I love all of the games I've posted about on Polygon Not Forgotten. I cannot say I love them all equally. If I had to choose just one to survive and the others to be eradicated from history, it would be Kururin Paradise.
Kururin Paradise is a game about moving a rotating stick through mazes, trying not to come into contact with the walls or obstacles. You use the directional pad to move the stick. You use the "A" button to speed up is movement along the map, "B" to slow it down," and "R" button to speed up its rotation along its own axis. This is the game I'd watch every other game in existence burn to save.
With a gameplay mechanic so basic, the only way Kururin Paradise could succeed is with flawless hit detection and ceaselessly inventive level design. It is by these that it does succeed. And on the topic of ceaselessness, the inexorability of the stick's clockwise rotation is the source of the game's tension. Corridors are typically not tall enough to accommodate a perfectly upright stick standing at 12:00 and 6:00. This means you area almost always on the verge of sustaining damage. One brush with a wall means your "Perfect" rating is gone. Three means game over.
Kururin Paradise, with its clean aesthetic, simple controls, and negligible production values, should be exactly the kind of game we see on cellphones. Its colors and characters look fresh out of a 2014 iPhone game, but its control and level design--that which cannot easily be copied--are strictly the domain of 2002 and Eighting, masters of rock-hard Japanese shooting games like Armed Police Batrider and whose employees would go on to found a little outfit called Cave. Yes, Mushihimesama and Dodon Pachi Cave. The same dedication to hit detection and difficulty that prevail in Kururin can be found in Cave's work of the same period. I just wish it could be found on my cellphone.
Highest Recommendation
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