another game was to blame. Something I do recall is that I was finding Dead-Heat Breakers a bit repetitive around the time I dropped it. Still, I want to know how its curiously post-apocalyptic tale ends, so I'm going to do my best to slip back in the saddle as soon as possible.

Dragon Quest XI S (Switch)--I have a real hit-or-miss history with the Dragon Quest series, which probably goes a long way toward explaining my ho-hum reaction to the initial eight-ish hours of Dragon Quest XI S. For the record, I adored both the first and the ninth game in the series, but found the seventh too long by at least half. Why am I currently leaning toward the latter with XI S? The lone culprit that comes to mind right now is that it's too just sleepy for me. In a way, I appreciate and respect that it's not as peppy as, say, Pokémon Sword and Shield, but I also wouldn't complain if it were a smidge more energetic. Regardless, that shouldn't keep me from Dragon Quest XI S' finish line forever.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the GameBoy Advance

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GameBoy Advance)--Against my better judgment, I started this Final Fantasy Tactics spinoff shortly after I started its sequel. Only one game could survive such an endeavor, and in this case, the one left standing was the DS follow-up. I don't expect to leave my aborted playthrough of the original hanging for long, though. I loved Tactics A2 so much that I spent more time with it than any other game last year, so I'm expecting to feel similarly moony about this precursor.

Great Greed (GameBoy)--I've started this Namco-made RPG numerous times since first becoming aware of it many years ago. None of those playthroughs ended with me watching Great Greed's credit roll, however--despite the fact that I adore pretty much every aspect of it. I especially like its snappy, one-on-one battles and its eclectic soundtrack. So, I'm going to take another stab at it sometime this year. Hopefully this time I'll make it far enough to marry either the king or the chief of bodyguards.

Great Greed for the GameBoy

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)--I put more than 10 hours into Breath of the Wild back in 2017 and 2018, and both stints absolutely thrilled me. Sadly, both stints were rudely interrupted by vacations. As I've already made painfully clear, that's often all it takes the break the spell a game has on me. I always--or almost always--intend to return to these discarded adventures, but only rarely do. I have no idea when or how I'm going to buck that trend with Breath of the Wild, but I promise to try my hardest to make it happen in 2020.

My World, My Way (DS)--I gave over 10 hours of my life to this Global A-made RPG in early 2015. At the time, I was knee-deep into #ADecadeofDS, a blog series I started to celebrate the existence and impressive game catalog of Nintendo's first dual-screened handheld system. As part of that series, I played a DS title for a week--and only a week--and then reported how long I spent with it, what I thought of it, and more. I was so taken with My World, My Way that I ignored my self-imposed "week only" rule and played it for seven more days. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough for me to reach the game's climax. The question is: when (not if) I circle back to it this year, will I start fresh or return to my woefully unfinished save file?

My World, My Way for the Nintendo DS

VA-11 HALL-A (Vita)--I own way too many copies of this cyberbunk-tinged visual novel to have never completed it, but that's the embarrassing truth of the matter. The only way to save face, I guess, is to force myself to finish it sometime this year. The thing I'm most looking forward to re-experiencing during my latest run at VA-11 HALL-A: its sublime OST. I'm pretty sure I could listen to some of its tracks for hours on end without tiring of them.

World of Final Fantasy Maxima (Switch)--Given how long I hemmed and hawed over buying a copy of World of Final Fantasy Maxima, it's amazing I ended up adoring the 26 or so hours I spent with it in 2019. It has its share of flaws, but none of them have bothered me much. In fact, the only thing that's bothered me about this odd Final Fantasy offshoot is the sinking feeling that I'll be completely lost when I jump back into the fray after so many months away. Fingers crossed those fears are proven unwarranted.

See also: Five 3DS games and 10 Switch games I want to play in 2020

Alice in Wonderland for the Nintendo DS: a hidden gem with a few flaws

People have been telling me for years that Alice in Wonderland for the Nintendo DS was one of the dual-screened system's hidden gems.

So, why did I wait until a couple of weekends ago to find out if I agreed with their assessment? Honestly, I dragged my feet on playing this version of Alice in Wonderland up to now because I found its box art repulsive. That's a terrible excuse, I know, but it's the truth. Plus, all that really matters is I eventually pushed my stupid biases aside and gave the game a chance.

