Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San is a love letter to the Game Boy in the best possible way. The game isn’t one of those retro-inspired games that would never be able to work on the machines from their generation, rather, Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San is built almost perfectly for the Game Boy.

The team behind the game played within the bounds of the Game Boy when putting this one together. These sorts of self-imposed limitations mean that most people will think this is simply an update of an actual Game Boy title. The visuals stick to the Game Boy color palette, the music was written on a classic tracker, and the controls are limited to only two action buttons.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”14″] Dev: Christophe Galati

Publisher: Nicalis

Genre: Platformer

Release: Oct 30, 2018

Platform: PC[/perfectpullquote]

But this is 2018 and Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San understands that by letting you play with lots of settings, almost as if the game was being played through a Super Game Boy. There’s a lot of nostalgia to be had here from just a technical level. You can change the colors, play with the screen size, and even add borders to spice things up.

The game itself is a weird one, which makes sense since this is from Nicalis and they release all manner of crazy titles. In fact, I can’t think of another major studio that would even think about taking a chance on releasing a game like this. In the game you play as Mr. Tako, an octopus  that’s stuck in the middle of an octopus and human war.

Look, this is a Japanese game so if you expected something that made sense you’re looking at the wrong freaking country. Mr. Tako himself is a really nice octopus who likes to rescue humans and is granted the ability to travel between sea and land by a magical fairy for being a cool dude. Japan, people.

The gameplay is where the game really shines. I like to say that less is more in game design and Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San really strips away all the fancy mechanics and styling of modern games leaving only the core basics. You can jump, shoot stuff from your mouth and that’s about it. Again, we are limited to the buttons offered by the Game Boy.

But while this seems really mundane, the gameplay keeps things exciting thanks to your abilities and the way each stage is designed. As you go through the game trying to make everyone play nice by you’ll solve puzzles and battling all manner of enemies on land and sea, both.

You won’t kill these enemies (only boss characters seem to die) and your only option for attack is to spit ink at them, freezing them in place for a limited amount of time. This may seem like a cop-out but it’s actually part of the gameplay mechanic Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San employs.

Spitting ink will freeze enemies and give you a chance to use them as impromptu platforms to progress through each stage, find hidden locations, or find alternate paths. It’s a neat mechanic that give you a lot of freedom, even in a game this basic in design and concept.

You’ll also need to use your “look down” feature so you can see where you are going as there are a lot of blind, or nearly blind jumps throughout the game. Levels can be fairly large because you can tackle them a few different ways and you can travel through them at will like in Metroid, so I get this looking feature, even if it is a bit clunky.

Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San spits ink, but he has other abilities that you can collect through your adventure. You can find hats that, aside from being super cute, give you new powers and abilities. One may give you and extra hit before death, another might let you shoot arrows, while another bouncing balls that jump all over the screen. These hats can be changed at checkpoints so you can play around with them on the go.

As for difficulty, Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San keeps this in the same vein as those brutal Game Boy games of old. That means one hit deaths are the name of the game here. Back then games tended to be really short, so to make it worth your money developers would make them really hard so you’d probably never finish it.

That isn’t quite the case here, but taking a single hit will take a life unless you have a hat on that acts as an extra hit or two. Die without reaching a checkpoint and you’ll start over from the beginning, lose all your lives and it’s game over. The game isn’t brutal, but it will require a fair bit of skill. There is even an easy mode that give you tons of lives for those that want a more casual experience.

Layout wise there are six worlds to explore, each with a bunch of stages that are laid out almost exactly like the Kibry games. In fact, Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San seems to pull a lot from the Kirby look and feel. And if you are going to pull from a game, might as well pull from one of the best on the Game Boy. But unlike the Game Boy, there are no space limitations here and there are tons and tons of stages to play and some 50 hats to collect.

Add on top of that a fully fleshed out story with almost too much dialogue, a bunch of mini-games and all sorts of side quests, some fun chip-tune music and you have for a robust game in a very small package. There is a lot to love here and Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San just oozes charm.

That said, it’s not a perfect experience with a few nagging issues. While the game isn’t a cakewalk like, say, Kirby, the massive boss battles sure are, especially if you are using the best weapon. I actually died less when battling the bosses of the game than playing through the stages. They were just too easy for my taste.

Then there’s the jumping mechanic that has some issues when near a ledge. There’s this weird thing that happens when you jump up to the edge of a platform but don’t quite reach the top. Sometimes you’ll just fall back down to try again, but sometimes you’ll slowly side up it as if gravity stopped working. It’s really strange when it happens and I’m not sure if it’s intentional.

It’s clear that Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San is a work of love by a team that grew up loving the Game Boy. The devil is in the details and they really nailed a lot of the little things that so many teams overlook when trying to copy, or use the retro aesthetic. If you grew up on the Game Boy then Save me Mr Tako: Tasukete Tako-San is a game you are going to love and we can totally recommend it.

There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before, but that sort of the point. It’s a chance to go back to the past with something designed in the present. The only thing I can add is that I’d really love for this one to get a physical release. I’d love to own a Nintendo Switch copy of the game to be able to take on the go!

Final Score:

3.5/5

 

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