Actually, I gave it more than a chance; I finished it--and in three days, no less. What did I think of the seven-plus hours I spent with Alice in Wonderland? The gist is I adored it. It's not without flaw, though, so keep reading if you want the full story on this portable puzzler-platformer.

Five things I loved about Alice in Wonderland

Its art style is surprisingly astounding--Imagine the gothic cartoonishness of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas mixed with the chunky, cel-shaded adorableness of Capcon's Okamiden. That's about what you get, visually speaking, from the DS version of Disney Interactive Studios' Alice in Wonderland. Not exactly what you expected from a throwaway licensed game, right? Me neither. But, boy, did I appreciate the unasked-for effort developer Etranges Libellules put into this 2010 release's aesthetics.

It's no cakewalk--Disney may have published this tie-in to the 2010 film of the same name, which the above-mentioned Burton directed, but it ain't no kiddie game. No sirree. That's not because the few enemies you encounter in Alice in Wonderland are tough to topple, mind you. Rather, it's due to the fact that it's not always easy to figure out where to go or what to do next. On a related note, one of the first things that went through my mind after I started this title was that it would flummox most youngsters. Hell, I think it would flummox most older players, too. I appreciated the challenge myself, but I have a feeling some folks will walk away from it in frustration.

It's the perfect length--One of the main reasons I finally got off my butt and booted up my long-ignored Alice in Wonderland cartridge was howlongtobeat.com suggested it would take me around 10 hours to finish. Anything under 20 hours is especially appealing to me these days, so I was thrilled when I reached this game's credit roll in just over seven hours. If that sounds too short to you, consider this: I'll definitely tackle Alice in Wonderland DS again down the road. Not simply because I enjoyed it the first time around, but because I think I'll enjoy it even more the second time around thanks to everything I learned in my earlier playthrough.

It's more than yet another Metroidvania--At its heart, Alice in Wonderland is a member of the ever-popular Metroidvania genre. But it's a bit more than that, too. For starters, you explore and re-explore the game's multifaceted world map not alone, as you do in most such games, but with a partner (Alice herself) in tow. Also, you don't lead her around as the same character for the whole adventure. At various points, you join forces with three other "guardians" you can switch to whenever you'd like. Even better, each one gives you access to special moves that help you do things like cross gaps, remove obstacles from your path, and see the flipside of a level.

It makes ample use of the DS' touch screen--If you tend to like games that put the DS hardware through its paces, you should love Alice in Wonderland. Pretty much every aspect of this title is controlled via the touch screen. You use it to move the protagonists, fight enemies, interact with the environment, and more. You can even use it to mark interesting locations on the map so you can return to them later. It all works surprisingly well, too--though I'm sure it helps that Alice is a fairly slow-paced game that favors brainpower over reflexes.

Five things I didn't love about Alice in Wonderland

Some might say it uses the touch screen a little too amply--Why? Because you pretty much only use the DS' touch screen while playing Alice in Wonderland. You can't use its directional pad or buttons to control characters or battle baddies even if you want to do so. I can't say that kept me from having a blast with the game, but I also can't say I wouldn't have had an even bigger blast with it if it had allowed me to, say, use my 3DS' circle pad instead of its touch screen to move the white rabbit and his blond, bug-eyed charge left and right.

Fighting enemies isn't much fun--After my first hour or so with Alice in Wonderland, I groaned every single time the background ripped open and baddies poured out of the swirling vortex that tear revealed. The resulting battles never proved to be overly difficult; in fact, I don't remember losing a single one. As a result, I'm not sure why the game includes them--or includes so many of them, at least. In my humble opinion, the overall experience would've been a lot more pleasant if Alice either offered up fewer of such fights or filled them with fewer enemies.

It can be pretty confusing--Alice in Wonderland doesn't always do a great job of explaining how things work. The game's "jigsaw system" is a great example. Early on, I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the puzzle pieces I uncovered during my travels. I eventually figured things out, but I got close to throwing in the towel a couple of times before then. I doubt that was the intention of the title's developers.

I wish the jigsaw system had more depth--This system is seriously cool in theory, if not always in practice. As I just mentioned, you collect puzzle pieces as you traipse across Alice in Wonderland's numerous stages. Whenever you come across a new one, you plop it onto the world map. How you connect it to the existing pieces determines which level, or which part of a level, you can access next. Unfortunately, the aforementioned map is small, so you barely get to explore the potential of this intriguing system before your journey comes to an end.

The soundtrack is a real bummer--Given Alice in Wonderland's visuals (not to mention its Tim Burton connection), I expected its soundtrack to be equal parts ominous and quirky. Instead, it's tepid and orchestral. Don't get me wrong, it's far from terrible, but in my mind it's at odds with the overall vibe of this darkly whimsical adventure.

See also: 'Six reasons all the people who suggested I'd hate A Witch's Tale were wrong'

Raging Loop would've been one of my favorite games of 2019 if I'd played it when it came out

It's funny how frequently the games I least expect to like end up becoming my favorites.

Four cases in point from the last 12 months: A Witch's Tale, Hey! Pikmin, Lapis x Labyrinth, and The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince.

To be honest, I approached Raging Loop with a bit less apprehension than I approached the just-named titles, but only a bit.



I say that because although I always liked the premise of Raging Loop, which is a Groundhog Day-esque visual novel (or VN) set in a secluded Japanese village and mixed with the social-deduction game called "Werewolf," I wasn't so fond of its art style.

In fact, I kept Raging Loop--or Rei-Jin-G-Lu-P, as it's known in Japan--at arm's length due to the latter until I read this old, glowing game-forum post about it.

Although the above-mentioned write-up pushed me to eagerly pre-order a physical copy of Raging Loop, I didn't pop its cartridge into my Switch as soon as it arrived on my doorstep in late November.



Part of the reason for the delay is I planned to race through it in the lead-up to Halloween. (Physical copies were supposed to hit North America on Oct. 22, but didn't actually do so until Nov. 19.) Also, by the time I got my grubby hands on it, I was knee-deep into Romancing SaGa 3. And after I finished that game, I dove right into Heroland.

Forty-plus hours and far too many weeks later, I wrapped up my mostly positive Heroland campaign and looked for something else to play. That's when I remembered Raging Loop--and promptly fired it up.

Honestly, what followed was something akin to a fever dream. For 10 straight days, I was utterly charmed by and obsessed with this visual novel's nail-biter of a story.



Why is Raging Loop's story so darn compelling? For me, the remote, rural Japanese setting was a big part of the pull. It made everything that happened after the protagonist, a mysterious grad student named Haruaki Fusaishi, enters it all the more unnerving and captivating.

Speaking of which, the "everything that happened after" also plays a major role in making Raging Loop such an engaging experience. As I mentioned earlier, it's got a Groundhog Day-esque time-loop thing going on that I'm sure will aggravate some, but for me it added enough twists and turns to that storytelling trope to seem uniquely thrilling.

The characters that help bring Raging Loop's story to life are another standout component of this creepy VN. It'll take you a while to warm up to most of them, if you're anything like me, but once that happens you'll do as I did and root for more than Fusaishi to make it through "the feast" alive.



The contentious art style grows on you after a while, too--or at least it grew on me over time. In the end, I thought Raging Loop's at-times-off-putting aesthetic was a perfect match for its unsettling vibe.

Still, I have a feeling the visuals here won't sit well with some folks. And even those who like them may be turned off by the general "cheapness" of the game's presentation. There isn't much variety to its character or backdrop illustrations, and while that didn't bother me, it may bug others.

Something else that might annoy Raging Loop readers is its overall linearity. Yes, there are decisions to make, the aforementioned time loops to deal with, and a vast assortment of (mostly bad) endings to muse over, but for the most part you have to tackle them in a fairly straightforward manner.



Clearly that didn't keep me from enjoying the hell out of Raging Loop. In fact, I can't point to a single component of the game that irked me in any meaningful way.

Will you have a similarly positive reaction to this VN should you choose to play--or read, as the kids say--it? It's hard to say. If what I've said so far intrigues you in the least, though, I'd recommend giving it a try.

And if you still need a little push in that direction? Read this Raging Loop review, or check out this game-forum thread devoted to it. They should nudge you to one side of the fence or the other.